Pick a setting: an Open Book blog hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

A field full of sunflowers on a bright morning? Or, rolling hills on a clear full moon night?  

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Those both sound pretty nice, in different ways. I guess it depends on what I'll be up to in this setting, and how hot it is outside. I wilt like a cabbage leaf in the bright, hot sun, but I also don't have great night vision. Are there mosquitos? 

I know, I'm overthinking it. 

I can imagine myself walking in the field of sunflowers with my youngest kid, who loves flowers as much as I do. There's a field like this near us, next to Maple View Farms, a favorite ice cream shop, so we could wander in the sunflowers until we got too hot, then cool off with sundaes or smoothies. 

Those rolling hills on a clear, full moon night sound pretty romantic, so I think I'll head over there with my husband, a citronella candle, and a blanket and lay there listening to frog song for a while. 

Maybe this is a more poetic way of asking whether I'm a night owl or a day lark, and like I am with both things, I'm both!

How about you? Does one of these settings please your heart more than the other? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 

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Anne? Pippi? Nancy? Madeline? Ferdinand? An open book blog hop post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

If you were a beloved children's character, which ones would you be? 

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Now that's an interesting question. Am I meant to say which character I think is the most like me? Or more like which character would I like to be? Both, you say? Sure! Why not both!

As a child, I was very much like Anne of Green Gables fame. I was always getting in trouble for daydreaming, a little quick to take offense, and very much following my heart. 

I even had freckles, reddish hair often worn in braids, and a propensity for books and straw hats. 

Honestly, I haven't changed that much. I've just figured out a way to channel my daydreaming into writing, and to go a little slower before I fly off the handle. (Probably much like Anne herself did as she grew up, come to think of it). 

So that's who I am like, but then who would I like to be, given the chance? 

Should I be content to be who I am, no matter what others seems to think, like Ferdinand the bull? Smart, brave, and helpful like Nancy Drew? Self-sufficient, independent, and unable to be cowed like Pippi Longstocking? Loyal and fierce like Madeline? 

I don't think I can pick. How about you? Is there a children's book character you especially identify with? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

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My Favorite Cover, an Open Book Blog Hop post

 Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Post your favorite cover from your books and explain why it's your favorite. 

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When my Menopausal Superhero novels moved from their first publisher to their second, they got a new look. 

The books are dramedy in tone (part drama, part comedy), and my first publisher (now defunct: you can read about that saga here) played up the comedy aspect with bright colors and focused on the torsos of the heroes. 

I liked those, but in the marketplace, they proved a little misleading, making readers think the books would be funnier than they are--comedy primarily instead of secondarily.

So I was really pleased when the team at Falstaff Books came up with the new branding. The novels would all use silhouettes and city scapes, beginning in pastels and adding darker/brighter colors and more detail to the silhouettes as the series progressed: 

Top row: the novels; Bottom row: the shorts

When we decided to release some shorter work in the universe, novellas and short stories, Falstaff wanted to do something that set those apart, but still made them feel connected to the longer works, so they came up with the rays of light/stripes and brighter color palette, while still using the silhouettes. I love that! Those rays are so old-school comic book feeling!

So my favorite of the bunch is the cover for Agents of Change. 

Since this volume contains all the short work collected, the cover designer worked to meld the look we were using for the novels with the look we were using for the short work, and we ended up with these lovely sunset colors, a subtler version of the rays, and the silhouettes and cityscape. 

I really admire the work of a good cover artist, and I'm so happy to have worked with a great team to get covers that capture the vibe of my work. The cover is the best advertisement for the book, giving the reader a feel for the tone and genre as well as the content. So the right cover makes all the difference!

What works for you when it comes to book covers? Are there tropes you find off-putting? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

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Why settle for egg drop soup when you can have Massaman Curry? An Open Book post.

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

What do you order from your local Chinese restaurant? Do you order it every time or mix things up? 

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The truth is I'm a bit of a food snob, and my local Chinese restaurant is nothing special. It's not bad. It's fine, completely adequate, but ordinary. 

So, if it's up to me alone, I don't bother. I feel that way about most of the restaurants in my adopted hometown of Hillsborough, North Carolina--they're fine, but not special (though that's changing! there are a couple of newer and more interesting places I'm hoping will take root). 

If I'm going out to eat, I want something more interesting, preferably something I've never tried, and there are a LOT of much more interesting restaurants near me. It's one of the cool things about living between two university towns--lots of culinary possibilities.

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My current favorites for eating out are a local Mexican restaurant (Tacos Los Altos), a Thai restaurant in downtown Durham (Thai at Main Street), an Indian restaurant in another part of Durham (Tandoori Bites), a Turkish place in downtown Chapel Hill (Talulla's) and a Himalayan place in downtown Chapel Hill (Momo's Master).  

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But, still, the kiddo gets a hankering for egg drop soup from time to time, especially if they don't feel well. 

And if I'm getting egg drop soup for the kid, then I get an egg roll for me while I'm there, and if I'm trying to avoid multiple stops, I might pick up some garlic chicken, or cashew chicken, or orange chicken for my own dinner and chicken and vegetables for Sweetman. 

So, I'm not completely averse to patronizing our local Chinese restaurant if the circumstances are right. And I do like to keep up the Jewish tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas. 

How about you? Do you favor a Chinese restaurant near you? What do you like to eat from there? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. 

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Where do your stories come from? An IWSG post

 

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. This month's co-hosts are:  PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, Gwen Gardner, Pat Garcia, and Natalie Aguirre!

June 5 question - 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from?

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I don't think I've ever written anything that came directly from a dream, at least not that I knew I was doing. 

My dreams don't usually make enough sense to be of any service in fiction, other than perhaps for imagery. 

But, it's an intriguing question all the same. Ideas are an essential part of a writing life. My problem is not usually coming up with them, but finding time to develop them all into finished pieces! 

But still, where do they come from?

I think most of my ideas come from juxtaposition.

By this I mean: there are lots of little thoughts and bits of information and observations bouncing around in my brain all the time, some pingponging around like high bounce balls dropped from a great height, others floating gently by on some unseen current. 

Sometimes a couple of them bump off each other and there's a spark, like one was flint and the other tinder. And boom! There's a story idea. 

For example, the idea of the Menopausal Superheroes was probably a combination of my apprehension about getting older and having just watched an X-Men movie where the characters were just so-very-teenagery that I found them frustrating. I thought something like: 

What is it with teenagers and superhero stories? If hormones cause superpowers, then menopausal women should have these pubescent kids beat!

When I'm not working on a particular project already under contract, I also really love to play with writing prompts. A fair amount of my short horror fiction got its start as a noodle from writing prompts in Bliss Morgan's Nightmare Fuel challenge held each October. I've written more than one piece after reading the call for a themed anthology and thinking the idea sounded like a fun one to explore. 

Other times, it's as simple as thinking, "What if?" and following that question where it takes me. A recently finished horror story (not yet published) came about because I'd gotten a new car with all kinds of fancy sensors and warnings and my brain asked some weird questions about that. 

Getting from idea to story sometimes comes from noodling on my own, but a lot of times, it comes from conversation. I've hashed out many a plot line in conversation with my husband or with one of the members of my critique group. 

How about the other storytellers out there? Where do your ideas come from? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

To AI or not to AI? An open book blog post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Have you played with AI in your writing? Tell us what you think about it. 

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As much as I enjoy reading stories about AI, I haven't really had much interest in trying it out in my writing life in the real world. I've got a process that's working for me right now, and it doesn't involve using AI. 

For starters, in these early days, the ethics are unclear. Is this really just a form of plagiarism? Can people really take credit for work co-written this way? Is it just another way exploitative method of undercutting and devaluing writing and art? 

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Obviously technology evolves and it changes the way art is produced. I'm not against that. I'm grateful to be typing this blogpost on my laptop rather than turning over my longhand notes to a literal typesetter who lays it out in trays and presses copies. I enjoy eBooks and audiobooks and am happy about some of the ways new technologies increase access. 

But, something about AI tools in writing, at least so far, stinks of exploitation and laziness. 

When ChatGPT was all everyone was talking about earlier this year, several well-respected magazine were deluged with submissions that had been AI-created. 

More people looking for a shortcut and thinking they can make some moolah without investing any effort, let alone a slice of their soul. (I haven't read anything about this actually working for anyone so far, by the way--a story written by AI, copied and pasted and submitted has yet to find fame or fortune in a news-making way). 

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I do have a couple of writing friends who say they find it helpful in the brainstorming phases of things, that they use it to get unstuck. I can see that. I can respect using a tool in support of your creativity, but in place of it?

But I don't have anyone in my writing life using it in the place of their creative impetus. But then again, I don't hang with a mercenary literary crowd. While we'd all love to make money from our work, we do the work because we love it and it expresses an essential part of our selves. Why would you hand the best part over to a computer mind? 

So, yeah, I'll stick to reading about AI and talking to the one in my kitchen. 

Some stories about AI I've enjoyed recently: 

How about you? Any AI in your real life? Any AI you've loved in fiction? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. 

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