Tag Archives: Writing Tip

Series World Wonders – Holiday HeadsUp for You

Get Published, , ,

Series World Wonders. If there is a single gift of value I can add to your holiday season, this is it. Series World is a fabulous realm for a reader to step into for a while and borrow as a home for her imagination.

Series World is also a place of professional and personal potential, where a writer may explore and discover rewarding story material. I’m talking about an immersive experience all around, and that immersion can be the source of Series World Wonders for anyone who cares to give it a try.

Reader fascination with Series World Wonders has a contemporary aspect that didn’t exist until a few years ago, though stories in a series have been with us for a very long time. My first adventure among Series World Wonders was all about Nancy Drew, who was also my first real foray into popular fiction. I fell in love with Nancy. I wanted to be Nancy, or at least slip in among her friend posse and follow along toward excitement. I wasn’t likely to encounter on East Avenue in Watertown, New York. Alice Orr Books Danger in Disguise Nancy DrewAfter I had read one story, I couldn’t wait to leap into another and another and another.

Nancy Drew had hooked me on her Series World Wonders, so much so that I published a Nancy story myself, ghostwritten under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. I already had my own author career as Alice Orr by then, but I couldn’t resist the lure of fulfilling a youthful dream, to become Nancy in the only way I could practically manage, by creating a story with her at the center and living with her in my head for a while. I will never forget Danger in Disguise.

Back to the reader, and the fresh wrinkle in her Series World Wonders tapestry. I not only love writing series, I also love reading series. This love affair may have begun with Nancy Drew books, but it didn’t end there. I galloped through the Black Stallion series, wandered and pondered with Anne of Green Gables, and eventually graduated to more adult thrills with the likes of Kinsey Millhone and Michael Haller. Which made me, and millions like me, ripe to become enthusiastic fans of Series World Wonders on the small screen.

Remember the phenomenon of the Downton Abbey series? The breathless excitement that accompanied anticipation of every new season? Some of us were so afflicted with separation trauma at season’s end, we would binge-watch the whole thing again, one episode after another for hours at a time. And when Downton alas deserted us altogether, we searched out full seasons of Upstairs Downstairs just so we could remain in the delicious Brit landscape of “Blimey” and “Egad” a while longer.

We had been captured by Series World Wonders. We had been seduced by their charms and immersed among the twists and turns of their stories. We had lived, via our imaginations and television’s vivid images, in that delightful, though obviously idealized milieu for what felt almost like a period of our own lives. We hungered to immerse ourselves in other Series World Wonders again very soon. Services like Netflix and Amazon  Prime recognized our whetted binge-watching appetites and indulged them, and we’ve been a happy mix ever since.

Which brings me to writers. What do binge-tv Series World Wonders mean for us? Has watching binge television conditioned our entertainment-eager culture to be ripe for binge book reading too? As in series, series, and more series? It absolutely has. This is great news for both writers and readers.

The Series World Wonders we create can set a reader’s teeth into a story universe that carries her along lickety-split, absorbed by our absorbing characters, and puts her in a foul mood when she is forced to read “THE END.” She yearns to be carried along and absorbed yet again. She yearns for us to expand the series into more books. My holiday heads-up to writers is for you to consider satisfying that yearning, if you have not done so already.

Why Is the land of Series World Wonders a great place for a writer to live? In purely professional terms, a trip there can be an adventure on the road to author success. An adventure we share with our readers, as we build that world detail by detail, and they revel in it scene by scene. I am currently 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 captivate them with my own Series World Wonders.

Riverton Road Suspense Tree logoThe Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series takes place in and around Riverton, New York and the North Country. Stories of danger and romance feature the warmhearted Kalli family and the more complicated Miller family.

The setting is a town in remote northern New York State, where I happened to grow up. No real-life town called Riverton exists there, but if I perform my storytelling job as I should, readers will believe in Riverton Road so deeply that they will miss it when they have to leave, and yearn to return.

Being lured into a love affair with my own Series World Wonders is a bonus benefit.  A gift I had not expected before I began this so far five-story excursion. I have become as deeply immersed in my Riverton world as I hope for my readers to be. From that deep place I bring my stories to real life, because in that deep place they have real life for me

Frankly, this is the most fun I’ve ever had as a writer. Which is the true holiday gift I share with you. My experience of diving into the ocean of my story world not wanting to leave. Dive in with me. Discover what Series World Wonders lie ahead for you.

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

– R|R –

A Time of Fear & LovingAlice’s new novel, filled with Series World Wonders, is A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. You can find all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel was through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

TAGS: Storytelling, Series Novels, Riverton Road Series, Romantic Suspense

Second Chance Love – First Class Storytelling

Storytelling

I adore Second Chance Love. The one that got away, or you let go because you knew they weren’t a good match for you. But that was then and this is now, and the nostalgia filter has performed a reality reconfiguration big time. Through that pink-purple, or whatever color combo suits your starry eyes, memory crush has morphed into whatever your dream combo may be. Mine is George Harrison meets George Carlin and imports Desmond Tutu for the heart chakra. That guy I would diet my literal behind off because of, pay every cent I have on plastic surgery for, and throw in several self-improvement courses too. Why? Because he’d be my Second Chance Love.

Who is your Second Chance Love? Is it a real-life person that actually exists somewhere between the layers of your experience, distantly or maybe not-so-distantly, past? Do you remember the actual name, or would you prefer to provide a new one? Do you remember the details of this heartthrob’s personal backstory, the poignant pathos of a stricken childhood made even more lamentable by painful recollections of puberty? Do you fancy yourself the one and only capable of healing said wounds? Or maybe you simply anticipate running into this individual at a high school reunion, or some such event, and wowing his/her knickers off, perhaps literally, with your scintillating present-day self.

I don’t know your answers to the above queries. What I do know is that you have the makings of a Second Chance Love story. Your reunion or sexy soul salvation or dreamboat heartthrob fantasy has storytelling legs that reach all the way to the ground and then some, because everybody loves a Second Chance Love story. Why? Because everybody has at least one such story of their own. Everybody has googled at least one hot-memory someone from their past, which means everybody is a hot readership opportunity for Second Chance Love storytellers.

In my latest novel,  A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5, Amanda Miller has unfinished business in Riverton, battlefields she didn’t conquer her first time around there. The most dangerous of those battlefields involves Mike Schaeffer, the young love she lost long ago. She wishes she could write an alternate ending to their story. “Look at me,” she’d say. “See the woman I am now. Don’t you wish you had noticed me back then? Sorry. You missed your chance.” Then she’d walk away without a backward glance, but it’s too late for that, too late for anything between Amanda and Mike. Or so she believes, until she sees him again.

I love Second Chance Love situations, not only for their market potential, but for their plot scenario potential too. They allow me to jump straight into the heart of the story without a lot of “meet-cute” at the beginning, when I’m supposed to be hooking the reader and grabbing her attention. I’m not a big fan of the meet-cute. Two attractive people meet in a cut, usually at least somewhat contrived situation and are attracted to each other. Sparks fly. Clever banter abounds. But where is the real story? What plummets the heroine into a dilemma so intense, dramatic and powerful she will have to scramble and struggle to escape. How is the reader hooked? Why is her attention grabbed?

I write romantic suspense so my lovers-to-be can meet over a dead body, which diminishes the cuteness factor considerably. Still, on first encounter, they might tend to circle one another bantering cleverly anyway. Three more of my Riverton Road stories refuse to follow that scenario. In A Wrong Way Home and A Vacancy at the Inn, heroine and hero were past lovers, though very briefly, and in A Year of Summer Shadows they’ve been eyeballing each other for quite some time.

Only A Villain for Vanessa is not a Second Chance Love story. Each of the others saves me a lot of work as a storyteller. The preliminaries are done with before page one. The “I’m so-and-so. Who are you?” part is past. More important, I have backstory to work with and develop. Backstory rife with conflict that gives my present-time front-story huge potential for intensity, drama and power. I’ve given myself a strong story advantage even before my story begins, and I’m in favor of advantages. The challenges of storytelling are enormous. I’ll take any help I can get. Second Chance Love stories are a great source of such help. Storytelling possibilities abound. Get out there and grab yourself some.

Plus, I love Second Chance Love stories because I believe life is all about chances, second or third or fourth or however many chances we need to succeed.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

– R|R –

A Time of Fear & LovingDon’t miss this chance to read Alice’s new Second Chance Love story. A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5 is available HERE. You can find all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving.

“Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.”
“Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.”
“The tension in this novel was through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

Stay on Board or Tumble into a Wallow? #MondayMotivation #MFRW_author #IAN1

Motivation, ,

smooth-sailing-imageReturned to earth after annual orbit through the Thanksgiving galaxy. Food leftovers provisioned out to freezer or jury-rigged concoctions, some less savory than others. Guest leftovers packed up for mailing, especially the grandson’s electric toothbrush. Extra table leaves packed up also until next feast day.

Re-entry into my newest project also after two weeks’ hiatus and several hiatuses before that one. Lots of reading in between with the comparison bunny hard at work reminding me how far short I fall. My last post here was titled “Your Brain on Doubt.” We write what we need to read.

Prominent among those reading experiences, because of its potential to inspire me off my duff, On Writing by Stephen King. His basic advice vis-à-vis doubt and the comparison bunny et.al. Sit down every morning and do the work. Two-K words minimum. He actually advises more K’s but offers this fallback, perhaps because he is a compassionate man. Or not.

If he were truly compassionate he wouldn’t rob me of my most righteous rationale. The gods of the health glitch, each a miserable so-and-so, have rendered me pretty much housebound. When asked how my work is going I simply say that word, “housebound,” or maybe “shut-in” with the hardliners. Nobody questions me again. They’re too busy offering condolences.

In response to which Mr. King tells the story of his own home incarceration. Leg encased in a medieval-style torture device. Confined to a back hallway. Sweating out a heatwave record breaker with only a small oscillating fan, as opposed to legions of the life-sized variety, for relief. Meanwhile, he’d written the very book I held in my hands.

In my own meanwhile, I was back in Chapter Six. Amanda and Willow race across the countryside propelled by fear of a phantom biker who may or may not be on their trail. I’d lost enthusiasm for their story right up to the moment that same morning when I took the King’s advice and forged ahead, hampered by homebound-ness or not.

“Keep on writing whatever may occur.” I’d signed my own book with those words many times but I hadn’t really paid attention. The phrase was a PR ploy. The thing I should say to be admired or maybe even loved a little, especially by beginners who give love so generously. That morning, at long last, I followed my own admonition.

Afterward I felt good, maybe even fabulous. I contacted my editor to ask if Amanda and Willow can expect her to jump on board, as she has so effectively in the past. But the most crucial questions are these. Will I stay on board myself? OR Will I tumble off into a wallow, as I’ve too often done? Only time, and the status of my word count, will tell.

RR

A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Romantic Suspense Book 4 is available from Amazon HERE. A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 is a FREE EBOOK HERE. All of Alice’s books are written while on board rather than wallowing.

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

http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/. 

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/