I remember reading an interview with a Romance Author, in which she stated that a Fan came up to her and Thanked her profusely for a book the author had written. The reason for the gratitude was that the Fan had read this book, while she sat by her child’s bedside as they recovered from injuries sustained in a car crash. The child pulled through with flying colors and the Fan was able to abate her anxiety by reading this author’s book.
I aspire to write a book such as this, a story that will give someone out there, sitting beside a loved one in a hospital bed, solace. Someone who hasn’t slept for days and is praying for those they love to have peace or healing. Perhaps some poor mother who is holding her child’s tiny hand and feels as if her heart is being squeezed like a sponge, because there is nothing she can do but wait and read and wait. A book that a girlfriend reads to her best friend, who recuperates and they can laugh and cry together. A book that can make those sometimes painful and sometimes cherished, hours fly by like a morning bird in flight.
I continue to work towards improving my writing with education, life experience, reading other good books and one of the best critique groups on the planet. I aspire to write this book one day.
Carmen
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Coming Soon
New from Morgan Q. O'Reilly
Til Death Undo Us
Book One of the Open Windows Series
She never imagined love could happen twice—until her husband returned from the dead.
Cassidy thinks she’s getting on with her life just fine after her husband’s fall to cancer. Life is quiet, which is just the way she likes it, half a continent away from her overbearing Irish family.
Niall doesn’t want to scare the fragile Irish rose, but her husband, supposedly two years in the grave, has been caught on security tapes at a secret government laboratory. Together, they unearth evidence of industrial espionage and identity theft ...and frightening connections to the Irish Mob that will put more than just their own lives at risk.
Sex, bullets, more sex, intimate body piercings and a few red roses. What more could a girl want?
Excerpt:
“I’m Cassidy Malone.”
“Niall Malone.” He didn’t offer a hand to shake. A part of me was glad, because I couldn’t have disguised my sweaty palms.
Jacob stopped at my side and I had the distinct impression he wanted to step in front of me. “Jacob Levin, senior partner here. What do you want with Mrs. Malone?”
The intense blue eyes shifted to my boss for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s personal. Mrs. Malone, is there some place we can talk?”
“I’m in the middle of a project with a deadline, if you could give me a hint of what this is about?”
“I need to ask you a few questions about your husband.”
“All right.” I folded my arms and waited.
His gaze flicked to Jacob then back to me. “Really, if we can do this in private it would be best.”
“Cassie?” Jacob took my arm and glared at Malone. “She’s been under an incredible amount of stress. I can’t imagine what you have to say will make it better.”
“Nevertheless, it’s important. Mrs. Malone, we can do this the easy way, here and now, or the hard way.”
I didn’t need him to spell that out. I’d watched too many crime dramas. “Give me the first question and I’ll decide if it’s good enough to drop what I’m doing. Otherwise we’ll have to schedule something for later.”
That didn’t go over well. A muscle in the side of his cheek twitched and his lips tightened for a moment. “All right. Just tell me how to get in touch with your husband.”
Ever had one of those moments when it seems the world stops moving? The blood stops, then draws inward, leaving the sensation of limbs filled with ice water, heavy and cold. The roaring in my ears might very well have been the rush of blood leaving my head.
Jacob plucked Malone’s card from my numb fingers and studied it as the receptionist gasped.
“That’s not funny,” I managed to whisper from a throat so dry I could barely swallow.
“I’m not joking.”
“You want to know where my husband is?”
“Yes. Please.”
“All right.” If this were some sick joke, I’d play along for a minute. Maybe the goons at lunch had been setting me up after all. I didn’t think so, but the same conversation, twice in one day, less than two hours apart, who knew?
I gave him the street and number. I drove past it every single day. Sometimes stopped and sat on the grass to pull the weeds and tend to the Forget-Me-Nots I’d planted there.
I watched as he drew the map in his head. A crease formed between his heavy black eye brows. It took a minute, but he had it.
“That’s the Oak Knoll Cemetery.”
“Precisely.”
Coming July 18, 2011 from Lyrical Press
Morgan Q. O'Reilly
Books available on Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader and many places where ebooks can be found.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Obsessed With Numbers
So, I’m not really a numbers person…ask my best friend the math teacher. When we’re out at dinner and I’m trying to calculate a tip she says things to me like “my class is doing decimals this week…I think you should come by.” Ha. Ha. Ha.I made it through Algebra in High School and even got a “B” in Calculus in College but after that…I was done. I’m a word person. With the exception of grammar issues, there aren’t a lot of “wrong” answers with words.
But now, I’ve become obsessed with numbers on the Internet…sales, web hits, links, etc.
There are all sorts of things you can track…how many people click the page, how did they get the link, where do they live...well, not a specific address because that would be creepy, but still, I know what country they are in.
I had a new release (A Change of Pace) come out this past week and here is what I’ve learned…I need to bump up my audience in the UK.
I had 102 hits on various links over 3 days…88% are from the US, then I had a few from Canada, Trinidad and Tobago (no really), Croatia, one from the UK (I’m going to work on that) and a couple from Australia.
Most of them connected to me through Facebook and my webpage but not all. Some got the message through email or through places I’ve never heard of, which means, I don’t know how it got there in the first place.
And sales numbers are the worst. I’ve spent hours going back and forth to the Amazon page for “A Change of Pace” just to watch the numbers…I’m #14 on the list of Erotica Books. No, now I’m number #9. Wait, I’ve dropped to #27? How did that happen?
Arrgh. It’s way too distracting. I’m going back to writing my dragon book.
Okay, let me check Amazon one more time.
Tielle St. Clare
P.S. I know there are a lot of choices out there for getting these numbers. I use Stat-Counter and bit.ly
Friday, May 6, 2011
New to Alaska
I am new to Alaska. So new, in fact, that my husband and I can still measure how long we’ve been in here in months (thirteen if you’re interested) and I’m still amazed by things like moose and 24 hour sunlight. Conversations with my friends and family down the lower-48 still include a lot of questions about the state and what it’s like actually live here. My best friend and I were on the phone the other night and she asked me how much fresh fruit costs in Alaska. We talked about the fact that goods and services are more expensive up here than they are down in New Jersey. I assured her that the fine print at the bottom of commercials that reads “prices higher in Alaska and Hawaii” doesn’t lie. Eventually, though, she asked about seafood, because, surely that was cheap, cheap, cheap. When I explained that the state is big enough that the costs of getting something from one part of the state to another automatically makes it expensive, she laughed and thanked me for bursting that bubble. She’d always assumed that, even if I was paying more for my grapefruit, I was at least getting king crab for less than the cost of chicken. The reality isn’t nearly as full of inexpensive crabby deliciousness as she would’ve liked it to be. Which is actually something authors have to be aware of whenever we write. Not crab, or the lack thereof, specifically, of course, but the differences between the realities of a situation and the assumptions we make about that situation.
Writing what we know is helpful, but still not foolproof. My first novel was based in Denver, Colorado, because that’s where I was living when I wrote it. By the time I had finished it, though, the coffee shop where my hero and heroine met had closed and the working class neighborhood where I had the best friend living had been gentrified and house prices had skyrocketed. So much for writing what you know. For my next novels, I thought I had solved the problem. I created Lambert Falls, North Carolina out of thin air. Only I still had to know how far it was to the Virginia border and how long of a drive it was to the Outer Banks. Even a fictional town required very real research.
My current work in progress takes place in New Orleans. I know nothing about New Orleans. You’d better believe, though, I will find someone who knows that city and pick their brain. I will become best friends with google maps and local librarians. I will learn about the local haunts, not just the tourist traps. Because for every reader out there who assumes certain things about New Orleans, there’s a reader who knows New Orleans. We as authors can’t get away with only writing the idealized version of a place.
So, I’ll research New Orleans and, hopefully, get it right. However, I do admit I would love to write a story with voodoo priestesses in every shadow and dark brooding men on every corner. Of course, I’d love king crab to be cheaper than chicken, too.
Pauline Trent
Writing what we know is helpful, but still not foolproof. My first novel was based in Denver, Colorado, because that’s where I was living when I wrote it. By the time I had finished it, though, the coffee shop where my hero and heroine met had closed and the working class neighborhood where I had the best friend living had been gentrified and house prices had skyrocketed. So much for writing what you know. For my next novels, I thought I had solved the problem. I created Lambert Falls, North Carolina out of thin air. Only I still had to know how far it was to the Virginia border and how long of a drive it was to the Outer Banks. Even a fictional town required very real research.
My current work in progress takes place in New Orleans. I know nothing about New Orleans. You’d better believe, though, I will find someone who knows that city and pick their brain. I will become best friends with google maps and local librarians. I will learn about the local haunts, not just the tourist traps. Because for every reader out there who assumes certain things about New Orleans, there’s a reader who knows New Orleans. We as authors can’t get away with only writing the idealized version of a place.
So, I’ll research New Orleans and, hopefully, get it right. However, I do admit I would love to write a story with voodoo priestesses in every shadow and dark brooding men on every corner. Of course, I’d love king crab to be cheaper than chicken, too.
Pauline Trent
Thursday, April 28, 2011
How Writing is Like Coon Hunting
Have you ever been coon hunting?
I grew to adulthood in the Ozark Mountains, in the NW corner of Arkansas. The country folk used to coon hunt in the woods up there and probably still do.
Coon hunting happens at night. During the day, they hole up somewhere, so there's no use hunting before the sun goes down.
The guys all met for the hunt in pickup trucks, the beds loaded with leashed dogs crowded against coolers full of ice and beer. Just good ol' boys out for some fun with guns. Greeting and heckling each other, they put beer on the tailgates as one of the most important preparations for the hunt.
"Hey Harry, nice to see you and your tomboy!" they greeted my dad. He waved. I said nothing, only hefted my rifle, knowing I could outshoot most of these men even when they were sober.
After they gulped a few alcoholic beverages, the guys unleashed their hounds. Gathering up our guns, we ambled after the mob of canines disappearing into the night-dark forest.
The men reminisced about good dogs that'd died, naming them with gruff reverence. Jake. Molly. Tri-Sally who'd gotten run over by a tractor, too tough to die, running almost as fast as her pups on her remaining three legs. Good dogs. Their memories lived on in their descendents running for us that night.
"Do you remember Old Blue?" asked a gray haired man, his worn shotgun an extension of his wiry arm. "He never let a coon get an even break." I was unsure if he was talking about hunting. The edge of meanness in his words made me uneasy. A couple of men beside him laughed like they did when whispering dirty jokes.
The hounds' chorus signaled they'd found a coon trail and gave chase with tones so pure they sounded like church bells pealing in God's woods. Their voices rang of life and death and the saving or escaping of it. We quickened our pace.
When the dogs treed the coon, their voices changed. Their barking became angry. We know you are up there, and our people will blast you into Heaven. Some of the hounds summoned their masters, Come-come. We have him.
Everyone hurried to where the dogs had the coon treed, guns clutched in their arms, flashlights and lanterns swinging, splashing light on the trees. Despite their lights, several men trip over roots and leaves anyway. Me, I was a twelve year old girl. I didn't have a flashlight to light my path and didn't need one. My .22 rifle cradled in my arms was all I needed. I ghosted over the ground like a deer.
We arrived at the oak where the dogs leapt and thrashed the trunk with their paws, tearing the bark. A Bluetick and a Redbone tried to climb like cats. The Bluetick made it up as high as I was tall, only to fall back to the ground amidst the milling pack.
Men and boys circled the tree with their flashlights; the beams lights riffled the branches, searched for the eerie green-reflected light of coon eyes above our heads, but no eyes were seen.
I waited on the outskirts of all the flailing lights and stomping boots. I didn't want any beer drinking idiots to step on me and knock me down in their hunting frenzy. I wondered, if they sighted the coon, would one person shoot it? Or would the poor coon end up with more holes than hair?
Even as a young girl I knew you needed a good, seasoned hound to guide the younger dogs. Coons are clever creatures who probably studied with foxes some time in their distant ancestry and taught those red guys their tricks.
Coons who have been hunted before know all kinds of tricks to use against dogs. One of their favorite tricks is to urinate or defecate on the tree they first climbed, and then jump from the wispy branches of one tree to another, until they come to a spot where the branches are too far away. They are forced to ground again, and this is where the dogs could pick up his scent. If there are seasoned old coon hounds on the hunt, wise to this trick, the ruse doesn't work for long. But because I was out with a bunch of red necks whose main intentions were drinking beer away from their wives and swapping stories, we didn't have one experienced tracker in the bunch. We had a pack of adolescent pups barking up the wrong tree and no wise old hounds to show them the correct way of doing things.
The men encouraged the hounds to cast about the tree and showed them how to work in circles. Bob grabbed his black and tan by her leather collar and dragged the gyp away from the decoy spot to areas several yards away, shoving her nose at the ground to show her where coon scent might be found. After several false starts, a dog found the trail where the prey had returned to the ground. Rallying the pack, she launched into the dark woods.
Now this is how writing is like coon hunting. A seasoned writer knows when she is barking up the wrong tree. Experienced writers start casting about in overlapping circles from where they got lost to where they might pick up the story trail again. But a less experienced writer--like me--gets confused. I leap at that tree--my chapter--and try to climb it, but I can't seem to keep going. I've completely fallen for that decoy shit. Around and around, I circle the spot where I got lost, positive this is the writing path I'm supposed to continue. If only I could glimpse my story staring down at me with glowing eyes for just one moment…but the reality is, the story has moved on and I need to find where it came to ground. Sometimes I have to drag my writing self away from the decoy by the collar until I start questing for the new scent on more than mere instinct. Or my critique partners see I'm on a false trail and help to redirect me. Eventually I find the scent trail and take off again.
Beer doesn't help in hunting for coons. However, I do find a Mike's Hard Lemonade helpful while I ponder the best way to solve my writing problem. I'm drinking a Mike's black cherry right now. Yum!
Oh, and I never DID shoot a coon. Those guys were the best beer drinkers and the worst hunters I've ever seen.
Veronica
I grew to adulthood in the Ozark Mountains, in the NW corner of Arkansas. The country folk used to coon hunt in the woods up there and probably still do.
Coon hunting happens at night. During the day, they hole up somewhere, so there's no use hunting before the sun goes down.
The guys all met for the hunt in pickup trucks, the beds loaded with leashed dogs crowded against coolers full of ice and beer. Just good ol' boys out for some fun with guns. Greeting and heckling each other, they put beer on the tailgates as one of the most important preparations for the hunt.
"Hey Harry, nice to see you and your tomboy!" they greeted my dad. He waved. I said nothing, only hefted my rifle, knowing I could outshoot most of these men even when they were sober.
After they gulped a few alcoholic beverages, the guys unleashed their hounds. Gathering up our guns, we ambled after the mob of canines disappearing into the night-dark forest.
The men reminisced about good dogs that'd died, naming them with gruff reverence. Jake. Molly. Tri-Sally who'd gotten run over by a tractor, too tough to die, running almost as fast as her pups on her remaining three legs. Good dogs. Their memories lived on in their descendents running for us that night.
"Do you remember Old Blue?" asked a gray haired man, his worn shotgun an extension of his wiry arm. "He never let a coon get an even break." I was unsure if he was talking about hunting. The edge of meanness in his words made me uneasy. A couple of men beside him laughed like they did when whispering dirty jokes.
The hounds' chorus signaled they'd found a coon trail and gave chase with tones so pure they sounded like church bells pealing in God's woods. Their voices rang of life and death and the saving or escaping of it. We quickened our pace.
When the dogs treed the coon, their voices changed. Their barking became angry. We know you are up there, and our people will blast you into Heaven. Some of the hounds summoned their masters, Come-come. We have him.
Everyone hurried to where the dogs had the coon treed, guns clutched in their arms, flashlights and lanterns swinging, splashing light on the trees. Despite their lights, several men trip over roots and leaves anyway. Me, I was a twelve year old girl. I didn't have a flashlight to light my path and didn't need one. My .22 rifle cradled in my arms was all I needed. I ghosted over the ground like a deer.
We arrived at the oak where the dogs leapt and thrashed the trunk with their paws, tearing the bark. A Bluetick and a Redbone tried to climb like cats. The Bluetick made it up as high as I was tall, only to fall back to the ground amidst the milling pack.
Men and boys circled the tree with their flashlights; the beams lights riffled the branches, searched for the eerie green-reflected light of coon eyes above our heads, but no eyes were seen.
I waited on the outskirts of all the flailing lights and stomping boots. I didn't want any beer drinking idiots to step on me and knock me down in their hunting frenzy. I wondered, if they sighted the coon, would one person shoot it? Or would the poor coon end up with more holes than hair?
Even as a young girl I knew you needed a good, seasoned hound to guide the younger dogs. Coons are clever creatures who probably studied with foxes some time in their distant ancestry and taught those red guys their tricks.
Coons who have been hunted before know all kinds of tricks to use against dogs. One of their favorite tricks is to urinate or defecate on the tree they first climbed, and then jump from the wispy branches of one tree to another, until they come to a spot where the branches are too far away. They are forced to ground again, and this is where the dogs could pick up his scent. If there are seasoned old coon hounds on the hunt, wise to this trick, the ruse doesn't work for long. But because I was out with a bunch of red necks whose main intentions were drinking beer away from their wives and swapping stories, we didn't have one experienced tracker in the bunch. We had a pack of adolescent pups barking up the wrong tree and no wise old hounds to show them the correct way of doing things.
The men encouraged the hounds to cast about the tree and showed them how to work in circles. Bob grabbed his black and tan by her leather collar and dragged the gyp away from the decoy spot to areas several yards away, shoving her nose at the ground to show her where coon scent might be found. After several false starts, a dog found the trail where the prey had returned to the ground. Rallying the pack, she launched into the dark woods.
Now this is how writing is like coon hunting. A seasoned writer knows when she is barking up the wrong tree. Experienced writers start casting about in overlapping circles from where they got lost to where they might pick up the story trail again. But a less experienced writer--like me--gets confused. I leap at that tree--my chapter--and try to climb it, but I can't seem to keep going. I've completely fallen for that decoy shit. Around and around, I circle the spot where I got lost, positive this is the writing path I'm supposed to continue. If only I could glimpse my story staring down at me with glowing eyes for just one moment…but the reality is, the story has moved on and I need to find where it came to ground. Sometimes I have to drag my writing self away from the decoy by the collar until I start questing for the new scent on more than mere instinct. Or my critique partners see I'm on a false trail and help to redirect me. Eventually I find the scent trail and take off again.
Beer doesn't help in hunting for coons. However, I do find a Mike's Hard Lemonade helpful while I ponder the best way to solve my writing problem. I'm drinking a Mike's black cherry right now. Yum!
Oh, and I never DID shoot a coon. Those guys were the best beer drinkers and the worst hunters I've ever seen.
Veronica
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Value of Shipping Out! Write At Sea
Alliteration? Possibly…
Amplification? Probably.
Asyndeton? What?
Anaphora? Excuse me?
Epizeuxis? Holy s**t!
Polysyndenton? You lost me at asy…!
We call ourselves writers, dare we say authors, and yet the intricacies of our own language often escape us. And their titles? Well, that dog just don’t hunt (cliché – an idiomatic saying that means something other than what it actually states).
So why, you ask yourself, should a writer know what a litotes is? Or an eponym? Or, for heaven’s sake, onomatopoeia? Diversity I say! With my authoresk thick skin turned to the naysayer. If our goal as writers is to produce the best possible marketable manuscript then editing is critical. When we edit we must be able to communicate our edits and discuss the craftsmanship of our product. How does one do that efficiently without being able to pin down the problem with appropriate terms and label the issue at hand?
I recently had the opportunity to join “Write At Sea: Deep Editing Power Master Class” with the indomitable Margie Lawson and, I have to admit my eyes were opened to a whole new way of editing and diagnosing my manuscripts. Yes, DIAGNOSING. I learned to do the same thing a doctor does when faced with a heart wrenching disease in a young child – evaluate all of the symptoms, disregard the mitigating factors and pinpoint the problem, label the issues and prescribe a course of treatment. The process takes good observational skills, a certain amount of research and competency in the field.
Competency? That is an interesting word to use in reference to writers. Anyone can write a book, right? Right (conduplicatio- starting a sentence with a key word from the last sentence)! Yes and no. Anyone can put pencil to paper but it takes learning the craft of writing to become a good author.
We’ve all read it; the book with the golden cover that offers a handsome hunk rescuing a gorgeous damsel in distress (another cliché) on the cover. Your expectation drips from your chin as you salivate over the possibilities, like biting into a juicy apple (a wet metaphor – comparing two different things by asserting one is like the other). You reverently open the cover and read the jacket critiques. They twist your heart so beautifully (possibly an oxymoron- an ironic contrast using paradox). You do the Michael Phelps thing and dive right in (eponym – referring to a famous person who is recognized for an attribute). You can’t even breathe, think, move (asyndeton – omitting conjunctions between three or more words). The opening chapter is right there before you but still a million miles away (hyperbole – a deliberate exaggeration). Your eyes devour the first chapter and everything you have ever associated with Fabio seems not to be the least bit true (litotes – an understatement where the words deny the opposite of the word expected to be used)! You casually remind yourself you are reading Rogue. Suddenly it all comes back; the muscle fame, the Italian model fame, the hero worship- book cover-yummy fame (epistrophe – repeating the last word or phrase in three or more subsequent phrases or sentences)! And you are so sorry. So sorry. So very sorry (epizeuxis – the repetition of a word for emphasis). Left hanging and disappointed. Disappointed because the man and the myth do not correlate (anandiplosis – repeating the last word of one sentence at the beginning of the next). The cover and the text do not relate. The title of author and the actual book do not share a bond.
How many more rhetorical devices can I slide into this blog without becoming world-weary? Worn-out? Word-unwise (alliteration – repeating initial consonant sounds)? We still have allusion, amplification, anaphora, parallelism, personification, polysyndenton, simile, symploce and my personal favorite, ZEUGMA. But in the interest of giving my poor keyboard a break to recover (personification – attributing an inanimate object with human characteristics), I will simply state that knowledge of linguistic concepts are to our craftsmanship what bread is to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (simile – comparing two different things that resemble each other or demonstrate a relationship). But you know I have to get one zeugma in, so fancy this: as authors we strive to provide our readers with exciting entertainment. However without the technical structure, superb editing and rich imagination of the author rolled together in one package we may have, excitement, entertainment… and crap!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The DUH of Reading
WARNING: This post may contain ridiculously obvious statements causing head-banging and eye-rolling among some writers. If you are reading fiction in as much quantity as you desire, you can safely skip this column.
The DUH of Reading
The other day I went to lunch with some non-writing friends—smart, professional women who understand I’m prone to fits of uncontrollable talking and also know I write in isolation so have a few other mortifying-to-be-around behaviors such as correcting the grammar on chalkboard menu-special signs. What they didn’t know is that I squeal over books. I admit, the books they found me squealing over this day were Little Golden Books. Even so, I was wounded—and astonished—by their reactions.
We were in a gift shop filled with classy, adult-oriented items like napkins that read, “Margueritas: They’re not just for breakfast anymore,” and what did I home in on? A rack of the above-mentioned Little Golden Books. Please understand, these were nothing less than classics. I’m not even lying. I found the original Color Kittens (my copy lost its cover years ago), and several other LGBs I read ragged at my grandmother’s house when I was a kid like, Doctor Dan the Bandage Man, and The Happy Man and His Dump Truck.
“I used to read one called, Nurse Nancy,” I said. “I wish I could find ...” I spun the rack and … there it was!
That’s when I squealed.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” one friend said, and I assured her I was not, this was the coolest thing I’d seen in a long time and I was going to buy four of the treasures.
“Oooookay,” said the other friend, and with complete seriousness added, “You are very strange.” (I want it on the record that SHE bought the marguerita napkins, so what was SHE talking about?)
I love my Little Golden Books. I’ve read them several times since bringing them home and putting them on my Keeper Shelf. In fact, I have more kids’ books than I can count in my house, and I still collect them. Why? Because these are the books that taught me to love reading. To love a story that made me feel happy or excited. Children’s books are, in my opinion, the most important books on the planet.
Fast forward from my Nurse Nancy days to when the Little Golden Books were replaced by The Black Stallion books, then Harlequin Romances by the gross, then LaVyrle Spencer, then, then … THEN, I knew I wanted to be a writer. So, I screwed up my courage and started to write.
You know what happened? Slowly, so slowly I barely noticed, I stopped reading very many books just for sheer joy. (Even procrastinating from my own writing I didn’t read—I cleaned the bathroom.) My reading material was reduced to books by Donald Maas or Debra Dixon. I did get to read wonderful stories by critique partners, but the point wasn’t to savor them, the point was to hand out opinions so I could get opinions on my work handed back to me. It was a very rare Susan Elizabeth Phillips or Lisa Kleypas that crossed my eyes. (Crossed my eyes??)
Excuses? I had a million of ‘em:
1) I don’t have time to waste reading, I need to write.
2) I can only read when I go to bed at night and I fall asleep so fast it isn’t worth it.
3) I can’t read other writers or it a) depresses me because they’re so good or b) depresses me because they’re so bad and they’re published anyway
4) I can’t read because I’m always in edit mode and I find all the mistakes and it’s no fun.
Etcetera. I was reading only three or four books a year and not seeing how much I missed the ones I wasn’t reading. Until, one day, I realized how envious I was of the question: “Who is your favorite romance hero—the one permanently on your keeper shelf?” and I had no answer except Mike Mulligan (who had a steam shovel named MaryAnn). And, thank the Lord for him, but I needed to get with the program.
The point of this is that I’ve learned there IS no excuse to stop reading if you’re a writer. I’ve recently started love affairs with every writer I can find in my genre and am working hard to learn what my (I hope) future fans love. I’m also reading any other genre that looks interesting. It’s very empowering. And it’s FUN! (Note: here’s where the head-banging, eye-rolling thing happens.) And, wait for it…it’s not just fun, it’s necessary.
You can’t write if you don’t know what’s out there. You have to read in your genre—no arguments. You will improve, you’ll be reassured, you’ll be more creative.
Even more important: you can’t write well, if you don’t read widely. Romance, like all genre fiction, has its tropes, it’s clichés if you will. Think steely blue eyes, chiseled jaws, and rock hard pecs. Other genres—sci fi, literary, women’s fiction, Little Golden Books —have their vocabularies too. Read them all, learn from them all. Be the writer who “brings it all” to your work.
And that’s the ‘duh.’ I don’t know how I came to the conclusion that I didn’t have time for fun reading. I’ve learned more in the past six months by reading for pleasure than from fifteen chapters of Writing the Breakout Novel.
So, if you aren’t taking time to read very much anymore, consider this an invitation to re-start. If you are, you’re well ahead of me and more power to you—I’m on my way to catching up.
Right after I finish The Color Kittens.
Liz Selvig
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