Helllooo Girlfriends!
Originally Published at www.girlfriendsbookclub.org
Hellloooo Girlfriends!
This is my first blog on the Girlfriends Book Club! Iām excited to be on the same āteamā with so many fun authors, and hopefully theyāll think Iām a good addition to the blog.
Iāll start with a little bit about me. I write what I call womenās action-adventure. Itās a good amount of mystery, a little bit of romance, a lot feminist, and of course, totally incomplete without action and adventure. Did you ever see an action movie and think, āWhy does the girl scream a lot and then fall down?ā Well, if I made movies, theyād be a lot shorter. Scary man in a mask, calling from inside the house? Bam. Yes, officer, I appear to have shot a deranged psycho hiding in my attic, please send a coroner. The End. None of this waiting for the hunky hero to come save the girl; my heroines save themselves, and possibly the hunky hero too.
My first two books Bulletproof Mascara and Compact with the Devil form the basis for my Carrie Mae Mystery series. (Coming in 2015 ā High Caliber Concealer!) They feature Nikki Lanier a twenty-something red-head who, in desperation, decides to sell make-up to make some cash, only to discover that the at home make-up sales giant Carrie Mae is also running a clandestine militant wing staffed by all women with the lofty goal of helping women everywhere.
If you just laughed while reading that, then youāll know exactly what my friends did when I told them the idea. (They also promptly made up the Carrie Mae salute ā chest thump into a mascara flip.) But I knew that I could write that book and that I could make it work. I knew that it would be funny, feminine, and feminist, and I could choreograph some awesome fight scenes.
Iāve written other things, and there have been books that I intended to write because they sounded like a good idea, but when I find the book that I have to writeā¦ have you ever heard the sound a metal pan makes when you take it off the burner and it starts to cool down? That little tiny ting? Thatās what I hear when my brain produces a freshly baked perfect novel premise. And thatās what I heard the day I realized that at home make-up sales were an incredibly cut-throat business.
So hopefully youāll join me as I search for the next tiny little auditory hallucination that tells me itās time to sit down at a computer and make some stuff up.
Dreams
The other night I dreamed that fellow Stiletto Gang author Linda Rodriguez rewrote the back-story on the main character of my Carrie Mae Mystery series ā Nikk Lanier. Nikki is a twenty-something red-headed linguistics major turned superspy with an overbearing mother and a steady boyfriend who works for the CIA. Notice how none of that background involves a whirlwind marriage and divorce from a blonde lawyer and the adoption of an African orphan? But by the time my dream Linda was done thatās what Nikki had. And in my dream, I kept thinking, āMaybe I could make the divorce work, but what am I supposed to do with a baby? I canāt just send it back!ā And then I woke up in a cold editorial sweat trying to figure out I was going to jam all these changes into Nikkiās next adventure that Iām 30,000 words into with no place to add in a spare baby.
What I love is that in my dream, never once did I question why Linda was rewriting Nikkiās backstory, and it certainly never occurred to me that I could just reject the edits. Nope, once Linda wrote it down, it was set in stone. Never mind that Linda and I have never actually met in person or done any writing together what-so-ever. In my dream, the changes were done and that was that. The other odd thing about my dream was the very real dual reality of Nikkiās reality. Linda may have written it, but I couldnāt send the baby back to the orphanage because Nikki would be upset, and what would her friends think?
But once I woke up, calmed down and then stopped laughing, it occurred to me to wonder. Do other authors dream about other authors? Do they dream about their characters? Is my brain off the deep end or just averagely crazy? I may never know the answer to that oneā¦
Don’t Feed the Gremlins
The premise of my Carrie Mae Mystery series is that in the sixties, while other ladies were burning their bras and inventing Tupperware, Carrie Mae Robart founded a door to door / friend to friend cosmetic selling empire ā Carrie Mae Cosmetics. Her goal was to give women financial independence without having to work outside the home. However, the more women she met, the more she realized that there were some problems that couldnāt be solved with just money Āā some problems needed a fist in the face. So Carrie Mae set up the Carrie Mae Foundation. Financed by proceeds from the cosmetic sales, the foundation is part non-profit – working on pro-bono legal cases and lobbying government on womenās rights issues – and partly a women only, black-ops, elite fighting force. The heroines of my stories Nikki Lanier, Ellen Marson, Jenny Baxter and Jane Rozmarek are part of that force and they travel the world, fulfilling the Carrie Mae mission statement: helping women everywhere.
Now the thing youāll notice about this premise is that itās only partially based in reality. I mean, sure, itās possible for a woman in the 1960ās to found a peer to peer make up sales company. Not that I know of anyā¦ ahem. But sadly, it has apparently never occurred to anyone to found an elite fighting force for women as part their non-profit. (If someone knows of one, please email me immediately; I would like to join up.) The problem with all of this lack of reality is that I have to make it sound plausible when writing. And that means all the other bits have to sound real. I have to research the guns and the locations and I try to make sure that my characters emotions feel authentic. But if I spend too much time in reality, I suddenly look at my own premise and think, āThatās ridiculous! I canāt write that.ā
Thatās right; I tell myself, āI canāt.ā Those are some of the worst words in the English language. (Although, theyāre still not as bad as, āWe need to talk.ā) Iām two books and two short stories, and half a manuscript into a series, andā¦ I canāt? How does the Canāt Gremlin sneak into so many places? I thought I was well fortified behind the Walls of Fantasy; girded by the Armor of Gumption; defended by the Holy Force of Imagination. And yetā¦ I canāt. Why is it so hard to get that jerk of a gremlin out of the house? Canāt have an elite fighting force? You might as well suggest that a woman canāt write books. The cycle of Canāt can be extremely hard to break, so when I get too down in the Canāts, I like to read other peopleās books. Thereās nothing like a good trip through someone elseās imagination to leave the Canāt Gremlin in the dust. But still, I know heās just waiting around the corner to trip me up. Which is why I prefer to visit reality infrequently and for only brief periods of time. Feel free to visit me any time, but leave your gremlins at the door ā I canāt be bothered with Canāt today.
Power of Attorney
This past year I have been focusing on my graphic design business and having a child (see adorable picture of Zoe below) and itās been hard to give the time required to write a novel. Not that Iāve stopped writing or wanting to write, but the amount of hours I have available is not what it once was. Since I had shorter hours I decided to shift to shorter projects and Iāve spent the past year working on short stories. This has been both hard and rewarding. Hard in that Iāve always worked in long format and short stories are structured differently than novels. Short stories have made me practice new skills and work in new ways and it has been extremely rewarding to see these new skills bear fruit.
But as my life (and daughter) settle back into a routine, Iām looking forward to returning to the novel structure. In fact, I have plans for a third Carrie Mae Mystery, High-Caliber Concealer, and an as yet to be named mystery set in the San Juan islands. I canāt wait to share these new adventures with you, but today Iām releasing the last of my pre-daughter short stories. Power of Attorney a Carrie Mae Mini-Mystery is now available! I hope you enjoy it!
