IWSG: Where Are We Headed?

Welcome to August's edition of the Insecure Writers' Support Group. This awesome group help each other out with advice, support and sometimes just by listening to each other vent. Alex Cavanaugh is the brain behind this endeavor. You can get an entire list of participants on his blog.

My inspiration for this post came to me when I visited my local Barnes and Noble this past Sunday. My daughter and I went, not because either of us intended or even wanted to purchase a book, but because we love hanging out in bookstores. We arrived around ten in the morning, shortly after they opened. The parking lot was already filling up as we made our way inside. We parted ways inside the door and then met in the café a short time later, each of us with a stack of magazines and books that caught our interest. Of course, we had to get a drink. Like many B&N, maybe all, the café is actually a Starbucks. I stood in line behind six other customers and there were that many more behind me when I ordered. Every seat in the café was filled when we decided on one book to purchase and went to the checkout. At the checkout, no one was in line. No one was buying books.

Where is our industry going? The book I bought at B&N was the first 'real' book I've purchased in at least two months. All my other purchases have been ebooks. I'm sure many of us started out writing hoping to see our books on the shelves at a bookstore one day. Maybe going on a promotional tour. But more and more, writers have their books come out only as ebooks. And in my personal experience, if you're working with a small press, as an author, you're going to make most of your sales and your money from ebooks.

How long until all books, except from a few select writers, are paperless? How long until bookstores close their doors? Will I ever go to Starbucks again if they aren't located inside a bookstore?

Don't forget to visit more blogs here and share the joys and miseries of being a writer.

Genre Blending

Most writers pitch their book at one time or another, either in person or with a query letter. In order to do, you have to be able to label your book. Where will it fit in on the shelves of a bookstore, be it a brick and mortar store or a virtual store?

I remember going to my very first writers' conference having just completed my very first novel. I didn't know it at the time, but it was in a really, rough draft form. I signed up for pitches to an agent and an editor. Before deciding which agent and editor to speak with, I investigated their areas of interest and made sure my book fit into their purview. I had to fit my book into a genre accepted at the time.

My book was a fantasy romance. The editor asked for a partial but the agent told me there was no market for that genre of book. Fortunately, a small independent press, New Concepts Publishing, worked with me and that book was published as The Greater Good. It continues to earn money every month.

I can't fault the agent who didn't want to represent such a book. That was right before the fantasy and paranormal markets took off. But my point was the blending of the two genres, fantasy and romance. So many books today don't fit into exact niches as was once required of them. Many books have multiple genres, paranormal and romance, fantasy and romance, dystopia and fantasy, historical and fantasy, and the list goes on and on. More publishers are open to those blended books, especially smaller presses.

But a writer still needs to categorize their books. Why? Mostly for marketing and promotion. My fantasy books have some romance in but no more so than Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. They are epic fantasies. The current romance series I'm working on have a futuristic science fiction setting but they are first a romance. Even though they did better on Amazon as science fiction, they are published by a romance publisher. Two genres blended in different ways and by different percentages.

Every writer needs to be able to label their work both generally and specifically. I write epic fantasy, fantasy romance and science fiction romance. What do you write? Do you have trouble putting your book in a niche? Have you ever read a book promoted as one genre but you felt it should have been labeled as something different?

Life Was Tough

One of my writing persona, Susan Gourley, writes epic fantasy. There are lots of definitions of epic fantasy out there but most of them expect the story to be set in a medieval setting. Mine is. I love reading books in that setting, even historical fiction that isn't fantasy.

I recently finished reading John Marco's novel, The Forever Knight. His series of which this book is the fourth, is one of my favorites. I've read his other works also. They're all in fantasy lands in a medieval time period. The Forever Knight, like Marco's other books remind me to try and keep things real in my own books.

Life was really difficult in such a setting. No real doctors or medicine. The food was simple and often scarce. Most people we would term the nobility didn't care about the welfare of the peasants. Those poor people suffered from poor food, lack of housing and were often pressed into service to fight a war they couldn't care less about. In such wars, they were considered expendable. A noble might celebrate victory in a battle, but families would starve the following winter because their fields had been destroyed and their menfolk killed. There were no social or government agencies to help the masses. The place of women in such societies could be an entirely other discussion.

Fantasy worlds can be whatever the author wants them to be, but the way Marco presents an unsettling realism to the plight of regular folks draws me into his books. He shows the bitter side of battle victories and isn't afraid to show the emotional devastation of loss. I hope I convey such details in my books even half as thoroughly.

Do you enjoy medieval settings? Have you read books where the peasants were too happy? Have you read John Marco? What do you think would have caused the biggest hardship for the medieval peasant? After paying fall tuition for my two children in college I'm feeling a little like a peasant myself.

Vacation Over

Sorry I didn't get to visit blogs last week, but I was busy enjoying my vacation in Colorado Springs. My youngest son is doing an internship at The Broadmoor, a premiere resort in Colorado Springs. Besides the joy of seeing him after many months, it was awesome to hear all the wonderful things his bosses had to say about him. He loves the job, the people he works with and the area.

I'll share some of what I learned on my vacation but for today, I'm going to mention a few observations I made on my cross country drive from central Pennsylvania to Colorado and back again. I very much welcome input and discussion in the comments. Today is about the roads.

My husband didn't want to drive but I wanted to see some parts of this great country that I'd never seen before. Pennsylvania and Ohio has completely inadequate roads to handle the number of cars using them. They shouldn't be able to call a road a turnpike unless it has three lanes in each direction. Pennsylvania does have the cool tunnels that always remind me of Will Smith in I, Robot.

Ohio gets the award for having the most cops pulling over speeders. Wish they would use the money from all those fines to put in a few more lanes so traffic could move better. Indiana and Illinois get the awards for most road construction while still having the worst roads I drove upon. Kansas ... I loved driving there. My husband was bored with the landscape, but I loved it and the open highway in front of me. Colorado had the best police cars. Lots of big suvs and hot looking chargers. And who can mind driving when you can see all those mountains in front of you.

So, just a little detour from my usual talk about writing. What do you think of our country's byways and highways? Any state you love driving in or hate driving in? Agree with my assessments or do you have a different opinion?

To Do Lists

Like many of my blogger friends, I've eased back a bit over the summer months. With my daughter home from college, I've spent lots of time with her. I've been blogging only Mondays and Wednesdays for most of the summer. Starting next week, I'm going back to blogging three times per week again.

I'm going to catch up on my Goodreads book lists and write some reviews. I'm going to tackle some more of that TBR pile. On a side burner is a start of a plan for promotion for First Dragon which has a November release date as of now.

And seriously, I have a lot of pictures on the new camera I got for Christmas and I'm going to start using some of those photos on my blog. I'll probably do some clean up and rearranging of my writing space. I always do that at least twice per year.

I'll also be diving back into The Marine's Heiress, hopefully getting the second draft done within six weeks. After that I have the first draft of the second book in The Morbunda Saga waiting on the shelf. War Dragon will pick up where First Dragon left off. It's great to have plans.

Do you do less blogging in the summer or keep the same routine year round? Do you keep your Goodreads current or do you play catch up with it about once a month like I do? Do you often rearrange your creative space, be it a corner of a room or an entire room that's all yours?

Take a Walk

Did you all start singing when you read the title? Yes, a little Passion Pit playing on the iPod while I write this post. But I'm not talking about romance, I'm talking about writing.

Finally, finally, I finished the first draft of The Marine's Heiress last Friday. I wanted to finish the book by the end of June but it took longer than I thought and was actually a bit longer, coming in at 85K before edits. There's lots to be cut, some added, some changed but that first draft is done. I'm eager to get onto the second draft, but first I'm going to take a walk. Well, actually, a long ride. I'm going to Colorado to visit my son in Colorado Springs. I'll be away from my writing for an entire week. All told, it will be about ten days until I get back to The Marine's Heiress. Long enough to think through the things I need to change and fix. Let it all percolate for a little bit.

How long do set aside a manuscript or story before you work on the second draft? Or do you dive right in? How long does it take you to do that second draft compared to the first? Do you like Passion Pit?

Clothing Optional

As I near the finish of the first, very rough, draft of The Marine's Heiress(working title) I'm starting of all the things I need to fix in the second draft. Tons and tons of things as usual but there is one constant I have to work on in the second draft of every novel I've ever written.

When I write, I have a clear picture in my mind of what my characters look like and even what they're wearing. But I'm very bad about getting that down in print. I tend to skip over descriptions of attire when I read books. As I sit here writing this in my flannel shorts and baggy tee shirt, I admit I'm not much of a fashion judge. On the other hand, a character's attire shows something about that character's personality just like my new running shoes do about me. And sometimes, because even my romance novels have a lot of action in them, what the characters are wearing can determine their movements. Someday, I'm going to write a novel where they all wear tee shirts and jeans with some great running shoes and never dress up into something fancier.

On a side note, I missed the cover reveal for Cloaked in Fur for Monday. TF Walsh's paranormal romance will be available on August 5th. Isn't that a great cover.

Do you spend a lot of attention to the attire of your characters when you write? Do you find it distracting when the attire is described in a lot of detail or do you want more than you get? What your favorite attire for when you're writing?