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Friday, June 7, 2013
Two Down, 28 To Go!
And the second book is out!
Yup, Red Sean’s Revenge is available! At the same time, the
kindle version of A Caribbean Spell is on sale for 99 cents and the print is up
on Amazon!
Gods, I’ve been busy. Set up some giveaway on Goodreads, and
one on FreeBookFridays… And I’m still pushing to get the print version of The
Pirate Circus out before the end of the month…
And contracting with my cover artist to work on the cover
for book number three, The French Gambit. Doing first round edits on The French
Gambit and pre-first round edits on book four, which I’ve decided to call Magic’s
Hostage.
And somewhere in here, I want to start working on my Aliens
Just Want Cats story…
You know, life was simpler when I had an agent and let her
do all the work. Having editors give me assignments. A cover questionnaire…yet…this
doing it myself is fun. I like having the final say on things. I like knowing
whatever is out there is on me. I don’t like trying to figure out how to
promote, what to spend money on, what to not spend money on.
Sometimes I’m wrong, sometimes I’m right. I have a feeling I’ll
know in a few years.
Meanwhile…Red Sean! Dastardly man, evil to the core. No redeeming
features. He lives for vengeance, born to it. He thrives on the blood of his
victims painting the deck red. Oh, yeah. This guy is bad. And man, does he
bring darkness to the world of Jake and Miranda.
But you know what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger. It also helps you see what is right in front of you…
This was the second full length book I wrote and I broke so
many rules in it. Because I didn’t know there were rules. Life was easier when
I didn’t know the rules. Writing rules are a PITA. I’m not talking about the
grammarly things, or spelling things right or using the right sort of dialogue
tags.
I’m talking about the other rules. Internal conflict. Outside
conflict. Don’t kill the dog. Don’t go too far with what you do to your heroes.
The black moment…the first act, the second, the third, the HEA… I reveled in
breaking rules…ah, the days of running free and unfettered by the rules, some
written, some simply understood…
Of all the rules,
what would you love to break?
Labels:
Maureen O. Betita,
Red Sean's Revenge
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27 comments:
Geniuses make their own rules!
Red Sean sounds like a seriously nasty piece of work .... I fear for Miranda's well-being.
I know that readers normally have to take what author's dish out but if Miranda is seriously harmed I might be tempted to do a little editing .... just for my personal enjoyment. Yep, I might break the rules and re-write sections I disapprove of.
Guess that makes me a genius! LOL
Arg! Wrote a great comment and my phone ate it. Will try to recreate.
Since I'm still learning the rules I'm not sure what I want to break yet. I did adore Kristan Higgans' The Next Best Thing where a widow falls in love with late husbands brother. Has to be a rule broken there somewhat. But it worked so well. Love that book!
I did have a heroine leave her fiance for his brother. Pretty sure there's a rule against that somewhere. (And mine didn't wait until bro #1 was dead.)
I don't pay much attention to the rules anymore. Not that I will be killing an animal EVER, but you have to tell the story as it comes. I worried my book wasn't hot enough or didn't have enough sex or didn't have any explosions.
But readers haven't complained about any of those things. If I've learned anything, it's to give the readers a little credit. They really do just want a good story. They could care less about these rules.
You are definitely like Barbossa in the "They're more like guidelines" philosophy.
My main broken rule is I always seem to try to create a hero out of the unconventional or unlikable. A married man. The Devil. Biblical characters used in modern time. A cowboy who isn't actually a cowboy. I mean, those are the books I usually finish or choose to write on.
I did have more conventional heroes, like Scottish warriors, a bartending tycoon, boy next door, a doctor...but those books never make it past chapter 3 for me. Yet. I'm still hopeful of course, I may turn over a new leaf for having a more conventional hero, though I imagine in return I'll make the heroine a complete PITA to like.
We don't write what we know; we write what we are. If you want to make it a challenge for someone to like you--like I usually seem to like to do--then you create characters a bit like you, in some way.
Q - I can't promise that you won't be tempted to rewrite my prose. But if you stick with it, there is a rational behind everything I do! Hang in there with me, Q!
Sabrina, I tend to find everything Higgins writes as enjoyable. So perhaps the trick is to break rules and make them enjoyable? Though I break rules in Red Sean that really aren't enjoyable...
Well, when I wrote it I didn't know there were rules! And since I'm still writing fringy type romance, I'm not sure the official rules of romance cover my tomes...
Yeah, that will work!
Terri, I don't think the rules you broke were really smashed, just...bent and twisted to your will...
Readers like to see things bent.
I sorta broke some biggies in Red Sean...
But you know, sometimes the dog has to die, the heroine has to face desperate times and the hero gets to enact black vengeance. I think I broke some time travel ones in there, too...
Oh, well!
Yeah, Hels, we both like to turn convention on it's side. You seek to redeem the nonredeemable, I look to turn the despicable into just another plot point.
I mean, look at the assassin, she took a family of traditional killers and made us love them!
You know, Mo, you'll probably get in more trouble for breaking time-travel rules than any of the other ones. *LOL* The other things--sure, that can be accepted by a reader--but not being consistent with the rules you set for your magical world? You can get into trouble.
Sci-fi/Fantasy people are just as fanatical about the rules being right for their stories as historical romance readers are fanatical about theirs...even though yes, it's just stories.
Yeah, I know...but screw 'em. I have rules, I just made them up as I went along and changed them as I needed to. And I rationalized it all...
I'm going to hell, aren't I?
Yep. Writer hell. Where there's no internet, dull pencils, and hateful reviewers with nothing nice to say.
My question would be, if you read a series and the author kept changing the rules to suit her needs, would you be irritated? If the answer is no, then you're good.
If the answer is yes...
Well, it all makes sense to me...it's not like I have them break rules and not explain. I'm bringing in a big rule guy in book ... uh ... four, who is gonna raise some hell about how everyone has been breaking the rules.
But they are going to win him over to why the rules need to be rewritten...
Pirate!
What I mean is if you say the ship isn't magical, that it can't pick up and go from point A to point B magically, then you have to stick to that. That's a world rule you created.
If in book 3 the boat has a beam me up button and is hopping around the Caribbean like Dumbledore, then you broke your own rule.
Those are the only real rules you need to follow.
No, no buttons...
Did Dumbledore have a button?
No transporters, either.
Then you're good. And no, Dumbledore did not have a button, but neither would your ship have a wand.
It's really a matter of being consistent to your own rules inside the story. Screw everything else.
Well...it's all in how you define a wand...
Out of the gutter! I'm climbing out of the gutter!
Don't you put Dumbledore in the gutter! *LOL*
I think Terri was alluding to "apparating" which is how the wizards travel; however, it was part of the world for the first chapter when Dumbledore shows up. It's explained later, possible a book or so later, but it's always been there.
So you can "introduce" something new as long as you can prove it's always been there.
I wasn't hauling Dumbledore into the gutter... It was Terri and the use of the word wand...
No wands in my world!
Well, none that aren't at the gutter level...
Don't be throwing me under the ship. You went there all on your own, girlfriend.
You said it first!
I didn't say, "Your ship doesn't have a dick...oh...I mean wand."
When I take a gutter shot, I claim it. I ain't claiming this one!
You say tomato, I saw tomahto...
I agree with Terri. As long as your consistent, then you're fine. I've read series where the author turned back from the world she set up. It drags me out. So, as long as you don't do that, I think you're fine. :)
As to writing rules, it depends. I break some pretty regularly. Adverbs? You know what, sometimes adverbs are fine. Take that. But other things I think aren't rules as much as definitions. As in, different acts, rising and falling actions, stuff like that, those are definitions of story parts. Whether your story has them or not.... You know what I mean?
Yeah, but you know the whole idea of what you can or can't do... I love doing what you can't do...
I think we need to make a distinction here. There are things it is recommended that you not do, but in truth, you can do anything you want.
What you must be prepared for, if you go against enough of the traditional recommendations, is for readers NOT to read your stuff. These rules, as they are often misnames, came about for a reason. Some are silly (adverbs!) but some are real and exist because readers truly don't appreciate them.
So you can do what you want, and if you do it well enough, there will never be a problem. But if you cross a line that's been drawn pretty clearly for a long time, just be prepared to for the push back.
Oh yeah, rules/guidelines/accepted things to do. I know I'm walking the edge. But the rules/guidelines/accepted things to do differ from genre to genre and when you cross genres...you can see the pitfalls. When I didn't know about these differences and just wrote, I was free-er.
I know I'm swimming upstream at times, I can only hope the readers will have faith and hang in long enough to see there is a point, to everything I do.
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