The Novelty Girls

I’ve been on this tear, lately, about trying to get the word out about books that don’t sizzle.

Wait. Let me step back. These books can sizzle. There is often enough sexual tension to melt candles in some of the books I’ve read. What makes them different, what makes them sadly (in my opinion) overlooked, is that when it comes down to the sex, it’s not explicit. It’s not graphic. There are no fluids exchanged in detail, there are no “naughty” words for genitalia. Sex may be on the page, or sex may happen behind closed doors, but compared to the erotic romance that’s prevelant today and seemingly everywhere, these books are tame.

Which means that in the current marketplace it’s hard to get the word out about them. Reviewers don’t pick these books up from their site offerings. Readers may not buy them because the blurbs don’t sizzle. Promotion on mailing lists and in chatrooms may not catch the eye or the attention because the excerpts aren’t sexy enough.

And I wonder why. Before erotic romance became all the rage, was this the case? Has the audience for “standard” romance suddenly disappeared? Is closing the door a death sentence for a book these days?

I have to say that I hope not. I’d rather not have to up the heat in what I’m writing just to get someone to sit up and pay attention. I prefer to write what the story calls for and in most cases, my stories don’t call for an explicit focus on sex. I still want reader feedback and reviews, of course. I’d still like to hear my praises sung on high and to make bestseller lists. Is that becoming an impossibility these days?

What do you think?

So I just got back from a weekend with my friend. We both have kids about the same age, and we love getting them together to play. And of course I was camera happy. So I was uploading the pics onto my computer, when one of them struck me as odd. My daughter and her son were riding bikes in her garage. And above both of their heads, there are these perfectly round, translucent orbs.

Now most people would look at this and think, hmm, must be the flash. A reflection. Dust on the lense. And they probably are. Easy to write off. But for me, not so much. I like to believe there’s a story behind it. I love the whole ghost stuff. I love reading books that have ghost threads in them. So here’s a ’supposed’ picture of an orb in a cemetary. And here’s the two orbs in my pic. Funny, and now I’ve creeped my friend out. She called to tell me her son’s door shut all by itself when he was asleep

My book Silk Hauntings was my first attempt at writing paranormal. It’s essentially a ghost story, well, one with a kinky side. But this book was a lot of fun for me. The research was incredibly fun (and actually I’ve been researching ghosts as a hobby for years!), the writing was a ticket to let my imagination and knowledge go wild. Because the idea of ghosts, of catching them on film, of running equipment to find evidence of them, all kinds of crazy stuff… well it’s totally exciting me! I love it!

So am I just crazy to believe in this stuff? To want to believe in it? There are times it scares the snot out of me. Where I know I’d freak out if I ever encountered a ghost or some kind of haunting. But yet I’m massively curious. And I think they make great backdrops for a book. Because essentially you have two stories. Your hero/heroine and your ghost’s story.

The word paranormal covers all branches of books. Shifters, vampires, witches… gosh the list is too long. And even though I write a lot of contemporaries, if I’m going to do a paranormal, ghosts are my favorite. They’re my thing. If you write paranormal, what’s your preference? Everyone has that one type of book that you just get all excited to write. You think ‘Great! I get to do another of these…’ Or even if it’s not paranormal. What type of book gets your juices flowing?

As a writer, you can go for decades without every recieving an acceptance letter. You might submit to contests, agents, editors, publishers and everyone else you can think of and still never get that first acceptance. If you keep at it, you may finally rake in that first golden ticket.

So, if you don’t get a yes right away, or even if you do, when do you look at yourself and say “I have arrived, I am a real writer.” And how much does that acceptance letter have to do with that point in your career mindset? Is it everything? Is it really that golden ticket to the chocolate factory (aka New York)?

Now that I’m e-pubbed I look at myself and think I’m not just a writer anymore, I’m an author. I’m still not sure what that says about me as a person and a writer. It’s all too new right now. For others, I’m sure there’s not much of a distinction between the two: writer and author. For me, there is. I’m just wired weird.

So, when is it safe to say “I have arrived” in this business? Is it when you first sell anywhere? Only to New York? After you first book is released and you have something tangible for all your hard work? What do you think?

Almost every writer dreams of the day they’ll receive an acceptance letter or “The Call” from an agent or editor — but at what point does the novelty wear off? I know it sounds crazy. I mean, if it’s your dream, then why would you ever get tired of it? It’d be just as exciting the fifteenth time as the first? Right?

Except that doesn’t hold up. Think of the first time you did something new. Now think of doing it over and over again. It might still be fun for you, but will you feel the same child-like fascinated joy that you did the first time? Probably not.

I’ve been submitting my (mostly short) work for years. I’ve gathered a small collection of acceptances and publications. This spring, an e-publisher, Freya’s Bower, accepted me based on a 500 word writing sample to write a set of short stories for their “Bites” line. Let me tell you, that felt good, especially considering the sample in question was a snippet from the rough draft of my then-novel-in-progress. I was high on excitement.

This weekend, I received an acceptance letter from Liquid Silver for my erotic fantasy romance, A Passion Draconic. Was I excited about it? Oh, hell yes. I wasn’t sure if the book was good enough to sell, but my crit partners and beta readers assured me it was my hyper-critical nature. But … after the first fifteen exuberant minutes, it faded. Compare that to several days of squeeing over prior acceptances.

People have been congratulating me since and saying how stoked I must be — and I am, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the same. In a way, it’s more a quiet affirmation: Yes, I can do this. I find myself treating it like something I knew was going to happen, even though I didn’t. Perhaps I’m just trying not to make a big deal out of it. (Or both.)

I can’t help but wonder how I’ll react to further acceptances — and rejections. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

How about you? What have your experiences been with multiple acceptances and publications? Does it still hold a deep fascination or novelty, or is it just another part of the business? Either way, how do you feel about it?

Elisabeth Drake
http://www.emdrake.com

At least that’s what Delle Jacob’s calls it. That all consuming need we as writers have to create. We forgo time with our family, friends, skip the laundry, order out fast food, don’t clean the bathroom. Our TBR pile reaches up to the ceiling waiting for us to shrink it down to a normal size that doesn’t impede access inside the room.

The more I say it, the more I think about it, YES, it is a sickness that causes all those people we write about to talk to us inside our heads, or, outloud if no one else is around. Because we’re NOT crazy. Right? They make us laugh, they make us cry, and sometimes they even piss us off when they won’t do what we tell them to do. Because we want them to be real. If we take the time to put them on paper, they ARE real. To us, and eventually, to the person who reads it after that wonderful acceptance email comes in.

And you know what, none of us want to be cured. There’s no pill or writing penicillin shot that will ever cure me. I love my sickness. I embrace my sickness. My sickness makes me whole.

What about you?

This weekend, I’m going on an adventure. My husband’s Boss hosts a summer party at his cabin by the lake. There are serious amounts of alcohol, and it is free-flowing. Everyone sits, drinks, talks, and goofs off…it’s basically like those parties I was never invited to in high school, but heard about the Morning After.

Maybe it’s a side-effect of not being one of the cool kids back then, but I find myself worrying and anxious before we head off tomorrow. Will I keep it together enough to leave them with a good impression of me (and by association, my husband)?

More than that, though, I wonder how these people, after seeing each other as undoubtedly inebriated as they will be by Friday evening, deal with each other on Monday morning. The Boss himself gets good ‘n liquored. Last year, when I arrived, one woman was so intoxicated she couldn’t (and didn’t even attempt) to stand. The (rented) jet-ski was flipped. Twice.

I heard rumour that there were two smoking sections, not to account for wind direction, but for ‘what was being smoked’. And I’m not talking cigars. Those were in the Poker Tent, and you smoked a cigar, inhaled the second hand smoke with a smile, or you didn’t play.

So how do they do it? How, after allowing themselves to hit this point of hedonistic abandon, do they manage to work side-by-side come Monday, without embarassment or fear? Since my husband works as a satellite to this office, he only sees them once a month…so his situation is different. (He also toed the line last year, being a new recruit.)

Am I just overly sensitive? I know that I indulged myself at the Christmas bash, as much as anyone else, and my face burns when I remember doing karaoke. If someone teases me about it this weekend, I’ll flush and hang my head. And I only see this people twice a year. How do they do it every day?

Which brings me, very slowly I’m afraid, to the question of personal professionalism. What lines do we have, as writers and people, that we won’t cross for our writing? I don’t talk about my own sex life in chats or on my blog. Even with my friends I say very little about it.
I’m careful about alcohol. My body doesn’t process it like other people, and one drink too many and I do things that are completely out of character, and I can’t remember a thing. Very bad for the professional image.

Which makes it very hard for me to understand how Boss can drink like he does without losing some of the Control he normally has over these people. Do you know how it could be done? Do you have your own ‘professional ethics’ that you stick to? And what would make you lose faith in someone you worked for? Or a writer you admired?

Well, The Novelty Girls blog has a new look at least. *g* I think all TNG’s are happy with it. If they aren’t, they ain’t sayin’;) We all picked an image to represent us or our work for the header. Who’s who? I’m not saying but I think guessing would make an interesting blog contest. Look for something along those lines next week.

Since I’m also redesigning my blog, I’ve been thinking about changes in general and how we handle certain ones in particular. I take most change pretty well. Life can throw curve balls at me and as long as it’s not all at one time (like last week. eek!), I can roll with it.

Where I tend to panic is in my writing. I’m a plotter and I get antsy when things start to twist on me. Jodie touched on this in her post. Those characters who throw weird crap at you when you least expect it? They are always messing with my plots lol. I mean, the nerve.

This is something of a problem right now. I’m working on the third Lunar Mates book and it has just taken off for left field. It’s darker than I usually write and I’m not sure how I feel about that. The plot in no way resembles what I started with. For many writer’s this isn’t a big deal. For me, it feels like navigating a mine field without a guide. Worse, I’m actually getting emails asking me when this one is coming out! *gulp*

Writing, particularly plot, changes make me very nervous. Am I the only one? Do you find change difficult to handle? Is it an isolated area and if so, what is it?

I was talking with another writer friend today, one who’s successfully published multiple print books. Granted her career is pretty new yet, but she’s doing well. And our conversation turned toward epublishing.

I noted that it seemed to me to be a length beyond which people are uncomfortable reading electronic books. Books of 20K words or so seem fairly popular and like they sell well. They’re quick reads, it’s not too much time to spend staring at your computer screen, they’re reasonably priced, etc.

But then I started wondering. What’s the upper end? How much are you willing to read on your computer before you skip right over a title? If you have an e-reader, does that make a difference? Are you more willing to buy something that’s longer because the format is easier to control?

Are you, like me, a bargain shopper? Would you rather buy four books for $10 instead of two for $10? Or does the length not matter since you’re in it for the author or the type of story?

I am ever curious, as usual.

So I’m running a bit late with this post, and with a whole bunch of other things. This got me thinking about deadlines. In writing, we seem to have a deadline for everything. Contests, publishers, editors, agents, submissions. It’s one never ending deadline.

And it only gets worse the more successful you become.

The more you sell, the more deadlines you have with all of the above mentioned people. You can be writing toward one deadline, editing toward another, and past deadline for a third all at the same time. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to deal with all the deadlines that come hand in hand with even a modicum of success in this business.

The question for today is how do YOU deal with deadlines? Do you wear them like badges of honor or see them as just one more thing on your overflowing to-do pile? Also, this brings up the idea that once you “succeed” it’s not about writing for yourself and working out this crazy obsession called “writing,” it’s about external motivators like money and deadlines. Is it possible that deadlines can kill success by making a writer churn out less than their best work?

Hello, my name is Jodie and I’m the guest blogger today on TNG.

Ever here about those moments where the ‘hero’ of an authors upcoming book just came to them in a dream? Well, that doesn’t happen to me. They visit me in the shower! *insert terrified scream and panicked covering* Ok, well, now that really doesn’t happen. It’s more of a *reow* Kehe.

I didn’t think when starting out as an author, that my characters would take a life of their own. I thought I could tell them what to do and I’ll write it *clapping hands* easy! Not so. I often get that ‘You’re the author tell them what to do!’ From family when I whine about the difficult scene I had to write because the characters wouldn’t cooperate.

Shall we have an example: I’m busy writing a scene where the hero is trying to save the heroine’s butt. They have to make a dive from the top floor of a building and while it’s a great adventureous leap I think - Fantastic! You know what I find out? The heroine’s afraid of heights. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Could the scene get any harder!

I can’t throw that fear away, since it’s so ingrained in the character - and when I try to change them to suit me, they stop talking!

Ok, you can imagine how crazy that sounds.

Yet, no matter how it sounds, I guess it doesn’t seem that bad. If the characters supply you problems, then I think it’s a good thing. To understand the character, I hope, means the reader will really connect with them.

So authors: Can you tell me of a moment where you went ‘Are you kidding me?!’ When a character came out of the blue with something?

Readers: Was there a character that really struck a chord with you?