How much is my time worth?

This post comes out of a couple different places. One, I’ve been pondering my goals for next year. Two, I made more money from book sales this year than I ever have before. (I also spent more this year, and after almost ten years of publishing, have yet to break even.) And three, I’ve expended a whole lot of time and energy over the last couple weeks making Christmas presents.

See, secretly I’m an embroidery nerd. I’ve done cross stitch, crewelwork, needlepoint, black work, and hardanger embroidery, and to a limited extent, I’ve designed my own projects. Needlework was my main hobby in my 40s, until I blew up a disc in my back and couldn’t sit for long periods of time. I couldn’t sit and stitch, but I could lay on my belly and write. I started with journaling to keep from going crazy, moved on to short stories, and voila! A writer was born!

I also crochet, but that’s more of an addiction than anything else. It keeps my hands busy and it’s less toxic than smoking cigarettes.

This morning as I was putting the finishing touches on some hardanger embroidery ornaments – here’s the link to hardanger’s Wikipedia page in case you’re unfamiliar with the style – I started thinking about how much time it had taken to make each one. The two smaller ones took about four hours each. The larger ones took….longer. The materials don’t cost a whole lot, but even so, for me to earn at least minimum wage, I’d have to sell the small ones for around $75.

The large ones would be…more. Which is why I’m giving them as gifts and not trying to sell them on Etsy.

You can find hardanger ornaments on Etsy, though, and for a lot less than I’d charge. (This one is pretty. And so it this one.) Which means either I’m slow (probably) or the market won’t support what the sellers’ time is really worth.

I mean, if you’re selling a hand-made ornament for $10, either you can finish one in 30 minutes or you’re earning what was minimum wage when I first entered the job market – $3.35/hour.

Which brings me back to publishing. I honestly don’t know how many hours it takes me to write a book, but for the sake of discussion, I can use last month’s NaNoWriMo challenge. I wrote 50,000 words in November, or a little under 1700 words a day. It takes me about 2 hours to write 1700 words, longer if I’m distracted.

My best selling book this year, Soulmates, is about 75,000 words long. Rather than challenge you with a story problem, I’ll just say that, assuming I write 1700 words in 2 hours, it took me 90 hours to write 75,000 words. Cool. I made decent money, if I only count the writing time. That hourly rate gets lower when I add in the editing, with all the false starts and rewrites that went into the final draft.

And after I back out the cost of the editor, the cover artist, and promotion, I’m lucky if I’m making minimum wage….for 1976. ($3.35/hour!)

So why do it? Why spend all the time and thought and energy on a project with little hope of financial reward? We’re only allotted so many hours in this life, and given that I’ll turn 60 on my next birthday….well, you do the math. Is publishing where I want to spend my time?

I’ve talked about retiring from my hospital job in the next couple years, with an eye toward earning enough in book royalties so I won’t have to tap my retirement accounts right away. To do that, I’d need to do more than break even, an elusive goal so far. It means I’d need to keep up the 4-books-a-year pace, and I’d need to pay more attention to the ‘Zon categories so that my upcoming projects align with what’s selling well.

I’d also need to layer on the butter. (See 7 Figure Fiction by T. Taylor for how to use Universal Fantasies, what she calls butter, to sell books.)

But do I want to do all that? I’m still pondering. Over the last ten years, I’ve invested a lot of my time – my self, my spirit, my creative drive – in this publishing project, and I’d like to see it pay off. Or maybe it already has paid off, in the satisfaction I feel knowing I sent some really good stories out into the world.

If you need me, I’m the one with the crochet hook and the wild eyes…

OMG! I’m a Hybrid Author

So…I have news!

I am over-the-moon excited! I’m finally a hybrid author! This has been a long time coming and I am so excited to write these books. Here’s a little more about them:

Not the real cover.

Sex and the City: A Cultural History
This book will provide cultural context and analysis of the famous show, both how it affected cultural as it aired and also how it looks now 20+ years later. Some topics include:

• Looking at what it means to relate to each of the girls (ala, Are you a Carrie? A Samantha? A Miranda? A Charlotte?)
• What the men in the show illustrate about masculinity and what that means about the kind of men women are attracted to.
• Issues like diversity or lack thereof, treatment of sex and sexuality, LGBTQIA portrayal.
• How the show made New York a character, built brands, influenced fashion and reflected third wave feminism.
• And a lot more!

I have an end of year deadline, so hopefully the book will come out around the time the reboot, And Just Like That, airs.

Fierce Females in Television: A Cultural History

Not the real cover.

This book will briefly discuss the nature of physically strong women on TV from the 1950s-1980s, but will focus specifically on the 1990s to today because that is when we saw a major ramp up in the portrayal of these kinds of women.

Shows covered include: Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), Charmed (1998-2006), Alias (2001-2006), Nikita (2010-2013), Agent Carter (2015-2016), Jessica Jones (2015-2019), Game of Thrones (2011-2019), and Homeland (2011-2020).

Some of the topics include:

• An analysis of the main female characters on each show.
• The meaning of female strength and friendships/family.
• The influence of third- and fourth-wave feminism on the shows and their characters.
• Treatment of sex and diversity.
• The role of redemption narratives and change in female lives.
• And more!

This book will be out sometime in 2023/24. 

Between these, the League of Women Voters book (due Oct. 4) and at least one work of historical fiction, you know what my next few months and even my 2022 will look like!

Promo for Authors

A necessary evil, or The Monster That Ate Your Dreams?

I’ll let you decide which one is social media and which is the hapless author…

I got an email this morning from an author who regularly coordinates book promotions and invites all her friends to participate. Today’s email included a link to a Facebook page for authors who are interested in building a supportive LGBTQ Romance community on TikTok.

Oof.

She had me until she got to that last word. I mean, I know TikTok is a thing, and I’ve heard it’s a great way for authors to connect with new readers. I even know a couple of authors who have made the leap and are TikToking away.

So far, I have not joined them.

See, if I draw a line connecting the authors I know who have jumped on the TikTok wagon, I find a couple of common traits. They’re either full-time authors, or they’re younger than me. Or both.

I shared a link to the FB page with my writing partner Irene, and after some discussion, we decided we were both undecided. (Lol!) She recently met The Gang* for happy hour (*a group of her author friends) and one was all excited about the new platform and shared a bunch of popular hashtags.

I feel like we’ve been invited to join an exclusive club with secret codes and everything.

The thing is, though, Irene and I both have fairly demanding day jobs and are trying to fit this writing thing in wherever we can. And honestly, my goals for 2021 included things like “publish 4 novels/novellas” and “study writing craft through books and classes” and “recruit agents & editors for this fall’s Emerald City Writers’ Conference”.

Nowhere on my goal list was there anything about conquering a social media platform that was invented like fifteen minutes ago.

Part of my reluctance stems from the fact that, while TikTok may well connect me with new readers, I wonder if they’ll be my readers. One of the basic lessons in book promotion has to do with knowing your audience and identifying your target reader. While I know readers don’t always conform to a predictable demographic, I’m also pretty sure that the readers I’m trying to reach skew a little bit older than what I imagine for the TikTok crowd.

Of course, I’m basing this on a guess, because my experience of TikTok is the occasional silly clip my kids share or that I stumble over on Twitter. And they do make me laugh. The people who excel at the format are really, really clever.

Hmm. Maybe deep down, I’m worried that nobody will want to see a grey-haired old lady trying to be funny when all she wants to do is finish the damned novella for the August giveaway and get back to work on Benedictus (Hours of the Night book 3).

As usual with one of my writing posts, I start with a title that suggests I know something about a topic and then proceed to rant for five hundred words, leaving you with a heartfelt suggestion. And today’s suggestion?

You’re going to have to figure it out for yourself.

I don’t say that just to be snarky. (Okay, maybe a little snarky, but mostly not.) Because another basic rule of book promotion is to be authentic. If you like Twitter (bless your heart), tweet away. (Lol! Joking. I’m on Twitter daily.) If FB is your thing, focus your content efforts there. There are about a bazillion ways to promote your books – promos and giveaways and the like – and while some are expensive (Bookbub) others only cost you the time it takes you to write the book and put it out there.

And if TikTok is your thing, leave a link to your page in the comments. Can’t promise I’ll join you there, but you never know…

And just to prove me n’ Irene can change with the times…do you Radish?

Earlier this month, Irene and I republished Vespers (m/m vampire romance with a 100-year old monk and his college grad demon-fighting assistant) on Radish, the serial reading app that’s optimized for your phone. Vespers is now called Vampire’s Sin, and we fancied up the cover (b/c we had to get rid of the text) and you can download the first six episodes for FREE to see if you like it. Click HERE to see more!

Writing the Unknowns Back into History

March is Women’s History Month. As longtime readers of this blog know, women’s history is my jam, so I felt like I couldn’t let this month’s post go by without talking about it. But I want to come at it from a slightly different angle than I have before. I apologize right now if this post sounds self-serving but this is my soapbox as of late.

I’ve set myself up on a hard path as an author because I write about people no one has ever heard of. People are naturally leery of what they don’t know or understand and thus less likely to take a chance on a book whose subject they don’t already recognize. And that can be a depressing prospect when you’re trying to write a book while balancing everything else in life. However, I am committed to sticking to my mission of shedding light on the stories of unknown women.

As we are all aware, history has been written, by and large, by white men. And it has been reduced to a handful of “marquee names,” leaving out even the influence of many important white men, not to mention women and people of color. That is a tremendous loss for us and for what we believe to be true about our nation. Yes, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Harriet Tubman are important. But much like Hollywood and its never-ending love of sequels and reboots, if we don’t contribute something new to history (or in my case historical fiction), we won’t ever learn anything new, just keep hashing the same old points over and over. Without a variety of perspectives in our history, we are looking back on a false, or at best incomplete, record.

History is anything but homogeneous, so our books about it should reflect diversity. Where are the stories of the women who supported the great men we read so much about? Where are the overlooked and uncredited women? (Hidden Figures was a great start, but there are so many more.) What about the LGBTQIA women who risked their lives by being who they were in an intolerant nation? Where are the stories of the strong women who survived natural disasters, poor harvests and plague (1918 Spanish Flu, anyone?) to go on to either do great things or just lead quiet lives? I’ve learned through my research that there are so many amazing stories that we don’t learn about in school and readers deserve the chance to know about them, too.

Every now and then an untold story breaks out. As Hamilton has shown us, there were other key men fighting for America’s independence and shaping the new nation, just as there were other people fighting for abolition, women’s suffrage and conducting the Underground Railroad. It is wonderful that we have our idols to look up to, but we shouldn’t limit our learning to just their stories. When that happens, we miss out on the rich tapestry that made our history happen. Just as it hasn’t been one person or even a council of people who have helped us get to what I hope is the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, not a single person made any other event in history happen. Thousands of people, many of them women and people of color, contributed to abolition. But we only remember the loudest handful of voices. What about everyone who supported those four or five icons or those whose stories are tread over completely in favor of the well-known names?

I believe in widening our history, not narrowing it down. I want everyone to know about the 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin, who refused to move to the back of the bus, months before Rosa Parks got the glory for doing the exact same thing. I want people to be riveted by the story of Ida Tarbell, the journalist who created modern investigative journalism in the early 1900s with an expose on Standard Oil, even though Julius Chambers and Nellie Bly are often credited with that feat. (I love me some Nellie Bly, don’t get me wrong, but her methods were different than Ida’s, whose are much closer to the ones still used today.) And I want people to read the stories of women of color–Black, Asian, Native American– and the spouses (gay and straight) who contributed to the women’s suffrage movement. Those stories alone would go a long way toward giving us a more complete picture of our history, of who we can and should admire and what we can do in our own lives to change the course of history.

But it is difficult to make people change. It’s easier and less risk to reach for a book about a person or from an author you already know and love. I do it just as much as the next reader. As an author, the only thing I can tell myself is to just keep going. Flood the market with as many books about unknowns as I can. And should that mean I will have to keep self-publishing and accept that I won’t ever be rich from my writing, so be it. But I can also hope that, not unlike Hamilton, one of my unknowns will take off and change everything.

New Release and ALL the Giveaways!

That cat is me this morning. I’ve got the day-before-release-day spins. There’s *this* to do and *that* to do and omg I forgot something else!! Please may I have an extra few hours today….like maybe 24 extra….?

It’s clear that I haven’t figured out how to balance the writing with all the non-writing parts of being an author. I find it awfully easy to get caught up in the networking and blog posting and promo-joining and whatnot. There’s also the editing and the formatting and the cover arting and the teaser-making. It all sucks up so much time! This last couple weeks I’ve been spending just about every free moment on something to do with publishing – and some not-so-free moments, tbh – and I haven’t written a new word in all that time.

Yikes.

But enough about me. (LOL!) You’re here for the new release and ALL the giveaways, right? I’m pretty excited about this book. It’s different from our other Irene&Liv books, but it’s still us. In a good way. Frog is part of the Royal Powers series, a shared-world series about an imaginary country on the coast between France & Spain, with two mythical royal families who also happen to possess superpowers. When they invited us to contribute, we couldn’t say no to a premise like that, and it was a whole lotta fun to play in that world.

You can find Frog HERE! It’s $3.99 or FREE with KU!

Here’s the blurb...

Spy vs Spy

Jim Calhoun and his sister Lori are just two Americans in North Abarra exploring their roots. They are definitely not off-duty CIA agents.
Enzo da Silva is the head groundskeeper on Princess Odile’s country estate. He is definitely what he seems to be – the guy who trims the hedge maze and measures oxygen levels in the national forest.
The Princess’s birthday bash is a major celebration every year. As the big day approaches, a series of accidents plague the preparations. It’s almost like someone wants things to go wrong. But it’s not as though two commoners like Jim and Enzo – with absolutely no super powers – can stop a rogue supervillian.  And if Jim and Enzo keep showing up at the same crime scenes, it’s not because they can’t keep their eyes off each other.
Definitely not.

Did I mention you can find Frog on Amazon? It’s $2.99 or FREE with KU!

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To celebrate the second season of the Royal Powers series, all of the authors got together for a SUPER BIG giveaway! The prize is a $75 gift card plus books from all the authors, and you can find the rafflecopter widget HERE. (Irene and I are also running our monthly giveaway for a $10 gift card. The rafflecopter widget for that one is conveniently located on the same page.)

Click HERE to get to the GIVEAWAY!

And finally, I joined another multi-author giveaway! One lucky winner will win a bundle of prizes including 2 x $5 gift cards, 8 x backlist ebooks, 1 x swag bundle, 1 x audiocode, & a signed paperback! Here’s a list of some of the participating authors:
RJ Scott, H.L Day, Clare London, Davidson King, Susan Scott Shelley, Liv Rancourt (that’s me!), A.D. Ellis, Elle Keaton, Anne Barwell, Avery Cockburn, Mel Gough, Jay Hogan, and Elizabeth Noble.

A bunch of the authors have freebies over on bookfunnel. You can find them here!
And go here to enter to win the grand prize!!

Thanks so much for reading along!!

Using current events in fiction.

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

Pandemic. Lockdown. Quarantine. Protest.
#BlackLivesMatter. #DefundThePolice. #WearAMask.

Think back to the Before Times – you know, like last February. Did any of these terms and hashtags resonate? #BlackLivesMatter is the only one I’d heard of, but now we have this whole new vocabulary.

And it’s….awkward.

I know many authors are struggling to get words on the page, and others who are no longer struggling, because they’ve given up. It’s just too hard to tap into their creativity when it feels like the world is falling in around them. I’ve also seen debates on social media about the appropriateness of writing quickie quarantine romances to try to capitalize on our new reality.

Kinda gives the “forced proximity” trope a whole different spin.

For discussion’s sake, let’s say you do have the spoons to write, but you’re wondering how much of our current quagmire should make it on the page. As a first step, it might be worth considering what people want to read. Maybe they do want that quickie quarantine romance. Or maybe they want Shauna’s fantastic dystopian Ash & Ruin series or any of the books on this Goodreads list of Current Events Fiction.

Or maybe they want something as far from reality as possible. (How ’bout hot&naughty elves? Kasia Bacon‘s Order series – starting with The Mutt – is a whole lot of fun.)

But, some of you might say, if I write about current events, my book might soon feel dated or people will forget what happened. Those are valid points, but I like this rebuttal by Brandi Reissenweber in an article from The Writer Magazine:

Keep them (current events) fresh and meaningful long after they’ve passed in the same way you keep any events in your fiction fresh and meaningful: Lash them with urgency to the experience of one or more characters.

For example, I found one of the best descriptions of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in Royal Street, the first book in Suzanne Johnson‘s Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series. Not only did the author nail the details – she lived in NOLA during Katrina – but her characters had a life or death stake in the events, which made for a real page-turner.

One thing to consider, though, is that Royal Street was published in 2012, about seven years after Katrina. I’ve never asked, but I’d imagine it took Suzanne some time to organize her reactions to the disaster in a way that made sense. In a WaPo article that speculates on what post-pandemic fiction will look like, Chris Bohjalian makes a useful comparison with post-9/11 fiction. He points out that it was 2005 before the serious novels dealing with 9/11 began to be published.

….it took novelists a little more time to shape the nightmare into a story. After all, how do you make something up when the truth is so unspeakable? So wrenching?

Good questions.

The pandemic, with the horrific costs associated with it, is at least as profound an event as 9/11, with arguably greater consequences. The concurrent shifting social paradigms around race and racism are equally significant, though I’d caution all writers who want to explore those issues to make sure the story is theirs to tell. It’s going to take years for creatives to wrap their arms around this phase in our history, and there may be some who’ll never be able to revisit this time, even in fiction.

Is there territory between a quickie something-something that grabs the headlines and runs, and a deep and thoughtful examination of our lived experience? I’d argue that there is. One of the series I’m co-writing with Irene Preston features a character who used to be a cop but quit the force. In part because of that character, I’ve made an effort to read about the whole #DefundThePolice movement and those ideas are definitely influencing his backstory.

Times are hard, and I’ve got it better than most. The stress, the isolation, and the endless conflict have to color what we’re able to create, if not squash our creativity all together. Take care. Be gentle with yourself. Use the grist of these days in any way that makes sense to you.

And wash your hands.

(In his WaPo article, Chris Bohjalian mentions several books on 9/11 that he considered “important”. Here’s another link to the article in case you’re curious.)

New Release: Hate Jacket by M. Andrew Patterson

Hello my darlings, I hope you’re all staying safe, wearing your masks, and washing your hands. Please don’t end up an infamous internet sensation because you won’t use curbside service or wear a mask. But, if you’re here, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. Moving on!

So, this week, we’re lending our blog to help boost the voice of a friend who has their debut novel coming out! So exciting!

We’ve got an awesome cover reveal, blurb, AND pre-order links to share with you today. Is it tacky to say the cover is awesome if I helped create it? Well, if it is, then I’m tacky af.

I gotta say, I’ve had quite the creative block for some time now and when I Kool-Aid-Man’d my way into helping Drew with his cover (no, he didn’t ask, yes, I just said “HEY LOOKIT I MAKE THINGS! DO YOU LIKE IT?”) it really shook something loose inside of me. I actually enjoyed making something again. So as much as I wanted to help a debut author, because goodness knows I’ve been there, I am grateful I got to do this for myself too.

I remember Lyra once talking about getting past a creative block by doing something other than your normal art and you know? I think she’s on to something!

Now, without further ado, I give you, Hate Jacket by M. Andrew Patterson!

Coming August 11, 2020 — Pre-orders available now!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Seventeen-year-old Julius Monroe hates his life. He hides the truth of his father’s abuse with careful lies and a kick-ass jacket that keeps everyone at bay. But Julius’ careful facade crumbles after a run-in with the school administration puts him on a collision course with his best friend’s sister and her jealous boyfriend.

But escaping the school bully and his father’s abuse isn’t his only worry. The worst monster is Lela, whose manipulations threaten to expose every secret that Julius is so desperate to hide.

When his worlds collide, Julius must make a choice. Live with the monsters he knows, or take a chance on being free.

About the Author

Andrew didn’t realize he wanted to be an author until he wrote his first words on his step-father’s Apple IIe. Fast forward 30 years and that story still isn’t finished. He keeps claiming he’ll write it…just after he finishes the four hundred other ones in his head.

Born in California, on a now decommissioned army base, Andrew then spent the next four years in Germany before moving to Kansas where he has been ever since. Coming from a long line of librarians, Andrew didn’t expect to continue the family trend. Instead, he received his bachelor’s in Music Theory from the University of Kansas in 1997. It was during that time that he ended up working in the university library as a student. He found he liked being around the old books and has been hanging around dusty old tomes for the entirety of his adult life.

After 20 years, he decided that he wasn’t leaving the world of libraries and received his Masters in Library Science from Emporia State University in 2015. But life changes and Andrew took a leap into the real world and now works as a software developer for a digital marketing firm.

When he’s not working or writing, Andrew is an avid gamer, reader, and occasional maker. He currently lives in Olathe, KS with his wife, their combined six children, and a tortoiseshell cat named Lili. She’s a princess.

Dreams Come True Even During a Pandemic!

In my last Spellbound Scribes post, I wrote about things that I am going to put on my vision board. Since then, I’ve done some Photoshopping, but I haven’t even printed the photos much less put the board up yet….and one thing has come true and another is getting really close!

Just to draw out the tension, the one that is close to happening is winning the Launchpad Manuscript Contest, which is a book-to-move contest. Daughter of Destiny is in the Top 25! They will announce the Top 10 June 30 and the three winners (and other prizes) July 16. Any good vibes you want to send are much appreciated.

Okay, on to the big news…. I HAVE AN AGENT!!

I signed with Amy Collins of Talcott Notch Literary last week! She is immediately representing the two books I’m working on now (the Minor biography and a historical fiction I’m not ready to talk about yet). Here’s the official announcement.

I’ve known Amy for a few years. We first met when she presented on marketing to the Saturday Writers chapter of the Missouri Writer’s Guild. We really hit it off during the presentation (I’m Hermionie Granger, so teachers and presenters usually love me because they know I am engaged) and through conversation at lunch afterwards. We stayed in touch online and I saw her present again maybe a year or two later at the St. Louis Publisher’s Association. Amy also hosted a lot of online workshops that I attended so were were in contact that way as well as on social media, and became friends.

I knew she was a huge fan and champion of my books, but what I didn’t know was that she was also an international rights agent. When she became a full U.S. agent earlier this month, she called me and asked if I was considering traditional publishing and if I would think about becoming her client. Why, yes, I was! We talked, I asked questions, and sent her what I have been working on. She loved it and needless to say, I said yes! (Never underestimate the power of networking…not that I could have ever predicted this.)

I really, really like Amy and she has a great reputation in the industry and in marketing, so I’m really looking forward to working with her. We’re a great personality fit and what she represents is right in my wheelhouse, so I am predicting a long and fruitful relationship with many, many book sales!

With Amy on my team, I’m officially on the come up! (I love that phrase and if you haven’t read the book by Angie Thomas of the same title, please do. It is amazing!)

Happy Pride! Top ten queer romances by POC authors

Here’s the deal. My two kids are college age, and they’re both the kind of bright, assertive young people who are gathering all over this country to demonstrate against police brutality and in support of #BlackLivesMatter. So far neither has been arrested or caught in any violence, but there have been some scary moments.

You know, I never did think to put, “Mom, I’m at a demonstration for farm workers rights and the Nazis are here and they have guns” on my short list of desired text messages.

So what do I do when the world is burning? I read romance. And how should we celebrate Pride in the year of our Lord 2020?

How about a list of novels featuring queer characters of all kinds by POC authors!

Some of these are old favorites, and some are new discoveries, and I hope you’ll find a story our two that you love, even as they draw you outside of your normal routine….

Jude Lucens – Behind these Doors

This books is AMAZING. It’s an award-winning polyamorous Edwardian romance that’s had incredible reviews and is just so, so good. Behind These Doors is grounded in both emotional truth and historical fact, where the harsh realities of the time period amplify the story’s sweetness and heart.

Buy Links for Behind These Doors

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Holly Trent – The Plot Twist series

Holley Trent has created this fantastic trilogy of polyamorous romances that explore the ways men and women love each other. Each book features different characters and different romantic pairings, and if there’s a common theme, it’s that joy can be found in unexpected ways.

• Writing Her In on Goodreads
• Three Part Harmony on Goodreads
• Working Title on Goodreads

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Atom Yang – The Red Envelope

Red Envelope is short but lovely, and it proved to me how good own-voices stories can be. Atom Yang’s eye for detail elevated the story and made it one I remember.

Buy Link for Red Envelope
(It’s in KU!)

Haven’t read this one yet but OMG the cover!!!

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Adriana Herrera – Dreamers Series

True confessions: I have three of these on my kindle but haven’t read them yet. I will, though! I’ve heard so many, many good things about them. Here’s a peak at the author’s blurb for the series:

The Dreamers series follows best friends— Nesto, Camilo, Patrice and Juan Pablo. Four Afro-Latinx men who came up together in the South Bronx, as they chase after their dreams and get unapologetic happy endings.

The Dreamer Series on Goodreads

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Courtney Milan – Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure

This book! I’m not quite as old as Bertrice and Violetta, but oh did they resonate for me. I laughed and I cried and I fell a little bit in love with their story. Courtney’s known for writing m/f romance, but she has a couple of stories with queer characters that are definitely worth checking out.

Buy links for Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure

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Cole McCade/Xen – Shatterproof

I gotta be honest. Xen/Cole McCade is an excellent wordsmith, whether he’s writing freaky dark stuff as Xen or contemporary romance as Cole. I haven’t yet dared Shatterproof, though my writing partner Irene loved it. She also really liked The Whites of their Eyes: A collection of queer horror, also by Xen. My taste runs closer to His Cocky Valet, book 1 in Cole’s Undue Arrogance series. See? There’s something for everyone!

Buy link for Shatterproof
Buy link for His Cocky Valet
They’re both in KU!

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Alyssa Cole – Once Ghosted, Twice Shy

This book intrigues me. It’s the only f/f story in Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series, and the cover is just so very good. Alyssa’s known for her m/f contemporary romances and especially for her Loyal League series of historical romances, which, hey, I’m a history nerd, so they’re totally my thing.

Her award-winning Loyal League series – An Extraordinary Union, A Hope Divided, and An Unconditional Freedom – are set in the Civil War era South. The characters in these m/f romances are black, and they’re strong and they’re real, and they find love.

Once Ghosted, Twice Shy on Goodreads

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Talia Hibbert – Work for It

Talia Hibbert’s another author who’s better known for writing m/f romance. She has such enthusiastic fans that I was jazzed when I heard she’d written an m/m romance. But see, I do this thing where I’ll catch the buzz when a book is coming out and I’ll get all excited and preorder it and then when it finally releases I won’t want to read it because I don’t want to spoil the anticipation. Or thereabouts. Anywhoodle, I’ve had Work for It on my kindle since its release day and between that gorgeous cover and all the great reviews, I really do need to bump it to the top of the pile.

Find Work for It on Goodreads

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CL Polk – Witchmark

Witchmark is a historical fantasy, and while it’s not technically a romance- romance, there’s a queer love story in an amongst the magic. Here’s a snippet from an enthusiastic review:

“Polk has created an amazing new world with hints of Edwardian glamour, sizzling secrets, and forbidden love that crescendos to a cinematic finish. WITCHMARK is a can’t-miss debut that will enchant readers.” 
—Booklist, starred review

Find Witchmark on Goodreads

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Rebekah Weatherspoon – Treasure

Rebekah Weatherspoon writes romance and erotic romance and kink. She’s also something of a fireball on twitter (@RdotSpoon), and she organizes WOC in Romance, a website that’s dedicated to promoting books by authors of color. (You can also support WOCIR on Patreon to help them get the word out.) I’ve heard Rebekah speak at a couple of conferences, and while she’s written a number of f/f stories, for this post I wanted to highlight Treasure because her in-person enthusiasm for the book made me want to read it!

Find Treasure on Goodreads

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Bonus

Tom & Lorenzo – Legendary Children

This is not a romance (oops!). As the subtitle says, it’s an examination of the first decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the last century of queer life. Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez are two of my very favorite bloggers, and at Tom&Lorenzo.com they go about judging celebrity fashion, television, and life in general with a healthy mix of take-no-bullshit and give-credit-where-its-due. They’ve been writing about RuPaul since Drag Race started, and in Legendary Children they bring wit and insight and compassion to this serious look at queer history that manages to be both informative and very, very funny. Highly recommend!

Legendary Children on Penguin/Random House

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If you want to keep going, look for books by Avril Ashton, Riley Hart, Robin Covington, Ada Maria Soto, or Jude Sierra. You can find even more rec’s on this master list from the POC Queer Romance Authors Community

And….if you’re around and about, here’s a list of black-owned bookstores for you to support, compiled by Brain Mill Press:
Brain Lair Books, South Bend, IN
Cafe Con Libros, Brooklyn, NY
A Different Booklist, Toronto, ON
The Dock Bookshop, Fort Worth, TX
EsoWon Books, Los Angeles, CA
EyeSeeMe, University City, MO – children’s books
Frugal Bookstore, Boston, MA
Harriet’s Bookshop, Philadelphia, PA
The Lit. Bar, Bronx, NY
Loyalty Bookstore, Washington, DC
Pyramid Books, Little Rock, AK
Semicolon, Chicago, IL
Sister’s Uptown Bookstore, New York, NY
Source Booksellers, Detroit, MI – nonfiction
Uncle Bobbies Coffee & Books, Philadelphia, PA

What the book is really about.

I don’t know about you, but I’m so, so tired of a certain virus that is apparently hell-bent on ending civilization as we know it. In the spirit of Shauna’s last post, I want to focus on writing, because I have a helluva lot more control of my imaginary worlds than I do over the real one.

This is aspirational. My real-life looks nothing like this.

I’m an avid (overly enthusiastic?) fan of author KJ Charles. Her books are funny and sexy and scary and they make you think. Her plots are a master class in how-to-do-it-right. And this week, in the run-up to her newest release Slippery Creatures (Will Darling #1), I noticed something else.

She’s got a knack for describing her books in a way that makes them sound like they’re the most fun ever.

I’m not talking about her book’s blurbs, the back-jacket copy that supposedly sells the book, although her blurbs are very well done – check out the Goodreads link for Slippery Creatures to see what I mean. The thing that really grabs me, though, are the one- or two-line descriptions she uses on social media that summarize what the stories are about.

For example, on her Facebook fan page (KJ Charles Chat) she posted a sign-up for Slippery Creatures ARCs, giving readers the chance to review her book prior to it’s May 13th release, and I promise you, that sign-up post is golden.

She compares her Will Darling series to Golden Age adventure stories with spies and secrets and country houses and social change. (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t want to give too much away.) I don’t even need to see the book’s blurb; she had me at nightclubs and shady conspiracies.

The blurb is awesome, but the one-line description on the ARC sign-up bumped the book to the top of my to-be-read pile.

Having made this observation – that KJ makes her books sound fun! – I wondered if I could do the same with my own books. I turned to my current WIP, the book I started last November for NaNoWriMo, but couldn’t come up with anything coherent. (More about that later.)

Instead, I shifted gears and went digging through my back list. Here are a few examples:

Vespers mixes a 100-year-old vampire monk with a 22 year old college grad and a bunch of demons (both physical and psychological) and gives Liv the chance to work out her ideas about religion.

Here’s another example:

Change of Heart throws a country girl who talks like Dorothy Gale into the Big Easy and gives Liv a chance to explore how trans people might have survived in the days before hormones and surgery and also gives Vespers fans an Easter egg.

Or:

Lost and Found takes a very sad story (the life of the Russian dancer Najinksy) and finds him a happy ending (because romance) and also gives Liv a chance to brush up on her high school French.

Hmm…I’m sensing a theme. In these one-liners, I focus on my intention when writing the books, rather than picking out elements that make the story sound fun!

And that, my friends, might explain why I had trouble coming up with a one-liner for my current WIP. I mean, I know what it’s about – in the days when the city of Seattle was struggling to establish itself as the top dog in the Northwest, a necromancer tried to run all other magic workers out of town but he is challenged by a ne’er do well night patrolman, a pretty piano player, and their friends – but I haven’t yet figured out the why.

Why am I writing this story? What overarching theme grabbed me and made me spend however many hours it took to hit the 85k word mark? (I’m just about there, with a couple scenes left to draft.) I’m pretty sure my motivation went deeper than “well hell, I managed to write 50k words in November, let’s see where this bad boy goes”.

I mean, I’m pretty sure I have a deeper motivation. I hope.

I’d argue that while KJ’s one-liner for Slippery Things hits on a number of elements that focus on fun! (Spies! Nightclubs! Shady conspiracies!) she slips in a note about social change, hinting that she’s worked in a deeper theme or two. That grounds the story, making it even more compelling.

So if you need me, I’ll be pondering the theme(s) for my current WIP, which I’m hoping will be more obvious after I finish the draft and give the story some time to breath. I’ll also be working on a one-liner that includes the kind of fun! elements that make KJs books sound so good.

Because it’s smart to learn from the best.