The Writing Process Blog Hop
Thanks to Elizabeth Delisi, for tagging me in The Writing
Process Blog Hop. Read about Elizabeth Delisi’s writing process here.
At the end I’ll be tagging a few other
authors, so please do follow those links to their blogs and interviews.
Click on any of the book covers below to
purchase them or go to my website at Kim Cox, Author.
What am I currently working on?
That’s a loaded question. ;)
I’m working on two different books right now and have about eight
books in different stages of completion and ideas for about three more series. However, my main focus is on The Wedding Crasher. This book will be
the third book in the “Lana Malloy Paranormal Mysteries” series. Lana is a
Psychic Private Investigator who's paranormal abilities grow with each book. In the first book,
Haunted Hearts, included in the Enchanted Holidays anthology, Lana could only see, hear, and talk
to her great aunt (a ghost), and she could only hear other ghosts. Blurb: Will Lana Malloy solve the twenty-year-old double murder of her great aunt and her great aunt's fiance by Valentine's Day? If she can, they'll spend eternity together; if she can't, they'll be stuck as Haunted Hearts for another year.
The second in the series, Get
Out or Die! is included in the One
Touch Beyond anthology. In this book, Lana is faced with an angry ghost. She
learns of an ability she has that makes it imperative to keep alert and stay in
control at all times. During this case she learns she has two more abilities as well: she can see a person’s past life and before the end of the book, she has a premonition
of her own future.
In The Wedding Crasher, my
current WIP, Lana is marrying the love of her life who she met during the first
case in Haunted Hearts. The night
before the wedding she has a psychic dream about a wedding and at first, she’s unsure
if the dream is of her wedding or someone else’s. She decides to go through
with her wedding. During her honeymoon in Cape Cod, Lana has another dream
about a young woman getting married, then it switches to her tied up in an old
building. The next morning the woman in her dream is on the front page of the newspaper
and it’s a kidnapping. The woman’s life
will depend on Lana finding her before it is too late. Her new abilities are psychic
dreams and visions.
Oh well, I said that was a loaded question . . .
What makes my writing distinctive?
Authors are artists and artists have great imaginations. My husband, for example, is a chainsaw artist. He can look at a log or a piece of wood and see the art hiding there as it takes the shape of a bear, an Eagle, an American Indian, a wind spirit, or whatever it is meant to be. I’m the same with my stories. I can have a thought about something that will soon take the shape of a story. It just has to be written.
Why do I write what I write?
That’s another loaded question.
I have many story ideas in many different genres—from a historical romance to modern day suspense and mystery, a time-travel, and
paranormal mysteries. I've always had a wide range of interests, and I also
read many different genres. Right now I’m reading Jean Plaidy’s Plantagenet
series. I don’t have any ideas for that
time period, yet, but I’m not promising anything because I’m fascinated with
this series.
Mainly, I write whatever I’m writing at the time I’m writing because that is the story that is screaming at me to be told at that time.
How does the writing process work?
I've just recently started writing again. I took a few years off while I pursued a college degree, so I’m a little rusty. But I’m back now.
I’m still finding my process as it seems to differ with each book
I write. With my first book, Suspicious
Minds, I sat down and I wrote the whole book from beginning to end; then
later I edited, researched, character developed, and whatever else the book
needed. I didn’t know much about writing and just played it by ear. I really
enjoyed that type of writing process but it caused many rewrites—about five
full rewrites where I chopped off chapters from the beginning (about six). In the
last edit, I killed off one of my main characters because he was taking the
story away from my hero and heroine. I had to rewrite the whole second half of
the book after killing him off.
In the books I’ve started since that time, I at least try to have
a synopsis written with a general idea of where I want to go with the story. With
some books I have fleshed the story out more fully with character development
and outlines. The problem for me is that if I know too much about the book I seem
to lose interest. Now I’m having a problem finishing the books I’ve started. I
have a hard time just writing like I did in the beginning and would like to be
able to cut the editor off and write through from beginning to end without
editing. I think that’s why I wrote the novellas, Haunted Hearts and Get Out or Die!. I was able to write without being tempted to edit before I completed
them.
What next?
I plan to complete The Wedding
Crasher first, and then work on the romantic suspense, All This Time, a book that was three-quarters completed when I
started college. There is so much information in that book that I believe it may
be two books. After that, there’s a post WWII mainstream book, Shattered Hearts—the first book I ever started
writing. Then there’s a mainstream time-travel, two more romantic suspense
books, a historical western, and two sweet romances, and that’s not all. That’s just the ones started. I also have
ideas for a paranormal witch series, an “end of world” type series, and a
science fiction book. I would also like to write more Lana Malloy Paranormal Mysteries.
And now I’d like to tag the following authors. Please visit their
blogs to read about their writing processes:
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