Welcome to the WRITING PROCESS BLOG HOP next stop!

MY WRITING PROCESS

Firstly, I want to say an enormous thank you to the amazing ladies which make up Spellbound Consortium, Alisha Payne and Nick Taylor for inviting me to participate in My Writing Process Blog Tour. I am still relatively new to this blogging scene, so it helps find my feet alongside offering a little information about myself.
Nick and Alisha posted their answers last week, you'll find them here.

What are you working on?

I am currently working on a new romantic suspense/mystery series called The Dark Evoke Series. It follows twenty-seven year old, Kady Jenson who awakens from a four day coma with a three year void in her memory. Although there is an Irish stranger at her bedside, she doesn't feel scared, she feels drawn to him, almost contented with his presence.

She comes to learn that things change over time. Her relationship with her long-term boyfriend and one of the very few people she can remember, is very much different. She begins slipping into routines which come as naturally as breathing, although she has no clue as to why she has begun behaving differently.

While her boyfriend is on a business trip, we follow Kady as she and the Irish stranger, Walker goes on a quest to fit the pieces of the puzzle and spark her memory.
The series is about rediscovering yourself and toes a line which has been the topic of controversy for quite some time.

The first installment, Seeking Nirvana is released on June 16th. I have just finished writing the second installment, Eluding Nirvana, and I'm striving to get past this infuriating case of writer's block, to begin writing the third installment.

Feel free to visit my author Facebook page where I am ridiculously active. I will update you regularly and post some amazing teasers created by a dear friend and one of my lovely page admins, Charlie C.

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

My debut, Impulses was a lengthy standalone, to which I literally gutted myself open. Although it has fictitious elements, 3/4 of the story was yours truly. I felt as though my future books would be lengthy also. Thankfully, that is not the case with The Dark Evoke Series.

The one element which remains within my writing is how raw it is, and can be, since my ability to create my characters incidences and circumstances, stem from life experiences. I am a very open, very honest person. I believe that we learn from our mistakes in life and there is nothing to be ashamed of because they make us stronger. As a result of that, I am able to express myself wholly through my characters, through their trials and tribulations and through their emotions and I feel they come alive more so, because they're flawed. To some degree, I feel that my readers can sense parts of me within the words on the page because those words were formed from my life experiences, and involvement in situations, that are relevant to my characters.

Why do you write what you do?

For me, I write because it's therapeutic. My genre, although contemporary romance, has dark elements, especially The Dark Evoke Series.

Ever since I was younger my mother told me that I had a dark mind. I remember when I was in school; I had to write a story for creative English in my end of school exams. Even then, at sixteen I wrote about a family who were fearful of their abusive father. It was hard-hitting, it was emotional but it was fact. It was fact because it brought to light that these situations happen around us every day.

Life isn't a bed of roses. We don't live in a perfect world where we meet a businessman with a jet, get married and become a typical 2.4 family. Life throws shit at you. That's reality. You can think a relationship is running smoothly, but when you least expect it something strains that relationship, an event, a medical condition...the past.
I write dark because life is dark.

How does your writing process work?

This is actually quite an amusing question for me at the moment because I am suffering one Hell of a writer's block.

My answer to everything is, 'create a timeline'.
I shrug on my jacket, step into my shoes and I walk the streets, most probably looking like some made-up zombie, while I get the cogs in my head turning. I play out my scenes like one would watch a movie unfold on the big screen, sometimes listening to music which my characters favor the most. I go through everything, even down to the facial expressions and the mumbling dialogue. Trust me; I have had more than the occasional few stares around my neighborhood because of this.
When I have several main scenes along with dialogue, I focus on the scenes which will strew them together.

With Impulses, I focused intently on the number of pages...something I will never do again. Instead, I have begun to focus on the word count. Sometimes, I find it's better to have fewer words, you can always go back and add scenes or further your descriptions later. I find that method better than stripping a good few thousand words from your work.

But most importantly, I continue reading. It's crazy, but reading helps me write. Your brain is a sponge; you continue to learn more whether it be sentence structure all the way down to vocabulary. It really does help oil up those cogs.  

Want more?

Want to take a look at where the Blog Hop Tour is heading next? Well, you're going to want to visit the amazingly talented, Amazon bestseller and author of The Savannah Series and the highly anticipated standalone novel, Tempt My Heart, Danielle Jamie. Show this girl some love people, she gifted us Kayden Knox and Jordon Valentine ;) Visit her here.