Make-Believe Mondays with Deborah Cooke

Today on Make-Believe Mondays, my guest is Deborah Cooke.

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

Deborah: Right now, I’m writing Dragonfire book #4.

The Dragonfire series has been a terrific challenge for me – it features heroes who are dragon shape shifters. These dragon shape shifters are called the Pyr, and the treasure they guard is the earth itself. The good Pyr (the “true Pyr”) consider humans to be part of the earth’s treasures, while the bad Pyr (the Slayers) believe that humans need to be exterminated – along with the Pyr who defend them – to save the earth. The Pyr mate with human women, and their encounter with their destined human mate is called the firestorm – literally, sparks fly between them. (And yes, this means that the heroes often have some fast talking to do!) The series is set during an astrological phase called the Dragon’s Tail, which a node of the moon – it’s right now – which is the time of the last great battle between the Pyr and the Slayers. So, each book features the Pyr facing a challenge from the Slayers while one Pyr negotiates his firestorm.

There’s a lot to balance in these books with the world being so complex and omnipresent, and the romance needing to be satisfying as well. The challenge is keeping the series fresh and giving each hero a different personality and personal crisis to face. In book #4, Delaney – who died in book #1 and was revived with the Dragon’s Blood Elixir by the Slayer Magnus in book #2, then discovered that he couldn’t trust his own impulses in book #3 because Magnus had control of him still – has put himself on a suicide mission to destroy the Dragon’s Blood Elixir and seriously weaken Magnus’s power. Delaney doesn’t care whether he lives or dies, because he thinks his life is a hell. He wants to do something for the good of the Pyr, instead of being driven to destroy them by Magnus.
Of course, he isn’t counting on having a firestorm, or on the determination of Ginger Sinclair. I’m having a lot of fun with these two strong-minded characters!
You can read more about Dragonfire at www.deborahcooke.com

Debra: Oh, that is fascinating! Okay, going to the top of my must buy, must read list. Somehow I had missed this series.

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?

Deborah: I knit.

Debra: Yes, you do. (smiling)

Deborah: Actually, there are other crafts I do, but knitting is my current favourite. I love playing with colour and with texture, and knitting combines that pretty well. I don’t always make garments, because then there’s the whole issue of fit and flatter – I knit a lot of socks and lace. They’re kind of one-size-solutions!

In the past, I’ve done a lot of dressmaking – but there’s that fit and flatter frustration factor – and I love to piece quilts. The trouble with quilts is that I like piecing them better than quilting them – piecing is the colour work – so I have backlog of quilt tops in need of quilting. I don’t like the look of machine quilting, so do mine by hand. It may take me a while to catch up.

Especially if I keep knitting instead. I also like all the colours and textures of yarns that are available. A yarn store or a small mill is a dangerous place for my wallet. I just want to take all of the pretties home!

Knitting is portable too – I can knit in the car or on the train, in the kitchen while dinner is simmering, or do a couple of rows right at my desk while I’m thinking. I like that a lot.

One of the best things about knitting for me creatively is that it seems to let my imagination wander by itself. I focus on the knitting – purl a stitch, knit a stitch etc. – and admire the fabric that’s taking shape, and all of a sudden, I know what comes next. Or I begin to hear the dialogue between my characters. It’s a magical thing, but whenever I’m stuck, a bit of quiet knitting will usually sort things out. I knit a bit every day, just to keep the story rolling in my mind.

You can peek at my adventures in knitting on my blog, which is called Alive & Knitting www.delacroix.net/blog

Debra: There is something about repetitive motion I think. Going for a walk, riding a train, something as simple as ironing, that allows the creative muse to play. So now I will think of you with your magic knitting needles creating stories full of magic. :-)



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?

Deborah: Well, whenever an author creates a fantasy world, there are things that need names, things that don’t have names in the world we know. We have dragons, of course, but no naming for good dragon shape shifters vs. bad dragon shapeshifters. We have no name for the mating phase of a dragon shape shifter. What is a female dragon shape shifter called, and how is she different?

So, I needed to come up with some names for these things in my Pyr world and more. I focused on the idea that my dragon shape shifters are a very old species, so I chose names that seemed old to me. “Pyr”, for example, is the Greek root for “fire” – think of pyrotechnics, or pyromania. The oldest story that is obviously about dragons is a Greek story, so I thought picking a name in that language was fitting. I also had to define their capabilities, which was intriguing – what can they do? What can’t they do?

I enjoy the fact that the Pyr’s numbers have been vastly diminished and that the social structure they once had has eroded and things have been forgotten. (Erik explains that to us in KISS OF FATE.) I like how they need to remember or rediscover these things, or interpret prophecies that seem enigmatic or just irrelevant. They’re all pretty down-to-earth pragmatists so interacting with legend and myth is frustrating to all of them. I like that.

The most interesting thing for me, though, has been giving the Pyr their stories and myths. I’m really enjoying the process of taking human stories about dragons and turning them around to be the Pyr’s stories. I love the Pyr’s creation story – “In the beginning, there was the fire and the fire burned bright…” – it’s really fun to echo the style of this kind of storytelling but change the content.

Fortunately, humans have always told a lot of stories about dragons, so there’s a lot of material to play with!

Debra: And I do love it when you play, creating such fascinating stories.

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

Deborah: I read a lot of fantasy novels when I was a kid, precisely because they had complex worlds. I liked the idea of slipping away into an alternate universe, where magic could happen and where the good guys invariably won.

After fairy tales, one of my favourite series was J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I’m not sure how many times I read it, and I read many of the ancillary works as well. I also was quite disappointed by the cursory treatment of Arwen and Aragon’s romance, so rewrote LOTR as a romance when I was a teenager. I didn’t understand then that that was what I was doing, but putting Arwen and Aragon front and centre made sense to me – maybe that was indicative of what I’d end up doing for a living!

Debra: Oh, yes, I felt like that was missing as well. I wanted to know more about their love story too!



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?

Deborah: Many writers fight against categories for books as being restrictive, but I think they do serve a purpose – as readers, we want to know what to expect from any given book, and book categories instruct that. For example, a romance will follow the story of a couple falling in love and negotiating their relationship to a permanent one. Categories of fiction also provide valuable clues to writers about structuring their work, in order to better satisfy that reader expectation. A romance, for example, because it focuses on the relationship, begins with the couple meeting or interacting for the first time, and ends with the HEA resolution. All other elements of the plot fit inside of those brackets. (There’s a post on my blog about this, called A Plot Is Like A Sandwich - which explains this more thoroughly.)

Part of what we forget sometimes as authors is that the reading experience is an exchange – in order to be working writers, we need readers, and we will only have readers if readers find something to love in our books. A big part of that is delivering to the expectations of a category of fiction. It’s true that an author can write a book without any structure or without adhering to any recognizable framework, but I’m not sure that that book will be an interesting read. I have a number of those books on my shelf – or have had a number of them on my shelf! – they tend to not get read the whole way through, and they certainly aren’t keepers. I want to write keepers.

So, the challenge to all writers is working within the framework of expectation, pushing its edges a bit but still deliverying a satisfying read. The other facet of that is that markets are fluid and reading tastes change, so what constitutes a satisfying read is a bit of a moving target.

I think there’s more latitude for my writing a satisfying read right now, with the market being more open to elaborate world-building. I love elaborate world-building! Ten years ago, it would have been very hard to sell a series like Dragonfire, because there was a perception in the romance market that the world building should be subtle not omnipresent. I was always pulling back on details in my Delacroix medievals, so being able to let loose and make things complicated is really exciting to me.

The trick is building the detail and the surprises inside the parameters of expectation. I think that’s a perfect balance, between giving readers what they want and letting authors be creative.

Debra: Deborah, I am always learning some bit of wisdom from you. Thank you for that 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.

Deborah: Thank you, Debra, for inviting me!

Visit Dragonfire online at www.deborahcooke.com
Visit Château Delacroix at www.delacroix.net
Visit Claire Cross online at www.clairecross.com
Blogging weekdays at www.delacroix.net/blog

----------------------
Debra's News/Debra is watching:

Debra will be knee deep in revisions this week and ordering bookmarks as well as participating in a Valentines Day game with Samahain. Stay tuned to
debraparmley.com for changes and updates.

Make-Believe Mondays with Claire Delacroix

Today on Make-Believe Mondays I'm thrilled to introduce my friend from RWAonline, Claire Dleacriox.

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

Claire: Right now, I’m working on the third book in this new future-set fantasy romance series with fallen angel heroes. The world of these books is a gritty place, it’s post-nuclear and pre-Apocalyptic, and essentially the angels are volunteering to sacrifice their wings in a last ditch effort to save humanity. Each hero takes a mission to fulfill on earth – his idea is that he’ll regain his wings when the quest is complete, but love seems to change their minds! The first book in the series is out right now (October 2008) and is called FALLEN. It’s had some terrific reviews and has a gorgeous cover – you can read the back cover copy and an excerpt on my site:

www.delacroix.net/fallen

The second book, GUARDIAN, comes out next October and the third – the one I’m writing now – will be out in October 2010.
The challenge in writing these books, set in such a different world, is finding different facets of that world to explore in each book. I’m having a great time with the series, although each book comes together more slowly for me.

Debra: Claire, I've always been fascinated with angels and I'm thrilled you are writing this series. I am ordering the first one today. Can't wait to read it!

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?

Claire: I’m a big fan of Julia Cameron’s book THE ARTIST’S WAY – I do my morning pages daily and my artist date every week. For me, playing with colour seems to help me to solve problems in books or figure out what comes next in the story.

So, my artist dates usually revolve around the pursuit of colour and new images – I’ll go to an art gallery or a museum or a guild store and look at the displays but not read the explanations. I visit stores that sell colourful and beautiful things – tile stores, fabric stores, bead stores, yarn stores – anywhere that there’s an avalanche of colour. I also like to walk - in busy cities, in different neighbourhoods, in the woods, on beaches – I think it’s healthy to explore new environments.

Invariably I bring souvenirs home with me - balls of wool that I’ve bought or pebbles from the beach or magazines from the thrift store - but those give me items to play with once I’m home again. Beach pebbles can be arranged in the garden, for example, or around a potted plant. Sometimes I make collages, just to play with the colour and shapes. I try to play a bit with texture and color every day as visual stimulation seems to encourage my words to flow.

Debra: You were the first person to tell me about Julia Cameron's book, and I am ever so thankful to you for that. It is excellent.

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

Claire: Yes. It happens in two phases. There’s a point right when I begin the book that I can hear them talking. I feel at this point like a landlady eavesdropping on the new tenants (they’re in the rental apartment in my imagination). That gets me started and is usually a very exciting point.

Then, when I’m about 100 pages into the manuscript, there’s a bigger challenge – that’s when they get opinionated. Often, they don’t like the story I want to tell and either modify it or have an entirely different story that they’d like to live. This is both exciting – because the characters have become real – and irritating – because I don’t really know what they’re up to yet and because they often have better ideas than I do – but it always works out well in the end.

If they don’t start arguing with me, then I worry.

Debra: Oh, what fun! I like the eavesdropping idea. Silent characters make me nervous. It usually means I have taken them somewhere they don't want to go and they just haven't told me yet. Stubborn arguing characters are good. Well, I like your endings. :-)

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?

Claire: I frequently use dreams in my work, or more accurately, use the energy of dreaming to create my work. One of the challenges in writing a work of fiction is to ensure that it’s not predictable. One of the ways to avoid predictability is to put characters into very challenging situations, situations in which there appears to be no way out.

The problem is that sometimes I don’t know the way out either! But there always is one and I’ve learned to trust in that, that I wouldn’t have thought of the situation if it couldn’t be resolved. And often, I find the solution in dreaming.

Here’s how:

If you fill your mind with a question or a problem before you go to sleep, you will often dream of the solution. Before you fall asleep, think about the question or problem. Examine it from all sides. Think of all the variables that created it and all the things that need to come out of it. Roll it around in your mind so that it’s the only thing in your thoughts and do this until you fall asleep.

When you wake up in the morning, probably 8 times out of 10, you’ll know the solution. You might remember the dream and you might not. You might “remember” the solution shortly after you awaken – the shower is good for this, in my experience – but it will come to you before you sit down to work. If not, repeat the exercise the next night. It seldom takes me two nights to find a solution and never takes three.

It works for questions other than “what comes next” in the book, too!

Debra: Oh, thank you, Claire! I am going to make that a new practice. What an excellent way to problem solve. (For more than the creation of fiction, I am thinking.)

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?

Claire: I think that book is FALLEN! I wrote FALLEN when I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. The historical market had slowed down a lot and I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to write more medievals anyway. I felt restless and ready for a change. The problem was that I was already writing contemporary romances as Claire Cross, so I didn’t know exactly what else I wanted to do.

Then this character marched into my office. She said her name was Lilia Desjardins and I had to help her get something done. Gid, her estranged husband, was dead, and the cops thought it was an accident but Lilia knew better. She thought Gid had been murdered and was going to find out the truth, no matter what the price.

I assumed she was crazy in love with Gid, but no, she told me she owed him this, that finding justice for him was the least she could do for him. I was intrigued.

I was even more intrigued when Lilia headed straight into danger – what a dangerous world she inhabits! - and met a very yummy cop. Was Adam Montgomery her friend or her foe? He certainly had a bunch of secrets…

Debra: And now I am wanting to know what those secrets are ... ;-)

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?

Claire: I think we all need to remember that we are creative beings. No matter what you do to make a living or how you pass your time, you’re creative. The thing is that when we allow ourselves to be creative, when we explore creativity in our lives in any way, we feel more vital and alive.

We’re happier.

Remember that problem solving is an expression of creativity. The ability to look at any situation and find a solution no one has considered is creative. The ability to get any number of people working together productivity is an exercise in creativity. You don’t have to be an artist in your working life to be creative. Expressing yourself in your home, in your garden, with your décor, personal style and even your cooking is all creative. There are many kinds of creativity, and each one is just as valid as the others.

So, don’t dismiss yourself as “not creative”. Do something that only you can do, or do something in a way that only you would think to do it. Let yourself play, and you’ll probably feel a bit lighter for it.

Debra: Such beautiful and encouraging and empowering words. Claire, thank you so much for joining us here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers. I knew it would be a treat.

Claire: Thanks, Debra, for having me!

Debra: It's been my great pleasure.

Please visit Claire at

Visit Dragonfire online at www.deborahcooke.com
Visit Château Delacroix at www.delacroix.net
Visit Claire Cross online at www.clairecross.com
Blogging weekdays at www.delacroix.net/blog