Sept. 6, 2019: Building The Ensemble Part 1 — Friends From Home

by avadunne3846, posted in Nautical Namaste Mysteries, Savasana at Sea
image courtesy of pixabay.com

Building the ensemble around Sophie for the Nautical Namaste Mysteries was an interesting challenge.

There were three sets of ensemble characters I needed to create.

The first consists of her friends on land, the friends that stick by her no matter what happens. Because we all need that support system, and that’s one reason why we read this type of book — because the friends support each other.

The second set consists of her colleagues on the ship, the fellow cruise ship employees. Some will become friends. Some will become lovers. Some will become antagonists. Some will shift alliances. Cruise ship staffs are an incredibly international bunch, and I will talk about that in depth next week.

The third set consists of the passengers. Each book in the series covers a different cruise. I change both the cruise route AND the passengers.

On the Nautical Namaste Website, I have pages to introduce the crew and the passengers with little bios. The bios also list which book each character appears in, but I try not to give out spoilers.

Yes, there are a lot of characters. That was intentional. I get annoyed when a book is set someplace that’s supposed to be busy and there are only five or six characters. If it’s a busy setting, I need the sense of motion, teeming life, people.

But today’s post focuses on Sophie’s family and friends on land. The support system she has as she makes the transition into cruise ship life.

She lives in a Brooklyn brownstone with two roommates. The brownstone is based on the one a Broadway pal of mine used to own, in the Fort Greene section. It’s been featured in plenty of film and television shows. When I moved from NY to the Cape, I used to stay there when I visited New York. The photo at the top is NOT my friend’s brownstone — his is much larger, a sandy color, with a high flight of steps leading to the front door. The photo here is a stock photo.

Sophie doesn’t own the brownstone. Her friend Fawn Lassiter, owns it. She’s the Communications Director for a philanthropic foundation in Manhattan. Bianca Suede is their third roommate, a performance artist, tarot reader, and herbalist. Their friend Freddie Diaz might as well be a roommate, for all the time he spends there. He’s a nomadic artist, moving from art colony to residency to crashing on friends’ couches.

These three are the people Sophie depends on most. They tell her the truth, whether she wants to hear it or not. When her fiancé dumps her, partially because she’s involved in too many progressive causes which are at odds with his high-paid corporate job, they support her while still being honest with her.  When she’s fired at the yoga studio where she works because she’s not enough of a “brand” — and then finds out that her nemesis at the studio is behind more than just her firing — Fawn, Bianca, and Freddie are there.

Fawn, Bianca, and Freddie will continue to be a presence in the books, and I hope to bring them on board the Charisma in a future book. I think it would be interesting to see how they interact on the ship, which is now Sophie’s territory. The dynamics of the relationships are bound to change, and that exploration interests me.

Sophie’s family is mentioned, but in SAVASANA AT SEA, most of them are not directly involved with the plot. The exception is Gamma Batchelder, Sophie’s paternal grandmother, who lives in Florida. Sophie is closer to her grandmother than anyone else in her family, and she can hear her grandmother’s sayings as she navigates her life.

 Her mother is barely mentioned, and lives out of state. Her sister Victoria lives in London. Her sister Edwina is more of a presence in the book, due to their difficult relationship. Her brother Rick works in the intelligence community in Washington, DC. Fawn has a crush on him.

But she’s closer to her friends than her family. That’s not unusual for single people in New York City. They’re caught up in their city lives. Their families live far away. Their friends become their family.

Sophie is kind. She cares about people, and makes friends. Establishing a solid base of friendships on land sets the foundation for her ability to make friends on the cruise ship, beyond the old “you’re thrown together and have no choice.”

One of Sophie’s strengths is her capacity for friendship.

Her family is peripheral to this book, but they have an impact on future books. In fact, Edwina will be an important character a few books down the line when she attends a shipboard conference on the Charisma, where Sophie works.

Other peripheral characters include colleagues at the yoga studio, and her students. There’s also a homeless woman, Carmen, for whom Sophie buys a meal and encourages to go to a shelter. Sophie cares. She is involved with the people around her. It’s a shame that one of her greatest strength is something her fiancé sees as a weakness.

Rowena is a character with a foot in both worlds. Rowena is one of Sophie’s yoga students, and supports her when she’s fired. She also works for the cruise line

In earlier drafts, establishing Sophie on land and getting her into her new life on the cruise ship took four chapters. Along the way, professionals in the business suggested cutting it all out and starting the book on the ship. I tried this for a draft, and then salting in her previous relationships. But losing the catalyst for her journey hurt the way her character was established.  It made her feel more shallow and less substantial to me.

However, the advice of needing to be on the cruise ship earlier was valuable. I cut A LOT of material from the early chapters. I now have the firing, the breakup, get her on the cruise ship, and the catalyst for her sleuthing on the ship in the first chapter. It keeps the story moving; it gives the reader enough background on Sophie and why she’s worth the time spent on this journey.

It was good advice, even if I didn’t follow it to the letter. I took the heart of the advice and adapted it in a way that supported my story and characters better.

It took eight drafts to get it where I wanted it to be. And every draft was worth the time and energy.

Next week, I’ll talk about building the ensemble of the cruise ship staff.

Visit the Nautical Namaste website. You can read excerpts from SAVASANA AT SEA and find buy links.

Fri. Aug. 30, 2019: How I Decided to Write SAVASANA AT SEA

by avadunne3846, posted in Uncategorized
image courtesy of skeeze via pixabay

First of all, hi! I’m glad you’re here. I created this blog to help walk a friend of mine through blog creation on WordPress. I don’t like the way this is set up, especially the way it’s spaced. I’m more comfortable with the templates that let me write and set it up the way I want..

In any case, since I have it, I thought I should utilize this tool to talk about the Nautical Namaste Mysteries and the other work that I create under the Ava Dunne name. The plan is to blog most Fridays.

Many of you know me as Devon Ellington, and read my Coventina Circle paranormal romantic suspense novels, my Gwen Finnegan Mysteries, the currently out-of-print Jain Lazarus urban fantasies (don’t worry, they’ll be back), and more. You read Ink in My Coffee, the almost-daily blog about the intersection of writing and life, and the other blogs that feed off that one.

So why another blog?

The Ava Dunne voice is a little different. It’s a little lighter, more comedic, more slanted toward romantic elements, although it wouldn’t be fair to romance readers to call them “romance.”

With the Nautical Namaste series, I wanted to write something that was closer to the cozy subgenre. Okay, I’ll be honest, I wanted to write a cozy. Only some of the expectations of the way the cozies evolved didn’t work for the story and the characters. The compromises I would have to make to keep it strictly within the cozy negated what I hoped to achieve with the book. I understand the expectations; I chose not to follow some of them. So this series is billed as “Not Quite Cozy.” I’ll do an entire post on how I strayed from the expectations of a typical cozy.

Most of you know that I spent the bulk of my career working professionally in the theatre, a good chunk of it on Broadway. As I worked my way up to Broadway, I worked in smaller venues, and I did whatever temp jobs I needed to in order to keep a roof over my head. I’ve worked in all kinds of company situations until I landed theatre work that paid enough to survive.

In the mid-1980’s, I lived in San Francisco for two years. There are tons of stories about my time there, but most of them aren’t relevant to the series. One of my favorite temp jobs in and around my theatre work was an eight-month stint in the office of a cruise line. I worked for one of the Vice Presidents, one of the few executives over the years with whom I worked that I liked, respected, and trusted. He was a decent, ethical, kind man.

My colleagues at the Cruise line were terrific. I absolutely adored them. Four of us had our desk together, and we had a blast. In fact, I dedicated SAVASANA AT SEA to Sonia, one of them. We’ve lost touch over the years, but I’ve never forgotten her.

There was a huge problem in the corporate whatevers during my tenure, and my boss, the kind, ethical man, was the fall guy. I was asked to stay on when he was fired. I refused, because I disagreed with why he’d been fired and the guy who replaced him was an A-1 asshole, not to mention way to “handy” with the women in the office. So I left.

But I was always interested in the idea of a mystery on a cruise ship. To me, it’s like a locked room mystery. You’re all stuck on a floating resort for the length of your cruise. Yes, you can do excursions, but plenty can happen.

When I was twelve, my mother and I took one of those tours that inspired the movie IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGUIM. Even at twelve, I was aware of quite a few of the undercurrents and drama between members of the tour group. Part of the tour was a week-long cruise up the Rhine River. Which was both fun and weird.

Working in theatre, many of my colleagues spent eight-to-ten month contracts on cruise ships. I heard a LOT of stories. All kinds of stories. Some were funny; some, not so much.

image by garyskirrow via pixabay

I have a daily yoga and meditation practice. I take class at the studio whenever I can. I go to Kripalu when I can. Yoga has become a vital part of my life. It helps both physically and mentally.

One of the things that has frustrated me in all genres of books is the depictions of yoga instructors as flaky or unreliable or out there. They were treated as jokes, instead of trained professionals. Too often, the author who creates yoga instructor candidates is downright patronizing and the characters don’t work.

Most of the yoga instructors I know are among the smartest, most reliable, most compassionate, most together people I’ve ever come across. They don’t pretend to be perfect; they’d not afraid to admit flaws. They know our flaws make us human. They work WITH us so we can all be our best selves.

I wanted to write about that kind of instructor.

I wanted to write about a cruise ship.

So why not combine them? So I did. My protagonist, Sophie Batchelder, is kind and smart and funny and determined to stay true to herself. Because she’s all of those things, her fiance breaks up with her – she’s a detriment to his career. As her housemate Bianca tells her, people underestimate her because she’s kind, and mistake kindness for weakeness.

Sophie’s not weak. She’s strong and smart and funny and flawed.

Once she started telling me her story, how could I resist?

Next Friday, I’ll tell you how I built the ensemble around her.

If you’d like to read more about The Nautical Namaste series, you can hop on over to the website here. You can read excerpts from the book (and even buy it, that would be great) here.

Just Jump in and Fly

by avadunne3846, posted in Short Stories

“Just Jump in and Fly” is a short story, a fresh take on some of my favorite holiday myths (turning some of them inside out). mixed with comedy and a little romance.

Susanna Wright has a problem. The attractive Kris Teague crash- landed his sleigh and eight not-so-tiny reindeer in her driveway. His uncle Nick happens to be THAT Nick – as in Claus – and they need Susanna Wright’s help to turn back the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at one of the Universal Gates not only to save Christmas, but keep Earth turning. A fresh, romantic comedy turn on Yuletide myths and traditions!

It’s only 99 cents on Smashwords here.

It’s a fun little piece. I’m fond of the characters, and thinking about doing more with them.

If you’d like to read an excerpt, you can hop over and read one here.