Rach and Kim Write

I posted a super funny, to me, meme on our author Facebook page earlier this week about pulling real life inspirations into our novel. It makes me giggle because my brother’s name is Isaac. #sorryyouhadtodie  But it got me thinking about how often I use real life scenarios in my work. Do I do it a lot? Is it conscious on my end?  The answer is, as so many are in life, yes and no.  When coming up with names of characters, possibly one of the most stressful parts to me personally, I shied away from names of people I knew. It’s inevitable, especially with a writing partner, that a name you would not have chosen is in the mix, however. If there’s no reasonable objection (and believe me, some names were rejected with prejudice), there’s no harm/no foul with naming characters. I have found with scenes, or conversations within scenes, that I like to pull what’s happened or happening in my real life as inspiration. Writer's block is real, and I like to run through my day or wha...

Reader, let me tell you, I don’t think I’ve been more aware of my personal writing style than I was when Kim and I got our first round of content edits back on book 1 of the Amber Falls Series: Yours, Always. Little quirks, odd phrasing, repeating words and a myriad of other strange things present themselves when a real editor reviews your manuscript for the first time. Listen. We’re not professionals. We started this as a lark—to spend time together. That being said, both Kim and I are well educated and well read. We know the difference between their, they’re and there. We know where to put dialogue tags and punctuation. But I don’t know what a subjunctive clause is. I’ve looked it up, been told what it is by our editor and I still don’t know what a subjunctive clause is (sorry, Nicki!). We read through our manuscript so many times, edited chapters—we even read the whole thing out loud! We thought we knew what editing was. I believe at one point we may have confidently declared “If we...

 Rachael and I are busy. Busy with work, busy with being moms, busy with family. And now busy trying to balance that with writing this book. With edits, with marketing. As I am sure you can relate on some level, it's hard sometimes.  Trying to be present and give 100% to the thing that is in front of you at the moment, and still making that mental list of all the things that need to be done. Trying to take time for yourself and feeling guilty because there are so many things that you could be crossing off your list.  What had started as a running joke had blossomed. But it can be hard, because of those other competing priorities, hard to put in the time to change this fun thing I was doing with my friend into an opportunity for something life changing.  Enter the writers retreat. Once we had a solid 25,000 words, Rachael and I knew that if we wanted to finish our book, it would take more than a few hours on a Friday or Saturday night. We knew that we needed focused t...

I've never written anything. Well, a poem in high school English class more years ago than I care to think about, but I can’t count an assignment.   As I'm writing this I can call myself a liar. I play guitar and have written more than one song. I’ve performed my songs live and recorded a demo. When I think about writing, why did I not think about my music? Why can I say to myself "poetry isn't my jam" but then know I can easily write a ditty with a mean hook and a haunting bridge? Songwriting came easy to me. You see, I'm the daughter of musicians. My mom plays piano and my dad, well, before his stroke he could play any instrument. I am the daughter of musicians who are writers and creators. Writing comes in so many styles yet I would guess most writers might not consider themselves writers™️. On social media I see a lot of talented authors suffer from imposter syndrome, whereas they write but don't consider themselves “writers”, mainly because they...

We have learned a lot about ourselves and the writing process on this journey. To be able to say, "We wrote a book", really took the cake. To know that there are people, other authors and writers out there that have stories living in their heads that may never see pen to paper. To have completed a story start to finish and see the story out there now in the world for others to see is a huge accomplishment in itself.  I cannot tell you how differently our final first chapter looks compared to our initial first chapter. There have been many changes and revisions, and we could not be happier with our final completed product. But there will always be something that could be updated or changed. But being able to stop and be happy enough to share with others is very exciting.  At first we were rouge, we wrote our first chapter together and had a small idea of how our outline would look, but we pieced together chapters each picking what we were excited to write about in the story. I...

Sitting in quarantine, watching some throw back 90s movies with my 10 year old daughter. Trying my best to make sure she has exposure to some of the greatest rom-coms that era has to offer. 'She's All That', 'Win A Date With Tad Hamilton', 'Never Been Kissed'. Only to be left in the middle of the movie for time with friends on Minecraft.  My mind started to wonder how great it would be to write a romance that would be worthy of a generation. Keep in mind I am not Danielle Steel - I start to think about what that romance would be like. What would my lead character's names be? What is their occupation? Is it a torrid love affair or a wholesome Hallmark?  I start tracking some of my ideas and pretty soon I come up with something to send to my friend Rachael.  Rachael and I have known each other for the better part of 12 years. We have experienced a lot together - from raising children, to aging parents. We have exchanged many ideas over the years, from shor...