Blog Tour

Today is my Blog Tour Day. I was excited when the talented Danielle Birch invited me to be part of this tour where authors and writers answer questions about their writing process. It is super exciting as this is the first time I’ve ever been involved in something like this.

My answers to the questions are below.

1. What am I working on?

I have just completed and returned my edits for my novel, Never Surrender and am back to my work in progress. It doesn’t have a title yet, actually it’s a bunch of notes, but, it’s talking to me, so that’s a huge bonus.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’m hoping my own crazy way of writing and my voice will set my work apart from others.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I write Romantic Suspense/Intrigue. To me it’s a marriage of the two genres’ I enjoy, romance and a great murder/mystery. I’ve always had a suspicious nature, I see a woman pass a package to a man over the bonnet of a car. Nothing sinister in that, Yeah right, unless you live in my head. I see a drug deal, a payoff. I see another couple deep in discussion sitting outside a coffee shop. Sweet. To others maybe, to me, they are sitting so close, looking so loving at each other, so no one will suspect they are plotting the death of her husband.  

Thankfully my suspicious nature only shows itself when I’m developing my novels.

4. How does your writing process work?

I have a book full of character names that have come to me as I’m running, hanging out the washing, in the shower. If they’re meant to make it to my book of characters and get an identity they stay with me, till I can get my hands on said book, where I write down their name, a brief description, what they do for a living and what scares them. I do that for all my characters.

Then I think about them till they tell me their story. More notes. I’m a plotter. I need to know where I’m going, how I’m going to get there. For most characters I match up, I write a first kiss scene. If they spark, I develop them deeper. I used to plough through one chapter at a time, in order from page one. I was introduced to Alexandra Sokoloff’s Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, which made me look at my plotting completely differently. Then a friend suggested nano, where you have to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Now, I write the full novel, anyway it comes to me, then I break it down, make sense of it, and the rewrite begins.

The process, as crazy as it is, works for me.

Sharon L Norris, you're up.