The Blaze Babes are having a Scavenger Hunt!!!

Where? Here on the blog

When? From the 14th of the month till the 14th of the month

How? All you need to do is watch the blog and read each post during the month. Included somewhere in 5 posts will be a Scavenger Hint When you put all the hints together, they’ll give you a message or ask you a riddle.

Email BlazeAuthors@gmail.com with all five hints and what the message or answer to the riddle is (don’t post it anywhere here on the blog or you’ll be dq’d). All the correct messages will go in a drawing for a fab prize!

Sound like fun? Then let the hunt begin… (H)

Wishing you a day filled with Blazing Hot Romance!!

I think I know why people read romances. I figured that out at thirteen when I found a Harlequin Presents left behind at the family cottage. But why write romance when there are so many “loftier” forms of literature?

Way back when I first decided to write a novel, I was thrilled to join a small, apparently dedicated group of writers who met once a week in a community building. They were “fiction writers” and I joined with bright-eyed enthusiasm and barrels of energy, eager to learn and absorb all they were willing to share.

The group consisted of a retired English teacher, an extremely talented writer married to a musician who was convinced he was the only creative in the family and she didn’t deserve the time to study craft or to write. There was a family man who wanted to write adventure. Another member sold non-fiction articles and had a fabulous idea for a women’s fiction novel. We had a woman married to a professor (for some reason she thought his position was relevant in terms of her ‘standing’ in the group) She was convinced that literary fiction was the only thing worth writing.

I found this group in October of that year…and had already begun my first romance novel. By January, I’d completed a partial and had queried Harlequin to see if they’d be interested. I never considered not querying. The whole thing of you write, you submit, you write, you submit just made sense.

Apparently I was alone in that theory. As time moved along, I realized not a one of them had ever submitted their work (aside from the article writer that is).

The retired teacher was actually afraid of what her family would think. This was a woman well into her middle years who’d raised a family, had a successful career and a genuine love of the written word.

By the next fall, I’d had my first rejection from Harlequin, (the first of many!) had found the local chapter of RWA, and was working on a new story. I wrote, I submitted, I wrote . . .

The chance to do a reading from our works in progress came to the group. I was asked not to read. Why? Because I wrote romance, and you know, they didn’t want the writing group’s rep to be tarnished. Huh.

I went to the reading: heard a member read a poem by Robbie Burns instead of his own work. Other people in the group finally admitted they hadn’t actually been writing and had nothing to read.

And these people were encouraging me to stop writing romance. Huh.

I write romance because I believe in romance. I believe love is what makes us get up in the morning. It is a driving force in our lives. Love makes us connect with others, makes us have pets, makes our lives glorious and miserable and messy and beautiful.

Love makes life . . . life

. . . and I wouldn’t trade my romance writing for anything else.

And if I feel a twinge of validation for my efforts and in my career I hope you’ll forgive me. There’s a five year old in most of us who gets a one-shot at blowing raspberries and when my first Harlequin Blaze hits the stands in a few weeks, imagine me, mouth pursed, blowing the biggest juiciest raspberry EVAH! (K)

One thing that you can always count on with a Blaze hero is that he’ll be hot and sexy! The question this month is, is there a type of hero you find sexier than others? The dark haired hotties or those dashing blonds? Redheads with their fiery passion? Cast your vote and share what your favorite sexy hero looks like in the comments section. (H)

Wishing All of You a Happy Holiday from All of Us here at the Blaze Authors Blog!!

According to that most authoritative of research sources, Wikipedia, October 25 has several interesting events associated with this date:

1415: The feast date of Sts. Crispin and Crispinian, featured in Henry V as well as the date of the Battle of Agincourt. This is the “Band of Brothers” speech by Henry rallying the men. I use it in Her Last Line of Defense as the hero Luc talks about the bonds formed with his fellow soldiers under the harsh conditions of war. In a weird footnote, these saints are the patron saints of leather workers and leather wearers—i.e. bikers. Glad to know somebody’s looking out for them considering all the bad traffic on the road.

1616: For our Aussie friends, Dutch sea captain Dirk Hartog makes landfall on, yes, Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australia coast.

1760: For our British friends, George III becomes King of England. For our American friends, George III eventually becomes Mad King George, whose “eccentric” reign encourages us to wave England a fond farewell.

1813: For our Canadian friends and editors (who are friends as well), the Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans at the Battle of Chateauguay. My father’s family are old New Englanders, and some of the children were kidnapped into the Mohawk tribe in the 1600’s. When their original family found them many years later, several of them refused to come back, and had been adopted into the tribe. Even now, many Mohawks have my same last name.

1861: Again for Canada, the Toronto Stock Exchange opened. Is Harlequin traded on this exchange at all? If so, can I buy some stock? Or is that insider trading? From what I hear, Harlequin is doing very well.

1938: For Dubuque, Iowa (because you’re not a Dubuquer if you don’t play euchre), Archbishop Francis J.L. Beckman calls swing music “a degenerated musical system… turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people”, warning that it leads down a “primrose path to hell”. Although Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller don’t seem like demonic minions to me, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

1944: For our Filipino friends, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle in history. Also for my husband, the biggest World War II buff in history.

For this kind of information, Wikipedia can be fun and a great brainstorming tool. I looked up my birthday, my family’s birthdays and other various dates. Take a look at what you can find out about your favorite dates. If you find anything interesting, let us know!

Due to the fact I have offspring that are much more athletically talented than I am (a low bar, to be sure), I have been to several junior high cross-country running meets this fall. Watching cross-country is not what you’d call a fantastic spectator sport because the kids all take off running at the starting line, run across the field, and usually disappear into the woods. If you are fast enough, you can sprint diagonally across the field behind them to catch them at a corner, but after that they are out of sight.

Then you chew the fat with the other parents, watch your wristwatch and eventually the first few speed demons erupt from the woods and tear down the chute to the finish line while everyone cheers mightily for their excellence as the kids wipe off dead bugs and mud from their skin. After one race, mine looked like the grill of our car after a long road trip.

The other kids dribble in and get cheered, but there are always a few toward the end who struggle. One race had them running two laps past the spectators, and the winners passed the last girl, going twice as fast.

I am not the sentimental type when it comes to sports. My heart doesn’t beat faster when I hear “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” and I have never painted my face Illini blue-and-orange. And normally I hate the “you’re all winners just for showing up” attitude because I was an extraordinarily competitive girl when I played sports as a kid and thought it stunk if you didn’t win. (actually I still do).

But that one girl last Saturday made me choke up and glad I had sunglasses to hide my watery eyes. She absolutely had to know she was dead last, and after her first lap, I expected her to drop out and I wouldn’t see her again.

But here she came, putting one foot in front of the other. It had taken so long that the spectators had drifted onto the course (one goofball even had his bike in her way) and the coaches had to roust everyone off. And that girl got a huge cheer as she staggered up the hill to the finish.

I thought of Winston Churchill’s quote, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in.” And I promised myself that even if I found myself plodding along dead last in whatever I had to do, that I would be as brave as that girl and just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Maybe we all can be winners just for keeping going. My September Blaze Her Last Line of Defense deals heavily with bravery and endurance under difficult conditions. Post what you think and you’ll be entered to win a copy of my Green Beret-themed romance.

It’s Autumn, and things should start cooling off soon. Which means, of course, we should all be reading more Blazes to heat them right back up. Right?!?

The question is, what’s the best autumn reading treat to go along with those yummy Blazes?

I’m fine tuning my March release, POSSESSING MORGAN. A fresh set of revisions have just come in, and while I worked on them the other day, I realized that what we were doing was putting the finishing touches on my heroine, Morgan Swann. She’s being buffed and polished into the best Blaze heroine I can create.

I’m not new to writing. I’ve published fairly steadily with a publishing house in NYC and teach writing classes at a couple of nearby university campuses in their continuing ed program.

But writing for Blaze has been eye-opening. This revision means
I’m going deeper into the details. The word-by-word work that takes a good story with decent writing into as shiny a piece as I can make it.

UHHHHH, so is this the point to change motivations? My actual character? Tweaking is one thing…but a change to what makes her tick?

I thought so. At least in the heat of the moment I did. I was rocking my way through the first love scene, responding to some of the revisions when suddenly, I “saw” the light and thought I’d change Morgan’s whole attitude toward the event. Clever me.

But this is my very first Blaze and I’m working with one of the best editors in the business with a reputation for whipping stories into shape. So, off goes an email with a question.

I’m so sure of myself and so high on creativity, my confidence soars and I go back up a few pages and layer in the new ‘tude. I’m happy, I’m laughing as I work, loving the whole thing. ACK, not so fast, Edwards. I get the reply, “I can see this after a few days, but not right off.”

Huh, I nod. Later, yes. I see it now. Clear as day…a heroine needs change, needs to grow and learn. I mean, heck if they knew everything right up front, there wouldn’t be much emotional connection for readers. Who cheers for perfect people? We all like to see the underdog win, right?

Back up to the start of the scene I go…this time, though, I’ve got a combination scene of the original heroine, and my new improved heroine which is too soon. I comb through with a meticulous eye. Deleting, rewriting, adding emotion, removing the wrong emotions, the too-soon thoughts.

Then I go eat lunch. I’m feeling pretty good while I’m eating that cheese sandwich and saying: “Go pee! Good boy!” to my new pup. After he gets some loving for peeing like a big boy does, I check email. (&)

Then I open my word processing program and realize, hm, I didn’t actually close it before I went for lunch. My file opens, but ACK! It’s the original file I opened this morning. Not one change had been saved. :-O

Now, before I’m scolded for not backing up, I’ll say the program’s set for back up every 10 minutes. At worst, that’s all I should have lost. But no! It’s all gone. I let my cursor hover over the file name and yes, there it is…last change was at 8:30 a.m.

I’ve written on computers for 20 years now, 6 of those years I worked in a custom computer shop. So, I know about back ups, I email my work to gmail as back up…I transfer files to my laptop. I do lots of things to protect myself. But still, I lost an entire day’s revisions.

I send Brenda a quick note and conclude that somehow, someway, the universe was telling me to get a good night’s sleep and come at this whole thing again, refreshed, in the morning. The universe was right! Next morning, I went straight back into the original scene and I could see what Brenda meant, as clearly as if the other attitude never occurred to me.

(Odd, but my horoscope that day said puzzle pieces would fall into place…and did you all know Mercury’s retrograde?)

Because of this glitch (the likes of which I’ve NEVER seen before) I came at the scene from Brenda’s perspective and WOW, it works. And yes, Morgan’s new attitude will work well later in the book.

Thing is, I made a huge mistake later that day, by telling my adult daughter about this piece of weirdness. What did I get? Sympathy you say? NOPE, not from this one. I get a lecture about backing up, external hard drives and moving to a Mac. Did I need this? After the day I’d had? Not on your life. What is it about lectures from your children that put your teeth on edge?