Guest Post from R.G. Emanuelle, Author of Have a Bite

  • April 25, 2016
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First, let me say thanks to J.M. for letting me hang out at her blog this week. Aside from our association as fellow Penheads, members of the same writing group, I’m a big fan of her work and it pleases me that she’s allowed me on her blog for a bit.

I wanted to talk about a couple of projects that I have coming out in May. One is Order Up: A Menu of Lesbian Romance & Erotica, the follow-up to All You Can Eat: A Buffet of Lesbian Romance & Erotica, which is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Also out this month is Have a Bite, book one in my new novella series The Vampires of Brooklyn Chronicles. It’s about a celebrity chef who’s being tormented by a restaurant reviewer with a grudge. Incidentally, she’s also being stalked by a vampire hunter because…oh, yeah, she’s a vampire.

Chapter One is Up!

  • April 18, 2016
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Chapter one of Magical Ties is up. Enjoy!

Week Two: Sore Wrists

  • April 11, 2016
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chinese painting photo

Photo by Kansas Poetry (Patrick)

 

That’s what happens when you grab and are grabbed in my self-defense class dozens of times. Well, to be fair, I’m sure not everyone had sore wrists. Just me.

I arrived at day two of class with trepidation. My knees and thighs were sore and I was pretty sure I had a pulled muscle in my side. I almost didn’t go at all.

When Writing Meets Fighting

  • April 04, 2016
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self defense photo

Photo by Kansas Poetry (Patrick)

 

I reminded myself why I was in a room deflecting punches to my face. In Magical Ties, Emily begins taking a class in self defense. My memories of briefly taking Tae Kwon Do and Tai Chi were too long ago to recall the mechanics of either. If Emily gets into a fight in book two, I want to write it correctly.

Spring Cleaning for Writers

  • March 27, 2016
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messy desk photo

Photo by wanderingone

 

Every spring I go through my clothes closets, sort through books, and read the expiration date of items in my kitchen cabinets and medicine chest. But I’ve come to realize that I need to spring clean with a writerly focus as well. And if you’re serious about writing, so should you.

What To Do When You Get a Bad Review

  • March 13, 2016
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Do you think you’ll never get a bad review? Think again. Better yet, be prepared. If you don’t have a thick skin when your book goes public, develop one. Buy one, if there’s a store in the universe that will deliver. But have it in place and use it.

Here is the number one rule (the only rule, actually) for responding to a bad review:

Don’t.

Writing Haikus for Fun

  • March 07, 2016
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The New Oxford American Dictionary defines a haiku as “a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.”

I enjoy Tweeting haikus with a nature theme, like these:

 

My feet run the trail

Spiderwebs adorn my hair

As birds call above.

 

 

A withered leaf falls.

Its scent crushes the present

And brings forth the past.

And The Words Spilled out

The short story I’m writing collided with real life on Friday. There I was, sitting in a subway car, looking over my pages. Nothing unusual about that, right? I was reading through the scene that takes place at a blues club, when a man stood up a few seats away and positioned himself in the center of the car. I knew I was going to get a musical performance whether I liked it or not.

 

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My Fingers Are Itching

  • February 22, 2016
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The other day a writer friend and I discussed Robert Johnson, the late, great blues player, and his legend of making a deal with the Devil at the Crossroads to play well. Talking about it made my fingers itch to get to the computer keyboard and continue working on a short story I’m writing for an anthology.

What Do You Do When Your Character Changes?

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“I’ve changed my mind—I don’t want to be the villain.”

“But I’m not in love with her.”

“I’d rather kill them than save them.”

To any nonwriters out there, understand this: my characters can (and do) change even in the midst of my writing them, even when I’ve already got the idea what they’ll be. I can’t explain it, that’s just the way it is.

To writers out there, I’m sorry to say that when it happens, when it alters your plot and the surrounding characters who are then required to react differently to this new facet of your character (let’s call him Smith), there’s no choice. If the change rings true, you’ll need to revise your story.

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