As I write SWEET SALT AIR, I’ve been dropping hints in my blog about characters, plot, and setting. Here are those hints, all in one place.
How emotional am I writing my characters’ emotions?
- You wouldn’t ask if you’d seen me this week. I’ve been writing three consecutive scenes in Sweet Salt Air, each pivotal to the plot, each filled with high emotion, and I’ve been wringing my hands, pacing the floor. We’re talking betrayal, heartache, and fear. You may read it in passing, but I live with it.
Starting 2012 with a good book
- This month’s snippet on Sweet Salt Air? Leo knows boats.
- I’m determined to get a meatloaf recipe into Sweet Salt Air – which, if you recall, involves a food blogger. Can you help me out here?
- I’m about to write the first sex scene in Sweet Salt Air, but it won’t be about juggling body parts. There are emotions involved. More details once I get it written.
- I’m far enough along in writing to have one of those surprise author moments when something happens in the story that I didn’t plan. In this case, it’s Bear. Bear, being slightly scary but totally heart-wrenching, brings something to the plot that I hadn’t planned.
- Charlotte and Nicole are discussing an artist who lives on Quinnipeague. He makes ceramic ramekins, but won’t be in their book, because the book is about food and foodies, not artists and plates.
- In researching Sweet Salt Air, I’m working with a doctor who is an expert on using umbilical cord blood stem cells in treating disease.
- After poring through the Maine Coastal Island Registry, I decided to go for a Native American feel and name my island Quinnipeague.
- One of my lead characters is a food blogger.
- Charlotte first sees Leo when he’s up on a ladder. He is struggling with a heavy storm shutter. Having built houses with charity groups, she knows that two pairs of hands are better than one, and offers to help.
- The challenge is to make each character’s voice unique. I’m facing this right now with Sweet Salt Air.
- There’s petite Nicole, who speaks in a high, childlike voice. Nicole has led a charmed life.
- Charlotte, on the other hand, grew up in a dysfunctional home and had to be brief and direct if she wanted to be heard. That’s how she talks now.
- Leo’s voice is low and flat, compatible with the image of an ex-con from Maine who works with his hands.
- Using the word “salt” in my title seemed like a good idea, since the book involves the ocean, tears, spices, and a man who lives on the sea. But what to put with it? My editor called this morning and proposed SWEET SALT AIR.
- The opening line of the book is, “Charlotte was used to feeling grungy.”
How to write a book proposal that sells
- If I were to describe my book in a single sentence, it is this: A woman has a secret that may save the life of her best friend’s husband – or destroy him.
- Where is the book set? An island off the coast of Maine.
- What is the book’s appeal? The ocean, the food, the guy whose house is at the very tip of the island.
