By Anne B. Howard

Walt Whitman said, “The secret of it all is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood of the moment—without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote—wrote, wrote…by writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.”

As a writer of memoir and narrative nonfiction—engaged in an illicit affair with post-it notes—I couldn’t agree more. At my age, memories and important ideas come in fits and starts. I need a net… and places…to do my best remembering. How to describe the view from here? Which view? I use them all, but for different reasons.

For the serious work of Araphel Grace, my first full length book and thus far, a three year project, I get along best in the office where I can spread out on an oversized desk…a very messy desk, (I love messy desks, nothing OCD about me), littered with the objects of my affection: post-its, journals, photos, piles of reference materials, editing instructions, and a monstrous manuscript laid out in chapters screaming for revision. “Scalpel, please!”

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the current work is never the only story we have rattling around in our brains, clamoring for attention. And if I’ve learned anything in my years of writing, it’s that if I don’t take it as it comes, oftentimes, it won’t come back. Hence, my love affair with the indispensable post-it note, or the grease pen, or the back of my hand, the grocery receipt, napkin, just about any blank space big enough for two or three words, an important idea, something too good to lose.

To these random ideas—my unruly children—I offer one hour uninterrupted, first thing each morning…pen and paper close at hand as I sip the morning coffee, water flowers and admire all interesting creatures on the pond just outside our little townhouse door. What a miracle it  is that two or three fleeting words scribbled across a napkin, if given the right amount of time and love, can evolve into something much bigger—like the context of a life lesson I’d almost forgotten.

Of course, there are other times when I’ve suffered enough—telephone  ringing, doorbell chiming, dog barking, the neighbor stopping by to gossip, and a husband suddenly home looking for the lunch I haven’t prepared. This is when I pick up the IPAD with the nifty new keyboard  and head for absolute solitude—my secret place—where nothing matters except getting the words out of my head and onto paper.

I’ll be honest with you. This seductive little disappearing act feels very, very naughty. Private and forbidden. Scandalous, treasonous, delightfully selfish. Just me and my post-its, “…writing in the gush, the throb, the flood of the moment….” Just me and my post-its, alone at last.

By Marlette Bess

Writing about sex is fraught with danger; for every reader and every writer it is subjective, depending on their personal point of view.

Writing about romance and sex are two different things. Romantic encounters may lead to sex, but you don’t always need romance to write a sex scene. In writing, romance is often tame and sex is the body unleashed. My characters generally have a sexual encounter that advances their relationship thus advancing the story, but not every sex scene makes it into the book or even needs too.

Sex scenes used to be called smut or bodice rippers, like Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence. Now we have erotica and women’s porn, for example, Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James.  Character development is the basis for all good stories and all good sex scenes. If the characters are not well developed then the sex scenes almost always end up as nothing but titillation. 

Romance is written by innuendo, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks and draw their own conclusions. Describing graphic sex, where nothing is left to the imagination, is on the opposite end of the spectrum. When I write, my description of a sexual encounter depends on the connection between the characters and the evolution of their relationship.

 In all my storylines, the buildup of tension begins with the spark between the couple.  I continue, along with my characters, to learn new ways to express intimacy.

Marlette Bess

By Gail Ranstorom

Hello world, and welcome to my view!

Montana born and raised, it took a twenty year sojourn—sixteen in Southern California and four in Sunny Florida—for me to realize there’s no place like home. Dorothy got back to Kansas faster than I got back to Montana, but my journey was nearly as strange.
Dorothy and I have much in common. I, too, have a cairn terrier, a family waiting for me to come to my senses, and an assortment of very odd friends. (Well, perhaps not so odd when you consider that they are writers.) They all, however, have huge hearts, boundless courage and are the smartest people I know.

Why, yes! That is a little Jane Austin standing on my desk by the flowers. She is my inspiration as well as a constant reminder to not get diverted by the views and myriad other distractions that snag my attention—anything shiny and bright. Or funny. Or furry. Or breathtaking. Or… well, you get the idea. Jane has her job cut out for her here in Montana, because those beautiful, breathtaking moments are just a glance out my window and every day is a new adventure.

Which brings me to my writing. Because my life is so wonderfully uncomplicated, I like to explore dark themes fraught with romance, mystery and suspense in my novels and set my characters on adventurous paths. From my first book, A Wild Justice, published in 2002, to my next release, Sweet Treason, scheduled for release in September 2013, I make my characters earn their happy endings.

And they lived happily ever after….
Gail