Happy 101

I just got the Happy 101 Award from Caroline Clemmons! Go on over to her blog for 4/22 and read, www.carolineclemmons,blogspot.com. How sweet! Thank you, Caroline! Bobbye

It's all in the details

Have you ever noticed that the things most intriguing in books are the little touches that set them apart from their competition? So, you have a story about a shape-shifting Japanese computer geek who turns into a world-saving Tyrannosaurus Rex with a love of human kind? Mundane. See it every day.

But how about a geek who does that and he's also afraid of reptiles? Or he doesn't know how to swim? By tweaking the story just a little bit more, people go, wait a minute, why is he afraid of the reptiles/water?

Now you add backstory through dialogue and action:

Asako Natsu(assistant to the mild mannered computer programmer) wrung her hands with worry. "The ambassador has been kidnapped by the evil sorcerer and is being held in an underground computer lab. He will be forced to give the wizard the password to our new computer game, 'Dragon Breath.'"

She crossed the office and laid her hand on Zinan Tomi's shoulder. "Do you know where Super Rex has gone? We need his help. He can swim to the lab and blast open the door with one super sonic pull of huge teeth, freeing the ambassador."

Zinan began to tremble. Fears of almost drowning in his bathtub as a child washed over him in waves.

Well, you get the point. Always put interesting tidbits of fact in your book that will detonate near the end and make it more interesting.

Now to go write about my miniature dragon, Cinder falling in love with the Lake Tahoe sea serpent, Tessie, who is really a male named Torrence, a lean seven hundred fifty pounds monster who fights against evil.

Establishing Yourself Under a New Pseudonym

Oh, boy, does it feel strange to be a newbie all over again! After fourteen years of writing with friend and co-writer, Linda Campbell, I have set sail on a new solo voyage under the name Daryn Cross. Although I still have my rights to be called a member of the RWA Published Authors' Network and being on a first-named and friendship basis with some of the mega-stars of romance writing, I am, by virtue of no track record, considered to be "just another" beginning writer. On sites where I don't disclose all my writing history, many who have recently signed a contract, their first, with a small press or even medium press, or someone who is now agented and not yet contracted,will point out I seem to have the basics of writing down pretty well. :-) If not, maybe I ought to consider a career in car mechanics.

But, I will try extremely hard to remain humble, for "humility goeth before the fall." And I remember well the words one published writer told me when I was truly a beginner. "You never know who you're talking to, and you never burn bridges you may have to cross later on down the road."

Moonshine and Astrological Movements

Today I've been reading numerous articles about moonshine and Virginia and I'm feeling absolutely loopy. I feel like I got into some of that "shine, white lightning,moonshizzle, mountain dew, creek water, hooch, squeezings, rot gut, corn liquor." Thankfully,despite the influence,I wrote seven pages on my novel.

Then again, maybe my success at writing may be coming from the imminent conjunction of the annualar solar eclipse and the New Moon. According to a report I get, that has the same potecy as a total solar eclipse. Considering I have three sun signs in my birth chart, it has to give me a boost, right?

Well, think whatever you want. All of us who are writers are simply glad Mercury's coming out of retrograde. No more lost manuscripts, miscommunications and messed up contracts.

Full speed ahead!

The Difference between Fantasy and Insanity

Fantasy: imaginary, make-believe, made-up, unreal, invented, pretend, imagined, fictional, illusory
Insanity: foolishness, irrationality, senselessness, absurdity, folly, recklessness, stupidity, craziness

I have worked in health care my whole career and started my career path by working in a state psychiatric hospital with geriatric patients. Recently I have been reminded of my beginnings when dealing with a family member who lapsed into an alternate reality due to the death of a spouse. This experience has made me re-examine the question, what is the difference between fantasy and insanity?

I have a very vivid imagination, and have had some acquaintances and friends tell me it’s a little “out there.” As a result, writing fantasy suited me. It allowed me free reign on creating a make-believe world. But, what makes my work believable and acceptable versus being considered irrational and absurd?

Ah, the crux of what will sell as opposed to what will sit in a drawer never to see the light of day again! Could it be that the only real difference between the two is perception? If you can get enough people to believe the world you’ve created, then it becomes real and not imaginary?

As one person put it on a forum board, “The real is only as real as you believe it is. What's imaginary is as imaginary as you believe it is. If you want, the real becomes imaginary, and what's imaginary becomes real.”

I pray my characters will be imaginary, not folly~that they’ll be illusory, not foolish~and finally, that they’ll be embraced not abhorred.

Writing is a Business

I spent this afternoon reading up on medical practice management (don’t ask—I know it sound odd, but there was a reason). As I read those areas practice managers must master, I realized the processes weren’t that different from what a professional writer must use to master the business of writing. Here’s the list and how the two professions compare:

1. Running a Practice with Maximum Efficiency, Quality Patient Care and To Increase the Bottom Line

Writers have a “practice” in the sense that they have a business producing a commodity that can be sold to the end-user, the reader. The better the quality controls on the writing, such as critiquing, editing, and testing the market before submission, the better it is likely to sell and produce a profit.

2. Handling the Multiple Management Tasks of Financial, Operational, Managed Care and Personnel

A writer’s multiple management tasks consist of: the financial, which encompass most of a writer’s end-put activities; operational, what needs to be done to submit, close the deal track sales, and how to turn a profit after advertising, home office and public appearance expenses; managed care in writing would be publishing discounting; personnel would include any individuals hired by you to edit, advertise, provide administrative support, etc.

3. Measuring How Well the Practice is Doing. Reporting Meaningful and Practical Financial Data to Senior Management and/or Physicians

Now we’re back to tracking sales, then submitting ARCs for reviews, checking fan reaction via author pages, blogs, Facebook and other networking sites. Make sure to let the editor know what input you’re receiving.

4. Pre-collections and Post-Collections
Always make sure you keep the publisher honest about sales. This is where an agent really helps.

Okay, I admit there are some dissimilarities between medical practice management and the business of writing, but I think I have proven one thing. Writing is a business.

My Third Eye is in a Coma

No matter how hard I’ve tried, I can’t seem to open my third eye. It seems determined to stay closed. I sought help from the Great Swami of present day, the Internet, to find a remedy for my sick eye.

First, I consulted a great font of knowledge, the source of all input and information, Mr. Wikki Pedia. After reading what he had to say, I determined that I was not Shiva, the Buddha, so opening my third eye would not cause the destruction of the physical universe.

Then, I read that the third eye was connected to the pituitary and pineal glands and is there, dormant, as an organ that will be needed in the future. Okay, I reasoned, the future is now! Why won’t the darned thing pop open?

I decided to go into “third eye training,” like Taoism dictates, “focusing attention on the point between the eyebrows with the eyes closed in various qigong postures.” It seems the goal of the training is to “allow students to have the ability to tune into the right vibration of the universe and gain solid foundation into more advanced meditation levels.”

I guess I Qied when I should have gonged or didn’t tune the channel to the right number, because I flunked third eye training.

Then, in one last desperate search for information that would save my third eye from eternal vegetative status—who wants a third eye on life support?—I discovered an answer in a book by the Queen of Metaphysics, Doreen Virtue. She had the answer.

My third eye doesn’t open outward. It opens inward. It’s could be open already, and I didn’t even know it. She says the third eye sees my true higher self, not this body out here that is slowly going south and wrinkling up like a week-old tomato. But,to my chagrin, I discovered that my third eye is closed.

It seems that first I have to get rid of one thing that happened in my past life, that little thing about being burned as a witch. The third eye’s afraid to look inward until I get rid of my fear of burning at the stake.

Time to consult Dr. Brian Weiss (www.brianweiss.com). . .