Lucynda Storey-Erotic Romance Writer

Every once in a while I look at something and realize, gosh, I haven’t done that in a while.  A while being a month, a quarter, sometimes even a year.

I spend a lot of time these days reading and trying to help newer author’s hone their talents.  Some of them are really taking off.  There is a part of me that is jealous, but then, I’m alternately prouder of their accomplishments because I know, I KNOW, I played a small part in their success.

The great thing, though, is they play a part in mine.  I can’t tell you how many times another author has lifted me when my spirits were at the bottom.  How many times I’ve asked for someone to give me an impression of what they’ve just read and let me know where it needs work.  All those times, my sisters and brothers in writing have helped me be better.

In a life that seems far too busy, I’m not too busy to say thank you, especially to the ladies of LAW.

I didn’t realize it, but I enjoy timed writing.

Last night, I attended a workshop in which that was all we did.  Various and assundry pieces of timed writing.  I liked it.  A lot.

Why?  It provided a jump start to my creativity.  It is non-judgmental.  I knew I wouldn’t be sitting in my seat for two hours trying to “come up with” something.  It had an end.

With timed writing, your body knows, it knows that there must be a beginning, a middle and most definitely an end.  The end is often a pithy sentence of clarity we didn’t even know we had within us.

Timed writing, like Julia Cameron’s morning pages, helps us clear our thoughts, dump the junk that may actually get in the way of our producing something better.  When we sit down to do the work, we can actually do the work.

The simplest plot is to know that there is a problem, to take an action, and then find a resolution.  Timed writing can allow us to go through these steps in a much more natural process.

Try it.  Set a timer for four minutes.  When it goes off, mentally tell yourself that now  you must wrap it up.  See what your mind creates.  Look for the arc, the beginning, middle and end.  Drain from your brain the worries and appointments and shopping lists and all the “to do’s” cluttering your mind. 

Now you’re really ready to create.

You Are Rum

You’re the life of the party, and a total flirt You are also pretty picky about what you drink Only the finest labels and best mixed cocktails will do Except if you’re dieting - then it’s Diet Coke and Bicardi all the way

What Alcoholic Drink Are You?

I just wanted to take a minute and remind all my readers to be aware of their own physical health.  While you may not have medical textbook knowledge, you do know your own body.  Know your family history.  One woman I know well, has a family history of breast cancer.  She’s been keeping a vigilant watch over her own body.  In December, she found out she had breast cancer.

The doctors feel it was caught very early, mainly because she was hyper aware.

If your family has a history of cancer, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and any number of other diseases and / or metabolic conditions, please, please, watch carefully for any signs or symptoms.  The life you save may very well be your own.

NecroSearch and Geoforensics International work on murder cases using remote sensing equipment for criminal and environmental data to help solve what often appears to be the unsolvable.  Clark Davenport, one of the founders of NecroSearch is a forensic geophysicist in the Denver, CO metro area who’s volunteer organization of highly trained specialists work together to find anomalies that often lead to the resolution of murder and missing persons cases.

According to Davenport, 90% of murder scenes occur outdoors.  Armed with this knowledge and the principal that you bring something to a crime scene as well as take something away NecroSearch investigators start looking for anomalies.   In what would seem a role reversal, these investigators spend a lot of their investigative time gathering information about a scene via computers, aerial photographs, and even the tax assessors office.  They begin by looking for patterns…patterns that should exist and disruptions to those patterns.  Often these patterns are revealed by photographs.

 Specialized film such as False Color Infrared and Thermal Infra Red reveal information about the state of the vegetation in an area (healthy plants look red on the False Color Infrared, hence its name) and heat anomalies.

Investigators take pictures of potential murder and / or clandestine grave areas in the morning and in the later evening, using shadows to indicate disturbances.  Once they have gathered a lot of the aerial information they can begin to make some educated guesses about where to look next.

And where does one look next?  Often the investigators check out nearby trees and find nests.  Birds are known to build their nests out of hairs and synthetic fibers.  Could there be trace evidence there?  Rodents and insects burrow into ground material that is easy to move such as loose dirt.  Often soft soil is indicative of a place to start searching.  There may be evidence in the burrows such as earrings and buttons that can be traced to victims.

Knowing the topography, and the botany of an area will tell investigators much.  Botanists can determine if a plant is new, or introduced into the area.  Soil mounds occur because when soil is displaced, air mixes with the dirt and expands the volume by nearly one third.  In addition, that which is being buried also creates a displacement.

Instruments used by farmers to determine irrigation needs also help solve these cases.  Loose soil retains more moisture than the area around it.  Better irrigated plants grow higher.

Ferrous in the ground automatically orients itself to magnetic north.  Each layer of soil orients itself at the time it is created and magnetic north moves.  Therefore, geophysicists look for specific orientations and can find soil disturbances because the magnetic orientation has been altered.

With twenty-two acres in the Highlands Ranch area of the southern Denver metro area, Davenport and his team perform experiments using pigs which are similar to humans in many ways.  They determine such things as if a wild animal will desecrate a grave of a person filled with drugs; what sort of tracks an animal might make dragging a body wrapped in various materials such as shower curtains and blankets.

The group has been called in to verify informant information regarding murders that are sometimes years old, and their expertise in locating soil disturbances has led to the discover of many clandestine graves all over the world.  One of their finds includes the buried body of a soldier from the army of Hannibal Barca, the Carthagian general.  Here aerial photographs literally laid out a map of a buried town in Italy.

NecroSearch is a not for profit organization that hosts over thirty employees with seventeen specialties ranging from investigation to botany to archeology and more.

It pays to have friends.

Christmas Eve day I got a notice from author Dawn Montgomery that my novel, The Captive’s Release was a CAPA nominee.  What incredible good news!  Last year, Blind Devotion was so honored.

The CAPA, the Cupid and Psyche Award honors excellence in several categories of romance and erotic romance.  Titles are nominated by reviewers at The Romance Studio for books reviewed during the period of November 23, 2006 and November 25, 2007.

The Captive’s Release was nominated for Best Fantasy Erotic Romance.  My good friend, Lena Austin, challenged me to write an erotic fantasy, and the end result was The Captive’s Release.

The story follows a strong willed princess, Finola, who runs from her father’s decree she marry a man not of her choice.  This is especially galling since the women in the kingdom have the right to marry whom they choose.  In the woods she meets her almost lover, Calder and they engage in some hot hanky-panky, the sort that manages to keep her precioius virginity intact.  Unknown to them, they have been watched by soldiers from the very man she is to marry, the king of a neighboring kingdom who is know for his unusual bedroom practices. 

Calder is hauled off to the dungeons and Finola is left to endure the long march to her betrothed.  As she journeys she hears tales of Calder’s activities including his lack of fidelity.  Finaola finds herself wondering if the masked man who has taken her captive is telling the truth. 

Known only to her by her own nickname of “Broadsword” she’s also curious about the mask covering a large portion of his face.   Lust builds in her for this stranger…or could it be something more altogether?  And what will she do if she is still forced to marry the King if her divided heart is somewhere else?  Only one man, Calder, or Broadsword can be responsible for her physical, emotoinal, and sexual release.  Who will it be?

Stay tuned to hear more about the CAPA results.  If you’d like to see a complete list of nominees, go to The Romance Studio.

It has recently occurred to me that a lot of people shoot themselves in the foot by shooting off their mouths.  In the age of the Internet where everything can be copied, pasted, and forwarded, it seems ill advised to be particularly nasty about a given subject without having taken appropriate, professional steps to resolve any question, error or other difficulty.

Courtesy is free.  Courtesy will make you a friend and champion far faster than snarky, nastiness will.  There’s a saying that you will catch more flies with honey than vinegar.  I’ve seen it be the case in the electronic world.

People who are nasty are avoided.  What does a little kindness and politeness really cost?  It doens’t mean being a doormat, it doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion; it means you state your concerns with tact and decorum.

Being strong isn’t about being a bully.  Getting ahead isn’t about pushing people out of your way.

I’d rather be honey.

I remember being a lot younger and listening to Rush Limbaugh talk about the Clinton White House years like the way they talked about the hostage crisis in the Middle East during the Carter years.

Authors have a different sort of captivity; our captivity to words.  No matter what, we have these stories going on in our heads…stories that won’t give us rest until we get those words onto the page.

In November, we make the captivity worse by engaging in a bit of extra curricular insanity called NaNoWriMo.  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month wherein authors and wanna be authors are challenged to push their limits…to write an awe inspiring 50,000 words.  No one at NaNo expects that their words are going to be ultra polished, perfect prose-not with that sort of output in 30 days or less.  And we do face it, we attempt this feat knowing we are going into the winter holiday season.  A lot of us lose an extra two or more days due to Thanksgiving.

But what NaNo really does is challenge us to reach beyond our comfort zone, to stretch when it is far more comfortable to do as we’ve been doing the past eleven months.

So, far, early on the 7th day of my NaNo captivity, I’ve topped 8,200 words on a brand new novel (totally, brand spanking new, not a word written previously on it).  41,800 to go. 

Can I do it?  I don’t know, but I’m hopeful.  I’ve got more on my plate than ever before, but I also feel more organized.  And hey, I’m already averaging more than 1,000 words a day. 

Lucynda

I spent the entire day yesterday at a conference sponsored by my local RWA chapter, the only reason I would stay with that organization since the parent organization has long abandoned me to vanity press.  We had an agent representative from Kristen Nelson Agency, Theresa Stevens from Red Sage Publishing, and authors Roxanne Rustand and CJ Lyons.

For writers, brushing shoulders and learning from other writers is essential for your continued growth as a story teller.  I learned something new from each one of these presenters.

Education of some form or another should be a frequent, common occurance for writers.  In chatting with CJ, I found out about her next WIP (work in progress) and it happened that I know someone in the field of specialty that she is going to use as the basis of her thriller.  She in turn had some excellent insight into how the world building of thrillers can help romance writers and how the characterization exhibited by most romance writers can help those who pen thrillers.  What a terrific exchange!

Writers must keep learning.  Not just about their craft, but about other subjects.  Little tidbits here and there are highly likely to lend an air of authenticity to a scene.  Craft books help provide knowledge on how story is put together, perhaps giving you a more solid foundation for “why” you do what you do.

Writers, Keep Learning!

Often I’ve been heard to say that I don’t believe in so-called “writer’s block.”  Mason  Cooley once said that “Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.”  I believe it is also true of “writer’s block”.

I probably sound rather harsh and judgmental when I say I don’t believe in this malady.  Maybe I am.  I happen to believe we are responsible for our own actions and that if we are not writing, it is not because we are blocked, it is because of some other reason, or perhaps even a poor excuse.

For the writer, the story must get out.  For the writer, writing is serious business.   When we choose to weed the garden, wash the car, or call Dear Aunt Bertha rather than write, we are using excuses to keep us from our task.

Can there be a lack of words to put on paper?  Perhaps.

Some things are easily remedied.  Perhaps your creative well needs to be refilled.  Perhaps you have been writing so long or with such intensity, you need to read for a while.  Perhaps you are truly physically ill.  If this is the case, you don’t have writer’s block, you have something else going on. 

Be sure of one thing…there are a hundred excuses but not one good reason.  If you are truly lacking the ability to put pen to paper, perhaps it is time to take a look at what is really holding you back and finding a way to deal with that hindrance.