I love traditions.  This is Mother’s Day, and I’m hosting lunch for the family.  I’m not cooking anything, because I don’t want to have to work.  Some of the guests are bringing food.  (We have a lot of desserts.)  And I’ve ordered a lot of good stuff from shops that make food fresh.  So I’m anticipating a good meal, a fun day, and a refrigerator full of leftovers.

Another spring tradition for us is a place called Brighton Dam.  I tell people that if they live around here and don’t go there in the spring, they’re crazy.  It borders a reservoir, and the water commission made the acres along the water into a wonderful park.  There are lots of natural trails leading through acres and acres of azaleas.   They’re fantastic now.  Many of the bushes are twenty or thirty years old, and they tower over you.  So you walk through a wonderland of natural beauty.  Or you can climb the hill and look down on a panorama of pink, salmon, purple, and white bushes.  The National Arboretum has similar trails.  But it’s farther away.  So we’re more likely to drive the fifteen minutes to Brighton.

A new tradition I’m going to miss is the BJ blog.  You know by now that we’re not going to be posting every day anymore.   So I won’t be writing you here.  But you can visit me at www.rebeccayork.blogspot.com.  Or at my web site: www.rebeccayork.com.  It’s being redesigned.  And it’s going to look fabulous.  But it’s not quite ready for prime time yet.

I hope to see you soon.
Rebecca

I wrote this entry earlier this month–as a guest on another blog.  I had a lot of fun with the subject, and people told me it made them snort their morning coffee.   

Enjoy.

Back in the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud asked his famous question, “What do women want?”

Over a hundred years later, it appears that guys are still trying to figure that out.

Witness this piece of–uh–spam that popped into my mailbox a couple of weeks ago.

“Did you know that a recent survey showed that 85% of women actually get aroused by a man who produces ‘above average’ semen amounts? With our pills, she’ll be speechless… and definitely coming back for more…”

Yeah, she’ll be speechless, all right.

I keep trying to wrap my head around this scenario. How does it work? A guy who wants to turn on his new girlfriend invites her into a bedroom and masturbates so she can see how much wallpaper paste he can produce?

Or does he just do it to her, then lie back and revel in her delight as he floods her out of bed?

Okay, I realize I’m getting a little gross here. And I also realize this ad is playing to a male fantasy. It’s easy to satisfy your sweetie. Forget about dinner, dancing, and foreplay. Flowers, candy, and champagne?

Nah. You’ve got everything you need right in your magic wand.

“I come buckets; therefore I am a Greek god.”

Any man who bothered to sit down and read a romance novel would find out very quickly that semen is pretty far down the list of what turns a woman on. Really, how many love scenes have you read where the guy erupts like Mt. Vesuvius? Or love scenes that get around to cleaning up after sex? Or even disposing of used condoms? Not many.

Those aren’t our fantasies. We’re looking for a man who focuses his attention on his woman. Who charms her with his witty dialogue, then slowly and skillfully uses his hands and mouth to bring her to a tingling level of arousal before he . . . .

Well, you get the idea.

I enjoy writing love scenes where a man and a woman give each other pleasure. And when I’m in the middle of one, I’m as focused on the emotions of my hero and heroine as I am on the physical descriptions. The emotions of these two people and the building arousal reinforce each other to give the scene a depth that most male writers can’t achieve.

There are a few who can do it, though. One guy who “gets it” is Ken Follett. In fact, he was actually one of my role models. When I read THE KEY TO REBECCA, my reaction was, “THAT’S what I want to write–two people falling in love against a background of suspense and danger.”

The hero and heroine may start off lusting after each other. They may jump into bed for the fun of it. But they end up committed to each other–body, mind, and soul.

I know my plot is going to drag my hero and heroine to hell and back. But I also know I’m going to reward them with a long, happy life together. And a fantastic sexual relationship is always part of the package.

To bring us around to the paranormal, that’s one of the reasons I got into werewolves. I love writing about the men in the Marshall family–my strong, sexy alpha male shape-shifters.

They enjoy sex on a very basic, very animal level. But when each of them finds his lifemate, the sex between them is mind-blowing–and a strong part of the bond they forge.

Sex is always integral to my stories. But sex in the context of a relationship where each partner takes pleasure in pleasing the other.

That’s what I’d like guys to take away from my books.

So how do we get them to read our novels? And without blushing? I find they’re often embarrassed by the love scenes. Which is a shame. Because if they read our favorite books, it would give them some basic information about what we like in bed.

Would they “get it” if they broke down and read a romance novel? Or is your average guy too “testosterized” to buy into our fantasies?

Well, you’re catching me on the road again. This time, I’m in San Diego for the NINC conference. NINC is an organization of multi-published genre writers. I’m here mostly for the networking and seeing friends, although I’m also looking forward to the workshops. We’re having a creativity workshop all day Thursday with psychologist Eric Maisel. And Friday we have the traditional strange evening sessions. One will be on collaging as an aid to plotting a novel. People bring magazines and other materials, and we cut out pictures and paste them on manila folders. I know it sounds weird, but last year it really did help me get some parts of NEW MOON straight in my mind.

This time, I’m working on the next Moon book. I wanted some basic story ideas to start with, so I did a quick plot sketch. Then I spent time cutting pictures out of magazines and getting images off the web. I needed stuff like graveyards, ghosts, wolves, the Kennedy Center, an FBI badge, and a gun. And I still need to have something that represents a portal to my parallel universe. I won’t tell you how it all fits together. But I know I’m going to have fun moving the parts around and making a visual image of my story.

Every book I write begins for me with an idea that turns me on. Then, as I start putting together pieces of a story on paper, the plot thickens. Usually I have an opening scene in mind. I know where the story’s going, but the details in the middle and of the ending are always vague. Somehow, I find that the more I know about the story, the more I will know. It’s kind of like magic. Or maybe it’s my subconscious working in the background.

So if you’re a writer, how do you plot? Do you plunge into the mist. Or do you want some idea of where you’re going?

Rebecca

I’m seeing a pattern in my life.  Last month I was in Phoenix to shoot the book trailer for NEW MOON.  (The editing’s almost finished!  Yaaah!)  We worked hard for three days.  Then I decided I could take a little time off and go to Tucson.  And what happened?  The weather turned cold and rainy.  So we toured the fabulous Desert Museum with coats and umbrellas.

This weekend, I was doing a romance panel discussion at the Bay to Ocean Conference in Easton, Maryland, with Mary Jo Putney and Candice Porch.  I explained that we used to say that a romance was the development of a relationship between a man and a woman.  Now it could be a woman and a lizard man from the planet Alpha Lasagna.

The conference was on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  And one thing I wanted to do while I was over there was go to the Blackwater Refuge which was originally designed as a stop along the Atlantic flyway for migrating ducks and geese.  Now it’s also a sanctuary for bald eagles, ospreys, foxes, and Delmarva squirrels.  While I was at the visitors’ center, I learned that “bald” used to mean white-headed, not “hairless.”   I also got to see a webcam pointed at an eagle’s nest, where the male and female traded places while we were watching.

Unfortunately, the best part of the trip to the refuge was inside the visitors’ center.  Outside, it was snowing like mad.  We bought a CD with a guided tour.  But we gave up on seeing much through the blinding snowstorm.  (Well, we did miraculously see an eagle in a dead tree.)  But the drive was a nail-biting experience since most of the road was on levees build up between brackish and fresh water.  With my suspense writer’s imagination, I kept picturing us skidding into the river and drowning.  

After we left the refuge, we had a fun two and a half hour ride home through the snow, sleet, and hail.  The best part was the Bay Bridge, a seven mile long span, much of it high up in the air.  It’s bad enough under normal conditions.  It’s a real treat when you’re inching along in blizzard conditions.  
 
So, once again, I worked first, anticipating my reward.  And once again the worst day of the week was the day I picked to play hooky.   (Okay, I have to be honest.  We sneaked out of the conference for two hours on Saturday afternoon and went down to the discount shopping  mall–where I had a fun time spending money at a Chico’s outlet.)

But we did make it home without skidding off the road or plowing into any other cars.  And I was smart enough to stop at my local gourmet take-out shop, where we bought prepared food for the next few days.  So I won’t have to do any cooking while we’re snowed in.

Next time, I’ll be tempted to play first and work later.  Only I know I’m too tied to the work ethic to let myself do it.

So here’s a glimpse into my schizophrenic life.

I’ve got a book due in a few days.  And it’s going to be a few days late!  It’s BEYOND FEARLESS, a sequel to BEYOND CONTROL, my story of sexually linked telepaths who were created by a genetics experiment gone bad.  A clandestine government agent has discovered them and sees them as a threat to national security.  So he’s bent on wiping them out.  But in BEYOND FEARLESS, my hero and heroine have more problems.  The heroine’s also being stalked by a guy who wants to join his power with hers–and kill the hero. 

I worked on editing this book most of the day, my head deep into my characters.  But as the sun went down, I knew I had other pressing business.  So finally I got up and went out–on a marathon shopping trip.

We started at  BJ’s warehouse, then progressed to PetSmart, Target, Home Depot, and Safeway. I’m assuming I’m supplied with food, cosmetics, cat litter, cat food, light bulbs, and bird seed just in time for a coming snowstorm.

I even fit in a little fun.  At Home Depot, I treated myself to a pretty magenta cyclamen for the sunroom (which I then had to carry around with me to Target and Safeway because it was too cold to leave it in the car).

By the time we got home, it was after nine.  Pretty late for dinner.  But I’d bought very nice  salmon fillets at BJ’s.   I cooked one in the skillet and had it with broccoli and salads I’d bought at Safeway. (The coleslaw was tasteless, and I had to doctor it up.)  I’ve got a lot of salmon left over that’s going to be salmon and cauliflower chowder today. Hum–and maybe celery, too.
So how does YOUR real life fit into your writing life? 

I’m in Phoenix to shoot a book trailer for my next release, NEW MOON, and I can’t get to my passwords from my travel computer. So Annette Blair was kind enough to post this for me.

The whole book trailer experience has been wild. Often when I get the cover of my book, the people look nothing like my hero and heroine. But for the book trailer, Circle of Seven sent me websites of various actors and let me pick the ones I wanted. I selected a husband and wife team, Jimmy and Kalin, and they’re perfect for my characters. My hero is Logan Marshall, one of my guys from the Marshall werewolf clan. And my heroine is Rinna, a woman from an alternate universe. I introduced readers to her in SHADOW OF THE MOON, when she helped the Marshall werewolves and their lifemates defeat a mind vampire from another universe. Now she and Logan have their own story.

Rinna’s hiding out from a powerful man who wants to enslave her mind and body. She meets Logan when he steps into a trap for shapeshifters–a trap that’s meant for her. Logan’s astonished to meet a female shapeshifter, since the only ones he knows are the men from his family.

We shot about sixteen scenes from the book, not in order. And I don’t know how many of them will end up in the finished product. Book trailers have a couple of versions. One will be 30 seconds. That will go to sites around the web and be shown in bookstores. The longer version will be on my site.

It was a fantastic experience watching the scenes in my book come alive with actors who looked so much like my hero and heroine. Of course we couldn’t use all the locations from the book, since they include a cave and an underground river. So those will be done with "green screen" techniques, where the background is added later. Another scene I’m waiting to see is where my heroine uses psychic energy to blow up a convenience store.

There were other restrictions, as well. We couldn’t use a ton of actors, so most of the scenes are between the hero and heroine. But we did use a few other people who volunteered–or were roped into helping out.

The director is also going to use morphing techniques. Because my h/h are both werewolves, he’ll be turning the actors into wolves. Or rather, turning the wolves into people. This should be interesting, since, of course, when you change from wolf to man or woman, you’re naked. We had a closed set for that part of the shoot, so I didn’t get to see how they did it. Naturally, the actors weren’t entirely naked. And the camera angles are designed to hide any of the sensitive bits.

Now I’m waiting for the editing to be done and anxious to see how it all comes out.

Rebecca York

I had an amazing experience yesterday.  There’s a new web site launching on February 14.  It’s called www.romancenovels.tv, and they spent half the day yesterday doing interviews with me.

It was really fun, and really exhausting, since I agonized over what to wear, how to do my hair and makeup, and how to answer the questions.

I used the excuse to buy a fantastic butter-soft silver-black leather jacket.  I had my hair done, and the film crew brought a makeup artist.

We did most of the interviews in my den, shooting toward the dining room, so there was a very long view in back of me.  I wanted to do it stand up, so I did A LOT OF STANDING.  We also shot footage outside the house and in the stream valley down the hill from my house–until it got too cold.

Since I also write cookbooks, I did a cooking segment for them.  I created a recipe exclusively for them–a chili con queso with only five ingredients, which I made on camera in my kitchen.  When I asked the producer if she wanted me to do a cooking segment, she said, “If you can cook and talk at the same time.”  I said I’d done a lot of cooking demonstrations, so I could.

They gave me a huge list of questions, so I spent a lot of time thinking about a huge list of answers.  One was–what makes a book a romance?

I said that back in the old days, the 90’s, a romance was the development of a relationship between a man and a woman.  But recently, we’ve said that it’s the development of a relationship between two people–perhaps two men.  Or two women.  Or a woman and a lizard man from the planet Alpha Lasagna.  I said that there’s always a happy ending.  If not, it’s a love story.

I also told them about being interviewed by Oprah, back before she was a star.  That was on People are Talking in Baltimore.  They had several romance writers on and there was a male co-host. While Oprah asked us polite questions, he stood in back of her mouthing, "orgasm. orgasm." But none of us would talk about that.   So I don’t remember her so much as him!

So, I’m waiting for the launch of the site and hoping I sound intelligent on camera.

Rebecca