All the Trimmings

All the Trimmings

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I’ve been thinking recently about the importance of side dishes. One Thanksgiving Day, we just had all the trimmings. It wasn’t until after the pie that our guest noticed the absence of turkey.

Indie-publishing can feel like this – a plethora of side dishes, from formatting to advertising. There are so many activities involved, it can be easy to forget that writing is the main event.

A good book, one that someone wants to read and once started can’t put down is not a small thing. But I have learned, it is also not the only thing.  If no one knows about your main dish, no one can enjoy it.

That’s what all the trimmings are for.

Gravy, for instance, is the distillation of a broth’s flavor. A blurb is like this. So is your author bio. And like gravy, these bits of text can be used to flavor many other side dishes.

Your book page on an online bookstore may start out looking like mashed potatoes – white and blank. So, make sure to add your blurb and author bio here.

Also, remember add a generous handful of keyword phrases to these texts. Just as extra seasonings like pepper and sage spice up your stuffing, keyword phrases make your text more appealing to search engines.

A fruit relish, like the iconic cranberry sauce adds contrast to your meal. I find writing a regular newsletter is an excellent palate cleanser. The opportunity to focus on a different flavor enhances my writing experience.

And then, the vegetables! I love crisp, crunchy salads bursting with vibrant color. This is a textural contrast, just as giving away or selling a book in person contrasts with doing so online. It’s not that bell pepper strips are better than sweet potato casserole. They are just completely different.

And included in “all the trimmings” is dessert. Whether it’s a crisp apple, a slice of pie, or chocolate mousse, dessert reminds me of reviews. I love knowing that something I wrote touched a reader, caught their attention and sweetened their day. That’s just the best!

Join hundreds of smart readers who get Rose Grey’s Newsletter and receive “Baci – A First Kiss Short Story” FREE plus other exclusive bonus content! www.rosegreybooks.com

Rose is the author of The Valora Series, The Durrell Brothers Trilogy, Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised. Her novel, Waiting For You, the first book of the Durrell Brothers Trilogy, was 2nd place winner in the 2018 New England Reader’s Choice Contest. She loves writing stories about people who do everything in their power to avoid falling in love.

Please feel free to email Rose at https://rosegreybooks.com/newsletter with your thoughts on any of her books. Or reach out on Facebook: facebook.com/rosegreybooks/. Rose loves to hear from her readers!

Rose Grey muses on muses..

Musing on Muses and Why You May Not Need One

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A lot of writers speak respectfully of their Muse. Me, not so much.

I’m not a believer in the concept of the muse when it comes to writing. If I had waited for a muse like Calliope to appear, I would never have written five novels. Plus, on a visceral level, I don’t trust the idea of a muse meddling in my process.

Years ago, I studied music composition with Professor Joseph Packeles. One day when we were discussing the process of composition, he told me, “If the music comes spewing out of you, that’s not healthy. You want to control the flow.”

For the most part, I have found this policy applies to writing stories as well. Because as an author of fiction, I am not a conduit for the words. I am making them up. And it’s darn hard work.

Often, applying seat of pants to seat of chair makes me whine and cuss. And sometimes even when the words come easily, the result makes me wince. Unclear. Vague. Filled with avoidance. But at least those lousy words are mine. Not Calliope’s. Or Erato’s. Or even Euturpe’s.

On the other hand, sometimes the best way to write is not to write at all.

As a teen, I worked as a gardener for a few months. It taught me patience. But more, it taught me to appreciate the value of the waiting. Because the waiting period is when the real action happens – underground, where you can’t see or hear it.

It’s a miracle that only works if you don’t meddle.

The seed needs time to crack its tough shell, to figure out which way the sun is, to convert the elements of the soil which surrounds it into fuel for growth. And it can’t do these things if it keeps getting dug up and inspected.

Gardens are about the deliciousness of waiting. Waiting for risk of frost to pass. For seeds to root. For rain to fall. And always, always waiting for the blossom to open, the fruit to appear and ripen.

One part of writing, almost before the beginning, is like this – a kind of germination of an idea. But the idea only germinates if you let it stay undisturbed in the dark for a bit. And that means waiting. Not waiting for Calliope to show up, but waiting for the idea to be ready to grow into a story.

That kind of waiting is a miracle too.

Rose Grey has written five romance novels and is hard at work on a new series. If you like free stories, subscribe to Rose’s newsletter www.rosegreybooks.com. Your subscription comes with a free sweet contemporary short, lots of fun info about upcoming books and occasional delicious recipes. The Closer You Get, All Of Me, Waiting For You, Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

ravens

Ravens. We’re not winning the brain race, folks.

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Ravens and macaques are just the beginning.

I’ve always felt there was something a bit presumptuous in assuming we humans are smarter than animals. Not to mention, self serving. Turns out, according to a recent study, ravens are giving us significant competition.

In an article, Scientific American reports a raven’s ability to postpone gratification is at a four year old human’s level. Which is something we should all worry about. Because I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am personally acquainted with grown up humans who don’t have this capacity.

The implication of this finding is ravens can plan ahead further than we suspected. Ravens don’t have watches. Or calendars. Or multi-page tabbed planners with a zipper ring binder made out of leather. Reasonable, since those binders are pretty inconvenient to fly around with and take up way too much room in the nest.

But just think what they could do if they had those things.

Better yet, maybe instead of banding ravens for scientific study, we should be fitting them with little electronic planners. According to the article, a raven only expects to find a carcass occasionally, so there are a lot of empty hours a raven might choose to fill more productively.

Ravens aren’t the only animals who might benefit from electronic devices. As I write this entry, there is a lawsuit about who owns the rights to selfies taken by a female macaque in Indonesia. The photographer who set up his camera with a remote trigger, says he expected the macaques in the area to find it and play with it.

Personally, I think the question of rights over the selfies is missing the point. The real issue is, shouldn’t all animals have their own electronic devices? If E.T. arrived on earth now, surely he would carry his own cell phone along with him. And if aliens have cell phones, why should our animal citizens do without?

Charging devices in the wild might be a problem, but I hear fireflies and electric eels are considering a merger to create the first Animal Power Company. So maybe not.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. Wednesday is generally book review day. Unless it isn’t. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

performance

Performance Dreams and Real Nightmares

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Interpreting performance dreams. Okay, it’s not that complicated.

Performance dreams all share certain characteristics – the absolute knowledge that failure is inevitable, the horror of knowing it is your fault and having little to no control over the outcome. You know the nightmare if you have ever performed anything.

Maybe even if you haven’t.

You start up out of sleep in a panic and realize it is the familiar old dream, fitted perfectly to your fears. The trappings might be different but the bones are the same.

But when I woke up this morning I realized this particular performance dream was about writing. And that was intriguing.

Because I don’t have an employer who will be angry if I get it wrong. Well, I might give myself a stern talking to, but that usually ends with chocolate. I know perfectly well I am growing into a writer and I am willing to be patient with the process. There is no specific deadline and no one cares what I wear when I am tapping out vagaries on the keyboard. If I get it wrong, I can fix it. In this arena at least, I have control over most of the elements one panics about in performance dreams.

So this dream wasn’t about me.

It was about Jock and Charlotte and whether they are ready to be in the story I am writing about them.

I’m one quarter into writing novel number four and I’m worried for them. It’s not so much my own performance which is at stake, it is the performance of these characters. I hope I’ve honed them well, but only learning how they fare in their fictional lives will tell me for sure.

Until then, it is a matter of leaping into the unknown and seeing what happens. I guess that’s what we all do every day, but most of the time we don’t think about it. Writing make you more conscious of the leap.

At least Jock and Charlotte aren’t appearing half an hour late to headline for a medieval lute concert in Carnegie Hall wearing bathing suits and roller skates.

They should be grateful. I can’t say the same.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

avocado hand

Avocado Hand – Count Your Fingers

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Cooking like an amateur and proud of it.

I know you didn’t ask, but…I find Avocado Hand annoying. Or maybe I’m just crabby. I guess if I had actually suffered from Avocado Hand, I would be more crabby. If you haven’t already heard about this “on the rise” and therefore extremely hip emergency room issue, apparently more people than ever before in recorded history are slashing their hands in an attempt to cut open and prepare avocados.

Martha Stewart, on a morning show recently, demonstrated the new FDA approved method of cutting avocados by holding the fruit in a dish towel and using a razor sharp knife both of which I consider the perfect way to create an avocado preparation injury no one has ever heard of yet. She explained it is dull knives which create Avocado Hand.

I would argue it is hubris.

I love watching professional chefs on television as much as the next person, but I have no illusions. These folks have professional training handling incredibly sharp tools at ridiculous speeds. I don’t.

I have neither the training, nor the dagger-like implements, nor the dexterity, and I know perfectly well I am not planning to spend twenty years perfecting those skills and accruing those knives. Because that is what it would take for me to be in that league.

But I think television breeds a kind of unrealistic perception in viewers that visual proximity is the same as knowledge. Watching a great chef’s hand motions and copying them, is simply not the same as practicing those motions thousands of times a day. Just as wiggling one’s fingers and owning a piano is not the same as becoming a great pianist.

It’s true most of us have fingers, but that’s not enough. And if we insist on pretending we have the same knife skills as professional chefs, we will be lucky to retain those fingers at all.

 

Which is particularly important if you are planning on typing the next great romance novel, instead of dictating it. So hurry up with the writing because I want to read it.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

manchester bombing

Manchester Bombing – Crime Against Children, Again,

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Words fail in the wake of the Manchester Bombing.

How can we respond to the Manchester Bombing? How do we cope with the images of parents and children killed and injured, pointlessly. And it is pointless, make no mistake about that.

This atrocity will devastate the lives of the families who have lost a loved one, their friends, their relatives. For them, nothing will ever be the same again.

But on a larger scale, the most effective response is to make the terrorist’s death meaningless. The residents of Manchester will keep going to public events. Arianna Grande will continue to bless those who love her with the beauty and joy of her gift. Nothing, with the exception of greater vigilance, will change.

Because that is the weapon we have. Normalcy.

I get that. I do. And yet this is not a random attack. It was specifically aimed at children.

There is nothing which angers me in quite so deep a way as the pain evil people intentionally cause children. There is no defense, no argument, no words which can excuse it.

Nor are there appropriate words in any human language which I personally can summon to respond to it.

Still it is not simply silence which is called for when children lie dead. Not the calm silence of acceptance, not the peaceful silence of belief, but a deeper, darker silence. A silence of pulsing life, of red grief, of a roar too loud for sound, too thick for words. The essence of no but without the softness of N, without the rounded welcome of O. A mighty silence which seeps under doors, slams down city streets and shrieks across prairies. A silence which crushes mountains beneath its weight and creeps in great clouds to cover valleys.

A teeth baring, howl of silence.

 

 

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

ritual

Ritual for Home Writing Sessions

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Creating a Home Writing Ritual

The space in which we write is significant and giving it sufficient gravitas sometimes requires a ritual. We all find ways to cue ourselves to get to work. Sharpen six pencils. Put loose papers in files. Go stand in front of the refrigerator and search hopefully for a brownie.

Some of those cues are the actual furniture on which we choose to write.

On top of my desk, looking down at my laptop, crouches a wooden sculpture of a cat. Whoever carved him caught the exact moment when a cat is considering jumping but has not bunched his muscles to do so.

I am lucky in my desk, although I occasionally yearn for a larger work surface. It is a high boy sort of thing with pigeon holes and a door which folds open for a work surface. I rarely close the door these days although I think I should reconsider that. Unlocking and opening the desk every time I wrote would lend a sense of occasion to writing time.

It may be that lack of ritual which makes it easier to write in the local library, at least when I am starting out a book.

Going to the library is a ritual.

It includes packing up my laptop, a bottle of water and any books which are due back. Fifteen minutes of driving and parking. Walking up the steps, circling the tables to find an empty one, setting up the laptop and settling into the chair. By the time I finish that process, I feel ready to focus.

This is a bit the way a cat prepares himself to sleep. He locates a perfect sunny spot, circles, pats the surface, kneads it, and kneads it again until he is ready to curl into a ball. Sleep is work for a cat.

So I’m thinking of creating a home ritual for beginning a writing session, a practical physical activity which would be somewhat useful, but mostly repetitive and basically pleasant. If you have already have one, please share.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

vegetable gardening

Vegetable Gardening For Non-Rabbits

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I planted a garden yesterday.

Well, it wasn’t actually as simple as that. I spent weeks dithering over how big it should be and what I should plant. The most complicated part of vegetable gardening for me was figuring out which plants like to be near which other plants. Also which ones detest other plants. It was a bit like planning seating for a wedding reception when the families involved are the Montagues, the Capulets, the Jets and the Sharks.

Tomatoes like carrots, but they stunt them. Eggplant likes being near thyme, but thyme doesn’t like being near basil. Cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage don’t get along with some nightshade plants, like tomatoes and green peppers. But they thrive when inter-planted with lettuce. Eggplants, unlike their nightshade family cousins, seem to get along with everybody. It took index cards, spiral bound notebooks, scissors, tape and the ever amazing glue stick to finalize the seating plan.

Then I did the actual planting – Woohoo! So far it’s been two days and I have remembered to water the plants. I talk to them, and tell them supportive nurturing things. Maybe vegetable gardening is my thing. If that was all plants required for a successful harvest, I wouldn’t worry.

But I know the real danger is lurking in the dark.

Don’t let the cute ears and twitchy fluffy tails mislead you. Those sweet little rabbits you see on the lawn at night when you are taking your before bedtime stroll are like Pirates of the Caribbean but armed with teeth instead of daggers.

I’m hoping to buy them off with the strawberry plants. So if you see a rabbit with strawberry mash dripping from its long adorable whiskers, you’ll know where it has been.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

writing

Writing Means Looking Back Occasionally

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Yes! Another one thousand words. Some days writing is like pulling teeth. Okay, many days writing is like pulling teeth. But once in a while, two thousand or more words just come pouring out of my fingers onto the keyboard. And that is amazing, and wonderful, and so, so exciting.

Always, as I write and rewrite and carve away all the parts of the manuscript which don’t look like an elephant, I wonder if it’s going to be any good. And those days when the writing flows are the times when I know, in my bones, I am doing the right thing.

But that did not happen today. On days like today, I remind myself to put on blinders and march forward.

Because you can’t get to a breathtaking mountain view without lots of trudging.

And you can’t get to good writing without lots of just plain writing.

I’m not sure how much that knowledge helps, however, when the mud is thick, my boots get stuck, the backpack is heavy and it starts to rain. On those days, of which there are more than any of us would like, it’s a matter of looking back.

Because it is easy to remember bad stuff. Who doesn’t quail at the mounds of revision required to whip the thing into shape. Who quivers with anticipation at the hard editing to follow? Not to mention the distinct possibility that hundreds of agents will look a the manuscript, shrug their shoulders and say, “Meh.”

It is hard to remember the glory of the mountain one is climbing when the peak is far above and hidden by trees.

So, writer, once in a while, stop trudging and turn around. Look down the trail and give yourself some credit. No matter how much further you intend to climb, no one can take away what you have already accomplished.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

color

Color Your Calendar Day By Day

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What color is today?

Some Fridays just don’t feel like Friday. Why is that? There is a thing called Grapheme-color Synesthesia which makes people associate colors with numbers, letters and even days of the week. One is white, two is red. Q might be purple with stripes and T might be a slick metallic silver.

So if you were to associate a color with Friday, what would it be? I think it is blue-green. Friday smells of fresh baked bread. It sounds like a stream in summer. It tastes like a grape.

But today didn’t taste like a grape. It tasted more like a Thursday. And that can’t be right because Thursday is the blue-purple of the sky just when the last ember of sunset disappears. It smells of rain and sounds like a fog horn. Thursday tastes like water.

Wednesday is orange, although not necessarily the fresh color of an orange peel. Maybe more like the orange-y brown of a pair of corduroys I once loved. Don’t ask. And the smell, a spice I think. Not a sweet one though. Maybe rosemary.

Tuesday is unquestionably light blue. The color of a clear sky in summer. And it smells like the lunches your mother packed for you when you were in elementary school, that indefinable scent of food which has been waiting in a paper bag, slightly smooshed by your books.

Monday is a sharp yellow color, not pleasant but certainly energizing.

It sounds like the smack of wind against the side of my house in midwinter. And it tastes like a coming snowstorm – cold, dry and acrid.

Sunday is lush, green and gold. The taste of leisure – home made scones or fresh cut watermelon.

Saturday smells of the promise of rain. It tastes like fresh apricots, the fuzzy promise of sweet answered with a burst of sharpness. And the color? That odd mixture of orange and pink which comes at sunset after a storm.

What did your day taste like?

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.