Tag Archive for: bethany maines

Clicking Our Heels – What We Hate Most About Computers

/in /by

Clicking Our Heels –
What We Hate Most About Computers

I’ve had that kind
of day! (Debra speaking) My computer
ate my words written for the day before deciding frozen was the position it
would like to be in. Even though I normally love computers, today, I asked my
fellow Stiletto Gang members “What they
hate most about computers?” Here’s what they said:
Dru Ann Love: The
updates and how it messes with my settings.
Bethany Maines:
The thing I hate most about computers is that I can’t punch them. I want to
start a business selling nerf computer replicas that come with their own
baseball bat.
Juliana Aragon Fatula:
They aren’t faithful. I have a relationship with a new computer on average
about once a year and they are unfaithful and I have to move on and go with a
younger, newer model. Sometimes I hate the fact that they make me want to pick
them p and throw them out the window or at the very least take a stiletto to
the screen.

Kay Kendall: Just
when I get used to and comfy with a program, the company that produces it
changes it radically, then all the PCs move to favoring that, and then I have
to learn the new program. It is invariably trickier and just does more things
that I don’t really need. Annoying!


Jennae M. Phillippe:
The update cycle. I’ll be fresh and excited to start working on a project, turn
on the computer, and have to wait like 20 minutes for the thing to update. Or
worse, I’ll be in mid-project which it does one of those mandatory shut down
thingies. Totally throws me off.


Linda Rodriguez:
I hate that some programs (I’m looking straight at you, Microsoft Word) try to
make decisions for me that I want to make for myself.
Paffi Flood:
Nothing, now that I have an Apple J.


Paula Benson: That computers understand so many things intuitively, except how to fulfill my needs.
Marilyn Meredith:
What I hate most about computers is what I have to learn how to do something
new – which seems to happen too often.

Sparkle Abbey: We
don’t know what we do without computers. We work on them, we write on them and
we use them to keep in touch with each other. We both think we’re pretty
computer savvy, but there have been a couple of times when the computer has
eaten a work in progress or not saved it correctly. That’s frustrating!

New Release from Bethany Maines

/in /by
by Bethany Maines
Today is the release date for my new novella – Wild Waters!!  This is my first time doing true romance (sex
scenes – eep!) and I’m very excited for everyone to get a chance to read it!
Purchase Wild Waters at:

Or enter to win a free copy on my website:
WILD WATERS (with Sienna Lance)
His duty. Her secrets. The mission that brings
them together will tear them apart.
In the steamy jungle of 1960’s era Vietnam,
when a team of Navy SEALs are brought together with a pair of reporters, no one
is prepared for the explosive secrets their encounter will reveal. Lt. Ben
Kolley, former WWII frogman, leads one of the first teams of Navy SEALs in 1968
Vietnam. His wild pack of soldiers  have earned their reputations as
“green ghosts” on the Mekong River and none is more elusive than Catch,
the point-man with an uncanny sense of the water. The reporters, a bumbling
drunken writer, and Kahele, a female photographer with a sharp
mind, dark eyes, and an even darker secret are the first allowed to
interview a SEAL team and both are intent on nailing their assignment. But
neither Kahele or Catch are prepared to discover an attraction for each other
that’s like nothing they’ve ever experienced. Soon, Catch is breaking all
the rules to be with her, and Kahele finds herself entangled by a passion
she’s never felt before.  But for Ben, Kahele dredges up horrifying
memories of an old mission – one where not all of his team returned. Can Kahele
be trusted or is she the monster Ben fears? The clock is ticking, and soon all
their lives may depend on Ben’s decisions.  SEALs believe
they can survive anything, but can they survive the truth?

***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of
Destiny and An Unseen Current.
 You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

My Toddler Works for James Patterson

/in /by
by Bethany Maines
My dad says he invented the skateboard.
He says that he had never before seen or heard of a
skateboard when he put a plank on skate wheels. Of course, his invention went
no further than a backyard of summer fun, but he still likes to claim his
invention when some youth sails by on a long board. 
Well, now I feel his pain. 
James Patterson, Mr. Prolific himself, is in the process of releasing
what he’s calling “Book Shots” — novella length works, penned with co-authors, that
cost less than five dollars. 
You have no idea how annoyed this makes me.
Because it was MY idea. 
This month I’m releasing Wild Waters, a novella length paranormal romance
(sex scenes!) story.  The genre is
outside of my usual brand, but I thought the structure and topic were
interesting (reporters, SEALs, Vietnam!). I also thought my readers might enjoy
something at a lower price point, but in my style of writing.  I examined the options.  I had the thoughts.  I came up with the plan. 

And then James Patterson stole it out of my brain!  How dare he use his larger amounts of money,
time and fame to launch my idea!  It
makes me want to march right over to his house and give him a toddler.  Let’s see how fast he can type then.  Toddlers should be like weights for
jockeys.  If Vegas gambled on writer’s
turning in manuscripts on time, I’m sure that they would have developed some
sort of toddler distribution system by now.  Fortunately, for Mr. Patterson and for me,
there’s plenty of room in this world for novella’s and writers of all kinds,
with or without toddlers. Good luck to
both of us with our tiny books.
***

PRE-ORDER TODAY

WILD WATERS (with Sienna Lance)
His duty. Her secrets. The mission that brings them together will tear them apart.

In the steamy jungle of 1960’s era Vietnam, when a team of Navy SEALs are brought together with a pair of reporters, no one is prepared for the explosive secrets their encounter will reveal. Lt. Ben Kolley, former WWII frogman, leads one of the first teams of Navy SEALs in 1968 Vietnam. His wild pack of soldiers have earned their reputations as “green ghosts” on the Mekong River and none is more elusive than Catch, the point-man with an uncanny sense of the water. The reporters, a bumbling drunken writer, and Kahele, a female photographer with a sharp mind, dark eyes, and an even darker secret are the first allowed to interview a SEAL team and both are intent on nailing their assignment. But neither Kahele or Catch are prepared to discover an attraction for each other that’s like nothing they’ve ever experienced. Soon, Catch is breaking all the rules to be with her, and Kahele finds herself entangled by a passion she’s never felt before. But for Ben, Kahele dredges up horrifying memories of an old mission – one where not all of his team returned. Can Kahele be trusted or is she the monster Ben fears? The clock is ticking, and soon all their lives may depend on Ben’s decisions. SEALs believe they can survive anything, but can they survive the truth?

Now is the time…

/in /by
Late in the month, it seems like almost everyone suddenly wakes
up and realizes that the deadlines that seemed so very far away are now, like,
almost here, man.  Cue panic.  Cue sudden uptick in workload for yours
truly.  The problem is that I’m exactly
like everyone else.  I’ve been noodling
over several pieces of writing and now the deadline is like, almost here,
man! 
Now is when the marathon of writing becomes a sprint. Just
how fast can fingers type?  We’re about
to find out. 
Now is also about the time when back pain and carpal tunnel
set in.  Time to start juicing
writers!  No, I mean literal
juicing.  It’s important to stay hydrated
– prevents muscle spasms.  Although, I
personally prefer copious amounts of tea, liberally applied, at regular
intervals.
Now is the time when the tiny proto-human you’ve been
carefully nurturing like a hot house bloom looks up from a coloring book and
says, “Sorry mom, work. Four more minutes.” 
Gee, wonder where she got that?
Now is the time that my face looks like this:

So wish me luck as I sprint to the end of the month.  And wish my family luck as they get abandoned
for fake people that I made up. 
***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of
Destiny and An Unseen Current.
 You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Personal Fitness

/in /by

by Bethany Maines

I’m going to let you in on a secret – writing is not for
wussies.  It’s for old people.
   
Or at least it makes you feel old. Carpal tunnel. Eye
twitches and strains. Aching neck, sore back. The human body was not designed to
spend hours sitting at a computer, and the hours compound into stiff muscles
that have forgotten how to move.  Walking into the kitchen after a prolonged bout of editing, I look like I’ve escaped from the neighborhood old-person jail… er… assisted living facility.  I
imagine that back when writers were churning out novels by quill and
candlelight that it wasn’t any better. 
But at least back then we were likely to die by forty anyway and
probably needed to worry more about childbirth and dental hygiene than whether
or not our wrists were a tad achy.
I could trot out some line about suffering for my art, but
the truth is, I do many things to combat the muscular stress of sitting and
writing.  First of all, I got married and
had a kid.  Although, maybe that wasn’t
quite my intended outcome when I started down the aisle, it has to be said that
nothing curtails long hours at a computer like a toddler. However, the things I
intentionally do to keep myself from becoming Quasimodo include walking / jogging,
stretching and keeping up on my martial arts training.  And then I whine and complain until my
husband gives me a neck rub.  And then
when all else fails I break down and pay for a massage.

Below are the most common stretches I do for my wrists.  These drawings were actually produced
by one of my former employers – Visual Health Information.  They produce drawings for physical therapists
and others to give to patients.  I have
found all of these to be very helpful for my extended typing lifestyle.
***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of
Destiny and An Unseen Current.
 You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

The Bag of Tricks

/in /by
By Bethany Maines
On my last blog I discussed how I
keep the fictional worlds of my books organized (answer: spreadsheets and
lists!), but recently I gave a talk on writing to a local high-school and they
wanted to know the more nitty-gritty details. Since they are at the start of
their writer journey they have yet to discover that many of the struggles of
writing are shared by all writers. 
What’s that? You have two great scenes, but you’re not sure how to
connect them?  You have half a novel
written, but you don’t know who the bad guy is yet? You really need the hot guy
to land in the heroine’s life, but you don’t know how he gets there?  These are all questions with many possible
answers, and like common core math, many possible ways of getting to the answer.
I thought Kimberly Jayne’s recent
post about Mindful Daydreaming was a great way to answer many writing
questions.  And yesterday’s post from Sally
Berneathy’s post about “pantsing” vs. plotting a novel showed how she dives and
discovers her book as she goes along.  I
have discovered that being a plotter is usually a faster more efficient way for
me to write.  When I have all the answers
before I start writing, I can write even when I’m not feeling very creative or
if I only have five minutes.  But
recently, I found myself stuck on the outline. 
I stared.  I hammered.  I picked. 
I ignored it.  Nothing
happened.  And at some point I decided to
start writing because you know what happens when you don’t write? Nothing.  So I wrote all the way to where I had
outlined and I was just as stuck as I was on the outline.  I was back to being a high-schooler – how do
I connect those two scenes? How do I get the hero from point A to point B? Dear
God, what happens nexxxxxxxt????
Which is when I decided to take my
own advice.  I grabbed a notebook and a
pen. Changing the medium can sometimes change my perspective.  I wrote a synopsis of the story from the
villain’s point of view.  I wrote a
synopsis from the love interests view point. I drew little diagrams about how the
storylines connect. I wrote a few paragraphs about the villain’s history and
motivation, really diving into what he thinks about the events of the story.  It’s an old saying that each of us is the
hero in our own story, and that goes for villains too (see the great post from
Jennae Phillippe about A Villain’s Voice). 
How does a villain think that his actions are justified? As I answered
that question, I discovered more and more about how my story moved
forward.  Which is when I put down the
pen and typed up my scrawling notes. 
Organizing a novel isn’t just
about filing systems; it’s about herding all your characters and ideas into a
coherent plot and making sure that everyone gets to the end (or the right end
if they happen to be the designated dead body) in a satisfying manner.  But sometimes a writer needs to reach into
her bag of tricks and try more than one technique to get the job done.  As I told my room full of high-schoolers, when
in doubt…  try, try something else.
*** 
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of
Destiny and An Unseen Current.
 You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Organizing My World(s)

/in /by
by Bethany Maines

An author’s job is not just to tell a story, but to decide how a story should be told. Is it better
in first or third person? Is it told in one long march of words or are their
chapters? We have to decide genre, tone and feeling. And once those decisions
have been made an author must create and track the main plot of the story – the
one that we struggle to capture in the blurb text on the back cover – as well as
the sub-plots, underlying themes, and finally, the characters themselves.  All of those pieces require not just the ability
to write, but also the ability to track information. Because, as any serious
reader will tell you (sometimes at great length), consistency and details
matter greatly to a well written book, and while we can rely on an editor for
some items, they are only human and can only catch so much.  It is in an author’s best interest to provide
the cleanest manuscript possible.
I’m currently working on two vastly different stories: the
fourth Carrie Mae Mystery Glossed Cause and a Romance Horror
novella Wild Waters.  Each story comes
with an array of characters, research and plot twists that to be perfectly
honest I can’t hold in my brain. 
Possibly pre-production of a toddler I could have kept hold of all the
details, but no longer. Now, to keep all my worlds organized, I must rely on a system of notes, plot outlines and
spreadsheets.

For the Carrie Mae books I track characters with a spread sheet
that notes who they are (name, basic role, job or company) and also what book
they have appeared in or if they have been deleted or omitted from a book.  I also have a rather extensive style sheet
that helps me keep track of how certain things, such as chapter headings are
formatted and whether or not I’m consistently formatting things like “AK-47”
and “INTERPOL” the same way over multiple books.
For Wild Waters I’m writing in two
different time periods – WWII and Vietnam ­– and they each use distinctive
slang that I organize in a couple of basic lists.  There are
also multiple character points of view and it is important to keep track of
what characters know and when they know it, so that each plot point is revealed
at the correct time. Tracking character
arcs are more difficult and sometimes require multiple ways of
visualizing.  I will frequently write out
the plot from each characters point of view or I will graph it out on a virtual
whiteboard, utilizing the main plot points.

There is no perfect system of course, and each author must
work the way that works for them. But when examining a well-written book, I am
frequently in awe, not just of the beautifully constructed words or strong turn
of phrase, but the underlying construction of a book.  Sometimes, I find it amazing that any books
get written at all.

***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of
Destiny and An Unseen Current.
 You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

CLICKING OUR HEELS – Raw or Cooked Carrots?

/in /by

CLICKING
OUR HEELS

Raw or Cooked Carrots?

Welcome to The Stiletto Gang’s newest feature – Clicking Our Heels. Each month, on the
Fourth Thursday, a number of our bloggers will share
their opinions on the same question. Hopefully, after reading CLICKING OUR HEELS you will learn some new
things about all of us.
When Debra attended the University of Michigan,
entering freshmen were given a personality/general info type test. The odd
question on the test – Do you prefer raw or cooked carrots?
Here are some of our responses:
Bethany
Maines: “I definitely prefer raw. The snap and crunch of fresh veggies is
much preferable to the mush of cooked.”

Linda
Rodriguez: “I prefer them raw, although I do enjoy a good carrot chowder now
and then, and of course, cooked with a roast of beef or pork.”


Juliana
Aragon Fatula: “Raw. I grow carrots and eat them fresh from the earth. They
are sweet and taste like love.”


Marilyn
Meredith: “Cooked carrots. I like to doctor them with butter and brown
sugar.”

Dru Ann
Love: “I like shredded carrots in my salad and cooked carrots with a
crunch.”

Cathy
Perkins: “Raw! Cooked carrots are down there with boiled okra for
nastiness.”

Sparkle
Abbey: “Definitely raw and the best part is you can always share this
healthy snack with your dog.”

Paffi Flood:
“Cooked carrots. Roasted, actually. Nothing compares to its sweetness.”

Jennae M.
Phillippe: “I prefer roasted carrots, usually accompanied by roasted
potatoes and garlic. And butter. Lots and lots of butter.”

Kay Kendall: “I like both cooked and raw carrots.
Each has its charms.”

What Michigan interpreted the question as
showing:  Raw carrot types were
energetic, aggressive and had go-getter personalities while the cooked carrot
camp was made up of kinder, sweeter, and more passive students.  We’ll let you guess how Debra answered the
question. 

Writing for Real(ism)

/in /by
by Bethany Maines
My brother and his wife recently sent out some new baby
pictures and an update on how  they’re
doing.  With the baby at 10 weeks old
they are getting approximately 5-7 hours of sleep and they declared it “luxurious”.  Oh, I remember those days! If you read my
post on Mom’s vs. Navy Seals “Hell What Now?” you know that I’m sympathetic to
the trials of sleep deprivation.  But now
that I’m a bit more on the other side (next stop – terrible two’s!), I’m
intrigued by the idea of how I can apply this knowledge to my characters.
Writers are told to add physical characteristics to their
characters and bring realism to the fictional world.  And I think all writers enjoy building a
character dossier – eyes, hair, height, tattoos.  But I think until I had my child it didn’t
occur to me to build in the psychological effects of physical changes and
stresses.  When one gains weight, there
are changes such as bumping into things you didn’t used to (I swear I didn’t whack
my baby belly with the car door more than 8 or 12 times).  With weight loss people can find themselves
turning sideways to go through doorways that fit them just fine.  And what about memory and focus problems that
come with hormonal changes, sleep deprivation, or trauma? And as if these very
physical realities weren’t enough, I think I should be asking not only “How
does my character deal with this physical limitation or stress?” But also “What
does my character feel about their reaction?” 

Now I just have to figure out how to write all that around a
dead body,  3 – 10 suspects, and a three
act structure and I’m sure I’ll have a best seller on my hands.
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of
Destiny and An Unseen Current.
 You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Equal Rights for Positives

/in /by

by Bethany Maines

A funny thing happens when you read your own reviews – you start
thinking about them. 
I’m about a month away from completing the manuscript for Glossed Cause, the fourth book in the
Carrie Mae Mystery Series, and I made the mistake of checking out a few of the
reviews on High-Caliber
Concealer (CM #3).  I knew it was
a bad idea.  It’s always a bad idea.  What happens when I get to a bad one,
hmmm?  It’s not like I can look the
reviewer up, knock on their door and explain how monumentally wrong they
are.  But you think, “I’ll just look at
the good ones.  Just one.  I can stop there.”
You know this a total lie, right? Reviews are like Pringles
for the eyes.  Like I can stop with just
one.  I open up Amazon, I’m looking and…
then I read this: “If you enjoy reading about
Stephanie Plum, you’ll love Nicki! Maines is getting better with each book.”

And I thought, “Hell, yeah!”
<insert fist pump here>

Just one?  But I have popped – I cannot stop. I should
read more! 

Eventually, of course, I got
to one with a complaint. I’d spent too much time on Nikki’s personal life. Gah!
But, but, but… Glossed Cause is about
her FATHER (among other things).  What do
I dooooooo????

Now I’m stuck staring at the screen, half way through the
book, trying to figure out if I should turn the ship or stay the course.  “Stay the course!” my internal editor
yells.  But it’s hard to hear over the
crashing waves of doubt. 
I was complaining a negative comment on another project to
my husband he said, “Well, I think it was awesome and my vote counts more.”  <insert lightbulb going on here>

Why do the negatives get more votes?  Shouldn’t the positives get equal
rights?  Here’s what I and anyone else
who is stuck in this trap are going to do: 
We’re going to go back, we’re going to read the first positive review,
and we’re going to believe that one.  Because
Maines really is getting better with
every book.