November is coming...

...and November is National Novel Writing Month. (Come on. You know you've heard of it.) And for the most part, I think it is a wonderful idea to encourage writers to put all the stacks of stuff we all carry around to help us procrastinate behind us and actually create. Just go with the flow.

But don't you love this line from the official site? This is one of their official reasons:

To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

Hey, it still doesn't discourage me. I'm signing up!

From a Reliable Source...

From the October 12th issue of Publisher's Weekly: New Warner Imprint Targets Hispanic Women

Warner Books will launch a new imprint in early 2007 that will feature English-language books aimed at Hispanic and Latino women. Under the Solana imprint, Warner will publish six English-language trade paperback originals annually that will feature Latino characters and lifestyles. The books will encompass a wide range of women's fiction, says Adrienne Avila, associate editor of Warner and who will be overseeing the imprint. The inaugural list will debut with "B" as in Beauty by Alberto Ferreras.

Readers (and Non-Readers) Say the Darnedest Things

As a working author of romantic suspense novels, I'm often amazed, flabbergasted, name-your-own synonym with the things friends, relatives, and total strangers say to me in a misguided attempt at flattery. Some of them are hurtful, but many cause intestinal distortions as I struggle to keep a straight face. Anyway, in the name of public education, I thought I'd share some of my very favorites.

1. (From older, male family member laboring under delusion I write porn): "I'd read your books, but since my prostrate operation, I can't really enjoy that sort of thing any longer."

2. (From medical assistant at an office where I'm a patient): "I loved your new book. I just *adore* reading trash."

3. (From mother-in-law): "You know, an *acquaintance* of mine -- I certainly won't call her a friend any longer -- told me in the church parking lot that "either your daughter-in-law and son have a wonderful sex life or she has a great imagination."

4. (From a reader letter): "Do you think you could please stop using words like 'nausea' and 'vomit'? I have a weak stomach."

5. (From a customer at a book signing): "Could you please sign this book? I know you didn't write it, but it's one I'd rather buy."

6. (From a gold-chain dripping pseudo-stud at book signing, as girlfriend frantically attempts to drag him away): "I have some -- ah-- sexual techniques I promise would make your next book a bestseller. Want to hear about --" (Girlfriend, in amazing adrenalin surge, drags Psuedo-Stud clear)

7. (From overall-clad man at book signing, speaking to young son while pointing directly in my face from across the table): "No, ma'am. I didn't come to buy a book. I just came to show my son. (To ogling boy-child): "This, son, is a real, live arthur."

Okay, my memory cells are running on low power. Anyone have others to share?

From a Reliable Source

Oh yeah. How much more reliable can you get than the horse's mouth. Harlequin is buying BET Books' assets, including Arabesque, Sepia and New Spirit.

OPC (Other People's Choices)

We all make choices about what we're going to read. What we're going to write. What time we're going to go to bed. We don't always have good reasons for those choices. In her blog, agent Nadia Cornier addresses choices that agents and editors make because...

It applies to how readers accept our books. It applies to reviewers. It applies to life.

It doesn't hurt to have a reminder.

Alfie

Hotter Sex in Romance Novels: Is It Here To Stay?

When I first started writing, my sex scenes were graphic and my mentor, Debby Camp, who had written 50 books, told me that I was writing porn. That I needed to get emotions in there and build up to the sex scenes emotionally. I learned a lot about emotional sex. This was 10 years ago.

Four years ago (or somewhere around there) when the first erotica publishers began making a splash, the main characters had foreplay in the first chapter -- or erotic dreams or actual intercourse. The emotional buildup to having sex or the emotional consequences of having intercourse so quickly wasn't dealt with in the later chapters. This bothered me because emotions play such a big part in physical intimacy. Now that the big houses are jumping on the erotica bandwagon, it will be interesting to see if the emotion is dealt with as it should be. In the guidelines for the new Harlequin Spice line, it says "We want novels that will take the genre above and beyond today's stereotypical erotica stories" . . . which, I'm fairly certain they mean with more emotions.

Ever since the romance genre began, I think we've been heading in this direction and I don't think erotica is ever going away. Personally, I love having the option of escalating the heat in my stories, and it really opens doors for me. I'm continually experimenting and my stories have gotten hotter and gutsier. In my recent release, Endangered by Magic, the heroine was raised as a gypsy and is now a British spy. The hero is a shapeshifter. I have scenes that are pretty hot where there's some heavy foreplay with him as a panther (no, they didn't make love in his animal form -- I couldn't quite imagine that . . . or maybe I could and was turned off! ). I also had a scene where they dueled with swords. The sword play was very physical which eventually led to physical hardcore sex, which went well together, (think The Mask of Zorro except my scene didn't stop where he had cut off her clothes. She also cut off his and, well . . . it carried on from there!).

Women are diverse in their likes/dislikes (which is great -- wouldn't the world be boring if we were all alike?) and thank goodness there's a variety to choose from. I'm glad that the inspirational romance market is finally taking off, too. The romance market is ever-evolving and it's exciting to push the envelope, to be on the cutting edge and to be responsible for those changes!

ACK!

I signed up to do "the official" post for today, which meant it was supposed to go up by 8 a.m. and It's well past 8 a.m., and I'm just now getting it done. Sorry!

So. What I was going to write about. I read this week, in one of last week's news magazines (yeah, I'm behind in pretty much everything) a whole series of articles about "how to have a healthy heart." Y'all won't be surprised to learn that at the top of the list for prevention of heart attacks you will find love.

It's scientifically proven now. People who are in loving relationships are more likely first, to avoid a heart attack, and second, to survive if they have one. Men whose wives express their love fare better than --I suppose-- men with grumpy wives. (Which leads one to wonder why those women don't express love--hmm, could it be that their husbands cut them off, ignored them, turned them away whenever they tried?)

Some might say that romance novels keep women from participating in real life, from actually living those loving relationships. However, other statistics show that romance readers are more likely to be in a relationship, and to be happy in their relationships, contrary to "popular opinion."

What do you think?

Free Will

Did you ever wonder how a book goes from idea to print? One important part of the process are revisions--after editorial feedback, the author goes back into her story and tweaks or rewrites scenes, chapters, or an entire book.

My first book, The Prey (Ballantine, January 2006), was pretty tight when my editor bought it. I had minor revisions, mostly layering in some emotion and tweaking a few scenes. I thought I understood the process quite well. I write, I tweak, I publish. I think most first books tend to be well-edited before they are even bought, because as an unpublished author we aren't on deadline. We can play and tweak to our heart's content.

I just turned in the revisions for my third book, The Kill (Ballantine, March 2006). Suffice it to say, the revised book is wholly different from the original manuscript my editor suffered through (um, I mean read.)

A good editor doesn't tell her authors how to change the story. A good editor shows an author where the problems are, and allows the author's creative instincts to fix the story.

Editing really uses a whole different creative process than writing. Editors need to look at each scene and how it fits into the whole; the story, the characters, the drama, the overall feeling. And they need to ask Does the story fulfill the promise? Since I write romantic suspense, the two questions are Does the scene further the suspense? Or the romance?

But editors also have to look at the big picture -- will readers of this genre be satisfied at the end. Because as an author, we represent not only ourselves, but our publisher.

It's not that The Kill was bad to begin with. It wasn't. The premise was solid, the story intriguing, the heroine strong and determined. The problem? I tried so hard to make the book fit into the proposal I wrote to sell it that every scene fell flat. Anti-climatic. I forced the characters to fit into my pre-conceived plot.

The original book was unsatisfying. I knew it when I turned it in. It wasn't bad, but I forgot my one "rule" . . . trust your instincts. I tried to force my characters into roles I'd created, rather than letting them do what came naturally to them. I tried to direct the story because I thought I needed it to end in one specific place, so every scene leading up to that ending fell flat because, ultimately, the story didn't end there.

When I typed The End a second time on The Kill, I knew the story would satisfy. Why? Because I didn't write it so much as I watched it unfold. My characters went off in directions I never imagined. I could hardly type fast enough to keep up with them. They even hopped on an airplane when I thought they should be in bed! LOL.

Next time around, I'm going to trust my instincts more and worry less. I think when I first sold, I became paralyzed. What if I couldn't tell another good story? So I sweated the small stuff and forgot the important stuff--that story is character, and characters drive the story. When I gave my hero, my heroine--and my villain--free will, everything fell into place.

Porn for women

I like the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson on after Letterman on CBS. I stay up a lot of nights just to watch Ferguson vamp his way through whatever topic he's chosen to discuss--he doesn't script anything, just stands there and talks. And the other night (Tuesday, this week, to be exact) he was talking about pornography.

Mostly he discussed internet porn, but almost inevitably, when he went off on the tangent (his whole 'monologue' is pretty much one tangent after another) on the difference between porn for men and porn for women, he hit on that old saw about romance novels--"Anything with Fabio on the cover"--being porn for women.

Of course, Ferguson being on at 11:30 p.m. or later, depending on your time zone, I'm sure not many were watching, but still...there it was again. That old preconcieved notion.

And of course, I immediately started trying to come up with a rebuttal--not that I would ever get round to sending one. You notice I'm not even blogging about it here until the Second Day after he mentioned it. Anyway, I quickly ran into a wall. I wasn't sure how I wanted to rebut. (Is that a word?) Because the first thing I thought was: Romance novels are not porn for women.

We're not to the wall yet. That first thought led me to trying to define the difference between porn and romance. One of our lovely romance authors (and I would give her name if I could remember who it was) has said something to the effect that romance is about relationships, porn is about mechanics.

I think that's a pretty good definition. (Still not to the wall.) But, it's hard to deny that romance has sex in it, because romance is about romantic relationships, and sexual attraction, sexual tension and actual sexual activity is all wrapped up in those kinds of relationships. It's a big part. Which of course is how romance gets it's "porn for women" label.

Which leads at last to the wall. Because the second thing I thought was: So what?

There's a whole continuum of sexuality in romance novels, from nothing more than heated looks or chaste kisses to hot monkey sex whilst hanging from chandeliers. And that's before we get into the romantica and erotica and all the rest that's becoming so popular these days.

If a woman wants to read erotica--or anything else that's out there--why shouldn't she? It involves no one but the person who wrote it, and the person who's reading it. (Okay, there are editors and stuff, but still, while they're editing, you're still talking just two--one wrote, one's reading.) Mr. Ferguson said that he thinks sex should be "just a bit nasty, and private." How much more private can you get than you and a book?

Can we discuss this in a calm and reasonable manner? What's your opinion? Does it matter if people think of romance as 'porn for women'? Why?

Do you think we're going to get anyone to change his/her mind? If so, how?

New Horizons

Yesterday my futuristic vampire story, MISLED, released with Ellora's Cave. It's not only my first release with EC, it's my first futuristic release. I'm primarily a historical author. Historical romances are my first love, not only as a writer, but as a reader. So why wade into untried waters?

First of all, I wanted to write about characters who had special abilities and lived in a world far removed from our own. Moving away from historicals allowed me to do that. By creating the setting from scratch, my imagination could go wherever it wanted.

Second, venturing into the e-format after first starting in print opens my stories up to an entirely different demographic. I've discovered that print readers and e-book readers are very different in their genre tastes, number of books purchased, and internet saviness. There really isn't that much crossover. My historical Brava readers probably won't read my e-book futuristics and vice versa. By writing in both formats and multiple genres, I can reach a far greater number of readers.

I spent a wonderful hour in my local Barnes & Noble the day before yesterday and was pleased to see the large number of Ellora's Cave print titles in the store. They were in center aisle displays with other books, and liberally dispersed amongst the other publisher titles in the romance section. EC books have done very well in Borders/Waldens, and BN is a new venue for them. It was pleasant surprise to see them there in such large quantities.

The publishing horizons are widening, readers are leaping at new opportunities to find authors and stories they love, and I'm excited to spread out with them.

Branding. What’s That All About?

Okay, so it’s been a few years since I’ve published a book. (In case you’re wondering, I blame that lapse on my ex. Not that it’s really his fault that I got distracted by other things and stopped writing, but I do like to make him feel special even though we’re no longer together. I’m like that. Considerate, I mean.) Anyway, now that I’m writing again, suddenly, everybody is talking about branding.

“Faye, you need a brand!”

That’s what other authors usually tell me whenever I tell them I’m writing again. I figure they must mean it since they used an exclamation point and everything.

“Okay,” I say. “How about Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey? That’s a great brand.”

“No, no, no!!”

Again with the exclamation points. They’re also looking at me funny at this point.

“You need a brand, Faye. Readers expect a brand. You’ll never get published again if you don’t have a brand.”

Okay, fine. I guess I’d better get one then. (Plus, an agent and a publisher. Maybe Target is having a huge blow-out sale this weekend and I can pick up all three.) But before I rush right out there and pick up mine, I’d like to know what you guys think.

How important is branding to an author’s career?

Do readers really expect us to have one?

And what's wrong with Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey? (I mean, have you tried it?)

Faye

Niche, hooks and book buyers

Bethany House editor Dave Long has been discussing niches and and how books fit into the market over at his blog this week. In his post about when to worry about such things, he says:

It’s unlikely you’ll be able to turn a story about a woman caring for her dying mother into a lighthearted chick-lit novel simply because the genre is hot.

And I'll bet you'll find this post interesting:

To gain a sense of why it’s important to think of your book in terms of an open niche or in terms of a marketing hook, let’s spend a moment inside someone’s head. That person is the fiction buyer for a store.

Anything for a little bit of insight. Right?

Reading Books

Since this blog is called 2 B Read, I thought I would write about reading.

I'm always amazed when I talk to rookie writers who tell me, when I ask, that they don't read. How can you possibly write if you don't read? Why would you want to write if you don't read?

It's the same basic principle as "You can't write what you don't like to read." Those who think that they can just sit down and bang out a romance because "romance novels sell like Tickle-me Elmos at Christmastime, and they're all just formula anyway," and think they can sell it instantly and make a patrillion bucks so they can sit back and write "the Great American Novel"-- those people soon discover that if they have no respect for the genre--if they don't even know what it is, they aren't going to get very far.

In order to write, you need to read. And if you want to get what you write published, I think it's even more important to read. Read in the genre you want to write, so that you know what's out there...and what's not. What's good...and what's not? Is there a gap? Something you'd like to see, or to write, that isn't out there?

I think it's good to read widely. Magazines. Non-fiction. Mysteries, science fiction, literary fiction. I'm not going to say you should force yourself to read things you just can't plow through, and yeah, sometimes time is just too short. And sometimes you're not in the mood for The Historian, or Heroics for Beginners, or The Cowboy's Pregnant Secret Bride. But it's not going to hurt me to try them out. (Was a little disappointed by The Historian, liked Heroics for Beginners--a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale--but thought it was a bit silly, made up The Cowboy's Pregnant Secret Bride--but hey, it could be a story, right?)

Now I just have to make time to finish The Dragon King's Palace by Laura Joh Rowland.

From a Reliable Source...

Kensington has announced the name of the erotica line:

Aphrodisia

Cool, huh?

What do you want to do with your life?

This is kind of an interesting (and fun) place to visit. But the most exciting thing about it is seeing how many of the "43 Things" writing and being involved with books has let you cross off your list.

I counted 23 things on the current list (it changes as people put in their 'things') that I've been able to do because I'm a writer. And yesterday, about every other line was some version of I want to be a writer. Just think, we're living their dreams.

Alfie

Used Book Sales (Part 2)

The mom and pop type operations never bothered me. In fact I loved (and still love) them. This is what gives me the jitters.

According to the Book Industry Study Group, used-book sales topped $2.2 billion in 2004, an 11% increase over 2003. Much of that growth can be credited to the Internet.

See if you find this short piece in the L.A. Times interesting (and just a bit scary).

Alfie

When does it get easier?

When I was a newbie writer, I really thought by the time I'd sold a dozen books, writing would be easier. Now here I am, 43 sold books later, and writing is not only not easier, it's harder! When I was that newbie, I couldn't wait to get home from my day job so I could get back to my WIP (work in progress, for the uninitiated). I could hardly stand the time it took to change clothes and say hello to my hubby before I hit the spare bedroom where my writing alcove had been set up. I did five drafts of my first book in less than four months. Nowadays I'd rather do just about anything than sit at my desk and try writing. I'd even rather clean the bathroom, and that's saying something. I procrastinate and agonize until I get to the point that if I don't hurry up and write something, anything, there's no way the book will be on time. So of course, the last month or six weeks before my deadline, I'm crazy and stressed and I make everyone else around me crazy and stressed. What's wrong with me?
Pat

Don't We Create Men Who...

don't do this? In an LA Times opinion piece, David Gelernter makes some thought provoking points in, Keep your 'machisma' out of it.

Years ago, this nation invested much energy in anguishing over and mocking machismo — male swagger, a menacing virility, an air of aggression.

Yes, I can remember people criticizing romances exactly because the men were too much the strong, silent type. Remember the (short) period when editors were actually requesting 'beta' heroes rather than 'alphas.' Now we're into alpha heroines, as well. And this, perhaps, explains why the alphas are so appealing.

For a person in authority to insist that lower-downs reveal their emotions is an abuse of power, a form of emotional groping that can leave the targets feeling violated and mad as hell.

Wonder if this is one reason our heroes are so easy to fall in love with?
This was a fascinating column.

Used Bookstore Sales

At what point do we seriously consider the impact used book sales have on your bottom line?

I think this is a nerve-racking issue. Anyone else?

When Your New Book Is Coming Out

Are all authors as obsessive as I? I have a new book (ONE GOLDEN RING) set to be released Oct. 1, and I've been checking my "numbers" at amazon and B&N.com several times a day -- even though B&N (whose numbers also include in-store sales) doesn't change its numbers throughout the day like amazon does. I got really excited on Sept. 20 because my B&N ranking went down to 409 -- which is fabulous. My book was listed as one of the Top 100 sellers that day. Two days before that, I was number 711 on amazon. I thought -- since my book hadn't even been released yet -- that this book was going to zoom onto those bestseller lists, which is something I've never done before.
I told myself this is the best book I've ever written, and the reviews seem to have borne this out. Romance Designs (historicalromancewriter) gave it a Perfect 10, Huntress Reviews gave it 5 stars, as did Harriet Klausner. AND Sue Grimshaw, the head buyer for the Borders, Waldens, Bretanno chain, e-mailed to tell me it was the best book she'd read in a long while.
Well, my book has been shipped. It should be shelved Saturday, and . . . no great big splash. No bestseller lists. No show on Neilsen's BookScan.
I keep asking myself if there's anything I can do now to up the all-important numbers. And, of course, I can't.
I know everyone says "Write the best book you can" and success will follow. But it ain't always so.
Last time I checked today, my book was 7,199 on B&N. Woe is me.
This book is my first Christmas book, and I've been told they sell really well. Has this been the case for those of you who've penned Christmas books?
Grasping and gasping for great numbers . . .