Raine Balkera - Romance Author

Hi everyone, and welcome back for Week 26 of the MFRW.org 52-Week Blog Challenge . This week, we're asked to explain (or, in my case, reason away) Why I Write . Well, it's simple, really. I write because I like to write. As a rare human being who has never experienced true love nor had it reciprocated, my desire to find it on my own by writing it into scripts for the make-believe characters coming to life inside my head is the next best thing. Conjuring up two people, a place (be it fictitious or real), and sending them off on an up/down adventure that leads to romance is exciting. It's also complex. While I like to write what pops into my head, and I really like the idea of my actually having a 'voice' with which to shout out, "Hey! It's me, and I'm trying to make it in the world by doing my own thing!" it hasn't panned out... yet. Marketing (grumble) I could say I like to write more than I like to edit or MARKET my stori...

However illusory the ideal may be, it is the one that, more than any other, drives the psyche of the Romantic poet forward. Wordsworth's Ideal Man Welcome back, friends, to Week 19 of the MFRW Author 52-Week Blog Challenge. This week, we're asked to describe The Ideal Romance Hero . I write AND read romance, but that doesn't mean I feel confident or sure about my response, and I needed to give this one some serious thought prior to setting fingers to keyboard. Alpha or Otherwise, Dark or Fair, Young or Old, Rich or Not, a Hero in any Romance novel needs to be a few things, and for me that mainly consists of MY idea of the Perfect Man. But, not entirely. Alpha's can be thrilling in a novel but downright boorish in real life. Next! I've always tended toward dark-haired men but have been known to freak out when spotting someone with blond hair, so... Sad though this might sound (and be in reality), I'd rather my man made good money than none ...

Week 11 - Plot Away... My Writing Process ...and I say PLODDING (not plotting) because it's what I do when I write. I've tried being disciplined and even bought a white board, pretty colored white board markers, the eraser, and lots of colorful sticky notes with the intention of pasting them all around my monitor for referencing. But it never works out that way. My kids take the sticky notes and use them for their own purposes, the white board is somewhere in my writing room (the den), and the markers are still unopened in a wicker basket stuffed with other assorted pens, pencils, and colored markers. Still, there is a method to my madness. IDEAS I'm usually careful about jotting down any/all ideas that pop into my head because most of us probably know the old saying about THAT, right? Still, there are times when I forget to write it down, but eventually the thought will return at some point, so I don't worry too much about forgetting things. RES...