Guest Princesses: Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi - The Setting Thesaurus Books Are Here! #PlottingPrincesses #RocktheVault #WritersHelpingWriters #SettingThesaurus #MFRWorg

It is a writer's job to draw readers into the fictional story so completely that they forget the real world. Our goal is to render them powerless, so despite the late hour, mountain of laundry, or workday ahead, they cannot give up the journey unfolding within the paper-crisp pages before them.

Strong, compelling writing comes down to the right words, in the right order. Sounds easy, but as all writers know, it is anything BUT. So how do we create this storytelling magic? How can we weave description in such a way that the fictional landscape becomes authentic and real—a mirror of the reader's world in all the ways that count most?

 Well, there's some good news on that front. Two new books have released this week that may change the description game for writers. The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to City Spaces and The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Personal and Natural Spaces look at the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds a character might experience within 225 different contemporary settings. And this is only the start of what these books offer writers.

 In fact, swing by and check out this hidden entry from the Urban Setting Thesaurus: Police Car.
 
And there's one more thing you might want to know more about....

Becca and Angela, authors of The Emotion Thesaurus, are celebrating their double release with a fun event going on from June 13-20th called ROCK THE VAULT.

At the heart of Writers Helping Writers is a tremendous vault, and these two ladies have been hoarding prizes of epic writerly proportions.

A safe full of prizes, ripe for the taking...if the writing community can work together to unlock it, of course.

Ready to do your part? Stop by Writers Helping Writers to find out more!  

What is Love? @sloanebcollins #plottingprincesses #amwriting #marriage #love #MFRWorg

What is Love?

Merriam Webster’s definition of love:

a (1):  strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties <maternal love for a child> (2):  attraction based on sexual desire :  affection and tenderness felt by lovers (3):  affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests <love for his old schoolmates>

The definition just doesn’t seem to encompass the feeling of an all-consuming romantic love, does it?  I write Romance, about two people falling in love, and encountering pitfalls along the way, things they have to overcome to profess their love to each other and end up happily ever after. So that’s romantic love, with the hero sweeping the heroine off her feet, seducing her with the best sex ever, and proposing in a unique and romantic way.

But that’s not always real life. Love goes so much deeper than what’s in the pages of a book. Yes, my husband completely surprised me with the proposal. We’d already been talking about getting married, even had the rings picked out, but had talked about doing it at back at home (I was in college, he was in the army). So one weekend he drove up to Mizzou, and wanted to walk around the campus. He had asked me what my favorite spot was, so I took him to the columns on the quadrangle. It was night time, the spotlights were shining, and he took me to the middle column and pulled the ring out of his pocket. He couldn’t kneel because it had been raining that day, but it was still so romantic.

And almost twenty-eight years later, he’s still showing me how much he loves me.

@sloanebcollins *Next week I'll be older than my mother* #MFRWorg #RLFblog #birthday #bucketlist

Next week I’ll be 14 years older than my mother. Somehow, she’s perpetually 36. (Okay, who’s doing the math?)  Yes, I have a big birthday coming up.  One that has me going “how the heck did this happen?” 

So I've been doing some musing on where I’m at in my life, things I've worked for, things I've accomplished, and what I still want to do someday. Which has led to my bucket list.  It’s changed over the years, but some things have stayed the same, and I can finally check them off.

We went to Hawaii a couple of years ago, and I've been to Ireland, so check check. I still want to go to Scotland.