Tag Archive for: bethany maines

Puppy Training

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by Bethany Maines


Recently my daughter learned to crawl. She’s six months old, so
basically any time she learns something it’s “recently”. But as she
learns new tricks she forces my husband and I to adapt (and hopefully
overcome).  Sadly, in our sleep deprived
state we find ourselves relying on the training we did with our previous “child.”
As she learns new things my mind reaches out for words that will
get the result I want. Ack! She’s chewing on a power cord! Drop it! It works on
the dog, so my brain now auto selects for those oh, so useful training phrases.
Sadly, the phrases mean less than nothing to my daughter.  The only one she obeys is “stay”
and that’s only if she’s strapped in the car seat.  As a result my dog, Kato, thinks I got the
runty, stupid puppy of the litter.  I can
practically see the thought bubble over his head.  “Look human puppy, I am demonstrating
what to do. Figure it out!” The tiny daughter’s thought bubble says,
“Look at those shiny eyeballs; if I could pluck them out, it might be
fantastic. Why is the fuzzy one leaving?” Which is a terrible way to treat a
dog who is trying his best to be supportive.

Tiny Daughter & Kato the Wonder Dog demonstrate their similar interests.

Kato performs many important baby related jobs. There is the
“I alert you to the fact that the baby is crying.” (Believe me Kato,
we know.) There is the extremely useful butt check. Kato, would you like to
smell this butt? Oh, you would? Must be time for a diaper change. And the
adorable guard dog duty.  He is not quite
sure why the human puppy hasn’t been weaned to dog food, but if I’m going to
insist on breastfeeding her, then he will do his best to guard us while we’re
vulnerable.
But she is learning. She now knows her name and his name, and she
knows where the dog food is and how delightful it is to spill it all over the
floor. So while the dog thinks she’s dumb, I can see the day coming when he
will realize that her little monkey fingers are useful to help him get the
delicious human food he desires. 
Hopefully, by then she will also know what “sit,” “stay” and “drop it”
mean. 





Bethany Maines is the
author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Dreaming

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by Bethany Maines

The other night I dreamed that fellow Stiletto Gang author
Linda Rodriguez rewrote the back-story on the main character of my Carrie MaeMystery series – Nikk Lanier. 
Nikki is a twenty-something red-headed linguistics major turned superspy
with an overbearing mother and a steady boyfriend who works for the CIA. 

Notice how none of that background
involves a whirlwind marriage and divorce from a blonde lawyer and the adoption
of an African orphan?  But by the
time my dream Linda was done that’s what Nikki had.  And in my dream, I kept thinking, “Maybe I could make the
divorce work, but what am I supposed to do with a baby?  I can’t just send it back!”  And then I woke up in a cold editorial
sweat trying to figure out I was going to jam all these changes into Nikki’s
next adventure that I’m 30,000 words into with no place to add in a spare baby.

What I love is that in my dream, never once did I question
why Linda was rewriting Nikki’s backstory, and it certainly never occurred to
me that I could just reject the edits. 
Nope, once Linda wrote it down, it was set in stone.  Never mind that Linda and I have never
actually met in person or done any writing together what-so-ever.  In my dream, the changes were done and
that was that.  The other odd thing
about my dream was the very real dual reality of Nikki’s reality.  Linda may have written it, but I
couldn’t send the baby back to the orphanage because Nikki would be upset, and
what would her friends think? 

But once I woke up, calmed down and then stopped laughing,
it occurred to me to wonder.  Do
other authors dream about other authors? 
Do they dream about their characters?  Is my brain off the deep end or just averagely crazy? We may
never know the answer to that one…

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Creativity vs. Time

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By Bethany Maines
When I was in college there was a hierarchy of artsy-ness. The fine artists looked down on the graphic designers, who looked down on the production people, who had to make do with looking down on people outside the art department. Web designers and Illustrators had to float around the edges and hope that no one eliminated their department before they graduated. I could never figure out why the fine arts students were so high and mighty – they were at a state school studying painting. It seemed wildly clear to me that their degree was a complete waste of daddy’s money. Graphic designers were just as creative as fine artists; we just happened to be practical enough to want jobs after graduation. Such sentiments were far to mercenary for the art department where creativity only had to serve it’s own purpose and things like deadline’s, client needs, and money were all too, too pedestrian to be considered. Which seemed silly to me since even if you became a wildly successful painter you were going to come up against deadlines (we need 12 paintings for your gallery show in September!), client needs (the White House says the portrait can’t be a nude), and money (don’t worry your pretty little head about money!), why not learn how to manage these everyday things?  Wouldn’t that make you more successful?  The resounding answer from the art department seemed to be that such thoughts would stifle the creativity.

And when it came to art, I had no problem shaking my head at their silliness. The only place I allowed myself that kind of indulgent largesse was in writing.  I would be out tip-toeing through the tulips of my imaginary worlds for months at a time. But as I have gotten older and more experienced in the craft of writing I have discovered two problems with this.  One – the product frequently is not what is needed.  Too much wandering down unprofitable by-ways and I come back to the main plot of the story with about 100 pages of random stuff that don’t serve the story at all, but because I’ve just spent months on them, I love them too much to cut.  Two – I don’t have the time.  I now have a husband, a daughter, and a business to attend to and they all have a legitimate claim to my time.  And how is the dog supposed to get any attention if I’m off typing… again? (He has to look really, really cute.) 
So, my solution?  Schedules and outlines.  Those two foes of creativity have now become my friends.  With a strong outline my writing is faster and more productive than the days when I sat down at the computer wondering what to write today.  I’m not sure how anyone else manages (and I’d love to hear other people’s experiences), but I’m hanging my hat on a schedule and an outline.

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Gremlins – Don’t Feed at All

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By Bethany Maines

The premise of my Carrie Mae Mystery series is that in the
sixties, while other ladies were burning their bras and inventing Tupperware,
Carrie Mae Robart founded a door to door / friend to friend cosmetic selling
empire – Carrie Mae Cosmetics. Her goal was to give women financial
independence without having to work outside the home. However, the more women
she met, the more she realized that there were some problems that couldn’t be
solved with just money ­– some problems needed a fist in the face. So Carrie
Mae set up the Carrie Mae Foundation. Financed by proceeds from the cosmetic
sales, the foundation is part non-profit – working on pro-bono legal cases and
lobbying government on women’s rights issues – and partly a women only,
black-ops, elite fighting force. The heroines of my stories Nikki Lanier, Ellen
Marson, Jenny Baxter and Jane Rozmarek are part of that force and they travel
the world, fulfilling the Carrie Mae mission statement: helping women
everywhere.
Now the thing you’ll notice about this premise is that it’s
only partially based in reality.  I
mean, sure, it’s possible for a woman in the 1960’s to found a peer to peer
make up sales company.  Not that I
know of any… ahem.  But sadly, it
has apparently never occurred to anyone to found an elite fighting force for
women as part their non-profit. (If someone knows of one, please email me
immediately; I would like to join up.) 
The problem with all of this lack of reality is that I have to make it
sound plausible when writing. And that means all the other bits have to sound
real. I have to research the guns and the locations and I try to make sure that
my characters emotions feel authentic. 
But if I spend too much time in reality, I suddenly look at my own
premise and think, “That’s ridiculous! 
I can’t write that.” 

That’s right; I tell myself, “I can’t.”  Those are some of the worst words in
the English language.  (Although,
they’re still not as bad as, “We need to talk.”) I’m two books and two short
stories, and half a manuscript into a series, and… I can’t?  How does the Can’t Gremlin sneak into
so many places?  I thought I was
well fortified behind the Walls of Fantasy; girded by the Armor of Gumption; defended
by the Holy Force of Imagination. 
And yet… I can’t.  Why is it
so hard to get that jerk of a gremlin out of the house? Can’t have an elite
fighting force?  You might as well
suggest that a woman can’t write books. The cycle of Can’t can be extremely
hard to break, so when I get too down in the Can’ts, I like to read other
people’s books.  There’s nothing
like a good trip through someone else’s imagination to leave the Can’t Gremlin
in the dust.  But still, I know
he’s just waiting around the corner to trip me up.  Which is why I prefer to visit reality infrequently and for
only brief periods of time.  Feel
free to visit me any time, but leave your gremlins at the door – I can’t be
bothered with Can’t today.
Bethany Maines is the author of
the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and
Facebook.

20 Something

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by Bethany Maines

One of my friends recently
complained that during an after work outing some twenty-something co-workers
wanted to go to a popular (aka crowded bar) and once there had wanted to leave
again (for another popular bar) because someone’s crush was present, but it was
all an “awkward love triangle!” Having had just about enough of that nonsense,
my friend co-opted the group and went to a less crowded bar where everyone
could hear each other AND sit down at the same time. Her conclusion?  “Man, is it nice to no longer be in my
twenties!” 
The thought made me laugh because
I could not agree more, but I do remember the angst of turning 29 and realizing
that all marketing was no longer going to be aimed at me!  If movies, music, and all popular culture
is no longer aimed at me how can I possibly validate my self-worth?  Oh wait, that’s right; I was never that
cool to begin with.  This was
probably strongly correlated to the high premium I placed on sleep.  If I wasn’t going to get at least 8
hours of sleep then the night-club we were going to had better dang well be
AWESOME, or it just wasn’t worth it. 
On the other hand, it does make
writing younger characters problematical. How do I realistically write a
twenty-something when I find all that gadding about just a little bit
silly?  Yes, that’s how old I am –
I use the word “gad”.  Well of
course, I could try using my imagination (What? A writer using their
imagination? P’shaw!).  Aging does
make me worry about the authentic feel of characters I never used to worry about.  Actually, aging makes me worry about
plenty of things that I never used to worry about.  Like, drinking out of a hose; when I was 10 we did this all
the time.  It never used to cross
my mind that it could have something wrong with it.  But maybe the ignorance of youth is double-edged sword.  Perhaps I will later get hose cancer
and perhaps the twenty-something characters I wrote in my twenties weren’t all
that great.  Or perhaps I should
just stop worrying and write with the same gusto that I did in the twenties,
trusting that it will all work out, and then go drink out of the hose, because
really it’s the same water that goes into my kitchen faucet, and the hoses
under the sink are made of rubber too and honestly it’s not going to matter any
more or less than the donut I might be having for dessert.

Bethany Maines is the author of
the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and
Facebook.

It’s Alllllivvvvvve!!

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by Bethany Maines

It’s here! It’s here!  Tales From the City of Destiny is
finally available for purchase! 
After what seems like months of writing, proofing, and review it
actually exists as a really, real book. Does this feeling ever get old?  I don’t think so. Last year, this
project was just an idea, barely an idea even, and here it is as a physical
object that anyone can hold.

As a graphic designer I marvel at
this phenomenon every time something I’ve dreamed up comes off the press. From
invitations to signs everything looks slightly different in real life than when
I began the creation process. Some things look better, some things are disappointing and some
things are neither bad or good ­– just different. And while every single time
it’s still cool that something I dreamed up is now a real physical object, the
dissonance between idea and reality no longer surprises me.
Except when it comes to my
books.  Somehow the process of
turning a word document that barely contains my invisible friends into an
actual book is… amazing. And I hope all of you will purchase your own copy and
enjoy reading about my invisible friends as much as I have enjoyed writing
about them.

Bethany Maines is the author of
the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and
Facebook.

Due Dates

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by Bethany Maines

It’s the new year! And you know what that
means? That’s right, we’re drawing ever closer to my due date. Not my actual
due date. I’m alternatively pretending a baby not going to imminently be
spawned from my body and wishing the date would hurry up so I could stop
feeling like a ship under full sail. 
(She’s coming about – tack starboard, avoid, avoid!!)  No, I’m referring to my next book –
Tales From the City of Destiny. My ARC is due tomorrow and I’m starting to
watch for the mailman with the same intensity as my dog (see picture – we call
him the dogoyle.) Every new ARC is like a present. Will it be perfect? Will I
wish to re-gift it? What’s it going to be??? Ahhhhhh!!



Meanwhile, the crib isn’t put together, we
haven’t picked a name, and my baby shower turns out to be at the same time as
the Seahawk’s first playoff game. A fact that practically all of my friends
have complained about. (Seriously, friends, seriously? It’s not like we knew
that ahead of time.  And honestly,
I like football better than baby showers too, but I swear it’s going to be fun
– there’s going to be booze, and we’re not playing any of the stupid
games.  Suck it up people!) But do
I care about these things? Well, yeah, a little bit. But right this minute,
what I really care about is seeing the fruition of all my hard work in
print. 
Tales From the City of Destiny is a collection
of short stories that track a character over the course of a decade. It’s
something that has been years in the making and I have to say that I’m very
proud of it. I feel that I have both challenged my writing skills and honed in
on how I really wanted to write. I can’t wait to share it with my fans, friends
and family! 

So as the date gets closer, I’ll keep my
fingers crossed that all goes well, that typos vanish and the cover
shines.  And as for the other due
date… well, if worse comes to worse the baby can sleep on the dog bed – I’m
sure he’d rather be on the couch anyway.  (I’m kidding – I swear!!)

    

Bethany Maines is the author of
the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and
Facebook.


Books That Stick

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by Bethany Maines

A friend recently posted a list of books that have “stuck with him.”  It was an interesting list featuring, among other things, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Disgusting Sneakers. (For those who never read Encyclopedia Brown as a kid – you missed out.  Half Choose Your Own Adventure, half Sherlock Holmes each Encyclopedia Brown book required attentive reading so that the reader could solve the mystery along with the heroes.) But the list got me to thinking about books that have stayed with me. What makes a book stick? Maybe the right book has to arrive at the right time, or maybe a book has to articulate something that I was unable to express until the moment I saw the words on the page. Or in the case of some books… they just seem realer than real life.  So for what it’s worth, here’s my list of the top 5 books/book series that have stuck with me.

  • Trixie Belden – This teenage sleuth was a tomboy with annoying siblings, and that sounded a lot more like pre-teen me than perfect Nancy Drew with her fancy car and friends.
  • The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings – My mother read us these books out loud (reading, it’s what people do when they don’t have a TV) when we were young.  I blame Eowyn for my life long desire to kick ass, take name, and defeat an Orc horde.
  • The Ordinary Princess – A  little tale about a Princess who is blessed with the gift of being ordinary by her fairy godmother, what could be better than that?  Oh, how about the most adorable illustrations penciled by the author herself?  From the day I discovered this book, the author, M.M. Kaye, became my inspiration. I don’t know if art and novel writing are a rare combination or if author’s just aren’t allowed to be something else, but what I know is that I want to do both and M.M. Kaye inspired me to reach for that dream.
  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson – Foisted on me as a birthday present, I didn’t read it for years, mostly because the book jacket let me know that the hero’s name was Hiro Protagonist.  I was put off.  I shouldn’t have been.  Bouncing between religion, language, consumerism, cybernetics, and computer programming, the book honestly made me rethink some of my positions on those topics.
  • Pyramids by Terry Pratchett – This was the first book I read in the Discworld series and it was the first “quirky” British style novel I’d ever read.  It was also the first time that I’d ever read something that sounded like the inside of my head, with parentheticals, footnotes, strange topic switches, and a loopy plot.  I didn’t even know you could write like the inside of my head and get away with it.  I became a devoted follower of the Discworld and when I learned that Sir Pratchett had been stricken with an early onset Alzheimer’s that was robbing of his ability to write, I was absolutely devastated.  The fact that he has carried on writing novels with the help of a tape recorder, a stenographer and some new drug treatment inspires me to get off my ass and write more as well.

That’s my list.  What’s on yours?

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

What’s in a Name?

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by Bethany Maines

First off, a shameless plug. The third City of Destiny short story has been released – The Devil’s Invitational!  Only a buck and my personal favorite short story to date.  And now back to our blog…

One of the best parts of being a writer is inventing
characters and places. I have to admit that this is also one of the
hardest.  It’s difficult to find a
name for a character that sounds both authentic and memorable. The temptation
is to give a character a name that is memorable simply by the power of its
sheer awesomeness, like Colt Savage. 
For the record, Colt is a real person. I really know him. But if I named
a character Colt Savage would you believe in that character? It’s possible that
I might be able to squeeze him in as a rodeo cowboy and have it feel authentic,
but unless this the twenties and I’m writing Tarazan novels, I’m fairly certain
that a hero named Colt Savage would make you roll your eyes. Just because a
name is real doesn’t mean it sounds real (Yeah, North West, I looking at
you). 
I learned this lesson the hard way. The villain in my second
novel, Compact with the Devil, was named Brandt Dettling because I saw the name
on a “Battle of the Bands” poster for a local pub. I had assumed that Brandt
Dettling was a band name, and therefore fair game to repurposed into a
character. After all, who would actually name their child that?  It just didn’t sound real. How was I
supposed to know he was a real person and that my cousin actually knew him? Party awkwardness ensued, and from then on I
have attempted to give my character entirely fictional, but realistic names.
In the pursuit of real sounding the names, the hardest part,
for me, are last names. They are littered around us – everyone’s
got one.  But when I’m sitting at a
computer with a first name on the page, coming up with a last name is pure
torture.  In the past I’ve used
author names (text books are especially helpful for this one) and movie
credits, but both of those mean I have to get up and move away from the typing
place. And once I leave the typing place writer ADD sets in and I won’t get
back for another hour.  These days
my favorite tools are IMDB and the wonderful interactive surname map of the US
at National Geographic – it shows the most common last names by geographic
area.  IMDB.com is a website that
list the cast, crew, and a synopsis of virtually any movie and TV show. So now
instead of picking a movie and squinting at the credits, I pick a movie and
click the “full cast and crew” button. 
I usually ignore the actors (too well known) and head straight for the
crew.  There’s a wealth of
wonderful names just waiting for my character to try on. And of course when I’m really desperate I turn to the random
name generator.  I like
BehindTheName.com, but there are several others. They rarely give me an entire
name that I will actually use, but it will spark an idea and give me at least a
starting point. No more Brandt Dettling moments for me.
   
Bethany Maines is the author of
the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter.

Magnum vs Everybody Else

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by Bethany Maines

I’ve been watching a lot of Magnum P.I. lately. And two
things have become very clear. One, the early 80’s were a time of
inappropriately short/tight shorts for men. And as for the second thing, well,
it’s a bit like the old joke about intelligence. There are those who can
extrapolate from incomplete data and those who…  I’ll leave you to figure out the second item that became
clear from Magnum’s short-shorts.  

Aside from admiring 1980’s Tom Selleck, I’ve also been
pondering a shift in TV story-telling style. Compared to today’s TV shows
Magnum’s style of bouncing from weekly mystery to weekly mystery with virtually
no expansive story line seems almost quaint. These days it seems like every
show is pursuing extended plot lines and slow building character themes that
reveal a new mastermind villain every season. In fact, it seems like the only
ones without a seasonal “Big Bad” these days are the procedurals like Law &
Order.
As a writer, I find myself intrigued by this shift. On one
hand, this extended long-form way of telling a story, makes for greater
character development and deeper story telling –making a TV show more like a
novel (or comic book). And I admire the skill and planning it must take to
execute so many plot lines at once. On the other hand, the extended story archs
make it hard for casual viewers to pop in and out of a series. This kind of
barrier to viewing would not have been allowed before Netflix, Hulu and other
streaming media allowed viewers to catch up with a show all at once.
I feel this style dichotomy is closely related to what I
call the “Sequel Dilemma.”  When
writing a sequel, do you simply dive into the latest mystery or do you stop to
throw in a couple of paragraphs of exposition to catch the reader up on what
has happened to our hero/ine thus far? 
If I were writing Magnum style novels than I pause to tell everyone that
my heroine used to be in the military and toss in a bit of back-story. If I’m
writing new style (aka Joss Whedon Style) novels then I just dive in and let my
readers catch up or read the other novels to fill themselves in. As a matter of
personal taste I find that I dislike the three paragraphs of exposition (which
doesn’t stop me from loving Magnum – I love Magnum!!), but maybe the TV model
doesn’t translate to novels. Maybe if a reader is diving into a story they
expect a little exposition to get the ball rolling? What do all of you think?
On a separate note, today is my birthday! And I would like
to celebrate by giving a gift to someone. The first person who can tell me the
names of the two Dobermans, aka The Lads, on Magnum P.I. will win a free
download of The Dragon Incident!
Bethany
Maines is the author of Bulletproof
Mascara, Compact With the Devil and Supporting the Girls, as well
as The Dragon Incident, the first short in her new series Tales
from the City of Destiny. You can also
view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her at www.bethanymaines.com.