Who Would You Invite? #November #RB4U @melissa_keir

Who Would You Invite??

Hello and welcome to everyone. It's Melissa Keir once again talking about romance books and life. This month our theme is the best party. I love planning parties. Attending them, not so much...but I adore picking out the food, planning who to invite and creating a wonderful setting for people to gather.

Just imagine, you are having a party and can invite anyone you want, living, dead, real or fantasy...Who Would You Invite?

I'm sure there are so many different answers out there. I'd love to spend another day with my family who passed on, but I think the best party to have would be if your own book characters came to life and attended the party. Can you just imagine?

Jake and Angela along with her daughter, Taylor. Of course, Jake's brother would show up. He does a lot of lurking in the book...determined to get back at Jake.

But it wouldn't be a party without Johnson and Debra...She's probably scoping out my house to see how much she can list it for. But if these two are coming to the party, make sure you hide the alcohol. We don't want them to fall off the wagon again.

Rob and Keira would certainly want to come. Hopefully, they won't cause a scene with their fights. With their marriage on the rocks, putting them together along with others is like adding fuel to a fire. Keira's certain to think Rob's flirting and then all H*ll will break loose!

Throw in Lissa and Alex as well as his ex-wife and Lissa's best friend...Chloe...Well, let's just say, my house isn't big enough to keep them apart and not fighting. Hopefully, Chloe has worked on her own marriage so she doesn't have to try to get Alex back.

As you can see, this party will be anything but ordinary. I'd love to sit back and watch the interactions. To make the party more interesting, throw in a few vampire hunters, shifters, and skin-walkers and you have a fabulous event. No one is going to be worried about the food with so many interesting people there!

Who would you invite to your party? What characters would you want to show up and how would they act? I'd love to hear your insights....

Melissa Keir writes small town romances that sizzle. She's also the local radio movie reviewer and owns her own publishing house. When not busy, she dreams of becoming a drag racer and living life on the beach. You can find out more about her and her books at her website or Amazon.

You Are Your Mother's Daughter.... A Reflection on Father's Day.

Hello everyone! Melissa Keir here to share with you some musings on family and life growing up in a small Ohio town. My mother passed away quite unexpectedly about fifteen years ago. She'd been a fighter all her life...battling cancer and other health scares. Of course I identified with her, but I felt that distanced me from my dad. I reflected on my relationship with him and wrote this essay to him which I shared on his big birthday among his closest friends. With Father's Day this month, it seemed appropriate that I share it again with all of you! Also- please share some of your own favorite memories with your fathers. <3

You Are Your Mother’s Daughter

“You’re your mother’s daughter” were words my dad wrote to me in response to an essay I wrote about food and the generational quality of it.  His words were meant as a compliment pointing out how much I am like my mother.  It made me happy to think of being so much like her but it also hurt.  “The pen is mightier than the sword” was never truer.  What we say in writing can wound and at two am I was worried that in some way, my essay had hurt my father with those words.  However these four words sent me on a journey down memory lane during the wee darkness of the morning…because if I am my mother’s daughter, I am also my father’s daughter.

Hard working is my strongest memory of my father.  Not only was his job incredibly physical, as a foreman at the local steel plant, but it was a mentally demanding job.  He worked the swing shift which meant that he would often work strange hours and sleep strange hours.  “Don’t wake your father” were words to live by! His schedule could and often did change daily.  To drive your body to that point takes not only physical but mental acuity.  But more than the hard work he did on the job, my father worked around the house and at many of my other family members’ homes too, fixing roofs, building decks, or helping to paint the house!  At no time did I hear my father complain about the work or refuse to help.  Maybe that is a part of the code he was raised by but he set a powerful standard that I have always attempted to reach. 

Personal responsibility was also an important part of my dad.  I remember when I was a teenager with a new car.  He told me that in order to be able to drive that car, I needed to know how to take care of it.  Two days I labored trying to figure out how to open the hood and check the oil.  At any time, I could have asked for help but I wanted to prove that I was able to do this.  I wanted to earn his respect.  His modeling of personal responsibility taught me to take my knocks for the things that I did wrong.  How absolutely frightening were the words “Wait till your father gets home!”  My mom could utter those in a whisper and we would sit with fear because we knew we had done something bad…something that we may face a consequence for but face it we would, you could count on that!  Today, so many parents let their children off easy for fear of harming their child’s self esteem but I am glad that my father taught me to take the good with the bad and own up for what I did.  No point in running from consequences, God or Karma has a way of catching you and making you face the music and no excuse will change that fact.

While hard work and personal responsibility were vital to my father, emotions were a tough one.  He grew up in a time when men didn’t show their emotions. Yet God felt the need to saddle this man with five daughters (yes, I did say five).  The emotional roller coasters he dealt with were staggering.  Honestly, that man must have earned sainthood as we went through teenage hormones!  There are photos of him holding each new baby with a look of awe on his face.  And the laughter that could be heard as he chased us around the house as a snarling monster was music for angel’s ears!   One story that he likes to share of my childhood is the burning desire I had for a puppy.  We had other pets, gerbils, hamsters and many cats growing up.   One day one of these kittens had climbed into my dad’s wheel well of his car (only a kitten knows why they do this).  On this day, my father had to work and the car quickly became a killing machine.  Horrified about how to break this information to his young daughter, my father must have agonized over telling me.  (Having children of my own- I know how heartbreaking it is to share bad news with them.)  Knowing my dad, the worry about the emotional toll it would have on me, fearing that I was scarred for life, he shared it in the kindest most sympathetic way.  Only to get a response from me, “Okay, now we can get a puppy?”  I have seen this man marry off his daughters, hold his grandchildren in his arms, and bury his loved ones with out shedding a tear but his emotions were there on his face for all to witness.  A few quiet words or a small gesture from my father conveys a whole conversation of emotion.  Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino has nothing on my father!   

So back to those four simple words- “You’re your mother’s daughter.”  I am proud to say that I am also my father’s daughter.  We are all a product of the millions of people and connections that we make during our lifetimes.  But our parents become the heroes of childhood, the dreams of what success means, and the sculptors of our personality.  During a time of crisis at the steel plant, one of my father’s employees told me that “my father was the best manager and he wouldn’t do anything to harm him if he had to cross the picket line.”  What respect!  So I hope to be my father’s daughter, with a strong work ethic, personal responsibility and the compassion to do what is right.  Thank you Dad!

Happy Father's Day to Dad's, Grandpa's, Uncle's, 

and Father figures everywhere! 

Be sure to leave your favorite Father's Day memory! 

Melissa Keir- Sexy Between the Covers @http://www.melissakeir.com 

Nail-Biting Tension

You know what’s it like. You’re reading a book on the edge of your seat. No bathroom break, no sir and you hope you don’t have to call for a catheter. Whatever happens, people better get ready to take care of it, because no way are you leaving this story. The tension in your shoulders is so tight, you can feel your muscles throb. Yet you turn the pages. Oh, my word, what will happen? How can the hero escape? How can he stay alive? Tension like that, my friends, is what you want to read. And it is, most assuredly, what you want to write. But how?

For me, it’s all in knowing how to crank it up. Here is a list to help:

The law of three-I find this very useful when writing suspense. To me, it means two separate things.

First, when writing a suspense or thriller (or any fiction, really) raise the stakes three times. You take a bad situation and make it worse. Then, just when you think how much worse could it be, kick it up one more notch. But it can’t happen all at the same time. That’s where pacing comes into play (stay tuned). For example (from Coming to Climax, releasing September 5^th): Margaret is going back to Climax for the first time in twenty-plus years to resolve her argument with her niece. She doesn’t know how she’ll ever face Blue, who married her sister on the rebound all those years ago. Margaret worries and frets, even orders three little bottles of Scotch on the plane. Can she pull it off and save face (the stakes)? Their meeting will be tense. But what if…you then find out Blue’s adopted daughter is really Margaret’s child? Will Blue forgive her and will she alienate Caroline forever? The stakes are raised again. But what if…the crimes in the town have something to do with those she loves and may lead to her death, or worse, Blue and Carolina getting killed? The stakes are raised again. Now you’re ready to feed in the tension by hitting the hot buttons, her stakes. Each time, the tension escalates.

Now thanks to Margie Lawson, think of the repetition of three items. By repeating words or phrases in a work, it brings emphasis or punch to the segment. That will be demonstrated at the end of this article.

Pacing and sentence structure – Don’t use long flowery sentences when in the middle of a tense scene. Think in shorthand and see the scene through the eyes of the person who has the POV. You’re seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting in snippets of sensation. Actions are choppy and hurried.

Reappearing images, phrases and sentences - One technique that pulls your book together and gives you a gotcha moment is to introduce something early in the text and then repeat it later with a twist. This could be a scene in a calm location, such as a thinking place or the security of one’s home. Later the same scene is colored with the ominous presence of the villain who seeks to kill the hero. Like Chef Emeril says, “kick it up a notch.” Similarly you can use a phrase or object that was used in an early violent or tense-filled scene and reintroduce it much later in another such scene, but this time involving a main character or the hero himself. For instance, in Nick of Time, the sequel to Coming to Climax, the book opens with two evil characters trapping a woman in a net they set up to capture her deep in the forest. One of the characters says. “Easier than trapping the Easter bunny.” Much later in the book, a prominent secondary character is trying to get away, and is also caught in a net. The same evil character says. ““Easy trapping, but you ain’t no Easter Bunny.” See? Gotcha’!

Atmosphere and Setting-I talked about this earlier when I explained about the calm scene becoming the violent one later. That’s setting. Use everything, the weather, the lighting, the location. For instance, my really threatening scenes in the Climax books normally take place in the deep forest with low lighting and obstacles to running, in abandoned buildings, even around a graveyard. Take time to describe the scenery. Paint a word picture so the reader can feel the dark mood and the somber tone.

Now, see if you can spot some of my techniques in this snippet (now unedited) from Nick of Time, coming in January 2012:

The guy vaulted at him, grabbing his shirt. Luke jerked loose, the fabric ripping. He lunged for the door. The man’s hands, talons, grabbed his shirt. Exerting unearthed power, Luke wrenched free and ran.

Ran from the trailer, primed for evasion. Ran down the path, terrified of capture. Ran like the hunted, straining to survive.

He darted into the woods, his breath coming in ragged gulps, his mind racing like an over-wound toy. The shadowed forest of a slowly setting sun dotted his view with dark patches of hopelessness. Run for escape. Run to the dark. The man won’t see me there.

Hiding behind a dense thatch of trees, he heard nothing. Maybe I lost him. He stayed silent, trying to calm his heaving chest. Maybe he left. His heart whammed against his ribcage, pounding anger at his foolishness. Where did he come from? His mind slapped him, laughing at his ignorance. He should have known.

I hope my insights will help someone on her quest to writing success. And for the reader, now you understand a bit about what goes into that novel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bobbye Terry writes mystery/suspense, romance, fantasies and dystopian fiction. The Marriage Murders, the sequel to Buried in Briny Bay, is slated for release on July 4^th. Bobbye and Linda Campbell, writing as Terry Campbell, also have a new cozy mystery short story collection, Slam Sisters of Serendipity. Kenada, a “Ladies of the Chronicles” novelette in the Cash Chronicles series releases in just a few weeks.  For more about Bobbye, visit her at www.BobbyeTerry-MysteryHappens.com, http://www.daryncross.com/  and www.BobbyeTerryRomance.com.