A Time for Thanks

With Thanksgiving next week, I thought it was a good time to tell you what I was grateful for. So, here we go.

First, I'm thankful for my family, my husband in particular. There are often long days or late nights spent at the computer while I'm in the zone. I don't always want to go out because I have a self-imposed deadline looming over me. My husband is also the computer guy, the graphic designer and is responsible for my website design and maintenance. That's a lot  of support for one person.

I'm thankful that I can be a writer. When I was a child reading books by authors like Judy Blume and Lurlene McDaniel and S.E. Hinton, I dreamed of being a writer. I never thought it would actually happen, never thought I was good enough, but here I am; a best-selling author. That's an amazing feeling.

I'm thankful to my peers. People like Erin Nicholas, Lucy Lennox, JM Dabney and Sloane Kennedy have given me a leg up with their generosity. They've allowed me to promote my work on their social media and have shared my book with their fans. Thanks to their support, I've reached more readers than I ever expected to. I can say with certainty that I wouldn't be a best selling author without their support.

I'm thankful for e-readers, blog tours and social media. Without these things, I would still be toiling away, trying to find a way to get my books in the hands of readers. Thanks to the evolution of publishing, independent authors are thriving. When I first started out, I thought I needed an agent to succeed. That was true, but it's not the case anymore. Indie authors can do as well, if not better, than traditionally published authors. And even better for me is that I get to retain full artistic control. From the words inside to the cover outside, I have the final say.

Most of all, I'm thankful for you, the readers. If it wasn't for all of you taking a chance on an unknown author, I wouldn't be where I am. You gave me a chance and you accepted me. Your support and love of my books showed me that I do deserve to be here. For every book you buy, every review you write, every social media post you write or share, every email you send telling me how much you liked my book, for all of that and so much more, I'm thankful. I can never adequately express how much.

To those of you celebrating next week, Happy Thanksgiving, but even if you're not celebrating, I'm still thankful. 

Is It Trash or Treasure?

In two different reader’s groups I belong to on Facebook, I recently saw a question posted asking what fellow group members didn’t like to see in a story. Several group members chimed in with their answers. Naturally, I had my own answer as well.

As I watched the comments wrack up, I reacted as an author and not a reader. My first inclination was to take all these comments and make a spreadsheet along the lines of what not to do. Something I could refer back to when editing to make sure I wasn’t doing anything to cause readers to turn away.

There were several comments and the thread got pretty long before one best-selling author chimed in with her opinion and it wasn’t what you would expect. Instead of telling group members what her deal breakers were, she pointed out that likes and dislikes within books are as varied as the books themselves and that’s okay. The author expressed her dismay that readers would be disparaging these things instead of celebrating differences. From there, several people felt put in their place and apologized. Others pointed out it was meant to be fun while a few people took exception to being chastised for exercising their rights to free speech.

Here’s the thing. Everyone was right and that’s okay.

There are a lot of topics brought up in online groups that are meant to spark discussion. I read every comment for this particular one, and no one came across as hurtful. Most of it was straightforward. ‘I hate it when characters fall in love instantly’ or ‘I don’t like to read books where main characters cheat on each other’ and even ‘I don’t like books about males getting pregnant.’ These are just a small sample of the comments, but most were along these lines. Some even had people commenting on their comments to voice their agreement.

The lone author, who waved her metaphorical mom finger, was also right. You will never find a book that everyone loves, and that includes some of the most popular and best-selling books out there. If you’ve ever written a book review, you know that’s true. You go to write your five-star review and a one-star review catches your eye. You read it and are surprised and maybe a little incensed to find everything the other reader hated about the book was what you loved.

The author’s basic point was that you read what you want and do it without putting others down. While I didn’t think anyone was putting authors down, her comment did get me thinking about how right she was. Something I knew firsthand. When I started out in this business, my goal was to get an agent and then let the agent get a book deal. No two agents ever had the same feedback on my book. 

One would say the characters were well developed but the plot was weak while the other would say the plot was strong, but the characters could be better fleshed out. And they were talking about the same book!

So, I have a few takeaways from this experience. One, I am not going to keep a spreadsheet of readers’ dislikes. Not only are there too many, but readers’ tastes aren’t universal. I could omit something that someone likes and end up losing readers that way as well. Two, I’m going to write what I want. I have a loyal reader base who have demonstrated how much they like what I’ve done so far. I’m not going to compromise the integrity of my storytelling for fear of alienating a few readers who might not even be reading my work in the first place. Three, and most important of all, that old cliché is true, even when it comes to books. One person’s trash really is another person’s treasure.