Monday, May 24, 2010

Make-Believe Monday with Tarra Blaize

This morning on Make-Believe Mondays I'd like to welcome Tarra Blaize.

Ray Bradbury said, “We are cups, constantly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” How do you keep your creative cup filled?

Tarra:  By reading what has poured out of other writers’ cups. Nothing motivates me more than reading a fantastic book. I love being pulled into another story where I can forget everything in my world because I am so intent on another one. When I reluctantly have to leave that haven, it makes me even more determined to try to create my own version for other readers.

Debra:   Is there a point when your characters begin to come alive and you can see and hear them?

Tarra:  Once my characters hit their first barrier, the way they react ends up defining them more than any hypothetical thinking on my part. I really try to let the characters write themselves, because whatever flows in my writing will hopefully translate best with readers when they read it. Failure is not about falling, but failing to get back up. The strongest method to bring a character to life is to throw his or her worst nightmare into their path… and make them find something inside of themselves to overcome the odds.

Debra:  For some writers, dreams play a role in creating fiction. Has this been true for you? Have you ever dreamed a scene or an image that later wound up in one of your books?

Tarra:  I laughed when I read this. I had total writers’ block with this novella, until I had an incredibly vivid dream that, with some reshaping and editing, turned into the first few scenes of the Break. In the dream, I got to be an undercover spy who was experiencing agony at being forced to betray a demon who had captivated emotions in ways that should have never happened. This character, of course, became my heroine Layla, and the demon became Gethin. I should note that this rarely ever happens to me, but I’m so grateful that it did!

Debra:  It's a wonderful thing when it does happen.  :-)  Imagination can be so strong and fully present in our dreams.

As a child did any particular book or author pull you into their imaginary world?

Tarra:  I was a total bookworm even as a child, and always had at least three books on hand: one that I was currently reading, another for when I finished my current one, and the third should I finish the second one as well! One of the books that shaped me early on to love romance is Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted, a retelling of Cinderella. If you haven’t read it you should – it’s for all ages, just like any brilliant young adult novel!

Debra:  I'll have to add that one to my list!

 Is there anything else you would like to add about the role of imagination, and dreams in creating fiction? Any other message for our readers?

Tarra:  I cannot imagine fiction without imagination or dreams. Let alone the author, but for readers, is this not integral to your reading experience? As a writer, my job is complete if you can walk away after reading my story, but not walk away from the story. I hope that whatever I’ve written entertained you so well, that your imagination keeps working even after the last word, and you dream the “what if…” of putting yourself in my characters’ shoes. My goal is to provide an alternate reality, and I cannot do that successfully if I fail to stimulate your creative side and sense of wonder as well.

Debra:  Tarra, that is so true.  Thank you for joining us here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers.

To learn more about Tarra and her books visit Tarra's website www.tarablaze.com
st Samhain
or Amazon Angels and Demons

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Debra's News/Debra is watching:

Currently I am researching for the Scottish hstorical romance I'll soon be writing.  It will be set in the 12th century.  I was able to see the new Robin Hood movie last week (which was wonderful) and I believe that counts as research too.  :-)  Such pretty gowns made me want to start sewing and the archery made me anxious to get out my new bow and learn to use it.  Perhaps this weekend.


debraparmley.com

Monday, May 17, 2010

Make-Believe Monday with Brad Parks

Today on Make-Believe Mondays my guest is Brad Parks. I first met Brad at the Romantic Times Book Lovers convention in Columbus OH at the big book signing where we were seated next to each other. He has a great sense of humor which made the signing all the more fun.

Brad, first, tell us a little bit about the manuscript you’re working on now.

Brad; It’s the third book in my mystery series with St. Martin’s Press, which features the adventures of Carter Ross, the sometimes-dashing investigative reporter. This one won’t be out until 2012, so I don’t want to get people too excited – it would feel like a big tease – but right now I’ve got Carter trapped in a car with a homicidal maniac on a deserted road in the middle of a thunderstorm. It’s not looking too good for our hero. But I can confirm he managed to make it alive out of the second book, EYES OF THE INNOCENT (due out early 2011). So maybe he’ll find a way to escape this time, too.

Debra: Okay, too late. I want to know how he gets out of that mess! But it's okay, a little bit of teasing is allowed. :-)

Ray Bradbury said, “We are cups, constantly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” How do you keep your creative cup filled?

Brad: I used to be a sportswriter, and am therefore a fan of sports movies. In one of the great all-time baseball movies, Bull Durham, the grizzled veteran catcher, played by Kevin Costner, gives the wild young pitcher, played by Tim Robbins, his first piece of advice: “Don’t think. It can only hurt the ballclub.” That rather neatly sums up my feelings about creativity in two ways. One, I try not to think about creativity very much – not how it works, why it works or what makes it work sometimes and not others. I’m afraid I’ll jinx myself. And, two, my most creative thoughts come when I’m not thinking actively about being creative – when I’m driving a car, doing the dishes, or doing something else that is keeping my mind minimally occupied. There’s something about keeping your conscious mind a little bit busy that allows your subconscious to bust out and do what it does naturally.

Debra: Yes there is something to that. The subconscious is key, I believe. It's a bit like trying to remember someones name and trying so hard that it won't come, then you go off to do something else and voila. There it is. So true.

Is there a point when your characters begin to come alive and you can see and hear them?

Brad: Before I wrote a lot of fiction, I’d occasionally find myself watching some famous author being interviewed. Inevitably, he’d get asked, “Well, famous author, how do you know what comes next in your books?” And the famous author would reply, “My characters tell me where the story needs to go.” And I’d always think, “Yeah? Do your characters tell you you’re a nut bag, too? Because that’s what you sound like right now.”

Then there I was, writing my first Carter Ross novel (FACES OF THE GONE, which came out last December). I’m in the middle of this scene where Carter, in his quest for a certain piece of information, has to smoke marijuana with a bunch of gang members so they’ll know he’s not a cop. Now, Carter is a pretty clean-cut guy who tried pot once or twice in college and never touched it since. Nevertheless, he tokes up, the gang members tell him what he needs to know and I’m thinking that’s going to be the end of it. It’s time for the next scene, right? Except when I tried to make Carter rise off the couch, he started tugging on my sleeve and giggling. “Dude,” he said. “I can’t go anywhere. I’m stoned out of my mind.” I shook my head and said, “Come on Carter. You can’t just sit on the couch for the next three hours. It’s boring and this book is supposed to have a lot of action in it. Let’s go.” Carter refused to move, so I made him get up anyway, and the next thing I knew he was stumbling all over the place, crashing into walls and… well, you get the point. It turned into one of my favorite scenes (you can read it at http://www.bradparksbooks.com/faces-of-the-gone2.php) and it established something I have come to accept as a fiction writer: My characters do tell me where the story is going to go, I just have to make sure I’m listening.

Debra: Now that is a great story to illustrate this point. I always find it interesting when an author is reluctant to say they hear their story people. It probably has to do with not wanting to sound crazy. But then some will say the voices in my mind tell me.... and that one makes me smile too. You've managed to cover both aspects quite well.

Some very famous authors have played with language, creating words for people or places that no one has ever heard of. Have you ever played with words in that way and if so how?

Brad: My stuff is pretty well grounded in reality. So, no, I haven’t created anything like that. But I certainly wouldn’t be averse to it. The point of language is to communicate meaning. As long as the reader is getting meaning out of the invented word? I say inventimicate all you want.

Debra: Inventimicate is a good one. :-)

For some writers, dreams play a role in creating fiction. Has this been true for you? Have you ever dreamed a scene or an image that later wound up in one of your books?

Brad: My dreams are, by and large, much too freaky to turn into a book. I fear some psychoanalyst would read it, interpret it, and insist I was a danger to society who needed to be institutionalized.

Debra: Though if you ever got the urge there's always the use of a pen name.

As a child did any particular book or author pull you into their imaginary world?

Brad: I mean, who didn’t see themselves living in a giant peach with Roald Dahl? Or feel the intense desire, thanks to Beverly Cleary, to pull the boing boing curls of a girl named Susan? But I think my favorite book as a kid was GENTLE BEN by Walt Morey. It’s about a boy from Alaska who adopts a grizzly bear. I must have read it twenty times. I wanted to have a pet bear so badly I would actually fantasize about my family taking a trip to Alaska and stumbling upon an orphaned bear cub. (Then I grew up, hit puberty, and started fantasizing about other things… I also read that Alaska has way more guys than women and realized that really wasn’t going to be the place for me if I ever wanted to get a date).

Debra: I remember that book! Haven't thought if it in years though. You're the first to mention GENTLE BEN which now that I think of it, is amazing. Because it's a very good book.

If there were no categories for books, no reader expectations to meet, and you could create the wildest work of imagination that you could think of what kind of story would that be?

Brad: Well, I think it would be a book about a boy wizard who goes off to a boarding school for other young wizards and then… what? That’s been done already? Aw, shucks.

Debra: Yeah, darn it. If you'd only been faster with that one. :-)

Brad: No, seriously, I’m actually thankful for reader expectations. It gives me some kind of guide. Otherwise, I’m like a horse without blinders – all skittish and distracted, looking around at everything instead of focusing on the task ahead of me. Besides, the chief expectation for a mystery writer is that the crime gets solved at the end. And, really, that’s not too onerous. I feel like I still get plenty of imaginary rope with which to hang myself.

Debra: Yes there's still plenty of room (or rope) for the imagination to play within a mystery world.

Is there anything else you would like to add about the role of imagination, and dreams in creating fiction? Any other message for our readers?

I recently spoke to a group of middle schoolers who were taking a year-long writing class. I wanted to demystify the writing process for them a little bit, so I talked about how I approach a new book: Basically, I start with characters who have a problem they need to solve. So we worked together to invent some characters and then began brainstorming a plot. It was amazing the way their minds’ worked. Sure, some of what they came up with was pretty derivative – obviously drawn from whatever television shows they liked. But some of it was really original and just, well, out there, in ways both good and bad. It was so far out there that the teacher, who was doing her best to keep them on task, began reigning them in a little bit. And I don’t blame the teacher, who had to maintain some semblance of order in the classroom. But it did strike me that the young brain was this incredibly fertile thing, capable of sprouting all these wonderful, wild ideas; it was only the grown-ups who needed things to fit into a neat box. So it’s made me mindful of sometimes going back to my own middle school self – minus the braces and awkwardness – and channeling some of that great craziness.

Debra: Oh, now that is a beautiful story and message to share. Thank you for adding that one. And thank you for joining me here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers.

Visit Brad Parks’ website www.BradParksBooks.com
and Brad Parks on Facebook. You can also follow Brad_Parks on Twitter.

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Debra's News/Debra is watching:

Last weekend I went to an SCA medieval reinactment event called Crown List which is where they fight for who will be King and Queen. It was great fun and I enjoyed the pageantry, the fighting and the medieval feast. Just enjoyed it while absorbing it all in for the medieval romance I will soon be starting. This is my research and planning period for the story.

I'm also sending my contemporary romance out to agents this week as the great agent search is on. Otherwise this will be a quiet week and I find I'm needing one of those. Those are important too, to recharge and refill the creative cup.

www.debraparmley.com

Monday, May 10, 2010

Make-Believe Monday with Roland Mann

Today on Make-Believe Mondays my guest is Roland Mann.

Roland, first, tell us a little bit about the manuscript you’re working on now.

Roland: The working title of my current project is The Interns. It came about because I enrolled in the MFA in Creative Writing at Spalding University. I already had 25,000 words of a book I was working on, but the program strongly suggested students produce new material. I’d actually written the very first “scene” as a comic strip that I wanted to pitch to a local newspaper. It didn’t happen, but the scene remained in my head. When I began to generate the pages for the MFA program, that scene popped into my head and became the first three chapters. The story itself is about a young superhero who’s finished his time at The Academy and is assigned to do his Internship. He’s assigned to a small town in the South and things don’t work out the way he imagined they would, being a superhero and all.

Debra: The story sounds very intriguing. Also, those stories that won't let us go, well I think they need to be written and so often turn out to be the best ones an author will write.

Ray Bradbury said, “We are cups, constantly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” How do you keep your creative cup filled?

Roland: I love Ray Bradbury. In fact, he’s part of my answer to a following question! J Personally, I think creative people are filled by everything around them, and I mean everything. Though some might try to tell you otherwise, authors/writers can’t remove themselves completely from their work. No, I’m not trying to suggest that when you read a book, the author is the main character, but a part of that author and who he is, is in the work somehow. That said, some of the things I do: obviously, I read a lot. Currently the stuff I’m reading is all for school, but it’s a pretty big load—not that I’m complaining. It’s better than working math problems! Another thing I do is eavesdrop. No, not the illegal kind, but the kind where when I’m out and about, I listen to people. Cellphones have helped that “research” aspect for writers tremendously. Give most people a cellphone and they become oblivious of their surroundings and speak at volumes louder than normal. You can get really good bits of dialogue that way!

Debra: Oh, I love him too. His work and his words of advice are true gems. And I agree with you about removing ourselves from the work. We can get distance but it's still authorial voice coming through at least in good stories it is. And math problems? Shiver. Anything but those. lol. Eavesdropping is a tremendous source. Perhaps everything an author encounters is potential fodder for the page. I'm now thinking I should pay more attention to people on cell phones. :-)

Is there a point when your characters begin to come alive and you can see and hear them?

Roland: That’s a cool question. Y’know, I think it’s kind of like our relationships with “real” people. The longer you spend with them, the more time you invest in them, the better you know them. I think that may be why series are so popular—you’ve invested yourself reading one book, so that when the 2nd (or 3rd or more) book comes out, you already “know” that character. I feel that’s why television series are popular and why new ones are hard to get going. To answer specifically, I felt I really knew Caleb (the main character in The Interns) after I’d finished chapter 6, and then revised the entire chaps 1-6.

Debra: Oh thanks, Roland. :-) That's a great way to explain it. Perhaps our story people become more real the more we get to know them as authors and as readers, then they become less like characters.

As a child did any particular book or author pull you into their imaginary world?

Roland: The first one I name may not be exactly what you or your readers anticipate. For me, the first to suck me in was Stan Lee, the man that created or co-created half of the Marvel universe. As a kid, I didn’t really like to read—had no interest in it. Mom, being the good mom she is, sought a way to get me more interested in reading. She introduced me to comic books and the Marvel Universe. I fell in love with the characters almost immediately. Those comics led me to explore other work, and I found writers like HG Wells, Ray Bradbury and Jules Verne.

Debra: I wonder how many children enter the world of reading through comic books? Bless all the mothers like yours who encourage their children to find a route into reading that they enjoy. That story world of imagination, there's nothing like it. The world of story is such a magical place, whether the route to it is a comic book, a hardback or audio book,or lately an e-book or graphic novel. The story world is where the magic is and I'll never understand why people fret so over the route into it.

Is there anything else you would like to add about the role of imagination, and dreams in creating fiction? Any other message for our readers?

Roland: I told you about the book I’m working on, but I would also like to tell you about the one that will be out in just a matter of days. If you had the chance to re-do part of your life, would you? Even if it meant dying earlier? Buying Time is a book that explores this very thing for two men, who purchase part of their past and attempt to relive it. When I get the book in my hands, I’ll announce it on my blog www.rolandmann.wordpress.com and let folks know how they can get it. Thanks for having me here!

Debra: Roland it has been a true pleasure. Thank you for joining us here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers.

Readers may find Roland at
www.rolandmann.wordpress.com
www.facebook.com/rolandmann
http://rolandmann.wordpress.com/projects/buyingtime/

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Debra's News/Debra is watching:

I'm home from the Romantic Times convention in Columbus, OH and pictures will soon be up on my website. www.debraparmley.com

There has been a lot going on during the convention and beyond. Here in the mid-south, there has been terrible flooding. Millington, TN is only 20 minutes from my house and to drive home I had to come through Nashville which also had terrible flooding. I'm happy to report that my home is fine as are family members and friends. Some of my friends have lost their homes to flooding and the relief and repair efforts continue here.

My second novel is complete and this week I begin the search for an agent. I will also start playing with the beginning of a new novel, which means exploratory writing, research, imagining....
....one of my favorite times is the beginning of a new novel, when anything I can imagine is possible.

Until next time, stay safe and healthy and hug your loved ones.

Love and light,
Debra