Author Website Checklist

This week we’re talking about one of the business sides to writing: the author website. 

Funny enough, my writing buddy and I were discussing this recently. She plans to turn her website back on since she’s going back in the query trenches and had been checking out a variety of author websites. She said the one thing that stood out the most was that each site she pulled up told her with a glance what genre the author wrote in. 

First impressions, like first lines, are important.

And you have about a second to capture that visiting reader's attention. Uff dah. The pressure! But what better time to do a little website spring cleaning than now! So, how about a checklist?

• The Headshot - do you have an updated headshot? I like Mary Robinette Kowal’s stance on author photos: do it more often than not so you’re recogniable to readers who may run into you IRL. Also, like Mary Robinette mentions here, your headshot is a selling tool. Don’t forget to use it.

• Your Bio - this is one of those necessary evils like a blurb and synopsis. Though hopefully less painful. It may be helpful to have a short bio (100-300 words written in third person) as certain publications have limited space, and also a longer bio, also written in third person, to give people a deeper glimpse into the wizard behind the curtain. Again, this is another selling tool. Drop your hobbies in there and whatever makes you unique as a person. Everyone has something, what’s yours?

• Awards/Publications - If you’ve won awards or your work has been nominated, list it! If you’ve been published in a magazine, print or online, or really any where else your non-novel writing has been published, list it! If a reader is on your website because they loved somethin you read you definately want to make it easy for them to find more. 

• Your Books - this is the given, but there’s a lot of information you’ll want to be sure to include. List the links of your books at all the major online retailors and also your local haunts. The book’s back cover copy, this is usually 200-300 words. The book’s cover in the highest resolution you’ve got. And all the metadata that goes along with a book. If it’s a series don’t forget to say which number!

• Links to your Socials & Platforms - Readers that take the time to check out your website are looking for a conneciton. Let them know where you hang out: your socials. Let them know if you offer subscription access to you: Patreon, Substack, etc. And let them know if you’ll make any in person appearances in the coming year. 

• Contact - Think about this one. If you’re comfortable with anyone having your email, feel free to list it. Or you can use a contact form to help you filter messages. Or if you have a publicist or agent that can happily handle messages, list their email instead of yours! List a contact option that you’re comfortable with. 

There are countless other options you can add to your website. But the most important is to remember it’s a selling tool and you’ll want to convey your genre in the first glimpse. Start simple and add on as you grow as a writer. And don’t forget to update your author headshot here and there or run the risk of showing up at a convention only to be unrecognizable. 

That’s all the wisdom I have for you this week. Happy writing and reading!

Jeffe's Favorite Love Interest

 It's been a tumultuous week in my world, so I missed posting on Wednesday, my usual day. Fortunately, I'm able to catch up today! 

For those who don't listen to my podcast or otherwise follow me on social media, this week a good friend came to visit bearing a life-changing gift. Mary Robinette Kowal, fabulous author and even better friend (which is saying something), spent a week here with us in Santa Fe. Like my husband, David, her mom had Parkinson's Disease and, now that her mom passed away, Mary Robinette brought us her mom's stability service dog, Captain. She spent the week teaching David (and me) how to work with Captain and helping us all assimilate to a new phase of life. It was a surprising amount of work and emotionally exhausting in a way I didn't predict. But things are smoothing out now and we're so grateful for this tremendous gift.

Our actual topic at the SFF Seven this week is our favorite hero that we didn't write. The other contributors have offered terrific, thoughtful takes on their favorite, with a satisfying range of genders/inclinations, romance and otherwise. That gives me room to go super-traditional with my alpha-male, cis-het favorite: Roarke, from J.D. Robb's In Death books. 

Roarke has been my favorite since the first book, Naked in Death, came out in 1995 and he continues to thrill me today. Yes, I absolutely read the latest in the series, book #57, Payback in Death, the moment it released earlier this month. Yes, I've read the entire series and re-read it, more than once. (Though, to be fair, there were only 40-odd books when I did my most recent re-read.)

Roarke is the love interest I wish I'd written. He's the perfect combination of powerful and sensitive. With a traumatic background, he's a reformed bad boy who hits all my buttons. Sexy, charming, wealthy, nurturing - he's the perfect man. My first and enduring fictional love. 

Using the MICE Tool to Find Where the Story Begins

This week at the SFF Seven, we're asking each other which MICE quotient we usually start with in a story. I can see that the calendar queen, KAK, is anticipating my bitching about not knowing what these things are, because she helpfully provided a definition and some useful links. 

It turns out that the MICE quotient is a tool originated by Orson Scott Card (brilliant storyteller, awful human being) for categorizing story elements. MICE stands for Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event. The Writing Excuses Podcast explores the MICE technique frequently, so I was able to listen to a couple of episodes to learn about it. Here's a list of the episodes where they mention it. This episode is particularly useful, from back in 2011, as Mary Robinette Kowal explains how MICE works. The podcasters also amusingly mull that "milieu" is really setting, but that SICE isn't nearly as good of an acronym. This episode is also useful for the discussion of the MICE approach to conflict.

To summarize this approach to writing - part of my job as the one who kicks off the topic for the week - I'm borrowing heavily from the Writing Excuses episodes I cited. 

Basically these four elements can be emphasized or de-emphasized in telling a story. Short stories tend to focus on one of these elements, while longer works use several. Novels typically have all four, often in a nested approach. The tool essentially dictates how a story begins and ends. 

So, for Milieu, a story begins with the protagonists exiting or entering a space, and ends with them returning to the space. For example, The Hobbit begins with leaving The Shire and ends with returning to it. 

For Idea, or Inquiry, the story begins with a question, like in a murder murder mystery, where the question is posed of why a person is dead and who killed them. It ends with the answer.

With Character, the story begins with a protagonist who is unhappy or unfulfilled, and ends with them fulfilled--or resigned to being unfulfilled. Romance and Lit Fiction are two genres that use this tool a lot.

Finally, a story that uses Event begins with something happening that changes the status quo, and ends with either re-establishing the old normal or establishing a new normal. These kinds of stories focus on action and often disaster.

As I mentioned earlier, a novel will also use these tools in a nested fashion, which I find very interesting. Mary Robinette used the example of html code (also applicable to algebraic formulas), where you essentially close brackets in the same order that you open them.

Html coding looks like this: 

<p><b><i> “Dark Wizard is one of my top reads ever.” </i> ~ NY Times Bestselling Author Darynda Jones</b> </p>

The p opens the paragraph and /p ends it. Same with b for bolding, and i for italics, giving you this formatted result:

“Dark Wizard is one of my top reads ever.” ~ NY Times Bestselling Author Darynda Jones

So, in a novel, where you use all four elements, you'd back out the same way you entered. It might look like this:

<Character><Milieu><Inquiry><Event></Event></Inquiry></Milieu></Character>

To finally answer the question of what I start with? I'm an intuitive writer, so I don't plan these things, but it's interesting to note that I pretty much always start with character, followed closely by Milieu. The above pattern is how my book DARK WIZARD goes. The pattern also repeats within smaller sections and scenes throughout the book, but this is true of the overall pattern. Basically Character frames the overall arc, as does Milieu - then there's a lot of moving from Inquiries and Events - sometimes with smaller Milieu changes.

So, the story opens as such:

Gabriel Phel crested the last ridge of the notorious Knifeblade Mountains that guarded Elal lands on nearly three sides, and faced the final barrier. The path through the mountains had been narrow, crooked, with blind endings and unexpected pitfalls.

Not unlike his life, Gabriel thought with grimly sardonic humor. 

My wizard opens the story, moving into a new Milieu - physically and metaphorically. It's also worth noting here that Milieu also refers to the larger setting of being in an alternate fantasy world, which was something I wanted to be sure to telegraph from the beginning. Gabriel has a plan to change his life, but he soon encounters many questions when he meets the heroine, Nic. It's amusing to me how I introduce her in Chapter 2.

Skirts swirling about her ankles, Lady Veronica Elal paced restlessly to the heavy velvet curtains that covered the barred windows of her round tower room, and slipped behind them. Shivering in the chill trapped there, she hooked her fingers into the slats of the shutters anyway, ignoring the cold bite of the metal. It was a ridiculous habit she’d developed over the last months of seclusion, as if she could make the spaces between the rigid slats wider, so she could glimpse just a bit more of the outside world.

Character, then Milieu. Funny, huh?

I enjoyed learning about this tool and will give it thought for future books. I can see how it would be useful for deciding where to begin a story - and for structuring a satisfying ending. 

When Writers Block Means to Dig Deeper

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: "The most difficult scene you ever wrote and why."

I'm guessing that's why was it difficult, not why we wrote it. Though I do think the why we wrote the scene in the first place is relevant.

There's a school of thought among writers and writerly-advice givers that if a story becomes difficult - if the writer hits a block and grinds to a stop - then that's an indicator of Something Gone Wrong. I see this advice a lot. Writers will say - often in response to questions about how they handle Writer's Block - "When I hit a block, I know I've done something wrong, taken a wrong turn somewhere, so I go back and rework the plot."

You all have heard a version of this, right?

Makes me cringe every time. I'll tell you why.

What I hear in this dubious advice is writers advocating walking away from the hard parts and looking for an easier path forward. Now, I know this isn't always the case. Part of becoming a professional writer is learning to decipher your own internal voices - to differentiate between laziness and being truly depleted. To separate painfully accurate critique from toxic attempts to undermine you. To know when resistance means you took a wrong turn - OR when it means you need to dig deeper.

{{{Important caveat: Sometimes writers block can mean depression. Or physical or emotional exhaustion. I'm talking about if those factors have been ruled out. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish and Mary Robinette Kowal has a great post about it.}}}

For me, resistance has always meant I need to put my nose to the grindstone. Keep picking at that wall. Make myself walk through the fire. Pick your metaphor: in my experience, the best stuff lies on the other side of that wall. I've experienced it repeatedly.

My friend and SFF author Kelly Robson talks about not taking the Monkey Bypass. That's a great essay she wrote about it at the link. In essence, the Monkey Bypass is an opportunity to avoid filth and damage. Robson argues, and I agree, that you can't let your characters bypass danger. I think an author also can't allow herself to retreat from pain and difficulty.

Why have I persisted in writing those difficult scenes? Because the story required it.

I have never once been sorry that I kept pushing through those blockades.

I recently released THE FATE OF THE TALA, the climactic book in my Twelve Kingdoms and Uncharted Realms series. Those who follow me regularly - especially those who listen to my daily (almost) podcast, First Cup of Coffee - know that I had a hell of a time writing this book. I'm not sure if I can point to a specific scene, because the whole freaking book was mostly picking at that wall. And kicking it, pummeling it, then collapsing in a sobbing heap and scraping myself together to try again.

At one point, my mom - who listens to my podcast with the loyalty of a mom - asked if I couldn't just put the book down, walk away from it and write something else for a while. "Isn't this supposed to be fun?" she asked.

Well... no. I don't believe that good art only comes from suffering, but sometimes writers DO need to hold their own feet to the fire to get to the good stuff.

I discovered a lot of things in writing that book - and not just that it's a bitch to write a novel that ties up a 16-episode thread (counting novels and shorter works in the arc). I realized I was working out emotional issues in my own life and marriage that I hadn't faced. And I discovered amazing things from the seeds I'd planted ten years ago, when I began writing THE MARK OF THE TALA.

Now I have readers coming back and telling me how they loved the way I tied this up. Here's one from this morning:

I am amazed at how well you brought it all together in this last book! It was so good; I cried several times. It got me through a very difficult week, when I’m not sure any other book would have held my attention. Thank you!!

— SonomaLass *Warren for Majority Leader* (@SonomaLass) March 8, 2020

Totally worth that slog through the monkey enclosure!

Alexia's Best Writing Tips of 2019 ~

A lot happens in a year. There’s undoubtedly been goodbyes and hellos, failures and successes, as well as some laughs and some tears. I’m grateful for it all because the highs wouldn’t be quite as high without the lows. 

But…how do you pick the best out of so much? Thankfully this is a book and writing themed blog, so that helps narrow it down. And without further ado…

The best writing advice I’ve utilized in 2019!

2: There’s always going to be resistance to our writing, as an author it’s your job to learn how to work around it. 

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.” ~ Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART

3: (Paraphrasing) In revisions, you just need to go with the story…and sometimes that means destroying things you really don't want to destroy. Revisions will take a lot out of you, and I’m learning how to roll with it and embrace it. Advice gleaned from: Jeffe Kennedy’s May 30th First Cup of Coffee.

There you have it, some gems I’ve picked up over the past year. I still don’t have it all figured out, but I’m still writing and maybe someday I’ll have some gems of my own to share! 

If you have any writing tips you've picked up, please share!