How Many Billionaires Are There?

A recent tweet from my friend, Andrew Shaffer, got me thinking about this question. You see, if you pay attention to romance novels--pretty much at all--there's been an upswing in the number of "billionaires" in titles, series titles and books in general. He made the point that there are not that many billionaires in the world, and then questioned how many of them were young and horny. I'd also like to question how many of them are single.

Now, if you replace the B with an M, maybe we could talk. Actors, musicians, tech geniuses... I'm sure there are a decent number of sexy, young, available men who have crossed the seven figures mark. But it seems millionaires aren't good enough for fiction anymore for that very reason--they've become "common."

In fairness, this is not the fault of the authors. Not really. Publishers want a certain type of hero because they know that type sells.

I've seen this with some of my own work. I submitted a proposal recently and was given a "maybe, but X as the romantic hero? I'm not sure that's going to work..." Long and short of it? X is not uber-rich. Nor is he the standard for heroes everywhere. He's not a big, muscly guy. He's not grr...argggh...let-me-show-you-my-pecs. Nor is he the most brilliant.

What he is is this: attractive, fit, good at his job, funny, great with his hands, quick-witted, willing to fight for the people he loves, and a perfect match for the heroine. In short, he's a "normal" guy. When I got the "maybe" from my editor, my blood ran cold. I don't want to move this story somewhere else!

But at the same time, I don't want to compromise the story for this... absurd set of hero requirements. I don't mind writing to those requirements sometimes, but not when dealing with an established series. Story comes first.

/personal-mini-rant off

But that's the thing. There is this set of guidelines heroes are supposed to fit and rich is a big one. If they aren't rich, they should be in a position of power. (Military is often used as an example, which I find funny because military men don't make much money at all.) The fact of the matter is, this is the grown-up version of Prince Charming. He's handsome, rich, can dance, ride a horse, blah blah blah.

I think my problem is that my favorite fairy tales don't feature those kind of heroes. Tangled? Flynn Ryder is a thief for crying out loud! Shrek? Hello... ogre. Those are my romantic heroes. The ones who step up to the plate even if everything they know says they should walk or run the other way.

I'm not saying there's no room in the world for the hooking up with the billionaire stories. Hell, I'm not even saying I won't write one (or even a bunch of them). What I am saying is that, as readers, we need to put our money where our mouths are and show that we're open to other kinds of heroes too. We're willing to walk with the single mom as she falls for her son's high school football coach. Or the woman whose boss is a douche, but hey, that guy who delivers lunch everyday is really something special. Let them be successful, sure, but let's stop measuring success by the size of their muscles and bank accounts. There's more to our real life men than that. Can't there be more to our fictional ones too?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to catch up on one of my favorite TV shows. There's a certain pirate captain I hope manages to find a happily-ever-after... as soon as he gets over himself.


Also, I'm participating in a couple blog hops over the next two weeks. Big prizes! Be sure to come back :)


***NOTE: I meant to add a caveat that category romance is kind of its own animal and that certain character tropes are an expected part of those books. This rant was meant more specifically toward non-category romance (and fiction in general).***

Back to School...

I know, I know, the kids have been back for over a month now, but I went back yesterday. You see, a friend of mine ranted and raved about this "Fast Draft" writing class she took, and I've been waiting for it to come around again. It's here! And I'm terrified.

You see, we're supposed to write 20 pages a day, every day, for two weeks. That's roughly 5,000 words a day, people. I don't know when the last time I had a 5k day was, but it's been a while. Still, I'm on board with this thing since my writing has been slowing down a lot and I really don't have time for that sort of nonsense. Not when I've got people asking about the next books in my series and the new story I've teased about here and there. And certainly not with NaNoWriMo starting in two and a half weeks.

So, I'm buckling down and doing this thing, however it turns out.

Interesting factoid about me...

I was basically a straight A student through high school. (I really don't count my elementary school grades in handwriting, especially since girls and boys were graded differently.) Hell, I even had a couple straight A semesters in college. Which is a decent sign as to how I feel about failing--I don't like it. At all. Which means I'm going to be fairly scarce the next few weeks. But hey, by the time it's all said and done, that new story should be done and off to beta, and I should have another piece with a serious chunk out of it. Pretty much just don't expect to see me until I collapse in December. That's safest.

Deconstructing Raiders 30 Years Later

I'm back! Sorry about missing last week. Real life, blah blah blah.

First, a huge thank you to all the bloggers who let me visit during my blog tour!

Second, the post at Keri Stevens is going up THIS Friday (there was a hiccup... namely me forgetting to send the actual post. Oops.) Also, because the owner is awesomesauce, Aine's Realm is hosting a giveaway of Kiss of Death--nice and simple rafflecopter entry. Go. Do it. Now.

Thirdly, there is a release date for Love & Other Indoor Sports! I got home from ChiCon to word that it will be coming out early. So, my first M/M romance releases.... September 21! That's right, folks, just 11 days. So excited.

Okay, now that the business stuff is all out of the way, onto the fun things. The family and I went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at the IMAX theater yesterday. Now, I love this movie, but I haven't seen it on anything other than a TV screen since my very first viewing *cough* a long time ago *cough*. First, just one general viewing negative. The movie was not filmed for IMAX and as such it was kind of grainy when blown up to that size. But... it's Raiders, so I kind of didn't care.

As for the story itself, I look at things differently than I did thirty years ago, so I spent much of the movie deconstructing the storyline with the question of "Why do we still love this film?" (Don't ask me why, but I don't do this as much when watching movies in the comfort of my own home. I'm guessing distractions.) One of the very first things I noticed was how quiet the beginning is. The tone is set, not by dialogue or voice-over, but simply by the music and the sounds of the jungle. From the very first, viewers knew that this film would have action, adventure, and laughs. As an author, this was the first thing that was very enlightening to me. It wasn't dished out piecemeal as the story progressed--the audience knew from that very first scene.

Another thing the audience got right away was a sense of exactly who Indiana Jones was. There was no pussy footing around. The opening sequence shows a man who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, has nerves of steel, a biting wit, and zero tolerance for betrayal. The best part? This was done with every character. Marion starts out drinking and very clearly shows her pent up feelings for Indy as well as her backbone. Sallah, Belloq, Brody, the Nazis... all of them were crystal clear from the first time they are on the screen. Do parts of their characters get developed throughout? Of course, but we get a real feel for them on first meeting--and as we know, first impressions matter.

Those things were done brilliantly.

Then there was the matter of the last half hour of the movie--(spoilers if you haven't seen it) pretty much from the time the sub shows up until the wrath of God bit at the end. (Honestly, you could say from after the big car chase until the end, but I really like the scene with Indy and Marion on the boat.) That thirty minutes (give or take) is slow. Like really slow. My son was falling asleep, my daughter was a fidget butt, and even I was very "I don't remember this being so boring."

Now, I might not have picked up on this if not for the fact that YA-author-me ran into a similar issue with Pretty Souls. The entire last quarter of that book (save the big fight at the end) was re-written because it lagged so badly. I am a fan of the whole calm-before-the-storm bit, but when you're dealing with a two-hour movie or an 80,000 word novel, you can't have a quarter of that be calm. As much as I wasn't happy about changing Pretty Souls at the time, I really and truly get it now.

Is this to say that I think Raiders of the Lost Ark sucks as a story? No. I love that story. If I didn't, I wouldn't watch it as often as I do now. However, I think one of the reasons Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was always my favorite was that it didn't have that issue. He has to make his way through all the booby traps to get to the end. And then there's that momentary calm when everything is okay... and then the last trap is triggered. That's a story that wouldn't get hammered by an editor today. But movies as we know them have only been around for about a hundred years. Raiders was thirty years ago. That's a third of the time. If we look at a books written a hundred years ago, they are also very different than those written today. It doesn't make them less, it just makes them different.

I write now though, so I'm going to take my lessons learned from this latest viewing of Raiders and start really trying to apply them to everything I work on. They're good lessons, and I'm not sure they are ones I really would have gotten from a movie I haven't seen a few dozen times. It was just that seeing it in a different way helped me to really watch... and learn.

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

Break On Through...

I've been struggling with a new project (tentative title is Slaying for Keeps). The heroine is very different from anyone I've ever written before (think River Tam different--only not--just that degree of different). Anyway, I've been plugging away at it and struggling to figure her out. I mean, I know the neurological reasons she is the way she is, but this one thing kept plaguing me. I didn't know emotionally why she acted the way she does.

It's a strange disconnect for me because that's the part I normally know right off, but this particular character (like River) on the face of things rather emotionless. Needless to say, that got in the way of things. I kept trying to poke at her scenes to understand her, but she wasn't giving me anything. With her so closed off emotionally, I was starting to think I'd never be able to flesh her out enough to make her real.

That was leading to... a degree of frustration we won't even really get into.

Then Sunday night, while I was exhausted from a day of sun and pool and booze and time in the car, I wrote a scene from the hero's point-of-view. Like me, he's been trying to figure this chick out and not having a lot of luck (of course, that's where things were supposed to be for him). In the scene she had, what for her was, a very emotional response. Basically something happened and she clutched at his arm. Heroines do that sort of thing all the time, but in this case, the hero realized how important what happened was for her and set to figuring out why. Suddenly, along with him, I learned what makes the chick tick.

It was an "Oh my God" moment of rather epic proportions for me. On the plus side, I think the writing will be easier from here on out. Down side? I have several chapters to go back and re-work using this new knowledge. It's okay though, because I'm pretty sure this will make things MUCH better in the long run.

*happy dances through the day*

Summer Vacation... What's a Vacation?

Summer vacation has officially begun here. Time off, right? Not so much, more like trying to work with my kids home all the time. On the upside, I don't have to get up to ship them off to school, which means I can sleep in a bit rather than the whole get up/get them off/realize I'm still dead/take a nap routine. Which should result in more productive hours in a day.


Except the kids are home.

Which automatically means my attention is divided. So those days last week when I wrote in daylight? Yeah. Probably not happening. On the up side, I can crit and edit and blog during the day. What that means for the next three months writing schedule is:
Edits on Kiss of Death
Initial (and possibly second) edits on Clockwork Mafia
Revising and subbing All the Fellas... and Love & Other Indoor Sports
Writing and subbing a smexy category romance
Writing Badlands 3 and Kiss of Life

...Unless, of course, other things come through sales-wise. Which would be awesome, but might also mean pushing things back a little. Ideally though, one way or another, I will get somewhere between 150-200k written this summer, along with all the editing and revising and, oh yeah, a pesky little blog tour thing.

And now that I wrote that down... *whimper*

This is me putting on my I-can't-see-that blinders.

Let's just call this the summer of writing badassery. *nods* That makes me feel much better about the whole thing.

So how about you? What are your summer plans?

Why Writing People of Color Is Hard

We don't live in a white world. We live in a world full of color, and that goes for people as well as things. So, why do so many books end up mono-ethnic? Truth is there's all sorts of reasons. In a lot of ways, people naturally segregate. It sucks, but it's true. Books about family don't get a lot of options unless it's about a person of another race coming into the family. Sometimes, because of the story the author is telling, it just "doesn't work" to be multi-cultural. And that's fair.

But what of those books where there's room for everyone? Why don't more writers put in people of color? Because it's hard in ways it shouldn't be.

Statistically, most writers in the US are caucasian. (I did a very quick and dirty google for some stats and the best I came up with was this article on TV writers. 12% are minorities. That's it, and if that's representative, it's kind of sad. But, onward...) The old adage "write what you know" shouldn't apply here, but it does. Sometimes it applies because authors are racist (sad but true). Sometimes it applies because it's just easier not to do the research on other cultures. And sometimes it applies because we aren't racist and we are afraid no matter how hard we try, we might come across that way.

I want diverse casts in my work. My world is multicultural and richer for it. The same can only be true of stories where that is the case as well. But often, when faced with those characters, I freeze up. Let's examine this for a minute...

In my YA series, Trey Harper is Cass's boyfriend. He's African-American and a basketball star. <---- I know this is a stereotype and I made a conscious choice to use it anyway. He also likes to talk like he's a street kid even though he's not. And Cass calls him on it every time because she knows that's not the real him. Trey is smart, funny, and pretty much not afraid of anything. I love the guy. But he started as a stereotype--and that's how Cass originally saw him too. (Then again, Cass starts out with everyone as a stereotype :P) My biggest issue when dealing with Trey? Describing his hair. He has awesome High School Musical era Corbin-Bleu-hair. I had no clue how to describe it. Stupid as it sounds, that was the moment I almost made him white. But that tiny bit of description stalled my writing for a long time.

In the Badlands world, Mahala is an escaped slave. Again, I love her. She's a fantastic character--the one who doesn't take shit from anyone (including Ever). And her history is traumatic and... let's just say I'm really geeked to write her story (hopefully soon). But there are difficulties with writing her. For starters, the language used in the time period would be unacceptable today. No one would say "people of color" or "African-American." At one point, she refers to herself as a "nigger." I didn't do it for shock value. I did it to be true to the time period and the character. And I agonized over it for days. I don't like that word. It's too charged with hate and negativity. But then it wasn't. The history of the word is beyond crazy. I don't know if it will be in the text whenever that manuscript gets published, but I left it there for now because it's what she would have said.

But soon, I'll be on her story, and that presents a whole new set of problems. For starters, much of it will take place in the Confederacy. By definition, it will be racially charged. It can't not be. But more than that, it's a romance, and that creates a whole new set of problems for me. In the first two installments, she was a minor character, and one most of the main characters were used to being around. Her skin color might be something they "noticed" but it wasn't a big deal to them--she's just Mahala. And that's how it should be, except in a romance, the love interest will notice everything about her. He will love her hair, her eyes, her skin... all of it. In his passages, he should see her in somewhat poetic terms. And like it or not, "dark" and "brown" and "black" in themselves are not poetic. The problem is, most of the more poetic phrases to describe skin color are food based: chocolate, coffee, caramel, peaches-and-creamy, milky. That tendency isn't just a PoC issue--it crosses racial lines, but it's been brought up time and again that people of color don't like it and find it offensive. That means in order to write Mahala's love story, I'm going to stall over and over again searching for ways that the hero can describe her--because he is the poetic type.

And right now, I'm faced with an antagonist who happens to be a PoC. First, I have to describe her from another character's point-of-view who knows nothing about her other than she's fawning over the hero. At this point, she's not hated, she's just unknown, and there's a layer of jealousy involved. The point-of-view character, again, is going to notice every amazing thing about this gorgeous woman. So... wording problem is rearing its head again. Plus, I'm beating myself up with the knowledge that I made the "bad guy" a PoC. Every time I think about it I get twitchy, because I'm anticipating backlash over this of the "Why couldn't she be white" variety. She's not white because when I closed my eyes, and thought of her, she wasn't. At the time, she was just a extra. It wasn't until I started writing her that I realized she had a slightly bigger role to play, and by that point, I already had her in my head. Is she world-ending evil? No. It's not that kind of story. Quite frankly, she's just a college girl who thinks really highly of herself and is convinced everyone else should too. But... she's the antagonist. And if I let myself think about that fact too much, it stalls me.

The thing is the world isn't just white. But just like there are good white people and bad white people, there are good and bad people of color too. If I made every bad guy African-American, I'd say it was a good sign I was racist. But, quite frankly, if I never make a bad guy a person of color, I'd say it's a pretty good sign I'm a coward who's too afraid of offending people to write real characters. I don't want to be a coward. But I really really wish making my cast multicultural wasn't so damn hard.

***With Larry's permission, I'm attaching a link to a blog post he did on this topic recently. It's the first one that ever made me feel like I could breathe and just let the characters tell their stories. So, thank you for that, Larry Benjamin :) ***

Searching for Seleste...

This is going to be a rather long, rambly post--possibly with a good deal of cursing. If you don't feel like actually reading it, I understand. If you want to be able to pretend you did, give me virtual hugs on facebook and commend me for my effective use of Firefly quotes.

Those of you who want to stick around, you might want to grab a chair (who am I kidding... only crazy people read on those treadmill desks).

Some of you have known me for most of my life. Others for several years. And others barely know me at all. But those who have known me from any time before 2011 have been well aware of... changes in my personality. Over the summer last year, I blogged about my battle with depression, so that isn't really news. The fact that I'm still fighting it might be, and I've recently started to pull out of things enough to take a good hard look at what sent me into the brain-chemistry spiral-of-doom.

Short version for those of you bored already is this--I took some major self-esteem hits and the after-effects trickled into everything. Shit started to spiral like a whirlpool and sucked me down into the deep. Once I was down there, part of me decided drowning was easier.

Long version for the rest of you...

About a year ago, great things were happening, I was on top of the world. Sure there were little things going wrong (when aren't there?), but overall things were good. Then, in about a 2-3 month period of time, several things happened that knocked me down hard. We're talking blows to my self-esteem like I haven't dealt with since elementary school (and for those who have known me "forever," you know that was a pretty severe low point in my life confidence-wise). Can I sit here an pin-point exactly what those things were? Some of them, but not all, and I really don't want to re-hash them to be quite honest. Plus, the ones I do remember came from friends, and I'm not going to throw people under the bus. (I'm prefer to assume that they didn't go in with horrid intentions. Sure, it's possible, but I prefer to think better of people than that. So for my own well being, I'm going to pretend they meant well.)

But in each of those particular cases, the stuff that was said or done made me start to question pretty much every fucking aspect of my life. This isn't just about the writing. We're talking writing, appearance, family, friends, children. And what little wasn't directly under fire soon came into question as the spiral of doom sucked me down.

I didn't just worry about the book I was writing, I worried about the ones that were out. The ones I hadn't written yet. I worried about the non-writing things that I was doing that could be detrimental to my career.

Had it just been that, I think I would have been okay. After all, I liked a good chunk of the stuff I was writing at the time. But because of some of it, I questioned every friendship I had. Not only from the perspective of whether or not they actually were my friends, but even more whether or not I deserved friends... at all. I started to believe that I was this horrible person.

Thankfully, my kids are out of the "mommy, I hate you" stage, because they and my husband (even though I questioned their love at every turn) were one of the big things that kept me from drowning when this first got out of control. They kept me marginally sane, but I still spent every day questioning every friend, every conversation, every word, every decision.

How would it affect my friendship? My marriage? My career? My sanity?

I started drifting away from social media. I posted less, and what I did post wasn't me. It was this shell that all my questions had left behind after I reached the conclusion that I was too abrasive, too loud, too snarky, too brash... too everything. Friends who I used to talk to every day were almost avoided out of fear. Fear that they'd notice the changes and not want to stick around. Fear that they'd prefer me this way. Fear they wouldn't notice at all.

Quite frankly, I'm surprised a lot of people didn't just take their toys and go home. I mean, quite frankly, I wasn't any fucking fun anymore. But most of them stuck around. A few even stuck by me hard-core. And those are the friendships that have helped slowly pull me out of this dark place. The funny part is I didn't even realize how far I'd gone until a few days ago when I said something (I don't remember what it was, but I do remember wondering if I should say it) on Twitter, and Nat (Wicked Lil Pixie) said something to the effect of "You sound more like you."

It was like a slap in the face--the good kind.

For the first time, I looked at what I'd been doing for the past year, because I knew it had been going on that long, even if it hadn't shown at first. What I realized was those self-doubts, those hits that had made me question everything, had turned me into someone who played it safe. I stopped balancing on that high-wire that separates too-much from not-enough and jumped into the net on the not-enough side. It was safe there. Nobody gets offended by the person who avoids pushing buttons.

The problem is nobody really gives a shit about them either. I'd made myself invisible to everyone but the people who really cared about me. And I'm pretty damn sure every single one of them was well-aware that I haven't been me in a long time. And more than my author photos with the ample cleavage, more than my semi-outrageous behavior at conventions, more than any snarky, borderline offensive thing I could say online, THAT would be what killed my career.

A year ago (and longer than that), I prided myself on the fact that I was always "me" online. What you saw was what you got. No reservations (other than not identifying my kids). When I tried to become a "good girl" who "followed the rules" and "did what I'm supposed to," I killed that fun, free part of me. And really? It sucked. Every. Single. Thing. About. It. Sucked. Ass.

I don't want to be her. She's a boring bitch. She complains, but she's never funny about it. All she does is work. And it feels like work.

I remember writing where it felt like freedom and truth and what I imagine being high feels like. I miss it.

I remember talking on Twitter and saying whatever crazy thing came to mind. Not that I mind doing that while chatting with Katee, but I miss doing it with everyone else.

 On my website it says my motto is "No worries, no regrets." I fucked up and forgot that for too long. I don't want to be safe anymore... I want to be me again. For better or worse.

So, I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it. I just need to remember how to be me again because I seem to have forgotten a little bit. On the other hand, I know what the problem is, and that means I can kick it's fucking ass because "Knowing is half the battle." (Yes, I went with the G.I. Joe quote. It'll help me identify the people who didn't bother reading this shit. Because that's how I roll :P)

And to my husband, my kids, and my friends who have stood by and not let me completely forget who I am... thank you. From the deepest, blackest recesses of my soul, thank you. There is a special spot in hell reserved for people like you--namely the head table at my debutante ball. I <3 each and every one of you.

What Do You Mean 'Headache'?

I am not one of those authors who is detached from her characters. They are "alive" in my head and, especially when I'm pantsing, tend to direct the action. When I plot, they do the same thing, they're just nice enough to do it in advance.

Now, a not-so-secret secret. I like sex in my books. I prefer characters who, if they're going to do the deed, do it on screen. Fade-to-black tends to be reserved for my YA work. (There are occasionally characters who don't have sex, but that's a post for a different day.) So, imagine my frustration when my characters finally hook up and they're on the path to smexy time and... they derail.

The piece I'm working on right now is a prime example of this. (For a sample of the new story, see this post.)

Cal and Penelope got on the road to sex without any argument. Everything was going great. Until they actually started making out. Then there was the should-we-shouldn't-we. I pounded on the keys and might have screamed "Yes, dammit, you should! Now get naked!" Eventually, I got their clothes off and then the non-fuckers had a different issue. I was ready to throw my computer.

Sure, it was something I knew would come up, but then?

This is a couple that is totally meant to be together, so I knew they'd get past it. Total frustration mode on the author's part though. So... back on the road and... another stumbling block. I messaged my CP while pulling my hair out and said, "Please tell me as a single woman that you'd _________." And she laughed at me.

After all the madness, they finally did the deed (of course they did, it's me...). But, with all the build-up, it needs more. I'm sure my crit partner and beta readers are going to give me a big "What the fuck was that?" So, I'm hoping I can make it better on pre-reader revisions.

But damn, Cal and Pen... stop this shit, okay? We're on a damn schedule. You don't have sex when you're supposed to, it throws everything off.

*grumble*

My Nice Neat Orderly Desk

(Images removed for legal reasons)
Over the weekend, I was poking around Facebook and came across a link from Heroes & Heartbreakers that led me to Jennifer Cruise's blog in which she laments the perfection of Susan Elizabeth Phillips's office. Go ahead and look--it's a very pretty office.

But, I have to admit, I thought the post itself was funny. Cruise talks about how everything is put away and Phillips will never find random stuff because it's so neat and tidy.

I swear I had a picture of my desk. In the picture it looks all nice and organized and pretty too. You know why? Because I took the picture before I ever used the desk. When I clean it, it looks almost that good again (sadly, I cannot find said picture--boo--so we'll use the one to the right instead since it looks a lot like my old desk...when we first set it up.). The reason I'm not just going to grab a snapshot of my desk now is I would never ever post a picture of what it looks like on a normal day.

You see, for me, an author's desk is a little like an author's mind. Somedays it's all nice and neat and orderly, kind of like our books are when they're released. The books have been through a thorough cleaning and all the extra junk (empty pop bottles, scrap papers, random bits of what-the-hell-it-this) removed or at least made shiny (you know, if the random bits of what-the-hell-is-this are actually important.

The rest of the time an author's desk is in creation-mode. It's ideas spread everywhere fueled by the power of the imagination and the gods of caffeine. It's indecipherable book notes and papers from the kids' school, and a half-eaten lunch because in the middle of chewing the author had an epiphany about how to fix a plot issue. In short, it's nothing a normal person would recognize as order. It's not pretty, but it's real.

If the time comes that I'm ever interviewed for some big magazine, I will clean the hell out of my office (and probably move the exercise equipment out so it doesn't look so crowded in here) because no one wants to see what it looks like normally. And they certainly don't want to read an interview where I let my brain go into creation-mode. (If you ever want to see a group of authors in that state, you should check out my tweets about our virtual write-ins at the Rebel Outpost. The conversations we have in there are a perfect scrapbook about why so many authors are not normally suitable for public consumption--and I totally include myself in that.)

So yes, if you ever see my office in photographs, it's going to look all neat and tidy and pretty. That's even the picture I'd send my author friends. In the case of the public perception, it's so people don't think things along the lines of "Oh my God! How can she live like that? Someone call the health department and make sure their aren't dead bodies under the desk!" For my author friends it would just be to prove that I can pretend at falling in line and being normal--I just don't like to stay there.

Woot and Woohoo! And Why It Matters

A lot of an author's job is done in relative solitude. We write alone, we edit under direction but essentially alone, we pimp and we promo while sitting at home at our desks/kitchen tables/sofas... alone. Our human interaction is generally of the digital sort. That's the sort of connection we have to others in the business when we start freaking out that our work sucks. And I don't know an author who doesn't go through the "my book sucks ass" phase at some point. So we run to the other people who have been there.

But in the back of our minds, there is always this little voice that reminds us how easy it is to lie on the internet. That doesn't even touch on the fact that authors are career liars.

So, while the conversations have the climb down off the ledge effect, we still make a mental note of exactly where that ledge is because we know we'll be back. Then the book comes out and reviews start coming in (possibly before release even). This stage of the game is like peri-menopause on crack. They loved it! They totally got what I was going for turns into Oh my God! They hated my main character and said she was too stupid to live with the next review. And it's up and down like that at every turn. This one swooned over my hero!!! ...Oh no, this one said the romance was completely unbelievable. 

And I say all that while loving reviewers for giving my books their time anyway. (We will not get into the reviews are not for authors thing here. I know it, you should know it, and I don't even rant in private about reviews. I just panic a little.)

But even if the vast majority of reviews are of the "liked/loved it" variety, authors know that the point has come when stuff is completely outside their control. I can't make anyone buy my book anymore than I can make a reviewer like it. I want you to buy, sure, but I can't make you. So, we stand there (virtually) with a tray of goodies, waiting to see if anyone wants them. We don't shake, we don't stutter. At least that we let anyone see. Inside, we're a quivering mass of nerves.

That's how the publishing game goes. You have to be a little bit of a masochist to love that feeling.

But every once in a while something happens that stops your heart for a second and makes you jump up and down screaming "They like me! They really like me!"

While I was in Disney, I found out I was up for Book of the Year at The TBR Pile. The first round of voting was reader-driven. My readers had to go there and vote to get me in the finals. I told people about it, but it was... nerve-wracking. There were some great books in that group, and I didn't know if I could squeeze into one of those top three slots. My fans came through though, and I was a finalist! Woot!

Honestly, I thought it was over then. The finals were judged at The TBR Pile and based on some formula that I don't know the ins and outs of that dealt with the initial review, sales numbers and I have no clue what else. So, I wrote off the competition then, and thanked everyone for their support.

Now I have to switch over to a different part of the story (which I was told I could share). While the person in charge of notifying the winner was waiting for the results, she decided to clean her house (I so know that excited cleaning thing). In the midst of cleaning, she ran across a DVD of an old Sandra Bullock movie. The name of the movie? Gun Shy. She got the results right after that and contacted me to not only tell me my own GunShy had WON Book of the Year but to share the story too.

Yep, you read that right. Cupid's Conquests #1 won Book of the Year. (It even says so right over there in the sidebar.) This award means the world to me as I've been struggling with some decisions regarding my writing career, and it helped remind me that I might not know all the people who love my books, but that's kind of the point. If reading my words touches one stranger, brightens their day for even a little while, that is why I'm in publishing and not just writing for my close friends.


Thank you, TBR Pile, for the honor and for the reminder. :)  

New Year, New Goals

Happy 2012! Sorry I didn't post last week. We were at Disney World and I wasn't around to talk to anyone, so I figured it was kind of silly to post.

Anyway... I'm back!

2011 was a big year for me. My first Carina Press release plus (counting YA-me) five others. This year is starting off a little slower, only in that I have no announcements right now. I will have some soon though! To add to that, my little girl started first grade, so I've been adapting to the home-alone thing all day. It's been... interesting.

But it's a new year and I'm freshly back from a vacation where I got to meet one of my tattoos in person and flirted with my favorite alien. All in all, I'm feeling good with the start of 2012. It's already shaping up to be a lot of work, but I'm okay with work. I just need to set goals for myself.

You see, I don't really believe in resolutions. Resolutions are things people say they're going to do and most fail within the first month. So my only resolution is eternally something along the lines of "be the best me I can be in the new year." I can't fail at that.

But for more tangible things, I have goals. I'd like to sign with an agent (either as this me or YA-me, preferably both), but I'm picky. I don't want an agent just to have one, so this might not happen this year and I'm okay with it. Plus, I don't have total control over that process. Sort of like I don't have total control over "I want at least five releases again this year." But those are more dreams and wishes than goals--powered by faith, trust and pixie dust. Goals are powered by hard work and dedication.

So my goals revolve around how much I write since I can control that. As of this moment, I have a full-length contemporary to revise, along with *gulp* two YAs and the second Badlands book. Then I want to write another Cupid's Conquest story. But the big projects are what are taking up the most space in my brain. I have two adult and two YA novels I want to write this year. Figuring them at an average of 80,000 words, that's 240k. Totally doable since I wrote around 350k in 2011. But I need to make sure I have a plan and stick to it. That all means I need to get more stringent about what I'm doing when I'm on my computer (especially since I want to get back to more consistent workouts again too). I'm excited and terrified by the prospect, but I hope all of you will help keep me honest.

Here's to 2012, may it be epic in it's apocalyptic goodness.

Drinking and Thinking...about Books

Last night we went out to dinner and I actually ordered a drink. Now, as much as I enjoy my adult beverages, I don't often order drinks when we're out for dinner. They tend to be over-priced...blah blah blah. But I'd finished a project yesterday and wanted to get something to celebrate. In the spirit of celebration, I perused the menu for something a little different and ordered a mojito--a drink that I enjoy but don't have very often.

For me, picking something like that is sort of like going into a bookstore and grabbing a book from a genre that I don't normally read but I've liked before. It makes the stories I do read there more special somehow. For instance, I read a lot of YA, but very little contemporary YA. The exception to that is Hannah Moskowitz. Love her work. I don't read much homosexual erotica either (yes, jumping from YA to erotica...it's what I do), but I decided to give it a chance and found that in certain ways I like it better than a lot of straight erotica (but odds are it'll still be a less common purchase). My mainstays in reading are what I normally write--speculative. Give me some weres and vamps or spaceships or clockworks or even elves and gnomes and I'm a happy girl (as long as it's well-written and a fun story). But in those other genres... I'm a lot more picky.

A friend once told me there's nothing like a really good mojito. He's right, but there's also nothing like a really bad one. And this went beyond bad. It was horrible. It tasted like really syrupy peppermint schnapps on the rocks--a big old glass of it. Nothing against peppermint schnapps, I mean, it's tasty in hot chocolate, but it's definitely not a mojito. I sent the drink back, but the peppermint taste was so strong that not even my cajun shrimp could cover it.

So, imagine buying a not-my-genre book and sitting down to read it and ending up with a similar experience. Since it's not a standard read for me, the book that leaves the horrid taste in my mouth that no amount of Kelley Armstrong and Richelle Mead with a Mark Henry chaser will kill, risks ruining the entire genre for me. That shit will make me pick my ass up and desert an entire section of the bookstore.

Now, one good thing is I've had a decent mojito. Hell, I've had a damn good mojito. I know they're out there, so other than making sure I never order one at that particular restaurant again, I'm not going to avoid mojitos at all cost, after all, I know they can be yummy. To be fair though, odds are I won't risk ordering one blindly. It'll take having had one at the place before (mmmm....Pickle Barrel...) or having a friend tell me the place makes good ones. Otherwise, I'm going to stick to what I normally drink.

The same is true with books. If I pick up a YA contemporary that turns my stomach (or melts my brain), I'm still going to buy the next Hannah Moskowitz book. A gay erotic romance with no character development or discernable plot? Meh. I know there are good ones out there, but I'll base that reading on recommendations from now on. This is, from my discussions with others, a pretty standard way of thinking. Beyond judging a book by its cover, readers often judge a genre based on the first book they read in that genre.

So every writer--traditional, digital, indie, I-don't-care-what-the-newest-label-is--needs to keep that in mind. That means the editing, plot, characterizations need to be the best you can make them. Your book could be the first one a reader picks up in that genre. It will be the book by which all others are judged. What kind of taste do you want to leave in the reader's mouth?

Have there been any books that you've read that would have turned you off to a genre if you didn't already know there were better books out there?

Sometimes It Pours

I've been trying to avoid doing a post like this for...pretty much forever. As open as I am online, there are some things that I just don't like to talk about. It isn't that I'm trying to hide them, they just aren't fun subjects so I don't bring them up.

This time, I don't feel like I really have a choice because it's affecting too much of my life.

For those of you who don't know, I suffer from depression. Most of the time, I can keep it under control and when it gets bad, it only gets bad for a few days before I pull out of it. At worst, I'll disappear from Twitter and Facebook for a bit, but usually I'm of the whole "fake it 'til you make it" school of thought and put on my happy face and plow through.

This time it hasn't been a few days though, it's been a few months.

The worst part is, objectively, it's been a really great few months: lots of travel (which I love), won the first writing contest I've entered in ages, sold a novella, got to hang with some of my best friends, kids are good, husband's good. Basically, life is good.

That doesn't matter to depression though.

Happy moments, no matter how big, have been fleeting at best, and everything in my life feels nothing short of overwhelming. I know some people have noticed that beyond the travel issue, I've been rather scarce on twitter. On my better days, I'm there a little bit, but for the most part it's one more thing that feels like too much.

So, as much as it pains me to do it, I'm going to pull back on some things. Any blog posts and whatnot that I've committed to, I'll still get done, but posts here (and at my other blog) will likely be very brief. I'm going to try to get some reviews in for Wicked Lil Pixie still, but until I get a handle on my life again, I don't know how often they'll show up. For now, I need to focus as much as I can on the writing part of my job (because 1-it's my job and 2-it actually helps the depression sometimes) and my family.

I'm not going to to disappear entirely or anything, I just need to get control of things again.

I hope you'll all bear with me. <3

Seeing Red...and Blue...and Green...

While I was away at the beach, edits came in on a recent story. It's a short, so I figured it was no big deal and I'd be able to tackle them pretty quickly. Now, to give you some perspective, when I'm really on, I can edit a short in a day or two. Then I opened the file.

Holy highlights, Batman!

There was...a lot. And I knew without a doubt I needed more than a couple days of sneaking away from family time to get it done. Most editors who have worked with me (and talked to me while I was editing) know that I can tackle big issues pretty handily. Editor points out a problem, I slap my hand against my forehead, wonder how I could have been so stupid as to not see the problem, and I get to work on fixing it. It's the little things that give me fits. (I'm sure Gina remembers well when I was working on edits in Italy and had one sentence that I couldn't get right. She told me to skip it. I refused, and the answer came to me while trying to sleep on the flight home.) And almost everything I needed to fix in this story was a little thing.

My intense love for edits (yes, I'm weird) quickly turned into a lot of loud groaning about not wanting to do it. You see, I had this illusion that the more stories I had published, the easier edits would get because I'd have been learning to fix all those stupid things I did wrong. The fact is I appear to replace one stupid thing with something new. My "that" problem? Tackled. Gone. Over. (Believe me, it took a long time.) Now I have things that can't be solved with a simple "delete".

But you know what? I'm seeing the tail end of this round of edits now--I'll finish them today--and as much as I hate to say it, I think it was a good experience for me. First, it made me realize there will always be something in need of fixing. That's a really freeing thought. I'm going to screw up, so I just need to worry about writing. Second, I found that even some of the little things need to be fought for. A suggested change of wording to something that your character would never use., a turn of phrase that your betas all loved, intentional use of passive structure--all of those things can be important. The point of edits is to figure out when they're most important, because that's when you dig your heels in (which is hard to do when you haven't made a bunch of other suggested changes--makes you seem like a diva :P).

Now that I've struggled through all the itty-bitty detailed changes, I can say I still love doing edits. I'm hoping when I do my read-through before hitting send later today, I'll be able to smile and say the changes made the story stronger. Because that's the point of all the moaning, groaning, hand-wringing, cursing, and throwing of things--to make it better.

In the meantime, I'll repaint the target on my office wall for the next round of throwing thi...er edits.

No. You Buy It Like This...

There's been a lot of talk from authors online about how to buy their books. Basically the push is something like this: buy in print, buy at an indie bookseller, buy it the first week. Basically, the argument is that those things will help drive sales and increase the likelihood of hitting the NYT bestseller list.

*shrug*

Maybe I'm silly, but to be honest, I'm just happy people are buying my books. Buy it wherever you want. Buy it in print or digital. Buy it on release week or buy it a year after it releases. No matter how you buy it, I make royalties on it. Now, to be fair if everyone waits until a year later to buy a given book, you can bet that publisher isn't going to want anything else from me. So if you want more books from an author, that is something to consider, but as long as everyone isn't waiting that long, it doesn't really hurt me as an author.

Again...I'm just happy that you're buying my books.

However, in an effort to be totally upfront with people about what an author makes, I'm going to break some things down for you with regard to how it works for digital publishing. Keep in mind that you can care about this information or not. Some people have asked me in the past where they should buy to make me the most money, so I figure rather than doing this individually, I'll put it all here.

- A digitally published author makes the most money if you buy directly from the publisher's site. It can be as much as twice as much money for the author.

- Depending on how a contract is written, third party sites vary in how much an author makes back from a sale. Some of my contracts, I make a percent of the cover price (a lower percent than at the publisher's site). Other contracts give me a percentage of what the publisher gets back from the third party site. Since the sites dictate what percent they keep, my sales at Amazon under those contracts make me a different amount than my sales at, say, All Romance eBooks.

- The author profit on print-on-demand books is very low compared to cover price, and is in fact lower than their profit on digital copies of full-length novels. (This one shocked the hell out of me, but after it was all explained, it made a degree of sense.)

Yeah, there are things readers can do to ensure the author makes as much money as possible when they buy an ebook. But you know what? Buy it however you want. As an author, I'd rather you buy my work from wherever the heck you want, as long as you're buying it. (Pirating is another issue and goes back to a similar issue as everyone waiting to buy an ebook until a year after its release--no one makes money off pirating and if no one makes money a publisher isn't going to want more from that author.)

So, thank you to everyone who has bought my books, wherever and whenever you chose to buy them. I hope you enjoyed them, and I appreciate the support. I'm pretty sure most authors I know feel the same.

Putting in the Work

So, a few weeks ago, I was getting a story ready to submit. I told my editor that she'd have it as soon as I'd finished with revisions. At that moment, it was out with my wonderful betas for a read-through so I could fix any glaring issues before I sent it in. She said (paraphrased), "You don't revise until after I edit it."


Then, at a totally separate time, I was talking to a fellow author (who shall remain unnamed) about one of her shorter works. She basically said that she didn't put as much time into it since it was just supposed to be a quickie--a break from her novels.


Needless to say, I was...confused.

You see, I have a process I go through before I send anything in for publication. I write. I revise. Maybe twice. For longer pieces, I might post part in my online writing group and wait for critiques (to revise again). I send to my betas. I wait for their comments. I revise. Then, if the revisions were big, I send it back to them to make sure it's solid. If not, I revise again. Then...sometime after that, I send it in.

I do this for my novel-length stories. I do this for my novellas. I do this for my short stories. Hell, if I'm worried about it, I do something similar for my flash fiction before I post it on the blog. I cannot imagine sending my rough drafts to my editors. Even thinking about it has me breaking out in a cold sweat right now. You see, as much as I love my editors and think they're awesome, I want as many eyes as I can reasonably get on my manuscript before it goes out. And I feel that way about all my stories; I don't differentiate by length (though, I will say that just because they are longer and therefore have more room for "issues", novel-length stories tend to go through more revisions than shorts).

Based on similar comments from both an editor and another author, however, I'm starting to think I might be in the minority with regard to these habits. I know in digital publishing, output is important. If you can't churn out stories fast enough, you can be forgotten as new authors pop up. But the idea of putting anything out there that is less than the best I can make it bothers me...a lot. This isn't to say that other people don't write crazy-good first drafts with no inconsistencies or weak spots or grammar issues because I'm sure some people do, but I'm not at the point yet where I can delude myself into thinking I'm one of them.

So, if you've been waiting on Badlands 2 or the next Blood Kissed story, consider this my apology for the delay. I want to get those stories to you. I just don't want to cut corners to do it, and for me it would be cutting corners (believe me, my betas are phenomenal and not at all afraid to tell me when I suck). Please forgive the delay, and hopefully I can work on that whole prolific thing in the meantime.

It's the Little Things

Writers get asked about inspiration all the time. Where did the idea for the story come from? What inspires you? I think the questions bother some authors, but usually those are the easiest ones for me to answer since I tend to be able to pinpoint the birth of all of my stories.

Every once in a while though, the inspiration is such a small thing that it's hard to explain. For instance, my trip to Scotland and London last week. In part, the trip was research-based. I want to write a story set somewhere else, and when the opportunity came to head to Britain, I jumped at it. The thing is instead of some sweeping a-ha moment of brilliance, I got little bits and pieces of inspiration from a lot of different places.

There is the barred over window in the secret room at Glamis Castle...


...and the haunted squatters' tunnels under Edinburgh...


...and the caged graves in the cemetery around Greyfriar's Kirk...


...and the ruins of Dunnottar Castle...


...and the mists that float like living things through the valleys...


...and then there's the dragon ;-)

I'm not sure which of these things will stick to make a story or if somehow I'll be able to work them all into something really epic. One way or another though, there's a story here and it will be written. Because there's a thing about Scotland. Even with the rain and the dreariness, it sinks under your skin and touches your soul. It's a magical place and, if you're lucky, when you leave you get to take a little piece of the magic with you.

Me-yow...

Cougar.

Love the cat, and to be honest, I don't hate it as a slang term either.

A couple places I frequent on the interwebs have been discussing cougars of late. Why the sudden surge of interest? I'm not sure. Maybe it's cyclical and I've just missed the cycles until now LOL. Really though, it's led me to do a lot of thinking. The first time it popped on my radar was with regard to romance books, and specifically erotic romance. Are cougars hot or overdone? How much of an age difference until it moves from sexy to squicky? Etc. etc. etc. And then, the terminology came into question. If you're not in your 40s, you aren't a cougar. (In your 30s, you're apparently a puma. Not sure what this means for women in their 50s or older.) Then someone said that if you weren't a woman who actively hunted for younger men, you weren't a cougar either. (Okay, so in a way, this makes sense, but then is there a different term for women who just happen to sometimes date or end up falling for a younger guy?)

All of this led me to a couple questions of my own.

First, there's a name for women who do this, but what about men? I mean, sure some of them get the dirty old man title, but in general do they have a name? Because if they do, I can't think of it.

Which leads me to wonder why women have one, and why we're always such sticklers for fitting people into niches. Because it isn't just the cougar thing and different people's ideas about that. Here are some other things you'll regularly hear from women about other women (and from men too, but...)

- "You're not curvy, you're fat."

- "She's too pretty to be smart."

- "That chick is too old to wear that."

- "Someone give that girl a cookie, she must be anorexic."

I will admit, I'm guilty of this as well, but when we talk about feminism and women supporting women, we need to start being realistic. Women are hard on each other to a crazy degree.

A few weeks ago, a woman started bitching about #BoobieWed on Twitter. Now, this is a campaign where people switch their avatars (if they choose) to a picture of boobs or cleavage and remind people to do their self-exams. It is for breast cancer awareness. Does it raise money? No. But it does get the message out that self-checks are important. My sister found her cancer through a self-exam and has been a survivor for ten years now. But this woman was adamant that it was about sex.

Who.

Gives.

A.

Rat's.

Ass?

If some jerk wants to look at my boobs on Wednesdays because he or she likes boobs--whatever. That doesn't matter to me. What does is the one chick who says seeing my cleavage reminded her to do a self-exam. Flashing my cleavage (which I do a lot anyway) is a price I'm totally willing to pay if it might save a life.

And who is that chick to judge me for it?

So, here's my question to all the cougars, pumas, kitties, whatever furry animal you associate yourself with (or even if you don't)--why do we do this to each other? Why all the judgments and rudeness?

Just a Thousand More Words Please

Word counts are the bane of many writers. Your first novel is over 100k? You might want to look at some trimming. Under 70k? Only if you're writing middle grade or younger. There are guidelines all over the internet on what constitutes a good word count for just about any genre of fiction. That's not what this post is about though.

One of the greatest things about digital publishing is beyond the "are you insane, even Tolkien was smart enough to make three books!" word counts, digital publishers are embracing all kinds of lengths. In fact, the first piece I had published was Of Course I Try at barely over 5k. Over the course of the next seven months, I released one around 10k, another between 15 and 20k, another at about 33k, and my YA which clocked in at just about 86k. I loved every one of those projects.

Right now, however, I'm working on a contest entry and realized that I've grown so used to the "any word count is a good word count" mentality that I really had a hard time with the 5-7k word limit. Like...really hard time. The first story I started for the contest is already well over that count and isn't close to being done (BTW, TriggerHappy won for band name for that particular story, tentatively titled GunShy). So, I set it aside and tried again. At first I wondered if I could possibly make this new story stretch to 5k. I just didn't think there was enough there (of course it doesn't help matters that it's a brand new genre for me, so a lot of guessing and O.o was involved in the writing). Then, once I crossed 5k, I had an "oh shit, I only have 2000 words left to play with" moment.

I finished it, and it's within the word count requirements. I'm really not sure if the ending was rushed though. I have less than 200 words to play with to make it the best it can be and that scares the crap out of me.

The funny part in all this is I used to do writing challenges with 1000 or 2000 word total limits all the time. Meeting 5-7k should be a breeze. But it's not. Not if you're out of practice at least. So, I'm sitting here tonight, dreading the feedback I'm going to get from my betas. I want them to be hard on me because I want it to be good...but I don't want it to suck because I don't have it in me to make another attempt at this by the deadline.

Oh yeah...there's a deadline. What the hell was I thinking? Oh, I remember. It was an excuse, just like those old challenges, to try something new and push myself out of my comfort zone. Yeah. I think I left that behind well over 7k words ago.

So what about you? What word counts do you write in and do you find it hard to switch it up? Or do limits make you happy since you know exactly what you have to work with and how close you are to done?

Name That Band!

First and foremost, I'm starting a new feature on Mondays. Sometimes it'll be more in depth than others, so please stop by and check it out (Hint: ManCandy).

Anyway, the heroine of Badlands 2 is being obstinate about telling me her tale, so I took a short break to work on (appropriately enough) a short story. It's going pretty well, but the hero is a member of a rock band and I need to give the band a name. Bantering around on FB and Twitter has gotten me several suggestions, but I can't decide. So, I decided to have a nice little poll here. I'm going to list the options that I liked for the band name, and I want you to vote on your favorite. Easy-peasy! (If it helps, think of the band as kind of Shinedown-like in nature. If you don't know them, I'll even provide you a video to help give you a feel of the kind of music they play.)

Band name options are:

Poets & Pornstars (Added after 3 votes and Psynde telling me not to skip it :P)
Taboo Coalition
Targets and Taboos (TnT)
Targets and Triggers (TnT)
Triggerhappy

Just mention your favorite in your comment, and thanks for voting :)