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Saint Peter has Surrendered

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My dear friend Lori Green passed away last night.

Lori1

I had heard the distant sound of thunder earlier. I thought at first that it was a low flying helicopter as my windows rattled slightly, but then it definitely took on a different characteristic. I finally realized that it was the sound of thousands of Marines snapping to attention, combined with the applause from the angels as they stopped what they were doing to welcome her. I certainly hope they got the streets reinforced in time.

Ready or not – Lori has arrived!

Saint Peter has apparently accepted Lori’s offerings and opened the gates. I have no doubt that the Marines tried to hide their smiles even as they came smartly to attention. The word has surely spread about a welcome party behind the barracks later in the evening. Of course, it is entirely possible that the sound I heard was actually Saint Peter banging his head against a wall after losing his first argument with Lori.

Some people may think that Lori has lost her battle. They’re wrong.

Lori has won her war.

Her goals were to face her adversary and live each day to the fullest, to be the best wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, and sister she could be, and to always give more than she received. She met those goals. Who wouldn’t wish to have her courage, sense of humor, grace, and dignity?

Lori worked hard to be an active and vibrant participant in life until the very end. Only a few days before her death, we were sparring via text message. Picking on each other and sharing our love. She promised to keep an eye on me and threatened a slap to the head if I veered off course. She also told me that she was looking forward to the idea of slapping me from above since I couldn’t retaliate. Even as she neared her death, she remained my most fierce cheerleader, asking to beta read my next book, and encouraging me to continue writing. She never once missed an opportunity to tell me that she was proud of me.

I am just as proud of her.

As painful as this loss is, I refuse to spend much time weeping. Lori really hated all the crying and hand wringing. She wanted people to enjoy the time they had with her, and she much preferred looking forward instead of examining the past or bemoaning the fate that God had chosen for her.

When I saw Lori in November, she told me that when she died, she would be thrilled if people would have a drink, eat their favorite meal, order dessert, or just have a Rollo in her memory. Her hope was that we would all live, love, and laugh every day, and that each of us would attempt to give more to others than we received. I know that she gave me more than I ever gave her.

I’m absolutely positive that Lori will be accepted as a guardian angel, and that she will do her best to keep me on the right path. In the coming years, I may try to mess up a little just to see if she’s on the job. It’s not like that will be a real stretch for me. The thing is that I’m sure that I’ll feel the need to be close to Lori at times. It might be as simple as the occasional speeding ticket in honor of Lead Foot Lori. Getting a head slap from an angelic friend in the form of a good looking cop would make a small screw up worthwhile.

This isn’t the first time that Lori and I have been separated. But I’m not sure the powers on high really get that we’re like two magnets who will always manage to find our way back to each other. When the time is right, we’ll do so again. Until then, I will carry her laughter, her harassment, her encouragement, and her sweet smile with me. I will also occasionally look up and use my best first sergeant voice when I bellow a reminder to her that those damn Marines have work to do and so does she. Even a guardian angel needs to be kept on her toes.

See ya later, Smiley. I love you.

The Freaking Process – The Idea

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I’ll be doing a short series about the writing process. I’ll try to answer some of the questions I’ve been asked and explain how I get from idea to novel.

The number one question that I’m asked is – Where do you get your ideas?

I have an overactive imagination so I have lots of ideas. Most of them would make truly lousy novels. But every once in a great while, something decent percolates out of the mud and I grab onto it. Those ideas have been kicking their way to the top of the heap, and I have come back to them time and again like a terrier to a bone. The idea for Stuck in Korea Time was well ahead of the idea for A Shared Fear, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. But it just wouldn’t go away. Those are the ones that mean something.

Sometimes, the initial idea comes from a conversation that I overhear.
Guy #1 – “It’s hard to date when you’re a single parent.”
Guy #2 – “Dude, you have no idea. Wait until she’s a teenager. Thirteen year old girls are nothing but judgmental divas. Mine complains about anyone I date. Too tall, too short, too fat, too thin. It’s like they’re trying on some bitchy new personality.”

My immediate thought was, “What the hell would she say if you brought home someone five years older than you?” That thought was followed by a scene playing out in my head of an offended daughter making a snotty comment after coming home to find her darling daddy canoodling with the older woman on the couch.

My second thought was, “What if the woman she was so rude to was now the only person that can keep her alive when she is kidnapped?”

Saving Emily began with that overheard conversation and those two questions.

Ideas also come from goofing around. I was practicing for a speaking engagement, and I was playing with my laser pointer. Yes, I’m easily amused. I pointed it across a dark room just to see how far the light beam would go and when it appeared on the far wall, I thought to myself, “Wow! That looks just like a laser target dot. I wonder if it would fool anybody.” The scenario that popped into my head was an ATF agent confronting a group of bad guys with no backup. His girlfriend, hiding behind something puts the red dot on the leader’s chest and tells him she’s got them covered. I didn’t wind up using the laser pointer idea, but that’s how A Shared Fear actually came into being.

Sometimes, the idea comes from the things that scare me.
My biggest fear when I was in the military was that I would let someone down when they really needed me. That if we deployed to the wrong place at the wrong time, someone would get hurt because they were trying to take care of me instead of taking care of themselves. During my career, I heard literally dozens of stories about the problems during deployment. Diverted personnel, the wrong personnel, the wrong equipment showing up, equipment that never showed up, lost paperwork, no medical personnel, no rations, being stranded and being ignored. Protecting Parker was the sum of all these stories.

[By the way, if you think things like this don’t happen – you’re wrong. I can show you examples from every war where the wrong people and equipment are sent to the wrong place. The example I most frequently use is from Vietnam and the Battle of Ngok Tavak. When you read the sanitized version on Wikipedia, (it appears in a section about the Battle of Kham Duc and begins in the section marked Prelude) you should keep in mind a couple things. #1 – Captain White requested assistance in extracting his Mike Force. #2 – A Mike Force is supposed to mobile. They are best at the hit and run. #3 – A howitzer is NOT really mobile. #4 – The 33 Marines dropped into Ngok Tavak with their howitzer were artillery guys, not a trained recon unit or special forces. And just to be crystal clear – these types of things still happen.]

I can trace each of my books back to the basic idea or concept they came from. What I can’t explain is exactly why I couldn’t let one particular idea or image go. I simply know that when I can’t – it’s usually going to be a good book.

The Damaged Blood Link IV

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The Damaged – Blood Link IV by Lynne Scott.
Blood_Link_IV-_The_Damaged_Cover

Blood Link: Where the military and vampires meet.

Until he came to the team, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Sonny Pauley was positive no one cared if he lived or died. He wasn’t sure he cared either. Now he’s ready to face the looming vampire war beside his chosen family. As Milo and Katherine send a violent and bloody message of their intention to annihilate the unit and everyone in it, Sonny has one last task to accomplish before the unit is ready to fight. He needs to help Esmeralda “Essie” Cannon move past her dark and violent history, so she can face the enemy beside them. But helping someone else often means sharing more of yourself than you are comfortable with. Sonny will have to face some of his own demons if he’s to help Essie confront hers.

Editor: Arwen Newman
Cover Design: Liquid Reality Studios
121,559 Words

Available from Amazon through the link on the right side of the page.
Also available in paperback at CreateSpace and Amazon.
Available from Barnes and Noble for the Nook.

Lost Again

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I was writing away like a mad woman the other day when I realized that I’d gotten sidetracked. It happens. My mind likes to take these little trips away from what I’m actually supposed to be writing and work on something else. Some of my best and worst stuff comes out of these little excursions.

My newest story was intended to be a fish out of water story about a symphony conductor who witnesses a murder and is stashed at a Southern Arizona ranch for a week while the Phoenix cops solve the case. There’d be some trouble on the ranch, the characters would have hot sex, the killer would show up, the heroine or the hero would save the day. Sort of a modern day western.

Like most of my great plans – it took a left turn at Albuquerque.

Somewhere along the line, I decided that I needed to do some research about my location. I’m a genealogist and a history buff. I like to know what I’m writing about. Like usual, I got hooked on my damn research. Two glorious days of reading about the history in the Santa Cruz river valley, its people and the ranches, ensued. It was fascinating stuff. But when I returned to writing my story – well, there I was in the middle of my book “sharing” this information in what I thought was a good little back story about the ranch. What should have been two paragraphs turned into four pages of ranch history. I can put all of that in, but not all at once, and certainly not in chapter three. Talk about bogging down a story.

The second problem I ran into was that I info dumped my characters. I’ve written their back stories and I know almost too much about them, and I just blurted it all out, taking away any interest or “mystery” as to why they behave the way they are behaving. “Hello, my name is Lynne. Let me vomit out my life history.” A rookie mistake to say the least.

The third problem is actually the thing that made me stop where I was and seek guidance from my mentor and a couple friends. I wrote a chapter about the cop and what was happening in Phoenix. I wanted to know more about him and the investigation and this seemed like a nice counterpoint to the ranch. I was planning to use the murder investigation as the story timeline. Well, the next thing I knew, I was writing the murder story and liking it. A few characters became many and four chapters later, I realized that my folks at the ranch were still standing in the kitchen. But I really like this cop and the story!

Realizing that I had a problem – the first step is admitting you need help – I sent bits and pieces off to three people. One went to a musician friend of mine to see if I had at least written that character correctly. One went to a trusted reader who pulls very few punches. And one when to my mentor, a fellow author who pulls even fewer punches. The responses were (bless their hearts) encouraging, but each pointed out exactly what I knew to be true. I have gotten lost in my own story.

My favorite comments:
“I liked the dog the best.” (So did I.)
“It’s not a bad story at all…” (A polite way of saying it ain’t good.)
“The first chapter was good.” (Clearly meaning the other three weren’t.)
“Who is the book about – the conductor or the cop?” (I was wondering that too.)
“I’m confused. Is this a suspense novel or historical fiction?” (Well, crap.)
“I like the cop and the foreman best.” (I like them too, but…)

Now you see what I mean about not pulling punches.

Writing a book has been equated to taking a journey without a map. Sometimes you take a few wrong turns, and while I happen to like those side trips, those roads don’t lead to my destination. It’s time to backtrack to the main road and decide just what the hell I am writing and whose story it is.

I better put on another pot of coffee.

How many books per year?

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More than one person has asked me why I don’t publish more books each year, so I thought I should address this question. Since March 2011, I have published seven books. If things go well, I’ll put out Blood Link IV in the next two weeks and that will still be a total of eight novels published in a two-year period.

I actually started writing seriously in June 2010, but I first submitted Protecting Parker to a publisher in October of that year. At that time, the four Blood Link books were one (rather jumbled) story of about 125,000 words, and I was sure that book was all just a waste of my time. Now the word count for the four books of the Blood Link series totals almost 400,000 words, and the ten people who actually read the darn things love them to death.

These eight books are not all there is. There are two books written that are in the beta cycle right now. The Healer – Book V of the Blood Link series centering on Dr. Peter (Mac) MacKenzie. My next standalone novel (tentatively titled The Embassy Guards) is a thriller about a special ops team with a cover as (can you guess) embassy guards. While those are in beta read and head for edits next month, I’m currently writing Book VI and the next standalone thriller. Those will be the four for 2013.

What most people should remember is that this isn’t all about me and what I can do. For every book I write there are numerous beta readers. All of whom have lives and may or may not be able to jump right in on the manuscript I send them. For every book I write there is an editor. My two editors do not do this for a living – they do it because they foolishly agreed to in a moment of weakness and now can’t figure out how to get the hell out of it. They have lives and other things they would rather be doing. Marcia prefers retirement and genealogy to editing. Arwen is a high school teacher and would much rather ring hand bells, hunt for old cemeteries, do needlework, and read for pleasure. Neither of them derives a great deal of satisfaction in facing the never-ending assaults by my comma fairy, and they are both more than a little embarrassed by my gerund fetish. The fact that I now know what a gerund is continues to amaze all of us. Two books each per year is a big enough imposition. Anything more than that could mean my death sentence.

There is also the issue of creating a quality cover and the technical aspect of the publishing to consider. Dean actually has a real business that he needs to attend to, but he makes time for me because I’m like a tubercular cough and won’t go away without large doses of expensive medication. (The truth is that he’s too busy to file the request for a restraining order on me.) Despite my obnoxiousness, he turns out my covers, reconfigures each book for the different sites, and takes care of actually getting my books online and making sure that they stay there. He’s also on call for my computer issues, technical (think geek) questions that I need to know for my manuscripts, and the poor bastard has to actually read every book I write. How much suffering can we expect from one man?

Publishing four books a year is what my team and I can manage, and probably more than any of them would like.

My Resolutions

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I hate New Year’s Resolutions. I think they are the biggest damn waste of my time that ever was. They rate right up there with those silly quizzes in the women’s magazines. You know the ones that ask stupid stuff like, “Do you know how to keep your man happy?” Hell, no! I have no idea what makes him happy on any given day. I’ve been married to him for 28 years and it’s still a damn mystery. “Do you dress for success?” Um, heeelllllooooo! There’s a reason I chose the military. In case you haven’t noticed, Uncle Sam sorta takes fashion and choice out of the equation. The simple answer in case you missed it is NO. I like sitting around in jeans or jammies when I write. What’s it to ya anyway?

As you can see – New Year’s makes me cranky. I went to online banking because I hated writing the wrong year on my checks for the first three months of the year. Don’t even get me started on the whole New Year’s Eve thing. What is the point of starting off the New Year puking your guts out and being hung over? Did it once and learned my lesson.

Where was I? Oh yeah… resolutions. I finally quit doing the resolution thing a couple of years ago. I made the same ones every year. Literally, year after year.
1. Lose weight. I do. And then I gain it back so I have to do it all over again.
2. Be nicer. I am. Then I go out in public or watch the news and that one’s over with.
3. Be kinder. It’s different than nicer, but the same thing happens.
4. Quit speeding. I do. But then I remember how much fun it is and I begin to channel Lori.
5. Cook healthier meals. Refer to #1.

What I finally realized was that every year I was setting myself up for failure and a boatload of self-loathing. I already know that I’m going to screw all those things up so why did I put them on a list and say I was going to do them. I thought if I put them out there then I’d be too embarrassed not to do them. Then I realized that almost everyone I know was failing at them too. Sure, there’s a couple over-achievers that you want to smack at the end of the year, but for the most part, we all make resolutions that are hard to keep.

Now I make a list of stuff that I can and will do. It’s nothing fancy, but I like the idea of starting out the year with the probability of success. My friend Dean likes to say that I’m aiming low to avoid any real expectation, but we all know that I’m just avoiding the disappointment of not meeting my goals.

So these are my resolutions for 2013 –
1. I will not step on my scale more than once a month. The damn thing just annoys me so I don’t know why I’d want to spend any real time with it. It’s rude, obnoxious, and the little bastard lies.
2. I will step away from anyone who I can’t be nice to or won’t be nice to me. Both in person and online. In person, this will save me the hassle of calling Mr. Scott to pick me up after arraignment, and online, it will keep me from leaving a permanent trail that can be used against me in a court of law.
3. I will adopt a dog this year because I have no trouble being kind to a dog. I like them better than most of the people I encounter. Dogs like me, and they don’t care if I’m overweight, have no fashion sense, curse too much, and don’t give a rat’s ass about dusting.
4. I will keep my one living houseplant alive for another year. It helps that it’s a cactus, but it’s still a challenge to me.
5. I will hoard three-way incandescent light bulbs. I hate those new squiggle damn things.
6. I will not go back to doing things that I have already managed to give up doing. Therefore, I will not be smoking, seriously drinking, or jogging. If I take up jogging again, you can bet that I’m drinking heavily.
7. I will lower my head and not look directly at the other driver when I call him a freaking useless Asshat that can’t drive to save his soul. I’m getting too old to get out of the car and beat the hell out of people. It’s also not as easy as it used to be to beat up on those old white-haired ladies since more of them are going to the gym and eating healthy.
8. I will not eat any beets or lima beans. I don’t like them. I don’t want them. And as an adult – I don’t have to eat the damn things if I don’t wanna.
9. I will avoid daytime television, reality television, and anything with wives, bachelors, survivors, gold hunting, trucking, crabbing, axe, or swamp in the premise or title. I’ve suffered enough brain damage from the serious drinking and I don’t need to add to it with this useless drivel.
10. And finally, I will stay at least one-half mile away from Sam Elliott. The restraining order was quite clear about the distance, and I’m pretty good at following rules when there are consequences.

That’s it. Those are my ten resolutions for the coming year. I know that I can keep them. Now all you have to do is keep yours. Happy New Year and best wishes for the coming year.