RRJ 1/29

We are rolling right along. 62k words as of finishing this morning's writing block, and lots more left to write. Sequels are my favorites because that's when I get to really crack the characters open like eggs on the side of a bowl and see what they're made of. 

I wanted to share some of my favorite lines from last week's writing:

Red Rooster

Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley 

“Lanny,” Steve said, brows knitting in concern. “How did this – are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” Lanny shrugged, and Nikita could tell his bravado was entirely fake – in the part of his brain that was managing to catalogue all of this and read emotions. “I’m cool. I mean, I wasn’t. This guy” – he jerked a thumb at Alexei beside him – “didn’t even ask, or anything. I was pissed. But. Yeah, so I had cancer…? Was kinda dying. I guess it all worked out.” He shrugged again, inelegant caveman that he was.

***

"You’re having second thoughts.” She smiled a fraction when she said it, pleased that she’d figured him out. “Why?”

Jake held her gaze stubbornly for a long moment, and then caved, glancing away, exhaling tiredly through his nose. He’d never before been the one to back down first in a game of chicken; but he guessed he wasn’t the same man he’d been then. The Major Treadwell who’d sacrificed himself for his unit had died in a desert inferno; the blind man who’d crawled back, who’d been given a second chance and the leadership of this hackneyed team, wasn’t so unwaveringly sure of himself. 

***

“Do vampires eat breakfast? ‘Cause we’re making a literal ton of food.”

“I dunno about him, but this one does,” Lanny said, and smiled wide enough to show his fangs.

Mom blinked at him, then sighed, expression becoming resigned. “Young lady.” Her gaze came back to Trina. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

Descriptive Writing

I’m a detail person. I don’t think that comes as a shock to anyone. It’s just a part of who I am; a wallflower, an introvert – I’m the person who sits quietly and notices things that others might have missed. Because it’s the details that mean the difference between seeing something and understanding it. You can watch two horses move freely in the field, and they might both be finely-bred, wonderful horses. But the horse with flat knees and a lower-set neck will make a better hunter, while the horse with rounded knees and long pasterns will have more expressive movement. A man might be generically handsome, but it’s the little shy tuck of his chin when he smiles that makes him beautiful.

I’ve wanted to be an author since I learned it was a profession – it happened sooner than I thought, but it’s always been a goal – and the heady aspect of it is this: as a writer, you have the ability to affect a reader’s emotions and perceptions with your words. Think about that for a minute; it’s a head-rush. As a writer, you have an image in your head, and with black type on paper you can transfer that image to someone else. Through words, readers travel to foreign cities, foreign countries, foreign worlds, and we, as their guides, steer them along, showing them all the wonders we’ve imagined through the eyes of our characters. Am I being melodramatic? Yes. So let’s break down the mechanics of it.

#TeaserTuesday - Red Rooster

I shared a portion of this in the SoR readers' group a few days ago, but I wanted to share a larger segment for #TeaserTuesday. Slight spoilers? Not really; mostly just setup for book three. 

Red Rooster

Copyright ©2018 by Lauren Gilley

The baroness had brought him a mirror. A compact, folding one of the kind ladies carried in their purses. “I know you think you’re so slick,” she’d said, laughing fondly, “but I see you trying to fix your hair. I just thought.” She’d grown serious. “You might like to have this. And this.” A simple plastic comb that nearly brought tears to his eyes.

“I don’t need these,” he’d said, gruff to cover the emotional clog in his throat. “I can make myself look however I want when I go dreamwalking.”

“Sure. But that’s not the point, is it?”

“No…no, I suppose it’s not.”

RRJ 1/18

Red Rooster Writing Journal

48k words and hoping to break 50 tomorrow.

The structure of this installment is of three separate - though related - storylines that all converge for the big finale. They are the New York storyline, the Virginia storyline, and the Wyoming storyline, and all roads lead to Virginia. 

I had THE epiphany on the treadmill two nights ago, and it brought the whole storyline together. I was grinning like an idiot to myself, so pumped and excited...now I've just got to write it all down. *cries*

This series is the first time I've ever written about true historical figures. Once I got past the initial fear that I will Screw Up Big Time, I realized it was an absolute blast, and incredibly interesting. For me it's like watching a film, and then writing obsessive essays about the characters' motivations afterward. It's like my favorite kind of literary paper - the character study. In school, whenever possible, I wrote character studies as opposed to literature analyses. I read this amazing Vlad biography over Christmas break, and while the true story of the Impaler and his brother is fascinating, it was also largely filled with speculation - and not very deep speculation at that - as to Vlad and Radu's (Valerian in my books) thought processes. I now get to go in, armed with the facts, and construct their thoughts and emotions during all that, and that's  just a nerdy dream, let me tell you. So I'm incredibly excited to introduce my humble interpretation of Vlad in this book, and start digging into the mountain range of issues that lies between the two brothers. 

Today's writing focused mostly on the NY storyline, and I'm loving getting to draw the parallels between Trina and Katya. Theirs is a family of badass ladies. 

Favorite tidbit of the day:

“I can’t sniff anyone out, or Jedi Mindtrick anyone, but I can cause a distraction. And get some useful intel out of the idiot. What do you say?”

Lanny sent her an approving look.

Jamie buried his face in his hands.

Alexei looked at her appraisingly, head cocked to the side.

Nikita sighed, and finally nodded. “Carry a gun.”

She felt her smile widen. “I’m never not carrying a gun.”

Red Rooster

Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley

Writing 1103: Punctuation

Punctuation

Punctuation is, just in general, a boring topic. It’s the necessary nuts and bolts of writing; nothing flashy or pretty about it. But, like the essential underpinning of most endeavors, it’s one of those things that can make or break your work. Mainly because punctuation has the power to change the meaning of your work. Proper punctuation helps readers understand what you’re saying clearly; it makes the book more readable and more visually pleasing.

Rather than a dry, textbook walkthrough, I’m hoping to word things my own way here, in this post, so that it’s a little more enjoyable to read about, and to hopefully highlight things in a more practical way. Specifically, I’m going to talk about commas, semicolons, and colons.

RRJ 1/8

I'm doing something I don't normally do, but something that feels like it will be a big help: I'm going to live-blog my Red Rooster writing journal. I keep lots of journals - usually research notes and scattered tidbits and plot bunnies, all of it scattered. In the spirit of New Year's productivity, I'm going to (at least to start with) run a journal for this latest installment in the Sons of Rome series, my only project at the moment, and share it here in case anyone enjoys that sort of thing. I'm super excited about this book, and series, and can't wait to share book two later this spring.

1/8/18

Currently sitting at a little over 32k words. Much progress has been made since I finished that last Dartmoor-related thing and put it out in December. Christmas slowed things down a little, as is necessary; took some time to research – all things Vlad and his little brother in this book and the next are killing me in the best way. Brother vs. brother, anguish, misunderstanding, abuse and heartache – these are the reasons I write books. This is my jam.

Rooster is too good for this world, and also, ferocious.

Red is too good for this world, and even more ferocious.

Sasha is my baby, and deserves all the hugs. 

I love that this series – indeed, even this book – lets me play with different aesthetics. Usually with a book, you’re limited by setting in all aspects. Not so here: I can play with several at once, and it keeps things fresh, makes immersing myself in each setting completely worthwhile.

I also love that this series isn’t formulaic. I like that nothing is rushed. I love the idea that readers will have the chance to actually ship pairings rather than being told, ahead of each book, that everyone is neatly paired off and everything is pre-prescribed.

2k words a day seems to be my sweet spot right now, but I hope to get beyond that tomorrow. I have football brain today.

Writing one thing and only one thing at a time is freeing and amazing.

Writing 1102: Sentence Structure

Happy Wednesday, writer friends, and a belated Happy New Year, too! Marching right along with our 1000 level seminar posts, today we’re going to talk about sentence structure.

The most entertaining books aren’t just the ones that tell interesting stories – but ones that tell those stories well, using language that is easy to understand, and which evokes emotion. Diction (word choice) plays a big role, but before you can dazzle with words, you have to arrange them in a way that makes reading your story a seamless, unconscious experience. Parts of this post are going to sound incredibly obvious, but as a reader, clumsy or repetitive sentence structure is the one thing guaranteed to turn me off of a book; it’s also something I don’t see a lot of freelance editors addressing in the books they are hired to edit. So let’s take a closer look.

Red Rooster Cover Reveal

Red Rooster Cover Reveal

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you’ve all had some moments to relax and enjoy the holidays over the past few weeks. To eat some amazing food and spend time with your loved ones. I managed to sneak in some reading, some researching, and spent all day yesterday watching college football (Roooolllll Tide!!!).

As of today, I’m officially officially back to work, and I’m very excited about all the things I’ll get to write in 2018. White Wolf was not just my favorite project of 2017, or even just my favorite project ever, but the beginning of a series whose stories and characters have haunted me for years, and which I’m so thrilled to finally share with everyone. The Sons of Rome series marks a new chapter in my writing life, one that is hefty, dark, and more complex than all my writing endeavors thus far.

For the first #TeaserTuesday of the year, I wanted to share the cover for Red Rooster, Sons of Rome Book Two.

Red Rooster picks up right where White Wolf left off, finding Nikita, Sasha, Trina, and Lanny in a modern-day mess; this book also revisits Fulk, Anna, and Val, and introduces some new characters who have parts to play in the big picture narrative. If you’ve read any of my three existing series, you’ll know that I like to write ongoing conflicts and plotlines that carry through from one book to the next, and that involve the whole ensemble cast. SoR takes that to the next level; it’s a series full of individual stories stitched together to make one big story, a patchwork quilt of sorts, told in my traditional non-linear fashion. There’s an overarching story at work here, and an endgame, but one that’s going to develop at its own organic pace, with lots of adventure, mystery, suspense, and action along the way. I love this framework, because it’s going to allow me to dig deeper into each character, to take them farther, and explore them in a way that a series of self-contained happily-ever-afters would never allow. It’s decidedly not a series for readers who have to have a standalone, or even for those who don’t like to read outside the romance genre; urban, contemporary, historical – in all its forms, this is an epic fantasy tale at heart, and the journey has only just begun.