Why doesn’t my Blackberry work? And other Techno-geek problems…

This one entry in my blog is a techno-geek blog and not a whiny writer's entry or even an entry about writing in general. Sorry. Next week. Or see my previous entry which sort of mashed my techno-geek and writing side together in a very uncomfortable mix.

So. You've been warned.

So. For all you desperate admins out there searching the Internet for help on why some of your users' Blackberry's aren't working…or why some of your users can't publish their certificates to the GAL…or why some of the permissions you've delegated in Active Directory don't seem to work all the time…or other anomalies like that…

This blog is for you.

Why Things Just Don't Work As Expected

Having problems with permissions in AD? Problems with Blackberries? Weird anomalies when trying to reset passwords?

I thought so.

Sometimes being an enterprise administrator for a very large organization is just…depressing. Since we've upgraded to Windows 2003, I've learned that Microsoft is serious about best practices such as not using your standard, mail-enabled/mailbox-owning user account for administrative tasks. And I've grown serious about it, too since I've begun to appreciate security. Now, I'm so serious that I'm thinking fondly of starting the Guido School of Admin Training (with sincere apologies to any existing Guidos or schools already named thusly).

Our Guido School of Admin Training is a very informal school held outside in the nice, fresh air in the alley between two office buildings. There are no formal registration procedures, however you do have to be nominated to attend. Admins just need to show up for class to begin.

What to expect: The instructor, Guido, will shake your hand and then gently haul you over to the nearest wall by your collar. Then it becomes really exciting and lots of fun. With a jaunty smile, Guido grabs you securely by the back of the neck and smacks your face against the wall while saying in a firm tone of voice:

Do
{smack}
not
{smack}
nest
{smack}
security
{smack}
groups
{smack}
into
{smack}
protected
{smack}
groups.

And then, after a slight pause for refreshments:

Do
{smack}
not
{smack}
place
{smack}
standard
{smack}
mail-enabled/mail-box associated
{smack}
user
{smack}
accounts
{smack}
into
{smack}
protected
{smack}
groups.

Now, if you can repeat what you just learned, you receive a diploma and a short ride to the nearest hospital.

Our school guarantees success. For the rest of their life, students will remember what they've been taught, even if they imprinted on Windows NT and never learned any other operating system and refuse to use an administrative account because it's just too much trouble. Even if they repeatedly put a group containing all 8,000 users in their domain (within your AD tree, mind you) into Domain Admins because they thought that would be the simplest way to deploy something, say, a patch. And after they remove the group containing all the users from Domain Admins and they suddenly get a rash of calls about how all the managers' Blackberrys are all broken, they call you to fix it.

If this happens, it's time to send the admin to Guido's school, so just take the bull by the horns and nominate them.

Because now you have to deal with the admincount attribute.

You see, protected groups are special. They need to be special because in the past, fanatical admins have removed critical permissions from key groups instead of simply not putting unnecessary admin accounts into those groups to begin with. After removing critical permissions, these fanatics have lost control of their domain, or worse, their AD Tree or even Forest. Okay, maybe that's not the entire reason for protecting these key groups, but it is certainly one good reason. There are a lot of others and this blog isn't long enough for all of them.

So in Windows 2003, Microsoft helped admins avoid such idiocy by developing a mechanism to put back critical permissions on certain key groups called protected groups. Organizations which follow best practices for administration and security are most likely completely unaware of this secret mechanism and don't need to worry about it. If you follow best practices, it will have no impact on you and never will. You deserve to be worshiped as the deity you obviously are.

For the rest of us, we need to learn this rule: You don't put standard user accounts associated with a mailbox into any protected group; and you don't nest groups into protected groups (because you lose track of what you nested and could potentially nest groups containing standard user accounts into protected groups and elevate permissions that should not be elevated).

If you violate this rule, the admincount attribute will afflict you mightly. (And yes, I used "afflict" on purpose so don't leave me a lot of obnoxious comments about that. It's funny. Laugh, darn you.)

Protected Groups

What are the protected groups? With Windows 2003, they include:

Schema Admins

Enterprise Admins

Cert Publishers

Domain Admins

Account Operators

Print Operators

Administrators (domain local)

Server Operators

Backup Operators

How are they protected?

One piece of the mechanism protecting these special groups is an attribute called the admincount.

• The protected groups have the admincount attribute set to 1.
  
• Any group or user account nested into a protected group gets the admincount set to 1.
  
• Any user nested into a group nested into a protected group gets the admincount set to 1.
  

The only exception is if there is a user account or group from another domain in your AD tree nested into a protected group, like the domain local Administrators group. The group/accounts from the other domain will not be affected. (But that does not mean you should be a knucklehead and use your standard, mailbox-associated user account for administrative purposes in other domains. Come on, grow up.)

Normally, the admincount is not set at all (it is null).

Every fifteen minutes or so, the operating system looks for the admincount attribute. If it finds it, it does some interesting things. It removes inheritance from the object so it will not inherit the permissions it might once have inherited from its parent OU or OU structure. This prevents unfortunate things from happening if you move one of the protected groups out of the Builtin container to a different OU or container where you might have diddled with the permissions it inherits might cause a breach of security or worse. Like a Help Desk person with full control over a user OU suddenly gaining full control over Domain Admins because some knuckle-dragging yahoo put Domain Admins into that OU. Stuff like that.

In addition, if an object like a user account has the admincount attribute set, the system strips certain key permissions granted to that account or group by the schema definition for that object type at the moment of creation. Specifically, most of the SELF permissions. These are the permissions that let a user account, for example, publish a certificate to AD (and hence, to the global address list or GAL if you are running a product like Exchange 2003).

So this could have the impact of preventing a user from publishing a cert.

Or it may break a user's Blackberry if the user happens to be put into a group like Domain Admins, because generally the Blackberry's service account is granted permissions through the OU hierarchy. These permissions for the BB service account are necessary for the service account to send/receive mail to/from the user's Blackberry to their Exchange mailbox. So if the user's account is affected by the admincount attribute, it will stop inheriting permissions from the OU, the BB service account will not get the permissions it needs, and this user will have a brick instead of a Blackberry.

Just a few examples. I've also seen it cause apparent permission anomalies where an admin grumbles that AD is broken or doesn't work well because sometimes they can't manage an object they supposedly have permissions to manage. When I get that type of call, the first thing I check is if the admincount attribute is set on either the admin's account or on the object they are trying to manage. Most of the time, one or the other (or both) has the attribute set and it's time to nominate the admin for my special school.

Because if a user object can't inherit permissions and has some self-permissions removed, how well do you think you're going to be able to manage an account with delegated permissions? How well will an account thus damaged work with inherited and/or delegated permissions? Not well, my friend. Not well at all.

The Kicker

Once a user account ( or group) is "contaminated" by the admincount attribute, it doesn't come clean just by removing the user account or group from the protected group. Oh, no. You have to fix it.

The nice thing about this is that you can always tell when some admin really needs to meet Guido out in the alley. You can just run ldifde and export a file containing all the users and groups with the admincount attribute set to 1. And of course the event logs on your domain controllers will show membership changes to protected groups so if you catch the problem soon after it occurs, you can see exactly who needs that training.

Here is an example of the ldifde command that will provide you with a text file called ac.txt of all users and groups with the admincount set in a domain (in the example, the domain is example.com):

Ldifde –f ac.txt –d dc=example,dc=com –l samaccountname –r "(admincount=1)"

Note: I like to include the samaccountname attribute in the output (it will by default include the distinguished name) because it helps me in other processes—but this is entirely optional.

You might think that the admincount is a bad thing. It is not. It is your friend because it shows when you are not following best practices and are, in fact, endangering the security of your enterprise. So I'm not in favor of turning off this functionality.

I'm in favor of training and implementing best practices that create a reasonable security model based on the use of a separate account for administration. This secondary account should not be mailbox enabled or associated with a mailbox.

Fixing It

Here is how to fix it if things weren't done exactly right in the past. I will warn you, however, that if you have a lot of user accounts affected (as I have had to fix multiple times for multiple domain admins) this can be a somewhat time consuming process, even if you script it up.

Fix Protected Group Membership

First, you must make sure you undo the cause, which is to say, make sure you don't have any groups nested into protected groups. If you do, remove them. There is no point in trying to cleanse things if you leave the source of contamination. Leaving groups nested into the protected groups means at some future date, you will be addressing this same problem again because people forget and put the wrong accounts into "innocent looking" groups.

So remove all nested groups and remove all standard user accounts that are associated with a mailbox. Just leave your agreed-upon administrative accounts which can and should have the admincount attribute set. Naturally, you won't be an idiot and remove all the accounts before you add the new administrative accounts, because you might find yourself suddenly unable to actually add the new admin accounts, particularly if you empty out Domain Admins without putting any new accounts into it, first. (Just an FYI. I know you know these things but I like to state the obvious. It's so satisfyingly…obvious.)

Clean the Groups and Users Removed

Once you have removed any nested groups and innocent user accounts, you can clean them. You have to clean both the user accounts and the nested groups, if any.

First, reset the admincount attribute to 0 (or null) on the nested groups and users. Null is best, but 0 will work and sometimes it is nice to set it to 0 because you then have a historical artifact you can search for later if you have other issues. A 0 will tell you that this user or group was afflicted by the admincount at one point. (Just as you are afflicted by whichever admin did this to the user or group.)

For one or two users and groups, you can simply edit them in adsiedit.msc, which will allow you to reset the admincount attribute. You can also script it up if you wish. (I use a script for bulk cleaning.)

If you are using adsiedit.msc, you should take the following steps:

• Right click the user (or group) and select Properties.
  
• On the Attribute Editor tab, find the admincount attribute. Select it and click the [Edit] button. Click on the [Clear] button (or set the value to 0 if you want the historical artifact). Click [Ok].
  
• Select the Security tab
  
• Click on the [Advanced] button. Click on the [Default] button. This will restore the removed permissions PLUS it will put a check mark next to the "Allow inheritable permissions…" box, which you want.
  
• Click on [Ok] until you close out that user's properties.
  

Unfortunately, as you see, in addition to clearing the admincount, you have to reset (turn on) inheritance for that object (group or user). Finally, you must give it back the permissions that object normally gets when it is first created. These permissions are not inherited, they are defined in the schema for that object and are granted to the object when it is created. If you use certificates, you're going to want these permissions and that's why the [Default] button is so handy. It restores all those things for you.

DSACLS can also be used to restore inheritance and reset an object back to its default "state" by using the /P:N /S switches.

There is obviously a lot more to be said about this, including administrative practices, best practices, and security whys & wherefores, but I'll be here all day if I don't stop somewhere.

There is a relevant KB article, "Delegated permissions are not available and inheritance is automatically disabled" KB817433, but I don't recommend doing the workaround. In fact, I generally don't like referencing that KB article because it includes that workaround and some knuckleheads always want to do the workaround instead of just tackling the problem and fixing it properly.

I recommend doing things the right way so you don't have to deactivate something that is there to help you and prevent you from doing something really egregiously stupid that could cost you the control of your domain or AD forest.

So…enough already.

Good night and sweet dreams.

Life in general

So this isn't my first blog this week, but you probably didn't realize that. I'm a charter member of Romance Writers of America (RWA) and after getting the June issue, I wrote a very different blog. Posted it and left it up for 24 hours and then deleted it, mostly because I'm trying to find ways to deal with frustration and not simply stroke out. I won't bore you with the details of my first post—I was simply upset because I may have trouble maintaining my published author status with RWA even though I actually have published, have an agent, and am working on publishing more titles.

However, the last few weeks have just been increasingly stressful and it makes me wonder why so many people are so determined to make life difficult. It's like they go out of their way to complicate simple issues instead of just doing the easy, straight-forward solution. It's wearing me down.

Like at my day job. I'm an enterprise admin in Information Technology (IT) for a very large organization—we have over 250,000 users and computers, if that gives you any idea. And a very small part of what I do is help roll out national projects. This is a very small part, mind you. Most of what I do is very unglamorous work with domain controllers, directory services, DNS, WINS, and other techno-geek, backroom stuff that no one has ever heard of and doesn't want to know about. In fact, I'm probably one of a handful of experts on a little know mechanism that exhibits itself via an attribute called the admincount on objects in Active Directory (AD) and prevents a Blackberry from working for users affected by this, as well as preventing them from publishing certificates to AD and so on. Like I said, no one wants to hear this stuff, least of all you. (However, I am actually going to publish two blogs tonight and the second one is going to be on the admincount attribute so if you're a techno-geek who is really into this stuff, you can look at that, later.)

But I am telling you this as a way of segueing into this topic of how humans seem to love making it difficult. So, I have this little side effort going on to do a simple deployment of a simple project. And I get it done all across the country until I get to the west coast of the U.S. These guys, in their brilliant arrogance had decided that the rest of us ignorant savages don't know what we're doing and so they can't possibly implement this the way the rest of the country has implemented it already. They have to reverse engineer it because they are convinced they know better. I mean, if they can't be involved in the development of every single project in our organization, then it's just up to these guys to break it apart and change it to suit their whims. It doesn't matter if changing the project may impact the security and expose information that should not be exposed or that another system was tested and granted FDA-approval as medical equipment and therefore should not be changed without changes being properly documented and tested since it might affect patient care and safety. Oh, no. These guys know better.

And so instead of a simple deployment, they refuse to do things the right way. The easy way. And even they have a change management system they insist everyone in their area follow, they are perfectly content to refuse to allow us to use our change management system and not change things without testing in the middle of a deployment. People might say, well, that's just your opinion. No. This is not my project. I had nothing to do with it. I was handed a finished project and told to deploy it and I'm following the directions. I would never assume that I knew better than the developer and that I could change the system mid-stream, particularly since I know that changing any medical system that is FDA-approved is at a minimum just bad judgment.

So that's my example of how people take a simple thing and make it difficult and stressful and why I'm probably going to stroke out.

Because not being content with a stressful day job in IT, I just had to start a writing career, too. And did I pick the easy road to publication? Did I write nice romances for a great company like Harlequin or write really hot romances that could be best sellers for a company like Avon? Heck no. I had to choose the hard road. I had to start out with writing a romantic comedy for the Harlequin Duets line which folded right after I submitted my manuscript (which they actually held for two years because they liked it—but not after Duets folded).

Then, did I learn my lesson? Heck no, again. I then wrote a traditional Regency. Got an agent. Kensington and Signet stopped publishing traditional Regencies. All right—two for two! And did I learn my lesson, yet? Heck no. What did I write next? I wrote a Regency-set mystery which pretty much no one publishes. Well, there are a few, but they are already pretty well stocked with all the Regency-set mysteries they want from their stable of writers and sort of don't need any more. Particularly not stories that are really kind of romantic mysteries set in the Regency period.

Did that stop me? No, of course not. I wrote four of them. But I also wrote a vampire story that has a romance in it, but it's not really hot, sensuality-wise, because I was actually interested in other issues in the story. So I sort of took a well-selling genre and wrote the story least likely to sell. I can hear my agent sighing…heavily and mournfully in the background.

Am I developing a trend here? Am I just making it difficult for myself? Yes, I guess so. I'd like to think I'm not being as arrogant as the guys from the west coast in my day job, but on the other hand, maybe all the other writers are looking at me and pointing their fingers, saying: if she just wasn't so arrogant and would just write commercial fiction in a well-selling genre, she might not have so many difficulties. She just won't follow the rules. Why is she trying to write Regency-set romantic mysteries, especially ones without long, explicit sex scenes and hot, lingering glances?

Except, I thought writers were supposed to write things they might actually enjoy reading. And I'm taking all kinds of writing classes and listening to all the experts like Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (who are fabulous writers and very generous with their time and advice) and my goal is to be the best writer there is. Of Regency-set romantic mysteries. Which may simply be mutually exclusive, especially if I continue to write what the characters and story demand instead of shoving in a lot of long, explicit sex scenes and things like "he stroked the pearl at the very core of her being as she moaned with ecstasy".

(At this point, I'm sure Crusie and Mayer are thinking: hmmm, if she's really listening to us, she wouldn't be writing this junk and she'd maybe be a best selling author by now. Why is she making this so hard? Write a freaking sex scene, for heaven's sake, and get over it. Grow up if you want to be a successful author.)

Okay, I might even write a few contemporary, romantic mysteries which I will consider romantic even without explicit scenes and pearls of anyone's essences. Darn, I guess that's not really listening, is it?

Okay, I guess I am arrogant and making it hard on myself. I really don't know, but I do know if I don't learn to take a deep breath and put it all behind me, I probably will stroke out. Soon.

Presumption

Looking back over my past blogs, I start to wonder who the heck am I to give advice to other writers? It's not like I'm Jennifer Crusie who has an entire class she is presenting on how to write a novel. She's also an amazingly successful and completely obsessed writer. And if you're not subscribing to her class (going on now!) then shame on you—you ought to be. Check out http://www.crusiemayer.com/workshop/ and listen to them. They have a lot of good things to say, although I have to disagree with several frothing-at-the-mouth points that Jennifer makes which I think are just…well, completely wrong. She's an avid fan (rabid fan) of only using either action tags in dialog or a simple a phrase including: said. No whispers, sighs, moans, whatever. And yet. Hmmm. She's wrong.

You see, in point of fact, while I agree with the use (or rather the non-use) of phrases such as: he hissed, "You'll never get away with that!" And I *sort of* agree with Jennifer's claim that it requires there to be a lot of "s's" in the phrase someone is hissing because of the sibilance—in a way, I actually don't agree. I don't agree that hiss requires there to be "s's" in the words being hissed. I just don't care for that particular attribution. I agree with Jennifer that in most cases, you ought to just use a simple: said. It's cleaner and not so melodramatic.

But she is totally, utterly, completely, mind-blowingly wrong about sigh. It does NOT need any sibilance, and anyone who has EVER been a member of a family will COMPLETELY know the exact mood and how it sounds when a teenager turns to her mother and sighs, "Oh, Mom." That is a sigh. Nothing else fits that description. "Said" does not convey it at all. And I'm shocked that Jennifer doesn't realize this because I believe she has at least one child and has been, at some time in her life, a child, and must therefore have either sighed at or been the recipient of a sigh of this sort.

In fact, I'll bet that at one time, she or her mom, in her turn, looked at her husband/child who has once more doing something incredibly stupid and sighed, "Oh, Person's-Name." You know exactly what is going on and exactly what that sighing, breath-letting-out, phrase means. We've all either uttered it or been the recipient of it many, many times. That long suffering sigh. The sigh of a wounded martyr. That guilt-inspiring sigh that is pretty much saying: "Oh, somebody's-name-who has-just-caused-me-a-vast-ocean-of-disappointment-or-shame."

Sighs absolutely do not include nor imply any sibilance whatsoever, and in dialog, there is nothing like that exhaling sigh, that "what am I going to do with you?" sigh, that sigh that we've all heard and felt guilty over and ashamed at after hearing.

So really, even the great writers sometimes get it wrong or make up rules that actually don't work and may have no basis in reality. Which is why I pretty much ignore all rules that don't make sense to me. Maybe it's why I'm not a great NY Times selling author. Maybe I'm just a mediocre hack with a limited vocabulary that doesn't understand that sighs have to be sibilant. Since when? The dictionary does NOT define it that way. A sigh is exhaled air, period. It's not a hiss. (The sibilant part is just completely wrong, if not entirely nut-so and frankly to my ear means there is something wrong with your hearing, but anyway…)

And while I'm on the subject, you actually CAN laugh something, as in: "You old goat!" she laughed.

I have, many times, tried to talk or did talk while I was laughing and gasping for air.

Why is it that authors who make all these rules about dialog tags don't seem to have lived actual lives? Don't they ever laugh while they're trying to talk? Don't they ever turn to their spouse and sigh, "Oh, Whoever. Why? Why did you do that for the hundredth time?"

I could, on a certain level, accept that Jennifer's real reason is that she doesn't want the reader to pause even for a nanosecond while reading the dialog to "figure out" what the tag means. Okay. I can sort of accept that, but really…ummmm, no. I have a brain. I use it. I read. I have no problem with whispers, sighs, and laughs. In fact, it makes me hear the dialog more clearly and understand what is going on. It doesn't make me think the writer doesn't know his or her business. In fact, it makes the story richer.

In the end, I'm afraid if this means I will forever be a mediocre writer and end up (as Jennifer said) in Writer's Hell for crimes against the reading public, then so be it. If the mother in my story looks at her headstrong child and sighs, "Oh, Henry…" Then by God, I'm going to use the word: sigh. And if my character is laughing and trying to talk at the same time (like I do all the time) then by God they are going to say, "Oh, please, quit—you're killing me," she laughed, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Although I swear I won't ever use the word: hissed. Because quite frankly, it's just silly. I'm not writing melodramas.

Promoting your work

The concept of promoting yourself and your work is such a strange one. I've heard a lot of lectures that say women in particular have problems promoting themselves and their work but I'm not convinced it's a gender thing. I've seen just as many men who not only do not promote themselves but actually downplay their contributions. In many cases, this is a result of having high standards and the search for excellence. The guy I work with/for is absolutely brilliant and yet he insists he's a knucklehead and points out dozens of ways he could have done something better while the rest of us are just sitting there with our mouths hanging open, catching flies, and watching dumbfounded as he cuts to the core of extraordinarily complex information system problems and defines ways to resolve them that actually make sense and are doable.

If you set high standards for yourself and look at your work critically, you'll find the flaws and it will never be good enough—never quite perfect. And it is therefore correspondingly difficult to say how wonderful your work is when you see all too clearly the flaws in it. When you wish it was better. And so how can you promote it without feeling like a fool or worse, a foul liar? Well, I can tell you this, no matter what you do, you're going to feel like an idiot. There's no way around that one unless you're just stunningly full of yourself.

Nonetheless, in all fields of endeavor, you have to promote yourself. In my day job, every year I have to write up a blurb about how I'm the Queen of Perfection in the computer field for my performance appraisal. And now, I also have to try to think of ways to make people sit up, take notice of my books and buy them, despite all my absolute conviction that everything I do could definitely be done better.

I'm also sitting here, almost beside myself with anxiety about getting book reviews, particularly real reader reviews. Despite my promise to totally avoid looking at reviews for fear of being forced to face the reality that I'm just a hack whose search for excellence has led her into the outfield of mediocrity, part of me is curled up on my chair shaking with fear at stumbling over some review somewhere that confirms my worst fears. Because I don't want to be a hack. I don't want to be mediocre. I want to be Shakespeare (without a sex change operation or having to use that really weird, overblown language).

So, that's the sum of my fears. And now…promotion. I'm the best thing since Harry Potter, so read my books! How's that?

One of the biggest problems writers face is trying to promote their books. Oh, sure, some of the really lucky/talented/whatever ones actually get a marketing department behind them and get some creative marketing done, but for the rest of us, that ain't an option. And if you write e-books, your options dwindle even further.

Bad Side

Here's the bad side. Reality, if you will. No matter what you write, your task is to get your book in front of someone when they are ready to buy a book. For people with an actual physical hardcover/paperback, you have to convince buyers for bookstores to stock your books. For you, getting that book out there on the actual shelves is going to be crucial. And this isn't all about Amazon. Amazon, while doing amazing things, is actually not selling as many books as say, Wal-Mart and Target. So, it's the book buyers you have to convince.

For e-book writers, it's even harder because you're already pretty much limited to people drifting around the Internet (a smaller number than those drifting through the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target, believe me) and of those, the ones who are actually interested in books, and of THOSE, the ones who are willing to buy an e-book. This is a very small number—unless you are talking about erotica—which seems to go hand-in-hand with the Internet. So you don't have the casual book buyer seeing your cover in the Target check-out line and buying it on impulse.

And to further depress you, most of the advertising avenues, particularly for e-books, are really geared for writers selling to other writers. Rather incestuous, actually, but the ads are in writers magazines or trade magazines sold mostly to writers, and web sites that review romance and other novels that have an audience that is largely…other writers in the same genre(s). Of course, most writers are also voracious readers, so this is not all bad, but it is still like pissing in your own bathwater. It's not getting out there to other people.

And all those online chats, blogs, etc—again—who are you really reaching? A few readers and other fellow writers. I've been on a lot of online chats and the most readers I've seen online chatting is 20. Now I'd be happy to get 20 readers, but that's not going to make me a NY Times bestseller any time soon. I'd say those promotional efforts are a lot of work for very little gain. You spend hours "chatting" with, on average, 4 or 5 other people who may or may not buy your book and are really just Internet cruising hoping to find some free goodies.

Good Side

I'm actually having a bit of difficulty with the good side. Sorry. I'm afraid I'm really more "the glass is most likely half-empty unless I'm wrong about that" sort of person, but it is so easy for me to go on and on about the difficulties you face in promotional efforts.

But if you've got a marketing department behind you, you've got a good start. If not and you have a physical product, e.g. hardcover/paperback, then you'd best start chatting up those Wal-Mart and Target buyers. Chat up librarians. Librarians are your friend. Advertise in mags like Romance Sells which will get you in front of at least some librarians and book buyers.

For both e-book authors and traditional authors with a physical product, think about ways of reaching readers who are NOT just other writers. Sure, if you get the opportunity to advertise in industry rags like Romantic Times, Writer's Digest, The Strand (for mystery writers/readers) and other publications—definitely go for it. Create book trailers on YouTube and wherever else you can get them displayed. Set up a web page on MySpace or the latest web hotspots, and…

Think of avenues that the "normal" non-writing public would run across. Google Adwords, for example, which is what pops up those interesting little website suggestions along the right-hand side of your web browser whenever you Google something. Other web portals do the same thing.

Can you write an article about you as a writer and get it published in a non-writer magazine? For example, if you're seventy and just published your first novel, could you write up your experiences for AARP as a way of expanding your horizons after reaching retirement age? Or, if you wrote a fiction work about rock climbing, could you get an article about the research you did or your own experiences published in an outdoors magazine? It's not rocket science, but it is a bit of work. However, I firmly believe that taking advantage of those other sorts of avenues will pay off.

So that's what I mean—reaching out to audiences outside the normal network of writers. Break outside the somewhat insular community of writers and hard core readers to find new readers who may be interested in what you have to say. It's a bright new world out there with a bunch of people looking for entertainment. Entertain them.

Who knows, maybe you could actually get to be the next Shakespeare?

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

Newton's laws of motion may seem like an odd set of laws for developing plots in writing, but in fact, they not only work for physics, but they work for fiction, too. It's one of those odd ways in which seemingly unrelated fields actually provide some point of reference and clarity for each other. Perhaps serendipitous, perhaps an example of synchronicity, perhaps simple insanity. You decide.

So what are Newton's laws of motion?

The Law of Inertia: An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force; and an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.

Story Opening. Some characters begin from what is essentially suspended animation, stasis, or the classic rut. Some external force, be it an inheritance, murder, or just catching the wrong train in the evening has to impel that character into a maelstrom of action.

Other characters may already appear to be in motion, but they are moving in the wrong direction or moving too quickly. In their case, an external force must act upon the character to push them in another direction, or stop/divert their path toward another direction. A U.S. Navy Seal on a critical mission is diverted by the crying of a child, propelling him and the mission into another direction.

Writers label this a number of things. The Inciting Incident or The Call to Action. Call it what you will, it is, in essence, the character overcoming the inertia of their everyday life and starting the story. I actually prefer to think of it this way because it reinforces, to my mind, the essential task you must complete for your story to begin. Your story must overcome the inertia of non-being and become an interesting work of fiction.

• Your character must overcome the inertia of their everyday life
  
• The writer must overcome the reader's initial inertia which translates into a lack of interest in anything the writer has to say. The writer has to hook the reader with the story, pique the reader's interest, and make the reader want to read more.
  
• And the story must overcome the inertia of the backstory, plot contrivances, and everything that must be done to get the story moving and get to the action.
  
• The writer wants to overcome this inertia as quickly as possible, to get the story and the characters moving and get the reader to turn the pages.
  

The Law of Acceleration: The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force action on the body and is in the same direction.

Fiction is about change. Characters are tortured and put through fire until they come out on the other side, wiser and perhaps in the case of a romance, worthy and ready for love. So if your character and story are going to move forward, you need to think about the law of acceleration, i.e. the rate of change of momentum. Momentum of the story, often called pacing by writers, and the momentum of change for the character(s). The obstacles they face, while they cause problems for the character, are what will propel that character—and story—forward.

The character's obstacles, bad decisions, and stupid actions are the forces acting upon them that will accelerate both the story and the character forward to the conclusion. And you want your story to keep on accelerating if you want your reader to turn those pages.

But not just mindless acceleration. The forces must cause change. Endless fight scenes are boring. What is interesting is the character's reactions to those incidents and how they change the character, change the flow of the story, and cause things to move in another, and hopefully, unexpected direction. Ceaseless action can actually decelerate your story. Think about it.

That's why I like the force aspect in this law, because it reminds me that the character is not in complete control. There are forces acting upon the character which will cause that character to react, reevaluate his or her life, and ultimately change. This is the journey or character's arc.

The Law of Reciprocal Actions: To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And finally, my favorite law. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So many writers forget this and it is so critical and basic to any story. Every time something happens to your character from the very beginning incident, your character is going to make a decision and react. And every time your character acts, there is going to be an equal and opposite reaction, which is many cases is going to be exceedingly unpleasant for your character and get them into deeper poo-poo. This is, in essence, the way stories work.

Your character inherits an old house (an action affecting them and propelling them out of their inertia).

Your character makes a decision and acts upon it by moving to the old house (decision/reaction: their reaction to the initial action) despite the fact that the house has a bad reputation.

Your character is confronted by ghosts/horror/mayhem (action).

Every action your character takes results in an equally bad and unexpected reaction in the story events.

And so it goes:

Your character overcomes inertia as a result of an initial action, starting the story cycle.

Then action / decision / reaction --> which leads to another action / decision / reaction cycle because every action results in an equal and opposite reaction in the plot.

And each cycle escalates (remember acceleration) until the final breaking point, the climax, the black moment, the final conflict—whatever you want to call it, which the character finally does resolve so the story can conclude.

Perhaps this appeals to me because it defines what can be sort of literary "airy-fairy nonsense" in more active, dynamic terms that I can relate to like action/reaction, forces driving a character, and overcoming inertia. It seems to make more sense to me and I'm better able to evaluate if my beginning chapter is strong enough to frame the story and get the character and action going if I think of it in terms of overcoming the initial inertia. And if I remember the laws of acceleration and reciprocal action, it is easier for me to keep the story moving. Perhaps it's just synchronicity after all, or some weird kink in my mental wiring.

The problem for other writers is finding ways to think about writing and the process of building a story in terms that make sense to them and help them with their goal of creating a piece of fiction that is interesting, enlightening, and engaging. For some writers, this is an effortless process that does not require any thought. Others plot and plan, write and rewrite, until they get their work the way they want it. Every writer is unique, every process is unique and all that matters is finding ways to illuminate the dark well enough to get where you want to go.

Speaking of Writing Software…

It's true that I'm a computer geek so some of the new Microsoft programming environments are just dead sexy, and sure, only a small percentage of writers use a Microsoft operating system on their computer, much less have upgraded to VistA, or have any interest what-so-ever in anything to do with Microsoft technologies, but I get an RSS feed (another techie-geek thing) from this guy: Tim Sneath who has been talking about Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, and some of the new web stuff and he mentioned this bunch of guys at Vertigo who created this supercool application that I found to be useful for writers. At the moment, it's free.

It's even useful for non-writers.

It's called Family.Show and it's a fantastic graphical genealogy program. I've been fumbling around with it and it is one of those serendipitous things that right at the moment when I was editing some of my manuscripts for submission (Yay! The Wild Rose Press asked for a partial!) I found exactly the program I needed for free. You see one thing I've been doing as a writer is creating a community of characters for my Regency novels. Many of the characters are related and what with one thing or another, I've been losing track of birth dates, physical traits, etc. I've used everything from MS Word documents to spreadsheets to a character database and it was just too difficult because I couldn't keep all the relationships straight. So I had been thinking of using a genealogy program to do it and voila! I get an RSS feed from Tim Sneath on exactly the same day when I realized I needed a genealogy program and guess what? The fabulous guys at Vertigo released this super-easy freebie program to show how WPF works (you can even download the source code—I mean how cool is that? — okay, I warned you that I'm a computer geek).

Here is what I really like about this, as opposed to all the other programs out there on the market. Besides the fact that it is free, of course.

You have little humanoid characters with lines and dates showing the relationships of the people (characters) you input, PLUS you can add pictures! PLUS you can add text (they call it "the person's story") where you can describe things like physical traits, etc. I've been adding at least the following:

• Eye color, hair color, distinguishing marks
• Personality type, dominate traits, bad habits, and general motivation: what makes this person do what they do
• Major issues
• Speech habits, pet phrases, etc.
  

This is just so cool because so many genealogical programs just don't have these free-form text areas and ways to include pictures. It is just so perfect for a writer developing their "stable of characters".

Here are pictures of what I have for Oriana Archer, the character in the manuscript just requested by The Wild Rose Press.

As you can see, I visualized Oriana sort of like the actress Gene Tierney with the really sexy overbite.

If you click on the [Photos & Stories] button, you can add all the information about that character you could ever possibly want (as I show in the next image).

You see—here's the thing. I've used a lot of other software, including writing software which lets you drone on about characters all you want. Some of it even lets you add pictures or whatever.

But what was always missing was the graphic representation of the relationships and that's where genealogy software comes in handy. I'm not saying you have to use this software—even if it is tres chic. What I am saying is that sometimes, when you're developing your characters, the family relationships are important and finding a way to track those relationships can be a challenge.

One note: I'm not sure how long this stuff will stay free, which is why in addition to saving all my characters genealogy in Family.Show "format", I'm also saving it in the standard GEDCOM format which is used by a lot of genealogy programs. That way, if it ever comes down to the wire and I have to buy a real program, I can hopefully import all of my information.

There is one other point I wanted to make about all of this. I really like creating an entire world in my manuscripts—which in my case is a world set during the Regency period in the early years of the 19^th century. But this is also done by Science Fiction writers, e.g. Frank Herbert's DUNE series, Andre Norton's Witch World books, and romance writers like Jennifer Crusie in some of her contemporary romances. Kristina Cook's Regency Historicals also have related characters.

The point is that readers seem to enjoy stepping into this world created by the author and peopled with characters who really do have relationships and family trees. It becomes a real world and readers respond to that. If they like the characters, they enjoy reading about the character's brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins, aunts and uncles. It makes it more interesting and gives the characters more depth, but it also means keeping better track of traits, especially personality traits, so that you don't take a feisty optimist and turn her into a shy pessimist in subsequent novels.

That's where it's really handy to have some way, be it index cards or some cool new program, to keep track.

Anyway, enough for tonight. Enjoy and may all your wishes come true!

Life in general

All afternoon, I've been sitting here thinking about two things: dinner and this blog. I didn't have any new thoughts this week about writing, other than how really, really difficult it is to cut something that was originally 94,000 words down below 75,000 words, particularly when you think your editor may not want to acquire it no matter how much work you put into it, but…anyway. I'm just depressed because my editor recently rejected one of my manuscripts and I'm now trembling in angst that she may hate the one I'm working to cut down now, too. I'm just so unworthy and pathetic. And I'm really finding that there is truly very little fat to cut in this latest manuscript and I'm desperate.

So enough about writing. My mental anguish does not need any more exposure.

The other thing was dinner. Because everything I want to eat is really bad for you and I'm starting to get sick and tired or tired and sick of paying attention to what I eat all the time. But I did give up margarine and go back to butter. I mean, what is the point? I hate margarine. There is no margarine on this planet that actually tastes like butter. Only butter tastes like butter and I've pretty much had it with the healthy thing, anyway. Especially since I've managed to gain weight, anyway, despite my best efforts not to do so. (Although I called my doctor today and he said my thyroid is a little low so maybe I have an excuse—unless it meant it's physically dropped to a lower portion of my anatomy, which wouldn't surprise me since every other part of my anatomy has also dropped a little lower.)

Let's face it, you're going to gain weight no matter what you eat unless you don't eat at all, or exercise. The key is really exercise which is just no fun. I'm substituting an hour of gardening and mental exercise each night and figuring that's good enough. Be that as it may, I actually gained close to ten pounds on the South Beach Diet, thank you very much, and it really burned me because our food bill went up by over $100 extra dollars a week to buy the stupid food, and we didn't like the food, and I religiously ate the junk and I didn't like it. And I gained nearly ten pounds on expensive crap I didn't like anyway.

I would have been much, much happier eating my normal diet supplemented by Hostess Twinkies and cupcakes and I probably wouldn't have spent as much or gained as much weight, since I actually don't snack on a normal basis.

Now, here's the real thing. I'm thinking—is it worth eating a lot of junk you don't like and that costs a lot, to extend your life…say how long? How much more "life" are you gonna get out of eating stuff you don't like? An extra year?

Okay, let's say you get an extra year after spending, say 85 years eating things you freaking hate and being miserable because you can't eat what you want to eat. Are those going to be happy years? Are you going to be glad about that? Or are you facing 85 years of misery every time you sit down at the table?

And what about that extra year, anyway? Do you get to be 17 again? 30? 50? No. You get to get another year of drooling, utterly desperate horror sitting around in an old folks' home watching random static on a broken television, waiting to die. You get that year from 86 to 87, or 99 to 100, not that year from 40 to 41 or even 60 to 61, when, let's face it, you could at least wipe both your own mouth and your own bum. When you had at least a shred of dignity left to you.

So. Are you saying you really want that extra year of life after having denied yourself everything you've ever wanted to eat?

I gotta tell you, that package of Twinkies is looking pretty damn good to me at the moment.

Almost Published

It's getting closer--my first book, Smuggled Rose, comes out May 3.
I'm trying not to get too excited about it though, because it will be months before I see anything like a royalty check and it's only out as an e-book for the first few months. Sigh. So I won't even have a paperback to hold in my hot little hands until the fall.

Anyway, so now I'm trying to decide what to do for promotion--how to get to the reading public. I mean, I doubt anyone is searching the Internet for Amy Corwin, books by Amy Corwin, or Smuggled Rose. It's interesting to me that most of the hits I do get are from folks looking for more information on...roses. Which is cool because for several years I was the newsletter editor for my local rose society. I'm thinking about writing a few articles about the history of roses, anyway, to put on my web site because some of the most frequent queries I see are "red roses" and "the history of red roses". It sort of dovetails with my book, anyway, because when we first meet Margaret Lane, the heroine, she's smuggling roses from France into England. Avid rose collectors will do anything to get new roses. Really.

In fact there are several documented cases of customers getting into fist fights at nurseries and/or auctions of new roses when there weren't enough roses to "go around" and someone really wanted that last bush.

Anyway, there are obviously still people out there interested in roses and I'm glad I already have some content related to that between my two sister sites.

The other thing I'm considering is developing a newsletter to go out quarterly. I want to make it a good newsletter, though, and not just "hey, I've just sold this manuscript and the book will be available for sale on blah, blah date". I don't generally subscribe to newsletters because frankly, I get enough sales chatter as it is.

No--what I want is to do a newsletter that somehow relates to what I write, which seem to be Regencies and Regency mysteries. So initially, I'm leaning toward content about the Regency period. I've got a lot of original source material that is way out of copyright and fallen into public domain, so maybe something like:

• Recipes from the Regency
• Articles about gardening in the Regency (and of course, ROSES)
• Regency Fashion tidbits
• Fun Regency Slang (a la Regency Word of the Day)
• And links to a serialized novel -- this last one would also be available if folks sign up for it as a weekly e-mail so by the end of, say, 25 weeks or so, you'd have the complete novel. A sort of freebie. After that, I may also do some short stories or other things like that.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking. I want to make it something that folks would actually want to get. Even if they never read my book, I want to make this fun.

That's about it--I'm just brainstorming here and hoping for the best.

If you have ideas about what you'd love to get as a newsletter, I'm totally open to suggestion. :-)

Spring is here

This old house could use a lot of work including a new kitchen, but at this time of year, I really don't care. I spend most of my time outside, anyway and if the floor in the kitchen is a little spongy under the linoleum and the cupboards are in danger of falling off the walls...well, we can work on those another day.

I just love this time of year. It's not too hot--yet--and the azaleas are blooming, the dogwoods are blooming, and the air is fragrant with wisteria. If I had a complaint it would be that the daffodils have already come and gone--I love them. They are so cheerful and grow so well and have such a lovely scent. Besides roses, I think daffodils may be my favorite flower. Some years when I'm having trouble with mildew and blackspot on the roses, I think daffodils really are totally my favorite flower. No fuss, no muss.

Even our old lab seems to like this weather although he doesn't seem as impressed by the azaleas as I am.

I could just sit outside for hours and stare.

Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer

I may have mentioned that Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer are doing a wonderful writing class online as a blog. I really recommend reading through it and subscribing to the blog. You can't go wrong if for nothing else than sheer enjoyment. There is just so much material there and they are a riot--very fun to read. I'm looking forward to getting their first collaborative effort: Don't Look Down. It should arrive any day now from Amazon.com. I bought myself a treat as a psychological boost after doing our taxes last weekend and finding out that we owe a lot--and the depressing realization that after the election, the taxes will only shoot higher. (Darn. I'm totally bummed out again--where the heck is that package from Amazon.com?)

Anyway, the thing I like about Crusie and hope I will like about the Mayer and Crusie team is that even if the plot is outlandish, the characters seem very warm, very likeable and very real. The heroine isn't some gorgeous, thin creature with no personality and no quirks and the guy has his own set of weirdnesses. I like that, which is probably why I can't get onboard with other authors like J.D. Robb or James Patterson. Now don't get me wrong--both of those last authors are great--at least I'm told they are. And they are certainly prolific and extremely popular. I've just never been able to get past the first chapter of either of them (or any of the other various personas adopted by them--I don't know what it is, but I can't read them and there is nothing I can do about it. Sorry.).

Crusie is a strange one for me to like because she mostly writes romance, although she sometimes throws in a little suspense or murder as a sop to those of us who feel that no book is complete without some sort of mayhem. It's Crusie's funny, quirky characters, though, that really grab me. And her sarcasm, of course. Let's not forget that. I'm deeply into sarcasm and misanthropic characters.

For folks who have read my blogs, they will remember me spending several nights fussing over descriptions. Worrying and fretting about what makes descriptions work--or not work--for me as a reader (and as a writer). Stuff like that. For me, Cruise's descriptions work because they are totally in character--or in the character of the characters. If the scene is in the hero's point of view, anything he describes, including the heroine, is described as he sees it--in his words. Nothing fancy or poetic, unless he happens to be a poetic kind of guy. Although for the record, none of her heroes has been a poetic kind of guy--at least not in any of the books I've read. Same for descriptions in the heroine's point of view. They are realistic and they are in keeping with the heroine's personality. (Although to be honest, I think the heroines are thinly disguised versions of Jennifer Crusie, which is okay by me because I like her and I like her heroines. What's not to like? Oh, and I liked Bob Mayer when I met him, too, so I fully expect to like his heroes, which I also expect will be lightly disguised versions of him. It's all good.)

And somewhere lost in the preceding paragraph, my folks, was the key. Although I seem to have temporarily lost it in the muck.

So...whatever. I've been reading another book, The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, and he somehow manages to write entire sections in the character of the, uh, characters. The tale is mostly told in what you might consider first person, as journal entries first from Ralph Trilipush (the Egyptologist) and then as letters from an Australian Detective--also in first person. Somehow, the author Arthur Phillips manages to actually stay in character when writing these sections, so they have an entirely different feel, syntax and vocabulary. I don't really know how he accomplished this because it would sort of be like Claude Monet painting a picture in Van Gogh's style. Or me trying to write something, well, poetic and very literary and totally not in my voice. Anyway, unlike me, Monet could probably have done it, but he would have had to suppress his own style and work in an entirely different one. But at least he would not have had to cut his ear off, although he might have wanted to do so after forcing himself to paint in someone else's style.

Whatever. The bottom line is that is makes for extraordinary reading and totally blows me away. Crusie and Mayer manage this feat it in small patches by making sure any observations, dialog and descriptions in a character's point of view stay in that character's vocabulary and style. But to write an entire book like that the way Phillips did? Amazing.

I am in awe of what other writers do.
The thing is, though, you can't let your awe of other writers stop you from writing. Even if you are convinced you are a terrible writer, you can't just quit. Only quitters quit. The rest of us learn something new every day.

Gimmes

A very famous writer once said that if you are a serious writer, you should be paid for your writing. You do not give your work away for free any more than a doctor would offer free surgery to "advertise" or promote his work. Actors don't work for free unless it's a charity benefit or something similar. If you give away your work for free, you are devaluing it.

I can understand all of that, and it makes sense. If you are a writer, that is your career and your profession and you expect to make a living wage at it. At least you'd like to make a living wage. If you give away your work for free, how can you make a living as a writer?

There's the dilemma.

With my first book coming out in May (yay!) I'm looking at things to offer and tempt my readers. One of the things a lot of authors offer is a newsletter, and one of the things they offer in their newsletter and/or through their web site is "free" reading material. A serialized novel, perhaps, or short story. An excerpt, etc. With the expansion of the Internet, there has been a growing feeling of entitlement to free material, particularly the written word, and the offer of free reading material to hook more readers feeds into this.

Which brings me back to my original source that said: if you give away your writing for free, you are devaluing it and making it harder for you and other writers to actually expect to be paid for their efforts. Obviously, extrapolating this into some science fiction future where no one gets paid for writing and all fiction is either subsidized (a la public radio--you could have public fiction, I guess) or simply given away free by people who just like to write, is taking it too far. I don't see us ever really reaching that point--at least I don't think so. But there is some truth to the assertion that giving away your fiction for free devalues your writing. Either you think the material you are giving away is sub-standard and not publishable anyway (so why not give it away) or you have so much time on your hands that you don't mind working for no pay. If the quality of the work you are offering is sub-standard, will it really get you more readers, or will it ultimately drive readers away because they'll think you're the worst writer who ever lived?

I don't have any answers at this point, except I'm not sure that offering any of my fiction for free is a terrific idea. I work two jobs: my day job and my writing job. I put in a lot of hours. I want to be paid for my work and I don't want to offer people sub-standard stuff just to feed their need for Internet freebies.

On the other hand, I want to give readers something. Some incentive to go to my web site, read my newsletter (that doesn't exist yet) and hopefully, buy my books. Excerpts are okay as newsletter teasers, although I have to say, most of the excerpts I've read have had an effect on me that was not intended by the authors. Most excerpts have made me decide not to purchase the book. They are either boring or overwritten in some way that turns me right off. Very few (I actually can't think of any) made me purchase a book. The thing that always makes me purchase a book is the teaser/blurb on the back of it. So I really don't know that offering an excerpt is such a terrific idea.

This really is quite a dilemma. I'm leaning toward including Regency period non-fiction items in a newsletter, like recipes, bits of historical news, and that sort of thing. I want to offer something to my readers. They deserve something particularly if they spent their hard-earned cash to buy my book and slogged through the entire thing and didn't blow chunks or throw it against the wall. It would be nice if the books itself was sufficient, but these days, well, everybody wants more. Or at least I guess they do.

As a reader, I actually don't want more. I'm perfectly content with buying the books I want to buy and leaving it at that. I frankly don't want to know more about the author, although I will search out additional books if I like a particular author. I don't subscribe to newsletters or anything like that, but then, I have time management problems and I'm afraid to base too much on what I as a reader do or don't do.

Anyway, this bears a lot more thought and I'd be interested to know if other readers and writers like newsletters and have any expectations about free fiction. It's a big question mark.

Mistakes to avoid in writing

None of the things I'm going to mention will kill your writing career, nor are they spectacularly insightful. In fact, they are things I heard a hundred times when I was still trying to find a publisher. Most are just common sense and will probably make you go...well, duh.

All of them made me go...well, duh, when I heard them, but the problem was, even though I knew them intellectually, I didn't know it right down to the bones. My creative side completely ignored them.

These are so obvious, you're going to laugh until you stroke-out, but here's another secret: you can read all of these and nod your head sagely, but until your creative side absorbs these lessons, you may have a rocky road ahead of you. My road has certainly been rocky and is still strewn with boulders the size of houses.

So...drum roll...ta da! Here is what I wish I had really understood when I started writing.

Write what you love.
(Didn't I warn you about 'well, duh'?)
Now I'll explain this. Back a million years ago a new writers organization formed called Romance Writers of America. They let folks who yearned to be writers join. I yearned to be a writer, so I joined. At the time, I read mostly mysteries and science fiction. And Georgette Heyer. No other historical writers. I just liked Georgette Heyer. Oh, and then I found a used bookstore and got a few nice Harlequin contemporary romances that were written by British writers and mostly set in England.

So sure. I read romance, right? At least in my mind, I did. I liked it. I expanded into gothics, which I really liked because it was like...a mystery with a happy ending (i.e. heroine gets the rich guy who turned out not to be the murderer even though she suspected him for like...the entire book). Cool.

Now, folks who read romance should already be thinking...well, you're not reading any romances written in the 90's or this century. And you're not reading any American authors except a few gothic writers (i.e. Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Dorothy Eden, Virginia Coffman, and Barbara Michaels--those were it, and I have no idea if in fact they were from North America or the U.K. I actually didn't much care for any other romance authors, although to be honest, I didn't try that many).

But I insisted I could write romance and I tried to write romance. Even though I have never read a romance written in the last 20 years. I went to a RWA conference and had no clue who any of the authors were--even the huge big names. Okay, I admit, I must have, like, lived in a cave or something, but I'd never heard of Julia Quinn or Nora Roberts or any of them. (I'm still fairly clueless about the big names in the industry--quite frankly, I have no idea.)

By now, you're probably thinking: this woman is completely clueless. You would be correct. But then again, years ago I met Isaac Asimov in the formal gardens behind the Governor's mansion in colonial Williamsburg and knew exactly who he was and got to shake his hand! I was so in awe, I completely forgot to take his picture. So anyway, it shows you where my head was at.

So, I tried to write romance. Not only that, I tried to write historical romance, because I absolutely adored Georgette Heyer. I had no freakin' idea that absolutely no one would publish a sweet historical anymore. I didn't even know the difference between traditional Regency (Heyer's genre) and Regency Historical. When I found out that what I wrote was traditional Regency, I also discovered that this genre is no longer being published and that the only historicals being published are Regency Historical, which are another kettle of fish (they are very sensual and the male/female relationship is the prime focus of the book).

Thankfully, a smaller publisher, Cerridwen Press, decided to give traditional Regencies another chance and is publishing me. (My first book comes out in May! Yay!)

But the moral of the story here is that I should have been more aware of current genres, what was being published, and written something that I not only love but that is actually still being published. I was lucky that Cerridwen is giving me a chance, but you really can't depend upon that kind of luck.

I was stubborn, however, because I knew that romance is the biggest category of fiction so I refused to give up the idea that I would write romance.
Anyway, we've beaten that dead horse into a puddle. So what else?

Target your book for a specific market, preferably for a specific publisher.
If you want Avon to publish you, then read Avon books. Your job, should you chose to accept it, is to write a book that "feels like" the other Avon books you have read. Each publisher's books have different things they go for, so you really can't just write a sort of "generic book" and send the same version to all publishers. Of course there are exceptions to this for some big breakout book, but the exceptions are fewer than you might think.

This point was brought home to me when I finally got a publisher. All of a sudden, I knew exactly how to tailor my book to fit the line. This is sort of a catch-22 for writers because you don't know what publisher will eventually buy you, so how do you tailor it?

You can revise your manuscript before you send it out, however, and match it as well as possible to the "feel" for a specific house. This is more difficult if you have an agent because chances are good they will take your MS and submit it to multiple houses and there shall be no tailoring. Oh well.

How did I change my manuscripts once I had a publisher? (I have to add, this was like a weight lifting off my shoulders--I mean all of a sudden, instead of trying to guess how I should frame my story, I knew! Eureka!) The following is only relevant for my publisher, but it gives you an idea of how it affects your manuscript.

I write stories for the Cotillion line of Cerridwen Press. They are traditional Regencies, which is a romance, so there does have to be a romance and it needs to be the major plot, but it is not so intensely focused on the male/female relationship. You can explore the society around them and have other elements of adventure/mystery, etc. (You can see why I liked this, due to my fascination with mysteries.) There is no explicit sensuality, which worked for me because as a writer, I'm find I'm not so intensely focused on just the male/female relationship.

So anyway, now I know that: my stories have to stay under the 75,000 word mark (tough, but I can do it with a lot of editing). Knowing that, it becomes very easy to edit out those scenes which make you go...hmmm. Oh, come on. You know know what I mean. You write something and then when you go back, it stops you. You go...hmmm. Then you read it again and the writing doesn't seem that bad to you and you decide after reading it a third time that it really is okay and you leave it.

Honey, I'm here to tell you that anything that makes you pause and anything that makes you even think, hmmm, has got to go. For me, trying to stay under 75,000 words alleviates a lot of the agony of deleting scenes or lines that make me pause, because I'm looking for places to cut anyway.

So, what else? I know the style. I know the heavily sensual won't cut the mustard (whew) so I can cut down on those elements.

If you want this in brief, I know how long my manuscript can be, how to format it for my publisher, what their "house style" is for grammar and punctuation, and I know what elements I can and cannot include. Because what I write fits so well into the Cotillion line, this has been enormously freeing and a huge weight off my shoulders because now I can write what I want, and my manuscripts fit within the "house parameters" for that line. I don't have to try to layer in sensuality, lush descriptions, and other things which just don't seem to fit with how I write and which therefore have an unpleasantly "additive" feel to them when I do try to add them.

Of course, we shall see if this is still working out for me when I get their decision about the second manuscript I've submitted to my editor.

The bottom line for other writers is that houses vary on everything from the length of the manuscript to levels of sensuality. Avon, for example, likes very sensual stories with very lush descriptions. They also like fairly dark stories (at the moment, anyway). My writing is totally inappropriate for Avon--it just doesn't mesh with their current lines.

So bone up on what your target publisher is doing these days and what sort of stories they like to see. Your goal is to send them a manuscript that fits within their line so well that they can't pass up the chance to publish you. But if the publisher you "want" seems to publish things you can't stand to read or stories that are not like the ones you like to write, I would politely suggest that maybe you're looking at the wrong publisher. If you try to shoe-horn your book into a style foreign to you, it will always just not seem right.

Delete anything that makes you go: hmmm
I already sort of explained that above. When you edit your stuff, you'll find those sections or sentences or even just a word that momentarily stops you. When you find them, after reading them a few times, you'll think: it's okay. I can get away with that.
Not.
No.
You cannot get away with it. Believe me. Just delete it. Maybe save it out to a file if it is some amazing piece of verbiage, but delete it from your manuscript. If it makes you go hmmm, it will make an editor stop reading and reject your book. Editors are busy, tired people. Occasionally, they are looking for a reason to buy you. More often, they are looking at a reason to stop reading your submission, stamp it with REJECTION, and move on with the futile hope of eventually seeing what the top of their desk looks like again.

My editor found every single place where I thought I can get away with that. I ended up having to delete every blessed one. It would have been much better if I had just deleted them in the first place. I knew better, I just didn't want to admit it.

Your opening line and first page must grab the reader. Once grabbed, you cannot let go.
Yes. Published authors can get away with anything. Published authors often have to edit their book so heavily that the third chapter becomes the actual first chapter when it is published. However, editors know that a published author can probably "pull this off" later in the book so if it is a little slow to start, they know the pace and story will improve and the editor will keep on reading. Although after a certain amount of time, they may stop reading even a published author--it is not all just roses and wine.

This leeway is not granted to unpublished authors. If your first sentence is boring or you think it's a shocker that is bound to make the editor sit up and take notice, well, think again. The editor will read the first line, snicker, and stamp it with REJECTION.

I sat in on a session at a writers conference were they randomly read a handful of manuscripts. Out of this random sampling, several started with the line: Sex sells. Several started with the heroine putting on her wedding gown in front of a mirror and suddenly deciding she can't go through with it and running out of her own wedding. Several started with the hero having a pounding headache.

In other words, out of this random sampling, most were not unique at all, and the ones that tried to be the most unique ended up being the most common (and unfortunately laughable). And the editors totally hated it when the opening line was meant to be a shocker/attention grabber. They had heard all of those "shocking" lines before, ad nauseum.

What to do?
Don't try to be cute or shocking.
Open with the predicament. You know what I mean. Either your hero or your heroine is about to plunge into a problem. Open with your main character (even in a romance, one of the pair is going to face more difficulties than the other and it is really more that character's story, so start with him or her). You want to: open with your main character; show where they are; what they are doing; and why they are doing it. By the end of the first page, your readers should have a pretty good idea of that character's circumstances and what the first problem is that this character is going to face. The faster you identify the problem, the better.

That is what is going to draw the reader into the story, i.e. understanding the character's motivation and sympathizing enough with him/her to hope that the horrors faced by the character will be overcome. That is what keeps the reader reading.

Of course then you have to keep them reading. So you have to delete all the hmmm parts. Tighten it up. Don't drift off into byways and highways, unless it's literary fiction or you just don't give a darn.

Man, I thought I had some other things, but my mind has just gone blank so I'll end here.
Good night and hope for the best.

Eureka! Well, okay--maybe not

Over the past few years, I've been struggling mightily with descriptions in my writing and leisure-time reading. I couldn't figure out why I dropped so many books during the first few pages or at the latest, by the third chapter. Then I had this long, long business trip to San Antonio and read two books back-to-back and figured it out. Okay, I tried to read the first book, couldn't take it and by the third chapter I dropped it, and with a heavy heart and large sigh, I went into a bookstore at the airport and bought a safe bet: a book by a male author.

So sue me.

I know. Who would have thunk it? Me, a U.S. citizen and female author, admitting that there are only two groups of authors I can be almost sure will not make me drop the book by the third chapter: British authors and male authors. Don't get me wrong, there are some U.S. authors who are female that I can be relatively sure will write a story that gets a grip on me and won't let go...but if it's an author unknown to me...I get damp palms when I pick up a book--particularly a suspense--by a female author. I know very few that I will be able to finish.

However, this is purely subjective. What I am going to so reflects my personal taste, if not reflective of my own personal problems. However, I did get some insight into descriptive styles which is interesting, at least to me. I recommend that authors and readers pay attention since it will enable them to determine which books they will like or what style they prefer to pursue. I should also say that the descriptive style I don't care for is the most popular style in fiction today so that is something to think about, too. Particularly if you are an author with any sort of ambition to be on the NY Times Bestsellers list.

Basically, it boils down to point of view (POV) issues and poetic descriptions. For me, if I'm reading something in the hero's POV and he's just met the heroine who is fabulously good-looking, he is more likely to wonder: hmmm, I wonder if I can get into her pants and if she's good in bed. He is not likely to think: hmmm, what a lovely maiden with teeth like pearls and eyes that shimmer like the night over the ocean.

I don't know of any men, even poets, who are going to think something like the latter statement unless they are actually sitting down to write poetry (gag). (Sorry, I'm not much into poetic poetry--I'm more into smartass, clever, snarky poetry.)

Didn't I warn you that this was my own personal opinion? There is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with you if you prefer the more poetic version (well, perhaps not my poetic version--which is admittedly bad). That is the vastly more popular style in fiction.

So let me give you some actual, concrete examples (and please forgive me, authors, if you recognize your work--I'm sorry and groveling at your feet).

Poetic Style
(This example isn't too, too poetic, but is shows two of the issues that made me stop reading the book. I'll point them out.)

Carly's eyes widened as she looked at the ancient door. The holes between the slats were big enough for her to step right through. Dan might not be the most outgoing man she'd ever met, but he'd kept her from a nasty fall.

"Used to be the town icehouse," he said, opening the cellar door. "During Prohibition it was the local speakeasy. Now it's the archive for the paper. They cut another entrance to the first floor around the corner, but this way is easier to get to the basement."

She looked up at him with hazel eyes that flashed gold in the unshielded overhead light. "Thank you."

Okay. Eyes that flashed gold? Whatever. But just whose POV is this, anyway? It started out in Carly's POV. Is she seeing her eyes flashing gold or did we just jump POV to good old Dan? And does that sound like something a man would be thinking? Maybe--I don't know, but...well, okay, I don't know but it doesn't feel right to me and it irritates me. That sort of thing will make me stop reading. It did make me stop reading.

So this had two flaws for me. First, when you are in a character's POV, she is not going to be thinking things like: She glanced up at him with melting, deep blue eyes. If the heroine is thinking that way, then I really don't want to read anything more about that character unless it is that she is hacked to pieces in the next scene.

Second, is the man--specifically this character Dan--really going to be thinking those thoughts? Not if he's the guy I think he is. I mean, look at that bit of dialog: short, choppy and to the point. So that description of her that follows just doesn't sound like him. And that is the biggest flaw for me with so many writers. Authors write descriptions that are supposedly in a character's POV, but it is not how that character would really be reacting or thinking. At least, to me.

Plain Style
I don't know what to call the "other" style. I associate it with male writers, a few women writers, and British writers (who seem to avoid inflicting poetic descriptions on their readers--or at least when they do--the character is thinking in a way that sounds like they might actually, really, think that way). You know, that previous sentence sort of sounds bad and U.S.-centric, so I apologize.

Here is another passage, by a male author. You'll see what I mean.

The photograph was a black-and-white glossy, eight-by-ten, framed and glassed. It was a Hollywood-style glamour shot that I associate with film stars from the 1930's and '40s. Full length, professional lighting.

Marlissa Dorn wore a black gown that accentuated how she would look if a man were lucky enough to see her naked: long legs, sensual symmetry of hips, breasts full and firm enough to resume their natural curvature once free of the garment's constraints.

The gown was black but glittered with sequins. She stood with hip canted to one side, her opposite hand held at eye level, a cigarette between her fingers. The woman was leaning against a black grand piano as if taking a break from performing.

I glanced at Chestra and studied her face for a moment as she sat at the piano and continued to play. I returned my attention to the photo.

Marlissa's cigarette was freshly lit. The smoke formed a lucent arc with the same curvilinear contour as her hips and breasts. She was staring through cigarette smoke at the camera, her hair combed full and glossy to her shoulder, head tilted in a way that emphasized the intensity of her gaze and the dimensions of her perfect face.

Her eyes were shadowed, I noticed. It added an exotic, smoldering effect.

Note that this is written in first person and it is entirely within keeping with the character's (the hero's) POV, attitude and style of talking. This was an interesting book for me because the author managed to pull off writing parts of it in third person POV when other characters, notably the bad guy, were the POV character, and first person POV when the hero was the POV character in the chapter. It was smooth and the characters always stayed in character. When they described something, it was described as that character really would think or describe it.

You can be poetic if your character is poetic, but the problem for me, particularly with popular suspense novels, is that the descriptions "thought" by characters do not seem to be "in character". It's like the author is putting words into their mouth (or head). And the words are always so...smarmy--at least to me.

Like I said, this is all purely subjective. If you like the first example--I think that's great and you are in very good company. It is currently the most popular style and is heavily used by top authors including luminaries like Allison Brennan, Nora Roberts (aka J.D. Robb) and James Patterson. Now, who wouldn't like to have their success and write like them? That's why I've made a point of saying this is purely subjective.

On the other hand, there are solid writers who use the plain style, including oddly enough, Georgette Heyer. She has fantastic descriptions but if you read them, they actually use very plain language and are always in the "voice" of the character doing the describing. Other authors? The writing team of Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Randy Wayne White. Charles Todd. Lindsay Davis. Sue Grafton. Lauren Henderson in MY LURID PAST has one of the most amazingly erotic almost-have-sex scenes I've read in a long time and although I didn't particularly care for the ending (is it really a happy ending when the heroine drags the hero down to the level of taking drugs so they can do so together really a happy ending?) the writing is superb.

So you can see, the actual styles cut across gender lines to some extent, but I would say that for the most part, romantic suspense written by women will use more poetic language, particularly in describing the heroine. Mysteries tend not to use the poetic style. Suspense and crime fiction written by men tend not to use the poetic style.

If you are writing, I strongly urge you to consider which style you prefer and hone your skills. If you're a reader, it pays to know what irritates you so you can avoid buying books you will never finish. There is no right or wrong. There is only subjective taste.

And of course there is the fact that the plain style is obviously the only correct choice because it is the one I prefer. ;-)

Editing is Scary...

There's nothing like getting your first batch of edits to make you feel like a complete fraud. I mean, you tell everyone you can write and have the nerve to send out your manuscript(s) to everyone on that assumption. But then you get your first edits from your editor and suddenly, you realize how much you don't know. Or perhaps it's that you discover other people now realize what you don't know. It's really scary.

My editor sent my first batch of edits to me and she was really nice. She marked passages she loved so that I would know she didn't think the entire thing was utter drivel. And I remember that she liked it enough to recommend the publisher buy it, and the rest of the staff at my publisher liked it enough to agree.

But now I'm looking at all my errors and places where my story time line got way out of whack and I'm thinking: What was I thinking? How could I have missed this stuff?

First, there are all the comma errors. Granted, the grammar book I'm using has a copyright date of 1948 because my dad used it to teach English at his first job, but gosh. It's pretty bad when every sentence has a correction to remove extraneous commas. Obviously, I'm comma-challenged, or maybe that's comma-obsessed since I have too many commas instead of not enough commas.

What really makes me feel completely unworthy, however, is my editor's blithe statement to "do what you need to do to make the chapter end here and begin a new chapter". This gives me pause. A great deal of pause. Because I don't know the formula for creating a chapter ending and chapter beginning. This lack makes me feel completely incompetent as a writer. Wouldn't a real writer know how to make a chapter ending and chapter beginning?

I sort of never think about it when I'm writing. I end chapters where there seems to be a break of some sort or when I'm just plain finished with a scene. In other words, when I write, I don't specifically think that I'm writing the end of a chapter and I don't specifically think about it when I'm writing the beginning of the next chapter. I begin at the scene beginning and I end at the end of the scene.

The good news is that after I got over the shock of realizing that yet again I had gotten uppity and over-confident when I thought I could write...I studied a few chapter endings. Then I looked at the place where my editor wanted a chapter break, and the break was pretty much already there. I just had to formalize it (if you want to put it that way). At least I hope I've done it properly and that she will agree.

Then, I moved on to the tougher stuff where I basically lost track of the time line and character locations. This turned out to be due largely to my own insecurity and need to please. You see, a lot of agents and editors were interested in this manuscript, but they all wanted various things changed--mostly to make it darker and sexier. Unfortunately, instead of telling them that what they wanted would not improve the manuscript and in fact messed it up, I tried to do the changes. With each change, it went more and more into the toilet.

Luckily, my editor recognized there was still gold in the manuscript. She asked for changes before she bought it, but the irony is that the changes she wanted brought it back to the original form. If I had had more confidence as a writer, I could have avoided making changes that did not help in the first place.

The scenes that are messed up are messed up because of trying to insert stuff that really didn't belong in the book (i.e. steamy sexual encounters) or wasn't true to the characters. When I tried to bring the book back to a more consistent state, I ran into some temporal difficulties that I'm still trying to straighten out. I think I'll get most of it done this week, however.

Isn't it odd that during this single phase of editing, I'm realizing how much I don't know and how much I instinctively know as a writer? That's actually presents a difficult dilemma. How do you know when something really is wrong because you don't have enough experience in your craft, and how do you know when you should stand your ground and Just Say No?

For me in this particular case, I should have held firm on making the characters do things they really would never do; things that simply were not in the characters' characters. :-) But I do need to work on comma-control and writing shorter chapters. Which is funny because as a reader, I love shorter chapters. As a writer, I have a tendency toward run-on sentences and run-on chapters.

Well, you never stop learning, and thank goodness.
And thank goodness for smart--and patient--editors.

Why Regency?

When you're a writer, you often get asked questions which make you think about your creative process. This can be a good thing because it forces you to be conscious of the decisions you are making. Recently, someone asked me why I had chosen the Regency period for my books. Like many of my decisions, there are multiple reasons and going through them all helps me understand my choices and do a better job writing within my chosen framework.

So…why did I choose the Regency?

First and foremost: I love Georgette Heyer. Maybe that wasn't clear. I love Georgette Heyer. I wish I could write like Georgette Heyer. In fact, if I had never read a single book by her, I'm not sure I would have wanted to be a writer. Hmmm. That may be too strong a statement. I might still have wanted to write, but I'm not sure I would have wanted it so badly. Between Heyer, Saki, and Wodehouse, I had no choice but to become a writer.

Oh, wait. I didn't even tell you what the Regency is. It's a time period: the early years of the 19^th century, from around 1811 to 1820, when King George III of England was not quite competent and a Regent in the form of his son, George IV, sort of ruled in his stead. Most books set during the Regency period are also set somewhere in the United Kingdom. Such books are also commonly referred to as "Regencies" with a sort of artificial division between traditional Regencies and Regency historicals. Regency historicals focus very intensely on the romantic relationship between a man and a woman and are generally very sensual (hot). Traditional Regencies—while still romances—often are less intensely focused on the romantic relationship and include a "broader view" of Society in general or other elements such as suspense, mystery, or adventure. Georgette Heyer, for example, would be considered to write traditional Regencies. As far as publishers are concerned, the Regency period is somewhat extended to include from the late 18^th century through about 1825 or so, and the focus has shifted toward Regency historicals and away from traditional Regencies.

For my purposes as a writer, I was interested in this period for several reasons (Heyer not withstanding).

I knew I wanted to move into writing mysteries: romantic mysteries with a bit of adventure. The Regency period was right before true law enforcement agencies as we know them today existed, so you could have private citizens and inquiry agents assist in, or conduct an investigation into a murder without some of the convoluted reasoning authors need for contemporary mysteries which don't have a law enforcement person as the main investigator. Sir Robert Peel became Home Secretary in England in 1822, and he is the one who helped rework many of the existing British laws and created the Metropolitan Police Force in London in 1829 (hence, London police earned the nickname of "peelers"). If I set stories before 1829, I have a lot more freedom in terms of conducting a murder investigation (or rather, my characters have more latitude in conducting a murder investigation). There was also the lovely organization known as the Bow Street Runners, which through the mists of time has assumed an attractive patina of romance.

As a gardener, the first half of the 19^th century brought about absolutely amazing developments in horticulture, particularly rose hybridization, which is another love of mine (hence, my first book entitled "Smuggled Rose"). All the explorers running around brought back plants from all over the world and experts were busy creating new hybrids… I won't bore you by going on about this, but it was a truly remarkable period of time. Science was exploding by leaps and bounds. Even germs were eventually invented, and we learned not to drink from the same glass as someone else. How cool is that?

Anyway, the period is close enough to our time to be recognizable and yet far enough away to be quaint and romantic. Men were men (and the sheep ran scared—but not too fast). People occasionally bathed. Duels were outlawed, but still occurred conveniently enough to give a few heroes—and heroines—some early morning angst. There were smugglers and aristocratic French refugees. The Napoleonic wars. Adventures which were romantic when they took place in the 19^th century, but would be just stupid, scary, or too darn serious if they took place today.

I am also interested in freedom and a person's place within Society. Regency Society had more "social rules" which are fun to play against and provide a bottomless source for comic escapades that simply would not work in our modern society. As you might guess, because I am interested in the interplay between personal freedom and Societal restrictions, my stories tend more toward traditional Regencies than Regency historicals.

There is also the fact that my heroines can have hordes of servants, wear fabulous long dresses and jewels, and spend their days writing subtly insulting letters to each other while eyeing the footmen. What's not to love? No e-mail. No Internet. No computers. No cell phones. No explaining away why they couldn't just pick up the phone and call the police (although they could send one of the footmen after a Bow Street Runner).

Yeah, that's the ticket: the Regency. A kinder, gentler period for romance and murder…