Avoiding the “Too Stupid to Live” Heroine in Regency Romantic Suspense Plus: Read a Deleted Scene from The Spinster’s Christmas If you’ve ever shouted at a movie screen because the heroine ran into the dark woods instead of toward safety, you’ve probably encountered what writers call a “Too Stupid to Live” (TSTL) heroine. As a reader and writer of Regency romantic suspense, I’ve always tried to avoid falling into that trap. But sometimes, even the most logic-loving authors can make mistakes. When I was about to release The Spinster’s Christmas , I hired a professional macro-editor to take a look at it. I wrote the book during a difficult season in my writing journey, and although I sensed something wasn’t working in the manuscript, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Turns out, it was a classic case of being too close to the story to see the problem. My editor pointed out a scene near the climax where my heroine—normally level-headed—suddenly runs away from safety and int...

Christine Henderson interviewed me if you’d like to read some tidbits about The Lone Rice Ball and some tips on writing. Check out the interview. Christine writes Christian contemporary romance and was in the Once Upon a Starry Night box set with me. You can check out her book The Sweetest Delights in Life here .

Christine Henderson interviewed me if you’d like to read a little about how I came up with the idea for The Spinster’s Christmas and some tips on writing. Check out the interview. Christine writes Christian contemporary romance and is in the Once Upon a Starry Night box set with me. You can check out her book The Sweetest Delights in Life here .

I posted earlier about my Book Creation Process/Writer’s Process on my Story Sensei blog, but I decided to also post more in depth about my Blocking process, which is an extension of my outlining process. I also included an example so you can see what my blocking is like. If you’re struggling with writing slowly and having difficulties getting through scenes, this might be of help to you. Click here to read the article.

I happened to read a review of Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 1: Archer , and the reader mentioned being confused because characters switched between using first names and last names. I didn’t comment on the review (it’s my policy never to do so), but I thought it might be useful for my readers for me to mention why I have some characters referring to certain others by their first names or last names or titles. When I was researching British titles, many published historical authors recommended this article , which is one of a series of very informative articles on how the British refer to those with titles. The article writer mentions that especially in the Georgian/Regency/Victorian time period in England, people did not refer to each other by their first names unless they were childhood friends or close family, and even close family would often refer to a peer by his title name (or a nickname of his title name) rather than his first name (i.e., “Hart” for Lord Hartley). It struc...

I’m not entirely sure if this might interest some of you, but I posted about my entire book creation process on my Story Sensei blog for writers. If any of you are writers and are curious as to how I create my books from start to finish, I listed each stage of my personal process. Each writer is different and will do things differently, but this is the process that I’ve found works best for me (at least for now). Click here to read the article.

I know I blogged about this on my Writing Diary Blog , but I don’t think I blogged about this here. I read a few writing and productivity books, and I’ve been trying to form better daily habits. The problem is that my self-discipline is very bad. As in, embarrassingly bad. One of my goals has been to form a better writing habit. Since I’m a full-time writer, I already write every day, but I think there are things I can do to tweak my schedule so that I can be able to focus better when I write. I tend to get distracted by the thought of things I need to do that day which I haven’t done yet. I don’t know why my brain is like this, but I haven’t been able to break this tendency. So for example, while I’m writing, I’ll suddenly think about the fact that today’s the day when I need to change the bathroom towels, or mop the kitchen floor, or change the bedsheets. It’ll distract me for a few moments before I tell myself I’ll do it later and I need to focus on writing now. Then a few ...

Today I’m very excited to interview Contemporary Romance author Kari Trumbo ! Kari’s bio: Kari Trumbo is a bestselling author of Christian and sweet romance, she also writes women’s fiction under the name Teri Blake. As Teri, she reached the USA Today bestseller list with her book The Rosewood Diary. She writes swoony heroes and places that become characters with historical detail and heart. She’s a stay-at-home mom to four vibrant children. When she isn’t writing, or editing, she pretends to keep up with them. Kari loves reading, listening to contemporary Christian music, singing when no one’s listening, and curling up near the wood stove when winter hits. She makes her home in central Minnesota, land of frigid toes and mosquitoes the size of compact cars, with her husband of over twenty years. They have two daughters, two sons, one cat, and one hungry wood stove. Camy here: Kari is one of the twelve authors participating with me in the Christian Contemporary Romance antho...

Secrets, disguises, and a sudden encounter in the woods… Step into the world of Lady Wynwood’s Spies , a Christian Regency romantic suspense series filled with clever heroines, hidden dangers, and a dash of irreverent humor. Miss Phoebe Sauber didn’t expect to find danger—or a disguised gentleman—in the woods. Here’s a favorite moment of humor and tension. *** Phoebe’s heart clenched. She had never injured anyone in all her years of archery and did not want to believe that this one rare misfire had harmed someone. She dropped her bow, grabbed at her skirts, and raced toward the trees. The screaming continued in short bursts, but it sounded strange. It sounded like a young girl, but at the same time, the tone was more booming than a girl. As she approached the tree-line, a man burst out from the shadows of the trees. His face was a mask of horror, and as he ran, his limbs flailed all around him. However, he was not limping, nor was he bleeding. He did not appear to be injur...

If you're following my Writing Diary Blog , you might remember that I'm trying to establish writing rituals to help me to get into flow state faster and easier, and also to encourage me to be more self-disciplined in my writing schedule. One of the rituals I've adopted has been to play the same playlist when I write. I usually can't write to songs with words, so I've been listening to movie and TV show soundtracks. Right now I'm working on my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series , and what I chose to listen to is the Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn Original Soundtrack by Sawano Hiroyuki. He’s my favorite composer and I love his J-pop songs too, but his soundtracks are out of this world. I know it's kind of strange that the music I'd pick to listen to while writing my Regency romantic adventure series is a Science Fiction anime series soundtrack, but since Lady Wynwood's Spies is my mashup of Mission: Impossible in the Regency period, it's not that di...

My first novel published in five years just released this past December, Lady Wynwood’s Spies 1: Archer , the first volume in a Christian Regency Romantic Adventure Serial Novel (yeah, I know, that’s quite a mouthful). Basically, it's like a really long novel divided into parts. Each volume has a story arc, but the overarching story continues in each volume and they're not stand-alone novels. It’s been outlined for 10 volumes, plus a side volume, and I already released two prequel novels. When I write, I like to have a visual idea of what my characters looks like. I also like to extrapolate the personality of the character from the photos I use, so I'm very careful about the model and their pose or the expression on their face. But lately I haven’t been using real photos, and instead using anime and manga characters. When I first started writing about my main heroine, Phoebe, the photos I used for reference for her personality and looks was this character, Ryu, who i...

I’ve been reading a bunch of marketing books and articles, and many of them gave great advice on how to blog. So I’ve been trying to be more “formal” in my blogging lately. I don't know if it was noticeable? Anyway, I found it kind of boring and really very restricting since I kept thinking about "value added" for each blog post and all that jazz. But I was still blogging at my Daily Writing Blog because I'm trying to improve my writing productivity, and I was still enjoying blogging over there. I was throwing my messy thoughts up on the web (which most blogging/marketing articles tell you NOT to do) and in the process, I've been able to pinpoint some of my really bad habits. I've managed to fix some of them, and I'm still working on coming up with ways to deal with others. I've also been doing experiments to improve my efficiency and productivity, and I use my writing blog like a lab notebook--I blog about what I intend to do for the experiment...

I’ve been reading more marketing books lately. The self-publishing market has changed so much in the few years since I first started self-publishing, and I haven’t released anything in several years because of those bad bouts of writer’s block ,so I wanted a refresher course on ebook marketing. I’m not very good at marketing AT ALL, and quite frankly I don’t like it very much, but I know I have to do at least some marketing for my books. But I started feeling overwhelmed and stressed about the thought of all the advance marketing I will need to start doing. God was watching out for me, because I had previously arranged to call an author friend of mine, MaryLu Tyndall , in order to ask some advice about target audience. So we talked, and she heard all my fears and stressing about marketing, and she basically talked me down from the rafters. She reminded me that God is in control of my marketing and book sales, and I should pray and do only the marketing I feel God telling me to do...

I think the biggest change I made in December was that I started journaling again, except that I’m using an electronic journal instead of a paper journal. The decision was a tough one to make because I love the tactile feel of a paper journal, but I also had to consider what I wanted to get out of journaling. I wanted to do a variety of things, including logging my meals (I needed to figure out what I was eating that might be triggering some health issues) and my exercise, and recording what I did during the day for my writing and also outside my writing. I was originally going to use the SparkPeople app for my meals and exercise, but I decided to give e-journaling a try and found that I am more likely to log my meals when I don’t have to figure out portions and calorie count. I still can see where I overeat and when I snack mindlessly, I just don’t see the calorie count. Also I have a reminder on the journal page template to exercise, and I found myself being motivated to check t...

I’ve had a good start to the new year so far, but haven’t sat down to think about my goals until now. I love setting New Year’s resolutions. Some people think that’s weird and I know all about the low probability of keeping resolutions, but I still like to make them. It makes me feel positive about myself and the upcoming year, and for me, that just feels good. So I came up with some goals/resolutions for the new year that I hope to keep. 1) Three novels in 2020 Since I write full-time, this isn’t an unrealistic goal for me. Last year, I was still suffering from several bouts of writer’s block. Some was because of personal issues, but because I got nothing done during that time, it then made me doubt what I should be writing. I ended up flipping between several different projects as I tried to figure out what I wanted to work on, and the indecision itself also triggered writer’s block when I tried to write any particular project, because I wasn’t certain if that project was wha...

I wrote a post about writing a kiss on my Story Sensei blog, and I ended up listing almost all of the kisses I’ve written in my published books—and since I write romance, it’s a lot of kissing! The post is aimed at writers, but it might be fun for a reader who’d like to read all those kisses, so check it out here .

I belong to a writer’s Discord group ( Writer’s Block , full of nice people) and they have daily Line Shares where people can post 150 words of their work in progress, based on the theme for that day’s Line Share. Everyone is writing something different (although I think there are more fantasy writers on the server than any other genre) so the Line Shares are often really fun to read. It made me think it might be fun to post Line Shares on my Camille Elliot Twitter account . I’m going to commit to posting one Twitter Line Share a day from my work in progress for at least this week. If you want to read my Line Shares each day, follow me on Twitter .

It’s cold here in California! We need the rain but my poor dog is getting older and seems to feel the cold more this year. I’m making her a dog sweater using 3-color Tunisian crochet and the general dimensions of this dog sweater pattern on LionBrand.com . On the writing front, I’m working on the 2nd book in my Lady Wynwood series and trying to figure out my villain. I find I go to movies, TV, and novels for inspiration—I think real-life “bad guys” are too complex, psychologically, for me to use as fictional inspiration. Do you have favorite villains in movies, TV, or fiction? I could use some ideas.

I've just released my Story Sensei Deep Point of View worksheet on ebook! $2.99 on Kindle , iBooks , Nook , Kobo , Smashwords . As a writer, you can provide a richer emotional experience for your reader by utilizing a deeper point of view. Deep point of view draws the reader into the characters’ heads and can elicit a stronger emotional reader response to the characters’ struggles, decisions, and reactions to external conflict. Readers who have read a passage in deep point of view often talk about how the characters seemed more vivid, how the story and prose riveted them to the page. It is very easy for a writer to learn ways to draw the reader into the mind, body, and soul of your characters through deep point of view techniques. By the end of the worksheet you’ll have: 1) A basic understanding of different points of view so you can decide if deep or shallow point of view is best for your story 2) Ways to strengthen the emotional writing and draw the reader deeper ...

I’m over on ChristiansRead.com talking about a really important message I heard yesterday that pertains to God’s message in my Regency writing, and I guess my writing in general.