Plot Monkeys

Today I’m giving away a $25.00 gift card to Borders/Waldenbooks, along with the winner’s choice of an autographed book from my backlist.

All you have to do to enter today’s contest is post a comment below, then check back on Sunday to see if you’re this week’s winner!

And just for fun . . . what books are on your “to be bought” list?

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A NOTE FROM CARLY
And a shameless plea from Bailey and Buddy:

Wheatens on Parade is an event that shows off wheatens and earns money for Wheaten Rescue. I entered Bailey and Buddy. If you would like to vote, EVERYONE/ANYONE gets one free vote. After that, if you want to donate money to Wheaten Rescue, you can buy votes. Info below.

In the meantime, here is Wheatens on Parade!

If you click on each picture, they come up larger.
Where to find BUDDY - 5th row down from top far right
5th row up from bottom far right and middle

Where to find BAILEY - 6th row down from top far left
4th row up from bottom far left
Its fun just to go through, but I’m asking you to vote Everyone has a FREE vote.

HOW TO VOTE:
Email: wheaten68-parade@yahoo.com
and in the subject - vote
and in the email - just write - One free vote for Buddy D or Bailey D (pick one)
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IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT WHEATEN RESCUE (I DID):
Additional votes: $5 each
Voting address: wheaten68-parade@yahoo.com
Paying address: wheatenshop-win@yahoo.com
(contact me if Paypal is not an option for you!)

Thanks!
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As I was walking through Target this past week, I strolled down the aisle with all the Easter candy and was amazed by just how much of a variety there was of chocolate, jelly beans, and other Spring candies. A lot of the candy was seasonal and just for the upcoming Easter holiday, which means it’s only made once a year. And some of those candies are my absolute favorites, and knowing that I can only get it once a year makes it very difficult to pass up! I’m not talking about the normal Nestle and Hershey candies all dressed up in Spring/Easter packaging that you can get any other time of the year. No, I’m talking about Cadbury Creme Eggs, Marshmallow Peeps that are shaped like cute little bunnies or chicks, Russell Stover Raspberry Cream eggs that are to die for (there are also coconut cream, maple cream, and vanilla cream), Speckled Robins Eggs, and many others. Of course, knowing that in less than a week all these seasonal items will be forever gone, a few did go into my basket – not for my girls, but for ME.

I’m not a big jelly bean fan, but I was amazed by just how many varieties of jelly beans there were on the shelves. Traditional jelly beans, Starburst jelly beans, Hot Tamale spice flavored jelly beans, Lifesavor jelly beans, Mike ‘n Ike jelly beans, and Hawaiian Punch jelly bean. It was truly unbelievable! Then again, I came across an article recently that stated that Americans consume 16 BILLION jelly beans at Easter, and if they were lined end to end, they would circle the globe nearly three times! That’s a whole lot of jelly beans!

Marshmallow Peeps really aren’t my thing, either, but they sure are cute. And, they’re a popular item with other kids (big and small!) out there. Last Easter, more than 700 million Marshmallow Peeps were consumed worldwide! And surprisingly, they’ve been around since 1953!

Then there’s the ever popular Cadbury Creme Eggs, which I find very hard to resist. This little egg has a thick milk chocolate shell with a white and yellow fondant filling designed to resemble the yolk and albumen of an egg. What a great gimmick – and it tastes good, too! Over the years Cadbury has come out with other creme eggs – such as caramel eggs, chocolate creme eggs, little bite-sized creme eggs that come in a cute dozen, and the delicious orange creme egg that tastes like the best of orange and chocolate together. Oh, YUM!

Now let’s talk about my personal favorite Easter candy: Russell Stover Raspberry Cream eggs. Every year I wait impatiently for these delicious cream eggs to hit the store shelves around Easter time. I absolutely love them. Other than orange and chocolate, I have to say that raspberry and chocolate is my second favorite candy combination. The raspberry cream inside of this chocolate egg is whipped into a light, soft “fluff” of cream that almost melts on your tongue. ::sigh::

I think I’ll go raid my secret stash for one of those Raspberry Cream eggs right now.

So, do you have any favorite Spring/Easter candies that you look forward to every year? If so, what are they?

The journey that has been my new kitchen is complete! I can’t quite manage to put together a book video, but I did work on this little musical view into my kitchen. The wood is cherry. The granite is called “cosa esmerelda” and the tile is tumbled marble with glass inserts. The appliances are stainless steel. The floor is a laminate, though it looks and feels like tile (except softer on the feet and warmer to the touch.) I think I covered just about every material known to kitchen builders, LOL!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I have to say that the whole process was relatively painless. And I mean “relatively.” I don’t like having people in my house. I don’t like having chatter in the background that isn’t chatter from my family…chatter from workers must be listened to, while family can be tuned out, LOL!

But I’m really pleased. There are actually a few little things left…the table you see in the pictures is my very old table and I’m waiting for the new one to come in. I haven’t found any bar stools that I like. The bulk of the contents of my kitchen are still in boxes in the dining room and I’m slowly weeding through it all and throwing out stuff I don’t use and finding a home for the stuff I do.

Oh, and that last picture is of my favorite feature–the InstaHot. Love that sucker. It gives you instant boiling hot water for instant coffee and tea. Can you say, “love, love, LOVE?”

I was going to run this video with a contest, but instead, Janelle and I have switched contest weeks and I’m running a very special WEEKLONG contest starting on Monday of next week. Trust me, it’ll be worth stopping by every day next week to swing into the jungle.

And speaking of contests…I know I’m behind mailing some things out. Between the kitchen, my flu and the general upheaval that is my life, I’m a slug. I admit it and apologize profusely…but those of you who are waiting will get a little something extra for your trouble. I promise!

I think we’ve talked on here about real plants vs. silk plants, and I confessed at that time that I have an utterly black thumb. I routinely kill anything that grows in pots, and it’s some kind of miracle that the beautiful plant Carly, Janelle & Julie sent me as a housewarming gift is still thriving in my kitchen.

So, naturally, I, the plant-killer, have decided to plant a vegetable garden.

Maybe it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

I need a hobby. In recent years, I’ve found myself having room for only two things in my life: writing and family. There hasn’t been much else, and now, with the deadlines and the pressures of reinventing my writing career, the writing seems to be in my head 24 hours a day. Considering I’m writing about a brutal serial killer, that’s not necessarily a place I want to be all the time.

I have heard other writers talk about how desperately they need other “mindless” hobbies to just take them out of the writing world for a while. I know Sue Kearney, who guest blogged here not too long ago, does belly dancing and ice skating, which is fabulous! I, unfortunately, have enough belly for four dancers, and couldn’t stand up on ice skates even before the nerve damage in my right leg made it utterly impossible.

Read back a few months…I’m about the most uncoordinated person on the planet. Or at least on this blogsite.

So I started thinking of what else I could do–something that would get me outside, allow me to just shut down and focus on breathing fresh air, enjoying the quiet, doing something positive. Sharing some quiet time with Bruce. And I thought of gardening.

My mother always loved working in her yard. I can still see her wiling away an entire spring afternoon pulling weeds and planting geraniums. She found a lot of peace and solace in it, which is exactly what I’m looking for.

Ergo, Miss Black Thumb is going whole-hog into the gardening thing. I think I might like it–I always enjoyed the little bit of flower planting I did in Florida, before I realized that the sun basically fried any flower that dared to show its head after May 1. The weather here is much more conducive, I have a beautiful big yard and the perfect spot for a big garden. Produce has gotten so darn expensive and preservative-filled, and I am already salivating at the thought of pulling fresh tomatoes, spinach and peppers off the vine for summer salads.

There’s one more big problem: I have no idea how the hell to grow a garden. I’ve been searching online, I researched at Lowes, and had a ball with Bruce and the girls picking out all the veggies we’ll grow. We sat at the kitchen table and started a bunch of different plants–fresh herbs! Yum! But then as we actually read the directions on the packet, we realized, umh, we have about 2 dozen broccoli seedlings. They take up a good couple of feet each. Ditto the squash. And the melons? Don’t even get me started. I think when we figure out just how much space we actually have in the ground, we’re going to be growing green beans, lettuce, zucchini and broccoli on my kitchen counter. lol!

I’m picturing this:

But I’m afraid I’m actually going to get this:

Aside from just the general “we don’t know what we’re doing” there are other issues. We’re clueless about how to keep the animals out. We bought the earth-friendly sprinkles and sprays, and organic fertilizers and bug killer. But does any of that really work? I’m actually thinking of chicken-wiring the whole thing because we live on the edge of the woods where plenty of critters live. Of course, the deer can just bend right over…sigh.

So, I guess I had a twofold reason for posting this today. First: Help! What do you know about gardening? Any tips, advice, do’s or don’ts you can offer?

And second: if you’re a writer, do you have any hobbies intended solely to pull you out of your fictional world and into the real one every day?

I am of the “I’ll try anything” PR wise point of view. Especially if it’s a) free and b) I don’t have to travel.

Myspace came first and once I got my Myspace page going, it sort of became self-operating in that I never went out and sought friends, they came to me. This worked well for me because to this day I can’t figure out how to find people on Myspace. It’s easy to log on and OK friends. I fall down on answering mail there, but it’s getting better. I’ve begun to do bulletins and add some of our plotmonkey blogs on my Myspace blog to bring readers into our jungle world. It’s going well.

One day on my Carly Phillips Yahoo Fan Group (another thing that I fall down on and it’s really not active which I feel bad about), someone asked me if I’d join Facebook. So I did. For a long time, I would forget to log onto my Facebook site and when I did, I’d be confused about what I saw there. Someone sent me a Zombie invitation. HUH?

So I went about my business on Myspace, virtually ignoring Facebook. Thank goodness they send those annoying email reminders (which you can disable but I don’t or I’d forget about the site altogether!) … and then, recently a funny thing happened: I began to get more FRIEND requests on Facebook. They were from other authors, so I did what any smart author would do, as I became their friend and was allowed to see their profile, I’d check out their friends – which is more manageable on Facebook than Myspace it seems. For some reason people have less friends on Facebook than Myspace – maybe because Facebook is more about “real” friends? I don’t know.And I’d add them to my Friends.

I learned that Facebook can be fun. I’ve been “toilet papered” and “trout slapped” and someone threw a sheep at me. I can throw a sheep right back. Time sucking? You betcha! But still fun.

But then I realized something else: ALL MY FACEBOOK FRIENDS are other authors! Or most of them. Not readers.

Which leads me to a question:
For authors, is Facebook more of a social/personal site and Myspace more of a meet strangers therefore more of a PR site? For readers/bloggers who are in some way familiar with these sites, what do you think the answer is?
Which site do you prefer and why?

Congratulations to…
CASSIE B! Message # 62! You’re the winner of Leslie’s Jungle Madness Friday.

Write to me at: author@lesliekelly.com so I can get your prize out to you.

Now, here’s a few laughs for the upcoming Easter holiday…

Oh, the stories I could tell you about Kathy Carmichael, today’s guest blogger…there was that time we drove to Atlanta for Celebrate Romance and it took us about thirteen hours to make a seven hour drive because we kept stopping to shop! There’s the one and only time I ever lost my daughter in a shopping mall and Kathy was there to help me search even though we’d been CONVINCED we were sitting in front of the only exit to the playground. (We were…my daughter was channeling Houdini that day.) And there was the time…wait, maybe she doesn’t want that one published publically. Well, suffice it to say, Kathy and I have been friends for a grand long time and we’ve had our share of adventures. In fact, next week, we’re breaking down and going to the beach to check out hotels for our local chapter’s guest speakers. And restaurants. It’s a dirty job, but hey, someone’s got to do it.

But in the meantime, I’ve got her here today to talk about endings. Thank you so much for stopping by, Kathy, and with such a fabulous topic, too!

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HOW TO GIVE YOUR READERS THAT AH! ENDING

Your job as a creator — of books, stories, confessions, or movies is to evoke an emotional response in the reader or viewer. That’s our job. Everything we write, regardless of genre, is about simply that. Emotion.

If you fail to give your readers an emotional experience, then they will not be fully satisfied with your creation.

Aristotle said: “The end must be bothe inevitable and unexpected.”

We’ve all heard it said that the ending sells the next book. Why is that a truism and how can you make sure the reader feels satisfied?

Have you ever read a book where you got to the last page and, while all the loose ends had pretty much been tied up, you still looked for more because the ending was too abrupt?

Have you ever read a book where outside forces intervened to solve the protagonist’s problems? That’s not nearly as satisfying as a story in which the hero must figure it out himself.

Have you ever read a romance novel where you felt the hero and heroine had Divorce Court in their near future?

These reactions usually are the result of less than satisfactory endings.

ENDING DO’s

1. RESOLVABLE CONFLICT. Remember to set up your character’s conflict so that it is something that can be resolved without seeming impossible. The firefighter/arsonist analogy sounds intriguing on the outside — but if the character truly is an arsonist with the full set of psychological problems that accompany this illness, then the romance with the firefighter is going to fall flat.

2. KEEP THE FOCUS ON THE MAIN PLOT. If you are writing a mystery novel, then the mystery must be the primary focus of the novel. The same holds true if you are writing a romance novel. The romance is always the focus or main plot. An important point to keep in mind is that if you’re writing a romance, then everything in the book is tied to that focus. This means that the external plotline (and in a romance this is more like a subplot) must be resolved before the romance is resolved. This puts the emphasis where it belongs, on the developing romance between your hero and heroine.

3. MAKE USE OF THEME AND SYMBOLISM. Books in which the ending of the book relates to the book’s theme resonate with readers. Your ending should sum up the changes the character has gone through as well as tie in the book’s theme. Symbolism can be a particularly powerful devise to illustrate how a character has come full circle. Even if the reader isn’t consciously aware, symbolism can pay off well in terms of reader satisfaction.

4. DEMONSTRATE THE CHARACTER’S CHANGES. A suggestion author and editor Alicia Rasley makes is to look for a concrete event or action a character can take to show the set of changes he’s been through.

5. FORESHADOW YOUR ENDING. What you want to strive for in your ending is a sense of the inevitable. That somehow, based on who your characters are at the beginning, this ending and only this ending is what had to occur. Foreshadowing is an excellent tool for creating the sense of inevitability.

6. REWARD THE READER. Once you’ve resolved the plot complications, and your reader has followed you to the end of the trials and tribulations that kept your protagonist from achieving his goal, the readers deserve a reward. Your readers deserve to know that whatever future problems he encounters, he’s now better able to deal with them. They want to see the payoff.

In Classical Greek Structure, they refer to this as the ‘after’ world. You want to allow your readers at least a page or two to explore their new world.

Common Mistakes Made by New Authors

1. THE ARTIFICIAL PLOT CONTRIVANCE. An artificial plot contrivance near the end, so that the hero must rescue the heroine thereby learning that he loves her (or that she’s ill, dying, etc) can be less than satisfying. Remember, any plot complication should arise from earlier plot events. If they don’t directly relate, they don’t belong in the story.

2. RECAP OF THE PLOT KIND OF ENDINGS. Sometimes authors find there are story events occurring outside the viewpoint characters’ experience that must be recapped so the reader will know what happened. You may want to avoid having your detective sit down and explain what all the clues mean. If at all possible, find a way to trickle the information into the story as it progresses rather than having the end of the book plot recap.

3. DEUS EX MACHINA. The reader wants to see the characters overcome obstacles themselves. Outside agencies (God, Fate, Fairy Godmothers) shouldn’t swoop in to solve your characters’ problems.

4. LOOSE ENDS. Tie up all the dangling loose ends. Unless you are writing a serial type of story, the reader expects that all of the loose plot threads will be resolved by the end of the book.

Give your readers the emotional punch they are seeking. By making sure your ending delivers what was promised early in your story, you’ll find your readers eager to come back for more!
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Julie here again…writers, do yourselves a favor and head over to Kathy’s website to for great writing advice. Wasn’t today’s workshop fabulous?