I write contemporary romance, for the most part. Of my eighteen published novels, fifteen are contemporary. The other three, however, are paranormal—the Ramos Family Trilogy that I wrote for Berkley InterMix about a family of mediums in San Antonio. That trilogy was so much fun to write that I’ve always had a secret wish to […]
I suppose it was inevitable that editing apps would become available eventually. After all, pattern recognition is something computers do very well, and a lot of copyediting comes under the heading of recognizing and, in some cases, changing authorial patterns of language. For example, most of us have words we habitually overuse. Some authors keep […]
In my last post I talked about the trials and pleasures of writing sex scenes in historical romances, and in my introduction I said that all romance novels have sex scenes. Of course, that isn’t actually the case. So consider this post a sort of footnote to the last one. Some romance novels don’t include […]
Now that I’ve got your attention, as they used to say… Romance novels have sex scenes. That’s not a big revelation to those who read and write romance. But some writers have an easier time of it than others. Assuming your hero and heroine are consenting adults, in contemporary romance you can usually work a […]
My first paranormal novel, Medium Well, is still one of my favorite writing experiences. The three novels in the Ramos Family trilogy are ghost stories because, well, I’ve always been sort of intrigued by ghosts. Haven’t you? When I was a kid, I devoured every ghost story I could lay my hands on at the […]
Getting a cover is one of the most exciting and nerve-racking parts of the indie publishing process. You have to find an artist, then you have to explain what you want (assuming you know), then you and the artist have to work through a series of rough drafts before you finally arrive at the cover […]
There are two main expenses for self-publishing—covers (about which, more later) and editing. Of the two, beginning writers are more likely to spend on the former than the latter. They’re making a big mistake. I come to this conclusion from a somewhat unique perspective—I was a freelance copy editor myself for several years. At one […]
There are several steps in self-publishing, but there’s a first one that’s absolutely fundamental. Write the book. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the other things that are involved in publishing, but without a book you’ve got nowhere to go. Fortunately, in this case I had a completed MS. In fact that MS had […]
Last year at this time I was a happy camper. The first book in the Salt Box Trilogy, Finding Mr. Right Now, had just been published. The second, Love In the Morning, had a publication date, and the third, Running On Empty, had been contracted. My first books set in Colorado had become a reality. […]
Today is the release date for Going Up In Flames, my contribution to the Sapphire Falls Kindle World collection of novellas. Sapphire Falls is Erin Nicholas’s long-running series about a small town in central Nebraska. Several months ago, Erin asked me to be part of a Kindle World series centering around the Sapphire Falls summer […]
