Category Archives: Writers Life

Let’s All Be Free at Last – Ask Alice Saturday

Kindle Bargain, Romantic Suspense, Writers Life, ,

Celebration image 5Question: It’s Independence Day. What do you want to be free of as a writer?

Answer: I wish for myself and all of my writer friends to free ourselves from the tyranny of our expectations.

I launched a book several days ago. Yet my celebration of that accomplishment is shadowed by my disappointment with myself. What did I not do well enough? What did I do too much?

I’m not saying a thorough debrief isn’t called for at the end of any major undertaking. Of course we should evaluate. Of course we should learn from our mistakes.

What I am saying is this. I find myself and too many other writers failing to congratulate our achievements. Failing to say – “I did that just right.” Or even – “I did that just right enough.”

Someone else had to remind me. “Look how far you’ve come in the past year. Look how much you’ve learned.” Typically I responded with a litany of my sins of omission. The things I’d left undone.

I was altogether wrong in that. A backward glance was in order. As I have absolutely no doubt it is also in order for you. Where were you a year ago today? Where was your career twelve months in the past?

Stop a moment right now. Take out a piece of paper and a pen. Cast yourself back a year. Ask yourself this question. “A year ago what were the 3 things I most wanted to accomplish in my writing career?”

Don’t overthink it. Let your first 3 thoughts be your best 3 thoughts. Write each down and leave a generous space blank after it. Put the paper aside and come back here with me for a bit.

In my opinion the worst of our sins of omission is committed when we fail to relish our experience. Stop another moment now and consider what it is we do. We set down words in a configuration that is brand new. Entirely our own creation.

We invent stories. We articulate thoughts. We build pictures from syllables. And if we are doing these precious activities as we should – we enjoy most of it.

This is a gift we’ve been given. A gift worthy of recognition and reveling. When we fail to do so we’ve fallen victim to the tyranny of our own expectations. We have forgotten to honor what we did accomplish by wallowing in what we haven’t yet accomplished.

Return to the piece of paper and your 3 hopeful ambitions for the year just past. After each one record every step you’ve taken along the path to that goal. The short steps – the long strides – the hops and hobbles in between. I’ll do it with you.

Fill the blank spaces. Carry onto the back of the page and across the desk and up the wall. Crowding the room with a record of our writerly deeds. We’ll read them over. Recognize and revel. Then we will have triumphed over tyranny and be free at last. Happy Independence Day.

RR

My current novel is A Year of Summer Shadows – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 2 – available in eBook and paperback at amazon.com/author/aliceorr and other outlets online. A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – the eBook – will be free for download soon at those same outlets. These are my 12th and 13th novels and I set myself free at last to honor them both. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

I Can Go Home Again – Riverton Road Monday

Kindle Bargain, Storytelling, Writers Life,

Alice at SRWA Workshop - August 1994I was in Saratoga Springs this past weekend. More specifically I was in the North Country where I grew up and where I’ve set my first romantic suspense novel series. I’ve been writing this series for months now but I haven’t been back north physically or geographically or emotionally in quite some time.

Those trips I did make were mostly to campuses and groups of other writers from other locales. Or I’d be staying with somebody I’d known a long time. Actually visiting the small town of my friend’s individual life – more than I was visiting the landscape surrounding that life or the general presence of the people who live there and make it what it is.

This trip was different. I was generously hosted by Joyce – a lovely lady I’d previously met but didn’t know well. Staying at her comfortable home gave me distance from the intense personal involvement and long-shared personal history that usually accompany my North Country jaunts.

Yet there we were – Joyce and I – in her kitchen until almost 1 a.m. talking about some very personal details of our very personal lives. That’s pretty much characteristic behavior in our pocket of the northeast. We cleave fairly close fairly fast and – on short acquaintance – trust each other with intimate details of our lives. At least we women do.

Even beyond that delightful person-to-person sharing the trip was an extraordinary experience. Despite the brevity of my time back home I remembered – both on the surface and deep down – what it feels like to be where I was born and raised. Where I became so much of what constitutes the human being I am.

Then all of a sudden I was in the middle of a group of authors who are another deep part of back home for me.  We share a passion for writing but much more than that. They come from where I come from. Most of us grew up there. We know the weather and the character of the place and the character of each other.

That afternoon I remembered how I feel a certain amount more at ease among people I share so much with underneath whatever surface differences there may be in our individual lives. I also remembered how much I like the people I come from. How much I in fact love them.

I’ve been a lot of places since I was last really back home. This past weekend brought me out of that away-ness and those other places just long enough and profoundly enough for me to feel all the way inside the North Country again.

I can’t tell you how much all of this means to me on several levels that run straight to the center of my heart. Except I guess I have just told you. I re-read this post and find myself stumbling around my mind in search of a way to bring you inside with me. Inside my Riverton stories which are the subject of these Monday meanderings.

Of course Riverton is back home and this past weekend I discovered I truly can go home again. Not only in the pages of my stories but on an Amtrak train as well. Up the gorgeous Hudson River at sunset to a place where when I’m bound to go there – gracious and giving North Country folk are bound to take me in.

Special thanks to Sally Booth and Saratoga Romance Writers – SRWA – for our years together. That’s us in the photo in 1994. Thanks for this past weekend too. I hope I can keep coming up with pretexts to travel north and regale you with what’s on my mind at the time until you’re terminally sick of me. May that malady not afflict you any time soon.

RR

A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Officially launches with summer on June 22nd but is already available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZBOTH5O. This is my 13th novel and it’s all North Country all the time. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

Giving Thanks – Riverton Road Monday

Indie Pub, Kindle Bargain, Writers Life, ,

Thank You imageA Year of Summer Shadows is the second story in my romantic suspense novel series set in a town I call Riverton that is reminiscent of North Country New York State where I grew up. We didn’t have murders at every turn like you find in my stories but we did have warmhearted people. I thank those people for giving me a strong start in life as both a storyteller and a person. Thank you Homies.

A very special thing happened to me during the writing of this book. My husband Jonathan Orr became my editor again as he was with my former novels before the hiatus preceding this series. We worked together well back then and we’re repeating that now. Our new partnership is a gift I didn’t expect and I’m extremely grateful for it. Thank you my beloved Jonathan.

I once again acknowledge Kristen Lamb author of the wonderful book The Rise of the Machines. This time because her blog writings got me to step all the way into the Twitter river at last instead of timidly dipping my toes there. She’s the social media maven we all need to follow. Thank you Kristen.

I don’t have to look further than my local RWA Chapter to find another media maven – one of the best – Maria Ferrer. She guides RWA/NYC and she has guided me with a marketing mind like few others I’ve seen. One Idea After Another – that’s the pace at which she thinks and her generosity with those ideas has helped me more than I can say. Thank you Maria.

I also repeat my thanks to the amazing writers of selfpublish@yahoogroups.com. They continue to offer all of us the benefit of their experience every day. Plus another yahoo group I’ve discovered more recently – mfrw@yahoogroups.com. The initials stand for Marketing for Romance Writers and that’s what they help us do. They’re surely helping me. Thank you generous writer friends.

And what would I do without the topnotch professional look of my books? The Killion Group Inc gives me exactly the covers I envision from multi-talented Kim Killion herself. Not to mention hassle-free formatting and uploading and just enough hand-holding from Jennifer Jakes. As if those weren’t blessings enough – Killion’s Shawntelle Madison makes my website what it needs to be. You can actually follow me now at www.aliceorrbooks.com. Thank you Killion.

My cup also runneth over and always has from the writers’ community that embraces me despite my history of consorting on the other side of the desk for a while as an editor and agent. My writing buddies at RWA/NYC are especially supportive along with the other RWA chapters that invite me to present workshops for them. Thank you romance writers.

Nor can I forget the International Women’s Writing Guild and its members who enrich my life in so many ways. As do my other writer friends – including the members of Liberty States Fiction Writers – and my civilian friends as well. Thank you all.

Leaving the best for almost last I begin always with my grandma Alice Jane Rowland Boudiette who has left this earth but not my heart. My daughter Kathleen Zea and son-in-law Luis Zea. My son Ed Vesneske and daughter-in-law Deborah Edison Vesneske. My grandchildren Maya and Julian Vesneske. Thank you my beloved family.

Finally I thank my God and the faith she inspires in me. It takes a village to create my Riverton and she dwells on every block and every page. I would be nothing and nowhere without her. Amen.

RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story – Launches with summer on June 22nd at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. The paperback is already available at www.amazon.com under Alice Orr. This is my 13th novel and I’ve had a world of help to be thankful for with every single one. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.