Romance Writers Weekly: July 14, 2015

I'm so not into sports, however, I love being motivated by music, so I think I can manage today's question with ease. Susan Scott Shelley asks:

A player's walk-up song (aka Entrance Theme), whether he's heading to the pitcher's mound or the batter's box, can tell a lot about him. What song would you choose for yours?

I honestly can't imagine me "walking up" to any place that requires music (I've already gotten married so that's taken care of). So I'm doing a little creative interpretation of the question. Because for me, "walking up" in the professional sense means sitting at my keyboard and feeling the groove to write. 

Alas, this means multiple songs, because I'm very much inspired by music. But it depends on the piece I'm working on. I'm currently working on several projects but the two that seem to be the most greatly impacted by music are Alpha Wars and the fifth book in my Heart's Ease series. So that's what I'm sharing today. 

Alpha Wars

First up, my alter ego, Hannah Hunter. I'm loving this series about Irish shifters, especially the bad boys. I'm a die hard traditional music fan, so when I started thinking about the Faoladh and the Conroicht, I had no trouble imagining big burly men who love to lift a pint and sing sad Irish songs. Here's a song I've listened to a lot while writing this one, sung by The Navigators, one of my favourite Newfoundland bands. 

 

Book 5 of Heart's Ease

I'm positive I've posted this before, however, nothing has changed. I was driving one morning listening to Newfoundland's own Tom Power who graces our national radio program, CBC's Radio 2 Morning. And on comes this song by Whitehorse. Bam. My hero came to life as I listened. I mean, come on.  "I'd don't have much, but I've got the good stuff." That lyric sums Will Walsh up to a T! It's my power anthem for this book, without a doubt. 

And because this book is starting to take up a lot of my headspace, it gets two songs! "I don't know where and I don't know when, but I know  we'll be lovers again." Atta boy, Passenger. This is Will's softer side. The side no one sees but our heroine. 

So there you have it. My "walk-up" songs. Now let's go see what my friend Betty Bolte has chosen. I'm always stoked about musical posts. I mean, come on. Romance writing and music? What a perfect combination. 

Also, if you've read something by me and think you know a song that sums up the feeling or mood or whatever, feel free to share it in the comments.

Romance Writers Weekly: February 3, 2015

Is it wrong that I'm giddy about today's post? Why, you ask? Because this week's question from the incomparable Brenda Margriet has posed a question that I adore: How do you choose the setting for your book? Does where you live inspire you? 

Does it? Ha. If this is your first time time my blog you won't know this, but I set all of my books in Newfoundland, which is where I live. I don't do this simply because it's a place I'm familiar with. I do it because I believe Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the most romantic places on Earth. I do it because I want the world to know what about a half a million of us know: That there's something different and magical and inspiring about this wind-swept coastline of ours. To say I'm a proud Newfoundlander is sort of like saying Richard Simmons likes tight shorts. I think both of our feelings go much deeper. 

But let's really dig into the why. Here are some essential things to know about this place. I'll start with a map so you know what I'm talking about. 

Newfoundland is that awesomely shaped island with a lot of black on it. Labrador, which is also part of our province, is the other awesomely shaped land to the north, also black. This black means that it is very sparsely populated. So the first thing you learn is that Newfoundland is big (about the size of California), and we have hardly any people here. (Our official population for the entire province, including Labrador is 500,000.) You can see that most of the people live on the coast, and the majority of those live all the way over on the east coast, near St. John's, which is our capital city. I grew up in St. John's. I now live about a half hour away. 

This means that we have a lot of undeveloped land, a lot of coastline, a lot of woods (which means a lot of wildlife) and a lot of room for the imagination. If you read Hard As Ice, there's a scene where Daphne and Jack drive from the west coast to the east coast. It takes them about 10 hours. It's a long drive from one end to the other. I loved writing that scene because it was a fun way to show distance here. Plus, they had some great dialogue. Let me share a snippet. 

“It took another hour but when they picked Ida up from the hospital, Jack was sure she’d be comfortable in the spacious backseat of the brown Chev. That was before Daphne got on the open road. The woman drove like a demented race-car driver. At this rate they’d be home in five hours.
He tried to bite his tongue but when she pulled out to pass three transport trucks, his nerves just couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Sweet Jesus, woman. Are you trying to get me and Ida killed?”
She blanched. “No.”
“Then slow down.” He knew he’d raised his voice, but he’d never truly been this terrified in a car before.
“I’m not going that fast.”
“No, one hundred and forty is perfectly reasonable. For a drag racer.”
“It’s this truck. It has too much power. It keeps speeding up. And these hills don’t help.”
“Most people would ease off the gas going downhill, or even use the brakes.”
“Well, thank you for the driving lesson,” she said, her voice clipped.
They’d left the eighteen-wheelers far behind, and she’d slowed to a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. He’d feel better if she were going closer to one-ten.
“I don’t know what the roads are like where you live, but here we have to watch out for things like moose, and potholes, and cops.”
She started to laugh. “You’d be hopeless driving in Britain. Your roads are so wide. Then again, a vehicle like this wouldn’t be able to handle them all that well.”
“Well, this isn’t Britain. It’s Newfoundland. And wide roads exist for a reason. So that we don’t crash into maniac foreign drivers.” He thought he smiled enough to show he wasn’t entirely serious. Although he was.
”

— Hard As Ice

Another scene that came from real life for me was in Against Her Rules. There's a part of the book where Elsie has taken Cam out in a boat onto the ocean so that he can sketch some seabirds.Here's what she does.

“Looming out of the water was a huge jagged rock, about the height of a ten-storey building. Overhead a myriad of birds swooped and crested in the wind. He hadn’t noticed the sound over the motor, but now it was all around them. A cacophony of the soft purring uurrr’s of turrs underlay the screeching of the herring gulls and a hundred more varieties of birds.
It was both frightening and awe-inspiring at the same time.
“Get ready for this,” she said, pulling a small white bucket out of the pack.
“Holy shit. What is that?”
The reek that came out of the bucket was putrid.
“Fish guts,” she said, tossing them overboard.
The first bird to spot the bait, a small puffin, dropped from the sky in a death-defying dive, plunging beneath the water, presumably spearing a treat as he dove. At least Cam hoped the poor thing did, given its tenacity.
It was followed quickly by another, a gull this time, he thought. And then another and another until it was raining birds, and feathers. If one bird was lucky enough to have speared some food, another tried to steal it from its beak. It was awesome and terrifying all at once.
”

— Against Her Rules

This happens. It's happened to me. Quite often I go out fishing for cod with my Dad. On our way in from fishing, he'll start to clean the fist, tossing the offal into the water. Here's a photo of how the birds react to this disgusting buffet.

That's my hubby steering the boat and my dad cleaning the fish. My editor was on this trip, and she took the photo. Trust me, when she was editing Against Her Rules, she didn't question that scene at all! 

I could go on forever about this place and how it inspires me. But I'd like for you to go visit all the other authors who are taking part in today's blog hop, so I'll stop here. Elizabeth Janette is next. I'm not sure where she's from, so let's go together and find out how she answered these questions! 

Historical Wednesday: November 19, 2014

I'm so happy this week to have my dear friend and fellow Newfoundlander romance author Kate Robbins on the blog. Kate writes awesome Scottish medieval historicals set in the 15th century around the reign of James 1. Today she's sharing some thoughts with you!

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Putting the History into Historical Romance by Kate Robbins

 If you’re a fan of the genre, you know there are several sub-genres to historical romance including Viking, Victorian, Western, Ancient, Medieval, the currently popular Scottish, and the uber giant Regency.

Though these sub-genres all take on different settings and eras, they all have one thing in common—readers who crave them. Let me tell you, if you are a budding writer and think you might be able to fudge some Regency detail? Forget it. Readers know these points in history so well, there’s no way around it. And they will tell you if you’ve gotten something wrong, too—just ask Mel Gibson.

That’s not to criticize readers, mind you. I think it’s amazing that the romance genre has produced such avid and dedicated readers. I write historicals set in fifteenth century Scotland. And while it is not as popular as those set during the Jacobite Rebellion, the attention to detail is no less important. The thing I’ve learned is that readers appreciate the attention to historical accuracy.

Every author will step away from the history and let the fiction take over at a different point too, which makes this genre so fascinating. Two different authors can take the exact same setting and the exact same conflict and will produce two completely different stories. That’s the beauty of this genre. There’s a reader out there for every author—and we are so fortunate for that!

Happy reading everyone!

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Kate Robbins is an Amazon Bestselling author. Her latest release from her Highland Chiefs series is Enemy of the Highlander to be released on November 21st, 2014.

You can find Kate online at the following

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Romance Weekly: July 29, 2014

I've missed the last few weeks because I was on holiday in Ireland. But what a great week to come back. Today we're doing things a little differently. Instead of answering three questions, we're just tackling one great one. 

What are your top ten romances of all time?

I'm going to keep my answers to books, because if I were to incorporate movies and real life and plays etc, my list would go on forever. So here they are in no particular order because I can't refine my mind that much!

The Time Traveler's Wife

By Audrey Niffenegger

Buy on Amazon

Gone with the Wind

By Margaret Mitchell

Buy on Amazon

Ten Things I Love About You

By Julia Quinn

Buy on Amazon

A Duke of Her Own (Desperate Duchesses)

By Eloisa James

Buy on Amazon

Rules of an Engagement

By Suzanne Enoch

Buy on Amazon

Outlander

By Diana Gabaldon

Buy on Amazon

Into the Wilderness

By Sara Donati

Buy on Amazon

Forever Amber (Rediscovered Classics)

By Kathleen Winsor

Buy on Amazon

The Hazards of Hunting a Duke (Desperate Debutantes)

By Julia London

Buy on Amazon

The Parson's Daughter

By Catherine Cookson

Buy on Amazon

As I was making this list, I was amazed with how easy these titles popped to mind. And I know why. There's a trend with all of these romances. Each and every one of them was recommended to me by my grandmother, my muse and mentor in all things related to romance novels. She's why I write. She's why I read. And she's why there's still a gaping hole in my heart whenever I think of her. I write using my real name because I'm proud of what I write. But if I ever do need a pseudonym, it will be her name I use. 

Now, enough of my emotional ramblings. I sure didn't think I was going to get sappy making a list. I think I'll pop on over to the brilliant and lovely Brenda Margriet now the once and see what fabulous list she concocted for us.