Can you believe we made it to Friday? It’s been a long and crazy week. But here we are, Friday again…
So, as many of you know, I plan my books ahead of time. It just keeps me from going crazy. I have got a new series coming out in 2021 and there will be five books. My plan is to only publish those five, which is something I haven’t done in a while, publish that few books. But, this will be a longer more detailed series than I’ve ever written.
You may be asking, what is different about this new series. Well, it’s a Christian Suspense Romance series. I’m not ready to give you a look at the completed covers, which are amazing. I have the best cover designer. And I’m not ready to give you the titles or the series name. So, what is the post giving you a sneak peek of? Glad you asked…
I have two more books left in the schedule for 2020. One of them will actually come out in January, but it’s from my 2020 schedule. This has been an unusual year, and we’ll leave it at that. But it did a lot to my writing schedule that I had no control over.
Tomorrow is release day for Bay Street, the last book in the Wishful Harbor Series. And the first week of December will be the release of Wine, wedding, and The Cowboy, the last book in the Tangled Vines Series. Then last, but certainly not least, in January will be the release of Double Take At Mistletoe Ranch, the last book in my bestselling Mistletoe Ranch Series. That’s a lot of series to close out, but with the new series coming out, I needed some closure.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be releasing a little bit about each of the five new books coming out in 2021. Let’s just say, I’m stepping out of my comfort zone with these. It will take a lot out of me, mentally. But I’m so excited about it. This series has been coming to me for a couple of years, but I just wasn’t ready to do it. Now I am. So keep watching for exciting news to come.
As always, Good Writing and May God Bless You…
I’ll leave you will the last three covers of this writing year!
Releases November 7thReleases December 4thReleases January, 29, 2021
How many of you hasn’t heard the old saying, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’? Yep, I thought so. Here in Georgia, apples are all the rave at the moment. Tis the season I always say.
It’s the same with writing. But it would say, ‘Writing every day keeps the writer’s block away’. I do believe this is true. A couple of days lately, I’ve been so busy with other things, that I didn’t get to write. I know, that’s horrible, but true. By the time I went to bed on those days, my head was so filled with writing that I couldn’t sleep, so back to writing every day.
Do you write everyday? Even if it’s just a line or two, it helps to keep your writer brain from becoming over full. As I’ve said before, I have a schedule and if I miss a day, well, it causes a schedule jam. I’m in the middle of that jam right now. When you schedule so many words a day, then miss one, well, you get the picture.
How do you keep your writer brain happy?
As always, good writing and May God Bless You..
Just to give you a snippet of my current wip, here’s a few lines from Wine, Wedding, & The Cowboy…
Abri stood there looking at her best friend. She couldn’t do it, could she? Would she find someone in less than a month? No, she couldn’t. Taking a deep breath, she looked him straight in the eye and straightened her shoulders. “Baron, we have to get married.” There, she’d said it. Although from the look on Baron’s face, she hadn’t handled it very well. Baron sat forward, his eyes wide with surprise. “This is so sudden. I don’t know what to say.” Then he laughed. “Have you been testing the new wine again?” “No, I’m serious Baron.” Abri dropped into the chair across from him. “Ok, what do you mean you’re serious?” Baron saw the look in her eyes and knew she wasn’t joking. But what on earth could have her asking him to marry her. Abri clasped her hands together as she looked down at her lap. “My father, being the old fashioned man he is, says that I have to be married before my 25th birthday in order to inherit Tuscan Rose Farms.” “What? When did this come about?” Baron bunched his brows together. He knew that this farm and vineyard was her heart. “If you’d showed up for Thanksgiving dinner as you were supposed to, then you’d know.” Abri shot him a withering look. “You know that I don’t like eating at the main house. It’s no secret that your father doesn’t care that much for me. Besides, I ate with the guys down at the mess hall. We had the best fried turkey and the dressing, well, what can I say, it was amazing.” He began to relay all of the menu, knowing that Abri was beginning to fume, but he loved it when she got angry. There was this light that came into her face. She was beautiful, but when she got angry, wow. “Baron! I don’t need a play by play of what you ate for lunch. All I need is for you to say you’ll marry me and we’ll be good.” “I can’t marry you. What would people say?” Baron was giving her a hard time and it paid off. The light came into her face and he was awestruck. “You have to. I don’t have any other takers. You know yourself I haven’t dated anyone in months. And where would I find someone to marry on this short of notice. Oh, and I already told my father and cousin that we were engaged, well, that you’d asked and I had yet to answer.” “What? Abri!” Baron stood up, running his fingers through his blond hair. “I know! Just listen. I have a plan.” Baron rolled his eyes. “Abri, I’ve been a part of your plans before. They never work out as you see them. This will be a disaster and both of us will be homeless when the dust settles.” He held his hands in the air, then growled in response to the thought of the disaster it would be. “No, wait. We can have a quick wedding, with a fake minister and fake license. Once the deed is done, we can get a divorce later. If I meet someone, then we’ll have a fake divorce.” Abri shrugged her shoulders. Baron sat back down, the air leaving his lungs in a long sigh. “Abri, do you realize what you’re asking?” “Yes, I know it’s a huge favor, but I can’t lose my birthright because of an old fashioned man with old world ideas. Please say you’ll marry me, at least for a short time. You’re my best friend, it can’t be that big of a deal. Well, maybe it’s a big deal, but it will be fake.” Abri sat forward in the chair and smiled at him, batting her lashes. “Abri, I need to think about this.” Baron said, running his hand over his face. He’d die a slow death if he was married to her, fake or real. She was everything to him, but if he married her, it would be the real deal. It would be for love, not for a vineyard.
How do you explain it to someone that’s never written or published anything? In three words, DESPAIR…HOPE…PUBLISH. It’s the three stages that most writers go through. And sometimes they repeat themselves as though on a reel.
Despair – The moment you’re so excited about getting the words on paper, but then you hit a wall. We all do at some point in the writing process. It’s like a given that the wall will show up and sometimes you hit it so hard that you worry about a concussion. Then despair can hit again when you put your work out there and get rejected at every turn. Or sales don’t seem to do as well as you’d hoped.
Hope – That moment when the idea comes into your head. You have the hope of a book that will astound the world. Also, the feeling you get after you bust through the wall of despair. And then again when you send your work to a prospective publisher and you wait. It’s the hope that keeps you moving forward.
Publish – Ahhhhh…. That moment when you hit the publish button and all is good with the world, then all three emotions run rampant. But there’s a relief in publishing your work. And if you’re luck enough to get an amazing publishing contract with a big publisher, then true relief takes over.
It’s amazing the emotions that run through your mind as you start, work on and finish your manuscript. So, let them run, but never let them run you off from your dream.
It’s hard to believe that I’m finishing the last book of the Wishful Harbor Series. I’ve enjoyed every moment of writing this series. The characters will always hold a special place in my heart. And the town of Wishful Harbor will draw me in and send me on a journey where the scent of sea air and the sound of sea gulls overhead fill the air.
Saying goodbye to anything isn’t easy. In life, there’s so many things we have to say goodbye to. But with a book series, even though the series has come to a close, the books will be there to read over and over. The memories will be there too.
Over the years of my writing career, I’ve said goodbye to many series. The Five Oaks Ranch Series is still one of my bestselling series and it continues to gain momentum. I’ve had so many people write to me about adding more books to that series. Maybe one day, but for now, it’s just a dream…
In January I’ll publish the last Mistletoe Ranch book. And I just published the last book from The Journal Series. With each new series, there has to be an end. New things need to start and life goes on. But the memories will forever be there along with the laughter, tears and thought that went into each word.
Starting in 2021 I’ll be starting a whole new series, one that will pull everything out of me. I’m so excited about it. I’ve not spoken much about it, but in the coming weeks, I’ll post some snippets and info on it. But for now, let’s just say, 2021 will be filled with mystery, intrigue, and romance.
For now, I’ll go back to my writing and the cup of coffee that’s growing cool. But I’ll ask one question, how do you handle saying goodbye?
Monday! After a crazy busy weekend, all I wanted was a Pumpkin Spice Latte, but the Espresso machine was down at the coffee shop, so I had to get a Pumpkin Spice Coffee. Yep, not what I needed this Monday morning. So, pushing through the tired fog.
Rough draft… It’s the nemesis of a writer. How many rough drafts do you go through? Me? Several. The first round of writing on my manuscript is usually unreadable. My editor laughs when she gets one of my rough drafts. Often there is a question posed to me of ‘what the heck did you mean by that sentence?’ It actually makes me giggle when I go back in to see what she’s talking about.
But, are rough drafts essential when writing? No… Maybe… Yes! It gives you a chance to go back over what you’ve written. The rough draft also gives you the freedom to get the words on the paper. That’s why it’s called a rough draft. It’s the flow straight from your brain. There is no rhyme or reason to that first draft, it’s just pure writing at it’s roughest. I love getting that raw first draft on paper. There’s such a sense of freedom.
So, posing the above question again, how many drafts do you go through to get to the finished product?
As always, good writing and May God Bless You…
Check out my newest release, Time Love – Marina’s Story… It’s on sale for a limited time only!
Alright ladies, who can raise their hand on this one? If you’re already at that age where your brain is fuzzy at best, then you’re aware of the effects it has on your writing. Some days my mind just doesn’t want to function, which can cause quite a disturbance in my daily word count. What to do?
For me, I caffeine up and take something naturally, which does help, but there are days when none of this makes a difference. I feel sluggish, irritable and just uninterested. That makes me crazy since writing is my happy place.
I’ve been reading a lot lately on how to combat this. One of the things is I make sure that I write everyday, even through the fuzzy edged mind. My editor laughs sometimes when she gets the first draft because, well, the menopause brain makes me stumble over my words, quite literally. Some of my words get ahead of themselves, but thank goodness she understands me, so she plows through it.
Another thing that has helped is a painting app on my phone. When the fuzziness starts creeping in, I pull out my phone and begin to paint. It’s paint by numbers and very relaxing. I’ve also found that while I’m painting, I can work through plots and scenes in my head. So, this is helping.
How many of you have these issues? Let’s work through them together and get to the next stage in our lives. Yes, I’m proud to be almost 52. My life has been an amazing adventure and I know this season will be another adventure that I will laugh at when I get past it. But for now, I’ll just do everything in my power to keep up my work.
As always, May God Bless You…
And while you’re working through it, give Marina a read. It’s a short story to finish out my The Journal Series.
Hit a wall with your current project? At a loss for words, literally? Yep, I’ve been there and other writers have too. The words stop… The creative juices reach a dam and stop… It’s like your internal hard drive crashes…
Push past that wall…
Everyone hits a wall, it’s only human. It’s how you react to that sudden wall standing in front of you that counts. So, here’s a couple of things I do when that wall jumps out and blocks my path.
1: Step back… Yes, step back. If you’re at a wall, then you need to clear your head, and redirect back to the project. When this happens to me, I’ll put that project aside and bring out an upcoming project to outline or even create some ads to inspire me.
2: Go back and read from the beginning of the project. Reintroduce yourself to the characters… Fall back in love with the story…
3: Don’t give up! Even though it seems like you’ve lost the battle, you haven’t. You’ve hit a wall that all writers hit. Push past it! Don’t let it control you. You’ve got this.
Now, get to writing and know that there will be obstacles, but you have the power to push through them. You’re a writer and that’s what you do. So write!
As always, good writing and May God Bless You…
P.S.: Don’t forget that Marina’s Story is coming out on Saturday.
Wow! We made it people, we’re halfway to the weekend… I have question and it’s one that’s been asked of me, plus I’ve asked it myself. What is the genre you write in?
It’s like sitting down to watch a movie. You have to choose what you want to watch. If you love Rom Com’s, then you’re not likely to choose a Horror Flick. Same with books, people are specific when they look for a book.
So, you’re probably saying, you write romance, that’s easy. But, when you put your book on a publishing site, it’s not that easy. Ok, the main genre is romance for me, but there are many styles of romance. It’s endless and sometimes gives me a headache. How do you break it down?
For example, when putting a book on Amazon for instance, you have to list 2 categories and then 7 keywords. Yikes! And if you get it wrong, you won’t explode, but your sales may not either. If you get it right, you nail it!
Now, the categories for romance are long and sort of specific. Yes, I know that I don’t write Dystopian Romance. To be honest, I had to look up Dystopian, just to clarify. And no, I don’t write Erotic Romance. But, does my book fall into Contemporary, New Adult, General, Comedy, Western, etc… The list goes on.
My best advice on this subject is to go to writers that write like you. See where they have their books at and always, always, look at the bestsellers in that style. Because if they aren’t bestsellers, then they may be doing the same thing as you, trying to wrap their head around it.
Oh, and don’t forget the keywords. This is something that I change up often and I mean often. Of course, sometimes Amazon will put your book in other keywords or categories, like if your book is short, it could be listed under Kindle Read under 2 hours. Do your research!!! Let me repeat that so that all of those in the back heard me, DO YOUR RESEARCH!!! Don’t you hate shouty capitals. Well, I hope I got your attention.
Go now and look at the book that’s not selling as well as it should. No, really, go now. You can’t afford for your book to be sitting in the wrong spot. It’s like a cook book that’s put under historical romance. Wrong! So get to it. And let me know how it goes. Make sure that you keep a spreadsheet on sales before you make the change, then after. See if it works and if you haven’t see a change in a couple of weeks, tweak it.
It’s Tuesday morning and I’m cozying up with my coffee cup. Morning’s are so hard, but after a couple more cups of coffee, I’ll have this thing in hand…
Ok, so I promised part 2 of my outline process would be about structure. And I always do my best to live up to my promises…
Structure!
Outlining gets me through the writing progress, but as I stated in my last post, there needs to be structure, the bones to the writing.
Now, this is the way I structure my writing process. It works for me and I hope it works for you.
Start your book by introducing your main character. Don’t overdo the backstory, but let your reader know who the main character is all about, what they are looking for, or what they need to happen. Maybe it’s looking for Mr. Right or solving a mystery.
Then, of course, things can’t go exactly right with your character, that would be boring. So, something needs to happen that changes their course, maybe setting them up for an exciting change. Maybe it’s an obstacle that’s put in front of their goal.
At this point, the character will want to give up, but they press forward.
In the middle or somewhere near it, your character should be at their breaking point. Your reader should be asking, what will happen next? I call this the top of the hill.
As you start to let things happen that go right for the character, you need to toss in one last zinger. Your reader has started to feel like they know how it will end, but then…
Now, and only now do you let your character have victory. This is when they slay the dragon, win the love, or find the killer.
This is the closing out of your story. Your character marries their love, sees the killer put in prison, or whatever their turmoil was, ends and they see the rainbow, so to speak. Then they walk into the sunset, or fall off a cliff, if it’s a cliffhanger for the next book in the series…
Now, I now this was a very relaxed explanation, but that’s how I roll. I don’t get into fancy words, because that just confuses the situation. This is how I do it and it may or may not work for you. It works for me!
Good Tuesday morning! Let’s talk about reviews. Yes, I know, some say don’t read them. Some say read them. Me, I read them. But how do we react when we read them? Anger? Confusion? Laughter? Happy? Sad? There’s a lot of things that go through your head when you read reviews of your work. But I have a couple of things to discuss with you about them.
Make them work for you…
What am I talking about? Well, hear me out… Bad reviews can go two ways, one being they are just nasty and have no meaning for your writing, or two, they are well thought out reviews that can tell you something about the work.
Let’s talk about some ways to use bad reviews to make your work better. Here goes:
1: There are misspelled words and grammatical errors!
We know that it doesn’t matter how many times your work is edited and even if it’s by the best editor out there, mistakes can be missed. I’ve read some of the bestsellers out there that have some mistakes that weren’t caught. SO, use that bad review as a reason to read through your work just one more time with a critical eye.
Now, do remember, some people are not experts and what they think is a grammatical error, really isn’t. But, I still go back over my work, just in case I missed something, or my editor did. It’s worth the effort in the end. Especially if you get several reviews about the same problem.
2: The book was left on a cliffhanger!
Ok, this one shocked me the first time I read it. When I read a book that’s part of a series, most of the time I expect a cliffhanger to get me to read the next one. Think about a series on television. They always leave you at the end of the season wondering what the heck just happened and what will happen next. The reason I put this one in my post is because if you get this and it bothers you, then insert a sentence in your description that says, ‘This book ends on a cliffhanger’. That way you don’t have to worry about a reader not understanding that it’s a series and can end on a cliffhanger.
3: The characters were not fleshed out…
If you get this one, maybe look back at your work and see if you never described your main characters. I know that as a reader, I love to be able to picture the characters in my mind. I’ve received this type of review before and realized that I was so into writing the story, I never fleshed my character out. Yep, that was a facepalm moment for me. Go ahead and add a little description, because as a writer, you know in your mind that you have a picture in your mind of the character.
4: The book was too short… or This book was too long…
Now this one took me by surprise. But yes, reviewers have opinions on the length of your book. There are those that don’t like them too long and those that don’t like them too short. My thoughts on this are, input in your description, at the end, ‘This is a novella’ or ‘This is a full-length book’. Maybe that little key point will stop some of those lower star reviews.
5: The story doesn’t flow well…
Now this can be a problem if your story doesn’t flow well. My suggestion is to read the manuscript out loud and don’t do it as the writer, do it as a reader. Meaning, in your mind, you’re the reader wanting to be entertained by the story. Believe me, I do this with my books before I publish them and its eye opening. Sometimes I wonder what on earth was I thinking…
Now there are many more aspects of reviews to look at. Also look at the good ones. This keeps you motivated and let’s you know what your dedicated readers loved. Of course, there will always be those that give a bad review just to do it. I’ve had those.
If you do have a review that’s particularly nasty and doesn’t match your book, report it to the distributor whether it be Amazon, Barnes and Noble or iTunes. I had one that mentioned characters that weren’t even in my book. I reported it to Amazon and the review disappeared. But I had one that didn’t represent my book and they didn’t take it down.
The moral of the blog is this, use even the bad reviews for good. Let them roll off your back and move forward. Now, if you get only bad reviews, then I would definitely take another look at the work. But hey, smile and keep writing. A writer has to have a thick skin. Sometimes when I get my work back from my editor, I have to thicken my skin and push through it. So, keep up the good work!
Stephanie Hurt - Romance Author 