Helping, Pretending, Writing and Rookies

Helping others is a good thing. Marianne Mancusi whom I do not know and have not read (sorry!!!) lost everything in a fire while at the Reno RWA convention. People have pulled together to donate things for an eBay auction.

You can hit the auction here to see everything, but the critiques are the thing! Even Steven Axelrod put one in. His is currently going for $825! Yes, you read that right! The next closest is Beth de Guzman at $340 and Deidre Knight at $260. It is amazing! I have three Tarot readings that are doing all right for themselves as well. I am tickled to see them up there. But do go take a look!

I've been working. Changing Times has grown from 163 pages to 171 so I am proud of that. Up to 49k words so I am almost half way there. Cai is working on the Archangels who have been plaguing her of late. Changing Times is the first book in our Shifters series. The one winning the contests is Changing Hearts. We realized that our heroine needed a bit more spunk and our hero needed just a dash more of bad boy sauce. The villain of book one is the hero of book two because he was just so darned interesting!

I think that sometimes characters take on lives of their own. When I say that it makes me laugh, because I remember one of my first RWA conferences (in Denver) when I attended a workshop put on by a regency author I have come to adore. She was adamant about the fact that HER characters never took on lives of their own and never talked in her head. She said if she didn't have control then she wasn't an author. Sadly, in her eyes, Cai and I are not authors then. We are merely beasts of burden who carry our characters' lives and words to the paper via our pens.

See, Cai and I talk "in character" all the time. We are our characters for brief shining moments. No.. not THOSE moments, silly children. LOL! We are best friends and that is all! But those moments when a character is arguing about something, sometimes one of us will drop into the character of someone else in the story so that there is a back and forth. We can do this at the drop of a hat in email, instant messaging or person. We get weird looks from our loved ones when we do it in person, but that is the price we pay.

We both joined the FF&P chapter of RWA today. I am looking forward to diving into that chapter to see what I can learn. Some great folk are there already. "The Sisters" belong to that chapter. These are two ladies (Mary and Margaret) from California. They had us sign their authors bag that they raffle off for charity. Said it was going to be our rookie bag. :-) I love their enthusiasm. Margaret also gave me her FF&P pin which was awfully sweet of her!

So what are you doing today? Leave me a comment so I know you are out there!

Create a great day today!
Stephanie (the Stephan half of Cai Stephan)