Hens Lay Eggs
food for thought
Business as usual … or not
I took a break, as often happens, from the current work-in-progress (WIP) because I wrote my protagonist into a corner and needed to ponder how I’d get him out of that predicament without erasing and rewriting a substantial portion of the manuscript. I think I’ve figured that out. Strangely enough, it was the character’s father who provided me with that inspiration. So, once again, I’ve resumed plugging away at the keyboard to push the story along. I need to keep at it, because I’ve slated this book–Champion of the Twin Moons, Book 5 in the Twin Moons Saga—for release in June (or earlier if I can swing it). There’s a whole lot to do yet!
In the hopper …
Meanwhile, I’ve got more books simmering on the back burners of my mind and which I hope to produce yet this year:
- Triune Alliance Brides Series: The first book was Triple Burn. The sequel is Double Cut, which is available for pre-order now and will be released on March 15. The third book and fourth books will be (1) a bride for the third planet in the Triune Alliance and (2) a bride for the general superior introduced in Double Cut.
- Russian Love Series: After a long hiatus, I returned to this popular mafia romance series with a character who demanded his own story: Ciro. Ciro’s story, Russian Revival, was published on January 15. But wait, there’s more! The series isn’t finished. The next book will feature characters introduced in Russian Revival: Sergio and Susan.
- Twin Moons Saga: In 2022, I returned to this fantasy world of mighty fae and other supernatural creatures with Knight of the Twin Moons. In 2023, I’ll be back with a fifth book in the series: Champion of the Twin Moons. (This is the WIP referenced above.)
Will there be more books? Of course! I just don’t know what they are yet. Don’t despair if you prefer those one-off stories. I’ll produce more of them. Those stories keep my mind fresh.
On the freelance front …
With regard to business as usual, there’s the freelancing aspect of my livelihood that cannot be ignored. I have come up with a package deal for ghostwriting I call the Rapid Release Program. This package is based on the favorable algorithms Amazon uses for new releases. An author who releases a lot of books frequently benefits from those algorithms through enhanced placement, better promotion, and increased sales. Here’s how it works:
- You sign a 6-month commitment for the production of one novella (approximately 20,000 words) per month.
- You provide the background information needed to produce each book.
- I do the heavy lifting (i.e., ghostwriting) and deliver a draft to you within 15 calendar days.
- You review the draft and return your requests for specific changes within 7 calendar days.
- I revise per your feedback, proofread, and deliver a high-resolution PDF file (for print) and an EPUB file (for e-book) for upload to Kindle Direct Publishing.
The price of the package is $1,500 per month.
Make sure you get a copy …
Finally, I’ll be attending several events throughout the year in the capacities of author, artist, and freelance writer/editor. To each of these events I bring a limited selection of my books. (Bringing copies of every title just isn’t feasible.) However, it’s come to my attention that some folks want to make sure I have copies of certain titles available. Therefore, I have created a pre-order form.
Use this pre-order form to let me know which event you’ll be attending and which title(s) you want me to reserve for you. I’ll make sure to keep copies of those books on hand for you. All pre-orders must be submitted at least 30 days prior to the event. If you want a copy of a book that is not listed on the pre-order form, purchase it from Amazon and bring it to the event where I’ll be happy to autograph it for you.
Readers’ pet peeves
Readers everywhere, regardless of genre preferences, have pet peeves. These can be categorized into trends or themes of things readers don’t like. The Washington Post offers some insights with this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/02/08/book-pet-peeves/
Since editor and authors are also readers, I’ll start with this list of my pet peeves:
- Grammar errors. These occur most frequently in self-published books that have not been touched by a professional editor. OK, there’s a time and a place for incorrect grammar, because any editor worth his or her salt knows that effective writing trumps grammatically correct writing. That means the writer (or editor) must know the language’s grammar conventions and understand how and when and why to break them to the best effect. Not knowing and still breaking grammar conventions is just sloppy writing.
- Information dumps. This occurs most frequently in self-published books. A paragraph or eight of expository description, background, or explanation halts the story in its tracks. It’s an obstacle the reader must wade through before resuming the action. Such deluges of information usually try to impart a detailed vision in the author’s brain to the reader’s. It doesn’t work. It’s better to weave in bits and pieces of information the author needs to make sense of the story as they become necessary to comprehension.
- Disjointed formatting. I’m not speaking of drop caps or other stylistic embellishments. For instance, I recently looked at a book in which the content of every page was center-justified. That’s just difficult to read. Formatting is important, and its purpose is to facilitate a positive experience for the reader.
- Malapropisms. This big word refers to the incorrect use of a word. Most of these occur as homophone errors: pair/pare/pear, phase/faze, bear/bare, reign/rein, etc. The presence of malapropisms indicates an author who didn’t use a professional editor or an incompetent editor who’s not a professional.
- Punctuation errors. This is a subset of grammar errors. The most egregious punctuation errors I see involve incorrect use of apostrophes and commas. The use of commas isn’t necessarily cut and dried; there’s wiggle room. However, the use of apostrophes to indicate plurals instead of possessives makes my teeth itch.
Larger peeves come in the form of some common tropes and/or archetypes. Since I read (and write) mainly romance, I’m all too familiar with these tropes and wonder about their enduring popularity in the genre.
- Secret baby. The “secret baby” trope usually arises from a one night stand. The heroine has a passionate one night stand with the hero and is surprised when she discovers she’s pregnant. Um … has anyone ever heard of consequences? You have sex, you risk pregnancy. It’s that simple. Another secret baby trope I loathe is when the heroine keeps the child a secret from the hero because … reasons. None of the reasons are, of course, justified; and the hero is understandably upset when he discovers the big secret. No thanks.
- “Broken” hero/heroine. The protagonist(s)—one or both of them—has suffered some trauma or major disappointment that makes him and/or her leery of the opposite sex and expect the worst. The emotionally damaged character never seeks therapy, but uses the trauma to justify poor treatment of other people, because all women are vindictive, manipulative gold diggers and/or all men are lying, cheating pigs. Ugh.
- Toxic masculinity masquerading as “Alpha.” Romance is chock-full of alpha male heroes, manly men who ooze what the real world considers toxic masculinity. This often ties into the broken hero trope, because the desirable alpha male exists as a womanizing chauvinst who treats women like toilet paper: use once and discard. Some heroines do the same with men. The alpha hero often takes command, asserts his authority, and imposes his will upon the heroine simply because he can. He’s domineering as well as dominant. Like romance readers around the world, I like a dominant hero, but not one whose dominance edges or leaps across the line into abuse.
- Idiocy. A clutz can be charming. We can relate to a character who has trouble understanding a particular concept or a character trying to prove himself or herself. But persistently poor decision-making in the face of repeated failure smacks of stupidity. I recently deleted a book in which the heroine not only got drunk (mistake #1, something many of us have done), but who mistook the hero’s room for her own (mistake #2), berated the hero who behaved like a perfect gentleman (mistake #3), lied to the hero (mistake #4), stole his horse to escape, while still wearing just a shift and not having any money (mistake #5), then lied to the hero again when he caught her (mistake #6). All in the first chapter. There’s a reason why we now have the TSTL acronym: that heroine was too stupid to live. And we’re supposed to believe the hero falls in love with such an idiot?
Sometimes the characters in my own books cross those lines (although I’ve yet to write a secret baby story) that can take a plot beyond building tension and delicious conflict to face-palmed disgust. There are no hard borders with most of these pet peeves; they’re more a matter of degree. When it comes to some stories and/or some readers, that degree hits the boiling point sooner than others.
The best a writer can do it tread the line between just enough and too much.
As readers, what are your pet peeves?
Tell me why
Potential customers often base their purchasing decisions on product reviews. A potential customer likely won’t buy a product that has a majority of critical and/or negative reviews. It’s the digital age’s version of what was formerly a neighborhood practice of referral via word-of-mouth. Our neighborhoods aren’t so close anymore, so we rely on the words of strangers to guide us.
This is no less true when it comes to book reviews. Reviews primarily serve potential readers, but they also serve authors.
Every author craves book reviews. Especially if the book is an Amazon exclusive, because once the book surpasses 50 reviews, Amazon puts a bit more effort into helping the author promote it.
No authors likes receiving critical or negative reviews: we all want those positive, glowing reviews that give us happy, feel-good feelings. Reviews comes less frequently than ratings, though. Ratings are easy: a couple of clicks or taps with a fingertip and it’s posted. A review requires more work.
Ratings without reviews can boost or sink a product, but reviews are more valuable to both potential readers and authors for the feedback they provide.
When I’m trying to decide whether to buy a book, I’ll read the reviews. If a book has 1- and 2-star ratings, but no reviews, I give them little to no credence. A preponderance of critical or negative ratings may inspire me to use the “Look Inside” feature to read the first several pages of the book to determine whether there are any immediate flaws to dissuade me from downloading the book.
Ratings themselves do little good. As an author, I dislike negative and critical ratings—they sting—but I don’t learn from them. Especially with critical and negative ratings, I exhort customers to leave reviews. Tell the author why you didn’t like the story. Some reasons may include:
- You didn’t like the characters. Perhaps a character was too deeply flawed or maybe too perfect.
- You didn’t like the lack of realism or perhaps the story was too realistic.
- The story ended on a cliffhanger … and the reader wasn’t forewarned of the pending cliffhanger.
- The content needed editing.
- The formatting was broken.
- There was too much or too little violence, explicit content, etc.
- There were too many inconsistencies or anachronisms or other things that didn’t make sense and jarred the reader from the story.
I don’t like and discount reviews that seem overly biased due to the reader’s lack of comprehension. A review lambasting a steamy romance for having explicit content makes no sense to me. If one picks up a steamy romance, then one should expect explicit content. A review blasting the book for faulty delivery issues makes no sense to me: it wasn’t the book that was the problem, but the delivery. That’s like negating the quality of a conference program because the property’s elevator was slow. One has no bearing on the other. There’s a certain expectations that the customer ought to apply some common sense in reviewing a purchase. Authors deserve candid feedback that pertains to the book, not to the author. Cultural appropriate and political correctness worries aside, an author’s demographics have no bearing on the quality of the story.
My being an author doesn’t stop me from leaving reviews on the books I read. I figure if I want readers to leave reviews, then I should do the same. I am candid in my reviews, always.
I recently left a critical review of a book. I was prepared to like the book, because it had several aspects that I enjoy: an alpha male hero, an exotic (to me) location, the promise of danger for the protagonists (suspense is fun). Reasons for my disappointment included:
- A distinct lack of editing. The book was rife with missing words, wrong words, misspelled words, punctuation errors, and grammar errors.
- Lack of verisimilitude. The story read like some teenager’s fantasy of a billionaire lifestyle and failed to suspend my disbelief. (I love fairy tales and can accept the most impossible of story premises and character environments, but the author must continue to suspend that disbelief.)
- The book itself was miscategorized as a steamy romance when the characters did little more than expound in internal dialogue how attracted they were to each other.
- A major plot hole. An important subplot—who is shooting at the protagonists and why, and why do the shooters appear to be targeting the heroine?—just disappeared without resolution as though the problem had been fixed when, instead, it could have been used to ratchet up the tension and add depth to the story.
There were other issues, but those were the big ones. Those and lesser flaws put that author on my “do not read” list. Her next book continues the series, but I’ve lost all interest. If the author keeps track of reviews on her books, perhaps my criticism will inspire her to at least hire a professional editor.
Lest you think I’m being unfair, there are authors whose book I don’t read because I find their stories disturbing. Those authors are excellent writers. They know how to tell a riveting story. However, their work is not to my taste. That doesn’t mean their work is bad or deserves poor reviews; it means I apply common sense and don’t buy books I’m almost certain I won’t like. I won’t buy a book I’m sure not to like and leave a negative review because I didn’t like it. That defies common sense and violates my sense of fairness. When dining at a restaurant, would you order a dish you detest and, after eating it, complain to the chef that you didn’t like it?
Personal preference does not indicate quality. Regardless, when you leave a review, inform potential readers why you rated the book as you did. Smart authors will appreciate the feedback, too.
Author
Hard boiled, scrambled, over easy, and sunny side up: eggs are the musings of Holly Bargo, the pseudonym for the author.
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Karen (Holly)
Blog Swaps
Looking for a place to swap blogs? Holly Bargo at Hen House Publishing is happy to reciprocate Blog Swaps in 2019.
For more information: