
You’re kidding, right?
I have this reaction several times a week. Over the past… oh, I dunno, year or so, I’ve gotten emails on a regular basis, usually several a week. Asking for some kind of advice. Or info. Some are a little easier than others. The easiest question to answer is…
How much money can I expect to make… I always answer that one the same. I have no answer for you.
I’m primarily still an ebook author, and yes, I write for a living, so I think I do okay, but every author is going to be different. So that one is easy. No answer~sorry.
The rest of them, though, they make me bang my head. I hardly ever have an answer. I’ve asked, how do you make yourself finish the book? Well, I just do. If I don’t finish it, i can’t sell it and I like selling them. $$$$$
Where do you come up with your ideas? Every single one is different. Sometimes, I’ll see something that inspires me to start a book and then the book comes from there. My current release is one of those. The idea for Hunter’s Pride came from something I saw on Animal Planet. A young girl in Africa was rescued from a couple of kidnappers by…. a pride of lions. Now I moved my book to America and it was cougars, or mountain lions, that saved her, but that’s where that idea came from.
The original Hunters? Eh…that was all Tori. I wanted a heroine that was kick a$$ but not so stupidly independent she’d cut off her nose to spite her face. Those sort of heroines really annoy me. So there was Tori, and then there was Declan and then there was the book. The rest just sort of came naturally after that.
Other ideas came from various places… fairy tales, or I’ll be talking with a friend, and there it is. So I don’t have a simple answer for that.
Do you plot out your books? I hate answering this one. I always feel like a moron. Nope, I don’t plot out until after I’ve started the book, and usually the plot just unfolds for me as I write it.
Where should I try to sell my book? Oh, boy. That’s a tricky one. Depends on what sort of book, how long, too many factors, and that’s another question i hate.
How did you get published? Another one that I kind of scratch my head over. Often… it feels like pure dumb luck. I had a book that was rejected by Harlequin. That form letter so many of us have seen, not what we’re looking for…yadda yadda yadda… My personal opinion~eh, it was perfect for them, however I wasn’t going to sweat it. That was about the time I’d found EC and I decided I’d just revamp the book and try it there. And that’s that as far as my ebook history goes. I’ve sold more than thirty various books, novellas and short stories to places like EC, Triskelion, and Samhain.
New York career, eh… a little different. Boils down to a couple of people mentioned my name to Cindy Hwang at Berkley and she looked me up, read a few things, and liked them. So I got the infamous call. I didn’t really do anything~so pure dumb luck on my part.
There’s other questions, like I need an agent. Will you read my book? Do you do critiques? Frankly, I wish I could help but I can’t. You can find a lot of these resources through RWA. I don’t have time to read for pleasure hardly, and I suck when it comes to technical advice, so I’m not a good person to ask.
It’s really very mind boggling to keep getting these emails~scary, yet at the same time, feels kinda cool. But I seriously suck at advice…
Read Full Post »