Blog

Romance in Real Life, with Tiffany Reisz

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18 May 2016
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Love is the center of life. It drives us, disappoints us, lifts us up and wrings us out, in all its many forms. I know it certainly drives my writing, no matter if I’m in paranormal, contemporary, or suspense. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversations with my husband about how real life and love are depicted in romantic fiction. About when people want escapism in their reading, and when they want their fiction to ring true to their real lives. About how much that might be changing with this new generation. So I decided to do this blog series interviewing other romance novelists about what they thought. Today’s interview is with Tiffany Reisz, the RITA, LAMBDA, and RT-award winning author of upcoming The Bourbon Thief (June 28, 2016), the bestselling and award-winning Original Sinners series, as well as...
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Wisdom from Writing Contest Hosts

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04 May 2016
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I love contests for writers. When I was in the query trenches, they were like an online party for those of us dying slowly while waiting for news. Once I stepped up into the mentor level of contests, I was shocked at how much was going on behind the scenes. So I decided to give everybody on the internet a peek behind the curtain of writing contests by asking some popular contest hosts two questions: what have they learned, and what would they tell writers. Here are their answers.   What is one unexpected thing you’ve learned from running contests?   I’d venture to say that roughly 30% of the entries that make it into our slush pile aren’t ready to be in the trenches. Many have glaring issues such as grammatical errors, excessive or insufficient word counts, or are...
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Tropes, Neurology and Pop Music

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25 Apr 2016
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Today, I’m writing about neurology because I’m a NERD! And I’m writing about tropes because I just got back from a romance novel conference (RT16 FTW!) where cowboys and Navy SEALS were roaming the hallways and gracing the covers of the books stacked on the tables. On one of my nights off, I hit an erm…adult entertainment show involving dancing and oh my! Turns out cowboys and Navy SEALS and firefighters were all over the stage there, too. This got me thinking about tropes. What’s a trope? A lot of people think a trope=stereotype, and that’s not true. A trope is something universal that always appeals. A Cinderella story. A daring rescue. A wounded but tough hero healed by love. These are things that have been appearing in stories since they were told by the light of a campfire flickering...
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