October 12, 2014 by Jilly Wood

Jilly: Kilts – Hot or Not?

Important question of the week: are men in kilts hot?

The hero of my contemporary-romance-in-progress, Ian, is a proud Scot who lives on a breathtakingly beautiful estate in the Scottish Highlands, so I should have given this question more thought before now, but honestly, I didn’t. Ian moved into my head about fourteen years ago, shortly after I spent a few days at Skibo Castle, so I’ve been living with him for a long time 🙂 . Check out this link and you’ll see why I was inspired. If you’d asked me the kilt question, I’d have said Ian would wear one at weddings and important family occasions – for sure when he marries my heroine, Rose, he will be in a kilt and so will his brother, Cameron, and his best friend, Rob – but for me it was a part of Ian’s identity, not something I chose to make him an insta-hottie. Continue reading →

August 6, 2014 by Elizabeth

Elizabeth: C is for Character

This year’s RWA conference included a workshop on writing great characters by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I attended her workshop at last year’s conference and really enjoyed it, especially the hands-on exercises. This year’s workshop featured two exercises that were aimed at helping us delineate character with description, rather than just telling the reader about the character. They were fun so I thought I’d share them here. Continue reading →

November 15, 2013 by Justine

Justine: Showing Love and Lust on the Page

So all of this talk about sex this week got me thinking about the physical aspect of love and how to convey that on the page. We’ve all heard the mantra, “Show, don’t tell,” but we also know that telling is easier. However, it’s not as engaging for the reader, plus, as I implied, showing is hard. It takes extra brain work (and chocolate to fuel that brain work) to come up with a myriad of physical manifestations of love. Continue reading →