SEALed by the Seat of my Pants
I love to get emails from fans. I heard from a reader the other day who begged me not to stop writing my SEALed series. She’d read somewhere that I had only one more planned.
In fact, people often ask me will the series continue past the book I’m currently working on.
Here’s the thing. I know writers who have their series plotted out four or five books into the future. I’m not one of them. I’m a pantser.
There’s a sort of good news/bad news scenario that goes with being a pantser.
The bad news is: I don’t know what will happen in a story until I write it. I do a lot of nail biting. I started SEALed with a Ring knowing only three things: that Davy was the hero; I wanted a marriage of convenience plot; and I had a phrase running around in my brain: Sometimes you don’t get what you bargain for. Sometimes you get more. With so little to go on, every book, while I’m working on it, feels like the last one.
The good news is that in my world the future is malleable.
I once wrote Suzanne Brockmann begging her please not to kill off Mary Jo—I could see the setup—even though Mary Jo deserved it, and it would solve another character’s problem.
But Suze is one of those who plans story lines way into the future. By the time I knew about Mary Jo’s peril, it was too late for me to save her—the next book was already at the publisher’s. (Suze didn’t kill her. Whew!)
The bad news for a plotter is that there’s not much they can do with reader’s suggestions for series development—whether they would like to or not.
Me? My next book is pretty much a clean slate. It’s not too late to make suggestions. If you have characters you want to see more of, tell me. Is there a dénouement (the point at which all the strings are tied up) that wasn’t complete for you. One fan feels the senator father of Do-Lord in SEALed with a Promise, hasn’t been punished and should be. Another was intrigued by the “off-screen” love story between Lon and Lauren in SEALed with a Ring. She wants details.
Will I do what they suggest?
If I knew that, I wouldn’t be a pantser and I wouldn’t be writing this blog. I can tell you this much. I was at the dentist’s last year about this time. When I checked out, the office staff gathered around for an update on my books. I told them SEALed with a Promise had just been released and I was working on SEALed with a Ring. The receptionist, listening from her post at the front counter, quipped, “So you have SEALed with a Kiss, a Promise, and A Ring. What’s next, SEALed with a Baby?”
We all laughed and I tried to look mysterious. At that time, all I could think was that the SEALed with a Ring deadline was far too close, given that I had no idea how it ended. I had no plans to ever write another one. Ever.
Once it was finally turned in, my editor asked, as she always does, “Got any ideas for another book?”
“Do you remember Garth?” I asked.
“Of course,” she answered. “Garth was Davy’s commanding officer.”
“On a temporary duty assignment Garth discovers a sturdy, ventilated cardboard box labeled Bananas Product of Ecuador stowed in the rear of a spy transport plane. Inside the box is a sleeping baby.”
How and why my first book, DEADLY SECRETS became a sponsor for the American Breast Cancer Foundation
Hi all, My name is Leeann Burke, I started writing when I was a tween let’s just say that I have been writing for a long time. I first started writing for the pleasure of putting the characters in my head to paper. DEADLY SECRETS isn’t my first book, but it is my first published book. It was released last December. I’d love to say I sold to a publisher right away, but that would be a lie. It took me 11 years before I found a home for it. It took another 3 years to see it published.
As I waited to hold a copy in my hands I decided I wanted more. Here I was about to get my creative dream come true while there were women out there who weren’t as lucky. I realized I wanted my dream to mean more, that’s when I decided to donate my royalties to a charity. One that was close to my heart. I chose to donate to the Breast Cancer cause. Why? When I was barely 15 my own mother found a lump in her breast. We were lucky it was benign, but not everyone is as lucky. Since then I have lost one friend and had countless friends like fellow LBF Books author A B Wallace, who have battled and won their fight against breast cancer.
When I told the owner of my publisher, Carole Spencer, of my intentions she decided she would also donate proceeds to the cause. Together we approached the American Breast Cancer Foundation to be one of their sponsors. We were thrilled when they accepted and we became their first Canadian sponsor.
My goal is to sell enough copies of DEADLY SECRETS to donate $1,000 USD to the American Breast Cancer Foundation and $1,000 CAD to a Canadian organization that does research to find a cure for breast cancer.
Here is a bit about DEADLY SECRETS my Romantic Suspense
Philippe Lafrance is a well known reclusive writer whose life is suddenly thrown upside down when the grandfather he never knew existed, dies. He investigates the reason and learns that his family has kept secrets from him. Deep, ugly secrets. Worse, a killer is murdering the men in his family. He discovers that his father, then his grandfather, were murdered by someone desperate to keep secrets buried.Bereft, Roxanne St-Clair is left to manage a restaurant when the only person who ever mattered to her, her foster parent and mentor, is murdered. She puts her life on hold to find his killer and bring him to justice.Thrown together by circumstance and a mutual goal, Philippe and Roxanne fight their attraction and team up to find the killer, bring him to justice and unearth the truth. To stay alive, they must keep one step ahead of the assassin in order to prevent him from killing his next target, Philippe.Will they succeed in bringing to justice this killer before Philippe becomes his next victim? Will they be able to deal with the truth behind the deadly secrets?
If you want to help me reach my goal please purchase a copy of my book at the following locations LBF Books, ARe, Bookstrand, Fictionwise, Amazon or get your library to carry a copy.
The Death of the Midlist…
If you’ve been around for longer than that carton of milk in your refrigerator, I’m sure you’ve heard these words “the midlist is dying” at least a time or two, but in the last two weeks I’ve heard of two publishers who have out and out declared either to many (via press release) or privately (via an agent) that they were eliminating their midlist.
So, what does it mean and why do we care–or do we?
First, what is the midlist? Quite honestly it is made up by most authors you meet on the Internet. It is an author who isn’t just starting out, and who also isn’t at the top of the sales game. I don’t say “best-selling” because honestly that tag is bantered around so much it lacks meaning. An author could label herself “best-selling” or even “NY Times best-selling” and still be mid-list. Because, times change and just because you hit a list once doesn’t mean you haven’t fallen back down into that gray middle…and making one list does not automatically yank you out of mid-list either. I guess it’s like tar–darn hard to shake and easy to sink back into. 
Another way to look at this is slots. Publishing houses have slots, as in A,B,C,D. An A slot author is getting the big support. The D slot author is getting their book published, listed in the publisher’s catalogue and going through the publisher’s distribution. The publisher in other words is putting their betting bucks on that A slot book and letting the D slot book fly as it might. Chances are the B and C slotters are mid-list. Neither the cheapest (in the way of royalties) nor the most expensive (in the way of promotion). But these authors are also missing the ever so alluring scent of possibility. They have been trotted out of the barn a few times and the chances (from booksellers and others view) of them jumping the gate and making off with the big sales prize are slim. That D slot author? They are not only cheap, they are chock full of possibility. Who knows? Maybe they will be the new hot thing. (This is all of course generalizations–the D slot could also be a mid-lister, and a newbie could be bumped to any other place on the hierarchy, but this gives you something else to look at.)
So, with this said, when I heard these two publishers were eliminating their mid-list I thought, “How?” Are they dropping everything that isn’t an A to them? Are they getting out their crystal ball and only buying the “big” books? Or are they just gouging out the middle? Keeping the A’s and the D’s but dumping those darn B’s and C’s?”
And which is better? Should we care?
I can’t say I think either is all that much better than another. But I care and I think you should too. Here’s why.
To write full time, authors have to make money. It’s a hard cold reality of life unless you were born with a healthy trust fund. Now authors can write and have a decent possibility of making a living somewhere in that mid list, but if it was gone–if they went from pennies for their books to big bucks? How would that work? A lot of authors, way more than now, would give up. You write one or two books for $10 an hour or less (after factoring in revisions, etc. and with no health, dental, etc. benefits) okay, because the promise of more is there. But if those stepping stones of the mid list were gone and your only shot was to be “big”? Well, the gamble is a lot bigger. And here’s a fact–writing is hard, not only hard work, but hard emotionally. Your ego can really take a beating. You can love something to death, but if you just love doing it and you aren’t getting paid much to do it–why put it out there to be torn up? Why deal with all of that?
So, my guess is a lot of authors who live on the mid list would just disappear. This would be okay for a while. There is a never ending supply of new hopeful writers, but eventually wouldn’t that get old? There are a lot of really good books on that mid list. (Seriously, none of us believe only best-sellers are good, right? Or even all best-sellers are good.) If you could only pick between the new and the big, I truly think you would miss what used to be in the middle.
I know I would.
(p.s. I’m travelling across Illinois today on my way to Ninc. So, talk amongst yourselves. I’ll check in when I can.)
Copyright
The great comeback
What a crazy year it’s been for me. It began last March, 2008 with the release of the first book in my Passion series, Discovery in Passion, a paranormal ghost story, and for the next eight months I was releasing a novel every other month. Three books in the Passion series wasn’t much of a problem having them come out every other month but when I submitted Seducing the Darkness, a vampire story, to my then editor, I had no idea what the next few months would be like for me. Originally a standalone book, everything was supposed to be wrapped up nice and pretty at the end of Seducing the Darkness with the ritual used to blot out the sun broken and the sunlight returning. Then my editor asked me if I would consider making it into a series. Instantly, my mind began to work. What if, instead of having the sun come back at the end of Seducing he Darkness, I prolong it and have the hero and heroine recruit people to help them bring back the sun. And so the Darkness series began. So for the next five months I was glued to my laptop, busy writing five novels, back to back, without a break, plus editing, promoting my Passion series. And like that wasn’t enough for me, I agreed to write three more Darkness books. My schedule was full well into 2009 with releases. While in this crazy schedule of writing, having a release every two months and promoting, my father suddenly passed away. I took two months off to grieve and help my mother cope and when I came back I had to get my butt in gear to get my books written and in by their deadlines. There were times I would be up all night writing, as well as writing during the day when I found time. I joked with friends and family that my life was surrounded by darkness. It truly was. I was engulfed in vampires and a city of darkness day and night for months. I even dreamt of darkness and blood and death. Then in December, my publisher, Linden Bay Romance, sold to Samhain and things were kind of thrown into a crazy sort of turmoil. I had four Darkness books set to release into June of 2009 and my schedule was shifted just a bit from its original release dates. And then….May, all the authors from Linden Bay were told they were discontinuing the line and the authors who they did not want to keep would get their rights back. At this time, I had submitted a standalone book, Until Death Do Us Part to another publisher, Absolute XPress. I went to them to ask if they would take on all thirteen of my books and re-release them. To my joy (at the time) they said yes. I won’t get into all the details but things didn’t work out and I ended up asking for my rights back a few months later and took my books to a new publisher, Breathless Press.You might ask, why is she telling us this and who is she? Well, that is the thing. Before the sale, before taking my books to AXP, I had a good following, I was building a fan base and my name was becoming popular. Seducing the Darkness was in the top five best selling Dark Fantasy Romance novels on Fictionwise for two weeks, at the same time as Stephanie Meyers, Twilight. What an achievement, I thought and I was so overjoyed.But when I slipped out of the public eye for three months, all my efforts to build a name for myself were swept out the door. I learned very quickly that in this industry, even a few months out of the loop and lead to disaster. Now, it seems I am starting all over again. I still have my followers and my fans but as for being known, I am, but not at the level I was before. There are always new authors coming in with new books and if the older more seasoned authors don’t keep up, they can be left in the dust. I am still brushing the dust away as I push my way back into the public eye. But the hectic schedule I had in 2008 is nothing compared to now. I thought releasing a book every two months was hard, but now I’m releasing every week. But I am a fighter, and I love a challenge and so I will continue this crazy schedule because I love to write, I love to tell a tale and I love having others read my work.Passion Series:Discovery in Passion: Nothing is ordinary in the small town of Passion, especially the love.Wanting to start fresh, Cassie Evans relocates to the small town of Passion where she moves into the home of her dreams, complete with dreamy next door neighbor, artist, and handyman Thomas Healy. The only problem is, the house she bought just might be haunted.Thomas Healy lives a life of solitude and that suits him just fine. Then Cassie Evans moves in next door and begins to turn his peaceful live upside down. He tries to ignore her, but ignoring a woman as beautiful as Cassie isn’t so easy, especially when she shows up at your door, naked, begging for you to paint her. Thomas’ first mistake was to agree to it, his second was to take Cassie to bed, now she’s all he can think about.
When their blossoming love is overshadowed by a ghostly haunting, the curious Cassie launches an investigation into the life and death of her home’s previous owner, uncovering a mystery and attracting the attention of a killer. Where will Cassie’s discovery lead her, to the love of her life or to death itself?
Welcome to the town of Passion.Escape in Passion:Nothing is ordinary in the small town of Passion, especially the love.
Victor Davis is a man trying to escape the tragedy of his past. Several months ago, a bullet that was meant for him killed his girlfriend by mistake. Now struggling to move on, Victor’s taken over as the chief of police of Passion. Vic knows everyone in Passion, so naturally he can’t help but notice when beautiful stranger Julia Wilson moves into the small town.Mysterious and alluring, Julia came to Passion with one thing on her mind, avenging the death of her sister. Desperate to find the truth, and keeping her true identity a secret, Julia enters into an affair with the one man she thinks might be able to give her answers—Victor Davis.
Lust and love run rampant when Victor and Julia enter into a torrid romance. But Julia’s deception turns dangerous and secrets from Victor’s past soon threaten their fragile relationship. Murder, kidnapping, and an escape that you’ll never forget. Welcome to the town of Passion.Mercy in Passion: Nothing is ordinary in the small town of Passion, especially the love.
Wild, rebellious, and perpetually in trouble, Justin Davis was labeled the town troublemaker and an embarrassment to his father, the chief of police in the small town of Passion. When Justin was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, he impulsively left the town he’d called home, vowing never to return.For six years Beth Healy pined after Justin, the boy next door who she’d come to think of as her friend, and had wanted for a lover. Now an officer of the law, Beth is shocked when her pursuit of a speeding car leads her to the one man she’s been longing to find—Justin Davis—and after all these years, he’s finally come home.
Despite the sizzling attraction, Beth’s feelings of hurt and betrayal linger and acceptance and forgiveness don’t come easy. Justin soon discovers that begging for mercy and allowing Beth time to grow to love him again might be the only way to win her back. Then an enemy of Justin’s begins to threaten his life, forcing Beth to make a choice. Will she be able to put the past behind her and trust in the man that Justin is now? Welcome to the town of PassionSeducing the Darkness: Bk 1 in the Passion series
An outcast by her kind, Trinity Ford has learned to live on her own…not an easy thing to do when you’re a vampire.
Trinity was once a fragile girl. Being taken by a powerful vampire prince changed her. Discovering him in the arms of another woman changed destiny. Alone, she’s learned fast how to be tough, how to survive, and how to protect the people in her city from the evil that lurks in the dark. She was managing just fine, until Basil walked back into her life.
Basil Hawthorn has been the reigning prince of vampires since banishing his father to the Realm of Dark Mystics decades earlier. When a prophetic dream makes him realize Trinity’s life is at risk, he decides the only way to save her is to push her away. Doing so is not easy. Trinity is the only woman he has ever loved, ever will love, and he can’t seem to let her go.
When rumors arise of a plan to raise the King and blot out the sun, both Trinity and Basil know they must do everything to stop it. Even if it means working together. Despite the betrayal and the threat, they find themselves drawn to each other. Love has no boundaries, especially in the face of danger. But will they be able to stop the ritual before it’s too late?
Or will the darkness capture them both?
The Passion series as well as the Darkness series available at: www.breathlesspress.com
Until Death Do Us Part available at: http://www.absolute-x-press.com/catalog/index.php?manufacturers_id=28&osCsid=142a0126116f89864695e562a1ca3e44
Shiela Stewarts Website: www.shielasbooks.ca
RWA contest changes…again
Yesterday the RWA Hot Sheet made the rounds and it includes some big changes for the RITA contest:
1. CONTESTS: WHAT’S CHANGING
Rules for the Golden Heart and RITA contests will be removed from the Policy and Procedures Manual, approved annually by the Board of Directors at the Board meeting preceding the RWA annual conference, and published in their entirety in the RWR and online to eliminate the possibility of discrepancies between policy and the published rules.
GOLDEN HEART
· Anyone who has accepted a publishing offer for a work of original fictional narrative prose of 20,000 words or more in any genre by November 16, 2009, is not eligible to enter the 2010 Golden Heart Contest.
· Entrants must retain all rights to the entry and must not have granted any of them to a publisher or any other party prior to or by November 16, 2009.
· The definition of a novel for the purposes of the Golden Heart Contest is “a work of fictional narrative prose in the romance genre of at least 40,000 words, as determined by computer word count.” Entries with word counts less than 40,000 will be disqualified.RITA
· Beginning with the 2010 RITA Contest year, books published by any non-Vanity/non-Subsidy publisher may be entered in the RITA.
· Books published by RWA-Eligible publishers may be entered in the RITA Contest beginning September 21, 2009.
· Books published by any non-Vanity/non-Subsidy publisher may be entered in the RITA Contest beginning October 12, 2009.
· Any publisher applying to be an RWA-Eligible publisher or an RWA non-Vanity/non-Subsidy publisher for the purposes of the RITA Contest must be approved by September 15, 2009, for its books to qualify for the upcoming contest.
· Beginning with the 2010 RITA Contest, entries must have an original copyright date of the year preceding the contest year. However, during the 2010 transitional contest year only, those books with BOTH a 2008 original copyright date AND a 2009 North American printing date OR a 2009 first printing date may be entered so that members who had waited to enter in this contest year are not penalized by the change in policy.
· All entries must be submitted in print book format, produced by the publisher, complete with copyright page, with perfect or case binding and printing on both sides of the page. Text and formatting must be identical to the published version. This includes those books commercially available in electronic format only.
Most of the reaction I’ve seen to the rule changes has been positive. Overall, I think I agree with the changes they’ve made. They’re at least a step in the right direction, showing the organization’s willingness to attempt a compromise.
I know there are epublished authors who will want more—exactly the same treatment as the traditionally published authors—but I’m not sure, given the sheer numbers of epublished authors/releases, that the system wouldn’t immediately be overwhelmed.
At least this way, if your publisher’s legit and your book is good enough, you might actually have a chance. You can at least enter…assuming your category isn’t full by the time you’re allowed to enter.
So what do you think of the contest changes? Agree? Disagree? Think it’s not enough?
Copyright
I like to be spoiled — how about you?
I don’t remember the last time I made it through a book without skipping ahead. Sometimes it’s a peek at the ending, but often it’s a leafing back and further, an impatience with what’s going on now and a need to have my curiosity satisfied or my questions answered right now. So is it any surprise that I have no problem with spoilers in book reviews?
Apparently, though, plenty of people do, including Alice Hoffman, whose anger at a reviewer’s revelation of plot details led to a very personally nasty, line-crossing call to arms against the reviewer. And then Ron Hogan opened up the question on Twitter: why should we be so concerned about plot spoilers in reviews (I’m paraphrasing here)? Isn’t a review a critical exercise, after all?
Well, I certainly think so. I love reading conversations among people who have read books I haven’t. It’s a pleasure watching someone wind their way analytically through a book, pondering its complexities, weighing its prose, measuring its success on a variety of levels. Sometimes, the more I know about a book the more inclined I am to read it. A coy review so often leaves me uninterested except for works by those authors I already know and trust or books that have already been circling on my radar.
Five years ago, I would have been very uncompromising in my belief that reviewing is part of the larger critical discourse on books and that no plot point should be held sacred in talking about books, even in reviews. Now that I review in a community of commercial fiction readers and authors, though, I try to balance my own convictions about book talk and a) the preferences of readers who do not want to be spoiled by a review, and b) authors who would prefer that spoilers not be offered in reviews, at least not without warning labels or masking. In fact, sometimes the most time consuming aspect of writing a review is figuring out how to work around these spoiler points – that is, how to make my substantive critiques without revealing something that is meant to surprise or give essentially timed information to the reader.
But even that can be fraught with trouble, because everyone has a different idea of what a spoiler is and isn’t. And then there are the character spoilers – details about a character that bear on the story but may not be revealed until one is well into the book. How does one hide those while still being able to talk meaningfully about how and why a book did and didn’t work for the reviewer? I have decided for my own reviews that if something is in the blurb, it’s not a spoiler, since it’s a public statement on the book (literally!) from the publisher. Although I know that sometimes authors object to what is written in the blurb, so that is not a problem-free approach, either.
Ultimately, I try to focus on plot summary around the way the story is set up and then shift into analysis, avoiding as many revelatory pieces of the plot or characters as I can (although I am probably more likely to spoil something about a character, since those details are so often more difficult to get around). Sometimes I just need a spoiler, and sometimes I am afraid that what I don’t see as a spoiler will be read that way by others. But I can’t bring myself to plaster warnings all over my reviews when I don’t think I’m spoiling the plot. Perhaps it’s a leftover stubbornness, a resistance to serving any particular master when I’m writing a review. Every review is a balance between respecting what the author wrote, what the reader should or shouldn’t know going in, and what I need to reveal in order to make my points about the book. And it is a difficult balance to achieve, and one that I sometimes feel is not well served by what I choose to withhold or reveal.
But how about you: how much plot and character background do you like to see in a review (or do you use in writing a review), and what’s the line across which you feel spoiled? Do you think it’s fair for reviewers to spoil the plot of a book if they warn or mask the spoiler, or do you think some things should be off limits? And what, if any, is the proper response from an author who believes that a review reveals too much about his or her book?
Copyright
At what price entitlement?
A couple of recent incidents have had me thinking of entitlement—both, interestingly enough, involving my favorite baseball team, The Florida Marlins. (Bear with me, I’m a baseball nut.) Anyhow, I love the Marlins. They’re the most bargain basement team in the majors, in terms of their salaries and as such, they’re also one of the youngest, most enthusiastic teams and a lot of fun to watch play.
Anyhow, a few weeks ago Chris Coghlan, a Marlin rookie just three or four days out of being called up, hit his first major league home run. Has to be one of the most exciting moments ever, right? And I’m sure it was, but the shine was somewhat taken off by what happened afterward. See, he hit the dinger at Miller Park, home of the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers, unfortunately, have among their fan ranks, a guy who calls himself “The Happy Youngster.” (Website, t-shirts, and all.) The guy is a self-professed ballhawk, living out in the bleachers for the purpose of catching home run balls. And he happened to catch Coghlan’s homer. Now, it’s a common practice in baseball for a player to exchange a signed ball or bat in order to get a personal milestone home run ball returned. So it’s not a surprise that Happy Youngster expected a trade to happen. This guy was downright organized. By the next inning, when the network’s roving reporter caught up to the guy, he had his list of demandsrequests, written out on a piece of paper that he proudly held up for the camera. He didn’t simply want a ball or bat signed by Coghlan, he wanted the signed ball and bat, plus a signed bat from All-Star shortstop Hanley Ramirez, plus a pair of tickets to the upcoming Marlins/Yankees game. Oh, and a picture with Coghlan. His reasoning? Coghplan should be happy to hand over everything and with a smile on his face. After all, the fans pay, right? It’s no less than what they deserve.
“I explained that ballhawking is my hobby and that what I was asking in return was fair,” Yohanek said Thursday, in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “I told him I make $50,000 a year working in law enforcement and that I didn’t feel like I was asking for too much. He responded, ‘Good for you.’ Real classy. Way to respect law enforcement. Way to respect a fan.”
‘Scuse me while I call foul. Way to respect a fan? He’s acting as if he’s… entitled to all those goodies. No. No, he’s not. And let me say it once more with a Whitney Houston emphasis, oh, hell to the no. He paid to watch nine innings of baseball. That’s precisely what he got. Anything else, extra innings, a picture flash on the big screen, a ball caught, whether a foul or a homer or just an extra tossed into the stands by a player in between innings… bonus and nothing more and certainly not to be expected.
Contrast that with earlier this week. Another Marlins rookie, Brett Carroll, hits his first major league home run, off 300-game and future Hall of Famer, Randy Johnson. Again, a fan in the bleachers caught it. The roving reporter asked what he wanted in exchange for the ball—all the fan wanted was to shake Carroll’s hand and congratulate him. The reporter then asked “and if Carroll offers a signed ball or bat?” the fan laughed and said, no, he wouldn’t turn it down. (He got a signed bat.)
By now you’re probably saying, “So okay, Barb, what does this have to do with writing and/or reading?”
More than you’d think, actually. Around the same time that Coghlan vs. the Over Entitled Nitwit situation was making the national sports news, Neil Gaiman posted a blog on, you guessed it, entitlement. A fan had written him complaining about George R.R. Martin’s lack of communication on the progress of his next A Song of Ice and Fire novel and wanted some of Neil’s insight as to what responsibility he thought George owed his fans and wasn’t George letting his fans down by, you know, having a life and having the nerve to blog about it, instead of writing the book, right now.
Neil’s response? “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.”
Pithiness aside, what I really liked about Neil’s response goes right back to the whole theme of entitlement. He pointed out that there has recently been this trend among readers whereupon they believe that by buying the first book in a series, the reader has entered into some sort of contract requiring the writer to devote themselves exclusively to writing each subsequent book until the series is complete. His take? A reader pays their money for a book. That one book.
I think this was especially resonant because lately, I’ve been seeing variations of this same theme of entitlement and it’s been fairly universal. There’s wonder as to what writers could possibly be doing that could take them away from writing The Next Book. And upon discovery that a writer is doing something other than writing The Next Book, readers coming back with commentary that could be interpreted as veiled (and not-so-veiled) threats—step it up, Sparky, or that reader can easily move on to another writer. (Uh, you really think writers don’t know that? C’mon.) Not only that, but that writers should be downright grateful (groveling welcome) and apply themselves diligently to serve the needs of their readers.
Really? I mean, it’s not that I’m not grateful for the people who have read my books and who share with me their enjoyment—believe me, I am. I cherish each and every reader who has gone out of their way to tell me they loved something I wrote. But see, herein lies the difference—being “grateful for” is not the same as being “beholden to”, which is the tone this commentary is starting to take on. Also, writers don’t necessarily set out to serve the needs of readers. Speaking for myself, I set out to serve something within myself. I choose to share it with readers—I want to share it—and I work darned hard to do so.
And really isn’t that what every reader should want? That a writer take the time to write the best possible book? I mean, not only does the writer benefit from the sense of accomplishment from a job well done, not simply for themselves, but for the publisher who’s actually paying them for the manuscript, but the reader benefits as well by getting their money’s worth for that one book. Sounds like a win/win situation to me.
Copyright
A Country Miss In Hanover Square
