When writers talk about building a “world”—what is a world?

A world isn’t necessarily a “where”. It’s the congregated circumstances your characters work inside. So, what the heck does that mean?

For the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s world is set in Sunnydale, California. At the start of her journey, she’s in high school and the most important activities she’s involved in are her cheerleading, passing her classes, and of course, boys. All by itself that can be pretty interesting stuff, right?

Joss Whedon added the whole “You are the One” role that Buffy is forced into accepting as THE Vampire Slayer, and suddenly, there’s a whole new texture to her world. Monsters come out of the woodwork, a Hell Mouth opens to release demons on the world, and she’s the only thing standing between the innocent human world and The Big Bad.

She comes into her “weapons”, her powers, which include her super-human speed, strength and fast healing. She’s a natural with cross-bows, pointy stakes and knows instinctually how to kill many of the beasties she encounters.

All the pieces fit together like a tapestry, and her journey convinces us this world exists, just as she must be convinced every step of the way.

Now her problems are bigger, her conflicts are bigger, and the antagonists that she must face in each episode of her total journey are bigger. The external plot really forces the growth of her character.

What was Buffy’s world? Every aspect of her life.

Her home life where she hides her role from her mother while trying to explain why she sneaks out at night, why her grades suffer, and why she keeps getting into fights.

Her inner life which she hadn’t really thought much about until she had to “dust” a vamp or two. Even then, she was never convinced she had the spiritual strength of conviction or the intelligence necessary to be the last hope of the world—not until the very last episode when she comes up with the plan to share her “power” with her “slayers-in-waiting”.

Her romantic life which gets pretty complicated when she falls in love with the very creature she’s destined to kill—and where making love with him can turn him into a soulless creature if he experiences that one moment of true happiness.

So, the world you build contains all the aspects of your character’s existence.

Why does it matter that every conflict, every hero, every villain, every resolution has to be bigger in a paranormal story?

1) You can have a true “super” hero. And don’t we all want guys who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, are stronger than Popeye, and better in bed than Casanova? When we suspend belief while reading a work of fantasy, it doesn’t seem too silly at all!

2) Doesn’t a reader want to escape into fantasy and join the quest to find The Holy Grail rather than looking for matching socks coming out of the dryer?

3) When our heroine faces pure rip-your-eyeballs-out evil, we don’t really want to believe the characteristics embodied by that villain truly exist. We can be scared, revolted, fascinated, but because it’s a good paranormal tale, we don’t have to close the book and wonder what the world’s coming to.

4) Don’t we all want to save the world?

The winners of this week’s contest are posted at the bottom of this blog! Thanks to everyone who played here, on Access Romance’s blog, and on Facebook!

I couldn’t sleep last night. I got an email yesterday evening that there’s interest in a proposal I submitted a while back. I’m supposed to talk to the editor later today. If all goes well, you’ll hear me squee clear to the Mississippi. Needless to say, after the email, I stayed up late reviewing my plans to see when I could deliver that book. It’s a different sort of endeavor for me, so I’m playing cautious. Since I won’t be able to depend solely on me for the work, I have to add time for the others I’ll have to solicit to do their thing.

Was that a tease or what?

Yesterday, I was very pleased with my page count, and if you take a look at the word counters to the right of this post, you’ll see a lot of pretty color to prove it. The first chapter of the new Viking book is done. It’s rough, but I think it’s compelling. I added to the short story I need to finish by the 15th. It’s a little mirky still. I’m not sure I like how it’s turned out, but I will hit it again today. I had thought to start a new short novella this week, but the one I worked on last month and set aside called to me again, so I plowed through another chapter of it. Now, I think I have a story there—and it’s full of horny werewolves, so some of you will be pleased.

Today, I need to brainstorm a sexy, winter cowboy story. Any thoughts on what you might like to see?

Wish me luck today. Whatever the verdict from the call, I will probably be twittering about it later. Love you guys! Thanks for being here. Oh, and Access Romance posted the blurbs and cover for Un, Deux, Trois, Menage! on their website today. I’d love it if you stopped by to say hello!

And the winners (by random number generator) are…

Congratulations, and email me to let me know where to send your prizes!

A note about the contest! Yesterday’s contest continues today. And since I find myself in a bit of a dilemma, you have additional chances to win. I double-booked today. So if you post here today and post at Access Romance’s blog, you will have additional chances to win. And to make this a little more interesting, I will add a second prize to the contest. In addition to the download of Ride a Cowboy, I will add a download from the Jasmine-Jade site—any book you want. So post away. Now there will be two winners!

Note from Tory:

Hi everyone! I’m honored to be here as a guest today. My first Ellora’s Cave Quickie was released in May and I’m excited to announce that so far it has received some great reviews. I hope you’ll check it out. It might be a Quickie but short isn’t always a bad thing.

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Lilly has been in love with her brother’s best friend Blake for years. She lost her virginity to the oil driller on her eighteenth birthday, only to wake the next morning to find him gone. After he pulled that stunt twice more, she swore never to see or talk to him again. But now he’s back for her brother’s wedding, and he’s as sexy as she remembers.

Blake thinks Lilly’s even sexier than ever. Unable to resist one another, they don’t make it out of the airport parking lot before taking up where they left off. As the two rediscover their passion for each other, nothing and nowhere is off limits!

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Lilly drove her little car around the airport at least twice before finding her way to Southwest arrivals. Parking wasn’t allowed so she could only hope Blake was waiting for her somewhere outside. She drove slow, searching through the crowd on the sidewalk for him. Desire churned in her stomach.

And then she saw him.

Her body reacted instantly, thinking about him was one thing but seeing him in the flesh was even more powerful. Awareness exploded through her body, as she remembered all the times and places they’d had hot, naughty sex. How Blake had taken her to paradise a thousand times. Her panties became soaked as she clenched her legs together hoping to ease the need that was becoming unbearable. A pleasant prickling in her full breasts caused her to raise her arm and brush it over them to try to ease some of the ache.

Blake hadn’t changed at all. He was still the sexiest man on earth. As she sat there staring at him she felt her breathing become erratic and her heart rate pick up speed.

Blake was six feet tall, and lean. Yet his black polo shirt revealed he wasn’t lacking on muscle power. The gray slacks he was wearing gave evidence to the strength in his thighs and stretched across the prominent outline of his cock. He looked dangerous. He was dangerous, only in a way that had always drawn her in. His dark hair was shorter than he used to wear it, military cut. Lilly couldn’t see his eyes for the dark sunglasses covering them, for which she was thankful. Blake had the kind of eyes that could look right through someone, into their very soul.

He’s just a man, he’s just a man, Lilly repeated to herself. Flesh and blood and as mortal as she was. He had emotions, he could be hurt. He had needs. Her cheeks grew hot when she thought of their last night together, and how they’d made love like two wild animals trying to consume one another. Then he’d left the next morning for an assignment on an oil rig in the North Sea. And she’d tried to convince herself that she hated him ever since.

Now she knew how futile that had been.

Reviews:
Manic Readers
My Overstuffed Bookshelf
Whipped Cream Erotic Reviews
Seriously Reviewed

My second Quickie with Ellora’s Cave, Breathless Surrender, will be out soon! Thank you for having me today Delilah. Readers interested in learning more about my books can visit my website!

Tootles!

Tory Richards
Author of sizzling romances!
Tory’s Website
Tory’s Blog

If you post a comment today and tomorrow, you’ll be in the running
for a free download of this book! I’ll announce a winner on Thursday.

When I wrote Ride A Cowboy, I didn’t know I’d be hooked on writing those sexy men. From the first line, writing the story about a woman who moved to the Hill Country of Texas was the easiest thing I’d ever written, because I was that girl. I knew those men. My back yard butted up against a working ranch. The book came out in February 2006, and if you look at my “Western” section on my books page, you can see what an addiction to Wranglers and a slow-talkin’ man I have.

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“…Ooooh is this hot! So very descriptive in the sheer need to be loved, to be not only desired sexually by the other. Proving to Katelyn that all men aren’t like her ex, Daniel gives of himself without any hesitation. What a man! This is a keeper, fellow readers, and not just for those dedicated “sexy cowboy” fans.”
5 Hearts, The Romance Studio

“…This is one book I could not put down from beginning to end!…I have to compliment Ms. Devlin on her writing prowess. She roped this reviewer with her playground of words, expertise of emotional perception, and exceptional writing ability.”
5 Kisses, Romance Divas

Katelyn Carter came to rural Texas to lick her wounds and start over after her failed marriage, but a sexy young cowboy seems determined to show her that love is still in the cards for this single librarian.

Sheriff’s deputy Daniel Bodine answers a 911 call to remove a rattlesnake from his new neighbor’s bedroom. What he finds is an embarrassed Katelyn, dressed in little more than her pretty pink blushes. One little omission later, and he’s working for the lady as her handyman.

Burned once by a man, Katelyn fights her growing attraction but finds Daniel more temptation than she can resist. When he shows her he knows his way around a woman’s body as well as he does a hammer and a saw, she takes a walk on the nasty side, vainly hoping she can keep her heart free of entanglement.

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The house Katelyn Carter had bought sight unseen was kind of like her—weathered by storms and in need of a lot of TLC.

After a quick glance around the empty road, she set her truck into park and stared. She let her eyes blur and tried to imagine how the old house must have looked once upon a time before the harsh South Texas sun baked its exterior. She wasn’t encouraged. Even seen from behind her dirty windshield, she could tell the one-story ranch needed a lot of work, and at the very least, a fresh coat of paint.

A lone tear streaked down her face, surprising her, and she sniffed. One last cry—she deserved that much. Then no more feeling sorry for herself. She had too much to do and a whole new life stretching in front of her.

A loud honk sounded and Katelyn swung her gaze to her rearview mirror to find that a dusty, older model pick-up truck had pulled up behind her. She swiped away the tears with the back of her hand, and then stuck her arm out the window to wave the driver past.

Instead, the driver-side door opened and a tall Texan in faded jeans and a cream-colored cowboy hat stepped onto the pavement.
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I promised pictures from the exhibit, but wouldn’t you know they wouldn’t let us film it, even without a flash. And would they sell us pictures of the artifacts?! Noooo! Only in Arkansas. And what’s with people who stroll through an exhibit in slow-mo listening to the audio guide and then stopping to read every single description posted beside the artifacts?! Hellooo! Headphones?

Here’s me with Shayla Kersten and Staci, another member of our DSRA group.

And here’s the red-headed hellion with her little one. The trick to getting more quickly through an exhibit is to train the baby to screech “Quiet! Quiet!”. People just make way. It’s like magic.

Ugh! I really, really need to get back on my diet, but there’s still some chocolate ice cream in the freezer.

And the shopping sack? I had to buy one of those pop-up books on Egyptology and a figurine of Bastet the cat. Oh! And a coffee mug. I collect them.

First, I have to tell you about this dream I had last night. I dreamed I was a superhero. I still haven’t figured out what my superpower was, but I got a call on the bat phone to hightail it to a sleepy little Texas border town to take out The Black Widow. My sidekick went with me. He was tall, balding and had a pot belly. Yeah, we made quite a team, but for some reason that was part of our power. Everyone underestimated us.

The Black Widow and I were old archrivals and we recognized each other immediately when our glances met across a smoky cantina. (There was a little homoerotic tinge to this whole dream.) She looked like Natalie Whatshername from Sugarland. A tall, blonde, natural beauty, with whom I’m sure I would have wanted to be friends if she didn’t have a nasty habit of romancing a victim in a bar then sucking off his head. Not a sexual euphemism.

Anyway, we got into a huge battle where we threw tables and chairs at each other from across the room, then took the battle out into the street and demolished half the buildings there. Neither of us won an advantage, and when we got tired of beating on each other, we headed back to the cantina for a beer, my trusty sidekick complaining about his aching back all the while. When she rose to leave, she handed me her lighter and said, “Keep it. I’m quittin’ anyway.”

I smiled and thanked her, but as soon as she was out the door, I gingerly held up the lighter, walked out the back of the cantina, tossed it into the garbage bin and ducked to avoid the explosion. End of dream.

My report is very anticlimactic. And it looks very different from what I had planned last week, but unexpected things crept up all week. Not that I can talk about all of it just yet.

* I wrote class material for FFnP’s Logline, Premise, Query and Synopsis class which starts tomorrow.
* I spoke with my Berkley editor about edits she wants on the first Viking book, then received the file and started work on that.
* I received word that Four Sworn was accepted and is tentatively scheduled for release by Samhain in September.
* I wrote a synopsis for a Merry Kinkmas short story for Ellora’s Cave and shipped it to my editor, after conducting some rather thorough fetish research.
* I received some exciting news about a project for an epublisher, but can’t mention it yet.
* And I quick-plotted a short story for Cleis.

This week:
* I will plow through edits of Viking-1.
* I will complete planning for Viking-2 and start writing the sucker!
* I will begin work on my Cleis short story.
* And lastly, I hope to begin work on my next western for Samhain.

Have a Happy 4th! I’ll think about you while I’m here on the lake!

Here’s me, bleary-eyed. The red-headed hellion was here until midnight looking for help with her math homework. She’ll be back for more help today. Guess who won’t be writing much?

My friend, Vivi Anna, has a new book and you should check it out! Hey, it’s 5:53 AM in the morning (the dogs got me up so they could go bark at the geese). No one’s meant to be eloquent at this time of the morning. It’s a good thing Vivi is.

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Olena Petrovich had seen more than enough death and destruction in her three hundred years. Now the vampiress fought as a CSI agent. But nothing about this crime scene seemed right—including the arrogant outsider from Interpol who challenged her authority. Sexy and cocky, the human was downright irresistible…even to a vampiress who should know better.

Though Cale Braxton was out of his league facing the vampires, lycans and witches of Nouveau Monde, he matched Olena in the one way that mattered—passion. Olena had sworn she’d never love—and lose—again, especially a human with his own demons. She and Cale lived in two different worlds, but after only one kiss, Olena wondered how she could ever spend eternity without him….

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Olena Petrovich had had close to three hundred years to perfect sin to an art form. In the past, she’d used her vampiric charms to get whatever she wanted in life—money, sex, power. It helped, she supposed, that she was curvy and possessed a mouth some men had said was made for sin. But it had always proven to be too easy.
She didn’t want easy any longer. She liked working for the things she received. Like this case.

This was Olena’s first time as lead investigator and she was excited about it. She didn’t want to make one mistake. It wasn’t often that Inspector Gabriel Bellmonte let go of the reins. But he had for her. Or it could’ve been because she had begged him for the past three months.

The crime scene at the National Bank of Nouveau Monde wasn’t typical for a bank robbery. Usually the robbers took the money, but instead these guys—four armed, masked men—had herded everyone in the bank into the vault, then blasted apart the safety-deposit boxes.

Olena and her team wouldn’t be able to get a clear view of the situation until they’d pieced together all the boxes that had been destroyed. And by the looks of the mess, that was going to take considerable time.

The odor of smoke still hung oppressively in the air as Olena eyed the wall of boxes, taking in the destruction. Charred residue marred an array of the shiny metal squares in a circular pattern. The explosion had caused a lot of damage.

“I wonder what they were looking for.” She glanced over her shoulder at her investigative partner, Sophie St. Clair, who was busy taking pictures of the metal and plastic shrapnel scattered all over the black-and-white-tiled floor.

“I guess someone must’ve lost his key.” After snapping her last photo, Sophie stood beside Olena and surveyed the destroyed wall. “Kellen called. He said he’d be on scene in about fifteen minutes,” Sophie informed her.

Olena nodded. “Good. He can figure out this blast pattern on the remaining safety-deposit boxes.”

Kellen, a recent addition to their crime-scene team, was a damn good ballistics expert. He had come from America to France for treatment for a rare blood disease and had ended up completely cured, with a new job on the team and an engagement to Sophie.

Fate had a grand sense of humor.
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