Falling For Finn Excerpt

Well, FINALLY, I'm on the Samhain website as 'coming soon'.   On the last page but there I am!

So if you want to read an excerpt, go...

HERE!

Very First Author Interview Eva!

So...uh...I have my very first author interview with Sasha at Caribbean Accent. There's also a giveaway of Falling For Finn if you'd like to enter. So...um...yeah....go along and check it out.

*shuffles feet nervously*

I really need to get over this not wanting to toot my own horn thing.

*tries again* *with extra American-ness*

YA'LL!! I am being interviewed because I am so effing awesome!! And my amazing, effing incredible book is being offered as a giveaway and you can READ IT EARLY. 

So go read. And enter. Otherwise I'll set Hoo on you. ;-)

More New Author Confessions

Being a writer is SUCH a funny/weird thing. Firstly you angst about your book when you send it to the publisher. Then after the joy of acceptance has worn off, there's the angst about the revisions. About the cover. Then the copy edits. And then once you've finished angsting about that and you have your ARC copies, there's the angst about people actually reading your work.

Obviously that people WILL read your book should come as no surprise. That's why we write, yes? So that other people can read it. But after years and years of no one but family members and/or crit partners reading your stories, the time comes when COMPLETE STRANGERS get the chance to cast their eye over your scratchings. And even though you think you've prepared yourself for this moment, it's actually bloody terrifying. Especially when you know that these strangers will also discuss your book with OTHER COMPLETE STRANGERS! People you don't know will be having discussions about your book and the characters you've created and they will have opinions about them! 'Scuse me while I go and be sick in the corner...

Finn on the iTunes store!!

Yeah, I'm neurotic, can't you tell? Anyway what brought this on is the fact that Falling for Finn has been sent out for review and am feeling anxious about it. It's also now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes. And soon should be up on the Samhain website too.  It's everywhere basically.

But that lovely period between acceptance and release date is drawing to a close. Those lovely months when only you and your editor know how brilliant (or otherwise) you are. Where you can tell yourself you have a masterpiece on your hands and can fantasise about what you're going to buy with the millions of dollars in royalties that you're going to get. Or write down your acceptance speech for when you win the Man Booker prize or get your Nobel medal. Yep, those days will be over soon and then everyone's going to see behind the curtain and you'll either be outed as a fraud or, worse, people will just shrug their shoulders and wonder what the fuss is about.

Of course there is the option that you'll be hailed as the next Nora but let's not mention that. 

Right, so,  despite the fact that I'm terrified of ya'll reading it, it would be remiss of me NOT to point out that iTunes has a first chapter sample of Finn that you can download. I'm not sure how to link to this (and it's not on the NZ iTunes bookshop - Grrrr!) but if you're in the US (not sure about UK) and you're keen to read the first chapter, then feel free.... :-)

The Delicate Art of the Synopsis

I wanna talk about synopses. Well, not really, you understand, because synopses SUCK.  But I wanna talk about them because I was complaining about them on Twitter and someone mentioned they'd looked at my blog and asked me if I'd done a post about them. And I realised it's been a year since I've done something about synopsis writing. So I thought I'd do an updated post after having sold and 'apparently' knowing what I'm doing.

Which is a total lie of course. I have a better idea about what I'm doing but I'm still learning.

That's the tedious reason behind this post. I know some people love writing synopses (yes, there are people who do. Strange, strange people) but I am not one of them. I kind of wish I was because it would make life easier.

Alrighty, I don't usually write a synopsis before starting the book because I'm a pantser. But I do after 3 chapters, depending on the editors. It's actually quite a good time to write one for me because after 3 chapters I've figured out my characters and have a general idea about the direction of the book. In fact, I often find it harder to write a synopsis once I've finished because I have a more difficult time working out what to include in the synopsis and what to leave out because EVERYTHING seems very important! Groan.

Anyhoo, I think the major thing I've learned is that different editors require different things from a synopsis. Some want a quick and dirty glance to see if you've got a story there. Some want to know more than that. This you won't know beforehand but the length they require is a giveaway. If you can't ask the editor straight out, follow the guidelines on the submission page.  In some ways, a one page synopsis is EASIER because you simply can't put exterraneous detail in. You have to keep it short and very basic.

The tricky thing is always figuring out what to put in and what to leave out. For me, since I'm writing romance (obviously), that's what I concentrate on when I write the synopsis. How the romance starts. How it develops. How it nearly comes to grief. And how it ends.  That's all. Because the romance is the backbone of the book. Not how the heroine gets from one place to another. Or the sassy conversation she has with her sassy best friend. Or how the hero has a fight or plays with his kid or whatever. Your main story happens when the hero and heroine interact with each other and that's the story your synopsis should follow (in my humble opinion naturally).

The way I do it is I basically write an emotional synopsis, concentrating only on the feelings of the hero and heroine. How they feel when they meet each other. What makes this feeling change. What makes it grow. What brings this feeling to crisis point. And what makes this feeling too strong to deny. The external plot comes into my synopsis only when it changes the feelings of the characters.  The turning points of your story (in a romance) are the instances where the feelings of your characters change towards each other. Okay, so maybe I told a lie and the fight the hero has with someone IS important. Maybe the fight changes the feelings the heroine had toward him some way. Maybe it causes her to change her opinion of him (either good or bad). If it does, include it. If it doesn't, don't put it in. Don't put anything in that doesn't cause major change in the character's emotions in other words.

It sounds kind of easy now I've written it down but it's not. I always have to write a very long synopsis (3 pages single spaced - long for me) first before I can distill it down. Somehow once you've got it down you can see what's needed and what isn't. And of course there's nothing like a synopsis for making you realise your conflict is missing something (but we won't go there).

What I try and make sure I have in each synopsis is this:

1. Hero/heroine - one paragraph each on who they are, plot set up and conflict.   

2. How they meet. Their attraction and why they're attaracted.

3. A few more paragraphs on how their attraction builds and the the first time they kiss/make love

4. Why their feelings for each other deepen.

5. Why their deepening feelings are bad and what they do in response (black moment).

6. What makes them decide to change and embrace love (HEA)

Now, this is just what I do so it's not a 'this is the way you MUST do it' guide. I've done it this way with two books and two different editors, and one editor sent me back the synopsis with screes of questions. The other bought the book off the partial and synopsis. So, y'know...it's a delicate art depending on the editor and the publisher.

What really helps though, when it comes to the synopsis, is knowing your characters well. And knowing your conflict, and how the character and the conflict connect. For me the easiest synopses to write have been the books where I know those things very well. 

So...uh....there you go. Synopses. Anyone got any other tips??

Breaking World Shattering News - Jackie is On Amazon

Ridiculous noobishness happening here but.....

I AM ON AMAZON!!!!

Here is the link.

Falling for Finn Jackie's bestest debut book evah and better than at least 1% of books on Amazon....

Yes, I am squeeing and being utterly ridiculous but you can only enjoy these things for the first time once so I am taking the liberty of fully embracing the moment.

*embraces moment*

Ahem.

At some point I will also be on the 'coming soon' part of the Samhain website but not yet. 

Anyway, bubbles all round I say what?

The Difficulties With Passions

Okay, I confess. Some days the rainbows and unicorns and shiny baubles of finally getting a publisher who wants to publish your book aren't enough. They scare away your doubt crows right enough but the bloody things keep coming back.

So what you sold six books this year? That doesn't mean readers will buy ANY of them.

You're just one of thousands trying to get people to buy your book. You'll never get noticed.

You only write boring contemporary romance and not even erotic contemporary romance at that. No one's interested in  that kind of thing.

Your characters are too left field. People won't identify with them.

Write much hotter otherwise you'll miss the 50 Shades boat.

Write something else otherwise you'll miss the 50 Shades boat.

You're missing the 50 Shades....Oh, too late. It's gone. Sucker.

These are just some of the wonderful crows that have been pecking me of late. Now I did know that everything suddenly wasn't going to get magically better upon having something accepted (I DID! It's true!). Or that I'd never have crises of confidence again. Or that things would get a hell of a lot easier. I DID know that.  It's just that, well, all the above doubts didn't really become real until your release date looms closer and you realise that following your passion and making it your profession has some unforseen difficulties. Like the stakes becoming a LOT higher and the possibility of failure that much more frightening.

Because I don't write to make a little bit of pin money to fuel my habit for antique doilies. Or because dashing off a couple of romances into between G&Ts is a good way of passing the time. Or because I can't find a real job and have to do something.

No. I write because I have to. Because I can't stop. Because after years of being a good-ish librarian, I want to be a GREAT writer. (okay, so not great as in Tolstoy/Hemingway great. Great as in 'woohoo, that was a damn good read' great. Got it? Good).

Oh yeah and I'd like to make a living from it. If that's not too much to ask.

And this is the difficulty with passions because if it doesn't come to pass, then you've got so much more to lose.

Anyway, given my personality type and my ability to worry about/over-analyse everything, I've decided that being a writer is very probably the worst thing for me to be doing. But what else can I do? It's the only thing I've ever wanted to be.

I guess the only thing to do, when the doubt crows circle, whether published or unpublished, is to keep writing more stories. Try not to let the doubts and fears and worries paralyse you. Keep looking forward, not back. *tells self*

What do you guys do with the doubts? Chocolate? Retail therapy? Alcohol???

It's My Process Man!

I'm not doing Nano this year - at least not officially - despite starting a brand new story as of yesterday. And since Nano tends to make people think about their process a lot more and since Maisey did an awesome post about writing process and being fast, I thought I'd totally copy her and do one about my process. Mainly because it's kind of been the opposite of Maisey's experience (and also because I was scraping around for a topic to blog about).

I've always been a fast writer but I didn't realise quite how fast until I started writing to get published. Before, I would go on writing binges and write for days on end, then stop and not write for months, so the last story I wrote before I actually committed to writing romance took about a year. Then again it did end up being 320k so there's that. ;-)

But when I started writing for publication, I found that  if I wrote every day, I could do a 50k story in a month. Or even 2 weeks if I planned it well enough. Which I found very pleasing. However the fatal flaw in the works was that because I didn't know much about character or conflict, or plot, or anything really, that 50k wasn't a very good 50k. So I used to end up having to rewrite over and over. This, I thought, was my process. That what I do is write my way into my books, I write fast to get it all down, and rewriting fifty million times was just part of it.

Since then, I've found that actually it's not and that my process has changed. Now, I know I haven't been published very long but one thing I've noticed is that subsequent to publication, I feel like I write slower (unlike Maisey who's got faster). This is kind of frustrating but I know that I'm writing slower because I'm thinking much more about character and conflict and pacing that I ever used to. Not in a conscious, second-guessing way. More in an analytical way as I complete each scene. It IS  frustrating, but the up side is that I don't have to do multiple drafts anymore. My Dirty Virgin Hero book - which I felt took ages and ages for me to write - I'll probably do a bit of editing with but nothing like the full on rewrites I used to have to do in the past. It's pretty much done in first draft form. 

The other thing I do now that I never used to do before and probably saves me from lots of rewriting is that I actually spend a lot of time thinking about the characters before I start. Yeah, I know, I should have done that years ago but I was always too impatient to start writing. These days I actually CAN'T actually get very far into the story until I have a feel for the character because I've learned what happens to a story when I don't (pants happens in other words). I do have to tell myself it's okay to spend time thinking and not writing, but never underestimate the power of a good think while you're doing the laundry or walking or having a shower (showers are especially awesome!).  It's helped by the fact that I now know what I have to figure out about each character, which 'why' questions I have to ask. And that I also have to go with my gut on some things and not second-guess, and that sometimes I have to let go the vision I had about a certain charater and let them be the way they want to be.

I hope this process will get faster the more I write and the more I learn, because it feels slow to me at the moment. Though some books are slower than others because some characters are harder to pin down and conflicts more complicated. What's for certain is that your process isn't set in stone and you can change it. This may happen naturally or it might be something you consciously do.

It just depends on how you want to write and how comfortable you feel about doing it.

So how does everyone else do it? (and I mean that not suggestively hehe, though feel free to share...).

Post-Book Hangover - The Reality of Having a Deadline

Have finished my Dirty Virgin Hero for Samhain - yay! Honestly, I loved the guy but he was one hell of a complicated hero to write. He had ISSUES man. Serious issues. And it was one of those stories where I had to stop and think through every one of his reactions and responses because maaaaaan, he so many complex things going on with him.

It was kind of one of those books where you go 'this is idea is cool and angsty. Sweet. I'll write it'. And then you realise what you've taken on. And you think 'crap'. Then you want to back out but you can't because hey, you're published now and you have a contract and a deadline and you can't email your editor saying 'you know that book of mine you bought? Well, I've decided it's too complicated and I can't write the rest of it. Sorry.'  Not when the title is in the Coming Soon part of your debut book (see that promo that I just kind of whipped in there?? hehe).  No, this is where the rubber hits the road and the warm, happy glow of being newly published becames the cold, damp embrace of reality.

You can't just fling up your hands and say 'eff it. I don't wanna write this crappy idea. It's way too hard,' and go and play Halo 4 instead.
You can't put it away and go on with the other two really neat story ideas that have popped up in your head and you REALLY want to write more.
You can't get your friends to write it for you.
You can't put it away and go back to it when you feel like it. 

What you have to do is sit down and write that mofo yourself. Because you are a PROFESSIONAL now and writing is no longer your hobby, or even just your passion, it's your job and if you don't do it there will be consequences.

Eeep.

Now I have to write my next book which is for Entangled and the third in the Talking Dirty series I sold to them earlier this year. It's not due till May but I am going to do it now because I DO have another couple of ideas I'm more excited about but neither of them have deadlines. Somehow I'm going to have to put them aside and muster up some enthusiasm for the story I have to write now - which is proving somewhat difficult. After the angst-fest of my last book, you'd think I'd be raring to get into something lighter and flirtier but no. There's something quite daunting about starting a new story, especially one you're kind of meh about writing.

Anyone got any tips on how to get excited about a story you HAVE to write?

BTW, if you're bored with me wibbling on, check out the Samhain video below. It's much sexier than listening to me rant. :-)  (oh and apologies for the dodgy formatting).