Michelle Garren Flye's Blog, page 84

Mission Possible: Get out your spy gear…there’s still time to win!

Before I get to the contest, please note, FOREIGN AFFAIRS is officially out, as you can tell by the “BUY IT NOW” links to the left. You can get it for your Kindle or NOOK or other e-reader of choice now, and the print version will be out in a month or two, but why wait? There are six sexy foreign men to explore (ahem, read about)!

But now on to the contest. To celebrate the anthology release, I’ve created an assignment for you, if you choose to accept it. You can win a $10 gift card from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble by doing two things: (1) Visit my fellow Foreign Affairs authors’ websites and (2) spy! Email me (michellegflye@gmail.com) with at least one fact about each author. Since all good spies need a place to start, I’m providing you with links to their websites below. While you’re there, you might drop them a line and let them know I said hi!

Karen Booth

Sidney Bristol

J.M. Kelley

Karen Stivali

Georgia St. Mane

I’m going to run this contest for a week, so you’ve got until August 15 at 5 p.m. Eastern to get me the information. Be sure to email me one fact about each one at michellegflye@gmail.com, and you’ll be entered in the drawing.

Meet FOREIGN AFFAIRS editor Gabriela Lessa and spy on my anthology buddies to win a gift card!

Tomorrow morning, Turquoise Morning Press releases FOREIGN AFFAIRS, a romance anthology containing my story “Agapi Mou” along with five other stories featuring sexy foreign guys. Fun stuff, for sure, and I’ve had a great time working on it. As much credit as the writers get for their books and stories, though, I’ve come to realize that we owe so much of that to our editors. And I’ve never felt more that way than I did with this anthology. Gabriela Lessa, the editor who brought this book together, has agreed to come celebrate FOREIGN AFFAIRS’s release with me on BREATHE today.

BREATHE: Foreign men…yum! But seriously, how did you get involved in a romance anthology about them?

GL: Well, I’m a foreigner myself, since I’m Brazilian, and I’m marrying the yummiest Brazilian man. So that’s really the main reason. And I’ve always loved traveling, and the kind of men you see abroad… Yummy! My single girlfriends actually have this thing going on, they call it “playing War”. Conquering as many territories as possible, if you know what I mean… I thought our readers wouldn’t mind playing a little War themselves, through some fun characters. So when Kim (TMP’s editor-in-chief) asked editors for anthology suggestions, I immediately came up with this one. It sounded like something absolutely delicious to read!

BREATHE: What did you like most about editing this anthology? Any least favorite things?

GL: Aside from the oh-so-hot men and the wonderful stories, you mean? Working with new authors. It’s very exciting to help hone new talent. Least favorites? I wish I could’ve had twenty stories like these!

BREATHE: Which nationalities did you get the most stories about?

GL: From the UK. I got many from England and Ireland, and actually had to select a bit not to end up with too many of those. Still, we ended up with two English gentlemen that will make women swoon, and one Irish fisherman that will show that rough men can have a soft heart.

BREATHE: Would you like to do a Foreign Affairs 2? Which nationalities would you like to have represented in that one?

GL: I would love to! On this first one, we ended up with more of an European edition. English, Irish, French, Greek, Italian… Oh, my, they are so delicious! For a next one, I would love to mix it up a bit. Get some more men from Asia, Africa, South and Central America… Hmmm… You’re getting me excited about this project!

BREATHE: Tell us a little about you, your past, current and future projects.

GL: I’m a bit of a workaholic. In addition to being an editor at Turquoise Morning Press, I’m an independent editor and a reader for a literary agency, so I’m always juggling several projects. There’s a lot going on at TMP right now, and I’m excited to be working with established and new authors. My past and future projects with TMP include several of Bobbye Terry’s novels and novellas, all fantastic. And also a few new authors, like Scott Kramer, whose debut mystery, Taking the Plunge, will be released in September. For the future, I have more from my established authors, more new authors and, of course, I look forward to getting more from the wonderful authors in this anthology.

Thank you for joining me, Gabi! For more information about Gabi’s projects, visit her at http://gabrielalessa.com.

Now the fun contest part. You can win a $10 gift card from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble by doing two things. Visit my fellow Foreign Affairs authors’ websites and spy! Just kidding. But check out their websites and email me (michellegflye@gmail.com) with at least one fact about each author. To make it a little easier for you, I’m providing you with links to their websites below. While you’re there, you might drop them a line and let them know I said hi!

Karen Booth

Sidney Bristol

J.M. Kelley

Karen Stivali

Georgia St. Mane

I’m going to run this little contest for a week, so you’ve got until August 15 at 5 p.m. Eastern to visit my buddies. Be sure to email me one fact about each one at michellegflye@gmail.com.

Foreign Affairs is out tomorrow! Win a prize!

To celebrate the release of Foreign Affairs by Turquoise Morning Press tomorrow, I’ll be interviewing the lovely editor of the anthology, Gabriela Lessa, right here on BREATHE! I’m very excited about the anthology. It features five other stories besides mine, all about handsome men from foreign lands. Join me here and find out how you can win a $10 Amazon e-gift card!

Enjoying the Olympics? Maybe you’d like Foreign Affairs.

Everybody seems to think they have an idea of what we’d like these days. If you rent a movie from an online service, that online service assumes it knows you well enough to make recommendations. I am certain that if I Google something, about a million advertising firms get hold of the information and bombard me with popups and online advertising about similar products. “Did you search for soccer scores? Buy your soccer cleats here.” Amazon is one of the worst about this. My Amazon home page changes from day to day depending on what I ordered or searched for last. Today the “Inspired by your shopping trends” has things like headbands, gardening tools, vacuum parts and a Star Wars Clone Trooper dart gun. I don’t actually want any of these things right now, but because I’ve bought things LIKE them there on former Amazon excursions (some dating back to last summer), Amazon assumes it knows me.

Ha!

On the other hand, I’m going to make a recommendation. If you’ve enjoyed watching the Olympics at least partly for the nice-looking males from all over the world, you may very well enjoy Foreign Affairs, the romance anthology featuring my story “Agapi Mou”. Foreign Affairs will be published Wednesday, August 8 (two days from now) and on September 8 in print. It features six men from six different countries who are not only good-looking, they’re also sweet and kind for the ultimate in sexy.

Am I on target for something YOU might like?

Music that isn’t mine or why there’s a gay woman in Where the Heart Lies: About Lulu.

I’m sitting here in my house listening to music that isn’t mine. We’re having work done (leaky windows), and the workmen have music. It’s good music, and I know you need something to listen to when you work, so I totally understand and don’t mind. But that music that isn’t mine got me thinking.

Why did I decide to put a gay woman in Where the Heart Lies? Heaven knows when I was writing her character, I felt like I was listening to somebody else’s music.

Lulu is a divorced mother of a five-year-old girl who befriends Alicia when Alicia moves to Hillsborough. Lulu is tough. She divorced her cheating husband and took over his sex shop in the heart of downtown Hillsborough. (Okay, there is no sex shop in downtown Hillsborough and probably never has been. I made it up, so don’t go looking for it!) Lulu worries about how her sexual orientation will affect her daughter, whether she grows up with one mommy or two. She’s able to shake off the disapproving looks and whispers that follow her around. She’s not a gossip, but she does enjoy the power of knowing who shops with her, and she hates the fact that her mother thinks her ex-husband “turned” her gay but she’s resigned to it.

Freud would probably say that Lulu is a part of me, but I don’t think that’s right. I think Lulu is a conglomeration of the things I’ve learned about the gay community over the years, even from my limited contact. Because I listen, I can hear their music, even though it isn’t mine.

I wish we could all remember to listen to other people’s music. Whether you’re ultra-liberal or ultra-conservative or (like me) somewhere in between, listen. Every community, every family, every individual has music and a story. Listen to it. The music may not be yours, but you might appreciate it, even if you don’t enjoy it.

Changing focus: From a novel to a short story…

Let’s get something straight first. I don’t have a master’s in fine arts. My degrees are in journalism and library science. Two very fine degrees, to be sure, but sometimes I feel like I’m feeling around in the dark when I write about writing. I know the basics. I know how to plot a story, I know how to characterize and how to describe. I’m very good with grammar and my self-editing skills are improving. But when it comes to story arc and some of the finer points of writing, I go by instinct.

It took me almost forty years to write a decent novel. Before that, I played around with short stories and flash fiction…mostly flash fiction, or stories of 1,000 words or less. Finally I got up the courage to write a novel. Weeds and Flowers was my first novel, written in a series of flash pieces because I was too scared to attempt to write a novel the traditional way. Then I wrote Winter Solstice and put it away for several years. Finally, I wrote Secrets of the Lotus and decided it was good enough to publish. Fortunately, I found a publisher (the wonderful Lyrical Press) that agreed with me, and after I re-worked Winter Solstice, they published that one, too. Now I’m on my fourth novel with Where the Heart Lies.

So how much of a shift in focus does it require to write a short story after you’ve written a novel? A lot. I played around with short romances a little. I even won third prize in a romance short story contest with “Life After” (available in The Best of All Sins: Stories of Love & Heartbreak). Short romances are really tough to write because you have to avoid “fast forwarding” too much. Fast forwarding can be either skipping over a lot of scenes you’d normally put into a novel or just having two people fall in love too fast. We don’t live life in fast forward, and while it’s okay to skip the boring parts, you still need your story to make sense. I guess that’s where the story arc comes in–if you’ve got an MFA, anyway.

My second romance short story “Agapi Mou”, was as successful as my first. It appears in the romance anthology FOREIGN AFFAIRS, which goes on sale in ebook format from Turquoise Morning Press next week and in print a month later. “Agapi Mou”, which means “My Love” in Greek, follows the romance of Myron and Lisa and takes place on a vineyard in eastern North Carolina. Myron and Lisa have known each other for several years. Lisa owns the vineyard that grows the scuppernong grapes that Myron’s winery in Greece uses to make scuppernong wine. Circumstances have kept them apart but on one of Myron’s visits, a simple kiss awakens their attraction to each other. Is the attraction just eratos (erotic love)…or could it be agape (true love)?

FOREIGN AFFAIRS also features stories about other hot men from foreign countries by exemplary romance authors (with their heroes in parentheses) Karen Booth (Antonio from Italy), Karen Stivali (Daniel from England), Georgia St. Mane (Logan from England), Sidney Bristol (Luc from France) and J.M. Kelley (Declan from Ireland). Look for more about these authors and their stories in the coming days.

Goodreads, Reviewers and Authors

Recently there has been some flap in the news about “Goodreads Bullies”. For those who aren’t familiar with the story, here it is (as I understand it) in a nutshell.

1. Some Authors have received some less than flattering reviews on Goodreads.

2. Some Reviewers have been accused by some Authors of being bullies.

3. Some Authors have started a website designed to bully the bullies.

4. Some Reviewers take objection to this because the founders of the website are “outing” them or publishing their personal information like names, addresses, phone numbers.

Okay, that’s it. It’s a pretty simple case as far as I’m concerned. Under no circumstances is it okay to bully someone online and writing a review, even a snarky one, is NOT bullying, but giving out someone’s personal information most definitely is. Authors have to be able to take criticism. Reviewers don’t. Reviewers are readers and (hopefully) their opinions are mirroring what’s out there in the real world. If we don’t want to know what readers think of what we write, we shouldn’t read reviews. Period.

Now that that’s said, I’d just like to say one thing to Goodreads reviewers. There’s a sort of perception that we as Authors are supposed to ignore the reviews posted about our books. We’re not supposed to acknowledge them in any way, shape or form. I didn’t realize this at first. When WHERE THE HEART LIES first started garnering reviews on Goodreads, I made a point of thanking the reviewers, even when the reviews were less than flattering. I’ve stopped doing that because it’s my understanding that it makes the reviewers uncomfortable. It’s kind of like eavesdropping, I guess.

What I want to say, though, is that even if I’m not responding to the reviewers, it doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention. Hello! I’m a person. I’m a writer. I write what’s in my heart and send it out to be trampled on as you guys see fit. Yeah, I’ve thickened my skin on purpose over the years, but every now and then the snark gets under it. At times I even allow myself to shake my head and slam my notebook computer screen shut. Once or twice I even put my head down on top of my shut computer and swore I’d never open it again.

Ten seconds later, I’m over it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not listening. I hear what you say over the tapping of my computer keys. We all do. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give your honest opinions about what you read. You definitely should. But don’t make the assumption that books are written by computers. Books are written by people with hearts.

Cheese in my hair, or why I don’t care if my long hair is unprofessional.

A few minutes ago I was eating lunch and browsing my Twitter feed. I came across a Tweet about this article in the Huffington Post (one of my favorite online news magazines): The Truth is Out Ladies: Your Long Hair is Killing Your Career. I was immediately concerned. You see, a couple of years ago I turned forty and made a decision to stop cutting my hair. It’s now quite long. In fact, I’d venture to say that it’s longer than it’s been since I was twelve years old.

So of course I clicked on the link. I read the article by Maria de Cesare, who cites another news story by Vivia Chen on The Careerist (Too Old for that Joni Mitchell Look?). Ms. Chen says old women (women over 40, evidently), shouldn’t have long hair because it’s a youthful hairstyle that clashes with our features, which begin melting off our skulls at that age. Or something to that effect. Ms. Chen says long hair on older women just doesn’t work on older women. Ms. de Cesare points out that if your boss is more concerned about your hairstyle than your job performance, you’re probably in the wrong job. Oh my. What to do? Two very intelligent women giving opposing opinions about the state of my chosen hairstyle. I read on, hoping to find some guidance.

The one thing Ms. de Cesare and Ms. Chen did seem to agree on is that your hair needs to be well-kept, by which I’m assuming they mean shampooed and brushed on a regular basis. I breathed a sigh of relief. Oh yes. I do shampoo. And I brushed my hair this very morning. I looked down at my hair with pride. Unfortunately, at the same moment, I happened to squeeze my hot pocket a little too hard and a glob of cheese plopped out…right onto one glossy lock.

Crap. You can’t exactly call that well-kept. I snatched a napkin and wiped the cheese away and that’s when I made the discovery of how my hair had saved me.

You see, I happen to be wearing a white blouse. I look pretty good for a Saturday when I don’t plan to go anywhere. I don’t actually want to change, but if my hair had not been there to impede the cheese, it would have landed smack on top of my left breast, leaving a large yellowy-orange stain in its wake. Imagine the horror! And my hair actually saved me from it!

And so, the hell with detractors and critics and fashion police. I have long brown hair. It even has a grey streak. Deal with it.

Vanishing literature or just disappearing ink?

I recently read an article about a book with disappearing ink. You can read about it here: “The Book That Can’t Wait”. I’ve pondered this concept for the past week, and I have to admit I understand why the publisher’s first print run sold out.

Let’s face it. I’m already writing less-than-permanent novels, as are many writers. I have no illusions about my creations, and I’m not sure many other writers should, either. If I look at the shelves of my library, I see my favorite authors. Anne McCaffrey, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling… I have some signed books from friends. I have a lot of poetry and folklore, some mythology, a few reference books. In short, I have sought my most permanent way of preserving the books I really care about.

My Kindle and Nook and iPad are a different story. They’re cluttered with anything that catches my fancy or needs to be read to keep up with my chosen genre. My books are on these devices. And you know what I’ve come to terms with?

One good EMP will wipe them all out.

When I first heard about The Book That Can’t Wait, I thought, “Oh my God, here I am fighting to get my books published, longing to have them in print, and these authors let a publisher put their stories into a book with vanishing ink? What’s wrong with them?” Now I sort of see their sacrifice as a show of solidarity with the rest of the changing publishing world.

So what’s the point? This is my take on it. If you think of the great post apocalyptic movies, a lot of them show a library somewhere. A library of printed books that are all that’s left of the literature of the world before. What books from today’s market will inhabit those shelves when so much of the “printed” word is electronic?

Or maybe the lesson is this: Read your e-books now. Who knows what will be left when the last Kindle is gone?

My most favorite comment of all…

I lost track of all the reviews Where the Heart Lies has received. Some of the reviewers liked it, some of them didn’t. I’ve forgotten most of the words of the reviewers (except the ones I preserved on this blog), but what I do remember are the comments from readers who have lost a loved one in the Armed Forces. These people have received the same “folded triangle of red, white and blue silk” that Alicia did at her husband Ty’s funeral. Some of them knew it had thirteen folds that had come to mean something to the family members left behind. Others say they learned something new from my book.

Either way, I know these are the comments that count. Anytime a reader makes an honest connection with what I write, it’s a great feeling. Writers can’t ask for better reviews than those.

For those who want to know what all the folds mean (I only mention the first six in Where the Heart Lies) and how they came to mean that, you can find it all here: Snopes.com: Grand Fold Flag.