What fires my Mojo?

As part of the launch of our Romantic Suspense Down Under website (www.romanticsuspensedownunder.com), Helene Young, Bronwyn Parry, Shannon Curtis, DB Tait and I are blogging each day for a week and doing giveaways. Here is my blog from Tuesday:

 

When we launched this website we asked readers what they wanted to know about us.

The replies were interesting: from, ‘Always enjoy hearing what inspires you all as authors. What fires your Mojo? What gets the creative juices flowing? What moves you enough to want to express it in your writing, and share it with the world?’ to ‘I like hearing how you come up with murders and keep everyone smiling throughout the stories:)’

Helene, Bron and DB might have different answers, but I thought I’d share what gets my creative juices flowing. Often it’s a spark, a thought, the “What if?” that occurs when I read an article or look at a certain location or overhear a conversation.

Some years ago I was eating lunch in the food court of the five-storey-high atrium of the Anzac Square Building in Brisbane. Light shone through the glass roof. Five balconies hung from the five stories. In the middle of the floor stood a tall metal tree, rectangular in shape, leaves sharp and coppery in the light.

For the other diners there it was a place to eat. For me, it was the perfect place to kill someone. Not literally. And not then. But the idea wouldn’t leave me, and when I was writing Until Death, I knew how I could use that idea.

So for me, it’s the challenge that gets my creative juices flowing. The challenge of conveying the story that’s inside my head that needs to be told. I love plotting, love weaving clues and red herrings into the story, love creating characters that will make my readers cry, laugh and fall in love with them.

The challenge of bringing all the plot threads together in the end; the challenge of making my readers care about my characters; the challenge of writing and re-writing and making every word count so the suspense is enthralling and the romance heart-wrenching and ultimately satisfying.

The challenge of experiencing the primeval pull of Carnarvon Gorge and conveying that convincingly in Dangerous Deception; of creating a villain in Fatal Flaw whose story was incredible but still making it credible to the reader; of having the very sensitive issue of paedophilia at the core of Grievous Harm and getting a review saying “it was handled well”.

And the answer to how do I “come up with the murders and keep everyone smiling throughout the stories” is by, hopefully, making the reader care so much for my characters that, no matter what terrible events they are forced to confront, she knows the love that is growing between them will see them triumph. Because no matter how complex the plot, how dastardly the villain, how suspenseful the story, the passion and the love and the caring between my hero and heroine must be the glue that binds all those other elements into an un-put-downable story.

So thank you, Janet and Helen, for reading romantic suspense and asking the questions that made me discover, once again, the joy I find in writing this wonderful sub-genre.

Please go here to post a comment and be in the draw to win an ebook (and a drinks cooler if you live in Oz).

This is the entrance to the Amphitheatre at Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland. When you walk through that split in the cliff you walk through the mountain until you come to where part of the mountain has fallen in to form a huge amphitheatre with a small opening at the top where sunlight filters down. It’s like being in an ancient cathedral. Awe-inspiring.)

Carnarvon - ladder to Amphitheatre tunnel entrance (2)

Guess whose shoes?

Had a fantastic time at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference. It was lovely to catch up with old friends and make new ones and find out what the writing industry is up to from the viewpoints of publishers, editors, agents, and just as importantly, authors.

I took some happy snaps at the Friday night cocktail party, but strangely, most of these came out with a very pink tinge. I was beginning to think it was some magical RWA magic until I went into the foyer and took a couple more happy pics. Some of these are on my facebook page, including this one:

Now, who do you think would own these delightful items of footwear? Here are the damsels whose only distress was knowing that the party was over and they had to go back to their rooms. Or out to dinner. Or to the bar …

Yes, it’s Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books fame, fabulous author and Conference Convenor Shannon Curtis (no relation, I promise), and NY Times bestselling author Cherry Adair.

Here is Shannon in her Conference Convenor/Crisis Warden/is-everything-in-this-cocktail-party-really-pink? mode:

Shannon Curtis in crisis mode.

Want to know about romantic suspense?

Join me at the Romance Writers of Australia national conference at the Gold Coast in August where Bronwyn Parry, Karlene Blakemore-Mowle, Shannon Curtis (no relation but a great gal) and I will be on a panel called Love in the Face of Danger: Romantic Suspense, with Helene Young moderating.

The blurb for the workshop is: Find out how far these writers have gone in pursuit of their stories, their tips on finding unusual sources and methods of research, and what publishing avenues exist in Australia for Romantic Suspense stories. Learn what makes Romantic Suspense different to Crime novels with love stories, and how to balance romance with suspense. Uncover which careers work best for the heroes and heroines and if there’s room for ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

If you’ve read our books, you’ll know that although we all write varieties of romantic suspense, there are definitely differences in the way we approach this sub-genre. From kick-arse to heart-rending, you’ll find it all. I have to confess that I feel my books are very gritty in not only subject matter, but in the style of writing, which probably explains why I have a strong male as well as female readership. Perhaps the men want to be like my heroes and the women fall in love with them like the heroines do 🙂 I also love writing complex plots covering a variety of crimes.

When my next book, Grievous Harm, is published, it’s going to be interesting to see what reactions I get from readers. My hero and heroine go through an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but that’s the way the story wrote itself. Sometimes I have no idea where my stories come from and why they twist and turn they way they do but still come out so cohesively in the end. No wonder my very good friend Sara Bennett said she didn’t know I was so devious 😉 Thank heavens she was only referring to my writer’s mind and not my personality lol

After two weeks with the flu I’m very happy to finally be back blogging and organising WriteFest – and soon doing some writing 🙂