Discover May's Best New Reads: Stories to Ignite Your Spring Days.

ML "Matt" Buchman

Features & Posts

No posts found.

10 comments posted.

Re: I Own The Dawn (11:43pm August 2, 2012):

Jennifer: Thanks for putting words to it. I love letting my characters discover not only each others layers, but their own as well. I found that falling in love was (aside from all the other great things) more self-educational even than my mid-life crisis on wheels when I bicycled solo around the world. Two people can be so much more than one plus one, which is just neat. I love that it works that way and that I was lucky enough to get that in real life as well as my writing live.

Re: I Own The Dawn (3:30pm August 2, 2012):

Elizabeth, you remind me of the day I met my step-daughter to be. I was scared to death! It was that make or break first meeting of "the kid" (6yo at the time) when I was already really enamored of her mom. We spent about 3 hours on the kitchen floor, her teaching me sign language and me teaching her how to spell, in sign. We had a great time and have whenever we've been together ever since (which has been a lot as she's almost 21 now). A real close 2nd for me, was the day we dropped her off at college and she practically took flight. Knew we'd done our job of setting her up to launch into the world.

Re: I Own The Dawn (10:57am August 2, 2012):

Erin: I know, me too! That moment of falling for each other is one of the great highs. I love reading and rereading those.
Denise: Yeah, that moment when your kid says, "I love you." for no reason that you can discern. That's about the best.
Clare: I've lost many a night's sleep to my characters emotions. Doesn't matter if I'm exhausted from the day and wrote until too late the night before, my brain will wake me up an hour before I have to leave for my day job, just so that I can write that next bit of scene. I love that part of writing.
So many: Thanks for all the positive comments, I certainly think they're immense fun. That's the reason I write, because I love to laugh and cry with my characters.

Re: The Night Is Mine (10:24pm February 17, 2012):

Susan, remind me to duck. Short swords make my head nervous for my shoulders.

Carla, there is no getting it right, there is only not starting. Once you start, don't stop. The rest of it will take care of itself.
ML

Re: The Night Is Mine (11:48pm February 16, 2012):

...I just noticed my comment ran too long and was truncated. I'll try to pick up my thoughts again...

I try to give my characters challenges, room to grow, and being the romantic that I am, room to become more themselves. To find who they are. I look for Emily Beale to find her place in her own life even as Mark "The Viper" Henderson seeks a place there as well. For my book two heroine in the Night Stalkers series, Kee Smith, finally allow herself to belong and to acknowledge her amazing heart that only Archie Stevenson III could see.

If I achieve even a little bit of this. If I somehow pass on even a piece of it, I will have done something important. My writing motto and my personal motto are the same:

To Champion the Human Spirit, to Celebrate the Power of Joy, and to Revel in the Wonder of Love.


Told you I was a romantic.
ML

Re: The Night Is Mine (10:26pm February 16, 2012):

Oh my god! Some of these stories... and I had the presumption to write about strength? LOL! Read these and revel in what you can achieve, this is really, really marvelous. Rather than try to respond to any of them, because it would be a weak shadow at best, let me turn back to myself and this story and more of how it came about.

I have a motto on the wall above my desk. A place my eyes naturally drift to when the latest throes of writing a scene have eased and I'm seeking the next moment. It is one born of my past and all the odd and horrible and wonderful experiences that have made me who I am. My bicycle journey is the great demarkation of my life, my before and after. (Perhaps bigger than my marriage because with who I was before my journey, well, I can't imagine my lady falling for that guy. Not nasty or anything, just really type A and really lost.) The after is what made me a writer and has kept me on the tail of the dream for the 19 years since and I'm sure will keep me going on the next 19. I set out to tell a story, and it changes and grows with each set of characters, but the thread of that story is there in each of the dozen books I've written, including that ones that will never see the light of day because I had to learn my craft somewhere and sometimes it wasn't pretty.

I seek to honor my characters. To reach inside them, and hence myself, and find that strength, those challenges, those defeats turned to triumphs. Sometimes I'm more serious, sometimes, like "The Night is Mine," I'm lighter and more frivolous. But the goal remains the same. And when I first started studying how to write military characters, it became all the more important. The career soldiers I have studied and spoken with have an inner driven that is deep and solid. For some it is a very conscious choice, for some it is rather more instinctual, but it is as deep a drive as any I've ever encountered.

I try to give my characters challenges, room to grow, and, being th

Re: The Night Is Mine (4:15pm February 16, 2012):

Alyson, My wife's mother did the same, ran away from home at 16 and lied about her age to get into nursing school in a different country. I admire you the desire to walk that road and the fact that you found where you wanted to walk at such an age. That's amazing!
ML

Re: The Night Is Mine (4:12pm February 16, 2012):

Peggy, all I can really say is, "Been there." The good news is when you discover that you have a strength you could never imagine possible. When I talk to my now wife about her time as a single-mother, starting a new business so that she could keep the house and raise her child in safety... I am in awe of such strength. I've said this elsewhere, but a woman's strength runs deep, it runs along their very bones. If a man ever thinks he's strong, he doesn't have a clue!

I hope your path continues to brighten.
ML

Re: The Night Is Mine (4:08pm February 16, 2012):

Suzanne, most romance writers are women. There are a few guys out there and always have been, but few is the key phrase. At that 1996 RWA National conference I mentioned above, there were 1,800 women and 7 men. And no, it wasn't what you'd expect, these women were intestested in writing and the business of writing. They mostly just assumed I was someone's lost boyfriend and ignored me.
ML

Re: The Night Is Mine (4:06pm February 16, 2012):

Lisa, "callings" are sneaky, slippery things. They slip up and tap you on the shoulder and if you turn too quickly, you can spook them. Actually, I never thought of writing as a calling, it was just something I did, that I enjoyed, and it built, and it grew, and I found myself reading books about writing in my leisure time and taking classes and so on. My wife is an absolutely amazing knitter and she's never happier than when puzzling over a steek, or two toes up, or Fair Isle or... If you really want to pursue something, look for what you already enjoy and are doing anyway. These are stolen minutes from my lunch at my day job, have to pay the bills and the college tuition, but writing is what keeps me up at night and wakes me up in the morning.
ML