K Is For Kiss #atozchallenge

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Karyn Good

K Is For Kiss

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

A kiss can mean different things. A kiss on the forehead means I care. A kiss on the cheek puts you firmly in the friend zone. A kiss on the hand means I cherish you. Kiss the back of my neck and make me want more. Kiss my shoulder and tell me I’m perfect. Because I love you when you kiss my lips I’ll let you in.

kissing

Chances are you remember your first romantic kiss. That first close and very intimate contact with another human being. It might have happened in a flash. Or lasted awhile. Maybe with someone you’d just met. Or someone you’d crushed on forever. Perhaps it happened because of an arranged meeting. Or because of a shift from friends to lovers.

However it happened, it turns out the physical act of kissing starts with the eyes. We focus in on our partner’s lips. Then we move closer so we can use our nose to get a whiff of the other person. Which leads to contact. It’ll come as no surprise that our lips are very sensitive. When we share a kiss, we create a bond with another person. There’s a rush of info to our brains. Our heart rate increases. Our pupils dilate. And then the age old cliche of time standing still comes in play.

There are many ways that first kiss comes about in romance novels. A little snippet from my latest Aspen Lake novel, EXPOSED.

“I love it. It’s going to be perfect.” Engrossed in their discussion she’d slid closer until they were hip to hip on the two-seat sofa. She faced him, a huge grin of approval aimed right at him. He watched her, his amber eyes serious, careful. She tilted her head. He was so close. So different than anyone she’d come across. And solitary confinement had lost its appeal the minute she’d laid eyes on him.

His eyes flashed. She didn’t imagine it. Didn’t think either. She simply reacted, leaning in with the certainty he’d meet her halfway. Instead, he withdrew a fraction of an inch. Not far but undoubtedly a retreat.

Oh, God.

“I…” She closed her eyes in horror. Or denial. But no, it was happening. She knew this because she opened her eyes and he was still there. Close enough to smell the sweat of humiliation pooling out of her pores. He was staring at her in ear shattering silence. With nowhere to go, she stood up. Wiped her hands down the side of her skirt.

Pull it together, Kate.

She refused to gasp out an apology like a fish. “I shouldn’t have done that. I crossed a line. I’m sorry.”

You can check out what other bloggers are writing about here!

Care to share a favourite kiss from a book? A movie? Your personal experience?

I Is For Insight #atozchallenge

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Karyn Good

I Is For Insight

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

There are all kinds of ways to gain insight into characters. Finding the answers to the big questions like a character’s greatest fear and their most treasured possession or their attitude towards money is helpful in creating multi-layered characters. Character interviews are very helpful. But sometimes you need to have a little bit of fun with them. Have them play a game. Like truth or dare.

They’d rented a cabin for the weekend. All six of them. Deep in the north woods by a small lake. The perfect spot. Secluded and quiet. Hiking trails through the bush, pickerel in the lake, and plenty of dead wood for an evening fire after plenty of the first two. Stars flooded the sky. Wood smoke wafted. Marshmallows flamed at the end of sticks.

Lily clapped her hands together. “Let’s play truth of dare.”

Chase leaned over and confiscated his wife’s wineglass. “You’re cut off.”

Lily grabbed for her glass. “Ooooh, is the big, bad police officer scared?”

Grace snorted. “Remember that time at camp when we stuck out down to the beach and dared Chase to go skinny dipping?

“That poor bear!” Kate doubled over in laughter.

“Poor bear, my ass. I almost died.”

Seth held out a hand and Mike reached into the cooler beside his chair. “This I gotta hear.”

“Nope.” Lily grinned, her red hair glinting in the firelight. “But you can ask him when it’s your turn to play.”

“I’ll go first.” Kate twisted to face Seth. “Truth or dare?”

Seth shrugged. “What the hell, truth.” Continue reading →

H Is For Heroine #atozchallenge

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Karyn Good

H Is For Heroine

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

Anne of Green Gables. Little House on the Prairie. Little Women. To Kill A Mockingbird. The Diviners. Stone Angel. These books contain the heroines of my childhood and teenage years.

I suppose I have a favourite type of heroine, like I have my favourite story troupes. They can have hard or soft edges. Little education or a PhD. Be child-free or buried in babies. Geeky gamers. Rudderless or driven. They don’t have to be likeable 100 percent of the time. They make mistakes.

Fast forward to crafting my own heroines and the characteristics I like to explore.

Confidence: No surprise there. Confidence is incredibly appealing. It affects how we feel, our behaviour towards others, and the outcome of any undertaking. It creates a heroine who is more powerful, more in control, and more satisfied. They expect equality, cooperation, and respect whether they bus tables or run companies. Whether they run a daycare or a country.

Passion: A heroine can be down and out, discouraged beyond belief, have lost hope. But once that fire within has been stoked it allows her to live life, experience it, and claim it. She does not live a life of temperance. When she regales her grandchildren with stories of her past, her tales are met with wide eyes and open mouths.

Determination: There is no superpower greater than determination. She will let nothing stand in her way. There is no obstacle big enough, no danger great enough to keep her from her goal. From winning. Because who can afford to lose if the life of their children is on the line? Their patient’s life? A total stranger’s?

Jane Eyre1

Strength: Often the ‘flight’ or ‘fight’ response is a luxury they can’t afford. Someone has to be around to look after the kids, the dog, the house, the neighbourhood, the community. Women are the fixers. The multi-taskers. The gatherers. They can be the hunters. The thief in the night. They can be whatever they have to be to survive.

Commitment: They know the cost of responsibility and are willing to pay it. When all seems lost they do not allow the feeling of wanting to quit to overpower their commitment. There is no ‘taking your best shot’, there is only try harder.

Purpose: The foundation for all the rest of it. To know what they are to do and why. Not to be confused with wanting power over something or someone else. It does not need to be about conquest and supremacy. It is deeply personal. It is passionate. It is backed up with thoughts, words and deeds. It will be evident in how she feels, heals, creates, and shapes her future.

Check out other A to Z April bloggers.

Have a favourite heroine?

G Is For Gone Fishing #atozchallenge

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Karyn Good

G Is For Gone Fishing

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

Had I been super organized for this challenge I would have had all my posts written and scheduled in advance. I’ve done a lot of organizing my life in the last two years, but I haven’t reached that pinnacle of success yet. Maybe next year. I had better start thinking about it in May.

But then I wouldn’t be able to tell you I’ve gone fishin’. I’m not really fishing. But I’m gone for the day. Making lunch for my daughter and her friend and then hanging out. After I drop her friend back home there are errands to be done. And then it’s book club.

Yay!

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We’ve read a lot of great books. Books I never would have read left to my own devices. Like Missing Sarah: A Vancouver Woman Remembers Her Vanished Sister by Maggie deVries. The idea for my novel Off The Grid came from reading Maggie’s recounting of her sister’s life.

My Top Five Book Club Picks!

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright

Are you a member of a book club? Want to share a favourite book recommendation?

Others blogs for your reading pleasure!

F Is For Freaking Out #atozchallenge

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Karyn Good

F Is For Freaking Out

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

I freak out regularly. Not at people. But quietly and consistently over every single aspect to do with being a writer. The crap I tell myself, you wouldn’t believe. That thing that Robert de Niro said at the Oscars that one time?

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So true. Whoever writers the stuff actors say when presenting awards is pretty intuitive.

Challenging myself means taking chances. Taking a chance means I’m acknowledging an idea. And great idea will involve risk and stepping outside of my comfort zone. But what was it Fred Devito said? If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. That’s my writing mantra for this year.

I’m one of those human beings that is anxious a lot of the time. In varying degrees. All over the place. Across the board. I still mange to get things done. Even if some days it’s at a snail’s pace. I persist. I’m stubborn. I’m fragile. I fail. I try again. I learn something. I experiment. I conquer. I start all over again. Some of the steps of my daily dance.

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You can find other bloggers doing their thing here.

Do you welcome the fear? Dance with it even?

E Is For Emotional Connection #atozchallenge

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Karyn Good

E Is For Emotional Connection

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

I love it when an emotional connection to a book or a character or a situation grabs hold. When it makes you feel, start to ask questions. The book I’m reading right now for our April book club is a very good example of a book that is making me ask all sorts of questions of myself.

The book is The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

For some context, here’s the book description from Kristin Hannah’s website.

In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France–a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

As explained above, it is the story of two very different sisters. With two very different ways of coping with the nightmare of living in an Nazi occupied France. I must be honest here and say I’m not fond of WWII stories. Or war stories. Even thought they’re important stories to be told, with their crushingly brutality, heartbreak and loss, as is often the case with the history of this planet we inhabit. But I would not have been allowed to be a soldier. I would not have gone off to fight, willingly, unwillingly or somewhere in between. In this story I saw myself. And I was captivated from the very beginning. The further along I read the stronger the emotional connection. Questions arose. Who would I have been in this story? Would I have been as brave? Made different choices? What would I have done?

That when you know you’re emotional connected and invested in the story. When your heart jumps. When the tears come. When you rage against the circumstances and the only choices left. When you want to decimate the enemy. That’s when you’ve made an emotional connection.

Read what other participants are talking about today!

What book(s) do you have an emotional connection to?

D Is For Diversity In Romance #atozchallenge

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Karyn Good

D Is For Diversity In The Romance Genre

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

There is a lot of important discussion going on right in the romance genre about diversity. In regards to both the representation and availability to writers and characters.

My sister and I were having a discussion the other day over enjoying Elementary’s Sherlock and his romance with an interesting and intelligent woman who also happens to be neuro-atypical. And how fabulous that glimpse into their budding relationship promises to be smart, entertaining, and different and familiar at the same time. As the mother of a daughter with special needs I want to see more characters with unique challenges face life head on and hold jobs, struggle, and fall in love.

There are all kinds of wonderful reasons why one’s reading experience is enhanced by reading books that represent diversity in ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, and immigrant status to name a few.

For myself, it became important to look at my genre reading history and realize that those small town romances that I favour are full of white, heterosexual, able-bodied people. Those sports romances? Whose entire rosters consists of perfect white athletes? I love them. Do I take for granted that I don’t have to reach down into the craters of the earth to find a romance novel in which I am represented? You bet I do. Proven by the fact that I hadn’t given such an important topic much thought before it became a subject others were talking about.

If you’re interested, here’s some interesting reading material.

Writing Diversity in Romance: Falguni Kothari Gives Us Tips

Jezebel: Inside The Push For A More Diverse Romance Genre

Dear Author: Diversity in Romance, Not Just Buying But Reading Diverse Books

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“I think it’s moving in a very positive direction. I think you have to make noise to have room at the table, for people to move aside and let you pull your chair up to the conversation. But in our industry it will always depend on diversity in the boardroom. So all the talk about the lower levels of endeavour — if the decisions are only made by one group of people whose tastes will decide which kinds of films are made, then only certain kinds of films will be made.” Meryl Streep

Share any and all diverse reading recommendations!

C Is For Courage #AtoZChallenge

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Karyn Good

C Is For Courage

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016

Cultivating your passions requires courage and a constant refuelling of commitment to the process. The courage to dream. The courage to start.

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The courage to plan. To prepare to make that dream a reality. To learn, revel and rejoice in the process. To find like minded people to accompany you on your journey. One of the biggest steps I took along my road to becoming a writer was join a writing group. To find like minded people to learn from and who support my efforts. I put myself in front of people and own that need to put words on paper. I’m also a part of an online community of writers who are dear to me. Writers who struggle, who are always willing to listen, offer suggestions, and their time. Ones who understand the road I’m traveling, especially as it pertains to writing romance and how little value some other authors have for my genre and therefore my efforts.

And above all it takes courage to limp along when nothing is going as planned or you can’t make out the details of the road ahead.

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It takes courage to put yourself out there to be judged. The learn how to take constructive criticisms and to deal with the haters. I’m still learning how to be a writer placing offerings at the feet of readers. Still finding my way from learning to owning my process.

I hope you find the courage to start what you’ve been putting off. Find the courage to continue should you feel despair. Or summon the courage to end what isn’t working.

Travel your way around the blogosphere and see what others are saying about the letter ‘C’.

Maybe you want to share your thoughts? One small step you took?

B Is For Bookshelves #atozchallenge

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Karyn Good

Bookshelves. Everyone’s got ’em. Whether you put books on it is a whole different story. Please tell me you put books on it! However you arrange things, the truly awesome thing about bookshelves is that no one has the same shelf. Literally no one else on the planet has the same compilation of things lining their shelves.

B Is For Bookshelves

What do our bookshelves say about us? I can’t say for sure, I’m not a psychology major. That you like to read? That you adore knickknacks? Have a thing for photos? Candles? My bookshelves are full of two of those things: books and photos. Candles and books don’t mix. Knickknacks scare me. I feel like I’m one step away from becoming a hoarder when I’m surrounded by them. Other people’s collections are symbolic of who they are, sometimes quirky, and often charming. I’m quite okay with other people’s knickknacks.

There are many ways to arrange books: alphabetically, by genre, size, colour. Some stack literary works on one side. Genre fiction on the other. Some of us mix it up. Below is a peek into one of shelves. I have to say I’m an arrange by size fan. Mostly. Kind of.

Bookshelf

Mostly ~~wine~~ book club books on this one. The Sanity Seekers have been around for nearly fifteen years. The same core group of seven or eight ~~drinkers~~ readers. I prefer to read book club selections in print. For no nobler reason than it’s easier to judge how much I have to read in a very short amount of time. Another confession – it’s easier to skim. Because some of the books we’ve read…yikes. From the very first book we shared, Chocolat by Joanne Harris, to today, I could not have survived with my sanity intact without my book club. Our current book?

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

These days when it comes to books some of us also have ebook shelves. Seriously, what did we do without ereaders?

My Ebook Shelf

Other bloggers waving at you from over here!

There you have it. A look at my shelves. What’s on yours?

A Is For Adventure #atozchallenge

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Karyn Good

The A To Z April Blogging Challenge: A Is For Adventure

It’s April 1st and that means it’s the start of my adventure. It’s a 26 day event known as the A to Z April Blogging Challenge. I’ll be blogging every day except Sundays. I’m perfectly serious. That’s 26 times in April. The last time I did that was, well…never. Hopefully the joke won’t be on me.

A Is For Adventure

So this will be an Adventure for me. I don’t exactly thrive on being adventurous. By that I mean I have no desire to scale Mount Everest. Or any kind of mountain, really. Maybe a hike in the hills where it’s mostly flat on a designated trail. I know urban hiking! That’s for me. I like to write about other people having adventures. Or running for their lives. Or generally being in peril of some kind. While falling in love. Because meeting the right person and fight or flight go hand in hand, don’t they?

So, I settled on a theme for this blogging challenge that interested me. A subject on which I have strong opinions. But what is passion without a little attitude? Let the adventure begin!

2016 Blogging Theme

Now that you’re riveted to your seat (as I knew you would be) let me try and explain what any of this has to do with the word adventure. Which is to say this endeavour is more about stepping out of my comfort zone. It’s also about creativity. And facing my fears in regard to putting myself out there. I think that qualifies as adventurous, in a non-life-threatening kind of way. (You read that right, two hyphens. I looked it up).

I’m reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. I don’t know about you but fear and doubt are constant companions of mine. Am I good enough? Creative enough? Talented enough? Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.

“Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together…You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.” Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

Tweet: Adventure, action, the need to act! That something deep inside me searching for the light.

That’s what this adventure is about for me. The chance to make new friends, to be informed, to learn, to be inspired, and to share my passion with the romance genre with you.

You can find other A to Z bloggers here.

A to Z April Blogging Challenge 2016