Month: August 2012

Guest Post: Ruth Ellen Parlour

Ruth Ellen Parlour, author of Earth Angel, is here today to give us some tips on writing romance. Romance isn’t the main plot in her novel, but it’s certainly present, and she has some great tips on how to weave it into your story. You should check out her first novel, Earth Angel! One person who comments on the blog today will receive a free e-copy of Earth Angel. Thanks for stopping by, Ruth and good luck with Earth Angel!

Ruth Ellen Parlour, author of Earth Angel

One of my readers made an interesting comment on the romantic subplot in my fantasy novel, Earth Angel. This particular reader was an older woman and not interested in sappy love stories or erotic scenes. She brought up the point that romance doesn’t need to be either of those things; that a romance can bloom without the characters even touching. This got me thinking about romance in books. I did a bit of research and found some useful tips to consider when writing romance. As a YA writer these tips do not include writing sex scenes!

Individual. The romance should be as unique as the characters. Romance is not a cliché, it is individual and personal. The two romantically involved pairings in Earth Angel couldn’t be more different. Pair 1 – a teenaged girl smitten by a young man who doesn’t even realise. Pair 2 – a man trying to win affection from a woman by driving her nuts. Both pairs have an entirely different relationship and conflicts.

Tension/conflict. Conflict is often a good tool to develop the relationship, whether the two characters have conflicting traits or they are put through a conflict together that brings them close. Tension between characters is good to generate an emotional response from the reader, for example, if they want to touch but can’t.
Climax/raise the stakes. Throughout the novel it might be an idea to raise the stakes of the romance or relationship to a climax at the end for added drama. Start off with small steps and increase the romance throughout.

Exaggerated awareness. From the perspective of the smitten character, they note looks, movements, speech of their loved one with exaggeration. A simple touch is heightened, tense and emotional. This is called Exaggerated awareness and draws the reader into the romance.

Genre. Genre can be used to add drama to a romance. The genre I write is fantasy so romantic elements are always subplot but I use the setting and plot to heighten the relationships. People are brought together through epic, life changing scenarios.

POV. Perspective can be a good tool to add mystery. Telling the story from only one character’s POV in one scene, we don’t know what the other is thinking or feeling which adds tension and mystery.

Details. This can be related to the point about individuality. What are the characters backgrounds, traits, personalities, wants, needs, issues that can affect the relationship? Details are a way to ground the romance in believability.

Dialogue is an essential tool to utilise that can generate a myriad of emotions. The way the characters speak and the words they choose can add drama easily.
Humour. Humour can work if it fits in with the character. One of my characters fancies himself as a joker and pokes fun at his female fancy. This point also relates to the individual aspect.
Character development. Don’t shoehorn a romance into the story for the sake of a romance. What does it add to the plot and to the characters? Your characters should develop and change through the story as the romance and plot does.

Other emotions. It’s not just about romance, what other emotions are in play? What issues do the characters have that affects the relationship: anger, sadness, fear? These tools can be used to add drama or bring the characters together through hardship.

Romance is about the relationship, not just physical attraction. It doesn’t have to be all about kissing and touching. Relationships are built on more than just the physical. The journey the characters take and issues they have to face and can more heart wrenching. This point is related to other emotions and the character development.

Sources;
http://shalleemcarthur.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/writing-romance-for-young-adults.html
http://shalleemcarthur.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/5-tips-for-writing-memorable-romantic.html
http://www.writing-world.com/romance/love.shtml
http://maxhelmberger.com/characterromance.html
http://writeromanceright.webs.com/

Earth Angel, by Ruth Ellen Parlour

Earth Angel is the first novel by UK author Ruth Ellen Parlour. This high fantasy novel, aimed at young adults, is set in a world completely unlike our own. The Earth Angels, serving their gods, fight to protect Eardesha in a world filled with many familiar fantasy creatures—like dragons—and many unfamiliar ones as well, including hybrids—human-animal crosses—and the monstrous Krieger. Earth Angels is the first in a series.

Gabrielle is imprisoned in sinister Khartaz prison, along with her brother, Oz. Desperate to escape the horrors of life there, she and her brother plot their escape, only to face the monsters in the surrounding desert that snatch their friends away one by one. Faith is an Earth Angel intent on reuniting with her lover, whom she left behind, and questioning the meaning of her calling. Zenovia is an orphan who only wants to find her parents, a search that will take her places she never dreamed of.

When an army of the vicious Krieger invades Eardesha with a dark power that threatens to destroy the entire land, the military turns Khartaz prison into a training ground for the convicts in the hope of stalling the destruction. Gabrielle finds herself drawn back to the prison against her will, called by the gods to help her people. Together with Faith, she will uncover a secret the gods have kept hidden for thousands of year, and race to stop the Krieger from destroying Eardesha forever.

Filled with varied landscapes and vivid creatures, Earth Angel is an intriguing first novel set in a fascinating world. The characters are well written and colorful, and the relationships between them bring the story to life. The pages are filled with action and adventure, and will keep the reader racing to find out what happens.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It’s a different type of YA fantasy–no vampires or werewolves in sight–and the strong female characters are a refreshing change as well. I liked the idea of the hybrids, too. Sort of SF, but it gave the world a neat twist, which is always a good thing. As an added bonus, Ruth Ellen Parlour will be doing a guest post here on Friday as part of her Earth Angel blog tour, and one commenter that day will receive a free e-copy of the book! So be sure and check back Friday to see what Ms. Parlour has to say about writing romance.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Okay, so this isn’t actual PANTS on fire, but still.
(Photo courtesy of Dave R. Farmer, via WANA Commons on Flickr)

Fair warning: this may be a lengthy rant. Also, I’m still a little angry.

Why do people lie? Seriously, isn’t it easier to tell the truth, or at the very least, not tell a falsehood? I don’t like liars. I never have. I’m not claiming to be perfect, or saying I’ve never lied (obviously, THAT would be a lie), but I DO try very hard not to lie. It makes me uncomfortable. And when people lie to me, it makes me angry. Very angry.

One particular instance that happened this week stands out. Background info: I work full-time and go to school full-time. About two months ago, I got it approved that when school started, I would only be working three days a week. Fast forward to this past Wednesday: I come back from a week off to find that the new schedule has me working four days a week. Apparently, my new boss won’t approve it. I was angry, but I decided to talk to her about it.

Now, I already knew that the scheduler had spent some time trying to convince her to approve it, and I already knew that our schedule was late being posted because the new boss had to approve it, so when she lied to me TWICE in the space of two minutes, I almost lost it. I asked her about the issue. She said, “Oh, I think mentioned that to me.” (Lie #1: I already KNOW she did. She’s awesome. She’s on top of these things.). Okay, is there anything you can do about it? I really need that to be my schedule. “I haven’t even seen the staff’s schedule, so I’ll take a look at it and get back to you.” (Lie #2, since I KNOW you had to approve the schedule, which means you had to see it.). I did not, however, lose my temper right then. I calmly told her that I needed to know something in the next couple of days, since school started in a week, and that if it couldn’t be worked out, I would be looking for a new job.

She did ask me if I’d be willing to commit to ONE 4-day week a month. I said yes, but that’s all I’ve heard from her. And on reflection…do I really want to trust the word of someone who has already proven herself to be a liar? I don’t think so. So I’m already looking for a new job. The good news is, I’m certified in a field where 3-day workweeks are relatively common, so I don’t think I’ll have a problem finding something else. (But wish me luck!)

It would have been simpler for her to say, “You know what? I’m aware of the situation. I looked at the schedule, but it’s just not possible.” I would have respected her, even if I were still angry. Now I don’t even have respect for her.

Another example: two years ago, I started dating someone. It was casual for a few months, but then it wasn’t. After a while, he started getting really busy all the time, and I rarely saw him. When I did, he was always really apologetic, and always said how much he missed me, asked me to be patient with his busy schedule a little bit longer (I’m an idiot. I know that…). After a couple of months of this, we split up because he thought one of my friends was interfering when she told him to stop treating me like crap. I found out about three weeks later that he’d been dating someone else for a couple of months and was ENGAGED to her! And he still had the BALLS to tell me, when I called him on it: “I never cheated on you, and I never lied to you.” REALLY? You also never mentioned YOUR FIANCEE!

Again, I would have respected him if he’d told me he met someone else and wanted to break things off. It wasn’t that serious. I’d still have been mad, but I wouldn’t now think he’s a complete and total douchebag. Which I do. Among other things…

Here’s another example:
Lie: Miley Cyrus’s fiancé: “Honey, your new haircut looks fantastic!”
Not-a-lie: Miley Cyrus’s fiancé: Honey, you cut your hair!

See the difference there? The second one is true. It doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. It doesn’t make you look like a total a**hat. Is it really too much to ask that people be honest with each other? Things would be so much simpler!

/end of rant

Paying it Forward

I’ve been nominated for two awards: the Reader Appreciation Award and the Beautiful Blogger award. Awesome, right? It’s not the Nobel Prize or anything, but I’m super excited about it (thank you, Candace Knoebel).

As part of the deal, I have to give you seven facts about myself, so here goes:

1) I’m a pescatarian. (This means the only meat I eat is seafood. For like 5 years now, although bacon is still really tempting sometimes…)

2) I have six tattoos. (Yes, only six. For now…)

3) I’m going to school for environmental biology (or, as everyone always asks “So you want to save the world?” Yes….)

4) I save all the fortunes out of my fortune cookies. Don’t ask me why..

5) I’ve lived in Texas most of my life, but New Orleans is my favorite city ever (and I lived just outside it for two years. Awesome.)

6) Ireland and Costa Rica top the list of Places I Want to Visit.

7) I’d really, really like to learn either Japanese or Gaelic. Not sure why, as there’s not a big demand for either in Texas…

I also get to nominate seven other deserving bloggers, so here they are: Ruth Ellen Parlor; JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom; bottledworder; Albert Berg; Lori Dyan, Stuart A. Etter; and Fiction Fanatic.

Is Fan Fiction the Devil (or am I overreacting)?

So, a couple of days ago, I got an email with this little story in it from GalleyCat, about a book deal worth seven figures for a work that started out as Twilight fan fiction (Gabriel’s Inferno and Gabriel’s Rapture, by Sylvain Reynard). And no, I’m not talking about Fifty Shades of Grey. If you haven’t heard about Fifty Shades of Grey (by E L James), where the heck have you been for the past few months? It also started out as a Twilight fan fiction piece, albeit one of erotica.

However, these two works of fan fiction are not your usual, run-of-the-mill, only-read-by-fans-on-some-website fan fiction. Fifty Shades of Grey has been phenomenally successful. According to Wikipedia, “On 1 August 2012, amazon.co.uk announced that they had sold more copies of Fifty Shades of Grey than they had of the entire Harry Potter series combined, making E. L. James their best-selling author ever, overtaking J.K. Rowling.” And according to Reynard’s blog yesterday, Gabriel’s Inferno is #35 on the New York Times Bestsellers List (Ebook/Fiction).

My initial reaction to these two pieces of information isn’t exactly printable, but it amounts to something along the lines of “Are you freaking kidding me?!” Fan fiction is, by definition (again, Wikipedia), “fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator.” So, these two writers were such huge fans of the Twilight series and its characters that they went out and wrote their own stories about these characters/this world.

Okay. I can understand that. I understand loving characters and a world so much that you just can’t bear to let them go. I love The Dragonriders of Pern. I have no idea how many times I’ve read that series and wished I could be a dragonrider. I can’t even put into words how much I love Gone with the Wind (and for the record, I’ve read that something like upwards of 20 times). Scarlett kicks a**, even if she is kind of clueless sometimes and makes me a little angry (Yes, I still get mad every time I read that book. Who in their right mind would want Ashley when Rhett is right there?). But I’ve never written any sort of re-telling of the story, or written my preferred version of what happened between them.

So, again, are you kidding me? Don’t get me wrong: I firmly believe every writer has the right to write whatever they want, whatever moves them, no matter what anyone else thinks of it. But it bothers me that these two authors are making a substantial amount of money off of works that are based on someone else’s creation. Maybe they changed the names/locations/plots to distance themselves. Maybe the books, in their current incarnations, aren’t anything remotely similar to their original versions (I really can’t say. Apart from the brief bits in the GalleyCat links above, I haven’t read either of them.). Maybe these authors were so inspired by Twilight that they realized their dreams of writing a novel. However….

Writing something based on someone else’s creation would feel like stealing to me. On a personal level, I couldn’t do it. Writing a piece of fan fiction strictly for yourself is one thing. Writing it and putting it out there for others to read, even if it’s made clear that it is based on someone else’s work, is another. Yes, maybe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but still, you took someone else’s work, changed it up, and called it your own. I read Eragon, too, and it’s similarities to Lord of the Rings and Star Wars bothered me immensely, so maybe this is my own personal problem, but what does everyone else think about this?

/end rant

Maybe the Muse is Here to Stay

I’ve been pretty consistent with the writing the past few weeks. My weekly word count goal has been 10k, and I’ve hit it all but one week out of the last three (and that week I wrote 7k, still not too shabby). I was getting a little off-track with Calder, but I did some brainstorming on Sunday, and I think I have a better grip on where things are going. I haven’t done any more outlining, but I do have a brief synopsis of the rest of the story.

My co-author and I have also started working on the zombie story again. Right now, I’m in the re-reading-because-it’s-been-so-long-I’ve-forgotten-what-we-wrote stage. The story is sitting at around 100k, and it’s all but finished, but it needs a lot of work, I’m not going to lie. We’re currently doing a lot of emailing back and forth about what works and what doesn’t, and I think we’re going to change the whole thing to rotating first-person POV. I’m also going to need someone with some military experience to read over my chapters (while not laughing at what I’m quite sure I got wrong), and give me some feedback. At the very least, killing people/zombies on the page as gruesomely as possible is always entertaining.

I also finally, finally started revising the werewolf story. It’s taken me almost a year to get my head straight enough to revise this story, but I’m so glad I finally got it together. I love this story. I really do. And with my editor’s suggestions, I’m hoping to make it the best I possibly can. And maybe self-publish it…

Too bad I can’t get my “real” life to go so well…

Much Ado About Magic, by Shanna Swenson

Shanna Swenson is a local author, from Irving, Texas, who writes fantasy novels. The fifth novel in her popular Enchanted, Inc. series; Much Ado About Magic, will be out on August 15th. Ms. Swenson will also be at FenCon in Dallas in September.

The Enchanted, Inc. series follows Katie Chandler, a girl from a small Texas town who moves to New York City, and is overwhelmed by the strangeness she sees there—strangeness that no one else seems to notice. When Katie finds out she is a magical immune—magic doesn’t work on her–everything starts to make sense. Soon she’s working for Magic, Spells, and Illusions (MSI), and flirting with the cute—and very shy—Owen Palmer.

In Much Ado About Magic, New York has been hit with a magical crime wave, and as the new director of marketing, it’s Katie’s job to deflect some of the heat a rival company is directing at MSI. Owen is working hard to decipher the criminal spells, but the rival company is selling protective charms—charms that just might affect their wearers more than they imagine.

When a magical flu hits the city, it’s up to Katie to figure out what’s going on—while the rest of the company is sick. Soon she realizes the crime wave and the flu are linked, and may be part of a plot that has been in the works for decades. With suspicion falling on Owen, Katie has to prove who the real threat is, and unraveling the truth about Owen’s path is key.

The Enchanted, Inc. series is a fun, light-hearted series mixing the best elements of fantasy and chick-lit into its own special blend of magic. The characters, even minor ones, are vivid and memorable, and the world itself is richly imagined and enticing. Much Ado About Magic is a long-awaited and much anticipated romp in the further adventures of Katie Chandler.

(Galley provided via NetGalley)