December Gephart

An oldie, but a goodie!!

I watched the Fast Five  this weekend, I love me some Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and Vin Diesel is a guilty pleasure of mine.  Paul Walker, um yes please and thank you.

All I wanted was a fun, fluffy movie with lots of manly men manning it up and being manly.  Hopefully someones shirt will come off.  Maybe some vroom vroom loud fast cars.  Perhaps there will be a love scene or two, some man doing manly stuff for the LURVE of his woman.  Mostly the hot men.

What I got was a weird Ocean’s 11, Italian Job type plot.  And for some reason, everyone else in the movie managed to stay sweat free, except Dwayne Johnson.  It was supposed to take place in Rio, and he was wearing swat gear, but c’mon!  Why was he LITERALLY dripping with sweat most of the time?  It was a very odd decision.  A little glisten on the head, the beefy forearms, etc… sure. Maybe one of those hot views from the back, muscles straining…  okay, so that part would be fine.  ENCOURAGED, in fact.

What Fast Five did?  I don’t support it, especially because everyone else looked cool as a cucumber.  Very odd.

Also I’d love to see him as the lead in a hard core Rom Com.  MAKE IT SO.

I can only blame myself.  Two of my favorite authors newer releases, and both of them I did not finish.

Which leads me to believe it’s ME, not them.  One book, well, both books, the “magical, amazing, hot and heavy” attraction between the Hero and heroine, I didn’t buy it.  It was sudden, automatic, and jarring.  I never felt the slow build, I never felt it was genuine. 

One of them, the happy ever after was wrapped up with a tidy bow about 2/3 of the way through the story.  There was one tiny issue that could be easily clarified with a good sit down discussion.  I put the book down, because I just didn’t care.  The other book I never understood what either character saw in the other.  I DID like the setting, but it never gripped me. 

I hate that.  And I hate when on Goodreads, nobody else seemed to see what I saw.  At all!  Everyone LOVED these books!  The book I’m reading now, there are some glaring errors, and yet I can forgive them becuase its a fun, campy romp, and it moves so fast I can ignore the errors.  Funny, huh?

My old computer, that is.  I love my iMac lappytop.  Love love love it.  Unfortunately I’m starting to see some signs that it’s time to upgrade.  Occasional stalls out, black screens, freezing up. 

As faithful a friend as it has been, I’ve worked it hard, and time is almost up. 

Which is actually a horrible, scary feeling.  I’ve triple backed up all my info, crossing my fingers that I don’t lose all my stuff before I have a chance to upgrade.  So!  Let me ask, what do you use for your home office computer?  Keep in mind, I work about 2 hours a night on this. 

 Art sheets!  Yes, I get a cover.  No, I don’t design it myself.  Also no – Fabio won’t be on it.  (I’m just curious when people ask about this.  Is the last romance novel these people have seen from the 80s or 90s?  Fabio’s heyday? Because boy howdy, have things changed.  There are romance novels on every book stand and grocery store check out kiosk, all over the world.  Nary a Fabio to be seen.  Why do they ask this?)

Next question I get a lot – How can you re-read your same story over and over.   Well… I’m not reading it for pleasure at this point.  I took off my “writer” hat, and put on my “editor” hat.  I’m picking apart sentence structure, I’m checking for overused words, I’m fact checking myself.  (She has brown eyes all the way through.  CHECK!)  I want this to be the absolute best version it possibly can be.  So no, it’s not FUN…  it’s work.  But it’s fun work.  Most of the time.  No, there is no magic in the story for me at this point. 

In fact, I’m hitting the point most writers hit when they are convinced the story is utter crap, why would anyone want to buy and/ or read this drivel.  Are these sentences even forming a story?  Is this story in ENGLISH?  Did I just make up words?  Do I have enough Best Friends who will buy it and pretend to love it to keep my ego afloat?  DO I have ANY FRIENDS?  Can my mom bribe them to read my book?  She makes cookies sometimes… can they be bribed with cookies? 

*ahem*  yes.  Onward.

I also use a Voice Speech program to “read” the story out loud to me.  It helps catch missed words or misused words.  I also can hear repetitive sentence structure easier this way.

Since I’ve announced my sale to Carina Press – a few questions have come up from friends and family about ‘the biz.’  I’m happy to fill in some answers, because it is a really interesting process.  I’m by no means an expert, I’m finding my way along, being guided by my editor. 

Timeline – I submitted this finished book January 9th.  I marked on my calendar 6 weeks and 12 weeks – usually the max time for this specific publisher to respond.  Times vary by publisher and agent.  If I didn’t hear a peep by that 12 week point, I would e-mail the publisher and make sure they received it.  (You would be shocked how often things don’t get there.  You really can’t beat yourself up about it, it happens.  But you have to wait the prescribed amount of time, and follow up through the proper channels.)

I heard back March 7th, so about 9 weeks.  When I submitted, this book was the VERY BEST I could make it.  I had worked on it steadily for about 12 months.  (keep in mind, I also had a baby in there.  Normally it doesn’t take me that long to finish a book.)  This is the 4th book I’ve written.  My critique partners and I had combed through the book from start to finish.  It had finaled in a few contests. 

So I get “the Call.”  Which I let go to voice mail, because I’m at my Day Job, selling donuts, and I don’t answer my phone to numbers I don’t recognize. Which means I get to listen to that joyful voice mail any time I want!  I got a follow up e-mail, an introduction to my editor, and a general timeline.

Right now I’m doing a first round of edits on the book.  My editor put together a 2 page “general” adjustments form, and then more in depth edits in the manuscript itself.  This is all done via e-mail, in MS Word, using the Track Changes option. 

Some of her notes were heart breaking like:  This chapter ending is weak.  Re-write stronger.   And she’s right, it was.  Some of the notes mention time lines, and how the reader needs more of a sense of urgency.  This forces me to take another look at the Ending, and re-write that entirely.  (That was a very rough day.)  From that adjustment, I went back through the entire book, and double check that things fall into place accordingly, and adjust things that don’t line up.

So… when you read a book, it has gone through multiple revisions.  This seems to surprise people.  If you’re a super ultra awesome writer who manages to hit it out of the park on the first draft, that’s pretty cool.  But even these authors have errors that need to be adjusted.  Grammar issues, word ticks, etc. 

A few people have asked me if they could read my “original” version.  Sure, I guess.  But why would you want to?  This new version is stronger.  I’m a better writer now than I was 3 months ago. 

Once this round of edits goes through, it does go through MORE edits!  Whee!!

I’ll continue this topic in my next blog post.

If you’ve already gone through this process and you are already published, you’ve probably dealt with these questions also.  Feel free to leave comments on what people ask you all the time!

You know you feel energized and perky when you eat right and exercise.  Yet when you’re stressed out and need to feel your best, you end up eating junk food and choosing couch time over gym time?  (Or in my case pillow time over treadmill time.)

And why is it when you need a solid nights sleep, the Naughty Little Dog decides to throw a vomit party at 2:30am.  And again at 3:30?

Why is that? 

My release date has been updated to November!  Just in time for the holidays.  Still no title, I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

Needless to say, all my deadlines are bumped up too. Exciting stuff.

Are you on www.goodreads.com?  If you are a reader, you should be!  And you can friend me! 

I enjoy seeing what other friends are reading right now, and there’s a nifty feature where you can compare your books to friends books, to see how much you have in common.  I have yet to find someone with more then 15% similarity, which I find very strange.  SO!  Come friend me, and lets see if I can find someone with similar book loves!

I think it’s laziness.  My brain is tired.  When I’m at the donut factory, I’m working all day with e-mails and orders and donuts and sprinkles.  Communicating with people.  Correction – TRYING to communicate with people.  It doesn’t always work…

When I get home, I plop myself in front of the computer for hours, telling a story.  I don’t belabour every single word at that point, I’m simply trying to get the story down before it escapes my brain. 

The only time words come into play are when I’m in edits, and I realize I’ve used the same word multiple times, or the word itself isn’t quite the tone I want to hit. Or I realize I can convey one full sentence with two quick words.   

So when it comes time to play Scrabble or Words with Friends, I shuffle, I re-arrange, I strategize.  And I end up playing JOE anyway, becuase I simply don’t care anymore.  I don’t relax when I play, I actually get stressed out .  My vocabulary isn’t that horrible, I just can’t demand it produce magic when given a specific set of letters.  Maybe I should quit, and go back to LoLDogs.