Welcome Author Kira Sinclair-Guest Blogger

Please welcome my fellow Heart of Dixie writing friend, author Kira Sinclair.  


She's a Harlequin  BLAZE author with a heart of gold. I'm excited to share my Veranda with her today as she shares about one of her favorite topics: Writing. Today's topic? Setting. And she's got setting nailed in her fabulous new novel, What Might Have Been.  I hope you enjoy meeting Kira as much as I enjoy knowing her!! 

Setting – More Than Just a Place

One of my favorite topics to talk about is writing.  Ask me a question, get me rolling and I can talk your ear off.  I recently had a nice discussion with a friend about settings.  Part of it started because of my bio – if you’ve read it you know I’m a self proclaimed city girl who’s been plopped down in the middle of the country.  The transformation started when my daddy moved us from Michigan to Alabama (and I seriously asked him if we could still wear shoes.  Hey, I was only nine). And continued with my husband’s penchant for bringing home critters...but that’s another discussion for another time.

I’ve come to realize, during my talk of settings, that up until What Might Have Been I’ve focused my attention on fairly urban locations.  Maybe I was feeling homesick.  However, WMHB returned me back to my present existence.  It’s set on a commercial peach orchard.  Now, I don’t live on a working farm.  At the moment the most we raise are goats and baby hamsters, but I do enjoy looking out my kitchen window and seeing the clear stretch of our land instead of my neighbor’s dilapidated trampoline and overgrown flower beds. 

There are definitely advantages to living in the country.  I just miss my pizza delivery guy sometimes. 

I did love doing the research for WMHB though.  Building a fictional small town where everyone knows your business.  The kind where there’s only one funeral home and multiple Baptist churches.  I enjoyed pulling out my learned Southern heritage and finally getting to use it.

So, do you find you gravitate towards a certain kind of setting?  Do you read books where that feel familiar or do you like to change up the pace?  Are you a city girl who likes to read about cowboys or a country girl who likes to travel to the urban meccas?

Kira

Baby on the Market: Submitting Queries to Publishers

I've busted my tail during the past few weeks to write a decent query and synopsis for the third MS. I have had great input from my CPs in NoVA and I truly appreciate their help.

Now I am ready to, *gulp*, query again.

People have read my work, and they say I have a good voice for BLAZE. So once again, I am querying that house first in HQN. I hope I get in past the cracked door, but I know it's a long shot. 

I spent most of the morning editing my query for BLAZE--of course they require two pages single spaced and I have, 4.5 double spaced pages. Edit... edit... edit... but I think I have a passable one now. I'm pleased with my query letter-- happy to mail it. 

After finalizing what I wanted to send to BLAZE, I checked out the websites for my next print publishers and e-publishers. I printed out their guidelines for submission and stacked them in order of query. Now I have 8 houses to query. Whew.

Next I work on getting each submission ready to mail out. And I am creating a spreadsheet for the task. My baby's ready to fly out the door. In the days ahead I will revise and polish the rest of my MS. I will also ignore the GH scores sure to dampen my day when they arrive at my door. I am filing them in the BOX and will refrain from looking at them until Sept. 09.

After I send off my submissions, I am targeting a few contests I feel will generate interest in my book. 

Ready, Set, Go....

Today is my last day to "relax" before I start BIAW. Well, relax is a relative term. First, grocery store for the upcoming weekend events and week of writing ahead of me. Second, a long walk and talk with my good friend across the street. Third, laundry (need I say more?), fourth, clean the kitchen, and fifth read through my notes for the writing.

So far, I've managed to get a lot of stuff accomplished regarding my writing goals. Except querying. I think I will wait now till March. I want to have a CLEAR head for the week and if I query book 3, I will have those characters wanting to bust out of my subconscious, not my new characters. So, that one thing did not get accomplished.

But I have managed to get a lot of prep work done, I've gotten my PRO status which will help me in my career--way more opportunities to meet with agents and editors because of the PRO status--and I've found a new place to research cops and robbers. Aha! Perfect for my 4th book.

I have also decided to retitle the third book: Sweet Sensations instead of Too Sweet to Eat. A recipe for sweet sensations... and I think for my query I will write a letter that is more like a back cover on a BLAZE. Seriously, I checked the website at HQN and they still have the sample query from 2004!! That is so old. I want to pep it up a notch.

So, wrote my ideas down, on a post-it. Those seem to work for me. And I'll just pop that into my TSTE novel box and let it "simmer" till I am finished the BIAW.

I'm excited about it. I think it will be a great experience. I've already learned a lot about myself as a writer as a result. The goal is to get FASTER and more efficient in the first draft process. All the GMC and so forth will probably reveal itself to me in revision time.

Inauguration

My daughter's student group arrived in DC after 24 hours in a bus trip from hell. They missed a lot of fun stuff, but ended up going to a great Italian restaurant, and then to the WW2 Memorial. Yesterday they were able to tour the city and see more memorials, and they got to visit their congressman's office. I had emailed the office about their plight on Sunday and they responded yesterday. The staffer followed up with calling the group and the chaperones. They were invited to see the congressman's office and get pictures made with him. I was pleased for them and very impressed with the man for following up. I told my husband I'd vote for him again because he did this one thing right for me. I know it will have an impact on the students' memories and my daughter called to say thanks as well.

I managed to write about one hour on Sunday, and three hours on Monday, MLK Bday. Also my actual birthday so lots of well-wishers calling. Then my DH took me out for a grown up treat: movies with wine and appies in the adult section of the theater. Very nice atmosphere. And the movie had Clint Eastwood in it--amazing actor and story.

Today I am writing the black moment--not feeling very good about the prior scene, but at this point, I am rewriting the entire thing, so I just need to get the story down--again-- for the zillionth time. I am so sick of this book. I can't wait to see the last page on my computer. I've cut 20,000 words!!!!!!!!! Argh -- I move forward, cut, move forward, cut again. I have approximately 53,000 words. The length of the BLAZE catergory is about 60,000. I easily have that many words with the cut ones LOLM, but I have to write new words. I WANT THIS BOOK OUT OF MY HAIR.

I gave myself a deadline: Friday the 23rd. I will finish it by then--late or early--and then weekend OFF. And then I start a new challenge--Book In A Week. I am looking forward to writing something completely NEW. I feel ready to start a new story, a new idea, anything but this swill I am serving up.

Now, off to read other blogs, pop back into bed and read for a bit, and then sleep again--I HOPE.