Keeping it simple
May 2, 2016 • No Comments
You know that feeling when you first start a book? It’s like my mind is a kitten surrounded by tempting balls of yarn. It wants to pounce on EVERYTHING at once and succeeds mostly in falling over a lot. Adorable, but not that effective.
Ideas, characters, settings, sub plots – I love them ALL and I want them ALL in the first paragraph because I’m so excited (!!!) by the fabulous world I’ve created. Unfortunately, that means I have written quite a few openings that sucked. Fortunately, I have discovered my best friend the delete key, which means my finished books aren’t quite the unruly beasts promised by my first few drafts.
It’s all too easy to load up our openings—and often our entire novels—with an embarrassment of riches. It’s true that certain genres, like epic fantasy, usually have lots of subplots and characters, but the best examples always firmly establish the world and conflict before branching off into weaving threads of events. Many other genres, including romance, prefer only a few main story threads. Either way, good craftsmanship guarantees the reader can always follow the action without drowning in clutter. No one likes a story that requires a spreadsheet and a geomancer to make sense of it.
So, my lesson learned? I don’t need to add one idea more than what’s absolutely necessary—my stories will magically gather complications all on their own. I have to start with the bare bones if I want to end with a coherent book. Restraint and simplicity are perhaps the last lessons one masters, and for me they have been the hardest. I have a hard drive full of mangled first drafts to prove it.
Long ago, I received an excellent piece of advice. “A woman of style will always remove one piece of jewelry before leaving her dressing table and another before leaving her front door.” While I will be the first to admit that sounds a bit patronizing, there’s wisdom in it when it refers to book structure. Sometimes simplicity is a good friend.
2016 RITA Nominee!
March 31, 2016 • No Comments
POSSESSED BY A WOLF has been nominated for a RITA Award in the paranormal category! So it’s off to San Diego this July for the Romance Writers of America conference. I’ll be part of the big Literacy Signing, so if you’re in the area please do stop and say hello.
So how did I hear the news? I was off work for the day and in my bathrobe because it was still early here on the West Coast. When the phone rang I thought it was a telemarketer or some such, so you can imagine my surprise when a very nice person began telling me Wolf had been selected. Yes, I’ve won a RITA before but finding out you’re a finalist doesn’t get old. Trust me on that one! I had to get her to repeat everything while my brain caught up.
An award like this is not a guarantee of fame and fortune, but it is important to authors because it’s validation of one’s art. The RITA is judged by peers. There’s no “campaigning” or politics involved. It’s just whether the judges who got your book in the box liked it or not and as far as I’m concerned that’s how it should be.
I have a real fondness for Faran, my werewolf hero. Let’s wish him luck! Maybe it’s appropriate that I imagined he was a Californian.
Goodreads Giveaway for Enchanted Warrior!
January 24, 2016 • No Comments
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Enchanted Warrior
by Sharon Ashwood
Giveaway ends January 30, 2016.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Ten no-fail procrastination technique, personally tested
January 17, 2016 • No Comments
Ten no-fail procrastination techniques, personally tested to ensure no writing happens
10 Obscure recipe ingredient. Must have it.
9 Coupons are expiring!
8 Distant relations haven’t heard from me since the 90s.
7 My car is overdue for servicing
6 Financial planning! Right now!
5 Flyers! Must. Read. Every. One.
4 My sinks are dirty. Someone might see them. Like my mother.
3 Computer gags. Software update.
2 Must Google for new reviews. Then the aftermath.
1 Can’t possibly write without the perfect tea.
We need to have a chat about the kibble
January 14, 2016 • 2 Comments
The Demon Lord of Kitty Badness in conversational mode.
Cream silk dress from 1910s
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I was piling through some photos from my trip to England a few years ago and found some from the fashion museum in Bath. This extremely Downton Abbey dress is certainly beautiful. I’ve seen photos of my grandmother as a young woman wearing this style and the cut, while seemingly loose, is very flattering to feminine curves. The dress dates from the early 1910s, but I think there are vague hints of the flapper 
look to come.
The plaque at the museum describes the dress as “cream silk ninon dress with satin ribbon work trim.” For those (like me) who had to look up the term “ninon” it’s the gauzy stuff. I have to say I am besotted with the way the overskirt is gathered up at the back. It looks casual and elegant at the same time and reminds me of Grecian statuary.
Today’s obsession – headphones
January 13, 2016 • No Comments
This has nothing to do with anything to do with writing or books, but it’s my blog and I can blither if I want to.
So I grew up with audio geeks and my mother, who is a musician, still claims that vinyl sounds better than anything else. Playing a record is a ceremony requiring the exact positioning of furniture, cleaning of the needle with special elixirs and sitting with uninterrupted focus to listen. I’m not quite that picky, but I finally coughed up money for a decent set of Sennheiser headphones and realized just how good digital CAN be if the proper equipment is available. My iTunes playlist suddenly has new life and–wait a moment–instruments I hadn’t even noticed! Lyrics I can understand! A sense of space and distance between sounds! Seriously, the average earbuds just don’t do justice to good music.
I’m not sure why it’s taken me this long to get some good headphones, but I think it has something to do with a beloved white pussycat of yore who used to chew through the wires of anything he could find. I loved him dearly, but one month he went through 3 sets of headphones. The sight of him with spaghetti wire dangling from his mouth discouraged any serious investment . . . I’d have him back in a heartbeat though.
So many books, only one keyboard!
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So here we are the beginning of 2016 and it’s time for me to take a step back and consider next steps.
It’s been a while since the last Emma Jane Holloway offering landed in bookstores. I’ve been careful not to make promises I can’t keep, but I can say that after clearing out other obligations I have a bit of space to think about it and hopefully will have a concrete plan about next books before long.
It’s not like I’m short of ideas or ambition. There are a handful of projects to choose from, each appealing for different reasons. Some are connected to the Baskerville series, some not. Each of my babies deserves to be written. Really. In my admittedly biased view, they all have interesting features and undeniable merit (but then I’m their mom). The fact that I have a choice is in some ways a problem in itself—doing one thing means not doing another, and then I get sad. I want to write ALL the books.
When it comes to decision time, the question is one of how ready a particular project is to be written. It’s not something an author has control of—at least not beyond a certain point. It’s like having a bowl of pears on the table. Which one is ready to eat first? All you can do is watch and wait. What am I waiting for—I dunno. I get a glowy feeling or I don’t. The more complicated the story, the more it needs to sit in the cellar. But eventually a book simply must be written, and away we go.
To complicate matters, sometimes I think I know which project it will be and then some outlier gallops past the post. Yes, it is possible to ignore that project in favor of another, but then what happens is a messy struggle between an unripened plot idea versus a rotting synopsis. I’m not sure, but I think that’s how dystopian novels are born.
Those of you who are writers know what I’m talking about. For those of you who aren’t, be aware that writers are weird.