Silke Juppenlatz's Blog, page 4

Write what you know?

Yeah, you've heard that one before.

"Write what you know."

That's all very well, but what I know is generally boring.

So I'll change this a little, because I think really…this is more important:

"Know what you write."

If I wrote that my hero is putting on his jacket, and then pulls on his sweater — you'd likely scream "That's not how you do it!" (aside from thinking he's a total prat and TSTL)

I get this reaction when I know a writer hasn't got a clue what they are talking about — and didn't bother to research.

We want to immerse our readers into a world we create, but one little thing (like the jacket before the sweater) can ruin it completely. It doesn't even have to be something that's obvious.

It can be as simple as the distance between two real places. I read a book where the hero's house is in Oxford, and the writer had him brought from London to his house in Oxford at 3am in the morning. Not only was our intrepid hero back in London for breakfast, but he also made a 2 hour car trip twice between 3am and around 10am.

What's the big deal?

Well, unless he owned Pegasus or Sleipnir (or their combined offspring), there is no way he'd make such a trip once in that time, let alone twice — because the story was a regency historical.

Since I live just outside London, and I know how long it takes to get from the West End to Oxford, plus I know what speeds and endurance a horse is capable of…that book hit the wall.

We can't all draw on real life facts in our stories.

I write paranormal and fantasy. There's a lot of magic involved, and some badass problems arise — and I really know not a lot about magic.

But there are texts out there which can help create a believable scenario, if not an accurate one. (But if you know how to turn someone into a toad, do tell.)

Knowing what you write is far more important than it's cousin, write what you know. I should probably mention the stepsister "Remember what you wrote" too.

That's another important one. How often have you stumbled across a book where the heroine's hair color changes — without the aid of Miss Clairol? Or maybe her name changed? How about the sister who starts out as a big brother?

I've (sadly) seen all of those.

So, do you research? Or do you hope for the best?

Virtual Assistants?

There is all this talk about Virtual Assistants…some good, some bad.

Some say they "do everything to get your book published, from editing to publishing"

Erm. I think I'll hire an editor to edit, not a VA.

Some say they "organize stuff" for them.

Personally?

Sure, I'd love to have one who gets me organized. But then, I probably just need a serious kick up the keister.

I have no clue what a VA charges, or what they could do for me, but the idea sounds great, in theory lol.

I'm a disorganized slacker, with too many things going on at the same time.

I forget stuff, then rush around like a loony.

I lose things (like important emails!) and then scrabble around like an idiot trying to find them.

Well, not always, but it happens.

Things that tend to suffer are my blog (for those reading this regularly…well, you already know.) facebook deteriorates into personal banter (not that it's bad, but most people don't care about Oz stomping on my foot…I realize that.) and dayum…I keep meaning to do a nice useful newsletter.

I should do more marketing, and promo…and time just gets away from me and well…it doesn't get done.

So, would I love to have a VA who organizes my stuff for me? Hell yeah.

Could I afford one?

Probably not, lol.

My goal for this year is to be more organized.

I think I already half failed, and half succeeded.

*groans*

Watch Me Edits

The second round of content edits for Watch Me are finished and sent off to my editor.

Hopefully it's line edits next and we can head down the home stretch.

No cover to share yet, blurb isn't finalized either, but I'll keep you updated.

It's funny, every time I go through the story I sit there, thinking "I wrote that? Really?"

The same happened with Howl, and Smitten.

I think it says something when you're able to read your own stuff and (just sometimes) amaze yourself. It's that old "Where'd that come from?"

Honestly, sometimes I look at my own stories and find something I don't recall writing. Well, I do…but…I kinda forget after a while.

I do have a third book in mind, but at the moment I'm working on "Caedir".

I'm back up at 15k after scrapping about 32k total.

Anyway! I shall chill a bit now that the edits are out of the door!

 

Friday Fun

I'm blogging at Believing is Seeing today.

Come on over and see why you need to Beware of Puddles!

More injuries.

Got my foot stomped and am hobbling around now.

Oh joy.

It's swelling up nicely, and I doubt I can get it into a boot tomorrow.

But I guess being immobile, and practically shackled to my computer, means I get on with writing.

I've been eying all the self publishing for a long while. There are stories on my drive which I might work up for this.

It also scares me.

Not because I suck — I think I write better first drafts than many self pubbed tenth drafts (and my editor happens to agree) — but because there is a kind of safety aspect to having a publisher behind you.

It's also scary because in a self published book, anything goes.

No, I don't write erotica, I don't have taboo subjects or situations either, but I wrote a scene last night where the hero slaps the heroine. (She deserved it, but that doesn't make it right.)

I edited that out again this morning.

We'll see.

 

Distractions…

Yeah, tons of them.

Here I am, having a whole two weeks off, able to write morning, noon and night — or round the clock if the mood strikes me — and…can I?

No.

Make that a HELL no.

It's not even that I get terribly distracted (which I do), or have things (aka Oscuro) to take care of, or get disturbed by anyone. Nope. None of that.

The worst culprit for not writing?

Sleep.

Yep, you saw that right.

Sleep. Here I am, I can stay up way into the wee hours, or until dawn if I want to–and instead I can't keep my eyes open at 9:30pm.

What's up with that?

I watch a little TV (hey, I did say distractions) and I fall asleep in front of it.

I wake up at 2am and can't sleep, but if I don't, then I'll be having daytime nap sessions–so I force myself back into bed. I read–and fall asleep.

Yes, Oz can be exhausting, but dayum…that's just ridiculous.

I think I'm changing back to regular coffee!

The Walking Wounded

My heroes (and heroines) often end up in physical fights.

They tend to get bruised and battered, shot, stabbed…you name it.

I'm sure many of us have the same scenarios, and usually our characters walk away and recover quickly.

Well…sporting several bruises, scrapes and whatnot right now…it takes time to heal.

Rope burns hurt, I tell you. And if you submerge them in hot water, they burn like the fires of hell.

In case you wonder why I have rope burns…



That's why. The farrier has been, and Oscuro decided to put up a serious fight rather than have shoes put on his back hooves.

He reared and ripped loose so hard, he fell over. Since I didn't want that to happen again, I hung on to the rope…big mistake.

Especially if you're not wearing gloves.

Yep, rope burn is nasty. So are the half dozen bruises I have now. And the scrape on my forearm where he decided to slam me into the wall.

The spot on my cheekbone where he clipped me with his head ten days ago…is still ouchie. (I saw stars when he caught me with his noggin on the cheek…)

It got me to thinking about what I put my characters through. No, none of it is realistic. Yeah, some are shifters and heal fast. Others are mythical creatures and heal fast.

But this healing process hurts and I often forget that.

The same goes for illnesses. It took me weeks to get over pneumonia, yet somewhere in a story my heroine gets over it in less than three days.

But most of all, I realized, none of them bear any emotional / mental scars from being shot, stabbed or otherwise attacked and injured.

And I find this same phenomena in many books I read.

Of course, I won't be having some hero bedbound for several weeks after he's been shot. It would be realistic, but it would also be a non story.

But the fact is, we all need to show a little more of the inner pain, along with the healing pain — rather than just the initial injury pain.

It's all part of a process, and as authors we tend to forget (or the lucky ones don't know) the pain of healing. So we often forget to put it in our books.

Here's to slightly more realism — and a few less bruises the next time the farrier comes.

Somebody has to say it

There is a lot of self published crap out there.

There. I said it. Someone had to.

Yes, I said it out loud. Yes, I said "Crap".

And I absolutely mean that it's utter drivel that should never have seen the light of day, let alone ended up on the Internet for common consumption.

Don't get me wrong. Not all of it is bad.

Just because someone self published does not mean it's automatically unreadable, or unenjoyable, badly spelled, full of typos, or lousy grammar.

The trouble is, to find those self published gems, you have to step on an awful lot of frogs. So many, the road to that wonderful-must have-keeper self published book is extremely slippery and squishy. And some frogs refuse to die. You have to step on them multiple times before they croak it.

I just wish people (I won't even call them authors, or writers, because they're not) would just wake up and realize they aren't going to be the next Amanda Hocking, just because they put out a "book" on Smashwords, or Amazon.

No. You won't be. Get it through your head already. You will not make millions. You will not be famous.

It takes talent and hard work and the ability to take on board criticism & critique and act on it.

Yeah, shock horror. I know. Talent. *Gasp* Imagine that.

There are very, very few writers who can get away with publishing a first draft. (I don't know any.) So what makes people think their epic, sweeping 8000 page saga about the migration of snails is A: Publishable as is, B: Readable, C: Of interest to anyone?

In todays (and yesterdays) world of publishing, 99.9% of what's out there would have been consigned to the slush pile. Most would never even have received a "No Thank You" reply, much less a contract.

The world has changed, and today anyone can publish a book within (almost) minutes. No need for publishers, editors, agents, right? Dinosaurs, the lot of them.

All you need is an account with Amazon, or Smashwords, or Lulu or whoever you want to use, and hey presto! There's your book!

Never mind it's full of spelling mistakes, misused words, bad grammar, head hopping, has no plot, no goal…and absolutely no writing ability. Let's just put it out there. Let's grab any ole image from the Internet for a cover, what's that copyright thing anyway?

I've seen far too many of those books. People try to get me to read them, too. (I won't. If you have to steal an image for the cover, chances are the story is a ripoff too.)

If you're a budding self publishing author, please, please heed this little piece of advice:

Don't do it until you are absolutely certain your book is the best it can be.

That means letting people other than your mom judge it. (She's biased.)
That means if they (more than one) say it's total crap, you go back to the drawing board.
That means doing research.
That means learning your craft.
That means hiring an editor.
That means getting a professional cover.
That means taking all good advice you can get your hands on.

It's not asking too much to have a book with few to no grammatical errors or typos if you're asking me to pay for it.

Don't make me wade through tons of half-dead frogs to get to the prince!

(Oh and if you review one of the frogs, please mark it down as such. Mention spelling, grammar and formatting too. For the next reader there is nothing worse than a 5 star review because you felt sorry for the "author".)

Fix or scrap?

We writers are weird creatures.

Anyone who knows us, or –God forbid– lives with us is fully aware of our little…err…quirks.

There is nothing like a tormented scream coming from the back bedroom at five to midnight. Most sane people would rush in there, expecting murder and mayhem. My significant other knows better. He is fully aware I've hit a rut, or I've discovered those 30k words I've written…don't work.

There is nothing like scrapping 25-30k. Trust me on this. I've just done it.

Yep, everything — and I really mean everything — I've written for Caedir…got scrapped.

A whole 26k. Gone bye bye. Reassigned to the "Might have been okay if it worked" folder. That's after I scrapped the original 8k.

Yes. That's how it goes sometimes. I had a brilliant (I thought, at the time) storyline for this book. And I wrote myself into one corner after another. I tried to rescue it–twice–and it just wasn't working for me. When I get the "This is crap" vibe from my writing, then it never sees the light of day. I will scrap it.

I can visualize several people shudder with horror.

But you know, I'd rather start over than try to fix something that refuses to be fixed. Sometimes a storyline just doesn't work. Rather than put out some substandard drivel, I start over.

Which is what I did on Saturday. I'm back up to over 10k already, and so far…I like it. (And I hope the readers will, when it's ready.)

Occasionally you can recycle a story, most often you can't. Sometimes you can fix the problems, other times you can't.

That's the writing process. It's frustrating when nothing you do bends the story in the direction you want it to go. Usually because your characters do what they want, rather than what you want. (I'm seriously considering clicker training my heroes…It works with horses, after all!)

I've dumped lots of stories into that "Might have been" folder. Lots and lots of them. If anyone saw my manuscripts folder, they'd probably faint.

There are hundreds of mishaps on there.

I never delete them. Never, never, never.

While something might not work for the story it's meant for, I may well revisit the idea for another story. I have scene snippets all over the place, whole chapters, whole books.

This one didn't want to be clicker trained, so I denied all treats and stuck it in a dark hole instead.

But I'm writing up a storm on the new version, and I have a feeling this one will be the one you'll get to see next February.

Judging a Book by the Cover

When I shop for books, my first impression of it is the cover.

Sometimes I know the story already, have been waiting for it, and the cover isn't important. It's rare.

Most of the time I shop for books and I form my "to peek or not to peek" by what I see on the cover.

Everyone has their own preferences. I like dark and moody, mysterious covers.

Others like bright pink girly covers.

Someone else likes reds, another greens.

If I pick up a dark moody cover book, I expect the cover to be reflected in the content. 

If I find I've picked up Sex and the City instead, I'll be pissed.

Just like someone who likes the pink modernist chick lit covers would be pissed to find Dracula between the pages.

First impressions are important.

I was lucky with my covers so far. (Although Smitten's cover was a difficult and lengthy birth, I tell you.)

Howl is my dark moody cover and it suits the story. Smitten, being a lighter book, has a soft feel to it, which also suits the book.

A Passionate Christmas needed to reflect four different stories, without being too specific to any one of them.

I went through about a dozen tries on that one, and we ended up with something we all liked. (Thank God, I was tearing my hair out.)

I did create the cover myself, thanks to our publisher being open to it, and my having the ability to create it.

But it was hard. I had feedback from all sides, three ideas were thrown out immediately, others mulled over, suggestions made…

It came together in the end, but it wasn't an easy road.

We all have our crosses to bear, and sometimes the cover just…sucks.

And other times…other times you get one where you just take one look and go "Yes! Love it!"

"Caedir" (Gatekeepers Book 2) was one of them.

I had a cover before I'd written a single word of the story–and the artist slamdunked me with the cover.

I was in lurve. I took one look at that hot bod and I knew exactly that it was right. Spot on, as I tend to say.

It truly was…yowsa. The green reflects on where the book is set (Ireland). His body is hot, but not with massive bulk…which is exactly how Caedir is in the book. He's not huge. Fitter than most athletes, yes, but he's not an eight foot ape with more bicep than brain.

So yes, I am extremely pleased with this cover.

One of the covers I really liked was Gena Showalter's "The Nymph King". I really, really wanted to read it, just because of the cover. Doesn't happen often, but it happens.

Did you have some covers where you just had to read the book?