Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal

Bang-Up Beginnings

2012-02-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Rebecca York

Writing a novel is hard work. It takes a lot of skills. You have to create characters the reader cares about, a fantastic plot, conflict, pacing, setting, dialogue. You probably have to research some aspects of your story. And you’ve got to make sure your grammar and punctuation don’t distract.

But of prime importance is getting the reader into the story–which means a fantastic first sentence, a great first paragraph and a first chapter that will suck the reader in.

I have a friend who says too many authors indulge in “throat clearing.” Remember in Amadeus when Salieri accuses Mozart of using “too many notes.” It was meant as a joke in the movie. Not so funny in a novel. I’ve made up a name for “too many words.” I call it wundeling. And I also use the term to describe scenes where the hero or heroine is endlessly thinking the same thing over and over.

One of my favorite metaphors is-- start with a dead horse in the living room--plunge the reader into the middle of a situation. Don’t confront the reader with an information dump. Give her just enough details so she can follow along. You will have ample opportunity to fill in the background later.

I’m most likely to open with the hero or the heroine, as in CHAINED, my new Decorah Security novella. In the first scene, the heroine arrives home from work to find two thugs hiding in the house. They are there to murder her, and her immediate problem is to escape.

If you have trouble deciding how much background to put into the first scene or the first chapter, ask yourself, “Does the reader need to know this now? Or can I work in these details later?”

Here’s how CHAINED begins:

Chapter One

Isabella Flores pulled open the kitchen door and stopped in her tracks. The house felt wrong. Come to that, it smelled wrong. The familiar scents of the empanadas she’d cooked the night before and the cleaning solution she used on the floor still hung in the air. But they were over laid by the smell of sweat and stealth.

Moments ago she’d been prepared to fall into bed and sleep for the next eight hours, after an exhausting shift on the surgical floor at Phoenix General Hospital.

Instead, she backed out the door and started running, not toward the car she’d just left in the driveway but into the alley.

A blast of noise followed her, and she felt a bullet whiz past her head.

“Christo. Don’t let her get away,” a harsh voice shouted.

Two hombres. Waiting in the dark for her.

She’d hoped she was safe living in this quite, middle-class neighborhood, but she’d always been prepared for the worst. She kept two bags packed, one in the trunk of her car and the other in an SUV, hidden down the block.

She leaped the waist-high chain link fence of a neighbor’s yard on the other side of the alley, rolled into a flower bed, and lay with her heart pounding, praying that the men hadn’t seen her vanish into the shadows.

As two sets of heavy footsteps pounded toward her then sprinted past, she let out the breath she’d been holding. But she couldn’t stay here. When they didn’t find her, they’d double back. Which meant she had only minutes to make her escape.

If the first scene starts with the hero or heroine, you must make the reader like your character. Or have a darn good reason why we think this person is a jerk. If the heroine is doing something mean and petty at the beginning of the story, probably the reader’s going to be turned off.

In the beginning of CHAINED, I haven’t “told” you a lot, but I think you have a pretty good picture of what Isabella is like.

If you’re writing romance, you want the hero and heroine to meet as soon as possible. It's not a must, but in a romance you can't delay the meeting too long because the reader wants to follow the development of their relationship.

Another way to “get them together” at the beginning of the story is to alternate scenes from each point of view. These two people are not together, but you know they will be.

In a romance, the h/h are drawn to each other. But you must set up conflicts that will keep them from working out their differences until the end of the story.

In CHAINED, Isabella hides out at her father’s old ranch. And the hero’s there. Or is he? She thinks he died five years ago. Is his ghost haunting the ranch? Or is something else going on? Isabella and Matt were in love with each other but neither of them could act on the attraction. Now she’s alone with his ghost, and all the sexual longing comes bubbling to the surface. But how can she have a relationship with him? And is there a way to “bring him back to life?”

At the beginning of your story, you must give the reader some idea what these people look like, but it’s more important to have an interior picture of the main characters. What motivates them? What are their values? How do they react under stress? Don’t tell us. Illustrate these traits through their actions and reactions.

If your first chapter has the h/h interacting with secondary characters, don’t let the secondaries take over. The primary focus should be on the main characters.

Try to end the first chapter with a cliffhanger. A tantalizing last line that will have the reader wanting to turn the page and find out about the rest of the story.

Here’s how I ended the first chapter of CHAINED:

Although she saw nothing, she felt the force of the wind like a solid wave that would have knocked her off her feet, except that it held her fast. It felt like giant hands were on her, one clamping her shoulder. The other locked around her neck, choking off her breath so that she couldn’t even scream.

The unseen attacker lifted her off her feet, pressing her backwards, moving in a rush of chilled air toward the stable in back of her.

My beginnings tend to be action scenes where something dangerous is happening, usually to the hero or heroine. If I don’t think I can have a dynamic opening using the hero and or heroine, I might turn to a secondary character.

In my Decorah Security novel, DARK MOON, I start with a scene where a woman is being kidnapped. You don’t know much about her. But you know she’s in trouble. She’s not the heroine. She’s the victim that the hero and heroine are sent to rescue. But I started with her so the reader would understand the urgency and danger of the situation.

You could also give the villain the first scene. One of the most impressive examples of this is in THE KEY TO REBECCA, by Ken Follett. It has that famous first line, “The last camel died at noon.” In the scene, a Nazi spy is sneaking into World War II Cairo across the desert, and he almost loses his life in the attempt. Almost, but not quite. He survives to give the hero and heroine big problems.

Let me add a warning. Don’t promise the reader something you’re not going to deliver. You can’t write a fantastic first scene that will have nothing to do with the rest of the book. (Like in those old James Bond movies, where the opening was a set piece with no connection to the rest of the movie.) The initial action must tie into the story and start the character development that continues throughout the story along with your plot.

On the other hand, I never truly know my characters until I’ve written the first few chapters of my novel. I have ideas about what they’re like, but I can’t fully know them until they start reacting to the situations my plot creates.

And here’s a piece of good news. What you write isn’t set in stone just because the words are on the screen. You can always edit yourself later. My goal is often to “get it down” so I have something to work with. I can always make improvements later. And usually my second thoughts are a significant part of the finished product.

If you comment on my post, you can win a small stuffed wolf and one of my favorite Harlequin Intrigues.

Ever since she can remember, Rebecca York has loved making up stories full of adventure, romance, and suspense. As a child she corralled her friends into adventure games or acted out romantic suspense stories with a cast of dolls. But she never assumed she could be an author because she couldn't spell. Her life changed dramatically with the invention of the word processor and spelling checker--and the help of her husband, Norman Glick, who spots spelling errors from fifty paces away.

A New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly best-selling and award-winning author, Rebecca has written over 125 books and novellas. In 2011 she became the dozenth author to receive the Romance Writers of America Centennial Award for having written 100 romantic novels. Her Killing Moon was a launch title for Berkley’s Sensation imprint in June 2003. Five more books in the series have followed.

Rebecca has authored or co-authored over 65 romantic thrillers, many for Harlequin Intrigue's very popular 43 Light Street series, set in Baltimore, and many with paranormal elements.

Chained

When death is stalking, only a phantom can save her- and love her.

Fleeing to her father’s abandoned Arizona ranch to hide from political assassins, Isabella Flores is attacked by a ghost haunting the property. He’s Decorah Security agent Matthew Houseman, killed in the line of duty. Still, passion blooms between Isabella and Matthew, and as their relationship turns more physical, Matthew becomes more real to himself and to her.

After the ranch is attacked and Matthew helps save Isabella’s life, she learns a startling secret. There may be hope of bringing her ghost lover back–if she dares to risk everything.

How to Make Your Villain both Terrifying and Real

2012-01-26T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Lucinda D. Schroeder

To make a fictional criminal real, writers have to know how real criminals think and how they operate. One area that writers can easily exploit is the use of “signatures.” This is a consistent (post-mortem) “mark” that killers often leave at the crime scene.

The concept of “signatures” was developed by FBI whose theories on this have remained fairly consistent for the last twenty years. Basically a “signature” is a very specific thing that the killer does to his victim’s body. He may leave the victim’s body posed in a particular way that later identifies the killer every time he strikes.
Ted Bundy, a serial killer, was known to use pink polish to paint the fingernails of his dead victims. Every time this “signature” occurred, law enforcement knew they were dealing with a specific killer.

Fiction writers can make these specific calling cards creepy and terrifying. There’s no limit to this. Criminal “signatures” can also be set up in a way for the killer to communicate with law enforcement like the D.C. snipers did. Most killers leave a “signature” for emotional reasons providing insight to their criminal minds. These clues can be used to further an investigation.

A secondary character trained to interpret “signatures” can have a strong impact on the providing law enforcement on what type of killer is running loose. These interpretations can be anything a fiction writer wants them to be. Just the fact that the writer is using the concept of “signatures” makes the fiction more credible.
FBI profilers have long said that to catch a killer you have to study their art.
“Inside the Criminal Mind” begins on February 6th. In this course writers will find dozens of ways to make the core of their criminals real while using fiction writing techniques to enhance the terror.

“Fiction on top of reality is like icing on a cake.” Lucinda Schroeder

See you in class! Lucinda

PS: My true crime book “A Hunt for Justice” will be profiled on the Travel Channel on Feb. 21 at 9:00 ET. The series is called “Hidden Cities” and the city being profiled is Anchorage.

Inside the Criminal Mind, presented by Lucinda Schroeder, runs from February 6, 2012 through March 4, 2012

Lucinda Schroeder is a retired federal agent who spent 30 years investigating crimes. She holds a BA in criminology and is the author of "A Hunt for Justice" --a true crime story that reads like a mystery.

How to make ‘the muse’ your slave…

2012-01-19T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Lori Toland

At least every day I see a tweet or a Facebook status like this:

“I found my muse and back to work on my latest WIP.”

Or… “My muse visited me last night and I wrote 1500 words on my latest WIP.”
But my favorite has to be… “I’ve found my muse and I’m chaining him to my desk. Take that, you little %$#@.”

When I see these, I chuckle to myself. Muses get a bad rap. Writers blame all their woes of missed deadlines and series being dumped because “my muse has gone missing.” Well, I have some really bad news for you.

Muses don’t exist. Yeah, you heard me right. Or at least, not in the capacity everyone believes and I’ll tell you why.

I had the chance to go to RT when it was in Orlando in 2009. Then in 2010, when RWA was rescheduled to Orlando, I just had to go because it was in my backyard. I’ve gone to panels and lectures given by dozens of authors, some even NY Times bestselling authors and they all say the same thing:

“There are no such things as muses.”

The gasp I heard from the unpublished authors echoes throughout the room. Then there’s a whisper amongst two people in the audience, “She has to be wrong.”
She’s not wrong. She’s a multi-published author with almost twenty books to her name. Don’t shoot down her advice. You should absolutely listen to her. Instead of scoffing at her, someone asked her why and she explained. It’s a reason I hear a lot from authors who are successful in this business.

Muses do not control your output. They are not typing away at your keyboard, slaving over your story while you’re on your patio, having a martini or a hot cocoa. You are the person putting those words down on the paper. It takes a lot of work to make a novel and the words don’t write themselves.

Instead, muses are our inspiration, the reason I get out of bed and rush to be my computer because I had an idea about my next story. They are the reason my husband asks, “Why are grinning and staring off into space?” Nowadays he knows me too well.

Sometimes we find it easy to dump our writing aside because we are too busy. Your kids have soccer practice, your day job is smothering you with work, your MIL is coming over and your house is a wreck. These are legitimate excuses but be wary. They are just more reasons not to work on your novel.

Another question came up: “I set aside my time every day to work on my novel and for some reason, I can’t seem to write one more word. I’m stuck in this scene and ready to tear my hair out. ARGH! HELP ME!”

This is a legitimate problem. I sometimes work around this by moving around in my story and writing different scenes but I’m just avoiding facing my problem. One author at RT put it best when she said, “If you are stuck at a scene in your book, your plot has jumped the tracks at some point. Back your story up to the point where your story was working and then fix it.”

I’ve applied what these authors told me to my own career. I’ve been published for 2 years this February. I have 3 short stories, 2 novellas, and 2 novels published. I have one novel under contract, due to release early 2012 and countless novels and novellas in the hopper, ready to be worked on. What I am saying is not believing in muses controlling me has worked for my career.

So please, don’t chain your muse to your desk… that is, unless he wants to be. But that is a whole other blog post.

CEO by day, erotic romance writer by night, Lori Toland lives in Orlando where the summers are hot but the romance between her characters is even hotter. Writing since the tender age of 13, Lori somehow finds time to play video games and watch movies while taking care of her beloved cats and a husband who will forever be her hero.

Soul Seduction

Ashlee Bennett has her priorities straight. Fighting demons is at the top of the list until she meets her sexy neighbor, Luke Byrne. She shouldn't want him, but she can't stop dreaming about his buff body and sexy grin.

Her world is turned upside down when Luke follows her one night and is determined to stand beside her and fight. Ashlee knows she needs to keep her distance from Luke, not just to protect her virginity but her heart as well. But Luke may be the only one who can save her from the night, and her dreams.

Put some new tools in your writing toolbox

2012-01-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Kris Neri

There is considerable genre bending going on now, particularly in the paranormal arena. This is great! Not only does it allow us to reach new readers, it lets us add new tools to our writing toolboxes and to use them in imaginative new ways.

My background is in mysteries and thrillers, mostly funny mysteries. Now I write humorous urban fantasies, too, and I’ve taken to fantasy like a duck takes to bread thrown upon the water. But I’m glad I have an in-depth understanding of the crime genre because its principles provide unseen girders in my cross-genre works.

I’m a longtime writing instructor and freelance editor, and I’d like to share with you some of the worst mystery-writing mistakes I’ve seen in my students’ and writing clients’ works. Not because I think many — or even any — of you are writing traditional mysteries, but because a crime or danger or puzzle element is often involved in many of the cross-category fantasy sub-genres, including urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Even if yours does not, an understanding of these principles may help you to better work with whatever struggle sustains the narrative drive in your WIP. The principles are the same whether a story involves a body found before the fireplace in an Agatha Christie-type vicarage or if a time-traveling pharaoh is secretly creating unrest in Egypt to reclaim his throne. (Hey, that’s not a bad idea.).

One of the biggest mistakes I see is that there are no false trails. In mysteries those are called red herrings, but false trails are a necessary part of most novels. If your protagonist knows precisely how to meet her goal easily and instantly, the journey is unlikely to engage too many readers or to fill an entire novel. Strangely, though, I’ve had more students fight me on this point, insisting that false trails aren’t realistic.

Actually, they’re precisely the way real life works. With any problem, we pursue the most obvious solution first, and only try less obvious solutions when that fails, usually because, at the start, we can’t see the full extent of the problem. To use a real life example…imagine you’re ready to leave your house, but you can’t find your keys. You look where you usually put them, then you check your purse, eventually removing everything in the purse in search of them, then you look in rooms that you might have carried them into…. Finally, it occurs to you that you changed to another purse briefly yesterday. (Why did you do that? I don’t know. Work with me here.) When you look into that alternate purse, you find the keys slipped into a pocket. You see, you didn’t remember changing purses, and until you factor that into the equation, you don’t see the full picture.

That’s the way it works in a novel, too. Our characters don’t always understand the full extent of the problem, and they grasp what seems to be the most obvious solution AT THAT TIME. As long as the false trails are organic to your story, and not some device you’ve created simply to slow your protagonist’s success, they will engage your reader.

Another common problem is that newish writers sometimes share too much and the wrong kind of relationship backstory. In the crime genre, that usually means the history shared between the victim and villain, or the heroine in danger and the bad guy pursuing her in a suspense novel. New writers often justify their backstory faux pas in terms of fairness to the reader, but full disclosure at the start doesn’t actually benefit readers. Readers want their vicarious adventures to involve both struggles and surprises. If you lay out precisely what’s coming, with a detailed explanation of why, you can kiss surprise goodbye.

And this principle has broad implications for every kind of novel. If you want any element to play out with a strong, surprising impact in the climax, you can’t push that element into the reader’s face. The element has to be there, sown in carefully, but you don’t want to draw attention to it. Not too early anyway. We novelists are like magicians, engaging in slight-of-hand, luring attention away from true nature of the trick, so the surprising outcome will have greater impact. We’re always saying, “Look HERE, don’t look THERE.” Until, that is, we’re ready for THERE to take center stage.

To me, the best part of genre crossing isn’t just the fun of creating new beings and new worlds — although those are some of the best things I’ve discovered since I first found words written on pages — it’s that no techniques, no conventions, no tools are off-limits. It’s that I can take well-used tools, twist ‘em around and use them in a brand new way.

I hope you’ll find something you can use in what I’ve shared here today.

What new tools have you found lately, and how do you use them?

Kris Neri writes funny urban fantasies featuring fake psychic Samantha Brennan and genuine Celtic goddess/FBI agent Annabelle Haggerty, HIGH CRIMES ON THE MAGICAL PLANE, a Lefty Award nominee, and MAGICAL ALIENATION. She also writes the popular Tracy Eaton mysteries. Kris teaches writing online for the prestigious Writers’ Program of the UCLA Extension School, and with her husband, owns The Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, AZ. She welcomes friends to her website, http://www.krisneri.com, and her blog, http://krisneri.blogspot.com/

Magical Alienation

A spaceship crash in Roswell…a rumored alien…the mysterious Area 51…a harmonic convergence in Sedona. No connection, right? With its rock stars and shape shifters, gods and militia leaders—Magical Alienation will turn what you think you know upside down.

Fake psychic Samantha Brennan and Celtic goddess/FBI agent Annabelle Haggerty team up again. While the rock people twist the surface of the earth and Sedona heads into the darkest night the planet has ever seen, Samantha wonders which, if any of them, will survive it. But when Celtic gods are involved, nothing is ever as it appears.

Agents/Editors: We Don't Bite...Much

2012-01-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Lynn Price

Hello and Welcome,

Okay, so the class is Agents/Editors: We Don't Bite...Much. If you are in the wrong classroom, consult with your counselor and she will direct you to Science 303 – Let’s Get Nuclear, or Math 201 – We Don’t Need No Frickin’ Long Division.

The idea over this two-week period is to discuss publishing from my side of the desk in order to give you an insider’s view as to how agents and editors work, why we make the decisions we do, and to finally put to rest - once and for all - that there really is a method to our madness.

My seminars are based on my book The Writer’s Essential Tackle Box – Getting a Hook on the Publishing Industry. I wrote this book in order to demystify the industry in order to help authors become more successful.

This is a one-stop-shopping class that explains the why’s about publishing in a satisfactory manner so you aren’t scratching your head wondering if we aren’t all barking mad. In truth, some of us are…heck, lots of are…but that’s beside the point. I want you to ask LOTS of questions because it’s how everyone learns.
There are no dumb questions, unless it’s from the beagle, and I’m used to dealing with her. For those of you who don’t know the beagle, she is my unreliable secretary who neither files, nor answers phones. Instead, she spreads out on the sunny spot on my desk and preens. But she makes fabulous margaritas and that’s why I must keep her around. She has offered a free pitcher during our two week time together, so I guess we may let her sit in and observe.

So that’s it. My plan is to put up a new seminar Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday that will deal with some aspect of what agents and editors are thinking and why. I look forward to “meeting” all of you and answering any and all questions you have.

I also maintain a blog - http://behlerblog.com/ - where I talk about all things publish, get outraged at some of the sillier things happening in the industry, and generally attempt to prove that I have no heart or soul.

Lynn Price
Behler Publications

Agents and Editors: We Don't Bite...Much, presented by Lynn Price, runs from February 13, 2012 through February 26, 2012

Along with being the editorial director for Behler Publications, Lynn Price is the award-winning author of the novel, Donovan's Paradigm, and of the writing reference book, The Writer's Essential Tackle Box: Getting a Hook on the Publishing Industry. Debuting last year as part of the Get It Write series, this second work provides "an insider's view geared to inform and educate writers as to how we work, why we work, and the pitfalls to avoid." Since 2003, Behler Publications has been publishing best selling and critically acclaimed works chronicling personal journeys with socially relevant themes: stories that deal with how people are influenced and changed by their experiences and how they deal with those repercussions. The books invite introspection: "I'm a better/more thoughtful/ smarter person for having read this book." In addition to extensive speaking engagements at writer's conferences all over the country, Lynn also assumes a lighthearted and somewhat irreverent tone in addressing the many issues facing today's writers on the Behler Publications blog: http://behlerblog.com/

Pitch Perfect: How to Hook an Editor

2012-01-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Angie Fox

Want to stand out from the crowd? You’ll need a hook. If you handle it right, this will be your dream editor or an agent’s first impression of your book. It’s what sets you and your work apart from everyone else.

Sound good? It is. When your hook is both strong and memorable, you’ll have that editor thinking about your book and anticipating it long after your initial meeting is over.

So what makes up a good hook? Simplicity. You don’t need to recite a paragraph-long pitch to an editor. You don’t need to wow them with every nuance of the conflict between your hero and heroine. That comes later. What you want to do first is get them interested in you and your book’s premise.

For example, the hook for my first book (my entire series, really) is the gang of geriatric biker witches. When anyone asks me about the Accidental Demon Slayer series (and now its booksellers), I tell them it’s about a gang of geriatric biker witches, oh and a reluctant demon slayer. End of story. Either they get the hook or they don’t. You’ll know right away whether you’re a good match for an editor, or in my case, potential readers.

So many times, authors will confuse their main conflict with their hook. It’s tempting to tell an editor that you’ve written the most touching love story of the year, or a paranormal thrill ride that will keep readers up all night. That’s all fine. In fact, that’s what you want your books to do. But it’s not your hook.

To find your book’s hook:

Dig deep. Ask yourself:

What is it that makes my story completely unique?
If I could tell an editor or an agent one thing about my book, what would it be?
What impression do I want to leave with my readers after they’ve read my work?

Another worthwhile exercise is to look at the books that you’ve bought. What about each of them hooked you? Chances are, it’s also what made that editor buy.

Sometimes, a hook is worked right into the title of a book. Think of Sally MacKenzie’s series: The Naked Duke, The Naked Earl, The Naked Viscount. Or it can be communicated in a simple sentence, like Colleen Gleason used for her Gardella Vampire series. “It’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Regency England.”

Editors love strong hooks because it lets them know immediately whether your book will be a good fit for their line. And after they offer you that cushy contract, your publishing house will use those hooks to sell your work. Everything from Colleen Gleason’s covers to her official tagline, “belles, balls, beaux…and stakes?” fit with her initial hook.

It can be hard to find the hook in our own work, simply because we are so engrossed in our own stories. This is never an easy exercise, especially the first few times. But pulling back, discovering what makes your book unique and then being able to communicate that can make the difference between an engaging pitch and an unforgettable one.

Lining Up the Bones: Crafting Your Paranormal, presented by Angie Fox, runs from February 6, 2012 through February 19, 2012

Angie Fox is the New York Times bestselling author of the Accidental Demon Slayer series and the up and coming Monster MASH series (releasing this summer). While researching her books, Angie has ridden with Harley biker gangs, explored the tunnels underneath Hoover Dam and repelled down a wall. She thinks pitching is way harder than all of that. Visit Angie at www.angiefox.com

10 Tips for Attending Writers Conferences

2012-01-11T03:00:00.000-08:00

by Agent Michelle Brower, FOLIO LITERARY AGENCY

1. Go to get feedback on your work in a workshop or instructional setting. Sometimes writers forget that the first and most important step in starting a writing career is actually, you know, writing. If you’re a genre or commercial writer, find out how your work fits the field you’re writing in, find out if anyone is bored, find out the pages where your reader just couldn’t put the manuscript down. If you’re a literary author, find a conference with a great group of faculty who can offer a nuanced reading and challenge you to do better.

2. Go to meet other writers. I know most writers tend to write alone in some cramped closet in a deep dark basement somewhere and rarely ever emerge to see the sun, but a conference is a great place to meet others of your kind. You can share writer’s block stories, bounce ideas around, talk about the process. And when you go home, thanks to the magic of the Internet, you just might have a ready-made critique circle to share your work with.

3. Go to learn about the publishing process. Let’s face it, sometimes publishing can seem a little mysterious and unfathomable. At conferences, there’s often a wide range of publishing personae there: agents of all shapes and sizes, editors from major houses, small publishers, magazine editors, etc. We almost always do some kind of panel, and this is your chance to ask educated questions about how publishing works. Ever wonder who decides what cover a book gets and why? How debut authors get blurbs? How do books get into the front of the book store? Here’s your chance.

4. Don’t expect to get a major book deal and be whisked directly from the conference to Hollywood with a newly fat bank account. It’s perfectly true that some people do sit down with an editor or an agent at a conference and something good comes of it down the line. But to be honest, it’s really rare. The thing that helps the most? Having an amazing book that you’ve worked on until it’s perfect.

5. If you’re pitching, have a book and be a writer. It’s surprising to me how many people pay for an individual pitch session, sit down, start telling me about their unfinished novel, and get really disappointed when they find out they have to complete it before it can be sold. All debut authors (with rare exceptions in certain genres) have to have one full novel that we can sell on the basis of its merits. Nonfiction books need complete book proposals. It sure would be great if you could sell an idea, but you can’t. Also, once a man sat down across from me and started telling me about the novel he had “written” by dictating to his secretary. He had the verbatim transcripts, and he was hoping I would “iron them out” for him. Needless to say, I did not have a good impression of his writing abilities.

6. Don’t be a pushy pitcher. I’ve been pitched in the bathroom. On the treadmill. In an elevator. While trying to eat. Once, in the airport when the conference was over. Now, agents are at these conferences for a reason—we do want to hear what prospective authors want to say, and in fact we are looking for good new material. But think about when you would bothered by talking about work, and don’t pitch to us then. If you didn’t get a chance for any face-time with the agent of your choice at a conference, it is perfectly acceptable to send an e-mail afterward with a “Sorry I missed you at (this) conference” and a query. Just think, then I won’t have to remember you as the person pitching their comic novel while I’m in line for the ladies’ room!

7. Agents and editors are people, too. For the most part, we are nice people who love books and reading. Don’t be overly obsequious, and don’t be overly rude. We are not trying to crush your dreams, nor are we magical beings. Honestly represent yourself and your work with confidence, and we promise to treat you with respect. We realize that you have worked very hard on your book, but we can’t take on everything, and any rejections are not a wholesale rejection of you.

8. Don’t be shy. Conferences are a great place to just talk to other people about what’s going on in the publishing world. It’s very important for authors to be in touch with contemporary writing. Who are the hot authors now? What’s working/not working in commercial fiction? What topics have recently been buzzing in nonfiction, and which already have 5 new books about them? Who is a good publicist to use? How do you start a blog? Take advantage of the collective wisdom of your peers.

9. Don’t bring paper manuscripts to hand out to agents or editors. We have small suitcases. We are probably not going to read your full manuscript right after we meet you. Wait, and follow up after the conference according to agent or editor preference.

10. Come prepared. Know what agents and editors will be at the conference, and research what they represent and edit. Have questions at the ready for panels and round tables. Read some of the work written by the authors on the faculty, and know what to expect from different types of events. If you do your homework on a particular conference and the people attending it, you’ll have a great time!

Check out FF&P's Fantasy on the Bayou Writers' Conference (March 2-4, 2012)!

Revision is My Thing

2012-01-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Laurin Wittig

I'm one of those writers that dread the first draft -- the process of taking the perfect vision of my story out of my head, feeding it through my fingers onto a blank screen where it becomes a pale, messy, distorted reflection of the perfect story I thought I was writing. *shudder* It used to overwhelm me. It was never perfect. Heck, it wasn't even good. I finally had to accept that this is the way my first drafts work. I had to learn to just let whatever happens in that first draft happen. It's the only way I ever hack my way through the first draft jungle. Once that job is done I'm faced with sifting through the chaos to find the true story, the one I really wanted to tell.

For me, this is where the fun begins. I love revisions but I didn't always know how to fix the mess I'd made and so I began my continuing quest to learn how to craft a story. Over a lot of years I've learned many techniques to apply to my manuscripts while revising, but there are two I find the most useful in solving a multitude of problems: scene goals/disasters and sequels.

Every scene I write must have a goal/disaster pair for the point of view character. If I don't have a clear goal and pair it up with a strong disaster I can guarantee my pacing will be off, the conflict will be weak or nonexistent, I may even have the wrong pov character, and the reader won't have anything to worry about. A reader without anything to worry about -- will the goal be achieved? -- has no reason to turn a page. Something as simple as tweaking a goal and/or the disaster is often all it takes to resuscitate a dying scene.

However, there are times where what you have, or what you need, isn't really a scene in that there isn't a goal/disaster. What you need is a sequel. This gives characters an opportunity to reflect on something that has happened to them and form a new plan (ie, goal!). Sequels are particularly useful for getting the emotional layer of your story across to the reader and for sneaking in backstory and motivation. They also help slow down the pacing to give the characters and the readers a chance to take a breath, metaphorically speaking, before diving back into the action. If you are told your characters aren't coming alive on the page, this may be the technique you need to master.

Do you know how to craft a strong goal and a great disaster in every scene? Do you know the structure of a sequel and when to use one? I learned these techniques from a wonderful book called Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham. It's my number one recommended how-to book for writers. However, you can learn these techniques from me in an interactive workshop where you'll learn the hows and whys of the techniques and apply them to your own work so you, too, can master these easy, yet powerful, tools of the writing craft.

Scene CPR: Breathing Life into Ailing Scenes with Scene Goals, Disasters & Sequels, presented by Laurin Wittig, runs from February 6, 2012 through March 4, 2012.

Laurin Wittig is an award-winning author of Scottish historical romances. She has been published by Berkley Publishing, independently, and with Amazon's Montlake Romance line where two of her backlist books will be re-released on Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2012. She has 20+ years in the writing industry as an author, a critiquer, and a creative writing teacher. Her passion is story craft and she loves sharing what she's learned with other writers.

Visit her at LaurinWittig.com.

How to Keep Editors from Hating You

2012-01-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Lauri Blasch

As authors, you naturally want editors to look at your submissions as favorably as possible. But many of you sabotage yourselves without even realizing it. What most of you are unaware of is the volume of work an average editor has on his or her desk at any given time. We often have dozens of manuscripts either waiting to be edited or waiting to be read and accepted or rejected. Consequently, anything you can do as an author to make your submission package easier to read is a big help to us. It also helps you to get a quicker, more favorable reply. Why? It’s simple. The harder a submission package is to read, the less likely we are to read it.

We simply don’t have time to reformat an unreadable manuscript. Nor can we spend time trying to undo whatever cutesy thing you may have done to get our attention. For example, I once got a submission package with a bright red background. The email query letter was bright red, as was the synopsis and even the manuscript. No doubt the author assumed that the color would make her manuscript stand out. And it did. However, it also made it so hard to read and so irritating to my eyes, that I deleted it without bothering to read it beyond the first couple of paragraphs of the query letter. I always feel bad whenever I have to do that because I may have been throwing away a brilliant story. But as much as I strain my eyes on a daily basis, they just weren’t up to reading a bright red submission package. It also told me that this was probably the author’s first manuscript, as experienced authors are usually more professional. If she had been around very long, she would have—or at least should have—learned this kind of gimmick only hurts your chances with most editors.

On the other hand, I have found that I tend to read farther into a submission that is well formatted and easy to read than I might otherwise do, even if I don’t think I want to accept it. Our policy at Black Opal Books is to read at least the first chapter of every submission (except for bright red ones) before we decide to reject it. However, I have found myself reading two or even three chapters of a well-formatted, easy to read submission I don’t particularly like, hoping the story or the writing may get better farther in. On a couple of occasions, this has led to us accepting a submission we might otherwise have rejected because the story did catch my interest in chapter two or three. If those manuscripts had not been so well formatted, the authors would have lost the sale.

In the current economy, authors are finding it harder than ever to find a publisher willing to take a chance on a story. Don’t sabotage your own chances by submitting something that the editor is going to reject on formatting alone. Here are a few tips that can help you:

Be professional, not cutesy—submissions should be black print on a white background. No exceptions.

Check submission guidelines—publishers post them for a reason, one of which is to see how well you can follow instructions. So pay attention and do what they ask, regardless of how silly it seems to you. They won’t thank you for deviating.

If a publisher asks for double-spacing on a manuscript and doesn’t specify the spacing on the synopsis, don’t assume it can be single spaced. Unless there is a specific limitation on the number of pages the synopsis can be, double space it, too.

If you don’t know, ask. Most publishers nowadays have a contact form on their websites that allows you to ask submission questions before you submit. If they do, use the form to ask about anything they don’t explain in their submission guidelines. This will do a couple of things for you. It will show them that you are professional enough to understand how important the guidelines are, and it will also let them know they need to correct the guidelines to answer the questions so authors don’t have to ask.

And lastly, don’t take a rejection so personally. Editors and agents are human. Some stories appeal to us and some simply don’t. It doesn’t mean you are not a good writer. It just means we didn’t like the story. Just because I might reject a story that I don’t think is good enough to sell, it does not mean another editor or agent won’t love it just the way it is. So before you revise your entire manuscript based on the opinion of one editor, get some additional input from another one or two. If two or three editors reject it, especially if they all reject it for the same reasons, it is time to think about revising it. And don’t hesitate to re-submit it to the same editors once you have revised it. They may reject it again without reading it, but if you include in your query that you took their advice to heart—if you really did—and revised the manuscript according to their suggestions, I’m betting they’ll be tempted to take another look, even if only to see if you really did. I know I would.

Professional Manuscript Formatting: Make It Easy For Editors To Say Yes, presented by Lauri Blasch, runs from February 6, 2012 through February 26, 2012

Lauri Blasch has been a professional editor for over ten years, first as a freelance editor then as a non-fiction, technical writing editor and now as an acquiring editor for Black Opal Books. She has a BA in special education and taught disabled as well as gifted children for a number of years before switching to a less-stressful career. She loves working with authors, especially with new authors because they are so willing to learn. She’s a single mother of four pre-teen children. When not working or tending her children, she takes night classes at the local community college, working toward her masters in education.

Fantasy on the Bayou

2012-01-06T03:00:00.000-08:00

We'd like to invite you to join us in historic New Orleans on March 2 – March 4, 2012 for FF&P's 1st conference! The conference will be held at the New Orleans Marriott.
You can register on-line or if you'd prefer to call, the numbers are:
(toll free) 1-888-364-1200 or (local) 1-504-581-1000

Once you've registered for the conference and you want to register for your room, use group code: ffpffpa to receive the discounted price. Rooms are limited, so register at the hotel early if you can.

Keynote Luncheon Speaker — Karen Marie Moning

Karen Marie Moning (rhymes with 'awning') is the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of 12 novels, including the Rita-award winning Highlander novels and the internationally bestselling urban fantasy Fever series. Her books have been published in 21 languages, and her events draw fans from all over the world.

Moning began her career writing paranormal romance set in Scotland but as she became increasingly fascinated with Celtic mythology, she switched genres to Urban Fantasy and location to Dublin, Ireland, so she could focus on the Tuatha de Danann, or Fae--an ancient race of immortal beings who have lived secretly among humans for millennia.

Moning is currently completing a graphic novel for Del Rey, featuring an original story about MacKayla Lane and Jericho Barrons, and has contracted with Random House Publishing Group for three more books set in the Fever universe. She divides her time between the mountains of Georgia and the beaches of Florida.

Conference registration includes access to 25+ workshops, editor/agent pitch sessions (live and virtual), a sit-down luncheon featuring our Keynote Speaker, a casual dinner with raffles, and a booksigning.

Editors:
Melissa Singer from Tor
Angela James from Carina Press
Liz Pelletier from Entangled Press

Agents:
Michelle Brower from Folio
Paul Lucas from Janklow & Nesbit
Elaine Spencer from Knight Agency
Becca Stumpf from Prospect Agency

Virtual:
Renee Rocco from Lyrical Press, Inc.
Donna O'Brien from Crescent Moon Press
Sara Megibow from Nelson Lit. Agency

We are still accepting donations of raffle baskets and raffle basket items, so feel free to pass the word along!

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FEES
(Registration opened October 15, 2011)

Before January 15, 2012:
$250 FF&P Members/Media
$275 RWA Members
$300 General Attendee

After January 16, 2012:
$300 FF&P Members/Media
$325 RWA Members
$350 General Attendee

(click to enlarge schedule)

On Keeping New Year’s Resolutions: Breaking Things Down Into Threes Workshop

2011-12-20T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Beth Daniels, aka Beth Henderson, J.B. Dane

Only days away from the close of the year and so much to do, right? Well, when you get breathing room don’t forget that it isn’t the gifts, the cards, the meals, the parties, the kisses under the mistletoe or at the strike of midnight that is in your future – it’s planning what you’re going to do about the things you’d like to write in 2012!

They say that a bad, and easily broken, resolution is an unspecific statement. You know, something along the lines of “THIS year I will finish that book I’ve been working on”, or “I swear, I’m going to write SOMETHING every day (or week)”. While these sound like they are fixed on a goal, it isn’t nearly as specific as a New Year’s Resolution needs to be, nor as achievable because it is vague. Yes, even the one about finishing the book that has been in production for…well, for HOW LONG now?

Let’s focus on that story though. What’s the hold up? Is it that the characters aren’t acting as you expected or had planned? Trust me on this, they never do. At least really fascinating characters don’t.

Is it that you don’t know what happens next? Or that you do know what happens next but getting there is a problem?

So let’s settle on a better statement for this resolution, hmm? How about that you need a better game plan than in the past?

How about a resolution that says “I’m taking the BREAKING THINGS DOWN INTO THREES workshop at FF&P in February? Yeah, I like that one.

This workshop is a guide to help you along the way, whether when the story is running full out and your fingers are having trouble keeping up with it, or when it’s hit a quagmire and the rope you just tossed simply isn’t long enough to reach the floundering tale.

Have you tried breaking things down into doable or even changeable increments? The Rule of Three is a “law” of long standing and pops up in many disciplines, such as interior design, the composition of color (red, yellow and blue), the arrangement of scenes within plays, graphic layout, and even for Goldilocks and her view of the three bears’ beds (too hard, too soft, and just right). Heck, there are even three pigs, three golden apples, and third time’s the charm!

On February 6, the BREAKING THINGS DOWN INTO THREES workshop throws open the virtual FF&P classroom doors in welcome. Those doors will stay open and welcoming for three weeks (we have a theme here!) before coming to a close on the 26th. During that time we’ll be taking on the many stumbling blocks that pop up during the creation of a piece of fiction – rather like they were part of video game, really. We’re going to take pot shots at them, sometimes blast them all to heck, and stumble, fumble, and scramble our way into a better place when it comes to spinning this tale.

Whether you have a WIP that has been giving you fits or are just getting started on a new project and would like to overcome some of the hazards this time around or are about to launch into your first adventure in fiction writing, BREAKING THINGS INTO THREES could be the story building aid you’ve been looking for.
It sure was the first time I gave the “by the threes” plan a workout!

Breaking Things Down Into Threes, presented by Beth Daniels, runs from February 6, 2012 through February 26, 2012

Beth Daniels writes fiction as Beth Henderson and J.B. Dane and has seen 28 of her novels published. She is also the author of WRITING STEAMPUNK and numerous articles in various e-zines on writing fiction. She’s diversified because she gets bored reading or writing the same sort of tale. Therefore, while her career began with the publication of a romantic-suspense tale, she moved into historical romantic adventure, contemporary romantic comedy, YA, and more recently into the fantasy realm with “The Dragon’s Tale” written as J.B. Dane, which appears in the anthology MOTHER GOOSE IS DEAD from Damnation Books. She is the co-author of LOVING TRIXIE FINE, a Babyboomer fantasy where the heroine’s wrinkle reducer formula erases thirty years worth of hormonal rearrangement as well as those wrinkles. But currently Beth’s heart belongs to Steampunk where storyline deveopments require a gazillion bunch of threes!

Visit her at www.RomanceAndMystery.com.

3 Characterization Tips I learned From Capt. Jack Sparrow

2011-12-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Mina Khan

First, I’m honored to be on the FFnP blog. I have spent many days & nights reading and learning from posts here. I hope my post gives back to readers at least a part of what I have gained.

When I think Pirates of the Caribbean, I think of Captain Jack Sparrow. While there are many twists and turns, snappy dialogue, and adventures in the movies, I would say what people remember are the characters, especially that of Sparrow. Actor Johnny Depp makes the character come to life and be almost more real than our next door neighbor, and as writers we must do the same for our protagonists.

Now Rukh, the hero of The Djinn’s Dilemma (my recent Harlequin release), is a genie assassin who can melt into shadows, fly through the ethereal plane, read his targets’ minds, and control the air. How do you make someone like that real?

After much head banging (my fellow FFnP authors I’m sure are nodding in sympathy), I went back to Jack Sparrow for inspiration (why yes, it involved popcorn) and he reinforced the following tips:

1. Don’t make your character a Mary Sue or average. While Rukh as described above makes for a very manly Mary Sue…he would still be overly-perfect if I left him at that. Readers would sneer at him rather than love him.

On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want to make your character well-polished, but average. Imagine a morning commute in the metro in Washington D.C. packed with pleasant looking, professionally-dressed workers. Which Average Joe will you remember? The one that stands out. Your character should be unforgettable, exciting and unpredictable. Yeah, Captain Jack Sparrow is definitely all that plus more.

So here’s a description of Rukh from the POV of my heroine, Sarah:

Just a hint of his tattoos, a few blue-black tendrils, peeked from the collar of his periwinkle blue shirt. The darker gray silk tie, neatly knotted at his tawny throat, was the straw that broke her. The mix of cool refinement and dangerous wildness left Sarah’s heart beating in her throat, turned her knees weak. She grasped the counter edge for support.

And I gave him a sense of humor & surprising dialogue (Sparrow is a master of saying & doing the unexpected):

She(Sarah) jotted down the order, then forced herself to meet his gaze. “It’s going to be a bit of a wait, we’re short-staffed this morning.” The next words rushed out of her. “And breakfast’s on me.”

“Normally I wouldn’t protest,” he said, leaning closer. “But in public, I’d prefer a plate.”

An image of Rukh, hair untied, licking whipped cream off her navel flashed through her mind, left her staring.

2. Every authentic character –hero, heroine, villain etc. – must believe in something and live by a personal moral code. Sparrow is a pirate and embodies much of the ambiguity the term carries, yet he has a moral compass. That’s what leads him to rescue Elizabeth Swann in The Curse of the Black Pearl, and return to rescue his crew in Dead Man’s Chest, among other things.

Rukh sees himself as taking care of the world’s trash, i.e. taking out the bad guys. The problem is his latest target, Sarah, isn’t bad. That’s what makes Rukh an honorable assassin, that’s what leads him to find out more and more about his unsettling target (Sarah, the heroine) until he ends up falling for her.

3. A hero should be heroic –be courageous even when he’s afraid, do the right thing even if it hurts, and be loyal to his friends or the heroine as the case maybe. At times, Sparrow comes across as selfish or even downright cowardly…yet he always redeems himself. In At World’s End, Sparrow wants Davy Jones’ heart & immortality, but in the end he saves Will instead and gives him the infamous immortality.

In THE DJINN’S DILEMMA, at one point Rukh puts Sarah’s needs ahead of his own and makes a choice that hurts him, makes him lose the very person he wants the most. The man made me cry while I wrote that scene, and then again during edits. A character doesn’t get more real than that.

I’ll be popping in throughout the day and looking forward to questions, comments, and bonding over Johnny Depp!

Mina/Rashda

Mina Khan is a Texas-based writer and food enthusiast. She daydreams of hunky paranormal heroes, magic, mayhem and mischief and writes them down as stories. Between stories, she teaches culinary classes and writes for her local newspaper. Other than that, she's raising a family of two children, two cats, two dogs and a husband.

She grew up in Bangladesh on stories of djinns, ghosts and monsters. These childhood fancies now color her fiction.

You can find her at:
http://facebook.com/Mina.Khan.Author
http://minakhan.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/SpiceBites

The Djinn’s Dilemma

Rukh O'Shay, half-djinn and assassin, is used to taking out the bad guys. But his latest assignment, Texas Journalist Sarah White, is nothing like he expected. A glimpse of her bright aura reveals her gentle spirit, while her beauty makes him long for only one thing—to taste her.

Sarah shares the raw desire to connect with Rukh. He can turn her on with a glance, and satisfies needs she didn't even know she had.

But Rukh had been hired to kill her—and the only way to save her is to find out who wants her dead before someone else finishes the job….

Author Branding 101

2011-12-08T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Kristen Lamb

Today we are going to talk a little bit about a writer’s brand. Want to become more than just an author? Do you want to be an icon, a household name like Stephen King or Nora Roberts? Do you want your name to sell your books so you don't have to? Well, first, write really, really, really great books. Excellent writing is the best thing to do to create an author brand. But, aside from that? To become an author brand, we must understand branding and how it is different for writers.

Branding is vital to any writer who wants to have a career in publishing, yet it often amazes me how many writers don’t understand the process. And that is okay in the beginning. I get it. You guys are writers, not Madison Avenue. But tempus fugit—time is fleeting. The learning curve these days is steep. I am here to show you that, if you grasp branding properly, every marketing effort, every social media endeavor will be magnified exponentially….leaving you more time to write great books.

I'm here to teach you how to work smarter, not harder.

Publishing is more competitive than ever. Agencies want to see strong writing, but they are now also expecting writers to be able to demonstrate an existing platform that can translate into book sales. The Digital Age has also opened up many new publishing choices, so for anyone considering indie publishing or self-publsihing, you guys really need to pay attention. This is one of the many reasons that the earlier you begin building a platform, the better. Yes, you unpubbed writers out there? Start now.

To make matters complicated, there are a lot of well-meaning social media folk happy to lend their services on-line and at conferences. Yet, many of these social media experts fail to appreciate that writers are different. Many practices that work great in Corporate America break down when used to brand an author. Writers are not car insurance and books are not tacos.

This is what makes my book, We Are Not Alone—The Writer’s Guide to Social Media different. I have been a writer and editor for going on ten years and appreciate the unique paradigm an author faces. Your brand will be your foundation, and no matter what anyone says, you are the brand.

This is the largest stumbling block for many writers and even social media folk. Your books are not your brand. Your NAME is the brand--the books are merely some of the ingredients that make up the brand. Prego is the brand of spaghetti sauce. Tomatoes, basil, oregano, etc. are what make up Prego. Make sense? Before social media, successful books were the only ingredients to an author brand. These days? Blogs, tweets, Facebook and all our interactions also contribute heavily to what we eventually call an author brand.

Yet, there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t see some well-intending marketing person advising writers to buy domains with the name of their books or have blogs or Twitter accounts from the perspectives of characters. Want the truth? None of that serves to build our brand as an author, and it is a formula to go crazy and spread ourselves so thinly that we don’t have time left over to produce the product…quality books.

Branding the title of our book whether published or unpublished is a bad idea.

Why do so many marketing folk assume writers need to brand a book? Well, plainly put, it is a really easy mistake to make, because in the traditional business world, these tactics work. Since these guys are marketing experts they frequently don’t understand how publishing works. Thus, they try to give writers the tools that kick butt in business, unaware that they are doing more harm than good. I have even been put in tight spots at conferences because I was teaching contrary to the other social media class down the hall. But that’s okay. We are here to learn.

Why is branding the title of your book a bad idea?

Mainstream social media folk think in business terms. They think, well if I am a business owner, I don’t promote my name, I promote my business. This tactic works great in Corporate America. In business, if I decide to open up a small business, I can go file for a DBA. I know the name of my business.

Say I want to open a dog grooming shop and call it Paw-parazzi. Once I have the green light on the name and the appropriate licenses then I know it is a good idea to go buy that domain for a web page. I also know I need a logo and to send out mailers and e-mails and flyers and Facebook fan pages all with Paw-parazzi. Why? Because I want Paw-parazzi to be the name that comes to mind when anyone needs their pooch shampooed. Paw-parazzi is THE place to give your doggie the treatment she deserves (brand).

Unless Paw-parazzi goes bankrupt, or I sell the shop, or for some reason decide to close the business (one too many dog bites), I know I own the rights to use the name Paw-parazzi. Thus I will promote this name (brand) until I retire, die, sell or go under.

As a writer, it is easy to assume that the book is the product. So, logically, I will want to begin building a platform and promoting my book. Ah, here’s the tar baby, though.

Unless you self-publish, you will have little to no control over the title.

For business reasons, a publishing company reserves the right to change the title at any time, right up to the minute before the book goes to print. Generally the decision to change a title is in the author’s best interests. Publishing houses do not make money unless we writers sell lots and lots of books. Thus, if they change the title, there is a strategic reason for doing so.

I see many unpublished writers running out and buying domains and building web sites for unpublished works. You guys certainly have the right spirit (ROCK ON!), but not the correct focus. If the title of your book changes before the book goes to print, that is a heck of a lot of work down the tubes.

And say the title of your book doesn’t change. If you want to be a career author, then it stands to reason that you will write more than one book. Now you are back at square one. Are you really motivated enough to build separate platforms for every single title you write? There wouldn’t be any time left over to write more books.

Think about your big name authors. Let's take Amy Tan. She wasn’t always a household name. Do you think it would have been a wise use of her time to build web sites and social media pages for Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Hundred Secret Senses, Kitchen God’s Wife…you guys get the point. She probably wouldn’t have had time to write all of these. She would have been too busy marketing :D.

What about self-published authors? Are they any different?

I once had a rather heated Twitter discussion with a person teaching social media marketing to writers. She asserted that if an author was self-published, then she thought it was critical to brand the title of the book. Fair enough. Self-publishing is certainly an option and a great way to break into a larger market. But we still need to look at long-term goals. If you are self-publishing with hopes it will ignite a career as an author, you still need to brand your name. Why? Well, let’s look at this logically.

A lot of self-published authors are going this route in hopes of demonstrating high enough sales to attract the attention of a larger publisher. So say you happen to be successful and sell a good amount of books.

NY comes calling.

If you branded the title of your book and not your name, then you are back in the same conundrum. The publisher reserves the right to change the title. Also, if you want to be a career author and write more than that one book, then you are back at square one for the next book and the next and the next and the...this is where you start drinking directly from the margarita machine.

Agents and editors want to see great books, and they really get excited when those books come tethered to people who understand how to correctly brand. So why aren’t more writers branding correctly? Misinformation accounts for a lot, but fear accounts for more.

Most of the time it is fear that keeps us from using our name. Because we fear failure, rejection, criticism, etc. we hide behind clever monikers, or we emotionally distance behind branding the title of a book. I say, name it and claim it. It is scary, but vital.

When we build everything on our name, we save time and we are also far more resilient when it comes to changes in social media.

Besides, If I told you today that I could hit you with super-duper writer magic dust and guarantee that you would be a huge success, would you still want a moniker or a book title as your brand? Stephen King, Stephenie Meyers, Amy Tan, Nora Roberts, James Rollins, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark are all very proud to use their names. If we want to one day be like them then we need to act like them.

Thanks so much for having me and I really look forward to helping each end every one of you reach your dreams.

Kristen Lamb is the author of the #1 best selling books, "We Are Not Alone--The Writer's Guide to Social Media" and "Are You There, Blog? It's Me, Writer." She is currently represented by Russell Galen of SGG Literary NYC. In her free time, Kristen trains sea monkeys for the purposes of world domination....when she isn't trying to saw through her ankle monitor.

The Top 10 Things I Learned From My First Round of Edits

2011-12-06T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Ruth A. Casie

For a new author, the thought of publisher edits can be intimidating. Review, re-write, re-plot, re-align subtext, and forget if you have action scenes.

My first round of edits reached me while I was getting on a plane at the Las Vegas airport. Paul and I were returning home after a great vacation. The shows were spectacular. I was excited to see what my editor, Denise, had for me. I tried, without success, to read her edits on my android phone before I had to turn it off. I would have to wait another five hours.

Once back home, I read the message and instructions, made a large pot of coffee and dug in. To start, I read all the track changes and comments to get an idea of what lay ahead for me. After 13 days (one day ahead of deadline), I got the edits back to Denise. I found I worked hard, got frustrated, made changes, had several aha moments, and fell in love with Arik, Rebeka and their story, Knight of Runes, all over again.

Here are the top ten things I learned from my first round edits. Go get your coffee and enjoy.

10. Well-meaning friends, who are ‘in the know,’ sometimes don’t know. The advice of a good friend and published author was to remove irrelevant words in order to stay in the action and make things sound crisp and immediate. It’s the way to hold your reader attention. Not, however, when you splice commas. Words such as and and but, are essential, not extraneous.

9. Cut extraneous exposition and let the reader see it. What some people see as extraneous exposition (which I went through and deleted) my editor said was necessary to set up the next scene or action.

8. Don’t give your editor (and reader) a headache by head hopping. Head hopping, I mean real leaps in the same scene, may work for Nora but not for Ruth. Ever.

7. POV is an art. If your POV character can’t see it, hear it, and doesn’t know it then it doesn’t exist. Unless, the other POV character says it or (this was an eye opener) thinks it in his head. Cool heh.

6. Edits are a learning experience and my editor is a fabulous, and patient, teacher. I learned to see patterns, hear echoes, and feel rhythms. It only took the first 100 pages to get there.

5. Immediate voice is much more powerful and compelling than passive voice. Chopping ‘ing’ words makes the action sound immediate. It’s is essential, although, passive voice has its place, but only occasionally.

4. Filler words do not move a scene along. These words can usually be eliminated without changing the meaning and will also make it more immediate.

3. Questions in the readers mind can be provocative. Some of Denise’s comments were questions that were answered in the next paragraph or scene. I made my reader think. Not bad!

2. My deepest apologies to Mrs. X. My high school grammar teacher must be spinning in her grave. I won’t embarrass her family by mentioning her name.

The number one thing I learned from my first round of edits…

Call me crazy but I enjoyed working through Denise’s track changes and comments. She made me think, make decisions, see opportunities, and ultimately she helped me make the story the best it can be and isn’t that what we both want.

Get ready Denise, I’ll be sending a new book soon.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you learned about your edits. Please leave me your email address and one person will be randomly selected to win a $5 (US) Amazon gift card.

Ruth’s Bio: For twenty-five years she’s been writing for corporate America. Encouraged by her family and friends this ballroom dancing, Sudoku playing, aspiring gourmet cook has given way to her inner muse. She’s let her creative juices flow and started writing a series of historical time travel romance stories. Her debut novel, Knight of Runes published by Carina Press is now available. She hopes you read her stories and that they become your favorite adventures.

Ruth’s web site: www.ruthacasie.com
Ruth’s blog: www.ruthacasie.blogspot.com
Ruth’s Twitter: www. Twitter.com/RuthACasie

Knight of Runes

It’s the 21st century and time travel is still a Wellsian fantasy but not for Rebeka Tyler. While on an impromptu tour of Avebury, she takes a misstep at the standing stones, and finds herself in the right place but tossed back into the 17th century. When Lord Arik, a druid knight, finds Rebeka wandering his lands without protection, he swears to keep her safe. But Rebeka can take care of herself. When Arik sees her clash with a group of attackers using a strange fighting style he is intrigued.

Rebeka is desparate to return to her time. She poses as a scholar sent by the king to help find out what’s killing Arik’s land to get access to the library. But as she decodes the ancient runes that are the key to solving his mystery and sending her home, she finds herself drawn to the charismatic and powerful Arik.

As Arik and Rebeka fall in love, someone in Arik’s household schemes to keep them apart and a dark druid with a grudge prepares his revenge. To defeat him, Arik and Rebeka must combine their skills. Soon Rebeka will have to decide whether to return to the future or trust Arik with the secret of her time travel and her heart.

The Truth Will Set You Free

2011-11-29T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Rory Miller

Just finished writing something and I am afraid that most people will see it as dark and depressing, but it isn’t. It, like many truths, is a key to a wonderful freedom. There are a handful of hard truths, very real, very powerful things and it seems that most people’s lives and civilization itself is often a sad and desperate attempt to make these truths less true.

The most famous? Possibly, from the Buddha: “Life is suffering.” Or, my favorite paraphrase from “The Princess Bride”: “Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell something.”

Maybe that’s a big truth and maybe it’s dark and maybe it’s scary, but it is profoundly liberating. Getting handed a shit sandwich with life isn’t that big a deal… but the idea that it’s not normal, that the sandwich of life is supposed to be roast beef with bacon and cream cheese lightly toasted with brown mustard… that’s the part that hurts. The suffering, if it is that, lingers in the gap between the expectation and the reality.

Most humans through most of history have had a pretty rough deal. You don’t see it in America much (no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that the country is awash in poverty and homelessness and violence- the math doesn’t work when the greatest health risk to the poorest Americans include complications from obesity). We are programmed, it seems, to think that our lives are hard, and they are, but only compared to an ideal that never really existed. Things, stuff, money, don’t mitigate suffering, they just focus your imagination on different things to suffer about.

I’m trying not to talk out of both sides of my mouth here. There is real pain. Tasers hurt. Old bone breaks and medically installed hardware hurts in your joints when things are cold and humid. You will lose friends that you love. But most of the suffering comes from elsewhere, from an expectation that joints aren’t supposed to hurt or that friends are eternal. That is the difference between grieving and wallowing. Both are about you, but one is honestly about what you lost and the other is about what you thought you had a right to.

Accepting this truth and a few others allows you to live…more? Harder? Better? It allows you to love harder because you are busy loving instead of whining that things aren’t perfect and love is ‘supposed to be perfect’. It allows you to play and learn getting better every day instead of wasting time and emotion trying to figure out how good you are or if you are ‘good enough.’

What do those phrases even mean? What is a ‘perfect love’? What would it look, feel, taste, like? It can’t be both perfectly smooth and exciting. And ‘good enough’? For what? To who? If you ever perfectly achieved it, then what?

Most of the big truths are like that: the totality of the statement is bleak: “Life is suffering.” “You will die.” But each of them is a key. When you quit wasting energy attempting to evade the inevitable; when you quit building a structure of lies to protect yourself from the truth, you can live at the level of truth.

Caveat emptor, though. It’s really not for everybody.

Weapons, Violence and Wounds, presented by Rory Miller, runs from January 2, 2012 through January 29, 2012

Rory Miller is a seventeen-year veteran of a metropolitan correctional system. He spent seventeen years, including ten as a sergeant, with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Portland Oregon. His assignments included Booking, Maximum Security, Disciplinary and Administrative Segregation, and Mental Health Units. He was a CERT (Corrections Emergency Response Team) member for over eleven years and Team Leader for six.

His training has included over eight hundred hours of tactical training; witness protection and close-quarters handgun training with the local US Marshals; Incident Command System; Instructor Development Courses; AELE Discipline and Internal Investigations; Hostage Negotiations and Hostage Survival; Integrated Use of Force and Confrontational Simulation Instructor; Mental Health; Defensive Tactics, including the GRAPLE instructors program; Diversity; and Supervision.

Rory has designed and taught courses including Confrontational Simulations; Uncontrolled Environments; Crisis Communications with the Mentally Ill; CERT Operations and Planning; Defensive Tactics; and Use of Force for Multnomah County and other local agencies.

In 2008 Rory Miller left his agency to spend over a year in Iraq with the Department of Justice ICITAP program as a civilian advisor to the Iraqi Corrections System.

He has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a blackbelt in jujutsu and college varsities in judo and fencing. He also likes long walks on the beach.

His writings have been featured in Loren Christensen’s "Fighter’s Fact Book 2: The Street," Kane and Wilder’s "Little Black Book of Violence," and "The Way to Blackbelt." Rory is the author of "Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence" published by YMAA.

The Ordinary World

2011-11-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Shona Husk

Last year I went to a two day lecture on the Hero’s Journey put on by Karel Segers of www.thestorydepartment.com. Every stage was demonstrated with film clips (watch Toy Story for an example of the Hero’s Journey).

What I found interesting was that in romantic fiction the first stage of the Hero’s Journey, the ordinary world, is greatly compressed. Authors don’t have pages and pages to build the world, introduce the characters and then get the start of the story where the character’s life is changed forever—also known as the inciting incident. We have one paragraph, maybe two to hook the reader and get into the action.

If we’re trying to world build at the same time this can become a problem. While in film some of the world building is done visually as the character gets into action, in fiction we can’t afford to get caught in pages of description we have to be clever about what we reveal and only sprinkle in the essential pieces. In part this comes from where the story starts.

I like to show the character only moments away from the decision that will change everything. The character doesn’t realize what is about to happen—but the reader is cued to know this event is important even if they don’t know where it will lead. This is the character living in their ordinary world so they aren’t going to be looking at it and describing it in detail. But as they interact with it things will be mentioned in passing. These things need to hint at the bigger world and the bigger conflict that will come once the reader cares enough about the character to read on.

Here are the first two paragraphs of my newest release Dark Vow.

Trouble is like a bastard-horse with a hunger for blood. If it wants you, it’ll get you and take a bite out of your ass. On a good day that’s all it’ll take; on a bad day it’ll take your life. The trouble with trouble is you never know if you’re having a good day or a bad day until after it’s happened. So when a man dressed in black and wearing the gold lightning strike of the Arcane Union Bounty Hunters stood in the doorway of my gun smithy, I knew trouble had found me.

Bounty Hunters never brought good news. Never. I had to get rid of him, politely, so I didn’t end up as fodder for his bastard-horse that was quietly growling out the front. With my husband away it would be at least a day before anyone realized I was gone.

In the opening paragraph we’ve learned the heroine works in a gun smith and a Bounty Hunter has turned up. There is something called a bastard-horse…and the heroine is worried. It’s her fear that allows the reader to empathize even if they’re not privy to all the working of the world yet, and a question has been raised. What does the Bounty Hunter want?

What are some of your tips for slipping world building into the start of a story?

A civil designer by day and an author by night, Shona Husk lives in Western Australia at the edge of the Indian Ocean. Blessed with a lively imagination she spent most of her childhood making up stories. As an adult she discovered romance novels and hasn’t looked back. Drawing on history and myth, she writes about heroes who are armed and dangerous but have a heart of gold—sometimes literally.

With stories ranging from sensual to scorching, she is published with Ellora’s Cave, Samhain Publishing, Carina Press and Sourcebooks. You can find out more at http://www.shonahusk.com

http://facebook.com/shonahusk

http://twitter.com/shonahusk

Dark Vow

Jaines Cord plans to kill the man who murdered her husband, even though killing a Bounty Hunter is said to be impossible. One bullet took away her livelihood, her home and her love. One bullet made by her. Fired from the gun she completed for the Arcane Bounty Hunter.

Obsidian wears the scars of disobeying the powerful Arcane Union. He barely escaped with his life and now lives quietly, in a town the lawmen forgot. When Jaines arrives asking too many questions, he's faced with a decision. Help her or run…again. Obsidian knows that if he flees he'll always be looking over his shoulder. His name is one of the first on the Bounty Hunter's death list.

Yet when Obsidian is offered an opportunity to stop the stone taking over his body in exchange for retrieving the gun, he asks Jaines for her help. Now Jaines must choose: a dead man's vengeance or a living man's hope?

When Husbands or Partners Just Don’t Understand

2011-11-15T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Louisa Bacio

“I read this article about a local woman who I think you could be friends with,” hubby recently said one morning.

I stopped what I was doing and looked at him expectedly. Even at my age, I’m open to meeting new friends. Who doesn’t need more friends?

“She’s also a writer,” he continued.

Even better … another writer.

“She just wrote a history book about Irvine.”

Crash. Screeching halt. What?

OK, I get it, she’s still a writer and I’m sure her book is interesting and she’s a nice person. But a history writer and a writer of erotic romance don’t instantly equal fast friends.

Well, that is unless she’s a writer of the history of erotic romance. Otherwise, she’ll probably not get me.

That said, having friends who understand what you’re going through, i.e. other writers, is particularly valuable. Not everyone gets the craziness that happens within our minds. There also are those genre writers who have been there, done that before. Yes, there are definitely “cliques” within the romance industry, and sometimes inspirational authors may mingle with those who write historical romance, but surely not those who delve into same-sex BDSM … or do they? While those in the erotic realm seem “open” to all forms of writing, that’s not always true across the board.

There’s also a difference between those writers who reflect “reality,” and those who push the boundaries. I’ve always been fascinated with the world of paranormal. I started reading Stephen King at the tender age of 12, and then quickly picked up Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Then there was the fascination with even darker, horror fiction. So for me, FF&P perfectly fits that craving. When someone posts about if “werewolves can do X, Y or Z,” we have answers and opinions! (We don’t scoff.)

And, to push it further into another niche, there’s also something special about having compadres that commiserate with what it’s like to balance writing and home life. I’m being somewhat evasive – for me, it’s kids. It takes a special desire to keep writing when you have the distractions of young children and don’t always feel in the mood to … write!

Fortunately, I’ve found that magic support group, in person via local writing organizations such as the Orange County Romance Writers and also Online. And, some of those “friends” I met through social networking such as Twitter and Facebook. How can you become friends with someone Online? Well, the people who ask such a question have never done so.

These strong and dedicated writers – most of them are women, but there are a few men that I can think of via name – that relate to the obsession of writing, and sharing work with others. They know what a #WIP is, and can relate to wanting to write 1,000 words or better in an hour. And when that magic happens, when you find that tribe that fits, nourish it and cherish it.

And if you need someone to complain to about those who just don’t get it … we’ll be here, too.

Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a few other things to do and my hubby has stayed up way past his bedtime. I need to find some alone-time.

In May 2012, Bacio will teach the Online workshop “De-Mystifying Ménage” for FF&P. http://www.romance-ffp.com/event.cfm?EventID=379

Louisa Bacio writes erotic romance, many of which delve into the paranormal realm. Her fourth full-length novel The Vampire, The Witch & The Werewolf 2: Chains of Silver will be released soon via Ravenous Romance. You can find her online at http://louisabacio.blogspot.com and http://www.facebook.com/louisabacio.

The Vampire, The Witch & The Werewolf 2: Chains of Silver

Adopted at birth, Silver Ashe discovers her blood-brother Trevor Pack is a werewolf, with a vampire and witch for lovers. All her teachings about the evils of the paranormal Others come into question. She runs to a family friend, Nick, for help.

Nick Stake takes his hobby as a vampire hunter personally. He strives to rid the world of evil bloodsuckers. When his best friend’s “kid” sister comes to him for advice, Nick discovers Silver’s more than grown up. He battles his growing desire for Silver and blindly holds true to his convictions.

Once Silver reaches her sexual maturity, she’ll inherit her full genetic heritage and turn into a werewolf. When death comes calling, Silver and Nick must face their darkest fears in order to break free from the chains that bind.

Announcing the 2012 Fantasy on the Bayou FF&P Conference!

2011-11-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

Prepare to spend March 2-4 with your fellow genre writers and fans of all things fantasy, futuristic and paranormal in the immortal city of New Orleans.

Special guests include Karen Marie Moning (keynote luncheon speaker), Bob Mayer, Angela James, literary agents, and editors from NY publishers and e-press.

Hosted at the beautiful New Orleans Marriott Hotel, the conference features 25+ workshops along with pitch sessions and book signings. Whether you're drawn to the wonder of steampunk or determined to learn how to craft a solid pitch, the 2012 Fantasy on the Bayou FF&P Conference has workshops covering those topics and others, including the latest on the future of publishing, what editors want, nurturing an audience, and crime scene forensics.

A trip to New Orleans wouldn't be complete without a party! Attendees will be treated to an awards dinner/banquet where we'll present awards, pin some PROs, and celebrate the greatness that stems from our PAN authors. There's also a strong chance for some night-time strolls through the city to feed your muse for your next novel!

Registration for FF&P members is only $250 USD. Additional information will be accessible through the official FF&P website at romance-ffp.com. The hotel rate is $195/night (plus tax) and will be available to you 2 days before and 2 days after the conference.

Keep watching the website as more details are announced soon.

Getting into Your Character’s Head

2011-11-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Laura Kaye

The feedback I receive from readers and reviewers that most warms my heart is praise of my characters. It’s my characters who speak to me first, who tell me what their story is [plot, GMC], how it would best be told [point of view, verb tense, genre], and when and where it takes place [setting].

For me, everything starts with characters, and what I tend most to write are character-driven stories (as opposed to plot-driven stories). By character-driven stories, I mean those stories that focus on the inner world of the character. What drives him, what scares him, what he most yearns for above all else, and what it is that makes him think he can’t have it—these become central to the plot and to shaping how the characters react to the action elements of the plot.

But how do you get into your character’s head in a way that lets you create compelling characters people will remember, care about and root for?

To answer that, consider the blank character sketch below. I almost never plot (hello, fellow pantsers! LOL), but I almost always write out a character sketch like this one:

Name:

Age:

Appearance:

Unique Physical Traits:

Where born:

Describe childhood:

Where lives now:

Occupation:

Why holds that job:

Overall goal in story*:

What stands in his way of achieving this goal*:

What does he stand to lose, if not successful*:

Greatest flaw or fault:

Greatest strength:

Scars (internal or external):

Habits:

Hobbies:

Hates:

Loves:

Fears:

What triggers fears:

Secret:

Dream:

Why hasn’t he achieved that dream:

Hardest thing to sacrifice:

Biggest sacrifice ever made:

Closest friend he ever had:

What happened to that person:

Closest current relationship:

Three words your character would use to describe himself:

What does he praise about himself:

What would others praise about him:

What would be the best situation your character could be in:

What would be the worst situation your character could be in:

Undeniably, plot and character are intertwined in any great story, but only the three starred questions on the character sketch explicitly relate to the action and forward motion of the plot. The rest tell you how the character thinks about the plot and how he’ll approach it and try to achieve it. Now, a more plot-driven writer might argue that what the character hates, or what secrets he has, or what sacrifice he’s made could all relate to the plot—and they’d be right. But, for our purposes here, those kinds of traits are fundamental to who this character is as a person. What their emotional make-up is. What’s going on inside their brain and heart that leads them to make one choice over another. To write memorable characters readers love, the author has to know the character’s emotional landscape inside and out. Some of what you come to learn about your character might never even make it into the story—but you as the author need to know it nonetheless.

You should consider your first pass through a sketch like this as a first draft. Complete it and tape it over your writing space. If you’re like me, you will learn more and more about your character as you write. As you learn new things that go deeper and deeper into your character, add them to the sketch.

For example, your first time through, you might respond to “Hate” with something like, “Hates the Evil Vampire Lord, who killed his whole human family and turned him into a vampire against his will.” Okay, great. That tells us a lot about the bad things that happened to your character in the past and what has injured him. But notice it doesn’t tell you how that made him feel. If you go deeper, you might add that he felt guilt for surviving when his family didn’t, grief at their loss, humiliation that he couldn’t stop the attack, and despair that he’ll never have a chance at family again. You might learn that what he really hates is himself, and that’s way, way deeper than hating the villain—because after all, villains are easy to hate.

For me, character sketches that I continue to flesh out are a great way to get into my characters’ heads, and are a great tool for helping to create three-dimensional, emotionally deep and contradictory characters who are relatable, sympathetic, likeable (even if they don’t like themselves), and able to rise to the occasion when the chips are down. Compelling characters are key to giving your readers a satisfying emotional payoff, so finding ways to create the most memorable characters you can will lead to writing gold.

If you already use character sketches, what do you feel they do for you in your writing? If not, what questions do you have about this approach? I’d also be curious to hear your take on character-driven versus plot-driven writing, and how that relates to your own stories.

Thanks so much for reading,

Laura Kaye

A multi-published author of paranormal, contemporary and erotic romance, Laura Kaye’s hot, heartfelt stories are all about the universal desire for a place to belong. Laura is the author of the bestselling contemporary romance and award-nominated HEARTS IN DARKNESS and the bestselling and award-winning paranormal romance FOREVER FREED (NJRW Golden Leaf Award for Best Paranormal of 2011), as well as an erotic romance novella, JUST GOTTA SAY. Her fourth book, contemporary fantasy romance NORTH OF NEED, is the first in the 4-book Hearts of the Anemoi series. Laura lives in Maryland with her husband, two daughters, and cute-but-bad dog, and appreciates her view of the Chesapeake Bay every day. Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Newsletter SignUp

WANT TO WIN NORTH OF NEED? The North of Need Book Launch Blog Tour runs through November 20. A giveaway everyday!

North of Need

Her tears called a powerful snow god to life, but only her love can grant the humanity he craves...

Desperate to escape agonizing memories of Christmas past, twenty-nine-year-old widow Megan Snow builds a snow family outside the mountain cabin she once shared with her husband, realizing too late that she's recreated the very thing she'll never have.

Called to life by Megan's tears, snow god Owen Winters appears unconscious on her doorstep in the midst of a raging blizzard. As she nurses him to health, Owen finds unexpected solace in her company and unimagined pleasure in the warmth of her body, and vows to win her heart for a chance at humanity.

Megan is drawn to Owen's mismatched eyes, otherworldly masculinity, and enthusiasm for the littlest things. But this Christmas miracle comes with an expiration--before the snow melts and the temperature rises, Megan must let go of her widow's grief and learn to trust love again, or she'll lose Owen forever.

Role Modeling as a Way to Writing Success

2011-11-08T03:00:00.000-08:00

Please welcome guest blogger Kelly L Stone

One of the ways to use the power of your subconscious mind to help you achieve your writing goals is to give it a “template” to follow, or a guide in the form of a Role Model that your conscious mind recognizes and understands. To do this, choose an author who has achieved the type of success you are going for and work to emulate the traits and habits of that author as best you can. Following in another’s footsteps gives you a guide for your own daily behavior as well as guideposts for your writing and writing career.

Role modeling is not copying another person or trying to be their clone; it’s simply using the qualities of another writer you admire as a touchstone to keep you moving ahead toward your own success.

When using Role Modeling, select traits and qualities in another writer that you admire and use those as a springboard for your own behaviors. Choose behaviors, attitudes, work habits, and other elements of another writer’s life that represent success to you and strive to emulate these things in your own way. It’s not necessary to know your Role Model personally; for instance, many authors post their writing schedules and their own paths to success on their websites, or in their books. Read these, and then pick out the habits and success traits of your Role Model that you want to emulate.

Let me give you an example. Several years ago I attended a large writing conference. Many attendees were wearing buttons with WWND? inscribed on them. I asked what the acronym stood for and was told it meant “What would Nora do?” meaning what would bestselling author Nora Roberts do. These button wearing aspiring authors were using the ideal of Nora Roberts as a touchstone for their own behaviors and actions as they strove toward their own writing success. For instance, when they didn’t feel like writing, the button reminded them to ask themselves what Nora Roberts would do when she didn’t feel like writing. The answer of course is that she probably writes no matter how she feels. And so forth.

In a similar way, you are working to pick an author you admire and ask yourself “What would Author X do?” It’s a good way to stay focused on your daily and long term writing goals.

A Composite Writer

An easy way to use Role Modeling is to create a composite writer. You probably have several authors that you admire; simply combine the traits and habits that these successful authors possess and strive to emulate those.

Perhaps you learned from Author X when you heard her speak at a conference that she writes Monday through Friday and takes weekends off to be with her family. So the habit of writing five days per week would be something that you want to incorporate into your composite writer Role Model. Maybe you read that Author Y was rejected three hundred times before he sold his first novel. The trait that you would want to list on your ideal composite might be persistence, or tenacity, or believing in self.

This ideal composite represents the type of writer you’re trying to become. It gives you a springboard to use as a jumping off point for your own success by guiding and directing your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This version of Role Modeling is a great tool for both aspiring and established authors because it allows you to take traits and habits from several writers and incorporate those into your own writing lifestyle.

For more information on the many uses of Role Modeling to achieve writing success, refer to Chapter 8 in LIVING WRITE: The Secret to Bringing Your Craft Into Your Daily Life.

Question for discussion: Who is your Role Model and what traits or habits of that author will you start emulating in your writing life?

©Kelly L Stone

Leave a comment by Friday, November 11th for a chance to win a 15 page critique from Kelly L. Stone!

No Matter How Busy You Are, You Can Find Time To Write!, presented by Kelly L. Stone, runs from January 9, 2012 through February 5, 2012

Kelly L. Stone started a successful writing career while holding down a full time job. She then wrote Time To Write (Adams Media, January, 2008) to show other aspiring writers how to do it, too. Her novel, Grave Secret (Mundania Press, September, 2007) was called "powerful" and "well written" by Romantic Times Book Reviews. Her latest book is LIVING WRITE: The Secret to Bringing Your Craft Into Your Daily Life was released in October 2010.

Famous Hauntings

2011-10-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Please welcome guest blogger Em Peters

My favorite holiday, Halloween, is coming up, and with the focus on costumes, decorations and all things spooky, I started wondering about paranormal activity. As an author of paranormal romance, this is also one of my preferred topics. So I thought I’d dig around to see what new stories I could come up with.

The Tower of London

One of the best known hauntings of this scene of murders, executions and poisonings is that of Anne Boleyn. She lost her head on Tower Green after a very stormy interlude with the King. Why wouldn’t she be seen carrying her head tucked beneath her arm? During WWI, a sergeant serving with the Artist’s Rifles was on duty the night before several spies were to be executed. Before Carl Lody was executed, the sergeant claimed to see the ghost of Anne Boleyn wearing a filmy white dress with a ruff.

The Tulip Staircase

In the Queen’s House at the Naval College of London, footfalls were often heard traversing the staircase at night. In 1966, the Reverend Hardy and his wife used time-lapse photography in hopes of capturing this figure. This is what they got…

Is that the glimmer of a ring we see on the ghost’s hand?

Dudleytown, CT

An abandoned 18th century village in Connecticut, Dudleytown is one of America’s most intriguing scenes of haunting. The first settler in Dudleytown was thought to be cursed. His family was reputed to be descendents of a Lord in England who was executed with Lady Jane Grey, and also said to be the carriers of Bubonic Plague. Insanity, murder and suicide were staples of life in Dudleytown (and I thought my small town was filled with crazies!).

In the 19th century, ghosts and apparitions began to appear to the inhabitants of this village. One family who moved away was wiped out by Indians. A woman was struck by lightning and killed, and her husband went crazy shortly afterward. Corpse mutilations were reported, and soon the villagers began to give up on the town.

During the 1920’s, a prominent doctor set up a summer home in the abandoned town. One day, upon coming home, he found his wife laughing hysterically. She said while he was gone, the ghosts and demons had visited her. When they returned to their original New York residence, his wife took her life.

Edgar Allen Poe House

Poe’s house, which was rented from his aunt during the 1830’s, was located on Amity Street in Baltimore. The attic room where he lived is said to be so small, an adult has difficulty standing upright in it. During a “slum clearance” in 1939, the house was nearly demolished. But the Edgar Allen Poe Society saved it. One of the most interesting things to be seen there today is a portrait of Poe’s wife that was painted from her corpse!

In the 1970’s, the doors and windows reportedly opened on their own. A neighbor called the police after he saw strange lights in the upper floors of the house. In 1835, Poe’s wife did die in the house, and visitors to her room were tapped on the shoulder. A heavy-set woman with grey hair has been seen wandering the rooms.

And as early as 1999, local residents of the neighborhood have looked up at the house, only to see a figure of a man seated at a writing desk in the window.

Have you ever experienced a strange sighting? I’ll tell you mine. As a child of about four, I stayed the night with my grandmother. In the very tall window of her bedroom where I slept, I saw the figure of a woman dressed in long blue, fluttering robes. She drifted across the windowsill and extended a hand to me.

To this day the image is very vivid in my mind. Later when I told my grandmother, she just nodded and looked toward the window. Later I learned several of my aunts had seen the same woman in the same window during their teen years!

I’d love to hear from you. Tell me about a haunting!

Em Peters
www.empeters.com

Moon Child

When eight-year-old orphan Jack spies an otherworldly girl seated in the crook of a cherry tree, he’s instantly smitten with the dark waif known as the “Moon Child.” Over time they become inseparable and the steel tendrils of tenderness take hold of Jack, especially on nights of the full moon, when she seeks sanctuary in his bunk, begging him to silence the voices she hears.

Frantic to find a way to help, he is thwarted by family at every turn. By the time he’s an adult, his determination to uncover the secret drives him to defy the family’s strict orders and he learns his childhood love has transformed into the bonedriven need to be part of her life in a brand new way.

To free her from the life she fears, he first must trust himself. Only then can he break the pact naming the woman he loves as Guardian of the Indian Six Nations, which forces her to wander the night protecting their peoples and ensuring the Montgomery family’s prosperity, but to her, means certain death.

Good Like a Bad Country Song

2011-10-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

Please welcome guest blogger Jeffe Kennedy

I listened to a radio show once – not on a country station – but on NPR, I’m pretty sure, about the science of country music. See, they’d actually done these studies to determine what people liked to listen to on their favorite country stations. The most salient finding revealed that the songs people rated as their most favorite, an equal number of people would rate as the songs they hated the most. The songs that people rated as neutral or mediocre, though, were rarely chosen as wonderful or awful. Now, it’s not a surprise, I’m sure, that a hated song coming on the radio prompted people to turn the dial. Even though an equal number of people would be thrilled to hear the song, all their shadow-selves would drop out. Meanwhile, if a song is meh, people would take no action.

You can see where this is going, right? As a result of these studies, country music stations went to playing music that created no strong reaction, so people wouldn’t change the dial.

I think about this a lot with writing. We all have this idea that we’d like to have our work universally loved. We have this fantasy that people will read our new book and shower it with praise. Five-star reviews will rain down like manna from the heavens and small children will dance in the playgrounds singing happy songs about us. When we see a negative review, we feel like we’ve failed somehow. Like that’s a bad thing.

I’d like to put forth that getting strongly negative reviews says just as much about the strength of our stories as the strongly positive ones. It means we accomplished something. People don’t react strongly to nothing. And, according to the studies, for every person who hates it, there is another who loves it with equal fervor.

I’m reminding myself of this with my new release from Carina Press, SAPPHIRE. Granted the topic isn’t for everyone. Still, some of the early reviewers don’t like it at all. Other people are writing to me, saying how much they love it. One reviewer hated my hero with a fiery passion. I started to feel bad about it, then I saw that on the next book she said “she could barely remember what happened” in it. And I thought to myself, “Aha!” I would much rather have the dramatic reaction over the barely remember one.

It’s nice to have your song played on the radio, but if it’s only there to keep people from waking up and looking for something more, then is that what we really want?

I think not. It’s time to embrace the negative review for what it is: a visceral response to something real and vital.

That’s what I want to create.

Jeffe took the crooked road to writing, stopping off at neurobiology, religious studies and environmental consulting before her creative writing began appearing in places like Redbook, Puerto del Sol, Wyoming Wildlife, Under the Sun and Aeon. An erotic novella, Petals and Thorns, came out under her pen name of Jennifer Paris in 2010, heralding yet another branch of her path, into erotica and romantic fantasy fiction. Jeffe lives in Santa Fe, with two Maine coon cats, a border collie, plentiful free-range lizards and frequently serves as a guinea pig for an acupuncturist-in-training.

Find her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/jeffe.kennedy) and Twitter (@jeffekennedy) or visit her at her website http://jeffekennedy.com/.

Sapphire

A successful executive, M. Taylor Hamilton is on track with her ten-year plan. Too bad her personal life consists of hitting the gym and grocery shopping.Enter the seductive Adam Kirliss. They may have a working relationship, but everything changes at an office party when he handcuffs her to the rail of a yacht.

Taylor writes the adventure off as too much champagne, but when Adam challenges her to a date, she agrees to meet up with him. And follow his rules. They share a night of exquisite intimacy, brimming with both pain and pleasure. But afterwards, fearful of losing her heart, Taylor pulls back emotionally.

Adam is determined to prove that she longs for the loss of control he can give her – and the passionate release it provides. How can he make her see that he wants her, and not just her body?

The Seven Deadly Sins of Paranormal Romance

2011-10-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

Please welcome guest blogger Stephanie Draven

While I’m sure I’ve committed one or two of these myself, if I were the goddess of the paranormal romance universe, I would decree the following seven deadly sins:

SLOTH: Info Dumps. Nothing turns me off faster than a book that starts off with a long narrative explaining all the world building. Info dumps are lazy. They’re bad form. The details of your world should come to light slowly, layer upon layer, immersing the reader in the experience. For hints on how to do this, paranormal romance writers should study the best written fantasy.

LUST: Fetishism of the Supernatural. There’s a tendency for paranormal romance writers to fetishize the supernatural elements in the same way that science fiction writers sometimes fetishize the buttons and gadgets of their worlds. That your character is a werewolf isn’t all that interesting in and of itself. Not being a furry, I’m not turned on by long descriptions of fangs and silver-grey coats. And while the fact that your hero can identify anything with his superior sense of smell lends flavor to his persona and reality to your world, it’s not actually characterization. Obsessing on the blood sucking, the mysterious brotherhood, and the magical abilities may appeal to other readers who share this fetish–but it isn’t storytelling. There has to be more to hold the book together than a collection of neato cool superpowers. Paranormal has a place, but don’t use it as a crutch.

GLUTTONY: Big Chunks of Boring Dialog Meant to Convey Realism. Writing teachers everywhere tell budding young authors to listen to real dialog and use it as a model for what their characters should say. This only gets you so far. In real life, people wander off on tangents. They pause and hem and haw. In short, they bore the pants off one another. Why would you want to do that to your reader? Paranormal romance characters live extraordinary lives. We don’t have to hear them talk about their car trouble or what kind of ice cream they’re going to eat unless this has some bearing on the plot, or conveys something about their character, or is a delightful little detail sparingly tossed into the mix. Real life conversations can go on for hours. Conversations in fiction need to be tight and lean! Never overindulge.

GREED: Too Many Speculative Elements. The best paranormal romance takes the world as we know it, or the past as we imagine it, and twists one or two crucial elements, following the repercussions from those changes like ripples on a pond. The worst paranormal romance turns itself into a carnival for every strange and unexplained myth, magic, and phenomenon in the cosmos. Elves and vampires, mining together on Epsilon 4 with space aliens who are ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West in a kingdom called Oz…readers need to be able to focus. In a world where everything is possible, what is truly at stake? (A perfect example of how too much of a good thing can ruin a series, is the beautiful television series LOST which started out with an intriguing premise, but eventually piled so many new paranormal elements onto the stack that the whole thing collapsed under its own weight, bleeding viewers and disappointing fans.)

WRATH: Violence Overload. Most paranormal romance follows the trend of urban fantasy to put existential concerns at the forefront. It’s the fate of the whole world, country, city, species, brotherhood, or pack at stake. It’s gotta be bloody, too. A struggle for survival. Just once, I’d like to see a good secret baby vampire romance or a simple mistaken identity story between witches, or a marriage of convenience between werewolves. At the very least, I’d like to see interpersonal conflicts that focus on a developing relationship at the center of the book, rather than the danger and violence.

PRIDE: A Glossy of Terms. Look, if you want to put a glossary of terms at the back of the book for curious readers to look up terms as they arise, go for it. But putting it at the front of your story signals to me that you think you’re just too special to weave your special special language into your special special special book. It says that artful exposition is something paeans must use, but you are too good for it. You will make your readers actually look it up instead of being able to figure it out in context.

ENVY: Mary Sue Characters. We all want to be six foot bombshells who can kick butt in high heels, smite evildoers, and capture the heart of the sexiest angel ever to fall from heaven. But such heroines can’t be all wish fulfilment, quick-witted, never afraid, never at a loss for a words, and always right. It’s held as a given in paranormal romance circles that your hero can be a bastard but your heroine can’t be a bad girl. However, a reader can’t love her if she’s perfect. Put some dents in her armor and let the hero call her on her bullshit once in a while.

Stephanie Draven is currently a denizen of Baltimore, that city of ravens and purple night skies. She lives there with her favorite nocturnal creatures–three scheming cats and a deliciously wicked husband. And when she is not busy with dark domestic rituals, she writes her books.

Stephanie has always been a storyteller. In elementary school, she channeled Scheherazade, weaving a series of stories to charm children into sitting with her each day at the lunch table. When she was a little older, Stephanie scared all the girls at her sleepovers with ghost stories.

She should have known she was born to hold an audience in her thrall, but Stephanie resisted her writerly urges and graduated from college with a B.A. in Government. Then she went to Law School, where she learned how to convincingly tell the tallest tales of all!

A longtime lover of ancient lore, Stephanie enjoys re-imagining myths for the modern age. She doesn’t believe that true love is ever simple or without struggle so her work tends to explore the sacred within the profane, the light under the loss and the virtue hidden in vice. She counts it amongst her greatest pleasures when, from her books, her readers learn something new about the world or about themselves.

Stephanie also writes historical fiction as Stephanie Dray and has a series of forthcoming novels from Berkley Books featuring Cleopatra’s daughter.

Dark Sins and Desert Sands

Wrongfully accused and broken by torture, an American soldier transforms into a mind-controlling minotaur bent on revenge…

Escaping a hellish Syrian prison, U.S. serviceman Ray Stavrakis emerges with uncanny powers and an eerie ability to morph into a mythical Minotaur, half-man, half-bull. Only one woman can prove his innocence and soothe the savage beast inside–the same woman who’d driven him to the brink of insanity with her cool-eyed interrogation and her hot-blooded sensuality.

But Vegas psychologist Layla Bahset has no memory of Ray or her past. Only a feeling of being stalked by a nonhuman predator. Is it Ray…whose eyes condemn her soul even as his hands ignite her body? Or is another evil force hunting her down like prey?

Now nothing can stop Layla from remembering what she really is…and what her evil creator has planned for her and her soldier lover…