Some of you may have noticed I’ve been absent as of late. Maybe some of you have forgotten who I even am! Well, the reason is that I’m extremely busy. I’m writing under 3 different names now and everything seems to be due at once. I’m not complaining! I wished for this and I got it, so I will NOT complain. However, it does mean that I have little time for anything but writing and making the odd Facebook or Twitter post. Recently I finally had to accept that I need to give some things up. I’ve been forgetting important dates, neglecting my hubby and basically forgetting to have a life outside of work. So, it’s with great sadness that I announce that I’m leaving the Jaunties. I hope to come back on occasion and guest post, but for now I have to say good-bye. It’s been a tremendous amount of fun being part of this blog and the fabulous women (and porcupine!) who run it. Thanks for everything!

hugs!

Kathryn

As a writer I learned that there was one credible way to become a published author — write, write, write, submit, submit, pray, pray, get an offer/get an agent (could be reversed), get a contract, be paid, book is published, get paid more, do it all again! And most writers I know followed that pattern and some got published while others didn’t. Lather, rinse, repeat brings us to today and the major changes coming in the publishing industry.

Self-publishing has been around for centuries, but generally it’s been considered by some to be the black sheep of the publishing family because of many reasons. All those reasons seem to be fading away…and many authors, including some former bestselling authors have decide it’s the way to go. . . and are proceeding to re-release out-of-print books as well as producing original content, too. Countless books are being released through small or e- or print publishers everyday and the discussion is going on about the role of ‘gatekeepers’ for the reading world.

In traditional publishing, an agent and then an editor/publisher serve as gatekeepers — those who ensure that work of a certain level of quality gets into the marketplace and is available to readers. Now, hundreds of thousands of books are being published and released through mostly digital markets, like Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Sony, iBooks and Smashwords creating a maze of overwhelming choices for readers. And removing the power and the importance (some say) of those gatekeepers….letting readers chose the books they read from either traditional publishers or self-publishing ventures. Letting them chose between established authors with new or previously-released work or an unpublished or self-published author.

I remember when I started reading romance novels back in the early 90s – I quickly realized that I liked reading books by authors published by certain publishers. I liked their stories, characters, tone, and style so I looked for their books each months before deciding which to buy. But that system may not work as publishing changes.

So I want to know how readers find good books to read from among the hundreds of books coming out each month. Do you have some authors who are ‘auto-buys’? Do you try out new authors – and when do you chose them? Does the price affect your choice? Are you more willing to try out unknowns on your e-device or do you stay with the ‘tried-and-true’? Do you use online or print reviews to help you decide?

Post a comment and help me learn more about readers’ opinions on this issue and two people with  receive a copy of one of my books (depending on ability). Thanks!

Terri is busily writing her next Harlequin Historicals and getting ready for some huge good times coming up in June. The RWA conference will be held there and it opens with the Literacy signing. 400 of your favorite romance authors there (it’s open to to the public.) And she’s getting ready for the release of the final book in her Brava STORM series at the end of the month! Visit her website for more info!

My upcoming release from Harlequin Desire deals with one of my biggest issues, image. I have always felt like the fat average girl in the room and my heroine was always a beauty until a horrible accident left her scarred and in need of lots of surgery and though the doctors have returned her to her former beauty when she looks in the mirror all she sees is scars.

What about you? Does the outside mirror the real you or do you feel its just a facade?

Happy Reading!

Google is my search engine of choice, and I use it religiously when researching.  But I’m a big a sucker for their artistic doodles.  Part of it stems from being an amateur doodler, which I likely inherited from my dad.  He was a big time doodler, and created some pretty awesome images.   

Since I’m way too curious, I’m also hooked on following the cleverly imbedded links in their doodle logos, directing readers to whatever they are showcasing.  Like the Royal Wedding of Prince William of Wales and Catherine Middlton on April 29, 2011. 

I’ve learned a lot following these type links, but I’ve also gotten lost reading when I should be researching.  And that’s the whole point behind it — leading you down the research path.  The logo doodles started after the founders of Google attended a Burning Man Festival in 1998.  From that point on, Google designers have come up with 300 doodles for the U.S. and 700 doodles internationally. 

Those first designs were fairly simple, but over the years, they have become very intricate and some are works of art.  They have celebrated holidays worldwide, birthdays of famous and infamous people, and events around the globe.  There’s even people who collect Google logos, which proves that some people will collect anything.  Sorry — my parents were collectors of far far too much stuff, most of absolutely no value.

Google is proud of the fact that they routinely alter their logo, which is unique among businesses.  They employ a team of designers, hold competitions for doodle designs, and accept doodle logos from artists.   The doodle on the left was the 2005 Google4 Competition winner, Five Wonders of Britain. 

If you’re so inclined, you can submit your logo design to proposals@google.com.  Expect a long wait to hear back from them.  So tell me, are you a doodler?

I was scheduled to fly back from Florida last Friday. But due to some problems with American Airlines having many planes out of service because of storm damage, I couldn’t get out until Saturday.

They told me that the flight would be full (YIKES!) and that I would be in the middle seat (Double YIKES!!)

Now any of you who’ve flown coach in the last few years knows that you’re squeezed in like sardines anyway…but to be in the middle of two strangers for two hours and fifty minutes, well, it made my stomach churn.

So I did something I rarely do…I treated myself. I used 5,000 AA points and upgraded to first class. It was a WONDERFUL flight. They served food on real plates with real silverware (just like the good ole days). It was truly a pleasure to fly.

It got me to thinking. How often do we as adult women treat ourselves? We treat our parents, our husband, or our children but often we forget about ourselves. Even something simple like a manicure, pedicure or a massage every so often can be a treat.

I’m interested in what you’ve done recently to treat yourself. Everyone who comments and lists at least one thing they’ve done in the past three months to treat themselves, will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of a book I wrote way back in 2003 under the title Kiss Me, Kaitlyn which has been recently re-released by Mills and Boon with a new cover and a new title: Undercover Millionare.

I’ll draw the winner on Sunday night at 9 pm CT, so check back then!

I was so intrigued by Robyn’s post the other day about piracy and questions of morality, that I decided to add in my take on it.

Book piracy=very bad.

Okay, that was easy. The question of whether or not people cheat more now than they used to, whether or not people are less moral … well, that’s so much tougher. I’m sure there are sociologist out there who can study and quantify this kind of thing. I don’t have those resources and it seems to me impossible to actually tell if people are less moral and ethical than they used to be. But the story-teller in me will say this: people crave stories with a strong moral position.

This is an issue I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Perfect example is the Harry Potter novels. Those books are all about right and wrong. They take a strong stance. They say, unequivocally, it’s wrong to judge people based on the circumstances of their birth. It’s wrong to oppress people who are different that you. It’s wrong to abuse power. The moral position of those books is crystal clear. Yes, the characters may have moments of doubt about their person strength or their abilities, but not about the important stuff. The more I think about it, the more I believe that’s why the books are so well loved. I could make a similar argument about the Twilight books. For all their scary vampire nature, the Cullens are probably the most moral characters around today. Both of these series are popular because readers crave stories with a strong moral compass. We need that. We need to believe that right and wrong are distinguishable and that making the right choice is important.

However, if that were universally true, then this nasty piracy issue wouldn’t be an issue at all. And yet it is. It’s something that’s affected every writer I know. One of the problems is that the internet makes the crime of piracy seem so far removed from the victim. Downloading a book illegally seems like such a small thing. Like it’s not hurting anyone. Just as saying something nasty during an internet flame war may seem small. We’ve all done that, right? A discussion grows heated. Because we’re talking to someone we don’t know personally (and someone who’s not even in the room with you), it’s easy to say things more emphatically. Before we know it, we’ve called John396 a total fracking idiot who doesn’t deserve to be sharing air with the rest of humanity. It seems like a victimless crime to download a book, just like it seems victim to yell at John whom we don’t really know.

Yeah, yeah, I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Based on Robyn’s post, it seems like none of y’all download illegally (and we really, really, really appreciate that). Because even if it seems victimless, it isn’t.

One argument I’ve heard (very often actually) is that published writers are money-grubbing brats. We should just be happy knowing someone has read our books. That should be motivation enough for the hard work we do. The fact that we want to actually make a living at this is just proof of our greed. (I’ve never heard this argument stated quite that way, but that’s the gist of it.)

The truth is (trust me on this), we really are happy when someone reads our books and enjoys them. There is no greater joy . Okay, maybe hugging our kids. But we really love happy, satisfied readers. We also love to eat. And to live in houses.

We are not creatures of pure intellect. We have physical needs. Sure, a lot of us probably would keep writing even if we weren’t paid. But we certainly wouldn’t have time to work at it quite so hard. And it is extremely hard, time consuming work. We don’t get paid that much. (I once calculated how much I made per hour. I wanted to cry. Seriously.)

But lets say, just for argument’s sake that we did live in a world were no authors get paid and were people write books just for the joy of writing. We writers bravely post our books for free on the internet. In this world, the newbie writer J.K.Rowling posts her little book about a boy wizard. Lots of people read it. If my Rowling history is correct, she was teaching school when the first book came out (or at least had completed her schooling to do so … something like that.) So let’s say–since in our new world of free books, she’s not getting paid to write–that she’s a teacher. She gets started on book two in the series. She’s writing in evenings, after a full day teaching (I’ve done that. It’s hard.) So it’s another five years to finish book two. Even if she gets fasters, the books are longer. At five years per book, it’s 2020 before Harry Potter book 7 is released to the internet. Does anyone even care anymore? Maybe. Are the books as good? Maybe. This is all hypothetical, so it’s hard to say. But it makes me sad to imagine her writing them in a world where she wouldn’t get paid to do so.

Does she need the billion U.S. dollars she’s now worth? No, probably not. Did she earn it? Goodness yes! Those books are just stinkin’ amazing. They were worth the $25 a book I paid for them. I’ve bought some of them twice (’cause I briefly lost a couple.) And I’d buy them all again if they were available on Kindle (’cause then my husband would know every time I reread them.)

So what it comes down to is this: I think books are worth what we pay for them. I’m guessing you do to, or you wouldn’t still be reading my post, which turned out to be longer than I meant it to.

I just got back from a plotting retreat at the beach with sister Jaunty Quill Cindy Kirk and SuperRomance author, Kathleen O’Brien. We spent four uninterrupted days collectively plotting our books, helping each other iron out the kinks in the story. The stories all three of us worked on had been brewing in the recesses of our imagination for a while, but for one reason or another we were having a hard time fleshing them out solo. It was hard work, but it was also wonderful, refreshing and creative. I came home recharged and empowered, ready to pound out a proposal for a new women’s fiction book.

I missed my family, but the chance to get away and immerse myself in creative work is one of my very favorite things about being a writer.  Over the course of those four days magic happened. We sequestered ourselves in the condo, working from about 9 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. We took breaks only to eat, sleep and freshen up for each new day. We did take a couple of head-clearing walks on the beach and, well, okay, I’ll fess up: Tuesday night we tuned in to watch the American Idol finale… But other than that we stayed focused, worked hard and emerged with the prize of brand new, fully-formed plots.

It’s amazing how total immersion and the power of creative minds can produce magic. I hope each of us will soon have good news to report about the fate of those newly minted stories.

In the meantime, here are some pictures I took while we were at the beach.

This is the car loaded with computers, supplies and provisions. It may not look like it, but it took strategic packing to make everything everything fit.

This is Cindy and me on one of those refreshing walks.

Low tide. The water was a perfect 77 degrees.

The next three were taken from the condo balcony with a special effects camera on my phone:

Writing this post made me wonder: How do you tackle a problem when you feel too close to the situation (as we three were too close to our stories to work out the problems alone) or it seems too big for you to solve on your own?

So chances are you’ve probably heard something recent about all the piracy issues with electronic books. Authors are losing money and people are angry and the other side seems not to see the big deal. This all happened several years ago with the music industry. I think it goes hand-in-hand with some other trends we’ve seen about. So what is the big deal? Is it wrong to download a free copy of an electronic book if the author didn’t give permission to do so? Is it stealing? Is it cheating?

I don’t know if any of you are aware of another significant problem in our society, but as you all know I am married to a college professor, and this is certainly something that affects our lives. College kids cheat, at an alarming rate. I’m sure it starts earlier because frankly they’re quite good at it, taking plagiarism to a whole new level. This semester alone The Professor had 2 students from two separate classes cheat on a final paper, one of these students was a graduate student so we’re not talking about an 18 year old kid here. And the level of deception is sophisticated. I’m not talking the purchase of papers though that clearly is still happening despite universities efforts to prevent such behavior.

In a recent new story there was an ethics professor who caught a rather large number of students cheating on a test and he gave them all the opportunity to come forward and turn themselves in even though he already knew exactly who they all were. During the news segment they interviewed some random college student and he was quoted as saying, “everyone cheats, it’s just the way it is.” I’m saddened by this though I don’t completely believe it either. My nephew graduates from high school this Friday and will start college in the fall and I know he’s a person of integrity and would never consider cheating, and I know he can’t be the only one.

But the mentality seems to be that this is harmless behavior, but let’s consider for a moment that if you cheat on a paper and you don’t get caught chances are you’ll do it again. But where does that end? Then do you cheat on your resume, add some “white lies” to get the job? Do you then borrow a co-worker’s idea and pass it off as your own? It’s harmless, right? What about in your family? Do you cheat on your spouse? It’s just an emotional affair so that doesn’t count, right? Where does it end? How harmless can it be when the behavior stems directly from your own personal ethics?

So what do you think? Is it okay to download a book for free? Is it the same thing as borrowing from a library? What about cheating in school? Is it okay to cheat just this once?