Just Because

by Rain Trueax

 

It's been a tough month for me with the disastrous fires in my home state. Just hard to get my head around what has happened and still is happening. Small towns like Talent and Phoenix were burned almost to the ground. Who paid the highest price for this catastrophe? In this case Latinx who had come up there for work in the orchards and were renting. All they might've accumulated from their work was obliterated. My daughter said half the children in those those school districts had lost their homes. The poor, of all colors, once again were unable to protect themselves. So very sad.

In such a depressing time, writing a blog or on the book is difficult as I don't want to just string together words. I want to have what I say have meaning. How do you do that when you are dealing with so much that is difficult and worse? All I can say is it has been a stressful month after the virus and the riots. People ask what more can happen? I don't think we want to know.

When the times they be changing

by Rain Trueax

Writers write books that come to them. Usually, they are plotted out long before the writing actually begins. The outside world is busy doing whatever it does. Once in a while, it impacts whether it's a good time for that book to come out.

A few weeks ago I saw where a writer was concerned because her hero was a police officer. Should she change it, she asked, as right now the police are under attack as not being the good guys, which they were thought of when she began the book. Things can change fast.

I ran into this in 2015, when I had written a book where the hero fought for the South in the Civil War.  He had been living in Oregon where he was establishing a ranch but was called back to Georgia by his mother who feared her health was failing and was worried about two of his brothers, who had already joined the Confederacy. 

In March of 2015, protests erupted over a death in police custody. Violence followed as the anger spread from the police to the South and the Civil War where people saw them as fighting to defend slavery. Not an uncommon belief but not that simple about the South in the 1860s.

That wasn't my problem as I'd already heavily researched my hero's situation. My problem was my hero was a Rebel in a modern time where that was seen as being a traitor. 

It was impossible to change the hero and his background.  I had written good reasons why he fought for the South, which did not include defending slavery. Although his family owned a plantation, they had freed the slaves that came with it when they arrived, after all that they'd gone through in Scotland. Oppression to people had no appeal to them. But he did fight for the South and that would make him not a hero but a bad guy in the eyes of some. How much would that impact the sales of the book, I asked myself a little selfishly. Should I delay its publication? Would it matter if I even did?

It's ironic when you write a book and suddenly the outside world impacts how people will see it. I've seen that a lot with older romances that are judged by today's standards. Sometimes it leads to condemnation of the authors and sometimes not so much.

When we hold people today to standards of the past nobody is safe from condemnation, which recently has included George Washington because he owned slaves back then. 

Anyway, I kept my book as it was, brought it out in September and don't know if it impacted sales for him to have been a confederate soldier. The book begins when he returns to Oregon to see if the woman he left might still love him. 

In the plot, I had plenty of opportunities to bring out how Oregon saw the South and any Southerner. Not to mention, my hero's surviving brother was half black. When the baby's mother had died at birth, he'd been raised with the hero and his brothers as an equal because of the nature of the hero's mother. I had a lot in that book about prejudice and felt it painted a fair picture of the times-- which were different than ours.

One point many did not know is that Oregon had a law that lasted into the early 20th Century that blacks could not own property. So while the people felt proudly anti-slavery, they also were racists to keep such a law. Some don't know that there are still property deeds, which ban the owner from selling to a minority-- ignored today, of course. 

I think sometimes having something negative in a story can be positive for what it can teach. That though may not help sales. :)

Although the link is to Amazon, this book is wide and has a paperback.

Going Home

A Distraction or Not?

by Rain Trueax

One of the bigger problems I wrestle with as a writer is-- what goes into the book? How much of what I know should be in the plot or revealed as part of the character's personality? It's not a simple question, as writers know. Most every book takes a lot of research. There is that which is done before the first word is written, but then new questions must be answered as the story unfolds. There is always much more than the average reader would probably find of interest.

Even writing blogs, I've noticed, can end up derailed by something I thought a minor point, but ends up the only thing that gets comments. I wonder how many readers have stopped at a point where a writer found it so interesting to describe the heroine gardening. What one person finds fascinating, another is ho-humming and wondering if it'll ever end.

My paranormal, work-in-progress has several of those potential pitfalls. For one thing, politics are a subplot. Considering our current political atmosphere, in terms of plot, not much would seem unrealistic-- even without ghosts, monsters, witches, and demons to complicate it.

Then I debated whether I should have my hero be in a political party that is not popular with my normal readers-- right away they won't like him. The thing is nothing else would work for the plot. The heroine and her family, of course, are in the opposing party. How much of that to put into the book? And that doesn't even get to my interest in reincarnation theories, an element of the plot. It's not like the average romance reader wants their book to turn into a treatise on spiritual theories.

With this, and assorted other distractions, my WIP will be lucky to get out by the end of May. This has frustrated me because I read that minimally you should have a book coming out every month. Some say every two weeks with the ultimate goal being 2 to 7 books a week. Seriously!!!???

Even one a month, is not happening for me, last year, I released 5 books-- a full length novel of 111,248 words; 2 contemporary paranormals 60,965 and 61,555, and 2 novellas (women starting over-- one contemporary and one historical-- 22,710 and 29,386. After looking up their word count for this piece, I added them together-- 295,864 words (good math practice). Even if they'd all been novellas, that only would have made for ten books-- assuming I had ten original plots in mind. This year with no released books is definitely not keeping up-- not smart if someone wants to sell. Neither, of course, is switching genres as I did in '16, but a gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do! I think...

The photos are from April and a lovely trip, with long-time friends, to the Oregon Coast (of course, another distraction to writing). I want to set a contemporary romance along the Oregon Coast someday. When I was there, I came up with the possible plot and the two main characters. It would be contemporary, in the women starting over series, and novella length-- maybe, if I can ever get through this 55-60,000 word paranormal ;).

Covers with Curb Appeal

by Rain Trueax

From the the time I decided to become an indie author, I wanted to do my own covers. Being a painter and sculptor, I thought how hard could a cover be? Naive is one word for where I was back then. I thought my first covers were fine-- looked like my characters. My painter friend loved them. It turned out readers-- not so much. To them, they were amateur looking and made them expect the books to be inferior. From that day began a learning process that has been ongoing. 

I thought I'd write about some of that process with my first indie published book, one that has undergone maybe the most changes.  

Desert Inferno is a contemporary adventure romance set on the border in Arizona.  I don't know how many covers it's had. Some changes were tweaks, others major shifts in what part of the story would be emphasized. 

The story, in terms of a cover, has a major complication in the hero. He is big, powerful, tawny haired, and most (not the heroine) see him as ugly. Romance heroes are almost never ugly. Models for these covers are never ugly. Jake is that kind of ugly that can also be seen as beautiful. Artists, like Rachel, its heroine, know there can be a thin line, very thin, between the two. I wanted the cover to be true to him.

One of my attempts used Jimmy Thomas, as handsome as men come, and gave him a big nose. When Jimmy saw it, he wasn't thrilled, felt an ugly man would not draw in readers, and suggested I find something that didn't show the hero's face. Two of those came next (showing one here). I wasn't happy with it but had no better plan. For awhile, I used a sunset-- pretty but wrong vibe.

It only dawned on me this month that I didn't need the hero on the cover. It could be the heroine-- after all, it begins with her and she faces one of the greatest challenges in the book.

So, with my Deposit Photo Plan in hand, I found Rachel. The photo is dark for a cover, but my intention was always to take it to Dreamscope where they offer apps to turn photos painterly. The one I have been favoring is Oil Pastel Portrait. My first try came out great until I looked at Rachel's hair. While she might have reddish highlights, she is not a redhead.

If I have learned one thing in the five years since I began, it's that a cover, with hero or heroine on it, better have images that match the characters in the book. I went back to the photo and darkened her hair... That time, the app turned her hair white... It is an AI tool and has its own reasons behind what it does-- no arguing with that. I darkened the photo's hair again and sharpened the image. Eureka!

Will readers like it better? I have no idea. Art is not a particularly objective field. It pleases me... for now.

I see a little irony in this as I have come full circle back to more painterly covers. The difference now is I have a lot more tools to use. I don't know if I will redo some of the other covers using Dreamscope, but probably not as I'm currently satisfied with most of them. As to how readers see them, I am still mostly guessing. For now, I hope Desert Inferno has had its last change as this seems true to the book.

Besides Amazon, Desert Inferno is available at other sites as well as a paperback (although it'll take awhile to get the new cover there. 

Links to heat level and buy sites at: Romances with an Edge.

My blog is at: Rainy Day Thoughts

Marketing as an Issue

While as a writer, I might like to think my issues are all about creating good stories, exciting characters, and finding inspiration for unique romantic plots, the reality is what I write has to fit a market-- if I want to sell. Before ePublishing, when I wrote, I didn't think  about a market; since then, my learning curve regarding it has been steadily ginned up.

Lately, a subject of interest has been length of book. Except for novellas, my books have ranged from 80,000-130,000 words. 80,000 words used to be considered the minimum length for the romance genre. Often, romances I would buy were considerably longer. Recently, however, when I have purchased novels by other romance authors, their lengths were less—sometimes much less.

Books have defining labels based on genre, of course, but also length: novel writing help (a novel is over 50,000 words; novella 20,000 to 50,000 words; novelette under 20,000 but over 7500; and short story anything under 7500). Some argue anything that isn’t a novel is a short story.

So, in the nitty-gritty world of marketing, if making a living is a consideration, a novel of 50,000-60,000 words generally will sell for the same price as one over 120,000. Many writers could create two shorter novels in the same time they would have produced the long one-- maybe more than two, since longer books have considerably more complexities for plots and characters. 

Marketing experts used to claim that bringing out a new eBook every three months kept your list active, benefiting your rankings. Now they are saying, if the writer can do it, once a month is better. Clearly, shorter books offer writers important benefits with the main drawback not having the satisfaction found in developing more complex stories.
 
How does the reader fit into this? If many of the best selling romances are becoming shorter, perhaps the readers are why. People today are running on tight schedules and have to fight for time to read. Where the world seems to be spinning faster, shorter books have their pluses.

For myself, a novella tempts me to read, where I’d hesitate to start a longer story. I can settle back for an hour or two, move into another world, enjoy the interaction of the characters, arrive at a satisfying conclusion, and still have time to get my work done. Time considerations are also a plus with anthologies, like Rawhide 'n Roses, made up of short stories or sometimes novellas.

I frankly like this freedom. When I begin writing a new book, I don't have to arrive at any set count. The story is finished when it's finished. Novellas were part of that shift as before eBooks, novellas, other than in an anthology, weren't encouraged by publishing houses. The Wild West of ePublishing changed a lot of things. Story length is one of them.

When I wrote three paranormal romances (When Fates Conspire, The Dark of the Moon, and Storm in the Canyon), set in contemporary Montana, I wanted each to be a complete love story and stay at novella length. Then, because my novellas leave out most of the heat, I expanded each into a hotter, three-part, anthology, titled Diablo Canyon Trilogy (enabling a paperback). Having the three novellas still available had its own complications, but that’s another story.

Links to Rain Trueax books: 

Rainy Day Romances  

Blog: 
Rainy Day Thoughts

Cover for Diablo Canyon by Charlene Raddon