A to Z: Going Indie: R is for Reviews

 

Welcome to Blogging A to Z! My theme this year is Going Indie. I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to check out the other participating blogs.  

In the algorithm games, one of the horses writers are betting on is reviews. Indications seem to be that having reviews for your book increases the likelihood that your book will be surfaced in different kinds of searches, get added to lists, and just generally be more discoverable.  

Is it true? It's hard to know. It's like Amazon would just be straightforward, direct, or honest with either the authors who sell there or the customers they sell to. It's all smoke and mirrors. Google's not really better. 

But I figure it doesn't hurt and might help. So, I set out to get reviews for my GenX romances in the months leading up to release day. I figured ANY reviews were better than none, but I'm hoping for 20 reviews for each book. 

Here's what I tried: 

1. Asking my audience: I put out feelers in some engagement groups I'm in on Instagram, posted sign-up forms for ARCs on social media, and offered ARC access in my newsletter. How'd it go? Well, so far, for Not Too Late, 11 people requested ARCs through those channels, and 2 have posted about it. Of course, I'm writing this on April 13th and release day isn't until April 28th, so they still have time!

2. NetGalley: My entire N post was about NetGalley, so I won't repeat all the details here. But the short version is that I paid for a slot in a NetGalley co-op ($63 for one month, as opposed to $500 for one book directly), and netted 10 public reviews for Not Too Late so far. I also did this for Acid Reign and Ready or Not. 

3. BookSirens: Another ARC service that connects authors and readers. They've had my book available about 3 weeks at this writing, and only 4 people have selected it to read, and 1 person has reviewed. I'm wondering if I should have done this earlier in the process to allow more time. 

 In contrast, for Stories for Shadow Hill I sent a copy to two friends who said they would review and that was all the effort I made in that regard. To date, that book still has zero reviews. 

See, up there next to the title? No stars, no reviews at all. (sad trombone noise)

 

From past experience, I know that reviews do matter. People are reassured, when taking a chance on a new author, if there are reviews. My first Menopausal Superhero novel, Going Through the Change, for example, has 713 reviews on Amazon and I have anecdotal evidence at least that just the number of reviews was enough to convince some folks to give it a try. 

I don't even get upset about so-called "bad" reviews. After all, what a review is meant to do is tell you whether this particular story worked for a particular reader. You're dreaming if you think there's a book out there that will please EVERYONE and sometimes those "poor" reviews reveal the very thing about the book that would delight a different reader, so they still can help with sales. 

Getting reviews isn't easy, and I won't know for a little while yet if all these effort will help my book find a broader audience or not. Reading reviews is a whole different kind of difficult, and I don't advise spending too much time there. But I also don't advise ignoring reviews all together. They can be useful!

Reviews give me pitch language. Seeing how readers describe my book gives me categories, phrases, and descriptions I can use to hand-sell my book, make social media posts, and use in advertising. It's sort of like sorting through feedback from a focus group, especially if you can distance yourself emotionally from the more harshly worded criticism.  

Reviews also give me food for thought in improving my craft in general. Going Through the Change was my first published novel, so I'm willing to admit it has flaws. For example, most lower star reviews complained that the ending of this first-in-series book was too much of a cliffhanger. 

I could have gotten defensive about that. After all, it's a superhero book and the comic book and pulp material that inspired me in the first place is chock full of cliffhangers. But instead, I took that to heart and as I wrote the rest of the series, I tried to better balance wrapping up one book satisfyingly while still flowing into the sequels. That "cliffhanger" complaint isn't there in the reviews of the other books nearly as often, so I think I found a better balance, at least so far as the evidence reveals. 

So, review what you read, y'all! Especially if it's by someone small potatoes like me. It helps! Even when you didn't like the book that much. 

A to Z: Going Indie: P is for Profitability

 

Welcome to Blogging A to Z! My theme this year is Going Indie. I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to check out the other participating blogs.  

So now that I'm trying to treat my writing life with a little more respect and be more of a businesswoman about it, I have to pay attention to things like profits. And the big question is how to measure that. 

There's a lot that I've bought for my writing life (see my M post on Money for details), but which things count in my reckoning for whether a book is profitable yet? 

Mostly, I've decided that things I buy that are for author life in general or serve as infrastructure don't go in the reckoning for any single book. So, buying an author banner, getting bookmarks made, paying a table fee at an event, doesn't count. 

But things specific to that book like editing, book cover, buying copies, etc. DO count. 

So for Not Too Late as an example:  I came up with $726.10 as my starting number, my "sunk cost." 

That includes: 

• $62.50 for Vellum (not sure this should actually count, because I'll use it for ALL my future books, but if it does count, that is 1/4 of what the software cost me, since I've used it on 4 books so far)
• $59 for two ISBNs, one for ebook, one for paperback (since I bought in a group of ten--they're cheaper if you buy more at a time)
•  $196.80 editing
• $400 book cover 
• $7.80 for a paper proof copy 

Since then, I've purchased 68 copies of the book for resale. I know that's a weird number, but it's because I shipped to bookstores in weird amounts for consignment arrangements as well as buying for my own in-person re-sale. I've sold 9 copies at full price in person, three at lower price to the cover artist, and one through one of those consignment arrangements. 

When I track how much I spent buying books, I always include the shipping, too. So each book costs me between $4 and $5 on average. So, the copy that sold through consignment paid me $9, but it's really $4 or $5 profit since I had to buy the book in the first place. I hope that makes sense. The copies I sell in person make me $10 or $11 each, for comparison. 

So I've put all that into a spreadsheet and currently, I'm further in the hole than I started, at $834.35. I'm not worried though, because, like I said, this book hasn't actually released yet. This is all PRESALE still.

My *hope* is that the book will be "in the black" within its first six months. So, just in time for Halloween. I'll let you know how it pans out! 

 

A to Z: Indie Publishing: O is for Older Characters

Welcome to Blogging A to Z! My theme this year is Going Indie. I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to check out the other participating blogs.  

So one of the "different" things about my GenX romances is that the people falling in love are in their 40s and 50s. I've read a fair amount of romance in my life, and if you based your ideas about love on romance novels, you could easily come to believe that it only happens to people between 17 and 25 years old. 

I don't mean to denigrate those stories. I've LOVED lots of them. But, it seems like a pretty narrow band of human experience to explore when it comes to love and relationships. If things go well, there's a lot of life to enjoy after age 25. 

And, I'm not 17 to 25 years old anymore. In fact, one of MY CHILDREN is older than that! And I myself am living a second-chance romance with a man I married when I was 34. So many people in my life are finding love either for the first time, or second or third time, in their 40s and 50s. I've got a friend with a really active dating life in her 60s. 

Writing romance for older characters is the same and different as writing for younger ones. 

You can still get the fun of "he said/she said" chapters, using the alternating points of view to build in some fun for your readers who will know what both characters are thinking and feeling, even when they haven't told each other yet.  

The giddy bits and emotions can be very much the same as they would be for 20 year olds. Swooning still happens after thirty, y'all. 

On the other hand, your characters have history. They've probably loved and lost before. This isn't their first rodeo. So some of the kinds of situations that play well with younger characters make older ones seems TSTL (too stupid to live). 

A lot of time the angst and obstacles are more external than internal. People in their middle age kind of know what they want and what they don't want, and are more willing to communicate it, so what's standing in their way when it comes to love has to be something different. 

For Amanda, in Not Too Late, it's the idea of giving up her wandering life and staying put in one town--her hometown at that. She also has to consider whether she wants to deal with romance while she's in the middle of elder care for her mother. 

For Abby, in Acid Reign, it's realizing that steady and reliable doesn't have to mean boring. Abby's losing her best friend to cancer, too. Is this really the time for love? 

For Becca, in Ready or Not, it's giving another man a chance even though she's been burnt before. Besides, her daughter is leaving for NYC, leaving her to face an empty nest. Isn't that enough? 

I've really enjoyed writing these and my early readers are saying good things, so I'm hoping that romance for older characters is a concept that might really have some legs! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A to Z: Going Indie: G is for GenX

 

Welcome to Blogging A to Z! My theme this year is Going Indie. I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to check out the other participating blogs. 

GenX is the famously invisible generation between Boomers and Millennials. We were born between 1965 and 1980 and currently most of us are in our 50s. The women among us are going through menopause. Sometimes we get called the "sandwich generation" too because our parents are old enough to need our care while our children (mostly GenZ) are still young enough to need our support, too, leaving us squished in the middle.

Just kidding! I don't actually hate any of you. 

 

I identify strongly with my generation, enjoying all the memes and jokes about our invisibility, resourcefulness, and independence and when I started thinking about writing romances, I love the idea of writing them for readers my age. I know a lot of people in their 40s and 50s finding love for the first time, or finding it again, and the challenges and obstacles are very different than they were when we were 20. 

In a similar vein to my Menopausal Superheroes series, which gave superpowers to fully adult women with partners, careers, and mortgages to worry about alongside dealing with their new abilities, my heroines in these GenX romances all find love while they're "going through something."  

 

• In Not Too Late, Amanda comes back to her hometown of Bellevue, Kentucky to care for her mother after a hip surgery. Who knew she'd find a second chance romance with a boy she'd known in high school while she's there! And Chris has changed A LOT since she knew him as Turbo, a skinny pimply track star. 
• Abby, the songwriter for the all-girl 80s punk band Acid Reign, was really only looking for a one-night stand to distract her from the fact that her best friend is losing her fight with cancer. But Gavin and her heart had other ideas. If only he wasn't a politician…
• Becca wasn't looking for love. This single mom had enough on her mind, with her now-grown daughter leaving for a new life in NYC, leaving her with an empty nest. David, widowed five years now, didn't really believe love would find him again. Luckily a rescue dog with muddy paws brought them together despite all their reservations, Ready or Not. 

Love finds you when it does, you know? And sometimes you're not twenty and you're already dealing with elder care, losing a friend, or facing empty nest.  

 

A to Z: Going Indie: Fact vs. Fiction

 

Welcome to Blogging A to Z! My theme this year is Going Indie. I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to check out the other participating blogs. 

 I've been taking my writing life seriously and really being a writer for about 12 years now. And one of the questions that continues to throw me is when readers ask if something in a book is "real." Generally they mean, is that factual? Did that actually happen? In particular to *you* the author? 

First off, um, nosy! LOL. Especially in my romance work, is it really any of your business? 

But secondly, the answer is often "Yes, but no." 

Your life and experiences are definitely fodder for your fiction, but most of us are not simply recreating our lives with the serial numbers scratched off and calling it fiction. The way I look at it is the emotional truth of a moment often pulls from my life: I've been in love, been afraid, tried new things, had to deal with unexpected dangers, faced losses, etc. But, the details don't. 

My characters are different people than I am (even if *some* of who and what they are pulls from me and people I know), so they make different choices than I would have. Plus, a lot of my work is speculative fiction, so obviously, I, a middle-aged woman limited by real-world physics, have never flown with just the power of my own body, deflected bullets, or wielded fire, even though my Menopausal Superheroes absolutely have!

 

So for Not Too Late, the first of my GenX romances (the one that officially releases on April 28! Pre-order now!), here are a few "facts" that made it into my fiction: 

• Bellevue, KY is a real place and is in fact where I grew up. The Bellevue in the book is 90% accurate to how Bellevue is in the real world (at least in my POV)
• Like Amanda, the main character, I left for college and never really came back other than for visits
• Like Amanda, I love roller skating and it was a big part of my youth
• Bellevue really has changed a lot since I lived there and does have a Thai restaurant now, which I'm very impressed by
• Bellevue also has stayed the same with my favorite candy/ice cream shop (Schneider's) and sub shop (Fessler's) still rocking the Avenue
• My fella is also a fella that I met in my youth and re-met when I was older…so Amanda and I have that second chance vibe in common. My husband is also three years younger than me, just like Chris and Amanda. 

So, I got to use a lot of my feelings and experiences, but Not Too Late is not just a retelling of my own life through a fictional lens. Writing is weird alchemy that way. 

A to Z: C is for Covers

Welcome to Blogging A to Z! My theme this year is Going Indie. I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to check out the other participating blogs. 

Before going indie, since my novels were published by a small press, my opinion about the covers was solicited and if I objected strongly I had a good shot at persuading John (the head honcho) to make changes or go a different way, but in the end, he was the publisher, and the decision lay with him. 

I feel lucky that I ended up with covers I quite like for The Menopausal Superhero series: 

Still, one of the things I was really looking forward to about going indie was having full control over the covers. It was both exciting, and a little daunting. I don't consider myself much of a graphic artist, but I do have opinions. So, I wasn't going to try to do my own covers. At my skill level, that would have been a great way to end up with something amateurish and off-putting. 

Instead, I hired an artist. I met Hannah (or Spoon, as most people call her) of Spoonwood Visuals at a convention. She had the table across from mine, so I had a lot of time to look at her art and chit-chat with her, and I really liked both what I saw and what I heard. I bought a journal book from her with this art on it: 

 

I really liked how she used color, and I've got a thing for Luna moths :-) So, I asked if she ever did book covers and it turned out she does! So, over the past few months, we've talked themes and ideas and she did the covers for all three Gen X romances: 

 

 

She really did a great job turning my vague concepts into vibrant covers that really represent the books. And check out her artistry on the wraps: 

 

 I love how the heart on the back of Not Too Late comes across and becomes the letter L on the cassette tape on the front. And those Trapper-Keeper-esque details really ground it in the 80s nostalgia that is so much a part of this story!

 

 

Acid Reign is a completely different look with that collage-art style that mirrors so many punk album covers of the 80s and 90s, when Abby Storm, my main character, was rocking the world. The big lipstick kiss on the back is perfect! 

 

 

That cutie on the cover, knocking over the microphone and leaving muddy pawprints everywhere is Roscoe. He's the real hero of Ready or Not and I love the way he's running off the cover, so his head is on the back, disrupting the back-of-book blurb text. 

Working directly with an artist was WONDERFUL and I'm so pleased with what Hannah created for my books. 10 out of 10, would totally recommend the experience! 

 

 

Going Indie: Month Two

February was a blur for me.

I had author events of one kind or another every weekend, trying to build my visibility and keep up connections, while still working my day job, doing my part in keeping our household afloat, keeping up with social media and marketing work, and progressing on the next book.

I did this to myself on purpose, but it was still quite a ride. I worry a little whether I have the stamina I’m going to need for this.

If you’d like to start at the beginning of this story, you can read my Month 1 update here: Going Indie: Month One (on Substack) or here: Going Indie: Month One (on this blog). 

The plan in broad terms is to take my writing life more fully into my own hands and raise it from an occasionally mildly profitable hobby to something that pays my bills. To get started down that track, I wrote three short romance novels which I’m indie-publishing in April, May, and June of 2026.



My GenX romances

I chose romance quite intentionally for both business and personal reasons.

On the personal side, I wanted to write something light and escapist. Like a lot of people, I’m finding it difficult to keep heart in the current political and social environment in the United States and I found it healing to write stories where nice people fall in love. Writing was first something I did for myself, and even though I do it with an audience in mind now, self-expression is still paramount in what I write and why I write it.

I settled on GenX Romances in particular because I’m a GenXer myself and because my best known work to this point is my Menopausal Superheroes series which also centers “women of a certain age.” So, even though Romance is a new genre for me, there’s some connection to my previous work and some of my existing readers are likely to give them a try. That’s sort of business and personal, I suppose.

Also, I read and blurbed a how-to book about writing romance for older characters (Write and Sell a Well-Seasoned Romance by Stella Fosse) and it sparked an interest in me to explore love stories for women in their 40s and 50s. I’m a sucker for a good prompt, which is probably how I ended up doing so much short-story writing for anthologies. So, Stella, these three books are probably your fault.

On the purely business side of things, well, romance sells. Romance readers are voracious! That’s a good reason to try writing it if I’m serious about making a living from my words. Romance with older characters looks like it might be a niche that’s building momentum, too. I keep finding more in the sub-genre the more I look for it.

Contemporary romance was the top subgenre in the U.S., with 32% of unit sales in 2023 (Publishers Weekly)

As I wrote these books, I found that the alternating point-of-view structure and clear genre and trope expectations meant that I could write more quickly than I have written my other books. (3-6 months for the first draft of each instead of 1-2 years).

When February rolled around, I had already seen all three books through editing (hired) and formatting (did it myself in Vellum) and gotten two of them into the system at Ingram. I was only awaiting the cover for the third book. I detailed my spending for the first book in my previous post in more detail, but I spent just over $700 producing each book, so I’m starting this experiment $2100-ish in the hole and we’ll see how long it takes me to “earn out.”

Even though I don’t plan to release these books until April, May, and June, I went ahead and ordered copies of both Not Too Late and Acid Reign with plans to hand sell them at my February events. They cost me between $4 and $5 a copy and I’m selling them for $15 each.

I know from past experience that selling your books in person is one of the best ways to learn how to sell your books. It gives you a chance to pitch hundreds of people and see what lands and doesn’t land with audiences. What tag line or approach makes someone pick up the book and read the back? What makes them decide to actually part with their hard-earned dollars and buy it?



More people picked up Not Too Late than Acid Reign to look at, which may have to with the bright colors and the appeal of 80s themed retro designs at the moment. Though my pitch for Acid Reign was pretty well received: “a punk princess falls for a politician; it’s complicated.” I haven’t landed on how to quickly pitch Not Too Late yet.

In February, I took these books (along with my others books—the Menopausal Superheroes series and some short horror collections—to two small local brewery events and a bigger book fair at a larger brewery with a Valentine’s theme. I’ll take them to a local horror film festival this weekend. That last one might seem odd, but, as a multi-genre author, I generally take at least some of all my books when I do an event. Sometimes which things sell where is unpredictable. So we’ll see if horror fans also buy romance or not.

In marketing work, I also finished my one month NetGalley co-op rental for Not Too Late and started a second one for Acid Reign, working under the theory that having reviews lined up on publication day will help me with online sales. I’ll have to wait until April to see if that proves true, but it has already given me some pull quotes and reviews I can link to for social media promotion.

As of this writing, 127 people requested Not Too Late, 114 people downloaded it before my NetGalley offer archived, and so far, 15 have reviewed on NetGalley, and 10 have posted their reviews to Goodreads. This might still collect more reviews ongoing.


For Acid Reign, I’ve had 53 requests so far (it’s still open for another few days if you want in), 45 downloads, 7 reviews on NetGalley, and 4 reviews on Goodreads. While I feel like the cover of Acid Reign is right for the book, I wonder if the darker colors and less playful design have something to do with the lower number of requests.


I’m starting a NetGalley offer for Ready or Not next week, which also has a brighter, lighter cover (with a dog!) and we’ll see how that plays.

Additionally, I devoted some time reaching out to bookstores to see if they’ll host me or sell my books, setting up consignment arrangements with a few places, and pursuing media coverage (with very little success).

I’m also working with an audiobook narrator on Not Too Late, and I LOVE Maggie’s voice and how she’s interpreting my characters so far.

And I made some pretty good progress on The Architect and the Heir, my next project. It’s a Gothic romance, so another new genre for me, but it does let me use some of what I’ve learned writing horror and romance and tap into a lifelong love of Gothic settings and trappings. I grew up on Universal Monsters, Dark Shadows, and Daphne du Maurier, among other things, after all.

I wrote 7,000 or so new words on the project and revised 9,000 or so. I’m bad at guessing how long it will take me to finish things, but it feels like I’m in the final third, so I’m hoping to finish a full draft by the end of March and get started on the revision.

And I approved the cover design!



I tried out a service for this one, since I ran across a good deal and you can opt out of the use of AI in the creation of your cover. The process wasn’t as much fun as working with the indie artist on the romances, so I don’t know if I’ll go this route again, even though I am pleased with the design and it was less expensive.

I am the stubborn girl who is going to try and make it as a romance writer without putting her books in KU because I disapprove of how the Big River site does business, so obviously I don’t make all my decisions just on what makes the most business sense. Sometimes, it’s about what feels right, and this cover company feels a little too slick.

Ethics versus profits, huh? Tale as old as time.

2026, The year of living dangerously

 

(Reminder: this site is now ONLY my blog. If you're looking for my book links or contact options, events, or any other aspects of my writer life, please visit http://dangerouswhenbored.com )

 

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the January 7 posting of the IWSG are Shannon Lawrence, Olga Godim, Jean Davis, and Jacqui Murray!

January 7 question - Is there anything in your writing plans for 2026 that you are going to do that you couldn't get done in 2025?

___________________________________

2025 in my writing life was in some ways a year of endings. 

I finished my Menopausal Superheroes series, which has been my major focus as a writer for the past decade, bringing that vision to a close. The last novel (Change for the Better) came out nearly exactly ten years after the first novel (Going Through the Change), which had a nice feeling of perfect timing. 

I've been on this roller coaster a long time, and while it's been a great ride, I'm excited about moving on to other projects and ideas. 

 

 

 

I've also spent 2025 gearing up for  

2026, the year Samantha goes indie! 

It is both exciting and terrifying. But I feel good about what I've done to get ready to make the leap and try to move my "hobby that pays for itself" writing life into a real business. 

• Incorporated as an LLC (Dangerous When Bored)
• Trademarked my Imprint/Business Name
• Built my new website: http://dangerouswhenbored.com
• Moved my newsletter to Mailerlite 
• Sought education on a variety of publishing topics (Women in Publishing has been SO HELPFUL) 
• Quietly published my first book (Stories from Shadow Hill) under the imprint, mostly to learn how to do this
• learned Vellum for formatting
• learned about various distribution options (I went with Ingram, with a separate upload to Amazon) 
• began learning Canva for promotional image creation 
• Wrote three short GenX romance novels and contracted for editing, cover art, and audiobook production. (The first one is already available for preorder and my proof copy is soooooo pretty)

 

So, 2026 is when it all comes to fruition, and we find out if I can make a go of this. It's a lot to juggle, and has definitely already felt overwhelming. But it's also super-exciting to make all the decisions myself and have more control over timetables and other publishing decisions. 

I'd love to hear from others about your publishing journeys and what you learned along the way…and if GenX romance sounds up your alley, let me know if you're interested in being an ARC reader and one of my early reviewers for release day!  

Best lines, an Open Book Blog Hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

What is the best line/s you've written recently?

_________________

That's a fun one :-)

Earlier this month, I finished a romance novel and sent it off to my editor (Hoping she can help me title the darn thing!). 

My two protagonists are Becca, a never-married single mom facing empty nest as her daughter leaves for college, and David, a widower who hasn't been having the best luck putting himself back out there for dating. 

 When David talks about how online dating is going for him, his good friend Luisa tells him: 

“Right, but the thing is—we’re not looking for ‘nice,’ honey. We’re looking for spice!” 

 That line has been a hit with my critique partners, so I'm hoping it'll get a grin from my readers, too, when I release the book this spring. 

The other thing I've been working on is a Menopausal Superheroes short story for an upcoming anthology (Disruptive Intent--now up for backing on Kickstarter!).  

 

The working title is "She Chose Anger" and it centers around Patricia O'Neill, the Lizard Woman of Springfield. She's famously curmudgeonly and brooks no nonsense, which makes her great fun to write. 

My favorite line in this story so far: 

Patricia sighed. Why were the bystanders always just standing by? If they’d just panic and run away, preferably far away from the bad guy, this would all be so much easier. It was harder to fight when you had to worry about innocents getting hurt in the process.

 So, that's my October fun on the page. How about you? Write or read any good lines lately? I'd love to hear about them in the comments! 

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Getting Triggered (to write), an Open Book Blog Hop Post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

What are your triggers for writing? (For instance, what gets you hyped or starts the story in your head).

_________________

I have at least ten ideas for a story nearly every day, but not all of those make it to the page. 

Some of them only take a mental moment's exploration for me to realize that there's not enough "there" there to develop into a full-blown story. They are at best bon mots that I might toss off on social media or in a social gathering. 

Others I might explore more fully, but then find that they fizzle. That little spark that had me excited, energized, or curious enough to start just sort of dissipates and it drifts off in the breeze. 

Some are so tenacious that they take root even when I don't have the time or freedom to sit down and play with them right away--they just keep butting up against my subconscious like an orca threatening to capsize my kayak until I give in and write the darn things. 

Generally, I'd say, a story needs three at least two of three things to really get started with me: 

• a bright enough spark
• a window of exploration soon enough that the idea gets pinned to the board before it can fly away
• deep enough roots to grow under the surface even if left un-nourished
• or being "the thing" that I need to write just then, the idea that scratches an itch I might have trouble defining for myself.  

One of these isn't enough without at least one of the others. There are too many ideas to develop them all, so the competition for my keyboard and head-space can be fierce. 

For example, the Menopausal Superheroes concept came to me in a flash. A nice bright spark that made me laugh aloud and start looking for time I could devote to it. I held it out there as a bribe to myself, the "something fun" I could play with after I finished the heavier-going more literary novel I was working on at the time.  

link to book

The romance novels I'm working on now didn't come in a flash like that, but they were "the thing" I needed to write once I'd finished my Menopausal Superheroes novels--new project energy and the excitement of something I'd never written before. The idea had deep enough roots that it didn't matter that I didn't start the first one for months after I first had the thought. They'd been there growing in my subconscious substrata just waiting for me to find or make the time for them. 

How about you? What decides which ideas get developed and explored for you? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Free to Write Anything, so What's Next?, an IWSG post

 

      

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Beth Camp, Liza @ Middle Passages, and Natalie @ Literary Rambles!

__________________________________________

 

I turned in the final novel in the Menopausal Superheroes series in 2024, for publication in 2025!

 

image source

Of course, I'm completely jazzed about that and I can't wait for readers to finish this journey with me (balloons, confetti, shouting in the streets!). 

 

Going Through the Change came out in 2015, so that means I'm starting 2025 with no writing deadlines to meet for the first time in ten years.

 

Okay, I'll still have editing deadlines to meet, but so far as the new projects I take on and the new words I create? They could be …anything! Which is wonderful and a little terrifying. 

 

See before I landed that first book contract, my big struggle as a writer was discipline--staying focused on a single project and seeing it to fruition without wandering off to explore the new shiny idea poking at my subconscious. But I respond very well to external deadlines. That little bit of external pressure calms the brain weasels. They take "no" for an answer when that "no" came from someone else, like John, my publisher. 

 

I mean, he does look kind of intimidating, doesn't he?

 

 

So, I worried that, once I didn't have a deadline hanging over my head, I'd founder. 

But, guess what? I haven't!

Since I turned in that novel, I've written a novella and a half of an intended set of three novellas that I plan to publish as my first all-indie project. In fact, I've been energized with that "new project energy" and creating at a faster pace than I have in years (ask John about all that deadline renegotiation we've gone through over the past couple of years). 

 

These are a whole new genre for me. My published work so far is the Menopausal Superheroes series, and a lot of dark-leaning short fiction. In fact, my author banner for events currently says: Samantha Bryant, Half-Hero, Half-Horror. 

 

Me selling my books at Splatterflix at the Carolina Theatre in Durham

 

These new novellas, though? Romance! 

A friend of mine from Women's Fiction Writers Association, Stella Fosse, wrote a how-to book about writing and publishing romances featuring older characters. I read and blurbed it for her--the connections to my own work with Menopausal Superheroes seemed obvious!

While I was reading, I had an idea…actually I had three ideas. And now, I'm off exploring an new-to-me genre and having a great time. My working titles: Not Too Late, a second chance Gen-X romance about a woman returning to her hometown and reconnecting with a boy she knew in high school; Acid Reign, a one-night-stand turns to love about an 80s punk star finding love with a local politician; and Skinny Jeans for Fat Girls, the idea for which is still just a nugget, so we'll see. But all three will feature women in their 50s finding love.

 

So that's what next for me! After that? Well, I've got several back burner projects I'd like to get back to, and a collection of short stories I never finished putting together, so there's a world of possibility out there. 

How about you? What's on the horizon for you in 2025? What are you excited about? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

 

 

The Uninvited, Revisited

I haven't written about it much here, but I am a bit of an old movie buff, particularly films of the later 1930s to 1950s. Black and white. Classics. I inherited this interest from my mother and throughout my childhood, we watched lots of such films together, whenever they were on TV. 

Off and on for the past couple of years (interestingly: about the same amount of time I've been trying to write my own Gothic romance novel), I'd been thinking about the film The Uninvited, from 1944, with Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, and Gail Russell.  

At first, I couldn't even figure out what movie I was remembering, or if I'd made some kind of amalgamation of several old films in my brain. I have watched and read more than a few things in this genre. 

I remembered that it was Gothic and scary, set in a stunning clifftop home, and some particular images and plot points. It took a bit of doing before I came up with the right search terms and learned the name of it. 

I requested it at my local Retro film series, but so far, they haven't shown it. And it's never on any of the streaming services, so I finally just bought a disk of it, the Criterion edition (a distinction other old movie fans will appreciate). 

I got Sweetman to watch it with me last night. 

I'm happy to report that it held up well. I fell in love with Windward House again, and so wish it were real and that I could go stay in it for a while, scary crashing waves at the foot of the rocks cliff and all. If you're a sucker for Gothic mansion settings like I am, this film is worth watching just for the house. 

image source

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful use of shadows and reflections amped up the atmosphere, and the trick photography used to more fully materialize a ghost still looks classy and "real" if that's an adjective one can apply to a spirit created by camera trickery. 

image source

As one expects in Gothic tales of this sort, there's a terrible secret in the past and it threatens our young ingenue in the present. It's quite convoluted, and I found myself pausing to untangle the threads for my husband more than once (he's less steeped in this kind of fiction than I am). I won't spoil the story here, in case you want to seek this out, but it had all the right elements of betrayal and questionable motivations for this kind of story. 

If you speak Spanish, the fuller story breaks more quickly when our ingenue is briefly possessed by a Spanish-speaking ghost who tells us very directly what happened, but I'm quite sure the film-makers did not anticipate the audience understanding what the ghost actually said in that scene because it all comes out again more slowly. 

A secondary plot took me by surprise. It had probably gone over my head when I watched the film as a child, but really added a level of threat and upped the ante with a side character (Miss Holloway) determined to keep certain secrets buried, regardless of the cost to others because of her obsessive love for one of the deceased characters.  

Shades of Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca, with room in the story that the feelings were mutual this time. Cornelia Otis Skinner's Miss Holloway was a different kind of threatening than Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers, but they might be sisters under the skin. 

Image source left, image source right

Implications of lesbian love were strong in that thread, and not portrayed as healthy and romantic. Holy subtext, Batman! More dangerous obsession, and dark secret sorts of themes.  

I'd love to write something playing in the backstory of this world, with the thwarted love, later love triangle and jealousies, and who exactly that missing father was, or what the grandfather did and didn't really know. The story did a lot with what it didn't tell us, even though it told us a lot. 

I'm also curious as heck about our outside interlopers, the brother and sister (Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald) who pooled their funds to buy the mansion together, only to become embroiled in a local tragedy and haunting. Neither of them married, neither of them seeming to have any particular ties in this world, and unusually close for adult siblings. What past tragedy had they survived together? 

Lastly, I was impressed by the mix of humor and horror. It's always a tricky balance to strike, and bringing in the wrong note at the wrong time can ruin a story, but The Uninvited beautifully blended lighthearted touches with a dark and troubling storyline.  Ray Milland was at his most Cary Grant-like, conveying a lot with a sideways glance or body language, revealing an inner little boy who wanted to run away from the scary things but was held in place by his sense of proper duty as a grown man. 

image source

The final minutes of the film wrapped everything up in a neat bow, delivering two impending marriages, happy pets (a dog and a cat), and every sign that the future will now be rosy for all involved now that the ghosts have been laid to rest. Practically Shakespearean in the rush to matrimony for all involved. It was charming how quickly everyone's future was settled now that we got that pesky troubled past dealt with. If only it were nearly that simple in real life. 

So, if you haven't watched it yet, go check out The Uninvited. It's well worth the watching. 

Car Dates

 One of the casualties of pandemic life at la casa Bryant has been date nights. As people who have never been married without children (I already had a daughter when I married Sweetman), date night has been essential to us from the get-go. We work to make sure we get some quality us-two time alongside work and family responsibilities, even when we can't afford anything fancy.

We have a teenager still at home, and while we do all try to give each other some space here during the pandemic, we've only been home without her about three nights in the past year (when she had a sleepover with her college-student-sister). It's not an option to send her on a sleepover, or even just to a friend's house for the afternoon like we're used to. 

Most of our favorite dating options, such as movies, restaurants, and theater outings have either been unavailable, or have not be available in a way that we feel safe about utilizing. So, what's a couple to do?

Image source

Sweetman and I value our date time, and though we try to capture a bit of it at home by getting special takeout and watching movies at home, playing games together, and banishing the teenager to her room for a while so we can feel alone, it's not the same. 

We're both bad at separating from the to-do lists and practicalities when we're at home, so it's hard for us to capture a sense of fun and romance without going somewhere. 

Some months ago, though, we came up with the car date. 

Basically, we pick something to go see, and a scenic route to get there, hop in the car and drive (leaving the teenager home with the dog to YouTube unfettered for a a few hours). 

Along the way we talk, play songs for each other, hold hands over the gear shift and seek new experiences together. 

While we have a destination, it's generally something we found on Atlas Obscura, involving driving by something or getting out and looking at an oddity, not something with tickets and timetables, so it's okay if we stop anywhere along the way just because we saw something interesting or if we fail to find the thing we were looking for. 

If the weather is nice, we get some takeout and find a place to picnic. If it's too cold or rained too recently, we get some takeout at the end of things, and take it back home to enjoy. 

This week's date took us on a lovely sunlit drive through muddy storm-bedraggled countryside to Shangri-La…the miniature stone village built by a retired farmer and available to admire and explore for free. It's adorable! A series of small buildings made of stone and brick, arranged in a tiny village. Toys strewn throughout add to the whimsy and crocus sprouts were just poking out their heads, so I intend to come back soon to see them in bloom. 

We were both completely charmed by the project and the results. Along our drive we found a local cider producer we didn't know about and found out where exactly a nature area I'd heard about was located. So future small adventures are afoot!

How about you, people of the internet? How do you keep a little romance in your lives under current circumstances? 

2019: My Year in Words

It's that time of year again, when a flip of the calendar has me looking back at what Ive accomplished and what I want to accomplish before it happens again. For me, that's my cue to examine my writing life. So, here's what my life of words was like in 2019:

I'm fighting feeling disappointed in myself because I didn't get a book-length work out there this year. I know I worked hard, and I know that on my schedule alongside a full time day job and an active family, it takes me roughly a year to draft a novel. But since I started my career with a book a year trajectory and haven't released another since 2017, I feel that as a failure.

I let go a novel I'd worked on for most of 2018, finding I wasn't in a good mental place to write dystopian fiction and started a gothic novel which I'm still loving, but don't yet have a complete draft of. So, no new book-length releases for Samantha for the second year in a row. Sadness.

So, it's a good idea to look back at what I *did* accomplish and remind myself that I made real progress even when it doesn't feel like enough to me. I know myself. It never feels like enough. I'm still learning to be reasonable with myself.

Publications are the most public measure of success. So, let's start there. The big thing to happen this year was the re-release of my novels. My first publisher fell apart and I jumped ship. After regaining my rights, I signed with Falstaff Books out of Charlotte, North Carolina and couldn't be more pleased with the treatment of my book babies.

They got new covers emphasizing their heroic elements and the publishing house has given me great support in finding a wider audience. There's an audiobook in progress and I'm now contracted for three more novellas and two more novels in the series. So exciting! My audience and sales are slowly building, too.

It wasn't my strongest year ever for other publications, but I did have short stories included in two anthologies, and two magazines. 

One of these (Christmas Lites) was a charity project supporting the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. "Margaret Lets Her Self Go" my cosmic horror story found a home in Hinnom Magazine (for a nicer-than-average paycheck, too!), "The Gleewoman of Preservation" my clown-themed horror story was included in Deadman Humour, and my Rod Serling style weird tale "Breakfast at the Twilight Café" found a home with Tell-Tale Press. All of these were new venues for me, working with new people, which is a positive for building a sustainable career. 

For those interested in stats, I submitted my work 72 times in 2019, a pretty good increase from 2018 when I only submitted 44 times and so much better than 2017 when I only submitted 6 times. I keep telling myself that I need to devote more time to submitting my shorter work. No one is going to publish my stories if I don't give it to them to look at, after all. But it's always a time-balance struggle to fit in time for promotion of already published work, creation of new work, and playing the submission game. 

In September, I participated in a submission challenge for which I submitted a piece of writing every day. So far, only one of those has led to publication, but I had several kind and personal rejections and several pieces are still under consideration, so I consider it worth my while. I'm planning to play along again in January as a way to kick start my year. 

My biggest disappointment was my failure to get my collection of short stories out in October. Self-

publishing is an expensive venture, at least the way I'm trying to do it. I want to feel good about my product!

So, I hired outside editing, hired a cover made, bought formatting software and taught it to myself. I got really close, but in the end there were two many life expenses and time crunches in October, so I didn't release the book, not wanting to release one that wasn't ready and unable to spare the dollars to buy my ISBNs.

Since it's a book with an obvious Halloween connection, I'm planning to hold off, taking my time to make sure its as near-perfect as I can and try again in October 2020. So look for Stories from Shadow Hill in October 2020!

Promotion: I devoted a fair amount of time to promotional activities. I attended conventions, gave readings, did signings, gave interviews, and in general tried to help my books find a broader audience out there in the world.

I went back to some events I'd enjoyed participating in before: Illogicon, Free Comic Book Day at Atomic Empire, teaching for CCCC Pittsboro, ConCarolinas, hosting the First Monday Classics Book Club, ConGregate, The Hillsborough Local Authors Book Fair, and Conapalooza. I did a couple of new things, taking a vendors table on Con-Tagion, participating in the first ever Hillsborough Comics Fair, reading as part of the Books and Beer series, and holding a signing at Dog-Eared Books.

I really enjoy the opportunity to do things like this. It makes the whole "I'm a writer now!" thing feel *really real*. Spending time with other creatives is educational and inspiring, and well, just plain fun. No one understands a writing life like someone else living one, after all.

That said, I'm looking at all events with a ROI eye in 2020. So far, writing has been a losing proposition, at least in the dollars and cents accounting. I spend more than I make--on travel, lodging, food, swag, copies of my books, etc.

So, I'm looking for more events that cost me less to participate in or where I can be more assured of making some sales while I'm there. That makes me feel rather mercenary, but it is a business, and since teaching in North Carolina is unlikely to afford me a comfortable retirement, I'll need other income streams in my old age :-)

So far, I'm only committed to two conventions in 2020, both new to me: MarsCon and JordanCon. I've applied to two others at which I would be a return guest, but haven't heard back yet. JordanCon will be more expensive to participate in, since it's further away, but it's a city I haven't visited yet and will introduce me to readers I haven't met yet. So, I'm hopeful.

Productivity: Even though I didn't finish a novel in 2019, I wrote a heck of a lot. I have a daily writing chain of more than six years now! 2,286 days recorded on the Magic Spreadsheet as of the last day of 2019 with a grand total of 2,848,826 over those years.

I track my work on Jamie Raintree's Writing and Revision Tracker, too, a spreadsheet tool I love for its versatility in letting you set and track goals in up to ten projects at a time. (She sells this amazing tool for $10, BTW. Quite a bargain! And she doesn't pay me or even ask me to say so; that's just my opinion.)

My numbers there shows that I wrote 463,737 words this year and revised 202,443. Not too shabby!

I also kept my promise to myself and blogged at least once a week. In fact, I overdid it. 88 posts this year, as well as posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You might think that social media wouldn't count as productivity, but it's an important part of a writing life in the twenty-first century and I definitely count work spent on providing content on those platforms as part of my job.

My focus for 2020 is to be more disciplined about where my writing time goes. I have a March deadline for a novella and a novel to turn in on January 1, 2021…and I really want to finish my Gothic romance and my dystopian, and get back to several other backburnered projects, while building my publications for short stories, too. I know, I don't ask for much, right?

There's a reason my blog is called Balancing Act. Here's hoping 2020 comes with perfect vision!



-->