Oregon, sunshine, and warm weather; time to catch up on work.
The Oregon roll has been full of sunshine and warm weather as we broke from the high tree covered mountains in Washington to high plains, gentle hills, and low rivers of Oregon. Our first two days in Oregon we tried something new. We booked our stay with Boondockers
welcome a group of like minded people who allow RVs to stop and stay at their place for a day or a few. This was our first experience with the program and it was very positive.
Our next goal in Oregon is to see Crater Lake so there will be many pictures in future blogs, but for now it's all about reading writing and getting some work finished up.
Writing has been sp0ratic over the past few months with long bouts of getting it done while
we recharge batteries both physically and mentally. As we began to unwind in Washington a lot of projects began to come into play. I love writing. I enjoy the process, and sharing my tales. It takes many hours to write even a novella and get it ready to go to print. This summer has been unique in my writing journey not just because of our trip through Alaska but because of the many multi-author projects I have been involved with. The Practical Pretender is my second book o the Book Club series. It's fun and tiny bit silly in some ways as all of the women at the book club meet up with a purple-haired matchmaker who has just been granted Fairy God Mother status. If you haven't read these you will get a grin out of everyone of them.
It is a little different working on multi-author projects. You get a lot of homework. Fortunately, most of that homework involves reading really good books and keeping the series on track. Being able to work with fun, interesting, and professional authors makes these projects loads of fun. Along with the Book Club series I've had the joy of writing more of the Ornamental
Match Maker series. This Christmas in July round gave us several more reads and a lot of fun. Keeping up with this series is only going to get crazier as more books and even more authors join the fun. After all, who doesn't love a little Christmas?
So why do authors do multi-author projects and are they all the same? Many group projects are written in a shared world. A fictitious setting where everyone needs to keep things in line and connect characters, places, and events; at least to some extent. One of the tricks in writing like this is that you need to connect the tale without telling each other's stories over and over again. One great thing to this is POV or point of view. Just like in everyday life each person sees events from there perspective. When you read in a series like this you will see little details that might seem to be a little out of wack. I think these little foibles in books are much like accounts of family gatherings from different people. They are never quite the same. One of the shared world series I have the privileged of being involved with is the Bride Herder series that
launched in May. This clever series was the brain child of my friend George McVey. George asked the question what would happen if a failed rancher inherited a matchmaking business. Along with everyone else we authors are finding out. It is so fun to see how this chaos gets turned around and I hope you'll join in the fun. My book in the series will arrive on July 30th but there are many more books you can find to read. The stories are light-hearted and the interaction with the authors is fun. It's a good thing we authors like each other in these sort of projects as well because sometimes it is harder than wrangling cats to keep everything straight.
There is actually another series like this coming your way on Friday the nineteenth of July with the launch of Lottie's True Love. This series will run a little slower but is gearing up to be a delightful series with some of my favorite author friends.
Brides of Pelican Rapids will be a mail-order bride series that my friend Lisa Prysock ran by me earlier this year. I loved the fact that we both were discussing our own ideas for mail-order bride tales and soon planning had begun. Along with this multi-author series I will also be launching my own small town mail-order bride saga with Brides of Needful Texas.
Sometimes it is just fun to play in your own sandbox all alone.
Writing is an odd sort of gig. You are always working and you can seldom ever shut down your brain. The process of planning, organizing, and writing is constant but when you see the story starting to come together it's like waking up all over again. Character's begin to come alive on the page and you get wrapped up in their lives, adventures, and romances as if meeting a new friend. It also puts demands on your life. Rolling through the USA as an authors is inspiring but it also adds to the requirements. One requirement is connectivity at our campsites. Because we primarily boondock in wild places we need to double check that we have a good or at least decent cell signal. This means our check list for finding a camping spot has an extra box. We need to have three things; 1. enough space 2. a clear way in that is wide enough and stable enough for a 36ft RV 3. Cell service. So far we have done well so far with being able to tick all boxes but it does make things a little more interesting. This is why it is all about the rolling and writing. I hope you'll stick with us this summer as we travel and bring some smiles into the world with the books and blogs. Over the next few days I'll be working on Newsletters, blogs, books, covers, uploads, blurbs and much more, all while sitting in the National Forest
