My Writing Process (A Blog Tour)

Thanks to Reese Ryan (< please visit her site), I get to grab the metaphorical baton and provide a stop on a blog hop. This should be short & sweet.

I have to answer 4 questions. Let's get started!

1) What am I currently working on?
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
3) Why do I write what I do?
4) How does your writing process work?

Hm. Pronoun switch on question 4. Sometimes it's not fun to be a grammar nazi.

Let's mash this all together. This year is special for me. At some point early in 2013 I looked at the "last opened" dates on my novel files and was SHOCKED!!!! with multiple exclamation points at how VERY long it had been since I'd last worked on the stories I considered important to get published toot sweet.

Also, for the past year our local writers' group, HCRW, and other sources had been stressing getting our work processed in a professional manner in order to stand out from the self-published crowd and make sure we were presenting our best work.

So beginning last December, I've been re-issuing old books, this time professionally: with pro covers, pro formatting, pro editing, with actual, bought-for-me ISBNs (those are inventory-type numbers) and copyrights. (And lots of money doled out to pay for all this.) I also planned to finish the first major arc of my Three Worlds superhero fantasy series. I've given myself one year to get everything (including website) in order. With Vol. 3 I'm running six weeks behind schedule, but all should still get done by December.

My writing process is thus different this year, as most of this is editing mode. The unpublished books were sitting already written, but they were written long ago and in need of serious updating of style (and tech) as well as cutting. Usually my goal is to write for one hour each day. Most people have daily page count goals, and perhaps when I retire I'll be able to do that, but for now I go by time. On difficult days I employ a timer. On really difficult days I disconnect from the Internet.

My Three Worlds work may be contemporary romance, but it's got these superheroes in it. I like to take über-powerful heroes and ask, "How would they work in the real world?" It's kind of like The Incredibles, but more so. As a fan from way back of superhero comics, I have favorite kinds of superheroes, favorite kinds of superhero organizations, but always thought they weren't operating logically. Now I can make up my own. My organizations have money problems, PR units, med techs who accompany the action teams, transportation problems, and lots of cool gadgets. The biggest problem with that last item is that our own tech is advancing so rapidly that I have to keep changing things to make them futuristic.

A few others write superhero romance, I've noticed, but these are more romance-oriented than mine (though this first arc is pretty romantic), and most of the ones I've read haven't set up as intricate a universe as I have to. I'm settling back for a long series! Also, Three Worlds has a lot of paranormal/New Age stuff in it: telepathy, ghosts, angels, "how do we relate to the universe?" questions.

That's because I'm really interested in that kind of thing. I've always been fascinated with the paranormal, and even attended a psychic school for 3 years way back when. These days I'm a member of the Rhine Research Center Book Club, which is immersing me in the latest scientific explorations of psychic phenomena. It's sooo cool! And some of the people in the group can do amazing things!

So that's it for these questions. Hope you'll try my books. (If you like 'em, please write a review. If you'd don't like 'em, please write a review.)

I'm passing the baton on to two other bloggers. Check 'em out next week! Here they are:

Maggie Maxwell is a speculative fiction writer with a love for adventure, superheroics, and a good laugh! She's over at the Wandering Quille.

Selena Blake is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 20+ erotic paranormal and contemporary romances. Fans gobble up her Stormy Weather series. She's a fan of action movies, green tea, Milky Way bars and thunderstorms, not necessarily in that order. Find her online at http://www.selena-blake.com

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