Previously, I thought I had a way to portray dual timelines–vignettes. Now I know that they will work for some cases, but not for all. I have to use the best technique for story advancement. It may be a flashback. It may be one or more scenes. It could be a chapter. It could even be […]
I love creating stories with intelligent heroines–especially the ones for whom the television is simply their largest computer monitor. However, the backstory for the heroine in my new novel is giving me fits. How can I hide a crucial piece of her personal history from her? If it’s anywhere on the World Wide Web, […]
It apparently isn’t enough to keep up with all the drama the characters in my new story are creating for themselves. Now I am muddying the waters by interweaving their dramas and making each of them instruments in each other’s dilemma. Insanity. I don’t know why the writing is taking me in that direction, but […]
When writing my first book, I would hear others say that the second one is harder. I had to toss those words out of my brain because even the first draft of the first book was hard enough. I’ve recently started drafting the second book and I saw that those folks were right. I now […]
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. True – but which words? In the case of my sepia flower, the thousand words distills down to exactly two: Cathryn Louis. As my profile avatar, it is on just about every site I’ve joined. Because I’ve been involved in social media and portions […]
Even now, in the age of computer games, puzzles are my thing. The more pieces there are, the better I like them. Creating the ‘big picture’ is thrilling. For a few years now, there has been only one puzzle on my table. I’ve fit pieces, pondered a little, fit more pieces, pondered a bit more… […]
My characters are not based on real people. Sometimes I wish that they were. But then, I would have to fictionalize them, which would make them not at all the same. Since that’s so, it’s probably best that they live only in my imagination. I love inventing people. If I were a gamer, I would […]
Artists – painters, sculptors, authors, poets, et al – express emotion with their work. Authors creating characters that show only one emotion is akin to painters rendering on the canvas in only one color, or at worst, only one hue of that color. Making lists of emotional attributes works for some authors; interviewing them works […]
I’ve let myself go – neglected my platform. Yes, I’ve been busy, but that’s not an excuse. It needs sprucing, pruning, polishing, and I’m taking time out right now get it all bright and shiny again.First up – my authors lists. I apologize in advance to those of you who follow them, but ‘authors-books, stories‘ […]
I love to read – almost more than I now know I love to write. For the past month, I’ve been reading far more than I’ve been writing. It wasn’t as pleasurable as I wanted it to be, because there was a nagging feeling that my reading wasn’t productive. I hadn’t been writing about it. I’m […]
