Molly O'Keefe's Blog, page 29

Sherry Thomas Tackles the Tropes

So I finished the last of Sherry Thomas' latest series. They all have sort of interchangeable names as is suddenly the norm in Historical romance these days. And I had some quibbles about the books - minor things, largely because Thomas has set the bar so damn high. Honestly, so damn high.

The main quibble was that in each of the books I felt short-changed on the pay off. It felt rushed, or didn't hit the right note I needed after the deft and emotionally intricate and specific set up. There is no part of Thomas' work that has ever felt generic to me. I have often thought I could read a passage of her work, without knowing the author and I'd know it was hers. That's a powerful voice in romance.

And the voice is the same, and that discordant sound at the end of the books wasn't about the writing, but more about the plotting.

But the funny thing - having read the three books now - I love them as a whole, a little more than I loved them individually. It was like a Greatest Hits of Romance Traditions - the first book is a revenge plot, the second is a marriage of convenience and the third is an amnesia story.

What freaking fun!! Honestly - I felt like it takes someone who truly TRULY gets the genre to have such a lark with her books. It both elevates and revels in the tropes we romance readers love best. There were delicious reversals and reveals. She both turned the trope on it's head, while at the same time giving readers what they want.

I highly highly recommend the books.

Have you read them? What do you think?

Guest Blogger Karen Whiddon: Switching from Story to Story

Hello all - please join me in welcoming my good friend Karen Whiddon to DWT! Many of you may already know her as Karen W. from the comments. She's filling in for me today with her blog: Switching from Story to Story!


As a reader, I often am reading more than one book at a time. But truth is, if a book grabs me by the throat and won't let go, I can't read anything else.


When I'm writing a story, as I immerse myself in the world and get to know the people, it's sometimes difficult to let the story go. Sure, I type "The End" and email it off to my editor and sigh with relief and some sadness. It's over. At least until revisions or line edits.

Because I have tight deadlines, I often don't get to take too much time off between books. Ideally, I'd like to take at least a couple of weeks. But that's not always possible. The book I'm working on now - Broken Wolf, which will be out in September 2013 - I had to start the day after I turned in The Millionaire Cowboy's Secret (May 2013).

There were various reasons I had to do this, but because the deadline is December 1st and I have a writer's conference, a vacation, and Thanksgiving all occurring during that time period, I couldn't take time off. And while I really didn't have a choice, it might have been a mistake.

I keep confusing the two stories. Calling my hero Lucas by my other hero's name (Matt). Same with the heroine. And while I never forget that this couple are both Shape-shifters and the others weren't, it makes for a bit of confusion.

As a reader - or a writer - do you ever do that? Read a really great book and then find yourself needing to take time off before reading a new book?

Speaking of new books - please check out mine. The Cop's Missing Child was out from Harlequin Romantic Suspense in September, and The Wolf Princess is out from Harlequin Nocturne now (October). If you've never read me before, I have a free on-line read, Wolf Dreams, up at EHarlequin.net. A new chapter is posted every Monday, so chapter 4 goes live tomorrow. I hope to see you there!

Karen

Tapped Out

Sorry. It's one of those weeks. The only things I'm thinking about are largely negative and I just don't want to put that out in the universe. Instead, I bring you a picture of my cats. They are not doing anything funny. They are old men, but I still think they're cute. Here they are:

Friendship

I've started watching one of the new TV shows, Last Resort. I'm mixed on it so far. The dialogue can be really over the top, and there is a lot of sermonizing, but the acting is great and what's at the core of the show so far, is this really interesting friendship between two men.

At first the friendship seems more like a mentor relationship between an older man and his second in command, but as the episode progressed, it became more of equals. Two men in a tense, precarious situation, and how they react to each other and their individual decisions. And the writers made a smart choice, because there is a ton of external conflict, there isn't much between the two men, there is trust and respect and they show us this through more than just dialogue. Andre Braugher and Scott Speedman are selling the hell out of their roles. It's subtle, but it's in the way they each look to each other for confirmation once they've made a decision, it's in Speedman's subtle nods each time Andre clashes with another crew member, it's in how they interact when they're not saying anything.

Another show that does friendship really well is Grey's Anatomy, which at it's core is about a friendship between two women and I believe Shonda Rhimes never loses sight of that.

The problem with friendships in genre storytelling is that they can reduce the tension. I read somewhere that so many romance heroines are motherless, because if they got some decent advice on how to handle the hero that the story would be over in three chapters. And a romance by it's nature is a focus on the hero and heroine, not her friends, but even in YA, the focus is often not on friendship.

I can't think of a genre story that has a great friendship outside of thrillers, where two people connected by solving a crime form a friendship. I did love the friendship between Butch and V in the brotherhood series. but it's the only one that can creep into my head right now. I'm probably not caffeinated enough..

Can anyone think of any I missed. I'd love to read a story with a solid friendship.

It's the best I've ever done...

As Molly announced on Monday, One Final Step is now out in stores for the month and digitally forever. Yeah! And so I decided to put it out there and say what I really feel about this book. A lot of times readers will ask writers what is their favorite book they wrote. Many will answer, the book I’m working on now. (I think that’s Nora’s favorite line.) Or they can’t choose between their books, it would be like choosing between children.


I’m not really saying One Final Step is my “favorite” book. That probably would be a hard call. I like them when I write them, but I don’t think about them much when they are done.

But I can say without a doubt that this is the “best” book I’ve ever written and for only one reason. When I sit down and think about a book, the story is always in my head first. I see the scenes, the characters, hear the words. The process of writing is getting the story out of your head and onto the page. And the hard part about that process is getting the typed version of the story to match EXACTY what the vision in your head was. I have never fully accomplished this. It’s usually almost there… but then something is missing. Or I didn’t quite get it right… but it was close.

The hero in this story for me is my Wow moment. Michael on paper, was the Michael in my head. He was everything I wanted him to be and accomplishing that meant I had achieved something with this book I had never done before.

Does this mean it’s perfect? Hell no. Does this mean I’ve reached the top? Absolutely not. If fact many of the reviews about this book talk about loving the hero, but not quite getting the romance. Which is the beauty of writing. I got him right this time. Maybe I get her right the next time. Maybe I get them both right AND the romance right but not the plot absolutely one hundred percent the way I want it.

There is so much growth in writing. I know people who write that first book, and it’s published and it’s a hit. But that’s not going to be my story. I’ve written over 25 books at least, had 15 published and now with this book I’ve accomplished one small thing that I need to learn from and take into my next stories.

And the irony is, just because you love it, just because you know it’s your best, you have no idea what readers will think. Despite a lot of buzz on the internet my Amazon ranking is the worst of all the books for my month.

Now let me be clear I’m not envious of my fellow Superromance authors – I want them to sell zillions of copies and hope they all tie for a number one ranking. What it brought home for me though was the reality that just because it’s the best I did, means nothing. Because once the book is done and on the shelves it’s not about the writer anymore. It’s about the reader and what they want to read.

Life as a Trained Seal

Okay, according to John Steinbeck, a little above a trained seal. A little below clowns.

For the past 6 months or so, I've made numerous trips to Salinas. On nearly every one of them, I've meant to stop by the National Steinbeck Center there. There were reasons that I didn't manage to do it until last week, most of them (shamefully) having to do with beating traffic through the Bay area which is an impossible task anyway and I should have abandoned it before I ever started.

Which is to say that last week I finally visited the Steinbeck Center. I wasn't originally a fan of Steinbeck. They made us read The Pearl and The Red Pony in school and I didn't like either of them. Then one day I picked up a copy of East of Eden that was on my parents' bookshelves. Wow. Just wow. Steinbeck had me. He had me for life once I read Cannery Row and couldn't stop laughing at the The Great Frog Hunt. And The Grapes of Wrath? Suffice it to say that my grandfather was a sharecropper and it was only really because of a mule that kicked him in the kidney in Enid, Oklahoma that my own mother wasn't an Okie.

It turned out there was a lot I didn't know about Steinbeck. For instance, I didn't know he never wrote fiction again after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. I actually didn't know he'd won the Nobel Prize at all. There were a few other details like that and more, but what I loved were the quotes about writing that they had posted on the walls.

There's the one I mentioned at the top about writers being a little below clowns and a little above trained seals. Then there's this one:

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

So those are a little cynical, try this one on for size:

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

And this:

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

And finally, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat - for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.

It all made me a little weepy. Then, I saw the quote (which they have etched into a beer mug in the gift store) by Steinbeck's good friend, Ed Ricketts: There's nothing like that first sip of beer. Supposedly he said it after waking from a 3-day bender.

Cheers to you, drunk writers! I felt like you were there with me in Salinas.

ONE FINAL STEP - OUT NOW!!!

So, Stephanie's latest book is out - One Final Step. And in it she tackles some serious serious taboo subjects. Our heroine was the other woman in a presidential cheating scandal years ago and our hero has a past with ramifications that I'm not going to spoil for anyone - because it's so so so worth letting it all unfold as you read it.

I like talking about writers that subvert romance conventions - and I think Stephanie is tearing up sacred ground left right and center - which is difficult in romance but she's that she's doing it in category romance where the conventions seem more like laws just kills me. KILLS ME! I can't believe what she gets away with. I couldn't kill a dog in Superromance, and she's ...well, you have to read the books.

I am inspired by what Stephanie is doing, I am literally stealing things from her as she writes them. In her next book she takes on the secret baby trope and she's just killing it.

I want to be like Stephanie when I grow up!

I am so sorry about the Spoilers

that said, anyone watching this who wants to watch Breaking Bad and hasn't gotten around to it yet, please stop reading this.

I just finished season 4 and while the show has faults (some episodes are paced slowly), what they are doing with their characters is amazing.

They have taken their main protagonist, the hero of the series and completely turned him, so now, at the end of the fourth season, he's a completely different man from the one who started the series.

The beauty of the fourth season is that the main villain, Gus Fring, may be a better man than Walt, or at least that's the question we're left with at the very end. And what the show has done beautifully is shift the focus, so now, the hero of the series is Jesse, the high school drop out, meth addict turned meth cook, who Walt once mentored and now ruthlessly manipulates.

Needless to say, I'm excited to watch the 5th season, and more importantly, the end, to see what Walt has coming to him, and how it happens, because he's now the villain.

It's an interesting idea, taking your hero and transforming him into a villain, and one I'm not sure I've seen on TV before. It means having a new hero waiting in the wings and a escalating series of events that turns a person, a meek, family oriented, science teacher into a homicidal drug kingpin. It's something I'd love to play with in a different setting, say a fantasy setting.

That's what great TV does, is give us interesting ideas and concepts and shows us how they can play out. And that's maybe why, I shouldn't watch another Bachelor Pad.

and soon, Vampire Diaries. I'm stupidly excited for the first episode.

Synopsizes Suck!

I know, I know it’s something we all moan about, but we all have to do them if we want to be traditionally published. I haven’t had to write one for a while because it’s been all book writing for the last several months, but this past week I had to put one together for a book that’s going out on submission.


Now this is a book I’ve already completed. I already know the story inside and out. There is no figuring out what should happen next. There is simply telling the story of the book you already wrote. Simple right?

Nope. I still struggled. What elements to tell, what can be left out. How to show case the relationship within a few lines so the person reading the synopsis will get a sense of what the book is about without going into too much detail.

And the thing about the synopsis – there seems to be a lot of gray area around it. Everyone knows what a pitch is – 2 to 3 sentences that showcase your story. Something High Concept! Everyone knows what a query is – one page. A couple of paragraphs dedicated to the story and a paragraph detailing the author’s writing credentials.

But for the synopsis I’ve heard editors say 5 pages. 10 pages. Even as high as 20 pages. Let me tell you the difference between telling your story in 5 pages and 20 pages is a BIG difference.

Me – I’m a ten page max kind of person. My thinking is if you wanted to read 20 pages of something then you might as well just read the book.

So fortunately that’s done and I can say something I never thought I would say. I can go back to doing the easy thing of just writing the book.

Dialogue in YA Fiction

One of the first things you learn as a beginner author is that while dialogue should give the reader the impression that it's the way people talk, it shouldn't be exactly how people talk.

That is, you shouldn't include the ums and pauses and repetition. You generally shouldn't include the boring inane small talk we all use to break the ice with each other or to get warmed up. You should get to the point, have your characters express themselves in as few words as possible, and expressing even more than the words actually say with subtext. Dialogue is closer to how we wished we spoke, or how we think we speak, rather than how we really speak.

But I feel like some YA authors forget this or think it doesn't apply to them. And editors let them get away with it.

To the point where I wonder if they think the rule doesn't apply to YA. I even started to wonder if teen readers want to read dialogue that's closer to how they actually speak.

But I, for one, don't think so. It's one reason why I haven't enjoyed a lot of contemporary YA I've read. Not all. Just some.

It's like when you hear a teen, like, speaking and like, they're saying like, like a lot, and it's like, that's okay, she's a teen and, like, that's how she talks, so like it makes sense that like the author wrote, like, all the dialogue with a lot of likes. But I think like it gets, like, you know, like kind of repetitious and annoying and, like, I start to feel like, if I were an actual, like, teen, I'd feel like the author was, like, mocking me, or like, talking down to me, not like, trying to sound like me or relate to me.

I'm reading a critically acclaimed YA novel right now. And it's from about 10 years ago. And it's not contemporary, it's sci-fi. And it's clever. It's a cool concept. I wish I'd written it. The author really commits to the world and the language these teens use, and for the most part it really works but, like, I wish the author had, like, used the word like less often.

The other YA book I read this year with really quirky language was Blood Red Road, but that one really worked for me. The language was different, it took a while to get into the flow of it, but it wasn't annoying. For this new one I'm reading, the language is getting in the way of the story for me.

Does that ever happen to you? If the language is annoying, can you enjoy a story?