Hey, y'all! Just a quick note to let you know that book 5 of the Notorious Wolfes saga, THE MAN WITH THE MONEY, is in stores now! You can read more about the book, including an excerpt, here.
What do you think about that gorgeous video, hmm? Love it!
Jack…Red-Hot. Renegade. Restless.
Notorious gambler Jack no longer gets a buzz from the risks he takes at the card table. In fact it bores him. Until one night he wins more than he ever bargained for…
His prize is stunning Cara Taylor – she might be down on her luck but she certainly doesn’t need rescuing by a card-shark like Jack! Now she’s stuck with him she doesn’t know whether to love him or loathe him.
What are the reviewers saying?
“…intense emotional turmoil, a tortured hero and toe-curling intimate encounters.” — 4 Stars, RT Book Reviews
“Lynn Raye Harris does not disappoint her fans with her latest – The Man With the Money, part of The Notorious Wolfes.” — Cataromance
I hope you give Jack and Cara a try, and that you enjoy! 🙂
As the New Voices entrants find out who made the Top Twenty today, there is very likely to be a great deal of disappointment for the majority who did not advance to the next round. I've already seen some comments about quitting, which quite frankly shock me. I've said it on the NV Facebook page more than once: you can't let one contest define your career as a writer.
But if you do, if you wave the white flag and say, “This is not for me, I quit,” then thank you for leaving the field of battle to someone else who will, one day, find victory. Harsh? Maybe, but that's exactly what you're doing. If you quit, you're making it easier for those who remain because you will not be there to compete. More chances for the others if you give up.
You might think it's fine for me to sit here and be all snarky and superior when I'm a published author because, really, what do I know about it? I have an editor, contracts, books in the pipeline, books in stores, and books translated into other languages for people the world over to read. Lucky me, right? Oh yes, lucky me.
But you know why I have those things? Because I ultimately did not quit. Oh, but I did quit for a while — eight years to be exact. That's right, eight years.
One day, many years ago, I decided I wanted to write a romance novel. I loved historicals, so that's what I decided to write. I researched for a year. Wrote for another year. And then I submitted it. I had a little bit of interest — requests for fulls from agents and editors, contest wins — but in the end, the book was rejected. I couldn't get an agent, and I couldn't sell the book.
I was upset, of course. Because everyone (critique group & husband) told me it was a great book (it really wasn't, but I believed it at the time). I was destined to be a writer, so why couldn't I sell this book?! If only they would really read it. If only they would wait until I explained everything and the story got seriously interesting on page 100.
But they didn't, so I started another book. I never submitted that book. I started a third book, which I never finished and never submitted. See, I'd begun to believe it just wasn't worth the effort. If I couldn't sell that first brilliant (snort) book, what chance did I have of selling anything?
So I quit. It hurt too much to keep flinging myself at the gates of publishing. I decided to go back to school, finish that pesky college degree, and then go on and get a Master's degree. I moved to Europe with my husband and got busy traveling and going to school. It was fun! Who needed writing?
I did, because in truth I never quite stopped. I kept writing shorter stories, and of course I wrote a ton of college papers. But I just knew I'd never get published. It wasn't for me. I wasn't good enough to get past those gates.
But then one day I got an idea for a contemporary romance and I started to write. I just wrote the darned thing for fun! And I never did submit it. By then, the bug hit again, and I started to get involved with my work. And this time, I decided I wasn't quitting for anything.
So I did come back, and I did keep trying — and I won a contest and sold a book. If I'd quit for good, I wouldn't be a multi-published, bestselling author today. Don't you think I ask myself what would have happened if I hadn't quit? Would I have sold sooner? Would I be farther along in my career today? I'll never know that, will I?
If you've suffered defeat today, hugs. You have two choices facing you right now.
1) Hang up the keyboard and the pain that comes with it. Live your life and have fun and think about writing every once in a while. Sigh wistfully when you remember that story you never finished. Think fondly of your writing pals and be amazed at how successful some of them have become. But you're happy because the pain is over and you never would have gotten published anyway, right?
2) Don't stop. Get mad, get sad, wail and rage and cry. Eat some chocolate, drink some wine, or run ten miles and collapse. Watch your favorite shows, indulge yourself for a few days, and then perch yourself at the computer and type onward. Finish the story you started, or start another if you can see it's too flawed. Though, really, it's ONE chapter — how flawed can it be? Rip it apart and start again if need be. Just keep writing. Never give up. And one day, you might be a bestselling, multi-published author too. That's the only way to get there. Never give up.
So which choice is it going to be? It's up to you, though I hope you'll go with option 2. 🙂
I never criticize other authors because, quite frankly, I know how much work goes into a story, and even if the story didn't work for me, I know it worked for someone else. That's the nature of the beast – not everyone will like what you write, some will actively hate it, and some will think it's the best thing ever written.
But, yesterday, I was goofing off at a point where I didn't quite know what came next in my WIP and a headline on CNN caught my eye: Making New Friends as an Adult. Sounds interesting, right? I thought so, therefore I clicked.
Let's just say that what came next was a head-shaker. If you want an example of how NOT to write your stories, look at this article. The writer starts off talking about cheese sticks, finally meanders to the one lunch date she had with a coworker that was perhaps a tad awkward, and back to cheese sticks.
Cheese sticks! She was trying to use them as a metaphor for something, but honest to God, the miss is a mile wide. For once, I don't mind saying so because a) everyone in the comment trail thought the same things* and b) we write in two entirely different genres so that I'm pretty sure the writer won't pop over here and see me using her work as an example of what not to do.
Remember when starting your stories that you've made a promise to your readers. You should know who your characters are and what their core problems are, and that's what you should write about. Don't spend the entire first chapter in setup before you get to the meat of the problem. This article that was supposed to be about making friends as an adult was more about cheese sticks and their affect on the author's life than about making friends. It would have been okay, maybe, if the reader had thought she was getting a story about cheese sticks — but she thought she was getting a story about how to make friends.
Don't promise your readers a story about a man and woman falling in love and then give take them a meandering side trip through the history of viticulture. If your characters own a winery, fine, use some of that information in weaving the framework for the main story. But for goodness sake, don't spend those valuable first pages on it. The cheese stick writer wasted valuable space talking about cheese sticks instead of her core topic and lost a lot of readers as a result. Don't do that, friends. Start with a bang and keep your story focused on the main problem. Cheese sticks are fine so long as they don't take over and become the main topic. Or, if they are the main topic, don't mislead readers with a story about something else entirely.
I suppose the cheese stick story would have been fine if I hadn't expected a tale about how to make friends, but it was so far off base from what I was expecting that I was irritated with the writer for misleading me. Two-thirds of the article is about the cheese sticks. One-third is about her lunch date and how it didn't go quite the way she was expecting. Big miss.
Do not do that in your writing! Thus ends today's mini writing rant. 🙂
*Comment trails on articles in public forums are usually enough to get my blood pumping in all the wrong ways, but this time, I agreed with the basic sentiment, which was “Huh?”
Good news for readers! Amazon is still selling the Kindle version of The Devil's Heart for an amazing price: $1.71! If you like bargains, then you should snap this one up. It's gotten some good reviews — RT Book Reviews gave it 4 Stars and said it had ‘Lots of conflict, hot love scenes, and a satisfying ending'. Readers on Goodreads seem to like the book a lot too.
A diamond, and a deal with the devil…
Francesca D’Oro was just eighteen when darkly sexy Marcos Navarre swept her up the aisle—then fled before the ink on the marriage licence had dried. Marcos might have given Francesca a jewel for her finger, but he stole another: the Devil’s Heart—a dazzling yellow diamond he believed belonged to his family…
Years later Francesca, no longer so youthfully naïve, is determined to reclaim the precious gem! But she’s forgotten that Marcos lives up to the treasure’s name—and dealing with the devil is always dangerous!
$1.71 on Kindle – it's a bargain! I hope you'll give it a try, and I hope you'll let me know what you think. 🙂
As always, thanks for reading my books! Y'all are the reason I keep writing them. 🙂
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