by Laura K. Curtis | May 2, 2014 | Books, Stuff!, Writing |
Anyone who thinks the life of a writer is glamorous has been watching too many movies or too much Castle. In fact, most of the writers I know who don’t have to leave their house for day jobs or to take their kids to school spend a fair amount of time in sweats or pajamas. Their clothes have coffee stains and wrinkles. Their footgear is more often slippers or socks than heels.
But once a year, for the Edgar Awards, the ugliest award on the planet brings out the beautiful side of the mystery-writing community. Even I stuff myself into fancy clothes and head out for the evening. So without further ado, here are some of the fashions on display at the Edgars 2014:
by Laura K. Curtis | Apr 25, 2014 | Books, Romance, Writing |
I spend a fair amount of time thinking and talking about marketing. (In fact, if you’re going to be at the RWA conference in NJ in October, you can come hear me talk about author branding.) But I like to think everything I do amounts to “truth in advertising.” Your brand shouldn’t be something you “put on,” it’s an expression of who you are. My brand is not just what I write in my fiction, it’s also the types of things I discuss here on the blog, the dog photos I post on Twitter, all the parts of the “social me.”
Your marketing should always be honest. Your cover shouldn’t make promises your book doesn’t keep. If the cover looks like romantic suspense, there should be thrills and chills inside. It if looks like a light, happy beach read, there shouldn’t be dead bodies piling up. If the cover copy (and please note, cover copy is the descriptive text about the plot; “blurbs” are those things where people say “this book is the best thing I’ve read in five years!”) says that the book is a romance, there damned well better be a happy ending.
Back in the days when authors didn’t have a whole lot of personal contact with readers, marketing was a different game. You (which, in those days, meant your publisher) gave clues, tempted and teased, and hoped that when readers picked up a book in the store and paged through it that they’d buy it.
But things have changed. In today’s world, authors meet their readers on Twitter and Facebook and blogs. They actively ask their readers to review their work on various sites. The lines between readers and authors are getting blurred more every day, which is both good and bad. It’s good because I feel—as a reader—that I can more easily tell my favorite authors how much I appreciate their work. And, as an author—certainly as a new author who is hoping to constantly improve her writing—it’s great to be able to hear directly from readers.
But there’s a down side, too, in that, well, not everyone likes my work. And I do have the desire to explain things to them (“but did you miss that she…?”). So that’s hard. And negotiating the author-reviewer relationship is difficult since I was brought up to say “thank you” to everyone and I’ve been told that a number of reviewers/bloggers don’t want to hear that from authors. So it’s problematic. My own solution is to say “thank you” to those I know from social media, and leave others alone.
This new author-reader-reviewer relationship, however, has also created an opening for a far darker and more manipulative form of marketing than used to be possible. Now, a select few authors—and I am by no means tarring everyone with this brush, but there are enough of them out there to make it a “thing”—are posting to blogs, forums, social media about how they are being “bullied,” and therefore they will be forced to stop writing. This leads to a jump in their sales, and a huge outpouring of sympathy, and of course they don’t stop writing.
There are other manifestations of this same kind of marketing, which I think of as “guilt marketing.” Authors post that someone has ripped them off. They post that they need money because of some personal problem or illness and that the best way to help them is to buy their books. (Instead of just giving them money, which doesn’t create a sales jump and thus a ranking jump on Amazon.) They post that haters are writing negative reviews for some specious reason and beg their followers to go post positive reviews to Amazon to drown out the negative voices.
Mind you, I am not saying that these things don’t happen—people do have family emergencies. They do get ripped off. They do have unfair reviews written on occasion. But up until now, that’s never been a problem they expected readers to solve for them.
The real issue is that this is now happening so frequently that it’s pretty clear not all of it is true. Which leaves readers feeling cynical and abused.
Recently, an author claimed that because of poor reviews, etc, she was suicidal and she was going to quit writing, take down her book, take down her page, yada yada yada. She did none of those things. In fact, she recently sent a review site a request to do a “cover reveal” for her new book. Yes, another book after she supposedly had to quit because of the psychological trauma caused to her by the readers of the first book.
Now, if you’ve followed this blog for a while, you probably know that I am a depressive. In fact, a high percentage of creative people deal with depression. I suffer from both epilepsy and depression and I deal with them, just like other epileptics and depressives. They’re part of my life the way, I don’t know, migraines, are a part of someone else’s life. I don’t expect other people to solve my problems for me and I don’t go “I’m going to kill myself because you are all being mean to me” when stuff goes wrong.
In fact, I’ve known a lot of people who have those feelings, and I’ve known those who actually committed suicide, and none of them have thrown that kind of tantrum. People who have depression take the words “I am going to kill myself” very, very seriously. Often, they won’t say them even when they mean them. If they do say them, it’s frequently to only a few very close friends, people they trust to help them stay alive.
Mood disorders affect different people in different ways. Yes, some people may prefer to announce to the world their current state of mind. But most don’t. Not when their current state is as dire as this woman said hers was. And she is not alone in faking this kind of melodrama. I’ve seen this same behavior several times in the past year. And none of these people have actually stopped writing, have actually taken down their sites and disappeared from the Net.
This kind of manipulation infuriates me, not the least because it drowns out the real cries for help that occur on the web. And it’s becoming more and more common. I don’t think there’s anything to be done about it, unfortunately, except for readers to become aware that they may be being manipulated and to proceed with caution.
But still, it pisses me off.
by Laura K. Curtis | Apr 19, 2014 | Writing |
credit: lightwise / 123RF.com
I think every author hears that at one point or another in her career, and it always makes me laugh. Where do I get my ideas? Where don’t I get my ideas? Sitting in the large jury selection room, I began to wonder what would happen if someone just didn’t show up for jury duty. I had this idea, you see, about an abused woman whose abuser doesn’t want her out of his control. Or a mobster’s wife who loves to gossip. So I asked the lovely gentleman in charge of our jury room and he tsked me and said I shouldn’t even be asking. But once I explained my reasons, he said practically anything could happen from nothing at all to a fine, to an arrest and incarceration.
“Oh, anything could happen” is, naturally, the best possible answer. It means that whatever I decided to do would be realistic. Within limits, of course.
Today, my wonderful RWA chapter, CoLoNY (Connecticut and Lower NY) had its monthly meeting. One of our members is a doctor, and today we all got to ask her the questions we were “dying” to get the answers to. But here’s the thing about answers…they just lead to more questions. We got into a simple question about a sprained ankle that ended up lasting half an hour. The epilepsy question went on for considerably longer. Not because she didn’t answer the questions, but because as soon as she did, you could practically see the ideas forming on the faces of the group and more questions popped out.
So the next time you wonder where an author gets her ideas, consider that she probably looks at life like a jeopardy game…the answers are there, but she is always thinking of the questions. Or maybe writers are just overgrown two-year-olds with the insatiable need to know “why.”
by Laura K. Curtis | Apr 12, 2014 | Books, Writing |
I’ve been thinking about my own work lately and I realized that I have something in common with Disney: a whole lot of motherless heroines.
In Twisted, her mother’s murder is the major event in the heroine’s life. That’s not giving anything away, as the book’s cover copy reads:
Lucy Sadler Caldwell is a successful true-crime writer. But the one story she’s never been able to come to terms with is the murder of her own mother–until now. She’s returned to Dobbs Hollow, Texas, the hometown she fled seventeen years ago, to finally expose the real killer.
Tara, the heroine of Lost, which comes out in May, is also motherless, though not for the same reason. Her mother’s death isn’t even mentioned in the book. (It’s actually mentioned in Twisted, though just in passing.)
Evie, the heroine of this summer’s Toying with His Affections, was raised by her aunt and uncle after her mother’s death by aneurism.
I have two more books in mind, and in both the heroine’s lack of parents is key to the story. It’s not as if the deaths need to be violent because they’re not inciting incidents for the action of the story, but they are necessary. So for the foreseeable future, I won’t be working on anything with mothers in the picture.
Now that I’ve noticed the trend, I have some suspicions as to why I am so obsessed with motherless adults even though my own mother, thank goodness, is alive and kicking. (And I mean that literally–she goes to the gym more often than I do!)
But now I am beginning to wonder…can I write a heroine with a mother in the picture? Do I even know what that woman would look like? I don’t write YA or NA, and my heroines tend to be late 20s to early 40s, so it’s not as if they’re living with their folks. You’d think I wouldn’t be so busy eliminating perfectly acceptable parents. I mean, why can’t my heroines just call their moms in another state once in a while the way normal adults do?
So I am determined that I will write a heroine who has some kind of relationship with her living mother. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter. The mother just has to still be around. But it won’t be for a while.
by Laura K. Curtis | Apr 10, 2014 | Books, Writing |
I know, I have been neglecting the blog. Unfortunately, despite my very best efforts (well, not really) I am still sitting on a jury. We’re getting to the end, so I will be back with you shortly. In the meantime, a few things:
• I am gearing up for Lost‘s release on May 20. And then this summer (no exact date yet, sorry), my first contemporary romance: Toying with His Affection.
• I will be reading from Lost at Lady Jane’s Salon on Monday, May 5. Not sure who else is reading then, but it’s bound to be a good time because it always is!
• I’ve been putting together (literally: it’s assembly-required) my swag for RT and RWA this year. It’s going to be great fun! I hope I get to see you at at least one of them.
Also, don’t forget…even when I don’t have enough time to write a blog post, you can always find me on Facebook and Twitter.
by Laura K. Curtis | Feb 26, 2014 | Books, Romance, Writing |
A discussion over the last several days on Twitter, and a long and interesting post with a great discussion on Dear Author, on the topic of what kind of ending readers require in a romance–HEA (happily ever after) or HFN (happy for now), and indeed, what “happy for now” means to different readers–led me to examine my own feelings. But before I subject you to ruminations on fiction, I will give you this little piece of writing that sort of explains my feelings as fiction.
I almost miss him, eclipsed as he is by the stark white blouse and night-black pants of the hostess leading him across the room. He has turned gray, a mist that trails in her wake, a near void amidst the burgundy wine, white tablecloths, mahogany furnishings and bright, fresh food.
– That’s him? He’s not what I imagined.
I almost tell her I was wrong, that the slope-shouldered shell is not my former brown-haired, bright-eyed, laughing lover with the rough hands and soft kisses.
– He’s changed.
I have changed, too, and for a brief moment regret the twenty pounds I’ve put on, the fact that I’ve been gardening and my face is smudged with dirt.
– You’re glad, now, to have escaped, I bet. I can’t see you being happy with a man like him.
I look at her, the one he married, sitting across from him. As brown as he is gray, she wears tailored slacks, a cream shirt, a string of pearls. Not an extra ounce to soften her frame; all her unworn pounds weigh him down. They don’t speak to each other, menus held like shields between them.
– I wouldn’t have been with a man like him. He wouldn’t be that man if we’d stayed together.
I cried at our parting. Tear of loss, tears of self-pity. I resist the urge to cry again. Tears of sorrow, this time, tears of frustration at what might have been.
– He got what he deserved. He should have stuck with the one he loved, not left her for the one who made sense.
She is angry for me, and I appreciate it, but she does not understand. We are what we are and he made the only choice he could. I don’t hate him. I never have.
When we leave, I will kiss his stubbled cheek and clasp his softening body to my own and wonder if he ever mourns the long-gone pieces of his soul.
As you might guess, that’s loosely based on my own life. I was 39 years old when I got married. I’d been in love before. More than once. Those were HFNs, but they could have been HEAs. When we were together, I think we thought it was forever. If you’d read about us, you could have closed the book and imagined forever. But it didn’t work out that way, mostly because I was young and so were they. We weren’t ready. We weren’t able to make the kind of commitment to each other a true HEA requires.
For me, a romance novel needs, at the minimum, a HFN like that. A HFN where you can close the book and imagine a future for the couple. Not that they won’t have to work at it, but that they might, realistically, be able to have one. So it’s definitional…if the “FN” just means that the characters are gleefully enjoying a sexual affair, well, that’s not romance for me. I’m not saying it’s not a fine reading experience, it’s just not romance. For romance, I need the characters to feel love, even if they don’t say it.
My real life is hard. When I pick up a romance I want to know that at the end, regardless of the trials and tribulations the couple goes through, regardless of how many horrible things may happen to them, their friends, their families, even their pets, that in the end, they will have a future together. That their lives will be better because they have someone to share them with. In fact, the books that end up with low grades from me when I review them are very often those where, although the characters at the end profess their love for each other, I simply cannot believe that they will be happy, even if they do actually work at it.
I must admit, it’s the rare thriller I am happy with where the criminal gets away at the end, though, so I guess I am a traditionalist. I want books to be better than real life.
