Characters: Do your characters have no obvious signs of life, nothing that gives them unique personality, perspective, and passion? Plots: Are plots and conflicts created spur of the moment with no set up, build up, curiosity, or tension? Relationships: Are your characters merely going through the motions with each other? All of these and more are signs of dead or lifeless stories. The three core elements of story--Characters, Plots, and Relationships (CPR)--need to be developed three dimensionally. To truly be living, characters aren't simply existing and going through the motions. They possess fully developed external and internal conflicts. They're interacting in dynamic, realistic, and believable relationships. They have multidimensional character attributes that give them both vitality and voice. Finally, they're engaged in what makes life worthwhile with definable goals and motivations. This resource teaches writers how to identify dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships; establish proper setup; plant the seeds early with in-depth sketches; and pinpoint weak areas in CPR development. The only one-stop, everything-you-need-to-know 9-1-1 for deep, multifaceted Character, Plot, and Relationship development!

Characters: Do your characters have no obvious signs of life, nothing that gives them unique personality, perspective, and passion? Plots: Are plots and conflicts created spur of the moment with no set up, build up, curiosity, or tension? Relationships: Are your characters merely going through the motions with each other? All of these and more are signs of dead or lifeless stories. The three core elements of story--Characters, Plots, and Relationships (CPR)--need to be developed three dimensionally. To truly be living, characters aren't simply existing and going through the motions. They possess fully developed external and internal conflicts. They're interacting in dynamic, realistic, and believable relationships. They have multidimensional character attributes that give them both vitality and voice. Finally, they're engaged in what makes life worthwhile with definable goals and motivations. This resource teaches writers how to identify dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships; establish proper setup; plant the seeds early with in-depth sketches; and pinpoint weak areas in CPR development. The only one-stop, everything-you-need-to-know 9-1-1 for deep, multifaceted Character, Plot, and Relationship development!

Detached and ignored for most of her life, Brayla Sullivan is the awkward, ugly duckling destined for spinsterhood who's never been kissed, never gone anywhere beyond the small town she was born and raised in. When she starts corresponding with a man from a "Meet Exotic Singles" website and he suggests they meet, she drops everything to fly to him in a last-ditch effort to find her happily-ever-after. The only son in a family of daughters, Shaun Levi, Peaceful's Chief of Police, has never looked the part of a dashing hero. Whenever he'd opened his mouth, his sisters had spoken for him or over him, and now any attempts at conversation with the opposite sex lead him to either a loss for words or making a mess that's ensured he'll stay a bachelor for life. Brayla has been nothing more than a buddy he's known all his life. But, when a kiss between them on a particularly lonesome New Year's takes a turn for the what-have-we-done?, he sees a side to his old friend he never anticipated...and the consequences may just leave him without a friend or a prayer of convincing her they could share so much more. Brayla's poorly-conceived plan to meet Mr. Right veers from point A to Z to F and every-sad-where in-between, leaving her hopelessly lost and desperate for someone to rescue her. Everything she expects to happen falls through while the unexpected may turn into everything she's ever dreamed of...or all she's dreaded. On the rocky road to happily-ever-after, who knows what can happen?

Peaceful Pilgrims Series is set in Karen Wiesner's fictional town of Peaceful, Wisconsin, a small community with old-fashioned values and friendly people you'll want to get to know and visit often. Small-town girl Ayodele "Della" Flynn lives in a city she abhors, where danger seems to be lurking around every corner. When her husband dies very unexpectedly, she's confronted with figuring out where her home is with her young son River and trying to come to terms with the loose ends her husband left their lives in.

Newlyweds Tori Bertoletti and Raze Salen--the heart and soul of the Human spacefaring liveship the Aero--are separated. Ambassador Raze continues to negotiate formal alliances while Tori and the best scientific minds in the galaxy try to figure out how to stop the organic menace swallowing the universe in darkness. Meanwhile, civil war threatens to erupt between Earthers and Spacers and the leader of the Napoleonic Sinshe has defected. But can he convince his people...including his own sons leading the armada against all other worlds and cultures...that they've been indoctrinated and enslaved to lies against their will?

How do you know destiny when it knocks on your door, or recognize it if it's always been there? Christian Riley, Elizabeth Horace, and Oscar Albright grew up together, the cliched "church kids", but Chris quickly found everything about his life stifling. When he moves to Los Angeles to get away from everything his existence has dictated for him, he doesn't expect Elizabeth to follow him, but he's known for as long as he can remember that she loves him obsessively...just as Oscar loves her. With Chris's faith in tatters, he has no interest in Christianity let alone morality. Yet in the thirteen years that follow, he finds himself returning to Elizabeth whenever he hits rock bottom. Deep down, he understands she alone will always love him, no matter how far he strays or how much he hurts her when he uses her as his last-ditch refuge. When a serial killer/rapist's attack of Elizabeth is mercifully thwarted, Chris's world collapses in on him with guilt and horror coming at him from every corner. The attack has changed Elizabeth. She realizes she's put her life on hold for too long praying for Chris to share her belief that their love and life together is destined. After she severs the ties between them, Chris knows the only way to get her back is to give himself to the Lord. God begins changing him from the inside out, but--too little, too late--has he fallen in love when his angel of mercy is no longer available to him?

Sometimes what you don't know can hurt you... Following a troubled childhood, Sybilla Nygard marries her much older entrepreneur partner, Tobias Ocampo. They've been inseparable since they started Offbeat Enterprises together. Their publishing house produces a book series focused on unusual homes. After suffering memory loss about his past, Tobias inherits an elaborate, isolated estate at the top of Bloodmoon Mountain in Bloodmoon Cove. The reports and rumors swirling about the house, suggesting death and secrets hide within, make it all the more appealing to Syl as their next Offbeat Homes project. But her biggest motivation is discovering more about Tobias's beginnings. Although Syl and Tobias don't relish spending winter trapped in isolation, they bring along their closest family and friends to keep them company while they search out the mysteries of Howling Halls. The nightmare Syl has been having as long as she can remember returns. The voice of a ghost urges, Find me, leading her to hidden spaces and the skeletons of a family desperate to escape its demons...all while monstrous things are waking up hungry.

At the ripe old age of thirty-six, Clay Wooten is tired of his law career and his insane, meddling family. Between constantly having to rescue his younger sister from her life-and-death antics and his parents' high-handed belief that they can manage his life better than he can, he wants out. At the very least, he wants to escape long enough to figure out on his own which direction to follow for his future. Harper Marasek had spent her teenage years wanting nothing more than to escape the stifling, suffocating small town she was born and raised in. When the charming and much-too-old-for-her Clay Wooten passed through Amethyst when she was fifteen years old, she found herself smitten...and a few years later she headed to New York to start college and learn how to be an independent woman. Harper secretly hoped to meet up with Clay and, though for the years she was in college they shared an off-and-on intimacy that could never be enough for her, she unfathomably finds after getting her degree that she misses Amethyst, her family and old friends, and the small town values she'd dismissed as old-fashioned when she was younger. With the offer of a job waiting for her in her hometown...and a marriage proposal from her high school boyfriend...Harper contacts Clay to say goodbye forever. Clay has spent a lifetime unwilling to allow himself to be shackled by anyone or anything except his family. Women have merely been a means to an end and unfettered pleasure for him. But, realizing he's losing Harper, he suddenly wants nothing more than to hold on tight to the best part of his life. On the pretense of getting away from his family, he suggests to Harper that they take a road trip, to end in Amethyst, for auld lang syne. Harper has resigned herself to never capturing Clay's heart, but she's loved him for as long as she can remember. How can she refuse his offer when her happiest moments have been spent with this man?

Talise "Tally" Johnson is the second youngest in a family of nine siblings, having grown up a lifer in the small town of Amethyst, where thousands of tourists flock in summer. Once the tourist season is over, the remaining residents do anything and everything to get through the long, hard winters. Tally's family owns Johnson Resort. Tally has managed to cultivate her job there to include professionally cleaning businesses all around the area throughout the year. Like most Amethyst lifers, she can't imagine ever moving, but Amethyst isn't exactly a hotbed for excitement. She and handsome bad boy Adam Schaefer have been an item since high school. Against all odds and despite being a reckless youth always in trouble, Adam is one of the few born and bred in Amethyst who have managed to get out into the big, wide world. As a pilot for a large commercial airline, he's barely home two weeks out of every year. Tally and Adam's informal engagement has stretched out into years and, seeing the happy couples getting engaged, married and starting families all around her, she begins to wonder if he's serious or simply sees her as a convenient stop on the never-ending tour of his life. Donnie Garner's best friend Adam is easy to admire. Though they grew up together and got in the same fracas as boys, Adam has made something of himself. Donnie still lives in Amethyst, still works in his dad's vehicle repair shop with no other career aspirations, still loves the same girl he spent most of his teenage years obsessed with though she's happily married with kids. Donnie finds himself longing to experience the kind of loyalty and crazy-love with a soulmate that he also sees all around him. For once in his life, he'd like to be the hero in some amazing woman's life. Donnie isn't blind to the shoddy way Adam treats beautiful and sweet Tally, cheating on her without remorse and bragging to him about it, while Tally carries on believing the best of him and his future intentions toward her. Almost unconsciously, Donnie finds himself in love with his best friend's girl and trying to make her see she'd be better off without Adam--maybe even better off with him. But, even when Tally falls in love with Donnie instead, she can't easily turn away from the father of the child she never expected to be carrying...

When mankind realized Earth would become uninhabitable, Humans built space habitations. Their first allies arrived in 2073 and shared their technology to power ships through space corridors that fold space and time. Only 58 years into their struggle for survival, an enemy emerges. In the wake of this threat an organic menace is only beginning to be recognized, ensuring the annihilation of every living thing if, together, they can't find a way to stop it. Spacefaring liveship, the Aero, is on a routine mission to the far-flung regions of the galaxy when they receive a distress call from their oldest space habitation outside the Sol System. The structure has been brutally attacked, inhabitants kidnapped or outright killed. The crew aboard the Aero including Astoria Bertoletti, librarian and planet cataloger, and Raze Salen, mankind's emissary, search for clues to explain the unprecedented tragedy. After several more, similar distress calls from other habitations, the savage pieces of the mystery begin to emerge--and point to the culpability of humanity's short-sightedness and desperation when they first began seeking out alternate spaces in the galaxy to call home. In the midst of the imminent threat of war, Raze and Tori present the immutable evidence of wrongdoing both intentional and inadvertent to their government as well as to their strongest and weakest allies who may have no choice but to desert them in yet another hour of dire need.