There are some characters that just grab you by the heart

Recently I was asked if I cried for any my characters. My answer has always been that if you're not feeling it, you're not doing it right. Because if you're not feeling it, the reader won't.
Some of my characters are real, and some of the imaginary ones are just as real, based from people I've know and loved over my life. And yes, I've cried over all of them.
Most of the time, the characters that grab you are the protagonists, but if a writer is doing their job right, the secondary characters should as well.
For instance, Jay and Marian in Director's Cut.
The real Jay always reminded me of the actor Rene Auberjonois - one of my favorite character actors. Certainly there was a resemblance between the two. Both were tallish, thin, with long noses and distinct features.
Jay was gay and already in full-blown AIDs.
It was toward the end of the AIDS crisis, they were starting to develop the drugs that now help so many survive. I'd already lost one friend to the disease and I hadn't handled it well. The idea of losing Ross to that disease had been more than I could cope with.
Jay and the woman I called Marian in Director's Cut had already formed a deep and abiding friendship long before I met them. She was divorced, struggling to raise her son alone. When Jay's disease became known they reached an agreement - they would marry and she would care for him in his last days. For them both it seemed like the perfect solution.
In the days before our little theater group put on the play version of Phantom of the Opera we were beset by a series of disasters. One of our actors was mugged, costing him his front teeth. Jay was hospitalized - again - with pneumonia. We had no understudies. And the circumstances in a key scene of Director's Cut took place. Our entire production was in jeopardy, but more than anything, we were praying for Jay, for Marian, and for our other actor.
In a tremendous show of strength and courage - given that it was just a community theater production - Jay left the hospital and appeared onstage in the role of one of the producers. The other actor had to have a bridge put in to replace his missing teeth at the last minute, but he went on as well.
The show went on, too.
Sadly, Jay took a bit of abuse in the reviews and it clearly hurt him, but he was a trooper. None of us could say anything, back then the stigma of the disease was pretty disastrous. Not that Jay would have let us. Even for our little production, he was ever and always the consummate professional.
Shortly thereafter our little company parted ways due to circumstances none of us foresaw and my life took unexpected turns.
I learned some time after that Jay had died through other sources, and far too late to pay my respects, in much the same way that I lost the friend I've called Electra in The Last Resort. My mother told me, probably years afterward, that Electra's daughter had tried to make contact with me. Probably to tell me that her mother was ill but my mother hadn't passed on the call or my number.
Electra was the closest I've come over the years to a best friend.
Time and distance do that. Now, years later, I hope I've done justice and honor to both. I've celebrated them, in my own way.
I adored Jay, respected both him and Marian, for the sacrifices they made.
Honestly, I don't know how the woman I've called Marian got through Jay's death. I know she loved him deeply, even if not in the way most people expect. Of course back then gay couples couldn't marry at all but straight ones could. In many states gay couples still can't, of course. But it was Jay himself who told me he wouldn't have another lover who could only stand there and watch him die. He just couldn't do it to them.
Marian, who was already his friend and aware of his illness, understood.
I did, too. Those are the sacrifices we make for the people we love...or might love. To not make them face the pain, even if it means not experiencing the joy.
Perhaps there's something better waiting beyond. If so, I hope Jay found it...

When Worlds Collide - Self and Traditional Publishing

I get the whole self/indie publishing - traditional publishing debate thing, I do! After all, I've been there. When I started out, it was all traditional, all the way. Of course, indie-publishing (or self-publishing), didn't really exist. Everyone considered that a vanity thing, not a viable path.
So, I did the agent/publisher query letters and collected my rejections, fought discouragement, the lack of support and the friends telling me it was a pipe-dream. I persisted. I had stories I needed to tell. It was an obsession. So I wrote the stories, and the query letters. I came this || close a time or two. An agent who called me at home on a Saturday (A SATURDAY) to tell me how much he liked my book... and then changed his mind. A publisher asked for a full...and didn't contact me for over a year and a half! Only to tell me it was rejected.
All the advice I was hearing also made my heart sink.
Like, 'Don't write in multiple genres.' I write in several.
'No publisher will take a chance on an epic fantasy by a nobody.' I had an epic fantasy series and a standalone. *ack!*
I ignored all that advice as I piled up new manuscripts, sent out queries and attended conferences.
At one of those conferences I did a one-on-one with the chief editor for a mid-level publisher in the process of branching out into other genres. She asked me to submit the novel I presented to her and I did. Nothing. But I checked out their website, saw the type of writing they normally handled - something I had never written - and took a shot at it. I wrote two novels and submitted them under a pen name. To my astonishment, they took both! I was thrilled.
Then reality reared it's ugly head. I knew going in that I'd have to compromise. I knew they would need to fit my novels into their style. I just didn't understand the industry, or how much compromise I'd need to make. I'd also hoped that success in one area would be a stepping stone to another. It wasn't.
In the meantime I'd been hearing about this Indie/Self-publishing thing. There was a division of Amazon called CreateSpace that would help you self-publish your book in print. I had read all the pros and cons (mostly cons), but what did I have to lose? From all the advice I was hearing, no one was going to buy a epic fantasy about a Fairy Queen and her efforts to put a human King back on his throne. And I wanted a book of mine in my hands before I died. Because face it, getting published traditionally is a crap shoot. 90% of all writers fail. You had to hit the right editor/agent at the right time on the right surface of the right wave. And if it didn't fit into the right genre niche? Forget it.
By then I was also hearing a lot more about this indie writing/self-publishing thing. A young woman by the name of Amanda Hocking had sold thousands of books that she'd published herself. She wasn't alone.
I was increasingly unhappy with my traditional publisher, and unbeknownst to me they weren't too happy with me, either. Unfortunately, I'd quit the day job on the strength of a book I was sure my traditional publisher would take, and the second book in a series. Instead they rejected the one and put the other on revise and resubmit. It also technically freed me from a clause in their contract.
Make no mistake about it, I sweated over the decision to try self-publishing. Make the leap, or not? I was scared. My whole writing career was at risk. There was so much negativity in some places - certainly among my traditionally published friends. I continued to try to make nice with my publisher on the one book but at the same time I self-published that book about the Fairy Queen, this time as an e-book. Again, what did I have to lose? Self-publishing offered the opportunity to publish ALL my books - the epic fantasies, the romance series, all of them, no matter the genre.
The Fairy Queen book began making a few sales.
My husband and I had an agreement. I had to be making money from my books by August of that year, or I'd  have to start job-hunting.
As the one book began to do well, I set myself a release schedule and started to put out the accumulated work of ten years of writing every few months or so.
Did I make the August deadline? Just. But I was making money... and it was increasing every month.
I took pains to make sure my books were edited the best I could, did much of the cover design myself (becoming the finalist in one major contest), all to counter the argument that Indie books were crap. An accusation I was starting to hear more and more.
Finally I made the commitment and stepped away from my traditional publisher as my income rose.
That Fairy book? It's one of my most popular. I have great reviews and I'm selling hundreds of copies each month. The epic fantasy series? It's doing well, too. And so is the romance series. And a particularly unique action-adventure. Plus a few more.
Now I'm Indie/Self-Published all the way. Using the income from my e-books I'm having editors go back over all my books to make certain they're the best they can be and hiring cover artists to do all but a few of my covers. (I get wonderful compliment on those covers. If it's not broke, don't fix it.)
The best part about it is that my editors work with me to make my novel better - rather than trying to shoehorn it, and me, into a niche. My cover artists do the same. I remember one instance where I felt a small change needed to be made on one of my traditional covers, something I could have done myself with a simple program like Paint. They told me it couldn't be changed. My cover artists and I work together to find the best covers for my books.
Oh, and the day job thing? I don't need it. I'm now making as much money from my writing as I have from any of my day jobs. Including my traditional publisher.
Now, as to that debate...
I understand why some traditional writers are unhappy. First, some of them must resent the fact that many self-publishers haven't paid the dues they have. Now almost anyone that wants to write can get published. That's got to be frustrating. On that I sympathize.
Second, there's the increasing demand on them for more output - reported recently in the New York Times - in response to the quick turnaround of e-books, and probably the output of self-publishers. Third? They now have competition, and LOTS of it. Readers have more choices. Soon they may have to compete against these new innovative writers who don't fit into the 'molds' for the attention and awards. More and more traditional writers, though, are also branching out into self-publishing, and not just for their back list. Some are doing it for those novels they wrote and loved but couldn't sell anywhere else. Even to their traditional publisher.
Times are changing, and that can be scary. However, the only constant is change, whether we like it or not. It's a great time to be an author, if you have the courage to make the leap.

When Fiction and Reality Collide

Writing is a strange enough profession, but more so when it seems there's a touch of prescience involved. For those who have read Jules Verne's novels, this isn't particularly a surprise - he predicted submarines, nuclear power and the flight to the moon. There have been other instances, of course.

This is the third or fourth time it has happened to me, especially with the novel Nike's Wings.

I can't even say that I was driven to write it. On the contrary, it was pulled out of me kicking and screaming, powered by a song I couldn't get out of my head She Don't Want the World by 3 Doors Down. All it took was that song, and I was off.

I'm a collector of extraneous information, an avid reader of newspapers and news feeds. It all came together in this book - an assassin once known as Carlos the Jackal, a story about kidnapped oil workers held for five years and a Colombian politician (female) and her companions held for six, some bits and pieces of the political situation (thanks to my editor for keeping my timeline consistent) in the US and elsewhere.

Now, the CIA isn't known for female agents (Valerie Plame notwithstanding), certainly not as field agents, but that was my postulation for Nike.

I no sooner finished the novel and published it than a tidbit of information surfaced about a previous Vice President - part of the back story in the novel - who might have been running his own private division of the CIA. I also learned that renditions - kidnapping suspected terrorists to have the tortured in other countries - had begun much earlier than many suspected. Early enough to make one chapter of my book completely accurate.

At the same time, another book I had written - Irish Fling, a romantic suspense - suggested a terrorist would be found in Ireland. Shortly thereafter, one did indeed was caught and captured.

Then this week CIA Director Leon Panetta finally honored the first American woman killed in the Vietnam War - CIA Officer Barbara A Robbins - the first of 10 women to fall in the line of duty. Her death has been a mystery until now, her name a star on the wall, her story untold. 

Some of it is purely coincidental, of course. Nike and Barbara Robbins have little or nothing in common, but it is one of those odd twists of fate that confirm that a writer's strange imaginings might not be so strange.

So I honor Ingrid Betancourt, Colombian Presidential candidate who ran on an anti-corruption platform, held for six years by FARC, and CIA Officer Barbara Robbins, who volunteered to go to Vietnam in the midst of the war because 'she wanted to make a difference' according to her father.

Box? What box? We don’t need to think outside no box…!

On genres and tropes and gender roles and HEAs and HFNs and all the other neat little boxes some people still think we need to use….

For those who don’t know what a trope is, it’s a metaphor or literary device. I’ve seen the word used most often in regards to romance and erotica writing, where the ‘trope’ is the semi-requirement that all the heroes be tall and good-looking and every novel has to end Happily Ever After (HEA). Or, in the case of erotic romance sometimes just Happily For Now (HFN). Just recently I was dinged on this (dinged being my word for the sound made when someone whacks you upside the head) by a reader of one of my books. She said she liked the book overall but that it ‘couldn’t be a romance because it didn’t have an HEA’ and gave me one star. Well… we won’t mention (often) that the book in question is a thriller, not particularly a romance – although it does have a romance in it – and the ending was pretty much telegraphed from the beginning, because I understand. Most of us who aren’t watching Game of Thrones want our happy endings. But as G.R.R. Martin has proven, we don’t always get them, not even in novels. *grins* I’ve also gotten dinged by a reader because I had the Queen from one of my novels go to defend the stairs so the King and their son could escape. She wanted to know why the Queen went instead of the King (even thought it was explained in the next paragraph). Primarily though, it’s because I don’t do gender roles.

That’s one of the great things about being an Indie writer and an Indie reader. Genres can be squished together. Writers don’t have to stick to tropes and gender roles. That thriller is also a historical romance where the heroine is pretty bad-ass but doesn’t act like a man, and she doesn’t wear leather (although I do have one heroine who does). Another reader wrote in a review that she was so glad that the heroine of one of my romances – and it is a romance – didn’t have your typical romance novel type job (owns a garden shop/bridal shop/antique or gift shop).

Readers will benefit even more as we stretch the boundaries. I’m a pretty eclectic reader. One of my exes once said I’d read cereal boxes and skywriting and he wasn’t far off. My tastes range from Robert Crais and Lee Child to Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb to G.R.R Martin and Mercedes Lackey, and my writing reflects that. Many of the readers I know are pretty eclectic, too. For the longest time we’ve been talking about the ‘gatekeepers’ at the big publishing houses, but it sometimes seems that we’re still trying to conform to their old rules. Writers must write in only one genre, and use a pen name for the others. PSSHHHT. No they don’t. (For the record, I do use a pen name for my erotic romances, but that’s more about language and content than separating one type of fiction from another.) While we still need the guidelines of genre – and most retailers want that – there’s no reason writers have to restrict themselves to that. You’ve got room in that description for saying ’this is a work of Steampunk/Historical/Romantic fiction’ or whatever it is, if you want to give readers a better idea of what you’ve written. And readers can get to read some truly fantastic innovative fiction.

Writers…just be prepared for a few dings if you do… *grins*

Originally published on the Indies Unlimited blog http://www.indiesunlimited.com 05/02/12