Thursday, December 15, 2016

Take Five With Author Kat Lively



Welcome to An Indie Adventure, Kat.  Tell us, what inspired you to write your book, Finish What You Started?
Thanks for having me :)
I usually have two or three ideas bouncing around in my head at a time. I have written mysteries and thrillers, but I read romance and have wanted to write one. The idea for FINISH happened after seeing a call from a publisher looking for romances with “rich and famous” heroes. I thought a story about a D-list actor working his way back to the A-list might make for an interesting romantic comedy. His relationship with an old girlfriend – currently on a career high – would be explored, along with the circumstances that caused them to split.
Well, once I finished the book the call expired. I shopped it around, and Totally Bound offered me a contract.
If you were not a writer, what vocation would you pursue?
Not a tough question, believe it or not. I’ve worked office jobs and bookstores much of my life, and while I’d love to go back to a bookstore I think a career change-up would appeal to me, too. I’d love to work for a winery or nursery, be outdoors.

Do you prefer to read in the same genre you write in, or do you avoid reading that genre?  Why?

I will read pretty much anything – romance, mystery, biographies, etc. For romance, I tend to gravitate toward historicals and small town settings. I suppose I look for a story I think I’ll enjoy, and when it comes to romance I like to get a feel for the possibilities.

How do you create internal and external conflict in your characters?  I find conflict often the hardest to create when I start planning a book.

I tend to draw on my own memories and observations of others close to me. I don’t necessarily base characters on people I know, but some conflicts I create in stories are those to which I can relate.

If you could live during any era of history, which one would you choose?

I’ve always been drawn to the Tudor era. Not sure I’d want to live in that time, but the Regency era has some appeal.:)


Give us a brief summary of Finish What You Started:
It gets hot under the spotlight…
Once a teen idol, Gabby Randall now spends her time behind the cameras. With her show Danse Macabre scripted and greenlighted for a popular streaming site, she has everything she wants…except her star. Deadlines are looming and she’s desperate to cast the role of a modern-day, motorcycle-riding Grim Reaper. She never thought she’d end up hiring her former co-star, TV’s most beloved geek…and her ex-husband.

Until the day he dies, people will remember Dash Gregory as Freddie “Grody” Grodin, the token geek friend of the cool kids at Wondermancer High. After years of casting agents overlooking him for plum roles, Dash wants to show Hollywood he’s more than a one-note player. He’s ready to break the vicious typecasting cycle, and he’s set his sights on the lead role in a sexy new series too hot for network TV.

When the director yells “Cut!” the star wants to keep up the action behind the scenes. Are Dash and Gabby willing to make ratings history again?

Buy:
Amazon | ARe | Barnes & Noble


Bio:

Kathryn Lively is an award-winning writer and editor, Slytherin, Whovian, and Rush (the band) fan. She loves chocolate and British crisps and is still searching for a good US dealer of Japanese Kit Kat bars.

Find Kat:
Newsletter | Website & Blog | Twitter | Facebook Page
Pinterest | Goodreads











Monday, December 12, 2016

Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ "I'll Not Shut Out The Lessons They Teach" via A Christmas Carol




Dickens has always been a favorite and every year my father would read A Christmas Carol to us over the course of several nights.  See what Brad Leach has gleaned from that venerable story.

I have always struggled with my writing around the holidays. And I blame it all on Charles Dickens. Good luck firing up the muse when your personal high water mark includes A Christmas Carol.

Talk about character arc? A miserly man, alone, who prefers it that way. So nasty he gleefully shoos away crippled children, begrudges the freezing a piece of coal, even argues with the ghost of a former partner, insisting he’s a result of indigestion. 


Then, literally overnight, he changes into London’s St. Nicholas. He gives extravagantly to the poor and needy, sends a prize turkey as a surprise gift, and praises the ghosts and Christmas time.

How’s it measure on the adage, “Show, don’t Tell?” We aren’t told Scrooge hates carolers; he bursts through their ranks grumbling, flushing them out of his way with a walking stick. He doesn’t say he’s frustrated with the ghosts; he extinguishes one, only to find he has his bedding. Declaring he’s changed, he pays a boy for an errand, orders a gift turkey, and pays for a cab.

Dialogue? So many to choose from. But who doesn’t get a shiver when Scrooge declares, “If they would rather die, then they had better do it - and decrease the surplus population.” Or when he asks if Tiny Tim will live and the ghost declares, “I see a vacant seat... in the poor chimney corner. And a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved.... If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”

Tag lines? Try “dead as a doornail,” “Bah humbug,” “God bless us, every one,” “picking a man’s pocket every 25th of December,” and “an old Scrooge.”

Narrative? “Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.... He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.” So how can I then settle for my, “he was a cold and calculating man...”?

Back story cleverly woven into the text? Just observe the Ghost of Christmas Past. Secondary characters? Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, Old Fezziwig. These are memorable characters whose every action play to our heart-strings or moving the story forward. Moral themes? Ignorance and Want. Dickens addresses poverty, social reform, redemption, and second chances. He doesn’t do social commentary, he motivates the heart; all in just under 29,000 words.


So I remember that this special holiday includes centuries of authors and screenplay writers best efforts. Delivered in concentrated form in one single month. Oscar-winning movies, classic stories and poems, sentimental favorites; they all set a high bar. Of course we expect to be moved by poignant emotions as we consider this time of holy redemption. How do you write to top that?

I can’t. Instead, I realize my stories will seem inadequate. I will feel they falter in the light of talent like Dickens, who wrote A Christmas Carol towards the end of his career. Christmas presents some of the greatest stories 2,000 years of Western Civilization has produced.

Instead, I study the great techniques of such stories. I ask if there is some way I can apply that technique? And I cling to my pen and laptop, waiting until January and February, when the magic fades, the measuring stick shortens, and even my bare stories appeal again. And as Scrooge vowed not to shut out the lessons the ghosts taught, let us embrace the classics and the inspiration they give this season.

~ Brad