Moving On

Having decided that I have got way too many blogs hanging around, half of which I never update, I have decided to try and consolidate a little bit. That means that this blog is one of the first to get the chop because it is one of the few which never gets comments and which I have not invested money into.




If you would like to keep following me, my new author blog is at wordpress.com. I have more personal blogs around the place also, but won't be putting links to those here.




Thanks for my loyal blogger followers for adding me to your blogrolls etc, but the time has come to move on to a place where I feel I have more options and functionality.

Reviews are scary!

(Reposted from Kalita Kasar's Live Journal)

As an author, I think that the hardest and scariest part of the 'job' is when you get reviews from readers. You write the story, edit it, submit it, and it gets accepted and then you send it out into the big wide world to be read. *shiver*

I find reviews terrifying and I always read them with my heart in my mouth, but also with my rational head on. A review is an opinion by one of the people you hoped to reach with your story, and should therefore be treated with respect.

Good reviews rock my world. Bad reviews? Well, they don't rock my world so much but they nearly always have something to teach me. They tell me where I missed the mark in connecting with a reader, they tell me where I let myself get lazy and didn't develop my character/s enough, they tell me what I could do better next time. I might not love the fact that the reviewer didn't fall instantly and madly in love with my book, but I will always appreciate and accept the chance to learn how to improve my writing and maybe win that reader over next time.

Thus, it makes me sad whenever I see an author snarling at anyone who gave them a less than shining review of their work. I'm not slanting this post at anyone in particular, and I'm not going to name names. I just wanted to talk about this, because I see it happening more and more of late and it's really sad.

I consider writing to be a conversation between the author and the reader, it's putting a message across and if you failed to get through to someone then, that's sad, but it is not a reason to snarl at the reader. I see it more as an opportunity to examine my craft and see how I could improve.

Although some reviews and reviewers can be harsh, I don't think that's a reason to fly off and scream at them. People have opinions, often those opinions are strongly felt, and couched in a way that makes me wince and say "OW!" but most of the time, I can see where I deserved it. *g*

You send a story out into the world and it makes a 'promise' to the reader. A promise to show them a different world, to introduce them to some new people, to take them away from themselves and their own lives and concerns to spend a few hours with your world and your characters. If your story doesn't then keep that promise in the way the reader expected, that's not the reader's fault.

Yes, reviews are scary. Bad reviews are even scarier than that! (Angela Anaconda reference *g*).

But I would hazard that authors screaming at reviewers, or asking that a particular reviewer not be 'allowed' to review our books is scarier than anything!

"it was a glitch." Amazon

Yeah, right. We all believe this, don't we?

Apparently Amazon.com has glitches, not only in their website, but also in their staff, because they're now saying that the removal of sales rankings was a glitch. So that means the email to Mark R. Probst must be one too?

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6651080.html

Amazon Fail

(X-posted to almost everywhere I go sorry for repetition)

I believe this affects us all, whether writers or readers. Amazon.com has decided in their "wisdom", that they will make some sweeping changes to the way in which users can interact/search on their site, and the most important of these limits the exposure of "adult" books to the public. In an email response to a query of this by Author Mark Probst, Amazon sent the following "explanation."

"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D


Member Services


Amazon.com Advantage"

Effectively, what this has done is to exclude these so called adult books from sales rankings, thus limiting their searchability on the website. This seems to be particularly focused on GLBT genre books, because some of the most vilely offensive (to my mind) books ever written are still available. eg: "Mein Kampf" or a book on training fighting dogs, or even better a book of playboy centerfolds containing photographs of over 600 naked women! (Thanks to Booksquare for pointing these out)

For example a friend of mine, Anthony Venn Brown has written a top selling book titled: A Life of Unlearning: One man's journey to find the truth. This is an autobiographical account of Anthony's struggle to reconcile being gay with being an evangelical Christian. It is a book which offers hope, and a compassionate approach to all who face the same struggle. If you search by the title, you will find the book without any trouble, but searching Anthony's name brings you to an incorrectly listed entry for the book, and a link to the audio book which is an older edition.

So, helping Christians who struggle with a Gay identity in an often hostile environment is now considered 'too hot to handle' by some of Amazon.com's customer base?

Who decided what content was too adult? Who decided that only GLBTQ Fiction and non-fiction including works by E. M. Forster are too "hot" for Amazon.com Customers to see?

There is much discussion of this all over the blogosphere today, and, I am sure there will be more. Here are just a few of the links:

Booksquare have weighed in

http://booksquare.com/open-letter-to-amazon-regarding-recent-policy-changes/comment-page-1/

http://www.naughty-and-spice.com/

Neil Gaiman


http://twitter.com/neilhimself

Queers united


http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-amazon-censoring-lgbt-books.html

Also, I urge my readers and fellow authors to sign the petition:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/119673661/

This is not an action taken in the interests of the safety of minors. In my opinion, this is yet another move to further repress and already marginalized people group and as such, should meet with the fiercest opposition that we are capable of giving it.

W.O.O.F Writing Contest March 13 Top Picks

About Writing


Writing Nag - "No More Walks In the Woods" - How can taking a break help you in your writing life? And a poem becomes a lyric. Getting away from writing can actually inspire you.

True Story


Hopeful Spirit - "Affirmation of Faith" - A true story about a sign . . . of faith, belief, and hope.

Poetry


Himri - "Somewhere between a bud and a bloom" - About organic growth and its influence.


Jennifer M Scott - "Substantial Inhibition" - A poem on getting older and keep on looking for better days.


Robert - "Icy Torrent" - A poem of questions.

Brought to you by PlotDog Press with the Serial Suspense Screenplay "Intervention"

Flashback - The Lazy Meg's Info Dump

For the last few days I have been working on prepbulication edits for my upcoming novel: Hunter's Dawn - Laying the Ghosts. I always approach editing with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I wrote the story, usually months beforehand, polished it up, decided it was as close to perfect as I could make it and sent it in to a publisher who loved it as much as I did and decided to buy it! That's something to celebrate, and to feel good about.

On the other hand, my beautiful story has now been placed in the hands of an editor -- one who loves the story, but like a good editor should, has found all the spots where it is less than perfect. Oh no! My story is not perfect? Worse yet, someone wants me to change it? That part doesn't feel so good.

To get back to this particular story. One of the first things that my editor commented on was my use of flashback in the second chapter. Now, I am the first person to admit that I love to use flashbacks. I know that a flashback, when it is well done, can provide the reader with important information about the plot, or a particular character, and what makes him/her tick. There's nothing wrong with using flashback, but I admit that sometimes, I use it as a lazy way to convey information. Sometimes, that information is not really crucial to the story right at that moment in the storyline. That's what has happened with this flashback. What it amounted to was "The lazy Meg's infodump!" *gasp*

I have schooled myself not to use infodumps, or as they're known in the business, "Expositions." These are passages of history, back story, background information which I, as the writer might know about the character and want the reader to know them too, so I dump them into the story in a paragraphs long "blah blah" that serves no real purpose other than to show how much I know about my characters. This slows down the story, bogs the reader down with unnecessary information and can even become confusing.

That was the point my editor made about my flashback.

Needless to say, that particular flashback hit the cuttingroom floor with lightning speed and I found a way to work the necessary backstory into the plot later in the book.

All this is not to say that flashbacks are bad, or should never be used. In fact, I have other flashbacks in this novel that have not attracted comment from my editor--and I don't think it is because she didn't notice them--this lady notices the times when I am being lazy or confusing or whatever. She's a blessing and a bane.

So how can flasback be used effectively?

First of all, you need to decide if the information you want to convey is essential to your plot. Does your reader have to know this now or could it be worked into the story at some other point. Does it have to be a flashback? Would it work better if the character told another character this information in a scene?

Then, you have to make it clear to your reader that what they're reading is in fact a flashback. The best--and easiest--way to do that, is by the use of the verb form "to have"

For example: Jack had carried this card in his wallet ever since his mother had given it to him when he was only eight years old.

At the end of the flashback, you need to transition your reader back to the here and now.

You can do that subtly:

"Jack sighed and folded the card, slipping it back into his wallet. His quest had been successful up until now, but Jack felt that he was standing on shaky ground."

Or more obviously: "Jack pulled his thoughts back to the present with a shake of his head."

Just make sure your reader knows that you're back to the present so they're not left confused.

Flashbacks are good to use when you want to explain why a character acts the way he/she does, or to reveal something that happened in the past which affects the plot in the here and now.

I think in the future, I need to pay more attention to this habit of using infodumps disguised as flashbacks and try to keep them out of my writing.

I used to have a small poster over my desk that read: "Make a scene of it!" I think it might be time to pull it out of storage and stick it up there again!

Coming Soon

Hunter's Dawn (Laying the Ghosts) This prequel revisits my ghost hunting duo, Jack and Casey, whom I introduced last year in a short story titled Hunter's Kiss in the Anthology: Another Fine Mess, and whose adventures continued in my Sip: Hunter's Bond.

Hunter's Dawn is actually the first story (yay for series in retrograde!) of this series and details how Jack and Casey came together in the first place.

Blurb:

Jack Stephens is a skeptic who lectures in Parapsychology at a community college. In his spare time, he works hard to prove that things going bump in the night can be rationally explained. When Jack meets psychic, Casey Lambeth, he sees just another chance to debunk paranormal phenomena. But there is something about Casey that defies explanation. From their first meeting, Casey decides Jack is an arrogant know it all.

When the two are thrown together to investigate a haunting at the home of Edith Andrews, the sparks really begin to fly. As they work their way through the case, both Jack and Casey will be forced to face some issues from their respective pasts, and work their way towards a mutual understanding, respect, and could it be possible--something more?

Hunter's Dawn will be released from Torquere Press in May 2009.