Wishing you a successful New Year!
The Write Way Café
Thursday, January 1, 2015
|
By:
The Write Way Cafe
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
|
By:
The Write Way Cafe
Our Blog Journey Continues
It seems like only yesterday that we had a vision for The Write Way Café. We wanted to create an inviting space where writers and readers could and would engage, share, vent and celebrate. We would like to thank our guests and our readers for joining us on this journey!
We plan to continue writing our own posts, as well as interviewing authors and inviting them to share guest posts. We also hope to do more giveaways. If you know an author who might be interested, please send them our way!
New for 2015!
Tuesday Special – A feature spotlight for authors will be offered every other week, and will include covers, bios, blurbs and buy links.
Building the Dream – Aspiring authors: Are you shopping your book around? Are you active on social media? We’d like to help get your name out there. Let us know if you’d like to be our guest.
Café Menu – What would a café be without food? We’ve shared a few of our favorite recipes, but we’d like to invite you (authors and readers) to share yours as well!
If you’d like to know more about being our guest in one of these areas, please contact us at thewritewaycafe@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
And, last but not least, we wish you a safe and Happy New Year!
Lynn and HiDee
We plan to continue writing our own posts, as well as interviewing authors and inviting them to share guest posts. We also hope to do more giveaways. If you know an author who might be interested, please send them our way!
New for 2015!
Tuesday Special – A feature spotlight for authors will be offered every other week, and will include covers, bios, blurbs and buy links.
Building the Dream – Aspiring authors: Are you shopping your book around? Are you active on social media? We’d like to help get your name out there. Let us know if you’d like to be our guest.
Café Menu – What would a café be without food? We’ve shared a few of our favorite recipes, but we’d like to invite you (authors and readers) to share yours as well!
If you’d like to know more about being our guest in one of these areas, please contact us at thewritewaycafe@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
And, last but not least, we wish you a safe and Happy New Year!
Lynn and HiDee
Friday, December 26, 2014
|
By:
The Write Way Cafe
Thursday, December 25, 2014
|
By:
The Write Way Cafe
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
|
By:
HiDee
Family Traditions
We hear a lot about family traditions at this time of year.
Common traditions leading up to the holidays include marathon shopping on Black Friday, cookie exchanges, and holiday parties. Schools and churches host holiday concerts and plays. Stores and restaurants pump Christmas music throughout their locations, doing their part to put people in the holiday mood, and enticing them to part with their hard-earned money.
Many people spend their time volunteering at shelters and soup kitchens. There are angel trees, and toy and coat drives for those less fortunate, for there always seems to be a need. It soothes my soul to know there are so many caring people in the world.
At home, my family traditions start with getting a fresh-cut tree. Hubby cuts the excess branches to use as background for our shelving decorations, and the faint piney-scent lingers in our rooms. Christmas cards received line the low wall from our front door, and stockings are hung above the fireplace. When the kids were little, our tradition was to load everyone in the car, drive-through McDonalds for dinner, and then drive around looking at Christmas lights. Nowadays, my son and I good-naturedly argue over who gets to drink the eggnog.
Growing up, my family always gravitated to Christmas Day. As kids, we traveled to both grandparents’ houses for meals and gifts. These days, my extended family gathers at my house. We share an abundance of food, and the women usually hang out around the dining room table while the men talk sports in the family room. We don’t currently have any little ones but when the kids were little, they were always the center of attention. I loved capturing their excitement, their wonder, and even their tantrums to freeze those moments in time. These days, my focus has shifted to capturing special moments with parents and grandparents. One of these days, I’m sure it will come full circle.
By contrast, my husband’s family doesn’t seem to care what actual day it is – when we get together for the holidays, the focus is on food and fellowship. The youngest kids hand out presents, and chaos ensues. Following gifts, my mother-in-law always gives us an assortment of items to choose from: calendars, magnets, coffee mugs, decorative dish towels, assorted crackers and pop, meat and cheese gift sets, and miscellaneous items. Some things she designates as one per person, others are one per family. Often, there is a lot of trading going on!
Over the years, our family traditions have evolved, as I'm sure yours have. I can remember watching musical Christmas specials with my mom, shows like Donny and Marie, The Captain and Tenille, Julie Andrews, Bing Crosby, and Bob Hope. We also watched various versions of Rudolph, Frosty, Snoopy and Sesame Street Christmas specials. As we grew older, we graduated to It's A Wonderful Life - a show that's still a favorite to this day. Who doesn't want to root for George Bailey?
These things may seem small compared to some family traditions, and yet they are an important fabric of our lives. The young adults in our family get upset if we try to shake up any of the normal ways of doing things. They have come to count on our traditions and find comfort in the familiar routines.
What are some of your family traditions? Have you given your characters any unique traditions? Please share!
.png)
Common traditions leading up to the holidays include marathon shopping on Black Friday, cookie exchanges, and holiday parties. Schools and churches host holiday concerts and plays. Stores and restaurants pump Christmas music throughout their locations, doing their part to put people in the holiday mood, and enticing them to part with their hard-earned money.
Many people spend their time volunteering at shelters and soup kitchens. There are angel trees, and toy and coat drives for those less fortunate, for there always seems to be a need. It soothes my soul to know there are so many caring people in the world.
At home, my family traditions start with getting a fresh-cut tree. Hubby cuts the excess branches to use as background for our shelving decorations, and the faint piney-scent lingers in our rooms. Christmas cards received line the low wall from our front door, and stockings are hung above the fireplace. When the kids were little, our tradition was to load everyone in the car, drive-through McDonalds for dinner, and then drive around looking at Christmas lights. Nowadays, my son and I good-naturedly argue over who gets to drink the eggnog.
Growing up, my family always gravitated to Christmas Day. As kids, we traveled to both grandparents’ houses for meals and gifts. These days, my extended family gathers at my house. We share an abundance of food, and the women usually hang out around the dining room table while the men talk sports in the family room. We don’t currently have any little ones but when the kids were little, they were always the center of attention. I loved capturing their excitement, their wonder, and even their tantrums to freeze those moments in time. These days, my focus has shifted to capturing special moments with parents and grandparents. One of these days, I’m sure it will come full circle.
By contrast, my husband’s family doesn’t seem to care what actual day it is – when we get together for the holidays, the focus is on food and fellowship. The youngest kids hand out presents, and chaos ensues. Following gifts, my mother-in-law always gives us an assortment of items to choose from: calendars, magnets, coffee mugs, decorative dish towels, assorted crackers and pop, meat and cheese gift sets, and miscellaneous items. Some things she designates as one per person, others are one per family. Often, there is a lot of trading going on!
Over the years, our family traditions have evolved, as I'm sure yours have. I can remember watching musical Christmas specials with my mom, shows like Donny and Marie, The Captain and Tenille, Julie Andrews, Bing Crosby, and Bob Hope. We also watched various versions of Rudolph, Frosty, Snoopy and Sesame Street Christmas specials. As we grew older, we graduated to It's A Wonderful Life - a show that's still a favorite to this day. Who doesn't want to root for George Bailey?
These things may seem small compared to some family traditions, and yet they are an important fabric of our lives. The young adults in our family get upset if we try to shake up any of the normal ways of doing things. They have come to count on our traditions and find comfort in the familiar routines.
What are some of your family traditions? Have you given your characters any unique traditions? Please share!
Friday, December 19, 2014
|
By:
The Write Way Cafe
Thursday, December 18, 2014
|
By:
The Write Way Cafe
The End—When is it Time to Say Goodbye to a Series?
.jpg)
The Write Way Café welcomes author Suzanne Johnson, who shares her thoughts on how to end a series without stranding your characters...or your readers!In a recent interview, author Kerrelyn Sparks talked about her long-running Love at Stake series, whose sixteenth and final book is being released this month. She likened writing such a long-running series to having family members who came to visit and wouldn’t quite leave. She loved them, but she needed a break.
It made me think about my own three series that are currently being published both under this name (Sentinels of New Orleans) and as Susannah Sandlin (The Penton Legacy and The Collectors). Book four of the Penton series released this past June, Collectors No. 2 came out a couple of weeks ago, and Sentinels No. 4 and 5 come out in 2015 and 2016.
Once upon a time in the olden days—you know, about five years ago—the question “When do you end a series?” had only one answer: “When the publisher decides to stop publishing it.”
That, I’m happy to say, is no longer the case. I know readers have often felt cheated when they’ve become invested in series that just….ended. No warning. Characters hanging off cliffs. Usually, the authors bore the brunt of the blame for that, but I can pretty much guarantee that 99.9 percent of those suddenly ending series were publisher choice, not author choice.
Now, with indie publishing becoming not only more accepted but financially viable, the burden is on the author to decide when it’s time to send the relatives home. If a series is still selling well, do you push it past its intended story life, publishing on your own, and risk it dying an ignoble, obscure death (or, in contrast, hitting the bullseye, sales-wise).
And how do you know when it’s time? I love my characters and all of my series, obviously, or I wouldn’t have taken them this far. But recently, I made myself take a step back from them, look at them from both a story and a business point of view, and see where their futures lay.
The answer I finally came up with was, when the story is no longer viable. When the characters begin to feel tired to me, they will be tired to the readers. I think we can all name a series or three that has simply gone on two or three books too long, that went from “must buy and drop everything to read immediately on release day” to “put it on a wish list for later.”
I have an end set for one of my series at either six or seven books, depending on how long the story arc in my head takes to play out. It has been building for a while, is about to explode, and then will need to play out. If it plays out in book six, then it’s done. I love the characters too much to see them grow tired and stale, or venture in directions that are wrong for the series. (Yeah, we’ve all seen that happen, too!)
Another series has reached a turning point where the characters need to go really big or go home. That one, I think, needs to end and morph into a spinoff series with new blood to mix with the old blood.
The third series is new and, as my first foray into a new genre of romantic suspense, is too early to call. It’s an odd premise in the genre—the continuing characters are the bad guys rather than the romantic hero/heroine, and each book can work as a standalone. But I’ll be watching it, taking its temperature, having a talk with my characters (and, oh yeah, the publisher) and deciding.
Of course plans change, there are tons of new stories bubbling around in my brain (and in my story idea folder on my computer desktop which goes by the unfortunate name of “Brain Farts”—true story), and publishers might want to go in one direction more than another.
This thing I know for sure, however. Authors now have options, which means we should never leave our readers—or our characters, for that matter—stranded. I’ve always said that if my series get orphaned, I’ll at least put out a novella to wrap things up, just as a gift to the readers who have invested time and emotion in my stories and my characters. It’s a hard thing to do, giving up writing time when you might be earning a living in order to write something that will earn more than goodwill.
But goodwill, and the trust between and author and a reader, is vital. I love my readers, and I hope they know it. I’d never strand them.
So, what say you? Have you been disappointed when favorite series ended without a satisfactory resolution of story? Do you think authors—or their publishers—have an obligation to readers to put out a final series book that wraps up the storyline?
Leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of your choice of book in any of my series!
Deadly, Calm and Cold
by Susannah Sandlin
How far will ordinary people go to protect their secrets? The Collectors’ games are as much about manipulating lives as finding lost treasure. Everyone is expendable as the ruthless C7 pushes people into gambling with their lives in order to find priceless objects lost to history.Samantha Crowe’s secrets could ruin her career, while Brody Parker’s could get him killed. They become pawns for two Collectors seeking Bad King John’s crown jewels, which disappeared in rural England back when Robin Hood roamed Nottingham. This time, however, the Collectors—a ruthless dotcom billionaire and a desperate London detective—might not be playing for the same team, leaving Sam and Brody trapped in the middle.
One thing’s for sure: if either hopes to survive, Sam and Brody will have to find a way to overcome their distrust—and their growing attraction—in order to succeed on this winner-take-all treasure hunt.
Find Deadly, Calm, and Cold in print, digital, and audio at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Book Depository. [Book one, Lovely, Dark, And Deep, is on sale for Kindle in December at $1.99.]
About Suzanne: Suzanne Johnson is the author of the award-winning Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series (Royal Street, River Road, Elysian Fields, Pirate’s Alley (2015) and Belle Chasse (2016), and, as Susannah Sandlin, writes the award-winning Penton Legacy paranormal romance series (Redemption, Absolution, Omega, Allegiance, and the spin-off paranormal romance Storm Force). She also writes The Collectors romantic suspense series, Lovely, Dark, and Deep, and Deadly, Calm, and Cold. She lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her elderly rescue dog Tanker and a yard full of chipmunks. You can find her at her website, on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
.png)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)