geek romance – Page 4

Off-Time – Crochet Edition

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Loose fitting hat

So, some of you may be sitting there RIGHT NOW wondering….what the heck does Dahlia do when she’s not writing up those great stories of hers? Well, dear readers of this blog, I’ll tell ya….in pictures.

I’m a crochet fanatic. I like to knit, but crochet is my thing, if you know what I’m saying. It’s faster, to me, and you can get a lot of projects done quickly. I do like the smooth lay of knitting, but….I sacrifice style for speed.

: Pink Hat, of course!

So whenever I’m trying to work out some plot twists or am simply taking a break from the keyboard, this is what I’m usually doing. If I’m quick, I can whip out a hat in 30 minutes. The scrunchie takes longer because I’m using a smaller needle.

All in all, it’s fun, mindless,and the family gets a lot of warm stuff out of it to boot.

Till next time!

Music Monday

Hey, I haven’t been very musical in a while, so I decided to sit down with some hours of Monday left to go and make it a musical one. I don’t have a lot to chat about today…so listen to the music, turn up the speakers and DANCE!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1nua7_the-time-jungle-love-morris-day_music

Sexual Harrassment and Racism…in a Romance?

Do Sexual Harassment and Racism Belong in Fiction?

Sexual harassment and racism…pretty taboo topics, right? That’s why I chose to tackle
them. I don’t like to read, nor do I like to write mindless entertainment. Most readers
nowadays want a fluffy romance with minor complications and a HEA. While I do
concede to Happy Ever Afters, I make sure it’s a rocky road to get there.

You will find sexual harassment and racism both in Afterburn. Having been an aircraft
mechanic for eleven years, I was dying to write about a woman grease monkey. Nobody
else is!

And let me tell you something about harassment…it’s ugly, but it’s there. Sexual
harassment happens to women in male-dominated professions on an everyday basis.
So, it’s an issue in Afterburn. It’s a fact of life and fiction isn’t real if it doesn’t portray
real life.

Racism: Another ugly, but sadly, real life issue. Even in 2013, it’s there. I’m sure many
of you have worked side by side with someone for years…never thought of the person
as a racist and suddenly one day you get to talking about some married couple who
happens to be interracial…and they say those horrible, offensive words, “I’d never let my
daughter marry a….”

That moment you realize you’ve been working with a bigot? Yea. I’ve had those and it
totally changes how I see the person in front of me.

These issues exist and they need to be eliminated. In a perfect world, we’d never have
these problems. Women would go to work not worrying about who is going to smack her
rear and make an inappropriate comment. And couples with different skin tones would
never get looked at funny.

So, Afterburn isn’t a piece of fluff. I lay it out there. It’s life.

Blurb:

The love between them burns hot, but their relationship won’t stay fueled if they
can’t beat the obstacles in their way. Besides breaking the fraternization rules,
Grant and Crystal have the difference of race between them…but can they prove to
the rest of the world, and to each other, that love is color blind?

Afterburn is about overcoming one’s past, not judging others, learning to forgive,
and what it’s like to be a woman in a “man’s world.”

Buy on Amazon

***

Tara Chevrestt is a deaf woman, former aviation mechanic, writer, and an editor. She is

most passionate about planes, motorcycles, dogs, and above all, reading. That led to her love of

writing. Between her writing and her editing, which allows her to be home with her little canine

kids, she believes she has the greatest job in the world. She is very happily married.

Her theme is Strong is Sexy. She shares a website with her naughty pen name:

http://tarachevrestt.weebly.com/index.html and they have a Facebook page: https://

www.facebook.com/pages/Tara-Chevrestt-Sonia-Hightower/218383211513877.

Creative Sparks

I decided to try something different for my blog, focus less on the specific craft of writing and spend some time talking about the entire creative process. I realized that creativity doesn’t start and stop when I type up my stories.

It’s no accident that crafting, writing, singing and other creative arts are often found in one person. I grew up on a

steady diet of broomstick crochet, macramé, knitting, crocheting, tatting, embroidery, piano lessons, vocal lessons and the like. I love to read and I do love to write. The only thing that I didn’t do much with was drawing/painting. I can draw a tree and that’s about it.

Sparking creativity is a must if one wants to write and write well. In former blog posts, you’ll see that I don’t believe in writer’s block. Why should I believe in something that blocks my creative flow? Why should I admit to the existence of something that prevents me from putting my stories on paper? Instead, I use triggers to spark my creative side.

How do I do this? It’s simple. Observe the creative works of others. Sometimes I watch something completely mindless on television before I work. Sometimes I look at paintings. Sometimes I reread a favorite book and/or watch a favorite movie and find things there that I never saw before.

For example, I’ve seen Shadow of a Doubt with Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten what seems like a million times. I watched it again last night and realized that the screenwriter gives us a reason why Joseph Cotton is the killer he is. Apparently, he was in a bicycle accident when he was six or seven years old and hit his head. After that, his sister said something about ‘ever since then, he’s been getting into trouble’ or something like that.

I thought it was an interesting detail that I’d missed the first few times I’d screened the movie. That could be enough to start a germinating character in the back of your mind.

Sparking your creative fires can be as simple as perusing a photography coffee table book or watching a children’s show. Try it. Find out what works for you.

The Idea Machine

ID-10085097 — My idea machine. For sale, cheap.

I actually have one of these in my basement. When I’m short on ideas, I take it out, crank it up and the ideas for stories come tumbling out, neatly printed in 3×5 cards, ready to tack up on my idea board for further perusal.

In addition, I have some oceanfront property in Kansas that’s for sale too. Real cheap.

I’ve been asked often, “Where do you get your ideas?” I know I’m not special. Most writers have been asked that. Readers want to see where the magic happens.

There is no magic.

There is no idea machine. If only!

Ideas have different compartments to me. There are ideas for stories, there are ideas for settings and there are ideas for people.

Stories are not just light bulbs of inspiration. They take work and nurturing and more hard work. Creating a story, with characters out of a speck of an idea…”what if a farmer had to take a wife….” isn’t the easiest work on the planet. Why is mental work sometimes the hardest?

If I’m feeling flush with creativity, I’ll sit down and write a list of one or two sentence ideas for a story with a sentence each for the main characters. If the idea takes hold, I can always go back and fill in the blanks. Sometimes these spur of the moment ideas work out into full fleshed stories. Sometimes they hide in the notebook pages, waiting for just the right time to spring back to life, usually when I’m in the middle of doing something else.

But that’s how the mind works and as a writer, you have to go with the flow or you’re lost. This isn’t a paint by numbers exercise!

Speaking of ideas, I got the idea for my latest story while watching Jurassic Park. I have no idea how it came down to this, because this story has no dinosaurs, but it does have a disgruntled programmer. They’re so sensitive, the surgeons of the software world.

While all of my books are fun for me to write, this was especially so. Not only was this my first foray into “romantic suspense”, but the relationship between the main characters was different for me. They’re friends with benefits, and both seem to maintain that makes it easier for them to work together. But does it really?

Inspired by Jurassic Park. But no sexy dinosaurs, only spanking.

Blurb:

Software designer Violet Connelly prefers code to cuddling, but is unable to resist the occasional closed-door meeting with her business partner and fellow developer Francis Rushmore. They’re on the fast track to submitting their educational game to a competition that has the potential to reap a lucrative contract and pull their failing company out of its decline.

But unexplainable glitches keep appearing in the program. A change in deadline means they have only two weeks to do four weeks’ worth of work. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, the lovers’ holiday as well as a potential rival for Violet’s affections forces them both to examine their true feelings for each other. Will the added personal and professional pressures bring them closer or tear them apart?

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