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You are here: Home / Archives for A Shared Fear

A Shared Fear

Q & A From A Shared Fear

October 8, 2014 By Lynne Leave a Comment

In response to a Q & A with The Spontaneous Reader Book Blog, these are some of the questions I’ve been asked since the publication of A Shared Fear in 2011. A Shared Fear was my second novel and brought together two of my favorite characters in one of my favorite places. Evie Davis is a former combat arms instructor (I’ve always liked those darn red hats) and Joe Graves, an ATF agent. The coast of Oregon provided a perfect backdrop for most of the book.

Q – I loved the opening for A Shared Fear. Was this taken from a real experience?

A – Yes to the airplane. No to the ATF Agent. I was on a flight from Salt Lake City to Bellingham, Washington, when part of this happened. We ran into turbulence as we crossed the Cascades and when we came into Bellingham, we encountered some wind shear and dropped like a rock. I was sitting alone and wasn’t really scared until that drop. The pilot took the plane out over the Pacific and announced we were going to make a second attempt at landing. He did and the results were just as bad. You know it’s ugly when the flight attendant screams. We diverted to Seattle. The conversation between Joe and the pilot was almost word-for-word what the pilot of my flight and I said to each other in Seattle. Unlike my character Joe, I still fly, but I’m not as big of a fan of air travel as I used to be.

Q – Is it true that you were told that having your main characters meet on an airplane was one of the worst openings an author could choose?

A – Yes. Several years ago, I was sitting in on a free online chat with a senior editor from a major romance publisher when she was asked what openings she hated to see. She responded that she rarely read past the first chapter if the main characters met on an airplane or met by spilling a drink on each other. In her words, authors who used those openings “generally lacked imagination.” I’d already written the opening to A Shared Fear and decided that my opening lacked nothing. Her comments were added confirmation that I didn’t fit in anyone’s mold and traditional publishing might not be for me.

Q – Where did the primary story line come from?

A – Ideas come at the strangest time and places. I was preparing to give a genealogy lecture, so early that morning I was testing my small laser pointer. When I turned it on, I immediately thought it looked like a laser targeting dot from a high-powered weapon. In a flight of fantasy, I thought about someone in a hidden position using the laser pointer to distract a bad guy who was holding a gun on a federal agent. It would be enough to make them think that another agent with a rifle had them in their sights and would force them to lower their weapon. I didn’t use it in the book, but that’s where the story was born. A genealogist with a weapons background and an ATF agent – how fun and different would that be?

Q – Tell me about June the waitress?

A – It’s always the old guys teasing the young waitresses. I thought it would be fun to turn the tables. June began as a means to lighten the moment and play with Senior Agent Terry Beamish as well as share a little information about Evie, but ended up taking over the chapter. This is one of the sections in the book that people most comment on.

Q – You seem to have a love affair going with Colt model 1911 handguns. Is this your weapon of choice?

A – I love the old 1911s. I’d been shooting revolvers since I was a kid, but when I shot my first Colt 1911, my whole world changed. It was truly love at first shot. The feel, the weight, the muzzle control, the smell, the sound… Everything about that weapon made me very, very happy. The next thing I knew, I owned a Colt Gold Cup, one of the finest semi-automatics in the world. I spent a lot of time shooting, and I spent a lot of money on that weapon and having it customized for a better fit. Beaver tail, ambidextrous safeties, Parkerized grips, better sights, throating and porting… I put a lot of rounds through that weapon over the years. There’s just something about those guns that I love. My friend Dave Dingley is the gun guru in my life now, and he provided most of the history for the weapon found in the book.

Q – You have an obvious love for the Oregon coast. Is this where you’d most like to live?

A –One of my retirement goals is being able to spend at least a week in both the spring and fall at the coast. If we’re talking “lottery dreams” than I’ve got a few spots that I could go for. I love both the Oregon coast and the Columbia River Gorge pretty much anytime of the year, western Pennsylvania in the fall, and Charleston, South Carolina, in April. After months of perpetual sunshine in Tucson, I’m always excited to go out and stand in the rain when I get to the Pacific Northwest, to inhale that crisp morning air back east that signifies it’s football season, and to see the blooming of the dogwoods and azaleas down south.

Q – Do you consider this Contemporary Fiction or Romantic Suspense?

A – I hate trying to figure out genre. I’m a little afraid of the Romantic Suspense title because I definitely don’t write romance, and most of the men I know are turned off by anything with that term in it. I market under Contemporary Fiction and Suspense and Thriller. There’s a good love story involved in all my books, so I suppose it fits Romantic Suspense as well.

Filed Under: A Shared Fear, Writing

Time to get back to work!!!

October 16, 2013 By Lynne Leave a Comment

November is National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org), known affectionately as NaNo to those of us crazy enough to participate. The goal is to write 50,000 words in one month and perhaps complete that novel that you’ve always dreamed of. No self-editing, no rewriting, and no worrying about anything but getting the words on the page. I’ve done NaNo for the last three years and have completed it for the last two. Yup! That makes me a freaking winner!!! In 2011, I wrote Saving Emily from start to finish and blogged about the process here. It took several more months to rewrite and edit before Emily was ready for release. Last year, I went for completing the 50K word count and didn’t worry about finishing the book in the time given – it was too large a project for NaNo. Those words were part of The Embassy Guards. Getting all the words down on the page made me a winner.

I have no idea what the hell I’m going to write this year, but I need to decide pretty damn quick.

I have a couple projects in the back of my head, but I’d been taking some time off. My latest unnamed standalone suspense novel turned into a slog (for me) and I’m inclined to set it aside. I did this when I wrote A Shared Fear. I knew I had a good book but it wasn’t flowing, so I let it set and wrote Blood Link III – The Civilian. Focusing on something else took the pressure off me, and when I came back to A Shared Fear, it rolled right out.

With only two weeks to go, I’ll need to choose the project and lay out the novel. I can work blind, but I’ve found it’s better with NaNo to have a clue where I’m going. My list includes a plot outline and rough chapter schedule so I can meet my major plot points.

The other thing I need to do is alter my personal schedule. If I’m pushing the word count then I should warn my friends that I won’t be around as much, pay the bills in advance so I won’t forget, and warn the girl dog that she’ll have to be much more vocal in getting my attention to go out. I’m not telling the cat anything – she’ll use it against me.

Mr. Scott shall have to be forewarned also. He really doesn’t mind NaNo as my distraction often affords him the opportunity to practice his hunting and gathering skills. None of those skills are particularly healthy as he has a tendency to hunt between the closest fast food places and he gathers way too much Taco Bell than is good for us. This being said, I should also spend a little time in the next two weeks cooking a few things that can go in the freezer. And you should all buy stock in bag-o-salad since I sure as hell won’t be spending time making my own.

Oh!!! And names for my characters – yeah – I definitely need names. Something short and quick to type… like Ed or Sue…

Filed Under: A Shared Fear, Blood Link, Saving Emily, The Embassy Guards, Writing

The Freaking Process – The opening line

March 7, 2013 By Lynne Leave a Comment

Question: How do you know where to start? What makes a great opening line?

Answer: Damned if I know. I just sit down and hope for the best. If it doesn’t work out, I dump it and try again. Eventually, I either find the opening, or I pass out from holding my breath.

There’s a cute little poster floating around on the Internet that sums it up nicely: “Alcohol! Because no great novel begins with someone eating a salad.” I agree. That’s why The Civilian – Blood Link IV doesn’t begin that way… although, the opening was inspired by that saying.

     Dr. Carolyn Brinn stared at the plate holding a lump of tuna salad on a sad, limp, pale leaf of lettuce and decided it was time for a change. She’d picked up the plate only a moment before, but she realized she wasn’t interested in moving the plate from the refrigerated cabinet to her tray.
Enough with the healthy crap. I need cake.

Finding the opening for your novel is considered to be the hardest thing writers do. I try not to think too hard about it. If I do, then I also begin to think about how nice it would be to have a nice shot of Jack Daniels.

Some writers agonize for days over the opening, but I go back to the old adage of just tell the damn story. My process is to pick a point and go from there. Remember, it’s a draft. If you find a better spot later, you can adjust. I usually try to come into people’s lives when something is happening or about to happen. You shouldn’t be afraid to open with dialogue and it’s perfectly okay if the person speaking isn’t your lead character. Ideally, you want to try to give the reader a taste of who your lead character is without overloading them.

From Protecting Parker:

     “I’m sorry, Parker. Alex dropped off the keys three days ago, along with the divorce papers.” Colonel Adam Henderson looked at her with pity as he handed her the large brown envelope. “You were already headed back and there was no way to contact you. Katy and I went to the storage unit and… well… it’s a damn mess. He pretty much pitched everything in. Nothing’s boxed or bagged.”
With a dazed expression, Air Force First Sergeant Parker Cotton took the envelope from her commander, unable to believe Alex had dumped her stuff in a storage unit and filed for divorce while she was deployed.

The hardest thing you will do as a writer is take the first step of placing words on the paper. The opening lines are a commitment to the rest of the story.

I was hanging out in an online chat in which aspiring authors could ask a senior editor for a major publisher questions. One of the questions asked was “What do you hate to see in the opening of a story?”. The editor promptly responded that she hated the contrived meetings of people spilling drinks on each other or sitting next to each other on a plane. She says that those two meetings so bother her that she often has trouble getting past them even if everything else about the story and the author excite her.

I had already published A Shared Fear in which Evie and Joe meet on an airplane. Of course, my airplane is about to crash, but it’s still the dreaded airplane meeting. Interestingly enough, the inflight emergency is one of the first things that people bring up when we discuss the book. My readers loved the idea that the mundane became the terrifying. It sets the tone for the entire book.

Don’t listen to anyone else when you start. Just write what works for you!

Filed Under: A Shared Fear, Blood Link, Protecting Parker, Writing

The Freaking Process – Nurturing the Idea

February 17, 2013 By Lynne 2 Comments

Question: “I think I have a great idea for a book. What do I do next?”

Answer: Drink heavily and try to forget the whole dream of writing a book. Do it now before you get in any deeper and it becomes a damn nightmare!

An idea needs to be nurtured, turned over, pounded into the dirt, and generally chewed on for a while to see if it has merit. When I had the idea of the genealogist saving the ATF agent with her laser pointer (A Shared Fear), it made me giggle. But these two lead characters didn’t go away. I kept seeing this couple doing things together: riding in a car, having dinner, walking on a beach, and cleaning guns at the dining room table. I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do with them, but I was hooked on the idea of these two people sharing something.

One of my first checks to see if an idea will hold water is to ask three basic questions and just see what pops into my head.

1. How do these people meet or know each other?
2. What’s the catalyst for their connection?
3. What’s the threat?

Believe it or not, those three questions are often the make or break points for an idea. If I can answer them in a reasonable and coherent manner, I begin to take notes. My original notes for A Shared Fear read:

“An ATF agent and a genealogist meet on their way from Tucson to Portland.
They are on an airplane together and it almost crashes.
The ATF agent doesn’t know at the time that someone has taken a contract out on him and the hit man is waiting in Portland.
She’s being stalked by someone.
Maybe the same guy.
Things I need to know:
Is the connection between them the real deal or is it the OMG we’re in trouble and I’m needy kind of sex? (think Speed – find & quote about relationships)
If I set this in Oregon, where do I put them down so they have to drive to Portland together?
How do I get them from speaking in Portland to a cabin on the coast – plausibility? I want the coast. I want the tide pools. Use as the pause in the action. Use as final scene w/storm.
These can’t be kids. I think she’s retired AF and he’s a retired Marine. I keep thinking he’s a sniper, but what the hell was she? How do they connect? Damn it – who are you two?
”

A Shared Fear was my second standalone novel, and I still had no clue what I was doing. Not that I really do now, it’s just that I’m much less worried about the process these days.

If you don’t know everything about your characters at this point, don’t worry. Characters evolve with the writing of the book.

So, unless you plan on drinking heavily or walking away, I suggest you start asking yourself and your characters a lot of questions. And just for the record – these are only the first of a million questions you will ask as you write your book. Not the least of which is “What the hell was I thinking?”

Filed Under: A Shared Fear, Writing

The Freaking Process – The Idea

January 23, 2013 By Lynne 2 Comments

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.

Filed Under: A Shared Fear, Protecting Parker, Saving Emily, Stuck in Korea Time, Writing

Paperback Time!

August 22, 2012 By Lynne Leave a Comment

I’m really excited that the paperback editions of my stand alone books are now available on CreateSpace and Amazon. Thanks again to Dean for all the hard work in accomplishing this onerous task. Lord knows that I would have broken many things in the course of trying to do this myself.

Here are the links for each of the novels and I have also added these to the book page of the website. We’ll get to the Blood Link series soon.

Protecting Parker
Available from Amazon through the link on the left side of the page.
Also available in paperback at Amazon.
Protecting Parker is also available as a NookBook from Barnes and Noble. Click here to visit the BN.com page.

A Shared Fear
Available from Amazon through the link on the left side of the page.
Also available in paperback at Amazon.
Available from Barnes and Noble for the Nook.

Stuck in Korea Time
Available from Amazon through the link on the left side of the page.
Also available in paperback at Amazon.
Available from Barnes and Noble for the Nook.

Saving Emily is ready and Dean will be loading it for publication this week. This novel will also be available in paperback.

Filed Under: A Shared Fear, Blood Link, Protecting Parker, Stuck in Korea Time, Writing

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