In the past few days I’ve seen two of these display-site/make-your-books-go-viral/readers-can’t-wait-to-read-your-unedited-unpublished-book sites. Slush sites; also known as YADS (Yet Another Display Site), because yeah, this is an idea that people have been trying and trying for years now, and which has never to my knowledge resulted in any sort of publishing deal for anyone.

Anyway. The two I’m thinking of offhand are PUBSLUSH (read more at AW and Writer Beware here and here) and the not-yet-unveiled ViralBestseller.com (link goes to the AW thread).

Here’s the basic idea behind these sites. The PUBSLUSH people or the “agents” at ViralBestseller will post your book on a website. According to them, what will then happen is that thousands of eager readers will flock to their site, desperate to find something new to read that hasn’t been touched by those horrible editors (ViralBestseller refers to “unedited glory” and reading “the author’s original intensions[sic],” which frankly to me displays a deep misunderstanding of the editing process, but whatever) or professional publishers or, well, anyone who can determine whether or not the work in question is actually readable. Readers, they claim, are desperate to wade through thousands of manuscripts looking for one that they might like. In the case of PUBSLUSH, their plan is for readers to actually pledge money to preorder the book, based on a ten-page sample, and when a certain amount of supporters/cash is reached the book will be published.

Now…okay. Maybe the problem here is me (I am the “lazy reader” referred to in the title of the post). I fully admit that may be the case. I certainly think of myself as a dedicated and avid reader; I don’t have as much time to read now as I used to, seeing as how I spend so much time writing them these days, but I certainly still read and buy books and read some more. I read a lot. Probably not as much as any of you, but certainly as much as I can. I’m always looking for book recommendations. Those of you who’ve reviewed my books favorably in the past may be surprised to know that based on that (by which I mean your obviously excellent taste in literature), I visit your sites to see what else you’re reading that you like, and check those books out at the bookstore. I write down titles; I look to see who you’re talking about (I also grit my teeth because, you know, talking about other books means you’re not talking about mine, but still). (That is of course a joke.) (Mostly.)

But I look at sites like these and I think, man…I just don’t want to have to work that hard, you know?

I have a big enough TBR list; I have books by my friends whose writing I love that I don’t manage to get to fast enough for me. I have recommendations I’ve found on your sites, if you review. I have research reading to do; my nonfiction library is ever-growing. I have books I saw at the bookstore that I bought just cuz they looked cool that I haven’t gotten to read yet. That adds up to a lot of books.

So when I’m thinking of looking for something new to read (if I’m not just picking something from my TBR)…I dunno, I just never think to myself, “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to spend several hours hunting through digital slushpiles to see if maybe there’s something in there I might want to read on my laptop.” In the case of PUBSLUSH, that would be “I’d like to spend several hours looking through ten-page samples in hopes of pledging to pay $25 to maybe get the whole thing in a few months’ time.”

All of the YADS play on–most of them have little screeds written to the effect of–the idea that commercial publishing as it is is “broken” and isn’t serving readers. I disagree with this; sure, not every book is to my taste, but in general I find there’s plenty of variety out there to keep me happy and interested. And the idea that publishers have no idea what readers want puzzles me, too, frankly. You and I might think TWILIGHT isn’t very good (or we may love it; I’m not saying anything one way or the other) but the fact remains that an agent and an editor read it and thought “This book will appeal to lots of readers,” and they were right, and that happens every day. Yes, bad books get published. I can certainly think of a few. But good ones do, too, every day.

But to get back to the main point…am I just lazy? Is this something readers actually want to do? Do you find yourself hunting around odd websites looking for something that might be interesting to read? Do you look at sites like those?

Or do you, like me, and like–I believe–the majority of readers, still prefer to find and read books from bookstores, from reviews on trusted sites, from friends who’ve read them? Books that you can be fairly certain are at least up to a certain standard of readability?

I’m genuinely curious. Because like I said, I just don’t want to work that hard to find something to read, and I just don’t have that kind of time.

BTW…I now have a Tumblr. So if you’re on Tumblr, let me know! I have plans for something fun on Tumblr soon, which I’m working on at the moment, so…there’ll be more on that later.

(Part one of this little series can be found here. Part two is here.)

When last we left little FOUR on its journey to the bookshelves, I was forcing myself to look at my stupid galleys, the Sales people were tallying the number of orders they managed to coerce and blackmail out of the poor bookstore buyers, my publicist was, well, probably dealing with far more important people than me. But she’s also probably getting together a list of review magazines/sites/blogs/whatevers to send ARCs to, if the publisher is doing ARCs, which they don’t always.

In dramatic time, it’s around June, or five months prior to release date.

16. Using the copyedited ms that was sent to me as a galley, the file is sent to the printer for ARCs if they’re being done. The timing on this bit is a tad sketchy, and really depends on how close we are to release date. But generally, if I’m not mistaken, ARCs are printed from that same ms that was sent to me, either with my corrections or before my corrections are added. They aren’t printed immediately, but they’re sent to enter a queue at the printer. This is why ARCs say “UNCORRECTED PROOF” in big letters, and it’s why you may get an ARC that is essentially pristine but another with more errors; some mss don’t get as many editing passes before it goes to ARC, because of the lead-time required.

17. I send my galleys back. I have now Officially Signed Off–so to speak–on the book. Nothing should be changed now that I have not approved.

Not that the galley process is done, oh no. My changes are input, and another galley is printed. That galley is reviewed in-house, for typos or errors that may have been missed the first umpteen times everyone looked at the ms. (By now we all hate my book, and wish it would just go away so we wouldn’t have to look at the damned thing ever again.) If there are any changes made, those are inputted again.

18. Cover art is finalized. This actually happened a while ago but I forgot to put it in. But it’s all done now. Sometimes, if the bookstores don’t seem too enthusiastic about a particular cover when the Sales teams visit them, a new one is quickly put together. That happens more often than you might think, but not as often as it might seem. (Hee.) Anyway. So you might have a new cover being finalized now, so it’s not totally out of place here.

19. ARCs are printed in August, and sent out shortly after to those reviewers etc. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a few; my agent will get a buttload (that’s about twenty, for books) of them as well to send to the foreign market to try to convince them how great I am and that they should totally buy foreign rights for my books or they’ll be sorry because who could resist such a bundle of fabulosity? Nobody, that’s who.

ARCs must be sent out at least three months in advance of the deadline dates for the November issues of whatever magazines or whatever the book is being sent to. At LEAST. If we want reviews in those magazines the month of release, we have to meet their deadlines.

20. Everything is sent off to the printers now. Whoo! That galley that dozens of people have looked at, and that all those people in the Production department lovingly entered and checked and checked and entered, and those nifty covers, are put together into a special file and sent off.

21. Books are printed. It’s probably, let’s say…the middle of October. Or rather, for a November 1st on-sale date, the printing will need to be finished by the middle of October. Why? Because now we have shipping & distribution, which is a whole big thing I only know a very little bit about. But I will share that little bit of knowledge with you, dearies.

22. All of those books are printed, boxed, and shipped to the distributer and/or warehouser. I used to be better able to explain the difference, but it’s not particularly important at the moment. All you need to know is, they divide the books into the amounts of boxes that go to, say, B&N, Borders, and Amazon. There are about fifty books in a box. For smaller indie stores or other online venues they may break up some of those boxes, so Murder by the Book in Houston might get twenty copies of FOUR and ten copies each of UG, UM, and CoG, because of course everyone wants to buy lots and lots of my books, right? Why would a bookstore stock any others?

23. Anyway. The books for B&N et al go to their big divisional warehouses, according to what sells in that area. Like, if UF sells big in the Northwest, the Northwest will get 5000 copies, whereas an area like the upper Midwest may only get 2000 because that genre doesn’t sell so much there. From those regional warehouses they get distributed and shipped to the individual stores.

24. It is now probably a week or so before release date. If all goes well, and according to the way it should, those boxes should sit in the storerooms of the individual stores until release day, when they are unboxed and placed lovingly on the shelves or towers or front tables by happy, smiling booksellers, all of whom love me and want to force their customers to buy my books even if said customer is a ten-year-old boy (hey, these are sales numbers we’re talking about. I’m ruthless).

What often happens is the poor, overworked booksellers, who just want to fill the shelves, or who have plans next Tuesday (books are released on Tuesdays, just like DVDs, unless they’re superspecial Event releases like Harry Potter books or something) and so want to get the hell out of that store that day, or whatever, will open boxes early and put the books on the shelves. It happens. And I still say that unless and until someone learns they lost out on hitting the NYT because fifty copies sold the week prior, it’s something writers should just suck up. Yes, it’s better when they wait. We all love it when they wait. It reminds us that there is order in the universe, and that sometimes that order is Good and Just, and makes us feel that sweet “all is right with the world,” sort of feeling as we tuck into our little beds at night.

But there is also Chaos in the world, and books getting shelved on Saturday because Melinda’s manager told her to stop standing around like that and just fucking do something are part of that Chaos. Yin and Yang, people, Yin and Yang.

25. Books are on the shelves! Oh, happy day! Now is the best part. All of you wonderful reader people can lie up outside the bookstore at eight a.m., wearing your Downside t-shirts and stuff (hey, this is my damn fantasy here so shut up), singing songs and drinking beer or whatever until the bookstore opens, the cops show up, an impromptu musical number breaks out, or all of the above, and you buy your copies of FOUR, which you then rush home to shower with love in a purely non-sexual sort of way (or maybe not; what you do in the privacy of your own home is your business, chickies). Meanwhile I sit at home, cowering, terrified that not only will there be no dance routines, there will be no sales at all, and at the end of the week my agent will call me to say not a single copy sold and there’s a cadre of angry bookstore managers about to rush the Del Rey offices and burn them down for wasting their valuable shelf space with my drivel.

And that is it. How a mss becomes a book. Isn’t that a sweet story?

I’m sure I messed up some timelines a bit and/or left some steps out. I’m not an actual employee at a publishing house, and some houses do things a bit differently. But this is based on my experience. my observations, and that of people I know, including a few very helpful answers/bits of info from Jessie at Random House. Thanks, Jessie.

Any questions?

(Part One of this little series can be found here.)

So, where last we left our manuscript, sweet little FOUR, it was making its dark and lonely descent into the hands of a copyeditor, where it was placed on the bottom of a stack of perhaps five or ten other manuscripts just like it, to be gone over with the dreaded green pencil, and it was early February at the very earliest (but more likely at least March).

While I’ve been piddling about with words, a few other things have been happening. Shauna will come up with a few thoughts or ideas about what she might like to see on my cover; what the concept is. She presents those to the cover people, and the Publisher in a big meeting that takes place three or four times a year (this is the way it’s done at Random House, anyway; it may be different at other houses). What sort of model, background, pose, etc? One person or two? That sort of thing. They decide on a concept, or maybe a couple, and the whole thing is sent on to a cover artist person.

That person finds and hires the necessary model(s) and takes numerous pictures in various poses and outfits. They show those to Shauna and/or someone else, but I do know for a fact Shauna sees the poses and selects the one she likes best. If the meeting took place immediately after FOUR was turned in, or right after the contracts were signed, it may be only January or so, but chances are it’s closer to March or April.

Then the cover artist starts, well, being artistic. They draw or digitally create backgrounds, or manipulate existing art or backgrounds. They do whatever else it is that artists do; I have no idea, frankly. All I know is, a cover generally takes at least a couple of months, and the cover art usually starts being discussed almost immediately. Yes, writers are asked for input, and yes, if it comes down to what we like vs. what Marketing likes, we’re going to lose. We’re asked for input, but “input” is all it is. And honestly, well, Marketing’s being doing this a lot longer than we have.

And really, they want us to be happy. No editor or publisher has ever cheered and high-fived when an authors bursts into tears at the sight of their cover. They want to please us. It’s just sometimes we can’t be pleased. And sometimes Marketing is totally right, and the cover we don’t particularly care for is a cover that readers seem to adore. That happens a lot.

So. Cover art may take anywhere from 2-6 months. Which means that cover art may come in for FOUR anywhere from January-March. Because the sales people are going to need a finished cover when they start soliciting orders, it will pretty much have to be in by May at the very, very latest, but April is a much better deadline.

11. While the cover artist has been working, the copyeditor has been viciously marking up the paper manuscript of FOUR. They check to make sure there are no typos, that facts are consistent, that all proper nouns are consistently spelled (I spelled Baldarel as Baldaral several times; I’m honestly not sure I spelled it right here and I’m too lazy to check. This is a fun blog post, not a scholarly essay. I’M ONLY HUMAN, WHY CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND?!). They may suggest different wording for some phrases to make them read more smoothly; putting “twisted just a little” instead of “just twisted a little,” for example, or eliminating “just” altogether because, um, some writers tend to use that word a lot. Never mind who, it’s not important. Copyeditors make sure everything else is consistent, too; if I mention a character’s blue eyes on page 103, and then mention that same character’s dark eyes on page 297, the copyeditor will catch that. If I forget it’s supposed to be Tuesday in dramatic time and start talking about Wednesday, they catch that. They’re like cobbler’s elves in that way. (I don’t know why I’m picking on copyeditors, I really don’t. They’re lovely in general, honestly. Occasionally you will get a bad one–I’ve heard stories that would turn your hair green–but in general they’re great.)

The copyeditor will also look for repeated words. Like if I use “jerked” to describe a certain motion (ahem) three times in a row, they notice. if I use a long, unusual word–like one of my favorites, “deliquescent”–to describe something, and then use it again thirty pages later, the copyeditor will flag it. If I use the same analogy twice in one book, they’ll mark it. It’s pretty cool.

So at some point, usually about two months after the final round of edits, I get a large, heavy package containing a printout of my manuscript (the ms for CoG weighed over seven pounds), bound by a single rubber band, with lots of little notes and bizarre alchemical-esque symbols all over it (you’ll see several pages of these when we do the editing series). If FOUR was a human, it would be returned to me as if it had undergone the Death of a Thousand Cuts. Luckily, it is not.

I have a deadline for the copyedits, and it’s usually two weeks at the most. I actually love copyedits. I get to re-read my book, okay changes or refuse them (when I refuse them I write “STET” in big letters next to the suggestion), make any little changes that leap out at me, and generally enjoy myself. Enough time has passed since writing that I can enjoy the story, and enough time has passed since editing that I’ve forgotten some of the changes so it’s a surprise (you may remember I disliked UM until I read it again in copyedits and found it wasn’t as awful as I remembered). It’s pretty pressure-free. I like to do my copyedits in one or two big hits, maybe two hundred pages one day and the other two hundred+ the next, but some writers do a few pages a day or whatever else. I send those back when completed.

12. While all of this is going on, the Big Stuff starts. The Sales/Marketing people begin doing their jobs, strong-arming bookstore buyers into ordering large quantities of FOUR to meet what will undoubtedly be an unprecedented demand (hey, it’s my series, I can dream if I want to). They begin doing this anywhere from 3-6 months before the anticipated release date. Yes, these meetings happen with the genre buyers for the big stores (Borders, B&N) but they may take place with indie stores or online venues as well; I’m honestly not sure. What I do know is this is the step that actually gets books onto shelves, and if the book doesn’t get onto shelves it’s pretty much dead in the water.

The sales/Marketing team also tries to purchase co-op space from the bookstores. Co-op space is stuff like the front tables and towers at bookstores. Publishers pay money for those, which is why it’s a mean thing to do to take someone’s book off those tables/towers and replace them with someone else’s book (not to mention it only creates more work for the booksellers themselves). This may have an effect on other things as well; for example, the release date for UNHOLY MAGIC was delayed a couple of weeks, if you recall, because the co-op Del Rey wanted for it (tower placement) wasn’t available on its original release date; the tower was full. By delaying the release two weeks, we were able to get tower placement, which is really cool, because while it’s exciting to see my books on the shelves, it’s really really exciting to see them on the tower, just like books people actually might want to buy.

13. Meanwhile, I’m probably contacted by my publicist, which feels very Hollywood to say. Yes, I have a publicist. She’s a total sweetheart and her name is April. Now, since FOUR is, well, the fourth in a series, April already has a lot of information about me. But if it was my first novel, I would have been sent, several months before, an enormous long questionnaire covering anything and everything April might be able to use to sell my book. Where I was born, hobbies, etc. April takes a look at that and thinks of some ideas. She may also call me; she’ll probably email me, to discuss anything she wants to set up or I want to set up, like signings or whatever. You guys might know that the idea of a solo signing scares me to death, because I’m convinced no one will show up, but if I were inclined to want to do a signing, April would set it up. Right, not me. April. The publisher does that. She talks to the bookstore, she makes sure enough books arrive for me to sign, she may arrange to have posters or fliers made up and given to the bookstore for them to post around to advertise my signing.

She may do other things, too. She might contact national magazines and ask them to review my book, and send them copies. She might encourage certain publications to feature my book as a “Hot Commodity” or whatever the particular publication calls its recommendations (I deliberately made it one I’ve never heard there). I’m a piddly genre author barely staying afloat, but if I were a bigger name April might set up TV/radio interviews for me.

April is in charge of sending my ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies; sometimes called AREs, for Advanced Reader Editions) to anyplace that reviews books. This includes various online review sites. If I’m contacted by a site who wants to review my books, I usually forward the request on to April, and she makes the decision whether or not to send them a copy (she usually does, I think, but if Bob Bobberson just set up a review blog, and he’s reviewed one book a month ago and nothing else, she probably won’t send him a book; why bother? It’s a waste of time/money). I often get requests for interviews or guest blogs or whatever, and I handle most of those myself, but sometimes people do contact April to ask if I’d be willing to do this or that, and April forwards those requests on to me. So April’s a busy girl.

14. Sales start in, say, May (we’ll go with six months), and probably go on for a month or two, on and off, while the salespeople pitch their entire catalogues to the buyers. The number of orders the salespeople get for FOUR determines how large FOUR’s print run will be. This is why pre-orders are so important. If Borders orders 20,000 copies, and B&N orders 20,000 copies, and Amazon has 5,000 pre-orders in their system, FOUR will probably have a print run of like sixty thousand at least, because of all the indie stores and stuff like that which will also order. Now, my print runs are sadly not 60k, but still. The more pre-orders, the bigger the print run. This is especially good in bookstores themselves.

15. Let’s say it’s the end of May now, or June. I get another package in the mail, which contains another stack of papers bound with a single rubber band. Galleys! This is, essentially, my entire book, laid out exactly as it will appear in the actual book, with one page set up as half an 8.5 by 11 sheet, and the next page set up as the other half. While I love looking at the galleys–this is where I got all excited about the chapter heading font they were using, for example–and it’s cool to see my copyright info and the Del Rey logo and all that other stuff, including my acknowledgments, all laid out pretty, I actually hate doing galleys. What I do with those, essentially, is re-read them, looking for typos or mistakes that the copyeditor, Shauna, possibly Jessica, who is Shauna’s wonderful assistant who is also an editor herself, and I, all missed. It happens. This is the last chance I have to fix or correct things without having to pay for the corrections myself. Usually I don’t have a lot of changes with galleys. I might decide that something I allowed the gnomish, lurking copyeditor to change doesn’t work after all. I might decide that saying “ketchup” n that sentence doesn’t work, and that character would have mustard instead. I might feel kind of weird about a certain thing and take it out altogether. Anyway, all of that I do with a colored pencil on the galleys. I usually have a deadline of two weeks or so with those, too.

Goodness! I thought I could wrap this all up today, but this is very long. We are almost done, though. So I guess I’ll come back tomorrow or Monday to finish it up; we’ve got several steps left.

It’s a lot more complex than you’d think, isn’t it? I was flabbergasted when I found out how much work it takes to produce one book and get it on the shelves.

No, books are not babies, but the title was too much fun to resist.

Okay, we’re going to discuss where books come from. See, sometimes when a mommy and a daddy love each other very–oh, I just slay myself, seriously. And I can see you laughing hysterically too, right? That rolling your eyes and checking your watch that you’re doing, that’s laughter, right? That’s what my parents always told me.

Anyway.

No, seriously, we are. Occasionally I do like to go all publishing wonk (I love publishing, I can’t help it) and write long detailed posts about things no one except other publishing wonks really care about. It’s my little way of driving people away, like all emotionally healthy people are known to do. But no, I do hope the wonk stuff is fun anyway, and that it might actually be interesting to other people.

So. How does a book go from manuscript to finished book, in stores, on shelves? (The process is different for epublishing; a lot of the steps are the same, but this post is specifically about printed books with NY houses [although printed books with small presses are made exactly the same and have the same steps, they just might possibly occur a little faster], and more specifically about mass market paperbacks. I imagine it’s the same, basically, for trade paperbacks and hardcovers, but mmps are what I have experience with.)

I’m going to use my books as an example, of course, and we’re going to start with the fourth Downside book, so we can really get an idea of time frames (UNHOLY GHOSTS, for example, was sold to Del Rey in June or July 2008, set for publication in October 2009, but of course was delayed so they could do the consecutive releases. So it’s not as good for demonstrative purposes).

FOUR–I have a tentative title, of course, but until I see if it actually fits the book and it’s all approved I don’t want to mention it, so we’ll call it FOUR here–is not yet written. I wrote about a page of it last night, that first page that’s so terrifying and awful and looks so lonely. But that’s it; it’s not even a thousand words yet. I have submitted a short synopsis of it to my editor(s), so they have a general idea what to expect, but that could change quite a bit. I don’t plan my books in advance; this makes for more work in editing but if I plan it ahead of time the book feels written and I lose enthusiasm. So all FOUR is at the moment is a paragraph or two of plot details, a single page of writing, and a few scenes in my head, only one of which I know where it goes (Chapter Two).

I have to finish FOUR and hand it over to Shauna, my editor at Del Rey (fabulous woman she is), by November 15th.

Now, if this was not the world of print publishing, she would put it in her queue to do a round of editing, then edit it and send it back to me. I’d look at her requested changes, approve them or not, make them or not, and send it back; we may do two or three rounds of that before she declares herself satisfied. At which point, for an epublisher, it would sit in a digital queue waiting for cover art and a release date, and would then be released. It usually takes about 4-6 months, roughly, depending on the size of the publisher and their exact routine. Some set release dates soon after acceptance and use that as a deadline for edits; others don’t set a release date until the edited ms is approved. Either is perfectly legitimate.

But this is the world of print publishing. FOUR needs to be in Shauna’s cute little hands, in readable, decent shape, by the fifteenth of November. You will probably be surprised to learn that if the release date is in fact planned for sometime in fall 2011, we are cutting it close with that date.

Why? Here’s why.

1. I am not Shauna’s only author. This is a big reason, but not the biggest by any means. When FOUR lands in her Inbox, she will, of course, want to open it, lock her door, and read straight through, because she is awesome like that. But to do so would be impossible. Shauna may be in the middle of another ms by another of her authors. She may be in the middle of edits for four or five of them. And not only does she have to edit those–through several rounds, which I will detail–she has to check on the progress of all of the other steps. She has to answer my occasional questions, some of which are probably stupid, and the undoubtedly much smarter questions of her other authors. She has meetings to attend. She has phone calls from writers and agents and all sorts of other people. She has manuscripts to read to see if she wants to offer for them, and if she does she has paperwork to do and meetings to attend about those. She has to talk to her bosses about whether or not they’re going to buy more books from her other authors. That’s not four or five authors total, btw; I’ve never asked Shauna, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover she had four or five times that many, if not more (I wouldn’t be surprised to find she has less, either, but I’ve been to her office and seen all the books there, and they’re all hers, so to speak).

Editors don’t read at work, on the clock, so to speak. They read at home, or on the train, or during lunch, or whatever. All that reading has to be done on their own time, because their work hours are too busy.

2. When Shauna finishes her first read of FOUR, or possibly after she reads it two or even three times (reading in between everything else, remember), she’ll send me an editorial letter. This delightful little missive is designed to crush my hopeful writerly heart into the sand, by coldly and systematically detailing everything that’s wrong with my book and how Shauna wants me to fix it OR ELSE. (I hope you realize that’s a joke; not only do I love editing and editorial feedback, Shauna would never ever write a cruel or cold editorial letter. I don’t know any editors who would [although I've heard of one or two]. Most editors even do something amazing, and include comments on stuff they like as well). Anyway. An editorial letter may be a page long; it may be only a few sentences. It may be eighteen pages. None of those are any bearing on what the editor feels should be done; that one line might be “the ending doesn’t work, please completely rewrite and find a way to make it realistic,” and the eighteen pages might be mostly compliments.

3. I read the editorial letter, probably a few times, and probably while drunk at least once. I think about them. Then I think about them some more. Then I obsess and call my BFF and make her listen to me talk about them for a few hours. I repeat this process with several other people. Finally, around the time my husband is ready to throw me out the next time he hears the word “edits.” I start them (this entire drinking-whinging process only takes a couple of days, usually, btw). I have a deadline for those; usually a couple of weeks, maybe a little longer. If you’re keeping track, even if Shauna picked up FOUR the second it arrived, read it and wrote her letter, sent it to me, and I got the edits done in, say, a week…we’re now around the middle of December. Of course the chances that that happened are so slim as to be nonexistent, so it’s more likely early-mid January.

4. After Shauna has read my new version, she sends me more edits. They may be little tweaks, they may not. Certainly both she and I are happier when they are. This may take her another couple of weeks, at least.

5. I do Shauna’s new edits. Maybe that takes me a week or two.

6. Line edits. These are specific sentences n the ms, or paragraphs, that Shauna feels could use rewording or whatever. Sometimes these are included as part of the editorial letter or the second round of edits; that depends on author and editor.

7. Line edits done, FOUR is now declared “accepted.” We discuss the title and see if we think it fits and is the way we want to go. Marketing may have a say in this, too.

8. The accepted version of FOUR is now reformatted and sent to the copyediting department. While I am certain this is not remotely the case, I like to picture this process as a combination between the mine in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, and those cool chutes at the bank where you stick your plastic tube in and it sucks it up and into the building. Also, in my head, the copyeditors wear those green visors under sepia-tinted lamps and hunch over row after row of desk in the basement. Or, you know, the mine. Either way, I know this isn’t true, but it makes me giggle.

9. Not long after this or around this time, I’ll be given the back cover copy, which was written by a copywriter (as opposed to a copyeditor). I generally have a small tweak or two to make; for example, the wording about “the two men in her life” on the back cover of UM was mine. Yeah, well, it’s not earth-shaking but it’s the only bit I absolutely remember contributing. Is that okay with you? Sheesh. You’re so picky. Anyway, that usually happens quickly; we may discuss back-cover copy for a day or two tops, and usually it only takes that long because people are busy or we want to give it some time to soak, as it were.

10. Now we wait. Again, at this point, if we’ve gone lightning-fast, the very earliest in time we can possibly be is the end of January or early February. Chances are it’s closer to late March or even early April. And yes, the book is edited–mostly–but there’s still more to do! (Remember, we’re looking at a fall publishing date, and it is now almost spring. We have, at most, let’s say eight months, but more likely about six, and we’re about to get into some of the really time-consuming stuff).

In fact, I think we’ll do that next time, because this is already very, very long. Okay? So more next time.

But of course, what exactly to put on them? A DA sticker or keyring or something isn’t hard, but a t-shirt? I want something people would actually wear, you know–there’s no point otherwise–so a sort of generic book cover shirt is out. Obviously I’m not going to get something with my name emblazoned all over it in big letters or anything.

These were my thoughts:

1. Plain t-shirts or v-necks, with a quote from the Book of Truth across the front or back. And on whichever side isn’t printed, maybe my site logo or web address or something, just small but there. I do like this idea–something people wouldn’t know unless they knew–and it would be the simplest and least expensive way to go, I think.

2. Plain t-shirts or v-necks, with a logo or whatever for one of the bars in Downside on the front or back. Several people seem to particularly like the idea of it being Chuck’s, which is the bar Chess spends some time in in CITY OF GHOSTS (no spoilers). I quite like this idea, but it does mean a logo or whatever has to be designed which would raise the overall costs.

3. Chelsea from Vampire Book Club, a really cool review site, designed this awesome logo (which funnily enough touches on something I plan to put in Book 5, so it’s extra cool for me). Actually, Chelsea designed these awesome logos:

Both of which I think are just, well, totally cool. And because Chelsea is so generous and such a good person, she’s perfectly happy to let other Downside fans use the logos as they see fit; I’ll be adding them to the Fun Stuff page for downloading soon. (Or rather, I’ll be giving them to my webguru to do that, along with the deleted scenes from CITY OF GHOSTS.) Until then you should be able to save those images anyway as full size.

So those are the options I came up with, basically. Do you guys have any others? Which do you like best? Like I said, I want to do something that people will actually be able to wear and not feel silly or like they’ve been turned into a big advertisement. Something a bit more subtle and interesting and fun. So please, any thoughts you may have, throw them out here!

Aaaand, one other thing. I shared a release day on Tuesday with Christopher Golden, who is seriously one of the nicest, coolest men I’ve ever met (we met at Dragon*Con last year, and we’ll both be there again this year, so I’m quite excited about that!). His release was a reissue of the first book in his really cool Peter Octavian series. The book is called OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS, and seriously, Christopher is a really, really good writer.

And, he said this about UNHOLY GHOSTS: “Stacia Kane’s UNHOLY GHOSTS blends horror, fantasy, and dystopian future noir with thrilling, twisted results,” so you know he has good taste in books, right(hee)? But no, seriously, he likes the books, and you guys like the books (I presume, since you’re here, unless you’re here to send hate messages or leave comments telling me how much my books suck), so there’s a common perspective there, a common opinion of what is and is not cool/fun/interesting/scary/etc. So I really do recommend you take a look at OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS. This reissue is the first of four, which will culminate in an all-new fifth book, and they’re all being released on pretty much an every-other-month schedule.

And I guess that’s it for the moment. I won’t be around much next week but I will try to check in; I’ll see if I can get some pictures I’m happy with when we all go to the Mai-Kai for dinner (it’s this enormous, totally cool Polynesian restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale, where they have a floor show–which we usually skip–and an enormous menu of tiki drinks and a big tiki garden and all kinds of stuff. It just kicks ass, and we’re going to go at least once, because that’s what we do).

But do let me know your thoughts on t-shirts etc., and if you have any other ideas do speak up! You can always email me if you’re not comfortable giving them publicly, or comment anonymously if such things make you nervous or whatever, too.

(One thing about the deleted scenes that I think will be really fun: I wrote a scene for UM that ended up getting cut. But I really really liked the scene, so I rewrote a little bit of it–the intro part, basically–and stuck it in CITY OF GHOSTS. But as I edited CoG, I decided the scene still didn’t work as written, so I rewrote it again, extensively this time. So there will be a few versions of that scene, and you’ll be able to compare them all, if you’re the type of person who enjoys stuff like that.)

So look for all of that soon. I’m really excited about it.

Another thing I’m quite excited about is the fact that my blog series “Be a Sex-writing Strumpet,” with which I know some of you are familiar, is now available on Kindle! So you can buy a paperback from Lulu, or an ebook from Lulu, or a Kindle version from Amazon. And of course, as always, the series is free here on the blog; just click the “be a sex-writing strumpet” tag in the sidebar.

I offer the series as an actual book because I had a lot of requests to do so, and I charge for it in those formats because people convinced me to do so by saying they wanted to pay me something for it, but you absolutely do not have to buy the book to read and enjoy the series. You don’t and you never will have to. I wrote it as a blog series, and it will remain a blog series. The book formats are just there to make it easier for people if they like, and so they don’t have to keep clicking all over my blog if they want to read it. I still get website hits for that series almost every day, which just stuns me; if you type “be a se” into google the second auto-finish term it offers is “be a sex-writing strumpet.” It’s just insane, it really is. I never imagined when I wrote it that people would enjoy it so much and find it so useful, and that’s amazingly gratifying. Also, having it on Amazon offers people a chance to write a review for it, which would be fantastic; it’d be really cool to see some feedback on it after all this time! And of course you could all review all of my books if you want, heh.

Also exciting to me is the Name a Character Contest! I’m thrilled at how enthusiastic you all are! Thank you so much! I did want to let you know that I am checking the #cityofghosts tag on Twitter regularly, and keeping track of the entries there, as well as the emails and blog post links I’m getting. If at any time you want to double-check the number of entries you have, feel free to email either the Downside Army email address or me, or use the contact form here on the site (which of course also comes to me). Make sure you include your Twitter name, if you have one, or whatever other information I might need to identify you.

Tomorrow evening sometime I plan to post a new snippety excerpt from CITY OF GHOSTS, so be on the lookout for that!

I know I say this a lot, and you guys are probably tired of hearing it, but I really honestly am amazed by how enthusiastic the response has been to the series. I never expected it, I really didn’t, and it’s absolutely amazing. I can’t thank you all enough.

So let’s see, what else? I’m going to be popping down to the RWA convention in Orlando next week for a couple of days. I know, I know, it’s RWA, but I’m not actually registering/paying for the convention, I’m just hanging out in the bar, really. I’d decided–and basically committed to–doing so when it was supposed to be in Nashville, which is only like two hours away. Of course, tragic floods intervened, and now it’s in Orlando which is considerably farther, but like I said, I’d already committed. And it’s not a bad drive. I like driving by myself. I mean, I like to drive, period, but I especially like driving by myself. I can turn the music up loud and sing along, I can flip through the radio stations all I want, stop or don’t stop as I please…whee! I’m almost more excited about the drive than the con itself, much like I was when I drove to Massachusetts to see Caitlin before we went to RT. Of course, I was excited about the convention, but that really was an awfully fun drive.

Anyway, I think this post is unfortunately a bit dull. Too much news and stuff to keep track of. I’ll try to be more fun again shortly. For now my head is so full of nervousness (over CoG’s release; what if you all hate it? What if nobody buys it?), projects I’m working on (loosely mentally plotting the 4th Downside book, and lots of stuff for the new WIP/series I’m working on), netbooks (hee, I am totally getting one asap!), our trip to Florida to see my BFF next month–we’ll be there for my birthday–and of course the usual family things. So forgive me, please. I’ll be more interesting next time. Anything you want me to blog about? Feel free to ask!

Oh! And speaking of questions, I wanted to let everyone know that this Saturday the 24th at three pm, I’ll be participating in Twitter’s first #UFChat! You can find a bit more info about it here. Either way, come and hang out, follow the hash tag, and please ask any questions you want, as many as you want! I’m hoping it’s going to be a lot of fun (and, you know, that people actually participate).

A few weeks ago over on the Romance Divas forum a discussion was started about honesty in your writing, and what that means. It moved on into discussions of art and connection to your work as art, which I’m also going to discuss. So basically we’re going to have a big mishmash of Stacia’s Deep Thoughts about writing, which will hopefully be fun for everyone, but of course we’ll see, won’t we?

Anyway. The initial question, posted by the lovely and talented Kate Pearce, was whether or not we, as writers, compromise ourselves–change what we want to write–in order to sell the work or make it “acceptable” to a particular audience; do we stop ourselves from writing things readers might react badly to. Keeping in mind we’re discussing genre fiction, and genre fiction has certain conventions and reader expectations. All of which are, of course, perfectly fine; readers are entitled to expect the book they pick up will be what the cover and bookstore shelving or whatever promises them it will be.

But at what point do we stop writing what we want to write in order to be successful? At what point do we suffer for refusing to do so?

The thing is, your writing should excite you. Not ‘excite” as discussed in the Strumpet series, lol (although sometimes it should, depending on what you’re writing), but excite as in fire you up intellectually and creatively. I firmly believe that if what you’re writing doesn’t do that, the reader will sense it. The writing will be flat. The story will seem cliche. And frankly, a flat, cliche story stands very little chance of selling (yes, there are exceptions, but in general, and especially when it comes to first-time authors or those just beginning careers). This post isn’t about writing techniques, though. It’s about the deeper aspects of writing, the emotional stuff, the stuff we couch in skill.

But how much is too much? What if the story that really excites you is one so out there that the odds of anyone wanting to buy or read it are infinitesimal? I believe fantasy, especially, is a genre with lots of room for growth and change. I believe readers on the whole are a lot smarter than some people give them credit for, and a lot more willing to and capable of stepping onto that ledge and seeing where the writer wants to take them. But if you’re writing a cannibal romance, you’re probably going to have a hard time, let’s face it.

We all know compromise is part of life, or rather, there is an element of compromise in life. We all know that we can stick to our guns, and write that romance where the hero and heroine sit down at the end to a nice big plate of baked human hearts with artichokes and mushrooms, with the freshly slaughtered carcasses stored in their deep freeze, but that may limit our publishing options. You might be able to sell that cannibal love story to a horror publisher or imprint, but it’s probably not going to fly with genre romance (hey, I could be wrong, this is just my personal feeling).

The problem–and the fundamental question here–is, at what point are you compromising too much? What is your work to you; is it stories you write for a laugh and to pay the bills, or is it an expression of yourself? (That’s not to say stories you write for a laugh and to pay the bills can’t be an expression of yourself. The difference is in how you view them, to some degree.) In other words, how much do you care about what you write, how much of yourself do you put into it? How deep do you go? How honest are you?

How deep should you go? How much do you need to expose yourself, if at all? How much should you expose yourself?

And how much of your decision is practicality, and how much is fear?

This touches on a larger, more fundamental question, which is whether or not fiction is art and whether or not writers are artists. And whether or not genre fiction is art. I think we’ll talk about that and the implications of it a bit more later, but we can’t really have this discussion without at least mentioning it first, so we have some kind of lens to view the discussion through.

My personal feeling is that every writer puts something of themselves into their work, whether they mean to or not.

Writing books is in some ways akin to exposing yourself. You write a book. You pour large parts of yourself into it. The characters may or may not be you–usually they aren’t–but if you’re really digging deep into the POV character, you are by necessity accessing parts of yourself and putting them on the page, no matter how ugly or embarrassing or painful they may be; no matter how joyous or fun or delightful they may be.

A book is the expression of truth as you see it and experience it. Every moment, every scene, every sentence is you expressing something important to you, no matter what it is. No matter what the plot is, no matter the setting or genre, you’re telling a story that came from you. You have to be in there; if you’re not, where and how is the book connected to you and to the rest of the world? If you’re not, what exactly are you writing, and is it what you really want to write or is it just something you’re writing to make money? How proud are you, or can you be, of the latter?

I think these are questions that can and do make a lot of people uncomfortable, and I have some thoughts on why, which we’ll discuss in the next post. But this is what I know. Writing something you really put yourself into is terrifying. Doing anything you really put yourself into is terrifying. And it is that way for a lot of reasons. Writing that way is akin to sharing your deepest secrets with a lot of strangers, and inviting them to poke and prod at your weakest points, your deepest insecurities. There are people out there who will look at your work and decide they know what kind of person you really are because of what you wrote. There are people who will decide that by exposing yourself in your work you have invited them into every other part of your life; look at the types of questions some erotic romance writers are regularly asked about their sex lives. There are people who will hate your book and be unable to separate that from you as a person. There are people who will decide that because you’ve written a certain type of character or story you deserve to be shamed or shunned; they will confuse you with the work to the extent that not just the work but you yourself become an object of derision, as if you are a book yourself with no feelings. And maybe they shouldn’t be able to completely separate you; who can really say? If you’re putting yourself that deeply into your work, are you actually stripping yourself, baring yourself? If they disagree with your truth, don’t they have a right to say that, and to say it about you and not just your work?

Perhaps eliciting that kind of reaction is a good thing. People may dislike the timid, but they don’t tend to hate them with such a passion. Maybe if you’ve done something that makes people that angry, it’s a good thing. I’ve never been someone who believes that the purpose of art is to shock or anger. But can we say that if you do shock and anger people, you’ve obviously touched them on some kind of deep level? And that perhaps an emotional reaction of that depth is the purpose of writing, and thus the purpose of art?

Perhaps if people hate you because of something you’ve written it’s because you refused to stay in the box they wanted to put you in. People don’t like it when you’re not easy to classify; they don’t like it when you try to challenge what they expect you to be. There are people in this world who dislike it when others show depth or intellect; there are people who simply cannot handle disagreement with them or the idea that others see things differently, people who are incapable of stepping outside of their own worldviews for a moment. Those people exist in every field, in every country, in every place, all over the world (look at some of the arguments people have over science questions, or politics, or about whether or not Spiderman could beat Iron Man in a fight. I’m not saying everyone who dislikes or diagrees with something or someone is being small-minded, that’s not remotely what I mean. I’m just saying that when you expose yourself and your work, or your theories or opinions, to the wider world, you have to be prepared for all kinds of reactions).

But eliciting that kind of reaction can be terrifying, too. Unnerving. And it’s something we don’t always prepare ourselves for. Something I’m not sure we can prepare ourselves for. No one can predict what kind of reaction a piece of writing or a piece of art–whether they’re different things or the same thing–will get.

The thing is, I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t feel emotionally vulnerable about their work, no matter how light-hearted the work is. I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t feel, after writing an intense scene or finishing a novel, as if they’ve just spent several hours being psychoanalyzed and poked with sticks. No, our characters are not us. But if our books are the expression of truth as we see them, if our books are expressions of ourselves, then we have exposed ourselves. If we’ve been honest in our work then we have essentially invited strangers into our minds and hearts, into our psyches, and invited them to rummage around a bit.

We’re trying to connect with people. We’re trying to connect with readers. We’re trying to share an experience with them, make them think and feel, and do it in the most honest way we can. (We’re trying to entertain them first and foremost, of course, but this is about the deeper aspects of our work.) We want them to connect emotionally with what we’ve written; there is no greater compliment than to be told by a reader that your work made them cry (um, assuming it was a sad or emotional scene, of course. It’s not a compliment if your light comedy made a reader cry through its sheer awfulness. Nobody wants a reader to put down their book, drop to their knees, and scream, “Why is life so terrible?!”)

Isn’t creating something with the intent to elicit an emotional response in someone else, art? Isn’t that the purpose of art?

And if it is, why do we so often shy away from calling it that?

We’re going to talk about that on Thursday.

I’ve read the Twilight books. Well, okay, I read the first three. The second, if memory serves, was the one I liked best out of those, but I simply could not force myself to get through the last one. I was dreadfully bored, so I skimmed it, and got the gist, and that was more than enough. And again, I didn’t hate them. I didn’t love them, by any stretch. I didn’t particularly like them. But I didn’t loathe them. I even thought–and it’s not an uncommon thought, I don’t think–that there were some good ideas buried in there, some really cool shit. And I admit as well that one scene in the first book, the one at the lake when Jacob tells Bella the legend of the vampires, was pretty nifty. I dug that scene.

But yes, I also see the problems. I see the essentially abusive relationship, the completely ridiculous parents, the ha-ha-semi-rape-is-okay bits, the oh-sure-it’s-totally-cool-for-adults-to-fall-in-love-with-infants bits, the female-sexual-desire-is-gross-and-must-be-suppressed bits, the creepy-religion-y stuff…you name it. I know it’s there.

Am I happy that teenage girls all over the world wish a man would stalk them, scare them, destroy their possessions in order to get them to obey, patronize them, treat them like morons? No. Of course not.

But here’s the thing. What exactly are the other relationship alternatives we as a society are offering teenage girls?

How many stories do we see about teen pregnancy rates going up? How many of the fathers of those babies stick around? How many women and girls do you know who’ve slept with a man who said he loved them or cared about them, and then dumped them shortly after they had sex? How many times does our society tell young women that for them to expect to be loved and taken care of by a man is ridiculous, a silly fairy-tale dream, and that they better get used to relying only on themselves because men won’t stick around? How many girls out there are led to believe that their only value is as a sex object? That being a sex object is the most important thing there is? How many of these girls have fathers in their homes? How many see men as people who drift in and out of your life, treating you sort of okay sometimes?

It’s not just about sex. I don’t mean to sound like I’m on some chastity crusade. But what I do think is that girls today are being raised to believe that they shouldn’t expect respect, love, responsibility, or anything else from men. That being cheated on is just the way it goes. That the only way to get and keep a boyfriend is to not mind when he treats you badly, to give him things, to not act like you really care that much, to place no expectations on him.

I realize I’m exaggerating a bit. I realize there are still plenty of decent people out there. I realize that things can be just as tough for teenage boys.

But my point is, our society seems to be moving further and further away from the idea that love is a valuable and good thing, that people belong together, that girls have the right to expect to be treated with respect and kindness, and that boys have the right to expect the same.

And that, my friends, is one reason I believe the Twilight books are so popular. Yes, Edward is a controlling jerk. But Edward isn’t embarrassed to care (he even says the L word!), and he doesn’t leave Bella at home alone while he goes out with his friends picking up girls. He doesn’t refer to her as his “bitch.” Once he admits he cares, he is committed. Twilight offers girls a view of a relationship that, if it’s not a great alternative, at least seems more secure than a casual hook-up. It’s a world where girls don’t have to be embarrassed to want a solid relationship, with a man who will care for and about them, and wants to make a serious commitment to them. It’s a world where, for all that the sexual attitudes in the book are troublesome to say the least, Bella’s sexuality and willingness to sexually perform is the least important aspect of the relationship.

And in this world it’s okay, even right, if the desire to love and be loved is the most important thing in your life. That desire isn’t pooh-poohed or put down in those books. It’s not treated as frivolity. It’s not spoken about or represented as if it’s a shameful thing to want to be loved or to be in love, and that any girl who thinks about relationships and romance instead of college and their investment portfolios are obviously ridiculous, irresponsible creatures.

Twilight offers a skewed view of relationship, yes. Twilight does not contain what I would say is a truly healthy relationship.

But Twilight is about a relationship, and Twilight takes that relationship seriously and treats it as an important thing, a worthwhile thing, a thing of respect. Something fulfilling. Twilight doesn’t put down young girls for wanting a boyfriend, or for wanting that more than anything else. It doesn’t make them feel as if they’re not good enough if they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, or aren’t spending their every waking minute working hard and collecting references for college applications.

I don’t think this is the only reason; it’s just the only one I can fathom, to be honest. And I’m not saying any of this is a good thing, or that I approve. And I’m not saying Twilight doesn’t deserve the criticism it’s gotten; it absolutely does.

But I also think that in relentlessly attacking Twilight, we’re once again attacking these girls, too. We’re telling them, once again, that they’re stupid and silly for believing in love and for wanting it. They’re ridiculous for wanting a man to truly love them and to see something special in them. We’re telling them that the desires of their heart and soul are unimportant, and foolish, and that if they aren’t focusing their entire selves on future earning power and getting ahead they’re wasting everyone’s time.

And to be honest, I don’t know which of those messages is worse.

First, and most importantly. Last night I noticed Mrs. Giggles–whom you all know I adore–linked to my Jade Goody entry and wrote an excellent and very informative post about Pap smears and the types of cells/cell abnormalities found in them. It’s well worth a read; great information there. But more importantly, Mrs. G. makes a point that I neglected to make: whether or not you are sexually active, you should be getting your pap smears annually. I don’t care if you’re a nun, once you reach a certain age–Mrs. G suggests 18–you need to do them. And she is 100% correct. I’m ashamed that I didn’t mention this myself. Please…get the test, whether you’re having sex or not. I need you to live so you can buy my books. (No, seriously, buy my books or don’t, but get the test. It could be the most important thing you ever do.)

Second, this will be my last bloggy-type blog post for a while. Thursday I’m just going to post some scheduling/update things and possible freak out a bit more. Next Monday the movers are coming; I will probably pop in for a very quick post, as I plan to open the blog to reader recommendations, which I’d like to start doing once every few months. After that we’ll be in transit for the next few weeks.

Third, we had a lovely time in London this weekend. Got to meet up with fellow writer, the excellent Kaz from lj, and have a couple of drinks on Friday night, and share some giggles and gossip. Unfortunately, thanks to the vagaries of the transit system on Sundays, I did NOT get to see my friend Yeyo from lj, which I’m very unhappy about; she’s been a good friend to me for almost seven years, and I’m heartbroken that I didn’t get to say goodbye to her and her wonderful hubby in person. But we did get to the British Museum and the Natural History museum, and to just be in London one more time; I do love London. Sigh.

Okay. Remember my post about UF as a genre, and how it’s changing? I had no idea when I wrote it that the post would be such a big deal; it’s still getting comments and was actually quoted in an NPR interview with Mario Acevedo, which was pretty exciting.

Anyway. Like I said it’s still getting comments, and I want to address a couple of those here in a new post.

First, a very nice lady posted the URL to her UF/paranormal mystery Yahoo group, which I haven’t joined yet but fully intend to. At the time she posted they had over 400 members, all avid readers. So groups like that are, IMO, great places to join and be a part of, in addition to reading blogs like Urban Fantasy Land (of course!) and Bitten by Books, or livejournal groups like Urban Fantasy Fans. (And please, if you belong to or know of another fan/reader community, leave it in comments!)

Second, I had quite a few comments about the level of sex in UF, or where the line is between paranormal romance and UF. This is a really interesting question for me, because I know the Demons books come pretty close to straddling that line. In my mind they’re UF, because although the Megan/Greyson relationship is a big part of the first book (and figures prominently in future books), ultimately the book is about Megan vs. the Yezer & the Accuser. She has to defeat the Accuser on her own. It’s about her and her story and how she changes, and the second is the same.

The Downside books are definitely UF. There is some romance and some sex–I’m going to get to the sex part in a minute–but ultimately Chess solves the mystery and Chess has to fight the bad guys, every time. She may get a little help from her friends, and she may fall in love along the way, and she may deal with a lot of issues related to her sexual or relationship choices, but in the end it’s just her doing what she has to do. And the romantic subplot stuff is a much smaller part of the books on the whole (with the possible exception of the third book, which it looks like we now might be calling SPELLBOUND GHOSTS.)

Now, one of the most recent comments the entry got was this:

I hate picking up a UF (and sometimes a SFF novel) and finding a thinly veiled romance. I am simply not into romances as a rule and really don’t care to read about someone having teh hawt sexxorz.
While I appreciate that people head in the UF direction precisely because of the copious sex and romance, it is not for me. I have even taken to picking up a book in the store and skimming page by page counting the sex scenes and considering the length of the scene. 0-1 is ideal, up to 3 dependent on the length and detail. Anything above that is an automatic ‘no’. I have no problems with relationships, searching, acquiring, troubles and what not. It can provide interest. I like things to be a bit more realistic than the standard romance instant lurv. I just wish books were better labeled. I have picked up novels listed as paranormal romances and found a great story with little to no sex and a more or less realistic approach to relationships. I have also picked up books labeled Scifi, fantasy or fiction with more insta-lurv and sex than a skin-a-max late night movie marathon. Hence the page by page skimming in the store. This is not to say that I haven’t purchased books with, in my opinion, too much sex, I have. The story just has to be very good and I can just flip past the areas that to me, aren’t important. These are very rare. I do have to laugh at myself though, wanting realistic relationships in novels which have nothing to do with reality.

I was going to reply to this in the comments but it interested me so much I thought it would be a good separate entry in itself.

First, I’ve gotten a few comments along the lines of “There’s too much sex for me.” And what troubles me about it–one of the things, anyway–is the way the commenter always seems to feel kind of sheepish about it, or like they expect to be attacked. Guys, there is no reason in the world why anyone, anywhere, should have to apologize for their reading tastes. Never. Ever. (Unless you like reading kiddie porn or something, of course.) But just because you don’t want to read erotica? You have every right not to read erotica if you don’t want.

I’m kind of the opposite, because I won’t buy a romance if there’s no sex scene and I’ll skim in the store for that. If there’s no sex it goes back on the shelf. And I don’t apologize for that. As readers of The Strumpet Series know, I believe sex scenes are important; I outlined my reasons in this entry specifically. In a nutshell, though, they are that I believe sex scenes–if well-written–show us something about the characters and their relationship that we couldn’t see any other way, that they are fulcrums on which entire plotlines and character arcs can shift, and that leaving them out in essence hides things from the reader and leaves them out of important parts of the story.

But let’s be honest. Not every sex scene is going to do that. They should, but they don’t always. And let’s be honest too, some readers just don’t find them interesting or appealing. I think that’s a shame, because I believe a well-written sex scene is a thing of beauty and adds a lot to a story, but I would never tell anyone they HAVE to read them if they don’t like them.

But I do think this points to the other thing which troubles me, and it’s one where I think those blogs and groups I linked to above can help. Because UF is a fairly new genre–which is to say, it’s been around for a long time but has just gelled into “UF,” everyone seems to have a different idea of what exactly it is. There are people who believe UF is exclusively first-person heroines, for example. There are people who believe that if a human is in love with a paranormal creature, it’s a paranormal romance no matter how much or how little of the book is devoted to the relationship.

So it’s hard to label the books correctly. It’s hard to know exactly where to look and what to look for. I’ve seen a few people who feel PERSONAL DEMONS is a paranormal romance rather than UF.

The thing is, what used to define genre romance was the HEA–the Happily-Ever-After ending. That separated romance from anything else. But now there are books sold as romance that don’t have it. There are books sold as UF that do.

And the level of sex isn’t really a good indicator of genre either, as the commenter pointed out. PD has one sex scene; DEMON INSIDE has two. UNHOLY GHOSTS and the further Downside books have at least one each; two at the most. Because I do believe they’re important; they’re part of the story. But PD skirts the line of paranormal romance whereas UG doesn’t at all, I don’t think.

All of which is a rather long and convoluted way of saying this is a complex issue, and one that will probably get more so as time goes on, which is why groups and blogs and communities are important.

I dislike the mislabeling of books in general. Books should be easy for readers to find; you should get what you want without having to hunt around too terribly much. While I am absolutely an advocate of trying new and different books, it’s hard to try new and different books when you don’t know where those are either. This is why I want to open the blog to recommendations on Monday and why I want to keep doing so on occasion; it’s why I recommend various genre blogs and groups.

But I’m really interested in your thoughts on this. How do you as a reader decide what genre is which? Where do you make the distinction? What do you look for in UF and how is that different from what you look for in para romance, if you read both?

Like I said if you know of a UF group or blog that I don’t have, please leave it in comments. I’d like to keep specific titles out of this one, as we’ll do that next week and hopefully that thread will keep going while I’m away.

So you tell me. What do you think?

I wasn’t going to talk about this, I really wasn’t. Because I don’t want to piss off or upset people. I certainly don’t want to make readers, the lovely people who spend money on books, angry with me.

But I just…It’s like the opinion is a pot of coffee, percolating in my chest, and it’s going to explode. (Incidentally, I feel kind of weird thinking that nobody uses percolators anymore. My parents were never coffee drinkers, but my Grandpa was. And when he would come visit the smell of coffee and especially the sound of the percolator, that particular burble-sploosh noise, would wake me up in the mornings. I used to really like it; I was fascinated by the percolator and could never figure out quite how it worked, you know? All those childhood machines that seemed like magic to me, and none of them are in use anymore. The percolator, the 8-track tape, the flashlight that ran because of how fast you squeezed the trigger thingie…anyway. No time for this; this is going to be a little long anyway.)

So everybody knows about this Stephen King/Stephenie Meyer thing. Basically, Mr. King said in an interview that Ms. Meyer “can’t write worth a darn.”

And for reasons I cannot fathom, it’s being treated like he said Hitler was a really good guy or something, or that in his spare time he enjoys molesting children.

Leaving aside the truth or lack thereof of his statement itself, and leaving aside the fact that although he claimed Meyer can’t write worth a darn he did say he understood the appeal of the books…

So what?

There seem to be two schools of thought among the “Fry him! FRY HIM!” crowd. The first is that he’s jealous of Meyer’s success, which is, IMO, patently ridiculous. Stephen King is arguably the most successful writer the world has ever seen (and no, you cannot bring up the people who wrote the Bible or the Talmud of the Koran or whatever). No, I’m serious. Think about it for a minute. How long has the man been writing bestsellers? How many of his books or stories have been made into major films? Adapted for television? Turned into series? How many of those film adaptations have garnered Oscar nominations in any category?

Now think of one other author, living or dead, which that kind of success. ONGOING success. I suppose it’s possible to argue that JK Rowling hits it, but King’s written something like thirty books. JKR has not. Tolkein had massive, unprecedented success, but again, not as many books.

So the idea that Stephen King is jealous of Stephenie Meyer is silliness. I’m sorry but it is, and there’s another reason why it is, and it ties into my whole feeling about this.

I suspect womanhood has something to do with it, yes I do. And that something is, everyone saying these things seems to be female, and more importantly, seems to be upset not that one writer is commenting on another writer’s work, but that the commenting writer has a protruding pee-pee and the one being commented on does not.

I know.

King said some not-very-nice things about a few male writers in that article too, but nobody seems to be jumping up and down all over the internets to say how Mr. King is just jealous of Mr. Patterson. In fact, no one seems at all bothered by the fact that not only did King call Petterson “a terrible writer,” he didn’t even qualify that statement anywhere by saying he sees the appeal of Patterson’s work, or that Patterson has very cleverly tapped into something in his audience’s collective subconscious.

So…why? Why does it seem okay for King to criticize Patterson, but not Meyer? Why isn’t anyone throwing “jealous” around?

Yeah. I think a big part of it is that Meyer is a woman. And I think there is a very ugly assumption beneath this, which is that a woman cannot take criticism. And sadly, I think there is a segment of the female writing “society,” for lack of a better term, which truly cannot take criticism, who flounce around saying things like “If you’ve never written a book you can’t criticize” or “It’s hard work to write a book and the author deserves something for that and it’s mean to say her book isn’t very good” or whatever other whiny little excuses these namby-pambies toss around to justify their own total and complete lack of professionalism.

We’ve seen these people online. We see them all the freaking time, in fact. They’re the ones who stalk Amazon reviewers or decide to name transexual AIDS-riddled prostitutes after people who give them mediocre reviews (and let’s keep in mind, btw, what sort of person thinks “transexual” is a worthy insult) or send nasty emails to reviewers or start blogs where they put up nasty cartoons or send hate mail or have hissy fits in comments or whatever the fuck it is, and thus make all female writers look as though we too have never progressed beyond the 9th grade.

This attitude seriously makes me ill. You know what, gang? I seriously doubt Stephenie Meyer gives a fuck what Stephen King says. And good, because she shouldn’t. I love Stephen King. I think he’s fantastic. And I would love to think he’d read my work and enjoyed it; that would be a huge thrill. But you know what? if he loved it, that’s just one man’s opinion. And if he hated it? That’s still just one man’s opinion.

And jealous? Why is this argument so rarely brought up when two men are involved? Why do we hardly ever see someone claiming, for example, that Steve Jobs is just jealous of Bill Gates? or that, I don’t know, Javier Bardem is just jealous of Benicio del Toro? Not that I’m aware of these men making comments about each other, but really, can you imagine it? So why then, does this crap come up when women are involved? Stephen King is a grown man, people, and I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen anything before that would lead me to believe he’s the kind of man for whom jealousy of other writers is a problem. Have you?

Stephenie Meyer is a published author; she’s written four enormous bestsellers. Let’s give her a little credit, shall we? Let’s assume she’s mature enough to shrug this off and go on writing, and not behave as though she’s crying in the bathrooms by the gym and she won’t come out until Stephen writes her a note that says he’s sorry and gee, golly, the dance is tonight and she was our ride and we’re gonna get Stephen and pants him in the cafeteria?

We’re all entitled to our opinions. (In fact, one could argue that Meyer is one of the few people Stephen King can actually criticize *without* looking like a bully; who else is big enough?) And in the grand scheme of things, this is such a non-issue it’s not even funny.

I was going to tell you about a book I bought the other day, which I haven’t finished, but which is so well-written my jaw keeps literally dropping open–but that will have to wait until next Monday, because this is so long already. Sigh.