Welcome and Happy Release Day to my dear friend, Louisa Edwards.  What are you doing here, readers?  Run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore or online retailer and pick up Just One Taste, Louisa’s newest entry in her supersexy, superfun, superdelicious Recipes For Love series!  I have been waiting for Just One Taste for a long time!  I’ve read snippets of Wes and Rosemary’s story and I assure you nobody does kitchen love like Louisa does kitchen love!  I’ve dragged her here on release day to celebrate, and share her thoughts on two of our favorite pastimes subjects:  food & sex!  Together, even.  Leave a comment and win not one, not two, but ALL THREE books in the Recipes for Love series – guaranteed to make you hungry for more!  Welcome, Louisa!

Humans are social animals. We need groups—for survival, for companionship…and most of all, for celebration. Is there anything that marks an occasion like a gathering of friends? (It’s harder to be festive on your own. Possible, but harder. And the amount of drinking involved in that is really not healthy or sustainable, long term. Or so I’m told.)

That’s why I’m so thrilled to be here at Murder She Writes today, celebrating the release of Just One Taste with all my MSW friends! Especially the fabulous Roxanne St. Claire, who only needs to peek at the acknowledgements in the front of the book to know exactly how much she means to me. 

Just One Taste is the third in my Recipe for Love series, culinary romances that explore the world of professional restaurant kitchens, sexy, swaggering chefs, and the delectable food they cook to tantalize their heroines into falling for them. In JOT we get to see the culinary school where many of the chefs in my series were trained, including our hero, Wes Murphy. In the midst of his most challenging class, he meets food chemistry professor Dr. Rosemary Wilkins, a former child prodigy who has a lot to learn about life and love. Wes tempts her with a research project delving into the truth behind aphrodisiacs, and once they start feeding each other delicacies ranging from oysters to chocolate, it’s on!

Of course, there’s more to the book than sex and food. No, really! (Rocki, quit shaking your head and laughing.) There’s conflict and secrets, betrayals and misunderstandings, a shadowy past for our hero and a chance at a bright, new future for our heroine. And there are appearances by the crew of renegade chefs and servers from Market restaurant, including reader favorites Adam Temple, Grant Holloway, Frankie Boyd, and Jess Wake. JOT can definitely be read as a stand-alone story, but for readers of the series, I think it will be a satisfying conclusion to the Market trilogy. I certainly had a blast writing it! And since I’m personally obsessive about reading a series in order, today I’m giving away signed copies of Can’t Stand the Heat, On the Steamy Side, AND Just One Taste to one randomly chosen commenter!

Since aphrodisiacs play such a big part in Just One Taste, I thought I’d ask the MSW community for stories about their experiences with sensual foods. Have you ever eaten something and noticed it gave you that special, tingly, naughty feeling? Recipes are welcome!

Today we welcome Silver James to the MSW blog! I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Silver in person, as well interacting with her online and she’s lovely in so many ways. One random commenter will win a paperback copy of her new release, FAERIE FIRE, coming out September 17th. Enjoy!

Some of you may remember me from the guest post I did a few weeks back about my life and career in forensics. Today, S.J. has granted me the opportunity to talk about something near and dear to my heart: Giving back. When I first started on my career in the fire and forensic services, I began as a volunteer. I had a talent and expertise. My local fire department had need of it but there was no budget to cover a position. So I volunteered. My daughter’s tee ball team needed another coach. I played softball back in the day. I volunteered. In school, the PTA or various committees always needed help. I volunteered. Church? Civic groups? Trade associations? They all needed time and talent and I shared mine whenever I could.

Don’t paint me out to be a saint. I’m far from it! I spent my time bashing my head against various walls and hidebound practices. I learned how to deal with the age-old argument of, “But we’ve ALWAYS done it that way!” But that doesn’t mean I didn’t drive home from the meeting muttering invectives and some very inventive curses the entire way. And it doesn’t mean that I didn’t consider quitting, walking away, and letting someone else worry about whether things would get accomplished. But my dad didn’t raise me to be a quitter.

My dad, who’s been gone fifteen years now, was a most interesting man. Dad was a man of old-fashioned values. Born and raised on a ranch in Wyoming, he truly believed in tenets we now consider tropes of Western literature like: A person works from can see to can’t see to get the job done, or you ride for the brand (which means you give your boss his due and you don’t bad mouth him until you quit!). Dad instilled two things in me as I was growing up—a love of reading and words and a sense of duty. If my Girl Scout troop needed help picking up the boxes of cookies or delivering tents to the local GS camp, he was always right there. If the church needed someone to serve on the board, he raised his hand. And it wasn’t just the volunteering of his time or money. He voted in every single election he was eligible to vote in. National, state, local. The secretary of the local election board told me at his funeral that Dad’s name was invariably the first one on the list of voters in his home precinct.

What brought this subject about? A couple of different things. RWA Nationals was a month ago. I attended the General Membership meeting. This is the time where the officers and board members present items to the membership for vote. Only…we couldn’t vote on anything. There wasn’t a quorum present. A quorum is the percentage of voters needed to conduct business in an organization. Those votes can be made in person or by proxy. A proxy is a legal document giving someone else the ability to vote for you. When I got home, I mentioned this to several writing groups and was shocked when I learned how many people had no clue about the process. They didn’t know about proxies or quorums, or the fact they didn’t have to attend to vote. I’d already made up my mind to run for the RWA Board of Directors from my region (under my real name, Penny T. James), and this just cemented one of my goals if I am elected—educating and communicating with the membership how important their participation is to the health of the organization.

This holds true for every organization, and every government. Exercising the right to vote is an honor and a privilege and it should be a duty! And organizations don’t run on air. They need volunteers to help in all sorts of ways. From local animal shelters to literacy programs to schools, there is a place for everyone to exercise their talents and spend a little of their time to make this old world a better place. If you are an RWA member, ballots are sent by email on September 1st. Please vote. School has started just about everywhere. If you have a child, please find some way to help your school. If you have a little time, expertise, or even extra money (I know, times are tight for all of us!), please considering donating a part of yourself to your favorite cause. National elections here in the US are November 2nd. Please vote.

And please tell me what you’ve done, do, or plan to do to give back. One random commenter will win a paperback copy of my new release, FAERIE FIRE, coming out September 17th. I’m not here to promote the book. If you’re interested, you can go to my website, www.silverjames.com, to get more info. I’m here today to play Jimminy Cricket, to poke everyone’s conscience just a little. We all have so many demands on our time, talent, and pocket book. But if we all find some small way to give back, think of the positive change for good that could happen.

Mariah Stewart asked MSW to post the following, considering we discussed fabulous booksellers on Tuesday. This gentleman will certainly be missed:

In Memoriam

Joe Drabyak, bookseller extraordinaire, past President of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, friend and mentor to many, sadly passed away on August 27th, 2010. He will be sorely missed, but never forgotten. We all pray he’s in a better place now, reading a “Joe Pick”, and making recommendations to all that are with him. Rest In Peace, Joe.

Arrangements for a memorial service are pending. We will post the time and place as soon as they are finalized.

In happier news, we also have some winners for the week.

From Monday, Jen’s two winners of THE BEAST WITHIN Anthology are GSM and LISA G. Congratulations! Please email Jen at Jenapodaca@aol.com your mailing address.

On Tuesday, Mariah Stewart was here and the winner of COMING HOME, book one of her Chesapeake Bay series, is Sherry S, commenter #16! Congratulations! Please email Allison at allison@allisonbrennan.com with your snail mail address.

Sophie’s Wednesday winner of LOVE IN BLOOM by Sheila Roberts is Chey – please email sophie@sophielittlefield.com with an address for the book to be sent.

And on Friday, Laura’s winner is commenter #32, Kathy B. Please email me at laura@lauragriffin.com and she will send you your signed Advanced Reader Copy of DEADLY PROMISES.

BY LAURA GRIFFIN

I know a lot of busy moms.

Come to think of it, I also know a lot of busy people who don’t have kids. It’s safe to say most of the people I know (or want to know) have their hands full with a zillion different pursuits, some mundane and some interesting.

I think about these people often because they are my readers–the woman in the doctor’s office with the paperback stuffed in her purse, the guy on the subway, the mom at soccer practice stealing a few moments to read between homework and dinner time.

And, I’ll say this now without shame, I see it as my job as an author to entertain these people. I want to give them a reason to stuff that book in the purse / briefcase /gym bag before leaving the house. People’s time is precious. My time is. Yours is, too. I believe the best thing I can do as a writer is to value that time and give you a reason, right away, to keep turning the pages.

Most writers strive to do this, with varying degrees of success. The conventional wisdom is, the sooner you can interest people, the better. Otherwise, they’ll put down your book and do something else.

Is this because we live in the Age of Twitter? People’s attention span is only 140 characters long? Maybe so. I am a Gen Xer (note the shout out to Nirvana up there in the title). I know my attention span is limited by the general business of life, so I figure other people’s is, too.

I was at the park the other day with a friend of mine, and she was telling me about the last book she put down, out of sheer boredom. “I got a few chapters in and started to worry it was going to be, you know, a dud.”

That sucks. Who wants to read (or write) a dud?

I told my friend one of the reasons I like to read and write commercial fiction is because those stories usually (although NOT always, I know) tend to hook you in faster. It takes less time to get “into” the book.

She gave me a puzzled look, and so I tried to describe the difference between literary fiction and other genres… which quickly led to a discussion about mass market fiction versus trade paperback… and more puzzled looks. I started to explain it all. (Like I know what the hell I’m talking about or something. Actually, I didn’t know any of this until I entered the publishing industry and started hearing jargon all over the place.) For those of you who want the Cliff Notes, there are three major print formats in fiction:

Hardback, trade paperback, and mass market paperback.

Hardback you know. Trade paper is the next-most expensive (usually). It tends to be similar in size to hardback, with higher quality paper and larger font than you see in mass market paperback. Mass market paperbacks (usually around the $8 price point) are the smaller books, thinner paper, often seen in grocery stores, etc… Except they’re in book stores, too. So really, it’s very confusing. Mass market paperbacks often include romance novels, mysteries, sci-fi and other types of stories some people call “genre fiction”. (Notice all my qualifiers here? I’m covering my butt, because it’s tough to have this discussion without ticking somebody off).

Literary fiction tends to be seen as more “serious” or high brow. My book club reads a lot of these books. Think The Kite Runner, The Joy Luck Club, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Corrections. Sometimes these books deal with weightier issues. Sometimes they feature beautifully written prose. Sometimes they are dreck. It all depends. The same could be said about some romance / mystery / sci-fi novels, so I’m not throwing tomatoes at anyone.

Anyhoo, the point is, we can toss these labels around, but basically I’m a book lover and all I really want is to fall in love with a good book. I don’t care what it’s called in publishing circles. I just want to open the pages and be pulled in.

What’s your limit? I know editors and busy literary agents who will put a book or manuscript down after one chapter if they’re not hooked. Maybe I’m biased toward writers, but I try to give at least 50 pages. If I get 50 pages in, and I’m still not feeling it, I move on to something else in my TBR pile. I mean, the darn thing is toppling over. A girlfriend of my was telling me about putting down a certain book about a certain girl with a certain scaled-beast tattoo after she read for 150 pages and still wasn’t into it. Not me, babe. Not gonna do it. That’s too long to be bored.

The newest work of literary fiction awaiting my attention (I can’t wait to dive in!) is Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen. His last book, which came out in 2001 (!!!) was called The Corrections, and Franzen made headlines when he supposedly snubbed Oprah and was uninvited to be featured by her book club. Oops. Bet the sales department liked that. Personally, I loved the book because it features this quirky and dysfunctional Midwestern family that reminded me of my own quirky and dysfunctional family so much, I laughed out loud at many points. Some people thought it was depressing. But, you know, books are subjective that way.

Freedom is absolutely a work of literary fiction. I know this because Newsweek just ran a cover (yes, cover) story about Jonathan Franzen, and the article talks about how it took him 9 years to complete the book. This has literary fiction written all over it. (It took way less time than that to write it, but he spent a few years coming up with the premise and so forth). That’s a long time to write a novel. But I still have high hopes that this book will be a good read because it features a discontented suburban mom (she sounds interesting) and because Franzen told the Newsweek reporter it was important for authors to write “compelling” books for today’s readers because “there is so much more distraction they have to resist.”

In other words, hook them in fast cuz they’re busy.

That’s what I think, too. Readers are, after all, here to be entertained.

What are you looking for when you sit down with a book? And when do you stop reading if the author isn’t hooking you in?

Anyone who comments will be eligible to win a SIGNED ADVANCED COPY of my upcoming anthology, written with Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dianna Love, and Cindy Gerard. For those of you who want to play the labels game, this is a collection of three novellas in the “genre” of romantic suspense. I’m so excited to share a book with these fabulous ladies, and I hope this week’s lucky winner will be excited to read it well before the Sept. 28 release date. Leave a comment for a chance to win!

DEADLY PROMISES containing three new romantic suspense novellas by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dianna Love, Cindy Gerard, and Laura Griffin.

by Toni McGee Causey

One of the difficult things about writing is narrowing down your options to the ones that best resonate with the story you want to tell. For me, it’s much easier to write a story when I already have the field narrowed. When I have to write a blog, for example, and if I know it could be about anything, I’m almost always stumped. If I narrow the field down to writing, then that helps me focus–but even with the category of “writing” there are all sorts of sub-categories, from marketing to creativity to time management to craft. And within each of those, more nesting categories. It’s a matter of choosing a subject and then refining, drilling down until I find the one specific point that resonates with my mood the day I’m writing the blog and then plucking that idea out, and examining it from as many sides as I can.

It’s also the same thing with life. You have so many choices every day–from simple things like “Will I apply for that job?” to “Will I have patience with the idiot co-worker or go postal?” to “Will I pursue my dream?” Each one of those choices then beget more… and if you focus on the totality of all of the choices, you’re very likely going to be paralyzed. You have to take the project–any project–step-by-step.

Fiction’s no different. You have to look at each set of choices you’re making and think about how they’re going to help you throughout the story. Do you want to do first person POV? Or multiple third person POVs? What type of story do you want to tell? What sort of tone fits that story? What sort of characters fit that tone? What sort of setting and premise fit those characters? What sort of ambience and socio-economic backgrounds fit that setting and premise? Etc… drilling down until you find the details that illuminate your original inspiration / goal.

This is where voice comes in–it’s your take on those choices that ultimately define your voice. It’s showing the world how YOU see the story, and giving us a slant on that that makes it uniquely yours. Which will make it memorable.

Instead of using a writing example to show you what I mean, let me jump into a different arena and use a couple of examples.

When I had the idea for this blog, I grabbed a couple of photos I’d taken, and I decided to show you the “before” image and the “after” results once I’d noodled with it in Lightroom. (I also have Photoshop, but for the purpose of these photos, Lightroom did enough of what I wanted, fast enough. If I were going to print and frame these photos, I’d pull each of them into Photoshop and clone out some of the flaws until I had it exactly as I wanted it… i.e., a “final polish”.)

I want to walk you through this process, because it’s going to show my voice and my editing process (same as I use for writing, in a lot of ways).

When I was vacationing in Moab, Utah last year with our oldest son, Luke, and my fabulous daughter-in-law, Amanda, I was experimenting with my camera, and I had a goal of getting some shots that I could play with for dramatic effect.

That right there is the first level of writing: the area was narrowed down: Moab. The tone: artistic–something that I could show off certain ideas I had in my head. So that eliminates me selecting for this exercise all sorts of candid shots of people. As I sifted through dozens of images, I had an idea of what I wanted to play with that would further my goal of an artistic take on a subject. This means eliminating shots that were perfectly good, but which didn’t have an angle or lighting or a detail that I could emphasize.

Okay, let me show you. Here’s the first shot that caught my eye of the ones I took. Now this is straight out of the camera, untouched. It’s a lazy shot–I didn’t bother to stop to get a good light read on the leaves, nor did I bother to frame the shot much. I knew, though, when I saw the leaves originally that I would end up turning the photo in a different direction from the image and playing with it in black and white and cropping it.

It started here:

It’s kinda boring, huh? But when I was walking by those leaves, I didn’t see what’s in that photo up there. I saw this (click on the image to see it in better detail):

The first photo is an example of writing that’s decent, serviceable. The second is voice: I not only converted it to a black and white, I boosted the contrast, the highlights and lowlights, the exposure, and futzed with things like luminescence to gain that “painting” quality. I then framed it tightly. In the first photo, there’s a little fluidity to the leaves, but we’ve got too much backstory around it: the wall of mud, the other leaves, the other sticks, and the dull, monochromatic color. By tightening in on the fluidity of the curves, I tell a story here: something dying can be beautiful, too. I love the almost lace-like quality of that bottom leaf, and I could’ve zeroed in on just that one detail, but I’d have lost the movement this image now has.

A lot of times, writers are afraid that readers won’t “get” the whole idea if we don’t lay out every single piece of information for them in one big information dump. But by giving so much, we render the overall “image” stagnant. There’s this resistance to getting in tight in a scene–a resistance to trusting that the reader will “get” the big picture. Often, it’s too easy to forget that you’re not going to just have that one scene. You’re going to have dozens of them, and if you’re giving us just the information that we need right then, we’ll “get” what we’re looking at, but we’ll also “get” the overall idea as you string a series of those tight images together. I could do an entire series right here on these kinds of details.

A second example I wanted to show you is one where what we see is not what I want you to focus on in the original. Here’s one of the arches in the National Park there in Moab:

Again, kinda boring. I was in a hurry at this point, and tired. I remember thinking about what I’d do with this image, and I took several quick shots. I should’ve metered better for the lighting, but I was starting to lose the sun. Here’s what I ended up with, after playing with it for about five minutes (again, click to see better detail):

That’s the same image, but the second one has drama. It’s going to grab your eye much better than the original, and you’re going to focus on that contrast between the sky and the mountains, whether you knew that’s where I intended to force your eye or not. By converting it into black and white and adding some sepia tones, I was able to get a lot more detail out of the rock face, and more contrast and boosting of the blacks in the photo gave me that effect with the sky.

So if you have a scene that you know is just sort of there, doing its job, looking decent, but it doesn’t feel like it’s grabbing the reader (and if it’s not grabbing you, it’s very likely it’s not going to grab them), then ask yourself, “What’s my vision here? Where do I want them to focus?” I took several shots of that arch above from different angles, but this one had the rockface in the forefront pointing to the sky and so I chose this angle to manipulate. Then I started playing with the colors, with converting it, playing with the contrasts, until the photo started telling you the story I wanted you to see.

In a scene, I’ll do the same thing–I’ll have a scene that’s functioning okay, but it’s too easy for my eyes to pass over it. I want you engaged in what you’re reading–or seeing–and to do that, I’ve got to think of ways of bringing out the details that create a vivid mental image for you. I ask myself, what’s the conflict here? (contrast) What do I want to highlight? What is the emotional response I want to have in the reader at the end of this scene? Do I need the reader to be close in on the detail, or pulled back for the perspective?

Imagery inspires me. If I were to do a final pass on these two images to make them into something that I actually liked enough to frame, I’d pull the top b&w leaf one into photoshop and I’d clone out that bottom stick that protrudes up into the lacy-leaf area. I’d probably futz a bit more with the contrast and texture, and I might add some actual textural overlays onto it to see how they looked (giving it more of an antique feel). On the bottom one, I’d pull it into photoshop and isolate the sky and then increase the contrast just in the sky without screwing with the rocks… so that there was a bit more of that lovely contrasty-sky feel to the piece. Or maybe not. I’m not sure–which is what happens sometimes in the final draft–I’ll put things in, decide they don’t help, and take them back out.

I love editing. I’m a far better editor than I am a writer–or a photographer, for that matter. It’s where I get to refine the choices I made, or throw them out and start with something else.

Imagery inspires me. I love photography for this reason, because it interlaces with how I see the world and informs how I write.

What inspires you? No matter what field you’re in, what is it in your life that inspires you to look at your world with a clearer eye? A happier eye?