Category Archives: writing

romance, Shiloh Walker, writing

Booksignings Mishaps

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Cross-posted from my personal blog….

Booksigning mishaps.  They happen.

Once I signed the wrong name. Yep.

On rare ocassion, I’ve spelled the reader’s name wrong, which is why I try to have people spell their name out for me.

But at last year, I had the signing mishap to end ALL signing mishaps. This should win me a prize, I swear.

It was at the Lori Foster/Dianne Castell’s Reader & Writer Get Together-this is a lot of fun…if you’ve never been, it’s well worth it. There’s a lot of ‘free time’…just walking around, hanging out, talking. I was doing just that, walking around and a reader came up, asked if I’d sign CHAINS.

We were talking. This was the first mistake. (I shouldn’t CHAT while I’m actively SIGNING the book)

I’d probably had a glass of wine, or a rum and coke. This was the second mistake.

I was also supremely stressed, because I’d just gotten a phone call about my daredevil that damn near turned my hair gray…WHERE I STOOD…now this wasn’t my mistake-out of my control, but still.

So. My brain wasn’t entirely…focused.

Halfway through signing, I stopped.

I closed the book. Looked at the reader and said, “Um. I just signed your book badly.”

She just blinked and said… “What?”

I started apologizing, profusely. Very profusely. Then I told her what I’d written. She burst out laughing. It tickled her to death. I’m mortified. If I’d had the presence of mind, I would have gone and bought a copy myself, replaced it. But I didn’t have the presence of mind at the time. However, she’s just tickled pink.

Wanna know how I signed it?

Continue reading Booksignings Mishaps →

Ashleigh Raine, This and That, writing

Beautiful May

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Last month I posted a day late, so I decided to average it out by posting a day early. I think that works, right?

May has been a rockin’ awesome month so far. One of those months that my face is permanently locked in a smile. Why? A couple reasons that all add up to me feeling darn good.

After six months of bundling up in layers, with my numb fingers trying to find the right keys on my laptop, the weather has finally turned around. It’s warm. Gloriously so. I’d go so far as to say it’s hot. Today, for the first time, I’m wearing my favorite denim capris and a short-sleeved cotton tee that have been tucked away in my closet since last October. I took a walk today, enjoyed the feel of the sun soaking into my pasty white skin. I’m enjoying it now since within a month or so it’ll be hitting temps in the high 90s and low 100s and I’ll be avoiding outside as much as possible. But for now…for now, I’m opening the windows and enjoying the breeze.

Another reason May has been so good? Lisa and I are writing, really, honest-to-God writing, again. Now, for the last few months we’ve been trying to write a novella, and we were getting words on the page, but it was going ridiculously slow, even for us. We were suffering some serious writer constipation. Finally, we sat down and talked and realized that although we loved the idea behind the story, clearly it wasn’t what we were supposed to be writing since we’ve never suffered that type of challenge before in getting a story written. We put the novella to the side and pulled out the book of our heart. The book we get more fan mail requesting than any other. Eternal Talisman is back in progress. And all I can say is why the heck did we wait so long? In the last few days Lisa and I have written more than we managed in the last few months combined. The fire we’d thought had burned down to an ember has blazed up again. Not only do we want to write, but we love what we’re writing. We love writing so much we’re going without sleep to write, we’re skipping meals, we’re staying attached to our computers. The reason I’m writing this blog post now, a day before my scheduled blog day here at After Midnight Fantasies, is that I sent the scene in progress to Lisa, and figured I’d spend the time waiting for her to send it back to me taking care of my blogging responsibilities before diving right back into Talisman Bay as soon as Lisa sends it my way.

Is this what addiction feels like? Although addiction has such nasty negative connotations. I think this is pure and simple happiness. And you just can’t beat that feeling. So here’s wishing you and yours happiness, in whatever form pleases you most.

Shiloh Walker, writing

A change of scenery

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I had a deadline for April 1, 2009.  The follow-up to Fragile was to be turned in.  Except about mid-February, the book was still fighting me.  I had this idea for the story and about 1/3 of the way through it, I realized the hero needed a different heroine.  Now the one I was giving him…he wanted her.  But she wasn’t right for him.  I started getting these glimpses of this other heroine…now she was right for him.  But I ignored it.

And what happens?  The story bogged down.  The heroine just wasn’t working for the hero, no matter how much he thought he wanted her.  So I trash the story in January and start rewriting.  From the original story, there is exactly one line that is the same in the finished version.  One.

That’s a lot of rewriting, yes?  I had 2 words.  I needed 90,000.  By mid-February, I had…oh, maybe 50k.  I also had edits coming in left and right, and a vacation coming up (the week before my deadline-what was I thinking?).  And the damn story just wouldn’t come.  Even though the new heroine was working for my hero, and for me, the story wasn’t coming.

About two weeks before my vacation, I decided one morning that I wasn’t going to keep writing at home.  For some reason, I decided to go to Panera Bread and write there.  Write, munch on a bagle, write.  And it worked.  There were no distractions-other than other bagle munchers and the lure of wireless internet access.  But there was no laundry.  There was no TV. No toys laying around that I had to pick up.  No mailbox.  No list of errands glaring at me from the corner of my eye.

It was just me, the laptop, the bagle…and the story.  I spent about four or five days writing at Panera Bread and I got the story up from 74k to 95k.

I don’t have a depressing workspace.  I have nice pretty blue walls, I have my iPod close by, I have a big windows, an office full of books, both the kind I read for pleasure and the kind I use for research.  And normally, I can work at home just fine (usually).

For some reason, though, this story needed a change of pace.  And now I’m hungry for another bagle…damn it.

Shiloh

http://shilohwalker.com