Tag Archives: Alice Orr

A Great Place to Live – Ask Alice Saturday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Writing Tips, ,

Question. Why Is the World of a series a great place to live?

 Answer: Novels in a series are the road to success for an author.

A Vacancy at the Inn - Cover 2 200x300 - 20.6 KB Novels in a series are also the road to pleasure for a reader as an adventure through a world. The author builds that world detail by detail. The reader revels in that world scene by scene.

I’m traveling through my first series world as a writer and I love it there. My goal is to draw readers in and make them want to stay through one book then the next and the next. To do this I must create a world that feels real and resonates.

That means I must create a world that is consistent. A world of that has Rules. Following these rules adds to the reality of the series. You can figure out some of the rules of my series from this brief blurb.

The Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series is set in and around Riverton, New York in the remote North Country. Stories of danger and romance feature the Kalli and Miller families, their sons and daughters and the fortunate people who find safety and welcome on Riverton Road.

The setting is a town in remote northern New York State where I happened to grow up though there’s no real town called Riverton. The Kalli family of Riverton Road was at the center of my series world through Books 1 and 2. Now I’ve added the Miller who also live on Riverton Road.

Each gorgeous son and radiant daughter has or her story. I intend to move beyond them to others among the Kalli-Miller circle in future Riverton Road books. To hook readers into this extended world my job is to master the art of immersion.

I must immerse my readers so completely in my story world that they’re eager to remain there until I release them at The End. If I do that job well these readers will miss Riverton Road when they have to leave.

One way to sabotage myself would be to slip an inconsistency into the mix. Any off-key note awakens the reader from what John Gardner calls “the dream of the book”. To prevent this I establish the rules and follow them. Some I figure out in advance. Others as each story grows.

A bonus benefit – one I hadn’t expected – is that I’ve also become deeply immersed myself in the world I’m creating. From that deep place I bring my stories to real life because in that deep place they have real life for me. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had as a fiction writer.

This is how I discovered that making series rules is anything but limiting. The rules liberate my imagination into the flowing ocean of my story world until I don’t want to leave. And because I’m writing a series I don’t have to leave. Believe me. It is definitely a great place to live.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

RR

A Vacancy at the Inn is the first Christmas Novella of the Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series featuring the Kalli family and now the Miller family too in stories of Romance and Danger. A Wrong Way Home is Book 1 of the series – A Year of Summer Shadows is Book 2 – A Villain for Vanessa is Book 3. All titles are available at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B000APC22E.

 

Conference Heat Hits Riverton Streets – Riverton Road Monday

Kindle Bargain, Romantic, Writing Tips, ,

Heat Wave imageI spent the past weekend at the New Jersey Romance Writers Conference and I learned a lot. I learned to steam up the heat index of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series.

I’m not saying my previous books aren’t hot. In A Year of Summer Shadows Mark and Hailey cook in her kitchen so slam-bang hard the pots and pans are rattling off the shelves. And in A Wrong Way Home Matt and Kara warm the spring buds to bursting in more than the garden.

Still – on Friday night when I listened to my dear friend Anne Walradt read excerpts from the Put Your Heart in a Book and Golden Leaf contest winners – I knew it was time to hit the hot-stuff button until my readers beg for mercy.

That must have been noodling in my head all night long because I woke up Saturday morning and wrote a scene that had my own home fires burning. This scene appears in A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Road Romance Series Book 3- Bobby and Vanessa’s Story which will be coming – pun entirely intended – soon.

I’m going to see how much I dare excerpt from that scene here. But – I warn you – if sexy situations are not your cup of tea stop reading now.

The roaring winds and yesterday’s rain had done their worst. Colored leaves lay in a blanket of slick stems and soggy points among the tangle of exposed roots beneath the tall, broad tree nearest to her car. Vanessa needed to think about the tangle she was in personally and how to extricate herself.

Instead, she found herself catapulted into the tangle of herself and Bobby in each other’s arms on the Kalli porch. He’d pulled her close and surrounded her with a power she hadn’t anticipated. He was usually careful not to overstep, but he wasn’t careful last night. He hadn’t so much moved past the boundary of propriety between them as he’d crushed it beneath his feet and lifted her into a place that was only him – his scent, his breath, his mouth, his everything.

He held her so tight she couldn’t have pushed him away if she wanted to, and she didn’t want to. She’d wanted more of him, every inch of his body, with no coats or jeans or sweaters in between. She longed to see him that way, naked against her, and herself just as naked pressing into him. She longed for that now.

Vanessa hadn’t put her gloves back on after leaving Wilson’s store. Her hands should be chilled to the bone, but they were hot. She breathed deep, long breaths as her fingers edged her coat aside and wandered over her thigh. She knew that wouldn’t be enough.

She engaged both hands, grabbing the waistband and snap of her pants, pulling them open and pushing the zipper down. Her fingertips were against her bare skin, flaming skin on flaming skin, moving downward beneath the flimsy fabric of her panties until she found the place she needed desperately to touch.

She reached between the….

Okay. That’s as far as I think I should go here. My guess is you get the direction I’m drifting toward. I will simply close by saying this. As the scene continues – a lot more than the autumn leaves whirl wild and end up wet.

RR

A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – the eBook – is FREE at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T9RVGGC. It is also FREE at Barnes & Noble and iTunes and KOBO and other online platforms. A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – is available at those same platforms including http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZBOTH5O. These are my 12th and 13th novels and I keep delivering the heat in number 14. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.