Voices from the Heart

Don't forget to drop by Voices From the Heart on the 27th to read my latest post.

One day I will...

Touch one. Will it bite?

Best and worst bestselling authors?

Thursday, Aug 18th: Who, in your opinion are the best and worst bestselling authors out there in the market and why? Question provided by affiliate author Amy Romine.

Wow. Never expected this one. But, honestly, for me, there probably isn't a worst bestselling author. There are authors whose voice, writing style, or genres don't interest me. But, that just means the stories don't work for me.

Recently, there have been a string of YA novels turned into movies and television series. With one, the movies proved to be more interesting than I originally believed they would be, but with another...I believe there was one book too many. With yet another, neither the books nor the movies captured my attention, fully.

I absolutely loved the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels. Virtually gobbled them up. You would think I wouldn't like the cable series, but I loved it, too. Although it has it's own identity, which continues to pull away from the book series.

So, I guess, I don't believe there is a such thing as worst bestselling, but some of my favorite best bestselling authors are: Jeaniene Frost, Charlaine Harris, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Terry McMillan, and so so many others.

Why?

The answer to that one is simple enough...they tell stories I want to read.

Character Inspiration

Hill Harper of "CSI NY"

OMG!-The value of sitting a manuscript down and walking away

How do you feel when you finish a manuscript? Excited? Empty? Relieved? What?

Me? Well, I think I feel a little of all of these, plus some. But, one thing for certain...after I finish a manuscript, I usually ship it off to my critique partners, and rest until I have their critiques.

Then, I sift through crit after crit, use some and throw some away.

At the moment, I'm editing two pieces. One of those pieces is a novella, which I let sit for quite a while.

Wow! I can't believe the things that both my critique partners and I missed.

When I first began to use critique partners, I'd write a few chapters, ship it off to them, get those pages back, review and incorporate their suggestion (well, some of them,) and ship those pages off again. The process, for me, did not work. Unfortunately, this poor ms fell into that pool of mss.

The better process for me is to finish the piece, do a basic round of edits while the characters are still fresh, then send it to my critique partners. Then, when I receive their feedback it's on the whole ms vs. pieces of it. Also, I don't bog them down with numerous re-reads of the same pages, and I get the complete crit I need to make the story better.

Forgetting the character and story, and becoming reacquainted with them has allowed me to find ways to deepen the characters and story.

What is your process for editing?

Truly, Madly, Deeply Romance Authors

Don't forget to drop by Truly, Madly, Deeply Romance Authors for the chance to read FREE romance stories by some of your favorite authors! Every Saturday!

And of course, for the opportunity to win some fabulous prizes!!!

Rules for writing fiction

As written for The Guardian by Johnathan Franzen, novelist.

1 The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

2 Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.

3 Never use the word "then" as a ­conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.

4 Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.

5 When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

6 The most purely autobiographical ­fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto­biographical story than "The Meta­morphosis".

7 You see more sitting still than chasing after.

8 It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

9 Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

10 You have to love before you can be relentless.