Make-Believe Monday with M J Frederick

Today on Make-Believe Mondays my guest is M J Frederick.

Welcome M J!  First, please tell us a little bit about the manuscript
 you’re working on now.

MJ:  Thanks so much for having me! I love talking writing! Right now I’m revising a straight contemporary romance which combines a friends-to-lovers element with a road trip from Minnesota to Seattle during a snowstorm. I’m having so much fun building the tension! I’m also playing with the plot of a new romantic suspense that takes place on a cruise ship. I hope to start working on that one later this week.

Debra:  It's a pleasure having you here.  Road trips certainly have a way of bringing people together or pushing them apart, add a snowstorm and it just intensifies.  I have a completed contemp set on a cruise ship also, which I'm sending out to agents currently.  I'm partial to romance on the sea from all the trips I took while working as a travel consultant.  Bet that one will be fun for you to 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?


M J:  My very favorite thing is to go to the museum. It’s free on Tuesday nights, and when I’m there, I just want to grab a pen and notebook and start writing. It’s nothing in particular that I see, but the atmosphere fills me up. Also, going to historical buildings. Here in San Antonio, we have the Alamo and the missions. Those always light a spark in me.

Debra:  Wonderful ideas all!

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

M J:  If they don’t, I know I have a problem. If they aren’t real for me, I worry they won’t be real for the reader. Sometimes it’s that I haven’t spent enough time with them, or didn’t do enough to develop their personalities. When I first started writing, I wasn’t writing every day so I spent a lot longer thinking about my characters. I had characters set in a certain town near my grandparents’ place and now every time I drive through that town I think of those characters! I really should revisit that story….



Debra:  Oh, yes, it sounds as if they are calling to you.

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?


M J:  How funny you should ask. Beneath the Surface, my July Samhain book (in print July 6!) came from a dream. I dreamed of archaeologists working in the jungle and being kidnapped by guerillas. I fully intended to write that book, but the dh pointed out it could get pretty gritty, especially for the heroine. Around that time, one of the cable stations started playing the movie Twister a lot. I was drawn into the reunion aspect of the story, and Beneath the Surface took off from there.




Debra:  Fascinating.  Hmm maybe there are two books emerging from your dream.  Dream worlds can be so rich and vivid.

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

M J:  Trixie Belden! I recently rebuilt my collection. I loved the friendships of those novels, the adventures, the different settings. I wanted to be Honey Wheeler so bad. Then there were the Little House on the Prairie books, which weren’t imaginary, I guess, but I loved traveling back in time to her world (as long as I could eat Double-Stuff Oreos while reading them!)


Debra:  Oh, I wanted to be Honey Wheeler too.  (And don't tempt me with those Double-Stuff Oreos now, or I'll be in trouble.)  lol

M J 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 please visit M J at
www.mjfredrick.com
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Debra's News/Debra is watching:

I'll be chatting more on my Facebook Fan Page, as I close my personal page.  Soon there will be pics from writing events I've attended (and yes some of those handsome cover models) as well as talk about the writing life.  Stay tuned.    


I'll be writing this week on Tue and Wed most of the day.  Also plan to get a partial of the contemporary romance in the mail to an agent I've had my eye on.  ;-)  Wish me luck!


www.debraparmley.com

Until next time, stay cool in this summer heat and have a Happy Fourth of July!

Love, light and joy,

Debra

Make-Believe Monday with Christine Price

Today on Make-Believe Mondays my guest is Christine Price.  Christine, first, tell us a little bit about the manuscript  you’re working on now.

Christine: Well, my new work (due out in September from Carina Press) is a horror-romance hybrid, which focuses on a young man with psychic powers who falls into the clutches of a mad scientist, only to find love in the most unexpected place.

Debra:  How exciting to be one of the first authors at Carina Press!  Congrats!  It sounds like an exciting story.

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?

Christine:  I draw inspiration from a LOT of different places. Whether it’s a particularly memorable episode of The Tudors or a good book, I seem to be unable to stop myself from suddenly getting a trillion ideas racing through my head all at once. The only problem with that is that it conflicts with my attention span, which is roughly that of a goldfish. I always have a half-dozen serious projects going on at once, and another dozen waiting for my attention on the backburner.

Debra:  The Tudors, hmm I need to check that one out.  Thank you.  It's nice to have more than one project going.  I'm a firm believer in that and suspect it prevents writers block.  Because if one story frustrates on any given day there's the option to jump over to the other one!

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

Christine:  Characters for me are interesting. I tend to come up with small snippets of dialogue first. From there, I start wondering what sort of person would actually SAY the stuff that’s suddenly appeared on my screen. From there, it just tends to escalate. When they really start showing up for me, though, is when I find a song that reminds me of them. Take one of my newest characters, Matt. I love him to death, and a large part of his character was developed while I was listening to “Falling For the First Time” by the Barenaked Ladies.

Debra:   Fascinating.  I've been doing these interviews for four years now and you're the first author to say this about songs.

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?

Christine:  Absolutely! One of my first passions was high fantasy, and I spent a whole year working on a project that needed about three different unique languages (all of them to come up with a way to say ‘zombie’ strangely enough). I’ve never gone so far as to actually create an entire language (the prospect terrifies me), but I think that every good fantasy writer has the ability to develop something unique to their world, and often that defies the languages that already exist.

Debra:  Yes, so true.  Hmm you have me wondering how many different ways there are to say zombie now.  :-)

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?

Christine:  I’ll be honest: the entire premise for Soul Bond was based on a dream. As I recall, the dream actually started out on a pirate ship, but Julian and Ellis were very definitely there. When I saw the open call Samhain had going on for space opera, I knew that it would work. I think I remembered three things from the dream besides the characters. Something about a ring, a sacrifice for love, and a long-awaited reunion. It was probably the most vivid dream I’ve ever had.

Debra:  Wonderful!  Some very good books have come from the author having a vivid dream.

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

Christine:  For me, it was more like which mundane task could pull me OUT. If I had to pick one particularly influential author, however, I would have to say that Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest chronicles were the whole reason I got turned onto fantasy in the first place. Her character Cimorene was the first strong female character in a fantasy series that I’d ever read about, and I felt like I could relate more to her than any of the male heroes that had come before her.

Debra:  Another to add to the to be read list then.  :-)  Thank you. 

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?

Christine:  What a fantastic question! I don’t know what the book would look like, but it would definitely have hot men kissing. All kidding aside, I think it’s important for any writer to just write what they love. Reader expectations and categories are absolutely important, but passion is what ultimately breaks through.

Debra:  Thank you!  This is so very true.

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?

Christine:  A long time ago, I heard that the most effective brainstorming sessions cannot have anyone say ‘no’ or claim that something is silly. I apply the same thing to my writing. My imagination gets triggered by the weirdest things, and as long as I sit back and enjoy the ride, instead of resisting it, it never lets me down.

Debra:  Good advice.  Christine, thank you for joining us here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers. 

Christine can be found haunting her blog at
www.christinepricewrites.com and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/CPriceIsWrite. Her first work, Soul Bond, was released last month

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Debra's News/Debra is watching:

The weather here in the Memphis area has been getting up to 100 and this sort of weather always has me slowing down to that southern summer pace.  Sitting and sipping a glass of something cold while observing people is one thing that feeds this writers creative cup.  Like Christine, I have multiple projects started, though I tend to only mention the one I'm working full steam ahead on.  This week I'll be pulling them out, looking them over and deciding which one calls to me the loudest.  I'm still researching for the Scotland set medieval and continuing the agent search with the most recently completed manuscript, so in the meantime I need to use the writing muscles again until I'm ready to jump start the medieval story.  This is the beauty of having more than one project waiting in the wings.

you can find me any number of places such as

www.debraparmley.com
Debra's facebook fanpage

Till next time, stay cool and remember to drink plenty of cold liquids.

Love and light,

Debra

Make-Believe Monday with Tina Donahue

Today on Make-Believe Mondays my guest is Tina Donahue.
Tina, welcome.
Is there a point when your characters begin to come alive and you can see and hear them?

Tina:  Generally by page five of the story my characters take over and I’m just an observer, recording what’s happening. It used to be page 50, but the more I write, the quicker the characters begin to come alive. I’m still hoping that they will someday take the reins on page 1, making things very easy for me. 

Debra: Wouldn't that be wonderful?  Mine haven't ever done that before chapter three.  It would certainly make the re-writing easier. 

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?

Tina:  I’ve played with places that way. I wrote a paranormal a long time ago where I created a new universe for the lovers. It was a lot of fun and I thought it would be easy plot-wise because there weren’t any rules like in the real world. I learned quickly, that wasn’t true. If you give your character the ability to let’s say walk through walls on page 20 and then on page 50 he needs to escape the villains, but you don’t want him to (in order to build tension/suspense) you have to figure out why he could walk through walls at one point but not at another – kind of like Kryptonite stopping Superman. So even make-believe worlds have a ton of rules in order to make sense.

Debra:  Sometimes I think the make-believe worlds are harder because of that.  With the ordinary mundane world we already know the how and sometimes the why of things. 

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

Tina:  I still recall reading “Mystery in Old Quebec”. To this day, I can see the peeling wallpaper in the room in my mind and the way the firelight flickered over the furniture. I got so hooked on the story and imagery, everything else faded away.

Debra:  That's a lovely image.  It's wonderful to be pulled into a world.

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?

Tina:  The paranormal I was speaking about earlier. I actually rewrote the history of mankind in it, beginning with creation. Maybe someday I’ll go back, polish the ms up and see if it sells.

Debra:  Yes, I think if it calls to you, then you should!  Tina, 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 visit Tina at www.tinadonahue.com

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Debra's News/ Debra is Watching:

I've been away for a few weeks.  Celebrated my birthday with a birthday luau, been researching for the Scottish historical romance I'll soon be writing.  Not quite ready to start that one yet, so I'll be working on some of the other stories I've started to keep the writing muscles in shape as well as submitting one of my completed novels to agents.  The great agent search is on and this takes time to find a good one.

It's been up in the 100's today here in the south.  Till next week, stay cool, stay safe and healthy.

Love and light,
Debra

www.debraparmley.com