Category: Blog

Competing for Covers

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

The cover of Platinum. So much pretty.

(Just in case you missed the cover reveal on Sullivan’s blog over the weekend.)

Covers are a funny thing. They are often the faces of our books – the first impression and lasting image. From the marketing end, the cover is the keystone of all publicity. After all, there’s not that many other visual images to tie to a story, except maybe the author head shot. (And for a lot of us, no one wants to go there. 😉 ) For the readers, covers add to the book’s caché. I know readers who collect bookmarks or cover flats of digital books, just to have the cover to look at.

If you’re a writer working with a publisher, what the cover will be is pretty much out of your hands. Oh, we get input–Carina and Ellora’s Cave have us fill out art fact sheets describing the book, characters, mood, tone, genre and visual hooks. And the marketing teams show the draft cover to us and we can give feedback. They smile, nod and give us the cover they want to.

If you self-publish, the writer becomes her own marketing team. Even if she hires a cover designer, she still has to communicate her concept, what the models should look like, the fonts and colors. It can be grueling, as I recently watched my friend and CP, Carolyn Crane, go through. She wanted the cover for her new book, Mr. Real, to be exactly right and wonderful, going through many iterations to get there.

(I know this because I think I looked at EVERY ONE.)

At any rate, she finally decided on a cover that she loved. Everyone was joyful. Until she found out that another author had received a nearly identical cover from her press – and the book is in the same genre and releasing on the same day. You can read Carolyn’s truly hilarious take on the fiasco here.

What strikes me most about this whole adventure though, is how lovely everyone was about it – especially the other author. We hear a lot of tales about author jealousy, infighting, plagiarizing, attack-sockpuppeting and various other kinds of unpleasantness. People love to pass around those stories. I knew this guy once who loved to complain about how women compete with each other in jealous and mean ways. He’d say “if two guys show up to a party wearing the same clothes, they’ll be friends for life – if two women wear the same dress, they’ll be at each other’s throats.”

Yeah. He was an ass.

But whenever he’d say that, I’d remember something that happened to my mom. The first time she ever volunteered to help organize a charity event, it was the inaugural fundraising ball put on by the American Cancer Society in Denver. She killed herself helping to plan this ball. Tons of work. And she stressed about what to wear. We shopped in EVERY store in Denver for the perfect dress. She visited me in college in St. Louis and we shopped there. We visited my aunt in Chicago and shopped there, too. This was over the course of nearly a year. Finally she found the perfect dress (I think in Chicago) and all was right with the world.

She arrives at the ball early, along with the rest of the committee, to finish setting up and in walks her good friend and another committee member wearing the exact same dress. That she’d bought at an exclusive boutique. Myrtle Rose, my mom’s friend, broke out laughing – I mean, what were the odds? – and said she’d go home and change. My mom protested and MR said, no, she’d been torn between two black dresses and all her make-up and jewelry would stay the same – she’d just shuck on the other dress and be right back.

It was done with the same spirit of friendship and generosity as Carolyn showed – and as the other author, Julianna Stone, showed her. After all, Carolyn was out money and the time she’d already invested in showing off the cover. It was well done of her.

I love a happy ending.

Oh, and speaking of – If you’d like win a 3-chapter, synopsis and query critique from me, you can do it here!

Platinum Cover Reveal!!

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Hee hee hee.

You have to visit Pearls Cast Before a McPig to see it. Voodoo Bride is a big fan and wanted the privilege.

Here’s the official description (which I forgot to give Sullivan-oops!):

Althea Grant is doing fine. Sure, her Charleston gallery is suffering from the bad economy, and her artistic aspirations have gone nowhere. But she’s happy enough. When rugged metal sculptor Steel rides up on his motorcycle looking to rent studio space, his infusion of cash is more than welcome. But his art is raw, visceral, sexual—and completely inappropriate for her pastel world of watercolor landscapes.

Steel, fascinated by Althea’s rare albino coloring, sees in her the key to his next piece: a metal satyr that can be used for bondage games. Moving into her gallery basement is the first step; seducing the coolly polite lady into modeling for him is the second.

As Steel peels away her careful manners and tasteful outfits, Althea begins to realize her life isn’t just fine at all—it’s as pale and washed-out as the watercolor paintings she’s failing to sell. Can she transform her life and accept her most secret desires?

Out February 25!

Trolling for Likes and Tags – Worth It or Not?

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

There’s this trope in the movies – especially a certain kind of teen movie – where someone pays/bribes/coerces one of the popular kids to pretend to like/love/date the nerdy kid, thereby conveying that special magic upon them and elevating the unpopular kid into the lofty ranks. You all have seen this movie, right? Inevitably it turns out that everyone loves the previously unpopular kid and the formerly golden kid has plummeted in the rankings because everyone now sees them for who they truly are, whatever that may be.

Of course, we understand from this that popularity is A) not a real thing, B) easily created and destroyed and C) a false goal that leads only to pain and suffering.

Popularity very often is a mysterious thing. Why does everyone think that one cheerleader is the prettiest? Or that one guy is the one everyone wants to hang with? It’s easy to put it down to money, the right clothes, personal charm, luck. In the end, nobody really knows the answers and, after a certain point, we all leave high school and we don’t worry about it so much anymore. It is what it is and popularity doesn’t really matter.

Unless you’re engaged in a field where you’re trying to get people’s attention.

Then you’re plunged right back into the social frenzy. Why does one book get passed around and talked about while another languishes? How come everyone seems to LOVE that author, that book blogger, the one agent who everybody knows is really kind of smarmy? But they do, we still don’t know the answers and now, unfortunately, it really DOES matter.

Recently on a number of the author loops I’m on, people have been engaging in “Like” and “Tagging” parties. People ask for “Likes” on their FB author pages. For example, here’s mine https://www.facebook.com/Author.Jeffe.Kennedy. You can see there’s a “Like” button (which is at least way better than the old “Fan” button). If you click, then you see my posts. And look! it’s a measurable indicator of popularity! There’s a similar deal on Amazon, which is arguably more important to the book’s success. For example, if you look at Rogue’s Pawn on Amazon, you can see the little thumbs-up symbol under the title, which is meant to show how many people liked the book. If you scroll ALLLLL the way down, below the reviews, you’ll see “Tags Customers Associate with this Product,” – again, meant to be a way for customers to rate and describe the product.

Well, there’s all sorts of mutterings and schemings about how a book needs 25 Likes to make it into Amazon’s recommendations. And that the tags are EVERYTHING if you want to sell books. Of course, a lot of this is trying to discern the system behind the curtain and make it play for us. So what are these authors on my loops doing?

They’re attempting to create the appearance of popularity. “I’ll like your book if you’ll like mine” is just the grown-up iteration of paying the popular kid to sit with you at lunch. And there’s a certain logic. Hopefully real readers – and by this I mean, people who’ve actually read and liked the book, as opposed to clicking to do you reciprocal favor – will see all those frisky likes and think “Hey, look at all the people who like this, it must be good! I want to be one of those people!”

But, in the end, though the number of Likes might look much better than it did before, it’s still not a real measure of anything. You’re kidding yourself. I suspect that at some point, like the kids in the teen movies, we realize that popularity cannot be bought, sold or traded. That it comes down to who we really are or, in the case of our books, what kind of reading experience we offer.

And it is what it is.

Please Don’t Post Bitchy Little Notes

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

I had a choice of using another photo similar to this one, with more clarity and better composition. But in the end, I just loved the full-on dramatic blaze of color in this.

I suppose our choices aren’t always rational ones.

Lately, despite my INTJ nature (if you know what that is, you’re nodding in understanding; if you don’t, don’t worry about it), I’ve been the Queen of Non-Rational Choices. At least when it comes to writing. This is part of the mister curse. I rarely ever feel like I get to control a story or make decisions about it. It’s like this great slippery many-tentacled thing that I’m trying to wedge into a Vera Wang gown. Never mind the make-up and hair-I just want the story to be able to walk down the runway without turning into a pile of goo.

So here I am in the middle of RP2. Just past the middle, actually. I’ve got about 63K written and I’m predicting I have about 48K to go. And bizarre things keep happening. I get one tentacle neatly tucked in and three more pop out.

Sigh.

It’s times like this that I wish I could pre-plot, when I’m envious of all those neat little outlines and well-behaved characters who simply suit up and behave. I know, too, that I simply need to slog through this part, that the story is trying to communicate something to me and I have to find out what it is. Writing the words then becomes like saying a rosary or Kaddish – you sit your butt down and put in the time, trusting that the transformation will take place.

Meanwhile, I’m all kinds of cranky. If I were the sort of writer who locked themselves in an attic room, demanded that food be left outside the door and threw temper tantrums, I would SO be doing that right now. But I don’t have that luxury, so I plug along, observing my rituals and routines to stay more or less on an even keel.

This morning, after I lifted weights at the gym, I put the check for the water bill in the dropbox. Taped to it was a note. You know the kind of note I mean. The passive-aggressive kind. It said something along the lines of “Please do not repeatedly slam the dropbox door. The bills will drop easily on the first try.” Clearly this person’s desk is on the other side of the wall the dropbox is attached to and said person is tired of hearing the dropbox door repeatedly slammed.

Now I want to type up a little note of my own and tape it on there. Something like “Please don’t post bitchy little notes.”

Ah, the irony.

This, my friends, is how my crazy writerliness manifests.

Maybe you should all just find me an attic room after all. Just leave food outside the door.

Reading and Buying Habits. And Kittens.

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

You can tell me it’s perspective, but Jackson really *does* have huge paws.

So, first off – well, second, since cute kittens ALWAYS come first – Rogue’s Pawn is up for a Reader’s Choice Award here. If you feel like voting, you can up until 8pm Pacific Time on September 29, 2012.  (I added the year because, you know, blog posts live forever on the interwebz. Wouldn’t want some poor soul in 2015 trying to vote!)

I really this really good book recently, by a new-to-me author. Touch of Power by Maria V. Snyder. The description, etc, didn’t really compel me and I doubt I would have picked it up on my own. But fabulous Agent Pam used it as a comparable for the book she’s shopping for me, so I thought I should check it out. And I loved it – not just because I got to read the kind of story I write, though that was a big piece of it. When I finished, I eagerly looked for the sequel and was disappointed to find it’s not out yet, and won’t be until December, even though Touch of Power came out nearly a year ago.

What is UP with that, Maria??

Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m one to talk.

At any rate, sad that the book was over and not ready to move on, I looked at her other books, wondering which I’d like. But – I think you all know this feeling – I didn’t *want* another world or set of characters. I wanted more of THOSE characters. Right now!

~stamps tiny foot~

Undecided, I ultimately bought none of the others. (I’ve since been reliably informed that the Poison Study series is a good bet, so I might do that, but now I’m off on a different reading jag.) Observing my own reading and buying habits gave me food for thought, however.

See, I get frustrated sometimes when readers who love one of my books, don’t then go read one of the others. I should say right off that I know a lot of you are fabulously loyal readers who read everything I’ve put out there. And I love you all! I’m coming to learn, though, that this is not always the case. Some people read only the Blood Currency books. Others are fans of Petals and Thorns and the Facets of Passion series, but would never pick up Rogue’s Pawn. I’ve seen some reviews of RP where readers say they hesitated to pick it up, because they knew I wrote sexier books, too.

So, sometimes, there’s this urge to reach out through the interwebz and grab a reader and say, “wait! you loved this book of mine, why won’t you read that one, too???”

As a general note? Feeling this kind of urge is a sign that you need to step away from the keyboard. Just saying.

When I realized I did this with Maria, it made sense to me. Though I’ll sometimes get on a kick and read *everything* an author has written, I do this less and less. It’s particular worlds and characters I attach to. Of course my readers do the same thing.
 
More. It’s all good.
 
Happy weekend everyone!

The Hallowed (and Frisky) Ones

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

So today is the much-anticipated and exciting event! THE HALLOWED ONES, by my good friend and CP, Laura Bickle, is out in the world! Here’s her official summary, plus some enticing blurbs:

The Hallowed Ones

If your home was the last safe place on earth, would you let a stranger in?

Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers are free to experience non-Amish culture before officially joining the church. But before Rumspringa arrives, Katie’s safe world starts to crumble. It begins with a fiery helicopter crash in the cornfields, followed by rumors of massive unrest and the disappearance of huge numbers of people all over the world. Something is out there…and it is making a killing.

Unsure why they haven’t yet been attacked, the Amish Elders make a decree: no one goes outside their community, and no one is allowed in. But when Katie finds a gravely injured young man lying just outside the boundary of their land, she can’t leave him to die. She refuses to submit to the Elders’ rule and secretly brings the stranger into her community—but what else is she bringing in with him?

“This is a book to make you fear the shadows–a horrifying and gruesome tale of faith, and things that blink red eyes in the night. I began reading in the daylight, and read on into the late hours, leaning close, biting my lip. I could not look away; I was obsessed. Katie is an unbreakable soul.” –Lauren DeStefano, New York Times Bestselling author of the Chemical Garden Trilogy

“What an eerily believable, unique story! I can’t stop thinking about it—or shivering.” —Melissa Marr, New York Times best-selling author of the Wicked Lovely series

“Readers will find it hard to put down this suspenseful, scary, compulsively readable adventure…” –Kirkus Reviews

 

It bums me out that poor Katie never got to go on her Rumspringa. So I thought maybe my own dirty girls could show her a bit of a good time!

It’s nice for a good Amish girl to flirt with a bit of vanity and get the first pedicure of her life.

And a manicure. She might even have gotten some sparkly jewels on her nails!

Out to lunch in Santa Fe, with wine and some other wild girls.

Plus a special trip to Minneapolis to visit some shirtless mens!

Katie really wanted to see a movie, so we took her to see The Avengers. Plenty of man-candy plus inspiration for her own super-hero exploits to come!

You know what they’re saying, don’t you?

Yes! You will *love* this book!

Being an Author – Two Things that Surprised Me and One that Didn’t

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

A big shout-out today to former, much-missed Word Whore, Laura Bickle on her Tuesday release of THE HALLOWED ONES! This one is YA, which is why she left the slutty boudoir. It’s also totally and completely awesome. So excited to see this hit the world.

I’m over at the Word Whores blog today, talking about what has surprised me about being an author.

Meeting Real Writers and Readers

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

I had to be in Minneapolis/St. Paul for the #dayjob this last week. One of the best parts of traveling for the job is getting to meet the people I usually only talk to online. On this trip, I got to meet two people, one who was already a good friend.

In the last six months, Carolyn Crane has become first a favorite author, then an online friend and then a critique partner. We were hooked up through a bit of savvy writer-matchmaking by Sullivan McPig. This was our first time, after increasingly copious online conversation, to meet in person.

We had dinner twice and, yes, talked a whole bunch. She even introduced me to her husband, who was a little dubious about who the hell I was, anyway. Carolyn got to meet my boss, Laurie, who joined us for some wine. We ruminated on how much the internet has added to our friendship connections this way. Without the internet, it’s highly unlikely that an enthusiastic reader in The Netherlands would have connected me to a writer who lives in another city and with whom I share so much.

The other person I met up with is Susan Doerr, who works at a book publisher (U. Minn Press). We had drinks after work and chatted about books we both love. She’s been lovely to me about my own books and asked lots of questions. When I told her about plans for stories I’m working on (*cough*Rogue’s Pawn 2*cough*), she actually jumped up and down with excitement about getting the “inside scoop.”

We may also have gossipped a little about various industry folks. Shhh….

But the whole conversation made me think about what readers like to know about the authors they read. I fill out the blog interviews and it’s hard to answer some of the questions because I often feel like so much of it is old hat. What can I possibly say about myself that everyone doesn’t already know? It’s easy to forget the enthusiastic readers on the other side of that equation – even though I am one, too.

So, I’m back home again at my house in the country, and savoring the wonderful in-person conversations I was privileged to share with these two very sharp, totally fabulous women. And I’m going to try to remember that, despite the physical distance and the lack of cocktails, real people are on the other side of these conversations.

Here’s to internet friends!