Tag: IWSG

insecure writers support group, writing

Books From My Childhood #IWSG

Jennifer Lane
Join us for the Insecure Writers Support Group started by Alex Cavanaugh.

I’m grateful to the co-hosts for the June 4 posting of the IWSG: PJ Colando, Pat Garcia, Kim Lajevardi, Melisa Maygrove, and Jean Davis!

June 4 question – What were some books that impacted you as a child or young adult?

Fun question! I was a HUGE reader growing up. I highlight three books, two from my childhood (Ramona the Pest and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) and one from my young adulthood (The Pistachio Prescription).

One reason I remember Ramona the Pest with such fondness is that I’m reading it now to my seven-year-old niece. Ramona is a plucky kindergartner who strives to do the right thing, but she has to fight her id impulses that drive her to pull Susie’s curled hair (“Boing!”) and chase Davy around the playground to show her affection. Now that I’m thinking about it through my adult psychologist eyes, maybe Ramona has undiagnosed ADHD? She’s wonderfully creative, including coming up with her own take on the Star Spangled Banner’s lyrics when she tells her sister to turn on the “dawnzer lee light”. I could relate to her as a sensitive soul who felt keen disappointment and frustration in a sometimes cruel world. I think this story inspired me to take a deep dive into character emotions.

A story about intelligent rats who have escaped from experiments at the National Institute of Mental Health, their mice friends, and an evil cat who threatens them all? Sign me up! Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH sparked my interest in mental health at a young age.

The Pistachio Prescription is a young adult book (though that genre probably didn’t exist in the 1980s when I read it) describing a thoughtful, quirky girl, Cassie, who hopes to become president of her 9th grade class. I could relate to her rocky relationship with her mother and turning to food to soothe herself. This story fed my obsession with dysfunctional families.

Honorable Mentions for my influential books:

Thurston House by Danielle Steel (I probably shouldn’t have read it as a teenager!) I liked the romance aspect along with the troubled family dynamics, and the rape scene made me bawl.

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. Again, I was too young to read this one! I watched the TV mini-series with my mother then searched for the book. The forbidden romance really drew me in.

Author Lois Duncan (teen suspense stories like The Gift of Magic and I Know What You Did Last Summer).

I can’t remember the title of a 1980’s story about a girl named Reagan(?) whose father kidnapped her and hid her from her mother, but I loved the suspense element.

Novel in Progress Update: Low Water 54,000 / ~85,000 words

insecure writers support group, writing

Writing Fears #IWSG

Jennifer Lane

Happy May, writers! Join us for the Insecure Writers Support Group started by Alex Cavanaugh.

Hey, amazing co-hosts for the May 7 posting of the IWSG: Feather Stone, Janet Alcorn,Rebecca Douglass, Jemima Pett, and Pat Garcia. We appreciate you!

May 7 question – Some common fears writers share are rejection, failure, success, and lack of talent or ability. What are your greatest fears as a writer? How do you manage them?

To decrease the intensity of our fears, it’s important to talk about them and examine their likelihood. But I had to think about this question for a while. At first I thought I that I had no fears in writing since it’s a side hobby to my day job. As I delved deeper, though, I unmasked my biggest fear…

Rejection from traditional publishers.

I was fortunate to sign with a small publisher (Omnific) to edit and release my first four novels. Then I ventured out on my own to self-publish the next five books. I’ll likely self-publish my work in progress, Low Water. There are some advantages to self-publishing, including speed and creative control. I also have a wonderful editor and book designer to polish the manuscript.

But it would be way cool to sign with an agent and submit to traditional publishing houses. With the flood of self-published novels out there, a larger publisher has the potential to bring more attention to my little novel. I tell myself I don’t have enough patience for the Big Five route, which is true, and I also don’t have a clue for how to land an agent. But the more salient hurdle is fear. What if I put all that effort in, and I get rejected? I hear rejection is quite likely on the trad pub path. I know I could handle the rejection (I’ve handled worse in my life), but I doubt I’ll risk it.

Another fear I have is not improving. I started writing on a lark, and there was so much I didn’t know upon the release of my debut novel. I want to keep learning and growing as a writer, and it would be disappointing if I remained stagnant or got worse.

Novel in Progress Update: Low Water 50,000 / ~85,000 words

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Softball Romance New Release and Fave Fantasy Character #IWSG

Jennifer Lane
Thank you to our founder, Alex Cavanaugh. Join us!

I’m excited to co-host this month along with L Diane Wolfe, Jenni Enzor, and Natalie Aguirre. Happy writing to all.

April 2 question – What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with?

I would like to have a beer with Westley from The Princess Bride (without iocaine powder added, I hope!) Not only is Westley clever, funny, mysterious, and tough, but he also portrays an air of vulnerability that draws people to him. Most endearing is his lasting love for the princess that helps him persevere through countless adversities.

*** New Release ***

My second short story, young adult sports romance BEHIND THE CATCHER’S MASK, launched on 3.29.25.

This story was part of the 2019 IWSG Anthology, Masquerade: Oddly Suited.

Thank you to Ronel Jansse van Vuuren for helping guide me with publishing wide for the first time, and I also appreciate fellow co-host Natalie Aguirre as well as IWSG founder Alex Cavanaugh for spreading the word!

It was nice to see the short-lived orange banner on the Amazon site for the obscure category I chose.

Novel in Progress Update: Low Water 45,000 / ~85,000 words

insecure writers support group, new release, writing

#IWSG Behind the Catcher’s Mask

Jennifer Lane
Join the Insecure Writers Support Group created by Alex Cavanaugh.

The helpful co-hosts for the March 5 posting of the IWSG are Ronel Janse Van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, and Liza @ Middle Passages! We appreciate you.

A special congratulations to Ronel Janse Van Vuren for the new release of her dark fantasy series, Smoke on the Water!

Instead of answering the optional question, I want to share the cover and blurb for my upcoming short story, Behind the Catcher’s Mask.

Who can help her through a meltdown on the pitcher’s mound?

Fast-pitch softball is Andie Wilson’s life. She’s a fierce pitcher hoping to score a college scholarship, and she hates the annoying distraction of cocky baseball players crashing her high-school charity game. But she doesn’t anticipate the impact of one baseball player: Colt Turner. As Colt stares at her through his catcher’s mask, his steadfast gaze may be just what she needs to guide her through a crisis. And Colt may need Andie, too—to cope with the secret hiding behind his mask.

~*~

I originally wrote this story for the IWSG Anthology, Masquerade: Oddly Suited. Thanks for the inspiration, IWSG and Dancing Lemur Press! I added a bonus scene and decided to self-publish the story. Because I’m reeling from a recent event in my family, I haven’t set a release date yet–hopefully late March or early April.

If you would be willing to help spread the word about this young adult sports romance, please let me know on the google form. I hope this link works as it’s been years since I created a google form?

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0N27O7z1WraXQ-yKKwXN9UtKSs5V5u2fgL65tdDHA8kOIqA/viewform

Thank you, and happy writing!

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New Release: Smoke on the Water, the Complete Irascible Immortals Short Story Series by Ronel van Vuuren

Jennifer Lane

They’ve been alive forever. They’ve been bored for some time. And now they’re showing it.

Congratulations to Ronel Janse van Vuuren on the completion of her dark fantasy series, Irascible Immortals!

Smoke on the Water

Immortals + Boredom = Catastrophe

Something old and dangerous is awake and influencing the immortals to act in ways they’d only imagined.

First, small things like Odin, Anubis and Mab going on separate vacations and leaving their seats of power open for the taking. Then, Yue Lao, Cupid, Bast, Apollo and a Kitsune messing with the lives and memories of mortals. It grows to pandemonium when Pan and Poseidon upend the world, creating the Warp – and a free-for-all where it comes to the immortals’ wildest fantasies. Especially the twisted fantasies of Baba Yaga and her Nightmares, Morrígan and her love of War, and Isis who has no qualms unleashing hell on Earth to get Osiris back, plunging mortals even deeper into danger.

Thankfully, some immortals are older and wiser than others, catching on that everything isn’t as it seems… But damage control, trying to avoid the Apocalypse of all realms, and discovering who the ancient evil is, takes more magic, wit, and sacrifice than they could’ve dreamt possible. Can the unlikely grouping of Hel, Aphrodite, Set, Thor, Loki, Apollo, Freyja, Ra and Ammit save the realms?

Scroll up to buy now and enjoy the hilarity, disaster and more that ensues when bored immortals let loose.

Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/u/mYk6AG

Interview

When I heard that each book is a 30-minute read, I needed to learn more.

Let’s talk about your creation of the series. Did I read correctly that each book is a 30-minute read? If so, how did you choose that format? That sounds unique and interesting.

I was talking to my optometrist about reading whichever series I was bingeing at the time, and she said she had like five minutes a day to devote to reading which meant that long books and series just didn’t work for her. Which got me thinking about how much punch a short story can give in a limited amount of time…

I had already written “Breaking the Habit” and submitted it to an anthology. (The first three books are featured in the “Grumpy Old Gods” anthologies.) From there, it was easy to build the world and the characters that inhabit it. Going from various gods and immortals being bored and just having a bit too much fun messing with humans to bringing about destruction was just a case of indulging my inner psychopath. LOL. I was listening to a Nightwish album and “Symphony of Destruction” came up and it just clicked: Pan and Poseidon clean up their domains, cause havoc among humans, and whatever happens next isn’t their problem.

Various gods and goddesses vied for my attention, so I wrote about the ones I’ve always wanted to write about (like Isis reuniting with Osiris).

At first, it only built to no-one doing anything to fix the Warp (the result of Pan and Poseidon’s competition) and adding to the mayhem. But after a while, I realised that I didn’t like things hanging there without any conclusion. That’s when I wrote a couple of stories to end the series and published them all together in “Smoke on the Water”. I stuck with the short format (which I recently heard is called a “mosaic novel”) so even in the collected edition, each story can still be read on its own.

Going from mayhem to fixing it, meant finding an antagonist behind it all. It was fun finding someone that is even more powerful than ancient gods like Ra. It also worked well with foreshadowing I (unintentionally) added in the first book.

We live in a world with short attention spans, limited free time, and a lot of competition for said attention and time, so we need to work with what we have.

I used my warped sense of humour, the need to focus on fixing Climate Change, and remembering that we should live and not just exist, to add different layers to this series.

It was a fun experiment in length, character POV, and world-building.

FREE BOOK!

The first book in the series is free during the Smashwords read an ebook week 2-8 March. Here’s Ronel’s profile link: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Ronel_Jansevan_Vuuren

Author bio

Award-winning Dark Fantasy author Ronel Janse van Vuuren writes about kick-ass heroines, the duality of being human and loves to use folklore to underscore her point.

She’s a Rottweiler pack leader, chicken wrangler and horse servant.

All of her books are available for purchase from major online retailers.

Find Ronel online: https://linktr.ee/miladyronel

insecure writers support group, writing

Cringing and Revising #IWSG

Jennifer Lane
Thank you to Alex Cavanaugh for creating this awesome group. Join us!

Holla to this month’s co-hosts: Joylene Nowell Butler,Louise Barbour, and Tyrean Martinson! We appreciate you.

February 5 question – Is there a story or book you’ve written you want to/wish you could go back and change? 

Oh, YES! I wrote my first two published novels in third person omniscient point-of-view. Though this POV provides a broad perspective to the characters and story, the downside is unfortunate head-hopping within the scenes. Cringe-worthy! I did seize the chance to edit my debut novel seven years after its initial release. To tighten the story, I chopped about 30K words, but changing the point-of-view would’ve been too extensive. My publisher released the edited ebook version but did not update the print copy.

Speaking of revising stories, I’m preparing to self-publish Behind the Catcher’s Mask, a short story that was part of the 2019 IWSG anthology, Masquerade: Oddly Suited. The theme of the anthology was young adult love featuring a mask of some sort, so naturally I turned to my favorite genre (sports romance) to pen a romance between a softball pitcher and a baseball catcher.

I hope to rekindle my writing and publishing mojo in 2025. I even signed up for a book event in Savannah, GA this fall!

Novel in Progress Update: Low Water 40,000 / ~85,000 words

insecure writers support group, writing

Hanging Off the Cliff #IWSG

Jennifer Lane
Join us for the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, hosted by Alex Cavanaugh!

(I realize this image says “newsletter”, but it was too cute for me not to copy/paste! Hope the IWSG creator doesn’t mind. (Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay))

Many thanks to the co-hosts for the December 4 posting of the IWSG: Ronel, Deniz, Pat Garcia, Olga Godim, and Cathrina Constantine!

December 4 question – Do you write cliffhangers at the end of your stories? Are they a turn-off to you as a writer and/or a reader?

I have mixed reactions to cliffhangers. Mostly I feel robbed from a satisfying ending, but sometimes I think they’re brilliant. One of my novels ended in a major cliffhanger, and some readers were angry with me!

My book that sold the best is Blocked, a New Adult volleyball romance. I wanted to write an opposites-attract love story, so I chose a romance between the college-age children of US Democrat and Republican presidential candidates. (I wrote this in 2014 before the vitriol of partisan politics became even more incendiary.)

I strived to present an unbiased view of both political parties until the very end of the story, which featured the results of the presidential election. Therefore, it didn’t feel right to choose a winner, and my story ended, “The next president of the United States is…”

Some readers were furious, whoops!

I hadn’t intended to write a series, but I felt motivated by reader feedback (a mix of love/hate, haha). I eventually chose a winner for the rest of the trilogy, Aced and Spiked.

How do YOU feel about cliffhangers?

insecure writers support group, writing

Ghost Stories #IWSG

Jennifer Lane
Join the Insecure Writers Support Group by blogging monthly. Thanks to Alex Cavanaugh!

I’m pleased to be a co-host this month along with the lovely Nancy Gideon, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre.

Happy Halloween! Stop by my blog October 5-26 for a $20 gift card giveaway as part of the Howl-o-ween Giveaway Hop hosted by The Kids Did It and Mommy Island.

Do you like to dress up for Halloween? I haven’t in years, but I found a cute set of cheetah ears, bowtie, tail, and face stickers to accompany my cheetah shirt and black skort. (My inner cat lover will be so happy dressing as a big cat!)

One year I dressed in this carrot costume, and it became my Twitter and Blogger avatar. (Random!)

As the family story goes, my mom (an avid sewer) asked which silly costume my sister wanted, and she replied, “Carrot.” Then my mom sewed this easy felt + yardstick + wire hanger creation, and it was a hit!

October 2 question – Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What’s your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

I’m not a horror fan, but two movies come to mind. One is The Changeling, which traumatized me as a child. As an adult, I loved the mental health aspects of The Sixth Sense.

Novel in Progress: Low Water 23,500 / ~85,000 words

insecure writers support group, writing

Fewer Adverbs, More Creative Writing in School #IWSG

Jennifer Lane
A monthly group to support neurotic writers, started by Alex Cavanaugh. Join us!

Thank you to this month’s co-hosts: Beth Camp, Jean Davis, Yvonne Ventresca, and PJ Colando!

September 4 question – Since it’s back to school time, let’s talk English class. What’s a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?

The first answer that comes to mind is adverbs. My teachers encouraged their use, but adverb abuse led to bloated and boring writing. Learning to tighten my prose has been a steep mountain. To climb perilously and precipitously? I’d rather wriggle and inch up the incline. While I’m not a fan of Stephen King, I agree with him that snappy, active verbs are better than mundane verbs + adverbs.

Upon further thought, I also wish my English classes focused more on creative writing in general. I adored writing wild stories in elementary school, but my middle and high school teachers favored structured essays over creative writing. And though my undergraduate institution (Kenyon College) was renown for its English department, I neglected to take creative writing classes at the collegiate level. I regret the missed opportunities to build skills and let my imagination fly.

I decided I will end my posts with a little WIP update for motivation:

Novel in Progress: Low Water 19,000 / ~85,000 words

insecure writers support group, writing

High Water #IWSG

Jennifer Lane

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and time for the Insecure Writers Support Group, started by Alex Cavanaugh. Writers, join us here to share our hopes and fears!

I’m grateful to this months co-hosts: Feather Stone, Kim Lajevardi, Diedre Knight, C. Lee McKenzie, and Sarah – The Faux Fountain Pen!

Today’s optional question is about using artificial intelligence as a writer. I have not even started to use AI, so I will skip that question and hope to learn more about possible uses from fellow writers.

Thanks for the accountability, IWSG! This monthly post helps motivate my writing, however slow it may be. I’ve written around 15K words for my next novel, Low Water. In the midst of writing, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the high waters of my first tropical storm (Debby) in my new South Carolina home. I’m thankful I’ve only faced heavy rain and winds without flooding or a loss of power.

However, there was a 9-foot alligator roaming the streets of Hilton Head island:

Image by Christian Sudduth in The Island Packet

And a gator in a woman’s swimming pool!

Image courtesy of Lisa Bisgard in The Island Packet