P.J. Fox's Blog, page 12

Mail Bag #8: More Questions Answered

Posting my answers to yesterday’s questions inspired people to shoot me a few more.  Keep them coming!  I can’t promise that I’ll answer every single question, depending on how personal it is, but all questions–including personal ones–are welcome.

With all [the things in your life] going on, to implement these things in your characters in your books?  I would think it difficult not to have some of them be you just in a different era?

And that’s the magic of it–no!  It’s a difficult thing to explain, but characters come alive.  Each one is different and they’re as real to me, often, as real people.  Or more so, in some cases.  What you read about them doing and saying and thinking, that’s the tip of the iceberg; I know what their favorite foods are, I know what their favorite colors are.  You have to, know, to really know, to write effectively.  Your characters.  Your settings.  A character who’s only as fleshed out as the events of a particular chapter is never going to seem real.  Never going to be real, to the reader.  For them to be real to you, they have to be real to me, first.  I spend a great deal of time brainstorming, before I ever put keys to keyboard.  After which point…

At some point, a mysterious alchemy occurs.  They go from being real in theory to being real in fact.  Which is one of the reasons I don’t outline: sometimes, I’ll have an idea in mind for what a particular character might do and then, later on, realize that that character wouldn’t do that at all.  In some of my books, characters originally intended to be minor have become much more–and visa versa.

There is some of me in my stories, in some more than others, but not in the sense of “this is me but I gave myself a different name.”  Rather, it’s inevitable I think that an author’s point of view is going to creep in.  You write how you see the world and, in a more attenuated sense, you write what you know.  Themes of loss, alienation, and change are common in my work, because those things are things that I’ve experienced.  I don’t, and probably couldn’t, create characters with whom I couldn’t identify–not as carbon copies of myself but as friends with whom, at some point, I might like to grab a beer.

As to the question about my schedule–this question came in the context of a broader discussion on life challenges and time management–no writer’s schedule is easy.  No professional’s is easy, I think.  Different jobs require different things of us and one thing that writing professionally requires is a huge time commitment.  It’s an every day, all day kind of thing: writing 2,000 words, or 2,500 words, or whatever your daily goal is, and then doing all the other career-related things you have to do (everything from blogging to working on your Facebook page to approving cover art and ad campaigns and who knows what else), and then doing the same thing the next day until eventually 2,000 words and 4,000 words and 6,000 words becomes a 140,000 word manuscript.  After which point the cycle begins again with editing, etc.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint and, as with any career, you’re going to get, at least to some extent, what you put in.

Some people are under the impression that writing is easy, because it seems like so much fun: lounging around, in your chair, drinking coffee and watching the world go by.  They forget that it also means working when working is the last thing you feel like doing, just like at any other job.  Writing, like a lot of things, makes a great hobby and there is absolutely no diminishment in doing something purely for love.  In fact, it’s just about the greatest thing ever.  But, however much you love something, you have to treat it a little differently if you want it to pay the bills.

My husband’s schedule is, at times, crazier than mine.  Before we were parents, that was fine; we’re both quite independent-minded people but, at the same time, we were on the same page about prioritizing spending time together.  Now that we’re a family of three, teamwork is even more essential.  I couldn’t do any of the things I do without my husband’s love, encouragement, and support.

Where do you live and does that help you with your writing?

We’re privileged to live in one of the most beautiful spots on earth: Massachusetts’ glorious North Shore.  I don’t like to give exact locations because, after all, this is the internet, but we’re in close proximity to Salem, home of the witches.  This is our view:

And yes, it’s awesome.  My husband took this picture with the good camera.  Which our son has, incidentally, decided should belong to him!  And while I do find my location inspiring, the truth is, I find what’s inside my house much more inspiring.  I met my husband eleven years ago this last Wednesday; even now, I wake up every morning blissfully happy that I slept through the night in safety.  That I had, and have, a roof over my head.  That no one is beating me, or forcing me to do something I don’t want to do.  I left a life that was…not a life, and that’s really helped me to appreciate the so-called little things.  Which are really the big things.

Returning to the first question, the only real autobiographical details, if you can call them that, in my books are in The Price of Desire and The Prince’s Slave.  Again, it’s not a one to one comparison but certain situations I’ve written about are situations I’ve lived.  Which I think, to some extent, may be why my prose at times doesn’t always match up with reader expectations.  Because actually living something is different than picturing “what if” from the comfort of your living room.

To write, to create anything, to really be inspired I think you have to feel safe.  Safe, and valued.  All the scenery in the world can’t help if you aren’t surrounded by love and acceptance where it counts.  I love where I live but I’d be just as happy living anywhere with my husband and son, because they’re what make home, home.  And while we’re lucky enough to live a certain lifestyle, the absolute truth of the matter is that, almost from the moment I met him, I would have been equally happy living with my husband in a cardboard box.

How do you come up with the ideas for your books?

It depends on the book.  I came up with the idea for The Demon of Darkling Reach and, indeed, the entire trilogy while receiving treatment for a serious illness.  But most of my inspirations are more attenuated, harder to pin down.  Some of The Price of Desire was about exorcising personal demons but there was more: a love of the history of the British Raj, combined with a keen sense of the injustices perpetrated against India.  And, then, that alchemy: one day, characters who were just there.

I have so many ideas for so many books, the challenge isn’t coming up with ideas but somehow getting them all down on paper.

Mail Bag #7: Your Questions Answered

I have amazing fans.  Of course, if you’re reading this, you know you’re amazing.  Or you should.  Not because you’re (presumably) okay with this book thing but because you’re a stunning, unique creature of the universe.  It’s because I get to meet so many different people, with so many different life paths and stories, that I enjoy my Facebook page so much.  So, this morning, I asked if anyone had any questions about me, my process, or anything else that they’d like to see answered.  And here are their/your questions, along with their responses.

Is Amazon the best place to get your writing out there?  And, if so, do you need a Kindle?

As to the first part of this question, while it’s tough to pin down an exact figure, the majority of books sold in the world are sold through Amazon.  This is true for physical books as well as e-books, of which Amazon also has the lion’s share of the market.  So whether you’re traditionally published or self-published, there’s a strong argument to be made that you should sell your book on Amazon.  Now whether you should publish independently, with Amazon, is a different question altogether.

Last year, I wrote a book on self publishing.  The title, Self Publishing Is For Losers, is a tongue and cheek jab at the misconceptions many people still have about indie publishing–what it is and isn’t.  I, personally, chose the independent route.  Not because I had no other options but because I wanted to retain control over my own intellectual property.  It’s been hard, but, for me, it’s been worth it.  Especially as a new writer, just starting out; I didn’t want to see my work butchered, not to make it better (you can hire an independent editor for that) but to make it more “salable” according to some obscure calculus.  I wanted to prove that I was salable by selling books.  Which, of course, I have done.  And since I’ve become more popular, as an author, the same literary agencies and publishers who either needed to be convinced or who outright told me that my work was awful have all started calling again.

I’ve told them thank you very much, but no.

The best advice I have on how to succeed as an indie author is in SPIFL, which is free to download this coming Monday through Friday, but the broader concept of “best” remains an elusive one.  It depends on what you’re after.  The average writer, however they’re published, doesn’t make a living writing.  According to Forbes, the average self-published writer makes 5,000 per year and the average traditionally published writer makes 10,000.  Which is nothing to sneeze at but, in most parts of the country, also not enough to pay the bills.  However you publish, your reason for doing it has to be the same: that you love doing it.  You may, indeed, become the next J.K. Rowling.  But J.K. Rowling wasn’t J.K. Rowling for a long time.  And Stephen King, whom I’ve had the pleasure to know for some years, tells some horrifying–and hilarious–stories about what life was like for him before he sold his first book.

I think that, for those who do decide to self-publish, that, yes, Amazon is the best route.  Some of the most exciting and dynamic voices in publishing today publish through Amazon.  The best recipe for success, though, is always going to be having a good book.

As to the second part of the question, you need either a Kindle device or Amazon’s Kindle e-reader software, which is free to download for any of a multitude of electronic devices (either directly from the book in question’s Amazon page or your relevant app store), to read a Kindle title.  My husband, for example, reads books on is iPad.  To publish a Kindle title, you need the same thing you need to publish any book: a computer.

I write all of my manuscripts on a 15″ MacBook Pro.  My manuscripts are formatted, professionally, for both Kindle and paperback by 52 Novels.  They’re at the top of the industry.  Then I upload them to Amazon’s relevant portals (KDP and CreateSpace) using my same trusty computer.  The importance of professional formatting, where to find an editor, how to edit your own work and what exactly KDP is in the first place are all topics I cover in my book.  Which is why I’m offering it for free: because it’s not cool to answer people’s questions by asking them to pay you for more information!  But, at the same time, this is too big of a topic to cover effectively in a blog post.

Where does your inspiration come from?

The world around me.  They say, “write what you know,” but what exactly it means to do so can be tough to pin down.  The reason we connect with stories like The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t because we’ve all been to Mordor but because we’ve all, to some extent, experienced the struggles those characters face.  Just in a different place and time.  In other words, while scenery changes, emotions don’t.  My novels are fiction, of course, but there’s also a lot of me and my life story in them.  Particularly in The Price of Desire and The Prince’s Slave.  Nothing is a one to one comparison, in these types of situations, but in many ways the core story, particularly of The Price of Desire, is my own.  My husband, on whom Kisten is based, and I met eleven years ago this last Wednesday.

But in the broader sense, everything in the world is inspiration: from past experiences to other people to a particularly interesting roadside shrine.  At the end of the day, the biggest challenge for me is usually shutting my mind off!  Probably the strangest source of inspiration for me, though, was that behind The Black Prince Trilogy: a near death experience.  A few years ago, while I was pregnant with my son, I got really sick.  We made it to full term and he was delivered safely, but after that my health quickly deteriorated.  I’d chosen to delay certain treatments until after he was born, out of concern for his health.  So the short answer is that, after he was born, I continued to spend a lot of time in the hospital.  And a lot of time at home, too sick to move.

And it was during one of those times that the entire story for the entire trilogy just came to me.

When you write, do you outline?  Or just go where the story takes you?

I take notes, but I don’t outline.  I find that my characters evolve as I write and, often, take on a life of their own to the point where too much preplanning is limiting.  I always know how a story begins, and ends, when I start writing but often, apart from a very few, very general scenes sketched out in my head, that’s it.

What books have you written?

I’ve published fourteen books, only one of which is erotica (The Prince’s Slave).  The rest can best be described as entries into the gothic romance, fantasy, and horror genres.  All of my books have a heavy human component; they’re about who we are under the surface and what pushes us to do what we do–and become what we become.  You can buy my books (e-book and paperback) through Amazon, as well as at your local Barnes & Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Although all of my books are available through Barnes & Noble’s website, not every book is available in every store.  You can, however, special order any book you want through customer service.  And, of course, do the same at your local indie bookstore if you’d rather shop local.

Achieving Success with Lechuza-Pon

…Or any substrate.  Lechuza-Pon is a soil alternative, no different than any of the many one might use for aquaculture (aquaponics/semi-aquaponics) although in my opinion much higher quality.  I also do use clay pebbles, at times, although the more I experiment with Lechuza-Pon the more I prefer it.  Largely due to its smaller size, in truth.  But many gardeners, it turns out, have had negative experiences with soil alternatives.  So, in this post, I’m going to address what some might be doing wrong and what, indeed, they should be doing instead.

First and foremost, you have to fertilize.  A number of gardeners, on various fora, have complained that their plants didn’t grow as well in substrate as they did in whatever potting soil was typically preferred.  Most likely because the average potting soil–and this certainly goes for all high quality potting soils–is enriched with all kinds of fertilizers, probiotics, etc.  Whereas substrate is inert.

The water in the reservoir, of whatever drip system you’re using (more on that in a minute), should be diluted with the appropriate water-soluble fertilizer.  I use orchid fertilizer for my orchids (I prefer Better-Gro as a brand), African violet fertilizer for my African violets, and all-purpose fertilizer for my other plants.  My preferred brand for the last two is Miracle-Gro, which is a Scott’s product.  The brand really isn’t important; what matters is that the fertilizer in question be a) appropriate to the plant in question and b) properly diluted.  I’ve always diluted according to package directions, mixing up my fertilizer/water before adding it to the pot.  I recommend this route, rather than adding the fertilizer directly to the pot, because you don’t want to over-fertilize and/or burn leaves or roots.

The second issue is that you have to use an appropriate vessel.  As in, a planter designed for aquaculture.  Again, the specific brand isn’t important so long as the function is there.  Any self-watering planter will not do.  Not all self-watering planters work that well and some, like those designed with a permeable clay wall, only work with soil.  If at all.  I’m not a huge fan of those.

So why grow with a substrate instead of plain old potting soil?  Well, as it turns out, there are several reasons.  First, some plants, like orchids, really can’t grow in traditional media.  Organic mixes are okay at best.  And really expensive!  You can save a lot of money, as well as problems down the road with root rot, etc, by choosing a medium that allows for proper drainage and aeration and doesn’t rot.  Substrates also, because they are so quick draining, work great with other plants (like, for example, jade plants) that don’t do well in traditional potting soil.  Because they don’t, you know, naturally occur in the average English garden.

A secondary issue is disease.  Harmful bacteria, fungi, etc can be a problem with even the best potting soils.  It’s the environment, and the fact that they’re in a closed container.  Whereas substrates, by contrast, simply cannot support disease-carrying organisms.  Your plant is free to develop on its own, at its own pace, free from any sort of attack (or competition for nutrients).  I’ve found that this last is particularly an issue if, like me, you have a greenhouse.  Humidity is a double-edged sword, as it’s great for growing everything.

And, finally, substrates help to avoid soil compaction.  With some of my top-heavy plants, like my jade plants, I find it most helpful to use a mixture of substrates (clay balls, which are larger, and some Lechuza-Pon, which is smaller) to simulate more of the plant’s natural environment and then mix in a little organic material (I use Nature’s Gold potting soil, available at Home Depot).  This helps the plant to stay upright.  Jade plants are notorious for falling over.  Like pugs.

There are concerns, too, with systems like these that plants are getting enough water.  I find, personally, that the advantage with a system like this is that each individual plant can decide how much it needs.  And they do all seem able to drink sufficiently; I’ve grown everything from orchids to various kinds of fittonia to ferns and hypoestes and African violets this way and been exceedingly pleased with the results.  Your mileage, of course, may vary.  But if you’re considering a potting soil substitute and are concerned, or have tried one in the past and been disappointed with the results, hopefully the advice here is encouraging.

What’s In A Bad Review?

Moving past the “this sucks” portion of the event, potentially a lot.  That you can learn from.  Because, if you read these reviews closely, the problem may not be with your book.  But, rather, with how its content ultimately matched with consumers’ expectations of what its content was supposed to be.  Are they really complaining about the writing itself–about any actual defects in technical execution, or in storytelling–or are their issues broader?  As in, are they objecting to too much sex, or violence?

If it’s the latter, then you can fix this problem pretty easily.

If, of course you’re self-published and thus have the luxury of controlling how your book is shelved.

The entirety of The Assassin‘s bad reviews, across continents, all shared one major theme: it wasn’t (initially) shelved in romance and people thought it should be.  They wanted a Hitman franchise-esque installment only with even less sex.  With hard-boiled white men and loving, paragraphs long descriptions of weddings.  Instead, there was…romance.  Which, admittedly, made up only part of the story.  There was (is) also gruesome violence.  And descriptions of new, exciting, and faraway places.  But, as I’ve discussed before, romance is de facto exclusionary.  Once a book contains it, it has to be shelved as romance.  Even if it, primarily, isn’t.  Which is why there are so many sub-categories to the genre: everything from science fiction romance to swords and armor romance to steampunk romance to biker gang romance.

Giving people the opportunity to avoid strong female characters (as opposed to props in tit armor), internal dialogue, and sex means avoiding some of these negative reviews.  Of course, negative reviews will still happen but you’re a lot better off if they’ve got something to do with the actual book.  “There was sex in this and I didn’t want to read a story with sex in it” isn’t the most useful use of one star and it certainly doesn’t help sell your book to others.  Whereas some negative reviews, believe it or not, actually do.

Even so, enough bad reviews can torpedo a book’s chances.  And then the question becomes, what to do now?  As I’m currently dealing with this issue re: two books, The Assassin and The Price of Desire, I’ll have to let you know.  But there’s an Iroquois saying, the two most powerful warriors are patience and time.  Some books take a long time to find their audience.  Some books never do.  And that, I think, for a writer, has to be okay.

Not every book is going to garner equal commercial success, but for many of us that’s not even the point.  The hurt of rejection can feel almost like somebody telling you your baby is ugly.  You want people to see what you see, to feel what you feel, more than you necessarily want their money (or anyone’s).  Because, even if some of us are lucky to eventually make a living doing this, the average writer–regardless of how they’re published–doesn’t and that’s not why we chose a career in the arts to begin with.

Thoughts?

Mail Bag #6: Where’s India?

In an Amazon review, a reader writes: “…[b]ut the reason for my three star is because the author spent a lot of time telling us unneeded information, which made the book drawn out and boring.  Such as history of certain countries and their people, not even relevant to the story.  I didn’t even know where these countries nor did I care.  Also on how wine and clay were made?  Come on, nothing to do again with story. A lot of unnecessary information [sic] could have been left out and this book would have been just one full novel.  I don’t know if author was trying to show how intelligent she was by knowing this information or trying to stretch book length out into three books so books would be a series with cliffhangers and readers would have to buy all three.  I just didn’t care for the needless, boring extra information.”

India, as envisioned by some Amazon customers.

As this review for The Prince’s Slave (the second installment, Bound in His Bed, before it was released as an omnibus) sort of raises some questions–like whether I have something to prove in the intelligence department–we’re going to answer them.  Because, in life, it’s best not to take yourself too seriously.  And also, I have a (constructive) response!  For both writers and readers, I hope this is interesting.

First, regarding unneeded information: several of the reviews, including this one, which mentioned “unneeded information” also talked about how real the characters felt to them.  How invested they were in the relationship.  This reaction?  These feelings?  Are due to that unneeded information.  All the descriptions of washboard abs and bulging…wallets in the world don’t a real character make.  Some writers use crutches, like fancy cars and bank accounts, to make their character seem more interesting.  Which is great…if what you want to lust after is an Audi A8.  I wanted readers to love, or hate, Ash regardless of his life circumstance.

Ash is a spoiled brat; Belle is a feminist.  And yes, Ash is from India.  Which isn’t, in fact a country (although it also is that) but a subcontinent replete with many different cultures.  Ash is from Gujarat; Gujarat isn’t a country, although it very well could be for its independent economy and rich traditions (and excellent food), but a state in India.  The Jewel of the West, as it’s sometimes called.  West of India, that is.  That Ash is an Indian expat is, to me, absolutely relevant to the story because so much of his issues arise directly from his childhood.  From being the child of parents who still mourn the loss of the Raj.  Who are completely out of touch.  He doesn’t fit in at home and he doesn’t fit in anywhere else.  He doesn’t fit in anywhere, nor truly connect with anyone, which is why he ends up alone, Beast-style, in a castle in the middle of nowhere.

And, on that note, I don’t know that I’m trying to show how intelligent I am by talking about a country other than America.  Not everyone is from America; not everyone’s life experience is relevant to that of the average American reader.  Some of us have more to say about Gujarat than Alabama; everyone’s life experience is different.

Likewise, Belle cares about things like making clay (also known as fine art pottery), because she’s not just a foil for Ash.  She’s her own person, and she needs more than a man in her life–however handsome and wealthy–to feel complete.  She has her own ambitions, her own needs and wants and desires.  She cares about art, because she’s an artist.  And we see how much Ash loves her, because, however inconvenient it might be for him, he supports her art.  He supports who she really is, inside.  True love is not all about what happens in the bedroom; and what happens in the bedroom matters a lot more when people know who they are outside of it.

So really, whether you consider the fact of the characters being, you know, characters a dump of needless information depends on what kind of book you want.  As an author, I just can’t help it: I write books with plots.  Sex scene after sex scene is just repetitive and boring, to me.  I need to care.  And about more than whether everyone orgasms.  Now as to the larger issue of my characters–in this book and others–being, in fact, not from Alabama (and not even white!), well, some folks are into that and some aren’t.  I’ve gotten a number of one star reviews, on this and on The Price of Desire, essentially because some readers were horrified by so much multiculturalism.  Kisten, too, is from his world’s analog to India (although some readers, there, confused India with the Middle East).

Should I Release More Chapters of The Black Prince?

So far, I’ve done a couple of contest-type things, and asked this question on Facebook, but there hasn’t been much response.  To either.  So I’m asking here: should I release more chapters?  What, in terms of questions raised by the series thus far, are you most anxious to learn?

Meeting my daily word goal, incidentally, has been a challenge while my son has been out for the summer.  We’ve spent lots of time at the park, and in the water, and visiting animals at our various local farms.  My writing time has pretty much been relegated to early mornings and late nights.  Although that’s about to change as–sob–my baby is starting preschool on Monday.  How time flies.

Book Not Selling? It Might Be Your Cover

I’ve written before about packaging your book for success and how sometimes, if your book isn’t selling, it might be your blurb.  Or indeed it might be your categories, or keywords.  How people find your book has as much to do with your success as anything, because their methods are illustrative of their expectations.  In other words, someone who’s looking for a Highlander romance is going to type in “Highlander romance.”  Not, necessarily, Dulnain Bridge, although that might be a lovely spot and, indeed, the setting of your book.  Packaging–from blurb to categories to keywords to cover–is all about demystifying the matching process, of book to person who wants book.

Which all sounds exceedingly obvious, until you make your first mistake.

There are certain elements of storytelling that, to the average reader, do not belong in certain genres.  And this is where you, the author, are going to have to face the fact that your conception of your own book is going to be, for many potential readers, wrong.  And accept that.  Because once it’s published, that story is no longer about you.  One of my husband’s professors, in college, used to love (and in my opinion overuse) the phrase, “trust the tale, not the teller.”  But he had (and has, I presume) a point: which is that effective storytelling is about connecting, on a personal level, with your audience.  They aren’t reading about you; they aren’t connecting with you.  Your story is what matters and your story is successful to the extent that it helps them access something within themselves.  Which is why someone who buys a book expecting hard science fiction is going to be so upset when he, instead, finds romance.

It’s not about whether the book is good.  That someone isn’t attracted to your kind of book isn’t a comment on its value, any more than someone of an incompatible sexual orientation not being attracted to you is a comment on your value as a person.  Trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole–literally or metaphorically–is a waste of time and energy.

I, personally, don’t see mutual exclusivity between science fiction and romance.  To me, most if not all of the best books have romantic themes.  But, as it turned out, the vast majority of my readers disagreed.  And so The Price of Desire was re-shelved.  But then came the problem that, even though the blurb very clearly stated that the events in this book centered on, and were told through the lens of, a relationship between two people, the cover said Alastair Reynolds and not M.M. Kaye.  Do people even read blurbs?  Sometimes I wonder.  I mean, they notice if it’s a really bad blurb but, at the same time, they also really do just books by their covers.  How people read blurbs is, largely, determined by what they think of the cover.  Which meant that, in the case of The Price of Desire, too much of a hard science fiction-type cover made a lot of readers dismiss the relationship between Kisten and Aria as probably irrelevant to the story.

You have to decide whether you want to sit around hoping for the next breakthrough novel or whether you want to sell a book.  And keep in mind, breakthroughs only tend to happen after the novel has been successful in its own genre.  And by “own genre” I mean where the balance of readers expect to find it shelved.  Harry Potter didn’t start out as adult reading material.

Romance, in and of itself, is an exclusionary category.  It can’t be “science fiction with a strong romantic bent,” it has to be romance shelved into the sub-category of science fiction romance.  It can’t be an historical novel; it can’t be fantasy.  It has to, first and foremost, be romance.  One of the reasons for which, I personally believe, being that romance as a genre tends to be heavy on the female leads.  Quarantining anything woman-forward as “romance” allows the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies-type readers to avoid sullying themselves with a book written from an unwanted perspective.

So once you’ve sorted all that out, you might have to face the fact that your original cover is no longer appropriate.  Because it appeals, not to your target audience but to, as happened with The Prince’s Slave, a group of readers who want less women and brown people and aren’t afraid to say so in Amazon reviews.

Which is how we went from this:

To this:

It’s not that one is better than the other, it’s that one aligns better with the expectations of my intended audience.  Browse through romance novels–in all sub-genres–and you’ll see that one common theme is abs.  Abs, abs, and more abs.  And, on occasion, a girl admiring those abs.

I was a little resistant to the idea at first, because this isn’t erotica.  I’ve only written one book that is (The Prince’s Slave).  But most books shelved in this category aren’t–the defining characteristic of a romance seems to be that it’s a story, which contains a woman as more than either a one dimensional She-Ra clone or window dressing–and they still have abs.  Abs, somehow, signaling that this is a book with feelings.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Tell me your thoughts in the comments.

Does Size Matter?

Never is beauty more than skin deep than when you’re writing a book.  As a writer, it’s your job to craft a character that will produce a certain emotional and intellectual response.  You want your readers rooting for the hero to win (including, as is often the case in my books, when the hero is the villain), for the hero to get the girl, et cetera.  And to do that, you have to think a lot about what makes people attractive–or not.

Simply describing them isn’t enough.  Washboard abs or a piercing stare don’t convey who they are and, beyond a fleeting moment, don’t activate that sense of desire.  No, to fall in love with a hero, you have to know how he makes the heroine feel.  Who he truly is.  What makes someone beautiful, on the page, is, in short, all the things that normative conventions of beauty overlook.

Because if you think about it, people picture Tristan, or Ash, or Kisten, for example, lots of different ways.  And, indeed, many of my readers have very strong opinions on this topic.  I have gotten hate mail, because I suggested that a certain actor would be perfect for a character in the fantasy HBO production I have in my mind, and I was wrong.  Wrong.  That character was real to them, and unbearably alluring to them, and someone they wished would come ravish them in real life and that all had nothing to do with the physical description I gave.  Indeed, I’ve learned over time that how I describe my characters in purely physical terms is largely irrelevant to most readers.

That beauty is an issue of personality, and character, is a truth you never see more clearly than in a book.

 

Which is why you should never let anyone make you feel bad about your appearance.  It’s not that it doesn’t matter; being healthy is important and acts of self care like showering regularly are important, too, not to please other people but because these are affirmations of self love.  We should all seek to treat our bodies as the divine vessels they are.

Conventional attitudes toward beauty, however, represent the opposite of self love in that they call for acceptance from others rather than acceptance from ourselves.  I’m fond of the truism never take advice from anybody you don’t want to be more like and yet this is what the beauty industry tells us we should do: listen to bullies who make us feel like shit about ourselves because somehow, they know what’s best for us.  Once it becomes about staring into the mirror, counting all the ways in which you don’t look enough like Kate Upton (who, trust me, is probably also being told that she doesn’t look enough like Kate Upton), you’re no longer on a quest for true beauty but for conformity.

So the next time you feel ugly–and if you’re anything like me, that’s several times a day, because, trust me, as I write this I’m also taking my own advice–think about the characters you love the most, from all your favorite books.  Think about the people you love, in your life.  And ask yourself: what makes them beautiful?

The same things that make them beautiful to you make you beautiful to them.

Who Would Play Kisten?

This is a game I think all authors play.

And this is my pick:

Because really, the attitude, the expression…that picture could be Kisten.

Kisten isn’t, in many ways, a typical hero.  Is he an antihero?  Perhaps.  But more than either of those things, to me, he’s an extremely flawed and complex human being.  His personal history, which is revealed more fully in A Dictionary of Fools, sheds some light onto what transformed him into the man he became.  For both good and for ill.  He’s intelligent, and he has a good sense of humor–he really has to have, to have survived his life to this point–and he’s misunderstood.  Even, at times, by his own wife.

The Black Prince Update 4

As I’ve mentioned before, the final volume is going to be split into two separate full length books.  Both of which will be, I’ve also decided, released together.  Which means that the entire third and final installment of the trilogy, in all its glory, is going to be a manuscript of approximately 300K words.  Of which I, at the moment, have written a little over 1/6.

The good news is that I’ve only recently started working full time on the trilogy again, and have good reason to believe I might be closer to half finished by Halloween.  So if all the stars align, we might end up with our original release date of Valentine’s Day plus one year.  The worst case scenario, on the other hand, would be summer of 2016.  It all depends on how fast I can write and, indeed, what my characters decide to do.

Thoughts?