Going Under – Page 2 – Jeffe Kennedy Blog

I posted this to the feeds yesterday, but had to share here, too. Jackson loves to play in the bathroom with me in the morning while I get ready. It’s all part of his joyful lead-up to breakfast, his equivalent of the Snoopy supper dance. The game evolves daily, usually involving stalker me from behind the shower curtain, bunching up the throw rug and mutilating Q-tips. Sometimes he hides behind the curtain, snags the Q-tips with a sneaky paw, and drags them to their doom.

Their doom being to be soggily swept down the drain when I shower.

Lately he’s figured out that he can jump up on the towel and bring it down on top of him, making an impromptu blanket fort, from which to stalk me and the Q-tips.

I imagine you can detect the theme here.

Yesterday, the towel-jumping morphed into a full leap onto the towel rack. It’s a narrow bar, mind you, but he managed to drape himself there nevertheless. The best part, I think, is that the picture above and to the right of him is a tuxedo cat, too. Okay, it’s an anthropomorphic tuxedo cat, getting off the trolley in New Orleans with a bag of Krauss Donuts. A Streetcat Named Desire is the title.

Stella!!!

I may be a bit giddily full of Friday today…

So, Goodreads has been morphing a bit lately. No surprise there with their acquisition by Amazon. Thus far it’s been fairly gentle (since the wholesale removal of some reviewers, that is). Recently Goodreads has started nudging me as an author – mostly via these monthly emailed “author newsletters.” Overall I like the tone and the suggestions seem reasonable. After all, I like Goodreads. I enjoy tracking my books there and seeing what other people are reading. Goodreads readers and reviewers have embraced my books and done a great deal to chat them up. Much more so than on, say, Amazon.

One thing that I hear people like on Goodreads is book giveaways. I’ve even entered them myself – and gotten the books! In fact, I recently discovered (no one told me, alas) that my publisher set up a giveaway for THE MARK OF THE TALA, which goes through April 30. When I looked just now to grab the link, 359 people had signed up! Pretty cool, I think.

And food for thought.

Yesterday I got the cover concept for GOING UNDER, the first book in FALLING UNDER, my new series of full-length erotic romances. And Goodreads, in the March Author Newsletter, had suggested ideas for cover reveals on their site. I spent a bit of time reading up, followed their instructions and set up my Cover Reveal Event.

Then I balked.

Because the next step is to invite people. The newsletter even suggested that I add a bribe (they didn’t call it that – I think they used the word “incentive”) that the first 100 people to add it to their “To Read” shelf will get a special excerpt or some such.

Now, I receive Goodreads invites pretty regularly. Usually from people I don’t know and don’t care about. Sometimes people I’m not even friends with, which I can’t figure out. I delete them all. In fact, I kind of hate getting those invites. And now they want me to send them? Ugh!

I asked this question on Twitter and Facebook, how people feel about getting these invites. The writers say they get a lot and auto-delete – my tribe, clearly – but other folks suggested that maybe readers like it better.

So, I’m torn. What do you all think?

Loved this dragon sculpture on the waterfront in San Diego.

So, in the flurry of travel for a weekend-long seminar for my day job in San Diego – which was illuminating, valuable and utterly exhausting – I totally forgot to announce the THING I’d been waiting to announce officially since, um, August. You all pretty much know about it already – that I signed on with Carina for a new trilogy. These are essentially more Facets of Passion books, but full-length novels, which means 2- to 3-times as long.

All you people saying “I wish it had been longer!” – see how I give you what you wish for??

The reason we did not announce immediately is because we – meaning Agent Pam, Carina and I – all wanted to go for a retitling and rebranding of the series. It’s sad on the one hand, because I really did love my “jewel” titles. But readers would see those titles – Sapphire, Platinum, Ruby and Five Golden Rings – and not know that they were erotic romances. I’m no marketing or business guru, but apparently that’s a problem. 😛

Thus, though I snort-giggle at some of the titles out there, I have gone full Borg and have been assimilated.

(You would not believe the cool stuff this ocular implant can do!)

So, I’m delighted, excited and just really pleased to OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCE

*clears throat*

*makes jazz hands*

My new erotic romance trilogy:

FALLING UNDER

The books will be

GOING UNDER (July 2014)

UNDER HIS TOUCH (January 2015)

UNDER CONTRACT (mmfflbrg 2015)

When you all get your paws on them, you’ll find that the titles really *do* reflect the stories themselves, which was important to me.

You all know about GOING UNDER already, because I had been calling it Emerald here. And yes, it’s all written. In fact, I’ll be working on developmental edits on it as soon as I finish this post.

An amusing story came out of my critique partner (CP) reviews of the initial draft, which carries a useful take-home message.

See, these books will also be a departure for me, because I’m including the hero’s point of view (POV). The Facets books were all from the heroine’s POV. Going Under, at least, alternates between the hero and heroine’s POV’s. (Probably they all will, but you never know what will happen when I get to actually writing them.) I wrote from the hero’s POV once before, in the fairly obscure Hunting the Siren, but this was my first significant effort to capture a “guy voice.”

Part of his voice emerged in that, at least in the lustful throes of sex, he thinks of her breasts as “tits.” To me, this is a convincingly guy thing. Particularly this guy. It’s a strong word, as these things go. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever used it in a story before – and pretty much not in real life either. Well, one of my CPs (nothing against you, darling!) mentioned, pretty much as her very first comment, that I needed to search for “tits” in the manuscript because I’d used it way too many times.

Taking her comment to heart, I searched for it and found 19 occurrences. In 308 pages and over 82,000 words. Conversely, I used the word “breast” well over 100 times. (Hey – it’s erotic romance. What did you expect?) That’s a 0.02% incidence of tits versus over 0.12% for breasts (I got tired of counting) – an order of magnitude in difference.

But, because “tits” struck her as such a strong word, it stood out.

I guess I mention this because readers will always have their pet peeves. Especially with sexual terms. Sometimes a blog post or Twitter hashtag will prompt people to riff on the words they hate. “Moist” crops up quite often. Surprisingly often, to me, because I don’t have the issue with it that so many seem to.

The thing is – this is something a writer simply cannot control for.

It falls under the “you can’t please everyone” umbrella. It’s simply not worth worrying about. Let the readers have their fun and riff on most-hated words and phrases – heavens know, I have them, too – but don’t write accordingly.

Way too crazy making to fret over too many tits.

I need that on a t-shirt.

Tag: Going Under

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Too Many Tits