Saturday, April 29, 2006

SPOTLIGHT ON: "Romantically Challenged" Author, Beth Orsoff!



Title of your new book: ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED



Pitch your book in 50 words or less: Think your love life is rotten? Meet Julie Burns, an L.A. entertaiment lawyer who, after being dumped and disgraced by her boyfriend, is now re-entering dating hell. All because she wants to find that one elusive commodity: a decent guy . . . who steals her heart, of course.



What was one of the best things about writing this book?

I finally got to do something with all those bad date stories!



Tell us about your journey to publication.

I wrote the first five drafts of ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED over the course of a year and then started looking for an agent. After about 50 rejection letters, some of which were very nice and showed that the agent had actually read the book, I felt like I was about 90% of the way there, but I just didn't know how to fix it. (The advice in the agents' responses was always contradictory.) I decided to submit my book for a manuscript consultation at UCLA Extension where the school pairs you with an instructor who acts as your editor. What I received back was 8 single-spaced typed pages of notes. After a weekend of feeling sorry for myself, I got to work and spent four to five months re-writing the book. When I submitted the manuscript the second time, I received a half-page e-mail in response basically telling me I was done. I still let the book sit on my desk for another year while I planned a wedding and otherwise procrastinated, but once I finally started submitting it again, it all happened pretty quickly. I found an agent in a couple of months, and she sold the book to NAL a few months after that. A year and a half later, there's a book on the shelf with my name on it, and I'm still amazed.



As a published author, what three pieces of advice would you offer to aspiring-to-be-published authors?

First, keep writing. You really do get better the more you do it.

Second, be persistent. Rejection letters suck, and I still take them personally, but you have to keep sending your work out if you want to be published.

Third, make sure the first ten pages of your manuscript are the best they can possibly be. I was shocked when my editor at NAL told me that if a manuscript doesn't grab her in the first ten pages she doesn't bother reading the rest. It won't matter that your book gets really good at page 50 because the editor won't read that far.



How do you spend your time when you're not writing?

Between working (I still have a day job) and writing, I don't have a lot of free time these days. But I do like to spend time with my husband, watch a few favorite shows on TV, and see plenty of movies. I also read a lot of books on the treadmill at the gym--I do like to multi-task :)



What three things make you feel the most feminine?

Push-up bras, pedicures, and sleeping in the nude.



Word Association. What comes to mind when you read the following words:

LOVE: Husband

DATING: Ugh!

ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED: Poor Julie Burns

WRITING: When it's going well, it's the highest high.



What are you currently working on?

I just started writing my third book, which is a chick lit/mystery cross-over, and I'm spending a lot of time thinking about my fourth book, which I can't quite figure out what it is.



Dream-on: You've been greenlighted to do any creative project you want. What project would that be?

Writing either my third or fourth book full-time.


Learn more about Beth and her writing at her WEBSITE!

Thursday, April 20, 2006

short: death by woman: a nicotine-induced ramble

Just so you know, I don't smoke, LOL; there is a reason behind the "nicotine-induced."

This is a short piece I wrote about a week or so ago. I posted on my MySpace blog, and I wanted to share it with you guys, too. If you check it out, leave a comment and let me know what you think!



she was like a cigarette after a good meal: orgasmic and satisfying, but you knew in thirty years, as you lay riddled with cancer, you'd regret the first taste of her on your lips.

you try to remember where you were in the story called your life before she entered in a smoky haze. you can't because in reality, your life was but a blank page waiting for her to come and write the first line. and she did. she did write that first, gripping line that propelled you into a whirlwind story full of cliffhanging chapters, tears, heartbreak, devastation, and small, slight glimpses of what could only be described as pure joy.

you take tentative steps behind her as you let her narrate the story of how you two came to be. with broad, sweeping strokes, she writes a tale of a friendship, and of a forbidden love that grew between two unlike souls. you breathed her and your story in, deep into your lungs, feeling the tar harden them and shorten your breath. despite the tightening of your chest, you can't stop reading about your life. you can't stop reading what will happen next in your adventure-horror-action-fantasy-mystery-love story. will it be the husband? perhaps the kid? or maybe the meddling mother that graces the story as a new character, looking to be villain or do-gooder in the ongoing saga. in any good story on the travails of love, one must ask:

will there be obstacles? surely, there are obstacles. marriage, kids way past time in carriage, denial, morals, family, friends, and when one minor obstacle arises, all the others pile up again.

will there be fights? surely, there are fights. loud fights. almost fist-flinging fights of i love you but i can't do this, of lets just be friends, of it's against my morals, of this is driving me crazy, of why can't we just run away and be together.

will there be make-ups? surely, there are make ups. at midnight, under a bridge in a car. in a hotel room with a ceiling full of stars. on new mattress on floor of newly moved in home. during 'too old to be having them' sleepovers that feel like there's no other place to belong.

for years, you step through the world, following your storyteller by the thin, curly float of smoke that seeps from her cigarette, and you hope, after the pages that have been written, after the too many to count times you looked at your wrist and thought 'it'll take just one slit,' and after the strife, fights, and kiss and make-ups, that finally she'll write THE END on a page and consider you two the most ill-fated, star-crossed lovers or the epitome of a strong, lasting relationship.

but alas, after a tome bigger than any work that guarantees to tell everything you ever wanted to know about life, she still writes, and you still read, letting her words embed themselves into your memory, letting her light flame your insides until nothing's left by pulp and ash.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Spring Break and Movies

SPRING BREAK IS HERE! I can't tell you how happy I am to finally be away from the uni and the students. It's WONDERFUL. Today was DAY ONE, and I really did NOTHING, just worked on SisterDivas Magazine and consider a new writing project. I have a few things to do over break, such as finish up material for the English 102 book I'm helping to write. I do plan to hit up the bookstore and get some chocolate caramel latte and do some writing.

Speaking of writing :: Currently queries are out to various editors on my latest book, TO CATCH A CHEAT. My agent and I are hopeful that something positive will come from this. She's very aggressive and really sees this..and other projects being marketable. We'll see.

She has made the suggestion that while we're pushing TCAC out for consideration rounds that I focus on another project. This time, however, instead of a novel, she would like me to work on a screenplay. I sent her brief descriptions of each of my current ideas and bodies of work, and after a meeting, she selected the top three she thought would make a great script. I've selected one, and now my job is to work on a treatment for it and then jump into the script.

I feel like I'm coming full circle. In my early teens, as I began writing, I was all about movies. I wrote a lot of scripts, mainly romantic comedies with a baseball element (adore baseball!). At some stage, I moved from scripts to novels and short stories. Now, I'll blend the forms and do them all, *smirk*

Luckily, I wrote a nice description of the movie idea previously, so I just need to reread through that, do some planning and get to working on the treatment.

You will definitely learn more about this process as I begin!

TTFN

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

A MUST-BUY Novel: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Last semester, it was suggested that I pick up the book THE SHADOW OF THE WIND by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I was told it was a wondrous story, a beautiful story. I picked it up, but with teaching and life and hurricane, the book was put on a shelf, awaiting its chance to be read.

Well, about a month ago, I decided to take back a few hours a day of my life and start reading again; thus, I began my reading odyssey with Zafon's novel. After reading just the first few pages, I deemed this book "absolutely delicious."

I began reading it during classes, during my office hours, during my down time at home. The more I read, the more I hungered to finish the novel...though it pained me tonight to finally close the book.

For those who are true lovers of the art of reading and the art of storytelling, you can find no better novel than this. Zafon has beautiful, poetic passages, he has vivid, intricate characters, stories within stories within stories that ultimately seem to make the novel an homage to the art of telling stories, and he has many "lectures" on storytelling, on the importance of reading, on love, on relationships between men and women, and the list continues. This is a literary novel that embraces all the greatness of genre--mystery, intrigue, suspense, romance, action, adventure.

Through reading this novel of great characters and situations, I learned a lot about myself as a person, as a reader, and as a writer. I've always known this, but I was reaffirmed in my belief that good stories should move readers, should connect with readers and transport them into new worlds, and this novel did all of that and more for me.


I hope that at least ONE of you will consider purchasing this book and delving into its beauty. From the very first page, I think you will be too invested to stop reading: check out the book at AMAZON.com!

Monday, April 03, 2006

Inspirations...

The other day, I was talking with one of my good friends about literary inspirations. He had a very elaborate idea of which authors helped influenced his writing.

Though I wasn't able to articulate my inspirations as concretely as he could, I know for certain that five women have inspired and influenced my writing: Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Bernice McFadden, Toni Morrison, and Mary Higgins Clark.

Toni Morrison's "Beloved" is like a symphony; it is so damn beautiful and haunting and poetic. I learned a lot about rhythm and using words that do more than put black ink on a page; they can move a reader through sound. Through Morrison's work, I also hear the sound of my African American heritage, and that sound, that voice is important to learn, to remember. Bernice McFadden, to me, is the literary daughter of Morrison. Some people have criticized Toni Morrison for being "too" literary (though I would argue differently). What McFadden does is offer beautiful literary fiction told in a very contemporary way, a way that should cross literary and genre readers. Though I write both literary and genre fiction, I learn through these women the art of beautiful writing that reflects its culture and sings on the page. I aspire to hone my craft within the path they helped to create.

I also am inspired by dead female writers, such as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf (and I would even include Anne Sexton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman). The first time I read Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," I felt the main character's pain. The idea of a woman with thoughts and feelings, being made to "lock" herself and those thoughts and feelings away appealed to me on a very guttural level. Through these women, I realize that we are ALL--black, white, asian, etc., WOMEN. We suffer. We hate. We love. We learn. This is something that is very important to me because I claim myself to be a universal writer, and I aspire to write stories that transcend race.

Mary Higgins Clark's novel "All around the Town" inspired me to write my first mystery/suspense novel. Through her other novels, I learned the craft, and I learned style. She introduced me to a new genre and ultimately inspired me to learn more about the genre.

In the end, though none of these women know me nor I them, I owe them thanks because ultimately, they have been resourceful tools in my journey as a writer.

The great thing about inspiration is that it never fades. When I'm in need of some good inspiration, I just go to one of my bookshelves and pull down a book by one of the ladies and read for a few minutes. Being transported into their worlds helps me escape my "real" world and eventually, move into my own dream film of storytelling.