I’m blogging over at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood today!

The Rubies are Golden Heart Finalists, Class of 2009, who have formed a strong bond, tight-knit friendship, and wonderful blog over the years.

In a blog series leading up to Nationals this year, they’re featuring the new Golden Heart Finalists, Class of 2012. So today’s my day!

C’mon over and leave a comment! I’m here: http://www.rubyslipperedsisterhood.com/meet-2012-golden-heart-finalist-laurie-sanchez/

Yesterday in the mail I received my official Golden Heart pin and invitation to the big RITA/Golden Heart gala in July! It feels so “real” to get the pin. …

The roses Superman bought me on Monday.

Wow! Well, that was a crazy coupla’ days. … Crazy week, really.

After finding out I was a finalist in RWA’s Golden Heart competition, I quickly found out what exactly that meant — I had no idea what a wild ride I was going to be on.

There were a gazillion emails, tweets, Facebook updates, loops to join, secret societies to join, and handshakes to learn (okay … kidding on those last two). There were beta readers to contact (and thank), critique and writing partners to reach, and friends and family members who’d been so supportive that I wanted to write to and thank each personally. There were champagne glasses to toast, roses from Superman to put in a vase, a celebratory dinner with my parents, and lovely congrats to acknowledge. There are pictures to take (haircuts to get beforehand!), photos to mail in, registrations to fill out, a gown to buy (egads!), tickets to purchase, and more. There were more than 1,000 messages to keep up with on a new 2012 Finalist loop alone, other previous-finalist loops to be part of, blogs to join, special memberships to join, plus open calls from agents for GH finalist submissions, and even personal emails from agents asking us if we had representation, and — if not — would we like to submit?

It has — to say the least — been wild.

In the middle of it all, I had a vacation already planned — just a long weekend, really — but it felt weird to unplug and take off when I knew another 1,000 emails were going to pile up. … But I did. (And I’m glad I did!)

Now I’m back in town, though, and ready to get back to work on this finalist thing.

First steps:

1. Catch up on ridiculous amount of email. (Working on it.)
2. Join RWA. (Did that at lunch today.)
3. Get a haircut. (Old-lady hairdos are threatening.)
4. Get a picture taken, quick!
5. Find an agent.
6. Join my local OC chapter.
7. Register for Nationals.
8. Fill out the paperwork that’s due Monday (addresses of local newspapers to contact, etc.)

Wish me luck with all this planning! I’ll keep you updated on the process, if you want the play-by-play on how all this goes. …

Well, it’s Sunday night and I’m working on … homework.

Yep, it’s for another writing class I’m taking this month from Laurie Schnebly Campbell.

It’s an online class, where we participate through Yahoo groups. We read the lecture and do our “homework” within a pretty wide window — at least 36 hours — so it’s very flexible for working folk like me. (And I can catch up a little on the weekends.)

This one’s called “Plotting Via Motivation.” I took it to learn new ways to plot a little quicker and in a slightly more organized fashion than I currently do.

I’ve taken other classes from Laurie Schnebly Campbell – a great one on using enneagrams to build characters (she wrote a book about them) and one on writing query letters. She’s an excellent teacher. She gives personal feedback each time you turn in your homework, making you feel as though — even in a class of more than 100 — she’s helping you out specifically. And she’s funny and positive. I always learn a lot.

I also found out that one of my romance-writing idols, Jenny Crusie, is planning to offer writing classes. Hers will be presented with award-winning romance writer Anne Stuart and will be called The Writewell Academy. So far they’re planning on making them only $10 each, but they are only lectures, no feedback.

Wheeeee!

Do you take online classes for writing or other hobbies or skills? (I also love paper-crafting classes!)

Over at Jenny Crusie’s blog, Argh Ink, she’s chatting with her friends and writing partners Anne Stuart and Lucy March (a.k.a. Lani Diane Rich) about various writing challenges.

I thought last week’s discussion and this week’s were particularly excellent — about writing the hero and writing the heroine in romance. (And then deciding which is your protagonist, which is a discussion my writing partner and I have all the time!)

Check them out if you’re interested:

The Three-Goddesses Chat: Heroines
The Three-Goddesses Chat: Heroes

She also has a great picture of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ uber-clean writing desk! (That entry is just called “Thank God My Friends Don’ t Gloat.”)

One the hard (and, simultaneously, fun/ intimidating/ nerve-wracking) parts of writing a new book is coming up with the characters’ names.

Misnaming a character from the beginning is a difficult mistake.

I’ve written several chapters, or in one case an entire manuscript, and then gone back and changed a character’s name. And believe you me, it’s not done without angst. (Like a child you’ve named, your character begins to embody his or her name, and changing it midway through the book can make the whole story seem “wrong” somehow.)

I changed both characters’ names of my very first romance (after the first draft was completely written). Why? Because I read a blog post by a well-reputed agent making fun of the names. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who’d thought “Emily” and “Jake” were great-sounding names in 2006. So did about 85% of other romance writers. She said if she got one more story with an “Emily,” “Jake,” “Max” (one of my supporting characters in the same story!) or “Luke,” she was tossing it out the window. 

Apparently there’s a cultural consciousness that causes us all to gravitate toward the same names, whether we’re using them to name characters or babies. Certain names just “sound right” in certain years. Or they sound handsome, cute, beautiful or successful.

But this is really silly thinking, I soon realized. Writers shouldn’t be selecting the same names (whether culturally conscious or not) as new moms. Because my character is 30 years old! Which would make “Jake” sound completely wrong for his era.

So I found an excellent baby-name book that tells when names are popular, and learned to name like this:

1. Figure out how old your character is and date the name back to the character’s “birth.” If my character is 29 in 2011, he would be born in 1982, so I’d have to look for names that were popular that year.
2. Take your character’s parents into consideration. Would your character’s parents have leaned toward a traditional name, or an unusual name? Would they have bucked trends or have followed them? What part of the country were they in when they named your character, and what influences might their hometown have had? What was your character’s last name when he was named, and did that last name change (through divorce or adoption)? What are the character’s siblings’ names? They should all sound like they came from the same parents’ ideas from that time.

Other tips I’ve learned from romance writers or editors:

1. Avoid having your hero and heroine sport similar-sounding names or – worse yet – names that start with the same letter. This is partly a visual thing for the page, as when readers scan, they have a hard time separating names like Maggie and Matthew, or Ryann and Ray.
2. Avoid initials as names. I truly love initials as names (J.R., J.T., T.J., A.J., etc.), but I had an experienced writer tell me once that most editors hate them. Again, it’s partly a visual thing, she said. While initial-names sound nice when spoken aloud, they tend to look clunky on a page, and when it’s your main character, the clunkiness will fill the page. I have to admit, as much as I love Jenny Crusie, I did find her character “C.L.” (“Tell Me Lies”) to have a terribly distracting name.

Here’s my favorite book for coming up with names: It not only lists the name and when it was popular, but it tells possible sibling names, too, that all sound right together: The Baby Name Wizard, Laura Wattenberg. (She has a great web site, too.)

What other things do you, as a reader, hate about name choice in books?

For the next project, I asked several writer/reader/romantic-heart friends if they’d help me brainstorm a good holiday romance. I’ve written about my love-hate relationship with Christmas romances before here, but the thing of it is, I really do like the concept of holiday romances. I just rarely like them in reality. (I’m reading one by Lisa Kleypas right now, though, that might be a pleasant exception – so far, so good.)

I’m excited to see what all my friends come up with! They don’t all read them, so their ideas will probably be quite out of the box. I’ve already received two e-mails back, with some fab ideas. This seems so fun to me, like writing on assignment — they can assign any characters, premise and setting, and I’ll just go to town, turning them over in my mind until they all take shape, and I can suddenly visualize the first scene (and the next, and next). … I promise I’ll thank the idea person on the first page if I can get one published!

Fun stuff!

Keep ‘em coming!

Well, it’s November 30, and all the NaNoWriMo writers are stepping away from their keyboards. … hopefully with 50,000 words and one long month of intense writing under their belts.

Although I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo this year, I had my own drummed-up deadline to meet – by Dec. 2, I had to have my Golden Heart entry on the desk of the Romance Writer Association’s group in Texas. Late Sunday night, I was boxing up six copies of a 44-page partial, six copies of an 11-page synopsis, and trying to get the entire manuscript into one file and on some form of CD or flash. (It’s always those last-minute techie things that take the longest, you know?) By midnight, I was finally strapping the packing tape around the box and feeling pretty relieved. …

On to the next project. …

In addition to letting my writing go by the wayside these last several months, I’ve also let my reading go. I haven’t read anything in eons.

But in the last week, I picked up my Kindle, recharged it, and downloaded a couple of Eloisa James stories! Whoo-hoo! – I bought her new novel, a novella, and a short story. Started on the novel first, and really enjoying the (very Dr. House-like!) Piers and heroine Linnet. Eloisa James always does a great job.

What are you reading these days?