by Charlene Teglia | Mar 16, 2006 | Uncategorized
First, Traditional Romance Lovers Alert! The first sighting of Samhain print books at Borders in Virginia Beach has been reported. In the first batch from Samhain is a book called Forever Again, a traditional romance that no fan who loves to go back to the basics will want to miss. Go! Buy! Read! And in about two months latch onto Discovering Dani by N.J. Walters for another traditional fix from Samhain. (If you don’t want to wait two months you can get the ebook now.)
Where to start: Following the discussion from Jordan’s blog about whether you should begin your career at Harlequin. It all depends on your goals and how you write, really. The thing about H/S, you really can build a name and a readership there but not if you only sell one book to one line. So the big question I would ask is, can you see yourself continuing to write books like that for at least the near future, say five years, at a rate of two or more a year? Because you can’t just put out one or two category books and build a name. Think beyond the current project to the next book, the next ten books and ask yourself where you’re going to find the right fit.
You only have to look at my bookshelf to know that I would’ve been a disaster at H/S. Futuristic, time-travel, paranormal, contemporary, I’m all over the map not just in subgenre but in length. For future publishing matches I look not just at who will accept my subgenres, but my preference for mixing up length. Brava, for instance, publishes six packs at short length, 3 or single author anthologies at novella length and single title in a variety of subgenres. Goes without saying that my current publishers allow me this flexibility and I value that.
And finally, some people in that discussion are wondering why some authors aren’t more excited about the new dark paranormal category line. I’ll just date myself and say that I’ve been around long enough to remember Silhouette Shadows. Which came and went so fast it made my head spin. So I’m watching this one cautiously. I hope it takes off and does well.
CAPAs; they’re being announced today throughout the day. Watch the CAPA page at The Romance Studio for news! I’ve got my fingers crossed for Ellora’s Cavemen Legendary Tails II. 🙂
by Charlene Teglia | Mar 15, 2006 | Uncategorized
I never entered contests before I sold. They’re expensive and time-consuming and I always figured my money was better spent submitting to people who could buy the book. Now that I qualify for published contests, I’m not entering them, either.
I didn’t enter the EPPIEs or the Rita. I actually intended to enter the PRISM, but I wasn’t able to get my entry together in time. There’s a lot of work and expense involved in getting a contrest entry put together and sent in along with the contest fee, and I have to wonder how well my book would have done if I’d managed to get it done on time anyway. Because instead of entering it in the futuristic category I would have had to put it in erotica (which technically it isn’t; Romantica and erotica are not the same) and I don’t think it would have done as well.
Putting all the erotic books together means that even if I’d written the best futuristic romance of the year, somebody else could have written a better paranormal or fantasy and since they’re all lumped together in that one category, only one could win. Even though separately several of the erotic romance books might have won if they’d been entered in the different categories. Also, I think if you put a short novel up against a meatier, single title length novel, it’s not going to compare well. Lumping together doesn’t seem to work for genre or length.
So I see the objection to an erotic romance category for the Rita. Not only because books of different subgenres and lengths would get lumped together, actually decreasing the number of potential winners if they’d been entered in the correct subgenre, but because frankly there are a lot of us writing Romantica and erotic romance that are, well, not what you’d expect. There’s this idea that all erotic romance includes anal sex scenes, menages, same sex encounters, hardcore kink of various kinds and it just ain’t so. Some of us are very vanilla. Hot vanilla, but if you start scoring us on sex instead of story, I think authors like myself and Shelby Reed and Shannon Stacy would lose by default, because a judge would expect an erotic romance to be wilder stuff.
Still not sure contests as they currently exist are much use anyway; Diana P. covered the problems in the Rita pretty thoroughly recently. I think Reviewer’s Choice awards mean a lot, but that’s a whole different animal. From a reader perspective, I’m not sure they care. If a book wins an award, is a reader more likely to go seek it out? Or does it just look good on the author’s resume? I love awards, I love winning them and being nominated for them, but I don’t know how much that means to readers. Thoughts?
by Charlene Teglia | Mar 14, 2006 | Uncategorized
I received my prize from PBW’s giveaway, Lover Eternal. But wait, there’s more! I also got…drum roll…an ARC of Dark Need! Yes, you may weep, wail, and gnash your teeth in envy. I would.
Still, there’s something to brighten the darkness in your ARCless life because PBW also included a surprise copy of Shadow Touch, which I already bought and read and can personally testify is a first-class kick-@$$ book. Haven’t read Tiger Eye yet? Don’t worry, it stands alone very well, although there are a couple of things that would probably be appreciated more if you’ve read the previous book.
So, share in my good fortune. Post a comment to get your name in the drawing for this free-to-good-home copy of Shadow Touch! I’ll do the drawing and announce the winner tomorrow morning.
by Charlene Teglia | Mar 14, 2006 | Uncategorized
For this amazing review of The Gripping Beast. Reviewer Serena gives it four and a half out of five pieces of hacksilver (you have to read the story for that one) and says:
“Charlene Teglia has done a masterful job of combining romance and the fantasy of time travel. The backdrops like the lynx fur and the descriptions of the ship made the story real. I was thrilled with her descriptive style. Her characters are very true to both themselves and their time periods and yet mesh very well…The secondary characters of Dane and Harold were gorgeous and I do hope that we will be able to read more of them. Also introduced were the band members from the Sirens, again an interesting sidebar that could be a series of fascinating stories. I do hope that she will follow up on the lives of the players in this novel.”
Gotta grin. And I hope the rest of the stories will be fascinating. I’ll do my best.
By the way, Miss Lonely Hearts is a related book but more of a spinoff than a true part of the series. It introduces another of the Sirens, though.
by Charlene Teglia | Mar 13, 2006 | Uncategorized
Still working on MLH. Still lots to fix. I’ve been spending a lot of time going over the research in the last couple of weeks. I think it’s really important to get details right, even though I may take a few creative liberties. I want it to have that sense of reality, that you are there.
I love, love, love the setting with a mad passion so I really want to convey that. Why I love it, why I think it’s an amazing place. Without bogging down in details and letting setting overtake the story, which I was guilty of in one scene in Love and Rockets and learned to slash and burn. That was quite a lesson, how to rein in the elements that ran wild while preserving the scene and putting impact where it belonged. Giving emphasis to what was really important. Revision, it is our friend.
Contemporaries are tough in a lot of ways, Not just because they can seem so easily dated but because it’s so easy for somebody to know the setting and it will either ring true for them or ruin the story for them. But people don’t see the same place with the same eyes or experience it in the same way. So it’s tough. I’m paying attention to facts and details but also I want to just focus on how I see it, my worldview, because while it won’t be like anybody else’s worldview it can still ring true.
Ray Bradbury has written about this; he loved his hometown and it was beautiful to him. Other people familiar with it couldn’t believe he was writing about the same place. It was beautiful to him, ugly to them. But he writes with conviction because he’s true to his vision of things.
Back to revision. Part of the job is finding all the notes that don’t ring true and rewriting them until the story is in harmony. So. I’m in Alaska, searching for harmony while the story avalanches over me.
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