How Easy is it to Add to Your 'To Be Read' Pile?

Miranda's May Musings

Hello beautiful readers, welcome! I have a very serious question to ask this month: how big is your To Be Read pile? Ha, stop laughing... Is it like mine? Enormous? Even if I live to be eleventy billion years old I'll never finish. Such a thrilling dilemma.

Today fellow BITB blogger Alyssa J Montgomery and I went to a wonderful High Tea run by the Australian Romance Readers Association (ARRA), and it was divine. Held in a beautiful boutique hotel in Sydney, there were three tables, each hosted by an author: Kandy Shepherd, Shannon Curtis, and my table's lovely hostess Avril Tremayne.

You know where this is going, don't you? Yes, more books! I don't care that I've got a trillion books at home (slight exaggeration only). I staggered home full of tea, scones, sandwiches and cake, with a bag of free books and divine swag (unicorn pen! tiara! chocolates!) from Avril. So now, deliciously, these books are on my TBR:

                   

Photo credits: amazon.com

Here Comes the Bridesmaid is a beautiful hardback (isn't the cover sumptuously bridesmaid-y pink? I adore it!), and of course both books are signed by Avril. Swoon. Thankyou, Avril, thankyou.

...But wait, there's more. Our recent guest blogger Melanie Milburne was also at my table (read her recent column here). Congratulations Melanie on your 75th book (wow!). These are now on my TBR:

                     

                      Photo credit: amazon.com

Photo credit: amazon.com

Somehow or other I missed getting a book from Kandy Shepherd. I love her sweet romances, they are gorgeous to read, and Kandy is the nicest person to meet and chat to. So I've pre-ordered her latest, which sounds right up my alley and has a divine wedding pic on the cover. I love it already.

Photo credit: amazon.com

I did get this book from Shannon Curtis, quite outside my normal genre picks, which will be interesting to read. Shannon suggested I read Lycan Unleashed first, to get the gist of the world building. Alrighty then.

Photo credit: amazon.com

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand there was more: some books by Penny Reid in the Knitting in the City series. And so many others to choose from - I honestly couldn't carry them all home, such a tragedy. Everyone staggered out from that High Tea with happy tummies and books spilling out of their arms, adding to their TBRs with gay abandon. Alyssa's bag was just as heavy as mine.

It is so, so, SO easy to add to the TBR, isn't it? Life is sweet! ...I'm off to read.

Until next time, my friends,

Love from Miranda xxx

Love to Love:

Free books! High teas! Meeting new authors and old friends! Thankyou ARRA.

Love to Laugh:

...at how dead easy it is to add to one's mountainous TBR. Awesome.

Love to Learn:

Has something fabulously wonderful like this happened to you? Free signed books poured your way? Or are you disciplined (unlike moi) and finish your TBR before you add more? (But seriously, does such a person even exist?!) 

Author Spotlight - Melanie Milburne

Breathless in the Bush is thrilled to introduce Award-winning and USA Best-selling Modern Romance author, Melanie Milburne.

A prolific writer and proud member of Romance Writers of Australia, and Ambassador for Australian Childhood Foundation, you can contact her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/melaniemilburn1, on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melanie.milburne/, and through her website: http://www.melaniemilburne.com.au.

Where are you at this moment and what is on your writing desk?

I am at our beach house on the east coast of Tasmania where an echidna waddles outside my window, dolphins swim in the ocean and the black and yellow cockatoos make a raucous noise as they fly past. And just the other day, a scarlet-breasted robin perched on the corner of the balcony near my office and a sea eagle drifted past. On my desk are my laptop and stand, my story notes and a collection of pens as well as a bottle of dog treats for my three poodles. I put them through some tricks when I need a break from my story.

What is the hardest part of your writing process? Starting a novel or finishing it?

Starting is easiest for me. I would have written three times as many books by now if I only had to start them. Ha ha. 😀 Finishing is always hard for me. In fact, I think it's getting harder.

What inspired the story idea behind Blackmailed into the Marriage Bed?

A couple of years ago I read Andrew Solomon's amazing book called Far from the Tree, a lengthy tome about the experience of parents who have children they didn't expect to have, such as with disabilities, or gay or transgender or with mental illness such as schizophrenia. One of the chapters was on children born out of rape. It made me think of what it would be like to know you were not conceived out of a loving union but out of a brutal crime and how that would make you feel about yourself. Thus my heroine Ailsa was created.

https://www.amazon.com/Blackmailed-into-Marriage-Harlequin-Presents/dp/1335419276/

This is your 76th book. How have you changed as a writer over the course of so many books?

I'm certainly not as fast as I was in the beginning of my career. I could literally churn out novels like a conveyor belt! I've done a lot of professional development over the last few years and it has slowed me down a lot, but that's overall a good thing. I no longer head hop (changing points of view within a scene) and I spend more time thinking about my choice of words and phrases and getting rid of cliches where I can.

What are you currently working on at the moment?

I have just finished a Wedding-themed duet and I will spend a couple of weeks reading and thinking about my next story. I don't rush in too quickly these days; I find it helps me to allow my subconscious time to play.

What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?

Writing is a craft and anyone with a modicum of talent can learn how to do it better. Writers need to read but they also need to write as often as they can. It's like physical exercise - the more you do, the stronger and fitter you get.

Tell us a little about Blackmailed into the Marriage Bed...

Ailsa is estranged from her husband Vinn Gagliardi because he wanted children and she didn't. But with his beloved grandfather facing do-or-die transplant surgery, Vinn is determined to get Ailsa back into a temporary reunion until his grandfather is out of danger. Ailsa had never told Vinn about her dark secret, but the temptation of being back in his arms is too overwhelming to resist!


What do you love to love?

I love to love my husband and two sons who have always believed in and stood by me.

What do you love to laugh at?

I love to laugh at my three miniature poodles Polly, Lily and Gonzo who are so intelligent and entertaining and do about twenty tricks apiece and still counting!

What do you love to learn?

I love to learn about the craft of writing and enjoy making each book better than the last if I can.

How to Write A Bestseller (Part Two) - Advice from 4 Well-Known Romance Authors

by Enisa Haines

Welcome to Part Two of my investigation into How to Write a Bestseller where again I get a sneak

peak into just how four beloved Aussie romance authors make a book a runaway success.


Melanie Milburne, USA Today Bestselling Romance author:

Link to buy

Writing a best-selling romance...Write real but larger than life characters. Make them believable people you can relate to and empathise with and feel sympathy for. Make sure their dialogue is true to their character and to their emotional state in each scene. Don't over-complicate the plot but rather draw out the emotional conflicts unique to each character. When you think you've got enough emotional punch, double it.






Valerie Parv, Bestseller and Pioneer in Romance Writing:

Link to buy

Firstly, I don't believe you can set out to write a bestseller. At most you could analyse numbers of successful books and try to identify common elements. But Hollywood does this routinely and still produces some astonishingly expensive failures. I believe it's far better to pour your heart and soul into a story you can't wait to tell, trusting that your passion will resonate with millions of readers. If you avoid writing your story thinking it has to be a bestseller and you're afraid nothing else will do, the only way is to plunge in and write the book anyway. Move past your need for the work to be perfect - it never will be. Focus on the story you're eager to tell about characters who are alive in your mind. Let your passion carry you away and there's a good chance you'll have the same effect on your readers. If you're lucky they will talk about this wonderful story they've read and urge their friends to read it, too. Those friends will tell their friends until readers everywhere want to share the experience. That's how you make a bestseller.

Annie West, USA Today Bestselling Romance Author:

Link to buy

What makes a Bestseller? Ah, if only I knew for sure. Sadly, there's no set recipe for how to write a bestselling romance. But here are a couple of ingredients:

• Writing that makes us feel!
• A different take on a familiar romance theme. Something fresh that sparks and comes alive so that, before we know it, we're sucked into the story and don't want to leave.
• Characters we want to spend time with. Maybe they're engaging from the start. Maybe they get our sympathy initially because of their circumstances. Maybe we don't want them to like them but there's something about them that overturns our wariness - they surprise us or tug at our emotions despite our reservations. These are people who, for whatever reason, won't fade into the background. We care about them, relate to them and wait with bated breath for their happy ending.
• A vivid world that is real and fascinating.
• Passion. By this I don't necessarily mean a love scene. But passion from the author and in the characters. This place, these people and their problems must matter. And of course, I think characters who are passionate about what's important to them, draw us in all the more.

Helene Young, Award-winning Romantic Suspense author:

I think the most important aspect of storytelling is to have characters your readers care about. Our readers need to worry that the characters might not get their happily ever after, might not survive to see love blossom. They need to go on the emotional roller-coaster with our hero and heroine, laugh with them, cry with them and feel that solid punch of love when the world jolts off its axis. They need to barrack for them when times get tough and forgive them when they make mistakes. A solid plot is a handy thing as well, but for me there is no greater compliment than a reader emailing me to say that they couldn't stop thinking about my characters.

Link to buy

Great advice, each author saying in their own way: "Write from your heart and soul. Write with passion."

How do you keep readers turning the page?

Love to love: seeing kindness in others

Love to laugh: at funny yet clever conversation

Love to learn: about far-away lands