February, the month of romance. Personally, setting a day aside in a month when lovers are supposed to acknowledge each other in romantic terms is silly. There, I said it. Bite me! My son thinks Hallmark is the smartest company on the planet. They have a poem for every day of the year (birthdays, you know) and now charge upwards of three or four dollars to say what a smart man can say in a few words. Let’s not forget florists and supermarkets who peddle their rose bouquets and planters. Oh, and add jewelry stores, because nothing beats a diamond to show how much you love the woman in your life. And it’s always the woman. How much advertising do you see for the man? Not much. Are we that conditioned? The point is, shouldn’t we show our affection to those we love daily? My husband didn’t like having certain days to buy me things. Granted, he was raised in a country where there is no Valentine’s Day, so it was never that important to him. He did buy me flowers and a card, and we somet...

February has long been associated with love, and Valentine's Day is celebrated in a number of countries, including the U.S., Mexico, Argentina, Britain, France, Australia, and Canada among others. Strangely, it's origins lie in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility rite involving the sacrificial killing of animals celebrated on February 15. The name was reportedly changed to St.Valentine's Day in the fifth century by Pope Gelasius I to honor Christian martyrs by the same name. Literary links to the ancient festival and modern celebrations include Shakespeare's Julius Caesar , which opens during the Lupercalia in Rome, and Chaucer's fourteenth-century work,  Parlement of Foules , written to celebrate romantic love and the first anniversary of King Richard II's engagement. He wrote, "For this was on seynt Volantynys day, Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make." ("For this was on St. Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh th...

February is Love Month on The Blood Red Pencil. Of course, it’s Valentine’s Day month. I have to admit I’m not the mushy type. I don’t leave little hearts or xoxo on my notes, never did. I don’t do squiggly hugs either, though I do write the word when I want to hug someone in person but can't. Hugs. I love my family and love my friends. I have friends I’ve known for almost my whole life. We stay in contact and still care what happens to each other, maybe more than ever now that we’re older. We’ve been through marriages, divorces, births, serious illnesses, and death, but our bonds are still strong. They’re family and in some ways closer because we knew each other through grade school, teen years, through schoolgirl crushes, loves, college, travels, and beyond. We were silly and stupid and crazy together and did things I’d never admit to my own children. One made me promise I wouldn’t tell her son that she drove 100 miles an hour down the beach road with me riding shotgun. Of c...

In past years, talking about love has been fairly straightforward here at the Blood-Red Pencil blog. We mostly examined love from the standpoint of romance from assorted angles. This year, the theme of love has gotten a little more complicated, thanks to politics. Where is the love, when finding even kindness is a challenge? Maybe we need to look at the different aspects of love and how we practice it to give us some insight -  our team will do that this blogging month. For now, let's think about it in the context of our writing. What do we do to give our book characters some love? From a Facebook prompt by Gary Chapman, I applied his five love languages to a few of my characters and gained some interesting insights. I'll write more about that this month, when I review his book, The 5 Love Languages , for #FridayReads. How about love of place? Do you treat your fictional settings like a character, exploring the moods and nuances as though the location were a character...

This top post of 2016 was first published on February 4. We wouldn't want to neglect real life (a.k.a. non-fiction) in our month of romance from the male perspective, so we are delighted to run an excerpt from Succulent Wild Love , a new book co-authored by SARK with her beloved, Dr. John Waddell . The happy couple share their advice on how we can all keep the love and romance in our lives even when there's only one piece of blueberry pie left.  Believe You Can Create a Joyful Solution An Excerpt from Succulent Wild Love Most people spontaneously look for solutions that meet everyone’s needs. We want to please the people we love and want to please ourselves. It’s when we get stuck that we start to look for a compromise or think someone has to sacrifice. To create a Joyful Solution, you start with the attitude that everyone can get what they want. That is the biggest factor. Starting from that approach is so powerful because when you believe that everyone can get wh...

10. You’re able to work in your pyjamas. I don’t, but I gather others do. Pyjama on, my friends. Go bravely into the flannel.  9. You don’t have an office job. But you do, really. If you don’t think of writing as a job (pyjamas or not), you’ll never get anywhere. Those manuscripts don’t write themselves. There’s no app for that.  8. You don’t have to make polite conversations with your co-workers. Although I consider ‘liking’ people’s posts on Facebook as the equivalent.  7. You HAVE no co-workers. Usually. But partnerships happen. Rejoice in the real-person contact. Compare and contrast your pyjama pants.  6. Lunch time is at your discretion. As is its content.  5. And duration.   4. You can (occasionally) receive praise for your writing from strangers. This means far more than praise from people you know. Odd, but true.   3. The best praise is royalties. Best, best, best. Yes, I know people say it’s not about the money. I disagr...

February is the month of “Love” and we’ve been discussing this theme in our writing all month. Love is an emotion. I have found that emotion is the KEY to rounded character development. If you write Sean loved Mary with all his heart , do you “feel” that love? Do you identify with him? Empathize? No? How can you “show” emotion without “telling” your reader what to feel? Here’s an exercise to put yourself “in the mood,” so to speak: • Close your eyes and think of the word Love and remember a time when you felt that emotion. • How is your body reacting? What are some of your physical reactions? • What are you thinking? • What do you see? Any specific colors? What color is love? • Is there a certain smell that goes with the feeling? (lilacs, Old-Spice aftershave, Neco Wafers?) • A taste? What does love taste like? (cinnamon, licorice, scotch?) • A sound. What does love sound like? Write for ten minutes based on your feelings without using the word “love”. Here’s an exce...

This sentence came up in a discussion about our February theme: Sex in novels is just scenery; it rarely moves the story forward. Of course, I took up the rebuttal since all my books have love scenes. Notice I said “love scenes.” How can a reader feel the emotional content if there is none? How does a writer define sex between her two protagonists? How does a reader respond? Let me elaborate by explaining an eye-opening experience. I entered one of my romantic suspense books in a contest a while back. One requirement committed everyone entering to judge another genre. I chose Erotica because I’ve written erotica under a pen name. I was not then, nor have I been since, a steady reader of the genre, and wow, was I surprised by the material I judged. I could see why I was not a breakout sensation among erotica writers. I write basically the same type of character-driven/plot-driven (yes, a book can be both) stories in my erotica novels as I write in my romantic suspens...

English literature is scattered with timeless tales of love: Heathcliff and Cathy, Scarlett and Rhett, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, and of course, Romeo and Juliet. But what of that other love story - hidden in the background of each of these tales, and present in every book ever written? I speak, gentle reader, of that epic love between a writer and her manuscript. It is a great love, but, like all great loves, not without pain.  Day 1 My most dearly beloved Manuscript; Where have you been all my life? I love you. I love your characters, your plot, your humour. I love me for having the imagination to create you! Working on you will be a joy. I look forward to every minute we're going to spend together. Welcome to my life. Day 15 Dear Manuscript; Thanks so much for showing me the way out of that corner I wrote myself into, although if you hadn't insisted on that monkey showing up I wouldn't have been in the corner to begin with. Let...

Venus and Cupid by Lambert Sustris It’s almost time for Valentine’s Month and once again, we plan to focus on the romance genre. Well, we might even get a bit spicier than that and explore the topic of sex in literature. Let this be a GRAPHIC CONTENTS warning of things to come, readers! I've been thinking a lot about romance novels over the past few months, though not exactly by intent. Researching a mystery series, my male protagonist took over and the plot began to take a decidedly sensual turn. He was so fixated on his heroine that I decided to write a standalone novella dealing strictly with the romance he was having with this new-found love. I realized the real stories in the mystery books wouldn't get told until their love life was a bit more settled. As I wrote scene after increasingly torrid love scene, I started thinking a lot about human sexuality, sexual objectification, and the differences between romance, erotica, and pornography. I have an education in fine ...

Since tomorrow is Valentine's Day, I thought it would be fun to share some thoughts on love from one of our frequent guests at The Blood Red Pencil, Slim Randles . Slim writes a popular column, Home Country and offers it up just for pure enjoyment. In the week before Valentine’s Day, Marvin Pincus had two new customers for his (free of charge, of course) love advice and fly-tying consultation services. He tied up a midge for one client, a salmon streamer wrapped in lead for another, and wished them well. This was his busy time, of course. He knew another would come in mid-May, in desperate anticipation of June weddings.  “Marge,” he said, sipping coffee and looking out at the snow, “I think we need a vacation.” Marjorie Pincus smiled. They’d both been retired and on permanent “vacation” for years now. “I’ll go if it means I don’t have to make the beds or do the dishes,” she said. “The only thing is, what if someone needs the fly tying love advice service while we’r...

’Tis the month of love (or heart disease); take your pick. We writers tend to have a similarly tempestuous relationship with our manuscripts, so I’ve written this list: O, Manuscript, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways…(just ten, don’t panic) 10. You’re new. You’re shiny. You’re brimming with bright, complex characters. 9. Those empty pages aren’t terrifying. They’re error-free. 8. You are my excuse for a computer browser history which can include undetectable poisons, eighteenth century table manners, last year’s Kentucky Derby winner and five different red velvet cake recipes.  7. I’m never alone. I have characters talking inside my head. (that’s normal, right?) Yes, they can wake me up in the middle of the night, but I'll take that over them not talking at all. 6. I now have the ability to type and eat simultaneously. 5. I can take all the lessons I learned from previous work and apply them to you . 4. I’m writing a new manuscript. I deserve chocolate. 3. ...

images.google.com I am obsessed by the sound and touch of words. I like Old English comical words like mugwort or marshmallow . I like hushed words spoken in whispers, like neath and ghoul . I like common everyday words like horn and jump and dog . I feel words nestled in my mouth, tucked into my cheeks. I smell them and taste them and lick every last drop from the corners of my lips. Then I let them drip like sweet spiced oil off my tongue. Words like nut have a short sharp crunchy feel as I say them, and when I say honey I can feel the goldenbrown goo thick at the back of my throat. Or the word crazy : the bee-tickled zz sound juxtaposed with the terrified eee sound of the y, the harsh C next to the soft liquid R – these are contradictions that make you doubt the location of your mind. I am enveloped in the sweet glut of words. I jump into them as though they are piles of autumn leaves. I roll around and listen to them crinkle and crisp under my broad soft hips. Or I dive...

Writing is: • A clandestine love affair • An approach-avoidance relationship • A black hole • An elusive butterfly • Giving birth • Filling the well • Creating a rainbow • Completing the unfinished • Wisps of smoke • A pact with the devil (or an angel) • Building a sandcastle • Reviving the dead • Walking in someone else’s moccasins • Joy • Despair • Hate • Love What does writing mean to you? ------------------------- A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams , is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream , has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild . She teaches writing and edits, blogs , and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.

Quis Cetera Nescit? (Ovid:  “ Who Does Not Know the Rest?” ) Some years ago, I was invited to speak at the St. Andrews University Science Fiction and Fantasy Society. I had so much fun, I started regularly attending their meetings - and thereby hangs the tale. During the week of Valentine’s Day, the president of the Society gave a talk on the subject of Sex and Romance in SF/F Literature. The presentation featured a selection of readings from works by Robert Heinlein, Robert Howard, and Anne Rice, among others. Given the fact that many of these passages were uproariously funny when read aloud out of context, I was more than a little taken aback to find myself represented on the agenda by a passage from Spiral of Fire , the third volume of my Garillon trilogy. In this scene, Margoth, the novel’s leading lady, seduces her beloved and leads him off to bed. The chapter ends thus: She traced the sharp-cut line of Serdor’s lips, stoking downward to the base of his throat, wher...

THE LOVE SCENE Ah, February—the season of the Valentine.  When all thoughts turn to love (or lust!). But with books and stories, we almost always have a “valentine” moment.  No matter in which genre you’re writing, a love scene is almost always included, be it Thriller or Mystery, Fantasy (good grief but vampires seem to have nothing else to do!), Mainstream, etc., etc., at some point our hero gets a breather from his travails and is rewarded by some physical love. And, by golly, most of the time he deserves it! Or should—if not, you may have missed a critical element in your storyline and character development. I’m not talking erotica or the graphic sex of Urban Lit, but in just about every other story genre we still need some love. And we don’t have to write actual “sex” either. Until the past decade and a half or so, the physical aspects of Category Romance were alluded to (“he took the ribbon from her hair” and we break for the next scene), or at most stopped with kiss...