Kiersten Fay's Blog, page 12

7 Things I Look For in a Romance

As my list of books read gets longer, I find I'm getting pickier with the new books that I buy. I want specific story lines and the right kind of hero and heroine. I want smart and sassy, wicked and wild, and a little bit of sickeningly sweet. I don't know if it's just me, but it's becoming more and more difficult to find a story I can lose myself in. So anyway, I decided to compile a list of things I look for in a romance.

1. Cover Art

I know it shouldn't affect my decision, but it does. If the cover looks bad to me, it makes me wonder if the story is bad too. Cover art also influences the way I picture the lead characters. Too many books show blonds on the cover, when the heroine is actually brunet, or vice versa. So as I read, my mind wars with the descriptions.

 2. Interesting Story Line

Some story lines are getting old for me. Cop and detective stories, for one. They do nothing for me these days.

 3. Must Be a Series

I look for books that are in a series, because I love to get totally dragged into the lives of all the characters. And if an author can make me eager for the next character's love story, that's the best.

 4. Removed From Reality

I have no interest in stories that are based on something that can happen in real life. This sort of goes back to the cop/detective thing. I don't want to read a long story about chasing an insane killer while two partners fall for each other. Blech. I guess that means no thank you to murder mysteries.

 5. Alpha Male

I need a hot alpha male with attitude, a slight sense of honor, and a wicked dark side. Oh yeah, pack me up some of that to go.

 6. Great Female Lead

I also need a smart witty female who can challenge the hero and drive him a little nuts at the same time. Females are probably the most difficult to write. Their emotions are much more complex and convoluted than any guy. You may say, "but my guy has really deep thoughts." No he doesn't. He thinks about food, sex, work, and sleep. Not always in that order. Any deep thoughts he comes up with are derived from the desire to get one of those four thing accomplished.

 7. That Brings Me to Sex

Don't stiff me on the sex! I hate when the sexual tension gets built up to a fever pitch, only to receive one mild sex scene before the end of the book. This happens mostly in older books. These days, authors are getting a little bolder when it comes to sexing up their characters. However, I don't want sex scenes at the cost of story line. Ha! Just try to please me, I dare you. LOL.

So anyway, that's my long list of requirements. As you can guess, I don't always find what I'm looking for, but the hunt is fun nonetheless.

You've Lost A Member

I know this has been said over and over again but I feel like reiterating. Plus I made the mistake of purchasing a book that had zero reviews, and now I need to complain about it.

There are a few little problems with self-publishing. One is that anyone can do it. ANYONE! It kind of reminds me of the cartoon ratatouille. Anyone can cook, but not everyone can create a five-star restaurant. (I know, I'm butchering the moral of the story a little.)

Don't get me wrong, I love that anyone can write something they love and have these outlets to let other people enjoy it as well. It's liberating, and allows many who, before, would have never been able to get their stuff out there. Me for one! =^_^= But it hurts my heart when I read something that looks like it might be a first draft, or that the author didn't even reread their stuff.

Kudos to those who buy un-reviewed books. I honor your bravery—however, you've lost a member. Thus ends my complaint about others. On to more personal stuff.

Another problem with self-publishing is that you have to do everything yourself—that is, unless you have little vampire rabbit minions to do some of the work for you. Mine went awol—so if I want to update my bio, I can't just do it on my website and be done with it. I have to go to amazon, smashwords, B&N, and my print company. I'm sure there are other sites I'm forgetting. Then I have to figure out where all those sites are all hiding the bios, so I can update them

I guess I could just leave all the old bios, and not give a crap, but that's just not me. If I can make something better, I'm going to put the time into doing it. Oh, and totally off topic, soon I'll have an updated website, with cool new features for you guys.

Rain – A Remembrance

There's something about rain. A light drizzle. A thundering downpour. Even if you hate it, there's something powerful in the sound of heavy droplets of liquid pounding against your roof, your car. Isn't it always a shock when you feel the first cool drop on your skin? Most of the time it makes you look to the sky in awe, even if you don't realize you do it.

As children we ran toward the rain, and as adults we run away from it. Why?

I remember the last time I exuberantly rushed into a storm. I was 14. My friend and I sat inside, playing Nintendo, when the windows were suddenly running with liquid, and we had a similar conversation as the theme of this post—much less in depth.

So, with my mother screaming at us from inside, we hurled ourselves through the harsh thick drops, getting more and more drenched and loving it. We made sure to stomp in the puddles, slide down the wet hill of our front yard, and put our faces to the sky.

When I came in, shivering and soaked, my mother scowling and ready with towels, something in me realized it would be the last time I ever did that again. I grew up a little in the middle of a storm, and said goodbye to childhood things.

Next time it storms, I think I'll go outside.

Latest and Greatest: Author Interview

Check out my latest interview, compliments of Rainy Of The Dark. I just love her name too; it's so broody and mysterious. Perhaps I should have a cool name like that. Like: Kiersten Of The Fellowship Of the Rings. I think that might be taken. How about Kiersten Of The Fay. That works. But you have to say it in a deep rumbly tone, like the last Batman.

Interview at: http://www.rainyofthedark.com/2011/07/interview-author-kiersten-fay/

Rainy just started doing interviews, so if you're interested she's probably not too backed up yet. But who know, I literally pounced on the opportunity like a starving cat. I never thought I would like doing interviews but I really enjoyed this one.

Tell me, what your your cool made up name be?

Before You Know It (Defeating Distractions)

So I woke up this morning, my day off, and thought, "I would like to write all day today." Easier said than done. First off, I suppose I'll have to eat at some point. Lunch, and probably dinner too. Breakfast is usually an entire pot of coffee, don't worry, it's one of those little Mr. Coffees since I'm the only one in the house who drinks it, and which I can consume while I check my email and chat on twitter.

Evading the Monster

That's another thing. That monster called Internet, who waits, stalking, until your resolve weakens, and you've become nothing more than a tasty bunny for it to simply reach out with one gnarled claw and drag you back into its evil lair.

Terminate the Tweets

Twitter is so much fun because it's so divers and people are crazy, funny, silly, ranty, mad at the world, inspirational, self-pitying, ridiculously happy, etc. You get to see it all in the span of about a minute. Then there's email—you have to check email. After that comes the standard, and sometimes hated, self-promotion, which is just part of being self-published and has to be done…well, unless you don't care about selling books.

All that little stuff adds up in a big way. And before you know it, the day is half over and you haven't even begun.

My Goal for the Next Week?

Less twitter…sorry guys, I'll miss you. But I'm sure you'll survive without my amazingly random tweets, for a little while at least. I'll also be backing off slightly on the self-promotion; this means the free ebook giveaway of Demon Possession I'd been planning is going to have to wait.

The terrible thing is that I'm already self-sabotaging, because I plan on tweeting this blog as soon as it goes live. Ah well, I'll start right after that.

Before You Know It (Defeating Destrations)

So I woke up this morning, my day off, and thought, "I would like to write all day today." Easier said than done. First off, I suppose I'll have to eat at some point. Lunch, and probably dinner too. Breakfast is usually an entire pot of coffee, don't worry, it's one of those little Mr. Coffees since I'm the only one in the house who drinks it, and which I can consume while I check my email and chat on twitter.

Evading the Monster

That's another thing. That monster called Internet, who waits, stalking, until your resolve weakens, and you've become nothing more than a tasty bunny for it to simply reach out with one gnarled claw and drag you back into its evil lair.

Terminate the Tweets

Twitter is so much fun because it's so divers and people are crazy, funny, silly, ranty, mad at the world, inspirational, self-pitying, ridiculously happy, etc. You get to see it all in the span of about a minute. Then there's email—you have to check email. After that comes the standard, and sometimes hated, self-promotion, which is just part of being self-published and has to be done…well, unless you don't care about selling books.

All that little stuff adds up in a big way. And before you know it, the day is half over and you haven't even begun.

My Goal for the Next Week?

Less twitter…sorry guys, I'll miss you. But I'm sure you'll survive without my amazingly random tweets, for a little while at least. I'll also be backing off slightly on the self-promotion; this means the free ebook giveaway of Demon Possession I'd been planning is going to have to wait.

The terrible thing is that I'm already self-sabotaging, because I plan on tweeting this blog as soon as it goes live. Ah well, I'll start right after that.

Halfway Through; Nowhere Near Done

Directly after my first paranormal romance novel, Demon Possession, was published in April, I started working on book 2 of my Shadow Quest Series, Demon Slave. With the first book, I had immersed myself so deeply into the two main characters that it took me a while to get out of their heads and figure out who the hero and heroine of Demon Slave are.

Character Development

I spent about a week just thinking about their individual pasts and how it has molded them into who they are. I scoured the Internet for images that give off a feel of what I imagine their persona's to be, and of what they look like in my head. I must admit, I got a little distracted surfing the web. Damn you YouTube!

Making It Perfect

Demon Possession took me about a year to write, but that was only part time. For book 2 I'm trying to cut that time way down, without sacrificing story quality. I'd say I'm over halfway through the story, but there is still much to do. Writing a first draft is the easy part. Making your story perfect? That is the challenge.

Everyone is Freaking the Frick Out

So Amazon is going through some changes and many authors (well, the ones who mainly self-promote on Amazon threads) are freaking the frick out. I used to like going to the threads and chatting about off-the-wall topics, without any kind of self-promotion. But now everything seems to turn into a nasty argument, even without self-promoting authors to muck things up. I expect things will even out, once the animosity has settled down.

So what did Amazon do?

They've moved all the author and promotion threads to a "Meet Our Authors" forum. I understand, and partly agree with, Amazon's choice to separate the authors from the customers. Self-promoting can get irritating when it's done by idiots, and Amazon has a responsibility to their customers.

You don't jump into a conversation about baseball and say "Oh yeah, baseball's awesome, check out my novel about rabbits. It's kind of like baseball without the bat, ball, players, and spectators." Silly rabbit!

The Cesspool

So now the "Meet Our Authors" forum is like one big promotion cesspool, and authors are now complaining about drops in their sales. I'm going to go ahead and assume that the authors who are whining the loudest are the ones who ruined it for the rest of us. I'm talking to you, Rabbit Man!

I'll admit, I'm fairly new to self-promotion myself, but I'm quickly learning what's appropriate, and what's not—at least I think I am, no one has yelled at me thus far—and even I get irritated with some authors on twitter who only talk about their new book, or their next book, or the last book they did. Bottom line…be a person, not a promo-machine.

Oh Hell, What To Do…

So, a friend and colleague of mine, Leia Shaw, who is also self-published, has been chatting with me about traditional publishing vs. self-publishing, and I hope she doesn't mind that I'm using a part of a letter I wrote to her in this blog.

I think a lot about traditional publishing. It would be wonderful to be distributed everywhere without the hassle, so nice, but from what I hear—and feel free to yell and scream at me if I'm wrong—most publishing companies don't spend a lot of time promoting their own authors, so a lot of them still have to do that on their own. Also, I hear if you don't sell a certain amount of books in the first few months they move on to their next big author and write you off. This is from people I've met who have been traditionally published for years.

It seems many traditional published authors don't think much about self-published authors; mostly I think that's because they've never been where we are, and that's understandable. For them, publishing companies take on a lot of the ins and outs like cover art and distribution. At one of my old writing groups someone brought up self-publishing for ebooks and most people scoffed. Not me though

The main reason I decided to move forward with self-publishing, besides the fact that I'm impatient and don't want to spend the next ten years soliciting agents, is because I don't believe an agent or publisher would take me seriously. I'm basically a nobody in the publishing world, and a lot of agents think the market is too saturated with my genre, paranormal romance, which I highly disagree with, especially after talking with all the people on goodreads, and other book-loving community sites, who are just dying for new stuff.

At this point I don't really know which one is better self or traditional publishing. It really depends on what you're looking to get out of it. Check out this post "Should You Self-Publish After a Near-Miss?" by Jane Friedman.

We're All Beggars on the Street of Promotion Ave.

Gaining book reviews for any author is important toward the promotion of their work. Most publishing companies make sure there are reviews for their books far in advance, weather solicited, purchased, or from an in-house team of reviewers, ready to get out the good word.

For a self-published author, it's a little different.

Most of us can't afford to pay for reviews, and I don't believe in that practice anyway. How could you get an honest opinion when you shelling out cash? And I don't know about any other self-published author, but I don't have a team of people ready to promote my book for me.

So what's left for us?

For many of us the first step is to solicited companies or blogs that do reviews, and then hope they not only want to review your book, but they have the free time to review your book, and finally, yet most important, that they liked your book. After soliciting so many companies and blogs, you start to feel like a beggar in the streets. "Change…"

What's Worse? No Review or a Bad Review?

When you hit the jackpot and someone wants to review your book, your next concern is, will they like it? You hope they will, but there's always the chance that they give you a bad review.

It's the risk every author takes.

But whether the review is good or bad, it's still publicity. I myself have purchased a book because of a bad review. What the reviewer hated about the book was exactly what I was looking for.

Writing Reviews? Easy Peasy.

There's no wrong way to write a review, but some people just don't know what to say, even if they loved the book. If you have problems getting your point across you could ask yourself a few questions and just use the answers, like:

• How did the book make you react?

• Did the book live up to your expectations, or did it fall flat?

• Were the characters and the storyline well developed?

• Would you recommend it to others?

Sorting Through the Rubble, and Finding Gold!

I don't purchase a book until I've sorted through all the reviews for it. In a later post I will cover my favorite places to find and possibly leave reviews. Until then, tell me about your favorite places to search for or post reviews.