90s novellaWelcome to Day Three of the ’90s Playlist RNRHS party! If you’re just now getting in on the fun, this collection rocks six all-new novellas about sex, love, and being young in the ’90s, inspired by some of the most iconic songs from the decade. And it’s available for the kick-ass price of 99 cents! Do yourself a favor and pick up your copy now! Today’s post is from author Jennifer Blackwood, who’d love to lure you in with vivid imagery of high school tennis and Eminem.

Jennifer Blackwood, Class of ’05

Currently: Author/Teacher

Band and/or song that reminds you the most of high school: Eminem reminds me the most of high school. During tennis team practices, we used to blare his music (I imagine how silly we probably looked as we rapped Just Lose It while practicing volleys). Another song that was integral to every high school dance was Hot in Herre by Nelly. It was the ultimate grinding song, and I distinctly remember being at an after-football dance in tenth grade dancing with my girlfriends, trying to make my ex jealous with my sweet dance moves. I look back and cringe, but then again, half my high school existence was cringe-worthy.

Favorite piece of music memorabilia (poster, t-shirt, etc.) in high school: Hmm I had A LOT of music memorabilia from middle school (Nsync posters, marionettes, magazines, etc…) but not a whole lot from high school. I’d have to say my favorite was probably my Usher poster. He was shirtless and it was glorious.

Band that you hated that everyone else at school seemed to love: I absolutely hated Jimmy Eat World. COULD. NOT. STAND. THEM. And everyone else in high school adored them. Whenever someone blasted it in the car, I just wanted to bang my head against the window. For real.

Best show or concert you saw in high school: I saw Coldplay in concert my senior year and it was at the Gorge Amphitheater. I went with my two best friends and an Abercrombie model I met at choir camp—I shit you not. It was the first time I’d gone to a concert without my parents (because they were overprotective and thought I would get into trouble) and I totally got into lots of trouble after the concert.

Best high school make-out song: Anything by either R. Kelly or Usher!

Foolproof_1600Jennifer Blackwood is an English teacher and contemporary romance author. She lives in Oregon with her husband, son, and poorly behaved black lab puppy. When not chasing after her toddler, you can find her binging on episodes of Gilmore Girls and Supernatural, and locking herself in her office to write. You can find more about Jennifer, including her latest release, Foolproof, at jenniferblackwood.com.

Tune in tomorrow for another RNRHS ’90s Playlist installment, this time from author Lorelei Brown!

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90s novellaIt’s Day Two of our slate of RNRHS posts celebrating the release of ’90s Playlist, a Romance Rewind Anthology! If you weren’t here yesterday, this collection includes six all-new novellas about sex, love, and being young in the ’90s, inspired by some of the most iconic songs from the decade. Did I mention it’s available for the amazeballs price of 99 cents? Do yourself a favor and pick up your copy now! Today’s post was dictated to Audra North, a past contributor to RNRHS, by Jill Kramer, the hero in her story Worthwhile.

Jill Kramer, Hickory High School, Class of ’93

Currently: I’m a junior at Penn State, just starting a semester abroad in Leeds, England

Band and/or song that reminds you the most of high school: U2! I listened to their Achtung Baby album pretty much nonstop during my senior year. I hope I get to see them in concert someday. They’re not touring now which totally sucks.

Favorite piece of music memorabilia (poster, t-shirt, etc.) in high school: Does a Wayne’s World poster count? I loved that movie and I thought the poster was hilarious, so I bought one and stuck it on the back of my bedroom door. It’s still there, I think, unless my parents took it down. (They better have saved it if they did.)

Band that you hated that everyone else at school seemed to love: Ace of Base. I mean, yeah, the songs are catchy, but they’re also bad. Like, I could probably hum one right now from memory but I’d end up hating myself for it.

Best show or concert you saw in high school: My parents didn’t let me go to concerts, but one night there was a ska band playing in this coffee shop I used to go to with my bff and they were pretty good, so…yeah, I know. That was a sad answer.

Best high school make-out song: Not like I want to be too obvious, here, but definitely Depeche Mode’s I Feel You.

INTHE-FAST-LANE-cover-206x300Jill Kramer is the heroine in Audra North’s Worthwhile, from the Romance Rewind Anthology, ’90s Playlist. You can find out more about Audra and her books, including her latest, In The Fast Lane, at audranorth.com.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for author Jennifer Blackwood’s installment of RNRHS!

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90s novellaWelcome to an entire week (minus Monday, because Monday) of RNRHS posts celebrating the release of ’90s Playlist, a Romance Rewind Anthology! This collection includes six all-new novellas about sex, love, and being young in the ’90s, inspired by some of the most iconic songs from the decade. Even better, it’s available at the why-are-we-still-talking price of 99 cents. Do yourself a favor and pick up your copy now! Today’s post was dictated to Rebecca Grace Allen, a past contributor to RNRHS, by James Griffith, the hero in her story Smells Like Teen Spirit. Here we are now, James. Entertain us…

James Griffith, Somewhere in the bowels of Long Island, NY, Class of ’92

Currently: Senior at Pearce College. Generally known to waste time playing music. Occasionally goes to a class or twelve.

Band and/or song that reminds you the most of high school: Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Favorite piece of music memorabilia (poster, t-shirt, etc.) in high school: My Kermit the Frog poster. Kermit performed with Doctor Teeth and The Electric Mayhem. It counts.

Band that you hated that everyone else at school seemed to love: New Kids on the Block. Just kidding—I’m a Donnie fan.

Best show or concert you saw in high school: July 13, 1991. Pearl Jam at the Marquee Room in NYC. I broke my curfew and was grounded for the rest of the summer, but it was so worth it.

Best high school make-out song: I Touch Myself. Just kidding. It’s I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd. Chicks really dug the multi-colored outfits those guys wore. (If I’m being serious, it’s really Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. Damn song still gets to me.)

TheHierarchyOfNeedsCover-266x400James Griffith is the hero in Rebecca Grace Allen’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, from the Romance Rewind Anthology, ’90s Playlist. You can find out more about Rebecca and her books, including her latest, The Hierarchy of Needs, at rebeccagraceallen.com.

Check back tomorrow for a RNRHS installment from Jill Kramer, the heroine in Audra North’s Worthwhile!

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GET IT TOGETHER HOP GIVEAWAYAh, the irony. Here I am, writing my post for the awesome Get It Together! Blog Hop, which is all about how authors stay organized and productive, all while I’m on deadline. As in really on deadline. As in my book is due by midnight tonight and I’m still freaking writing. In any other line of work, this would give you full license to discount everything I’m about to say. But the thing is, writers are weird and a lot of us torture ourselves with procrastination. I hate waiting until the last minute. I’m almost never late, and I won’t be late with this book, but it’s going to be a photo-finish. And when you’re turning in a book on time, however close to late it is, I still think you get to live in the category of people who are organized.

So, without much further ado, since I have zero ado to spare, here are some bits and baubles about my writing life, things that keep me “organized”, and most importantly, the things that keep me inspired.

Ideas

I’m a writer who gets ideas in very tiny bits. Scraps, if you will. I collect my scraps, hundreds of them, and eventually, if I’m lucky, they might turn into a bigger idea, an idea that might actually turn into a book. I use notebooks for most of these scraps. (Here comes the only writing rule I absolutely subscribe to: you must keep a notebook next to the bed. I get 99.9% of my best ideas in the sixty seconds after I have turned off the light to go to sleep.) I had a difficult time later finding my scraps, mostly because I’m juggling multiple books and I’m not organized enough to have one notebook for each project. I discovered a solution! Post-It Tabs, which are heavy-duty, repositionable tabs you can write on and put in a notebook like this:71bnrLvT7UL._SL1500_

(I do not endorse the 3M Corporation officially, although they should feel free to send me a box of goodies any time they want.) If I have a chunk of pages in a notebook that are devoted to a particular book, I can at least mark where they are, label them, and get to them quickly and easily.

I also use Pinterest for ideas, especially when I’ve arrived at that “this could almost be a book” stage. I construct private boards, chock full of inspiration for my characters, where they live, what kind of car they drive, what they like to eat, quotes that might describe some aspect of their personality. I refer to that when I get lost. The visuals help. As much as I like words, I really, really like pictures..

Plotting

I am the most disorganized plotter ever. I do it differently every time. I felt badly about not having a go-to, guaranteed-to-kick-butt system, until I read an article saying that if you hope to write a truly breakout novel some day, you should avoid using the same methods every time you write a book. Each book should be its own learning experience. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I do most plotting in Scrivener–each “tent pole”, or major plot event,  gets its own document (or more than one if its a big event). Scrivener allows me to rearrange the sequence easily and that helps me visualize the whole story. Otherwise, I get lost. Seeing a suggestion of everything really helps. I use those tent poles to construct the synopsis, aka the thing I send to my editor, from which I am absolutely guaranteed to stray. I fill in the gaps in the synopsis, especially the feels, and then I take those tidbits, go back into each tent pole’s document and fill in the info–actual events like, “she tells him the baby isn’t his” go in the “synopsis” part in the upper right. Notes like, “remember he hates key lime pie” go in the “document notes”, bottom right. I will regularly add to those document notes as I’m writing.

Of course, this makes it sound far more linear than it usually is. In actuality, me plotting a book more closely resembles someone throwing a bag of confetti in the air and me running around catching it piece by piece, color coding as I go. It’s painful to watch. I feel sorry for my husband.

RitualsSimone_de_Beauvoir_text_only_for_photo

My dad bought me this awesome book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Currey, which tells how interesting and creative people have used rituals or routines to stay productive. It’s a fascinating read if you’re inclined to pick it up–did you know that Benjamin Franklin took air baths? Or that Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, using the top of the refrigerator as his desk? Refrigerators were much shorter years ago. Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on tablets that were a mix of amphetamine and aspirin, ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day. I generally resort to ice cream straight out of the carton.

My ritual is to write every morning at 5:30. If I’m on deadline, I might get up earlier than that. On the weekend, I sleep until 6:30 on Saturday and 7:30 on Sunday. It is during those wee hours, when I know there’s literally zero chance of my husband or kids waking up, that I get the most writing done. I need solitude and quiet to let go–the crack of dawn gives me what I need. I set my alarm, and I’m prohibited from hitting the snooze by our cat, Ella, who sits outside our door and waits for the buzz of the alarm. Then she meows her little head off. I’m pretty much right out of bed. (Ella doesn’t get to sleep with us because she has a nasty habit of murdering the books on my bedside table at 2 am.) I stumble downstairs and put on a full pot of coffee–full pot! Then my behind is on the couch, Ella wedges herself between my hip and arm and I write. Or try to write. After I check my email. And my Amazon numbers. And my horoscope.

The important thing to note is that you need to recognize what kind of person you are. When are you most productive? When are you most mentally sharp? And is that a time when you can sit down and write? I’m a morning person…one of those annoying, bluebird of happiness on my windowsill people. But I know this about myself and I use it to my advantage.

Staying on Track

I have a daily word goal of 2k words. Some days I don’t get there, and other days, I slay that dragon, big time. My biggest sticky point is getting myself to write quickly. If I poke around, which is my natural inclination, my editor will get this next book right around 2018. To stay on track, I schedule two or three fifty-minute writing sprints. I type really fast, so if my brain is going, my fingers do just fine keeping up.

And speaking of staying on track…I still have a book to finish. Be sure to enter the Get It Together! Rafflecopter giveaway! Thanks to Alexandra Haughton and Lindsay Emory for inviting me to take part–click on the links to their sites to see the full slate of Get It Together! authors and stops.

Thanks for stopping by! xoxo

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To celebrate release month for That Night with the CEO, I’m hosting a photo contest. I was inspired to do it when my awesome Duranie friend Bryony Evens took a picture of the UK version of my book in London. (see below) It was just the coolest thing ever! The rules are straightforward–take a picture with the book, post it everywhere, make sure you use the hashtag #myhotCEO. If you win, I’ll put you or someone you love in my next book for Harlequin Desire. We’ll even plan out how you work into the story–do you want to be the fun best friend or the Bridezilla sister? The quirky neighbor or the mysterious woman from the hero’s past? In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions. Just make a comment below and I’ll see it. I hope everyone’s summer has been awesome! xoxo

Where do you take a hot CEO- (1)

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