Chameleon Backlist

Back lists are supposed to be where old books go to make an author a steady trickle of income. But sometimes the back list rises from the grave and lives again. IT LIVES. Yeah. That's all the spooky I got. Sorry. 

Enemy Within was the first book published. That qualifies it as back list. So is the second book in the series, Enemy Games. And then the series was orphaned. I had all but given up getting to finish the series, but sometimes, years long procrastination has its benefits. My rights reverted.

I made plans to self-pub the whole kit and kaboodle. But then the lightning struck my monsters. The Wild Rose Press bought the entire series. They reissued Enemy Within and Enemy Games. They then released Enemy Storm. When I finish the current WIP, they'll get book four - which doesn't even have a working title yet because that's how titles and I roll.

So then. If the back list rises from the dead, is it still back list? If it isn't, there's always that UF series with the demon. Maybe that's a better Halloween horror-fest.

The Good, the Bad, the Easy, and the Difficult

 

Two fer one Void Bois, speaking of who has it easy in this household.

The good, the bad, the easy, and the difficult.

We're questioning which scenes are better, the easy or the difficult. I assume we're talking about easy or hard to write as opposed to read. I've read scenes authors claimed were a breeze to write, but they were really tough to read. Then I've read scenes authors struggled over that went down like syrup, lovely and sweet.

Now that I think about it, it doesn't matter whether we're talking about writing or reading. Easy scenes have their place. Difficult scenes have their place. 

If you're writing, you may run across a treatise by someone who likes to claim that ALL scenes should be easy. That you should always be itching to get to write those scenes because they excite you so much. Maybe it works that way for some people. Maybe there's a medication I could take that would make it that way for me. But writing isn't that way for me and I'll argue it's not for most writers. We all have different strengths. As a result, we're all going to be drawn to finding different scenes more attractive than others. For me, the easy scenes are the volunteers - the images, dialogue, and action that come to me from out of nowhere. There's a duel scene in Enemy Within that happened like that. Popped up out of nothing as I was trying to go to sleep one night. Little sleep was had that night while I got that scene down. It wrote itself, I just showed up to the go between for scene and keyboard. And it's a good scene. At least, I adore it.

But then there's the tough stuff. These are the scenes we agonize over. Well, okay. *I* do. I didn't get to do emo teen angst, okay? I make up for it when I write. 

The tough scene came at the end of Enemy Within when I sat staring at the last (unwritten) quarter of the book wondering what on earth to do. It took a critique partner snapping at me to go away and make everything much, much worse for the final climax scene. It was just the kick in the brain necessary to really start digging into problem-solving those final pages. It was torturous and it took long, hard hours of writing and rewriting to make things as grim as they needed to be. But you know, a funny thing happened on the way to bloody and grim - I began enjoying myself. It was mighty damned satisfying to hack my way through the weeds and uncover something worthwhile. Hard as the scene was to write, I suspect it's an even better scene than the one that volunteered so readily.

And regardless. Both scenes were crucial to the arc of the story. So easy? Hard? Who cares so long as the end result is a finished novel.

Ch-ch-changing. Titles and names, that is.

First and foremost, I have a new book out. It's The Blood Knife, the vampire novel that had been in a box set for three weeks. That fundraising promo is over and I've put the book up as a standalone. It'll go up in formats other than Kindle this weekend.


Ch-ch-changing.
Title and name changes. You knew I'd have a story about that. When I subbed my first book to Berkley, it went in as Enemy Within. Marketing didn't like that title. So, they asked for a name change. I wasn't thrilled, but I was eager to play nicely with the big kids. So I sent in a list of twenty possible other titles. Many blessings upon my ever-patient critique group(s) who helped brainstorm those, cause I was stuck after about five. Titles are so not my super power. Anyway, I sent the list. Marketing brought their own list. Not a single one of them stuck. After a week of wrangling, marketing went back to the editor and said, "Leave it." You know the rest. The book went out with the original title. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that marketing meeting. I really would. It would have been fascinating to hear what criteria made a good title versus a bad one. With that information, I might could have given them a better title option, but alas. I was not invited.

The only change that DID happen was in the name of the aliens in the book. The major bad guys are the Chekydran. Well. That's what they *became* because when I first conceived of them, their name had far fewer vowels. My point at the time was that not every species humans and humanoids ever encounter are going to have names that we can say. My agent at the time, who convinced me to buy a few vowels, argued that it didn't matter humans and humanoids were always going to name aliens something they could say, so I might as well throw my poor readers a bone and make the Chekydran readable. I'm glad I did. I can't even remember, now, how I had them spelled originally. So it clearly didn't matter.

Frankly, if I need to change a name, that gets caught in draft when my critique group catches that all of my character names start with the same letter of the alphabet or something. I've been lucky thus far. Editors haven't asked me to change anything I feel really strongly about. I expect that's just a matter of time, though.

True Love, High Aventure, and Explosions: The Musical!

When I think of the musicals I've seen and the ones I've been in, I think of grand sweep tales (the ones I've seen) and the utterly silly (the ones I've been in). We won't talk about the show where I was painted blue and singing about a unicorn. Or the show where I sang a rhapsodic song about my pink Airstream trailer.

Anyway.

Musicals. I'm not sure how you score a science fiction romance. I mean. I suppose if someone could score Victor Hugo, there out to be a rousing score for Enemy Within. So long as it didn't end up sounding like Pirates of Penzance. I admit that like Alexia, I see SFR in a more cinematic ligh - - - WAAAAIT.

I write Space Opera. What if - stay with me here - WHAT IF I could get a Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd What's Opera Doc adaptation of Enemy Within?? SIGN. ME. UP.

I May Have a Reading Problem

Enemy Storm is available for preorder from Amazon. We should see more preorder links come available shortly. We all know the 'zon likes to beat everyone else to the punch. This is book three of the Chronicles of the Empire SFR series. Unlike Enemy Within (book one) and Enemy Games (book two) this one hasn't been published before now. Official release date is June 10. 

Reading

I love to read. Always have. I hope I always will. I love it enough that when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I made a pact with my best friend. We signed up for a speed reading course. We then spent several days in a cramped, dark room with a bunch of airmen learning to not subvocalize while we read. However, I have a pretty serious problem with reading, too. Once I start a book that's good, I don't stop. You know all those memes that go around about what kind of person you are based on how you mark you place in a book? I laugh. Cause I rarely need to mark my place in a book. I read. And read. And read. To the detriment of sleep. And chores. I will grudgingly get up to feed the cats and scoop their boxes. But other than that, the rest of the world can just take care of itself for the few hours it's going to take me to get through whatever I'm reading. 

So I try to save reading for rewards. I finish writing a novel, I get to binge read a book or three. I'm like most other people are with Netflix series. Don't get me wrong. A book has to hit my reader buttons in order to merit that kind of attention. A book either makes me turn pages like a freak, or I DNF. There is some gray area in there, but it's not much. Life is too short to finish meh books. The biggest fun I get to have is beta reading other writer's books. Second to that, is finding an author whose writing lights me up. I really don't care what the genre is. Right now, I'm still reading my way through all of the new-to-me, under-represented authors who were promoted in the midst of the last RWA crisis. Some have been really good, and some have not been my cup. But that's the way with everything, I feel. At least I'm still reading. When I'm not on deadline.

What book have you read that surprised you into liking it? (My example - I thought I would hate To Kill a Mockingbird because we *had* to read it for school. Ended up loving it. What's yours?)

Marcella's Top Three of 2019

In the liminal space between Christmas past and the New Year, we're posting our best three of 2019. Here are mine. Three new book covers in one year. I couldn't ask for anything better.

Transformative Fairytelling

It's been a busy, messy week involving surgeries (one complicated and expensive, the other not so much), a drama queen, an all-nighter (which was last night - I'm running on two hours of sleep so no warranties expressed or implied as to the coherence of my post). Oh yeah. And a book re-release.

I wish I'd worded this little piece of pretty differently, but what the heck. 

I was also invited to step into a podcast to talk about the creative process, the excuses that derail it, and how to approach overcoming those. If you want a listen, check out Creativity Quest on Sound Cloud or on Anchor.fm. If you prefer video, the episode is also available from the Creativity Quest YouTube channel. Truth: The sole reason for vid was the opportunity for kitty photo bombing. Which happens. Now you can make an informed choice.

We're writing about fairytales - which ones inform our work and which ones we want to write. I come from a Jungian background, which translates into having followed the work of Joseph Campbell for more years than I want to admit. I love the fact that a folklorist made the psychology myth and fairytales so accessible that he and his work entered popular culture. Most of us are familiar with the hero's journey cycle. It's the basis for most TV, movies, and genre fiction in Western culture. But there's also a heroine's journey. It's very similar to the hero's journey in most respects. There's the call to adventure, the descent into the Underworld, mentors, gatekeepers, everything we're familiar with. It shifts near the very end. In the hero's cycle, the hero has to conquer the monster(s) facing him or her. (The great thing about these story cycles is that gender is meaningless - you could just as easily say 'protagonist' rather than hero if you don't want to get hung up on gender.) In the heroine's journey, rather than conquering or defeating the monster, the protagonist's challenge is to transform the monster(s). It's a subtle shift, but the implications can be really profound both from a character standpoint and from a plot standpoint. How do you overcome someone or something you can't kill (because to kill or destroy would also wreck your character arc and you would fail your quest). I feel like the romance genre spends a lot of time and page space exploring the differences between hero's and heroine's journeys and I love when I run across a book that unabashedly gives all that transformational power to its protagonist.

If I get to play around with fairytales and myths in my stories, I want it to be from within the confines of the heroine's journey. I'll admit that Enemy Within didn't make that benchmark. It is solidly a hero's journey rather than a heroine's, but that's my aspiration.

As to which fairytale I prefer? I'm an author trying really hard to grab my own glass slipper. I'm comfortably certain you can work that one out. :)

Release Day on My Mind

On my mind this week is the ramp up to the release of Enemy Within  on July 17. I'll attach preorder links below. The sharp-eyed among you will note that this cover is NOT Enemy Within. No. It is the *other* thing on my mind - Enemy Mine is a hot novella in the same world as Enemy Within, in fact you briefly meet the hero of this story in Enemy Within. It's on my mind because it went live in serialization on Radish this week. New episodes will release for the next 19 weeks. 

This is pure experiment. I have no idea if the story will interest a new age bracket of readers or not. I hope it will, but the last time I checked, the only click on the first episode was mine, checking to make sure it had indeed published. But hey! If you Radish, you'll find this easily by searching on either the title or my name. 

This novella was originally published in e-format by Berkley. So you may have seen it before. 

Interesting tidbit. It was written on a dare issued by none other than our very own Jeffe Kennedy, who, it turned out, had to assist me with some of the psychology. But that's another story. 

What's really on my mind? The lovely and uplifting community of writers to which I so gratefully belong. 

Preorder links! These are for e-versions only. I understand Amazon is working on the link to the paper copy of the book (y'all I have serious sticker shock on that - but it wasn't my call) but I do not yet have that link for the physical copy. 

Amazon    Barnes and Noble     Itunes

Road Maps for Complex Plots

News: I have a release date for Enemy Within - July 17, 2019. 

I also have a new foster cat. She doesn't have a name yet. She had been dumped at the feral colony a few months ago. She integrated very well with the other cats, so we assumed she was fine, then one day, she showed up limping. We managed to pick her up and run her to the vet. Something bit her - either one of the other cats or a racoon. She's got an infection brewing in there, so she's had antibiotic shots. She'll have oral antibiotics for a few weeks, too. 

She's a sweet girl with a deep love for being brushed. She'll be with me until she's healed up. We'll be looking for a rescue placement for her so she'll have a chance to find a home that won't discard her ever again. 

Complicated plots. That's what we're here for today. You, my friend, have come to the right place. Complicated plots (some might say convoluted) R I. How do I keep it all straight? Pff. Who says I do? 

I absolutely lose track of what the hell I'm doing and have done. But there's almost always a roadmap that I can refer to - not an outline. Character profiles guide my way. Because for me, all plot comes from what the characters need in order to force them into their arcs, all the complications arise from what the characters need, too. I do pretty intense character work, digging into psychology, deep motivation and the bits of my characters' natures that lead them astray.

Any time I lose my way, I return to my character profiles and remember why we all called this party in the first place. From time to time, like the book I just shipped to beta readers, I *really* lose my way and not only do I have to go back to the character maps, I have to redraw those maps entirely while inching my way along the story, trying to figure it out as I go. We'll see what the beta readers have to say about how I did. 

To keep track of specific threads for complex plots, I keep a notebook for each story. Mostly, it's silly notes about DON'T FORGET THE THING! Remember you meant to do x with this event and this character! Stuff like that. It's one of those things - if I write it down, I'll remember it and not need to consult my notes. If I don't write it down, I will only remember that I'd meant to do something cool AND I'd failed to make any useful notes. O_o I do try not to get too het up about continuity until the editing stages. That's really where I get a little OCD about making sure every thread is caught up in the larger weave of story. If they aren't, they either have to be snipped, or woven in and tied. 

It isn't a foolproof process, but it does seem to work for me so far. I hope.

Covers That Don't Know What They Ought to Be - AND Cover Reveal

What a serendipitous topic for this week. Deceptive marketing/book covers. I was just given the new cover for Enemy Within. You'll be the first to get a look. And we can analyze. 

This cover had a very tall order standing behind it. I wanted it to do several things: 

1. Convey Science Fiction

2. Convey Romance

3. Convey that this story isn't entirely a light read - I hope to all the gods it's fun, you know? But there are -- issues. And there's a body count. The heroine has PTSD for a reason. So I really, really wanted the cover to not be all sunshine and roses. Basically, I didn't want my cover to sell the promise of a light SFR when I've been told I'm writing grim SFR. 

How do you think the cover does?

Because this is a rerelease, several of you will remember that this book was originally pubbed with a very different cover (which I cannot link in because it is the property of the publisher.) THAT cover had a very different look and feel. It was sunnier. The background was bright yellow. The heroine was in a very different posture on the cover. Over all, I felt like that print cover did a better job of conveying Urban Fantasy than SFR. But I'll never be able to prove that hindered the sale of the book in any way. I can only speculate. 

Keeping in mind that this rerelease is coming out as an ebook, I have to say I like this new cover. It's clean. It's simple (apparently TWRP has done a serious bit of reader surveying about covers and came up with a 'no more than three elements per cover' rule to accommodate thumbnails). I feel like it communicates more than it shows, if that makes any sense. Now, granted, I have no idea whether that will translate into book sales, but hope springs eternal. Or maybe wishful thinking does. 

I think above all things (and as a great surprise to me) I really love that the woman on the cover comes across as both vulnerable and capable all at the same time. That, to me, feels like a hit out of the park. Now I hope readers will agree.

Laughing Off Writing Advice

NEWS: Finally all the official stuff is in place and I can tell you I have a five book contract with The Wild Rose Press for my SFR series. This is the series that started with Enemy Within and Enemy Games. This contract is for the complete series. So in the near future, I should have fun stuff to share.


Writing Advice to Laugh Off
The worst writing advice ever is as much a peel back of my psychology as it is terrible writing advice, but here it is. "Write to market". Don't get me wrong. There's a time and place for worrying about the market. You need to know stuff like sex scenes do not a romance make. That much market, okay. That's more an issue of knowing your market.

No, when I hear someone say 'writing to market', I hear someone suggesting that we al learn how to read minds and predict what's going to be popular two years from now cause that's how long it will take to write, sub an get a book through the publication process with a traditional house. You might only have to predict six months of future if you go with an indie press or self pub something. There are people who do it, though, I hear you say. I'd argue that those people found or created a niche, recognized what their readers loved about the niche and then those writers stay faithful to reader expectation book after book. In a way, that is writing to market - your market. That's totally learnable.

But writing to The Market as if you're in possession of some kind of literary crystal ball? That is a key that opens the door to crazy. When someone says 'write to market', it kicks me straight out of being immersed in my story and into high insecurity. I spend all my writing time slogging through the 'yer doing it wrong' voices. Have you ever read one of those stories where the heroes have to fight their way through some kind of compulsion? That's what it feels like. There. You have insight into my legion of neuroses. C'mon in. They don't bite. Much.

What would I prefer over 'write to market'? Easy. Write the story that needs to be written. Write what matters to you. Worry about the market once you're in the editing phase. That's when you're in analytical brain and that's when you can entertain all those critical internal voices. That's when it makes sense to look at what's out there in the book world and decide where your darling might fit. Until then, write what's in your head. Someone somewhere needs that.

Cover Artist Praise

 Danielle Fine does most of my covers. It's a good thing, too, because on those forms for authors, when cover artists ask if you have a vision for the cover, I always do.

And it pretty much sucks. 

For Damned If He Does, I'd figured on some artsy cover because the hero is a frustrated artist. And maybe because I grew up with those kinds of covers out of the 70s and early 80s with geometric shapes in once bold colors that inevitably faded by about the third year the book had been on a shelf. 

Danielle kindly led me down the path of PNR reader expectations for this cover. And even if the cover seems to promise something the book doesn't deliver (I had concerns this cover conveyed a really hot read and well - the heroine is ace so while the story has its share of flames, they aren't the sexy kind, much) this book is already one readers either love or think should have been a short story. So eh. Point of interest. Danielle found the models for the cover and she NAILED that heroine.

She found the heroine image for Emissary, too. After I'd looked and looked and looked. This heroine isn't 20. She's at the end of her soldiering career and I really wanted someone who looked like she hadn't just skipped class at the local high school. 

I think my favorite thing about Danielle's work is that whether models match my particular internal vision or not, Danielle always manages to convey the mood of the story. Every single time.

The two Nightmare Ink covers were done by someone at Berkley - I'm ashamed to say I don't know by whom. Because both books are e-only, the covers are simpler and with the first book, the editor and marketing staff chose to go against the UF tide at the time. Most UF covers at the time these came out were barely clad heroines in ripped jeans and leather. Some gorgeous covers came out of that, but Isa wasn't that kind of bad ass heroine. She has her strengths, but fighting isn't one of them. At least, not physically. The only issue we had with the covers, in my opinion, was that the first book didn't actually convey any hint of magic. I think the Bound By Ink cover does a better job of that. It's more atmospheric, too. But this is the difference between publishing through a traditional publisher and publishing your own work. With a traditional publisher, covers are collaborative to a point. Past that point, you can't ask for further changes in the cover. On books you publish yourself, you can pursue THE perfect cover to the limits of your budget. I have a dream to be able to commission original artwork for book covers. Just because I love painterly covers and if I could pay an artist whose work I love - everyone wins.

Now Look What You Made Me Do

Funny. I'll tell you I am not at all a sports fan. But I've come to appreciate the vast and deep ocean of sports metaphors sloshing around in the English language - no matter which side of the pond you're on. I think I even put one in the first book - something about feeling like a puck in a hockey game, only my hockey game was played in three dimensions in low or no gravity. You're probably never going to see a game inside the series. Mostly because war, but I'm not above borrowing a few drops from the metaphor ocean.

Actually putting team sports into a story is right out of the question for me, though. The last team sport I actually enjoyed was kick ball with all of the neighbor kids. Organized sports in school? Complete 180. Aversion therapy to the extreme. So yeah. Not likely. Unless I'm also trying to torture a character. But individual sports? You may be able to guess from Enemy Within that I fenced for a few years and enjoyed the heck out of it. Had all the gear and several blades - at least until we went to move aboard the boat. Sigh. It's not something I can do now with a bum hip, alas. So I have to get my jollies writing it into fiction. I made Ari and her hero into fencers - though with energy blades and the whole thing is supposed to be more like staged combat in that you don't fence a line. So long as you stay in the grid, you can fight in the round. Not that it matters - it was only useful in the story as a means of breaking through Ari's conditioning. 

Funny, too, I would have told you I hadn't invented any kind of martial art system, but I guess I did. Jayleia, the heroine from Enemy Games, has a particular set of martial training that marries gymnastics and kicking the crap out of someone who never sees you coming. While I don't codify the moves in the story much, the point of the system is to keep Jay out of range of whoever she engages - dance in, strike, GTFO, dance back in for another strike, rinse, repeat. It was something she had as a secret from her past - something that she had to reclaim. Again, it was useful as a plot device to force a character to change. 

Games? Funny. You'd think I'd have all kinds of games in my books. We spend so much time as a family unit in games - whether MMORPGs, board games, or having friends over for Munchkin or Exploding Kittens. Or going to the local Sunday night D&D league at the game store. But so far, while you know there are games - mostly gambling type games - on Silver City, say, you don't see them much. How interesting that my characters spend most of their time fighting their separate bad guys rather than having actual lives or down time. Now I'm thinking that maybe I'm going to see about building a game of some kind into book 4 of this series. Cause that book might just be a tiny bit intense and it might need something to pave the way between the hero and heroine. Hmmm. Help me out here. I'm going to want something deceptively simple but that's layers and layers of deep. Maybe a puzzle of some kind that doesn't get solved until the very end of the book and means the arcs have been achieved. 

Thanks a lot, you guys, I wasn't ready to start plotting that book yet. 

Backlist Love: HEY! Where'd It Go?

Should anyone attempt to search out my first two books, they'll find the books are no longer available. This is because the rights reverted to me. Yay. The books are undergoing a minor face lift while I write book three. Then books four and five.

I no longer own the awesome covers Berkley gave Enemy Within and Enemy Games. Had to go out and get my own. Which I did. Haven't shown them to anyone else, but what say we plunk the new ones down here for your perusal? The covers aren't final. So if you have suggestions, bring 'em. (besides getting the stock photo watermark out of the Enemy Games cover) The series title it going to change to The Chekydran War, since this series follows the arc of said war.

 

The third book is tentatively titled ENEMY STORM. No cover for that one yet. It is THIS CLOSE to going off for edits. Not that I'm anxious for that.

On the off chance anyone has forgotten what this pair of SFR books was about, here are the descriptions:

ENEMY WITHIN

An escalating intergalactic cold war.

A  starship captain clinging to her shattered past. A pirate with an empire to protect .

An inhuman adversary.

And a threat beyond the scope of the imagination. 

Enemy Within

After a stint in an alien prison followed by a torpedoed military career, Captain Ari Idylle has to wonder why she even bothered to survive. Stripped of command and banished to her father’s scientific expedition to finish a PhD she doesn’t want, Ari never planned to languish quietly behind a desk. She wasn’t built for it, either. But when pirates commandeer her father’s ship, Ari once again becomes a prisoner—this time of pirate leader Cullin Seaghdh, who may not be at all who he pretends to be. As far as Cullin is concerned, the same goes for Ari.

Ari’s past association with aliens puts her dead center in Cullin’s sights. If she hasn’t been brainwashed and returned as a spy, then she must be part of a traitorous alliance endangering billions of lives. He can’t afford the desire she fires within him. His mission comes first: that he stop at nothing, including destroying her, to uncover the truth of her mission.

ENEMY GAMES

Besieged by an inhuman adversary.

Betrayed by their own kind.

A scientist and a spy, sworn enemies allied by danger, bound by passion. 

Enemy Games 

Kidnapped while combating a devastating plague, Jayleia Durante fights to resist Major Damen Sindrivik, an officer from a rival government’s spy corps. With her spymaster father missing, and mercenaries hot on her trail, Jayleia must align with the magnetic, charming, manipulative spy. She must not lose sight of the fact that his single-minded agenda is for the protection of the empire - not her, not her people. 

Damen knows a shadowy network of traitors has allied with the violent, insectoid Chekydran, and that Jayleia’s father holds the key to dismantling that web. She becomes his only lead in a circuitous round of hide and seek. Too bad his instincts tell him Jayleia is lying to him. Nearly as much as she's lying to herself. 

Unless Jayleia can decide what matters most: ending the war or Damen’s love, they’ll become the prey of the traitors they stalk, and one species’ civil war will consume the galaxy.

Don't forget to let me know whether you love or hate the new covers (and why, please, if you hate them - so I can fix them.)

Binge Reading, a Bookworm's Approach to Series

Do you remember as a kid finding a book in the library? It looked great, so you checked it out. Then you started reading. It's a hit out of the park. You LOVE this book. You're right in there with the characters, laughing, crying, fighting -- and then the book ends on a cliffhanger. Then and only then do you realize you have a book that's the first in a series.

Heart fluttering, you rush back to the library. There! On the shelf! More titles by the same author. You search frantically. You come up with books three and four and seven.

Right then. Right there. Your innocent little bookworm heart breaks just a little. And you learn. NEVER start a book without 1. first knowing whether it's part of a series and 2. that you can acquire the rest of the series.

Maybe your life was settled and you grew up in some rarified place where books were as important to your family as they are to you. If you did, you could generally be sure that if you developed an addiction to a series that was still being written (as opposed to one already completed) you'd be able to get a hold of the latest in the series when it finally came out. Those of us without such assurance, at the mercy of library systems without our loyalties to long-running series, learned never to start a series until it was finished and all the books in the series were available.

This is the long way of saying I strongly favor writing stand alone books, which is amusing, because everything I have is part of a series or leaves the door open to being a series. Funny how the world turns, isn't it?

As it happens, at the time that Enemy Within sold, series were THE thing. I'd written the book as a stand alone. Straight up, I admit that I did. And then my editor asked if I could make it a series. I was still so afraid someone would take back that publishing contract, I said that of course I could. So I did. Same thing happened with Nightmare Ink, though I wised up before I wrote that one and I planned it out as a series because I could see the handwriting on the wall. Sure enough. That same editor asked for a series treatment. At least this time around, I was ready for it. And now that I'm writing my series, I love them. I don't want to abandon them any more than I wanted to read the first book in a series I'd never find book number two for when I was a kid.

This isn't to say I don't love reading series. I do. And now that I'm an adult with my own book budget AND Amazon Prime, I can do my very favorite thing in the world: Find a series I love and buy the whole damned thing in one go. Because you binge watch GoT if you want. I'll binge read Jeffe's Twelve Kingdoms, thanks.

I desperately wanted a bookwormish sort of photo to give you. I don't have one. But I do have a little green garden frog who was hanging out in the zinnias yesterday. I have yet to ask what his reading preferences are.

Rewarding Readers

When we talk about rewards, I am never clear who is rewarding whom. Frankly, I'm usually pretty stunned to find I have a reader who isn't related to me by blood or marriage. When I do find that out, I have the disconcerting tendency to say "C'mon in!" And subject said reader to cat photos on Facebook. Is that a reward?

Anything I've ever tried to do - tee shirts, giveaways, silly toys at signings - have felt as much like a reward for me as for anyone who wanted to buy a book, get a book signed, or just come talk to me about books in general. I have too much fun handing those things out. And, of course, there's only so much of that one person (and one pocket book) can do. So then I do my darnedest to make my readers feel special - which they are - I started looking for ways to make them a part of the writing process. Several readers generously answered my plea for beta readers. My newsletter subscribers (you can subscribe here) voted on the new cover for the re-release of Enemy Within. And yes. The cover that won is the cover I'm going with. Never ask readers' opinions and then blow them off. They know what they want. Someone remind me of that if I ever forget it, will you? Sorry. Can't post the cover here - it's still being worked on and I don't yet own the image yet.

I've been fortunate enough to trade birthday and holiday cards with readers who've become my friends. If I travel through a reader's state/town/region, I do my darnedest to meet for coffee at the very least. But again. Buying a reader a cup of coffee and a pastry is reward for me! Who else gets to do that other than a writer? Actors have stalkers. Romance writers have amazing readers we can laugh and chat and geek out with.

And that means that to this point, I have yet to find a reward for my readers that isn't a reward for me, too. Ideas? I'd love to hear them!

Cover Lottery

File covers under: You win some, you lose some. Sometimes all on the same cover(s). Book covers have a lot of jobs. Entice a reader to pick the book out of all the books on the shelves in order to read the back cover blurb. Convey what kind of read to expect - genre, tone, what have you. And hopefully, if you're really lucky, the cover will get the hero or heroines hair color right. Ish.

Wins on my first two covers: Really pretty. Amazing artwork. The heroines are mostly right. Ari's book (yellow one left) makes her far too put together for her particular circumstance, but oh well. Jayleia's cover (green below) gets her right.

The losses on these covers: Neither one says SFR. They both, to my eye, convey urban fantasy, instead. Compounding that problem? They were shelved in romance. Also, that background scene for Ari? Doesn't exist. No where in the books. Jay's background? Well. Maybe. There is a temple on her home world that gets attacked and she gets to be all bad ass about. So okay.

These covers came from a traditional house and when they were presented to me, there was very little room for alterations or changes.


The next two covers were also from a traditional house, but were for their E-book only imprint. Both were for urban fantasy novels, which I think they convey reasonably well.

I think you get UF from this cover. And maybe you get that the heroine isn't exactly a kick ass supernatural. She has skills, yes, but swinging swords or staking vamps might not be among them. The piece missing for me is a hint of magic - which really defines Isa's books. I do love that she's more than half dressed. But without the hint of something mystical, this could also pass as a cover for a cozy mystery. Which makes it not as cool as it could be. The only other issue is that this cover isn't all that great at conveying the tone of the story - the fact that there's some torture and overall angst. The problem is that ebook covers have to do all the work that print covers do - but they have to do it in thumbnail. That shit's HARD.
The second book in the series did a better job, I think.

In this cover, I got the hint of magic and with the background, I think you get a taste of this story not being all sunshine and roses. Maybe. So. Ebook covers - but ebook covers still presented by a traditional house with their own agendas and ideas about what changes might be made when and where. Which is to say - not many.

The really interesting cover, for me, is the most current one. It's for a light paranormal romance. The story was a complete departure for me. There are no dead bodies. Well. None that die on screen, anyway. It was my first venture into self publishing. Therefore the pressure I put on getting the cover right was enormous. I had several ideas for how the cover could look. In the end, I won a Twitter contest for a free cover from the awesome Danielle Fine. I told her my cover ideas.

She shot me right down. And explained WHY she'd nixed my cover. Her experience with romances novels and with paranormal in particular told us that paranormal readers expect the couple on the cover. Well okay. I was so relieved to have some guidance, I instantly sent over all of the particulars about Fiona and Darsorin. Danielle mocked up several different covers. We sat with them, hemming and hawing. I picked one I liked, but asked for a few changes in the hero. Discontent with the covers, Danielle went back to the drawing board and sent me a cover that made me gasp when I saw it because it was 100% right.

The characters are dead on. The single issue is that the flames surrounding them (while entirely appropriate to a theme that runs through the book) suggests this is a hot read. And it ain't. See. While Darsorin is an incubus and feeds on sexual energy, Fiona is asexual. So sure fire happens in the book...but...you know. Anyway. I hope to heaven it's not misleading. Or if it is, the story is enjoyable enough as is. Because, boy, do I love this cover.

Given my druthers which cover process do I prefer? Oh, this last one. Hands down. Getting to strive for a cover that does the matches the story is a huge win. Even if it means brainstorming several times before you finally find the right fit - that was something that simply wasn't an option with any of the traditionally published titles. That isn't to say I wouldn't work with a house again. I would. For the right book and circumstances.  But there's a lot to be said for having control over the face your stories present to the world.