Update from Sherry: Carrie, Barb in MD, and Vi, your prizes are on their way. Joie, yours will go out very soon. Liz, we are waiting to hear from you!
After an in-depth consultation with Random.org, we offer congratulations to the winners of our contest:
Carrie
Joie
Barb in MD
Liz (1:05PM)
and our GRAND PRIZE WINNER, Vi (6:08PM)!
Soon-to-be-gleaming winners, please let Sherry know where to send your goodies!
A NOTE FROM SHERRY: In honor of WICKED BECOMES YOU’s release next Tuesday, Plotters and Manipulators United is running a contest. Leave a comment to this post on how much you love Meredith’s books and/or how eagerly you are looking forward to WICKED BECOMES YOU, and you will be entered into a drawing. Five winners will each get a crazy-becomes-Sherry tin of organic shea butter, with the grand prize winner also getting a $25 Godiva Chocolate Gift Certificate, which Sherry just rediscovered in her goody drawer. Best of luck. Contest ends at 11:59PM (Standard Blog Time) on Friday, April 30th!
(Please note that while Sherry will ship anywhere, the gift certificate is only good for purchases in the U.S.)
Sherry and I both have new releases coming up – mine next Tuesday, hers on May 25th. You may have heard certain shocking rumors about these books. For instance:
His at Night has no flashbacks. (Not a one!)
Wicked Becomes You has no drug addictions. (No laudanum, no habitual heavy drinking, and not even a hint of opium!)
Disbelieving, you may have asked, What’s going on here? Has the sky fallen? Are pigs flying?
Okay, so I can’t comment with any certainty on the last question. I’m in India right now, and I often spot bands of roving street pigs doing very odd things.
I’ve been going through an Oscar Wilde phase, which has led me to some intriguing primary sources, all of them fierce Victorian debates about interior design. What with Ruskin and Morris et al convinced that beautiful architecture and interiors made for serene and beautiful minds, designing and furnishing one’s home was A Very Serious Business in the 1880s and 1890s. I am instructed by said texts that it is crucial to have a central focal point for a room — a painting or an object d’art (preferably Japanesque) to orient one’s attention and soothe one’s aggrieved sensibilities and draw the whole room into perfect accord.
With this in mind, I must admit that this blog post is officially Aesthetically Unsound. There is no unitary theme or accord to it; it is drawn from the drawer in my brain filled with random, rattling shiny bits. I suggest you gird yourself for the five-and-dime experience by spending a moment gazing upon this authentically Aesthetic objet.
Beautiful, no?
All right, on to the glitter: awesome sisters, book trailers, and bad music.
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Meredith: Look at any forum devoted to writing and you’ll find a few topics dedicated to the “standard questions” that writers get asked: Where do you get your ideas? How do you find the time? How do you figure out what happens next? How do you manage to actually finish a story?
These questions may be standard, but the answers are anything but. Every writer seems to have a slightly (or drastically) different way of working.
Some of the methods I’ve come across make me white with terror. For example, covering my entire living room wall with color-coded 8×6 Post It notes. Or outlining. Others turn me green with jealousy (ahem: the Shitty First Draft). All of them fascinate me. There may, in fact, be something a bit neurotic about the avidity with which I read explanations of methods that I know won’t work for me. It reminds me of that phase in eighth grade when my friends and I used to get together to bake brownies, drink milkshakes, and watch exercise videos.
Anyway, there’s a specific reason that craft — and in particular, craftly excellence — is on my mind. I’ve just reread Sherry’s new release, Not Quite a Husband. NQAH effortlessly blends superb prose, incredibly nuanced characterization, sizzling chemistry, very hot sex, and other manner of high drama (rebellions! potentially fatal illnesses! death-defying treks! many whizzing bullets!) into a moving, dare I say epic romance that traverses a not-so-familiar but altogether fascinating part of the world. It’s a tour de force, and since I share a blog with her, I get to ask how she does it. Sherry, brace yourself for interrogation!
(Sherry: When I first joined RWA–after finishing the first draft of PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS–and heard people mention the RWA craft-loop, I used to think it was women more dexterous than me talking about their macramé. That should tell you how much I know about craft. So read at your own peril!)
Sherry, I understand that the idea for NQAH was sparked by a viewing of The Painted Veil. How do you proceed once you’ve got the seedling of an idea? Do you outline, do you daydream, or do you simply begin to write?
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I have no idea how other authors begin a new project. But with Bound by Your Touch rushing toward the shelves (the first review is already in!) and Written on Your Skin off to print, it’s time to start working on the next book. For me, that usually begins with a backstory that pops into my head, fully formed. (This is not as cool as it sounds. The backstory is what happens before the book starts. Suffice it to say, I would much prefer to have PLOTS pop fully formed into my mind. (Plotters, you have my undying envy.))
The question then becomes: how does this backstory make for a plot? To answer this question, I… procrastinate. I play with random ideas, read everything I can get my hands on, and daydream to a long and inspiring playlist of Music that Deeply Offends My Boyfriend’s Superior Taste.
I also occasionally entertain myself by searching Parliamentary records and date-restricted Google results. During my most recent search, I discovered a Ghost in the Google Machine: Eva Fox-Strangway, birthdate: unknown; death: March 1910.
Eva Fox-Strangway: who were you? Not who you said you were: that much is clear.
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