Today I interviewed Jewel E. Leonard about her book, Rays of Sunshine. We’re talking about Settings for #smutchat this week, and I was interested in how she came to choose her setting for Tales by Rails, her first novella in the book. Listen in to how she wrote her steamy story!
What have you been working on lately?
I am up to my neck in edits for the second book of The Witches’ Rede series. Mostly now I’m writing scenes I failed to get to when I originally wrote this book several years ago during NaNoWriMo. I consider it punishment for a job not-well-done. (Just kidding. Sorta.)
This book was a dumpster fire the way I left it, and I’m pleased to say it’s turning out superbly well with my edits.
#SmutChat’s theme this week is settings. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on Tales by Rails. Your novella is set on a train. How did you choose that location?
To be honest, I gave it little thought; it seemed the natural choice.
When I started writing Tales by Rails, I really didn’t have anything planned for it as it started with what became the opening lines of narration that popped into my head just as I was falling asleep one night. Then as more of the story started coming to me, placing the–ahem–action on a train was a little bit fantasy fulfillment for yours truly.
Have you traveled by train before? (If you have, how was your experience?)
Oh absolutely, many times–California to Pennsylvania and back (twice), California to New Hampshire and back, California to Nebraska and back, Arizona to Texas and back. Like Surfer Boy, I don’t fly.
My experiences with Amtrak have been wildly variable … I wouldn’t recommend taking the train unless you can afford a private “roomette,” as they call the downstairs cabins (Superliners, like the one in Tales by Rails, have two stories–some coach seats downstairs with the roomettes, and coach seats all on the second level).
I had a few trips where nothing went horribly wrong, and some trips where Murphy’s Law was the rule of the rails.
Lost luggage, the dining car splitting from the train and leaving passengers with nothing but the snack car for sustenance, no air conditioning in the heat, heater turned full-blast at night and nothing to be done about it, smokers sneaking cigarettes on board (Amtrak is strictly non-smoking now and was at that time), smoking section sharing a car with a non-smoking section because clearly the smoke will be so kind as to stop at some invisible barrier (this was back in the days before Amtrak went non-smoking), old seats eager to snap at a finger if you tried to recline them, and don’t get me started on the state of the bathrooms at the end of several thousand miles … and there was one trip where we were pretty sure the train was breaking speed limits to get through nasty weather through the Midwest, which spurred a conversation about what happens should a tornado meet a train that scared passengers around us (oopsie) …
Having said all that–a good trip on Amtrak is well worth the fare and yes, I miss going, and double-yes, I sometimes wish I could just drop everything and run away the way Rhea does at the beginning of Tales by Rails.
Did you find yourself restricted in any way by the setting while you were writing?
With the train layover in Albuquerque enabling Surfer Boy to run to a nearby convenience store for some necessities not sold aboard the train, no, I really didn’t feel especially restricted.
Picking compact quarters was also a tip I picked up from a theater class I took as an elective at a community college a few years ago. The plays we studied all took place in one room, generally with more characters than can comfortably fit in them.
Combining tight spaces and two strangers with undeniable chemistry is a quick and dirty way to create tension. In my case, sexual tension.
And yeah, you’d better believe all that entendre was deliberate. 😉
What did you like most about the setting?
I found the setting especially conducive to speeding along the “natural course of events” between Surfer Boy and Rhea, when it almost certainly would have progressed far more slowly under other circumstances. When you’ve got a first-time rail-rider who didn’t especially prepare for her trip, there’s really very little to do if you’re not interested in talking to random people in an Amtrak observation car.
Basically, to be blunt, “trapped” in a tiny Amtrak roomette, if Rhea and Surfer Boy weren’t entertaining each other, they were bored out of their minds.
The sequel to Tales by Rails, Smiles by Trials, is not set on a train. How different was your experience writing the two books?
Smiles by Trials was more difficult … but not only did I expand Rhea’s world into a slightly fictionalized version of Illinois, I introduced several new characters with an assortment of complications, each, and the short novel spanned many months. It was more complicated all around, but more rewarding and–to my shock–seems to be more well-received than the novella that came before it.
Do you think you will write about trains in the future?
Seeing as I’m writing in the old west for The Witches’ Rede, including (steam) trains seems necessary. The railyards of Tucson are featured in book one (with a scene on a west-bound train omitted from the beginning), and there’s quite a bit of train that pops up in book two, with a rather —–never mind that. That’s spoilery. 😉
But yes, trains seem to be a staple in my writing these days, though I imagine that will change once The Witches’ Rede is complete.
Thank you, Jewel, for taking the time to answer some questions and for giving away a paperback copy of Rays of Sunshine during #smutchat this week! Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and bookmark her website. Take a moment to subscribe to her newsletter to stay up to date on everything she has going on this year!
Her books are available on Amazon! Don’t forget to check them out!
Enter here:
This is going to be a touchy post. Not uncomfortable touchy-feely like your creepy neighbor, more touchy-feely like you’ll probably get mad. At me, at my thoughts about the indie-publishing industry, whatever.
Indie writers are famous (infamous?) for not liking being told what to do. They don’t like being told to write every day, they don’t like being told not to genre-hop, they don’t like being told write to market. No head-hopping, no weird 1st person to 3rd person shifts in the middle of a novel, no using their artistic license to do what they want.
And that’s really great–up to a point. Yes, write what you love. For sure. Use 100 POVs in a novella because you think they fit, do that crazy cover because you want to stand out. Do whatever the hell you want because it’s your book, you’re self-publishing it, and you don’t have to answer to anyone.
There’s disdain for the traditional publishing industry. I know there is because I’ve felt it myself. When I attended the Minnesota Writer’s conference I went to a workshop on how to self-publish your novel. That she ran her own self-publishing firm seemed a conflict of interest to me, but anyway, her firm hired out everything. She hired out the editing, the proofing, the formatting, the cover. They did it all for you for a hefty tune of $5,000-$10,000. I could hear dreams shattering around me like fragile champagne glasses thrown against a stone fireplace mantle. (Romantic, yes?) Having already published 1700 for free (I only paid for my ISBN number) I sat there shaking my head.
But between then and now I had a realization. She wasn’t trying to rip anyone off. On the contrary, what she was actually trying to get across was that when you self-publish, especially when you self-publish, you are in charge of the quality of your book. You are in charge of how good the story is, you are in charge of how eye-catching the cover is. You are in charge to make sure the inside of your book is not a hot mess. The speaker of that workshop discouraged a lot of people from ever trying to self-publish because they didn’t know where else to look for information. They didn’t realize that you could self-publish for free (or for cheaper than $5,000!).
It’s too bad because the only thing she was trying to press upon the attendees of her workshop was that a certain standard is expected when a reader opens a book.
Traditional publishing is under a lot of fire lately for not being flexible and not changing their ways to adapt to what the publishing industry is turning into. I agree that to keep up with the output of indie authors they are going to step up their game and do things differently. But while distribution and output may change, the point is, quality is something a reader can always expect from a traditionally published book. And whether you want to believe it or not, a reader is going to want that same quality from your book, too.
Oh, I know, you’ve found typos in books. I read a book recently and a whole speech tag was missing in a sentence. I don’t know how it slipped by an editor, but it did. There have always been typos. And there will be more as the publishing industry has to tighten their bootstraps and make budget cuts. But for every little mistake that slips by in a trad-pubbed book, there things a reader can expect to get from a book they bought from a big publisher:
An author who is traditionally-published doesn’t have to worry about that stuff, and unless they go hybrid and self-publish as well as have their books trad-published, they won’t have to.
But you will. Not knowing isn’t a valid reason. If you want people to read your book, and read the next one you write, and the next, you have to take ownership of your work. It isn’t unheard of for indie-authors to revamp their first books as they publish more and learn more. I redid the cover for 1700, fixed typos, and fixed some formatting errors.
Anyway, the point I’m getting at with this post is that you are responsible for the quality of your book. Going rogue in the name of artistic license may feel good at the time, but how good is it going to feel if it ultimately means giving up sales and maybe even sullying your reputation as a writer?
The best way to know how to format your book is to look at one. Check one out at the library, or go to the bookstore and look through several in your genre. When I wrote my front matter for 1700, I took the book I was reading and copied it. You’ll notice in a trad-pubbed book the margins are justified, there are pages numbers, the book’s title and author name in the headers. There aren’t any spaces between paragraphs (this is a big pet peeve of mine).
There’s no doubt that the publishing industry is changing. But like anything that changes, you want things to get better, not worse.
Tell me what you think! Am I being too picky?
Other articles on self-publishing quality:
http://www.writing-world.com/publish/lulu.shtml
http://www.writing-world.com/publish/format.shtml
https://self-publishingschool.com/5-book-formatting-mistakes-to-avoid/
https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/thread/1434?start=0&tstart=0
I read books. I read lots and lots of books. Which, even though Stephen King says you can’t be a good writer if you don’t have time to read, is actually unusual for a writer. Most writers, especially those who don’t have much time to write, spend their time writing. That makes sense, right? Right. But I read a lot of books, and sometimes I’ll have an epiphany.
Right now I’m reading Making More Money: Habits, Tactics, and Strategies for Making a Living as a Writer by Honoree Corder and Brian D. Meeks, and I had an epiphany.
How does a writer title their books, short stories, blog posts?
I suck at it.
And that was my epiphany.
No, not that I suck at creating titles for my books and stories. I knew that already.
No, I realized that On the Corner of 1700 Hamilton is the worst book title in the world. It was what I had named it while I was writing it, and I never changed it.
I should have.
Because I will never know how much money that sucky title cost me. In sales, in readers, in exposure. In anything that has to do with selling books.
Which is too bad because the story inside is really good.
Anyway, where was I going with this? I should have chosen a better title for my book. It’s about a guy in a bar called The Maze. I practically named the book myself while I was writing it, but did I use it? Nope. Even the new cover has a picture of a maze on it.
I blew it. Big time.
Anyway, back to the book I’m in the middle of reading. The authors talk about where to advertise. They talk about your cover, your description. Keywords. They haven’t, so far, mentioned the story itself, because I’m assuming they expect you to publish quality work. And they don’t talk about your book’s title. It would have been nice if they had.
How important is a book’s title? As important as the description? The cover? The reviews? Maybe it doesn’t matter.
It must matter somewhat because when I do research on deciding a book title, I read over and over again how to choose something that is not being used a million times. (This is easy enough to find, just search for that title in Books on Amazon and see what comes up.) But you also don’t want to name your book something so crazy in an attempt to stand out that it sounds out of place in your genre.
Choosing a title, writing your blurb, choosing your keywords, and creating your cover all need to go together to complement what your book is about in an attempt to achieve maximum sales and a high number of reviews.
I wish I would have known how important titles are when I named 1700. I do now, and I won’t be making any more mistakes. My title will make sense, my cover will tell readers what genre they are reading, and my tight description will hook them into the plot.
The problem is, we can’t know what turns a potential customer off. They might see past a sucky cover if the description is well-written and grabs their attention. Some might not do anything more than look at a horrible cover and move along. Some go directly to the reviews and if they are all glowing reports of a wonderful read, they don’t pay attention to anything else. Without knowing how a potential reader chooses their next read, it’s imperative that we get all the pieces of the book spot-on the first time around.
I’ve learned my lesson with Summer Secrets. I researched the title; I researched the genre. The title will match the cover and the description will be a hook so well-written that no one reading it could possibly turn away. I’ll try by best with the keywords. Unfortunately, reviews are out of my hands, but I can get the title right.
This time.
How do you think of names for your books/stories/blogs?
Articles about choosing a title:
As a writer, putting your work out there is difficult. It’s probably the number one reason writers don’t publish: they are afraid of people seeing their work. And not only seeing their work, but judging it. I’m editing Summer Secrets right now. My editor (I feel like such a professional writer when I say that!) sent me back my novellas, and over the past week, I’ve slowly been putting in the revisions she suggested and fixing the mistakes she found.
You would think that I would be ecstatic that my novellas are so much closer to publication, and don’t get me wrong, I am. But you know how I really feel when I go through all her comments and suggestions? Shame. Embarrassment. Sadness. Fear.
The definition of shame from Merriam-Webster is:
When I go through my editor’s comments (and let me be clear, these are all my feelings, not caused by my editor. My editor is a professional, in that she is kind, supportive, and in no way hurtful or disrespectful in regards to me and my work) I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed I made the mistakes I made. I’m a writer, aren’t I? I can’t see for myself I used the same word five times in two sentences? I can’t see for myself my two main characters have names that are similar and therefore yes, a reader may mix them up, and why couldn’t I choose different names, for crying out loud? In the definition above, 1a mentions shortcomings. Uh. Yeah. Nothing makes you feel like you are less than a writer than when all your mistakes are highlighted and accentuated with a comment. Definition 3a mentions regret. Yep. I have a ton of regret in that, why didn’t I find all these mistakes before I passed on my work to someone?
Embarrassment goes hand in hand with shame. I’m embarrassed I sent her my work with so much wrong with it. I’m embarrassed I didn’t try harder. Never mind how many times I read through them, never mind that I used Grammarly, then read them again. Never mind I spent money on printing them out to edit a paper copy. I didn’t try hard enough to make them mistake-free. That’s my inner critic talking, my irrational, unrealistic inner critic. Because any writer knows how impossible it is to catch all your own mistakes.
But it’s how I feel when my eyes slide away from a highlighted paragraph and the comments telling me what’s wrong with it and possible ways to fix it. My cheeks heat up, I have to swallow hard, and I have to force myself to just get on with it.
Sadness is probably the weakest feeling I have when I edit, but it’s still there. I get sad that my editor had to work so hard, I get sad when I feel like I could have tried harder. I get sad when I think there are better writers out there than me. Sadness waltzes with self-doubt in my heart when I see how many comments she made in my document. But you know what else I get sad about? Thinking about not writing anymore. That makes me sad, too.
When I searched “fear in writing” I found this lovely drawing on Lynette Noni’s blog post. I have a lot of fears about my writing, and yes, they come out when I’m editing. I fear I’m not a good writer. I fear I’ll never sell any books. I fear I’ll never be able to make a career out of my writing. After all, I can’t be a good writer if my editor finds all these things wrong with my book, right? And I want to be a good writer so I can sell books, so people can say, “Wow, that was probably one of the most emotional, heart-wrenching books I have ever read.” We all want to be writers who touch someone in some way with our work.
But you know what else I feel when I edit? I feel joy. I feel happy when my editor says she enjoyed a setting description or how I nailed how a character feels with show and not tell. I get excited when she tells me she loved an intimate moment between two characters, and a “More please!” in the comment section. I get excited when she congratulates me on proper grammar.
I’ll feel pride when I hold my published books in my hands, when my friends, family, and co-workers congratulate me on being tenacious, of having a dream and working toward it.
The act of writing and publishing is no doubt an emotional roller coaster ride. There are ups and downs, you’re thrown sideways and completely head over heels. But the trick, and oh my, is it a trick, is to keep fighting. To not let those negative feelings overwhelm you, to let them win. Surround yourself with friends who know what you’re going through, who will support you, and not let you give up.
If I have any advice from going through the editing process, it’s to keep your mind open and learn. Learn from what your editor is telling you. S/he’s on your side. Your editor wants to you to put out your best work, and that undoubtedly is your goal too, which is why you hired one. Don’t take their advice and suggestions as hurtful criticism, (unless it is, then you need a new editor) take their feedback and turn it into a positive learning moment. I’ve learned a lot going through my editor’s feedback.
I took a break from editing to quickly write up this post. I’d come to a paragraph where her advice was hard to swallow. I see it, I understand it, I agree with it, but there again, those feelings come up. Why didn’t I see this? Why did I send my work to her this way? What is so wrong with me I couldn’t fix this on my own?
Nothing is wrong with me. Nothing is wrong with you, either. We’re all human, and doing the best we can.
For more articles about fear in writing, look here:
http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/10-ways-to-harness-fear-and-fuel-your-writing
Thank you for participating in #smutchat tonight! Click to enter the giveaway of @KMWeiland‘s book Outlining Your Novel and the workbook that goes with it.
I hope to see you again soon!
I haven’t done much writing lately, and I haven’t blogged much either. I gave myself a pass last week because I flew from MN to FL on Friday to go to my sister’s wedding, and I just got back last night (Monday) pretty late. I had a great weekend, though, and I spent a lot of time at the ocean, which was fantastic! I love going to the beach and looking for shells. There’s something calming about seeing the ocean and realizing how small we are in comparison.
But I’m back now, and this summer is going to be all about writing. This is what I’m going to be doing in the next little while:
An editing project came my way, and she was lovely enough to run it through CreateSpace for me so I can work on it at work. I don’t have computer access there, so having the paperback will be a big help. I’m looking forward to helping this author and reading her book. I hope she can get it out this summer.
My own editor is coming back with my edits for Summer Secrets. I’ll be putting them in and doing all the rest so I, too, can publish these novellas this summer. The things I need to before release:
I am hoping for an August release. I’m hoping. My plans have been shot to hell before, but I’ll do my best.
I’ll be going to Santa Barabara in June for a writer’s conference. It’s my first big one and my first time in California! I’m so excited I could die! I have everything paid for . . . I’m just waiting to go! I’ll have to see how much Summer Secrets I can get done before then.
This is my new working title for my Nano project from two years ago (formerly known as Running to Love). I’m letting this one breathe as I have ripped it apart a couple of times now, but I’m thinking as soon as I take the bandages off, it’s going to be all healed to perfection! Maybe not, but I do plan to release it in the fall after editing it a few more times. This is the first book in my Tower City Romance series. I’ll have the second one finished soon, and I plan two more books after that.
And of course, I’ll be doing #smutchat, the Twitter chat I started last month. Or was it two months ago now? Anyway, I think that people are enjoying it, and it’s going in a direction that I didn’t think it would. I always give away a non-fiction writing resource book in conjunction with the topic of the chat, but other authors have approached me and asked if I could give away their books too. So I will be pairing these books with the non-fiction writing resource I’ll be giving away and even interviewing the author for my blog if they are willing and able. My first foray into this is during one of my weeks when we talk about settings. I have the book picked out already and Jewel E. Leonard is going to be giving away Rays of Sunshine. The writing resource book of the week for that one is @AngelaAckerman‘s book on settings. It’s something interesting, but I won’t be doing this for every chat simply because planning the blog interview takes time, and quite honestly, I haven’t seen a lot of interest in the giveaways. I was hoping making the giveaway a writing resource would help spark interest, I mean, who doesn’t want to add to their collection to help them write better, but still, no. The last chat I hosted I had only 5 people enter the giveaway. It’s too bad.
Anyway, so that’s what I’ll be doing this summer. I do have a solid publication schedule down though, so you can watch for these:
Summer Secrets, August 2017
Don’t Run Away, (A Tower City Romance) November 2017
Chasing You, (A Tower City Romance) March 2018
After that, I hope to have books three and four of the series completed and ready to go.
I have a busy summer ahead of me, and I hope you do too! What are your summer writing plans?
When I write, I can tear through a manuscript pretty quickly. I have more free time as a mother of two who works full time should, and being I can write at my job if I know what I’m writing, I can put words down at a fairly acceptable pace. You would think I could crank out books, and believe me, that is one of my main goals as a writer.
But what holds me up is all the %#!*&$# editing I end up doing. I have to edit a lot because yeah, I’m still learning my craft, (I’ve complained before I feel like I’m skidding my wheels and this is a big reason why) and there’s not a lot I can do to speed that up besides doing what I’m doing. I’m learning not to head-hop, I’m learning how many points of view work in a book. I’m learning to write without all my naughty words. All of these things will help me put out a book that will reduce the amount of editing that I need before I can publish.
One of the things that took me by surprise was that amount of time it took adding the “set it aside” time everyone recommends before reading it again. I completely understand this, and I do it myself. I’m doing it now, putting aside one manuscript while I write the next, and when I’m done writing it I’ll go back to the first. But doing this takes so much time. Who wants to take so much time? Here you have a completed manuscript, then you read it, and read it again, and even again, fixing things as you go, if you’re lucky to find them, because let’s face it, by the time you read it that many times you know what it says by heart and it could turn to Greek and you wouldn’t even notice. And now you’re supposed to set it aside for a week, a month, whatever. What are you supposed to do? All you want is to publish the darn thing.
After you think you can’t do any more with it, then come the beta readers, and if they find stuff you missed, you’re at it again. Then maybe you send it to an editor or a proofreader, and then you have to fix those things, too.
It’s nutso and when someone would tell me they’ve been working on their book for two or three or four years, I would just be, forget that I’m not doing that. But guess what? I’m doing it because I have to.
I won’t always have to.
I’m getting better. I’m learning which POVs work best, I’m learning to not head-hop, I’m learning not to write using my naughty word list.
One day I’ll get there, and a 77,000 word novel won’t take me two years to publish because I’ll have all the lessons I’ve learned already in my head as I write a new book, and I won’t have to go back and fix all those mistakes I didn’t know I was making in the first place. My career is just beginning; one day I’ll know what I’m doing.
And that day can’t come soon enough.
More articles on letting your WIP sit so you can read it with fresh eyes:
http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2011/12/i-just-finished-a-novel-what-do-i-do-next-let-it-sit/
http://annerallen.com/finished-your-first-novel-what-to-do-now/
Vania Margene Rheault 