Heven & Hell Tour, Guest Post by Cambria Hebert

I am very excited to welcome Cambria Hebert, author of the faboulus book Masquerade, at my blog today for a guest post. So I am not going to say anything else, just enjoy...

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Hey Peeps! 

A huge thank you to Veronica for having me by today!! The Heven and Hell tour has been so much fun! When Veronica and I were talking about what kind of post to do, she asked me about the process I go through when writing. So I thought I would share a little peak at the inside of my writer’s head. 

Note: Beware of what you are about to see and hear!! LOL. 

Usually for me an idea for a book stems from a single character. I get a flash about something that they have experienced and from there I want to know more. And a lot of times that character decided to “talk” to me at all hours of the day and night. It can actually be very distracting – especially if I don’t listen. LOL. Sometimes I feel like I am outlet for them to tell their story. So for the first little while I just listen to them talk and I learn more about them. With Heven in Masquerade – I really liked her and I wanted to know so much more so I started writing. 

I went to my closet and strapped on some mismatched socks, a hat with a propeller on top and a sweater with tissues in the pockets – hey sometimes the characters make you cry…. 

Okay not really. LOL. That would be weird. I wear my pj’s usually when I write. But sometimes the characters do make you cry. ;) 

I don’t usually write from an outline – I am too impatient to sit and write an outline I want to get to the good part – the story. Plus and outline makes me feel like I have to follow it when I am writing. My characters like to do surprising things and if I stuck to an outline the story wouldn’t be as good. I do write notes though. Notes on certain things I want to add to the story, exciting scene ideas I don’t want to forget, etc. I write in a notebook that I have and also on napkins, old bills and pretty much anything that is within reach when I get an idea. Then I stuff all those ideas into the pages of the notebook. It is extremely disorganized. Anyone volunteer to be my secretary? Lol. 

I also write the book out of order. I write the scenes that are loudest in my head and then I work backwards or forward depending upon my mood. (Yeah – I can be a moody girl, lol). Then when that scene seems to fade out I tend to skip ahead and write what I am thinking that day. Then I have to piece all those scenes together and combine them with new scenes to make it all make sense. 

Are you following any of this? 

I’m not sure I am. 

I pretty much walk around like a crazed person while writing a book with a notebook and a pen asking people if certain things make sense. Then I sit and the computer and pound away at the keys until all the ideas run out. People think I am crazy. I probably am. Ha ha ha ha. 

I do keep a list of all the characters in my story with their descriptions, likes and dislikes and certain character traits. You would be surprised how often I forget an eye color or some small detail so a list to refer to is a must. 

For Masquerade I also wrote a timeline. It was helpful to keep all the events straight that happened before and after Heven’s accident. The timeline also included information about Sam. 

After the rough draft is written I go through it with my editor and we flush out all the things that don’t add to the story or the things I wrote that make my characters seem bi-polar (I tend to make them bi-polar a lot). For Masquerade we added a lot of content to give the story more depth and detail. 

So that is pretty much my process when writing a book. I go from crazy to crazier! LOL!! Thankfully the mess in my head usually translates onto paper pretty well. 

It definitely keeps things interesting and I usually am never bored.! 

Thanks again to Veronica for having me here at her marvelous blog today!!! 

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I hope everyone enjoyed this post, I know I did. So for more stops on the Heven and Hell tour you can go to my right sidebar. I have posted all the direct links so far. There are guest posts, reviews, interviews and my personal fav...giveaways!!! 

You can get the prequel to Masquerade for free!!! Click Here

And if you are interested in byuing Masquerade you can find it almost everywhere: Smashwords, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk.