Will Contemporary References Crash and Burn a Novel?

MASTER OF THE OPERA, my erotic retelling of The Phantom of the Opera set in modern day at the Santa Fe Opera House, originally published as a serial ebook, is now available in print! Exclusively from Books A Million for the time being. You can read a snippet from the book at That's What I'm Talking About today. Also, if you like my contemporary erotic stuff, you can vote for a scene from UNDER CONTRACT here for six more hours! Finally, over at Here Be Magic, we're celebrating August with Beach Week. I've got an excerpt of Ursula at the beach - a scene I really love.

This week at Word Whores, we're talking about whether topical or contemporary references should be avoided in fiction.

I heard this debate a whole bunch back when I was writing essays and creative nonfiction, which meant I was heavily involved in the literary and university/arts council-driven writing communities. I've rarely encountered it in genre circles, either in the romance or the sci fi/fantasy groups.

Frankly, I never bought the argument back then. People felt it "dated" the books, which would prevent them from becoming classics. I'd always bring up Jane Austen, whose books are classics partly because they so perfectly capture that era.

I imagine this doesn't come up as much in SFF because the stories are rarely about the contemporary era as is. In romance, particularly contemporary romance, topical and contemporary references are, well, pretty much expected and necessary. That said, I did hear one piece of advice on topical references that I've since taken to heart.

Angela James, Editorial Director at Carina Press, said in a workshop that writers should avoid comparing their characters physically to celebrities. I wanted to object, because I did this in GOING UNDER, comparing my hero Fox to Tom Hiddleston. To make her argument, she said two words: Val Kilmer.

Everyone groaned.

If you don't keep up with such things, Val Kilmer, who used to embody all things smexy, enigmatic and smoldering has now... gone exceptionally squidgy around the edges. In a distressing Brian Wilson/Marlon Brando way. Angela said, "you don't want people picturing that."

In addition, I've since learned that - astonishing to me - not everyone has a THING for Tom Hiddleston. Go figure.

Word to the wise!

Lines in the Sand

The word of the week?

DEADLINE

Yeah.... No coincidence that "dead" is in that word, right?

Turns out it dates back to the Civil War. Prisoners of war could not cross the "dead line" drawn around their stockade, on penalty of death.

Fortunately, that particular penalty is *not* written into my publishing contracts.

I hope.

Maybe I should go read the fine print again, just to be sure...

All kidding aside, a deadline is a fearsome thing for the creative individual. Delivering art by a specific date can be a tricky thing. Always beneath, like an underground lake of doubt, is the deep, chilling fear that this time I can't do it. Because art isn't something that I can just plan on cranking on with extra time and effort to get it done. It happens on another time scale. On another plane of existence.

One without lines.

That said, I turned in a book yesterday. Right on deadline. The third book in my Covenant of Thorns trilogy, Rogue's Paradise, was due March 15 and I sent it at 6pm.

Also - it's really a coincidence in the best sense, of two things co-occurring at the same time - this week, March 20, sees the release of the final episode of my serial novel, Master of the Opera.

It's another kind of deadline - not the sort I have to deliver for - but one that marks the end of the serial. It started with the release of Act 1: Passionate Overture on January 2, so this has dominated my 2014 so far.

It's a good line to cross.

It's funny how the writing thing works - a book starts with flicker of an idea. Maybe an image or a feeling or a situation. From there it slowly grows, moving through all the stages of mulling, pitching, refining, writing, revising, polishing, editing, (sometimes negotiating), proofing, reviewing, and finally releasing. Even then, it's like having grown children. The book no longer requires such concentrated care and feeding, but it's always yours, forever a part of your life.

It's almost a vast, extended family. No wonder they call it a "body of work."

Still, I'm loving to see this one graduate from college.

Cheers everyone!

Enticing Villains, Bland Heroes and the Lure of the Bad Boy

This week's topic of conversation in the bordello is The Villain Protagonist. Now, this is some clever winking by one of the Word Whores - I'm not entirely sure who.

The protagonist of a story is typically defined as the central character in a story. Some writers like to play with this and change it up so there is no central character - or keep you guessing about who it is. (George R.R. Martin comes to mind. Hint: the protagonist shouldn't die before the story is over. And usually not even then unless you're Nicholas Sparks or a certain YA writer.)

The protagonist typically struggles against an antagonist, which might not necessarily be a person. The antagonist is "whatever opposing force the protagonist struggles with, such as another character, environment, or something within the protagonist."

Pretty straightforward, huh?

It gets murkier when we start talking about the definition of a villain, which is why the craft Word Whore who suggested this topic is cackling away. Here are a few:

• a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.
• a character in a story, movie, etc., who does bad things
• someone or something that is blamed for a particular problem or difficulty
• a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel

Amusingly, the etymology shows the word comes from an innocuous beginning:

Villain comes from the Anglo-French and Old French vilain, which itself descends from the Late Latin word villanus, meaning "farmhand", in the sense of someone who is bound to the soil of a villa, which is to say, worked on the equivalent of a plantation in Late Antiquity, in Italy or Gaul. The same etymology produced villein. It referred to a person of less than knightly status and so came to mean a person who was not chivalrous. As a result of many unchivalrous acts, such as treachery or rape, being considered villainous in the modern sense of the word, it became used as a term of abuse and eventually took on its modern meaning.- from Wikipedia, "it could be true"

My point (and I do have one) is that we get onto very boggy ground when we throw around words like "evil," "bad," "malicious," "wickedness," and "scoundrel." The concept that "villain" derived from the concept of being unchivalrous helps showcase this.

Truly, evil is in the eye of the beholder.

After all, what's good for me might be bad for you. Our daily dramas are filled with "villains" who do "bad" things to us, from the person who cuts us off in traffic, likely never noticing our existence, to that nasty co-worker actively plotting to undermine us, to that toddler who has a meltdown in the grocery store. 

This is why it's much more clear to think in terms of the antagonist, rather than the villain.

It's also why the villain can be the protagonist.

Last week, in her excellent post, Word Whore Allison mentioned Erik of Phantom of the Opera. I confess that, when she pinged me on instant messenger and asked me if I would consider him disabled, I answered with my version of the story in mind. Because my Master of the Opera eSerial comes out starting in January. (The Act V cover is at the top - love that feel.) This is a great story to play with villain and hero roles - and swap them out. 

In the original Gaston Leroux book, the phantom, Erik, is presented as a true villain. Leroux wrote the story based on theater gossip and myths. Leroux's phantom is distorted in body and soul - murderous and perhaps slightly insane. Some reasons for his being that way are offered, but he is, in the end, a monster. In Andrew Lloyd Webber's production, Erik is more sympathetic - though he's still cast as the villain the heroine must escape. 

To the disappointment of women everywhere.

Chide us if you will for loving the bad boy. But we do. It doesn't help that the hero, Raoul, is pretty much a flat, uninteresting and unflaggingly noble guy. Spare me. What woman in her right mind would choose insipid Raoul over dark, passionate and fascinating Erik?

And before you tell me about the virtues of the "nice guy," remember that I have one. He's wonderful and I wouldn't trade him for anything.

We're talking fiction here.

At any rate, when I set out to write Master of the Opera, I discovered a few things about the original story versus the one I wanted to tell. One is that the heroine, Christine, is not really the protagonist of either Leroux's or Webber's version. She seems like she is, but really she has no agency of her own. Really she's the trophy. Erik and Raoul - and the other people who want a piece of her, such as the theater managers and her fans - battle it out to possess her. Raoul isn't the protagonist - he's not present for the most critical scenes in the story. So who is?

Right, Erik, the Phantom. The villain. 

In my version, I do what writers love to do and I change it up. Christine truly becomes the protagonist in mine. 

And the true villain?

You'll have to read it and see!

(Wasn't that an amazing bit of Word Whoring? I didn't even plan it that way...)

Ask the Readers: How Do You Feel About Interference with Reviews?

Here's the cover for the sixth and final episode of my Master of the Opera e-Serial. The first one comes out January 2 and the series finishes with this one, on March 20. What's cool to me about this cover is the opal ring. It's EXACTLY how I described it in the story, which is just way cool to see. You can see about all of them here.

So, this is Ask the Readers week in the bordello - where we ask you all those questions we *really* wonder about. Imagine yourselves up on the panel at the front of the room and we're sitting in those crowded-too-close conference chairs.

This is my long-winded question:

For me, what's on my mind is the ongoing kerfuffle on reviews and review sites. It seems to be heating up and becoming more complex as the retailers get more involved. The growing force of self-published authors is also having an effect, because they bring an entrepreneurial fervor to the mix, with an "anything goes" attitude that's markedly different from the more old-fashioned literary world.

For example, this article about John Locke buying reviews was posted a year ago, but bubbled up in my feed again this morning, due to the recent Goodreads changes. For those not in the know, Goodreads has been a great site for listing books, reviewing them, posting progress in reading a book and having conversations about them. Goodreads has come under fire because some readers have targeted authors they feel treat readers or other people badly. By that I mean, they use the "bookshelf" function to list authors they will never support. Recently, Amazon bought Goodreads. And, at the end of last week, all of the "anti-author" shelves and reviews were summarily deleted.

Has, a reviewer from The Bookpushers book review blog, has an excellent summary here.

Even more interesting, while Goodreads has decided to take sweeping control of what reviewers post, they've added this bit to the author pages:

Hey, you have some reviews! That’s great news. Goodreads reviews help readers decide to read your book. Read more about reviews.

Looking to get more reviews? Try a free giveaway.
For more suggestions of great ways to use Goodreads, please see our author guidelines.
For more about how our reviews work, please see our review guidelines.

If you see a review you feel violates our guidelines, please flag it to bring it to our attention. You’ll see a flag icon when you mouse over the bottom right-hand side of a review.

Which, is not only insulting to me, as a professional author. *Ahem, I know what a review is* - it's also a red flag for the days to come.We've already been through Facebook's ever-increasing attempts to get authors to pay to promote, to reach the readers already following us. Seems to me like Goodreads isn't far behind. Just guessing here.

After all, tons of authors are willing to pay. That's the point of that article on John Locke. He wrote a book called How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months, though he left out the "secret" that he did it mainly by 1) paying people to buy his books and 2) paying for reviews. Some choice tidbits:

Potential reviewers were told that if they felt they could not give a book a five-star review, they should say so and would still be paid half their fee…As you might guess, this hardly ever happened.

That’s the New York Times’ David Streitfeld quoting Todd Jason Rutherford, who, Streitfeld reports, commissioned 4,531 glowing and completely bogus book reviews at the now-inactive GettingBookReviews.com.

and

If you’re a self-published author who is still struggling to get noticed, now might be the time to swallow the rest of your pride, jettison your code of ethics, and start buying reviews. (Hey, everyone is doing it.)

and

He also asked that the reviewers make their book purchases directly from Amazon, which would then show up as an “Amazon verified purchase” and increase the review’s credibility.

and

The “democratizing” of content on the Internet, as it’s touted by some, suddenly looks less attractive when users realize they’re the victims of ruthless, orchestrated, profiteering liars.

and

Amazon has a dilemma. So far the system has been working, but what happens when players out themselves? Even last year, detractors were calling it Spamazon. Could there be a tipping point of credibility?

So, that's my question for you readers - where is the tipping point of credibility? How do YOU feel about all of this??

Jeffe's Five Tips for Using Social Media on a Time Budget

We Word Whores love to socialize. From the quiet safety of our bordello, that is.

That's the kind of whores we are - we love to sell our wares, but our product is our stories, not our sexy selves. Except, that's not really true, is it?

For example, on the cover of Act 4 of my six-episode eSerial, Master of the Opera, my name is pretty much the same size as the act title, Dark Interlude. Just yesterday I was having a conversation with my man, David, who has started reselling books on Amazon. He's learning lots about books and book sales - things like what is a mass-market paperback and predicting when a used book might come into vogue again, such as when the movie comes out - knowledge that I've taken for granted. I told him it's kind of a joke in the business that you've made it when your name is bigger than the title. It gets a little freaky, in fact, like those Janet Evanovich books where her name takes up the ENTIRE cover and you can barely figure out what the title is.

Art tends to be associated with the person. Perhaps because it's so much an expression of ourselves. When was the last time you heard a reader say "Oh, I'm so in the mood for a Kensington Press book!" as opposed to "I can't wait to read the new JD Robb!"

So, where we might feel that we're pimping out our words and not our bodies, the truth is that being the face and personality that brings our stories together is vitally important.

Fortunately we have social media!

This week's topic is Social Media: Using It without Losing All of Your Time.

I kind of cringe every time I hear someone say they don't have time for social media. Because, really, if your publisher sent you on a three-week book tour of the major cities, you'd make time for that. And it would be three solid freaking weeks out of your life when you got Nothing Else Done. More, any of us would go happily because, yo! BOOK TOUR.

Those days are pretty much gone if you're not Neil Gaiman and having a road named after you. But you don't have to be a Famous Author to use social media. All you need is an internet connection and some sort of access to it with a keyboard - both of which can be found for free - and you're set.

But, Jeffe, you whine (yes, I hear you) - I'm so BUSY already that I barely have time to write! How can I possibly find the time for this??

I'm telling you, it doesn't have to take that much time. It's a matter of deciding how you spend it. So here's

Jeffe's Five Tips for Using Social Media on a Time Budget:

1) Pick Your Poison - Just like nobody promised you a rose garden (dating myself), nobody ever said you have to do All The Things. In fact, please don't. The magic number is, and always will be, three things. Pick three avenues into the Interwebz that you enjoy and do those and only those. Can you do more than three? Sure - but this is about being on a time budget. Some venues to choose from:

1. Individual blog
2. Group blog (like this rocking one!)
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Goodreads
6. Google +
7. Fan forums

This is just off the top of my head - there are tons more. Don't listen to the people who say "you have to be on X" or "all the readers are on Y." Pick three you like (see Bonus Advice!) and focus on them. Which leads to my next point.

2) FOCUS

If you want to be efficient about your social media time investment, concentrate on doing that. Don't watch TV. Don't try to write at the same time. Don't go down the rabbit holes (see Tip #3). Treat social media as the time investment it is. Pay attention to what other people are saying and posting and respond to it sincerely. Just like it's rude (and ineffective) to talk to people while you're watching TV (because your attention is divided), the same works for social media. Pay attention to the people you're interacting with.

3) Don't Go Down the Rabbit Holes

Okay, we all know this. The Internet, by its very nature, is full of rabbit holes. You could spend YOUR ENTIRE LIFE reading interesting (or banal) stuff and never get to it all. Don't try. For example, when I visit the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) forums, I pick one thread to look at and respond to. Then I close it. On Twitter, I use the list function and have columns set up on TweetDeck to organize the people I follow by who they are to me - friends, writing friends, agents & editors, book reviewers, booksellers & librarians, etc. I don't look at each column every time. Instead, I'll peruse one or two and respond to some, then close it down. On Facebook, I use notifications to make sure I see stuff from the people I most want to. If you're doing social media right, the people you follow post fascinating things - but you cannot read them all. Don't try. And when you do read, RESPOND. Otherwise, you just blew the point of your being there to interact.

4) Set a Time Limit

I have my browser (Firefox) to open to the pages I look at regularly: Facebook, Blogger (for my two group blogs located there), my own blog, Goodreads, SFWA, the Contemporary Romance Cafe group blog, and Tumblr. I also open TweetDeck. But wait, Jeffe! cry you math geniuses out there, Isn't that way more than three? Well, yes. Yes it is. But, I work from home for my day job for a company based out of a city on the east coast, with a team of people scattered across the country. I am on the Internet All Day Long. I don't have to be on a time budget so much, except in being careful to get all of my work done. This is why I touch each thing and then close it. I dip in maybe 5-7 times a day, look at a few TweetDeck columns (and respond!), peruse the latest on Facebook. If I follow a link to a blog post or interesting article, I make sure to comment or share it. (Unless it falls in the "banal" category, which sadly happens more often than it should.)

Then I move on. If necessary, I use Freedom, to make sure I can't look. Set a timer if you have to.

5) Invest in What You're Doing

Okay, this is the advice you won't like, but if you're having trouble finding time because you don't have regular Internet access - like if you're behind a firewall at the day job - then you have to invest in an alternate portal. In other words? Get a damn Smart Phone already. I know, I know - your flip phone still works fine, despite that the top is duct-taped on. But come on - the technology is here to stay. You can access every social media site from a Smart Phone app. You take breaks during the day, the kids are off on the swing set, the pointy-haired boss left for his daily "errand" that involves sneaking off to the bar. Use that time to check in. This is an investment in your career. Five minutes here and there can be all you need.

BONUS Advice: Have Fun

Seriously. Take the "social" out of "social media" and you have, um, well - "media." And who likes that? If you limit your social media activity to things you enjoy, then it's not a burden. Talk to people. Read interesting things. Laugh. Share the cute kitty pictures and don't listen to the snarky hipsters who bitch about that sort of thing. Don't worry about being cool. Be like the people at the water park who run around in their swimsuits and forget to hold in their stomachs because they're having so much fun.

Do what you like and people will get to know the real you.

Stop by the bordello and let us know how it goes! Virtually, of course. ;-)