Fun Friday – Romantic Times Review for Critical Condition

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Today’s post is short and sweet, because I’m working like crazy to finish the first draft of my next Love Inspired Suspense. But…

I wanted to celebrate with you the fun news I heard this week about my October release Critical Condition.

For those who have read the Undercover Cops series so far, this book has Zach (introduced in Deep Cover) as the hero.

The news is…

The Romantic Times Magazine gave Critical Condition 4.5 stars!!!

The 4.5 star rating is described as a fabulous read, a keeper–their second to highest rating.

But what was even more thrilling for me was how the reviewer described it:

“Well-developed characters and fast-paced action will keep readers fully engaged in this wonderful tribute to spouses struggling with a loved one’s illness.” 

The hero lost his wife to cancer eight years ago and now has to work undercover in a hospital to stop a killer. The suspects include several medical professionals involved in experimental and alternative treatments.

The reason I soooo appreciate this reviewer’s description is because I wrote the final draft of this story after losing my dear writing friend to cancer and dedicated the story to her husband who is the kind of hero I imagined Zach being.

Your Turn: Would you like to help me spread the word about this upcoming release?

You could…

Share this post on FB or G+ using the icons below the post. 
If you’ve already read the book (through Hqn), please consider posting a review on Goodreads or your favorite online retailer. (Note: some, like Amazon, don’t allow review posts until the book releases October 2nd) 

or…
Visit the book, or others in the series, at your favorite online retailer and click the “like” button. With Amazon this only works if you’re signed in (ie. have an account). With Barnes and Noble and CBD.com, you can “like” using FB or G+ social media buttons.
Clicking the photos in the sidebar, takes you to the books on CBD.com (Christian Book Distributors)
Thank you so much for visiting my blog today and helping me celebrate. It is my dearest prayer that this book will inspire you to cherish the gifts of each day and open your heart to new possibilities. 
Have a fabulous weekend!

How to Bribe a Writer…

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Offer to critique her manuscript…

Laurie critiquing

while she cuts mat board, stretches canvas with a stapler that could cripple a weight lifter, and cleans a thousand annoying specs of dust off the glass for your art show.

Me slaving

This is how I spent several afternoons and evenings last week helping my critique partner, Laurie Benner, who also happens to be a fabulous artist and photographer, get ready for her first big art show.  
It was a lot of fun learning new skills–thank you Google and dear people who posted videos on how to stretch canvas–while brainstorming a heart-stopping ending to my current work in progress. 
The best part was seeing the fruit of our labor on display (the lines behind are chains for hanging):

Highland Dancers – photos on canvas & fine art paper

Rowing Scenes & Horse Scene in Oil Pastel

Photos on Canvas

Yes, we still had to spend a long time afterward fussing to get all those pieces straight and mount labels! But aren’t they interesting?

When she showed me the set of old locks and keys that I’m working on in the top picture, I immediately started imagining a suspense story they might inspire. And I’ve already got my eye on another one for future cover art!!!

For those who live in Niagara, Laurie’s work along with another artist’s will be on display for the month of September at The Mahtay Cafe in downtown St. Catharines.

Your Turn: What do you like to do to express your creativity?

Happy Labor Day!!

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Happy Labor/Labour Day to my American and Canadian readers, and…

Happy Australian Flag Day to my Aussie readers…

Hope you’re enjoying the holiday.

I guess the Brits had their last summer bank holiday last week.

Your Turn: Ever wonder why it’s called Labor Day when it’s a day OFF work? Any other countries have holidays today?

Fun Friday – The Art of Ironing

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Aside from by stepsister in England–love you, Bec–does anyone iron anymore?

I mean I love to have ironed clothes. What I find infernally frustrating is spending so much time ironing a shirt and then having it still end up looking like I didn’t!

Is there an ironing secret I’m missing?

My aforementioned stepsister assured me that starch was the answer, but it’s just not doing the trick for me.

Okay, the tin is a little rusty on the bottom because it’s the same tin I bought for Bec’s visit from across the pond two and a half years ago. Has it really been that long?

Clearly, I haven’t given the starch suggestion a fair shake …thanks to seersucker and those other wrinkly-style clothes. ~grin~

But seriously, there’s got to be some secret I’m missing.

And I’m desperate, because now that I have one of these new-fangled condensing dryers instead of the traditional air type, my hubby’s T-shirts are more wrinkled than ever.

Ooh, there’s got to be a conflict in this for my heroine somewhere! Gotta go write!!

Your Turn: Any tips on ironing to share? What’s your biggest housekeeping pet peeve?

A Day in the Life of a Writer

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

First let’s start with an ideal day.

5:30 am  Rise and rush to the keyboard brimming with ideas and write 1000 words before breakfast

7:30 am  Take the dog for a walk and celebrate the beautiful day

8 ish Eat breakfast, spend time in The Word

8:45 am Check emails with lightning speed and post a wildly happy post to Facebook because I’ve practically already met my writing target for the day (if I’m not writing two books at the same time and horribly behind schedule)

9:00 am Reread what I wrote before breakfast and not think it’s horrible

9:30 am Write, write, write…words flying from my fingertips onto the screen. Okay, I did start by saying this was an ideal writing day… the kind I haven’t had since before I learned how a publishable novel is “supposed” to be crafted. Before I learned all those “rules” of how to write a good story. Before I had an email inbox the size of Mount Everest.

Enough said. Let’s move on to a typical day.

6:30 am Wake up a little bleary-eyed because I foolishly stayed up reading until midnight or 1 am, but after going to the bathroom decide that since I’m awake I might as well stay up. If I’m smart and self-disciplined, I don’t check emails, but turn on a software screen called Omni which features a blank screen except for a few barren trees along the bottom and soft music in the background.

Then I write my next scene, or if I haven’t figured out what happens in my next scene, I write about what needs to happen. On wonderful days, I can write about 750 words before the rest of the household begins to stir.

Things fall apart from there!

Most days the dog does get her walk. Emails usually take much longer to read and respond to. Then of course, if my characters aren’t cooperating and the words just aren’t flowing as they should…

You know what, there is no such thing as a typical day. I write at all hours. My most creative and productive times are usually later in the evening.

I tend to devote afternoons to editing or responding to the art department’s questions or reader’s questions or interviewer questions or the myriad of marketing-related tasks that go along with being published.

And most days I love it all.

Some days I wonder why I torture myself. Okay, during the first draft stage, I tend to have a lot of those days. LOL

But the days when words fly from my fingerprints and tidbits that I threw into the story on a whim suddenly and serendipitously tie together, are pure bliss.

Your Turn: What makes routine day special for you?

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How to Make Characters Mind without Losing Yours

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Last week, I noticed a book in my daughter’s diaper bag titled “How to Make your Children Mind without Losing Yours.” Oh, I remember that book well from the days that very same daughter challenged every request we made.

Now… my characters are acting up!

They simply won’t do anything I ask.

They have minds of their own, utterly oblivious to the fact that I created them!!

And I thought making children mind was a challenge!

But seeing that book in my daughter’s diaper bag reminded me of the key lesson that I never forgot from reading it. That was to let your children experience the consequences of their choices.

“So, dear character,” I said, “if that’s really the road you want to go down, guess what? You can live with the consequences.”

And they will be bad. Very bad. ~hee, hee, hee~

Yes, as oftentimes happens with children, characters need to learn their lessons the hard way. The harder the better for the reader. Wouldn’t you say?

So I threw out my neat little story outline, and put my characters on the therapist’s couch and had a serious heart-to-heart with each and everyone of them. Wow, was I surprised.

In some cases, the emotional baggage that I thought was driving their inner conflict wasn’t it at all! I had one character who wasn’t even who I thought he was!!

Needless to say, the weekend turned out to be quite an adventure as I caught up on all the writing I hadn’t been able to do while I’d been steadfastly trying to fit my characters into the mold I’d hatched them from. Now I understand why writers who write by the seat-of-their-pants enjoy it so much.

Every day is an adventure as you wait to see what happens next.

Of course… I have an eerie feeling that I’ll start losing my mind again during the editing phase, but why worry about tomorrow when today has enough trouble of its own?

Your Turn: What lessons have you learned from having to face the consequences of your actions? Or what lessons have your children learned that way?

P.S. Did you catch the book title on the book my grand daughter is reading in the photo? And Then I Had Kids

P.S.S. For any writers in the group, click the link for more detailed posts featuring writing tips and articles on the craft of writing

Fun Friday – Visiting Port Dalhousie, St. Catharines

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Last Friday, I took my granddaughter for her first carousel ride.

The carousel is at Lakeside Park, which happens to be the “Miller’s Bay” park I had in my mind’s eye while writing Deep Cover and Shades of Truth.

Of course, the landscape is quickly changing as a highrise is going in on the main street.

But the antique carousel, carved in 1905 and brought to St. Catharines in 1921 is still going and continues to attract young and old alike.

At a nickel a ride, it’s the best deal in town!

Lakeside Park is located on the shores of Lake Ontario near the mouth of the Welland Canal. The area is home to the annual Henley Regatta and is becoming a popular spot for kite surfing.

If you look closely at the horizon, a third of the way across from the left, you can see the skyline of Toronto across the lake.

Your Turn: What do you enjoy doing on a day off?

Turning Weaknesses into Strengths

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Do you tend to focus on your weaknesses or your strengths?

Have you ever considered that your greatest weakness might be your greatest strength?

Think for a moment about a weakness you consider yourself to have. What might be a corresponding strength?

Here’s what I mean… weaknesses and strengths are part of the same continuum. How they manifest in your life has a lot to do with your perspective.

The wrong outlook propels you toward disaster.

A positive perspective equips you to succeed.

So when my daughter, at five and six years of age, put up a stink every time I asked her to do something, I could have called her uncooperative or stubborn or any other number of not-so-positive attributes. Instead, I admired her ability to negotiate and her courage to express her opinion. More than once, through gritted teeth, I told her that she’d make a good lawyer one day.

For my own sanity, probably more than for her mental health, I was looking for the positives.

Can you relate?

If you’re a “creative” type, you may have been criticized by your parents and teachers as being a dreamer or lazy.

Yet, that ability to shut out the world around you and let your imagination run wild is an essential quality for a writer.

Or perhaps you’re criticized for being too obstinate as the heroine in my current wip is. But what is obstinancy?

It’s firmly adhering to one’s purpose or opinion. Not yielding. Not giving up.

Are you seeing the strengths in that definition?

I am. My heroine is determined and persistent and she won’t give up, and because of it, she’ll ultimately win the day, but along the way, her unyielding nature is bound to stir up trouble.

We tend to respond to fiction when it resonates with us. When we recognize ourselves in the characters or in their experiences or in their dreams or in their circumstances.

If, unlike the villains I talked about on Monday, the hero rises above a tragic experience, if she triumphs over impossible odds, we are filled with hope that we could triumph, too.

Your Turn: What’s a weakness you feel that you have and the corresponding strength? If you can’t think of what the corresponding strength would be, we’ll help!!

Praying you see yourself in a new positive light today!

Image courtesy of Andy Newson / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thinking about Bad Guys

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Since I write romantic suspense, I spend a lot of time thinking about bad guys.

 Not the mustache-twirling, two-dimensional villains of the Dudley Dooright era, but the kind of villains the hero and reader will scarcely suspect. The kind of villain whose actions can be utterly justified in his own mind. A there-but-by-the-grace-of-God-goeth-I kind of villain.

Isn’t that scarier?

Well, okay, a psychopath who will attack a room full of movie-goers with no apparent remorse is scarier, but I don’t write thrillers so stay with me here.

Isn’t it a little disturbing, upon the revelation of the true villain at the end of a mystery, to realize that you scarcely suspected him or her?

Or worse that you empathized with him! 

A well-characterized villain, in my opinion, can totally justify his actions in his own mind. 

We don’t blame the mother who, upon finding her child under attack, brutally attacks the attacker. Right? It’s when she plots ways to make him pay, after the fact, that she begins to turn the corner.

Your Turn: What kind of scenario might spur you to do something unimaginable?

Images courtesy of Victor Habbick and photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Fun Friday – Inviting my Muse to Come out and Play

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

I’m often asked how I come up with ideas for my stories, so today I’m giving you a glimpse into the process with the book I’m currently working on…

…a book that is giving me no end of trouble as the voice in my head keeps asking…

Do you really want him to be the villain?

Now I’ve heard of authors who write a book not knowing who the villain will turn out to be so that the process of writing is as fun and surprising for them as it will be for the reader.

Being VERY left-brained (that is to say I like to plot everything out ahead of time and figure out how it will work before I start writing), I have never contemplated such a thing.

At least… not until last week.

And I’ve got to admit that letting my right brain (or muse as many refer to that fountain of ideas in your head) have it’s whimsical way is a lot of fun.

Every morning for the past week, I’ve come to my writing with new energy, wondering what interesting twists I’ll discover today that I’d never imagined when I wrote up that story summary to sell my story to my editor. 

The key to making the writing process an adventure, I’ve discovered, is asking good questions. Then letting the answers generate more questions and answers and see where they lead.

I do this by clustering (also called mind-mapping).

Here’s one I did last week when that voice in my head kept hounding me about changing my villain. Not sure if you’ll actually be able to read my handwriting, but even if you can, I’m not worried about giving away the story, because honestly… I haven’t decided who the villain will ultimately be.

Gasp! I know. Heretical!

As you can see this is a messy process. Ideas come a mile a minute. 
In this exercise, I was exploring the possibility of making a different character the villain–a character that hadn’t even been on my radar as a suspect when I outlined the story, but I soon became suspicious of as I got to know him better. 
The exercise is an incredibly energizing creativity boost as it encourages me to think outside of the box.  I’ve started to spend a few minutes doing a clustering exercise each time I finish a scene. My central question: What happens next? 
I explore the possibilities from various characters’ points of view then ask why does that matter? Why would the reader care? It helps me to eradicate the mundane and discover the extraordinary, and best of all, to surprise myself. 
Hopefully, if I’m surprising myself, my reader will be surprised, too! 
Even if you’re not a writer, give clustering a try. It’s a great problem solving exercise whether you’re trying to come up with a new fundraising idea for your daughter’s school, or a creative way to rearrange your living room. 
Your Turn: What are some problem-solving strategies you like to use?

From top to bottom, people images courtesy of David Castillo Dominici (X2), imagerymajestic and photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net