By Amanda Linsmeier

Robin McKinley’s novel Beauty is a retelling of the classic French fairy tale Beauty and The Beast. Her novel takes the popular tale and develops the characters and emotions, taking the fairy tale to new heights.

“Beauty” begins in a city where a widower lives with his three daughters, named Grace, Hope and Honour by his literal-minded wife. As a little girl, Honour doesn’t much care for her name. When she says she’d rather be Beauty, her family takes it to heart. What begins as a nickname sticks, and as Beauty ages, she finds herself uncomfortable with her name, for she is gangly and awkward with big hands and feet. While her sisters are quite beautiful, Beauty is content to be the smart one. She spends her time studying languages, reading everything she can get her hands on and pursuing her passion for riding horses. All seems to be going well for the family until Beauty’s father, a ship merchant, loses everything when his ships are lost to a storm. The father and his three daughters are forced to sell their belonging and move to the country.

The years pass by and each daughter finds her own way in her new life. Beauty in particular thrives, for her lack of beauty doesn’t matter in the country. She is able to put her mind to work, and her plow horse Greatheart is greatly esteemed for his size and strength. One day, Beauty’s father leaves to check on news of a lost ship. When he returns, he is greatly changed. He brings back a rose for Beauty and a tale of a Beast who he must meet again in exchange for stealing the flower. In a moment of courage and love, Beauty insists that she will meet with the beast in her father’s place. When Beauty and Greatheart arrive at the home of the Beast, she finds an enchanted castle full of strange and wonderful things. Perhaps the most shocking character is the Beast himself; the master of the castle is not at all what she expects.

Beauty, in a word, is lovely. I adored the language and the description. McKinley has a gift for making the reader see what she sees. The heroine Beauty is humorous, intelligent and interesting. The characters are loveable and fully developed on their own. Beast is a particular joy to read because he is so patient, wise and obviously in love with Beauty. In my search to write about fantastic novels by female authors I abandoned the bookstore and all its glossy titles this week to write about a story I’ve read at least a hundred times before. I could never forget about this book and how it has touched my heart all these years. Beauty is marketed to readers aged nine-adult, and I agree that people of all ages will enjoy the tale. I probably read it for the first time around age nine, and it’s still a book I have never stopped loving. This must-read is a remarkably detailed and joyous novel about family, courage, love and of course, magic.

By Carole Shmurak

There are some mysteries that are actually more enjoyable when read a second time. To Love and Be Wise (Touchstone, 1950) is one of those books. Once the reader knows the solution to the mystery, it’s a treat to go back and look for the clues that Tey provides. They're all there, seeming to call out to the reader, "If only you had paid attention, it would have been so easy!"

Tey’s detective, Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, is called in to find out what has become of a young American photographer named Leslie Searle who disappeared while on a boat trip with a British radio commentator named Walter Whitmore. Has Whitmore killed Searle and disposed of his body in the river? Or did Searle simply walk away one night, leaving Whitmore behind to be blamed for his death? All that Grant knows for sure is that they were seen quarreling and that Searle has spent a lot of time recently with Whitmore’s fiancée. Perhaps someone else has killed the enigmatic American? There are certainly many possible suspects in the little artist colony of Salcott St. Mary.

One of the joys of Tey’s writing is her sense of humor; not the laugh-out-loud kind, but rather the gentle wit that makes the reader chuckle with recognition. Her description of Salcott St. Mary’s evolution from sleepy little village to “occupied territory” as the writers and actors from London moved in, for example, reminded me of the fate of several Connecticut towns I know. And when the very successful author Lavinia Fitch, dictating her umpteenth romance novel, discovers that she has had her heroine wear high heels to play tennis, I recalled some of the authorial blunders I’ve seen in books, and even some I’ve made myself. Lavinia’s reaction to her own heroine (“Who cares what the silly moron does!”) is perfect.

This book was published a year before The Daughter of Time and includes some of the same characters; both Grant’s sidekick Williams and the glamorous Marta Hallard make important contributions to the solution of the mystery. Daughter of Time fans will also be amused to see that the authors whose books sit unread on Grant’s bedside table in Daughter of Time appear as characters in To Love and Be Wise.

The wonderful twist at the end of the story is just one more reason to treasure this book. One of the members of my mystery readers’ group called To Love and Be Wise “elegant.” She couldn’t be more right: There is elegance in its construction and elegance in the writing.

1. How does it feel to be an author? Is it everything you expected?
It’s everything I expected it to be. It feels good. There are some challenges that go along with it, but other then that I think it’s what I expected.

2. You were invited to the Publishers Weekly party. How did it feel, and how was the event?
I got to see some great authors speak and it was awesome. To see how they handle themselves and what they’ve done throughout the years; it makes you want to accomplish something like that one day.

3. There is a lot of press on serial killers. Did you have to do a lot of research for the book?
The research that I did was two part: Find out what they were thinking and what they were doing, then find out their motive and how they kill. During the writing process, you learn how to make an exciting novel without being too gory. Usually, serial killers are quiet people, which benefited me in my novel writing.

4. To your knowledge, have you ever met a serial killer?
NO!

5. How do you envision the future of the Twisted Killer series?
All the novels are written already; I did four of them, so the writing aspect of my vision is complete. Ultimately, I think it would be great if the series was made into a movie. I would love to have Frank and Vinny go into these different killings. I want to combine them into a movie. I think it would make a fantastic movie. You would see Frank and Vinny rise, fail and rise again. I would like to see Vinny being Andy Garcia and Frank maybe Clint Eastwood, someone older.

Catherine Coulter

Catherine Coulter is a New York Times bestselling author whose success spans three decades. She writes in the historical romance and contemporary FBI suspense thriller genres.

Q: What are some of the challenges you face when you switch from writing historical romance to the contemporary thriller genre?

A: I wouldn’t call them challenges; in fact, I find it energizing to switch genres for the simple reason that I’m not writing in the same sort of format again and again.

Q: Which do you find the most demanding: Creating the concept, the first draft, revising or editing? Why?

A: It’s all simply part of the whole or the process. Since I don’t work with an outline, I simply begin. As for editing, that happens every single day when I’m reworking what I wrote the previous day. I do a full-book edit when the book is done. It’s all demanding and it’s all fun, and if you pull your hair out one day, you’ll be humming and fluffing your hair the next. The writer’s brain is never quiet.

Q: How do you cope with the pressure of having your books on the New York Times best seller list?

A: It is always very exciting to get the call on Wednesday, the week after publication of a new book, and hear that the book has made the Times and it’s at a high position. There’s always self-pressure for a book to perform well, but once it’s out of my hands there is simply nothing I can do about it.

Carlotta Holton is the author of Salem Pact and Touching The Dead, and is a member of the National Federation of Press Women and an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.

Carlotta Holton has just received her second award for Touching the Dead from the National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest. Click here to purchase the book.

Settling down for a good night’s sleep after a hard day, either mentally or physically, isn’t always an easy feat or an enjoyable event. Our minds are still racing at speeds that surpass the fastest movements of our body. So why is it that the two hardly ever seem to be in sync?

One answer is that we are not in total control of our bodies or minds. We think we are in control of everything, yet we actually control very little. Our minds and body work involuntarily most of the time. We breathe the air, our blood pumps to every extremity and we find ourselves contemplating ideas we never consciously think about.
What are we really in charge of when it comes to ourselves?

You take the trash outdoors because your nose picks up a foul scent and tells your brain that something needs to happen. Your brain tells your muscle system to get moving and take the trash out so the nose won’t have to keep smelling the odor. Or your ears relay a message to the brain that someone else in your household has the same odor issue and has selected your body to act upon their desires.

With all of that in mind, nodding off to sleep is usually accompanied by your thoughts of either good or bad things, either current, in the past or something in the future.
In any case, once your body gets the sleep signal from the brain, your consciousness
takes a break and the real control freak in you takes over, your subconscious brain,
which may not be so subconscious after all.

Keeping you alive is the subconscious brain’s first priority. After all, it needs you to gather food and provide shelter in order for it to survive. But once the brain has put you to sleep, it decides what and when you will dream, whether it be a happy dream or a terrifying nightmare. Only your brain can decide what treatment you will have for the night. It may decide to shake up the muscle system and make you shudder and tremble in fear of an evil beast it has concocted just for its own entertainment.

It could decide to reward you with a pleasant night time ride; winning the big lottery and enjoying a life of luxury, even if only for a brief moment in time. It’s important to remember that whichever dream you experience was not really your choice, because if it truly was under your control then no one would ever have a bad dream. No matter who you are, the real control over what you do and how you think comes from deep inside your brain. And who knows where they actually get their orders from? It could come from another time and place, even a parallel dimension housing our spiritual twin.

So what happens when you allow your subconscious brain to write for you in the darkest hours of the night? Many horror novels begin and end with a nightmare; perhaps your next nightmare will end up on the bestseller list.

Brian Douglas Coyle, a graduate of Kent State University in Ohio, has over 30 years of experience in the banking industry. He is currently the Community Development Investment Manager at BB&T, the eleventh largest bank in the country. Brian is the author of Soul Riders and the 2008 release The Devil’s Sanctuary.

Right now, intuition is telling me to do something writers are taught never to do: Open a piece with a dictionary definition. My rational mind is screaming, Don’t do it! But I’ve learned through experience to trust these intuitive nudges. So here goes…

Intuition (ĭn'tū-ĭsh'ən, -tyū-): The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes; a sense of something not evident or deductible.

That was tough, but following intuition almost always pays off for me, sometimes in unexpected ways. Intuitive feelings are a natural part of the human experience. They happen to everyone, but in Western culture we’re trained to suppress them in favor of a rational approach. The rational mind is great at organizing and learning from experience, but it’s limited to computing information it’s already received from the outside world.

The intuitive faculty taps into knowledge of a different kind, related to less finite aspects of ourselves, such as creativity, higher purpose and personal growth. It’s another way we have of accessing information. To ignore it is to limit the very experience the rational mind is so adept at processing. Sometimes the rational mind discards intuitive knowledge so quickly, we don’t realize we have it at all

You know that pang in the gut that says it’s time for a new job? That internal nod that lets you know you’ve made the right decision? That nagging hunch that keeps you writing in a direction that seems to make no sense? Hello, intuition. The rational mind might rebel against it, but when we listen to those impulses things tend to work out for the best, even if we don’t immediately understand how or why.

Intuition tells us what feels right and true in the moment. If we listen, it can guide us to insights that are unavailable to the logical mind. It can infuse our writing with energy and creativity, and make those agonizing decisions that determine the course of a project easier to make. Ever hear a writer say her characters tell her what to do? Or that the novel “wrote itself?” These writers allow intuition to lead them, trusting it will take them somewhere, and use their rational minds to smooth the path.

I don’t mean to suggest that intuition is infallible. Four-hundred words into this column and I’m still not getting any love from that definition. But my intuitive gambles often pay off in unpredictable ways. Maybe when I shelve the dictionary, a postcard will fall out and solve a problem in my novel; one my rational mind has been banging its head against. Or maybe the definition itself, so orderly and precise, is saying that intuition and rationality are most powerful when they work together. This feels closer to the truth, and I think I’ll investigate the idea further in my next column.

Until then, read Shakti Gawain’s excellent book, Developing Intuition—Practical Guidance for Daily Life (New World Library, 2002.) It’ll help you wrap your mind around this mysterious faculty that we all possess.

Intuition Rationalized
Intuition Developed

Have a question for Doug? Click here to submit it to THE WRITE MIND.

Doug Kurtz is a published novelist, certified life coach and the owner of Write Life Coaching (www.writelifecoaching.com). He earned his MA in creative writing at the University of Colorado, where he also taught fiction writing. He currently lives in Boulder, where he’s busy coaching other writers and working on his next novel.

Photo Courtesy: Ronnie Bergeron

Recently I was at Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, to attend the opening of an Ira Yeager exhibition. After the reception, I found myself downstairs in the shop, starting at the long wall of cookbooks. I contemplated the beautiful photographs on the covers, the section dedicated to Julia Child, the local foods wheel, book after colorful book filled with meals I then imagined myself cooking. I knew I was in over my head but I couldn’t help ogle a bit, flipping through pages of bouchons au chocolat, fried zucchini blossoms, and garlic sausage in brioche. Cookbooks can be as captivating as novels, an inspiration to the cook in us all.

I suppose it was because I got married so young but when we were newlyweds several women gave me the same advice on the marriage front. More than once when my husband and I went out somewhere a long married woman would begin to talk and pat her husband’s stomach. She would then tell me the same thing: the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. I always glanced at the man’s stomach and then looked away quickly, happy that Joshua and I jogged together and could only spend forty dollars a week on groceries anyway.

Still, the wall of cookbooks at Copia reminded me of that secret dream, the dream of being called a good cook. While yes, I have the basics down, a repertoire of dishes I make well enough not to be shy about I’m still waiting for that breakout moment. It’s the moment where a big group of us is at the table and someone looks up into my eyes and says, “Wow! This is incredible. Now I can die happy.” You know, it could even be a child with a discerning palate; that would completely count.

Back at Copia, my favorite cookbooks are those of local restaurants, favorite to look at that is on that wall of inspiration. With the Napa Valley so abundant in good food, it’s hard not to be spoiled. Looking at the photographs of dishes at The French Laundry, Tra Vigne, and Mustards I’m happily reminded we’re more than just spoiled. Amazing food abounds, and buying local produce doesn’t make it too hard to make dinner taste good. Back at home as I flip through my copy of Thomas Keller’s Bouchon I finally admit to myself that I have no intention of making anything out of it any time soon. I’m really only trying to figure out what I’ll order next time we go Bouchon, and hopefully that will be very soon.

Tyler Oaks earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from California State University, Stanislaus and her Master of Arts in Spanish from California State University, Sacramento. Tyler lives in California's Napa Valley with her husband and twin daughters. Tyler is presently at work on her next novel.

A book without tone is like a human without any emotions. Flat characters are often boring because there is no human quality in their interactions. This week, the exercises we will be featuring from Writing Aerobics I will focus on setting the tone of the novel. To do this, it’s important to recognize and distinguish between flat tones and emotional tones.

Tone Exercise One
Objective: To recognize tone

To recognize tone, ask yourself what the writer is doing to elicit an emotional respone from the reader. Is it word choice? Imagery? Actions that speak louder than words? Character, dialogue, thoughts, or feelings? Do words or images build on each other to create a compelling picture of the character’s life? Or is the writer merely giving us surface information: names, dates, activities, concrete observations?

Read the sentences below. Mark an “F” beside the ones that seem flat and devoid of tone; mark a “T” beside the ones written to elicit an emotional response.

1. Harry and David had been friends for many years, and they frequently got together to play cards and share a few laughs.

2. Once he knew where he was going, Bret folded the roadmap, tucked it into the glove compartment and eased the old Buick back out onto the highway.

3. Jessie shivered when she saw his face. Blood dripped from his mouth. Had he been in an accident…or a fight?

4. The stallion was a beautiful animal. His coat was pure black and his tail long and full. Robert was sure the horse would fetch a good price at the auction.

5. What a horse! The stallion looked even better than Robert remembered. His coat shone like black satin and his tail streamed out behind him when he ran, like a banner. It’s gonna break my heart to sell him, Robert thought, but I have to.

6. Marie took the frog from Justin and cupped it in her hands. It wriggled against her palms, wet and slimy. Little boys were disgusting brutes!

7. The mountains looked bright pink in the glow of the early morning sun.

8. The wind, like a mischievous child, batted the tops of the pines, sending a fine sugar-dusting of snow to the ground.

9. That day in April in 1066, the Saxon army was in no shape to withstand the onslaught of the Norman fighting force. Harold, a fair-to-middling general, was taken off his guard and had no time to prepare a stand against William’s well-equipped horde.

Tone Exercise Two

For more helpful tips and exercises, visit www.sterlinghouse-bookstore.com and check out:
Writing Aerobics I by C. Sterling and M. Davidson

What do you think about this exercise? Tell us at editor@writersnewsweekly.com or join the discussion on facebook.com.

Initiatives to Go Green Prompt Authors to Try Virtual Book Tours

Photo Courtesy: Mary R. Vogt

Industry insiders are calling it a sign of the times: More and more publishers are encouraging authors to promote their books online in what is being called a virtual book tour.

The way it works is simple, and the benefits are huge. Authors who decide to go on a virtual book tour work with a public relations firm that specializes in online promotions. The agency works with websites and instructs the author to answer questions online, write blog posts on approved websites and send books to online reviewers one month prior to the tour. Diligent authors who post information on the websites per the instructions of the agency can appear on more than 20 blogs in a one month period. The benefits of a virtual book tour to authors are immense; authors are able to work from home without the costly travel expenses. The results are remarkable: Authors who participate in virtual book tours are reporting higher sales and significant savings in promotion. Are virtual book tours a quick trend in a green-age of publishing, or the wave of the future?

With all the benefits, there remains the added concern for publishers that the author will post inappropriate or damaging comments on websites and blogs that will hurt sales, in addition to the reputation of both the author and the publisher. Since the author typically works from home during a virtual book tour and a publicist is rarely sitting at home with the author, it’s important for the author to know what to say and how to say it online. As bloggers know, everything that is said online is permanent.

Virtual book tours are easy to find and even easier to execute. Social media outlets like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Yelp, Gawker and LinkedIn all have pages for virtual book tours; numerous websites, including www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com are also dedicated to developing virtual book tours for authors.

Dorothy Thompson works for Pump Up Your Book Promotion, a full service public relations agency specializing in online book promotion. “In my company alone, I see approximately 12 - 15 authors each month wanting to go on a virtual book tour,” says Thompson. According to the website, virtual book tours are designed to take authors around the world with a tremendous amount of exposure. Thompson explains, “Frankly, what's to lose? The authors and publishers get world-wide exposure, and the websites receive more hits. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.”

Critics of virtual book tours bring some legitimate concerns to the table. According to a BusinessWeek article by Sarah Lacy, there’s nothing like face-to-face interaction when promoting anything. Authors should not give up on traditional book tours; by doing so, according to Lacy, publishers are throwing away “a powerful tool.” Thompson sees the virtual book tour quite differently, saying “What is truly so spectacular is that every day there are more and more venues online opening up to market your book. In ten years, I predict that there will be so many more venues…it will boggle your mind. I say the future looks very, very bright for virtual book tours.”

Click here to read more about Green Publishing.

Whether or not blog tours are the wave of the future or just a hot trend in a green market is up for debate. Let us know what you think. Email editor@writersnewsweekly.com and voice your opinion today.