Archived- Promotional Q&A's: Q&A with Delancey Stewart - CLOSED

[Selena]

Hi Delancey!
I'm wondering what your writing process is? How do you come up with ideas and then how do you get from idea to book? :)

[Delancey]

Selena wrote: "Hi Delancey!
I'm wondering what your writing process is? How do you come up with ideas and then how do you get from idea to book? :)"

Hey Selena! Thanks for the question... For this series, I knew that I wanted to write a contemporary romance -- with a happily ever after... and I knew that I wanted to incorporate my love of wine. I use the "save the cat" process - an author named Jamie Gold actually posted a great excel worksheet for plotting romance that I used for this and am using for the next book in the series.

I actually just wrote a blog post about my process - you can find it here: http://delanceystewart.wordpress.com/...

I used to think I was a planner, but once I get the main story elements plotted, I become a pantser. I'm writing the second in the series now and I'm actually surprised at how many subplots and secondary characters are coming out of the woodwork!

My goal is to write a pretty clean first draft because revision is not my thing. I write a couple scenes each morning (I write from 5-6am on weekdays) and then read them over that night and edit. By the time the first draft is done, it's mostly free of errors -- then it comes down to bigger picture issues. Since I edit as I go, things end up looking pretty good. I think of it as kind of a cascading process because I'll write a scene, then re-read and write another, editing both along the way. The next time I write, I might not read that first scene again, but will go back through the second, etc... everything ends up getting several looks before I'm done.

Hope that isn't too rambling... it's getting late!

[[deleted user]]

Hey Delancey!

Like me you've lived all over. How do you think that impacts your writing? Do you tend to set your books in places you've lived? Which do you like better--west coast or east coast (and don't even pretend not to have an opinion! ;))

[Melanie]

Hey Delancey! I'm wondering about your Men and Martinis series. Sounds delightful! What can you tell me about it? :)

[Alison]

Hey Delancey,
What has been your most effective marketing tool?
Thanks, Alison

[Delancey]

JL wrote: "Hey Delancey!

Like me you've lived all over. How do you think that impacts your writing? Do you tend to set your books in places you've lived? Which do you like better--west coast or east coast..."

Howdy JL!

Thanks for the question! I have lived in lots of places... and one of them has stuck with me more than any other. So a lot of what I have written so far has been set in New York City. I don't know why living in NYC made such a remarkable imprint on my life, but I'm going to guess that it was the time that I lived there -- both the time in my life and the time in our history. I only spent 4 years there, but it was in the late 90s through 2001. I was a part of the dot-com boom and the city was crazy and alive and completely open to people my age (I was in my mid-twenties at the time, but most of my friends were 23-28). It was like the whole place had gone crazy, and we were all being handed jobs and titles and responsibilities that made us believe that we actually owned the place. And then, not much later, the economy started to fall apart and soon after that, the World Trade Center came down.

Being in the city during those particular years definitely influenced my first publication, which was a collection of short stories all set in one upper west side brownstone through a century. That is a reflection on all the events that transpired over those hundred years through the eyes of regular people (like me)...

The city is also the setting for my upcoming NA series with Swoon Romance -- Girlfriends of Gotham. In fact, that series is set in the late 90s, so in some ways it's a bit autobiographical.

The Wine Country Romances also reflect my experiences geographically, I guess... though I have never lived in Paso Robles, where A Rare Vintage is set, I grew up in Fresno which is not very far from there... and the second will be in Portland and the Yamhill District -- places I've visited.

I think I'd find it very hard to write a book set somewhere that I've never been. I'm curious how authors do that convincingly!

[Delancey]

JL wrote: "Hey Delancey!

Like me you've lived all over. How do you think that impacts your writing? Do you tend to set your books in places you've lived? Which do you like better--west coast or east coast..."

Hi Melanie!

Thanks for the question!

I'm so excited about Men and Martinis (the first book in the Girlfriends of Gotham) that I can barely see straight. That's due to a few factors. For one thing, as mentioned above, it's set in NYC during the years that I actually lived there, and a lot of the experiences that I had are mirrored by things that the "Girlfriends" go through in the books.

Men and Martinis is a story of friends finding one another soon after leaving college and figuring out how to take on the responsibilities that come with big jobs in a crazy economy and with the first "real" romantic relationships they've ever had. The first book explores the depths of friendship and explores the idea of what happens when everything that we believe about the way our lives will be turns out to be not quite correct.

Of course that's all set against the backdrop of Manhattan at a time when there were these raging "Internet Parties" -- parties that companies threw to get their names known where the alcohol was free and the companies did everything they could to top one another in terms of fabulousness... so there's plenty of fun and craziness in there, too. Oh, and there's some sex. The book is, at heart, a romance. It's about finding out who you are and finding someone to love...

Feel free to ask more specific questions about it if you like -- I just don't want to give anything away, and it's still in developmental edit with the publisher, so some things may end up being a surprise even to me!

Men and Martinis is targeted to publish in November...

[Delancey]

Alison wrote: "Hey Delancey,
What has been your most effective marketing tool?
Thanks, Alison"

Hi Alison!

I think I'm still figuring out the answer to this one! I haven't published a lot (yet), so my experience is limited. And I'm in the midst of the self-published versus traditional published question, since the Wine Country Romances (and Through a Dusty Window) are self-published, and the Girlfriends of Gotham Series is being published by Swoon Romance.

So far, from the self-pubbing side, the KDP promos on Amazon have been helpful in generating interest, if not sales. The same is true of the giveaways here on Goodreads (though I really wish you could give away ebooks...)

I blog and tweet and am part of lots of Facebook groups... and I think the biggest help is the support of my family and friends. I was a little hesitant to mention to them that I'd written a romance -- with sex and everything -- but then I realized that those who are legally bound to love me have the greatest potential for helping me get the word out. So with this book I have been much more open than I was with the first, and the sales right out of the gate were better as a result.

I do a lot of reading about marketing, and am trying pretty much everything available to newbie writers on a budget. So I guess the best answer I can give at the moment is... I'll let you know!

[Alison]

Delancey wrote: "Alison wrote: "Hey Delancey,
What has been your most effective marketing tool?
Thanks, Alison"

Hi Alison!

I think I'm still figuring out the answer to this one! I haven't published a lot (yet), s..."

Thanks for the answer. It was great. Congrats on being published by Swoon worthy. Did you submit your work to them or did they find you?

[Delancey]

Alison wrote: "Delancey wrote: "Alison wrote: "Hey Delancey,
What has been your most effective marketing tool?
Thanks, Alison"

Hi Alison!

I think I'm still figuring out the answer to this one! I haven't publish..."

Alison:

I submitted to them directly... you can find them at www.myswoonromance.com

They accept pitches usually through their facebook page. (and for the record -- since they'd want me to -- I should let you know that the imprint is called Swoon Romance (though all their books are certainly swoonworthy!))

[Alison]

Lol. I just noticed I put Swoon worthy after I clicked send.

This may have already been asked, but when you write to you do it in sequence or do you skip around & write out of sequence?

[Delancey]

Alison wrote: "Lol. I just noticed I put Swoon worthy after I clicked send.

This may have already been asked, but when you write to you do it in sequence or do you skip around & write out of sequence?"

I was just thinking about that... I know some people write scenes out of order and I've read about authors writing the ending first... I feel like I get to know my characters as my readers do, learning more about them with each interaction. So I write in order - I don't think I know them well enough to write the ending until I've seen how they react to everything else I throw at them through the course of the book!

What about you? I'm curious how people CAN write out of order!

Sometimes I go back in and fill stuff in if it needs more fleshing out, but I mostly go from start to finish...

[Alison]

I started with knowing I wanted my female character to be a certain way, personality wise and physically.Then I had a few scenes in my head that took place at various points in the story and wrote them down. All this before writing chapter one. I know what you mean about getting to know your characters. My first draft mainly focused on getting from point A to B. As I went back each time to work on chapters I understood the characters and was able to flesh them out a lot. This actually caused me to change what I thought was the ending. I never wrote the ending down until I actually got to that point in the book. Music also plays a huge part in my process.
Do you get multiple ideas for other books while working on a book? I see other authors say they have other ideas for books while working on the current one.

[Michelle]

Hey Delancey! Do you read the reviews? If so, does it change your writing in future books?

[Michelle]

Hey Delancey! Do you read the reviews? If so, does it change your writing in future books?

[Delancey]

Michelle wrote: "Hey Delancey! Do you read the reviews? If so, does it change your writing in future books?"

Hey Michelle! Thanks for joining in!

I think any writer that says they don't read reviews of their work are probably lying. if you think about it, writing a book is basically taking a part of your psyche, ripping it out and putting on a serving platter before a crowd of people you don't know and saying, "please love me." It's hard. And even though it's masochistic, you want to read the bad reviews as much as the good...

So yeah, I read reviews. I've been lucky so far and haven't had any that have really shook my belief in myself... but I know that one is probably coming. Reading and writing is a subjective effort. There are bound to be people who don't like or get what I'm doing. And they're not wrong. They're just wrong for me and my work.

So I'd never let a review influence my direction for future work. Unless that reviewer said, "hey, I really need to know what happened to "so and so'" and if I got the same input a lot.. .then I might think about writing more about "so and so"... make sense?