Realms of the Raven - Erotic Romance Author Maura Anderson

Calling a Ride
(c) 2007 by Maura Anderson, all rights reserved.

The roar of a motorcycle engine cut through the stillness of the early morning quiet. Hidden by the deep fog, she crawled behind the small boulder near the park entrance. Lena clutched the talisman to her lips, fingers and face so cold she could no longer feel them. But she continued to whisper the foreign words her mother had taught her as soon as she was old enough to memorize them. The words that would summon a dragon to aid her.

Her mother knew this day would come. The day when her mother’s family would find them and try to kill them. All in the name of purity, in the name of bloodlines. The memory of her mother’s broken body tore at her but she couldn’t cry now. She refused to waste that desperate sacrifice. She would grieve later. She would plan her vengeance later.

The deep throb of the motorcycle engine drew closer, now accompanied by the crunch and clatter of tires on the gravel road. What the hell was a biker doing her at this time of day and in this weather? And where was her dragon.

Goddess, please let this work.

The bike was so near now it had to be in the parking lot where her burnt out car sat. The rider cut the engine and the silence seemed stark in comparison. She closed her eyes and chanted the words, putting every bit of energy she had into the call.

“Would you stop, already?” The deep voice spoke from right beside her. Startled, Lena’s eyes shot open and she tried to scramble away from the tall man who stood glowering over her, helmet in hand.

“Who are you? Why did you sneak up on me?” She forced the words out despite her panic. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

He reached a large, hard hand down and effortlessly drug her to her feet by one arm. He was quite a bit taller than her and looked very solid. Lena rejected the instinct to run, there was no way she’d get more than a few feet away.

Muscles clenched in his angular jaw and his almost teal blue eyes narrowed. With a sigh, he tugged her toward the huge motorcycle he’d parked under the dim parking lot light. “You can call me Shayle and I was sent to answer your summons. My family owes yours and I get to make the debt good.”

Despite her fear, she couldn’t help but admire the thick muscles that flowed under the skintight black leathers he wore. He had dark hair, pulled back from his face and bound with criss-crossed leather ties from the nape of his neck to the top of his glorious ass. The silver tips of the ties bounced against the seat of his pants.

As soon as they reached the bike, he yanked another helmet off the seat clip and shoved it at her. “Here, put this on. We need to get out of here.”

She made no motion to take the helmet. “Umm. My mother swore a dragon would come and transport me away to somewhere safe.”

She motioned at the huge machine, almost ridiculous with the amount of chrome, black leather and studs. “This doesn’t look like a dragon. A hog, maybe.”

A snarl escaped the mysterious Shayle. “It’s not a hog or a dragon. It’s a custom.”

He tried to shove the helmet at her again and she backed up a step. “Can’t you just get a dragon to fly me out of here?”

He seemed shocked for a moment, then his strange eyes almost glowed. His voice had an undertone of anger that made Lena instinctively flinch. “No one mounts a dragon but his children or his mate. And you are neither, human.”

This time she took the helmet he held out to her, careful to not touch the razor sharp claws that had appeared from the tips of his fingers.

So - my apologies - I can’t find the bleeping charger for the camera’s special batteries so today will have to be sans photos. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Anyway…..

Last week I showed everyone the POV Summary post-its up to chapter three and how I got into a situation where the POV Summary didn’t match the Plot Details. Then I rewrote the POV Summaries to better match the Plot Details.

Finish the POV Summary Post-Its
The next step is to continue through the rest of the chapter boxes and write the POV Summary post-its for each scene. I double-check each one to makes sure it agrees with the Plot Details.

I don’t necessarily do this in order. Often I know the scene where a major revelation takes place so I’ll put up the POV Summary for that scene, then I’ll go back and decide what scenes need to take place to carry my story from the prior major plot point.

Evaluate the POV balance
The next thing I do is stand back from the storyboard and unfocus my eyes a little so I don’t get caught up reading the words. I look at the entire storyboard to try to get a basic feel for the balance of different POV’s in the story.

My stories are often a bit weighted toward the heroinne but I try to keep it pretty even. I’ve had a few times where the POV was heavily weighted toward one character or another and that often leads to readers feeling as if they are distanced from the character they don’t hear as much from. They don’t get as much of a chance to know that character from the inside out.

In those cases, I go back through the scenes and look for opportunities to change the POV of a scene.

I mostly write third person, so the rules for first person wouldn’t really apply here, your POV is always one character. In the case of the first person story I plotted out, I instead used two shades of pink and one was external focus, one was internal focus.

Add Reference Notes
I’m very prone to forgetting things like eye color, etc. and because I don’t want to page back through the document to look for the details, I create some Reference post-it notes. I use the lined 4×4 post-its and put these on the storyboard far enough below the last row of the chapters so that they don’t visually interfere but where I can easily see them.

Start Writing
By now I’m ready to start writing this story. The plot is a lot clearer to me and I have a good idea where I’m going. Some people take the post-it notes for the scene they are working on to their computer but I take the whole board and prop it up near the desk.

Modify as You Go
Things still change during the actual writing of the story. At least every two chapters, I sit down and look again at where the story is going and whether I need to make changes to the storyboard. Sometimes I have items appear that are important to the story and I need to show them to the reader at least three times to make them memorable. I typically add little post-it notes for these to places they should appear.

I am careful, however, to not just let myself ditch the storyboard and go off on some tangent on the spur of the moment. If I start to think the storyboard won’t work, I STOP writing and redo the storyboard in whatever new vein is important.

If I make decisions on things that I need to use later (appearance, family relationships,etc), I add those to the Reference notes.

Next week I’ll talk about pitfalls I’ve found and things I’ve tried but this is the meat of the information. It’s really not that complicated and there is no magic formula that works for everyone.