Blog Roundup: December 5 - 11, 2011

Chuck Wendig posted 25 Financial Fuck-Ups Writers Make, an article about the business of writing and how it can affect your bottom line. Romantic? No. Useful? Yes! He also wrote about The Seduction of Self-Publishing, which would be a helpful read for anyone on the fence about the subject.

Greta van der Rol hosted a guest post by Meredith Lopez on the subject of "clearing your throat" before you write. I confess that I thought all writers did something to get started. Ms. van der Rol also asked if "writing is like prospecting." After the last eight months I've spent learning about the publishing industry (and being well aware that I still have much to learn), I have to kind of chuckle and think... yeah.

James Killick wrote about creating great content for your blog. His "write the post you want to read" tip is basically my mantra and, if anyone where to ask, it would be the tip I would give. Write the blog you want to read.

Keystrokes and Word Counts had a post on formatting, a relevant topic for self-publishers in particular. If you're looking for information on a rough guide to the steps of self-publishing, there is also this post.

This post on improving your dialogue over at Rob On Writing is worth a read, mostly because I encourage all fiction writers to give the exercise a try. I once wrote a novel-length piece entirely in dialogue. It was actually pretty good, but it will never see the light of day. It was an exercise.

Sierra Godfrey wrote about why author websites matter. I think mine does and I encourage any other writer to create their own. It may not be fancy, but having a place where your readers can go to get just the facts is a good idea.

Sirra posted her seventh collection of writer tips from Twitter. I think all writers should constantly be looking for ways to improve their work. She also posted this collection of commonly misused words. I think we've established how I feel about the poor abused English language, so it's worth reading. (And bookmarking.) Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, even very careful writers, but education on the subject is always a good thing.

Stella Deleuze wrote about giving small and new publishers a chance. Risks can be good, but be aware whenever you take them.

SitRep Saturday: New WIP, Personal Update

I "took the week off" to do housekeeping work. That wasn't really a success. I did get a lot done--but it wasn't enough. Today I'm scrambling to finish getting the house ready for my sister's arrival while I lament the fact that I've used up my pre-written blog posts.

It's okay, though. I have a few more blog posts started (I just need to sit down and write them), I should be done with my real-life housekeeping in a few hours, and starting Monday afternoon, life gets back to business as usual.

The new WIP has a tentative title: Hard to Hold. It's another erotic short story, but this one is about a cowboy, a bartender, and a closed bar beside the highway outside of Canyon, Texas. I've started the action draft and it's already about 1,500 words. It needs a lot of work. I'm hopeful I can have the action draft complete within the next few days and maybe even have the story drafted by the middle of next week.

Where To Buy Books For Your E-Reader

I've written before that I have a Kindle. My mom has one, my grandmother has one, my sister has one, one of my best friends has one, and one of my other best friends downloaded the software to her cell phone. I buy most of my books on Amazon, as I'm sure most Kindle owners do, but there are so many other places to buy ebooks.

Device-Specific Websites

• Amazon for the Kindle
• Barnes & Noble for the Nook
• Kobo for the Kobo
• Sony Reader Store for the Sony Reader
• iBooks for Apple devices
• Android Market for Android devices

eBookstores

• Smashwords: Most books are available in all formats supported by various electronic readers, including the computer. Buy the book once and you have access to all formats.
• Ebooks: Intuitively named, with an excellent selection. They even have a nice page explaining how to use the site.
• Diesel: An independent ebook retailer. If a book meets premium catalogue requirements at Smashwords and the author is opted in, the book goes out and is listed on this website.
• Ebook-Eros: "Burlesque for the brain," reads the tagline. This is where you'll find erotic romance and erotica. They include a "heat level" rating for each book and even offer shoppers incentives in the form of reward money for doing things like leaving a review.
• OmniLit: Excellent selection with a nice mix of independently-published and traditionally-published work. 
• All Romance: OmniLit's romance store.

Free eBooks

• Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Sony all offer free book selections. 
• Project Gutenberg has thousands of free books. 
• Free-eBooks.net even has a Spanish library.
• ManyBooks.net even has eReader reviews and comparisons.

Happy reading!

On Writing: How To Talk

What your characters say is just as important as what they do. In fiction, dialogue is action. It reveals characterization, it moves the plot, it provides information. Well, it's supposed to.

Listen to people.
Listen to your family, your friends, people on the bus, people on the train, people at the zoo, people at the grocery store. Listen to what they say and how they say it, what words they use. Pay attention to your assumptions of them based on their speech, to how their words relate to their age, sex, and apparent economic position. Listen to how they interact with others. The absolute best way to learn how people speak is to just listen.

Learn how to properly format and punctuate dialogue.
Because it's action and because our eyes slide so smoothly over well-formatted and properly-punctuated dialogue, we as readers don't really notice it. This is a good thing. So learn the mechanics of it. Learn where to put action in relation to dialogue (admittedly, something I still struggle with). Learn when to start a new line, where to put commas and periods and quotations, learn how to use multiple sentence-ending punctuation (like ellipses and the interrobang).

Learn how to use dialogue tags.
He said. She said. He whispered. She hissed. Learn where and how to use these attributes and learn how to avoid "creative dialogue tag syndrome." (Stella Deleuze posted a series of excellent articles on the subject of dialogue attributes recently. Here's the first post.)

Monday Miscellany: New Release & Housekeeping

Over the weekend, I released Please, Sir. (You can get it at Amazon or you can get it for free at Smashwords with coupon code NV22M until tomorrow.) I started pre-writing for the next project and realized that it's much bigger than I want to deal with right now. As in, it might possibly be a novel. So I set it aside and looked at the short story collection I wanted to write.

And then I realized that my sister will be here in a week and the house isn't ready for her and I have a professional to-do list that is several pages long. So I've decided to take the next few days--maybe even the whole week--off from "real" writing to do housekeeping things.

Things like rearranging my daughter's room so that it's more usable for a college student, doing the rest of the autumn deep clean, and hauling the toys the kid has outgrown down to my storage unit. Things like the website redesign I want to do, a bunch of blog posts for days I don't have time to write new ones, and cleaning up my currently-available work (including reworking summaries and tweaking covers as needed).

Today, I'm running errands and getting back into the habit of daily chores. I let the housework slip over the last few months while I worked so hard to reach my goal of four books available by Christmas. I have some paperwork to take care of, the mail to check, a friend to see... Real life stuff.

It's going to be weird to be out in the sunshine and breathe in fresh air, but I think I'll survive it.

Blog Roundup: November 28 - December 4, 2011

To recognize the end of National Novel Writing Month (and assuming you actually "won"), Chuck Wendig posted 25 Things You Should Know About Your Completed Novel.

Greta van der Rol asked if all critiques are useful.

Avery Olive wrote about the query letter.

Fonts and Fiction has a post on showing and not telling.

Rik Davnall wrote about "crushing feelings of inadequacy," something I suspect all writers are familiar with.

James Killick posted about writing even when it all seems pointless.

Pub Rants hosted a guest post about writing the book of your heart, not the book of the market.

This post on Seeking the Write life is about how critiquing someone else's work will make yours better.

Sirra wrote about the passive voice.

Stella Deleuze posted on vanity publishers and how to recognize them.

This article at The Sharp Angle is about author branding.

Release News: Please, Sir

Paige finally has her life together. Her boyfriend just proposed, she's set to complete her nursing certification, and they just moved to Kansas City--within an hour's drive of her fiancé's childhood home, where his widower father still lives.

But upon meeting John, Paige's newfound self-control slips. He is temptation she cannot resist.

Please, Sir is a short story of approximately 10,000 words featuring adult characters, explicit sex between an older man and a younger woman, and spanking.

***

Now available at Amazon.com and at Smashwords. At Smashwords, you can use coupon code NV22M until December 6 to download it for free.

SitRep Saturday: Please, Sir

Please, Sir will be available on Smashwords today and it will be available on Amazon within the next few days. I'm putting the finishing touches on the formatting today. It has been edited, beta-read, ignored, and agonized over. It's ready.

I'm going to take a day or two off after this and maybe write up a few more blog posts (that's what I did while I ignored the story for the last half of the week), but I have already started work on the next project. It's another cowboy romance that looks to be longer than The Cowboy Next Door.

Resources: Devils In The Details

According to Wikipedia, "the devil is in the details" derives from an earlier phrase, "God is in the detail." I think that, when it comes to writing, though we may play God and an attention to detail is fundamental to our success in conveying the story, it's the devils in the details that can trip us up.

We're fortunate. These days, the entire human history of accumulated knowledge is at our fingertips. We don't have to be experts on everything we want to write before we set pen to paper--we can become experts. Why some writers choose to ignore this is beyond me.

Search engines.
Unless you know exactly what you're looking for, this is where you'll start. Google is great. But don't forget about Yahoo, Ask, HotBot, Excite, and MSN. Using difference search engines for each search is a good idea, since each will probably offer different results for the same phrase or keywords. This is research. You want as much information confirmed as independently as possible. (A personal rule is three sources that do not reference each other saying the same thing or similar things.)

Library websites.
Lots of libraries offer reference books online. You probably have to be a real-life patron in order to access the references (as with the University of Texas library), but there are some free sites (like Bibliomania). IPL.org seems to be an excellent resources site. Your local library probably has an online selection. I know that US Army Europe does.

Topic-specific websites.
When you search keywords, use as many of them in topic-specific language as possible in order to locate sites dedicated to what you want to know. Like how to make an obsidian projectile point (honestly not something I recommend even attempting for the first-time flintknapper). Maybe you're curious about vampire mythology. Maybe you need to know everything you can about how to clean an 1894 Winchester rifle. My point is that if you want to know something, all you have to do is find the website an expert already created. The site gets bonus points if it lists reference material that you can use, too.

Detail-oriented communities and picking the brains of loved ones.
I've pimped it before and I'll pimp it again: the Little Details community on LiveJournal is amazing. The benefit of communities like this one--full of people from all walks of life with all areas of expertise--is that someone probably has firsthand knowledge and knows how to point you in the direction of other resources. This can work in real life, too. Everyone you know is an expert on something. Maybe your dad knows everything there is to know about the 1959 Edsel. Maybe your niece knows everything about tea. My husband seems to know everything about high school wrestling (he was a wrestler in high school, is a current combatives champ, and refs for local high school wrestling matches on the weekends). Asking someone about something they love is a good way to spend some quality time with them, too.

Actual books and newspapers.
I know this is old technology, but stay with me. Newspapers offer a glimpse into community that websites just can't. Actual books--especially reference books--provide a snapshot of knowledge at the time of publication. Online, things change almost as fast as our knowledge does. What we know as true today may not be true tomorrow and it can be easy to lose the trail on the Internet. A reference book from the timeframe you're writing about will show you what people knew. A newspaper will show you what they cared about. Older, underfunded libraries may have those old books, or maybe your grandparents or older aunts and uncles have some in their homes. As for newspapers--that's what microfiche is for. (Or this website.)

On Writing: To E Or Not To E

In my current WIP, I've had to use the word "fiancé" at least twice. It got me thinking about the French origins of that word and two other specific words I regularly see misused. Today's short post is to clarify the correct spelling and use of those words.

blond/blonde

brunet/brunette

fiancé/fiancée

There is a difference. These are all examples of gendered words, and while they mean the same thing in each spelling, the spelling is significant. That "e" at the end of each word signifies the feminine.

A blond is a man with yellow hair; a blonde is a woman with yellow hair. A brunet is a man, a brunette is a woman. A fiancé is a man engaged to be married, a fiancée is a woman engaged to be married.

As with any other word: if you're going to use it, use it correctly.