My Next Big Thing

Hello all! The fantabulous Cari Kamm asked me to share all the details about my next big thing in this exciting pay-it-forward author event, and of course I jumped at the chance to dish about my upcoming release, Unmasking Maya, scheduled to release on December 15th.

I'm so stoked to read Cari's upcoming release, For Internal Use Only. And I absolutely love her cover! Check it out:

My cover isn't ready yet, but I'm ready to reveal a few tidbits about Unmasking Maya here. And away we go!

Where did the idea come from for the book?

From the misconception that Silicon Valley would be a great place to meet men! There’s a funny little phrase people say in the San Francisco Bay Area about the uneven ratio between men and women in Silicon Valley. “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” It’s a generalization, of course, but a lot of these tech guys are odd in the sense that they’re super left-brained and insanely intelligent. Thus it can be hard for them to relate to more “normal” people. I thought this kind of guy would make an um… interesting love interest. And that’s what sparked the story.

What genre does your book fall under?

Chick Lit/Romance

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I think Michelle Williams would be perfect to play the part of Maya Kirkwood. She’s even got a similar hairdo!

Oh, Jesse Metcalfe could so totally pull off the role of Derek Whitley. Course we’d have to nerd him up a bit first.

It would be fabulous to see Zhang Ziyi (of Crouching Tiger and Memoirs of a Geisha fame) take on the role as quirky IT girl, Lin.

And sassy Sofia Vergara would be superb as Maya’s stylish agent.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Fallen fashionista meets cold, unfeeling tech whiz in this quirky, fish-out-of-water love story that incorporates humor alongside emotional trauma with lots of secrets to be revealed.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m self-publishing this one. Wish me luck!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Actually I wrote this one in about three months, which is a record for me. I blazed through the story, working on it at least eight hours a day. Well… probably more like twelve hours. I should point out that it’s only about 50,000 words long – the size of a category romance.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Parts of it are similar to Swept Off Her Stilettos by Fiona Harper, I think, because it’s a romantic story told in the first person. But it’s definitely more chick-litty than it is straight-up romance. I’ve had people compare my previous work to Sophie Kinsella’s and while mine aren’t nearly as humorous, I can kind of see the similarity.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve been living in the San Francisco Bay Area for about a year now (about six months from when I started writing this book) and I wanted to write a story set in the Bay Area that was very ingrained in the setting. It really is a fabulous place to live.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Hm. I think the fact that Maya and Derek both have some pretty major secrets might spark a bit of curiosity…

And now I would like to present the amazing author, Aretha C. Smith!

Aretha will be following up her beautiful romance novel, Hearts of Time, with The Enchanted Fate Series - four interracial romances, scheduled to release early in 2013 under the name of Ava Jared. Check out the cover for Hearts of Time. Isn't it to die for?

Be on a lookout for  book one, Karma's Kiss, which is scheduled for release in January, and book two, His for Keeps, which will be hitting the virtual shelves in late January. And in the meantime, check out the fabulous covers:

The Outline: Organized Intentions

I have a real treat in store for you today!  Aretha C. Smith will be guest hosting today.  Her novel, Hearts of Time, is due to be published on April 17th by Rebel Ink Press and she's written a great article about outlining that's made me rethink the whole pantser thing... 

The power that comes with writing—especially writing fiction—is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about the craft itself. Creating characters and the worlds they exist in, and then infusing their lives with drama and conflict is something I derive great pleasure from. Years ago, when writing was merely something I did in my free time, even though I knew it was something I was meant to do, I didn’t take it seriously. I would sit down to write a story and simply write off the top of my head, without the slightest thought of using an outline. In hindsight, I am convinced this is the reason I kept spinning my wheels, starting stories and quickly losing interest in them. Although I had read plenty of reference books on writing fiction and the importance of writing from an outline, I was either too lazy or too stubborn to heed the advice. I thought writing outlines took up too much time and I wanted to get avoid wasting time and just get down to the story. Little did I know the disservice I was doing myself as a fledgling writer. But after spinning my wheels due to too many occurrences of writer’s block, the cold, hard reality that using an outline was a necessary element of writing fiction, finally hit me.

With that lessoned learned, when I sat down to write my upcoming release, Hearts of Time a few years ago, the first thing I did was to create an outline. I am aware that we are all different individuals and that some writers may have the ability to eschew using an outline and still be able to write incredibly well-thought out stories with strong plots that sizzle up the bestsellers lists. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. And as I set about getting my outline mapped out, I realized that it was not nearly as tedious a process as I’d imagined. I may or may not be the exception to the rule, but the outline I'd long spurned, proved to be the biggest catalyst for helping me get down to the business of writing my stories. Suddenly the process of story writing seemed far less intimidating. There was something about mapping out the plotlines in advance that proved almost more powerful than the process of creating the story itself. Knowing exactly where I planned to go with the story gave me a far better handle on the integrity of the characters themselves. The outline had suddenly become the most powerful tool I had as a writer. Knowing what would happen in chapter twelve when I hadn't even yet finished writing chapter three yet, was a major confidence booster.

Mind you, not to be misunderstood. As much as I sing the praises of outlines, they’re not necessarily always the “be all to end all”. Many times a character takes over a story, rendering portions of the outline useless. This leaves the earth shattering incident I’d planned for chapter twelve no longer feasible; the character now has other plans in mind, or has developed throughout the past nine chapters in such a way that the action I'd gleefully planned to have them do is now out of character. And let me just say that as a writer, I love when that happens. Even though it upsets the flow of my outline, the unplanned growth of a character is one of those intuitive aspects of writing fiction that leaves me clapping my hands in delight at having the privilege to be a part of such a process.

Still, the difference between having an outline and not having an outline is as different as night and day. I dreadfully recall those days when I wrote on the fly, some sort of writing Houdini, thinking I could perform the incredible feat of writing a story that flowed seamlessly from my mind to my fingers, thus spilling onto the keyboard and onto my computer screen as part of some miraculous act of writing magic. Quite honestly it was my overgrown ego more than anything that let me think this way. I’ve been greatly humbled since then, and my storytelling skills have become better for it.

The value of outlines cannot be overlooked; using them has changed my whole outlook as a writer. I actually finish stories now. Gone is the backlog of partially written stories languishing in limbo tucked hidden away in a forgotten computer file somewhere. And those that do languish do so out of deliberation; those stories are outlined and will soon be revisited. I'm a more organized writer now. I think I’d even go so far as to say writer's block has all but become a thing of the past since outlines became part of my writing reality.

Keep an eye out for my upcoming April 17th release, Hearts of Time, published by Rebel Ink Press!