If I could be anything or anyone…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. The awesome co-hosts for the March 5 posting of the IWSG are Ronel Janse Van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, and Liza @ Middle Passages!

This month's question:

March 5 question - If for one day you could be anyone or *thing* in the world, what would it be? Describe, tell why, and any themes, goals, or values they/it inspire in you.

__________________________________________

 

What a fun question this month! So many possibilities. 

 

Should I be a dog? A bird? A whale? I've often wondered what it would be like to be any number of animals. To be able to fly, or swim, or leap with their abilities. I wonder if it would be like Selkie stories, though, where there's some danger I'll forget who I used to be and just remain forever in my animal form. Then again, maybe that could be amazing. 

 

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It could be cool to be a man for a minute. To see what all this business is like from that point of view. Maybe it would help me understand what's going on with some of the males in my life…or maybe it would be more like trying to drive an unfamiliar vehicle. Maybe I'd need more than one day to try this one out. 

 

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Is one day long enough to wreak havoc in the life of one of the bigwigs in my country? How quickly could I dismantle a financial empire and turn the money to uses I believe in instead? Avoiding names, but could I take over RichDude's life for a day and fund every GoFundMe out there, give scholarships galore, spoil scientists and librarians with resources, and fund every food scarcity charity in the country for the foreseeable future? I bet my signing hand would hurt by then end of day, and boy howdy, would RichDude be in for a surprise when he took his life back over. 

 

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Yeah, I think I'll go with that third one. If you see some RichDude out there seeming like he had an Ebeneezer Scrooge experience? That was me :-)

Being one of my characters, an IWSG 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 had to become one of your characters, which ones would you choose?
 ______________________

 Oh my. 

A lot of my characters live some pretty dramatic lives. They've been through things, you know? And that makes good story fodder. But I, myself, have a lovely quiet little life that is mostly low drama and I'd really like to keep it that way. 

So, I don't think I'd want to be any of my Menopausal Superheroes

I don't think I'd like to take over for any of my horror characters either. They have to work too hard to survive…and some of them, um, don't. 

So, I guess my best hope lies in my current Works-in-Progress: a trio of romance novellas. 

• Mandy, the graphic designer returning to her hometown in Never Too Late (out for Beta reading)
• Abby, the punk band musician finding love while she faces the loss of her best friend in Acid Reign (with my critique partners now)
• Bekah, the single-mom veterinarian facing an empty nest in the third, not yet titled novella I'm still drafting. 

These are all smart, capable women in their fifties, who are all about to find love in unexpected places. I'm really enjoying writing these un-apologetically optimistic stories, and it wouldn't be a bad thing to find myself in one of their lives if I couldn't keep living the one I have now.   

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A letter to my readers, 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.

Write a letter to your readers.
 ______________________

Dear Readers, 

Thank you! It means so much to me that you have been willing to spend time and money engaging with my imaginary friends and me. While I love writing, and would probably still write at some level even if no one ever read it, having an audience is very motivating and keeps me going when I struggle. 

That writer-reader connection is magic--reaching across space and time and finding someone who picks up what you're putting down? (or when I'm the reader--finding someone who articulate the truths of my heart and lifts me out of my woes with wonderful stories and imaginative characters) Wowzers. Powerful stuff.

I hope you're enjoying the ride! You're already doing me a favor by giving my work a chance, but if you're up to help even further, I can always use more reviews for my books and that even-more-valuable word of mouth recommendation to your reading friends. Making any kind of living from art is difficult, so anything that increases visibility of my work is a boon. 

In the meantime, I'm working hard to bring you lots of new things to read and I hope you'll enjoy them when I get them out there in the world. You rock! 

Love,

Samantha

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The Hardest Format, 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.

What has been the hardest format to write in for you?
 ______________________

I've tried on a lot of different literary forms over the years. They're all difficult at first, because they're new. And each project is it's own critter, so even if it's a form I've written before, it's still a new challenge.

I began, in childhood as a poet, in formal and free-verse styles. I stopped pursuing poetry seriously (i.e. with an eye to publication) in my thirties, but I still write it for myself and sometimes share it. I might still someday produce a collection if I ever have enough that fit together that way. (My published poetry is all under my maiden name--Samantha Dunaway).

I really got into personal essays in my later twenties, writing a few that made it into magazines and newspapers. I was especially proud of a few that made it into We Alaskans. That led directly into some newspaper work as a book columnist for the Bering Strait (now defunct) and the Nome Nugget and attracted me to blogging where I could "sound off" more freely in this not-journalism-but-not-fiction area. 

I played with short stories off and on along the way but didn't really start to feel like I understood and made good use of the form until 2014 or so. Now I LOVE writing short stories, especially for anthologies, for the opportunity to try on different styles and genres without the long-term commitment that a novel entails. At this point, I've had 25 or so short stories published of 73 that I currently have in my pieces list on Duotrope. I'm in the middle of writing two new ones right now.

(SIDEBAR: Duotrope has been really useful to me for tracking submissions and helping me find places to submit my work. I pay $5 a month and consider it well worth it. It's great for folks like me who struggle to organize this stuff, and it's searchable, so I can make sure I didn't send that same story to that venue a year ago and just forgot.)

After my second child was born (2007) and I needed something to help pull me out of Post-partum depression, I joined a group of novel writers and started trying to write a novel. I started and abandoned three before I finished one. That one remains unpublished and is shelved for now, but I've since written an entire five novel series (The Menopausal Superheroes I'm always talking about) and seen it accepted for publication by two different publishers. So excited to bring that one to a close this summer! I've got several other partially completed novels I plan to finish up soon.

Novels are BIG, and it took me a while to develop a process and be able to track work that large and keep it consistent over a longer creation period. But discovering Scrivener software helped me a lot. It's so easy to re-arrange work and use color coding and image labels to help track things like POV or then-and-now timelines.

I've also written a couple of novellas along the way. I quite enjoy this form--longer than a short story, but not as involved as a novel, bridging what I love about short stories and what I love about novels. In fact, the project I'm working on now is a trilogy of romance novellas and I'm loving working on them. 

So that's a long-winded answer to a relatively simple question. The short version: short stories took me the longest to feel competent at, so I guess they've been the hardest for me. 

But I LOVE to try new things. Maybe screenplays will be next. I've got some friends who do some writing for indie films and that could be amazing to try my hand at.

So, how about you? Have you tried a variety of formats? What proved most challenging for you?

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Fact-finding missions, 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.

How do you find the facts that inform your work?
 ______________________

You end up needing to know a lot of strange little things when you're writing a book. Sure, you're making things up, but your story still needs grounding in reality, especially if your work is set in a realistic or near-realistic setting. 

For my Menopausal Superheroes series, there's obviously a lot of "hand-wave-ium" about the science of how things are possible. Jessica "Flygirl" Roark can fly and there's some exploration as to how and why, but I'm not trying to make this impossible thing realistic, so I was free to be playful and imaginative in making that part up. 

Still, I did research about buoyancy and flight, trying to decide if I'd pull more from bird, balloon, or machine in my decision-making about how Jessica's flight works. I enjoy that reading, finding facts to extrapolate from and play with. In fact, I enjoy research so much, that if I'm not careful, I can fall down a research rabbit hole and get distracted from actually writing my story. 

For many things, I pull from my own experience and from stories I've heard all my life from other people. I know what it feels like (at least from my own experience) to fall in love, to be ill, to become frustrated, etc. So, I can use my own experiences and what I've observed as a baseline.

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On the other hand, I don't know what it feels like to be shot by a gun (and I hope I never find out), so when Leonel "Fuerte" Álvarez took a bullet wound in Book 2, Change of Life, I did a lot of reading and asking questions in online groups about the medical aspects of that, making sure he was shot in a way that he could recover from, and that his recovery could be reasonably realistic. 

For some of my other work, I've needed historical details of dress and legal status, so I read nonfiction books, look details up online (always corroborating with more than one source because the Internet lies), and ask questions of experts. I'm in a couple of Facebook groups where writers can ask lawyers and doctors legal and medical questions and that's SUPER useful as those kinds of things come up in fiction all the time. 

Those little details add veracity to a story and make it easy for the reader to stay engaged in a story, so they really do matter. I know I've been frustrated by books I've read that got details wrong that conflict with own knowledge and experience. If there's enough of them, I stop reading. So, I try not to do that to my own readers. 

How about you? What do you do to make your own work feel real? Where do you learn what you need to know? What kinds of details throw you out of a story you're reading? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

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Looking Backward, 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. The awesome co-hosts for the February 5 posting of the IWSG are Joylene Nowell Butler, Louise Barbour, and Tyrean Martinson!

This month's question:

February 5 question - Is there a story or book you've written you want to/wish you could go back and change?

__________________________________________

 

 Short answer: no. 

Longer answer: 

I'm always growing and learning, as a writer, and as a human. And, at least from my own biased perspective, my writing is getting better the longer I focus on it and work on it. 

But, all those poems, essays, stories, and books in my past can stay just the way they are. 

 

Sure, if I was to write the same thing now, I might be able to improve upon the craft or come up with a more original take on the theme--but past Samantha wrote those and I'm just not her anymore. Present Samantha has her own stories she's passionate about telling and future Samantha will have her own, too.

 

 

So, no time travel for me, at least not down my own timeline. I'll just take what I've learned along the way and use it to make the next thing even better. 

How about you? Do you/would you go back and change some of your past creations? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

My Hot Cuppa, an open book blog hop

 

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's your favorite hot beverage and how do you prepare it?
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I am a year-round hot beverage fan. 

I start with morning caffeine. 

Currently, that  might be Yorkshire Gold tea with a splash of milk in my Ember mug (which keeps it hot even I forget to drink it for a bit while I wake up), or Amor Prohibido coffee by Little Waves with some cream (because who doesn't love coffee that comes with an earworm) made with that new fancy pour-over apparatus I got for Chanukah last year, or a fancy espresso drink from Weaver Street Market or Hillsborough Cup-a-Joe (because coffee that comes with friendly people is even better). Which one is based totally on what I think will make me feel good that morning. 

Pourover in progress

In hot months, that might be all my hot beverages until my evening writing time, but in cold months, I'm likely to drink a variety of decaf and herbal teas across my day. The warm mug helps with my arthritis pain, or at least distracts from it. The steam opens up my head and the scent activates my brain. Tea is life. But I do have to limit my caffeine if I'd like to sleep come nightfall. 

Then, come evening, I nearly always have a cup of tea with my writing time. My two favorites for writing tea are Tension Tamer tea by Celestial Seasonings and Herbal Cold Care by Traditional Medicines. Both are soothing without making me sleepy, and now that I've been drinking them at writing time for several years, they "smell like writing." Just call me Pavlov's author. If I can't seem to fall into the zone, the tea always helps.

Lastly, I sometimes have a cup of hot cocoa, sometimes with a splash of Bailey's in it. Currently, I'm hooked on a fancy raspberry hot cocoa, but I also love Silly Cow brand, and sometimes like to try a new one from a chocolate shop or cooking store.

At the end of the day, my dishwasher is full of mugs! How about you? Are you a hot drinks person? What are your favorites?

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My favorite artist, 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.

Who is your favorite visual artist?
 ______________________

Sorry, y'all. I can't pick. My favorite on any given day is the one that feeds the part of my soul that was hungry, and that's different on different days. 

So far as big, museum-famous artists, I love Francisco Goya, Frida Kahlo, Johannes Vermeer, and Auguste Rodin, among others. I'm more likely to get stuck on a particular work than all the work by a particular artist. For example, my favorite Van Gogh isn't any of his most famous ones, but a strange one that is part of the Cincinnati Art Museum's collection: Undergrowth with Two Figures. 

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That's my "hometown" art museum, so I've spent a lot of time staring at this particular wooded scene trying to decide if the people are ghosts, or if their semi-transparent appearance is more an optical illusion created by the lush undergrowth and the trees. I like that I never could decide. 

There are also quite a few artists in my life. People I know personally and love, whose work adorns my walls. From my father-in-law, who made his living as an artist, to my mother who studied photography, to neighbors, to convention buddies, to a college friend (Mark Davis) who sold me his cool octopus painting at a bargain rate because I wanted it badly, to a local guy (Wes Flanary) who painted The Gill Man and sold the work to my husband as a holiday gift for me. 

Honestly, I need more walls. I'm running out of space to hang the art that charms and inspires me. 

So, no, I don't have a single favorite artist, but I'm grateful they're all out there making wonderful things. Who's on your list?

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Knowledge is power, 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.

What new learning do you have on your list for the upcoming year?
 ______________________

I've got big plans to release my first all-indie project in 2025, so I'm guessing I'll be learning a lot, including some things that I don't know I don't know yet. 

 

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But I know I'll be learning:

• to wrangle Vellum software for book layout
• how best to hire a book cover done
• the whole ISBN business
• how to understand my metrics for sales
• marketing for a new genre

So I'm hoping to learn a LOT of new writing-life skills in 2025. 

In other parts of my life, I'm hoping to learn:

• more about how all our household electronics systems work so I can troubleshoot for myself instead of always bugging Sweetman about it.  
• New recipes! I stay interested in cooking by always trying new things
• The secret to sleeping well 
• more about parenting adult children as my youngest crosses that threshold this year

How about you? What do you hope to learn this year? 

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Going off-roading, 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.

How do you deal with a change in ideas halfway through your book? Or do you save it for a sequel?
 ______________________

Well, I'm a "pantser" as they call it--meaning that I don't work from an outline, but just free-form it in my writing life. So, there darn well better be some new ideas halfway through the book or I'll stay stalled forever! 

I have, however, had an unexpected twist--where I really thought the story or characters were going one direction and suddenly, a left turn at Albuquerque. That's what I think this prompt is getting at: when you had one plan, but the story or character seems to have other ideas.

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When that happens, I usually follow the new inspiration, at least for a while. Sometimes I end up writing a few different versions of events before I settle on the one that really serves the needs of the story. I keep all the versions, just in case I want to explore another one or use part of an abandoned section in another story sometime.

It's probably not the most efficient method for creation, but it is the one that works for me. How about you? Do you make a plan and stick with it in your creative endeavors? Or do you go with the flow, even when it ends up being a dead end? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. 

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Free to Write Anything, so What's Next?, 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. The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Beth Camp, Liza @ Middle Passages, and Natalie @ Literary Rambles!

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I turned in the final novel in the Menopausal Superheroes series in 2024, for publication in 2025!

 

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Of course, I'm completely jazzed about that and I can't wait for readers to finish this journey with me (balloons, confetti, shouting in the streets!). 

 

Going Through the Change came out in 2015, so that means I'm starting 2025 with no writing deadlines to meet for the first time in ten years.

 

Okay, I'll still have editing deadlines to meet, but so far as the new projects I take on and the new words I create? They could be …anything! Which is wonderful and a little terrifying. 

 

See before I landed that first book contract, my big struggle as a writer was discipline--staying focused on a single project and seeing it to fruition without wandering off to explore the new shiny idea poking at my subconscious. But I respond very well to external deadlines. That little bit of external pressure calms the brain weasels. They take "no" for an answer when that "no" came from someone else, like John, my publisher. 

 

I mean, he does look kind of intimidating, doesn't he?

 

 

So, I worried that, once I didn't have a deadline hanging over my head, I'd founder. 

But, guess what? I haven't!

Since I turned in that novel, I've written a novella and a half of an intended set of three novellas that I plan to publish as my first all-indie project. In fact, I've been energized with that "new project energy" and creating at a faster pace than I have in years (ask John about all that deadline renegotiation we've gone through over the past couple of years). 

 

These are a whole new genre for me. My published work so far is the Menopausal Superheroes series, and a lot of dark-leaning short fiction. In fact, my author banner for events currently says: Samantha Bryant, Half-Hero, Half-Horror. 

 

Me selling my books at Splatterflix at the Carolina Theatre in Durham

 

These new novellas, though? Romance! 

A friend of mine from Women's Fiction Writers Association, Stella Fosse, wrote a how-to book about writing and publishing romances featuring older characters. I read and blurbed it for her--the connections to my own work with Menopausal Superheroes seemed obvious!

While I was reading, I had an idea…actually I had three ideas. And now, I'm off exploring an new-to-me genre and having a great time. My working titles: Not Too Late, a second chance Gen-X romance about a woman returning to her hometown and reconnecting with a boy she knew in high school; Acid Reign, a one-night-stand turns to love about an 80s punk star finding love with a local politician; and Skinny Jeans for Fat Girls, the idea for which is still just a nugget, so we'll see. But all three will feature women in their 50s finding love.

 

So that's what next for me! After that? Well, I've got several back burner projects I'd like to get back to, and a collection of short stories I never finished putting together, so there's a world of possibility out there. 

How about you? What's on the horizon for you in 2025? What are you excited about? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

 

 

The Best Thing in 2024, 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.

What was the best thing that happened to you in 2024 (writing or otherwise)? The worst?
 ______________________

2024 was a landmark year in my writing life because I wrapped up The Menopausal Superheroes series of novels--the work of 10 years! Getting to "the end" was a whole different ball game when it wasn't just the end of a book, but the end of an entire series, but I'm really happy with how I wrapped it all up. 

4 novels, 2 novellas, and the shorts. The series so far.

 

It's with my publisher now and we expect to bring it out in June of 2025, so soon you'll be able to find out how it all concludes. 

And now that it's done, I feel so excited about all my new projects. I'm writing a trio of romance novellas right now that I look forward to bringing out as my first all-indie project. 

So how did 2024 treat you in your endeavors? Any big wins? Anything you're glad is over? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

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