Really, but No

Happy St. Patrick's Day! David and I are both from Irish families. You can see it in those smiling eyes, yes?

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "I don't think so. Name a piece of writing advice you do not agree with and explain why."

Some of you might be able to guess which bit of advice I'm going to say. It's been on my mind lately and I've mentioned it often enough that I already have a tag/label for it.

It's this one: "If You're Bored Your Readers Will Be Too."

Really, but no.

When I've posted about this before (Looks like I did nearly a year ago, so that's not TOO recent), people have argued with me. "People" meaning other writers. They contend that they must FEEL the feels in the story or their readers won't. I can't argue with anyone else's process - the First Rule of Being a Writer is Own Your Process - but I don't think the writing experience should be conflated with the reading experience.

The two are VERY different. In the most basic sense, reading is faster than writing. I suspect if we did a cage match of the slowest reader with the fastest writer, the reader would still prevail. Also, absorbing a story is different than creating one. Finally, "boredom" is a relative term.

I'm going to focus on this last one.

Anyone who's been a parent, or spent any time around kids, is familiar with the "I'm so boorrrrred" complaint. It's usually ill-timed, delivered when the adult is working hard on some necessary but unexciting task of their own.

Merriam-Webster - the dictionary with the most politically on-point Twitter feed of its ilk - defines boredom as the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest. That "weary and restless" part is what makes the complaint from kids irritating. They're expressing a restlessness of youth, and the weariness is mostly emotional. The usual temptation is suggest various household chores to absorb their energy, but we all know that doesn't answer the complaint.

What they need to do is solve their own problem, and find something to invest their energy into.

I argue that "boredom" in writing is much the same. When we feel weary and restless while writing, it's a sign that we're working on a problem that needs our attention and energy. When a reader is bored, it's a sign that we've failed to engage their interest.

See how these are two totally different problems?

That's why I think it's terrible advice. If the writer is bored, they need to work through it, knowing that feeling restless with the slow pace of writing is part of the process. If you're worried about the readers being bored, then you need to look at other factors, like plot, pacing, emotions, investment in the characters, and so forth.

Éirinn go Brách!

There Is No Club But You Can Be a Fan

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As an author I certainly hope for people to discover my books, enjoy them and not stop until they’ve devoured my entire backlist (scifi romance, fantasy AND ancient Egyptian – hey, I can dream, can’t I?) and are clamoring for MORE. That’s the daydream…

But I’m the type of author who writes her books very much alone, at my great-grandmother’s desk (on a laptop though!), and doesn’t seek input or suggestions or want people to proffer names for characters or suggest plot points or what-have-you. I don’t like to discuss my plots while the books are being written, not even with my best real life friend of 30 years. I don’t have beta readers, critique partners or share details of works in progress.

 I’m very self-contained. I do have a wonderful editor and respect her inputs but she doesn’t see the stories until they’re done and I’m not likely to make any major structural changes. I have added things at her suggestion or clarified plot points…on KIERCE, my upcoming book, I added about 5K words in total after receiving her notes. There were adds and subtracts of course.

So while I may enjoy reading the daily Facebook posts from some of my own favorite authors, I shake my head and marvel at how much they seem to share, not only about the books but about their personal lives. But that’s genuinely ‘them’ to do…

That’s not me, folks.

Sometimes even the topics here on SFF7 make me squirmy as requiring too much of a glimpse into what I regard as personal and I deflect those or pass on writing a post that week.

I’m not going to get into all the background of why I am the way I am…I haz reasons…but I am pretty set in my ways.

What I do enjoy very much is being a member of several groups on Facebook oriented to scifi romance, both for readers and for authors, and participating in the conversations there. These groups are general, not dedicated to any one author (I don’t belong to any one author’s group for their books) and at times the discussions get lively, but not personal. I love connecting with readers in these groups and have made a number of really good friends over the years, speaking in social media terms. We’ll probably never meet in person but they’re lovely people and we’ve had great conversations, primarily around shared interests like scifi romance, books, movies, TV shows, pets…

I absolutely do not mind if a reader asks me questions about my books, either via the Contact Me form on my blog, or on FB or twitter. I try to give good thoughtful answers. I really appreciate the kind remarks readers have made about my books on social media. I LOVE the lady who has done some gorgeous fanfic drawings of scenes from my ancient Egyptian novels!

I call these ‘grace notes’ and I love them when they happen – they brighten my day. But I’m not going to set up a private group to try to cultivate more of these. Spontaneity works for me.

I also don’t want and will not read communications with story suggestions or plot ideas. I have my own, more than enough to last me a lifetime and I’m never going to be as enthused about an idea coming from someone else as I am about the ones bubbling in my own brain.  I have a general overview of the timeline in all my various ‘universes’ and no one but me knows who is going to do what, when, where.

Also, sadly, in the current crazy publishing environment, where many people don’t understand that ideas cannot be copyrighted, that there are no truly unique ideas (or very rarely), that genres and tropes have existed for years…well, I can’t afford to take the chance of reading someone’s well-meant  plot suggestions in order to be polite.

I’m on twitter and love it for the most part…

I’m in a couple of Goodreads groups but I tread warily and try to be super respectful that it’s a reader space, not for me as an author…

If I set up a group, would I then have a group of super dedicated readers/fans and thereby rocket my book sales into hyperspace? We’ll never know…but I do know I treasure every single reader, enjoy each reader interaction and am grateful for all the readers!

In the meantime, you can find me at the SciFi Romance Group,  the Pets In Space Readers group or the SFR Brigade on Facebook, and at https://twitter.com/vscotttheauthor on twitter, or my blog.

Happy reading!

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The President of My Fan Club

Suuuuuuure I have a fan club! This is the president. Look at those smoochable lips. Unfortunately, these fans aren't readers. At all. And it turns out, they really seem to enjoy impeding the work in favor of being held while they snooze. Negotiations are underway on that front. 

As for reader groups, in a way I have one - it's a pre-existing group of people in a cat group. You're surprised, right? They've known me and my writing since long before I'd been published. They pulled for me and encouraged me. That group are AVID readers and these days there are weekly conversations about what everyone is reading. We have at least three authors in the group. Each time one of us publishes something, the group descends upon it. It's amazing and lovely and heartwarming. It's nothing formal, of course. It's simply my friends being awesome and helping keep my cats in kibble. 

Other than that, there's a Facebook author page which I update once in a blue moon because I refuse to pay FB's extortion that would allow the people who followed that page of their own free will to actually SEE that page. I've done my best to shift those followers to my actual friends page because right now, that's the only thing that isn't being held hostage. There's also an Instagram account that has a bunch of followers, and while I'd originally set it up to be *my* author account, the cats took it over. Entirely. I think out of 300+ photos, one is a book cover. Maybe two. Regardless, that account generates a lot of conversation regarding feline rescue efforts, so when I do post something specific to the human behind the IG curtain, there're always a few 'hey cool!' comments. But if we want to be honest, that group are fans of my cats. Not me.

I had a Twitter account. It's still there, but I have had to accept the fact that Twitter doesn't work for me. My brain just handles information in a way that Twitter wasn't designed to accommodate. And that's okay. So I don't go out there much. Tumblr was fun until it got nerfed. Now it's just -- a sad shell, really. I have a terrible secret about social media, too. I'd MUCH rather talk to readers in person. I so much prefer the energy exchange of meeting someone face to face and getting to talk books and stories. Mine, anyone else's - it's all good. But trying to do that via a couple hundred characters or via a one way newsletter? Not my happy place. Maybe one day, I'll have so many readers, I'll change my tune because newsletters and Twitter are the best ways of letting that many people know what's going on. I would love to have that opportunity. Until the day I cannot possibly meet ALL THE READERS I'll keep doing my best to engage in personal relationships with the ones I do have. Cause they are wicked cool people.

Fan groups, wikis and eligibility

So, a while back, I was chatting with an old friend who is far more business/marketing minded than I am capable of being, and he was talking about giving readers the opportunities tone more than fans, to "live" in Maradaine-- in the sense that there is more for them to engage in beyond the books. Partly that's encouraging things like fan art and fanfic (which: yes, especially fan art.) Partly that's merchandise. But largely it's about engagement and community.

I'm not entirely sure how to go about that, but I do know that some fans have been working on a Maradaine wiki, which is AMAZING. If you are interested in helping out with that project, I highly encourage it: https://the-maradaine-sequence.fandom.com/wiki/The_Maradaine_Sequence_Wiki

ALSO, since I've been asked, here's are my eligible works for this year's Hugo nominations, which are due on the 15th:

• Best Novel: LADY HENTERMAN'S WARDROBE
• Best Novel: WAY OF THE SHIELD 
• Best Series: MARADAINE (the whole saga, not any of the individual series)
• Best Related Work: #BelgariadLive Read

All right, back into the word mines for me. No use having fans if I'm not putting out the work, right? Right.

Come play in my vortex (reader group)

Following the accumulated wisdom of How to Be a Writer in Public, I have developed all the things a writer is supposed to have: web site, at least two social media presences, newsletter, public Facebook page, and so on. But the common thread on all those is pushiness: I'm pushing info at folks. Even worse, sometimes I'm just pushing info out into the void, like "buy my book" pollution that nobody's ever going to pick up.

It's hard for authors to get a handle on the value of some of these one-way communication paths. We can count our followers or likes or whatever, but it still feels, to me, very bleak.

My goal in writing has never been to make money or get awards. It has always been to connect with other people, via a story. I can't even tell you how exciting it is to write a thing -- any thing -- when I know for certain that someone is going to read it. Even better when I know someone is looking forward to reading it. Those people make this sometimes dismal job worthwhile.

And I will never meet them by shoving out news items into email inboxes and swiftly flowing Twitter feeds. So I made a place where they could hang out, and I could hang out, and we can talk. People who might have an interest in my stories or worlds can tell me what they like, what they don't, what they would be interested in reading in the future. We exchange recipes and pet pics and memes and fandom and science info.

That place is Viv's Vortex of Readers and Space Vodka. It's not a fan group per se. It's more of a gathering of friends. I think we all know each other, and we welcome new members rarely enough that anybody joining is going to get a lot of attention.

The coolest part of the group so far is that I've noticed friends from one area of my life (for instance, my fandom friends from way back) meeting folks from another area (like my writing friends), and interacting and forming relationships that detach from me completely and grow into awesome things on their own.

I don't run contests in the group. I don't have rules about posting or reviewing or any of that. I make no demands on your time. We're small enough that we don't even have rules about members promoting their own work (though I wouldn't be against that... we should discuss). It's as close to a safe place on the internet as I've found.

You are cordially invited to join.

Author Groups vs Genre Groups: Love To All

Author Fan Clubs. Fans of Specific Author Groups. Multi-Author Reader Groups. Genre Reviewer Groups. Whatever they're called, the most awesome thing to see is readers enthusiastically sharing their love of books.

Author-Run Fan Clubs/Groups are neat to observe. Maintaining that connection is a significant time investment, and I hat-tip to all the authors who thrive in the setting. The romance community--especially the PNR readers--IMHO, win the prize for most author-to-reader engagement. Nalini Singh's and Sherilyn Kenyon's are two of the author-run groups that spring to mind. UF comes charging into second place, probably due to the huge crossover from PNR (the LKH fan club was strong for a long, long time). Yes, I know personal assistants and fan club moderators help the authors balance writing their books and engaging with their fans. Mad props to the whole engine making fan clubs happen.

Now, that's not to throw shade on the fantasy readers, no, no. Fantasy fans seem to congregate around the genre more so than specific authors. Sure, they champion the hell out of their favorite series within the genre groups. You can make a drinking game out of frequency with which Malazon, LOTR, Farseer, and WoT are mentioned.

Personally, I participate in genre reader groups (okay, I lurk a lot and post when I have an answer to a question that doesn't already have dozens of responses). I don't have a fan group of my own beyond my Facebook Author Page, mostly because I suck at small talk IRL and online.

Fan groups?Do those really exist?

I'm joking of course. Yes, I know they exist. No, I don't have any.
I have followers on Twif=tter and facebook. That's about all I've managed. If I ever figure out how to do more, I will.
"Jim, why don't you hire a publicist?"
Money. Unless they can do it for the love, (You know, like a lot of publishers ask the writers to do) that just isn't happening.

So here: Instead let me remind you I have a new book coming out in a few weeks.


YOU can order it HERE

Screaming Love and More for You

At the SFF Seven this week, we're discussing author fan groups – whether we have them, like them, how they work, and we're interested in what the readers think about them. Do you belong to any fan groups and what do you like about them, which are your favorites and why?

I confess I didn't have a fan group for a really long time. I don't really love the word "fan" to begin with, and given the opportunity, I'll say "my readers" instead. With I think of "fan" I immediately picture Simon Zealotes from Jesus Christ, Superstar, singing and dancing with his crew about their fanatical zealotry.


What can I say? Early impressions and all that.

But I did finally form a fan group on Facebook because one of my readers asked me to. I did it back in November of 2016 and it's called "Jeffe's Closet." That's a bit of an inside joke. I used to have a Tumblr called Jeffe's Closet. Actually, it's still there - but because Tumblr freaked out about erotic images, and my closet was full of naughty pictures, it's been gutted. Or it's there, but behind a firewall? I don't even know anymore. I haven't added to it in forever, mostly because in the era of Trump, images of girls in chains began to feel too literal and not at all sexy anymore.

Alas.

Anyway, I like my private group! I post extra things there occasionally, and ask people to weigh in on stuff. Probably I should post there more often. So that leads me to ask - what should I be posting? What author fan groups do you belong to, what's the platform and what are your favorite things to see there?

Oh, and in case you haven't seen it, there's the final cover for LONEN'S REIGN! Out March 20 and available for preorder now :-)

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