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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: BBW Anthology project

Writing Romance

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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Tags

BBW Anthology project, bbw romance, BBW Romance writers, Conan the Barbarian, D.A Lascelles, Elric of Melnibone, fantasy novel, paranormal romance, Romance fiction, Transitions


There was a time when I would have said that I would never write Romance. I certainly never read it. That stuff was for girls, after all. When I were a lad my reading was all fantasy and SF, cool stuff with lasers and swords and demons and stuff. Romance was not in the picture. After all, I would hardly consider the sort of relationships that Conan had as ‘romance’, more reinforcing an unhelpful misogynistic male stereotype, and Elric of Melnibone was too obsessed with his own self destructive angst to worry about such things. Typical teenage boy stuff.

Even at school I hardly displayed the most romantic tendencies. Given the choice between studying a play about angsty teenage romance that ends in suicide and a particular Scottish play filled with witches, blood and dark omens (not to mention Banquo’s ‘gory locks’) you would probably not be too surprised at which one won out.

Needless to say I was not known for my romantic tendencies.

So, obviously, when I grew up, I wrote a Romance novella…

Wait… what? How the hell did that happen? I ask myself the same question a lot.

I put the answer down to my desire to challenge myself.

At least Conan got the smouldering hero look about right….

You see, when I was in school my ambitions were to write a fantasy novel. Or a SF novel. Something genre based anyway. I even wrote a very bad SF short about aliens invading the school (I am still waiting for the producers of The Faculty to get back to me on my royalties for that… 🙂 ) and a clichéd fantasy novel about a bunch of characters who join up in a quest to find a magic object. It even had a werewolf in it. Thankfully, those truly awful pieces of literature never survived long enough to sully the world with their awfulness and for a while I put aside writing to focus on other things. Then I came back to it and the first thing I thought was ‘I need a challenge’. I also came to a revelation that romance was an important part of life. More than important, it is fundamental to life. Without it being there to help ensure that certain essential biological processes occur, life pretty much stops. Ok, I guess at some point in human history we did without it, though it is hard to really say when romance first began. Courtly love is cited as a medieval invention but there was romance long before then as evidenced by the love poems of Cattullus (written between 84 and 54 BC). Even older than that is a Sumerian poem or song written 4000 years ago and bear in mind that this is the oldest recorded evidence. Just because there are no surviving written love poems before that does not mean the concept did not exist. Romance has been around a long time.

Though I am not sure why this would be surprising. After all, these ancient civilisations had deities (usually goddesses, there may be a hetero-normative argument to be had there) who were dedicated to romance and love. Safe to say that romance and love have been human concepts for a long time, almost certainly longer than the written records that hold these fragments of the literature of these ancient periods.

So what did this mean for me and my big decision? Well, I argued in my inner Transitions-AuthorCopymonologue, you see romance is everywhere and involved in everything. It is a major motivator for human behaviour. It appears in all forms of story, not just those that come with covers depicting smouldering leading men with a tendency to scowl too much and beautiful heroines trying desperately to keep their bosoms inside a corset. Main characters in war stories, superhero stories, comedies, tragedies and, well, any story really, are at risk of falling in love and doing something stupid because of that. Romance is a vital tool in the storyteller’s repertoire. And I wanted to get better at using it.

So I joined up with a fun group of writers known as the BBW Romance Writer’s group. That’s BBW as in ‘Big Beautiful Women’ because another thing I believe in is realistic bodyshapes for both genders. Our goal was to produce an anthology of Romance fiction novellas with realistic heroines, a project they had already achieved with two previous publications. I set out to try to write a Paranormal love story because I realised early on that I could not do a full romance tale, I had to have some fantasy, some supernatural stuff, to shake things up. Boy/Girl/Trans meets Boy/Girl/Trans [delete as appropriate] is all very well but it is also cool if there’s a ghost or something as well. In the end I actually merged two stories that were sat unfinished on my hard drive – one a contemporary boy meets girl, the other about an ancient Roman and his doomed marriage.

About half way through merging these two I realised that the romance was not where anyone would expect it to be – in the hands of the two contemporary characters. Their tale is a more modern love story, but it is not as deep and enduring as the tragic tale of Gaius Lucius – a romance that makes a desperate man do terrible things in order to keep hold of it. In a way I suppose I was making a point about perceptions of romance – that in some cases modern ideas of love are more superficial. That epiphany is what, for me, made sense of the whole concept of romance in fiction and the final result of that realisation led to the publication of Transitions.

So, I would say to any writer who works in any genre to not ignore the importance of romance. Explore it and use it and try to understand how it might motivate your characters. It is not just hearts and flowers and hallmark cards.

Transitions – Release information

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Productivity, Publicity

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

BBW Anthology project, BBW Romance writers, books, Cover design, Cover reveal, ebook release, mundania press, Novella, release date, Transitions


Well, it is finally here…. all the hard work has come together and my novella, Transitions, is finally about to be released.

Tomorrow, in fact… but you wonderful readers of this blog get the heads up a day early and a quick sneak preview of the cover and blurb.

Click here to go to the webpage for the upcoming release

Some time soon (hopefully over the next 24 hours) this page will change to a current release and links will be added to allow you to purchase this novella as an ebook. When that happens I will do another post and give you all the links I know about for places where you may purchase it.

Note, this is an ebook release. If you want to read this novella in a more old fashioned, olde timey format such as paper you will have to wait until all the novellas in the series have been released and we put together the paperback collection of all of them. Until then, I hope you enjoy the pixelatted version…

 

[Guest Post] Opposite Attraction by Judy Bagshaw

24 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Guest posts

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

bagshaw, BBW Anthology project, BBW Romance writers, books, ghost hunter, Ghosts, guest blogging, guest posts, mundania press, Paranormal, paranormal romance, parapsychology, Plus sized heroines, Publication, romantic suspense, writing


My name is Judy Bagshaw, and I am a Canadian author of romance and romantic suspense generally featuring plus-sized heroines. I’ve been published since 1999 and currently have three ebooks available through Fictionwise, two anthologies and a novel with Draumr Publishing, a short story collection and upcoming novel with Pearlsong Press, a short in an anthology with The Wild Rose Press, two novels with Mundania Press and one with their imprint, AweStruck.

A huge thanks to David for inviting me to guest post on his blog. I’m a little new at the whole blogging thing, so can’t promise that I’ll enlighten or amaze. I do hope I’ll interest you enough to consider checking out my upcoming paranormal romance, Opposite Attraction, coming out in ebook from Mundania Press, July 24. (www.mundania.com)

David told you a bit about our project in a recent post. Basically, to recap, several authors banded together to write romance novellas featuring ghosts. Five of us saw it through to completion. We took turns critiquing each other’s work, then did rounds of editing later. We polished them up as best we could, then started looking around for a home.

Finding a home was a five year journey filled with hope, disappointment, doubt, desperation, determination, and finally exaltation. We were thrilled when Mundania Press accepted our anthology for publication. They are releasing each story in ebook format first, giving each author a month to shine on their own, then the stories will be compiled into a print anthology…likely late in the fall.

The title, Opposite Attraction, nicely sums up my story. Serena McKay, my heroine, is a skeptic…someone who has made a career from exposing frauds and con artists in the field of paranormal activity. Carter Shehan, on the other hand, is a bona fide ghost hunter. He believes. And he has spent his adult life trying to find proof of the existence of the here-after and ghostly visitors to this plane. Both have written best selling books in their respective fields, and they have locked horns more than once, both adamant that they are right.

Challenged by Carter on a nationally broadcast television talk show, Serena agrees to spend the weekend with him at the famous “haunted” Shelbourne Manor, now a museum. It’s a ‘fish or cut bait’ situation, and Serena is determined to show Carter up as just one more charlatan, while he is determined to prove to her that ghosts exist.

But of course, as with any good romance story, something unexpected happens, and you’ll have to read the story to find out how it all ends up. Let’s just say that it doesn’t hurt that Carter finds the feisty Serena very attractive. And if Serena were being honest, she would admit to more than a passing interest in the laid back Carter.

I like the idea of bringing opposites together and seeing where fate leads them, and often my heroines and heroes are at odds with each other before finding their way into each other’s heart.

You can read more about my work, including excerpts and reviews, at www.judybagshaw.com

You can also find out more about our little writing group at www.bbwromancewriters.homestead.com

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