What Evie is Reading
Are you sitting comfortably? Tray tables stowed and seat belts fastened? Because I’m about to take you on a wild ride courtesy of three high-flying books. We’ve got a rock star second-chance Christmas romance, a winning witchy story for spooky season, and a romcom with zero G’s but plenty of O’s. Whether you want to hang out in an Irish castle, make magic on Halloween, or become weightless with a six foot nine hockey star, I’ve got you covered.
On creating characters
When this comes to finding characters for my stories, I usually don’t have a problem. I think about an idea for someone, and then look at what events in their culture or childhood have shaped them the way they are. Then I ask what their wants and needs are at the start of the story and how I can make it difficult for them to achieve what they desire.
What is a Beta Reader?
Beta readers come in lots of different forms, and authors have their own definitions of what makes one, but essentially, a beta reader is someone who reads your work before it is published and offers their opinion. I’ve used beta readers in many ways and have found them absolutely instrumental in my writing process.
On finding stories
I love meeting new people because I want to find out what their stories are, what brought them to this exact moment. I’m the person you don’t want to sit next to on a plane as I want you to lay your life and your soul out for my delectation. The more different your experiences are to mine, the more I want to gobble them up.
Behind the Scenes in Evie Land – January 2021
Despite a lockdown, Joe Wicks, rabbit food and no alcohol I managed to do some amazing things this month! Read the highs and lows of a pretty intense few weeks in the Evie Alexander household!
On writers block
You know your characters, you love them, and then they turn their backs on you and give you the cold shoulder. Suddenly you no longer know what they’re going to say or do. Writer’s block is where you simply don’t know what is coming next in your story or how to get around a problem. So what to do? How can you get over writer’s block?
On why I write romance novels
Why do I write romance novels? Why do I write love stories that make you laugh and leave a smile on your face? Because I reject the reality fed to us by the mainstream media and substitute my own. I used to consume the news many times a day. I would wake up in the morning and check online for what had happened whilst I slept. I would listen on the radio in the car whilst driving, and then watch it later on the television.
What Evie read next
The next top picks from my kindle library are a crazy billionaire romance with a meet cute in a men’s bathroom, a steamy drama set in a Sonoma county winery, and a fake romance novel set in Manchester. The books were either recommended to me by authors, or found by my eternal quest to find writers like me.
On editing
Once I have an idea, and the bit between my teeth, getting words on the page is often easy. They aren’t necessarily the right words or even in the right order, but they are there. Writing too many words is a far better place to be than not writing enough, as cutting your work down creates a better draft. Having to add fluff just to up a word count is rarely going to end well.
What Evie is reading
Here are the current top picks from my kindle library. A gentle British romance set amongst the upper classes, a steamy gangster love story set in East LA, and a ‘enemies to lovers’ novel set in a publishing company in Australia. All three books were fabulous reads, and all were recommended to me by my editor or other authors. I absolutely loved them and hope you do too
