Stories By Mina Khan: January 2012

I have the great pleasure of sharing with you an exciting debut author & my twitter buddy Roni Loren. She's shared amazing, insightful posts on her Fiction Groupie blog for a while now and I have learned so much from her. So here she is discussing recharging, inspiration & brain food....

I What Keeps My Writer Brain Fed

Roni Loren

Writing is one of the best jobs in the world. We get to wear pajamas to work, we get to lie for a living, and we get to lose ourselves in imaginary worlds (and sometimes get paid for it, lol.) But it also can be a mentally draining career.

There are days I wake up and I just don’t have the words or my characters aren’t cooperating or I have some deadline looming and I’m in a panic because I’ve hit a block. You can’t depend on inspiration to finish a book. Some days, that muse is simply not going to be there and you have to get your word count in anyway.

But, I have found there are some things I can do to help get a ticket back to that lovely, magical place where my muse graces me with his presence.

Music – I’m infinitely inspired by music. I can hear two minute song and get an idea for an entire novel. Plus, listening to music (usually loud, pounding rock music in my case) is soothing for the soul. Going to a concert is even better.

Cooking – I love to cook. It’s an activity where I find my brain relaxes. Even the simple act of chopping vegetables can quiet my mind like nothing else. It seems silly but it’s almost like therapy for me to prepare a meal.

Reading – This is a given. If I stop reading, my writer brain shuts down. My brain needs to be refilled regularly with words. : )

Yoga – This is a recent discovery for me, but I’m totally in love. I started going to yoga to build some muscle and gain some flexibility, but the experience turned out to be so much more. If I’ve had a really tough day or can’t seem to get my head together, a nice sweaty yoga session will usually fix it.

My Family – I’m a lucky girl. I have a wonderful husband and a four-year old son who never fail to bring brightness into my day. Without them, I would never have been inspired to write all my happy ending stories. : )

And if all else fails, there’s always chocolate and beer! (Not together though.)

What inspires you? What do you do to recharge?

And don't forget to check out Roni's new book CRASH INTO YOU.

Brynn LeBreck has sedicated herself to helping women in crisis, but she never imagianed how personal her work would get, or where it would take her. Her younger sister is missing, suspected to be hiding from cops and criminals alike at a highly secretive BDSM retreat-a place where the elite escape to play out their most extreme sexual fantasies. To find her, Brynn must go undercover as a sexual submissive. Unfortunately, The Ranch is invitation only. And the one master who can get her in is from the darkest corner of Brynn's past.

Brynn know what attorney Reid Jamison is like once stripped of his conservative suit and tie. Years ago she left herself vulnerable only to have him crush her heart. Now she needs him again. Back on top. And he's all too willing to engage. But as their primal desires and old wounds are exposed, the sexual games escalate-and so does the danger. Their hearts aren't the only things at risk. Someone else is watching, playing by his own rules. And his game could be murder.

BIO:

Roni wrote her first romance novel at age fifteen when she discovered writing about boys was way easier than actually talking to them. Since then, her flirting skills haven’t improved, but she likes to think her storytelling ability has. If she’s not working on her latest sexy story, you can find her reading, watching reality television, or indulging in her unhealthy addiction to rockstars, er, rock concerts. Yeah, that's it. Her debut novel, CRASH INTO YOU, releases from Berkley Heat January 3, 2012. Website: www.roniloren.com

Today I have the pleasure of hosting uber-talented fantasy authot Carol Berg. She's made me fall in love with stories, awed me with her writing...enough that I went to the Colorado Gold Conference just so I could meet her and hear her talk about stories. I left even more impressed than I'd arrived. So without further ado, here's Ms. Berg:

(Carol Berg and moi at the Colorado Gold 2011)

There is a set of standard questions that readers always ask authors. Where do you get your ideas? When did you start writing? How did you get published? How many hours a day do you write? Why are you so mean to your characters? We’ve answered them so many times, we don’t even have to think about them.

So here it is holiday time and one is thinking about family dinners and travel and New Year’s celebrations, as well as January book releases, and Rashda in her most unique and clever way, comes up with a question I have to consider carefully. Where do I get my inspiration to write? Inspiration, not ideas. What makes me sit down and tear my brain to shreds to come up with these convoluted stories? What gets me back in the chair only a few weeks after finishing seven years of constant deadlines. As I sit here and close my eyes, the notions that come to mind are kind of odd.

Trees. Dense evergreens or multicolored oaks along a meadow or sparse across a desolate hillside. Or colored gold with autumn and sheltering a path. Green seams in the rocky face of a mountain. Weather: lowering clouds or driving snow or a thin autumn day after the leaves have blown and the haze says a change is coming. Sun sparkling on frost covered tree limbs. Moonlit nights so bright that trees and fences cast shadows. The way the dust rolls up in the desert air. Unanswered questions. The Etruscan artifacts in the Penn Archeology Museum, talking about a sophisticated people who were inundated by the Roman Empire. Phrases like the last lighthouse or you can’t go home again or who is on the other side of the mirror. What does that mean? The glimpse of Billy Elliot grown up (at the end of the film by the same name) leaping onto the stage…no, really it is the expression on his father’s face as he looks on a wonder we can’t see… Books, certainly. Oh yes, I’m getting close.

Each speaks of one thing…story. What’s happening, who’s out there just beyond the place I can see? What makes a hard-bitten miner’s face express such awe when he’s watching a ballet? So that’s it. There’s a story in there somewhere, and I want to know what happens!

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Former software engineer Carol Berg never expected to become an award-winning author. But her thirteen epic fantasy novels have won national and international awards, including multiple Colorado Book Awards and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She’s taught writing in the US, Canada, Scotland, and Israel, and received reader mail from the slopes of Denali to beneath the Mediterranean. All amazing for one who majored in math and computer science to avoid writing papers. Her novels of the Collegia Magica have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, using words like compelling and superbly realized.