Negotiating Skills - The Soundtrack!

Good (Early) Morning Lovelies, 

Music plays a huge part of my daily life. It calms me, soothes me and revves me up when necessary. It helps set the mood for my days or cheers me up on bad days. When it comes to my writing I tend to create playlists that put me in the right frame of mind and that remind me of my characters. Music helps set the mood for the overall mood of a scene or complete book. I thought you all might enjoy the playlist I had on loop while writing Negotiating Skills. 

Each song listed was chosen to help capture a feeling or mood of the characters and overall feel for the book. The most of the songs listed are definitely sexy, but Inertia Creeps is the song that actually helped me get in the right state of mind for writing most of the scenes for Negotiating Skills. I love the pacing and yes tension in the song.  

• Feelin Love, Paula Cole
• Glory Box, Portshead
• When Doves Cry, Prince
• Slow Wind, R Kelly ft. Sean Paul and Akon
• Ooops Oh My, Tweet
• You're Makin' Me High, Toni Braxton
• Holler, Spice Girls
• It's All About Me, Mya ft. Sisqo
• My Love is Like Whoa, Mya ft. Missy Elliot
• Juicy Fruit, Mtume
• Close To You, Maxi Priest
• That Girl, Shaggy & Maxi Priest
• Touch My Body, Mariah Carey
• Inertia Creeps, Massive Attack
• Ooh La La, Goldfrapp
• Say Yes, Floetry
• Sexy Daddy, Destiny's Child
• Promise, Ciara
• Dip It Low, Christina Milian ft. Fabulous
• Get Mine Get Yours, Christina Aguilera,
• At Last, Christina Aguilera
• What's It Gonna Be, Busta Rhymes ft. Janet Jackson
• Speechless, Beyonce
• Breathe On Me, Britney Spears  

Well Enjoy!
Laurel

Creating Tension in Romance Novels

Hello Lovelies, 

I'm a ridiculously voracious reader. When I'm not writing I read about 2-5 books a week across multiple genres. I know to many that may seem like a lot and to others not enough. Either way I read several books a week and I'm almost always sad to see one book end, and excited to start another. Unfortunately, I just finished reading an erotic romance that left me incredibly disappointed. Which is hella sad because I was looking forward to reading this particular book. Since this is not supposed to be a book review site, I won't mention the name or author. I will however, state that the book came highly recommended, has gotten rave reviews and is currently listed on amazon's best sellers list. Unfortunately I could not seem to find the enthusiasm for this book that so many other readers have. 

When I finally turned the last page of this book all I could do was sigh in relief, that it was over. I rarely don't finish books, but I was tempted to toss this one out after the first few chapters. sitting back and analyzing my reaction to this book I realized that it, like all the other books I've struggled unhappily to finish in the past, lacked an element that I find necessary to enjoy a good romance-TENSION. I felt absolutely no situational or sexual tension in the plot or between the characters whatsoever when reading this book. It was so frustrating! The story just kept moving forward with no apparant reasons or catalysts. Even Seinfiled had catalysts, and it was a show about nothing!

For me a bad plot or premise can be saved if the author can relay the proper amount of tension. It keeps me as a reader engaged and invested in the ending of the book. Without it I struggle to finish the book or don't even finish it at all, and will be less likely to purchase other books from that author again (fickle I know). Tension is the foreplay of plot. It's all part of the seduction a writer weaves to get you in bed with them and willing to spend hours turning the pages of their books. Sadly after finishing this recent book I'm left feeling used and unfulfilled. What do you think? What are your fundamental elements to romance? What leaves you wanting?

Talk to you soon,

Laurel

Why Should They Fall In Love?

Hello Lovelies,

So I may or may not have mentioned this, but I've already got the basics of the next two "How to" books roughly outlined. The books will be part of a series I plan on calling OWLS Inc. How To Kill Your Immortal will be book one in this series. I'm currently working on beefing up the story line of Jasmine and Dante. I've been cleaning up some clunky paragraphs and trying to make the dialogue as un-wasteful as possible. While doing this I've found myself adding some more dialogue here or there as well as some additional narrative. This is mainly because despite the fact that this story is meant to have elements of suspense and mystery it is still fundamentally a romance and I want that to be reflected properly. 

In the end I want my readers to see two people in love and it make sense. I don't want readers to be told Jasmine and Dante are in love, I want them to know they're in love. I want them to feel the attraction between these two people and get why each one has fallen for the other. This is not easy. I find myself going back to certain scenes and asking myself, "Why did she kiss him?", "Why does he want her?," "Why should they be together?", "Why is he on top?". I guess it's a writer's version of "what's my motivation". When I come across scenes or moments in the book where I don't feel my own questions are properly answered, then I know it's time for some work on narrative and dialogue and more often than not, the delete key.

I've read books in the past where it felt like the author was following a formula regarding her main characters. Two (or three, or four, yay erotica!) people meet, there is some sort of conflict, sparks fly, they have sex, declare their love and we as the readers are supposed to believe that because they bumped uglies or said the requisite I love yous, they're  in love. I need more than that. Have you ever read a book where the love just wasn't believable? Does it burn you as much as it burns me? Like I want to soak this book in kerosene and make a bonfire burn?

I read an erotic romance recently, which out of sheer embarrassment for the author, I will not reveal the title, but I swear I was told the hero was in love with the heroine and vice versa and given absolutely NO reason or evidence as to why. I feel like providing this info to the reader is like the proverbial reach around. Seriously help a sister out!

Now after all of the griping I'm doing here wouldn't it be just HILARIOUS if someone tells me the love between Jasmine and Dante isn't believable to them? To that I can only respond at least I tried! Argh!

Talk to you soon,
Laurel

Q10 Text Editor--When You Just Need ABSOLUTE Focus

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Have you ever been in the middle of a project and you just couldn't focus? There's no one in the house, your phone is off, the shades are drawn and there is absolutely nothing that could interfere with you sitting down, opening your laptop and just typing your little heart out. You hum softly to yourself, already cherishing the moments to come as you settle yourself down and flip open your laptop. This is going to be amazing, you think as your hand cups your mouse and moves automatically as if powered by some unseen force, hovering momentarily over your word processor icon, but instead of clicking that open, your hand quickly zooms to your internet client and an hour later you realize that you just wasted prime writing time checking email and getting lost in a Wikipedia labyrinth. Insert major expletive here! 
     How could this have happened?! It's days like these where I'm extremely envious of the "old days" when a writer had just a desk and a typewriter to contend with. I'm sure there are people out there who think "How hard is it to not check your email or stay off the net?". To those people I say "Don't judge me (*sigh*)!" Trust me when I say I don't intend to get lost for hours on the net, but it's so easy! During my BIAM month this happened to me more than once and in desperation (ironically) I turned to to the internet and learned about full screen text editors. 
     A full screen text editor, is an editor that takes up the entire screen of your computer. Once you pull it up it doesn't even display your task bar.  A few people in forums swore that the editors were a part of their arsenal against distraction. I downloaded a few of them, not really believing that a full screen could make such a huge difference and was pleasantly surprised. The editors don't just have a full screen to keep you from clicking around your desktop, but most of them have some pretty handy features that I would have never thought would be helpful. The editor that impressed me the most was the Q10 Text Editor. This editor is free and open source, so it was free to download and super easy to install. The Q10 also has a lot of features but unlike a word-processor these features aren't broadcasted in tool bars and clunky menus.  Remember the whole purpose is to have as few distractions as possible. If you want to access Q10's features you use a quick command that allows you to pull up the full menu and adjust settings. 
     One of my favorite features of the Q10 editor is it's typewriter sounds feature. I know it's a little cheesy put I just love typing away and hearing the clack-clack-clack of a typewriter. It helps me drown out everything and just groove :). Of course for those who need absolute silence the feature can be turned off. Q10 also has a great word and page count ticker that you can choose to display at the bottom of your screen. You can also set word and page count goals and Q10 will let you know where you are in reaching those goals. 
    Although the Q10 editor is my favorite from the bunch that I tested, I'm sure there are some that may be even better, but for now I am content in having one more weapon in my arsenal against distraction.


Talk to you soon,
Laurel