My Favorite Writing - Jungle Jeopardy

Marketing for Romance Writers has a 52-week blog writing challenge, and I've decided to join. The first week is "What is your favorite piece of writing and why?"

Jungle Jeopardy, my Indiana Jones kind of novel, has to be the most exciting, fun piece of writing I've ever done. It starts on the island of Antigua where my heroine lives, then heads to Costa Rica and goes up to Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Our first trip to Antigua a few years ago was the real inspiration for this book. It all began with a visit to the director of the history museum on the island. He shared so much with me that I was immediately hooked on writing a book that would include some of the things I learned.  

Secrets by the Sea was my first book with Antigua as the setting, but it didn't tell the whole story so I wrote Jungle Jeopardy. Billy, the jaguar, became a character in that book. If you love animals, casting an animal in an important role in the story will intrigue you.

Costa Rica is the only one of the four Central American countries we have visited, but I had developed strong interest in the Mayan Ruins of Mexico. I pulled that knowledge into my new story that I set in the jungle. The fictitious ruins in my book rely a lot on what I learned while visiting the Mayan sites at Palenque, Chichen Itza, and Cozumel. I had already created a series of large Mayan Ruins paintings, so writing a story that included ruins was a perfect follow-up.

In my imagination, I see Jungle Jeopardy as a magical movie. It is a true adventure story and romance with an actor who is a young version of Harrison Ford. Who might that be?

Signing the End on a Book Manuscript

Signing the words "the end" on a book manuscript has usually been a magic time for me. After weeks of intense work and dedication, it's fulfilling to accomplish a special goal.

Last Saturday, I typed those words on my latest manuscript, Jungle Jeopardy. I was happy, and I was sad at the same time.

You see, along the way, I fell in love with the characters. I relished the adventure in the jungle. My characters took over the story and wandered off in directions I never imagined when I began writing this book in March. I had a villain at the beginning whom I loved in the end. That was certainly never planned nor was it expected. I even had a jaguar play a major part in the plot.

Imagine that!

It was so much fun that I want to return to the jungles of Central America for more adventures. I want to find my way back into the unexplored Maya ruins. And I want to continue to wonder why I never heard much about the amazing Maya civilization in history classes.

What happens when you complete your manuscript? Are you willing to leave your characters or do you want to keep on going?

Getting Lost in the Setting

When you're writing a book, do you ever get lost in the setting you've created? I do.

Right now, I'm writing an adventure novel, Jungle Jeopardy, that's set in the jungles of Central America. I have a wonderful National Geographic map of Mexico and Central America spread out across a third of my desk. As I write about my characters' experiences in lost Maya ruins, I am captivated by the subject. When I leave to proceed with my own daily life, I think about my characters as though they were real living people.

Sometimes for past books, I've made a big chart and stuck post-it notes all over it as things happen. That can be pretty helpful when you want to check on the timing for some event. For this book, I have a little black spiral notebook that's 4 x 6 inches in size. So far, I've almost completely filled it with research notes about the Maya, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. It's amazing what you can find on the Internet, even including the sounds certain animals make.

Since Jungle Jeopardy is a sequel to Secrets by the Sea, I keep a copy of that novel close at hand as well. I also make little notes on sheets of paper scattered about my desk on both sides of the computer. And there are photographs torn from magazines from some of the destinations in my setting.

Getting lost in the setting is a lot of fun. Now, I can hardly wait to see how it all turns out because my characters have taken over. I truly won't know how this book ends until almost the last page. It definitely will not end the way I originally planned.

I'd love to know what happens when you're writing a book. Do you ever get lost in your setting?

Google Changes Everything for a Novelist

Parking Lot at Sunset - MMSikes

How quickly things change. An ordinary parking lot turns into magic at sunset. And a novel you think is going one way suddenly takes a U-turn in the opposite direction. That change in my novel happened because of Google.

When I first started writing books, as the Passenger to Paradise, I spent a lot of time at the local library using various reference materials to enhance what I already knew about the destination I was visiting. For my first novel, Hearts Across Forever, set in Jamaica, I not only researched that island nation, but I learned more about subjects such as hypnotic regression and reincarnation because my characters were involved in both.

For my current project, Jungle Jeopardy, I planned to have my characters get involved in a kidnapping and much more in Costa Rica. But then Google and my characters took over. I remembered my own adventures in the Maya ruins and started reading and Googling the ruins of Central America. What I've learned has been compelling, and my characters are out of control having a wild adventure in the jungles of Guatemala. While in the past the Passenger to Paradise has always written from personal experience, now I've discovered a journey so dangerous only Google can handle it for me.

Because so much is available at the touch of a key, Google changes everything for the novelist. Have you changed the way you research and write. Do you still spend hours at the library researching? Or do you have your own system.