On another matter, I’ve been thinking about subtext lately and how authors create mystery, anticipation and reader engagement by leaving gaps in the text that the audience has to fill.  I know I prefer to read stories where I have to use my imagination to search for clues, form hypotheses and consider where the story will end up.  The more I engage in writing the harder I am on my fellow writers because I don’t want all the information handed to me on a platter.  As a reader, I want to participate in making meaning of the narrative.  Too many internal life signs or descriptions such as, ‘he looked her up and down,’ or worse, ‘he raised a brow in curiosity,’ have me tuning out.

The classic ‘who did it,’ of mystery and detective stories is an example of a temporary gap in the reading process where the audience has to consider a number of potential suspects.  The uncertainty of not knowing and guessing is part of the dynamics of the reading experience.

Horror stories often leave permanent gaps in the text, so you’re never quite sure if what you’re reading is real or illusion. House of Leaves is a classic tale of the uncanny.  The reader never knows if the house is indeed larger on the inside as the narrator suggests, or if it’s all part of some psychedelic fantasy.

As a debut novel, I didn’t leave too many gaps in Illusion.  I was working on getting the plot on the page and  revealing character motivation.

In my latest manuscript, I’ve been working hard on creating subtext beneath the words and hope the audience uses their imagination to engage in the narrative.

For more information about subtext and how it works, try:

Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot.

And from the book, one of my favourite quotes:

“Dark nights of the soul are lit by inconceivable ideas.  Any story may draw its source from the power of an unthinkable thought.”

The Genesis of a Character

When I was much younger (okay, not *that* much younger, at least as far as anyone knows , 16 or so, I had this story idea. I was going to write it and it was going to be this brilliant, best-selling novel (because I knew how to dream big back then) and everyone in the world would read it and love me.

The basic premise was about 5 teenagers, a messy love square, an unwanted pregnancy, and two best friends falling in love through it all.  Over the next however many years, the story shifted and changed and evaporated, but one character remained.

Scott has been living in my head for as long as I can remember having character living in my head. When he started out, he was quiet, withdrawn, sensitive, and the most brilliant drummer in existence. Over the years he’s also dealt with alcoholism, an overbearing father, and keeping up the appearance of being a (really lousy) high school quarterback when he’d rather be writing video games.

During that time, he’s also convinced me to create some friends for him. Zach has lived through about 90% of this with him as a best friend, half-brother, and eventual business partner. Rae is the relationship that’s so platonic I’m not even sure they realize anymore that sometimes people still wonder if they’re a couple. And Kelly – the ultimate mean girl who screwed them all over by the time they were in their mid-twenties.

Still, Scott didn’t exist in a story. Unlike every other one of the characters who live in my head, he was this force of nature who existed outside a fictional universe. But while he’s been living up there, he and Zach have created a multi-billion dollar corporation (twice), become some of the best-known playboy geeks in imaginary history, and Zach even (sort of) settled down (different story for a different day).

Then one day he walked into a coffee shop in my brain. And there was a woman who was his antithesis in every way except one. Where he’s chaos, who doesn’t care what people think, who would rather tell the world off than make a compromise, she’s reserved, polite, and earns a living (literally) making people look good in public. The only thing they had in common on the surface was they’re both stubborn as hell.

But somehow they clicked. At least for the weekend. And suddenly, the following Monday (in my brain still), they found themselves in the same room again – this time one of his conference rooms. And that’s how we arrived at He’s tired of his board of directors dictating his behavior. Her job is to make him like it.

Do the people in your head live their own lives? Or maybe I’m the only one with other people living in my head

Check Website for buy links: http://allsyonlindt.com

Blurb

Kenzie propositions a sexy stranger in a coffee shop to prove to herself she’s capable of taking a risk. She doesn’t expect him to be sitting across from her the following Monday as her newest client. Even worse, she can’t stop thinking about what might have happened between them on a personal level if it weren’t for their professional relationship. He knows how to push her buttons, and she doesn’t want him to stop.

Scott has built his software company from the ground up to escape things like stuffy old men telling him how to behave, so he loathes his board of directors ordering him to make the public forget he doesn’t have a verbal filter. When his new publicity manager is the almost-fling he never expected to see again, he seizes the opportunity to have fun and still pretend he’s complying with the board’s edict.

Giving in to desire could mean both their jobs, but each “one last time” always leads to another. Now they have to decide what they’re willing to sacrifice to indulge this conflict of interest.

Biography

Allyson Lindt has been telling stories since before she could put the words on paper.

She was lucky enough to marry her muse and soul mate. Their cats are their children, and when they’re not spending way too much time gaming, they’re building new worlds together. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies, and she made her authorial debut with a racy, erotic short story on a popular porn site for women.

She loves a sexy happily-ever-after and helping deserving couples find their futures together.

THE APPEAL OF RELUCTANT LOVERS

Hello everyone, and a big thank you to Dy for hosting me today. I’m thrilled to be here!

As everyone knows by now, conflict and tension are important ingredients to good fiction, no matter what genre one writes. As a romance author, much of my conflict arises from the fact that the hero and heroine don’t always see eye to eye. And in many good romances, the two main characters often start out hating each other. Things can sometimes get nasty in the course of true love!

And don’t we just love it?

Why do we find this idea so appealing? I’ve often wondered.

Part of it is the sizzle, the spark. You take an opinionated hero and thrust him toward an equally opinionated heroine. They may be polar opposites. They may fight for different causes. But underneath all the bravado, there is an instant attraction. A recognition. A shiver of awareness. All of a sudden, those high and mighty opinions don’t seem to matter so much.

There is a star-crossed quality to these love affairs, a sense that everything is preordained. We love to watch these lovers quarrel, and we love to see them start to surrender to each other. An action sparks a change in the plot, and suddenly we get that “Aaah” moment. Someone bends. Someone folds. He might notice that quiver of vulnerability in her lip. She can’t stop thinking about the deep rumble of his voice when he speaks her name. Planets begin to collide. Stars shine brighter.

Let’s face it, the sex is fairly explosive between these lovers too. Where there was once animosity, there is now a feral need to mate and mark one another. Life seems wrong when they are not in each other’s arms. They touch places in one another no one has touched before, and every kiss brings them closer.

I suppose it can be very appealing to think Fate is kicking one in the ass, pushing us toward the partner we least expected. The relationship that began as suspicious resentment or irritation has suddenly become the strongest of loves. And we are forever changed. The universe provided exactly what that hero and heroine needed, even though they had no clue they needed it.

This is the case in my latest release Sunburn. My hero is the Greek god Apollo, a man blessed with many talents and skills (head up, ladies!), but who has been burned so many times. He is now the owner of a posh Mexican resort. My heroine is Patience O’Connor, a travel blogger who arrives at the resort to review it. Cue animosity! But as Apollo and Patience get to know one another, as they begin to realize they can’t be without one another, they realize they have more in common than they thought.

I hope you’ll get a chance to fall in love with them.

SUNBURN BY ROSANNA LEO

Patience O’Conner is a travel blogger who lives for her work. Her dedication to her readers brings her to the famed Helios Resort in Mexico, a locale that stuns her with its beauty but at which she suffers from some very strange accidents.
Luckily, hunky resort bartender Apollo Delos is always there in the nick of time, a malcontent guardian angel. Apollo stuns Patience again and again with his life-saving abilities, to say nothing of his smoldering looks and apparent desire to keep her alive.
Before long, Patience wonders if there is more to the sexy bartender than mixed cocktails and insane first-aid skills. Something strange is happening at Helios and Apollo doesn’t want to talk about it.
Can Patience open herself up to this enigmatic man, even though she is terrified to be vulnerable again? And can Apollo recover from an eternity of hurt and learn to trust once more? They must both decide before Death comes calling.

Sunburn Excerpt:

She approached the booth, only to find the blond bartender manning it. Her eyes almost popped and she blurted, “You!”

He grinned, but there was still a tightness around his eyes, as if he were sizing her up. “Hello, Patience.” His strained expression said volumes about what he considered to be the unsuitability of her name.

She tried to ignore the sucker punch in her gut, the one that hit her as soon as his deep, velvety voice caressed her eardrums. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the bar?”

His smile grew wider, showing off his perfect white teeth. “I’m everywhere.”

“Clearly.” She forced herself to look away from his gorgeous face, feeling light-headed because of the suns dancing in her eyes, the suns that seemed to come from him. To distract herself, she touched a few of the painted bowls on display. Not that it snuffed out those blasted suns.

He stepped closer. “Do you see anything you like?”

She choked on her saliva and coughed like a victim of the Black Death. He rushed to calm her, putting his hand on her back, massaging. She recovered upon feeling his touch and was hit by the bizarre, fleeting notion his touch made her recover. As if he’d healed her.

Utter nonsense. Yet as much as it was nonsense, her head swam with the bizarre possibility.

“Better?” he asked quietly, his face serious now.

She stared into the man’s eyes. They were blue, so very blue. “Uh, yeah, thanks.” Curiosity got the better of her and the question poured out. “What’s your name anyway?”

He breathed in. “Apollo Delos.”

“Oh, wow,” she said, breaking into a grin. “Just like Apolo Anton Ohno! I loved him on Dancing with the Stars!”

He got a curious look and let out a strange laugh. “Yeah. Just like him.”

Sunburn is available at http://www.lsbooks.com/sunburn-p743.php

BIO:

Rosanna Leo is a multi-published, erotic romance author with Liquid Silver Books. Her books include For the Love of a God, Up In Flames, Sweet Hell, The Selkie and her newest, Sunburn. When not writing, she can be found haunting dusty library stacks or planning her next star-crossed love affair.

www.rosannaleo.blogspot.com

www.facebook.com/rleoauthor1

www.twitter.com/LeoRosanna

www.goodreads.com/author/show/5826852.Rosanna_Leo

www.pinterest.com/rosannaleo/

As promised we headed off to the Coorong over Easter for some family fun + research for the novel.  I do love it when my holidays do double duty.

We camped on the sand dunes near the Great Southern Ocean amongst emus, kangaroos, snakes and stunning bird life. In front lay the quiet lagoons and behind the wild ocean with its crashing waves and air clouded with salt spray.  The mood of the place was eerie with glittering stars, cool nights, warm days and a rolling, ever changing landscape of red carpet-like succulents and grey-green bush.  It was isolated and rough and I could imagine the world as seen through the eyes of the early explorer George French Angas.  He wrote about barely-clad Aboriginal people (Ngarrindjeri) and hundreds of campfires flickering on a hundred mile stretch of sand dunes.   Beneath our feet crunched shell grit crushed by the feet of ancient folk.

Not much has changed since then and although we didn’t live off Bulrush root and mussels, we did enjoy a simple life.

Here’s hoping I can do justice to the timeless beauty of the setting.    The quietness is unnerving with an odd, other-worldly feel to the place.  At night I made sure my feet were tucked into the sleeping bag real tight.  Because if an alien species planned on visiting, the Coorong would make the perfect isolated base.

Oh, and did I mention we lost Ollie, our Alexandrine parrot?  An awful day and one I won’t forget in a hurry.  I went to change her food and she did a clever little duck and weave, avoiding my arm and flying out the cage and over the back fence.  She shrieked a few times for me to come get her but before I could find my way through the scrub, a Kestrel chased her away.

Ollie’s disappearance has given me a renewed faith in humans for we’ve had so many calls of sightings from all over Adelaide.  But unfortunately none of them ended up being our girl.  After one call, we did a midnight drive to a neighbouring suburb to coax an Alexandrine out from under a rainwater tank.  The bird took off and we jumped over fences, battled with rose bushes and met a massive Malamute who frightened the crap out of us.  Thankfully he was busy pushing his footy up my dress hoping for a playdate, which my husband thought was pretty funny.  The bird sat in a mandarin tree chortling.  After numerous mozzie, spider and ant bites we discovered it wasn’t Ollie after all, just a juvenile Alex having a great time annoying the humans.

It’s enough to give anyone an upset tummy.

For a while, I found it hard to write, what with worrying about her and dealing with a house full of sick people.  But we’re on the mend and hopefully she’s found a lovely family to torment.

In the meantime we’re packing belongings and borrowing what we can from friends and family for our camping trip.  We ended up hiring a 4WD and will no doubt bounce along the sand dunes, nowhere near where I’ve set my novel—just for the pure fun of listening to my daughter and her girlfriend scream in delight.

A happy and safe Easter to you all, happy holidays to those of other religious persuasions and please, keep safe.

And if you’re going away don’t forget to organize a care plan for your pets.

Best

Dy

COFFEE TIME ROMANCE is holding a contest for their featured authors and a free ebook copy of ILLUSION is up for grabs.

You can read the first chapter in the bibliography but here’s a few hints for the contest.

The Mage Wars took place in 2032.  Jhara smells like ozone and Oxhyhiayal is hiding inside

Good luck!

The story was inspired by a dream of a young boy forced to make a terrible choice between siblings.  The first scene I wrote is now the beginning of Act II.  It hasn’t been an easy story to write because the point of view character isn’t the most sympathetic character to follow.  But her love of the setting is one of her more endearing traits.

So over Easter we are heading up to the Coorong to research the landscape.  It’s an eerie setting, where the mouth of the River Murray opens to the sea.  North are the pastoral lands and Lakes of the Narrung Peninsula and south lies the rugged coastline. We’ll either camp on the 140 km stretch of wild coastal dunes or on the mainland amongst the bush, wildlife and long narrow lagoons.

It’s the kind of place where you dig a hole to go to the bathroom, rig up a shower from a tree (if you can find one), watch out for poisonous reptiles and teach your kid to cook  damper. We might even hire a 4WD to cross onto the beach and check out the steep dunes. Although that might be just a little too exciting for an author who isn’t too fond of playing in an adult sandpit while the ocean rushes up to bogged tyres.

Some of the dunes shift daily while soft sands and king tides create ‘bottomless’ black shell-grit sections.  It’s a dangerous part of the world for the unwary.

I’m at once frightened and excited to go.

While I’m there, I’ll read a fascinating account of the Aboriginal Ngarrindjeri tribes of the Lower Lakes by an English naturalist visiting in 1857.  Savage Life and Scenes in Australia Vol 1. 

Let’s hope our trip contains plenty of this …

Or this …

Some of this …

And absolutely, positively, none of this …

Happy imagining, folks.

Each quadrant represents a different aspect of the point of view character’s personality.    The author can introduce different aspects in scenes, stuff that the character has either knowingly or unknowingly revealed to reader/other characters.  The elements can reveal important areas for internal and external conflict.

Here’s an example of a gothic horror story I’m writing.

The chart helps me remember to add layers of conflict for the inner, interpersonal and external domains as well as raise the stakes at the internal (personal) and external (public) levels.

Types of Conflict 

Inner – the point of view character’s internal thoughts, beliefs and feelings

Personal – his or her relationship with friends and family

External – society as a whole

Robert McKee – Story

The analogy is a good one and I’m reminded that good story structure keeps the reader engaged and increases surprise and suspense.

My latest short story, THE GIRL BENEATH, has had some good feedback and I’m revising it for Jeanne’s writing class.  The process is helping me to see that the turns are abstract and there’s too much internal conflict.

Developing an outline before writing a story isn’t my usual process, but there are many benefits to being clear and focused.  McKee suggests that if you put limitations on your writing you will be more creative.  Squeezing the action into small episodes of time has definitely made the story stronger.  The protagonist is compelled to act and every scene is changing something of significance.  Aristotole called it a ‘reversal’:

Act I  - anxiety to bravery

Act II – ignorance to fury

Act III – lies to truth

Each peak is higher than the one before and the character is travelling in a new direction with new threats to overcome. Each plot point or complication reveals something new e.g. new action, evidence or deeper layers of character.  The new information creates forward momentum , while the turns should be something the reader doesn’t see coming.  The turning points need to be foreshadowed and well-motivated to be believable.

Lisa Gardner suggests you identify at least two plot twists that will take the story in a completely new direction, such as the main suspect turns up dead.  She suggests the story build steadily in tension until the end, which should be surprising and inevitable.  A good ending has a  confrontation which builds logical from the major plot points (cause and effect) and provides a release for the characters and reader.

So now it is out to my crit buddies for some feedback and further revisions.  I heartily recommend Jeanne’s workshops for writers wanting to improve their craft.

I’m looking forward to applying these strategies to the novel.

Practice, practice, practice …

I finally finished the first in Anne Bishop’s, Black Jewels’ trilogy.  The book stuttered to a halt around page 50 and it took a bit of persuading to get me to re-enter the world.  But I’m glad I persevered, and finally finished the novel tonight with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

But reading anything right now is a guilty pleasure. When I start writing a new piece, reading anything else feels like a betrayal to my characters ESPECIALLY if I’m engaged in the other story.

What a crazy, worthless emotion.   Yeah, well I never said writers were normal.  I mean you have to be a bit weird to sit in front of a computer screen every day and dig deep into your psyche, hoping someone out there will be entertained by it all.

Anyway I digress.  Anne’s book gave me some excellent ideas for my new novel.  My character is a mage who’s drifting through alternate realities, searching for her son.  I was going to place most of the book on Earth but wondered why I was restricting myself to one reality when I’d already built several worlds to choose from.  I’ve heard publishers aren’t keen on alternate reality books at the moment, but there’s always that teenager skulking about in my mid brain with more bravado than common sense.

So it looks like I’ll have another alternate universe on my hands

I believe it was Stephen King who said, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.”  There’s nothing like unpacking another author’s work to see how they wield the craft.  It helps generate ideas and forces you to jump over the mental cross road with your own characters.  But before going back to my novel I’ll read a little of “The Amulet Manual,” and a few Witchcraft texts so my characterisation and prose isn’t coloured by the fiction I’ve just read.

Refreshed and energised I’m keen to get back to my work.  Fuelled by lots of images and plenty of ideas to sustain a few more chapters.

Happy reading and writing folks!

And here’s a video of DD at the beach.

Beach Time