A fast pace, well-written book encourages me to write. I get excited and want my books to be just as fun to read.
A book that doesn’t satisfy frightens me; I’m afraid I’ll pick up their bad habits. So, I quit reading and pass it on to the used book store or delete it off my e-reader.
Do you delete books ever? What are your reasons?
When I was on vacation in Alaska, I received a sweet email from my former editor at HarperCollins. Back in 2011, Wendy Lee had offered me my first (and the second one too) contract with Avon, and we stayed in touch after she left. In the email, she wanted to check on my mailing address as she planned to send her newest book. I was thrilled. During the time we worked together I knew we thought a lot alike and liked the same things about books. She was so easy to work with, and I was certain anything she wrote, I would enjoy.
Her newest book is ACROSS A GREEN OCEAN and coming out February 2015. I’m not sure if the cover on her ARC (advance reading copy) will be on the final one (that’s why it’s not shown here). [updated 1/18/15 – it is! Check it out at Amazon. Click here!] The cover is beautiful, soothing even. Looks like a painting of pastels, blending of greens and blues. It’s a photo of a young man fishing off a pier with mountains in the background and the sun reflected in the water, all hazy and soft. As soon as I reached home, I started reading it. The book was exactly what I needed to read.
For the last few months, I’ve been dissatisfied with the books I normally read. There were a couple I enjoyed, but I felt I was in a rut. I’m a big romance reader and rarely stray from them except when friends insist I read a book.
A couple years ago, Wendy had told me a little of what her book was about, and I was intrigued.
Believe it or not, I’m a big lover of reading about family dynamics. Lots of romance novels delve into how family react to each other. Even my books touch on it, especially the last novel, CIRCLE OF DECEPTION.
Wendy’s ACROSS A GREEN OCEAN is about the Tang family and how they each cope with the death of their father/husband and more. The story is written in third person, present tense. Funny thing is I read a couple chapters before I even noticed it. The style is easy to read and pulls you in quickly.
I think each character had something I could relate to: the mother worrying about her children, and if she could’ve done things differently so the siblings could be closer; the daughter who had done all the right things, but now realizes they weren’t making her happy; and the son. Ah, the son. He’s running away from himself even before his dad passed away.
So much of it fascinated me. The way they reacted to and thought about neighbors, friends, family and co-workers. How the parents wanted to live the American dream, yet didn’t feel comfortable with it. And when the son makes the big decision to go to China to meet his father’s old friend, I read faster to find out what he would learn about his father, and how he handled being in a country where he looked like he belonged but didn’t. All of it pushing me to rush to the end to see what happened next.
I’m not Asian, nor have I visited a country that spoke a language other than my own, yet I know how it feels to be out of my element in a crowd and lose a loved one.
See, my father died the Saturday before I received the book. He’d been having health problems, but his death was sudden. In fact, I was still in Alaska at the time. So as I read, the book allowed me to compare my reactions to my dad’s death as the characters dealt with theirs. Death will do that. Make you look inside and hunt for answers to questions you never knew you had.
As you can tell, I’m not a reviewer. I’m an author and reader. But this book has so much to offer and I wanted to let others know. I highly recommend it to anyone. Just remember it is not a romance. I will point out the ending was perfect for the book. I was satisfied and that’s saying a lot.
You can find Wendy at her Website.
Really, what author doesn’t love readers? Well, knowing how cankerous us authors can be, there is probably a handful out there. But then I don’t understand why they even try to be/are published.
Anyway, I was reading Suzanne Johnson’s blog, and she kindly pointed out to an Amazon reviewer a misconception some readers have about authors. Click here to read the post. We’re always flabbergasted when we receive complaints about things we can’t control.
Sure, we can go to our editors and ask them to reconsider, but their marketing people have been doing the job many years, have the education to back them up, and the savvy needed to make the decisions. While, like me, authors usually just want to write and make enough money to live on. We are dreamers. Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) recited part of a great poem that most authors can relate to.
And yes, I feel a list coming on. Here are the things authors have no or little control over if published by a traditional publisher. Self-published books are totally a different kettle of fish.
1) Price. I’ve been fortunate that my publisher would ask me on occasion if they can mark down my books. Standard price is $3.99 for the e-book. So when they marked it down, it has been as low as $1.99. Only once have I let them mark a full novel down to 99 cents. Others can price them that low, but I value the work and time involved in producing my full length books, and I deserve more than 25 cents (usually less) for each one. We’re not talking about tens of thousands of dollars. It’s more like around $1,000 a year. Can you live on that amount in the U.S.? Hell, no, not if you want electricity, food, a roof over your head, etc.
By the way, it takes five months for me to write a full length book. And I work a full time job. Yep. Over 40-48 hrs a week and then I come home and write all evening and sometimes early in the morning. Let’s say on the low average, six hours a day. I write weekends, holidays, and of course, weekdays. So 365 days a year. Yes. Family obligations keep me from writing at times, but I still find time in the mornings or evenings. So six hours a day times 365 days equals 2,190 hrs a year. Let’s say last year I made $1,250 off all three books (probably less than that), I average 0.57 cents an hour. WOW! I’m living the high life, heh?
Oh,that amount isn’t all at one time. I get paid once a month on e-books (some months are skipped -no sales), so those $30 royalty checks can get us excited at home. That means we can go out to eat. YAY!
2) Cover. Once again, my publisher does ask my opinion and if I didn’t like something, they would give me a chance to say no, though I never did. Though I wish I had on my blue book (CIRCLE OF DANGER). It looks so different from the other two. We can only hope that the picture grabs the readers attention. It is the hotter of the three novels.
3) Formatting. Thankfully, Avon does a wonderful job in that regard with my books. There are several publishers who do not. They use double spacing (like an unpublished manuscript) between each line. Or they use double between each paragraph. To me, a break after a paragraph in a book means a POV change or time shift. A favorite author of mine’s publisher does that. Why? I have no idea. Anyway, this is usually beyond our control.
4) Title. You didn’t see that one coming, did ya? Yep. We have little control over that. Some authors have no say so at all. Thankfully, Avon is a class act. My editor asked my opinion and listened to what I said and then we worked together on the right title. CIRCLE OF DESIRE was originally OUT OF THE SHADOWS. I like the original title because spies and mercenaries work in the shadows. With Collin’s help, Olivia was pulled out of the shadows into the light and realized the person she worked for was a bad guy. Cool, isn’t it?
Anyway, the editor felt my title didn’t do the book justice as it was a romance, a hot one, and we needed to bring it to the reader’s attention. She thought the play on the organization’s name would help connect the other books. Boy, oh, boy, it did. When it came to the second and third book, we (my second editor came in the middle of edits of CIRCLE OF DANGER) agreed DANGER and DECEPTION worked perfectly for the other books.
5) Odds and Ends. I’ve seen one star reviews for the reader having trouble downloading a book (if through a reputable bookseller, it is most likely your computer/tablet/internet connection – besides, most authors are not IT experts), for receiving a book looking used (purchased from an independent seller, claiming to be “new” – I swear we want you to receive a new book, but there are others wanting to make a buck off an author’s hard work, without compensating the author. So buyer beware of unknown third parties.), and for the book not being the type of story or the direction they wanted. The last one I say, be sure to read the description of the book and the first few pages before buying. If you did, then I suggest either buy another author’s book or do what many authors have done, write your own. HA!
Over the years in romance and erotica, I’ve seen (or is that read) the size of a man’s penis go from average to King Kong in length and width (ouch!). I’ll never forget reading a historical romance where the guy’s cock was so big he had to wear a sheath around it whenever he rode out to battle the enemy. Funny but oddly sexy.
Anyway, I came across this interesting article called Does Size Really Matter? It’s worth a read and maybe the next time (if you’re a writer), you’ll think twice before giving your hero a huge “pleasure rod.” If you want to know more about penises and sizes, click here and read what Wikipedia said about it.
This all makes me remember a scene in CIRCLE OF DESIRE.
She [Olivia] leaned back in the chair, looking at him [Collin] with half-closed eyes. “Listen I hate men. No, I’m not sexually interested in women. I already have a pussy. Why would I want another one? I put up with men for one reason only. Their cocks. Big throbbing ones. A real live hot, hard cock is ten times better than any synthetic one at satisfying my needs. I like playing with them and then leaving before they want more. Was that what you wanted to hear?
The burning sensation in her stomach said it all. She hated this discussion. She hated that he couldn’t bring himself to care enough to protect her. Why she expected any man to protect her when she’d done it for herself all this time, she didn’t know. She just did.
Love that woman!
For the last few weeks I’ve been listening to some NYT bestselling books on audio. It’s inspiring all the way around.
As I was telling a buddy the other day, when I decided to try my hand at writing, it was out of desperation for something I liked to read. I had read all of my favorite writers’ books at that point (they can only write only so fast) and wanted to read what I knew for sure I would enjoy. Other authors start writing because they read something awful and said they could do better. But me, I wanted something just as good.
Though I’m not up to the excellence as the ladies I read, I continue to work on improving my books while keeping true to my voice.
One of the things I’ve learned while listening to the audios is that they’re not perfect. Close enough, but I catch a few things. And when I say I catch a few things, I’m saying they’re minor. It proves to me to stop sweating the small stuff.
Side note: One of the ways an author self-edits her book is to read it out loud. You catch so many errors that way. Helps smooth out the writing. But we’re all human and still miss a few.
Yes. There are grammar rules and they should be followed. Yet, at times you can break the rules if it will make the scene more dramatic or funny or whatever. In other words, there must be a reason to break the rule.
My critique partner can tell you, I don’t believe in characters saying each other’s name over and over again, especially in a scene where there is only two people. Wouldn’t you get ticked, if your better half said your name at the beginning or end of every other sentence? You’d think they were mad at you or being sarcastic. But in one of the books, the hero refers to the heroine quite often by a nickname. It caught my attention, but didn’t irritate me (or the heroine). It actually helped the reader to remember there was a difference between the two lovers.
I caught inconsistencies in facts, but it didn’t bother me because the story was so wonderful. Yes. Great writing can help you overlook the small errors too.
So here’s to me hoping that my writing improves to the point people forgive me of all my small mistakes and understand the choices I make in my books.
Carla Swafford, Author 