Vixenwriter

Loves: Tool Academy. I know. I do and I’m sort of ashamed but I cannot tear my eyes away! I can’t deal with the new Rock of Love at all – these women are so beyond sanity and personal hygiene that my pity gene won’t allow me to watch without massive eye watering and muttering. So while I was in bed, too tired to write anymore and too tired to fall asleep right away I caught an episode of Tool Academy and I was hooked.

Don’t get me wrong, this show is spectacularly awful and these women need way more therapy than they can get on some VH1 exploitation fest but I don’t know, there’s something compelling in a guilty pleasure sort of way. The daily therapy sessions, yes they call them that, I don’t know if the lady with the accent is really a therapist but she has an accent and we all know that’s a TV shortcut to give an air of authority and hello, it’s a VH1 reality show, if these women really wanted help would they be humiliating themselves on television by showing us all what they’ve put up with for 6 and 10 years?

A few of the guys seem like they truly want to change but most of them are spectacular a-holes. And these women, sigh. I can’t hear the, “I put six years into him, I can’t just walk away knowing I didn’t do everything I could” without thinking, he’s been fucking his way through your girlfriends and siblings for six years, eating all the food in your fridge, insulting your mom, not paying rent and leaving him now is really knowing you did everything you could because getting 100K if you make it through isn’t really a good indicator of change. But that’s just me.

I love my husband very much. we’ve been together for 23 years and let me tell you, if he had an alter ego name like “matsuflex” or “celebrity” wherein he used the name use the douchebag card in general, there would not be 23 years of togetherness. There has to be a point where boys grow into men and women stop letting men who are boys walk all over them and get away with fucking their friends. Yannow? If not, I suppose let’s put it on tv so I can look heavenward and mouth thank you when my dude walks into the room with a piece of chocolate.

Anyhoodle, yes I love it. It’s better than Housewives of OC, which had been my reality TV guilty pleasure up to this point.

Hates: Can we PLEASE stop talking about Jessica Simpson’s weight? OH MY GOD. The economy is in ruins, we’re in a war on two fronts, institutional peanut butter snacks are making children and the elderly sick and every freaking news story last night on the entertainment shows was about Jessica Simpson’s weight. Who fucking cares? Like seriously? You don’t know her and I think her life is hard enough performing at chili cook offs instead of at the superbowl so let’s just let the poor girl sing her shallow pop songs in peace. At least her creepily inappropriate father isn’t talking about how hot her body is, okay? Jeebus.

All this excessive attention on the woman’s pants size (when girlfriend, those PANTS were a crime against humanity and would make twiggy look like a heifer anyway) is just stupid. STUPID. We can’t have it both ways. The media gets all over people like Misha Barton for being too thin but Jessica Simpson for not being too thin – there’s no middle ground. Leave her alone. Jeez.

A’la randomizer – commenter #12 – Janet H.

Janet, email me your mailing address and I’ll get the book your way!

Wolf Unbound comes out in print tomorrow!

Werewolf Enforcer Tegan Warden has been alone since the death of her mate four years ago. Until she meets Ben Stoner at a local club and she feels something she thought died inside her. Things move very quickly and she finds herself mated to a human man who’s not altogether sure he wants a forever kind of love with a woman he’s just met.

All around them, the rising violence threatens the Packs and the only thing they know for certain is one another.

Wanna win it? As it happens I have a few here with me right now. I’ll award one to a commenter at 5 pm pacific today a la randomizer. Let’s see, how about in the comments here you tell me about a book you weren’t expecting to be wowed by but totally loved it. It doesn’t have to be a romance or something you read recently.

I remember reading the back blurb of Outlander and thinking, “no.” at least a dozen times. And then a friend sent me the first four books so I relented and started reading. Once I was about five pages in I was totally and utterly hooked.

There’s a lot of talk about the RWA’s PAN eligibility rules. I’m not going to address that, not really. Listen, I see on one of my loops constant angry grumblilng about the RWA. People bitter and unhappy with them and in the end, my thought is, “I wouldn’t belong to an organization that made me feel so horrible and resentful all the time.” I wouldn’t. IMO, you need to decide if the RWA (or any other organization) is right for you and meets your needs. If it doesn’t, you can attempt to change it from the inside, you can rail at the unfairness of it while staying and doing nothing, or you can say F’it I’m outta here. I think the first and last are fine decisions, the second drives me crazy.

Anyhoodle, enough of that! This is my attempt at the first approach.

What I wanted to talk about is the idea that being career minded, with respect to the National RWA board, means an advance, even one as minor as a grand and no other way.

My feeling is that the RWA is woefully ignorant of any other publishing mode but the traditional one. I do not believe those on the Board are jealous or threatened by epublishing. In fact when that statement comes up it makes me roll my eyes so hard I get a strain. They don’t understand it and when you don’t understand something, you tend to feel it’s wrong or inferior.

I’m a career oriented author. I’ve been career oriented since I wrote my first book and I continue to be. I hold myself to high standards and I hold my editor and publisher to high standards as well. I complete my books on time, I edit them in a timely fashion and I promote effectively and regularly. Whether I get an advance of a thousand dollars or more or whether I get paid monthly, my attitude is the same. This is my job, this is my career and it is beyond insulting that a few people who don’t understand anything about epublishing to judge my approach when they don’t know me.

If we were to attach “career oriented” to money – I must interject here that I’ve made more than my largest NY advance in one month on one ebook title and I’ve done that more than once. I rarely talk about money because I think it’s a private thing and also, it can create issues between authors. But I’d like to say I personally don’t find an advance any more “career oriented” than monthly royalties. There are things I’d give up in a contract with an advance that I wouldn’t to an epublishing contract, but making those choices also makes me career oriented.

Here’s how an advance works – your agent pitches the book. Author waits. A long time usually. If editor wants to buy it they make an offer. Negotiation takes place and you accept. Author writes book and waits for contract. In some cases, months more. I know authors who have been done with the book and hit a deadline without a contract (or money). It hasn’t happened to me, but these authors write for very large houses. You sign, it goes away wherever and then you get a portion of your advance. Not all of it.

Let’s just use 10K for an example because it’s easy to break down and I hate math (also remembering that every contract is different and these breakdowns are just an example):

You get 2500 for signing and acceptance of the proposal – you get this minus the fee your agent takes. I’ve received this money anywhere from a month after signing to six months after signing.

Then you turn in the book and you get 4000 for delivery and acceptance of the manuscript

Upon publication you get the remaining 3500

Now this entire process, getting paid that original 10K can take up to two years. And it can take up to two years more to start earning royalties because of how the pay schedule works)

Meanwhile with epublishing:

I turn in book/proposal to my editor. She takes anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months depending on her schedule. If she buys we talk about when I can turn in the completed book and she puts me into the schedule.

So say I contract the book in June and I turn it in in October and it comes out in December. In January I’ll get a check for more than any 1K advance. And then each month afterward I continue to earn. Within the year it takes to see the entire advance from NY, I’ve made that and more on that title and once it goes to print with Samhain for instance, I receive twice yearly print checks that make me very happy.

These two processes are not superior and inferior – they are simply different. I find plusses and minuses to each so I find them complimentary and do them both. There are many authors who continue to write for small/epublishers while they write for NY (I’m one of them but not the only one by any stretch). I take my career very seriously. I work very hard. Promotion tends to be different to account for the differences in medium but it’s the job of any career minded author to understand that and account for that.

In essence though, I enjoy what I do. I do it to the best of my ability and I continue to build my career and my name with each book I put out. That’s career oriented.

But really, it’s not only about money because as many of us know from experience, there’s a hell of a lot of rejection in this business. Sometimes you write and write and write and no one wants to buy.

In an RWR last year I read an article about authors who’d written and submitted for upwards of a dozen years before selling. That takes heart. That takes courage and that is career oriented. In those dozen years those authors made no money from writing at all as they didn’t sell, but to say you have to get an advance check of 1K before you’re “career oriented” or that an advance makes you a “writer” worth of support by the RWA as a writer’s organization is simply offensive and ignorant.

The RWA needs to set standards on some level. I understand that. I understand that in an organization of over 9,000 with different approaches, styles and levels of success there’s no one rule that will make everyone happy.

However, writers should understand that there’s no one approach to career. Some writers write novellas. Some write 700 page historical romance tomes that are rich with detail. Some write short stories for magazines and a lot haven’t sold yet but continue to try to. None of these approaches is more important or worthy than the other. We are all writers.

With epublishing, I’ll say yes, there are a lot of authors who don’t make a lot of money. They don’t get much exposure and they sell to companies with poor reputations and they’ll sell 4 copies instead of 1000 that first month (or whatever). It is my belief that those authors who jump at a quick sale with a start up to get a sale and without thinking about all the important things like how much you can sell with a company no one has heard of, should bear responsibility for poor choices. It is also my belief that if the RWA was more open and willing to understand other career paths, this could be addressed by the RWA and SHOULD be.

Educating noobs on what patience means in a business where waiting is the norm rather than the exception, should be part of the services the members get and it seems to be with some of the local chapters, but serving authors shouldln’t just be about teaching them how to write tension or how to outline, it should also be how to manage their businesses, how to keep good records for taxes, how to choose agents and editors and how to look at ANY potential publisher and decide if saying yes to get a quick sale is worth it or if you should wait, continue to hone your craft and sell to a publisher who will get your work out before a larger audience.

In the end, I’ll stay a member of the RWA because I think it’s a worthy organization full of creative, dynamic people who if given the chance can work together and make positive change. They do things I disagree with, like this recent RITA controversy – Rules people, rules should be CLEAR. Just say what mass produced means, stop hiding rule changes and give a refund to those people who were disqualified. These are your members, this is our organization – we can and should make it known when directions are taken that are confusing or just plain wrong.

And to my sisters and brothers in epublishing, I challenge you all who are members of the RWA to be full members. I know it feels like at times we’re supposed to sit at the kids table in the back. But why let yourselves be relegated to that status? Eleanor Roosevelt once said that “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” and while I think there are gradations of truth to that comment, I think it’s very much true here. I don’t care if people who don’t know me judge me because I write erotic or because I write ebooks. I care what my editors think and I care what my readers think. No member of the RWA is more or less worthy of belonging than I am. This all starts and ends with me and you, and you over there, and you too. Stand up and speak – another favorite quote, this one from Maggie Kuhn, is “Speak Your Mind Even If Your Voice Shakes”

As long as we remain civil and coherent, we create our own power. Any organization is only as dynamic as her members. I truly believe most of the authors in the RWA do not feel epublishing is inferior, I think they don’t know much about it. Approaching with that in mind can make some important ground in 2009. The atmosphere is ripe for education. So let’s do it.

The heroine in the book I’m writing now is a ballet teacher but she used to be a principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre (although I may have to change the company depending on licensing issues). She’s different from many of my heroines so far, not as outwardly emotional and expressive but in a lot of ways, she emotes through her body when she dances.

As I was thinking about her, about who she’d be in relation to who Brody is (and I wrote him in Laid Bare so I knew him much more as I began to write the proposal). I wanted her not to be his opposite, but with core things very much like his, but outwardly different. Her mode of expression also through art but what or how? And then I thought about ballet and dancing. I love ballet. Like, really, really, really love ballet.

When I was ten, a woman my mother worked with had a son who danced with the Royal Australian Ballet and he came to visit her in Los Angeles and with him, came tickets to a gala at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach for the American Ballet Theatre. This was huge and a moment in my life I’ll never forget (I still have the program tucked into a book Lois – our friend – gave me for my birthday a few days before that.) A gala is often a chance to see bits from the season so it has several acts, each with different styles and it’s wildly exciting for people who love ballet. And even better, it’s a great excuse to get dressed up. We had these amazing seats because of our friend’s son and that night I knew I’d love ballet forever. I wanted to be Cynthia Gregory when I watched her dance the Grand Pas Classique with Fernando Bujones (both of them such amazing, amazing dancers).

That night, I don’t think I can really put into words how it changed my life. I was this kid who watched ballet on PBS. We didn’t hob nob, we couldn’t afford lessons or anything. I’d never seen it live and even later in my life I hadn’t seen anything that could touch it until I was an adult. Something inside me was set free by the beauty I saw that night. By the way the dancers moved and carried themselves. It’s one of the most beautiful things imaginable to see ballet live.

This is the Grand Pas Classique with music by Auber - I looked for Bujones clips because I love how he looks when he dances but the only one I found was of poor quality. This one features Sylvie Guillem, who is one of the finest ballet dancers ever. It’s worth a watch because she doesn’t allow her dancing to be filmed these days.

This is very a very classic, very beautiful piece. Look at the balance required, the timing, the strength and poise. It’s one of my favorite pieces when done by a good company because it’s lovely to look at. It had embedding disabled but the link works. When you watch closer to the end and see her freaking balance during her turns, it’s amazing. She’s flawless, like a thing of magic and air.

That night we saw The River as the closing piece – this is Cynthia Gregory above performing part of the River (with music by Duke Ellington and choreography by Alvin Ailey)

Anyway, I’ve been watching a lot of youtube, thinking about Elise, about what she’d look like, how she’d carry herself and so I thought I’d just share a bit of that, and a bit of me, with you all.

I’ve just had so much to do and on Tuesday I got sucked into all the inaugural stuff, glued to my television and yesterday I spent most of the day finishing up my copy edits and sending them back (minus the last page, which I found in the front seat of the van this morning because I am SO brilliant)

But today I’ve worked on title TBD, the sequel to Laid Bare and it’s opening days yet so Brody and Elise are just getting to know each other and I’m getting to know them both as well.

Tomorrow on my plate are first round edits for Always and this weekend it’s all about working on title TBD (god I hope I get a title soon) and my next bit for No Reservations.

So I’m working and working but getting places, which is a good thing indeed. Hope everyone is having a good week!

A tiny snippet from the sequel: He nodded. This kid reminded him a lot of Erin. Firecracker. He wondered what the mother was like. He looked back to her, she of the very soft voice and the scared rabbit nerves. Thank god those had seemed to calm a bit but he’d realized the fear on her face wasn’t of him personally. As he’d thought of Erin, he also realized he recognized the look on his savior’s face. Someone did something to her or she saw something to make her react that way. Anger, unbidden, washed over him a moment at the idea of anyone harming a woman—this woman.

“This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”

“For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies,” Obama said. “It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.”

No matter your party affiliation, today I hope we’re all proud to be Americans in this truly glorious country.

Hey everyone, I’m participating in an auction for author Sharon Cullars along with many fine authors, editors and webdesigners – Up for grabs is an ARC of Taking Care of Business. So check it out and while you’re there, check out all the other cool stuff too!

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Courage is difficult. Staying strong in an atmosphere where you’re being threatened and harassed, when you worry about your own and your family’s survival – I can’t imagine what substance that takes. I can’t imagine what it felt like to walk around with that sort of fear always gnawing at you. And to stand up still, every day and work, work to change the face of the world for your children, that takes so much substance of character and force of will, very few people could possibly stand up under that sort of pressure.

Happy MLK Day everyone.