Meredith Bond's Blog, page 20

Inspiring Blog

It’s the strangest thing to get an email from someone you don’t know and have never heard of telling you that your blog inspires them. That happened to me – honestly! Meredith Towbin, wrote to me a few weeks ago telling me how much she’s enjoyed reading my blog and that she’s found it inspiring. I was dumbfounded. Or is that astounded? Stupified? Would you believe overjoyed? Well, I do work hard to try to make my blog informative and fun. Maybe it’s working!

There are, naturally, rules for being named as an inspiration blog. Here they are:

1. Display the award logo on your blog. ==>

2. Link back to the person who nominated you. http://www.meredithtowbin.com/

3. State 7 things about yourself.

I’ve got two children– but you knew that. I’ve shown their picture on this blog — well, sort of.
My husband is Indian, as in from India. Kolkata to be exact.
I learned to speak Bengali (my husband’s native language) so that I could raise my children bilingual (and honestly, it’s not a difficult language to learn), and I now speak it fluently even though my son likes to correct my pronunciation.
When my family and I arrived in Kolkata for my wedding, my husband and his brother picked everyone up at the airport and left me behind with a cart filled with luggage (it was an accident, there were 15 of us in two cars, but I’m still never going to let them forget it).
I have a master’s degree in secondary education from the University of Pennsylvania.
I can’t decide which I like better teaching or writing, writing or teaching. I love them both!
I write male characters much more easily than female. Don’t know why – maybe because I grew up with brothers?

4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award and link to them. Here you go:

http://www.rubyslipperedsisterhood.com/

http://rhondahopkins.com/blog/

http://www.staceyjoynetzel.blogspot.com/

http://www.gramico.com/blog/

http://catierhodes.com/

http://waterworldmermaids.com/

http://passionateperseverance.blogspot.com/

http://debradunbar.com/

http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/

http://danadelamar.blogspot.com/

http://www.nataliegowens.com/search

5. Notify those bloggers of their nomination and the award’s requirements. Done did.

A huge thank you to Meredith (lovely name, by the way), and kudos to you all who I have found to be inspirational — really amazing blogs, please check them out!

Making Connections

Making Connections.  It’s a vital life skill. It’s something nearly all of us enjoy doing in some form or other – even the most introverted of us, and writers are generally a pretty introverted group, which makes making connections even more difficult. And yet, it is through connections that we sell our books – especially if we’re self-published (as I am), and get reviews. So, what better way to make connections than through the Goodreads group “Making Connections”?

I’ve been a member of the group for over six months now. I’m not the best, most active member, but when I stop by I always have fun. I learn about what other authors are writing and I can find reviewers for my books which is something so vitally important in today’s publishing market. I’ve even found a number of really fun new books to read – since I am a reader as well as an author.

Making connections is also what I write about – romance! Making the vital connection to one person who you are willing to commit the rest of your life to is at the core of every romance novel, is it not? Tatiana, the heroine of my new novella, Storm on the Horizon (out today!!) has no trouble making connections, it’s the fact that she’s not supposed to be doing so while on her visit to London that’s the problem. She’s only supposed to be there to help launch her sister on to the marriage mart (this being the Regency when parents introduced their daughters to society specifically for the purpose of finding a husband), not finding one of her own. And yet, when she meets Christopher Vallentyn, there’s that connection. That click that we all hope for in our lives, when we know that the person we’ve just met is the right one, the one person we want to marry. If only life were so easy! Tatiana has a great destiny laid out for her, so great that her parents have told her that she isn’t allowed to choose her own husband, she has to wait for them to choose him for her. But then what is she to do when she can’t stop thinking about Mr. Vallentyn? She knows it’s wrong, that she shouldn’t continue seeing him, enjoying his company, wanting to be with him – but she just can’t stop herself. It’s a problem, making a connection.

Find out what happens to Tatiana and Kit in my new novella, Storm On The Horizon – a prequel to Magic In The Storm, now available at Amazon (link), Barnes & Noble (link), Smashwords (link), All Romance ebooks (link) and other e-retailers.

Warning!

A $25 gift card to Amazon to one lucky commenter today, along with a free copy of Storm on the Horizon!

Upcoming posts in the Making Connections blog hop:

 15 – N Donna www.donnagalanti.com

16 – O Samantha http://bookloverscozycafe.blogspot.com

17 – P Stephanie Http://stephsbookretreat.wordpress.com

18 – Q Alana http://darkobsessionchronicles.blogsp…

19 – R Cody Kennedy www.CKennedyAuthor.blogspot.com

20 – S SantaFlash http://santaflash.wordpress.com/

21 – T Think Books http://thinksbooks.blogspot.com

22 – U Maghon http://magluvsya03.wordpress.com

23 – V Debbie http://amethysteyesauthor.blogspot.ca/

24 – W Pragya http://reviewingshelf.wordpress.com

25 – X Ellie http://elliewrites2.wordpress.com

26 – Y Terri Bruce http://www.terribruce.net

27 – Z J.A. Beard www.riftwatcher.blogspot.com

28 Tana www.tana-someofmyfavoritebooks.blogsp…

Sheri www.makingconnectionsgroup.blogspot.ca/

Trying not to be judgmental

It’s judging season again. The Ritas and Golden Hearts are out to be judged and the WRW Marlene Contest is as well. I don’t judge the Golden Heart, but I know a number of people who do. I always judge the Ritas, though – somehow they always send me five books I dread picking up and two that I can’t wait to get my hands on. Last year I was happily surprised by two of the books I dreaded. So far this year, I’ve finished four of the books I need to read. Two were just as bad as I feared, one was not a genre I enjoy reading, but it was ok, and the last one, also not a genre I normally read, took me completely by surprise at how good it was. Naturally, I read them in the order from what looks worst to those I can’t wait to get to — it helps me get through the ones I know I won’t like.

But how do you judge these things? I mean, someone thought that these books were publish-worthy, right? Honestly, I can’t see how anyone did with some of them. They’re just awful! The writing is bad, the characters are two dimensional. I read historical novels for pleasure, so I’m always looking for historical accuracy, and am so disappointed when it is abundantly clear that the author did little or no research, or if they did it, they then disregarded it when it came to writing their book (why do people do this?). But honestly, when I’m reading a Rita contender I’m looking for exactly the same thing I look for when I’m reading a Marlene entry (and eight out of ten people who enter the Marlenes are unpublished, new writers).

The first thing I look for is believable characters. It’s the first thing I focus on in my own writing, and when I teach writing. Characters are the number one most important thing in a novel, so that is the first thing I look at when I’m reading and judging a work critically.

Next, I look for flow. How well does the story flow, is the pacing right, is the writing smooth. That is, oddly enough, really important. If a story’s pacing is off or the writing isn’t smooth, it’s really hard for me to become engrossed in a book, and that is the key – I want to lose myself in the story. With bad writing and pacing, I can’t do that. If the writing isn’t smooth, that’s when I look for what’s wrong with it. Is it the dialogue that’s unnatural? Is it the grammar? Word choice? How are those beats – are there too many slowing down what should be a fast paced scene?

I also look at GMC. It’s really important that the characters have a distinct goal (that is clear to me, the reader) and that it’s properly motivated. I need to believe that the conflict is a true conflict and not something that the hero can easily work around with the tiniest bit of effort. It’s important that the GMC is clear and believable, otherwise the entire story will fall flat.

So, do you judge contests? If so, which ones? And what is it that you feel is important to look for? Do you agree with me or do you have other priorities, other things you look for?

Launch

I’m trying out a new concept for me. I learned about this from the fabulous people at WG2E when we were getting ready to publish our horror/paranormal anthology, Tales From The Mist. It’s a soft launch of a new book. Now, I have to admit, I was a little confused about this concept when we first enacted it. To me, it looked like we were just publishing our book earlier than we had planned, and, indeed, it did kind of work out that way because I’m not totally sure we did the thing right. It worked out really well in the end, but I’m now in the process of trying it again with my new novella (short story?) Storm on the Horizon.

I planned, and let it be publicly known that I was publishing the short story (novella – I really can’t decide which to call it, it’s somewhere in between), Storm on the Horizon, which is be a prequel to my Regency-set paranormal romance, Magic In The Storm. I told everyone who would listen that it was coming out on February 14th, Valentine’s Day. You see, it works out perfectly for a Valentine’s Day launch because the hero’s name is Vallentyn – not at all connected with the saint or the day dedicated to romance, but you’ll have to read the book to find out more. J

And then, I did something odd (perhaps) – I actually published the book yesterday. No, I wasn’t lying when I said that the official publication date is February 14th. It’s just that I want and need reviews so that when I hit the publication date and really start hitting hard with the marketing of the book (although, not very hard, it is just a short story, after all), I’ll have some reviews up there already – at least I hope so! I’ve sent out word to a number of people and places (friends and Goodreads groups) that I’m looking for reviews. Obviously, I can’t get reviews if people don’t have a place to post them, so it has to already be published, ergo, it’s a soft launch. It’s out there, but not fully marketed yet.

Now, I’ve got to spend the next two weeks trying to get some places to really market the book. Any suggestions on places that have worked for you?

Social Media for the Socially Awkward

My daughter is sixteen years old. Everything in her life revolves around friends and her social life. She’s worried that she doesn’t have enough friends (she does). She’s worried that people at school think she’s more concerned with academic subjects than fashion and who is dating whom (she is, it’s how her father and I raised her). When she told me about her new classes on the first day of the new semester it was more about who else was in the class than whether the teacher or the coursework would be interesting. Her entire world is social and she feels inadequately prepared to deal with it.

And all I can say to the poor girl is, I feel your pain. I understand. I’m right there with you, kid. Because I am. Not because my entire world revolves around being social and having friends, but because I’m being told every time I turn around that it should be.

My entire world revolves around whether I get my writing or editing done on my books. I’m more concerned with whether I’m prepared to teach the classes I’m committed to teach. And yet, whenever I look on-line at the blogs I follow (and there are quite a number of them from all sorts of sources) I’m told that I need to be out there, socializing on Facebook, Twitter, Triberr, Pinterest, Google+, Goodreads, and goodness only knows where else. Myspace? I think that one’s just for musicians and actors now. Tumbler? I pretty sure that’s for visual artists. I’m certain there are more sites where I should be participating, but do I care? No, honestly, I don’t. My entire life does not revolve around these social media sites despite the fact that I’m told that it should.

I’m a writer. I’m not a social person. I’ve got a few very close friends who I see or interact with on a regular basis. I’ve got my writing buddies at WRW who I’m very happy to socialize with at our monthly meetings. I’ve got my WG2E friends who I interact with on-line. And I’ve got my former students who follow me and interact with me at my Chapter One Facebook page. Do I need more than that? It’s already quite a lot in my opinion.

I do my best to stay active on Facebook (I’ve got my author page where I try to post something every few days) and I post all of my friends’ tweets on twitter (almost never do I post anything about my own work). I read a post here and there on Goodreads and G+ and I’m a member of a couple of tribes on Triberr (not that I ever check them, but I know I should). Pinterest I’ve avoided like the plaque because I’ve heard that it’s a time vampire (sucks all the time right out of your life, right?).

Is it enough? Am I out there as I should be? Probably not. I should probably do even more – if all the bloggers are to be believed. But I just don’t have it in me. Just like my poor, sweet sixteen-year-old who just can’t quite get the right mix of nerdiness and likeability down in order to have enough friends to not be considered odd. Poor kid. She’s just like her mother, I suppose.

So, how many social media platforms are you active on? And how do you do it and get all of your work done?

Class on-line

Have you ever taken an on-line class? I have. A number of them. In fact, I’ve taken an on-line class about how to give on-line classes. Some classes I’ve taken have been terrific (Angela James’ critiquing class), some have been horrible – that one about on-line classes was particularly useless.

Now I find myself in the funny position of being about to offer a class myself. For two weeks beginning on the 25th of February – yes, it seems like a long time from now, but honestly, it’s going to be here in the blink of an eye – I’m going to be teaching my Chapter One class on-line at Savvyauthors.com, and I can tell you, just from my very beginning attempts to prepare for this class, it’s going to be a doozy!

I’ve been teaching Chapter One at my local community college for six years. Six years! You’d think I’d know the material backwards and forwards by now. Actually, I do, but never have I tried to convey it in this format. I’ve written my lectures up for my own reading and referring to as I teach my in-class course, and I’ve written them up in the form of a book for students (and others) to read and use, but teaching by email is going to be a whole new ballgame.

I can’t just use what I wrote for my book. First of all, I’ve added material to the class since I wrote it (I’m always working on my own craft and incorporating what I learn into my courses); and secondly if my students wanted the book, they could just buy the book. They don’t need me to post it on a chat loop. They deserve more than that.

So here I am, rewriting my lectures into email form and trying to make them interesting and informative at the same time. Trying to translate what I do in class, which incorporates real-time discussion, into an email format and yet not overwhelm the students with too much information. I’ve got to think of new examples where I give examples, and I’ve got to limit the amount of reading I normally give my students (which they do in class, and then discuss immediately after reading– obviously something which can’t be done in an email). In essence, I’ve got to totally recreate my course, and you know what? It’s really, really hard to do that. I find myself avoiding doing this! Can you believe – I’d rather edit my writing than try to write these lectures! Yes! It’s horrible, and I don’t have enough time before this course starts to be procrastinating like this.

So what am I to do? Well, I know I’ve just got to buckle down and just do this. And I’ve got to do it as well as I can. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use what I write to make my in-class lectures better, more organized. Or I could revise my textbook with bits and pieces from the lectures (although, I do hope I’ll be teaching on-line again, so I may not want to do that… we’ll see how it goes this first time).  And I’m really worried that a class which normally meets once a week, meeting every day will become overwhelming for the student – information overload as well as no time to do the homework (yes, I’m horrible, I assign homework).

So, tell me, honestly. What was the best thing about the last really good on-line class you took? I need to know how to make this course really good. Help?

Goaling

The Ruby Slipper Sisterhood is holding their third annual Winter Writing Festival. This is the neatest idea I’ve see for while – the idea is that everyone who joins sets daily goals for themselves (write 1000 words, edit 25 pages, plot for 1 hour) then they assign points to whatever they pledge to do. They publicly track their points on the Festival website and can participate in writing sprints where everybody joins a group chat, chats for ten minutes, writes (solo) for twenty, they chats for another ten, then writes for another twenty. The idea is that knowing that there are so many other people writing at the same time as you, and that you’ve got to check back in at the end of the twenty minutes and say how much you wrote, inspires people to be really productive for that amount of time. It sounds fantastic to me! A real kick in the you-know-what! Of courses, there are prizes to be won for participating, and especially for achieving your goals.

There are two things that is great about this Festival: 1) you are setting a firm goal which you need to achieve every day. It can be whatever is possible for you and whatever you need to do. And 2) you’ve got a supportive group watching you, paying attention to how you do. You are forced to do something because there are people watching.

But what happens if you can’t participate in this right now (like me – I’m traveling)? Well, why not have your own mini festival? There’s no reason why you can’t. I’m thinking of doing this. I’ll set daily goals for myself. If I make the goals every day for a month, I’ll go out for a favorite cheap meal (a hamburger and fries from Five Guys, which I never allow myself ^_^) . If I succeed in achieving my daily goal for two months, I get $25 to spend at Amazon. If I’m brave, I’ll even make this public on facebook, checking in every day to let my friends and followers know how I’m doing, whether I make my daily goal or not.

So what do you think? Is this something you could or would do? Would you join me, or the Ruby Slipper Sisterhood?

On the importance of creating Great Characters

How important are the characters we create in our novels? I’ve spoken about creating characters here before—tips on how to create well-rounded characters – but I don’t think I wrote about why it is so important to have real-to-life, likeable characters who develop through your book. Yes, you have to like, even love, the characters you create because you, the author, are going to be spending a great deal of time with these people. You are going to, hopefully, embody the main one(s), thinking and writing from their point of view, experiencing the story from within their head. But, I think it should be pretty obvious that your readers must also love your characters, or else they won’t care enough to read your book.

Great characters do another thing, something which I recently experienced with a book I was reading for my own pleasure: they allow readers to forgive. All right, they allow this sometimes critical reader to forgive.

Head-hoping is a pet peeve of mine. I pay extraordinary attention to POV because I like to live inside of a character’s head for a good length of time while I’m reading. If an author switches POV too often, I don’t get to appreciate how the POV character and other non-POV characters react to what is happening, nor how they interpret the scene differently.  The thing is, we’re all stuck in our own heads. Reading allows me to inhabit another head for a while, but not if an author keeps changing POV characters on me, as the author of this book I was reading did whenever things got exciting. She would stay in one POV while things were calm, switching between the two main characters (hero and heroine), but when things got exciting and both characters were there, she would switch POV – often – sometimes paragraph to paragraph.  It was really annoying and didn’t allow me to dwell and understand how the POV character was reacting to the action.

Why did I put up with this? Why wasn’t this a wall-banger for me?

Because I cared about the characters.

I was interested in how they were going to work things out (both the external and internal plot lines).

Did the author do a fantastic job of creating dynamic, interesting characters? No. She didn’t. The hero grows in fits and spurts and never quite gets to where I wanted him to go. The heroine, the same only at a slower pace. But still, they were interesting characters and they did grow, so I was hooked. Overall, I enjoyed the book, almost entirely because of the characters.

As with most new authors I discover, after I was finished reading this book, I went searching for other books by this author. I didn’t buy any though. Why not? Because the reviews were all about how awful the characters were. In the next book in the series, the heroine is TSTL (too stupid to live) according to a couple of reviewers. In the one following that, the hero is rude, nasty and downright mean to the heroine, or just plain distasteful to many of the reviewers. Why would I want to read books like that? I don’t.

I’m sorry to hear that the author wasn’t able to capture the same magic with her characters in later books, but I won’t waste my time reading badly done characters who I won’t like. When it comes down to it, it is the characters which determine whether I like a book and whether I can forgive an author other writing faults. That’s how important characters are.

So, are there any books where you kept reading because you cared so much about the characters that you could forgive other problems with the book?

Resolutions

Many people make resolutions for the new year. It’s a time honored tradition dating back to Babylonian times when people would make an effort to pay their debts and return borrowed objects at the turn of the new year (according to Wikapedia). The Romans would start the year by making promises to the god Janus (as in January), and Jews are supposed to make amends for any hurt caused (intentional or unintentional) during the previous year at the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah).

Personally, I always thought it was a little silly. So many people promise to exercise more (lasts two weeks, if that) and eat better (see exercise) and frequently, to lose weight (again, see exercise). But I’ve been thinking about New Year’s resolutions this year and thinking that if I actually want to make a good-hearted resolution to improve myself… well, I’ve done a pretty good job this past year of losing weight (yes!) without a new year having to roll around to do so, and my husband keeps me going to the gym just about every day. No, what I resolve to do in the next year is to work as hard as ever, if not harder, to improve my writing craft and writing speed.

I am always trying to improve my craft, it is true. I am a professional writer, after all. But I can do more to study and work harder at it. It’s one of the reasons why I love to teach writing – it forces me to look at my own writing and how I do it, and there is always room for improvement.

Even more importantly (if that’s possible) is the speed at which I finish my writing. Actually, it’s not how fast I write once I get started, it’s the getting started part that I have problems with. I spend way too much time on email, social media, marketing and general fooling around to get to the actual writing part of my work. I’ve got to stop doing that. I need a timer. I need something to scream at me “Get writing!!” every day at a certain time, so that I’ll stop my fooling around (which I get away with because I call it “work”) and actually get to my writing. If I do that, I’ve got a pretty good shot at getting accomplished the goals I’ve set for myself for the next year – to finish writing the third book of my Children of Avalon series and publish the series. I’d also like to get another book written next year, but right now, I’m just focusing on the trilogy. It’s been way too long that I’ve been working on it and I’ve got to get it done.

So, what about you? Do you have any New Year’s resolutions that you’ve made? What about writing goals? Please share, and then maybe we can try reminding each other of these goals through the year and maybe, just maybe, be able to look back at this time next year with a sense of satisfaction knowing that we’ve achieved what we set out to do.

Looking ahead by looking behind

A typical blog topic for this time of year is to predict what might happen in the year to come. Personally, I think this a little silly because there is just no possible way that anyone could predict the future — who could have predicted the meteoric rise in ebooks over the past year, or the massive changes in publishing industry as a whole? No one, really. On the other hand, I can look back at what’s been happening, and that in itself might give us some ideas of what might be coming in the year ahead. Shall we try it?

In the past year traditional publishing companies have been doing all that they can to stay relevant in this ever-changing market. It’s a funny line they’ve got to walk. On the one hand, many authors still want that validation of being published by a traditional publisher – it is outside validation, and it does make getting a book out there easier (not having to worry about editing, formatting or designing a cover), giving authors much better distribution than anything an indie-author could do on his own. So, yes, despite the fact that many authors are turning their backs on the traditional publishing industry, a good number of authors do still want to be published that way, even indie-authors. So for that reason, traditional publishers need to keep doing what they’ve always done.  But now they’re not just competing against each other, but against every indie-author as well. So they’ve got to find the best books and publish them in as many different formats as they can. There is no longer a mid-list. Those authors have fled to self-publishing. There is only the best for the traditional publishers. It’s hard and it’s harsh, but it’s reality.

Within self-publishing there are new companies trying to beat Amazon at its own game. Barnes and Noble has been trying for years, Apple ad Smashwords are doing it’s best and now there are a bunch of other companies jumping into the book-selling business or are entering the US market for the first time. Will they succeed? Unfortunately, the answer, I think, is probably not. Nothing can beat Amazon. It’s too big. Too pervasive. Barnes and Noble has been doing an amazing job with their Nook and all of the ebooks and magazines that they’ve got, but they’re just a book store. Amazon is an everything store — it’s like Walmart, only better. You can get everything there, so while you’re there you’ll buy your books and your clothing and your groceries.

The one advantage Barnes and Noble has is that its e-reader reads epub books which can be read on almost any e-reading device (except Kindles). On the other hand, there are still more people buying books in the Kindle (mobi) format than epubs. (I’ve had my books for sale at Kobo since they “opened their doors” in the US, and my sales have been so bad there, I never even check them anymore. No point. Smashwords, All Romance ebooks and the new Best Indie Bookstore are good in that you can get any format of the books for sale there that you want (and that the author has made available). Those are smart e-retailers and I appreciate that (even if I do hate the Smashwords meatgrinder with a passion).)

With regard to what genres are selling – it is everything and anything. There are more genres than ever before — and they’re all selling.  Personally, I love the concept of this new “new adult” genre. It’s kind of like YA only with sex. It’s basically what I’ve been writing my entire career since all of my Regencies have had heroes and heroines who are in their late teens, early twenties. It’s the nature of the genre I write, so, I think my books will fit in very nicely there — and now I get to give my books a new label. Fun!

So, what have I missed – it’s a lot, I know! Tell me what has happened this year that’s really caught your attention. And how do you think it’s going to impact the industry in the year to come. I’d love to hear your ideas!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas (no matter how you celebrate – with a tree, presents and a fantastic Christmas dinner, or Chinese take-out and a movie)!