Clutter

I have a problem with clutter. I’m not at the Hoarders stage yet, and I’d rather not end up there. But I can be a bit of a pack rat, especially where reading material is concerned. I imagine most if not all writers have the same problem. There’s nothing worse than knowing you read something somewhere in some magazine and trying to find it again. Between that and what I suspect is an inborn reverence for the written and the printed word, I rarely throw anything out if it’s bound between covers or on a glossy page. God help me if a fire ever breaks out in the house.

Part of the problem stems from a move I made about five years ago. I went from renting a semi-detached house with two floors and an attic to owning a mobile home. The house and all its extra room let my packrattitude run wild. I could go on book binges and then stash them in the attic and tell myself I didn’t have a problem because they weren’t visible.

That’s fine for a house. Trailers come with a whole other set of criteria. Space, for one. For a time I considered buying a double wide just so I’d have an extra room for the books. I kid you not.

Fortunately the trailer’s owner liked to do crafts. Since it was just her and her husband, they converted the second bedroom into a work room and the second bathroom into storage space. When I looked in the storage room, it was floor to ceiling shelves. It was like she knew she’d be selling her home to a book hoarder some day. That front bedroom would make the perfect writing room, too, with all my reference material only steps away. I agreed to buy it on the spot.

Long story short, I got my collection crammed in there. I have no idea how. Imagine thirty years of accumulated paperbacks, hardbacks, magazines and sketch pads crammed into a space the size of the average bathroom. That’s an apartment-sized bathroom, by the way. Those shelves, which the owner worried how she was going to get rid of, served me perfectly. There are books stacked on shelving from floor to ceiling and boxes piled up on the floor. I have a narrow little walkway so I can get in. It really does look like a scene from Hoarders in there. If the whole house looked like that, I could probably call the producers and get myself on TV.

The other day I bit the bullet and went rooting through the boxes, some of which I haven’t touched since I moved in five years ago. There are tons of writing magazines, SF mags from back in the ‘80s, and fanzines from my con-going days. Most of it I’ll probably never look at again. Why the hell am I keeping this stuff?

One thing’s for sure: if I ever find myself housebound, I’ll never run out of reading material.

Scarily, that’s not all of it. Remember, I’m a writer.

In my bedroom closet are piles of spiral notebooks, tablets and file folders with every manuscript I’ve sold, drafted or abandoned over at least the past twenty years. I know I have stuff from the ‘80s in there because the files are marked. This is in addition to the stuff in the filing cabinet, piled on the desk in the writing room, and sitting on the hard drives of my desktop computer (the indestructible Troglodyte-1000 from 1990) and my more current laptop. Oh, and then there’s the pile of notebooks on the end table next to the bed. Those are the works in progress. That file changes every seven-eight months as old stories peter out and new ideas emerge. There are never fewer than four spiral notebooks stacked on that table at any one time.

In addition, there are the books and magazines on the coffee table in the living room (so I can read during commercial breaks), the miscellaneous papers on the dining room table (I don’t eat there; I each on the couch), and the stack of bills on the nightstand. Oh, and the wire book rack in the bedroom where I keep the books I intend to read next. In my house, a flat surface without some form of printed material on it is rare indeed. I shudder to think how many forests have had to die so I can clutter up my house with their corpses. Acreage the size of the state of Oregon comes to mind, with maybe parts of Washington thrown in.

Life would be so much easier, and the house less crammed, if I’d just throw in the towel and buy a Kindle. All those books in the book room could be replaced by an object the size of one paperback. A whole library reduced to portability, and a lot easier to dust. But where’s the fun in that?

Someday I’ll screw up my courage and actually go through those boxes and those closets and winnow out some of the crap. I’m not looking forward to that. Maybe I’ll wait until it reaches the point where I need a storage locker. Until then, I’ll just shut the door.

The Going Rate for a Soul

This is the story of a story. Around six years ago I wrote a little horror story about a serial killer in the Dexter mode. A neat trick, considering I’d never seen or heard of Dexter at the time. I’m not even sure it was on when I wrote my story. Anyhoo, I sent it out to the few mystery/horror mags on the market that would take a story over 5000 words. No bites. One mag held it for a year and a half before regretfully sending it back. Finally I saw a call for an anthology about serial killers, and my story fell within the word parameters. I sent it in and success! They took it! I can’t say “they bought it” because this market was pay on publication. Publication was estimated at about a year away.

The year came and went. I did a few spot changes at the editor’s request. The editor mentioned Dexter. I explained how I’d never seen Dexter when I wrote the story. My character and Dexter’s similar outlook on life, and killing, was just one of those weird coincidences.

Then, with only a couple of months to go until publication (and payment) we authors got an email: the publisher was having financial troubles and had cancelled all planned anthologies. We were back at square one.

The editor promised to look for another publisher and gave us the option of pulling out or staying in. I opted to stay in. What the hell, I’d waited this long, and the market clearly wasn’t clamoring for another Dexter, even an inadvertent one. At some point I was bound to get a check.

Success again! The editor found a new publisher. Back to the waiting.
Then yesterday we got another email. The anthology was good to go. The publisher—not the editor, mind; this was the publisher—just had a couple of changes. We just had to check over our stories, agree to the changes or discuss them with the new publisher/editor, and we’d be looking at publication around September/October.

So I opened the file to check on what changes the publisher wanted to see.

Jesus God.

I think our “publisher” is a frustrated editor/writer. He hadn’t made suggestions. He’d cut some sentences, added others, moved whole paragraphs around. He wanted me to make changes and additions that, if implemented, would effectively change my protagonist’s personality and probably the thrust of the story.

The publisher, by the way, also mentioned Dexter. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

After my initial skim-through, and somewhat in shock, I decided to let the file sit overnight and sleep on my emotions. I’ll take another look at the changes sometime today with a fresh eye and a calmer brain. If it turns out my first impression was right and the guy is indeed trying to rewrite my story, I think I’ll go with my initial gut reaction and pull the story from the anthology.

Have I mentioned payment yet? Here ’tis: they’re offering one cent a word. Since nothing has ever been said about splitting royalties between contributing authors, I can only assume that one cent a word and a contributor’s copy are all we’re going to see. For my 8000+ word story, which they’ve now been holding for over two years and want me to revise into something else, I might see about $80. After publication.

Welcome to the world of a working writer.

The more I think about this, the more pissed off I get. I may just pull the story after all and make it, in its original non-Dexter form, my first foray into self-publishing. I may earn less than $80, but it’ll still be my story. The returns are liable to come in a lot faster than they have through these “traditional” publishers, and I won’t have to deal with a publisher who wants to be my co-author. I’m long past the point where I’ll put up with anything in order to see my words in print. I’ve seen my work in print for several decades now, and at way more than one cent a word.

Then there’s the other story I wrote as work for hire for a start-up fantasy publisher. I was promised a flat fee of $300 for a 5000-6000 word story—half on approval of plot, half on approval of story. I sent in half a dozen plots and finally got one approved. Got my $150. I wrote the story and sent it in by the agreed-upon deadline. The editor said he’d get back to me in a couple of weeks. That was October. No sign of the story, the editor’s opinion, or my other $150. Thank God I’m not trying to make a living at this.

And these are just short stories. I shudder to think what must go into selling a novel.

Self-publishing is looking better and better, boy I tell you what.

On a better note, yesterday I subbed a M/M romance novella to Siren. Their editors are skilled, professional and easy to work with. Responses are swift, within two weeks. So’s production time. Once a book’s accepted, you can count on seeing it for sale on the site within six months or less. Royalties are paid on time. Editors might make suggestions and request expansion or clarification of scenes or characters, but to date not one has actively moved or rewritten whole sections of story, or tried to get me to change my character so it’s more like a show on cable. Guess who I’ll be writing more stories for in the weeks to come.

If I had the whole thing to do over, I’d have taken art and illustration in college and gone into comics like I always wanted. Wait, we can self-publish comics on the Internet too. I’m starting to like the future more and more.

On Tap for 2012

The topic-tank’s running low again, so instead of an actual blog I’m going to run excerpts from a couple of WIPs. One’s M/M, one’s M/F, one I hope to send to a fantasy market, and one I’m entering in this year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest just as soon as I clean up that one last pesky chapter. Enjoy.

Snippet A:
The cab left Holland Temminck off at an ornate iron gate just off the main road. Beyond the gate twin lines of hedges and a wide drive led the eye directly to its intended target, the grand, two-story mansion that crouched like a hungry cat at its end. Holland’s imagination saw the wings as paws with claws extended, and the front doors as a mouth just looking for an excuse to gape. The windows even glinted green, like greedy eyes. Holland took his time extracting his single bag from the cab’s trunk. He was in no rush to fling himself into that ravenous maw.

“That’s quite the hike,” the driver remarked. “You want me to take you to the door?”

Holland hesitated. No, take me to the airport poised on his tongue like a diver on the edge of a cliff. He had just enough cash left on him to escape Georgia. He could disappear into the Pacific Northwest or perhaps slip into Canada, where even Judge Minsk’s riches couldn’t find him. All it would cost him was his family’s continued survival.

Sold to stud to save the family solvency. Not the fate he’d imagined for himself when he was a kit.

“No, thanks.” Holland slammed the lid of the trunk. “This is fine.”

Snippet B:
There’s no way you can mistake a dragon when one stalks into your life. I recognized this one the second he strode through the door of my shop, in spite of his human form. It’s all a lie anyway, only a disguise, and not a very good one at that. When a dragon enters a certain space, he stands and moves as if everything, and everyone, within range of his senses is his. Dragons are greedy. It’s their nature.

This one had picked a human shape that was both imposing and attractive. The body bearing down on me topped six feet easily, every inch of it molded into male physical perfection. Naturally. He would want to draw all females to him. Greedy, remember?

Snippet C:
Clay Beddoe rode into the town of Fortune on the back of a buckskin mare, with a rangy bay stallion trotting along behind. The bay wore neither pack nor bridle, only a native blanket. It followed Clay up the street like a dog and never once spooked at the bustle.

And quite a bustle it was, Clay thought, even for a railroad stop like Fortune. So many people all over the place, you’d think it was the Fourth of July. Men mostly, and a lot of them rough customers. Clay thinned his eyes and thinned his mouth and tried not to look like he was watching.

And the horses! Near as many as the people. Cow ponies, native paints, bucket-hooved giants that ought to be back on the farm pulling plows instead of hogging much-needed street space. Quite a few horses showed speed in their lines and quality in their breeding. The rough crowd held the reins on these. Clay’s narrowed eyes got thinner.

Two cowboys on horseback charged up the street, slapping the rumps of their mounts with their hats and howling like a pair of coyotes. Clay barely reined his mare out of their way in time. The bay shrilled a protest and shot a nasty look after the racers.

“Better put that horse on a lead,” a bystander advised, “or he’s gonna get tromped on.”

Snippet D:
Johnie Ishida wasn’t thinking about the end of the world. He was thinking about the overripe pigpen stink rolling off the flesh and clothes of the fat man crammed into the booth opposite him. When pressed for a meeting place, Johnie had picked this hole-in-the-wall dinette because the LA smog patrol had rated today a Defcon-3, and besides, the place served a smokin’ Gutbuster Gordito. But now, with the man’s stench smothering him like an antique Amish quilt, he wished he’d put his lungs at risk and insisted on an open-air meet after all.

But the man had an offer, Olmos has said. Something lucrative. Something unique. Right up Johnie’s alley. So he sipped his cola, kept a wary eye on the two beat cops at the counter, breathed through his mouth as best he could, and listened. And vowed that, once the job was done, he would bitch-slap Olmos silly.

The fat man shifted a butt the size of Madagascar on the crimson vinyl seat and mopped a gallon of sweat off his face with the back of a beefy hand. A chunk of odor wafted in Johnie’s direction. The dinette’s ancient air conditioner, industriously throbbing away, made little dent in it. Johnie cringed back, but the reek got its hooks in his nostrils anyway. It tasted raw and slimy, like day-old fish, or panic.

# # #

My biggest problem, along with my procrastinative nature, is going to be word count. I’m not sure if A is going to reach the mandatory 20,000 word minimum required by the publisher I’m aiming for. I guess I can throw in an extra sex scene if I have to. I thought I had two possible markets for C. One tops out at 10,000 words; the other is looking for novellas between 20,000-40,000. Snippet C, of course, runs 15,000. It’s probably easier to cut instead of pad, so I’ll give it a thorough go-over with my virtual butcher knife and send it to the shorter market. If that doesn’t pan out, you could be looking at my first foray into self-publishing. I’d like to move into that arena for 2012. The romance market may be booming, but I’m tired of the long wait times even e-mags are inflicting on SF/F writers. I had two different mags each hold two different stories for over a year and a half before rejecting them. Another held a story for TWO YEARS and eventually folded, all without notifying me even though I sent a nudge note. I found out about its demise in a market report. I can have a story up on Smashwords and Amazon just as soon as I figure out the formatting instructions, and I get to keep the bulk of the money. So there.

This should keep me busy for the first couple of months of the new year, at least. And what are your plans for 2012?

The Tortoise and the Hare

I’m a slow writer. I admit it. If I turn out a book, or even a novella, in a year’s time, I consider that prolific. Civilizations crumble before I get 5000 words written. I average a page an hour on a good day. The other six days a week I might write a paragraph. You get the idea.

Part of my problem is a major aversion to work. Let’s face it, writing is hard. Sweating blood in front of a notebook or computer screen for hours on end is no picnic. There are so many other things I could be doing – grocery shopping, housework, laundry, mowing the lawn. Then there’s cable TV, God’s gift to lazy writers. Wow, I’ve only seen this movie 20 times. Better watch it again.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the fast writers, the ones who can seemingly toss out a full-length novel in an afternoon with no apparent hardship. I look at you in envy, especially those of you with full-time jobs. How do you do it? Where do you find the discipline? Who’s doing your laundry?

Frankly, I don’t believe there’s a difference in quality between a book that burst onto the page like lava out of Vesuvius and a book that had to be excavated like a T. Rex fossil from stone. The real book emerges in the draft-and-polish stage anyway. Lots of times I’ve had better ideas hit while I was screwing off and allowing the pages to sit, making me glad I took my time. On the other hand, I do wish I had the discipline to sit myself down and dig out that T. Rex for more than two hours a day. One book a year is fine for the big names at the print publishers, but today’s e-world favors the speedy.

I’d like to hear from you hares out there. How long does it take you, on average, to finish a book? Do you outline first? Do you have your story figured out before you start writing, or do you just go for it? (That may be part of my problem. As a pantser, half the time I have no idea where the story’s headed. That tends to slow you down.) Do you take your time in the editing stage, or is the first draft close to the finished version? In short, I’m looking for some tips to speed me up. Slow and steady may win the race, but it doesn’t get too many books written.

How to Grow a Series

Let me rephrase that: this is how I grow a series. In general. I’m a pantser, so my approach to any novel, let alone a series, tends to be haphazard. I don’t sit down and plot out a nine-book epic with every single twist and plot point outlined and described. God bless those who can. It’d be a lot easier if I could, but my mind doesn’t work that way.

Tip one: don’t wait for inspiration. You can’t expect your muse to drop in on a regular basis. She may go on strike or get caught up in a CSI marathon or something and leave you holding the keyboard with a blank screen to fill. Forget about her. Sit down and write. You may find your best inspirations happen when you’re in the middle of working. As your fingers fly, so do your thoughts. It’s like dominos. One idea knocks over others, and so on down the line.

Tip two: Ask questions. Answering them results in more ideas. Before you know it, you’ve got the background for a series.

For example, suppose you’re writing about Billy and Susie – or, because this is romance, Blake and Cameron. (Or Blake and Trevor, if you’re writing M/M.) Right in the middle of a tense scene, Cameron suddenly blurts out that her sister has been arrested. Huh? Cameron has a sister? Since when? Never mind. She’s got one now. Three brothers, too, and every one of them is involved in some cause or other. That’s why Cameron never talks about them. The whole family has stories to tell and people to fall in love with. Or maybe Blake lets slip that he comes from a dynasty of assassins, but he left the business because he faints at the sight of blood. What about the rest of his family? What if one of them falls in love with their target? What if one is competing with another assassin for a lucrative government contract? Or is being hunted him/herself? There’s a trilogy right there.

If you’re writing paranormal, as I do, it gets even better. Like werewolves? In a wolf pack, only the alphas mate and breed. Depending on the size of the pack, you could have up to a dozen stories about desperate, sex-starved low-rankers trying to find love behind their alpha’s back. Would they try for other wolves, or go after humans because there’s less competition? Or try to seduce the alpha? All sorts of possibilities abound.

Moving into personal territory, here’s how a single book of mine ended up as a trilogy. I wrote Belonging, my M/M vampire story, to deal with two ideas: the concept of a person raised by vampires, and how the undead can have sex. Plus because I wanted to write Supernatural fan fiction, which is how it ended up M/M. But never mind. While answering these questions, others arose. If vampires can have sex (I figured out a way around the undead problem), can they also reproduce? Can an undead woman get pregnant, or would they have to use a human surrogate? What kind of abilities would the resulting child have?

Right in the middle of writing one book, I suddenly found the plot for another. My M/M couple becomes M/M/F when they come to the aid of a woman who has vampires chasing her. My vampire lead discovers her past and his intersect, as an incident from his human life (mentioned in the first book) comes back to haunt him. Answering the initial question – can vampires have sex? – led to the second – can vampires have children? – which led to a second book. I even got to re-use the main characters, who I really liked. Yay, less work for me.

It didn’t end there. I decided to tie off a loose end from the first book by bringing back a cameo character for a subplot. The slayer who destroyed Jeremy’s vampire family only appeared for half a page, but he left a lot of unresolved issues in his wake. He ended up playing a larger part in the sequel than I’d expected. His backstory hit me while I was writing the flashback chapter in Belonging – remember what I said about inspiration while writing? – so I already knew his whos, whats and whys. I just needed a where for him.

And I found it. My muse waylaid me as I was walking across the library parking lot. The sequel had left its own set of loose ends, in particular the other female victims of the book’s vampire conspiracy. One of them meets up with the slayer. Sparks fly and conflicts ensue. I’m currently sweating over the first draft of yet another sequel to what initially started out as a standalone book. Ta-da! My first series.

Tip Three: when an idea hits you, run with it. At one point in the third book, the heroine researches vampire slayers on the Internet. She comes across a reference to the Colt brothers, a family of slayers living in Texas. This was my little shout-out to the Winchesters for starting it all, and to Jared and Jensen, both Texas boys. Then I remembered: Annie Stanton, my retired slayer from the first book, hails from Texas, and she comes from a large family. Was her maiden name Colt? That mob down there could be her nephews, with a few nieces thrown in. Maybe she helped train them, and still sends them leads. Holy Joe, it’s a spinoff!

Tip four: know when to quit. I’m going to leave those ideas on the back burner while I concentrate on getting the other two books into (hopefully) sellable shape. In the meantime, I can always jot notes and ideas as they occur to me. If you’re looking to start your own series and don’t know what to write about, look no further than your current WIP, or maybe a previous book. Odds are the seeds of a series are sitting right in front of you in the form of a character, idea or line of dialogue, just waiting for some inspiration to help them sprout. Happy growing!

Researching For Your Genre

When I wrote my Regencies, I had an entire bookcase (not just a bookshelf, but a bookcase) dedicated to my time period. You'll find notebooks upon notebooks of notes and printouts on the time period. I have books on the Napoleonic Wars, on the English monarchy, on culture, villages, music, clothes -- you name it, I have it.

I enjoy the research. However, now that I'm no longer writing in that time period, I haven't been making much use of that particular bookcase.

I tried my hand at writing a contemporary once, thinking it'll be a breeze because I won't have to do so much research. Boy was I wrong! I can honestly say without a doubt that writing a contemporary is harder than writing a historical because of the research involved.

You're looking at a sub-genre where things are more easily recognized by readers. Don't know a thing about yachts? You better do more than just the usual book and internet search. You need to take a trip to see one in person and talk to some people who specialize in it because you bet some reader will read your book and KNOW that you didn't do your research correctly.

What I find most difficult about researching 21st century things is that there isn't much written about it in books and on the internet. Not like there is when dealing with historical facts. Information isn't readily available because it's automatically assumed that people are already familiar with the subject, and if not, then they can have easy access to see it in person and ask questions.

My hats off to contemporary writers!

Hate research? Then I suggest trying your hand at writing fantasy. Sure, there is some world-building involved, but EVERYTHING can be made up. Give it a shot! You might be surprised at how much fun it is to really and truly make everything up.

Whatever your take on research, we can agree that researching is an important part of writing.

Happy researching!

Back to the Beginning

June may seem a strange time to talk about beginnings. After all, we’re in the middle of the year, not the beginning—whether we’re talking about a school year or a calendar year. Okay, maybe it is the beginning of the fiscal year for many, but I’d rather not talk about money:)

Instead, I want to talk about two different types of beginnings that are very appropriate to discuss at this time of year…going back to those goals you set in January (you did, didn’t you) and going all the way back to whenever you might have started your writing career. The first won’t take long and won’t be painful (I hope). Remember those goals you set for yourself at New Year’s? So many people fail, give up, and that’s the end. It doesn’t have to be…think of this as forgiveness month, feel free to start back on the path toward your goals--whether in writing or losing weight. Look back over your list—I always write mine in my day planner on a separate page and actually check off the long-terms when I reach them.

Okay, now to the second type of beginning. I joined RWA in 2002. I took creative writing courses in college, wrote a manuscript, sent it in cold, received a form rejection letter, and stopped. I had no idea how the business worked. To be truthful, my college classes—at a school well known for its writing program—didn’t even teach us how to write anything longer than a short story. I was lost.

So, I didn’t write other than poems between the years 1986 and 2002. I joined RWA when my children were both in school, I was established in my day job, and ready to go. I’ve attended my local chapter meetings regularly, have served on the board, and attended one Nationals. Oh, and I’ve attended many local master classes.

I still don’t believe I know what I’m doing. Therefore, I want to start a discussion about how writers can better mentor other writers. First, if I were to start all over again, I’d have a reading list for new authors in order of digestibility. The book I remember hearing about first was The Writer’s Journey. I think it’s too esoteric for a beginner. There’s also Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer, Deb Dixon’s GMC, and Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel. All of these may belong to an advance class. To be honest, I only read Deb Dixon two years ago, and the others THIS year. I didn’t see a future in this field so I only wrote and went to meetings. AT changed that for me.

I think it would be helpful for RWA chapters to have a New Members notebook, or maybe even files available on the Yahoo groups lists we all seem to have. The first page would be reading materials—and start with something simple like, “Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies.” I’m not kidding—I found that the most helpful for an overview of the writer’s process.

Next, I would include a timeline—not of things out of the writers’ control, but things within his/her control. For example, the writer could have a goal for writing a chapter, three chapters, finish a manuscript. Analyze novels in his/her chosen genre. Research agents in his/her genre. Research publishers in his/her genre. These tasks may seem simple, but to someone just walking in to a meeting wanting to write a book, knowing where to begin is overwhelming. Not only that, smaller chapters like the LowCountry RWA need to tailor their meetings toward all members—some of whom have published in the double digits.

Finally, for now:), I just attended a Congregational Meeting at my church where several new members stood up and said, I’ve never been in a church—how do I get started? The church assigns new members a shepherd, someone to help the new people steer their way through the tough parts. I propose that RWA chapters assign new members a mentor. Not a critique partner (I haven’t had one stick yet, the ones I have had are now sick, pregnant, or the wrong genre), those are too personal. A mentor would simply be available for questions. I understand how busy we all are and many just want to write, but… Chapters everywhere are struggling to get their work done. Contests are closing because they can’t find judges.

Just think—if you make the new members feel welcome, they’ll stick around, and if they stick around, you can get out of some work!

So…what do you think (I may have sidestepped into chapter business, sorry)? If you were going to advise someone at the beginning of their writing career, what would you say?

Abusing the TBR Pile: Readers' Advisory For Writers - The Vampire Edition!

It's the inaugural Abusing the TBR Pile series post! Woot! I suspect I'm probably the only person really excited about it. Which is why I'm giving away a copy of one of these books to one lucky TM reader who comments before 11:59 p.m. central time today! I'll announce the winner, who will then squee, and directly afterward e-mail his or her choice to me. If you choose an e-book, your prize will be in the form of Fictionwise micropay credits/publisher gift certificate for the amount of the book. Violating e-book copyrights is bad, m'kay?

So, what's up with the AtTBRP book lists? Back in February I posted an entry called "Books that Suck and the Readers Who Love Them." We discussed how performing peer critiques and analyzing some of the published work we read can help us improve our own writing.

I decided to use my Librarian Readers' Advisory Superpowers to make balanced lists of books for writers who are analyzing genre markets.

We'll abuse our TBR piles every month with a different genre and giveaway, as close to the 15th as we can get.

Two caveats:

These lists are by no means comprehensive. Omission or inclusion of a title makes no statement about the its quality. I will, more than likely, repeat genres as older titles go out of print and new ones get published.

AtTBRP book lists aren't just for writers! Bibliophiles of all flavors can use them to discover new authors and expand their reading.

Ready? Since we Title Magicians all write paranormal (among other things, of course!), I figured it would be appropriate to start with a paranormal subgenre. This month? It's all about vampires.





Blood Ties: The Turning by Jennifer Armintrout
Nocturne by Elizabeth Donald
Evermore by Lynn Viehl
Kiss Me Forever/Love Me Forever by Rosemary Laurey
Lord of the Night by Robin T. Popp
Tall, Dark, and Dead by Tate Halloway
Sweeter than Wine by Bianca D'Arc (E-book)
Night Rising by Chris Marie Green
Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready
Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward



So, tell me. What genres are you most interested in?

*Today's list was compiled with the help of Gale Group's "What do I Read Next" database , AquaBrowser's Fiction Connection, LibraryThing, Vampire Romance Books and the book Genreflecting: a guide to popular reading interests by Diana Tixier Herald

**Edited for clarity. Never let me post pre-caffeine again.

Dark and Dangerous? Guest Blogger Nina Bruhns Asks...

When I posted a request for guest bloggers on my local chapter’s Chat loop, Nina Bruhns immediately volunteered. That’s who she is. She has served as Programs Chair, organizes our annual retreat (and has added a Master Class and Hermit Weeks at the Beach—check them out at LowCountryRWA.com), and has served as Co-President these last two years. Our chapter is small and Nina keeps us going by so graciously giving!

Her writing accomplishments are amazing. They include wins in such prestigious contests as the National Readers’ Choice Award, the Daphne du Maurier Award (twice), the Dorothy Parker Award (five times), the Golden Chalice Award, the Beacon Award, the Colorado Award of Excellence, the Lories, the Write Touch Readers Award, and the Aspen Gold, to name a few. Her books have also made it onto the WaldenBooks Bestseller List, as well as been named favorite book of the year by several review website. Recently, Night Mischief was nominated for a RITA Award, and we all have our fingers and toes crossed for her!

Please join me in welcoming Nina Bruhns as our guest blogger this 4th of April!

Nina: Last week, an article in our local paper, the Post and Courier, really got me thinking. Written by columnist Rebekah Bradford, who is wonderful and a great friend to romance novels, part of the new and very welcome thaw in Charleston’s über-conservative attitude (read: prejudice) against “those books”, the article was nevertheless somewhat critical of the (alleged) changes which romance novels have undergone since 9/11.

Here’s a link to the article: http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/mar/30/romance_novels_changed_after_sept35351/

The gist of what Bradford said was that she feels the complex, dark and intense romances of the nineties have given way post-9/11 to a genre that is “breezy, full of humor and feel-good emotion.” Okaaay... Well, that brings up several things in my mind. The first being, so, what’s wrong with humor and feel-good emotion!?

But I get what she means. I honestly do. Even if I don’t strictly agree with her assertion that all romance novels are like that now. Because I’ve read a ton of wonderfully dark, complex and unpredictable stories just this past year. My own NIGHT MISCHIEF, which was an October 07 release from Silhouette Nocturne, is an extremely dark and intense read. It is currently up for a RITA Award, which is the romantic equivalent of an Oscar (yay! ☺). So, I would definitely disagree that you can’t find seriously intricate and emotional romances out there today.

Personally, I love writing textured and angsty stories, full of twists and wrenching conflict. But guess what? And here’s the bottom line. They don’t sell nearly as well as the light, humorous, pure entertainment books do. In fact, I used to alternate writing lighter stories with darker, but the difference in sales among my own books is so striking that a couple of years ago I made a conscious decision to stop writing the serious stories I love so well in favor of more light, breezy ones. Luckily, I enjoy writing those also. ☺ In March I had a hero from outer space (I like to characterize THE REBEL PRINCE as “Mork and Mindy meets The DaVinci Code and Sex and the City” – how serious can that be?) and coming in June KILLER TEMPTATION is a sexy romp on the beach in Fiji (okay, there’s a serial killer there, but trust me it’s not the least bit scary). I was lucky enough recently to sell to Berkley (Penguin/Putnam) and those bigger books will be fairly dark and quite complex romantic thrillers. I’m already starting to worry about sales and I haven’t even finished writing the first one... Yikes.

So, I guess I would argue that if indeed there is a predominance of lighter romance fare out there today, the trend is being driven by the number of readers who prefer that type of story and show it with their purchases. As an author, I wish it were otherwise. But there you go. You have to give the audience what they want. Hopefully in another five years it will swing back the other way.

Meanwhile, what do you think? Do you see a trend to lighter reads in romance? Do you prefer them to the darker stories? Or...?

I’d love to hear your comments!
Nina

2008 RITA nominee Nina Bruhns
www.NinaBruhns.com

St. Patrick's Day--Or How the Irish Saved Literature

For the majority of my life, I, like most people on this planet, knew only that St.
Patrick was the patron saint of the Irish and green beer. Being a good mother, I even once dyed my kids’ eggs and bacon green to start a tradition—which I never repeated since, being sensible kids, they wouldn’t touch the disgusting stuff.

A few years ago, that changed when my historian husband introduced me to the relatively short and utterly fascinating book, How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. I truly recommend all his books, even though I don’t always agree with everything he says. But, to the point…

In this book, there is the true story of St. Patrick. You can also click over to Wikipedia and so on to find the same thing, but who takes the time? Here’s the basics…Patrick was the son of a high-ranked Roman and a well-to-do woman Gaul, the French to us. He was captured in a raid and made a slave, but not before a servant imparted the rudiments of a Christian faith. If he’d grown up privileged and comfortable, we would most likely never have heard of him and corned beef and cabbage would remain just another ethnic dish.

Instead, he became the slave of a Druid High Priest. Set to tend his master’s sheep (who knew Druids kept sheep?), Patrick was isolated and miserable, and mistreated. He turned to God and the Spirit lifted him up. He fled six years later.

Ireland didn’t leave him, however. He traveled around Europe, became a priest, was sanctioned by the Pope, and went back to the people he’d learned to love. He converted the whole country. Oh, the Druids set out in force against him, one in particular employing magic against him while flying through the air, but Patrick prevailed.

Rome fell. Barbarian hordes overthrew the government, killed many, and torched libraries. Well, dang them, why did they have to do that? In fact, if Patrick hadn’t converted Ireland, brought them peace, and created monasteries and abbeys where the great literature of antiquity would be copied and hidden—very little would remain. Of course, mummified crocodiles have been found with pages and pages of papyrus, but that is only recently. What we had between the 400s and the 1800s can be credited, at least to some extent, to the Irish on their remote island that escaped notice for long enough.

So, raise a glass of green beer (nasty stuff) with me and thank St. Patrick! Otherwise, The Eddy Complex couldn’t have been based on Oedipus Rex and so very much more.

Reading for Writers: Books That Suck and the Readers Who Love Them

As the facilitator for my local indie writers' group, there's one question I hear from new writers and non-writers more than any other: why is peer critique important?

Why, indeed? Well, there are the obvious benefits for the recipient of the critique. The feedback you get from peers lets you know what works and what doesn't from a readers' viewpoint. Also, exposing your work to people on a regular basis can give you confidence for the submission process and potential post-publication criticism. What's not as obvious is that peer critiques help the critiquer just as much.

When you do a peer critique for someone, you don't just hand the manuscript back and say, "I liked it!" (And if you do, your writer friend will be grumbling at you behind your back.) You tell her, "I liked it! Except for..." And then you give reasons. You tell her why you fell in love with the hero. Why you felt the mother/daughter relationship wasn't very believable. You tell her how tired you got of the gazes flying and the fingers wandering by themselves. And after the critique is over, you remember these things. And when it comes time to edit your own work, you might think twice about letting your heroine's eyes follow someone across a room. Because, really, who wants carpet lint on their eyeballs? Yick! (Can you tell this is a particular peeve of mine?)

A few years ago I read a post on Holly Lisle's blog about how she was analyzing the structure of books from the genre she was aiming to break into at the time and that's when I heard that wonderful clicking noise in my head: Just like peer critique, it's not enough to just read published books and determine whether you liked them or not. Not when you want your work to be among them on the bookstore shelves. You have to scrutinize them, too.

There are a few things you should keep in mind before you start picking apart all the books on your keeper shelf:

• It's not very realistic to spend the same amount of time on a single published work as you would a peer critique. If you're like me, your To Be Read pile is already out of control and slowing down isn't an option! Besides, these books have already been edited by professionals and they don't need us to go spelunking for typos.
• It's also not very realistic to try to analyze everything you read for pleasure or you'll burn out. Reading will start to feel like a chore instead of a hobby. So be choosy.
• You won't learn as much by just reading the good stuff. (Besides, picking apart the sucky stuff is a lot more fun! MST3K fans can attest to that.) Select a short list of recent releases that are of varying quality and popularity. I'll be posting recommended lists in a variety of genres on a regular basis after completing this series.
• Creating a venue for your criticism can do wonders for your motivation! You may or may not want to do this, but I decided that if I was going to do all of this work, I might as well share it with somebody. So I started reviewing for The Long and Short of It, and I do some contest judging. Be careful, though. You don't want to say something to alienate someone you'll meet at a conference, social function, or in the blogosphere later. Anonymity or extreme diplomacy is important when you're a writer critiquing in public.

When you settle down to read, make sure you have a notebook and a pen handy.

The very first thing I do is make a note of the structure. Holly's right. Books in the same genre/subgenre are similar this way. A James Patterson thriller is going to have lots of little chapters heavy on the action whereas a Robert Jordan epic fantasy is going to have longer chapters with more blocks of description. So I write down how many pages the book has, how many chapters, and how many pages are in each chapter. You could even go as far as breaking it down by scenes within chapters if you think you'll find that helpful.

While you read, make notes. You're not necessarily looking for typos or grammatical errors, although if they bug you or there's an excess of them, you can certainly mark them down. What you are looking for are the things that yank you out of the story. The things that give you pause. An oddly worded phrase. Clumsy dialogue. Illogical plot points. Character inconsistencies. Even factual errors. Confusing head-hopping. Anything that makes you think, "Eh?"

Don't forget the stuff that makes you go, "Wow!" Write down what you liked or the things you think the writer did exceptionally well. Using the omniscient point of view without giving the reader a headache, for instance. Witty dialogue. Did the book elicit strong emotion? Did it make you laugh?

All of these things are the "whats," and for every what you need a "why" and a "how." For example, understanding why that dialogue is clumsy (unnatural speech or overused regional dialects) and how it might be improved. Why that scene made you cry (reader manipulation by word connotation, good set up of the pay off) and how you might use these things in your own work.

When you're done, you'll have a ton of data. How you manage all that stuff depends on your writing process and your organizational style. I tend to be more organic than organized. I take the bare minimum of notes, and make a journal entry about the whole thing when I'm done. I internalize things better when I babble to myself in a notebook or in a Word document. I'll occasionally go back and read my thoughts just to refresh my memory, or to see if there's something I have forgotten.

Folks with a more organized mind might find an index card file handy for this. A section for characterization, a section for plot, a section for little things that drive you crazy like my fuzzy eyeball thing, etc. Each card should contain the what, why, and how for each issue. This could also translate to a database or a spreadsheet for writers with techy leanings. Ultimately, there are as many methods of dealing with the results as there are writers who devise them.

There are many ways to improve your writing, but I believe that this is one practice that can give you an edge that most unpublished writers won't have. At the very least, you'll better know your market. At most, you'll have a good things/bad things epiphany that will change the way you look at literature forever. Most of us will fall somewhere in the middle by finding helpful new techniques as well as annoying elements to avoid every single time you analyze a book.

Reading for Writers Series
Books That Suck and the Readers Who Love Them
March 13: The Care and Feeding of Your Local Librarian
April 14: Nonfiction - Not Just For Research Anymore

Series Coming Soon: Abusing the TBR Pile - Readers' Advisory For Writers

Love at First...Sentence?

We talk a lot in the writing world about the need to grab our reader’s interest in the opening pages of a book. Not until the American Title Contest though, did I give serious thought to the potential power of the first sentence.

Certainly some books have incredible, memorable openings:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (Austen, Pride and Prejudice)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

“Call me Ishmael.”(Melville, Moby Dick)

But those are well-loved classics. Would we think those lines so great if we didn’t know the stories that follow them?

Curious about how the authors of today are crafting their first lines, I grabbed a few favorite books off my shelf. See what you think of these opening sentences:

1. There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever.
2. His footsteps were soundless, but Victoria felt him moving.
3. Anthony Bridgerton had always known he would die young.
4. I didn’t realize he was a werewolf at first.
5. One fine August evening in South Carolina, Agnes Crandall stirred raspberries and sugar in her heavy nonstick frying pan and defended her fiancé to the only man she’d ever trusted.

As with the classics above, my opinion isn’t unbiased because I know the stories that follow them, but all five of these first lines set a tone and pull me right along to the next sentence. The books and their clever authors are:

1. Janet Evanovich, One for the Money.
2. Colleen Gleason, Rises the Night
3. Julia Quinn, The Viscount who Loved Me
4. Patricia Briggs, Moon Called
5. Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, Agnes and the Hitman

What are the opening lines of some of your favorite books – and was it “love at first sentence?”

Move Over, Carl Sagan

The man in the office next to me, Bob, is a pretty smart guy. He’s the assistant director of our lab and if you have data you want analyzed – well, let’s just say Bob can make numbers dance like Margarita-soaked writers at a gay karaoke bar. (A comparison which, if you were at a certain nightspot during the Romance Writer’s of America convention in Atlanta a couple years back, would impress heck out of you.)

The other day, Bob voiced his opinion that writers are Interpreters of the Cosmos. After immediately deciding that he’d never read anything of mine since I have enough trouble interpreting the washing instruction tags on my clothes let alone the cosmos, I gave his idea some thought.

If one defines “cosmos” as the world around us, then what Bob says makes absolute sense. Each story is a lens through which the writer explores human interaction and shares their world view with us.

Mary Janice Davidson makes us laugh as we ride along with Betsy, a woman/vampire dealing with a world and a position of power she doesn’t want. Nora Roberts enthralls us as we grow with Eve Dallas, a tough, honest cop learning to love and overcome extreme childhood abuse. Suzanne Brockman takes us into the hearts and minds of the men and women warriors who fight for us. These authors interpret our world in fresh and inventive ways. They give us insight into human nature and light corners that might otherwise have remained dark.

Carl Sagan helped us navigate the mysteries of the ever-expanding universe, but writers can show us new paths through the world we walk every day. They truly could be considered Interpreters of the Cosmos.

Like I said, Bob is a pretty smart guy.

Okay, so of course I started to think about books that have impacted my view of life. The first thing that came to mind was the Fellowship of the Ring. I devoured the series, caught up in the adventure. But I was also engaged by Tolkein’s view of the cosmos - his belief in good triumphing over evil, the power of community and trusted friends, the necessity to persevere even when you don’t believe you can reach your goal.

How about you? What books or authors have Interpreted the Cosmos for you and changed or affirmed the way you think about the world?

The Happy Little Philosophy

I love Bob Ross. I don’t even paint, but if I’m home on Saturday afternoon, you better believe I’ll have the TV tuned to the local PBS affiliate for The Joy of Painting. I think it’s because the show, while classified as an instructional program, isn’t only about brush techniques, and tubes of Phthalo Blue and Titanium White. It’s also about attitude.

Bob has a reputation for being a bit goofy with all the happy little trees and footy hills and things, and that’s what has made him an enduring cult icon. But as he talks and taps that fan brush on the canvas, he weaves this whole philosophy about art that transcends form.

No, really! I mean it! Let’s look at a few quotes culled from the web.

“We don’t make mistakes, we have happy little accidents.”

“That's why I paint. It's because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news."

“There are no mistakes in your world.”

What can a writer get from all of that? An acknowledgment that art is supposed to be fun. A reminder that we write for ourselves as well as for our potential audience. Permission to play, to make mistakes in pursuit of our craft. The realization that said mistakes aren’t the end of the world, nor are they permanent.

As a writer, the simplicity of this happy little philosophy appeals to me. And, although I do sometimes get blocked, or frustrated, or scared of failure or criticism, and probably always will, I like to think that having these ideas in my writer’s toolbox will help get my words out as well as keep the things I can’t control in their proper perspective.

The Happy Little Philosophy isn’t going to engage every writer, though. And that’s all right! Just know it’s there for those times when you’ve agonized over the same scene for days or a particularly scathing comment about your latest work has you glancing sidelong at the blinking cursor.

I hope you’re enjoying our launch week here at Title Magic, and we look forward to seeing you back. Happy Wednesday!