Accept the characters that are within you and free your inner villain!

Good evening!

I have never been analyzed, but my handwriting has.  When I was teaching in Detroit, a group of teachers got together for one of those "meetings" that was supposed to "Further educate" us.  The speaker was a handwriting analyst.  It was very interesting.  I didn't put a lot of stock in that sort of thing, mostly because at the time I prided myself in the fact that I didn't have any one style of handwriting.  (In reality, I just had really, really bad penmanship.)  I thought I could fool this guy.

So we were supposed to turn in a sample of our handwriting.  He thumbed through most of it until he came to mine.  He said the words didn't matter, but he read enough so that I knew it was mine.  He studied the handwriting for a moment and said, "This is a person who is searching for a father figure."

One of the other teachers, a woman who has known my dad since high school, blurted out, "That's nonsense, she has a wonderful father."

The guy said, "Yes, but if her father is a parochial school teacher, is he ever available to her?"

A light suddenly clicked for me.  I realized that everything I'd written involved a rescue of some kind.  An older man rescuing a younger woman, or a girl.  I've always idolized men decades older than I am.  I have little time for the younger crowd.  Come see me when you hit 45 boys. 

And I love heroes.  I LOVE THEM.  I have 5 seasons of "Emergency" and 10 seasons of "JAG" on DVD to prove it.  Oh I enjoy the bad boys (Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp come to mind)  but I like it better when they're the hero  ("Gladiator" anyone?) 

I should also mention that, in addition to my obvious love of the heroic, I am a basically happy person.  Well, I would rather be cheerful mostly because it's just easier to be cheerful around folks than to dwell on whatever is wrong.  Ya gotta love the Lutheran upbringing!  "Just be happy, put on a smile, and pass the casserole dear."

But I've always embraced that darker part of me, even though I never really acknowledged it as being part of me.  In high school I read Poe, Plath, and the Sisters Bronte endlessly.  "Light hearted" reading for me was "Gone with the Wind."  It got to the point that my father, then my English teacher, wouldn't let me do an oral report on Sylvia Plath because I'd just done one on Edgar Allen Poe and he figured I should read something more cheerful.  (I smell my mother's hand in that...my dad avoids conflict at all costs...telling me I couldn't do a report on Sylvia Plath at the height of my "Bell Jar" period was just begging for a weepy evening listening to Julie London records....loudly.)

More recently, I've seen a pattern in my reading and listening habits.  I love Rick Springfield's music, but my favorite of his albums is "Shock Denial Anger Acceptance"  a loud, generally dark collection that I shred when I sing along in the car.

It's a collection of mellow love songs...really...

I got to thinking about this today as a very interesting, very evil character leaped from my fingers to my computer screen today.  When I'm writing fiction I love to have a villain and I like her to be a woman.  "Dream in Color" is an exception to that rule because that book was more about one woman's journey through a maze of reality into something far more interesting, rather than multiple character story.  Of course, then I fell in love with Jesse Alexander and TAH DAH  a romance was born.  Besides, I've always thought of REAL LIFE as being the villain in that story...that and the mother character comes across as sort of villainous.  The thing about this new villain is man, she is twisted.  My Serena Shiply Chapman is one very evil, very twisted beauty of a villain.  She's doing and saying things I would NEVER...

I was shocked.  I said, "I can't write that!" 

Then  I pondered it.

What if Edgar Allen Poe had said that?  There would be no "Tell Tale Heart."  There would be no "Cask of Amontillado."  And the House of Usher would still be standing.

Daphne Du Maurier...what if she had said, "Well, there shall be a Manderly, and everything will be lovely.  Rebecca will just be a cranky ex wife, and Mrs. Danvers will make cookies through out the book."

What if....horrors...Emily Bronte had said, "I can't possibly create a character as bold and twisted and sadistic as Heathcliff...and make him the most romantic character in literature."   THANK GOD she said, "Oh wait...yes I can!"  And she was ridiculously good at it.  So much so that she pretty much didn't need to write another word.  Heathcliff in all his dark beauty, was her masterpiece.

Today's writers seem very different.  I meet a lot of authors and writers who ask the same question over and over again, "WHAT DO THEY WANT?"  I've done enough pitches for agents and editors to know that, while they say they want a fresh voice...what they mean is they want a book they know immediately where to sell.  In the two minute pitch  (ten seconds, if you're pitching to a certain agent who shot me down in...yes ten seconds.  I barely had my name out there.

 I said, "Hi, I'm Sarah Bradley.  I have a single title romantic suspense set in a small town, the main-"

"Nope.  I can't sell that."  that was it.

I'm not ripping on agents and editors.  I WOULD LOVE to have an agent. And I really liked my editor at The Wild Rose Press.  But they have a lousy job.  These days, with the economy the way it is, there's really very little margin for error and therefore, no margin for something that hasn't been tried before.  If you want to break into print these days, you'd better have the right formula, or you're not going to get past the pitch.

I've found that female villains who have...interesting...sexual appetites don't play well in the traditional romance world.

And yet here I have this magnificent villain.  A villain so scary I'm almost afraid to open up my files for fear she's done something really depraved. 

Now you know you all have that character lurking in you.  We're all way more Bronte and Poe than we are Jane Austen.  (Seriously...I love Jane Austen made into movies, but her books.....not exactly my speed.  Where's the death?  Where's the mayhem?  Where's the dark, alcoholic in need of spiritual rescue?)

That brings us back to my need to rescue and be rescued. 

It's taken me a very long time as a writer to know who I am.  Turns out, I'm a bit schizophrenic, like my dear departed grandmother.  One the one hand, if you read my humor blog  It Can Only Happen to Sarah you'll know I'm a completely normal woman who likes to see the funny in every situation.  BUT, as a fiction writer, I'm really more interested in writing characters I like to read. 

I'm hoping that if I give Serena Shiply Chapman enough page time, I'll have the female version of Heathcliff.

And she can create mayhem while my heroine and hero are busy rescuing each other.

Now, let's see if I can pitch that!

Meanwhile, the rest of you, pick up a copy of my romantic comedy Dream in Color  at the Wild Rose Press site.  It's available in digital as well as paperback!

Now go forth and WRITE!

Freedom isn't free...but it's freeing!

Hello everyone on this fine Saturday!






Has a whole week really gone by? Really?





I'd say I was busy with work...but you all know 95% of my work involves playing spider solitaire and watching the last precious weeks of "As The World Turns" on my computer. And I'd say I was busy writing, but, well, again, that pesky spider solitaire. One day I will win!





What I have been busy doing, my friends, is pondering things about my life and trying to release those things I cannot change. For example: I cannot change the fact that my mother loves my brother and my husband more than she loves me. There's nothing I can do about being pretty far down on her list when it comes to important relatives. I can write about my feelings in a humorous way (Those of you who have read "Dream in Color" know what I mean. Those of you who haven't WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?) or I can do it in a very dramatic way: The maternal figure in Shara's life in "Lies in Chance" is murdered when the book opens. For me, writing is cheap therapy and it means every family gathering is actually a deductible expense for me.





I can change a number of things: I can change how I look. I darkened the door of Gold's for the first time since Tom lost his job back in January. It felt good. And then my knee really hurt so that felt bad, but I'm going to hit the gym again tomorrow or Monday because it did feel good.





Some time back I did one of those soul searching exercises because someone close to me told me I was doing something that was wrong and intolerable. I spent a lot of time and sleepless nights wondering what that was. After a year of wondering, I found out what I did and I realized it wasn't something I could change about myself.





See, I'm essentially a happy person. There are a few souls out there who have seen me when I'm sad or depressed. I call those people my closest friends and family. But most of the time, what you see is what I am. A happy person who would much rather laugh at life and be friendly with everyone regardless of political views, religion, and all the other things that seem to make people mad. For me it's just easier being happy and friendly than anything else.



While I've always been that way, that doesn't mean I haven't changed in the years of my life. I've softened my views in some ways and changed my views in others. It's called growing up, we all do it. But the core values, the core things of who I am...those have not and do not change.





For example. I'm a life long Barry Manilow fan. I am a Christian. I love pizza, ice cream, soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with jam on top. These are things I've loved since childhood.

When I was a teen, I fell in love with Rick Springfield, my husband, and movies. I haven't been a teen in a couple of decades, but I still love those three things.

My favorite song of all time, "Ah Leah" has been my favorite song since I was 15, and I will always, always, always get a tear in my eye when the songs "Waiting for a Girl Like You" and "Broken Wings" come on the radio. (And thank you Rick Springfield for rerecording those two songs.)





Also, I'm a writer. I've been a writer since the age of six when I wrote an illustrated history of the Civil War. (Shelby Foote, eat your heart out!) I was a writer the day I opened up "Little House in the Big Woods" and said, "Hey, I can do that!" (The writing, not the living in the woods in a log cabin with no central AC or cable.)





So looking at this big thing I was doing that was so wrong, I realized...the wrong thing was I was being me. I hadn't changed. Sure, I had joined this group or that group, read a book I wouldn't have looked at ten years ago, saw a movie I may not have liked five years ago. My core, what I am, hadn't changed. The other person, the one who had liked all those things about me before, had.

We all have that. We all have moment when a relationship ends and it hurts like lit matches on bare skin. I'm not just talking about a romantic thing. Every relationship that ends ends with pain. And then, after the Shock Denial Anger (is there any situation in which I cannot quote Rick Springfield? I DON'T THINK SO!) there is Acceptance. And there is freedom.





Knowing what I know now, I realize that this was a lost year for me. I was so worried about that thing I was doing that was offensive, I let it hang over me like a heavy cloud. That cloud is gone. I am free.

The adage "Freedom isn't free" is a very good one. It's always applied to our amazing men and women in the armed forces. GOD BLESS YOU! If I may, I'd like to apply it to everyone who's had their heart broken, really broken, by a friend, a family member, or a lover. After everything else washes away, there is freedom. And that freedom wasn't free, you paid for it in tears, in sleeplessness, in dashed hope. But now you have your freedom to be you again. You have your freedom to go out and live without the cloud.





Do I still feel sad about this? Yes. I have mourned and I will mourn again. There will be times when I question myself, because something like this leaves you a little unsure, a little wary of the next relationship.





Freedom isn't free, my friends. But it is freeing. If you've lost someone because it "wasn't you, it's me" then believe it. Stand a litter straighter, sing in your car, laugh as loud as you want to no matter who thinks you sound like a cackling hen. Be kind to those around you, and be cheerful as much as you can. Not everyone is going to like you. Maybe that's freeing, too.





(Meanwhile, if you or a loved one is serving in our military, God Bless you and I pray all our soldiers every where come home safely.)





NOW, GO FORTH AND WRITE!