Well this was like a Christmas bonus! The Romance Studio announced their 2009 CAPA nominees and Restrain Me earned two! One for the content (kudos to me, Alyssa & our editor!) and one for the cover (congratulations fabulous cover artist Syneca!). Officially, we’re up for Best Contemporary Erotic Romance of 2009! [Can I get a yee-haw?!]  (and no, before you ask…our characters don’t talk like this. )

Bottoms Up, book 1 – Restrain Me

Alyssa’s been reading over Bottoms Up book 2 the last several weeks — and laughing a lot, judging from the feedback I’ve been receiving. That makes me a very happy camper. Stay tuned for more writing updates, contest announcements, and other goodies. Meanwhile, if you haven’t given Restrain Me a try, go see for yourself, there’s a lot to love — sexy cowboys especially! Larissa

Tags: Alyssa, Bottoms Up, Restrain Me

Collaborative Writing, part 3 of ????

And now for our next installment on Plotting with a Partner. Just a reminder, I’m only sharing what Alyssa and I have found works for us. There are as many ways of writing with a partner as there are authors who write.

And we did not figure all this out at once. It took several attempts at co-writing before we developed a method that clicked with both of us and yielded results we were satisfied with. (okay, more than satisfied!)

Before I go any further, let me begin highlighting our strengths as individual writers. Alyssa is a whiz at telling a story. She can take our phone-plotted scene outline and turn it into a beautifully creative, cohesive story with very little deviation or sidetracks from what we discussed. She does this, adding in her own unique touches (such as a grandmother who bans TV and confiscates televisions*) and inventing all of the dialogue, and the detailed personalities of our characters. She brings them to life. She tells their story, scene by scene, just as we planned.

She writes, she reads over her work, does a bit of polishing…she finishes the story.

Then she sends it to me — and heh, heh, heh…I get to do my thing. Such as add a Jacuzzi in the middle of the living room* (hey, with no TV, it needed to be good for something!).

*Examples from Bottoms Up Book I, Restrain Me

What are my strengths as a writer? Just what do I bring to this collaborative partnership? After a brief intermission and a couple other posts, I’ll be back to explain, so stay tuned.

Currently Reading: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Tags: Alyssa, story planning, writing

Collaboration Series, part 2 of several

Last time, I touched on how Alyssa and I begin working out a new story idea. This post will detail how we plan the actual events. (Keep in mind, I’ve learned that while this process works fabulously for she and I together, it has proved an absolute disaster when I attempted to use it by myself. More on that when I discuss my own solo writing later this year.)

First, an addendum to the CHARACTERS post – when we agree upon their names and descriptions, we both start to get a “feel” for their personalities. Is someone a brainiac? Are they bossy? Possibly a true leader? Do they have hidden desires? If so, are these desires hidden from themselves, or simply something they won’t reveal to others? Do they have a goal that motivates all of their actions? (They’d better!)

This type of characterization and developing personality traits is something there are many, many books written upon, and I own quite a few. To date, I have yet to gain significant insight on characters from a reference book. It just seems to me, and Alyssa from what I gather, that when you have a “real” full-bodied person in mind, their character traits come to you naturally. This isn’t to say those might not change, depending upon your story — or more specifically how the character grows…just that from my point of view, books on characterization haven’t proved as helpful as some of my other reference material.

Now, details on how we PLOT our stories together:

Since we’re about 2000 miles too far apart to schedule any face time, we’ve learned to plot out the entire story during one marathon phone call. This means planning for quality, uninterrupted time–Alyssa feeds her daughter mega helpings of turkey, a gallon of warm milk, and tucks her in, complete with padlock & bedpan; I hand Mr. Lyons a fifth of Jack and tell him to keep quiet.

We’ve learned the hard way not to do part of the story one day and plan to finish it another. We both had vastly different ideas during the interim of what the characters would do and how to resolve things, and ended up with a morass of jumbled ideas. We’ve found it’s much more efficient to get all our major scene ideas out in one session.

I use a headset so my hands are free. Alyssa uses a speakerphone so hers are. She types up a summary or brief idea for each scene as we go along, starting with our beginning idea, the major plot and turning points, then the conflict resolution. This typically takes a couple of hours, depending upon the length of story.

Since I’m not typing, you might wonder why my hands need to be free…often the ideas start flowing fast and furiously. I make notes when her fingers can’t keep up or when I have ideas and she’s currently typing something else. Now the first joint story we wrote together (it wasn’t the first one we talked about…simply the first one we successfully learned how to work together on!) was Orchids and Orgasms, and on that one, we did some of the actual dialogue and exact narration using the method I’ve described here, as we were both getting our feet wet and learning the characters. Since we now develop our characters before the scene plotting, we already have an idea of how they’ll respond and talk in certain situations so we no longer write actual first draft scenes in live time together. Eventually, when we think we have all the main points covered, we both hang up happy and sore from laughing.

In the next day or so, Alyssa smooths her typing (ensuring everything is recognizable!); she also includes which viewpoint each scene is to be told from and what the setting is for each (all of this was touched on in the phone call, but not necessarily jotted down the first time). When she’s finished, she sends the document to me for a glance over.

Once I okay it, she’s ready to go.

Next up — writing the “Rough” Draft.

Currently Reading: Don’t Bargain With the Devil by Sabrina Jeffries and The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming

Tags: Alyssa, story planning

How Alyssa & I Write Together, Part 1 of Several

This post, and the few that follow, will detail the wonderful collaboration process Alyssa Brooks and I have developed on our co-authored stories, which is significantly different from how I write my solo books. (I’ll provide information on my own chaotic creative “structure” once I completely finish writing my part of Jonah’s story!)

First, a quick tidbit on how we met. It was June of 2005 and each of us were over at the eHarlequin website, trolling for a critique partner on the forum boards. I answered her post; she e-mailed that she wrote erotic romance and hoped that didn’t scare me off. I broke out in a sweat on my side of the monitor, then assured her that I was fine with it. My nose didn’t grow (whew!). Next, we each exchanged a chapter or so of writing and the rest, as they say, is history… Now on to the good stuff:

CHARACTERS & STORY CONCEPT

1. We agree on main characters — ages, occupations and names (when it comes to names, I usually provide several choices because I adore naming characters and Alyssa picks the one she likes best; other times, one of us has a specific name in mind and we go with that). [Side Note -- my two favorite books for use in naming characters are The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Names by Nathaniel Altman and-- interestingly! -- Gary Gygax's (YES! from Dungeons & Dragons!) Extraordinary Book of Names by Malcolm Bowers. This last one may be my #1 favorite reference book of all.]

2. We choose a pictorial representation of each main character. This might be an actor or actress, or a painting or drawing, or simply a picture from a magazine or some random photo one of us sees online. I’ve found I do best working from a picture of a person completely unknown to me, which helps eliminate any type of media-created baggage. It’s why none of my sexy men look like Brad Pitt. Can we say BAGGAGE?

3. A general idea of the story is touched upon. Location, setting, main conflict. If there’s a theme, we discuss it here. Then we set a meeting time to do the actual story plotting. And I’ll discuss that in my next post!

Any questions so far? Stick ‘em in comments!

Currently Reading: Let Sleeping Rogues Lie by Sabrina Jeffries, Homeopathy An A to Z Home Handbook by Alan V. Schmukler, and The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming

Tags: Alyssa, book recommendations, story planning, writing