How to Know When to Give Up

 

Can't believe it's already time! But the Coastal Magic Convention is only a few weeks away and January 15 is the last day to register. I love this convention and there's going to be tons of great authors, bloggers and readers there - so if you can wrangle it, you should totally join us. Great panels, terrific interactions and it's right on the beach. SO fun!

So, this week's topic is: It's dead, Jim - how to know when a project isn't working vs when its fixable.

I want to tell you a couple of stories.

Back in the mists of time, when I was a baby aspiring writer who focused mainly on creative nonfiction, I helped organize this annual writers' retreat. We brought in some great speakers and one year I drove to Denver International Airport to pick up a guy who was the Editor in Chief of a prominent creative nonfiction literary journal. On the two-hour drive up to Wyoming, we talked a lot about writing, publishing, the industry in general and my fledgling career in particular.

(BTW, this is a great way for newbie writers to begin building industry contacts. Volunteering to pick up or escort visiting agents, editors and established writers gives you time to have longer, more intensive conversations.)

At any rate, one thing this guy said to me was that he felt strongly that some aspiring writers should just give up. It was his opinion that not everyone possessed the native talent to be a writer. He said he struggled as an editor not to simply tell some writers submitting to the magazine that they should give up already and go do something else.

Of course, I obsessed over this, wondering if *I* was one of those people. He'd rejected many of my essays, after all.

The second story happened many years later, after my first book of creative nonfiction was published by a university press. I'd switched to fiction and had written the book that became ROGUE'S PAWN. I shopped that one for a *long* time. Years. I had two friends who were in the same place, shopping their first novels in the genre. One of them hit it - won a contest, got an agent and a three-book deal. The other two of us kept slogging along. One day, the other unpublished gal asked me how long I was giving myself. At first I didn't know what she meant. "I'm giving myself a year," she clarified, "then I'm giving up."

I told her I had no deadline, that I'd keep trying until I succeeded. That response totally mystified her. I think she regarded me as quite foolish.

You know what? She gave up on being a writer. ROGUE'S PAWN ended up being the first of the Covenant of Thorns trilogy and I have in the neighborhood of twenty published fiction works out there.

I realize this is all somewhat sideways of the question - which is when to give up on a project. A lot of authors I know have "under-the-bed" books that they say will never see the light of day.They call them learning books and are happy to let them go.

This is just not who I am. "Stubborn" is one of my defining characteristics, and yes, more than one person has cited it as a character flaw. Including my PhD adviser. He also told me he didn't think I could make it as a writer, when I said I wanted to be a writer instead of a research scientist.

So, all of this is byway of saying that this division doesn't exist in my world. Nora Roberts rather famously says she can fix anything but a blank page. I agree.

Never give up. Never surrender.

Do Book Trailers Work?

Amusingly enough, this week's topic might again fall to Veronica, as the most experienced with the topic - Book Trailers: Yes or No?

I have exactly two book trailers - both that other people made for me. One my friend made as a gift, above, for ROGUE'S PAWN, the first in my Covenant of Thorns trilogy. And the other I paid a reader/fan to do, below, for THE MARK OF THE TALA, first in my Twelve Kingdoms series. I like them fine. They're fun. Do they work?

Meh. I dunno.

The idea is that they should work like a movie trailer, to generate excitement for the book. The problem is that movie trailers are, obviously, assembled from actual clips from the movie itself. For a book, the images must be created. Depending on budget, the images can be video or still. (Mine are the more cheapie option, of a series of still images, which I don't think is as effective. Even if you cough up for video, we all know that the movie is just NEVER as good as the book. That's with multi-million-dollar budgeting and doing the whole book.

All that said... can a short trailer capture the essence of a book? Probably not.

Can it get far enough to entice a reader? Maybe.

But, so far, my experience says it's not worth the money.



Oh! And my new contemporary erotic romance comes out tomorrow! 

Under Contract

Read an Excerpt

The kinkier the sex, the higher the price tag…
Ryan Black has admired Celestina Sala from afar for years, her lush body and sensual nature calling to the dominant in him. For just as many years, Celestina was off-limits—married, proud and self-sufficient. But all that has changed, and now Celestina is in debt and in need…and available. Ryan proposes a contract: he’ll pay off her debt if she gives herself to him in bed, yielding control in exchange for the pain and pleasure he’ll bring them both.
There are words for women who take money for sex, and none of them are nice ones. Celestina never thought she’d have to sink this low, but giving up control sounds more enticing than ever before. And suddenly it’s not about having to give in to Ryan. It’s about wanting to.
But when Ryan’s dark past comes to light, they may both be in over their heads. The terms of his contract say her body is his…but her heart may be another story.
One thing is for sure—now that Ryan has Celestina, he can never let her go.

Available July 13, 2015

• Kindle
• Barnes & Noble
• iBooks
• Kobo

 

How Writing 1st Person POV Gave Me Boy Cooties

Yesterday, at #LERANM, my local RWA chapter, I gave a tutorial on using Twitter. We had a great time and the lovely and viviacious Katie Lane snapped this pic as I was talking. And gesticulating. LOL!

This week's topic in the bordello concerns perspective - as in first, second or third person point of view (POV) - which works best for us and why.

I started out writing in first person, because my natural form from the beginning was personal essays. Very much like my blog posts. I sometimes segue into second person, I notice. Particularly in blog posts where I start saying things like you don't really notice how essays and blog posts tend to be in first person because you expect non-fiction to be more so than fiction. <-See what I did there?

So, when I went to write my first novel - which eventually and after many revisions and iterations became Rogue's Pawn - I wrote that in first person. In fact, and I admit this with chagrin, I originally wrote that book in a memoir style. As if I, myself, had fallen through a gate to Faerie and wrote a memoir about my adventures. I thought I was SO BRILLIANT doing that, subverting the genre tropes and all. Thing is, I didn't write genre well enough to subvert the tropes - something I had to learn through painful trial, error and ego-bruising. Thinking about it now, it IS kind of a cool idea. Something I might have the craft to pull off at this point.

Hmm...

Anyhoo. I wrote in first person because it was what I knew and I had some skill at it. Readers tell me they like my first person perspectives when they don't like others. It's not easy to do because it's so restrictive. The reader can only know what the first person POV characters now. You can mix in more than one first person POV character (I don't like it) or mix in a third-person POV in with the first (like that even less), but the purest form - and really my very favorite - is one person, telling the story through their eyes. It works well for me because I feel like I can really delve into the person's character, along with their emotional and spiritual arc.

I started writing third person with erotic romance. Most fiction is really in third person. With my full length erotic romance novels, the Falling Under trilogy, I added in the hero's third-person POV too. I alternate POVs in those and that's fun, too, to build the story from two perspectives like that. I keep a very close POV, so that it's barely a step removed from first person. So close, in fact, that in writing the third book in the trilogy, I inadvertently slipped into first person - writing from the hero's POV! I couldn't figure out why I felt so... odd. Then I realized, a page or two later, that I was inside a man's head. A very strange place to be.

This may have marked a step up in writing craft for me however. I might try it again, if I can make sure to wash off the boy cooties afterward. ;-)

For the fantasy series I'm working on now - brand new, top sekrit stuff! - I'm writing in third person alternating POV, because my agent, fabulous Connor, asked me to. He  and Iwanted to target a particular market and I like the idea of selling books as well as the next Word Whore. At first I struggled, however. I *really* wanted to write in first person, particularly the heroine. But I applied discipline (GASP) and found my way through to her voice. Now I'm into it.

So, that doesn't really answer the question, I know. I like having all the tools. Each story is different and so are the various markets.

It would be interesting to know if you all like how I write one kind of POV over another - feel free to share!

Which Marketing Is Worth Paying For?

by @JeffeKennedy

This week's topic we'll be gnoshing at the Bordello is our favorite free and paid marketing venues.




It's always the question, which thing to invest in. The topic comes up repeatedly on my author loops. It's not that we don't want to pay to advertise, but there are a LOT of "opportunities" for authors to shell out money in order to bring their books to readers' attention.


Okay, it's downright predatory out there.

Between the perception created in part by the astonishing success of authors like Veronica Roth, JK Rowling, EL James and Stefanie Meyer that authors are rolling in money and the most understandable eagerness (which can shade toward desperation) of writers who *aren't* rolling in money to get that way, a huge marketplace awaits the unwary writer. All of them claim to deliver book sales. None (in my experience) can definitively prove it.

And, lemme tell you, we're not talking cheap. Book Bub charges up to $1600 to feature your book for one day. Fresh Fiction offers a one-year advertising  package for just shy of $1100. You can pay up to nearly $4000 for a full-page, full-color ad at RT Book Reviews - and barely skate away for less than $1,000 for a 1/6th page ad. Now, I'm not saying these don't return on the investment. Some people swear by them. I can vouch that having Rogue's Pawn featured on Book Bub put the book up at #2 under Fantasy Romance on Amazon. Which was amazing and wonderful - arguably tremendously effective. And my publisher paid for it - even better.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have that much cash to invest. Not like that, anyway. So I tend toward free marketing venues. Do I get what I pay for in those cases? Maybe. The ones I pay for I choose pretty carefully.

Free
Social media. It costs time, yes, but - if you don't succumb to Facebook's endless prompting to pay to boost posts - it's otherwise free. If you do it right, it's also fun and builds a community of friends and like minds. My personal favorites:

• Twitter
• Tumblr
• Blogging
• Goodreads
• Facebook

Paid
My favorites aren't necessarily the smartest investments, but in examining what I actually shell out money for? Giveaways. I give away my books, my friends' books and various prezzies. I tend to favor baked goods. Some examples:

• Guesting on blogs and hosting a giveaway as part of that
• Contributing to a group gift
• Participating in another author's party and adding my own giveaway
• Offering a gift related to the book on my own website
• Swag at conferences

In the end, I shell out the most to attend conferences. Going to those, interacting with readers and other writers, both feeds me and gives me a real-world sense of who is actually reading my books. Nothing is more wonderful than having someone dash up to me at a cocktail party and introduce themselves as the person who wrote that amazing, glowing review. It's a small sample, but I love having that moment.

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.

Why I Love Color Words and Why Whom Should Die

The view out our driveway the other day. This seems to be shaping up to be a snowy winter!

This week's topic is a good one for the annual Word Whores' Holiday Party. We're breaking out the brandied eggnog, mead and cookies this week and throwing out the cocktail conversation challenge:

What are your five most loved and hated words?

So, I have a confession to make.

As usual, huh?

Must be the brandied eggnog.

I started a list of "Good Words" when I was twelve. I know, I know - my best friend made the 7th grade cheerleading squad and had a boyfriend. I was making lists of good words. This might seem like a stretch, but those words and my feelings about them were absolutely tied in with my burgeoning sexuality. Unlike my friend, I wasn't ready to make out with boys at parties, but I thought about, and read about, sex a lot.

This, no doubt, explains a great deal about how I've ended up where I am today.

I've lost that list - I bet there were 30-50 words on it, that I added to over time - but I know that many of my favorite words today were on it. All of them tie into sensual, exuberant feelings. Here are five of them:

Exquisite

Ebullient

Effervescent

Egregious

Voluptuous

Why do so many begin with the letter "e"? I have no idea. Probably some Facebook app personality analysis would return a verdict. My original list also contained a lot of color/jewel-related words. It's no coincidence that my Facets of Passion series has color titles - or that my original title for Rogue's Pawn was "Obsidian." Yes, I have a list of color words I like, as potential future titles for the Facets of Passion. As a hint, the next three I have contracted are Emerald, Adamantine and Amber.

 As for my most hated words?

You know, this isn't a thing for me. Probably this says something about me, too, but I don't really have words I despise in the same way I have words that make me tingle all over. I know a lot of people hate "moist" or "suckle." They don't bother me. In fact, I can think of only one word that I'll never willingly use:

Whom

Right? I mean, enough already. It's archaic. Most of my editors consider it optional and restricted to formal English. Nobody uses it in conversation. (Okay, yes, some of you do. Have some more mead and stop that.)

I am, however, willing to entertain votes for hated words. Anyone got one that makes their skin crawl?

Turning the Private into the Public - Games with Internal Monologue

It's getting to be summer here in Santa Fe and I'm having a lovely time getting our patios all set up for long hours of enjoyment.

This week's topic is Internal Monologue: What it reveals about your POV character. I admit I felt a little frisson of pleasure when I saw it, though I'm quite sure I didn't suggest this one. See, I'm the Queen of Internal Monologue.

Or, at least, my heroine from the Covenant of Thorns series, Gwynn, is.

And yes, she's the POV character - which means the story is told from her point of view. It's first person, which is a very close perspective. The reader is essentially riding around in her head, hearing her thoughts. It's a fun way to tell a story, because we discover aspects of the new world she's been plunged into - Faerie - along with her. We are also there when she figures things out, though a smart reader without Gwynn's particular emotional biases or blind spots might get there ahead of her.

A huge part of the story, however, is informed by her internal monologue.

I would have guessed this concept came from theater, but a bit of slapdash Google research reveals that it began as a literary device.

The term interior monologue is often used interchangeably with stream of consciousness. But while an interior monologue may mirror all the half thoughts, impressions, and associations that impinge upon the character’s consciousness, it may also be restricted to an organized presentation of that character’s rational thoughts. Closely related to the soliloquy and dramatic monologue, the interior monologue was first used extensively by Édouard Dujardin in Les Lauriers sont coupés (1887; We’ll to the Woods No More) and later became a characteristic device of 20th-century psychological novels. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/290310/interior-monologue)

 It is notable that it's a more recent device. Jane Austen's novels, for example, are interesting in that they have practically no internal monologue. The reader gathers how the people think and feel from their actions and what they do and don't say. But they don't ruminate on their feelings.

Gwynn, however, is a thoughtful person. And by that I mean, full of thoughts. She's an academic, a scientist, and she's trained herself to be analytical, to take notes and examine the world from an objective standpoint. As many "in-their-heads" people do, her thoughts run All The Time. It's nearly impossible for her to shut it off.

Amusingly - to me as an author, though it's infuriating for her as a character - in Faerie, her thoughts can be overheard. Particularly by her would-be lover and nemesis, Rogue. If she's not careful, which can happen when she's either emotionally involved or really interested in something - which amounts to the same thing, really - she gets "loud."

And he calls her on it.

It's a fun way to play with her subtext, which should be available only to her and to us, her readers and voyeurs. Instead of being private, it becomes public, at least to Rogue, who uses every advantage he can to sneak inside her motivations and direct them towards his own ends.

Or maybe he just wants to understand her better.

At any rate, it's one of those fun author-games to play, that often leaves me chortling as I wiggle in my seat.

Who says an author's life isn't glamorous??

Three Characteristics a Heroine Should and Should Not Have

This is my heroine from Rogue's Pawn.

Or, at least, the cover artist's conception of her. Which means, quite a bit younger, lovelier and...softer than she looks in my head.

But that's okay. Readers know the cover image doesn't define the heroine. What truly defines her in my mind and theirs is how she behaves. How she handles the outrageous and sometimes horrific things that happen to her. What makes her laugh, what makes her finally cry. What she secretly hopes for in the tender parts of her heart.

It's difficult, sometimes, to find the right balance in a heroine. I'd argue that it can be more difficult than it is for a hero, because we have so many social expectations for women. A hero can be a right bastard and get away with it because he's tortured. A heroine, even a tortured one, can't be too much of a bitch. But if she's too wonderful, she risks becoming the perfect-in-all-ways Mary Sue.

So, what characteristics should a heroine have and which are no-go?

You all know I'm not a big fan of rules. Especially when it comes to characters, because for me, they're real people, with all the charms and failings of real people. I don't feel like I get to *choose* what they're like. But, for what it's worth, I'm submitting three principles each for your consideration.

A heroine should:

1. Be, above all things, believable. This means having human flaws and limitations, even if she has other amazing abilities.

2. Be relatable. Whoever she might be - whether a fairy princess, a vampire queen, slave on an alien planet, mermaid, Victorian virgin, what have you - she should think and feel in the same way a modern reader in that body would think and feel. Sadly, this can make books feel dated over time, which is why the rapetastic romances of the 70s and 80s are so appalling now -we've changed as readers. So it goes.

3. Be admirable. Even if your heroine is seriously flawed (Stacy Kane's drug-addicted Chess comes to mind), she should behave in a way that inspires admiration. Usually this means some kind of self-sacrifice.


A heroine should not:

1. Be completely confident. Nobody is, ever. Even Jesus suffered the torments of self-doubt.

2. Be randomly bitchy or cranky. She can be pissed off, but only if well-justified. If she is cranky, she should feel bad about it. I think this is a double-standard, but I also think it's a real one.

3. Ever fall into the tropes of stereotypical female behavior. This is purely a Jeffe-rule. But I figure there are enough books out there with "heroines" being insanely jealous or wringing their hands while waiting for rescue or scheming to land their man or not able to have female friends that we don't need to write any more of that crap.

What did I miss?

Superstition as a Survival Skill

So, today's topic is, straight from our little scheduling calendar, Superstitious Characters: Writing to a stereotype or tapping unmined gold?

I read this and thought to myself...huh?

I imagined broken mirrors, black cats and heedless folk walking under ladders.

Then I started speculating which of my fellow Word Whores would come up with a topic like this. And I think I know who it is, just from the stories this person writes. Our stories reveal us, don't they? In some ways, I think our stories are a road map to our psyches, revealing the cracks and webs of what fascinates us.

All of this is a long way of saying that I'd never thought about whether my characters are superstitious, much less whether that would be writing to a stereotype. I suppose that my characters always have a good reason to believe what they do. The idea that they might be laboring under a false understanding is really interesting.

Superstition, to get the definition out of the way, is:

a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like. 

Looking at it that way, it's not really a false understanding so much as one not based on reason or knowledge. Which puts altogether another lens on the question for me. Readers of my personal blog know that I'm in thick of writing the sequel to Rogue's Pawn. The kind of intense drafting that really digs its claws into you and feeds on your innards. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around much else, so I'm thinking about my heroine, Gwynn. She's a woman of reason. As a scientist, she relies upon demonstrable facts. But she's been thrown into Faerie, a place where the evidence doesn't always add up. Physical laws are different. Magic exists. In many ways, she's having to learn how operate in a reality where what she must believe can't be based on reason or knowledge, because the one no longer necessarily follows the other. Overlooking the the ominous significance of anything in a place like Faerie could get her in serious trouble.

Oh wait, it already has.

Being superstitious in Faerie is practically a survival skill.

So, my answer? I think I'm mining this gold.

And, boy, is my back killing me!

How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Rejections

I'm up at Lake Dillon with the family, celebrating multiple birthdays this weekend. Beautiful, gorgeous, wish you all could be here!

This week's theme is the best rejection we've ever received. For those of you who haven't played the submission game very much, or for very long, the concept of a "best" rejection might sound foreign. But truly this is a thick skin thing. Once you get over the sheer pain and awfulness of having your work rejected in the first place (and *always* remember that the rejection of that particular piece of work, not all your work, and certainly not you, yourself), you begin to learn the variety in the responses. And this is a very important lesson to learn: not all rejections are the same. Not even close. Better, you learn this:

Some rejections can be the opportunity you've been waiting for.

I mean this in all seriousness. Once you can see past the "no" and recognize the opportunity offered, you've attained an important level of professionalism as a writer.

So, I can offer two examples of the best rejections I've received.

The first, way back in the mists of time, was in 1996, when I was writing and submitting essays. That year, I took a class from a visiting writer at the university, Essays on Self and Place, and I wrote an essay called "Inheritances." This class hooked me up with some wonderful writers in the community, who invited me to join their critique group, and firmly set my feet on the path that eventually led to the publication of my essay collection. At that time, though, I was dipping my toes and trying to find out if I had an ability at all. One of the gals in the class had graduated from the Iowa Writing Circle and her good friend, Jo Ann Beard, had just been published in The New Yorker and scored a book deal.

Jo Ann gave me the info for her editor at The New Yorker, let me drop her name and I submitted "Inheritances" to her. Now, gather 'round children, because I'm going to tell you of long-ago days, when all of this occurred on something called "paper" and communications went via "mail." Some of you know this as "snail mail" these days. So, you'd mail your query letter and essay and include a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE). Thus, rejections arrived in an envelope you'd addressed to yourself. If you were lucky, there was a letter inside. Often it was just a slip of paper, clearly cut from a sheet with 20 or 50 of the exact same "not for us" answer. An envelope was always bad news, but the acceptances came via phone call or email.

So, when my envelope came from the New Yorker, I knew it was bad. And from the silhouette, I could see that it was worse - not a full sheet of paper. But, when I opened it up, the note was on a piece of cardstock with a New Yorker cartoon on it and a HAND-WRITTEN note. In those days, a hand-written response was the holy grail. Better, this was from the ACTUAL EDITOR - not some intern tasked to cut 20 to 50 stock rejections into strips and throw them into envelopes. She said to me, and I'm quoting from memory, because I bet I read it a thousand times.

"This is a lovely essay, graceful and moving, but not quite strong enough to make a sticking piece for us."

And she wished me luck, etc, and invited me to submit more work to her. From this I learned that I could, indeed, write. It may seem paradoxical, but that I came close enough, with one of the first essays I ever wrote, to elicit that praise and an invite to submit more... well, it was crucial to me.

I never did get pubbed in The New Yorker, but I kept trying.

The other rejection was from one of my editors. She rejected me twice, actually. Both were R&Rs - revise and resubmits. They're rejections, yes. "No, I can't take this as is." With the addition of "But if you fix these things, I'll look again."

Amazingly, she tells me that a very small percentage of authors actually do revise and resubmit.

Update: She says My rate is about 50%,including ones I do for my authors too. If I just look at slush (including the first time one of my authors subbed), it's around 60% who don't resub, 40% who do. Sad, since it always takes me hours to do those RR letters.

I've heard other authors say that they won't devote the time to "writing on spec," since there's no guarantee the revision will be accepted. They prefer to try other presses, which usually means going down to less prestigious ones, to see if they can get it published as is.

All I know is, both of those stories were accepted after I revised them. I was lucky that Deb is an insightful editor and I liked her suggestions. And now both of those stories are part of ongoing series with Carina. For one of them, I was able to pitch the novella on a partial and synopsis - based in part on the fact that Deb knows I can and will take editorial direction.

If that long-ago editor from The New Yorker had sent me an R&R? I totally would have done that, too.

How to Improve the Discoverability of Books

This is how my office looks as I prepare to head the Romance Writers of American annual National Convention.

(Yes, those are PRISM trophies, for those of you hoping to win one next week!)

Otherwise, those are boxes of bookmarks, business cards, special candies to give away and so forth. There's one reason I do all of this: to call attention to the books. I mean, I go to convention for a number of reasons: networking, rejuvenation, learning. But I could do all that empty-handed. No - the stuff is for discoverability.

And, yes, that really is a word. Now.

It's only become a word in these tumultuous post-paper, post-brick and mortar bookstore days. Oh sure, there are still paper books and libraries and book stores, but these venues are on the decline. Far fewer bookstores are available, even fewer are ones you could go into and have someone passionate about books hand sell you something you're sure to love. And there are all those so-convenient eReaders, which allow you to buy your next read from wherever you happen to be, with the click of the buy now link.

In the old days, the publishing house might have sent the author on tour. The gung-ho author would forge relationships with those hand-selling book lovers. For many years, publishing houses sold books to bookstores, not to readers. It's an important distinction. Publishers knew how to sell to bookstores and then those stores took care of selling to readers.

Thus the consternation in the publishing and book-selling community. In the electronic jungle, how do readers discover those new books to read? Lots of conversations on "improving discoverability," which really means "how do I get them to buy MY book?"

My take on that? I don't think you do.

I heard a great quote recently, when Susan Elizabeth Phillips spoke of what a generous and gracious person Sandra Brown is. (Fair warning: Sandra's website has flash, takes forever to load and has sound - dunno WHAT they're thinking on that!) Sandra said it's because "A high tide floats all ships."

This, to me, is the essence of social media. And of finding the path through the jungle.

We're no longer lone authors hidden away in our secret lairs, venturing out on pre-planned quests to woo booksellers. We're part of a web - a vast network of writers, editors, agents, publishers, book bloggers, readers and book sellers. The high - or low - tides affect us all. Everybody wants to sail their ships.

So, the people who get on the internet and shout BUYMYBOOK BUYMYBOOK BUYMYBOOK are not improving their discoverability. In fact, people are likely to turn their backs and put their fingers in their ears. No - it's about conversations and being passionate about books. All books. In some ways, we're all hand-selling books theses days. And that's about sharing the love.

I discovered this for myself just recently. The Bookpushers Blog (and boy, are they well-named) did  a joint review of Rogue's Pawn. And now they talk up and recommend the book all the time. Because they loved it. People who like them and their blog get excited and pick it up, too. This kind of thing is what our community is about. More - it's so fun.

Okay - so how did Bookpushers discover the book? Netgalley.com, which lists books available for review in digital format. Why did the reviewer first pick it out - pretty cover? Compelling cover copy? Fabulous title? Hard to say. Serendipity, perhaps.

But my point - and I do have one ;-) - is that we maybe should spend less time talking about how to improve discoverability and more time just talking about books.

After all, that's what we love best.

Stupid Mistakes You Can Make in Your Writing Career

Rogue's Pawn releases tomorrow!
Rogue's Pawn releases tomorrow!
Rogue's Pawn releases tomorrow!

*deep, cleansing breath*

Okay, now that I have that out of my system, at least for the next five minutes, I can focus on today's topic: The Stupidest Thing I Did on the Path to Publication.

On the one hand, I feel like I have any number of mistakes, embarrassing gaffes and foolish choices to choose from. On the other.... I feel like my path has been meant. That things went the way they should have. Even my disappointments led me to a better place.

Maybe, it's like the truism that there are no stupid questions. Really, there is no such thing as a stupid mistake. Unless you keep making the SAME mistake. Then you're just being pathological.

But I am a bit embarrassed to admit that what I consider my most foolish mistake is one that is often repeated in warning: I sent my novel out too soon.

I hear this all the time now: don't shop it before it's ready. Which is absolutely what I did. I finished my novel, which I had slaved over for a long time and I started querying it. Agents jumped at it, asked to see it - and sent me rejections.

Over time, I learned it hadn't been ready.

Now, looking back I can see that, though I was a reasonably accomplished literary nonfiction writer with decent credentials, I did not know how to write genre. Though I'd had people read it, none of them were genre writers. I missed that opportunity - to be the fresh new thing for all these agents, because the book wasn't ready.

The thing is: I didn't know that.

Also? I don't think I could have known that.

Sure, maybe if I'd gotten involved in RWA earlier, had different crit from different kinds of writers, they might have guided me. But I didn't know that was something I needed to do until I got those rejections.

I know I rant sometimes about bad writing advice, stuff like "write a really good book." In truth, any time I hear a published author advice aspiring writers to "write a really good book," I want to kick him or her. Most useless, self-satisfied piece of advice on the planet. Right up there with "don't hurt yourself" and "choose wisely." And "don't send your book before it's ready."

This is all stupid advice, because if you could control these things, you would.

Oh, and that book I sent before it was ready? It's Rogue's Pawn. And it releases tomorrow!!!

Did I mention that part?

No such thing as a stupid mistake.

Jobs I've Worked: Guess the Lie!

No, I've never worked in a bookstore, surprisingly enough. It would have been a natural fit, but somehow the circumstances never aligned to allow it to happen.

I think that's the way most jobs occur, even careers - you fall into the opportunity. Writing is one of the few careers not like that, I think. Maybe because it takes so much persistence and effort, but no one just offers you a job writing novels.

And yes, most of the jobs I've held were offered to me. My favorite way to do things. I've held all sorts of jobs through the years, as most of us have. So I think we should play the Three Truths and a Lie game (only this is 13 truths). Below is a list of all the jobs I've worked. One is not true. A random commenter who guesses correctly which one is a lie gets a copy of Rogue's Pawn (either pdf or epub).

Ooh! My first Rogue's Pawn giveaway!

1. Babysitter
2. Runner for a law firm
3. Unaccompanied Minor Runner for United Airlines
4. Movie theater concessions girl
5. Apple picker
6. Cocktail waitress
7. Restaurant hostess
8. Lake water sampler
9. Lab technician
10. Teacher
11. Editor for a chemical/petroleum group
12. Environmental consultant
13. Newsletter editor
14. Dishwasher

Okay, let's hear those guesses!

Why Choose Genre?

by Jeffe Kennedy

On the Word Whores blog, we are all writers of genre. We were semi-random about choosing the original group of seven and continued that fine tradition with replacing those that moved on. But, we all write some form of speculative fiction - science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, that kind of thing.

You could say we chose to write it.

But - and I'll be interested to hear what my fellow Whores say - but I didn't choose anything.

It chose me. And by that I mean, it rose up, seized me by the throat and refused to let go.

Speculative fiction, in all its glorious permutations, is what has always lit me up. From fairy tales to mythology to the day I picked up my first Anne McCaffrey book and discovered the joy of stories on other freaking planets, these have been the kind of stories I love to read.

Turns out they're also the stories I love to write. I don't choose what turns me on.

I mean, we're all self-confessed Word Whores here. We tell you right there on the side bar that we all started doing it out of love. That's a little whore-secret: we still do it out of love. Out of obsession. Because we can't freaking help ourselves.

If we make some money at it, that keeps us alive a little longer so we can keep doing it.

The picture above is one that the editors at Aeon Thirteen put on my very first speculative fiction story, Pearl. Which you can still buy here, should you be so inclined. It's a good story. I've gotten better since then.

But I still remember the feeling of writing it. Of letting myself write it, this non-literary, lower story life form.

Oh yeah. It was that good.

Sign me up for more.

We'll Always Have Paris

by Jennifer Paris

My first published fiction effort was an erotic story. Petals and Thorns is a BDSM take on Beauty and the Beast. I felt a need to create a division between the fantasy work I hoped to publish (Shameless plug: Rogue's Pawn coming out July 16!) and this more explicit erotica. So I created the Jennifer Paris pen name.

Since then, I've discovered a few things:

1. It's a pain to have a pen name.
2. Because Petals & Thorns continues to do well and be recommended, I really wish there was a better connection to my Jeffe Kennedy books.
3. Writing sex is writing sex and there just isn't the divide that I thought there was.

I spent most of January on developmental and line edits on Rogue's Pawn, revisiting that novel in great depth. I found many of the same themes as in my more erotic works. Certainly, sex is a strong theme in Rogue's Pawn, but it's far from being an erotic story like Petals and Thorns.

For the record, I think the difference between an erotic story and one with erotic elements is that an erotic story is about the sexual journey as the main plot arc.

Still, regardless of plot arc, sex scenes all serve a similar purpose. An idea that emerged during our week-long discussion of writing action scenes. An effective sex scene should be no more a blow by blow than an action scene should. It's not all "insert tab A into slot B" as some literary writers have snarkily pronounced. (That kind of talk always makes me want to take the person aside and gently inquire as to whether maybe they're missing the point.)

Sex at its most brilliant, in both fiction and reality, is about the coming together of human beings. It's one of the few ways we can reach out of these fleshy shells that encase us and actually merge with other human beings. Sex scenes show how where the characters hold their emotional boundaries - and when they relinquish them. Through sex, the characters reach into each other, intertwine, deepen intimacy and understanding. Characters can express things to each other through sex that they can't articulate.

I think those things hold true, regardless of how detailed the sex is, or the overall arc of the story.

Tab A in slot B, indeed.