The HEA Cafe

So here it is, 5:00 pm (Central time) and I’m just now sitting down to write my blog entry. Sigh… Lately it seems like everything is “right in under the wire.” On time, well done, but with no leeway, no breathing room.

I wish I knew what the cause was. It’s not so much that I’ve accepted too much work. Most of it is little stuff—a 500 word article here, a 5,000 word short story there, a quick guest blog or this group blog that I know I’ll have every single month. It SHOULDN’T be so difficult.

But real life keeps intruding. I didn’t plan on a slew of baby goats. We keep the males and females separated, after all. Different pastures, locked gates. Yet the babies started coming nonetheless. Mind you, I LOVE baby goats. They’re like little Tiggers, bouncing on legs loaded with springs. I didn’t plan on difficult births that forced me to call the vet to save the mother. I didn’t plan on two of our dogs getting into a fight that left multiple puncture wounds on legs and faces that forced us to build a third kennel for when they have PMS. Yep. No kidding. Our dogs get PMS and have nasty tempers. We’re in the process of spaying them, but we had to wait until they were old enough.

Then there was the refrigerator dying in a plume of smoke that made me call the fire department. No damage done, but days and days of getting rid of old food, shopping for a new unit, filling the unit, and getting back to real life. It never seems to end.

And yet, through it all, I LOVE this job. I like sitting and staring at the walls and creating new worlds and then having the time to actually write them. It’s fun and challenging and makes me happy to turn something in. The more we do it, the more things we get INVITED to do, too, which is fun. But it eats away at the time and one of the things getting chewed into this year will be conferences/conventions. While I’d love to go to ALL of them, I just can’t and still get out the work. We went to six last year (as I discovered with shock while preparing my deductions for the accountant to start doing taxes.) This year—it might have to be TWO. I’d love to say National was going to be one of them. It probably won’t be. RT might be out too, but that’s still up in the air since we’re up for awards.

How do the rest of you guys manage it? I don’t even have kids! I can’t imagine how it works for you who have to juggle school and sports and PTA or even day care. Yikes!

Let’s hear your horror stories, or your best tips for time management.

I was just sitting down the other day, thinking about this upcoming year. It’s hard to believe how much is going on in our writing career! I didn’t really realize until I started to look at book covers and such just how many anthologies, novels and short stories we have coming out. Since I don’t often actually sit down and promo our books here, I thought that perhaps it was time.  So, here we go!

The first book is a charity anthology titled DREAMS & DESIRES 2. It hit the virtual shelf on February 1st. It’s available as either an ebook or trade paperback. Freya’s Bower has always been a champion of women’s issues and this anthology is no exception. Here’s the details: 

“By purchasing this collection, you can help turn someone’s nightmare into the pursuit of dreams. Every year, four million women are assaulted by their partners. At Freya’s Bower, we want to do our part to bring this statistic down to zero. To this end, all net proceeds from every Dreams and Desire anthology purchased will go to a battered woman’s shelter. Through education and support, we can make a difference.”

Included in the volume are stories by: C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp (us!) Jenna Bayley-Burke, Amanda Brice, Shannon Canard, Sela Carsen, Rachelle Chase, M.E. Ellis, Jenny Gardiner, Gemma Halliday, Candace Havens, Zinnia Hope, Babe King, Susan Lyons, Sarah Salway, Rhonda Stapleton, Bebe Thomas, Emily Veinglory, Lois Winston, and Shaunna Wolf. Here’s a link to order if you’re so inclined:  http://www.freyasbower.com/content/view/347/1/ 

Next up is a non-fiction that I was pleased to be able to contribute to. Everybody loves dogs. They’re faithful, devoted and often clowns. DOGS, edited by John Cali celebrates the strange, the wonderful and the weird (I’ll add that my story is one of the “weird” ones. LOL!) Here’s a little about it:  In this book, you will discover these, and many other, wonderfully warm true dog stories: The miniature schnauzer who returned from the dead to protect his family. The Belgian sheepdog who kept his sleepy human companion from crashing his car on a lonely deserted highway. The part Labrador mixed-breed who saved her mistress from the fangs of a venomous copperhead snake by taking the bite herself. The sheep dog who kept a faithful, five-year vigil for his dead master. The Scottish terrier who sees ghosts. These dog tales will warm your heart and stir your soul. They will bring you joy and tears. These beguiling canines will inspire and uplift you with their antics, their comedy, and their love for humans. In this world, which sometimes seems so dark, dogs light up the darkness with their love and courage. They offer us a reason to rejoice and to feel good about ourselves — a reason to celebrate life and the lives of all creatures great and small. Again, this is available in either ebook form or trade paperback. Pick one up for the dog lover in your house! http://www.booklocker.com/books/3316.html  It’s also available at Amazon and B&N.com, but is probably quicker through the publisher’s site.

Our next Sazi book will hit the shelf on March 7th. TIMELESS MOON finally tells the story of Josette Monier, the older sister of Sazi council member Antoine Monier. Josette, sometimes known as Aspen, is a centuries old bobcat shifter who was blessed (or some would say cursed) with seer talent. But she got ALL of the seer talents at once, so she can see the past—called “hindsight,” the future—known as “foresight,” and events in the present in far-flung locations—”remote sight.” Time has no meaning to Josette, because the entire stream of time flows through her head every minute. To be around other people is to be in pain, because she sees their entire life, their death, their birth, and all events between. As a seer, she guards the Sazi’s future and protects their past and her visions have never failed her.

Until now.

Lately, she doesn’t see herself in the future. Her husband, who she believed to be long dead, is back among the living, and all the other seers are being slowly killed. And for once in her long life, she hasn’t got a clue WHY.

Next, for you horror fans, I’ll be having a short story called ERROR 404: PAGE FOUND (and yes—I’m aware that’s wrong. That’s sort of the point… ) appear in the World Horror Convention program. It’s set in the Cthulhu mythos, with a whole new twist. If dark and scary is your thing, join us in Salt Lake City, March 27-30. http://www.whc2008.org/ 

Cie and I have also signed up for some other anthologies that will probably hit the shelf later in the year. You’ll be seeing our name a LOT this year, and we really hope you’ll like some of the interesting things we’ll be doing.

Finally, we just got our cover for our August book, the last in the Thrall vampire trilogy. TOUCH OF DARKNESS and just HAVE to show it off! I really think this is the artist’s best effort yet! We’re really excited about this book because it ends the series so wonderfully. We really think fans are going to LOVE it!

So, that’s about all for us for the moment. It’s just amazing to us that everything’s happening at once, with so many more things to come. Well, back to work on the next book. Hope to see you all soon at one of the upcoming conferences.

Happy Valentine’s Day next week! May you swim happily in chocolates and roses.

Well, here I am, 3/4 of the way through the book that was due back on January 3rd (which I have until the 15th to complete now. Whew!) and it’s just now occurred to me that that there really isn’t much romantic conflict between the H/h. Oh, there’s plenty of action, lots of external tension, and I’ve got the lust going just fine. But these characters don’t feel, in my head, particularly angsty. They’re just normal folk (despite having magic abilities) and their individual jobs are really important to them, so there’s never been much time for romance. It’s not that they’re ANTI-romance, it’s just never occurred to them. But now they see each other and they like each other and they want to start something—despite the weird and scary things happening around them.

But is that enough conflict? Is there room on the shelf for a pair of well-adjusted people falling in love without crazy ex-boyfriends and materialistic current girlfriends picking at them? Is there space for people who don’t fret about the past, and look forward to the future and aren’t bothered by society’s image of their looks, hair color or current dress size? Sigh…

Cie tells me that well-adjusted families are . . . well, boring, even though an awful lot of people have them. Disfunctional families give book spice, so do I go back to chapter 1 and give the heroine a crack-addicted mother who abandoned them, so she feels properly abandoned and doesn’t want to love anyone who will leave her again? Do I make the hero someone who always chooses women who take advantage of him (whether emotionally or cleaning out his bank account?)

Three-fourths done, and now it feels completely UNDONE. Sure, they’re fixes that can be made in editing, and maybe that’s what I should do. Send it in, pick a few random “angst-nesses” and send them along for the ride—letting the editor pick her favorite.

The trouble is, I LIKE them this way, so it feels like it’s not fair that the book could suffer. They’re nice people. They’re sort of half-Beta, with kick-butt Alpha moments. They’re tough, but can bend. They’re reasonable and nice but are strong leaders that people will follow because they believe in them. Magically powerful but with a strong sense of ethics.

So where do I go from here? I hate to change the direction this late because it’s going to effectively change HOW they deal with the villain. It’ll change their entire approach to the problem and the plot is swimming along quite nicely, thank you. Sigh, a second time.

But, this is our first stand alone novel, and I want it to ROCK. The plot does, but is a romance somehow lacking without angst? There’s no second book to fix the mistakes, like in a series. No way to say, “Oops! Yeah, about that conflict…” to the reader.

I’m open to thoughts about how any of the rest of you have handled this, or if I’m unique in this problem. Thanks for listening to my rant. Guess I’ll get back to the keyboard and try to get it done as I envision it now.

Yep, I missed yesterday’s post. I even KNEW I was supposed to post, because I was a good girl and put a reminder on my Outlook. But then came the “I’ll do that just as soon as…” stuff and away went the day. Sigh…

Most of the day was taken up writing a short story. Oddly, it wasn’t a romance, but a horror short that I agreed to do for the program brochure of World Horror 2008, to be held in Salt Lake City in March. There aren’t many women who write dark fantasy/horror, and since Cie and I are both members in good standing of HWA (Horror Writers Association of America) they asked if we’d be interested in attending the convention as guests. I’m hoping the weather holds out, because who schedules a freaking conference for Salt Lake City in March?! For those of you who don’t know, there’s a reason why the 2002 winter olympics was there. Snowy, cold, windy—all the reasons I moved away from Colorado. Ick.

Anyway, it gave me a chance to finally write a story that’s been kicking around in my mind since the World Fantasy convention in Austin last year. It’s a Cthulu mythos story, set in the computer age. I’d originally planned to push it to either Weird Tales or Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, but this seemed just as good, if not better. All the right readers, y’know? But they needed it quick, by Friday, so I really had to jump on it to get it edited and to the printers by January.

Oh, and I got the chance to write a short holiday story (again on short notice) that’s going to appear in Affaire de Coeur in their December issue, so pick it up if they sell it near you! It features our original hitman werewolf, Tony Giodone, and the editor LOVED it! Yay!

But taking the time to do those during the day meant that I’m having to write on the ROMANCE novel during the night—because it’s due on January 3rd, and I’m not much more than half done. Aargh! again!  Normally, I don’t like pushing up against deadlines, but this book has been kicking my tail, both plot-wise and characterization-wise. It’s pretty much my first stand-alone fantasy romance. Cie and I write series, which gives you the opportunity to concentrate on the plot while doling out small bits of worldbuilding and backstory over the course of 3-5 books. But with a stand-alone, it’s all got to be there if it’s going to make sense. So, it’s been going slower than planned.

We also have been invited into a British anthology—The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance. It’s not big pay, but those “Mammoth” books are a lot like the “Dummies” books, with lots of built-in fans and they often get picked up for book clubs. So definitely worth the effort. Thankfully, that’s not due until March, so I can get the novel done first.

And, of course, there have been the “puppy issues.” A wound on one of the puppy’s neck abcessed in two places, even after two rounds of antibiotics. So, the vet had to do surgery and then put in a drain tube. It’s a really messy thing that we had to flush out twice a day with sterile saline solution and then pack with antibiotic fluid. Naturally, she had to wear one of those neck collars so she didn’t scratch out the tube, and hated it. Of course, that meant I had to watch her like a hawk every hour or so to make sure she didn’t chew it to pieces, have panic attacks or choke herself trying to pull it off. Tough to get into heavy duty writing while managing that level of puppy-sitting. Then yesterday afternoon, she was FINALLY able to go back out and run with her sisters and had a tumble. She came up yelping and couldn’t put weight on one front leg. So back to the vet we go this morning, because it not only wasn’t better, but the elbow was swollen. Three x-rays and an exam later, and no broken bones, so no cast and no anesthetic. Whew! She’ll be gimpy for a few days and need some anti-inflammatories, but at least I’ll be able to leave her in her pen for a few hours at a stretch. But poor thing! It’s been a rough month for her. 

Haven’t even got my tree up, but did manage to finish Christmas cards and about half of the shopping is done. I wish there were more hours in the day. Then I wouldn’t have to get up at 1:00 in the morning to sneak in an extra 2-3 hours of writing on the book.

So please forgive me for being a day late. I’m also a dollar short, but that’s another story.

Have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Yuletide, or whatever you celebrate, and I’ll see you next year!

Authors have a real love/hate relationship with reviewers that crosses genre and category boundaries. Good reviews make us want to jump around the room and can keep us giddy for days. Bad reviews can elicit anger, embarrassment or even depression in some authors who are on the sensitive side (I’m not one of them, FWIW.) The bigger the status of the reviewer, the bigger the elation or let-down. For a paperback paranormal romance author such as myself, a good review in RT, PNR, Locus or Science Fiction Book Club is the equivalent of the New York Times for a hardback literary author. Authors know how valuable good advance reviews can be toward print runs, and how quickly a bad review can mean the end of a book (and possibly a career.) So, we send out our books with hopeful trepidation, wishing for the five stars, five blue ribbons, five champagne glasses or whatever the magazine/newspaper/website or blog uses, but fearing a three star “average” rating or worse—the dreaded one star. Yikes!

A lot of 5-star ratings well in advance of publication can mean book buyers for chain stores or secondary markets (WalMart, airport stores, groceries) will look more favorably on the title and potentially offer special deals for advertising which will make it stand out better in stores.

But what can a one-star review in a major publication mean to an author? Same thing in reverse. Those same buyers might lower the number they order to stock, fearing a dud. That can mean tens of thousands of copies that WON’T be printed. That makes it difficult for both fans and casual new potential readers to find the book, so often they won’t realize a new book is out there.

And yet, we keep sending them out, crossing our fingers each time. Cie and I post EVERY review on our website . . . good or bad. A number of author friends have asked why we subject ourselves to the torture. Why do we spend the time to create PDF versions of our books to send out to dozens of reviewers? Why do we spend the postage to mail out more dozens of Advance Reading Copies (ARCs) to others? The simple truth is that I know the kind of reader who likes our kind of books reads reviews, and we’re new enough in the game that plenty of people have never heard of our books. So, the more reviews that are out there, the more readers are exposed to our books, and the better chance for the reader to get an unbiased view of the book.

Ah, yes—now we’re into the meat of the subject. Are reviews biased? Are reviews nothing more than author promotion, instead of valuable reader education? Are magazines and websites afraid to diss a book for fear of making an enemy of an author? Rumors are whispered on reading loops and groups, wondering whether a book that received praise from a prominent reviewer, but flames from readers, was based on the amount of dollars spent on the flashing banner ad on the front page, or the four-color full page ad in the magazine. Are reviewers influenced by money or editor pressure? After all, some magazines will review a book ONLY if money is spent on an ad, and even respected review veterans like Kirkus are taking heat for allowing “paid-for” reviews to appear on its pages. Can journalistic integrity be maintained when gold is crossing palms?

The problem is that authors look at reviews for different reasons than readers, so the question of bias is valid. Authors are looking for sound bites . . . a “recommended read” JPG, or 5-star image to place on their site, or favorable bits of the review that can be posted on future cover jackets, touted on websites and grace advertisements to woo new readers. Authors work hard to stay in the good graces of reviewers, keeping them “in the loop” about new offerings, having drinks, meeting for lunch at conferences. Reviewers and their employers know this.

But readers are looking for the “down and dirty.” They want to know ALL the negatives, from plot holes a mile wide to “too stupid to live” heroines. With up to 250 new romances on the shelf each month (not to mention the other genres!) readers want to be convinced that a book is worth their hard-earned money. The more the pocketbook is tight, the tougher the readers want the reviews to be.

Of course, review sites and magazines depend on QUANTITY of reviews, because it makes them relevant and keeps readers returning day after day. But the deluge of new print and e-titles each month makes it nearly impossible to keep up the quantity without affecting the quality. Reviewers and site owners (some of them, anyway) like to be paid for their work and have to maintain their web presence. Payment can only come with income. Income often comes from advertising by authors and publishers. It’s a vicious cycle. But the fewer reviewers a site/magazine has, the more likely they are to become irrelevant because they aren’t meeting the readers’ needs. So, what sometimes happens are “lick and a promise” reviews, where reviewers only read ten pages at the beginning, ten in the middle and ten at the end—which may not give the whole story. Still, “dust jacket” reviewers can easily put out fifty to a hundred reviews a month over the twenty to thirty that a slower, more thorough reader can manage.

Unfortunately, when plot elements are taken from the back of jacket covers on ARCs, or the book is flipped through casually, it shows. One early review of our first book had the wrong person becoming a werewolf, and for the wrong reason. Another on our new October release misinformed readers (because they apparently only read an early, and incorrect, cover jacket) and gave the wrong job to the wrong person.

In my opinion, review sites and magazines do a disservice to readers when the plot recitation in the review makes it obvious the book wasn’t read in full (if at all.) If plot logic and characterization are left at the door, the reader suffers. A review has no value if it only has fluff inside—when terms like “brilliant” and “mesmerizing” are used in conjunction with a 3-star ranking. Romantic Times long ago eliminated the 5 star rating. When I asked a senior reviewer why the highest review that could be obtained is a 4-1/2 Gold, the answer was simple. “No book is perfect.” And as much as we authors hate to admit it, no book is.

But does an author actually want a fair review? Wouldn’t we rather have every single book have five star, five roses, five ribbons, Top Pick, Recommended Read reviews? Well, of course we would, but not at the price of our integrity! Even the most sensitive among us don’t want false praise. It’s like having confetti thrown on you every day you show up for work. Sure, it’s nice and flattering for a while, but quickly gets old. It also diminishes your true achievements. When you really do go above and beyond the call, what’s left to say? How will a reader know a true masterpiece from a “fun beach read” when the same words are used to describe both? How will a true masterpiece that will someday be compared to Jane Austin or Margaret Mitchell be found if the reviews give the wrong plot details? So, reviews do have value. The words have the power to sway.

The problem is with bad reviews that so many authors keep silent about them. Very seldom do I hear of authors who actually contact the review site or magazine management to complain about a wrong review—not just unflattering, but flat WRONG. I’m one of the few that actually does. Because if a character name is spelled wrong or a detail is way out of whack, it doesn’t just affect the book, it affects the good name of the review site. The more errors that occur that are allowed to slide, the more readers will find the reviews on that site to be valueless—all the reviews.

Overall, I think reviews matter enough that we authors bite our tongue and cross our fingers. They’re a valuable service to all involved. So long as reviewers remember that they’re really in the service of READERS, then their relationship with authors will always be an uneasy truce . . . of the very best kind.