Running Down a Dream

An ancient proverb tells us that patience is a virtue—and if this is true, then I am pretty darned virtuous.  My whole life is a waiting game, and I never advance any closer to an end goal.  And yes, I know that life is a destination, not a journey, but mine is neither.  I have increasingly realized over the past year that I have no concept of fun, or relaxation, or hobbies, and part of this is because I am just too poor for them.  Hobbies require some kind of income, unless you’re hiking (and even that requires the money to buy proper shoes).  I have also realized that if I ever find a real job, I won’t have time for fun.  I’ll be too busy working.  At this point, though, I don’t guess it matters.  I am single and hardly surrounded by a plethora of friends—nearly everyone I am close to lives miles and miles from here—but it would just be nice to make money.  It would also be nice to be married and have children before I grow old and die—but that requires money, too.  I guess writing is the cheapest hobby I could imagine, but the stress of my life has pushed me into a period of writer’s block.

 

Broken Connections

I live in an area with so-so internet service, and merely decent phone service.  Recently, however, my phone signal dropped out for weeks and would only work maybe every six hours.  It can be a little frustrating trying to promote yourself and your publishing ambitions when social networking is closed off to you.  The good news is that I’ve been promoting myself when I do have a stronger signal, blasting very blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts about myself.  I’m still in the formative stages even though I’ve been putting books and blogs out for over a year now.  I find myself wondering if there’s a right or wrong way to do blogging.  How much do you need to inspire your followers?  How much of it is simply catharsis, hoping that another person out there will read your words and find some meaning in them?  I ask too many questions, don’t I?

Heart Trouble

I wrote, edited, and self-publishing my first six novels without much consideration to submitting them to a publisher.  And I may never know if this was a sound idea, but it did allow me to create in a vacuum—deadlines were my own, additions and deletions were at my whim, and word count generally fell where it wanted. I would set goals and exceed them.  I always vow to take sabbaticals upon a book’s completion, but I rarely follow through.  Upon finishing my longest novel yet, I set out to create something a little more, well, manageable.  I strived to write something standard and commercial.  There was no switching of perspectives, and the supporting characters became just that—support.  In no more than four weeks I had completed Heart Trouble, edited it, and then set about offering it to a publisher.  Crimson Romance liked my query and asked for both a synopsis and manuscript, neither of which was hard to submit.  Thankfully they liked the novel, and I am now on the verge of my first release through a real-life publisher.  It’s been an adjustment, of course, but I am grateful to have had both an editor and a cover designer that wasn’t me. 

So here I am, putting the novel out there for the rest of the world to see.  I’ll be available for the first time in a place that isn’t Amazon, although I will be there as well.  This deal includes much more promotion than I could have ever accomplished alone, and will be distributed through Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and the Crimson Romance webpage as well.  If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll find myself on a library shelf here and there.  I will include the relevant links as they become available.  I am already excited to share the high-resolution cover image.

And now for some background on the novel itself, Heart Trouble.  My hero and heroine are only children, much like myself.  The hero, Brandt, lives at home with his parents; the heroine, Marissa, has never met her father and had to move away from her mother in order to find work.  I stuck with the time-tested and familiar cowboy theme in this novel, although I moved it closer to home—I invented a fictional region of Kentucky in order to play fast and loose with the settings.  The town wound up not being as large a character—we mainly stick to the ranch, a typical-enough rural setting.  Like I’ve said before, I’m far more comfortable with rural backdrops.  The novel is a shade under 62,000 words, shorter than all of my previous novels save for Windswept.  I think of it as an efficient story—I tried to focus on the two main characters and allow the story to take place strictly through their eyes.

I’ll keep you up-to-date as things progress—and thanks, once again, to everyone for their support.

 

Chapters

There are thousands upon thousands of books out there, and just as many authors, but one thing that’s always made me paranoid is chapter length.  Early on, based simply on what I’d seen in other books, I resolved that every chapter should be a minimum of ten pages.  I’ve done pretty well at sticking to that; in book format, some wind up being much longer.  Clearly every author has their own view on things; sometimes I run across books where the chapters are no longer than a page.  It doesn’t detract from the story, but I do find it confusing.  I suppose the point I am trying to make—if there is one—is that different things work for different authors.  If you can get your point across in a shorter chapter, then good on you.  I know for a fact that some of my chapters are way too long, but I’ve also been my own editor for much of the process.  I try to get a complete thought in, or at least lead into the next chapter before I end the current one.  Any thoughts on this?  I’ve also gotten to the point where I’m okay with writing an epilogue; those are usually short by definition. 

Cowboys and Angels

 

Oddly enough, I never bothered to watch this video/listen to this song in its entirety until I’d nearly completed my first novel, “Windswept”.  I’m no songwriter (obviously) but the storyline felt not unlike what I was writing—a man lost, and the woman who saved him.  It’s a simple message but a beautiful one.

Social Networking

Brutal honesty time:  I am lousy at networking.  In a large gathering of people I am more than likely to be found in a corner by myself, with my nose stuck in a book.  That isn’t necessarily a bad thing—books are great.   However, this is an entrée into the topic of my blog—I may not be any better at social networking.  I have been on Facebook for over eight years, back when the only thing you could do was look at someone’s profile.  There was none of this status update witchcraft you see now.  I’ve been posting this blog for over a year, and been on Pinterest nearly as long.  I was a slower convert to Twitter, and now I’m on Google+ as well.  I honestly don’t know what any of this means.  I’m not an outgoing, extraverted person, though I was born that way; I simply became more introverted over the years as I found that I had little in common with my peers.  Oh well.  It’s still not very easy for me to forge personal connections, which is likely another reason I enjoy writing; it’s a fantasy where people get over their shyness and loneliness to find lasting happiness.  Back to networking, though—I am making  an honest effort to branch out and promote myself in better ways, because I know that it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

Wisteria Lane

I owe my writing career to a lot of hard work.  I also owe it to Desperate Housewives.

Some background, before you think I’ve gone completely around the bend.  As a nine-year-old kid, my first celebrity crush was formed by watching Teri Hatcher on “Lois & Clark:  The New Adventures of Superman.”  I also still think of Dean Cain as Superman, but I digress.  Anyway, I loved that show and kinda missed Teri after it ended.  Obviously she went through some lean years career-wise but was also raising her daughter.  She had a brief role in my least-favorite James Bond movie—go figure.  Fast forward to 2004 when I’m a red-blooded college male who’s just learned Teri is coming back to TV in a brand-new show, Desperate Housewives.  The show quickly became one of my favorites, a brilliant mixture of comedy and high drama, a soap opera for the modern world.  It was also populated with other beautiful women, including Eva Longoria, who quickly became another celebrity crush.  Teri’s character reminded me of myself—hapless, accident prone, and well-meaning.  For a man, I’m kind of a klutz.  Anyway, I remained a faithful viewer of the show, which was a beacon of light in sometimes difficult college years.  Anyone who has been to graduate school can surely relate to this fact; you need at least one escape from life.

My friend Josie became my friend because of our shared love for the show Dallas (even though we “shipped” different couples).  Over time we bonded over similar interests, buoyed each other through some of life’s challenges.   Even as we drifted away from Dallas (though we always come back to it) we’d still chat about anything and everything.  Late in 2010 she told me about some movie that was going to be on, “Ricochet”, and how I should watch it because Julie Benz would be in it.  I didn’t recognize the name but I had seen her before—more on that later—and a check of IMDB let me know that John Corbett would play the male lead, and he’s one of my favorite actors.  In spite of our differing time zones we watched the movie together, well past my usual bedtime, and it was excellent.  After that we each read the book, and somehow I fell in love with both Julie Benz and the works of Sandra Brown.  It was while reading “Ricochet” that the seeds were planted for my first novel.  It’s hilarious when you consider the obvious—my novels are nothing like hers.  She has an excellent grasp of sexual tension, thrilling mystery, and sheer terror.  I write straightforward romances with happy endings (then again, so did she at the beginning of her career).  Anyway, that is how I became a writer:  Julie Benz and Ricochet.  Oh, and Josie.  But the story doesn’t end there.  Josie asked me about Julie’s role on Desperate Housewives (light bulb!) and I told her it was an amazing show and that she should watch.  Six episodes of Julie on DH was enough for Josie to fall in love with the rest of the main characters on the series and buy the seasons on DVD.  I got to reminisce as she went along, because I remembered a lot of the storylines years after viewing them.  Other stories I had forgotten, although I had a good excuse—college brain!  When the series concluded, Josie and I once again watched across time zones as the ladies completed their stories.   Now we watch at different points in the series on DVDs, reminiscing and enjoying and observing and laughing.  Now I’m a Julie Benz fan, too, and we’re always thinking of new things to try to get the other into (she’s Bones, I’m Castle).  I’m sure I’ll tackle Melrose Place next since I made her a Marcia Cross superfan.  And while this blog entry may have seemingly veered into non-writing territory, I bring you full-circle:  my coming of age crush on Lois Lane made me the writer I am today, twenty years later.

Thanks, Jo.