Gulp. One of my writer pals pointed out that I am committing a grammatical faux pas on a regular basis in my work. I am using "ing" phrases incorrectly. While these phrases imply simultaneous actions, the way I employ them makes the action impossible. I hadn’t even realized I was culpable of such a grievous misdemeanor. None of my editors have pointed out this flaw to me, nor did the members of my bimonthly critique group. How had this foible slipped past us all?

As I am doing edits for my futuristic romance, I seek to eliminate this glaring evidence of my crime. Here are some examples from this story along with my corrections. Look for these phrases in your manuscript. Quick, check for them now, before the Grammar Police get you!

Turning off the water, Silver pushed the button for the drying vents.

Jumping to his feet, he sauntered over.

Grabbing her sack from the floor, she slung it over her shoulder.

Closing in on her apartment complex, she slipped into a stream of other night owls prowling the streets.

Dodging around the corners of skyscrapers, she plunged in and out of geometrically designed avenues.

Peering over her shoulder to check for signs of pursuit, she narrowly missed the dive-bombing aircar.

Jerking her body, she righted herself and swooped north just in time to avoid hitting a flyby night train.

Spotting her apartment building, she zoomed in for a landing at the rooftop pool.

Descending an interior stairway, she paused at the landing to her floor and cracked open the door.

Motioning to Jace to follow silently, she crept toward her [apartment] number.

Thrusting Silver aside, he stalked into the block of space she called home.

Opening the window with a grunt, she leaned outside.

Flinging the door wide, she stepped inside the darkened interior.

Nancy Cohen – post #10   http://mysterygal.bravejournal.com/

Judging by their collective girth, G. Winston Howard's caterers were as likely to eat a party spread as they were to prepare one. Julius Rosen's face, dwarfed by his pudgy chins, pinked up when Milla pulled her eyes away from his paunch. A button was missing there, he knew, but he plowed ahead anyway, summarizing how he and his wife had landed the catering contract for Howard's high dollar ball.

"Frieda had no idea it was his sister." He laid a meaty hand, with fingers like sausages, on his wife's stooped shoulder. Milla noticed that the free end of his watch band was held down with a blue rubber band. "Damn lucky Frieda was having a good day." He chuckled. "My little woman's not always so charitable, even for a good cause. Offered to cut our regular prices in half. Anyway, she must've made a favorable impression 'cause next day we got the call. Old Howard gave us the job."

Frieda's sour look told Milla that either she was having another generally uncharitable day or that Julius' account of how they came to work for Howard wasn't altogether true.

Milla wondered how the Rosens really got on G. Winston Howard's radar and the identity of the woman who negotiated the deal. G. Winston Howard was an only child.

Next Clue Location - http://writeitanyway.blogspot.com:80/

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As authors, we’ve heard this refrain often enough. Many years ago, when my husband and I attended a dinner party, his boss’s snooty wife said to me: "You haven’t had enough experiences in life to write about them yet." Duh. This adage doesn’t mean you have to be an aircraft mechanic to write about a jet pilot as a hero. What this phrase means is we must tap into our own emotions to portray them in our characters. Have I ever felt embarrassment, hurt, fear or envy? These are what we mean by Write What You Know.

I should have said to this lady, "Haven’t you heard of research?" Certainly I knew nothing about being a hairdresser when I chose salon owner Marla Shore as my sleuth. So how did I learn? By trailing my stylist around the salon, interviewing hairdressers, visiting a local beauty school, subscribing to Modern Salon magazine, attending a trade show. Research, baby!

So how come I’ve never written books about a nurse, since my own background is in nursing?

1. I wanted to write humorous mysteries and couldn’t think of anything funny involving a nurse.

2. It had been a while since I’d practiced, so a lot of research would be involved.

3. The research wouldn’t be fun. I’d have to hang around a hospital ward or trail a visiting nurse on her rounds. Sad stuff.

I have three stipulations for creating a mystery series: It should be set in Florida. The sleuth’s occupation should be easily researchable. And the topic should be fun and interesting.

So in terms of Write What You Know, it’s not your profession that counts. Many mystery authors have created series based on their occupation, but then what happens when that series is cancelled? They either have to launch a spin-off series, or–you got it–do the research for a totally different idea.

So don’t be put off if you lack experience in a certain career. You can do the research. What is more important is to tap into your emotions. Use those incidents in your background to make your characters come alive. Let out your inner demons and Write What You Know.

Please welcome guest blogger Pat Bertram. Thank you, Pat, for visiting us today.

Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book - character and story driven novels that can't easily be slotted into a genre - she decided to write her own. Daughter Am I is Bertram's third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

DIALOGUE

One of the hardest techniques for new writers to handle is dialogue. When I first started out, my characters never just said something. They agreed, cautioned, reminded, mimicked, answered, contributed, guessed, explained, responded, admonished, confessed, encouraged, clarified, blurted, pointed, winced, replied, corrected, acknowledged, returned, laughed, challenged, chided, objected, contested, quipped, offered, moaned, complained, repeated, stammered, pleaded, inquired, mumbled, interrupted, confirmed, addressed, countered, advised, completed, allowed, supplied, ordered, asked, continued, chided, answered, whispered, teased, requested, hollered, echoed, declared, informed, spoke, bellowed, spit out, thundered, hissed. All within a few pages. Whew!

Even worse, I would sit and agonize over the way my characters spoke. "He responded sparingly." "She informed him haughtily." He mumbled sadly." Ouch.

It was a joy to discover that modern dialogue relies primarily on "said," such a common word, the reader’s gaze glides over it as if it were invisible. It was even more of a joy to discover that adverbs were frowned on. The dialogue itself, or the beat -- the bit of action accompanying the dialogue -- should show the character’s emotion. "I hate you", she said angrily tells us what the character is feeling. She picked up a rock and threw it at him. "I hate you!" shows us, allowing us to become intimately involved with the character. The only time an adverb is necessary is if the way a character speaks is at odds with the words.

A good example: toward the end of When Harry Met Sally, Meg Ryan tells Billy Crystal she hates him. "And I really hate you," she said tearfully. If you were writing the scene in a novel, you would need the "tearfully" to show her state of mind. You can also use an occasional adverb to modify the word "said." "I hate you," he said softly.

Books on how to write dialogue often suggest we listen to people talk to learn how to write dialogue. Seems like good advice, but have you ever truly listened? "We . . . um . . . we, like . . . you know . . . we stammer and like we repeat ourselves and um . . . you know."

Even when we speak coherently, we don't converse. We lecture. We tell long, boring, convoluted stories. We interrupt others and talk over them. We use clichés. We tell jokes that take forever to get to the punch line. None of which helps us write dialogue. If characters in books talked the way we talk in real life, who would bother reading? We want our characters to sound like us, just not talk like us. We also want their conversations to be witty, to the point, and conflicted.

In life, most of us cannot come up with that clever quip when we need it -- it comes to mind (if at all) late at night when no one is around to be impressed. Our characters don't have to suffer from that malady because they have us and our late night epiphanies on their side.

We can change their words as often as necessary to get it right.

And get it right we must. Good dialogue makes a reader keep reading. Bad dialogue, no matter how crucial to the story, makes readers go in search of other amusements.

So how does one write good dialogue?　

Make speeches short.

Have speakers cut in on one another.

Answer a question with a question.

Ignore questions, or answer it after another exchange of words.

Instead of a character answering a question directly, have him tell why it was done: "Did you eat the cookie?" "They looked so good."

Have characters play tug-of-war with words, each trying to get something from the other.

When editing, review every snippet of speech and ask yourself, "Is this the best, the wittiest, the most dramatic thing the character can say?"

Dialogue is not life. In life, most of us can't think of the perfect response until it is way too late. But in writing you can take your time and make each bit of dialogue a jewel.

Here is a bit of dialogue from Daughter Am I:

Daughter Am I: When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents-grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born-she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead. Along the way she accumulates a crew of feisty octogenarians-former gangsters and friends of her grandfather. She meets and falls in love Tim Olson, whose grandfather shared a deadly secret with her great-grandfather. Now Mary and Tim need to stay one step ahead of the killer who is desperate to dig up that secret.

Website: http://patbertram.com

Blog: http://ptbertram.wordpress.com

Publisher: http://secondwindpublishing.com/DaughterAmI.html

My Website Launch Contest has ended. Thanks to everyone who entered. We had 224 entries. Winners were selected using a Random Integer Generator at www.random.org.

The Winners Are:

First Place: Sherry Haut.  Prize: An autographed book by the Author plus signed books from her critique partners: Dark Temptation by Allison Chase, Chocolate Secrets by Zelda Benjamin, and Return of the Wild Son by Cynthia Thomason.

Second Place: Sharon Berger.  Prize: An autographed book plus a gold tone charm bracelet from Diamonds International (charms not included).

Third Place: Diane Lesetmoe.  Prize: A gift certificate for one free hour (worth approx. $ 80) toward a website project or other related web service from Progressive Web Site & Information Services (minimum of 10 hours required).

Newsletter Subscriber Bonus: Mina Gerhart.  Prize: A glamorous red beaded purse, perfect for the Holidays.

* If your name is listed, please contact me with your snail mail address. Due to postage constraints, international winners will receive an online bookstore gift card with prize equivalent value.

For more chances to win, visit The Book Belles, click on News & Events, and find the Contest info.

Also check the Halloween box on top of this blog for a Contest beginning Oct. 30.

Upcoming Guest Blogger Pat Bertram will be discussing Dialogue on Thursday, Oct. 22, so be sure to visit then.

Some writers despise revisions. Others don’t mind them or see them as another chance to improve their work. Depends on the editor’s comments and how extensive the requested changes are to be. An eight page single-spaced revision letter is going to provoke a different response than an editor telling you to tighten your story. This is what I’ve been doing for over a week now, morning to night, scouring for redundancies, passive verbs, removing "he said, she said"s, and adding instead a character tag or line of action. My editor suggested I break up some of the longer paragraphs, look for places to add more sensory details, and tone down one of the, ahem, hot sex scenes. It’s intense, neck-bending work, especially when my book is a loooong 451 pages. Remind me to write shorter next time!

I’m halfway through, while she’s waiting on the manuscript to set a release date. I’d like to do a final read-through before turning it in to make sure I caught everything. I’m adding snippets of dialogue here and there so this version may end up even longer. Thank goodness I haven’t had to cut the word count! It’s a great story, and I’m enjoying reading this wild space adventure again as I hope you will when it is released. I think of it as Lara Croft meets Star Wars with its cocky space pilot hero and tough chick heroine. The cover suits her perfectly:

I learned a lesson from the readers of my Bad Hair Day mysteries who requested a Yiddish glossary. I never did get around to that, figuring it was too late as I was already into several volumes of the series. But I did create a glossary for my paranormal romance. However, for Silver Serenade, I’d scribbled down a list of futuristic terms in my notes but didn’t submit it with the manuscript. Since my editor requested a Glossary, I am typing this as I go along with the editing. This story has lots of sci fi terms, and although you can figure them out in the context, a Glossary will be fun for readers.

Creating other bonus materials is another lesson I’ve learned along the way. Again, I did it for my later paranormal romance (that’s making the marketing rounds), but not for Silver’s story. So I’m also doing a Reader Discussion Guide while thinking about what else might be appealing to fans. How about the political structures of the various inter-planetary government alliances? Character profiles? Descriptions of some of the worlds our protagonists visit?

As a reader, what kinds of bonus materials do you like to see from authors?

I am proud to announce that I’ve signed with The Wild Rose Press for a futuristic romance titled SILVER SERENADE. This book will be available in both print and electronic formats.

Currently, I’m going through the editorial process so I’ll let you know when I have a release date.

This is very exciting for me because I started my writing career in this genre. I wrote four futuristics for Dorchester as Nancy Cane before switching to mysteries. After ten delightful years spent with hairdresser Marla Shore, I yearned to write another space adventure. And so I did.

What’s it about? Here’s the blurb:

The job of being a writer is no longer limited to writing the book. Now we have to do website updates, blogs, book trailers, social networking, and more. We have to write blurbs and log lines. In fact, we could spend all our time on promotion rather than writing. So far I’m on Facebook but I haven’t ventured onto My Space or Twitter. Will those become necessary? We’ll see. Oh, and don’t forget real life. Sometimes that intrudes into our writing space.

Anyway, thank you, my very loyal fans, for being with me through the years. I hope you’ll join me on this new adventure.

Last week, we followed our annual tradition of attending the Epcot Food & Wine Festival.

But first, I attended a meeting of Central Florida Romance Writers to greet my fellow authors and hear Terri Garey speak on a Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Mass Market Publishing Process. Terri writes stories with great titles like Dead Girls are Easy, A Match Made in Hell, and You’re the One That I Haunt.

Ready for refreshments, I rejoined my family for our venture to Disney’s Epcot Center. Each year the Food & Wine Festival showcases the foods and beverages of different lands. We veered left at World Showcase, stopping by the booth for Argentina. Our kids sampled the beef empanada with tomato salsa. I had the grilled beef skewer with a boniato puree that tasted like mashed potatoes with pesto sauce. Very tasty! We tried the red wine, Reserva Malbec. All recommended!

The kids stopped by Mexico for Quesadilla but I waited for the rice and lentil crepe at India.

South Africa proved a bonus with its seared beef tenderloin, mango barbeque sauce, and sweet potato puree. Recommended! At Melborne, Australia, we sampled the Penfold’s Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet. Okay, but nothing special compared to the Malbec.

Vienna, Austria offered paprika beef stew with bacon dumplings which my husband tried. I downed the mushroom soup with chive dumplings and craved more. The sinful chocolate sacher torte came next. Recommended!

Here’s an easy way to remember these great finds. Think the 4 A’s: Africa, Argentina, Australia, and Austria.

Add one more: Cork, Ireland. Here we had the cheese plate served with apple chutney and brown bread but the chocolate lava cake was the best. Umm, it’s a real to-die-for dessert.

If you’re craving a real meal, eat in France in the downstairs restaurant. The crepe with turkey strips and sauteed peppers and onions is delish.

As usual, we got full before making it around the world. This necessitates a return visit. Next time, we head right past Greece and toward Canada. I’m smacking my lips in anticipation already. What does it cost? Anywhere from around $2.50 to $5 per item. Bring lots of cash.

We had an amazing adventure at Scott’s Maze Adventures in Zellwood, Florida this past weekend. Home of the Fall Corn Maze, Long & Scott Farms is located in rural country northwest of Orlando. To get there, take I-4 and get off at Altamonte Springs. Continue north on Route 436 past Apopka until you reach Zellwood. It’s easy to print out directions on the Farm’s website. Turning at the traffic light at Jones Avenue, you’ll follow a road bordered by farmlands stretching into the distance on either side so that you feel like you’re out in the boonies.

It cost $10 per person to enter the maze. You get a neon bracelet to wear and have to watch a safety video first. The attendant makes everyone repeat the rules aloud, such as Do not run in the maze; Do not cut through the maze; Do not pick the corn, etc. Then you have your choice of entering either through a tunnel that’s a piece of large pipe or going down a slide at a playground. There’s a mini maze or the regular maze. At the entrance to the regular maze, you’re given a flag on a pole. If you get in trouble, you can wave the flag, and the attendant on a high bridge will note your location. The large maze has four sections, each denoted by a different colored ribbon. When you pass from one color to the next, you know you’re going in the right direction. They also give you clues along the way and a paper on which to rub the symbols with a pencil.

The stalks are very high, and even our son who is over 6 feet tall couldn’t see beyond them. The aisles are very narrow with a packed dirt trail. Tapered leaves swat your arms as you stroll past. The day we went, it was in the low 90s, and sweat dripped down our backs and faces. It’s a good idea to bring along a bottle of water. There’s a snack stand outside the maze that sells drinks as well as hot dogs and chips. There’s also a stand for Italian Ices, picnic tables under shade, a corn toss game, a playground for kids, a nature trail, and a gift shop. We bought a bag of a dozen fresh corn for seven dollars.

It took us less than an hour to get through the maze, but we were so hot that we asked the attendant for the way out. You can truly get lost in this cornfield for hours. It would be more fun in cooler weather, and you’re not far from Mount Dora so you could spend the rest of the day in that delightful town with its boutique shops and restaurants. Or the farm has enough activities to keep you busy for an afternoon if you’re so inclined. The maze is open during fall and spring season. Check the website for dates and hours. I’ve always wanted to do a corn maze, especially since I have a chase scene in a cornfield in Dead Roots. Now I’ve shared the experience with you.

When you get lost, you wave this flag and the attendant will help you find the exit.

I was stunned and sorry to hear of editor Kate Duffy’s passing. She was an institution in the romance industry and a champion of the genre. Kate was my editor for my Brava novella in Wicked Women Whodunit, and being a Kensington mystery author, I'd met her before. She’d attended a conference sponsored by Florida Romance Writers and I picked her up at the airport. We chatted at the con and I ran into her subsequently at RT and other conventions and always received a friendly greeting. She was beloved by many authors. Her enthusiasm, support, generosity, and sharp wit will be missed by many. There’s a lovely tribute to her on the Smart Bitches blog.

        Nancy J. Cohen and Editor Kate Duffy

  Kate Duffy with author Allison Chase

  My novella, "Three Men and a Body" is inside.

  The Portuguese version.  Cool, huh?

These were made possible thanks to Kate Duffy.  May she find peace and romance novels in the Great Library Beyond.