The HEA Cafe

Archive for May, 2009

Today is my day to blog, and I didn’t have a topic until I learned that Angela James of Samhain Publishing had her workshop on digital publishing rejected by RWA for the 2010 National conference set in Washington, DC this coming July. According to Romancing the Blog ( Read here) and the Galaxy Express ( Read here) there aren’t any digital publishing workshops on the ticket. This topic’s not yet hit the pages of Dear Author or Smart Bitches, but I imagine it will in the next couple of days.

RWA’s decision really confuses me. The mission statement of RWA is (and I quote straight from the website) “…to advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy. RWA works to support the efforts of its members to earn a living, to make a full-time career out of writing romance—or a part-time one that generously supplements his/her main income.”

If the mission is to support members in their effort to earn a living via a full-time or part-time career, why would you refuse to put out as much information as possible for your members? Information that might prove valuable for all members, including those who state that the eBook royalties on their statements are a miniscule piece not to consider. If you hear rumbles that there might be layoff at your workplace, do you ignore them or do you work a little harder to ensure you keep your job. Simply because eBooks are a sliver on your statements doesn’t mean it’s good business sense to ignore them. You need to learn all you can about this small piece of the pie so you’re prepared for what comes when the pie slice grows.

When a workshop is submitted by a highly respected editor in the ePublishing world, you DO NOT just throw it out the door simply because the submitting editor works for an ePublisher. It’s also important to note that Angela James is not an editor at some fly-by-night ePublisher. Since Samhain opened its doors in November 2005, it’s become a force to be reckoned with in the ePublishing industry. So why reject a workshop that offers insight into the digital world? It’s most illogical as Spock would say (either reality you want to cite from).

Digital publishing has been around for quite some time, and in the past six years, it’s boomed. Is it about to take over the print medium? No, but its growth continues by leaps and bounds, whereas the print industry’s growth has been seen as lackluster. RWA says that the numbers from digital press only makes up a small slice of the pie. But whose pie are we talking about? The pie of RWA members or the pie of writers who do not feel the need to belong to RWA, or both sectors of writers. Either way, they’re only looking at data, and they’re clearly NOT looking too far down the road. So I’d like to offer up a real-world business example of how ignoring something new can bite you in the a$$.

Once upon a time, there was this WONDERFUL software called WordPerfect. It was customizable and there were templates for legal, writers, administrative workers, etc. People loved WordPerfect (including me). Then suddenly there was an underdog on the scene. Microsoft Windows for the PC and a word processing program called Word. At first Word wasn’t much to speak of, and in fact, it couldn’t even compare to WordPerfect in the customization or flexibility department. But it did have one thing that WordPerfect didn’t. It was mouse driven and on a pretty screen, which was easier to read than the blue WordPerfect screen.

But WordPerfect saw Microsoft and their word processing software as a fad. Something new that would die out and never really grow. So what did WordPerfect do? They ignored Microsoft Word. But Microsoft’s Word’s share of the market grew and grew until WordPerfect finally said, whoa! We need to put out a version of WordPerfect for Windows interface. Problem was, WordPerfect waited too long. The balance shifted and now Microsoft Word owns the world, and WordPerfect while still around is pretty much a piece of hair in world-wide soup called Microsoft.

While I agree that RWA cannot be everything to every writer, to ignore digital publishing in any way is not only short-sighted, it lacks vision. It also shows RWA isn’t putting the needs of its membership at the forefront. It seems to be kow-towing to a small portion of its 10K+ membership.

I am not advocating RWA should charge ahead and throw in every workshop out there simply because it’s about digital publishing. What I do advocate is that RWA provide as much information to the membership as possible. Even if it means providing information on a publishing segment that doesn’t pay an advance. RWA Board President, Diane Pershing herself said in the June 2009 RWR that “RWA is set to do its part, to be more and more proactive in offering better and more complete education to the membership.” And in fairness to Ms. Pershing, the workshop committee is responsible for selecting workshops. Not Ms. Pershing. However, one has to wonder why the message isn’t getting down the food chain. And while RWA insists they are concerned with members and their advances, fine. But at the same time, if you believe ePublishing isn’t good enough for your members because there’s no advance, why not educate them on that issue and let the member decide if its for them.

I easily see the day will come when a growing number of RWA’s members write for NY print and ePub simultaneously. Oh but wait! That’s already happening. Angela Knight, Jaci Burton, Lora Leigh, Lucy Monroe, Deidre Knight and many more are writing for NY and for ePub. Why put one’s eggs all in one basket. Good business models in so many instances are about diversification. To not offer up information to the membership sends the message that RWA doesn’t think the member has to worry about this segment of the market. All I can say to that is…I’m glad RWA isn’t writing my personal business plan. I want long-range planning and vision in my plan, not dismissal of a medium simply because it’s only a small piece of the pie at the moment. I don’t like playing catch-up. I’d rather be leading the charge.

Monica

Monica Burns – http://www.monicaburns.com
Mirage, Now In Print 4.5 Stars, RT Top Pick RT BOOKreviews
2008 Reviewers Choice Award Nominee| 2009 EPPIE Best Historical Erotic Romance
Kismet, Berkley, 01/10 | Untitled, Berkley, 05/10

Thursday afternoon, I attended an online class-conference call set up by Harlequin for its authors. It was titled Blogging 201. (Near the end of 08, Harlequin had given the 101 class which I “comped” out of. GRIN.)

201 was really an eye-opener. I thought I’d learn a bit about blogging but now I find I have much more to learn.

But the teacher Malle Vallik’s main point hit home–there are so many online promo ops and social networks–that a writer must focus on what she wants to concentrate her efforts on. And stick to it.

I’m on MySpace, Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shoutlife and I’ve just set up on Twitter.

I don’t spend a lot of time on any ONE of these. So I’ve made the choice to focus on building my own blog traffic. My personal blog is www.strongwomenbravestories.blogspot.com.

Right now I’m having my MEGA May where I focus on mothers and other women in our lives that were good examples for us. And I’m going to try to figure out  how to Tweet?
So what social networks are you in? And which type of online promo do you think would serve you best?

No matter how many times I read or see things in shows, there are times when the writers and/or actors nail an emotion so perfectly, I want to stand up and applaud.

(**SPOILER ALERT** I’m going to be discussing the movie Love Actually and last night’s episode of House)

Emma Thompson is, without question, one of the best actresses on the planet, and her character in Love Actually is one that so many women can relate to.  There comes that moment in the movie when she opens her Christmas gift from her husband (played by the amazing Alan Rickman), expecting the gold necklace, and finds a CD instead. 

Ugh.

You can actually feel her heart stop.  You can feel the instant panic that floods through her as she realizes what her husband has done.  She goes into her bedroom, on the pretense of wanting to listen to the CD, but once there, we watch her struggle to get a grip as her whole world starts to crumble.  She can’t fall to pieces right now – it’s Christmas Eve for goodness sake and she has two children dressed and ready to make their big stage debuts at the pageant.  It’s the most heart breaking scene of the entire movie and I’ve often wondered if any other actor or actress would have been able to pull that off.  I wonder if the writers had any idea how impactful those few moments would be to their movie. 

On last night’s episode of House, we see him go through a horrible detox.  And who is there with him?  Cuddy of course.  He is truly at his worst during this, but thank goodness it sticks it out because he finally rids himself of Cut-Throat-Bitch once and for all.  Then, right at the end, we finally get to see him with a tiny bit of his guard down.  Did you see it?  She says to him “You want to kiss me right now, don’t you?”  And House responds “I always want to kiss you.”

For a sappy romantic like myself, that made the whole show.  Not the kiss itself, just him admitting that out loud.  It was huge.  In this instance, I’m certain the writers knew how impactful it would be, and it was.

When we’re writing, we know exactly which scenes are going to pop off the page and slam our readers, but sometimes, it’s the scenes we’re not expecting that pack the most punch.  Obviously, every scene in a book is important, otherwise it wouldn’t be there.  Each scene must move the story along, do something, create some kind of conflict or resolution, and sometimes, the scene only needs to be a few lines long to make the biggest impact.

Do you have any favourite books that have done this to you?  Any favourite shows or movies that left you awestruck over the way the writers handled a particular scene?

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Yesterday my youngest child graduated from college.  When my sons were younger I thought high school graduation would be the big transition.  Even though that was a milestone, the end of their undergraduate careers felt even more like an end-of-childhood rite of passage for me.

Part of it is I remember what I was doing when I graduated from the University of Florida, which is now my son’s alma mater as well:  I was married, running a household and working full time as a radio news reporter and anchor of the afternoon news.  A lot of responsibility for a 22-year-old, but that was my life and to me it was the norm.  Now I’ve got one son preparing for graduate school, and another who’s going to spend a year traveling and figuring out what he wants to do with his philosophy degree and his life (on his dime, I might add).

One thing I never expected when I got my diploma in broadcast news was that I would end up writing romance novels for a living.  At 22 I saw myself as always being what used to be termed a “news-hen”, a woman reporter/broadcaster/editor/anchor.  And I did live my dream.  I may not have conquered the networks, but I rose to become a news director, producer, and ultimately, radio station owner.

Now that I write fiction full time I realize that the neat thing about life is you never have to let go of your dreams, but it helps to ask yourself if there are new directions to explore.  While I often joke that I hate writing but love having written, the truth is, I love writing.  I loved writing news that informed people with the urgency of a radio bulletin, and I love writing about pirates.  Same dream, different day.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t follow your dream. Your dream may be to get a degree in philosophy, despite a whole bunch of nay-sayers staring at you and saying, ” How do you expect to make a living with that?”  Or your dream may be to realize one morning that you’d like to write pirate stories with a HEA ending.  It’s your dream.  Hold fast to it, and don’t give up.

(This blog originally appeared in The Samhellion. Thank you to all the authors who contributed!)

My name is Misty, and I’m a writing addict. 

Today I wrote The End on my third super agent book. As I gave my hero, Michael, his long-deserved HEA, I actually teared up. He’s such a good guy, and I put him through all kinds of hell in the first book of the series, Operation Sheba. His girlfriend betrayed him with his old rival, his boss set him up as the CIA’s mole, and terrorists held him hostage in his own home. He was turned him into a human bomb and shot in the chest.

I left him alone for the second book, giving him a chance to recover. He needed to grieve over losing Julia, and he also needed time to let his physical wounds heal. Then there was the post traumatic stress he was trying to suppress and the deep rage over the hostage situation building inside him. All difficult internal challenges he had to overcome in the third book.

Bringing characters to life, and putting them through hell in order to find a happy ending, gives me a high that no drug can. The thrill of writing sends me on a rollercoaster ride. Every scene, every chapter, is a slow, deliberate climb to the top and an exhilarating zoom down to the bottom again. I’m a prolific writer and when people ask me how I turn out stories so fast, I always tell them it’s not the how that’s important, it’s the why. I’m an addict. I need the rush.

I’m not alone with my God/Dr. Frankenstein complex. Several of the authors I interviewed for this article, including Marie-Nicole Ryan (One Too Many), stated similar reasons for their choice to be a writer. As she puts it, “Writing fills the undeniable urge to create, which is always present in my life. There’s much magic involved in creating and completing a new story.”

Vivi Andrews (The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant) loves the control writing gives her. “There is something extremely cathartic, emotionally speaking, about having the power to make that happily ever after happen.  Good, bad, or ugly, everyone gets what they deserve and I get the intense satisfaction of seeing that justice in words when it can be so elusive in ‘real’ life.  If I can control that one area, I can let go of all the things I can’t control.  It’s my own private therapy session for the control-freak within.”

Writing as therapy was a common denominator among the authors I spoke with. “Writing can be boiled down into two major parts for me,” Michelle Miles (Nice Girls Do) says. “One part is Quell The Voices In My Head, and one part is Escapism From The Real World.”

Shiela Stewart (Tempting the Darkness) agrees. “For me, writing has always been both a necessity and a means of escape. I need to get the stories out of my head or it will explode, and escaping into the fantasy world makes me a much saner person.”

In the current economy, escapism is the new black. We’re all in need of a good fantasy. “Writing gives me an escape from the chaos that is my life,” states Kaye Chambers (Tiger by the Tail). “When I’m writing, I can be whoever – or whatever – I want to be and not give a hoot about the consequences!”

According to scientific studies, writing has positive health benefits. Because you use your left brain, which is analytical and rational, to put sentences together, your right brain is free to create, intuit and feel. Mental blocks crumble and give you brainpower to better understand yourself, others and the world around you.

Keith Melton (Blood Vice) has found this is true. “Getting out of my head and into another person’s head, and living their dreams, fears, needs and sorrows, increases my empathy and ability to relate to the rest of humanity. I believe the experience of fiction enhances the connections between us all.”

Whether writing satisfies our need to create, keeps us sane, or helps us relate to others, we are all addicted to telling stories. No drugs or professional therapy necessary. Just another story…

I was going to take a break from writing this week. Do some spring cleaning. Catch up with a few friends over lunch. Paint my bathroom. But all I can think about is the next world, the next character, the next rush. Yep, I need another hit, another story.

Writing is my addiction, and I don’t plan to break the habit any time soon.
Misty Evans is an award-winning, multi-published author of CIA thrillers and paranormal comedy. Visit her at www.readMistyEvans.com .