Raine Miller Romance

Where history comes unlaced..

On Writing

Please help me! Facebook’s taking over my life!

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The first thing a new author learns is that “self- promotion” should become your new best friend.

“Okay.  So what’s an easy thing to do to promote my work?” I asked innocently.

“You set up a Facebook account and interact with people.  Social media is how you build a readership.  All authors have them, Raine!”  *feels like an idiot for asking and gets <where have you been living, under a rock?> kinds of looks*

Now, that’s all well and good, but gosh darn, there are only so many hours in the day!  As soon as you set up your account, Facebook sucks you in.  I mean literally within minutes!  There’s a news feed that tells you what your friends are doing.  There are new friend requests, people you want to be friends with, and old friends from high school to reconnect with.   And all of it drags you back to your computer repeatedly to check for updates.  I’ve heard this is not unusual.  In fact it’s the typical response for most new Facebookers.

All of this interacting takes time though.  You have to be friendly and social by posting on your wall and thanking others for “friending” you.  You must be funny and share witty prose and cool pictures for your friends to comment on.  And don’t forget that you have to go around clicking the “Like” button on your friends stuff.  There is a protocol and it must be followed.  Duh!  You don’t want people to think you’re a jerk do you?

What is the point of your rant, Raine?  Why are you telling us what we already know?

*looks sheepish*  Sorry, I just needed to get that out, I guess.  You see, I’m finding it very hard to write when it’s so much more fun to play on Facebook.  Or when I should be plotting out a new story or editing one I’ve already written.  So I’m learning that finding a balance between the crafting and the socializing is harder than I ever thought it would be.  As my Facebook friends have grown in number, my daily word counts have shrunk.  And that is not a good thing if you are trying to build a successful writing career.

I like this quote by Paul Boese:   “We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.”

Yeah, thanks for that, Paul.  That’s really great  advice you’ve–  *beep sounds*  Oh, sorry–  I gotta go.  Just got a txt message… 5 new friend requests waiting for me on FB…

“The new phonebook’s here!”

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Remember that line from the movie, The Jerk with Steve Martin?  He runs around doing the happy dance when the new phonebook is delivered.  That was me when my long-awaited first edits arrived yesterday for His Perfect Passion.  Except nowadays documents are delivered in an email and I don’t think I’m quite as ignorant as poor Navin Johnson was in that movie.  Well, I hope not anyway.

It was an exciting moment because it validated once again that my book really is being published.  I’ve learned there’s a lot of waiting around in the publishing business.  You have to use that waiting time to write your next book because you’ll have to wait some more for it too.

And the result wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d worried it might be.   The editor sent two documents.  One was a checklist with notations, suggestions and compliments, and the other was a word doc. of my whole book with all the corrections highlighted in different colors and balloon comments telling you what they want you to look at over on the right.  I like how my editor said, “please consider changing this to…for better clarity,” rather than saying, “that’s just stupid the way you wrote this, Raine!”  (Thanks, Caroline, for being so nice to me.) 

That kind of niceness is another thing I’ve experienced over and over since I’ve started down this writerly path.  The people in this business are just downright wonderful.  Whether they’re writers or publishers or bloggers or readers or Facebookers or whatever, they are kind and helpful, funny and interesting.  I’ve met so many lovely people and am having such a good time doing this, I wish I’d started writing years ago.

~Raine

The Word Around RT…x3

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My first convention.  My grade report?  I’d give it an A-.  The venue is nice, the people are friendly, and the swag is plentiful.  I’ve been here 12 hours and have received 12 free books so far, numerous reading ephemera and made some writer friends who may just be the coup of this whole thing.  You see, they know what they’re talking about.

I sat in several workshops today and one theme was repeated, and repeated, and repeated.

…Digital romance publishing is growing so big, sooooooo fast that people are afraid to predict just how big it’s going to get.

I listened to author after author after author tell me how they make more money on their e-pubs than on their mass-market publications.  Another very nice, multi-pub’d author (someone I had heard of before I came here) told me about how she’s recently made the foray into self-publishing with two novellas that have done nothing but sell, sell, sell.  (Are you feeling the triplicate theme here?)  The bottom line on your self-published books:  You get to keep all of the $ on those.

So what’s a newbie authoress to do?  Nothing rash, that”s for sure.  I’ll keep my options open and keep writing books.  That was the second most oft heard nugget of wisdom:

“The best thing you can do to publicize your writing career is to write another book.”  And another, and another, and another…

Hugs,

Raine

The Stolen Kiss

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The Stolen Kiss, late 1780's

I’ve had people asking me about some of the paintings featured in my posts and thought I’d share the one in my header image.  I actually have this print on a canvas on the wall above my laptop.  I used it for inspiration for a scene in a WIP (work in progress).  The hero, Colin, goes after Elle and gets what he was after, thank you very much!

The artist, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (pronounced without the /d/ at the end) was a French painter whose work became all the rage for the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV’s pleasure-loving, licentious court and influenced what he painted: mostly scenes of love and voluptuousness, considered scandalous, but hugely popular with the hedonists of the day.  History lesson:  Louis the 15th was the French king just before the one who lost his head in the French Revolution.  So, the wild revelry was great while it lasted.

A Young Girl Reading, c. 1776

The reading girl in the yellow dress is an image much copied and reprinted, so you may have seen it before.  Another vastly popular painting is the one of the girl swinging while her lover checks under her skirts.  Ahem, yes, those French boys were naughty that way.

The Swing, 1767

So what happened to Fragonard, you ask?  Well, the French Revolution happened, that’s what.  And it cost him his private patrons (they got the axe, or guillotine as it were) and he decided it would be a good time to get the hell out of France himself.  Fragonard didn’t return to Paris until early in the 19th c. where he died in 1806, almost completely forgotten. 

For a half century after that he was ignored, not even mentioned in the 1873 edition of  History of Art.  Reevaluation by later scholars have changed that though, confirming his position among the all-time masters of French painting.

Okay boys and girls, that concludes our lesson for today.  You may get out your snacks and line up for recess.

Raine