What's in a name?

Does anyone get stuck on names? I hate names. Names have history attached to them. Call a character Susan and then remember Susan in Grade 4 who turned into a hysterical shrew on picture day because you were wearing your hair the same way she was. Nope, Susan can't be a good guy. And maybe you end up picking Sandra but reader number 587 had a huge fight with a Sandra over a boy when they were 16. It's a pathway frought with danger.

Sometimes, when I'm totally stumped on names, I use movie star names in the first draft. A handsome character who uses his dark good looks to charm the women might be Pierce Brosnan. A sexy physicist might be Susan Sarandon. Her nerdish professor research partner might be Jeff Goldblum. And then if I'm lucky, as I'm writing, a name will come to me. If I'm not lucky I spend days going through baby name books, trying to find the right combination. If all else fails I take my girlfriends out for dinner and we split a bottle or two of wine and don't come home until they are all named.

I used to work at a medical laboratory, processing the lab requisitions as they came in. I kept a notepad beside my desk and anytime I found an interesting name I wrote it down. I also use the phone book, a couple of medical directories that I have, yearbooks and anything else that has a name in it.

Place names are hard too. I think I found a new solution though. I used to use my Atlas or the internet. But I just recently came back from holidays on the Oregon coast, and before we went, we sent away to all the tourist boards in Washington State, Oregon and California for their information booklets. We got these great hotel and bed and breakfast guides that list the names of all the cities and towns that hotels can be found in. What a gold mine! There are some seriously cool place names. And they don't have to stay in Oregon, for example. How about a novel set in Serendipity Alberta? Or Sacred British Columbia? That can set a mood before the book binding is even cracked!

Anyone else have any other ideas or suggestions? I'm always looking for new ones.

By the way, it was my first time on the Oregon coast - amazing beaches and breath-taking scenery. Someone should have told me about it sooner.

Judging a Book by its Cover - Part 3.

And then came this one. Book number five. I loved this book. I think the writing and the story were some of my best. And I had a great time researching it, including getting to do a ride along with the firefighters in Calgary.

So when the book was done, I have visions of the cover in my mind. Bright, hot, reds, oranges. I mean it was about an arsonist, a fire fighter, a fire investigator and a fire hall.

And you can see that I didn't get what I imagined.

So, I was brave and I argued my point. After all, hadn't they told me ages ago that they would listen to my comments and take them into consideration? And the did. They listened, they took my comments into consideration and then they went ahead with the cool blues. Drat! (I was actually thinking a worse word.) The funny thing is, the picture is exactly what I expected. It's just the colours - I really wanted to bright and vibrant colours to reflect the action inside.

In the end the publisher wins. And in the end, that is okay. They have a marketing and publicity department that knows way more about this stuff than I do. And they have invested a lot of money in my, publishing five of my novels so far and getting them out there into the world.

You know, what I really think is that an artist of any sort has to decide what is most important to them. People speak of integrity and prostituting yourself or selling out. But would arguing about a cover design really be worth not having my novel published? No, not in my mind. For me, it is about getting my stuff out there and continuing my publishing career. If they publisher thought another city would have been a better setting, I probably would have changed it. I know, I can hear half of you gasp out there. But I don't believe there is right and wrong (or is that write and wrong) - you have to do what is right for you. And it's not about money - Lord knows it's not about money - it's about reaching my goals, which is to be published and build my reputation as an author. Yours might be different and that is okay too.

So there you go, don't judge an author by their covers, they really don't have much of a say in what they look like after all.

Judging a book by its cover - Part II

The third book, Sins of the Mother. To be honest, I didn't LOVE this cover, I just liked it. It kept the theme of the eerie colours and slightly skewed image. But to be honest, Sins of the Mother didn't really have much to do with the theatre, so it was hard to find a cover image that fit with the series. So in the end the use of a flashlight (torch), such as would be used by an usher in a thatre, was used. Nothing that really threw me though.

Because....

Along came the fourth Book, Flirting With Disaster. I loved this cover. I remember the first of my friends I showed it to got totally freaked out - well that did it for me! It was vibrant colours, really stood out from the crowds and we all know what kind of terror the image of a clown can cause some people.

It's such a good image that my publisher even have it on the header of their website. http://www.severnhouse.com

But into every life a little rain must fall...

...And you know I'm a writer...You know you're going to have to wait for the conflict. We have to build up to it, create the anticipation...So tune in soon....

Can you judge a book by it's cover?

This was the first book I had published. House Report. It's a murder mystery set in Calgary, with our main characters working in and around live theatre. There's the cover.

One of my big questions when I signed my deal was what was going to happen with the cover design. Would I get a say? And then early one morning I got up for work as always, sleepily wandering into the kitchen to get the coffee started and then turned on my computer. There was an email from Severn House. With an attachment. A JPG attachment. And it said, here's the cover art for House Report, please let us know what you think.

Wow. I cried. But then, I'd been so emotional since I got my contract that I cried over everything. But I loved the cover. The colours were vibrant, the design striking and even offered a bit of foreshadowing into the story. And someone even commented that it was metaphorical too: the curtain rising on this new mystery series as well as my new life as a published author. Cool!

I emailed the photo to everyone I knew for their opinion and then I woke half of them up by phoning them and telling them to go and check their emails. Everyone loved it. And when I did an interview on Shaw TV and they projected it on a huge blue screen for background, it looked amazing!

So this was great, everyone was happy. I emailed back the art department to let them knew how happy we all were.




Number two, Evening the Score. It was totally cool again. Eye catching, colour slightly off to let you know there was something myserious going on inside. A story about a piano competition.

Strangely, speaking for foreshadowing, one of my friends asked me at this point what would happen if I didn't like the cover art? I said I don't know, but I loved what they were doing, so I was happy I couldn't answer that question.

So there we go, two books out and me and my publisher are working happily together! Even cooler, though, was that since I got great reviews on House Report, we had a great quote to put on the cover of this one. Oh yeah, I cried! (LOL)

Does this fairy taile continue? Do the author and her publisher live happily ever after? Tune in tomorrow for my further ruminations, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!

Oops I forgot someone!

I don't want anyone to feel left out!

Urania in Calgary...on Halloween.

Sometimes you get BSP.

After all, it is my blog!

Bonnie and Evening the Score in Montreal

BSP. It's not a bad word. Blatant Self Promotion. Take out the word blatant and it's a fact of life. An author has to promote themselves. Otherwise who is going to know about your books. But sometimes we come up with some fun ideas. This was one of them.

We asked people to take pictures of themselves reading my books and send them to me. Here they are. If you take a photo and send it, I'll make sure to post it too!

Carol and Evening the Score

Tio's Restaurant in Mexico loves House Report!

As does Alex in Mexico

We're still aiming for more cities - if you have copy of a book - send a photo!

Summer in the City

Ever try and get inspired when it's well over 30 degrees outside, there is not a hint of wind and you haven't slept well in three days.

How about when the air conditioning at your office has broken down and you've been sitting in an office that is 32 degree for the last two weeks.

And don't forget, you're probably on a deadline.

So where does the motivation and/or inspiration come from?

For me, I think the motivation is easier sometimes. There is the standard motivating factors we all share, mortgage, bills, food in the fridge. On top of that there is always that pressing voice saying "you got published, you've got your chance - don't lose the momentum now!". That's a big one for me.

Inspiration is hard. My brain is asleep right now. Or at least moving really, really slowly. So now I have to open up my computer, avoid any file with the word solitaire in it, and come up with something witty and brilliant that my publisher will love and want to publish in six months or so. Doesn't always happen. But I do not believe in writer's block.

So what do I do? Well, I have a rule: five pages a day. Come hell or high water. I mean, this may be a creative endeavor, but it is also a job, so I have to be disciplined. And so I write until I have five pages. Maybe the next day I'll trash all five of those pages. Maybe I'll find a little germ of something worth keeping. Maybe it will all be great (in my mind - wait until the editor gets at it!) And if I can't do that, I'll write five pages of my character's history. But I will write. And sometimes I'll play solitaire too. Which is probably one of the reasons I haven't slept well for the last several nights. You have to stay up really late if you're going to write five pages and play solitaire.

Even later if you're now writing a blog too! Uh-oh!

So you want to be an author? There's my entry into the world of blogging. Something I said I would never do until I stumbled across some interesting blogs that I actually learned some things from. And then I thought I might be able to share some things too. So here I am. I'm here to learn, to teach, to share my experiences and hear about yours.

And what should we talk about? Well, I'm not real big on sharing tons of my personal life. But I am an author with five books out there (Kate Carpenter Mystery series) and I've had two agents under my belt (one I had to fire) and I know a lot about the highs and lows of reaching your dream and the discovering everything that is on the other side of that dream.

Maybe we'll talk about book news, what's happening out there, who's getting the deals and who is not and why we aren't all JK Rowling.

We can talk movies too - what do you think about adaptations of books into movies? How about our heros in Hollywood (both north and south). My current heros are Paul Haggis and Paul Gross - Paul Haggis for Due South, Million Dollar Baby and his oscar winning Crash, and Paul Gross for making the decision to stay in Canada - despite many lucrative offers to go to the US - and just recently doing the biggest deal ever for a Canadian made movie - $21 million, I believe, and soon to start production in Alberta. But who else is out there?

Books and writing and authors and movies and screenplays and television are all very interesting topics and I hope over the days/weeks/months/years I'll have lots to say and some people will have lots of comments to add!