Romancing the Hone

Alligators? Nobody could survive that!

Er...that is: Honing the Romance. Cue silly picture.

Anywho, I wanted to highlight a few things about the Romance genre, because it ties together a few Writing article concepts that would otherwise be rather short for a weekly post.

How I buy eBooks

If I see a book amongst friends on Twitter, Goodreads or, sometimes, their website, I’ll look at it, hence the importance of word-of-mouth referrals (first-order). I also follow Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (amongst others) for my romance reading, highlighting the importance of word-of-link referrals (second-order). But a lot of the time it’s just me stumbling across a book in the Amazon search (third-order), thus requiring a good blurb and cover. Finally, of course, all these require a good preview (money-shot!)

This time I searched Amazon for ‘domestic romance’--because for some reason I decided that day that I shall buy my romance books like I do beer (presumably an import romance would have more body)--and found a neat series.


Romeo, Romeo
Too Hot to Handle
Breakfast in Bed

Rosalie Ronaldi is never getting married, no way, no how! But convincing her Italian mother and family is easier said than done for this financial executive. After leaving another hectic Sunday dinner at her parents’ in Brooklyn, Rosalie gets a flat tire and curses her brother, who borrowed the car, in three different languages, impressing Good Samaritan Nick Romeo. Nick is considered Brooklyn’s equivalent of Donald Trump: he owns several car dealerships and dates beautiful gold diggers. Driving a tow truck and wearing overalls, he decides to help Rosalie, who he thinks is crazy and very attractive in a Sophia Loren style. As they start a relationship, Rosalie has no idea that this Nick is the Nick Romeo. She lays down her ground rules, including nothing serious and no marriage talk, and Nick agrees until their relationship heats up. Now he must work up the nerve to tell Rosalie who he really is. Kaye’s debut is a delightfully fun, witty romance, making her a writer to watch.

From that blurb (actually a review, I guess...), the hook-word was ‘witty’ (somehow overcoming 'Donald Trump'), so I looked at the preview and saw that it was written from both perspectives. That's a good sign, because

What I Like in Books

First and foremost, Dialogue. Word-play, wit, wisdom, clevertude, attitude, scathing, simmering, rolling off the tongue, read-out-loud-and-laugh exchanges. In romance, this usually takes the form of ‘banter’, scaling up from playful, flirty, romantic and finally culminating in sexy. This is the province of Christopher Moore, Terry Pratchett, A Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, (Shakespeare!) and is the reason I enjoy The Hobbit and hate The Lord of the Rings. And why I like A Song of Ice and Fire almost exclusively for Tyrion and Littlefinger (and sometimes Jaime). Thus,

Second but still foremost, Characters. You can’t have good dialogue without good characters, and the best dialogue is two strong characters (or more! in a tightly written scene) duking it out with words. It’s the book equivalent of an exciting action sequence with colorful explosions, and it should be enshrined accordingly. This is the reason why I don’t really care for (most) Victorian romances, because women are assumed to be submissive (or so brazenly unsubmissive as to render dialogue moot by sheer physicality). Inner thoughts aren’t dialogue! At least not when I’m writing them, which leads us to...

Romance Hones My Writing

SciFaR? (sounds like ‘Cypher’)

As I’ve previously indicated, I write in the Science Fantasy Romance genre, a delightful fusion of all the things I like to read. In my opinion, my best (stand-alone) genre example thus far is my short story “The Moors of Venus” (which you can find most conveniently in my Fantasy collection “To Another Shore”). To craft that genre, I read three genres and steal the good parts.

To make a useful generalization, Science Fiction = Plot and Fantasy = Setting while,
Romance = Relationships
The main strength of Romance is that it focuses on relationships (and hence, to my tastes: ‘dialogue’, a verbal relationship) and,
Relationships = Characters.
Relationships define characters, and show without telling. You could declare “Timmy was a good person. Alice knew it.” or you could more effectively describe Timmy taking care of his sick girlfriend Alice. Likewise with plot and setting. It’s just there for the characters to react to, and, by reacting, to reveal character. Thus,
Characters = Story.

Two New Collections

I put together and released two short story collections for your reading convenience.

To Another Shore
eight fantasy stories
$2.99
Kindle
Smashwords

Dear sir or madam: please find attached eight short stories of a most fantastic nature. But, lo, I beg to inform you that it is a most mixed bag of fantasies. “The Witch of Amber City” is a parable. “Sorcerer’s Hire” is a coming-of-age story set amidst a magical-industrial war. “Timpani the Ostrich Rancher” posits a preemptive Great War sparked by the independent Kingdom of Kenya. “An Aesop Amidst the Fairy Dust” is a humorous urban fantasy of pizza. “The Moors of Venus” is my favorite short story of all I’ve written, and once you’ve read it, you’ll agree. “New Sodom Takes Her Chances”, starring Satan, is just plain weird. “The Ambassador’s Lady” chronicles the break-up of an Imperial Russia. Last but not least, “Ostracon” is a fast-paced tale of Mesolithic errantry. Is there a theme amidst this delightful madness? Sure. But you’ll only find it out once you’ve gone To Another Shore.

More of the Sun
The Jeremiad Monologues
$0.99
Kindle

He’s forcing me to publish this: Jeremiad, the lounge lizard turned revolutionary. He just appeared in my office—seriously, he can teleport—he’s holding my whisky hostage. He keeps talking and talking, some day he’ll get to the point. He’s promised me one beer for each book sold. ...I’m so thirsty.

This one is the three Jeremiad monologues in one convenient package, with much better cover art. If you previously purchased one of the single stories, e-mail me and I'll send you this one gratis

I'm putting these on Amazon first, and will make the Smashwords editions later. Thanks to my eBook Formatting Workflow and macros, it takes five minutes to format a book for MOBI and EPUB. Whereas I have to do all the formatting by hand in a word processor for Smashwords.

I'm also going to use this opportunity to see if LibreOffice 3.4 will suffice to do Smashwords DOC formatting. That would make my life a lot easier. Results to follow.

How to Write a Book

Not pictured: Writing

Rule One: drink AFTER you write.
If this were How to Write a Short Story, I’d be all for drinking while you write. You’re trying to finish as fast as possible, so you need an outside clock to race against. In this case, that clock is drunkeness. Try it with speed chess! (On no circumstances should you drink before you write. That never helps.) With books, though, you’ve got to pace yourself. Unless you’ve hit the Next Level or are on drugs, you’re probably not going to finish the book in one day. So, put the beer aside until you’ve got at least 2000 words done that day.

Rule Two: Set a deadline!
Make it arbitrary, but realistic (you know how much you write), then generate an ‘expected wordcount per day’. Buy a wall calendar or some sort of annoying computer program that counts the days for you and yells at you. For my current series, I’m giving myself 25 days for each short book, at 1000 words a day. Obviously, some days I write 500, some days I write 2000, and one day (this is a Certainty) I write 5000 words. Whatever you set, just do it or you’re not a Writer, and stop calling yourself one. It makes the rest of us look bad.

Rule Three: Don’t think about the book too much unless you’re writing it.
Write in the morning, Play in the afternoon, Write in the evening
Sleep
Repeat
Note: It doesn’t count as ‘play’ if you’re thinking about work.

Rule Four: Race yourself!
Set a 15-minute timer and type. See how many words you can type, then try again. Mark your highest. FocusWriter has a convenient timer that’ll give you a wordcount at the end. Neat!

Rule Five: Bracket Outline
When I start a book, I usually write the first chapter without knowing what’s going to happen, then I take whatever characters and plot developed from that and come a bracket outline. Each bracket can be a scene, a chapter, a plot twist, or just a cool ‘image’, but the point is that you’re supposed to expand them and ‘explode’ words out of the bracket. Anything not in brackets can be weaved into the dialogue. (I’m sure there’s a way to make the wordcounter ignore anything between [X], but I’m too lazy to deal with it) Here’s an example of a short bracket outline after a first chapter introducing Jimmy Bats, hapless used car salesman:

Jimmy Bats was a man disappointed with his car lot in life. [&c]
[Jimmy Bats loses his keys]
[A global key theft ring?]
[Meet Cute: Darlene, the key detective]
[A Comic Interlude; polka dot dress]
[Murder by Car]
[Jimmy Bats Finds A Clue amidst the wreckage, leads to the Smithsonian’s Janitor Closet]
[The Declaration of Keydepence?]
[Darlene kidnapped!]
[Jimmy kicks Ass. (...keyster?)]
[A Wedding and a brand new car]
“Oh, Jimmy! You DID have the keys to my heart!”
THE END
###

Now just write it, rolling through the brackets and expanding them as far as they’ll go, adding new brackets as you see the need so you always know what you’ll be writing tomorrow. I usually come up with about ten brackets before I start, not worrying too much how to tie them all together. They’ll all come together somehow, if you just force yourself to write about it. (The title of the book is “Christmas and Keyster”. And if you write it, you can keep it.)

Rule Six: Don’t read the book until you finish the book.
It can’t be judged as a book until it’s done. It probably doesn’t suck as much as you think it does.

Rule Seven: [Redacted]
[It was about sex.]

Rule Eight: Buy My Book, I guess?

Amazon

May you live forever...

Ernie Centrifuge just wants to relax with his girlfriend (a police inspector) and play with his survey drones, but when a Senator is assassinated by laser, Ernie decides that the floating city isn’t as relaxing as he would have hoped. When his sister (a psion) brings in an orphan girl who found a tantalizing map, Ernie decides to descend to the surface of a forgotten Earth. But what has he left behind on Megalopolis?

A technological thriller with a double shot of humor and romance: To roll anyway, a science fiction short novel by David Barron.