A very special contest…

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
–Will Rogers

I will not forget you. I have carved you on the palm of my hand.

Isaiah 49:15

 

Three years ago this month I lost my beloved girl, pictured here. I’d like to tell you everything that was so special about her, but that would fill, as they say, a book. Let’s just say that some angels have fur, not wings. She was a rescue, which supposedly means we rescued her. It didn’t take long for me to realize we had that backwards. She was my husband’s baby, and then my most solid support through very dark days. If not for that dog, I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am. I might not even be.

 

You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us.

–Robert Louis Stevenson

While to me, she was the best dog in the world–and I mean that literally, except for a couple of times when she first came to us and was unsure, that dog Never Did Anything Wrong–I know every dog is special in their own way. And judging from the response to my series of books featuring that furry rascal Cutter, people everywhere love being owned by those furry critters who have the gift of utter forgiveness and give the gift of unconditional love.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

–Mark Twain

Nothing can fill the hole left by the loss of a beloved dog. And their lives are far, far too short, leaving our lives without them far, far too empty. No one knows that better than I. The only thing we can do is to never forget them, or the joy and love they brought us. With that in mind, it occurred to me that there might be a way for me to help. Which is why I decided to dedicate all of the Cutter books, however many there may be (and no, I have no idea yet) to those dogs who are missed so much.

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.

–Roger Caras

This month, (until January 31) you can enter to win the chance to memorialize your most beloved canine. Enter through the contest tab at my website: http://justinedavis.com/contest.html You’ll have to be patient, publishing is not a fast business and you’ll have to wait a while to see your tribute. And don’t worry if you’re not a writer, I’ll work with you personally via email to get it just right, because I understand.

Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog.

~On the grave of the Newfoundland of George Gordon, Lord Byron

Why am I doing this? Yes, in memory of my sweet girl. But also to move a step closer to that old saying, that the best goal you can have in life is to be the person your dog already thinks you are.

Meet the Character: Brett Dunbar

My first ever game of blog tag! I’m “it” courtesy of my friend and great author Eve Gaddy. (her book Cry Love is incredible!) This one is a meet the character game, to introduce a character in a current or upcoming book. So, here we go…oh, wait, first, a visual.

Yeah, I thought that might get your attention!!

Okay, now that you have a picture in your head, read on. Or feel free to drool a bit more, your choice.

MEET THE CHARACTER

Answer these questions about your main character from a finished work or work in progress:

1.) What is the name of your character?

Sheriff’s Detective Brett Dunbar. This will be a familiar name to readers following the Cutter’s Code series. In this adventure, Cutter has decided that, contrary to his human’s plans Brett, who needs a little Cutter-style intervention, will be the one dog-sitting him while they are on their honeymoon.

2.) Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

To me he’s real! But I suppose I must admit he’s fictional. Sadly, because he looks like Jim Caviezel.  (See above. Drool. Repeat.)

3.) When and where is the story set?

When is what the fiction world calls “the ever present now.” Meaning present day, whenever that might be in your world. Where is my beloved Pacific Northwest, and one of our famous ferry boats even made the cover of the book!

4.) What should we know about him/her?

Brett is an ex-LAPD cop who has relocated to a smaller, much more rural location in the woods of western Washington state. He left to escape that harsh world and painful memories, and was quite happy living a quiet life alone. And then he ran into the people of the Foxworth Foundation, and their uncanny canine partner, Cutter, and his life was changed forever.

5.) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

When what starts out as a simple favor mushrooms into a dangerous mystery of huge proportions, Brett finds himself getting drawn ever more deeply into the world of Sloan Burke, a woman he finds both attractive—a shock to him, since he’d sworn off—and unavailable, since he believes she is still in love with her heroic and honorable late husband. That she is just as heroic and honorable herself makes it all even harder for him.

6.) What is the personal goal of the character?

His original goal is to help Sloan solve her simple problem and then extricate himself. But both the problem and his feelings soon become much more than that.

7.) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

The title is OPERATION POWER PLAY, and it’s available for pre-order now, at the links below.

Amazon: http://bit.ly/11ix37G

B&N: http://bit.ly/1zkqE7b

iBooks: http://bit.ly/1xycq34

8.) When can we expect the book to be published or when was it published?

It is scheduled for February 3, 2015. (February 1 for Kindle)

Here’s the cover, do you think they got close? (and no, that’s not really what Cutter looks like, but they tried!)

Redemption: Even in fiction it’s tough

Webster makes it sound so easy….

Redeemable. That’s a big word in fiction writing. When you create a character, sometimes you don’t want them redeemable. You want a villain so evil people stand up and cheer at their fate, a la Dolores Umbridge. (Sorry, I wanted that woman to die more than I wanted Voldemort dead!) Sometimes you want people to understand why they are the way they are, to perhaps feel a twinge of understanding. Sometimes you want the character to be puzzling, so readers can’t quite decide if they’re completely evil or not.

All of this, of course, presupposes you have A Plan.

See how nicely it all comes together when you have a plan?

But life–and writing–being what they are, sometimes things just happen. Like an editor buying what you assumed would be a standalone book, and then, when it’s too late to change anything, asking for a spinoff. And realizing that only one secondary character truly stood out enough to be the main character in said spinoff. And that character just happens to be…well, darn near irredeemable. As in one of Those. Yes, she’s a b*tch.

Dogs are for the most part nicer than people anyway, right?

And I don’t mean this kind, loving, loveable, and generally sweet. No, this female, unlike the one above, hasn’t got a nurturing bone in her body. But at the time I’m young, still a newbie, and foolish. I think I can do anything. I mean, how hard can it be to turn somebody around, right? I’m the writer, in that world I created I’m God, I invented her, didn’t I? Besides, the heroine of the first book, who was absolutely heroine material, had been friends with her once. So there had to be something good about her, didn’t there? I only had to find it. So, I set myself to the task. And how did it go? Kind of like this:

 

Whose idea WAS this, anyway???

It wasn’t long before I was pacing the floor, yelling at myself for being an idiot. Why on earth–or any of the worlds I was writing about–had I ever thought I could save this woman? What had possessed me to choose her as a heroine? How on earth was I going to make this woman in the least heroic, let alone loveable?

I finally realized there was only one way to do this. I had to go back to the bones. I had to tear this woman down and try to rebuild her into something heroic. And I had to do it so thoroughly that readers would believe that it was possible for this woman to achieve that redemption. Had I realized what I was letting myself in for, I probably would have rethought it. But as I said, I was young and foolish and probably a bit cocky thanks to landing on the fast track my first published year and having sold a ridiculous number of books quickly. Ha. That’ll learn me, as my uncle used to say.

So I began. And for a long time my life felt like this:

Wait, where does that stick go again?

And nearly 600 manuscript pages later, it was done. Whether I succeeded is not really up to me. Whatever I think, it is the reader who ultimately decides. Although I will happily accept the assessment of reviewer extraordinaire I mentioned in the last post, Melinda Helfer, who gave SKYPIRATE that rarest of accolades, one that has since been retired–an actual 5-star review in RT Magazine. The book also won a Reviewer’s Choice award, a Reader’s Voice award, and along with its predecessor, LORD OF THE STORM, was on the RT top 200 of all time list. So I guess maybe I did succeed. But I swear I will never try that again. Next b*tch I write stays one.

Heroes, on the other hand…..

 

LORD OF THE STORM and SKYPIRATE, re-released and available now in both e-book and print! Links on the book page, here: http://justinedavis.com/booklist.html

 

 

 

Frustration: Tanya Little https://www.flickr.com/people/50965643@N06 via Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

 

The true story behind an award winner

The holy grail, back in the day…..

Last post I told the story of revisiting a world I created two decades ago, to write a new, long-awaited story set in that same world. Now I’d like to tell you about how it all began. You see, there I was, a newbie writer (yes, I had several books already sold and a couple published, but I still felt like a newbie. Heck, to this day I feel like a newbie!) with a signed contract in hand, deadlines, obligations, and the promise of payment to in turn pay for things like food and shelter. I was working a full-time job that often morphed into more than full time–you don’t walk out in the middle of a hostage situation with shots fired–so my time was very tight. And yet….

An idea struck. Actually, more like an entire story, full-grown and feathered. (I blame the release of Star Wars at a very impressionable stage of my life) Scenes fully formed, characters I knew inside out, strange places, odd words that were unfamiliar yet clear (no glossary required, something that will turn me off many books), it was all battering at me. This had never happened to me before. I promised it I would get to it, as soon as I could. I placated it, begged it to leave me alone until I finished this contract. It would not. This story was nothing my current publisher would or could publish. It was pure self-indulgence, I told myself. It would be a book without a market. But it haunted me, day and night, until finally, when I had a vacation coming from the day job (which was really the night job, but that’s another story) I decided to use it to get this thing off my back. I warned my husband, closed the office door, and began.

It started like this:

Wow, this is hot! In more ways than one….

But before long it was going like this, like taking dictation, and my fingers could barely keep up with my brain:

Where is this coming from???

It turned into a frenzied white-heat of writing, a string of twenty hour days that lasted…..three weeks. Yep, three weeks. And that is something I waited a very long time to publicly admit. As award-winning author Cindy Dees recently observed on Facebook, “Decades ago, authors were thought to be hacks if they turned out more than one novel a year. That was also before the advent of computers and the Internet which greatly streamlined the writing process.” But I’ve found a lot of that mindset lingers even after the ability to quickly create, edit, and communicate. And so I was hesitant to admit how quickly this book came.

What did it take to convince me it was safe? This:

Okay, maybe it is safe to admit.

And that’s not even all of the honors LORD OF THE STORM accumulated. I don’t live and die for awards, but I won’t deny the satisfaction and gratification of receiving them. It is a tremendous honor, whether they come from fellow writers or readers, although I tend to think continuing to buy and talk about my books is the best award any reader can give me. And in this case, after the book received all these accolades and awards, I finally felt brave enough to admit how quickly it had been written, and that it was published virtually unchanged from my final manuscript. I probably wouldn’t worry about it that much today. Having sixty-plus books/novellas under your belt gives you a bit of confidence, I guess. But at the time, it was a Big Deal.

And I can’t talk about LORD OF THE STORM without acknowledging the godmother of the book, the late, much-missed Melinda Helfer, RT Magazine reviewer extraordinaire. Melinda read this book in manuscript form, and insisted it would be huge. It was Melinda who hooked me up with Hilary Ross, an editor from NAL/Penguin who happened to be looking for just such a story as this. The rest, as they say….

And so that is the story behind the book that will be re-issued this June by Bell Bridge Books, in both print (and they do gorgeous print books!) and e-book. But the tale doesn’t end there. (I’m a writer, of course it doesn’t…) Stay tuned for the next chapter, about the second book I never planned on, and how many times I kicked myself for even thinking a certain character was redeemable enough to be a heroine.

Twenty years in the making

Wow, when did THAT happen??

So, I admit, I’ve neglected things here of late. And yes, my house does kind of look like that picture at the moment. But you know something? I don’t care. I don’t care, because I have now finished the main draft on a book I’ve been waiting nearly twenty years to write.

I had my doubts about whether I could get my mind from its current place back to the entirely fictional world I had created all those years ago. It had been such a unique experience, (more about that in later posts) one that I sometimes called channeling, because it was the only way I could explain how that first book came to me. Would that they were all so clear and sharp and quick!

In this case, I wasn’t just starting with a blank, earthbound landscape like this:

Hmm, that’s quite a moon there. Picture fits better than I thought!

No, I had to get my head not just back in the clouds, but back into space. Into the proverbial galaxy far, far away. And frankly, it had been so long I didn’t know if I could do it. At least, not with the completeness this particular book would demand. Because this was one of two books that readers have been asking me for for all of those two decades. And I take that very seriously. That people would remember so clearly, for so long, and bother to write me and ask, even beg me to revisit this place, was so incredibly moving and inspiring. But the stars (pardon the phrase) seemed to conspire against it. Until now.

So I re-read the original two books that led to this. I loved them as much as I always had. This was a good sign. And it got me here, about halfway there:

I can see it, I just have to get there!

But I needed to be out there, no longer earthbound. And the only way to do that was to jump in. And find out once and for all if this was going to work. So…I took the leap. And to my thankful surprise, the story took off like a runaway one of these:

Whoa, this thing is going FAST!

It was going so fast, I couldn’t help thinking that trains that go too fast often end up like this:

Ooops.

But I was having too much fun to worry about it, and before long, I was so completely in this Other Place that it was hard to come back to reality. Old and new (and boy was one of those a pleasant surprise!) friends, old and new enemies, I lived in their world(s) and loved it for 125,000 words.

It’s as much fun as ever!

It’s nice to know I still have a “big book” or two left in me. That part of my career got derailed (again, pardon the phrase) a while back, but it’s back on the tracks (oh, dear, there I go again) now. And thanks to a great new publisher (Bell Bridge Books, more about them later, too) this story people have asked for for all these years will finally be done.

And leading up to that day, Bell Bridge will be releasing in both print and as ebooks the two books that led me to this one, LORD OF THE STORM and THE SKYPIRATE, beginning this June.

I hope you’ll join me on this adventure!

****************************

 photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/brenda-starr/5408959378/”>~Brenda-Starr~</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>cc</a&gt;

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/chiaralily/4780134550/”>chiaralily</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>cc</a&gt;

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/mendhak/4588756128/”>mendhak</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>cc</a&gt;

The End of My Lazy Summer

• Note: There’s news coming! For the wonderful readers who have regularly, over the years since certain books came out, written me about them, I’ll have an announcement soon! But now, I have to turn in my “summer excuse.”

So as my last post–over a month ago–indicated, we had a rare summer for the Pacific Northwest. Lots of warm and sunny. Sometimes a bit too much warm for me. All I can say is heat pumps are the best invention ever. Well, after air conditioning in general, I suppose. Anyway, I never played hooky from school (what can I say, I was an angel–a terrified angel, but that’s another story) but I did from the blog. But it was 48 degrees this morning, the flag is whipping in 30mph winds, and I have steady rain. Yep, fall’s definitely here.

Spring is long over, according to my apple tree, which used to look like this:

And this little guy is bigger now…

…although mom is still close by, if a bit itchy.

And now summer is gone as well, along with some of the odder cloud formations, blue skies giving way to perpetual gray.

The big question every year around here (well, at my house anyway) is will we be looking at this sometime soon?

Most winters, when we get snow, it’s the perfect amount for me. Enough to say “Oh, snow, I can’t get up my driveway, guess I’ll build up the fire, fix a chai latte, curl up and read a book.” Or “Oh, gee, I guess I’d better finish knitting that sweater, I’m going to need it!” I love those days. But then, I’ve never lived anywhere that regularly gets snow several feet deep, which I’m sure colors my perception. They say it’s a “neutral” year so far, meaning no “El Nino” or “La Nina.” (apologies to the non-weather geeks/non-Pacific Ocean folks–they are Pacific Ocean conditions that greatly affect weather) Which would normally mean probably not this kind of snow. But then again, we had almost no snow last winter, and we very rarely have two back-to-back no or low snow years.

In other words, no clue. Yet, anyway. But my playing hooky is over, the blog is back, that news will be forthcoming, and lots of other things!

 

 

 

 

 

The Light of Day

My friend and social media connector extraordinaire, Piper Bayard, held a cover reveal of her first book on her blog a couple of days ago. (http://piperbayard.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/the-nine-year-baby-firelands-cover-reveal/) If you’ll notice, the title of her post is “The Nine Year Baby.” Funny, catchy, and painfully true. This is Piper’s first book, and I’m sure it won’t be her last. Just reading her blog is enough to tell you that. But besides my delight for her, her post got me to thinking.

I’ve written a lot of books. From this one, back in 1991:

on through a couple of favorites like this duo, that still bring in mail after more than fifteen years (and more news about them upcoming soon!):

to this one, coming up in July (yes, I slipped my own little cover reveal into this one!):

But it’s not these published or soon to be published works that I got to thinking about. It’s the unpublished ones. Books that have never, and may never, as the title of this post says, see the light of day. I’m sure all writers have them. Ideas that seemed good at the time, but in the end didn’t have enough muscle to carry an entire book. The things you put away, and frequently dig out again when you realize that partial idea is the perfect partner for this other partial idea you just came up with.

Or that book of the heart, that one that calls to you so strongly you can’t stop working on it, even though it’s other stories that will be paying the bills. I have one of those I’ve been working on even longer than Piper’s nine-year baby. I’m so in love with the hero of this book I’m not sure I can bear to send him out into the world. He may never see the light of day, although a few lines made it onto Facebook in that “seven lines” meme that was going around a while back.

I have a few  several  okay, I’ll face it, a ton of bits and pieces squirreled away in a folder titled “Beginnings.” Because that’s what they are. Beginnings. Some are mere paragraphs, a scene, a setup, a fragment where I have no idea where it came from or where it’s going. Others are maybe two or three pages. Some are longer, and a couple are twenty-plus pages that came out in the white heat of “I have to write this NOW.”

I’ve often wondered what other writers do with this stuff. Is it deleted? Filed away never to be looked at again? Personally, I have a hard time deleting anything that I was moved enough to write in the first place. Not because I think my every word is golden–I wish!–but because I can’t shake the feeling that some day, somewhere down the line, that little bit of writing might save my sorry backside when I’m mired deep in deadline hell. So my process has become I save it and walk away. And my criteria after that is if I remember it after it’s in that beginnings folder, if after a while it’s still in my head, then it has a potential worth looking at. Maybe.

Is anybody else curious about things like this, would you love to peek at these bits and pieces, or is it just a writer’s weirdness that makes me wonder?

Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone

COLTON DESTINY, Book 1 of The Coltons of Eden Falls mini-series

This post you’re reading was written quite some time ago. I was in the middle of writing the book that was released this month, so I saved it until now. But this isn’t really about the book so much as how I came to be writing it.

If you’re one of my readers, then you’re likely familiar with continuity series, although you may not know them by that name. These are editor/publisher-generated, a string of books by different authors with a commonality that ties them all together. Often the connection is family, in this case, the Coltons, who have become a wildly popular fictional family. I’ve done a few of these before, even another Colton saga. It’s always a challenge to take characters and a story line created by someone else, and make them enough your own to invest the passion and caring in them that makes the romance genre work. On the other hand, it’s not that far removed from how I started writing as a child.

Say what?

Yes, a child. My sister likes to say she’s responsible for the start of my writing career. She didn’t buy me a fancy pen, or a computer, or anything like that. What she did was sit down and turn on an old Disney movie on TV. One of those heart-wrenching, tear-jerking things. Which inspired my elementary-school self to grab my favorite pencil (and who but a future writer would even have a favorite pencil at that age?)and some of that kid’s paper with the wood chunks floating around in it, and rewrite the entire ending. In my version, of course, every character I liked lived, and every one I didn’t went away. Kind of like I’d like to arrange my life today, if only I could. But I digress. At that age I had no concept of creating my own characters, and simply wanted the stories for characters I loved, created by others, to go my way. An early form of fan fiction, I suppose.

Fast forward to today, where I’m knee-deep in a world I didn’t make up, with characters who, like those characters long ago, didn’t spring from my own imagination. It would seem difficult, and sometimes it is, but in its way, it’s much like returning to that old childhood world where I cut my writing teeth. Not that I didn’t have doubts. I had strong ones. The world these stories are set in, the Amish community, is very foreign to my experience. But I was intrigued by the idea of setting a romantic suspense story in that community. I mean, Witness worked for me in a big way. And then I have this little writer personality quirk. If you want me to darn near kill myself trying to do something just tell me I can’t. Or even get me thinking I can’t. It’s like waving a red flag. I’m cautious in most other areas of life, but in my writing I hold the firm belief that if I motivate it properly, and if I build the fictional world with enough care, I can make anything work.

It’s up to the reader to decide if I’ve succeeded. I may not always, but I always begin with the conviction that it CAN be done.