The Pool

It's been finished for a week now. The kids have played in it every day and my youngest has finally learned to swim. Through this adventure, I've thought about two things.

First the process of refinishing the pool from start to finish. Our salesman was fantastic and very knowledgeable - hence the choice of his company over a few others. We signed all the papers and went down to the showroom and picked out our color and our tile. They came and chipped out the old plaster. Then we waited. And waited. A worker showed up one morning to place the tile turtles on the step. This was fine except that I wasn't home and my husband kept sending pictures as I drove. Then we waited and waited some more. We called. They looked into it and I guess there was some confusion about who was installing some anchors. They finally came out and did a blue pebble-sheen finish.

So what does this have to do with writing? It's a long process, from rough draft to polished copy, but in the end we aim to have something wonderful that people will enjoy.

   

The second thing that occurred to me is that sometimes we have to jump in, learn all we can about our craft, trust our mentors (our crit groups, our editors, our agents etc.), have fun, and give it our all. Then, before you know it we are swimming like pros. Jump in and Write On!

Special Olympics

I am fortunate enough to have a daughter with special needs. She is an amazing girl that has blessed our family enormously. Most of us know someone with special needs - and if you don't, I challenge you to volunteer to help at Special Olympics and get to know these great people.

Clearly this is a cause that is dear to my heart and I was so impressed when my cousin Lauren decided to get involved. She is raising money for Special Olympics in Utah.  Special Olympics Utah is a non-profit organization that receives no local, state, or federal government or United Way support. They rely on donations of time and money to provide these great programs.

Please click here to learn more and join me in supporting Lauren and Special Olympics Utah.

Copyrights and TM

Copyright laws. It all depends on the question. Rather than try to cover everything there is about copyrights - which has already been done, I am going to list some of the resources I found in researching copyright laws.
Government website
Get copyright permissions HERE
Using trademarks in fiction - a publishing and intellectual property attorney's point of view
More trademarks in fiction - from a publishing company point of view
A chart of copyright terms and public domain in the US
An easy to use site with tons of links and resources.

Remember, citing a source is not "permission" to use someone else's work. Good luck and write on!

More Heroines

Yesterday started with me dropping my oldest daughter off for a week long youth conference. She is beautiful and amazing and by far the most persistent person I know. She going to have a great week.

Then I had lunch with a dear friend whom I met at the LDStorymakers Conference in April. She is such an inspiration. I truly believe that God puts people in our path from whom we can learn. Connie is one of those people for me. It's a little (OK, a lot) unfair - it's as if I am feasting at this great banquet and all I've provided is the cheese plate. I've started her LifeChange Program - a simple way to set goals and make simple but effective changes in your life - love it! I am currently listening to her Get Organized CD (yes, I need to get organized!) So, you can see, I am nibbling on this fabulous table of goodies thanks to her.

After a long and wonderful lunch, I went to see my best friend from high school. It had been way, WAY, too long since we'd gotten together (like 10 years). How does that happen? I guess it doesn't help that we live in different states - about 11 hours by car from each other. But still. I should be better at the keeping in touch thing, after all, she's another amazing person in my life - and I love her! She's had to face some incredible trials throughout her life.

But what does this have to do with writing you ask? Well, creating characters in our books that are believable and real sometimes comes as a challenge. What kind of attributes do I want my protagonist to have? These ladies are my heroes and the strength of their amazing character is a great example of the kind of women I want to write about. They have profound faith and true courage. Even when the pain blurs minute into minute and day into day, they reach deep inside, lean on the Lord - God is an integral part of their lives - and work through it. Thank you my friends for your friendship and your example and for being women of God.

Awakening Avery by LC Lewis

LC Lewis typically writes historical novels but has switched gears with her just-released novel "Awakening Avery." The following is an excerpt from an interview with her.

Author Interview with Laurie Lewis

Laurie, why did you switch genres and write “AWAKENING AVERY?” It’s not historical is it?

No, ”AWAKENING AVERY” is current, so it’s a nice diversion from my historical work.

What is the message behind the title, “AWAKENING AVERY?”

Our lead character is an LDS author/wife and mother who gets catapulted from her comfortable support role in the family to the lead after the untimely death of her wonderful husband. Although her husband, Paul, had been slowing fading for a long time, Avery had closed her eyes to the toll his illness and death had taken on her and her family.  Her oldest son tells her he needs to get away to deal with his grief, and she is forced to face some hard truths—things are falling apart in her once perfect family, and instead of preparing for the eventuality of Paul’s death, she has been shriveling away.  Avery needs to step up and take action, a daring thing that requires her to grow and stretch in ways she never imagined.

So is this story primarily about handling grief?

The Thompson family’s grief is the vehicle we use to address the major theme of the book, which is family vigilance. Their grief opens cracks in their spiritual veneer that weakens them, and makes them vulnerable, but hopefully readers will recognize that all of our families are vulnerable if we lower our vigilance for whatever reason. But another lesson from the book is the power available to us as we draw upon our families and friends for strength. The book is very hopeful.

The themes are serious, but you call "AWAKENING AVERY" a chuckle-out-loud and grab-a-hankie read.  Why?

Avery is grieving, but she goes through a summer of self-discovery  where she opens her narrow world up to receive a host of quirky new friends. They all have life experience and strength she can draw from, and she discovers she has a few things to teach them as well. So it’s not a sad book. Parts are very tender—happy tender and sad tender— and parts are a riot. We’ve got some fun, crazy characters in here.

 Like Teddie and Rider Davis? They’re hilarious!

Yeah, I love them! They remind me of kids playing dress-up, but they have already been through the fire, and under all their designer duds, they are people of great substance. They have been tested in the crucible of faith, and they are stronger because of it.

And George?  I hear the dedication of Awakening Avery is also very personal to you.

It is. It reads, “To my father, Allen K. Chilcoat, the chef behind the magic of slumgolian and peanut-butter balls; and to my mother, Bernice, who kept us alive despite his kitchen exploits.”

Of all the books I’ve written, or that I will ever write, this one probably best reflects my childhood memories of my father. He is the model for George because when Dad went into the kitchen to cook we knew it was going to be an adventure.

So Slumgolian is a real dish? You actually ate it?

Oh yes! I think the recipe had its beginnings in Iceland where my father was stationed for a time. The men threw whatever they had into a pot and called it Slumgolian. One evening when we were camping, after a long day of crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay, my dad offered to make dinner. Mom was horrified at what was being thrown together—baked beans, chicken noodle soup, corn, peas, you name it—but Dad insisted we’d love it. It looked dreadful, but Dad’s presentation and sales pitch transformed it from slop to Slumgolian, a very exotic foreign dish.

And the Kool-Aid pancakes and Peanut Butter Balls?

Yeah, they were all my dad’s recipes.

Avery is an author. Was that meant to be another biographical element?

No . . . I needed Avery to have a career that made her mobile enough to take this journey, and to provide her with a tool with which she could measure her personal growth. Writing her as an author fit that bill, and I already understood that industry. For Avery, her writing and the writings of another author—Axel Hunter—provide an outlet for expression . . . of her grief, her fears, her hopes. I think we all need an outlet.  Hopefully one of our outlets is good friends.

Axel Hunter figures critically in this book.

Neither Avery nor Gabriel sees any personal life for themselves after their spouses die.  Axel’s books open their eyes and hearts to possibilities they had shut out. As a writer, I’d love to think my books made a difference like that in anyone’s life.

That’s powerful, but there is also great power in humor. I love the story of the Carson sisters and the pink flamingo rug!

That was the most fun scene to write! I hope to begin a new pink flamingo trend in home décor!

The Thompsons are LDS but the Carsons are not. That becomes a major theme in the book as well.

“Awakening Avery” explores the additional tensions that arise in a marriage when religious differences exist, and the devastating consequences that occur when partners allow that to build a wedge in their family. The absolute essential nature of strong families is the underlying theme of “Awakening Avery.”

So what other projects are you working on?

I’m still promoting my Free Men and Dreamers series. Volume three, “Dawn’s Early Light,” debuted in December, and I’m hoping we’ll see book four on the shelves by late summer.

Thanks for the interview, Laurie Lewis. “Awakening Avery” sounds like a great gift for mothers and wives.



Reviews. . .

Readers will love the journey that Avery takes them on and will find themselves transformed in the process. —Martha Adams

“Teddie and Rider are most delightful, and they immediately find a place in Avery's heart and in the reader's heart as well.”

“I had to chuckle out loud.”

“A very . . . compelling read.”

“[This] author has a definite knack for making her characters' voices distinct.”

“I love Avery . . . a middle-aged woman being the heroine.”

Click on this link to reach chapter one: Awakening Avery Chapter One or click here to go to Ms. Lewis' website.

Illuminations by Joyce DiPastena

Illuminations of the Heart

Back of the Book:

“Clothilde.”

He spoke the name on a breath like a prayer. Then he lowered his head and kissed her.

Her heart is lost in that first embrace, her world shaken to its foundations. There is just one problem: her name is not Clothilde. It is Siriol de Calendri.

Trained in the art of illumination in the far-off city of Venice, Siri is directed by her late brother’s will to the county of Poitou in France, where she enters the guardianship of her brother’s friend, Sir Triston de Brielle. Once in Poitou, Siri hopes to find employment in an illuminator’s shop—until Triston unexpectedly snatches her heart away with a kiss.

Triston is a man of quiet honor and courage, but the guilt he carries for the death of his late wife, Clothilde, has left him numb and hesitant to love again. Worse yet, Siri bears an uncanny resemblance to his lost love. Or does she? Her merry laughter and twinkling eyes are very different from his late wife’s shy smiles and quiet ways. Yet when he gazes into Siri’s face, all he sees is Clothilde.

Then Triston’s past returns to threaten them both. Will his tragic life with Clothilde be repeated with Siri? Trapped between the rivalry of the king’s sons on the one hand and a neighbor out for vengeance on the other, Triston realizes it would be safer to send Siri away. But how can he bear to lose her again?

Siri is determined not to be cast off and not to live in another woman’s shadow. She has illuminated many a priceless book with pen and paint. But can her own vibrant spirit illuminate the darkness in Triston’s soul and make his heart beat for her alone?

And who would not want to pick that up and read it? I recently bought this book after reading the first chapter on the author's blog, JDP News. It was posted June 6, 2009. I have read her book, Loyalty's Web - which I really enjoyed and one of these days I will post a review. To get to know Ms. DiPastena and her newest book, read on:

How long have you been writing?

I’ve been writing silly little stories I never finished since junior high school. When I started a new story my freshman year in college I thought it’d end up the same as all the others…begun but never finished. But this one, my first attempt at a medieval romance, somehow captivated my attention and carried me through all the way to the words “the end”. It took me six years to get there, four years undergraduate and two years of graduate school. Although that book was never published, I’m still in love with its hero to this day!

What genre do you write and why?

I write medieval romances, although I tend to include so much additional plot alongside the romance that I had an agent tell me I don’t really write romances at all. But they’re all romances to me. There may be a lot of other stuff going on…mysteries, assassination attempts, medieval politics…but at the heart of each story is a man and a woman falling in love against all the odds around them.

Where do you get your inspiration to write?

My inspiration comes from many different sources. Sometimes it comes from a book I’ve written before. For example, my first published book, Loyalty’s Web, was based on characters from that first unpublished novel I wrote in college. The hero and heroine of Loyalty’s Web were an elderly married couple in that early romance, and I became curious to find out how they had met and fallen in love, so I wrote Loyalty’s Web to find out the answer.

Sometimes bits and pieces of research will fascinate me and influence how I draw a character’s background. For my second published romance, Illuminations of the Heart, I became interested in the subject of medieval illumination and decided to combine that interest with my new heroine, the daughter of a medieval illuminator from Italy. (Although the novel itself is set in France, like Loyalty’s Web.) During the writing of Illuminations of the Heart, I became interested in the subject of medieval troubadours. So that’s a subject I’m incorporating into the novel I’m writing right now.

Do you ever get writer’s block? What helps you to overcome it?

Writer’s block is a toughie. There was a time I thought I had so many ideas that I’d never get writer’s block. Now I find myself struggling with it quite frequently. I’ve discovered it’s not a lack of ideas that I have. It’s a byproduct of stress. When my stress levels go up, I find it very difficult to “turn off” my worries and focus enough to work on my novels.

The thing that has worked best for me through the years is to set a timer for a specific length of time (an hour, two hours, whatever you can set it for) and tell myself that I don’t have to write anything, but I do have to sit at the computer until the timer goes off. I can’t go get a snack, I can’t play any games, I can’t turn on the TV, I can’t do anything except either stare at my blank computer screen or type something. And that “something” has to have something to do with my new story! Sometimes I only type a handful of words, sometimes I’ll end up typing a stream, but whether out of boredom or inspiration, I don’t think I’ve ever not written something before the timer goes off. And no matter how terrible what I wrote might seem at the time, it almost always ends up moving my story along no matter how microscopically. And I always feel better about myself just for trying.

If you could spend an hour talking to anyone from any time in history, who 
would it be? And Why?

King Henry II of England! I fell in love with Henry II back in high school when I first read The Conquering Family by Thomas B. Costain. Not “romantic” love. There was just something about the way his contemporaries described him that stirred a great affection in me for him. He seemed to be one of those rare kings who was actually more interested in trying to improve his country than in simply enjoying the “glory” or “privileges” of his rank. He is described as a man who hated war, even though circumstances forced him to spend most of his adult life at war. He was a man of tremendous energy and intellect. And he laid important foundations to the legal system that we have inherited from England and enjoy ourselves today.

His legacy was marred by his quarrel with Archbishop Thomas á Becket, and the son who succeeded him, Richard the Lionheart, is a more flashy character of legend. But everything I’ve read about Henry II since those high school days has only increased my love and admiration for this man. Loyalty’s Web and Illuminations of the Heart are both set during his lifetime, and although he has not yet actually appeared on the scene in any of my books, the references I make to him, small though they might be, are my own way of paying tribute to this great, underappreciated king.

What is your next project?

Right now, I’m just calling it “my troubadour book”. It’s based on a character from my second book, Illuminations of the Heart, and once again is set in medieval France.

Power round questions:

Uh-oh!

Favorite food? Chocolate chip cookies

Favorite dessert? Umm…chocolate chip cookies

Jeans and  T-shirt, or designer clothes? Both! (Well, not really “designer”, but I also like fun, “nice” clothes.)

Guilty pleasure? Chocolate. (If only I felt more guilt than pleasure from it!)

One word that describes you? Shy. Why do you think this interview is taking place on a blog?

Favorite flower? Snapdragons

Favorite sport? If I absolutely, positively MUST be forced to watch a sport, then I’ll choose figure skating.

Where can readers find a copy of Illuminations of the Heart?

Illuminations of the Heart is available in Deseret Bookstores and some Arizona Barnes & Nobles. It can be ordered directly through Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores, or ordered online at DeseretBook.com (http://deseretbook.com) Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com), BarnesandNoble.com (http://www.barnesandnoble.com), and Borders.com (http://www.borders.com).

The Stranger She Married

Disclaimer: I purchased this book and received no compensation from the author for this review.

Back of the book:
When her parents and only brother die within weeks of each other, Alicia and her younger sister are left in the hands of an uncle who has brought them all to financial and social ruin. Desperate to save her family from debtor's prison, Alicia vows to marry the first wealthy man to propose. She meets the dashing Lord Amesbury, and her heart whispers that this is the man she is destined to love, but his tainted past may forever stand in their way. Her choices in potential husbands narrow to either a scarred cripple with the heart of a poet, or a handsome rake with a deadly secret.

Cole Amesbury is tormented by his own ghosts, and believes he is beyond redemption, yet he cannot deny his attraction for the girl whose genuine goodness touches the heart he'd thought long dead. He fears the scars in his soul cut so deeply that he may never be able to offer Alicia a love that is true.

After yet another bizarre mishap threatens her life, Alicia suspects the seemingly unrelated accidents that have plagued her loved ones are actually a killer's attempt to exterminate every member of her family. Despite the threat looming over her, learning to love the stranger she married may pose the greatest danger to her heart.

I have always loved a good romance! My definition of good romance is not Danielle Steele-esque, but rather follows the old fashioned Victoria Holt style. So, did I think this was a good romance story? Yes, I did. Enough romance to satisfy the romantic in me and enough adventure to keep me hooked. I read this one in a day - took it with me in the car as I chauffeured around my kids. Departing from my usual loathing of red lights, I actually hoped for them so I could read a few more paragraphs as I waited. The characters were appealing and well-developed and there were enough twists and turns that I had to keep on reading. The characters stayed with me even after I finished reading. There were a few copy errors, but that aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I have thought about lending out my copy, but can't part with it yet. So, for now, I highly recommend buying your own and reading it. To read an excerpt from this novel and check out other works by Donna Hatch, check out her website at http://www.donnahatch.net/.

I am looking forward to her novel 'Guise of a Gentleman' coming in April 2010.