Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

You have seen the quote on t-shirts and mugs, right? Well, let me tell you my story. I am a writer of magical erotic romances. The majority of my protagonists are contemporary Wiccans or fantasy witches. I have recently gotten published and along with the contracts came some new friends.

The six of us become quick friends during the next two months living in a lake community where we take our kids swimming daily in the summer. Of these new friends, I find that four of their five marriages are at some stage in the divorce process. Now, I don’t know these women’s husbands. One husband I met in a driveway, was introduced to, shook hands with before he went back inside his home. I promise this will be vital information. I go away on vacation, and this particular husband confronts his wife about an affair she has been having with one of his good friends for almost a year. Of course, his next step is to start telling other husbands in the neighborhood that I am a witch. Actually, I am a high priestess! And, I have lured these women into a coven. I have single-handily destroyed their marriages. No, this is not the plot of a novel, yet! And, of course, the math just doesn’t add up. Plus, I have an amazingly happy marriage and have naively asked if any of theirs could be saved. What does add up is that I am new to the group, he doesn’t know my husband like he does the others, and my website gives him the ‘proof’ he needs. Therefore, I am an easy scapegoat.

Okay, now once I calm my husband down about this whole thing and talk these women out of renting witch’s costumes and parading through the streets at night, I find out that this man claims to have looked into my eyes and seen true evil. Funny, being kind-of a shy person, I probably didn’t quite catch his eyes when I shook his hand during the driveway incident I mentioned earlier. Now, luckily anyone who knows this reclusive, quiet writer is laughing at these accusations. Yet, as I sit here just weeks from the release of Celtic Love Knots, Volume 10 with two stories having witch’s as protagonist’s, I have to chuckle evilly to myself. With a bookshelf of Wiccan books as well as a plethora of websites for black magic I have read for research, this man should be thanking his lucky stars that he is not right about me. Interestingly enough, last week I came across a spell to give a man boils. Nonetheless, I respect it all too much to dabble.

I plan on getting even in my own way. I am developing a storyline for a new novel that I will call, “Modern Day Witch Hunt.” If it gets published, would it be tacky to dedicate it to this man? The moral of the story of course, is if you get published stay a recluse! No seriously, what I have learned is you can’t have an imagination in a neighborhood of failing marriages. Huh? I am not quite sure what there is to learn from this. I can only use it for good, and let this man know that I will be including him in my next novel since he has blurred the lines between fantasy and reality already.

I am in the process of moving from my tiny, bookshelf-filled apartment to a real house. When the movers came to take our stuff, they found a couch, a bed, a dresser, a desk, a couple of lamps, six bookshelves and almost 30 boxes of books.

Yeah, they hated us.

As I was packing up the 30 boxes of books, I came up with a sort of filing/boxing system:

* Favorites
* Keepers
* Really nice hardcovers I’m keeping anyway
* Textbooks and other reference books I use a lot
* To Get Rid Of (as soon as I find someone who will take them, because I don’t know if I can bear to throw books away)
* Books I haven’t read yet but fully plan to (there were several boxes of these)
* Books I haven’t yet read and, let’s face it, am not going to

The movers were vastly amused by these categories.

In the last category, I marveled at the numbers. I have ARCS from BEA in 2006 that I haven’t read. These are books that, in many instances, are no longer in print. (I have an ARC for a novel that is about 10 novels back in this author’s back list. Pretty good career she’s got going. I’ve only put out three books in that time.) I never read these ARCs. I’m never going to read them. I’m never going to read any of the books I put in this box. And in a month or two, they will be donated to a library sale or similar, or they will be recycled.

Recycled, having never had their covers even cracked.

I know this is the fate of millions of books per year. Remaindered, coverless, pulped. I’ve heard that often, half a paperback author’s print run is doomed to this fate. If you’re a bestseller, they may even overprint you to create volume in the stores the first few weeks, expecting a higher return rate from their massive print run.

As a lover of books, this always makes me quake. I know that one copy of the book is nothing. If I recycle my copies, the story doesn’t go away. There are hundreds or thousands out there. The author, at least, must have a few copies lying in a box in her basement. But this one never got to fulfill the purpose for which it was made. No one ever curled up with it on a couch. No one ever dogeared the pages or broke the spine. No one dripped tea on page 47, or gripped the pages so hard during the climax that her fingernails left little indents on the margin. No one stamped, “From the library of” inside the first page then lent it to her friend, 80% certain she’d never see it again and would be forced to go out and buy another copy because she couldn’t bear having it not be part of her collection.

Woe, oh woe, to the readerless book.

On the other hand, I only have so much attic space…

I bet if you were to ask authors what’s on the top of their wish lists, the majority would say they want to get that big contract that finally lets them quit their day jobs. Or they want to be number one on all the best-seller lists. Maybe even see one of their books turned into a movie or television series.

I’ll admit all those things are on my author wish list, but they’re not number one. I’m a simple, practical gal at heart, which is why my number one wish is for something a little unusual – bionic wrists.

Yep, you read that right. I want bionic wrists of the na-na-na! kind a la the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman. Why, you ask? Well, with bionic wrists, I could reach my full potential as an author. I could type five or ten or even fifteen thousand words a day without pesky things like carpal tunnel interfering.

Typing thirty thousand words in a weekend? No problem with bionic wrists! Signing hundreds of bookmarks at one time? A piece of cake! Plus, bionic wrists would come in handy should I ever have to judo chop a bad guy into submission or hurl a bomb into the upper atmosphere to keep it from exploding around a bunch of innocent people. Hey, it could happen.

Some might scoff at my dream of bionic wrists. Wish for that big money contract, some folks might say, and then you can buy yourself some bionic wrists. Nonsense, I would reply. Give me the bionic wrists first, and I’ll write so many books so fast that my evil plan of world domination will practically fulfill itself. All Jennifer Estep books, all the time, brought to you courtesy of bionic wrists. Wha-ha-ha!

Of course, bionic wrists aren’t the only thing that I long for. There’s the reader side of me, which has its own wish list. I’d love more books by my favorite authors like Donald Westlake, Robin McKinley, and Ian Fleming (even though he’s no longer with us). A new title every two weeks would be a good place to start.

I also long to find new authors I enjoy as much as my old favorites. I want to discover more and more and more of them, until I have so many great authors and books that I never have another reading slump ever again. I’d also like to clear my mind of all the great books I’ve read, so I could go back and fall in love with them for the first time all over again.

And, of course, I’d have to have bionic eyes that never get tired of reading and allow me to see every single word in high definition.

What about you? What do you wish for as an author or reader? Share in the comments and be creative. You already know what’s at the top of my list. Na-na-na!

I have a child in middle school. When I was coming up, it was junior high school but no matter what it’s called, the mentality of the students is largely the same. Early teen students who are just old enough to think they know something about everything and too young to realize they know little about most things. And the things they do know, they haven’t practiced enough to be really good at them yet.

It’s kind of like that in the middle stages of becoming of a writer. I’ve moved up from elementary school, where everything is new and wonderful, to middle school, where it feels like I know a whole lot about a lot of things but I have yet to do much concrete with all that knowledge.

I remember when I first yielded to the writing itch. I’d always been a reader but somewhere between the first and second child, I’d gotten a slow burn to write that eventually became a steady fire.

When I began to write in earnest, with the hope of publication, there was so much I didn’t know. Years of toiling in a technical profession afforded me the opportunity to go many places, meet many people, and do many things. Yet I still felt an unfulfilled yearning within that writing seemed to satisfy.

I knew at least the basics of writing, or so I thought. I could write a complete thought with subject and predicate. I knew the difference between nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs. I knew my story characters and something called plot, an entertaining series of events involving those characters. I could even write and follow an outline, thanks to that technical experience, developing a point in a cohesive manner and building to a conclusion.

But what did I really know?

I wrote and submitted a few short stories, some of which were accepted for publication. Oh, how I was excited! That early success added fuel to my dreams. I was a writer!

The truth was I knew very little…and I doubted very much.

Because the more I learn, the more I realized I don’t know. When I think about those early stories, I wish I could issue a general recall, like the government does for goods that are not quite right. I also wish I’d been slower to offer advice to writers newer than I. The elementary school students, if you will. I don’t think I steered anyone wrong but I didn’t have a broad enough base of knowledge and experience.

Thankfully, I’ve invested time. I scour blogs for nuggets of craft knowledge. I listen to authors tell their stories for lessons in what—and what not—to do. I take classes and attend workshops. I read. Craft books. Books in the genre I write. Books in other genres.

Still, I realized not long ago that although it feels as though I’ve learned enough about writing and publishing to fill Fort Knox, there’s still so much more to learn. The publishing industry is changing. Readers are changing. Some changes feel a bit glacial, others like moving at warp speed.

I remember when I went off to college. It was then that I felt I’d made a quantum leap forward. Life was finally as much about doing as it was about absorbing new information. From that point on, I had a confidence not previously felt and the opportunities seemed limitless. I couldn’t wait to experience life.

I’m not there yet in my writing but I’m on my way. I look forward to the experience of becoming comfortable in a writer’s skin, of knowing that I can put together a story from start to finish, again and again and again.

To the experience of incorporating all of that craft knowledge into my stories so that it becomes less about theory and more about better writing.

To the experience of submitting and getting feedback, from critique partners, agents, and editors in the form of everything from marked-up manuscripts to Xeroxed rejection letters. (But I’d be okay with skipping over this and going straight to The Call.)

And finally to the experience of getting that call, of entering the next phase of the journey and eventually holding a book in my hand, one with my name on the cover.

I realize the road may not be smooth or straight.

I’m at the point where I’ve learned a lot and incorporated some of it. Time to “just do it”, it being writing to completion and submitting.

And then do it again.

Will I stumble into some of the same pitfalls other authors have blogged about?

Will the time to publication be a year or two or twenty-five?

Hard to say. Got a ways to go before the college stage but I’m already beginning to feel liberated. I’m no longer afraid of the process or worried about what I don’t know. It’s time to show what I can do.

I wonder how I’ll feel when I look back in a few years, about the journey and about the stuff I’m writing now. I wonder what lessons I have yet to learn that I wish I’d known when I wrote this.

I LOVE to cook. Well, let me quantify that. I love to cook, IF it’s quick and easy and delicious. I’m not one of those Julia Child kind of cooks who wants to spend four hours in my kitchen preparing a meal. I’m more the Rachael Ray kind. Maybe because my kitchen isn’t all that big, and just finding the right pan means moving twenty others out of the way in the one cabinet deep enough to hold the pots and pans. Or maybe because I’ve got the full-time writing job, the kids, the husband, the dogs, and the cat keeping me busy, too.

But I do love making easy, yummy meals, ones that take a half hour or hour or less, aren’t super complicated (my whole blog is dedicated to my cooking trials and tribulations and my family’s reactions), and, in my spare time, reading TONS of cooking magazines and finding more recipes. I attack my grocery list like a military operation, making sure I have the right ingredients to make at least three new recipes for the week, and LOVE the summer when the open-air market is open downtown and I can get super-fresh-from-the-farm fruits, veggies and herbs.

Cooking is also therapy for me–writing therapy. When I’m having a bad writing day, I’ll head to the kitchen. Not just for high-carb munchies but to get my mind off the book for a while. I find that taking to the pots and pans, and concentrating on mixing and melding ingredients, takes my mind in new directions. It allows me to fous on something else, and while I’m cooking food, my brain is “cooking” the book in my subconscious. The plot is twisting and turning, the characters are developing, and the story is coming together.

Cooking has also taught me a few other things that I have taken back to my writing. When I first started to cook, I used to be so precise. Following the recipes exactly, measuring right down to the last grain of salt.

But as I grew in confidence, I started experimenting, throwing in the spices by eye and taste (those, FYI, are my Easy Pizza Calzones). Trying cilantro instead of parsley because I wanted to take this dish up a notch, or removing the red pepper flakes because I thought that dish already had enough heat with the cayenne. Substituting pecans for peanuts, because I knew the sweeter nuts would taste better in those cookies.

I’d also make up my own recipes, throwing together whatever I had in the cabinets. Some of my concoctions were wonderful. Some were…not. But with each effort, I learned more about my own skills as a home chef, and about what I could accomplish, given some time and a few ingredients.

My writing has evolved much the same way. In the beginning, I used to follow all the “rules,” and it stressed me out to no end. It also showed in my work–the words were flat, and lacked in personality. But as I grew in ability and confidence, I started trying a little of this, a little of that, breaking those same rules here and there. I threw in my own ingredients, creating my own style, rather than following the prescribed methods of someone else. Some of my early efforts were wonderful. Some were…not.

But after a while, I hit my stride and found exactly what I’d been seeking, and like my cooking, the results became something I could rely upon. I knew what I could do, and how to do it, and with what tools and ingredients. Cooking and writing both have become fun, something I love to do, every day. Throw me some ingredients, or throw me some words, and I’ll create something.

When I’m cooking, my current book is always in the back of my mind, and when I’m writing, my tummy is always there, reminding me that there’s something simmering on the stove. The brain and the stomach–working together, at least in me. Thank goodness the one works well enough to pay the bills for the other because the tummy end really wants a bigger kitchen to start expanding the cooking repertoire.

What about you? Do you like to cook? Any favorite standby meals in your house?

Shirley

The other day I was at wedding reception and talking with the brother of the bride. He’s a Westpoint graduate, currently a Captain in the US army who just returned from a tour in Iraq. He in his short life time has seen so much more of the world, the good, the bad and the ugly than I ever will have seen and his question to me?

“How do you keep writing? Don’t you ever get writer’s block. I don’t know how you do what you do.”
Well, my teeth about fell out. He’d already told me about friends being killed or mutilated, about not always knowing who the enemy was, about fighting for his life and the lives of those he commanded . . . and he genuinely wanted to know how to finish a story. He told about writing papers in class and how he just powered through them. Now, this man is an Army Ranger, too.
I couldn’t believe it, but I told him that I thought he’d be a helluva lot better at writing books than I ever would be as a soldier. (Boy, would our country be in trouble if I were ever asked to take up a rifle and fight!)

Anyway, I guess it just shows that we all do, or try to do, what we do best.

There was a time long, long ago (give or take 30 years) in a far away place (small town Missouri) when summers involved lots of time sitting outside and reading. Summer was all about reading. We only got two TV channels; I lived on a dirt road in the woods–and was too young to drive. So, yeah, I loved my books! (Oh and no air conditioning–so it was outside or die.)

I even ordered them from the publishers via the advertisements printed in the backs. I bought a LOT of Zane Grey novels that way. But I also discovered Alexandre Dumas during the summer, cranked through a number of the “100 books everyone should read” (a handout I got…I don’t know where I got it, but those were important books ), and read my very first Harlequin (about a woman who worked at a diner/truck stop that had an “EATS” sign.).

I loved reading, and summer was made for it.

Then I got older, got a job and then kids. Summer is now not a lot different from say January as far as reading time goes. But I still think of books by the season–and what books I read during the summer.

So, how’d I do this summer?

• Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
• The Taste of Night by Vicki Pettersson
• Gaits of Heaven by Susan Conant

That’s embarrassing, isn’t it. But in my defense–I had to read my own stuff and a few things for other writers. AND I’m working on…

• Grimspace by Ann Aguirre
• Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

AND I might be able to squeeze in at least one, maybe two more books. I have one on audio. That feels a bit like cheating, but I think it counts…

How about you? Do you see summer as prime reading time? Did you discover anyone new this summer? What about books from summers past? Any that really stand out in your mind?

Side note: If you are looking for an excuse to make September a reading month, check out Unleashyourstory.com It’s a read/write-a-thon to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. (Cystic Fibrosis is the number one fatal genetic disease in the United States.) The event is going to be a lot of fun and there will be prizes. I would offer cake, but that’s hard online. So, consider signing up for the warm fuzzies, prizes and reward of reading or writing a lot.

“Why are heroines always feisty, independent and headstrong? Why aren’t any of them shy or reserved?” A reader asked me this question recently and I couldn’t think of a good answer. The feisty heroine would, certainly, make for a more lively read, but would a shy heroine make for a boring read? Not necessarily. I know some shy, reserved people who are wonderfully fun to be around and whose waters run very deep.

The definition of shy is “showing nervousness or timidity in the company of other people.” The definition of reserved is “slow to reveal emotions or opinions.” Makes me wonder if perhaps we have “fantasy” heroines just like we have fantasy heroes. And for many of us, a headstrong heroine will say out loud–in front of God and everybody–things we think, but keep to ourselves. It makes for great conflict and often humor. But so could a reserved heroine, don’t you think?

The challenges with having a shy heroine would be what? Too much internal thoughts? The possibility that she might come off as weak instead of reserved? That she might be upstaged by a more feisty secondary character? That she might look like a doormat when, in fact, she’s a person that thinks first and acts second?

Whatever the reasons, I would venture to guess that taking on a reserved heroine would require a higher level of craft than what I might have in my arsenal. I’m not shy by nature. I didn’t marry a shy man. Don’t have shy kids. Don’t really have a good point of reference. Still, I’m not a murderer either. Yet, I could write one into my novel. Of course, they needn’t be heroic or appealing to the reader.

What do you think? Would you enjoy a book with a shy/reserved heroine? Would you write one?

It’s pretty obvious to me that fairy tales are the stuff that romance readers are made of. My favorite movie when I was little was the Walt Disney version of Cinderella, but I loved the story long before I ever saw the film. Someone — my mother? a family friend? — had bought me a hardcover, illustrated copy of the old Charles Perrault version when I was very small. The cover was pale pink with an iridescent illustration mounted in the center of the front, and the illustrations inside looked like old fashioned paintings, the colors muted and somehow even more magical because they had that nineteenth century feeling to them. The pumpkin that became the gilded coach had winding green vines stretching out to either side, and Cinderella’s ball gown was edged in gold. And of course the prince was handsome, with thick, dark hair and a serene expression — until, of course, his dream girl ran off, and then he looked suitably miserable.

The film held a different appeal. Yes, my little girl heart went pitter patter when Cinderella danced with the prince at the ball, but the guys over at Disney knew that preschoolers had a limited attention span for true love, and so they threw in a lot of other things to keep us entranced. I think it was my favorite Disney film because of those other details more than anything else. The idea of little mice and birds helping you dress in the morning (as opposed to your mother yelling up that breakfast was getting cold while you struggled with your head caught in the hem of your pullover) really appealed to me. The wicked step-mother and step-sisters were wonderfully vivid villains, more real and scary than any witch because they wield very authentic and possible power over Cinderella. And I adored the music — I ran around singing “bibbity bobbity boo” for days on end after I saw the movie, to the point where my mother bought me the record for my birthday.

Now I’m a bit (okay, quite a bit) older, but I still have a soft spot for Cinderella. When my parents packed their house up to move last winter, I made sure my beloved old book was one of the volumes that made it into the box and not into the pile for Goodwill. When the film first came out of the infamous Disney vaults and made an appearance on VHS, my college roommate knew to buy me a copy. And I still feel a bit of a thrill when I see Cinderella wandering around at Disneyland.

But what, exactly, is the lasting magic of this story for me? Yes, I’m a fan of the other fairy tale heroines, both original and Disney versions, but Cinderella remains my number one pick. So I sat down to analyze it, as only someone who spends way too much time thinking about romance stories can do, and I came up with a few reasons:

1. I like Cinderella as a person. This is a girl who works hard with a smile on her face, despite having been turned into a servant in her own home. She’s not stupid — she knows her step-mother and step-sisters treat her badly and that they’re in the wrong, but she sees that being bitter won’t really get her anywhere. The girl’s a smart cookie.

2. She appreciates a windfall. Cinderella may be surprised by her fairy godmother’s appearance, but she knows better than to turn down such a wonderful gift. She’s grateful, and then she makes the most of her opportunity.

3. The danger in this story is real. The step-mother and step-sisters are human, manipulative women with power in their hands. They have Cinderella at their mercy, and there’s not much I find more frightening than a real-to-life threat that a reader can relate to. Witches and vampires are lots of fun, but give me a situation that I could see happening next door, and that’s going to keep me up at night.

4. I also like the prince. This is a boy who knows a good thing when he sees it. I also like that he’s willing to hold out for true love; he won’t marry just any princess, he wants to marry this particular girl. We all want a man who will fight for us. Even if that means fondling every smelly foot in the kingdom to find the one that fits that lost shoe.

5. Which brings me to my last point: How can you not love a story that hangs on a beautiful, custom-made slipper, glass or otherwise? ( I was a shoe lover even as a child.)

Next month I’m going to Disney World with my brother and sister-in-law and my two nieces. The baby is two, and apparently obsessed with Snow White. She wore the costume last year for Halloween, and now watches the DVD repeatedly as often as her parents will let her. She told my mother “high ho” on the phone the other night. My mother mumbled something about seven dirty old men, and how my niece has a lot to learn. I just figured she’s more or less on the right track, and that there’s another romance reader in the making.

“Having courage means being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”
–John Wayne

That about sums up a cowboy, doesn’t it? They’re strong, courageous, and all man.

There are tons of web sites about cowboys, and there are myths galore about them. Take this one, for example: “A Cowboy would be your typical, dirty, horse riding type. He drank until he fell over; fought everyone around him, rode a horse everywhere, pushed cattle around the county, and was a lonely soul.”

So what is it that makes a cowboy so appealing? There’s an allure to them that is unmistakeable. A dangerous mystique. The cowboy lives in a man’s world, a world that women just aren’t privy to. A friend of mine recently wrote about the lack of cowboy romances out. While I think I may have only read one [Lonesome Dove], I do love a cowboy.

Some of the characters in my own books are contemporary cowboys or ranchers. They rope cattle, ride horses, work their ranches. One of them doesn’t have anything to do with horses and cows, though they are in his past. Today’s cowboy is trying to get back to his roots, trying to recapture the mystique and allure of the past.

Cowboys have that X factor appeal that is undefinable. [My husband and his buddies call it the man-card. They have each lost ‘man-cards’ due to some un-macho behavior they’ve exhibited.] Whether the X factor is attitude, action, emotion or a combination, the fact is that the thing that makes a cowboy appealing is the same thing that gives Texans their bountiful Pride. It’s an identity–and a powerful one at that. Being a modern-day cowboy [not redneck, though--mark the distinction] clearly defines a man as tough, courageous, and puro macho.

Look at these modern-day cowboys:

Ty Murray: Jewel just married her rodeo star cowboy. His cowboy hat is as much a part of him as any other piece of his clothing. It’s part of who he is, and that makes him kind of cool.

Tim McGraw: He’s almost never seen without his cowboy hat on. It’s just a Southern thing, I’m learning [as a new resident of the Lone Start state]. Everyone has a hat and a big Texas Star on or in their house somewhere]. Would Tim look like Tim without his hat? I’m not sure I’d recognize him. He’s a family man, a truly admirable thing in today’s world, and he’s got a quite strength about him.

Val Kilmer: He’s a slick Doc Holliday.

Kevin Costner in Wyatt Earp: He rides a horse like he knows what he’s doing. And there’s Dennis Quaid as Doc Holliday, a great role for him.

Clint Eastwood in almost everything he does and every movie he’s made. He’s the quintessential cowboy, even when he’s not wearing the garb.

Who are some other contemporary cowboys, real-life or fictional, that feed the mystique?