Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts from the “Thrillers” Category

Daily Distraction: The Writing Process Blog Tour

Posted on May 26, 2014
Daily Distraction: The Writing Process Blog Tour

Welcome to this stop on the Writing Process Blog Tour. The amazing Tioka Tokedira nominated me for the next round on this blog tour that leads you past writers of all plumes. Tioka is the writer of The Stone Cutter, a spine-chilling YA about a girl raised to be a thief and a mysterious boy in a Maserati – so spine-chilling it landed her right into the Undiscovered Voices Anthology 2014. After I’ve answered the four questions, I will nominate the next writers who will do the same, as many have done before us. Curious about who preceded me? Search the net for Writing Process Blog Tour! Or click here.

I’m changing the Blog Tour routine a little, as I like my blog posts to be short and snappy, so I divided the four questions into four daily distraction posts and a closing post with the nomination of the next writer(s). Check in tomorrow for the first question:

  1. What am I working on?
  2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?
  3. Why do I write what I do?
  4. How does my writing process work?

For the next round, starting next Monday, I nominate the incredibly funny Gary Fabbri, writer, illustrator and film director. Born and raised in Rhode Island, he lived in London for 12 years working in television and advertising before moving to Stockholm. His picture book THE EAGLE WHO WANTED TO SEE EVERYTHING just came out.

My second nomination goes to writer, Reiki Master, Wisdom Keeper and all around adventuress Donna Gwinnel Lambo-Weidner. Despite her love for anything that deals with archery, armor, and swashbuckling, and her appreciation for a good sword, Donna is one of the kindest people on earth. She writers picture books and middle grades, and somehow there’s a lot of chickens in them, like a distraught hen whose egg yolks have been deemed too yellow, and a middle grade novel about a chicken who accompanies Marco Polo on his expedition to China.

 

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

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Daily Distraction: Recharging at Half Moon Bay

Posted on May 17, 2014
Daily Distraction: Recharging at Half Moon Bay

It’s been a while since I let myself be distracted. There were deadlines and death in my life after I returned from the US. In short: life caught up with me.

Before I left for the Haunted Hospital in Virginia City to acquaint myself with the local ghosts and to hone my writing skills, I was in Half Moon Bay. Half Moon Bay is one of the settings in my techno thriller, more specifically The Mavericks, a surfer’s paradise and the place where my protagonist – a very very antagonistic protagonist – finds himself and recharges his batteries to play the end game of his scheme. Looking at this photo reminds me how I sat on the rocks looking out over the ocean, feeling the wind and the spray of the breakers in my face. Just like with my protagonist wind and sea is what recharges my batteries.

Tell me, what is your recipe to recharge? What is it that replenishes your energy?

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Thrillers, YA books

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Daily Distraction: Ducking the Line Edits

Posted on April 20, 2014
Daily Distraction: Ducking the Line Edits

Some writers are fast, determined, strong-minded. Me? Not so much. I’m line editing my manuscript and scrutinizing 90,000 words can be mighty disheartening. Being in the Bay Area doesn’t make it any easier.
I’m staying with friends and, man, talking books and life with them is so much more fun than weighing every sentence you wrote. The eldest of their kids easily lures me away from my mission with our common interest TV show Bones, the middle one loves talking science even more than I do, and the youngest is a master patisserie chef (you’ve got to taste those cupcakes). On top of that they have the cutest puppy and two kittens to die for.
Despite all that, I am frantically trying to pull this off. I don’t want to disappoint my mentor. I don’t dare to disappoint my mentor. So I’m glued to my laptop and stripping those 90,000 words like the wind stripped the Tiburon Hippie Tree.
You have no idea how much I’d prefer to arc out high above Richardson Bay on that old Eucalyptus tree’s swing.

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

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Daily Distraction: Publishing Houses Belly Up

Posted on March 6, 2014
Daily Distraction: Publishing Houses Belly Up

Tucked away in a corner on page 24 of my newspaper, I read an unsettling newsflash. More and more Dutch publishing houses are going belly up. In the last quarter of 2013 the total loss of business was 9% compared to the last quarter a year before. The overall loss over 2013 was 6%.
Since 2008, publishing houses in the Netherlands have faced a staggering 20% loss of business and that is causing them to close more and more doors.

I was already proud and happy with the Little Golden Book and the Middle Grade adventure novel that will be published later this year, but now I also admire both publishers for their stamina, their perseverance and their unbroken trust in authors and illustrators. Chapeau Rubinstein! Chapeau Ploegsma Children’s Book Publishers!

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

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Daily Distraction: Trees and Blue Skies

Posted on February 18, 2014

Daily Distractiion: Trees, Skies and How the Brain Works

Not sure if it was the blue skies or the whiteness of the bark, but this tree pushed me forward in my writing. It stands in a park outside Asheville and I looked up its trunk for a while, noticing how its now leafless branches fork out and reach up to the sky. From down below they seem all tangled up and yet, like a story plot, they form one single whole.

While standing there and staring up, I realized that I had to go back to the manuscript I am working on, shed all the leaves and study just the trunk, the boughs, the branches, the twigs. I did just that: strip the manuscript from all the fluff and scrutinize the bare bones. Today, I knew what it missed. Not the trunk that forms the storyline, not the boughs that reach out to the sky and layer the plot, not the branches or the twigs that fork out and make the subplots. What my story missed was a root. My mentor Ellen Hopkins had already pointed that out, but I failed to see what she meant. Now I do. One more chapter, that is all it needs. I will push it out tonight, in the confidence that it will root my story firmly to the ground.

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

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Daily Distraction: Characters and Frozen Rain

Posted on February 12, 2014

Daily Distraction: Ghost Town

Atlanta, Georgia. Frozen rain, sleet and snow turned the city into a ghost town. The bustle of a vibrant city died down in a matter of hours. We — a bunch of Internet geeks and me — were forewarned and huddled together in a downtown hotel. Most geeks will be here for a while, as today’s buzz word at the airport is ‘cancelled’. I will be driving out tomorrow, up north and into the mountains. Icy conditions call for an invigorating research trip.

It awed me, though, how nature can force life to its knees. Had me think about the characters for my novel-in-the-making, about how deceitful they can or should be. Delicate and elusive as frozen rain and yet strong enough to send whomever crosses their path spinning.

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Thrillers, YA books

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Daily Distraction: Swim Against the Current

Posted on February 10, 2014

Daily Distraction: Swim
When pondering new novel plots, particularly when those plots involve the exploration of free will, touring an aquarium is not only an excellent distraction, it pushes my thinking process ahead. Questions like do fish have free will or are they solely propelled through their lives by nature? pop up almost immediately. I sat and watched this school of Blue Runners for a while at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. They all go with the flow, all aligned and facing up-current, all at the same speed. No finning against the current here.

Just like us these Blue Runners seem to drift to through life the most efficient way. Or the most convenient way. Why bother going against the current? Why deviate from the rest? I can almost hear some of them whisper: “but it’s me who decides to go with the flow, it’s me who decides not to deviate.” And I wonder about the truth in that statement. Are we free to choose whatever we want, whichever direction to go? Are we indeed free to choose to drift along with the school, or to unshackle ourselves and swim against the tide?

 

 

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Thrillers, YA books