Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans

When I was in Weight Watchers, I lived by a set of guidelines for survival. People typically don't end up in Weight Watchers unless they're food addicts, and that is definitely the case with me. Yet after years living on the WW program, there are a number of lessons I've learned that I can apply to life in general. One being: if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.

Words to live by.

The latter, and the subject of this post, is not a rhymy catchphrase. It's likewise the one most people have the hardest time doing.

People make plans. Sometimes those plans fail. Rather than beat yourself up over what you did in place of what you should've done, the only productive thing to do is accept you failed, buck up, dust yourself off, forgive yourself, and move on.

Last year I set out to complete three manuscripts. That was my resolution. Finish Know Thine Enemy, start and finish Sinfully Scandalous, and complete the work that became Elevated Exposure. I did a good job, and I even tossed in a short story or two for nothing. A Friend In Need was pounded out in less than a month. I had no idea that would happen, even when I decided to do NaNo for the first time. I exceeded my own expectations, and with a heartful of optimism, I took the accomplishments of 2011 and decided to at least match that in 2012.

It's May. Next month will mark the midway point through the year. That's right. 2012 is almost halfway over. And what have I accomplished that I set out to accomplish?

If you answered a big fat load of nothing, congrats, you guessed correctly.

That's not to say I've coasted. Contrary, I've had a very busy spring. I got married two weeks ago (thus my husband-in-name, as he's been for years, became my husband-in-name-AND-on-paper!) and it was a big shebang. Honestly, I should have expected it as my mother's only daughter. I'm not the girliest girl, though, and I guess I thought I could get all my shit done in a timely manner. I thought with editing (and I've taken on several freelance jobs), and writing when I could, I, the great multi-tasker, could just show up to my wedding and see what happened.

Stop laughing. It’s not nice.

Obviously, that didn’t go as planned. But I did get stuff done. A modest amount of work has been completed. I'm about halfway through Sinners and Saints, Book 3, according to my word count estimate. I have plans for the revamp of Possession and all that, and half a dozen other ideas. But I must admit, when it comes down to what I personally love working on, the Sinners and Saints series is hands down the winner. I love the universe, I love the characters, I love the mythology – I am unabashedly infatuated with my own work, as I think all authors should be. And though modest, the series has gained a handful of fans.

Yet for the first time, I am completely self-aware of myself, the words, and the flow as I write the story. I wrote Sinfully Scandalous on a high mostly, never dreaming it'd actually get published. It was too different, had too many controversial themes, and wouldn't be received well by those who read the first. And yes, I did receive a few quiet comments about the content, but overall, it was received well. But unlike Lost Wages of Sin, I did little to no promotion. I tweeted, posted excerpts, gave away a few copies, and even now I have no idea how well it did, aside from the less-than-encouraging numbers on novelrank.com.

Now, I don't write for money. I write for me. I publish for the cash, sure, but the overall awesome feeling that is having my name on a book that is read and enjoyed by at least more one more person than my best friend and my mother is worth most of the blood, sweat, and tears. Yet with LWoS, something in me changed. I really loved the book, and I loved the thought of starting a series, and I loved the thought of others loving the series. I spared no expense, purchasing bookmarks, paying for multiple print copies, cover art, and so on. I didn't spend a ton, but I don't have tons of expendable income, which made it all the more disheartening when my first check didn't even begin to cover what I'd forked over.

I work a full-time job, a part-time job with editing, and whatever time I have left over is either spent socializing, relaxing, or sleeping. Because as much fun as I find writing, that doesn't take away from the fact that it's work. In some fashion, it's work, and it takes effort. If I spend eight hours a day at work and another three editing, whatever time I have left over is, ideally, spent writing. More realistically, though, I'm cuddled on the sofa with Aaron watching whatever TV show we're catching up on. If I'm in the groove, getting x amount of words committed to paper doesn't take much. If I'm not, I can waste hours trying to force my way inside before giving up and going to bed angry and frustrated with myself.

At the end of the day, though, the thing I enjoy writing the most is a series that I spent more money promoting than I gained in sales. I love writing it, I do, but a writer's head is never quiet. To get into the zone, I have to shut up the crowd of naysayers that takes up the peanut gallery inside my noggin. With Sinfully Scandalous, this took no effort, and I think a part of that was on some level, never expected it to be published.

All this to say, I desperately need to turn this motherfucker around and find the road I was on before I peeled off the exit. I have excuses, and many are legitimate, but what I really need is to quiet the peanut gallery, gather my bearings, and return to basics. Basics might mean writing new stuff for a while – new new stuff. If I’ve learned anything, it is I will come back to those things that are important to me. Know Thine Enemy took almost three years to write, because I wrote the first 15k, hit a wall, and then didn’t come back to finish the rest until I’d pretty much forgotten what I was doing in the first place. I don’t think it’ll take quite that much time to find my way back on track, but until then, I can’t promise to work on Flip Side of Sin. To those who like the series, and chastised me for waiting a year between the first and second book, all I can do is beg your patience and understanding. When I’m not writing, I’m not the best me I can be, and right now I’m not writing. I hate not writing.

It’s time for me to accept I’m likely not going to meet the goal I set out for myself in December 2011, which also means I need to stop beating myself up over what I did in place of what I should've done, accept I’m human, buck up, dust myself off, forgive myself, and move on. Goals, schmoals. This isn’t a race. I’ll get there when I get there.

Until then, I can't push it.

Just a quick question...

Do people read blurbs anymore? Recently, I've seen several reviews for books that complain about things that were clearly advertised in the work.

Blurbs aren't easy to write, people. They're pretty awful, actually. Summarizing every nuance of a book, choosing between what plot points to mention and what to keep, and then writing a couple paragraphs in a way that both showcases your skill yet also ensnares readers. The market is saturated with a thousand other stories like the one you're selling, and you're expected to make yours stand out. Think that's hard? Every other author is doing the same thing.

Yeah. I hate blurbs. Most of my author buds do, too. So it's somewhat disconcerting when readers don't even bother glossing them over. Don't like menage? How about not buying a menage book. Not a fan of shifters? Maybe pay attention when the author starts discussing wolf packs. Skeeved by taboo subjects? Steer the fuck away.

These things are there for a reason, people. Are you allowed to not like a book because of a kink or theme? Of course. You're allowed to not like a book for any reason you see fit. But there's a reason I'm not rushing out to buy Fifty Shades. I have some idea what it's about, and I'm not interested.

I actually saw a review for an Ellora's Cave book complaining about the sex. As in, it was too descriptive. In an Ellora's Cave book.

If you're going to spend money on a book, you owe it to yourself to read up on what you're buying.

Vampires and Demons and Shifters, Oh My!

A part of me likes to believe I was into the whole "vampire" thing long before it became popular. A friend of mine sent me the first three books of the Sookie Stackhouse series before anyone had heard the term “True Blood,” and I devoured them before patiently waiting for the next one’s release. I had never really been one to purchase romance novels before then, and actually hadn’t imagined legitimate, royalty-paying publications printing the sort of raw, explicit, sexy material I enjoy reading. I first encountered erotica through the art of fan-fiction, and naively believed the realm of explicit fiction solely reserved for the Internet. It makes sense now, of course, years and many, many, many books later that the phrase “sex sells” applies to all media. Of course, I knew about romance novels, but I hadn’t thought the sexual encounters would be anything more than clever allusions to the act itself. And while this has been the case with a handful of authors, this misconception was at the blame of my own obliviousness until I started reading.

I’ve been a huge vampire buff for about ten years now, therefore I began devouring every vampire romance I could get my hands on. After Sookie Stackhouse, it was Lynsay Sands, Christine Feehan, Amanda Ashley, and Sherrilyn Kenyon. I’d spend hours in a bookstore, buying more novels than I could read. Even today, I have a healthy collection of books I haven’t cracked open. I tell myself I’ll get there eventually, but the stack keeps growing by the year. Point being, I loved a good paranormal. I’d read werewolves and demons on occasion, but vampires were my poison. It was actually around the time Twilight took the world by storm that my interest in the paranormal at last began to wane.

I’m not talking in terms of writing. I’ve written paranormal romance for so long that writing anything else seems strange and unpredictable to me. My world might change from project to project, but some staples remain the same. Yet over the past year, my reading library has expanded from strictly paranormal to mostly contemporary, with perhaps a paranormal title thrown in there out of habit. I likewise have entertained more contemporary ideas (one I’m very excited about) and even more I will likely never get around to writing. Still, when it comes to the sort of stories that motivate me in terms of creativity, it has monsters…more than likely vampires.

My current project is no exception. The main world-focus contains angels and demons, which is something I’ve never touched, but my hero is a vampire. This world will likely be expanded in further series, as I’ve fallen in love with the premise and have enough side-characters that their story, including Lucifer’s, will need to be told down the line. I plan to include shifters and other paranormal aspects the more it grows, but vampires have always been my first paranormal love, and paranormal heroes have always been my writing preference. There’s just something about a larger-than-life hero that gets my engine going.

Still, while my creativity seems to be led by the paranormal, I keep selecting contemporary romances for my bookshelf. I’ve published two to date, and have another in the works, and I do feel a sort of accomplishment upon drafting a new non-paranormal. I hope to expand my personal writings in that direction, as well.

At any rate, I definitely won’t be short for ideas anytime soon.

Sugar and Spice/Snakes and Snails

So, it's been about a year since I entered the wacky world of publishing. My initial release was Firsts, which was contracted approximately this time last year and released in November of 2009. I've made some fantastic friends within the writing community, learned a thing or two about the differences between publishers and editing styles, and for someone who did very little promotion, comparatively, have enjoyed moderate success.

I suppose the most important thing I've learned over the last year is the impact of reviews. Like almost every writer I know, I take my work very seriously. I put all of myself into whatever I'm crafting, often obsessing over word placement and sentence structure to the point of insanity. While I try to keep myself grounded in terms of reception, I was terrified after each one of my first three releases that the review sites would rip them to shreds. They didn't...at least not yet. Now, I didn't receive a glowing review every time, but every site had something nice to say. Those reviewers that loved my work REALLY loved my work, and those that didn't love it still enjoyed it, at the very least. Ripples Through Time was a radically different story for me, at least at the time it was written, and after it was released I spent countless hours Googling for review results. It was, ironically, the least reviewed of all my releases, but those reviews it received were complimentary, even the lukewarm ones.

I suppose this is what ultimately convinced me to calm down when it came to reviews. Yes, a bad review can hurt - my non-professional peer-reviewed writing has taught me that much - but it's an inevitable part of being published. You can't please everyone, you can't appeal to everyone's personal tastes, you can't make the perfect book in terms of everyone's definition of perfection. Therefore, when my latest release, Moving Target, hit the e-book shelves, I barely followed its initial progression.

This is the first release I've had that has displayed an almost even divide in its reception. I've received some positively flattering reviews from HEA Reviews and Seriously Reviewed, and at least one downright depressing review from Book Utopia. What these individual reviewers took away from Moving Target is completely different. Completely. And it has illustrated something that I needed illustrated for my own survival as a professional writer. I'm a sensitive person, though I try not to be, and I let little things get to me, even though I know I shouldn't. I've wanted badly to be well-received, and while I've gotten my wish in many venues, I've come to accept emotionally what I've always known intellectually.

You can't please everyone. Sometimes, you can't please anyone. I'm perfectly content now knowing that I can please some of the people some of the time, and at least hope to keep the others entertained. If a reviewer from one review site doesn't like something, that doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad story...it might mean that, granted, but not necessarily. What it definitely means is that story didn't speak to that person, and that's fine. I just like knowing my work speaks to others.

So thank you to my reviewers, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And thank you to my readers - all of you. You have helped me develop a better sense of self. For a year into my publishing career, I think I'm exactly where I need to be.