Welcome Donna Marie Rogers!

Today, let's welcome Donna Marie Rogers to Alien Places. She's stopping by at my blog on her whirlwind tour of cyberspace in celebration of the launch of her fourth book, Meant To Be. I'm just hoping that her title is an omen in my own writing life!

After the interview, you will find more information (including a blurb and excerpt) about Donna's book!

Romance author Donna Marie Rogers lives in a renovated old schoolhouse in beautiful Northeast Wisconsin with her husband and children. She's an avid gardener and home-canner, as well as an admitted reality TV junkie. Her passion to read is only exceeded by her passion to write, so when she's not doing the wife and mother thing, you can usually find her sitting at her computer creating exciting new characters, fresh new worlds, and always happily-ever-afters.

Hi, Donna! Welcome to Alien Places. Thank you for stopping by my corner of the universe. Please take a seat and make yourself comfortable. Congratulations on the release of your new book!

Thank you so much for having me, Masha, and for helping me celebrate the release of Meant To Be! *getting comfortable on the sofa*

The first thing that caught my attention about your book is the setting. I went to school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and my husband was born near there and also attended UW. Now we're down in Texas, but we still have relatives all over the Midwest. Why did you choose such a northern area for your story? Not just Wisconsin (I love that state), but Green Bay? Can't be the Packers, because according to my husband, they're not having a great year.

Definitely not the Packers, though I am a fan. My husband, however, is a huge Bears fan. *grin* We both grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, but decided to move up to Northeast Wisconsin about 15 years ago. I think Green Bay is a beautiful city; I’ve really come to love it. And since I’ve always preferred a Midwestern setting, it just seemed natural to set my series here. 

How much research did you need to do for the setting? The physical setting, the characters, the atmosphere?

I really didn’t have to do too much. I know the city well enough, especially the homey neighborhood I set the series in. I think watching reality shows ad nauseam helps a lot with writing interesting, and often quirky, characters. LOL

Where did the idea for Meant to Be come from? Did it start with characters? Setting? A premise?

I knew before I'd even finished my first draft of There's Only Been You that I'd be writing Garrett's story. Garrett is Sara Jamison’s oldest brother, and I fell hard and fast for the big moody cop who’s just too sexy for words. But it was the close relationship he has with his sister and the special bond he shares with his nephew, Ethan, that melted my heart and locked it for me. I couldn't imagine Garrett not having his own happily-ever-after. He so deserved one.

Tell us about writing the characters of Meant to Be. Did they barge into your life and interrupt your thoughts? How do you create characters? Do you build them little by little or do you know them in detail as soon as they appear to you?

Holy moly, Masha, no easy questions from you...LOL Of course, the entire Jamison clan from There’s Only Been You is in Meant To Be. They basically told me if they weren’t in the sequel, they were going on strike. *grin* And frankly, I love them all, so no problem there. Jessica McGovern developed slowly for me, but she was feisty from the get go. ;-) I’m sure all my characters have similarities with people I’ve met, seen on TV or in a movie, etc. I can’t say I have a particular way I create characters. I just start with an idea of who they are, and their personality develops as the story unfolds.

Who is your all-time favorite hero? What about from your own books?

For me there’s nothing sexier than a typical alpha hero, and nobody writes them better than NY Times Bestselling author Lori Foster. I love all of Lori’s heroes, but my favorite is Joe Winston from Say No To Joe? In fact, I dedicated Meant To Be to Lori & Joe. I’d like to think Garrett Jamison from Meant To Be is a little like Joe. Big, strong, sexy, loyal, super protective of those he loves. Though Garrett is also moody and a “drama king” according to his sister Sara. *grin*

So tell us about the best review you’ve ever received.

I’ve been blessed some really nice reviews, but the one that comes immediately to mind is the 4-1/2 star from Romantic Times for Welcome To Redemption. I wrote the four-story, small town anthology with my good friend Stacey Joy Netzel, and I think we’re both still a little in shock over this one. *grin* Seriously, the reader and reviewer response has been amazing. There’s definitely something special about the town of Redemption and it’s inhabitants. 

Do you plot and plan, or do you fly by the seat of your pants? If you plot, what kind of method do you use? Do you have any tricks you'd like to share?

I started off as a pantster, which worked for my first two books. But I realized I like the security of having a plot fleshed out, a rough outline at least, before I dive into a new manuscript. Tip? If you don’t already have one, find a good critique partner—or two. ;-)

Do you have an office? What does your work area look like? Do you like to spread or to keep everything within reach? Do you need coffee to sustain you while you work? Or is it tea? Or Coke?

My desk is set up in my bedroom, so I guess my bedroom is my office. I have my TV mounted up on the wall because I need the background noise when I write (though there are certainly some drawbacks to that *grin*). I’m a nibbler, which is also a problem since I don’t have the greatest metabolism (LOL), and I tend to suck down sweet tea by the gallon.

If you could have the perfect office or work area, what would it be like? Would it be a single room? A sea-side bungalow? Or would you sit outside in perpetual springtime? Would you like to have a personal, um, assistant at your beck and call?

Since this is fantasy, I’m going all out. *grin* I would love to own a mansion with a gazebo-style office that attached to my home via a long hallway so I’d have plenty of privacy from my chatty hubby and ever fighting kids. This gazebo office would sit on a bluff overlooking a clear blue river with a picturesque, tree-lined shoreline on the other side. There’d be plenty of colorful wildflowers to perfume the air and trilling birds would be nice, too...LOL Maksim, my sexy shirtless butler, would make sure I’m well fed and dance for me whenever I need a distraction...LOL Man, that sounds like freakin’ heaven!

How about your favorite set-up for reading? Chair? Couch? Recliner?

Bubble bath, without question. *grin* As it says on my website, “A good romance novel is like a bubble bath—steamy, relaxing, and over way too soon.” I also like to read in bed at night if I’m not too tired (I tend to be a night owl).

How about your future books? How do you keep track of new ideas? Or do you?

I’m much better than I used to be. I have files for all of my stories, and loosely written synopses for most. I’m still not as organized as I should be, but I’m working on it!

What's next on your agenda? What's the next story you're working on?

I have two novellas to write for Return To Redemption, the sequel to Welcome To Redemption. I’m also working on a new Liza James story, Three Alarm Blaze. Plus I’m about 50K words into Jack Sutton’s story, who you meet in Meant To Be. I do plan to write Nick Jamison’s story, Head Over Heels, and hope to have that third book in the trilogy started before the end of the year.

Thank you very much for visiting with us. Good luck on your virtual tour! Now if our visitors have any additional questions, let's hear them in the comments...

Thanks again for having me, Masha, and thank you to everyone who stopped by! **I'm going to give away a download of my new release, Meant To Be, and all you have to do to be eligible is tell us about your favorite summer cocktail (recipes are always appreciated but not necessary *grin*). Thanks again, everyone, and a special thanks to Goddess Fish Promotions! Please visit me at www.DonnaMarieRogers.com

She's running from her past, he's unsure about his future. Maybe together they can figure out what was MEANT TO BE. Officer Garrett Jamison is at the lowest point in his life. He’s lost faith in his ability as a police officer after unwittingly setting his sister up with a dirty cop. Garrett ended up getting shot, and his sister's son kidnapped right out of his own bed. He takes a leave from the force, in need of some time to make a decision about his future. Too bad he can't get a decent night's sleep thanks to his sexy new neighbor and her howling cat.

Jessica McGovern moves halfway across the country to start a new life in Green Bay, Wisconsin after her ex-husband is convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of their young son. Her new neighbor is as infuriating as he is handsome, but when her ex is released from prison early and shows up in town, Jessica discovers she's never needed anyone more...

Read an Excerpt:

"Come here, Miss Crabbypants."

Jessica resisted, but it was no use. The big oaf outweighed her by a ton. "Look, I just want to finish my tea and relax. Today's my last day off for almost two weeks."

He leaned back and frowned down at her. "Why are you working so many hours?"

She rolled her eyes. "Um, I have bills to pay...?"

His gaze became pensive as he massaged the back of her neck. Slowly, she relaxed until she was leaning into his broad chest, eyes closed, inhaling his spicy masculine scent. He always smelled so good...Damn, the man was a magician; she'd already forgotten why she was mad at him...Wait, oh yeah. "So what's with all that hammering?"

"We're building a doghouse."

His busy fingers moved to her shoulders wringing a groan of ecstasy from her. Oh, God, was she drooling on his shirt? Then his words registered. Jessica leaned back and swiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. "A doghouse? But you don't have a dog...do you?"

"No, but Ethan's been begging for a puppy for a couple years now. I guess he finally wore Sara down. And Mike's still in the ‘buy-Ethan-anything-he-wants' phase." Garrett glanced down at his T-shirt and chuckled. He reached out and recaptured the back of her neck. "Liked that, did you? You do seem a little tense—"

"Oh, no you don't." She ducked out of his reach and took a few steps back. He started to follow but she held up both hands. "You stay right where you are."

He propped his hands on his hips. "So do I have a date tonight or what?"

"Or what."

He grinned. "Wear something sexy," he said with a wink before strolling out the back door. The jackass even had the nerve to whistle.

Jessica walked over and slammed the door with a muttered, "Nutjob." Then she headed into the bedroom to search through her closet.

San Antonio is Not The Middle of Nowhere

... or (not so) little things that can put your kids in a very good mood.

So we were taking my husband to the airport at an ungodly hour this morning. Or maybe for some people is was a truly righteous hour -- 4 am -- but for me, that's just wrong. It's a time when you're either fast asleep and deep in the most inspiring dreams, or awake and writing in the throes of insomnia.

Or in a murderous mood plotting bloody demise because some neighbor's dog... No, I think that was in a story, and I'll stick to that.

Anyway, this morning, I was at the airport with my daughter keeping my husband company while he was checking in. We shuffled with the other half-awake zombies in the long line at United, wondering why some people got special treatment and what we could do to speed up the process next time. At least I did. Who knows what went on in my family's sleepy brains.

No one waited in the first-class line, of course. The three people who breezed through received personal attention, and accepted it with good humor and gracious smiles, not as their dues, but with a pleasant, friendly attitude. I'm not sure why I paid attention to them. Maybe it was because they looked just like people next door, not like any typical first-class traveling San Antonians (I don't know what typical first-class traveling San Antonians should look like, but apparently they weren't it).

I did notice their clothing. It was normal. It wasn't flashy, or fancy, or fashionable, it was just comfortable, cute, and normal. They looked like happy people doing something they enjoyed, satisfied with their existence -- living a life we should all aspire to.

As always, I worried about the long wait, the early hour, and having my husband travel by himself, and being left alone to take care of the household, so I didn't pay much more attention to the first-class travelers for a while. When I looked at them again, I got a full-face view of the man.

I turned to my daughter. She grinned and nodded. She'd recognized him too.

Naturally, realizing that something was going on, my husband switched to Russian and we had to explain without naming any names or titles that we just saw Cesar Milan, the host of the Dog Whisperer.

Just like that. In the regular San Antonio airport taking a regular United flight, except in first class (well duh, I would too if I could afford it).

No, we didn't get any autographs, no one made any fuss, we didn't squeal or anything, we just let him have his quiet boarding, but we had our little unexpected adventure.

In the words of my daughter, it put her in a great mood for the rest of the day. "Of course, if it had been one of my absolute favorite stars, I'd have been in a puddle right then and there, but it was Cesar Milan! That's just like the coolest!"

We spent the drive home speculating about his trip, and trying to list the big names who live in San Antonio.

You think San Antonio will feature on a future episode?

A Few, Free, Nifty Programs

I tend to do all of my work on the computer, from brainstorming to the first draft to the outline, my correspondence, my research. True, I don't limit myself to Google (or Bing) since I have access to a number of academic databases.

I know, I know. I'm spoiled.

To tell the truth, sometimes I do need to get off my chair and reach for an actual book and leaf through the pages, either in a concerted search or at random, just to jump-start my muse.

But otherwise, I rely on free (freeware and opensource) software to do my work.

For word processing and other office-like work, I rely on OpenOffice.Org
Open Office. I can save documents in Word format and open them on just about any computer anywhere I need. From their website:

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

I add to that a little dictionary and thesaurus that works from inside most word processing programs. On my computer, I can highlight a word in my OpenOffice document, click on the WordWeb icon in the taskbar, and get an instant definition and extensive synonym screen for that word.

Word Web

Word Web is also available in a for-pay, "Pro" version.

From their website:

WordWeb is a comprehensive one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It can be used to look up words from almost any program, showing definitions, synonyms and related words. It includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links.

Next, I like to keep track of word count, chapters, scenes per chapter, POV characters, and other structural elements with yWriter from SpaceJock Software. The creator of the program is a writer himself and yWriter continues to evolve as the creator refines it for his own needs. Big thanks for sharing it with us. Check out his sci-fi comedies while you visit his site!

yWriter

From the website:

What is yWriter?
First, and most important, yWriter is FREE to download and use!

Second, and still rather important, it's a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes. It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind. It does help you keep track of your work, leaving your mind free to create.

For Web browsing, I use Firefox

Is my browser of choice. For the occasional site that doesn't work in FF, I don't switch to Internet Explorer, but instead, I use a Firefox add-on that allows me to run pages in FF as it was Internet Explorer: IE Tab.

For my email needs, I use Thunderbird
I receive all my mail from my AoL account and from my web host in one place and I can keep track of my correspondence. The only thing I find awkward and haven't been able to solve so far is the interface with Yahoo! web mail. But since most of what goes to Yahoo is also forwarded to one of my other mail accounts, I'm OK.

One final cool thing to subscribe to: something I learned about from fellow writer Delilah Devlin. It's a site that will send you a "Giveaway of the Day", a program to download and install within a given period of time. Those are NOT freeware programs. They're full-featured, for-pay programs available to you for a short period. You get to read about them, and make up your mind whether you want to try them. Check it out here: Giveaway of the Day.

Welcome to Sandy Lender

Today, let's welcome Sandy Lender to Alien Places.

Creating a story-world isn't easy, even when you research real places in today's world. Even when you've been to those places and can still walk those streets in your memory.

But what happens when you have to build an entire universe from scratch, invent its rules and rulers, its positive aspects and its dangers?

Let's hear from Sandy Lender how she does it. And don't forget to leave a comment! Sandy will be giving away a signed copy of her hard cover book to a lucky winner!

Sandy Lender!

Researching an Alien Place

By Fantasy Author Sandy Lender
http://www.todaythedragonwins.blogspot.com

I don’t get to do this for a living yet, but, for my second career, I build alien worlds in my imagination. I use research skills honed by 21 years of writing research papers and magazine articles to borrow from the Anglo-Saxon past of our real world, keep track of the legends, lands, and characters I create, and double-check the traditional elements of fantasy literature against the pros who’ve come before me. I’m a fantasy author who loves to put medieval symbolism in her work.

It’s difficult to explain why. Maybe I lived (for a really short time) in Anglo-Saxon England in a past life and I still carry part of the romance inside me. Or maybe I just enjoyed my Old English literature classes in college too much. Or maybe the year I lived in Mallorca, Spain, impressed upon me a yearning for old buildings alongside cliffs that overlook the spray of crashing ocean waves. Of course, in Anglo-Saxon times, those old buildings were quite drafty and cold…and I don’t do well with the cold.

So I made some changes to the OE themes that I admired so much in my research when I plugged them into my made-up world in CHOICES MEANT FOR GODS. First of all, I’ve brought everyone’s lodgings “forward” a bit in technology. No drafty, cold castles. Also, the “hero” of CHOICES MEANT FOR GODS is a lady. It’s all girl power with Amanda Chariss as far as I’m concerned! A writer also has to tone down the OE propensity for mead-drinking and boasting in our modern book marketplace. While the folks sitting around listening to a scop tell the tale of BEOWULF would have loved all that, readers today think it’s kind of annoying for a hero to go about bragging on himself. So, of course, my hot and handsome Nigel Taiman sits in the shadows that blanket him like comfortable clothes and doesn’t tell a soul how he protects his family from his father’s rages.

Mostly, the elements I put in my fantasy novels don’t come from the real world. You can’t pick up an encyclopedia and find the origination of The Ungol race. I made it up for my fantasy world of Onweald. In my early scribbled notebooks, you’ll see them called Lognu, but I thought that sounded strange when I read it aloud. The Ungol are a peaceful, artistic race of beings that live in the underground network of sapedrels known as Tiurlang. (And then, just recently, I found a reference to ungol in a Tolkien book and, once again, cursed Tolkien for being a literary god. I was already upset with him for using the ultimately perfect name Smaug for a dragon.)

Be that as it may, the names of gods, goddesses, villages, and rivers in the alien land of Onweald are reminiscent of OE words and people. Symbols all over the series hearken back to OE themes of exile, ring-giving, serfdom, and loyalty to one’s leader that send me to the research books from time to time. The problem with checking on something in, say, ELENE or THE BATTLE OF MALDON, is that I get sucked in and end up reading the whole thing. The next thing I know, I’ve used up my writing time for that evening…Bummer!

Other than that, it all comes from my slightly off-kilter imagination. My research books for Onweald and the CHOICES MEANT FOR GODS series currently consist of tons of spiral notebooks, file folders full of stories and legends and character descriptions on the computer, a recipe box full of vocabulary words, and a bunch of other papers and notes and napkins with scribblings. My research includes a huge desk calendar with the phases of the moons of Onweald mapped out so I know exactly when both are full and when both are waning. It’s important when you’ve got an announcement to make by their light, you know. To a new reader, it’s only an alien place for a little while. I welcome you all to travel there with me!

“Some days, I just want the dragon to win.”

Making Stuff

... or a day with my daughter.

Sometimes, your day just won't go the way you plan it. But it may go better.

There's writing planned for every one of my days. At least three kinds. And Internet work, and some computer study time... But some days, I don't really get to sit in front of my monitor and do all that stuff.

Like today. I was pulled out of my comfy cave by my daughter's pleas for help and by colorful scraps of fabric.

We made a tote. Doesn't seem like much, does it, to you crafters out there? But to a beginner, that meant learning patience. Thinking things through. Making choices. Learning about types of fabric and the purpose of different notions. Discovering the sewing machine. Learning to measure and cut and pin.

Learning about patience again, and listening.

But most of all, it was having Mom's undiluted attention. And doing something I like with my daughter and having fun.

Next training session: spending time together in companionable silence.

But that may be a very advanced skill.

Last Day to Register

It's Sunday, and it's the last day to register for this session of the Blurbs Workshop!

Hurry in! The fun starts in earnest tomorrow!

Click to join blurbs101

Get some great reads!

On the heels of the previous post, I'm happy to announce Delilah Devlin's summer contest (see the sidebar). The prizes are cool, the reading is hot, and I'm happy to spread the word about her stories.

Check it out here!