Texan to the bone and an unrepentant Daddy's Girl, BA Tortuga spends her days with her basset hounds and her beloved wife, texting her sisters, and eating Mexican food. When she's not doing that, she's writing. She spends her days off watching rodeo, knitting and surfing Pinterest in the name of research. BA's personal saviors include her wife, Julia Talbot, her best friend, Sean Michael, and coffee. Lots of coffee. Really good coffee.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Country Don't Mean Dumb
I write a lot of Texans. I'm a Texan, through and through. My partner is a fine mix of New Mexico, Colorado, and South Carolina. I have known a ton of southerners, a ton of rural folks, and more cowboys than I can shake a stick at.
I'm here to tell you, we may not speak with perfectly grammatically correct English. We have weird colloquialisms. I write my characters as they speak -- internal and spoken dialogue.
This is a stylistic choice, absolutely. I try to tone it down when it doesn't fit a publisher's house style, but I tend very much toward tight, tight third person. My boys don't worry about the difference between who and whom.
I've been asked, does that make them sound dumb?
Not to me. I'm writing characters that belong in a particular time and space, with the voices they come with -- educated, not educated, brilliant, average intellect, challenged.
Did you know there are 7 distinct Texan dialects? For instance, I grew up in east Texas, but I've lived in central Texas for 15 years. In my home town, I sound like Austin. Here in Austin, they say I sound like east Texas. West Texas doesn't sound like me at all. ;-)
*shrugs*
There's also a difference between the Carolinas and Georgia. Western Colorado and Front Range. New Mexico and Arizona. Shreveport and NOLA.
I believe in letting the characters live in their skins, even when their skins don't sound like TV announcers.
Not only that, I love colloquialisms. I love that in the Ozarks, the answer to "What for?" can be "Cat fur, to make kitten britches." That in West Texas you can be plumb fool for a girl. That we're always fixin' to run somewhere. That we get mad as all get out or that it can come up a cloud outside. That the plural of y'all is all y'all (and only in Texas do you have all y'all ladies). That there is a particular brother in the family that is your bubba and that I'm Sister to my sister, Baby Girl, but Baby Girl to my daddy. That I have a Moma (not a momma) and a sister called Tootie.
I love that our new nephew, Boo, is 3 months old and has 15 nicknames, all of which will stick his whole life.
I love that, in our family, there's a pappy, a poppy, papaw, peepaw, grampy, nana, granny, mawmaw...
This is where my heart lives, in celebrating the voice that fills my ears whenever I go outside.
Is it dumb?
You'd be a damn fool to walk that road. ;-)
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
A hell of a way to wake up
Me, Julia, and the dogs popped out of bed like daisies from the snow. The lights were on in a couple of hours, the net and phone a couple of hours after that. Of course, one of the Macs blew up and we lost a switch, but we did not lose the file server.
I'm *so* grateful the transformer blew during a downpour and there wasn't a huge fire, so I won't even complain.
Except that my heart is still racing, 10 hours later. O.o
Monday, January 23, 2012
Challenges :D
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
My Boys Touch
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
10 Weird BA Factoids
Friday, January 13, 2012
Top Ten Things I'm Looking forward to this Spring
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
New Series Coming in February
Marc deals daily with the kinds of phenomenon Lily is struggling against. He knows it’s magick, but he’s not sure how to convince such a beautiful, stubborn woman how to start looking for solutions of the supernatural variety. Lily thinks Marc is arrogant and amazingly handsome, but she doesn’t want to trust him. Can the two of them learn to work together in time to save all that Lily holds dear?
:D
The first book is m/f, the second is m/m/f, the third is m/f, and the fourth is m/m/f. I make no promises after that.
As soon as I have a cover, I'll make sure to share.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Happy birthday to Me
Friday, January 6, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Happy New Year!
Oh, y'all! Happy happy! I had a lovely new year, restful and joyous. My house is clean, my heart is full, and my fingers are typing.
I resolved a number of things -- mainly to repeat my 100 books read in 2012, and I'm going to track them on GoodReads. I'm also backing away from processed food. Of course, I need to keep my word count up.
:D
What did y'all resolve this year?