Category Archives: Writing

Living the Alternative Write-Style

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Yes, that’s right. Me. Joe Romance Novelist. I live an alternative write-style.

You never would have guessed? Or you have no idea what I’m talking about?

Well, here it is. I take writing very seriously. I identify myself as a writer, an author, a storyteller, a book-maker. Hell, last year when I filled out my taxes, I put “writer” in as my profession. It is, and someday I even hope to make a living at it.

But I can’t swear I write forty hours a week or two thousand words a day or whatever is considered the going rate for a working writer. And I’m starting to accept that I don’t have to.

Last night I stayed up late because I hadn’t written all day. Well, nothing but tweets, and I just can’t count those. I have two works-in-progress ongoing right now, a vague outline of a romance featuring a sexy male librarian hero, and a complete novel waiting for my edits. I’ve got plenty to do, ideas percolating in my brain at all hours. If I had my way, I’d be indulging in a write fest nine to five every day.

Ah, but there’s a rub. I also have three kids getting ready to start school, a puppy who insists on being walked every hour and a half, a hard-working husband who deserves to be fed at some point after he comes home from work, and a house that hasn’t been completely clean since summer started…or possibly since we moved in.

This is where the alternative write-style comes in. Over the summer I’ve given up on set writing time. I’ve made the decision that I will write when I can. Like last night. I stayed up thirty minutes later than I should have and wrote a grand total of about four hundred words. And you know what I saw when I gazed blearily at my computer screen at 12:30 a.m.? I saw the one thing that I needed to see.

Progress.

(For some reason, that little song Dory from “Finding Nemo” sang keeps running through my head: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”)

If you have to live an alternative write-style, don’t worry. You may not hit the two thousand prescribed words a day a serious writer is supposed to write. The question is, would you like to? If you could get someone else to do your grocery shopping and kid carting and day job for you, would you sit down and write until you hit two thousand words a day? If the answer is yes, then you’re a writer.

However, if you’d rather be rock-climbing or skydiving or playing Minecraft all day (I mean, hell, if you’ve got someone working your day job for you, who can blame you?), then you might be more of a hobbyist writer. Nothing wrong with it, but you probably shouldn’t call yourself a writer on your income taxes.

In the meantime, writers, here’s the one bit of advice I really feel like I can give you: Whatever you do, just keep swimming…

Motivation: What Makes Your Characters Move?

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I started a new story the other day and did my normal thing. I jumped right the hell into the deep end. Only then did I realize that I didn’t know how to swim in this particular pool. Ripples in the Blue Water of a Swimming Pool

Getting away from the swimming metaphor (forgive me, it’s HOT in eastern North Carolina), I set the story aside for a day or so and figured out why I couldn’t make it work. You see, I have a very clear idea of what I want to have happen, but I couldn’t figure out how to make my characters get from point A to point B. They just stood there like little statues.

I know now why. I knew one of the characters pretty well. He was in Close Up Magic, so he didn’t hold that much mystery for me. I knew what motivated him. Guilt, love, a certain fragility of spirit and an inner strength he doesn’t realize he possesses yet. And I created this awesomely sexy heroine to show him the way. She’s strong, beautiful, worldly–but I couldn’t get her to fall in love with him.

I realized that while I knew what my hero’s motivation was, I wasn’t sure about hers. I’d jumped into the middle of the story and forgotten to wade a little into the backstory first. Even if I don’t need to tell the reader everything at first, I need to know why she’d choose this particular instance to fall in love with this particular guy.

It’s a rookie mistake, and one I’ve made before (waaay back when I was a rookie, wink wink). I think a lot of writers make it. We get excited about telling the story and forget a basic fundamental of storytelling: without motivation, our characters won’t live. Whether it’s a carrot or a stick, we’ve gotta give them a reason to move from the beginning of the story to the climactic middle to the end.

The Unlikely Hero and Me: Is There a Future for Us?

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Looking back over my romance novels, I don’t find a typical alpha hero in many of them. Dan in Secrets of the Lotus and John in Winter Solstice were the closest I came, and that was because as I started out I thought that was what was required.

Since then, the men of my stories have been pretty much quiet intellectuals or devoted professionals. A physics professor, a family lawyer, a chef, and now…a magician.

Now, keep in mind that most of my life I’ve been a quiet, devoted geek. I’ve seen every episode of Star Trek (original through Deep Space Nine, anyway), and certainly every movie (I love the new ones!). My favorite authors in high school were Anne McCaffrey (dragons!) and Piers Anthony (Xanth!). My favorite hobby? Reading. I’m a librarian for heaven’s sake. (Speaking of which, I’m seriously considering writing a novel with a librarian as the hero.)

So it makes sense that my heroes would tend toward the geek side of the scale, too, doesn’t it?

But is there a future in writing heroes with a geek factor? I may not have found my answer, but I did get a little bit of encouragement the other night while watching Big Brother (another sign of my geekiness!). If you’ve been watching, you know there’s an unlikely showmance going on between houseguests Amanda and McCrae. Amanda is a gorgeous, brash, successful businesswoman. McCrae is a pizza boy…well, I guess you’d have to say pizza man. He’s certainly old enough to have a real job. (Sorry, McCrae!)

Anyway, the two have struck up a relationship and are undeniably cute together, even if they are totally mismatched and would never have gotten together (like, in a million years! I mean who would be caught dating a pizza boy? Really?) in the real world. And McCrae says to Amanda the other night (at least something to this effect), “I don’t even really get it why you like me.” And Amanda starts giggling and just for a second, I got it. I saw it. McCrae’s a geek, but there’s something about him.

Of course, my next hero isn’t going to be a pizza boy (man), and he isn’t going to look like McCrae, but just the fact that I actually could see something in him for a second there made me feel better about my heroes. I mean, hey, why shouldn’t a sexy, devoted, sweet, slightly geeky magician get the girl?

Even in this day and age of fifty shades of twilight, there’s room for a nice guy, too, isn’t there?

I need to be writing. Even if I sometimes ask what’s the point?

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Here’s a little peek at how I as an indie contemporary romance author often feel: Hello? Is this thing on?

I recently read a very good blog article about why indie writers need to avoid underpricing their books. The author made several very good points, but one in particular stood out to me. Unless we write as a hobby, we’re hoping our writing will eventually support us. It’s hard to do that when you’re selling your work for 99 cents.

I’ve spoken up several times on this subject in support of writers selling their work for whatever the hell they want to sell it for—provided they can find buyers. It’s survival of the fittest out there in the publishing world, and anything you can do to give yourself an edge is fair game.

The problem is, pricing your ebook at 99 cents is no longer going to give you that much of an edge. In fact, giving it away is no longer going to give you an edge. The only real way to get an edge in today’s market is to study your craft and write and promote and study and write and promote…and pray. Yup, that’s right. Pray. Pray to God or Buddha or your muse. Pray for that magic moment when, for some unknown reason, the words you wrote catch on. Something snags the attention of the reading masses and it’s your book that’s being tweeted and talked and posted about.

I’m still waiting for that. Reviewers (for the most part) like my writing. But hey, most of them get my books for free. (Want a review copy? Email me. I’ll send it out. Kindle or paperback. Your choice.) So I’m still trying everything I can, including different price points, to catch that wave.

Just the other day, I dropped the price of Ducks in a Row from $2.99 to $1.99 in the hopes that it would spur some sales. The sequel, Saturday Love, is with an editor now and I hope to publish it in January. I think there are literally dozens of people waiting for that sequel, and I have no intentions of disappointing them. If I could grow those dozens to hundreds by January, that’d be pretty awesome, though.

And, can you keep a secret? Next week on July 1, Close Up Magic will be free for one day only. I’m not telling everyone yet, just you guys. I’d hate to discourage anyone from paying for the book now.

But as I wait for that moment when it all comes together with pricing and readers and promotions and magic, be assured I’m writing. And I’m striving to write each book a little better than the last one so that eventually my readers won’t even look at the price of my novels. Eventually, they’ll see another book by me and buy it without worrying about how much it costs because they know it’s worth it.

“What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?”

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In the course of Googling something else the other night, I ran across an article on a blog that intrigued me. The blogger devoted his entire time to tearing down a very successful author, whose name I shall not mention. In a nutshell, the blogger said she loved this particular author UNTIL she started following him on social media where said author made a number of missteps. Her main complaint, however, was that he never offered anything to the aspiring writers who clustered about him waiting for a morsel of genius to fall on them.

Instead, the author in question would fill his Twitter feed with his daily word counts, bits from his new books, or his favorite quotes from his old books. Why doesn’t the author just be himself? the blogger asked.

(Ahem. Possibly because he might not be his actual self. Lord knows, if I ever get to the point he’s at, I’m going to hire someone to handle social media for me. It’s part of the job of being a writer, but if you can afford to pay someone else to do it for you so you can keep doing what you really enjoy doing—writing—well, who can blame you…much?)

But I digress. This article got me thinking. Have I ever gotten any actually useful advice from a successful published author? I’ve seen several speak. Some tell stories about how they became successful. Sometimes you can glean some bit of something useful out of that, but for the most part, you’re left wondering, Why couldn’t that happen to me? Every now and then, though, somebody says something that sticks with you, that really helps.

Unfortunately, I honestly can’t remember who said the most useful writing tip I ever got from a published writer. I think it was a man, and I believe it was while I was in college. Other than that, I’m at a loss. At any rate, what he said was, “Tell you readers your secrets.”

That startled me. My secrets. He was talking about writing fiction. Novels. Not true stuff. Why would I tell my secrets? Real stuff. But I’ve found over the years that he was right. If you mix a little bit of reality into your fiction, it makes it live and breathe in a way that purely made up stuff could never do. And the great thing is, you don’t have to tell your reader what bits are true. You just write from the heart, mix in things that are true with things that you wish could be true or you fear ever coming true and what results is so much more than fiction.

Here’s a bit of writing advice from me, a published, if not yet successful, author. Don’t expect too much from your heroes. No matter how successful they are, they’re caught up in a balancing act, just like the rest of us. They may not have to make ends meet financially (well, the top 1% don’t, anyway), but they are trying to balance marketing and social media and family with what they really probably still want to do—writing. So don’t expect too much, but listen when you’re lucky enough to hear one speak. They might just give you that tidbit you’ve been waiting for.

What’s in a word? $#*% by any other name would smell as $#%%^, wouldn’t it?

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This is how it happened.

I’m driving down the road the other night and a possum walks out in front of me. More than just about any other wildlife, possums freak me out. There’s something downright evil in the way they turn their long rat-like snouts to look at an oncoming car. Hit me. I dare you. Of course, most of them lose that particular battle, but they still startle me with their glares.

“Oh, (expletive deleted).” I slam on the brakes and swerve to avoid the creature.

My daughter, who has been playing quietly on her iPod in the backseat, says calmly in her little innocent voice, “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“I almost hit a possum.” I wonder why I didn’t just go ahead and hit the thing. Why go out of my way to avoid something that I don’t like? Maybe it’s a deep-rooted fear that this one won’t die. It’ll grab hold of the undercarriage of my car and wait until I park and, unsuspecting, climb out, exposing my ankle to its sharp teeth and claws…

“What?” My daughter can’t place what kind of critter I’m talking about.

“You know, those things we see squished on the side of the road all the time.” (I’m probably not going to get mother-of-the-year for that definition, but it had been a long day, and last I heard I’m not in the running away.)

“Eww.” She exclaims as only a dramatic five-year-old can. But she knows what I’m talking about now.

I laugh and continue driving. It’s only later that I realize I used a curse word in front of her and she didn’t react to it. She’s heard it before…from me. Have I desensitized her already to the power of profanity? The thought is sobering.

As a writer, I’m interested in language and how certain words have more power than others. I’ve read countless articles about words and how their sounds affect people in different ways. (Here’s a really interesting article about the subject: Which Words Do You Love and Which Do You Hate?) Profanity is fascinating because so many people have such adverse reactions to the ugly words. Including me. I flinch when I hear certain words. They’re unpleasant. They have power over me.

When I was in high school, I knew a boy who always said “sugar” instead of “(expletive deleted)”. I thought it was cute. I thought he was cute. I knew what he meant, but by replacing the expletive with a much sweeter (pun intended) word, he accomplished something many of us have yet to figure out how to do. He used the power of language in a positive way.

Which leads me to my vow. I’m going to be a less profane person. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not horrible, but a “bad word” pops out every now and then. I’m not doing this because I think it’s wrong to curse, but because I want my kids to understand that words do have power over people. You can use them in a positive way (think speeches by great men like Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK) and influence people for good. But if you go throwing profanity and other negative words around, eventually the people around you become desensitized to your voice. What you say fades away and becomes less important, and when you do have something positive to say, you’ll be lucky if anybody hears you.

Writing about Writing: My Year in Review

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Today I looked at my bookshelves. You see, I have a new book to put on them. My brother-in-law gave me one of the best books ever written about writing. Stephen King’s On Writing. I’ve read excerpts but never the whole thing, and I’ve never owned my own copy, so I was thrilled to get it. Let me share one of my favorite excerpts from the book with you:

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. … Come to it any way but lightly.” — Stephen King, On Writing

I LOVE that quote. It hits the heart of my writing experience every time I read it. When I sit down at my computer, I assess my own ambitions for my writing. Maybe I have an idea I can’t wait to tap into my computer. Maybe I’m ready to get lost in that other world. Maybe I’m ready to try, anyway. Or maybe I just want to update my blog or maybe I’m…not. King goes on to say:

“…it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.”

On the days when I know I can’t take my writing seriously, I do find other things to do. If I know all I’m going to be doing is surfing the net or (worse) posting inane comments on Facebook all day, I go do something else useful. I’ve taken up cataloging my kids’ school library during these “off hours”, and I’ve found that I am far better off when I return to the writing I’m never very far away from.

So much for King. What really caught my attention when I looked at my bookshelves was another book about writing by Eudora Welty, also titled On Writing. I admit, I’ve never read this book. I bought it way back as a sentimental investment. I met Ms. Welty once, way back at some young authors’ conference or other. She was very old, and I’d never read anything she’d ever written, but she was what I knew I wanted to be: a published, respected writer. I was curious. Did she see writing as seriously as King does? I flipped through the pages and eventually came across this quote, which, to me, seems to indicate she does:

“We have the writer’s own vision of everything in the world when we place his novel in the center. Then so much is clear: how he sees life and death, how much he thinks people matter to each other and to themselves, how much he would like you to know what he finds beautiful or strange or awful or absurd, what he can do without, how well he has learned to see, hear, touch, smell—all as his sentences go by and in their time and sequence mount up. It grows clear how he imposes order and structure on his fictional world; and it is terribly clear, in the end, whether, when he calls for understanding, he gets any.” –Eudora Welty, On Writing

The last line of that rather lengthy quote gave me chills. Don’t we all want understanding at the end of the book? As I scanned the pages of Welty’s book on writing, I noticed she explores the relationship between reader and writer in a much clearer manner than I’ve ever seen before. In her many years of writing, Ms. Welty obviously established a very good understanding with her readers.

Over the course of the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a writer. I’ve discovered that just because I write books I want to write doesn’t mean that everybody will want to read them. I’ve discovered that even when they get published and read, my books won’t always establish that connection with the reader that I strive for. And yet, if I’m going to ask my readers to take me seriously as a writer, I have to, as King advises, never come to it lightly. I have to approach writing as a business. It’s a business you have to stick with, you have to work at, and the you must, at all costs, constantly strive to get better at it if you hope to connect with your readers.

This year, I’ve written a few blog posts I was sort of proud of about writing. Nothing compared to King or Welty, but I haven’t had their careers yet. Most of these are either about my impressions of what writing is like on this side of success or were responses to articles I’d read about writing or publishing. In case you missed my brilliance the first time around, I thought I’d include links to my top 10 favorite blog posts of 2012:

1. “Embrace your velvet-cloaked vampire: Go ahead and publish that book”

2. “How to make your setting into a character…and why you should”

3. “Self-published and proud of it: Stop squelching the new voices”

4. “Confessions of a Contemporary Romance Author”

5. “Music that isn’t mine or why there’s a gay woman in Where the Heart Lies: About Lulu”

6. “How a chronic beginner finishes writing a novel”

7. “Slacking Off: Writing is Hard Work!”

8. “Vanishing Literature or Just Disappearing Ink?”

9. “Playing with emotions: What do you want to feel when you read?”

10. “Immersing Myself in the Culture of My Creations”

NaNoWriMo: What’s Going On? (exclusive excerpt from my NaNo novel)

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No, I’m not confused. I’m updating. Finally. I feel like I’ve been in a daze most of this month, and I guess I have sort of been in a writing fever. Consumed. I’d like to credit National Novel Writing Month with this, but I’ve participated in this annual event often enough to know, if the story hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have written itself like this. NaNoWriMo probably did help me keep going, but this story was just kind of there. The characters weren’t hard to bring to life because by the time November 1 rolled around, I already knew them well enough to write about them.

I’ve already said the story is about magic. I’ve spent most of my life looking for magic, even finding it every now and then in everyday life, trying to capture it and cage it on the page in black and white. It doesn’t work, usually. I’m not sure I managed it this time. Maybe you can tell me:

She could feel the dry desert breeze on her skin, a welcome relief after the canned air she’d been breathing all day. This far up, the air smelled fresh, free from the musty mix of sweaty bodies and sewage that often pervaded the street level of Vegas. If she kept her eyes closed, she could almost imagine what it had been like hundreds of years before when the cowboys rode through the desert…

She was wasting time. If she were going to do it, she should go ahead. She bit her lip, felt his hands on her hips, the warmth of his body behind her. As if he understood her inner battle, he leaned forward, his lips almost touching her ear, making her dizzy with desire at a time when she desperately didn’t want to be dizzy. At first she barely understood his words, but when they penetrated, she found her courage. “Sometimes you have to do something that frightens you just to be sure you’re still alive.”

Her eyes fluttered open, and she waited for the vertigo and fear to crash down on her. But with him at her back, she found she could look out at what was undeniably an amazing view. Somehow beautiful in its blatant excess, the Strip spread out below her in a medley of lights, looking like crystal and jeweled glass. She could see the people strolling along the street, slower and more peaceful at this late hour and at this great distance than she knew they would if she were among them. Light of every color bloomed and blossomed and split through the night. The light breeze brushed her hair back from her face, almost as gentle as his touch. For the first time, she could understand why Vegas had become known as the flower of the desert. “It’s amazing.”

He stood close enough so she could feel him nod. “From up here it is.” He moved to her side, and she immediately wished he hadn’t. She liked the solid feel of him behind her. He contemplated the view for a moment. “Do you know what I see down there?”

She shook her head. “What?”

“A lot of people looking for something. I’ve always believed it’s magic. Do you know what I think magic is?” He turned, searching her eyes.

Again she shook her head. A gust of wind whipped her hair across her face and he reached up to brush it back, his palm warm against her cheek. “Magic is the absence of doubt.”

So far, my magic novel is 48,000+ words. I anticipate finishing it today. It’s the first time I’ve ever finished a NaNo novel before Thanksgiving. It’s still untitled, although I have a few ideas. But if you want to help, feel free to leave a comment below with your suggestion.

And while I’m bragging, I got two reviews yesterday for Where the Heart Lies! One was from my gracious blog tour host Stitch Read Cook. Here’s an excerpt:

“Michelle has a way with words, she draws you into the small town life of these characters and keeps you hooked until the last page.” — Stitch Read Cook

The second was unexpected, however, and I found it by chance on Bookaddiction. Check this out:

“Where The Heart Lies by Michelle Garren Flye is a lovely story about guilt, redemption, and the power of love. …a well-written romantic novel with an unusual amount of depth.” –Bookaddiction

How cool is that? Makes me think my quest for magic might be progressing after all!

Sandy prayers and a blog tour update, plus a plug for NANOWRIMO

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First off, let me say I’m praying for the people in the Northeast who are going to deal with Sandy’s full wrath in a few hours. I’ve been in a hurricane. I thought Irene was bad. That was the night and day where I could do nothing but pace the floor and listen to trees falling outside my house, praying none hit our roof. North Carolina just got swiped by Sandy this year, for which I’m thankful, but I’m watching and listening to reports of it bearing down on the New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia coasts. I have friends and family in all those states.

But the show—or at least the blog tour—must go on. I’ve got a Q&A up at It’s Raining Books today. Stop by and leave a comment for your chance at the fabulous prizes I’m giving away. And don’t forget to leave me a comment here for a chance to win a print copy of Foreign Affairs. I’ll be giving that away on Wednesday, but you’ve still got time!

Finally, I signed up for NANOWRIMO (NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth) this weekend. I’ve already got a rough outline of my book, have named the main characters and started to work on character outlines. So I’m ready to come out guns blazing on Thursday morning. I have every intention of finishing a novel this month, and I challenge everyone out there to join me. If you’re a writer at all, NANO is a great way to see if you’ve got a novel in you. It teaches you discipline and the joy of writing every single day. And if you don’t find those things by the end of the month (regardless of whether you finish the 50,000 words or not), well, you probably aren’t a novel writer. At any rate, it’s a great way to find out.

I will be blogging this month about my struggles with NANO. I am warning you ahead of time that I may use this blog to complain and vent my frustrations. I will also use it to remind myself to breathe. November is a busy month anyway, but when you’re forcing yourself to crank out nearly 2,000 words a day, it can be downright active! I look forward to finding out what it holds in store for me…

Self-published and proud of it: Stop squelching the new voices.

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There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt. — Audre Lorde

I’m really trying not to get angry now. If you want to know why, go read this article: Are Self-Pubbed Authors Killing the Publishing Industry? I actually read the article yesterday and let it sit for a day so I could be sure after cooling off that I didn’t see her point, but after reading it again this morning, I realized I’m still hot. So here I go on my soapbox.

Seriously? KILLING the industry? You want to know what’s killing the industry? Look a little deeper. Look at the agents who don’t want to take a chance on cross-genre works and new names. And the editors who won’t even look at a new author unless they’re represented by an agent. The publishing industry has become so intertwined, it’s almost impossible to get anything published the traditional route unless you’re grandfathered in.

Of course, there are exceptions. Everybody knows J.K. Rowling’s slush pile acceptance story. But that was more than fifteen years ago. More recently, of course, there was the Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (what’s with the British authors with initials thing?) breakthrough, but let’s please remember that that started out as fanfiction, and was originally published online. So I’m not certain you can claim Ms. James went the traditional route at all.

I have self-published a book. I’m considering self-publishing more. And the reason I’m doing it is because I’m a writer, and I have every intention of continuing to write and be published, whether I have to do it myself or not. And to promote my books, I will do web tours and give away Kindles and Nooks, even if “Traditionally published authors aren’t stooping to these tactics.” Traditionally published authors don’t have to. Their publishers take care of publicity for them.

I have said before and will say again that the way for new authors to get their words out there is to go through small e-publishers. With that route, you get the benefit of a professional editor (believe me, it helps). However, I also know there are books that even indie publishers aren’t going to consider. And for those, Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing will continue to be desirable routes for writers. And if we want to sell our words for 99 cents, then traditional publishers need to suck it up and stop complaining. Buyer beware. If you pay 99 cents for a book, you might not enjoy it. It probably hasn’t been professionally edited. It may have typos and formatting errors.

On the other hand, it might be brilliant. It might be a new voice with something to say that you might enjoy hearing. At any rate, it cost less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, so what do you have to lose?

If you’d like to try my 99 cent self-published 5-star on Amazon book, here’s a link: Weeds and Flowers. And my self-designed cover, which I am very proud of: