Tag Archives: Denny S. Bryce

Romance is Everywhere

Three Mermaids walk into a bar…

I just had to start out that way because back in July three Mermaids were in a bar. Alethea, Denny, and I were at a bar in San Antonio for a publisher’s party during the RWA Annual Conference®. When the party started dying down, we decided to walk back to our hotel. Because walking in the late-July Texas heat was our best idea? Turns out, we didn’t even notice the heat.

Scene of the Romance

Scene of the Romance

As we made our way along the festive, color-bursting River Walk, a young man dressed in military uniform rushed by us. He was on a mission. And if the big bouquet of beautiful flowers said anything, it was that this mission was of the romantic persuasion.

So Alethea, Denny, and I did what any normal person who writes romance novels would do. We hiked up our fancy dresses and started following him. It didn’t take long for us to realize we weren’t the only people who took notice. Heads turned left and right. A man sidled up to the soldier for part of the walk. And before we knew it, there was a huge mass of people following us. If you’ve ever seen Love Actually and are familiar with the final scene when Colin Firth is walking through the village to propose and the whole town follows him – that’s pretty much what it was like.

As we neared his final destination, he picked up the pace. So did the rest of us. We weaved in and out of restaurants, around chairs and tables set up next to the canal, as the passing boat tours pointed out the sights and yummy wafts of Mexican food met our noses.

Finally, we reached a restaurant. As if the entire crowd was in on it, we all dispersed to different places and waited anxiously for whatever would come next.

The soldier didn’t miss a beat. He ducked around a couple tables, flowers still clutched in hand. Then he approached a table with an older couple and a young girl. Tapping on her shoulder, she turned, took him in. Surprise turned to shock turned to tears. And then they were embracing, flowers forgotten. Large crowd of cheering spectators forgotten. Hot, humid weather forgotten.

Romantic Mermaids

Romantic Mermaids

But romance. That was very much not forgotten.

It was really nice to think that during this big romance conference we actually got to experience an amazingly romantic gesture. And I hope that whatever happens with the two of them will involve many, many retellings of that magical, romantic night when a whole bunch of strangers followed a man in love.

 

Congratulations!!!

The Waterworld Mermaids are flipping our fins, pouring some delicious cocktails and getting the party started in our magical lagoon today. We have a lot to celebrate!

We want to congratulate 3 (yes 3!) of our very amazing, talented, beautiful Mermaids for being finalists in this year’s Romance Writers of America Golden Heart® contest. Congrats to all – well done!

Denny S. Bryce – “Chasing Damn” in Romantic Suspense

Kimberly MacCarron – “Chasing Fireworks” and “To Feel or Not to Feel” in Young Adult Romance

Pintip Dunn – “Carlie in Crisis” in Young Adult Romance and “Fit to Die” in Paranormal Romance

We’ll all be cheering you on this July when they announce the winners!!!

Ask a Mermaid: The @MargieLawson Experience

Do you want to add a psychological punch to your writing and editing?

Are you interested in capturing the full range of body language on the page?

Is your goal to turn your work into a page-turner by powering up emotion and hooking the reader viscerally?

Well, duh! What writer doesn’t want to do those things? Recently, many of the mermaids left the lagoon for a writing workshop. What kind of awesomeness does it take to get us to leave the warm waters? The Margie Lawson kind.

Here are a few of the things we picked up during the Empowering Characters’ Emotions workshop presented by Margie Lawson and the Washington Romance Writers.

***

Denny S. Bryce said:

“I was reminded that revising a manuscript is a different ball game (cliche) than writing one, and there is an ebb and flow (cliche) to story telling that includes green, yellow, orange, blue with a well-timed blush of pink. As with any thoughtful craft session, I walked away from Saturday with another weapon in my writers toolkit (cliche, cliche, cliche:)! I also learned I can’t stop writing freaking CLICHES!

Seriously, Margie helped me understand how to avoid melodrama and the true meaning of cliche, especially as it applies to writing romance. So, what’s next now that I have these insights? I’ll let you know after I begin Margie’s class in January:)…”

Carlene Love Flores said:

“I left the Margie Lawson meeting feeling like a mad scientist, equipped with new-to-me terms like Anadiplosis, Anaphora, Haptics and Proxemics.  My favorite, Haptics, which is the power of touch and the easiest to pronounce 😉  And who can forget the term for when our normally lazy little body hairs stand at attention?  Pilo Erection! ”

Avery Flynn said:

“Some of my favorites include:

1. Write fresh. For example, don’t write ‘His stomach clenched.’ write something like, ‘His stomach shifted like a Buick on black ice.’

2. Always challenge your word choices.

3. Your character’s visceral reactions need to be caused by emotion and written in an expressive and fresh way.

4. Use words that carry psychological power and backload those words so that your sentences end with them. For example, ‘He’ll die if you give him the epi.’ becomes ‘If you give him the epi, he’ll die.’

5. A good way to slip in backstory is to slip it into dialogue cues and body language.”

***

A big thanks to Margie for inspiring so many mermaids. 🙂

Happy Anniversary Waterworld Mermaids – Party Time in the Lagoon!

It’s our one-year anniversary! The Waterworld Mermaids have dyed the lagoon hot pink, added glitter and cranked up the dance music for our weeklong anniversary celebration. Each day we’ll be hosting a mermaid scavenger hunt. At the bottom of each day’s post you’ll find three questions about the mermaids who blogged that day, the answers to which can be found on this site. Answer the questions and be entered to win that day’s prize. Plus, on Friday we’ll be giving away a $130 Visa gift card. To increase your odds of winning the gift card, answer each day’s scavenger hunt questions. Every entry you make Monday through Thursday will give you an additional entry in the big Friday giveaway of a $130 gift card. So jump in the lagoon and get swimming with your lucky fin!

Welcome to the kick-off post of the WWM Anniversary Celebration. We were asked by the other Mermaids to post together because we all write on the smexy side of things, love all kinds of naked man-flesh on book covers, and play most often at the naughty end of the lagoon. Yes, please!

So, we decided to have a little convo about our favorite smexy movies, music, and man flesh – you know the things that get our fins all tingly.

Robin:  So ladies, let’s take it all off . . .I mean kick it all off with our favorite smexy movie.  For me, it is “Love and Other Drugs”  with Jake Gyllenhall and Anne Hathaway. Now I loved hottie Jake prancing through most of the movie half naked and in bed but I confess that it was the dialogue that really dragged me into this film.  I love a couple who can get it on between the sheets and between the ears. Know what I mean?

Denny: Favorite sexy movie? Well, it’s usually a scene or two that brings the anticipated heat and in a film called “Something New” with Sanaa Latham and Simon Baker – there are a number of scenes that bring it, and what’s fun is the film is a classic romance structure but with a delightful twist and two very pretty people in the lead. And yeah, the heat was palatable:)…

Dana: So many choices, so little time… A sexy flick that sticks in my mind was “Head in the  Clouds” withCharlize Theron, Penelope Cruz, and Stuart Townsend. This sweeping saga set in 1930’s Europe is full of passion, betrayal and redemption. The love scenes were sweltering and the plot kept you engaged, with the characters making life altering choices at every turn.

Robin:  Let’s talk music.  I write with the music playing loud and one of the first things I do when I start a WIP is create a playlist on my iPod.  Favorite artists for creating a smexy mood are Matt Nathanson, Jake Owen, & Marc Broussard. Music really creates a mood for me and since I keep the sexual tension thrumming throughout my book it is a crucial aspect of my work.

Denny: Robin and I might blow the roof off if we wrote in the same house (lol!) because I play music LOUD when I write – but the music you will find me listening to crosses the spectrum from Stravinsky (I love him, especially when my antagonist is more than a bit on edge), and R&B, especially Janet Jackson (You Want This) works when my heroine is feeling her oats (sexy and in control). Also Adele, Meshell Ndegeocello, Sting…

Dana: I LOVE music! All kinds of music–from Classical to Country and R & B to Alternative, and everything in between. But not while I’m writing. I need quiet for my characters voices to come alive on the page.

Robin:  Okay, we’ve all heard the debate about naked man torsos on the covers of romance novels.  I am willing to go on the record and say that I am all for it. In fact, the only thing better than one naked man’s breasticles is many male breasticles!  What say you?

Denny: Mmmm…I’m torn on this one. Seriously, oddly enough. I do love my man candy, but sometimes the publishing houses get lazy, and we see a lot of repeats…then again, the best naked man torso of the year for me — cover of the Seal of My Dreams anthology.

Dana: I love my man candy as much as the next girl, but I think the prevalence of hot, half naked bodies on book covers in the romance genre often skews people’s opinions about the quality and content of the story between the pages. I prefer covers where faces are cast in profile or cut off altogether because I think some details are better when left to the imagination.

Thanks for helping us get the party started!

Fishy kisses from your friendly neighborhood mermaids!

Leave a comment with the answers to the following three questions (the answers can all be found on this blog) and be entered to win today’s giveaway and the grand prize – a $130 Visa gift card.

Today’s giveaway is a digital copy of Robin Covington’s debut sexy romance, A NIGHT OF SOUTHERN COMFORT, on June 15th!

1.  What contest did Robin win two years in a row?

2. Who did Denny date (just three dates:) who ended up winning two Oscars?

3. What’s the coolest thing Dana’s ever done?

Thanks for joining us in the Waterworld Mermaid lagoon! Answer today’s questions in the comments below to be entered to win today’s prize and in our big Friday giveaway of a $130 gift card. Only one entry per day. Be sure to leave your e-mail address in your comment. You have until 11:59 p.m. EST May 13 to leave your answers. Contest open to U.S. residents only. 

 

Happy Valentine’s Week – Day Three

Happy Valentine’s Week from the Waterworld Mermaids!!!

Here in our lovely mermaid lagoon, we are all abuzz with the holiday of love. And because we’re in such a happy mood, we wanted to share some stories and memories from mermaid-pasts. Best of all, we’re celebrating all week long! We hope you enjoy!

Ever notice how love can inspire music and music often has a hand in love? Whether the feelings are between significant others or family members, today’s stories mix these two beautiful things – love and music….

 

Songs in the Key of Love
Denny S. Bryce

He had a voice like smooth raw silk—deep and rich and soft and strong. When he sang, with his lips next to my ear, his breath was warm and cool, and always made me smile.

He loved to sing. He would burst into song anywhere, any time. When we sat in the car at the gas pump, or as we shopped for groceries, or walked across the football field after he’d coached a game.

It took a few months, but eventually, I joined in and sang the words I knew to whatever song he was singing. But my voice never sounded as good as his. So I mostly sat back and let him sing to me. He liked it best that way.

He wasn’t showing off. No, but sometimes talking didn’t do what he wanted it to do. His words weren’t as good as the lyrics on the radio. It was easier to say what he wanted to say with a song.

So he’d serenade me.

After a while, I stopped noticing when he sang, or that he wasn’t singing as much anymore.

Then one night we were in the car driving back from, or driving off to, somewhere, and a Stevie Wonder song came on the radio. It was from a 1976 album, Songs in the Key of Life, one of my favorites from back in the day.

He pulled over to the side of the road, and started singing…

“As”.

If you’re not familiar, here are some of the lyrics…

You know what I say is true
That I’ll be loving you always

(Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky)
Always
(Until the ocean covers every mountain high)
Always
(Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea)
Always
(Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream)

Did you know that true love asks for nothing
No no her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day

Well, let’s just say, I started listening again…and heard every word when he sang.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

Song from the Heart
Masha Levinson

This thing I hold in my arms is more like a loaf of bread than a baby.  And not one of those pretty loaves either.  He’s all beat up looking.  Black and blue.  As if he’d been in a fight and is now sleeping off a horrid hangover.  Except unlike most drunks, this one isn’t staying quiet.  He’s screaming as if belting out a tune for the cheap seats at Lincoln Center.  And it’s 2:30 in the morning.  And I’m tired.  And cranky.  And I want to go to sleep.  And he won’t cooperate.  The spindles from the creaky rocking chair are digging into my back.  My arm, the one his lumpy head is resting on, has long ago fallen asleep. Why won’t this kid sleep?

It’s half an hour later when his eyelids begin to flutter up and down.  Small veins weave around his translucent skin.  His fragility amazes me.  Twenty minutes later, he’s finally asleep.  I exhale.  As if holding the rarest of gems, I will my body off the chair, cringing when the hinges squeal.  I hold my breath.  He doesn’t stir.  Step by step, I make it to the crib.  The side is up.  I can’t reach in there.  I look around the semi-lit room and see the stepstool.  I hold him in my arms and with one foot drag it toward his crib.  His eyes flutter open.  My breath hitches.  He closes them.  I place the stool in front of the bed and gingerly climb on it.  The crib is still too high for me.

Each time, before I lower him into the crib, no matter how tired, I lean over and kiss his satiny forehead.  Tonight is no different.  He sighs.  I smile.  I lean over and place him, as carefully as if he was the most fragile loaf of bread, onto the sheets.  I hold my breath and wait.  Sometimes he wakes and sometimes he doesn’t.  He continues sleeping. I exhale and creep out of the room.  I crawl into my bed.  My body begins to drift off as the last thought flutters through my mind.  I wonder if he’ll ever know what I did for him.

Fourteen years later I’m sitting in front of the school, waiting to pick him up from a homecoming dance.  It’s Saturday night.  Request night on the love station.  I’m tapping my finger on the steering wheel.  The music filters off and then I hear it.  “Our last dedication is to Masha from her brother and for everything she did for him.”

I stop tapping.  And breathing.  The intro to the song begins to fill the car.  A moment later the words come across my old radio loud and clear.  I am no longer left to wonder.

The song he chose is Hero.

 

We hoped you enjoyed our stories today. Come back tomorrow for more sweet stories that are sure to make you feel all gooey (in a good way)!

 

 

The Garden Party (Part Two) by Denny S. Bryce

(Mermaid Note: If you haven’t already, please read The Garden Party (Part One) first.)

“Will you miss me?”

Jeesus. Guilty as sin and still he flirted. “Nope, won’t miss you one damn bit. I will, however, get a full weekend of sleep for the first time in two years.” It was her turn to grin at him. “I told you not to come back here, but your ego made you careless. You think you can steal from the Garden as if it was your neighborhood candy store.”

His half-gaze followed her as she paced compulsively for a moment. The Fedora still draped at the same angle showed only one smart-mouthed eye. Suddenly she couldn’t resist the urge and flipped the hat off of his head.

He sucked in a breath. “Why’d you do that?”

She reared back. “Do what? Tell you the truth. Too tough to hear? Or are you threatening me? That’s not a smart move considering you’re cuffed to a rail in a plant museum surrounded by a dozen armed guards, and at least a dozen squad cars parked outside, hoping you try something stupid.”

“You talk too much when you’re mad. That’s how I caught you in Chicago.” He winked, devilishly, and leveled his gaze. “Or are you mad because I let myself get caught?”

Shayna refused to fall for his nonsense. A penetrating gaze wasn’t going to make her suddenly dumbfounded. “Stop with the flirting and the sexy voice and the hard body. What did you do? Crunches until I walked in so your abs would pop through your T-shirt?”

He licked his lips; fighting the grin she saw threatening the corners of his mouth.

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The Garden Party (Part One) by Denny S. Bryce

Then there was the Garden. Dark and hot, it smelled like jungle or what Shayna Marigold imagined jungle smelled like when jungles still existed.

A steady stream of wet fell from sprinklers planted in the glass ceiling. Fake rain, they spewed a hot clingy mist that seeped into Shayna’s every open pore. It made her skin itch as if tiny wet ants marched over her flesh. Then the wind, blown by propeller-sized fans tossed fallen leaves and dirt in her face. Thankfully, there were no fake bugs or neon sunlight. She scratched her nose and wondered why scientists bothered to create keepsake gardens for the wealthy anyway. When a world collapsed might as well let the soon-to-be extinct things die. Better to wallow in reality than make-believe.

Washington, DC, was a sea of broken concrete, cracked monuments, and pools of black mud. The earthquakes, volcanic ash and acid rain had made a mess of the city and the rest of the continent, leaving a killer atmosphere, no plant life and little food. Shelter was bleak, too, unless you had a government job. Just wasn’t much left worth its weight other than what the well-to-do and the scientists stowed away in mausoleums like the Garden.

The domed building with a half dozen rooms, or chambers, overflowed with exotic plants and other remnants of extinct ecological systems. The rich and powerful kept their newest version of antiquities, the plants that no longer grew outdoors, safe and secure in the Garden. So yeah, it might look like a jungle, smell like a jungle, but it was Noah’s Ark without a sea to sail.

Shayna, special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Environmental Crimes Task Force, walked into the middle of the Garden’s atrium, wiped the water from her brow and looked around. A short janitor in a gray jumpsuit, with a bulging gut, rushed to the nearest wall and a metal switch box. Opening it, he flipped the switch up, then down, and an instant later the water and wind stopped hitting her in the face. She sighed, relieved, and gave him a nod of thanks.

Shayna then shrugged out of her heavy overcoat, but a last morsel of dust flew into a nostril, and she sneezed so hard her eardrums popped. She hated working the Garden beat. The moist heat, flying bits of dirt and indoor plant life pushed her allergies into overdrive. She should be at home, comfy in her hermetically sealed apartment, hiding out for the weekend, safe from the atmosphere, beat cops and dust.

But she drew the short straw—supposedly—and forced to work the crime scene of the biggest heist attempt in the Garden’s history. She also got to interrogate the primary suspect, currently handcuffed to a banister in the Orchid room. She smiled smugly. No way was she going to miss out on this chance, not for all the Benadryl in the District.

After a quick swipe of her itchy nose, she handed her coat to the closest beat cop. He guarded the tapeline in front of the Jungle, the largest chamber in the Garden.

“I’m FBI Special Agent Marigold,” she said to the officer.

“Wow, ma’am, you got here fast.” The cop, a bald-headed boxer-type in a poorly fitted uniform, tucked her coat under his arm as he lifted the yellow tape.

Shayna slipped beneath it. “Headquarters called me on my PDA. I live up the street.” Answering his question fast was best. She didn’t want him treating her silence as an opportunity to chitchat.

They stood in front of the unmoving electronic doors without speaking for a long moment. The doors weren’t working. Shayna glimpsed the handyman in the jumpsuit dash around a corner, searching for a different wall switch to jimmy the doors open. She hoped.

Waiting not so patiently, she gathered her locks into a ponytail and stretched her neck to the side to relieve some of the tension. Faced with another opportunity to go head-to-head with this particular thief thrilled and disturbed her all at once. He was the architect behind more than a thousand successful cons up and down the Atlantic Coast and in the Midwest. Now here he was a hundred feet away on the other side of the sliding glass doors in handcuffs.

It was about damn time.

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Come Inside Our Garden

The true beauty of a story is that through the written word we can travel anywhere, be anyone and experience anything.

As Waterworld Mermaids, we don’t normally find ourselves in a garden, unless it’s of the seaweed and coral variety; so, for our first anthology of short stories, we decided to tie each tale together by location and an exotic one to us – a garden.

What will you find in our garden during the next few weeks?

Alethea Kontis brings you a fantasy story of two ethereal beings who live only in dreams, without any of their own, emboldened by love to take the biggest risk of all.

Avery Flynn takes you on a steampunk journey to Victoria City. When the fate of the word is at stake, a freedom fighter and the man hunting her must work together to foil a would-be tyrant.

Carlene Love Flores will envelope you inside a moody thriller. A grief-stricken and sleep-deprived mother struggles against the family who thinks she’s gone mad until a mysterious man comes to her aid.

Dana Rodgers spins a paranormal tale of a lonely girl who discovers her family harbors dark secrets and finds salvation in a knight’s garden.

Denny S. Bryce ratchets up the tension, in the romantic suspense tale of an FBI agent in a post-apocalyptical world hunting an orchid thief who has stolen her heart.

Kerri Carpenter brings you the contemporary world of two long-lost lovers who find themselves together again surrounded by nature’s beauty, wondering if they can find nature’s greatest gift – love.

Robin Covington heats up the garden when lust and the promise of love collide in this steamy tale of when opposites attract.

The Come Inside Our Garden anthology of free reads will last from Oct. 3 to Oct. 26 with something new each day. Please enjoy your time in the Waterworld Mermaid garden and tell your friends about the new worlds you discover.