Done That

Blogging just isn't working for me today. I've thought of lots of things, but none of them merit a whole blog. First I thought about character development. I know there's plenty to say about character development, but that's the problem; every blogger in the blogosphere including me, has already said it all. On that subject I'll just say I'm getting tired of weird, off the wall, loaded with hang-ups characters. I just finished reading Captive Heart by Michele Paige Holmes. I can't tell you how nice it was to meet a heroine I could actually identify with, someone I could imagine sitting down to dinner with, and actually becoming her friend and care about her problems.

I thought about background details and I have to say I'm a minimalist. If clothing, scenery, and sunsets aren't part of the story, leave them out. Of course I don't want all those characters running around sans clothes, but I really don't care about styles, flounces, and designer logos unless the book is about some facet of the fashion industry. I want just enough background and setting to give the story a realistic feel. I don't want all fourteen colors of the sunset detailed and I don't want to count every blade of grass on the prairie. Please leave something to my imagination.

All right, this next one is a pet peeve of mine, but something some readers actually like. Name dropping. I don't mean just the conversational use of famous people's names a person uses to make themselves appear more important, but the use of designer labels on clothes, cars, electronics, exclusive resorts, and foreign dishes. Some writers use them as a means of establishing certain qualities such as shallowness or snobbery in a character and in moderation they work. Overdone they say more about the author than the character.

I could always blog about the weather, but that's a little overdone too. As long as I can remember, every ten years or so, we have a sequence of weather that breaks records and makes life miserable one way or the other. This seems to be our year.

I could write about my new book, If I Should Die, but I've already done that too. Being a reviewer, I can't ask bloggers to review my books or send them free copies, but I love it when one buys my book and comments or reviews it on his/her own. Here's the first one I've run across. It's by Julie Bellon, a writer and teacher I respect a great deal. Believe it or not, even writers who have published many books are nervous and jittery about what readers will think of each new book and anxiously await comments and reviews.

Okay, my inability to concentrate on a topic may have something to do with my speaking assignment tonight. I've been asked to speak to a book club, not the usual kind of book club I often speak to. This one is Spanish and the participants speak varying amounts of English and, sadly, I only know about five words in Spanish. The dear lady who invited me and is hosting the club tonight once worked with me at the City Library. We had some great times, a few sad times, and one scary time, which come to think of it, would make a great topic for another blog.