Teresa D’Amario is blogging here today and giving away 2 ebooks of BLOOD MOON BETRAYED!!!

First, Thank you so much, crazy chicks, for inviting me to this most awesome blog. It's a pleasure to be here, and I can't wait to chat with your readers.

Everyone who watches my twitter or facebook feed knows I love movies. It’s mine and my husband’s date nights. But lately it’s become harder and harder for us to give “two thumbs up” upon departing a theater. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. If I’ve read the book in question, it helps, but only sometimes. Others, it seems to make matters worse. Or, if it’s a remake. Hollywood has been very busy with remakes of late, spurred by the remake of the Batman series. Now there’s remakes everywhere. Don't look now, but Carrie is just around the corner. It’s one thing Hollywood gets away with that we authors don’t – redoing what has already been done. On the night of this writing, my husband and I went to see Red Dawn. Last week’s movie was Twilight, Breaking Dawn part 2, and so on. But society is now so much into a combination of “I don’t have time” and “let me give you less for your money”, movies get shorter and shorter. Twilight, Breaking dawn, should have been in one 2.5 hr movie. Instead it was dragged out to four hours, making the first one almost putting me to sleep, but at least they were able to address some of the emotions this time, with the last 2 hrs of the movie being the best of the series. That, and the movie makers receive twice as much money, so of course it was a hit in their eyes. My husband didn’t like it, but then he didn’t realize how surprising the ending was for those of us who read the books. For once, it was a good surprise, and made the movie. For him, it was rather a let down.

Red Dawn is a remake of a 1984 movie featuring the late, great Patrick Swayze where a group of teenagers fight to save their town from the soviets. I remember when it came out, it played on the military base on which I was stationed, and one of my friends said after walking out of the theater, she cried when she saw the American Flag flying freely right outside the theater. Today’s movie was about a group of teens saving their town from the North Koreans. It was updated to include current technology. There were several highly emotional scenes, and yet…. For me, it fell flat. Like a lot of other movies, the scenes are shoved together and rushed that I totally missed what happened with one character who died and wasn’t even mourned.

In this world of romance novels, and even in other books, we thrive on that emotion. We authors put as much into it as we can. We take our time, allowing the reader to feel what our characters feel. We provide the ups and downs, the laughter and the pain. An example would be my book Blood Moon Betrayed. It is filled with pain, and confusion. I remember when writing one particular scene, my beta reader told me I was avoiding the pain, that I shouldn't. She was right. I dived in and recreated the scene until I cried my own eyes out. I felt our hero’s pain as the twists and turns bring him to the point of crushing death. What took me hours to write probably took the readers 10-15 minutes to read. And had it been in a movie, I’m sure it would have been over in seconds. It would be a quick “The hero’s pissed, stay away”, instead of an Oh My God, how did he survive the pain? True betrayal is nothing more than an arrow straight into the emotional heart of the one betrayed. How can I make that blasé?

When directors rush the most emotional part of the movies, they fall flat. They steal the very character of the story. Half of them can’t touch my heart with the important characters unless I’ve already read the books. Would Harry Potter have drawn me so firmly into his final battles had I not read the books? I can say definitely not. When Dobby died in the books, the readers were in an uproar, all of us teary eyed and crying into our kerchiefs. I think even I saw a tear in my hubby’s eye as we listened (We used audio books for the Harry Potter series and listened mostly together) In the movie, Dobby was nothing more than a character that barely showed up in the last parts of the movie. His character meant little, and there were very few tears in the theater at his demise.

Success is all about the emotion. That tiny detail that drives us to do everything we do. It’s motivation. If a character has no emotion, then when he acts, his acts fall flat. If I have to judge, books always come away the winner, because the scenes aren’t rushed. They’re slow enough to let us feel exactly what’s happening, and I’ll take books over Movies any day!

Excerpt from Blood Moon Betrayed:

“Are you okay?” she asked. 
He stopped beside her and stared down at her for long seconds. His jaw flexed, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped away, moving toward Kieran’s cabin. Caden followed. Without a word, he moved into the bathroom, but before he closed himself inside, she was there, her hand slapping on the wood. 
He stared at her for long minutes before turning to face the mirror. She didn’t know what he saw within his own eyes, but from her place by the door, she saw the pain wearing heavily on his slumped shoulders. He propped his hands on either side of the sink and dropped his head, as though avoiding his own gaze.
“I failed.” 
Caden sucked in a breath. “You did not.” 
His jaw tightened. He shoved from the sink and stormed toward her, stopping only when they were nose to nose. “I was her father, damn it. I failed her.”  
Inside, Caden’s heart broke, and tears stung her eyes, but she fought them back and lifted her chin. Sean needed to hear some truths and only she was there to give them. “She made her own decisions.”  
“You’re right,” he snarled, storming away, back toward the mirror. “And I made mine.” Anger and grief twisted inside him, warring for control. He slammed a fist on the counter. “And mine led to what she became!” 
“You can’t know that.” 
“Don’t try to placate me, Caden. It’s beneath you.” 
The overhead light glared down on him, his face hard and filled with shadows. Shadows she wished she could take away from him. She wanted to take him in her arms and soothe away the hurt. God, how she wished grief worked like that, but it didn’t. The pain was too raw and bone deep. For now, all she could do was try to offer him reason and show him what his heart failed to see.

Be sure to stop by Teresa's web page for more information at: http://teresadamario.com/index.html

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BLOOD MOON BETRAYED!!!

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