I would like to welcome Chris Almeida and Cecilia Aubrey to my blog, as they tell us a bit about how they write, and about their latest book, Countermeasure. Also, don't forget to comment for a chance to win a $10 gift card AND fill out the Google doc on the bottom for a chance at the GRAND PRIZE: Signed copies (by both authors) of Countermeasure and To Russia with Love plus author swag!
We Go With Our Gut
In our interaction with other authors,
we have heard them discussing the writing of love scenes and how some
think it the hardest part to write. Oddly enough, the love scenes and
romance aspects of our stories are the easiest to both of us. We are
fairly certain that this comes from our background as role players
where you actually wear the skin of the characters you are portraying
and play fairly erotic scenes often. In that case, practice makes
perfect. The more we played erotic love scenes, the easier it became
to write them for the novels and shorts.
What we find the hardest are the
intense fight scenes in our stories. These have to be precise, the
movements fluid, the punches accurate. We have to study physiology of
the human body, progression of debilitation due to certain injuries,
evolution of bruising and even decomposition. When you get it wrong,
readers question it. Yet, the hot market out there is paranormal
romance where characters have super strength and can do things humans
can’t. We write contemporary romance where humans are…humans.
They fail; they succeed by sheer power of desperation. Fight scenes
have to match the “reality” of the story. You can’t have a
human in a contemporary story fighting with super-hero strength. In
real life situations, in a fight, both parties are scuffed up.
In COUNTERMEASURE, one of the most
thrilling scenes is a fight scene that took us a long time to polish.
Cassandra James did work the field as a CIA operative but not as a
Super Spy. Trevor is a geek (granted hot geek) Data Analyst. They are
not kick ass paranormal beings with super hero strength. They are
human and non-combative for the most part. Granted, Cassandra has
been trained by her father, a Navy Seal and strict military man, and
by the CIA at the Farm, but there is a big difference in how they
react to situations compared to paranormal characters would.
When another author critiqued our first
fight scene, she shredded it. The main complaint was related to the
fact that our hero didn’t look like a hero because he was not
winning the fight at all times, kicking ass and coming out unscathed.
At first we were chest fallen but then we studied what she said, we
read and we researched. We revisited our fight scenes with a
different perspective and in the end, we were proud of the final
polished scenes.
Trevor and Cassandra fought as they
knew how, with rage, determination, and a little help from Trev’s
laptop, Jack. No help from the Gods or any extra-terrestrial ability,
just plain and simple wit and will to overcome adversities.
Most rewarding of all is to hear
comments from readers on how the scenes feel real, how they read them
at the edge of their seats, how they enjoy each and every move as if
they are watching a movie play in front of them. Although we didn’t
follow the author’s advice to make our hero a super hero, we are
still grateful for the advice given and for the drive to push the
envelope, tighten the scene even more.
To all writers beginning this amazing
journey, go with your gut. Do not try to make your characters
something they are not. If Trevor had gone from desk jockey to Chuck
Norris with a change of a scene, he would no longer have been
himself. Take criticism, turn it around to your advantage, and run
with it.
To readers, all we can say is thank you
for the amazing feedback and comments on our much worked on fight
scenes. We hope you enjoy them as much as our hot love ones.
Cheers,
Cecilia
Blurb
 |
| Amazon |
In the first novel of the
COUNTERMEASURE SERIES, Trevor Bauer is haunted by the mystery
surrounding his parents' disappearance. His dreams for his own life
have been put on hold. While searching for clues about them, he
crosses paths with Cassandra James, a tough ex-CIA agent who derails
every one of his best laid plans to avoid a relationship until he can
find the closure he desperately seeks.
Suspicious and determined never to fall
into the love trap, security specialist Cassandra James takes on a
chase to recover files stolen right out from under her nose. In an
effort to prove to her father--also her boss--that she is a capable
woman, she follows the digital trail--a trail that leads her directly
into the arms of Trevor Bauer, an NSA analyst who appears to have
more secrets than she has scars...
When he accepts her request for help in
recovering the files she's hunting, they embark on an adventure that
takes them across the ocean and into a world of intrigue and
violence. As things between them begin to heat up, Trevor realizes
that, if he is ever to win Cassandra's heart and the future he
craves, he has no choice but to reveal all his secrets.
~*~*~*~*~*~
~*~*~*~*~*~
PART 4 of
the COUNTERMEASURE Excerpt
(Excerpts 1-3, and 5 can be found here:
Simply Ali - Part 1 Mrs. Condit - Part 2 Cocktails and Books - Part 3 Harlie's Books - Part 5 )
A smile
lit his face and he laughed. “Sorry. Old habits from home.” When
she frowned he added, “Ireland. Irish. Born and raised.”
“Ah,
that would explain the lilt.”
“Yeah,
I can mask it well, though. Most times I speak good American.”
“How’s
that working for you? It didn’t do you any good a few minutes ago.
I seem to recall the word shite.”
“You
caught me by surprise,” he replied with a wicked grin.
His grin
pulled at her heart, which surprised her. She had never had this
reaction to someone before.
“Good
to know. So what the hell did you call Nate? It was Irish, right?”
With a
snort, Trevor responded, “A amadáin? It means you fool, but it’s
really a polite Irish way of calling someone an asshole. Since there
are no assholes in Ireland, we don’t really have a word for them,
so that’s what we say.”
His
expression was so serious, Cassandra couldn’t help but burst out
laughing. “I’ll have to remember that one. I know a few back
home.”
“A few
assholes or Irishmen?”
“Definitely
assholes,” she laughed. Sliding off the table, she walked back to
her chair and sat. Laughter aside, it was time to get back to the
business at hand. “Help me, here. I’m trying to understand what
an NSA employee would be doing hacking a system from their own work
computer.”
Her
laughter was like a warm blanket wrapped around his heart and he had
an overwhelming urge to make her laugh more. But the laughter faded
and the glimmer of determination to get to the bottom of why he’d
been on the server returned to her eyes.
His
stomach burned from the stress of the confrontation; she would be
giving him an ulcer if she didn’t stop asking questions soon. The
truth about the connection between the NSA and the formula was more
than an acceptable answer to her questions. He would just keep his
personal reasons for the intrusion to himself. That should give her
enough to cool her heels. He moved off the table and took the chair
she had originally indicated at the start of the meeting.
“Okay, Ms. James,” he
sighed. “The reason I infiltrated the server was to verify
information associated with a flagged conversation we picked up. My
co-worker George, the one you saw me talking to when you arrived,
received the thread originally. Based on my check, we were able to
remove the flag that same day.”
“What do you mean by
‘flagged’?”
Trevor
considered the ramifications of sharing classified information with
her. Since he was fairly certain she was the same Cassandra mentioned
in the tagged conversation, he didn’t see anything wrong with
exposing that information to her.
“Our
group investigates conversations that Echelon has flagged as
suspicious based on a list of priority keywords. Almost two weeks
ago, a phone conversation was flagged. Some dumbass picked the wrong
choice of words to describe how a person by the name of Cassandra had
‘bombed’ the security around the formula—the same formula
you’re asking me about right now.”
Cassandra’s
pulse pounded in her ears. She now knew why he had been so surprised
to hear her name. He had heard it before, had known who she was when
she had introduced herself. She was mortified. She was fairly certain
Jeff had been the dumbass gloating about her failure.
ABOUT THE
AUTHORS
CHRIS
ALMEIDA and CECILIA AUBREY
Chris
Almeida began writing children’s stories at a very young age. While
Cecilia Aubrey has dabbled in writing on and off over the years. It
was in 2010, when Chris and Cecilia met and began role-playing online
as a hobby, that writing placed itself front and center—this time,
writing storylines for the role-playing group.
The ideas
and plots created for the game awoke their inner writers, and, a few
months later, together they began writing romantic erotica. Together,
they write suspense-driven erotic romance with sexy, technologically
inclined men and woman, filled with intrigue and enough twists and
turns to make a rollercoaster seem tame.
Chris and
Cecilia have several published short stories to their credit and
their first novel, COUNTERMEASURE, was published in January 2012.
They are currently working on the second and third books in the
COUNTERMEASURE series. Through all the chaos and laughter, they still
hold true to their roots, bringing their favorite role-play
characters and stories to life.
You can
find out more about them on their author and series websites:
The fighting scenes sound great! Now I'm really looking forward to read them :)
ReplyDeleteby.evie at yahoo dot com dot br
Those are tough. We hope you enjoy them. Obrigado por deixar uma mensagem ;)
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post by Cecilia. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteGod lord Mrs. Condit, you should have been a fly on the wall for the conversations during the writing and line editing between Chris and I on those scenes. There is one we wrote for book 2 that literally took us 3 days to hash out. I am happy to report that it ended up being a very good one and endeared one of our newest characters to our beta readers. ;)
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Very true - I hate when I read a book about regular everyday folk and then there is a fight scene or a scene that requires a lot of physical behavior and suddenly the characters are werewolf strong and vampire fast and no one gets hurt- snort- totally takes me out of the book and ask what the author was thinking or not thinking...lol
ReplyDeleteMaria - I believe the issue here is that the paranormal market is so prevalent right now that some just forget what the real world is like out there.
ReplyDeleteWe enjoy creating characters who feel like someone you could meet anytime you are at the grocery store, at the library or bank. We had a reader say that she could imagine meeting our characters because they felt real. In a way, they are. Thank you for your comment :)
I have to agree with you on the fight scenes. Our main characters seem to take turns being knocked out, scraped up or just plain shot at. They get patched up and heal up. Of course, they are former military Special Forces and CIA Special Ops team. They should be able to take licks as well as given them out.
ReplyDeleteYep. Also, research at this point is quite important. We contacted an emergency room doctor and fellow author with descriptions of injuries and the circumstances surrounding it, as well as weapon used, etc in order to confirm the feasibility of survival and after care for such injuries in order to be as accurate as possible. We write fiction and in that sense we can use creative license for some aspects of the story but again, we are dealing with real people, not immortal beings. Although there are miraculous cases of people who have survived gun shot wounds to the head or heart, the odds of that are very small. We stick with the realistic scenarios.
ReplyDeleteOften when I am lost in a story it's because it's so good and the scenes become real to me. It does feel like I'm at a movie, only instead of watching it I'm a participant. That's an awesome feel.
ReplyDeleteCambonified(at)yahoo(dot)com
That's how the scenes present themselves in our minds. Like scenes in a movie. The opening scene of Countermeasure came to me in a dream. Fully formed.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice seeing it in words :)
Some say a good story is when you live in the skin of the characters you are writing or reading. As a reader, I too love that feeling Na. As a writers we aspire to evoke that in readers.
ReplyDeleteVery nice post and excerpt.
ReplyDeletebn100candg(at)hotmail(dot)com