Cass Gets Her Kicks: What Was I Thinking?

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

That was basically the idea behind Cass Gets Her Kicks. I wanted something to read that wouldn't take me long, would be entirely self-contained, and wouldn't require any thought on my part. In fact, I specifically needed something I could read in half an hour on my Kindle.

Searching Amazon proved fruitless. I had a few titles by Delilah Devlin, but they were too long. (She is a fantastic smut writer, so I did stick it out several times for her work.)

On top of that, I had a story germinating in my head that featured a mechanic from Kansas, a crappy motel room, and Magic Fingers.

So I wrote.

I admit that I focused on the stories so intently partly to get that first release out of the way. It's kind of terrifying doing something big for the first time like that, and Cass was safe. I knew--I know--I can write smut. I've won peer-voted awards for it. I like it, I'm decent at it, I'm comfortable with it. Young adult paranormal fantasy is a bit out of my comfort zone, and while I'm all for pushing the boundaries of that comfort zone in my writing, I felt like I should do something I know I can do for my first time out.

It was something I wanted to read. If I wanted to read it, chances were that someone else wanted to read it, too.

Cass will be a recurring character for me. I already have ideas for her when she gets to California--that girl has a lot of experimenting to do. And I have a lot of new things to explore with her... and whoever else she encounters.

On Writing: Won't Someone Think Of The Letters?!

Language is constantly changing. Old words that are no longer useful or fashionable drop from the language, new ones are added, and then we make more up. Spoken language and informal language directly influence formal language. Still, there are some poor, abused letters that end up strung together to create not-words or, worse, to help people who don't pay attention misuse perfectly good words.

Alright
A bastardization of the phrase "all right," this one-word spelling is very common and, these days, seems to be widely accepted. It makes me cringe. Even an attractive, talented man can't make me like this word.

Alot
Hyperbole and a Half has a fantastic post on this word-as-a-thing. This is not a word. It is two words. I distinctly remember devoting an entire week of spelling lessons to this not-word. There aren't even any results for this at Dictionary.com!

Apart (as in, "apart of something great")
Like alot, this word is a commonly-mashed-together not-word. Apart is a real word. It just doesn't mean what people seem to think it means. "Apart" is separate and "a part" is a piece. When you speak, "a part of something great" sounds very much like "apart of something great," so it's pretty easy to see why it ends up written the way it is. This (and the next entry) wouldn't be a problem if the people who make this mistake would simply stop and think about what they're trying to say.

Of for Have (as in, "should of," "could of," "would of")
Yet another victim of spoken language, "of" used in place of the contracted "have" has become far too common. Should have, could have, would have. Should've, could've, would've. "I should of gone to the concert" makes absolutely no sense, but when you say, "I should've gone to the concert" aloud, they sound very much alike. Just looking at the first part of that last sentence makes my skin crawl.

Irregardless
Ir- and -less are both negative, which--according to the double negative rule of English--means that the prefix and the suffix cancel each other out. What this word essentially means is "in regards to" and I have not heard or read this word used in a context that implied "in regards to" was the intended meaning.

Monday Miscellany

It was 94 degrees here last week, and this week, it's hovering around the 60 degree mark. It's fabulous. The kid has so many cute pajamas and we took her shopping for new cooler-weather clothes this weekend. Another bonus of the colder weather: baking! I made two separate batches of cupcakes (I use this recipe for chocolate cupcakes, and I add about half a teaspoon of lemon extract to bring out the flavors of everything; you can also use lemon zest). Cold-weather food is also on the menu. We're having meatloaf for dinner tonight, and I think I'm making lemon-herb roast chicken for dinner tomorrow night.

If Facebook wasn't such a necessary social networking tool, I would get rid of my personal account and my author page. Every time they "improve" things, my privacy settings end up altered and I have to waste half an hour of my precious time fixing those settings. I am not one of those people with hundreds or thousands of friends. In fact, I have 42 friends--and 27 of them are my in-laws or friends of my husband. I use my personal account for keeping up with loved ones and sharing pictures of my daughter. If I believed my family and friends would check their email regularly, I would switch to a mailing list.

Late last week, I started reading Amelia James' blog. You should, too. She's clever and funny and she writes pretty sexy stuff. I enjoyed her post about balancing writing and family life. It made me think. Our kids are about the same age, it seems. I tend to write while the kid is asleep--she's napping right now, actually--but my little one likes her alone time, and several times a day, she deliberately separates herself from me to do something she likes. (Usually, she pretends to read a book or she plays with one of her larger interactive toys. Sometimes she just sits at the back door and watches the trees outside.) I use that time, too. If I'm all caught up on my housework, I write or cook or read. Things can get kind of tense if I feel like I'm on a deadline and she's being unusually needy, but for the most part, she and I work well together. It doesn't hurt that I keep my sense of humor about things ("Do you want to go to college? Then let Mom write!") and that I have no problem parking her butt in her swing, jumperoo, or in front of her favorite movie for half an hour while I get things done. I'm fortunate enough to be a stat-at-home-parent and part of the point of me staying home was to get my writing career off the ground. It's slow going, but then I knew it would be.

This week's blog posts are probably going to cover the subjects of words that are not words, what I was thinking when I wrote Cass, and why I don't think self-publishing is career suicide. Those are the posts I'm going to shoot for finishing, at least. That last one about self-publishing was inspired by an email I received from a local milspouse who claims that no publisher is going to take me seriously now that I've self-published. It was also sort of inspired by this post by Ciara Ballintyne.

I checked my Distribution Channel Manager over at Smashwords this weekend, and it looks like Cass Gets Her Kicks should be showing up at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, and Diesel in the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you updated.

However, if you've made it all the way through this post and you're interested in reading my first release right now, drop me a comment here or send me an email at ldotleonadavisatgmaildotcom and I'll send you a coupon code to download a free copy from Smashwords.

Blog Roundup: August 22 - 28, 2011

Chuck Wendig made another "25 Things" post, this one about what writers should know about social media. Read it. Absorb it. Use what you need. (Especially relevant is this: "People want to follow other people." So, you know, be a person.) Also, he used the word "behooves."

Amanda Hocking made a good post about bullying. Let me say, first of all, that bullying as a pet cause annoys the hell out of me. I'm jaded by all of the anti-bullying chain status updates on Facebook, though. I do think that the Internet has revolutionized bullying and I think it's worth educating yourself, especially if you have kids. I also think it's important to take a personal stand against bullies, no matter how non-confrontational you are.

James Killick posted about rejection and why it has to hurt. The quote about writing being easy, just sit down and "open a vein" came to mind when I read it. In real life, I'm pretty stoic and reserved. This has come from a lifetime of extreme emotional ups and downs. When it comes to my writing, I'm broody, moody, emotional, and deathly afraid of rejection and negativity. None of that stops me. I guess I'm also stubborn and determined.

This week, I discovered a blog dedicated entirely to ideas for promoting your book for free. It has been a couple of weeks since the last update, but the ideas there seem like good ones. In any case, it certainly can't hurt to check it out and see if there are any ideas you can implement.

You should be reading Sirra's blog. This week's post was about voice in writing, but it's worth going back to read her post about douchesm in promotion, too--the comments exploded in a snarkfest of hilarity.

Stella Deleuze posted about conflict in a novel, which was helpful to me because it's something I struggle with. Remember how I mentioned I'm a non-confrontational person? And how I tend toward the stoic and reserved? I don't "get" confrontation and high emotion, so it's something I don't feel I write well. The other kinds of conflict she discusses, more internal conflict, make more sense to me, but those sorts of conflict are difficult to convey effectively. I think it's worth identifying them and working on them. She also posted about how to annoy your social network contacts. Especially if you're new to this game of self-promotion, check out the post. Read it in conjunction with Sirra's post above. Learn what not to do.

It looks like this was the week to learn about how to use social media for professional purposes.

SitRep Saturday: The Cowboy Next Door

This week, I finished the first draft and started editing. At the end of the draft, it was 14,688 words. It currently sits at 14,693, but I'm only on the first page. Things can change.

I've decided to add a "bonus" chapter. The main relationship is so charged that I thought it could use some couple time. Plus, I really enjoy the hero and I'd like to see him get what he wants.

The layout of the book is basically designed, from chapter headings to summary to acknowledgments. I plan to include an excerpt of Cass Gets Her Kicks.

And, finally, last night, I designed the book cover. Weeks of searching Dreamstime finally paid off, and I found the perfect cover image.

Yes, that image is relevant. (It's my favorite scene, actually.) Does it make you laugh? It makes me laugh.

So! That's what I've been up to this week.

Self-Publishing: Judge Me By My Cover, Do You?

We've all heard that old idiom. You know the one. The fact is that books are judged by their covers, and now, with bookselling happening online, books are judged by thumbnail-sized digital images representing what may or may not be an actual cover. 

You need a great cover. You can't just skate by on your superior writing skills. No one is going to click on your link if your cover doesn't catch their attention. Ideally, you'll hire a professional cover designer. (Might I suggest my friend Kelsey and her company?) But what if you can't afford them? What if you decide to DIY your book cover? I have some tips for you. 

Look at covers for similar books. 

Go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and check out the top ten best-selling books in whatever genre your book is. Look at the book covers as thumbnails and as full-size images. What do you like? What grabs you? What don't you like? I recently spent some time on Harlequin's website looking at Blaze book covers, since the story I'm currently working on has the same sort of feel as those books. You can do the same at other publishers' websites.

Read graphic design and book cover review blogs. 

If you're not visually inclined, reading graphic design blogs can be daunting. Those wacky artists talk about all sorts of things I don't really understand. Read them anyway. It's the same as any other research; Google any terms you don't understand. You will eventually absorb some information and figure out how to use what you learn. As for book cover review blogs, I like Your Cover Uncovered, even though it's relatively new. 

How-to guides on graphic design are good for you.

Read about things like how color affects people and which fonts are a bad idea. Watch things like how to design a book cover. I'm not saying be a copycat. I'm saying learn something. 

Download free photo editing software.

I use Photoscape. It's not as sophisticated as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, but it's pretty good. I've heard good things about Picasa, too. (My father is a photographer and he uses Picasa when he's away from Photoshop.) After you download it, play with it. A lot. Watch tutorials. Share what you create with people who will give you their opinions, and listen to those opinions. Get better.

Use royalty-free images.

Back when I was designing the cover for Cass, I Googled "free royalty free images." (I ended up creating the neon heart shape on my own. Please don't ask me how, it was a fluke and I doubt I could ever recreate it.) I ended up finding Dreamstime, a website with an enormous free stock image library. Their prices are reasonable ($10 per image seems to be industry standard); I may actually end up buying an image for the next book cover. Just be sure you read the terms of service. At Dreamstime, you can use free images for up to 10,000 sales, and paid images for 500,000 sales; online use is unlimited. Don't forget to give credit where credit is due on your copyright page.

On Writing: When You Can't Call Everyone "Darling"

I hate naming my characters. There. I said it. For many years, I refused to name them, and I stuck with the pronouns only. Then I started writing homoerotica, and names became necessary because more than one "he" and if you're not careful, you have one guy doing all sorts of dirty things to himself. Some of those things are physically impossible.

But I digress.

Now that I name my characters regularly, I still hate it, but I have a few ways of going about it that make the process easier. I believe you should give thought to your character names, but I also believe--especially in fiction based in the real world--that the names should make sense. Conservative, wealthy parents from New England aren't going to name their daughter Rainbow Moonbeam, and die-hard Secessionists from the South aren't going to name their oldest son after the bastard who burned Atlanta to the ground. There are, of course, always exceptions to the rule, and true life is much stranger than fiction, but I think you get my point.

So here's what I do.

Visit the Social Security Administration website.
The SSA has a site dedicated to baby names. What I do is determine the year my character was born, and then I search "popular names by birth year." I try to pick a name from the top 1000. By doing this, I give my character an extra dimension of realism. Her parents were fully grounded in reality. Plus, it makes naming characters so much easier.

Let the characters name themselves.
It's a bit like letting a child name itself, but sometimes, it works. In Strawberry Moon, the main characters were originally named Lydia and Elaine, but it just wasn't working. When I sort of gave over to the muse and just started typing, they named themselves Jessica and Amy. I wouldn't have chosen these names on my own because of real-world connections to a Jessica and an Amy, but the names work, it's unlikely the women my husband knows will ever read the book, and so I'm going with it.

Consider the character's parents.
I mentioned the conservative New England parents and the die-hard Southern parents. Think about the character's origins, where she came from, who would have named her. What were her parents thinking? What did they hope to accomplish with her name? Parents generally put a lot of thought into their child's name. And some don't, which says something about their character.

Use what sounds good.
I confess: Cass got her name because it sounded good. It's a good sex name: one syllable, easy to say in the heat of passion. It sort of embodies the character and her story. Her name is short, it sounds like "sassy," it even has the vulgar word for buttocks in it, and if you've read the book, you know that kind of figures into her thinking. The current character I'm writing, Lilah, got her name in a similar fashion. It just sounds good. I like the way it rises and falls, I like that it flows nicely with her middle name and her last name, and I like that her parents chose an old-fashioned, Biblical name for her but shortened it to something more modern and flower-like.

Monday Miscellany: Why I'll Be MIA Tomorrow

First, I'm a thousand words into the second chapter of The Cowboy Next Door. The first chapter has been drafted and comes in at just over 4,000 words, so I think the chances are good that this story will be about 15,000 words. Not bad.

I also did a very rough action-draft of the first part of the book on self-publishing I plan to work on next. I wouldn't normally start a second project like that, but it was nagging me, so I gave in.

Tomorrow, my daughter turns a year old. I know, right? I can't believe it has already been a year. This morning, we took her out so she could pick out gifts with the birthday money her great-grandmother sent her (she chose a toy espresso machine, a toy laptop, and a plastic foam dinosaur) and it was only when she laid down for a nap that I realized I haven't done anything that I normally do today. You know. Blogging, tweeting, checking Smashwords and Amazon... So it occurs to me that I will probably be MIA from social networking for the next day, maybe even two. We have a lot of playing to do.

With the weather here in Germany being so, um, unpredictable, I'm not ruling out much of the next few days being spent at the pool. We went all summer with relatively cool days and lots of rain, but the last few days have been hot and icky. I'm so glad the pool in Kaiserslautern is so nice.

Blog Roundup: August 15 - 21, 2011

I love this post from Amanda Hocking. I think it's important to have these sort of re-realizations sometimes. I also love this post, because it's such a totally exciting thing that her books are getting new covers.

I am not exactly sure what Ms. Charbonneau is getting at in this post. Not only did I not notice Amazon doing the rounding-up (which I guess is the point), but I also can't find evidence of it on the site (but maybe I just am not looking in the correct place). I understand her skepticism, but I'm just not that skeptical.

James Killick blogged on why you should give up writing right now. I'm still not deterred.

Keystrokes & Word Counts came through yet again with two great posts this week. One on social networking and not over-extending yourself and one on not feeding the trolls. If you click on no other links, click on that one.

Don't be a douche. Listen to Sirra.

Stella Deleuze blogged about creating believable scenes. Think about what you write. Even if a scene is science fiction or fantasy, I don't think it hurts to act it out and make sure that it makes sense.

The Bookshelf Muse has a post on impulsive as a character trait this week. I think I'm writing a character who could be described as impulsive...

Your Cover Uncovered took on a new book cover. I love this blog for the explanations behind the writer's opinion. I wish it was updated more frequently simply because I'm not very graphically inclined and this is such a great blog. (Yes, I'm being selfish.)

Chuck Wendig posted about the bare-bones secret menu of writing advice. I think all of his advice is pretty sound (or it makes me laugh, whatever), but this really strips it down. Also, I think I want animal fries now.

Wow. It looks like it was kind of a light week for blogging.

SitRep Saturday: Cass Gets Her Kicks and Announcing The Cowboy Next Door

Cass Gets Her Kicks is for sale at Smashwords and at Amazon. It has been accepted into the premium catalog for distribution at Smashwords, so it'll be available at B&N, Sony, and Apple in the next two weeks or so. The first story, "Galena, KS," is available on the website as a sneak peek and the first 35% of the book is free to preview at Smashwords.

This week, I outlined and action-drafted the next project, a romance novella set in a fictional town in Colorado, starring a Navy widow and a cowboy. The working title is currently The Cowboy Next Door. I'm shooting for a wordcount of 15,000 - 20,000 and I think I can make it, but we'll see how it goes. My hope is to have the whole thing drafted by the end of this week. I started the first chapter last night and got about 200 words in before I decided that I should go to bed early.

I've already been looking at possible cover images, but I haven't found anything that just calls to me the way Cass's pink-and-black image did.