Stonington CT

16 July 2015: A Mother Shouldn’t Have Favorites

Just like a mother shouldn’t have favorites, I sometimes feel as an author, I shouldn’t think of one of my characters as a favorite. After all, my characters are my children. I gave birth to them.

I shouldn’t … but I do …

When I say favorite, what I’m really talking about is my favorite to write for. When asked which is my favorite of my novels, I always answer The Blood That Binds (The Purity of Blood Volume III) It’s my favorite for a few reasons, but one is that it has my favorite characters to write for. Now you’d think my favs would include the Big Three (Sara, Daniel and Ben) but actually it doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I love all my children, but some are just more fun to write.

As I’ve said a few times, when I write, I feel as if I’m really just taking dictation. I can literally hear the voices of my characters chattering away in my head as I type. My favorite voices belong to Roger, Lauri and Mason. Roger is Sara’s(my protagonist) brother. He’s a very marginal character until book three when Sara goes to spend the summer living with him and his wife Lauri. Highly intelligent, Roger is a bumbling professor sort, whose clothing always needs ironing. But there’s a lot more to Roger than meets the eye. Like Sara, he’s a man with a past. Lauri, his floral dress and single strand of pearls wearing wife, is a housewife pulled straight out of the 1950’s. Her exterior is pure June Cleaver with a sexy twist. She’s a mother to two small children, a loving and supportive wife. But put these two love birds together and they’re a 1920’s his/hers comedy act full of one liners that zing back and forth like crazy. Lauri is continually frustrated at how her husband gives no thought to walking around town looking like a frumpy professor, but despite that is madly in love with him and wouldn’t have him any other way. Roger’s new job as curator of the Lighthouse Museum in Stonington, CT is a dream job and as much as he loves his wife and kids, he could spend all day at work. Together, Lauri and Roger are a joy to write for. Here’s a sample of some of their antics:

I found her in our bedroom in front of a pile of dresses on the bed. Hands on her hips, she stared down at them in nothing but her lacy pink bra and matching panties.

“I can’t decide what to wear,” she lamented with a hint of frustration in her voice.

Walking past her into the closet to change, I said “I think what you have on now is just fine.”

She slapped me on the backside as I passed her by.

“Smart-aleck. Now I know where your son gets it from.”

I started rummaging through my clothes to find something suitable to wear, and after picking something out, walked back in the bedroom.

As she picked up a dress off the bed, Lauri turned and looked at me.

“No. You’re not wearing that in public.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, taking a second look at the decision I was holding in my hands.

With pursed lips, all she could do is shake her head at me like she did with the kids when she was at a loss for words.

“There.”

She pointed to a pair of pants and a shirt hanging on the back of the bathroom door. “And please try not to get too wrinkly before we arrive at the picnic. I just ironed them.”

Knowing there was no point in doing anything other than what she said, I headed for the bathroom.

And then there’s good old Mason …

Ahh, Mason. He’s Roger’s new boss, and another one of my favorites. SPOILER ALERT!!!! Mason’s the bad guy of Book three. Up until book three, all my bad guys had been vampires, but Mason is a lowly human. A lowly, sexy, devil-may-care, evil to the core, lecherous, rich, philanthropic, vampire killing, caring, conniving man. He’s Roger’s boss, but he’s chasing after Roger’s little sister … Sara, and with dishonorable intentions and honorable motivations. He’s a riddle. He’s a man you love to hate. I believe a truly good villain must have a duality about him. You have to hate him, but at the same time sympathize with him. After all, that’s life. There are no thoroughly evil people in this world. We all have darkness and light in us. Who we are is a result of the ration of light to dark. Sara is our heroine, but eve she has great darkness that hides in her light. She’s far from perfect. In truth, Mason is a shadowy reflection of her. He has great light that hides in his darkness. Because of this, he’s a lot of fun to write for. He wants Sara because of her light, be he’s equally attracted to her darkness because in her he sees a kindred spirit. For Sara, in Mason she finds a man who perhaps might be the only man who could accept her darker side, a man who would embrace her whole. But she also knows he’s not a good person. Yet that desire to be accepted is very strong in us as humans. It can over right our better judgment, blur our sense of right and wrong, goodness and evil.

Here’s an excerpt from a chapter Mason is given the narration of:

Walking out on the back door, I stood on the edge of the patio and gazed down on my sailboat tied up at the dock below. Sara was my only concern. It was her safety and the puzzling mystery of how a vampire had managed to break through our lines only to end up in her bedroom that had plagued my thoughts all day. I couldn’t get the image of her ripe young body lying peacefully on her bed as she slept. Suddenly the curtains parted. As they shifted, the vampire silently crawled in her window and crept over to stare down at her perfect breasts as they rose and fell with her every breath. Perhaps he’d run his hand up her shapely legs, all the way from her ankle to her hip before he sunk his teeth into her elegant alabaster neck. I shuddered at the waste, at the death of such a creature as Sara. So much potential, so close to being snuffed out. We had to catch this vamp and kill it quickly. Besides the safety concerns for the Donnellys, it was bad for morale and that was almost as important to my overall plans at this critical juncture as Sara and Roger were.

I remembered how I’d felt when Sara had thrown me to the floor like a school boy that morning in the lighthouse, how I’d stared up that sexy leg into her big brown eyes while her shoe pressed down on my jugular. For an instant I’d seen something there. It was dark, very dark, and I had to admit I’d been incredibly turned on by it. I’d fantasized more than a few times about what could have happened if Roger hadn’t walked in. How I’d have loved to have bent her over the table and shown her what it was like to be a real woman. She’d have liked that, I could tell. She’d beg for more like they all did. Yes, I thought to myself, I was looking forward to this. Swirling the last of the scotch around in my glass, I smiled. Yes, this was going to be a pleasure.

Well, I hope you enjoyed a little of my favs.

-Jennifer

Jennifer Geoghan, Author of If Love is a lie: Finding and Losing Love Online and The Purity of Blood Novels.

5 Jan 2015: Describing your characters without describing your characters

It’s all about subtlety.

Let’s take Roger for instance. Roger is the brother of the main character of my novels. He’s only in a scene or two in the first two books in the series, but in book three, he’s a main character. There’s a couple of ways that I like to use subtle devices to give you a deeper picture of a character without coming out and having it said in dialog.

One is using the expressions. Roger is obsessed with maritime history. He lives in a seaside community and works in a lighthouse. Because of this, I like to have him use subtle maritime references in his daily talk. If he’s leaving somewhere and heading home, he’ll say something like “I think I’ll weigh anchor and shove off,” or “I think it’s time to set a course for home.” He’s a man who loves the sea, not only its history, but to be out on it as well. It’s only natural some of this terminology would invade his normal way of speaking, but it also adds dimension to his everyday language.

I do this not only in how they speak, but also in other subtle ways as well. The father of Sara (my main character) is a lawyer. Here’s a snippet from my fifth novel (Ooo, this one hasn’t been published yet, sneak peek alert!!!!) where he’s described by another character. “I dropped down into the empty seat across from him and watched as his expression darkened ever so slightly. He may have let me marry his daughter, but the jury was clearly still out on my final verdict.” Here I used legal terms to describe the father’s look. Again, it’s very subtle, but at the same time it gives you another dimension to the character.

I also use my characters surroundings, possessions, and physical descriptions to describe them. Take Daniel and Ben for example. Daniel and Ben are complete opposites, yet both in love with Sara. Yep, gotta have a lone triangle. What fun would it be without one? Daniel is a vampire, Ben is human (more or less). With Daniel, I describe his eyes as sky blue. To me, the sky is ethereal, part of this world, yet not part of it. It’s a little unobtainable. For Ben, I describe his eyes as chocolate brown. To be, chocolate is desire, its physical craving, it melts with heat. Ben is definitely a physical attraction for Sara, she really desires him. She love Daniel, but she also sees him as someone she may never be able to hold onto with an everlasting grasp.

I also describe these two men with their cars. Daniel drives a Ferrari Italia 451. It’s black, sleek, clean, crisp, the perfect speed machine and unobtainable my most budgets. Ben drives an old Ford Mustang convertible. It’s red with slightly chipped and faded paint, well-worn, but warm in inviting. Both these cars are also subtly describing the men who drive them.

Now back to Roger. Roger’s sanctuary in the middle of his chaos is his study. It’s a small room off the living room of their house in the seaside community of Stonington, CT. It has odd angles as it’s partially under the stairs leading up the second floor. I also describe it as having only one window, a round window over his desk. This is a subtle reference to a porthole.

The Blood that Binds, by Jennifer Geoghan: “A minute later I found Roger in his study, sitting at his desk with a book in his lap he’d obviously not been reading. I walked over to the far side of the small room and leaned against the wall of wooden bookshelves. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the room looked exactly like a ship captain’s quarters on an old sailing ship. It seemed very appropriate for Roger. On the wall above his desk hung a needlepoint sampler with No Man is Free Who is Not Master of Himself embroidered on it. Again, somehow it seemed appropriate. Putting the book down on his desk, he swiveled in his chair to face me.”

I’ve used this quote not long ago when telling of my fortune cookie inserts, but now I’m using to show you how I described Roger’s study as like a room on an old sailing ship. All subtle ways of describing the man through the room he feels most comfortable in.

-Jennifer

12 Oct 2014 … Walking the streets of Forks

I’m finally back home after my two-week road trip up North. Outside of visiting family and friends, I visited a lot of the places I wrote about in my books. I think it was on Facebook that I made the comment that as I was walking up and down the main drag in New Paltz, NY, I felt like Stephanie Meyer walking the streets of Forks. (Twilight author/town it takes place in)

It’s an odd feeling, one very difficult to describe. Halfway between fantasy and reality as you walk past places where events in your books take place. No, in reality they never really happened, but in my mind I’ve pictured those events dozens upon dozens of times so they’ve taken on a reality all their own … in my mind at least.

It wasn’t only in New Paltz that this happened, but up at the Mohonk Mountain House and most assuredly in Stonington, CT. I was completely overwhelmed with deja vu when I walked into the Lighthouse Museum. I hadn’t been back to Stonington since before I started to write book 3 (the one that mostly takes place there)

It also happened when I was in the Hopkinton Town Clerks office doing genealogy research and was looking through land transactions of Randall Wells and wife Lois Maxson, actual characters in my novels! Talk about the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy!

Anyway, I had a wonderful trip and did some good research for the fifth novel. I got some good details to really tighten it up to a place I’ll be happy with.

I’ll leave you with a few pictures from my vacation.

SUNY New Paltz … AKA New Paltz University

Lecture Hall at SUNY New Paltz

View of Mt Mohonk from the top of the Faculty Tower of SUNY New Paltz

Me in front of Capen Hall

New Paltz in the rain.

Stonington CT: The Old Lighthouse Museum

Stonington CT: The Old Lighthouse Museum … view from the Top

Stonington CT: Omega Street

Stonington CT: The Old Lighthouse Museum

1 Jun 2014: The Old Lighthouse Museum, Stonington, CT

So now that book three (The Blood That Binds) has been out for a while, I thought I’d start to post some photos related to its contents. Today I’m sharing some pictures I took inside the Old Lighthouse Museum in Stonington, CT. As my read…ers will know, a lot of the action in Book 3 centers in and around this small museum located in the lovely lighthouse I fell in love with at first sight. The blue door you see is actually the doorway that leads into the backroom where “Roger’s office” is located in my books. All of the other photos are of the ground floor main room of the museum. You should definitely check it out if you’re in the area someday.

The Old Lighthouse Museum, Stonington, CT

Anatomy of an E-Book Cover

As an Independent Author who’s on a budget and has a talent for graphic design, I decided to create my own cover art. It was daunting at first. I had to figure out what the technical requirements were, but once I figured all that out, it was pretty easy to do with my photo editing program. Since I still had so many of my test images saved on my computer, I thought I’d share with you how the cover for my third novel came to be.

Of course the first question is … what do you put on the cover besides the title and your name? Well, I like to choose an image, a single thing that sets the tone or represents the spirit of the book. For book one in my series, I had a DNA strand and a rampant lion. Since the books center on how special my main characters Blood/DNA is, I thought the DNA strand was a no brainer. The Lion comes from the Wells family crest. It’s my mother’s family crest and as I have real ancestors of mine in the Wells family as charters, it seemed a good fit. Plus lions represent courage and I thought that was my main character, Sara, in spades. Book two has the just extinguished white candle leaking blood. This actually represents two things, only one of which is apparent in Book 2. Sorry, but you’re just going to have to read book 4 to find out what that other thing is. In Book 2, it represents Daniel’s loss of innocence. So that brings us to book 3. Well, unlike the first to books which take place mainly in New Paltz, NY, book 3 mainly takes place in Stonington, CT. The Old Lighthouse Museum is the hub of all the action, but as you can see if I just said a lighthouse, you’d probably be thinking a big tall tower and small house beside it. Yes, I describe the lighthouse in the book, but because it’s so distinctive, I wanted to feature it on the cover. Fortunately for me, the good folks at the real museum didn’t mind my using the photo I took when I was up there doing research.

So, I started with my original photo. Yes, it wasn’t the ideal photo to work with, but at the time I had no idea I was shooting a cover photo. I was just shooting shots about town to reference when writing. I hadn’t written the book yet so how was I supposed to know? Alas hindsight is 50/50. So I started with my photo, but I wanted something much more graphic and less photorealism. I needed it to match the two covers that came before as I wanted them to seem cohesive. So using my photo editing software, I converted the image to a sketch look.

The Blood That Binds: The Purity of Blood Vol III

Because the first two covers were in a Black, Red and White color scheme on a black background, I added the black and sucked out as much red as I could. It looked good, but still too photographic. I wanted more of a stark contrast. I also sucked out the window panes on the front door and tried to minimize some of the details to just pull out the basic bones of the image.

The Blood That Binds: The Purity of Blood Vol III

After I added the text (Same font as other books for cohesiveness) I extended over the grass at the bottom of the cover and added a hint of the bushes to the black spot to the left of the front door. Was a big black hole that was screaming at me to be filled. I liked what I had but it still needed something to punch it up. I was thinking a moon or clouds, but the moon didn’t sit right with me. First of all, it was too hard to get the subtleties of the light and dark patches of the moon and retain the stark graphic look I was going for. Plus although good in theory, when I looked at it, it just screamed werewolf to me. Sorry, no werewolves in my books, so the moon had to go. Clouds were really hard to manipulate as well and still keep the stark look I was aiming for.

The Blood That Binds: The Purity of Blood Vol III

And then came the birds. I had several nights wrangling to find a bird that worked. Attempt one didn’t quite live up to expectations. I liked it but needed to get all of the white out of him and it just wasn’t working. Bird two stuck and became the final cover. In the end, I like the idea of the bird. It’s sort of Sara. She’s there but she can’t be caged or confined by life or the circumstances she’s presented with. She’s a survivor and in the end will always find a way to fly free. Very poetic, I know, but true none the less.

The Blood That Binds: The Purity of Blood Vol III

So I’d love to hear you comments on my cover art. If you have any comments good or constructive, I’d live to get some feed back for when I do the cover for book four in the next month or so.

-Jennifer