First Word

So I need to revise the California Girl Chronicles script ... why haven't I done it yet? Well, let's see how many distractions can I come up with? Oh, yeah, I run 3L Publishing and have five books running in parallel. Okay, that is a serious distraction that has to be attended to. I'm plugging along yesterday and got an enormous amount of work done ... wait! A pile of laundry ... can't leave that be. And now my laundry room is across from my office so that is going to be a constant reminder to just pile it in. Now since I finally relented to the texting revolution every single of one of my friends texts me. Now I am answering emails AND texts. Did I tell you I pride 3L's reputation on quick response times? Yes, we guarantee a response within 24 hours and typically I keep my email open on my desk so I can respond within the hour. Customer service is critical, and my clients feel they have my full attention when I respond to their needs right away. Now what? All rig...

Time to give you my take on the evil-doers.  The purely evil, sociopathic villain can border on a cartoon character. You do not want to paint a black character with no heart or soul or motivation for his or her evil nature. A great villain is the one that is fully fleshed out, relatable and understandable. A one-dimensional villain is actually quite boring.  What you really want is to write a great antihero.  In fiction the antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character, in some regards, is conspicuously contradictory to the archetypal hero. In some cases, the antihero is the antithesis to the hero. Some people believe the antihero could be classified as the antagonist or villain. An antihero, however, is not a strict villain and typically elicits sympathy or admiration. The antihero is sometimes the character you love to hate and love at the same time. So here are my favorite antiheroes: Rev. Steve Newlin, True Blood -- I'm not sure we can find ...

Now I have covered the male characters I loved in 2011, and I thought now I would cover the girls. Girl power is big in Hollywood right now. The Carrie Diaries is being developed by the CW Network and HBO has a new girl-driven series coming this spring titled Girls . Now I am honestly not intrigued with Carrie Bradshaw's teen and young adults years, so I will be passing up that show. Girls looks like it might be somewhat interesting, sardonic and sarcastic. And with all of this current and upcoming girl power, we have some great female characters to cover. So, here we go. Sookie Stackhouse (the book version): I love Sookie. She's fun, sexy, courageous, and human even if she's "fae". The TV version, I have some qualms about her on True Blood . She has vacillated quite a bit and changed and "rearranged" so to speak. She can be bad-ass, but the writers, while I know are trying to reset the story for 2012, had her say and do some things that, while I...

Time to myself always means I'm writing. I love to write (can't you tell), so I thought it would be fun since I'm also a complete movie and TV series lover (almost always when it's an HBO show) to share my top five shows and why they made the list. See if you agree or if you're just intrigued by what I'm sharing. It's pretty tough to pick my all-time favorite mostly because it changes with each obsession. I get so into these shows that I watch them until I have often memorized some of the greatest lines in them. I also listen attentively to commentaries to learn from them since I also screen write. I enjoy cast interviews too and love it when you can tell an actor is completely committed to the role. I get it. I treat my characters in my fiction works the same way. They become trusted friends -- and believe it or not they kind of take on minds of their own. If you don't understand that, just ask another writer. So, I think you'll have to read this ...