Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you all have a happy and pleasurable holiday weekend.

I'm still a relative newbie to being published. My first story went live in September, my second earlier this month. A third has been contracted, but won't see the light of day until January, most likely. So I'm still learning how to best promote my writing.

To that end, I've been trying to participate as a guest blooger, or in contests. You know, just getting my name and my work out there for potential readers to stumble across. So, if you've found this page by following a link from elsewhere, I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a comment telling me where you saw it. It'll help me, and it'll show whose blogs are being read.

Thanks!

We're All Genre Writers On This Bus

If you've been a reader (or a writer) of genre fiction for any length of time, I'm sure you've heard it. "Science fiction--or fantasy, or mystery, or romance, or [insert genre here]--isn't real literature."

But what is real literature? I think most people would agree that Shakespeare qualifies--and Shakespeare was writing for a living, and that meant keeping the crowd entertained. It also meant keeping the powerful people of his day happy. That meant writing plays that wouldn't offend or insult powerful people who could make trouble for him, and it meant writing plays that would keep the crowds entertained--crowds who were paying good money to be entertained and expected their money's worth.

Was he writing for the ages? Hardly. Charles Dickens, another literary great, wrote serial stories for publication. He wrote fast and he wrote voluminously. There was no time to ponder the literary merits of his stories. He had to concern himself with making sure the customers who bought newspapers containing his tales felt satisfied with their purchase day after day.

Another point to consider is that what is often viewed as "literature" is really simply another genre. If you're writing "slice of life" stories about tortured English professors having mid-life crises and affairs with their students, or vignettes that eschew plot as a middle-brow contrivance...I hate to tell you, but you are not creating literature. You're writing in a genre as specific, as structured, as anything in science fiction, fantasy, mystery or romance.

Real literature, great literature, can emerge from any genre--and does. Science fiction and horror novelist Dean Koontz wrote once that "Not all popular novelists are great, but all great novelists are--sooner or later--popular." He's right. Before your fiction can entertain generations to come, it has to entertain today's readers. Shakespeare, Dickens and other greats produced classics of literature--but they wrote to entertain their readers first and foremost. If you can't do that, your works won't last to be discovered.

From one Romance Diva to Another...

Triad of Hope

Contemporary, Inspirational, Interracial/Multicultural

Juliana, Rosa, and Shani--three very different women with a common bond: all are on a journey of healing, self-discovery, and hope. Join them as they conquer fears, forgive past wrongs, and come to terms with their inner selves. Do difficulties in life really make one stronger? Can a shattered heart ever heal enough to love again? When one's life seems hopeless, what lengths will one go to find hope?

BUY HERE

Celebrate my release with me at Author Island Cyber Launch PARTY HERE

November 19th All Day!

LOTS of prizes to giveaway!

Adelle Laudan

A little birdie told me...

Authors, a heads up. SingleTitles.com just relaunched, sporting a full site makeover and a contest to celebrate the new look. They’re offering up $450 worth of advertising as prizes. If you write romance, mystery or thrillers you should head over and check out. http://www.singletitles.com

From one Romance Diva to Another...

Stephanie Adkins new contemporary erotic romance suspense novella, Between Heaven and Hell, is now available from Liquid Silver Books!


Blurb: Somewhere between Heaven and Hell … there are nightmares. After being forced to confront an abusive ex-lover in court, Elaina Richmond wanted nothing more than to get away from the trial and the nightmares that came with it. Escaping to her Aunt and Uncle's vineyard in the rolling hills of Sonoma, California, she is reunited with her first love, Caden Russell. An old flame is rekindled. Though Heaven is found in his arms once again, Elaina soon discovers that the Devil has a way of finding you … especially when there's hope to destroy.


Click here to read an excerpt.

Click here to purchase.

Visit Stephanie at www.stephanieadkins.com

My latest release is now available!

After defeating an obsessed opponent with some decidedly kinky plans for her, Leah Wright--Iron Maiden--finds herself intrigued by the idea of bondage. She's been in charge all her life and giving up control even for an evening sounds heavenly. Problem is, when you're as strong as Leah, who can possibly restrain you?

But Leah has underestimated fellow hero--and lover--Victor Kruger, the Black Knight. He knows just what to do. It's a simple matter of applying the correct leverage. The game they play is as much mental as physical--and win or lose, Leah's going to have an experience she'll never forget.

To read an excerpt, or to purchase a digital version, click here.

For more titles from Gail Roark, click here.

Another week gone by...

And I'm busy, busy, busy!

I've been writing on my NaNoWriMo novel for just over a week now. I've written 22,415 words so far, which puts me well ahead of schedule. Tomorrow (Day 9) I should reach the halfway point of 25,000 words. At that rate, I'll be done by the 18th.

I'm very pleased by this. I started NaNoWriMo with much fear and trepidation. I have no difficulty with short stories. I can write them without much fear, but the idea of tackling a novel was quite alarming. This past week has put to rest a lot of my fears in that regard. I am quite certain now that I can sustain the effort of writing a single story for 50,000 words or more.

It isn't the story I started out to tell. I swapped out my hero and heroine on day two. It's morphed from science fiction into fantasy, and the events of the story from day to day are as much as surprise to me as they would be to any reader. Which just proves that I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer, I guess. I've tried plotting before writing and it really just never seems to work.

But that's okay. Lots of successful writers write with little or no idea of where the story will go when they start, or maybe with an end point in mind, but no roadmap for the journey. If it works for you, that's all that matters.

In other news, my second published story will be available from Cobblestone Press this Friday (November 13), AND I sold a third one this past week. It will probably be published sometime in January if the timing from sale to publication on the first two are anything to go by. I'll certainly tell you more as it moves through the pipeline.

NaNoWriMo Day 2

Wrote 3,239 words on my NaNo novel today. Or 3,184 if you go by the word counter on the NaNoWriMo site rather than the word count in OpenOffice Writer. But either way, I'm at over 5,000 words for day 2. Which pleases me mightily.

It's not the same novel I started yesterday. I mean, it is--I didn't scrap anything. But hard as I tried to push it in the direction I originally intended, I just couldn't get it to gel. But that's okay. I'm going in an entirely different direction, striking out into uncharted territory.

While stewing about this issue last night (I didn't get the brainstorm and/or give myself permission to change the novel concept until this morning), I assembled bits and pieces of another story I've been thinking of turning into a novel for some time. All told, that story is already at around 14,000 words of previous work. I thought about using that as my backup story.

I might still work on it some this month, but not as a last-minute swap-in. Just as another story to be finished eventually.

Borrowing a page from the Book In A Month workbook, I started a companion document for keeping notes on the novel. I noted that I needed to change the description of the opening setting (a moderately large house) to something different (a small apartment), I've swapped out the heroine's name, personality and talents for someone entirely different, but who will suit the new direction.

Which means, of course, that the original character(s) remain available to me for some other story.

In other news (already shared on Facebook), I got a rejection letter from The Atlantic. No surprise there. I haven't seen the story out again yet, but I will. I've been busy writing til now.

And I got the first monthly royalty check from Cobblestone Press for "Flying High" (www.cobblestone-press.com/catalog/books/flyinghigh.htm). It's tiny, but it's a check! I hope to do better in the future, since a) this check covers only September and the story only went live on the 25th, and b) I aim to do more promotion. Plus, as of the 13th of this month, I'll have TWO stories to promote.

Anyhow, that's it for now.



Stories in Circulation: 13
Rejections: 20
Stories Accepted: TWO!