What should I Write Next? You Decide!

I've taken the last few weeks off from m/m writing in order to concentrate on starting my new YA novel, which was a wrench, but needed to be done. But now that I've hit the 10,000 word mark on the novel, and I'm feeling quite comfy and bedded into the story (how long that'll last, who knows?) I think I'd like to pick up work on an m/m story again.

The problem is that I have several stories plotted out and two started and I'm not sure which one I should go for. So, just in case there's anyone out there in the blogosphere who a) reads this blog and b) cares, I'm going to set up a poll. Yay! Poll!

You can find the poll at the top right hand corner of the blog, and vote for what you would like me to do next. If anyone wants more information about any of the projects mentioned, you can email me and I'll be happy to post about it.

Thanks in advance for anyone who participates.

And is Never Shaken Taster

Hi guys. It looks like the release date for And is Never Shaken is pretty solid, so it will be out next Wednesday from Dreamspinner Press. There's an excerpt on the website, but in celebration I'm going to post a different, work-safe snippet under the cut. Enjoy!

Possible Release Date for And Is Never Shaken

And Is Never Shaken has turned up on the Forthcoming page at Dreamspinner Press with a publication date of the 5th of May. You can see it and even pre-order it here.

I say 'possible date' just because they haven't emailed me to let me know this date yet, and I've noticed that they play about with the Forthcoming page quite a lot. Things jump on and off there all the time. So it might have disappeared by tomorrow, and come back with with a different release date the day after.

I suspect it's just one of the ways that the sneaky folks there at DSP keep us on our toes.

UPDATE: The book is also on Goodreads now, and people have already started adding it to their 'To Be Read' and 'Potential Buy' shelves! Woohoo!

Rejection and Bitch-Slapping

Short post because I am, in a word, knackered.

Having allowed Wave to lure me into turning my five-minute rant on pen-names into an editorial post for her blog, I then got bitch-slapped by...oh, let's see...everyone. Pretty much. I've been replying to comments non stop and post of them are not of the 'Right On, Sista' variety. That'll teach me to have opinions. Or, at least, not to think about them a bit more carefully before sharing them.

I just heard back from TQ Press that 'Precious Possession' is not right for them either. This would be more depressing if it was a form rejection, like the one from DSP, but the lovely Michelle gave me feedback which let me pinpoint what was wrong. Basically I tried to tell the story in the style of a fairytale, with a sarcastic narrator voice. Michelle said that it basically felt like the first eight pages were info-dumping. So that didn't work, then. She also invited me to re-write and submit, which I fully intend to do once I get a spare five minutes. I know they're still looking for Halloween sips and I think PP could work really well for that.

The lesson I have learned this week: People (and by people I mean me) make mistakes. It's okay. The only unforgivable sin is not to learn from them. No more ranting on Wave's blog (I can rant here all I like, since no one reads it) and no more sarcastic narrator voice for me.

Now, back to my new YA novel. I need to hit 5000 words before I shut down tonight.

Reviews by Jessewave

A really exciting new challenge has presented itself to me this weekend. I've been asked by Wave of Reviews by Jessewave if I'd like to try writing reviews for her blog.

This is my absolute favourite review blog and I check it at least once a day; it informs a lot of my buying decisions. Being asked is a huge honour, and not just that but a great opportunity because it means that my name will become familiar to m/m readers before my books ever hit the market. Of course I said yes. Actually, I said 'HELL yes!'.

Nevertheless, it's a little daunting. First of all, as Wave herself points out, this is a serious responsibility. Not only am I going to be having an impact on the quality of this famous blog, but I'm going to hopefully be influencing other people's book buying, just like Wave, Tam, Lily, Jenre, Aunt Leslie and the rest have influenced mine. I have to be fair minded, thorough and objective, while also striving to be entertaining.

There are potential pitfalls. Although I've taken a solemn oath not to be snarky for snarks sake, there are going to be times when my reviews contain unfavourable remarks. Some readers aren't going to like that. I may review authors who are published by the same publishers as me, and that could be awkward if I have negative comments. Will they be angry at me, or think I'm being disloyal? It might not seem fair, but I know that people often aren't fair when their baby, their work, is under discussion.

Despite my niggles, I'm really enthusiastic because I love the m/m community. I've been an m/m reader for nearly three years but I've only dipped my toe into the m/m readers and writers community since January this year and I've found it to be a wonderful place, peopled with strong, intelligent, well-read men and women. People of high ideals, high standards and great integrity. I want to be one of them and that's why I'm taking the leap and doing this.

On with the show!

Cover Squee! And Ipad Competition...

Look! Look! I got the final version of the cover for And is Never Shaken! And it's beee-ooo-tiful!

I loved the black and white version and kind of worried about how it would look 'painted' but this is such high quality work, I'm completely on Team Colour now. I'm just really crossing my fingers that my book can live up to this!

In other news (while I try to stop squeeing) DSP are running a competition which makes me drool, so I thought I'd share. If you, like me, are a techie-geek and adore gadgets and gismos, you might have been looking wistfully at your Sony E-Reader, Kindle or BeBook and thinking, 'Yeah, but it's not an iPad'. So a chance to get your hands on one for free should make both us happy. Here's the press release thingy (because I haven't finished my first cup of coffee yet and I'm not feeling creative enough to re-write it):

To celebrate the release of Dreamspinner’s eBooks being added to the iBookstore this summer, Dreamspinner Press is giving away an iPad in a random drawing. Every $10 you spend at Dreamspinner’s web site between April 15 and May 15 automatically enters your name in the drawing. The more you spend, the more times you’ll be entered. A winner will be drawn at random and announced on May 24.
 
Good stuff, right? Definitely worth a try.

Hmmph.

Just got the third - yes, that's third - lot of revisions back for the novel I finished last year. I have never had to revise more than twice before, not even on my very novel first novel ever, and even then the second lot was very minor.

This is a non m/m novel under my other name, and I know it's the best thing I've ever written. Frankly at this point (after two extensive rounds of re-writing and cutting nearly 10,000 words) I don't feel like I can improve it anymore. My editor says that the book is wonderful, phenomenal, brilliant - and yet she doesn't seem to actually get the story at all.

This is my first time working with this new editor, and it may just be down to us adjusting to each other but...Jeez. I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. Or at least a person who doesn't understand subtext, conflicted/complex characters or any society other than the modern western world.

Sigh. Well, things might be a little quiet around this blog for a while, because I'm going into Revision Mode. Maybe when I come back I might have some actual readers/followers...

Pen-Names: Discretion or Cowardice?

Quick post today, as I'm wanting to write a certain amount of words before Monday, and blog posts don't count, unfortunately.

So, I've just been participating in a discussion on an m/m writer's forum about pen-names. I'd say, at a rough guess, that about 75% of the people posting there write their m/m fiction under a pen-name of some kind. Including me. Various reasons were given.

For example, I'm already a fairly well-known novelist of books for young adults and children. I write under a pen-name to separate my m/m work from my YA work, otherwise there would be nothing to stop my YA readers (many of whom are ten or under) from assuming that the stories published by DSP or Torquere (easily found in a Google search) were written for them. The implications there are sticky in more ways than one. I'd rather not read an email from a puzzled ten year old asking me to explain gay sex. I'd rather not read one from an homophobic parent of a ten year old (and it's stunning how many parents reveal heretofore unnoticed homophobic tendencies when it comes to their kids) asking me to drop dead. I'd definitely rather not get one from a large group of librarians who've decided to ban my YA work based on my lack of moral fibre, an all too real possibility in the US.

Other writers were teachers who knew that, despite discrimination laws, their jobs would be under threat if it was discovered that they wrote about sex at all, let alone gay sex. Still others had family members who feared for their jobs or businesses, and swore them to secrecy. One lady has a church group that she and her family love, and whom they rely on for many different kinds of support, but which they knew would eject them if they found out about her m/m writing.

It was when I got to the last example that I felt my mental gears grind to a halt. Because, although the author in question described her church group as being genuinely nice people, and used language like 'conservative' to describe them, it's clear that what that group must actually be is bigoted. Very bigoted. Anti-gay. Homophobic.

So this lady is someone who presumably believes in gay rights and abhors prejudice and bigotry, and yet she's happy for her family to associate and take comfort from a group of people who are teaching them that hating gay people and displaying hatred and rejection to those who believe in equal rights for gay people, is just A-Okay.

Huh?

The problem is that once you question this last example, you find yourself going back through all the other reasons - like the ones from people who fear that their jobs would be under threat, and my own excuse about not wanting kids to accidentally read work not meant for them...and suddenly it all seems a bit feeble. You start to wonder how the Hell society is ever going to evolve if people don't stand up and take that risk one day? Why anyone bothered to write discrimination laws if none of us trust them? If kids go ahead and read stories that depict gay sex despite all the warnings posted on them then it's not like the world will end, is it?

You find yourself thinking: we've got a Hell of a nerve writing m/m fiction with an attitude like that. Gay people who want to live anything approaching a real life don't get to come up with a pen-name and a bunch of excuses. They either come out and face all the hatred or they live a life of lies and repression. And I should know, because I'm bisexual, and I'm out in real life. So just what the Hell am I thinking with this pen-name stuff?

And the answer is...I don't know. But maybe I - and all the m/m authors out there - should think about this a little more.

A Blurbing Birthday Continued

Okay, so readers who tuned into this bat-channel yesterday will have been witness to my epic snit-fit over the blurb that the good professionals of DSP came up with for my novella And Is Never Shaken. 

Not because the blurb wasn't well-written, correct and factual, but because despite this, it also had many of the problems that readers of Reviews by Jessewave had raved about here. If you'd like to read the blurb, you can go back to yesterday's post here and see for yourself what I mean.
 
We ended yesterday's thrilling installment with my decision to risk not only my own sanity, but also annoying the people of DSP, by attempting to completely re-write the blurb and asking them to use my version instead.

The first thing I did was to throw out both the short synopsis which I had submitted to DSP originally and the blurb that DSP had sent me. I tend to think that the first mistake most people make when writing blurbs for readers is to confuse what a prospective buyer needs to make their decision, with what an editor needs to make theirs. The editor needs to know the shape of the story and the factual details of how it starts and ends. They need to know you're not going to have aliens appear in chapter two and turn everyone to jelly. Once they're assured of that they open the file and begin to read, which requires a commitment of time, but no money. If they have questions about tone or language, they answer them by reading the story. It's right there.

But your potential buyers are looking at a professional entry on a publisher's website. They know this book has been accepted for publication and edited, so they already know that aliens don't appear and turn everyone to jelly (unless the story actually calls for that). What they want to know is what they can expect to experience as a reader if they invest their hard earned cash in your story. Why buy your story and not the three others that came out from the publisher at the same time, or the twenty others that came out from different publishers that day? They need to know the world they're about to step into if they buy your book.

Bearing all this - and the comments from the erudite readers of Jessewave's blog - in mind, this is my blurb-writing check-list.

1) Characters. This is romance we're writing here - the characters are everything. Introduce both the main characters with a couple of key facts that allow readers to visualize them. I don't mean their appearance, unless the way they look is what defines them in some way (if one of them has a disability, or is astonishingly good-looking for example) . In the case of And Is Never Shaken, both protagonists have jobs that they love and which define them, so those go in the blurb. 

2) Relationship. Again, this is romance. The relationship is what we're reading for. We need to know the 'hook' of the relationship - love at first sight, hate at first sight, the odd couple, gay for you, May to December, whatever. My characters have little in common and have a large age gap, yet they keep bumping into each other, and this makes one of them think the other is a stalker. Not a great start for them, but a great 'hook' for the book.

3) What Happens Next? One or two sentences about how their beginning eases into a middle. Do they fight like cats and dogs, get separated but struggle to keep their love alive, find themselves swept away in a fairytale passion? This is the meat of the story. This is where you tell readers if they have humour or angst or outdoor sex or naked swimming in a vat of custard to look forward to.Try to express the tone of the story. It's pointless to write a funny blurb if the story isn't comedic, pointless to write an angsty one if the story is light and sweet. If there are squink factors in the story which you haven't already mentioned, put them here. If you added a threesome to spice things up (I hope you didn't, by the way) you should be hinting at the characters journey of sexual discovery so that it doesn't come as a complete shock to the reader.

4) The Big No-No. Or - what goes wrong. Not too much detail, because that's the point of reading the book, but at the same time don't be coy. Blog readers said they hate, hate, hated it when authors tried to convince them that there would be a sad ending because, let's face it, this is m/m romance and that doesn't happen very often. So unless you actually wrote a down-ending (which was brave of you) it's better to focus on the conflict here. What goes wrong? Put a question in the reader's mind so that they picture the pain or difficulty the characters might face to get their HEA or HFN. However, another huge Red Button was the use of rhetorical questions, so don't try to put a question into the reader's mind by saying 'Will Tim and Fred fight through their parent's expectations to be together?' Because the reader knows the answer must be yes, and this just annoys them and makes them think snarky thoughts.

Putting all this into practise: 

(One paragraph) Cassian Ford is a successful writer in his forties, established at the local university (hello, character number one!). Andy Havers is a book restorer in his early twenties who just moved to town (Hello character number two and May to December relationship!) They have nothing in common, and yet somehow everywhere they go they seem to run into each other. Despite a bumpy beginning - an exasperated Cassian accuses Andy of being a stalker - (there's the hook, and a hint of humour) the gap in age and their many other differences, a passionate romance develops between them. But just when Andy is convinced he's found true love (these last two lines are the What Happens Next - they tell us that things are passionate and loving) secrets from Cassian's past erupt into the present (word choice hopefully suggests angst and drama) and Andy realizes it might not be him Cassian wants at all...(Yowch, that sounds kind of painful for Andy, I wonder how he gets over that?)

Without the commentary:
 
Cassian Ford is a successful writer in his forties, established at the local university. Andy Havers is a book restorer in his early twenties who just moved to town. They have nothing in common, and yet somehow everywhere they go they seem to run into each other. Despite a bumpy beginning - an exasperated Cassian accuses Andy of being a stalker - the gap in age and their many other differences, a passionate romance develops between them. But just when Andy is convinced he's found true love, secrets from Cassian's past erupt into the present and Andy realizes it might not be him Cassian wants at all... 

Mission accomplished. Now I had to submit this to DSP and hope they liked it.

Now, let's get something straight here before we go any further: I'm a seasoned publishing professional. I've been dealing with editors, marketing directors and Big Cheeses (otherwise known as Commissioning Editors) for...Jeez, seven years now. But no matter how many times you've had playful banter with an editor, no matter how confident you are as a professional, no matter how sure you are that you're right, EVERYTIME that you have to disagree with an editor, you will be reduced to quivering jelly. What if they get really upset and don't want to work with you anymore?

Luckily, despite that big build-up, DSP did like my version of the blurb, and said they'll use it. And they didn't even cuss me out for being an awkward b*tch either. (Sigh of contentment).

A Blurbing Birthday

The fateful day has dawned, and I am a year older and definitely wiser. My first birthday present? A blurb from DSP for my novella And Is Never Shaken.

Very recently there was a blog post about blurbs on Reviews by Jessewave. You can find this revealing article (and what's even more revealing, the comment trail following it) here.

What this made clear to me is that for a lot of people the blurb is all they read - it makes the decision on whether they buy or not. People ignore covers because often they're terrible or cliched; even if they're pretty they usually say very little about the story itself. And it seems most people don't have time to read the excepts either - there are just too many books to get through, and they don't think the excerpt really tells them much.

The blurb is the number one selling tool that an author can have, other than a well-respected name.

Unfortunately, a lot of readers feel that the blurbs they're offered are letting them down. And readers place the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the author. Yes, they acknowledge that editors and other publishing professionals are partly responsible for this too, but most readers seemed to feel that since the author is the one who knows the story inside out they should be the one who makes sure the blurb reflects what their work is really about.

All of which resulted in this reaction when I saw the blurb which DSP had written for And Is Never Shaken: AAAAAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, it's safe to say that I was a tad upset. The blurb I read - though technically correct and not terrible in any way - held basically ALL the elements that the readers of the Jessewave blog had isolated as problems for them. Let me illustrate:

The first time Andreas Havers meets Cassian Ford, Cassian stops him in the street and then walks away. The second time is when Andy signs up for a creative writing course—a course Cassian is teaching. The third time, they bump into each other in the hallway of Andy’s new apartment building and realize they’re neighbors. After being accused of being a stalker, Andy finally loses his temper and tells Cassian where to get off.

Strangely, instead of letting the acquaintance die there, Cassian pursues Andy and apologizes. Explaining away his odd behavior, Cassian asks Andy out on a date, a date that will turn into a passionate affair threatened by secrets from the past.

First of all, this is two paragraphs long. Now, I personally have no problem with two paragraph blurbs. In fact, I like a lot of details. But the vast majority of e-book buyers do not appear to agree with me. They want one paragraph only - they were very emphatic about this.

They also felt that many blurbs missed out pertinent details of the story which might either make them want to buy it, or warn them to steer clear. In this case, the romance is a May to December relationship, with eighteen years between the protagonists. This is a selling point for me (which is why I wrote the story) and might be for a lot of others too, but for those who are squinked out by May to December, there's no warning here.

Finally, they felt that blurbs didn't give them any idea of the tone of the story, and in some cases that blurbs were actively misleading. Well, this blurb has no tone, really. It's just business-like and straightforward, which would be fine if the novella were business-like and straightforward. But it isn't. And Is Never Shaken has a lot of poetic language and also some humour. I don't think there's any way that anyone could label this blurb misleading, but it doesn't give much of a flavour of the story either.

So, after much gnashing of teeth, stressing and hair-pulling, I decided to completely re-write this blurb and ask my DSP editor to consider a new version.

Since this post is getting rather long, tune in tomorrow to see how I incorporated the blog reader's comments into a new version of the blurb, and hear about DSP's reaction to an uppity author re-writing their blurbs wholesale.

Status Check # 2...And Other Stuff

So it's the beginning of April (and my birthday is nearly here) and it seems like time for another status check. Because I'm self-absorbed like that.

My status is pretty much the same as it was the last time I looked, at least when it comes to m/m work under the name Alexi Silversmith. All that's changed really is that I've edited, proof-read and approved the 'galley proofs' (this makes me laugh a little, because galley proofs for a print book are such a big deal - this huge packet of pages arrives recorded post and you have to mark up the whole thing and send it back ASAP, but the ebook version was just a PDF file in which I made three corrections, easy-peasy) for And Is Never Shaken. Still no word on the pub date for that.

Side Note: DSP's proofers changed the capitalization of the title so it reads 'And Is Never Shaken' instead of 'And is Never Shaken'. Is this an American thing? Hmm...

Anyway, I haven't finished any other new m/m stories. I haven't started work on the two stories I've sold to Torquere Press yet, nor have I heard back about the short story I submitted to them. So, it's pretty quiet on the m/m front. Just like any writer, I'm sitting around waiting for publishers to get back to me.

In other news, I promised Wave (from Reviews by Jessewave) that I'd try to read the notorious m/m novel Bareback by Chris Owen this week. And now I'm scared, because although I really like Chris Owen's work, I do NOT like cheating in my books. This book is famous because one of the leads is unfaithful to the other, and the book shows the aftermath of this, and how they struggle to repair their relationship. I have avoided this novel for a long time for that very reason.

This might seem ridiculously wimpy. In a way, it is. Afterall, it's just a book, right? It's not real, and I can chose to stop reading at any point. My problem is that I suffer from clinical depression, and although I have various coping strategies in place which ensure that my mood is even a lot of the time, there are always periods when I can feel myself teetering on the edge of another episode. When I get that unbalanced feeling, I know it won't take much to tip me over the edge. And I'm teetering now.

Which means that if this book is as good as Wave said it is, and you end it feeling uplifted and convinced of the romantic relationship between the characters, then I'll probably be fine. But if I react to it in a different way, if I'm not convinced by the relationship, then I'll probably end up dealing with a seriously black mood which could last for up to a month. Do I really want to take the risk? Well, I'm off on a long train journey today, so I'll take the book and see how I feel. I'll just have to hope that if I can't face it, Wave won't beat me up...

The Pressure is On

All right. I did my meeting with the Folks in London (my publishers for my work under my different name) and they're really keen to get a new book out the year after the book that I've just finished. That's because there's been sort of a long gap between the one I just finished (not published yet) and the one they published before that.

This was actually the publisher's fault, and they've acknowledged it, but it doesn't change the fact that it damages my career - and the publisher's prospects of selling lots of books - to have such a long gap. Readers forget quickly. Which means when I come back on the scene I need to make a really strong impression. Two books in two years does that. Therefore, I need to get to work on the new novel and I need to make it good.

What does any of this have to do with Alexi Silversmith, newbie writer of m/m fiction? Well, it means that m/m writing is going to have to go on the back burner. For a while. I don't know how long. Basically when I start any new project it takes me a while to really firmly get a grasp on it and I need to spend that time completely absorbed in the new characters, world etc. I can't do that if I'm working on something utterly different at the same time. Once I've embedded my brain in this new novel, I might be able to look at m/m stuff again as a hobby and do it for fun, but not until I'm totally confident in the other story.

So, right now...feeling a little depressed. Excited about my new novel, fired up, committed....but still, a part of me is depressed about Captain Space Bunny and all the other m/m characters teaming in my head.

But there's always the hope that the release of the m/m stories I've written will be staggered in such a way that my potential m/m readers won't even notice this hiatus. I don't have a pub date for And Is Never Shaken yet, and I haven't even started the editing process on the stories that were sold to Torquere Press. Which means that by the time the last of them comes out, I might have started work as Alexi Silversmith again. That's a comforting thought.

Slaving in the Coalmines...

I'm feeling crotchety and grumpy today. Real life has collided with writing life and there has been an audible smashing sound. Not sure exactly what broke yet, or how I should go about picking up the pieces, but this is one of those horrible times when people in my life want me to do something, and either cannot or will not accept that I can't.

I'm writing.

No, I'm not slaving in the coalmines. But writing is work, and it's hard, and it takes effort and most of all, time. It's just as mentally exhausting as being in an office, on the phone, writing reports or entering data - in fact it's a lot harder because everything that appears on the page has to come from within you, not from a handy programme on your computer or a bunch of stats that your PA gave you.

Yes, at times it's also far more enjoyable than putting together marketing reports, but at the end of the day writing is a craft as well as an art, and it doesn't happen by sprinkling faery-dust over the pages. It happens because you sit down for several hours a day and DO IT.

For many people in a writer's life - often our nearest and dearest - it's impossible to understand this. Your friends and family think it's amazing that you're a writer, but they still cling to that belief that writing works by a strange process of 'inspiration', whereby scribbling for an hour now and again will produce a novel in a few months time. People who would never dream of calling you up in your office and expecting you to skip out on a meeting will expect you to drop your writing, and will get hurt, offended and annoyed when you can't.

And yes, that's can't, not won't. If you are your own boss, you need to be twice as strict with yourself as another person would be or else you will never finish anything. And no, there's no 'probably' in that sentence, because it's fact. You will never finish anything - nothing at all - if you don't make yourself do it. If you don't force yourself to keep on producing words through illness, boredom, lack of inspiration, depression and most of all, times when there are all kinds of other calls on your attention which you must ignore.

When I meet people for the first time and they ask what I do, and I tell them 'I'm a writer' there's a comment that I hear time and time again. A comment that I'm so used to now that it doesn't even infuriate me anymore, it just makes me feel tired out.

'Oh, I've always meant to write a book - but I don't have the time'.

What I always want to say (and never do) is, 'Wow, it's a good job I bought all those extra hours at the Time shop then, isn't it?'

Where do these people think the time to write comes from? Do they imagine that we all have trust funds, or that the moment a publishing contract appears we're suddenly millionaires? Do they honestly believe that writers have no lives, no families, no commitments? That we don't have to earn a living, make heart-breaking choices, go without sleep, give up other things that we love, in order to carve out the time to do this?

I get emails from people all the time asking me how to get published, and I usually write back with sound advice about polishing your work, doing research, being persistent. But the real truth is that the way you become a writer is to be willing to make sacrifices for writing's sake.

I've been doing this a few years now, but I'm still not used to it. And on days like this, I wonder if it's worth it at all.