Harder than I thought

I thought I'd share a bit about the transition I've made over the last few years from academic writing to fiction writing. Although I'd been planning to turn my hand to fiction for many years, I was always too busy working full time to even think about writing even one more word that I had to. Teaching four classes of first and second-year university English classes left me precious little time to even read for pleasure, let alone write. So I let it slide....

Then, once I got a handle on my workload I began to suffer from long bouts of insomnia. The good news was that now I had time on my hands. The hours between bedtime and when I was ready to fall asleep proved to be fruitful. It was quality time. Just me and my laptop. And so I began to write.

At first I had no idea what I was doing. I wanted to tell a story about a married woman who meets an irresistible man while she's travelling in France. Against her better judgement, she begins an affair right under her husband's nose. It wasn't supposed to be a romance. It had to end badly, a sort of cautionary tale. I was influenced by the novel Damage by Josephine Hart. It was gritty and dark and just my kind of read.

So I began. But I didn't begin at the beginning. I began with the first seduction scene. And why not? I wanted to jump into the fun stuff right away.

I have to admit that it was self indulgent of me. But again, why not? Once I'd finished the first draft of that scene, I was happy with what I'd written. And that scene appears, basically unaltered, in the middle of my first novel, Cult of the Black Virgin. But then came the hard part.

I had to create a sympathetic character, place her in a meaningful context, then lead her to this first, explosive coming together with her lover.

That proved a lot harder than I thought it would be. I really sucked at character development. I'd never done it before, and I guess I expected that characters were born fully-formed, ready to walk, talk and have great sex without any direction from their creator.

Boy, did I struggle. Not only was my heroine an adulteress, she was attractive and privileged. I had my work cut out for me if I wanted readers to like her.

That was when I turned to the professionals for help.

I bought books on writing fiction. I took some on-line courses. I attended workshops. And I read articles, blogs and even more novels.

Then things began to morph....

Hot, hot, hot!

One of the reasons I like living in a rain forest is the climate. It's wet. It's cool. Lots of things grow, year round. But sometimes, rarely, we get a stretch of warm weather. And what most people consider warm, I consider hot. I don't like hot.

If I liked hot I might winter in Mexico, or Florida. But I choose to stay put--when I'm not traveling for fun, of course--during the winter here on the west coast of Canada because our winters are mild. And wet.

And that brings me to the subject of writing. Winters in western British Columbia are a perfect time for writing novels. In fact, when I started writing romance a few years ago, my husband suggested that we should spend six months indoors working, and six months outside enjoying the glory of nature.

And I have no problem with the indoor six months. I like writing. But when hot weather arrives, I don't want to be victimized by Mother Nature. I'd rather be hunched over my keyboard. I have to escape the heat, you see.

And, now that I'm drafting my fifth novel, I'll use any excuse I can to go inside and get back to work. Hot weather? It's much cooler in the house. Rain? Best to stay home and keep dry. A windy day? It's calm indoors. And so on....

This year, July has been unusually hot and dry. Consequently, I've been writing a lot. I completed the edits for the second book in my Black Virgin Trilogy--Revenge of the Black Virgin. It will be released by eXtasy Books on August 15th.

Then I finished the third book in the series--Gift of the Black Virgin. While I wait for the edits on that one, I figured I'd just keep writing. After all, the weather is cooperating. So I began a new series, called Tracking Tor. The first book, Mirage, is set deep in the Syrian desert. It seems fitting to take all this heat around me and channel it into my story.

But as soon as our heat wave ends, I'll have to move my characters to the sea shore.