Category Archives for Nancy Drew

Inspiration is Around Me – This is Life

This is Life

Life is hard. We work full-time. We have children, friends, family, hobbies if we're lucky. We need to eat well, exercise daily. I have an adult child with severe anxiety, ADD and OCD. My youngest is a transgender male.

There's sleepless nights worrying about the extraordinary and sometimes I only have time to worry about the ordinary. You have to pick your battles.

I've always wanted to be a writer. I was seven when I started the Nancy Drew Mysteries. From that moment I not only wanted to read her adventures, I wanted to create and write my own adventures.

As life pulled me in difficult directions, writing became something more for me than just a means to make money doing something I was fairly good at. It became an escape from increasingly difficult and out of the ordinary situations. It was my inspiration.

Inspiration

Mystery novels have always been my first love. Taking a problem and digging one layer at a time to discover the truth. I also love the urban fantasy, epic fantasy realm. Hiding in the make-believe. It's there that I find equality lives, women can be strong leaders, justice most often prevails.

This is why I imagined Annie Pearce. Young, smart, beautiful, seemingly perfect but when you dig deeper, when you get to know her, she's flawed, she's vulnerable, she's real. She works in a highly male field as a Wizard Guard. A magical police officer who fights demons, vampires and evil wizards. She falls in love with her best friend and partner at work, Bobby “Cham” Chamsky and had to deal with the new emotions while investigating the biggest case of their careers.

Annie Pearce makes mistakes, some are small and easy to fix. Other mistakes can risk exposure or cause a wizard war. But she perseveres because that is her make up. She wants justice for the downtrodden, for the victims of crimes. Though she is young, she can be an inspiration.

Annie is the Me I Strive to Be

I wrote Annie to be the woman I wanted to be. A strong survivor who can and will find her way through a difficult and often scary world. Joss Whedon's Buffy Summers was one of my inspirations for putting together a relatable woman.

While I stumble through my life with increasingly difficult situations that make me want to cry or hide in the sand or simply run away, I remember the alter ego that I created. I suck it in and imagine the confidence and take one step in front of the other. This is what I want and for now, Annie is my own fairy godmother and inspiration as I make my way through the world of writing to become the author I want to be.

Why Do You Write – Where Does the Passion Come From?

Why do I write?

So why do I write? It's an intriguing question; to ask someone why they do what they do. What brought them to their profession, hobby, fandom? I took to reading early, ravenously read through entire series. It didn't matter if it was Nancy Drew, Judy Blume, Stephen King or Harry Potter. Always with each book, as I experienced all these adventures between the pages, what I really wanted to do was write my own story.

It is my passion.

I am a self-proclaimed introvert, perfect personality trait to write. Being the center of attention is uncomfortable, confining. But when I write, I am free of anxiety, of fear. It is on the paper that I can write and re-write to craft the words that express my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions.

To be a writer, is what I have wanted to do since I was seven years old. I have never wavered from my desire to create my own worlds, my own stories and characters. To create something lasting. When I can't form the words with my mouth, I can always type them with my fingers.

I've always been able to write about anything. Though sometimes, I just don't know what to write. But when I do, it gives me power, it gives me confidence.

I love finishing that first book, letting the story pour out of me. It gives me a great sense of pride with each draft when I see the story fill itself out, when I link each book to the other as I tell a complete story. I don't feel as confident with anything else in my life as I do when I write.

And through the highs and lows in my life, to write it was keeps me sane. When I don't write, heavy emotions can wear my down. Writing is my therapy. It is my strength.

Why Do I Write?

I write because simply, writing is a part of me. When darkness gathers and envelopes me, writing is my light. It is my fire. I was born to do nothing else.

Pass it On

I read a blog Tara M. Martin . It was there she answered the same question; why does she write? So I had this idea to share why I wrote. And then it occurred to me. I'm going to pass the question on. To all my writer friends, why do you write? To all my non-writer friends, what is your passion.

Life should not be passionless. We should dance, sing, write exercise, mediate; do something we are passionate about every day. Every day.

Go Get ‘Em Girl – Lorelei Gilmore is my Inspiration

My Inspiration

Art imitates life, at least I can find inspiration in the stories I see. As I work towards obtaining my goal of writing for a living, publishing and selling my books, I found myself flocking to television shows that reflected my current journey.

I've been obsessed with shows before. It started with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I probably watched the entire show from pilot to finale three times, before I could no longer watch anymore. Leaving me to watch only the episodes that I truly love. I did it with Charmed and Supernatural too.

So as I searched for my newest obsession, I rediscovered Gilmore Girls. I'd already seen the entire series, but this time, there was something else. Lorelei Gilmore was opening her dream, The Dragonfly Inn.

I know this is only a television show. I know she's not real and The Dragonfly Inn is a fake set in California, but I relate to the sentiment.

I knew I Wanted to Write

I've said it here many times. I knew at the age of 7, I wanted to be a writer. I started crafting my own stories, modeled after the Nancy Drew book series. I created characters, dropped them into adventures and most importantly turned my day dreams into living, breathing stories.

And then life comes in and drags you down several paths, some your choice, others outside forces pull you somewhere else. After many years, I finally got a chance to go back to my dream, much like Lorelei. We both stepped off that cliff, took a chance. She opened her own inn, I published a book. I re-watch the episodes with a new point of view. I get emotional, it inspires me, I dream big. I can do this too. Yes I can.

My brain never shuts down. Stories and characters scream in my head, begging to be let out. I can't write fast enough to get all the ideas out on paper. I get anxious the closer I move toward publishing my book, to selling at Comic Con, to finding a publisher. And watching this amazing, strong, ambitious, character in Lorelei, achieve her dream, makes me laugh and cry, sometimes in that ugly cry sorta way.

Go get 'em Lorelei Gilmore, because if there's a dream, there's a way.

To order my dream, The Day of First Sun check out Amazon.com.

Oops I Did It Again…a Rewrite That Is

 I was 7 years old when I read my first Nancy Drew book. There was something in that smart girl that resonated me and I wanted to read every adventure. But I didn't just want to read the stories, I wanted to write them, create my own world, characters and adventures.

Life, it sometimes gets in the way. Infertility, a difficult pregnancy, the death of a child, threw me off of my course, the path I set for myself when I graduated college.

It took a wake up call, meeting a high school classmate, a published author to fuel my jealously, to snap the dream back to me. I finally wrote that book.

It took all of 6 weeks from start to finish, all 170 pages of it. It took at least 15 drafts two of which were self published. I hired marketing help.

I wasn't ready. I didn't understand how to edit, forget about using Twitter and Facebook effectively. Without holding up my end of the bargain, marketing, well it left me back to square one.

A horrible book release for book 2, left me constantly 5 minutes away from quitting. Paralyzed to move forward, which is where I've been for over 2 years as I try to figure out y life as a non writer. But I still come back to the desire to make it right, to finally live that dream.

I've been lucky because had I not gone down that road, I wouldn't have met a collective group of great, smart women who have taught me some of what they know about marketing, writing and editing. And I would have learned nothing.

After careful thought, I re-wrote my first book again. I re-thought the entire series. Rather than selling books with flaws, I chose to improve the product. The premise was good but… I hope I fixed the but.

That is why I chose this major rewrite. I took a long look at the book and the series and pinpointed where I fell short. I took out chunks of the book, changed relationships and rewrote what turned out to be a majority of the book. Though the story is the same, it gets there in a different manner. One that I hope answers questions, feels complete, with characters that are worth reading about.

I often wonder why no one has said to me, you're an awful writer you should quit. I've mostly experienced encouragement, just enough to ignore the bad reviews. Just enough to try again. Maybe this time I'm nearly 10 minutes away from quitting, and at least in the end I know I've tried.

I'm very proud of version 20 of The Day of First Sun and I look forward to it's release. I can't wait to share.

It's been an emotional few years picking myself up and dusting myself off, but I did it. Sometimes it's all we know what to do.

Pre-order The Day of First Sun, check out Amazon.com.

The Quit Debate

As I start this blog entry I'm really want you to know I'm not trying to whine or complain. I'm just taking stock of the last year and making decisions. This is really meant to be a look back and maybe someone, somewhere can benefit from my mistakes. Or maybe you can relate or maybe this will make you feel better because things aren't as bad for you. Or maybe no one will read it. I can never be sure.

I'm seriously thinking of quitting. I'm not sure I have what it takes to be an independent author and maybe the last four years were simply the act of fooling myself into thinking I was actually a writer. Pros and cons cloud my mind as I contemplate giving it all up and I change my mind so fast that my head is ready to spin-off. I wish I had me to talk to when I started this process, when I decided to write my first book. This debate started when I released She Wulf and agonized over horrible reviews and it's come to this because I haven't sold a book in months. Granted I haven't been pushing them, I'm just starting to think it's not going to happen.

I know I've chosen a difficult path for myself and I know we all can't be best-selling authors, but I was hoping for something a little more. I at least put myself out there and I tried, but honestly, bad and so so reviews make me believe that my work is just that, so so and bad. Either that or I'm failing miserably finding my core audience. Regardless, I'm finding it difficult to find the inspiration to keep at it. So if my legacy in the end becomes a cautionary tale for other writers so be it. I'll just have to find that happiness somewhere else. In the meantime, I honestly feel like I have something useful to share. So here it is the many things I've learned about writing and publishing. I hope it inspires or helps, either way, it's one perspective that not many chose to share.

1) Editing. Hire a good editor. My first go round I went through CreateSpace. I'm not saying their editors are bad, I'm just saying it wasn't the perfect situation for me. I need someone who I could easily contact. Someone that I can throw ideas out to. Someone who intimately knows my book, story and characters. Before re-releasing The Day of First Sun, I had it re-edited. To this day I can still go to my editor, Ashley and ask her questions. She one of my biggest supporters and one of the reasons I've hung around this long.

2) Editing. Yeah. You really need to edit. Two drafts might be enough for some, but for me what I learned about editing is this, finishing one draft and starting the next one after only eight hours of sleep isn't long enough to process your work, think about the direction or come up with new and unusual plot points or characters. I edited The Day of First Sun at least six times, one right after the other. When I decided to re-write it last year, I picked it up for the first time after a full year, and boy did I see it differently. So much so it became a complete rewrite. Though the story is the same, it's really so different and I might say even better.

3) Editing. Again. See number one and two. Don't be afraid to re-write, move, or edit out stuff. I tried so hard to create the world in the first book that I wanted to include everything, including flashbacks, spells, and creatures. Write them down and save them for the next book. As it turns out, I removed the memory modification scene from The Day of First Sun. I think I'm actually using that spell in my second book in the series.

4) Editing. And you thought it was something else. Make sure you trust and like your editor. This one is for Kira, who after I received horrible, mean and nit picky reviews for She Wulf , she kept me sane, was a great support and took time out from her busy life to teach me new ways to write and edit. I wrote Yeti with her help. She spent weeks coming up with lesson plans and going through the story re-teaching me how to write and edit my work. I can never thank her enough for doing this on her own time. Her support has been amazing. I wish I was a better student and had more to show for it, but because of her my rewrite of The Day of First Sun is far better than it originally was.

4) Write everyday. And you thought it was about editing again. Nope. I'm done with editing. I wanted to be a writer when I was seven years old. I did write a lot when I was a kid. I had my own detective series with a female detective named Jeffrie Marcus. (Thanks Nancy Drew.) When I got my first job out of college I knew it wasn't going to be perfect and I knew I wouldn't write a book at first, so I worked my way into a writing position so that I could do what I wanted and make money while I contemplated my first love. Eventually life got in the way of my dream. Kids, death, depression can muck up your life and they are things you can't go back and change. It's the one thing I truly regret is that I stopped writing. So if you want to be a writer, write even if that means you write a line a day.

5) Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Tiberr, Instagram… Buffy had the Evil Trio as her arch nemesis. I have Twitter. You have to be social on social media if you are trying to sell your books. I have yet to master this which is part of my problem. Social media is not necessarily for introverts. I still have no idea how to make it work. I've hired help and she's been fabulous increasing my twitter following and Facebook author page, but I'm still at a loss as to how to create these relationships the marketing experts always talk about. I'm trying to build a following but for me I think I just don't know what to say. Find out who your audience is and what they are interested in and talk about that. If you figure it out please let me know.

6) The blog. Now here's my problem with blogging. I don't read blogs. I usually found the information very high level and not usually useful. Also, see number five. I just don't know what to say. I've been reworking and rewriting trying to find that one thing that gets people interested and every once and awhile I hit on something that people want to read. But mostly it's high level and quick because none of us has time to read lengthy material. What I do know is, talk about yourself and share. So here's my sharing.

7) Don't jump into self publishing unless you really know what it consists of. I jumped right away. I didn't edit my work enough. I rushed without learning about professional editing, without talking to agents, or attending book fairs.  Talk to other authors, find out what's out there. Find someone like me who's willing to share the pitfalls. I've done this several times to other aspiring writers because I want them to go in knowing what they're getting themselves into. I wish I knew.

8) You can't please everyone. I have a writer friend who's had the opportunity to talk to agents and others in the book industry. Each one of them has offered her suggestions on how to change her book. She's made so many changes that the book is far from her original vision for it. I suggested she make changes that make sense and yet allow her to retain her vision. She's rethinking her book because unless one of the agents is taking her as a client, she can't try and please all of them.

9) You can't please everyone but you can accept suggestions. As part of eight, here's nine, similar and yet different. This friend once told me she really liked one of my characters, one that I had only written into the first half of the book. After discussing our books with each other, I realized she was right. I should include Jack Ramsey in the latter part of the book and planned how to do that. I figured an FBI agent whether he was in charge of the case or not would want to be there to see the case through and I had him conclude the investigation by being there to capture the murderer and arrest him. The second major change came after my editor pointed out that all of my relationships started before the book's timeline and that maybe it would be more interesting if we saw the start of some of those relationships. I thought about it, agreed and changed one of the key relationships in the book. Jack and Annie no longer knew each other prior to the story. It changes how they interact and creates a little tension and confusion. Make the changes that make sense, because you can't please everyone. Please yourself first.

10) Believe in your work. I love my characters. I love the story lines. I love my book series. I really believe I have a great idea for book series and a television show. If I don't believe that I should stop writing.

11) Most importantly, believe in yourself. No one else will. You will find supportive and helpful friends but only you can write and edit and do the things you need to do in order to make your dreams happen and you have to believe that you can do it. If you don't believe in yourself you won't get very far. You are a writer, you deserve a chance to try to make it. We don't always get what we want but if you have no faith in yourself, you will never achieve anything. And I discovered I believe that I can do this.

Am I bitter? Sometimes. Do I lack self-esteem? When it comes to my books, right now yes. But I've learned a lot in the last four years. And one of those things that I've learned is, I have a lot to offer. I'm a good writer with a good idea. It's just going to take me a little longer than some. And in reality I was never really going to quit. I'm a writer after all and that's what I was born to do.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving used to be my favorite holiday. I have memories of both sides of my family coming to our house. I always have a sense of warmth. Even as I remember fighting my dad and brother for crispy turkey skin or making stuffing in my pajamas. I have to admit, I don't enjoy the holiday as much now that I'm an adult. It's a lot of work and it's exhausting. But I do hope that when I host it at my house, my children will take away their own special memories of Thanksgiving to pass on to their own children.

I've seen people this year expressing gratitude on Facebook. I didn't participate because some of my things I'm grateful for might not seem as normal as others. But we're all different and we all have different experiences that make us happy and thankful.

I'm always grateful for my children. They are amazing kids, fairly well-behaved, good students and constant reminders that I should be present in my life, take a little time to stop and enjoy and spent some quality time with them. Sometimes it's not always easy, sometimes I just have to turn off the computer. Annie and Cham will just have to wait.

I'm thankful for the people in my life. Some you get stuck with, some you let in because you like them. It's not always easy but they and the experiences you have with them make you who you are whether you like it or not.

I'm thankful for two amazing editors, Kira and Ashley. Not because they edited my books, but because they offered me a level of support beyond what was required and it was that support which kept me writing. For whatever reason they chose to give more of themselves and for that I will always be grateful and thankful.

I may never meet the next in my list but they influenced me in ways that truly shaped me as a writer. I'm thankful all of the writers of Nancy Drew who wrote under the name Carolyn Keene. It was my first time reading mysteries. I loved them and have ever since. To Judy Blume I'm thankful for the lesson in writing about characters you care for. I might not always hit the mark, but it's always in the back of my head as I try to draw a complete picture of who they are. To Stephen King, I'm thankful for the lesson in imagination, and thinking outside the box. I'm writing fantasy, anything can go, so let it flow. And lastly I'm thankful to JK Rowling for simply writing books that made me happy, but most importantly, reminded me that I wanted to be a writer. Without that little push, I might not have written my own books.

Lastly, I'm thankful for being me. For learning something from all of my setbacks and realizing that with a little belief in myself I might be able to get somewhere good.

It's always nice around this time to remember what we're thankful for. I can add so many other things and people and expand beyond my books or career but for now I'll leave the list where it is. It's a fluid and ever-changing thing as life moves about.

So what are you thankful for? Happy Thanksgiving!