Reviews, Reviews, Reviews

I've been getting so many reviews recently, I'm barely able to keep up with them all! There is no way I could have posted each and every one, so I'm going to just give you some links instead.

• Too Wyrd
• Amazon - 4.2/5
• Goodreads - 4.03/5
• Barnes & Noble - 4.7/5
• Fluffy Bunny
• Amazon - 5/5
• Goodreads - 4.88/5
• Barnes & Noble - 5/5
• Slings & Arrows: A Runespells Short Story - 5/5
• Short Horrors
• Amazon - 4.6/5
• Goodreads - 4/5
• Anthologies
• Chasing Fireflies (w/ Scarborough Fair) - 4.2/5 & GR: 4.09/5
• London Calling (w/ Slings & Arrows) - 4.6/5 & GR: 4.54/5
• A Twist of Fate (w/ Free Gift with Purchase) - 4.6/5 & GR: 4.67/5

All-in-all, not a bad collection of reviews! I hope you check them out, particularly if you've been eyeing one of my books. The assessment of another reader might just be what makes up your mind!

If you are an author or reviewer, you can see the different kinds of reviews that people leave. All are completely valid (yeah, even the occasional 1 or 2 stars). If you aren't sure you can do reviewing, this should help you see that anything at all is a good review - it's the second best way to love your author!

Honoring Reader's Preferences

I’ve talked a lot about writing elitism. This time, it’s about perspective.

I can’t go more than a few days without seeing something ranting and railing about how “some readers” won’t read present tense, or 2nd person perspective, or other less common tenses. Mostly I find that it is done by writers who are pushing to have their own writing style “accepted” by more people.

I get it. Sometimes we write stuff that is a bit too far off the beaten path for the mainstream. I understand that frustration.

I like big “but”s.

BUT, when a writer does this, it doesn’t often come across as “oh, look, you should give this a chance.” It is more of a sneering, looking-down-one’s-nose rant about how the plebs just can’t understand how much they are missing. In case the point was missed, most of these call people some degree of stupid, narrow-minded, or uneducated. Because they prefer certain styles of writing.

Take a moment to think about that, from the reader’s perspective.

Any time a writer pushes the idea that you are some kind of fool for liking a specific genre, for preferring present tense over past (or vice versa), for liking the Hero’s Journey storyline format… they are insulting you for having a preference.

The funniest part is that most will backtrack and say things along the lines of “if you just give it a chance.” Funny, because people who read, tend to read a LOT. They have preferences because they’ve read a LOT. Most are willing to try new things, but few are willing to try something that they’ve tried (and disliked) before.

As a reader, I have preferences. If something sounds particularly good but is outside those preferences, I’ll still give it a go. That doesn’t change the fact that it is up to the author to make me want to leave my preferences.

One million new books every year are published. These books cross all genres, all styles. It is not up to me as a reader to throw out what I like and don’t like each and every time just to give a book a chance. It is up to me as an author to make people interested enough in my work to give it a chance.

That’s how that works.

It is also up to me as an author to accept that my style of writing, POV choice, 1st/2nd/3rd person perspective, etc, may not be what an individual reader enjoys. Accept it, and move on to the next reader, who likes the type of book I’ve written, or is at least interested in it enough to give it a chance.

My writing is not important enough to trump your right to have preferences and opinions. And vice versa.

Book Covers and Cyber Bullies

I awoke today to find that another person in the author community has been sent private messages telling them to kill themselves over book covers.

That's right, I know more than one person who has been the victim of this kind of bullying. And the reasons for it are incredibly ridiculous.

First, let me wax philo-something over book covers. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, I'm old. But more importantly, I grew up in the hey-day of bodice-ripping romances. Maybe that's why I'm so unconcerned with whether someone's cover looks similar to another's. Back then, that's how books identified their genres.

No joke. You could tell what kind of story you were getting based on what was on the book cover. Spaceship over a planet? Hard sci-fi, likely male MC. Barbarian with a sword and sexy chick kneeling nearby? High fantasy (maybe soft sci-fi), male MC, romantic subplot. Fabio looking guy hovering over woman half-undressed?  ROMANCE! Background has a castle? Historical romance. Background is a ship? Historical romance with pirates! Fabio wears a kilt? Scottish historical romance. Fabio wears boots? Western romance...

Seriously, you could change the shirt and hair color and background just to change the covers of the romances. There were maybe three or four positions that the couple were in, but everything else was virtually identical.

Now people sit there and talk about how a different image was used, the font was changed and THAT'S ALL... and I have no idea what the deal is. It's not the same cover. The hype over unique covers is so weird.

ONE MILLION new books are published each year. That means, since I started actively publishing my books, THREE MILLION books have been published. That's a lot of covers. And many of them are going to look similar. In my opinion, for genres, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

To be clear, I'd love to see more diversity in book covers - but I'm looking more for racial, size, gender (non-sexualized women, please, for the love of whatever deity you hold dear!), ability, etc, etc.

Book covers can only be so original before all the originality either gets used, or becomes nonsensical. Let's get over that particular issue really quickly.

NOTE: the quality of a good book cover seldom has to do with originality. Just because I'm not huge on making totally original covers doesn't mean I don't want GOOD covers. It's a different metric altogether.

Now, for the bullying aspect.

To those who would send such a message, I'm just going to say this really loud and clear:
If you get so hyped up over a book cover mimicking other covers that you are willing to message the creator/author to tell them that their career is over and that they should KILL THEMSELVES over YOUR issue regarding their book cover, they aren't the one with the issues.

Dude.

A book cover.

To those who have had such messages sent to them, I'm going to say this:
Screenshot those messages. Do NOT mark out the name of the sender. Share it.

Yeah, I get it. The person who sent such a message may have had a point or a reason, or whatever. Yeah, most people might not even care about the message they sent. But some of us in the authoring community are more than willing to restrict access to people who would go there.

In other words, if you want to take your possibly correct stance to the point of telling someone to kill themselves, you may find yourself with a MUCH smaller author/promo network. That is a line, and there WILL be consequences.

I don't care how much you feel righteous about your stance on someone else's work. Don't cross that line.

Different Strokes of the Pen

Different writers have different ways of writing.

Some people throw a whole bunch of words out, then edit up to a dozen times, doing rewrites and changing the order of scenes. This type of writer usually writes faster in the beginning.

Some people write much slower, resulting in a cleaner first draft. They often have less rewriting, because they are more methodical in the initial writing.

In the end, each of these takes about the same amount of time to write and finalize their books, with generally the same level of quality, depending on the skill level of the writer and their editor(s).

I am very much the second type. NaNoWriMo is a very real challenge for me because I tend towards slow, methodical writing. I end up doing maybe five rounds of edits, max, but the initial writing is emotionally draining for me.

Now that NaNo is done, I’ve still got a bit more to write on The Chains That Bind, book 3 of the Runespells series. Then I will take a few days off to recover from the emotional trauma… lol.

Once that is done, I’ll run through the first round of edits and send it out for Beta Reading. While I’m waiting for those to come back, I’ll be working on one or two other projects, one of which will be determined by my patrons on my Patreon page! (Check it out HERE)

In 2017, I put out 1 novel, 1 novella, a collection of short stories, and 4 short stories in anthologies. In 2018, I’m going to shoot for 2 novels, 1-2 novellas, and up to 3 short stories in anthologies. Wish me luck!

Author's Hierarchy of Needs

I’ve been thinking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs lately, and how it applies to writing.

In the interest of context, here’s the deal. I am a full-time author. My husband just came out of a year of schooling to be an electrician. Due to some politics and technicalities, and some bad luck and bad timing, he’s been having trouble finding a job that is more than just temporary. He is currently working in manufacturing, which isn’t a bad job, but not at the rate to support a family on a single income.

I’ve tapped out our resources pretty thoroughly to get us through this, but we are doing a lot of extras: plasma donations, free/reduced food options, and I’m looking for a job that will work with my kids’ schedule. It would be either prohibitively expensive or functionally impossible to find the type of childcare we would need for most jobs I could get quickly, so it’s going slowly.

That said, we are doing okay, but there’s a lot of time and mental energy going into keeping us going until we break through this very short rough patch. Which brings me back to Maslow’s Hierarchy.

Essentially, this theory states that humans can only really focus on one level if the lower levels are being met. It’s not completely exclusive, but it makes sense. The first level is immediate safety. You probably aren’t going to ponder your spiritual development while being chased by a lion. (Why is it always a lion in these scenarios? Why not a rhino or a wolf?)

The second level is food and shelter. If you are safe for the moment, you can plan on these things. Then you can focus on larger safety issues, such as environment and neighborhood. After that is interpersonal relationships, such as family and friendships.

Next is self-esteem, or the ability to believe you are worthy. Self-actualization follows, covering your place in society. Ie, career, status, etc. And finally, self-transcendence, which is the personal spiritual experience.

Since only a threshold has to be met at each level, you can have some deficiencies in a lower level while still focusing on a higher level. But if those lower levels are threatened in some way, the focus gets drawn to them again and again.

Anyways, this is probably why I’m having so much trouble prioritizing NaNoWriMo this year. It’s not that writing isn’t as important to me, it’s that I kinda have to make sure we can pay rent before I can focus on my career.

This leads me to thinking about authors, pirates and self-care.

Pirating books is pretty bad. Authors don’t make much as it is, and anything that is taken from them makes it less likely for them to be able to meet their own basic needs. If they can’t do that, they can’t focus on the making the words stuff. Knowledge is free, and most authors are willing to do giveaways, etc. But it’s something that the author CHOOSES to do, based on their own risk-benefit assessment, financial ability, etc. Stealing from them is just that: stealing.

Authors also need to spend a certain amount of time and mental energy on self-care. People like to think that writing is easy, and in many ways they are right. But writing novels that are well-crafted, interesting and meaningful? Well, that takes skill, mental energy, and technique that has to be developed over time. By the time an author puts out their first decent book, they’ve already put in years of practice, reading and studying writing skills.

I think authors should put more emphasis on knowing their own worth, and the worth of their works. But, at the same time, readers need to put more worth on the books that they love so much.

Happy New Year!

It’s that time.

New year, new writer. It’s time to assess what’s happened and make goals for the coming year.

My assessment is pretty constant. I have issues when I don’t keep tabs on my psycho-emotional barometer. So this is easy for me.

2017 sucked in so many ways. On the personal life front, it was a roller coaster of hope and disappointment with a distinct trend towards the decline. It’s been so bad that, even though it’s true, I’m hesitant to say it looks like things are going to be improving. I’m talking days of crying from depression and fear.

I blame my husband, but that’s a different set of thoughts. (And, no, he’s not abusive or anything. It’s just a crap situation mostly due to timing and luck.)

On the professional writing front, I marketed my first book and put out my second. Sales seem to be climbing steadily, if very slowly, and I see this as a sign that my books will continue to grow slowly but steadily. I can live with that. At least the arrow is going the right way.

Biggest frustration: just when I promised I wouldn’t be missing any more vlogs, my built-in camera takes a nose-dive. But I got a spiffy new camera for the holidays, so I’ll be back in a jiff.

As for my goals, I’m looking forward to completing at least 3 books in 2018. I’ll still be working on sales and vlog and patreon, etc. So, I guess I haven’t been beaten down!

Loss and Life

Loss is an inextricable part of life. When a loved one passes on, it can be emotionally difficult... and not just because of mourning losses. There is also pressure to be emotionally supportive to others. And to make major plans and decisions about how to care for your deceased and their assets and belongings.

My last grandparent died about a month ago. It marks a huge milestone in my life, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. Sure, there's the idea that an entire generation of my ancestors has moved on, bringing me closer to being the eldest of elders. However, the biggest milestone is that the funeral and accompanying events are the last time I will intentionally interact with my extended family, save a single cousin on one side of the family.

This may seem like a harsh tactic, but it is actually about removing toxicity from my life. While I have never had to deal with it directly, a variety of abuses has gradually colored my interactions with the larger family to the point where I feel it is inappropriate to spend my time with these people just because fate gave us a random connection.

For my own health and for the health of my children, for my own family's safety and sanity, I say to my cousins, aunts and uncles... "Bye Felicia!"

Don't get me wrong, most of them are harmless. Maybe a bit too hung up on "normal" (which I am not), or on... Okay, I don't even know. They are all just way too mainstream and snotty about stuff, and my tolerance for such things is very low.

They gossip. They emphasize money. They are willing to look down on people for things that can't be helped. They are hypocrites about their morals.

There's just a lot of baggage there, and I don't feel that any benefit to dealing with that would be worth it. So, there ya go.

This means that my loss is about more than my grandparent. I am losing an entire branch of my family tree... or two. It may be my choice, but it is still valid to mourn the losses of what might have been.

So, this loss feeds the beast of creativity, and I will accept what comes of it. And I solemnly swear I am not writing my entire family into my next murder scene. Not the entire family... lol

The Responsibility of an Author: Networking as an Indie or Small Press Author

The indie and small-press author community is small but mighty. Our power lies in our ability to help each other in much the same ways that a larger press helps its authors.

Ok, but what does this really mean?

It means we create and share our own marketing opportunities. Many times, this takes the form of social media events, sweepstakes giveaways (with dozens of books from dozens of authors), donating ebooks to other authors' events and giveaways, newsletter "exchanges" (where two or more authors feature each other in their newsletters), etc. It also means crowd-sourcing marketing techniques and sharing events with fellow authors.

It also means that, if an author is taking advantage of these opportunities but not sharing and reciprocating... what?

What does it mean when an author is taking advantage of the freely given and freely available opportunities, but not paying it forward to those same authors that are sharing information and events with them?

Well, you have an author who is now "That Guy".

That Guy is the one who never seems to share events, but always seems to manage to sign up for time slots in the events. That Guy is the one who is always asking for help or advice, but never has any to give back. That Guy is the one who begs for beta readers and reviewers - which, for That Guy, is also code for free editing - but always has a reason why he (or she) cannot beta read or review for you.

Because so much of the indie and small-press author community is about a sharing and exchanging of resources, it is incredibly important to reciprocate - give back what you receive. Make it part of your writing goals.

Many authors find that they have less time to read than they used to. It makes sense - we are busy writing. I decided that, in order to keep myself on target, I would make it part of my quarterly goals to beta read/review at least 2 books each quarter from my indie/small press contacts, in addition to any entertainment reading I managed to cram in. (See more about my quarterly goals HERE.)

Other suggestions? Take note of what specific people in your network are interested in. If you have a pal from a writing group who does romance, shoot them a link to a romance-based book release event that he/she can sign up for. If someone in your fantasy author group has been begging for marketing hookups, let them know about the sweepstakes featuring fantasy books.

What this means is that it is important to think about the people in your network - who they really are and what they need. You should consider, not just how you yourself can use the information you come across, but also how others might use it, too.

Trust me, that generosity will come full circle. People remember those who have helped them, and they will be thinking of you when they get something popping up on their radar. When authors share, we all win.

Authors Getting Feedback

I recently received a lovely email from a gentleman who had read Too Wyrd. He told me that he never wrote to authors, but he enjoyed the book so much, he was looking forward to the next one.

I know that many people love things, but only tell their friends, etc. After all, authors, actors, musicians - they can seem distant and egotistical (more on the misinterpretation of introverts thrust into a spotlight later), unreachable.

Sometimes, as a creator of entertainment, I feel like I am throwing my work out into a void, hoping that there will be some sign that I'm doing good work. Then, I get a message, or an email, or a glowing review.

It bolsters my heart and gives me motivation to do the hard things - like writing those scenes that make you cry or rage. Trust me, I feel it, too.

Take the time to send off a little note to your fav creator. Let them know that their work isn't languishing in the void. Tell people when they've touched your soul.

That's the only reason we do this - it sure ain't for the money... lol

Decisions, Decisions - Help me decide!

I've been presented with an opportunity to join a group of bloggers for blog tours. This would consist of me posting pre-written blogs as a way to help authors promote their work.

So, my question is this: Would you enjoy periodic posts of other authors' work among the ramblings of your humble host?

Please click this link to respond, or just comment below!

Welcome!

If you are here, you are probably an avid reader of fantasy, urban fantasy, sci-fi/fantasy and similar works. You may even know me from Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites.

I am a writer, pure and simple. And in this blog, I will be exploring the art of writing more. I will post excerpts of my works-in-progress (WIPs), musings about the writing process, and much more.

This will not be a blog about the technique of writing, per se. There are thousands of those out there, and I find it difficult to explain how I write, for example, good dialog. I just... do.

I appreciate all forms of feedback, and I welcome conversations on story structure and plotting.

So, sit down, pour a cuppa, and let's chat.