Emotional Notes

I hope it's not some kind of harbinger of the sort of day it will be that I started the day with a funeral. It's yet another one for someone I never met, but they needed a choir and I have a lenient (probably too lenient) boss. I don't have the money to donate to charity right now (I am the needy), but I can sing and I have a flexible schedule, so this is one of my forms of community service. I did my usual thing of crying more at a funeral for someone I don't know than at funerals of people I know. In this case, the widower did the eulogy, and he was so very sweet in the way he talked about his wife and their life together. I thought it was the perfect depiction of the kind of relationship I wish I could have found. Even if I hadn't heard it at the wife's funeral, if he'd said these things in my earshot with his wife healthy and nearby, it would have set me to bawling. And now I've got a bad case of sniffles because once you start crying like that, the sniffles seem to linger all day.

But getting all emotional may be what I needed, as much of what I have to do on these rewrites is raise the emotional stakes to create more of a variety of emotional notes. I'm way too even-keeled and tend to write characters who are even-keeled, and that doesn't make for the most compelling reading. I guess that's why I wasn't any good at writing romance novels. Those are all about the emotion, and with me it was like Spock writing romances:

"I feel physical attraction for you and enjoy the time we spend together." "I concur. We appear to be quite compatible. We should pursue a relationship." The End.

Or else: "While I feel physical attraction for you, I find you irritating, and our outlooks on life are too different. It is likely that I can find someone else for whom I feel physical attraction who is more compatible." And that would ruin the very concept of the romance novel.

So maybe I can channel this morning's weep-fest into something I can use.

On an unrelated note, if you haven't bought all the books in my series, know someone who hasn't yet bought the whole series, know someone you'd like to buy the series for or know of someone who might like these books who hasn't yet been hooked, the next month or so would be a really good time for that. Or if everyone you know, including your pets, has their own copies, write some Amazon reviews, mention on blogs or message boards, etc. This isn't a get your hopes up about book 5 thing, just a preparation for the annual Swinging of the Clue Stick in the general direction of the publisher, and a nice surge in sales would look good. Any sales of new books or legal e-books are good, but sales at the major chains look even better (online or in store, though in store you may have to request them) because getting re-orders from the chains would be seen as a positive.