Okay so it looks like I fell off the planet. Promise - I'm still here. The last four years have been ... hard. There's no other word for it. Everything is fine. I'm fine, but I've been the caregiver of my mom who has Dementia. Between her needs, work, etc I seem to have lost control of my time. I am still writing and am trying hard to get back to my blog.

In case you weren't aware Phaze and HSWF which where under the Mundania Umbrella have closed. I was smart enough to get my titles back before all this happened. I'm happy to say the three books I sold to HSWF have been picked up by Melange Books and are available through their Satin Books imprint. I have even sold a new title to them called Magical Quest due out in 2022

I have also been lucky enough to find a publisher for my Vespian Way series. I'm now with Blushing Books under the name of Bethany Drake. I have five titles out with them right now and am close to submitting two more. There's Desire's Destiny, Desire's Duty and Desire's Promise. Then there is two in my werewolf series, Tears of the Queen and Legend of the Tears. I have just finished the rough draft of the third book in the series and have plans for a fourth one the moment I submit it.

I'll probably still be sporadic here on the blog. Unless I win the lottery and can hire someone to help me I can't avoid it, but know I'm still here still working hard in the background and am hoping to do better at keeping my blog alive.

Barb:)



Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Random Thoughts: Data Dumping

We've all been told that data dumping is bad. Drags your reader right out of the story. But you do need to give your reader the information needed? I have always felt I did a good job of relying what I felt my readers needed without boring them with too much info.

I'm working on the next book in the series where my hero and heroine are battling timelines. Someone wants them apart, yet they keep finding each other, which makes the person trying to change things redo the timeline time and again. Secondary characters happened to be in a temporal ship so were aware of the change. After each change things reset and they find they have to explain things over and over.

It made me think. When is it too much? You have information you want to give your reader but how do you do it? If you just dump it on the page in one scene without a whole lot of anything else you could loose your reader. And what if you're like me where you working on the rough draft where they have to repeat the same info over and over? How do you make it creative? For now I'll dump it because my goal is words on the page. I can always fix it in my edits.

What I have learned from my past wroks is to weave it in. Sometimes you have to give some information right up front, but I love it when I can give a little of ther information through out the story. Each story is going to be different and some time you will have to give the information needed right up front, but always try to figure out the best way for your characters to give the information without boring your reader.

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