The Novelty Girls

A recent problem I’ve had while writing is working on more than one mauscript at a time. Some of you may know that I write in multiple genres. I do fantasy, contemporary, paranormal, erotic, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum. (Prolly spelled all those fancy words wrong too).

Anyway, the problem is when I’m writing multiple works in multiple genres. You tell me how easy it would be to write a sweet chick lit fantasy and switching to a dark paranormal then to an erotic holidy story. It all gets very confusing. Which point of view am I in? First or third? Am I writing dirty, naughty, graphic sex or using euphemisms? Is my heroine tortured or sassy? Would she say/think/do this or is that my other heroine? Do his insecurities play a part here, is he tortured and bitter or shy and reserved? Wait, which book am I in again?

It’s a balancing act, one where you have to constantly assess what you’re writing to make sure you keep your characters and plot and story consistent. Not sure yet if I’ve pulled it off or mucked it up. We’ll see when I submit the stories.

So how do you do it? Do you ever write more than one book at a time? If so, how to you maintain consistency? What’s your strategy? Give me some tips!

Are you wondering, what the heck? LOL Book Pimpin* in the literal sense means promoting another author*s book. Some of you may wonder, why in the world would you do that? Don*t you want readers to buy *your* book? Why? Because we authors are a fun, loving, generous bunch. (Most of us - don*t get me wrong, there are some skanks out there.)

In the world of literature, we*re in a business where readers don*t just read *one* author. I was reading a post somewhere that it*s not like household products. In my house, we buy Gain to wash clothes, Wonder Bread, Welch*s Jelly, Dole Pineapples, etc. You get my point. On stuff like this you have your favorites and you don*t or rarely experiment with something else.

But in the world of reading and writers, you can have a favorite author, but read and like a whole lot of other people too and will run to the store-computer to purchase their next book when it comes out. You have shelves and shelves of or files and files of e-books.

So, as a writer/reader how do you feel when you see another author pimp someone elses book? Do you think, is she crazy? or Wow, that is so nice?

Hope you have a great weekend. Lyric

I’m talking/thinking/breathing writing lately. My personal blog is full of thoughts about stories and characters and publishing and…I’m bored with it!

I can talk about writing here, and at Romance Divas, and in IMs with my writer-friends. But my friends and I also talk about our kids and husbands, dreams and goals, and just the random thoughts that make us human. This week I started realising my blog is very much about a writer, not so much about a human. A reflection of my state of mind, too, I’m afraid.

Of course, husbands and kids don’t much appreciate it when you blog about them. Or, at least not if you blog the truth But, it seems to me they bear mentioning, at least once in a while.

There was a question posted to one of my yahoo groups this week, too. How well do you like to know your authors? I don’t. I mean, I have a couple authors who make me weak in the knees; total fangirl. I visit their websites, but I don’t think I’d ever go to their blog. What if they post when they’re drunk? What if they’re womanizers? What if they’re, well, all too human?

I was a vocal minority on that point, though. Most readers seemed to like to know their authors, interact with them. But it got me wondering: what do you want to know about your fave authors? What *don’t* you want to know? And what could you learn that would turn you off their writing entirely?

Life is crazy. I should just deal, huh? Things are fixing to get very crazy for me though. I’m working on a book that needs to be by the end of the year. I have two books in edits. And I’ve just found a house that I really want to buy. Doesn’t seem like much does it? But if we buy this house, I have to sell mine and get a job. Get. A. Job. Oh my. But until that mythical day of in the future that my writing income matches a job income, I’ll just have to suck it up and do it.

All this change has me a little worried though. Right now I’m having a hard enough time juggling life, writing, working on the house (to get ready to sell), and looking for a job. What’s gonna happen when I actually throw a job in that mix? (The house stuff will just be transfered from one place to another.) So I’m wondering what our working-writer-readers have to say about this. How do juggle everything? Do you make up schedules or just wing it?

Picture this.

You’ve finished a proposal. You’re excited about sending it off. It needs to be printed, so to the printer it goes.

And then, halfway through chapter two of the three you need, you run out of paper.

So it’s off to the store and back. And then you notice it. The fact that your faithful printer is making weird little black checkmarks on the page. You test a new piece of paper. Nope, still there.

So you investigate and discover that the roller on the toner cartridge is scratched. What do you do? You let some idiot (not naming names) “fix” it. Which, of course, makes it worse. And now? Now you’re reduced to printing things on your color inkjet which, while speedy, is not really made for printing Plain. Black. Text.

Sigh.

Yes, you guessed it. My old dino of a printer has finally been put to rest. It ran for 15 years without many hitches. It was slow as molasses, but it was reliable. It worked! Fortunately, my husband had already promised that when Dino went we’d get another one, so it’s on its way, but it made me think.

Do you have anything that’s old and worn and a comfortable part of your routine that you do or will miss when it’s gone? Did you (like I did) learn to type on a manual typewriter and sometimes still miss having to slide the shuttle back and forth? Do you have a thesaurus or dictionary that’s falling apart? Does anybody else make attachments to inanimate equipment, or is that just me?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Took some time to celebrate. Just one day out of life. It would be, it would be so nice. Yes… I’m attempting to sing vintage Madonna

So I was filling out an interview today, regarding my writing, and one question totally made me laugh. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t funny. It was logical, and would probably make sense in any other career. But as a writer, it just gave me the biggest belly laugh. The question?

So, I finished my latest book Revenant and am going to submit it today. While I did a crazy Snoopy dance last night when I typed The End, it occurred to me that this is hardly the end of this book.

Assuming that the publisher I’m sending it to buys the book (cross fingers and pray really, really hard), then I have to go through edits. Lots of edits where I sculpt and hone and prune the bejesus out of this bad boy until it only vaguely resembles the story I turned it. This is a good thing, because as much as we whine and bemoan the editing process, it usually helps the book in question to become a better piece of marketable product. And this is, after all, a business where writers put out a product for sale. More sale equal more money, and money is gooooood. Bring it on, baby.

After edits are done, you get a release date, a cover, other promotional material. You set up promo chats, bloggings, interviews and basically anything to pimp the crap out of your book to make it sell like hotcakes. And once it’s out on the market for people to buy, you still do a little promoing here and there as people mention it to you for as long as it’s available for sale.

So, basically, once you hit The End, there’s no end in sight. Am I the only weirdo who thinks that’s the coolest thing ever? How do you feel when you type The End?

The book I*ve been working on lately took me in another direction. Not a bad one, mind you, but different. It was supposed to be the beginning of a series, but after I finished writing Chapter 6, it hit me that I could have much more fun with this character in another book and THEN write this one, just tweak it and make it a little bit different.

I actually was able to sit down, do a little research and then mini-plot out the entire book! And, since I did that, I*ve decided that instead of the cozy mystery I*d planned to work on during NaNoWriMo, I*m going to work on this book instead and work on the cozy possibly in Dec/Jan.

I*ve heard other writers say that sometimes the characters in their books do unexpected things, say no to something when the author wants them to say yes, or vice versa. Has this ever happened to you? Or, have your characters ever called to you said, “Hey, I should have another story, and this one too.”

Hope you have a great weekend.

Lyric

Thanks Lori for posting that question yesterday. It got me thinking.

I have the honour of being the namesake for a villain in Crystal’s latest book, which for the most part makes me happy. I mean, once she promised me it wasn’t a passive-aggressive way of getting back at me for something I might’ve said to upset her.

Because the one sure way to get yourself into one of my books is to make me mad. I wrote a story in high school about a woman who was trying to steal my boyfriend. She was transformed into a hog-like beast with skin blemishes and halitosis of the highest order. More recently I took a skinny bitty thing who gave me the up-down look because I still can’t fit into the jeans I wore before I had my last son. (she was transformed into the botoxed, lipo-ed, implanted villainess of a story.)

Not that these people would ever recognize themselves, or be recognized by others by being in one of my stories. Usually my anger just fuels a scene. (when I was younger, my sister and I had a huge fight. I worked on a story, and the scene ended with someone being decapitated. Tell me being angry didn’t have anything to do with that!)

But as I thought about it, I realised I tend to put pieces of people I know (who haven’t made me angry) into my books. My one heroine has my youngest son’s eyes, because the almost-black brown of his eyes fascinates me so much. She also has a bit of my CP’s attitude. One of my heroes has my husband’s eyes, which range from amber to chocolate brown, depending on his mood. Again, no one else would notice it, but it’s there.

And I’m there too, though I’m not going to be nearly as forthright about what of myself I put into my characters. It’s not always good things, I’m going to leave it at that.

As a writer, I hope that those pieces of other people will help make characters more real to my readers. Because as a reader, there’s nothing more amazing than reading a book and thinking “That character was me…”

So today’s question is this: what book have you read that made you squirm a little in your seat, wondering if maybe the writer had tapped your phone–they just got a character that hit too close to who you are?

I’m starting to hate those four little words.

It seems like in modern culture we put a whole lot of emphasis on jobs as if everyone is defined by what they “do”. If you’re a stay at home mother sometimes you feel like you’ve been excluded from some exclusive club. Sometimes announcing that job makes you the recipient of snide comments and nasty looks. I never thought “I’m a writer” could be worse. Responses to that run the gamut.

1. Must be nice not to have a real job. –Ok, I’m guilty of this myself. I often say I don’t want a real job. But I hear this as if writing isn’t work. Hello, uninformed commenter that asked ME what I do–you try it!

2. Romance is just trash. –Um, yeah. Cause that Stephen King tucked under your arm there is so high brow?

3. Where do you get your ideas?–If I only had a dime for every time someone asks this…

4. Can I be in your book?–Um, no.

5. Are you still working on that thing?–Yes I’m still working on this. It takes a long time to finish a book to as close to perfection as I can get it. Trust me, you’ll know when it’s done. For one, I’ll crawl out of the writing hole I’ve been living in.

And from my husband.

6. When are you going to make enough money that I can quit working?–Get over it, dear.

So what writing assumptions/questions do you find most annoying?