My New Website

Write
July, 15, 2015

I have a new website! From now on, I will be posting at www.shannonyvonnemoreau.com.

I’ve been working on my new site for awhile now, since Angela James spoke at the March LERA meeting about the importance of an author website.

So it is with a twinge of sadness that I write this last post to Read, Write, Bliss. RWB has been my blogging home since January 2012, when I announced that I was going to finish my novel by the end of the year. It actually took me a wee bit longer than that, with rewrites and all, but it’s good to have goals. Without them, I wouldn’t finish anything I started.

Most of my RWB posts are now on my new site at www.shannonyvonnemoreau.com/blog.

See you there!

A Word with Writers Event: Mira Jacob and Kirstin Valdez Quade

Read
June 15, 2015

The Sleepwalkers Guide to Dancing and Night at the Fiestas Books

I picked up two new books at Saturday’s A Word with Writers event, featuring Mira Jacob and Kirstin Valdez Quade, as part of a series sponsored by Bookworks to benefit the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation.

First the authors read excerpts from their books:

The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob:

“Amina wasn’t totally sure where one should be when one’s brother was being seduced, but she was pretty sure the backseat was not the right place.”

Night at the Fiestas by Kirstin Valdez Quade:

“Frances was pretending to be someone else, someone whose father was not the bus driver.”

During the Q&A that followed, I asked the question:

“I’ve read a lot of articles lately that discuss how even though there is a desire among readers for more diversity in books, there are still barriers to the publication of diverse books. Did either of you encounter these types of barriers in your publication process, and if so, what were they and how did you overcome them?”

Question for A Word with Writers Event on diversity in publishing. Yep, I wrote it down first.

Mira Jacob said that when she first started writing, she assumed that readers would only want stories from a white American viewpoint, so she wrote white American main characters. The stories were awful because they were not authentic for her. Once she started writing from a viewpoint that was true for her, (an Indian immigrant family adjusting to life in the U.S., including New Mexico!), readers were very receptive. She did add that when approached about a movie version of her book, the executives were worried that there weren’t enough Indians in America to constitute a good-sized audience. “What about everybody else in America?” Jacob said. “But that’s Hollywood.”

Mira Jacob signs “The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing” at A Word with Writers event sponsored by Bookworks to benefit the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation.

Kirstin Valdez Quade agreed that readers are by nature empathetic and want to read books from different cultures and ethnicities, but the publishing industry tends to be risk adverse, and anything non-white can be seen as a risk.

Kirstin Valdez Quade signs “Night at the Fiestas” at A Word with Writers event sponsored by Bookworks to benefit the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation.

One extra tidbit that was super exciting for me, of must-cut-down-word-count fame: both Jacob and Quade tend to overwrite and then trim down, a lot. Jacob admitted her original draft of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was twice as long. Twice!

I’m in good company.

New Books from Darynda Jones and Jeffe Kennedy

Bliss
June 1, 2015

Saturday I went to the book signing for fellow LERA members Darynda Jones and Jeffe Kennedy at Page One Books here in Albuquerque.

Darynda Jones and Jeffe Kennedy at Page 1 book signing for “Eighth Grave After Dark” and “The Talon of the Hawk”

Jeffe Kennedy signed for the next book in her The Twelve Kingdoms series, “The Talon of the Hawk.” She said that she pitched her first book in the series as “The Middle Princess” because in the fairy tale the eldest and youngest princesses always get a story, but the middle princess never does.

Jeffe Kennedy at Page 1 book signing for “The Talon of the Hawk”

Darynda Jones signed for the next in her Charley Davidson series, “Eighth Grave After Dark.” (I also picked up the previous book “Seventh Grave and No Body.” I’m a wee bit behind.) Darynda said that when she first started writing the series she envisioned it being about Charley, the Grim Reaper, slowly but surely coming in to her full power. What readers really responded to was the world-building and that led to the expansion of the series into the layered, multi-character universe fans know and love.  

Darynda Jones at Page 1 for book signing “Eighth Grave After Dark”

So now I have some exciting new books to read to distract me from my synopsis writing nightmare.

I mean, Stephen King said, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

I love when I can justify my excuses.

This Maybe Isn’t the Most Efficient Way to Write a Synopsis

or, I’m in Synopsis-Writing Hell. Liquor isn’t helping.

Write
May 11, 2015

Not to say that I didn’t try, though.

Vegan Bailey’s from Mind Body Green recipe

I finished my latest round of manuscript cuts a few days ahead of schedule. The next step was to rewrite my synopsis. This is how I made the best use of my time advantage:

1. Took a few days off from even looking at the damn thing. Fiddled with the NaNoWriMo draft instead. Went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron. Told myself I’ll start the synopsis on Sunday.

2. On Sunday morning thought to myself, “Gah. It’s Sunday already? I so do not want to work on the synopsis. Besides, Not That Kind of Girl is due at the library tomorrow. Spend the day reading that instead. I’ll start the synopsis on Monday.”

3. Monday I remembered I am also supposed to be planning my new website. Why start off a Monday doing something hard like a synopsis? I spent the morning looking at authors’ websites for ideas instead.

4. Tuesday I exported my manuscript outline from Scrivener to a .csv file and then to Excel so I can use it to rework the synopsis. Great start. Then I left early to take the car in for the oil change in case the carpool to the Claudia Rankine event in Santa Fe fell through. (It didn’t.)

5. Just wasn’t feeling the synopsis writing on Wednesday. I spent my morning hour looking at other author sites again.

6. I slept in on Thursday on account of getting to bed so late the night before after going to the Claudia Rankine event. No time to work on the synopsis even if I wanted to. I didn’t.

7. Friday. It hit me that a whole week had gone by. Panic fluttered in my stomach. I wrote down in my planner “I don’t even want to look at my f***ing synopsis.”

But I did it anyway. It was not quite as horrific as I thought it was going to be. It needs all kinds of work, though.

All kinds of work.

I’d rather watch the birds.