Since Last Christmas
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Author: Jeffe Kennedy
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With a Prince
//rince
The Writer as Friendly Curmudgeon – Building Fences Without Walling People Out
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One of my favorite pictures of my mother, embodying all her effervescence and zest for life – letting her fringe fly.
It’s apropos for me that week’s topic – which has to do with attempting to be both a writer and a socially acceptable person – falls on Mother’s Day. My mother is tremendously social person. She’s good at it, and she loves it. Me… well, I’ve always struggled a bit with feeling like I’m not as good at it, and it took me a really long time to understand that about myself. Come on over to the SFF Seven to read more.
The Writing Process – and Avoiding Yeast Infections
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This year at the RT Booklovers Convention, Meg Tilly emceed the Reviewers Choice Awards ceremony. Yeah, the Meg Tilly of The Bill Chill fame, among others. I know she’s done other stuff, but I always think of her as Chloe, doing her serene stretching out, while William Hurt videos her, asking questions. He asks if Alex had been happy, and she looks in the camera and says, “I haven’t known many happy people – how do they act?” Sure, it’s a character line, but that’s always stuck with me, the soulfulness of that moment. Normally we don’t get celebrity emcees (other than authors, who are celebrities mostly only within the community), but Meg recently wrote a romance novel, Solace Island, under the name Sara Flynn.
I understand it’s really good, too – she’s gotten excellent reviews from substantial sources, not ones given to pandering.
A number of people asked me what Meg was like. (Other than that everyone seems to give universal thumbs up to her gorgeous dress, which was even more beautiful and shimmery in real life.) In short, she was just great. No huge ego, seemed really grounded and glad to be there. I confess I tend to be cynical about celejbrities who decide to write books, but she’s reinvented herself several times and seems to really love writing romance.
Most of RT for me, of course, involved hanging out in the bar – a whole lot of that with Grace Draven, who I never seem to tire of. We had a lot of conversations, some ranging far into the night, and lots of other wonderful writers and industry folks joined in.
One thing on Grace’s mind is her upcoming shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, and the physical therapy she’s enduring to free up her frozen shoulder before she can have the surgery. For writers, losing our ability to type – easily, fast, and for long periods at a time – is a scary prospect. She was talking about telling the doctor how her sling would have to allow her to sneak a hand out of it to reach the keyboard. The table full of writers all nodded sympathetically, making glum faces.
Now, I know what you’re about to suggest – and someone at the table brought it up, though not as an actual suggestion, because she knows better.
She said, “I don’t suppose you’d want to try something like Dragon to dictate your books?”
And we all did a collective shudder, everyone noting that it wouldn’t be the same.
The thing is…. Yes, some authors use voice recognition software to write their books. Maisey Yates went to it, after suffering crippling carpal tunnel syndrome. She really loves it.
But I totally shudder even contemplating doing something like that. I will if I’m ever forced into it, but I’m with Grace in that I’ll go to great lengths to avoid that eventuality. Just like that table full of authors.
As I said to Grace, it’s because the writing process is a delicate thing.
She immediately protested and said, “Oh no! Don’t make us sound like delicate artists.”
And I said, “No, no – it’s more like we do everything to avoid getting a yeast infection.”
Forgive the analogy, gentlemen, but even if you’ve never experienced a vaginal yeast infection, surely you know a woman who has. They’re painful, itchy, disgusting – and sometimes nearly impossible to get rid of. Once you get one, they’re more likely to recur. I’ve known women who had them for years and had to go to lengths like eliminating all sources of yeast from their diet and microwaving their underwear. If a woman gets one, then her sexual partner is likely to get it, too, which means it gets passed back and forth ad infinitum. The cures range from inconvenient to downright awful.
Even the most minor yeast infection can affect everything in your life, sometimes for a really long time.
Thus, the easiest solution is to avoid contracting them!
I won’t go into all of those essential habits, because my point is: the writing process can feel much the same. The mechanics of writing are as much a part of the developed habit as writing every day, or other rituals that allow the words to flow.
Once an author has her process working well, then it’s best to leave it be. If it’s not working – hey, change it up, do whatever. But if it IS working, then we’ll go to great lengths to avoid impacting that. We know too well that a bump too far in one direction can create a cascade of effects.
I suppose it all comes down to respecting our own process. I always advise newbie writers to discover what their process is and own it.
And then, once someone does, know that they’ll do anything to protect that process.
Picking the Good Ideas for a Novel – How Do You Know?
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I just got back from the RT Booklovers Convention in Atlanta. Here’s Sonali Dev and Grace Draven, after accepting their awards for best Contemporary Romance and Best Fantasy Romance, respectively. Two of my favorite people, among so many wonderful people at that convention. I had a wonderful time!
“Where do you get your ideas?”
This is a question authors get all the time. And we have a pretty stock answer for it, which is absolutely true, that getting ideas isn’t the hard part. Most authors have tons of ideas stockpiled.
Ideas are everywhere. GOOD ideas? Maybe not so much.
That’s our topic at the SFF Seven this week: how do we know which are the GOOD ideas. Come on over to read more.
Crying Wolf
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The bright day after the big snowstorm. The snow is melting fast and I’m betting it will be all gone by midafternoon.
Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is an open author riff, an invitation to talk about whatever’s on our minds.
I ended up complaining about bad security advice on the Internet. Because I couldn’t help myself. Don’t bother reading it – it’s a boring rant. Really.
Firing that Inner Critic
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Something I get asked quite a bit in the various workshops I teach, is essentially how to deal with the inner critic. The questions come to me like this:
How do you deal with worrying about family reading your sex scenes?
My (sister/mother/father/aunt) says I can’t write about this because I’ll hurt people – what do I do?
Every time I try to finish my story, I get bogged down in editing – how can I get past this?
All of these are evidence of the inner critic at work. Even those voices that “sound” like they come from someone else, those are simply concerns that we’ve internalized. It’s like a part of our brains is a tape recorder, faithfully taking down every criticism leveled at us. Then, when we got to write, it “helpfully” plays all of that back for us.
So, a lot of the time I tell people this is part of the gig (which it is) and you simply have to get good at exercising the discipline of shutting this voice off (which is also true). At the most basic level, it’s like learning to exercise regularly. At some point you have to shuck the excuses, laziness and don’t-wannas and just do it.
Write the sex scene anyway.
Write the memoir anyway.
Don’t go back and edit until you’re done.
All of that makes it sound easy, which it isn’t. It’s simple, but not easy. But I haven’t had better advice than this.
Recently, however, I discovered a tool for myself that I want to share.
Because – don’t mistake me – these things don’t go away. I’ve never met any writer, no matter how practiced or successful, who’s said they no longer hear these undermining voices. The syndrome can come and go, depending on overall life and emotional health, and on the project.
I struggled with this not long ago because of a chain of events where several people said critical things to me. A couple of them were angry with me and said things deliberately to hurt me. Even though I knew that intellectually, my inner tape recorder faithfully took down all of it, playing it back for me over and over, along with other stuff – negative comments from reviews, chance remarks that no one meant in a bad way. It became this inescapable ear worm that filled my head when I tried to write, making it both difficult and agonizing.
Finally, I made a stack of blank paper squares. I set them on my writing desk with a stainless steel mixing bowl (nothing special about that – just so I wouldn’t set my desk on fire, as appealing as the notion was at the time), and a lighter I use to light the candle in my tea warmer.
Every time one of those repeated phrases came into my head, I immediately wrote it on a square of paper and then burned it. Witness my pile of ash above!
You know what?? It worked like a charm. Those confidence-sapping earworms disappeared. And stayed gone. So much so that I can’t remember now what they were, much as I’d like to give you examples.
I’m encouraging you all to try this. Let me know how it works out!
When Mentors Go Bad: Writing Advice Red Flags
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This clematis I planted late last summer has been early to bloom this spring. Such a lovely new visitor to the garden!
Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is Paying it Forward: How We Serve as Mentors for Tomorrow’s New Writers. There’s lots of ways to do this, and I look forward to hearing what others of the SFF 7 say they do, but I want to come at this a little sideways by giving a warning about what is NOT helpful.
I Believe in Unicorns
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This week we’re asking the question: What’s the Greatest Myth or Legend You Wish Were True & Why?
My reply to this sort of thing, deep in the still idealistic abyss of my heart – which I’ve carried surprisingly untainted by collisions with reality since my childhood – is “what makes you think they’re not true?”
I believe in unicorns. Come find out more.
The Tide Is Shifting!!
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THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE is taking shape! If you haven’t been under a rock these last two days – and if you have, hey, I don’t judge – then you’ve already seen the cover. So much gorgeousness! The incomparable Ravven did this for me. Many people (who haven’t been under a rock, but that’s okay, too) have asked if this is the same artist who did the covers for (RITA finalist!) THE PAGES OF THE MIND and THE EDGE OF THE BLADE.
The short answer is: no.
But Ravven did an AMAZING job of matching the look and feel of those previous covers. Those were done via my publisher, Kensington. They hired artist Cliff Nielsen to create the images and Kensington’s in-house cover designer, Kristine Mills, took it from there. Ravven did both jobs and managed to capture the same vibe while pinpointing everything about Zynda as I described her.
Because, yes, that’s Zynda – the Tala cousin of the three princesses of the original Twelve Kingdoms trilogy. She’s a powerful shapeshifter, capable of taking many animal forms, and she’s also a sorceress. Just how much can she do? Well, we don’t know for sure! But, like her cousin Andromeda (Andi), she is of Salena’s potently magical line. Zynda has an interesting role to play in unraveling the riddles that plague their realms.
Oh, wait – you’re wondering why I’m doing this book on my own, when the previous five were with Kensington? Yeah, savvy readers will have picked out that THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE will be self-published rather than traditionally published. This partly by my choice, partly not.
See, this is how traditional publishing works, is that they might decide they no longer want to publish a series even though the author (and possibly readers!) think there’s more story to tell. In Kensington’s case, they were happy the books were so well received and have gotten great awards, but the sales weren’t what they wanted. Specifically the print sales. All of these books have sold great in ebook form – which is very typical for romance – and have sold through on the advances Kensington gave me. The print sales, however, weren’t as good as they wanted. What did they want? I don’t know. These decisions are rarely made clear to the authors. Instead, what they do – and did with THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE – is pass on the “option book,” which is the next book I’m contractually obligated to offer them.
Once they passed on SHIFT, which came as no surprise to me for a number of reasons – frankly, I was luckier than most to go that long as many authors get two books and that’s it – I had the freedom to self-publish the rest of the series. That’s pretty huge, by the way. Back in the Bad Old Days, I would not have had this option. The infrastructure to self-publish simply wasn’t there. You know how some of your favorite series suddenly seemed to just… stop? 95% of the time, that’s the reason why. (The other 5% being author going off the edge, burning out, or dying, pretty much in that order.)
So, I’m planning to do this book and at least one more. After that… it depends! I’ll have to see where the overall arc is and how you all are with it. I’ll have to make my own sales decision. For the time being, I’m *thrilled* that this cover continues the look of the series in grand style. In additional exciting news, my editor for the first five books is freelancing, so Peter Senftleben will be editing these also! I’m also fortunate to have my same production editor, Rebecca Cremonese, who makes sure all of my books are as perfect as my stubborn nature allows.
I’m shooting for August 15 release date on this. Amazon only allows a 90-day lead on setting a pre-order date, so by mid-May, when we can actually DO it, I’ll know for sure that I can commit.
This is the initial blurb. It will change as, you know, I write the actual story. If you want to learn something about how my process does (and doesn’t!) work, save this and compare it to the final. Could be entertaining!
Free from the hand of a tyrant, the Twelve Kingdoms have thrown all that touch them into chaos. New allies appear–and enemies encroach–from all sides. To survive, they must adapt to this new reality without a moment of doubt…
Growing up in a country where magic was common as dust, Zynda never had to worry about her enchantments upsetting the balance of nature. But the land beyond the borders of the thirteenth kingdom calls to her. It may be foreign and ugly, but the strangeness is laced with an excitement she has never known. Outside her homeland, Zynda’s shapeshifting and sorcery are a potent advantage to nations grasping for dominance–and the thrill of power lures her even as she recognizes the threat she poses to these magic-buffeted realms.
A ruthless enemy stalks them, promising destruction if she does not fight with all her strength–but if she upsets the equilibrium of the land, all will pay, the common people most of all. And a man of this outside world fascinates her, a mossback with no scrap of magic in him. He knows nothing of the fears and temptations pulling at her. But in his steady embrace she learns she must choose well–for the consequences may reach farther than she ever imagined…