L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 20

Does It Matter What Your Characters Look Like?

There are three types of authors when it comes to character description and, just like Goldilocks and her porridge, only one of them gets it just right. Of course, this means the other two provide way too much information or not nearly enough. It’s a fine line. It’s also difficult to please all readers in this area because some prefer a lot of description in order to have a comprehensive image of the character in their mind and some prefer the bare minimum so that they can do some of the imagining for themselves.

So does it matter what they look like? I’m going to use a few Shakespearean examples to answer the question. (Shakespeare’s plays are usually a great example of everything to do with writing.) Sometimes it doesn’t. In Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves play the brothers Don Pedro and Don John. While Don John is described as a “bastard”, an illegitimate son, there is no mention of any specific cultural characteristics so Branagh decided to give his version of the story one black brother and one white brother. However, it’s the illegitimacy of the second son that is relevant, not his different skin colour.

But sometimes your characters’ physical features will be a key part of the plot itself. Shakespeare’s play Othello is the story of a dark-skinned man described as a Moor, who has advanced through the ranks to become a general in the Venetian army in a society composed mainly of white or light-skinned people. If the story were set in this day and age, then the fact that he is a Moor would be of almost no relevance. But because the story was written in the 1600s when dark-skinned people in English society were considered part of the “other”, his otherness – particularly his physical otherness – is a very important part of the story. When Othello is summoned to his superiors after eloping with his new wife, he is forced to explain that their marriage was the result of love and not witchcraft. Not too many white people would suffer those sorts of suspicions or accusations.

There are non-Shakespearean (very, very non-Shakespearean) examples in my upcoming novel, Black Spot. In the story, my main character has significant and obvious scars on her face and arms and when she’s around people she doesn’t know, she goes to great lengths to conceal them, dropping her head so that her hair hangs over the disfiguring marks and wearing long sleeves in weather that usually wouldn’t call for it. Her father has also removed all mirrors from their home and kept her isolated on the family farm to protect her from staring eyes and hurtful remarks (even her own). So when I wrote a scene in which she finally gets to see herself after six long years, the description of what she sees seemed particularly important. It’s not hugely descriptive – her lips are pink, her nose is long, her cheeks are like rosy apples, her eyes are green and her scar is purple (hmmm, I may have just had an epiphany about how much I use colour as a descriptive tool for my characters) – but for a character who hasn’t seen what she looks like for years, it’s huge for her. “I didn’t know my eyes were green,” she says and she marvels at how much she looks like her long-dead mother (who is described previously in the book as the character looks at a photograph of her).

So now that we’ve got a handle on when your characters’ physical appearance matters and when it doesn’t, here are a few guidelines that might help you be one of the authors who gets it just right.

There Are Things That Only Need to Be Described Once

Unless your story takes place over a long time and your characters age or they have significant plastic surgery, things like eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, the shape of their nose, face, hands, butt, etc, only need to be described once. There are only so many references to a mop of curly brown hair that readers are willing to put up with before they will start to tear their own out at the repetitive and unnecessary appearances of that particular physical description.

There Are Things That Can Change and Might Need to Be Described Again

Of course, there are also things that change about people and that might need to be referred to again such as different clothes, make-up, a new hairstyle or a physical injury. If a woman is wearing too much make-up in the opinion of another character after previously seeing her wearing less of it (and it’s relevant – to plot or character development), then that woman might need to be described again. If someone has a new black eye (and it’s relevant – surely that’s always going to be relevant? Most people would be concerned or curious about how it happened, right?), then a description of that character’s eyes would be appropriate, even if they’ve already been described before. If someone’s wearing a wedding dress in a scene, then it’s probably going to be worth mentioning as well as worth a little bit of effort to paint the picture. I think you see where I’m going with this.

Physical Description Doesn’t Have to Occur All at Once

It’s also worth mentioning that physical description of a character doesn’t have to occur all at once. Just because a new character is introduced in the story doesn’t mean we have to know everything there is to know about them right then and there. After all, in real life it takes time for all this information to be presented and absorbed. Even things that perhaps we should see from the start are often overlooked or hidden or given a different perspective from the first meeting to the second and subsequent encounters.

So if a character is in more than one scene in your story, then it’s okay to spread the load a little.

Not Everybody Has to Be Good Looking

This is a real bugbear of mine (almost as much of a bugbear as how every character these days seems to have a superpower or unique characteristic instead of being a normal person). It’s perfectly acceptable for characters to be average looking or funny looking or okay looking or attractive to a certain kind of person or just one person. If literature represented the real world, we’d have a lot more models and actors than we currently do (and we already have more than we really need).

Making the physical appearance of your character interesting rather than mind-blowingly gorgeous is a lot more fun, a lot more realistic and a lot less likely to induce eye-rolling amongst readers.

*****

If you like detailed character description, then write detailed character description. If you don’t, then there’s no need to torture yourself by going overboard. Hopefully, you’ll find yourself somewhere close to that happy middle ground of just the right amount.

Book Review: Hell Island by Matthew Reilly

Hell Island was released in 2005 as part of the Books Alive promotion – the only way to get it at the time was to buy another Australian book in order to receive it for free. Given Matthew Reilly’s popularity at the time, it was a brilliant idea. People (including me) were desperate to get their hands on it. (I bought a Phryne Fisher book by Kerry Greenwood – didn’t like it but love the TV series that is based on the book series.) That was when I first read it.

The story is part of the Shane Schofield narrative, Reilly’s heroic US Marine who always seems a little smarter, a little stronger, a little more strategic than everyone else around him and one hell of a survivalist. In the Schofield chronology, it takes place after Scarecrow and before Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves but is easily removed from it. And enough is regurgitated to make this a stand-alone book.

In the novel, Hell Island is a remote place in the Pacific, seized by the US from the Japanese during World War II and scrubbed from the maps so that the Department of Defense could use it in secret. Schofield leads one of four special forces teams that are parachuted in to different geographic points to investigate why contact has been lost with the island and the carrier ship currently docked there and what has happened to the 600 soldiers it delivered. There are bullet casings and blood everywhere but no bodies. Within minutes, two of the four special forces teams are obliterated. Schofield and his team listen to them all die over radio communications. Then a dishevelled scientist appears to inform Schofield about the questionable DARPA experiments that have been taking place and the investigation is forgotten. All they can try to do now is to survive.

Matthew Reilly does everything that writers are told they shouldn’t do. He uses italics for emphasis – a lot – and horribly overuses exclamation marks. The dialogue is absolutely terrible and his characters aren’t much better; they’re all very black and white – heroes and villains, leaders and followers, sceptics and true believers. And the plot is very Planet of the Apes.

And despite all of this, it works. Not brilliantly but well enough, particularly for his targeted demographic – men who like to blow shit up or like to watch shit being blown up (Reilly has always said his main goal was to write entertaining books that got boys and men reading again). His research is impeccable and the book is full of Super Hornets and Tomcats and K-bars and C-2 and M-4s, delivering a real sense of authenticity.

There’s nothing subtle or subtextual but it would be wasted if there was because the demographic reading it wouldn’t notice. Instead, it’s the kind of book that hits the reader straight between the eyes. It’s all action all the time from the moment you begin reading the first page to the moment you close that back cover. The whole story takes place within about four hours and the body count is enormous – over a thousand and probably closer to fifteen hundred. Let’s face it – neither Matthew Reilly nor this book are ever going to win any awards but he’s sold so many at this point that it’s unlikely he cares.

If you’re looking for breathless entertainment that doesn’t require thought or logic, then Hell Island (and all Matthew Reilly’s books) will be exactly what you are looking for. And sometimes, between collections of poetry and literature so important that it hurts both the eyes and brain to read, that’s exactly what we need.

3 stars

*First published on Goodreads 1 January 2017

Developing a Website for Your Book

I am by no means a marketing or design or website expert but, luckily, I happen to know someone who is. When I or my editing clients need assistance, she is my first (and only) point of contact. That’s how good she is in my opinion.

Through my professional relationship with her, I have distilled some (hopefully most) of the key points to consider when developing a website for your book.

First Decisions

The first decision is what you want to call your website. If you have only written one book and don’t plan to write any more, you may prefer to set up a website in the name of your book for maximum exposure. If you’ve written more than one book or plan to write more in the future, it might be better to set up a website in your name to promote yourself as much as the books. Of course, you could always call your website something completely different (John Birmingham’s is called Cheeseburger Gothic – no idea why). As long as you have a good reason and it doesn’t make you and your book very difficult to find (which defeats entirely the purpose of setting up a website), then why not?

The next choice is the domain name extension. If you’re planning or likely to become a worldwide sensation (and who isn’t?), then the .com extension is the way to go. If you prefer to focus on your domestic market, then using a country-specific extension tells people you’re a legitimately local website (.com.au in Australia, .co.uk in the UK, .co.nz in New Zealand and so on – note that the .com.au extension in Australia requires an ABN; other jurisdictions might also have additional or different requirements and it’s up to you to find out what they are). There are also a slew of new extension options like .book and .author. Costs for these options vary.

Once you’ve decided which way you want to go with the website name and extension, you will need to check if it is available. As much as I would like to be the only Louise Truscott in the world, I’m not. So if one of the other Louise Truscotts out there needs to promote herself, she may have already bought it, even if she’s not using it. So it’s best not to get too attached to just one option – have a few ready, just in case.

Using a Template or Designing from Scratch

Now that you’ve got a domain name, you can start making decisions about how you want your website to look. There are thousands of templates to choose from – WordPress and Wix are two of the most popular template providers and they are also hosting sites (see the next section for more information on hosting), so you might be able to kill two birds with one stone in that respect – and many of them are free or available for a small charge.

Be aware that you can’t use a WordPress template with Wix hosting or a Wix template with WordPress hosting so if you have your heart set on a particular template or a particular host, make sure you don’t tie yourself up in knots attempting the impossible.

The other alternative is to design your website from scratch. Unless you have design skills yourself, you’ll have to hire a professional to accomplish this and it can be very, very expensive. I’m talking tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, depending on how much time goes into it. You really need to consider whether it’s worth the investment. Unless you’re guaranteed to be the next JK Rowling, it generally isn’t.

Hosting

Once you’ve purchased your website domain name and decided on your approach to design, you’ll need a host. A hosting website provides the background infrastructure – the stuff that a website needs to run but that most of us don’t know the first thing about – like storage and… well, that’s about as much as I know about it. I just know it’s necessary.

There are so many companies that provide this service, although you may be able to cross a few off the list based on the type of website you want (template choice) and cost. There will be a monthly or yearly charge but, depending on the level of hosting you choose (simple, low traffic all the way up to complex, high traffic), it’s generally inexpensive.

Pages

And now it’s time to start building your site by deciding what pages you want and creating the content for them. The following are the generally agreed upon minimum requirements:

*Main page

*About the author page

*About the book page

*Sample chapter/excerpts

*Testimonials page

*Purchase links page

*Contact me page

Main Page

The main page is the first thing visitors to your site will see so it needs to have some visual impact. The template or design you choose will contribute significantly to this. It should also have links to all your social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Instagram, whatever else you’ve chosen to set yourself up on – so that each marketing tool feeds into the other.

One of the most important things to include on your main page is the cover of your book. It sounds obvious but because there’s a page specifically for the book, we might put it on there and then forget that it can (and should) be used more than once.

You may want to include other images – some you may own, some may be professional photographs that you need to purchase. If you’ve already purchased some to use on your book cover, use the same ones – for consistency and so you don’t have to pay for more.

About the Author Page

Selling a book can be as much about selling yourself as the physical product. And readers love to get to know the person behind the talent. So here’s the place to really do yourself justice. However, writing your own biography can be hard. Just ask me. I’m boring. I still haven’t written a biography for myself that I think is any good. But I’ve written hundreds of them for other people and each person I interviewed insisted they were boring and not worth the space… until they saw what I wrote about them. Everybody can be interesting. It’s just about how you approach it.

And don’t forget your author photo. If you don’t have one, get one taken. My marketing, design and website expert took mine (and photoshopped it a little because I had a slight double chin and make-up on my jacket) – she’s also a terrific photographer. These days, most people are selfie experts so you can keep snapping away until you have one you’re happy with or you can enlist a friend to help out.

About the Book Page

You’ve already written a blurb and it’s perfectly acceptable to use it here, too, but you can write a slightly different version if you want to mix it up a little. Sometimes it can be good to use another option. The blurb will be on all the websites where the book is available for sale, it will be on the back of the book, it will be on Goodreads and a lot of book review sites will grab and use chunks of the blurb to limit how much work they have to do. So to lessen the saturation slightly, a modified description can be very welcome.

And don’t forget your book cover. You want people to be able to recognise it on sight so it’s almost impossible to overuse your book cover on your website. Almost.

Sample Chapter/Excerpts Page

Many of the websites where your book is available for sale will have a certain percentage of the start of the book viewable as a sample. Samples are great for giving readers an insight into the story and your style of writing.

But you might want to use a chapter from the middle of the book or excerpts from a range of places throughout the book to highlight several areas. This is the place to do it.

Testimonials Page

Testimonials will come with sales but you’ll need a few before then for your testimonials page. Ask your partner, your mother, your beta readers, your editor. Most people will be happy to help.

Purchase Links Page

Every website or bookstore where your book can be purchased should be listed on the purchase links page. Depending on where and how you have published this may include Amazon, CreateSpace, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble and a variety of others. Don’t make your potential readers have to search high and low for a place to buy your book.

Contact Me Page

Lastly (but certainly not least), set up a page for readers and fans to be able to contact you. The best way to do this is by using a submission form. It requires your readers to provide their email address and then there’s a free text box so that they can type their message to you and a button for when they’re ready to submit.

When you set up a domain name and hosting for your site, you are usually provided with a generic email address that can also be used on your website such as info@mybookwebsite.com. But (and this is really important) you should never list a private personal email address or phone number on your contact me page. As much as we would like to imagine that everyone who wants to contact you will be pleasant, there is always the potential for inappropriate contact or spam and the only way to protect yourself is to be in a position to choose who you will respond to and who you won’t.

A Few Other Things to Consider

Your Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages should have a theme consistent with your website. If you’re going to invest all this time and energy into creating the website, then make sure it is used to its full potential.

Your Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages should also be publicly available, even to people who aren’t signed up on these social media platforms. Otherwise you are limiting your reach.

Or Maybe Just Hire a Professional

If you’re unsure about any of this, if you’re lacking in confidence or if all of this is just too much for you in spite of or maybe because of all the overwhelmingly helpful advice I’ve provided, then there’s no shame in hiring a professional. In fact, your results are likely to be a lot better because you’ll have access to lots of advice and expert execution in a much shorter time frame.

Of course, it costs money, just like hiring the editor and the book cover designer and buying the ISBN and the website name and paying the hosting fees. It’s another investment in you and your book.

And if you’d like a recommendation, I know just the person.

Project January

This is the titular chapter from my latest book, Project January: A Sequel About Writing.

*****

If you’ve read my book Project December: A Book About Writing or the various Project… blog posts on this blog, then you’ll know Project October is about intensive writing, Project November is about editing and revision, and Project December is about getting your book published. And, of course, I hope it makes sense that Project January is about starting all over again.

The pride and relief at finishing and finally publishing a book is wonderful. But the realisation that all that hard work, all the blood, sweat and tears that it took, all the back and forth, all of the begging for beta readers, all the doubt and belief and doubt again, the realisation that all of it simply rewinds to deposit you back at the beginning again can be hard.

Some people only want to write one book, only have one book in them. If that’s you and you’re okay with it, great. For the rest us who don’t want to be one-book wonders, we’re confronted with an entirely different set of problems from when we began writing our first books. So here are a few things to consider to help get you back on track to another Project October, Project November and Project December.

It Probably Won’t Be the Same Process

How could it be when you’ve learned so much from writing the first book? My first novel took nearly four years to write and my second novel took just six months. And my third novel has so far taken more than four years and remains unfinished, although agonisingly close to completion.

Even if the basic writing process is the same, you won’t be the same person. Your life will be different from one book to the next. Your responsibilities will be different. Something will be different. So it’s important not to judge yourself based on a comparison of accomplishments, of attaining the numerous small goals that add up to a whole book. Each book will be its own adventure.

It Doesn’t Have to Be a Sequel

I’ve mentioned this before but within a week of publishing my debut novel, Enemies Closer, people had read it and contacted me to ask when the sequel would be coming out. It had taken eight years from conception to publication so it was going to take a little longer than one week for another. And now four years after it was published, the sequel to Enemies Closer remains unfinished. I’ve written four other books instead.

Because I didn’t and still don’t know what the story of the sequel is. I had set up a group of characters and given some of them mysterious pasts that would be well worth exploring but even I couldn’t figure out what those mysterious pasts were and how they could fit into another action adventure story.

There’s nothing less inspiring than trying to write something for which the inspiration refuses to come. And your readers will feel much the same reading it as you felt writing it if the passion isn’t there.

It Doesn’t Have to Be the Same Genre

When I wrote Enemies Closer, I didn’t specifically want to be an action adventure writer. I just wanted to prove that women could be more than kidnapping targets and bikini-clad bimbos in that very male-dominated genre. And when it came time to write my next novel, I didn’t specifically want to be a literary crime author. It was just that the story I wanted to write pushed me in that direction. And when a friend suggested I should write for a young adult audience to take advantage of the appetite in that market, I thought why not?

There are plenty of writers who write the same genre and the same universe and the same character in book after book and there are plenty of readers who are glad of it. But I tend to get bored. I like switching things up every now and then and it usually coincides with the end of one book and the start of another. (Thank goodness, I’d be screwed if it happened before I’d finished writing the book.)

If you’re determined to explore a different genre, particularly if it’s one that the readership you’ve built up from your previous book won’t necessarily appreciate, then make sure you do it well. It might not be their cup of tea but at least they’ll be able to appreciate it objectively.

It Doesn’t Even Have to Be a Novel

Despite writing and trying to write four other novels, with varying levels of success, since I published my first book, my second published work ended up being not fiction but non-fiction. Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans. And my second book was what happened while I was busy writing a blog and various other novels.

Memoirs are big business these days. Essays do a reasonable trade, too, if your topics, your perspective and your writing style are interesting enough. And, of course, people are always shelling out for how-to guides, even if the only reason they’re wealthy is because of the number of how-to guides they’ve been able to sell. Project December: A Book About Writing, the second book I referred to above, was one of those how-to guides on writing, editing and publishing.

Don’t feel obligated. Write whatever you want. And be prepared to go wherever it leads you.

Avoid the Bruce Willis Problem

“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

John McClane (played by Bruce Willis) in Die Hard 2

Well, if you want people to read and enjoy your second book, it can’t (or, more accurately, it shouldn’t) be the same shit happening to the same guy twice. Bruce Willis can get away with it because he’s Bruce Willis and because he self-deprecatingly acknowledges that he is living the Bruce Willis problem. But for the rest of us, if we want to read a story in which the same shit happens to the same guy twice, we can just read the first book again.

Any attempt to simply recreate the first book, regardless of how many small details differ, will likely suffer because you’ll be bored writing it and readers will comment that it seems awfully and boringly familiar.

Avoid the Hugh Howey Problem

In the same vein, you shouldn’t simply write your second book in order to be different from your first. After the success of Wool, Shift and Dust, Hugh Howey did a very large U-turn and wrote The Shell Collector, which I can only describe as dystopian environmental science fiction romance. (Perhaps he was experiencing a problem I’ve heard publishers speak of – writers forced into publishing a book that isn’t good or isn’t ready simply to meet deadlines. Most of us aren’t unlucky enough – or lucky enough, depending on your perspective – to have this problem.) I don’t know whether he did it deliberately to distance himself from his previous works but it was a strange choice. Not because it was so different from his successful trilogy but because it was different and it was bad.

*****

The second time around – regardless of what it is you are attempting to do – is universally acknowledged to be difficult. The second book, the second album, the second movie, the second year playing football. Often it’s because the first effort has been so well received and the pressure of expectations can impact us detrimentally. But if you can remember that you write for yourself first and foremost and not get pressured into doing anything before you are good and ready to (as well as keeping all the above points in mind), then you’ll be well on your way to avoiding the second book blues.

The Pros & Cons of a Pen Name (With a Little Help from KK Ness)

In 2012, when I released my debut novel, Enemies Closer, I decided to use the pseudonym “LE Truscott”. The book was action adventure and I was concerned (perhaps unnecessarily) that male readers wouldn’t be interested in reading a woman writing in the genre. I didn’t think too long or too hard about what the drawbacks might be. But just as there were benefits, there were also disadvantages.

KK Ness has recently released her first book, Messenger, in The Shifter War fantasy series and her pseudonym is a complete departure from her actual name (as opposed to the partial disguise I chose). I asked her a few questions about her choice to help illustrate the pros and cons of using a pen name.

Pros

Anonymity/Freedom

“I feel an immense freedom writing under a pen name,” KK Ness told me when I asked why she’d decided to do it. “I’ve wanted to be an author for years but I’ve placed so much pressure on myself that I often become frozen at the thought of releasing anything that isn’t perfect (an impossible goal, right?). Using a pen name has somehow released me from that unrealistic pressure. KK Ness had no emotional history and could do whatever she wanted and write what she wanted.”

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Writing isn’t just writing – it’s complete exposure. Writers expose the inner workings of their minds, the secret and sometimes guilty pleasures they indulge in, even their talent (or their lack of it – at least that’s what they worry people will think). So using a pen name gives them the freedom to explore without letting those worries impact directly on their everyday life.

EL James is a great example. The subject matter of her book isn’t to everybody’s taste – not something they would admit to publicly anyway – so her initial anonymity allowed her to bring her work and a genre that had pottered on the fringes of fiction for a while into the mainstream without worrying about embarrassing herself, her family, her co-workers and her friends. By the time her real identity came out, it was such an enormous hit that the only embarrassment was how much money she was making. Besides, if everyone was reading it, they could all be embarrassed together.

Anne Perry is another example, although for very different reasons. In 1954 in Christchurch, New Zealand, Anne Perry – then known as Juliet Hulme – and her best friend murdered her best friend’s mother. She was just fifteen years old at the time. It’s a reasonably well-known story within the publishing industry and became even more so after Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures movie about the crime. Anne Perry’s name change wasn’t just anonymity; it was freedom from her infamy.

Differentiating Yourself for Diverse Audiences in Multiple Genres

JK Rowling was so famous for her Harry Potter series that when she wrote The Cuckoo’s Calling, she decided to publish it under the pen name Robert Galbraith. She didn’t want to confuse the children who had grown up on her magical adventures with the adult crime fiction she was now writing. And she’s not the only one (although there are many reasons thrown about). Stephen King wrote four books as Richard Bachman. Ruth Rendell wrote multiple novels under the name Barbara Vine to separate them from her immensely popular Inspector Wexford series. Nora Roberts has written dozens and dozens of romance books but she publishes her crime under the name J.D. Robb.

Is KK Ness planning to do the same? “Hmm, I’ve got a heap of sci fi and urban fantasy stories rattling around in my brain that I want to write. As for whether I’d write them under the same pen name… I don’t know. Many authors recommend using different pen names for different genres so that your readers of war stories don’t end up purchasing your steam punk comedies by mistake. Multiple pen names are also important for developing multiple streams of income. Other authors, however, seem to do perfectly well having all of their genre-diverse publications under one name. I’ll need to research more on it before deciding.”

Disguising Gender

This was certainly my motivation and JK Rowling’s publishers were the ones who asked her to publish under initials, thinking that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman (just goes to show you how much publishers know). She didn’t actually have a second name and had to pick an initial (she chose K for her grandmother Kathleen).

It’s conventional wisdom that readers of one gender won’t read books written by writers of the other in particular genres – men writing romance, for example. But this seems to be less and less an issue (Nicholas Sparks certainly doesn’t seem to have any problems) as quality is prioritised over stereotypes.

I asked KK Ness if this was one of her considerations. “I haven’t disguised my gender (anyone who reads my ‘About the Author’ page will know I’m female). I thought it was important to indicate my gender because anyone can write about any topic or relationship. The aim is to do it thoughtfully and well.”

Disguising Multiple Authors

Frank and Wendy Brennan, a husband and wife romance writing team, published as Emma Darcy (the inimitable Emma Darcy – sigh!) until Frank’s death in 1995, after which Wendy continued using the name for her solo writing. Nicci Gerrard and Sean French are another husband and wife team who write as Nicci French.

But this seems to be another one that is falling by the wayside. The recently feted Illuminae and its sequel Gemina were co-written and co-published by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristof (although both were already established authors in their own rights so it makes sense to leverage their existing popularity). David Levithan is establishing a routine of publishing multi-authored books (Will Grayson, Will Grayson with John Green, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist with Rachel Cohn).

Differentiating Yourself from Other Authors or Famous People in General with the Same or Similar Names

I’m not sure I know of anyone specifically in writing who has done this but it’s very common for actors. Michael Keaton’s real name is Michael Douglas but, of course, Michael Douglas, the son of Kirk Douglas, was already using it and according to Screen Actors Guild rules, only one person can register under any one name. He chose Keaton as a tribute to Buster Keaton.

KK Ness has an academic namesake and given the protocol for listing academic authors by initials and last name, that’s how she appears in her many contributions to articles. I asked if she was aware of this when choosing the name. “I knew of Kristen K Ness and figured our target audiences were unlikely to cross paths. I Googled my real name and ironically discovered that there is also a woman of the same name working for Amazon, which is where my ebook is exclusively available at the moment. It seems most names are entangled with other names in some way. It’s a small world.”

Cons

Inability to Trade on the Reputation You Have Established Under Your Real Name

Regardless of what industry you have worked in or community you are known in, the networks and connections you have built are often crucial to starting the ball rolling when you publish and begin marketing your book. However, if you’ve chosen a pen name and you don’t want to reveal your true identity, you’re automatically at a disadvantage. It’s hard enough to get people who know you to buy and read your book, let alone people who don’t have or don’t know they have an association with the author.

KK Ness agrees. “Marketing a book under a pen name with no existing online presence is hard. It’s difficult to build an audience, but I think that’s true for most new authors. Personally, I would have struggled even under my real name, since I don’t spend any time on social media, and have been neglectful of my blog as well. That being said, savvy advertising and producing more books will impact sales far more than any number of Twitter and Facebook followers.”

Potentially Having to Market Multiple Names

It’s hard enough marketing one name, let alone multiple identities. If you choose to publish under a pen name or multiple pen names and your real name as well, you might have to repeat the same marketing step for each name and I don’t know about anyone else but I barely have time to market just one. Multiple names can mean multiple websites, multiple author profiles on Amazon, Goodreads and Smashwords, multiple social media profiles. I’m getting tired just thinking about it.

Difficulty Consolidating Works Published Under Different Names

It can be difficult to consolidate works published under different names if you decide you don’t want them separate. After initially publishing as LE Truscott and realising it made almost no difference, I published my next two books under my full name. Goodreads nearly had a conniption fit and in the end told me that I could either establish another Goodreads profile under my “new” name or stick with “LE Truscott” until they can figure out how to achieve changing the name (something their system doesn’t currently allow).

Amazon has a similar problem. Even though I published all three of my Amazon ebooks under the same KDP account, the online giant didn’t understand that “LE Truscott” and “Louise Truscott” were the same author. I had to apply to “claim” my own books and even though my profile links to my two most recent books, they don’t link back to my Amazon Author Central profile. It’s enough to make me want to tear my hair out.

Initials Can Be Difficult for Search Engines

Many authors writing and publishing under pen names choose to use initials, like JD Robb, like KK Ness, like LE Truscott and many more. But how exactly should these names be searched? Is it “LE” or “L.E.” or “L E”?

When I found out that KK Ness had published her first book, I went to Goodreads to add it to my list of “Want to Read” books. But when I searched “Messenger by KK Ness”, Goodreads told me it had no results. Was I jumping the gun? I wondered. Perhaps she hadn’t put it on the site yet? But, no, it was just that I wasn’t searching the right name. If I added a space between the Ks or even a full stop (just one, the second doesn’t seem to be necessary), the entry came up.

Google was friendlier in this respect, bringing up her website, her Facebook profile, her Twitter profile, the Goodreads entry and the UK Amazon site for Messenger. Perhaps Goodreads just needs to pick Google’s brains.

*****

To make sure you can find her everywhere, here are the links for you to check out KK Ness’s website, her Facebook profile, her Twitter profile and the Goodreads entry for Messenger. You can purchase the book in paperback from Amazon’s US site and as an ebook from all Amazon platforms.

You can also read my 4 star review of Messenger here.

Book Review: Messenger (The Shifter War Book 1) by KK Ness

I don’t normally read fantasy fiction but with a terrific cast of characters and great writing, this is the kind of book that could change anyone’s mind.

Danil is a scavenger in the deadlands (barren for centuries after a widespread scorching event that ended the Great War) that separate the kingdoms of Roldaer and Amas. Danil and his fellow humans live in Roldaer under the rule of King Liam and his numerous magi, powerful sorcerers. Amas is the land of shapeshifters. Born into human form, they gradually discover their true form, basically their spirit animals, and then can transform at will and back again.

Danil is one of few who can survive in the deadlands – many have died there – so he searches for the mage-crystals that the magi crave so that he can stay in their favour. But shapeshifters patrolling the deadlands like Hafryn, a wolf, usually steal the ones he does find to keep them out of magi hands. Returning from a search one evening, Danil finds his whole village has been evacuated as two powerful magi, Brianna and Ronan, and their soldiers prepare for war against Amas. The treaty has held for a long time and Danil is suspicious of their intentions, especially when they lock him up and even more so when he overhears his captors talking about the sedative they have slipped into his water. Luckily, he hasn’t drunk it yet.

When he breaks out of his cell and stumbles across a book encased in a magical ice spell that seems to be guiding the magi, he decides to steal it in an attempt to prevent the new war. Now he is what they seek. And when Danil comes across Hafryn as he hides in the deadlands, he accepts the shapeshifter’s offer of help to survive the game of cat and mouse. Danil knows he’s the mouse. But are the Amasian shapeshifters cats as much as the magi are?

Messenger contains all the traditional fantasy elements – weird names, shapeshifters, magic, crystals, warring kingdoms, ordinary people drawn into the conflict and ending up being pivotal – and the plot seems typical – an outsider, a great loss, a great quest, evil authoritarians seeking more and more power, good people faced with hard choices – but in Ness’s hands, it doesn’t come off as typical. And I think that ultimately comes down to the cast of characters she has developed. Instead of having a couple of well-developed main ones and a lot of under-developed minor ones, she has put real thought into making them all potential main characters. Considering this is the first book in a series, it’s easy to see how the stories of all the other characters could be explored. They’re interesting enough and strong enough to support their own books.

I sometimes struggle with the weird names in fantasy fiction (if I can’t figure out how to pronounce it, I spend a lot of time wrestling with the combination of letters in my head and it detracts from my ability to concentrate on the story itself). It’s not a problem here – the names were weird enough that they made sense in the genre without being distracting at all.

The one area that I thought could have been improved for that extra star was the romance between Danil and Hafryn. When we’re introduced to them, they already know each other reasonably well and so we’re prevented from seeing those first moments of butterflies and beating hearts, if indeed that’s what happened. In fact, it seems like Hafryn’s been in love (or in lust, it’s a little hard to tell) with Danil for a while. And Danil doesn’t seem to understand how Hafryn feels even though he’s been fairly obvious – in the first scene in the book, a naked Hafryn sits on Danil. It’s a romance that could have done with extra depth and feels more like attraction than real feeling. If the relationship had been developed a little further and a little deeper, the intensity of the story could have been even greater.

At 41,000 words, Messenger isn’t a novel, it’s a novella and I was a little concerned when I was buying it that its main classifications seemed to be “gay fiction”, “gay & lesbian fiction” and “lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender fiction” when the blurb clearly described a story that easily falls into the fantasy genre. Maybe my concern was because so much fiction classified in that way turns out to be erotic fiction. But it’s only because the main character and his love interest are both male. In fact, it was so subtle that I wondered if the “gay fiction” classification might put off some conservative readers when it really shouldn’t. More a marketing consideration than anything to do with the story itself.

KK Ness once read one of my unpublished books and offered some great advice so this is an opportunity for me to repay her. However, that acquaintance hasn’t impacted my review – she’s earned every single one of the four stars I’ve given this book.

4 stars

*First published on Goodreads 9 April 2017

You Know What I Mean: When It Sounds Sort of Close but Isn’t Quite Right

The first three years I was in high school, we spent six months of the year being taught French and then the other six months of the year being taught Indonesian. Then, in Year 10, we would decide whether to continue with one or the other or to give away foreign language studies altogether. I continued on with French and achieved the best French marks in the entire school the year I was in Year 12 (nothing really to brag about – my marks were just okay and the “honour” just made me wonder how badly everyone else had done). Twenty years later when I finally visited France though, I still knew enough to be able to listen to locals conversing in their native tongue about tourists when they didn’t think anyone on the tour group could understand them. (Australians aren’t big tippers apparently but they thought the Germans were. “Donnez, donnez, donnez,” they said, which means, “Give, give, give.”)

Conversely, I can’t remember a single word of Indonesian. I didn’t enjoy learning it the way I enjoyed learning French, which had a lot to do with how similar it was to English (which, of course, I loved then and still do now). But I remember the Indonesian teacher. I didn’t think so at the time but we were lucky to have an actual Indonesian person teaching us the language. Her English wasn’t great but then I don’t suppose it needed to be. It explains, however, when she was scolding us for not paying attention or for not trying hard enough, why she would say, “Pull your socks together.” (She was trying for either “Pull your socks up” or “Pull yourselves together” and instead ended up somewhere in between.)

Of course, as immature fourteen-year-olds, it only made us laugh. But the fact that English was her second language was a pretty good excuse for getting it not quite right. It’s harder to excuse it when it comes from native speakers but these days it seems to be an ever expanding epidemic.

The difference between high school and university, which I have been told dozens – if not hundreds – of times both while I was studying and since leaving my educational years behind me, was the ability to think critically, to question what we are told or what we think we are being told. To not worry about looking like an idiot but concern ourselves with actually understanding, not just learning (or almost learning) by rote.

There are the obvious “not quite right” moments like mixing up “accept” and “except”, “affect” and “effect”, “amusement” and “bemusement”. There are the errors that occur between what we hear and what eventually makes it onto the page like writing “would of” when it should be “would’ve”, short for “would have”. Then there are the “heard something like it once, can’t remember exactly what it was, but I’m going to go for it” examples. And, of course, there are the “I’ve heard people say this and I know it doesn’t make sense, but who am I to question it?” sayings.

These are a few examples I collected within the space of just two days:

*A cricket commentator who was talking about something that was “praying” [or perhaps it was “preying”?] on his mind

*A news.com.au article about “contract and taught law”

*A pregnant woman complaining about the treatment during her labour with the words “they kept reinstating it”

*A newly drafted football player who talked about how he had “big shoes to fulfil”

Of course, the cricket commentator actually had something “playing” on his mind, the news.com.au journalist should have referenced “contract and tort law”, the pregnant woman meant that they kept “restating it” (as in saying it over and over again) and the football player had “big shoes to fill”. They were close but not quite right.

Public speaking – particularly when speaking without preparation, such as the way commentators and people being interviewed often do – is a genuine talent in itself, as much or possibly even more than writing well because there are so few who do it competently and confidently. Who hasn’t wished they could go back and redo a moment when they said something not quite right or, even worse, something foolish? I know I have. A lot. So much sometimes that I wish I could stop talking altogether and let my writing say everything for me.

But when it occurs in writing, it’s a much bigger sin because we almost always have the ability to go back and correct our writing before anyone sees it. If we have this opportunity but don’t take advantage of it, that makes us not only not quite right (AKA wrong) but also unwise (AKA stupid).

The lesson: when you’re going to use a common saying such as “playing on your mind” or “big shoes to fill” or write about something that you’re not one hundred percent familiar with, make sure you double check that you’ve got it right. Otherwise, instead of focusing on the topic at hand, the people listening to you or reading what you’ve written will focus on your poor style over what may actually be great substance.

Nobody, let alone a writer, should pretend that they know more than they do. (See every politician ever for evidence of this.) It’s enough to know exactly as much as you currently know. That’s usually more than many other people if you stick to your specialist topic. And if you want to know more – and to put yourself out there as knowing more – then do the work to actually know it. Pretending won’t make you any smarter and will, in fact, make you look like an idiot.

The Benefits of a Goodreads Profile

I’ve been helping an internet and marketing ignorant author about thirty years older than me in the lead up to his book being published and he’s also been receiving moral support from another published author roughly his age. He’s paying a professional to put together a small website and I suggested I set up a Goodreads author profile for him so that when the book is released I – and whoever else is so inclined – can post a review. He agreed.

I signed him up, added a picture and posted his About Me text that we’ve been working on for the website. Then, since I’m on Goodreads as well, I connected with him as a friend. And knowing the name of the other author who’s supporting him, I looked her up on Goodreads in an attempt to connect the two of them.

But when I found her profile, it was empty. She’s there – her book was quite successful and has an average rating of 3.46 – but there’s no picture, no author bio, no other information except that she was the author of the book listed. I was surprised. I went back to my friend and told him what I’d found, suggesting he contact his friend and let her know her profile was there and that she could claim it. He told me she was as clueless as he was when it came to technology and being online and that he doubted she would be interested. Fair enough. She clearly doesn’t have someone like me to help her out the way he has me.

I’ve been on Goodreads for over four years and I use it as a reader as much as I do as an author but I’ve found it to be a really good marketing tool. So imagine my annoyance when I went back to my post on “Should You Market Your Book or Yourself? (Part 1: Marketing Your Book)” and realised I hadn’t included it in the section on social media. I’d pointed out Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even LinkedIn but I’d completely neglected the one platform specifically about books.

So to make up for it, here’s a post all about Goodreads, its uses and its benefits.

It’s Quick

You can sign up on Goodreads in seconds with just an email address (or you can sign up with a Facebook, Twitter, Google or Amazon account), choose your password and get started on setting up your profile. It’s the same process regardless of whether you’re a reader or a writer. To get to the additional bits and pieces to become a Goodreads Author, you will need to sign up to the Author Program and to do this you must be a published author or in the process of publishing. Goodreads doesn’t distinguish between traditionally published books and self-published books and your book doesn’t need an ISBN, although it can be easier

It’s Free

Neither the initial sign up nor the Author Program will cost you a thing.

It’s Easy

It’s all relatively simple once you’ve signed up. And there are plenty of tips and support on offer from the team at Goodreads – I’ve dealt with them myself and they’re very helpful and responsive.

You Can Advertise

Paid advertising for your book is available but it’s extremely cost effective and entirely optional. The best part, though, is that you are able to target any advertising you do to readers who are specifically interested in your type of book. When each member sets up their reader profile, it asks what kind of genres they like and then uses that information to make sure the ads get where they will have the most impact. On your Author Dashboard, you can even monitor your advertising campaign statistics.

It’s a Huge Database of Readers All in One Place

Goodreads has more than 55 million members at the time of writing and adds between 10 and 15 million new members each year. It’s a captive audience of people who love to read. And instead of you having to look for them, your profile allows them to come to you. It’s not automatic but you can connect with friends and people you don’t know can follow you to receive updates whenever you post something and with some good old-fashioned hard work, it will happen.

It Links to Other Social Media Platforms and Websites

You can link your Goodreads profile to Twitter, your blog and your official website and it starts to become a central repository from almost everything about you as a writer.

It Becomes a Central Repository of Your Books

Once you’re set up as an author, you can list all your published books and link them to your author profile. So if someone enjoys one of your books, they can easily find everything else you’ve published.

You Can Rate and Review Other Books

It’s sometimes easy to forget about helping out other authors when you’re so busy trying to get noticed yourself. But if you believe in karma, then rating and reviewing the books by other writers that you read can be a big tick in your column. Writing book reviews is also a great way to demonstrate your writing abilities for anyone wondering what your book might be like.

Readers Can Ask and You Can Answer Questions

Goodreads starts you off with six standard questions:

*What are you currently working on?

*Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

*What’s the best thing about being a writer?

*How do you get inspired to write?

*How do you deal with writer’s block?

*What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

You don’t have to answer any of them. Readers can also ask questions, although you can turn this function off if you don’t want to receive them. But every forum for you to connect with readers could be another potential sale.

You Can List Upcoming Events, Do Giveaways, Upload Quotes from Your Writing and So Much More

There are more functions on Goodreads than I could possibly cover in a blog post without it turning into a lengthy essay so if I’ve convinced you or at the very least piqued your interest, then head over to the Goodreads website and check it out. But if it’s good enough for famous authors like Michael Connelly, Gillian Flynn, James Patterson, Diana Gabaldon, Stephen King and Veronica Roth, just to name a few, then it should be good enough for the rest of us.

How Long Should a Novel Take to Write?

It’s another chapter in the “How long should…” series of blog posts. I saw this question on a writing forum and immediately thought, “Should, could, would…” It’s the kind of question that someone who has never written a novel tends to ask and makes me think they want to get in and get out as quickly as possible. Boy, are they going to be shocked when they realise that’s almost impossible.

In almost every one of the “How long should…” series, I bring up the piece of string and then go into guidelines that might help somehow. But that’s unlikely when we’re talking about how long it should take to write a novel. Because it’s not like roasting a chicken or completing a school year or watching a movie, all of which will come to an end within a reasonably predictable time frame.

But here are a few things to consider about the sort of commitment it takes.

Examples of Books That Were Written Quickly

If everything to do with writing was logical, then it would make sense that the longer a book takes to write, the better it would be. But writing is more likely to be head-scratchingly frustrating than logical. I can’t comment on the quality of these quickly-written books as I haven’t read them but they are generally considered classics or classics in the making.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac was written in three weeks, although perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it was typed in three weeks. It was preceded by three years of road trips that inspired the story, copious notebooks full of research, several abandoned versions of the novel and a two-page manifesto on “The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose”. The book was then written single-spaced on one long roll of paper without paragraph breaks or any consideration of grammatical correctness. It makes sense that breaking most of the rules most other writers have to follow would really speed up the process.

John Boyne took an entirely different approach when writing The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in just two-and-a-half days. He did no research, no planning, nothing. He just wrote. He barely slept. Except that’s not the full story either. After that first manuscript was submitted to the publisher, there were “a good seven or eight drafts” and “a lot of rewriting”. So why aren’t those months of additional work included when we talk about how long it took to write? I guess it ruins the mythology.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo took just two weeks to write and the author explained that was partially because the story was already in his soul. I think it was also partially because at 45,000 words, the book is closer to a novella than a novel.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark took one month to write, the main character of which is a fictionalised version of one of the author’s teachers. I think I’m starting to see a pattern in which novels written quickly cut corners in some way – by doing huge amounts of research over many years before writing, by conveniently ignoring the huge amounts of rewriting and editing that need to be done afterwards, by writing significantly fewer words than a standard novel generally requires to earn the title, and by co-opting the lives of other people and thinly veiling them in order not to have to create them from scratch, a process that can take some time.

Examples of Books That Were Written Slowly

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien took twelve years to write, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell took ten years and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton took eight years and all of this makes sense to me – creating entirely new worlds, sweeping historical sagas and minute scientific details.

The story of the writing of The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger is somewhat similar to the story of On the Road. The characters appeared in earlier shorter pieces. A previous version of the book was submitted and withdrawn. The difference is that Salinger admits that the novel took ten years to write. So all those things that were conveniently overlooked in the mythology of the quickly-written books were admitted to in this case. Still, the length of time it took to write this book shocked me. I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye and it’s one of only two books I’ve ever given 1 star in a review and that was only because the Goodreads rating system wouldn’t let me give it no stars. Which just goes to show that tinkering with a book for years and years doesn’t always correlate with it being good.

How Long It Takes Me

I did some quick calculations on how long it takes me to produce a book:

*Enemies Closer, my debut novel, took about four years to write but I was completing a master’s degree and working a full-time job at the same time.

*Black Spot, my upcoming novel, took six months to write the first draft and even though I’ve yet to publish it, it’s substantially the same. Still, I’ve spent more than two years doing minor rewrites and polishing it – not consecutively but a month here and a month there as I take the months in between to refresh and reconsider.

*Trine, which I still haven’t finished yet, has so far taken me more than three years and I’m hoping to have the final 20,000 words written in the next year.

*Project December: A Book About Writing and Project January: A Sequel About Writing both took about six months.

From what I can tell, six months is about the time it takes me to write a first draft – as long as I’m not working a full-time job or getting distracted by other writing – and then the next six months is consumed by rewrites and editing and publishing and marketing. So it ends up being roughly one book every year.

This is partially due to Project October. If you’ve read Project December: A Book About Writing, you’ll know it’s an intensive writing month I undertake, usually in October, with a target of 30,000 words. More recently, though, I’ve been trying to do it twice a year. Last year, I did it twice, although once in April and once in November because I was working in October and it just didn’t happen. If you want some suggestions on intensive writing, the Project October chapter in Project December can help you out.

NaNoWriMo

If you’re looking for an even more intensive writing process with plenty of help and support, NaNoWriMo might be for you. A contraction of National Novel Writing Month, it takes place every year in November and the challenge is to write 50,000 words over thirty days, either a short novel or the first 50,000 words of a longer one. Planning and extensive notes are permitted prior to November to enable writers to achieve the average of 1,667 words per day and the focus is on length, not quality.

I’ve never done it myself – I don’t like working to other people’s arbitrary deadlines, only my own, and writing is an intensely private and solitary journey for me – but there are hundreds of thousands of people who have undertaken it. Wool by Hugh Howey was a NaNoWriMo novel, as was Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

The Verdict

Ultimately, it takes as long as it takes to write a novel. If you’re working a full-time job, raising a family, generally having a life, then that will impact the amount of time that can be devoted to writing. If you write slowly or quickly, then that will impact the length of time before the novel is finished. If you’ve done all your research, you might be able to write quickly. If you haven’t done any research, then doing it along the way will likely take longer. There is no single answer to the question of how long it takes to write a novel.

And it shouldn’t really matter. If you want to write a book, then surely it’s more important to write well than to write quickly. You can’t – or perhaps I should say you shouldn’t – put a deadline on that.

Book Review: Something Missing by Glenice Whitting

Glenice Whitting is the master of character studies. I’ve read both of her novels now (the latest being Something Missing, the first being Pickle to Pie) and if there’s one thing she surpasses almost all other writers in, it’s unravelling the intricacies of people living ordinary lives.

In Something Missing, the two main characters living ordinary lives are Diane and Maggie. Diane is Australian, a hairdresser, has a daughter from her first marriage, is onto her second marriage and is travelling in outback Australia with her family. Maggie is American, an unacknowledged research assistant to her academic husband, mother to two grown daughters and thirty years older than Diane. When they cross paths on their travels in the 1970s and exchange addresses, it’s the start of a decades-long pen pal friendship.

It gets off to a rocky start. Diane is enthusiastic but uneducated and when Maggie returns her first letter full of red pen corrections, she’s a little miffed. But she’s big enough to move past it and is eventually inspired to better herself by enrolling to study at university. We follow Diane through a mostly forward progression as she gains her bachelor’s degree, writes short stories, wins a competition for an unpublished manuscript before finally graduating with a PhD in writing and publishing her first book in her sixties.

At the same time, we go back into Maggie’s past to see how she became who she is, going from a family who value education above almost everything to a student who drops out of college in order to marry, indulging in drinking too much and suffering from occasional domestic abuse (physical and emotional) until her husband’s death finally allows her to focus on herself. But is it too late for both of them?

The book is more than just a tad semi-autobiographical and I know this because I know Glenice. We studied together back in the late 1990s when she was beginning the writing journey that Diane mirrors almost identically. And Glenice has acknowledged in interviews that she herself had and was inspired by her thirty-five year plus pen pal relationship with an American poet in real life. It makes it a little difficult to critique the lack of plot when it is someone’s life. So perhaps I’ll just leave it this: there isn’t much of a plot but then again it’s not that kind of book.

The writing, though, is beautiful and the descriptions scattered throughout are perfect (for lack of a better word). When she describes the lacy patterns the incoming tide makes on the beach at Australia’s Phillip Island, it made me think, “That’s so spot on.” Having been there and seen it and knowing what she was talking about, it was a perfect description. And as someone who generally starts to skip chunks of descriptive text in books where I feel there’s too much, I was never tempted to do that in Something Missing.

I read an interview that said Glenice reworked the original manuscript from literary fiction to more resemble popular fiction in order to get it published but I feel it would have worked even better as literary fiction. Perhaps her publisher didn’t really do her any favours. Because the book is also in desperate need of a thorough edit – it’s full of bad grammar, poor punctuation, misspellings, a huge number of typos and italics that run on for paragraphs longer than they should have. Some of the letters are out of chronological order when all the previous ones have been arranged by date and at one point a character mentions having a computer with Windows 7 nine years before it was released by Microsoft. It’s all quite distracting, especially since the Maggie character is constantly lecturing Diane on the importance of proper English. Since her lectures suffer from the problems she is lecturing about, it really undermines her.

Still there’s much to like about this book and it’s the sort of thing that both English Literature classes and book clubs can have an absolute field day with.

3 stars

First published on Goodreads 29 March 2017