Talking Story Prompts by @vscotttheauthor

by Veronica Scott 

One of the things I love most about writing is how you can give a group of authors the same story prompt – whether it’s one word, a phrase, a concept or a few common elements – and you’ll get as many different stories as there are people in the group. 

Sometimes in the various author groups I’ll see a new person posting something angsty about their totally unique story idea and their fear someone will steal it, so how can they have beta readers, critique partners, be edited, submit to publishers…I just want to say “bless your heart” (which is an old Southern saying – I lived in north Alabama for quite a few years), take a deep breath and relax. 

MAYBE you do indeed have the most revolutionary idea since sliced bread but most likely you have a variation on something that’s been done by many people, many times. What you have is your unique take on the concept, to be written in your voice, which will be cool and hopefully attract readers, but other people have no need to ‘steal’ the fundamental idea.

Now plagiarism and outright book pirating of course are always despicable, deplorable and illegal and a genuine concern for every published author. I pay the Blasty service a nice round sum yearly to ferret out pirates and ‘blast’ them. We all have to be vigilant as a community for these issues and thank goodness for readers who catch plagiarists and notify us.

But usually the novice author is worrying needlessly.

Although in fairness, I do have to say I’ve heard of two cases where someone alleged another author heard their concept, rushed to write a novel with the exact same concept and published first. I can’t speak to whether this actually occurred as the first author perceived it as happening, but even if it did, two cases out of the thousands of books published annually is pretty insignificant odds.

I’m in a group right now that’s voting on what the common elements will be for possibly 100 books!!! And I’m willing to bet all 100 will be very different stories.

We’ve done two Pets In Space anthologies and are on the third one now (for October release) and have had an amazing range of fun novellas based on pets, space and scifi romance.

The Great Space Race group, the Cosmic Cabaret authors and the Valos of Sonhadra novelists all generated totally different scifi romance adventures, working with their central concept. (If you haven’t read any of these, what are you waiting for???)

I profess to hate flash fiction, yet when a group blog I belong to decides to create FF, it’s always amazing to me that the words inspire me to write something completely out of my normal genres. I don’t know why but the last two times we did it, I wrote a contemporary fantasy and a Wild West romance. (Looks around the room) Who wrote THAT?! Couldn’t have been me! I think my Muse likes the palate clearing effects of FF, no matter how much she protests initially. (I should probably add they were 500-1000 word vignettes, not entire books, but I was tempted to keep going.)

So my latest series is based on a genetically engineered race of super soldiers. Hello,  Lora Leigh’s Breeds, Laurann Dohner’s New Species, the whole ‘ferals’ genre (which wow, those are some steamy stories – way off the chart for my sort of midrange steam factor as an author – I might read one every now and then but I can’t write them), Christine Feehan’s Ghostwalkers…the list goes on and on. (Psst, tell me your favorites if I’ve missed them here – always looking for new-to-me authors!)

My Badari warriors are created by aliens, in the far future, I’m having a blast writing them and playing with concepts…but they’re my take on the whole ‘genetically engineered’ plot device, written in my established Sectors scifi universe, in my voice, and hence unique to me.

The third book, JADRIAN, will be out at the end of May. I just finished the first draft of book four, DARIK. Starting GABE, book 5, today. In the meantime, here’s the blurb for AYDARR, the first book in the series.

The story: Jill Garrison, a maintenance tech at the Sectors Amarcae 7 colony, goes to sleep one night as usual only to wake up in her nightgown stranded in the middle of a forest on an unknown world. There’s no time to think as she’s stalked by carnivorous predators and rescued by genetically engineered warriors calling themselves the Badari. Turns out they and she, along with her whole colony, are now prisoners of the Khagrish, a ruthless race of alien scientists. Working for enemies of the Sectors, the Khagrish have created the Badari to be super soldiers.

Aydarr, the Badari alpha, isn’t sure he can trust Jill but his attraction to her is undeniable. He impulsively claims her as his mate to prevent her death at the hands of the Khagrish.

Can he continue to protect her from the experiments already underway? Will his claiming her put his pack in jeopardy from their alien masters?

As Jill searches for a way to rescue her fellow humans and get them all to safety, she finds herself falling for Aydarr, despite the secrets he’s keeping. She has a few of her own.

The situation becomes dire when Aydarr and his pack are sent offplanet on a mission, leaving Jill unprotected, prey for the senior scientist. Can she escape the experiments he has in mind for her? Will she be able to thwart the Khagrish plans and liberate humans and Badari alike? How will she and Aydarr reunite?

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Author Bio and Links:

USA Today Best Selling Author

“SciFi Encounters” columnist for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog

Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing her own stories.

Seven time winner of the SFR Galaxy Award, as well as a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award, Veronica is also the proud recipient of a NASA Exceptional Service Medal relating to her former day job, not her romances!

She was honored to read the part of Star Trek Crew Member in the audiobook production of Harlan Ellison’s “The City On the Edge of Forever.”

Blog: https://veronicascott.wordpress.com/

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/vscotttheauthor

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Veronica-Scott/177217415659637?ref=hl

To Trope, or Not to Trope @LexxxChristian

by Alexandra Christian

You can’t talk about the romance genre without talking about tropes. Tropes are certain conventions that appear in literature. Those comfortable little plot points that we can nestle down in and escape. Some people are of the opinion that tropes are bad. That our jobs as writers are to break new ground and blow those tired old tropes out of the water. And I can definitely understand that point of view. I like to read different stories that aren’t like every story I’ve read before. But I can also appreciate the familiarity of a tried and true trope that makes the story an escape.

We all love things we can predict sometimes. Take the success of Midsomer Murders. It’s a British detective series that’s been running for a thousand years. If you watch it on a regular basis, you start to notice a formula: a body is found, Inspector Barnaby is called away from some quirky family business to investigate, they talk to everyone in the village that has reason to want the person dead, you think you know who the murderer is until that person gets murdered before the commercial break, the killer ends up being the person you least expected, and we all live happily ever after. People tune in for it week after week because the comfort of that formula is there.

Tropes do this for romantic stories in a very effective way. We want there to be twists and turns, but we have basic elements that we look for when we start searching for a new favorite read. Here are some of my favorites:

1. MC in peril: Phoe Addison, the heroine of Naked, fits in easily with this trope. She is a woman that is in danger from outside forces and needs Cage’s help. I love these stories because the lovers are thrown together in difficult circumstances. They grow to rely on one another and their relationship grows through their teamwork at solving the larger problem. 
2. Fairytales: As a child, fairytales were my favorite kind of story. Incidentally, fairytales are often romances at their core (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast… need I go on?). As a romance genre trope, the fairytale stories are often updated to present day, or transported to different settings or times in history. I love writing fairytales, as is evident in my books Beast of Burden and Huntress. In Beast, it’s an erotic retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” where the hero, Marek, is a werewolf. For Huntress, I found a very old Scandinavian dragon story for the basis of hero Malik’s redemption.
3. Performers: Stories where one of the protagonists is a performer of some sort (actor, musician, etc.). Sometimes they’re called celebrity romances. I think we can all identify with those. I know that I’ve been mentally dating Benedict Cumberbatch for years now. I wrote a short, summery piece called Mr. Hollywood about a romance novelist in Bora Bora who meets her celebrity crush and has a little rendezvous. Gee… I wonder where I got the idea for that?
4. Virgin: This trope can be controversial if the author doesn’t get the ages right. For me, the key to these kinds of stories is the slow-burning romance between the two main characters. Showcasing the alpha hero’s tenderness with an unsure lover can always bake my muffins. I tried to incorporate this trope a little in Naked with Phoe and Cage’s first love scene. Phoe is not very experienced and has been sheltered most of her life. She doesn’t come right out and say that she’s a virgin, but the concept is there. More obvious is in the first installment of my Queen Joanna series, The Virgin Queen. It’s a medieval romance where the heroine Joanna is married off to the king, who she assumes is a cold, disfigured brute. He turns out to be quite the opposite and their story is probably one of my more luscious stories.
5. Protector: I know, you’re going to take away my feminist card, but I love this trope. A story where the hero has to protect the heroine in some way-- those make me melt. Now, that’s not to say that in the same story, the heroine can’t turn around and rescue him right back. In Naked, Phoe is very timid at the beginning and Cage steps up and protects her from the men chasing her and from the terrible creatures that try to kill them. She’s terrified at the prospect of leaving her home and is paying this “big strong man” to help her through it. Of course, by the end, Phoe becomes a badass in her own right and has to help Cage out of some sticky situations.

So tropes can be useful tools in choosing stories as well as writing them. They can also be traps, so choose wisely. The trick is to take those comfortable tropes and give them a twist that will make them stand out from the rest.

 

BACK...

Macijah "Cage" St. John' didn't want the spy life anymore. He would have been thrilled to spend every morning lying in the field behind Phoe's home in smalltown Louisiana watching the clouds roll by. But his Miss Addison wanted to spread her wings, literally. So Cage accepted a mission that teamed him up with his lady love. If only he had trusted her.

TO THE FUTURE

Everything about being a spy was a million times more exciting, and scarier, than the books she'd read in her former life as a librarian. When her first mission with Cage turned into a colossal clusterf*ck because he withheld information and kept secrets, Phoebe's world narrowed into a long tunnel of betrayal. Captured by space pirates and delivered to a horrible fate, she wished the last words between them had been of love, because she was certain she would never see Cage St. John again.

 

About the Author:

Alexandra Christian is an author of mostly romance with a speculative slant. Her love of Stephen King and sweet tea has flavored her fiction with a Southern Gothic sensibility that reeks of Spanish moss and deep fried eccentricity. Lexx likes to keep her fingers in lots of different pies having written everything from sci-fi and horror to Sherlock Holmes adventures. 

A self-proclaimed “Southern Belle from Hell,” Lexx is a native South Carolinian who lives with an epileptic wiener dog and her husband, author Tally Johnson. Her long-term aspirations are to one day be a best-selling authoress and part-time pinup girl. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America.

Website: http://lexxxchristian.wixsite.com/alexandrachristian

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/b5c_Un

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSouthernBellefromHell/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4684601.Alexandra_Christian

Amazon Author Central:

https://www.amazon.com/Alexandra-Christian/e/B009QU3UD4/

 

Watching For Trends To Write To Market by @vscotttheauthor

by Veronica Scott

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look into the future and know what the hot trends were going to be in the scifi romance field? Especially if you were trying to write to market?

I do a New Releases report every week on my blog, and have been doing it for well over a year now, and through that lens I can kind of see the trends as they develop, if not in advance.  Because of the sheer volume of new releases I look at in three genres every week – SFR, PNR and FantasyR – and the many sources I use (including authors sending me information) I do get a feel for what may be ‘hot’ soon. Reverse harem stories for one. I’ve been seeing a gradual increase in the number of them across all genres and in fact just interviewed some RH authors for my USA Today Happy Ever After platform. Definitely a growing favorite with a lot of readers.

Dragon shifters – I saw that one coming and sure enough, every week I have more and more dragon-themed stories. There are certain authors I watch (my little trade secret) and I have no idea how they figure it out, but if one of them suddenly starts releasing novels with a purple penguin shifter hero (to be ridiculous), I’ll know that’s the next hot place to be if you’re trying to write to market. In all honesty, I think the dragon craze may have been helped by the popularity of the character Daenarys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons in the ‘Game of Thrones’ TV series. Always a good idea to pay heed to what’s being presented and getting a lot of buzz in the movies and on TV.

Time travel is on a slight uptick…hello, ‘Outlander’….and probably also due to many really well done historical programs which are piquing reader interest in past times.

I’m seeing a new trend right now, of using the standard tropes from category romance – secret babies, billionaires, stepbrothers, fake fiancées and on and on – and just moving them bodily over to the SFR and PNR genres. And putting all those key words right into the title!

I hear whispers that cozy SFR will be next and when you figure that formula out, let me know because I want to write something that can have one of those adorable cozy covers! I do think the Ilona Andrews Innkeeper series could almost fall into this category. It’ll be interesting to see how ‘cozy’ gets redefined for scifi romance if it happens.

And I’m betting on the continued popularity of fairy tales and the whole “marry a prince” trope, thanks to Harry and Meghan.

I don’t write to market, as it happens. I write what I write – that’s what my Muse presents to me to put on the paper (or into the computer) and what I enjoy reading the most as well, so I’m only an observer of these specific trends. The nice thing about being independently published is that if I did want to try to jump on a hot trend, I have the flexibility to do so and get a properly edited book out in 4-6 weeks, versus the much longer timetable at a trad pub house. And once established, a popular subgenre like cyborg romances tend to remain favorites with readers for a long time and as they evolve, creative authors think of new twists and fun developments to keep the stories fresh.

What trend do you see coming? Or wish would take off with readers?

There was fortune telling of a different sort in my most recent scifi romance, The Fated Stars, with my hero Samell being an alien empath held captive and forced to deliver fake fortunes while he was actually spying. Here’s a short excerpt from the book where Samell and Larissa, my kickass space mercenary heroine, are discussing what he does. The conversation is taking place mind to mind, in a dream. Samell is speaking

“The most venerated legends of my race are about warriors and priestesses, and the noble deeds they accomplished together. Rarely, if ever, do the stories feature a priest and a female warrior, although we’ve had many famous women fighters in our history. You intrigued me, Larissa Channer, on many levels.”

“You can cut the flattery—it doesn’t work on me. Better men than you have tried.”

He surveyed her from head to toe with open admiration. “Their loss.”

“I’m gonna wake myself up in a minute, if you continue this chatter. Or touch me again without my permission, even in a dream.” She took a deep breath because despite her stern warning, she was craving his touch and wanted to run her hands freely over his body. Her attraction to him was scary in intensity, so unlike her. “Stick to the facts.”

“As you prefer. I told you the truth—I’m a prisoner and Kinterow forces me to do his bidding. I extract information from certain minds, as the controller commands. I deliver meaningless ‘fortunes’ to anyone who enters the tent, based on what my power to read emotions tells me the person most wants to hear.”

“So you’re a telepathic empath.”

“You can categorize my gifts from Thuun as you wish.”

“Why did you lie to the sheriff? Why didn’t you take the chance I gave you?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her tone. “You let me take big risks for nothing.”

“I’m one of many kidnapped from my world. Kinterow threatened the lives of the others if I said anything but what he commanded to the sheriff. He says he holds many Tulavarran imprisoned.”

“Did you ever consider he could be lying?”

Samell leaned closer. “He also threatened to have you killed in the prison if I disobeyed.”

She snorted. “I’d like to have seen him try.”

The story:

Larissa Channer, a tough no-nonsense mercenary in the Sectors, is celebrating success on her last job and a big bonus, with no slightest thought of taking on another assignment anytime soon. Out for a night of carousing with her friends at a third rate carnival on a backwater planet, she walks into the tent of a fake fortune teller and finds herself confronting the most intriguing man she’s ever seen. But something’s wrong, ominous currents lie beneath the surface of their encounter and Larissa can’t leave well enough alone.

Samell, a powerful, high born empathic priest, has been kidnapped from his own primitive planet along with a number of his people, and sold to the shady operator of an interstellar carnival. Kept enslaved, pretending to be a fortune teller while forced by his captor to steal information from the minds of all who come before him, Samell despairs of every breaking free.

Until Larissa walks into his tent and he recognizes the warrior who might mean the difference between life and death.

The situation becomes dire when Larissa and Samell come to the attention of the Shemdylann pirates who kidnapped him in the first place and the deadly Mawreg, aliens who threaten the Sectors. Can she save herself and the empathic alien noble, and derail the Mawreg plot against the Sectors? And will the soldier end up with her prince when all’s said and done?

Buy Links:  Amazon     Kobo     B&N     iBooks     Google

Author Bio: 

USA Today Best Selling Author

“SciFi Encounters” columnist for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog

 Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing her own stories.

Seven time winner of the SFR Galaxy Award, as well as a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award, Veronica is also the proud recipient of a NASA Exceptional Service Medal relating to her former day job, not her romances!

 She was honored to read the part of Star Trek Crew Member in the audiobook production of Harlan Ellison’s “The City On the Edge of Forever.”

Blog: https://veronicascott.wordpress.com/

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/vscotttheauthor

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Veronica-Scott/177217415659637?ref=hl