Ideas to Story - The Writing Process

When I began asking other writers about their writing processes for classes I was teaching, I kept finding so many different answers.  I am always telling students not to worry if they feel their process might not work. The secret is to figure out what works for you.  Here are a couple more authors who have come up with their own writing process.

First we hear from Madeleine McDonald, author of The Rescued Heart, a newspaper columnist who made the change from non-fiction to fiction writing and made some discoveries about the writing process along the way.

Twenty years ago, in the days of print magazines, I was a freelance journalist. When I tried my hand at fiction, I had to learn a totally different craft. Instead of summarizing factual information for my readers, little by little, through a myriad of false starts and rejections, I learned to add mood and texture to the bare bones of a story idea. It took dedication, discipline and any number of rewrites. Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s trash. Fiction involves a partnership with the reader, and it’s a lot more fun to write.

My first romance novel, Enchantment in Morocco, was published in 2010, followed by The Rescued Heart in 2013.

Madeleine raises a good point. Writing fiction is much different from non-fiction, though I discovered during all my years of writing TV news, that it was possible to find plenty of ideas from those real life stories. So where do ideas come from?

Let’s  hear from A. Y. Stratton who writes romantic suspense for The Wild Rose Press about her writing process. Her latest work is Buried Secrets.

The truth is I don’t have a writing process, unless you call this a process:

I am on a walk and see a workman loading a truck in a neighbor’s driveway. The man is young and fit, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal his muscles. Nice muscles. The box he’s carrying must be heavy because he’s sweating and it’s cool out. And he has a tarp over the box. The tarp covers up the writing that might reveal what’s in the box. I begin to suspect he’s stealing something from the neighbor, a lawn mower that was sitting on the grass or something from the back yard. Maybe a TV on the screened porch? All he has to do was use a razor to slit the screen and bang!  The loot is in his truck and off he goes. I should always have paper and pencil in my pocket, so I can write down a license plate number.

I’m at a clothing store, waiting to try on some slacks. The woman in front of me steps into the first available dressing room with at least a half dozen outfits draped over her arms. She’s in the dressing room for a long time. I suspect she’s putting all the items on beneath her other clothes.

When I can’t go to sleep at night, I make up stories, adventures with thieves like the workman and the woman, lovers like the ones I see whispering to each other in bars. And pretty soon I have a story. The workman is really a detective spying on the drug king who lives across the street from the construction site.  The woman in the department store is hiding from the man who has been following her. Why is he following her? To track down her parents who never returned from their vacation in Cuba.

As I began my latest published novel, Buried Secrets, I imagined two people hiding in a closet while a murder takes place in the bedroom. I loved writing that chapter. I had to figure out what they were doing there. The man was going to be my hero, so he had to be there for a good reason. And the woman had to be on a quest too, so that took some tricky plotting. Then I had to figure out how they would escape.

I go to a lot of Milwaukee Brewers games. While I’m there I wonder if the handsome rookie playing first base has a girlfriend back home in Arkansas. Maybe he has one in Milwaukee too. The women fans swamp him at the autograph sessions. He falls for a wealthy city girl who waits for him after the games. Who invites him out to her father’s boat on Lake Michigan and introduces him to her friends. I imagine her ex-boyfriend is jealous and plots to get the ball player drunk so he can plant drugs on him. And maybe… I really like this idea. I wonder what will happen next.

Conclusion? I am a confirmed *pantser.

*A person who writes stories by the seat of her pants, without an outline or a character list.  

So whether it’s a pact with your readers or writing by the seat of your pants, the secret to the right writing process is there is no “secret.” Find out what works for you and go for it.

If you have a writing process you’d like to share, please email me at rebecca.grace@aol.com. I’d love to hear from you or feature your process on Write That Novel.

The Writing Process

This month our focus is on the writing process. I started thinking about it because I am currently teaching a class at Savvy Authors to new writers where we start from scratch. Every time I teach one of these classes where we start from scratch I am amazed at how many different methods writers use to get their novel started. I decided to ask some of my published friends how they got started and this month I am posting some of the answers. We start off today with Rolynn Anderson, the author of the new book, Lie Catchers.


How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific method?
My process is haphazard at best, in the beginning, but as I proceed with the plot, I pick characters with purpose: people who act as foils to my hero/heroine, and individuals who trip them up…people who push the action and challenge the h/h.  For LIE CATCHERS, I was charmed by the fact that in Petersburg, Alaska, Norwegian men, displaced from their homeland, traveled to Alaska to become fishermen.  Some of them married Tlingit (native) women.  In a gift store in Petersburg, Alaska, I met the owner, who happened to be a “Tlingwegian.”  She was blonde and blue-eyed but with a warm complexion.  My heroine was born with that encounter.

 
Do your characters come before the plot?

Not a linear process, for sure.  As I develop the plot that challenges my h/h, I grab new characters off the ‘shelf,’ adding to the complexity of the plot.  I like to surprise the reader and challenge myself as a writer with “out of the box” tactics.  In LIE CATCHERS, for instance, I found out that Petersburg, Alaska, was burdened with a 1932 unsolved homicide.  What’s more, the man murdered was an important Chinese man…in a Norwegian town.  That caught my interest.  I wondered if I could solve an old crime and a new one, comparing the way crimes were handled in 1932 to how we work them today…and somehow tie in both crimes.  The challenge was too delicious to pass up! 

 
Do you know how the story will end before you begin? 

Absolutely not.  I may not know how it’s going to end before I’m 85% into the book.  I like surprise endings, so I tend to work to the denouement and surprise myself with a turnabout climax.  One thing I do know about the ending of a stand-alone novel…the h/h are stretched, learn and grow, finding that together, their skills, love and verve are unbeatable.

Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of plots sitting around?

Settings drive me to write a book even more than character or plot ideas.  I cruised to Petersburg, Alaska, in my trawler two years ago.  Had never been there before.  Did not know the town was full of Norwegians (my heritage).  Was not aware Norwegians settled in Alaska to fish (as did the Russians, etc.).  LIE CATCHERS was born out of my surprise and delight in discovering this charming fishing town, full of people who looked like me, ate food I liked, said ‘uff da’ the way I say it.  Okay, there’s a bit of narcissism here, but finding this town, set below the LeConte Glacier, really got my writing juices flowing! 

 
Where do you do your research?

Books and online.  I bought books about Petersburg in the town’s bookstore and connected with people in Petersburg to help me answer some questions about the town, but most of my research (especially about the 1932 murder) was done on line.  I e-mail individuals regularly, as well.  I have a cadre of experts I consult about forensics, for instance.  Don’t know what I’d do without all that free advice!

Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?

I’m a pantser through and through, which takes more time, but is more satisfying to me.  I like to be surprised every morning when I get up to write.  I never know where my writing will take me each day…and I love that feeling!

Thank you, Rolynn for telling us about your writing process.  Can you provide a blurb and information about the Lie Catchers?

LIE CATCHERS

Buy site: http://amzn.com/B00HJDS1LG

Website: http://rolynnanderson.com/         

Blurb: Two unsolved murders will tear apart an Alaska fishing town unless a writer and a government agent reveal their secret obsessions.

Treasury agent Parker Browne is working undercover in Petersburg, Alaska to investigate a money scam and a murder. His prime suspect, Liv Hanson, is a freelance writer struggling to save her family’s business. Free spirited, full of life, and with a talent for catching liars, she fascinates Parker.
Trying to prove she’s a legitimate writer who cares about Petersburg’s issues, Liv pens a series of newspaper articles about an old, unsolved murder. When her cold case ties in with Parker’s investigation, bullets start to fly.

Parker understands money trails, and Liv knows the town residents. But he gave up on love two years ago, and she trusts no one, especially with her carefully guarded secret. If they mesh their skills to find the killers, will they survive the fallout?

A 5 STAR REVIEW:

A Rich, Intriguing Story December 27, 2013-Amazon Kindle

By Roben

I received an ARC of this book, and was thrilled to read it. I adored the setting, and the quirkiness of the characters in the small Alaska town. It made me want to go to Alaska. That kind of authenticity comes from an author who knows her setting, who understands its people, and can then convey that knowledge richly. Anderson does just that. Her mystery/suspense, is carefully woven with the right amount of history to engage the reader, and enough mystery to keep the reader guessing. This was my first novel by Rolynn Anderson, and I would definitely read this author again.

EXERPT:

       Parker touched her shoulder.

       “May I have this dance?”

       Liv twirled to find him so close she could smell beer on his breath. A hint of cologne. Had he shaved recently? Smiling at the thought he might have done that for her, she gave him her right hand and rested her left hand on his shirt collar, intent on finding a way to  touch his chin to answer the shaving question. But the shave-or-not dilemma was a minor one.  She’d already screwed up with one man tonight; would she make a wrong move with Parker, too?  

      She drew her thumb along his chin and sighed at the silky smoothness. Forget the man’s mouthful of queries and his intense gaze. Just dance. While the singer lamented over loosing her mind, Liv’s body disappeared into Parker’s. Soothed, she was and aroused at the same time, aware Parker knew not to use words. A close shave and a close dance spoke volumes. She was the silent one, afraid to say what might start an avalanche of sentences, lowering her guard, exposing too much to the wrong person at the worst time. This man who held her was a cop and she was on his list of murder suspects. Even if Parker was unorthodox as an investigator, he still held the power of his profession. The reason for his offer to dance wasn’t clear, was it?

       The strumming ended, emptying the room of the singer’s piercing ballad.

       “Good night, Liv. And thank you for the dance.”

       Parker kissed her on the forehead, walked out the door and closed it quietly, taking with him all the unasked questions she would never answer.

Thanks again, Rolynn for sharing your new book with us as well as your writing process.

What about you? Please feel free to share how you initially start planning a new book.  

Just Do it

by Becky Martinez

Just do it.

That’s a great sounding saying, but how easy is it to do that? From losing weight to starting an exercise program to writing a book, what does it take to “just do it?”

It sounds so promising when you say it, when you’re thinking about it. Then you’re all charged up and excited to get going. Maybe you are at a conference or out with a group of writing friends talking about your book and brainstorming ideas and you know exactly what you want to do.

Then the regular day kicks in.  You go back to the real life. How can you continue to “just do it” when you’re back to your normal routine.

The truth is you might want to do it, but you can’t just start and automatically make it happen.   Even if you start out filled with anticipation and excitement immediately, how likely are you to do the same thing tomorrow and the next day and the next until you actually can say you are just doing it and you will continue?

How can you make it happen? There are a number of ways to start building that daily chore into a daily routine or habit.

Try baby steps. One thing that I have done successfully in the past is to begin small.  Take that story idea and start developing more than just the vague thought about a man faced with proving his innocence in the murder of his wife, or a woman who wakes up 500 years in the future and isn’t sure how she got there.  Those might be great premises, but what do you do to come up with a story behind them?

Well, you might start developing your character more or pushing that plot a little bit forward. Who is she? What does she want?  What does he need to do to solve the crime? Who is he and who was his dead wife? These are baby steps that can when answered can move your story up another level. 

Keep going. Try doing those baby steps again tomorrow. Continue to develop that character or your plot. What is the first obstacle he or she is going to face now that she is in the future. Is she mistaken for the commander of a space ship? Start bringing in challenges or small new problems for each of your characters. Is your hero’s blood on his wife’s shirt she was wearing when she died? 

Start to own it.  Make it as steady practice to keep considering where you want that story to go or what you want that character to do. Begin to look for ways to get your characters out of their scrapes or to put them into new ones. Develop your setting more. Where does that murder story take place? What about the world where your heroine finds herself? Give it more depth until you can begin to truly see it.

Fight against setbacks.  Nothing is going to come easily or immediately and you will eventually be hit with something unexpected. That might happen to you or your characters. You’re run into a dead end with your new world. You have no idea how to propel someone into the future? What would make such a thing happen? How can you explain that to the reader? Does that obstacle make you want to give up? How can you fight that?

Plan for chaos or be ready for it.  That’s one way to fight back. Have an idea of how before you set out and just begin blindly writing the story. It goes back to item number two  and three.  If you keep developing and owning your story, you will begin to see some of the things that might happen and plan for them. 

Don’t let the doldrums get you down either. Sometimes even the ordinary can bring you to a standstill. You find yourself in the sagging middle of the book where the same old stuff is occurring. How many aliens can this woman battle? How many times can this man face another challenge that puts him at the murder scene.  

Shake things up. This might be a good time to look at some of those early challenges you came up with earlier, but didn’t use. Clear your brain and then come up with some sort of twist. Perhaps someone else from the past comes into the heroine’s new world or perhaps the husband finds out his wife was having an affair and that man might be the killer. Look for a twist to bring new life into the humdrum story. 

Recall past successes.  If you’re still having trouble making that story come alive, think about how you dealt with this in the past? What did you do other times that got you through the tough points?  Think about what worked before and see if you can apply it again. Sometimes it works and sometimes it gets tougher.

Consider your overall plan. What is working for you and what is a problem area. Write that down or keep it in mind. Are you coming up short in the character department or in your plotting? What needs more work?

Know where you want to finish. Whether it is the ending of the story, where she conquers the final alien leader or your hero proves his innocence and uncovers the real killer, think about where you want that story to end. That can go a long way toward helping you through some of those earlier steps when you get bogged down or you aren't sure what you want to happen next. Knowing how you want to end helps you know which direction to go.

Have you thought about what your writing process is? Now may be a good time to examine what you are doing that is working and what needs changing.  Come up with a process that you can use again and again.  And when that gets old, then change it up again. Be strong enough to follow the program, but always be ready to be flexible.

In the next month I am going to be going through my own writing process and bringing in some of the other processes used by other writers that have been successful for them. Think about ways to develop your own writing process.


Maybe then you’ll be ready next time you just want to “do it.”

 

Fighting Writer's Block with your Characters

by Becky Martinez

Last Saturday at the Colorado Romance Writers tea for Readers a reader asked the writers at our table about writer’s block and it got me to thinking.

How do you handle writer’s block?  Don’t we all feel like we suffer from it every so often? I don’t know about writer’s block, but I feel like there is something stubborn inside me every so often that holds me back from sitting down at the keyboard and keeps me from writing.

Often attending an event like the reader’s tea helps. Spending time with other writers or listening to what readers like about books is enough to give me lots of ideas or get the creative juices flowing.

At CRW TEA

But other times, my muse can be stubborn. How do I know when that’s a problem? Easy, I find myself doing things like cleaning up my office area or, heaven forbid, running the vacuum every room in the house. If I get to deep cleaning the kitchen, I know I’m in trouble. Time to put down the dust cloth and dish rag and head for my computer.

Usually though, it is easy to do that. For the past thirty years I’ve been sitting down at my computer first thing in the morning and that was even before it had an internet connection. I really enjoyed the idea of a being able to write early in the morning without having the neighbors in my apartment building hearing me at my typewriter.

Think of it as spending time with your characters. Take them out of the plot if you have to and just write a short story around them.  When I think of spending time with my characters, I think of bestselling Author Robert Crais telling us at a writing convention how he loves to spend time with his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Wouldn’t you just love to hang out with those guys too?  He gets to do it whenever he feels like it.  Mystery writer Margaret Coel says the same thing. She enjoys checking on what her characters Father John O’Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden are doing today.

Spend some time with them and ask what their problems are, and you may find yourself caught up in your book again.

Try another project besides your novel, even if it’s a novella or short story. I’ve always been able to work on several things at a time and people ask how I can do that. Well, it’s one thing that keeps me from getting writer’s block.  When I find myself at a dead end with one story, I put it aside for the moment and pull up another one and begin work on that. For instance, when I feel like a shopping expedition, I might work on my Blues mystery where anchorwoman Kimberly has plenty of time these days for shopping and she still has a bigger desire than her budget.

If I feel like traveling to the Northwest, I work on my sequel to Deadly Messages and spend time with Lisa Romero who is on the run in the San Juan Islands.

 

Finally, if I find myself ready for the old West, I go back in time to 1880 and Johnson Mesa near Trinidad, Co, where I am setting my first western romance.

Will these two ideas work for everyone? Maybe not, but they are there for you to consider. New projects, old characters – both can help to get you back into your writing.

Bad Guys and Gals -- How We love to hate them!

by Sue Viders and Becky Martinez

Villains... those bad guys and gals that you hate, but remember. In fact the really great villains are sometimes remembered more than the other characters in the story. How does a character get to be such so revered, so infused with the love/hate emotions we have?It’s because they have one or more of the following motivations:

Revenge - the powerful need to “get back” at someone for those wrongs, whether only perceived or real

Power - wanting control over almost anything, another person, another company, or another nation or country

Greed - the overpowering lust for money or “things”

Perhaps they have a religious or political agenda... sigh, don’t get me started on the politics in Washington or anywhere else in the world, and in some cases the overriding actions of the villain  is caused by a simple case of insanity.

Then we have the comic book characters and the supernatural creatures, such as the vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts and all those aliens from other planets and universes. I do so love some of them. Take the Joker and many of the “thugs” Marvel Comics have brought to the big screen.

However we do want the “good” guys to win, but without the “bad” guys there really is no story, no conflict, no reason to read the book.

As a writer we absolutely need the evil guys and gals for the following reason:

Without a villain there simply is no suspense in a story, no conflict, no need to keep turning the pages to see how the hero overcomes and defeats the villain.

If you do your character carefully, the reader will remember the villain even more than the hero. Let’s consider the follow characters:

Count Dracula... do you have any idea who the hero was in these stories? I don’t.

Audry II from the Little Shop of Horrors. Great plant. Can you even remember the little guy who tried to kill her?

Crulla De Vil was more of a main character in 101 Dalmations. Again, do you remember the other characters as well?

Then there are those villains, secondary to the main protagonist, who also stay in our minds:

The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wonderful World of OZ. who we want to really get caught so Dorothy can go home.

Dr. Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes books, who gave Sherlock a rough time

What about loved Hans Gruber in the Die Hard film or  Katharine Parker in Working Girl? We really wanted them to get theirs...

Then there are the “turn-coats”... who at first we think are the bad guys but turn out to be a good guy. For example take Sam Gerard, from The Fugitive. He  was a good guy who seemed like a bad guy but then really turned out to be good, but through most of the movie he really, really wanted to capture Dr. Richard Kimball. 

And think about those villains who can turn into a franchise all on their own?

Dr. Hannibal Lector was a bit player in Thomas Harris’ book Red Dragon, though he was pretty spooky as he guided serial killer Francis Dollarhyde, but then he played a larger role in Silence of the Lambs when he assisted FBI trainee Clarice Starling, but he was still a vicious killer who would do anything to escape. And then he hit "star" villain status when Anthony Hopkins brought him to life on the screen. Suddenly readers and movie goers wanted more of this crazed character, and the rest, as they say is history. More books followed as well as a TV series.

 

Bottom line - Every story needs a villain, from Lady Macbeth to Voldemort. And you, as their creator, need to know how to write them.

We’re going to be presenting a special class on villains next week. Please join us as we talk about how you can come up with villains who can chill and thrill your readers, and perhaps – like Hannibal Lector – clamoring for more.  For more information on our work shop, go to  RMFW.org and click on Events.
 
What about you? Who are your favorite villains?

The Self Publishing Journey

It takes a village...
Hillary Clinton, when she was the First Lady, wrote a book entitled... “It Takes A Village...” referring to the concept that it takes many individuals and groups outside of the immediate family to raise a child.

So it is with writing. For after you have written that book, what are you going to do with it?

There are two ways to look at publishing a tome and the bottom line is they both revolve around money. Well, what doesn’t these days?

•   Traditional publishing - usually in print form has both the pros and the cons... doesn’t everything.
•   Pros - they do it all for you, the proofing, editing, design a cover, print it and to some degree marketing
•   Cons - you don’t make much money

•   Self-publishing - an ebook
•   Pros - you make more money and you are in charge of all the details along the way
•   Cons - you have to spend a lot of money before you can make any as putting together your team requires a lot of energy (you have to kiss a lot of frogs in the way of editors, etc. who don’t really know what they are doing), a lot of time and a bit of money

And any writer who thinks they can simply write a few words, have a few friends edit and proof it, put together a do-it-yourself cover and then click it up onto the web as an e-book, is sadly mistaken.

It doesn’t work that way. 

Well, it does work that way (anyone can put up an e-book) but it doesn’t work well. Especially if you are in for the long run, in terms of fame and continuing sales.

It takes a team to polish the book and make it truly presentable and ultimately readable and worthwhile. You need to “wow” the reader so they will come back and buy the next book.

It takes a team if you are going the self-publishing route, which is what I am doing.

Okay what does this team consist of? Well, I don’t know about other writers, but it took the following to get my guides up and running.

•   Proofing
•   while it’s great to have some Beta readers who will find some of the problems, (usually these are just your friends) it is wise to find someone who works in the genre of the piece, that knows what they are doing and can catch those little spelling errors and stray typos that we, the author, always miss,

•   Editing
•   again, not your sister-in-law. A professional editor is needed, someone who can see the “big picture” and realize that “this sentence, paragraph, chapter, section” actually belongs somewhere else in the project whether a nonfiction how-to book or a steamy romance or mystery.

•   An artist or illustrator (very, very important)
•   someone who has a track record in your genre... most books are bought because of the cover... believe it...

•   Someone to format the words
•   once again, a formatter who works in your genre. If you are only doing fiction, this is rather easy, but if you are doing let’s say a children’s book or an instruction book with illustrations or charts, you need a formatter who has done this before and really knows how to lay it all out.

•   A webmaster
•   because you will also need, if you haven’t done this before, a Facebook account, Twitter, and all those other social happenings, with new ones popping up daily, a blog of some kind, a way to collect e-mails, and perhaps a Q and A column plus a daily inspirational section and if you are really savvy, a place to sell your specialized items... and the list goes on and on...

•   And finally it’s also nice to have or at least occasionally talk to a business manager who could give you some financial advise and perhaps oversee the whole project. About once a month I have breakfast with mine and he gives me ideas and suggestions I would never have thought of on my own.

Bottom line, it does take a “village”... a team, working together, to produce a great book - a book that really reads great, looks great and in the long run will make you a great deal of money.

Sue Viders -- who has done both - been with a big NY traditional publishing company and who is now striking out on her own with a new series of writing guides

Growing an Idea

By Sue Viders

And they multiplied like rabbits...

Okay fellow writers, here is an update on my writing guides for my Weekend Writer series of ebooks that are going to hit the Amazon Kindle shelf in June.

In the beginning, I had the idea of developing a series of six short writing books built on the premise that in order to write a really good nonfiction piece you needed first an idea, then you should have a firm grasp on where the story was taking place and who the storyteller was and of course, how to write the darn thing along with some clues on how to polish it up so it was ready to be presented to the world.

And a pyramid of building blocks was to visually show the concept of how each of these concepts were necessary to complete any writing project.

Well, this concept grew. And grew... and grew until now I have 36 books. 

First it simply started as a way to help nonfiction writers with their ideas. A short book based on my writing classes that would help the writer pin down their idea and assist them in turning this budding idea into something that would flourish into a great book. But of course, the idea is just the first step, more books were needed.

 As the pyramid of blocks finally emerged I felt I was on to something great for all the nonfiction writers in the world, as there was nothing like this out there in the great wide world of writing books. My guides were short, full of bullets, packed with practical suggestions and simple to follow.

So it seemed logical to take the six building blocks of nonfiction writing and expand it to fiction writers.

Okay, now instead of six guides, I had twelve.

Over the next few months I “chugged” along, a bit here, a bit there, when one of my former co-authors, who loved this idea, joined me.

Suddenly there was a furry of activity. We met every Friday and had a working breakfast. The first book was slightly revised. The cover was finalized. Fonts were chosen. 

And the writing was coming along when suddenly, as the first guide was nearly completion,we realized that in all my classes I given my writing students a ton of worksheets to help them organize their ideas.

Worksheets. Of course.

But let’s not call them that. Worksheets can be scary to a beginning writer. But everyone learns different. Some writers love filling them in, while others, secretly admit to at least looking them over.

We came up with the title “Pathways”... which of course are worksheets, but at least the word is not so scary. Grin.

Okay. Each guide now has an accompanying guide called Pathways... so instead of 12 books we now have 24...

Of course the pathway books need a new cover design. Onward.

Time was spent reading the blogs of successful e-book authors, who all were saying the same thing. Don’t be a one-book wonder. To make money you need lots and lots of product.

So... following their advice, we needed lots and lots of product. Hmm, what could we do to create more product?

Hmm. More books. My mind boggled at the thought when suddenly we had the answer.

A bundle.

Put the two guides together as a third product. We’ll combine the teaching book with the worksheets and sell it at a reduced price.

Okay, now I have, lets see, first I had six books, then we added fiction, so there were 12 books... each 12 got it’s own pathway book, so now there are 24 books, and by adding a bundle to each group... wow... 36 guides are coming out in the next two years.

Let’s not send me any rabbit jokes, please.

You can expect the first guide, The Building Blocks of Nonfiction - The IDEA - Guide 1, to be up on Amazon June 1st.

It’s sister book, IDEA, Pathways, Worksheets and Exercises for the Nonfiction Writer will be out July 1st and the Bundle, tentatively entitled, Two for One, (still working on that) hopefully out in August.

Once these three have their covers in place, format secure, the rest will follow quickly.  I’m hoping for one a month.

Should you like to be a “Beta” reader for any of these first few books, please let me know and I’ll be delighted to send you a review copy.

sueviders@comcast.net