Spring Fling

Spring Fling There’s no better way to start spring than to get yourself involved in a brand new project this May. That’s why starting Friday, May 1st we will kick off the RWA/New York City’s First Annual Spring Fling. Some of you must be wondering, what is a Spring Fling? Now that I have your full attention, I will tell you about the challenge that I am setting forth to you. I challenge everyone to write 25,000 words for the month. A lot of us were fortunate enough to take part in NaNoWriMo last November. But due to family, jobs and time constraints, many weren’t able to achieve the 50,000 word goal. That’s what led me to our own version of NaNo. The purpose of doing this is to get everyone on a daily regimen of setting goals and writing every day. I am already psyched up and have a fragment of an idea ready to bloom. Now I’m sure some of you are already involved in a project and can’t put it on hold, however, all you need do is write 807 words (3 and a half pages) a day. Hey, I’m sure you write double that in emails and blogs during the course of the day…because I know I do. This is not meant to be a contest or a competition. It’s meant to keep our minds open and our ideas flowing. A lot of times we get into those ruts where we let life take over and put our writing on hold. That’s why I feel that implementing the Spring Fling will be beneficial for everybody. My goal is to use the Spring Fling as a tool to get me motivated and give me the jump start that I need. I’m hoping that everyone joins in. As I’ve said in the past, if you only write five hundred words during the month, then you are 500 words closer to completing the project. There will be updates and reminders as we get closer. Karen Cino www.karencino.com

Leanna Renee Hieber's Guerilla Do-It-Yourself Book Trailer Guide

(Lise Says: Leanna's most informative article on creating a book trailer follows. She will be checking back to answer anyone's questions, so please visit and comment and ask away!) Note: I have one (1) book trailer to my credit. I’m writing this article because people liked my trailer and asked me to talk about how I did it, so I’m sharing my thoughts. When you discover something else, new, better, cool, please share other ideas/resources with the chapter! For those who haven’t seen my book trailer, it’s right on my homepage: www.leannareneehieber.com/ Okay! Before you decide to do a book trailer, ask yourself this question: Is this worth the time, money and energy I’ll be putting into it? - I won’t do a book trailer for my smaller works/novellas, because I have to make a financial choice about what I’m going to promote. While I did the trailer myself, the trailer was not free, because I was sure to buy royalty-free images and buy royalty-free music so that I was released from copyright infringement. I believe I ended up spending somewhere around $130 dollars. Does a Book Trailer translate directly into a book sale? I’m not sure, but it gives people a sense of your work in a visual way, and the more ways you can market your book, the better. It opens up new venues, there are many author sites to use and upload them, they attract the more visual connoisseur and are far more eye-catching than mere text and coverblurbs. Step #1: Think of your book and write a short teaser script. Your book in one paragraph. Make it catchy. While you can certainly have someone narrate the story and record it, like in a movie trailer, what if someone is watching at work with the sound off? Having text makes sure people can see what you’re trying to sell, and if your recorder isn’t professional studio quality, you don’t want it to cheapen your trailer. Keep it simple, like a cover blurb cut in half. If there’s a ton of text, people will lose interest. A sentence or two at most per image. If right now you are already stuck and/or panicking, watch some movie trailers or book trailers on YouTube, you’ll get ideas. The text will determine your images and your images determine the $ spent, so do text first. Step #2: Open a movie-making program on your computer. - Windows has a basic “My Movie Maker” - Mac has “iMovie” - Apple has “Final Cut and Final Cut pro” movie making software (more advanced) - Surf the web for free media / movie making software, just don’t download from a site that looks sketchy. - You might also be able use a slide-show program, just be sure you can make it into a .wmv file or other uploadable media file (check and see what your options are under your “Save As”.) Get familiar with what your program does. I did mine using Windows “My Movie Maker”. It’s very user friendly, with a lot of click and drag options onto a ‘timeline’ of your movie. You can run through these programs’ tutorials. (Or if you’re hands-on like me, just tinker till you get it). Experiment with loading pictures and music files into the program and learning how to arrange them, time them, and caption them differently. It’s fun to tinker.  Step #3: Think about the “Look” of your book. What are the colors of your book? The sounds? I see my book much like how the Underworld franchise of movies created their “Look”, very dark and blue. So I chose to stick to blue and grey-scale, with a period quality, and very supernatural with a lot of dark shadows. Since my heroine has skin, hair and eyes as white as a ghost, I use pale images contrasted with dark. Black, white, and blue. I stuck within that color palette and made sure nothing looked too modern in my Victorian England (I had to crop the cars out of the bottom of my Tower Bridge photo – even still, it’s anachronistic because the bridge went up in 1894 and my book takes place in 1888 – but hey, this is Hollywood folks – just don’t make those mistakes in your book!) What are the colors that you think of for your hero, your heroine? These very important “look and feel” decisions on your setting and your storyline will be very important visceral clues for the audience. They’ll put your book immediately into a mental category due to these factors as well, so choose the basic ‘look and feel’ carefully, especially starting out. Think from your gut and most likely your choices will play like you want them too. Try to be consistent with your choices. Keep in mind that we all have distinct emotional and physical associations with color and sound, work with it rather than go against it. If you use photos of people for your characters, be aware that whatever images you use for the hero/heroine might work as a movie works in imprinting the image of those people onto your readers’ minds, so choose them carefully if you use them. Step #4: Start looking at image sites. Such as: http://stockphotography.lifetips.com/ http://www.stockphotography.com/ http://www.stockphotos.com/ http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php http://www.acclaimimages.com/ http://www.gettyimages.com Do some price checking before you buy, some sites have better deals/packages than others. You can’t legally just pull stuff from google images, if you do, you must ask permission from the photo credit or website. You can certainly use some of your own images, but for these I have many caveats. If you have a high-resolution digital camera, see if something works. Don’t cast your best friend as your heroine without asking her permission. Make sure a specific photo of your own won’t look out of place against the more vague and general mood-setting photos you might get from photo sites. Try and make sure the resolution and quality of the photo you use matches with the photos you buy. You will probably lose photo resolution when it uploads to sites, I notice this with YouTube. You want the visuals to look consistent in quality. Toying with your photos can give them fun moods and can work to even out the quality of the prints. Changing a photo from color to black and white might hide the fact that its lower resolution or quality. For those of us dealing with historical settings, the Sepia tone setting does wonders.  (Note – I won’t be talking about using actors, nor would I encourage the use of actors in a book trailer, and I am one, so you know I mean no disrespect. You’re not promoting a movie. While many top-selling authors do use actors, unless you’re a NYT bestseller and have a huge production budget - or unless you want to use the trailer as your experimental filmmaking project too – it’s not going to look professional unless you have access to top shelf production companies and talent) Editing: This means putting the pictures in order and timing how long they will stay on screen. This is putting text onto those pictures, or in between pictures. The exact process of step by step editing depends on the program you’re using, so I can’t really go into a whole ‘how to’ since there may be several different programs between everyone. But essentially the trick with editing is to create the proper timing and flow of each picture/segment. Keep your text simple and your images simple, so that you don’t have to sit on the images or text for a long time to figure them out. Make sure it’s time enough to read it, but that the images and text keep flowing. Your video will have a ‘timeline’ that grows the more you add, you can rearrange your images and text on this timeline, but remember shifting one thing affects the rest of the flow. Keep it under 2 minutes, otherwise sites like Facebook won’t upload it. You run the risk of losing viewers if it’s not succinct, and the file becomes too unwieldy if it’s long. Readers I spoke with said they won’t look at a book trailer over 2 minutes. Try to avoid ‘choppy’ looks or sequences – there are transition effects to smooth one image and/or text into the next one as well as fading in, easing the image in or out and fading out. These give some nice movement qualities to static images, so play with what your movie making program can do and see what looks good. Save a striking image for last but remember it’s a teaser, so leave people wanting more. Music? If you want to use music as an underscore, I find it effective. Be sure it’s something that fits with the mood of your book. Pick music that’s a nice compliment but not competition with the images. If the piece is too dynamic, it might be hard to sync the images to the rise and fall of the music, perhaps pick something a little more generally atmospheric to the world of your book. I used a Chopin waltz that I love a lot, and bought the download for a one-time fee to assure I would be free from copyright infringement. There are many royalty free music sites. A few: http://musicbakery.com/ http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/ http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/ http://www.shockwave-sound.com/ http://www.stockmusicstore.com Editing the music: Depending on your program, adding music can be easy using an MP3 file, I literally “clicked and dragged” the MP3 file from a folder and into my open movie-maker window. Again, the exact particulars will depend on program. Make sure your music syncs up with the pictures. If you have a really bleak image but really happy or upbeat music at that moment, it’ll look/sound odd, try to pick something that compliments the trajectory of your text and images. Where do you put the trailer once its done? On your website. On your blog. On MySpace. On Facebook. Anywhere you can upload video. On free author pages like Manic Readers www.manicreaders.com and trailer site Blazing Trailers: www.blazingtrailers.com/index.php. See if your publisher will put it on their website. YouTube is a must. It’s free. A lot of sites use YouTube as default for uploading video. When you sign up for a free YouTube channel, it can be like a free author page. And it’s a great way to expose your work to a hugely trafficked site. Without announcement on my part other than this chapter loop, I have about 150 views in a month, just because of how I “tagged” it, people searching for Book Trailers or Victorian London or Dark Fantasy or related subjects can find it because I “Tagged” it (like you do in blogs) with key search words. Have fun, stay true to your book, and you’ll come away with a great little marketing tool! *** Leanna Renee Hieber’s The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, the first in a Gothic Victorian fantasy series-- for which she created her trailer-- releases 9-9-09 from Dorchester Publishing. www.leannareneehieber.com

Short & Sweet - Welcome Author Jeanine McAdam

If you were not among the fortunate few who recently had the opportunity to hear Jeanine speak to the RWA/NYC Chapter on her success writing short romance fiction, here's your chance. She inspired many us to attempt this most succinct and demanding of forms but even more importantly, she generously agreed to answer some questions for our blog about her writing life, the short fiction genre, and writing "confessions". I hope that you make Jeanine feel welcome, enjoy the interview and please, don't be stingy with your comments! She'll be available from 10 AM to 12 Noon on Thursday, March 12 to engage and respond. And now, without further ado... Lise: To begin at the beginning, Jeanine: When did you begin writing? Jeanine: I am trained as a librarian so I’ve always loved words and books. I worked as a reference librarian for five years. Around that time the Internet and email became widely available, I started teaching technology training courses. Then I started writing instructional manuals. After that I moved on to managing the technology training program at the Brooklyn Public Library. I had a half million dollar budget and 1700 employees to train. During all those steps in my career I was writing articles for newsletters and industry magazines, preparing speeches, reports and budgets. Through my job I grew into a non-fiction writer and I liked it. I became interested in fiction when I left my job. My second son had just been born and my husband’s career was taking off. It was time for me to be home with the kids, however I wanted to continue to write. After a few years of trying to figure out fiction writing I started submitting to the confession magazines. I’ve published twelve so far and have another one in the works. I’ve also written two unpublished books. L: Do you have any formal education or training in creative writing? J: No. I’m self-taught. The process has been a very interesting learning experience. L: Have you pursued any forms of self-education, other than “learn as you go”? Do you continue to educate yourself about your craft in any formal way? Workshops, classes, reading? J: I’ve attended many workshops and read numerous writing manuals. I found the New Jersey RWA Conference extremely helpful and Stephen King’s book On Writing to be a terrific resource. I’ve read it a number of times. When I started writing short stories for the confession magazines I took two online courses which were very useful in helping me understand the market. L: Your recent work is contemporary romance in short fiction form (averaging about 6,000 to 7,000 words, correct?). Is this a recent departure from work on longer, novel-length romance fiction? J: I’ve always written short stories for Dorchester Media’s “true confession” line of magazines. I feel it’s a great way to be working as a writer regularly. At this point in my career, the short story market seems to be right for me. L: Why did you decide to pursue the short story format? J: I wanted to be published. I wanted to build a portfolio of published work. I also wanted to build my skills as a writer. I needed to learn how to put the words down on the page in a month and develop a beginning, middle and end that told a good story in 7,000 words. Plus create engaging, memorable characters. As we all know, books are hard to get published and I saw this market as an opportunity. Dorchester Media publishes four confession magazines every month. They need between 35 to 40 stories a month. I have a product, they have a need. It’s been a match. L: If you are not currently working on longer fiction, do you think that you will be moved to do so in the future? If not, why not? Is there an aspect of writing novel-length romance that turns you off? J: Yes, I’m moved to work on longer fiction. Even as I work on the short stories I’m working on a book too. Stephen King advises the writer not to tell anyone about a book in progress until it is done. He feels if the author talks about the story too much it disrupts the creative process. So mum’s the word for me. For now! L: When your first work appeared in print, how did it feel? Everyone asks about “the call”, and how an acceptance of a work may have changed your life, so I thought I’d forge slightly ahead of that moment. Do you have your first story in a scrapbook, or framed or something? J: I felt great when my first story came out. I sent it to True Love magazine on a Monday via snail mail. They sent me an acceptance email on Thursday. It was wonderful to have the story bought so quickly. It was called “In the Arms of a U.S. Marine.” To have someone validate me as a writer by purchasing my work was very exciting to me. I was able to sell that story as a series. Three consecutive stories appeared in the August, September and October issues of True Love. I haven’t framed “In the Arms of a U.S. Marine” but I do keep copies of all my stories in a pile on my book shelf. L: How do your friends and family feel about your writing? Are they supportive, puzzled, helping you cash the checks? J: At first they were puzzled. I was in the nonprofit world on a fast career track at a young age. They all thought I would continue on that route. So they didn’t know how to take this writing thing especially since it took me about three years to get published. Now that I’m published regularly they are extremely supportive. They don’t completely understand the romance genre but they always encourage me. My husband is super supportive. He’s my own personal patron and he always says, “You’re good.” Except he does get upset with me when I stay up too late at the computer. And he wants everyone to know that he feels I edit myself too much. L: Do you work at a job other than your writing? If so, how do you juggle the demands of both? J: I’m a stay-at-home Mom raising two kids. My husband works extremely long hours so I do everything to run the house. However, I treat writing as my full time job. I always block out time everyday to write. That snow day last Monday messed up my writing schedule because the kids were suddenly home and looking for stuff to do. L: What is your favorite reading material these days? J: I love the Twilight series and can’t wait for the movie to come out on DVD – March 21!!!. Also I’m reading the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. She’s a mystery writer, she writes in the first person and she’s got a great voice. Those books were made into the HBO show True Blood. L: If you could be any author – contemporary or historical – who would it be? Why? J: Stephanie Meyer or Diana Gabaldon. Such deep, emotional POV. These books are written in first person and those authors are good at making the reader feel the complexity of the heroine’s experience. Also Suzanne Brockman. Her books are great. Plus I love the way she presents herself professionally. She’s at every conference willing to share information and is incredibly approachable. L: What is the most difficult part of the writing craft for you; the part that takes the most work, takes blood, sweat and tears J: Working through a scene that is not coming together. Usually the problem is I haven’t spent enough time thinking about how each of the characters are feeling. If I’m unsure about their emotions or their reaction to an event I struggle with a scene. L: What’s the easiest aspect of writing fiction? J: With the confession stories, I have no problem coming up with ideas. As I said, I try to write a confession every month. I feel like there’s always a story in my own life or an aspect of something I encounter in someone else’s life that I can make into a 7,000 word story. L: I want to borrow a concept from James Lipton’s Inside the Actor’s Studio (who borrowed it from Bernard Pivot) for his guest questionnaire and ask you some questions for short answers: a. What is your favorite word? J: Yes – it such a positive word. Unlimited possibilities. When I hear yes. I smile! Sometimes I even laugh…… b. What is your favorite genre of fiction? J: Romance… And more romance. I like happy endings. c. What is your least favorite genre of fiction? J: That’s tough. I have a very good friend who writes horror. My apologies to John but I’ll have to say horror. It scares me. I can’t sleep at night. But I suppose that’s the idea. Maybe I’ll come to a time in my life when I don’t have to be rested the next day. Then I’ll read it. BTW – I know I keep quoting Stephen King’s book about writing so I feel a little bad saying I can’t read horror, hopefully my plugging his book all over the place helps balance things out. d. Who is your favorite romance author? J: There are so many that I love. Suzanne Brockman, Diana Gabaldon…. My critique partners Jen, Kwana and Megan. e. Who is your favorite non-romance author? J: Charlaine Harris – ask me that same question next year and I may have a different answer. f. Who is your favorite literary character, not created by you? J: Starting with the men I would say Jamie Fraser. He’s a man’s man. I read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series years ago and I still think about Jamie. Also – I love Lt. Sam Starrett in Suzanne Brockmann’s Gone too Far. He’s a real American original and I adore him for that. Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum is an extremely entertaining heroine. As far as classic characters, I respect Margaret Hale in North and South. She’s tough and she figured out how to make her life meaningful within the confines of the society she lived in. g. What has one of your characters done that surprised you? J: In the February 2009 issue of True Romance I wrote a story called “Love in Small Bytes”. My hero was a computer geek. He surprised me because his intellectualism and open honesty was super sexy. Even the way he pushed his glasses up on his nose turned me on. I hope it did the same to the reader. h. What satisfaction do you get out of writing romance? J: I enjoy writing about how people relate to each other. The back and forth in conversation between two characters fascinates me, then how that interaction builds into love. Plus all the physical stuff is really fun to write. Even the hero pushing a piece of hair from the heroine’s eye, I love that!! i. Have you ever had someone put you down for writing romance? How did you handle it? J: Not so much put me down. But I’ve definitely felt looked down upon. I’ll tell people at a cocktail party or some social event and get a little, “ha, ha, ha,” plus a quick change of the subject. I give them a big smile and say, “this is what I do.” I always add, “I like the happy ending.” L: Jeanine, what is the publisher that you most want to write for? J: I would say Harlequin. They respect romance, they publish romance and they completely understand the needs and interests of their reader. In closing I wanted to say thank you to Lise for such great questions. I feel honored to be here on the RWA-NYC blog. I just reread Lis’s February 24th 2009 entry about editing. I must sign off now and get cracking. All the best to my fellow RWA-NYC friends/colleagues and good luck with your writing. May you get lots of pages written today! (Jeanine will be presenting another round table, along with author Patt Mihailoff, on the art of the romance short story at Liberty States Fiction Writers' June meeting. For Liberty States information, check out their link at right.)

Leanna and Isabo's Chaos Theory Guide to Non-Linear World-Building Redux

Leanna Renee Hieber and I gave a talk for the chapter on Saturday which involved discussing our chaotic way of world-building. I thought the talk showed off our chaotic process by being a little chaotic itself. :)

Fellow chapter memeber, Jerrica Knight-Catania posted her own brilliant blog on one aspect of the talk--Where the Magic Happens--inspired by the fact that both Leanna and I find a lot of our ideas and world-building happens in the shower.

As a very recent example of this: Sunday night, very late, after I'd put Jack to bed (this is something like 1:30am, btw), I ended up in the shower--the first peaceful shower I've had in awhile--and I started thinking about my current WIP. Thanks to Jack sleeping in on Sunday morning (hooray!) I was able to write a bit that day. I decided to mull over the upcoming scene so I'd be able to more easily start when the next chance to write arose (I have to take time where I can these days!).

Lo and behold, I realized I have a serious--and I mean SERIOUS--logic error in the section of story I'd just written that morning. This was the kind of logic error that could have gotten me into a world of trouble with both my editor and my readers. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before this. So I spent the rest of the shower and the first few minutes in bed figuring out how to fix the problem. Fixing things involved expanding my world AND giving my heroine an extra issue which placed a further wedge between her and the hero. It deepened the emotional journey of the characters as well as added more dimension to the world. At this point it hit me that the world was complex enough I could even write further stories here. Since I'd intended this as a once off, more stories was not in the original plan. But because of the way I world-build, this was also not the first time this had happened to me.

All I can say is thank you universe for hot showers! Even if I do have yet another possible series on my hands. :) This is also the perfect example of how my worlds get built while I'm writing. Even if there's been advanced planning before I start to write, I discover what I need to tell the story as I start telling it. As Leanna would say, "Necessity is the mother of invention."

So Leanna and I encouraged others to discover this magical place where you can solve all story problems, break through blocks and uncover hidden traps in your worlds. Once you start thinking about it, I'm sure you'll realize you already have that spot. Just wait, you'll find yourself hurrying to do the dishes, visit the doctor, or take a shower just so you can concentrate on your story.

The other thing we encouraged people to think about is where their stories start (delving into your writing process here). I start with characters, sometimes in a scene, sometimes with just a bit of dialogue or an impression, but I have to have characters or I don't have a story. Once I've got the characters, I go to the shower and start world-building. And remember world-building is done by all authors, whether you write contemparies, historicals, fantasies, paranormals, or suspense. No matter the setting, we all have to build a world the reader will believe.

So where do you start? When an idea first comes to you--or when you're trying to think up a new story idea--what hits you first? Setting? Plot? Character? Conflict? Just some random situation? What do you need to know to get excited about writing a new book? Where does your world-building start?

Isabo

And a lovely time was had by all!

On Monday, March 2nd, I had the great pleasure to attend the second reading event sponsored by Lady Jane's Salon, along with of several of our Chapter members, including, among others, Lis Eng, Fidencia Solomon, Elizabeth Mahon, Tanya Goodwin and Karen Keith. This wonderful innovation is the brain child of RWA/NYC members Hope Tarr, Maya Rodale and Leanna Renee Hieber, who, with Ron Hogan of Media Bistro's Galley Cat, decided that the time had come for NYC to have a romance reading salon of its very own. Yet the team wanted more than just to provide the entertainment of good romance writing to interested guests. So it does double-duty as a charitable event. Attendees bring in gently used romance novels, or make a donation of $5, to benefit Maya Rodale's Share the Love charity. In keeping with the greatest salons of Europe, Lady Jane's unfolded at the most alluring Madam X club, on Houston Street in NYC. I missed the first event, but braved the winter's fiercest snow to trek down to the wilds of Greenwich Village for the second. And it was certainly worth the effort! With plush red settees, appropriately seductive lighting and a crowd of enthusiastic romance afficianados - authors and fans alike - it was a delightful evening. Beverages with such decadent names as Pussy Galore were served, and the erudite crowd mingled. When the featured reader of the evening, Lauren Willig (still basking in the glow of her momentous arrival on the New York Times bestseller list) took the minute stage, the crowd was hushed with anticipation. Reading from her most recent title, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine (book five in the scrumptious Pink Carnation series), she enthralled and amused. Her effervescent personality added to the boisterous selection and it was a perfect interlude. The second author on the program, historical romance author Jenna Petersen, was unfortunately snowed out of the City, but her words lived through the wonderfully nuanced reading given by Leanna Hieber (no stranger to drama, Ms. Hieber is an actress as well as published author ... so much creative ability in one lovely lady!). A special guest (Ms. Rodale's beau, Tony) was also announced and by the time this novice romance author left the stage the audience was breathless with laughter. To me, his work would be something akin to a romance that Carl Hiassen might produce, so filled with tongue-in-cheek humor was his writing. With guests from Romantic Times (who generously brought free copies of RT), and plenty of fans eagerly buying up copies of both authors' books, it was a terrific evening, for a great cause. All in all, Lady Jane's Salon is a terrific idea and has been blessed with perfect execution. So, if you are ever in the neighborhood.....come on in, snuggle up on a red velvet sofa, sip a Pussy Galore, throw off your inhibitions and enjoy! (The first Monday of every month.) For those of you too far afield to enjoy an evening with the ladies of Lady Jane's, perhaps your own little neck of the woods could do with a romance reading series of its own? What better to way to spread the word that romance is king. Or more aptly, Queen!