Today’s blog topic is something of an umbrella for a lot of different things.  I’m working on losing the fat all over the place.  Baby fat from this latest pregnancy for one–and only two months before nationals!  I am really disappointed in the slacking off I’ve been doing.  Time to kick my butt!  I won’t be nearly near where I want to be by the end of July, but I’m hoping to at least lose 1 size!  Gotta start small…  I went to the gym this morning, and I feel great now!

The 2nd place I’m losing the fat is all negativity.  I need to be more positive about things, and surround myself with positive people.  I was reading a book lately that talked about internal positive thinking.  We’re very hard on ourselves, (especially moms with the guilt factor!)  I/You/We have to think more positively.  Think, yes, I can try this, or better yet, I will succeed!

Losing the fat/junk in my house.   Every year around March or so I start the spring cleaning process.  With all the kiddies and time constraints it takes awhile to get it done… so needless to say, I started in March but I’m still working on it.  A little at a time, but the closets are clean, there is less piles, kids toys have been cleaned out. 

Losing the fat in our diet!  From now on, this family will be eating healthier!  I usually do cook pretty healthy food, but lately with work deadlines and after school activities we’ve been eating out more.  Time to get back to home cooking!  Salad anyone?

Now how does all this relate to writing?  Simple, lose the fat on the following:  too much backstory, insignificant details, irrelevant plot points, mundane dialogue, long winded narrative.  Get that manuscript to work out! Beef up the action, sensory detail, intrigue, make your dialogue witty–make it move your story along.  Tone up those characters, you want them to make a difference, you want them to be strong, believable, realistic.  Do your characters have a well thought out and planned GMC? 

I’m also taking the advice of an author I met at RWA Nationals 2009.  She told me to stop working on this other stuff and really write.  If I wanted to get that book done, if I wanted this to truly be my career then I needed to concentrate on it.  Put my heart in it.  Now, that’s not to say I haven’t taken my career seriously up to this point.  I have.  But I’ve been working on smaller projects, doing a lot of side things, not really working on my dream which is to be a novelist.  Its taken  nearly a year for her advice to kick in.  But I’m there.  I’m ready.  I’ve recently signed with an agent, and I feel better about my writing career then I ever have before.  It’s time.

What types of changes are you making in your life right now?

Eliza Knight is the author of sizzling historical romance.  Visit her at www.elizaknight.com

Coming June 9, 2010 from Ellora’s cave.

The past three years have not been good for a number of our friends–well, I guess that depends on which one you ask LOL.

I think we are now up to four couples whose marriages have ended in the last three years. And I’m not talking the under five year percentage either. I’m talking the over 15 and close to twenty years married percentage. And we never saw any of them coming.

To be fair, we don’t live close to any but have been in constant contact and/or the occasional visits so no, we don’t know the day to day grind they went through, but still no mention during weekly telephone calls or anything.

The last one just happened a couple weeks ago and it still bothers me. I know things like this usually have a ‘build’ for quite awhile–that’s the part we don’t see but still, it makes you worried. Is Real romance still alive or does it fade out and fizzle as life progresses? Do we marry with the blind thought that yeah, I’d like to make babies with this guy for awhile or sure, she’ll do for now??

As writers, for the most part, we write about the new relationship, couples meeting for the first time or getting back together after long absences–the initial romance.  Not many write about ten, twenty years down the line.  Is that because the romance has worn off?  Do children, a mortgage and society’s pressures kill the romance, that electrical start to a couple.  Does it, for lack of a better word, really just fizzle out?

My husband and I are going on our 12th year of marriage and I’ll tell you right now, if he came up to me and said it was over, I would be totally blindsided. We’re not perfect, but still, we seem to work things out and accept each other for who we are etc etc etc. We have similiar thoughts and theories on raising our children, family etc and those haven’t changed (although I think this baseball season might affect that LOL as both boys are on house league and aiming for the rep league too, meaning most night this summer will be on a ball field)

I must say though, I’m not overly worried at the moment for me though, not when my husband comes up to me in the kitchen, turns me around, stares me straight in the eye and says, “I love you. No, I mean I really love you,” and gives me a big bear hug just before announcing the demise of the most recent friends’ marriage. I feel bad for them, I do, but I can’t help being thankful that romance, at least in my home, is still very much alive!

The lemony aroma of my mother’s raisin bread reminds me of Christmas. When I was a child, each year my mother made a huge batch of her family recipe to give as gifts to friends and co-workers. The citrus scent of the pure lemon oil she used mingled with the fruity raisins and yeast produced a fragrance that to this day takes me back to my childhood holidays.

Of all the five senses, the sense of smell is the most linked to memory. I’ve been blessed with a particularly strong sense of smell. My husband swears I was a dog in a past life . I adore all kinds of fragrances, and I adore describing them in my writing. My CPs have often commented on my use of this particular sense.

In romance, the sense of smell can be used abundantly — setting, for example. Describe the pungent scent of pine as your heroine breathes in fresh mountain air, or the sweet floral fragrance of wildflowers as she walks in a meadow.

But nothing is as important in romance as when your heroine smells your hero for the first time. She’s attracted to him. His amazing looks stop her in her tracks. And then she inhales.

The scent of a man is often described as “musky.” Take this a step further and describe that musk. Is it spicy? Sweet? Like leather? The outdoors? All are common scents associated with men, and all work well when you, as the author, give them your own special touch. Does your hero wear cologne? What does it smell like?

Once you’ve determined your hero’s fragrance, the important part begins. You show your reader how that scent affects your heroine. Does her heart accelerate, her breath catch? Does his scent spark a memory for her? Perhaps his leathery aroma takes her back to summers spent on her grandfather’s ranch.

The sense of smell can bring an immediacy to your writing and plunge your reader directly into your scene. So as you write, close your eyes. Take a moment to visualize your scene, then inhale. What smells do you imagine? Describe them with lots of detail, then show your reader their effect on your point of view character.

Here’s a short example of the sense of smell in my current release, Lessons of the Heart, available at The Wild Rose Press.

With a shallow breath through her nose, she parted her lips. His tongue glided into her mouth, and his exotic vanilla spice flavor trickled into her. Smooth, masculine, and oh so very delicious.

She inhaled again, another shallow puff, and his raw aroma permeated her body. More spice, a hint of tobacco, and the fresh scent of the open prairie.

Ruth shuddered, her lips numb. She didn’t know how to kiss him, how to respond, but he didn’t seem to mind. He growled against her mouth and deepened his assault.

How do you use the sense of smell in your work?

MamasWriters are thrilled to have my friend and Regency romance author Vanessa Kelly with us today.

Please help us welcome her!

THE BEHAVIOR AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE REGENCY MALE

I want to thank Kris for having me here to talk about something near and dear to my heart:  men.  Yes, I know.  I’m that shallow.  I should be writing about the challenges that women face as both authors and mothers, but you probably deal with those challenges way better than I do.  When my family starts to bug me, my m.o. is more akin to that of a first grader—I lose my temper and stomp out of the room.  So, no advice here, ladies.  Just move along.

Unless, of course, you want to talk about guys.  Not just any guys, either, but the big, strapping Regency hero. I’m assuming that since you’re all moms here, at some point you liked men enough to make babies.

So what happened to those guys after that momentous event occurred?  Did they remain the same sexy but often obnoxious jerks they were when they were single?  Or did they morph into the kind of loving husband and father who will get up in the middle of the night with a colicky baby?

Let’s see how that works with the Regency Alpha male, shall we?

Some of the characteristics of the Regency Alpha Male:

• He is a crack shot from hours spent practicing at Manton’s, thus ensuring that he can respond to any attacks by nefarious evildoers.
• He boxes at Gentleman Jackson’s, thus ensuring that he can beat the crap out of anyone who tries to come between him and the heroine.
• He can drink and waltz the night away, and still meet the heroine for an assignation in Hyde Park at 9am the next morning.
• He never breaks a sweat playing cards, no matter how high the stakes—including the heroine’s virginity.
• He has shot far more birds than a village could eat in an entire year, and is a bruising rider in the local hunt.
• He has a long history of rakish behavior with women far more beautiful than the heroine.
• Although incredibly masculine, the Regency Alpha male can spend hours on his dress and grooming, thus ensuring that he is often better turned-out than his bookish, bluestocking heroine.
• Masculine codes of honor mean everything to him.

Some of the behavior of the Regency Alpha Male:

• He resists any attempt to force him into marriage, vowing that he will remain a bachelor forever.
• If for some reason he MUST get married (usually to save his estate from the vagaries of an obscure article in a long-lost relative’s will), he will vow never to fall in love.
• Despite the two points listed above, he can never keep his hands off the heroine, and has a marked predilection for trying to seduce her in semi-public places.  This invariably leads to discovery, thus ensuring that he will have to marry her (see code of honor).
• If the heroine resists marriage (usually a sensible decision, given his rakish past), the hero invariably decides to post the engagement notice in all the papers in order to force the heroine’s hand.  After all, the sweet, naïve girl really doesn’t know what’s good for her.
• He can be secretive, keeping information about things like murder plots or former mistresses (or engagement notices) to himself, thus ensuring that the heroine will be forced to take action to solve whatever problem is bedeviling her.  Which invariably leads to…
• Trouble, which then leads to a fight between the hero and heroine, which then leads to sex.
• Once there is sex, the hero’s masculine code of honor comes into play again, and he will do whatever it takes to make the heroine his and his alone.

It’s usually at this point that our Regency Alpha male begins his transformation from arrogant rake to devoted husband and loving father.  By the epilogue, we often don’t recognize him because he’s turned into such a marshmallow, wiping away manly tears on the birth of his first child or getting up in the middle of the night with the aforementioned colicky baby.

I suspect that the real Regency aristocrat didn’t spend much time with his own children and didn’t walk the floor night after night, bouncing junior on his shoulder. But as romance writers, we bring so many of our own hopes, dreams, and realities to our stories.  So it makes perfect sense that we take these arrogant, rakish, and handsome men and turn them into something we know is possible and which we all experience (I hope!) in our own lives—husbands who adore us, and fathers who will make any sacrifice for their children.

So, how about all you MamaWriters out there?  How realistic are the male characters you create in your books? Are they larger than life or just like the guy next door?  And when you’re not writing, what kind of male characters do you like to read about?  The Alpha, the Beta, or does the Gamma turn your crank?

MamaWriters: And be sure to stop by Vanessa’s site; she’s funny, has a newsletter, and is always having contests!