The Waffle House

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So, I forgot that I was supposed to blog today and instead used my few minutes of writing time to write a scene where two of my characters go to a Waffle House.  But as a west coast resident, I’ve never actually been to a Waffle House.  As a result, I spent way too much time looking at the Waffle House menu on line and now I want hashbrowns and waffles.  Sometimes we hear authors say that their characters speak to them.  My characters wouldn’t deign to do that.  They’re too busy talking to each other. And honestly, if I left them to their own devices they would talk until my fingers cramped up from trying to transcribe.  I frequently have to cut off the conversations so that the story goes somewhere.  That’s part of the editing process, but these conversations are excellent at helping me understand the characters.  When I discover what they find funny, what they hate, what annoys them, and what their hard line stance is on Christmas decorations after New Years, I can plunk them down in any situation and know how they’ll react.  Which is how I know that Jackson Deveraux would be quite happy at the Waffle House, but that he would be shocked that his hoity toity grandmother Eleanor Deveraux knows to order Waffle House hashbrowns scattered, smothered, and covered, but not chunked.  The Deveraux family is full of secrets and surprises, but when I started writing about them I never would have thought that hashbrowns would be one of the surprises.  The Deveraux family, from my Deveraux Legacy, has become one of my favorite group of characters.  They’re a very fractured family that is struggling toward reconciliation while attempting to overcome the periodic interruption of mercenaries, bank robbers, and greedy CEOs.

If you want to find out what the Deveraux family thinks about Christmas décor you can check out book 1, The Second Shot, and pre-order book 2, The Cinderella Secret (both currently ¢.99). Or you can…

Enter to win a paperback copy of The Cinderella Secret on Goodreads!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Cinderella Secret by Bethany Maines

The Cinderella Secret

by Bethany Maines

Giveaway ends October 17, 2020.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

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Or you can join the Bethany Maines / Blue Zephyr Press Newsletter mailing list and get a free copy of the prequel novella, The Lost Heir in October!

Thorny Problems

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This week has been a bit of roller coaster ride for my writing.  I received some very excellent news which them prompted me to move up several items on my to-do list, which further caused me to do the thing that I had been dreading… Call Apple Support to fix a problem with my Apple ID.  I have had three different people on my “case” and have now been bumped up to a “Senior Advisor.”  In short, my problem has been deemed an actual problem (hmm… like I said at the beginning?) and I have been moved away from the people that tell me to do things like “spell out North, instead of putting N.” and “try clicking ‘add’ 4 times really fast.”  Which is probably good because I was starting to make notes for killing off a customer support specialist in my next novel.

But all of this has left me feeling more than a little bit blocked.  I want to do one simple thing, but suddenly the simple thing spawned multiple problems and multiple frustrations.  Usually when I’m feeling frustrated I can dive into one of my writing projects to escape, but unfortunately I’m feeling blocked on many of those as well!  Book #4 of the San Juan Island series is holding until I can figure out who finds the body.  I’ve got it narrowed down, but I’m not sure who would be the best person.  My sci-fi version of Beauty & the Beast for the Galactic Dreams Anthology series is with my co-writers and I don’t want to write the next section without their input. And The Lost Heir, my Deveraux Legacy novella is with my beta readers.  So what’s the solution to this thorny issue?  Here’s what I came up with…

Step 1: Go blackberry picking

Step 2: Make pie.

Step 3: Eat pie.

It may be the long way around for pie, but it is a solution to a very thorny problem.

The Second Shot Goes Live

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Cover Reveal

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Lipstick Part 2

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