Reality and fiction

Back from taking the girls to the orthodontist. I'm working on The Braced Experience right now, which is a collection of stories, and it's the first of the Dr.Samantha Wrighting books being written while I'm also seeing first-hand what the whole orthodontic experience is like again. What my girls are going through is different from what I went through - both the technological improvements and the office-visits themselves, and I guess my stories are more "old fashioned" (and exagerrated), but I think that works. So far, it's in the smaller details that what the girls are going through has really influenced what I'm writing. Like I'll catch them looking in the mirror sometimes, and I want to try to capture that look and the way it's different from the way they looked in the mirror a few months ago. Or the small things where the expander or the braces get in the way which I'd forgotten about.

I decided to use one more personal family experience in some of the stories - "the precaution" as we call it - though the daughter in question would be mortified. But I think it fits with the whole Dr.Wrighting experience, and I think it is probably more common than most people think.

I'm amazed how much I still have to write. I think The Braced Experience will have 10 or 11 stories (I want it to be around 200 pages long), but that's only half the stories I have outlines for! And I have another idea for a novel now too.

Right now I'm not thinking too much about finding readers and all that, though I porbably should be. I'm not sure the books will ever really catch on but I have so much to write that at the moment I almost don't care. But I guess I am a bit disappointed and surprised that there hasn't been more interest in Love and Braces yet. I really think there is an audience for it and for Retainer Girl - girls who really would get something out of them and feel better.

I'm really bad trying to do the publicity things, but I did add the press release for Love and Braces at the Intraoral Press MySpace page!