Greetings Love Bytes readers! This is the Alix half of Alix-and-Connie, with added commentary from Connie. Today we’re talking about the things we think are funny. And Wikipedia. And um, some other stuff….
Folks have mixed feelings about clichés. One obvious cliché in a story? Bad storytelling. Two? Terrible. But six or seven? Now that’s just funny.
Both Connie and I have eschewed the “less is more” philosophy in pretty much all areas of our lives, and are firmly in the “more is more” camp. (We also enjoy camp, but that’s a topic for another time.) Neither one of us are hoarders or anything, but we both agree that one or two gnome statues in your garden are tacky, but thirty of them staging a war and gradually moving into different battle formations day by day? Awesome.
Story planning sessions with Connie go something a bit like this:
“What if we added supernatural creature/conspiracy theory/secret society/ridiculous location?”
“That’s kind of over the top….”
“Yeah, but is that bad? What if we add another supernatural creature/conspiracy theory/secret society/ridiculous location?”
“That’s ridiculous. But it could be fun.”
“Okay, so how about if we add YET ANOTHER supernatural creature/conspiracy theory/secret society/ridiculous location?”
“Are you kidding me? That’s ridiculous. [pause to mull it over] Do you think we can do that? Won’t the editors make us change it because we went too far?”
“No such thing as too far, babe. Not with you by my side.”
And then we dissolve in laughter.
(It’s possible that we shouldn’t have our story-planning meetings during cocktail hour. Then again, why mess with a good thing? I like mojitos, and Connie recently has a thing for dirty martinis [James Bond, anyone?]. Or cosmos. Or Moscow mules. I’m a seriously cheap drunk, who can’t make her way to the bathroom without staggering after one drink, but Connie could out-drink a Russian. Not that either of us drink to excess or have a problem—unless you count my inability to make my body go where I want it to as a problem.)
In addition to our love of word play, tropes, and clichés, Connie and I both have a bad habit with getting lost in Wikipedia. For Song and Key, my search history includes such obscurities as Proto Indo-European languages, local food and liquors of the Balkans, weather in the Carpathian mountains, Sebastian Stan (oops, I got distracted there for a little while), Central European predatory mammals, and why hot springs smell so utterly foul. [Hi, it’s Connie. I’m squidging in here to agree with everything Alix said. Getting lost in the research is half the fun! Getting lost with Alix is sheer nirvana!]
We both love obscure facts and trivia (note to self: we seriously need to play Trivial Pursuit some time), and we love to throw weird bits of things that we found into our current writing project. As a perfect example, I was recently looking up small villages in Cornwall, and stumbled upon Stargazey pie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargazy_pie). So that has to go in the next book, obviously. OBVIOUSLY. [It’s Connie again, popping up to fist-bump Alix.]
How about you, readers? What’s the strangest thing currently in your Wikipedia history? Do you get lost wandering around in there too? We’d love to hear from you, so drop a comment here or visit us at our Facebooks. [Yes, please do. The more weird trivia the better! – CB]
BLURB
The Men from GLEN
Dreamspun Beyond | #11
So-called monsters won’t hold these spies back!
For two secret agents on a mission to a secluded Romanian village, the toughest fight they face may not be against the folktale monsters lurking in the foggy mountains and old ruins, but against their unlikely attraction to each other.
Keller Key is the top operative at the covert Global Law Enforcement Network—and boy, does he know it. Sexy half-Ukrainian, half-Korean Sevastyan Song is a close second. When the agents go undercover to investigate an old friend’s suspicious death, it soon becomes clear something sinister is afoot in the ancient forest and decrepit abbey. If an evil organization doesn’t spell the end of them, the angry locals might. But if they’re going to conquer their enemies, they need to keep their hands off each other and their minds on the case, in a rivals-to-lovers paranormal mash-up that gives new meaning to spy-on-spy action.
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Available January 2, 2018 from Dreamspinner Press
Alix Bekins lives and writes atop a treacherous hillside in the Santa Cruz mountains. Her days start with a cup of proper British tea and end with knitting while watching TV. In real life, Alix is a no-nonsense, judgmental-eyebrow, whip-cracking admin whose turn-ons include glitter nail polish, hiking, dogs, chocolate, and sensual walks in the rain. Without the rain, because that sounds cold.
Alix is pretty sure she’s the only person in the world who wears a plastic Viking helmet as a thinking cap when she battles writer’s block. She always wins.
Connie Bailey is a Luddite who can’t live without her computer. She’s an acrophobic who loves to fly, a faultfinding pessimist who, nonetheless, is always surprised when something bad happens, and an antisocialite who loves her friends like family. She’s held a number of jobs in many disparate arenas to put food on the table, but writing is the occupation that feeds her soul.
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Facebook: www.facebook.com/AlixBekins
Blog: http://alixbekins.wordpress.com
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Email: bailey.connie@gmail.com