Monday, February 10, 2025

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.

image source
 

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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Wednesday, February 5, 2025

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?

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 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!

Monday, February 3, 2025

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?
 ______________________

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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