Being a Serious Reader

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

 

You all have figured out you’re in for cute kitten pics for quite a while, right?

Last week, there was quite a bit of discussion regarding a blog post from a librarian. It was kind of an odd post, with a number of internal conflicts. Basically she said people should stop criticizing readers of Fifty Shades of Grey, because people should be able to read what they want to read. Then, in the next breath, she declared that serious readers never read Harlequin romances. Other librarians, bloggers and reviewers passed the link around, straining their brains to understand how she could believe both things. And, of course, it all prompted declarations that they were not serious readers. (It was generally agreed that serious readers frown a lot.)  I believe there may be a t-shirt in the works.

The thing is, I don’t think her opinions can be parsed, because she’s really just declaring her own preferences. She liked Fifty Shades. She doesn’t like Harlequins. Okay. What’s salient is that preferences aren’t really arguable. In fact, they’re mainly affectations.

When we’re young, we establish likes and dislikes as a way of defining ourselves. You know – “I like purple. Unicorns are my favorite animal. I hate broccoli.” In fact, if you ask an adult what their favorite color is, I bet most will reflexively tell you the color they picked as a child. If you press them, most will say that they like lots of colors now. It’s no longer so important to have One Favorite Color because, as a mature adult, you’re more complex than that. You’re about far more than a favorite animal and most hated vegetable.

I think this is why it gets so much more difficult later in life to reel off the favorite author, book, song, movie, etc. If you’ve led a full life, you have long lists of these things. The book I loved when I was 16 is not the book I loved when I was 21 and is not the book I love today. For a long time, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” was my favorite song. I still like it, but it doesn’t hold the resonance it once did, back when I was in my early 20s. Things change. I’ve changed.

To me, this is where stuff like “serious readers don’t…” comes from. The person saying it wants to define herself in a particular way, so she makes a list of what she does and doesn’t like. But, really, reading should be about what she gets out of it – not what other people think about her. It’s like the people who make a big point about declaring that they hate something very popular. I saw a writer the other day declare that she would never lower herself to read Harry Potter. Now, I read the first couple books and I freely admit that I didn’t love them. Certainly not the way so many others did. They just didn’t sing to me. But this gal wanted us to know that she is a free-thinking individual, evidenced by her refusal to read something popular. She also seemed to think Harry Potter started the fantasy genre, which was mind-boggling to me, but that’s neither here nor there.

What I’m saying is, the fact that I never really got into Harry Potter doesn’t say anything interesting about who I am. I enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey, I still think Ann Patchett is an amazing writer, though I didn’t love her last book. None of this makes me more or less serious about reading than anyone else.

I just love to read. Period. And that, I think, says something about who I am.

But, if there is a t-shirt? I totally want one.

Hunting the Siren Cover Reveal and Newsletter Bonus!

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Here’s the cover for Hunting the Siren!

(No, I don’t know the release date yet.)

This is the novella I was calling Blood Siren for a while, but Ellora’s Cave has a rule that you can’t have blood in the title. Apparently it was overused, which kind of gives one pause. However, I *can* have blood in the series title, so this is officially the second book in the Blood Currency series, led off byFeeding the Vampire. In this one, Imogen is my vampire queen, living on the Russian steppes with her Nightriders. That ripped Mongol dude? That’s Kasar, who hiked out of Moscow after the earthquakes devastated that, too, and Europe sank. He thinks he’s going to go all VanHelsing and hunt Imogen down, to avenge his sister. But Imogen is no pussy cat.

Did I mention I don’t have official cover copy yet, either?

But!

Yes, here’s the sales pitch part: if you sign up for my NEWSLETTER, then you can be the first know these things! I also will include special somethings in my newsletters, which will probably be fairly few and far between, settling into your email in-box like dew on the morning rosebuds.

See, I’ve been exhorted to have a newsletter. (I don’t much like them myself.) So, I did it. Set up the newsletter sign-up link there in the right-hand column of the home page. And like SIX people have signed up. Which is really super sad and pitiful. Thus, I have a deal for you!

Everyone signed up for my newsletter by midnight, mountain time on July 8 will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 gift card to the online book vend0r of your choice! And yes, this includes you six loyal few who signed up already.

And then you get the extra bonus of fun surprises in the newsletter, too!

Isn’t this fun?

Okay, yeah, we’ll see.

Here – have an ice cream cone.

Breaking through Plot Walls

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Jackson demonstrates a little kitty yoga for you. Dare you to replicate this position.

I’ve been working away on the sequel to Rogue’s Pawn, simply titled RP2 for now. I had been going fast on it, then I slowed down. It happened right as I neared the Act I climax. Usually I don’t have this problem, but usually I’m not writing a sequel.

Now, for those of you not hugely up on story structure, most stories fall roughly into three acts. This is traditional, embedded-in-the-subconscious hum storytelling. Jokes traditionally come in three parts. Magic tricks have three stages: the pledge, the turn and the prestige. (Brilliantly demonstrated in the movie The Prestige.) Shakespeare’s plays generally are in three acts (if there’s  an Act IV, it usually serves as an epilogue). You can think of it in the classic terms of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back” or “get your hero up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him back down.”

So, Act I for a sequel is all about getting my characters back up a tree. I say specifically “back up the tree” because I just finished getting them out of a damn tree in the first book. It’s not that easy to get them back up the tree without making them seem stubborn or stupid or just plain self-destructive.

Plus, in the sequel, you need to ground readers in the world and ongoing threads established in the first book so that they know enough to skip reading the first book, but not so much that readers of the first book throw the second one against the wall in frustration. (A reader recently told me she did this with the most recent book in an ongoing, very long series. She felt like every other paragraph was devoted to summarizing “the story so far,” to the point that would have thrown it against the wall, except she values her ereader.)

It’s a lot of stuff to fold into the first act. Especially if you want the story to be interesting, too.

I felt like I was up against a wall, in that final scene of the first act. I’d built and built up to that point, I had an idea what needed to happen, where everyone needed to be mentally, to catapult us into the rest of the adventure (hurtling rocks – coming right up!), but I just couldn’t seem to get it into place.

Now, some writers will switch off at this point. They’ll switch to another project or write a scene from later in the story. I can see why this works – it relieves the pressure of having your creative face mashed up against that plot wall.

But, for me, all the juice is in sticking it out.

I went back and reread what I had so far – about 100 pages – and tightened and polished as I went. I worked my way back up to that wall, my steps slowing with every page as I neared that final scene. Yes, it was painful and unfulfilling. The last 20 pages took me two days of sticking it out.

Finally, the wall crumbled.

The resistance gave way and the world on the other side opened up.

Juicy, indeed.

Fifty Shades of Fae

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

A bit of a kitty stand-off here. Not that New Kitten Jackson is at all afraid of Isabel, despite that impressive claw display.

I dipped into Goodreads yesterday and looked at some of the reviews and ratings for Rogue’s Pawn. I don’t do this all that often. Mostly I try not to read all my reviews and ratings. I look at the ones people tag me with, especially when a reviewer went to a lot of effort to write a long and thoughtful review. But, for the most part, I think the Goodreads ratings are for other readers and aren’t really my business to helicopter over.

Besides – that kind of thing can make you crazy.

But, on impulse yesterday, I took a quick gander (I think this link will work, even if you’re not a member) and I’m so delighted that readers seems to be loving it for all the reasons I hoped they would. Near the top I saw a two-star rating – alas – and saw that she started off saying she wanted to like it and the writing is “clean and direct and intelligent” (thank you!), but that she was going to say what no one else would: that she didn’t like it being so “Fifty Shades of Fae.”

I just busted out laughing.

I mean – how clever is that?

She is, of course, referring to the erotic phenomFifty Shades of Grey and sinceRogue’s Pawn is absolutely about Faerie and the fae, the play on the title is apt. I also see why she got that vibe, though the book is not a BDSM story like Fifty Shades. But, thereare elements of power, control and submission. Because that’s just what seems to come out in my writing. My hero and heroine, Rogue and Gwynn, struggle with each other for mastery. It’s not a kinky game, though. It’s about life and death, magic and freedom.

Still – I confess I just love the tagline “Fifty Shades of Fae.”

I find it clever, funny, oddly apt and flattering in a way she might not have intended. After all, being connected to something everyone recognizes is a wonderful gift.

So is the laugh.

Do We Really Need Author Coaches?

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Jackson was playing in my purse and fell asleep with one incriminating paw still inside…

The other day on Twitter – yes, where I get pretty much all of my news – I saw someone listed as an “agent and author coach.” And he was tweeting coach-y type things. You know – those energetically optimistic exhortations that you can doo eet. Usually with the caveat that you need the coach’s help to doo eet. (Sorry – Adam Sandler movies have forever corrupted this phrase for me.)

In case you haven’t picked up on my tone, I should say I’m not a huge fan of the whole coach concept to begin with.

Some of this goes back to being a 10 year-old cheerleader and having the football coaches yell at me to get the hell out of the way. And the coaches in school who also taught gym class and showed nothing but contempt for non-athletic me. So, yeah, I have issues there. But even the whole personal trainer and life coach trend bothers me. I even have a friend who’s a life coach, and she’s a really lovely, interesting and dynamic person, but I still have problems with telling people how to run their lives.

See, that’s the thing – a personal trainer or life coach really doesn’t have access to knowledge you don’t have. You can read all kinds of information on how to build muscle tone or organize your schedule. What the coach brings to the table is that outside perspective and a kind of authoritative permission/directive to do the things you really want or need to do.

Fair enough.

I’m stubborn and self-directed, sometimes to a fault, and I really don’t like other people telling me what to do. Not my gig.

But let’s talk about these “author coaches.” We all know that the job of agent is in flux. With the rise of digital publishing, authors have access to publishing again in a way that they didn’t for many years. We still need agents to reach the upper echelons of traditional publishing, but that particular brass ring isn’t quite as shiny as it was. Certainly it’s not the be-all and end-all of a writing career anymore. Advances – where agents traditionally made most of their money – have shrunk or, in the case of many digital publishers, have gone away.

A lot of writers are questioning whether they need an agent. When I see agents selling their clients’ books to the exact same digital publishers that I am, I wonder, too. That debate is another issue, but what is undeniable is that many agents are reinventing themselves and their profession. Clearly the agents selling clients’ books to digital publishers that don’t do advances are making their money through a percent of royalties, perhaps with the hope of building the clients’ readership and moving them into bigger and better contracts.

Clearly this “author coach” concept is one of the reinventions. This feels predatory to me. An agent’s job is to be your advocate, get you access and know the contract negotiations. Not to be your friend and cheerleader. I know some authors have this relationship with their agent, which is great, but it’s not necessary. What is necessary is that they have information and expertise that you don’t have. And can’t just read up on.
 
I think that’s what it comes down to for me: anyone can call themselves an author coach. Hell, every time I tell my CPs they can doo eet, I’m being an author coach, right? Does this entitle me to a percentage of their royalties?
 
Hmm….

The Flip Side of Over-Editing

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

One of the things I love about this blog is the conversations it starts. Jodie Griffin, one of my Carina Press stable-mates (whinnies) said she thought I should touch on not giving up on editing, too. I invited her to guest post and here she is!

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Yesterday, Jeffe posted a great blog about over-editing a book. Today, I want to talk about the other side of that.

Don’t give up too easily.

Let me take this to a personal level.  Forbidden Fantasies, my first Carina Press title and my first published story ever, was rejected by Spice Briefs. Form rejection, no suggestions as to why, nothing. I put it aside and worked on some other projects, but it was never far out of my mind.

I submitted two other stories to different Harlequin lines, both of which were rejected. At this point, I was seriously questioning my writing skills and wondering if the stress of raising a family, working a full-time job, and trying to get published was worth it.  But Forbidden Fantasies wouldn’t let me go, and I started to fiddle with it again.

I deleted a lot. I added new stuff. And then I let it sit. I was considering some other publishers, but just wasn’t sure if I was brave enough to try again, and then Harlequin ran a Carina Press pitch contest.  I submitted my two-paragraph blurb and was chosen as one of five to pitch my story to Angela James.  I was crazy nervous, but Angela was wonderful.  When I finished my pitch, she asked to see the full manuscript. I was elated and terrified at the same time. My fabulous critique partners helped me make sure it was as clean as could be, and I sent it in.

You’d think the story about not giving up would end here, since Forbidden Fantasies was published in March, but you’d be wrong. Because rather than a sale, I got a revise and resubmit request. In a way, a rejection, but the best possible kind of rejection. We like it, but it needs work. If you’re willing to try to fix it, we’re willing to look at it again. 

I felt like I’d won the lottery.  Deborah Nemeth, my editor, had incredible ideas on ways to strengthen and expand the story.  I took my time, played around with it, got advice from my crit partners, and (holding the longest breath I’ve ever held) sent it back in again. 

 And this time, I got an offer.  The editing and revising didn’t end there by any stretch, but now it was being guided by Deb, a wonderful editor who understood what I was trying to say and helped me make sure I was getting that across.

Forbidden Desires will be my second story with Carina Press, and it’s coming out in November. And guess what? It was also rejected by Spice Briefs, same as the first story. Form rejection, no explanation, nothing to tell me why. To submit it to Carina Press, I changed it from first person to third person, and used everything I’d learned from the editing process with Forbidden Fantasies to make it stronger.  It sold without a revise and resubmit, but I would’ve been fine with that, too.

I loved Jeffe’s don’t over-edit advice, and I really agree with it. But there’s definitely a fine line between that and giving up. I’d hate to see someone give up after their first rejection. If you truly believe in your story, you owe it to yourself to try more than once.   It’s a chance I’m glad I took.

About Jodie Griffin:

Jodie writes naughty tales about nice girls & the men who love them.  She loves chocolate, happily-ever-afters, and alliterative titles, and could seriously use more hours in every day. You can find Jodie on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and at www.jodiegriffin.com.