The Carus Chronicles

Today I'm going to share the TOP 5 supporting documents I  MUST HAVE for my writing process. They've helped keep my mind sane, when really I should've cracked. 5. Character tracking Excel spreadsheet I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep all my characters' names, nicknames, job titles, supernatural type, parents' names/lineage, physical description, personal tics, etc straight. Excel's sorting feature makes it super convenient to find characters and to also ensure I don't double up on my names. 4. Book Timeline:   Keep a timeline for your book(s), this is especially important for series. For example, if the first book is set for the beginning of May and the story spans about a month of time, the ending occurs around June. If book 2 picks up 6 months later, that means it starts at the beginning of December, and probably shouldn't have any heat waves (unless you're in the southern hemisphere) 3. Backstory Timeline:  It's als...

Just call it a penis! I have to start this post off with a disclaimer: I grew up in a small coastal community, am a biologist and have worked on fishing vessels as a government representative. I've heard every name in the book for male and female genitalia and am fairly desensitized to the wide variety of labels, including the more crass and less savory ones. But unless you plan to lick it off, why sugar coat it? A penis is a penis, after all! Maybe it's the biologist in me, but when I'm reading a sex scene, I find it amusing when the writer has seemingly gone out of the way to avoid the dreaded P and V words, or even the commonly used slang terms. Second disclaimer: These aren't so much as pet peeves, as they are points of hilarity for me. The top two labels for male and female genitalia respectively that throw me into fits of giggles are: 1. Velvet Covered Steel 2. Inner Goddess As a writer, I can appreciate how difficult writing a sex scene is, and how yo...