I love to go to used book stores, yard sales and auctions to buy books. Inevitably, you find little personal details of the previous owners within them. Old photographs. Coins. Letters. I even found a four-leave clover in a book on superstitions.
The Guardian's Theresa Malone has a terrific column about the life of books – and how electronic devices take away the pleasures of a book's past.
Check out Every Book Tells a Story.
Today I was reading a romance novel and got to the steamy sex scene.
The woman is all hot and bothered as the guy is running his tongue across her body. He gets to her waist and makes certain to delve his tongue into her belly button (which, of course, is situated just perfectly in her flat tummy, which is sunken because she is lying down in ecstasy).
This made me wonder exactly how a belly button tastes. I cannot be all that good, because sometimes, belly buttons smell. Or they have some weird waxy liquid in them with the scent of rotten garbage.
For some reason, fictional characters never run into stinky belly buttons. These outies and innies always taste great and are situated just perfectly on the body. Whether appetizer, dinner or dessert, the belly button is a harbinger of steamy sex in today's books.
In real life, of course, we have to deal with stinky, waxy belly buttons, which probably don't taste that great or entice us to linger in the stomach area.
What is the cause of the stinky belly button?
According to this Associated Content article, it can be water or baby powder trapped inside or stomach odors leaking out (YUCK!). If you want to control it, then use deoderant or rubbing alcohol.
Can you imagine your protagonist dipping his tongue into his lady's belly button only to taste deoderant?
Now THAT would be interesting.
I love weird news tidbits. They always do a lot to stimulate my imagination.
Today, Digg introduced me to the Environmental Graffiti blog post, "10 Beautiful Yet Deadly Megatropolises."
There are some odd factoids about the worst cities to live in because of pollution. santitation, overpopulation… the list goes on and on.
The photos I found the most startling were from Cairo. The air quality is so bad there, you can barely see anything.
This photo really fit with some of my ideas for a futuristic urban fantasy. How deadly living can be in a world that is forgotten. (Yes, I know. I relate everything to writing. My friends love me, anyway.)
I think that's why I axed subscriptions to magazines about writing and started subscribing to magazines that inspired me. Saved me money and provided resources that were much more in tune with the Muse. Now that we have blogs, I find myself surfing endlessly for ideas and inspiration – sometimes to the detriment of the writing itself.
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For the first time in a very long time, I dreamed of a scene for a new book.
This character just came to me a few days ago, her eyes haunted, her lonely soul calling out to me to tell her story. I don't know her very well right now, but I could easily envision her in a few very key scenes for an urban fantasy novel.
Last night, the unnamed woman was seized by black magic and, after she healed, saved the life of the man will soon be her mate. The scene was so real, I could practically feel her pain, the sizzle of the deadly magic in her veins, the terror of watching her nearly die.
It was amazing. It was incredible. And today, I MUST write out this scene!
I remember once, author Sharon Sala talking at a conference about how she allowed her subconscious to "dream" scenes – particularly those that were tough to write for whatever reason.
I thought to myself, Geesh, I wish I could dream up the scenes and write them fresh. That would totally rock.
Before last night, I'd dreamed of scenes, but most times couldn't remember most of it when I woke up, or the scenes were more disjointed than I thought when I started to write them down. This time, though, I'm hoping it will be different. I hope (fingers crossed) that this scene remains just as vivid – and coherent – as it seemed to be last night.
{Art found at VoiceYourself.com}
And I wonder why I don't get any writing done?
As I sat, Dee Whompus (She'll womp-n-knot-on-you if she's in a mood.) gets up and stretches from her cushy place on my office chair.
Oh, did I mention that I am frequently relegated to the very hard, white folding chair when my cats are in the office? Oh yes. They walk around me, claw me, step on the keyboard, block the screen and do whatever they need to get my butt out of the chair so they can plomp down into it, snuggling deeply until they are asleep.
Writing erotica and romance isn't easy.
I struggle not so much with stories and plots and characters as personal convictions on if it is right to pen these stories or not.
Growing up in a conservative household (I'm still conservative in politics) sometimes make it difficult to finish stories. Of course, having my mother constantly say I'm going to write for the Christian market if its the last think she ever does doesn't help, either.
In my critique groups, I was always known as the one who took the sexual risks (in fiction). I didn't hesitate to write a hot, steamy love scene if it somehow moved along the plot or brought my characters to a new level. I'm not into sex for sex' sake. I'm for sexual realism in fiction. As a Christian, I know sex happens before marriage. I know people like to get hinky and kinky and down with it. Fiction writers should be able to express that.
I think, for me, fiction is not realistic if it doesn't' have some sort of intimacy. I find Alison Kent's work a sexual overload and could not finish her stuff, but I do like subtle innuendo – when it is written correctly. (Victoria Laurie is a terrific example of romance that works without a ton of explicit nookie.) Hot sex works in several instances, but only when it doesn't overtake the plot, like in Jory Strong's novels.
I've read several books sans sex and the two characters never connect. There is no ping moment where they are all hot and bothered for each other, or they discover they have some sort of connection beyond a physical attracts. They are just two cardboard characters who never quite reach a point beyond acquaintances.
Finding a good balance between the plot and the romantic relationship is key to story enjoyment for me.
So how do you connect two characters in a novel to make their romance real to readers?
Here are a few links to Web sites that want to help:
Laurie Sanders of Black Velvet Seduction does a terrific course on Deep POV that authors in any genre would appreciate. She sets everything up in a blog, where you log in and take the course at your leisure.
What do you do as an author to connect your characters? When your characters aren't compatible, what do you?