Jo’s debut novel, THE WATCHER, won Romance Writers of America's 2006 Golden Heart Award for romantic suspense.
Did your mind go straight to Wild Turkey Bourbon at the title of today's blog? Well, I'm not talking about that kind of wild turkey today. I'm talking about the feathered friend kind.
Sort of.
On the way to
the dentist recently I nearly hit two wild turkeys with my car as they dashed
across the street. The environmentalists in our town have done a good job of
preserving creek and wooded areas, so I wasn't surprised to see the birds
skitter across the four-lane road.
But seeing them
me think about how writers are a bit like wild turkeys – they often stand out
in crowds, mainly because their minds always seem to be somewhere else.
Writers think a
lot. They think about thinking. It's
called metacognition, and a writer metacognates all the time. If she did it in
grade school, educators called her "easily distracted." In high
school or college, she was "flighty," and in the work place,
"unfocused."
In reality,
writers are anything but distracted,
flighty or unfocused. We wouldn't survive long in this industry if we were.
But we are free thinkers, letting our minds –
conscious and subconscious alike – roam freely, snagging here and there on an
idea, a phrase, a character, a scene, moving on , trolling deep waters or
shallow pools. Hence, we may seem out of step with the people around us.
Our ideas and
inspiration come from everywhere, skittering through our creative minds like
those wild turkeys.
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| Photo Credit: Henry Zeman |
Not only are we
wild turkeys in our disparate ideas and stories, but we're like them in the
venues we choose to publish through. We're all struggling to find a place in
the publishing industry.
The truth is
that the way we look at books, purchase them, and collect them is in the throes
of significant change, and publishers of all kinds – the NY Big Six, small
presses, e-publishers and digital first – are all scrambling to see what's
going to happen to the book publishing industry.
It's not so much
that digital publishing has increased significantly. Electronic books still account for only about 15-20-% of the
market, which leaves a good 80% to the print business. It's more how quickly digital publishing has
increased – exponentially. And it's got everyone wondering what the future
holds.
The one point
all seem to agree on is we need writers! Writers of all kinds. Writers who think inside and outside the box, those who march in step with their fellow writers and those who march out of step to some weird meter in their heads.
My journey into
publishing began with the purchase of my Kindle in December. The moment I held
that baby in my hands, I felt like I'd birthed another child. And I knew I'd
never give it up. I also knew I'd never purchase another print book again
unless it was a gift for someone without an e-reader or was unavailable electronically.
When I realized
that the New York publishers weren't excited about my Golden Heart winning
manuscript or my Daphne-winning story – too much romance, too little romance,
not enough suspense, too much suspense, all of which I translated into
"Where can we place your book on the shelf in the brick and mortar
bookstore?" – I realized I needed to find a much bigger store.
A virtual bookstore. Digital publishing provides shelf upon
shelf for the reader to pick among, and tons of tags, descriptors, and categories
for them.
Deciding to take
my career into my own hands, to move at my own pace, was a seminal moment for
me. I like the control I have, choosing my own genres, setting my own pace.
Once I made the
leap to indie publishing, I felt like one of those wild turkeys tripping across
the road – free, but a wee bit scared I might get mowed down by a speeding car!
Now that The Watcher is in print and available soon electronically, I feel
my wild turkey has come home to roost.
How about you, readers? What
large or small decision have you made that felt wonderfully liberating or
frighteningly scary? Share the deets.
The Watcher--Available now.
THE WATCHER Forensic psychiatrist Kate Myers believes the killer of two teenage girls in Bigler County, California, is the same man who savagely murdered her twin sister over fifteen years ago. Working on sheer tenacity, she sets out to prove it. Deputy Sheriff Ben Slater hides his personal pain behind the job, but Kate's arrival knocks his world on its axis. He wants to believe her wild theory, but the idea of a serial killer with this pathology is bizarre. Together they work to find a killer whose roots began in a small town in Bigler County, but whose violence spread across the nation. A Janus-like killer, more monster than man, fixates on Kate and wants nothing more than to kill her again. Excerpt
BUY: Available in print on Amazon Available as e-book, August 19th.
Like many writers, I penned my first story at a young
age. However, a family and a teaching career put my writing dreams on
hold until my Advanced Placement seniors conned me into writing my first
complete manuscript. That story, which subsequently won RWA's Golden
Heart Award in 2006, was THE WATCHER.
From the moment I put my fingers to the keyboard, the
barrier between my brain and the paper lifted, the story flew from my mind, and I fell in love with everything about the process of writing.
Raised as an Army brat, I lived in Germany as a child, Northern Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Idaho, and Utah before finally settling in Northern California. Whenever I visit my sister in Virginia or my brothers in North Carolina and Florida, upon returning home I remember again why I love Northern California, home of the ancient redwoods, the fecund forests and the rugged Pacific Coastline.
From the moment I put my fingers to the keyboard, the
barrier between my brain and the paper lifted, the story flew from my mind, and I fell in love with everything about the process of writing.
Raised as an Army brat, I lived in Germany as a child, Northern Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Idaho, and Utah before finally settling in Northern California. Whenever I visit my sister in Virginia or my brothers in North Carolina and Florida, upon returning home I remember again why I love Northern California, home of the ancient redwoods, the fecund forests and the rugged Pacific Coastline.
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