Does It Get Any Easier?

Often new writers ask me if it gets any easier with subsequent books. I'm not always sure whether they're talking about the words or the stories, but my answer to both would be yes. With qualifiers.

I've often heard it said that writing is a muscle, and I've absolutely found that to be true. The more you exercise it (the more you write), the more easily the words come. 'Born writers', those who were writing books as soon as they were old enough to write, might not always see it that way. I suspect that many of them don't even remember what those early attempts at writing stories was like, they were so young at the time. I remember. If you know anything about me at all, you know I used to be an engineer. (The IBM kind, not the train driver.) I remember clearly my first attempt to put story to paper, and it was NOT easy. Slowly, it got easier and easier, the words coming more quickly as my writing muscle strengthened. I'm not sure I'll ever call writing easy. And I'll probably never be a particularly fast writer. But yes, absolutely, the whole process is a thousand times easier for me now than it was when I started. Without qualifiers.

The qualifiers come in when I talk about the stories themselves, or the plotting. In general, the plotting, or story development, is also a thousand times easier than when I started. Considering I knew nothing of story structure back then, that's probably not too hard to imagine. (Physics, thermodynamics, operations research, yes. Anything to do with creative writing, no.) In each of my early books, I learned something new. Usually what not to do next time, or what to look for when I started to have trouble. In general, the books come together pretty easily once I figure everything out these days.

But every now and then, one of the characters (almost always a difficult one) throws a wrench into the works and sends me scrambling. Jag, the hero of Rapture Untamed was one such character. He was the resident bad boy, and not in a nice way. The guy was an ass and, at first, flat out refused to be the hero of his own book. The heroine, Olivia, and I had to drag him to it, kicking and screaming. He had it in him, even if he didn't see it.

Another problem character has been Melisande, the heroine of A Love Untamed, Feral Warriors book 7, which comes out in December. There's nothing quite like the challenge of making the villainess of one story (Hearts Untamed in the Bitten By Cupid anthology) into the heroine of another. And as you can imagine, she wasn't the least bit cooperative about it. It took four tries to get her story right, but in the end, I came to love her. As did Fox/Kieran (her intended mate), although I will say, he saw her far more clearly than I did at first, and fell in love with her while I was still fighting with her.

My latest character challenge? The vampire Arturo Mazza from my Vamp City series. I hesitate to call him the hero just yet because, like Jag, this male has a looong way to go to earn that title. And no real interest in claiming it. Unlike Jag, he has five books to get there (or I have five books to get him there). Arturo is a bit like Damon Salvatore in the Vampire Diaries in that while there's honor and goodness deep inside of him, they don't always show. Arturo is one manipulative, dangerous vamp. It will take Quinn Lennox, the heroine of the series, a long time to fully understand this male. I understand him just fine and can already tell that I'm in for a rough ride. I'm pushing up my sleeves, ready to dive into the writing of book 2. Wish me luck!


P.S. A Blood Seduction (Vamp City book 1) comes out May 29th. RT BookReviews calls it: “A  wonderfully intriguing and chilling launch!” Check out the book trailer, below.