Eva, a romantic suspense with a mystical twist, is a bestseller! Currently, it is at #37 on Amazon’s bestseller list in the Women’s Fantasy category.
I am so thrilled that people are reading and enjoying my book!
Here is another question I recently answered while promoting my new novel, “Eva; a riveting romantic suspense with a supernatural twist.”
I am definitely a plotter. I lay it all out in advance. First, I tend to brainstorm with my wonderful husband Mark Carey, and he’s a brilliant thinker and writer. Then as I’m getting down into the details, I scribble down the jist of each scene on a postcard, and then pin the cards up on a large corkboard. Then I can move the scenes around as needed to get the structure and pacing right. I spend a long time on character development, even down to drawing the family tree, deciding each character’s backstory, their likes and dislikes, what their tragedies were, etc. How they became who they are.
But then the real fun starts! When I write the first draft, I just let go of everything; I try not to edit myself in the first draft. And as I’m sinking more and more into each character, I find they take over my fingers on the keyboard or my voice as I’m speaking into the mic for voice recognition.
This is the part I love the most; they write the book to a great extent! If I’m deeply involved with the character, it is similar to acting (my first career was as a singer and actor in the UK). As I begin a scene, I know what is going to happen, in general, and what I need to achieve in that scene. But what the characters actually say, and the things they do is a continual surprise. It can be delightful! Sometimes I find I pull sharply out of the moment when something unexpected occurs. I read what I wrote and say out loud, “Oh that’s cool!” How to explain this? I get the distinct feeling that I’ve opened up a channel to some creative source out there in the universe. As if there is an ocean of creativity we can all access.
I hope I answered the question. I’m a plotter, but I let it rip and let it flow in the first draft. It is enormous fun!
Hi all, hope your summer is going well! I confess I am so excited!
Although the idea for Eva came to me twenty-five years ago, only now did I feel ready to write it…
I would love reviews on Amazon if you enjoy the book!
Eva possesses a unique and powerful gift. But is it a curse?
She plays down her beauty, to avoid attention. But it doesn’t work. She has a magnetic quality, a calm, a power of which she is unaware.
Never having known her father and having lost her mother when she was young, Eva believes she’s better off alone. She only connects deeply with animals, they are her first love. But another great love is on the horizon, along with other life-changing discoveries.
When they learn of her gift, the media jackals gather, and Eva is forced into the limelight she’s avoided all her life. She is accused online of being a heretic and scam artist.
Facing challenges at every turn, including her own inner demons, she must fight to protect, even embrace, her newfound ability.
But someone wants her dead.
* * *
~ ~ ~ Read the first three chapters here
Do you remember the first book you passionately loved? I sure do. It was “101 Dalmatians” by the wonderful Dodie Smith, that I first read when I was about seven or eight. My dad was a librarian, and he brought it home for me. I fell so in love with it that I wouldn’t give it back! He kept telling me it had to be returned, that I couldn’t keep it. So I started copying it. No, not with a copy machine, but by hand!! I was determined to write out every single page of that book so that I had it forever.
And so it began. I raced home from school every day and sat scrunched over my little desk, writing out the book, word for word. I got to page forty-five, before my dad found a way to take pity on me. He told his boss at the library what his little daughter was doing, and she finally gifted me the copy.
The pictures are of the original book, published in 1957, which I’ve had more than fifty years. It’s been moved around the planet about twenty times in countless moves: from Alberta to California, to Oregon, to England, to Pennsylvania, to Colorado and Connecticut. To New Hampshire. It’s lost his spine, and it’s a bit worse for wear. But I still read it. And still love it.
Dodie Smith, what a great writer.
Leave me a comment about your favorite childhood book – I’d love to know! A friend from high school came on to Facebook to respond on my post, saying her mad fav was “The Witch of Blackbird Pond,” so now I have to go read that! I still love kids’ books…