Welcome

Anita Clenney!

Author of

Embrace the Highland Warrior

Anita Clenney, USA Today Bestseller!

Anita Clenney grew up an avid reader, devouring Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books before moving on to grown up mysteries and romance. After working as a secretary, a Realtor, teacher's assistant, booking agent for Aztec Fire Dancers, and a brief stint in a pickle factory (picture Lucy and Ethel--lasted half a day)...she realized she'd missed the fork in the road that led to her destiny. Anita lives in Virginia with her husband and two kids, where she spends her days writing mysteries and paranormal romantic suspense about Secret Warriors, Ancient Evil and Destined Love.

Deep Edit Q & A:  Anita Clenney

1.  What’s your writing process?

Once I have an idea for a story, I do a lot of brainstorming before I begin to write. I’ll mull the story over and make tons of notes. My plots are big with lots of suspense and twists, so the more I can figure out in the beginning, the less I have to change later. I hate it when I get a fantastic idea just as I think I’m finished with the book. And I tend to edit as I go, not deep edits, just simple edits. I just can’t turn off that internal editor.

Pantser? Plotter?

I think I’m somewhere in between, probably leaning more toward plotter now. I don’t do character sheets or outlines, but I have lots and lots of notes. However, I’m not married to my ideas, and the greatest thing for a story is when I get a new idea and run off in a totally different direction. I love twists and turns in my stories, so that gives me good opportunities for the punster side of me to run free.

Do you strive to complete a first draft in a certain time frame?

I don’t do well with schedules. I work on motivation. (I know, I need to change that) I just get it done. I may spend a solid week working ten hours a day, or writing for 20 hours straight, then not write for a week. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone else, by the way, but that’s how I function.

How long do you allow to deep edit a complete manuscript?

Since I’m not very structured, it depends on deadlines. I’m bad about waiting until the last minute. Of course, that’s a great motivator, but it’s easier to make mistakes.

It wasn’t that twenty-seven was too young to die; she just had too many loose ends in her life, things she needed to fix. Shay huddled in the darkness, heart thudding as she listened to the floor’s ominous creak. Images flickered out of sequence in her head. Aunt Nina in the kitchen. Cody and his brothers playing hide and seek in the yard. Shadows lurking in the dark, statues, and empty graves. A hayloft and a dark-haired boy—almost a man—looking at her with passion and bewilderment on his face, the one face she’d never been able to forget.

She shut her eyes and tried to quiet her breathing as the footsteps crept closer to her hiding place. She heard an evil chuckle, the sound thick with anticipation, as a broken table leg skidded across the floor, next to her. Was that what Mr. Calhoun had heard just before his heart attack? The first of her clients to die. And Mrs. Lindsey, now with a gaping hole where her throat should have been. They’d been vandalized, too.

She forced her eyes open, terrified she would find his face inches away, but only his boot was there, the square toe so close she could have touched it. She clamped her lips together and listened to him breathe while her own lungs screamed, until nothing mattered but the next breath of air.

Wow!

Anita Clenney knows how to capture power on the page.

In the first sentence, the reader learns Shay is in danger, her age, and that her life is screwed up. The first paragraph includes a visceral response, strong imagery, some hints about Shay’s world, and a mysterious man.

Those three paragraphs are loaded with power words: die, huddled, ominous, lurking, dark, graves, crept, hiding, evil, heart attack, die, gaping hole, vandalized, forced, terrified, screamed.

The prologue is only 231 words. But it makes Shay real. It makes the danger she is in real. It’s written with a compelling cadence that drives the reader from the first word to the last. It makes the reader want to read more.

Margie Asked Anita:

Did you have all that power in your original version?

No. It had the basics, but over many edits I added in more of the elements, stronger words.

What can you share with these writers regarding how you built that prologue?

I started with a bare bones idea. The fullness of the scene doesn’t come all at once. As I write and rewrite, I see it clearer. Then I can expand on the action, what the characters are feeling, what should happen and shouldn’t. A lot of people don’t like prologues. I like them if they’re appropriate and if they’re short. There is so much from the past that is important in this story, I felt it needed a prologue. In the beginning, I used a prologue from when Cody and Shay were young, but I wanted to feel more immediate, in the here and now, so this everything I wanted. It showed Shay’s fear, her dread, and her connection to her past.

2.  The following excerpt is from page two.

Another sound registered in her head. Not tiny claws, but the creak of a footstep. Something cold and hard pressed against the back of her head.

“Don’t move,” a low voice growled.

Blood rushed from her head to her feet. How could he be here if he was in jail? Don’t panic. If you lose your head, your attacker will win. She’d practiced this a thousand times, playing soldiers and spies. In the seconds that stretched like droplets of frozen time, Shay forced her body to move, spinning quickly to clear his weapon. She struck with the candlestick, and something clattered to the floor. The gun?

A hard hand grabbed her wrist, and the candlestick fell. She lifted her knee and heard a grunt. Lunging, she tried to get past him. His foot shot out, and she crashed to the floor. What little breath she had left exploded from her lungs as a muscular body landed on top of her. A startled exclamation hissed next to her ear. She shoved against broad shoulders, but the weight didn’t budge. Lifting her head, she took a bite of T-shirt and flesh.

Excellent action and great example of expanding time. Well done.

I can see Shay taking that bite of T-shirt and flesh. Smart to backload with a power word like “flesh!”

Margie Asked Anita:  Did you love writing these action scenes? They work so well, I’d guess that writing them is fun.

I do like writing them. I don’t know if it’s the action I like or just because I love the characters so much and want to see them in motion.

Is there something that’s tough about writing them too?

They are tricky scenes to write. I have to picture it as if happening on a stage so I get the sequence right. In the scene you’ve mentioned here, I actually had my husband act it out with me.

Do you ever overwrite, and have to tighten or tone it down?

Do I ever! Not as much as I used to, but I still have to tighten, tighten, tighten. I can be very scattered in my thoughts. Verbally, I am too, and I’m horrible at telling stories orally. I don’t how I manage to do it on paper. Probably because I can spend so much time tweaking and polishing.

Or do you underwrite, and have to go back and add more punch?

I do this too, especially in setting and emotion. I never have enough setting in early drafts. And I love going back and adding punch, making it stronger. That’s the empowering part that I love.

3.  Some writers struggle with character descriptions.  Based on the character descriptions in this book, Anita doesn’t struggle. She excels.

Here’s how she described Cody.

We’re in Shay’s POV.  Neither one knew the other was on the continent, much less in this house.  He’s the one she just fought with in the action scene above.

FYI:  Shay’s clothes were wet, so she’s not wearing them.  She’s wearing a T-shirt. That’s it. Just one item—the T-shirt.

The essence of him was still there; the boy next door who’d kept her secrets, bandaged her scrapes, and comforted her against his scrawny chest, but there was nothing scrawny about him now. He was tall, with broad-shoulders and lean muscles undisguised by his soft gray T-shirt and worn jeans. Dark hair brushed his collar, giving him a rugged, dangerous look. His face was still stunning. Strong jaw, straight nose, and those intense hazel eyes that even at nineteen had tempted married women to watch as he walked past. Her gaze caught on the scar above his eyebrow, trophy from the motorcycle wreck when he was sixteen, and she remembered the terror of finding him sprawled on the rocky hill, so still she thought he was dead.

He appeared dumbstruck as well, staring as if she were the ghost. He swallowed hard, eyes moving down her body and back up.

Shay remembered what she wasn’t wearing. She grabbed the edge of her damp T-shirt and stretched it down as far as she could, which further outlined her breasts. “Could you hand me that sweater on the coat rack?” It was a long, belted cardigan, probably dusty, but she didn’t care.

He blinked and nodded, reaching for the sweater. A tattoo covered the side of his neck. A series of swirls. Maybe it was something to do with Special Forces. She accepted the long sweater and slipped her arms inside, watching as he picked up his gun and holstered it.

Look how Anita wove some hits of backstory in with the character description. Perfect.

And look how she showed and shared about his tattoo. Smart.

Margie asked Anita:  What suggestions about writing character descriptions do you have for our guests?

We all know how important characters are. If the reader doesn’t connect with them it doesn’t matter if you have a great plot. I think the writer has to picture the character, see them in her head, the way they look, the way they move, the clothes they wear, expressions on their face, if they have a “tell”, some little tic that gives away their feelings. And then layer that in, gradually showing more about the character. You don’t want to dump it all out at the same time. I love mysteries, and I think it’s fun to keep things hidden about the characters and then slowly reveal the clues. Okay, I’m overwriting the answer. :-)

5.  What are some deep editing tools you learned from me, and how did they make a difference in your writing?

I think there are two parts to writing. The storytelling, and the craft, and they impact each other. You can have one without the other, but the magic is when you have them together. Your techniques take good storytellers and make them good writers as well.

I have a lot of favorite Margie tools: Empowering, cadence and beats, backloading, write it fresh. All these have stuck with me. Now, when I write, I think “empower”, whether it be a character, a motivation, a sentence, a word, a scene, whatever. EMPOWER it! Take it to the next level. Make it stronger and better.

And backloading…such a simple concept. End on a powerful word that will stick in the reader’s mind. It makes the story stronger.

I love cadence and beats. In fact, I have to be careful because I’ll make the wording strange in order to achieve this. I think there’s a poet  hidden somewhere inside me.:-)

Writing it fresh is really important but a little harder for me to do. All these tools from Deep Edits and the classes on Empowering Characters Emotions have made me a far stronger writer than I was before. And the proof is in the pudding. (cliché alert!) My FIRST novel, Awaken the Highland Warrior hit the USA Today best seller list and NY Times bestseller list (extended) after only three months! Thank you, Margie!

Thank you. I'm honored to have contributed to your success!

I understand that your first book hit the extended NYT list, # 34. Kudos to you!

And I am THRILLED for you!

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