Waiting for inspiration?

Hello, all. Dana Mentink here, astonished to report that it’s fall! Oh I know, maybe not officially, but my Japanese Maple is turning colors and most importantly, school has started. For an elementary teacher in a combination class that means a roster full of enthusiastic little ones and very long hours. Folks ask me how I manage to write books on top of the life hysteria. The answer is, I get up pretty darn early in the morning, say around 4ish. I’ve heard people say that they can’t write unless they’re feeling inspired. This amuses me. Inspiration for me is beside the point. My tushy is in the chair in the morning and I’m writing because that’s my job and my passion. Sooner or later (after the second cup of java, maybe) that inspiration will kick in and things are humming along nicely, but even if they aren’t, it’s tushy meets chair at that wee early time. I have this theory that we always make time to do the things we love to do (TV, Facebook, outings with friends) even when time is short. What do you think, friends? What passion do you have that you make time for regardless of the craziness in your weekly schedule? Do tell.

Do you know your treasure movies?

Dana Mentink here, with thoughts of treasure on my mind. This could be because I’ve just finished up the first book in a three book treasure seeker series for Harlequin. It got me to thinking about all the wonderful movies that have focused on the desire to find treasure. I thought it would be fun to wrestle up a little quiz. Here is a list of movies about treasure. Can you name the prize being sought after in each flick? Got your thinking caps on? Okay. Here goes.

Romancing the Stone
National Treasure
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Goonies
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear
Paint Your Wagon
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Are we getting a little soft?

Did you ever get the feeling that we’re getting a little lazy as a society? Hi, all. Dana Mentink here. I recently thumbed through a catalogue and two products caught my eye. The first is a little device that stirs your pot for you with these magical little feet. Handy no? We all know how exhausting stirring that pot of marinara can be. The other item is a nifty underwear type garment which heats up so you can give your buns a sauna treatment without leaving your home. No joke. Apparently these Sauna Pants will induce sweating and hence, weight loss, around those pesky problem areas.

Perhaps these items struck me particularly, because I’ve been researching the California gold rush era. People risked illness, accident and all manner of catastrophe getting to the gold fields via perilous routes through Panama, around Cape Horn or via treacherous overland trails. Many arrived to find horrendous living conditions in mining camps, discrimination, back breaking labor and lawlessness before they found so much as a flake of gold. A hard life, with no guarantee of survival, let alone profit. These pioneers stirred their own pots and lost weight the old fashioned way. I’m going to remember these rugged ancestors next time I spill my latte or complain that my computer is too slow. Just put on your big girl sauna pants and deal with it, Dana!

The Hunt For Treasure

I love stories like this! I’m writing a three book series about a treasure seekers agency so this kind of story trips my trigger.
One man’s dusty old vase, is another man’s wildest dream come true. A brother and sister, cleaning out their uncle’s London bungalow after his death, came across a yellow and blue vase which they stashed precariously on a bookshelf during the packing. When they finally took it to a London auction house they were dumbfounded to learn it was a priceless Chinese vase made for the Qianlong Emperor. They were further floored when the thing fetched a cool 69 million dollars at Bainbridges auction house.

What kind of treasure would you like to discover?

Confessions of a rule breaker!

Howdy, all. Dana Mentink here.Sorry I'm late, but Blogger was down for a while. I’m humbly blogging about a new fact I learned today. Did you know that it’s against the rules to use a Facebook page to host a contest? Am I the only one that didn’t know that? Frankly, I’m surprised. Even ‘author pages’ are not permitted to host contests or request participation in contests through FB. That means you can’t have people ‘Like’ a page as a way of entering a contest or promotion. Wowzers. I’ve been breaking rules all over the place! So what can you do? Apparently there’s this thingy called a canvas page that one can use instead. This, of course, is more technical info than I can absorb.

I am, by nature, a rule follower, and I am, by circumstance, half way through a monthly contest, hosted on FB. Acck! Criminal! Sinner! RULE BREAKER! How to correct this problem? Not sure. Redirect folks to finish out the contest on my website? But that would mean posting the details to the FB people. It’s also against the rules to alert friends via FB that they won the contest. Oh gee! Now what? Does any savvy reader/author out there have a solution to this? I love hosting contests, especially the kind I’ve been trying lately where there’s a different question every few days and folks can tell a bit about their lives. So what to do, what to do? Any ideas, gentle bloggers? Are you going to miss those Facebook contests?

Here’s a link to the official FB rules if you want to see for yourself.
https://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

Pardon me, I've got to take this call

Howdy, all. Dana Mentink here and I…hang on. I’ve got a call coming in. Back in a flash.

Have you noticed the world has gone crazy over cell phones? I was in the grocery store today and a woman was firing ANGRY words into her cell phone loud enough for us all in the bread department to hear. One aisle over it was a gal reconnecting with a friend from the past. (They’re going to try to get together on Wednesday which is the friend’s only day off during the week.) Across the meat counter I was privy to a conversation between a lady and the woman who would be babysitting for her later in the day and the man in the pasta aisle? I wish him good luck on the rice dish he’s going to attempt tonight. It struck me that I was immersed in the worlds of four different people who I have never even been introduced to. Interesting, how this age of sharing has blurred the lines between our public and private personas.

Wouldn’t a snippet of a private conversation that wasn’t so private make for an interesting suspense story? Here’s the first line. Can you add the next one?

“Doesn’t matter,” the man spat into the phone, “I know what you did and I’m not going away. You’ll never be free of me.”

Print vs. epubbing, what's an author to do?

Oh ‘tis a tough time to be in the book business, no? I passed by our poor sad Border’s store the other day. The shelves are nearly bare and now they’re even selling the fixtures. How sad to see bookcases and overhead lighting being carted off. I am conflicted about this since just this month I published my first e-book (a personal effort, not through a publisher.) Was I disloyal to the print market? Have I contributed to the fall of the written word? I do not own an ebook reader but I have felt the shift more and more from readers who tell me they’ve downloaded the Kindle version of my suspense books. I’ve also encountered more and more articles about how publishers are easing away from print books due to the high cost of distributing and keeping them on store shelves.

Are print books vanishing? Personally, I don’t think so, but I do feel that ebooks are taking a more important place in the publishing world. Good or bad? I don’t know, but I do know that the ebook market gives me freedom as an author. The book I epubbed was an inspy romantic comedy, outside my “brand” as a suspense writer, but a book that I believe in and enjoyed writing tremendously. Epubbing put the power of the publisher in my hands and I could produce the book that I desired, without restrictions or comments like “the market for rom coms is very limited in CBA.” What is the down side? No one buys the book and I’m out the bit of money I spent to have it formatted. The upside? I became Dana Mentink, publisher, with total control over my book.

When I started in this business, experts told me epubbing was bad. If anyone can publish a book electronically, what are the quality controls? What’s to say the book isn’t poorly written? Unedited? A waste of money? There are no guarantees, but then again, it costs a fraction of the price of a hardcover so the risk is minimal. You don’t like the ebook, you don’t buy anything else (epubbed or print version) from that author. That being said, I enjoy nothing more than the feel of a print book in my hands. I’m torn between two worlds. How about you? What are your thoughts on epubbing vs. print books?

What's the point?

I really enjoy teaching writing techniques to kids. Yesterday’s discussion started out with the question, “What's the point of writing anyway? What does writing accomplish?” The consensus was, it accomplished many different purposes but one of the most powerful results of narrative writing is the potential to move the reader. The more you move that reader, the better the writing is. Make them laugh, cry, think, get angry, get curious, ignite their imaginations. The bigger the emotion, the better the book. I challenged myself to come up with a list of the books that have moved me the most and here they are. Please add to the list and we’ll see what kind of powerful books we’ve read collectively.
-Mrs. Mike, exceptional because it takes the reader through a range of emotions from happy to horrified.

-Rebecca, created in me a sense of anxiety that lasted until the last page.

-The Five People You Meet In Heaven , powerful and moving

-Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, infuriating and thought provoking

-Frankenstein’s Monster, oooooh, alternately revolted and engrossed me.

-Right Ho, Jeeves, laughter pure and simple, guaranteed

Turbulence Interview

Today we're welcoming Maddie Lambert, the heroine of Turbulence, a February LIS novel by Dana Mentink. Wow, you've just had quite an adventure.


1. Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be in the midst of such suspense. I was boarding a flight to deliver a Berlin Heart, an experimental artificial device, to my father who was injured in the same crash that killed my nieces. The doctor who treated the girls was my fiancé, Paul Ford whom my father and I blamed for letting my nieces die.

2. So, during the book you encountered Paul Ford again. Tell us a bit about him/her. I was completely in shock to discover Paul on board the plane. I believed at one time that Paul was my soul mate. Until the day of the accident I thought he was the best trauma doctor in the world. Then things fell apart, too much grief,too much blame, and we broke up. After surviving the plane crash and fighting for survival against a man who wanted us dead, I let go the anger I’ve been carrying around and Paul came to terms with his guilt. We found our way back to each other with the Lord’s help.

3. What strengths/skills do you have? What is your greatest weakness? I’m proud and stubborn which is both a strength and weakness. I’m compassionate, especially about children, and ferociously devoted to my father and sister.

4. What scares you? Losing my father or sister.
5. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would become more humble.
6. Where are you in your faith at the start of your story? Enraged at God for taking my nieces.

7. Where are you in your faith at the end of the story? Accepting of the loss and able to trust God that he uses all things for the good.

8. You've got a scripture at the beginning of the story. Tell us why this scripture is significant. The scripture is Proverbs 3:3-4. It talks about how we need to keep God’s kindness and truth close to us always, in spite of the traumas and tragedies we experience.

9. If you could be a dessert what would you be and why?
I would be fresh fruit, wholesome, refreshing and a little tangy too.

Thank you Dana for sharing Maddie with us today. Sound like an exciting read!
For a chance to be blessed with one of Dana's book's leave a comment and your email address for her to contact you.

Dana Mentink lives in California where the weather is golden and the cheese is divine. Her family includes two girls (affectionately nicknamed Yogi and Boo Boo.) Papa Bear works for the fire department and he met Dana doing a dinner theater production of The Velveteen Rabbit. Ironically, their parts were husband and wife.
Dana is a 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year finalist for romantic suspense and an award winner in the Pacific Northwest Writers Literary Contest. Her October release, Betrayal in the Badlands, has been nominated for a 2010 Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award.
She spent her college years competing in speech and debate tournaments all around the country. Besides writing, she busies herself teaching Sunday school and working in second/third grade combination class. Mostly, she loves to be home with her family, a dog with social anxiety problems, a chubby box turtle and a quirky parakeet.
Dana loves to hear from her readers via her website (www.danamentink.com) or her Facebook reader page

Watch out for those nasty cliches!

Hi, all. Dana Mentink here. I was perusing a Tweet from Harlequin Editor Emily Rodmell (who happens to me my editor!) about cliches that she sees often in suspense novels. Her first one was the vague threatening note ordering someone to back off from some unnamed threat. Must quickly delete that threatening note on the porch scene from my work in progress. Ha! It made me start thinking about other suspense cliches, things that tend to crop up in spite of our best efforts. Here's a quick list.

1. The aforementioned threatening note.

2. A similar threatening phonecall. No name given, just a menacing warning via the phone line. Or maybe even a call where no one speaks at all, just that nice menacing breathing and such.

3. The lady who goes into that dark basement by herself. Oy! I see this one in movies from time to time. Scary dark house? Killer on the loose? Is a normal person going into that basement? No way.

4. I know I'm going to get into trouble about this one because I'm guilty as charged, but writing the same type of hero. He's a....choose your role...Texas Ranger, Navy Seal, homicide detective, Marine, pararescueman...etc. etc. Oh I know! Who doesn't love to read about a macho, take charge kind of hero, but perhaps it would be a nice change of pace to insert a regular job in there? Of course he would be a remarkable character, but couldn't he have a regular Joe job? Say a nice accountant thrust into horrific circumstances that test his inner strength? Maybe that just doesn't get our romance juice flowing, but I've read many excellent suspense novels where the protag is just a regular guy and it's very compelling stuff.

Hmmm. What do you think? Any cliches in suspense fiction that bug you?

What do you want more (or less of) in Christian fiction? Readers weigh in!

Hello, all. Dana Mentink here. I have been following a discussion thread on Amazon over the past few months. The topic is Christian fiction and as I writer of that very thing, I found the answers interesting when the question came up about what readers wanted more (or less of) in their inspy fiction. I've culled a few comments for this blog.

More of the male point of view.

More Hispanic, Latin, Native American protagonists.

More exotic locales.

Romances featuring older (45+) couples. (This came up a lot.)

More deeply flawed characters.

Better writing. (Ouch!) Commenters suggested that Christian fiction can be dull, preachy, with stiff and predictable prose.

More spiritually mature characters. There should be some people to act as guides in this area. Not all characters need to be new to the faith.

Well what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Want to add some more recommendations?

Christmas Eve traditions

Hello, all. Dana Mentink here, looking forward to some lovely holiday traditions on this Christmas Eve day. I just love this day, mostly because of the sweet family service at church. My youngest will be doing a reading and lighting the advent candle so I'll probably cry. Just being there, singing together, worshipping together warms me in my soul. Before we leave for church, my husband concocts his famous herb pizza dough and the kiddos each make their own personal pizza. In the fridge it goes and after church, into the oven! Christmas Eve pizza for everyone! There's a Christmas movie to be watched, a bible reading to be enjoyed and the girls open their present to each other. So much fun and joy in one twenty four hour period! What special things to you enjoy on Christmas Eve?

name that christmas movie!

Ah December! Dana Mentink here and I just love this month. Twinkly lights, yummy treats, friends and family. So sweet! Let’s test your Christmas savvy shall we? Here are some quotes from famous Christmas movies. See how many you recognize. Feel free to add some of your own for us to guess!

1. His wealth is quite useless to him, really. He doesn’t do any good with it; he doesn’t even make himself comfortable with it.

2. We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.

3. Strange isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?

4. Didn’t I ever tell you about bumbles? Bumbles bounce.

Got fears?

Dana Mentink here, thinking about fear today. We just made it through a scary month, no? I mean aside from the fact that our property taxes are due, this Halloween business can be downright frightening. Seeing five hundred plus elementary schoolers hopped up on sugar and wearing costumes is enough to scare even the most stalwart. It got me thinking about fear and how writing can be the perfect way to get up close and personal with what scares us (without that nasty reality ruining the fun.) So here are my top three fears to date.

#1) Losing a loved one. Oooooh! I hate that one. Since I’ve had children, I now understand the wise person who said it’s like having your heart walking around outside your body. I fear that something will happen to them or Papa Bear or my darling parents or siblings. Imagine if I lost one of my beloved sisters? I spent some time imagining that, and I wrote a book about a gal who does. Talk about getting out all that emotion on the page!

#2) Okay, so I’m a teensy bit scared of the dark. Bad things happen in the dark, you know. So why not face that fear head on by crashing a plane into a darkening wilderness and the only way to survive is to hide in the glacial tunnels bored into a mountain? Uh huh. I imagined that too and to add to the drama, my poor heroine was also grieving over the loss of her twin nieces. Acck! Double whammy!

#3) Birds. I know, I know. It’s silly to be scared of birds, but there’s something about those beady eyes and razor sharp beaks that just gives me goosebumps (if you’ll excuse the expression.) Of course, being a writer, I can deal with those fears perfectly, by creating a heroine who is surrounded by a squadron of rescued sea birds. As a matter of fact, I wrote an entire mystery series with Ruth and her gaggle of naughty birds.
Isn’t being a writer awesome? I can face my fears without ruffling my feathers in the least. What about you? Got any fears that find their way on the page?

Betrayal in the Badlands Interview

Today we're welcoming Isabel Ling, the heroine of Betrayal in the Badlands, by Dana Mentink, available in October.
Wow, you've just had quite an adventure.


1. Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be in the midst of such suspense. I had a rocky childhood and rather than face my past I ran, leaving my sister behind. I’d just started to try to repair my relationship with her when she died under mysterious circumstances. I returned to her horse ranch in South Dakota to settle her affairs only I got much more than I bargained on.

2. So, during the book you met Logan Price. Tell us a bit about him. What was your first impression? When did you know it was love? Logan is a pararescueman who was injured during his last deployment. When we first met, I dismissed him as alternately aloof and bossy. Over time I learned that he’s had just as many obstacles to overcome in his life as I have. I fell for Logan when I realized he really did want the best for me, in my faith, in my life and in my future.

3. What strengths/skills do you have? What is your greatest weakness? I’m a quiet person by nature but I am determined to catch my sister’s killer. I know that God is bigger than anything obstacle I can face in this world and I know He’ll sustain me.

4. What scares you? Loving someone and losing them.

5. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would have been more courageous and stayed by my sister’s side.

6. Where are you in your faith at the start of your story? I’m still stuck in the past with the consequences of my bad choices. I’ve asked God for forgiveness but I’m not fully trusting that He’s forgiven me.

7. Where are you in your faith at the end of the story? Feeling the incomparable joy that comes from loving and trusting the Lord.

8. You've got a scripture at the beginning of the story. Tell us why this scripture is significant.
Psalms 56:8 says, Thou hast taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Thy bottle; Are they not in Thy book?

God knows where I’ve wandered and has counted ever bitter tear I’ve shed.
He doesn’t keep us from the pain, but he stays with us through every moment along the way.


9. If you could be a dessert what would you be and why?
I’d be a dark chocolate square, sweet with an edge of bitterness that only makes the flavor more intense.

Thank you Dana for sharing Isabel with us. What an exciting story!!

Dana Mentink's Personal Highlights from the ACFW Conference

Howdy, all. Dana Mentink here. I just flew back from the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference in Indiana and boy are my arms tired! Ha! Here are my top three conference moments in reverse order.

#3. Football
Yep, football. I’m not much of a sports fan but I enjoyed being steeped in the Indiana Colts culture. These folks are serious fans, let me tell you. I’m from California. We love our 49ers and all, but you’d never see an entire city of people here wearing niner jerseys. I enjoyed being surrounded by SERIOUS Colts fans at the local P.F. Changs and I really enjoyed peeked from my sixteenth story hotel room window and seeing the entire city in their blue jerseys making their way to the football stadium. It was so neat to see such pride (and I was happy those Colts won!)

#2 Michael Hague’s Six Step Plot Structure class.
Mr. Hague was not only incredibly knowledgeable about how to put together an amazing story for the big screen or novel, but he was also very entertaining. I think I’ll always have his turning points and stages stuck in my head when I watch a movie and I’ve already put his framework to use in my current WIP. One of the best classes I’ve been too.

#1. Cindy, in the prayer room.
This is my fourth ACFW conference and I’ve never been in the prayer room. This time, a family crisis brought me to the door where I met the amazing Cindy W. She was truly God’s hands and heart for me and I will never forget her kindness and spiritual support.

Did you go to Indiana this year or have you attended ACFW in the past? What were the highpoints?

The Day We Really DID Find that Body!

Dana Mentink, reporting in. I believe I have been writing mystery and suspense for too long. I find myself thinking things like…that would be a great place to find a body! Or, I wonder what it would feel like to be lost in the Antarctic? While I was on vacation, what do you know? We DID actually find a body. See attached photo.
Bodies everywhere? Danger at every turn? These are the perils of living in an imaginary world a lot of the time. But there are advantages too. I am absolutely sure that the bad guys are going to be punished at the end of my novels. Unlike real life, justice is served! I am equally as certain that someone will find a lasting love, no dogs will be killed and most of the good folks will survive. Pretty nifty, huh? Creating my own world is a difficult job, but it’s got some perks too. Must go now and save my heroine from a ruthless killer. Ta!

The Swan Song of Summer

Ah the swan song of summer! Dana Mentink here, counting down the days until kids (and teachers) go back to the classroom. I’ve been perusing my summer reading materials and wondering if it is possible to tell a lot about a person by their reading tastes. After contemplating my list, I’ve decided that I’m the bee mentality, buzzing along to the nearest pretty flower without much rhyme or reason to my choices. I did stick with one author, the marvelous Janette Oke for a while, but most of my choices weren’t even in the same genre. How about you? Did you read anything this summer that was a bit out of the norm for you? Something new that surprised you? Do share.

Some of my summer list:
Love Comes Softly (prairie romance)
Love’s Enduring Promise (prairie romance)
Skullduggery (mystery)
Fit to Be Tied (inspy romance)
The Teen Whisperer (advice)
The Virginian (THE original western)
Erma Bombeck (humor)

A Snowball's Chance...

Dana Mentink, here. Guess what came in the mail this week? A SNOWBALL! Odd, in California to get such a thing, especially in April, but I digress. It’s an amazing speaker called the Blue Snowball, manufactured by Blue Microphones. Why would a techno idiot such as myself even consider buying the thing? Because I have discovered the beauty of podcasting, my friends. That’s a nifty way you can record stories or music, translate it to an MP3 format, and post it for people to download. I never thought I’d even attempt it, but I have found podcasting to be an absolute joy. Why? Because I can be a storyteller in the truest form. Not limited to mere words, I can show with my voice the feeling behind the words. In the podcast I’m working on now, my main character Martina can sound just as frantic and hunted as I intended. And Joe, the Yavapai hero? Hunky and calm, as is the nature of this vegetarian veterinarian. And then there’s Lucille, a leathery old gal who rides a moped and carries pockets full of meat around. (Did I mention the podcast allows one to mix a little humor in with the suspense? ) Podcasting is truly liberating for a person previously confined to mere words!
My snowball apparently has uses for the musically minded too, so if I decide to take up the electric guitar and start a band called er, Flaky Dana, perhaps, I’m all set. What are the odds of that happening do you suppose? Yep. A snowball’s chance, I’d say!

The Invasion of the Pod people

I’ve become one of the pod people. Dana Mentink here and yes, the truth is far stranger than fiction. I, the woman who can’t figure out the t.v. remote and remains ignorant about the function of various buttons on her cell phone, has managed to record a podcast! This is worthy of note because it shows you just how little one needs to know to dive into the cyber world. Ten years ago, when I started writing professionally, I naively thought the writing biz was accomplished simply with the aid of a word processor and maybe a pencil or two. Ha! The name of the game now is social networking, blogging, webcasting, podcasting, vodcasting and plaidcasting. (I just threw that last one in there to see if you were paying attention. No one has invented plaidcasting that I am aware of.) You’ve got to have friends and fans and create a frenzy of ripples in the vast cyber sea if you’re going to make a go of it. I find it frightening that someone as technologically challenged as I am can actually be responsible for maintaining a website and making recordings that will be zapped out into the world. What if I do something wrong and accidently launch some nuclear weapons or crash the national banking system or something? You laugh, but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You saw War Games, didn’t you? I should mention that one year when I climbed up to plug the angel on the top of our Christmas tree I plunged the whole house into darkness. No joke. Me and technology get along like Simon and Garfunkel.
So what’s the podcast about? It’s the recording of a novel I wrote about a woman who lives out in the middle of a desert town called Ferocious, a place where there’s little cell phone reception and the locals would laugh you out of the place if you talked about podcasts. Hmmm. A place where people look at the sunset instead of blogging about it? A place where people network face to face instead of screen to screen? Hmmmmm.