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Here’s Laura Drewry’s bookmark. Her new book, The Devil’s Daughter is a 2008 release with Dorchester. I’ll post an interview with her at some point, but for now you can check out her website for more info.
We left the empty space on purpose. Although looking at it, I think I need to make the top wording bigger…tweak, tweak, tweak…
The CF Foundation is the charity we personally give the most to. In 1998 our daughter was born. Everything seemed fine at first, but then at only two months of age she caught the flu and after that stopped growing. It was a horrible time in our lives, and after five months of seeing doctors and her almost starving to death in my arms, she was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis.
Three years later our son was also born with the disease. It is the most common fatal disease in the United States. That’s right–fatal, a hard word to write when attached to your children.
They are both doing well, thanks in a huge part to research headed by the CFF. Today I got an email from them regarding a donation matching program–so if you are considering giving, now is a good time. Here’s the letter…
Dear Friend,
We are excited to announce that a very generous CF dad will match every online donation (dollar-for-dollar) that the CF Foundation receives—up to $1 million—now through Dec. 31!
We hope you will help us make the most of this special opportunity and reach our $2 million goal. Please consider sending an e-Gift, creating or donating to a gift registry, or making a year-end donation.
E-Gifts
Sending an e-Gift is a quick and simple way to support the Foundation’s mission, while sending good wishes to your friends, family, co-workers and others this holiday season. It’s also the perfect corporate gift for your company to give clients and employees—and 100 percent tax-deductible.
Just click here to begin your holiday shopping!
Gift Registry
Creating a gift registry is a fun way to let people know exactly what you want—to find a cure for cystic fibrosis! Through your registry, they can make tax-deductible donations to a cause that is important to you.
Click here to create your own gift registry or donate to a registry.
Please bookmark http://gifts.cff.org and tell everyone you know about how to give and get a meaningful gift in support of CF research and care.
Make a Donation
We are always grateful for general and memorial donations, which are 100 percent tax deductible. Click here to make a year-end donation.
Thank you for supporting our lifesaving mission. Together, we are adding tomorrows every day to the lives of those with CF.Sincerely,
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
6931 Arlington Road
Bethesda, MD 20814
(800) FIGHT CF
E-mail: info@cff.org
Web: www.cff.org
Find your local chapter
Thanks and if you haven’t done it today–go hug your kids. :)
Lori
So, I’ve been designing bookmarks. I do my own and the occasional one for friends. Bad news is a lot of bookstores don’t want them anymore, but I still like having them to stick in books and mailings and such.
Here’s the one I’m working on for me. I have one in the works for my friend Laura Drewry too. I’ll post it after she approves it.
What I can’t decide is length and printer. I was going on the short side 6 inches, but thought a little longer would be good. This one is 7.25 inches…Then there is another printer who does an 8 inch bookmark with a really nice finish. So hard to decide. Opinions? How much bookmark do you like to have sticking out of your book? 8 inches seems more trade than mass market to me–but they do look darn nice with that fancy finish…
Oh, and for anyone who has actually read one of my Nocturnes…Sensual or Sexy?
Don’t you love that sometimes you can’t put things in books that actually happen because people will squawk that they are impossible. Here’s a link to check out…
My friend Caroline Linden posted an interview with me on her web site. She asked WAY better questions than I do. Here’s the link.
Kathy is one of my best and “real” friends–meaning we actually get together face-to-face and do fun things like lunch and whine. Her debut novel, First There is a River, came out this fall from Medallion Press and she agreed to stop by here and chat with us a bit.
Q.) First tell us about First, There is a River.
KS.) The story begins with a woman trapped in an abusive marriage. When her husband sends her kids away in a final move to isolate and control her, she is completely devestated and ends up on her uncle’s riverboat, where she takes a job as a cook. Through that job and the incredible people she meets on the river (river-rats as they were called) she learns that there is much more strength in her than she ever thought. In fact, she finds perhaps enough courage to face her husband and get her children back, which is the most important thing in her life and what she wants more than anything else.
Q.) Why riverboats? There’s a family connection, isn’t there?
KS.) Yes, my great-grandmother, who died way before I was born, worked as a cook on a riverboat. The book has nothing to do with her other than my original interest and idea about riverboats and cooks. In fact, I’m sure my great-grandfather was nothing like Jared! But my great-grandmother, during the depression, just got sick and tired of being so poor. When she was offered a job on a boat, although it meant being gone from home, she took it. Just that image, of a woman going to work on a boat on the river and living such an unusual life, has always interested me.
I love doing research and this book gave me the opportunity to learn about not only a different time and place, but an entire society that is pretty much non-existent in the modern world. It was a wonderful experience researching and writing this book! Not to mention great fun.
Q.) First, There is a River is offered under the Mainstream category. What other elements does it have…mystery, romance, etc.?
KS.) It is definitely a cross-genre book, and crosses categories. There is loads of action and suspense, elements of historical fiction and plenty of romance! I like to think of it as historical suspense, but it gets categorized all sorts of ways in bookstores, from mystery to romance to historical, which is why mainstream is good–it covers everything. I love to read romance, mysteries, women’s fiction, action/adventure, suspense, thrillers, you name it–and so I wrote a book that has many elements. `
Q.) As a debut author you go through a lot of emotional ups and downs. How have you found the trip so far? Have you learned anything new about yourself?
KS.)Oh boy, that’s quite a question and probably hits on the most incredible aspect about being published for the first time, it’s like holding a big fun-house mirror up and trying to figure out what is real, what is you, and what it all means. You hold your book inside for so long, and then you let a few chosen people read it. But once it’s out there, it’s out there!
I was surprised to find being so “out there” threw me, I’m pretty open and outgoing and I always thought I was extroverted. Turns out I’m actually an introvert and would rather keep it all in. But when the dream is to be published and write stories, you can’t have it both ways.
Talk about a roller-coaster. One day I’m so happy and excited that I can’t put a sentence together, the next day depressed and thinking I can’t write a decent word. As time goes on, my emotional responses are becoming more even, which probably means I’m learning and growing from the experience. Go figure! :o)
Q.) Medallion is your publisher. Can you tell us a bit about them?
KS.) Love them! They are an independent publisher who publishes many genres, from suspense/thriller, mystery, horror, historical, romance, and mainstream. I’m sure I’m forgetting one. But they are an author-friendly, young company that is growing by leaps and bounds. The biggest news is that they are now distributed by IPG (Independent Publishers Group) and have about 60 authors writing books for their lines.
Q.) I know you have at least two more books in the series planned. Can you tell us about them?
KS.) Jasper Mountain comes out in November of 2008 and actually is a prequel to First, There is a River. While writing FTIARiver I became interested in one of the main character’s mother. He talks about her and about her special “sight” and that she taught him to see and talk to mountain spirits. When I started delving into who she was as a young woman, I ended up in Jasper, Colorado, a fictional mining town in 1873. And wow, is that place rife with suffering, hardships, and everyone carries a gun! Yikes! And it’s haunted to boot!
The third is about Emma’s daughter, Sarah. Not too much on that one yet. I do know where it is set and what the gist of the story is, but until I start writing, I’m never sure where these stories are going to take me.
Q.) You also have an interest in writing screen plays and mysteries. Do you have anything in those or other areas in the works? What type of books do you enjoy reading?
KS.)I am working on a contemporary mystery. It’s a cozy with an amateur sleuth who is a psychic. After I turn Jasper Mountain in to Medallion, I’m going to spend some serious time working on it. Time always seems to be my big achilles heel.
Screenwriting has been an interest of mine since I took Chris DeSmet’s screenwriting class (at University of Wisconsin) to improve my dialogue. I find screenwriting especially difficult. Everything, when in script form, has to happen through the dialogue, and of course, some movement. But really, as a writer, the true power of the story and characterization is through dialogue.
I love reading all kinds of books. I like to read bestsellers just to see what is selling and I am seldom disappointed in any genre I decide to investigate. The one thing I never liked reading when I was younger was science fiction, so in college I took a course called “Science Fiction as Literature” and wouldn’t you know it, I got hooked! I can’t say there’s anything I don’t read. As a writer it’s important to keep an open mind (I think) and read as much as you can. Since becoming serious about writing, I don’t enjoy reading quite as much as I used to because I find myself analyzing what I’m reading to see what works and what doesn’t.
I love classics as well, and I like to alternate a “serious” book with a lighter one just to keep on my toes and entertained. But I have to admit, I find myself cheating and reaching for commercial and entertaining quite a bit more often than any others.
Q.) Thanks for taking time to answer my questions. Where can readers find you on the web? How about First, There is a River?
Absolutely my pleasure, and thanks for the opportunity to talk, Lori. You can find me at www.kathysteffen.com and FTIARiver is on Amazon, Books a Million, Barnes and Noble.com and in bookstores. If they don’t have it on the shelves (and believe me, I go shelf-sighting as often as I can), it can be ordered easily.
Thanks! This was great fun. I love to talk about writing!
As a writer I think we “know” a lot of things, and probably do many instinctively (automatically following story structure because we have read so much, etc.), but that is different from really “getting” something.
For some reason, I recently had an epiphany about turning points. I could have told you what a turning point was a long time ago and I put turning points in my books (they’d be near unreadable without them), but I didn’t really “get” them. So, assuming I am not the only slow one wandering around in the world, I thought I’d chat about them a bit.
A turning point is a place in the story where everything changes, where the character is forced to do things differently, where they can’t go back to life as they knew it before. Turning points are essential to entertaining fiction–ESSENTIAL. I’m sure you could have too many and give your reader whiplash, but in general I think writers are far more guilty of writing books that don’t have as many as they need.
Let’s look at some examples.
Stephanie Plum loses her job as a lingerie salesperson (that’s what she did, isn’t it?), she is forced to search for a new job and all she can find is one as a bounty hunter. Turning point–everything changes.
In the current TV series Chuck (which I love BTW), the series has been progressing with the assumption a certain character was dead. Guess what? He isn’t. Everything changes. I particularly love this example because it pushed the series to a new level. Rather than watching Chuck go through the same motions over and over, it mixed things up (at least for a couple of shows). You don’t tend to see that in TV series too much.
Another TV example, in Charmed Phoebe discovers her new love interest is a demon. (And I so miss Cole.) Hello! That changed things didn’t it?
So that’s a turning point, think of it as literally forcing your character to spin on his or her heel, leaving whatever direction they thought they were going behind.
Now why do you need them, and how many. There are very simple answers to these questions–which you have probably already figured out.
You need them because without them you have a linear journey of this happened, then this happened, they they did this and so on and so on. In other words boring–and we have all read books like this. Readers want to be surprised. They want to encounter new challenges. Turning points give them those.
So far as how many, it really varies on the length of the book. I have a friend who writes for Harlequin Intrigue and she plans three in each book–and this is not counting the inciting incident (like the Stephanie Plum example). And you may have turning points for more than one character. In my Nocturnes I do. In Unbound, Kara is approached by Risk, finds out she’s a witch, and then discovers Risk is a hellhound. All turning points for her. Each set her on a slightly new path. Risk found out Kara was a twin witch, discovered he loved her, and discovered he was a father. All changed his goals and direction. Oh, and sex. Sex scenes make great turning points. It’s cliche, but true…sex changes things, if you are writing a romance, use that.
Until later,
Lori
Random books from my shelf...
