RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
Author: Jeffe Kennedy
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I’m over at Word Whores, showing off these pretty flowers I got for the Top Pick review for The Talon of the Hawk, and talking about language in fantasy, along the lines of realism and suspension of disbelief.
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I’m just thrilled and nearly breathless to report that RT Book Reviews gave The Talon of the Hawk a 4.5 Star Top Pick review! The reviewers there are just so incredibly good to this series.
Here’s the review:
“The saga of The Twelve Kingdoms returns in grand style! It takes a great deal of trust for Ursula to accept that Harlan is interested in her as a woman; his position as a mercenary means he’s skilled at playing courtly games. She’s always possessed a physical strength, so it’s beautiful to watch her accept her own personal power, as a woman and as a daughter of Salena, even when her stubbornness gives you fits. Harlan is her perfect match because his talent at observation allows him to see beyond the tough warrior image she employs to avoid showing her feelings. This is a complex world full of danger, subterfuge and secrets with empowering female characters who are not afraid to fight for their future.”– RT Book Reviews, 4.5 Stars Top Pick
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I have not always been this person I am these days. The one who puts on her cross-trainers to run in the morning and later to walk at my treadmill desk. In fact, I recall this one time that my colleagues teased me about it. I arrived to work with them in Salt Lake City after the main team had been there a couple of days already. We were starting a big project and a bunch of newbies were being trained. I walked in the room, having just flown in, and my boss says, “I told you all that would be Jeffe.” I asked how she knew and she said by the clicking of my heels. I happened to be wearing a pair of high-heeled Enzo Angiolini boots I still miss – a lovely light buff suede that eventually became too soiled to rescue – that I’d bought at DSW in Boston on another work trip. At any right I told her that heels didn’t necessarily mean me and she said no, but that I always wear them. Then she asked me if I even owned a pair of sneakers or athletic shoes.
At the time, no, I did not.
Like I said, I’m a different person now. Especially since I’ve learned to tie my shoelaces correctly.
It’s funny to remember this, but once upon a time, tying my shoelaces was a Big Freaking Deal. I must have been five, in Kindergarten, and I got pulled out of class for a series of days for “Special Tutoring.” Because I could not tell time or tie my shoelaces. I know, right? With the telling time thing, keep in mind that they wanted me to be able to on an analog clock and we had all digital clocks at home. With the shoelaces…we’ll get to that.
So, this was kind of humiliating for me. I mean, I saw myself as a smart kid. I could already read on my own by then. I’d shocked the hell out of my mom by spelling, then sounding out the name of our grocery store. (Naturally, words were my first and best skill.) I really hated feeling stupid about the time thing and the shoelace thing. Frustrated, too, because despite all that Special Tutoring, I still got it wrong easily half the time.
Looking back, I’ve realized I probably had dyslexia. I only figured this out in college, when I was tired and actually saw a road sign arrow flip back and forth horizontally. It explained the analog clocks that showed me two different times at once, my baffling tendency to run the ball over the wrong goal line and those shoelaces that wouldn’t stay tied.
It’s amusing then to find out that I’d been tying my shoelaces WRONG. After all that Special Tutoring, they didn’t even teach me correctly.
If you don’t know, there IS a correct way to tie shoelaces so that they don’t come undone. Even better, this knot tightens as you run or walk.
All goes to continuing to grow, improve and learn new things. One of the many bounties of the Internet, that we can escape the embarrassment and frustration of Special Tutoring.
Win.
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I’m over at Word Whores talking about ways to make the environment be another character and asking for recs on books that do this really well!
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Recently I had occasion to research my agent’s Twitter feed, looking for a link he’d posted. Along the way I found a number of writers commenting on him not responding to their queries fast enough. Some of their tweets had a fairly terse and impatient tone. One was downright antagonistic.
It truly gave me pause.
First of all – I totally get the frustration. I queried agents (and editors) for years. Some I never heard any kind of response from. Others took approximately forever to reply. One in particular sent me a rejection a year after I’d signed with my first agent. On one level, we hear what they tell us – that client work comes first, that queries come at the far end of a long list of priorities – and intellectually we understand that. But emotionally we also understand what they’re too polite to say: that we are not that important to them at that stage.
Now, before any agents jump in and argue that, OF COURSE queriers are important, that this is where they get new clients and they’re always looking for something exciting in the slush pile – which is all absolutely true – let me clarify. A potential client is exactly that: a possibility. This person and their book lie in the intangible realm. Whereas the agent has very tangible clients and books to deal with. No matter how much as authors we believe in the vast potential of the book we’re querying, no one else has that same emotional charge as we do. And it’s painful.
It’s cranky-making.
It made me cranky, too.
But here’s the thing. The crankiness never goes away. Publishing is a strange business. Things can move at a glacially slow pace. There’s rarely ever a direct relationship between any two things. Hard work does not necessarily equal success. Brilliant writing does not necessarily equal great sales. Awards and rave reviews don’t mean the book will succeed. People you thought supported you turn out not to. Exciting things happen out of the blue and expected things evaporate. Yes, it’s exciting and creative and I wouldn’t trade it for any other career, but my point is this: it’s a cranky-making business. Everybody gets cranky at some point: authors, editors, agents, publishers, marketers, etc.
So, here’s my point. Agents know this. They know that there will be times in working with their authors that things will get stressful. There will be annoying contract negotiations, offers will fall through, books will fail to live up to expectations, editors will change their minds, difficult conversations will be had. This is part of the business. In point of fact, I mentioned in a blog post last week how I was cranky and snarky to my agent about advice he gave me. He probably didn’t love me for it, but he also gave me some latitude on it. (At least, I *think* he still loves me…) And I’m taking the advice, I decided once my cranky subsided. But part of why I get a bye (the one I hope I got) is that’s as cranky as I get. (And we have a pretty easy relationship at this point, where we get each other.)
To him. Or in public. I absolutely get crankier than that in private. That’s what DMs, IMs, text messages and tearful, ranty phone calls are for. Otherwise, I try to keep my professional relationships relatively cranky-free.
Imagine then, if an author is hostile and impatient with an agent they don’t know, have never talked to and have no relationship with. This is like the standard dating advice: he or she is not going to get BETTER after you marry them. Nobody turns out to be sweeter, better behaved and with more diligent hygiene AFTER the vows are said. No, when we’re dating and courting is when we are wearing our best selves. An author who’s impatient about queries, and is cranky about it, is not likely to be pleasant to deal with when the chips are down and a deal is going badly. If you think agents don’t know this and consider it, think again.
Most agents are in the business out of love and passion, much as authors are. There are easier ways to make money. But there’s also a reason we’re not stockbrokers. Agents want to love authors, want to love the books they write and help bring them into the world. If they make a bunch of money doing that, even better. But no book is brilliant enough to make an agent want to work with you if they think it will be a miserable experience.
Because life is too short.
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Tis the season to be gearing up for the RT Convention! This is just one of the fun reader parties I’m participating in.
I’m over at Word Whores talking about 3 Hours, 3 Days, or 300 Years: How Do You Choose & Use The Passage of Time?
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As the weather warms up in Santa Fe, the sunsets get more spectacular – double the blessings!
So, I seldom wax terribly feminist in writing. I’m sure more than a little of this is due to my Texas grandmother’s voice in my head reminding me to be pleasant, soft-spoken and not to ruffle feathers. Which I totally get is part of the problem. Still I tend to avoid conflict and sometimes I don’t voice my opinions for that reason. Of course, I have other, very good reasons for not voicing my position on some subjects, at least not publicly.
But this one has been bugging me for quite a while.
As you all may or may not know, I’m a member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and remain an enthusiastic supporter of the organization. RWA is the premier professional organization for romance writers, which means it’s composed primarily of women. There are no absolute numbers for this, as some men write under female pseudonyms, other writers consider themselves gender-flexible and, of course, there’s no gender-reporting requirement. Still, if looking around the room at the National Convention is any indicator, we’re probably talking over 95% female.
I frankly love that about RWA. There are very few arenas in my life where the community is so strongly female and – in the words of Cinderella from Into the Woods – it makes for a nice change. I think more people than I feel this way. Sure the male members joke about being outnumbered, but I figure, hey, welcome to the non-male experience. I embrace the overwhelming femaleness of RWA and feel that should be celebrated. Certainly that fact should be front and center in RWA’s branding.
So why isn’t it?
This is what has me riled up. (Hi Grandmother!) The cover of the April 2015 Romance Writers Report, our official magazine, looks like this:
The lead article is “Master of Your Career,” which… okay, fine. “Master” is grammatically correct and we’re all supposed to be good with the word being gender neutral. It might look silly to have “Mistress of Your Career,” because that word doesn’t denote mastery of anything at all. Which is a sad truth, right there. I probably wouldn’t even have given it (much of) a second thought, except for that image.
Men’s shoes.
I mean, decidedly masculine shoes. Not even gender-neutral shoes, like sneakers or some such, that could be seen either way. Now, I know that probably Corn Creative, who does the magazine design, likely came up with this and didn’t give it a second thought. I think that graphic designer is female, too. It looks like she does work for many publications, including the Society for Neuroscience, which I can vouch from personal experience skews the gender proportion in almost the opposite direction. Maybe she didn’t think about it and just picked a strong image.
What I’m saying is, maybe we should think about it.
I’m saying this also coming off a call with Agent Connor where he (strongly) suggested that I reconsider some of the naming in this new fantasy series I’m working on, as it can be viewed as cultural appropriation. And yes, it irritated me that he said that and I might have replied that we all belong to the human race and that the Celts came up out of India and at which point do I have to stop retracing my cultural inheritance?
(I know, I know – send him a nice note for having to deal with me.)
I’m no less irritated about that now, but… in the clear light of day I’m seeing that he’s likely right. I needed to think about it and avoid causing that offense, if I can. Which I can because it’s really not necessary. And it’s an important courtesy.
These things ARE important. Ruffled feathers or no.
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I’m over at the Contemporary Romance Cafe, talking about the reader contract and why it matters so very much.
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A piece of writing advice I often see tossed out there is that you must love your own characters, if you want your readers to love them. A parallel bit of advice is that a writer must be interested in the scene she writes in order to create interest in the reader. Every time I see this sort of thing, I pause and ask myself if I think that’s true.
I’ve decided that I really don’t.
I think this is a kind of false logic that springs from observations on the relationship between art, artist and viewer that I talked about a few days ago while discussing how to write vivid characters. Basically it’s the idea that our conscious understanding of what we’re trying to show as artists subconsciously affects the viewer (or reader, play-watcher, etc.). I observed long ago in directing a play that where I was muddy in how I understood the story, so was the audience. I do think this is a real phenomenon.
What’s not so real is the conflation that our emotional reaction to the work – love, fascination, what-have-you – will also manifest in the final product.
I’m not sure why it doesn’t work this way, but from my own experience, and from what other writers have said, it simply doesn’t. Neil Gaiman has written about this before and I can’t find the direct quote right now (updating to say I ran across it – posted in pic), but particularly for novel writing, there are long slogs where the writer might be bored out of his mind. Neil suggests that a writer who wants to feel constantly engaged by her own work might make a good poet, because poems are short enough. A novelist, however, he points out, has to have more endurance. It takes a long time to write a novel. I’ve calculated that I can write steadily at an average of 1,700 words per day, including days off and intervening edit rounds on other works. This means it takes me approximately 70 days to write a 120K word novel. That’s pretty fast, I’m reliably informed. It also works out to about 3 months writing the story.
Am I always entranced by every scene I write? No.
Will I experience every emotion I write? Not at all.
Do I always love my characters? Not by a long shot.
Now, some days I do! Sure, sometimes I cry while writing, or feel in love with my characters. Other times it’s like laying down bricks on an endless road. This is why what Neil said resonates with me. He noted this same thing, that there can be long periods where the writing feels dreadfully dull and not at all engaging, and – most salient – that when he goes back and reads the final work, he can’t discern which parts he wrote while loving it and which while slogging through.
I have experienced exactly this thing.
So, no – you don’t have to love your own characters. Just as, I might be going out on a limb here, we don’t always feel gushing love for our spouses every minute of every day. But what we do have is commitment to them. In a long-term relationship, we stay the course and feed the parts we want to grow. Writing a novel requires the same commitment. Don’t expect to love every moment, every nuance. Stay the course, feed the work and trust in yourself as an artist.
Do the work and the love will follow