Tag: A. Catherine Noon

  • Announcing Silken Sheets & Seduction!

    I’m so excited to report that Silken Sheets & Seduction is here! To celebrate, we’re holding a huge – and I mean HUGE – giveaway! We’re giving a Kindle preloaded with books (for U.S. only), and a huge bundle of e-books (for international folks), as well as some other amazing prizes.

    Together with a team of 8 writers, we will share sexy and sensual stories that go on between the covers!

    Check out our trailer!

    If you like what you see, check out our Facebook page and Twitter feed.  You’ll be glad you did!

  • Lessons I’ve Learned About Promo

    My first book, BURNING BRIGHT, written with coauthor Rachel Wilder, comes out next month. One of the things I’m learning as a new author is how to do promo. In fact, I’ve started talking about it like that – “do promo” like it’s some kind of jargon term, some in-crowd thing that I’m part of.

    But it’s sure easy to get overwhelmed. I talk to people in my writing group who are mystified by even the small efforts I do, and I know authors who are so on top of their promo that I despair of ever catching up (Delilah Devlin and Xakara are two examples). So what have I learned? Here are three easy steps that anyone can take to dip a toe into the promotional waters without diving directly into the deep end.

    Step One: Start Small

    Don’t try to drink from the fire hydrant. Find a small drinking fountain at the park instead. Pick one outlet and play with it for a month or five – a blog, or Facebook page, or a website. Learn how the technology works and practice.

    Step Two: Invent a Framework

    Instead of staring at a blank screen waiting for inspiration, come up with a list of ideas that you can use as a framework. What works for me is this: on a clean sheet of paper, write in a column the days of the week:

    Sunday
    Monday
    Tuesday
    Wednesday
    etc.

    Then, next to each day, write an idea of a topic. Play with alliteration, (Sunday Silliness), or with some kind of one-through-seven sequence (chakras, musical notes, or subjects). Use those as your theme for the day, if you post daily, or for the week, if you post weekly.

    Step Three: Play Well With Others

    Join a forum in your genre of choice, or something targeted for writers. Read other writers who work in your genre, and comment on their posts. No one likes talking to themselves in an empty room, so give as good as you get: commenting on others is a good way, and sometimes the only way, to encourage others to comment on your own stuff.

    That’s all it takes. Just start with something simple, and build from there. A well-done but simple presence is much more effective than a broad scatter of disconnected blather.

    Above all, have fun. After all, that’s why we write, right?

  • And Now, For Something Completely Different…

    I know, I know. Usually I post chapters of The Night Is a Harsh Mistress. I promise, I’m working on it. I even am doing so with the collaboration of my coauthor, Rachel! I think we’re going to come up with some good ideas for it that will interest you.

    But for today, I want to share with you the results of a challenge from Romance Divas. For those of you that aren’t familiar, Romance Divas is an online forum of writers, authors, and readers. It consistently is listed as one of Writer’s Digest’s Top 101 Websites for Writers, and has received accolades from the writing community – and not just romance. Composed of authors writing in many genres besides romance, it is an excellent place to learn, grow, and network.

    The challenges are great fun. Authors who are interested post that they would like to play, and challengers give them a scenario. The writer must respond within 48 hours with a flash that is under 750 words, meets all the points of the challenge, and that is PG-13. It’s a good way to practice writing quickly, and one can use an existing or new WIP (work-in-progress).

    My challenge this go-round was from author Jason Linetsky. The particulars were:

    • Genre of choice.
    • Scenario: Your h/h has to travel over a great distance for a very important meeting. It must be a straight through trip as in no layovers/stopovers in a method of your choice.
    • Required elements: An old owners manual, a helium tank, a fake id, and a chihuahua … KIDDING! No chihuahua! … and a bottle of Grey Goose vodka.

    Here is what I came up with. Enjoy!

    Untitled

    Zeta woke to the lovely strains of Chihuahua in full bark, accompanied by the symphony of shrill hungover White trash. God damned trucker hotels. The barking cut off with a yelp and sympathy for the stupid animal burned through Zeta’s chest.

    Figured.

    He rolled out of bed and took a piss, then set the coffee on to brew. He moved the owner’s manual for the ancient Helium tank back onto the bed. The tank itself sat there like a huge, half-rusted torpedo from the sixties. Here’s hoping the thing worked as well as a torpedo, or Monroe was gonna kill him.

    Thank God that dump had water pressure.

    Then again, heavy water pressure on bruises wasn’t the sort of thing a man wanted to wake up to…

    He managed to grab the bottle of vodka from the counter next to the coffeemaker without dripping too much water everywhere. Some half-drunk yuppie kid gave it to him last night at the bar, wobbly with martinis and Zeta’s blowjob. Kid wasn’t half-bad at it himself, Zeta’s lower brain reminded him, but he swigged the vodka instead of focusing on his morning leftover reaction.

    Didn’t taste nearly as good as it had the night before. The label read “Grey Goose Vodka” with a picture of a fjord and geese flying overhead against some mountains.

    Mountains…

    Hell, he tried everything else…

    Then he heard it. The door rattled and jiggled, then the unmistakable turn of a key. He snatched his gun off the towels by the toilet and waited, heart pounding.

    “Hey, gorgeous, I’m back!”

    The aroma of eggs, bacon and coffee hit Zeta’s nose like a steam train and his stomach yowled like a starving cheetah. Christ. Why did his assailant have to bring food? He’d be a helluva lot easier to shoot if he’d been some snaggle-toothed asshat with body odor.

    Of course not. It was the yuppie from the bar.

    Christ. How the hell much Vodka did Zeta drink?

    And what the hell was the kid’s name?

    “I know you said you’re in a hurry to get to Oxnard, so I got breakfast for us. Oh, good. You’re almost done.” The yuppie set the food on the table by the window and grinned at Zeta. His large brown eyes crinkled at the corners, and smile lines just starting by his mouth gave him a friendly appearance.

    Yup, he was as hot now as he was in the bar, vodka or no vodka.

    And he was stripping… A steady pile of discarded clothing littered the floor behind him as he approached Zeta. “You just let ol’ Chico wash your back, hmm?”

    Zeta stubbed his toe getting out of the shower. “No, I really can’t. Monroe will kill me if I’m late.” He paused, a towel in his hands. “You go by ‘Boy’ in Spanish?”

    Chico shrugged, stepping into the water but not quite closing the curtain all the way. Man, he had a nice ass!

    “My nickname is Chico, so that’s what I put on my fake I.D. You really go by the letter ‘Z’?”

    Zeta flushed. “My name’s Alex.”

    “’Xander’ begins with an ‘X’.” Chico winked. “And my name is Pedro.”

    “To my best friend in grammar school, Xander sounds like a ‘Z’.”

    “What was her name?” Chico finished in record time and joined Zeta on the mat to dry off. He pulled the towel out of Zeta’s hands and finished his back with quick movements that reawakened all of Zeta’s senses, then slapped his ass. “Go eat while I finish. We have to get on the road.”

    “How do you know it was a girl?” Zeta dressed in jeans and his Elvis t-shirt, sandals and a belt. He stuffed the rest of his clothes into his duffel and then went to investigate the food.

    “Because no dude would name you Zeta.” Chico bent and kissed his neck, then whispered in his ear. “So hurry up and eat, will ya? I want to see if you make as much noise driving when I go down on you as you did last night.”

    Zeta’s heart started pounding. This was seventeen kinds of stupid, but damned if he wasn’t gonna do it. Monroe didn’t have to know about his new partner, and besides.

    It would make the drive go a lot faster.

    He grinned at Chico, chewing a bite of bacon and eggs, and the most gorgeous yuppie latino on two legs grinned back.

    Damn fine truck stop.

  • Thursday 13

    Welcome to our weekly grab-bag of fun stuff to read. Enjoy!

    A. Catherine Noon

    Darla’s Sand Castles

    Lucius Antony

    ShopNotes

  • Wiley Wednesday: Mapmaking

    “No, put it there.” “No, over there.” “On the bureau, can’t you see?” “What bureau?” “The one in the bedroom!”

    Discussions about space sometimes plague us. Where do we file that client information? Where do we put the new hire? Where do we store all the books that we bought? We just bought a new TV, now where do we put it? What about the bin for recycled goods?

    This is true for our characters too. The worlds we create for them to inhabit are places that need to be as real to us as our own home. If we put a tree in the front yard in the morning, it better be there in the evening when our character comes home from work – or a neighbor cut it down, it fell over in a storm, or the city came and trimmed it. It can’t just go “poof.”

    So… How do you keep your trees from going poof? Because, after all, tree poofage is a leading cause of stress among writers, according to a recent poll.

    Maps!

    That’s right, I said maps. Draw a map of your space. You can draw a map of a room, a house, a street, even a planet. Even if you can’t draw very well, you can at least sketch in the main points. Where IS that pesky tree, anyway? Who lives to the right of the house? The left? What’s the name of the street?

    This is an old trick of fantasy authors, to draw maps of their worlds for readers to use. Some of them are quite elaborate and beautiful. But it can be useful even for “regular” world building. For example, in our upcoming release of BURNING BRIGHT, Rachel and I have a restaurant and bar called the Factory. We sat down and drew out how many tables there are on the main floor, where the bathrooms and kitchen are, the stairs, elevator, back door, and other elements are. That way, when our characters move around in the space we know what direction to turn them, what they see when they do it, and how to avoid walking them into walls.

    Try it with your house. Take a piece of paper out of your printer, and a use a pencil. See if you can’t draw your home, starting at the property line. Mark where the driveway is. Where do you park? Imagine coming home from the grocery store, and follow yourself from the moment you shut off the engine. Do you go in the back or front door? What’s the room you enter when you first come inside? Where’s the kitchen? Bathroom? Bedroom? What’s in the back yard? (A tree?) Fill in details as you go and don’t be afraid to erase and start over. It takes practice, and it doesn’t have to be pretty – it just needs to be clear.

    Tell me in the comments if you tried it, how did it go? Or, alternatively, how do you manage your imaginary worlds?

  • Thursday Thirteen

    Click below for a brief diversion from your daily grind:

    A. Catherine Noon

    Darla M Sands

  • Wiley Wednesday: In Defense of the Pen

    How many of you use a pen and paper to write? A handwritten journal? Post-it notes??

    Yeah, I thought so. Not very many of you. I’ve learned in doing Prompt Group meetings for the last couple years that modern Americans don’t seem to write much anymore. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; after all, I am a Technorati of the first order, a modern-day “power user.”

    Yet, philosophically, I have a lot in common with Luddites.

    What’s a Luddite? They were a sect that shunned technology and modern contrivances. As I type this on a laptop in a friend’s home whilst using her wireless, for use on a group blog the authors of which reside all over the planet, I can’t in all honesty claim to be a Luddite, but still. I love me a pen and paper!

    And here is something I’ve learned: there’s something alchemical that happens when one sits down to write that doesn’t happen in the same way when one sits down at the keyboard. I believe that it’s the kinesthetic process of one-handedness.

    Say wha?

    Bear with me. Kinesiology is the study of muscles and how they work. “Kinesthetic learners” learn, literally, by doing: by working with their hands or bodies. When we write, we do so one-handed – even if we are the rare ambidextrous person, when writing, we’re not doing so with a pen in each hand. We write with one hand, one pen, on one surface. When we type, we do so either with one finger of each hand, or we know how to touch type and use all ten fingers.

    We know from the treatment of Epilepsy and cognitive developmental theory that things that bridge the left/right brain hemispheres helps, literally, to teach the brain to think. That’s good, right?

    I believe, though, that writing with one hand can, if done for long enough, help us to bridge the hemispheres in another way: by literally giving one “side” voice to the other side. We can, over time, get to know ourselves better and to even start to communicate with our own subconscious minds. This happens more easily, I’ve observed, by the tool of handwriting and not the tool of typing. I don’t know why this is so, but I’ve seen it happen so consistently that I’ve accepted its reality even if I don’t understand all of the methodology.

    My long-time readers have heard my arguments on Morning Pages, an idea put forth by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way and others. Three pages of longhand writing, done in the morning, can alter our waking reality. I have seen this to be true in my own life as well as others that I’ve known that have used the tool. What’s more, at the end of a Prompt Group, where we write to prompts for two hours, I see it happen in the writers who attend. (For more information on the Prompt Group, please visit our website.)

    I urge you to try it for yourself: try writing three pages a day, or hand write a letter or card to an absent friend. Postcards are good, too. Try writing the response to a story prompt (if you don’t have one, just Google “writing prompt” and pick one). See if you can unlock the magic of the pen for yourself.

  • Thursday Thirteen

    Today we revel in the random. Click below and tell us what you think.

    A. Catherine Noon

    Casey Lynn Marketing & Media Services 

    Darla M Sands

    Skylar Kade

  • Thursday Thirteen

    Here we are again. Click below for a random read of thirteen things:

    A. Catherine Noon

    Darla M Sands

  • Wiley Wednesday: Music and Editing

    Getting Back In the Mood

    I’ve been working on editing my first book, which comes out later this year from Samhain Publishing. I wrote it with my coauthor, Rachel Wilder. While we work together extensively, when I’m at my keyboard working on edits it’s usually by myself. Since we wrote Burning Bright last year, we’ve developed two new series in very different universes, as well as wrote more material in the Burning Bright universe but with other characters. So how do I recapture the mood I was in when first writing Burning Bright?

    One of the ways, obviously, is to re-read the manuscript. But since the first draft was 87,000 words, that’s not the fastest method. Add to that the fact that we’re required to do multiple content edits (three in this case, since it was our first time with this editor), re-reading the manuscript doesn’t help me capture the mood I need so that I know what to cut from the manuscript.

    To solve that problem, I use music. I develop specific playlists for novels and series, targeted to the specific characters and the world we’ve created. While I sometimes use the music my husband and I own in our library, I find Pandora online radio to be exceedingly valuable because it will develop “stations” based on artists or songs, and then give back songs that are related to it – but that I may not (and quite probably don’t) have in my library.

    Which makes it like a stranger’s library.

    In other words, it is like my character is a separate person from me, and I’m listening to their music choices. I don’t have to make them up, because Pandora does it for me.

    How do you do this? Visit the Pandora website. You can either set up a free account (which is all I have at the moment), or you can subscribe to Pandora One for $36 USD a year. If you decide to use the free version, you can listen, with ads, for 40 hours a month. When you hit about 35 hours, it will tell you that you’re approaching the limit and offer to upgrade you, or tell you that your free time is over until the next month begins.

    Unfortunately, I don’t believe the service works outside the U.S. (a fellow writer in Canada said she’s not able to access it), because of the record company’s strict licensing requirements. (Too strict, in my opinion.) But if you are in the states, you can sign up and develop stations based on particular artists or songs – and their mix is VERY eclectic. It’s not just mainstream music.

    If you don’t have access to Pandora, then iTunes Genius does the same thing, using similar technology. It will use music you already own, or suggest stuff to buy, which is why I don’t use it (I don’t have extra music money in my budget for this, which is why I like the free Pandora service).

    Are there other music services out there that you like? Other ways you use music in your writing? Tell me in the comments, I’d love to hear!