It's Magic

City Park, New Orleans, LA

I think it's completely normal for people to close a book, mourn the loss of the character in their daily life and think about what they might be doing outside the confines of the story. I believe it is expected to dream past the end of the story a writer creates, to imagine more, to desire more. I think that is the mark of writing well done. It is what I strive for. I want you lost inside the world I created, wandering the streets and homes, meeting the people, sitting at the table, yourself a guest at the party. I want you to smell the richly cooked meals, hear the tinkle of ice in glasses, fight the urge to interject in a conversation... I want to take you with me, introduce you to the characters, whisper their secrets in your ear and invest you in their cause as I show you the places I have been.

It is a balm to my soul when, after finishing something I have written, I hear the call for "More!" I am humbled when I have readers who tell me they lost themselves in the writing, that they miss the wit, the locations, the sunlight through the trees. I smile when they ask what she's wearing today. It tells me I created something worthy of their desire, of their precious investment of time. Inevitably, there will be the question, "How do you come up with this stuff?"

I have thought long and hard on how to reply, as if there is some urbane, "right" way to explain such an intricate and personal process. Really, it has been different for each. Each tale starts from a tiny seed, very small thoughts around a certain subject, or a dress, or a picture and once watered by my imagination, grows into a story that buds with the first draft and then, through editing, blossoms into a full fledged novel. Mostly...

With Exposed, my first endeavor, I must admit I was not that planned or focused. I had finished reading a certain series of books and I have to confess: I was pissed off. The writing was poor, pedantic and condescending. There was little to no research done on the subject matter and the characters were lack-luster, shallow and fickle. It was one of the few times I forced myself to keep reading, hoping that somewhere I would click in, feel less duped, find something of substance. Nope. Just... Nope. I read like a woman pursued, wanting only to turn the page so I could get the damned thing over with. I have to say I was red-hot by the time I was done, so I snapped the cover of my Kindle closed and tossed it on my nightstand. This of course alerted the Man to my sour mood. He bravely asked what was wrong and I told him, adding, "I can write better (stories) than that!" So, as the Man will do, in his matter-of-fact Man-ish way, he shrugged and said, "Then do it."

At first I balked, but then I remembered the feeling of betrayal, the lament of time wasted and the regret of having been taken for a fruitless ride and I decided I would at least begin. The next morning found me pounding away on my computer keyboard, a sideways kiss to the Man as he left for work, and Chapter One was born. If you have read Exposed, you know that after I allowed the Man to read it I was engaged for the rest of the night. In the morning he encouraged me to continue my writing, to flesh out the story, to just keep going. So I did. I kept going.

I had very little direction with my first book. I didn't start with an outline and I had no idea how it would end, but I knew one thing: I wanted to use the reader's time wisely, give them something to take away and at the same time, make them never want to leave. I didn't want anyone rushing through my pages because they just wanted it to be over. As I wrote, I became friends with Presley DuBois, my main character, and I listened to her. I wrote her angst, her fears, her selfishness, her reflections and her joys. I let her lead me down paths I hadn't explored and I let her tell me when it was okay to finish. There are moments in the book that I literally sat back from my keyboard and look slack-jawed at the screen. There are things I never saw coming and things that broke my heart. I listened to her voice in my head that had been quiet right up until she wasn't. When I finished the last line of Exposed I too was saddened by the loss of some deeply interesting and enjoyable people. They became as real to me as my family members and I struggled to let them go. My only saving grace was that I had another tale brewing in my head that was begging to get out, so I moved on.

As I wrote this first novel, however, I learned two things about myself that I didn't know: I refuse write a formulaic romance novel,  and I cannot ever stop writing. It is a desperate, undeniable part of me now. I have learned to recognize the need for words as readily as I recognize my need for food and water. When I am not writing, I am thinking of writing. When I am writing, I am thinking of more writing. When I am traveling, I am thinking of how to describe what I see; from airports, to taxi-cabs, to park benches and street gutters, I want to describe every detail. I cannot stop my mind from the desire to get it all in, tell it all accurately, write it all down!

Everyone's process is different and I am finding that each book I start demands something different from my routine. I hope that if you are reading this today you will come away with an understanding of how valuable I know your time is. I hope I never waste it or leave you wanting anything but more!

It's a process...

I am a chaotic thinker. That translates heavily into everything I do, from writing to housework to creating invitations to watching a show to accounting. Yeah... It doesn't fly well with the accounting thing, but that would be why I steer clear of most of those types of duties.

If you could plug a set of headphones into the base of my skull and hear all of the things that my brain is churning over you would yank them from your ears and drop them at your feet. It's loud in here, horrifying and messy like my teenager's rooms. Thoughts jump around, shout for attention at all the wrong times and rabbit trail into oblivion. Voices talk over each other, push aside mundane tasks and evoke the weird and unresolved. They leave little bits of themselves strung about, pieces of stories that may or may not ever see the back-light of my computer screen, and they often lead nowhere. Like the wasteland of a hoarder's collection, I cannot seem to throw them away, only leave them there to languish and mutter until I find them a home.

My chaotic thinking often results in chaotic doing. I can start out determined to get the kitchen cleaned and end up researching how it is blue birds have evolved such iridescent coloring. Having a conversation when I am in chaotic mode has to be terribly frustrating for my friends and loved ones, although for me it is merely thinking out loud. It's odd and frustrating and funny and exhilarating, all at the same time.

Before you step into a diagnostic role, I do not have ADD or ADHD or any combination thereof. I can concentrate on one thing and I can, to a degree, operate in polite society without awkward silence or inappropriate outburst. It is only in my mind that I am constantly tearing jagged holes in the universe and asking the very writerly question, "What if..."

I don't view my chaotic mind as an affliction, something to be hid away or secreted from view. Rather, I embrace it, revere it like one watching seedlings push through soil. In that moment, when all of my thoughts seem like a jumbled mess of shouty ideas and tangled string, I am watching for the "a-ha!" that transforms the "What if" into something unique, something interesting, something to explore. Like seedlings, which to my eye look very much the same when they push through that dark loamy earth, each will develop into something recognizable, unique, genuine. At that point we decide whether to weed it out of the dirt and pluck it away, or water it and let it grow.

What are you watering today? Hmmmm?

Photo Credit Creative Commons

...And she wears stilettos

I have a muse. Like many creative-types, I owe much inspiration to this creature of myth and mystery but she is not what you would call conventional. She is not clad in a gauzy toga, hair coiffed in a gold circlet up-do, but a more modern version. Someone I can relate to.

She is a chain-smoking, booze swilling, long-legged red-head, dressed in a tight black pencil skirt, a french-cuffed fitted white blouse, and bright red stilettos. She often looks as though she just wandered in from a night on the town, hair askew and wind-blown, a run in her stocking, spent and ready for a greasy breakfast to ward off the impending hangover. She has no walk of shame, but more a stride of pride, an "ask me if you dare" attitude. If you only knew where she'd been... Never mind, you couldn't handle it.

She is impatient, tsks and rolls her eyes, slams doors and storms out when she is ignored. My genius is an entertainer with a foul mouth, a hearty laugh and a raw sense of humor. She is not concerned with decorum or silly, antiquated social norms and has been kicked out of more places than you and I have ever attempted to enter. She is revered by men who want her and women who want to be her. She is that woman that can say the harshest things right to your face and still, you fight to stay in her orbit. Her criticisms do not deter you, but draw you in. She attracts you because she sees your flaws for what they are: the dark, sticky humanness that bubbles like gooey black tar in all of us. Her recognition of this nastiness is not a condemnation, not a judgement, only a reminder that we all have our own ugly bag of crap. She will unabashedly call you on it should you start to feel your bag isn't as bad as the next guy's. Don't even try it, you will come away feeling infinitely small.

My genius, my muse, my daemon is often sitting in the corner, one shoe dangling from a brightly painted toe, swirling her drink, making the ice tinkle invitingly in her glass as she dictates my next sentence, my next paragraph, my next chapter. She tells the tales she weaves in a smoky alto, chuckling to herself when I hesitate to write what she has uttered, for fear it is too harsh, too sultry, too too. She urges me to write it anyway, push the boundaries, tell the real story. And when I fail, when I hesitate and pull up out of the dangerous dive she has us in, she slaps me on the back as she leaves. "I'll come back later, when you're ready to tell the truth," and I hear her shoes click off down the hallway and out the door.

I have a muse and she wears stilettos.

About that...

There are things I cherish about writing. There are things I detest. Then again, that is life, isn't it? A comparison of what we love, what fuels us, what sends us out into the wide abyss of the world with another hope, another try, another idea and the opposing side of our fears, our dislikes, our prideful, hateful, shunning natures warring within the same body, the same mind, the same soul.

I find myself always thinking about this thing I do, this thing I am, actually. I can never seem to let it rest, to let it fade quietly into the backdrop of my task list. It is always there, lurking, desiring to be noticed, pounding at my brain, itching at the tips of my fingers for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours at the keyboard.

The mind of a writer is a tortured, tangled basket of ideas, like balls of yarn come half undone. So many strands going this way and that, one story twisting into another, plots threaded throughout and swirling below what can be readily seen.

My job is to sit with that basket, to patiently follow the strands, while I untangle the stories woven for me out of the thin and misty atmosphere of my darkest thoughts. I would tell you it's tedious, but that would be a lie. I would tell you it's difficult, but that too isn't entirely true. I can only tell you that the mysterious things that slink out of my head and onto the page consume me the same way a basket of tangled string does; the task seems never-ending, yet oddly calming. When one ball is sorted and stacked neatly to the side, I am relieved yet there is always another waiting...

Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons

Exposed... Launched February 27th!

Available at Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords to name a few

I don't know if there is anything quite as exhilarating or as emotionally exhausting as the launch of a first book. The leap into the depths of this pool was a hesitant, wobbly, flailing mess if I am honest. I wanted to have someone see it, I wanted to be brave and just sling it out there, but I feared the rebuke, I loathed the perceived rejection, I hesitated to accept criticism...

Isn't that the juxtaposition of a new author? That overwhelming desire to tell a story and then the reluctance to have that part of the mind exposed for all to see? (Snort! What a time for a pun...) While I wanted to launch my novel out into the universe, I also wanted to hide it away, get one more friendly set of eyes on it, assure myself with one more platitude that it was "good," "well written," "a fun read."

In the end, what sent me into the open air of the internet was, of all things, a rejection letter. Yes... That's right. A rejection letter, a year after submission, made me brave enough to say, "What the hell have I got to lose?" To be fair, it was the nicest rejection I have received to date and it was from one of the most influential women in the industry I thought I was writing in. Here... Look for yourself:

Dear (Sterling),​Thank you very much for submitting your book Exposed to Ellora's Cave last year. I am terribly sorry it has taken so long for anyone to reply. 

First off, let me say that Exposed is an excellent story, well-written with interesting, three-dimensional characters, and a strong, emotional plot. Presley's journey from tightly controlled narcissist to emotionally connected and caring woman is a fascinating and unique one. 

It is not, I'm sorry to say, an Ellora's Cave book. Our books either have a strong romance story line, or in our Exotica line, focus on a more sexual story line. Presley's story doesn't fit into either one of those categories, and I suspect our readers wouldn't quite know what to do with it. I'm going to have to pass. 

I wish you all the best with your writing and publishing endeavors. I do hope you'll send us something else in the future. I'd like to read more of your writing.

Thanks again,
Elisabeth R. NelsonManaging EditorEllora's Cave Publishing Inc.

While I might have reacted in defeat, my instant response was to be enlightened and encouraged. I don't fit into a traditional type of writing format. It explains the reasons why I have struggled to find a spot in the traditional publisher's game, but it doesn't mean that I am a bad writer! Pretty awesome indeed.

I have thought long and hard about what this means, and I am still working through that... But in the meantime, I have a book out there in the wide, wonderful world and that counts for something!

Feel free to download a copy from your preferred vendor below:

Smashwords
Amazon
Apple
Barnes and Noble

Thank you for your time... I value it above all other things you give.
Sterling