Please help me welcome Berta Platas, who graciously agreed to blog with us today. Berta is a long time member of the Georgia Romance Writers. She writes romantic comedies with a latina flavor for St. Martins Press and young adult fiction with her friend and critique partner, Michelle Roper, under the name Gillian Summers. Their Faire Folk Trilogy, about a young half-elven girl who is sent to live with her father, an itinerant woodworker at renaissance faires, has now been extended into three more books. The first, The Tree Shepherd's
Daughter, was a National Book Award finalist.
Teaching Myself Tarot
I am in over my head in weird research. My WIP (work in progress) is about a
woman who has to fake being an expert on tarot cards. I thought this would be
easy, since I'm no expert, I'd just pick up a couple of pointers and, like my
heroine, fake the rest. Not so easy. Turns out that the best way to fake being
bad at something is to be really good at it, then pretend not to be. So here I
am, with the Complete Idiot's Guide to Tarot (this really exists, thank goodness), revisiting Jungian archetypes and learning symbolic meaning in cards that I'd previously bought because I liked the artwork.
The book is finished, and my job now is to layer in the realistic sensory
elements that I had to research: the layout of the Los Angeles neighborhood, how
the gardens smell, what Hollywood parties are really like. Fun stuff, except for
this difficult tarot thingie.
My upcoming book is about a girl who wins a major lottery prize (LUCKY CHICA -
it'll be out in January of '09), and I bugged the nice folks at the Georgia
Lottery Commission about how some of the big prize winners claimed their loot.
Lawyers? Press conferences? Limousines? They graciously answered all of my
questions, telling me tales of the angry mother-in-law who tried to convince her
lottery-winner daughter to divorce her husband before she claimed the prize -
with the husband standing right there, and the man who was afraid to claim his
prize, fearing robbers would know he was walking into the lottery's offices with
the winning ticket. Total strangers helped me to research, too. At customer
service counters and gas stations all over town, I'd buy a ticket, and ask my
fellow ticket purchasers what they would do with the prize, if they won it.
Everyone had an answer, and many had put a lot of thought into their plans. A
bonus to that fun research project was that I spent $35 on lottery tickets and
won $150. Woo hoo! I quit while I was ahead.
Given my love of research and the trouble I could get into, you won't find me
writing about gangsters, drug dealers, or the sex industry. Maybe my next book
should be about a personal trainer. I could use the exercise. You might say it's
in the cards.
Learn more about Berta www.bertaplatas.com and www.gilliansummers.com
Let's thank Berta and ask her questions Sunday and Monday.
