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Protecting Parker

How Much Can One Woman Take?

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Question: Why do you give your heroines so much trouble? Just how much can you reasonably expect one person to endure and still manage to do their job?

Answer: No more than anyone else. I know many who’ve managed to survive much worse. They may be a little battle damaged from life but they’re still in there swinging.

Apparently, some people are bothered by the number of issues that I heap upon some of my heroines. I’m a little bothered by it myself because, in some cases, I didn’t give them enough trouble to be realistic.

The idea that more than one or two problems at a time is too many suggests that you’ve been watching too many old Kung Fu movies. You know the ones. Twenty bad guys in black surround our hero dressed in white, and they attack one at a time or in pairs. The rest stand around like honorable and polite little thugs and await their turn at the hero.

Life isn’t like that. When bad things happen, there’s no referee to blow the whistle and signify the end of the play. The hits keep coming and all you can do is act like a good running back by keeping your legs churning as you try to drive forward to the goal line. In the real world, the goals are surviving and thriving.

Let’s look at a couple of my heroines and their problems:

Parker Cotton in Protecting Parker – A chain of events puts her in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’s wounded, two of her team die, and she returns home to a dangerous soon to be ex.

How many military members have wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time? Dozens of Army and Marine units have been on patrol in “reasonably secure” environments only to find themselves in pitched battles where team members were killed and wounded. Jessica Lynch’s supply unit took a wrong turn from the “reasonably secure” route near Nasiriyah, Iraq, and was almost wiped out in 2003. Air Force Security Forces in “reasonably secure” environments have repelled heavy attacks of their airfields and had team members killed and wounded.

How many of them came home to failed marriages? I once knew of a troop who returned from a six-month deployment to an empty house and a set of divorce papers on the kitchen counter. When he finally tracked his wife down and went to see his kids, her new boyfriend assaulted him and the troop wound up in the hospital for a week. While the numbers for divorce aren’t as high as some would have you believe, deployment issues are one of the leading factors in the divorce rate among military members.

Jenna Robinson in Vapor Point – Her fiancé died and she had to move back home, her buddy died on the deployment, she’s a trooper who holds it together by day but drinks when not working, and she’s got the mother from hell.

Maybe I could have let her be divorced instead of having the fiancé die, but hey, it happens. Your life goes to hell and you have to move back home. Take a look around. How many of your friends, or if you’re older, your friend’s kids, have had to move back home? Out of the seven houses surrounding me, three have adult children who are employed full-time but are at home due to divorce or money issues. How many military members whose units saw combat, lost a soldier? How many of those returning troops have some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that keeps them from functioning to their fullest potential?

And, if you don’t think a mother like Karen exists, then just go look at the narcissistic, spoiled, and obnoxious “it’s all about me” people on Facebook. I recently saw a post from a soccer mom that read, “We suffered through two hours of brutal heat just to watch XXXX score a goal. And now I have to figure out what to have for dinner.” And she was mild compared to many others.

Do the types of things I write about happen often? Of course not. But they’re a hell of a lot more plausible than a lot of the stories I’ve seen selling. Tell the truth now. When was the last time a spy washed up on the beach by your house? When was the last time you saw a bomb squad guy save a hot chick? When was the last time your neighbor in small town USA turned out to be an escapee from the Russian Mob? When was the last time you heard of a rich billionaire who actually wandered into a library, much less swept a librarian off her feet and took her to Monte Carlo? Oh, yeah. Those are plausible. Go ahead and wait for any of them to happen. Feel free to call me and gloat when it does.

Now forget my characters for a minute and look at your own life and the people you know. My characters aren’t burdened at all compared to the woman in your church who lost her mother last year to breast cancer, has a father with Alzheimer’s, and is raising her ADHD grandson because her drug-addicted daughter has been declared unfit and is serving time. Or perhaps you know the nice cop down the street who’s just back from his fifth deployment in thirteen years and has to go to work on midnight shift tonight, but he’s not going to get a lot of sleep today between the teething baby and the neighbor’s barking dog. And how was your day? Did you have to get up and figure out how to get the kids fed and out the door while hoping your old car would get you to work, only to have to deal with a micro-managing boss, over-sharing Susie, and Henry the perpetual sneezer and snorter who sounds like he’s hacking up a lung in the next cubicle? Did you come home to find out that the dog left you a present on the carpet, one kid has a note for head lice, and the other kid has a project worth half his grade due tomorrow and you forgot to stop at the store and buy whatever it was he needed to complete that project? Have you figured out how to pay for little Angela’s allergy shots, Sammy’s soccer equipment, and get the dentist to carry you for a month so you can take care of the crown you need?

How many people have you met who suffered multiple tragedies, or lost their jobs, or just couldn’t catch a damn break from the universe when they needed it? Didn’t it leave you wondering how they simply managed to go on?

If you’re reading a book where the character only has a single issue to resolve—you’re reading a fantasy. It’s as fake as those bad Kung Fu movies and the romance novels where the billionaire knows where the library is. I’m not faulting that type of escapism. I like a quick little flight of fantasy myself. But I don’t write that stuff. I’ve spent my life surrounded by the survivors and fighters and those are the people I write about. Real people, facing real issues and moving forward in their lives. If that’s not your thing, feel free to move along and read something else. No harm—no foul.

Now is the Time

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This is a partial repost of my blog from 2011 concerning NaNo. If you are going to participate – please take a minute and read this:

“The most frequently asked question is “How do I get started?” My answer is pretty standard and stolen from Nike, “Just do it.” Sit down and go to work. Tell me what you have to say. Don’t try to make it perfect – just get it on the page. There is no wrong way to do this!

There’s no time like the present to do that. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and it’s all about putting words on paper. Will you write a complete novel or story? Probably not, but it is a great way to get started. For those of us who participate, it’s about a commitment to thirty days of no excuses – we write. In NaNo it’s not about the structure of the novel – it’s about getting the words down.

The biggest problem people have is the opening. How do you write that perfect first sentence and paragraph. You don’t, so quit worrying about it. Start with whatever it is in your head that you feel the need to say. If it’s a novel, and a conversation is what you hear in your head – start there. Let your story take you where it wants to go. When I wrote Protecting Parker it all started with a “what if?” conversation. What if this woman came home from the deployment from hell only to find that her husband has tossed her out and become a violent dangerous man? I opened the book with that conversation and then told the story.

In doing NaNo, many writers don’t worry about creating a structured story, they write the vignettes that make up their story. So if they were writing the novel that might eventually become Demolition Man, they might write the individual scenes of John Spartan being frozen, then John Spartan being woken, perhaps that would be followed by Spartan learning to drive, or Spartan discussing the three sea shells. In NaNo, those scenes can be written with page breaks between them and no thought about order or connections. Sometimes, writers begin NaNo by writing a basic synopsis of their story and then describing their characters and locations before launching into the story.

I’ve learned some hard lessons about keeping track of my people and timeline since writing Protecting Parker and Blood Link. After several books, I know how I like to write and how I want to get from point A to point B. I have an idea for a story and I jot down my idea in a paragraph or two and go from there. I write a one-paragraph character sketch that includes a name, physical description, and the basics of who they are. Sometimes it’s only a sentence: “Parker doesn’t think she needs a personal life or family because she has her job and the troops she’s responsible for.” I refer back to these notes frequently – I swear I can’t remember eye colors to save my soul.

I’ll be entering NaNo this year trying to actually write my novel from start to finish in order. I have my character sketches and my synopsis. I even have a blurb – not a good blurb mind you, but a blurb! I also have created a time line for my novel and laid out the basic chapter structure. All of this is rough – I don’t worry about making this perfect.

You can click on the links here to look at what I’ve done creating a blurb, background, and synopsis in one document, and a timeline in a separate excel document.

You’ll notice that I’ve made a note that the chapter structure could change if I add chapters for the bad guy. It could also all go out the window mid-way through if my character has other ideas. Sometimes they say unexpected things and I’m forced to adapt by going back and making adjustments. However, during NaNo itself – I won’t be going back – only forward.

December should be called National Editing Month since that’s what most of us will do – if we don’t toss the whole damn mess. I don’t toss anything – just because it didn’t work here, doesn’t mean that you can’t use it.

So why do this? Published author Heather Rae Scott always reminds me, “You can’t edit a blank page! No one writes a perfect sentence, paragraph, or chapter the first time. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or all the stuff that gets in the way of being creative. Just tell me the damn story!”

So all you wannabe writers need to take this golden opportunity to get off your butt and tell me the damn story!”

The Freaking Process – The opening line

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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!

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.

Paperback Time!

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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.

Available now in Paperback!

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I’m pretty excited to announce that you can now get Protecting Parker in a paperback. I know how much some of you prefer the feel of a book. The book is available on Amazon. Dean is now busily working away at getting the other stand-alone novels ready to go. I’ll let you know when they’re available.