Sloan Parker Blog

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I was working on a new scene for my serial novel today and was getting frustrated after the first 300 words. I went out to the living room, lay down on the couch, and put my head on my sweetie’s lap. Here’s how the conversation went.

Her: “How’s it going?

Me: “Like crap.”

“Why?”

“Everything I write sucks.”

“Is it a first draft?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, it’s just important to get the ideas down. You can fix the writing later. So you say, ‘See Dick run into Dick’s dick.’ You can rewrite it later. Although I’m not sure why you’d want two characters named Dick.”

That got me laughing. I went back into the office to write some more.

Gotta love these little motivational talks with my sweetie. Thanks, hon!

This one is somewhat “not safe for work.”

Thanks to my fabulous and wickedly smart uncle (Hey T!) I learned how to play Pandemic a few months back. It was my first time playing a cooperative board game where players work together rather than compete against each other. We just got our own copy of Pandemic and have been playing the two player version. I have to say, I love cooperative games like this!

Maybe it’s the romantic in me that prefers the non-competitive nature of the game. I really hate seeing my sweetie get frustrated when I’m kicking her ass in a game. I mean, all we have to do is mention the game Clue and I can see her get all serious like she might actually be able to beat me this time, then her expression falls as she thinks, Nope. She ALWAYS wins that game.

Then there’s the other night when we decided to play Monopoly, something we haven’t played in years. I think I ended up in jail 42 times. My mood was pretty good the first 40 times, but I hit the 41st and it was no longer funny. It was just sad.

At least with Pandemic if we go down, we do it as a couple and have some laughs at ourselves at the same time.

Now if we could just figure out how to always get us a happy ending in Pandemic, all would be right with the world. (I do love my happy, all-is-right-with-the-world endings.)

What’s your favorite board game? I’m a game geek and would love to try out some new ones.

I was writing the other day and got stuck with how to describe a fight scene. I needed some strong sensory descriptions. But how do you describe a fist slamming against someone’s body? I started lightly punching my fist into my hand, just pondering the fight scene, thinking about what it would sound like and feel like, really getting into the moment with my characters.

But I was punching my hand. That’s not right. So I proceeded to move my punches (albeit they were light punches) up my arm. Several slaps of fist to skin, I realized what I was doing. Yep, I was punching myself for my art.

I imagined someone seeing bruises all along my arms and asking, “How did you get these?”

“Writing.”

Duh. How else?

Seriously, who thought that was a good name for a burger? And that sign? I couldn’t resist snapping a pic.

For those of you who mentioned Sawyer as your Lost fave when I had Jack up for my first “Picture This,” well now it’s Sawyer’s turn.

Here’s my pick for Josh Holloway: James Marsden

And speaking of Lost and Sawyer, I thought I’d share my favorite Sawyer moments:

• When he’s reading to Aaron.
• Whenever he reads, for that matter. There’s nothing sexier than the sight of a man reading.
• When he jumps from the helicopter when it’s too heavy to make it to the boat.
• When Juliet dies.
• When he and Juliet “remember” each other, and he says, “I got you, babe.”

What are your favorite Sawyer moments? And who would you put together with Josh?

Two weeks ago I attended a brainstorming event with some of the writers in my local writing group. It was my third year attending this annual event, and I had such a fabulous time. Not only is it productive in generating story ideas, it’s also a time to recharge my writing energy. Just hanging with these fabulous women (and our lone, brave man who slept in a lake cottage with 12 women) gets me excited about writing. These people have amazing energy and talent. I’m always in awe of their creativity.

We spent the weekend talking about each other’s stories and coming up with titles, plot ideas, ways to kill off characters (don’t worry, that wasn’t mine), and more. We have writers of all genres and heat levels in the group. From contemporary to sci-fi. From sweet inspiration to steamy erotic romance and erotica. Most write romance, but some don’t.

So what kinds of things did I hear that weekend? Here’s a sampling:

“He’s a schizophrenic vampire priest!”

“Die, bitch, die!” (which worked for several of the stories)

“Orgasmoplasm“

“Hooha goo”

“Viagraville”

“Regrow the cherry!”

“Everybody use frickidous in a sentence.” Our 18-year-old, youngest member immediately told us all to, “Go frickidous yourselves.”

“bilabial frickidousness and glaodal stoppages”

And perhaps my favorite…“We need to make his junk grow!”

So yeah, it was a blast. Thanks ladies and Ray! I had a wonderful time.

Just for fun here’s the scene board for Take Me Home (cleverly covered by my editing check marks to avoid spoilers). Each scene actually has 8 or more check mark post-its. I kept track of my read-throughs on a scene-by-scene basis. First time I’d ever done that, and it worked well for me. Gave me a nice sense of accomplishment at the end of every day.

I was scrolling through my work-in-progress the other day when three words caught my eye. “Get me off.” I couldn’t remember having one of my characters demand that from the other. Nothing wrong with that line, but how odd that I couldn’t remember something I had written on a current project. I stopped to review that section.

My character wasn’t talking to another guy. He was talking to a dog.

Ew.

Wait. The line was “Get off me.”

What a difference the order of the words make.

I hope nothing like that ever slips by me.

And if it does, I hope to God my beta reader, critique partner, editor, the copy editor, or the proofer catches it.

Thanks to all those hardworking people behind the scenes who help an author put out the best work they can. And who save them from embarrassing typos like this.