Insecure Writer’s Support Group Monthly Blog for April

This is the second post today. If you are looking for the letter F in the A to Z Challenge 2021, please scroll down.

Well, here we are in April and for many of us, life is still far from normal. COVID 19 variants continue to ravage our nations faster than we can get life-saving vaccines into willing arms. Easter has come and gone, and for many of us, the celebration was a lonely one without family meals and the rest of the what we took for granted for so long.

Each month, the IWSG posts an optional question to its writer members. This month’s question is:

Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work?

I have to admit to being a risk-taker, but a rather mild one. When I started writing, I wrote in the third person which I felt suited the stories because they let me see inside more than one characters’ mind. My suspense novels tend to be gritty, with realistic details, and a lot of psychological drama. What they don’t have is a lot of sex. In fact, unless sex between the characters is critical to the plot’s development it isn’t there. I won’t apologize for that. I don’t believe in jumping into bed at the drop of a hat. Society’s views on that may have changed, but once a prude, always a prude. That may be costing me readers who wants sex rather than plot, but as I said, unless it’s needed, it isn’t there.

When I taught English, I worked with several great classics. Some had the omniscient point of view, where you could see inside the heads of multiple characters, but that has fallen out of favor.

Usually I have the standard two-points of view–the hero and the heroine. In Fire Angel, I gave the villain his own point of view as well. It seemed the only way to truly make the story pop.

There didn’t seem to be an effective manner in which explain the killer’s motivation otherwise. It was also a way to allow the readers to feel his almost orgasmic relationship with fire and his need for revenge. Having that information given though the main characters made it far too easy to identify the killer early on in the story. The other option was a confession, a type of verbal storm at the end of the book, that I find imminently unsatisfying in books I read.

In Same Time Next Year, I have two stories folded together, that of an older woman returning to where she was happiest if only for a few weeks, and that of a girl experiencing her first love affair. The book is written as scenes from the present (written in the third person) mixed with her memoirs of the past (written in the first person). The scenes from 1967 touch on a lot of sensitive topics through the lens of time. Few people today realize how women were perceived then, not as equals in any way, but essentially property belonging to either their fathers or husbands. I also touched on the events of the times such as the Vietnam War and how society viewed interfaith relationships, alcohol abuse, gambling, homosexuality, and teen pregnancy. I used the music of the time to set the scene, referring to various songs to set the mood.

My third venture outside the box would be my Christmas stories, Holiday Magic and The Perfect Choice. The two books cover the same time period, the essential difference being the point of view. The heroines are fraternal twins who have always been there for one another. Georgia, in Holiday Magic, has been dealing with a broken heart. Eleni, in The Perfect Choice is searching for the man of her dreams. The stories collide when Eleni asks Georgia to do her a favor. So what you get is a similar story with identical scenes, but each book telling the story from its heroine’s point of view.

Last year, with the pandemic, I started something new to me, books written entirely in the first person. Not only were they written that way, but instead of my usual suspense novels, there are romantic comedies, what’s often referred to as Chick-lit. The first three books in the series I’ve named Cocktails for You, are essentially set pre-pandemic, the fourth book is written in the here and now with the restrictions in place in Canada back in March 2021. The stories, Tequila Sunrise, Champagne Cocktail, Buck’s Fizz, and The Tipsy Pig are all named after cocktails. When I first started writing them, I hadn’t thought of a suitable series name, but then I read an article about how alcohol sales had jumped since the onset of the pandemic. If people were going to drink anyway, why not try something new?

And so far, that is as big a risk as I’ve taken. What about you? Do you take risks in what you read or write?

To read other opinions on this topic, follow the link! https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html