Oh my goodness! Some fun answers from your side of the blog in the comments yesterday! Carol Moncado, here. Continuing to be your hostess with the mostest (I hope!) this week. Since yesterday, I’ve discovered that, in addition to using a lot of exclamation marks, I seem to have an affinity for parentheses… that probably says something about me. I don’t know what it could be… (Carol is also addicted to … (apparently) says Valerie…)
Image courtesy of dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Thank you for your patience with us as we work out the kinks! You should be able to comment right away this time ;). But, hey! That’s why we decided to do a “soft opening” with fun stuff like this before jumping into our regular posting schedule (that comes Monday)! If you ever want to see who’s coming up, click that calendar link up on the top and you’ll see what our schedule is. Right now, we’re only scheduled through early March while we get our feet under us, but soon, you’ll be able to check it out several months in advance.
Now, it’s still cold where I am (though the kindergarten class I was subbing for did get an outside recess yesterday – but my kids in the same district didn’t :p). So I’m gonna grab a blanket and a good book to read while we hang out. Feel free to bring whatever’s on the top of your to be read stack along, too!
I will say this… never ask a group of your favorite authors to answer bookish type questions. You’ll get so many great answers, it’ll be hard to choose! But, like I mentioned yesterday, I’ll be using some more of them in the Sunday posts over the next few weeks :).
So… here we go!
What’s your favorite romantic trope (eg. secret baby, star-crossed lovers, etc.)?
Katherine Reay: I am completely sidestepping this one – I love them all. As long as they feel real, you can get me with any set-up.
Lorraine Beatty: Reunited lovers. I like the idea of two people who are perfect for one another but maybe met at the wrong time in their lives, getting a second chance. Age, experience and maturity make it all work out the next time their paths cross.
Carla Laureano: I’m a sucker for reunited lovers stories. I love when the heroic couple has a past—bad or good, but usually bad. It ups the tension and the stakes in the story. And who doesn’t want to believe that true love will prevail over all?
Merrillee Whren: Do I have to pick only one? I like reunited lovers, best friends, marriage of convenience, reformed bad boy/girl and best friends. Can you tell I just like romance?
(I think I’m with Katherine and Merrillee on this one :D.)
What is your favorite music to write to?
Hallee Bridgeman: Classical symphony. It’s the only music that doesn’t distract me.
Ginger Solomon: Instrumental – Michael W. Smith: Freedom; or celtic
Elizabeth Maddrey: Silence. Pure, blissful silence. Typically interrupted by the shrieks of “Mooooommmmyyyyy! He’s (touching me/taken my toy/bothering me/etc.)” I don’t love that last part, but what are you going to do?
Jennifer Slattery, Katherine Reay, Cathy Bryant, and Valerie Comer also prefer the sound of silence! You’d have to ask them if their silence is interrupted by fighting children.
Kimberly Johnson: I prefer to write to piano music. My favorite is George Winston. Anything with words distracts me from the story playing out in my head.
Beth Vogt: I make up soundtracks for my novels as I write them. I decide what kind of music my main characters would listen to and create playlists using Spotify. Right now I am listening to classical music (heroine) and ‘80s music (hero).
Staci Stallings: I actually make a soundtrack for each book. It’s one of the ways I get the “feel of the book.” When I write country, I listen to country. When I write New York, I write to pop and more urban music. One of the strangest was I had a character who was going with a secondary character, and he played rock music with violins. Did you know they have such a thing? I didn’t know that when I started, but there IS a band just like that. And that’s what I listened to when I wrote that book.
Merrilee Whren and Kristen Ethridge also make soundtracks for their books! Maybe, one of these days, they’ll share some of them with us!
The next question had to do with what’s your last release – or next one – but, oh my goodness! We had so many great answers to that one… well, we’ll be putting as many as possible in the news section of the website! Be sure to check out the “sliders” at the top of the main page or the bottom of this blog for upcoming releases or other cool information! Those will change monthly so check back.
What’s the LAST sentence of your WIP?
For those of you unfamiliar with writer jargon, WIP is Work in Progress. Most of the answers are the literal last sentence written (at the time the author sent me their answers), not the end of the manuscript/book. It makes for great fun ;). Where applicable, the title is included.
Deb Kastner: “Is there anything about caring for an infant that is easy?” Shawn asked.
Cathy Bryant (A Bridge Unbroken): “I don’t know who you are, Mister, but you’re about two seconds shy of getting your backside loaded with buckshot.”
Stacy Monson: Finally he was home and in her arms. And following Razzie’s orders.
Laurie Tomlinson: She wanted more.
Pepper Basham: “What’s yer business?”
(Don’t they just make you want more?!)
Who is your most unusual character (published or unpublished)?
This one also had so many great answers! There’s some great characters out there!
Jennifer Slattery: A woman named Maggie who was a bit overly… naturopathic.
Katherine Reay: Samantha Moore, heroine of Dear Mr. Knightley. A woman who hides behind literary personas? That’s unusual, bordering on strange… but we love her.
Deb Kastner: Jo Murphy Spencer is the gregarious redhead who owns Cup O’ Jo Café in my fictional town of Serendipity, Texas. She’s the mother/grandmother everyone would love to have. She tells it like it is, but she always speaks in love. She’s the engine and caboose of the gossip train, and she’s constantly looking out for everyone else’s interests.
Melissa Tagg: Probably Blake aka “Blaze.” He’s a side character in my first book, Made to Last, and one of the main characters in my second book, Here to Stay. He’s a total goofball who’s spent years playing nomad, adventuring his way across the globe. And in Made to Last, he spends his time pretending to be a celebrity’s husband. By book two, he finally braves up and goes home.
Hallee Bridgeman: A musical prodigy who, when she could no longer play music, turned her mind to physics and excelled.
What book did you wish you wrote?
Amy Matayo: Harry Potter (doesn’t everyone?) or Slammed by Colleen Hoover
Annalisa Daughety: Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos. It is so beautifully written…I was envious with every page.
Virginia Carmichael: I wish I’d written The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. Or anything by Neil Gaiman or Holly Black or Franny Billingsley or Scott Westerfeld.
Pepper Basham: Courting Morrow Little by Laura Frantz….and about 100 others.
Now, I know a lot of you aren’t writers – and that’s perfect! This blog is for readers! Of course, writers are readers, too, but our focus isn’t how to be a better writer (lots of great blogs out there for that). Our focus is on you! So… if you’re not a writer (or if you are), can you answer any of those questions about books you’ve read? Maybe the last sentence you read in that book you’ve got in front of you while we curl up in our cushy chairs next to the fire (have you seen all that snow out there?! Even our mountain lake is frozen over!) – or the most interesting character you remember reading about, the one that just won’t leave you.
All week long, you can enter the Rafflecopter drawing below – up to four comments a day count, so be sure to check back and see if you discover a new quirky character or a last line read that makes you want to find out how on earth they got to *that* point!
Grab a cup of coffee and thanks again for hanging out with us! Hope to see you again soon!
(All photos, except the cover for Courting Morrow Little, came from the “insert clip art” button in Microsoft Word…)
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When she's not writing about her imaginary friends, Carol Moncado is hanging out with her husband and four kids in the big yard of their southwest Missouri home, teaching American Government at a community college, reading, or watching NCIS. She's a member of ACFW and RWA, President and founding member for the MozArks ACFW group, and a category coordinator for ACFW's First Impressions.
Another great job, Carol.
Thanks, Ginger!
And over 40 comments yesterday!!! What a great start!!! I’m working today but it’s not NEARLY as taxing as Kindergarten ;). I’ll be in and out – and trying to come up with answers of my own…
The last sentence I wrote at the moment is: “It’s a date.”
Quirkiest character… Granny in the historical I wrote. I think. Or… Well, I have a manuscript where the h/h are writers. We’re a quirky bunch… :D
Wow, Carol, you are one busy lady! Quirky characters are so much fun to write. I have a group of old men in the Miller’s Creek novels who are known by everyone in town as “the old geezers.” (These guys put women to shame when it comes to town gossip.) One of them is Otis Thacker, the town grump, and another is Coot. (The only thing louder than Coot’s boisterous voice is his orange suspenders, stretched taut across his pot belly.) Makes me smile just to think about ’em, ’cause I know every small town has their own group of quirky “old geezers.” :0)
Cathy – they sound so fun!!!! One thing I’ve loved about getting these posts together is getting to know all of my InspyRomance ladies! A number of you I’d never met or never really chatted with before [while some are dear friends I’ve known for a long time]. I don’t think I’ve read a Cat Bryant book yet, but I’m gonna have to dig a Miller Creek one up from somewhere just for Otis and Coot! What a great name!
They’re a mess! And they were Otis and Coot from the get-go. That’s just who they are. (BTW, I’m also enjoying getting to know you and the other ladies. And another great job on today’s post!)
Congratulations to all of you! Beautiful website and great blog. I’m sure your cooperative effort will be good for all of you. Blessings!
So fun to get into the heads up the authors.
Oh, Danielle, I can only my speak for myself, but inside my head is a scaaaaarrrry place to be! ;)
This is so fun – and I agree that you’re doing a great job, Carol! I’m enjoying getting to know all the ladies here myself. :)
Another day of fun getting to you know you all!
I have to say secret baby isn’t one of my favourite topics infact I got to the point 2 years ago if I read one more book with a secret baby I may throw it at the wall. I read so many in a short space of time that I wondered if there were any other books out there.
Not sure what my fave is.
blogs looking good.
Hi!
Romance novels are actually pretty new to me. I’ve been a big reader most of my life, but i’ll admit that I only just read my first romance novel last year. But I’m broadening my horizons so I look forward to trying out some of the authors here. I love what you guys are doing :)
Hi! Glad to see some of my favorite authors here!
I think I like the marriage of convenience books. Not sure why these intrigue me so much. But truly I’m a sucker for anything romance, so it really doesn’t matter. =)
The last sentence that I read was “He’s a good man, and deserves to have love again.” Dandelions on the Wind ~ Mona Hodgson
I’m not really a writer, but I write a blog sometimes. And I usually just listen to what is on spotify at the moment. Not really picky. But if I’m reading a book I want it to be quiet. That being said, I always have a book with me to read during commercials. =)
Cathy and Danielle – the inside of my head is a bit like a pinchinko [sp?] machine. You could bounce all over the place!!!
Tima – I love marriage of convenience. I’m doing my best to come up with some realistic contemporary scenarios – SO MUCH EASIER to write them in the Old West or… well, anytime before about 50 years ago, I’d guess [maybe a bit longer than that now]. I actually tried writing a historical for that very reason. I think it turned out pretty decent, but not what I want to write :D.
Samantha! So glad you’ve found romance ;). I think it’s fair to say we’re all partial to it!
Rebecca – glad to see you!
Jenny – yeah – if any trope is overdone it can get to that point. It’s good to have a mix I think. Not only in our libraries in general but in publishing so readers have choices.
I love reading about authors and how they think. Thanks for these really fun blog posts. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow is about!
Carol, my great-grandmother was married to man 20 years her senior. I always thought it was odd as a child growing up. Then after she died, a cousin found letters to her parents where she referred to him as Mr. Dunn and mentioned how kind he’d been to her. Made my writer wheels spin furiously!
This looks like a great new blog. I’m interested to get to know you all better.
I was interested in Carol’s comment about going out to recess with her kindergarten class. I work as a special ed para at an elementary school in Kansas. We finally were able to go out for morning recess today after several days inside. It was cold but good for the kids to get outside (not as good for me!).
Carol, thanks for another great post! Loved reading everyone’s answers :)
Pam –
I’m not too far away from you! Depending on where you are in Kansas. I can cross the border in just over an hour (I think – I’ve never done it – I tend to head on into Oklahoma).
Yesterday, I was a sub for a kindergarten class. All of our five elementary schools are within sight of each other (Okay – one of them can’t be seen from the school I was at yesterday or the one next to it and vice versa, but it’s across the playground from one I could see…). The school I was at decided to go to outside recess yesterday afternoon. My kids were STOKED that they got outside recess today. TWICE! And my son (1st grade) said they got to stay out extra long since it’s not supposed to be nice enough again for at least a couple weeks. We think this was only the second time they’ve played outside this month (and most of last month they were inside, too – maybe all of it?!)
So glad to have you!!!
Narelle and Valerie let me know about this new site. Looks fantastic, ladies, and I enjoyed reading through your answers!
I recently finished a book that I really enjoyed, Secrets of the Heart by Jillian Kent. The last line is, “I’ll find him,” Witt said easily. “The difficulty will be stopping him before someone is murdered.” Needless to say, I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
I’m totally late to the party…this week’s book release is keeping me on my toes!
But, Carol…ask and you shall receive: “Merrilee Whren and Kristen Ethridge also make soundtracks for their books! Maybe, one of these days, they’ll share some of them with us!”
Guess what just went up on my blog this morning? The playlist to my new release, New Year’s Eve!
http://kristenethridge.com/2014/01/31/book-extras-the-sights-sounds-and-tastes-of-new-years-eve/
I liked the music picked out for the book your writing would be neat to hear what you picked out and for which book.
What’s your favorite romantic trope (eg. secret baby, star-crossed lovers, etc.)?
Reunited, best friends, rocky start, most all of them, as long as they are well written.
What is your favorite music to write to?
Varies, based on what I’m writing. I rarely listen to country, usually listen to some form of instrumental, either Christian or classical, but sometimes need to break out the Avalon!
What’s the LAST sentence of your WIP?
My current project is still all over the place. In fact, it’s all on computer “note cards”, as different scenes pop into my head. I’m a bit crazy like that. Once I see the entire story starting to take shape, I print the pages, literally cut apart, organize into order, then go back to the computer and write. Yes, I know that makes me insane. ROFL Sooo…what sentence I wrote last is anyone’s guess.
Who is your most unusual character (published or unpublished)?
All characters are still too early in their development to know for certain who is the most unusual.
What book did you wish you wrote?
Hahaha…right now, I just wish one of MY books was completed. ROFL