Vixenwriter

I’ve got my author copies of Reading Between the Lines - anyone think they want to win a copy? I’ll run a contest today and choose a winner for a download of an ARC at 4 pm pacific.

All you need to do is email me with “READING” in the subject line and I’ll choose a winner at random.

18 and over only

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My daughter was just wearing SIX pairs of little mermaid underwear. I am relieved in that I thought, “holy crap, that’s not a diaper I want to change” and then it was just panties on top of panties.

I’m still sick. Bleh. Even cupcakes don’t sound good right now. The world is unkind, boys and girls, when buttercream doesn’t make your heart beat faster.

It’s Saturday once again and despite the cold from hell, I had a pretty productive week last week. I finished and fed exed off my revisions for Stripped (whew, big weight off my shoulders). I’m 98% finished with my last run through of To Do List to send to Angie, who is on vacation anyway. Then I’ll work on some chapters for my story, dirty/bad/wrong which is part of a dual author anthology called Risky Business with my buddy Megan Hart. We came up with the idea while in line for some dinner or other at RT in April. Then I have a free month to choose from a few things I need to do (so, um, not actually free, LOL) and I think I’ll work on Second Chances - expand it, tighten it, etc, before I get started on Standoff, the last Cascadia Wolves book coming out April 1.

Vengeance Due is finally up for sale at Amazon.com but not at Barnes and Noble. Chased is up for pre-order at Barnes and Noble but not at Amazon. Sigh. Whatevah, I roll with zee punches, LOL.

Genre bashing is stupid. Insulting readers is suicidal. Duh. I say duh again and also, an ear flick for making fun of the intelligence of my most fabulous readers.

I haven’t had a lot of reading time during the week because I’ve been working on revisions and fighting a cold but last weekend I had a Mandy Roth binge and it was quite satisfying.

First Date with Destiny - which is a Mandy Roth/Michelle Pillow book - love it. First of all, I’m working on two four author anthologies. I’m not sharing a story with anyone but just dealing with shared world stuff is complicated. These two share a book and it’s seamless. Excellent job, funny, short and sexy story. Totally brightened my afternoon.

Another great example of their joint writing is Red Light Specialists - futuristic and verra hot. This one is a novel so you get more of them to love.

Then I moved on to Pike’s Peak - a paranormal novella in her League of Unnatural Guardians series. Whoo, so you get Pike, a shifter and a well, superhero essentially and his jones for his friend’s younger sister. But Adira wants him too, even though to be claimed by a werewolf isn’t your ordinary declaration of love. She comes back as an adult and the League wants her to join them. Great tension for a short, really clever, funny dialog. Really well done!

The Advisor’s Apprentice is a lovely fantasy short! writing short takes a certain skillset, not one I have very often but Mandy Roth has it in spades. This story is a nicely done character piece, the sex is in proportion to the story and I really liked it!

And lastly, A View to A Kill with what I think is a very hot cover and seriously, if that’s backfat, what do we say about the rest of the country because that dude can’t possibly possess more than 8% bodyfat. Anyway, Sachin is a bird shifter of sorts from another plane of reality and he’s on earth when he saves a teenager from the same fate her murdered mother was unable to avoid. But what he didn’t bargain for was falling in love with her and realizing she’s his mate.

Excellent tension! Great sex. I liked Sachin and Paige a lot. A really great read.

I also read Warprize, the third book in the series and I think it’s my favorite in the series. It took some chances with the fantasy romance trope but it totally worked.

I’ll do this one early because I’ve got lots of books to talk about tomorrow too!

Here’s a little bit from Stripped - the novella in the What Happens in Vegas anthology coming out May 1, 2008

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THIRTEEN THINGS I’M THANKFUL FOR

1. My husband who brought me home a bouquet of exotic flowers when I got the offer on Vegas II this week.

2. My kids are, well, my kids and they’re all alive and full of kid-type goodness. My oldest is obsessed with Pokemon. And in that way a 10 year old boy can be obsessed which means it drives me insane. He starts telling me about this dream where he’s in a cave and suddenly it’s all about Pokemon and I groan.

“Dude. No Pokemon stuff.”
“But mom, it’s for school! I wrote an assignment about it.”
“No way. Don’t wanna hear it. Tell me about math.”
He tells me about Pokemon anyway!
“DUDE! I said no. I can’t take it. I’m going to have a seizure.”
“But it’s for school!”

3. My friends. I’m very blessed in my friends. People who have been with me even when things get rough, who celebrate when things are good and give me love when things are bad. Friends who’ll totally tell me if I have spinach in my teeth (metaphorically too) or if my dress is bunched in my tights. I’ve been making some new friends recently and that’s wonderful too.

4. My readers. Wow, what can I say? You are all so good to me and I wouldn’t be here celebrating all these contracts without your support.

5. Vegas II - I’d been in sort of a blues/funk space with my writing, or rather the publication aspect, feeling a bit stuck right on the verge. It’s not an eight book, six figure deal, but it came along right when I needed it and helps me continue to believe in myself and my work.

6. The cover for Vegas I - I can’t stop looking at it. I am jonesin to show it to everyone. All the authors in the anthology are so thrilled with this cover. It’s fun, sexy, young and sooooo pretty!

7. Music - I was talking to Ann Aguirre yesterday about MC Solaar and how much I loved French hip hop and now I’m on a renewed MC Solaar kick. I listened to Ben Oui over and over as I wrote last night. This novella will have a dance music oriented soundtrack. His stuff is hard to get here in the US but you can grab some of it at iTunes or find imports.

Here’s a bit from youtube - not a video but you can hear the song.

8. Wonderful books! I’ll talk about some of them tomorrow for Friday Booktalk

9. This writing gig in general. Five years ago I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be writing and making a real go of it.

10. TVGASM - I love their recaps. Since I don’t watch a lot of TV to make space to write, I can follow stuff by reading the hilarious recaps.

11. Planning for RT. I like dressing up. I like hanging out with readers and other authors. It’s one time I get to be Lauren without other contexts. I don’t have to worry about my kids and their schedule. I can just do my own thing and it’s a lot of fun. We’re hosting a reader party on Friday this year so I can’t wait.

12. Clive - He’s so pretty and yet, so masculine and there’s SUCH a bad boy in there. Yum. He inspires me.

13. Little things make me happy. Sure I want a big book deal, sure I want to win the lottery to pay off all our student loans so we can move into a bigger house, etc. But little things can still make me happy - a note from a friend, hearing an old song on the radio, pictures my kids draw, the smell of fall in the air, cupcakes.

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Well there’ve been a few contests of late where the winners haven’t claimed in two weeks so I re-drew!

Bella
Kate Scott
carma

you all win a package of books (including one of mine) so email me with your mailing address and let me know if you have any of mine in print already so I don’t duplicate!

We learned this week that Harlequin Spice has picked up the second Vegas anthology and it’ll be out in 2009. Not a whole lot more right now, this is brand spankin new. The second anthology has a paranormal theme and will have secondary characters you’ll meet in the first anthology.

My story, Sensual Magic, features William Emery, the owner of the burlesque club The Dollhouse and a witch named Nell Hunter who bursts into his life on the hunt for an embezzler.

This is a long one and it’s totally based on my perceptions of small and epublishing houses.

Recently, we’ve seen the demise of a few epublishers. Some people like to use this as a platform to crow about how epublishing is risky. Some people like to use this as an excuse to blather on and on about how they’re all mistreated and misunderstood and to make it seem like normal business practice to not pay authors, to sign contracts that are monumentally one sided like NET contracts or to make it okay to address the public as a publisher in all caps while screaming about hormones, sexually promiscuous family members or some other conspiracy.

There are basic things to guiding yourself through the publishing maze. First and foremost is a freebie - COMMON SENSE. Truly, your mother was right. Common sense will save a lot of heartache in so many ways. Despite what some in this business attempt to tell you (usually from a soapbox while holding a spotlight on themselves) there is no “one true way” to this business. There is simply the best way for you. This is about how I do it. Others do things differently. Your mileage may vary.

Firstly - folks, I know how much waiting sucks. God, do I know. I feel the pressure as much as anyone else does to hear back and get manuscripts contracted. But this is something you can’t be penny smart and pound foolish over. Yes, you can submit to a new epublisher and most likely hear back in a very short period of time and get your book out very quickly. This will feel good. At first.

And then you will realize why waiting is part of the process. Because, and I can tell you this from experience, the difference in sales is monumental. The difference in name recognition (which is after all, what you’re trying to build) will have far more impact if your book is read by more people than less people. That’s basic math. I don’t mean to sound harsh. I don’t have any beef with start up epublishers as a general principle. But there is a reason why you’re going to wait months to hear back from Samhain or EC (just as an example - there are others out there, I just write for them so I can speak with some firsthand knowledge) and just days from other epublishers. Demand usually means an established reader base.

If you go with a start up or with a very small publisher, do it with your eyes open. Just as an example: I submitted Giving Chase to Samhain when they were very new. It was a risk for them to take something totally different from me and for me to sub to a start up. But I did my homework and I knew Crissy Brashear was a smart woman who’d done a lot of great things for EC before she started Samhain. I also looked at who was writing for them and I asked a few folks what their experience was. I subbed and went through the process before I sent them anything else and I’ve been thrilled. EC was established long before I started writing for them and had a group of excellent authors writing there (many you see writing for major NY houses now).

CONTRACTS: Here’s where things get tricky because the things I personally hold to be important may not be important to you. There is no one true way, but you have to read that contract carefully and don’t let your eagerness to sell a book overcome your common sense. This is just some basic stuff based on things I find important.

Think about several things: Length of rights. How long will the publisher own rights? Are you okay with that? I have book contracts for all sorts of different terms. In truth, this, to me, is about relative power. When you’re new, you don’t have a lot. Also, how important was it to me to sign with the publisher? Did I think they’d do something with the rights? Did I have a way to get them back if my book went out of print? Etc.

Here’s one thing - people don’t sign a contract where you have to pay to have your book up for sale. Seriously. A reputible publisher isn’t going to charge you to list the book at their website, or to make you pay the credit card fees or anything like that. It’s ridiculous and totally scadalously unfair to authors. There are costs authors have to bear in certain circumstances in certain contracts (front and backmatter sometimes although that’s one of my particular issues, some other authors don’t care) or if you pull a book you might have to pay for the editing or the cover art, READ YOUR CONTRACT BEFORE YOU SIGN IT. If you ask questions and aren’t dealt with professionally, that’s a big red warning flag. They might refuse to budge, but a publisher who flips out when you ask questions is not professional.

Percentages - in ebooks there’s a pretty standard range that’s about 40% (give or take a few percentage points one way or another). If it’s very low, and we aren’t talking about a NY publisher who is also putting your book out in digital form, you might really think on it. If they can promise you a hell of a lot of sales for 5%, it might be worth it. But how many sales does that have to be? Because you’d have to sell roughly eight books to one at a standard rate.

Distribution: what is the distribution like? Where do they sell your book? Can people find it? What do they do to help people find it?

Look at their website. Is it easy to navigate? How easy is it to buy a book? Because let me tell you, some epublishers have the worst freaking point of sale situation ever and it does effect sales. I won’t buy from some epublishers because of how stupid ridiculous it is to get the book to my hard drive. Is it updated frequently? Is it horrible to look at with terrible colors? Do they give focus to three authors while everyone else’s books are hard to find? (because folks unless you are those three authors, that sucks). Do they only take paypal or some other form of payment not everyone will be able to use or want to use? Do they have a page for individual authors? I have my mom go to the site, if she can navigate it, it’s pretty easy. But that’s just me.

How does the staff conduct themselves? Because seriously? As an author seeing publishers and editors get out in public and make ridiculous statements and do stupid stuff makes me cringe. And it’s not just confined to a few publishers either and this puzzles and enrages me. I don’t want to know about your personal beefs with other publishers. I don’t want to know about your personal beefs with your authors. I don’t want to know about your personal problems at home, your money problems or whatever fungus is growing between your toes. STOP OVERSHARING. My god. You may be having money problems or problems at home and I’m sorry for you. But the author loop, your public blog, the business loop and other people’s blogs are not the appropriate or professional place to share your business. It makes you look unprofessional. It hurts sales for the authors at that house and nothing pisses me off more than when someone’s behavior messes with my bottom line. I work hard and I don’t think it’s fair when I hold up my end of the deal to have someone come and blow that all to bits with unprofessional behavior.

There are other things - promotion, advertising, covers, EDITING! Read what they put out. What is the quality of the books they publish? If you write for a house who puts out crap and who doesn’t edit, you’re going to look bad by association. EVERYONE can benefit from editing and sometimes, even great authors get rejected. A house that accepts everything isn’t one readers are going to be able to count on. A house with crap editing isn’t one that people will have a good perception of. This affects your bottom line. It also affects your overall reputation.

CAN YOU ASK QUESTIONS AND HAVE YOUR CONCERNS ADDRESSED? This is not solely a problem with start ups or those epubs who’ve gone out of business. I’ve had a very negative experience and I’ll never go back again even though others are happy there. LISTEN TO YOUR GUT. You aren’t a troublemaker for bringing up concerns. It’s how you conduct yourself that’s the issue and I’ll get into that part another day. But if you feel like you can’t even ask a question, that’s a red flag. If there are authors who are in the good graces of the publisher and anyone who asks questions is put at the bad kids table, that’s a red flag.

However, preferential treatment IS NOT NECESSARILY A PROBLEM. It’s a reality. I have no problem with it because of course any smart publisher is going to keep slots open for their big sellers. Sales matter and they help mid listers and newbies too. Big names attract readers. This is a good thing. It’s how you make your own name. What you do with the attention is up to you. Publishers who take care of their big sellers AND make opportunities for others are a good thing. Publishers who show preferential treatment to punish people are a bad thing. This is something you need to decide for yourself.