The HEA Cafe

Banned Book Week runs from September 29th through October 6^th. Over the next couple of days on my personal blog (http://monicaburns.blogspot.com/), I’ll be posting brief blurbs about books I’ve read over the years that have been banned or burned in places throughout the world. On Thursday, I’ll talk about actual book burnings. And stay tuned through out the week as there will be a surprise coming on Friday.
1984
by George Orwell

This book about Big Brother and its political themes was banned in the USSR and challenged in Florida based on what challengers considered pro-communist and sexual themes throughout the book.

For the book synopsis and purchase information, click here.

Monica

Monica Burns – http://www.monicaburns.com | http://www.myspace.com/monicaburns
Mirage, Samhain, 10/07 | Dangerous, Samhain 03/08
Come Enjoy the Ahh…Sensation

Once upon a time I decided I was going to write books that people would love. I soon discovered I was very good at starting stories, but for some inexplicable reason, once started, they didn’t just keep going on their own.

Thinking perhaps I wasn’t starting them right, I did more research, created fuller and more original characters, and did everything in my power to begin my stories better. But just like airplanes before the Wright Brothers, they’d come crashing down to earth Every Single Time (around chapter three).

The truth was, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t understand Conflict; I wouldn’t recognize a Plot Point if it jumped up and bit me; I’d never heard of POV, was unaware of the Danger of Flashbacks, and thought author intrusion was Just Fine. In fact, it was under such Delusions that I began to write a story about a puritan heiress and a noble-turned highwayman that was set during England’s Restoration period.

This would be my practice book. It didn’t need to be perfect, but it had to have characters that were well drawn, a plot, lots of sex, and (of course) a happy ever after. As best as I can tell, I started it sometime in 1994. By May of 1996, having discovered I was a plotter, I’d managed to write nine chapters. Okay, so that wasn’t going fast, but it was much more than I’d accomplished on any manuscript in the past, and during that time I’d also been taking care of my mother who was dying of cancer, raising my family and working full-time.

Almost five years later I was only up to Chapter Fourteen. We’d moved. I’d stalled leaving my characters in a cold courtyard for almost nine months (for which they have still not forgiven me), restarted and revised several times, but . . . I was still writing. I’d written a first kiss, my first love scene, and discovered how much I didn’t understand my heroine. I’d also pondered the concept of voice and had the first three chapters final in the Emily contest. However, it was becoming clear that in order to finish the book, I was going to have to torture my characters, make them grow, and learn a lot more about the function of the comma.

By April of 2003, I had typed The End. I was entering contests with some success, submitting queries, pitching to editors and agents and . . .

getting rejected.

Which was okay, right, because it was my practice book? Although, somewhere between the afternoon where I’d fleshed out the premise and the day I realized it was done, it had become a Real Story. A story that needed to be Read (and loved) By Others. A story I would keep sending out until it sold.

Unfortunately the historical market had cooled off while I took eleven years to write the book. Maybe it hadn’t just cooled. Maybe it was really frozen. It was heartening to get personal rejections from editors. To get keep me in mind for another project from agents, but it also sucked.

And then one day I read about the American Title contest and had a hunch that might be a good way for my characters to find other folks who would love them. So, I sent it the manuscript. When the finalist email came almost exactly two years ago it brought with it the possibility of publication. For the next six months, my characters and I lived with that very real hope. In the end we made it almost to the final round.

I got to work on another book. The Raven’s Revenge languished on my hard drive. After all, it was my first book. First books don’t get published often. I’d moved on from writing historical romance and was now working on a young adult and an erotic women’s fiction.

Then one day a friend of mine asked to read it. She’d voted for it in the contest and that had got her all curious about it. I balked. I equivocated. (After all she wasn’t a romance reader.) In the end, I finally said yes.
She wrote me to tell me she loved it, in fact it had revived her marriage.

I was stunned. I was elated. I realized I needed to keep looking for a publisher and dug it off my hard drive. In almost no time at all, it was accepted by The Wild Rose Press and is coming out as an ebook this winter. It will be published in print in the summer of 2008.

If there’s a moral to this story it’s don’t quit. Books aren’t published unless they are finished (as in completed and done). They can’t be contracted if they aren’t sent to editors. And happy-ever-after doesn’t come easy, but it does come.

Hi everyone! This is my first post in the HEA Cafe. I’m very excited to be here. I’m going to be talking about using two pen names.

The conventional wisdom is to pick a genre and a name and establish yourself there before branching out into other genres and using other names. So, did I follow conventional wisdom? Nope. Some imp of perversity pinched me and I now have two pen names in two genres. Actually, since the two books I sold were so different I didn’t want any of my readers to get content shock.

 As Darcy McKenna, I write romantic suspense. My debut novel is out currently in e-book format and will be out in print October 19th from The Wild Rose Press. The premise of FATED LOVE is soul mates. And what happens if someone who isn’t your soul mate believes he is.

As Renee Russell, I write historical fiction with a literary slant. My debut novel as Renee came out this past January. KATE’S PRIDE is a cross between Gone With The Wind and To Kill A Mockingbird.

So, now I’m out there in the real world and the internet world trying to build a base for two different names at the same time. That can be a little confusing for me. I have to make sure I write down which name I’m promoting at a given time. Am I Darcy for this promotion or am I Renee? Or am I both? Gah!!!

I actually had two separate websites for a brief period, but that became a problem because there’s not enough time in the day to work my day job, write more novels, promote the two that are out there and try to keep up with two websites. So I contacted my web host company and asked them to walk me through the process to fix it so that no matter which name or website is entered into the search the person will end up at one website. That’s worked out much much better.

So, what do y’all think? Have I made my life that much harder by using two pen names at the beginning of my career? I know there are others out there who have done this too. How is it working out for you?

 Darcy

aka Renee

www.darcymckenna.com

www.reneerussell.com

This week, I received copies of my November Kimani Romance, TO LOVE A KNIGHT, the second in my The Knight Family Trilogy.  Immediately, I ripped open the box and stared, for I-don’t-know-how-long, at the sparkling shiny new cover.  I started to tremble with excitement and slowly picked one up.  I sat, opened the book and read the prologue and first few chapters.

When I finally closed the book, I could not help but wonder.  Did I really write that?

I had…and I realized something at that moment.  I was growing as a writer.  My words flowed smoother.  The few lapses were no longer there.  I had somehow moved from a hesitant cautious newbie into a writer whose words breathed confidence and experience.

Almost two years have passed since my first book, SLOW MOTION went on sale.  Four books later and a new contract being negotiated, I’m becoming someone who not only writes by somone who knows his craft.  During the years that have passed since that first flawed effort, I’ve done everything possible to learn the business of writing and improve my craft.  Thought I still have a long way to go, I know I’m a better writer.

Of course, I don’t love everything about writing.  I hate deadline; I hate the fact that I have fives stories working themselves out inside my head and not being about to write faster, and I hate the fact that African-American authors are often treated like the ugly stepsister of romance by publishers, authors and readers.  However, I don’t want to talk about that stuff right now.  I just want to pamper myself and share the joy of being part of a noble but misunderstood genre.

I know that there are other newly published authors out there who know exactly what I’m talking about.  And to the unpublished author, never, never, give up on your dream.

Of course, I know there will be more deadlines and wordcount changes and all that goes with being a published author.

But I will continue to dream…and dream big dreams.

So, who else works at a radio station besides the disc jockeys? Trust me, you can have a lot of fun here, too….

As you read this, you’ll be able to tell where some of my deepest empathies lie. My husband is a disc jockey (who did make a dreaded three-year foray into sales – brr!), and I worked for seven years as a copy writer, working closely with the traffic department. So I may write with a certain bias, but this is the way I see –

Sales reps: They sell the commercials that keep the radio station afloat and everyone’s salaries paid. They’ll remind you of that, too, when they come in with that commercial after the daily deadline that absolutely has to be on the air tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong – like the morning show host, these folks range from arrogant so-and-sos to glad-handing charmers … but it’s their commission that’s on the line, and they’ll do just about anything to get that spot on the air. Some of them really struggle, too – the newest rep is the low man on the totem pole, who’s inherited the accounts that don’t pay off, and they have to go scrabbling through the community for SOME business that the other reps haven’t already sold or tried to sell to a dozen times. Try to argue with a sales rep, and you’ll usually lose, because management doesn’t want to turn down those advertising dollars either. If you ever need more conflict in a radio story, just throw in a sales rep. They can be really nice – they just don’t always relate well to certain realities, like time, space, and, well, reality. And those last-minute spots? They very often have to be re-cut, because they’re missing some minor detail – like, say, the business’s correct name or phone number.

Traffic department: Not to be confused with the people (usually off-site) who call in the traffic reports for drivers, these people work within the station, scheduling those commercials the sales reps bring in. They often work long hours to make this happen.

Copy writer: This is generally regarded as a luxury item. Many stations don’t have one. If they don’t, sales reps usually write the commercials, or sometimes the jocks. A copy writer’s job is to turn a sales rep’s copy instructions into understandable English and try to persuade them that the client really shouldn’t try to throw in every piece of information but the kitchen sink, or the listener won’t remember ANY of it. Can often be found trying to track down the rep who just fled the building, in search of the correct pronunciation to the client’s name, or the missing digit of a 6-digit phone number. In my case, the copy writing position also included the duties of….

Production director: Again, a luxury item, usually combined with some other job. I found a LOT of my job was not just writing the commercials, but chasing after problems with the ones that were already on the air. The ones hawking a Christmas sale, still scheduled to run on December 26^th … the one where an agency sent several dubs, and we were running the wrong version … the one that some ambitious new jock chose to voice in a foreign accent for no reason except to show his versatility … I worked very closely with the traffic department, who would give me the heads-up on some of those expiring Christmas spots. Let me tell you, a radio station on the afternoon of December 24^th is a lonely place to be.

Engineer: Ever see Nick Burns, Your Company’s Computer Guy, on Saturday Night Live? Most engineers are like that. They know more than you would ever want to know about incomprehensible technical stuff, like what’s wrong with the studio’s sound board or the transmitter – and most of them won’t let you forget it. When you can reach them, anyway. A lot of them work on an “on-call” basis – that technical expertise is pretty expensive, after all – and they can be hard to get hold of in case of an equipment meltdown. Sometimes there’s an on-site engineer, but the personality type is USUALLY the same.

Owners/management: Even in the days before most radio stations were owned by big corporations, the owners were usually from somewhere out of town, and rarely seen. The same holds true of corporate CEOs. If you do see an owner, or someone from the corporation, chances are change is in the air: a new owner, a new music format, a station manager who’s about to disappear. The station manager is on site and oversees the daily operations of the station while reporting to those elusive owners. The station manager may not be very accessible – he or she usually deals primarily with the office staff, or maybe a program director or sales manager who’s in the hot seat for low ratings or sales. Not ALWAYS the case … but often.

Whew. I think that covers most of it, although more details keep creeping into my head. When you get down to it, I could probably write a book on radio. Come to think of it, I have.

Hope you’ve had fun this week. I know that not many of you are likely to run out and write a radio-based book, but if a character who’s involved with a radio station needs to make a cameo appearance, now you have some of the basics.

So, to wrap up the week, be sure to let me know if you have any questions about something I might have left out. And if you come up with a radio-related question later on down the road, you’re welcome to track me down!

Sierra Donovan
LOVE ON THE AIR, Avalon Books
www.sierradonovan.com