Did you ever stop to think about the way ideas are pitched to movie producers or book publishers? There is something called the “high concept” that is widely used and accepted. Basically, it’s the culling down of a storyline into a sentence of about 25 words or less. It’s supposed to grab the producer or editor’s attention and make them say, “Wow – I haven’t seen that done before!”

I’ll give you a few examples. The movie Gladiator: Roman general is made a gladiator-slave and strives to kill the emperor as revenge for killing his family. Harry Potter: Boy wizard attends a school for child witches/wizards and learns he might be the single defense against the most evil wizard in the world. While You Were Sleeping: Woman dramatically saves man’s life and circumstances lead his family to believe she is his fiance, but she falls in love with his brother.

There could be other, even more hook-y one-liners to describe these films, and any author or screenwriter could take these high concepts and turn them into their own story. The way these particular ones were executed, though, worked just great!

What about books? The high-concept line for my last two books, A Warrior’s Taking and the sequel Temptation of the Warrior (out in April, 2008) is: To save their clan, two warrior-sorcerers must travel in time and space to search for a powerful talisman in 19th century England, but each one falls in love with a woman, and neither can take her home with him. (Oops – too long. I’ll have to work on that!) Then each book has its own one-liner, more specific to the book.

Can you come up with a few high-concept lines for your favorite movies or books? Try some Jane Austen. It’s fun.

Hey, everyone! At the kind invitation of the Jaunty Quills, I’ll be blogging here once or twice a month … sometimes I’ll talk writing, but probably more often than not I’ll simply share the chaotic ramblings of my neurotic mind. So here I go …

One of my many goals is to get in shape. I know, not too original, but it’s something I seriously need to do. After the birth of my son in September, I feel like such an out-of-shape slug. My primary focus is to get healthy – course I wouldn’t mind looking better, too. Honestly, some days my body just feels too old and tired for a thirty-something-year-old woman. So …enough is enough.

Well, there’s nothing like a little stomach flu to kick start one’s diet plans. For almost a week, I couldn’t even look at food without feeling queasy. Appetite back again, I’m eating right and determined to keep it up. I’ve even started back at the gym … and posting here is declaring to the world that I’m serious about getting healthy. You heard it here, folks. Sophie’s getting in shape.

Even DH, who is fit as far as I’m concerned, is getting on the band wagon with me. Of course, he really doesn’t need to lose weight – I know, sickening, right? He just wants to get “mean” and “ripped”. I’m trying to be supportive of his goal, but part of me is thinking, “Puh-lease!!” You’re at your goal weight already. Do you really need to look like Brad Pitt? Because I just want to reach goal weight! No one said anything about bouncing a nickel off my bottom! It reminds me of those commercials with the cartoon husband and wife who do the same thing to drop weight and the husband keeps losing weight while the wife doesn’t. Preaching to the choir, girl!

Which leads me to yesterday…

DH joined a boot camp. You know, one of those four week fitness courses that meet three times a week. Like I said, DH is in pretty good shape. He already works out several times a week, but just in case, he joined a beginners’ level boot camp. I was thinking a course like this might be good for me, too. Beginner to me implies that it wouldn’t be too strenuous. You know what I mean … some cardio but nothing to make me cry or puke my guts up. So I thought I might like to do this course next. Hey, I watch Biggest Loser and XWeighted (both great shows!) – they’ve inspired me into thinking I can handle at least a little pain.

WRONG.

When I came home yesterday it was to find the man I married sprawled face down on the living room rug, all the lights in the house turned off. The dogs were circling him and I thought he was dead. After a few moans and whimpers from his inert, 6 feet 1″, 190lbs form, I gathered he was not. Apparently, he came close though. So now I’m thinking “no” on the alleged beginners’ boot camp. I’ll continue to work out on my own and wish DH the best in claiming his Brad Pitt physique. Hey, I can enjoy that, too, after all.

What about any of you? I know Shana keeps in pretty good shape. Any of the rest of you vowing to get healthier in ’08?

The winner of the signed ARC of Be Still My Vampire Heart is Cheryl! Cheryl, email Kerrelyn at kerrelyn@earthlink.net and give her your address.

Congrats!

Scroll down to read Shana’s blog.

The other day Ultimate Sportsfan asked me what I was going to give up for Lent. I hadn’t really thought much about it yet, but I figured that with today being ash Wednesday, some of you might be in the same boat I am.

What to give up?

It would be easy for me to give up something like meat or smoking or swearing. It would be super hard to give up chocolate or sugar or surfing the Internet. Isn’t there a middle ground?

While eating some chocolate chip cookies (i.e. chocolate and sugar, see above) I started looking around on the Internet (i.e. surfing the internet, see above) to find out what other people were giving up. One idea I liked was the idea of taking something on. Instead of giving something up, you add something good to your life–like volunteering at a soup kitchen or an animal shelter.

USF suggested I give up whining and complaining, so I told him he should give up telling me what to give up!

In the end, I think I might give up criticizing other people. I can be really critical, especially when someone else gets me started. I think it might be useful to keep my mouth shut and say nothing if I have nothing nice to say for 40 days.

So what are you giving up? Or maybe you’ve given up giving things up?

I love watching book trailers, so it was an easy decision to have one made for my latest release, The Undead Next Door. I soon discovered, though, that there was nothing easy about writing the script. The Circle of Seven team assigned me an excellent script writer, but we still struggled for several weeks to produce the perfect script.

Here’s the problem. I wrote a book with the length of 450 manuscript pages, and in those pages, I tried my best to include a hot romance, well-rounded characters, and an exciting plot with enough twists and turns to keep the reader glued to the pages. Now we had to capture the essence of the book in THIRTY WORDS!!

Here’s my first attempt:
He can dress a woman with as much skill as he undresses her,
But Fame could reveal his deadly Secret.
He flees the Fashion World to hide in Texas
Where an unexpected woman ignites a Desire kept restrained for centuries.
When his old enemy returns, promising to kill her,
She could lose her life as well as her heart.
Romance can prove deadly with The Undead Next Door.

It roughly explains the premise and plot, while mentioning the hero, heroine, and villain, but it’s sixty-eight words long! That’s when I realized there was no way to describe the plot in the allotted time of one minute. The people watching the video would have to read so fast that by the time the trailer ended, they would feel completely frazzled. And that would not encourage them to buy the book. So we gave up on telling much of the plot. Instead, we went for the romance angle with pictures of the hero and heroine. (Isn’t he gorgeous?)

And we tried to capture the tone of the book—a mixture of humor and suspense.

I love the way it turned out! But I’m left wondering if the trailer can do its job and convince people to buy the book. Writers are always trying to figure out the most effective way to spend our bucks on promotion, so I would love to know what readers think. Does the trailer pique your interest in The Undead Next Door? Comment below and you could win a signed ARC of Be Still My Vampire Heart. The winner will be chosen at random tomorrow.

Thank you, Jaunty, for inviting me! Happy reading, everybody!
Kerrelyn

Last night The Professor and I disagreed on who should win the Superbowl. Now I really didn’t care one way or the other, but if pressured for who I was rooting for, I picked the Giants, whereas The Professor yelled at the TV for hours for the Patriots. Neither of us have any ties to either of the teams and I understand pulling for a team to pull off the ultimate season of perfection. I get that. Who doesn’t want to be superior in what they do? But to me, it was all about the underdogs. No one expected the Giants to win therefore I wanted to see the unexpected, I wanted them to pull off an incomparable upset. They totally pulled it off, which was really cool and poor Professor was bummed. But it got me thinking about why it is that I always end up cheering for the underdog.

So what is it about the underdog that pulls us in? I write a lot of underdogs, especially my heroines. They tend to be women who aren’t necessarily the most beautiful in the room, nor the most graceful, nor the most polished, but they have an undeniable charm that draws the hero in like that proverbial moth to the flame. I like to have the hero, in a way, discover, the heroine – be the first to see her beauty, the first to uncover the passion she waits to have unleashed. It’s that discovery that pulls me in every time. Whether as a reader or a writer.

I’m not sure what the draw really is, but what I *think* it is is that the underdog represents the everyman. Something about the underdog resonates with most of us. We’ve all felt, at one point or another, that we were not quite up to the task at hand, not qualified, not good enough. Whether it be that you don’t feel like you’re smart enough or pretty enough or talented enough, that feeling is authentic to all of us. This is the key to the underdog. We look at these characters and we think, “yeah, I’ve been there, I know what that’s like” and it endears them to us. We cheer for them to win, to find their love and to reach their happy ending. Because in a way when they succeed, we succeed.

So how about you? Do you like to root for the underdog? Do you like those unconventional characters that seem the most unlikely to get the guy or girl?

Congrats to Serenissima, who is the winner of a signed copy of the gorgeous Australian edition of Anna Campbell’s Untouched.

Serenissima, email Anna at anna@annacampbell.info with your address, so she can send you the book. Or you can have her send it to me…

Jaunty P. Quills
The Forest
Jaunty, Quilland
USA

Oh, and scroll down to read Robyn’s blog on Going to the Dark Side. I’m scared!!!!!

First and foremost let me tell y’all why you’re stuck with me today instead of Cindy – it seems she broke a hand yesterday and is temporarily typing-impaired. So please send her good thoughts for quick healing.

Ever been taken with something and you become a little obsessed? It happens to me periodically. I get a bee in my bonnet, as my mother would say. A couple of weeks ago I was minding my own business when I get an email on one of my writer’s loops and all of a sudden my world – or at least part of it – has been turned upside down. I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, but when I got this email, the TV commercials hadn’t yet aired. So when someone sent the link to the new Macbook Air ad, I was intrigued. Well, I have to admit that I have a bit of a crush. I mean look at it.

You should know that I’m a PC user. I have nothing really against MACs, they’ve just never been my preference. I am bothered by the fact that their application “windows” don’t dock the way that PC windows do and the fact that because of this if you don’t have the application selected, the menu doesn’t correlate. It’s an aesthetic thing and I can get passed it. I worked on one for over a year with one of my day jobs. And The Professor has one. My critique partner uses them as well. They’ve been trying to pull me over to their side for years and I have remained, solid, in my PC world.

Then 2 years ago I bought this new toy – a 30 gig video iPOD and OHMYGOSH it was just about the coolest thing I’d ever owned. I was a big walkman (remember those?) users when I was growing up so the thought of being able to have all of my CDs at my fingertips, well, that’s just awesome. I still love that little thing and there are features I can’t really use because, well, because I use a PC. Needless to say I was already softening towards Apple products so when I saw the ad for the Air, frankly I was just blown away.

Because of my obsessive nature before I buy anything of substantial price, I investigate it thoroughly. I read reviews, I balance the pros and cons – I like to make informed decisions. So for the last few weeks I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about the Air, about PC users switching to MACs, I’ve even resorted to watching videos on YouTube of people unpacking their Airs and showing them off. See, I’ve got it bad. It’s almost embarrassing, but I’m so excited about this new product I can hardly stand it.

I’m not rushing out to buy one, they’re not even in stock at my local store yet. I’ve called. Twice. But they do have a demo which I plan to fiddle with before making a final decision. So it will be a little while before I bring a new toy home, but in the meantime I’m able to get my fix by perusing the internet and reading about others’ experience with it. Does that make me some sort of sick electronics voyeur?

I never thought I’d become a MAC user, but it appears I’ve finally decided to make the big switch. What’s next, Star Trek?

Hello! It’s me, Jaunty P. Quills, Porcupine Extraordinaire. Have you missed me? You have, haven’t you?

I’ve missed you, too, but I have not been idle in my absence. I’ve been out interviewing my little quills off! And my first interview of the year is with Anna Campbell!

Anna Campbell is a favorite of the ladies of the Jaunty Quills, not only because of her fabulous writing but because she’s just so much fun to be around. No one would believe this witty, vivacious (Robyn helped with the vocabulary) woman could write such dark, sexy books.

Jaunty: Welcome, Anna! Thanks for joining us!

Anna: Jaunty, my hero! As you know, I base all my lead male characters on you, you charismatic, sexy, um…prickly… OK, wipe that! Anyway, JQ, you’re my guy and any time you don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day, you know who to call! Thank you to you and your handmaidens (who I hope wear thick leather gloves when they handle you) for inviting me here. I love this blog. It’s more fun than a bag full of porcupines!

Jaunty: No, thank you, Anna, for joining us and for finally telling the truth: I am the sexiest porcupine alive! And now, JQ readers, you heard it first. I have a hot date for Valentine’s Day. Ha! And Anne said I couldn’t get a date. Just because I’ve never had one…

Um, anyway, I noticed when we spoke that you have an accent. Are you from Texas?

Anna: Actually, I had to laugh. I’m from Queensland, Australia, and would you believe there’s a country town in this state called…TEXAS!!! So I could be from Texas, sorta.

Jaunty: Really? Maybe I can come and visit sometime. Do you have porcupines? More importantly, do you have “American Idol” (I’m trying out this year—maybe you saw my audition?)?

Anna: Oh, you’d make a wonderful American Idol. Me? I’d be American Idle! Yes, it’s the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer down here and I’m having extreme difficulty ignoring the sun outside and trying to work. We do have “American Idol.” And we have a local version too. I’m sending you a picture of your cousin from over here, the echidna or spiny ant eater. Although I’m sure you eat much more delicious stuff than ants, JQ! Well, at least I hope so if we’re heading out for a nosh-up on Valentine’s!

Jaunty: Ants? Yuck! I prefer tree bark and pine nuts. Anna, your bio says you’ve had lots of jobs over the years. What was the worst and where does “author” rank?

Anna: Oh, JQ, of course author ranks at the top! Being able to set my own schedule and run my own show and go to work in my pajamas is a great way to pass the working day! The worst job? Probably the week I spent working as a housekeeper with a swooning employer (she didn’t get out of bed the whole time I was there. Why? Who knows?) and the incontinent dog. I was outta there!

Jaunty: Dogs! Scary! I read that you won on a quiz show. What was the winning question? Do you have any tips for those of us who aspire to be Alex Trebek?

Anna: Actually, JQ, the winning question was about a tree-climbing fox. Perhaps a friend of yours! And I LOVE Alex Trebek. I think he’s brilliant at his job. He’s smart but not smarmy and he asks those questions so well!

Jaunty: Huh? What? I’m still shaking (in a sexy, manly way, of course) at the mention of a tree-climbing fox.

Let’s talk a bit about your awesome debut novel Claiming the Courtesan . Sylvester the Squirrel who lives next door told me that it selected as both best debut and book of the year by Michelle Buonfiglio at Lifetime TV’s Romance: B(u)y the Book. Congratulations!

Anna: Thanks. Yeah, I’m still in shock over that one! Good shock! And Jaunty, you’re far too young to be reading my books!

Jaunty: If I had an award—and really I should, shouldn’t I?—your novel would have won sexiest book of the year. Is that how you want readers to think of you? What do you believe are your strengths as a writer?

Anna: Hey, JQ, you HAVE been reading my books, you naughty boy! Thank you for that award! Actually, my books make me think of that old joke about how do porcupines make love? Answer: VERY carefully. Sex is usually a pretty risky, dangerous act for my characters. And it leads to major shifts in their lives. It’s interesting you say the books are sexy. They’re not terrifically adventurous compared to a lot of stuff out there. But I work really hard to invest deep, complex emotion into the love scenes. Call me old-fashioned, but it’s the emotion between the characters that makes a sex scene sexy to me, not the permutations in position! Goodness, I’m not sure what my strengths are as a writer! Writers never know that! Ask your handmaidens! Maybe I tend to think a little bit outside the box with situations and characters. The emotional landscape is usually complex, dark and sensual. I have a fairly lush prose style which may or may not appeal – let’s put it this way, I never met an adjective I didn’t like!

Jaunty: And you definitely have a way with heroes. Neither Kylemore in Claiming the Courtesan or Sheene in Untouched are traditional heroes. How do you make men like that so appealing to readers?

Continued below…

How do you make your heroes so appealing to readers?

Anna: Hey, thanks, JQ! You know, at this rate, I’ll be paying for our Valentine’s date! I found Kylemore really compelling, his passion, his pain, his ability to rise out of the mire to become the man he should be. Sheene, as you know, is a completely different sort of man although equally focused on the heroine (one of the essential heroic traits!). I was worried that people would consider him weak because he’s trapped for most of the story and is definitely a victim of his history and his uncle’s evil. But to me, he was always so strong. He kept his humor and his humanity and his integrity through everything that happened to him and that to me was the essence of strength. Fortunately, the readers seem to agree with me! But I was always conscious that if the story was to work, he had to emerge as a genuine hero, if not a conventional one.

Jaunty: Your heroines have to be strong to stand up to those dark, sexy men. Does the hero or the heroine come first for you?

Anna: I’m not quite sure why, but the hero is always the heart of my story. He almost always writes more easily. His issues are always much clearer to me from the beginning. I have to work harder on the heroines but you’re right – I really like strong women. And both Grace and Verity have had to be strong to survive what they’ve been through. Not to mention what they go through in the actual story!

Jaunty: Claiming the Courtesan was a somewhat controversial book. Do you think the controversy was deserved?

Anna: Ah, the hoo-ha. I’m probably the wrong person to ask if it was deserved. You know, vested interest and all that. Clearly a lot of people took issue with the book, principally because of the forced seductions. I felt at the time and still feel that Kylemore and Verity in that situation couldn’t have acted any differently if they were to remain true to their characters. And it was a genuine controversy – the book had at least as many enthusiastic supporters as it had detractors which is what gave the whole hoo-ha legs.

Jaunty: You have your own blog with about 19 other writers. Tell us about The Romance Bandits.

Anna: JQ, my fellow Banditas are ALMOST as cool as you are! We should organize an exchange. We have our own mascot, a Golden Rooster who goes to whoever posts first. In 2006, I finaled in the Golden Heart with some absolutely wonderful women. We created such good mojo together on our loop that we decided to take it public so 20 of us set up the Romance Bandits. Four of us were published when we got going a bit over a year ago. We’re now on 11 published authors which I think is pretty impressive!

Jaunty: A rooster. Hmm…I like it.

I see you have a great contest on your website. Am I eligible to win?

Anna: I don’t see why not! I think the ARC of The Dangerous Duke by Christine Wells (which I’ve read – fabuloso!) would be worth pulling out a quill and using it as a pen so you can write in. And there’s the gorgeous hardback version of Untouched too. All you have to do, JQ, is tell us which romance heroine you’d like to be. Clearly, you’d be a prickly chick like some of Jenny Crusie’s wonderful witty heroines! Just a suggestion!

Jaunty: What are you working on now? When can we expect the next Anna Campbell book?

Anna: I’m currently working on my fourth Regency noir, which I think will have a similar feeling to Untouched. Definitely another unusual hero but one I hope readers will take to their hearts. It’s a runaway heiress story – at last a virginal heroine My third historical romance for Avon is called Tempt the Devil. I’m billing it as my Regency noir Affair to Remember. The hero and heroine are older, cynical and sophisticated and love is definitely not a welcome arrival in their lives! At this stage, it’s going to come out either late in 2008 or very early in 2009. Jaunty, come and prod me with a quill so I write a bit faster.

Jaunty: Anna! I don’t prod in public!
Last question, and this is really important. What are my chances in the presidential election? Would you vote for me?

Anna: JQ, I would ABSOLUTELY vote for you! I’m guessing you’re running on a platform of margaritas for all and safe crossing zones across highways for porcupines! Worthy causes, both!

Jaunty: Thanks for blogging with us, Anna!

Anna: JQ, I’ve had a fabulous time finally meeting you. I was too shy to talk to someone of your extreme coolness before this! Wonderful questions! And thank you to your support staff

Jaunty: Anna will be around today answering questions, so ask away! One reader who comments will win a signed copy of the Australian edition of Untouched. This is a trade paperback and Margo says it’s absolutely gorgeous. Seriously pretty.

So what are you waiting for? Comment!