Book Review: I found one of the hidden jewels! Circle of Ceridwen

I am a reasonably easy reader to please... and a very hard reader to enthrall. I like  a lot of books, but I passionately love only a few. My favorite authors can be counted on one hand. And if Octavia Randolph keeps it up I may need another finger.

The world of digital books is like a great mountain of ash. You step into it and you're instantly up to your waist in dust. You know there are jewels of incredible power hidden in the grime and fluff, but finding them is a mammoth task. After more than a year of searching, I have finally found one of the jewels in The Circle of Ceridwen, the first book in Randolf's historical series.

Oddly enough, I never would have bought this book in a million years based on the cover and the description. I like a good historical novel and I'm not adverse to violent stories but I have never found a book with big swords on the front to be very emotionally powerful and a description that immediately touts the presence of "vikings with tatoos" is unlikely to have the emotional caliber I'm looking for. But I downloaded the book because of one of those free deals and I was very pleasantly surprised. I'd be willing to pay plenty for books like this.

Here's the real deal on this book:

• Its style is accessible and conversational, yet historically evocative. All the semi-literate reviewers confused about the grammar are simply wrong. There are few if any errors in this book. There is a refreshing absence of flamboyance and pompous writing. The prose is easy, flowing and without distraction, a rare treat and the very first necessity for me to love a book.
• The book has the emotional impact that so few have these days. That's hard to prove without reading it. It's a mix of good characters and realism. 
• The story is told in first person. Always a plus in my opinion. You experience ninth century England through the eyes of a young woman named Ceridwin.
• The characters are likable, believable and relatable, including the supposed "bad guys." I am one of those readers who demands a likable main characters. I simply won't suffer through a book, no matter how good the story is, if the heroine or hero bores me or ticks me off. Here is a young heroine who is so different from the modern vision of a "strong female heroine." She is strong and courageous without being divorced from real women. She is emotionally real and does not try to be "everywoman" so that all readers can see themselves in her. She is a distinct character but one you can love with her flaws. The other characters are also well developed and fascinating.
• The plot is riveting from the first few pages. It takes some very unexpected turns and yet it is never confusing. The tension is held throughout with a fierce desire to see Ceridwen survive and thrive.
• There is warfare, suspense, incredible tension and yet there is no classic villain. It is the real world. The invaders and those who threaten the heroine are people, in fact at least moderately understandable people. You may not agree with all of their decisions or motivations but they are understandable and even honorable in many instances. It is the sheer believability of the characters and world that make the story so emotionally gripping. 
• The details of the historical world are breathtaking. I've read enough historical fiction and nonfiction to know extensive research when I see it. While it's hard to say exactly what life was like in the ninth century, this feels both true and consistent. The level of detail is wonderful with none of the vagueness that results from historical uncertainty and no facts clearly manipulated to suit the needs of fiction. It fulfills that thirst for something beautifully historical and effortless to read at the same time. 
• The pace is just right. This is a subjective matter as far as I can tell. Some people may call this pace "slow." I call many books that have little emotion and character-develop to them "chaotic and rushed."  It isn't constant action. It is instead ever-present story, plot and emotional tension. At no point does the story slow down in order to show off the author's excellent grasp of the history. There are no wasted words or long descriptive scenes for the sake of showing off.
• The book's only flaws may be its cover and description, which hint at a rollicking ride of battle, "weapons porn" and macho atmosphere. The reader only gets to see one "fight" in real time in this first book of the series and that one doesn't even result in anyone dying and is a minor incident in the overall plot. There is plenty of battle going on around but the main character is a girl, who isn't unrealistically placed in the middle of battles. Some readers I know who are into constant battle might be taken in by the cover and description and may be very disappointed. While other readers, who are interested in more character-based stories with flavor and conversational tone, may miss out on this one due to the cover and description. 
• It is fashionable today to comment on the ending in a review. This is the first book in a series and while the ending appears to wrap up the major plot lines, it is clear that peace is unlikely to last long. There is plenty of room for more story and yet the ending doesn't feel contrived or episodic. I appreciate this. The fact that much of the plot is sort of wrapped up makes it easier to resist spending my kids' lunch money on the next book right away but I am eager to get my hands on the next book. 

Unique, detailed settings galore: Real super secret trick of the trade # 3

This tip is obvious on first inspection but using it to its full potential is an art form

How long do you spend drawing maps and sketching out buildings? Most writers either spend a lot of time on this or their settings are sorely lacking in detail. I've drawn my share of maps and sketched quite a few buildings, but there is a shortcut that will get you there a lot faster. It will do a few other things besides. And you already know what it is and have probably used it many times for other purposes. 

GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth

Here's a short list of the things I use either GoogleMaps or GoogleEarth for while writing and the reasons why one or both is almost always open on my desktop:

Imabe by Simon Ledingham of the Geographic Project Collection

1. Real settings: If you are writing about a setting in the real world, it's pretty obvious that you're going to want to have a map and pictures of it handy while you write out your first draft and when you edit. You've got to get distances right and check for street names, but you also want to include details of the landscape and buildings. If you're writing about a real location, even if you have been there, open up GoogleMaps and refresh your memory. You'd be surprised how many more details reemerge when you see the landscape around your location. You know the key to getting your reader engrossed in the story is often in the use of sensory details. Take a look at the pictures and if you've been in a place with similar plants and climate, remember how it smelled. What would that city street feel and sound like? I write a lot of scenes in real places because even though my books are fantasy, they're set in the contemporary world and the realism of the settings adds to the plausibility and suspense of the story.

2. Fantasy settings: But I've written fantasy locations as well and GoogleMaps is just as good for that. There is no need to draw a map from scratch and fill in every detail even if your world is complete fantasy. Use GoogleMaps like a template. Is your world desert? Fine. Find a large desert and use the distances, types of rock formations, water sources and habitations to make a realistic map of your world. Change a few things and voila, you've got a fantasy desert with a lot more detail than you could generate on your own. As you describe your character's movements, use the close views on GoogleEarth to grab details of the landscape. Need a cityscape? The same can be done. Look at the street view and imagine how the city of your fantasy world would be different. But choose a part of a city that is at least close and that way you'll have the basic layout already.

3. Planning action scenes: At one point I knew I needed a bridge. It had to be a two-lane freeway with not much in terms of railings, so that one of my characters could leap off in desperation. And it had to be high enough for that to be dangerous but not high enough to make survival impossible. And it had to have at least a low wall in the center for my other characters to take cover behind in a gun battle. I assumed I was going to have to choose a river and invent my  own bridge, but I actually found the perfect real-world bridge in Portland, Oregon on GoogleMaps and once I had a real bridge coordinating the scene realistically and plotting the aftermath was relatively easy. Even if the building, street, mountain, bay or bridge that you choose for your scene isn't in the location you say it is or is really pure fantasy, choose a look-alike location on GoogleEarth, get into the detail mode and imagine your scene on location. The details and the physical movement of action scenes will go much more smoothly.

4. Coordinating distance, time and plot:  If your plot requires characters moving from one location to another and arriving at a particular time, let alone if more than one group must move and arrive at the same time, you need to plot the movements and time on a map. (I know you may think your scene is simple enough to avoid this step, but please take it from someone who tried that a lot of times and had to backtrack every time due to a need for details. If you plot the movements on a map, you will have a much easier time keeping details accurate and evocative.) You can do this by hand but is is grueling. Better, grab an area with enough similarity to your fictional setting on GoogleMaps and plot the movements there. Are your fantasy heroes on foot through the Great Kierlap Mountains and the villains racing on horses across the plains of Umthrak both heading for the city of Fallem? There are plenty of mountains and plains that intersect with a city in the real world. And you can get distance and time estimates for travel on foot as well as by bicycle and car. (Google, would you please add horses!) Note that distances and time on foot will still be calculated based on roads. But this actually helps a great deal. Even in a world of wilderness, your characters won't be going in a straight line. They'll be following winding trails or at least the bottoms of canyons. Use the time and distance calculations as a guide and adjust appropriately. This helps to keep estimates of time and distance realistic and to keep directions consistent over long plot sequences.

5. Easy variety and detail in dwellings and other buildings: When you're using GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps, don't forget that most buildings can be transferred to another location in your imagination. If you need a medieval castle in your landscape, go find one. A real one. If it is partly in ruins or you simple don't like part of it, change it, and sketch a new one. But having a real one to look at from the air before hand will be immensely helpful in making your castle realistic. You may also not need anything out of the ordinary. Maybe you just need a suburban house but you want to describe it well. You could use your house, if you live in the right neighborhood, but what about the next book? You could also make up all those details, but you're going to start repeating yourself eventually. GoogleMaps provides you with endless possibilities of buildings to describe. And when you're writing about imaginary locations, you can use any building and keep a 3D picture of it handy on your desktop for evoking detail and planning scenes.

Note 1: You'll notice that I use GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth almost interchangeably. They aren't exactly the same. GoogleMaps.com is  a website and you can use from any kind of internet connect. GoogleEarth is a program that you can download onto your computer. The basic version is free. I find it easier to find locations and get directions and estimate distance and time on GoogleMaps. I find GoogleEarth has better access to street view and more photographs of specific places. Obviously they are really the same thing but I use both. You could probably get by with on or the other depending on how complex your setting isl

Note 2:  Just in case anyone misunderstands this, I am not suggesting that you should copy Google's maps to make your own map. Don't plagiarize. This is not about making a map to put in your book. This is about using a working and interactive map to plan out the details of your scenes and plot. If you need to draw a map to put in your book, that's another process entirely. You can draw a map, hire someone or buy software that will help you draw realistic maps.

This on-line thesaurus is a writer's best friend: Real Super Secret Trick of the Trade # 2

I'm sharing the real tricks of writing that I use every day. 

Today, here's the one site I always have open on my desktop if I'm writing on my computer. Granted, you have to keep discipline in order to have your browser open without going to social media and breaking up your writing time. But if you can do that, open a window in the background and you'll have the basic tools at your fingertips.

My favorite on-line thesaurus is www.wordhippo.com.

Here's why:

1. You know that point when you're writing along at a good pace and your character smiles in an unfriendly way. Not at you necessarily. At another character. You don't want to use the word "smile" or "smirk" or "grin," because you've already used those in the past few chapters. And you definitely don't want to resort to "humorlessly" or (shudder) "grimly?"  Now, maybe you're a born genius and this never happens to you. Maybe you always have strong, specific words at your fingertips and finding the perfect one never sets you back a moment.

But if you're like most of us, this kind of problem can lead to writer's block or to using vague placeholder words or just to time-consuming frustration. Back in the day, we had to keep a heavy thesaurus around and even that was limited by printing costs in the number of words it could list. The days of the internet are truly wonderful!

Wordhippo suggests "sneer," "leer" and "beam" for a potentially unfriendly smile. 

Painting by Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450–1516) through Wikipedia

2.  Áside from synonyms, Wordhippo also lets you look up words that mean the opposite. An interesting opposite for "sneer" might be "commend," "admire," or "applaud."

3. Wordhippo also offers quick grammar advice such as the correct tenses and plurals as well as a dictionary definition and example sentences.

4. One of my favorite features is the rhyme dictionary. I occasionally include riddles or songs in my stories and there is no shame in using a rhyming dictionary to get the ideas flowing. It's just like using a thesaurus in narrative writing.

5. Then there are the lists of related words. For "admire," Wordhippo gives "admiration," "admirer" and "Admiral" among a dozen or so others. You don't have to spend time and brain power trying to remember. And when you're dealing with an awkward sentence a look at this list might be all it takes to change the focus, make it more active and cut through the fluff. 

6. There's a sweet little section on names toward the bottom. In my example, there are names beginning with "A," Names meaning "admire" and names beginning with "admire." Character naming has a whole new dimension. 

7. There are lists of matching words that start with the first letter of a given word, the first two letters, the first three letters and so on  (for your alliterative delight). 

8. And if that isn't enough, there are translations of each word into 50 plus languages. It may be risky to use this part in hopes of choosing the correct word to be mentioned in a foreign language in your story, but it can at least get you started, so that you have something to check when you find a native speaker to confirm it. (See my previous post on Quora for a great place to find native speakers of obscure languages who are glad to help you do their language right. I've had several Burmese speakers help me on my latest book just for the fun of knowing that there will be some modern fiction out there in English that won't mangle a reference to their mother tongue.)

WARNING:  I know it's been said before, but it bears repeating. Don't use words you don't really know. You use a thesaurus to jog your memory and move faster, so you can get on with your plot. The goal is NOT to sprinkle your prose with a spectacular vocabulary. The whole point of looking up the word "smile" In my initial example is that you want to find a strong and highly specific verb so that you can avoid the use of weak adverbs. The key point here is "specific." Think of it in terms of finding the exact right tool for the job or tuning a musical instrument to the precise sweet spot. You have to know your tools or have good pitch in order to do either. And in writing, you have to know the vocabulary. Use the most specific word that you are already familiar with from the list. (If you aren't familiar with enough words, hit the library and read piles of books. Look up words as you go. That is really the only way to increase usable vocabulary.) Don't use a word you don't have experience with for one simple reason. You don't know its other connotations and the chances are good that it actually won't be the specific word you need but something that means something slightly different. 

Otherwise, pop open Wordhippo the next time you write and see if things roll just a bit more smoothly. 

I love hearing from you, drop a comment below and let me know know about your favorite thesaurus or your favorite super specific word for describing a character's facial expressions. 

Happy writing!

Teaching writing to resistant teens

I am an ESL teacher in a town where we struggle with very demotivating schools. Most of my students are reasonably well off socio-economically, but when they first come to me, they have no interest in school, reading or writing. After years of struggling as a teacher, I have found something that works. I've seen it engage many different kinds of students now, often making a huge difference in a few short months.

It's blogging. It sounds simple. Too simple in fact. But it works.

If you're a teacher or a parent or anyone concerned about teaching teens, read on and I'll tell you how I make it work. 

I spend some time in discussions beforehand to figure out an interest that each student can really pursue. You have to reserve all judgement at this point. Your goal here isn't to help students develop interests that adults believe are worthwhile, but rather to teach them writing skills and spark their passion. My students initially claim absolute boredom and disinterest with everything. It takes a while to identify interests. 

One of my students played 49 hours of video games at home last week alone. He has no interest in anything else. Okay. But he is interested in video games at least. It might be the party scene that your student is interested in or Facebook or some sort of music you don't even consider to be music. But there is something if you dig enough. 

Image by MCPearson of Wikipedia

Once you have identified topics for your students' blogs, you go on to a free site like WordPress.com. and have each student set up a blogger account. Have them title their blog something to do with their identified interest or interests. (Putting in writing what the general topic is can be crucial for the success of beginners.) And then spend class time drafting blog entries on topics within the interest. This shouldn't be left to homework or it is unlikely to happen. This is the core of what needs to happen and your students will often need help thinking of how to continue. You can have them write on paper if few computers are available and then have them type in the final draft later.

I have one student who is only interested in tennis and primarily the tennis played on TV. She writes about her practices, what tennis matches she watched on TV and what she thinks of celebrity tennis players. I am really not interested in tennis and I find writing about what was on TV to be excruciating but this student is suddenly motivated. I don't care that she is reformulating what she saw on TV. She is writing.

My students are writing at a very basic level because this is ESL, but the same can be applied to English-speaking high school students. Whether your students can write one paragraph per week or a full essay, each constitutes a "blog post." This can be adapted to any level beyond about third grade reading level.

To help students generate more complex and interesting entries, have them show you their progress and then ask specific questions. In the beginning I have to ask leading questions to get students to write the next sentence and the next and the next. If you have to ask a question for every sentence they write, you know they're struggling but if they write a sentence to answer your question and these sentences string together to make a post on a topic, then they'll make progress.

Students will have to read and write in their area of interest in order to post on their blogs. As they become more advanced and tackle topics beyond their direct experience, they will need to read other articles and cite them in their blog. These are indispensable skills in today's world. 

There will be resistance at first. You will still have to "force" students to do it as assignments in the beginning, but in my experience they quickly stopped complaining about coming to class and came in with smiles, which they had never had before. 

Most started to do assignments voluntarily and they now come up with ideas on their own. The most important thing is that their writing and language skills improved by leaps and bounds. Studies have shown that people learn not just somewhat more but many times more if the subject matter is of personal interest. This method capitalizes on that. As time goes on quality control will actually come from within the student because the blog will be public and they will be motivated to try to make it interesting. You can encourage them to post about their blog on social media and discuss it with people who share similar interests.

In a large class this could take time to set up, but it is worth every confusing organizational and discussion hour in the beginning. Once you have identified each student's interests and set up blogger accounts, you will have ready made lessons. You help students choose a topic, advise them on where to get information (this is probably the homework part to some extent) and then do the writing (primarily in class under guidance at first). 

Many students will balk even when faced with their area of interest and claim they can't think of ideas for posting. Give them a short list of things within their topic that they can choose from. Here are post ideas for some of the more common teen interests that often elude adult comprehension. 

Video games/programming: 
Review a video game (can be used many times and could be the entire blog)
Review a new computer or game console on the market
Review an operating system.
Compare and contrast any of the above

Sports: 
Write what happened at the game last weekend
Write about sports events in the media, give opinions
Compare and contrast celebrity players
Compare and contrast sport styles

Facebook or other social media:
Defend social media from one specific criticism (can be used several times for a whole list of criticisms)
Compare and contrast SM platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Quora...)
Review or discuss specific Facebook groups or Twitter hashtags
Discuss the groups or hashtags useful for various topics
Discuss an issue such as what to think about when accepting a friend request
Discuss an experience from SM such as what happened when I posted about a private moment, something controversial, something boring, something cute
What kinds of posts get the most interest from my friends

Music or pop culture:
Review specific musicians, bands, albums, songs or actors
Compare and contrast
Describe specific styles
Defend a specific style against criticisms
Write about what was recently in the media, give opinions

Introducing the Real Super Secret Tricks of the Writing Trade

that I use every day but didn’t find in the writing and publishing books

Okay, I’ve had enough!

I am sick and tired of the virtual sharks and even the virtual parasites out there in the land of indie publishing. If you have come anywhere close to the world of authors and publishing on Amazon in the last few years, you’ve seen them. Chances are you’ve even been at least nipped by one, if you’re a writer.

Image by Brocken Inaglory of Wikipedia 

These days there seem to be as many scams out there to part writers from their money as there are writers.

There are sharks who will take your rights for a song and a promise of marketing that they never intend to fulfill. There are parasites who will eat away at your meager savings (or get you into debt) with some very convincing words about “lifting you out of obscurity.”

Peddling hollow dreams to people who have slaved at soulless day jobs all their lives to earn meager moments to write is big business. And lucrative!

There are even authors who were once not that different from the rest of us, who realized the market for dreams is bigger than the market for fiction (or else realized that their writing craft isn’t all that developed and they didn’t want to put in the effort to improve it), so they’ve taken to preying on their fellows.

I’m a little irritated… in case you hadn’t noticed.

But there is an antidote to this problem (beyond ranting). And that is to share the real nitty gritty of writing secrets with one another.

I’m not a newbie at this. I was a journalist for ten years. I have put in my proverbial ten thousand hours in fiction and then some. I have three books published and three more on the way. In the past twenty years, I’ve read a lot of craft books and a lot of publishing books and a lot of marketing books. So, I know what any writer trying to learn the trade is going through.

You are told that you can’t live without a bunch of how-to books, whether they are about writing craft, publishing or marketing. There is usually a little real info in each of these how-to books - usually about enough for a blog post, very rarely enough for a book. There is almost never anything revolutionary in them and yet they are advertised as life savers for writers.

And the books will tell you that there are no secrets and you have to just “go write” and if you are talented (and wealthy and connected to the advertising/publishing industry like the author of whatever book you’re reading) you’ll do just fine. You’ll finish the latest new must-read book for indie authors feeling mildly upbeat but having learned very little of real value.

And you know what is worse? They’re lying.

First, there are secrets to the trade. These are rarely in the books at all and if they are they are buried among a lot of fluff.

The secrets of the trade aren’t special passwords or names to drop or formulas to put into your next plot. They are resources, things that experienced writers use every day. These usually either aren’t included in the indie publishing guides or they are lost in such long lists of parasitic options that you have no way of knowing which are the real goods, until you either spend some time in the trenches or run across a good-hearted and experienced friend.

I’m not even saying that I know all the secrets of the trade. I am sure there are some I don’t know yet. But I do know quite a few that make my writing life immeasurably easier than it would be otherwise. I remember the days when I didn’t know these things and I feel motherly and tender toward my former self. I want to take her by the hand and give her these tools.

Because that’s what they are. They’re like hammers, nails, screw drivers and power saws, and I was trying to build a house with my bare hands. I know a lot of writers who are still trying to do that.

I’m told I should save all these tips and tricks and write my own “how to write and publish and make a million dollars” book and capitalize on the market.

But I won’t. I won’t because I love my readers and I know that this is basic, simple stuff. It is mostly free and it should be free. I got most of it from friends and I don’t own it. (And by the way, the “make a million dollars” part is the scammiest part of that sort of advertising.)

These tips won’t turn you from a hack into a brilliant writer and they won’t make you into a bestseller overnight. (When you find a tip that will, would you please drop it in the comments section for me. :D ) But they will spice up your prose, polish your best work and make it easier to turn out professional writing fast.

That is why I have decided to start a series of posts on the super secrete tips and resources for writers, the real ones that I actually use to do the writing job. They are free because we’re in this together. I’m not selling to you and I'm not your competitor. I’m your colleague and I’ll tell you when I find something that works.

Well, and because you were really sweet to read this far into my rant.

The first super secret trick of the trade

Today I’m going to start right off telling you about one of the power saws in my tool chest because you shouldn’t miss this one for a moment longer.

This is one tip that I didn’t get from a friend or a book at all. I discovered it entirely on my own and I haven’t seen any other serious writers using it, so it may actually be a real super secret that only I know about and I can’t wait to tell someone.

The secret is Quora - to be known hereafter as writing research on steroids.

I think Quora is technically called a social network, but it would be more accurately called a content generation system that may eventually rival Wikipedia. Quora is basically crowdsourced information gathering and research at its best.

Here is the thing that is revolutionary for writers. Quora can give you the tricky obscure facts that are hard to find on Google or in a library, but that is nothing yet. Quora will also give you what you can’t get on Wikipedia and what you could find only after exhaustive research in books and interviews - the personal experiences of people who have lived exactly what your specific character is going through. And if that isn’t enough, Quora tells you what the world - particularly the typical picky reader - thinks about ANY topic imaginable.

Here’s how it works.

Quora users sign up for an account and list their areas of expertise. I listed mostly writing, journalism, linguistics, Eastern Europe and blindness, because I happen to be legally blind. I started getting requests from other users to answer questions such as “Why does English have so many verb tenses?” and “How can a blind person live alone?” I answered a couple of them for fun and lo and behold I earned points. You earn points by answering questions, especially those that someone specifically asked you to answer. I discovered that Quora also gave me 500 free points to start out.

Now comes the fun part. You use the points you earn to ask people with the expertise you need to answer your own questions. Just asking a question is free. It doesn’t take any of your points and it can even earn you points if other people want to know the answer to your question too.

What takes points is sending a message that will put an email in the inbox of an expert in the field you want or a person with a specific experience that you need information about.

This is why I call it writing research on steroids. Recently, I discovered that one of my major characters is gay. I’ve had gay friends but I don’t have any close gay friends at the moment. I have a few lesbian friends but I specifically wanted to know what it would be like for my teenage male character to realize that he is gay, get rid of his own denial on the issue and deal with his parents about it. This is deep stuff and a few words of an embarrassed answer from a friend might not give me nearly enough to make the character’s experience ring true.

So, I asked on Quora and I specifically requested answers from men who listed LGBT as one of their areas of expertise. I got five essays back within a few days full of thoughtful, emotional, real-life experience from five different men with different takes on exactly the issue my character was dealing with.

Wow! I’m floored. My beta readers are ecstatic over this character because his experience is so vivid and his emotion is so right on.

Since discovering Quora I have written way more involved, accurate and suspenseful action and weapons scenes. I write contemporary fantasy thrillers, so I need to know a lot about police and military operations of the modern world. I was a war correspondent briefly way back in 2001. A lot has changed since then and I never was actually the kind of old hand who could tell what kind of mortar that distant boom was just by the sound.

So, I need a lot of help with the details and there are a lot of police and military people on Quora who are bursting with the information and the first-hand experience that I need. This is way better than googling weaponry or military tactics. You get the smell of things, the details, the emotions as well as various facts.

And yes, given that this is crowdsourced sometimes you need to do a little fact checking, but by and large I have found the answers to be accurate for the particular place and time the person answering is talking about. They don’t know everything but they do know what Wikipedia will never tell you, what X or Y feels and smells like. That is what a writer really needs, the sensory details and Quora is extraordinary for this.

The other thing Quora will tell you is what your most critical readers are likely to say. The type of people who use Quora today are intellectual, argumentative and love to write lengthy rants. They are the kind of people who would give you a terrible book review if you wrote something about their field that doesn’t make sense in their practical experience.

In many fields, it doesn’t entirely matter if the facts are guaranteed. What matters is that if you ask about a technical detail of how a police scene would play out for a thriller and half a dozen police officers and former police officers and other specialists get back to you and generally agree on the answer, you’re not going to get nasty reviews about that particular thing if you follow their advice. Common wisdom can be wrong, but it is what people think and if you want your book’s facts to check out with readers in a particular field, it is a good idea to check with them as well as with the encyclopedia. Quora is the fastest way to check with people with practical experience in just about every issue, line of work and life situation imaginable.

Some questions do fair better than others on Quora. I asked for experiences of attending an elite boarding school at the age of eight. I didn’t get a lot on that because as it turns out, it’s very rare for elite schools to accept boarders that young. But still I did find out that I need to make it clear that the situation I’m describing in my story is uncommon.

I don’t make a big deal out of the fact that I am asking questions on Quora for a book. Sometimes I mention it if the question is particularly convoluted and involves a whole scenario. But often there is no need to mention it. People ask the weirdest things on Quora all the time, just for fun and people almost always answer them. This wasn’t even a network that it took any appreciable time to get into and I am a notorious introvert. I would almost say Quora particularly appeals to geeks, nerds and introverts.

Still I don’t see many other writers on Quora. The only other writer I actually did run across there recently was someone posting their full short story and asking for opinions on it in a somewhat demanding way. I desperately hope that will not become common practice among writers as it would make us very unpopular on Quora. “Is this a good story?” is not really a legitimate Quora question. The writer in question did actually get some gentle and insightful responses, which I felt was extraordinarily generous of the Quora crowd, but this isn’t really the place I’d go to find beta readers in that particular way.

That said, I did find a beta reader on Quora. In fact, I found the kind of beta reader it never even occurred to me to dream of having. The fourth book in my contemporary fantasy series has a main character who is the son of a Burmese immigrant in the US and as the story progressed I realized that his relationship with his father is actually pretty significant to the story. And I don’t know much at all about Myanmar. I only said the guy was Burmese on a whim because I saw a picture on-line of a Burmese guy and thought, “There’s my character’s personality in his eyes!”

So, I was a bit stuck on a couple of Burmese cultural things and I started asking questions about it on Quora. I got into a short and friendly exchange with one Burmese guy who answered and he said, “Now I want to read what you’re writing.” So, I wrote him a PM and offered him the chance to be a beta reader, a chance he happily jumped at and he quickly ironed out all of the cultural issues.

Oh, and another neat feature of Quora is that you can both ask and answer anonymously while still both earning and using your points. You will have a screen name and it is in your interests as an author to use your author name, but if for some reason you need to ask a question or answer and you don’t want your author name to be associated with it, there is a handy little “anonymous” button and you switch to anonymous use. I wouldn’t post anything illegal by doing this as I would bet the authorities could bypass it if they really wanted to, but it works in terms of other users or someone searching the internet to see what you area associated with or finding spoilers about your next book.

So if you are stuck for details, whether factual or experiential or simply want to run a scenario by a group of people with specific knowledge, Quora is the trick. I have even found plot twists when temporarily stumped by asking “What do you think should happen if…” types of questions. You can ask just about anything on Quora and I’m shocked at how many active and engaged answers you get in a matter of hours or days.

As an end note, I'll also mention one other way that Quora might be useful. I hesitate to do so because if Quora becomes commercialized and a forum for spam like Twitter and Facebook it will lose its effectiveness. But if you have read this far in my post, I'm assuming you're a serious person. So, think on this. Remember that the people who are asking you to answer questions are actually seeking your expertise. If you happen to write non-fiction books there is an obvious side benefit. You can answer their specific question and include a link to your book at the end of the post. You've just provided something wanted to an ideal reader. Think you might make a few sales? 

I have even used this for fiction books. I was recently asked to answer a question about how to improve high school English classes. I gave my answer actually based on my experience as an ESL teacher, but after giving a very exciting new method, I also mentioned that I write YA literature and included a link to my fantasy thriller series. A few high school English teachers might just have a new book to recommend to their students from someone they feel like they like and trust because I gave them an awesome teaching tactic. The same goes for topics within my books like herbs or Pagan spirituality. If I answer a question on those, I can legitimately put in a link at the end and if I do a good job on the answer, I have got an audience that has true interest in the work I'm talking about.

So use Quora well and wisely. Good luck and happy writing!

The Ten Commandments of Writers

The reader lost in a story is thy god.

Thou shalt not disrupt the zen of the reader.

Thou shalt not make technical errors that boot thy reader out of the story.

Thou shalt hold no other goal higher than the reader’s full immersion in the story.

Remember thy writing time and keep it holy.

Honour thy voice and the rules of thy fictional world.

Thou shalt not kill off characters just for fun.

Thou shalt not write love triangles that are exactly the same as hundreds of other fictional love triangles.

Thou shalt not steal more than a few ideas from one fellow author.

Thou shalt not make characters do things they would not do.

Thou shalt not covet false sympathy by making thy character an orphan. 

Character development the easy way

There are all kinds of books on writing that will tell you how to develop deep, multi-dimensional characters. And yet most leave out a few easy and essential early steps that make all the difference.

I’m not saying that character development is easy. Good, deep character development is very hard. It’s arguably one of the hardest things about writing fiction and also the most important thing.

But there are harder ways to do it and there are easier ways to do it. This the easier way to do something that is hard enough even if you don’t make it any harder than necessary.

Step 1: Choose models

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. Using real-life people as models for you characters is not plagiarism and it is not slander. The whole point of using a real person as a model for your character is that you want to come up with a new person. The model is only a starting point and usually only covers one facet of the character.

The key point is that you actually don’t want one model for your character. You probably want at least three. You want one person who looks more or less like what you want your character to look like. You want another person who has a personality and speaking style like you want your character to have. And you want one person who has a job or situation like you want your character to have. It is much simpler to take these three things from three different people. That way you have the flexibility to work within your plot. And no one can say that you slandered them by putting them in your story.

Why is it important to have models? Well, models make it easy. You don’t have to do it this way. You can make your ten or twenty essential characters up out of whole cloth and try to keep their faces and mannerisms in your head through your book or series of books.

But… well, good luck with that.

If you’re name is George Martin or Diana Gabaldon you can ignore this and all of my advice. Those authors are either doing this already or they are geniuses with astronomical IQs.

Here’s a practical example of what I’m talking about. Let’s say you need a police officer in your story.

There. You already have a job for your character. But figure out what kind of police officer, in what position, in what size of town you need. Then if possible find someone who is a police officer in that sort of situation. The job part is actually one situation where people like to be models for fiction. If possible, find a friendly cop in the kind of position you need and tell them that you want to write about someone in a similar position who isn’t them, who looks completely different and has a different personality but the same job. Professionals will often be thrilled to tell you all the crucial details about that job.

I’ve got a landscaper in my current work-in-progress and my younger brother is a landscaper. It’s very handy to pick his brain to find out exactly what my landscaper should be doing at various times of the year. But my landscaper couldn’t be more different physically or emotionally from my brother.

Okay, I went a bit backwards on this one. The characters at the bottom of this cover (Rick and Kenyen, as readers of the Kyrennei series will know) are recognizable but I actually didn't find these pictures on ShutterStock until I was finished writing the first three books.  That made finding the right pictures hard. But I'd had these characters in my head for twenty years, and had a very clear picture of each of them, although Rick does sort of look suspiciously like an Iraqi friend of mine who likes to cook.

As for the physical picture of your character, think about what physical characteristics will suit the character in your story. Don’t forget that besides hair color, eye color and height you have many other factors to play with. Don’t make all your characters be of average weight and build. Don’t make all your characters the same race as you. Give your characters some small differentiating feature. Once you figure out what general kind of physical appearance you need, try to find someone who looks like that.

Think about your circle of friends and acquaintances or look up photos on Google. You can seriously google “Picture of tall brown-haired man” and get a ton of great pictures of tall, brown-haired men. Look at them and pick one. Then copy the link to your research file. Do NOT use this photo in any publication as you probably don’t have the copyright privileges to do so. But do refer back to it. Keep it in front of you enough that you can visualize the character.

With a main character or other key character you might still want to change some important detail of the character’s appearance but make it something you can visualize in that photo. Pick a person without a scar and give them a scar in your mind. Or glasses. Or sideburns.

The most difficult and most important part is your character’s personality. But again the same technique will serve you well. Choose a person to be your emotional model. This time it is really better to choose someone you know personally. Otherwise, you won’t know their reactions in enough depth. Then think about that person in various situations. How would he or she react if their spouse broke up with them or if they won a writing contest or if they had to tell a loved one terrible news? Get used to that person’s reactions and way of relating. Play amateur psychologist and make up reasons for why a person might have those particular reactions. Or if you know why your real-world model has those reactions, change the reasons up a bit.

You can in fact use more than one emotional model for one character. Combine different traits from two different people. Again think how your character with the personality he or she has would react in various situations.

I have a character in my current work-in-progress who is trans-racially adopted. I use what I know of people in that situation to inform me about her emotional make up. But she is also the kind of person who avoids conflict at all cost and tends to freeze up when there is tension.

A relative of mine, who is also one of my trusted beta readers, talks about struggling with freezing up in the face of conflict. So, I use my relative’s reactions to inform how this character might react. The character isn't “supposed to be” my relative. The girl in the story is very different in other ways, but it is handy to have an emotional model.

It is particularly handy to have one who likes being an emotional model and is happy to read through the story and pick out how I’ve slipped up on the personality type. That is a rare treat. You won’t usually be able to tell your emotional models that they have a personality double in your story and you might have to go on the run if you do tell, but it’s fun while it lasts.

Step 2: Fill out a character sheet

The next thing you do with your budding characters is print out a copy of this free character sheet I developed, combining the best qualities of the many character sheets out there. You’ll need a copy for each major character.

Stop!

Wait. You don’t have to fill out the whole thing immediately. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. Fill out as much as comes easily to you given your choice of models for this character. If you don’t know your character’s family history yet and it isn’t key to the plot in the beginning, leave it blank for now. You may find that the story will provide you with the answers you need as you deepen your plot.

So, in the beginning, just fill out those parts you can and then come back later and fill in other parts as you go.

Why am I asking you to do this exercise that looks like a worksheet from school and doesn’t seem to have much in common with writing? Because it will save you endless blood, sweat and tears later.

You may think you know your characters well now but after 70,000 words and many months of work are you really sure you’re going to remember the make of this character’s car or the color of that character’s eyes? Even when it was mentioned only once somewhere in your narrative?

Remembering those references will be much harder than you think. And finding them again is tedious and time consuming, assuming you even remember to look. What if you decide to put this manuscript aside for a couple of months and get back to it later? It will be much less work to get back into if you can quickly review the crucial information about your characters.

There is nothing worse than having a reader catch you being inconsistent. “I’m confused. In chapter 1 she had blue eyes. In chapter 10 she has brown eyes.”

Oops!

Keep character sheets. I’ve made one for you and it’s free.

Step 3: Think about what your characters want

I know the character’s desires are on the character sheet but it is likely that with many characters you won’t be able to come up with all of their desires in the very beginning.

This is a step that starts in the beginning and keeps going throughout the writing process. Remember that good fiction requires conflict or at least a problem to be solved. Conflicts and problems create suffering of some kind in a character. And if you ask a Buddhist guru (or a writer) what the root of human suffering is, you will be told that it is desire.

Without desire, there is no suffering and without suffering, there is no conflict. Make your characters yearn for something and you have story.

Deny your characters what they want and you create suffering. There is a law in fiction that says that the more you make a characters suffer, the more your reader will love them. This is almost always true. You can make a character too pitiful and lose the reader’s sympathy and respect but generally if your character suffers, your reader will keep reading.

Desire doesn’t have to be a fantastic dream or an overt goal and suffering need not involve physical pain. Sometimes a character simply wants to be able to live in peace or to find the answer to nagging internal questions. But this desire must be made clear and vivid to the reader. The more abstract the desire, the harder the writer’s job is.

Suffering is the same way. While commercial fiction usually involves a character suffering in some dramatic way involving physical injury, grief, betrayal or denial of love, it is very possible to make a compelling story in which the suffering is deep and less easily understood. It is only that doing more abstract and less overtly tangible things with a character is harder to do well.

Step 4: Visualize scenes like a movie or act them out

Either before you write or in the early stages of writing your first draft, visualize new scenes in your head. Let them play like a movie a few times. Get a picture of the characters and watch how they move. Get a feeling for them and watch what they do and say.

Try out the scene in a few different ways. What works best? What actions and words seem natural to your characters?

I have been known to act out scenes from my stories, standing in the middle of the room and stepping back and forth to take on the roles of different characters in a heated debate or moving around the room to block out a combat scene, making sure the physical actions will add up in three-dimensional space. I don’t really recommend doing this when other people are watching or listening. It requires too much stopping and backing up and redoing to be very entertaining and your goal is not to be silly but to iron out specific details that will then come across very real in the story.

Do I look slightly crazy while I talk to myself and have fights with the air? I might but this is another reason to do it in private. If the NSA is spying on me through my computer’s webcam, at least they’ll know what all my Google searches involving borders, bridges and weapons are about.

Step 5: Start writing or plotting, whichever is relevant.

There are two kinds of writers, it is said. The plotters and the pantsers.

Plotters carefully plan out their story with note cards, time-lines and outlines before they ever sit down to write.

Pantsers fly by the seat of their pants. They get the basic groundwork in place, particularly the settings, premise of the story, key conflict and the characters, including their initial desires. Then they sit down at the keyboard and let the characters do their thing.

I’m a pantser, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Pantsers don’t necessarily do less work in preparation for writing. Flying free in writing is best done if you have all the necessary back-up - well-developed characters, settings, premise and initial conflict. I usually know where the story is going within the next 20,000 words. And I have a vague idea of the ending but I don’t usually know how I’m going to get there.

I have often pulled up Google Earth, plunked my characters down in one place and told them they have to get to another place, given whatever the conditions of the story are (chase, pursuit or search for something), and then I let Google Earth surprise me and the characters. It almost always works beautifully, providing me with plot twists I never would have come up with on my own.

Oh, there’s a river there. That’s a problem. How are my heroes going to get across while being chased by helicopters. Ah, there’s a bridge… But only one bridge. And it will be guarded by the antagonists, obviously.

You can see where that’s going.

But this isn’t a general guide to plotting. This is about characters. And which ever way you choose to write, whether plotting or pantsing, you have now come to the point where you have to just do it. You hold onto the sense of your characters as individuals that you have developed in the previous steps and you feel their desire while you work out the specifics of your story. This will result in what is called a “character-driven story.” But that is just a fancy name for good fiction. All good fiction is character-driven, even the fiction that is action packed.

Step 6: Now change your characters

I know. I know. I said keep your characters consistent. But there is a difference between “consistent” and “stagnant.”

Real people faced with challenges and conflict change. Characters with a realistic personality should too.

Aranka Miko, the main character in The Soul and the Seed, is initially a frightened teenager imprisoned in a dark cage. How she rises in a troubled world to kindle the first flicker of hope in a thousand years is the core of the story..

Maybe this is the hard part for some, but I contend that if you’ve done the previous steps well this will be the easy part. I have rarely decided beforehand how my characters are going to change. I have simple set up characters and given them unfulfilled desires and a conflict. Then I followed where they led and the characters changed by the time the story was done.

Several reviewers of my first book gushed, “You can see the characters growing and changing before your eyes.”

I hadn’t realized when I started the story that the growth of the characters would be so obvious so soon. I also thought the only character to really change would be the main character. But that wasn’t the case. Because my major characters were strong and unique and had real personalities and they were faced with huge challenges, they had to change and I didn’t have to force it or consciously manipulate it that much.

In case this doesn’t come as easy in every story, remember to go back to the character’s desires. Do they get what they want? Are they thwarted? Does what they wanted turn out to be as good as they thought it would be? How does this impact the character?

Step 7: Rewrite and edit with an eye to character consistency

When you are done with your first draft, it’s time to rewrite and edit, then edit some more, then put the story aside and pick it up again and edit some more, and then edit again… and again.

That’s just the reality of writing. I edit certain parts roughly as I go and my first drafts are relatively clean. I rarely have to change major plot twists after the first draft is done, despite my seat-of-the-pants writing style. But I do have to edit and edit and edit. Everyone does who wants to turn out good writing.

When you edit, pay particular attention to what your characters look like and what they say and do. Make sure you have kept their appearances consistent and that the actions and words of each character fit their personality and situation. If you have a feisty, firebrand for a heroine, you can’t suddenly have her meekly take insults just because the plot requires that she is calm and collected for once. You can get away with having her learn to be calm and collected but that is going to take some work.

Read your text out loud and particularly your dialogue scenes. Go through dialogue several times, trying to hear the voices of your characters. What kind of voices do they have? Do they have an accent compared to you? What is the emotion behind the words?

I hope these tips come in handy. What are your favorite tips for developing characters? I would love to hear from you. Put a comment in below and keep in touch.

The Self Publisher's Ultimate Resource Guide is less than ultimate

I received a review copy of The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide in an exchange for an honest review.

This is essentially a master list of some of the top service providers and resources for authors. Some of them are relevant for new traditionally published authors as well. The lists are good and helpful as a very basic starting place for research. The sections are reasonably chosen and organized.

There are two reasons that this book doesn’t get an enthusiastic review from me. First, the descriptions of the services are vague and uninformative. Often the listing simply states the claims of the provider without giving any independent confirmation of quality and bang-for-buck.  As a self-publisher who has already published several books, I can see how the early sections of the book sum up information that I already know. I had to learn all this on my own through simple research but what I know from my research is far more than is contained in this book. But when I picture a newbie coming to these lists, I don’t see how the lists would save more than a little time.  

Because the listings are vague, the newbie will still have to do exhaustive hours of research to determine which of the providers is makes sense for their circumstances. I found the information on these lists within an hour or two as a newbie. I spent months researching which providers to use. If the experienced authors of this book had provided some more detailed information about the various providers, including things that many of us know simply because we have enough experience to have learned the difference between Smashwords and Draft2Digital, the guide would be much more useful to the newbie.

 That alone would have knocked this book down a bit in my rating. It gets knocked down further because of the price. I’m sorry but with the going prices of ebooks these days, charging $7.99 for a “book” of lists that is only 180 pages borders on exploitation of the new and inexperienced. I gave the book three stars on Amazon. give three stars to books I buy that I don’t find entirely useless but wish I hadn’t spent that amount of money on. Had I paid $7.99 for this book I would have been disappointed and disgruntled.  

That said, if you have the money this book would save a little time if you are still in the very early stages of research. It is a handy summary for those who are more experienced and simply want easy links to everything all in one place. 

The Nine Mortal Sins of Worldbuilding

Here is the second part of my free worldbuilding workshop materials. The previous post outlined what you should strive for in worldbuilding. Here is a quick rundown on what not to do. I'm not implying that you are doing these things, but at the very least this is good comic relief for readers and writers of fantasy and science fiction. 

1.      The sin of illogical history: Don't forget to indicate why the events of your story are happening now. Stories involve conflict. So, first you have to determine what the conflict is. Second, you have to say why it is happening now instead of 20 years ago or 20 years in the future. If aliens are invading, why are they invading now?

Example: In my book The Soul and the Seed, the mind-controlling Addin Association has been around forever, meddling in most of the wars and dirty politics of human history. BUT the story is happening now (in today's world) because a fluke of genetics (influenced by some ancient magic-wielding mystics has caused Kyrennei genes to crop up in a few individuals. That gives rise to the core conflict of the story.. The reason for this happening right now is a minor point but it is essential to believability.

2. The sin of completely logical history:  If you create a fictional history, don't make it entirely logical and simplistic. Determine the major events of history that affect your characters. Make up reasons for the social norms and economic realities of your world. You don't have to write them into your story but you should have a general sense of them. Make them mostly logical but include the occasional chance event.

Example: J.R.R. Tolkien developed detailed backstories and histories for all of his characters and cultures. His history is as full of intricacies and discrepancies as real history is. There is an overall logic but the details have the realism of chaotic and natural events.  A brother's jealousy unleashes an unforeseeable cascade of major historical events and so forth. This is one of the reason's Tolkien's world rings so true to generations of readers.

3. The sin of illogical magic: Don't make up magical powers for the inhabitants of your world without considering how they will affect history, society, the environment, relationships and so forth. Don't allow your magic users to do anything they want without limit or cost because the logical consequences of that in your society will get out of hand fast and you will be stuck with a huge mess. The best way to invent magic is to set limits on it or make it costly or exhausting to carry out. In essence, fictional magic requires a system of checks and balances. You also need to consider whether or not everyone in your world has the same special powers and if they don't, why those with special powers haven't taken over the world yet.

Example: David Eddings developed one of the best systems of magic in fantasy. His sorcerers can do almost anything, except will something out of existence. But the use of magic makes a kind of "noise" that other magic-users can hear and it expends energy. There are logical rules to Eddings' special physics and his world feels quite possible and authentic, despite all the magic. The rules aren't explained straight out or very early in the story. They come up when they are needed and a handy narrative device is used for the explanations of the more complex rules. An older sorcerer has to teach a younger sorcerer about the rules of magic and the reader gets to learn too. But because this doesn't happen in the very beginning and the reader cares a great deal about the younger sorcerer by that point, there is no sense of this being an info dump. There are opposing sides among magic users and even the protagonists among the sorcerers tend to be few, eccentric and anti-social, which is why they haven't taken over the world yet. And Edding's magic-users do hold a lot of political and social power even so. That is part of what makes his world so believable. 

4.  The sin of too much explanation too soon: This is the worldbuilding rule that everyone knows about and almost no one can follow. It is very hard to start the action off in your world in the beginning without explaining your world to the reader. You have the feeling that your reader can't possibly understand what is going on unless you explain the specifics of your world first. There are two keys to doing the explanation right and avoiding the dreaded "info dump."

First, accept that your reader not knowing everything about your world is usually a good thing. The mystery over what exactly is happening can be key to creating suspense in the beginning of your novel. Don't keep secrets from your reader in an obvious way. Instead, either have an inexperienced, young or foreign character who doesn't know the specifics either and let your reader learn along with them OR make your narrator speak or think as though addressing someone who already knows and drop hints as you go. 

Second, make sure YOU know your world (and particularly any magic or special physics) really well BEFORE you start writing. One of the main causes of info dumping is actually writers who are exploring their world while writing. Do some background writing first. Make sure you know your world very well before you start your actual story and then get yourself into the mindset of your characters. Your characters won't feel the need to explain everything right off the bat because the world is "normal" to them or in some cases they won't know about the special physics of your world either. In either case, if you know your world well enough and you put yourself in your characters' shoes, the details of your world will come up when they are truly needed. 

Examples: The book Open Minds by successful indie author Susan Kaye Quinn opens with an everyday high school scene in a world where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, except the main character who has a sort of disability so she can't hear thoughts. Because she is unique in her world and this is an issue for her every day in high school (she is ostracized by other kids), it is natural that she thinks about this and explains it to the reader immediately. It doesn't feel like an info dump. It makes for a great opening to a good series. My first book The Soul and the Seed, also starts in high school, but my main character believes she lives in the same world as you and me. She knows nothing about the clandestine mind-control cult that rules the world or the genetic fluke that makes her at threat to their power and the reader is pleasantly confused until chapter 5, when the narrative switches to someone who knows what is going on. It works (at least according to my enthusiastic readers) because the suspense of not knowing why the world is going haywire is delicious. And by the time you get my second narrator's explanation, the reader is so hungry for the details that I have never been accused of info dumping. 

5. The sin of everyone speaking English: Don't make everyone on an entire planet speak the same language unless they have lived with instant long-distance communication for at least five generations. Don't allow aliens who have never been in contact to talk to each other in a common language. You are free to indicate that there are other languages being spoken while still writing the dialogue in English. Use the fact that characters can't always understand each other to enhance tension. If you want to dabble in inventing languages, expect to do a lot of research. That is one of the more advanced worldbuilding options.

Example: I'm actually going to give a negative example here. I love Robert Jordan's fantasy world. I love it. I love living in it for long periods of time. But there is one thing that really bugs me about it. The invaders from across the sea speak the same language as people they have had no contact with for centuries. It only takes a few hundred years for a language to change so drastically that it can no longer be understood by the original speakers. Try reading Beowolf in the original some time. That's English and you won't understand three words, unless you are a serious linguistic scholar. Even Shakespeare takes work and there is a reason for that. Languages change. Robert Jordan actually gets a pass on this because the rest of his worldbuilding is so spectacularly well done and he does actually have other languages in other parts of his world. There are many many books that are seriously damaged by this sin, however.

6. The sin of stereotyping real cultures: Don't abuse ethnic, religious or other groups of people from the real world. This isn't just political correctness to avoid being labeled as a racist or something similar, although that is a real danger if you accidentally make all your good guys "fair" and all your bad guys "dark lords." But at the most basic level this is about believability. If you are even going to hint at a real ethnic or religious group in your story, you had better do your research and make sure you can portray that group in detail. It isn't just that promoting stereotypes is despicable. It is that someone among your readers will know at least something about any culture you can come up with and they will be very annoyed and ditch your story if you get the details wrong or make the group too stereotypical.

Example: Okay, another negative example, but this time I'm going to pick on myself. I didn't stereotype another culture but I do use a lot of real existing cultures in my Kyrennei Series. I am an international journalist and linguist, so I am generally pretty confident about my cultural stuff. I did some serious research to come up with a Hebrew endearment that a man raised in Israel might really use under the circumstances in the book. I didn't, however, call up my friend who is married to a Japanese woman and spent ten plus years in Japan to ask about my Japanese character's name. I should have but there were reasons. I went on my own research and used a name I found on a list of uncommon Japanese names. I needed an uncommon name because my character's subculture likes uncommon names. The name Cho is very uncommon in Japan and would have to be a shortened version of Choko, which was my original idea. But other names I considered would have been better. I should have made that call. No one who doesn't know Japan will ever care but readers who do know Japan will pause and wonder about Cho's name when they read my book. That is distraction and distraction in fiction is almost always bad by definition. 

7. The sin of stereotyping your fictional cultures: Don't make everyone in your fictional culture, religion or nationality agree on everything. That just isn't realistic. Unless you are creating a new version of the Borg, individuals within your fictional cultures and religions should disagree on details and sometimes even on major issues. And if you are creating a new version of the Borg, the effects of that monolithic society should be explored and shown in your story.

Example: This is really too complicated to summarize easily. Read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Seriously. If you haven't read it, what are you thinking trying to write speculative fiction. :) It's required reading! Jordan did a spectacular job of worldbuilding in general and particularly of portraying believable, diverse and well-textured fictional cultures.

8. The sin of no place: Gone are the days of "It was a dark and stormy night…" Today the most fashionable writing sin seems to be ignoring climate and place. It should at least randomly rain in your story. If it truly never rains, that would affect the climate, the smell of the place, the kinds of plants that grow there and so on. Have a sense of the natural environment and weather, even if your story is urban and primarily indoors. It greatly enhances believability.

Example: I think clouds may be mentioned once in the Divergent series. It's a fun read but the one major weakness of this popular series is the lack of a sense of place. I fear that the Divergent series, which is otherwise good enough to become a lasting classic will be a short-lived wonder, rather than a long-term phenomena, partly based on this sin.

9. The sin of no place to pee: Don't ignore infrastructure and sanitation. If you're constructing a whole society or city, you should know how waste gets taken care of, how food gets delivered and so forth. If you are dealing with a prisoner, don't forget that they do eventually have to go to the bathroom. If there is none, there will be consequences. You don't have to discuss these things in the text of your story but you have to have them in mind. Otherwise, you won't respond correctly  when one of those issues should have been mentioned in passing and you'll lose your reader's faith.

Example: I can actually think of quite a few examples in popular fantasy and science fiction where a prisoner has no possibility relieving themselves and the consequences of that are not taken into account, but I'm done picking on my favorite authors for today. I'll just point out how I solved this problem. In The Soul and the Seed, I have my narrator imprisoned in a cage in a warehouse for two and a half chapters. In order to create enough of a sense of place, I had to describe that environment with significant detail and there was simply no way around it. I had to equip the cages with bedpans. 

Writing Workshop Series: Worldbuilding for Believability

This is the first of my writing workshop posts in coordination with writing workshops at the Art Center at the Old Library in La Grande,, Oregon. 

First up is worldbuilding - the magic of creating believable settings and societies in fiction. Worldbuilding is often used as a specialized term for science fiction and fantasy writers but it's also a crucial craft tool for writers of historical and intercultural fiction. In many genres you will need to develop complex settings, cultures and societies. 

While this may seem like a minor issue in comparison to plot and character development, worldbuilding provides the foundation for two things even more basic to readable fiction - believability and conflict.  

Believability: A writer's portrayal of settings and culture is crucial to the reader's feeling of reality when reading fiction. That feeling of reality is closely tied to the sense of being engrossed in a story and the inability to put a book down.

Conflict: Every story revolves around a conflict of some sort. Often that conflict is rooted in a social, cultural or physical characteristic of the fictional world. In fact, if you need to heighten the conflict in any given story, adding an element of worldbuilding to it can often mean the difference between a mediocre conflict and a real whopper. 

And so... here are the top things to consider when building your world or describing the setting of your story:

1.       Your setting or world should have a purpose in your story. Avoid adding fantastical special effects "just because." That gets old fast. Even the world of Alice in Wonderland is carefully constructed for a purpose, even if it may seem to be a world endless absurd fantasy.

2.       You can start with the general setting or start with the main conflict of the plot or start with a great character. But wherever you start, these things should be tied together. If you start with the setting, your plot should be related to the setting. If you want to write story based in medieval Morocco, choose a problem for your characters to encounter that is integral to that setting. If you start with the plot, figure out which type of setting will serve the plot best. Is the conflict you've chosen best placed in the past, the future or the present? Will it benefit from being seen through a real culture of today or through a made-up culture?

3.       Think about the central conflict of your story and how it is affected by the world of your story. Do social or political factors play a role? Is there a culture clash? Is there a major need or hunger that economic or environmental conditions influence?

4.       A key to plot and character development is determining what your characters want and what stands in their way. Worldbuilding plays a big role here. Consider what social, political, economic, environmental or other factors influence what your characters want and how hard or not it is for them to get what they want.

5.       Ask yourself detailed questions about the setting and society where your story takes place. You won't need to include all of these details in your story but you do need to at least go over them in your head. There are lots of lists online detailing the types of questions you can run through.

6.       Take notes on whatever details you come up with. Keep cheat sheets on locations, characters, cultures and languages for quick reference. Just as it is important to keep notes on the hair and eye color of your minor characters, so that you don't have cousin Fred have gray eyes in Book 1 of your series and blue eyes in Book 3, it is also important to keep a record of places, cultures and languages, so that they stay consistent. You would be amazed at how glaring such mistakes are to people who aren't as wrapped up in the story as you are.

7.       Draw maps and plans of buildings, streets and towns whenever you are going to have characters in a specific location for more than one scene and do it even for one scene if it is an action scene. Draw a map of the whole country or world if you are going to have characters move around much or any sort of major political or economic intrigue.

8.       When describing events keep in mind whether it is night or day, what angle the sun is at, what the weather is like, which direction is east or west. You don't have to include all this but you should know because otherwise you will easily end up with sunlight streaming in a window that you said faced north.

9.       Ponder:

• The climate: how it smells and feels
• The food: what is available or popular and what isn't
• The economy: what portion of the people are well-off or hungry
• Clothing: don't assume it is the same as yours or Tolkien's, be specific
• The physics: if there are multiple moons what does that do?
• Hierarchies: who is in charge and why, who is above and below
•  Needs: What do the people in your society need most, what is scarce?
•  Luxuries: What are the signs of wealth and privilege, certain foods, clothes, etc.
•  Instability vs. stability: what would it take to upset the order of your world?
• How long have things been the way they are?
• How has history affected the issues that are important in your society?

The literature revolution: How book reviews give power to the people

Hey people who love to read! I have awesome news for you. You have some real power. The world of publishing is changing and you personally have some significant ability to steer what will be available to read and what kinds of authors get to write books.

I'm serious. And I did not used to know this. I used to think that leaving a review on an item or a book on Amazon was like voting. It mattered a little tiny bit. It was a drop in the ocean type of thing. I did it occasionally because it was like a civic duty or a way to say a special "thank you" if the book was really outstanding.

I've learned. Given recent changes in the publishing industry, reviewing books - particularly on Amazon - has become serious business. And particularly if you DON'T like something, you can deliver a fairly large blow and deny an author the ability to make a living writing with a click and about 20 words. Be careful of this because you can also accidentally do this without meaning to and seriously hurt an author you like, thus denying yourself that author's books in the future. It is real power.

(If you give a negative review because of shipping service, the harm goes to the author not the shipper.)

How to read Amazon star rankings

Here is a quick rundown of the five-star book review system:

5-stars - 5-stars means the reviewer really likes the book. It really entertained them and they will probably recommend it to their friends and read more books by that author. This is pretty much the same on most sites. Some sites consider 5-star reviews more exclusive than others, but on Amazon, 5-stars are just for books you really liked. You don't have to ration them and only use them for your favorite top-ten books of all time. But they do mean you really liked the book. An author usually needs several books with at least a hundred or two hundred five star reviews before they are considered an established author and before they can make a living writing.

4-stars - 4-stars means the book was pretty good, the reviewer enjoyed it. There was maybe one or two minor issues with the book but they didn't really get in the way of a good read. Most readers, when looking at books on Amazon will consider a book if it has between a four and five-star average. If see that a book has close to a five-star average and you give it four stars, you will actually make the book look worse to future readers than it does to you at that moment. So, give four stars if you think it should not be as highly recommended as it appears but it was still reasonably good. If the book has an average below four stars, your 4-star review will make the book look better than it currently does. So, again, give it four-stars if you liked it and think it should be recommended more, even though it wasn't perfect. Four stars is basically the baseline for saying that the book was worth buying and that is how most readers interpret a 4-star average. If a book has less than a 4-star average, there will be very few sales of that book and unless the author has a lot more books or is independently wealthy, that author probably won't be writing much more. I do consider this when posting a review that will pull the book above or below the 4-star average line because that is the power of reader reviews. You have the ability to make an impact on what gets written and published.

3-stars -  Some sites, like Goodreads, still consider 3-star reviews to be a positive review and describe it as "I liked it." But on Amazon a 3-star review is a mildly negative review. It means, "This book wasn't terrible. I don't really want my money back but I wouldn't recommend it. It was just okay." Let's face it. The world is too full of great things to do, read, watch, learn and write to spend our time reading books that are "just okay." So, most readers don't consider buying books with a 3-star average. I don't buy 3-star books unless it is non-fiction about something I really want to know and there aren't any other choices. (And on the few occasions I have bought 3-star books for that sort of reason, I was usually sorry I did.) Amazon also does not recommend books with a 3-star average and if you give a book a 3-star average you are saying you don't recommend it. Use this rating for books that didn't offend you in any way but that weren't really that great. The kind of book that you could read if you really had nothing else to read on a long flight but not the type of book you would actually choose to read. 

2-stars - Two stars means the reviewer didn't like it. There is no passion in this kind of review. It is a way of saying that the book had major flaws, rampant typos, a bad or non-existent plot, nothing interesting. There is no book review site i know of where a two-star review has any positive connotations, so if you liked the book a little bit, you might consider giving it more than two stars. However, by all means, if you really were bored and wished you hadn't spent your time, let alone your money on it, give it two stars. A two-star review is low enough to seriously exert a downward pull on a book's rating and hurt an author's earnings and ability to write books in the future.

1-star - 1-star reviews can be pretty unpredictable on Amazon. Amazon means them to be for books a reviewer strongly disliked. But when I read reviews, I always start with the one-star reviews because they can tell you if there is something seriously offensive in the book or if the negative reviews come from some political group that simply dislikes the author. (I have very occasionally bought a book based on who DIDN'T like it because it was a group I disagree with and anything they disagreed with that vehemently was at least intriguing.) All too often people post one-star reviews because a book arrived late or was damaged in the mail. Others post one-star reviews because they want another book in the same genre to look better. Still others post one-star reviews because they found the book truly objectionable in some way or couldn't get past the first few chapters due to sheer boredom and horrendous prose. I personally reserve 1-star reviews for books that I really think Amazon should withdraw, books with racist, homophobic or otherwise bigoted content, books that promote stereotypes or that I think do harm. I would also give a one-star review to a book that was so badly written as to be unreadable, but I have never personally ordered or read such a book from Amazon because I carefully read reviews and descriptions before I order books, so I haven't actually used a one-star review for that.

Now, here's the reason I am saying all this. 1-star reviews can seriously hurt an author. If a book only has a few reviews, even one 1-star review will bring down the book's rating by a significant degree. This is a good thing in reality. I have rated a certain children's book that had racist content in it (not of the Mark Twain educational variety but seriously racist) with one star and it significantly changed the position of the book on Amazon. That's power. You can flag things that are problematic with this kind of review and it will really matter. On the other hand, be mindful that writers are people. They often support families. Giving a 1-star review can seriously impact the financial life of a family. Unless the writer is personally shipping you the book, you should think twice about giving a one-star review for a damaged book. Any writer worth their salt will help you get recompense from the shipping company if you write to the author personally (see their Amazon author page). It is very rarely the writer's fault if there is a problem with delivery and if the writer is independent and has options they will change their delivery system if a few people contact them with problems. But if an independent writer gets a few one-star reviews on Amazon, that person will probably no longer be a writer. This system is unforgiving and bad reviews last forever. The fact that you write in your review that the problem is with the delivery and not with the book itself does not really matter because the Amazon system runs mostly on the numbers.

Today is a world where consumers have real power. Use it consciously because it is YOUR power. 

This description of ratings was necessary because there are a lot of people who aren't as used to the online world as others. And different sites have different feelings about different ratings. On Goodreads a three-star review is mildly positive or neutral. On Amazon it is at least mildly negative and will hurt the author in the pocketbook. This isn't just my view. Read Anne R. Allen's blog entry on this if you want to know more about ratings. 

Why you should write reviews for any author you hope will write more

The first part of this post gives you the real dirt on the power of negative reviews. But what about the power of positive reviews? 

Unfortunately for authors, while it only takes a few negative reviews to seriously hurt an author, it takes a lot more positive reviews to give a writer a good chance on Amazon. It takes at least 50 good reviews (mostly 5-stars and a few 4-stars) before the Amazon system will start recommending a book to other readers who have enjoyed similar books. Because that recommendation system is one of the primary ways that unknown authors become known, sell books and thus can afford to continue to write, it is also serious beeswax.

New writers start with no reviews and being the first reviewer is a bit intimidating. I've done it. I know. So a lot of books go a long time with no reviews, even when some people are buying them and enjoying them. Even though statistics say that only about 1 percent of readers leave reviews, moderately successful books usually have at least a couple hundred reviews. The media and the better book promoters won't look at a book until it has a few hundred good reviews, no matter how good the book is. I've heard readers say, "Oh, I just loved that book. It's a new author. I hope he writes more but everything has already been said in the reviews." Reviewing isn't about saying something new. It is like voting and it really does influence what kinds of books will be available in the future. 

New authors simply have to pay their dues and slog in the trenches, trying to hand sell their first few thousand books and asking very sweetly for reviews from readers who want to see more of their work. Unless an author is picked up by one of the big publishing companies that essentially buy reviews or commission them from their media subsidiaries (and that is increasingly rare with new authors), it is a long hard struggle to get those requisite few-hundred positive reviews and a handful of bad reviews can derail the whole process and put the book at the bottom of the Amazon pile of a million-odd books. 

That is why reviews are important. I used to feel like reviews were sort of a civic duty, like voting. That still stands, except much more so. It would be like voting in a system where I felt like my vote really counted. I now know that if I read a book and like it, I can have a real impact on the chances the author has to write more. I recently ran across a little book by an unknown author. I read it and liked the story okay. But more than that the style was fresh and there was real heart and emotion in it. There were a couple technical issues. The author was independent and not wealthy at all and obviously didn't have a lot of support or the ability to hire expensive editors. (EVERY author needs editors. Please don't believe that a "good writer" ought to write without typos. All writers commit typos and they are much easier for readers to see than for the writer. It is virtually impossible to polish 80,000 words or more to technical perfection even with several editors working on it.) Anyway, I saw that the book had only a few reviews and an 3-something average. I really wanted to see more work by this author because I liked the voice, even with the technical issues. I gave the book a five-star review and it made a big difference. That's power! The author went from having very little chance of getting more readers to being in a category with a fighting chance, due to my review. 

Since then, I have seen that there are a lot of new independent writers climbing the long hill toward being established authors. And if I read them, I get to choose which ones I help to the top. And it doesn't take much. Those long rambling reviews that rehash the plot may be fun to write (and they may seriously help the author's self-esteem if they are nice). But what really matters in terms of an author's career are numbers, how many reviews with how many stars. You don't have to write more than 20 words to make a real difference.

I personally like to see good, thought-provoking books. I like books with great adventure that don't use gratuitous violence for cheap thrills, that reflect real emotions and show characters as real people. I want to see more books about minority cultures that we don't know enough about. I want to see more books that go beyond formulaic fiction. And we are going to see all those things much more in the future than we do now because "I am not the only one"  as John Lennon said. We the people may not have all the power in today's world, but I am seriously excited about the fact that we do have the power when it comes to book publishing at the moment. It is possible that some monolithic corporations will be able to get things back under their control eventually, but for now this is a place where alternatives actually get to take off.

So, think about what kinds of books you like and join this quiet, beautiful, literary revolution. Write reviews and you just wait and see. You will get more of what you like and less of the stuff you have always been annoyed by in the media and mass-market books. 

Why all the controversy then?

Now I'm getting to a part of this issue that most readers don't see. Underneath all the talk about the power of reviews there is a raging controversy going on among authors - about whether authors should request reviews and who should and shouldn't write books. Weighing in on a controversial topic that has the potential to destroy one's chances of being able to write for a living is a dangerous game. But I like to live dangerously... and this issue is really bugging me. 

It is currently fashionable among more established authors to make a lot of noise about how new authors shouldn't review other new authors. I have run across several prominent blogs accusing authors who review fellow authors of running "review cartels." The idea is that a theoretical group of authors gets together and agrees to give each other all five-star reviews, regardless of how bad their books are. Hey, it could happen. I certainly haven't met any authors who seem like they'd participate in such a thing but you can always find crooked people. And yet, this is only likely to generate a handful of reviews. And remember, a book needs a few hundred good reviews and very few bad reviews to really allow an author to make a living at writing. 

The reason there is a controversy is that reviews are supposed to be for readers. This is how readers get to find out if they should spend their hard-earned money and often even-harder-earned time on a particular book. It is also, as I described above, part of a very real democratic process that can help people shape our culture in wonderful ways. If someone hijacks this in an attempt to get an unfair advantage and trick readers into buying something that isn't well-written, that undermines a system that has a lot of potential for good. 

But here's the rub. It is extremely difficult for a new and unknown author to get those crucial first 50 reviews that launch an author career. The authors who are most vocal about deriding other authors for reviewing each other are often fairly well established, don't particularly want all the new-author competition and say they got their first reviews from friends and family. How nice for them. I'm glad they have supportive friends and family willing to give them a chance to make a career of writing. I will be grateful to the first readers who posted reviews of my books forever. No matter how many reviews I get in the years to come, those first ones will always carry the most weight because, frankly, none of the other readers ever would have come without those first reviews. 

But let's be honest, I'm not a socialite. I don't have 50 friends who both have Amazon accounts or have the time to read my books soon. Half of my friends don't speak English because I live in the Czech Republic but I write in English. And many of my friends are swamped and have been meaning to read my books but seriously work 12-hour days and simply never get to read for pleasure. We're working-class mostly.  So, if I could only rely on my friends to get those initial reviews (so that other readers could have a chance to see that my books exist) then I wouldn't stand a chance.

Perhaps some new and unknown authors do have that many friends. Maybe they write well and all their friends review their books honestly and glowingly. Perhaps they don't write so well and all their friends review their books glowingly anyway. But this goes back to the purpose of the review system. I want to read books that are well-written, interesting, thought-provoking and entertaining. I do not want to ONLY read books by people who are socially popular, even if those books are good. I also want to read GOOD books by people who are introverts and only have three good close friends (and one of them is a grandmother who barely has electricity let alone an Amazon account). How does an author like that get 50 reviews?

Well, one way authors do it today is by signing up for what is called Read-for-Review programs. You can find these programs on sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing. They are basically places where authors offer to let random people read their book for free in exchange for an honest review. There is a sort of honor code. If you get a free copy, you are supposed to try to review the book within about two weeks. Authors are really really really not allowed to pressure reviewers to give good reviews just because they received a free copy. (And authors are banned from such sites if people report that they pressure reviewers.) Many people on these sites refuse to give one- and two-star reviews and simply refrain from reviewing if they really don't like the book because they don't want to actively hurt an author who is simply struggling to make something coherent and still developing as a writer. But that isn't necessary. It's just the policy of some reviewers. 

Read-for-Review programs are a good way to get free books but you have to choose carefully because anyone can put their book in the program and some of them really are from writers who still need a lot of practice. The reviewers on these sites are generally not there for the freebies. They are there because they care about books and writers and the future of literature. These are mostly people who are there generously offering their time to review books by unknown authors so that the rest of the world can have a better chance of getting to read only the good stuff. About half of the reviewers on these places (in my experience, not a statistical survey) are also authors.

Now, the controversy arises when there are claims that there is pressure from authors for reviewers on these Read-for-Review sites to give only good reviews. And specifically for authors to give other authors only good reviews (or else someone might give them a bad review, whether they deserve it or not). This then makes those reviews less valuable in helping other readers figure out which books are worth investing time and money in. And that is why some authors have taken to vehemently demanding that authors stop reviewing other authors. 

I understand the concern. It isn't non-existent but it is far smaller than it is made out to be. I have so far gained a few reviews on my books from Read-for-Review sites. As far as I know the only reviews on Amazon that I have that are not five-star reviews come from fellow authors from Read-for-Review sites. All my reviews from general readers are 5-star reviews. (Readers apparently like my books and, of course, I'm glad and very grateful.) My experience is not that authors are more generous with their good reviews. My experience is the opposite. I have so far been lucky enough to avoid those certain poisonous individuals who actually go around giving bad reviews to books that seem to be in competition with theirs. But I have received some critical reviews from other authors. Whereas my few general readers have been wildly enthusiastic about The Soul and the Seed and The Fear and the Solace, the first and second books in my series, my fellow authors have picky professional things to say. And that is only natural. They really know something about writing.

Sometimes a fellow author reviewed my book even though it wasn't their favorite genre and even though they say it was a great read, they give it fewer stars because I wrote in the wrong genre for them. Or some of them say they like series that end each book with a nice wrapped up conclusion rather than a continuing story. This is an issue of taste. Some readers like "episodic" series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, that make it appear that the protagonist has achieved their goals at the end of each book, only to throw more problems at them in the very beginning of the next book. Other readers prefer "classic" series like The Lord of the Rings or The Outlander Series that keep a cohesive story going over multiple books. I happen to be the latter type of reader. (Harry Potter was really good but I just really loved Rowling's writing. I didn't love the episodic nature of the series. The Hunger Games seriously tanked for me after the first book, largely for this reason.)  

And so I'm also a classic series type of writer. General readers mostly review based on "feeling." If they loved the book and didn't want to put it down to go work, bed or something else, then they give it 5-stars, period. No quibbling. But writers... Well, it's our profession. We know all mechanics, the other things the author could have done but didn't and so forth. As a result, authors are usually tough reviewers.

I have tried to wean myself off of being so ultra critical, since I found out just how many 5-star reviews it takes before an author can make enough money to get time to write more books. Part of my personal review policy is that I try to review books based on how I think they would appeal to readers of their genre. If I'm reading out of my primary genres that means that I will sometimes be more generous with the stars than my own personal inclination suggests because I don't want to deprive readers of, say, hard science fiction of a read they'll love, even if I may not love it. If the book is well-written and as technically good as any other well-known hard science fiction I've read (and I have read a few), then I'll even give it five stars, based on its technical qualities rather than my enjoyment of the book. That's just my policy.

But many authors have a harsher policy than mine. They are very critical of other authors and demand impossibly high standards when compared with what the star rankings actually mean to average readers. I often read three-star reviews by authors on other books that are essentially positive reviews. They liked the book. It had no technical problems. It is good enough to be traditionally published but they weren't amazed by it. It didn't personally change their life, so it only gets three stars. That is their choice, but I feel that makes authors a particularly critical bunch of reviewers on average. 

Lets face it. A book on Amazon needs hundreds of 5-star reviews to allow the author to make a living writing. I read comments by authors all the time saying they reserve 5-star reviews for books that "change their life" or books they "will read many times over again." If all or most Amazon reviewers had that policy, what would happen? How many books truly changed your life? How many do you read over and over again? And do you think those are the only authors who should be able to make a living writing? 

I personally want to see greater variety than just Julia Scheeres, Ann Pettitt, Dianna Gabaldon, Barbara Kingsolver and the estates of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan (to name the handful of authors I tend to read over and over again). I love the authors I love but even they get old after awhile. I do want to see more good work by good authors and I even think that authors that don't write in my genre should be able to make a living, if their work is of professional quality and appeals to readers of their genre. So, I am going to give lots of authors who I like 5-star reviews because I know that that is the ONLY way that they will ever be able to write more books. And I have the power to influence that.

I have to conclude that the idea that authors are rampantly reviewing other authors with undeserved 5-star reviews in order to get 5-star reviews in return is somewhat of an urban legend. It probably happens with small groups of close friends but it doesn't seem to happen nearly as often as those who like to fret about it make out. And even when it does happen, it isn't likely to matter enough to make or break the review system. One 1-star review effectively negates five 5-star reviews from a financial perspective because it brings the average down to 4-stars which is the bare minimum for most buyers. So, if an author somehow gets ten other authors to review their book with five stars (good luck trying to find ten who will really do it) and the book is really awful, how many angry readers is it really going to take to make those ten fake reviews irrelevant? Not very many.

And given my experience, I would discourage any new author from trying such a strategy for strategic as well as moral reasons. In my experience seeking out other authors to give you reviews is a good way to get MORE critical reviews of your books than you will get from general readers, not less critical. If you desperately need to get a reasonable number of reviews, which you do in the beginning, then I do recommend going to Goodreads and LibraryThing and other Read-for-Review sites and entering the fray there with a lot of other authors. But don't expect a bunch of 5-star reviews because that isn't what happens in those places.

Featured: The Wanderer's Guide to Dragon Keeping

This week's featured author on the Goodreads PFDR board is Ashley O'Melia of Illinois. Her biography isn't very revealing, although she does claim to have written her first story at five years old. But the big thing about this author is her book The Wanderer's Guide to Dragon Keeping. I've had this book on my "want to read" list for awhile now and I'm really hoping that being featured author for the week will inspire her to hold a sale because otherwise her Amazon Kindle price is a bit steep by indie standards ($5.99, especially for a slim little book of 170 pages). Still, I want to read this book because that is just an awesome title. (Why can't I seem to come up with titles that good? Titles are my Achilles's heel in writing.) And secondly this is one book where the description is as good as the title: 

"Welcome to The Wanderer’s Guide to Dragon Keeping. You no doubt have stumbled upon this book due to a great need, whether realized or otherwise. You are a very select individual, placed in a very exclusive position of responsibility. Dragon keeping is not for the faint of heart. Aubrey Goodknight is alone. Orphaned at a young age, she long ago stopped believing in the fantasies and mythical creatures she had so loved as a child. When she’s diagnosed with breast cancer, she’s certain things couldn’t be more desolate. That is, until she stumbles across The Wanderer’s Guide to Dragon Keeping, which changes her life completely. Raising a baby dragon in a modern, non-magical world isn’t a challenge she’s sure she’s up to. Now, Aubrey must learn that seeing isn’t always believing, but believing can be the most powerful kind of magic."

See what I mean. If you don't want to read this book, you're either not a fantasy fan or you're made of wood. If you're brave enough, go get it HERE.  

O'Melia has also published some books of poetry and other stories. You can see the full list on Goodreads.

Teen fantasy and angst-ridden romance

This week's featured author on the Goodreads PFDR board is younger and well connected with a lot of the teenage world. She's Australian author Kia Carrington-Russell. She started writing when she was fifteen and says that her "warped and strange dreams" gave her a fantastic new world. 

Her Three Immortal Blades series is about a teenage girl who has the ability to erect a sort of force field or shield around herself. There are some bad guys around that "shielders" like her have to fight and they mix about as well as bleach and red clothes, i.e. there's a lot of red lost. 

One reviewer sums it up this way: "If you like Young Adult Fantasy, with a touch of angst ridden semi-romance that never quite gets fulfilled - then this series is worth your attention"

I should mention that this is yet another teenage fantasy romance in which the heroine must choose between two boyfriends. 

You can find Possession of My Soul (Book 1 of the Three Immortal Blades series) HERE.

And then Possession of My Heart (Book 2 of the Three Immortal Blades series) HERE.

New Release: The Fear and the Solace (The Kyrennei Series Book Two)

The second book in The Kyrennei Series is being released today in honor of my mother's birthday and the lunar eclipse. Happy birthday, Mama!

What if you had to fight a war you knew you could never win?

Aranka Miko, the girl who carried the hope of resistance against Addin mind control, is lost and assumed to be dead. Despair has always dogged at the heels of those in the desperate fight against the Addin, but now that they've tasted hope, the return of darkness is all the more bitter. 

Twenty-two-year-old Cho is the temporary commander of the J. Company compound in Montana when disaster strikes. The scouting team in Portland, Oregon has been ambushed on the 205 bridge. If they're captured, their souls will be usurped by Addin control. Then Cho will be on her own in this secret world war that can never be won. At least two of her closest friends are dead, the man she loves is at the epicenter of the danger and the one who carries the first hope in a thousand years is lost, almost certainly killed in a rain of bullets. 

Hope is a fragile thing and fear is constant companion. It's the twenty-first century, right now, in America and everything looks just fine on the surface. But a clandestine force controls the highest seats of power and will stop at nothing to stamp out resistance. The ancient Meikan people, like Cho, have lived in terror of the Addin for generations, and those who dare to stand up to its power are shunned as outlaws by their own people. Then a mere girl fulfilled an almost forgotten prophecy and hope briefly flowered in unlikely places. But does a giant even notice the crushing of a single flower? One girl is easy enough to kill.

Writer's Toolbox: Screwdrivers and pliers - Writing and publishing terminology

Every profession has it's secret language and writing is no exception.

I'm putting together a collection of tools and inspiration for writers here on my blog site. And one of the first things that goes in that toolbox are the terms that writers use to talk about writing. I'm not talking about things like "grammar" or even what kind of keyboard one should use. I'm talking about the professional terms that are crucial to development of the craft and surviving in the world of authors. 

I have been writing since... I don't even know when. Maybe since I was seven and my family took a trip to Mexico and I wrote bits and pieces about it in a scrapbook. When I was a teenager I dabbled in fiction and then I turned to what I thought of as serious writing, i.e. newspaper journalism. While working as an international correspondent in places like Kosovo, the Ukraine, Ecuador and Bangladesh, I also took writing classes and joined writer's groups.

And from all those years of experience, I know for certain that writers get better. I haven't slid off the fence yet in the argument over talent versus experience. I think there are some assets that are handy to get genetically to be a writer. But I definitely know that no amount of inborn "talent" will make up for lack of practice and knowledge.

And the most basic knowledge, as with any profession, is knowing the professional lingo. That's not just so that you can talk to other writers and sound like you know what you're talking about. Each of the terms I will list here packs a key concept that writers use as surely as a carpenter uses an electric screwdriver or a sander. 

There are probably too many words I could list, so I'm going to just start with those terms and concepts that I have seen writers struggle with. I'm going to be teaching writing workshops this fall, so I am likely to add to the list as I go.

Genre woes

I'm not going to cover everything to do with genres. That's a huge topic but here are the terms that I have seen cause misunderstandings.

Genre-blending and genre-mixing: 

Genres were made up by the publishing and bookselling industry. It was an attempt to get people to buy more books and it worked. If a type of story was successful, publishers put out more of that kind of book and booksellers put them on a shelf next to the successful books of similar type.

But these categories are essentially arbitrary. Someone somewhere decided that all stories that hinge on a character trying to find out a secret (such as who done it or where is it?) should be put on a shelf together. And then someone else decided that stories where a romantic relationship is the central point should be on another shelf. Thus the mystery and romance genres were born.

That may be simple enough but then came science fiction, fantasy, chick lit... And now we have steampunk, new adult and dystopia. Each of these "genres" has a description but they are often indistinct and not mutually exclusive. For the publishing and bookselling industries this is a problem.

When a writer (I'm looking at you Morgan Daimler) writes what at first sounds like a mystery but puts it into a fantasy world with a romantic relationship as central to the action and aims it at a specific cultural or religious group of readers, your local bookstore is in trouble. They don't know where to shelf it and if Daimler had shelved hers in mystery, where it seems to belong on first inspection, I never would have read it, because mystery is one of the few things I almost never read.

Enter the age of Amazon and similar retailers. Thanks to complex algorithms, we can now categorize books much more precisely and readers can find what they want to read based on a lot of factors - the reader's age, culture, gender and interests as well as the the type of story or what is central to the plot. This means that writers and readers no longer have to stick to these arbitrary and ultimately claustrophobic categories known as genres. 

The result is a lot of genre-blending and genre-mixing in which writers take interesting facets of various genres and come up with something fresh and new that would have been "impossible to publish" ten years ago.

Dystopia:

I would like to define one particular genre because I have seen several online forums where significant confusion over the definition reigned. Thanks to the popularity of books like The Hunger Games and Divergent, writers love to claim that they are writing dystopia these days.

The problem is that the virtual shelves of dystopia have been inundated with piles of books about zombies, vampires and apocalyptic disasters. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this fiction, most of it isn't dystopia.

The quick and dirty definition of dystopia is as easy to formulate as that for the romance genre. It is said that it isn't a romance if you can take the love part out and still have a plot. Similarly, it isn't dystopia if you can take the socio-political problems out and still have a plot.

Dystopia is the counter to utopia. It is society gone wrong in some crucial way. George Orwell is often held up as the father of the dystopian genre and a lot of dystopia is like Orwell's work, overt social commentary set in a totalitarian society that exaggerates certain elements of our own world to show what could happen if we continue in some unwise direction. Some dystopia is more subtle, showing an outwardly ideal society, often set in the future but showing how an individual can be harmed even within an ostensibly perfect system. More rare is dystopia set in our times and essentially in our world but highlighting particular aspects of contemporary society as dysfunctional.

Steampunk:

Steampunk is a relatively new genre that includes stories that take place in a society that is not high tech but includes some technological advances. Some of the technology tends to be a bit fantastic, such as flying machines with flappable wings that run on steam engines. But it isn't all silly. Some steampunk is set in a future world where much of the high technoogy has broken down for one reason or another. Some of it is set in a fantasy world that is neither entirely modern nor entirely medieval.

New Adult:

New adult is sort of like a genre that occupies the crack between Young Adult and general adult-level genre fiction. I like the theory of a genre that appeals to twenty-somethings but alas New Adult has been largely taken over by stories set on or around college campuses that involve romance. It should legitimately be called New Adult Romance now, but for the time being the going term is New Adult. 

Narrative nonfiction:

Narrative nonfiction is a writing style as well as a genre. I have again seen a lot of confusion about it in the online world. Just about any sort of nonfiction can be written in narrative form, meaning written as if it were fiction... as a story. A lot of the best history books are being written this way as well as memoirs, self-help and inspirational books. There are also some pretty good technical how-to books written with at least elements of narrative style. 

Style and writing terms

This is not a comprehensive list, just the things that I have run into in discussions with writing students, writers or editors in the past year. 

First person

I am now writing in first person. I personally prefer first person narratives, even when I'm reading fiction and the author isn't really the character talking in the book. I like first person because it brings the reader right into the story intimately. I know there are disadvantages to it though. For one thing, the reader has to take my word for it. If I had written this paragraph in third person, I could have made the advantages of first person sound much more universal and authoritative. This way you just know that I like it.

Second person

You may be reading this either to stock your writer's toolbox or simply to be entertained. Whatever your reason, you are now reading a paragraph written in second person. Second person is what happens whenever you the reader are the primary character in the narrative. You can try it in fiction if you want but you'll find that it is exceedingly difficult to pull off well.

Third person

Most writers choose to write in third person. It's probably the most versatile point of view in terms of the types of voice and tone that the writer can employ. Third person simply means that the story is about a character who is named and referred to as he, she or it. The reader isn't addressed directly and the narrator remains in the background, never speaking directly about him- or herself. Arie Farnam wrote this paragraph in third person, which creates some minor problems when it comes to avoiding the passive voice.

Passive voice

Passive voice is often misunderstood. I am amazed at the number of writers and editors who are confused by what is passive and what isn't passive voice. The phrases above with "misunderstood," "amazed" and "confused" are all written in passive voice, as is this sentence.

Here, let met me fix that. (Because passive voice is evil, right?) Many people misunderstand passive voice. I see a lot of writers and editors who confuse awkward sentences and passive voice. I wrote the last three sentences in active voice.

If you go to a high school composition class, you will be told to avoid passive voice like the plague. And it is a good thing to do at the beginning. Beginning writers almost always overuse passive voice and it is very helpful to try to avoid it. The vast majority of sentences will be more concise and interesting in active voice.

The easiest way to avoid passive voice is to go through your writing and look for passive adjectives (adjectives that describe something that has happened to the noun, like "written", "flown" and "misunderstood.") Try turning these sentences into active sentences and see if they're better that way. Usually they will be.

Biut there will be times when they aren't. Passive voice isn't bad to the bone. There are reasons to use it. Laziness is, however, the most common reason it is used and that isn't a good reason. When I said "Passive voice is often misunderstood," I was avoiding having to say who misunderstands passive voice. I could have been doing that as a way of being diplomatic, which is sometimes a good idea, but I was surely also doing it partly because it is easier to hint that some mysterious "them" out there misunderstands passive voice than to do the hard work of thinking about exactly who does. 

I've recently had editors tell me things are passive voice when they aren't. Past perfect and present perfect sentences like "She had read all of my books" and "I've been working at the store" are not passive. The are easy to confuse with passive because the form of the verb used in those tenses in English (Fun fact: and in Russian!) is the same as the passive adjective used in passive voice. The linguistic term for this type of word is "the past passive participle." You really wanted to know that, didn't you?

Writing for a living

There is a lot of hype about writing as an entrepreneur lately. I get it. Writers need to think like business people in order to succeed. But the terminology can be scary. When you get right down to it "an author entrepreneur" is a person who makes a living from writing books.  

Self-publisher or indie-publisher:

These two terms get used interchangeably most of the time. Indie implies a bit more rebellion and a desire to keep independence even from retailers and other services. There are self-publishers who would gladly sign up with someone who would do a chunk of the business side of their work at the drop of a hat, in order to have more time to write, and independence be damned. But in general, both self-publishers and indie-publishers are writers out there trying to do serious writing and publishing, often as a business. Their primary goal is usually not fame and fortune or the kick of seeing their name on a book. And many never do see their name on a "book" because they stick to ebooks. It reminds me a bit of the culture of international freelance journalists of the 1980s and 1990s, minus the worn out shoes. It is chaotic and only the hardiest survive for long. 

Traditional publisher:

A traditional publisher is a company that makes a profit from actually acquiring rights to publish books, publishing them, selling them and paying authors a royalty. There will always be some overlap in these descriptions but a self-publisher doesn't become a traditional publisher just by giving their publishing "company" a name that is different from their author name. Neither does a vanity publisher become a traditional publisher by accidentally selling a few books and actually paying a royalty once in a blue moon. A traditional publisher has to turn a profit in the traditional way.

Vanity publisher:

A vanity publisher is a company that makes a profit by charging authors for publishing services. This isn't to say that a vanity published book has never sold a copy or made the author a cent. Some probably have but the difference between a traditional publisher and a vanity publisher is that a vanity publisher charges for things that a publisher traditionally covers. Vanity publishers don't pay advances and they don't have very high standards (if any) about what they publish, so they'll publish just about anything. They also don't promote books or help in selling them in any way. But traditional publishers often don't do that last very much either.

Proof copy:

This refers to a printed book that is sent to you buy the printer (or publisher possibly) for you to check for mistakes before the book is approved as final. Proof copies usually have a page or a stamp that says "proof" on it, so they can't be sold as "regular books." Printers often charge less for them and so they don't want you just ordering a bunch of proof copies and selling them as if they were the final book. Proof copies can be sent to reviewers to get early reviews.

Ebook formats:

When I first got into indie publishing I was a bit worried by all the talk of formatting headaches and woes. I thought this meant that formatting was going to be as hard as learning webdesign had been. It wasn't.

Maybe it's just me but I don't find formatting to be that terrible. Okay, some of the work can be tedious. If like me, you started writing in MS Word without a care in the world and just typed, you might well have used tabs to indent your paragraphs and then after a few paragraphs Word picked up on that and started automatically indenting. But when you started a new chapter, you had to go back to pressing the tab button. This is the dumb way to do things, Arie... Yes, I know but I didn't even know I was writing something serious at first.  So, anyway, if you foolishly did that, like me, then when you're finalizing your work, you have to go back and weed out all the tabs. Tabs are a big no no in ebook formatting. Put on some good music, get into a meditative mood and skim down the left-hand side of your screen and delete all tabs. Not hard, just tedious.

There are more complex parts of ebook formatting and I"m not going to cover them all here, but the essential thing to know is that, if you can organize a kitchen cabinet, you can format an ebook. Know the most important format names.

Mobi is the standard Kindle format. 

Epub is the format for Android-based systems.

Ibooks is the Apple format.

I use Scrivener to organize large projects and Scrivener converts to Mobi and Epub formats easily. You can also now use Smashwords to automatically convert and they'll do Ibooks too. But in either case, you have to start with a very cleanly formatted manuscript. Do not try to insert extra lines anywhere. Learn to use page breaks. You can run into trouble with graphic elements and things like drop caps. So, it is best to avoid those until you are used to formatting.

Cover design:

It used to be that writers wrote. Not so much any more. Today, if you want to make a living as a writer you need to at the very least also be a marketer. Think of it as going back to the medieval days of traveling bards. Back then, storytellers had to market their work as well. That makes it sound a lot more romantic at least. But I digress...

The other thing you have to do if you are publishing independently is worry about the design of your cover. There are hundreds of designers out there on Fiverr who will supposedly do it for $5  but if you look at their portfolios they are distinctly uninspired and you will have to provide all photos or artwork and tell them exactly how to do it. Ideas are not part of what they do. There are dozens of designers with webpages offering to design a more legitimate cover for anywhere from $100 to $1000. The average is around $200 to $300 at this point. Depending on your genre and your tastes, you can find a cover designer in that price range. 

Call me picky but I couldn't find a designer portfollio for less than $500 that I liked even slightly and $500 is out of my price range for a single cover. So, I downloaded a free Photoshop equivalent called Gimp and spent three months learning how to run it. Many experts warn authors away from doing this and I may be a fool. I'm also an artist and a photographer, so maybe I'm not. I don't entirely recommend that everyone try to design their own covers. There are way too many badly designed self-published covers out there. If you do want to try it, expect it to take at least a few months to learn and study book covers and graphic design principles. Consider it every bit as important as any of the writing of the inside of the book. Technically it is actually more important in terms of initially reaching readers.

You can buy the rights to photos to use on a cover from sites like istock.com and shutterstock.com. There is a lot of talk of creative commons photos and there are lists of servers where you can supposedly find free photos. I have spent hours searching these frree sites and not only did I not find many good photos on them, I did not find one single photo that was not marked as copyright protected.  These supposedly free site shave been taken over by photographers trying to sell their work. Be very careful about using photos from sites that claim to be showing creative commons images because many of the photos on these sites are copyrighted and downloading them from a site that says the photos listed should be creative commons is no protection. Read the small print. And that will take hours. The paid sites are not that expensive (less than $40 for 5 very large, very high quality photos of my choice from Shutterstock) and they are a sure bet.

In the end, I hired a model (i.e. a student friend) shot my own main photographs and then paid for a few more pictures from Shutterstock. I"ve very happy with the results so far. 

Kerning: 

If you are going to try designing your own cover, look up kerning and study it until you get it. Kerning is the technique of changing the distance between letters. It is a funny thing but you can take a perfectly professional photo and artfully arrange a title and an author's name on it and it will still not look like a real book cover, until you add kerning. Even the non-professional eye will know the difference if allowed to compare.

The overall explanation is that kerning is supposed to make it look as though the letters in a word are equally separated when actually it pulls some letters closer together or pushes others further apart. This is because some letters fit together nicely and others have bits that stick out and if such an awkward letter happens to be right next to another awkward letter they don't fit together easily.

Say in this font, "rt" tend to run into each other. You can't put them closer together and have them look nice, but "To" looks much better if the "o" is tucked protectively under the top line of the "T". You have to do this by hand on book cover titles and other large text. You need a solid graphic design program to do it and you have to know when and where to do it. That's kerning and it's one of the things you have to study if you want to try designing your own covers.

Coopetition: 

This is a term coined by self-publishing trail blazer Joanna Penn. It refers to the mixture of cooperation and competition that has become the professional standard among independent and small-press authors.

The theory behind coopetition is that readers tend to read a lot of books and often in the same genre. Traditionally, readers were stuck following those authors most heavily promoted by the publishing industry and that is still where the bulk of the market is. Today, however, readers who discover one independent author usually discover other independent and small-press authors, particularly those in similar genres. This creates an interesting dynamic among author-entrepreneurs.

We have been brought up to believe that business as primarily a competitive proposition but that mindset doesn't serve well in the current circumstances. The pool of readers is infinite because readers read many books and they read more books if they like what they read. The result is that it is in the interests of the individual author-entrepreneur to help and promote their fellow independent and small-press authors as much as possible.

In fact, the closer the competition may seem, the more it is in my interest to support and promote another author. That may seem counter intuitive but it makes good economics. The fact is that if a reader discovers a book that is similar to mine (contemporary dystopia or fantasy thriller) written by an independent author, they are much much more likely to discover mine than is the average person on the street. And readers who have already discovered my books are more likely to stick around and be satisfied readers, if they can read something similar that recommended to them, while waiting for my next book to come out.

This concept wasn't entirely foreign to me when I started on this adventure, but I have been pleasantly surprised at how well it works. A side benefit is that the more you post on your blog and website, the more readers you attract in general. So, I post about interesting indie authors on this blog both because I want to give my readers something to chew on while I prepare the next book for publication and because that boosts my site in general. I also post everywhere else I can about these interesting indie authors because if a reader sees their work and likes it, they are halfway to finding my work.

Key abbreviations: 

WIP

Work In Progress: This refers to whatever a writer is currently working on and has not yet completed or published.

POD

Print On Demand: This is a way of publishing a book in print format without having to pay for boxes of printed books that may or may not ever be sold before they gather too much dust and moisture and become undesirable. POD used to be fairly expensive and inferior in quality to comerically available paperbacks but today there are several companies offering POD services that make affordable books that are virtually indistinguishable from their mass-printed peers.

POV

Point Of View: This refers to which character's mind and senses the reader shares in a given section of writing. A lot of classic literature uses a distant or omniscient POV where the reader can see the story from many points of view but often not in great emotional detail from any one character. Recently, close third person and first person POVs have become more popular with stories that allow the reader to identify closely with the characters and their emotions. 

R4R

Read for Review: This refers to the practice of authors giving out free review copies of their book either before publication or early on when they have few reviews. Authors may give R4R copies to bloggers or other professional reviewers but they will often also give out free copies to random readers on sites such as Goodreads or LibraryThing.  There is an "honor system" involved. In exchange for a free book, the reader/reviewer agrees to post honest reviews, usually on Amazon at the very least and sometimes other sites.

It is key to note that there is no agreement about what kind of review gets posted. It may be hard to write a critical review when one got the book for free but the whole point is to help readers find books that they will like, so a modicum of honesty is an important part of the equation. R4R agreements are usually informal and made online between the author and the reader/reviewer. Sometimes the agreement calls for the review to be posted within a certain time period, usually two weeks from receipt of a free book, but authors will often wait longer for reviews from well-known reviewers.

If you have made it this far in this post, you are a serious reader and possibly a serious writer. So, if you would like to try out R4R yourself, drop me an email on this page and ask for a free Read for Review copy of my book.

Good luck in your writing adventures!

Icelandic horror and romance - Talk about chills and steam!

When I think of Iceland, I get this image of the rocky Isle of David Eddings' fantasies but with lots of hot springs! What better place for spooky fantasy stories? What better place for romance? 

This week's featured author on the Goodreads PFDR board is Icelandic author Hildur Enola of Nostri Publication and she's got the goods on this one.  

Enola has two books of short stories out in cooperation with her co-author Sirrý Sig.

One Thing Led to Another is a collection of spooky and suspenseful tales that dig into the subconscious.

Icelandic Love features a variety of romance for a quick and delicious read. 

She has a couple of books out in Icelandic and I'm not going to try to pronounce or spell them but if you are more linguistically talented, check out her Goodreads page.

Spotlight on One Thing Led to Another

Hildur Enóla and Sirrý Sig present four very different short stories:

This is a small world. We all have effect on each other, one thing leads to another in an unforeseen way.

The Blood Weeping Table
A fantasy about a pampered wife who finds more than she bargained for with her new desk.

When Hafsteinn Died
A mystery about a woman coming home from a business trip to find her cat dead, and her girlfriend missing.

Just the Facts
A drama about a down-to-earth family man who begins to suspect his young stepdaughter of a cold-blooded murder.

My Rose
A realistic horror fiction about a man who falls madly in love with a girl.

“We Dare You”

Hildur Enóla won first place in the magazine, Vikan, for her short story, ‘Icelandic Honey’. Her co-author Sirrý Sig won third place in the Nýtt Líf magazine for her short story, ‘The Shadow.’ She has also published the children’s book, ‘Through the Cracks’,and several short stories

And the featured author of the week is... oops!

And the featured author this week on the Goodreads PFDR board is... 

OOPS!

Wait a minute here...

That wasn't supposed to happen yet. I'm not ready yet! Mys second book isn't out yet. I'm not ready! Oh well, no arguing with the gods of Goodreads. 

Yup, you guessed it. The featured author this week is yours truly. 

As a mark of my gratitude to all the wonderful readers at Goodreads I'm putting The Soul and the Seed on sale for 99 cents for just this week on Amazon. So, if there was ever a time to tell all your friends on Facebook and Twitter about it, now is the time. 

This week also happens to be Mabon week, which is the time of thanksgiving in our family. Now, how timely is that? 

I am grateful to all the Goodreads members who are spreading the word about this intense, amazing book that I was so honored to birth into the world. Thank you also to my family and friends who have tirelessly helped with technical details, advance reading and spreading the word.

Beyond that I am astounded into gratitude every day by the fact that I was given this idea, these words, this chance and the time to write it down. It was a gift of the universe and spirit, if anything ever was. The idea brewed for many years but the characters came like real people, telling me their stories. So, I am thankful to whatever it is that gave me this gift - goddess, spirit or my own luck of the draw in life experience. I have many gifts that can't be taken for granted, a husband who works a steady job, so that I don't have to work extra long hours like so many women today. I have a snug home and good fortune in health.

A recent calamity at a friend's home - one of those completely unpredictable things that could happen any day to any of us and leave harm that will last a lifetime - has reminded me to give thanks every day that disaster doesn't strike.  I have just finished writing a final chapter for Book 3 of the Kyrennei Series and that is a sentiment that comes out in the story as well - that simplest of gratitude, the miracle of another day of peace and wholeness.

I don't take this moment for granted.

And thank you for reading because then I am never alone.

Sneak a Peek at Book 2 of the Kyrennei Serieis - Work-in-Progress Blog Tour

I was nominated by author Sarah Queen  for the Work In Progress Blog Tour. This is where authors post about their current work in progress, divulge the first sentences of the first three chapters of their next book, and nominate several other authors to do the same.

So, here goes...

The second book in the Kyrennei Series is called The Fear and the Solace. This is the sequel to The Soul and the Seed. Reviewers have said they are anxiously awaiting this sequel, to which I can now say, "Almost there!" The Fear and the Solace should be published in about two weeks. The text is undergoing copyediting at a secret location in the Mid West and the cover is being polished to a high gloss.

For those who don't know, the Kyrennei Series is a contemporary fantasy thriller with dystopian elements. The world of the story looks just like today's world and the setting is the Pacific Northwest. But a clandestine force usurps the wills and desires of individuals, forcing them to pursue more power for those already in power. The problems of our modern world can easily be blamed on this premise and readers find themselves looking over their shoulders and shivering, much as I did when reading George Orwell's 1984 all those years ago. It can be disconcerting when the dystopia is a bit too close for comfort.

The primary character is Aranka Miko, a girl from the small town of La Grande, Oregon, who finds out the hard way that a fluke in her genes makes her a threat to the those who hold real power in today's world. First, she is imprisoned and forced to watch as others like her are killed. To escape, Aranka falls in with a group of desperate outlaws from every corner of the globe. They are at turns endearing and ruthless but they represent her only hope to escape from torture and death. Then an ambush separates Aranka from her new friends, including one who she might just love.

This is where The Fear and the Solace begins. The modern-day freedom fighters known as J. Company despair of finding Aranka alive and she has come to be the symbol of their greatest hope. Aranka is stranded with every possible authority hunting her. And she is physically different from everyone around her. She can't easily hide. 

Readers of The Soul and the Seed may be interested to know that this time you get to hear from some other intriguing characters - both Cho and Rick, for instance. You also get to explore settings beyond the United States. But I won't spoil anything for you. You will get to read it soon enough.

As I said, it's coming in about two weeks. Here is something to tease you with... as promised, the initial sentences of the first three chapters.

Chapter 1

The smell of late summer dust bit sharply inside my nose as I walked cross the gravel courtyard toward Jace’s office... 

Chapter 2

It was a Saturday morning at the tail end of September...

Chapter 3

I couldn't quite believe that I was still both alive and free... 

My heartfelt thanks to Sarah Queen for tagging me for this. It's fun and a great way to get to know authors. Here is Sarah's post about her new upcoming book Evergreen.  It sounds like a thought-provoking science fiction / fantasy. 

Now it is my turn to nominate some fellow authors to disclose some tantalizing tidbits about what they're working on. 

Morgan Daimler - I must say I was astounded by Morgan's book Murder Between the Worlds. I am not a mystery reader and the title totally turned me off. I only read it because it was supposed to have really interesting Pagan themes and I'll undergo almost anything (even formulaic mystery, I suppose) for that. How glad I was that I gave it a chance! This is not a formulaic mystery. It's fascinating speculative fiction about what might happen if the human world and the legendary world of Faerie were to partially merge. There is a murder mystery in the plot but there is much much more - great modern fantasy atmosphere, wonderful prose, lovable characters, realistic dialogue - in short, all the things I find in such short supply in fiction. I have been so overloaded with work these past few months that it is very hard to get my attention (as my children know all too well) and this was the only book to really succeed in the past three months. I am very interested to see what Morgan will do next.

Debbie Behan - Debbie writes science fiction adventure with a fun atmosphere and the lore of Greek gods liberally mixed in. Her Lord of the Planets series starts with Home Worlds. She gets bonus points because my dear husband Dusan wishes she would have her books translated into Czech, so that he could read them. She gets good karma points for being an indie author who reaches out a hand to other indie authors, including those who are brand new and have few credentials... like, ahem... me. I wonder what she'll reveal about her next book.

Lauren Shelton - I don't know Lauren as well yet but she is an intriguing fantasy author who has spent a lot of her life dreaming up her fantasies, just as I did. Her book The Hybrid also deals with myths and legends and their intersections with modern society. I see now that I have managed to create a pattern here. I didn't mean to but it is just as well and it may be a sign of the times. I am curious to see what Lauren will write next.

Okay, you three. TAG! You're it.

Here are the "rules."

You write a blog post about your work in progress and include the first sentences of the first three chapters (at least as they stand at the moment). You link back to me and you link to several other authors who you nominate. Traditionally, you nominate four. I tried but it seems that most of my author friends are either too early in the process or a bit secretive about their WIPs, so I nominate three for now. Good luck!

Indie urban fantasy - good stories, rough edges and all

This week's featured author on the Goodreads PFDR forum is Canadian author Jennifer R. McDonald. She's an example of one of the many hardworking independent authors out there, not only writing as authors used to be expected to but dealing with cover design, editing, formatting and marketing of books all at the same time. McDonald does it all but writing a good yarn is still probably her stronger suit. The covers of her Vielwalker trilogy look like self-published covers. The reviews are enthusiastic for the meat of the stories, while conceding that the books could be more professionally presented. 

The question here is what your priorities are as a reader. If what you primarily want is an endless supply of the good reading, then you can find that with independent authors, rough edges and all. 

Here is a quote from a review by Heather Blair for Into the Veil, the first book in McDonald's trilogy featuring a teenage girl who possesses a rare and dangerous ability to walk betweent he worlds of the living and the dead: "I am getting hooked on indie books, and Into the Veil is a perfect example of why. The book starts out engaging, but just a little rough, a little awkward, mirroring the teenager it portrays... This book gets better and better as it moves along and the last third is guaranteed to keep your nose glued to your Kindle. Lyric is one of the absolutely best female characters I have ever read. She is strong and fragile, stubborn and full of heart. In other words, completely real and you will be completely absorbed in her story. Yes, there are grammatical errors scattered liberally through the book, but they are no more than a small irritation once the story gets going."

You can find Jennifer R. McDonald's books at the following links:

Into the Veil (Veilwalker Trilogy #1)

Through the Gloom (Veilwalker Trilogy #2)

Across the Blood Red River (Veilwalker Trilogy #3)

Werewolf romance may be nothing new but here's a fresh twist

This week's featured author on the Goodreads PFDR discussion board is Irish writer Mandy Lou Dowson. While I am not personally on good terms with werewolf romances and I find the extreme proliferation of these stories in recent years to be perplexing, Dowson's first book Bound by Fate has earned fantastic reviews the hard way - by finding real readers. No expensive advertising or big media-powered publishers to toot the horn here. These are real readers who say this writer brings something fresh and real to the sub-genre.

Here's a quote from one reviewer: "I consider myself to be a PNR, shifter connoisseur ;) and this book kept me on my toes and anxiously guessing at what would happen next."

You can read more comments from enthusiastic reviewers HERE.

Bound by Fate is available on Amazon in Kindle format and at iBooks. Check the Goodreads page for more formats.