Pre-Mother's Day Booksigning with authors Zelda Benjamin and Mary Ricksen. Also pictured is FRW's fabulous pan liaison. May 2010.
Signing at the Coral Springs Arts Festival with author Cynthia Thomason, April 2010.
DARK TEMPTATION wins the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Best Historic Romantic Gothic of 2008!
Florida Romance Writers Conference Cruise:
On Coco Cay, Allison with Cynthia Thomason, Zelda Benjamin, Sharon Hartley and Nancy Cohen
Allison and Nancy on board the Navigator of the Seas
FL Book Signing Pictures:
Multi-Author Holiday Booksigning at the Altamonte Mall in Altamonte Springs, FL, Nov. 2008
Signing with good friend, Nancy J. Cohen, at Waldenbooks in Coral Springs, FL, Dec. 2008
Signing Pictures:
Allison and mystery author Nancy J. Cohen helped raise Over $5000 for Breast Cancer Research at Ladies Night Out at the Melting Pot Restaurant.
Dark Obsession Book Trailer:
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Romantic Times Interview:
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GOING WITH YOUR GUT: Every Writer's Guide to Getting It Right
After years of conferences, workshops, and how-to books, I've found there's one writing technique that really can't be taught, but which every writer has. Instinct. Gut feeling. That innate sense that lets you know when something you've written is working, and when it just plain isn't. It's the kind of thing you don't even need your critique group to point out to you. You just know.
Yes, we all have this ability to recognize the good and the not-so-good in what we've set down on the page. But the problem that so often arises, and can ultimately be a writer's downfall, is the inability or unwillingness to listen to what your gut tells you.
Here's why. Writing is incredibly hard work. It's a pull-your-hair-back, roll-up-your-sleeves, sit-down-and-get-serious kind of endeavor. It can take hours to craft a single scene - hours of painstaking, exhausting mental labor, at the end of which you experience a heady sense of accomplishment. It was a good day. You produced your quota and then some, and darn it all, it's good. Really, really good.
Or so you tell yourself until suddenly you realize your plot is getting away from you, and you get an odd gnawing in the pit of your stomach. Something isn't quite right and you know it, even if you can't quite put your finger on it. So you go back and reread. Oh, but your prose sparkles. Your word choice is dead on. The emotions are soaring and the chemistry between your hero and heroine sizzles. It's all wonderful and obviously you worried for nothing.
Yet there is it.that nagging little voice from deep inside suggesting things have gone awry. LISTEN TO IT! It's telling you exactly what you already know: that a certain scene just doesn't advance your plot, or a twist sends things in the wrong direction, or one of your characters is acting, well, out of character. Despite your sparkling prose and white-knuckled pacing, you need to step back and take a hard look at what you want to accomplish in your story, at who your characters are and why they do the things they do. You need to figure out how to untangle threads that have knotted and reweave them with a new perspective, in a way that's true to your characters and your story. Take it apart. TEAR it apart. It comes down to being brutally honest with yourself, and you've got to be willing to toss out whole sections if need be - no matter how beautifully written, how much time they took to write, or how much they advanced your page count. Because in the world of publishable manuscripts, those things can mean absolutely ZIP.
I've been there myself, and not all that infrequently thanks to my fly-with-the-wind style of plotting. I've used pretty much every self-persuasive argument in favor of not making changes - only to awaken in the middle of the night with a gnawing in my gut and a sleep-depriving conviction that my story will NEVER work unless I'm willing to make changes. Big, inconvenient, time-consuming changes. Because in my gut I KNOW the willingness to rip into some or even all of a story and rebuild it is what will ultimately turn an OK manuscript into a really good one. One that's publishable. And I never needed a workshop, how-to book or even my wonderful critique partners to tell me that.
