Tag Archives: The Curse She Wore

Cultivate New Readers by Donating Your Books to Worthy Causes

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

I accumulate books and they breed on their own when the lights are out. Organizer guru, Marie Kondo, would not approve. During my last move, I downsized. Maintaining a personal library is not practical. With all the guests that come to visit on a regular basis, it is more fun to have an extra bedroom.

That got me thinking about what I could do with the good books I have already read. I have a special collection of signed books I will never donate or share (because sharing can be a one-way trip). These are books I treasure. (They are often written by author friends. Super special.)

For a number of years, before I sold and published, I collected debut books in hardback print. Those books served as inspiration for me that my dream to become a published author could happen. But no matter how much I wanted to keep all the books I’ve read, I also see good reason to donate them to other avid readers. Sharing the joy of reading is a special bond we readers share.

Off the top, there are many great places to donate books to appreciative organizations. Your kids’ school, the local library, homeless shelters, Goodwill, nursing homes (especially if you have audio books or large print reading material). My last donation was to a home for pregnant teen girls where I dropped off young adult novels, my books and other YA author friends’ stories.

Something that I’ve wanted to start in my neighborhood is a Little Free Library. I first saw these when I lived in Wisconsin many years ago, but they are a great way to develop a sense of community and support literacy. Many cities and states have these programs and the little libraries can be constructed in very clever ways. Here is a cute one in Arizona. People leave books for free, readers can take a book and leave one when they are done, for someone else to enjoy. Everything is on the honor system. I love this idea. Here is a LINK on how you can start your own Little Free Library.

Below are some book donation ideas that you might not have thought of before:

1.) Donate Books to Deployed Soldiers – An organization like OPERATION GRATITUDE offers many ways to donate books and more. They serve military families, veterans, first-responders, deployed soldiers, wounded heroes and caregivers, & recruit graduates. Help them fill care packages with your book donations.

OPERATION PAPERBACK takes book donations for troops. (Make a money donation or contribute books.) Operation Paperback started in 1999 and has shipped 2.9 million books to over 30 locations overseas. They have 19,000+ volunteers in all 50 states, who partner with a network of shippers and send 15,000+ books per month.

There might also be local groups where you live that send books to deployed military. Tampa Bay has Books for Troops.

A special program – the USO’s United Through Reading program, helps deployed soldiers read bedtime stories to their kids.

NOTE: Many of these programs have criteria for book donations and some have suggestions for genre and/or specific book titles they are requesting. Be sure to read donation guidelines before you send books.

2.) Think Dogs & Kids – This is a great & creative idea that merges rescue animals and literacy. Some animal shelters are matching up canines, kids and books in an innovative way. At the Humane Society of Missouri, the Shelter Buddies Reading Program gets kids ages 6 to 15 to read to shelter dogs, as a way of getting the dogs ready for adoption.

Another program, Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D) connects children who have difficulties reading with therapy dogs, under the notion that children will find reading to an animal less intimidating. In Connecticut, you can donate books to support the “Read with Me” program out of Pet Partners, a local dog therapy organization that pairs therapy dogs with struggling readers. Talk about a WIN-WIN.

3.) Local Book Lovers – Do you have a local program that needs books? In Los Angeles, for example, there’s a service called Re-Book It. This is a free service hosted by The Last Bookstore. They offer free pickup throughout Los Angeles county, and your donations could benefit libraries, schools, at-risk children, and hospitals. The Last Bookstore does all the work and your books find a new home.

If you don’t have a great organization like this in your area, you may find other groups that do similar work. For example, a book drive through a local church, library, school, or volunteer organization could be a good resource to relocate your books.

Organizations like Better World Books has drop boxes across the country. Enter your zip code into their site search to see if they have a drop box near you.

This time of year, with the tax season looming, I think about ways to make a difference and charitable donations. I hope this post gives you ideas or inspires you to start something new in your area. Happy 2020!

For Discussion:

1.) Do you have good suggestions for places to donate books?

2.) Share a story about one of your book donations. (This could be for your books or for other authors.)

 

The Curse She Wore by Jordan Dane – Coming Feb 10, 2020.

ON PRESALE at Amazon (in ebook and print)

They had Death in common…

Homeless on the streets of New Orleans, Trinity LeDoux has nothing to lose when she hands a cursed vintage necklace to a wealthy, yet reclusive clairvoyant.

During a rare public appearance, Hayden Quinn is unexpectedly recruited into Trinity’s perilous mission–a journey back through time to the exact moment of death for two very different victims.

Hayden and Trinity, two broken people with nothing but death in common, pursue the dangerous quest to stop a murderer from emulating the grisly works of a notorious serial killer. But trespassing on Fate’s turf comes with a price–one they never see coming.

GOODREADS GIVEAWAY for The Curse She Wore – Enter for a chance to win.

12-Archetypes: A Framework for Creating a Cast of Memorable Characters

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

Wikimedia Commons-Falkue

How do characters come to you? For me, each book can be different. I don’t have a set method, nor do I want to nail my process down. I’ve awakened in the middle of the night with a character speaking to me about his or her story. I leap from bed and rush to the bathroom with pen and paper in hand to jot down notes.

Sometimes from my preliminary research, I can meld 2-3 ideas together and a character might spring from that work. For example, I might realize I need an adventurer hero, a love interest and one of them might need a scientific background or have other special cognitive skills to pull off the plot that’s developing. Those characters come at me slowly and build, where I sometimes throw in fun hobbies or weirdness to keep the plot interesting.

Have you ever gone back into a novel you’ve already written and examined character archetypes?

You can also do this deep dive for themes you generally write about, even if it’s not a conscious awareness you have when you first start your project. I write from a gut level. Too much structure might inhibit my process, but I do find it interesting to take a closer look after I finish writing a book, especially if it sells well and the feedback is good from industry professionals. It’s helpful to dig into a plot I created organically to find threads of themes I love to explore.

Let’s take a closer look at character archetypes. In researching this post, I found a more comprehensive list of 99 Archetypes & Stock Characters that Screen Writers Can Mold that screenwriters might utilize in their craft. Archetypes are broader as a foundation to build on. Experienced editors and industry professionals can hear your book pitch and see the archetypes in their mind’s eye. From years of experience, it helps them see how your project might fit in their line or on a book shelf.

But to simplify this post and give it focus, I’ll narrow these character types down to Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung‘s 12-Archetypes. Listed below, Jung developed his 12-archetypes, as well as their potential goals and what they might fear. Goals and fears can be expanded, but think of this as a springboard to trigger ideas.

TYPE/GOAL/FEAR

1.) Innocent

GOAL – Happiness

FEAR – Punishment

2.) Orphan

GOAL – Belonging

FEAR – Exclusion

3.) Hero

GOAL – Change World

FEAR – Weakness

4.) Caregiver

GOAL – Help Others

FEAR – Selfishness

5.) Explorer

GOAL – Freedom

FEAR – Entrapment

6.) Rebel 

GOAL – Revolution

FEAR – No Power

7.) Lover

GOAL – Connection

FEAR – Isolation

8.) Creator

GOAL – Realize Vision

FEAR – Mediocrity

9.) Jester

GOAL – Levity & Fun

FEAR – Boredom

10.) Sage

GOAL – Knowledge

FEAR – Deception

11.) Magician

GOAL – Alter Reality

FEAR – Unintended Results

12.) Ruler

GOAL – Prosperity

FEAR – Overthrown

I recently sold a series to The Wild Rose Press. Book 1 is called THE CURSE SHE WORE – A Trinity LeDoux novel.

TRINITY – When I looked back at my heroine, Trinity appeared to be a combination of two archetypes, until I gave her a closer look. On the surface, she’s an innocent AND an orphan, but when I examined her from the GOAL and FEAR angles, I saw her clearly as an ORPHAN. No family. She’s homeless and living on the streets of New Orleans. She hasn’t known much happiness and punishment would only make her more stubborn. Her soft underbelly lies in her own thoughts on where she belongs and what she deserves. She keeps her life at a distance from others–her self-imposed exclusion. She thinks she doesn’t need anyone until she meets Hayden, but what she has planned for him, there won’t be anything left to build on. Loyalty can be a double-edged sword.

HAYDEN – My hero Hayden Quinn doesn’t fall neatly into the HERO category. Because of his psychic ability, he’s become a CAREGIVER to a small needy Santeria community in New Orleans. But his gift didn’t help him when he needed it most. He’s drawn to help others, but his ability only reminds him of the worst day of his life.

CROSSED PATHS – As a child of the streets, Trinity exploits Hayden’s guilt and grief to get what she wants. He’s unable to say no because of his guilt. For an author, it’s not easy to walk a line of conflict that I wanted to sustain throughout the first novel in this series. Surprises and unexpected outcomes twist through the plot until the very last page of book 1. The roots of their conflict grow deeper and extend into book 2.

SUMMARY: Whether you use these 12-archetypes to analyze a completed manuscript or consider them when you begin framing a new story, these building blocks can sustain an effective character study and get you thinking. It helped me dive deeper into my characters and this will help me develop the series. Any series needs the stakes to escalate and it all springs from a foundation of knowing your characters well. You have to keep punishing them. Show the reader why your characters deserve star status.

Can you see how you might utilize a list if archetypes to infuse your creative process?

When you consider these basic types, imagine pitting them against one another for sustained conflict. In the case of Trinity and Hayden, she risks putting his life at risk out of her loyalty to a dead friend. Any hope she had for a future is snuffed out by her own decisions.

For him, the very gift that had been a blessing failed him at the worst time of his life. Now his gift might kill him, but he can’t resist protecting Trinity. It’s in his nature.

All Hayden and Trinity have in common is death.

FOR DISCUSSION:

1.) As an exercise, forge conflict between two archetypes of your choosing to create a one-liner plot pitch.

2.) Share your main character archetype from your current or latest WIP. Does the Carl Jung matrix above help you define your character?

***

The Curse She Wore – A Trinity LeDoux Novel

 They had Death in Common                                                 

Trinity LeDoux, a homeless young woman in New Orleans, has nothing to lose when she hands a cursed vintage necklace to unsuspecting Hayden Quinn at one of his rare public appearances—a wealthy yet reclusive clairvoyant she hopes to recruit for a perilous journey. She prays that the jewelry she’d stolen off a body at a funeral will telepathically transport the powerful psychic to the murder scenes of two women at the exact moment of their deaths—even though the killings take place 125 years apart and span two continents.

When the ill-fated necklace connects the brutal crimes in a macabre vision, Hayden becomes a sympathetic believer. After enduring the tragic loss of his beloved wife and child, Hayden is touched by Trinity’s vulnerability and her need for justice in the cruel slaughter of her best friend, the rightful owner of the necklace.

Hayden and Trinity are two broken people who have nothing but death in common when they take on a dangerous quest. They must stop a killer from resurrecting the grisly work of Jack the Ripper by targeting the ancestors of the Ripper’s victims. Trinity will learn the hard way that trespassing on Fate’s turf always has its reckoning.

When Fiction Meets Reality – The Challenges of my Current WIP

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

Falkue at German Wikipedia

I’m 75% finished with my latest novel and I can’t stop dreaming about it. It’s keeping me up. I hope that’s a good thing. I’ve never had this happen before. Have any of you?

My novel is something very far from my comfort zone. For a large section of the story, my characters time travel (in an odd way) to Victorian London where they hunt Jack the Ripper. They have their reasons and the clock is ticking.

Whenever I add paranormal elements to any of my stories, I want the premise to almost seem plausible. You know how most people get scared when sitting around a campfire, telling ghost stories? That’s the visceral feeling I hope readers will get when they come along for a ride to the streets of White Chapel 1888.

I not only had to research the many resources on the Jack the Ripper case and take a view on what I think might’ve happened for the sake of my plot, I also had to research the time period to recreate a setting that will come alive on the page. In 1888, London was not the progressive modern city it is today. This was before proper sanitation, plumbing, and before police investigative methods were improved.

Tenement slum houses held large families of immigrants contained in small rooms rented by the day. Disease ran rampant with poor options for drinking water. Within close proximity to these slums lived wealthier Londoners who attended the opera and dined in fine restaurants. A newspaper called The Star had started in 1888, the year Jack had been born to evil. It had originally provided a voice for the common folk on injustice, but anything on the White Chapel murders turned a profit for the newspaper and became the driving story of the day.

A challenge has been to add enough details for history buffs yet recreate this world for readers who might be more interested in the peril of the characters. There’s always a balance and a consideration for good pacing.

My story is seen through the eyes of a young woman in present day who is desperate to find justice for a murdered friend in New Orleans. She’s obsessed with the Ripper case because she thinks it is related to the death of her friend. She steals a vintage necklace off a body and brings it to a mysterious yet reclusive psychic, only to find that she is correct that the jewelry is linked to her friend’s investigation. When held in his hand, the necklace catapults the psychic to two horrific murders. The vintage piece is the key to locating Jack the Ripper on the night he kills his 5th victim, Mary Kelly. I can’t give too much away, but I hope you’ll see the many moving parts of this story.

In order to recreate time travel, the hunters (led by the psychic) must be willing to suspend their bodies in a near death coma. Similar to how dreams work, a willing mind can share the common existence of a shared dream. My twin sisters often shared the same dreams. For most that would be scary, but it was normal for them. It’s been said that if you dream of your own death, you die in the dream. How many of you believe that is possible? Does it make you think twice before imagining it?

While my characters hunt the Ripper in spirit form, they are invisible to everyone except their one spirit guide (someone from 1888 that they must find in order to remain tethered to their world). As you can imagine, there are challenges to not having a physical body, yet they must be presentable in period clothing to the one guide (their citizen of heaven) who is capable of seeing the traveler.

Another challenge was to create believable dialogue during the time travel segment. What my modern woman hears from the people she meets must sound authentic. That involved a lot of historical research as well. It helped that my narrator was a modern young woman. For most of the historical part of the plot, her voice dominated, but I made sure she overheard the locals to make sure the color would be there.

But things are not what they seem in the netherworld between life and death. Evil and Fate combine to change history in ways my team of hunters will never foresee. Their worst fears are exposed and they must face their worst nightmares. As a writer, it’s my job to make my characters pay for the daring things they do to become a star in their story.

Thinking through all the ramifications of affecting history or interfering with fate–while doing it in a way to create mysterious twists in the plot–has been another fun challenge. Every time I think I know where the story is going, it changes course again, in a good way. I’ve surprised myself in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. The plot had to develop and the characters’ dilemmas had to rise to the top in order for me to see different outcomes and motivations. I’ve added layers to my story that I never would’ve seen coming. That’s a good feeling.

This is the first book in a new Trinity LeDoux series for me. The working title is – The Curse She Wore. Trinity is a 24-year-old wannabe bounty hunter, trying to get her license in New Orleans. At the start of the story she is homeless, but everything changes after my hermit psychic sees something brave yet vulnerable in her.

The first time I visited New Orleans, I sensed the layers of richness to the setting and understood why so many writers find the location completely captivating. I’ve waited to write a story set in New Orleans. This is it. I’m bringing in a Cuban influence, the Santeria faith (used for the concept of an ancestral spirit guide or citizen of heaven), a discreet Voo Doo shop for true believers, and a reclusive psychic from an old wealthy family who lives on an historic plantation. He’s got secrets of his own.

My tag line for this story is – “They had Death in Common.”

For Discussion:
1.) Tell me about the challenges of your current WIP. Anything interesting to research?

2.) Have you ever worked in the details of a real murder into your work of fiction? How did that work for you?

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