Family-wise, it’s been a very hectic past several weeks. Picking up Youngest Son from university and having the extra body around as he unpacks his stuff and searches for summer work. Eldest Son has been super busy finishing up his second student teaching practicum and is now working on his last course for his teaching certificate plus is taking two of three courses needed to complete his Bachelor of Education on top of his B.A. and certification, plus he’s moving out! Very slowly, as he tries to fit the moving out with three classes.
I’ve been experiencing a bit of Motherhood Mania, when you feel like you should have enough hours in the day, but extra brains are EVERYWHERE. I don’t know about you, but extra brains deplete my creative energy and finding butt-in-keyboard time has been a challenge, particularly because I’m at the brainstorming/drafting stage of a new project (as Cindy).
Thus the slow-down in my blog entries.
Did you know you can now put your blog up on Kindle and subscribers can pay a fee to receive your posts on their e-reader? I wouldn’t consider Kindle-izing my blog at this time, because I believe that if you’re going to Kindle-ize your blog, then you should be writing a steady stream of content, and that’s not a position I find myself in.
I’m not likely to subscribe to blogs via my Kindle at this point, either. For one thing, I’m not using my Kindle exclusively—I still have a paperback and hard cover TBR pile as well as a Kindle TBR pile. To me, subscribing to a blog via Kindle would feel much like subscribing to a newspaper or magazine via Kindle. I’d feel like I should be picking up the Kindle every day to check in on my subscriptions. But I’m not on my Kindle every day. I am on my computer pretty much every day, and I check my fav blogs via my blog-roll.
So here are a handful of new blogs I’ve discovered that I intend to put in my blog-roll so I’ll remember to visit them (instead of having to be reminded through Facebook posts that I should visit). I hope you find them interesting, too.
First, D.P. Lyle, M.D.’s Writer’s Forensics blog. I discovered Dr. Lyle’s blog while writing SEX, PIs & PACKING TAPE, the mystery romance single title that is currently enjoying a bit of back-burnering in anticipation of pitching the manuscript at the RWA National Conference in New York in June.
I don’t read Dr. Lyle’s blog daily, or even every week. But when I’m working on a book with a mystery or suspense component, his Forensics blog is invaluable.
Romance author Shannon McKeldon has begun The Happy Writer blog. Her tag line is “Life’s hard. Write happy.” It’s a great idea for a blog (and also the sort of blog that I think deserves Kindle-izing). It’s all about remaining positive—and providing tools to help writers remain positive—within this rollercoaster business. Because, yes, it’s fun to get to do what you love for a “living” (ahem) every day, but writing for publication is very, very difficult. Deadline pressures, an editor messing with your voice (has never happened to me, but I’ve heard the horror stories), losing an editor and then suddenly losing your ability to sell to his/her replacement, despite that you have published several award-winning books (yes, it happens. Writing is subjective, and what one editor loves, another might not). There are pressures and there are stresses that no one but other writers truly understand. So if you need help maintaining a positive attitude, check out Shannon’s The Happy Writer.
Another writer’s blog to check out is Cathy Yardley’s. First, she has her main blog, which I really want to read more often (so it’s going in my blog-roll), and then she has a marketing/writing blog called Rock Your Writing, tag line “Sell a Lot without Selling Out.” (I really love these clever tag lines!).
Cathy lost several posts during a blog implosion (her words). But her blog is definitely worth checking out. Both blogs are going in my blog-roll.
Lastly, New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie and multi-publishing romance author Barbara Samuel (aka Ruth Wind and aka Barbara O’Neal) have been discussing the new e-publishing self-publishing model that has spawned success stories like Amanda Hocking’s. Their discussion occurs in three posts on Jenny Crusie’s blog. It’s interesting, although I found myself skimming because (a) I’m short on time these days and (b) I’m short on time. If you want to read from the beginning, here’s the link to Post 1. Post 2 continues their conversation, ending with Post 3, which discusses self-publishing and editing.
I’ve read Post 3 and Post 2, because naturally I’m reading them backwards. Don’t ask me why. I hope to get to Post 1 today. “Hope.”
Because I think I finally have a handle on the first scene of my short story WIP, in which my heroine appears drunk. My romance writer’s brain tells me, “She can’t be drunk. An editor would never buy that.” My Cindy brain tells me, “But she’s not drunk. She’s just really sloshed. And I’m writing this for a niche market, not a major publishing house that might frown on heroines walking on-stage inebriated.”
Really, it’s okay for my heroine to be sloshed in scene i. I need to accept that. Real people get tanked and still find love—why can’t my heroine?
Initially scene i was written from her point of view when she wakes up in the hero’s apartment and pieces together what happened the night before. Then it suddenly occurred to me that it would be great fun (for me as a writer, anyway) to show WHERE the hero found her (in the apartment building laundry wearing revealing sleepwear), which would lead to WHY she was down there, and basically adds a layer of “out-of-control”ness my heroine is experiencing at this time in her life. Let me assure you (why must I assure you?), she over-indulged for a very good reason. She was keeping up with her friend, who’s about to go all Bridezilla in the series. As the Maid of Honor, my heroine, Claire, felt it was her duty to keep up with Tanya. And, if you’ve ever drank a Mudslide, you know how easily they go down.
So there. That’s my justification. I have a drunk heroine in the first scene of my WIP. And I’m okay with that.
Will romance readers be okay with that? I don’t know. But that’s one of the nice things about writing a series like this for a niche market. If I’m writing for a niche, I don’t have to worry about appealing to the masses. I want to appeal to the masses, but I also want to write the stories that make me smile. And this one makes my madcap romantic comedy demon grin.