To the book reviewers

This might come as a shock, but I like to read. I know! An author who reads books? Well try to keep your eyeballs in your heads, folks, because I'm going to tell it like it is. Straight up truth! Ahem, anyway.

SO, I like to read (duh), and because there are way way way more books out there than I could possibly ever consume even if reading was my full time job, I also enjoy book reviews. Especially clever, funny, insightful reviews that are as entertaining to read as they are informative about the book (see all of Smart Bitches). I have an RSS feed of dozens of reviewers I read on a regular basis just because I like hearing about books. This list includes reviewers whose opinions I never agree with, but who I keep reading just because I like seeing the other side. And as an author, I especially love book reviewers because without them, getting any attention for a debut novel that doesn't have a big ad push behind it would be nearly impossible.

I know what you're saying, "Ok, Rachel, we get it, you're a book review nerd. Why are you stating the obvious?" Well, because there's been some shenanigans going on across the internet that, I feel, need some addressing.

First off, let's review what a book reviewer actually is. A book reviewer is someone who reads and gives their opinions so that other people who might be interested in a title can get a taste for if the book is their thing or not before they purchase it. This means a book reviewer's audience is their readers, the people who come to their site or column or Goodreads account to check out what books are worth pursuing. A book reviewer has no obligation to give a book a good review. A book reviewer has no obligation to review a book AT ALL (well, unless they work as a reviewer for a paper that demands reviews of certain books as part of the job).

The vast majority of book reviewers these days, especially in genre fiction, write reviews as a labor of love. They don't get paid for it other than whatever advertising they can get from their websites, and many don't make any money off their reviews at all. With this in mind, I get astoundingly frustrated when I see things like this. Yep, that is a contract sent by a (small) publisher to a book reviewer. A CONTRACT, for a book review, telling them things like what review system they should use, and trying to make them sign over rights to their review, etc. etc. And in return for all this rights snatching and bombastic downtalking, the lowly reviewer has the honor of reviewing the publisher's books.

*deep, calming breath*

Ok, so this is one really horrid example of how people can get forget the fact that every time a book reviewer selects a book to talk about, they are doing the publisher a favor. But there are plenty of examples of authors and publishers treating reviewers and book bloggers like they are the ones who should be grateful, and that's just not how things works. A good review is not the reward you get for sending someone a free copy of your book. Every review, good, bad, or otherwise, is a gift. Each one represents a book lover taking time out of their life to read and write something thoughtful about your work. Authors and publishers should spend their time worrying about how they can thank reviewers and make getting books to them easier, not how they can best ensure a stream of positive reviews in time to meet their pub date.

So, just in case I haven't made it clear yet, let me go ahead and give you Rachel Aaron's official policy on book reviews:

If you reviewed my book, thank you. If you loved it and said so, you made my day a million times over, thank you! If you hated it, I'm sorry, but still, thank you for reviewing it. If you reviewed it on Amazon, thank you. If you gave it one star, it made me sad, but I'm STILL GLAD YOU DID IT. I said it before and I'll say it again, every review is a gift. Every single person who took their time to say something, anything, about my book deserves my appreciation and thanks.

There are thousands and thousands of books published every year in the US alone. For a new author like myself, the greatest threat is getting lost in that sea of titles. My fear isn't getting bad reviews, it's having my book sink because no one knew it was there. Every time someone writes a review of my work, even if that review isn't glowing, new readers hear about my book, and the risk of fading away grows less.

Book review work is demanding, the least I can do is try my utmost to make sure it is never thankless. So to all reviewers out there, the big ones and the small ones, the pros and the casual Amazon raters, thank you. Thank you for reviewing my book. Thank you for reviewing books period. Thank you for helping to get new authors going and bring attention to older books that might have gotten overlooked. I owe a great many of my sales to my reviews, and I never, ever forget that.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you. And if anyone tries to treat you badly, I will cut them.

Yours forever,
Rachel

Orbit France made me a BOOK TRAILER!

Seriously BLOWN AWAY!

La légende d'Eli Monpress, Le voleur aux... by Orbit_Books

It's in French, but you get the general gist. DailyMotion is kind of annoying with ads, I'll put up a better link if I can I get one. Still, the trailer is COOL. Soooooo cool!!! Thank you guys!!

Fantastic Eli Review, now in English!

So a few days ago I was utterly blown over by an incredibly imaginative comic-style review from Sita at http://www.sorcelleries.net. Only problem (for me, at least)? It was in French! But then, as I bemoaned never getting to read it, Sita contacted me over Twitter with an offer to translate! Rachel's Day: MADE! So, without further ado, here is the translated review!

Is that not the best thing ever? Thanks again to the wonderfully talented Sita for drawing this! Her other reviews are just as cool, you should totally go to her site and check them out! You can read the original French version here if you're cool like that. Thanks a million times, Sita, and I hope you enjoy the other books when they come out in French!

- Rachel

The Spirit War, coming at you!

As you might have noticed from the lovely new look, I've updated my website and blog to match my glorious new covers!

I mean, can't have new covers without a new site, can you?

But that's not the best part. The BEST part is that my new site includes a big, 3 chapter sample from The Spirit War, including the prologue which might as well be a Josef short story! It's still a long wait until the book comes out in June, but hopefully this will help ease the wait. Or make it worse? Either way, I hope you enjoy it, along with my spiffy new site!

Now, back to the final edits on Spirit's End. Siiigh, it feels like the end, too. Poor Eli, he was so enjoying being the main character. Don't worry, Eli, you'll always be my main character! (Eli: You say that to all your characters. Rachel: *innocent whistling*)

A happy New Year indeed!

There is no one more excited about 2012 than I am, and for reasons that have nothing to do with ancient calendars. 2012 is the year when the final two Eli books come out at last! I am SO HAPPY about this! Finally I get to share the end of the story with everyone, which means the time when I can stop worrying about slipping up and dropping a spoiler is in sight. Woo!

The Spirit War comes out in June, and Spirit's End, the fifth and final Eli novel, comes out in November. And even though I'm not supposed to have favorites, I have to tell you that these two books are probably the best I've ever written. I am UNCOMFORTABLY EXCITED about people getting to read them at last!

To celebrate, here's a large, lovely version of the cover of The Spirit War, as well as the back cover blurb! (Warning, back blurb might be a spoiler if you haven't read the first three books. Not a bad spoiler, but if you're very sensitive about these things, you might want to skip it. Or read the first three books, a much better idea!) 

"All Eli Monpress wanted was the biggest bounty in the world. He never meant to have obligations, or friends, but master swordsman Josef Leichten and Nico, the daughter of the dead mountain, have saved Eli's life too many times to be called anything else. And when a friend upsets your plans and ruins all your hard work, what's a thief to do?

After years of running from his birthright, Josef is forced to return home and take up his title as prince. War is coming for humans and spirits between the Immortal Empress and the Council of Thrones, and Josef's little island is right in the middle. But conquest isn't the Empress's only goal, she has a personal vendetta against a certain thief.

What started as a simple side trip to help a friend is rapidly turning into the most dangerous job of Eli's career, but he can't back out now, not when Josef needs him. But when you're under attack from all sides, even the world's greatest thief can find himself cornered, and it's going to take all the fast talking Eli can muster to survive the next few days."

ALSO! Did you see that the lovely and amazing Felicia Day reviewed the first three Eli novels on Goodreads? Well she did, and she had lots of nice things to say! I've been a fan of hers for years, and I gotta tell you, I nearly died when I saw she called The Spirit Eater, caps lock quote, "a REALLY good book." To say I was fangirling over this would be an irresponsible understatement. I was positively levitating with happiness. Having people you admire read and like your books out of the blue? Priceless.

And in other big news, I've written a short story set in the Eli world that will be coming out on Feb. 15 to celebrate the Omnibus! It's called Spirit's Oath, and it's the story of how Miranda and Gin met. Here's the full blurb:

"Four years before the events of The Spirit Thief, Miranda Lyonette was a young apprentice Spiritualist on the cusp of a promising career. But on the eve of her return from bonding a wind spirit, a night that should have been a celebration, she finds instead that her father has come to take her home. Now, Miranda must choose between her duty to her family and her future at the Spirit Court. But while she's trying to make her parents see reason and avoid an arranged marriage to a man she can't stand, she stumbles across the one one spirit who needs her more than any other, a caged ghosthound who doesn't want her help. To save him, Miranda will have to earn the dog's trust, but what she gets in return is a friendship deeper than anything she expected."

At 20k words it's more like a mini-novel than a short story, but if you enjoy ghosthounds you should totally give it a try. It will be available digitally through Orbit Short Fiction, which is a really fantastic little story shop if you haven't seen it yet.

Whew, ok, I think I got everything there. Lots of great Eli stuff coming your way, I hope you're ready! I know I am!

Thanks for reading!

- Rachel

The Two Bird Minimum

In my Eli Monpress series, Eli, my charming degenerate of a main character, has a favorite saying - "My stones have a two bird minimum." Of course, since it's my book and Eli is my character, this is also one of my favorite sayings, and I try to apply it as often as possible. Especially in my writing, and especially when I'm planning out a scene.

For example, yesterday I was cooking dinner and thinking about this new scene I was going to add to my new novel (the one from my 12 Days of Glory post, for those of you playing along at home). My editor had requested a few changes, and I'd decided right off the bat that a new scene was needed. But while I had the perfect scene in mind, I had a problem. While this scene nicely solved the problem my editor (quite rightly) wanted addressed, it didn't do anything else. Since my scenes tend to run around 2k, I was reasonably sure this new addition would only fatten my novel by around that much. But, to make the scene work I'd have to move my characters to a new location, which would add another 1.5-2k words to get them there, describe things, and get them back. And then there'd be everyone else's reaction to the location change (the problem with an ensemble cast, all those story lines have to be taken into consideration), so that's another 1k spent covering my bases and 5k in total once everything was added in.

5k is a LOT in a 110k novel, almost a full chapter, and way too much space to dedicate to fixing one measly problem. But I liked the scene a lot, so, I decided to make it earn its keep in the novel and set about finding other work for it to do. If this scene was my stone, I was going to whack as many birds as possible with it by the time those five thousand words were done. 

As I've talked about in tiresome detail before, when I write a scene, I demand that it do three things - advance the story, reveal new information, and pull the reader forward. But the real secret I've found for scenes is that you can hit every one of these points from multiple angles at once, and the more angles you hit, the better the scene tends to get. 

Complexity in a novel isn't a matter of having lots of people doing lots of things, it's about how well those plots are revealed and well they fit together. When I plan a scene, I try to do at least two stories at once, preferably more. For example, if my main characters have to go to a space station to get information about the main plot, I'll put hints of a secondary character's secret past on that station as well, and then maybe use the stop over as an excuse to have my main couple get some down time to have a serious conversation. So, in this one scene, a stop at a space station, I've hit on three story lines: the main plot, the subplot, and the romantic plot. Any or all of these plots can hit the three scene hooks for me - the discoveries for the main plot can advance the story, the hints of the subplot reveal new information and pull the reader forward, and the growing romantic tension can pull the reader forward and advance the story and reveal new information, especially if we get a hint of the hero's mysterious past. The possibilities are endless!

Every time you add a scene, you're bulking up your novel. You're putting more words between your reader and the end of the story. The way I see it, it's up to me to make those words count. It's up to us, as writers, to make each scene necessary, interesting, and purposeful, to really make the scene work to earn its place in the book. To this end, whenever I write a scene, I'm constantly thinking "what else can it do?", what else can I make happen. Of course, you can go too far with this and overload a scene, but part of writing is learning how much is too much, too little, and just right.

In the end, my new scene did end up being right about 5k long, but rather than just solving the problem I'd created it to solve, the new location gave information about the world at large, offered a perfect set up for some foreshadowing of later events, got me some great character interaction, and turned into a really fun little interlude before the big battle. Many birds were hit, including some I didn't know were up there. Final verdict: Great success! I wish you many great successes as well. Keep writing!

- Rachel

 

Out and About

I am breaking my writing hermitage for some news!

First off, if you haven't already heard, I will be a guest this weekend at RoundCon! It's most an anime convention, but thanks to John Hartness, there are a lot of writerly types showing up as well. Best of all, though, I'll get to hang out with Kalayna Price, who floats my boat all the way to China. If you're in the area and have a chance to stop by the con, please find me and say hello! We will gab Eli and I will spill all the secrets for you!

Second, I did an interview with Tracy S. Morris about my writing process. I think the most interesting new topic I talk about in there is the difference in my process for pansters/discovery writers. Namely, how I don't know how people write like that, but if you do, more power to you!

Again, I do hope to see some people at RoundCon if anyone lives in SC! People who've read my books are my favorite people in the world.

- Rachel

Eli Monpress Week!

The lovely Mel over at Mel's Random Reviews has declared this Eli Monpress Week! Eli, of course, would like to remind people that every week is Eli Monpress week, but he is none-the-less delighted to accept the honor. All week there will be reviews of my books and the audio versions as well as a big fat interview Mel and I did earlier in the month full of news about the new books and some really great questions about where Eli and the crew came from coming later in the week. I hope you'll head over and check it out!

How I Plot A Novel in 5 Steps

By popular request (ok, 1 person, but they're populace, so that makes it popular, right?) I've put together a step by step process for how I go from "Hey I should write a novel" to "Ok, let's get writing!" Though I managed to get things grouped into steps, what I've really done is labeled and applied order to the phases I go through as I work toward the point where I feel I know enough about a book to start writing. Some parts of my process may seem a bit obsessive, but the most important part of writing fast is knowing as much as you can about what you're writing before you write it, and that means lots and lots of planning.

Planning a novel takes me anywhere from a few days to weeks. Usually I plan while I'm working on other things, like editing, but I've also had whole weeks where I did nothing but put a story together. I should say that I plan far more novels than I actually end up writing. My computer is littered with the cast off husks of half started worlds. I consider this a normal part of the process. If you do it right, planning is where you uncover all the things that are wrong with that idea you thought was so amazing last week. Sometimes these faults are workable, other times it's better to just move on. Even so, it's way better to discover a novel isn't as strong as you thought at the planning stage instead of 3 chapters in. Not every idea deserves to be a novel.

Well, enough of that. You came to see how I plan novels. So, best as I can articulate something that changes for every book, here is my general process. I really hope everyone finds something useful they can take away to help organize and speed up their own writing system.

Rachel on the (Internet) Radio!

I joined Justin and Terry of The Dead Robot's Society podcast to talk about my books, my road to publication, and how the hell I write so many words every day. It was a really, really fun interview, and the show itself is a barrel of good times all on its own. So if you're at all interested in writing or the publishing world, why don't you check it out!

Here's the direct link to my episode, my interview is in the second part of the show. Enjoy!