Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Writing In The First Person

Many people don't, but I absolutely love writing in the 1st person--a lot! And I love reading books written that way as well. The main reason is because, to my tastes, the protagonist seems to come alive so much more brilliantly. When forced to concentrate on the internal thought process of one character, said character usually turns out more dynamic and interesting, someone who readers can rally behind and care about. You can almost taste their emotions, feel their pain, and when they bleed we bleed.

But here's my predicament now. Along with RED STRAIN (3rd person thank the Lord), I am currently penning the follow-up novel to JEWEL in the 1st person. The protag is a female (Tracey from JEWEL) paranormal investigator. At first I thought I could pull it off without too much difficulty. I'm married, understand women, well, at least in theory, and after all everyone has the same kinds of emotions, right? Wrong!

Every good book has a degree of sexual tension. I don't care if you are the prude of all prudes or the king of porn, we all like sex. And if you say otherwise you're a liar liar pants on fire!

Anyway, you can now understand my predicament. What runs through a woman's mind when she's aroused, feels amorous, or otherwise just wants to tear off a chunk? For men it's easy; I can just write from experience. But I know that women differ. Some are simple to understand, others more complicated, and others, well, impossible at all to predict. So where does that leave me?

To help alleviate some of my worries, and it does stay true to her personality from JEWEL, I've made Tracey to be a tomboy. She chews, cusses, hangs out with men mostly because most women (according to her) are bitches or worse. And that all helps, but...

Any feedback from my female fans would be most appreciated here. My wife has been a tremendous help of course, but she is only one woman, and well, I'd love to see varying view points on how to handle this delicate situation. Because you all know what will happen if I don't nail this dead on (ahem).

So please, feel free to respond in any way you feel inclined. Please share your thoughts on the female psyche. Thanks!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Novel Updates and Other Bits of Carnage

Another long hiatus, I know, and thank you to the many peeps surfing the social networking wave who pointed that fact out to me and got me back in the blogospherical saddle. I should be a more religious blogger, no doubt!

Some updates though--finally:

I am eleven chapters into RED STRAIN, my newest novel, which has been accomplished in only two weeks time, and so I am very optimistic of an April/May completion date (first draft). Somewhere closer to that time, I'll have the artistic representation and blurb posted on my website under the writing tab. Think zombieish peeps!

In addition to RED STRAIN, I am picking away ever so slowly at the sequel to JEWEL (currently being read by a major publishing house), entitled WEDNESDAY'S CHILD. Like JEWEL, the novel is written in the first person, but this time, I'm writing from the perspective of the opposite gender--very fun and interesting, have learned a lot! Stay tuned, please!

Shortly, there will be some exciting anthology news regarding my short story, VANDRAVEN'S TICK. I can't say too much yet, but soon...

So anyway, I got some stuff in the works, and will try my butt off to keep my blog updated. Thanks again for all who cared to remind me.