Six Sentence Sunday

Welcome to my SSS! For the next two months, I'm featuring my RT Award Nominee, the het paranormal/time travel-ish erotic romance, Two Lives in Waltz Time. I have a real soft spot for this one. It combines a lot of my favorite elements in romance - time travel, paranormal, snarky banter, and a lot of action. It's the story of Maddy Cardinale, an art restorer at a prestigious NYC museum, her co-worker, the irrepressible Cash Vinci, and what happens to them when Cash receives a mysterious painting. At the start of the story, Maddy has arrived for her midnight shift after getting caught in a downpour. Her best friend Ava is offering to help her out before Cash shows up.

It wasn't much—just a faded white T-shirt that said, “I'll show you my motherboard, if you show me your hard drive” and a pair of navy cut-off sweats. Maddy chewed at her lower lip as she held them up.

“No offense, but if I wear these, I'm going to look like a clown.”

Ava smiled brightly, steering Maddy so she was forced to look at her reflection again. “Yes, but you'll be a dry, non-transparent clown.”

“And suddenly I see the appeal.” 

To check out all the other six sentence contributions, head over to the official website.

The shoeman cometh

I love shoes. LOVE shoes. When I was in college, I worked for a year at a shoe store, which completely triggered my obsession ever since.

Meet my latest acquisitions. I just bought these yesterday.

Aren't they adorable? Both are suede, and they're in my two favorite colors, red and green. And one of the nicest parts about living in California is that I can wear the green ones pretty much all year round if I want.

The red ones are just plain hot. ;)

When shooting a gun just isn't enough

Plot holes. I hate 'em.

It's my own fault. I try to make things too complicated sometimes.

Okay, more than sometimes.

Last night, just as I was getting into the meat of a scene, I got stopped dead in my tracks by a question I hadn't asked myself yet about the plot. Well, not so much the question, but the answer to that question. Because that answer made much of what I was planning seem completely and utterly ridiculous. It unhinged the logic I needed to make it believable.

And if the reader doesn't believe what you're doing, you're pretty much sunk.

When my ex-writing partner and I would be plotting, she very often said something along the lines of, "Why doesn't he just shoot him?" Meaning, why was I suggesting a convoluted route to solving a problem rather than the more direct method. It's like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy is facing off with the sword-wielding ninja-like guy. It looks impossible to beat, until Indy pulls his gun out and shoots him.

Simple. Direct. Straight to the point.

Not my forte.

I'm actually a big fan of simple and direct when it's used effectively. But I like to think that people and situations are more complex than that. I hate the obvious. Add it all together and you get...

...a big hole in the internal logic of my current WIP.

So I took a break from it for the rest of the night to let my brain stew over how I could fix it. I'm halfway through the story, and the thought of going back to try and rework everything was almost enough to give me a panic attack. There had to be something I was missing, a different path I could from the step I was currently in the midst of.

I think I found it. I think. And I'll be at it again today with the new ideas in place.

I can guarantee, however, that I'll be advancing more carefully for the next 10k or so. I need to be sure that I've sufficiently covered the hole. I don't want to fall into another one.

Make it all matter

Yesterday, one of my favorite girl geeks had a spread on Lifehacker about how she worked. I'm talking about Felicia Day, one of the forces behind The Guild and Geek & Sundry. She's an actress, a writer, a producer, a reader, and so much more. Yes, I'll freely admit to having a major crush on her. I mean, who wouldn't? She's smart and adorable.

One of the things she said really hit home for me. When asked what the best advice she'd ever received was, she had this to say:

"The way you do one thing, is the way you do everything." I heard that in an acting class and it resonates with me every day. Especially when I'm feeling tempted to half-ass something.

I think that might be some of the smartest advice I've ever heard, the kind I'm definitely going to pass on to my kids. I mean, it's applicable across the board. Creative pursuits. Relationships. Education. Apply the same levels of respect and diligence to everything that matters in your life, and your odds for benefiting from them grow exponentially.

For writing, that can mean not cobbling a story together just for the sake of doing so. Invest in the characters and emotions in all of your work. Make every word matter.

Make everything matter.

Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower

Okay, so I'm not a photographer, lol. I thought about taking this picture way too late, and no amount of trying to crop it made it look any better. So I'm putting it up there in all its original not-so-glory, and letting the recipe speak for itself.

I made this for the first time Tuesday night, and let me tell you, my ten-year-son---who has turned up his nose at every variation on cauliflower I have ever thrown at him---ate every lick of this and asked when we'd have it again. That's a success in my house. Plus, it just tasted good.

PASTA WITH ROASTED CAULIFLOWER

INGREDIENTS
1 head cauliflower, cut into bite-size pieces
2 tbsp olive oil
5 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
Kosher salt and ground pepper
8 oz uncooked farfalle
1/2 cup black olives, coarsely chopped
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 450F.
2. Toss cauliflower with olive oil, garlic, and 1 teaspoon salt, and spread on a baking sheet.
3. Roast until golden and tender, about 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, boil salted water for pasta. Once it's boiling, add pasta and cook for designated time on package until done.
5. Reserve 1/4 cup of the pasta cooking water and set aside.
6. Drain pasta.
7. In large bowl, toss pasta, cauliflower, olives, lemon zest, and reserved pasta water. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

NOTES
Serves 4. It's light, but filling, and did I mention my picky son ate all the cauliflower in it?

At the end of the series

Remember that book I bitched about last week? The one where I hoped the author would fix what she wrote?

I finished the series yesterday. And yeah, she did fix it.

There's only one problem. I'm in serious mourning for the characters. I want to see more of them, damn it. This arc is completely done, so I don't want more story there, but you know, these characters were too vital for me not to be curious about the rest of their lives.

I'm not going to get it. I know that. That doesn't change how I feel.

I deliberately picked up a book from a different genre that is entirely standalone to read next. I'm not ready to get sucked into another series any time soon.

I have to get this one out of my head first.

It's all about momentum

The hardest part about being sick isn't necessarily the fact that my head and neck feel like they're getting chiseled from the inside out. It's the time I lose because I can't concentrate on my WIP. Because nothing kills a story faster than losing momentum.

I'm not one to write a lot of drafts. However, I'm also not one to do a ton of editing once I'm done. I fall somewhere in between, polishing a little as I go, slowing down when a scene takes a little bit longer. I literally cannot leave a blank space with a note, "Sex scene goes here," because for me, every scene counts toward the character's ultimate ending. How do I know that particular scene isn't going to be somehow crucial in a way I can't predict?

So sometimes I might slow down to get through a section of a story, but I always trudge forward. It's that energy that drives me on, that sense of being in the thick of it that dissipates when you have to leave a story for too long. I know writers who stop and go back to polish, polish, polish, and while I have tremendous respect for them and their work, that kind of approach completely kills my creative drive. I need that urgency that comes from the next moment in the story, and then the next one after that.

It's like making a lifechange, whether it's in adding exercise or modifying your diet. People often fail because they make a mistake, or get interrupted, and then decide to give up entirely. It's easy to throw in the towel on a story when you're not wrapped up in the urgency of it. You've had time to talk yourself out of it, or lose the fire.

It's all about the momentum. You can't reach where you're going if you're not always going forward.