I am very excited about this one because it concerns an initial story idea I got from watching local news reports about the presence of the FLDS religious compound and the number of illegal aliens and drugs coming across the border south of Phoenix. After spending some hours on the phone with Big Mike talking about our characters, what they would be for a living, and how they would become embroiled in border and religious activities, we worked on putting together an outline, a timeline, and characterizations we could both follow along with.

That kernel of an idea I had so many months ago turned into a real nail biter of a suspense novel with, surprisingly, very little romance. This is something new for me. Yeah, when I started writing before Big Mike’s input, I was already adding romantic scenes. When the collaboration truly started, these scenes no longer made much sense so they were all deleted, for the most part. But I’m not complaining; I think the end result is incredibly good. Another bonus? Without the sex scenes this is one book I can be comfortable sharing with DMIL and my pastor’s wife.

Hopefully the next news we have regarding Whispers of Innocence is good news regarding publication.

Now, who will play the part of the heroine, Micki Lewis, in the movie? She looks like Scarlett Johansson so that’s a good choice. And the hero, Drake Elliot? I picture him looking like Dr. House but Big Mike modeled him after Sam Elliot.  That actor is a bit too old to play the part but Hugh Laurie might be perfect…

I use Google Alerts to let me know any time something is posted on the internet with my name and/or the titles of my books. My present this morning was a review of Veil of Deception from You Gotta Read Reviews. Shira, the reviewer, gave our book a “You Gotta Read” rating – the highest possible. She says:

Veil of Deception made me feel as though I were a part of this close knit community. I was the neighbor that got to peek into the lives of my neighbors sight unseen. I got to call them a best friend, a sister, or a brother. I felt their joys, pain, and anguish. I wanted to meddle and give my opinion every once in a while. I loved Danielle. She was such a strong woman that lived with a secret that haunted her for ten years. I felt that Hawk needed to stand up to his sister in law and tell her what he honestly thought. I enjoyed this book because it flowed. Even though there were two authors, it was very seamless. I enjoyed being a resident of Spenser Lake even for a few hours.

For Big Mike and I, this review is confirmation that our long months of work on Veil of Deception paid off. Yes, it was difficult at time, and even frustrating, but the experiment was a success. I know one of Mike’s biggest fears is that the reader would be able to tell the difference between our two writing styles but this was unfounded.

Now if we can just get our current collaboration, Whispers of Innocence, finished we will both be happy! If anything, I think it will be even better than Veil of Deception but we’ll leave that up to the readers.

Little Candy

He made me realize just how different our minds think, and the difference in our writing styles.

I sent out a blanket email asking for help with a tag line for my next Champagne Books release in October, FULL THROTTLE. I included a blurb about the book to give everyone an idea of what it is about:

Samantha Roberts partners with her cousin to run Dr. Doug’s Mobile Dyno, a motorcycle testing and performance tuning business. Spurned by an ex-fiancée and resolved to taking care of her aging father and his medical problems, romance is the last thing she’s looking for while expanding her business is at the top of her priorities list.

Along comes opportunity in the form of Linc Montgomery, a tough, business-savvy, ex-Harley racer and new owner of Full Throttle Custom Cycles in Phoenix. Linc is used to having gorgeous women fall at his feet. When he meets Samantha and agrees to contract her dyno services, he quickly realizes she isn’t one of those brainless bimbos he normally dates before carelessly tossing aside.

The challenge is on for Linc as he sets out to seduce Samantha just to prove he can. However, he doesn’t plan on the interference of his ex-wife and her ex-fiancée – both of whom serve to make him realize that along the way, his ‘love her and leave her’ seduction scheme causes him to fall head over heels in love. But it isn’t so easy to convince Samantha she belongs to him.

Now, Big Mike thought this was just a terrible blurb. However, he writes suspense novels, not light romances like this is supposed to be. He wanted to hear something about the heroine’s inner demons and how the hero would slay her dragons. Yes, Samantha’s got some inner demons, but that’s not the focus of this book other than how it relates to her sex and love life!

His suggestions were very apropos for his books, but not for this one. And it also made me realize that since I am targeting purely female readers, they are looking for something in a contemporary romance that is far different from what a male reader would look for to pick out a suspense novel. My women beta testers loved the blurb and the whole idea of the book; men not so much.

Anyway, I’ve added one more sentence to the top of the blurb: “Phoenix is hot, but the bikers are even hotter”. And so far it looks like the tag line is going to be something along the lines of “A sexy romp of full throttle seduction leading to slow burning love” or “When Linc embarks on a full throttle seduction of Samantha, the last thing he expects is love to throw a wrench in the works “. I’m still working on it, though. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Big Mike took exception to the guy’s comments because he didn’t think it was realistic. Now maybe it’s because Mike was raised as a Southern gentleman and I was raised around men in an auto parts store, but we had a slight difference of opinion. Big Mike contends that the hero would never have stood by while this dialogue was going on, even if the woman was a complete stranger. Alas, but not all men are as chivalrous.

I can think of several instances where I’ve encountered a real jackass. I’ve had an ex-boyfriend slash my tires and throw a knife into the headlights on my beloved Chevy Camaro Berlinetta while I watched. In a previous post, I related how a manager of mine in the auto parts store pounded his fist on the counter mere inches from my face. I’ve been the target of many a raised fist (that luckily never made contact due to the man’s better judgment kicking in at the last minute). I’ve head crude comments when I was walking down the street, such as “Hey honey! Looking good! Want to come for a ride with me?” I’ve seen rude hand gestures, heard smoochy noises, and been subjected to unwanted touching and groping.

In none of these cases did some knight in shining armor come to my rescue, even when there were other men around. Nope, I was on my own.

I have to think I’m not the only one. Ladies, tell me if you’ve encountered a similar circumstance in your life.

He’s right.

But that doesn’t mean I needed an oh-so-gentle reminder.

Since I hate to be a slacker, I decided I’d better get busy posting.

The good news is that we are going forward on a brand new writing collaboration. As Big Mike likes to say, I am on top this time. So I picked the place: Arizona’s southern border. And my heroine: an investigative journalist. An the premise in a broad sense: drug smuggling and a fanatic religious cult based on the FLDS (the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, in case you haven’t heard of Warren Jeffs – who is now in prison – and his polygamist offshoot sect of the Mormon religion).

We are currently still hashing out the plot and the outline, but both of us are excited about the premise and the possibilities for action, suspense, and romance. I think you will be surprised at the hero Big Mike came up with, and I’m certain you will be more than a little surprised at what happens by the end of the novel.

So here’s to another successful writing venture, Big Mike. Cheers (clinking cyber champagne glass)… Now get off my case!

According to Ellen, “the reading team RAVED about this book“. Guess it turned out pretty good, after all!

Now Big Mike and I are beginning to think about a new story line for our next collaboration. I told Big Mike that this one had to take place in Arizona, since VoD is set in his home state of Virginia. I guess the ball is in my court now. I’m leaning toward a plot line that revolves around the issues which are part of being so close to the Mexico border. We’ll keep you posted as to what we decide on.

In the meantime, here is the cover art I created to give you a better vision of our work. Please stop by the synopsis/excerpt page to read a bit more about Veil of Deception.

She’s has some physical difficulties and doesn’t have the ability to do all the things we used to do together. We never caught much, yet it was always a very special time we shared together. I loved watching her gracefully meade her line into a small pool. Not just because she looked hot in those leg waders and jeans. It was the patience with which she address

ed the sport. My strategy was to make three or four casts in a potential pool, move to the next opportunity, and repeat the process. She would fish the same area for twenty minutes. Why the difference? It relates to the difference in patience between men and women. By moving in and out of many pools, I optimized my potential of finding one with a hungry trout. By focusing on one pool, she insured if one were there, it would see her fly again and again until maybe it became interested. Which is the best strategy? It’s likely somewhere in the middle.

I think the different degrees of patience between men and women carries into many facets of our lives, including books. You see, when I read a fiction story, you have to grab me fast. If you don’t get me in one or two pages, it goes in the “forget it” pile. I’ve talked to women that would hang in there for 30 or 40 pages before discarding it as a sleeper. Since I’ve become a published writer, I’ve been exposed to a bunch of stories I would never have given a chance in the past. This opportunity resulted in an epiphany of why most of the fiction I enjoyed in the past was written by men. The stories could have been great, but they didn’t grab me fast enough. I recently found two exceptions that have forced me to expand my horizons.

I began reading a novel by Kimber Chin, fully expecting to toss it aside after two pages, but it never happened. The novel, called Invisible, is about a female character named Maeve, that in my view, suffers from self induced confusion about her worth as a person, and as a woman. What grabbed me? Several things. The writer’s unique voice, it was real and gritty. The internal struggle of the heroine, something was going on inside and I had to know. And trying to figure why the hell she had so many internal voices hammering at who she was as a person. I won’t mess up the story for you by giving away the punch line (I hate when reviewers reveal too much), but the title of the novel is well toned to the storyline. The question remains, why does the heroine intentionally try to become invisible? Why did the uncle create such a strange prerequisite for the hero to acquire his part of the will (and it’s not what you think at the onset)? How will the hero and heroine ever resolve their confusing back and forth battle? Don’t get me wrong, I adored the heroine. But just like the hero, Hagen, stated in his internal monologue, I wanted to put her over my knee and spank her till her bottom was beet red. I know. What a terrible thing to say, right? As a male, like the hero, Maeve was an enigma, so alluring, yet so frustrating. I’m analytical in nature. I always delve into the core of the character and try to deduce why, what is it that makes this character so appealing and real, yet so confusing. And that’s what makes a great story. It grabbed me and didn’t let go. What more could you want.

Another terrific story I read by a female author was Noble Sacrifice, an off world SF by Ciara Gold. I literally couldn’t put the book down until I finished it. I fell in love with the hero and heroine, their unique circumstances as pariahs in their world, and the intriguing storyline itself. The hero is an outcast because political strife on his home world has forced him and his clan of loyalists to create a new existence on another planet, without women. The heroine, because she is different, I mean really different, is a literal pariah to everyone in her tribe. In the end, as with most romance oriented novels, they both learn they need each other to be complete and together they are better than apart. I also had an awakening that women, at least in the fictional world, have a need to help the hero fight the demons in the story. I know; that’s a big duh. As a large alpha male, I was so busy slaying the dragons for my mate, I never figured women wanted to be in on the action, side by side with their hero. I should also mention, this story won the EPIC award. This was only the second Off world SF I read from a female author, and it compares with my favorite, Blade Runner.

What’s my point? To say that too little or too much patience is wrong is too simple and myopic. We do approach the world, as men and women, with a different degree of patience. The wise person recognizes the differences and works with it, including if you’re trying to attract men to read a story. Fortunately, now that I have opened my eyes to what I was missing, I will force myself to delve deeper in a story before I can it, maybe at least to page four, Ok page five, but that’s my limit.

Big Mike
Davisstories.com

For some reason, it seems us women out here in the West are a bit more self-sufficient, though. We live by the code “git ‘er done” and we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty.

I’ve got a couple examples to illustrate my point about generalizations.

For instance, when we were writing Veil of Deception, Big Mike came up with a scene whereby the hero would take the heroine fishing and used the premise that the heroine had no experience in the sport. Now Veil of Deception takes place in a fictional lake community in Virginia. The heroine had lived in this community for a decade longer than the hero and had a boat dock on her property. There was just no way I could write a scene where the heroine was ignorant of fishing. What was she doing living all these years on the lake with a boat dock if she didn’t know how, or didn’t like, to fish?

According to Big Mike, in the real lake community where he lives, there are no single women who fish. Having just spent the summer going out on the lake in a boat with some friends of mine, baiting my own hook with night crawlers I dug out of a container, and catching trout on every trip (my husband has no interest), this just didn’t make sense to me. However, Big Mike was just using his own experience in his own locale to draw a picture of the heroine as he saw her. In the end we compromised and I agreed that maybe the heroine just hadn’t been fishing for stripers before.

Another time, Big Mike and I were chatting with some of our fellow authors in a Yahoo group and he happened to post that there was at least one thing women needed a man for: to kill spiders. I wasn’t the only one who immediately responded by saying if I were afraid of spiders, I’d never get able to get out of bed in the morning! Although I keep a clean house, I’ve got more spiders living in my mountain home year round than I have pine trees in my yard. And honestly, my husband is way more afraid of them than I am. My philosophy is “live and let live”. As long as I don’t see a brown recluse or black widow, I let the critters cohabitate and catch all the other bugs.

But again, this was a gender generalization because Big Mike’s wife is afraid of spiders.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think females suffer from this affliction quite as much as males. After all, if a man cooks dinner and cleans the house and writes romantic love scenes, we tend to say “Ah! How sweet! What a great guy!”. However, if a woman works on her own vehicle, fishes and hunts, and uses power tools, too often she’s seen as less than feminine, and it’s a negative trait.

In fact, if you read the comment Big Mike made in response to a comment from Mindy and I about “The Rear View” he states that he thinks we’re both just tomboys and anomalies in the world of the female. Naw, Big Mike, it’s just that we’re western women and we know how to “git ‘er done”!

I think we’re starting to close the gap, ladies, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

Candace Morehouse
www.candacemorehouse.com

Now you did it! Calling me mushy in front of all these people. Thank God my buds don’t read my posts. I’d lose all status as the alpha male.

Just kidding. Candi does bring up a good point. One of my future posts deals with the misunderstandings between men and women. It’s important to note that generalizations are just that, they do not represent the total distributions of a group. There are men that couldn’t care less about the internal voices women deal with, or the disparity and difficulty that our sizes create in the stuff women have to deal with. But most of the men I call “bud” do care. Why? It’s hard to truly adore a female as a man and not have a soft side to their confusing nature and vulnerability. Regardless whether it’s a wife, girlfriend, daughter or grand daughter; you can’t truly hold that woman in your heart and not feel soft things about her. Doesn’t mean women don’t confuse us, cause YOU do. But in a strange way, if you’re secure in your manhood, you just love em more for what they are.

Men, I mean those that care for the whole woman, do talk about relationships with their buds. Bet you didn’t know about that did ya. And it seems that the older you get, the more observant men become about the gender delta in terms of the demons that threaten women. Could be as you age you gain perspective, or maybe the overpowering shift in blood flow from your brain to a man’s central organ slows down and the animal side chills a bit. The difference is, we don’t talk about relationships in a chat group. It’s always been guy to guy style. And most men will never be conformable about exposing their soft side in an open forum. We have to maintain that macho image to keep from being razed constantly. Every heard a woman call another woman a wussy? I doubt it. But there is a “don’t lose face” nature between men to reduce the bully tendency of some males. For me, I don’t really care what others think. A little razing is natural and enjoyable, but if it goes too far, a cocked eyebrow from the big guy can nip it. I only care what those that love me think and they would never diss the big guy for exposing his under belly.

Ref the Veil of Deception novel, now come on Candi, you have to admit it. Dani is a much more alluring and lovable character for both male and female readers as a compassionate vulnerable person with conflicts and internal vulnerabilities. I actually fell in love with Danielle, and I think others will also.

As for aggressive women, most that exhibit such tendencies do so as a protective response to being burned or hurt somewhere alone life’s path. In my career I’ve worked with hundreds of females in a professional environment. Many felt the aggressive shield was necessary for defensive purposes, or maybe they read to many feminist articles. With very few exceptions, those that exhibited an aggressive nature were actually hiding their true feminine insides. You just had to get to know them, then the shield came down. Yeah, in the same way many men hide their soft side. There are anomalies of course (two female congresspersons come to mind) but in my view, most aggressive shields are for protection of the soft interior, even with Candi. Now you exposed me, so it’s only fair play, right? Yes, Candi does exhibit the shield, but I’ve peered through it, and there is a tender feminine woman in there, and I luv even feisty ouch of the CowGirl. Tell the truth, CG. Weren’t you moved by the pain and struggle that both the hero and heroine in VOD had to overcome. You bet you were. See, you’re not as “tough as nails” as you thought.

On, one more thing. I will admit to being a softy for loven, but make no mistake. Anyone ever harms someone I love, hell won’t come fast enough for them. I make no bones about it. May end up in the slammer, but no demons that hard my loved ones will be protected by our inept legal system. There is a dark side to the big guy, and I wouldn’t apologize or deny it.

Tell next time
Big Mike
Davisstories.com

I have never learned more about gender differences before embarking upon this adventure of writing a collaborative novel with Big Mike.

Probably the oddest thing I’ve noticed along the way is that he is way more mushy than I am. Yeah, he’s a big guy – and I can attest to this as I have met him in person. Totally analytical, or so one would think. Left brain, type A personality. Logical. Empirical. Scientific. Understands processes on a level way beyond my comprehension or way of thinking.

Yet, this big, analytical guy is a just a soft marshmallow inside.

There were many scenes in our book which we disagreed on. And the biggest factor involved? Big Mike wanted the heroine to show more emotion, to be more vulnerable, more needy. I, on the other hand, wanted her to be more aggressive. In my mind, Danielle has no need of a man. She is self-sufficient. Yet according to the other half of my writing team, she should be needy. This goes against everything I’ve ever thought I knew about the opposite sex. After all, don’t most men run when faced with a needy female?

In retrospect I believe that we, as authors, place many of our own personality traits on the characters we create. So, for the two of us, that means Big Mike is way more emotional than me and that I am way more aggressive than he is used to. It’s funny, but we appear to have challenged the ‘normal’ gender roles. The big guy is all soft inside and the little woman is tough as nails.

Who’da thunk it?

It’s worth exploring in more depth, and I will do so in future posts.