Thursday, March 16, 2006

Contest Contest Contest

Starting today we are having our first contest at your virtual bookbag! There are eleven great books being given away–and you can have multiple entries by visiting
various Your Virtual Book Bag authors' blogs. For all the details
visit the Contest Page, then come back here and enter your answers in a comment to win a copy of Here Comes the Bride by Laura Drewry.

You can win an Advanced Readers Copy of my new book, Pistols at Dawn by entering the contest through the contest page. For a review, use the link and go to my website. You will find a link there to the Contest.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

More About Magic

I would really like to know what makes a good story for you.
Is the heroine? Is that you can identify with her? Do you live the story in her skin.
That is the writer's objective, you know, to tell a story that resonates with you. It doesn't matter if the heroine is contemporary, or born two hundred years ago, or for that matter if she will be born two hundred years into the future, while you are reading, you need to be her.
Of course, some writers are better at it than others and I am sure you have your favorites.
Writing historicals is a special challenge if we want to be true to our era.
We want our heroines to be attractive, but we also want them to be proactive. In times gone by, women were often not considered equals at least not an a legal sense.
And if they flouted convention, they might find themselves ostracized, cut, as they say in Regency times.
They often needed a man to support them, especially if they were "gently-born". On the other hand, if they found the right man, a man who appreciated them for who they were, then they could find equality and be treated as an equal partner.
There are many examples in history of women who pushed the boundaries.
I will write about some of those in a future post.
Next time I want to address the issue of how to get inside your historical heroine. How to make her come alive in her own time period as well as appeal to the modern reader.
Oh yes, and I got the cover for my first novel. I will post that next week.
Good night, and good luck.