Showing posts with label cowtown critiquers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cowtown critiquers. Show all posts

Cowtown Critiquers Christmas

I love my critique partners. They have literally rescued my characters out of plotting wells I let them fall into...or helped me shovel crap onto ones that needed it. I so admire these ladies and their intelligence and creativity. And they are so fun to be around. When I can't make it to one of our monthly plotting sessions at The Cotton Patch (we're the noisy laughing ones at the long table in the back who never leave--our poor waitress) I really miss them and can't wait for the next month when I can be with them. 

Seriously. Even when my personal life feels as bleak as wading through a quagmire with leeches in a dark jungle with vines slapping my face, a few hours laughing with the cowtown critiquers strengthens my lungs to get back at it and keep swinging that machete.  

We usually exchange small gifts at Christmas time. This year I wanted to add a personal touch and thanks to Pinterest (Best ideas ever. I want to do everything and I don't even like crafts.) I saw these personalized frames that would be perfect. So I had each of my critique partners write down what they love about writing or reading. Printed it off, and voilà! 

personalized picture frames


Turned out pretty nice if I say so myself. Below are the quotes they each gave me.


"I write because it's who I am. I've been writing so long, I can't imagine not putting words to the page. It would be like a chunk of me is missing. Writing is just me. Besides, it's the only way to keep the voices in my head subdued."  C.A. Szarek


"I write because there are too many stories floating around in my head. Sending a story out into the world makes room for the next book and the next, and the next…"  Michele Welsh

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” 
― John GreenThe Fault in Our Stars

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
― Mark TwainThe Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

"I read to escape, to ride the roller coaster, to marvel at the journey. I write to humble myself, to embrace the challenge, to throw caution to the wind and soar."                    Gina Lee Nelson 
 

"I love to read because I love to learn new things, not just facts and figures, but words and ideas. I love to feel the highest highs and the lowest lows and to be moved to tears, laughter, or breathlessness. I love to be able to experience other times or other worlds through the eyes of characters that I have come to love and who resonate with me." 
Jen FitzGerald

The Fae Ring

The Fae Ring cover 

She's always been a dutiful daughter...



Janet MacLeod has spent the last ten years dedicated to her clan, acting as the Lady of the castle—at the cost of her own happiness.

She aches every time she looks at her brothers, both happy with their wives, and wants nothing more than a love of her own.

He’s a broken soldier…


Xander, a former Fae Warrior, sacrificed his wings and magic to live in the Human
Realm and became a traitor to his people.

When he finds Janet forlorn on the beach, Xander gives her a ring he’s had since childhood, not realizing it’ll reveal her as his fated mate.

The ring’s magic activates the Faery Stones, and Janet is sucked into the Fae Realm. Her life is in immediate danger, for the Fae sense—and seek to destroy—any human who dares step into their world.

Xander is the only one who can retrieve her, but he too, wears a target.

Can he rescue his soul-mate and return with her to the Human Realm or will temptation of great magic and the rebirth of his wings force him to abandon their destiny? Duncan promises to help Claire get home, even though his desire to have her wars with his vow.
Torn between familiarity of the present and what she wants in the past, can Claire help Duncan find his brother and get back to the future? Will she even want to?
The Fae Ring cover back flap

About The Author:
Displaying photo.JPGC.A SzarekC.A. is my critique partner and I love her to death. I'm thrilled to show y'all her latest book ~~ Highland style of course. She's originally from Ohio, and has made me these to-die-for buck-eye treats. nom-nom-nom. Anyway, I'm so glad she made her way out here to Texas. She is married and has a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice.

She works with kids when she’s not writing.

She’s always wanted to be a writer and is overjoyed to share her stories with the world. C.A. is just an all around great sweet person and I know you'll love her and her stories as much as I do.

Visit her on her blog, orn TwitterFacebookGoodreads and website. She's everywhere!!!

C.A. Szarek is also author of Collision Force, Chance Collision, Sword's Call, Love's Call and The Tartan MP3 Player.
Twinsie Jo




Also, enter this giveaway for your chance to win some amazing goodies!!


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My Critique Partners

Thought I'd introduce you to my critique partners, the Cowtown Critiquers. We are all part of the North Texas RWA chapter where we all met. We send our chapters back and forth through email whenever we need help. We're pretty relaxed as far as scheduling goes, although we started out with deadlines to turn stuff in, but that kind of fell and got scattered along the well-intentions trail.

We meet in person once a month after our RWA meeting. You'll usually find us at a Cotton Patch in Colleyville around a table laughing and talking and the waitresses there are so sweet, they never make us feel like we've overstayed our welcome even when we've been there for hours and ordered nothing but dessert and something to drink.

I love hanging out with these gals and brainstorming. I come back from our sessions pumped up with creativity and jazzed to get back into writing. It's amazing how a table full of creative people can uplift your own creative energies.

So on with the introductions: This is Chrissy. She's the baby of the group, both in age and in when she joined RWA and really got serious with her writing journey. She's such a hard worker though and in a relatively short time, her writing went from "needs a bit of work" to "amazing". She has a stubborn protective streak when it comes to her characters. In a brainstorming session if we suggest putting her characters in harmful situations, I can see her mentally shift in front of her characters with the stance of a protective mama bear: "Oh, no, you aren't putting my characters through that." It's rather amusing and very cute. But then after she takes a moment to process, she'll go ahead and put her beloved hero and heroine through as much hell as the rest of us do to ours anyway. Somebody has to suffer for literary greatness, right?

This is Jen and Gina. Two of the most amazing generous, get-the-job-done people I know. Actually I can say the same about Chrissy and Michelle. All my critique partners are hard-working generous people, who end up volunteering to do a lot of things that benefit others for our chapter. 
Jen is our grammatical go-to goddess. Once my writing has passed through her fine-tooth comb, I know it's in a fairly stable shape.  It won't need life-support at any rate. Her writing tends to hone in on characters going through periods of growth and self-realization. Strong people becoming stronger. Much like Jen herself. Out of all of us, I sometimes think she doesn't see how good of a writer she really is. 

And Gina is so calm and able to focus on a story-line as a whole, seeing the big picture and what the characters need to go through in order to have their happily-ever-after. Even when she speaks, she has that peaceful lulling kind of quality in her voice. She's a tinkerer though, always finding a new scene that could be added to make a story better. I'll bet if she could, she'd go back and tinker with her books that are already published.   

This is Michelle. She's a go-getter, knows exactly what she wants out of a writing career, and isn't afraid to go out and grab the bull by the horns to get it. She writes the most genuinely true-to-life character interaction scenes I've ever read. The characters might be doing something mundane and simple, yet I'm hanging on every word, every movement. 

So, that's them, my critique partners, women I treasure as friends and as my first readers who won't let me get lazy or take easy short-cuts and keep my writing focused and on track. 
Love 'em. Share the love and check out their sites if you get a chance.   


Writers Retreat

The North Texas Chapter of Romance Writers of America has an annual writers retreat every November. For the past two years since I've been a member I haven't been able to go for various reasons, so I was real excited to be able to attend, hoping to get lots of writing done.

So how'd I do? Uh, let's skip over that part for a minute.

Around 10 of us converged upon the Jefferson Street  Bed and Breakfast Inn in remote Irving, Texas. I'm joking. Irving is smack dab between Fort Worth and Dallas (which reminds me of a joke: If Fort Worth is where the West began, that makes Dallas where the East petered out.) approximately about a pig and poke from the old Dallas Cowboy Stadium before it was torn down. Not remote. But it was in the Historic Downtown Irving District and was real quiet and pleasant. There is even a horse painted on the side to inspire a remote atmosphere.
Great times were had by all. We enjoyed two workshops. One with a former secret service dude who waltzed in all innocent looking with several hidden weapons on his body and yes, we all now know how to make a homemade silencer with a baby's pacifier and which guns will go off if accidentally dropped and which won't.

We also enjoyed cringed as Nikki got thrown around the cottage by the multiple Martial Arts instructor and listened to our mild-mannered chapter president exclaim "damn!" each time a body smacked the floor. 

(Excuse the blurriness. They were in motion. Also I kinda can't take a good picture. Hubby keeps sending me how to take good picture links, but, well, here ya go.)    
        
Just hangin out and plotting. That's Marsha, Nikki, and Chrissy's back.  Marsha wrote approximately 7000 new words.
Chrissy and Michelle aka Lavender.
Jen got a new premise worked out for her T/T WIP.   Most frequent question overheard: Does your story have a secret baby?
Gina reworked three scenes.


This is what the Hill Country Suite looks like without 10 writers hangin out in it and also in focus.
Everyone together, even the two dark heads who wished to remain unphotographed. Vampires or something. Oh, and me, I'm behind the lens. Raquel (blonde in the back) wrote a truckload of words, but she's prolific any day of the week anyway so I don't know her final count. The Dark head writing team who shall remain unphotographed plotted the weekend away.
Wow, looks like a grumpy group. It's morning and I just hadn't warned them to smile yet.

The bathrooms rocked. Three words: Heated tile floors.



And me? The group as a whole helped me figure out my villian's motivation. It only took the entire Saturday, but after that I was able to write a pivotal scene that pretty much the entire WIP hinges on. Only about 800 words total, but some very vital-better-get-it-right 800 words so I'm happy.