THE BIG COVER-UP: CLOAKING DEVICES ©

By Polly Guerin RWA Fashion Historian

When the weather turns chilly, it’s time to cloak yourself in the hottest stylish accessory, the fashionable cover-up. Whether it is a cloak, poncho, ruana, cape, capelet or shawl, these hot fashion items provide an extra layer of warmth that give any outfit a certain pizzazz that conveys a chic image. A wide range of fabrics dominate the cover-up style, from classic knits, to camel wool, tweeds, or paisley for day wear to elegant silks, lace and moiré for evening wear. They are trimmed with embroidery, braid, and ruffles and updated with a Burberry border or fur.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

Most of our modern cover-up styles come right out of historical reference. Definitions as follows:

CLOAK, any loose fitting garment, with or without hood, fastened at the neck with strings or fastened to the hemline. A Puritan cover-up, it is a popular for rainwear today.

PONCHO, a blanket-like cloak with a hole in the center to admit the head, originated in Latin America. Pretty today with braid embroidery or fashioned in paisley fabric.

RUANA, a poncho-like outer garment of heavy wool. Today a Southwest-inspired, fringed ruana, toggle tied at the neck with Prairie embroidery looks great with rancher girl wear.

CAPE, a sleeveless garment of various lengths, fastened at the neck and falling loose from the shoulders is worn separately or attached to a coat.

CAPLELET, a short cape usually covering just the shoulders. More fashion than function in this style, but charming as an evening accessory.

SHAWL, a square, triangular or oblong piece of wool or other material worn dashingly about the shoulders in place of a coat outdoors or protection against chill or dampness indoors. Coordinated in matching color with a sweater it perks up an outfit with fashion savvy.

CLOAKING FASHION HISTORY

Full length cloaks have been in fashion from early times and they all seem to start with a very loose garment that protected from the cold, rain and wind. The Romans, Scots and Brits used the cloak as a night blanket, as did the Arabs of the Middle East. Long cloaks were popular with both sexes through the 16th and 17th centuries but we mostly think of them as Victorian Opera Cloaks. In the 18th century a very popular cloak in Britain was the Cardinal, a three quarter cloak with a hood. Welsh women liked blue cloaks and the Irish wore black or gray. The term, “Mantle,” another name for a hooded shapeless cloak with arm slits was frequently used throughout the 19th century.

Roman Cloak

THE FASHIONABLE CAPE

The cloak cover-up paved the way for the small cape that falls over the shoulders and reached the waist. Around the 1890s the multi-tiered shoulder cape with high collar became fashionable and would have been made of cashmere, alpaca, Melton wool or lace and silk fabrics for evening wear trimmed with fur, tassels, fancy braid or feathers and usually lined in silk or fur in winter. Etiquette books advised Victorian brides to include at least 2 or 3 evening wraps (capes) in their trousseau. However, the loose fullness of a cloak held on as a fashion accessory as it was highly suitable for wearing over the wide romantic crinoline skirts. Until 1900s full length cloaks and capes were still worn but after that time they seemingly lost their place in fashion importance and by WWI they were only seen on Red Cross Nurses and service women. Moving into fashion, a wide variety of stylish coats became de rigueur and the standard.

COOL WEATHER COVER-UPS

The hottest new way to stay warm has come full circle and the various cloaking devices have given way today to a wide variety of gorgeous shawl, poncho, ruana and cape styles. Worn separately in milder weather or tossed over a coat in winter these items have become ‘must have’ fashion accessories. ♥

Polly Guerin honed her skills as a fashion writer at Women’s Wear Daily where her accessories columns dominated the Friday pages. She is a former professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Currently her historical “The Tale of Two Sisters,” will be featured in Vintage magazine’s fall/winter issue. Visit her at http://www.pollytalk.com/.

FASTING PRO

It was funny for my last post people thought that I was fasting from food! Fasting from writing is like fasting from food for me. Of course now because I am not writing, I always want to write and have the desire to write! But I do not and it is hard, but I know that when I can write again it will be a feast of mind and body--that every sense will be utilized.

In the time that I have not been writing, I received a rejection for a short story that I was told was read with "great interest," by the editor, and I have begun reading one of my previous NaNo novels I completed. I have never edited any of the NaNo novels so they are all just gathering dust, as much as they can in the files on my MacBook. T

he one that I finished in 2008, I honestly did not even remember the name of the protagonist! It reads pretty well nonetheless and I can see myself working on the editing. I am really thinking about doing what is necessary to become a RWA-PRO.   I was writing short stories and thinking that I needed to start somewhere, but I have four 50,000 word novels under my belt, and the PRO requirement is only 40,000.

That is the purpose of NaNoWriMo, for people who always say that they want to write a novel but they never sit down and do it. I have done it four times--I am a PRO! It is my mission to really be serious about my writing. It is the way that I express myself. I am a storyteller, in the way I talk and the way I write.

I am a romantic, everything about me is romantic down to my clothes with lace and ruffles. RWA-PRO is basically what I am as soon as I apply myself...

...right after NaNo though! I have one more week of fasting, a fifth NaNo title to get and then I am going to be a PRO!

BITS & PIECES: ABIGAIL EKUE

I was at an In The Flesh Reading at Happy Ending--which I still cannot believe is coming to a close--when I heard Abigail Ekue read this short story from her Darker Side of Lust collection. Her voice filled the audience, and the scene --that was sexy and provocative and especially confident --cast a spell on the entire crowd. Everyone looked at her and listened attentively, putting down their drinks even and inching closer.
      Abigail knows how to cast a spell.
      A creative soul after my own heart, she not only writes but reads and performs erotic pieces. Additonally, she is a photographer and dabbles in a lot more than just the erotic. A strong, smart and focused woman, her connection with the human body extends to wanting to heal those bodies with sports medicine as one incarnation.
     We met at a favorite haunt of hers in Lower Manhattan, where sensuous fill bodied women framed the drink menu. The kitchen was closed with an uncertainty as to when it would open (it did and was well worth the wait!). But talking to Abigail made it not matter, sensual and passionate and did I say focused? It is the reason why the audience was so focused on her at Happy Ending. She does the erotica and the sensual well because she does everything she sets her mind to do well. Her drive is contagious and makes you want to get up and do something! Maybe even something erotic her stories are HOT! 
      Read on to get Abigail's bits and pieces...And you can find out even more about this native creative New Yorker here on her website.



Saw an ad on Craigslist -- seeking a dancer type and he wanted real women for nude photography. I figured I would try that. It's about the art or the form of the body. One of the goals of my modeling is to be featured in a gallery show one day. The closest I've been so far is when Aeric Meredith-Goujon had one image of me on display at an event. It was kinda fun, the experience, because I was on the wall and people would look at me and be like you look familiar and then they would realize that that's me on the wall, and they were seeing "a lot" of me.

I do not equate nudity with sex. A friend saw an ad for models for a Babeland book and said, "This is you." I answered the model call, got in the book and was nicknamed the "Wand girl". And it's not a nude photo. On the flip side, I've taken co-ed naked yoga classes -- everyone can see all your stuff and you can see everyone's stuff. It was a great class. It wasn't a sexual environment.

We were not a naked house when I was growing up. We had clothes on in our house. I have my mother's shape, and my father's muscles. My father recently got a copy of my book, my mom encouraged me to write a book.

I need to see the world, I know a lot about the world, but I need to be there to experience it firsthand.

Me, as a photographer, started out with self portraits and photos around NY. Now I want to start shooting with human males. A friend lent me his Canon EOS 10D and I started shooting. My whole learning curve has been portraits and then events. That was all to prepare for my "Emotional Black Male" portrait series. I've envisioned it as a series of very stark black and white portraits. A friend of mine has a very hard face but when he smiles he has dimples and his eyes light up; he has a range of emotion that people don't often see. You don't see a lot of men, in general, in art. I love stills, maybe later I would do videos.

Earlier this year, I read "The Art of Seduction" by Robert Greene -- it's about just that, seduction. Nietzche and Freud were thrown into the mix too. Reading makes me want to read more. If the author has referenced something or if it's something they mentioned in passing in their work, I'll research that. It's a never ending cycle. In the past few months, I've read "The Ethical Slut", "Blue Streak" (about free speech and sexual harassment), "Beauty Junkies" and I've started reading "Ready" (about women embracing a late motherhood), and "The Diary of an Innocent".

I wanted to be a pediatrician then a cardiologist and then I decided to go into sports medicine. It was fun and it was medical and it's sports and it's psychological. It's the whole healing of the body, I love the way the body moves. It takes a certain type of person to be an athlete. I'm drawn to them.

I am a crotch watcher. I look at a person's crotch. Sometimes I see the crotch and then I see the face.

I was just going to take photos of all my sex toys. But my dildo looked like a little man standing there and I decided to focus on him. That's where the name "Man. Toy." came from. I had a gallery interested in the show about 4 days after I started shooting. For the entire summer, I had a dildo in my bag and if I saw something I'd whip him out and take photos. Most people did not even notice I was taking photos with a dildo. Only once, I was in SoHo and this guy saw the dildo and said to his friend, "Yo, did you see that? Did you see that? That's you, dawg!"

I like to be by myself. I like that comfortable silence you can have with someone. Writing, journaling, exercise. I like to do those. I have been journaling since junior high school. I tend to journal before I go to sleep. I have boxes in a hall closet, the drawers in my platform bed full of notebooks.

My intuition helps me out. I focus on things that I know can happen or I think can happen.Someone suggested I send some of my erotica to Mo Beasley and when he read it he wanted me up on the stage. The first time I shared on a big stage was at UrbanErotika, at the Bowery Poetry Club, on my birthday. I recited a poem about BDSM. It was a great night.

I like anything that is character based, emotional, human. I like movies with subtitles. It's a glimpse into another world which I love. I've been obsessed with French cinema recently in preparation for my trip to Paris. I rant a lot on my blog. I do a lot of health and fiction articles. I have done food writing and I would go back into screenplays. I like prose. I write the way I think and the way I talk. My stories aren't always linear or follow a formula.

I cannot bake, I can follow instructions on a box but to bake something from scratch... I'm very impressed by anyone who can bake.

One of my closest friends said that I am the exception to the rule.

Born and raised in New York City, Abigail Ekue is a freelance writer specializing in health fitness and nutrition. She has a B.S. in Sport Sciences and is a NATA certified Athletic Trainer. Her short story collection, The Darker Side of Lust, was published in December 2009. She has worked with UrbanErotika as performer, producer and curator, and been a featured performer at ArtErotica, Freak Nasty, Abiola’s Kiss and Tell and In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series.

INSPIRATION IN UNUSUAL PLACES

By Carolyn Gibbs



As writers we know that story ideas surround us every day, if we just look around and are open to them. The ideas for the confession stories I’ve written have come to me in a variety of ways. For My Holiday House Guest, a Thanksgiving story for Lady Leo Publishing, I recalled inviting a friend of mine to our house for the holiday while I was in college. I thought it would be a nice twist if the house guest, a handsome college student, falls for the single mom. 

And some stories are a combination of ideas that kind of merge into one. Having a background in television news, I’m a self professed news junkie and have gotten several ideas from watching the morning shows or magazine shows like 20/20 and Dateline. I also hear news soundbites as bits of possible dialogue in stories. The story Love & the Economy, which will be available on Lady Leo Publishing next month, is an example of inspiration from different sources. After seeing stories about the failing economy night after night on the news and knowing how the slow the housing market is right now, I wanted to show a couple who was touched by the economy in a surprising way. The couple, Andrea and Tyrone, is about to divorce and are living separately, when their accountant does their taxes. He advises them not to sell their house at this time, and in fact they can’t afford to support two households so Tyrone moves back home. After I wrote the story one of the networks did a story on couples who had to live together because they couldn’t sell their house.

I’m also a big fan of the former ABC show Once and Again, where a divorced couple move on with their lives. I really liked the flavor of that show which was actually one of first to use character narrations, and one episode the heroine Sela Ward’s character fools around with her ex while getting ready for a date. I loved that scene and built on it for my story. 

You never know when inspiration can hit, and how something as mundane as watching the news or recalling something in our own lives, can be the catalyst for your next story.♥



Carolyn Gibbs is an author of confessions and short fiction under the name of Chloe Daniels.

Just Write!

by Erin O' Brien

It sounds corny, but it's not an exaggeration to say National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) changed my life.

I participated for the first time in 2002. I'd had an interest in writing fiction for a long time, though most of what I was writing at that time was poetry. I had an idea for a murder mystery, though, and that November seemed like a good time to try it out. I had also just moved to New York, and when other New Yorkers on the official website started talking about meeting, I took the opportunity to go meet them, since I still didn't know many people in the area.

I'm so glad I did. I've met a lot of really wonderful people in the time that I've been participating in NaNoWriMo. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the writing, too, and I've gotten several worthwhile manuscripts out of my attempts, but it's the people that keep me coming back. I've made some great friends. I became a municipal liaison in 2003, which means I'm sort of an event planner/cheerleader/cat herder for New York City. Last year, I traveled to San Francisco to take part in the Night of Writing Dangerously, a fundraiser for the Young Writer's Program, an offshoot of NaNoWriMo that encourages school-aged kids to start writing. It was my first trip to the west coast. I got to meet the staff at the Office of Letters and Light and had a really great time.

NaNoWriMo has changed the way I approach my writing, too. I think there's something to be said for getting it all out there first and asking questions later. It's one thing to say you're going to write a novel and quite another to just do it, and even if that first draft is completely terrible, at least it's on paper. Making it good is what the editing process is for. I write year-round and tend to employ this approach more often than not, writing as much as I can before going back to edit.

So, now that I've got a few years of experience under my belt, I figured I'd share a few tips with those of you interested in taking on this particular challenge.

1. Just write. I know that seems obvious, but I mean it. Just write. Don't look back. Don't re-read. For heaven's sake, don't edit. The only way to get all fifty thousand of those words written is to keep plowing forward. Worry about what you've written in December.

2. Plan accordingly. I mean this in two senses. First, figure out how much planning works for you. In my eight attempts, I failed twice, both because of planning blunders. In the first case, I planned too much; I wrote a really elaborate outline in October and then got to the end of it around November 20th with a mere 35,000 words to show for it. I was out of ideas after that. In the second case, I started on November 1st with nothing, hated everything I'd written by the end of the first week, started over, and then just completely crashed and burned. My experience is not universal, however. I've met writers who spend all of October outlining and making diagrams and sketches and notes and then soar to success in November. I've also met writers who start on November 1 with nothing and still churn out interesting, creative novels in the time allotted. You have to figure out what works for you.

I also mean this in the sense of making time to write. Set aside a little bit of time each day. Don't beat yourself up if you have to miss a day; you can make it up on the next day you have extra time. Tell your friends and family that you're doing this crazy thing so that they understand why you've suddenly become a recluse.

3. Sprint. Set an egg timer for a short interval of time, ten or fifteen minutes, then write as much as you can in that time. At our write-ins, people tend to average about 400 words in a ten-minute sprint, which means you can meet the day's quota in roughly four sprints. That's less than an hour. Pretty amazing, right? Sure, some of it's going to come out garbled, and it'll be riddled with spelling mistakes, but remember what I said about just getting it down? Run spell check in December.

4. Go to write-ins. No, really, do it. I know, meeting strangers is a scary proposition. But I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said that coming to a write-in made all the difference. These are people who tried NaNoWriMo on their own a few times and failed, but then decided to come out one year and found the encouragement of other writers to be what they needed to finally succeed. And I know for a fact that there are many really great people who regularly attend write-ins in New York City. Plus we usually have stickers. Who doesn't like stickers?

So those are my keys to success. Happy writing!

For more information on NaNoWriMo in New York City, visit http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/50, the regional forum or follow http://www.twitter.com/nycnowrimo" on Twitter.

Erin O'Brien is a Brooklyn-based writer/editor and the NaNoWriMo municipal liaison for New York City. She is also a romance-novel enthusiast and is contemplating writing a romance novel for this year's NaNoWriMo. She can be reached at erinfshk at gmail dot com.

CRAFTING CHARACTERS: A Blog Series

Lise Horton



Stephanie Plum. Jack Reacher. Voldemort. Mr. Darcy. Anita Blake.   Striking characters, one and all. But how do the authors do it?

You’ve heard the question: Is the book ‘plot driven’ or ‘character driven’? As a reader, a great character always hooks me and I might even overlook plot shortcomings if the characters grab me. In genre fiction it is even tougher. Characters are expected to conform with ‘stock’ types, at least to some degree, both physically and psychologically. So making your characters come to life within that traditional framework, making them ‘breathe’, is vital. There are character trait/detail charts. Some authors create character surveys. Others create psychological profiles or do full biographical outlines.

I’m a biographer. I want to know every nuance of my characters, but most importantly (as a psych major, and method actress for over 25 years) I must get into their heads, to know what makes them tick, what drives them. I ask as I create: What frightens them? Arouses them? What makes them angry, happy, sad? What are their darkest secrets and their worst nightmares? What are they proud of? Ashamed of? How do they perceive themselves, and how are they perceived by others? Do these perceptions match?

Naturally physical details matter greatly, but character is key. Your hero is scarred – but how does he FEEL about that scarring? Your heroine is brilliant but how does her IQ meld with her total person?

What makes your characters human, fallible and flawed? They cannot be perfect or there’s no growth possible for the story (unless that sense of perfection IS the flaw!). A character must begin the story at one point, but evolve throughout and be changed by the end of the arc. Examine the changes in your characters: at the start, as the external conflicts act on them, as their internal conflict is invoked and motivation drives them forward – during the black moment, during the revelation, and at resolution. Do they grow and evolve believably? Are their actions and reactions consistent with the character personalities you created?

Much of what the author knows about his/her characters will never make it into the story spelled out in description. Instead, this knowledge and understanding on your part invests your characters with depth, complexity and humanity. It allows you to write believable actions and reactions that compliment those characters’ established personalities.

Too, the reading pleasure is in the MIX of unique characters. Just as character voices must differ, so must their personalities. Conflicts and motivations will differ, despite similar circumstances. Characters’ actions may be the same, but what drives them to take those actions will not be. You create character personalities that dictate how they will act and react. Make them human, varied and real and your story will come alive.

Watch for my coming blogs on characters: Crafting Your Hero, Creating Your Heroine, Drawing Your Villain and Writing Secondary Characters.

Until then, how do YOU create and develop characters?♥



Lise Horton loves to create characters from psychic kick-ass demon hunters, to WWII heroines, to erotic school teachers. She hopes fervently that readers will soon have an opportunity to get to know her literary "crew"! Share her journey and visit her at http://lisehorton.com/

GHOSTS, POLTERGEISTS, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

Cathy Greenfeder

At the Liberty State Fiction Writers meeting this month Mark Sarlo, founder and leader of the Chester County Paranormal Research Society, spoke about his research and his books on the paranormal investigations in West Chester County, Pennsylvania. His experiences and stories are documented in his two books GHOST OF WEST CHESTER and HAUNTED GETTYSBURG.

Mark started off the program by surveying the audience about their beliefs in ghosts and other non-living beings. Almost three-quarter of the audience believed, two-third experienced encounters with ghosts, and a few less encountered other non-living beings.

Science or Pseudo-science?

According to Mark, the paranormal is not an “exact science”. Although scientific instruments and measures are used including EVP and ICC machines, researchers also base their findings on reports from residents of haunted houses or institutions, as well as the feelings - both physical and emotional -- that researchers experience upon entering and visiting haunted premises.

EVP is speech (or speech-like sounds) heard on electronic devices, but not heard in the environment at the time they are recorded. For purposes of research, investigators can pose questions or comments and hear human-sounding voices in response.

EVP recordings usually register noise below the human hearing range. Early on when Mark used such a device, he forgot to turn it off. He fell asleep, and while he slept something crawled into bed beside him. He woke, prayed, and the thing left. Therefore, as with all kinds of paranormal research, Mark urges caution. He suggests that you prepare yourself mentally and emotionally if you are to do parasitological research.

Web sites on the Internet offer all kinds of equipment for amateur psychic sleuths including digital cameras, webcams, night vision, thermal imaging, wireless cameras, voice recorders, microphones, two way radios, and measuring equipment. It’s best to contact the experts before you involve yourself with such research. You can find various associations for parapsychological research.

Haunted History

Gettysburg, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, is reportedly one of the most haunted sites in America. The Jenny Wade House is very active. Jenny was a civilian killed by a stray bullet shot during the battle. While baking bread, a bullet struck her through the back and pierced her heart. Her spirit is among those that haunt the site.

In some cases, haunting have led to historical research and findings. “Anthropologists and historians are unearthing a mass grave containing the remains of dozens of Irish workers who died nearly two centuries ago. The find called Duffy’s Cut Project started out as an investigation into local folklore and ghost stories.” (AOL News). Mark’s research team has worked with Immaculata University on this particular site. “Duffy’s Cut is a stretch of rail line in Malvery, 30 miles west of Philadelphia. It was constructed for the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad in 1832. Much of the construction was completed by a group of 57 Irish immigrants. Within eight weeks of their arrival, all of the men reportedly died during a cholera pandemic. The dead were buried together in a mass grave along Duffy’s Cut.” Research is leading to a theory that Duffy’s Cut may be one of the oldest murder mysteries in Pennsylvania. “All the remains found so far indicate that the men were brutally murdered,” according to William Watson, head of the history department at Immaculata University in Immaculate, Pa.

Ghosts on Film

Movies tend to over dramatize things or over simplify them according to Mark. Not all apparitions are harmful, nor do ghosts only come out at night. Paranormal researchers look for patterns of activity, and that can happen at any time. Children and animals, particularly animals, are more sensitive to paranormal activities. Pet owners often implore the researchers to help them calm their dogs or cats down.

Mark’s book GHOSTS OF WEST CHESTER details the various types of haunting in his Pennsylvania community. These include residual haunting, crisis apparitions, shadow people, poltergeists, haunted houses, and inhuman and demonic haunting. Portals, Mark explained, are locations which become a gateway where things come and go as they please.

Ghost Busting

Who you gonna call?

While most ghostly encounters are benign, there have been injuries and even deaths linked to haunting. Mark told of one person who had been struck by lightning that came up the ground, another man had been thrown down so hard he broke his rotator cuff, one house had over twenty five deaths linked to its haunted premise, and so on.

How do you get rid of a ghost? Mark said that tell them to get out. You need to take control of your residence. Simply say, “I don’t want you here. Leave my family alone.”

For more information or to find out about Mark Sarro’s books, you can go to his website at http://www.chestercountyprs.com/.

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!♥

Cathy Greenfeder is the author of ANGELS AMONG US and WILDFLOWERS from WingsePress.

FAST

Last night, I arrived at a famed beer garden in Queens in a pretty foul mood, to meet my friend, who was also not in such a hot mood. As with all good friends, our bad moods dissolved as we sat across from each other on benches in the remarkably cool, but so cool that you could not sit outside garden. I started taking pictures with my iPod touch and my friend said that I should submit pictures to contests or something--that I have an "eye." Suddenly I understood my friend whom I kept telling him he was such talented photographer and he said to me he just takes pictures with his phone as if it was nothing.

You have to make it something so it does not become nothing.

Photos are my new avenue right now, but I know I am an amateur. Though I now have two cameras in my bag--the point and shoot camera I bought from B&H, and the one on my new iPod touch. I am always taking pictures.

In lieu of writing.

I am a creative person, even my conversations become a major source of creativity it seems. I had a discussion with someone today about my figurative use of the word glamorous. Putting words on the page is not something that is happening and now I am fasting as I prepare for NaNoWriMo. I have won four NaNos in a row, am doing it this year without an outline. It will be purely organic for me this year--whatever happens when my hand touches keys on my iPod or MacBook.

Writing is like blood for me, whether that it is contained in me, pours from me or is an essential body fluid I am not sure but it is my blood. I feel comfortable when I have pen in my hand or fingers skimming my computer or iPod touch. I write whether it is to create or to relive by retrospective like the Anais Nin quote. I feel stable and level when I am writing and even to retreat from it, pursue another creative endeavor like photography is okay because I know I will return. I was working on a short story, not sure I going to completely abandon it, but I have fasted from fiction writing for NaNo before and it made it easier to write under the pressure that NaNo is.

Like anything you love whether it be a person or a thing if you let it go and it returns it's the real thing...Writing and I will return to each other...

Photograph by F. Solomon

PREPARING FOR THE NANOWRIMO

  
By Maria Ferrer


November is National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo.

The Challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Sort of like the process by which Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. Her, Byron and others were hanging out and decided to challenge each other to write a story. Mary’s story has lasted decades -- a wish every author shares. But first we must write the story, and that is where NaNoWriMo comes in.

Here are some tips on preparing for the NaNo:

1. REGISTER. You need to register by October 31st at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ . Once you are in, you will receive weekly inspirational messages and be invited to write-ins around the city. They are fun and energizing. You should try to go at least to the Launch Party.

2. CHAPTER NANO LOOP. Join the RWANYC NaNo Loop. Writing may be a solitary profession but not in November and not during NaNo. To join loop, email me at ferrerm@aol.com. Also, make sure to “friend” your chapter mates on the NaNo site so you can keep track of everyone. Note: we are going to try to gather weekly to “write” together depending on everyone’s schedule. Shall we say Tuesdays in November?

3. PENCILS READY. Well, we’ve come a long way, baby, and most writers today are probably using laptops, netbooks, iTouches or iPads to write, but a crisp paper notepad and a sharp pencil can work just as well. But do make sure that your computer is virus free, that it has plenty of storage space for those 50,000 words, and/or you have plenty of notebooks and pencils handy.

4. MAKE AN OUTLINE. This is optional. You are actually supposed to write your 50,000 words by the seat of your pants, but I find that I need more structure than that. I tried writing without an outline and did not finish because my story was all over the place. Maybe it’s the curse—and blessing—of being a writer that I have to have an outline. It can be all of one paragraph or 50 pages, but I need my outline, my road map. 

5. PREPARE MENTALLY. Take deep breaths, take long walks, do yoga, make a playlist, buy more fragrant candles, etc. Relax. You are a writer. You can do this.

6. SCHEDULE TIME TO WRITE. Set your goals. You can write every day, twice a day, only on weekends, whatever works for you. The objective is to write, write, write.

7. HAVE FUN. Writing can be fun. Enjoy the NaNoWriMo Challenge.


The NaNoWriMo countdown has begun. You only have three weeks to register. Don’t delay. Register and join the RWANYC NaNo Loop today. Good luck.♥



Maria Ferrer has won the NaNoWriMo Challenge twice. She is looking forward to a third win.

HOW SEX SCENES AND FIGHT SCENES ARE ALIKE

   
by Isabo Kelly


Bet you never considered that before, huh? Well they are. In fact, writing a sex scene and writing a fight scene is a lot alike. And getting either one wrong can ruin an otherwise good book. Each of these types of scenes is intense, action-packed, emotional, potentially dangerous, and should reveal a lot about who and what your characters are. They go beyond a simple conversation and reveal more about your characters than they often want revealed. A gratuitous fight scene, like a gratuitous sex scene, is just boring. They have to matter each and every time. They have to add to the plot and/or character development. And that’s the trick with writing erotic romance, to manage so much sex without it getting boring. (Tricky. Very tricky.)

Like a fight scene, sex scenes have to be choreographed. There is nothing more disconcerting than having a heroine swing three different fists at a bad guy, and there’s nothing quite so disturbing as having a hero manage to touch very different parts of the heroine’s body with the same hand at the same time. Also if you’re writing ménage or more stories, it becomes extremely important to remember whose hands and body parts are where. So you must get your choreography right—remember where the various hands and feet are, make sure in edits that there are no extra breasts or penises involved (two breasts only for human women; one penis for human men—if you’re writing about otherworldly creatures with more of these body parts, well, do keep in mind how many they have).

Just as a fight scene will completely lose the reader if the movements are so physically impossible that it pulls us out of the fantasy of the book, a sex scene in which characters do things we absolutely know they can not do will make a reader throw the book against the wall or shut off her e-reader. If you’re not entirely sure if a position or set of movements is possible, consult books—the Kama Sutra is an excellent resource for sexual positions, and it will tell you how fit you need to be to achieve those positions! It also tells which positions are possible with various size combinations for men and women. If you’re writing erotic romance, and you’ve followed the bandwagon and given your hero an enormous penis, there are certain positions that just will not work if the woman happens to be small. If a reader clenches her knees together in sympathetic pain during a sex scene, the scene probably isn’t very romantic or erotic for that matter.

I also recommend watching movies for fight and sex scenes—yes, this is giving you permission to watch porn, but only for research purposes. If you just can’t bring yourself to get near porn (and I understand, the stuff can be quite boring), then in the privacy of your own home when no one is watching (except maybe your significant other—who might enjoy this experiment), attempt a given position or move. Okay, okay, your heroine and hero might be stronger, fitter, skinnier, taller, shorter, alien, or paranormally endowed so they can do things you can’t. Fair enough, but if you want your readers to believe in the scene you’re writing, they need to believe that what your characters are doing is possible. If you can’t even get close to something similar, it’s very possible your readers won’t believe in your scene.

Above all this, however, you must keep in mind the importance of each scene to your characters. In a good, well-written fight scene, characters reveal themselves—their sense of right and wrong, their strengths and weaknesses both physical and mental. They reveal how they feel about life itself by the way they conduct themselves in a battle. Someone who’s killed a lot and is no longer staggered by it will view a fight very differently from someone who’s never swatted a fly before. The same goes for a well-written sex scene. A lot of a person’s character is revealed when they have sex. Both a fight and sex make your characters vulnerable. In this vulnerability, they show the reader who they are and how they are growing.

And that, more than any other aspect of writing these scenes, is what keeps them from being boring. Readers don’t just want to know what body part went where; they want to know how that affects the heroine, and what this experience does to the hero.

Are they changed? Have they gone somewhere they never thought they would, or is this just the kind of place they’ve always wanted to be? Are they angry, hollow, excited, in love, desperate, scared, bored? How they feel is much more important than what they do—especially in character-driven books like romances.

Nothing will turn an erotic romance reader off more than sex scene after sex scene that doesn’t mean anything to the story. They might be reading erotic romances for the high sexual content, but they want story with their sex (even if the sex is the story). That’s the difference between erotica and porn, between an action-packed battle scene and a pointless succession of bloody fights—character. It’s all about the character.

You want your erotica to sizzle, remember to choreograph your scenes, make sure the movements of the characters are physically possible, and don’t forget to make each and every scene do more than just show sex. If you’re writing sex because you need to add more sex (or throwing in a fight to fill in space) DON’T. Your readers will stop reading. And there’s nothing worse than a reader putting down an erotic book because they’re bored or think there’s too much sex!

Keep your characters uniqueness in mind and you’ll be sure to create a book readers can’t put down.

Isabo Kelly (aka Katrina Tipton) is the author of multiple science fiction, fantasy and paranormal romances. Her Prism Award Winning novel, SIREN SINGING, has just been released in paperback from Ellora’s Cave (www.ellorascave.com). For more on Isabo’s books, visit her at http://www.isabokelly.com/

Ethics and the Romance Novel

by Lisbeth Eng

I have sometimes wondered whether including a moral message is too heavy-handed for genre fiction, including romance. All authors, whether of genre or literary fiction have something to say, but besides telling a good story, what could that be? Have I included a “message” in In the Arms of the Enemy, my recently released romance novel? And If I have, what is it? I imagine that through the writing process, my own moral convictions and complexities have permeated the text, perhaps even subconsciously, and expressed themselves through my characters.  But it was not until I had thrown myself into the first draft, so many years ago, that I even became conscious of the possibility.

Each of my three main characters wrestles with his or her conscience. Isabella Ricci has pledged her life to fight the Germans who have occupied her country and committed atrocities against her people, including the unjust execution of her own brother. She joins the Resistance and although she is involved in a romantic relationship with Massimo Baricelli, her superior in their squadron, she agrees to “cozy up to the enemy,” eventually ending up in the arms of German army officer Günter Schumann, in a scheme to elicit intelligence to use against the Nazis. 

Massimo’s ethical dilemma begins when he sends his girlfriend Isabella on this espionage mission. He feels guilt over endangering her life and has to abide the thought that she is sleeping with another man, not something a macho man would easily endure. He reacts to the situation with a mixture of optimism at gaining intelligence, which will increase his status in their squadron, and resentment that he has to share his woman with another man, and the enemy, at that! Motivated by a hunger for his country’s freedom and his ambition to rise in the ranks, he foresees an end to the war, and is confident that his role on the victorious side will gain him future success and prestige. But he eventually experiences the pangs of conscience over how the decisions he has made to fight the enemy have imperiled those he loves.

Isabella struggles with whether to view herself as a patriot or a wanton woman. To further complicate matters, she begins to realize that she is enjoying the attentions of her German lover. She knows that if she allows herself to develop affectionate feelings for him, she will not be able to complete her mission.

Günter is blissfully unaware that the sweet Italian girl he is falling in love with is a spy, and he her target. He is less than blissful about his participation in the war. Günter, a decent man drafted into the German army, has only one experience directly killing an enemy in combat. He struggles to reconcile his own conscience with having caused the death of another human being. Later, his principles are more severely tested when he learns of atrocities committed by his own army.

Romance novels vary greatly, from lighthearted and humorous in tone to dark and weighty. What moral questions do other romance writers weave into their books? Would anyone care to offer an opinion?

Oh, and if you’re wondering whom Isabella ends up with in the end – Massimo or Günter – well, you’ll just have to read the book!

Lisbeth Eng’s novel, In the Arms of the Enemy, is available at The Wild Rose Press in paperback and e-book versions. Please visit her at www.lisbetheng.com.

PICTURE PERFECT

    
by Karen Cino



There’s more to a novel than plotting. I found that another hidden element is the setting. I’ve been playing around with different settings, and after spending time without coming up with anything feasible, I reverted back to my old standby…the boardwalk. Now I know by now that you are all tired of hearing me talk about the inspiration I get every time I go walking, but I have to share another story with you.

It started a few years ago, one August, when a friend of mine kept after me everyday about starting my outline for NaNoWriMo in November. I always put her off and waited until the two weeks before NaNo to get an outline down on paper. This year, I decided to take her advice and start a little bit earlier. So, this is how I prioritize my novel:


1. Purple composition notebook: Purple is mystical and one of my favorite colors.

2. Title: I can’t work on a manuscript unless I have a working title.

3. The first sentence: I need to have the first sentence before I can start writing an outline.

4. Characters: I have to have my character sketches done.

5. Setting: I need to have a picture of where my characters will live and visit.


Setting. This is where my walk comes into play.

This picture inspired me like no other. Just looking at it, I have already found one of the places my hero and heroine will meet and share their first kiss. Isn’t that picture a beauty? (Talk about the best things in life being free.) For me, where the hero and heroine meet and share their first kiss is important. I have to feel it, see it and capture the beauty in a picture. Here are a couple of other pictures:

My secret has now been revealed. Not only do I get my morning walk, exercise and a daily dose of inspiration, but I get my props for a memorable setting.♥



Karen Cino is President of the RWA New York City Chapter. She keeps her muse alive by walking every morning down at the South Beach Boardwalk in Staten Island. Currently, she is shopping for a home for her novels, ROSES and MYSTICAL WONDERS and is working on her next novel.

MY CHARACTERS WANT TO GO TO BED AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS THROW-UP

   
By Mary Lamb

You'd think from the title of this posting, there was something seriously wrong with my writing. It's generally not a good sign when the idea of two of your best characters having sex makes you want to vomit.

Maybe I should rethink the whole premise of my story or abandon it entirely, one would think. But the poor characters, it's really not their fault. They're in love, have the serious hots for each other, and are compatible on the psychological, social, and physical level. Poor things all they want to do is get happily naked and engage in mind blowing sex, which is the right, nay, duty of every H/H penned by the author Mary Lamb.

They are not the problem. I am the problem You see, I am pregnant. And what with fluctuating hormones, bloating belly, and the perverse desire to eat everything in sight opposed by the need immediately throw everything up, the idea of sex is, well, I won’t say disgusting, but not nearly as pleasurable as the thought of eating an entire bag of Ruffles potatoes chips with French onion dip. Then making a beeline for the toilet. (Oddly the latter action does not have any effect on the happiness brought on by the first but whatever.)

So what am I doing with my characters? The stupid book must be written before the baby comes (due March 17th) because having had a baby once before, I know I will not be doing any serious writing for a good couple of months after I give birth. So I have resorted to inserting all in caps and boldface, the sentence: PUT BIG SEX SCENE HERE whenever they want to indulge. Which is often because they are just that hot for each other and the poor hero hasn't had sex in five years and the heroine is still a virgin at the age of thirty-five.

My question to all of you out there who've written romance books when you are pregnant is this: How do write about sex when sex is the last thing on you mind?


WARNING:   Do not dare tell me chirpily about how sexy you were when you were pregnant and how you just couldn't restrain yourself from sexually harassing your husband because I will find you and hurt you.♥




Mary Lamb is an unpublished writer, shopping around her first historical romance.