Kelly Jamieson's Blog, page 35

Inaccuracies and anachronisms

There was recently a fascinating discussion at Dear Author about accuracy in historical romances. Some very interesting and intelligent perspectives were shared. Here are my own thoughts about it. I don't write historical romance, and I don't read a lot of it any more. It's not that I don't like it, but it's not my first love (which is contemporary) and these days my time for reading is limited.

I suppose if I read a book that was full of inaccuracies that kept pulling me out of the story, I would be annoyed. I might think less of that author because he or she didn't do enough research, or was sloppy or careless in their world-building. I suppose there are books like that out there. But more often you're likely to encounter a couple of small slip-ups in a book.  How serious is that to readers?

When an author writes a book, he or she is building a world. A world that readers have never been to. Whether it's science fiction, paranormal, or contemporary, it's still building a world. In science fiction (which I fully admit I do not read) I'm guessing that writers make stuff up. It might be based on science or scientific principles, but I bet a lot of it is made up. In my contemporary romances, I'm building a world that my characters live in that nobody else has ever seen. We may all live in contemporary settings, in houses and apartments, and work in office buildings or whatever; but nobody has ever seen the world my characters inhabit―because I'm making it up. A reviewer commented on my contemporary romance Breakaway that I had gotten the names of the NHL teams wrong. I didn't get them wrong―I made them up. And to me, a historical romance is the same. It's building a world that readers have never been to. Base it on reality to make it realistic for me, something I can visualize in my mind and enhance with my imagination, make it plausible―as with any fiction. But the writer is making it up. I don't think it is possible for an author to write a romance set in an historical setting without having some inaccuracies and anachronisms. Even scholars don't always agree on history. We all know that personal hygiene standards were much different then than now. (Or do we?) I will admit that when I read a historical romance and the hero has perfect white even teeth I chuckle a little. In historical romances, it seems the characters do a lot of bathing, which is also apparently inaccurate. If romance characters talked the way people really talked in the middle ages, nobody would want to read it. On the other hand, few contemporary romance characters ever have morning breath. We forgive these inaccuracies because it is a romance. I guess I'm forgiving of some inaccuracies in any romance sub-genre. Yes, I've read books where I've come across a detail I know is wrong. I enjoy my little moment of smug superiority, but if it's a good book, I move on with the story.I guess I don't understand reading a book for the purpose of finding things wrong with it, rather than just reading it for the enjoyment of it. So there was no such thing as yellow silk back then? I don't care! And I also can't imagine doing research to find out if I'm right. Oh...I know there was no yellow silk in that time period. Or do I? How do I know that? Do I know it because I read it in another romance novel? Or do I know it because I studied history in such detail? Maybe I'd better make sure I'm right before I spout off about this historical inaccuracy and do the research. No, thanks. I'd rather just accept that in that fictional world, there was yellow silk. I'd rather just read the book for the pleasure of it than spend hours doing research to prove I'm right and the author is wrong. Do readers need to be alerted that there are inaccuracies in historical romances? Or in any romance sub-genre, for that matter? Do you want to know that she could not possibly have been driving east on Main Street in Anytown, USA because that street runs north and south? Do you want to know that that was not the type of corset women wore in 1844? Do you want to be told that there are really no such things as vampires or werewolves

Release day for Faceoff and a giveaway!

Faceoff is a novella featuring Tag  Heller. You may recognize the name from my book Breakaway. Tag is the oldest of the four hockey-playing Heller brother. When I wrote Breakaway I intended all the brothers to have their own stories and when my publisher Ellora's Cave put out a call for submissions for an "Oh Canada!" theme, I thought, what is more Canadian than hockey? So I wrote Tag's story.

Although this book is short, it's special to me for a couple of reasons. One is that I get to use my own city as a setting. You all may have noticed that most of my books are set in California, in either a fictional or real city. This seems to me a much more exotic and romantic location than my own city, but California is also special to me. My husband went to school there and we love to go back often to visit. But writing a book set in my own home is pretty cool! Even though I still had to spell words "funny" (favor instead of favour, canceled instead of cancelled!!) I got to talk about degrees Celsius and kilometres per hour! Also my city is pretty cool – yes we have problems with poverty and violence and crumbling infrastructure, like many cities, but we have a vibrant arts culture with a lot of theatre, concerts, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, etc. We also love sports here – our Canadian Football League team the Winnipeg Blue Bombers has a long and proud football history, and our baseball team the Winnipeg Goldeyes are having a great season. But what are we missing...? A National Hockey League team!

We used to have an NHL team but in 1996 the owners were forced to sell the Winnipeg Jets and they moved to Phoenix to become the Coyotes. At the time, the Canadian dollar was weak and it was expensive to pay those players' huge salaries in American dollars, plus travel to the US cost more. Also, the arena they played in was old and didn't have luxury boxes or concession stands to generate a lot of revenue. The city was devastated to lose our team and like most, 'Peggers, I always kept hope that some day the Jets would come back.

Which is the other reason this story is special! It is a Canadian fantasy come true—a hockey fantasy. It's been no secret for years that two businessmen wanted to purchase an NHL team and bring it back to Winnipeg. I so much admire how they went about it, very low key. They built a new NHL quality arena, purchased a farm team and ran it like an NHL team, found financing that was solid and made it known to the NHL that they were interested in purchasing a team. There were years of rumors, disappointments and false reports of done deals, but hockey fans in Winnipeg continued to fantasize about the NHL returning.

As I worked on edits to Breakaway, it seemed these Winnipeg businessmen were very close to purchasing the Phoenix Coyotes (which were the Winnipeg Jets). Thinking ahead, I changed the team Tag Heller played for to a (fictional!) team in Phoenix (called the Stars, not the Coyotes) and when I started writing Faceoff, Tag's story, I wrote the fantasy—the NHL had returned to Winnipeg!

I had not yet submitted Faceoff to my editor when the real life story changed—it was no longer the Phoenix Coyotes being purchased, it was the Atlanta Thrashers. I couldn't change my story to match reality because I'd already planted the seed in Breakaway that Tag Heller played for Phoenix. Oh well. I named the new Winnipeg team the Jets in my book, even though every other hockey team I mention in Breakaway and Faceoff are fictional NHL teams—at that point we didn't know for sure the deal would even happen and if it did, whether a new Winnipeg team would be called the Jets or something entirely different.

The day after I submitted this manuscript to my editor, the story did come true—the NHL was returning to Winnipeg! The true story didn't play out exactly as it does in Faceoff (which is fiction), but the basis of the story is accurate and the hockey fantasy is the backdrop for the romance fantasy between Tag and Kyla. (And they did name the new team the Jets!)

Of course you'd think a Canadian-set book would take place in the winter, right? But I wanted to show that we also have awesome hot summers here (we sure did this year!) and the local culture of summer weekends at the lake cottage. We are fortunate to live near a lot of wonderful lake country. So Faceoff takes place in the hockey off season, just after the deal has been made public that the team is coming back to Winnipeg. In real life, there is no Winnipeg born and raised player on the new team, but I liked that idea of a "home town hockey hero" returning to his roots – which has its complications for Tag!

Here's an excerpt from Faceoff:

They were alone on the beach. Around the rocky point that separated the public beach from the cottages, the public beach was probably filling up with people, beach blankets and umbrellas, but here nobody else was out yet.
"You coming skiing later?" He rubbed the towel slowly over his chest.
"Sure."
"Mom's planning a game night tonight at our place. You're all invited."
Kyla nodded. "Cool. Just like old times."
"Yeah."
She studied him, his tanned skin gleaming in the bright sun, remembering the game nights of the past, how competitive he and his brothers were. And how competitive she was and how they'd had cut-throat games of Monopoly and Rummikub and Trivial Pursuit. She watched a drop of water slide down the side of his neck, then lower, slowly trickling down his chest. She wanted to go up on her tiptoes and lick that drop of water.
Heat suffused her body, and not from the noon sun overhead. Flashes of her dreams returned, hot glimpses of Tag naked, underneath her, on top of her. She swallowed. She lifted her gaze to his face and the heat in his eyes had her breath stalling. Tension arced between them as they stood there eyeing each other. When he looked at her mouth, her eyes went heavy-lidded and her heart began to thud.
"Oh man," he said. He swiped the towel across his forehead, breaking the eye contact. She blinked. "Kyla."
"What?"
"Don't look at me like that."
"Um...like what?" As if she needed to ask. She wanted to eat him up. But did it show that much?
He looked her in the eye again. "Your brothers would kill me."
Her breath came in choppy little pants. Her insides went hot and liquid. "What am I supposed to say to that?" she said, her voice breathy. "We're not teenagers any more."
"No. We're not." They were both remembering the last time this had happened. A long time ago. Heat built hotter between them.
She was used to going after what she wanted. She had a plan for her career and she worked to make things happen. If she wanted Tag, why couldn't she have him?
Last time he'd tried to make a joke of it. As if he didn't want her. This time, older, wiser, more experienced, she could tell he did. Was he really going to let their families stand in the way of what they both wanted?
"My brothers have no say in who I..." She stopped. They'd been tiptoeing around it and when it came to saying it outright, she found she couldn't.
He smiled, that sexy lift of his wide mouth that melted her. She couldn't breathe. Her body thrummed with sexual tension. "Think about it, Mac," he said, his voice low and raspy. "We may not be teenagers but we're here with our families. Every bed in both our cottages is occupied. You're sharing a room with a three year old. I'm sharing a room with Matt."
She couldn't get air into her lungs and her heart thudded wildly against her ribs. She opened her mouth to tell him that she was very good at solving problems when she heard a little voice calling, "Auntie Kywa!"
She turned to see Emily appear on the path through the poplar trees edging the beach. "Shit," she muttered under her breath, but she plastered on a smile and reached for her niece as she hurtled toward her .








If you'd like to win a download of Faceoff, leave a comment here! I will draw a winner Saturday afternoon.

A week of ups and downs

This week I had to make a tough decision with respect to my writing career. It was something I gave a lot of thought to over the last few months. I talked to writer friends about it, weighed the pros and cons, talked to my husband. It was difficult but it had to be done. And I did it. I'm a little sad but I'm also ready to move on, feeling more free and at peace with it.

Music is powerful for me, especially when a song speaks to me, and I listened to this song over and over this week. It really lifted me up. Sadly I could not find this version on YouTube, only a weird distorted version. Some of the lyrics:

Took a long hard look, at my life.
Lost my way, well I was fighting the time.
A big black cloud, stormy sky.
Followed me, while I was living a lie.
So heartless, so selfish, so in darkness, when all your nights are
Starless,
You're running outta hope.
But I found the strength inside to see, found the better part of me,
And I'll never let it go.
I've come a long, long way,
Made a lot of mistakes,
But I'm breathin, breathin, that's right and I mean it, mean it.
This time I'm a little run down, I've been living out loud.
I could beat it, beat it, that's right, 'cause I'm feelin, feelin,
Invincible.

http://grooveshark.com/#/s/Invincible/46fLiw?src=5

I love Hedley!!

And in other news.... The UP part of the roller coaster... I have a new sale to Samhain Publishing! Sweet Deal will be out in the spring of 2012! Stay tuned for details (Yes I know it's a far far away. But I do have three releases between now and then, including one next week- Friday!)

An amazing contest!

My critique partner and super talented author Nara Malone has a unique contest she's holding at her blog to introduce more people to the wonder of virtual worlds. Nara says: "Inner space is the true final frontier, and the Internet is an amazing example of what can happen when we use technology to facilitate a meeting of creative minds. Virtual worlds are shared inner space, a creative collective's vision made real in a way that allows one person to walk through another's dream, to interact with it, to reshape it into a new vision. I've spent weeks constructing worlds that will be easy for beginners to navigate and fun for them to explore."

Six Weeks!

Six Worlds to Explore!

Six Ways to Win!

Each week players will have multiple activities to engage in to earn points. These could be as simple as earning points for tweets or comments, or as challenging as finding hidden items in a virtual world. At the end of each week everyone who has obtained the minimum level of points for that week's prize will be entered in the weekly drawing.

Week One: The first week is easy. You only need to enter the contest to get into that drawing. The prize is a $10.00 gift card (winners choice of Amazon or B&N).

Weeks Two- Six will present contestants with new challenges and new ways to earn points each week. Each Thursday I'll count up points earned for the week and draw the winner for a gift card. Value of the gift card goes up each week. On the sixth week, every contestant with a score of 1000 points or more will be entered into the drawing for a NookColor.

You'll need a Facebook account to play along, so if you don't have one, get signed up.Nara will be posting daily contest detail updates at www.naramalone.com leading up to launch day so check there for more.

Here's a video Nara made as a preview of the first world being explored:

I have a release date!

Faceoff will be out September 9!


Faceoff is a spin-off story from Breakaway. As you may know, the hero in Breakaway, Jason Heller, has three brothers. This is oldest brother Tag Heller's story. It's set in the off season, so there isn't a lot of hockey in it, but it's still about a hot hockey player during a hot summer week at the cottage.

I wrote this novella for the "Oh Canada" theme series at Ellora's Cave and it is a true Canadian fantasy - not just the sexy fantasy but the HOCKEY fantasy! The story features the long-awaited return of an NHL team to a city that was devastated to lose their team years ago. Yes, it's based in reality, and as I was writing the "fantasy" the story actually came true! Okay, not exactly as it is in my book, but the book is fiction after all.

Here's a tiny sneak peek at Faceoff - here are Tag and Kyla at the beach after he's just rubbed sunscreen onto her in a super sexy massage:


He went to his knees beside her, scooped his arms beneath her and lifted her. "Tag! Put me down!"

"Want to get dropped into the water or want to walk?"

"I'll walk!"

He lowered her until her feet touched the soft warm sand. "Okay."

She followed them into the water, wading through it up to her knees, the shallow water pleasantly cool on her heated skin. She kept walking, the water climbing higher and higher, and when it touched her stomach, she tightened her belly muscles and went on her toes. Tag turned to look at her, the water still at his thighs because of his height. He grinned. "Coming, Mac?"

She gave him a look, up through her eyelashes, as if to say, I just did, remember? His eyes darkened and her heart fluttered. Was she really going to go to his tent tonight?

"It's cold," she said.

"Yeah, and I need that," he muttered. And he strode further out, then jumped to do a shallow, perfect dive. She sighed once more at the male perfection of his body, his athletic grace. And taking a deep breath, she too dove under. Cool water closed over her head, shocking her body, stealing her breath, and she emerged with a gasp. But it didn't take long to get used to the water and she rolled to her back and floated, staring up at the blue sky and the clouds gathering right along the horizon.

"There you go," he said. "Swimming's good exercise."

She kicked her feet and splashed him a little. "Why are you trying to get me to exercise?"

"It's good for you. It's good for your body and your mind. And your soul. Actually the best exercise for all that is sex."

She almost sucked in a mouthful of lake water. "Okay then!" She rolled and dove beneath the surface again, kicking hard. When she came up for air, she heard him laughing. She couldn't resist turning to look at him, at the water glistening in his hair, his eyes gleaming, his wide mouth parted in a sexy smile that tugged a curl of heat inside her.

Oh god. What was he trying to do to her? He'd practically seduced her there on the beach, touching her like that, so intimately, and her pussy clenched at the memory. Now he was flirting with her.

Maybe he was right. Maybe some hot sex in a tent was just what she needed.

The Perfect Hero

This week it's Dom Week at Day Dreaming

A rant about hypocrisy

I blogged about this once before on another blog but today I am once again struck by how social media seems to make some people immune from the "filter" we use when we speak to people face to face. Or maybe some of the people I see on Twitter don't have that filter even face to face. There's no way of knowing with people I've neve rmet in person.

Today a prominent review blog reviewed an independently-published book and gave it a fairly scathing review. There were a lot of details about the story included in the review. I will admit this would not be the type of book I would read. Apparently it was never touted to be a "romance" but rather historical fiction and apparently included some scenes of rape including repeated rape of a child that would definitely turn some readers off, me included.

But the Twitter chatter immediately began vilifying the author for writing this stuff. There were comments about not just hating the book but hating the author. And yet some of these same people have also commented that they are not the books they write. Authors of erotic romance have often had to deal with perceptions and assumptions about who they are because of what they write, and have often spoken out about this in social media. But yet they do the same thing to someone else because of something that person has written.

If someone chooses to write about subjects many people find abhorrent, does that mean he or she is a bad person?  There are very likely are people offended by what I've written. And they may have made assumptions about me because of that. I don't have to read about things I find abhorrent. But should I tell people they can't write those things? Should I make assumptions about who that person is because of what they've written? I don't want people doing that to me...

The Perfect Man Event Week 2

On to Week 2 at Day Dreaming and Scorching Reviews - it's paranormal romance week!

I write stories, not books

Reading this article in the guardian.co.uk yesterday got me thinking more about the publishing business and the price of ebooks and a whole lot of other random things. I noticed in the comments that a lot of people who read the article were misinformed about ebooks and digital publishing. Many of the comments on the article turned to the ebook vs print book debate, about the loss of the "richly sensual experience" that reading a print book is, etc. etc. I'm so over that debate, so I skipped over those comments.
I tried to talk to my husband last about it last night, but like many people not involved in the publishing industry there were weird things about it that he also didn't get. Like when I talked about the price of ebooks and how so many people think they should be so much cheaper than print books, he was all in agreement because you know, it costs nothing to produce an ebook.  
Wrong.
I also thought about how maybe I'm different than many readers (and certainly many of the commenters on the guardian article who clearly aren't talking about genre fiction books). 
Before I purchased my Sony reader, I made regular trips to the bookstore and often dropped a hundred bucks at a time. I thought nothing of shelling out $18 for a trade paperback by one of my favourite authors. That was the price they were and that's what I had to pay if I wanted to read them. However, I rarely bought hardback books because of the price. When a book by a favourite author came out in hardback, I'd put my name on the waiting list for it at the library and wait out whether my name came up before the paperback version of the book came out.  
Another way I may be different is that I rarely sold my books to used book stores. I keep many of them, but I'm not sure why because I also rarely reread them. I have donated ones that I don't want to keep to charities. I've also shared books with friends, my mom, my aunt but most often we have different tastes in books/authors.  
So having a "physical" book to keep or sell wasn't something I missed when I got my Sony reader. Also I was thrilled to discover I could buy those $18 books for $9.99. Sometimes even less. And since I was published with smaller digital publishers, I started devouring their books at usually about $5 a pop.  
What are you getting when you buy a book? The guardian article talks about what costs going into producing a hardcover book and claim that it costs a publisher about $3.00 print and distribute a hardcover book, which might then be priced at $30 in the bookstore. Apparently there's not much difference in costs between a hardcover book and a paperback book, but publishers produce those "premium" editions because there are people who want to buy them.
The article says "Most people instinctively feel that ebooks should be substantially cheaper than paper books, because an ebook is not physically "made": there are no printing costs. But if, says (author Robert) Levine, the real value of a book resides in the "text itself", then the delivery method shouldn't much matter. The fixed costs – acquiring, editing, marketing – remain unchanged." 
This is very true. Here I also have to mention that many commenters on the article (and my own husband) seemed unaware of the amount of work (and expense) involved in formatting books into digital formats. You are not reading a Word document on your Kindle. With some readers, you're reading a PDF. Other readers use other formats. When my digital publishers produce ebooks, they have to produce them in numerous formats so that most any customer can purchase that book and read it on whatever reader they happen to have. This is not easy or cheap and often gets overlooked in discussions about pricing of ebooks.
But even so, whether you buy a hardcover book that you can hold in your hands, or a digital book that you load on your reader, what are you really paying for? In the article, "Levine points out, what you're really paying for when you buy a book is something different. You are buying the "text itself". And why is that so expensive? Because the publisher will, in many cases, have paid the author a considerable sum for the right to sell it."

Yes, the author gets paid something to write the book. Whatever kind of book it is you can be sure a lot of work and that includes blood, sweat and tears often literally, has gone into producing that "story". And yet  I've seen fellow authors say they would never pay more then $3-4 for an ebook.  
Really? 
I can't believe some authors think their work is worth that little.  
Well, maybe a short novel or novella. But a full length novel? Really? 
The guardian article points out how much Amazon has influenced this line of thinking, with their free reads, .99 books and the 2.99 price point that many self-published authors go to. They also deeply discount prices on other books. "When they first started selling ebooks, publishers argued that they should cost pretty much the same as physical books, and tried to set prices accordingly. Amazon, though, has always been in the business of driving prices down, and sought to sell them as cheaply as possible in order to gain as large as possible a share of the ebook market. In their efforts to drive prices down, Amazon has been hugely assisted (Levine points out) by the fact that they also manufacture the most popular ebook reader. Because Amazon makes big profits from its Kindle, it doesn't need to bother about making profits from its ebook sales. Indeed, if it sells ebooks at a loss, it may still be better off overall, because this will drive up sales of its Kindle." 
One commenter made what I thought was a very salient point: "… as a writer I keep on having to say I don't write books, I write stories."
Yes! This! I write stories. My publishers produce books! In different formats! And to me, the value is in the story that I've written, not the format that it's produced in. I don't know what the right price for an ebook is, or even a print book I suppose. The market will decide that, but in the end it has to be enough for the bookseller to make money so they'll keep selling books, for the publisher to make money so they'll keep publishing books, and for the author to make money so she'll keep writing books.

The Perfect Man Event

This week begins The Perfect Man Event at Day Dreaming and Scorching Reviews. Up first:  Men in Uniform. Check out these hot hot authors and their hot heroes!