Samhain Publishing

I was going to use this post to bitch about the weather, but PG already did that. (Eighty-one degrees? Coblogger, please.  Upper nineties to low hundreds, day in day out, and the longest prolonged drought in the state’s recorded history. We’re praying for a tropical storm or a hurricane here, people.)

Then I thought I’d talk about books and writing. But do we not drone on about that stuff enough? Frankly, I’m sick of my own promotion. (Check back with me in two months when my next novella, Ready to Run, comes out and I’ll feel differently.) (What? Too obvious?)

So instead I’ll talk about family, and how I’ve thought about writing a romance involving extended family like mine.  If nothing else it would give me an endless supply of sequel bait.

My family, my husband’s family, my sister-in-law’s husband’s family and my sister’s husband’s family all live in Houston. This itself is kind of unusual. Most people I know don’t have all of their family in the same town with them.

But on top of that, all the families – mine, the Husband’s, the Husband’s sister’s husband’s, and my sister’s husband’s family—celebrate the holidays together. We rarely have to worry about whose family we’re spending what holiday with, because we normally all do it together. The only thing we ever have to argue about is who “gets” to host the big day and who “has to” host the big day. The Hub’s sister usually takes Thanksgiving and my sister takes Christmas. Easter moves around, and Mother’s Day is usually at the sister in law in law in law’s. (I don’t like hosting big dinner thingies. That’s something the sisters-in-law do much better than me.)

My nephews call their other grandmother—i.e., my brother-in-law’s mom—Mee Maw. My daughter (Diva) calls her Mee Maw too. The Husband’s two grandmothers—i.e., Diva’s great grandmothers—are Bebe and Mimi. The nephews call them that too.

And my sister’s sister-in-law (i.e., my brother-in-law’s sister, Mee Maw’s daughter) has in-laws that Diva and my nephews call Nana Suzy and Papa Lloyd, even though they aren’t blood related.

In other words, the old people belong to everybody.

Now. My best friend of thirty years is Marietta. Marietta is marred to Greg D. I dated Greg D. many, many years ago (I don’t want to add the years up, but it was during the first Gulf War.) They got together while I was pregnant with Diva. People asked me if it bothered me for my best friend to marry my ex-boyfriend and I said yes, of course—I thought she could do better. But they're happy together, and he's way more successful than I ever thought he would be, so she's been good for him.

Greg D.’s best friend, since long before I dated him, is Greg N. Greg N. is now married to the Hub’s sister. Way back in our twenties we used to double date with other guys. I’ve known her longer than I’ve known the Hub.

My sister is Melissa. Melissa is married to Matt. Matt’s sister is Vickie—aka Vickie the Blunt, my chief beta reader and unpaid editorial consultant. Vickie’s husband is Jay. (Jay’s parents are Nana Suzy and Papa Lloyd.) Jay’s brother is Jim and Jim’s wife is Leslie. Vickie is my sister in law in law, and Leslie is my sister in law in law in law.  Jay and Jim’s sister is Laura, so Laura is also my sister in law in law in law. She is by far all the Monsters' favorite auntie – hers is the house where they always have fun. Laura will soon marry her partner Lacey. Lacey is a very sweet woman who doesn’t seem to mind all this.

The Hub went to high school with Ravi. Ravi went to college with Jim and Jay, long before the Hub knew Jim and Jay.

I’m responsible for Jay and Vickie getting married. I introduced them at Matt’s birthday party.

Then there’s Jaime, a good friend of mine since college who now lives next door and is very close to everyone. And Ernie, the Hub’s best friend of thirty years, who just brought his girlfriend down from Alaska to meet everyone.  And I haven’t even gone into detail about Ernie’s family.

We’ve tried diagramming our relationships, but it always comes out like this:

My sister lives out in the suburbs and socializes with lots of people outside the group. The rest of us know we should try to do more of that ourselves, but hey. We’re old, and busy, and it’s just so much easier to stick with each other. I always have someone who can pick up the Diva from school, or help me out when my car breaks down, or keep me company on any given evening, and so long as no one dies before the next generation is grown, I'll never have to cook Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.   We have a doctor, two lawyers, a mechanic, an accountant and several computer geeks.  We don’t have a plumber or a foundation repair guy. We could really use both.

So as I said, I've thought about writing a series of romances based on a big interrelated group like we've got. But I bet my editor would say, "Look. This is confusing, and way too unrealistic for a contemporary series. Why don't you write about a small rural town that just happens to be home to a couple dozen retired Army Rangers and beautiful women who keep showing up pursued by bad guys?"

Historical romance writers have to pay attention to details of dress, speech, transportation, and dozens of other facets of times past if they don’t want to lose their audiences. Histrom readers know their stuff, and they expect authors to know it too.

Contemporary romance authors may have an even harder time of it, because readers will expect to identify with contemporary heroines, and they’ll know if details about a place or profession or situation don’t ring true.

Paranormal writers just have to get their worldbuilding right.

When I started writing Yours, Mine and Howls—almost a year before I wrote Kiss and Kin—the only thing I knew about my world was that werewolves were “out,” living among humans and assimilated into American society. There weren’t that many of them compared to humans, but they weren’t hunted or persecuted or officially discriminated against, and they weren’t conflicted or tortured about their dual natures.

Once I started writing the story, though, I soon realized, “Oh no! I have to do some worldbuilding!”

Read More

I keep — or try to keep — every draft of the books I write. I don't use any standard to judge when it's time to move to the next version. At some point, I just decide there's about to be enough significant changes to make a new version of the manuscript.

Yours, Mine and Howls began life as Rocky Mountain Howl and went through forty-something versions. According to the documents on my laptop, I started it in the spring of 2008. It was finalized in late 2010. (I hope, if you read it, you don't think to yourself, "It took her two years to write THAT?" Hey, it's my first full length novel — but, okay, yeah, I won't blame you.)

It's funny to go back and see how much has changed. Completely different beginning, new names for major characters, a big climactic scene that my editor said I needed (and she was so right.)

The main theme didn't change, though. It's still about family, and secrets, and trusting someone enough to let them love you — the real you, not the you that you show to other people.

It's still about a young girl who throws herself between a rampaging werewolf and a little boy she loves enough to die for, and how it changes her life.

It's still about a powerful werewolf who longs to recreate the happy family and pack he had, and lost, as a child.

And it's also about a bunch of werewolves and a little girl who thinks she's a cat.

I hope you check it out, and I hope you like it. 

And if you do — drop me an email (kinseywholley@live.com) and tell me who should get the next novella – Seth or Declan. Because I'm paralzyed with indecision, and I can't seem to get started on either one.

Authors love to complain about editors and, let’s face it, there’s a lot to complain about. Who decides whether a publisher’s going to avail themselves of your masterpiece? An editor. If a publisher has the artistic taste and commercial savvy to offer you a contract for your masterpiece, will they publish it as is? Hell no. Who’s going to make you change it? An editor.

Among the definitions of the word edit is “to revise or correct, as a manuscript” and “to expunge; eliminate.” Most authors don’t like being revised or corrected, nor do they like to see any part of their masterpiece expunged or eliminated.

The painful truth, of course, is that editors – bless their fussy, nitpicking, arbitrary, judgmental, cold cold hearts – are a necessary evil. There, I said it.

I firmly believe there is no author, anywhere, who doesn’t need an editor. Jonathan Freaking Franzen has an editor. Loretta Chase has an editor. A very, very, very bestselling author some years ago released a book that garnered a lot of criticism from her millions of readers. They said, “It’s like she didn’t have an editor or something.” She said, “I’m ___________! I’ve sold a gazillion books! I don’t need an editor!” They said, “Um, yeah, actually, you do.” And they were right. (But Gawd, can you imagine being So Big that a Huge Publisher will release your books without an editor? Me neither.)

The fact is, you can’t judge your own stuff objectively. You can’t see a plot hole when you’re standing in the bottom of it. You might not realize that your hero’s motivation, so obvious to you – because, duh, you’re the one who thought of it – is not clear to the reader. What seemed really hot to you when you wrote it seems kind of ….icky to the reader. And the fact that your characters seem to sigh heavily on every other page? Yeah, you need to do something about that.

The reverse is sometimes true as well. The story you’ve worked on for so long that you’ve become sick unto death of it? Your editor reads it and says – “Hey! This is really good!” The tertiary character that you thought should be killed off in the second chapter? Your editor thinks he should be bumped up to the hero’s best friend.

That’s why your editor’s there. To see the flaws you can’t see, and the beauty as well. To help you polish the story a little more, after you’ve polished it for so long that your arms are about to fall off.

My first full length book is entitled Yours Mine and Howls – it’ll be released in February. And even though that’s five months away, it’s not too soon to start thinking about promoting it. It’s only my second book, so I’m nervous – Kiss and Kin has sold very well, and I want Yours Mine and Howls to sell even better. How to publicize it?

I thought – maybe I’ll do a series of free reads on my blog, once a month, and give readers a glimpse of things that happened to the hero before the book opens. It’ll be like five mini-prequels – six, actually, because the first one introduces Cade MacDougall, the hero, and his daughter.

My blog mates thought it was a great idea, and so did my buds at Romance Divas. My brand new editor, Mary, who’s going to be editing YMAH but isn’t the one who acquired it, said it might be a great idea, but she had caveats: I should be very careful, take my time, make sure it’s heavily proofed, and, most importantly, make sure I present the hero the way I want readers to see him. Mary said she wouldn’t be able to read over it for me – which I completely understood, because she’s buried in submissions [oh, for my very own editor who lives only to read my stuff!] – but to make sure I get other people to read it first.

And suddenly, I got scared. At first, I’d loved the idea of just writing something and posting it – not having to submit it, hope someone likes it, hope they want to publish it. Just instant communication between me, the writer, and Them, the Readers.

But then I thought – what if Them the Readers don’t like it? What if the people who bought Kiss and Kin read the mini-prequels and think, “Ugh. No thanks.” What if my brilliant promotional tool actually drives readers away before my book is published?

I need an editor!!!

Or at least someone to read this stuff and tell me what’s wrong with it (that is to say, an editor).

So I ran the first short story past my regular beta readers and, sure enough, they had problems with some of it. They thought I’d included too much back story, stuff that would seem repetitive when readers read the actual book, which kind of defeats the purpose – I want to get people interested in the story, so that they’ll want to buy the book when it comes out. And they had concerns with some of the actions and some of the dialog.

All of the criticisms were spot on, all of them pointed out flaws in the story I hadn’t been able to see, and all of them resulted in me writing a much, much better story than I had originally written. I’m very glad I didn’t post that story without first running it past my beta readers who, in this instance, acted as my editors.

As I mentioned, Mary isn’t the editor who bought YMAH. The acquiring editor left Samhain very shortly after I signed the contract. Mary seems like a lovely person, and I know she’s got experience editing romance, especially hot romance, and I trust she’ll give my book her best efforts. But I couldn’t help being nervous. What if she doesn’t like it? What if it’s not really the kind of book she would’ve acquired? She’s got another submission from me, a novella set in the same universe as YMAH – what if she passes on it? I am not the world’s most self-confident writer to begin with, plus I worked on YMAH for so long that I can’t read it anymore – I’m, yes, sick unto death of it, and I can’t tell if it’s any good anymore.

So I emailed Mary the other day to tell her I’d posted the first free read, and that I’d already gotten some positive feedback. She emailed me back to say that she’d cruise by and take a look.

And she told me how much she liked YMAH, and she actually kind of gushed about it, and I’m going to save the email and read it over and over again for years to come like people do with love letters.

See? Some editors aren’t evil at all. Some of them are brilliant and discerning professionals with a true appreciation of the writer’s craft…

Kinsey
www.kinseyholley.com

Kinsey Holley lives in Houston Texas, where a lot of people know about her Secret Romance Writer Identity. Hopefully those people don’t include her mother or the folks she goes to church with. She’s married to the Hub, mommy to the Diva, and works part time as a law librarian (the firm doesn’t know about the Secret Romance Writer Identity, either).

She enjoys reading SF, UF, and romance, is addicted to pop culture and several television series, and dreams of moving to the mountains of Colorado, which she’d never really do because all her friends and family (they overlap a lot) are in Houston and she loves them and besides, she can’t imagine being more than an hour’s drive from a beach. Besides her Werewolves in Love series, she’s working on a Regency and a big glitzy contemporary that she hopes will evoke comparisons to the sexy melodramas of the 80s (Models! Rock stars! Monaco! Alexis Morrell Carrington Colby Dexter Dexter Rowan! No, not her…)

Kinsey takes her mail here, blogs at www.kinseyholley.com and Nine Naughty Novelists, and Tweets all the time at @kinseyholley. Drop by and say hi sometime.

I’m having trouble finishing my first full length novel, and I think it’s because of my debut novella, Kiss and Kin. According to my friend and antho-mate, Vivi Andrews, I have a case of sophomore nerves. She’s probably right. But I have no idea what to do about it.

I’ve been working on Rocky Mountain Howl for over a year. Last fall, I got stalled for a bit. When Samhain called for submissions for the Sexy Shifter anthology, I decided a 30K word novella didn’t sound so hard – I already had 70K of Rocky Mountain, and I figured I’d set the novella in the world I’d already built.

Well. Once I knew who my characters were, and I’d come up with a basic plot, the story just va-rooomed.

Every plot turn of Rocky Mountain has felt like manual labor. But Kiss and Kin just sort of wrote itself. I only had to call my sister-in-law (she’s the wall off which I bounce every idea) once to beg, “tell me what happens next!” It was just so much easier to write than Rocky Mountain.

That’s the first reason for my sophomore nerves. If RMH has been so laborious, and KnK so close to effortless, does that mean RMH just isn’t as good? I’ve read that most authors never complete their first novel and, if they do, they never submit it. I’ve put an awful lot of work into RMH. I can’t bear the thought of giving up when I’m 95% done. The idea of finishing and not submitting is even worse.

Adding to the sophomore heebie-jeebies is the fact that lots of readers have told me how much they liked KnK. That’s good, right? Of course it is! Getting published, and receiving so much positive feedback, has given me a thrill second only to the birth of my Tomboy Diva. But lots of readers have asked me when they can expect the story of my secondary characters, Nick and TJ. And I’ve had to say…um, when I figure out what it is?

Nick and TJ were the stars of my first attempt at a paranormal romance. I did 6K words and stalled out. The character of Ally Kendall started talking to me, dragging me off to Colorado, and that’s how RMH got started. Poor Nick and TJ have been hanging out in a document all by themselves for over a year now. I didn’t want to use them for the novella, because I wanted to give them the full length treatment. I felt bad leaving them in limbo, so I gave them supporting roles in KnK. Much to my delight, readers liked them.

But RMH – if I finish it, and if I sell it – is Ally and Cade’s story, not Nick and TJ’s. And it doesn’t feel like KnK – it’s a little darker, a little more serious. I can’t help wondering – what if the readers who liked KnK so much read RMH and don’t like it at all?

You can’t think about that as you write, can you? You can only write the story in your head, in the best way you can, and hope it finds its way to readers. My sister-in-law says RMH is very much my voice, and that it’s not as different from KnK as I think. Still, the urge to go back and start tinkering, adjusting the atmosphere and background so that it feels more like KnK, is strong.

I find myself sketching plot ideas for Nick and TJ when I should be finishing RMH. In fact, I got so frustrated recently that I started an entirely NEW story! It’s an erotic romance starring a rock star and a country music songwriter. I love the first chapter, but my sister-in-law refuses to read anything but RMH until I finish it.

Readers: have you ever read a book you really liked and then found you didn’t care for the author’s next one, even though it was set in the same world and involved some of the same characters? And authors: have you ever found that your readers’ reactions to a character influenced the way you wrote your next book? I’d love to hear what you think.