Fall into Romance

While the beach season heats up in August, the reading never stops. The Romance Reviews will conduct their Fall into Romance promotion and contest Sept. 1-30, and I plan to take part. Keep your eye on this site for a giveaway date for THE PRINCE OF VAL-FEYRIDGE. Click on the link at the left for more information on the upcoming contest.

In the meantime, my reading list has grown to include what I'm waiting for in September: Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Victoria Abbott, plus my October must-read from Rick Riordan!

Giveaway!

BLOODSTONE will be featured on the Sizzling Summer Reads site (http://www.theromancereviews.com/event.php) on Tuesday, June 24th. 

For a chance to win an e-copy, hop over to the contest and correctly answer a trivia question. 

(Hint: the answer is on this very blog. Just navigate over to my Bloodstone page: http://helencjohannes.blogspot.com/p/bloodstone.html)

If you're still filling out your summer reading list, check out works by the huge number of incredible authors participating in the month-long event at The Romance Reviews site.

Hooks--Not Just for the Opening Page

What keeps a reader reading?

Story and character, obviously. If a reader is engaged in the story, she/he wants to know what happens next. But how do authors hook the reader into turning those pages well past bedtime or the end of lunch break/commute?

The answer is scene and chapter hooks.

The strongest hook comes at the end of a scene or chapter. The obvious hook is to end a scene or chapter by leaving a character literally or figuratively hanging by his/her fingertips off a ledge. Of course the reader has to know how the character gets out of this one. Then, the savvy writer starts the next scene with some other character, making the reader consume that scene before being rewarded—and re-hooked!

For instance, consider this from BLOODSTONE:

Rees halted and stood in his stirrups, head turned like a hound scenting the wind. “Krad,” he said. “There’ve been Krad through here.”

An unearthly howl rent the air. Stones cascaded down from above, pelting the ground, the horses, Syryk’s head. He reeled in his saddle and saw stars before Rees grabbed his reins and shouted, “Ride!”

Not all end-of-chapter/scene hooks need to be that dramatic. All they have to do is create a tantalizing question in the reader’s mind. Here’s an example from THE PRINCE OF VAL-FEYRIDGE:

A battered leather bag with many pouches thumped onto the table, inches from the letter. “What in the name of the—!” Arn sputtered, turning.

            A pair of slanted cat’s eyes, brilliant blue but red-rimmed and swollen, pinned him to his stool with a glare of pure defiance. “‘Tis your healer I be, m’lord, for once and no more, for ‘tis my fault you be injured, and ‘tis my duty to make you well.”

These end-of-chapter/scene hooks are the bread and butter of pacing.

However, not all pacing is created or driven by the end of a scene/chapter. The opening lines of a chapter/scene can and should hook the reader too. One hook sets up a story/scene question in the opening lines, one that the reader—and the character—will learn the answer (or part of it) by the end of the scene.

Here’s an example from my WIP, THE LORD OF DRUMARWIN:

Lady Vyenne of Tumin sat before her mirror and regarded the parchment lying on her dressing table. Her name on the outside was writ not in the flowing script she’d longed to see when she heard she had a message from Druemarwin, but in careful lettering made by one who found ink and quill unfamiliar. Not Naed, though she could’ve expected a missive from her youngest son by now. No doubt her husband thought it was from the child she favored and had ordered the letter brought to her chambers straight away.

But he was wrong.

And so was she.

If this chapter opening works properly, the reader should want to know who wrote the letter, what’s in it, and how she will react.

Another technique is to set up a goal for the character in the opening lines. What does he/she hope to achieve in the next minutes/hours? If the reader knows what the character is determined to do, the reader can ‘keep score’ as the character bobs and weaves through whatever obstacles are thrown into his/her path:

Vyenne paused at the foot of the stone staircase where guttering torches had nearly surrendered to the night. She’d come down from the living quarters with the wolfhound at her side and her winter cloak concealing her traveling clothes. One last obstacle remained on her path to the stables where her maid waited—the chamber in which her husband conducted the affairs of court. She guessed he might be working late this eve, and the occasional murmur of voices issuing from the open door confirmed that. If she could time it correctly, she’d traverse the pool of light thrown into the corridor before her husband noted her presence. Gathering her resolve, she strode forward.

In this scene, we want to know—does she make it and, if so, at what cost?

If we can master these types of chapter/scene hooks—both at the beginning and ends of scenes/chapters—our books will be the ones about which readers rave, “I couldn’t put it down!”

Guest blogging 'across the pond'

Starting Wednesday, May 28th, I have the privilege of visiting a fellow Wild Rose Press author in the same Faery Rose line as my books. What makes this visit even more special, Hywela Lyn lives in the UK! I am a total Anglophile, so I'm thrilled to be online in Wales. Please stop over and leave a comment: http://hywelalyn.blogspot.com/

Also, check out my new pages! I've added a page for excerpts for each of my books. See the links on the right side of the page for taglines, blurbs, and excerpts. Let me know what you think.

Sizzling Summer Reads "Beach Party"

Believe it or not, summer is less than two months away. Time to gear up for summer reading either in print or on e-devices. What better way to make your choices than to check out The Romance Reviews Sizzling Summer Reads contest and giveaways running June 1-30: http://www.theromancereviews.com/event.php

What's on my reading list? REBEL MARQUESS by Amy Sandas, LORD OF DARKNESS (a Maiden Lane book) by Elizabeth Hoyt, Mia Marlowe's PLAID TO THE BONE and STROKE OF GENIUS, and THE SPY WORE BLUE by Shana Galen to name a few. I can hardly wait--for the warm weather and the great books!

“Where do you get your ideas?”

As a fantasy romance author, I’m often asked this question. My response is—do you want the quick answer or the deep answer?

In the case of my current release BLOODSTONE, the quick answer revolves around these two photos and panning for gold.

The first picture is the Rock of Cashel in Ireland. This site dates to St. Patrick, and the roots of the place go deep into unwritten, ancient history. I was mesmerized by the empty windows and roofless walls. The image became Drakkonwehr, an ancient, ruined fortress with deep, mystical roots.

The second picture is from a spring day in a mountain forest. I was entranced by the quality of light and the promise of the opening in the trees ahead. It became the Wehrland, a place of danger and mystery, teeming with the potential of magic. Both pictures accentuate the light vs. dark imagery of the story.

The panning for gold was something my father did for several summers in Alaska. His stories and pictures laid the groundwork for an early scene of my hero panning for, not gold, but the ultimate prize of gem hunters in the Wehrland, bloodstone—petrified dragon’s blood.

That’s the quick answer. You’ll notice it covers setting, a hint of imagery, and the title object. Not a thing about the people who are, after all, the heart of a romance.

That would fall under the deep answer.

I wanted to tell a story about trust, about ignoring the illusions we surround ourselves with and seeing into the heart of a person—because that’s what true love is really all about. We might be attracted by the illusions, but the truth is what either deepens the relationship or drives us away. That meant I was going to tell a Beauty-and-the-Beast story, and because my mind works in mysterious ways, it was going to revolve around a snatch of scroll lore my characters rely on at various points in the story: “True hearts and no fear, against a mage’s power, hold dear.”

With a setting and a kind of story, my characters popped up, as they are wont to do, and carried on ‘living’ out the adventure. I just had to write it down.

BLOODSTONE - Spring Deal on Amazon

I don't know how Amazon makes these decisions to reduce prices on Kindle books, or what the exact pricing formula is, but BLOODSTONE is currently reduced to $4.61 for the Kindle edition.

Maybe it's a Happy Spring deal?

We can hope, anyway, after the winter we've had--the winter that never seems to end. I'm looking at a snowscape today, on April 16th. Our high won't even reach the average low for the day. My rhubarb's coming up and I hope it doesn't freeze out. About the only thing we can do is wrap up warm, hunker down inside, and read books.

Give me a shout out if you're as tired of winter as I am.