Are We in Prison? by Andrea Downing

When I realized my deadline for writing this post was looming, I dredged up what choices I thought I had. I’d just been in Wyoming for a month and wondered if I should share my photos with you all, but a number of them have already hit the pages of Facebook and Instagram so I nixed that. Then, of course, I had just attended a conference in Tucson so considered words of wisdom emanating from that experience, but so many of us have already talked about our conferences, I also let that idea go. Next thought to enter my mind was that I’ve returned to the traumas of selling an apartment—in NYC VERY traumatic waiting for Board approval on top of everything else—and buying a house, but all that is better left in the recesses of my mind.

     And then I was reading a wonderful book, Irene Sandell’s River of the Arms of God (highly recommended!) in which two women, one hundred years apart, are imprisoned in different ways. Well, that got me thinking! Prisons! As Sandell made me realize, not all prisons have bars. While one of the women in her book is in something of a ‘gilded cage,’ it struck me that her husband was as much imprisoned as she was, and at his own hand. He felt the compulsion to behave in a certain way and maintain his inheritance in the same manner his forebears had done, and there was no one else cracking the whip. How many of us do something similar to ourselves?

A friend and I have been moaning the usual array of rants against publishing and promoting the last few months. You know the kind I mean if you’re an author or work in publishing.  It’s the ‘gotta get that book out,’ gotta meet that deadline, gotta get that blog written or that Facebook post out, put something up on Pinterest or Instagram, show off my new cover, arrange that book signing, 'like' my friend’s page, comment on that author’s post, announce that five star review, and so on that we all have got ourselves into. In other words, it’s pressure we put on ourselves.  And to be perfectly frank, I don’t think I can stop! I can let things go for a while, but then when time permits, it’s a Murphy’s Law situation:  if there is time to be filled, it will certainly be filled (and probably something will go wrong as well!).

Behind this all is the love of writing, of course.  We want to create and get those words down on the page, hell or high water. There is that ‘something’ inside us that persistently nags us to write and if we’re not writing, we’re not happy.  Once that happens, of course, the rest follows. We’ve all thrown away the keys.

But I am curious:  do you feel you have other prisons you’ve created for yourself?

And so:  I just got a lovely 4* review from InD’Tale Magazine for Bad Boy, Big Heart, available at https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Boy-Big-Heart-Book-ebook/dp/B072MKG48B/:

“Bad Boy, Big Heart” is a fast paced short story with such beautiful descriptions of the Wyoming countryside, readers will feel as if they have been swept into the very pages of the book. One cannot help but instantly fall in love with the characters, feel their connection and share the struggle they face. .  . the writing is beautifully vivid and the characters likable, with a plot that any romance lover could easily sink their teeth into, especially if one enjoys a quick, enjoyable read.”

Dahlia Gosney

PET PEEVES

If you’re an author, you read.  And if you read as an author, you’re bound to be more critical than Jane Doe who’s just picked up a book for enjoyment.  Or maybe not….  I’m not sure because I’ve taught English Language at university level, been an editor, and worked for Simon and Schuster so being critical is really ingrained in me.  You can probably therefore guess that my pet peeves include bad grammar and lousy punctuation.  Over the years, I’ve loosened up on the amount of commas necessary in a sentence for clarity, but I remain fairly strict.  I’ve been told that in fiction we should use emdashes instead of semi-colons, but that doesn’t sit well with me:  an emdash is for an interrupted thought; a semi-colon is for a secondary idea of the same thought expressed in the sentence.  Yup, it gets complicated.

But now, I’ve got new pet peeves.  I hate, hate, hate anachronisms in historical books.  For me, it’s sloppy research and there’s no excuse for it.  When writing an historical book I work with the on-line etymological dictionary.  Of course, you have to think, ‘does this word need to be looked up?’ and mistakes happen.  But did someone really think a woman would refer to a man’s abs in the 1880s?  Or discuss accessorizing a dress? And then there’s referring to a song in the 1860s when the song wasn’t written until the 1920s. But then maybe I shouldn’t be so annoyed about that; I’ve been watching the series, ‘Underground’ about the underground railway prior to the Civil War, and they keep playing ‘Summertime’ penned by Gershwin in 1935.

Someone once criticized a book of mine because I had a character briefly speak. like. this. We do it to emphasize what the character is saying and how he/she says it.  Personally, I don’t see a problem but this obviously annoyed my reader. My publisher has a stipulation that the hero and heroine should generally meet within the first four pages.  An author friend told me she disliked books where the h/h weren’t described early on, and another author wrote she hated reading about "a single tear" making its way. She demanded, 'who has a single tear?' And then we ask ourselves what’s the inner conflict?  What’s the goal/motivation/conflict of the story?  Is there character development? Does the story move along and make sense—is it properly constructed?  Goodness, there’s a minefield out there of things to dislike. And that’s before we even get to the love/sex scenes and how they’re described and their length (OF THE SCENE!)

But as I’ve learned from being in three anthologies now, some things will eat at one reader and not in the least bother the next, while the book will hit the wall in the room of yet another reader.

So what are your pet peeves?  What do you absolutely hate to find in a story when reading, whether it is in the basics of good English or the construction of the story itself.  And please let me know if any of them are in Bad Boy, Big Heart. 

I aim to please.

Available at https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Boy-Big-Heart-Book-ebook/dp/B072MKG48B/

 http://andreadowning.com   

           https://www.facebook.com/writerAndreaDowning     

HELLO EVERYONE!! by Andrea Downing

So there I was, innocently stepping into the hallway outside my apartment to put something in the garbage. And I tripped…

Snap! I broke my shoulder. In two places.  And then the call came…

Okay, so being asked to join The Roses of Prose wasn’t quite the kind of ‘call’ I’d been hoping for, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.  You know the call I wanted:  Steven Spielberg ringing to say Loveland would make a great television series and was I willing to dash off eight two-hour scripts. That sort of thing.  But this will do, and I’m very pleased to be here.  Except for the shoulder, of course.  Sort of makes typing difficult.  My two hands work perfectly fine, only trouble is that one of them is now located in the general area of my belly button. To see what I mean, bring one arm tightly down your side (it can be the less used arm—mine is, but give me a break—not THAT kind of break!—this is tough enough).  Now, the lower part of your arm with hand has to be at right angle across your stomach. Now tie it up nice and tight. And NOW see what you can do.  Try taking a shower and washing your underarms. (for those of you grossed out, I fling the washcloth….never mind)   How about getting your bra done up?  Washing your face…and rinsing it. (Warning: have mop to hand)  Flossing? Now for some more fun, throw Percocet into the mix. Once you discover what day it actually is, take that shower again, and when you realize, as I did, that you just put shampoo on your washcloth instead of body wash, try not to then put hair conditioner on the washcloth—as I did.

Life is full of surprises, and being asked to join the Roses of Prose was one of the better ones this week.  Thank you, ladies, I’m very pleased to be here. 

And for those of you out there who don’t know me, I write both contemporary and historical western romance (the apartment is in New York, the mind is in Wyoming).  You can also find me on my Website Facebook Twitter  Goodreads  and Amazon

 My latest, a novella Bad Boy, Big Heart, has just come out in an anthology titled Come Love a Cowboy. Only 99c for 8 stories by best-selling and award-winning authors, it’s available at http://www.amazon.com/Come-Love-Cowboy-Kathleen-Ball-ebook/dp/B01D5876UK/  

Here’s the blurb for Bad Boy, Big Heart :    

     When New Yorker K.C. Daniels heads to Wyoming for a summer job, she wants nothing more than to fit in with the staff of the Lazy S Ranch. Yearning to be independent of her mom and dad, and have a taste of the west before she starts her Master's degree, getting involved with a cowboy is the last thing on her mind—especially when she’s greeted with warnings about ‘Bad Boy’ Chay Ridgway.

     High school dropout Chay Ridgway sees summer as his time to be a rodeo star and win a girl in his life, while facing the responsibilities he has for his father. Although working to bring in cash to help his dad, he's never had a problem finding a woman who's happy to be that summer love—until K.C. Daniels appears on the scene.

     As two different worlds collide in a season that will end all too soon, is this going to be another summer romance or a love that will last for years?

And a little taste to tempt you:

“I…I’ve been told things about you. I don’t want to be a summer romance. And I do have to leave at the end of the summer, and the summer is fast fading.”

“It’s only June, K.C.” He hesitated before, “What sort of things were you told?”

K.C. looked around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “That you like to…to date the girls who work in the office because we leave at the end of the summer, and it makes for a clean break.”

“True.”

K.C. blinked at his honesty.

“But it doesn’t mean it will always be the case.” Chay fidgeted on his chair. “What time do you get off? Let’s go for a ride. You do ride, don’t you?”

“I ride…English.”

“Oh, yeah. Bob said something about that. That can be fixed. So what time?”

“Five-thirty weekdays, Saturday noon as long as the check-outs are complete. Sunday is hit or miss; I work virtually all day until all the check-ins are done.”

“Hmmm. I’m taking out a pack trip tomorrow, back Friday. Meet me down at the barns as soon as you’re off Saturday.” Chay swung out of the chair and stood, then leaned in and stabbed one more bite of cheesecake. “Saving you calories,” he said. “You’d be amazed at what goes into this.” And with that, he stuffed the piece in his mouth and was off.

K.C. sat there, turning over Chay’s words in her mind: ‘It doesn’t mean it will always be the case.’ Yet the fact was, her Master’s degree meant two years…oh, what was she thinking? That was way ahead and, while she knew she was deeply attracted to Chay, it didn’t necessarily mean…. She stared at the remaining cheesecake on her plate, then pushed it away.

What was ‘the case’?