Five I'm Still Thinking about - Jeffe's picks for interesting reads of the year

Our first real snow hit last night and this morning's sunrise showed in spectacular glory, a promise of the solstice and the turn of the year, it seemed.

The topic at the Bordello this week is the Five Most Engaging/Interesting Books Read in 2014. I like how this one is phrased - not necessarily our favorite books, but the ones that stood out. It can be an important distinction, especially for writers, because we tend to be friends with other writers and, outside of that, personally know many of the authors of the books we read. Reading a book can be infused - positively or negatively - with how we feel about that person. Picking a favorite of the year can be even worse, because which of your wonderful friends do you pick? It's often easier for me to pick a book written by someone I don't know, than to choose from among my friends' books.

That said, I tend to read a lot of my friends' books, sometimes via crit or as a beta reader, or just so I can have nice things to say. In 2014 (so far!) I've read 119 books. Yes, I've been keeping track, because I had a goal of reading at least two books a week, to try to get back into reading again. For someone who used to read about a book a day, that's not much. But I also caught up on a lot of "meaning to" reads.

One of those was Thea Harrison's Elder Races series. I've been hearing about these books for several years, but had never read. I confess it was partly because they're labeled as Paranormal Romance. I should totally know better, how these hairs are split, but PNR has sadly come to mean questionable worldbuilding to me. Not so with these books! Some are stronger than others, but the series is a fantastic take on our modern world, but with the addition of living monsters like gryphons, harpies and dragons. Much like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series as it used to be, with better romance and way less crazy. In particular I found Serpent's Kiss and Kinked to be engaging stories that have stuck with me.

I also read and write a fair amount of erotic romance. My friend Anne Calhoun came out with Afternoon Delight this year. She's one of those authors I stalked and made be my friend after I read her work. Her books stay with me long after I finish them and this was no different. The recovery from grief, the heroine who runs a food truck, the afternoons of lazy sex...this book lingers in my mind like the memory of a perfect meal in a beautiful place with my favorite person.

I caught up on the last of my Neil Gaiman backlog this year, and read his 2013 release, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and I finally sat down with the box set of his graphic novel series The Sandman: Book of Dreams, which I received for my birthday a year ago.(I SAID I'm behind on my reading, okay??) Both carry Gaiman's trademark dreamy darkness. I thought I was going to say that I didn't enjoy Ocean, which I finished just last night - but by the end he had me as usual.

On the SFWA forums, I met MCA Hogarth, who is self-publishing most of her work these days as, like me, she doesn't write books that neatly slot into genres. I read her Even the Wingless and that book has continued to haunt me. Her voice is also dark and dreamy, the world she created dense and provocative. I love a well-constructed alien society that stays true to its own mores and doesn't bow to the standards of the one we live in. This book is a far cry from a romance and yet got to my heart anyway.

Finally, my go-to when I'm asked to pick my favorite book of the year, I've been saying Magic Breaks, by Ilona Andrews. This is the seventh novel in the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series.
I've been keeping up with that series since book 2 and I think it's one of the best out there. It's not easy to keep a series like that, especially with an ongoing and developing romance, vital and fresh.
This seventh book lives up to its magical number with a searing story and developments that catapult the overall arc into a whole new realm. Amazing accomplishment.

Tracking Sales Without Losing Your Mind

by @JeffeKennedy

This week's topic - Tracking Sales: Do You Do It and How? - is apropos as I have a book release tomorrow. Yes, Rogue's Paradise, the third book in the Covenant of Thorns series, comes out Monday, September 8!

A book release day can be so fraught. It's the final goodbye to the book in many ways - like sending your kid off to college or waving farewell on their wedding day. You're full of hopes and dreams for them and also teeming with nervous dread that something awful will happen. With a book, of course, a huge part of this is WILL IT SELL?

It's the inescapable metric, particularly for those of us who are not independently wealthy and are trying to make a self-supporting career of writing. At the same time, tracking sales feels - to me - like focusing on the wrong thing.

I've been having this ongoing conversation lately with my friend, Anne Calhoun. About making career decisions and what our goals as writers really are. Both of us agree that, if it were all about making money for us, we'd be stockbrokers. There are easier ways to make a lot of money. Last week on Word Whores, too, I talked about valuing personal happiness and how I work towards that. Part of that for me is not focusing too hard on sales.

So the answer to the first part of the question is, I don't track very closely. I don't try for real time much at all. Sometimes I see my Amazon ranking if someone points me there, and that's because it's good news. Really, I only want to see the happy-making stuff. Like when a bunch of tweets alerted me to Rogue's Pawn, book one in the Covenant of Thorns series, making #2 in Fantasy Romance on Amazon. After Dean Koontz, well-known Fantasy Romance author. *cough*

I sometimes look at the Amazon rankings for book one in my Twelve Kingdoms series, The Mark of the Tala, because I continue to be bemused - and pleasantly surprised - by how high the rankings are. There are a lot of people out there who perform the dubious alchemy of translating Almighty Amazon's sales rankings to copies sold and dollars generated, but I am not one.

That said, I *am* the Spreadsheet Queen. I do track my sales there, both by book and overall totals. I have charts that show which venues sell the most of each book and that track my sales by month (where I have that much detail - some of my royalties are reported quarterly or longer) for copies sold and my revenue. It's gotten more complicated now that the statements are funneled through my agency as well, but I input all the data. The most interesting metric is one I set up that calculates the total amount of money a book has earned for me divided by the number of days elapsed since its release. This gives me essentially a "dollars per day" metric. This ranges from, as of this posting, $100/day for a book I received an advance for (which complicates things), to $4/day real time sales for my longest-published book, to $0.09/day for my poorest performer. I like that way of parsing things, because it gives me a more objective sense of which books earn the best.

But I still love each and every one. I cry at all their weddings and graduations.

Conventions: Tips, Trolls, & Tactics

#ProTip: Find a way to photobomb every shot with your name and book cover.

Snort. The lovely and delightful Historical Romance author Grace Callaway posted this photo to Facebook. I joined her, Miranda Neville, Maya Rodale, Sara Ramsey, Megan Mulry, Jennifer Lohmann, and Anne Calhoun for tea at the Napoleon House after the Ginormous Book Signing at the RT Booklovers Convention. Which is why I was carrying my big book cover poster around. Imagine my reaction when I saw Grace had tagged me on Facebook with this delightful photo - and there's my cover and name, practically front and center. 

I can't believe she didn't crop out the damn thing. I'm torn between chagrin and delight.

Don't try this at home, people.

Trolls: Don't feed them. 

Okay, we know this, right? Yes, they're out there and they're hungry. The only reason people behave badly is because they crave that attention. Usually they live under bridges, bothering nobody, but conventions bring them out of hiding and they go foraging. Don't give them anything to eat. That means if they're insulting, don't act offended. If they're mean, don't give them your pain. If they argue, agree and walk away. If they demand something, walk away. 

Don't feed the trolls.

Tactics: Jeffe's Top 3

1 - Go to conventions you think you'll enjoy. If you're not having fun, none of the rest of it is worth it.

2 - The main reason to go to conventions is to talk to people. The only thing I plan ahead any more is social engagements. Every opportunity to spend time talking to people takes priority over the rest.

3 - Forget about Return on Investment (ROI). The greatest returns of going to conventions have no dollar value and cannot be calculated on a material scale. Quit that.

Using the Holidays as a Plot Device - from Perky to Perfect

The new weekly theme asks if holidays make for a useful plot device or if they're just a marketing scheme.

Ironically enough, before last night, I would have answered this question differently.

See, I've never been much for "holiday stories." I read a Christmas romance a while back, that a friend gave me, and just *hated* it. Worse, I was trapped on an airplane with nothing else to read - ah, those dark, deprived days before e-readers let us carry huge numbers of books around! - so I read the whole thing. It was about a woman who loves Christmas - she may even have been and elf and I'm pretty sure her name was Holly - who meets this widower with two kids. He's all depressed and the kids are bummed because he's Scroogey. You can guess what happens - she brings Christmas joy into their lives and the two fall in love, sealing it with a Christmas kiss.

Blergh.

Now, to be fair - my friend gave it to me because she loved it. And I know there are plenty of readers out there who are perfectly happy ending with a chaste kiss. That's my own particular parade, that a single, sweet kiss doesn't seal the deal for me. But the rest? Yeah, I totally see that as marketing cash in. As much as I'm a personal fan of the baking and decorating and gift-giving, I know full well that for people who don't enjoy the holidays, dragging them kicking and screaming into it doesn't help anyone.

I've also never written a holiday story. Much as I enjoy the holidays, and as much as I can usually spin a story on most any topic, I just have never seen my way into that kind of story. Every time I try, I think about Holly in all her sprightly perkitude and throw up a little in my mouth.

Not the image we want.

But then, last night, I read Anne Calhoun's story in the Red Hot Holidays anthology from Carina. I confess I read the anthology mainly as research - since I don't read holiday stuff for fun, ever since the Holly Incident - because I'm contemplating something for next year's anthology. Her story, Breath on Embers, had me in tears by the end.

In that story, she took the enormity of holiday pain and used it. The heroine is a woman who lost her husband just before Christmas and her grief is killing her. She avoids everything that smacks of Christmas and seeks out sex to distract herself from the pain. It's hot and erotic sex, yes, but the hero reaches a point where he won't let her use him anymore. He reaches her emotionally through the intimacy of the sex they share. It's powerful and moving and everything a really good erotic story can be.

And it wouldn't have been the same without accessing that very real suffering so many feel during the holidays.

It may have helped that the hero is a brawny fireman and not a perky elf.

Just saying.

Now I'm off to write my story for next year. Though how I'll match what Anne accomplished, I have no idea.