Molly O'Keefe's Blog, page 31

Oh! Thank God That's Over....

Summer was not pretty at our house. Fun. Lots of fun. Sandy, too. But not pretty.

I feel like I learn a little something every summer about how I'm going to be a mom and a writer at the same time and this year I learned - I'm not. I took the kids out of daycare in August because we were taking so many trips etc...etc... and it just never occurred to me that I would get NOTHING -- NOT ONE THING done for the month of August.

Part of it is that I am a bit precious. I hate writing when they're in the house, there are so many interruptions I feel like I do more harm than good to my manuscript. I know there are so many mom/writers who can just seal themselves off and get it done - I salute you.

I also TOTALLY overestimate how much my husband is going to help. I have this vision every summer of my husband turning to me and saying "you haven't gotten any writing done, have you? No. You don't have to say it. I can tell. Please, go write. I've got it covered."

Has any husband said this?

He's totally supportive, but trust me, I'm the one bringing it up and making it happen.

So, now I'm back to work. I have a half book deadline at the beginning of October and I'm at about 26,000 words. Doable? Sure. Especially since both kids are in about 6 hours of school. (which you would think is plenty of time, but again, I'm so precious. I want to work out, walk the dog, walk to the coffee shop to meet Maureen, pick up the kids - those things can't happen in six hours - much to my dismay.

And again, every September I'm reminded how damn hard this is. And not so much the plotting and character and fun stuff. I'm talking about the actual sitting butt in chair for three hours problem. The physical act of writing takes some easing into.

So, how about you guys? Did you take time off this summer? How are you doing getting back into the grind?

Eric the Vampire in Person!

Steph will be seething with jealousy. I am going to see Alexander Skarsgård in person next Tuesday night at the screening of his new film Disconnect.



I honest barely read the description of the film before I picked it. (They had me at Skarsgård.) But now that I have, it does sound interesting with a similar storytelling style to Magnolia, Babel or Crash. Excited!

With the aid of a first-rate cast — including Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and Alexander Skarsgård (Melancholia) — director Henry Alex Rubin (Murderball) explores the impact of the internet on our daily lives through a series of gripping, cunningly interwoven parallel narratives.

I'm seeing fewer films this year and not the ones that already have Oscar buzz, but still, I think I have an interesting lineup.

Another one I'm excited about and didn't read the description until after I picked it is Byzantium.

A pair of female vampires (Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton) wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting English seaside community in this deliciously depraved supernatural drama from Academy Award® winner Neil Jordan.

I'm not sure how I missed that it was a vampire movie when I was first skimming the description! This wasn't the photo in the programme book and I honestly thought it was going to be a dour story about working class English people. Not sure why I got that idea.

I'm slightly frightened about another one of my picks... It's called Painless and it's a Spanish film about kids who are experimented on because they can't feel pain.

In this fascinating allegorical horror-thriller, a brilliant young neurosurgeon emerges miraculously unharmed from a devastating car crash — only to discover a dark secret about his origins that stretches back to a series of bizarre experiments conducted at the dawn of the Spanish Civil War.

Creepy, right?

I'll try to blog next week, maybe with pictures of Stephanie's boyfriend!

Summer 2012 movies

It's labour day weekend and the summer movie season is officially over. So it's time to review how the season went.

Favourite summer movie - this was surprisingly tough, and ultimately a three way toss up between the Avengers, The Hunger Games and the Dark Knight, but in the end I really loved the darkness and depth of the Dark Knight, even though Avengers was definitely more fun.

Summer movie I wish I'd seen - Moonrise Kingdom, which by all accounts is charming and sweet and I still have time, so it's next on my list.

Biggest disappointment - I still loved it, but Prometheus. Given my love for the Alien movies, I wish the plot in this one had held together more, but that said, the acting and the atmosphere and the tension in the first half, they were all amazing, it just needed a better screenplay.

Biggest Surprise - Battleship - I'd read the terrible, terrible reviews going in, so my expectations were non-existent, and I had a really great time. Sure there were moments of dialogue that were downright awful and the blond love interest had the charisma of a wet blanket, but it was fun, and lighthearted and I left the movie in a great mood.

Movie I'm most looking forward to in the Fall - Les Miserables - seriously, if you haven't seen the trailer, look it up - it gave me goosebumps.

there are movies I missed, and I wish I'd gotten out to see more, but these are the ones that are top of mind. What was your favourite movie? Least favourite.

Marketing or Cheating

So the new big kerfuffle in publishing is authors paying people to review their books. See the NYT article below. (I think I did this link correctly.)

While the article targets self-published authors I’m sure there could be any number of traditionally published authors that might take this route as well. Although again the difference between the two is that it’s much harder for people to find self-published work than traditionally published work – so the need to have more reviews is greater for them.
What’s so painful about it, is that it works. Books with more reviews fall into some kind of Amazon mathematic formula that gets them listed and shown in certain places which leads to more copies being sold. Same with Goodreads. If you get enough reviews you’re going to fall into an algorithm that gets you recommended to more readers. The more people who see your book the more potential you have to make money.

As I’ve noted in previous blogs my self-publishing effort has been abysmal for that very reason. Very few people know that book is out there. Now I did get some nice reviews from Net Galley and of course my very good friends here gave their best effort, but to little avail.

So the question is if you are a writer, and the most effective means you have of selling your books is by gaining more than say 100 reviews, is it worth it to pay someone to positively review your book?

And is it unethical or just the next new marketing strategy?

For me I’m embarrassed to ask my friends to write reviews for me. Molly, Sinead and Maureen – can verify I did not ask them to review my book on Amazon – they simply did it because they know and like me. But sure asking friends or family to read your books and write reviews is totally fine.

However, the thought of paying someone to say they loved my work is so crazy to me, that I can’t get my mind around it. Especially when so many of the reviewers cashing in from this new craze in many cases never read the book.

But at the same time I don’t know that I can cry foul. I don't have a lot of reviews and my book didn’t sell to more than 200 people. Maybe if I were less proud and more business savvy I could make more money, find more readers.

I think the problem with this kind of thing is that it again leads to the new battle brewing between the traditionally published and self-published. Many traditionally published authors will point their fingers and say you never got picked. An agent didn’t want to represent the work, a publisher didn’t want to publish it – so you bypassed the whole system and did it yourself. Now add to that – you’re paying people to tell other people it’s good so you can sell more copies.

As a self-published author I can assure readers I would never corrupt something as important as reviews because it’s just not how I roll. And I guess I would urge people not to pursue this practice because I do think ultimately it diminishes the industry as a whole. Just like the lack of editing does. Readers are smart. If they read that 100 people gave a book 5 stars and the book is really garbage they’ll understand what took place and a certain amount of trust will be lost.

But boy… there sure are people out there a lot smarter than I am because what they did sounds like it’s working.

NYT Article.

So, I saw my Kirkus Review for Deviants yesterday. And it...

So, I saw my Kirkus Review for Deviants yesterday. And it wasn't terrible. In fact my publisher seems to be very excited about it.

Kirkus has a reputation for some pretty scathing and cruel reviews. Their own slogan is: "The World's Toughest Book Critics Since 1933." So that said, I am pretty pleased.

I'm not supposed to post the review anywhere yet (although, hint, it is actually on my book's page on Amazon).

Is the review glowing? No... but it's not bad and frankly I am just so relieved that they reviewed the book at all and that they didn't completely tear it apart.

And of course, I started looking up tons of other authors' reviews on Kirkus to compare them to mine. That's just human nature, right? Or am I psychotic?

This release business is starting to stress me out... On that topic... Did everyone see Nathan Bransford's very funny sequence of gifs on the publishing process this week?

Check it out. http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2012/08/the-publishing-process-in-gif-form.html

I have a lot of favorites, but I think the Mr. Spock gif for how most of us feel when we reach page 75 (or 100, or 150) is particularly apropos. And clearly I related to the surprise attack review one too. :)

Getting Out of My Own Head

I don't mean going out of my mind. I mean getting out of the self-defeatist litany that seems to keep repeating itself in an insidious little whisper over and over these days. My life is a little bit in flux right now. My youngest child is leaving for college in a few short weeks. I'm in the process of finishing up two book contracts, at which point I'll have to decide what to write next (which is a whole 'nother blog post, trust me). I changed day jobs. Nothing is the way it was a few short months ago and I feel completely at sea.

For some reason, I am only able to see the negatives right now. I'm old. I'm fat. I'm a slow runner. I'm not a New York Times Bestselling Author. I don't make enough money. My house is disorganized and messy.

Then today, this young woman I work with at my day job described me to someone else and it took everything bad I was thinking about myself and spun it 180 degrees. I'm all focused on the fact that I can't get below an 11 minute mile. She was all focused on the fact that I'm training for a marathon. I'm all focused on how I have to have a day job and write to support my family. She was all focused on how I manage to both have a day job and write books. I'm focused on being old and fat. She thinks I look great for my age.

She hasn't seen the inside of the house. Even she wouldn't be able to spin that.

Anyway, it made me think about why I'm always looking for the ways that I'm failing instead of the ways that I'm succeeding. I suppose realizing it is the first step, but I'm not quite sure how to shake it or keep it from paralyzing me as it does from time to time.

Any suggestions?

Social media

Has anyone else read the crap storm that Emily Giffin and her husband managed to create by responding to a bad amazon review. I read about this on Dear Author, and apparently Giffin's husband responded to the review by calling the reviewer psycho.

Dear author posted the review, which is measured and fair and perfectly reasonable from a self-professed fan of Giffin's work.

And Dear Author is coming down on Giffin and her husband and rightly so, but my first reaction was where were her friends. Bad reviews suck, and it's why we have writer friends to whine to, to reassure us how great we are and to talk us down from the ledge.

I'm starting to believe there's too much information out there, too much access to reviews, amazon rankings, twitter diatribes and about a thousand review sites.

I read two review sites, and I trust them when they tell me a book is good. Other than that, I'll check Goodreads when I've heard some buzz about a book. but I honestly think, for authors out there, the amount of opinions can be really distracting and worse, possibly confidence destroying.

Unless you're a person who can read a bad review, or negative comment and not let it affect you,(which would exclude most writers I know) I would recommend not reading them at all. Avoid Amazon, Good reads, at least when it comes to your own books. Do you need extra voices in your head as you're writing? Do you need a thousand opinions of what a great character is, or does, or who prefers their heroines to be sweet, or rebellious?

It takes a pretty clinical person to step back and go is this helping or hurting my writing? But it's necessary and anything that hurts, cut it out, or at least back to a minimal amount. And to reiterate Stephanie's point from yesterday. Do not engage.

No matter how unfair, or ugly, the review.

Editing... you gotta do it.

There was a pretty interesting article on Dear Author the other day regarding Objectivity vs. Subjectivity when talking about writing. In the wake of the self-publishing bonanza what a lot of readers are finding is that while they may actually enjoy the story, they are somewhat frustrated by the over abundance of grammatical errors.


Apparently there is also backlash from some authors who get upset when these errors are pointed out. They feel pointing out the errors is picky on the part of the reader and their work should be judged based on the overall story and not on the “rules” which let’s face it can be debatable.

SIDENOTE: Authors should never respond to criticism publicly. Period. The end. I don’t care if you think you need to or you think you are justified. If you are a professional – just don’t do it. Ever. That’s what friends, husbands and in my case pets are for!

Now back to editing… My view on this is pretty hard line. Mistakes will happen. Many people can read a manuscript and all miss the typo or incorrect word choice because our brain will naturally correct things within context. But to not edit a book at all - which I was actually stunned to read that several self-published authors admitted they didn’t because of the cost and other reasons – in my opinion is not “publishing”.

All you did was write and sell. And you broke faith with the reader who you told this was a “published” book that you felt was worthy enough for payment.

My books at Harlequin are screened no less than 5 times! My self-published work was screened 3 times. (That’s not including all the times I did it myself.) And yes, Got Game is probably less clean than my Harlequin titles as a result.

So to not have someone besides the author edit it AT ALL to me is nearly criminal and those books should be sold with the disclaimer – “This book was not edited by an independent party.”

Yes, it costs money to hire someone. And the reason a “professional” author should be willing to pay that person is because what the editor does is not simple or easy. Yes it takes more time to edit. An author has to incorporate all the changes someone is suggesting back into the work once it’s edited. Not fun. But an author should be willing to take this time to have a better finished product. Because as a professional the product is what counts.

Throwing non-edited material up on Amazon hoping that you’re going to hit the self-publishing lottery is destructive to writers and readers everywhere. It’s going to lower the overall quality of what’s available. It’s going set expectations lower than it ever has been before. And worse it’s going to make readers wary of everything out there in terms of what they buy.

We’re all adjusting to this new world. And I think the new world is great and exciting. But if we as writers are going to do this - on our own or with a traditional publisher – we at least have to agree that a book isn’t a “book” until it has been edited by someone else. Until then it’s just a manuscript.

I have no doubt there were probably typos throughout this post. Why? Because it wasn’t edited by someone other than me.

Genre Pondering

Two things have me thinking about genre conventions tonight.

First is the current brouhaha at RWA over the elimination of the "strong romantic elements" category in the RITAs and specifying that novels entered in the YA category must focus on the romance--something which very few YA novels do. The second is a delightful movie I saw tonight Celeste and Jesse Forever.


So... I'm not really sure I want to debate the RWA thing here but that said, I just can't keep quiet sometimes. :) I get that RWA is a romance writers organization and that lines need to be drawn somewhere... but really, it's the organization itself who defines what a romance is or isn't, and frankly they can define it however broadly or narrowly they choose to.

By including YA and SRE they embraced a lot of authors of popular fiction who write books that don't fit neatly into genre boxes and I'm not sure why they'd want to reverse that. I mean romance is such a strong genre, it's not like the future of romance publishing will be threatened by recognizing the work of writers of popular fiction that has a similar audience (largely women), but which doesn't fall neatly into any specific genre. Books that are closer to romance than say, horror, or thriller or mysteries or sci-fi. And I'm not sure why the RWA so recently sanctioned the new Women's Fiction and Young Adult chapters only to turn around and tell the members of those newly formed chapters that their books don't qualify to be entered for the organization's biggest award... But hey. I'm not on the board and wasn't there to hear the debate when the decision was made.

And it's the former of those arguments, the "why should RWA shun stories that are highly romantic but don't neatly fit within the genre's definitions" question, that made me think of the movie I saw tonight. (or vice versa)

I don't want to ruin the story--Celeste and Jesse Forever is a really nice movie that is definitely worth a rental--but without ruining it, let's just say the plot definitely focuses on the romance. The romantic relationship between this couple is the main plot in this story. It's about a married couple who've decided to get divorced, but are still best friends. They still love each other, and yet have decided to split amicably. She's too controlling. He won't grow up. It's a story about how sometimes to have a lasting relationship it takes more than love and compatibility. Sometimes it takes timing and compromise and hard work. And maybe a little luck.

The story has a happy, hopeful ending... I thought. But let's just say it's not a typical romance happily ever after ending. So, by the strict definitions of the genre, this movie was not a romance. Even though it was wholly about a relationship between a couple.

By the reactions in the audience, I think the ending caught many people by surprise because we're all trained for romances to end a certain way. But the film was really enjoyable and has high ratings both from critics and viewers on rotten tomatoes, so obviously I"m not the only person who enjoyed this film. Clearly it has an audience. But I don't think it's getting a huge release. Probably because it doesn't fit neatly into a genre.

For me, as a reader and movie goer, I wish there were more stories like this. Stories that are interesting, well told, but don't fit neatly into a box.

I guess I just like coloring (and reading and movie watching) outside the lines.

How about you? Can you enjoy a romance like, say, The Bridges of Madison County, where the couple doesn't end up together at the end? Or does that make you crazy? Is it not a romance just because of how it ends? Do you think anyone beyond the RWA really cares or can tell that Nicholas Sparks books don't qualify either?

A Thank You to My Readers

So in March, my publisher rereleased Don't Kill the Messenger as a mass market paperback. In addition to being a mass market paperback, it also came out from Ace, presenting me to a whole new audience. In November, Dead on Delivery will also be released as a mass market paperback from Ace.


To celebrate, I've written a short story, Payback for a Post-Mortem, set in the Messenger world with a new heroine. It's available for Kindle on Amazon and for Nook on Barnes and Noble.com. It's $.99 in both places.

There is an opportunity, however, to get it as a free PDF download. That's right. Free. If you go to my website and sign up for my newsletter, you can get it for free.

Oh, you want to know what it's about? Well, here goes:

Forensic veterinarian Dawn Bianchi knew that the animal on her necropsy table wasn't ordinary from the second it was brought in. She just didn't know how far it was from ordinary. She found out damn quickly, though. Between the leather-clad man and woman who stole the wolf from her lab and the mysterious man stalking her, she starts to get an inkling. It turns out there is far more out there than she ever dreamt.

So I hope you'll check it out either as a free download or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Regardless, thank you all for your support. It means the world to me.