07/23/2014 18:12
The TV Do-Over Blog Hop goes to Australia today to visit
Monique McDonell's blog!
Monique's do-over is the series finale of
How I Met Your Mother
I, too, am a HIMYM fan and also HATED the last episode, and if I'm being completely honest, I hated the Mother, too. Sorry.
Hop over to Monique's blog to see what she has to say!
(Haaaaave you met Monique?)
And tomorrow, hop over to my college friend Kerrie Olzak's blog for tomorrow's post!
07/22/2014 14:19
The blog hop stops at Laura Chapman's
Change the Word
for her rant on Gilmore Girls.
Laura's a funny lady, and her post is full of fun.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's article on Monique McDonell's blog.
07/21/2014 19:38
Hop to Deborah Nam-Krane's blog,
Written by Deb
for today's TV Do-Over!
Deb will be discussing her favorite show...
well, at least her favorite to complain about,
Hawaii Five-0!
Don't miss it!
And tomorrow, we hop over to Laura Chapman's blog, Change the Word!
07/20/2014 14:41
It starts tomorrow!
The TV Do-Over Blog Hop
Join me, along with 10 of my writer friends, as we hop from blog to blog, dishing on what we would change about our favorite TV shows.
The hop starts at Deborah Nam-Krane's blog, Written By Deb. She's going to unleash her writer's rage on Hawaii Five-0, which is the show she and I love to rehash after every episode.
Check back tomorrow for the direct link to her article!
07/17/2014 14:50
My writer friends and I are always talking about our favorite TV shows. Mostly, we complain about what the TV writers did to our favorite characters and storylines and discuss what we think they should have done instead. I thought it would be a blast to do our daily gossiping as a "blog hop" instead. From July 21 - August 3, join me and a bunch of my writer buddies as we present our...
"TV Do-Over" Blog Hop
Here's the schedule:
July 21--Deborah Nam-Krane
July 22--Laura Chapman
July 23--Monique McDonell
July 24--Kerrie Olzak
July 25--Lilian Roberts
July 26--ME!
July 27--Aaron Deckard (guest blogging here)
July 28--Courtney Giardina
July 29--Deborah Nam-Krane
July 30--Danielle-Claude Ngontang
July 31--Jami Deise
August 1--Zanna Mackenzie
August 2--Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
August 3--Me, again!
I'll post a link here everyday to the daily Blog Hop spot so you can follow us as we hop all over the blogosphere!
06/28/2014 16:32
I love summer. I have my kids home all of the time, there’s plenty to do outdoors, and vacations abound. Summer is hell on my writing, though. I get absolutely nothing done, but I have a great time playing hooky from work.
With my kids being older this summer (7 and 11), I’ve tried to give them a little freedom to choose what we do to fill our days. Sometimes it’s crafting, cooking, playing games, watching movies, swimming, biking…whatever their little minds can come up with. It’s always fun, but sometimes it’s fun-ny, especially with a sassy 7-year-old in charge.
Movies
I asked my sweet little Lizzie what movie she’d like to see, thinking she’d say something like “Earth to Echo” or “Rio 2”. Nope.
She said, “I want to see ‘Captain America’.”
“Why? I didn’t think you were into superhero movies,” I replied.
She put one hand on her hip and pointed in the air with the other hand. “Mom, Captain America is HOT. That’s why I want to go see the movie.”
She had me there. So, “Captain America” it was.
Crafts
Lizzie loves drawing and making crafts. She was up in her room a couple of weeks ago, working hard on something. When she emerged, she was carrying this:
Mommy’s heart nearly burst. There’s no better compliment than your kid thinking that your book is cool. Even though my heroine is named after her, Lizzie is not allowed to read it just yet. I know she wants to, because when I’m working on my writing, she likes to sneak up behind me and read over my shoulder. And when a soon-to-be 2nd grader has a 6th grade reading level, she’s able to sound out a lot of words that she probably shouldn’t.
Cooking
I let my kids be “chefs” in the kitchen. They’re allowed to make any concoction of food that they want, but they have to take a bite of it. Today, Lizzie decided to make something for me. It was “Flour-dough bread with oatmeal, cheddar, spices, and pomme-chipettes”. Yeah. Lizzie thinks flour can be a garnish, like Parmesan cheese or something. Oatmeal, too. And “pommes-chipettes”? We can thank the TV show “Jessie” for that one. Pommes-chippettes are basically potato chip crumbs. Not one of Lizzie's best dishes.
.JPG)
But she arranged it so artfully, how could a mommy say no?
I can’t wait to see what she has in store for me tomorrow.
05/24/2014 08:56
Thanks to Deborah Nam-Krane for inviting me to be a part of her Soap Opera Blog Hop! I discovered soaps in college and devoted many hours to them when I should have been studying. They taught me a lot about life and love (by bad example, mostly), but I didn't realize what they'd taught me about writing until I sat down and thought about it! Thanks, Deb!
What have I learned about writing from soap operas? Simply this—no character is safe from heartache…or death. Today I’m going to look at soaps, both daytime and primetime (possibly stretching the standard definition of “soap opera” on one of my examples), examining murder and emotional anguish—every mystery authors’ favorite things.
Murder
I have a little trouble following the “no character is safe” rule entirely, because when I write, I generally use first person, making it pretty well impossible to kill the narrator. That said, I have maimed my narrators and broken their hearts many times over. I’ve learned that it’s okay to create a central character just to kill them, for the sole purpose of blindsighting your audience.
Why does Sean Bean always have to die?
Case in point: Game of Thrones. In Season 1, Ned Stark, THE main character as far as I was concerned, gets his head chopped off mid-season. I refused to believe it for a couple of episodes, that is until Joffrey pointed out that Ned’s head was on a spike outside the castle. I know, I know, you’re all screaming, “Game of Thrones is NOT a soap!” Well, as epically manly and porn-y as it presents itself, let’s face it—the main focus of the show is backstabbing and sex…now what other TV genre revolves around those themes? Hmm... Oh, yeah—SOAPS!
You can already tell this is not going to work out.
Another case in point: General Hospital. (I was addicted to GH and One Life to Live in college, so that meant I was watching in the late 90’s.) Lily Rivera Corinthos was brought onto the show to be a part of Miguel Morez’s (Ricky Martin) backstory, but later got chosen to be cannon fodder in Sonny Corinthos’s story arc. On one of his many breaks from Brenda, Sonny falls in love with (sort of) Lily, they get married, and she gets pregnant. And then, once we had just begun to get emotionally invested in her…BOOM! She dies from a car bomb meant for Sonny, planted by her own father.
Emotional Anguish
My poor heroines go through a lot—death of loved ones, nasty breakups, betrayal, near-death experiences—but all of those “bad” things that happen to them only serve to make them stronger. A technique that soap writers use (that I love) is that once a heroine’s life is going great, that is the perfect time to pull the rug out from under her.
Aiden was one of my favorites. No coming back from the grave for him. He’s really dead, plus the actor, Barry Sloane, has a new show on ABC next season.
Case in point: Revenge. By rights, Emily Thorne should be huddled in the corner right now after what happened to her on the season finale last week. She had just told Aiden that she loved him (something that was difficult for her to do because she had to open up and let someone in), and hours later he was murdered, by her nemesis of course. I had a bad feeling in the beginning of the episode—things were going way too well for Emily—and it turned out that my instincts were right, unfortunately.
Eww. Just…eww.
Another case in point: One Life to Live. Dorian Lord decided to get back at her nemesis, Victoria Lord, by seducing her son, Joey (a very young Nathan Fillion, his first TV gig, I believe). Dorian was a cougar way before it was cool, but let’s face it, this relationship made us all squirm with the near 30-year age difference between them. Dorian’s revenge-y plan would have worked, except she ended up falling for Joey. They were in love and all was right with the world. Wrong! Once mama Viki found out about their affair, she turned the tables on Dorian, locking her in a cage and insisting that Dorian marry another man and break things off with Joey. Dorian’s heart was broken as she had to let Joey go, and it was further stomped on by Joey’s rebound with her teenage niece, Kelly. Ouch!
Thank you, soap writers, for your never-ending, blatant torture of your characters. Conflict makes great storylines and creates the multi-dimensional characters we love and love to hate. My characters should watch out—if they start getting too happy and complacent, it’s only a matter of time before this writer is going to lay the smack down.
05/08/2014 09:56
Congrats to my friend Carolyn Ridder Aspenson on the release of her latest novel, UNBREAKABLE BONDS. She recently got a book deal with Booktrope, and you can read all about it at the end of this article. Also, look for the Rafflecopter giveaway farther down as well!
Buy UNBREAKABLE BONDS at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
A Mother's Work is Never Done...
Carolyn Aspenson's (Unfinished Business) latest picks up the story of Angela Panther's dealings with her dead mom, Fran and the duo's dynamic is as delightful as ever!
Angela had her psychic gift under control until a traumatic loss shut it down. And now that Angela's daughter is in too deep with a boy and her best friend Mel's husband is cheating, she needs her mom more than ever.
Fran knows that when you're a mom, there's no such thing as till death do us part and she won't rest in peace while there's strife in her daughter's life. Using her nifty celestial superpowers, she's soon back in the game and helping out, regardless of her daughter's defunct gift.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Stay at home mom Angela Panther is living the good life. Happily married with two kids, a house in the suburbs and, a fantabulous best friend, she's got it all. But hours after Angela's mother dies, her ghost pops in for a visit, leaving the door to the other side wide open. Suddenly Angela's life is jam-packed with ghosts - ghosts that need her help. Now Angela must find a way to balance the needs of the living along with the unfinished business of the dead, all while keeping her mother's ghost in line. Hilarious and bittersweet, Unfinished Business tackles the emotional ups and downs of the relationships between mothers and daughters and the desperate desire for that one last chance to tell someone we've lost how we feel.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson is the Amazon and Barnes & Noble best selling author of Unfinished Business; An Angela Panther Novel, Unbreakable Bonds; An Angela Panther Novel, the novella Santa's Gift, a Cumming Christmas Novella and The Quick Start Weight Loss Program.
An avid fitness buff, Carolyn writes a monthly health and fitness column for Northside Woman Magazine as well as regular weekly news articles for various Atlanta area media outlets including the Forsyth Herald, the Milton Herald, the Revue and News, and the Johns Creek Herald. Her works have also been published in Countyline Magazine and various Internet publications.
A native of Indiana, for over eighteen years Carolyn called the northwest Chicago suburbs home. She now resides in the Atlanta area with her husband, three kids, two dogs and cat.
carolynridderaspenson.com www.facebook.com/carolynridderaspensonauthor
Twitter: @awritingwoman carolynridderaspenson@gmail.com
Laughter as Medicine: Author's grief inspires bestseller - and more to come
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson signs on with Seattle start-up, Booktrope Editions
Carolyn Aspenson epitomizes today's juggler: busy mother of 3, avid fitness buff, and columnist for several websites and Atlanta-based publications. A few years ago, when both her parents died within 11 months of each other, she found herself orphaned, and completely devastated. Her grief consumed her, and her weight spun out of control. One day, she gazed in the mirror and decided she no longer wanted to be "that girl."
She channeled her grief. Carolyn wrote her first paranormal/chick lit novel, Unfinished Business: An Angela Panther novel, as a way of honoring her parents. "I felt the world was missing out on these wonderful people, and I wanted to share them. I created the character of Fran, the ghost in the book, after my mother, who was very much the sassy, in-your-face Italian woman you'll find in the book." Before she knew it, Unfinished Business hit both Amazon and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists. Caroline Fardig, author of Barnes & Noble bestseller It's Just a Little Crush, says, "The author has a great sense of humor, even about death, but when the story called for it, she was reverent and empathetic in the way her characters handled each other."
Re-energized, Carolyn worked through her grief, dropped the weight, and discovered she was just getting started. She discovered Booktrope, a Seattle-based publishing startup that uses targeted marketing strategies and an innovative Team Publishing concept, which offers authors the support they need to succeed, and allows them more creative control and higher royalties than traditional publishing houses. Unfinished Business got a makeover, slated for release in just weeks, and her second novel in the Angela Panther series, Unbreakable Bonds, will be released through Booktrope in late spring. A third novel is in the works.
"I'm excited to be a part of the Booktrope community," Aspenson said, "and look forward to working with them."
About Booktrope Publishing: Booktrope is a team-publishing platform and a social marketing engine for books of all kinds. We free the creative team of authors, editors, designers and marketing partners to work on what they do best—create and market the best book possible. With over 150 authors, several on bestseller lists, Booktrope is redesigning the way to publish. For more information on Booktrope, visit www.booktrope.com.
04/16/2014 08:32
Thanks to fellow author Louise Wise for stopping by today to do a guest post!
Keep Calm and WRITE!
By Louise Wise
My writing process must be similar the world over with other writerly folk, but the one thing I do that’s automatic (and why I like to write alone) is that I act out, or talk myself through, difficult scenes. Say, for instance, I need to write an action scene:
Scene from Oh no, I’ve Fallen in Love!
Suddenly all the wind was taken from my body as something painful smashed into my shoulder and spun me around. The sharp movement made my ankle give way inside my high heels, and I fell, my legs like Bambi’s, onto the grass. A grubby leather football rolled away, and a young man stood staring down at me with horror on his spotty face.
With the above, I’ll stand and spin sharply to the right as if something hard (the football) had knocked into me, this is because I need it clear in my head before I can type it, and reacting the scene is automatic.
I talk things through as well, especially accents, and with modern technology you can easily find a webpage that will pronounce all accents so you can spell them phonically. Lex from Oh no, I’ve Fallen in Love telephoned Valerie pretending to be Irish:
‘David O’Brien for you, Miss Anthrope,’ Paul said.
I didn’t know any David O’Brien, nor was I expecting a call. I thanked Paul anyway and the call was put through.
‘Top of the morning t’you,’ said a very false Irish accent.
‘Lex.’
‘Tis a leprechaun, missus. I don’t know any Lex.’
I hung up.
I have to hear the accent before I can write it even though I didn’t go overboard with the accent.
My other process is that I tend to like alternating scenes. With Oh no, I’ve Fallen in Love! the two main characters have their own scenes and one character, Valerie, is written in the first person and the second character, Lex, is written in the third.
Because of this style, I wrote the book first with Valerie’s viewpoint, and then started over with Lex’s. Then I merged the two ‘books’ together. It took a lot of patience but it was the only way I could monitor both characters. It also gave me scope to include the thoughts and feelings of Lex and get deep and personal to Valerie’s thoughts.
Oh no, I've Fallen in Love! is also half price all spring.
Thanks to Caroline for having me on her blog, and thanks for reading!
Louise Wise Bio and links
Married, with four children, Louise Wise lives in England. She is a pharmacist technician by day and a writer by night. She was educated in an ordinary state school and left without achieving much in the way of qualifications; you could say she was the result of a crap school. Hungry for knowledge she enrolled in an Adult Education centre and studied English, maths and creative writing. Whereas other young girls asked for makeup and clothes for their birthdays, she asked for encyclopaedias!
Louise Wise used her general love of romantic fiction and interest in astronomy to write her first book. The book received many rejections stating the novel was too original for the current market, until finally, an agent took the book on but subsequently failed to find a publisher for it. Instead of becoming despondent, it made Louise realise that becoming a published writer WAS possible. She turned her back on traditionally publishing, threw herself into the indie world and went on to publish her first chick lit book, A Proper Charlie and then Oh no, I’ve Fallen in Love!
As for the ‘too original’ Eden it has been such a hit that Louise has now followed it up with the sequel, Hunted. So far, they are both selling well.
Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/louise_wise
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelouisewise?ref=hl
Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/bookjunkies/
Blog: https://louisewise.com
_____________________________
Blurb: Oh no, I’ve Fallen in Love!
On the surface, Valerie Anthrope was happy with her life. She had her own brokerage with Sunny Oak Insurance and was financially solvent. But once asleep, she was plunged into a world of nightmares that reminded her she was cursed.
And that meant she couldn’t fall in love. Ever.
Lex Kendal was a multi-millionaire. Women flocked to him, preened and flaunted for his attention. But one woman, Valerie, knocked him back. Hard. It dented his pride and Lex set out to convince himself he still ‘had it’ by pursuing her.
Only he found himself being needed in a way he never, ever, expected and, for once in his life, money wasn’t the answer.
________________________
Oh no, I’ve Fallen in Love purchase links
04/08/2014 08:44
Today, I welcome author Monique McDowell on her blog tour to promote her new book, A FAIR EXCHANGE. Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon AU.
A Fair Exchange
A Fair Exchange
Who hasn’t wondered about their first love? What happened? What went wrong? Where are they now?
What if you got a second chance?
Amelia Armstrong is about to find out. What a shame her long-lost love, Matt, has returned (looking way too good and acting way too sweet) when her life is a shambles and she has finally decided once and for all to put herself and not whichever man is currently in her life, first.
How do you balance that desire to recapture that loving feeling with the need to finally be the best version of yourself? What if this really is the one, how do you choose when to stand your ground and when to cut your losses? Amelia takes a journey from Sydney to New York and back again trying to find the answers while negotiating with pop-divas, ex-lovers, crazy teenagers, a well-meaning cousin and the tabloids.
A Fair Exchange is a story about being a grown up when, maybe, you’d much rather be sixteen again.
.jpg)
Excerpt
It was not as if he was the first one to mention it. In the past week everyone who had entered my apartment had commented on the shiny new Vespa parked in the middle of the otherwise empty living room. In fact, each and every one of them had imaginatively said “Amelia you have a red Vespa parked in your living room!” And they all said it in a tone that implied I might not have noticed, as if it may have magically appeared there.
How could I not notice a vehicle parked in what was otherwise an empty room?
What amazed me was that the Vespa was what they chose to comment on.
Not that Nick had dumped me, after ten years, for a twenty-one year-old. Nor that he had moved out, taking basically all the furniture and leaving me with a great view over the beach and an enormous mortgage.
No one even commented about the fact that I, in turn, had quit the fabulous job that had always meant way too much to me.
No, they commented on the Vespa.
What I could not understand though was why it hadn’t bothered me until right then, when Matthew Blue commented. And when he did comment, why had I collapsed into this embarrassing sea of tears?
How had this happened? How had I become this sobbing pathetic figure of womanhood? And more importantly how had I ended up thirty-six and alone?
Didn’t I used to have so much potential? Everyone had said so, hadn’t they?
“Amelia Armstrong is something special.”
I was one of those shiny young girls who took risks and dreamed big. I was one of the smart ones who knew what she wanted and went after it. I was one to watch.
If I hadn’t been that kind of a girl I would never have met Matthew all those years ago. A different girl would not have found herself, on the other side of the world, at sixteen, staring into his dark and dreamy eyes.
So where was that girl right now, I wanted to know? And how had a girl with so much potential gotten it so horribly wrong?
About the author – Monique McDonell
.jpg)
I am an Australian author who writes contemporary women's fiction including chick lit and romance. I live on Sydney's Northern Beaches with my husband and daughter, and despite my dog phobia, with a dog called Skip.
I have written all my life especially as a child when I loved to write short stories and poetry. At University I studied Creative Writing as part of my Communication degree. Afterwards I was busy working in public relations I didn't write for pleasure for quite a few years although I wrote many media releases, brochures and newsletters. (And I still do in my day-job!)
When I began to write again I noticed a trend - writing dark unhappy stories made me unhappy. So I made a decision to write a novel with a happy ending and I have been writing happy stories ever since.
I have been a member of the writing group The Writer’s Dozen for eight years. Our anthology Better Than Chocolate raised over $10,000 for the charity Room to Read and helped build a library in South East Asia. I am also a member of the Romance Writers of Australia.
A Fair Exchange is the fifth novel I have released in the last two years.
To learn more about Monique McDonell and her upcoming books please visit her at www.moniquemcdonell.com.au
Links:
Amazon author page ~ Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Blog ~ Goodreads
