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After wearing a “Least Likely to Succeed” label all her life, Roxanne Eberly is hell-bent on making her Red Light Lingerie store successful. Although the residents of small-town Shelbyville, Texas, are a little…lingerie-resistant, she’ll win them over eventually. So when a former employer sues her, putting a major wrinkle in her careful plans, she reluctantly accepts help from hot-stuff Houston attorney Jamie Wright.

Jamie’s on track to become his firm’s youngest partner, but discovers an unwritten prerequisite—marriage. Turns out, the only woman he wants is Roxanne, but peddling thongs and sex toys isn’t a suitable career for the spouse of an up-and-coming attorney.

Jamie’s tangled up in Roxanne’s lawsuit, her life and her lingerie. But if they’re ever going to make it work, Roxanne’s big-city boy will have to decide what he values more: the career he always thought he wanted or the woman he never thought he’d fall for.

~~~*~~~*~~~

EXCERPT

Today’s post is about twists, turns, and surprises in fiction, and what can make them feel “gimmicky” as opposed to delighting readers in the way we authors expect and hope.

We all know “gimmicky” when we read it: something feels lazy, forced, or somehow not genuine, because characters aren’t being true to who we believe they are (who they’ve shown themselves to be.)

I’ve written one post about suspense tactics turning gimmicky, but this post is different. In many ways, surprise is the opposite of suspense. And that explains the first reason surprises in fiction can feel gimmicky:

1. THE STORY DOESN’T SET UP FOR THE SHOCKING REVELATION

Suspense is all about building tension, based on knowing only PART of what’s going on. You know a killer is in the house, but you don’t know when he’ll strike. You know the bad guy is up to something, but you…

by Susan Spann

Last month, I kicked off a new #PubLaw guest series here at Writers in the Storm with a brief look at copyright law and the rights it covers.

When authors learn that copyright protection is automatic and attaches to qualifying works at the time of creation, many assume that means the author owns those copyrights.

How could I not own my copyrighted works? Many authors ask. I wrote them, so I own them. Right?

Usually, but not always.

Copyright law recognizes several types of copyrighted works which are not owned by the creator, or which are owned by the creator in partnership with another person or entity.

Let’s take a closer look:

1.The General Rule: creative works are owned by their creator.
As a general rule, ownership of copyrighted works, and all the related rights, belongs to the author or creator.

However, an author may license…

We’ve been talking about some heavy stuff the past several posts, so I figured it was time for a bit of levity. We writers are different *eye twitches* for sure, but the world would be SO boring without us.

You Know You’re a Writer When…

You’ve learned that regular people are cute, and no longer get offended with this conversation.

Regular Person: What do you do?

Writer: I’m a writer.

Regular Person: No, I mean, what’s your real job?

You’ve come to understand that writers are a lot like unicorns. Everyone knows about them, they’ve simply never seen a REAL ONE.

You Know You’re a Writer When…

The NSA, CIA and FBI no longer bother with you. Likely, they know you by name and now outsource to the creepy ice cream truck to just make a few passes and check to make sure you’re still at your computer.

You Know…

The eight ladies have been writing to a theme this week, and the theme topic is “New Year, New Writer.” I panicked,  because, hey—nothing like a little pressure to be a new writer in the new year. When I stopped hyperventilating, I decided there’s no rule that says I have to be new. So here’s my theme within a theme:

New Year, Same Old Writer.

To my classmates who have had transformative experiences with their writing in the McDaniel program, I salute you. I wish that I, too, could say my writing has been transformed. But it hasn’t.

In a perfect world, I wouldn’t need to send a rejection letter. Over the years, I’ve written so many that I’m confident there’s a chair with my name on it in that fiery place below the River Styx. So just to pave the way, I’ll give you some insight into my rejection letters. While I do take notes with each submission, I tend to use the same sentences over and over (not always). 90% of the projects I turn away have the same problems, and there just isn’t time to go into much detail.

Here are my top–but not only–phrases in order of most used:

1. The pacing is inconsistent… So, the first chapter moves quickly. Second and third chapters, not so much. I will then go to the middle of the book and read from there. Every novel has a lull or two (hello, Gone with the Wind

By Orly Konig-Lopez

Querying authors know the feeling: Your email pings with an incoming message. It’s from one of the agents who requested your manuscript. Your heart beats in your ears, you close one eye, tilt your head to a 35 degree angle and squint at the words. Maybe this is “the one.”

“Thank you for sharing, blah blah. I liked blah blah. But … ”

You groan. It’s a rejection.

You keep reading anyway. This is where the “but” gets interesting. There are notes. Detailed notes. And a request to resubmit after you’ve made the revisions. Whoa!!!!!!!

Once you’re done with the “it’s not a no” dance (and get an ice pack for the muscle you pulled – not that I’m speaking from experience on this), you sit down to pound out those revisions.

Wait! Back away from the keyboard. Seriously. Hands up. Scootch back. This is not the…

As a teenager, when I thought about the life of a romance writer I had a vision of Barbara Cartland leaning back on her chaise lounge in a flowing gown, easily dictating a story to her waiting secretary.   Once I began to write, however, I realized just how much of a fantasy that image was.

One of the most important–and perhaps toughest– aspects of writing good fiction is crafting characters that have a life of their own, that feel believable as people in the world they inhabit, and that genuinely can catch and hold the interest of readers.

So what IS reader interest in a character? Well, we all want readers to care what happens to our characters. We want readers to connect with them on some basic, human level, even if their personalities are very, very different.

Just as important as what” reader interest in a character” is, though, is what it isn’t. And it isn’t these three things.

1. YOUR READERS HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER(S)

Can the way you tell a story about an intriguing, interesting character raise questions about that character’s motivation or background that you only resolve toward the end of a story?

Definitely: please don’t think I’m saying otherwise.

Whether you are just now entertaining the idea of writing a book or have been writing for a while, all authors need certain tools if our goal is to publish and make money with our work. Now, if your goal is to simply create a piece of literature that “says something deep and probing” about society or life or is esoteric and selling the book doesn’t matter? Then that is a noble goal and I wish you the very best.

There are works that have broken all the rules and come to be known (usually much later) as classics. I will, however, respectfully point out that the majority of those who follow this blog want to write commercially and make a decent living, so my list is geared toward a certain group of authors.

What this means is that anything can go in writing. Rules are not to be a…

by Shannon Donnelly

There are a lot of crimes a writer can commit—the torture of sentences, the mangling of meaning, the wrecking of words through using the wrong one at the wrong time. However, the greatest of these is the crime of lack—to forget to put in the emotion.

Now, emotions come in lots of ways and there are lots of opportunities to layer them in, but you have to remember you’re not just putting down words. You are constructing a believable scene with what should be memorable characters (people in other words). And people come with emotions.

Let’s look at the ways to make sure you get the emotion into your scenes.

1. Add emotion through actions.

This goes back to the old ‘show, don’t tell’ advice. You want to show your characters in action so the reader sees who your characters are. Does a character slam a…

I’m a newbie at the writing game, but I’m a lifelong reader. I always check out the acknowledgements page, which means I’ve read thousands of heartfelt thank-yous to critique partners and beta readers, usually along the lines of “they read this story when it sucked, so you don’t have to.” I knew before I ever put finger to keyboard that getting feedback was important, but as Justine discovered with conflict and Michaeline learned regarding revision, I had no clue what that actually meant. I had a vague idea that I should ask a few readers for comments and they’d tell me if they liked the characters and spot mistakes in the details. I imagined the contemporary romance equivalent of the online comments on the new Sherlock – the train carriage belonged to the wrong tube line, and the photographers in the press pack were using the wrong lenses.

When I started the McDaniel program over a year ago, I came in without any formal (or informal, for that matter) instruction about writing fiction. I’d neither taken a creative writing class, nor studied the basic elements of good fiction. In other words, I was a blank slate, which is great in some respects because there weren’t any bad habits/knowledge I had to purge from my brain. But it’s bad when my instructor tells me to identify the goal, motivation, and conflict for my protag and antag…I was left saying, “Huh?”

Of all the things we covered at McDaniel, conflict was one of the topics that tripped me up the most. (Well, okay, so did goals and motivation, which go hand-in-hand with conflict.) I thought I knew what conflict was. I mean, I read romance novels, right? Those books are chock-a-block full of men and women arguing about something or…

Today is a tad of a touchy subject, but in this New year, I want everyone to have a the greatest gift any of us can have…peace. Bullies, in my opinion, are among the lowest known existing lifeforms. I wouldn’t want to insult cockroaches and fleas by drawing a comparison.

Kristen’s History With Bullies

I grew up most of my life being bullied. I switched schools at least once a year and there was always a new gaggle of Mean Girls to make my daily life a veritable hell. I think this is why I grew to love books. I skipped school so much (to seek sanctuary at the public library), that I’m fairly certain I’m the reason for the current Texas truancy laws.

I couldn’t get out of bed. I became ill at the thought of even walking through the front doors of my school. I was poor and…

by Fae Rowen

Who wouldn’t want a sneak peek at 2014? A chance for insider information about what’s in store?

Well, as the resident science and science fiction geek here at WITS, I’m going to share what my friends in the know, in particular Jeanine Just, have to say about the next 365 days.

We’re talking about potentialities here–the physics of energy. So don’t take anything as set in stone. (Though, I looked back at the suggestions for 2013, and I wish I’d taped the page to my wall to remind myself of them.)

1. First, on January 31, we’ll celebrate the Chinese New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Horse, Wood Horse to be specific. This is a year of youthful vitality and freedom, a year of balanced emotions. This is a year to settle down and commit to long-term plans. It’s time to…