Inside the editing cave

I've been absent on social media for the last month, as some of my friends have noticed, but online activities went ahead minus me and most were none the wiser. And my inbox grew...a lot. It's like the emails were bunnies and bred.

During this time I was holed up with my laptop editing like a fiend. I had to take an early version of my manuscript and mash it together with a newer version and then weed out all the inconsistencies.

Two rounds of editing later and I'm back in the real world...for now. My manuscript is now  in the hands of my editor and will probably undergo a few more rounds of content edits before it under goes line edits. So I'm bound to disappear into the editing cave again soon enough.

So if you have a writer friend who goes MIA it's not that they don't love you or care anymore. They're probably in crazy editing mode and neglecting friends and family in person as well as online.

So: what makes you disappear offline? And how do you handle your editing?

New Adult Cover Reveal: ENDRE by ST Bende

ST Bende's first book in the new adult paranormal romance The Elsker Saga, ELSKER, has been making waves on the indie circuits. So while we're all eagerly awaiting the release of the second installment in this Nordic love story, we'll have to content ourselves with ogling the cover.

So here it is...

*drumroll please*

Sometimes, finding your destiny means doing the exact opposite of what The Fates have planned.

Winning the heart of an immortal assassin was a dream come true for Kristia Tostenson. Now she's knee deep in wedding plans, goddess lessons, and stolen kisses. But her decision to become immortal could end in heartbreak -- not only for Kristia, but for the god who loves her. Because while Ull would do anything to protect his bride, even the God of Winter is powerless against the Norse apocalypse. Ragnarok is coming. And the gods aren't even close to ready.

ENDRE releases September 23rd from Entranced Publishing, but if you haven't read ELSKER yet you can find out more here

When Characters Irritate...

There was this recently released YA novel I'd been dying to read since I first saw the cover and read the blurb almost a year earlier (why do this to us publishers?). I finally got to read the book, the book I'd heard was all kinds of awesome and brilliant, and after having been assured by bloggers and friends I'd love it.

I didn't...

The reason? The main character irritated the !*@# out of me!

Yup this was me after the first chapter... and then after every subsequent chapter.

This experience was new to me. Sure I've read books where I disliked or even hated a character but even then I enjoyed reading the book because I wanted to see the jerk get his comeuppance - kind of like how I handle watching Game of Thrones without throwing a brick through my screen every time there's a scene with Joffrey in it. I'm convinced he's going to get skewered one of these days so I keep watching in hopeful anticipation.

Not so with this book sadly. A main character doesn't need to be likable but they need to be someone we can root for, someone we can hopefully relate to and empathise with - or someone we love to hate, like Klaus from The Vampire Diaries. The problem with an irritating character is that I can't root for them, I can't relate or empathise with them because I just want to slap them every second page. I finished the book hoping the character would die and relieve the fictional world of their existence. Sadly not, and there's even a sequel 0.o.

So why did this character rub me up the wrong way? Oh let me count the ways:

1. Weak and easily manipulated
2. Oblivious to just about everything important
3. Made inane references to cult-classic pop culture (possibly more author's fault than character's)
4. Made stupid decisions, not bad decisions, just ridiculous
5. Spent far too much time worrying about getting kissed instead of surviving
6. Tried too hard to be cool - this may actually be the author's fault too

It's tricky to separate the author from the character since the author is the god of their book world and controls character action, decision, dialogue... everything. I can forgive points 1, 2, 4 and 5 as aspects of a character that I just didn't like - if this were a real person we would not be friends. But points 3 and 6 are entirely on the author. 

Yes, YA is intended for a teen audience but it's not written by teens and many authors try way too hard to be cool in their writing. You can capture authentic teen lifestyle and voice without cramming dialogue full of slang, without referencing clothing brands and gadgets to the point where it seems like product placement and please authors, stop with all the 'cool' references to pop and Internet culture like memes. It's not cool, it's irritating as hell and dates the work immediately. This is why I tend to steer clear of contemporary YA, except all these irritating points weren't actually in a contemporary book, which made their presence all the more annoying.

Have you ever met a character so irritating you wanted to tear up the pages or break your eReader?

Trends

Originally I was going to do a follow up interview with Janine Spendlove, but that will have to wait till next month. Life likes to get in the way from time to time in the most unexpected ways both in a positive and negative ways.

So I am sitting here trying to figure out what to write; and I am drawing a blank. I am not sure if it is actual writer’s block or my mind is a whirl with life and I can’t focus on a single thought. Then it hits him.

I am a librarian and I haven’t really talked about that side of myself. And I am not going to, not really anyway. As I write this I realize today Dan Brown’s new book came out, which has nothing to do with YA Lit, but it did get me thinking about trends, which I am see in the ordering catalogues from various publishers - namely Baker and Taylor and Ingram.

I started to wonder what causes these trends to form. Why does one theme or idea hit over another, which then causes publishers to leap onto the bad wagon? Or what connects with the readers to cause this phenomenon to occur.

Why did Harry Potter become the multimillion, if not multibillion dollar success it became?

Why did Twilight hit it big and it did regardless of what you think about it?

Why did the Hunger Games become the big dystopian series it was?

Why is it taking so long for Steam Punk to catch on?

Where are all the Zombie books, weren’t they supposed to replace Vampires as the next big monster?

Why aren’t there more superhero based novels? They are huge in the box office?

Needless to say I don’t have the answers… I have never been that great at guessing trends when it comes to YA Lit. I really thought Zombies were about to have their day. But as I was looking through the ordering books I was shocked at the number of Roman and Greek God & Goddess themed books coming out. I know that the Percy Jackson’s books were huge, even though the movie didn’t make the money the studios thought. I am happy the second film is coming out. Is this why we are seeing all of these books? Honestly Percy Jackson hit it big a while back and isn’t really current or asked for at the library I work at. I could be wrong? But I am asking the question and putting it out there.  

I know most books hitting the shelf, let’s say this week, and have been in the hands of the publishers for at least a year or longer. But can a trend survive that length of time? Especially when the series which has inspired the initial trend has ended? I don’t have the answer.

And what about those long lasting books?

The classics?

The Hobbit?

Sherlock Holmes?

The works of Jules Vern?

Geek and Roman Mythology?

And countless others?

I have to wonder will anyone care about what I have written next month? A year from now? A year after my death? 50 years after my death? Etc. I hope you get my point?

I do think Harry Potter will become a classic.

I think the Hunger Games and Twilight will fade in time.

Writing is a tricky thing. Do we write to the trends or to things which might become trends? Or do we just write what we want to read or enjoy writing and just hope some else reads and likes it? And if it becomes a trend starter so be it?

Do we have to ask, as an author/writer, “Why do we write in the first place?”

I know for me I can’t imagine myself not writing, though it is strange getting back to writing after taking 3 years off to get my Masters in Library Science/Services.

And it is really thanks to Scaldcrow Games to get me writing again. It might not be the writing I thought I would be doing after my Masters, but it got me writing again and brought me back to my world of Sapphire City, the city of tomorrow, to-day! Will my 1940s Golden Age Hero Pulp be the next big trend? I doubt it, but I love writing it and the responses I am getting from the people who have gotten a taste of this world. A world I created.

I am going to talk more about the Amazing Pulp Adventures closer to the release of the multiple books being release later this year.

As I continue to write about trends, I realize trends overtime fade. Sometimes they run in cycles and will come back strong, like Vampires have done time and time again. Though there are some trends which come and go and never return as one-hit-wonders. Where does this staying power come from? The only thing I can think of is something deep inside us, something visceral which keeps drawing us back to certain themes and ideas we can’t in our human nature get enough of.

Trends - what an interesting thing you are.

I wonder if computer written books will become a new trend or not? Or if it will one day replace human writers? I hope not.

Oh trends where will you take us next?

I am curious to see. 

CYOA blog hop

To celebrate the release of my YA Fantasy, BROKEN FOREST, I decided to do a CYOA blog hop.

Do you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure novels? I LOVED them. I would read a couple of pages, die, then flip back and re-do my choices. The CYOA I wrote takes place in Raswood Forest, one of the wild territories of Tarrtainya. If you love adventure, take a trip into the dark woods, but be mindful of the winter wolves.

The adventure starts here

There are a total of FIVE giveaways. There’s the main giveaway and four hidden ones on different story endings. Make sure to keep playing!

Last night my husband finished the monotype for the main giveaway. Here’s a pic! Did I mention he did the cover?

I hope you’ll stop by and play!

Book Blurb:

Hopeless he'll never be more than the boy who didn't save his brother, 17-year-old Avikar accepts his life as the family stable boy, trying to forget the past. But when his sister, Jeslyn, is kidnapped, the thought of losing another sibling catapults him on a desperate quest. With his best friend by his side, and using the tracking skills he learned from his father, he discovers Jeslyn has been taken, kidnapped by one Lucino, the young lord of Daath, a mystical place thought only to exist in fables.

And Lucino has plans for Jeslyn.

Author Bio:

Eliza graduated from Dowling College with a BS in Visual Communications. When she’s not arguing with excel at her day job, or playing Dragon Age 2, again, she’s writing. Her stories hold a bit of the fantastical and there’s always a romance. She resides on Long Island with her husband, two kids and one very snuggly pit bull.

 

BUY LINKS:

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / KOBO

Goodreads

Author links:

Twitter / Tumblr / Website  / Pinterest / Facebook

 

I Aint Afraid of No Tropes

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations.

This is a blog post about starting to come to terms with what works when building a story. It is also a post about humbling yourself to the tried and true.

When I was studying for my MFA my professors were very clear that "TROPES" though they didn't call them that at the time, were evil. They called them cliches. The girl falling for her best friend's brother. The crotchety old man who finds a heart of gold. The fish out of water story.

My professors taught me that you didn't want your readers to have preconceived notions about your work. You didn't want to be "stuck in a box".

I was learning to write literary fiction, which while I love it, is many times all about the words and language and NOT about the story. Usually the story comes from character and not from the plot.

My first book came out a year ago and when I conceived of it, it came from character. I had a story about a teenage girl with self-esteem issues and a smart mouth that I wanted to tell. I didn't understand when I was plotting it that there were things that could help me. Road-maps well worn and used by authors for years and years, instead I pulled the whole story from one idea.

A girl in the "wrong crowd" gets arrested in Prom Night. 

From this incident the conflict and plot was built.
 
But, it took me forever because I was building something from scratch rather than using scaffolding that could have been provided to me.

My professors had told me NOT to use this scaffolding because it was cliche. It was OVERDONE. It was not "real" writing. Tropes were what people who were lazy used.

I believed this for years and years.

Then I got published.

Being published is amazing, but it also means you need to write faster. MUCH FASTER. You need to build stories that work and make sense within months, not years, so you can keep your readers and audience engaged.

Tropes are helping me do this.

In my experience writing three books and more than halfway into my fourth, I have learned that tropes are beautiful things. They are the skeleton, the trail of bread crumbs to building your story.

They wouldn't be tropes if they didn't "work". If they weren't stories that already had beginning, middles and ends.

Finally coming to this realization, my stories are coming much easier, because I am not afraid to pull from the ideas that people recognize. I am not afraid to use what is provided to write stories that people want to read.

What are your thoughts on tropes?

Once more into the fray...

Today I got to thinking. Mainly about the many different genres that exist within the writing world. Nowadays, there seems to be a genre name for every imaginable type of novel – SteamPunk, Gothic Horror, Romance, Light sci-fi...you name it, there's a genre label for it. Whatever you've written, whether it's a straight genre piece or a genre mash-up, there's a niche for it in the market today, and nowhere more so than in the YA world.

With the fresh, young minds of today hungry to learn about their world through the words that they read, the YA market offers such a diverse opportunity for writers to explore their imaginations and put the fruits of their Muse onto the page. However, no matter how hungry the new generation of readers are for books of every kind, it still doesn't hide the fact that the publishing industry is still cautious about opening up to these new genres, and watches the market figures and trends carefully to see what's going to succeed and what's going to fail.

 

So where does this leave the new writer who is writing outwith the most popular genres? Mostly, hesitant about sending their romantic fantasy or post apocalyptic novels on submission when paranormal or alternate historical leads the charts.

However, does that mean we need to stick within the realms of only the genres currently selling well? The answer, for me at least, is a resounding NO!

While it is all well and good from a business point of view to follow the trends and watch the markets, it is never a good idea to write something solely for the market. If this is done, the novels begin to lack true imagination, emotion and power. And if you think a teenager lacks the depth of intelligence and creativity to notice a lack-lustre, half-hearted novel, then think again.

Despite having the scope and ability to encompass any type of tale, the YA genre is perhaps one of the toughest markets to convince. That's because of the honesty and truth that comes as part of being a teen. While you might be able to fool an adult into reading a well-written book without heart, you'll have no such luck with a teen, as they live, fully present, in the real world. Their emotions and feelings, so raw and unbridled at that age, means that they can spot a fake a mile off. So be warned...if you're going to dive in the YA fray, make sure your story comes straight from the soul.

Calling All Teen Bloggers!

Digital romance publisher, Entranced Publishing, is on the hunt for the best teen book bloggers from around the globe. If you’re 18 years old or younger, then we want to know all about you and your blog.

This contest runs from May 1st, 2013 to May 14th, 2013. To enter is easy: just leave the name and URL of your blog in the comments section on our facebook page using this link here. At midnight EDT, May 14th, the contest will close and we’ll begin selecting the winners. Five winners will be hand-selected by Publicist Suzanne van Rooyen, Managing Editor of Entranced Blush (our YA/NA imprint) Eden Plantz, and author ST Bende. In addition, ST Bende will give the top blog (only 1 of the 5 winners selected) a $10 Amazon gift card.

All winners will receive a free copy of ST Bende’s fun NA Norse mythology romance ELSKER in the digital ebook format of their choice, to review on their blogs. Winners will also receive an ARC of ENDRE, the sequel to ELSKER, prior to its release in November. All winners will have their blog promoted on the Entranced Publishing Tumblr and other social media.

Winners will be announced via Entranced Publishing’s Tumblr on May 17th to coincide with the Norwegian holiday Syttende Mai so make sure you’re following our page in case you’re a winner!

Find more information about ELSKER here. 

Writing Basics: Plot

Summer’s almost here. (Seems like an odd thing to write, considering that I just survived the longest winter in the history of the human race since the last ice age. Basically, it was winter here in Wisconsin until just last week.) In preparation for summer, when so many of us will be starting new projects, I decided to start a series of posts that will be all about plot: plotting a novel, the parts of plot, subplots, Aristotle vs. Freytag, exposition, climax, resolution, etc…

So let’s start with the very basics.

First, what is plot?

Plot: the events or actions that take place in a story or novel.

According to Freytag (that’s Gustav Freytag the writer) a dramatic work (a novel) has five main parts: the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution.

 

For this month’s post, let’s focus primarily on exposition.

Exposition:

This is the opening of the novel, where the main character is introduced in his/her ordinary world. Depending on the length, style, and structure of the novel, the exposition is usually the first 20% to 25% of the book, though this number can vary. As we approach the end of the exposition—let’s call this “page 25”—a conflict is introduced. This is sometimes called a “trigger” or a “plot point.”

For example: in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone) this is where we meet Harry Potter and the Dursleys. We get to know all about Harry’s life as an orphan, how he is mistreated by his aunt and uncle, how he has to wear Dudley’s hand-me-downs, and how he sleeps in the cupboard. And then, something happens to change Harry’s life, something that sends the ordinary world spinning in another direction. The trigger: Harry gets an owl, a letter that changes his life. This sets the plot in motion. 

 

Another example: in The Hunger Games, we open with Katniss and Gale hunting. We learn all about Katniss—how she and Gale are hunting partners, how there are fences surrounding their district, and that two tributes will be chosen. Everything is going fine (as fine as things can go in a Hunger Games universe) until the tributes are chosen. Prim is chosen as tribute, which “triggers” what happens next: Katniss volunteers as tribute. This sets the plot in motion. 

And finally: Breaking Bad. (Because it’s awesome. Also, pink teddy bear! Who doesn’t love pink teddy bears?) In Breaking Bad, during the exposition, we meet Walter and his family, we learn all about his job as a high school chemistry teacher, and his second job at a car wash, where he is mistreated by his boss. Everything is going fine (again, as fine as things can go in a Breaking Bad universe) until Walter’s life is changed forever. The trigger: Walter is diagnosed with lung cancer. This sets the plot in motion.

Plotting:

As you’re plotting your novel, think about the trigger. What will set the plot in motion? What could force your main character to make a life-changing decision? Think about your favorite books. Go back to them and pay special attention to how the author handles the exposition and the trigger, and how much of the setting is revealed/described during the first 25% of the book. Go back to your favorite TV shows and watch the pilots. How long before a conflict is introduced? How many characters are we introduced to during the exposition? When does the first plot point happen? 

Advice for New Authors: Your First Event

Are you a new author looking to have a signing to celebrate the release of your awesome, shiny book? Planning an event can be a bit of a headache, but hopefully today's post will lighten some of the load.

As a person who likes to have a plan, the first thing I suggest is to sit down with a friend or two and discuss what you want your event to be like. Do you want it to more of an open house where you can mingle and sign books? Would you prefer to have it be a bit more formal with a Q&A before you sign books? Do you want to have giveaways? Don't be afraid to think outside the box. Leah Clifford hosted a costume tea party for the release of A Touch Morbid, and it was fun, unique, and memorable.

Once you have an idea of how you want your event to go, find an appropriate venue. Definitely try to find a local bookstore who'd be willing and excited to host you. You might be a bit nervous approaching a store, but don't worry too much; most bookstores/booksellers are eager and happy to help out a new author. They might ask to stock your book on consignment, but this is reflective on the economy/market and not on you personally. :-) Make sure to ask how the store will publicize the event so you can plan your own publicity endeavors accordingly. In terms of when to have your event, aim for an evening time in the later part of the week.

Once the venue and date are set, it's time to start promoting the crap out of your signing. Make a Facebook event page and start getting the word out online. Blog, Tweet, Tumble, Pin, etc... Don't be too obnoxious about it, though, haha. Also, ask if the store has event fliers or postcards for you to hand out. If not, look into making some of your own. I took some postcards to my old high school and it really helped. Most stores will run an ad in the local newspaper for events, so you might want to take it a step further and look into getting an interview to go along with a listing for the event. Reach out to your local news stations, too.

The most important thing, however, is to remain calm and have fun during your event. Enjoy every moment of it and then fall into bed afterwards and get a well-deserved night's rest.

Hopefully, this post was helpful and if anyone has any questions about planning an event, let me know! In addition to being an author, I'm also a bookseller, so I've had experience with author events, so I'm happy to help. Just let me know in the comments!

~DJ 

Be proud, write loud.