RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//I’m doing a deep dive into my thoughts and feelings on the allegations against Neil Gaiman and on parasocial relationships, the writing community, and associated implications. Also, hey! Good news on audiobooks and Spanish translations.
//My thoughts on admiring and idolizing the creators of the art we love, meeting your heroes, being careful what we complain about online, my unexpected trip to Tucson and exciting news on NEVER THE ROSES!
//My experience so far with putting a Romantasy series in KU and plan to have RELUCTANT WIZARD wide for preorder and into KU on release day. Also thoughts on patriotism, politics, and diverse reading.
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This week at the SFF Seven, we’re talking about real life people (or celebrities) we’ve based characters on.
That phrasing makes me laugh a little because I’m pretty sure celebrities are still real life people. It puts me in mind of some of my ongoing themes of reminding readers that their favorite authors are still people who get sick and have life drama. But I digress.
I don’t know if I’ve talked about this openly, but in UNDER HIS TOUCH, the second Falling Under book (and this series is contemporary erotic romance, not SFF, fair warning), I totally based the male protagonist on a celebrity. I wanted a Brit man, one who was brooding and not conventionally handsome, full of smoldering sexiness. Guess who I based him on?
Yeah, yeah – I know. Only a book nerd like me would pick someone like that. I don’t think it’s at all obvious in the text to the reader, but he was the guy I envisioned when I wrote it. I even threw in a little Amanda Palmer easter egg, just for fun.
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I used this photo (Thanks to Craig Chrissinger for taking it!) a couple of weeks ago, but it’s too appropriate for this week’s topic to pass up using it again. Our topic at the SFF Seven is our fantasy dinner party. We’re asking which SFF authors and characters you’d invite to a soiree.
The thing is, one of the best perks of being an author is getting to make other authors be your friends. So my fantasy dinner parties have mostly happened! Case in point: above I’m having dinner with Martha Wells, Darynda Jones, and Kelly Robson. Yes, it was a great conversation. I feel so blessed and fortunate that I pretty much get to have my fantasy dinner parties on a regular basis now.
Last week I got to have dinner with Amanda Bouchet, Maria V. Snyder, Jennifer Estep, H.R. Moore, and Maria Vale. On another evening, I sat between Juliette Cross and Chloe C. Peñaranda, later joined by Carissa Broadbent.
The one person I have yet to meet in person – and hopefully have dinner with! – is Neil Gaiman. But I do have his cell phone number and have chatted with him on the phone, which gives me all kinds of happiness right there. Since it’s a fantasy, Anne McCaffrey, Tanith Lee, and Vonda McIntyre could all come back from the dead and join us.
My younger self would be thrilled.
//How writing a novel is like building a road brick by brick, and how some days you’re nose in the mortar and other days you lift your head to look. Also thoughts on revision, the 3-Act structure, story logic, and knowing whether you have brain juice or not.
//How to graciously answer that invidious question: “Have I heard of you?” Also, some lovely early feedback on ROGUE FAMILIAR – just released!!! – and how we don’t always know what we’re writing.
//How you know when your creativity is flowing, which story ideas have enough juice to sustain a novel or series, and how to handle those New Shiny ideas when you have other works in progress to focus on.
//Why I don’t believe in muses and how conflating the experience of writing – joyful or otherwise – with the experience of reading is counterproductive, and how writing turns out the same whether it was fun to write or not.
//How being female isn’t actually a characterization (yes, this rant again), an odd coincidence with my growing up and a now Famous Author, and asking for good thoughts for a new preemie baby in the family.
