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Writing Teen Romance

Writing Teen Romance

The Moderator Diaries–Episode 2

Here’s another sample of the variety of ridiculous comments I’ve received on the blog lately. It’s obvious they don’t read the blog and I hate, abhor, no detest SPAM. But this does lend a little humor to the situation and it gives me a great subject to post about: #1 POSTED COMMENT: I think one of your advertisings caused my browser to resize, you might want to put that on your blacklist. POSTED BY: cesartipswordrddg@xxxxxcom MY RESPONSE (in my head of course because I’d never respond to any of

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Writing Teen Romance

Why Editing is Like a Merry-Go-Round

Editing is like a merry-go-round. At first it can be a bit of a thrill, accompanied by a hint of butterflies. But if you stay on the carousel too long… you’re gonna get sick. Aside from editing the voice right out of your work, story fatigue becomes a factor. You get so sick of your characters, you don’t want to spend another second with them. You can’t see what’s wrong or right with the manuscript. Your inner critic tells you it’s crap and then asks… “What the heck were you thinking?” You want

Writing Teen Romance

On Writer Conferences

The beauty of an online writing conference is that you don’t have to physically go anywhere. You can attend via the comfort of your favorite chair or coffee shop. Anywhere you can connect via your laptop or internet enabled device of choice. It’s perfect for those of us with day jobs, as we can attend at night or when we get a few minutes of down-time. I attended two online writing conferences in August – making it a whirlwind month and it’s taken me almost another to recover from information

Writing Teen Romance

Why Writing is Like Cliff Jumping

The other day, while shopping at Publix, I spied a teenager, with her nose in a book as she walked the aisles with her parents. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close enough to get a good glance at the title. I wondered if it was required reading in English class and whether she was a) behind, b) a very busy kid and had to take every opportunity to read, or c) it was quite simply a very interesting read. As I was stalking this child, I got to thinking about how bold I’ve gotten, thanks to my

Writing Teen Romance

It’s all in the context

I needed to find out which South American country was the hottest, in terms of temperature or climate. So I went to my favorite search engine, Google, and typed in the following: hottest South American country Here are my less than helpful results: In case you can’t read the small print, the majority of the hits the search returned were referring to “hot women”. Definitely not what I was looking for. But based on the order of my words, that’s what Google thought I meant. In going for a more

Things I Love

The ever growing TBR pile

Aye! My TBR pile runneth over. At the moment – it’s a bit overwhelming. Here’s the stack of freebies from RWA. And here are two other piles that I haven’t gotten to yet. That’s a total of thirty books!! 1.7333 books per week if I don’t add any more books to the pile for a year. Since I have a book obsession, that’s not a very likely prospect. Case in point -- here’s what came today from BAM.com. And it’s going straight to the top of the pile!!! Actually – it’s skipping the pile entirely. After

Writing Teen Romance

The Great Beta Read - continued

I’m headed to NYC for RWA Nationals. This will be my first conference and I am excited to learn tons from the workshops and get to meet some fabulous like-minded writerly types. I’m also looking forward to putting a face with a lot of folks I’ve met virtually in classes and through various online writing communities. To send me off in a great frame of mind, at 8:26 last night I received the following text message from my second teen beta reader: Omg! I’m LOOOOOVING YOUR BOOK! But I have a

Writing Teen Romance

Flavoring Dialogue with Authenticity

This is our second week hosting a soccer coach for the Challenger Sports British Soccer Camp. It is one of the most rewarding experiences and tons of fun getting to know someone from another country and sharing a week of our American life with them. Last week we hosted an Irish lad named Cian (pronounced Kee-an). This week, a Brit named Lawrence. I’ve been observing our guests and really listening to how they speak so I can flavor my dialogue with authentic bits of dialect and word usage.

Writing Teen Romance

The Great Beta Read

I’ve been MIA trying to finish another round of edits and it was well worth it, as my MS is finally in the hands of my teen betas. I picked three teens that I’m not super close to, hoping they’d feel more comfortable looking at my work with a critical eye. My first reader is 15, reads widely in the YA genre and is an aspiring author herself. My second reader is 17, enjoys the YA genre, but of late has mostly read non-fiction. My third reader is 15, another avid reader who’s favorite HS class is