Foggy Females ~ Ellen O’Connell

First, no, I haven’t joined or started a group called Foggy Females. Those two words should be the subject and only subject of this post. However, a friendly reader recently let me know that a Google search doesn’t turn up this blog, and after reading more mumbo jumbo on the WordPress site than I wanted to about how to fix that, I gave up, did a search on “Romantic Guppies,” and that post came up high on the first page of results about small fish. So I’m going to try sticking my name in the subject line of a post or two and see if it fixes the problem. If it does, I’ll then try a less obnoxiously large byline in the text and see what happens.

So, as to Foggy Females. I thought after snarking at romance heroes in the last post, I should give the ladies equal time. IMO it’s a target-rich environment, but the thing I settled on is one I don’t feel absolute confidence about. There is some part of me that wonders if my own hormones, emotions, etc., just aren’t up to snuff. Another part thinks that maybe even though I believe I’ve known some wonderful guys, maybe if I’d just been kissed by a romance hero type….

What I notice, and what annoys and makes me wonder is the fact our heroines get so lost in our heroes’ kisses the ladies no longer can think and in fact are no longer aware of anything going on around them. A whole crowd can enter the room and witness the heroine’s ruin, but she never notices them until the hero lets up and she looks around (without the crowd, her lips that look bee stung because of his kisses give her away — a phenomenon that has also missed me). She is oblivious to anything and everything, which is how he gets her clothes off without her noticing and inserts fingers and tongue in places she never equates with a rapidly approaching irreversible event. In fact it’s how she loses her virginity (orgasmically) without realizing it until, whoops, there’s a “pinch.”

Admittedly I’ve never discussed this in great detail with female friends, and the ones who’ve mentioned it seem as deficient as I am. A little further along in the process, I can see how passion might fog things, but even then, the one time I walked in my parents’ bedroom without knocking when I should have — well, no one seemed too passion fogged to react strongly and immediately. Then again, maybe that means my deficiency is inherited? (And in case anyone who reads this is thinking how awful I am to be embarrassing my parents in public here — they’ve both been gone and quite past embarrassment for some time now. My father would be p.o.’d, but my mother would just shake her head and quote something pithy, probably to do with a serpent’s tooth.)

Interestingly, about the time all these thoughts were bumping around in my mind, one of the library ebooks I downloaded was Mary Balogh’s A Summer to Remember, which proved convincingly that while one can make generalizations about guppies and foggy females in romances, there are always great exceptions. The heroine is so unfoggy that when he tries to devastate her with a kiss, she asks something like, “What are you up to?” as soon as his lips unlock with hers. And of course he is up to something. The hero is not a guppy. The ending does involve the shopworn bit where she says no to a marriage proposal because he has never said he looves her, but that’s a minor quibble over a book with appealing and rather different characters.

Dog News: Victor’s blood test earlier this month showed no microfilaria, which means his heartworm treatment has been a success. He has to have another blood test in April before being pronounced good to go, but I think that’s a checking it twice to be safe and sure type thing. Unfortunately in all this time there’s only been one adoption application for him, and it wasn’t suitable. Adoptions have been slow generally, another casualty of the economy. So we’re going to take some new pictures of Victor now that he’s up to proper weight and his coat is nicer and keep trying at least until after the April test. If nothing shows up by then, he’ll probably stay with me. My other male doesn’t like him a lot, but other than the time they knocked me down and were fighting on top of me…. Ah, that’s another tail tale, and it’s not usually too hard to work around their antipathy.

~Ellen

Romantic Guppies

I have a mental image of many eyes rolling when my subject is dogs, and here I am — about to do worse and ramble on about aquariums and fish. Trust me, though, it’s going to lead to romance novels.

Some years ago I discovered that even someone who is a lousy gardener — me — can be halfway competent when it comes to planted aquariums. I read an article about how to set one up, followed the advice, and got hooked in a minor way. Right now I have three small planted aquariums in the house. There’s a picture of one of my tanks here (#96). I still have that little bowfront tank, although it’s been redone several times since then.

It’s the fish that stock the tanks that I recently realized relate to romance novels. You see, after I set up my first aquarium there was the question of what to put in it. Small tanks need small fish, and guppies should be candidates, right? Not for me. Do you know that if you get guppies, the advice is to get 3 to 5 females for each male? That’s so the males don’t harass the females to death. If you look at a tank of guppies, swordtails, or other like fish in a store, you likely will see the males chasing the females with their “rod-like gonopodiums” (that’s a quote from one of my fish books) arched forward, ready for action.

So how does all this relate to romance novels? I blew my book budget out of the water in January and turned to library books. The Denver Library is quite forward-thinking about ebooks and not only has a lot in the system, but unlike my local library, has many that are instantly available and don’t require a hold. So that’s where I turned. And of course I’ve been a lot less selective than if I were buying books: read the description, think it sounds sort of okay, download, give it a try, delete if it’s not up to snuff, try another, repeat.

Some of what I tried was pretty decent, but after I hit a few in a row that annoyed me and that I zapped pretty quickly, I started trying to analyze what it was that annoyed me. The fact is that while the rape romance of old may be out of style, there are still a lot of books whose heroes are guppies. Instead of rod-like gonopodiums, they have rock-like throbbing manhoods or sometimes these days hard as rock correctly named organs, but they’re guppies. These heroes walk around and lay around (they have to sleep but they sleep in the same state) doing pretty much nothing but harassing females or if stymied from direct action, thinking about it or talking about it. When all this lust settles on one female, it’s love, and the guy is a hero.

I’ve always avoided romances that have no story to speak of, where the H and h just pant over each other for 300 pages, consumed by passion and kept apart until page 200 by something so minor it’s impossible to believe. Books with guppy guys can have story lines, though. It’s just that in guppy books the hero lives his life with his rod-like manhood throbbing and since he’s a dominant alpha type, nothing else matters. He’s entitled to harass the heroine into giving him what he wants, since minor inconveniences to her, like getting pregnant when unmarried in the Nineteenth Century, fade in comparison to the throbbing.

One of these books got zapped when the hero comforted the heroine with sex when her baby had been kidnapped. Yoohoo, any of you out there think you’d find that comforting under those circumstances? Am I missing out here? No one could make me feel sexy when I’m worried about one of the dogs much less a kid. I’m not sure if the guppy guy is just a more politically correct version of the old romance rapist, but after coming across several of these guys in a row, I think I dislike them just as passionately.

Tidbit: It’s favorite book of the year time at All About Romance, and one of the reviewers there (Lea) mentioned Dancing on Coals as a 2011 favorite. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I saw the thread there about a review of Dancing and got busy and sent AAR what they require in order to review. I must confess since I never sent them anything for  Sing and that review just appeared like magic, it never occurred to me to send them anything for Dancing. Oops.

~Ellen

Reader vs. Writer?

As most of you probably know, I frequent several author forums, and one of them featured a link to a Dear Author article the other day. The description made me curious, so I went over there and took a look. So far as I can tell, the whole thing was provoked by an author or maybe more than one getting into it with a reader/reviewer and behaving badly. Having never heard about the provoking incidents and not caring about them enough to try to track them down, I skimmed.

And then I skimmed the gazillion comments. Some of them highlight things I learned myself in the past two years the hard way and some mention things that never affected me, but one really hit home. It hit home for several of the people commenting because I saw it quoted in comments after the original one:

“Years ago I had an online conversation with the author Judith Ivory, who said that a reading experience is a product of two imaginations, the author’s and the reader’s. Different readers will bring different imaginations to the process of reading which means that responses will vary.”

I love that quote because it says eloquently something that puzzled me when I first put my books out:  Some readers see things I don’t think I put in the book. Other readers don’t see things I believe I said outright. You’d think I would have known this going in. After all, even the most popular bestseller has people who hate it. All of us have friends who hate a book we loved or vice versa. Knowing that about “books” (as in other people’s books) is one thing. Accepting it about one’s own books is something else. At first I thought, well, I didn’t make xyz clear enough. Sometime in the last two years I did accept that we all have different experiences and imaginations and so every book is different to every reader, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot.

And that’s the reason millions of people loved Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, and it stands out in my mind as such a tedious, terrible, boring experience it was the last book I ever forced myself to finish.

~Ellen

 

 

Happy New Year and…

Happy New Year, everyone. A New Year gift for me is the Maldivian Book Reviewer’s choice of Dancing on Coals as her #1 Pick of the Month for December 2011. You may remember that she posted a really complimentary review of Dancing recently. This time she posted an e-interview she did with me, and if you follow her giveaway rules there are some prizes you can win also. None of you reading here need a digital copy of Dancing, but there are other prizes, including a $20 gift certificate good at Amazon, B&N or some other places.

Something I’m looking forward to with the New Year is Victor’s last heartworm treatment on Monday, January 2. After this one, I can start to let him return to normal dog life – no more leash walks in cold Colorado winter nights!

In addition to the chronic and quickly ignored resolution to lose weight, this year I’m resolving to stick with the disciplined writing of 1,000 words a day at least 5 days a week. I did it while writing Dancing, but then fell off the wagon once I got to the revising and formatting when the book was finished. Ideally I need to keep with the 1,000 words a day for a next book while doing those things for a completed one, and that might result in more books per year, although I have no illusions of managing the 4-6 some writers do. Time will tell.

~Ellen

P.S. MBR also made a quote from Dancing the first of her favorite quotes of 2011. Since she picked a quote from one of the sex scenes, it’s a good thing I discovered it on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t cool my red face in a beer but did it much more classily (think that’s a word?) in a wine cooler. ~E

 

Merry Christmas and…

… for those of you who aren’t Christmas-y for whatever reason, happy holidays, winter solstice and everything else.

We’ve just gotten our first big snow of the season here in Colorado. Nothing like what they got south of us, but still 9 inches is enough to break out the snow shovel. It also makes me appreciate my Kindle even more than usual. Pre-Kindle being snowed in meant finding something to reread. I’ve never been one of those people who have a big TBR pile. I always bought a book or two, read them, and then looked for more. Being snowed in with the Kindle would only be a problem if the electricity was out the whole time and the K was due for a charge when it happened.

I don’t know if any of you who read here are mystery fans as well as romance, but I confess to having been recently royally hooked by a mystery series – and I still haven’t figured out why. I read in some forum or another that Candice Proctor, author of Whispers of Heaven, one of my favorite romances, writes a mystery series under the name of C.S. Harris. So of course I looked it up to see. A couple of the reviews I saw panned the accuracy of details of the historical setting of the series – England in 1811-12 – but since I’m no expert on that place and time, I figured what the heck.

However, I do know a lot of about dogs and horses, and there are noticeable and frequent enough errors about both to make me stop reading most books. Did that stop me? No. I can make a whole list of other things that would stop me cold in most books:

I didn’t count, but I bet 80% of the characters have gray eyes, enough that I started to roll my eyes every time another one showed up. What percentage of the population, even in 1811 England, do you think had gray eyes?

The hero single-handedly and without consequences kills bad guys right and left until that gets eyes-rolling too (he also gets injured so severely so often a mass of scar tissue an inch deep must cover his arms and torso). He gets married in the last book available in the series at the moment, and his wife and he are obviously going to have a body-count competition in the future.

Since the books aren’t romances it’s not a case of a TSTL heroine, but equal opportunity TSTL characters, not constantly, but they all get their turn. Good guys: “Oh, it must be a trap.” “Yes, it’s a trap.” “Let’s go stick our noses in there just in case we’re wrong.” Bad or so-so guys: “Lie, lie, lie.” I know anyone with any sense could check and find out it’s a lie, but what the heck.

None of it mattered. I read all 6 of them and will pounce on the 7th when it’s available next year. I think I’m hooked for the same reasons people get hooked on soap operas. Secrets, lies, constant emotional turmoil, even a dash of incest. Whatever. I went through them like a bowl of popcorn. They aren’t exactly bargain books either at $7.99 for the Kindle version of most of them and I think $11.99 for the newest ones. Fortunately my library had most of them, so I didn’t do mortal damage to the book budget.

If anyone else has read or ever reads any of these, I’d love to know if you too got hooked or if you’re made of sterner stuff.

~Ellen

 

Amazon’s KDP Select Program and…

I don’t know how Amazon is going about letting customers know about its new KDP Select program, but the author forums are abuzz with discussions about it. As Amazon customers know (even those of us who aren’t members), they have a Prime program that gives members free 2-day shipping and other benefits in return for a set membership fee each year. The Prime membership is also now going to include the ability to borrow one Kindle book a month free. As of now, that’s what the advantage of the program is to the reader.

An author who signs up with the program allows her book(s) in the program to be borrowed and also can offer the book for free 5 days in every 90-day period. Additionally, for a new book entered in the program, the author would be able to have pre-release orders (something indies have not been able to do in the past). In return for this, the author has to give Amazon the exclusive right to sell the book on its website – no B&N, Sony, Kobo, Apple, selling on the author’s website, etc. In fact so far the interpretation is that the author cannot give digital copies of the book to anyone, even for review. Surely that will be clarified more sensibly soon.

Needless to say, some authors think this is awful; others think it’s great and are hopping on the Select bandwagon with glee. I’m sitting on the sidelines thinking about it. For starters, since my ebooks are distributed to B&N, Sony, et al., via Smashwords, it would take weeks for me to get them taken down from those sites so that I could enter a program that requires exclusivity with Amazon. Theoretically I’m an ideal author for the program. I’ve never calculated, but definitely more than 95% of all my ebook sales are from Amazon, probably more than 98% if I did the math. However, do I want to tell the Nook, Sony, and Kobo people too bad? I put out paperbacks of my books in order not to say no to what is also a very tiny percentage of my readers. One author is working on a way to tell her readers if they buy from Amazon, she’ll convert the book to the format they want and send it to them, but IME not every ebook reader knows how to or wants to learn how to sideload a book onto their device, and of course the get your ebook instantaneously convenience would be turned into a back and forth aggravation.

For some authors the lure is being able to offer their books for free for those 5 days. Amazon has not allowed indies to offer their books for free in the past. However, clever people soon figured that if they offered their books for free in other places that do allow it, Amazon would price match and also offer the book for free. Timing was a bear that way, but a lot of authors do it. Those of you who have been reading here for a while are probably aware I’ve never waved the free flag wildly. Every time I think about it, I hear my mother’s voice saying, “You get what you pay for.” I know that’s not always true. I’ve scooped up some decent free books myself when given the chance, but even so….

The free theory is that readers who would never buy an unknown author try a free book, like it, and then buy all the author’s other books. It does work that way for some, but it works best with series books when the first one is free and of course my romances are standalones. So, for right now, I’m not putting any of my books in the Select program, but I’d love to hear thoughts on it from any of you. Maybe I will try it with a new book if early participants think it does give useful exposure. The minimum participation time is 90 days, so if a new book could be in the program for only 90 days and get the advantage of pre-orders…. Well, maybe.

Tidbits: Dancing on Coals has now been given 5-star reviews by KristieJ and by the Maldivian Book Reviewer. (Okay, KristieJ’s is really a 4.99 review, but what the heck.) Really great reviews that had me smiling for hours, and I thank them both for picking the book up so quickly to review. In addition, MBR is making Dancing on Coals one of her December pick of the month books and I did an interview with her that will be posted in early January. It might appear as early as January 1, but I’ll let everyone know the date as soon as I find out. Her questions were excellent, and I think you may enjoy reading the interview.

And speaking of free — MBR will have some gift copies of Dancing on Coals at the time the interview appears. Mom is mercifully silent on that subject.

~Ellen

 

RomCon Winner

RomCon notified me today of the winner of the copy of Dancing on Coals from the people who commented on my guest blog there. Her name is Claudia, and I don’t think she’s a follower of this blog just from the wording of the comment. To anyone who does read here and had fingers crossed (Mervi?), sorry. She’s not in the U.S. so I’m lucky she’s choosing an ebook as I never considered international people, and of course just from those who do follow here that I know are non-U.S., I should have.

~Ellen

At Last!

The paperback of Dancing on Coals is now available for order on Amazon. It’s linked to the Kindle version already (which is how I found it so fast without someone more on the ball telling me about it), but some things, like the story description, aren’t there yet. It saves me a phone call because I really felt it should be up by now and was ready to start harassing Create Space on Monday. I hope those of you who have been waiting think it was worth it once you’ve read it.

~Ellen

Happy Thanksgiving and Eek!

I suspect I got the dates wrong on all the sites where Dancing on Coals was going to be featured in that last post. All three of them have already been posted. The guest blog at RomCon went up on the 21st, a fact I only just woke up to. That’s the one where one person who comments will win a copy of the book.

http://romconinc.com/index.php?option=com_lyftenbloggie&view=entry&category=historical&id=1707%3Adancing-on-coals-by-ellen-oconnell&Itemid=23#comment

Moral of that story:  Never trust me if so much as a single number is involved.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who frequent this blog and for those of you in countries where tomorrow is just another Thursday – extra happy Thursday anyway. All of you who come here are one of the many things I’m grateful for and have to celebrate because you are part of the audience my books have found. Just two years ago I never dreamed of such a thing, and my life has changed for the better because of it. Thank you, each and every one of you.

~Ellen

Paperback Update and Guest Blog Post

You may remember that in a comment to the previous post I said I’d done a process that would speed up the appearance of the paperback version of Dancing on Coals on Amazon. Well, no, I didn’t. Whether I clicked the wrong thing or didn’t click something, I screwed up and slowed the process instead of speeding it, especially since I didn’t wake up to the fact things weren’t progressing until I got an email from Create Space saying yoo hoo what do you want to do with this thing?

So I got in gear and think I straightened everything out and the paperback should appear on Amazon sometime in the next few days. I know some of you are waiting, and I’m sorry for the screw up.

Also for you paperback people (since I figure the ebookers have already got their copy if they wanted it), I’ve done a guest blog for Romcon.com which is scheduled to appear Tuesday, November 22. Romcon asks that those who do guest blogs offer a gift copy of their book to be given as a prize to someone who comments on the guest blog. They choose the winner and notify me who it is and pass on the needed info so I can send the book. In my case the winner can choose either the ebook or paperback version of any of my books (signed paperback).

http://romconinc.com/index.php?option=com_lyftenbloggie&view=lyftenbloggie&category=historical&Itemid=23

If you want to leave a comment on that blog and don’t want to win a copy of a book you’ve already read, go ahead and comment. If you win, let me know, and you can have an Amazon gift certificate instead of the book.

Another blog put up info about Dancing yesterday, but it isn’t a review, just a copy of the description that appears on Amazon with the cover image.

http://www.indiepublishers.blogspot.com

And another has scheduled posting an excerpt on Friday, November 25th:

http://the-ruthin-trilogy.blogspot.com

Thanks to everyone for all the good feedback and for the reviews. I keep waiting for the first person to pop up with “I hate xxx,” but as of right now enough readers who do like the book have spoken that the people who don’t aren’t going to bruise me too badly when they speak.

~Ellen