Month: May 2014

Writer’s Block? What Writers Block?

~ Jonna Hawker Turek ~ Leave a comment

We all hear a lot about the struggles writers can have coming up with the next plot turn, but I struggle with the opposite problem, something I call writer’s rush.

Once the plot has been outlined, the main characters roughed in and I begin writing the first chapter of the narrative, I must constantly rein myself in so as not to hurry to the climax or give away plot points too early.

I’m near the end of the first chapter of my current work and already feeling the familiar tug to speed to the ending.

The technique I’ve been using to prevent my books from becoming short stories or novellas is to decide ahead of time what I want to accomplish in each segment. I bracket that goal on the page before I begin, and then paragraph by paragraph reread what I’ve written, comparing it to what’s in the brackets. When I’ve covered some point, I delete it from the brackets and when the brackets are empty I am ready to move on to the next chapter. In this way, my first rough draft moves at approximately the pace I want.

Of course, goals change and those draft chapters will be revised many times before I am ready to send the work for editing, but the basic structure remains.

If you deal with a similar issue, I’d love to hear how you handle it.

 

Work in Progress

~ Jonna Hawker Turek ~ Leave a comment

I am currently in the outline and characterization stage of my next J.B.Hawker novel.

Naidenne Grinager and Rev. Scott Davidson (introduced in the Bunny Elder series) have been married for about a year when the story opens. They are living in the Bannoch Community Fellowship church parsonage.

Other characters introduced in the Bunny Elder series who will reappear in the new book (working title “Bannoch-by-the-Sea”) are Naidenne’s friend, Shirley; Scott’s sister, Rosamund; and her now-widowed nemesis, Maureen Oldham.

New characters being developed are bank manager, Len Spurgeon; Miss Dot, the ancient quilting lady living near Cannon Beach; escaped convict from Pelican Bay, Carver Schramm; Eskaletha Evans, wife of the pastor of the AME church; Judith Falls, Olivette Vernon and Elizabeth Gilbert, other pastor’s wives in the Bannoch community and friends of Naidenne.

I will be trying to give a more in-depth look into the life of a typical pastor’s wife while at the same time weaving a thrilling adventure story.

The Bunny Elder series books were published at the rate of one every six months. Rather than attempt to keep up that pace, I have set a target publication date for “Bannoch” for late Spring 2015.

 

…and Something Blue, Book Four of the Bunny Elder Adventure Series

~ Jonna Hawker Turek ~ Leave a comment

This book, published this month, is the final installment of the Bunny Elder series.

Against her better judgment, Bunny sets sail on a voyage to Australia. Along the way she encounters pirates and learns a surprising secret about her new husband.

Throughout this series I received conflicting feedback about Bunny’s relationship with her first husband, Max.  It is my hope this final episode will satisfy the readers as stayed with her to the end of the series.

The next book, outlined now as a stand-alone book, will spin off some of the characters first introduced in Seadrift.

 

Seadrift, Book Three in the Bunny Elder Adventure Series

~ Jonna Hawker Turek ~ Leave a comment

After her Italian adventure, Bunny is determined to learn who she is outside the roles of pastor’s wife and younger sister.

She loved the Oregon coast when her late husband’s ministry took them there for a few years, so she decides to strike out on her own and see if she can make a living as a free-lance writer.

She rents a quiet cabin near the imaginary coastal village, Bannoch-by-the-Sea, and begins sending out pitches to local periodicals and businesses. She joins a local church, where she is just becoming established, when a chance discovery while beach combing leads Bunny into yet another life-threatening situation.

While dodging human traffickers bent on retrieving the little sea chest Bunny found, she builds relationships with new friends and finds depths of strength she scarcely knew she had.

Thoughts of what might have been with Max finally begin to fade.

In this book we meet Ellery, Bunny’s great-niece, a student at Seattle University, and take a step outside the middle-aged viewpoint of the earlier books.

Like Bunny, I lived in parsonages on the coast of Oregon and Washington and I enjoyed revisiting some of my favorite places with her in this book.

Bannoch, entirely fictional, is very loosely based on Bandon, OR.

Through the lives of Bannoch Community Fellowship Pastor Scott Davidson and his sister, Rosamund, we get a tiny peek into parsonage life.

Although Hollow, book one in the series, is a true mystery, with a definite whodunnit, Vain Pursuits, and Seadrift fall more into the thriller/adventure category, leading me to change the series title from Bunny Elder Mysteries to Bunny Elder Adventures. One reviewer described the series as “Nancy Drew for Grown-ups.” While I’m not as prolific as Carolyn Keene, I am flattered by the comparison.

Vain Pursuits, Book Two in the Bunny Elder Adventure Series

~ Jonna Hawker Turek ~ Leave a comment

When we last saw Bunny at the end of Book 1, she was picking up the pieces of her life.  In Book 2 we discover what happens when she accepts her sister’s invitation to come and stay on her Idaho potato ranch.

I served with my pastor husband in a small church in south-central Idaho, not too far from Bunny’s sister’s place. As I wrote about the women’s time on the ranch I was able to look out across the arid fields in my imagination and picture antelope skidding under the fences .

Vain Pursuits opens with the sisters flying across the Atlantic headed for Italy.

Much of this scene came from my own first trip overseas to visit my oldest son in Italy. Many of my impressions of the various locations in the book are reflected in Bunny’s and her sister’s reactions.

Although I never got involved with smugglers or mafiosi in my visits to Italy, I believe my time there added a bit of color to Bunny’s adventures.

Many of my reviewers appreciated seeing a bit of the real Italy through Bunny’s eyes.

When I decided to make a series from the original book which takes place around Halloween, I thought I might highlight a different holiday in each book.

In Vain Pursuits the holiday was Christmas, as the sisters were shopping for an authentic Italian nativity set.

 

Hollow, Book One in the Bunny Elder Adventure Series

~ Jonna Hawker Turek ~ Leave a comment

Hollow, my debut novel, began as a random comment to my youngest son one October day while we were taking a walk.

Observing the grisly Halloween decorations in the neighborhood, I remarked that if I were a serial killer getting rid of the bodies in October would be easy. I’d just tuck them into the holiday displays like the ones we saw.

“You should write a book about that, Mom,” he said.

I began toying with the idea and only six years later, Hollow was available in print and on Kindle at Amazon.com.

Having been a pastor’s wife for twenty-five years, the decision to make my protagonist a pastor’s wife was easy.

Although many of the characters in my books have personalities borrowed from people I’ve known, the stories and characters are pure fiction.

Hollow is a cozy mystery with a bit of bite. Some readers find a scene or two “too gruesome” while other reviews comment on the “delightfully gruesome” scenes.

One thing I’ve learned as a writer, the book I write is not necessarily the one you read. Just as an author puts something of herself into every book, the reader adds their own personality to the story. The more the book catches their imagination, the more the reader contributes.

Hollow takes place in rural Northern California, in an imaginary community not far from  the foothill towns where I grew up.

When I was encouraged to write more adventures of Bunny and Max, I took them to other locations where I’ve traveled or lived.