Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 39

Taking a Break From Publishing Until January

Note: This is only a break from publishing. I still plan to be writing during this time.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been unable to shake off the feeling of being overwhelmed. No matter what I tried to adjust around my daily life, I couldn’t seem to work my way out of it. And then it occurred to me when I finished the first draft of One Enchanted Evening. I haven’t had a break from publishing books on a regular basis since 2015. And I’m exhausted. I need a vacation from publishing.

The writing part is no longer an issue. I got my enthusiasm back. The business angle, however, has taken its toll. I don’t have an assistant. I do all of this myself. In the past, I used to just write books, and then I published them once they were ready for the public. I didn’t plan out my publishing schedule.

Here’s what goes into the publishing side of things for each book:

If making a pre-order, then do that before or after book is completed
Create a Booklaunch page which gives information about the book with retailer links (useful if there’s have a pre-order), but this gives one link to send everyone to so it’s convenient
Hiring a cover artist or making the cover myself
Setting up the editors and beta readers to read over the book and working on an agreed-to-schedule
Doing blog posts and other social media stuff to let people know the book is coming
Making the email that will go out on release day
Making the special scene or epilogue to go with the new release to send out to email list (some authors do something like this, and I’m one of them). This takes a week for me to write since I have trouble coming up with this.
Work over final edits handed in by editors and beta readers
Format ebook
Upload ebook and fill out description page on retailer website and then check to make sure all of the ebook is there, and I upload on Amazon, Smashwords, and Google Play
Check each retailer (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, Google Play, Smashwords) and adding links to my blog (on my book page) and Booklaunch page (I update my website later)
Announce new release in the email, on my regular blog, my monthly blog, on social media, update my website, etc
Hire out for someone to format paperback or do it myself
Work on paperback cover or hire cover artist to do this
Upload the paperback book to Kindle Direct Publishing (used to be CreateSpace, but it’s all transferring to KDP now)
Buy paperback copy and check for errors
Buy paperback copies for beta readers

Anyway, today as I was thinking over having to go through all of that to get One Enchanted Evening out in October, I realized I didn’t have the energy to do all of that. I need to take a step back and give it all a rest.

I think the body gives us clues when it’s time to slow down. I don’t want to run myself ragged. While I’ve been doing good with getting regular sleep, avoiding bad foods, and spending time with my family on the weekends, I haven’t given myself enough time for exercise or to do anything for personal enjoyment (like reading some books that have been sitting on my shelf for the past year, or working on crossword puzzles, or just watching TV to let my mind decompress).

My goal is to get things going on the publishing side in December to get One Enchanted Evening ready for January. That allows me two and a half months to take some of the pressure off.

I’m afraid if I keep pushing myself on this publishing side, I’ll crash and burn. I just want to sit back and write for a while. So I’ll still be busy, but it’s a busy that energizes me instead of drains me. The business side drains me. I don’t mind having control over things, but it does require focus and time. I feel like I’ve been running in the “hurry up and get this book out” hamster wheel since the beginning of 2016. In addition to writing for passion, I guess I also need to stop the rushing to publish another book mindset.

The business side of writing greatly rewards authors who can get books out fast because it pays better than taking one’s time. That’s been especially true since 2014 or so. There was a shift that happened some point along that time period that made it harder and harder for indie authors to stay relevant unless they were constantly getting something new out there.

But sometimes people have to make hard decisions. Money is nice, but killing oneself to get more of it isn’t a good way to pursue things. I need to prioritize things in their proper place. God, my family, and my health have to come before the publishing stuff. (Some might say that putting my health before family would be best, but I’m a mom, and I don’t think moms can do that. We tend to be people who will sacrifice ourselves for our children.) Anyway, if I don’t get my priorities right, I believe my stories will suffer for it. So it’s a good idea to hit the refresh button (or whatever you want to call it) and figure out a strategy to get things lined up in their proper order.

Could There be a Good Reason why Writing to Market Works so well for Authors?

For those of you who are tired of me rambling about my experience as I shift from writing to market to writing for passion, you may want to skip this post. 

That warning aside, let’s dive into the topic that has been weighing on my mind for the past few days.

Pondering the Ramifications of Writing for Passion

It’s becoming apparent to me that the way writing to market works is by giving people what they expect. It’s working off of what is already popular. It’s working off of “familiarity”.

I knew this in theory, but as I’ve been going back to writing for passion (which is writing outside of the box), I’m starting to feel this. It’s no longer something on paper. It’s now something that is right in front of me where I can experience it. Part of this is because of the feedback I’ve been getting from the past two books I’ve written more to passion than to market, but it’s also from research I’ve been doing on this subject.

I just got through watching a You Tube video about why modern pop songs (in the US) is becoming more and more “cookie cutter” as the years go on. That video has inspired this post. I have noticed how similar songs are on my radio. I do hear them in the store, at the pool, and in movies. I hadn’t taken the time to connect how this relates to the world of writing until now.

When I was writing to market, I ran out of ideas because I had used up all of the ones I knew were “safe”. If I wanted to keep writing to market, I was going to have start doing “cookie cutter” books. I had exhausted all of my fresh ideas. Now, my reviews are a lot more positive when I stay within the box of what most romance readers expect in a book. I also earned more money when I was doing that. Based off my research and my personal experience, I have concluded that writing to market does pay off for authors who use this method of writing. That’s bad news for authors who are writing for passion because it means we have a tougher hill to climb. It’s not an impossible hill to climb, but there are going to be more challenges.

My hypothesis on why writing to market works as well as it does.

Now, the question came to my mind as to WHY writing to market is so fruitful. I have a degree in Psychology, and from to time, this part of me wants to come out and play, so I figured, what the hey.

Writing to market means you give the majority of people what they want. This is why so many books are cookie cutter books. Authors are trying to make a living at this. They want each book to sell. The best way to do that is to play it safe and not piss off the people who will read your books. The You Tube video about music mentioned the problem of risk and how it’s affected the kind of music that becomes popular today. The relevant stuff starts at the 13:50 mark in the video, if you want to watch it.

Risk affects what authors write. It affects what publishers accept. It affects what gets out into the mainstream. Over the past few years, an explosion of books have found their way to online stores. What this means is that it’s harder for authors to get noticed. Authors have learned that if they want to get more exposure, they need more people taking an interest in their books. The best way to do that is to piggyback off of what has been successfully done before. The keyword here is “successfully”.  That is what writing to market is. It’s taking out as much risk as possible. It’s sticking with what is familiar.

Familiarity is what attracts people. This is why there are some cookie cutter books out there. A segment of the population complains that there are too many cookie cutter books out there. There is a good reason for this. Cookie cutter books sell pretty darn well. There’s a reason why a lot of people have heard of Harlequin. Harlequin was big before self-publishing grabbed a foothold in the romance community. Harlequin is still around, but it’s not as big as it once was. The last I heard, they were shutting down some of their lines. One thing I heard about Harlequin was that they liked to base their romances off of a formula. The formula they used apparently worked since they had a huge readership. Self-pubilshing disrupted that business. Self-publishing disrupted a lot of things, but the traditional publishing business is one of them and Harlequin was a part of that.

Early on, I don’t recall any self-published author talking about writing to market. In fact, the benefit of self-publishing was that you didn’t have to write to market. The market for the traditionally published author is the publisher. The market for the publisher is the reader. The publisher didn’t like risk, so it would offer “safe”. When self-publishing came on the scene, it was about the freedom to write for passion. It was about throwing off the shackles of the publisher telling us what to do. It’s why I went into self-publishing.

Then authors found out there was money in self-publishing. And from there, the shift went from the pursuit of writing for passion to writing for money. There’s nothing wrong with making money from writing. I believe authors should make money from their work. The problem I have is when money is more important than the passion. My problem is when money is the only thing that matters.

Risk is hard to embrace. It means going against the grain. It means that you have to venture into areas other authors in your genre aren’t going in. It means potentially upsetting some people. It means stepping out of the comfort zone and diving into areas that aren’t often done. It means doing things differently. It means doing the unexpected.

In my research, I have discovered that authors who take those risks end up with less money than those who play it safe. Sure, there are examples of an author who did something different and became successful because of it. That kind of thing does happen, but more often than not, authors who are writing to market seem to make more money because they are delivering what most people expect.

The You Tube video posed something I thought was interesting at the 16:50 mark. There is something called the Mere-Exposure Effect, and it basically states that our brains release the chemical called dopamine when we hear something that is familiar to us. Dopamine makes us feel good. As result, we gain a preference to what we see and hear on a regular basis. I went on to research this idea, and I came across this online article that explained why music can be addicting. This is why we prefer certain types of music to others. So from that, I deducted that frequent exposure to a certain thing actually leads us to want more of it.

Could the same be true for books? Could there be a scientific reason why writing to market works as well as it does? Reading involves our emotions. I’m sure those emotions lead to the release of a variety of chemicals in our brains. If our brains reward us (make us feel good) when we get what we’re expecting in a story, then it leads us to want to read more books like the one we just read.

That’s something I never considered before, and I think it’s an interesting idea. So part of the problem of writing for passion (and taking those risks) is that most people’s brains aren’t tuned into “different” stories. Their brains reward them for sticking with familiar terrain. Perhaps “the same kind of story” is exactly what most people want, and this is why authors who write to market are doing as well as they are. Obviously, authors who say they write to market try to make their stories unique. They put their own spin on things. But, in the end, the goal is to please the majority of people in the genre they’re writing.

Personally, I have no qualms about writing to market. It burned me out. I can’t do it anymore. No amount of money is going to push me through forcing out a book that I can’t get passionate about writing. But I certainly understand why some authors do it, and these authors manage to do it very well. I just thought what I came up with my research on music was interesting and thought there was a correlation between music and writing books. Hopefully, I didn’t bore anyone with my ramblings.

How to Remove Skunk Spray

Yesterday morning, we woke up to the realization that a skunk had sprayed our carport. We live a little further out of town. It’s not too far since I can get anywhere I need to within 10-15 minutes, but we are far enough out where we have plenty of wildlife in the area. This kind of thing comes with the territory.

Since this was the first time I ever had to deal with skunk spray, I thought I’d share some things I learned (thanks to You Tube). So if you happen to come across a situation where you need to remove skunk spray, this is what to do.

I can testify that the 1 cup bleach + 1 galloon of water solution works. Between running to the store to get the bleach and bucket then running out to the garage about 30 times to dump the solution all over the garage, it did take me about 3.5 hours, but it worked!

Since that method worked so well

I haven’t had a need to boil vinegar in the house, but I bought a large container of vinegar yesterday. I also bought the hydrogen peroxide and baking soda in case someone in the family gets sprayed in the future.

I did end up using a natural spray to go around the areas I don’t want any skunks going. I bought a spray bottle, and I will be buying cayenne pepper. That way if the spray I bought doesn’t work, I have a backup plan. (I’m the kind of person who likes to have everything ready in advance.)

My main concern is also having stuff that isn’t harmful to kids. I try to stay away from harmful chemicals as much as possible. And I was using the bleach solution in the garage while they were in school so that by the time they got home, that had evaporated. Something I learned as a parent is that you really never know what kids will get into, and even older kids have moments where they slip and get into things they shouldn’t.

Now, since this happened in a carport, the cars were affected. I went to an automotive store yesterday and the person there recommended Ozium. This happens to be something that is potentially hazardous if breathed in, so my husband sprayed this in the car when he got home, and we made sure the doors were locked so the kids wouldn’t go into it. This morning at 5:30, I went outside and rolled down all of the windows. I wanted to make sure anything lingering from the spray would be gone by the time I needed to take the kids to the bus stop. In Montana, it’s cool in the mornings so it was the ideal time to air out the car. (And yesterday I kept the car outside of the carport.) When I drove to the bus stop an hour later, the skunk smell was gone. I think Ozium got the smell completely out, but I need to check on it this afternoon when it warms up to know for sure. If the trick doesn’t work, I’ll let you know. The good news is that the smell wasn’t that bad in the car, and no one smelled like skunk after being in the car. So I’m not that worried about it. The main thing is that the smell is gone from the carport.

Anyway, I’m passing this information along in case you ever need it. Hopefully, you won’t.

Sometimes You Have to Push Through It

Long intro (you might want to skip):

I haven’t had a week where it was like pulling teeth to write anything in a long time.  The problem has to do with what I’ve been eating. I haven’t felt this bad since I was about 34 or 35. I’m 43 now, and I have felt tons better since adjusting my diet. I’m 43, guys. You know what that means? I KNOW better than to eat things that are going to make me feel like crap. Basically, I feel like someone hit me in the head with a baseball bat. And it’s all because I let myself slip into eating and even drinking a lot of sugary products. As much as this sucks to feel this way, I’m actually grateful my body is sensitive to what I do with it because it forces me to behave. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Updates on What I’m Doing

First of all, I’m very pleased with the changes I made to two of my fantasies that are decades old. All this time, I felt like something was missing, and now that I finally got that resolved. I feel like the romance between the main hero and heroine lead is finally complete. This is why I will always and forever be a romance writer, no matter what other genre I dip my toes into.

Second, I am halfway into my pen name’s book. This isn’t a fantasy like the others were. This one is a straight out YA thriller where a girl saw her student kill a classmate, and no one believes her. The student is now coming for her, and unless she can prove he committed the crime, her time will be up.

Part of keeping the creative process going is working on multiple genres. I don’t know what it is about dabbling with different genres that do this, but each time I do, I notice the creativity explode when I work on romance.

Speaking of which…here is what I’m doing in the romance genre…

The Perfect Wife will be out August 25
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Click here to pre-order!

I got it up on all the channels. I notice that Amazon isn’t linking my series recently, and one theory is that it’s because I’m doing pre-orders over there. The Perfect Duke (Book 4 in the Marriage by Fate Series) never linked up with its series on Amazon. When I put The Perfect Wife (Book 3 in the Misled Mail Order Brides Series), it didn’t link up to its series on Amazon, either.

So I’ll put up my next book without doing a pre-order for it on Amazon. If that book does link up to the series it’s supposed to be in, then I know it’s a pre-order issue. If it doesn’t, then I know I have another problem going on. Fortunately, I’m not having this problem at other retailers. When things don’t run smoothly, it causes a certain degree of stress. I’ll keep an eye on this situation.

One Enchanted Evening is over halfway done
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Click here to pre-order!

I expect to finish the first draft at the end of this month. I am almost at 50,000 words, and things are building up for the final event of the story. This one has a gothic feel to it. There is the fairy tale undertone to it. That is the foundation of the story. It’s loosely based off of Cinderella, except Cinderella isn’t so perfect and her step-sister knows it. It’s the ideal setup for a gothic historical romance, and since it takes place in the Regency world, I’m putting it under the Regencies category in my book list.

This one has been especially fun to write. I’ve explored dark areas of my writing that I haven’t done before. It’s been a challenge, to say the least, and it’s always fun to stretch the creative muscles to try something new. I had the climax of this story in mind before I even started it, and I’m so excited to get to it! I loved the climax in The Marriage Contract where the hero was forced into a sword fight then pursued on horseback toward the bridge. Honestly, that is one of my favorite endings of all time. I’m looking forward the end of this book, too, with the same kind of excitement. I don’t want to say what it is because I don’t want to spoil it.

The Imperfect Husband is at 16,000 words now

 

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Click here to pre-order!

 

I average 60,000 words a book, so this gives you an idea of how far I am into it.  This one gave me a huge “Oh wow!” moment the last two days I’ve written in it. I had no idea part of the hero’s reason for being so insecure and shy around Annabelle stems from his relationship with his family. I thought it was weird that he didn’t run off to his parents right away at the beginning of this book. I noticed he felt easier around Annabelle’s family than his own, but I had no idea why. I just knew I had to trust the process and that there was a good reason for it. (This is the subconscious mind at work for us pansters.)

Anyway, I got to the scene where he and Annabelle go to have dinner with his parents, and all at once, so many pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and I was so excited as I started piecing them together. Now I understand him so much better. The poor guy has a younger brother who is the favorite, and he’s used to being second place in a lot of ways. Annabelle is the only one who is going to be able to help him realize his full value. That is going to be fun to work out!

I’m actually making good progress in Shane’s Deal

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Yep, this one is Book 4 in the Montana Collection, and it’s finally getting done. Madeline Thompson (the woman the men at the beginning of Boaz’s Wager were searching for) has finally shown up in Lewistown, and the hero has signed up to protect her. It’ll be interesting to see how the story progresses, but I know the mayor is going to finally be exposed for the sneaky lowlife he is. If you remember Boaz’s Wager and Patty’s Gamble, you know the mayor isn’t that nice of a guy. I’m looking forward to giving the mayor what’s coming to him.

Kidnapping the Viscount is a lot more fun than I expected
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Click here to pre-order

I really love the dynamic between the hero and heroine in this book. The heroine think she’s the one calling the shots, but it’s really the hero who’s doing it.

My original idea was for this to be a brooding kind of hero who is forced to marry the heroine, and I expected him to be upset with her for half of the book. If I was writing this to market, that is how I would write this. However, since I’ve gone back to embracing the passionate side of writing again, I thought, “I’d rather have the hero be someone with a great sense of humor who really wants to be with the heroine but wants her to prove how much she wants to be with him since she rejected his proposal in the past.” And he’s going to do this in a way that will make the book a humorous read. This is not a book for people who prefer things to be serious. This is a light-hearted and fun romance where nothing is taken seriously.

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As I glance through the stuff I wrote about the romances, I realize that, even within romance, I like variety. I don’t like to stick with one type of story. I think doing different kinds of romance (gothic, sentimental, humorous, some more spicy than others) help to keep me at my most creative. I’m not the kind of author who can only write one thing, regardless of the genre I’m in. I think this might also help me write more than one book at a time. Since these books are all so different, it’s easier to keep them all separate. Now, I do slip once in a while and call a character the wrong name, but stuff like that gets found during the edits. So anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing how these stories all play out.

Get the Book Right the First Time (A Writer’s Reflection)

You’d think by now, I would have learned this lesson. I’ve been writing since I was in high school. I did things from YA and adult romances, which never saw the light of day–it was the efforts of a 15 and 16-year-old, so be glad you were spared that horror :P. After high school, I did science fiction to fantasy to thrillers. I started writing adult romance in 2007 and quickly realized this was the genre I loved writing most. So with all of that experience under my belt, you think I would have learned that it’s important to get the story exactly the way I want it the first time.

And yet, yesterday I was adding some scenes I had always wanted to put into one of my fantasies but hadn’t because of fear. I hate fear. Fear is the thing that prevents a story from becoming the best it can be. Fear comes in to destroy the creative process. Instead of looking at what’s right, it looks at all the things that will make a story wrong. Fear is based on what other people might think. It goes against what the characters want.

Though I am not a fantasy writer, I do love the four fantasies I wrote way back in the day, and I have a soft spot for them. I don’t often go back over them, but I had the inkling to last week, so I’ve been working my way through them. As I was listening to them on my Kindle (using that text-to-speech feature), I realized I wasn’t happy with Books 2 and 3. Not totally happy. Something was missing. I knew what that something was, but did I have the courage to do something about it? And did I dare take the time from other writing projects to make them?

Sometimes it’s hard for a writer to have the courage to do what will make the story 100% what the author had envisioned. Like I said, fear creeps in, and it can be crippling to the creative side. My fantasies aren’t popular. They aren’t my main focus. My main focus is romance, and I want it to stay that way. I dabble in other genres because I get the urge to do so once in a while, and I find it actually enhances my creativity so when I go back to romance, the ideas flow better than before. This isn’t something a savvy marketer would do, but I’m not going to worry about that angle of things anymore. I’m done with it. I just want to go back to having fun, and fortunately, I’m in the position where I can do that. For the authors who need to write specifically to a market in order to make ends meet, you have my sympathies. I know that is not easy!

Anyway, I spent yesterday changing Book 2. I uploaded it to Smashwords, and then I downloaded the Smashwords version to my Kindle so I can listen to it. The changes don’t change the story. It won’t do that for Book 3, either, which is why I’m only going to upload the new version to Smashwords. Smashwords will send out the versions to the retailers like B&N, Kobo, and Apple, but I don’t download books from those sites to listen to on my Kindle. I would use a Nook, Kobo device, or my iPhone if it came with the text-to-speech feature on my books, but alas, it doesn’t.

Since I’m that tech savvy, it took me an hour to figure out how to get a mobi file from my desktop to my Kindle. It turned out, I had to download an app to make the transfer possible. This morning I have a headache because I went through this craziness right before bed, and it took some trial and error to get it right. But see, Amazon doesn’t automatically update the interior files of a book. It does update covers (after some time), but it doesn’t do interior updates, and these changes are so small that it’s not worth bugging Amazon about it (nor am I going to update the books on Amazon). Smashwords, however, is very easy to update anything, so that’s why I’m doing it over there.  I know a lot of people complain about Smashwords, but I love Smashwords for the ease it provides authors and readers. (Okay, I will admit figuring out how to get a Smashwords mobi file up to my Kindle wasn’t a piece of cake, but now that I know how to do it, it will be easy.)

So anyway….

To get back to the point….

Stories need to be told in the spirit of the creative voice. Fear (aka critical voice) will make the story less than what it should be. Now, I know there’s a balance that needs to be employed somewhere along the way, but when a writer feels like something is missing from the book, then that feeling has to trump trying to appease potential readers who won’t like it.

That’s what fear is in a nutshell: it’s worrying over what someone might think when they read the book. Sometimes the criticism is valid. I still think the changes I made at the last minute to The Perfect Wife made the story better. I’m happier with the final version. Having an editing team is good for some checks and balances. In the case of The Perfect Wife, this helped me get the book right the first time. Now it’s on pre-order, and I can walk away from it, knowing I got it the way I wanted it. The fantasy books, however, were a different matter, so I have to go back and tweak on it so that I’m happy with the final product.

In the end, writers are stuck with the books they write. Regardless of whether the books sell or not, they belong to the writers, and this is why (in my opinion), it’s important that the writers are happy with the finished product. Otherwise, the writers might find themselves in the position I’m in. They might be wishing they’d had the courage to write the story a different way in years to come. Yeah, money is nice. No one is going to argue that, but there’s something about being satisfied in the long run with something you created that supersedes financial rewards.

My goal moving forward is to get each book right the first time so that I don’t have to go back and change things later on.

I Guess Tastes Change Over Time

When I was a freshman in college back in 1993-1994, I read a trilogy from an author I loved. I remember loving that trilogy for one main reason: the romantic subplot. This was a YA thriller. I didn’t really care a whole lot about the main storyline. I was only interested in whether or not the female character ended up with the male character I was rooting for. And I was excited when she did. Over the years, I had forgotten most of the actual story. I only remembered how I felt about those two characters ending up together.

So, fast forward to last week, and I was telling a friend about the trilogy. I got the inkling to revisit the past and read through this romantic subplot again. Keep in mind, it’s been 24-25 years since I last read it. Add to that I’m now a romance writer. So my perspective has changed much more than I had expected it to.

When I read through the story again, I was disappointed. The actual story was good, but it wasn’t the story I wanted. I wanted to be swept up in this totally awesome romance that had once thrilled me so much. When I read it, I realized there weren’t that many romantic scenes. The two characters kissed, and some of it was great, but there was little follow up to this in Book 3 when they finally ended up together. And I kept wondering, “Why? Why did the author do such a great job of building up this romance only to let it flounder at the end?”

Then I had to remind myself this wasn’t a romance. It was a thriller. The romance was a secondary issue. The writer part of me is tempted to take the same elements and write my own book to do the romance the justice it is deserves. Here are the elements in this romantic subplot:

the forbidden bad boy who believes no one will ever accept him so he reluctantly does the right thing
the female character who sees the good in him that no one else does
the struggle the female faces on whether she’ll pick the super good guy who offers a “comfortable” love to the forbidden bad boy who offers her a “passionate” love

Isn’t that an awesome foundation? That kind of story can go many ways while keeping those elements intact. I don’t see myself writing it, at least not any time in the near future, and I certainly wouldn’t write anything like the actual story of the series I read. That storyline didn’t interest me all that much to begin with, and it still doesn’t. If I were to take those three elements, I would probably use it for the YA pen name I have if I used it at all. And guys, I’m talking about the “elements” of the romance. My characters would be different, so the actual romance wouldn’t be the same. But I would take the bad boy, the female who can make him believe in himself, and the conflict between comfort vs passion. Those are common tropes. They’ve already been done a lot. Those are fair game.

I would also love to read a book that can deliver this type of romance with a powerful punch. I would love to see the ending of the book or series to be way more intense than what came before it. This series’ best romantic moment happened in Book 2 and at the beginning of Book 3. Then it fell off a cliff and gave a lackluster conclusion. But the main story did end in a fantastic way. As I said, this wasn’t a romance, so it’s really not fair to judge the series based on the romantic subplot. It’s just that the romance is why I read it again.

Also, I’ve changed. I’m now a married woman with four children. I’m not the virgin college student who thought a kiss was a huge deal. I have a better understanding of the physical aspects of a relationship. I suppose it’s like anything else when we mature over time. Sure, ramen noodles were good when I was in college, too, but these days my taste for food has matured. When I was a little kid, I liked the single kid jingles. Then my taste in music required something more complex. The older I get, the more I appreciate layers to things. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s the only way I can think of to describe it.

This morning when I was talking to my youngest son who’ll enter the seventh grade this year, and he said, “People’s best days are in their 20s.” I gave him an amused smile and said, “When I was in my 20s, there was so much I didn’t know about life. I was mostly insecure, too. I would rather be 44 because I’m more confident, I have some life experience under my belt, and I’m happier with who I am. Sure, my body isn’t as ‘beautiful’ as it used to be. I have had four children, and that takes its toll on a body. But I feel great. I exercise, I eat better than I ever did in the past, and I get to write what I love. I wouldn’t want to go back to being in my 20s again. I expect to enjoy life more and more as the years go on because I’ll get even better.”

I’m currently writing books that I believe are my best yet. Why? Because I’ve learned from my past books. I’m fine-tuning my storytelling craft with every book I write. I’ve ditched the whole “write to market 100%” thing. I’m embracing the passionate side of writing like I haven’t since I got started. I expect my future books to be better than the past ones. I am in love again with writing, and I especially love romance.

So yeah, tastes do change over time. I’m not the same person who fell in love with that trilogy, and when I think about it, that’s for the best.

 

The Perfect Duke is now Available!

It’s here!

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Here are the books in the Marriage by Fate Series:

The Reclusive Earl (Book 1)
Married In Haste (Book 2)
Make Believe Bride (Book 3)
The Perfect Duke (Book 4)
Kidnapping the Viscount (Book 5) (which I’m writing)
Maybe another one (we shall see)

Description:

This book follows the events that started in Married In Haste continued on in Make Believe Bride. The social group, Ladies of Grace, is in turmoil, and the remaining members are struggling to undo the damage Lady Eloise did to it. Miss Tara Webb, the heroine of this book, is one of them.

When the gentleman Tara had planned to marry ditches her for another lady, she is left without a solid plan on making Ladies of Grace look good to the Ton. Fortunately, the Duke of Ravenshire comes along at the right moment and proposes marriage. He needs a wife, and fast, in order to avoid debtor’s prison. Tara agrees to marry him since he has a way of charming prominent members of the Ton. Her brother tries to stop the union, but, being twenty-one, she runs off with the Duke of Ravenshire anyway. And, naturally, this stirs up the wrath of her brother.

For those of you on my email list or in my private Facebook group, I sent out a special bonus scene with information on how things progressed for Ladies of Grace five years later. If you don’t want to miss these special scenes in the future, I suggest signing up for the email list or joining my private Facebook group.

Here is where you can find The Perfect Duke:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

iBooks

Google Play

Smashwords

Somewhere in the Middle

Looking back on things, it becomes obvious the answer wasn’t write for passion OR write  to market. The truth is, you need to find a balance between the two. You can’t do one to the exclusion of the other.

This past week, I experienced something of a crisis moment in a writer’s life. I’ve never been in this particular situation before, so I wasn’t prepared for how to handle it. When I started down this road of writing and publishing my own books, I wrote whatever came to mind. I never thought other people would read the books. I had written them so I could have a paperback copy on my shelf. Then I got into ebooks because I was going to get a Kindle and a Nook.

I’ve never been a plotter. I’ve always written whatever came to me, and somehow, the story just wrote itself out. Things were always neatly tied up, or, if there was a series, I knew something left unanswered in one book would end up answered in another.  This method lent itself to writing for passion. I was like a kid on the playground. I didn’t give any conscious thought to what I was writing. I was just playing and having a good time. That is what writing for passion is.  (Writing to market is having boundaries set up on the playground.)

Once I realized people were actually reading my books, I panicked. Suddenly, I had a responsibility to other people. It wasn’t just me I was writing for anymore. These days, most new indie authors assume they’re writing for other people. Their mindset is different from what I went into this writing gig with.

I don’t know how many authors who chose the route I did back in the “old days of publishing in 2008-2009” were thinking of book sales when they published their books on their own instead of going with a publisher. Back then, publishing your own books was seen as the option of last resort. It guaranteed you’d sell no more than 200 copies in the book’s entire life, which could outlive the author. Not selling means no one is reading the book. This means, there is no audience to write for. We were told indie publishing was doomed to failure.

So we flash forward to 2010-2012 when authors who were publishing their own books could actually find an audience. Suddenly, we had readers. And that meant when I sat down to write, I was now aware that other people were looking over my shoulder, judging what I was writing. I started to think about the market. I soon discovered that if I wrote more for the market, I got better reviews on my books. If you look at my early stuff, you’ll see a lot more 1 and 2-star reviews. I did learn what upset people and what pleased them. The more I wrote to market, the better the reviews got.

It was a natural progression that I moved more and more to the writing to market side. I didn’t want to disappoint people who read my books. I still don’t. No author sets out to piss off anyone who reads their book. It is, however, impossible to please everyone. That was a lesson I learned when I tried to change the Virginia Series from a historical romance genre to a contemporary romance genre. It turned out, I got emails and messages from people who preferred the series as in the historical genre. That was one of my biggest lessons learned: the people who matter most are those who I can please with my books. People who can’t be pleased because my writing doesn’t resonate with them are not the people I’m writing for. So I switched the Virginia Series back to historical and moved on.

In 2016-2017, I was in another state of panic (for reasons I already went into in other posts), so I went full over to the writing to market side of things. And in doing that, I realized that was burning me out. To sum up, I learned that writing for passion is very important. I hadn’t realized just how much until I started to actually hate writing.

So then I go full back over to writing for passion a couple of months ago. Yes, I feel like a ping pong ball in going from one extreme to the other. This writing thing is not as easy as some people make it look.

Anyway, my latest finished book, The Perfect Wife, went off to the editing team at the end of last month. These ladies look out for me. They do what they can to make my books the very best they can be. And a couple of them came back with the same concerns. I went into crisis mode because I’ve never been in this situation before. There’s usually something someone doesn’t like. Half the time, I’ll adjust it. If I happen to like it, I’ll keep it anyway. But this time more than one person had issues with the same things. And, to be fair, deep in my gut, I knew they were right. After getting over the shock, I sat down to revise the story so it’s more suited to the market. The changes turned out to not be as involved as I originally thought they were going to be. In fact, I had it all smoothed out within five hours (once I figured out what I was going to do). I thought it was going to take a lot longer. I’m actually much happier with the book now.

Yesterday afternoon as I finally had a chance to sit back and process everything that had just happened over the past week, I realized that there needs to be a balance between writing for passion AND writing to market. You can’t exclusively write for passion or write to market if you want a writing career. And I further suspect that each book will be different. Some books will be more toward one side of the aisle (writing for passion) while others will go more toward the other side (writing to market). All books, however, should be somewhere along the spectrum. The Perfect Duke is more toward the writing for passion side, and The Perfect Wife is more toward the writing for market side. I now realize each book will stand on a case by case basis. So that’s what I’m going to do. I will mix both approaches for what will make for the best story possible.

Simplifying My Publishing Life

Today while I was re-formatting the Marriage by Scandal Series to put on Google Play, I decided to take those cleaner updated versions and make a Smashwords version for them. That way they would also be distributed to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and other channels Smashwords distributes to.

While I was doing this, I realized I hadn’t gone in to update anything in the Kobo dashboard in forever. I have been updating covers of older books and revamping some old interior files over the years. It’s easy to do it through Smashwords because Smashwords will send it out to the other retailers for me. I’ve been doing this on Amazon, too. But I couldn’t remember which books I had directly up on Kobo. Out of the 80 books I currently have on Smashwords, I had put 24 of those up directly through Kobo.

Before I cause any confusion, all of my books have been up on Kobo all of this time.  But instead of going through Smashwords to get 24 of them on Kobo, I went directly to Kobo and published them there. What happened was that I kept forgetting which books I had put directly there and which I hadn’t.

I don’t know how familiar you are with distributors like Smashwords or the fact that retialers have their own platforms to upload books direclty to their store. But this has led to a common debate in the writer community. Is it better to use a distributor or to upload books directly to each retailer?

The main reason authors go direct is to make a little more money. Smashwords (and other distributors) take a small percentage out of the profits when a book is sold. I have no trouble with this. The distributors need to make money in order to keep operating. But some authors figure they could use the extra money. I don’t blame them. I have no trouble with an author who wants to keep a little extra in their pocket.

What I have learned, however, is that I am not the most organized person on the planet. It is way easier for someone like me to use Smashwords to distribute all of my books to other retailers for me. The only expections are Amazon and Google Play. Smashwords doesn’t offer distribution to Google Play. It’s easier to publish directly on Amazon since I would have to use a representative at Smashwords to distribute there for me, and I have a hard enough time remembering to keep my editing team updated on when they can expect my next book (thereby securing a slot in their busy calendars). So remembering to contact a representative whenever I had a book to publish or update on Amazon wouldn’t work well for me.

So anyway, I’m currently looking for ways to simply my life so that I can be more efficient.  I had about ten or so books directly up on Barnes & Noble via their Nook Press site. A month or so ago, I had decided to remove those and use Smashwords to upload the books over there for me. I forgot to mention that on this blog when I did it, but I’m sure the books are all over there by now. Kobo was the next logical step.

I’m going in small steps so that I don’t get overwhelmed.

I wanted to give everyone a heads up on what is going on in case you are at Kobo and see some of my books not there. They will be there. If you notice something that isn’t there in two weeks, let me know and I’ll look into it.

The good news is that it’ll be easier for me to make updates to older books so you should be able to download the new versions. On Apple, I do this on my iPhone by going to the the “updates” thing in the top of the iBooks page where books I have purchased are listed. Kindle seems to do this automatically in about a month’s time. It’s been ages since I used a Nook, and I don’t yet own a Kobo device. I want to get a Kobo device after it connects up with Walmart. I’m not sure how updates are done on the Nook or Kobo devices.

I will say one good thing about uploading these books to Google Play. It’s given me a reason to reformat my older books so that they look a lot better. I don’t do anything fancy when I format. My motto is keep it simple, especially since I don’t know what other people’s reading devices look like when they open my books. As long as my books are clean and neat, that’s what counts.

I will continue to work on updating older books so that the formatting is better and the covers are better. I’m not going to touch the covers a wonderful reader had done for me back in the early days when I was just getting my feet wet in publishing. That person really blessed me by making those covers for me, and I’m keeping them because whenever I look at them, I think of her.

As a side note, I am keeping the pen name Barbara Joan Russell. I like to dabble in other genres from time to time since it keeps my creativity going. I don’t plan to do a lot of books under that name, but when I get an itch to write YA thriller/dark fantasy, that name will satisfy it. I use Draft 2 Digital for that one because it helps separate out what I do under Ruth and what I do under Barbara. I know it’s another frying pan in the fire, but it helps me keep the two different names organized. My first focus will always be on Ruth since I love writing romance the most.