Self Publishing Can Spin On a Dime

I LOVE self publishing because I'm very much a control freak and I have a business background, so I also enjoy running my own 'small business' in terms of all the activities required besides the creative writing.

The Carina Press imprint of Harlequin plucked my book from their slush pile and gave me a wonderful start as a - gasp - published author! with Priestess of the Nile and Warrior of the Nile. I learned so much from my association with them - which was harmonious and collegial - and even now, I see people's eyes light up when I tell them my first publisher was Harlequin. Everyone has heard of HQN, even the scientists and engineers at the old NASA/JPL day job.

But along the way I got into self publishing too, so I'm a hybrid. I like working to my own schedule, choosing what I want to write next and when I want to release it. I love the cover design process,working with Fiona Jayde for my science fiction romances, and with Frauke Spanuth for the ancient Egyptians. I have terrific independent editors and a wonderful formatter, so I'm set. I pick, choose and pay for my own promo and truthfully, I'd be doing that even if I was still traditionally published because the burden is on the author for the most part.

I can spin on a dime and make decisions before breakfast, and implement them by lunchtime. (Yeah, I'm not very patient either.)

IF I were to be offered a traditional publishing contract in the future, I'd have to consider long and hard whether my goals for the specific project could be met without giving up too much of my control AND my intellectual property rights. The things I've read recently about the clauses in publishing contracts make my blood run cold. I have an extensive background in government aerospace contracting, which is a specialty of its own, but rest assured I know how to read the teeny tiniest of fine print. I'm not signing away my rights till the universe goes bang. Not unless it meets my goals in that case to do so. Offer me seven figures and a movie deal and we can talk LOL. Negotiaions open!

Speaking of all this, I released a new book this week: LADY OF THE STAR WIND. Here's the story:

Are they merely luckless lovers … or a legend come back to life?

Mark Denaltieri, ex-Sector Special Forces, has been hired by the Outlier Empress to rescue her granddaughter, Princess Alessandra, from kidnappers. Since the Empress once had him tortured and banished, she’s the last person Mark wants to work for. But he takes the job. He’ll save Alessandra, his first love, and discover why she didn’t speak for him when he desperately needed her. Then he’ll be on his way, finally free of his past.

Alessandra would rather her rescuer was anyone but Mark–after all, he let her believe he was dead all this time. But when the couple are forced to flee her captors by Traveling via a strange crystal globe, they find themselves in a lovely Oasis on a desert planet, the old attraction sizzling between them again.

They soon discover they are far from alone. The Oasis holds the entrance to another world, one in which the inhabitants are convinced Sandy and Mark are the Lady of the Star Wind and her Warrior, come to free them from an evil Queen.

Mark and Sandy must work together to unearth an ancient mirror, and crown the true king of this land.  Can they fulfill the prophecy of the Lady and her Warrior … and this time, will their love survive the test?

Buy Links: Amazon    KOBO     Barnes & Noble  iBooks will be up on the 18th

On Reviews

Jake the Cat ignoring me this morning because I was not properly attentive!

I don't review. I mention books from time to time, especially in my various columns and posts art USA Today Happily Ever After and Amazing Stories Magazine (Archive of  USAT and AM posts), and I think it's a fairly safe assumption that if I take the time to interview an author or mention the book, I enjoyed it.

I don't read reviews either, unless a reader tweets me or notifies me they've written one they want me to see. If someone calls a review to my attention, then I go look at it. I very much appreciate the time that readers and book bloggers put into writing reviews, to help other readers decide if the books are something they'll enjoy or not! And I know I need reviews to help Amazon in its algorithmic ponderings of the book in question.

I just can't read them.

I learned this lesson about myself in the early, wild days of eBay when feedback on buyers and sellers wasn't capsulized in nice anonymous stars about price, timeliness, communications and etc. In the old OLD days, people could and did write some outrageous things, much like a one star book review from a troll (not just an unhappy reader who has good reasons for why the book disappointed them - that can certainly happen even with the best book). We didn't get many bad reviews because we were highly conscientious sellers but every once in a while the customer would be unhappy. And wow, those words would wound me every time. I was doing my best, I was a widowed mother of two with a day job, trying to make the mortgage payment, didn't they realize they were taking food from my children's mouths if they left bad feedback....yup. I took it all onboard and I'd argue, in passionate e mails, to get the feedback removed or softened, or make the buyer happy. Good thing I learned NOT to do this on eBay so I'd be prepared for being an author LOL!

I finally made my daughters read all our Seller feedback first and only tell me if I had a specific thing I needed to know. Did the item arrive broken  and a refund really was needed? Fine. I'd deal with it.

So that's my tale, folks.

In a non-review, I read an ARC of  Jeffe's next release The Pages of the Mind (Uncharted Realms) and could not put it down. I LOVED it. Interview will be forthcoming when the book  comes out in June.

Do Pictures Inspire My Writing?

No, not usually, except in the most general sense that looking at photos and art can be inspiring and nurturing to creativity. Earlier in my writing career, long before I was published (and before Pinterest), I used to cut out pages from magazines and take bits and pieces of pictorials to help me come up with ideas for futuristic clothing.  High fashion spreads were especially useful because they tended to feature really interesting garments, backgrounds and accessories. I also loved photos of jewelry, the more unusual the better. But I don't do that much anymore, as I've gotten better at visualizing details for my characters and settings while I'm in the flow of writing the science fiction romance novels. I won't say I'm never inspired by a specific photo these days, but it's rare.

There was one of actor Charlie Hunnam that was pretty darn inspiring…but I digress!

One of my novels, Mission to Mahjundar, did spring into my mind pretty much fully formed from two pictures I saw in the same general time frame, long before it ever reached final draft, much less was published. I don't have the rights to use the photos so I can't share them here (although I do have the tattered magazine pages in a file somewhere).

I saw a photo of a windswept, abandoned temple, standing alone on a plateau, somewhere in the Middle East. The image remained with me and I pondered – as one does – what adventure would bring people to this remote location and what would happen to them there. What would they be seeking? Would they find whatever they needed? This became the temple of the Ten Gods, where Shalira must go on her wedding journey, to seek a key to her mother’s long-closed tomb.  The key thing that put all the other elements together in my mind and set off the plot was a perfume ad in a magazine. The illustration was very dark in tone, with a woman in a purple-and-gold hooded cloak holding a beautiful crystal bottle that glowed golden. The light from the bottle illuminated her face. And I thought, that’s it! That’s Shalira inside the tomb. Then I needed to know who would be there with her…and my Sectors Special Forces soldier, Mike Varone, told me he would be, of course!

I was inspired to write a short story about ancient Egypt by a picture of statue of a handsome soldier that had clearly been one of a pair at some time. I thought about a lonely museum worker who might picture herself standing hand in hand with the warrior…and then I had to figure out how to make that happen. This photo below is not the one which inspired the story (Available in the Five Minute Love Stories anthology) but is from roughly the same era, and has a similar look.

Photo by the author

My upcoming May release, Lady of the Star Wind, has a subplot pretty much entirely inspired by an ancient mirror I once saw at a museum, although the Mirror of the Mother in my novel is very different.

When it comes to the ancient Egyptian paranormal novels I write, I do spend time looking through my large collection of books, tomb wall painting reproductions, 1800's prints and advertising cards, and other artifacts. 

Photo by the author

My Take on Book Contests

I'm writing this post ahead of time, since I'll be at the RT Booklovers' Convention April 12th through 17th, so for once I have NO idea what the other Whores will say on the topic.

I have submitted books to various contests conducted within the Romance Writers of America (RWA) chapters. Yes, there's a fee for entering but the proceeds go to help the nonprofit organization and the chapters provide services to their members. (I'm a member.) I kind of fell into it the first year I was published, when everyone I knew at Carina Press was rushing around to enter the RITA, which is 'the' big award in romance writing, and I happily went along.

After that I entered more RWA contests, not all by any means, and I don't do it for the feedback, or to get my books in front of agents or publishers. Since I'm independently published, neither of those is a concern to me. Although it is nice to think maybe you'll gain some readers after the judges read the book you submit! I kind of enjoyed the validation in those early days that my books were good enough to place or to win, when read alongside my peers. I have a goodly collection of Finals or Awards, noted on my book's pages. No need to recap here. I'm proud of the National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award for Escape From Zulaire and the Hearts Through History Romancing the Novel Award for Magic of the Nile. I loved having additional points to add to the book descriptions in Amazon.

After the big kerfluffle about the 2015 RITAs, where a questionable and distasteful (to me and many others) book reached the Finals in one category, I hesitated to enter again. I finally did and probably will in the future, because it is our 'big' award after all. But one problem I have is that the majority of my books are science fiction romance and have to be lumped into the RITA Paranormal category, where they don't belong.

So I asked myself why I was entering contests at all any more and pretty much decided to stop. I love

feedback from readers and am always so happy when someone takes the time to let me know via a review, a tweet or a message that they enjoyed the story! The readers'  opinions are what ultimately matter, not whether three people or five people assigned to judge read the book and subjectively felt it scored high enough for an award (after tossing the outlier scores etc etc.). Awards are nice and I very much appreciate the ones I've garnered. It's a lovely little adrenaline rush to get that e mail or phone call that your book Finaled, or won. I may decide to enter another contest here and there, but I've pretty much moved on. I don't believe the awards - not even the RITA - mean a thing to the vast majority of readers. So if it makes me happy to enter, well and good, but that's about where it stops. There are better ways to find new readers! For me anyway...

I love my SFR Galaxy Awards, which are bestowed by science fiction romance bloggers, not in a contest.

I'd be thrilled to win an Academy Award some day but not holding my breath!

Just to be complete, there are a number of commercial organizations that  bestow 'book awards' as a marketing tool to then prevail on the 'winners' to pay for medals and etc. Here's a Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Writers Beware post on that topic.

And of course there are many other perfectly legitimate book awards....

To Critique and Partner or Not?

I don’t have critique partners or a critique group. The one and only time I tried anything of that nature was in junior college. It was an evening creative writing class and I lasted through the first time I had to read my WIP and receive feedback, and it was SO not this introvert’s comfort zone…I left at the break and never went back. I have wonderful, professional editors and I rely on them. They will tell me if I’ve taken a left turn or done something TSTL with my plot. As you might guess, they’ve had occasion to do that a time or two!  My process is my process and I don’t feel the need to bounce story issues off other people or gather inputs as I go, etc. Shrug. I get that it works great for other people, which just proves yet again that there’s no one “right way” to write. Thanks goodness.

On to something more exciting for me – this past week I did the cover reveal for my next science fiction romance novel, Star Cruise: Outbreak. Here’s the pretty cover, from Fiona Jayde. The book will be out on April 18^th.

The story:

She saved countless soldiers in the wars … but does she have the weapons to fight an outbreak?

Dr. Emily Shane, veteran of the Sector Wars, is known as “The Angel of Fantalar” for her bravery under fire as a medic. However, the doctor has her own war wounds–severe PTSD and guilt over those she failed to save.

Persuaded to fill a seemingly frivolous berth as ship’s doctor on the huge and luxurious interstellar cruise liner Nebula Zephyr, she finds the job brings unexpected perks–a luxe beach deck with water imported from Tahumaroa II, and Security Officer Jake Dilon, a fellow veteran who heats her up like a tropical sun.

However, Emily soon learns she and Jake didn’t leave all peril behind in the war. A mysterious ailment aboard the Zephyr begins to claim victim after victim … and they must race against time and space to find the cause and a cure! Trapped on a ship no spaceport will allow to dock, their efforts are complicated by a temperamental princess and a terrorist–one who won’t hesitate to take down any being in the way of his target.  If anyone’s left when the disease is through with them …

The Lighter Take on Cinderella For Me

Marcella and I both picked the same favorite fairy tale but we're literally the light and dark here. My favorite version of the tale is Drew Barrymore's wonderful film "Ever After." I so love that movie. I liked that it was given a very realistic twist, no fairy dust on anything, although Leonardo da Vinci made an acceptable substitute for the traditional godmother who fixes everything. I loved the way the aged descendant of the hero and heroine is telling the correct tale to the Brothers Grimm, surrounded by a few artifacts saved from the "once upon a time".

I also enjoyed parts of the recent Disney live action version of "Cinderella", primarily for the Fairy Godmother, played by Helena Bonham Carter, who was SO good.  I thought that Disney got too carried away with designing the ball gown and that then rendered the waltz kind of ridiculous. The prince couldn't take her in his arms and dance properly.

I love the Rodgers & Hammerstein stage version of the tale, especially the TV broadcast with  Lesley Anne Warren in the title role. At one point in time I had all the songs in that musical memorized and could belt them out. (Shall I sing? No? Maybe later then...) I wanted to waltz with a handsome prince in that fabulous gown Ms. Warren wears. I love the comedic turn of the Wicked Stepsisters.

I don't enjoy the actual Disney cartoon version, oddly enough. Not enough Prince, not enough romance, too much evil stepmother....

Another fun take on the story is the 1987 movie "Maid To Order," with Ally Sheedy. If you haven't seen it, by all means hunt it down. The Fairy Godmother in that one is scary cool.

Music, magic, romance....

The oldest known recorded version of the story dates back to the 1st Century BCE and deals with an ancient Egyptian servant girl and her ornately decorated slippers. Horus the Falcon God steals one and gives it to Pharaoh, who of course knows he must find the owner and marry her. A lot of searching ensues and jealous servants trying to do the heroine out of her happily ever after, but eventually she puts the slipper on and becomes queen.

I've written two tales set in ancient Egypt with a bit of a Cinderella twist, In Priestess of the Nile, the heroine actually does have an evil stepmother, and her prince is Sobek the Crocodile God in human form. No shoes were involved but eventually there's a Happily Ever After in the Egyptian Afterlife. In Healer of the Nile, I cast Pharaoh in the role of Leonardo da Vinci or the Fairy Godmother, as he steps in to assist his friend Tadenhut to  persuade Mehyta the Healer to marry him. Here's part of the scene:

             “Mehyta the Healer?”

            “Yes.” She turned and dropped the seedlings she held as she faced a royal messenger, accompanied by a scribe, both wearing finer robes than most of the local nobility. Two immaculately dressed servants hovered behind, each holding one handle of a large, closed woven basket. A guard in crisp military uniform stood to the rear, hand on his sword.

            The scribe held a rolled papyrus out to her, tied with a scarlet thong, and stamped with Pharaoh’s cartouche in red wax. “I am personally charged by the Great One to deliver this to you.”

            She took it, but asked hesitantly, “Am I in some kind of trouble?” She touched the red seal hesitantly. “I can’t read.”

            The scribe nodded, as if her answer met his expectation. “The Great One commands your presence before him at the banquet tomorrow evening. You’re to dine in his company with the other invited guests and will be granted an audience later in the festivities. So says the scroll.”

            “I-I don’t know what to say. Why does he want to see me?”

            The scribe gave her a thin-lipped smile. “One doesn’t question the dictates of Pharaoh. And lesser men such as myself don’t attempt to interpret his wishes.”

            “No, of course not. I meant no disrespect. I’m only the village healer. I’ve nothing grand enough to wear, and I don’t want to give offense—”

            “The Great One has anticipated these matters.” The scribe gestured and the servants stepped forward. Placing the basket on the ground in front of Mehyta, the women removed the cover as the scribe and herald stood aside. The first maid withdrew a sparkling white sheath, finely pleated, and a girdle woven from golden and scarlet threads, embellished with tiny scarabs made from faience and turquoise. The second maid plucked an elegant wig from the basket, and a pair of gold scarab earrings. Last came a new pair of sandals, crafted from fine leather, turquoise lotus flowers set into the center strap. “He sends you these garments as his gift and requests you appear at the banquet wearing the proof of his generosity.”

            “Of course, I’d never dream of refusing.” Mehyta curled her fingers into fists, longing to touch the beautiful garments.

            The maids efficiently repacked the basket and at a nod from the scribe, carried it by the wooden handles into Mehyta’s hut.

            Light-headed, wondering what was in store for her, Mehyta realized the herald had more to say. “A litter and proper escort will be sent to fetch you at the appointed time.”

            “I’ll be ready.”

            “Are there any questions?” the scribe asked.

            Mehyta had so many questions crowding her mind, she couldn’t give voice to any of them, so she shook her head.

            The scribe leaned closer and patted her arm. “All will be well; have no fears. We bid you good day.” He and the herald walked away, the silent soldier behind them, rejoining the maids and marching up the road toward the estate house.

            Going inside, Mehyta approached the basket sitting on her hearth as if it contained live cobras instead of elaborate clothes and jewelry. Drawing her stool closer to the basket, she removed the lid, setting it aside with care. One at a time, she handled the beautifully made clothing and trinkets, examining each before laying them on her bed. Beneath the shoes she found a gauzy shawl the maids hadn’t displayed, fringed and embroidered with a pattern of lotus leaves. Wrapping it around herself, she slid her feet into the jeweled sandals and twirled for a moment. In a manner of speaking, Pharaoh had made magic just for her!

The story:

The story: When Pharaoh sends injured warrior Tadenhut home to die, his noble family asks Mehyta, the local healer, to ease his path to the Afterlife. Mehyta discovers he’s trapped between Life and Death, caught in the dreamspace. Touched by his fighting spirit and will to live, Mehyta vows to use all the powers Shai, god of fate, gave her. Together Tadenhut and the brave healer battle to overcome his injuries, as well as threats from devious family members. While struggling to rescue her patient, Mehyta comes to realize he matters more to her than any man ever has before. But even if his life can be saved, what do the omens say about a match between a highborn soldier and a simple healer?

Buy Links:

Amazon     Kobo     iBooks    All Romance eBooks     Barnes & Noble

Long Term Planning Grasshopper or Ant?

I AM going to tell you a story, sort of.

So  by nature I'm a pretty happy go lucky lark morning person short term planner. A grasshopper in the Aesop's Fable. I freel admit I do a lot of magical thinking about stuff, rather than hard planning. I never used to worry about it too much because my high school sweetie was a very long term planning guy and night owl.

We followed his excellent plan to the letter. Marine Corps (him)....got married...G. I. Bill...college...work...night school...more work...I graduated...get good job at NASA JPL....he keeps juggling work and school...buy first house....he graduates, gets great job...buy station wagon....have child...buy bigger house close to JPL....have second child....this plan stretched to infinity. I was very happy because I'm NOT a big picture planning person.

Then he was killed in a bicycle accident. I had two children ages 3 and 5. No, I didn't turn into a long range planner but I knew certain things had to happen and they did. I made sure of that. Of course other things also happened but you adapt.

Then one morning at breakfast on a business trip, I choked on a morsel of food and came within seconds of brain death. My life was only saved because the co-worker who I taught to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on me via gestures as I was passing out, continued to repeat the Maneuver fourteen more times before the food dislodged enough for me to resume breathing. So I did a lot of deep thinking and soul searching afterward because if my husband's death hadn't been compelling enough to show that we can all leave this Earth at literally any moment, now it had nearly happened to me.

But you can't just stop making plans. Especially not if you have a family depending on you, and  bills to pay and etc. So I continued to muddle through with my version of planning...

Eventually the family moved out to pursue their own plans and I started hopefully working toward a kind of vague plan to get published, write lots of books and maybe someday give up the day job and become a fulltime writer.

OK, so now that plan has come to fruition. Now my plan is to write lots of good books and enjoy the HECK out of being a published author. Oh, and pay the bills.

I have a fairly solid plan to write specific books this year and release them on target dates. (STAR CRUISE: OUTBREAK in mid April - watch for it!)  I have a plan to attend the RT Booklovers Conference in Las Vegas in April and I'm chairing a panel on scifi romance that I proposed and got accepted.

That's it. Probably my 2017 plan is rinse and repeat. And do that again in 2018....you get the idea.

Along the way fun things come up out of the blue, like recording a line in a Star Trek audiobook (I am Crew Woman. Really.) Or being on a Wondercon panel (which didn't happen because I was replaced by an actress with Farscape credits but she was probably a better fit for the audience than romance writer me.)  Or being in an anthology with New York Times best selling authors (maybe lightning will strike).

I plan to feed the cats EVERY day. (Jake made me add that.)

Of Blue Cats, Lost Socks and Missing Time Flash Fiction

I’d had enough of losing socks. The plain white ankle socks – okay, I could still make up pairs. But my Laurel Burch Blue Cats socks from a trip to Universal Studios Citywalk??? NO!!!! When I moved the wet laundry from the washer to the dryer and could only find one of these precious blue babies, I was upset.

Leaning over, I searched the cavernous recesses of the washing machine. Leaning just a little bit too far over the lip, I realized I was falling…..falling……curiouser and curiouser.

I landed on a shiny gray surface with a thump and took a moment to catch my breath. The smell of laundry detergent fumes was strong and perfume-y. (I thought the brand I used was perfume free?) Rising to my feet, I trudged toward the only pile of color anywhere in sight – a gaily hued pyramid, rising to the dark sky.

When I got there, the pyramid was composed of thousands of socks in all shapes, sizes and colors. Baby socks, doll socks, military green socks, socks with dogs and cats and penguins and Santas and anything and everything you could name. I was dizzy gazing at all the choices! Was this every sock I’d ever lost in my entire life? For I observed there was only one of each.

There! My Blue Cats sock was beckoning to me from the top of the pyramid so, greatly daring and determined, I started climbing the pile. But socks shifted under my feet and I couldn’t make progress and finally the entire structure fell apart in an avalanche of color, like spilling dozens of paint cans at the same time. Remembering all the stories I ever read about avalanches, I swam with the flow and clawed my way to the top. Seeing my Blue Cats sock floating close at hand, I grabbed it and nearly drowned. A moment later the sock and I washed up on a bare spot.

Clutching it, I looked back to where the pyramid had been. Now an ivory, blue and gold timer stood there, revealed by the avalanche. Could this be where the missing hours went as well? Drawn to this strange other dimension by the same mystical power that steals single socks and hoards them? Every time we foolish humans in parts of the USA “sprang forward” and sacrificed an hour of sleep to the gods of lost time and socks, the fleeting moments came here.

Eureka, I’d unlocked a secret of the universe!

Now to get home and tell the world of my revelation. Hmmm. Now to get home indeed…I looked around the barren gray wasteland of the washing machine innards.

Suddenly a beautiful humming bird hovered above me. “I’ll take you home but you must swear never to reveal the secrets of this lost place.”

Ulp. Ok! I jumped onto the saddle, holding my sock for dear life.

As we rose, I seemed to hear the voice of Rod Serling in my ear, telling me I was leaving The Twilight Zone.

But it was actually the voice of my daughter. “Mom, Mom! Are you finished washing yet? I need to do my gym clothes.”

I put the second Blue Cats sock into the dryer and twisted the dial. Yes, I’d keep my secrets.

************************************************************

One thing I won't keep secret is my release of HEALER OF THE NILE: A NOVELLA, last week. This story was previously released in the Here Be Magic box set but is now a standalone. Here's my pretty cover and the story is below:

The story: 

1550 BCE

When Pharaoh sends injured warrior Tadenhut home to die, his noble family asks Mehyta, the local healer, to ease his path to the Afterlife. Mehyta discovers he’s trapped between Life and Death, caught in the dreamspace. Touched by his fighting spirit and will to live, Mehyta vows to use all the powers Shai, god of fate, gave her. Together Tadenhut and the brave healer battle to overcome his injuries, as well as threats from devious family members. While struggling to rescue her patient, Mehyta comes to realize he matters more to her than any man ever has before. But even if his life can be saved, what do the omens say about a match between a highborn soldier and a simple healer?

Buy Links:

Amazon     Kobo     iBooks    All Romance eBooks     Barnes & Noble

Social Media Annoyances

I love twitter! Turns out that I was born to tweet and it's my favorite form of social media.

A couple of things that turn me off there. Do not Direct Message (DM) me the moment we've Followed each other, to try to sell me your book/music/services and/or to ask me to Like you on FB or anywhere else. I will unFollow you. Don't DM me to suggest I click on a link...

I don't auto Follow either. I look at the tweets of someone who has Followed me (all these capital "F"'s are exhausting!) and if all they do is (a) effusively thank new followers or (b) tweet their own book (BUY MY BOOK) or (c) tweet only their own deathless prose - sayings, lines from their book, what have you without ever engaging with other people, much less retweeting other people or (d) spammy/obscene material or (e) all their tweets are in a language I can't read - and I do have  followers that I follow whose primary language doesn't happen to be English but because they got a better education than I did, they kindly do tweet in English sometimes.....where was I going with this? Oh, ok in all those cases, I won't follow them.

The other thing that is a social media no-no to ME? The way the social media tools themselves make arbitrary changes we the users did NOT ask for, don't want and can't turn off. Especially if said changes are in the name of monetizing the cool social media tool and making a bunch of investors happy.

It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time. Alexis Ohanian

Creativity Running A Bit Low?

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things. Ray Bradbury

While I don't have an amazing new insights to offer that my fellow Whores haven't mentioned earlier in the week, I do subscribe to this thought that Ray Bradbury expressed. I believe he was on to something. If you overthink anything that you normally do “in the flow” and fairly effortlessly, even brushing your teeth, you’ll suddenly get clumsy, start questioning yourself and the process breaks down. Overexamination modifies whatever you’re examining. If Tom Brady or Peyton Manning analyzed the way they throw a football every time they threw one, they’d have been sitting on the bench. If a ballet dancer like Misty Copeland thought through her every step and turn as she moved across the dance floor, she’d be behind the music.

Here’s another good thought: An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Edwin Land

Right! Don’t worry about whether what you’re doing is good enough, a final product, as good as someone else’s, as good as your own last effort – if you’re being creative, you’re probably learning an generating some kernel of useful stuff that you can build on, adapt, scrap but know you want to move in a different direction…a standard piece of advice I always give beginning writers is to not self edit as you write. Just get the words on the page and go back later and edit and polish. Let the words flow for now.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams

Creativity takes courage. Henri Matisse

Yup, you may look a bit foolish at times while you’re trying new things but who cares? At least you’re out there making the attempt to create art, dance, the perfect pass, a science fiction romance novel (that would be me by the way)…

I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity. Gilda Radner

Sometimes I just have to go do something else. I listen to music. I watch certain movies that I know get to me and inspire me to want to create my own stories. Ditto for books by certain authors in my genres. I read them and I’m on fire to get back to creating my own, not because I’m jealous of what they’ve done but because their wonderful worldbuilding, adventure and romance make me hungry to create my own again.

I go for a long drive on the open freeway and listen to music. Sometimes I’ll consciously think about a plot point and other times I just let the Beach Boys or whoever take over while I cruise to the beat, man. No better music for SoCal freeway cruisin’.

I organize something in my house. Fortunately there’s always some closet or spare room that needs to be organized. (Why IS that?!)

Trying to force creativity is never good. Sarah McLachlan

Sometimes I sleep on it. A good nap or even overnight. My subconscious is a dog with a bone, a cat with a mouse…and more often than not when I wake up the first thing my conscious mind holds is the answer the subconscious me has spent all that time working out. Like this morning – “Oh, the entire planet has become an alien experimentation  station….” Well then, I know where to go from there and is my main character ever in for some trouble before that HEA ending.

It's impossible to explain creativity. It's like asking a bird, 'How do you fly?' You just do. Eric Jerome Dickey

My personal anthem (song starts at about :59):

My Titles Evolve Over Time

For the fantasy romance novels set in ancient Egypt, I'm quite basic. Everything is "of the Nile." I figured that would cue people as to the time and place. It was also my homage to the 1950's movie "Princess of the Nile," which is a B movie favorite of mine. So I have Priestess, Warrior, Dancer, Magic and Ghost. Of The Nile. There' s also the novella Healer of the Nile, in a boxed set at the moment but soon to come out as a standalone. This year I plan to write the sequel to Dancer and I'm pondering the title. Return of the Dancer of the Nile is perhaps a bit unwieldy.

My subtitle for the series, chosen by Carina Press back in 2011, is Gods of  Egypt. You may be familiar with the fact that a certain movie has recently come out with the same title? Nope, not based on my books!

So, easy peasy so far.

For the science fiction romance, I tend to start out by thinking of the book in terms of the planet's name. So the early working files are entitled "Zulaire" or "Majumdar". Unless the action takes place on a ship and then it'll be known as something like "Plague Ship". I have one that started out as "Saqqarrain" and still is that on my computer. The manuscript has gone through quite a few iterations and will be released in May as Lady of the Star Wind. And no location in the book anywhere has the long and unwieldy name Saqqarrain any more.

When I began writing science fiction in junor high school, I wasn't very keyed into the title as another tool for selling the book, so I think that''s probably why my titles are utilitarian.

Let's see - Wreck of the Nebula Dream. OK, pretty descriptive and easy to pronounce. Probably ok. Escape from Zulaire. Is that clearly science fiction, set on another planet? Or does it sound like my characters are somewhere in Africa? Without spaceships? Mission to Mahjundar. Again, doesn't signal space adventure and going by the title alone, could just as easily be eastern Asia, minus the blasters and starships.  Probably not good.

I also thought of my novels as standalone stories in a connected series, set in the same universe. They are all subtitled A Sectors SF Romance, which helps a little. The Sectors is my interstellar civilization, the backdrop against which all the action occurs.

So for my next book, I went with Star Cruise: Marooned. And the direct sequel to that is going to be Star Cruise: Outbreak. Future books in this series, which will all occur on an interstellar cruise ship, with be Star Cruise: Something. Look for it at an ebook retailer near you!

Like everything else to do with the publishing business, titles have evolved too. I promise the one thing you'll never see from me is a book title with hashtag hashtag hashtag key words in the title itself!

Ghost of the Nile is on sale at Amazon, by the way, only $.99!

The story:

Betrayed, murdered, and buried without proper ceremony, Egyptian warrior Periseneb is doomed to roam the gray deserts of the dead as a ghost for all eternity.

But then the goddess of truth offers him a bargain: return to the world of the living as her champion for 30 days. If he completes his mission, he’ll be guaranteed entry into Paradise. Periseneb agrees to the bargain but, when he returns to the living world, two hundred years have passed and nothing is quite as he expected.

Neithamun is a woman fighting to hang onto her family’s estate against an unscrupulous nobleman who desires the land as well as the lady. All seems lost until a mysterious yet appealing ex-soldier, Periseneb, appears out of nowhere to help her fight off the noble’s repeated attacks.

Meanwhile, Periseneb’s thirty days are rushing by, and he’s powerless against the growing attraction between himself and Neithamun. But their love can never be. For his Fate is to return to the Afterlife, and Death cannot wed with Life…

No Revelations About Tools or Tricks To Be Found Here

I’m a pretty straight forward writer of books and don’t use much in the way of fancy applications.  A long time ago I did switch to writing on the computer as my handwriting got worse and worse (not that it was ever too pretty).

Eons ago, long before I became published, I first used Wordstar, with dot commands and other arcane such tricks, but I happily switched to WORD when it came along. I still faithfully pound the keys in WORD nowadays.

Tweetdeck keeps me up to date with my amazing twitter Followers and the intriguing people that I Follow. There’s no way to manage the always-cascading timeline I have in twitter itself. I’m hoping their new revision of the timeline won’t mess me up too much. I have Tweetbot on my cell phone.

Canva is my choice for creating promo graphics…I’m not too good at coming up with snappy ones

like many other authors do, but I try. I putter. I have fun. It's a tool that isn't too complex for my nontech mind. (Can you believe I was on the implementation team that installed Oracle at JPL in the late '90's? Me either LOL! I was more of a change management person than a programmer though.) Incidentally, I'm sharing a few of my Canva efforts on this post for your delectation...

ccCleaner keeps my cache and other mysterious, hidden computer archives from clogging up the works too much.

Carbonite backs up my laptop stuff daily. It slowed down my email too much for me to run it constantly. I'm highly impatient. Those few seconds of lag drive me CRAZY.

Norton sniffs out viruses and other insidous attacks for me…

Some of the other creative people with whom I collaborate use Google docs, so I’ve learned how to do that…I schedule meetings, Facebook parties and dentist appointments in Calendar…I do blog posts in Wordpress and Blogger….my audiobook narrator put up samples of the audio books in Soundcloud…

I use a noisy kitchen timer to tell me when to stop typing, and get up and walk or be busy on my feet for 10 minutes before resuming the keyboard workout…

And of course THE most essential component of my life as an author are The Cats, who tell me when I need to pay attention to THEM. Enough said!

Writing to the Market Is Not My Super Power

One of my 3 SFR Galaxy Award winning titles

I’m the wrong person to address the issue of writing to market, because I don’t.  Since I’m independently published, I write what I’m in the mood to write and as my own nimble small business, I can get away with that. I have loyal readers who love science fiction romance or ancient Egypt, or both.  My stories fall into niche markets with goodly amounts of readers, but probably not enough at the moment for major publishers to pursue.

Although as an aside, the SFR Galaxy Awards were just announced and I wrote a post for USA Today Happily Ever After, where I asked this year’s winners for their views on the future of SFR. Nearly everyone said it’s on a growth curve, which – YAY! I would tend to agree with that assessment and I’m happy because I love the genre and I love writing in the genre.

This week, other Whores have already thrashed out the issues traditional publishers face trying to bring books to the market while that market is still hot and growing, versus being latecomers. Life was probably easier when it was ALL about the traditional publishing business and if they didn’t put the books out there, you couldn’t read in your favorite niche.

The other issue for me would be, even if I had a crystal ball and could foretell the future, it’s probably not going to be something I want to write. I might love to read it and put every book that comes out onto my poor kindle, but my Muse is finicky. Everything falls from my mind onto the page with a science fiction twist, or fantastical elements. I have notes somewhere on a Regency romance, because I would so love to write one of those, but once I get beyond the governess and the Duke and either a house party or a snowbound inn, I’m out of inspiration. The. Words. Do. Not. Flow. And maybe at that point I go off and reread my favorite Mary Balogh book.

Someone I respect, who is a longtime participant in the publishing world, recently pointed out the popularity of the Hamilton Broadway musical and wondered if that might mean romances set in the Revolutionary era would make a comeback. Hmmm, I said to myself, good point! But yet, no plots come to my mind. (The “Swamp Fox” theme song from the old Disney show comes to mind, which isn’t particularly helpful.)

The other thing for me, is that if I’m writing something I don’t have genuine enthusiasm for, it doesn’t flow and it doesn’t read as well as my normal prose (at least in my opinion). So I’m lucky to be writing in  time where “the market” can exist without me and vice versa.

Leaving you with an excellent little clip from "Hamilton":

The Root Cause of My Writerly Bad Habits

In my old life one of the many things I did at the day job was to serve as a Lead Auditor for ISO 9000 and AS9100 quality management standards. I’m was also certified as a NASA Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. I’ve taught process improvement and led process improvement teams.

Why is this cryptic set of qualifications relevant to today’s topic?  I’m trained to “science the shit” out of any process on the face of the Earth. Or Mars. Analyze it within an inch of its life and find the errors, the statistical inefficiencies, identify the ways to do everything better. (And that wasn’t even my primary assignment!). So of course I’ve turned my critical eye on my own process as a writer.

I was a lot less rigorous than I ever had to be at JPL though, didn’t keep metrics, didn’t do interviews, draw flow diagrams or write any reports. I sat down with a cup of tea and a lavender legal pad after breakfast and made notes about where I was getting in my own way. I actually did a Mission/Vision session with myself, to establish what was my main motivator and how did I see that once it had become reality. Then I did the strategies that would advance my Mission and identified some of the things that would definitely hold me back. (Sounds SO formal, doesn’t it? But I did no powerpoint slides.)

 Over the last year since becoming a fulltime author I’ve noticed a few things.

1.    1.   I worked on all kinds of assignments and projects at the day job. Multitasking was my middle name. I like having many irons in the fire. As an author, I had a tendency to take on too much because it all sounded fun, or challenging, or was a learning experience. I’d get it all done on deadline but there was a toll and sometimes the price was paid in stress-related health problems. After becoming aware of this aspect of my own nature, I made myself promise not to say yes to anything immediately this year, and to really think it through, as far as how the activity would help me in my career as an author. (Or to pay forward some of the wonderful help I’ve received over the years from other authors and editors and bloggers.)  And to say no when required. That’s still hard for me – I like to be helpful. Getting way better at picking and choosing, however!

2.    2.    I LOVE research but sometimes that can take me way far down the rabbit hole. I need to do better at only going as far as I need to for the book (or post) I’m writing at the moment. Maybe make a note if there’s something that might be intriguing for the future, but NOT pursue the fleeing plot bunnies like a confused coyote until metaphorical the sun sets.

3.      3.  I LOVE social media in general but have a bad habit of trying to “get caught up” every time I log in. There is no such thing when it comes to the Internet, and you have Facebook and Twitter going on, and four e mail accounts (for different things).  Had to tell myself to give up, turn it all off when trying to write!

4.       4. The main problem I uncovered was that after many years of working for others, I had an unconscious tendency to see everything as “part of the job,” which the multitudinous  tasks would indeed have been in the office.  That led to a subproblem - things that I owed to other people tended to take priority in my day, versus sitting and getting new words on next novel. BZZZT! WRONG! The novels are the key to my life as a writer and nothing should be taking precedence over the stories. If I want to do other activities, that’s fine and desirable, but I can’t let them take priority. Write first, strike while the creativity is hot. Other stuff later or not at all.

I’d say the root cause of my bad habits is a desire to do it all and do it perfectly. We won’t drill down any further, thank you, as to why I want to do it all, much less the quest for perfection!

I just have to keep pulling my focus back to the writing, every day.

So that’s me and  few photos of the lovely flowers on my balcony.

Writing Advice for My Younger Self

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. Marcus Tullius Cicero

I guess any advice I’d give to my younger self depends on which point in time we’re talking about. From age 7 to 12, I just wrote my stories and didn’t worry about anything. From 12 to about 16 I wrote more serious stories, about space cadets and starships, and I shared them with my friends and it was all fine. I even submitted some to various magazines and collected rejections slips. Around the age of 16, some of the older ‘cool’ kids got their hands on one of my stories and made fun of me publicly, and THAT was that. No more sharing from me.

But I kept writing of course.

The thing is, I think my life has gone pretty much the way it’s supposed to. I don’t have regrets or want to reverse any of my major decisions, and the writing is woven through my life. I’m not going to serve up the year by year recitation of the life and times of Veronica Scott, no worries. But the point is, I honestly can’t see any advice I could travel back in time to give myself about the writing. I was doing what I was supposed to do, and able to do, at each point.

I always read voraciously, at every age. Still do.

I got married, had children, was widowed, pursued my career to support us all…

I got a degree in business and I worked in Acquisition for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and wow, did I learn a LOT about contracts and business and process improvement and finance, and many other things that work for me now as my own small business, publishing my books.

I always wrote. I always had stories in my head. At the point in my life where I was able to devote serious time to actually learning the fundamentals of the craft, getting published, starting to self publish, getting really involved in social media and blogging…then I did all of that and had some wonderful mentors and friends who helped and advised. That really started in late 2010.

So….here I am, at a loss for advice to make it worth hopping in the time machine and traveling back to any given moment. Now if I could give advice on non-writing stuff, ok then! But that wasn’t the assignment.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway. John Steinbeck

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate. Thornton Wilder

She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).Lewis Carroll

Book Not Working? I Never Give up!

You're talking to a woman who taught someone to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on me AS I was literally dying from complete lack of oxygen and passing out. I. Do. Not. Give. Up. If this was the Middle Ages, that would be my family motto.

Now granted having a book plot not working out for me is a bit less dire than nearly dying.

I might set the subject book aside for a while and work on something else that my Muse was more seduced by or interested in....there's no telling how long I might wait to go back to said nonworking book...

There is in fact such a book (in a box and on a disc, not in a trunk under the bed LOL. The only things under my bed besides dust bunnies are cat toys that I refuse to retrieve for Jake, who finds it amusing to drop them between the headboard and the frame but we digress....) This epic tome is a paranormal fantasy, set on another world. It's known to me as "Kyle and Caitlyn." My freelance editors have said they'll never look at this book again. Let's go back in time....

So in 2010 I got fired up that now was the time to work seriously toward being published. I was inspired by the books of Cynthia Eden and Nalini Singh, as well as Andre Norton's Witch World, and had this idea for a PNR novel. I wrote it in a hot burst of wild creativity where the flow takes you and time stops. I thought it was THE best thing I'd ever written, I had sequels lined up in my head (still do). My beta reader, who was a published author, asked me if I was serious about being published. I said yes. She ripped it to SHREDS, people. (But I needed that. No worries.)  For about a week, in shock, I said this was it, I was never writing again. I had ALL the problems - too much telling, not enough showing. Lack of stage business for my people to do while talking. A heroine who had no agency. Some dubious consent issues. Omniscient POV. Head hopping. Use of dialog tags other than "said"....well, the list goes on, all the classic  newbie stuff.

Then I got stubborn (see the Family motto) and buckled down to start learning all these skillz I needed.  Carina put out a call for Ancient World romances and I wrote Priestess of the Nile with my newly acquired craft. Happy ending: that book got published in January 2012. I've got a total of 9 books, one novella, one short story, and 5 audiobooks released, the tenth novel is all written and the 11th one is 20K into the first draft. But I STILL keep wandering back to good old Kyle and Caitlyn in my mind.

I did do a massive rewrite on the manuscript, last year, I think, or maybe in 2014, and tried to address all the concerns the beta reader and editor had brought up originally. I applied my new toolbox of author craft and learning....massive comments back from the freelance editor and as I mentioned, the statement they never wanted to see it again. (This is my regular editor, by the way, so they're usually very cool with my books.)

SOME DAY I will bring this book and these characters I love up to the line and it will get released.  But to do that I'm going to have basically start over from the first word, let go of some of my favorite parts of the novel, probably change all the names....but Kyle and Caitlyn and my Muse know I will find the magic that brings their world alive in the same way I write ancient Egypt and the far future in my other two series.

And then we will celebrate!

I Don't Want To Be Jules Verne

Our topic this week is which pre-1950's author we might like to be. First of all, I NEVER took this question seriously on the "wanting to BE the author". I agree with the other Whores who've said this week they have no interest in living the sometimes troublesome and unhappy lives of certain authors, nor do they hanker to live in a time without modern meds and conveniences. Count me in on that.

When the topic was announced, my author's brain went immediately to the books various authors-of-other-centuries wrote, and which titles I was drawn to the most. (K.A. Krantz opined on my personal favorite, Alexandre Dumas - I LOVE the Musketeers! I'm loyal to the 1970's movie version but I've read and reread the novel a jillion times.)

As a modern day author, especially in my early years when I was trying to find my own voice as a writer, I admire Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey, and their Witch World and Pern respectively. I wish I could find my own Witch World or Pern - somewhere so unique and wonderful, full of adventure and possibilities that readers (like myself) crave and yearn to live there. I don't wish I'd written their books. I want to write my own that evoke the same kind of reaction. I watched the Harry Potter phenomenon from afar, but I imagine it's the same kind of wonderful longing to BE there yourself when you read J. K. Rowling's prose.

So if we're talking pre-1950's, I'll start with Homer and The Iliad and The Odyssey. (I'm always so impressed when a character in a book says they've read these classics in the original Greek, but I've only read them in heavily annotated English.) Or perhaps Virgil and The Aeneid. Being a huge fan of the Ancient World and mythology, these three tales were right up my alley, plus Odysseus and Penelope get a happy ending.

I also admire Jane Austen's novels, for capturing a time and place in a way that many of us still treasure and want to visit. Even if she didn't really write waltzing Dukes....

If I had to choose (and Dumas was taken), I'd go with either Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. I think they're closest to my science fiction romance DNA, with their fabulous mysterious islands, submarines and Men in the Moon and Time Machines....

But wait, there's also H. Rider Haggard, with his cracking good adventure tales like King Solomon's Mines, the Lost World (dinosaurs anyone?), the Lost City of Gold....

Or maybe Edward Bulwer-Lytton, with Last Days of Pompeii (although I'd clean up his style a LOT and insert more romance and less moralizing.... but hey, he was a man of his times too.)

I gravitate to adventure, science fiction and romance, no matter what time I'm in!

(Here's the trailer from the 1970's "Three Musketeers" movies):

Favorite Books to Give a Child

Here I go again, as the Saturday Whore, veering off the exact nature of the topic at hand. Hey, that's how I roll, folks!

As a kid, I devoured any and all books and reading material. I HAVE to have something to read at all times or...dire things happen. No, I don't exactly turn into a Gremlin but I do get bored! So I read the usual Heidi, Swiss Family Robinson, all the series from Bobbsey Twins to Nancy Drew to Cherry Ames to Trixie Belden, plus Tom Swift, Tom Corbett and Rick Brant. And some older series of my grandparents' youth along the way. The Dare Boys and Bobby of the Labrador were big in our house...and there was a book, whose title is now sadly lost to me, about the French and Indian War, and a gallant young (fictional) backwoodsman who ended up in every campaign and massacre and hot spot. Oddly he met no girls, which even at that age I found to be a huge plot hole...

The classic books of my youthful reading became conflated in my head with the movies. So when I say Heidi, I see Shirley Temple. The Swiss Family Robinson is forever the Disney family to me, with John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur as Fritz (had a bigtime crush on him for a time), a tiger in a pit and a girl riding a zebra (I was so jealous).

If I was going to settle on one book, it'd probably be the Howard Pyle version of Robin Hood. There again, I see Errol Flynn, who will forever and always be my ultimate version of the Earl of Locksley.

However, when this topic was announced, I immediately thought of  some lovely illustrated books from when my daughters were young, so those are going to be my actual recommendation. In our house we still read Jan Brett's The Wild Christmas Reindeer every year at this season. Her Country Mouse Town Mouse was also a big favorite year round. with stunning illustrations. We were also very wrapped up in the Angelina Ballerina series, including Angelina's Christmas. There's also Tosca's Christmas, by Matthew Sturgis, with great cat illustrations from Anne Mortimer.

The Dinotopia series by James Gurney was also a hit at our house...

Happy holidays to one and all!

Eliminate THAT and Cross the River - Final Steps on a Manuscript

When I finish a manuscript, I go through a process very similar to that which my fellow Whores have talked about this week.  The FIRST thing I do is spend two to three days laboriously combing through the entire manuscript for my very own personal pet words. The list somehow always starts with THAT. I am totally enamored of this word, no idea why. It will have by far the highest count of repetitions in the entire book, no matter if this is a 48K word book or a 125K word epic.

It's an excellent exercise though, because in the process of eliminating my lazy words like that and very, I'm forced to do some more creative and elegant writing, so the manuscript comes out stronger. Until the point where I find myself re-inserting words I know I've deleted, so then off it goes to my developmental editor. I never edit myself on these words when I'm in the process of writing the story initially. I think authors can create a self paralysis state if they edit too much when the Muse is still trying to get the story down that first time. (Not that I really want to tell anyone else how they should write - I can only speak for myself.)

My freelance developmental editor is also on to all my 'tricks', which is where the river comes in. On one of my first ever books, the characters have to cross a large, treacherous river on horseback while being hotly pursued by a lot of angry clan warriors. Well, the first time through the book, I just literally wrote "They crossed the river and escaped." Uh huh. No. I needed to describe all this tense action and plot development. In the actual finished book, this takes about 1400 words. This episode became shorthand between my editor and me, and even in my most recent (as yet unpublished) manuscript, she made me go back and write about the month-long journey the characters take to reach their temporary haven. 4240 words of character development and key incidents later.....I always know which part I'm avoiding writing, I have no idea why I do it...she always catches it...and her suggestions always make the book better and stronger. Yay for editors!

My copy editor just returned this same manuscript to me, and flagged endless spots where I'd capitalized words that really don't deserve the honor. I decided I might be a Reincarnated Victorian Novelist, because they loved to Capitalize Things for Emphasis. She also caught that I had people shrugging left and right, as if there was an epidemic of this physical tic happening on this planet. Sigh. I usually do better than that!!! (I love exclamation points too but I know better than to overuse them in a book to be published.)

Oh, and as long as I'm telling tales on myself, in one science fiction romance I discovered at the formatting stage (which is rather late in the process) that I'd had one character utter so many things in italics he sounded like a Valley Girl. which doesn't work for a big brawny Special Forces guy.

I know, I know, I really should read the entire book out loud before I send it off to the editor but have we discussed my impatience issues in this space yet? If I could afford it, and he was willing to do it, I'd love to have my audiobook narrator read all my manuscripts to me as part of the final edit process but alas, that's not going to happen.

I am making an early New Year's resolution or two, about not being so impatient when I get close to the publication stage - to take my characters "across the river" in full detail without waiting for my editor to flag it, and to go back for a second edit after all the changes are made, which we're doing on this new portal fantasy I've got. It's killing me not to have released this book already, but I want to take a bit more time and really burnish the prose.