Fun Friday!

Writing is not a serious business. I mean really, among all the serious professions in the world - nurses, doctors, lawyers, firefighters, police officers, counselors... all the people who save our lives and take care of us day in and day out - writing romance novels for a living rates right up there with acting and finger painting on the serious scale. And thank goodness... we all need to lighten up sometimes. But even for writers, amid deadlines, commitments, real life and all of its turmoil - many of us here at the Casablanca blog have had a difficult year, to say the least - we all need to laugh more, have fun, be goofy, get our jollies.

So I am unilaterally declaring today 'Fun Friday'! By the way, did you know that the word 'Friday', in the romance language tradition, is - according to Wikipedia - "The word for Friday in most Romance languages is derived from Latin dies Veneris, 'day of Venus'" Or, some prefer to think of it as from Freya, the Norse goddess of love, beauty and fertility. Either way, it is a dandy day for a bunch of romance novelists to celebrate!

So, here we go for a silly and fun end of the week.

Wanna be a Regency romance writer? You dooo? Well, all you have to do is go to this site, the Regency Romance Plot Generator and take it for a spin. Honest! You will come up with a plot, and all you have to do is write the book from it!

But more fun is to be had! On the main site you will find not only the plot generator, but also a Gothic novel title generator and other things. Go to: Stuff and Nonsense.

But... but... you sputter, there's more to writing a Regency romance novel than some randomly generated plot! You need characters... lots and lots of characters! And you need place names, and house names and maybe a treasure for your characters to seek, or a war for them to fight, and colorful language...

Have no fear, folks. Do I have the place for you to go! Serendipity is its name, and generating random stuff is its game. This site is so much fun, you'll lose hours of possible work time. Honest! Need a French character name? Japanese? A place? City? Description for a castle or a style of clothing.

Even - and this is almost the most fun - a colorful cuss phrase?

Here's what I came up with, in just a couple of minutes:

Okay, so the title of my Gothic book, using the Gothic Romance Title Generator from Stuff and Nonsense is (dah duh-duh-duh! with a flourish)

Return to Dread!

Heroine's Name: Floriane Brideau
Hero's Name: Prince Xavier Domenic
Villain: Humbert Falkwing
Villain's favorite Cuss-Phrase: Almighty mother of a pestilent platypus-abusing squid!
Village: Scarmead (I'm not making this up... that's what I got on the Stuff and Nonsense random placename generator. Pretty good for a placename in Return to Dread, dontcha think?)

One of my favorite generators on the Serendipity site is the Plot Twist Generator... things are clicking along in Return to Dread when (plot twist coming up) "Without warning an assassin arrives, waving a newspaper."

So it is Fun Friday. Want to have some fun yourself? Check out the Regency Romance Plot Generator on Stuff and Nonsense, and for lots of other generators, (where I got the character names and the villain's cusswords) check out this page: Serendipity, where you'll find all the rest.

Haven't had enough, you little minxes? You say you're looking for more cool freaky Friday randomosity? Check out Seventh Sanctum. They can random generate anything!

And have fun!