I've been posting from The Tree of Life, and last week Rio has just arrived home in Sedona to secure the safety of his family. We'll go on from there...

      “Rio,” she said, rushing headlong into his arms to be swung around and then hugged close.
     “Seraphina, I’ve missed you,” he said, stepping back to take a look at her. Golden eyes, much like his own, glistened with excitement at their reunion and accentuated her sun-kissed skin. Her hair, darker than his, hung to her waist and held a mahogany sheen his keen eyes picked up even in the faint light provided by the open elevator door. “Stunning as ever. Am I in time to beat down any aggressive curs?”
    “Ever the big brother,” she countered, laughing. “Thank the stars you are home at last.” Her look sobered and she grew serious. “Trouble is coming, Rio. We are in terrible danger.”

I hope you enjoyed the snippet I posted for Elizabeth today. I like the twisty trees in Sedona. They make me want to chase them, but I am too busy looking in the mirror right now. I went to the groomer today and if I do say so myself, I look very handsome. Elizabeth thinks it's a little short and asked me if I had joined the military.

I posted her book trailer below. Stolen Secrets is now available on preorder (whatever that is)!
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Be sure to check out all the other great Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday posts for more great reads!

Most writers write in layers, using a writing process. That's how I know my most common mistakes so intimately. I'm not talking about those scattered typos and occasional wrong word use mistakes. I'm talking about craft, the skillfully (that's the goal) applied techniques that writers use to make their writing more immediate, realistic, and intense. 

My final stages are always laced with efforts to remove passive voice where appropriate, to flesh out more detail when needed, and to add depth to characters. I think this may be even more essential when you're a pantser, like I am. 

Through my Beta readers I know that I have a penchant for leaving in too much passive voice. I've discovered I often do this when my goal is to add more individualism and depth to a character by using internal dialogue or reflection. I have to consciously go in and take out as much as possible, though of course in some instances it just works better.

And though description is generally one of my strengths (probably because I'm an amateur artist) I sometimes get so wrapped up in what's "happening" in my action-packed stories that I forget to add setting or character features, the things that ground the reader and give the story that "movie" feel to it that makes a reader able to actually visual the story in their head.

Being aware is the key to continual improvement, which is something I hope to do. So what's your most common writing mistake?   

​Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, the weekly hop for everyone who loves to write! Sign up below with your name, blog and email and share an 8 to 10 sentence snippet of your writing on Sunday. Your post needs to be live between 12:00 noon on Saturday 01/21/17 and 09:00 AM on Sunday 01/22/17. Visit the other participants on the list and read, critique and comment on their 8sunday posts.

Spread the word, share the love, warriors. Twitter hashtag #8sunday. 

The Tree of Life, Book 2 of my Illuminati Series. As Kirin tries to convince her mother there's no reason to suspect she knows anything at all about Rio, Rio is headed home to rejoin his family and, he hopes, keep them safe from Queen Isis.

I hope you like the snippet I shared for Elizabeth this week. Not sure why she likes this kitty so much. Everyone knows doggies make better protectors. Be sure to read the other Weekend Writing Warriors blogs and the #SnippetSunday authors for more great reads.

​You know I love Game of Thrones. Dragons, mayhem, betrayal and revenge. What's not to love? Another historical slam dunk. How dare they EVER end this series? LOL! Everyone must die! Why? Why? Why? 

Favorite characters? Daenerys and Drogon, and all the Starks, and then there's Tyrion, and...endless list, though they all keep dying, of course! LOL! I think this is the last season and I am so bummed about that! The settings are spectacular, the special effects, the costumes, the twisting scripts...wonderful stuff!

Last week I shared from my WIP, The Tree of Life, book 2 in my Illuminati series. We left off at Kirin trying to get her parents to let her accompany her brother Luc to America to find Rio, He managed to get away from them once, in Rio, and then in the rainforests of Brazil he shapeshifted and escaped from her mother. They have found out that he is in Sedona, and Isis wants him captured and sent to the underworld. Kirin has other plans, but doesn't want her mother to know or interfere. 

            Rio thought of his gift as a curse, a curse that her ancestors had caused. He couldn’t know that of course. Could he?
            “It’s settled then,” her father was saying.
            “Muhktar’s a great operative,” Luc said. “He just helped return Ornias to where he belonged.”
            “This scientist is hardly evil, and certainly not a Jinn,” Kirin snapped, before she could stop herself.
            “And you know this how?” Sekhmet asked, her attention riveted to Kirin’s face and her eyebrows lifted in curious expectation.
            Kirin clamped her jaws together. She could feel her mother’s stare boring into her, knowing with certainty without even probing her thoughts that Kirin knew more than she would admit.

I hope you enjoyed the snippet I posted for Elizabeth today. She has been sick all week and had something called hives because she took some medicine she was allergic to. She scratched more than a doggie without flea medicine, but when I tried to lick the little bumps and make them better she stopped me. They finally went away by themselves, not if only her cold would go away too. She's not nearly as much fun as usual! ;( Please visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors and #snippetsunday authors for more great reads!

My family would probably disagree with the above quote. My husband in particular thinks my writing is absolute torture, especially in November. Why November? NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month, in which one is expected to write a complete novel of 50,000 plus words in at least rough form), for which I have my husband trained to respond to "Not now, please, it's NANO!" with silence and walking away. 

He has asked me why I can't just write during his working hours, when he's not home, and doesn't understand that sometimes I'm in the middle of a brainstorm or the muses are flowing like crazy and I just have to get down a scene or a chapter while it's sparking in my head. 

And during brainstorming I may look like I'm vacuuming, dusting, or out for a run, but I am actually hard at work, so a distruption sometimes makes me lose my train of thought, that thought that was becoming a brilliant ending or plot twist! 

So how does my husband survive my crazy writerly behavior? He complains. He goes outside to do some yard work. He comes up with spontaneous compromises like write later when I'm at work or sleeping and I'll ..... Or, "Okay, 20 more minutes, tops, and then you're all mine the rest of the night." His imagination is fairly good too. After all, he's Irish!

The best undistrubed writing time in my house? During a Packer's game!

Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, the weekly hop for everyone who loves to write! Sign up below with your name, blog and email and share an 8 to 10 sentence snippet of your writing on Sunday. Your post needs to be live between 12:00 noon on Saturday 01/07/17 and 09:00 AM on Sunday 01/08/17. Visit the other participants on the list and read, critique and comment on their 8sunday posts.
Spread the word, share the love, warriors. Twitter hashtag #8sunday. 

Since Stolen Secrets, my Illuminati Fantasy Romance Spin-Off novel is in final edits and will be released soon, I am going to share some more from my second book in the Illuminati Series which will be coming out next: The Tree of Life.  The royal immortals are gathered and discussing who will be going to Sedona, AZ, after Rio, the Black Jaguar shapeshifter whose family genetic "defects" are the responsibility of the ancients, the ancestors of the royal immortal family, the Illuminati founders.

          “I know who Mukhtar is, I was just wondering why you felt the need to send him with us to America when he's to be married soon, and--”
            “Yes, and we are all invited and wouldn’t think of missing the wedding,” Osiris said.
           “The wedding is still two months away. His going with you will keep him out of the way while the bride plans the wedding,” Isis insisted.
          Dammit, Kirin thought. Her mother was determined to control Rio’s capture. He wasn’t just some monster, a genetic defect as Sekhmet claimed. She was sure of it. No way was she letting them imprison him in the underworld with the true beasts and monsters. He was an intelligent human, a brilliant scientist who just happened to have a rare gift.  

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I sure did. I got a new toy and lots of doggie treats and had so much fun playing with my family. The snippet I posted for Elizabeth today is from her Work in Progress. Please visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors and #SnippetSunday authors for some other great reads!