EBOOKS VERSUS PRINT BOOKS...PREDICTING THE FUTURE

In broaching the subject of eBooks, no doubt, again, it merits continued debate as I continue to read various blogs and articles on eBooks versus print books, who's buying what, and what this all means for the future for writers and readers.

There doesn't seem to be a clear consensus one way or the other, but my own sense is that eBooks are the definite wave of the future while also making its presence felt right now.

Clearly print books are still in the driver's seat, so to speak, in terms of overall sales, keeping struggling bookstores afloat, and books on library shelves. From where I sit, there is no substitute for holding a real book in my hands and flipping from one page to the next, backtracking, or riffling through. I also love the atmosphere of a bookstore, be it an intimate independent bookshop or a chain bookseller, where my wife and I can hang out while wandering the aisles, sipping on a cappuccino and hoping to find that diamond in the rough that we must have.

However, I know people (particularly younger readers), who rely entirely on their Nooks and Kindles in reading for pleasure (and even schooling). It is pretty obvious to me that as a society, we are gravitating toward digital for movies, music, TV, and now reading. Amazon recently suggested their eBooks were outselling hardcover titles. Not too surprising here, considering the difference in price, even if most hardcover books are discounted these days, and ease in downloading and reading electronic books.

Twenty years from now, I predict that eBooks will be the primary means for reading fiction and nonfiction. Of course, for most of us writers whose livelihood is wrapped up in print sales, the coming years will be challenging, to say the least.
The best advice is to get with the program now and ease the burden later. One way I am doing this by trying to get my publishers to release out of print titles in eBook or allow me to do so. The results have been mixed thus far, but I will keep working on them.

I am also keeping an eye on the digital royalty rate for future print contracts, seeking to get as much as I can when books are released as eBooks.

Finally, I have begun putting out in eBook my out of print books for which I have the rights back, as well as original eBooks. The results have surprised and excited me. I am selling lots of copies of what has grown to be eight eBooks I control, thus far, giving me income on the side that comes in handy more often than not.

My original young adult coming of age eBook tale, HER TEEN DREAM, has been a hit sensation in Kindle and Nook; as has been my original medical mystery, MURDER IN MAUI, and eBook version of out of print legal thriller, STATE'S EVIDENCE.

I, for one, have truly embraced the digital revolution and intend to ride the wave wherever it takes me in the world of writing in print and eBook formats.

What are your thoughts on eBooks versus print books? Are your eBook versions of print books selling well?

Have you done any original eBooks in Kindle, Nook, Google eBooks, Smashwords, etc.?

International Women's Day!

International Women's Day is a global day on which we celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women. In some countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, the day is a holiday and it has the equivalent status of Mother's Day.

It is an important day here, a country where many women have second class status. It is not as obvious as other countries where women are told what to wear, where to go and how to act. However, women still suffer a number of indignities at the whims and fancies of men, including being banished from their villages and branded as witches, mistreated when they are widowed, and scorned if they contract HIV from their errant husbands.

This morning, my daughter insisted that I should write my blog about her. "I inspire you to write," she reminded me, "AND I have the writing spirit." She then described three stories that she has in her head to write down. "But I am still going to be a vet," she added quickly.

I am so happy that my daughter has the freedom to make these choices, freedom earned on the backs of women who have fought since the 1900s to gain the right to be.

Vampires and Sex

The first vampires I ever met stalked Salem’s Lot. Man, they were cool. Deadly, too, but with a disturbingly seductive and rotted beauty. The next vampire novel that I recall with fondness was Robert McCammon’s They Thirst, about some of the nastiest bloodsuckers you’d ever want to meet razing Los Angeles in search of gore. Only later did I venture back to the originators, first to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, then to the even earlier Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.

In those days I preferred the villainous aspects of the vampire. I recognized the erotic attraction that characters like Carmilla and Dracula had for some readers, but I was far more interested in the horror than the seduction. By the mid-1980s, though, when I began to write seriously myself, a change had swept over vampire literature, initiated, perhaps, by Anne Rice’s 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire. Vamps were still dangerous, but the focus fell increasingly on their seductive and romantic qualities. The age of the antihero vampire was “dawning.”

Anthology series and magazines like Prisoners of the Night, Dead of Night, and The Vampire’s Crypt were pioneers in unleashing this new kind of vampire on the world. These were some of the magazines publishing dark fantasy and horror at the time I became interested in writing in those genres, and by then I was ready to embrace the rising trend. I began to enjoy writing about vampires who were not so much evil as they were “conflicted.” My vampires did bad things; they killed and fed. But they often struggled with the “thirst,” and with their own lost—or not quite lost—humanity.

Recently, a collection of my vampire stories was published, called Midnight in Rosary. There’s a werewolf tale or two in the collection. There’s a ghost. But mostly it’s vampires of various kinds and stripes. I was surprised when I was putting it together that I’d written so many stories about vampires in which they weren’t total villains. There are some nasty ones in there, but most of them have a lot more complexity to their characters, and I found I appreciated that.

I was also surprised that there was so much sex in the stories. Most of what I’ve written in my life would fall under the “adventure” heading, and quite often there is no sex at all, or it’s mostly implied. The stories in Midnight in Rosary are different. The sexual descriptions range from the romantic to the graphic, although I doubt anyone who has read a Laurell K. Hamilton book would be shocked. But there’s quite a lot of sex and it is generally integral in some way to the plot. I have to think that it is the vampire thing that led to this. Eroticism existed as part of the vampire equation from it’s beginnings in Carmilla and Dracula, but it has certainly become far more pronounced over the last 30 years. In the modern day it seems almost impossible to write about vampires without some kind of sexual element.

Vampires can be many things to many people, and that has gone far toward making them the most enduring “monster” in all of literature. It’s a major reason why I’ve visited and revisited them so many times in my work.

So, what do you think of vampires? Is there room for really nasty, non-sexual vamps in today's world? Would anyone read such a book?

When is adultery romance

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a divorced mother. On discovering I was a romance novelist, she proceeded to provide me unsolicited ideas for my next novel. One of her ideas involved a military wife who falls in love with a man on base while her husband was involved in covert ops somewhere overseas.

I shook my head and said, “If I do that, I’ll have to make her husband pretty despicable and probably abusive. Readers don’t think of adultery as romance.”

As I pondered the scenario, the writer in me wondered, “When is adultery romance?”

Romance novels have clear guidelines. The leading character (especially the woman) should not be involved in a relationship at the time the romance begins. Beyond the guidelines, I have my own religious views, which do not condone adultery in any form or fashion. But as an artist, my mind was already thinking of scenarios that would work.

One scenario that would justify the new relationship is an abusive controlling philandering spouse. But what if that spouse was actually a nice person?

A few years back I was at a party when a friend of mine told the story of her friend, Jane, who called her in the middle of the night. Jane was driving aimlessly frustrated with no clear plan except that she was leaving her live-in boyfriend. Everybody in the group gasped. The consensus: he was such a nice man. He cooked, he cleaned, he took care of the bills and he was committed. But according to my friend, that was the problem. He took care of everything but he was a dud. Jane was emotionally frustrated and bored to insanity because her boyfriend offered no excitement or romance. He just took care of business.

I of course didn’t know the man and was only slightly acquainted with Jane. A few parties later I met Jane and I understood why she was dissatisfied. She wanted the kind of romance I write about in the novels, where the man wines and dines her and offers emotional excitement. She wanted someone who made her heart throb and her palms sweaty every time he came near. I could imagine in a situation like that, Jane would be vulnerable enough to leave her boyfriend (or have a steamy affair) for someone more exciting who can meet her emotional needs. Could we make that adulterous affair into a romance story that readers would enjoy and even root for?

Needless to say, Jane did return to her boyfriend, trading the excitement of the novels for the everyday mundane of a steady, comfortable, secure relationship. I have no doubt she had a laundry list of changes she would like to implement. But my question still stands: could we really make adultery so romantic that readers are rooting for the adulterous relationship, even though the spouse is a nice, committed person?

What do you think? What scenarios would work ?

What's in a Name?

Last week I discovered the power of a mere name to energize, galvanize, motivate and eradicate the heebie jeebies.



I've been stuck in a rut with novel #2. The publishers of #1 had first option on it; we sent it along to them and the option deadline came... and went. Our polite enquiries went unanswered: the house was running flat out trying to save its own life and I suppose minor matters like option deadlines didn't even register on their redlining priority meter. Finally, my agent withdrew the book from them. I proceeded to make one (admittedly half-hearted) submission to an e-first publisher who politely declined.



This was the point where I was supposed to gird the loins and get back in the fight, send the book out to the markets and keep sending until someone either bought it or I ran out of places to submit. What actually happened was that I lost the motivation, the energy, the incredible faith that writers must have to keep working and submitting despite all the negative realities of the business. I was no longer a bright-eyed initiate; instead of getting back on the horse I spent a hell of a lot of time wondering whether the ride was even worth it.



I tried to get going. I really did. But every time I opened the file and saw the title, it looked at me with sadness and reproach; I felt the weight of all the negatives descend on my shoulders.



Half the time I don't know what the heck my subconscious is playing at, but I'm learning to trust it even at its wackiest. Last week it began bugging me when the novel was the furthest thing from my mind. Change the title, it kept whispering in my ear, from inside my head at that. Change the title! How about this one for starters? And the new title came to me, bright and new and enticing, unblemished by any history or heaviness.



I had the flu and was not in the most receptive mood. But it kept insisting so I went in there, opened up the files, changed the title. And something weird happened. While going through the process of changing the title, the old excitement - about the story, about the process - came back, just a flash at first. Then it grew. And grew. Changing the title, it seems, tricked my mind in such a way that the heaviness and negative associations from the past year that the old title would call forth were nowhere in evidence when I looked at the new title. The upshot? I'm back in the game - wary, not trusting it much, but back at work.



So, what's in a name? Only a deep connection between what we label an object and the experiences we associate with said object. Want to change those associations? Go ahead. Change that name.

—Liane Spicer

Paprika Chicken

I've been sick for the last week with a severe cold or mild flu -- either way I've been coughing up thick viscous things my friends no longer wish described to them and living with a head that feels as full as the A train at rush hour, and just about as civil. I ventured into the city yesterday to make up a computer class I missed, starting to feel better, and today I felt like I was past the worst for the first time.

I’ve been living on Whole Foods soups and homemade soup or stews I froze in individual servings months ago. When I was out yesterday I stocked up on a few things and bought some chicken breasts for when I started getting back my appetite for more solid food. Today I decided to go for it. I crushed a bunch of garlic cloves, threw them into a pot with baby carrots and sliced shallots, with the intent of pouring in a cup of red wine before I tossed it in the oven with the chicken. I cleaned the breasts and laid them on the veggie bed, and looked for some seasonings as I salted and peppered them. I have a jar of smoked paprika I bought at a friend’s suggestion that comes off the shelf from time to time to jolly up a meal, so I pulled it down.

The only reason I don’t use it more often is that the jar has a cork, not a shake lid, so I can’t sprinkle things with it. I don’t have a small strainer, but still fuzzy headed, I devised a plan with a fork and the big strainer I use to drain pasta that ended with the lightly oiled chicken completely covered in paprika. I decided to just roll with it, add a couple cups of red wine and put the pot in the oven to brown the chicken before I covered it and let it slow roast.

Looking down at the chicken my first memory had been of a dish my mother used to make that she called Paprika Chicken. It was only chicken breasts sprinkled with paprika and broiled crisp. I loved the crunchy skin, tinted dark red and brown by the flame and seasoning, remember it as one of many “special” meals my mom made for us. She also made Egg Foo Yung, bamboo shoots mixed with egg and spices and fried into pancake-sized discs drenched in sweet brown sauce; Tuna Casserole, creamy canned tuna, with crunchy crumb topping; Turkey ala King, chunks of white breast meat simmered in cream of mushroom soup from whatever cans hadn't been used in the tuna. My mom knew how to work a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup.

I can’t remember them all, but they flew through my head as I stared down at the paprika covered chicken. Looking back, most of them were budget stretchers, ways to feed a family of six on a limited income, ways to make meat go farther and still nourish your children. The reason we never felt like we were "eating poor" was that my mom made something wonderful out of it, turned their introduction to the table into a treasured family treat!

I LOVED Egg Foo Yung night! I didn’t eat sprouts any other time, and couldn’t see them in any other dish -- it was the only reason we had Soy Sauce in the house, a meal with a combination of flavors I didn’t eat any other time. We didn’t live in New York with a Chinese Restaurant every two blocks. My mother’s table may have been the most exotic around in places like Biloxi, Missisippi, where we lived in Air Force housing and could do as we pleased.

It leaves me with ever more respect for my mother, and the slight of hand tricks she used to keep us in line and on the straight and narrow. No matter what our reality may have been in good or bad years, when she was married with a husband’s support, or single and sometimes only just surviving, she never let us feel anything less than proud, and I think it was the greatest gift she gave us.

Spilling paprika on chicken is a funny trigger to take me there, but that is how the writing mind works, freely associative, and in times like this when it takes me to a pleasant place I haven’t been to in decades, it’s a very nice thing to have in your head. It’s also nice to remember where these things come from as I recover enough to go back to work on the novel.

Yikes! Writer Bloopers

"What are you cooking?" she asks, looking into the pot he stirs.

"Pesto," he answers.

It's been years, if not decades, since I saw the movie in which that exchange occurred. I no longer remember the name of the movie or the stars or any of the plot, only the huge mistake the writers had made and the scorn I felt for them. It would have taken only a few minutes to look in a cookbook to find out how pesto is made—only seconds if the Web were already around—but they didn't bother.

I work hard not to make factual mistakes in my stories that will lead to readers ridiculing me and possibly never reading my work again. Even so, I had the humbling experience this week of almost sending out a short story with two mistakes in a single sentence in the first paragraph.

This story takes place on an Indonesian island in 1598. To describe the setting without an info dump, I have one of the lead characters, a Portuguese sailor, admiring a few features he can see from his ship. One of the features was a vast sprawl of flowers, and in my final round of polishing, I decided to add a smoking volcano.

I checked online to see whether any of the volcanoes were live; a smoking volcano would be silly if none were. Yikes! It hit me then for the first time that volcanoes erupt and I had not checked any on the island had erupted in or shortly before 1598. Luckily, none had. But an eruption could have changed the look of the island considerably and possibly forced a relocation of the story to a different part of the island or a different year.

Second yikes! To make the description of flowers more specific, I went Google-surfing to find out what colors the flowers the island is known for are. That was when I discovered that the "flowers" were in fact the many species of brightly colored corals that the Portuguese saw in the clear tropical water under their ships. I not only had to take out the reference to flowers in the lead paragraph, but also add a mention of sharp-edged corals in an underwater scene.

I thought of the pesto-cooking writers then and felt a little sympathy. If I had skipped researching these two important points, I wondered what else I hadn't researched enough. The story is on submission now; if it gets accepted, I may find out from alert readers.

What is the silliest mistake you've ever made in a story or book? Did you catch it before it got published? Did any readers write to you?


I'll be blogging again on March 21, the second day of Spring. May you make no factual mistakes in your writing between now and then!

—Shauna Roberts

Renewing your first works.

For many years I wrote longhand. I favored top-bound pads with heavy backing so I could write anywhere. And I did write anywhere, any time I had a few extra minutes (or could make a few extra minutes). Every few days – sometimes every week or so – I'd devote a predawn morning to typing what I'd written on the family's desktop computer.

When I was able to afford my first second-hand laptop, I felt like I'd been liberated. No more deciphering my crabbed hybrid of cursive and print, trying to remember the letters I'd intended with a tangled blot of lines, no more mornings racing against a paling sky and the impending day job I could type my stories anywhere. And look like I was writing – not scribbling – while I did it. I soon reached the point where I could not write longhand. I could write myself reminders of bits of dialog, or sketch a flowchart of the plot, or maybe make lists of salient points and details I did not want to forget, but I could not write creatively without a keyboard under my fingers.

This was for the most part fine. It sped up the process, got me from idea to mailed manuscript faster, increased my productivity a dozen fold. It felt good to be productive.

But in recent months my life has been complex. And my day job – which was once about helping people in person – is now about filling out forms online and typing up treatment plans and progress notes and reports to Medicaid justifying requests for thirty more days of service. All I do is type. Sitting at the keyboard to write stopped feeling like a new adventure and began felling like a seamless continuation of the day job. Writing became more work than it had been in a long time, and what I wrote I id not like.

So this past weekend I tried something new. I picked up a thick notebook and a sharpie pen and began writing whenever I found myself idle. I have written about the world around me, the lives of people I see and overhear. I have worked on a story, and have the bones of an essay on liturgical religions and faith. And I have found the tactile sense of the writing process – the grip of the pen, the feel of the pen point scratching its way across the paper – to be therapeutic. Even refreshing.

So once again I've been liberated in my writing. I've given up the tyranny of the keyboard for the freedom of the undemanding pad. I've come full circle – which would seem like the end if a single circle was what our lives are about. But each of us lives an ongoing a process, and what looks like an ending is simply the beginning of another revolution. We all of us will go through phases in our writing, and what we once did we will do again. The trick is to go with the changes, even if the they take you back to things you thought you'd left behind. Keep writing.

I'm Writing...

...because sometimes there's nothing to do but write.

The Author/Reviewer Relationship

At one time book reviews could only be found in newspapers and a few magazines, but the Internet has provided a platform for avid readers to share their opinions on books with the world. Online reviews have become key promotional tools for authors, but, unfortunately, some writers have heaped much embarrassment on their heads by lashing out after unfavorable reviews.

I cringe every time I read a story about “Authors Acting Badly.” Don’t get me wrong, I understand their pain. Reading harsh words about your work is not easy, but it comes with the territory. Making it in this business requires a layer of really thick skin.

Some authors refrain from responding to reviews all together, but personally, I don’t see the harm. If my book is reviewed on a blog that allows for comments, I usually drop in and thank the reviewer for taking the time out to read and review my book. Yes, even if the review is a bit unflattering. The Author/Reviewer relationship doesn’t have to be contentious; it just has to be civil.

What are your thoughts? Should authors just ignore reviews, or do you think it’s okay for a writer to engage in discussions about their books?