Six LDS Writers and A Frog

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen...

2011-05-15T22:37:00.002-04:00

It just wouldn't be official unless my last blog was a day late and a dollar short, right? (And at least I posted, Wells.)

My oldest son received the Aaronic priesthood today. Exactly 182 years after Joseph Smith received it (May 15, 1829). It wasn't planned that way - his birthday was on Friday and today was simply the Sunday following his 12th birthday. But the coincidence seemed sort of profound to me, as I thought about how those two events were connected. How one couldn't have happened without the other. How a beginning for Joseph Smith made this beginning possible for my son.

So here we Frog Bloggers stand at a new beginning. A door is closing, but another door stands wide open, and I'm excited at the possibilities. But that excitement is tempered by the sadness and loss I'm also feeling.

Looking back to when the blog started, it was unique. Now there are many multi-author blogs, but back in the day, in the LDS market at least, it was just us. I had belonged to a message board where I had gotten to know Rob and Julie, both of whom were already published. Julie kindly read my first chapter and then gave me some pointers, and Rob gave me advice on where to submit (he strongly encouraged me to submit to Covenant. And I don't know if those two know this, but I included them both in my acknowledgments of my first book). Jeff and Stephanie also posted on the board, but I hadn't interacted as much with them. I got to know Jeff better when my manuscript was accepted, and we shared the same amazing editor, and Jeff had lots of advice and recommendations when it came to the LDS industry.

I approached Jeff, Julie and Rob with the idea for a group blog. They all seemed interested, and I thought we should get a couple more authors to give us each one day to blog. Rob immediately recommended Stephanie, because he was a fan and thought she was awesome, and Jeff thought we should add Candace Salima because of, among many other things, her marketing know-how. Candace stayed with us for a while until she had to leave (darn real life!), and fortunately it wasn't too difficult to choose her replacement - it seemed like just about everyone wanted to nab the amazing Kerry.

I'm so grateful to Jeff for his knowledge, his willingness to share it, his words of encouragement and his example. I've been the beneficiary of his compassion, kindness and wisdom. He rocks.

I'm thankful for Rob, for his humor, for his advice, for his dedication to LDS writers (Whitney Awards, anyone?), for his success. On my writing path, he's probably the person I've most related to. He also rocks.

I'm grateful to Stephanie, for her talent, for her sweetness and peacemaking abilities, for her wit, for not making me too jealous over the adventures she's had and awards she's won, and for thinking of me during one of my hardest trials. She is another who rocks.

I'm thankful for Julie, for her writing ability, dependability (the only one of us to blog every single week on her day!), for her ability to do it all and do it well, for her putting up with me when Hotmail wouldn't let her emails through, and for being such an incredibly nice and helpful person. She similarly also rocks.

I'm grateful for Kerry, who even while she was MIA, was still with us in spirit. Who has so much love for her fellow man, and has been such an incredible example to me. I'm thankful for her self-deprecating humor, for being so humble, for her strength in adversity. When I grow up, I would like to be Kerry Blair. She rocks hard, as well.

I love this eclectic bunch. Which feels a little strange, considering that I've never even met any of them in real life. I'm grateful that I met them online, that I got to work with them, and through them got to know so many of you. I'm thankful to all of you, who put up with my complaining, who posted words of encouragement when the light got dark, who said prayers for me and mine, who bought my books (yay!), who reviewed them (double yay!), who have followed our ups and downs and have stayed with us through it all. Gah, I actually just got teary. I never do that.

It's not good-bye. I will see you all in cyberspace, and this is probably going to force me to go to the next Storymakers conference, although I will no longer be cool as I won't have the Frog Blog to back me up. You can find me on Twitter (@sariahwilson) and sometimes I post on Facebook ("sometimes" being a lot less often than I blogged).

I'm going to start a personal blog, that I will probably post to sporadically (although my intentions will be to post regularly), but I have to pick a name. Something clever. Any suggestions?

On a final note, we're not taking the blog down. So I leave you with this wealth of their knowledge (and my complaints) and thank you again for traveling this road with us.

Thank you.

Final Friday Frog Fblog (Of Course it's the 13th)

2011-05-13T15:30:00.004-04:00

by Kerry Blair

Just for the record, I would like to state unequivocally that I had no part in the heartrending scheme to drain the frog blog and/or discontinue the Frog’s Blogging.

Lower those skeptical eyebrows, please. It is true! Sure, I admit I quit blogging before everybody else . . . except maybe Rob. (We’re probably tied for Blog Shirker of the Last Half Decade.) I was, however, honestly and truly in the midst of a family crisis at the time of the aforementioned fateful plot. By the time I returned home and got around to turning on a computer the vote was cast. The deed was done. The blog was done-for.

But I was not involved! (Nor is The Frog dead; last I heard he was touring the country doing Mystery Dinner Theatre.)

Nevertheless, I am taking this harder than anybody. (Possibly everybody.) I am even now huddled in my armchair, feeling exactly as one does when her best friends decide quite suddenly to move away—and all at once. I can assure you my rather extensive frog collection will never even come close to filling that gaping, you-shaped hole that is left behind.

Besides emotional baggage, I still have all this stuff. My goal for this weekend is to go through comments posted since the anniversary celebration, sleuthing for enough contact info to foist Froggie memorabilia off on as many innocent blog bystanders as I can possibly identify. (If you actually want a souvenir, please write to me asap; everything is going out Monday morning.) I also have an e-certificate for Pat for our last game, and a book of my own—you’ll have to brush off the cobwebs and separate the moldering pages—to send to whoever’s name Jeff drew after the Follow Us Contest. (I think I missed the announcement of winners.)

I can probably manage to clean up all that kind of stuff, but what in the heck will I do with all the rest of the blogging remnants I have left laying around? My drawers are stuffed full of ellipses, exclamation points, and em dashes. Parentheses and semi colons are forming punctuation drifts around my feet. And let’s not even think about the thousands of adverbs and adjectives I’ve stored up! Tell me, who can I get to take all these beloved italics off my hands? I’ve already flipped over my soapbox to use as a packing crate, but I ran out of room before the first metaphor! In fact, some of my similes and favorite trite phrases—like “in fact”—are already leaking out the bottom.

Alas.

For what it is worth, I can almost guarantee that is the last time you will come upon “alas” in a blog.

Unless.

Believe it or not, I have a blog of my own. No, really I do! I excavated it myself just a few minutes ago. It wasn’t buried all that deep. After all, I last posted in May. (Of 2009.) There are caves in France with writings older than that. The remarkable thing about this blog—at least to me—is that people have stumbled into it without me having to set traps. I have twelve followers. Who knew? I only know one of those poor people, but I have a compelling urge to write to each and all and say: “No! Wait! I spend my life traveling at light speed but mostly in concentric circles. Whatever you do, don’t follow me!”

That said, if any of you would ever possibly want to maybe even consider dropping by my new/old digs to say hello, I’ll leave the lights on and the door open. I’m at kerryblair@blogspot.com. (How’s that for originality?) And don’t tell me you can’t find it. According to an arcane set of Blogger statoids I just perused I have had drop-ins from France, Armenia, Iran, and Sri Lanka. Possibly the hit from Iran came when my son was stationed there, but I don’t know precisely where Sri Lanka even is. But I do know the what the point is. It is: if you can get to my blog from Sri Lanka, you can get there from Utah. Or Idaho. Or California. Or . . . you get the idea. And if/when you do, please leave an address so I can visit you. I have never been much of a writer, but I am one of the world's great readers. There are great writers out there everywhere, but none greater than those who have stopped by here over the years.

This is where I would get all gloppy if I were to continue writing. I won't. I will only say I have come to love, admire, and rely on so many of you. I have no idea how I will cope now that you've all moved away. Nor do I have any idea how a reunion might be held at a cyberblog, but please let's do it someday if it is possible!

In the meantime, God be with you in all your many amazing endeavors. You have in many ways been the light on the hill in some of my darkest days. Thank you for reassuring me time and again that through it all, faith manages.

No Goodbyes, Just See You Later

2011-05-12T10:07:00.000-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

At the conference last week I spoke to Stephanie about how sad I was that the Frog blog was ending. I’ve loved being associated with these five people for the last five years. It was such an eclectic group, I think it made our blog completely unique. We had Jeff the teacher, Rob the comedian, Stephanie who kept it all real, Kerry the inspiration, and Sariah the researcher (who knows a lot about everything.) I am still in awe of the authors in this group and how much I’ve learned from them. I’m just so sad that it’s all coming to a close.

I’ve been using my emotions, however, and working really hard for a week and a half on a “secret project,” just to see if I could really do it. You see, I’ve posted every Thursday for five years on this blog, and when next Thursday comes around, I don’t want to be sitting in my chair thinking, “oh yeah, I don’t have anywhere to post anymore.”

So I started my own blog, LDSWriterMom.blogspot.com

I’ve been posting there since May 4th (May the fourth be with you, haha) and am excited at how well it’s gone. Mondays are my LDS Mommy Musing days, talking about organizing, taking care of kids, getting ready for FHE or prepping for my Sunday RS lesson, fitting writing time in between chores, anything Mom-related.

Tuesdays are my TV and books day where I’ll talk about my fave shows, Castle and Dancing With The Stars, and review books (or interview other authors).

Wednesday is What I’m Working On where I will have some accountability for what I’ve gotten done (or still need to do) on my work in progress for that week.

Thursdays are Thinking Thursday where I talk about writing and the things I’ve learned (and am still learning) as I go through the process of publishing.

Friday is First Page Friday. I was in a class last week where the agents said they pretty much only read the first page of a manuscript before they decide whether they’ll keep going or just reject it, so I thought that on Fridays I’d have readers submit the first page of their manuscript and I would critique it, in the hopes of making it stronger. I also have my editor friend who works for a national publishing house back East who said she would love to help critique as well. And we already have a doozy for tomorrow’s entry.

So there you have it. While I will miss the Frog blog, and everyone associated with it, I know this blog is the reason I’m interested in continuing at all. So, thank you. To the bloggers, to the commenters, and everyone associated with the frog blog. It has been a great run. I hope you’ll follow my new blog and keep in touch with me.

Housekeeping Item

I asked some opinions a few weeks ago on covers and my cover designer has decided to go with the map one, but add a shadowy figure in it for suspense purposes. So I drew a name from the hat of people who had chosen the map one, and the winner is

PrimaryMary!!

If you will send me your snail mail info at juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com I will send you a copy of On the Edge. :)

Thank you Frog Blog people. From the bottom of my heart—thank you. I’m sort of looking around thinking there should be a little band playing as I finish this post. Maybe TAPS or a twelve gun salute or something. I can’t imagine not posting here anymore, but I have some really great memories and I’m very grateful for that.

I don‘t think I’m going to say goodbye to all of you, and it’s getting hard to type through the tears, (I know, I know, I’m a baby) so I think I’ll just say---see you later. And hope that I do.

Thank You, and Farewell, My Beloved Froggie Home

2011-05-11T11:26:00.000-04:00

To Jeff’s beautiful comments, I want to add my personal thanks to everyone who has supported Six LDS Writers and a Frog over the past five years. Thank you for taking the time to read our posts; thank you for all the comments. I’m so grateful for the connections I’ve been able to make through the blog.

I love and admire my fellow frog bloggers—Jeff, Rob, Julie, Kerry, and Sariah—and I am so grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to get to know each of them through the blog. These are amazing, talented, wonderfully nice people, and it’s been an honor to rub shoulders with them. Thank you to Sariah for founding the blog, and thank you to her husband and to Jeff for taking care of technical matters. It’s been a huge privilege to be here in the Frog Pond.

Aww, man. It's sad to see it ending. We’ve had a great run (hop?) and it's strange to think of being frog-pond-less. But as Jeff said, we’ll still be around. I’m starting my own blog--yikes, my own blog! Right now, my blog is in a fairly primitive state. I never had a hand in any of the blog design here, so I’m a newbie. But it’s up and running with an introductory post that consists mainly of a picture that amuses me (involving James Dashner). Please please pretty please come follow my blog. It would be great to have some company as I leave the safety of the frog bog and step out in the big, wide world. The new blog is titled Black Ink (my sister suggested the title—thanks, Di).

Again, a huge thank you to all of you for being part of the Frog Blog. This has been a great blessing in my life and I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity I had to ribbet here on Wednesdays. And, um, I'm kind of sad at the thought of clicking "post" on my last post, after five years of blogging here. I kind of want to drag this out a little . . . um . . . okay . . . I'm sorta crying now. Didn't realize I'd cry while finishing up my last post. Love you, Frog Blog! Thanks for everything!

The Corner of Bitter & Sweet

2011-05-09T00:31:00.000-04:00

This last weekend was absolutely amazing. Those of you who have not been to an LDStorymakers conference absolutely need to put it at the top of your must do list next year. It was an incredible time. So many great classes, wonderful teachers, and just plain good people. Both those who have published and those who soon will publish, rubbing shoulders, and talking everything from writing to families.

I have made so many good friends over the years through this conference. Then my wonderful wife and I had the chance to attend the Whitney Awards dinner. Again, just awesome people. Rick Walton is a stud, and I’d love to be able to say at some point in my career that I’ve helped a tenth of the writers he has. Susan Evans McCloud was so inspiring. In fact even before she came up to accept her award, I was in awe just from the incredible intro Michele Holmes gave.

I didn’t win any awards this year. But it was okay, because A) I had already told my wife I knew who would win in both of my categories and I was right. And B) The people who won were so deserving. It was such a thrill to see Annette Lyon, who I have known nearly as long as I have been writing, and who has been such an awesome friend win. Julie Wright, who is a pure sweetheart, and an awesome friend too, totally, totally, earned her award. And our very own Stephanie Black won for Cold as Ice, which is an absolutely incredible book. And she is the nicest person ever.

And in case anyone thought the Whitney Awards would only go to LDS publishers, or longtime Storymaker, or even only inspirational religious books, a 900 page epic fantasy published by TOR and a book about a serial killer tied for best novels of the year. Quote of the night goes to Dan Wells, who walked up to the podium after hearing his novel, Mr. Monster had tied for best novel of the year, and said, “What’s wrong with you people?!”

And that doesn’t even include my good friend Ally Condie’s novel Matched that won for best YA speculative. Or the many, many other incredible winners.

I am truly honored and inspired to see how many LDS authors are out there and all the great things they are doing. And to put icing on the cake, the very same Julie Wright who won for best romance talked up my horror novel so much, that an editor at the conference gave me her card and asked if I would send it to her. “UM, yeah.”

It was such a wonderful night that the next thing I have to say is so hard. If you haven’t noticed, the Frog Blog has become more and more hit and miss over time. Of course Stephanie and Julie have been total studettes, posting regularly and well. But we recently got together and decided that maybe after five years, we are starting to struggle for new things to say.

I personally have found myself searching old posts, sure I am repeating myself, or posting not because I have something exciting and new to say, but because I feel so guilty for not posting the previous week, or two, or three.

So after much discussion and soul-searching, we at the Frog Blog have decided to wish our readers goodbye. Oh we’ll still be around, twittering and posting on our personal blogs. But this week will be the last week of the Frog Blog.

I’ve loved being part of this, and I hope I’ve made you smile, or laugh, or think. I’m positive the others here have. And I’m proud to have joined them here. There are lots of other great LDS author blogs around, but this one will always be closest to my heart.

So farewell and ribbet. I hope all of your dreams, writing related or otherwise come true.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!

2011-05-06T00:25:00.002-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! I've spent today partying with all the LDStorymakers and boot camp attendees at the 8th annual LDStorymakers Conference. I was a boot camp instructor which means I had three people at my table and we critiqued fifteen pages of their writing. Of course, I had the most incredible ladies at my table and we had a great time tweaking and rewriting and generally just talking shop. Then I got to go to the Storymakers Meet and Greet and all my writer friends were there laughing and visiting and we had such a great time. I can't wait for the rest of the Conference this weekend. Tomorrow is going to be amazing. I can feel it! If you're not going to be there, you should totally make plans to come next year. If you are going to be there, come find me! I totally want to visit and talk with as many frog blog commenters as possible.

I also want to tell you about Carole Thayne Warburton's book, Just Shy of Paradise. It is a new release and I can hardly put it down. She has woven such a great story with flawed and lovable characters, I can't wait to see what happens. I want to do a full review of it soon, but not when I'm so crazy happy tired. I want to make sense so you can get the full effect.

Anyway, I hope you had a great day as well, and that you have something fun to look forward to this weekend.

Happy writing!

I Need Your Opinion

2011-04-28T16:59:00.004-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I have some wonderful news. Great news. Stupendous news. Well, okay, not stupendous, but still pretty good.

I have been working with Encore Editions to put my backlist on Kindle, Nook, etc. and my first book, Through Love’s Trials, is now available here (for Nook, Kindle, and any other ereader) and here (Amazon, Kindle readers). I love the new cover and I even still love the story. But that’s not the news.

My second book, On the Edge, is about to be available on both of those same sites, but here’s the thing, my cover designer (love her!) has designed two wonderful covers and I can’t decide which one I love the best. So, because I couldn't decide, I sent it out to ten of my most trusted author friends, and ten of my extended family members. And, you guessed it, ten people liked the first cover and ten liked the second. It was dead even!

So I still want some input.

If you are so inclined, I would like you read the backliner below, look at both covers, and tell me which one you like the best and why. After the final cover is chosen, wouldn’t it be fun to put everyone who voted for the chosen cover into a drawing for a copy of On the Edge? I think so.

So here’s the backliner:

Dylan Campbell, a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent, is recovering from a gunshot wound and looking for a new direction in his life. Armed with his newly found testimony in the LDS Church, he soon embarks on a routine fact-finding mission to Africa.

While there he befriends Elizabeth Spencer, a beautiful American working to ease the suffering in Uganda. Their relationship is just beginning to deepen when Dylan discovers that a biological weapon has been manufactured in the private hospital where Elizabeth works. He realizes the terrorists plan to infect millions of innocent people across Canada and the United States.

Dylan must catch up with the terrorists in Greece to stop them from taking the weapon to North America. However, he is captured before he can act, and it takes every ounce of Dylan’s physical and spiritual strength to stay alive.

Can Dylan trust his heart and accept Elizabeth’s offer of help? Will he learn the true identities of his enemies in time to stop the biological weapon from being unleashed?

From the wilds of Africa to the ancient ruins of Greece, this book takes you to the edge of civilization and will keep you on the edge of your seat

Here’s cover #1

Here’s cover #2

I won’t say anything else about them because I don’t want to sway anyone’s opinion, so go ahead and comment and be sure to tell me which one you like best and why.

And if it's dead even again . . . well, maybe I'll just tell the designer to flip a coin. Or have her throw a dart and whatever one it lands on is the winner. Hmmm . . .

Storymaker Countdown

2011-04-27T22:03:00.003-04:00

It's only a week until the LDStorymakers Writers Conference! I'll be super excited as soon as I'm done being freaked out at everything I need to accomplish between now and then. I'll be teaching a class on fiction writing basics, as well as being one of the instructors in a Publication Primer class, which is like an advanced boot camp. I am SO not ready for my classes yet, but I have accomplished one thing--I found a dress for the Whitney gala. My daughter (who just got home from BYU) was my personal shopping assistant, which was very handy. Not only did she help choose a bunch of dresses for me to try on, but she'd put them back on hangers while I tried on the next dress. I found one I really liked (and it was on sale--woot!). And it matches my book cover, in the sense that it's black (okay, that means it matches all my mystery book covers, but it still counts, right?). (No, I really don't choose Whitney clothes on the basis of whether or not they match my covers--that sounds way too hard. I was just happy to find a dress I liked and that wasn't too expensive).

Will you be at Storymakers and/or the Whitney gala this year? What are you you most excited about? Any class or event that you're particularly looking forward to? It's going to be awesome all around, but the thing I'm the most excited about is seeing my writer friends and making new writer friends. So I hope to see you there and meet lots and lots of new people!

(Sorry for another bloglet, but time is marching WAY too fast, and there is not one single thing in my life that I'm currently on top of. I'm behind on Storymaker prep, behind on girls camp prep--even the library books are overdue. Sigh).

Happy Easter!

2011-04-23T23:51:00.004-04:00

We'll be going to church, then we'll have our Easter egg hunt down here in our basement, going upstairs afterward to have one with the grandparents, then driving out to Provo to have yet another hunt and dinner with the in-laws.

How are you spending your Easter Sunday?

Review of Blackberry Crumble

2011-04-21T20:01:00.002-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

Well, it’s over. I was able to read enough Whitney finalists to vote in four categories. I’m pretty proud of myself because that’s the most I’ve ever done for the Whitneys. I know I probably won’t be able to read every finalist (because there is one category that has books the size of Bibles!) but I’m feeling really good about how I did this year. I am so interested to hear who won because there were two categories that could easily have a three way tie, there were just that many good fiction novels this year. Of course, I’m most excited for historical, because I get to announce the winner! Yay!

In order to clear my mind after doing all of that Whitney reading, I decided to do some . . . well . . . more reading. I finished Josi Kilpack’s Blackberry Crumble (even reading the title had my mouth watering. Who doesn't love a good blackberry crumble?). For those of you who aren’t familiar with Josi’s Sadie Hofmiller series, this is the fifth book and honestly, I think it’s her best one. I heard about this series from one of my friends who had really liked it, but I wasn’t sure it was going to be my cup of tea. I read Lemon Tart in two days and was immediately hooked. Her characters are so charming, normal, and fun, and the mystery part of it is very well written. In Blackberry Crumble I was completely surprised as to who the killer was. I was totally on the wrong track! It was definitely worth the read. If you haven’t gotten this series yet, you don’t have to start at the beginning, but I recommend that you do, just so you can have the full flavor of the Misadventures of Sleuthing Sadie. And of course, that is sort of punny, because there are yummy recipes included in each book. (Full flavor, recipes, get it?) (I know, I know, groan.)

So here is the backliner for Blackberry Crumble. This book receives a very enthusiastic two thumbs up from me. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest Deseret Book (or surf on over to the Kindle store) and buy this book. You won’t be sorry. (If you don’t believe me, Sharon Haddock gave it a great review in Mormon Times. You can read that here).

The word is out about Sadie Hoffmiller's amateur detective work, but it's not exactly the kind of publicity Sadie wants. In the newest culinary mystery from bestselling author Josi Kilpack, Sadie accepts her first investigation-for-hire and travels to Portland, Oregon, at the request of a woman who has suspicions about her wealthy father's untimely death. Putting her detective skills to the test, Sadie delves into a past business partnership that didn't end well, discovers some unsavory family secrets, and exposes more than a few motives for murder. When the investigation leads to threats against her safety, Sadie pretends to crumble under the pressure. But secretly, she is more determined than ever to uncover answers that seem to be buried in shocking scandal, insatiable appetites, and pure greed.

Deadline!

2011-04-20T11:10:00.003-04:00

Today is the deadline for submitting Whitney Award ballots. Since I still have a book to finish before I'll be ready to vote, this is going to be a tiny blog, because by gum, I'm going to FINISH THAT BOOK. After getting this far, no way am I going to miss finishing book #35--I want to be able to vote for Best Novel of the Year!

Today's micro-blog is a poll for blog readers (and I'd love it if our lurkers popped up to comment too--it would be fun to get a broad perspective). Will you be voting (or have you already voted) in the 2010 Whitney Awards? If so, how many categories did you vote in? And whether or not you're an Academy voter, did you read any 2010 finalists (here's the list) that really impressed you? Or that were books you might not have picked up otherwise but that you ended up loving? Or that introduced you to authors you hadn't tried before? I'd love to hear any and all thoughts our blog readers have about the Whitney Awards.

'Tis the Season for Reruns

2011-04-15T09:05:00.005-04:00

Let's Play a Game!

debuted Friday, March 9, 2007: surely you've forgotten in four years!

by Kerry Blair

It's a gorgeous spring day. (At least it is here in Arizona.) Nobody in their right mind wants to sit at a computer reading a boring blog. (And I know very well you were almost doomed to a very boring blog because I just finished writing/polishing/dumping it.) I mean, come on. If you're stuck at a computer somewhere instead of out frolicking in a dog park with your best friend (your best friend is a dog, I hope) you deserve a little fun.

One of my favorite games (after Clue) is something my son bought called Bestsellers. The game comes with four pads of paper, four pencils, an hour glass that measures three minutes of time, and a stack of cards with faux book covers. Players look at the picture and then have exactly three minutes to begin writing the "bestselling book" to go with the cover picture. When the timer runs out, you must stop writing, no matter if you're in the middle of a paragraph, a sentence, or a word. The players then share what they came up with and vote for the best effort. Winner of that round gets the book cover. The person who collects the most covers by the end of the game is the over-all winner.

Now, since were playing this in cyberspace, you must provide your own paper, pencil (or computer) and hourglass. Otherwise, the rules are the same. Look at the picture below and then take exactly three minutes to write your entry. If this were a book cover, what would the book be about? You can write in any genre, of course, and anything goes -- as long as it goes in three minutes. (You have three lousy minutes, right?)

We'll keep the game open through Thursday and vote for a winner next Friday. Person with the most votes gets a $10 e-gift card to Amazon or B&N -- their choice -- to buy a bestseller of their choice!

Ready? Set? GO!

The Balancing Act

2011-04-15T00:28:00.002-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I gave a presentation at the Ephraim’s Writer’s Conference last Saturday on Finding Time to Write and part of my presentation was having an audience member come up and pretend to walk on a balance beam. I asked them before they started, if they were at the Olympics, in front of the world, and being asked to walk across the beam without falling off, what would be the first thing they would do?

Of course, my volunteer said the first thing she would do, would be to focus. Then she would put one foot in front of the other and slowly move across. She put her arms out, and said that she probably would try not to look down.

I think this is exactly what we have to do as writers, when we’re trying to carve out time for ourselves to write. When we get those precious minutes in front of the computer, we need to focus. We can’t be distracted by Facebook, email, Twitter, or surfing in the name of research. We need to sit there and actually write. Get into your scene or dialogue. Get out your idea book, read the last page you wrote, and then go from there. If you’re like me you have scenes and snippets of dialogue going through your head all the time, and once you get in front of the computer it’s just a matter of getting it all down. But it does require focus.

The second thing is to put one foot in front of the other and slowly move across. Do some writing every day. Plod along. If you write one page a day for a year, you’ll have 365 pages which could be a novel and a half. And, you know, that’s 365 more pages you would have than if you didn’t do any writing at all while you were waiting for that big block of writing time to come. You’re slowly moving across, getting your novel out there, one step at a time.

The next thing she did was to put her arms out. This is important when you’re trying to carve out time for writing. Put your arms out and ask for help. Ask your older children to babysit the kids for half an hour. Have your family cook dinner one evening so you can write. Join a neighborhood coop and trade babysitting. Ask your co-workers to understand if you take your lunch hours at your desk to write instead of socializing. Don’t be afraid to ask for others’ support.

The last thing she did was to not look down (or back) and that is big. Don’t get down on yourself if you miss a day of writing or if you write a scene that has to be deleted later. Writing is a learning process and the more you do it, I believe the better you become. Beating yourself up with regrets isn’t helpful. Just do better today than you did yesterday.

It’s all a balancing act and some days we’re better at it than others. If you fall off, get up and get back on. Slowly make your way, one foot at a time, with your arms out, and with your eyes focused. Don’t look down, look straight ahead, and see the success within your reach.

How to Write a Negative Review

2011-04-13T14:00:00.003-04:00

I got a Goodreads review the other day that included a mild criticism of one aspect of my book. The review was an excellent example of Nathan Bransford’s “sandwich rule” that he requests people use when critiquing someone’s writing on his blog or forum—a positive comment, followed by “very polite constructive feedback,” followed by a positive comment. This particular piece of criticism was specific and thought-provoking, something for me to consider while writing subsequent books. I may or may not end up changing anything because of it, but it was an insightful observation and worth pondering. And I appreciate the way the reviewer presented it, sandwiched between two positive comments.

When someone reviews a book, usually they’re writing for other readers, not to give the author feedback. But in this day of Goodreads and Google Alerts, there’s a good chance the author will see the review. Should you keep that in mind while writing a review? That’s not a rhetorical question; I’d like to know what you think. Do you think a reviewer should consider that the author might very well read her review—or should that be completely irrelevant? Please feel free to express your opinion in the comment trail. I’ll express my opinion right here (and you’re welcome to disagree with me):

My answer is yes, the reviewer should consider that the author might well read her review. Shocking huh, that an author would feel that way (no, I don’t pretend to be a disinterested party in this discussion). But here’s how I see it: when you’re reviewing a book, you’re reviewing the work of another human being. While you don’t have to like the book or praise it, and you should definitely feel free to give your honest opinion (how helpful is a book review if the reviewer is fudging on what he really thought just to be nice?), I think there are more thoughtful and less thoughtful ways of presenting a negative opinion. And I mean thoughtful in two senses: 1--You really think about what in the book didn’t work for you, as opposed to tossing off the equivalent of an easy “This book was awful.” 2--You consider that another person is involved here who will be affected by what you say and how you say it. Hence, two suggestions:

1-Be specific
2-Be polite

Specific criticisms are far more interesting and helpful (both to readers and authors) than general criticisms.

General criticism: “The characters were flat.”

Okay. Clearly the characters didn’t feel like real people to you, but why? What about them didn’t work?

Specific criticism: “The main character was too good to be true—her perfect beauty and total lack of personality flaws made her seem flat and fake. And the secondary characters had no distinguishing characteristics—I kept forgetting who was who.”

Now the people reading your review know why you felt the way you did. And the author has specific feedback to consider and something to possibly improve on in future novels. The author (and other readers) may or may not agree with your opinion—reactions to fiction are very subjective, and if an author tried to reconcile the differing opinions of every reviewer, her authorial brain would implode. But you’ve given the author something to think about, not just something to cringe over.

General criticism: “This book was boring.”

Specific criticism: “The story developed too slowly. There were several chapters at the beginning of the book where nothing happened to advance the plot.”

General: “This book was poorly written.”

Specific: “Some of the sentences were awkward; I had to read them twice to figure out what they meant.”

General: “The dialogue was unrealistic.”

Specific: “The main character spoke in a stilted, formal way that didn’t ring true. It sounded like he was always making speeches, not having casual conversations.”

Being specific about what in the book didn’t work for you leads to a much stronger review than just general statements about how the book was lousy. It also gets you to stop, think, and analyze.

As far as politeness: yeah, I have a sarcastic streak too. But when you’re writing a review, I recommend resisting the urge to indulge in snarky wit at the author’s expense. “This plot was so corny that the author could pop it and serve it with butter and salt.” “I wanted to run this book through the shredder and use it to make New Year's Eve confetti. At least then I'd get some enjoyment out of it.” You’ve made your point, but you’ve done it in an unnecessarily mocking way. Snarky comments can bring a dash of cruelty instead of candor. Is that really what you’re going for?

Give some thought to Nathan Bransford’s sandwich rule. I’m not saying I think every review has to follow that critique format exactly, but I do think book reviewers should look for ways to include positives with the negatives. Chances are you didn’t think everything about the book was rotten. Was there a plot twist you liked? A character you related to? Some beautiful writing? A well-executed climax? Even if your overall opinion of the book is negative, you can mention some of the positives you found along the way. You can write a negative review of a book without mocking it or slaughtering it.

Be careful if you’re not well versed in the genre you’re reviewing. If you’re not familiar with the conventions of a genre, you might be inclined to criticize something as a flaw when regular readers of the genre would have no problem with it. I think (feel free to disagree) that it doesn’t hurt to offer a disclaimer in this situation: “I’m not usually a romance fan” . . . “I don’t read a lot of LDS fiction” . . . “I haven’t read a mystery in years” . . . something to alert the reader that your review—while valid and worthwhile in expressing your opinion on the book—might not reflect the viewpoint of the majority of fans of that genre. If I were reviewing a romance and offered a criticism like “The outcome was so predictable—I knew right from page one that Joe and Jane would end up together”—the savvy romance reader would stare at me in disbelief; of course you knew that. Having the hero and heroine end up together is a requirement of the genre. On the other hand, if I said, “There were no surprises in this book—at every turning point, I knew exactly what was going to happen next”—that would be a valid criticism, and one that wouldn’t make readers go, um, you don’t read much romance, do you?

To sum up: I hope I’ve made it clear that I do not for one instant think that reviewers shouldn’t write negative reviews of books. But I think there are ways to be both graceful and honest in expressing opinions.

List of Grievances/Happy Fun Time

2011-04-10T22:12:00.003-04:00

Things that are annoying me this week:

I don't know if this is just a Utah thing that I don't understand (like leaving church to go to parties for a baby blessing), but what is the deal with people standing right behind you at the supermarket as you're checking out? Every single time I go to Wal-Mart, as I'm loading up the bags into my cart, the person behind me pushes their cart right up to where the bags are. So I have to wait for them to move in order to use the machine to swipe my credit card. See that little stand next to the machine? That's for me to interact with the cashier. I like to put my purse and my coupons there. Don't stand in front of it, please. I don't get why people do this, but it literally happens every single time I go to the store.

Living in a basement. I remember reading this article last year about a family who took advantage of the recession to downsize their too large home and move into a much smaller one. It had made them unbelievably happy and they loved all their togetherness. Yeah, I'm not that family. Everybody here is starting to go just a tad crazy. It's really hard living in a space this size with no heat (and another subgripe - seriously? It's mid-April, and it's snowing here like it's December. What is up with that? It's 84 degrees back where we used to live. /rant off) and my kids are cramped and not able to go anywhere and run around and be loud and that's hard. We're all getting grouchy about it, and being confined indoors is not helping it at all.

Reviewing other authors. On a bigger level, this isn't a problem. Rob commented on Twitter not too long ago that nobody's ever told him that Konrath and Hocking's books are good. I couldn't dispute that because the one book I'd read of Konrath had a hysterically bad ending (although I do heart the guy and adore his blog - and I'm sure his other books are much better, but he's a Stephen King type writer, and I don't so much like the blood and gore and swearing and horror stuff). The one I read, "The List," had a great premise - people were cloned from famous historical figures and branded with a tattoo, and then they start being killed off. His Abe Lincoln character was fantastic, and the hero's detective partner was probably the best part of the book. I won't spoil it for you if you're interested in reading it, but the ending involves, and I'm not kidding, lobotomized killer clones (which would be a good name for a rock band). I can see why the book didn't get published (he shopped it for a while). Then on to Amanda Hocking - she's a great storyteller. I read her Trylle Trilogy, and got completely sucked in to the first two books. (SPOILER ALERT - STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED!!!!) But the third one I actually returned to Amazon because I was that angry. She set up one guy to be the hero, and he was the hero and love interest for 2 1/2 books. Then halfway through the third book she decides to make the heroine love somebody else (that we didn't even get introduced to until the end of Book 2). I'm not sure if this was meant to be a twist or to make it more realistic or something, but I was flaming angry. You have to make me pretty upset to get me to return a book (and a digital one at that!). She completely destroyed the series and undermined everything she'd done up to that point by making the heroine flaky and unlikable, having her fall for a guy who was smarmy, immoral and arrogant as opposed to the noble, selfless, moral one.

When it comes down to it, Konrath and Hocking don't care what I think. Hocking just raked in another $2 million and Konrath's made approximately $73,000 over the last six weeks. And being that big, it doesn't matter if I don't like the work that I've read.

But what about the authors that are your peers? I recently read one that I thought was not all that great. And not just in a it's not the genre I prefer or not the story I'd typically like, but as in things like characterization and writing style. How are you supposed to review a book you didn't really like all that much? You're going to hurt someone's feelings.

Things I'm liking this week:

"Breaking In" - This is a new sitcom on Fox that stars Christian Slater (finally in a role that makes full use of his charisma) and Bret Harrison (from "Reaper" - a very, very funny show that never got the audience it should have - witness this YouTube clip that still manages to make me laugh every time I see it: Reaper clip ) Anyway, back to "Breaking In" - it is seriously one of the funniest shows I've watched in a very long time. I laughed out loud through the entire show (not something I typically do). Fox has got it up on their website if you're interested.

Sam and Freddie kiss! You may not watch iCarly. Some of you, like me, may be forced into it as you have children who love this show. So I have to look for something to like (Jerry Trainor being among them - he's hilarious), and yesterday, Sam and Freddie finally kissed! The name of the episode trended worldwide on Twitter for several hours last night. I was sad that 1) I knew this and 2) that I was excited about a Seddie kiss.

Kindle - A-ma-zing. I'm pretty sure I've read more books in the last two weeks than I have in the last year. I love my Kindle. Love, love, love it. I love that there's websites that let you borrow books on your Kindle (like Lendle). I love free e-books (and sometimes publishers put books up for free/cheap for a limited time - last night I picked up Aprilynne Pike's "Wings" for free). I love inexpensive e-books. I don't so much love the prices on the more expensive books, but I do love being able to get a book right when I want it. No more waiting for something to arrive by mail, no more running down to the bookstore because I've read the first book in a series and now must read the rest. All of it right at my fingertips - and I love it! If you don't have an e-reader, I would really recommend getting one. So far, I haven't seen a downside. Other than all the money I'm now spending on books.

Anything this week that you've loved/not loved so much?

Green Acres ~ We Aren't There! (Yet)

2011-04-08T19:12:00.006-04:00

by Kerry Blair

I firmly believe that avid readers find real life much more difficult than people who never crack a book and/or charge their e-readers. And if an avid reader is also a writer with a good imagination, well, in the eloquent word of latter-day philosopher Joe Garagiola: “Fergetaboutit.”

While I have long believed the above hypothesis to be true, I recently set out to prove it.

First I must provide a little back story.* One of the first books I loved with all my little avid-reader heart was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. (While my family’s copy dates from 1903, please know it lay around a couple of generations before I picked it up.) Rebecca preceded both Anne (of Green Gables) and Pollyanna—both in creation and on my reading list—and remains in my view the superior of the three. At the beginning of the book a character says to orphaned Rebecca, “Why you poor little girl!” The eight-year-old replies, “I am not a poor little girl. I am very self-reliant.” She not only repeats those last five words throughout the book (Shirley Temple is adorable saying it in the movie!) she proves it time and again.

I have always identified with Rebecca, the spunky, self-reliant moppet who—despite an incredible talent and the promise of great fame and fortune—pined for an idyllic life on the family farm. (It is me all over, minus the moppet, talent, and guaranteed fame-and-fortune bits, I guess.)

Sunnybrook Farm was only the first of the literature of my childhood that convinced me that farms are idyllic places of blue sky, fresh air, brightly-colored produce stands groaning beneath the harvest, and sweet-tempered farm critters, jovially whinnying, clucking, and purring their way into your heart. No place on earth could be better! (If you harbor any doubt, you have only to remember how anxious Dorothy was to get back home. Clearly, farms are fabulous even in comparison to Oz!)

After decades of pining, imagine my delight when my husband and I moved to our very own farmlette in Dewey, Arizona. I had open land, already developed corrals and pens, a well full of water—and virtually no zoning restrictions of any kind. My vivid imagination, bolstered by years of living vicariously in the country in countless books—went crazy. What couldn’t a very self-reliant girl like me do? Of course, fiction alone isn’t enough to bring about the dream. Knowing that, I started where every Avid Reader does, mortgaging the new family farm to buy every book, magazine and pamphlet ever published on homesteading.

I learned more than I have in any period of time since my senior year in college. For one thing, I learned that gardening is ridiculously simple . . . in February. In an armchair. In front of the fire. It’s when you run outside on the first sunny day in March, shiny new shovel in hand, and discover that concrete is softer and richer than that “loam” you settled onto that truth finally reflects upon your senses. That’s when you begin to discover as well, Avid Reader and Spinner of Stories, that there is a whole lot of fiction within the pages of nonfiction and that life does not imitate art nearly as well as you wish it would.

In stories, geese lay golden eggs and bean sprouts grow like magic. (Even in less fanciful books, seeds started in little pots indoors bring forth rows and rows of summer produce.) In reality, geese eat, honk, poop, and guard their eggs with greater enthusiasm than that guy trying to hold onto Tripoli. Beans of the non-magical variety sprout a quarter of an inch, lose interest in life, and fall over dead. Books suggest sagely the planting of spinach, cabbage and peas “when the daffodils bloom.” Reality comes along and dumps five inches of snow on your three-inch-tall plants. (Not to mention the stupid daffodils.)

I hate to belabor this, but one more caution is worth mention. When absolutely everything you know about living with a horse comes from the pages of Pippi Longstocking, you’re going to need more than a brand new copy of Horses for Dummies to successfully cohabitate with that new 1100-lb “pet” you didn’t think you could live without.

Finally, do not get me started on goats. Not only have I read Heidi, I’ve recently perused almost one thousand pages on the how-tos of caring for goats. I am here to tell you there is not one single line (let alone paragraph) within any of those pages that suggests what you should do when a 65-lb Nubian doe jumps up onto the hood of your mother’s shiny white car and refuses to budge.

So, that’s the Friday Farm Report from Dewey. I haven’t stopped reading, of course. I’ll never stop reading. I have, however, found a few farm-friendly uses for books that the authors probably did not intend. Pleasures of a Handmade Life is exactly the right size to plug a crack in a hen house. And, as it turns out, if you chuck Raising Dairy Goats hard enough at the beastie tap-dancing on the Buick, you do get its attention.

*This, Fellow Writers, is also known as “Info Dump.” Editors hate it. I can only hope that faithful follower Kirk Shaw is too busy editing Covenant superstars Stephanie and Julie today to lurk around a boggy frog blog.

FYI: The goat pictured is not my goat. I could not get my picture to load from my phone, so I borrowed one from the web. (My goat it cuter.) Alarmingly this goat-on-car problem is more wide-spread than I imagined. I think I'll write my own book about goats gone bad and the people who . . . um . . . love (?) them.

The Cold Hard Facts & A Writer's Conference

2011-04-07T22:42:00.005-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I am cold. Deathly white, frozen to the bone, cold.

You see, today my son had a track meet. And for some extremely odd reason, track people are like the postal service---come rain, snow, sleet or hail, they will be running and jumping in it. And the track people fully expect their family members to be there to watch.

So there I was on METAL stands, with the wind blowing so hard the flagpole looked like it was bending over, squinting through the rain to watch my son run around the track. I was trying to think warm thoughts to stop the shivering so I didn’t look like I was having a medical emergency, but it wasn’t working. I stood and jumped up and down a little, pretending I was a very enthusiastic parent cheering on her son, but it didn’t help. My legs felt frozen and my old frostbite injury was starting to hurt. I sat back down, but the metal that was warmer than an ice cube a minute ago was now colder than an icicle again and my bottom protested strongly at being pressed against it. Pulling my hood closer around my face, I pulled my hands into my sleeves and glanced longingly at my warm car a few hundred feet away in the parking lot. But then my son ran by, waving and smiling, and my heart melted as I knew it was worth it. Every cold and miserable second was worth it if my son knew that his mom supported him, believed in him, and would be there for him.

Even when it started to hail.

I think writing is sort of like that, in two ways. When you’ve finished a manuscript, you’re sort of like a runner who’s been training and is ready for the race. You start the preliminaries of finding an agent or a publishing house. That is when the wind of insecurity and the rain of rejection will most likely begin. You stand and jump up and down in the face of whatever is thrown at you, sometimes longing for the warm, sweet days of being swept up in your story and not in the race for publication. Then, one day, that agent or publishing house will smile and pick up your manuscript and your heart will melt because in that moment, it was all worth it. Every cold rejection, every harsh critique, every loss will all be made up when your baby wins the race.

Of course, the second way is the most obvious one. Your mom will read your manuscript and tell you how brilliant it is. When you are rejected, she will listen to you cry, and tell you they’re just jealous of your work and obviously not intelligent enough to see your brilliance. She will always be there for you, supporting you, and believing in you, no matter what—through rain, wind, and hail.

I’m still trying to warm myself up from my track experience today. I need a fire or something. Or warm soup. Or to just snuggle into a heated blanket or something. But I’ll be at the computer for a while yet because I’m putting the finishing touches on my presentation that I’ll be giving at the Write Here in Ephraim writing conference this Saturday. We have some amazing classes like Elements of Suspense by Gregg Luke and Book Promotions and Blog Tours by Rachelle Christensen, Becoming an Idea Factory, Children’s Literature, and lots more, all starting at 8:30 a.m. and going until 5:00 p.m. at 105 E. 200 S. in Ephraim, UT. There will also be panels with published authors on the publishing process, and twenty authors to mix and mingle with (listed below), so if you will be in the Ephraim area this Saturday, you have to drop by. I hope to see you there!

The Goose that Lays the Golden Egg

2011-04-06T13:44:00.003-04:00

It would be wonderful to have huge piles of money to use to support every good cause in existence, but I’m not sure even Bill Gates has THAT much money. The vast majority of our donations are unsolicited and go to a source that we know absolutely will use the money wisely. Most of the time, I turn down phone requests from various groups asking for money, but once in a while, I’ll go ahead and donate in response to a phone request. And on an unfortunate occasion, I found that not everyone has quite gotten the message about not killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. You remember that Aesop’s fable, right? The farmer and his wife have a goose that lays a golden egg each day. They get greedy and cut the goose open to get their paws on all the gold they think must be inside, all at once—but they just find normal goose innards, and now their source of gold is dead. Oops.

Case study: I donated to an organization I won’t name—okay, I can’t remember the name, but even if I could, I wouldn’t name it because I’m not out to slam anyone’s group. I’ll just say it seemed like a worthy cause, and I donated. Then I got calls from similar organizations (and, I think, the same organization). And more calls. And MORE calls. AND MORE CALLS. It got ridiculous, and I’m now to the point that I will never donate to a similar organization again. My goose is gone, baby. When I agree to send money to support a worthy cause, that’s what I want to do—support a worthy cause. Not get my information passed along so I can get more and more requests for money. That’s an effective way for an organization to rid itself of a potential golden goose.

Now for the comparison relevant to writers: I’ve been on Twitter for almost a year now. I’m far from being a Twitter expert, but I’ve been there long enough to realize some things that, as a writer, I definitely don’t want to do when I’m tweeting.

If a writer starts following me on Twitter, I always go check out their tweets. If I find that the tweets don’t look too spammy or what all, I’ll follow back. But if that person then proceeds to tweet what amounts to ads for their book EVERY day—or even more frequently than that—I’m going to start getting annoyed. I’ve unfollowed a couple of writers for that reason. They had me as an audience—I was following them; I was willing to see what they had to say—but then they lost me. Goose gone.

I’m not saying writers shouldn’t promote their books on Twitter. Of course they should—let’s be frank; what are we doing there in the first place? As an author, it’s not just about having fun with social media; it’s about networking, connecting with potential readers, spreading the word, letting people know who we are and what we write. But in my humble opinion, you don’t make the desired connections by bombarding people with tweets like: “Want a great spine-tingling mystery? Read Whitney Award finalist COLD AS ICE!” Over and over and over again. I’ve got an audience ready to hear me—but instead of gently cultivating that audience, and trying, through personal, entertaining, interesting tweets, to generate interest in my work, I’m going for all the gold right away: Buy my book! Buy my book! And in doing that, I’m risking losing my golden geese—people who might have become interested in my work because of our Twitter connection.

When a writer talks about his/her book on Twitter, I want to feel like I’m hearing fun, interesting news—not like I’m listening to an advertisement. It’s fun to hear a writer tweet excitedly about a new book being accepted, or a new release, or a great review, or a new cover, or what have you. I do want to hear book news--definitely. I like connecting with authors and finding out about their work. I just want to hear about it in a fun, personal way.

Thanks, Rob, and Book Prices.

2011-04-05T01:21:00.001-04:00

First, let me say thanks to all the frog bloggers and to you, our friends. It has been so fun having everyone blogging and reliving the last half-decade. Good times! Good times!

I’ve spent every minute since I got off work moving stuff, putting together stuff, and cleaning stuff in preparation for my oldest son returning from his mission next week. It is definitely an ibuprofen moment.

Which is to say that I haven’t actually done the drawing from all of your wonderful comments, but I absolutely positive will tomorrow morning. I’ll let each author decide what they want to give away, but my giveaway will be from the way back machine. Either Cutting Edge or Into the Fire, which are both long out of print.

Second, I want to wish a truly happy birthday to Rob. I can’t think of a better success through perseverance story, or a more deserving person to have it happen to. Hope your day was great, Rob.

Of course after all the goodwill and resurgence of energy, I couldn’t skip my first post 5 year blog. So I thought I’d throw out a question. Recently I read a blog where a person was complaining about people selling their books on-line for $0.99 – $2.99. This author felt it devalued books to sell them that low.

And yet, right now, I can hustle down to the local Red Box and watch a movie that cost millions to make for a paltry $1. Does that devalue the movie? Should you be able to watch a well made movie for a buck?

Now, admittedly, you don’t get to keep the movie. It doesn’t have the same quality or sound of a full theater experience. And you have to wait until after the movie is out of theaters.

Could any of this apply to books. Publishers want to make more money. Many authors have found they make more money by selling a higher quantity at a lower price. But many publishers are still keeping prices higher to keep from cannibalizing their hardback sales.

As a reader, would you be willing to “rent” an e-book for, say two weeks if the price was a buck or two? Would you be willing to wait several months after the hardback was released to pay significantly less? Would you pay more for a copy that had special features—author notes, deleted scenes, short stories?

As an author, I’d be happy to take my million bucks in a million one dollar sales or a hundred thousand ten dollar sales. But if I was only selling a few thousand books, I have to admit I would be pretty ticked if each copy only sold for a buck.

I hear people all the time complain about e-books from big name publishers not being cheap enough. But in the same breath they want the e-book the same day the hardback comes out and with all the bells and whistles. What do you think? Pay more for getting it right away and with special features? Pay less, but after waiting a few months or renting? Or do you want it all? Low price, all the goodies, and immediate release?

And how much lower does the e-book have to be than the print copy to work for you?

Five and Counting

2011-04-03T21:07:00.002-04:00

As the song says, life is what happens to you while you're making other plans, right?

Looking back on five years, I'm sort of amazed at the twists and turns my life has taken.

Five years ago I had two children. The oldest had a diagnosis of autism and I spent most of my time shuttling him back and forth between different therapists (occupational, speech, behavioral). My second was four, and attending preschool. I had one free-and-clear hour in my day, every day, to write. He would enter kindergarten in the fall, and I would suddenly have several hours.

I was excited at the prospect. I started planning out my days for kindergarten and then first grade the year after. Eight hours or so a day just to write? I couldn't even imagine.

It wasn't the plan I wanted. I desperately wanted more children. But it was the reality I had.

Then something miraculous happened, and in 2006 I was pregnant with my daughter. In 2008 I became pregnant with my son.

Two absolute miracles, two babies who came into this world healthy and normal when there had been loss after loss after loss.

I remember a moment where the Spirit warned me that by choosing this path, my writing would suffer. I didn't care. I wouldn't trade my babies for even J.K. Rowling's money. Maybe I'll never be as successful as I might have been. And I'm okay with that.

I can see where that warning from the Spirit came true. Miracles and joy that they are, they're also still babies. All my creativity, all my excitement about writing, everything got sucked out the window. All my time and energy got focused on these new additions to our family. You know this, because you read my blog and you've heard me complain about it for nearly four years now.

But the tide is turning. My daughter's in preschool; my son will join her this fall. I now live near my sisters and sisters-in-law, and I'm already making plans to trade off times with our kids - for them to have a break, for me to have time to write.

I'm excited by new pathways in publishing. I'm excited to find the time to get back to committing words to paper (keystrokes to Word?). I'm excited to see where the next five years will take me.

PS: Blast From the Past!

2011-04-01T11:53:00.004-04:00

Anybody remember those fantabulously fun Frog Surprise packs we used to send out?

I didn't think so.

Nevertheless, I simply could not bear to part with my box of all things Froggy, so I moved it here to Dewey where it continues to take up space. Before it becomes any greener (from mold) I want to give it all away! So...in the comment section, tell us your fondest memory from the Frog Years Thus Far. (Make sure there is some contact info somewhere so I can track you down for a snail-mail address.) I'll send out prizes as long as they last -- or until my husband notices how much I'm spending on postage, whichever comes first.

We do so appreciate each and every one of you!

I Blame Jeff

2011-04-01T11:05:00.011-04:00

by Kerry Blair

I thought I’d retired from blogging. You thought I’d finally run out of metaphorical Karo syrup . . . or died . . . or . . . whatever it is you thought. (This would be the three of you who noticed my recent, um, sabbatical.) But here I am again, celebrating the Frog Blog’s anniversary, albeit sheepishly. (How did sheep get in here? Let’s just say I feel like a toad and leave it at that.

I blame Jeff for getting me to come back. (Which is not to say it is his fault; merely that I blame him.)

Although the blog began in March of 2006 it was April (May?) when I received the e-mail inviting me to take over Fridays from the amazing Candace Salima. (I never did replace that woman, but nobody could.) I was befuddled. Truth be told, I had never seen the word “blog” before it popped up in that e-mail. It wasn’t in my dictionary.* A little research revealed that “blog” is a contraction of “web log.” Ah, ha! I knew what a captain’s log was from Star Trek and, bright girl that I am, extrapolated from there. And what a great little word to get to know! Blog can be a noun, a verb—sometimes even an adjective—all in the same sentence! What’s not to love about four letters that can do all that?

If I have a claim to fame (folly?) here on the Frog Blog, perhaps it is in, um, plasticizing The Frog. One of his earliest photo shoots was in Arizona in January of 2007 where he was snapped smoozing with Mean Aunt and her lovely daughter. A few months later he popped (hopped?) up again at another signing, this time in Cincinnati with two of Sariah’s sisters. He is most famous, of course, for posing with a rather befuddled-looking Stephenie Myer. Besides his much-acclaimed public appearances over the years, The Frog has written a couple of blogs, starred in a murder mystery, and gotten himself kidnapped by the mega-talented (if nefarious) Janette Rallison.

As much as I’ve loved that Frog, my favorite part the whole blogging experience has to be the incredible, fascinating people we meet along the way. I hesitate to attempt a list our guest bloggers for fear of missing somebody somewhere sometime, but no retrospective would be complete without acknowledging that sometimes we only got by with a little help from our friends. (At least I did.) In gratitude, I spent five hours sloshing around the Frog Blog Bog archives—mostly by flashlight in the wee hours of this morning—so I’ll be astounded if I didn’t miss a name or three. (Please forgive me!) Here is my best effort at hats off to our guest stars who are, in no particular order: Janette Rallison, Michele Ashman Bell, Christy Gruber, Marnie Pehrson, Janet Jensen, Linda Weaver Clark, Jennifer Savage, Hilary Blair, Betsy Brannon Green, Jennifer Leigh, Tristi Pinkston, Annette Lyon, Marsha Ward, Matthew Buckley, Evil HR Lady, Delsa Anderson, Rachel Nunes, Joan Sowards/LizAnne Bayh, Tammy Daybell, Pat Taylor, Traci Hunter Abramson, Crystal Liechty, Debra Erfert, Julie Wright, Deirdra Eden Coppel, Jewel Adams, Anna Jones Buttimore, Bandit Blair, Marlene Austin, Cheri Crane, Meredith C. Dias, Michele Holmes, Jennie Hansen, Jon Spell, John Governale, Sheralyn Pratt, Stephanie Humphreys, Doug Johnston, Amy Black, Candace Salima, W. Dave Free, Jeri Gilchrist, Daron Fraley, Spencer McKay, Michael Cleverly, Karlene Browning, Scott Blair, Lynn Gardner, Bron Bahlmann, Gale Sears, Susan Corpany, Valerie Holladay, Nancy Campbell Allen, Deanne Blackhurst, Laura Bingham, and Julia Polakoff.

Clearly, we have had impressive guests. More importantly, we continue to be visited by amazing readers/writers. I could never count the number of times I’ve perused the comments one of you left after a blog and thought, “I wish I’d said that!” or “If only I could express myself that well.” You are some of the most thoughtful, articulate, and creative people on the planet and I will forever be grateful that cyberspace (and Sariah!) brought us together.

One more observation, really quick. (I’m approximately 350,000 words behind everybody else at this point, so you can’t blame me for trying to gain back a little ground.) When I joined the blog, family and friends began giving me frogs. (Although I suspect Moses “gifted” Pharaoh with a few more than I’ve received, I definitely have my share.) My veritable army of amphibians is stationed all around the yard and almost always draws comment from passersby. By far the most surprising—and meaningful—comment was from a new neighbor in Chino Valley who looked over my collection of little green men and said, "I just knew you were Christian!"

Huh?

As it turns out, in some circles of modern Christianity, FROG is a popular acronym for Forever Remember Our God or Forever Rely On God. Her revelation startled me. Not just the oddity of the God/frog (?!) thing, but the serendipity of it all. As Jeff and Rob and Stephanie and Julie and Sariah reminisced about the last five years of their personal and professional lives, I was struck again by the aptness of our mascot. These people are some of the most gifted and brilliant writers in their genres, but what I have long loved and admired most about them is that in each of their hearts the “writer” label will forever come after “LDS.” It is becoming increasingly rare to find so much truth and so much testimony in "mere" books and blogs and tweets. These people are beyond inspiring. I look back today with gratitude, seeing how much I’ve grown—just as a result of trying to fit in.

Thanks, guys! (Yes, even Jeff. Maybe especially Jeff.)

*It is now. I update dictionaries about as often as most top models update their wardrobes.

The Last Five Years

2011-03-31T22:28:00.002-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I sort of wish there had been some sort of futuristic time capsule of the blog, or famous future sayings by each of the bloggers that we could pull out today. Perhaps, something like this:

Jeff: You should definitely listen to me more, and I’ll tell you how it’s done. My character bible classes are going to be popular and I’ll let you be first in line.

Rob: Those dang Canadians.

Stephanie: I’m going to make you think I’m a sci-fi writer and then stun you and become a creepy mystery writer. No one will see it coming! Bwahaha!

Kerry: Believe in yourself! You can do it!

Sariah: They weren’t sheep! They were birds!

I don’t know what mine would be. Probably, it’s Thursday so I have to blog. I don’t want to ruin my perfect record of making sure there’s a blog every Thursday.

But seriously, it’s been really fun to go back and read some of my first blogs here. It’s so hard to believe it’s been five years. Five years ago in March I was awaiting the release of my third fiction novel with Spring Creek books and my first non-fiction book later that summer and I was blogging about finding time to be a writer with six kids. Crazy! Now, here I am, five years later, I publish with Covenant and have two more books under my belt, and oddly enough, I also have two more children, so I’m finding time to write with eight kids. Wow!

If I could go back in time, knowing what I do now, and give myself some advice about things I’ve learned since then, it would be this:

First, enjoy all the little moments more. Savor them. When that box of books arrives, take a moment to hold your novel that you’ve worked so hard on, and then grab a pen and write down everything you’re feeling in that moment. Someone, (I forget who, sorry!) told me once to write it in the front cover of one of your books so you’ll always remember that feeling.

Second, don’t stress so much. The books will get written. The editor will answer your email. The dinner will get made. The kids will keep growing. Adding stress and worry doesn’t do a thing for you.

Third, let people get to know the real you more. Be less of a hermit. Laugh and have fun with your friends, especially your writer friends. It adds such a richness to the writing experience.

Fourth, don’t be afraid to stand firm about what is important to you. Editors and publishing houses are more flexible than you think. You won’t regret it.

The last five years have been such a great ride for me. Like riding a unicycle on a tiny balance beam ledge. I found my groove and lost it. I wrote horrible limericks, crazy fanfiction, and silly short stories so I could laugh with my friends over them. I’ve written characters I loved and hated. I’ve changed publishers, editors, and jobs. I’ve presented in conferences, classes, book clubs, and libraries, and I’ve met so many wonderful people who have become friends. It’s been a journey, on a twisty, turny, road filled with both dark and sunshine, but it’s been one I can look back on and say I’m glad I took it.

I’m so grateful to be part of this blog. I’ve looked up to all of these bloggers for years, and count myself lucky to be a part of this group. What a great five years it’s been and here’s to another five.

Five Years Ago

2011-03-30T15:11:00.004-04:00

Five years . . . wow. Five years ago, my youngest daughter was a toddler. Now she’s a first-grader, missing her two front teeth. My oldest daughter was a freshman in high school. Now she’s finishing up her second year at BYU. The kids have grown, but in an odd twist of reality, I didn’t get any older. Weird, huh? No, those aren’t gray hairs. They’re . . . highlights.

In 2006 when the Frog Blog began, I was just finishing up writing the sequel to my first book, The Believer. In a blog post, I made this comment about manuscript submission:

Up until the point that you submit the manuscript, you’re free to imagine whatever scenarios you want. The publisher will love it! They’ll snatch it up in record time! The first print run will sell out in a day! You’ll have so many fan letters that your e-mail server will crash! Your publisher will call you up, begging you to please, please write another book as quickly as you can because the world needs your unique and unparalleled genius. People will send you chocolates!

But once you submit the book, you’ve applied for a reality check. And so the panic begins.

Turns out that in this case, the panic was warranted. In June 2006, on the day we were leaving to drive to a family reunion in Utah, I found out that the sequel had been rejected--not because my publisher didn’t like it, but because they feared it wouldn’t sell well enough at that time to be a good move for either them or me. Turns out that sequels don’t tend to sell as well as first books in a series, so unless you have really strong sales numbers for the first book, a publisher will be skittish about a sequel. I didn’t know that, nor did I know what constituted strong sales numbers, so the rejection came as a shock (I’m happy to report that now in a letter every author receives, my publisher talks about the particular challenges associated with sequels and advises authors on how to proceed).

This rejection was by far the most painful thing I’d experienced in my writer’s journey. I felt like I’d walked full-speed into a brick wall. The Believer had gotten great reviews. People were waiting for the sequel. And now, I had nothing to offer them. I felt like a failure. All around me, authors were churning out books right and left. All the other Frog Bloggers had new or upcoming releases. And I’d published one book and then fallen flat on my face.

But I didn’t blog about the rejection (sort of a Twilight Zone thing, I guess. I blogged about finishing this manuscript and then submitting this manuscript and then it sort of . . . disappeared). Experienced author friends had cautioned me not to cry about it in public; people who didn’t understand the industry would get the wrong idea and think if my publisher rejected the book, it must not have been good enough. Recognizing this as wise counsel, I was careful about what I said publicly. So why am I not afraid to blog openly about it now? Well, I figure I’ve accumulated enough of a track record that people won’t automatically assume the book was lousy. But five years ago when I blogged about that disappointing day, I referred to the rejection only as an unnamed source of stress as I discussed our vacation:

Our anticipated drive time to this year’s family reunion was about twelve hours, but we decided to do it the easy way—half and half. We stopped at one in the morning to spend the night, or what was left of it, in Winnemucca, Nevada. (Winnemucca is a truly snappy name for a city). I’m grateful we didn’t decide to attempt the whole trip at once—halfway was more than enough for that night. I’d had a rotten day anyway, the sort of day where you get smacked with stress that turns your brain to mashed parsnips. Thank heavens I’d made the packing list prior to departure day and had already packed a good portion of the clothes, or who knows what we would have ended up with. My kids would have gone to get dressed and found I’d given them only three socks, pajama bottoms and an onion.

It sounds almost cliché to say it, but I gained a lot from that painful experience and what followed. Here are some things I learned:

*My publisher really supported me. While I was vacationing in Utah, I was able to meet with my editor and members of the acquisitions committee. These busy people took over an hour of their time to sit and answer any questions I wanted to ask. It was very plain to me that even though they didn’t feel it was the right time for this book, they valued me as one of their authors and wanted me to succeed.

*When you get knocked on your rear end, you (vent in your journal and moan to family and trusted friends, cry, get frustrated, feel discouraged, and then) jump up, dust yourself off, and get writing. Perseverance is vital to success.

*It’s important to be flexible. I enjoyed writing futuristic fiction, but if I wanted to keep writing sci fi at that time, I needed to find another publisher. On the other hand, if I wanted to keep writing for the same publisher, I needed to write something different for a while. There was no one “right” choice—the question was which track I wanted to follow, and a different author in that situation might have made a different decision. For me, I wasn’t married to futuristic novels—I also really enjoyed contemporary mystery/suspense. I decided to put the sequel on the back burner and focus on something in a more solid genre for the LDS market. I pulled up a suspense novel I’d started a few years ago and got to work on it. That book became my second novel, Fool Me Twice.

*Sometimes an answer you don’t like can turn out to be a great thing, setting you on a new path that leads to new opportunities. It hurt when I found out the sequel had been rejected, but once I got moving again, I’ve really enjoyed my writing journey over the past five years, and have released three contemporary novels with another on the way. I enjoy writing in this genre, and winning a couple of Whitney Awards for mystery/suspense was a huge highlight in my writing career. Sure, someday I'd like to write sci fi again, and I will--there's time. (And by the way, the door is still open with my publisher for the possibility of the sequel to The Believer—not right away, but who knows what will happen in the future?).

I don't know what my writing journey will bring--chances are, at some point, there will be another brick wall that I'll smack right into--but I hope I can remember that once the shock wears off, it's time to dust myself off and keep moving. Here’s to the next five years!

Five Years of Rob

2011-03-30T03:49:00.002-04:00

Since we're looking back at the history of Six LDS Writers this week, I figure I ought to blog (since, five years ago, I used to blog).

It's really amazing what has happened in the last five years. I think all six of us have gone through some really serious life changes, some terrible and some amazing.

I thought I'd go through some of my old posts--ones that I find particularly memorable or interesting or funny or whatever--and offer a little commentary. A Brief History of Rob, or Whatever.

Never Make Eye Contact, March 14, 2006
This was my first post on this blog, and I think it's interesting for one big reason: the entire post is about how I hate marketing. Of course, what I meant was "self-promotion", but at the time I didn't know the difference--and I certainly didn't guess that five years later I'd have an MBA in marketing.

Everyone's a Critic, March 16, 2006
This is one I'd forgotten about, but it's interesting for two reasons: first, it's in response to the first significant kerfuffle I'd gotten into on this blog, and second, it's discussing my plans for the LDS Fiction Review Database (a database containing all reviews of all LDS fiction everywhere). For people who know the history of the Whitney Awards, you'll remember that this database was my first (and misguided) attempt at helping LDS fiction as a whole. When my mindset shifted from pessimism ("LDS fiction needs to be fixed") to optimism ("LDS fiction is good, and we need to highlight the best of it") the Whitney Awards were born. You can read the first announcement about the Whitneys here.

Guest Blogging, July 21, 2006
An important discussion of an email Stephanie Black sent me.

For Love of the Game, October 10, 2006
It was with this post that I announced I had decided to return to grad school.

Wow, December 28, 2006
The announcement that Deseret Book was buying Seagull and Covenant. I added very little commentary here, but the discussion thread is really interesting in light of what has happened in the last four years. We were all afraid and unsure and speculating.

'Roid Rage, February 28, 2007
This was the first of several blogs about my as-yet undiagnosed pneumonia. At the time this was written, the doctor thought it was asthma. Fun fact: it was this pneumonia (undiagnosed for three months) that led to much of the financial trouble I had in grad school, which in turn led to much of the financial trouble I had after grad school, which in turn led to me writing Variant. It's a tenuous connection, certainly, but I still think it's interesting.

Resistance is Futile, May 8, 2007
After resisting for a year, I joined LDStorymakers, and then I dove in head first and tried to get everyone else to join. There were several blogs to this effect, but this is the best one.

Fake Interviews:

Guest Interview: JK Rowling This was the first of my fake interviews, which quickly became a popular feature on the blog. And then I stopped doing them, for some reason.
Delving Deeper: Interview with Jeff Savage
Annette Lyon Gets Socratic
Thanksgiving Forum (One of my all-time favorites.)
Election 08: Townhall Meeting (Another all-time favorite.)
The Brands of Wrath: Interview with John Steinbeck
The 2008 LDStorymakers Conference, an Insider's View: Interview with Annette Lyon and Heather Moore
Guest Interview: Sariah Wilson (Another of my favorites. Man, I have a lot of favorites. But this one especially so.)
Enough For Forever: An Interview with Edward Cullen
The Great Debate: A Debate Between Jeff Savage and Rob Wells
Sarah Palin Speaks
Face Off: A debate between Obama and McCain. I got a lot of material out of the 2008 election. Well, "material". It's not like I ever talked about issues.
My Endorsement. I endorse The Phantom of the Opera for president.
Social Media Marketing: I teach Stephanie Black about social media

Spencer McKay

The Friberg Code I started to blog about/in behalf of Spencer McKay. He started in the comment trail of one of Sariah's posts (I can't find it now), and quickly grew into a beloved(ish) character. Beloved by me, at least.
The Ineffectual Education Fund, a TV show Spencer created.
Blog Touring: Spencer McKay. Spencer is back to talk about his latest literary masterpiece: Walked, and Other Things the Pioneer Children Did While They Sang.
An Honor Worth Defending. People claimed that Spencer wasn't real. My favorite part of this blog: I use the phrase "a literary Polkaroo".
The Great Mormon Novels Have Already Been Written Hint: Guess who wrote them?

Lovers, Haters and Swingers, October 30, 2007
Once I was in business school, I started annoying everyone with business/marketing blogs. I still find them interesting, even if no one else cared.

2007 SixLDSWriters Christmas Letter, December 2007
This is one of my very favorite posts.

The Nephite Who Loved Me, May 21, 2008
A photoshopped movie poster for Sariah's upcoming book.

Minnesota: Currently Giving 106%, June 2006
In the summer of 2008 I lived in Minneapolis while doing a brand management internship with ConAgra Foods (for Orville Redenbacher popcorn). I blogged about it several times.

Architecture and Books -or- How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tract Homes (and Harry Potter), July 29, 2008
This blog is notable for being the first time I used the phrase "who the hell cares?" in this LDS blog. But I was doing it in defense of a wonderful person when a moron criticized her taste in books.

Billings, August 19, 2008
I wrote this while stranded in Billings, Montana. I was broke and depressed. I followed it up the next day with this: On The Road Again

Max Robison Wells, January 3, 2009
We had a little baby. He's rad.

Barack Obama, January 2009
Even though I talk about politics a lot, I never really give much of an opinion. I did here.

Annette Lyon, Forgive Me Please, March 2009
I think this is my all-time favorite blog. Annette was blog touring and I'd agreed to write about her, but creating a graphic novel based on her covers seemed like more fun.

A Cry For Help, May 5, 2009
At long last, I finish grad school. I need a job.

You Can Never Go Home Again, June 2, 2009
Because it was 2009, jobs were few and far between, especially for dorks who'd just graduated. So, I and my wife and three kids moved back in with my parents.

The Float, July 2009
While living with my parents and being unemployed, I took over the creation of the Stake's parade float.

Time To Set Another Goal, August 25, 2009
This blog details my brother, Dan Wells, giving me the goal to write a sci-fi/fantasy book in two months, in anticipation of the World Fantasy Convention. It was this challenge that got me to write Variant, which got me the deal with HarperTeen, which changed my writing career forever.

The News, November 11, 2009
I announce that Variant is now represented by Sara Crowe.

My Heart Is Breaking, December 9, 2009
This is the first blog in which I discuss my chest pain--pain that would plague me for the next six months and was (eventually) diagnosed as Tietze Syndrome.

The End of Seven Months
After seven months of unemployment, I got a job! Hooray!

Major News: I May Hyperventilate
Variant sold to HarperTeen!

Things Never Work Out As Planned, October 10, 2010
I think this is about as good a place as any to end this 5 year recap. The point of this post was to explain how many of the things I'd expected--to get a great job right out of school, to not be unemployed, to not have major financial problems--hadn't happened. And yet, despite it not going to plan, everything has worked out splendidly. It's worked out differently, to be sure. And at times it's been painful and awful. But it's worked out nonetheless. I look back at Five Years Ago Rob, and he seems like such a different person; different goals and different plans. It kinda makes me wonder where I'll be in 2016.

Looking Back

2011-03-28T23:10:00.003-04:00

It’s weird to realize how much has happened over five years and how quickly it went. I’ve had a son go and almost come back from a mission, had a daughter get married, published five books—three with a publisher I’d never worked with at that point, changed jobs, visited over 400 schools, and changed agents.

The biggest recession since the great depression hit, e-books went crazy, a self-published author started making Twilight like waves—except that five years ago, most people were just hearing about Twilight, a huge book store chain declared bankruptcy, lots of people lost their houses and their jobs. One of the greatest prophets of my lifetime passed away and a great one took his place.

Yeah It’s been crazy.

So what have I learned personally?

First, I think, is that perseverance is key to whatever you want to accomplish. I’ve seen some of my good friends and family members go through some tough struggles. What kept them afloat was the fact that they didn’t quit. In the publishing field, people who were unknown five years ago have hit best seller status.

I’ve considered giving up writing many, many times over the last few years. I honestly think my lowest points in my publishing career have been during this period of time. At the moment I have no idea where things will lead me, but the future looks pretty bright and I’m glad I didn’t quit.

Second, the path we are following often takes truly unexpected turns but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Five years ago I’d never written a book for kids. Five years ago, I’d never even considered writing fantasy. Five years ago the big thing was Harry Potter. No one had heard of Hunger Games and only a few people knew much about this new vampire book except that it had received a huge advance and the author was Mormon.

I’d love to have a map that explained where things were going and why, but since I don’t, I’ve learned to be flexible and look for opportunities in places I might not have expected.

Lastly, I’ve learned that you really can’t do it alone. If it wasn’t for great friends, awesome family, and the support of many of the people who read, and write, this blog, I know I would not have achieved half of what I have. I hope I’ve been able to help some others along the way too.

So here’s to the amazing, annoying, unexpected last five years. I hope the next five bring you both wisdom and surprises, and that all your fondest wishes come true—even if it happens in ways you don’t expect. Happy anniversary!

Surveys That Pay

2011-03-27T23:47:00.001-04:00

I had quite a few people ask me to pass along this information when I posted about getting a free Kindle, so I thought I'd go ahead and share what I know.

I've been doing surveys for a couple of years now to see what works/what doesn't. One of my pet peeves, and there are sites that do this regularly: You start/finish a survey and after spending 20 minutes on it, it will suddenly say, oh, sorry, you don't qualify. Or you finish it and then there's a message on their website that says too many people took this survey, so you've just wasted your time and aren't getting compensated.

So these are the sites that I use, that pay well and pay often, and don't typically waste your time (although I have no guarantees).

Keep in mind that for most of these sites you'll have to fill out profile information/surveys that will take up some time, but it's important so that the site will know what surveys to send you.

Also note that most sites have a minimum balance before they'll pay you. As for qualifying for surveys, every site has their own set up as to how they send surveys out. Sometimes you'll be on the tail end and even though you answer the email right away, you may still not qualify because too many people in your demographic have already taken the survey.

SurveySavvy - I've been a member at this site for several years. There is no minimum balance for payout, so they'll send you a check whenever you request one.

Opinion Outpost - This is BY FAR my favorite survey site. I used to qualify for surveys more frequently - I don't know if I've just been inactive for awhile so I'm not at the front of the line any longer. They have a minimum payout of $5.00 (or 50 points), which you can request as an Amazon gift card, or donate to the Red Cross. At $15, you can get a Citi gift card, at $20 a check. I always get the Amazon gift codes and spend them on books. As a bonus, if you don't qualify for a survey, you can play an instant game where you have a chance of winning $50. FYI, after two years, I have never won (you can also donate to a charity instead of playing the game).

Opinion Place - This survey site is a little different. You can only log on once a week and try to qualify for surveys; but if they send you a special invitation, the week restriction doesn't matter. They will pay you in Amazon gift codes or Paypal credits. When you qualify, they send the codes to you a few days later via email.

MySurvey - These guys are fun because if you get a survey, even if you don't qualify, you still earn 5 points. When you earn 1100 points total, you can cash them out for an Amazon $10 gift card. What I like about them is their surveys are typically more fun, and they give you lots of chances to try out products. Right now I'm doing an in-home survey for them where I'm keeping track of my daughter's snack preferences for two weeks. I'll earn $60 in Citi gift cards by doing this. I really love getting the products in home to try out, and they're great about hooking you up with chances like that.

Valued Opinions - Earning money at this site seems to go a little more slowly, i.e., I don't get surveys all that often from them. But when I do get one, I typically qualify and get paid for it. They have a $20 minimum for cashing out, and also offer Amazon gift codes via email.

MyPoints - I think I've talked about them before, but this is another slow-going site where you can accumulate points over time and they have many different types of rewards. I've received CVS and Wal-Mart gift cards from them in the past; now I'll probably always request Amazon codes (or a Barnes & Noble gift card - there's a complete list of rewards here). They will send you emails and usually give you 5 points just for clicking on the link in the email. They will have small surveys on their main page that are also worth about 5 points. They have offers that if you complete them, will give you more points. They're a shopping portal - which means that if you're going to buy something like flowers from FTD, you'd go to MyPoints first, find the vendor, click on it and then order like normal from the browser window that opens up, and MyPoints will give you points for doing it. You can also print out grocery coupons from their site that will give you points for using them. AND they occasionally send out surveys for you to complete.

A good idea is to create an email account that you use for all your survey sites so that everything's in one place and it doesn't get mixed in with your regular email.

And on an unrelated side note - Connie Brockway just announced that she is forsaking traditional publishing and going indie. For those outside of romance, Connie Brockway is HUGE. And she's best buddies with the genre's top-selling authors. I imagine if she does well (and she expects to) her friends will soon follow. If you're interested, she talks about it here.

Authors Gone Wild

2011-03-24T22:42:00.001-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

There has been some flap recently over authors who get angry when they get a bad review. One author ranted about the bad review on Twitter, delivering twenty-seven tweets about it, including the reviewer’s telephone number and e-mail address and asked readers to contact the woman and tell her what they thought of “snarky reviewers.” Another author responded to their bad review in the comment section of the review blog and wrote, “"I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make."

Wow.

That’s just scratching the surface as other incidents in the blogosphere have come to light, including a response to a bad review that said the reviewers themselves were jealous and probably hadn’t ever written anything more than a grocery list. It stuns me a little bit to see this kind of behavior. As an author I have had a few negative reviews (I’m looking at you Goodreads) and while it stings, I know I wouldn’t ever resort to name-calling and death wishes for the reviewers. (Although I might borrow one of Rob’s voodoo dolls and stick pins in it.) (Kidding, kidding.)

No matter what, every author will experience a time when someone won’t like their book. All their hard work, blood, sweat, tears, effort, love, everything they’ve poured into that book will be labeled. Characters are too shallow. Plot had holes. Grammar mistakes. Too cliché. Whatever it is, it’s going to hurt, and there is no way to prepare yourself for it. So here is my advice for authors who get a bad review.

If the review is so bad it makes you want to cry, get out a journal or open up a new Word document, and write down how you feel. Get it out of your system, and then let it go. Do not post it on your blog or Twitter or Facebook. You will be tempted, but don’t do it. (I know some people post links to bad reviews for the sympathy vote, and validation that your work doesn’t suck, and that is not taboo, of course, and completely up to you as a person, but be careful. Don’t let your friends trash the reviewer, either.)

Take a good look at the review. Is there anything to their criticism? Is there something you could improve on in your writing style? Try to look for any positives that you can take away from it, and then move on and get back to writing.

Talk to your best friend. Or, if you don’t have a best friend, or they’re not home at the moment, take a nap.

Get out of the house and away from the computer. Go for a walk. Go to the mall. Go to that little bistro you love and get a low-fat yogurt, or a chocolate brownie, or something that will take your mind off of it.

Sit down and remind yourself of why you got into writing. Think about how you love to share your stories with others. Think of how you felt when you got that first fan letter thanking you for your work. Look at how many good reviews you’ve gotten and maybe read a few of those.

Whatever you do, don’t diss your reviewers and don’t make the mistake of publicly reacting defensively to feedback. It can be an author’s biggest mistake and often comes back to bite you. No matter what, reviewers have taken the time to read your book and offer their opinion on it. You may not like their opinion, but it’s theirs and it does deserve some respect whether you choose to respond positively or negatively. However, if you post your positive or negative feelings online, you can bet that, with social media today, your post will get around. And what you post matters. It says something about you as a person and as an author. Make sure what is out there accurately represents you as a human being, and not you when you are in the heat of the moment.

I'll Give You a Song

2011-03-23T13:58:00.003-04:00

Since there was a great, vigorous discussion about e-publishing already taking place in the comment trails of the past two posts, I was tempted to just skip my blog today, but, well, I’d better do my duty. Work first, then play is my motto!

Ha ha! Actually, that’s a gigantic fib. I’m perfectly capable—unfortunately—of ignoring work and playing instead (hello, email and Twitter). If someone paid me for the skill of procrastinating work, I’d be rich, though I’m guessing if someone volunteered to pay me for procrastination, they’d be the type of person who’d never get around to sending me the check.

Today’s topic: music. My daughter wanted me to buy the new Mana single (I know that's not typed correctly--I tried to figure out how to make an accent mark but failed). Mana is a Latin rock band my daughters love. I don’t speak Spanish, but both of my daughters study it—one daughter is in AP Spanish Literature and the other is minoring in Spanish at BYU. I think it is absolutely awesome that they’re both on their way to becoming fluent. I never got past the “Hola, como estas” two-years-of-high-school-Spanish phase, so to see them actually learning a new language is exciting. It’s also handy. The other day I was playing Sorry with my two youngest children and we had a dispute about the rules, with the six-year-old insisting you couldn’t do something and me saying you could. She grabbed the rule sheet, but it turned out to be in Spanish; we’d lost the English one. So I took the rule sheet downstairs, handed it to my 17-year-old, told her our question, and she found the section in question and translated (turns out the six-year-old was right :).

Um . . . anyway. Where was I? Yes, buying a song. So my daughter was messaging me, saying I needed to enter my info into iTunes so they could get the song. I accused her of whining and said I was trying to finish writing my blog and she was raining on my parade. She said that wasn’t a valid use of that idiom. I typed, “so you’re the idiom police now?” She typed, “you told me to get a job.”

Later, she messaged, asking “do you have a song for me?” I said sure, but her words sparked a memory, so I gave her the following song (though at the time I messed up the first line-hey, it had been a while since I'd heard it):

“I’ll give you a song
That I think is tops
If you keep up this racket
I’m calling the cops.”

She was amused. This song, written by Joseph A. Bailey and Sam Pottle, was sung by Oscar the Grouch on a Sesame Street album that my sister and I loved when we were young. Thinking of that song made me think of the album, which made me think wouldn’t it be fun to have that album again? I went to iTunes and searched for it and to my delight, there it was—Sesame Street: Bert and Ernie Sing-Along, originally released in 1975. Bert is taking a bath and singing to himself. Ernie hears him singing and decides a sing-along is a good idea (“Ernie! What are you doing—you can’t push the piano through the bathroom door!” “Sure I can, Bert. Watch!”). A bunch of fun songs follow, and it’s remarkable how familiar the album is, even though heaven knows how many years have passed since I heard it. Music is like that; it really sticks in your head. I’m not a little kid anymore, but I still love that album (my six-year-old did NOT want to hear it at first—perhaps she felt it was beneath her dignity—but later conceded it wasn’t bad).

How about you? Is there any music that you loved as a kid and still love or have recently rediscovered?

Replying to Outliers

2011-03-23T01:04:00.004-04:00

I wrote this as a reply to Rob's post, but it's too long. Surprising, right?

I get your point. I do.

But people are leaving out what e-publishing offers.

Suddenly...I will get 100% control. That means no more title changes, covers of my choosing, leaving things the way that I want them.

It means writing what *I* want to write - not trying to think of the next high concept that will get me in the door, not trying to be aware of what I have to write for what market, not worrying over whether or not my new agent/editor will force me to write questionable content because that's how it's done; it suddenly means that everything is in my hands. It doesn't matter if another author has a book like mine. It doesn't matter if the publisher has taken on another book with similar content. It means I don't have to worry about the, "Oh, you're so close. But no thanks." None of that matters anymore.

Not for a second do I think it's easy. Not for a second do I imagine that I'll be making $100,000 next month. But...at least there are possibilities that didn't exist before. What if someone had told Amanda Hocking "This e-publishing thing is crap. It's too hard. Don't do it." Or Victorine Lieske? Or HP Mallory? Or Michael J. Sullivan? (All indie authors off the top of my head with recently acquired agents shopping deals for them, which means they *must* be outliers or anecdotal, right? ;) )

For the first time in a long time, I am *excited* again. Books I've been wanting to write, books of my heart, have been put aside because they won't work for certain markets. My Muse had gone silent. And suddenly the floodgates have opened. I have ideas, dialogues, scenes coming so quickly I can hardly write them down.

This isn't because New York doesn't want me. I don't know whether or not they do. I haven't tried. I don't have a drawer full of rejections. Not because I assume they will reject me, but because I haven't had anything to give them that I think will work. The midlist author is disappearing. It'd better be big or go home (see also: Ally Condie, Rob Wells, Stephenie Meyer).

Here's the reality: publishing is changing. Publishers will fight it tooth and nail for as long as they possibly can. But for generations that consume all their other media digitally, they will expect to consume their books digitally and they will be livid that the book they want costs $12.99 and is more expensive than the paperback. My mom got excited today by the possibility that she could get a certain author's books as e-books, until she saw all the prices. While a consumer may understand paying $25 for a hardback (they can look at the book and see the costs involved), there's nothing like that involved with e-books. Consumers will clamor for lower prices, and if traditional publishers refuse to give it to them, someone will come in and fill in the gap (see also: John Locke. Go to Amazon's Kindle Store. He's the guy that's got most of the Top 100 slots).

And the simple fact that I see ignored - there are people that no matter how hard they try, no matter how many times they submit to New York, are never, ever, ever going to get published. And before that meant languishing in obscurity with only your mom to read your books. Now it could mean that you might be like Tina Folsom and sell 100,000 books in less than one year by e-publishing all those New York-rejected books. And there are so many authors that are thrilled beyond belief to have just five people buy their book in a month. That means five strangers went out of their way and actually read something, paid for something, that previously just sat on someone's hard drive.

Publishing is hard. It's hard to go through New York and succeed, it's hard to do it yourself and succeed. But so what? Marketing? Up to me whether I'm with NY or just me. Accounting? For sure 100% accurate, because it's just me (NY tends to have a slight problem in this area). Cover? Plenty of excellent designers who can do it for me on the less expensive side (and there's even websites where you can bid the work out - a writer I know did that and got 150 covers to choose from). Editing? I'd be using a professional for that either way - one way means I get to keep the money I earn, the other I give up 90% (give or take) of the money in perpetuity.

It's not the same beast. E-readers have turned everything on its head. You asked how many authors are making a decent living on e-publishing - I would garner a guess that it's probably a tad more than make a living wage via traditional publishing.

I'm actually feeling a deep urgency to get started with this stuff because I want to get my foot in the door before other excellent authors figure out what's going on, before we get more midlisters and more bestsellers turning to this medium and suddenly there will be so much more competition.

So, never mind. Ignore everything I just said. As you were. ;)

Outliers and Anecdotes: Why epublishing articles drive me crazy

2011-03-22T22:04:00.005-04:00

When The Appendix podcast (which I run, along with Sarah Eden and Marion Jensen) did its first episode about ebooks, I declared that I was sick of hearing about them. It seems that another dozen articles pop up every day, and very few of them have anything meaningful to say. (Note: since I initially said that on the podcast, just about every episode mentions ebooks in one way or another. So I'm a hypocrite.)

I'm skeptical about epublishing, for lots and lots of reasons. I'm not saying that no one should dive into it, but rather just saying that a healthy dose of realism is in order.

I don't intend this blog to be comprehensive, and it's certainly not a Should-I-or-Shouldn't-I? guide to epublishing. Instead, I just want to make a couple of points that ought to be obvious:

Without further ado:

Let's define a couple of statistical terms, and a couple of logical fallacies, and then talk about how they knock down 90% of epublishing arguments.

Outlier: an observation that is numerically distant from the rest of the data. In our present situation, I think we can call Amanda Hocking and JA Konrath outliers. We can also call JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown outliers. They are data points that are significantly different from the vast majority of other data points.
Availability heuristic: the idea that because you can think of an example of something, it must be significant. For example, "There are three new thai places near my house--it's got to be fastest growing trend in restaurants" or "That guy on the news was attacked by a bear, so bear attacks on humans must be commonplace" or "An author turned down a huge advance to epublish instead, so epublishing must be really better than traditional publishing."
Anecdotal evidence: evidence, which may or may not be verifiable, which is used to support a conclusion that does not follow from it. "I didn't get a job until January. The American economy must be better this year." or "I stopped getting asthma attacks after I stopped eating Chex Mix. Chex Mix must cause asthma" or "I'd buy five times as many books as I currently do if they only cost $2.99. Therefore, lowering the price will significantly increase volume sold across the country."

If you can't guess my point, it's this: statistical conclusions cannot be based on outliers or anecdotal evidence. It may be 100% true that Chex Mix causes asthma, but the FDA shouldn't ban Chex Mix because of a single point of data. Likewise, it may be true that Hocking's success is replicable, but you shouldn't go into epublishing just because you heard her story. That makes as much sense as going into computer science because you expect to get Bill Gates' salary, or taking up basketball because you really want a mansion like Kobe Bryant's.

Notice: I'm not saying "you shouldn't pursue great success." What I'm saying is this: don't expect the outlier. Expect the trend.

So, in epublishing, what's the trend? I'm not asking what the hype is--I'm asking what the hard numbers are. How many epublished authors are making decent money? The answer is... who knows? A few? Some? Lots? Not sure?

What does that mean? The market is changing, and while great successes has occurred (Hocking and Konrath, for example), if we're being honest we really have no idea what the trend will be. We can make hypotheses about it. We make assumptions about success based on pricing and distribution models. But what we cannot say is "there is evidence to show that epublishing is better for authors than traditional publishing". So stop it, internet.

This all leads into my long-standing worry about epublishing, which is not that epublishing is bad or wrong, but that people are getting into it for the wrong reasons. Publishing is really hard, but epublishing looks so easy--no wonder aspiring authors are excited about it! But desperation is the WRONG reason to epublish. Rejection letters are the WRONG reason to epublish. Hopes for Hocking-style paychecks are the WRONG reason to get into epublishing.

What's the right reason? Because you've sat down and worked out a business plan, with realistic expectations, and you've fully weighed all your options.

Wait--a business plan!? But I'm an author!

Remember back before everyone freaked out about epublishing, how you used to see article after article warning people about the perils of self-publishing? Well, epublishing is self-publishing. Sure, you have a better distribution method, fewer startup costs (but not NO startup costs), and maybe a little less stigma, but it's still the same beast. When you go self-pub or e-pub, you're effectively starting your own micropublishing company. All the pitfalls that seemed so daunting for decades--managing your own marketing, editing, accounting, graphic design, etc--now seem to be glossed over in a wave of hype.

I guess my conclusion is this: if you want to epublish, then do it. But be skeptical of the hype (because 98% of it talks about outliers, not trends), get into it for the right reasons, and have a solid business plan before you do it.

Writing is Like Fixing the Toaster

2011-03-21T12:49:00.002-04:00

Last week I was asked to help update another blog I post to. We were trying to add a couple of new features to the sidebar and the person who set up the blog template has a really busy schedule and didn’t have time to update it. Unfortunately, the blog was not a standard out of the box template. It was written in straight HTML so I couldn’t just find the widget and add it.

The good news is that the code was done by a professional coder, so it was neatly laid out and well documented. The bad news is that I am not a programmer. So I did what I usually do when I’m trying to fix something. I dug around inside and started playing with stuff (being careful not to permanently change anything until I’d figured it out.)

First, I found what appeared to be a complete section of code for one of the existing sidebar boxes, and deleted it. Then I looked at a preview version to see what I had done. Turns out I hadn’t gotten all the code for that box. I tried it again, and appeared to have succeeded. Next I reset the code to its original form and pasted in the code I had deleted before—creating a second copy of that box. With a little more messing around, I was able to create a new box, add the spacing images above and below it, and eventually paste in the new code for the widget I was adding.

My wife likes that I can fix most things around the house. Again, I follow a pretty standard procedure. Poke around, being careful not to break anything, see if I can figure out how it works, then determine, whether or not it is something I should try to fix myself or hand off to a professional. I recently saved about $500 by replacing the circuit board in our furnace myself. (While being EXTREMELY careful to make sure I wasn’t doing anything that could explode, suffocate, burst into flames, etc.)

Partly I’m telling you this to brag a little. I mean seriously, when you find something that’s broken and fix it to like new (or better than new) status, you want to get all the applause you can. Am I right?

Mostly though, I’m telling you this because I think it relates to writing. The curse of many writers (especially those that are new to the craft) is that we want everything to come from our imagination to the paper perfectly the first time. We read a book we like, and in our minds we imagine our favorite author penning those words exactly the way we read them on the first try.

In reality, writing is a lot more like dabbling in programming code or fixing an appliance. Let’s divide writing into a couple of sections.

1) Before You Open the Hood—When fixing an appliance, the first thing you do is a little research. Any information available on-line? It’s much easier if you can find instructions (and warnings) from people who do this a lot and know what you are about to try. When I added my widgets, I Googled the issue I was looking at and got some good help.

In writing, this is the part where you play with the story in your head. Do you know what is going to happen? What if you did this? What if you tried that? Recently you read a great book where the author did a, b, and c. Any chance you could use that kind of set up in your story? Do a little freestyle internet research, where you start with one thing and follow various links to see what you can find. I can’t stress enough the value of thinking before writing.

2) Dig In—This is the part that scares most people off. Both in writing and fixing things. Do I really know what I’m doing"? What if I screw something up?

In fixing something, the first and foremost goal is not to screw it up any worse than it already is. So a little caution is a good thing.

In writing, you have no such worries. You started with a blank screen or piece of paper. At the end of the day, the worst thing you will have is a blank screen or paper. As long as you put down words, you have something to work with. To quote some editor, “You can’t edit nothing.” But you can always improve what you have written, Will it be perfect? Not if you’re like me and 99% of the rest of the writers out there. Will it even make it into the final version? Maybe not. Will it take you a step closer to the final version absolutely.

The beginning of a story can be one of the most daunting things for a writer. Until you put a word down on paper, the story can be perfect inside your head. As soon as you start writing, problems arise. What makes it even worse is that often you don’t know your characters, voice, or even exactly where the story is going until you’re well into it.

A good friend of mine, and fellow critique group member, Annette Lyon, doesn’t put chapter numbers on her first few chapters for this very reason. It lets her dive into the story without the anxiety of thinking, “This is the first word, sentence, page, that my reader will see.” Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. You can figure that out later. The key is to get writing.

3) Figure Out How It Works—This is actually my favorite part of writing. You are not finalizing anything. You are not committed to any course of direction. You are just fiddling. The other day, the door that goes from our garage to our house stopped swinging closed by itself. My wife pointed this out to me, and after a week or two of complaining every time someone forgot and didn’t close the door all the way, I examined the mechanism. It turns out there are two spring-loaded hinges. So are they broken now and need to be replaced or can I fix them? Well first I have to figure out how they work. There has to be some way to loosen and tighten them or you would never be able to get them on an open door in the first place. Hmmm, a hex bolt. What’s this little pin do? Sproing! Ahh, it holds the spring in place.

Same deal with your writing. So often we stop because we are afraid of drawing our character wrong. But remember, there is nothing to break here. The worst that happens is that you erase and start over. Character boring? Try a new voice or angle or gender or age. Give her a twitch or a have him be starting a new diet. Play with your story until you figure out how it works and where it’s going. Stuck on a scene? I have the perfect fix for you. Add this note. “Something cool happens here.” Then continue writing the part you know. The magic is that later in the story you will discover precisely what should go there.

In a nutshell, give yourself permission to make mistakes.

4) Fix It—If you have made it to this point, hurray! You are well on your way to success. As long as you actually have written an entire story to fix. If you have written three pages and are now going back to edit those pages, stop it!!! Didn’t you read anything I just said? How can you fix your story when you haven’t put in the blood, sweat and tears to discover how it works?

Get as much of it done as you can before going back and fixing. One you do start fixing, the the key is to view your story like a house full of furniture. Move it around. Try a new look. Keep playing until it feels right to you. then move on to the next room. I tend to do a lot of this.

She peeked around the corner. Her feet kicked up a loose piece of carpet and a beetle scurried out from the dirt.

“Do you hear anything?” he asked.

What were they doing here anyway? If her mother knew what she’d been doing. She would be toast.

The ancient hotel creaked like a battleship in a rough sea.

“No.”

Hmm, what if I build up to the bug, but make it even creepier?

“Do you hear anything?” he asked.

The ancient hotel creaked like a battleship in a rough sea. “No.”

What were they doing here anyway? If her mother knew she’d returned to the abandoned building, she would be toast.

As she peeked around the corner, her foot kicked up a loose piece of carpet and a nest of tiny black spiders darted out of the darkness up the wall and across the floor. One climbed up her shoe and leaped onto her bare ankle.

Same basic story, but we move things around a little, fix some grammar, and add a nasty little detail to crank up the tension. You can do the same thing with entire chapters. What if the police chief doesn’t learn that his wife is missing until after he discovers the note?

Not everything I try to fix works out. Sometimes I have to give it up as a lost cause. That may happen to your stories on occasion too. But that’s okay. It’s part of the process. By getting rid of the junk it’s easier to discover the gems. The key is to not let the enormity of the project, your inexperience, or hiccups in the process stop you. The only book you don’t learn from is the one you never try to write.

And remember, it’s by giving yourself permission to fail that you allow yourself the opportunity to succeed.

Making Your Bid

2011-03-17T12:28:00.005-04:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

For the past week and a half we have been getting bids to have our cupboards and countertops redone. We finally chose a company to refinish our cupboards and they came yesterday and removed all the doors and took them away. I honestly didn’t realize what that would do to me. With no cupboard doors, my kitchen was naked. There was nothing to cover my stuff! And boy, I had a lot more stuff than I thought. I mean, you know how a black skirt and a cute jacket can cover and hide any “extra” stuff you might have? Yeah, cupboard doors do the same thing. For example, with no cupboard doors I can easily see that I have two toasters crammed in one cupboard. And one entire top shelf that I never look at has about fifty scented candles on it. It’s a stuffapalooza that is driving me crazy to look at. I can hardly sit here and concentrate with all this stuff staring at me. Which is sort of odd, because it’s not like my desk is that organized, but I can still work with a pile of papers right next to me. Yet, cupboards with no doors has made any and all work-related actions come to a grinding halt. (I was going to take a picture and post it, but then I decided it would probably affect all of you, as well, so I will spare you having to actually see it. I’m sure you can visualize your own kitchen with no doors. Wouldn’t it freak you out, too?)

Anyway, I did have a writing tip to go along with my cupboard/counter story. You see, we had ten bidders come to bid on the project, (five for the cupboards, five for the counters), and each bidder was completely different. I never knew what kind of person was going to show up at my door. One bidder came in shorts and a t-shirt with an old beat-up truck, another came in a full suit with a really flashy car. One spent ten minutes measuring things, barely spoke a word, wrote a few figures on a paper and left. Another spent an hour and a half telling me how great my kitchen would look with brown and gold accents and how his product is unique to the entire NATION and I would be lucky to have it. Some had presentation packets with samples, others just referred me to their website. None of those things really bothered me, however, I just thought it was interesting to see the contrast between different individuals and companies. I did have a few pet peeves come up, though, when people were late to their appointment and didn’t call (one guy was over an hour and a half late. Very unprofessional in my opinion.) Another one wore his muddy shoes into my home and tracked all the way through it as he measured our counters. Yeah, I was a little bugged. But, overall, it was quite an eye-opening experience in how many different companies there are out there who do this sort of thing, and how many different approaches there are to selling said company and product.

What does this have to do with writing you ask? If you think about it, writers are sort of like bidders. We are representing our work to agents and publishing companies and how we present ourselves matters. For our kitchen, we needed a company that could refinish our cupboards and our stair railing. We made that clear when we asked these companies to come. But one company, knowing they didn't do stair railings, came anyway, and really wasted everyone's time. As a writer, are you giving your bid to the right agent or company? I mean, if you write YA and you’re putting your “bid” to an agent who only represents romance, then you’re wasting everyone’s time like my one bidder. It’s important to know who exactly you are giving your bid to and what they are looking for.

We were also getting bids for granite countertops, but one of the companies that came out had a full line of solid surface and quartz as well. We hadn’t really thought about those materials, but suddenly, we felt like we had some options. As a writer “bidder” do you have any other options if the agent or publishing house wants something else from you? Can you give them options when it comes to you and your work?

There also is the matter of presentation. Once you have your bid ready to go, are you the kind of person who is following the submission guidelines every agent/publishing house has? Or will they feel annoyed because you didn’t follow common rules like my bidders who were late and had muddy shoes?

You also want to decide what sort of person you will be representing to these agents/publishing company. Are you the casual guy in the shorts and beat up truck? Or are you the full suit guy with a flashy car? Your presence and how you present yourself matters to both the agent and publishing company because once you are published, you will be selling yourself as well as your writing. If you are shy and have a hard time talking, it can be a little off-putting, like my bidder who didn’t speak a word, was for me. Writing is such a solitary business until you are ready to do marketing. And then it’s important to be able to express yourself in public, with social media, blogs, etc. Be prepared for that. Have your presentation ready, and be enthusiastic about it. I mean, the guy who spent an hour and a half telling me how great my kitchen would look with his product believed every word he spoke. Or he made me believe that he believed it. I was excited about what he had shown me after he left. But the guy who said "just look at my website," made me feel a little let down. Be the guy who is enthusiastic about your writing. Be able to sell it.

Of course, once your work has sold, the real work begins and the cupboard doors come off. Your mettle as a writer will be tested as you move to the next phase, and it’s up to you whether you stick it out and see it through, or crumble under the pressure. Be the kind of writer that I wish I could be at this moment. One that isn’t stuck in their chair, staring at mounds of unorganized stuff. Gather yourself. Gather your strength and write no matter what is staring you in the face.

As for me, I will have to stop and organize the stuff so I can stop looking at it (and my children will stop bringing their friends over to stare at it. We're sort of a neighborhood sensation right now.) Ooh, and I can apply that little gem to writing, too. Hopefully your book, will be a neighborhood and beyond sensation! See! It all ties together.

And with that, I will “bid” you adieu, my fellow bidder/writers so I can get back to my naked kitchen. (Can we say naked on this blog? I forgot. If we can't, pretend you didn't see that and substitute another word.)

Oh, and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Contradictions of a Writer

2011-03-16T10:12:00.007-04:00

Rob Wells is finishing up the first draft of the sequel to his upcoming YA sci fi novel, Variant (in fact, he might be done now. If so, congrats, Rob! If not, GET TO WORK, SLACKER). A week and a half ago, he tweeted the following: “I had to look up some details from VARIANT and ended up reading several chapters. Forgive me for saying so, but that book's pretty darn good.”

I suspect that many of us aren’t accustomed to coming right out and praising our own work (hence Rob’s joking request for forgiveness), but Rob should think his book is good—fantastic, in fact. I think every author should love his/her work. If we don’t love what we write, why should we expect readers to love it—and even spend money to buy it? We’re readers too, and naturally, we’re going to write the type of thing we like to read—so, if we think our own book is lackluster, a little on the boring side and not too polished, maybe a scant three stars on a good day . . . um . . . bummer. Not a good sign.

Of course, it’s difficult—impossible, even?—to read our own work like we’d read another author’s work. We’re powerfully emotionally invested in our own work and might want to adore it, even when it doesn’t deserve adoration. Strangely enough, we might also want to criticize it more harshly than we would another writer's work, nitpicking at even tiny flaws. Contradictory, huh? In his book How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, Orson Scott Card said:

“Writers have to simultaneously believe the following two things:

1. The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written in English.

2. The story I am now working on is worthless drivel.

“It’s best if you believe both these things simultaneously, so that you can call on Belief 1 when you’re deciding whether to mail the story out, Belief 2 when going over the story to revise it, Belief 1 when choosing which market to submit to, Belief 2 when the story is rejected (of course, I expected to get this back), and Belief 1 again when you put it back in an envelope and mail it to the next-best market.

“Of course, believing two contradictory facts at the same time is sometimes referred to as madness—but that, too, can be an asset to a writer.”

I love that quote. I agree with Card—as authors, we need both beliefs. We need that excitement about our work—the exhilarating sense that we're doing a good job of creating a gripping, well-written story that readers will enjoy. Lose that joy of creation, and what’s the point? I hate to burst the bubbles of any aspiring writers out there, but most of us aren’t getting rich writing books. This isn’t a business you go into for the money.

But at the same time, the worst thing we can do for a book—and our writing careers—during the creation process is to regard our talent and skill as infallible and our stories as perfect. If we’re not willing to improve our skills, to look for problems in our manuscripts, to listen and seriously consider it when our instinct or feedback from an outside source tells us something isn’t working, to be flexible, to delete, to add, to rewrite, to polish, to do all of this as many times as it takes to produce a strong, publishable manuscript—we’re toast. To succeed, we MUST be willing to regard our work critically and see where it needs improvement—and then improve it. And we should continue to grow our skills, book to book.

And when all your hard work pays off, a book is polished and published (or in your publisher’s queue awaiting release), and you can no longer change a word—then don't forget to enjoy what you’ve done. Flip through the pages and think, “Hey—this book is pretty darn good.” Go ahead and love what you created. Five stars! (And you can pre-order Variant here).

Dude, I'm Getting a Kindle (For Free!)

2011-03-14T01:21:00.001-04:00

So after my post last weekend (was it last weekend? I can't remember whether or not I posted. You may not know this about me, but I'm not always so good about the posting), I figured it was time to step into the future.

I'm buying a Kindle!

Well, sort of buying one. Not so much buying as getting for free.

How, you ask?

Well, one of the major ways is through Swagbucks. I've mentioned Swagbucks in a previous post, and it is a site I use on a daily basis. Last year I earned enough points to get more than $150 in Amazon gift cards, which I saved up. There are other, more dedicated people than me who spend way more time on the site than I do and thus earn way more than I do - I typically only answer the daily poll in the morning and then use it as a search engine the rest of the day. I probably earn swagbucks twice a day from searching. It's something I'd be doing anyway (going to websites) so it just makes it a little easier, and it gives me some cash.

I earned the rest of the Amazon gift cards from doing surveys. There are a lot of scammy type survey sites out there, and it's taken me a while to winnow it down to the sites that are really good and won't waste your time and actually pay out. I was going to list them all for you, but as I'm now really tired (nearly midnight) instead of looking them all up I'll list them another day (if anyone's interested). But I cashed in points that I'd earned and got another $50 in gift cards.

So I'm getting my Kindle for free, and already have my first few books picked out that I'm going to download with my extra money. I fear this may become a highly expensive habit as it's so easy to justify only spending $0.99 or $2.99 on a book, which means I'll have to keep taking those surveys and earning swagbucks so that I can get my books for free too (or, more likely, just help mitigate the costs of what I'll probably be spending).

Once it arrives and I figure it out, I will let everyone know what I think of it!

For those that haven't heard, there are rumors that by November 2011 the Kindle will probably be free (I remember when it first came out and was like $500 or something - now it's down to $139) or close to free. The general guess is that you'll have to buy a certain number of books or sign up for some kind of program (like when you get a free cell phone by signing up for cell service), but you may just have to hold off a few more months so that you can get it for even less money.

Does anyone else have an e-reader? What do you think of it? If you don't have one, are you interested in getting one?

Lauren Goes to College

2011-03-10T23:42:00.002-05:00

by Lauren Bellon

Hi I’m Lauren and I am Julie Bellon’s oldest daughter. As most of you know, my mom is a very busy woman and was having a hard time thinking of something to blog about today. So I offered to step up and tell a story, because I am a freshman in college and have a very exciting life. I would guess that most of you readers are a bit older than me, and reading about me will add a little excitement to your life and remind you of when you were young and groovy.

This is my first year living away from home and it is super exciting. Let me just tell you a little bit about the place that I am living. It is probably about 200 years old, falling apart, flooded earlier this year, and was infested with mice. As you can tell, it is really nice. In fact, this extremely old woman in my family ward told me that she lived where I am living now. She said they had great times playing Yahtzee. Don’t worry; this story is more exciting than me playing Yahtzee.

As previously mentioned, my apartment had mice in it. My roommates were the first to spot the mouse running across the floor, and I had yet to see the creature. I have one roommate that we like to play jokes on, so I made a trail of cheese to her bedroom from the oven where the mouse had been spotted. I then went to the grocery store, and when I returned half the trail was gone and the mouse was running for cover under the oven. This sparked a long night of mouse watching.

We made a small pile of cheese in front of the oven and turned off the lights. We sat on the couch and waited to see if the mouse would come out with us all there. We waited and waited, and then he finally emerged. We watched him run back and forth, taking cheese to his home under the oven. My roommates had a hard time keeping in their screams. My other roommate came home to find us sitting on the couches in the dark. We quickly shushed her and she joined in on the fun. After watching the mouse for quite some time, one of my roommates had a good idea---we should try to catch the mouse.

My roommate headed over to the cupboard and pulled out another one of my roommate’s Tupperware bowl. She handed it to me, and I sat down on the floor with the bowl hovering over the pile of cheese. My roommates climbed onto the kitchen table and watched in silence. The mouse came and I started shaking. I slammed down the bowl but he was too quick and I missed. We decided to add peanut butter to the pile of cheese to see if that would keep him there longer. He came back for more food and I tried again, only to have another miss. Again we sat, and waited for what seemed like forever. Finally, the mouse emerged again. He sat eating peanut butter not realizing what was going to happen.

I closed my eyes and slammed the bowl down as fast as I could. I looked down. All my roommates thought I had missed, but I saw that I had definitely caught him. The only problem was that his head was on one side of the bowl and his body was on the other.

I had killed the mouse.

I started freaking out. We all ran from the room screaming, and drew some attention from people in the lobby. Some boys heard the commotion and were kind enough to dispose of the mouse for us. (In case anyone was wondering, no we did not keep the Tupperware, we threw it out.)

The next day, the exterminators came. We told them the problem had been taken care of, and I think he should have hired me on the spot but that didn’t happen.

And there you have it, a glimpse into the exciting college life. I’m sure that makes you want to send all your kids to college, because the two things I have learned are how to kill mice and how to sleep in any of my classes sitting up. (I’m just kidding. I love college and I am learning so much. It was well worth my parents’ money.) Love you mom!

The Page Intentionally Left Blank

2011-03-09T20:24:00.002-05:00

Today, I'm the guest on Sheila Staley's "What Do You Think About . . . Wednesday" feature. I got to answer the questions "What do you think about writing mysteries? What is the easiest/hardest part of writing mystery/suspense?" Therefore, according to the law of the Frog Blog, which I just made up on the spot, I can count this as my Wednesday blog (Thanks, Sheila!). You can read my guest post here. So please drop by Sheila's blog and say hi, because Sheila is awesome.

In other news, I finally started the actual writing on my new suspense novel and . . . I'm on Chapter 2! Okay, I haven't actually written a single word there, but I did type Chapter 2, so woohoo! I'm happy to be moving forward on a new project.

A Shortcut or an Alternate Route?

2011-03-07T14:17:00.003-05:00

by Jeffrey Savage

(I just want to say that this is not a response or a rebuttal to Sariah's excellent post yesterday. This is a post I wrote shortly after LTUE and the big discussions everyone was having there about the USA Today story featuring Amanda Hocking. It is purely coincidence that Sariah wrote her post yesterday about e-book publishing and I had mine today. I loved Sariah's post and I think this is something nearly every author LDS or not is considering.)

When I was about four, my family went camping. Shortly after setting up our tent, stove, obligatory giant thermos of Kool-Aid, etc, my Dad took my older sister and me down the road to the bathrooms. Camp ground bathrooms, shudder, but that’s another story. After we were done, he said, “You two take the road back to the campground and see if you can beat me.”

We ran like bats out of . . . a campground bathroom, only to discover our Dad waiting by the tent. He’d taken a shortcut. My sister, being the older and smarter of the two of us, quickly discovered the path that led directly from the facilities to our tent. I, being younger and dumber, watched enviously and when no one was looking, attempted to discover the great toilet trail myself.

Can you see this coming? If you close your eyes, can you see this kid wondering into the deep woods in search a shortcut to the potty?

Then can you imagine this mom going, “Wait, you told my baby there was a shortcut through the woods and then didn’t keep an eye on him?” Yeah, us dads are not always the sharpest tacks in the drawer.

Obviously I didn’t get eaten by a bear, washed away by a river, or stolen by a stranger of dubious intent. In fact when I was found a couple of hours later, my entire narrative of the harrowing events was, “I cried three time and I prayed four times.” Whew good thing it hadn’t gone the other way or I might have been blogging to the Heavenly Hosts.

Over the years, my storytelling has hopefully improved a little, but my love of shortcuts has only grown. I LOVE, I mean LOVE a good shortcut. It is so cool to know that you know a better way than most people. I’m always looking for an angle. I have learned to master the art of buying hotel rooms on Priceline, And you know what? William Shatner is right. It does feel great to check into the Atlanta Airport Westin knowing you only paid $40, when everyone else is paying $100 or more. A long time ago,I played World of Warcraft for about a year, until I realized how much time I was wasting on it. My favorite things were learning a trick that would let me earn a lot of gold more quickly than everyone else or an easy way to level up fast.

When I got into writing and publishing, I felt exactly the same. I figured there had to be a way to jump to the top of the list. Let me clarify. I wasn’t looking to avoid hard work. Quite the opposite. Often shortcuts require as much or more work than the normal path, they are just faster. I tried contests and blogs. I was one of the first people I’d ever heard of doing a blog tour and I did it with over 200 blogs. I soon became recognized as a guy to come to if you had marketing questions.

Along the way, I learned things. Again this is pretty normal in my opinion. In order to find a shortcut, you often have to try a number of paths that either dead end or turn out to be longer than the path most people take. The nice thing about the world of writing is that there are many, many people who have tried different paths and are willing to share their stories of success and failure. The bad thing is that what works perfectly for one person doesn’t necessarily work the same way for another. She met an agent at a conference, struck up a friendship and sold her her vampire trilogy. He self-published a Christmas book and parlayed into a multimillion dollar career. Just because you sold a gazillion books by e-publishing, doesn’t mean that will work for me. And just because I got an agent through the slush pile doesn’t mean that will work for you.

Which leads us (in a very non shortcutty fashion) to my topic today. Are e-books a shortcut to success? Have we reached an age where hundreds of queries, hundreds of rejections, negative editors, and over-budget publishers are no longer necessary?

Yes.

Wait, what? Not what you were expecting me to say? I know. Over the years I’ve kind of build up a reputation as being dubious about the whole “radical publishing paradigm shift” thing. I’m a huge proponent of e-books. Anything that lets people carry and read more books and buy them whenever they want and wherever they are is a great thing in my opinion. I’m just not sure that changing the medium automatically changes the process as much as most people think.

But Amanda Hocking and many other authors have clearly proved that you can be a successful author without an agent, editor, the marketing of big publishers, or even a tangible book. The words can pour directly from your brain, through a keyboard, to the internet, and into a readers e-book device without needing the approval of a single person other than you and your readers. So, yes, agents, editors, and publishers are no longer necessary. There is a path you can take that has led others to success which is much quicker and possibly less painful than the traditional one most authors have followed for over a hundred years.

The question in my mind is not so much can this process work as whether we are seeing a shortcut to success or an alternate route. Is that ambiguous enough for you? Let me try and clarify my question with part of an e-mail I recently received from my good friend Dave Cebrowski.

“Can a writer - one that is unpublished make a living selling e-books - think about it - if you could sell 100,000 books a year, couldn't you live on that? Sure you have other marketing costs to promote the book - so figure 20% so maybe you sell 200k books a year as ebooks and make the rest of your living from speaking engagements and consulting work to other up-and-coming authors.”

Obviously, as we just discussed, the answer is yes. It can and does happen. But does it happen enough that we could call it a shortcut? Imagine that you and your neighbor drive to work at the same time each day. You live next door to each other. You work in the same office building. You leave at exactly the same time. The only difference is that he takes the freeway and you take the side roads. If one of you always gets there faster that would be a shortcut. Even if the faster path was occasionally longer due to traffic, weather, or other conditions, it would still be a shortcut. But if one day route A was faster, and the next day route B was faster, and you couldn’t count on either way constantly saving you time, what you would have is not a shortcut, but an alternate route.

So let’s examine e-book publishing in that light. Is e-book publishing a faster route to publications? Yes, hands down no brainer. If you know your stuff, you can turn an unpublished manuscript into a work for sale in less than 24 hours. You could potentially sell your first book before you could get your first rejection going the traditional route. Is it easier? Once you learn the basics of layout, find someone to do your cover, etc, it is generally much easier to publish your own book than to convince someone to publish your book for you.

Is it more profitable? Here’s where things start to get a little less clear. First of all, profit may not mean anything to you. Very few of us started writing with the goal of making a living at it. And even fewer of us kept that dream once we realized how incredibly difficult it is to make a living. But for the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that you do still have the dream, as I do, to make a living writing fulltime, and move on to how an author makes money.

In its most simple terms profit equals number of books sold x royalty earned. The great thing about self-publishing an e-book is that the royalty you earn is awesome. If you sell a book for even $2.99 on Amazon, you can earn $2 per book. Double the price and you get double the royalty and so on and so on. Theoretically, you could get to the point of the kid who has a lemonade stand selling one glass for a million dollars and thinking, “All I have to do is sell one glass.” But obviously price point has an impact.

Let’s stick with our lemonade stand analogy for a minute. Traditionally the problem with self publishing was the same problem you had with owning a lemonade stand. You make all the profit, but you also have all the overhead. E-books took away the overhead. You can now publish a book without paying a cent. The other problem you had was that you had limited distribution. Unless your lemonade stand was in a shopping mall or along the side of a busy road, you couldn’t get a lot of potential customers. Same with self-publishing. It was next to impossible to get into book stores. With e-books you can immediately get yourself into the largest bookstores.

You have now addressed two of the biggest problems with self-publishing: start-up costs and distribution. But there is still another big hurdle that even e-books can’t get you over. You have distribution, but how do you generate demand? Let’s imagine that now every kid who opens a lemonade stand can instantly sell virtual lemonade to anyone in the world. The good news is that anyone can buy a glass from you. And since you have no overhead at all, you can sell your lemonade pretty darn cheaply. But how do you separate your lemonade from everyone else’s? If you get there early you won’t have as much competition. And if your lemonade is already well known from selling lemonade traditionally, so much the better. And hopefully your lemonade is so good people will give it great on-line reviews.

Still there are more lemonade makers coming on-line every day. And some of them are owned by big companies who can do lots of marketing. Or people who are already well known from their other ventures. You start to despair until you read about another person just like you who opened a virtual lemonade stand last year and is now making money hand over fist. If she can do it anyone can. Perfect! Nothing can stand in your way.

But let’s leave our lemonade analogy and go back to our drive to work analogy. Amanda Hocking and others got to work much quicker. In fact they not only got there quicker, but their experience was better than the vast majority of even the authors who succeeded in the traditional route. The e-book route worked for them. Are they representative of most e-books authors though? Do more authors who publish e-books succeed more than authors who take the traditional route?

Defining success as selling enough books to make a living (which is what has gotten Hocking and others this sudden national exposure) the answer is definitely not. Most authors who are making a living writing fiction are doing it through traditional publishers. And the numbers aren’t even close. That’s what makes authors like Hocking and JA Konrath such big news. They are the huge exceptions. They are the lottery winners, and they know it. Using them as examples of why you should go straight to self-published e-book is like using JK Rowling and other hugely successful authors as examples of why you should quit your job and write books. they are what R&D departments call outliers.If you want to make a living as an author, your chances are much, much better if you are published with a traditional publisher than if you self-publish.

There’s one last thing we need to consider in this scenario though. How many people try to get published with traditional publishers but don’t make it? That definitely affects the odds. If a million people all go the traditional route and only a few thousand are accepted, the vast majority of people who write books never even have a chance at success. Whereas if those million people all publish e-books, most of them won’t make much money, but all of them will at least have a chance to. Is that a good thing? It is if you are one of those authors. So while your odds of success are much better if you get a national agent and a big publisher, your odds of at least being in the game are better if you self-publish.

This post is not to say you should or shouldn’t self-publish e-books. Just like the gold rush, this is an exciting time for authors. You write the best book you can, stick it out in the big world and hope to hit the mother load. And if your book is good enough, and you work hard enough, and the dice roll your way, you may be the next Amanda Hocking.

But knowing that most people selling enough books to make a living are doing with the backing of traditional publishers (either currently or before they started self-publishing) doesn’t it make sense to at least try the traditional route with your book before going straight to e-book?

Marion Jensen and I were having a discussion recently at the LTUE conference. He said something to the effect of if your options were going with a publisher that could only sell a thousand books or so, or self-publishing an e-book, which route would you choose? For me, that question is a no brainer. If I sell a thousand books with a small publisher, I make at most $1,000. And they keep the e-book rights to my title forever. If I self-publish, I may only sell a hundred books, but I have the potential to sell many, many more, and I keep getting the royalties forever. Therefore if my goal is to make more money, I go the e-book route. If my goal is to sell more books, I probably still go the e-book route.

That being said, for me personally, I could never convince myself to self-publish a book without at least trying to get it published nationally first. Even Amanda Hocking tried to get an agent and a national publisher publisher before going her own route. I think Brandon Mull said it best when we were at a conference together and he was asked if he preferred working with big publishers or small publishers.

He said, “Big publishers can ignore you and small publishers can ignore you. Big publisher can promote you and small publishers can promote you. The difference is that when a big publisher decides to promote you they can have a much bigger impact.”

I think self-pubbed e-books are a great way to go. They offer many benefits that the traditional route does not. But if your goal is to make make enough money to earn a living writing, self-publishing is simply another route. Not a shortcut.

I Think I'm a Convert

2011-03-05T23:37:00.002-05:00

Not in an LDS sense (born in the church and all), but in the past week, mostly thanks to David Vandagriff, I may be an e-book convert.

As the song says, something's happening here, a sort of e-revolution. I will freely admit that I fell into the snob category when it came to "indie" publishing. I thought that it was for people who couldn't get published any other way. I thought the books done this way were as the name implied - vanity publishing. People who wanted to be in print and this was the only route they had. I heard the stories of those who sold 100 copies of their books, if they were lucky. The online publishers who considered 500 copies of an e-book sold to be a bestseller. Publishing in print was the only medium I had ever considered.

And as I studied the market and the trends, I saw the old Catch-22 - you couldn't get an agent unless you were published, and you couldn't get published unless you had an agent. I decided that the best route for me to take was to try and break in to a smaller independent market. Knowing that there were LDS publishing houses, it seemed like a good fit. I knew I didn't have to have an agent to submit, and I thought I might have a chance. Plus, I had a Book of Mormon story that I really wanted to write. It kept coming to me and I kept writing little scenes here and there until I committed to writing a book and could finally get it all out on my computer. I also liked the idea of having this little way to help build the kingdom.

You probably have already guessed that my gambit was successful - I finished the book and mailed it off to my publisher. They accepted it with very little changes (mostly cosmetic) and it was published.

I had done it!

But, as with most other authors, I didn't want that to be it. The next two books also came along and were quickly accepted and published. But to make it in the industry, at least for me, I needed to be published by one of the Big 6 in New York. They were the ultimate gatekeepers. To be accepted there meant I Had Made It.

Problem was, I had some unexpected (and very longed/prayed for) babies that are a handful and a half (times a million). Everything was put into them and the rest of my family. I suddenly didn't have anything for myself or my writing.

Story ideas continued to come. Many of them I had to dismiss as not being quite right for an LDS audience. No stories with magic, obviously (and I love paranormals!). The hero gets drunk in that story, nope, can't write that one. This YA heroine might use some fraks and frells in her language, can't use those placeholders.

Then the other concern I had while sitting in one of my RWA meetings was the realization that the people who were selling big were the people who had unique hooks (see also: Ally Condie, Rob Wells). A big idea. A blockbuster idea. I realized that I had none of those. I've been waiting several years for one, and it hasn't come.

My ideas are more run-of-the mill, I suppose. But I still want to write them. I'm also aware of the fact that agents have to "fall in love" with your story to want to represent you. What if I sent a manuscript out for her blind date only to be stood up every single time?

I also like genre combining, which works well in some places, but not so much in others. Apparently some publishers' sales departments don't like it when they can't figure out how to sell your book.

I know that there is a ceiling cap on how many books I will sell in LDS publishing, which poor Jeff Savage tried to explain to me before my first book came out - I just didn't believe him. Finding this to be very true, I looked at New York publishing as a way to expand that audience. But as Miss Snark once personally assured me, my numbers in LDS publishing were phenomenal for a first time author. Writers want to be read. We write to write, but we also write for readers. I wanted a lot of readers (as, I would guess, do most other authors).

Then I looked at what I would have to do in my romances. I don't plan on putting in any smut. I've heard from some LDS authors who've had a hard time selling to Christian houses because of their religion (although there are some who do just fine). I also had a writer friend back in Ohio who absolutely did not want to put any love scenes in her books, and her editor basically told her she had no choice. Without wanting to, she did it in order to be published. And her books since then have contained more and more of those types of scenes. I didn't want to compromise on content, either.

So thanks to a link to David Vandagriff's blog, I started reading about the revolution that's happening in e-books. Once the domain of no names and low numbers, now even well-known, bestselling authors are releasing new works solely as e-books and retaining all the electronic rights.

I used to think there was no money in it. Unknown (to me until three days ago) 26-year-old Amanda Hocking sold 900,000 e-books last year. She admits to doing little to no publicity. She somehow found that lightning in a bottle, and her books just took off (even to her own amazement). 900,000 books where you are making .35 cents to $2.04 each...that is A LOT of money, and a lot of readers. Not surprisingly, she has one of the top New York agents now, is looking at a print deal and selling off foreign and movie rights.

JA Konrath is another that you may know of thanks to his excellent blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing. He got into e-books when his first publisher dropped him (despite his books selling well) and a growing disenchantment with publishers. Thanks to his savvy, he's now selling 1,500 books A DAY. He is planning on making at least $500,000 this year. Some might argue that his success comes from his previous publishing, but he'll tell you that his pseudonym is outselling his Konrath name. And that there are lots of unknowns that are easily outselling him (see also: Amanda Hocking).

There are unknown, previously unpublished authors who put out books and are suddenly selling 10,000 copies a month. For those keeping score at home, that's $20,000 a month. That might be possible with a New York house, but other than scoring a major deal for an awesome book, there's no way you're making that kind of money. Quite a few of the names on the Kindle bestselling lists are indie authors.

Obviously there are lots of people who will never sell that many. I don't assume that everyone who tries it becomes a bestseller. But I also think that quality will get found, and will rise to the top. Just like the best/most entertaining videos go viral on YouTube or the best bands/musicians are the most downloaded on iTunes, readers will find the books that are well-written.

With e-books only having approximately 8 to 10 percent of the market, obviously there is room for growth. The Kindle on Amazon continues to sell at an amazing pace - it is currently Amazon's #1 bestselling product and has the most five-star reviews. More and more people will get in to this technology. I don't think print books will ever go away completely, but I do think more people will start using e-readers now that there are industry standards like the Kindle or Nook.

So I'm intrigued. I think I want to try it. I want to write some of the books of my heart that I thought would never sell to anyone and see what happens.

Since I've been hovering around the Kindle boards on Amazon lately, I've seen some LDS authors that I know. With that in mind, is anyone else considering this? Has anyone else tried it? How are you doing with it? (Post anonymously if you wish, I'm just sort of obsessed with this whole idea lately and want to know if anyone else is feeling the way that I am.)

Support Your Published Author

2011-03-03T21:58:00.004-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

One of the best things I did when I became a published author was to join an author’s guild called LDStorymakers. Storymakers is a group of about 130 authors who support, help, and encourage one another through email lists. It was created by Rachel Nunes (and the idea was born when she was signing at a Book Festival I’d put together so I take a teeny bit of credit for that, haha). But, since writing is such a lonely business, Rachel wanted to have a place for authors where they could reach out, find friendship, and have a place to go where people understood the idiosyncrasies of authors. That small original group has grown to our current numbers, and Rachel has passed the torch along to me, as I am currently serving as the chairman of LDStorymakers.

I think the thing I love most about this group is that you never know what topics will come up. For example, we had an author who needed to know what happens to a human body after it’s been immersed in water for two weeks. Another author is a police officer by trade and described in great detail what happens (yeah, not an email you want to read while eating your lunch). We have an author who is a pharmacist who was able to help with a murder scene involving prescription drugs. We’ve had emails about foreign language, CIA/FBI procedures, along with the celebratory emails when a work is accepted and consolation emails when a work is rejected. We’ve shared marketing ideas with each other, strange/weird/incredible book signing experience stories, and the trends in the market. Anything relating to writing has more than likely come up in our list conversations. It’s just fun to have a group of people who get you and your craft, you know? And I’ve learned much more than I ever dreamed I would.

Another thing I really enjoy about our group is the diversity. We have horror writers, romance writers, suspense writers, non-fiction authors, fiction authors, and authors from almost every publishing house you can think of, and we’re still growing. I love hearing opinions from national authors as well as local authors, I love getting to know other writers and how they do things, and I love working side by side as we strive to give back to the community and help aspiring authors.

One of the ways we give back is that LDStorymakers puts on a first rate writers conference every year with classes for beginning and advanced writers. The conference also has agents who fly in from all over the country that our attendees can pitch their manuscripts to, it has a first chapter contest that is unsurpassed, and it has a great atmosphere for learning the craft and business of writing. This year’s conference is going to be held May 6-7 and our keynote is Larry Brooks. I’m really excited about it, and if you’re interested in more information you can go here.

I think my point today is that even when you are a published author, it’s still nice to have resources like an author’s guild, or an author’s group that can give you needed support. It’s fun to share things like marketing ideas that worked, book signing ideas that weren’t so great, and what you are doing with your current work in progress. It’s nice to have a place to share thoughts and feelings about the process, about a class you’re teaching/attending, a place to ask for tips on your query letter, or just to sit around and shoot the breeze. I am so privileged to be a part of LDStorymakers, and even more so to be serving as chairman right now. It’s such a wonderful group of people that I look up to and admire and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have them in my life and not only because of what they've brought to me in my writing career. I really can call them my friends.

So, if you don’t have a writing support group? Get one! It’s worth it.

In Which I Ramble about Skills, or the Lack Thereof

2011-03-02T12:36:00.002-05:00

I asked my kids what I should blog about. My nineteen-year-old said, “Me.” My seventeen-year-old also suggested herself as the subject of my blog. “What aspect of your life should I blog about?” I asked. She suggested I blog about how awesome she is. Today’s topic: self-esteem.

Okay, maybe I won’t talk about self-esteem, though my daughters are awesome. Yes, indeedy. The 19-yo knows how to dance the cha cha, speak in incomprehensible psychological jargon, and cook hot and sour soup. The 17-yo can handle snakes, ferrets, and Russian novels that weigh more than she does.

I asked my ten-year-old son, Techno-Boy, what I should blog about, and he suggested I wait until 10:00 to blog. Why? Because that’s when they make the announcement about the new iPad, of course. Given that I’m not exactly what you’d call a techno-genius, I’m not sure that’s a good topic for me (“Today, Apple announced the new iPad. I’ve noticed that it’s really shiny, just like the old one. Also, it’s flat.”) Example of my skills: yesterday, I was using the desktop computer, which I don’t do a lot—I usually use my laptop. “Why isn’t this mouse working very well?” I griped, at which point, Techno-Boy said, “You’ve got it upside down, silly.” (In my defense, the thing looks the same both ways except for the Apple logo). Techno-Boy is also giving me lessons in how to use my phone, a device which thrills him intensely—he can toss off stats like the fact that it has an “A4 1GHz single core processor,” which I think is techno-speak for “it runs by magic.”

It’s not that I’m innately inept at working anything with a power button—it’s more that I suffer from, as Captain von Trapp put it in The Sound of Music, “a deplorable lack of curiosity.” Plus I’m lazy. It’s not that I think I’m incapable of learning how to stream Netflix onto the TV—it’s just that I don’t watch much TV, and if I do want to see something, someone else is around who knows how to work the magic buttons, and I’m content to let them take care of it. Yeah, I know—I really should learn how to work my own TV. But I know how to take pictures on my phone now, so that’s worth points, right? I mean, I think I know . . . if I can remember what Techno-Boy taught me.

Another thing I’m learning besides phone skills: how to use our new mixer. Our old one died a prolonged death, its decline triggered by a stiff batch of bagel dough. When we replaced the mixer, we wanted one that could handle whatever type of bread my bread-baker husband wanted to throw at it, along with cookies, rolls, etc. Our new mixer has a bit of a learning curve attached to it—the first time I used it, I made my hand sore trying to figure out how to work the screw that you use to adjust the position of the arm that holds the attachments. Why in the world was this screw so hard to turn? This couldn’t possibly be right. When my husband got home, I told him about the problem. It took him about three seconds to figure out how to work it (okay, back to my contention that I’m not innately inept. Actually, I think I am, a little bit. Mechanical or electronic things are not intuitive for me. Also, I can’t sew a straight line, but that’s another topic).

Anyway, my new mixing adventure today: using the bread hook for the first time. The Young Women’s president asked my husband to teach a bread class to the YW tonight. Since the bread my husband usually makes—assorted sourdoughs, baguettes, etc.—is not the kind of bread that would work well for a beginner, he decided to do two things: he’ll bring an already-baked loaf of No-Knead Bread for the girls to taste (this is an awesome bread—you just combine the ingredients and let the dough sit for about 18 hours, then fold, rest, shape, rise, bake. It’s a somewhat wet dough, which makes it trickier to handle, but even if your loaf comes out crooked, it still tastes great). He’ll also bring the dough for a basic white sandwich bread for the girls to work with. One tricky part of teaching a bread class: if you want a finished product that evening, you need some dough ready beforehand—otherwise, the class is going to be super long and super boring (“Okay, girls, we’re done kneading the bread. Now we’ll wait for an hour and a half while it rises and then you can shape it.”). Since my husband will be at work all day, I’ll be his assistant bread person and make the dough for him in the new Mixer of Power. I’m ready to try out that dough hook—I know how to work the mixer screw now, and if I keep my hands out of the bowl, I’m unlikely to break anything. So I should be good to go. And if I mess up too badly, maybe he can scrap the bread class and I can show off to the Young Women that I know how to check my email on my phone. Think they’ll be impressed?

A Ukrainian Miracle

2011-02-28T01:26:00.002-05:00

It's amazing what a small world it is - especially here in Utah.

There is a family in my ward, the Cerans, that are in the process of trying to raise funds to adopt three older children from the Ukraine.

They've had a lot of major and minor miracles during this process, which they like to share with us at church. One story in particular that touched me - their 16-year-old son is selling his drawings to help raise the money they need. Sr. Ceran shared that they were at a track meet for her daughters, and he thought it'd be a great time to try and sell his pictures. Sr. Ceran was a little put out, a little embarrassed, and dragged her feet as she followed at a distance (which is one of the reasons I like her so much. She's not a typical Molly, she's just this very real person) and saw several people buying the pictures and giving her son more money than he asked for.

Suddenly, a man approached her son and gave him a very large bill. He refused the picture and walked away.

When Sr. Ceran saw this, it nagged at her - why would he do this? Why would someone give away that kind of money, especially to a teenager that he didn't even know? She and her son spent an hour tracking the man down, and when they finally found him, he tried to get them to leave, sort of waving them off and saying no, no, I don't want to talk about it, please take the money, no thanks necessary, that sort of a thing.

Sr. Ceran said, "I just want to ask you one thing. Why would you give so much money to a total stranger?"

The man paused, and then said, "Well, let me just say this. To someone, your son is not a stranger. And when the Lord speaks, I listen."

My father told me another story of a little girl who had a bake sale and raised a great deal of money for the Cerans.

You can imagine my surprise when I was at the website of one Eric D. Snider (and for those of you my age that went to BYU, he was the founder of The Garrens and was the humor columnist for the Universe with his "Snide Remarks"), one of my favorite humor writers, and he had this post about that same little girl, who is his niece!

From hearing stories about this blended family, these are people who have had more than their fair share of heartache and tragedy. But they've emerged from it smiling and trusting in the Lord. I can't imagine some of the pain and obstacles that they've had to go through.

And now they want to open their home and their hearts to these children, knowing that it will not be easy, knowing that all sorts of unimagined trials and tribulations await them, but knowing that these kids are part of their eternal family and relying on the Lord to help them through it.

If you'd like to learn more about the Cerans, and how you can help them, here is their family's website:

A Ukrainian Miracle

The Artist's Quest

2011-02-24T21:55:00.003-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I was able to attend the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art recently and I was completely blown away by the talent of this artist. He painted pictures of people and places that looked like photographs, and he painted pictures of the Savior that drew out emotions in me that were completely unexpected. The thing that struck me the most, however, was at the beginning they have a little presentation about his life and it says that Carl “painted fleeting impressions from his mind.” That phrase stuck with me, not only because of how real and beautiful and skilled his work is, but because it made me wonder if he really did see those things in his head and if he, perhaps, was working off of more than just imaginings, but long-forgotten images and memories. But I digress.

The other reason that phrase stuck with me is that I believe that writers can be artists as well, and when we are writing a book we are “painting fleeting impressions from our minds,” as well. Characters can come to life on our keyboard, just as people come to life under a paintbrush. Settings and impressions can be penned on a page, just as a landscape or action painting can be brought to life on canvas. And the true masterpiece is when it all comes together, just like a finished painting---the skill, the characters, the story, they are all given life in a finished book. As writers, I think we are all looking for that perfect painting of words that will transform our imagined story into something that will touch someone or linger in someone’s thoughts long after the book is closed.

I know I will be thinking about Carl Bloch’s work for some time to come. It was so breathtakingly beautiful, with so many shades and meanings, it’s something I can ponder on and admire, from one artist to another. I want to give you examples, I want to talk about each painting and everything that I learned (they give you an iPad so you can see a virtual tour of the churches and palaces that his paintings originally hung in, they have talks from General Authorities, they have a choir singing Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, I mean, there was something incredible at each and every painting display to ponder and learn). But if I gave you examples, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop. Suffice it to say, this exhibit is a must-see. Carl Bloch was a true master who studied and honed his craft until he had mastered it and was able to touch the hearts of all who look upon his work.

I hope to someday reach that sort of mastery in my own craft, and while that may seem an impossible dream right now, I know that even reaching for the dream takes courage. Hopefully, I will look back and at least see progress in my quest as a writer—that I will be able to put on paper, "the fleeting impressions of my mind," and have them be appreciated, that my stories will be rich in character and skill, and touch the hearts of those who read them. Someday.

Variant Cover!

2011-02-24T12:32:00.004-05:00

After a history of hit and miss covers (Wake Me When It's Over, I'm looking at you) I'm extremely happy to present the following:

The book will be out on October 18th, 2011. It's available for pre-order now.

Does Popularity Influence the Voting?

2011-02-23T14:02:00.004-05:00

Jeff wrote an interesting post at the LDS Publisher blog discussing Whitney judging. The question had come up of how the Whitneys are judged/should be judged and whether or not the Whitney Awards are a popularity contest. My immediate reaction to that question—and others agree with me; Jeff included quotes from other authors on the subject—was that no, they aren’t a popularity contest, if we’re assuming that popularity=highest sales.

This is the fourth year of the Whitneys. In 2007, Best Novel of the Year went to On the Road to Heaven, by Coke Newell—a book published by Zarahemla Books, a small LDS publisher. 2008, Sandra Grey took Best Novel of the Year with her first book, Traitor, published by Covenant Communications. In 2009, the overall winner was David Farland with a self-published novel, In the Company of Angels.

In 2007, Best Novel by a New Author went to Jessica Day George for Dragon Slippers, a nationally published title. In 2008, the winner was Angela Hallstrom for Bound on Earth—a book released by Parables Publishing, a small LDS publisher. In 2009, there was a tie—a nationally published book (Dan Wells’ I Am Not a Serial Killer) and a self-published book (Riley Noehren’s Gravity vs. the Girl).

Detecting a trend here? Yes—the trend that when it comes to winning a Whitney, the size of the publisher and how many copies the book sold have nothing to do with it. Winning titles might be huge sellers from huge publishers, or small sellers from small publishers, or self-published titles. If any Academy judges are influenced by a book's sales numbers, they must be a tiny minority, since the results don't show it.

Big national titles win awards, like Brandon Sanderson’s Hero of Ages (Best Speculative, 2008) or Carol Lynch Williams’ The Chosen One (Best Youth Fiction, 2009). Novels from the biggest LDS publishers win awards, like Josi Kilpack’s Sheep’s Clothing (Deseret Book, Best Mystery/Suspense 2007) and Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven II (Shadow Mountain, Deseret Book’s national imprint, Best Youth Fiction, 2007). Books from Covenant Communications have taken several awards, like HB Moore’s Abinadi (Best Historical, 2008) and Michele Paige Holmes' Counting Stars (Best Romance, 2007). Cedar Fort authors have also won trophies: Aubrey Mace for Spare Change (Best Romance, 2008) and Annette Haws for Waiting for the Light to Change (Best General Fiction 2008). Small LDS publishers Zarahemla and Parables have won awards, as mentioned above in the paragraphs about Best Novel of the Year and Best Novel by a New Author. Self-published titles have taken three Whitney Awards (the two books mentioned in the paragraphs above, plus Liz Adair’s Counting the Cost, Best Romance, 2009).

I think it's very exciting that the Whitneys are one of the few places in the publishing world where sales numbers don’t mean anything.

Here are how the Whitney winners shook out, publisher-wise, in case you’re interested. For national market titles, I didn’t list the specific publisher—I figured what was more of interest for purposes of this blog was whether the book was published in the LDS market or nationally.

Best Novel of the Year:

2007: Zarahemla Books
2008: Covenant
2009: Self-published

Best Novel by a New Author:

2007: National title
2008: Parables Publishing
2009: (tie) National title/Self-published

Best Romance:

2007: Covenant
2008: Cedar Fort
2009: Self-published

Best Mystery/Suspense:

2007: Deseret Book
2008: Covenant
2009: Covenant

Best Youth Fiction:

2007: Shadow Mountain (Deseret Book)
2008: Shadow Mountain (Deseret Book)
2009: National title

Best Speculative:

2007: National title
2008: National title
2009: National title

Best Historical:

2007: Covenant
2008: Covenant
2009: Shadow Mountain (Deseret Book)

Best General Fiction:

2007 (category didn’t exist yet)
2008: Cedar Fort
2009: National title

Can You Make a Living Writing LDS Novels?

2011-02-21T22:51:00.002-05:00

Last week, I had the chance to attend LTUE (Life the Universe and Everything.) Although it is a conference focused primarily on fantasy and Sci-Fi, it attracts writers of all genres. During the course of the conference, I ended up having discussions with several different authors that all came back to the same point. Is it possible to make a living as an LDS author?

Wow. Talk about a dicey question. It is possible? Yes. Is it possible for most authors? No.That’s it discussion done. I haven’t ticked off any authors, publishers, or friends. (A feat in and of itself.)

Which probably means that answer is too simplistic. Sooooo, let’s try this again. I will attempt to be open-minded, tactful, and yet honest at the same time.

You might wonder why this is such a difficult question to answer. Do I know roughly what all of the publisher’s pay per book? Yes. Do I know about how many books each publisher expects to sell on a given title? For the most part, yes. So just multiply A x B, The issue is that 1) every publisher has exceptions. If I say Cedar Fort usually sells x amount of books, they can come back and say, oh we’ve had titles that sell 10 times that many. And it’s true, they do have titles that sell a ton more books than normal. But is that fair to use as an example for a new author? Is it fair to set expectations to a level that is virtually unreachable for Jane Doe that just got accepted for her first mystery novel?

Issue 2) is that publishers are not fond of releasing sales numbers. Even though I suspect all LDS publishers have a pretty good idea of what other LDS publishers are doing, it’s kind of a trade secret. They might not be happy if I started spouting sales number of specific titles publicly.

So what I’ll try to do is use generic enough examples that I won’t tick anyone off, while still providing something useful to you the new or aspiring LDS author.

Let’s start with something pretty basic. Royalties. Royalties in the LDS market typically come a few different flavors. Hardback vs. trade paperback (not the small mass market paperbacks you can fit in your jeans pocket but the one that’s about the same dimensions as a hardback), and retail vs. wholesale.

’ll explain wholesale first, since it’s easier. Wholesale (sometimes referred to in contracts as gross sales price) is the amount the publisher sells the book to a bookstore for. This is usually going to be 30% to 50% off the listed price. However it can be much less if the publisher is trying to get rid of extra inventory. If your publisher pays on wholesale, the normal rate will usually be 10%, whether the book is released in hardback or paperback. So if your book sells for $14.99 and the book store buys it for $8.99, you get about $0.90 per book. If your book sells for $6.99, you make about $0.42 per book.

Retail is a little bit trickier. Trade paperback usually has a royalty in the range of 6.5% for the first 5,000, 8% for the next 5,000, and 10% for anything above 10,000. Hardback is typically a little higher. 10% for the first 10,000 and 12.5% for anything above that. Not all publishers pay the same rates, but these numbers should work for our purposes. Retail is based on the list price of the book—what’s actually on the cover. Again, most contracts have some kind of stipulation regarding books that are sold significantly below normal pricing (clearance or promotional.) If your contract has a section like this, you should ask your publisher how many of their titles are typically sold for these lower rates.

Generally royalties are paid on all books shipped for the previous six months, less a holdback for returns. So in early February I would get a check for all book shipped between July 1st and December 30th. However some publishers wait six months and then pay on a monthly basis. So in early February I would get a check for all books sold the month of July. The good things about this are that there are usually no return holds and you get paid monthly. The bad news is that you have to wait five months longer to get what the other publishers pay in one sum. While some LDS authors do get advances against royalties, most still do not.

Now let’s get to the question most would-be LDS authors are clueless about. How many books can I expect to sell? Ten or fifteen years ago, a new LDS author could sell 15,000 to 20,000 copies of a title or even more. You might think that number has gone up, since there are more LDS readers, more LDS bookstores, and more LDS publishers. But the dad truth is that it has gone way down. Why? Well for one thing, there are MANY more titles being released now. Instead of having ten to twenty fiction titles coming out in a year, readers have well over a hundred to chose from. In addition, the novelty factor has worn off. Remember how cool it was when God’s Army came out? Wow a MORMON movie! How cool was that? Roughly ten years later, Mormon movies are everywhere. And sales have gone down just like they did with books.

This is not to say that Mormon novels don’t still sell well over 20,000 copies, because they do. But they are the huge exception to the rule now. And most of the authors selling that many books started way back when there wasn’t that competition. A new LDS author with a genre title (mystery, romance, thriller, etc) can expect to sell typically no more than 5,000 copies, unless they get amazing marketing from their publisher. 10,000 is a major best seller.

Let’s run the numbers. $14.99 for a trade paperback. Whether your contract is wholesale or retail, you will get about $1 per book for the first 5,000. You will probably sell no more than 5,000 books. So you can expect to earn less than $5,000 per book before taxes. In order to make a living writing books, you would need to publish roughly ten novels per year.

Are there exceptions? Yes. I believe that at least Cedar Fort, Covenant, and DB can point out a novel or two every year that sold more than 20,000 books. Maybe more than 40,000. But the truth of that matter is that a new author publishing a genre novel should not expect to earn more than $5,000, and most will earn quite a bit less.

Am I saying not to write LDS novels? Absolutely not. In fact, it’s not just LDS publishers that have those kinds of numbers. Most independent publishers would be thrilled to have their authors sell 5,000 books. But you should not go into it expecting that after a year or two you will be able to retire at your cabin by the lake. Writing LDS novels can be a great experience. There are so many rewards that have nothing to do with money. I’ve loved writing LDS novels and I hope that regardless of what happens with my national writing career I will be able to continue writing and publishing LDS novels.

But if you are writing an LDS novel because you just lost your job and you want to make a living as a writer, you’d be much, much better off sending out resumes. LDS publishers and other authors, please feel free to point out any areas where I have been less than clear or where my information might be outdated.

Joining the eBook Revolution

2011-02-17T10:26:00.002-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

So this past week I’ve decided to take the plunge and put my first three novels out as ebooks. (Thank you librispro for helping me make clean beautiful ebooks. If you want a company to help you do this, they are the ones to have. Click here if you want to see their price list and website.) The first thing I did to join this ebook revolution, was get out the old manuscripts and take a look at them. I hadn’t read my first manuscript for five or six years now and what I found when I opened up that file both thrilled and frightened me.

It frightened me because I discovered I had once been a head hopper.

I never would have guessed that about myself. I’ve always been pretty firm as an editor and a writer that head-hopping throughout a chapter is a no-no. But here it was in my own manuscript! How had I missed it? And how had it been published with my missing it?

The part that thrilled me as I was reading along, was that it was a solid story. I had forgotten details and characters and found myself really enjoying the plot. It was sort of like reading something new, since I hadn’t read it for so long, and I thought to myself, hmmm…this is pretty good if I do say so myself. So, yay me!

I’ve now finished spiffing up the first one, Through Love’s Trials, and I’m moving on to my next one, On the Edge. Hopefully I have the same experience there and it will only need a few spiffs, and possibly some smoothed out POV edges. But I really hope I don’t find any head-hopping in there or I’m going to wonder what kind of a rookie author I really was, since I never dreamed I’d make that kind of mistake and I did. Hopefully it’s a one-time thing, but even if it isn’t, you know what else I discovered reading my old manuscript? I’ve come a long way in my writing. I think my first three books were good, I loved the characters and plots, but my writing now seems more layered, and I do a better job of telling the story. Which is also nice since I can go back with these first three manuscripts now, before they go out in ebook form, and fix a few things with the skills I’ve developed in the years since those books were published. I would hope that all writers would improve over time and it’s kind of nice to realize that it’s happened in my case. It’s been a fun ebook prep process so far, and I’ll definitely let you guys know when my ebooks are out and ready.

Anyway, I’m really excited about the idea of having ebooks out with my name on them and part of that excitement is because I’m about to buy a Kindle. I’ve been researching this for a while, brands, types, etc., and I’ve finally decided to get a Kindle 3. Did you know it can hold 3500 books? The thought of that many books makes me feel a little giddy because at the moment, my bookshelves are full. I couldn’t even squeeze one more in which makes me sad because there are a lot more I want to add to my collection. So, to have the possibility of 3500 books at my fingertips, well, my reading loving heart is in heaven at the thought. Although I’m sure my pocketbook might be taking a few hits as I “collect” these ebooks, I’m glad to see that most books seem to be priced to sell. This is going to be really fun.

Have any of you tried ebooks? Do you love your Kindle, Nook, iPad, whatever it is you have? Does anyone have any ebook secrets (as an author or a reader) that they’d like to share as I am new at all of this and anxious to learn?

(Just as an aside, Rob Wells does a podcast now with Sarah Eden and Marion Jensen. The one they did this week addressed ebooks and how they are changing the industry which was pretty interesting. You can listen to it here.)

Cracking Up

2011-02-16T14:39:00.004-05:00

Seeing as how I’ve already given myself a headache with blogging—working on a guest blog that will be posted on the AML blog next month, a post I got really neurotic about and kept tweaking and tweaking and JUST TURN THE SILLY THING IN AND STOP MESSING WITH IT—I’ve already blogged my way into insanity. I will now proceed to be crabby and incoherent, partly to make up for the fact that Rob didn’t blog yesterday, which brings up the question: is Rob still around the frog swamp? If you insult Rob and he doesn’t hear it, do you still get snark points? Discuss.

And you used to think I was a nice person, though there was that lady in my ward who said I must have a “dark side” after she read one of my books. I'm not admitting to any dark side, but just in case, DON’T MAKE ME MAD. Ahahahahaha! I’ve really cracked up. I warned you, didn’t I?

Okay. I’m calm now. Which reminds me, though it has no relevance to anything I’ve said, on Christmas night, my six-year-old daughter had come into our room to sleep in a “nest” on the floor—she has trouble staying in her own room at night. She was overtired and wound up and having trouble getting to sleep. At one point, she said, “My nose hurts, so I might thrash around and hiss,” which gave me the giggles—you know how sometimes you’re laughing so hard you have trouble explaining to your spouse what’s so funny?

And this morning, when I went into the kitchen before the early morning seminary run, there was milk spilled on the table. It had been partially wiped up, but how good of a clean-up job can you expect from a tired teenager at 6:00 AM? As we walked to the car, my daughter remarked, “Sorry about the spilled milk, but I didn’t think it was worth crying over.” That’s the kind of line that makes it worth being out of bed that early.

Anyway, what I really need is some Tylenol and a nap. Let’s see . . . I’ll try to make sense for a minute. Good news is, I’ve got some plot basics hammered out for my next suspense novel and I hope to be ready to start drafting by next week. It will be good to jump into a new project, and I’m excited about the story. And yes, I know who the villain is. I know some mystery writers get well into the story before they know whodunit, but I want to know right at the first. So much of my villain’s motives come from backstory—what happened before page one.

One thing I find tricky is trying to avoid repeating myself in storylines. This new project is my fifth contemporary suspense novel, so in brainstorming, I’ll create what-have-I-done-before lists: I’ve already used this motive or that one, and so on. Which is not to say that I can’t have two villains motivated by greed—there are only so many reasons that people kill, and it’s not bad to reuse motives, but you want a fresh twist each time. So in this new novel, I've decided that the villain is just plain NUTS. He's a neurotic writer who finally cracked up completely. Write what you know, right?

What Are Your Three Most Romatic Movie Moments?

2011-02-15T00:14:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago, my wife and I had friends over to the house and one of the wives asked what everyone’s favorite romantic scene from a movie was. For some reason my mind went totally blank. Ask me my favorite action scene, (The first five minutes of the first Indiana Jones movie), comedy scene (the Ned Ryerson series in Ground Hog Day), bad guy (Hannibal Lechter), fight scene (the second Mr. T fight in Rocky 3), and I’m good to go. But romance. Hmmm.

You don’t exactly win brownie points for naming your favorite fight scene on Valentines Day, though. So, with many deep sighs and significant head scratching, here are my three favorite romantic movie scenes.

1) Pretty much the whole movie The Notebook. I don’t know why, but for some reason that movie just gets me. There are so many memorable romantic scenes. My favorite is probably not the one most people think of though. It’s where James Garner’s kids come to try and get him to leave the nursing home and come home with them, He says, “Look guys, that's my sweetheart in there. I'm not leaving her, this is my home now. Your mother is my home.”

Even reading that makes my chest tighten. I think it’s because even after all the years, he’d still rather be with his sweetheart who can’t remember him than anyone else in the world. That’s the way I feel about my Jennifer, and I have no doubt I always will. So, yeah, mush.

I tried to find the actual clip. But this is the best I could do. You can hear the quote in the first couple of seconds of this music video.

2) Pretty much any old Meg Ryan movies. She just had the best smile in the world. And she and Tom Hanks were one of my favorite movie couples of all time. I could pick half a dozen scenes. But I really like this one from the end of You’ve Got Mail.

This version is actually without the dialog, but I think I like it even better because you get to focus on what an incredible job she does of portraying, surprise, confusion, sorrow, and ultimately joy (starting at about 2:11) that he’s the one who’s been writing to her.

3) I think I’m going to get slapped down on this one from some of my female readers. “Wait, you’re putting Adam Sandler in your top three romantic movie scenes!?” But yeah, he and Drew Barrymore are another of the couple that just click so well for me. Every time I come across The Wedding Singer on cable, I get pulled into it all over again.

I could list any of a dozen scenes from their movies, but one of my favorites is from 50 First Dates, where he realizes she has been singing and that maybe, just maybe, she remembers him. You’re all excited for him. And when he asks, “Do you remember me?” you are so sure she does, that when she says no, you are as shocked and disappointed as he is. That makes the scene where she shows him her paintings even more powerful. My favorite part starts right at 2:00 on the clip below.

So yeah, I don’t have a heart of stone. Silly Putty maybe, but not stone. In fact, I’ll add one more of my favorites. Just because it has my favorite actor of all time, and also because some of my own most romantic memories aren’t about going to expensive restaurants and staying in amazing hotels, but having nothing more than the love of my life and not needing any more than that. The scene starts at about the five minute mark.

Happy Valentine’s Day all. I hope you are spending it with the love of your life. And if you aren’t, I hope that you have a great movie to remind you that it won’t be long before you are united or reunited with that amazing someone that still makes your heart go crazy after more than twenty years.

An Age of Faith or Miracles?

2011-02-14T00:29:00.002-05:00

Like many of you, in Sunday School today we had a lesson on the miracles Christ performed during his ministry.

A comment made in class struck me - the sister asserted that we didn't live in an age of miracles as previous dispensations had, that we instead lived in an age of faith where we would simply have to believe and hope and would have no physical evidence like the people in Christ's time did.

I wholeheartedly disagreed with this statement, and for anyone that knows me, you will not be surprised that I raised my hand.

I said it was a matter of context and perspective. We are given specific miracles that occurred in the scriptures - both the former situation and what the miraculous outcome was. We know about people being healed from leprosy because someone is there to say, "I saw that this person was a leper and then I saw that Christ healed them."

But what about the stranger that passes that former leper in the street? Would they have even the faintest idea of the great miracle that had occurred in that person's life? To the stranger, the former leper would be just another person.

I said great miracles happen each and every day all over the world. I feel very much that three mighty miracles have happened in my life - gifts of healing and births that should not have been possible - a child with autism that speaks and reads above his grade level and loves - I wholeheartedly know, without a doubt, that miracles very much exist in this day and age.

Not liking my answer, the sister retorted that what we have now is nothing like what happened during Adam's time - where angels walked among them or in Moses' or Noah's eras. That we have to live by faith and not have angels to instruct us.

I wasn't trying to be contentious (just explain my own point of view) and thought that if I continued, it might get a little ugly. So I held my tongue.

But I wondered - how do you know angels don't walk among us? Just because you (or I) haven't met one, doesn't mean that it hasn't happened for anyone else. I've read modern day accounts of people who were protected or comforted by angels in horrible situations. I know of fantastic stories of healing from blessings that have mystified medical science. People who have died and come back to life. Miracles very much like the ones Christ performed while on the earth (seeing as how he gave his apostles the same power to heal the sick, it makes sense). You can't know the entire world's spiritual experiences just from your own limited perspective. The scriptures are giving us specific examples from individuals' lives, but we can't hope to access all the experiences of people everywhere in our own time period.

I reject the notion that we live only by faith alone. I've seen the hand of the Lord. I've seen miracles. I live with them.

If all things of the Gospel have been restored in our dispensation, then why would the Lord neglect us with the same experiences he gave to people in times past? Why wouldn't someone see an angel? Or be miraculously healed? Alma and the sons of Mosiah saw an angel. Did their fathers? Their friends? Not everyone is given the same experiences all the time. The Lord will give us what we need, not necessarily the miracle that we want (although I testify that sometimes He does that too!).

Anyway, what say you? Do we live in an age of faith alone, or do we too live in an age of miracles?

Two More Secrets to Getting Published

2011-02-10T14:07:00.002-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I’d like to tell you two more secrets to getting published today. Obviously, I know there are many more, but I’m focusing on the ones that I get asked most about, and the ones I spend the most time encouraging aspiring authors to do.

The third secret (the first two were discussed last week) is getting feedback on your manuscript. Now, this can be done in many ways and if you do it right, it may be hard for you. The most common way to get feedback on your manuscript is to have a critique group, or at the very least, some beta readers who will read your stuff and give it honest feedback. You definitely want to get with people who will not just fawn all over you and tell you how great you are (hi Mom and Dad!) but you want people who are willing to be honest and say, I couldn’t understand your plot here, or I got bored halfway through, or I hated your heroine. It’s going to be hard to hear, because this is the baby you’ve worked on for months or years, but it can be very valuable.

For the past few years I have been involved in the LDStorymakers First Chapter conference as a judge, a committee member, or the person in charge of it. This is a contest where five industry professionals will evaluate the first chapter of unpublished authors, and choose the winners for some great prizes. The judges give fairly extensive evaluations that are given to each entrant, not just the winners, and to me, the feedback itself is more valuable than the prizes. Yet, every year I listen to a small group of entrants complain about the feedback. Judges were too mean, or they probably hadn’t really read the chapter since they didn’t like it, or one judge liked it where another judge didn’t so I'm going to disregard the comments that didn't like it. And every time I heard these complaints I told them, “you are the author. You can disregard any feedback you want, but the hardest evaluation will probably be the most helpful.” I wanted them to know that these judges were agents, editors, authors, and publishers who had taken a considerable amount of time to evaluate their work, and those comments, as hard as they were to read, were the ones that I would look at most closely in order to improve.

Of course not all feedback is going to be useful. There are some people who just won’t like your work or have anything constructive to say about it. But it is important to really look at your feedback before you discard any of it. Seriously looking at it all will ensure that you will definitely find those gems to help you make your story stronger, but it may hurt a bit while you’re rubbing the rough edges off.

The fourth secret is to be persistent. Write something every day, even when you don’t feel like it. Even if you only write a page a day, it might not seem like much at the time, but that’s going to equal to a pretty large book at the end of the year. Writing every day also keeps you in prime writing shape and it makes the ideas flow a lot easier if you’ve been flexing those writing/thinking muscles at least a little bit on a regular basis. Successful writers are hard workers who know that there are going to be good days when the words are practically jumping by themselves onto the page, and bad days when the cursor is blinking at you and you can’t think of much to say. But a persistent author can’t give up, they must press forward and finish that scene, chapter, or book. A little at a time, slow and steady, persistence and perseverance can do the trick for authors of any circumstance.

Persistence as a writer also equates to the business end when you get a rejection letter for your new manuscript. It is going to take a little while for the feelings that a rejection might evoke in you to go away, but ultimately, a persistent writer will dust herself off, rewrite the manuscript and submit it somewhere else. The same goes for when an agent doesn’t pick you up. Feel sad, but get up and try again.

Persistence is the writer’s over-arching key to success and every published author will tell you that being an author is full of ups and downs both on the creative side of things and on the business end. And, as I’ve said before on this blog, the only difference between a published author and an unpublished author is that one gave up and one didn’t. Don’t give up.

Thank you to everyone who commented last week, and to Tim who linked to my blog and added his own ideas of the first two secrets. I’ve honestly learned so much from my fellow frog bloggers and from the commenters. It’s a privilege to be here among so many wonderful people and authors. I hope you all are moving toward achieving your dreams in the writing business and that you’ve found something useful here that will help you navigate it. If not, you can tune in to LDSPublishers site tomorrow and read Jeff’s new entry. I know I’m looking forward to it!

Repeating Ourselves

2011-02-09T12:37:00.004-05:00

Have you ever been listening to someone speak, and everything is going along fine until it catches in your consciousness that they’re saying “um.” Hey . . . they’re saying “um” frequently. Um. Um. Um. From that point on, you’re doomed. They might be delivering the most masterful speech since the Gettysburg Address, and all you can hear is “um." Before you noticed it, you were fine, but once you noticed, it’s hard to un-notice.

Same with books. As authors, we sometimes use a word . . . and use it again . . . and again. As a reader, you’re fine until you notice it. Once you do notice it, you start cringing. I read a novel where if ONE MORE PERSON shrugged, my brain was going to melt. Don’t misunderstand me—there’s nothing wrong with shrugging. Shrugging is good, a nice bit of stage direction. But once I noticed it was happening frequently, it started to bug me. In another book, it was a sneering blitz, if I remember correctly. Stop sneering! Next person who sneers gets a timeout and a penalty job!

It’s super easy to slip into the repeated word trap. When we’re writing a novel, days, weeks, or even months can pass between when we wrote this scene and when we wrote that scene. I don’t know how good your memory is, but I’m sure not going to remember that in the scene I wrote three months ago, and the one I wrote five weeks ago, and three weeks ago, AND last week, people were shrugging in every scene, until it was some kind of new shoulder exercise craze. In my recent manuscript, a test reader pointed out that I was overly fond of the word “adrenaline.” I hadn’t noticed that, and I’m glad he did. I was able to mix things up a bit so I wouldn’t have readers saying what IS it with her and adrenaline?

Reading rapidly through a manuscript is a good way to catch word repetition—you’ll notice things you never would have noticed while working your way through a novel slowly, scene by scene. And that’s how your readers will read it—fast—so it’s good to try it out that way yourself.

At Writing on the Wall, Annette Lyon wrote a fantastic post dealing with editing out repetitive, deadwood words in our manuscripts. In addition to watching out for “pet words” she talks about getting rid of empty words that weaken prose—her post is one you’ll want to bookmark and refer to again and again when you’re editing. Thank you, Annette!

On one of the LDS Storymakers group chats the other week, there was a discussion where people listed “red flag” words they targeted in editing. Looks to me like ALL of us have to work--every time--to cut the deadwood from our prose. I'm glad to know I'm in good company!

You Need to Hurt the Words You Love, & I Am Trying Something New

2011-02-07T22:04:00.002-05:00

Originally, I was going to title this post killing your babies. This being a writing site, I was of course referring to your literary babies. But when I googled “killing your babies,” I decided maybe I’d come up with a different term. So let’s go with, “You Need to Hurt the Words You Love.” This is in answer to David Glenn, who asked, “What does an author do if there’s something (like a character or a situation) that they really want to put into their book, but it doesn’t do anything to help with the plot?”

The answer is probably not what he—or many of us want to hear. Have you ever come up with a great character, scene, or turn of phrase that you are absolutely dying to use ion a story? Maybe you even wrote it out, planning to use it at a certain point in your book, only to discover that as you wrote the story, that character, scene, or phrase didn’t really fit anymore.

You try to make it fit, like Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters shoving and crunching their feet in a vain effort to slide into the glass slipper. But when your critique group, beta readers, or heaven forbid, your editor read it they nixed your baby. What to do? It’s a great scene. The character is so hilariously unpredictable. The sentence in a work of literary masterpiece.

I could beat around the bush here, but let’s be brutally honest. Cut it. Chop it. Kill it. Destroy it. Trying to keep a favorite scene that doesn’t fit into your story is like sticking an exotic orchid into a vase of daises. By itself it might be beautiful. Your character really might be as spectacular as you think she is (although she probably is not.) But it doesn’t matter. The orchid doesn’t fit among the daisies. Rather than adding to their beauty, it draws attention away from them in such a way that it actually harms the arrangement.

That’s what your “baby” does to your story. Even if you think you’ve camouflaged it well, the readers won’t be fooled. They’re reading an exciting beach thriller and unexpectedly come across a character that reads like something out of Lord of The Rings. Not only does the character seem out of place, but it pulls the reader out of the story that does fit.

More than one editor has suggested writers take their favorite line and cut it out of their books. That may seem extreme, but the reasoning is sound. If there is a particular scene or line which you love above the rest of your story, there’s a good chance it doesn’t fit with the rest of your writing.

Am I recommending that you cut out your favorite line? No. I’m not quite that heartless. But I do recommend that you look closely at anything that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the story, whether you hate it or love it. Keeping the reader “in” the story is much more important than the brilliance of any one piece.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ll still be posting here and on my J Scott Savage blog, but I’m also trying something new.

You may be familiar with the LDS Publisher blog. If you’re not, you should head on over. It’s a great blog that every author who has aspirations of publishing in either the national or LDS market should read. Beginning this week, I am excited to be a regular guest blogger there every Friday. My hope is that Friday’s column will be similar to what Nathan Bransford does on his blog every Friday where he links to interesting writing news and comments on it--but focused on the LDS market, LDS authors, and their blogs, podcasts, columns, etc. There will be a little humor, a little analysis, and hopefully a lot of information that will be useful to LDS writers. I’d love to have you come by and I’d love to know what blogs you enjoy the most and would recommend for other LDS writers.

Two Secrets to Getting Published

2011-02-03T16:29:00.002-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I often get asked what is the secret to getting published. Today I am going to share two of them with you. (I’m sure there’s more, but these are my pet secrets today.)

The first thing every aspiring author should do is to read. Now, don’t turn away because it’s such a simple answer. It’s true. You need to read a lot of books so you can get a feel for words, for plots, and for how it’s done. When you read you see the balance between dialogue and setting. You see how characters are fleshed out and how plots are paced. You start to get an innate sense of how to make a story flow.

But, “I don’t have time to read,” is the standard response. To be frank, that is a choice you make. If you want to be a good writer, it is important to be a good reader. I recently had the privilege of listening to Julie B. Beck (the LDS General Relief Society Board president) and during her Q & A session after her remarks, I asked her if she found time for recreational reading, and if so, what books were on her nightstand. She smiled and said she loved recreational reading. She had described her incredibly busy schedule earlier in the evening, and how she’d been going through a stressful time, yet she took ten minutes before bed every night for recreational reading. She was currently reading an English humor book because she needed to laugh, but she also enjoyed classics like Jane Austen, as well as biographies. (She specifically mentioned Harry S. Truman’s biography). She continued with, “sometimes I read the same paragraph over and over, because I’m tired,” but, even so, she loves to read and makes time for it. Now, if one of the busiest women I’ve ever met can find time to read, I think you can, too. Put a book in your purse for when you’re at an appointment (of course, real men will carry a man-purse so that applies.) Put a book in your car for when you’re waiting for carpool. Listen to a book on CD. Put one in the bathroom. Make reading a priority.

The second secret is to attend a writer’s conference. This doesn’t have to be a huge expense, especially if you live in Utah. For example, there will be a free conference in Ephraim, Utah at the Ephraim City building on April 9th, featuring several well-known authors who will teach classes and do a Q & A afterward. Some of the classes include self-editing, the publication process, becoming an idea factory, find time to write and much more and include such authors as Julie Coulter Bellon (surprise!), Tristi Pinkston, Rebecca Talley, Cheri Chesley, Abel Keogh, and Michael Knudsen to name a few.

If you want more advanced classes and the chance to rub shoulders with national agents and editors you have the LDStorymaker conference, which will be held in May 6-7 this year at the Sheraton Hotel in Salt Lake City. The keynote speaker will be Larry Brooks and they have three national agents as well as several local editors. Classes are top-notch and include advanced writing classes as well as beginning tracks. It is a great conference for any writer.

Of course there are many more conferences across the country and state that are well worth your time and can really help you hone your writing skills. You just have to look. Or follow authors on Facebook or Twitter. Industry people talk and usually have great recommendations for new authors.

Everyone can give different advice as to what the best course of action for a budding author is, but, in addition to being a reader and attending classes at conferences, the most important thing of all is to write. Write a little something day after day until your novel is finished. There is no better education than that. Then, when you do attend classes, you will have an edge because you can say to yourself---I’ve done it. I'm a writer and I’m here to be a better writer. It will be a little easier after that to keep yourself motivated and, as long as you stay committed, you will do exactly what you set out to do. Become a published writer.

Cyber Slippage

2011-02-02T13:32:00.006-05:00

I discovered I’ve read 14 of the 35 Whitney Award finalists. Not bad, huh? That’s a decent dent in the reading pile. And since the deadline for Academy ballots isn’t until April 20th, that means if I read about two books per week, I’ll finish them all. That would be exciting. I’ve never yet managed to read every finalist. We’ll see if I make it this year (yes, I’ve already read the thousand-page The Way of Kings—I figured it would be a finalist, so I made sure to read it beforehand, knowing I wouldn’t have time after the announcement). In order to vote for Best Novel of the Year, Academy members have to read all 35 finalists. I might be able to read them all this year, but that will involve . . . er . . . discipline. Translated: close my email, get off Facebook, quit checking Twitter, ignore that Google reader, and go READ A BOOK.

I have this problem. I . . . um . . . waste too much time online. When I want to relax, I open my computer. But instead of quickly checking my email and glancing at Twitter and then working on a writing project, or girls camp stuff—yes, it’s already time to work on girls camp—or something else productive, I tend to putter around on email, reading blogs, Facebook, etc. And twenty minutes pass, or thirty, or forty-five, and what have I accomplished? Almost nothing, unless you count the networking benefits of dropping in on blogs or social media sites. It’s so easy to let the minutes slip away, and if I do that multiple times a day . . . that’s a lot of slipping minutes.

I do love the Internet. It’s strange now to think back to what life was like without it. I needed a zip code for a Missouri town the other day. Went to Google, and almost instantly, I had my answer. What would I have done before the days of Google? Called the post office? Gone to the library and looked it up? I don’t know. Now, we take it for granted that information of all kinds is available immediately. And what would my life as a writer have been like, pre-Internet? Now, almost everything is done electronically. A decade and a half ago, when I wanted to send my manuscript to my sister, I put the whole giant stack of papers in a binder, packed it in a box, and mailed it to her. Sounds really old-fashioned now, doesn’t it? Sort of Pony Express-like.

Along with the ease of sending manuscripts around electronically, the Internet allows me to interact with other authors and readers in a way I never would have been able to do otherwise. Since I live away from the center of LDS publishing, without online communication, I would have had very little opportunity to interact with my colleagues and get to know them. The online connections I’ve made with other authors and my ability to participate in the writing community long-distance have been huge blessings in my life.

The Internet is also the main way I communicate with my siblings and parents and with my college daughter. My daughter pops up on Gmail chat and I find out what's going on in her life--like the fact that she was down to bread and Pasta Roni yesterday, poor child. But any good thing can become a not-so-good thing if not used wisely, and I fear I've not been using my online time as wisely as I should. So now I'm setting the goal to not let so much time slip away into cyberspace--and maybe I'll be able to finish reading all 21 remaining finalists. How about you? How do you keep the Internet from becoming a timesink--while still reaping the benefits of cyberspace?

Whitney Awards Finalists Announced!

2011-02-01T17:17:00.001-05:00

Many congratulations to the Whitney Awards finalists, which were announced this afternoon! I was a judge this year (for Youth Fiction, both categories) and I can gleefully state that the quality is continuing to climb every single year.

The finalists this year are:

Romance:

Courting Miss Lancaster, by Sarah Eden
Cross My Heart, by Julie Wright
The Legend of Shannonderry, by Carol Warburton
Luck of the Draw, by Rachael Renee Anderson
Meg's Melody, by Kaylee Baldwin

Mystery/Suspense:

Cold As Ice, by Stephanie Black
Crossfire, by Traci Hunter Abramson
Murder by Design, by Betsy Brannon Green
A Time To Die, by Jeffrey Savage
Wrong Number, by Rachelle Christensen

Speculative:

Imprints, by Rachel Ann Nunes
Mr. Monster, by Dan Wells
Pathfinder, by Orson Scott Card
The Scorch Trials, by James Dashner
The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

Youth Fiction—Speculative:

Fablehaven 5, by Brandon Mull
Matched, by Ally Condie
Paranormalcy, by Kiersten White
The Forbidden Sea, by Sheila Nielson
The Fourth Nephite, Jeffrey Savage

Youth Fiction—General:

Glimpse, by Carol Lynch Williams
Missing in Action, by Dean Hughes
My Double Life, by Janette Rallison
The Healing Spell, by Kimberly Griffiths Little
Wolves, Boys, and Other Things That Might Kill Me, by Kristen Chandler

Historical:

Alma The Younger, by H.B. Moore
Oh Say Can You See?, by L.C. Lewis
The Sheen on the Silk, by Anne Perry
The Silence of God, by Gale Sears
Trespass, by Sandra Grey

General Fiction:

Band of Sisters, by Annette Lyon
Blink of an Eye, by Gregg Luke
The Cross Gardener, by Jason Wright
Finding Mercie, by Blaine Yorgason
Lucky Change, by Susan Law Corpany

On Getting Old, & What to Do if Your Book Sounds Too Familiar

2011-01-31T23:56:00.001-05:00

First, thanks so much for all the birthday wishes! I still don’t get about half of what you can do on Facebook. But it is such a kick to find like fifty “Happy Birthdays,” from so many of my friends.

Trying not to feel too old here. And for the most part I succeeded. The only thing that broke the illusion briefly was that I was showing my boys different bands from my era on YouTube. I was okay as long as I stuck to Def Leopard, Supertramp, Asia, Jeff Beck, etc. But when I found myself listening to some of my favorite old Barry Manilow songs, I suddenly flashed back to being in the car with my parents and groaning when the pulled out the Time Life eight track tapes with singers like Johnny Horton.

So I just explained to my children that BM was music my “older” sister listened to and all was well again.

Anyway, great day and all your well wishes just made it that much better. I was going to blog about getting old, but you were saved that ~~enlightening~~ ~~unusual~~ stomach-churning experience, by another of my faithful minions who asked a great question.

David Glenn asks, “What can someone do when they’re trying to write a story, but people say it sounds too much like another story? What can they do to make it different?”

Great question! I’ll answer it in two parts.

Part one:

If I told you I recently read a story of a child whose parents were dead, who was being raised by mean relatives, who met a magical person, and who had an adventure, what story would you think I was talking about?

Harry Potter? Orphan. Raised by mean aunt and uncle. Meets Hagrid. Goes to Hogwarts. That would qualify right?

But there’s another orphan who also fits those exact qualifications.

James and the Giant Peach.

Switch the race, and swirl the circumstances a little, and you might have this well known pair.

And if we change the boy to a girl, we could have . . .

Sorry, my bad. I meant . . .

The lovely, charming, and rodent-speaking Cinderella.

In fact if you think about it long enough, I’ll bet you could come up with at least another dozen examples. That’s because this is a pretty common beginning. In order to isolate our protagonist, we kill off the parents. Then we use a magical figure to send him or her on a hero’s journey.

Now I know what you are thinking, those are just the beginnings of the story. Once you get past the start, they are nothing like one another. And that’s true.

But do you think Twilight was the first romantic vampire book? Was Harry Potter the first book where a kid gets sent to a school to learn magic? Was The Maze Runner the first book where kids are taken on an elevator to a strange place and run through tests? No, no, and no.

Start reading book reviews and you will quickly discover that people like to compare a new book to things they’ve read before. Thus you’ll get descriptions like “Lord of the Flies meets Secret Garden.” Or “Twilight with zombies.” Or “A mix of The Giver and Gulliver’s Travels.”

This is not a bad thing. people like to be able to put books and movies into context. It allows other readers to think, “Well I liked Twilight and I’ve always kind of thought zombies were cool, so maybe I should read it.”

It also helps stores and publishers to know how to position your book and where to place it on the shelves. Someone who loves regency romances will look for other regency romances. Someone who is a fan of Lisa Gardner might very well like Janet Evanovich. Someone who liked Hunger Games is probably going to read other dystopian or post-apocalyptic novels.

Where you run into trouble is when someone reads you whole book (not just a description) and complains “That was a total rip off of . . .”

This takes us to Part 2

It’s okay to have a story that kind of sounds like XYZ, or starts like ABC. But there are certain storylines that have become almost too prevalent. It’s very difficult to not sound like a rip off when you write a book about a girl who falls in love with a vampire and has to chose between him and a werewolf. Can you create a world where children go to a boarding school to learn spells? Yes. And both magic school books and vampire romances have been done since Twilight and Harry Potter came out. But it’s extremely difficult to sell to a publisher.

You not only have to write an amazing story, but you have to be so good that people will stop calling it a rip off of whatever novel it sounds just like. Again, it has been done. Before Harry Potter came out there were books with wizard children who went to a boarding school and played a game flying on brooms. Before Hunger Games came out there was a book about kids sent into an arena and forced to fight to the death. By Rowling and Collins created such strong stories that they succeeded despite the similarities.

So do you do what if you’ve come up with a great idea only to discover it’s been done before? Well you could try changing the setting. Move your laser-wielding hero into 16th century France. Turn your dragon-riding boy into a girl who tames animals that emerge from a sea of flames and soars over fiery infernos.

Or maybe it’s not your story, but your character. If everyone who reads your book says, “That girl is exactly like Katniss,” look at motivations, habits, voice, appearance. Are you inadvertently copying a character you loved from another book? It’s really not that hard to change enough to avoid the comparison.

Mostly though, I would just say, ignore the comparisons and write a great story. So what if your friend tells you your story sounds a lot like Uglies? Uglies is a great book. If you write an awesome story that reminds people a little of another book they loved, isn’t that a good thing? And if your voice, style, characters, and plot are ultimately different, people will soon forget about how it was kind of like Uglies and love it for what it is.

Hope that answers your question. Keep sending more. this is a lot of fun!

Also, if you are a teenager and like to write, sign up for the Teen Writer’s Bootcamp in April at UVU. Here’s a video about it.

The Writing Mother

2011-01-30T20:27:00.002-05:00

As I've had such a difficult time trying to mesh writing with living in a basement and taking care of my family, I wondered how other women did it. Do you get up early in the morning to write? Snatch small amounts of time where you can? Write after the kids go to bed? Write only on weekends?

What is your writing schedule like? (Share all the gritty details - I'm trying to get some inspiration here!)

Achieving Your Dreams When You Want to Give Up

2011-01-27T11:51:00.004-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

When you are staring at that rejection letter, have you ever felt like giving up? Like maybe you just weren’t meant to be a writer, or maybe your skill and talent just weren’t enough to take you to the next level? Have you ever felt like there was something holding you back from achieving your dream of getting that book published?

I want to tell you about a young man who experienced that very same thing, but his chosen field was basketball instead of writing. From the very beginning he was told that he was too short, too slow, and too chubby to really be a good basketball player. People wondered how tough he really was, and not many colleges looked at him despite his stellar high school record. No one seemed to see his talent and abilities no matter what he did. But even with those challenges, he didn’t give up. He worked on his game, coming up with moves, toughening himself up by playing in physical games where there were no fouls called, and willing himself to find ways to win even when it looked like there wasn’t any way to win. When people said he was too slow, he started with a trainer to make himself faster, both in his running and shooting. Of course he kept working on his other skills of dribbling, footwork, and shots almost constantly. Yet, he also worked on his mental game. He pretended every shot had the game on the line, he ran a gauntlet in his LDS church hallway where he turned off the lights and would dribble down the hall as his friends would pop out of doorways and try to rattle him. Improving very aspect of his game became a focus, but it was still fun for him. He slowly became faster, tougher, and more skilled. And that perseverance has paid off for Jimmer Fredette.

Jimmer Fredette is currently the leading college basketball scorer in the country. He will likely go into the NBA and several NBA players sing his praises. He has scored over forty points in clutch games, and last night he was the major impetus in BYU’s win over previously undefeated SDSU. Audiences are amazed that he can make a shot from almost the half court line, he has circus scoop shots, and he can shoot with both hands---you just never know what kind of defense to use against him because he is so good. He has achieved almost celebrity status and even coined a new term in the basketball world—you just got Jimmered. He has a bright future ahead of him in his chosen field because he didn’t let himself give up, even when he was told he couldn’t do it. He didn’t let the doubters get him down. In fact, he still has his doubters, but it’s not something he focuses on. “I’ve never worried when people said I can’t do it,” he said, “but it does fuel me.”

As writers, I think that we can have a similar experience to Jimmer’s. We can have people doubt our abilities. Rejection letters may paper our mailbox, but we can do the same thing Jimmer did. When people say you can’t do it, make that your fuel to improve. People said Jimmer was slow, so he worked on becoming faster. People said he wasn’t tough so he started playing no foul games and running gauntlets. He worked on improving himself day after day, in spite of the doubters and their opinions. When he had success in high school basketball, but was still overlooked by colleges, he didn’t give up. He continued to work on his moves, but most especially on his mental game. He made himself mentally tough and didn’t let anything take his focus off of his goals. We can do the same thing in our writing. When you are overlooked and rejected, use the feedback you get to continue to improve, but never take your focus off of your ultimate goal. Keep on preparing and practicing like Jimmer did, because the perseverance will pay off. Jimmer is in the running for Player of the Year, he is being interviewed in national magazines and on national sports shows, and his name is achieving a legendary status in college basketball. But what if he’d believed those first people who told him he was too short, slow, and chubby to ever play ball and had given up? His dream would have died when those words were spoken to him. But he didn’t let it die and neither should you.

Be a Jimmer Fredette kind of writer. Don’t give up. Focus on your goals. Use the rejection and doubt to fuel you to be a better, tougher, and focused writer with improved skills and there is no doubt in my mind that you will be successful writer, achieving your dreams of that next published book.

So, every time you think you can’t do it, “Fredette” about it and go to work.

Dear Diary vs. Dear Blogosphere

2011-01-26T13:27:00.004-05:00

If someone were to sneak onto my computer and start reading my journal, they might be mildly interested, or curious, or intrigued for, oh, maybe two posts, at which point they’d start withering with boredom and go watch Psych reruns. Mind you, I like my journal and find it interesting, but it tends to be extremely repetitive. Reason why: I often use my journal to vent.

I know. I’m not sure my posterity will find it very inspirational. But I’m a writer. When I’m feeling stressed about something, it helps me if I can pour words onto a computer screen. Thus I end up with stretches where, post after post, I’m wringing my hands over the same thing, over and over (maybe I can do a “best of” series and leave that for my descendants so they don’t have to wade through the whole record, bless them).

When I’m worried about something writing-related, I write about it. For instance, when I’m waiting to hear back on a manuscript, that’s prime journal venting--er, journal writing time. “They’ve had the book for (fill in the blank) amount of time . . . will I hear back soon . . . will they like it . . . what if they don’t like it . . . here’s my plan for what to do if they don’t like it . . . will they like it . . . what if they reject it . . . what if my sales numbers aren’t good enough . . .” repeat, ad nauseam. Well, nauseam for anyone else. I like to hear myself talk about it.

As any writer could tell you, worry is one of the occupational hazards of being an author. I write, therefore I worry. I seek to publish, therefore I worry. I check Goodreads too often, therefore I worry. I worry, therefore I vent—but I’m careful what I say in public. I can vent my stress in my journal to my heart’s content, but my angst-filled entries aren’t floating around out there for anyone to see. Say I’m stung and annoyed about something a reviewer said and think she missed the mark—but no way am I going to challenge her in public because that’s just plain dumb, and bad author manners to boot. Instead, I can dump some stress into my journal (and complain privately to people I trust, like my husband).

When I was dealing with a particularly painful rejection, two successful, established authors gave me the same advice: don’t advertise it. If I started talking publicly about how my book was rejected, it was going to give the wrong impression. People who didn’t understand the publishing industry would assume the book was rejected because it wasn’t good enough (in this particular case, that wasn’t the problem). I took their advice to heart and was careful about what I said publicly and how I said it.

Recently, an agent or editor—I’m sorry, I can’t remember who it was; if someone saw the post, can you remind me so I can link to them?—was advising authors to be careful about detailing their path-to-publication saga by posting things like rejection letters, rants about agents, or what have you. You don’t want a bunch of negative stuff sitting on your blog when a potential agent googles you. Save the vents for private venues—which is not to say you can never publicly express any frustration or disappointment. But I think we want to be careful to present ourselves online they way we want potential/current agents or editors to see us—and that includes being careful of what we say on social media sites such as Facebook. My editor mentioned to me once that things authors post on social media sites often get back to the publisher. So make sure when you say something publicly, you don't mind if your publisher/potential publisher hears it.

So be wise, and I promise to never make you read my journal.

(For an article from business columnist Evil HR Lady discussing Facebook in the business world, click here).

Implausibility, or Why I Hate Most Cop Shows

2011-01-26T05:06:00.001-05:00

This blog is a rant disguised as writing advice. Therefore, when I say "When you're writing something, be sure to do your research", what I really mean is "Man, don't you hate TV shows that assume we're all idiots?"

I realize that there is a necessary balancing act between too much research and flying by the seat of your pants. A story too concerned with 100% accuracy can often appear infodumpy, and if the writer includes too many details it can really bog down the pacing of a story. I also understand that you're never going to make every reader/viewer happy. (If you're ever looking for people who care too much about minutae, read the "Goofs" sections on IMDb. My favorite is this gem from Bourne Ultimatum: "In the opening minutes of the film, Bourne has his nightmare in Goa and goes to the bathroom. We hear the fluorescent lamp ballast (choke) buzzing at 60Hz, however if Bourne is in Goa, India like the film says then it should be buzzing at 50Hz." Obviously, you're never going to please these types of people.)

But, despite that caveat I want to firmly declare: there are times when you simply have to have your facts straight.

The most egregious genre (or, at least, the genre I'm thinking about at the moment) is cop shows. We Americans are raised from little kids to know what's in the Constitution, and when we're in the fifth grade we study the Bill of Rights, and we all know what an illegal search is. I'm not complaining about the little-known trivialities of police procedure--I'm complaining about when a cop breaks into someone's house to search it. That's illegal. They may find evidence that catches the bad guy, the TV show ends happily, and everyone in the audience is thinking "ALL THAT EVIDENCE IS GOING TO BE THROWN OUT OF COURT, YOU MORONS."

This is likewise a problem when a cop beats a confession out of someone, which is done all the time in stupid cop shows, generally when something is time sensitive, like a bomb is going to go off, or a kidnappee is locked in a box somewhere. If a real cop did this, the criminal would sue, the cop would get demoted or fired, and the bad guy might not go to jail after all.

This drives me crazy.

Lots of cop shows get around this by making a private detective do the dirty work: they're not cops, so they can do whatever they want! True, a private detective cannot perform an illegal search and seizure (because he can't even perform legal search and siezure), but that private detective can definitely go to jail for breaking and entering. Of course, that would never happen, because the ultimate message of cop shows is: as long as the bad guy goes to jail, the ends justify the means. Beat up a criminal, break into a house, coerce a confession, entrap a suspect--that's all okey dokey.

Which leads me to my real point: yes, we all know these laws, and yet we ignore them (with few notable exceptions) when it comes to our entertainment. Is this a sign of deep philosophical rumblings, where we Americans view our society with a kind of Old West justice--shoot first, ask questions later? Or is it, perhaps, that we catatonically gobble up any lazy piece of writing slapped on the screen?

(I know there's a third option, which is "Sheesh, Rob! It's escapism! Calm it down, fatboy!" This, I suppose, is a valid point. It's still apathetic--it assumes that escapism can only be found in lazy, crappy writing, when that is most definitely not the case. But I will concede that there are worse things in the world, like genocide, maybe.)

So, after all that, I guess my point is this: man, I hate Castle.

Your Protagonist Compass

2011-01-24T18:48:00.004-05:00

What? No boat load of questions for today’s blog post? You mean I have to come up with something myself? Remember, I don’t make pirate ship floats, I didn’t just recently have a book accepted by Covenant, (although we are very close on my horror novel), and I know nothing about Canadian New Year. So you’ll have to blame yourselves if you don’t like today’s post..

Last week I was asked to do a workshop at LTUE. For those of you who haven’t been, it is an amazing writer’s conference primarily based around SciFi and Fantasy writing, and it’s really inexpensive. More info here. One of my more popular classes lately has been on creating a Character Bible. I’m teaching that at Storymakers with my awesome sister and fellow author Deanne Blackhurst, as well as at the UVU Teen Writers Conference in April. So it seemed like overkill to teach it again at LTUE. Instead I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a much more specific tool, I call a Protagonist Compass.

Here’s the basic concept. One of the biggest complaints I hear about books is that the main character is unbelievable. Janette Rallison had a great post about unbelievable teen romances on her blog. I think the biggest issue is that, while real people may be all over the board on what they do and why, readers expect more from a book. Books are not like real life. Our lives don’t have a clear plot line. We do have a start and we do have an end, but the rest of it is often more of a jumble than a progression. Books require much more precision. You can’t have a chapter where nothing happens, even if you do feel like you need it to connect two plot points. Each chapter must stand on its own.

It’s the same with characters. Readers may not realize it, but they want a clear understanding of what makes your protagonist tick. What drives her? What motivates her? If her motivations change, there needs to be a clear reason why. In order to do that, you need to understand where your protagonist is coming from and track where they are headed. In Scouts and in the Army, we used to go on a compass course. There were different points you had to locate by starting at one and using your compass to site in on the next. I think you could do something similar with a protagonist.

Let’s start with history. When your book starts, your character is at a certain point. Let’s call it point C. As you know from math classes, a point has no direction. It is simply a coordinate floating in space. Until you connect it with another point floating in space. Let’s call this point A. If you draw a line between point A and point C, you can track where your character should go. All things being equal, any decision they make should generally lead them to a point D along that line. Still with me? Let me give you an example.

In Demon Spawn, Blaze has grown up her whole life assuming certain things. Hell is just. Humans are sent to Hell for being evil, and have therefore earned any punishment they get. Her primary goal in life is to be successful in Hell. (i.e. get a good demon job, and continue the status quo.)

In our compass course, point A would be her normal demon spawn upbringing. Point C would be her first day of demon training—specifically her first day of meeting damned humans and sending them to their fates. Now you might ask, what about B? Or you might just figure that, like most authors, I’m either 1) Somewhat less than attentive to specific details, or 2) leaving a spot open for rewrites down the road.

But no. There is a plan to my apparent lack of attention. Point B is left for a life altering experience that happened sometime in the protagonist’s life that changed its course significantly, but that occurred before the start of your story. For example:

Hopefully you’ve read Hunger Games. If not, go get a copy and read it. Some very good story-telling there. I won’t ruin too much of the story for you by saying that before the beginning of where the book starts, an event occurred in the life of Katniss—our protagonist. Let’s say that in Katniss’ life point A was being raised in a post-apocalyptic future where life was hard, children are sacrificed to a reality game every year, and her father teaches her how to hunt and gather wild plants and animals. Had life continued on its course, her biggest concerns would have been those of any teen in her town. Avoiding the games, making a living, meeting a guy, etc.

But when she was younger, a major event shook her life. Her father died. That would have been a traumatic event for any child. But to make matters worse, her mother had a total breakdown, leaving Katniss to feed the family or let them all starve. This event so scarred her that now the biggest motivating factor in her life is protecting her family—especially her little sister, Prim. This is point B.

If we look at our compass course, we can see that this single event altered the course of her life. Any decisions she makes after this point will be affected by this event. Should anything threaten this direction, it will immediately create conflict. The more it threatens to alter this course, the bigger the conflict will be. Now remember that point A has not gone away. She still does not want to be part of the games. And she is somewhat attracted to a guy. But even the guy she is attracted to comes more as a result of a desire to provide for her family than a physical attraction. And she has taken a greater risk of being chosen for the games purely to provide for her family. So it is clear that while point A still exists, point B overrides it.

One of the interesting things about Katniss’ life changing event is that we don’t learn about it until after point D, which I’ll get to in a moment. Many authors would be tempted to either begin the book with a prologue where we see what happened to her father and how her mother reacted. Or they would show a flashback prior to point C, so the reader would understand clearly why Katniss makes the decision she does. This is not necessary. You actually have two better options. One is implied history. For example, if an eighth grader’s first reaction to his new school is that he will fit inside the lockers, we can surmise that he has been stuck in a locker before. It is implied that not only has he been picked on, but that he expects to be at his new school as well.

Another method is through actions. Collins actually uses both methods. We learn that Katniss’ father made the bows she is using and that he is no longer in her life. We also see her out hunting to provide food for her family. We don’t know all the details yet, but we “get” that Katniss is about protecting her family in her father’s absence.

Knowing points A and B, it is pretty easy to surmise point D. (Spoiler alert) Point D must be a decision where points A and B come into direct conflict, and that once more changes the course of Katniss’ life. And sure enough it is. Katniss doesn’t want to be chosen for the games. She isn’t. But Prim is. Now, had Katniss’ father not died, we don’t know for sure what Katniss would have reacted to this event. But knowing that her desire to protect her younger sister is more important than anything, it is clear what she must do. Point B overrides point A, and she takes Prim’s place. This is perfectly consistent with Katniss’ prime motivation.

Once her decision is made, we get the back story. And along with it, another key point on our compass course. One that also took place before the story begins. Let’s call this point B2. When Katniss was near to dying—and failing her family, a boy tossed her a loaf of bread, causing himself suffering. Katniss hasn’t thought about this a lot over the years. B1 is clearly not as strong as B. But it suddenly becomes an issue when that very boy is chosen to go to the games as well. He may very well have saved her life. And she definitely owes him. But only one of them can survive the games, and her prime motivation is still providing for her family—which can only occur if she survives, meaning the boy who saved her life must die.

What the casual reader sees is that almost immediately Katniss and Peeta begin to argue. Like many romances, it seems impossible that they can ever get together. What they make not actively think about is that this back and forth arguing—occasionally broken up by moments of friendship or even actual tension—only work because the correct motivating factors were put in place first. If Peeta had not saved Katniss’ life we wouldn’t buy the romance, at least on her part. If he didn’t already love her, we wouldn’t buy the self-sacrificing behavior on his part. If Katniss’ prime motivation wasn’t saving her sister, we would hate her for being such a jerk to him.

Occasionally, Katniss can be pulled off track. She can start to fall for Peeta, or decide to help out another person in the game. But protecting her family must come first. Unless outside circumstances change. Sensing the romantic tension, we hope and expect that Katniss and Peeta will get together. (Even though this is not a traditional romance.) But no matter how much we might want it, we will not accept it unless there is a major event that is strong enough to alter the course set in place by point B. These outside influences must be strong enough to alter the protagonist’s course. They must be believable and to some extent the reader must be prepared to receive them.

Of course if you’ve read the book, what know what Peeta did in order to change things. Had that not occurred, readers would have been unhappy with the major decision Katniss makes near the end of the book. They might not have known why they were unhappy with it—especially since they wanted it to happen all along. They just would have said it was unbelievable.

Going briefly back to Demon Spawn, the life altering event doesn’t always happen before point C where the story starts. Blaze’s point B takes place shortly after the story begins, when she discovers a young human girl has been sent to Hell. This event doesn’t have an immediate impact on Blaze, but it opens her up to outside influences. In the story, she has two outside influencers tugging at her. Cinder, her roommate, is all about immediate gratification—mostly in the form of guys. Onyx, her best male friend, believes in change and questioning authority. These two outside influencers have various amounts of success, but ultimately which one wins out is the result of the events Blaze experiences herself.

Had she not seen the human child and questioned what the girl could possibly done to be sent to hell, she might not have been open to Onyx’s influences in the way she eventually is.

Hopefully you get the general idea here. Each major decision in your protagonist’s story must be checked against the compass of his past decisions. If you want the girl and the guy to get together, you must either give them back stories that lead to this, or create strong enough outside influences to swing the compass one way or another. If you know your main character will finish the story with a different view of life than they began it with, you must create believable events to shape that change, or your readers will not believe it when it finally happens.

For more detailed examples and some hands on class work, come to my workshop at LTUE.

P.S. If you are interested in LDS fiction, you have a great new column to follow by Andrew Hall called This Week in Mormon Literature. I've followed him fro years and he does some amazing research. And I don't just say that because he called the Frog Blog one of, "the best LDS literature discussion blogs."

Tron: Legacy is Bad

2011-01-23T22:32:00.002-05:00

So, I don't know if it's just being a writer that makes you notice these things more than you might were you not a writer (I have this problem reading books - I'm constantly dissecting) or if it's just because Tron: Legacy was not a very good movie. (I'm leaning more towards the latter explanation.)

WARNING - this contains spoilers so if you haven't seen it and don't want to be "spoiled," (although, in all honesty, I'm pretty sure I'm doing you a favor by telling you about the lameness that is this movie) then stop reading here!

Also be aware that the reason this movie irritated me was all the questions I had while watching it, and will pepper my recap with some of those questions.

I admittedly have little to no familiarity with the original "Tron" movie. I have vague recollections of people in light-up suits riding around on motorcycles from the Disney Channel when I was little. I had no idea what the plot was or why everybody had glowing outfits.

My husband insisted we see this sequel, and I agreed to it as it looked like some good special effects eye candy, and I'm always up for that.

The premise is this - Jeff Bridges, back while he was still young - got into his computer in a landscape called "The Grid" and wrested control away from an evil program that was keeping the programs living on The Grid (who all look human, and take on the appearance of their Users) from interacting with their Users. Jeff Bridges, being The Dude that he is, stops the evil cyber-program that made the programs participate in gladiator type death matches which seemed to consist of motorcycle races (where light trailed from the machines and for some reason if you ran into the pretty ribbon of light you disintegrated) and chucking Frisbees at each other. Jeff Bridges stopped all this, and when he got back to the real world, he took over a major technology company and wiped The Grid clean to create a "perfect" world.

"Tron: Legacy" starts a few years after the events of that movie, where Jeff Bridges' character is played by a guy who wears a really bad, rubbery Jeff Bridges mask (okay, I understand that it was actually CGI in a "Benjamin Button" sort of way, but I found it SO distracting. It didn't look cool or real. It looked like a really bad, rubbery Jeff Bridges mask, or RBRJBM as I will now refer to it). He has a kid named Sam. RBRJBM disappears, never to be heard from again. Sam becomes the richest kid in the second grade.

We flash to present day where Sam is now breaking into his own company to pre-release his Windows type software which isn't any different than the last version - it just has a new number on it or something. Sam thinks the technology should have been given away for free. Seeing as how he's the actual majority shareholder he could have just, oh, I don't know, pre-released it legally, but instead he must break into the building, get past security, hack into the mainframe (which, if you play World of Warcraft, is easily one of my favorite quests) and give it to the whole world, flummoxing his conservative, uptight, greedy board of directors (which includes Bruce Boxleitner, the original "Tron" character, but no one gives him a really bad rubbery face mask. I wondered if he felt cheated at not getting de-SORASed. (For those that don't watch soaps, SORAS is Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome where a kid is five years old one day, and the next he's an angst-filled emo teenager. Thus, de-SORAS would be the opposite of that.) Cillian Murphy is on the board in an uncredited part and I kept wanting him to do something Scarecrow-like that was cool, but he didn't. Anyway, to escape the out-of-shape security guards, Sam has to base jump off the top of his building just so that you understand what a cool guy he is (he drives a motorcyle. Need I say more?).

To further illustrate his coolness, he eschews his billions of dollars and instead chooses to live in a converted garage in a junkyard instead of the penthouse at Trump Towers or something. Regular age Tron guy encourages him to go looking for his dad as he got a page (why would Tron still carry around a pager? Just for old times sake? Seriously, he works at a technology company).

Sam drives his rad motorcycle to his dad's arcade, where he finds the old man's secret entrance to The Grid and teleports himself there.

Lots of fun CGI things going on there. Cool machines, cool city.

Sam gets picked up as a rogue program (like a virus? A Trojan horse? I wondered) and has to participate in the previously abolished gladiator type games. He is prepared for these games by four insanely hot female programs who have to undress and dress him (and lets me know this movie was, indeed, written by a man). They give him a Frisbee disk on his back which is able to essentially download him (despite the fact that he is a human and not a computer program) and is something HE MUST KEEP WITH HIM AT ALL TIMES as it is very, very important.

So of course, the first chance he gets, Sam starts chucking it at people. The disks are apparently not family-friendly Frisbees, since if you get hit by one you "derez" (or deresolution - you basically disappear). So I wondered if these are spinning circles of death, how can people catch them so easily? Why didn't Sam have any issues throwing and then catching his disk? Wouldn't he have needed a warm-up or something? I'm pretty sure I would have lost a hand.

Sam also seems to take the whole thing in stride - the spinning circles of death that he was supposed to keep with him but used to make people disappear - the shiny motorcycles that suddenly materialized and de-materialized, the Daft Punk soundtrack. All of it.

The new bad guy is RBRJBM guy. In the show he's called CLU, but whenever they said that all I could think of was Tim Curry. Anyway, because Sam's so awesome and cool, he's able to survive everything until Olivia Wilde, playing another insanely hot female program, breaks up the boys' club and rescues Sam.

I kept wondering why all the girls had so much eye make-up and platform boots. I would understand if this were like a Sims type world, but it wasn't. Also, most of the men are equally good-looking (but with lower shoes and not as much make-up). If these people were supposed to represent their Users, I'm sorry, I've been to a lot of "Users" Christmas parties. They do not look like the people on The Grid.

Olivia Wilde is a character named Quorra, not Cora like I imagined through the whole movie. She takes Sam to see his father, the appropriately-aged Jeff Bridges. Poor Jeff Bridges has been trapped on The Grid for 20 years, despite being the creator of the entire world and having godlike powers. He creates a Zen world for himself (big surprise, right?) and somehow has food and water that he feeds to his son and to program Quorra. I wondered whether they had to go to the bathroom with all that eating and drinking (nobody stops and does this, in case you were wondering).

Jeff Bridges had wiped The Grid with the intent of making a perfect world. Unfortunately, he got trapped in there before he could watch any cautionary movies that probably would have changed his programming choices. He creates RBRJBM and tells him to make a perfect world. Does he program RBRJBM to not hurt people? No. (Have we learned nothing from "I, Robot?") He creates an autonomous, self-aware, highly intelligent program. (Have we learned nothing from "Terminator?" Don't you know what happens when you make machines smart?) RBRJBM then proceeds to wipe out bad programs that are imperfect and has his sights set on eradicating humans because they are also imperfect. (Have we learned nothing from "Virus?")

Also, there's apparently a group of isomorphic algorithms that are spontaneously created (i.e., they have no User or creator). For some reason they also look human. Why, I don't know. The show doesn't tell us why either. We find out Quorra is the last of the ISOs because RBRJBM decided they were imperfect too (at which point I'm thinking, doesn't Jeff Bridges deserve some of the fault here for making such a crappy program?).

Jeff Bridges is fine with his fate, but Sam wants back into the real world. He finds Michael Sheen, who is playing a bipolar program who runs a bar. And I'm thinking, what would you do if Microsoft Word became crazy? And started spewing random junk while you were typing? And for all the programs that were hooking up in the bar and getting drunk - what would you do if Outlook was hung over? What was the point of all that?

Sam escapes RBRJBM as Michael Sheen is playing a bad guy and turns them over to RBRJBM (shocking, I know). Quorra loses an arm from a flying Frisbee, but since she's a program, Jeff Bridges just reprograms her. He also stops their plummeting elevator by simply hacking into it (not with an axe, just his hand) where at the bottom awaits a transport ship that will take them to the portal! Which is where Sam must go! Isn't that AMAZING?

Big fight scene in the end, stuff blows up, Quorra wants to get into the real world and see the sun.

Jeff Bridges takes one for the team and uses his godlike powers to stop RBRJBM (at which point I'm wondering why he didn't use those awesome powers to take out the bad guy in the first place and get out of the computer, but whatever) destroying them both. Sam and Quorra escape.

Sam decides to take control of his father's empire and change the world. Disappointingly, Quorra is still in human form outside The Grid. I was kinda hoping it'd be like in "Stardust" where if the star crosses from the land of Faerie into the real world she turns from a beautiful human into an actual star (i.e., a piece of rock). Didn't happen.

Sam takes Quorra to see the sunrise. There is no romance or smooching. I know, I was disappointed too (at which point my husband said, "What more did you want? They literally rode off into the sunset(rise) together." Bah, not enough).

I don't mind if a movie doesn't answer my questions as long as they entertain me. Take The Joker from "The Dark Knight." I never knew how he got those cuts on his mouth - every time he told the story he gave a different explanation. But that gave me insight into his character and I got caught up in the story. Tron does not do that.

So after watching this movie, I came to the conclusion that it is not okay for your viewers/readers to be asking so many questions that you can't just enjoy the CGI. Have a little story to go with your eye candy, please. Thanks.

What I've Noticed About Being a Writer

2011-01-20T12:45:00.005-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I love being a writer. I’ve written stories for as long as I can remember and there is just something so satisfying about getting a story from my imagination down on paper.

However, being a writer has changed me in some ways. For example, being a writer means I can never throw away a piece of paper, program, or napkin until I’ve checked to see if I wrote a scene or dialogue on it. I usually carry a notebook, but there are times when I don’t have it with me and have to make do with what’s available. (And no, I’ve never written on toilet paper. Just to be clear.) I used to try to tape all of the little pieces of paper etc., into my notebook to keep them all together, but it made my notebook look more like a scrapbook, so I just tuck them all into a little folder now.

Being a writer also means that when my children are late getting home from a date or something, I always think of the worst case scenario---they’ve witnessed a crime and are on the run and can’t call or they accidentally picked up movie popcorn that a government agent hid a microchip in before he died and they’re trying to hide it, or they’ve been the victim of an EMP device and their phones and/or car isn’t working---well, you get the picture. (I know, I know, my poor children. Oddly, none of those things have ever happened. It’s usually just that they lost track of time or something very normal. In case you were wondering.)

I’ve also noticed that writers generally have more people that stare at them, especially if you talk to yourself in a public place or suddenly laugh out loud when you think of some funny dialogue to put in your story. Not that I’ve ever done that.

You would be surprised where writers can get their inspiration. A lot of my scenes come to me during a relaxing bubble bath, or while I’m walking on the treadmill. Dialogue ideas get really interesting whenever I’m at the grocery store. You would be surprised what people will tell the checker/bagger/person on the phone while they’re at the grocery store. The people on cell phones are always the most funny/annoying. It’s like they think they’re in this little bubble and no one can hear them discussing how she didn’t feel like going to work today because she hates her boss, so she lied to him and is currently at the grocery store for popcorn and chocolate so she can have a Castle marathon at home. But what if she went home and her door was open, and her boss was found dead in her living room? How would she explain her lies? (Love the TV show, Castle, by the way, and Rick Riordan, the author of The Lightning Thief series tweeted last week how he loves it, too. If you haven’t seen it, you really are missing out!)

Being a writer, for me, means that I think of weird things (in case you hadn't gathered that already). Possibly one of the weirdest was when I was sitting in church and I began wondering what I would do if terrorists suddenly took over the chapel and I started making a list of the people in the room who could be an asset and who I thought would be hiding under the pew. (If anyone from my ward is reading this, I think you know which group you’d be in.)

Of course being a writer means people have weird expectations of you, too. I mean, I’m always expected to write the family Christmas letter, and not only write it, but make it sound creative and fun. Which is harder than it looks sometimes!

People also seem to think that I have read all the latest novels in every genre and can recommend great reading material for toddlers, teenagers, adults, seniors, and of course it must be appropriate for each person. If I haven’t read the latest picture books,YA novels, or newest historical or whatever, I always feel like a failure, too. What is it about writers and people pleasing tendencies?.

I've also noticed people believe that writers are innately good at public speaking and having witty remarks for every situation. Of course, since I’m a teacher I’m not too shabby at public speaking, but my brain freezes in the witty remarks department unless I have a lot of time to analyze the situation and write a few ideas down. Which doesn’t help a whole lot in the moment.

I don’t make spelling or grammar mistakes very often, but I’ve noticed that my friends gleefully point out any grammatical error in my emails, no matter how small, and they scoff at my excuses that I was trying to quickly type them something with one hand while feeding my baby so it doesn’t count.

Probably the weirdest thing I’ve noticed that people think about writers is that somehow we are more organized than normal people since we have time to write. I don’t think that’s true at all. For me, it just comes down to priorities. I make writing a priority in my life. I don’t watch a lot of television. I don’t have very many hobbies. And sometimes dinner is late when I have to write just one more scene. It’s not a matter of organization, it’s just a matter of what you can make time for, in my opinion.

No matter the quirk or expectation that being a writer brings, however, I wouldn’t trade being a writer for anything. It’s the best job in the world where you can share characters, stories, world views and perspectives and if you don’t change the world, you can definitely change one person’s world, even if that one person is you. Writing is the synthesis of a person’s experience all wrapped up in beautiful words and given as a gift to the world. Accept it. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Especially with all the quirks that come with it.

Four Stealth Issues. And Good News.

2011-01-19T14:28:00.002-05:00

First, the good news: my new suspense novel, working title Rearview Mirror, has been accepted for publication. Yay! (Plot summary: a protagonist with an eerie resemblance to Billy Joel struggles to save the world and defeat the Space Monkey Mafia, a deadly secret society run by Harold "Hula Hoops" Castro).(Bonus points if you can guess what song I heard in the car this morning while driving back from the high school). (And an actual blurb about the plot is here).(And apparently it's National Parentheses Day!)

Now, for the stealth issues. I want to discuss a few writing glitches that are very sneaky about slipping into manuscripts. And yes, you’ll sometimes see them in published books, which means they sometimes sneak past editors as well. How can we avoid these stealth issues? As Mad-Eye Moody would say, “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”

1. Tiny point of view slips. These can be oh-so-insidious. We’re writing along, solidly in Jane's viewpoint. We’re thinking her thoughts, feeling what she feels, seeing the world through her eyes. We would never dream of all of a sudden telling the reader what Bob is thinking, or that his foot itches--we know we're in Jane's head, not Bob's. Then, we type this line: “Anger darkened Jane's eyes.” Whoa, baby! Hold the presses! Whose POV are we in? Jane's. We think what she thinks, right? When was the last time you thought to yourself, “Man, I am so ticked. Anger is darkening my eyes.”? We don’t think about ourselves with that kind of outward observation, and neither does Jane. She can feel symptoms of anger—maybe she notices her face is getting hot, or her heart is pounding, or her stomach is clenching, or her muscles tightening, or whatever—but she’s not going to notice how her own eyes look, unless she’s staring at herself in the mirror. Rule of thumb: if you’re in a character’s POV, don’t describe reactions that she wouldn’t be able to see or think or feel.

2. I confess, I’m bad at remembering what grammatical errors and constructions are named. It’s more intuitive for me—I can tell you this is wrong, but I can’t tell you what the error is called. I had to Google around and try a couple of things before I could finally put a name to my next stealth error (and Annette Lyon of Word Nerd Fame can tell me if I got this right or not): dangling modifiers. Here’s the type of sentence I’m talking about: “Trembling with fear, Sarah’s skirt rippled around her knees.” Okay—we get it—the writer means Sarah is nervous, and her knees are shaking. “Trembling with fear” is supposed to modify Sarah—but the sentence doesn’t say that. The way it’s set up, “trembling with fear” is modifying “Sarah’s skirt.” Apparently, Sarah’s apparel is sentient and it’s scared (no telling what her shoes are feeling). So when you’re setting up a sentence like this, make sure you say what you mean: “Trembling with fear, Sarah felt her skirt ripple around her knees.” Or whatever you want. Just make sure your modifier matches up with the word you intended it to modify. No dangling! Constant vigilance!

3. Unintentionally whackadoodle –ing constructions: “Locking the door, he raced across the street.” Ladies and gentleman, meet your protagonist—Gumby! No one else would be able to twist a key in a lock and cross the street at the same time. Yeah, okay, I know what the sentence is supposed to mean—first, he locked the door and then he crossed the street. But that’s not what it says. Grammatically, it says he did both at once. “Tying her shoes, she ran down the stairs.” I wonder how many bones she broke. Yes, a protagonist can do two things at once—real people do that all the time. “Sipping bacon grease, Rob read a few more pages of Jeff’s new romance novel, A Time to Sigh.” But when your grammatical construction indicates that a character did things simultaneously, make sure those things actually work if you do them together.

4. Emotional tone. Characters are people too, and should react to events emotionally like real people would. When someone traumatic or strange happens to a character but he keeps sailing along cheerfully, seemingly unshaken, it can jar me out of that fiction-reading suspension of disbelief so important to enjoying a story So, because it bugs me when I read it, I automatically avoid it in my own writing, right? Heh. Did I mention these are stealth errors, creeping in when you’re not paying attention? In my new manuscript, someone is murdered (Spoiler! Bet you didn’t see that coming). Another character—we’ll call him Tom--knew the victim quite well, and there are some issues surrounding the death that ought to upset Tom (in addition to the fact that the victim is dead). But when I show Tom after the murder, he’s all cheerful and joking—he doesn’t show distress; he doesn’t mention the victim. I don’t know how many drafts it took me to realize that Tom ought to be visibly troubled by what’s happened, but I know it slipped through at least the first two drafts. I think it’s easy to do this, because sometimes we’re just moving the story along, and we forget to stop and let our characters worry or mourn or react, like a real person would.

After all, characters are real people, right?

From Idea to Story

2011-01-17T23:25:00.001-05:00

Okay, I know I live in Utah. It’s SUPPOSED to snow here. I get that. But it doesn’t have to mean I like it. What bugs me most is that I drive up I-15 and every other city has no snow left, while here we still look like a new polar bear exhibit. Oh well. At least it hasn’t snowed for almost a week and the warm weather is melting some of it.

One of the things I hate most about blogging is not knowing if anyone cares about what your are writing about. So I love it when someone asks a question. This is the second one from Julia “Jeuls” Wright. Which means the rest of you slackers are falling behind. So if you have questions about writing, publishing, strange airplane stories, or the mating habit of obscure Australian omnivores (wonder how many hits that last one will generate), e-mail me or just drop a note in the comments.

Here is the question from the lovely, charming, talented, and inquisitive Jeuls.

What do you do when you get stuck. When you have a great story beginning or start, but no idea what happens next or where a story is going? When you need answers and they're not coming? Is there a name for that (writer's block?) or a therapy that has worked for you (or your author friends)? Coming up with the whole skeleton of the story is something I'd like your ideas on. Just in case you had anything to share with your minions, thought I'd ask :-)

Great question! I especially like the minions part. I’ve always wanted minions. I asked for some for Christmas once, but all I got was Legos. Side note, Lego minions are pretty cool, but when they begin asking you questions, your parents take you to a special doctor.

This is one of my favorite questions to answer. And as a bonus we get to use examples and cool pictures. First of all, how many of you are in the same situation as Julia? How many of you have stories you’ve begun, but didn’t know where to go with them? Don’t be shy. Raise your hands. Okay, actually put your hands back down. I can’t really see them. Unless I can, in which case you should probably be wearing more than that while you sit at the computer. Yeah.

There are a couple of possibilities here, but let’s start with the most obvious, and common issue. The problem is that what you have is actually an idea, and not a story. Let me give you a for example. You’re standing in the shower one afternoon, eating a Milkyway Dark Chocolate (sorry, most of my stories involve food) and scratching your back with one of those loofa sponges on a stick, when suddenly a great idea for a middle grade book pops into your head.

What if this kid got on his school bus one morning, just like every morning? But this time, when he got on, he looked around and realized he didn’t recognize anyone except this girl he really hated. And then she gave him a really scared look and all the other kids on the bus turned into aliens.

The idea is so strong, you can actually see the aliens and the little girl. (Although in your mind, she’s giving the boy a kind of come hither look, so maybe there’s going to be some romance in this story.)

This is going to be the best story ever. So without even turning off the shower (the muse has no time for things like conserving water) you jump out of the shower, run to your computer, and begin typing.

It’s possible this story—and your story—might have a happy ending. Sometimes an idea just clicks. You see the whole thing from beginning to end and all you have to do is capture it the best you can, complete from your imagination.

For some authors, this is the only way to write. Stephen King claims he just chucks some characters into an odd situation and watches them to see what happens. But for most of us, this doesn’t work. Why? Because we are heading out on what will probably be a long hike without the first clue of where we want to end up.

A story generally has a least four elements. They are:

1) A likeable hero that your readers will care about and hopefully root for. This hero can be anything from a blade of grass to a wooly mammoth. But it’s important that you have a hero or protagonist of your story. As readers, we want a main character we can root for. We may not agree with her at first. We may dislike parts of her. But we need to care about her and root for her.

Okay, take a moment to channel your inner Robin Hood, enjoy the Retro Friday music I didn’t post on Friday and think about the hero of your story. And while you’re at it, put something on and finish your candy bar. We’ll wait.

I’m holding out for you to come up with a likeable hero

Great. Now back to our story. In the case of The Boy and the Bus (catchy title , eh?) we do have a hero. Is he likeable? That’s going to be up to you. Are we rooting for him? Well that’s another question completely. You see, in order to root for your hero, I, the reader, need your hero to have a goal. What is he trying to accomplish?

2) That’s the second element of a story. The goal. What your hero’s goal will be depends totally on the type of story you are writing. And the goal can change. Don’t go for the obvious here. In a romance, don’t decide the woman’s main goal is to find a man. That’s okay, I guess. I mean, I don’t want your poor lonely heroine to die alone and sad. But is it noble? Will I stand up and root for her? “Get a man! Get a man!” Probably not. Unless the man is a really cool, handsome super-powerful vampire. And then . . . Nope not even then. I want something better, bigger.

I want Meg Ryan trying to save her independent bookstore. I want Katniss shooting an apple out of the judges’ pig’s mouth. I want Superman going back in time. (But please for the love of all that is holy, don’t have him die of a broken heart clutching a penny.)

Does our bus story have a goal? Not really. We could probably come up with one, and that’s part of turning an idea into a story. Let’s say that Bob (the boy) and Sadie (the girl) are snatched away to a faraway planet because it turns out that they are the only ones who can save the likeable, but slightly smelly Fergrulians from a terrible plague. Now we have a hero and a plot. The next thing we need is . . .

3) Obstacles

The idea that you need obstacles seems kind of obvious. I mean imagine that in our story Bob and Sadie get to Fegrulia, stop the plague, and leave. Not much of story. Most authors get that they need obstacles. What they don’t get is how important it is that the obstacles, are hard, big, impossible even. Think about The Fellowship of the Ring.

Here we have this happy little hobbit. The only thing he has to worry about is what kind of fireworks they are having at his Uncle’s party. Until a wizard tells him he has to take the ring, he gets chased by Nazguls, discovers the wizard isn’t at the inn, gets taken by a cloaked stranger, gets stabbed, almost dies,gets recued by a hot elf chick, is nearly caught, makes it to the elves only to realize he must take the ring, tries to go over the mountains, gets hit by an avalanche, tries to go under, gets attacked by a giant freshwater squid, hopes for help from the dwarves, discovers they are all dead, is stabbed by a cave troll, gets attacked by things that can crawl on walls and ceilings, get’s chased by a huge fiery demon, loses the wizard . . . and that’s just in, like, the first third of the first movie.

Whether you are writing a thriller, a romance, a mystery, or a story about an alien school bus, you must put your character in situations where the reader feels empathy for him, fears for him, and wonders how he will possibly manage to succeed.

4) Which leads us to the fourth element. Consequences. We almost have the four parts of our bus story now. We have the heroes. They have a goal. We are going to give them big hard obstacles standing between success and failure. Now all we need is to set the clock ticking. What happens if they succeed? What happens if they fail?

In Demon Spawn, I knew my main character and her friends were going to try and help Visala, the seraph. cross the outer circles of Hell to get to Judgment. But I needed a really god reason. The carrot part is that if they do this, Visala can clear their names in an attack on the Trans. And Onyx—Blaze’s friend—demands they also get angel-fire. That’s the positive. But if they fail, the seraph dies, they will be thrown in prison for life or worse, and they might get killed by the denizens of outer Hell along the way.

And to increase the tension, there is something odd about Hell and Judgment, they only have a limited time before the seraph dies, and our hero doesn’t trust anyone’s motives.

In our bus story, we must have some pretty drastic consequences. Obstacles and consequences help the reader root for your hero. Especially if the consequences are not just to them, but to someone they love. I would root for our heroes in the bus story just because the Fergrulians are likeable, if slightly smelly. But what if the plague’s next victim will be Earth? What if Sadle’s little sister will be the first to die? What if the plague will hit Earth in less than five days? Get the picture?

So the first thing you do when you get an idea is wait. Let the idea muddle in your brain for a while. Give it time to germinate into a full story. Who is the hero? What’s she trying to accomplish? What stands in her way? What if she fails?

Once you have all four of those elements, You can give yourself the beginning (how it all starts) the middle (what they are trying to do and what stands in their way) and the end (success or failure, or something in between.)

Another thing that helps is letting the first idea meet, date, and hopefully mate with a second idea. Take the story of Shrek, you know the big green Ogre. The first idea is that an ogre has to recue a princess to save his swamp. Fun idea, but not all that unique. However, when you combine the second idea—that the princess is actually an ogre at night due to a curse that can only be broken by love’s kiss—lots of new baby ideas are born.

Way back at the top of this post, Julia asked if what she was facing was writers block. I don’t think so. Writers block can and does happen. But it is generally when your story has hit a snag and your subconscious needs time to work it out. In our trail analogy, you know where you came from, you know where you are going, but you’ve temporarily lost your way.

What I think Julia is facing trying to force a story that isn’t quite ready to be born yet. It’s only an idea, waiting to turn into a full blown plot. Give it time. Imagine the characters. Explore the setting in your head. Start to hear dialogue. Don’t tell anyone yet. Just wait. And when it finally demands to be set free put it on paper as fast as you can.

Of course there are a whole slew of ways to ways to do what I’ve described above. if you’re an outliner, outline away. If you’re a researcher, start looking things up. If you’re visual, draw pictures. I like to start a character bible. What about the rest of you? What is your tried and true process for turning an idea into a story?

The Dreaded Bio

2011-01-13T12:59:00.004-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

I had to write a bio for my publisher this week and I was instructed to write something unique about me. You wouldn’t think that writing in any form would be hard for a writer, but this was hard for me. What can you really say about yourself?

I sat there at my desk, just thinking. What is unique about me? I’m pretty average. Being a writer was sort of unique, but since people would be reading this bio in the back of my book, they would already know that. Strike that one. I’m a mom. Still not that unique. I realized that I don’t leave my house a lot because I’m usually home taking care of kids or writing or whatever. But that’s not the type of unique you probably want people to know in a bio. “Julie is a hermit who takes care of kids and writes books and rarely leaves her house except to shop for food.” Yeah, I don’t know if my publisher would think that was a good idea to tell people.

Maybe part of the problem is that I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble about a writer’s life. I mean, my husband has been asked several times when he’s going to retire since his wife is a published author, because, of course, being a published author means we have oodles of money lying around and we fill the tub with hundred dollar bills and roll in it before bed every night, right? Wouldn’t that look great in my bio (and my bank account)? “Julie loves to take a dip in a cool, money-filled pool each night.” Oh, man, I laughed myself silly even just writing that. (Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with rolling in your royalty money in your tub, if that’s what you like to do.)

But I also don’t want to be someone like my daughter’s BYU professor who introduced himself to the class by going over his resume. Although she did find out where he went to school and what jobs he’d had, it was pretty boring. I’m assuming my readers don’t care much that I worked at a tomato stand for a summer job once. Maybe they care that I earned a degree at BYU. I thought I wanted to put that in, even though it may be boring, because I worked hard for it, so it just seems right that I could have that there at least.

So my list of unique things about me was pretty short. I’m a mom. I’m a hermit. I’m a writer. (Not necessarily in that order.) So I expanded my list to things I’ve done. I got to meet Princess Diana. I’ve been able to travel to places such as London, Paris, Athens, and Ottawa. I teach a journalism class. I’ve had eight children. I’m working on my eighth book. I play the flute and I’m learning the bagpipes, (but I sort of stink at the bagpipes. They’re hard to play!)

Of course that’s the list I ended up using for the bio, mostly because it made me sound unique and interesting whether I am or not. I threw in that I teach at BYU to balance the unique with the boring, but all in all, I was pretty happy with it. Here’s how it turned out:

Julie Coulter Bellon loves the number eight, which is probably why she has eight children and is excited to see her eighth book taking shape. Her claim to fame, besides being an author, is that she got to meet Princess Diana when she was twelve years old. Julie loves to travel and her favorite cities are Athens, Paris, Ottawa, and London. She’s learning to play the bagpipes and she’s not very good at it, yet, (she thinks she sounds like a sick moose), but she’s working on it. She teaches a journalism course for BYU Continuing Education, and loves to stay up with current events and our changing world. You can keep up with Julie and all her projects at www.juliebellon.com

What do you think? Will my publisher be happy? When you read a book, do you even read the author’s bio? What kind of things do you want to see there if you do?

Time for the Whitney Strrrretch

2011-01-12T16:09:00.003-05:00

Whitney finalists will be announced February 1st. I don’t yet know when ballots will be due, but I’m guessing sometime in April, since the Whitney gala is May 7th. Thus, I’m trying to get a jump on Whitney reading by targeting books I think might be finalists, which beats trying to read a zillion books in two months. Last year I ALMOST read all the Whitney finalists. I missed it by two books (as Agent Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by that much."). Last year there were 30 books. This year, there will be 35, since there are now seven categories. The Whitney Committee has decided to split YA into two categories—YA General and YA Speculative. This was an excellent decision, since even with the split, both YA categories are sizeable—there are 13 nominees in YA General, and YA Speculative is the largest category, with a whopping 26 nominees. Other bits of Whitney nominee trivia: the smallest category is Historical, with seven nominees, and the second largest is Romance, with twenty nominees.

So far, I’ve read a grand total of eleven of the nominees—four in General Fiction, one in Historical, one in Romance, three in Mystery/Suspense, two in Speculative. One of those two Speculative books was Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, which was AMAZING. I figure Way of Kings will be a finalist, and I figured I’d better read it—all thousand pages of it—before the finalists were announced, or I wouldn’t have time afterward.

I’ve also read two books that were nominated but weren’t eligible—Devil’s Food Cake and Key Lime Pie, Josi Kilpack’s mysteries. Josi is the current Whitney President, which is why her books aren't eligible. But I still get credit for reading 13 nominees, right? But no matter how I juggle the stats, I’ve still got a lot of reading to do. I’m currently reading Matched, by Ally Condie, and thoroughly enjoying it. And for my Kindle (I want to have a paper book and an e-book going at the same time), this morning I bought Wrong Number, Rachelle Christensen’s highly praised debut mystery novel.

Matched and Wrong Number are two books that appeal to me (dystopian YA fiction and mystery fiction), but as I read for the Whitneys, I’ll end up reading many books that I wouldn’t have chosen to read otherwise, which raises the question of the day: is it possible to admire a book and deem it an excellent book without particularly liking the book? I say yes, it is. Liking a book isn’t necessarily the same thing as thinking it’s a well-written book. For example: sometimes I have difficulty with books in the romance category because I’m not much of a romance fan. I enjoy a little romance in the books I read, but when the romance is the center of the plot, I sometimes have a harder time with it. I think of one book I read last year that was painful for me—not because it was a bad book; it was well-written, and I’m sure romance fans loved it, but it just didn’t appeal to me. But objectively, I could see it was a skillfully written novel. Another book I read—this one in the historical category—was a book where my personal enjoyment of the story ranked about three stars. But it was a superbly written book. In fact, I even nominated it for a Whitney.

I like the way Whitney reading pushes me into trying new authors and different genres than I normally read. It’s good to stretch, even if I occasionally struggle with a book that's just not to my tastes. How about you? Have you read books that you admired or respected, while not particularly liking them? Which genres do you read in most often—and if you’re a Whitney Academy voter, which categories require you to stretch the furthest from your usual reading?

Writing YA Dystopia: Two different thoughts

2011-01-11T16:03:00.001-05:00

In a couple months I have to teach a class about writing dystopian fiction, so I'm reading as much as I can on the subject. The question that everyone seems to be asking is: why do teenagers love it so much?

While I don't think that there's a single answer, and I don't mean to claim that all readers have the same motivations, some answers seem much more likely to me than others, and one answer in particular bugs me.

Before I start pulling out the quotes from other stuff I've been reading, let me tell you my theory (which, admittedly, isn't terribly original):

Dystopian fiction is almost always about oppression and control, and there is no group of Americans who views themselves as more oppressed and controlled than teenagers. They're at an age where they are becoming more and more capable--physically, mentally, etc--and yet they're still not allowed to make many choices about their lives. They are in a very structured environment, moving every hour at the ring of a bell to a different room where they learn things they're required to learn, whether they want to or not. Depending on their school, they might not be able to wear what they want, sit where they want, or even set foot off campus during a certain period of time. After school they may work at a job which gives them responsibility, but still no real choices--they can use their minimum wage salary to buy some consumer goods or some fast food, but they can't use that small amount of money to change their situation in life. At home they have to follow their parents' rules, continue studying things they don't appreciate, and do chores--forced labor--for a system they have little or no say in (kind of a taxation-without-representation scenario).

I'm not saying high school or parents or homework are bad. I'm just saying that it's easy to see how teenagers view themselves as oppressed and controlled.

I remember when I was in high school we'd protest everything. The school was less than a mile from the state capitol building, and there was more than one occasion when students would walk out and march up the hill shouting something or other. And it seemed like I was school board meetings every couple of months, joining my friends in the only way we could make our displeasure known. And lest you get the wrong impression, I wasn't much of a hooligan--half the time I was protesting in favor of the status quo, protesting against other protesting teenagers. But the point is: teenagers want to fight for something. They want choices, and they want a voice.

Consequently, it's not at all surprising that teens suck up books like Matched and The Maze Runner and The Hunger Games as though they were the last drops of water in the desert. These books are metaphors of the teenage condition, yet they all have heroic teens who break free from their oppressor's controls.

So, that's my theory about why teens love dystopia. Here's the theory that bugs me:

As author Paolo Bacigalupi put it in a recent New York Times article: "I suspect that young adults crave stories of broken futures because they themselves are uneasily aware that their world is falling apart."

As my brother, Dan Wells, put it on his blog: "Dystopia is huge right now, especially in YA. This is probably due to the fact that we live in one–or, more correctly, this is due to the fact that YA readers are finally paying close enough attention to realize that we live in one."

I have no quibble with either Bacigalupi's assertion that the world is falling apart, or Dan's claim that we live in a dystopia. Both of those claims are subjective, but I'd tend to agree with both, to some extent. No, my complaint is with the idea that our political and cultural climate is what's turning teens on to dystopian fiction--and I especially worry that if you write a story with that mindset it could easily lead to pedantic, plot-driven fiction.

Teens may be paying more attention to world events, with knowledge more readily available at the click of a button, I think they're also more media savvy, and if there's anything that teens DON'T want, it's to be preached to. I have many friends who read James Patterson's Maximum Ride series with pleasure, until it became clear that the book's underlying message was about the dangers of global warming, at which point they quit reading (and some of these friends are environmentalists themselves).

It's not that this second theory about dystopia (from Dan and Bacigalupi and others) is wrong--it's that it's a dangerous mindset for authors to have as they approach their writing, because it implies the most important aspect of the book is the plot: that teens want to read dystopia because they want "What If?" scenarios and extrapolated futures. And I think that's just plain not true. Above all else, most readers want (and teens especially) to be able to relate. They want an emotional connection to characters and situations. They want to say "This character is like me!" not "This corrupt government is like my corrupt government!" If that's lacking, then no amount of frightening, not-too-distant-future dystopia will make the book worth reading.

Disclaimer: both Paolo Bacigalupi and Dan Wells are both fantastic, award-winning authors who write great books with great characters, and I'm sure they'd agree with me that emotional connection is extremely important. I'm merely saying that, as advice to authors, I don't think you should approach YA dystopia with that kind of top-down look.

Great (or Not So Great) Expectations

2011-01-10T13:34:00.003-05:00

Several years ago at a big Utah writing event, I was sitting beside an author who had published several novels nationally. As I mentioned that, along with my Farworld novels, I had published several novels with LDS publishers, she looked surprised. “But those writers aren’t very good are they?” she asked, referring to authors writing for LDS publishers.

Now I’m not going to post about whether LDS fiction is good or not. That topic has been hammered to death a million times over. And the truth is that whether LDS fiction is good and getting better all the time, or cliché-filled drivel where everyone does the right thing and joins the Church, is purely in the eyes of the beholder. What I do want to discuss is how big of a role expectations play in how we judge what we read.

Let’s take Ally Condie for example. She published multiple novels before her breakout YA, Matched. Those novels were published by Deseret Book, an LDS publisher. That would place her—in the eyes of many readers—in the “not very good” category. And yet her book that came out this fall with a national publisher has received rave reviews by many of the very same people who look down on novels from LDS publishers.

Admittedly, Matched is very different from her other novels. The story is different, the voice is different. But what isn’t different is the author. An aberration? How about James Dashner, whose first six novels were published by Cedar Fort and Shadow Mountain, an imprint of DB? Or our very own Rob Wells who published with Covenant before selling a national three book deal? Janette Rallison? Also published with LDS publisher under the pen name of Sierra St. James. Instead of an aberration, it sounds more like a trend to me.

An argument could be made that as these authors became better writers they transitioned to the national market. An argument could also be made that bigger publishers have higher paid editors with more time to work on each project. So perhaps the quality is better. And to some extent both of those statements are true. Any author who values their craft usually improves their writing over time. But this is true of both national and regional (which is what most LDS publishers are) authors. Rob’s second book was absolutely better than his first book. James’ 13th Reality was written better than his Jimmy Fincher series. They didn’t magically leap tall buildings when they signed with a national publisher.

As far as editors, in general, editors from bigger publishers do more thorough edits. They don’t have nearly as many projects to work on at the same time as LDS editors who are seriously overburdened, even by today’s tightened publishing standards. But I can say for a fact that I would gladly have any of my national projects edited by Kirk Shaw or Lisa Mangum, who edit me at Covenant and Deseret Book. And I specifically asked Lisa, who read Ally’s book before it was even submitted nationally, if it had been significantly changed by the national editor who worked on it. Her answer was no.

So if these are the same writers, and if the edits are more detailed, but not enough to make a huge difference, what explains the different ways their stories are viewed? My theory is expectations. To a large extent, you read what you expect to read. If you expect to read a story filled with clichés and poorly developed plots, your mindset going into that book makes you jump on the flaws and miss many of the great parts.

In a recent e-mail exchange with another author, the author recalled how back in high school she was working on a student poetry anthology. To teach the students a lesson, the teacher allowed several lesser known poems by famous authors to be slipped into the submissions. Did the students recognize the greatness of what they were reading? Or did they let their preconceived notions influence them? Considering that I’m using this as an example, you can probably guess. They ripped the masters just like they did their fellow students. Because they expected to read crap, they got crap.

Clearly there are exceptions to this rule. I’ve read submissions to an unpublished author contest that blew me away. And I’ve read books by some of my favorite authors that I hated. Ever have a friend tell you’ll love a book, only to find yourself bored to tears? High expectations don’t guarantee we will love something and low expectations don’t guarantee failure. But you can’t deny that they seriously color your view.

I think the same applies to Julie’s recent post about DB banning The Maze Runner. As Mormons, we tend to look at books by our own differently. Would so many members of the church really have made such a fuss about Twilight if it hadn’t been written by a fellow Mormon? “She’s LDS and she put a boy and a girl in bed together.” While at the same time, non-Mormons were complaining the make out scenes were too tame because “the author is Mormon.”

I am 100 percent fine with Deseret Book putting Maze Runner on Special Order status. I suspect that if Demon Spawn is published they will probably do the same thing with that. It doesn’t have any fake swear words or even real swearwords used as expletives. But it is a story about humans who have been damned to Hell and the Demons who guard them. By its very nature there are some pretty dark parts. Human heads on spikes, games played with humans as live grails. There is violence. And although they are used in the context of place, damn, hell, and damned are sprinkled liberally throughout. Is it gratuitous violence? I don’t think so. But it will probably not be placed on DB shelves, and like I said, I am totally okay with that.

But here’s the kicker. I know of many, many books carried right now on DB shelves that have either worse language than Maze Runner, more sex than Twilight, or are darker than Demon Spawn. Why haven’t readers complained about those? I believe it is for the exact same reason that many readers look down on LDS fiction. Expectations. They don’t expect non-LDS authors to have the same morals (although many of them do) so they overlook a swear word or a racy scene. They don’t expect a novel by an author who is Mormon to have a cuss in it. So when it does, they are shocked and complain to store employees.

I said at the top of this post that I’m not trying to convince the unbelievers that many, many LDS authors are every bit as good or better than national authors. James Dashner, Ally Condie and the rest are great authors. And they were before Entertainment Weekly started mentioning their names. There are some LDS authors who I think are still perfecting their craft. There are some publishers who could spend more time on editing what they publish. But I know for a fact of more authors than I could count on both hands who are every bit as good as the authors that publish nationally.

And I am absolutely not trying to convince anyone to change their standards on what they think is and isn’t appropriate in the books they read. But next time you are offended by something you read in a book by an LDS author, go back and think about the last few books you read by national authors. Were they less offensive? Or we were wearing a different shade of lenses to view them through.

What I am suggesting is that some people might want to reevaluate their measuring sticks.

Let me finish by clarifying that I am not suggesting LDS authors shouldn’t have high standards. With what we know about who were are and why we are here, we absolutely have a lot to live up to. And with national exposure comes even greater opportunities to let our lights so shine. Mt greatest dream is to succeed nationally and to use that success to place even more focus on the LDS novels I will continue to write. I like to imagine what Stephanie Meyer could do if she wrote an awesome LDS series. How many lives could she influence?

But there’s another part of me that worries that many people would judge her unworthy to write to or give firesides to the LDS market. I worry that if Demon Spawn sells, people might wonder if someone who writes about demons and Hell, should be writing church history time traveling novels for Deseret Book. I can’t speak for any other authors, but I can tell you that I will never write anything that I would be ashamed to have a General Authority read. Would they like all of my books? Probably not. You know how poorly edited those LDS novels are. (Just kidding!) I am doing my best to create exciting, uplifting, well-crafted novels. And I think most of my peers are doing the exact same thing.

I am thrilled to death that Whitney nominees this year cover everything from serial killers to corny LDS romances. I am proud to be affiliated with the kind of writers who have the talent to break into the national market, whether they ever choose to or not. And the next time that someone asks me if LDS authors are any good, I’ll tell them, “That all depends on what you are looking for.”

This Dedication Goes Out To...

2011-01-10T00:20:00.003-05:00

So today in Sacrament the speaker talked about how when you open up a book, very often you'll find a dedication from the author to someone special. It had the whole spiritual hook, as in when we write our "Book of Life" that the book should be dedicated to the Lord, but it got me thinking about dedications. The way the speaker talked about it, the dedication, when you were writing that book, was one of the most important things - that as you write your "Book of Life," if it's dedicated to the Lord, the book will be different.

But as an author, I realized that my books are never written around my dedication. They're typically an afterthought, instead of the prerequisite to the rest of the book.

I do always read dedications, even though most of the time I have no idea who that person is or why the dedication was given. One of my favorite authors dedicates all of her books to her husband. Another never has any dedications.

My first book I dedicated to my parents, my husband and my kids. The next one the dedication got left out accidentally. With the third, it was for my brother and his wife for something they'd done for my family, as well as my daughter.

When I write a book, often the dedication is the last thing on my mind and I don't write it until I'm sent a copy to edit.

It made me wonder though about other writers - when do you decide who to dedicate a book to? Who do you typically dedicate books to? For those that aren't published, is it something you've thought about? Who would you dedicate your debut release to?

The Power of Thirty Minutes

2011-01-06T14:09:00.002-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

If you haven’t voted already, today is the last day to vote in LDS Publishers Annual Cover contest. Go here to vote for your favorite cover!

It’s a brand new year and I’ve made some New Year’s resolutions. I won’t bore you with all of them here, but one of them was to take thirty minutes a day as a gift to myself and write. Now some of you may say pshaw, what can you do in thirty minutes? Why would that be a gift to yourself?

It’s because I’m a parent. I think most parents are alike in that everything else seems to come first before yourself. Parents are concerned with helping Johnny do his homework, and making sure Janey has dinner before she heads out to her volunteer work, or that the baby is fed and changed. There is always something to do and at the end of the day I pretty much just fall into bed exhausted and think to myself, I’ll get that writing done tomorrow.

The thing is, I’ve had ideas for two non-fiction books come to me in a really strong manner. I also have another fiction novel idea that I’d like to dive into. But without taking time for myself, and giving myself permission to have that gift, they will never get done. And I don’t think that God would have given us talents and inspiration without wanting us to do something with them.

Now, I’ve been told in the past that there is a time and a season for everything, and that maybe this isn’t my season for writing. Unfortunately, I have also realized that if I don’t write, and don’t take that time for myself, I start to feel smothered somehow and burdened. There is just something so freeing and stress-relieving for me to be able to sit down and write. And, honestly, I don’t think there is any particular time in my life when it will be my season for writing. Writing is just a part of me and a part of my life. It’s more of a need and not something I can wait to do when my kids are older or when a different “season” comes along.

So, while thirty minutes may not be much, it’s all mine, and I know if I can really focus, I’ll be able to get on paper the stories and ideas that are coming to my mind, and I’ll also be a happier person who is developing talents and pursuing dreams. Who knew thirty little minutes could do all that?

The Question of Peeking

2011-01-05T16:13:00.004-05:00

So it’s January. Back to reality. The Christmas holidays are over. The chocolate is almost gone, except for a few stray Hershey’s kisses and a Santa candy that I opened today, then rejected when I saw it was cookies and cream instead of chocolate. Normally, I’d probably have eaten it, but after eating eight hundred pounds of chocolate and other assorted treats over the holidays, I’m trying to get in a little better shape (what an original idea for January, right?). Note that this doesn’t mean I’m avoiding chocolate—I did intend to eat the Santa—but it means I’m trying not to eat it unless I really want it, rather than just eating it because it’s there, and cookies and cream is not a flavor I swoon over.

Er . . . okay, I was a little less than accurate in the preceding paragraph when I claimed the chocolate is almost gone. The purchased-for-Christmas chocolate is almost gone, but there are those three bags of chocolate that I bought when I saw a display of Christmas candy for 75 percent off. But I’ll have you know that I haven’t opened the bags. They’re in the pantry—the kids don’t even know they’re there (though my daughter will know once she reads this blog—Shauna, keep your paws off the Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. Eat those weird sugar cookies instead).

So in the aftermath of Christmas, here’s the philosophical question for the day: when it comes to Christmas presents, are you a peeker or a non-peeker?

I’m a non-peeker. I would never want to try to discover all my Christmas presents before the big day. It’s not that I’m wonderful at delaying gratification—I always bite Tootsie Pops to get to the Tootsie Roll in the center, and I confess to skipping ahead a bit in The Way of Kings this morning and reading a scene out of order because I wanted to know what happened to a particular character. But when it comes to gifts, I love happy surprises.

My brother was a peeker. I remember my mother hiding his gifts at my aunt’s house to keep him from finding them. He claims that finding your gifts beforehand adds to the fun—you get the excitement of finding out what you’re getting, and then on Christmas, you get the excitement of actually getting it. To which I say: dude, you're a raving lunatic. So much of the fun of Christmas is in the anticipation and wondering—the not knowing—the exquisite excitement of finally finding out what Santa brought you or what's under the tree. To find out all your gifts beforehand would be a bummer (I don’t know if my brother still tries to peek—I’ll have to ask his wife).

My husband was also a peeker in his childhood. To him, the fun was in the challenge of it—finding your presents beforehand. I one hundred percent cannot relate to that. Where’s the fun in knowing everything you’re getting? How can Christmas morning possibly be as exciting if you’ve already unearthed all the gifts?

To my delight, my children have all inherited my non-peeking ways. I don’t have to go to great lengths to hide the presents—I just keep them in my closet. The kids know they’re there. My husband suggested that maybe this is genius on my part—because I don’t try to hide the fact that they’re in the closet, there’s no challenge in trying to discover them, which lessens the temptation. I’d like to claim genius, but I suspect it’s just that the kids are innately non-peekers. This year, my younger son accidentally found out what he was getting when he went to Amazon.com on my computer—oops—to look up the gift he had requested and on that page was a statement that I’d ordered it on such-and-such date. He was bummed, feeling like he’d ruined Christmas (he bounced back, of course, and was very excited, but at the moment, he wasn’t happy that he’d accidentally seen that shipping info). And we still had some surprises in store--when he saw one of them on Christmas morning--something he totally hadn't expected--he was so excited that he screamed and fell to the floor. It was a great moment.

How about you? Peeker or non-peeker?

Hiding

2011-01-04T13:39:00.003-05:00

A couple weeks ago, Julie Bellon wrote on this blog about how James Dashner's book, The Scorch Trials, was not being carried in Deseret Book due to some content issues. This led to a long and, at times, heated argument in the comment section. Some claimed that this was censorship, while others claimed it was just a business protecting its target market.

I haven't read The Scorch Trials yet (though I plan to) so I can't really comment on the decision to take it off of Deseret Book's shelves. I absolutely agree that Deseret Book has every right to remove any book it deems a bad fit to its overall brand. What I want to talk about, instead, is this target market that Deseret Book is trying so desperately to please. (So, yes: instead of criticizing a single business, I'm going to criticize a large group of people. Sorry.)

When I was president of the Whitney Awards, I'd often get emails from people--sometimes even a judge or two--asking why the Whitney Awards (an awards program for novels by LDS authors) didn't have rules that excluded books based on content that didn't live up to LDS standards. My answer was always the same: there is no moral yardstick that could possibly be applied to all books that would determine whether or not they live up to LDS standards. Some people will adamantly insist that the slightest swear word is inappropriate. Others will claim that any amount of violence is inappropriate. (Generally, these people will couch everything in the term "gratuitous": no gratuitous violence, no gratuitous sensuality. "Gratuitous" is in the eye of the beholder, and about as ambiguous a measuring stick as anything I can think of.) Consequently, the books nominated for the Whitney Awards never had to pass through any kind of Appropriateness Filter. The judges had to individually answer the question: "Which book is most deserving of the Whitney Award?" and if a judge thought LDS standards were in question, they had a right to personally vote their conscience. But there was no censorship board, no content review panel. Why? Because it simply wouldn't work. You would never be able to please every person's individual belief about what is "appropriate."

CASE IN FREAKING POINT (and the reason I'm writing about this today):

Publishers Weekly is reporting that a publisher, NewSouth Books, is re-releasing Huckleberry Finn sans the infamous 'n' word. Also missing is the word "injun".

Says the publisher: "...there was a market for a book in which the n-word was switched out for something less hurtful, less controversial. We recognized that some people would say that this was censorship of a kind, but our feeling is that there are plenty of other books out there—all of them, in fact—that faithfully replicate the text, and that this was simply an option for those who were increasingly uncomfortable, as he put it, insisting students read a text which was so incredibly hurtful."

This horrifies me. Both as a lover of literature and a student of history, this kind of attitude toward Huckleberry Finn--one of the most powerful indictments of slavery in world history--is offensive. They want a "less controversial" book about slavery? It is a whitewashing of our past; it is changing a painful, "incredibly hurtful" truth into a more comfortable lie.

While I don't mean to put The Scorch Trials on the same level as Huckleberry Finn (sorry, James), I think the exact same kind of attitude is present in both these audiences: that X is bad, therefore I must hide from it (and hide it from others).

If the people who complained about the Whitney Awards had their way--applying their standards of appropriateness with broad black-and-white strokes--then we would wipe out so much of what is good and important in literature. When we say "I won't read anything that has a swear word in it", then how many of the classics of literature would be left? The same can be said of any "appropriateness" measuring stick.

I'm not saying that we should consume all media--all books, movies, music and magazines--and that we should give them all to our kids. What I am saying is this:

There is no moral standard (in LDS theology, anyway) that suggests we are to hide from the world.

There is a moral standard that says that we should seek after "anything virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy". I think that non-edited Huckleberry Finn (and a lot of other great literature) fits into that category.

My former stake president used to have a quote hanging in his office: "When we deal with generalities, we will never succeed. When we deal with specifics, we will rarely have a failure. --Thomas S. Monson". It's fine to make value judgments about what media we consume, but judging that media from afar with universal, flawed measuring sticks is bound to produce some pretty stupid results.

Google And Games

2011-01-03T21:14:00.001-05:00

T’was the week after Christmas and all through the house,
You could make out the footsteps of even a mouse.

Why is it so quiet in the Savage household? Everyone has come down with a bad case of Android fever. Son #2 is listening to MP3s and Facebooking. Son #3 is playing something on his gameboy emulator. And Mom is downloading Disney wallpaper, adding ringtones, and updating contacts. Yep, New cell phones for Christmas.

This post isn’t actually about cell phones, but just as a side note, I think back to how Microsoft became a a powerhouse by controlling the operating systems of computers, with Apple a distant—but still powerful—second. I think we are seeing the same thing with Google.

Microsoft’s power came in the form of controlling what people created: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mails, etc. If you made it, you almost had to use their products.

Google has done the same thing, but with the world of consuming. Think about it. You voice search for restaurants, read reviews on your phone, watch a youtube video of someone who went there, call to make a reservation, use Google Maps to guide you to the location, and actually see a picture of what the place looks like as you arrive at your destination. All without ever leaving Google. All with the chance to offer you ever more customized ads, coupons, etc, throughout the process.

We’ve gone from a point where technology was all about making something to where we spend most of our time using technology to consume: read, watch, find, research, and listen. And with their massive digital library of books and documents, Google stands to get even more powerful. Amazon and Apple are big players in the digital consumption age, but I suspect they will end up playing second fiddle to Google.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. What I actually wanted to blog about was what I got for Christmas. Every year when people ask me what I want for Christmas, the answer is almost always, “Games!” I really love cool games. And Santa was good this year. I’m going to tell you about three games. Two that have been out for a couple of years, and one that’s been around for a long time, but is making a big comeback.I thought The Game of Things was new this year, but looks like it may have been out since about 2008. Still, from what I can see, it’s really become popular in the last year or so.

The idea is so simple, you wonder why no one came up with it before. Basically, one player draws a card and reads it to the group. The card will say something like, “Things you should never do with chocolate.” Then everyone writes down their own answer. Answers in our admittedly off-the-wall group would be anything from put it in your ears, or store it in your underwear, to put it in the toilet and pretend . . . well you get the idea. Then you take turns guessing who wrote what. The best thing about the game is that everyone plays every turn, and I’ve never heard so much laughter during any game.

This is a game that is best played with at least five players. We actually played with about ten of us at one point. It was fun, but just took too long to give everyone a turn. On the other hand, if you have fewer than five players it doesn’t work very well. I wouldn’t recommend it for kids much younger than ten, unless there are several of them playing, as part of the game is guessing who wrote what.

When we first took this Pandemic out of the box, it looked like another Risk type of board game. You have the usual world map, different colored markers, cards, etc. The big difference here, is that instead of trying to kill each other, all of the players cooperate to save the world from a world wide . . . you guessed it, pandemic.

I like this game for several reason. First, it’s cool to play a game where all of you are cooperating against a single opponent. Kind of fun to help each other instead of trying to trash each other. Either you all succeed in finding cures for four rampant diseases, or you all fail together.

The second fun thing is that it’s really kind of educational to see how a disease can spread, and quickly get out of control. (Okay, maybe I just have a sick idea of fun, but it is educational, while not being boring.)

The only drawback is that you can’t have any more than four players unless you have the expansion. The good news is that you can have an enjoyable game with as few as two players. It took us about thirty-five minutes to play. (Yeah, we , uh, actually did not manage to save the world. Sorry about that.) I would guess that with experienced players most games would take under an hour to complete.

Of all the games we played over the last week, I think Acquire may be my favorite. This game is actually older than me. It kind of fell off the radar for a while, and had a few changes. But now it’s back to it original form, and, from what I heard at the game store, bigger than ever.

When you first look at the board, it seems incredibly boring.

It’s essentially just a big grid of numbers and letters. Even when we began reading the rules, it didn’t seem all that cool. Basically you build hotel chains, buy and sell stock, and watch as one hotel gobbles up another.

But once you start playing, it become so engrossing I couldn’t tear myself away. The idea is that you start with a certain amount of money. You draw tiles that match the grids on the board. Once two adjoining tile are laid down, you can place a hotel on them. Every time a tile is added to the hotel, it become worth more. Eventually one hotel connects with another hotel, and as long as the smaller hotel is less than 11 tiles big, it gets acquired.

Where the real strategy (and fun) comes in is buying and selling stock. If you are a majority (most shares) or minority (second most shares) shareholder in a hotel that is acquired, you get cash. You can then sell your stock in that hotel, trade it for stock in the bigger hotel, or keep it in hopes that the hotel chain will be placed back on the board again. You use your cash to buy additional stock in other hotels.

The challenge is that you need cash flow to keep buying more hotel stock, but there is a limited number of shares in any given hotel. And ultimately the players with the most stock in the hotels that survive cash out big. As soon as you finish a game, you start to think of other strategies and want to play again. Really fun game with lots of different ways to approach it.

You can have from three to six players and games take anywhere from one to two hours. Because so much of this game involves strategic thinking, I think players younger than twelve or so would have a hard time competing or enjoying the game.

So that’s what we’ve been playing here. How about you?

My Top Ten Books for 2010

2010-12-30T16:14:00.004-05:00

by Julie Coulter Bellon

It seems that the trend this week has been to post what your top ten books of 2010 were that you read. I think I shall do the same, but I couldn’t choose between Josi Kilpack’s Key Lime Pie and Devil’s Food Cake, so they are tied. Or, you could say I posted my top eleven. Whichever makes you happy. So here we go:

Cold As Ice by Stephanie Black was one of the creepiest books I read all year. Loved how it kept me guessing!

Wrong Number by Rachelle Christensen had suspense and romance and was really well done for the author’s debut novel.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins was a good ending to the series. I didn’t love all the violence, but she did tie up everything with a few surprising twists and turns.

A Time to Die by Jeff Savage was the book I’d been waiting years to read and it was well worth the wait. I love Shandra mysteries and hope there are many more to come.

Alma the Younger by H.B. Moore was a riveting book and really made me think about Alma and his life. I just love books that I think about long after I’ve put them down.

Between the Lines by Erin Klingler was a book with romance and intrigue including a nicely layered plot with likable characters. Can’t wait for her next book!

Courting Miss Lancaster by Sarah Eden makes me smile whenever I think about it. I loved the author’s style of writing, her humor, the way she writes the time period, I love everything about this book. This is a book I will read again and again just to remember all the good parts.

Key Lime Pie and Devil’s Food Cake by Josi Kilpack are books I have a hard time not gushing over. I love this series. Josi writes the main characters so well you’d think they were real and the plots are incredibly well done. I think I’ve recommended this series to everyone I know. It’s that good.

Crossfire by Traci Hunter Abramson is another in the Saint Squad series and this one features an old flame for Seth, an escalating terrorist threat, and lots of heart pounding action.

Murder by Design Betsy Brannon Green continues the story of Kennedy Killingsworth and it has all of Betsy’s southern charm with a mystery woven in between. It totally sucks you in and keeps you reading all night.

What I’m Reading Now

I’m going to start the new year off right by reading Sarah Eden’s new book The Kiss of a Stranger, Traci Hunter Abramson’s new book, Smokescreen, Cross My Heart by Julie Wright and I will be first in line to get Josi Kilpack’s new Blackberry Crumble. I got Decision Points by George W. Bush for Christmas so I am reading that, as well as the How to Train Your Dragon series that I’m reading with my son. I think 2011 is going to be a great year for books and I can’t wait. Did all of you make a top ten list of books that you read in 2010? What were your top picks?