Yep, I have character arcs on the brain. It happens every time I finish a book and think about how I can better align the internal journey and external plot climaxes. (I think I have it for this last one. Still have to hammer out the details.)

Since we revisited character arcs last week, it seemed like the perfect time to compile the PDF of the series, including last week’s post. Even though I didn’t look back at the original series as I was writing the new post, I was surprised at how well the new material meshed, expanding on some topics I mention in passing.

So if you’re having trouble figuring out how to found, form or finish your character’s emotional journey, check out the PDF version of Character Arcs!

More free PDF writing guides.

Photo by Riccardo Romano

Yep, it’s my birthday! I also finished writing my latest novel laaaate Saturday night, as I’d hoped! After three intensive weeks of writing, managing a “March-a-thon” and keeping up (mostly) with my normal life, I’m so ready for the day off.

 

I’ll have posts throughout the week still, but Marketing Monday is taking a break for this week. Be sure to join me back here next week, though! We’re going to move from author websites to author blogs (dun dun dunnn!), a topic I know we all want to hear more about.

My friend Carolyn Twede Frank is publishing her first novel today! Hooray! Promises is about a young girl named Hattie who has to move to a tiny town:

Hattie is barely twelve when her pa’s “business adventures” disrupt her family and move them to the new town of Tropic, nestled in the shadows of old Ebenezer Bryce’s Canyon. Her pa views the town as opportunity. Hattie is hopelessly shy and views it with apprehension; she dreads the task of making new friends. More than anything else, Hattie wants to be like her father—not afraid of meeting new people, talking to strangers, and standing up for herself. So it is with trepidation that she accepts her pa’s challenge and promises to make new friends.

Hattie forms more promises as she struggles to make friends, finding companionship in places she wouldn’t have expected and learning that there is a difference between complaining and standing up for oneself.

Drawn from the memoirs of early Utah settlers, Promises is a heartwarming story of friendship with a touch of mystery and adventure set in the days before Bryce Canyon became a national park.

Carolyn has a great idea to tie the entries in her blog tour together: having us write about promises, too! After reading about her book, I keep thinking about the promises one of my ancestors made. Along with his family, Christian Emil Nielsen joined a new faith in Denmark in the 1850s, when he was about the same age as Hattie. Their family soon decided to immigrate to Utah to join other members of the church, so they would better be able to keep the promises they made when they were baptized.

During the journey, Christian’s father Rasmus kept a journal recording their delays and setbacks. After spending what seemed like months just getting from Denmark to Britain, they finally crossed the Atlantic, and into the Gulf of Mexico. They transferred to a steamship to sail up the Mississippi River. Just past New Orleans, a serious illness swept through the passengers (cholera, if you’d like to know). Rasmus wrote that his wife had begun to show the symptoms.

The next day, Christian took over keeping the journal: both of his parents had died. But with the help of a family friend, Christian and his surviving siblings crossed the plains and arrived in Utah. Christian spent the rest of his life living true to the promises he’d made to God, serving him by helping to tame the wilderness wherever he was assigned.

Read more personal stories about promises on each day of her blog tour!

You can also enter to win a full-sized puppet stage and puppets, value of $290 by participating in Carolyn’s blog tour giveaway. Check out her website or blog for more details.

Carolyn is co-launching her book, Promises, along with Cindy M. Hogan’s Protected, a sequel to Watched. This is one I’m looking forward to, too! A little about Protected:

Christy has the guy. The terrorists have been taken care of, and she has a shot at becoming popular. Life is GREAT! Until they find her. Now she must run and leave behind everything she knows, including herself.

You can follow Cindy’s full blog tour here.

Good luck and happy book birthday, Carolyn & Cindy!

Forsooth, Shakespeare.

I think I’ve mentioned him about eighty jabillion times in this context, but once again, hat-tip to my dad, who sent me a link to this via Big Geek Dad. Which is totally appropriate.

In the ’90s, Nick at Night began airing The Monkees. My sisters and I got hooked on the absurdity pretty quickly right before I started high school. (What can I say? We were the target audience, 30 years too late.) Over the next couple years, I met and saw two members of the Monkees in concerts (three different events)—Peter Tork and Davy Jones.

Two weeks ago, I got a text message from two of my sisters within seconds, basically saying the same thing:

I’m so sorry about Davy Jones!

That was how I found out he’d died. He had a heart attack at 66. For some odd reason, the youngest of the Monkees was the first to go.

It was a sad surprise, even if it’s not completely unheard of (I mean, Peter Tork, the oldest of the Monkees, hit 70 just two weeks before). It hit me that night as I saw a clip from the old TV show that he was really gone. But let’s be serious here: he wasn’t a close personal friend, and I’m not going to mourn him like one. His death didn’t make me face my own mortality, or give me a sobering wake up call, or anything else. It was a sad note.

One of my favorite songs actually sung by Davy

But then over the last weekend, I remembered what I owe to Davy Jones.

When my sisters and I started watching The Monkees, I liked the show so much, I had to write about it. Yes, it’s true—I came to writing through fanfiction. Monkees fanfic. (Is this as shameful as I think it sounds?) And though Davy himself wasn’t the biggest reason for my doing that, he was part of the ensemble. He was part of the reason I started to write.

From left to right: my sister (holding one of my favorite photos of Davy from the 60s), my friend, my sister, Davy and me (holding records?), in 1998. And yes, that extra hand on my waist is Davy’s. I’m 15, he’s 52. Is that skeevy? Oh well. (Don’t know where my other sister was .)

So thank you, Davy Jones.

How did you get started writing?