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!

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.

Erin Shanley, a hospice nurse, turns amateur sleuth when she realizes that some of her patients are being swindled out of their life savings by the new "psychic" fortunetellers in Briar's Point. She confides in her neighbor, Detective Tyler Shaw, whom she grew up alongside and considers her best friend. Tough guy Ty has been in love with Erin since their disastrous first attempt at a romantic relationship when they were teenagers. Erin has been skittish about love since she discovered her father was cheating on her mother--and Ty is so much like her father. How can she risk loving a reckless, restless adventurer when her mother's loyalty to a man like that brought her so much pain? But when Erin's bumbling sleuthing attempts arouse someone's wrath, she realizes her heart isn't the only thing in danger.

Back into the mouth of hell... Daniel and Hannah Reynolds are newly married with their first child on the way when a notice comes from a lawyer saying that the remaining member of the Bonavaris clan has died and willed Bloodmoon Manor and all its possessions to Hannah, her former maid and cook. While Hannah can't fathom the reason for the bequest, the notion of selling the manor and the valuable items inside it begins to grow inside her like an obsession. She and Daniel have begun their married life with little more than outstanding debts from his medical education--debts that come due around the same time as the birth of their baby. After a lifetime of poverty, Hannah refuses to allow her child to face the kind of scavenging, hand-to-mouth existence that had led to her employment at the horrible Bloodmoon Manor in the first place. Unable to convince his beloved wife to forget about returning to Bloodmoon Cove to secure a future for their family, Daniel has no choice but to follow her into what he aptly calls "the mouth of hell"--a place Hannah just barely escaped with her life last time. Daniel's worst fears are justified when the doors of Bloodmoon Manor slam shut behind them. They've been lured here deliberately, and the horrors that haunt the dark, evil manor aren't willing to let Hannah leave ever again...

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. At nearly 40, Dante Robinson has never been in a relationship that wasn't more than a one-night stand. His nephew, a college student, living in the upstairs apartment of his garage reveals that, on a lark, he and his friend started an online dating company, Perfect Match. Dante insists he shut it down...until the kid offers to hook him up with a "naughty librarian". Lena Young has worked two jobs since she was in high school. She's 30 and raises the daughter of her abusive older brother, a truck driver, as if she's her own. When her friend convinced her to sign up for Perfect Match, she couldn't get herself to go through it...until Dante responds to her profile. Developing a major crush on her brother's best friend hadn't been difficult when Lena was a sheltered girl, but Dante hasn't been back to their house in 16 years. After she agrees to meet him without telling him who she is, she discovers he only invited her over to his house to get laid. She's mortified but, when an equally humiliated Dante comes to the truck stop diner she works on the weekends and apologizes, begging her to forgive him, she can't turn him away. Wanting to tell him to hit the road, she instead finds herself believing him, championing his determination to become a better man...convinced that, with him, she could have one thing in her life that brings her the kind of joy she's always dreamed of but has never considered possible.

A missing engagement ring leads to murder... It's been a month since Denim McHart hung up his private investigating career after he ended up with a bullet in his leg. The injury has forced Den to re-evaluate future goals in his career, his love-life and his spiritual life. To keep himself busy in early retirement, he's been attempting to restore an antique table and he's officially bored. He can't seem to keep his mind off his investigative partner, the lovely and complicated Sylvia Price whom he's had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship with in the past. When Sylvia calls him out of the blue, he doesn't waste time getting down to their office. In this past month, Sylvia has been dealing with her own feelings for Den, her overwhelming guilt for the pivotal event that happened years ago and caused her mother to be mentally unstable, coinciding with her inability to forgive herself the way she knows the Lord has forgiven her. Before the sparks can fly between Den and Sylvia in the direction he has his heart set, she says they've got company. Jilted bride Naomi Deva tells him that her groom--Mayor Thomas Julian--dumped her at the altar. Reluctantly, she admits he'd caught her in a compromising position with the best man only minutes before the ceremony. Naomi also reveals the reason why she's sought them: The local police department hasn't been able to turn up the 6.1 carat diamond engagement ring Thomas gave her...and the groom wants it back. Immediately.

Without layering, a story is one-dimensional, unbelievable, boring. Layers mean stronger characters, settings, plots, suspense, intrigue, emotions and motivation. Layering also produces cohesion of all elements. Characters must blend naturally with the setting the writer has placed them, just as plot becomes an organic part of character and setting. If a story doesn't work, it could very well be because the elements aren't cohesive. Cohesive Story Building shows how each element hinges on the other two and how to mix them until they fuse irrevocably. Additionally, Cohesive Story Building carefully explores each stage of story development from brainstorming and outlining to drafting and revision. From a thorough look at the fundamentals of writing to comprehensive story building techniques, as well as submission guidelines and etiquette, this must-have guide will see writers through the entire book writing process from start to finish. Set within the framework of comparing the process of building a house to the process of building a story, Cohesive Story Building gives a solid plan of action from start to finish through in-depth examples and exercises, and leave-no-stone-unturned checklists that will help writers take the plan into their own writing. Features detailed examples from published books to illustrate story-building principles. Those who have read Karen S. Wiesner's reference First Draft Outline, which focuses on in-depth outlining and goal-setting, will find Cohesive Story Building a perfect companion to that book.

An eleven-year-old boy is plucked from boarding school in England and transported to the tropical paradise of Jamaica where he's free to study his one great love--butterflies. He discovers that Jamaica has a wealth of these wonderful insects and sets about making a collection of as many as he can find. Along the way, he has adventures with other creatures, from hummingbirds to vultures, from iguanas to black widow spiders. Through it all runs the promise of the legendary Homerus swallowtail, Jamaica's national butterfly. Other activities intrude, like school, boxing and swimming lessons, but he manages to inveigle his parents into taking him to strange and sometimes dangerous places, all in the name of butterfly collecting. He meets scientists and Rastafarians, teachers, small boys and the ordinary people living on the tropical isle, and even discovers butterflies that shouldn't exist in Jamaica. Author Max Overton was that young boy. He counted himself fortunate to have lived in Jamaica in an age very different from the present one. Max still has some of the butterflies he collected half a century or more ago, and each one releases a flood of memories whenever he opens the box and gazes at their tattered and fading wings. These memories have become stories--stories of the Adventures of a Small Game Hunter in Jamaica.