Big Easy Blog Tour

Better late than never, right? I hope so. It's my week to appear on the Big Easy Blog Tour, but with my scattered brain and Memorial Day combined, I missed posting on Monday. So I'm doing it today. 

Author Sharon Drane invited me to participate. Visit her blog to read her post for the tour and to see the beautiful cover of her upcoming release, Touch the Sky. Go backwards from there, and like a family tree, you can trace the roots of this tour as close to its beginnings as you'd like. 

Since the purpose of this tour is to discuss our writing process in the hopes of helping other aspiring writers,  I was instructed to answer four questions as part of this tour. Here they are, along with my answers. 

1) What am I working on?

I just finished the first round of edits on Broken Ties, which will be released just in time for Christmas this year. I'm also working on edits for the re-release of my first book, Flowers for Megan. It should be available in the next few months. As far as new projects, I always have several works in progress. The one I'm working on most regularly right now is one I have titled Deceptive Cadence. It has a beginning, middle and end and is fully fleshed out, but I can't quite get it to where it needs to be and I'm having a rather hard time pinpointing why. When I get to the point where I can't beat my head against that wall any longer, I work on my historical inspirational romance, The Stonecarver's Bride, for a while. 

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

That's a hard question to answer. I guess my best answer would be that it's mine. No two writers are going to write the same, regardless of whether they write in the same genre. I firmly believe two writers could be given the exact same parameters of a novel, and even be told the story step by step, but when they sat down to write it, the two stories would be told in completely different ways, because each of our voices is shaped by our own experiences, personalities, etc. That's why we readers continue to read the same basic story line over and over again - because each author's voice makes it a totally new experience. 

3) Why do I write what I do?

Because I absolutely love it. I've loved romance since the very first time I heard the story of Cinderella, or maybe even before. I love every moment from Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After, and I love creating all those moments in between! I am a firm believer in hope and love and happiness, and I want my hero and heroine to know all of those - after a few people die, of course. 

4) How does my writing process work?

I don't know. I just write. I was more of a pantster before I worked full-time outside my home. Then, I had the ability to just be absorbed in the story so that it was all kind of happening and I was writing it down as it unfolded in my head. Now, I have to have a bit more of an idea where it might go. Although it rarely goes exactly where I think it will, it helps me to have some idea of it before I start so I can get all my ducks in a row. So I'm not really a pantster or a plotter. I'm more like a duck herder. (Who kills people.)

The only thing I know for certain at the start of a book is there will be a happy ending. And just for the record, I mean a definite happy ending. The heroine or hero in my book is never going to get hit by a bus or a logging truck, murdered, or know any other horrible death. None of my stories are going to end with a "happy despite his or her bitter grief" moment for the hero or heroine. At least, not if I can help it. I despise that in movies, and I get even more caught up in books, so reading that kind of ending is even more devastating. I won't do it to my readers. No way. No how. Although I'm fairly certain I'm now going to get a wonderful idea for a tearjerker that ends just that way. (I have a long list of things I swore wouldn't happen and they did anyway.) 

Following me on the blog tour next week are: 

Joyce Scarbrough 

is a Southern woman weary of seeing herself and her peers portrayed in books and movies as either post-antebellum debutantes or barefoot hillbillies á la Daisy Duke, so all her heroines are smart, unpretentious women who refuse to be anyone but themselves. Joyce has three published novels and also has short stories featured in several anthologies. She writes both adult and YA fiction and has lived all her life in beautiful LA (lower Alabama). Her blog is called Blue Attitude and you can find it here  http://joycescarbrough.blogspot.com

Shirley McCann Shirley’s fiction has appeared in Woman’s World, Alfred Hitchcock, and numerous other magazines. Her first contracted novel with The Wild Rose Press, Anonymously Yours, is now available exclusively through Kindle at Anonymously Yours http://shirleymccann.blogspot.com

Please be sure to visit their blogs!