Sam Burns's Blog, page 10

Quote of the Week

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

-Henry David Thoreau

Next Up: Saint and the Sinner

Yeah, you read that excerpt right. Next book in the Wilde Love series is going to be Owen and Mickey’s story, Saint and the Sinner. It’s with my editor right now, and scheduled for release on November 27th.

Also coming before the end of the year will be A Very Wilde Christmas. Lots of Christmas fluff about your favorite Wilde Love characters.

While I have more books planned for Wilde Love, it’s unlikely that book five is going to follow as quickly as the first few have come. There are various  reasons for this, but the one I’ve decided to share is this: what’s coming next.

I read and love all kinds of romance, but I have a particularly soft spot in my heart for paranormal romance. Since before I decided to start with Wilde Love, I’ve had this idea for a series. It’s a little long, counting in at a planned nine books, so I decided to start with something a shorter, or at least more open-ended.

I’ll be posting a little about it here and there for the next few months. I’m shooting for a January release on book one, so it’s coming up fast!

Quote of the Week

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

-Mark Twain

Quote of the Week

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Strike Up the Band Cover Reveal!

As many of you know Natasha Snow is the designer of the covers for the Wilde Love series. She just completed the cover for the third book in the series, Strike Up the Band, and I wanted to share it. The mailing list got a sneak peek last night, but as her covers tend to be, this is too lovely not to share with everyone.

Strike Up the Band will go on sale at Amazon on September 27th, and you can preorder it here.

During the week of the release, the ebook of Straight from the Heart will be on sale for 99 cents, so that will be a good time to pick up a copy if you don’t already have one!

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Quote of the Week

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

-Oscar Wilde

Quote of the Week

Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.

-Buddha

All the ways to say said

Fun story with a twist ending.

I worked with kids in an ELL program. That’s ELL for English Language Learners, not ESL/English as a Second Language, because for many kids learning English in the American school system, English isn’t a second language, but a third or fourth.

With one student, we were working through a novel intended for teenagers about her age. (16-18) She went through the words she knew easily, and her vocabulary was pretty impressive; after a year of English, she knew words her US-born contemporaries would have scratched their heads at. She liked to read, and it helped build her vocabulary a lot.

Anyway, every other paragraph or so, she’d stop and ask me what a word meant. And after a while, it almost became a game. Because every single time in this novel, the word she was asking about was a clumsy replacement for “said.”

“Don’t do that,” she yelled.

“I’m not angry,” he hissed.

“You can’t make me,” she growled.

“I didn’t mean to,” he sobbed.

Okay. Sometimes I understand this necessity. It’s important that he’s sobbing, and we need to know that. But seriously, there’s a limit–and there are better ways to say these things.

If my student would have to stop five times on every page of your manuscript and ask what that word means? You need to rethink some of your word choices

So stop it, okay self? Now get back to writing.

Quote of the Week

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

-Mark Twain

For all the reviewers in the house…

After a conversation with a reviewer in the m/m community, I was taken by the need to write you reviewers, for lack of a better term, a love letter. I’ve met a handful of the reviewers in the m/m community, and every one that I’ve spoken to has been a lovely person. I feel lucky to be writing in a genre that has these people in it.

You guys don’t have to be here. It’s not your job. You don’t get paid to show up. Most of the time, you don’t even get thanked for your efforts. You sometimes get treated like dirt for expressing your opinions. On terrifying occasion, people get threatened, stalked, and attacked for being reviewers. With all that, the fact that you stick around and keep going? It amazes me.

I’m a writer. I could try to be something else, but I’ve done that, and it doesn’t work for me. So I have to be here. I come back every day not just because I love books, but because this is my bread and butter. If I do my job well, I get paid for it.

You? You’re just here because of the books. You could read and not review, but you choose to share instead. Sure, sometimes if you review long and well enough, you get free books to review. You didn’t get promised free books at the outset, though, and chances are they’re not the only reason you’re here.

And sure, there are some books that make you angry, or bored, or disgusted, and you give them bad reviews. But you’re not here for those. You’re not here because you want to insult bad books. You’re here because you want to find the good ones, and share them with other readers. And frankly, there’s something incredible about that. You’re here to find and share joy.

Sometimes your review will disagree with the overall opinion of the community, and that’s fine. Sometimes you’ll review and then realize that there were issues surrounding the book that you didn’t know about, and that’s fine too. Sometimes, you’ll give my favorite book (or even *gasp* my book!) a bad review, and that’s fine too.

The thing is, you’re here. You show up and tell us about the amazing books you’ve found, and everyone needs more amazing books in their life.

Thank you.

 

*I swear, this isn’t an attempt to get better reviews. As has been said over and over again, reviews of my books aren’t for me, they’re for potential readers. If, as a reviewer, you feel like my book deserves to be panned, pan away.