Hearing Voices: When a Character Cracks Up

My first novel, Adventures with Max and Louise features a woman who, through a surgical error, is given unwanted breast implants. Before they can be removed, they start talking to her. One is an English bloke, Max, the other a black woman of a certain age, Louise. Both have very strong opinions on what Molly, the main character, should do to fix her life, which is stuck firmly in the past.

In other words, Molly is completely nuts. And she knows it. She's hearing voices. The completely

mental thing about it is that when she starts listening to them, they make sense. Both Max and Louise, although they clash wildly, want Molly to break out of her shell and take some risks in love and life.

When I was writing the book, people at cocktail parties or my daughter's soccer games either laughed uproariously or they took a step back with a confused look on their faces, asking "Seriously? A book with talking boobs?" And to be honest, readers either willingly suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy the story or they don't.

But the insanity of the idea is what made it interesting to me. Weighed down by years of guilt about an accident in which her mother died, Molly's breaking point is the surgery, which cracks her open, spilling out all the fear, loneliness and guilt that have shadowed her since the day of her of her mother's death. With the breaking point comes two voices that change her life forever.

If you ever read any books by neurologist Oliver Sacks, such as The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, featuring stories of patients with various mental disabilities, Molly's voices aren't that much of a stretch. But unlike many real and debilitating mental illnesses, this one goes away once the Molly has reached a crisis point and moved beyond.

Great fiction takes characters and tosses them into the sea of crisis, spitting them out changed, for better or worse. In every day life, when faced with the chaos that life throws our way, we all have various coping devices. Sometimes going a little bit crazy is one of them. In fiction, writers can take it further because unlike real life, no one is going to end up getting hurt.

And in my books, I can promise you a few laughs along the way.

A native of Seattle and graduate of Smith College, Ellyn financed her MFA at The American Film Institute by working as a cook on fishing boats in Alaska. After several years as a screenwriter, Ellyn came to her senses and returned to Seattle, where she wrote her first novel, Adventures with Max and Louise, which was pubished in 2012. Her second novel, Divine Moves, was published the following year. She's polishing her third novel, Fifty Acts of Kindness and outlining her first YA novel, Finding Nirvana.

When she can find the right mix of humor, depression and hysteria, she'll write about her years in Los Angeles.

She lives near Seattle with her family and a shelter dog.

For writing news, sneak peeks at new projects and her blog, visit www.EllynOaksmith.com

Fiction Comes Home to Roost: Making up with the Neighbors by Ellyn Oaksmith

Setting: my cul-de-sac

For me setting is the bird’s next outside my house. Inside the bird warms her eggs, waits to hatch a living thing and watches the world go by. What came first, the setting or the plot? 

Coming from a screenwriting background, plot is king. Screenwriters live and die by the 30 second pitch: “Snakes on a plane!” “Husband and wife assasins!” Laugh all you want but those screenwriters are working today.

My current title, Divine Moves takes place in my own neighborhood, something I've never done. The plot involves infidelity, drug use, snotty teens, a kid possibly setting something very expensive on fire (rhymes with Hercedes) and yes, a stripping grandmother who teaches a grandchild to pole dance. Luckily I have neighbors with a good sense of humor who enjoy my books. 

What I wanted to write was a compilation of every quirky suburban family drama that interested me. But I couldn’t see any other way than to stick it in my own cul-de-sac. In reality we are incredibly supportive, adore each others’ children and celebrate with wine at the drop of a hat. What I found interesting was to throw a grenade into my fictional world (inspired by reality in tone only) and see where the pieces fell.

Did it work? Most people, including my neighbors have found the book to be engaging because the characters felt real and their problems — the tension between public and private and how we deal with failure, is real. At the same time I worked very hard to keep it light. Laughter isn’t the best medicine, it is the only medicine.

And it’s the only way I know how to write.

Thanks for stopping by. This is my first post so I’d like to say thank you to my fellow writers for inviting me. I’m so excited to be part of The Girlfriends Book Club!

A native of Seattle and graduate of Smith College, Ellyn financed her MFA at The American Film Institute by working as a cook on fishing boats in Alaska. After several years as a screenwriter, Ellyn came to her senses and returned to Seattle, where she wrote her first novel, Adventures with Max and Louise, which was pubished in 2012. Her second novel, Divine Moves, was published the following year. She's polishing her third novel, Fifty Acts of Kindness and outlining her first YA novel, Finding Nirvana.

When she can find the right mix of humor, depression and hysteria, she'll write about her years in Los Angeles.

She lives near Seattle with her family and a shelter dog.

For writing news, sneak peeks at new projects and her blog, visit www.EllynOaksmith.com

A Bookless World? by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga

A public library with no books? Librarians who look like Apple Store employees? Glistening iMacs and iPads awaiting patrons on sleek desks, with even more tablets ready to be checked out by anyone with a library card? If this is the library of the future, the future is already here. This is BiblioTech in Bexar County, San Antonio Texas, the country’s first and only bookless public library. The design makes sense in today’s shaky economic times and with the ever-present possibility of libraries having to shut down: BiblioTech buys its 10,000-title digital collection at the same cost as physical books, but millions were saved in architectural expenses because the library didn’t need to be structured to hold the weight of printed books and bookshelves.

Plans are underway for bookless libraries in other parts of the country. And with the continued popularity of e-books, tablets and dedicated e-readers, it seems that bookshelves in homes and apartments filled with printed books will become less and less common. Many who love to read when they travel have marveled at being able to “carry” scores of books on their iPads and Kindles to be read on the airplane and by the pool. And what about the ability to instantly purchase a book in seconds without stepping outside your home? That can be compellingly convenient in this time of instant gratification. No, you don’t need to trek anymore to your local record store to buy music and you don’t need to do that with books either.

But while we hear about the demise of brick-and-mortar bookstores and witness this happening in our own communities due to e-books and online sales, many still find it imperative (and fun!) to browse through a bookstore. And there’s also the curious phenomenon of new bookstores continuing to open despite the gloom and doom. In the San Francisco Bay Area where I live, just last year Diesel Books opened a new branch in Marin County and a new independent bookstore called Village House of Books debuted in Los Gatos. Many established independent bookstores (BooksInc., Book Passage, etc.) here are also still going strong. In the town that I call home, we have no fewer than five independent bookstores serving a population of about 15,000.

So what does the future hold? Will books and bookstores disappear like vinyl, cassettes, CDs and record stores? I’m not sure. I’d like to hope that print books and e-books, and online bookstores and neighborhood bookshops can co-exist in some way. Just the other day I was reading a novel on my iPad that I’m planning to teach in an upcoming course. But I also bought the paper copy and switched over to reading that version. I’ll probably mark it up with handwritten notes, which is easier to accomplish on the paper book. But another thing I found that I especially enjoyed was placing a bookmark in the book and monitoring my progress of how close I was to finishing. Somehow eyeballing that physical bookmark was much more satisfying than reading “43%, 161 out of 371 pages” at the bottom of the Kindle page.

Do you think that a bookless world is in our future?

Ebooks: The Good, The Bad, and the Worrisome by Sara Rosett

The first eight-track tape I saw was bright orange and had my grandfather’s careful all-caps lettering of song titles on the label. I was a kid at the time and didn’t quite understand his delight at being able to transfer his vinyl records to the tape, which he could play in his car. My grandfather was a techie when it came to music. He wanted to know how things worked and he kept up with the latest trends, but I don’t think he had any idea how fast the music industry’s delivery system would change. Records to eight-tract to cassette to compact disk to digital, all in the space of about fifty years.

Books, on the other hand, haven’t changed much. Before ebooks, we hadn’t had a new delivery system for books in, oh, about 2,000 years. Sure, there had been blips in the book industry—audio books come to mind—but nothing had changed radically since the first century when a new technology made it possible to go from storing the written word on scrolls to books, or to use the technical term, manuscripts.

As an aside, I have to wonder if the change caused some of the same near-apocalyptic hysteria we’ve seen recently with e-books. Did some people refuse to ever buy a book? Were books declared “not real reading material?” Were scrolls declared the only true format for the written word? 

I suppose we’ll never know if there were “scroll holdouts” because now we look back on the book format—thin sheets of paper bound between a thick, sturdy cover—as a positive advance that spread knowledge and allowed more “common people,” particularly merchants and the well-to-do, to own their personal copies of important works.

Fast forward a few thousand years and we’re at another turning point, digital books and electronic readers.

As an author, I’m thrilled about ebooks. I have had six books traditionally published. I write cozy mysteries and each book came out first in hardcover (at a whopping $22), then eleven months later in paperback (at six to seven bucks). The hardcover editions were wonderful for garnering reviews and library sales but it was difficult to compete in a niche dominated by mass market paperback originals. It’s not an easy sale to convince new readers to shell out almost twenty-five dollars for my book when they could buy around three different paperback books for the price of my hardcover. The paperback versions seemed to get lost in the wake of the hardcovers, never generating the attention of the hardcover.

My publisher was on the leading edge of ebooks and began bringing out ebook versions of my books with a competitive price point. My early series ebooks are priced around four dollars. The more recent books are more expensive, but I feel that I’m finally on a level playing field with other books in my niche. With my latest new release in 2011, my publisher dropped the price on one of the other books in the series to ninety-nine cents, then to zero for a few days, and I had the heady sensation of seeing it climb up Amazon’s Top 100 free, which lead to a surges in other books, one of which appeared on the Top 100 Paid list.

So I’m a solid a fan of ebooks, but it’s not all sweetness and light. There are a few drawbacks. Here’s my take on the benefits and drawbacks of ebooks:

The Good

Choice:  Readers and authors have more freedom than ever before, which is one of the best things about the ebook revolution. Readers are discovering authors who they never would have found in the traditional publishing model. Turns out, readers will give new authors a chance, particularly if the price is right.

Authors are reveling in their new freedom, too. No longer are authors constricted to working through publishers. Digital delivery systems allow authors to reach a wide audience, breaking the monopoly the big publishers held on distribution. Authors are free to create their own covers (often a sticky point with authors who disagreed with what “New York” thought would sell). Authors are also exploring new genres and/or genre mash-ups. Writing once labeled “unsellable,” including short stories and cross genre novels, can be viable markets for some authors. And probably the biggest change of all:  authors are making money. Paying your mortgage out of your royalties is a possibility, not a pipe-dream.

Speed:  The ability to instantly have a copy of a book is pure joy for bookworms. As a reader, one of my favorite things about ebooks is the sample feature. I think it’s wonderful to be able to read a few pages or chapters before I make my buying decisions.

Portability: Readers love the ability to have so many books at their fingertips. For serious book lovers, an ereader is a must for long trips, doctors’ waiting rooms, and carpool lines.

The Bad

Limits on Ownership: Unlike a physical copy of a book that can be passed on to a friend or donated to the Friends of the Library, when you buy an ebook you’re purchasing  a digital copy of a book, which is linked to the seller. If the seller decides there is an issue or problem with that book, the digital copy can be removed from ereaders. If a seller goes out of business, what happens to all those digital copies sold by that retailer? It’s hard to say because we haven’t had a huge retailer/epublisher go under.

Privacy:  In this age where personal information is the holy grail of business, you know that each digital book purchase is carefully tracked. I’d also venture to say that digital retailers are linking your purchasing habits to your browsing habits, at least on their websites, if not elsewhere around the web (i.e. recent tracking Facebook embarrassment).

The Potentially Worrisome 

Future Fees?:

When I first purchased books on my Kindle there was a little line that read, “Free delivery via Amazon Whispernet.” It makes me wonder if someday there will be a delivery charge, which could be passed along to either the author, the buyer, or both.

Price Trending Towards Zero:  I know Amazon is many author’s new BFF, but I have some reservations about Kindle KDP Select program. It allows Prime members who pay an annual fee to read certain books for free. Amazon has created a pool of money that will be distributed to participating authors to draw authors to the program. I can’t help but wonder if this is a good trend for authors. I completely understand authors participating in the program to broaden their readership, but I wonder if eventually readers will expect to read ebooks for free and be reluctant to buy ebooks. I think authors should be compensated for their work, even if it is a bargain-basement price. I realize the KDP Select program is the same principal as an author lowing the price on his or her book to zero. What worries me is that Amazon may eliminate the option for authors to lower their prices to zero in the future and allow only “free” books through their Prime program. And who knows if the pool for author payment to those participating in the KDP Select Program will continue. It could be phased out, but authors anxious for wider readership will still be eager to participate. Gloomy sounding, I know, and I hope it doesn’t happen.   

Books as Product: I think of Amazon first as a bookstore, but, in reality, books are only one product they sell. They’re more like a huge department store with every conceivable item. Their approach is to have all products ranked, reviewed, and linked to similar products. That’s fine, but people feel differently about books than, say, a stockpot or an edger. That’s the specialness of books. We connect with the characters, the setting, and, sometimes, the author. I’m not sure how well that connection fits into the Amazon model. Time will tell.

I don’t want to end on a downer note. I’m thrilled to be part of a revolution in the way we buy and read books. I’d love to hear your thoughts on ebooks—positive and negative. Have you found a new author you love through ebooks? Maybe a relative unknown? A new genre? How many books do you have on your ereader? Are you buying more or less books on your ereader? Do you have an ebook TBR (to-be-read) pile? 

~Sara

P.S. In case you’re wondering, my eighty-five year old grandfather is still on the cutting edge. He now has a MP3 player and an ereader. :)

Sara Rosett is the author of the Ellie Avery mystery series, an adult “whodunit” mystery series in the tradition of Agatha Christie. Publishers Weekly has called Sara’s books, “satisfying,” “well-executed,” and “sparkling.”Library Journal says, “...Rosett’s Ellie Avery titles are among the best, using timely topics to move her plots and good old-fashioned motives to make everything believable.”

Visit http://www.SaraRosett.com for more information or connect with Sara on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, or Pinterest.  

Writing Down Your Soul

By Malena Lott

Have you ever had a book that screamed at you from the postage-stamp sized cover on the computer screen? That happened to me last month with WRITING DOWN YOUR SOUL by Janet Conner about her process of deep journaling, which she says has the benefits of journaling, prayer and meditation all rolled into one.

As a writer, I’m drawn to anything that will enhance my creativity and clear my cluttered mind to make way for new ideas and guidance and connecting with the Voice – you know, the all-knowing, Higher Self Voice that seems to know what's best for us. What I found fascinating wasn’t her how-to or process on deep journaling, but rather the research and interviews in the book with experts on theta waves. And, get this, artists, when we are deep into our creative endeavors, we’re riding the same theta waves that monks surf when they are meditating. This photo is my little zen spot in the spot where I sit under the tree with my morning cup of coffee and try just to "be," which is hard some days!

I’ve written before about the zen of writing – and am now also writing about zen, period – but Conner’s book had some nice takeaways for writers, whether we’re trying to tap into our books or ourselves, which we know can more often than not be the same thing.

1. On the subconscious mind: She quotes Bruce Lipton, from his book, THE BIOLOGY OF BELIEF, “When it comes to sheer neurological processing abilities, the subconscious mind is millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind.” (See, writers, plenty of room for our characters to roam!)

2. On listening to the Voice: “Listen beyond the story to the story behind the story – the deeper joys, deeper sorrows, the deeper fears.” (A necessary step in our character’s goal, motivation and conflict and determining a story’s theme.)

3. On asking “why” (when whining): “The truth is, there is no one to blame…The sooner you give up the victim mentality, the sooner you can dive into and explore your soul’s truth.” (Something to chew on while we’re waiting for that big break and bestseller.)

My favorite part of writing is the discovery – the journey my characters and stories take me on. It’s also my favorite part of marriage, motherhood, friendship and work. I’ve realized I can’t force anything to happen – if anything, the more I resist it, the more it feels like quicksand. By opening up space for creativity to flow, I’ve got plenty of room for more.

What about you? How do you try to connect with your Voice?

Malena Lott is the author of several women's fiction novels and works as a brand and creative strategist. Her e-book novella, Life’s a Beach, about two unlikely friends and one bad case of karma, is available for Kindle, nook and Apple. Visit her blog about mojo, zen and creativity at www.malenalott.com.