01/20/12
by Sharon Wray
Today at Blame it on the Muse, I’m pleased to introduce Karen E. M. Johnston.
Karen, an award-winning British author, was born in Gibraltar, studied Business and International Marketing in the UK, and worked in advertising and marketing in London’s Covent Garden before moving to the US. She is widely published in children’s, parent, and business magazines. Karen also writes Women’s Fiction and Young Adult novels. She lives in Chantilly, Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington D.C. with her British husband and three American sons who have not the slightest trace of a British accent. Read the rest of this entry »
11/29/11
by Sharon Wray
Last week, my children and I drove home from my mother’s wedding in Savannah, Georgia. It was the third long distance driving trip I’d made in under three weeks, and I was sick of the highway. In less than a month, my family and I attended three weddings on the East Coast. I logged almost two thousand miles on my car from Fairfax, VA, down to Charleston, SC then Savannah, GA, and back up to Bucks County, PA (north of Philadelphia), and back home.
A few days later, after walking through historic Savannah and attending multiple wedding events, we left on a Sunday morning at 5:30 am and headed home. I knew it would take ten hours because I was driving by myself. My husband had left a day early to attend yet another wedding in Annapolis, MD. As soon as I had my coffee and we hit the highway, I put on our current audio book. Since the newest Christopher Paolini book Inheritance (the fourth–and long awaited–book in the Eragon series) had just been released, we’d decided to re-read (in this case re-listen to) the first three books before reading the fourth.
10/14/11
If You Give a Girl a Viscount,
by Sharon Wray
you find USA Today best-selling author Kieran Kramer.
Kieran writes Regency Historicals for St. Martin’s Press, and her November 1st release If You Give A Girl A Viscount is the fourth in her Impossible Bachelors Series. In the interest of full disclosure, Kieran is also my sister-in-law (I’m married to her brother). But that just makes for a more interesting interview!
09/15/11
by Sharon Wray
I do not love butterflies.
Don’t take this the wrong way. Butterflies bring happiness to everyone who discovers one. Their wings are so colorful, so delicate, light exposes nature’s version of stained glass. Everyone agrees they are the loveliest insects around. It’s just that butterflies and I have a tortured relationship. Read the rest of this entry »
08/17/11
How Story Structure Saved the Princess, the Knight, and the Lamb
by Sharon Wray
I love writing, but I hate plotting. Mostly because I’m terrible at it. I’m much more comfortable having no idea what’s going to happen, writing out of order, then putting all the pieces together like a puzzle. Of course this means tons of revisions and lots of time. So, to increase my productivity, I’ve read every craft book ever written and taken every online class about plotting. And while I’d still rather wing the writing, one of my favorite devices is Anne Lamott’s story structure mnemonic. From A to E, it’s short and easy to remember. For those of you who don’t know it, I’ll give a short re-cap.
Action (which includes the inciting incident), Background (backstory, which is now woven throughout the story), Conflict (goals, motivations, and hindrances), Development (protagonist’s journey) and End–parts 1 & 2 (crisis and resolution). Since I’m also a strong visual learner, I’ve come up with a Wacky Wednesday visual representation of Ms. Lamott’s device, with an added prologue (because I love prologues, especially in stories where the heroine is a four-year old with a vivid imagination). And this is how Ms. Lamott’s Story Structure saved the Princess, the Knight, and the Lamb.
08/2/11
The Pre-teen, the Pop Princess, and the Green Beret
by Sharon Wray
. . . and what they taught me about courage.
I’ve always been a slow learner. I have no idea why. Or how to fix it. But I have to do things three times to remember them. In college I would read through the notes/textbook, rewrite the facts onto index cards, then read them aloud. If I put in the time, I got an A. If I didn’t, I failed. Over the years I’ve come to realize that this discipline was also a way to deal with the knot of anxiety that lives in the deepest pit of my stomach–aka FEAR.
Read the rest of this entry »
