It's been so long since I last posted here, some of my readers have probably died. But this isn't aimed at them, being dead and all. It's aimed at PitchWars mentors who are not only alive, but interested in finding out who the prospective mentees are.
I'm not in this picture. These are some of my chickens. They play an important role in my writing, because they like to be addressed. And since I always feel silly reading my work out loud to see if my dialogue sounds true, I read it to them. Win.
I'm not any of these people either. They are characters from Pictures of Us, the adult magic realism novel I'm entering in PitchWars. My MC, Mick, lives with a family of photographs. Nicole, the glamour shot on the left, is the cool one who is like a big sister to him. Grandma is a studio portrait, and has been his advisor since he was ten and his world was about to implode. The school photo is Troy, the sweet voice of innocence. It's all good until Mick begins connecting with real people and tries to leave them behind. Not only will they not let him go, but, well, you'll have to read the story.
This is also not me. It's a chocolate cremeux, which is a dense mousse. I make my living as a catering pastry chef. Although I have never written a food novel, my characters tend to work in restaurants. Working in upscale catering can mean long hours doing and redoing until the product is perfect. So you never see the chocolate garnishes that came out too thin or too small, or the ones where the chocolate got out of temper and I had to melt them down and start over. You don't even see the room where 435 of these are being set up at the same time. You only see the beautiful dessert set before you. I try to bring that same focus and dedication to writing.
To me, editing makes the writing sing.
Right. This is supposed to be an intro to me. That's my songwriter husband standing behind me. We have two daughters, one of whom became a published YA author last month. I was born a visual artist. About ten years ago, my writer daughter asked me to do nanowrimo with her. I wrote this awful, ridiculous novel about a group of people who got stuck in a gated subdivision for three weeks when the power went down in a hurricane. The characters wouldn't listen to me, they took over in a full-on mutiny, and I was hooked. I have been writing ever since. Several of my short stories have been published in lit mags, and I won a Nashville Writers Meetup contest with a Christmas story. I read across most genres and age levels, and have always been attracted to quirks of human nature and touches of magic. It shows in my writing.
Life has limits. Writing doesn't.
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