I’m a guest over at Juliet Madison’s blog and she’s quizzing me about how the Dance Card Series came into existence. You’ll also find out which actor was the inspiration for Carlos, the hero in Luna Tango. Come on over, we’d love you to visit!
Photo by Carlos Luque – wikimedia commons
A big thank you to Sarah Belle for inviting me on this fun journey of exploring the different writing processes of writers.
My processes have changed over the years, starting with illegible scrawl on Post-it notes to what is now still illegible scrawl but in hardcover notebooks!
What am I working on?
I’m currently working on Flamenco Fire, book two of the Dance Card series. As with all my books, they require a lot of research before I can even crack open the manuscript.
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Hmmm…. the present-day and historical stories always mesh together to solve a mystery and without one of those story lines, the whole book would fall apart. There are other books out there that do this also, but none that I know of that are centred around dance.
Why do I write what I do?
Since I was a child I’ve been fascinated by history and other cultures and so it is only natural for me to incorporate them in my stories. I grew up with dance and even though I’ll never been a tango diva or ballerina, I love the energy and passion involved in such pursuits and the emotions it can trigger in people who experience the dancing on and off the stage.
How does my writing process work?
I find it incredibly difficult to start a book without a title. It doesn’t matter if I change it later down the track, but I need a title to begin with. I let the names of the characters come to me and once I have a concept in mind, I plot out the story by hand – in Spanish. I have no idea why writing in Spanish helps but it does free my mind for when I’m jotting down ideas. Once that is sorted then it’s synopsis time (collective groan from every writer who has ever had to write one of these suckers) and once I feel it’s finessed I start the manuscript. Of course, there’s a lot of research going on in between.
I’d rather stick hot pokers in my eyes than write a first draft, but as I’ve got a team of people expecting me to turn in a good story, I roll up the sleeves, grit my teeth and bleed all over the page. Then when the first draft is done the fun begins – editing, and lots of it! I have a team of fabulous critique partners and a fantastic literary agent who are happy to pick my story to shreds and help me get it right before it’s sent to my publisher. Then my fabulous editors start pulling the story apart and helping me put it back together. It really does take a village to write a book!
Thanks for stopping by! You can check out the writing processes of talented authors Di Curran, Pamela DuMond, and Misty Simon next Monday, 24 March!
Next week:
Dianne Curran is a writer of fiction with attitude and particularly enjoys twisting fairytales. She also is a collage poet, cutting out words from magazines and reassembling them into poems. She has seven manuscripts in various stages of development or decay. She lives on the Mid North Coast of NSW, Australia with her clever feline, Qwerty, after escaping the rat race of Sydney.
Pamela duMond Pamela DuMond is the author who discovered Erin Brockovich’s life story, thought it would make a great movie and pitched it to ‘Hollywood’. She writes romantic comedic mysteries, romantic YA time travel novels, and New Adult romance.
Misty Simon Misty Simon loves a good story and decided one day that she would try her hand at it. Eventually she got it right. There’s nothing better in the world than making someone laugh, and she hopes everyone at least snickers in the right places when reading her books.
Alli Sinclair 