The first few words are the hardest to write–and the most important to get right
So as you may know, I am currently living in a tent.
What I’m working on — when I am near an electrical plug :)
Most of the time. The routine my sweetheart and I have fallen into, since we sold our house and moved, is about five days in the tent, then two or three nights in a hotel or AirBnB.
I am loving it. My sleep quality is the best it’s been in years. Not sure if it’s the fresh air or the hours (we are basically sleeping sunrise to sunset) but I am feeling so rested when I wake up, almost every morning.
And being immersed in nature for hours and hours every day is pretty amazing as well.
That said, both of us work, so we need to connect to the Interwebs and recharge our devices every day. So rather than brew coffee in the wild, we’ve been driving into town every morning to one of several different coffee shops.
And as I’ve settled into this routine, in addition to my contract writing work, I’ve been editing Happily Flarey Ever — the third and probably last of my Marion Flarey books.
Specifically, I’ve been working on the first 3-5 pages.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash. This is nothing like the Weekes-Flarey dome. Or the San Antonio family’s dome. But I would definitely camp in it :)
One of the things that is the most fun about writing is when an idea just pops into your head, and the further into the novel you get, the more you realize how well it works.
With my Marion Flarey books, an impulsive idea I came to love was to make her parents’ home a geodesic dome.
Click the link to see the photos. It’s a gorgeous home. (A far cry from Marion’s parents’ rather messy dome with the leaky roof!)
The article also mentions some of the things I’d picked up over the years about the advantages of geodesic domes. They are energy efficient and relatively inexpensive to build.
So, to my point about choosing a dome for my Marion Flarey books:
Marion’s stepfather, Winchell Weekes, is tight with money (a character trait that becomes particular important in the second book, Fo Fum Flarey), so of course he would pick something cheap to build and cheap to heat.
Geodesic domes peaked in popularity in the late 70s or so. Winchell started building his dome around 1987, after the peak, but he’s eccentric enough that the timing makes sense. He’s the kind of guy who would still think domes were cool ten years after the trend had petered out :)
But from my perspective as a writer, the best thing is how I was able to incorporate the dome as an aspect of the novels’ setting. I can “shorthand” the Weekes-Flarey home by calling it “the dome,” and readers know exactly what I’m talking about. Because the interior has an open floor plan, it’s easy to “force” characters into conflict. They can’t easily escape from each other.
And because the dome is fairly unique as a dwelling place, I can create quick visuals to help draw readers into the story. I can talk about the challenges of placing furniture on a wall that isn’t flat — something Marion notes when she tours her tower apartment in Once Upon a Flarey Tale — or the way the shingles have darkened with age, and (hopefully!) readers start to form a picture in their minds of what the Weekes-Flarey home is like. Even the word “dome” is visual. You can’t read the word without picturing the general shape of the Weekes-Flarey house.
This experience has taught me something as a writer that I’ll carry into my future novels: make the buildings unique, in some way that is easy to visualize and easy to shorthand.
How about you? Have you ever set a story in a building that you could use in this way?
And have you ever seen a geodesic dome house — or been inside one? I was, many years ago when I was in my early twenties back in Chenango County… someday I’ll have to see if I can figure out where it is :)
Not in the sense of genre romance, but Romance in the sense of an affirmation of the centrality of the heart in human experience. Of the perils of our alienation from nature, and because Romance gives us a break from the sheer awfulness of life (Byron: “And if I laugh at any mortal thing, Tis that I may not weep.”)
My question is: can novels help people learn better (learn again?) how to think?
Yes, reading novels is a form of escapism.
But can they draw people into stories and then use those stories to train people, not what to think (blech) but how?
Those of you who know me personally know that this past year has been incredibly difficult. Yeah, I know I’m not alone. COVID etc. But in addition to the social upheaval, my personal life was turned upside down as well. First, my dad passed in April. And now my mom is gone, too. January 9.
She’s got her prince. If she can figure out how to keep him…
I am not even sure how to process it, to be honest. Looking forward to when this is all something that happened instead of something that is still happening.
In the meantime, I have been getting some writing done, although work has been a bit slower than I would have liked.
Now the second book in the series, Fo Fum Flarey, is available.
Here’s the description of Fo Fum Flarey:
A tale about love, life choices — and how trusting the wisdom of old stories is sometimes the best choice of all.
Marion Flarey has finally found him. Fletcher Beal. Her Prince. And when you find your rich, handsome Prince, everything is settled, right? The fairy tales say so! You live happily ever after. No more questions, no more stress. But as much as Marion loves those wise old tales, there’s a limit to their magic. How is she supposed to make her place in her new prince’s world — especially when Fletcher is always busy, flying around the country, exploring new domains and adding conquests to his kingdom? The stories don’t say. To make matters worse, her family is gripped by stories of their own — and Marion can’t figure out what’s going on. Her mother is distracted and unhappy. What secrets is she hiding? And then Marion’s brother, Ace, shows up in town — and Marion learns why he left. He’s a thief. He stole from their family. Worse yet? He stole from Marion’s prince. Can Marion unravel her family’s secrets? Can she rescue her brother? Can she put her broken family back together again? And should she even try? Or will her family’s crazy problems sabotage Marion’s life, robbing her of the one thing she wants most: a happy future with her sweet, rich, sexy prince?
