Jennifer Becton's Blog, page 57

For Real: Expanded Distribution Is Coming

Since the release of Charlotte Collins, I've been hemming and hawing about the wisdom of opening expanded distribution of the paperback. I know distribution is a key to sales, but expanding it would require me to price the book higher to account for the other retailers' cuts. I really want to make my books available at the lowest possible prices, but I also want them to be in as many locations as possible for convenience.

Well, I've finally decided to open distribution. In preparation, I made one very minor change to the back cover, and then, I'll have to wait for the proof to arrive. Once that happens, I'll be changing the list price to $12.99, which will likely be discounted by the retailers. (In case you're a curious indie, royalties are still paid based on the list price.) That will make the paperback available online at BN, Books-a-Million, etc.

We'll see how it goes.

The book will be off sale temporarily (less than 48 hours) on Amazon, but if you are desperate, you can buy a copy from my website. Thanks for your patience.

Caroline Bingley: the Cover

Here is the front cover of Caroline Bingley!

Original Art by Hamilton Hamilton

Artist: Hamilton Hamilton (Odd name.)

Title: Woman with Fan

Year: 1900

This is another wonderful work in the public domain.

I created the cover using my ancient–but still excellent–Paint Shop Pro program.

And yes, I am branding all my Jane Austen sequel covers. More on that later.

Let me know what you think!

In Memoriam: Abby

Abby plays with her swatty toy at the lake house.

A few months ago, my in-laws saved a tiny, sick kitten by taking her into their home and giving her lots of tender loving care. On Sunday night, she died after a freak post-spaying incident.

For such a youngster, Abby was well-traveled and made two trips to our lake house, where Bert and I got to play with her. At first, she spent a lot of time hiding inside the box springs of the bed in the guest room, but once she realized that we wanted to play with her, she warmed up to us.

She once managed to disappear inside the cab of an F-250, causing everyone to think she had escaped at the last stop. After driving all the way back to the city, searching for hours, and driving back to the lake house, Abby revealed herself. She had been in the truck all the time and was wondering what all the fuss was about.

Abby had an array of toys that she had collected, including a cracker wrapper, a pen (I suspect she had aspirations to be a writer.), some pecans in the shell, a piece of plastic shaped like a hockey puck, a bookmark, and one store-bought toy with feathers. She kept them all in a Kleenex box, and she could remove them all by herself, which was quite a feat to observe.

Even though Abby's life was too short, she was a very happy cat. She had the best of everything and loved her chosen humans. She even warmed up to Bert and I, and we loved having a cat at the lake house again.

Abby will be greatly missed.

Writing Fear Free: Changing It Up

Captain Reynolds (left) and Husband Wash

Two men are bound to a metal restraining device in the center of a dark, hot room. Their bodies already show the effects of their torture. Sweat runs down their faces as their captor and his assistant prepare for the next round of abuse. They gather and the lay out their tools; knives, scalpels, and devices designed to issue electrical shocks are all laid out in a pretty little line, waiting their turns. The victims can only watch and listen with a mixture of fear and defiance as these evil men discuss their chosen methods for causing them pain.

Then, hope arrives. A door opens and one of their allies appears with a bag of money to purchase their freedom.

But wait! The torturer says there is only enough money to purchase one man's freedom. She is fiercely loyal to both men, but now, her devotion is divided. Her priorities must be tested. One of the tortured men is her husband, the man she loves and whom she knows is not fit to withstand such abuse. The other is her captain, the man with whom she has served and worked for many years. He is stronger and more able to withstand torture, but he is also more capable of devising a rescue plan for the one left behind.

She stands before the torturer and both of the men she loves. Whom will she choose?

This type of big decision is a fairly common plot device, and it can certainly produce a great deal of strife and tension, especially when the characters must deal with the fallout after the choice has been made. We are supposed to learn something important about the person who is forced to make the decision.

But, be honest, don't you roll your eyes just a bit when you come to a scene like this? Hasn't it been done a zillion times before? Don't you just want to get on with it? You already know what to expect. The torturer will enjoy taunting the woman with this difficult choice, and the woman will agonize over her decision. Then, having chosen which man to save, the remaining one will be upset at being left behind, and his relationship with the woman will be volatile for some time, if he is rescued at all. You'll have to read scene after scene of them rehashing the scenario as the woman works through her decision. You could practically write it yourself.

When you come to the point in your writing when you have one of these "stock" scenes, try finding a way to change it up, just as the writers of Firefly did in "War Stories," the scene described and pictured above.

Zoe makes her choice.

Here's how it ends:

The torturer is gearing up to taunt the woman and enjoy his little game.

He says, "I think this is not enough [money]. Not enough for two. But sufficient, perhaps, for one. Ah, you now hav…"

"Him." The woman points at her husband.



The torturer is taken aback by her quick choice and is speechless.

She says, "I'm sorry, you were going to ask me to choose, right? Do you wanna finish?"

I love this scene. It accomplishes its purpose without going in the traditional direction. We do learn a great deal about the woman and about her relationship with both men, but we do it without all the needless mumbo jumbo. The woman is practical in all situations; she chooses her husband because he is not able to take any more torture, and the captain can. All three characters understand and approve of this choice. The couple returns to the rest of the crew, and they immediately devise a rescue plan to save their captain.

Now, lest you think there is no emotional fallout from the scene, let me assure you that there is. The question of the woman's loyalty has been the center of the episode and it is resolved by the end. I won't spoil it for you. Go rent it on Netflix and watch for yourself.

Readers are smart. They know when a writer is walking into an over-done scene, and they think they already know the ending. Surprise them. Change it up. It will make your story much stronger in the end.

Learning from other Media

Soap Opera Supercouple Luke and Laura from General Hospital

Aspiring writers are always encouraged to read more. I certainly do not disagree with this advice, but I also believe that novelists can learn a great deal from other media. We can learn what to do and what not to do in our own novels by being exposed to other books, movies, TV shows, plays, and even music.

I used to think it would be fun to write an episode of a television show until I read some blog posts by Alexandra Sokoloff, a screenwriter and novelist. I am apparently already too old to make it in the biz. Plus, I don't want to move to LA. So there goes that dream, but hey, I can still hope to sell TV rights to a book one day. HA! Ms. Sokoloff goes into great detail about story structure, and it is incredibly informative. I have no desire to head in that direction with these "Other Media" posts. I just want to share some valuable lessons from other venues.

So let's start with a cheap trick to avoid.

With their crazy writing and shooting schedules, soap operas are rife with cheap writing tricks. The most annoying is their propensity for ending a scene in the middle of a critical line and then going to commercial, a whole new scene, or closing credits.

Actor 1: I demand that you tell me immediately who your baby's father is.

Actor 2: Fine. I'll tell you. The father of my child is…

[cue dramatic music; cut to closing credits]

This trick is meant to build more suspense and to ensure that viewers tune in tomorrow for the big reveal, but of course, the big reveal will take place sometime next month, which will still be the same day in soap-opera time. In practice, this technique just serves to annoy people. It would be like getting the end of a murder mystery only to discover that you have to buy the next book in the series to find out whodunnit. Or it would be like getting to the end of a chapter for a big reveal, the chapter ends, and the next begins with another character's POV and does not address the secret at all. It's a cheap trick.

There are many other methods for creating suspense. Use any one of those instead. Your goal should be to draw the reader through the book naturally, building suspense along the way. You want them to keep reading. Using that soap opera trick will jar them out of the story and that is not what you want, right? Don't let your storytelling techniques distract the reader from the story.

Skis on the Roof

After posting about Hyacinth Bucket and Caroline Bingley this weekend, I decided I really wanted to watch the skis on the car episode of Keeping up Appearances again. I wondered if it was on YouTube, and lo and behold! It is!

I'm going to embed the second part of four in this episode because it gets the heart of the matter, but the full episode is available.

Enjoy! I hope it brightens your Monday.

For a Limited Time Only: Caroline Binlgey Chapter 1

Caroline Bingley Sample for Scribd

Caroline Bingley, Hyacinth Bucket, and Starbucks

Today, I am writing this blog post at Starbucks. Ahhh! Hazelnut Latte! Delicious, but I have always felt a little strange about dragging out a laptop and writing in such a public forum, and I still do, I suppose. (I wouldn't be here if I had internet in my weekend location.) When writing in public, I've always felt a bit like Hyacinth Bucket—that's pronounced boo-kay—in the episode of Keeping up Appearances in which she insists that Richard, her longsuffering husband, drive her around town with a pair of snow skis strapped to the roof of their car.

Hyacinth doesn't snow ski. Neither does Richard. And they have no intentions of doing so. Ever.

But Hyacinth believes that snow skiing is an activity done by those of a different—and higher—social class, one she has always hoped to join. She spends every molecule of her energy attempting to give the appearance that she is something other than what she truly is. She plans society events such as lavish candlelight suppers and riverside dining with riparian entertainments, and she forces her husband to join her in the hopes that someone will see how truly worthy she is to be accepted.

If I ever considered writing in public, I felt a bit like Hyacinth Bucket. I was driving around with skis on my car. Look at me! I am writing. I might have given the appearance of a writer, but I had never joined the ranks of the published. I had never truly been accepted into that upper echelon of literary society. In fact, I had been rejected as if I were Hyacinth herself!

Self-publishing has given writers the option of bypassing this vaunted and—more often than not—discouraging and insulting facet of bringing a book to market. No longer do writers have to feel the same desperation as Hyacinth Bucket about accomplishing their goal. If I write at Starbucks, I no longer have to feel as if I'm trying to give an appearance of being something I'm not. I am a writer.

On July 15, I plan to release Caroline Bingley, my second continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. To a certain extent, I have begun to see Caroline in a bit of the same light as I see Hyacinth. Caroline was wealthy, to be sure, and she traveled with the upper-class Mr. Darcy, but the truth of the matter is that her fortune was earned in trade: a deep humiliation indeed. She often displayed jealousy and pettiness, which I believe came about because of her desire to make herself appear to be more important than she was. She spent much of her time keeping up the appearance that she hailed from wealthy, titled landowners. She was always driving around with skis on her car.

Tomorrow, I'll be posting the first chapter of Caroline Bingley for sample Sunday on Twitter. The book is still a work-in-progress, so the text may change a bit before its publication, but I'm very excited to share it with you. In the coming weeks and months, I'll reveal the new cover and start taking pre-orders for paperbacks. In the meantime, don't forget to check out Charlotte Collins and "Maria Lucas."

Numbers Updates

I should probably wait until the end of the month, but I crossed another milestone yesterday, and I'm excited. My last update, which includes sell through numbers of other books in my genre, is here if you'd like to read it for a reference point on what these numbers mean.

Charlotte Collins has sold 3,000 copies. If the book continues to sell at this pace, it will sell 5,000 copies in less than 3 more months. Some will argue that the pace of ebook sales should actually increase as more people make the conversion, and I wouldn't complain a bit if it did.

"Maria Lucas," my short story priced at $.99, has sold 100 copies since I released it on March 5. Very pleased!

So, those are the stats. Now, I'm off to work on Caroline Bingley.

Writing Fear Free: Expecting Too Much Too Soon

At some point in the writing process, most people go through a period when they think one or more of the following:

I am the worst writer in the world.
This is the worst book in the world.
I should probably give up and become a cowgirl.

I hit this point in the writing process this weekend, and I realized that these feelings were largely due to the fact that I was expecting too much too soon.

Now, maybe all writers aren't like me, but my writing process relies heavily on editing. By the time my novel is finished, it will have gone through seven or more drafts. I'm currently on draft three, but I was expecting it to be perfect.

So I'm writing this to remind all you writers to ask yourself good questions when you start to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. Where are you in the process? Are you expecting too much too soon?

Just take a little break. Time away will give you a fresh perspective, and when you come back, you will have a better sense of what you should be expecting at that particular stage of your writing process.