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Book Review: Lady in the Mist by Laurie Alice Eakes, Revell, Feb 2011 Lady in the Mist is a rich, historical read that mixes the secrets of midwifery and espionage into a suspenseful tale of romance. A master at vivid description, the author uses all the senses to place you right there in the scene, whether it's sitting on a sunny beach, or a running through a dark ship’s passageway. What a refreshing change for a hero. As a third son in Britain’s peerage, Dominick is your regular, run-of-the-beach indentured servant chasing after the woman of his dreams. But when her life and others are in jeopardy, he cloaks himself with the arrogance of his upbringing and commands the attention of his title. Midwife Tabitha is past the average age of marriage, yet it’s no fault of her looks or attitude that she can’t seem to keep a man around long enough to marry. Following generations of family tradition, she delivers other women’s babies while yearning for a daughter of her own. This poignan...

Outside my window, the trees bow and bob as if trying to shoot out the new green leaves like bullets from a Gatling gun. The air whistles as it’s forced through a crack beside the door. No matter where I go in the house, I hear the dull roar from outside, advancing and retreating in waves. When the kids opened the door to leave for school, the air filled with an earthy vegetative smell reminiscent of a forest. The normally blue sky is obscured by a mantle of clouds. Yet, I’m snug inside our little house on the prairie. :) Since Jessie has a music lesson and dental appt in the city today, I’m making an executive decision to stay in my jammies until I have to leave to pick her up from school. I can get more writing done that way, you see and read my Prairie Chick post tomorrow to see what I'm talking about. Jessie also has her final grad dress fitting today. A princess dress, bought by a father who dotes on her. In my wildest dreams I’ve never imagined such a dress on anyone other th...

Day 3 was a bit frustrating. I had to re-type 3 pages due to a faulty/corrupt flash drive - long story, please don't ask. Anyway, I got those retyped and kept going. Then I had to stop for some research. Yeah, I know what you're thinking...that I wasted time on Facebook or surfing the net, checking and reading blogs. Well, I might have checked a couple, BUT I really did have to do some research. I spent about an hour or so on it before getting back to writing. Storywise I have to tell you things did not go as planned. My writing style is a cross between a plotter and a pantser - like a hybrid. I know how the story will play out but I don't know all the twists and turns to get there. When I started writing this morning, I planned to have the villain shoot at Dyler and Hayley today. It didn't happen. That's where the research came in. I used a different venue to bring them to a nerve shattering moment which ends with Dyler's arms around Hayley in comfort. You see,...

Okay, so Day 2 of Book in a Week has just ended and I thought I'd pass on how I'm doing. Wordwise I'm doing great at 15% completed. Of course if you add it up, you'll know I have to pick up the pace if I want to actually complete Translucent Trust by midnight Friday night. And I'm aiming for that goal, but I won't be disappointed if I don't make it. 55,000 is an awful lot of words to shoot for in a week and at the end of the day, any number over 1 is more than I started the day with. Storywise, it's going great. It's a reunion story since my characters, Hayley and Dyler used to be a hot item but they broke apart 5 yrs ago. I'm a bit worried because the first contact they have with each other in Translucent Trust isn't until page 9 but the preceeding 8 pages set the stage for why Hayley's calling Dyler up after all these years. I could write a prologue I suppose... And since it’s a suspense, I have to garner some excitement. So far the ...

Last November, I attempted to write a novel during National Novel Writing Month but had to pull out because of prior writing commitments that just wouldn't go away. Well, next week is Book in a Week (BIAW) with my local group, the Saskatchewan Romance Writers (SRW). It starts this Friday at midnight and it's only a week long. Basically, you write like mad for a week and try to accomplish your goal. My 2009 BIAW goal will be to complete Translucent Trust - the inspirational suspense novel I started last Nov. This novel has been on my mind since last Sept and it just won't go away so I might as well write it. In a day or so I'll put my word counter up and then you'll all be able to watch my progress. The only thing I ask is that you don't get ticked off at me next week if I don't answer your emails, etc. I'm hoping to do a bit of email and blog checking with my morning coffee, but otherwise, I'll be writing. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that i...

So, are you wondering with the blue insignia is on the right? That’s what I’m spending this month doing. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The briefest way to explain it is – you type as fast as your little fingers can go and punch out a complete 50,000 word novel in a month. Wow. Who can write that fast, right? Well, it’s not supposed to be perfect. In fact, you should shut off your internal editor for this month. “ November is for writing. December is for editing .” I’ve heard that often in reference to NaNoWriMo. That means, that even if you change your mind and decide not to use the last 3 pages of a scene – don’t delete it. You might change your mind later on and then wish you still had it. Some writers cut and paste it onto another document. I do when I’m not doing NaNo. I call it my ‘deleted lines’ document. During NaNo, however, I just put a box around it so it’ll still register in the daily word count. Because, after you’ve spent a couple hours writing a scene...

Yippee!!! Love Inspired author, Cheryl Wyatt, runs a contest on her blog every month. When I first saw Cheryl’s July word list and prompt lines, I knew the theme was a crime scene. But, I don’t write suspense. As usual, I copied the prompt list to a word doc and filed it way. And, as usual, every few days, I’d open the doc and look at the list. Slowly, the words merged into a crime story. But...I write tender romances filled with faith and forgiveness. I don’t write horrendous, frightening, gory stories. Cheryl’s prompt contest, though, is a challenge. I thrive on challenge. For 2 weeks I thought about Cheryl’s list. Slowly, during the last week of July, I started writing the most horrendous, frightening, gory story my imaginative mind could dream up. For 5 days I worked on it, tweaking it, until I’d wrung every word I could out of the 500 word limit. Finally I submitted it, assured that no one else but Cheryl would see it, because with her contests, you email your entry for her eyes o...