Alice Orr's Blog, page 9

Why A CHRISTMAS CAROL Sings to Me

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because I Long to Decode its Secret. Why does this story grasp my heart and refuse to let go, no matter how many times I experience it? How has it continued to hold that same power for so very long over such a vast audience? What did Charles Dickens do that keeps us returning again and again? I can only answer for myself.

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because of Ebenezer Scrooge. Charles Dickens created a character I am unable to resist. Ebenezer commands me to revisit the dark chill of his “money-changing hole” with astonishing regularity. I simply cannot get enough of him, or the twisting and twisted trail he leads me along.

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because it is a Ghost Story. Things that go bump in the night abound. Literally, as Jacob Marley’s chain of miser’s sins clanks toward Scrooge’s cold, barren rooms. On film, I favor the Alastair Sim version. Its gloomy black and white images and ominous sound effects most accurately evoke the mood of the book for me, while Ebenezer’s ever angry scowl draws me into dread and melancholy “at this time of the rolling year.”

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because I am Myself an Ebenezer. Not because I hoard and hover over my worldly goods, or grumble, “Humbug this, humbug that,” for all to hear. But because, as surely as he carries his poisonous, punishing temper everywhere, he carries a wound as well, and I’ve been similarly wounded.

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because, like Scrooge, the Wound was to my Heart. A gaping hole was inflicted by continually dropping hot coals of malice and neglect onto the same tender spot when I was very young. The resulting hollow begged to be filled, and could only be filled with love. Sadly, the scant love available came from hearts even more damaged than my own, from souls too willing to wound, too unhealthy to heal themselves or me.

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because so Many of Us have been Singed and Hollowed. I ask for no one to admit this. Doing so can cause its own pain, in searing vulnerability. I feel twinges of that right now. Please, don’t feel you must point out how you are not the least bit wounded. If this is true, I rejoice and pray you shall remain forever so. Still, I suspect that, more often than not, we bear up beneath our injuries and scar them over as best we can.

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me Because Ebenezer Offers Us an Answer. He points us toward a place where healing can happen, and that place is within ourselves, in each of our hearts. Action is required, as is always the case in Redemption stories, and Scrooge’s story is about redemption for sure. The action is love, in its working verb form. I hope you will indulge me now, as I speak that call to action to myself.

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because it Reminds Me of a Crucial Truth. In order to complete the healing of my wound, I must love, everybody and everything, as deeply and consistently as I can, given my flawed human nature. The still, small voice inside me echoes the right and goodness of this intention. Love. Love. Love. I pray to be able to do that.

Meanwhile… Charles Dickens, Ebenezer, Tiny Tim, and I sing wishes to each of you for a beloved and loving New Year. God Bless Us Every One.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice Orr’s Christmas story A Vacancy at the Inn = Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 3 – is a available on Amazon HERE. Enjoy!

A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.  Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

 

 

The post Why A CHRISTMAS CAROL Sings to Me appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Present Perfect Survive-Thrive Secret #1

Persist Till You Prevail. We’ve seen many of us fall by the wayside. We’re called Creatives. Yet, we struggle to create the mindset that will keep our bodies and spirits from sliding off the path which gives us joy and satisfaction. The challenge is to Persist. The goal is to Prevail.

I Have Persisted. Through breast cancer, past heart attack surgery, onto enough downer meds to crumple a steed in the first furlong. Am I boasting? You betcha, though God and great docs had a lot to do with it. Plus maybe my rat-dog stubbornly stupid refusal to give up.

Alice’s Survive and Thrive Secrets. Five rules for life’s risky road were planted deep in me by Grandma when I was young, and I’ve nurtured them some since. I share those seeds in my next few posts. The overall message being Persist Till You Prevail.

What Do I Mean by Prevail? Do I mean fame and fortune? Don’t turn those puppies away if they scratch at your door, but they’re not my thesis here. To Prevail is what my top-line title states and my bottom-line belief dictates. Survive and Thrive. Get past whatever you encounter. Don’t expect easy. Survive to Thrive and tell about it, because we must always share good news.

What Do I Mean by Thrive? Muster the strength to pick up your life, like they picked my heart up out of my chest, and celebrate your very existence. You made it this far, battered and bruised maybe, but still Present. That, like me not dying on heart attack day, is a miracle.

Present Perfect. So, here’s Survive and Thrive Secret #1. Be the Best You Can Be in the Present. The best you can be, not the best there ever was, or the best expected by whomever’s been flogging your psyche for almost ever. Your ma, your pa, Saint Francis. I expect, and you should too, only the best you can manage to be on any given day in any given moment.

The Best You/I/We Can Manage is Good Enough. Better than good enough. Your Personal Any Morning Best. That’s a diamond, my friend, subject to polishing perhaps, but worth a fortunate fortune all the same.

In the Interests of Full Disclosure. My own consciousness lost the gist of that last paragraph for a while. The concrete of forgetfulness paved my path, honed it into hobble-stones that delivered a direct hit to my heart on 12/12/17. A cautionary tale you must remember when tempted to overlook the glint of the jewel you already are, or misjudge it not glinty enough.

Be Gentle with Yourself – the Exercise Begins. Identify goals that are Realistic for You. Not for whomever you’re alleged to be less whatever than. Realistic/Doable/Workable Goals for You. Be compassionate. Cutting somebody a break begins at home.

Brainstorm Those Compassionate-with-Yourself Goals. Get someone who really loves you to join in, or make it a solo storm. A bottle of wine could help, or a pot of strong tea if you prefer. Make mine cabernet sauvignon, please.

Write Them Suckers Down. Do not edit. Don’t say, “That’s stupid,” or “This won’t work.” The psyche-flogger I mentioned earlier? Those dismissives are her/his/their voice. Ignore it. Write down every syllable. Then leave the list alone for a bit, maybe even a day or two.

The Cooler Consideration. Again, do not edit. Guided by self-compassion, prioritize Your Realistic Goals. Start easy, not with the biggest thunderclap on your brainstormed list. Make a new list from the new sequence you’ve created.

Print That List in a Large Font. Hang it everywhere you hang. Your laptop lip, the fridge door. Do not laminate. Periodic tweaking, always in self-compassion mode, is encouraged.

Go After Those Goals at Heart-Healthy Speed. You are Present Perfect now, Lovey, as Grandma used to call me. Survive and Thrive Secret Number One is done and done.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.  Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

 

The post Present Perfect Survive-Thrive Secret #1 appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Scoreboard Status Writers’ Style

Scoreboard Status Writers’ Style. Have you ever heard this ponderous question? “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear, is there any sound?” Well, let’s ponder this one. “If your book falls into the marketplace, and nobody notices, are you still a real writer?”

 That doozy has been frying in my brainpan for some time now, and I’m not alone. More and more of us are deciding to quit the writing game. We not only consider ourselves losers there, we’ve concluded that we aren’t even up on the scoreboard.

We toil long and hard and believe we’re writing strong stories, but don’t sell many books. We don’t make much money either. What we thought of as a writing career is behaving more like a writing hobby. And, the IRS may be about to make that hobby status official.

Been there. Am there now. The only book sales I’m sure of are the copies I send to reviewers, because good reviews are supposed to make all the difference. My reviews are stellar, and no difference has been made.

Many authors report a similar experience. Their reviewers are generous, enthusiastic, even ecstatic. Still, sales figures don’t budge enough to get them even into the minor leagues. We’re playing pickup ball on the sandlots of scribes.

Before we start sputtering over the obvious injustice – let’s sprint this sporty metaphor back to the scoreboard concept. Who is up there in lights anyway? Whose numbers soar high, then higher still, over and over again?

The “Why?” of the above questions is in the last phrase, “over and over again.” These are repeat performers, repeat big sales performers. Their identities repeat as well. The same bestseller names sell best, as I said, over and over again.

They are the superstars. According to a recent Sunday New York Times article, once you’re a superstar, you stay a superstar. Everybody knows your name. You’re a proven, recognizable commodity, and readers feel most confident buying a brand name. Plus, there are only so many superstar slots on the board, and those are pretty much filled.

 I succumbed to the blues notes of that tune several months ago. I stopped writing anything other than the occasional blog post and a regular column. Then I read the Sunday Times article, felt the truth of it, and somehow that turned me around. “WTF am I doing?” I shouted.

Since I stopped writing, I have been a less satisfied person. Anyone in my family will bear witness to this. So, yesterday I started writing again. I picked up my novel-in-progress, shoved Patrice, my beleaguered heroine, into hot water, and turned up the temp.

Then, this morning, after a second writing session, something happened. I was standing in my bedroom listening to a conversation between two people who only exist in my head. Patrice and John, my hero, were saying things entirely new to me. And, guess what? It felt great.

So, to hell with the scoreboard. Whether or not the marketplace acknowledges the presence of my stories in its midst, I am still a real writer. How about you?

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

 A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.  Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

 

The post Scoreboard Status Writers’ Style appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Series Novels Still Sell

Series Novels Still Sell. You can’t swing a dead book contract these days without hitting some advice about how to succeed as an Indie Author. Which is advice about how to succeed as a novelist in traditional publishing also. First on the list of those suggestions is, more often than not, this: Write a series.

Novels in a series can be the road to success for an author. The way to capture a reader and add her to your fan circle is to hook her into your story. Neither a simple nor an easy task, especially when you must accomplish it one book at a time. A series allows you, the storyteller, to plant the hook in the first book, then sink that hook deeper with each connected volume.

Novels in a series are the road to pleasure for a reader. She is invited into a world where she can remain from one book to the next. A world she will grow intimate with, until she becomes a part of its landscape, a citizen of its country. The author builds this world detail by detail, so that the reader may revel there, scene by scene.

The World of a series is a great place for an author to live. I’ve traveled a long way through my first series world as a writer. The Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series is five books so far, with the series finale in progress. I don’t relish the prospect of a last adventure in Riverton, New York, because I’ve grown to love it there. My goal was to draw readers in and make them want to stay. Meanwhile, I drew myself in, and now I don’t want to leave.

I accomplished this by creating a world that feels real and resonates. Ginny Simmons’ coffee shop could be on the corner of your street. The Kalli family of Riverton Road and the Miller family of Riverton Hill could be your family, complete with both loving bonds and challenging temperaments. Which encourages a reader to accept the outlandish things that happen there. The murders, the betrayals, the ever-lurking danger.

I accomplished this by creating a world which is consistent. A series world is built detail by detail, and each must be consistent from book to book. I keep track of those details in my Series Bible, a loose-leaf notebook with several sections. Main characters. Secondary characters. Recurring characters. Locations: Riverton in general. Locations: Specific to each book. Plots of each book. Subplots that recur from book to book.

Each series world has its own rules. Following these rules adds to the real feel of your imaginary world. Forgetting these rules jolts the reader out of the reality you’ve worked to create and confuses her. A few basic rules of my series world are as follows. Set in and around Riverton in the remote North Country. Stories of danger and romance. Each story features either the Kalli family or the Miller family. Good people in peril find help and safety here.

Your series world will have its own rules too. Brainstorm them before you start writing, enough basics to make it possible for you to begin seeing and feeling the terrain as it becomes more and more real for you. Trust this reality to grow on you and in you. Your writer’s imagination will make that happen, conjuring new details almost faster than you can record them in your Series Bible. Don’t forget to keep that record. I guarantee it will prove crucial to you.

Making series rules is anything but limiting. The rules liberate your writer’s consciousness into the flowing ocean of your story world until you won’t want to leave. And because you are writing a series, you don’t have to leave, until you’re ready to create a finale of your own. Which, by the way, doesn’t mean you can’t return. You are the world builder after all. You make the rules. And you just might want to revisit, because Series Novels Still Sell.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 –is available HERE. Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’sRiverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/alibettewrites/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

The post Series Novels Still Sell appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Writers Conference Kickstart Time

Writers Conference Kickstart Time. Spring into summer is conference time. Small retreats and huge gatherings punctuate this period of the year for many of us. We pack up our notebooks and our hopes and head for a convocation of scribes.

Most of us want to find a kickstart to getting our work published or better published. But I do not believe that is the most important thing we gain from these gatherings, whether they take place in a grand hotel or a modest cabin or somewhere in between.

The most important thing we find is each other. We make the most of a writers’ conference by maximizing that discovery. We writers are natural allies. That is so deeply true because we understand one another from inside our own writers’ lives and souls.

We understand… what it’s like to labor in the formidable publishing marketplace… what a struggle it is to get our work published and keep it published… how it feels to suffer rejection and disappointment… and the joy of our accomplishments, whether they be large or small.

Every writer needs support in these hard struggles we have chosen. We know this because we need the same support ourselves. With this knowledge comes the obligation to reach out and offer encouragement to our writer friends, the old friends we reunion with at these gatherings, and the about-to-become new friend in the hotel lobby chair next to ours.

A few sentences of kindness can be another kind of kickstart. They can be exactly what a writer colleague requires at a downbeat moment of her career, while requiring little more on our part than a few upbeat moments of being nice.

Our success dreams make us nice to the max to attending agents, editors and instructors. We line up to pitch our projects. We take copious, almost worshipful notes at their presentations. We long to recruit them as our allies on the inside of the publishing world.

In the meantime, we mustn’t forget to nurture our allies inside the writing world. Give what you can. A word of advice, an attentive ear, a shared laugh, a hug. As you scurry to workshops and appointments, take a moment to touch an author ally with a bit of being nice. My guess is you will experience a lot of feeling good in return.

I am just now emerging from the disappointment of missing a writers conference. One of my favorites, where I would absolutely have devoted myself to a great deal of being nice, and feeling glad I’d done it too.

I’d also have been in need of a motivation mojo boost myself. You might sit down beside me in a workshop suite or at the bar and give that bit of being nice to me, and I’d return it in kind and in kindness to you. Thus, we would have happily shared a Writers Conference Kickstart Time.

Note: Photos are from Conferences 1994 – 2018.  Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Find all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/alibettewrites/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

The post Writers Conference Kickstart Time appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Publishing’s Rocky Road Continues – How to Keep Traveling On

Publishing’s Rocky Road Continues. You’ve completed your manuscript, revised it, polished it. You’ve followed the advice in my last post, Literary Agent Search Savvy. You’ve submitted to the right agents for you, not exclusively, but no more than six at a time. Now, as if out of bright blue nowhere, the anxiously awaited call or email has arrived. An agent is seriously interested in your work, maybe even a topnotch agent. Hallelujah!You think you have exited Publishing’s Rocky Road. Think again. Don’t get me wrong. A momentous thing is happening in your writing life. You have captured the attention of an agent, not an easy thing to do. Good agents don’t waste their short supply of time requesting work that has not genuinely attracted them. But this doesn’t mean you’re off Publishing’s Rocky Road. You have detoured onto its unmarked byway, the Wait-Wait-Wait Highway.

“I’ve already been here,” you exclaim. You have most likely traveled through a pile of submissions and a pile of rejections too, wait-wait-waiting what felt like eternities in between. The current view beyond your windshield may feel and look a lot the same, anxious and skimpy on roadside attractions. The order of the day is once again to Wait-Wait-Wait, and waiting periods are trying, in civilian life and in author life.

Console yourself first with this reality. You have already traveled the hardest leg of this adventure. You have conceived and created an entire book. A book that is attracting positive attention in the land of the publishing professionals. Do not ever underestimate that accomplishment. It is the foundation of everything to come, and it hasn’t crumbled so far.

So, why do you not feel consoled? No matter how far out of control you felt in your initial agent search submission phase, this new phase somehow feels more out of your control than ever. During that initial period, you dropped your work into multiple black holes, expected rejections and, when one came, made another drop into the next black hole on your list. It was something to do. Now there is only a single repository and nothing to do but, you guessed it, wait-wait-wait.

So, how do you keep from losing your mind? Right here, I’m going to say something that sounds so lame, so Pollyannaish you will want to climb through the screen and wring my neck. To jeopardize my neck even further, I must preface that something by agreeing with you. This phase of your struggle to become published feels so far out of your control because it is. And, (here comes the I-get-throttled part) because it is, you must simply let go and travel on.

What did she say? I said you must let go of longing for control and let your work find its way. Harder still, you must have confidence that it will. While you attempt, however imperfectly, to build this confidence, turn to your first powerful resource, the rest of us, your writer friends in your writers’ community. We are your shoulders to lean and/or cry upon. Whether you need a strategy session, a consult, or just a boost in the spirits-up department, we are here.

Next, get back to work. If you’ve not already done so, dive deep-down into your next book or continue your series. Professional authors are forever moving on to the next project, which keeps us from bogging down with anxiety over the one that’s out there in the publishing world ozone. It also guarantees we will have a continuing career, bent upon producing a shelf load of books eventually. Disciplined forward momentum prevents, or at least lessens the severity of, running out of fuel along Publishing’s Rocky Road.

Never forget that you are tenacious. You have traversed this far on a boulder-strewn path. From that process, you have forged your own personal template for doing so again and again with each new project. Have faith that will be the case, and take my word as well. I have watched it happen with countless authors, including myself.

In the meantime, there is the joy of the doing. The joy of the writing work, at every stage of its challenging course. You are on that course, moving along it, as well as deeper into it. Publishing’s Rocky Road Continues, but you, with fire in your belly, are ready for the ride. Bon voyage.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving– Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE. Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/alibettewrites/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

The post Publishing’s Rocky Road Continues – How to Keep Traveling On appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Literary Agent Search Savvy – Words to the Wise Writer

Literary Agent Search Savvy. Where have all the agents gone? A writers’ conference organizer contacted me recently to ask why they were having so much difficulty finding participants for their annual agents’ panel. From what I hear, they are not the only group having this problem. In fact, individual authors experience the same scarcity.

Agents are selective. A difficult species to pin down, even back when I was the above specimen, literary agent accessibility is more of an issue than ever. Agents, and their mother ship companies, have always been selective regarding who goes where in terms of conference participation, which is an investment for them after all, even more so now than in the past.

Publishing, for better or worse, has become an almost totally bottom-line business. For agencies, that means they must justify each investment they make of time and resources. Not only the time and effort spent on being at an event, but the time and effort required to address the cascade of manuscript submissions that result from every such appearance.

Bottom-line thinking, agent style. The essential consideration for any agency worth its AAR membership is this. How many author contacts are we likely to make at this event that will lead to taking on a client who attracts a publisher and sells lots of books for that house? The viability of any agency depends on its ability to scout out authors who will satisfy publishers.

This concern has to do with commerce. Many authors, and authors’ organizations, make no pretense of being commercial in focus. Their primary goal is not necessarily to sell the work, or so they say. They are instead all about freeing the writerly voice, exploring the writerly self, and encouraging that voice and self to define and speak the writer’s personal truth.

A worthy aspiration for sure. But, to the publishing establishment—agents, editors, publishing houses—that focus reads as not particularly marketable, whether this is entirely accurate or not. All of which puts writers’ groups, and writers, at a definite disadvantage when it comes to attracting agents, either to attend author events or to represent an individual writer’s work. But do not despair. I have a couple of suggestions.

My first and most sweeping suggestion is to modify your target search. Seek out, in addition to literary agents, people who know a lot about the publishing business and how to succeed there. Let’s call them Mavens. A writers’ event has a better chance of mounting a successful panel when there are mavens in the mix. An individual writer gifts herself with access to wisdom and experience when she cultivates a maven mentor.

Thus, value is added. These mavens know the world of writing and publishing, as we used to say, like it is, and they tell it like it is. They shoot from the hip and are, frankly, much more forthcoming with the real skinny than most agents can afford to be. Another agent bottom line is that she must not risk alienating publishers.

Still, almost every writer wants to get up-close with agents. More specifically, you need to find agents who will actually be willing to show up for a panel and/or read your work. So, here’s my second suggestion. Identify established agencies and target the young, the talented and the hungry on their staffs. In other words, don’t pursue the headliners. They already have a stable of authors and are far less eager than their newer colleagues to go trolling for more clients.

Contact agents who are lower on the agency totem pole. Go to the agency website. If they don’t have a good one, that’s a heads-up that they’re not very deep into the publishing game. Find the assistant editors and associates. Check their credentials. Each should have a bio on the site that details the submissions they prefer. Google them too. Any agent worth that designation has an online presence.

Choose the ones that suit your interests and needs. Don’t worry about scouting the second string. Successful agencies hire talented new agents they believe can bring in authors that will attract publishers. These agencies groom and train their recruits and closely supervise their work. The top dogs mentor their pups to become champions, your champions.

“Hungry” means these starlets don’t yet have a full stable of clients and are eager to find good writers with good work. Let’s face it, that means marketable work, books that will sell. If you want a stall in that stable, my words to the wise are these. You must adopt the bottom line too. If you need to find out how, return to my first suggestion. Ask a maven. That’s real Literary Agent Search Savvy.  Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving–Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5– is available HERE.  Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/alibettewrites/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

 

The post Literary Agent Search Savvy – Words to the Wise Writer appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Tell Your Emotional Truth Story – Why and How

Tell Your Emotional Truth Story. Why is it so important to do that? Because, if you don’t tell your emotional truth, your story will have no beating heart. Your story will not come alive on the page. Why not? Because your story has not first come alive in your own writer’s soul.

What is Emotional Truth? Emotional truth is what is really going on in your story, the real truth of what is happening to your characters. The surface of things, what your characters allow to be seen and heard, can be manipulated to conceal what they are truly feeling, but great stories are not about feelings being concealed. Great stories are about feelings being revealed.

How Do You Find Emotional Truth? Real life is the mother lode from which you mine your own emotional truth and then refine it into storytelling treasure. The deeply felt emotions that are the beating heart of your story come from your own personal experience of emotions you have felt yourself in your own life. They have the power to make your reader feel deeply too.

How I Found My Emotional Truth Story. I write romantic suspense novels. Scary things happen in my stories. Hailey Lambert, the main character of my book A Year of Summer Shadows, is assaulted and strangled. That happened to me once. My character and I both survived. Now we both benefit from my emotional truth of that awful experience.



The Details of That Emotional Truth Story. The powerlessness while it was happening. The shock and numbness after it was over. The way others might have seen me at that moment had there been anyone present to see. I didn’t need to take notes. All of that was branded on my psyche in indelible emotional ink. Deeply felt experiences do that to us.

Mine for Those Details and You Will find Storytelling Gold. Unfortunately, we have all had similarly indelible experiences. We have been changed by them, traumatized by them, sometimes stopped in our tracks by them. Now we get to convert them into the very raw material of intense, dramatic, powerful storytelling.

Stephen King Agrees with Me. He has said, “For me, there have been times when the act of writing has been an act of faith, a spit in the eye of despair. Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

I Agree with Stephen King. Despair, and the trauma that can cause it, are a way back to an act of writing from the most vivid and vital center of your bloody, beating heart. I don’t mean memoir writing, though digging for emotional truth is crucial there too. I’m talking about reimagining real-life experience into the “spit in the eye” that is a riveting piece of fiction.

Mining for Gold Requires Digging. Our emotional truth is not usually what we show on the surface of ourselves. It is more deeply true than what we show on the surface. Your stories can be the expression of that subterranean truth brought to the light and recreated in words. The result can be the best writing you have ever done.

Find Your Gold Mine Stories. Whether you realize it or not, you know what these stories are for you. Check your heart, your stories are there. Write them the way your heart feels them to be true, which may differ from factual truth. Facts are verifiable. Feelings are not. Someone else’s emotional truth may vary from yours. BUT that does not make your truth any less valid.

Emotional Truth Stories are Individual. Your emotional truth is what you honestly feel. Your character’s emotional truth is what she honestly feels. That honesty gives your story its authenticity, its bleeding, beating heart. That inner authentic truth is what really matters and makes your story really matter, to you as you write it and to your readers as they read it.

So, dig down and dig deep. You will know when you hit the mother lode because it will zing straight to your heart, just before you zing it to the page and Tell Your Emotional Truth Story.  Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

******************** 

A Wrong Way Home – Alice’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 – is a FREE Kindle eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel is A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. 

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

The post Tell Your Emotional Truth Story – Why and How appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

The Ideal Story Idea Equation

The Ideal Story Idea Equation. Every writer I know, and probably every writer I don’t know, is praying for the Idea from Heaven. The perfect combination of elements that will create the best story you’ve ever written and take you where you want to be in your writer’s adventure. What we sometimes forget to emphasize is the Combination of Elements part. The Equation.

The Technicolor Idea Strike. Most of us have, on very happy occasion, experienced the exhilaration of a technicolor idea strike. A story concept, maybe a scene, appears suddenly, unexpectedly, like lightning in the mind, revealing something entirely new, previously unimagined. “This is it,” we cry out in creative ecstasy. “This is the story I must write.”

An Idea Is Not a Plot. The problem is that we don’t really have a story. We have an idea for a story, and an idea is only a beginning. A story, particularly in the commercial fiction arena, requires a plot with a beginning, middle and end. At best, our flashes of inspiration will get us through the opening scene, maybe the first chapter. Without lots more work and a much bigger brainstorm, the story tumbles downhill from there.

The Cocktail Party Scenario. Permit me to illustrate with a cocktail party scenario that goes something like this. Author stands at the edge of the party crowd to maximize observation potential. Fellow partier sidles over, discovers that Author is, in fact, an author and suggests some variation on the following. “I’ve got a terrific idea for a novel. Bestseller for sure. How’s about I tell you my idea, you write the story, we split the take fifty-fifty?”

The Peril of Underestimating The Storytelling Process. A giant misconception is in play here. This non-writer underestimates the writing process. Somebody once famously said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.” The partier with the great story idea knows nothing about the bloodletting aspect of the writer’s craft. He doesn’t understand that an idea is not a story.

An Idea Is Only A Kernel. That kernel may possess the potential to grow into the next Nora King Mary Higgins Grisham opus or it may not. Either way, tons of nurturing, strain, frustration, doubt and even bloodletting must be applied between planting and harvest. A clever idea is a jumping off place but without the sweat equity required the storyteller is in for a hard fall.

The Equation Begins With Character. An idea flash may reveal intriguing, even startling circumstances, but those circumstances must happen to equally intriguing characters or the agent/editor/reader will soon cease to care.  An intriguing character comes to life on the page, has a history fraught with complex experience, and a personality riddled with contradictions, like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. Such characters are complicated, often confused, and always in conflict with each other.

The Equation Continues With Conflict. Great storytelling is all about story conflict, and that conflict must have enough power to reach beyond the initial story idea. Enough power to propel the agent/editor/reader, nonstop and without much respite, from first scene to last with a riveting rollercoaster ride between, like in The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

A Powerful Story Idea Plants The Conflict Kernel Deep. A powerful storyteller cultivates that kernel through obstacles, frustrations, near misses and reversals as layered and complex as the characters themselves. Conjuring all of that requires opening the previously mentioned vein. A lightning flash story idea makes the first cut, then the real surgery begins.

The Ideal Story Idea Equation Is Simply This. Great Idea plus Characters We Care About plus An Excruciating Conflict Situation equals First Class Storytelling. Which is, of course, not simple to accomplish, but that’s the challenge which creates the conflict at the heart of your great writer’s adventure. Welcome to the rollercoaster.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 – is a FREE Kindle eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel is A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE.

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

 

The post The Ideal Story Idea Equation appeared first on Alice Orr Books.

Go Confidently Into This Good Year

Go Confidently into This Good Year. My grandchildren gave me a very important gift one Christmas. That gift was a mug with these words printed on it. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.” I’d pointed that mug out one day at a Barnes & Noble where the kids and I were indulging in a much beloved pastime – book buying.

The Dread Begins. I coveted that mug from the moment I saw it, but now I actually had one. Sitting in my writing corner, that day and every day, holding my coffee and my trepidation. Sometimes, after a sip of the former, I would put the mug back down with the words facing deliberately away from me, in order to avoid confrontation with the latter.

A Helluva Assignment. Truth was, I didn’t feel equipped to Go Confidently anywhere. My first great critic, next to myself, was my mother, and I could hear her speaking from beyond this material plane, plain as day. “You always take on more than you can chew.” She’d said a mouthful of unchewables, and I had no smartass response. Would you? Well, we’d best get one.

We Need a Plan. That’s a pic of me standing at a podium, like I did for 30+ years, hardly ever appearing to lack confidence. Want to know why? Look at what I’m doing. Checking my notes. When I need to look, and maybe even be, confident, I make a plan. I write that plan down. Then, with a few smartass digressions thrown in, I follow it. We need to do the same now. In writing. With lots of specifics. Make a plan for how to Go Confidently into This Good Year.

What is “the direction of your dreams”? What do you want to accomplish right now? By which I mean, over the next 3 months. Grab a paper product or device you can write on. Don’t ponder much. We’re brainstorming, not brain-straining. Remember what I said about specifics. List anything that comes to mind, as long as it’s a concrete action. And write really fast,

Map Those Directions for the next few miles. New page(s). Still in rapid-response mode. To each item on the above list, add 3 specific actions you might take to make that accomplishment happen. Don’t edit or judge or compare the validity or practicality or whatever of your original list items just yet. Simply whale away into that brainstorm. No self-harpooning allowed.

Refine Your Route. During that last exercise, my guess is you found yourself responding more enthusiastically to some of your original dream accomplishments and less so to others. Go back over your combined list now – dream achievements plus specifics to get there. Asterisk the dream categories that excite you most. Once again, don’t ponder. Follow your gut.

Prioritize Your Trail Markers. Draw a big circle around each of your asterisked achievement categories and the how-to’s that go with each. Still fast-tracking. Rate those circles in order of importance to your career as you see it right now. Or in order of which ones turn you on most. Number them. And there you have it. A Plan for Your Next 3 months.  After that time has passed, simply grab a tablet and your stormy brain and repeat the above exercise for the next 3 months, then the next, and so on.

Now – Here’s the Kick-Start Kicker. If you did what I asked. If you moved ahead fast as gangbusters. If you short-circuited any and all temptations to edit/judge/second-guess the storm gusts your brain was gifting to you. Then my guess is you experienced little or no self-doubt during this entire slam-bam process. You were Confident about what you were doing.

What Comes Next. Whether you realize it or not, you have made a bold move toward “Living the life you’ve imagined.” But don’t dwell on that too much just yet. Celebrate instead. Because you did it. You made it. You are now ready to Go Confidently into This Good Year.

P.S. These two pics are years-back shots of our grandkids. Maya after winning a Tai Kwan Do Championship she didn’t think she should even enter. Julian, well, ready to take on the Hulk. They must have Go Confidently mugs of their own. In fact, Grandma is confident that they do.   Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 – is a FREE Kindle eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel is A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE.

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/

http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

 

The post Go Confidently Into This Good Year appeared first on Alice Orr Books.