Now, I have this love/hate relationship with public events. A natural introvert, my first instinct is to cringe, lock the doors, and hunker down in front of the television, eating junk food and watching episode after episode of The Big Bang Theory. But getting out and meeting people can be a very good thing. So I do it. I even wrote this blog post on public events, and how to stop doing pointless and mentally poisonous things like imagining the audience in their underwear.

Preparation. Yes. It’s all in the preparation. So that’s what I did. This was a pre-Mother’s Day event, with writers who have decades more publishing experience than I, so I needed to choose the right excerpt from the book. I printed it out in a large font to make reading easier, since my fifty-year-old eyes no longer like the ten-point type that has been standard for book production for the last fifty years. I rehearsed over and over until my tongue no longer tripped over the lines, until I hit all the right marks. I gathered all my books, the easel I display them on, my bookmarks and business cards, a printout of the reading, and put them in a box in my living room. I threw in the copy of my new book, just received, to whip out when the inevitable question of “what’s next?” arose. Damn, I felt impressive. I was even wearing jewelry. And I don’t pull that crap out for just any old occasion.

But something happened in the half-hour between getting into my car and arriving at the library. It wasn’t my confidence. I felt great. I love reading in Woodstock. The book is set there, and people love hearing about the things they’re familiar with. Plus, I was reading with other writers so the pressure wasn’t all on me. No. A confidence crisis wasn’t the problem. I parked, and, smiling to myself, I opened my trunk. No box. No books. No reading carefully selected and printed out in fourteen-point type. No beautiful new sample book. No easel. Nada. Bupkes.

I found myself rapidly cycling through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief.

Denial. No. This can’t be happening. I’m going to close the trunk, and when I open it again, there will be books.

Anger. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bargaining. Please, Universe, if you can just make one copy of my book drop from the sky, at least I’ll have something to read, and then I’ll donate it to the library. Pay my library fines. Pay everyone’s library fines. I looked up. Nothing. Bastards. All my new age friends have been lying to me. There is no Universe and the only way it works in strange ways is in its innovative methods to screw you over.

Depression. Why? WHY? Why do I bother? I should have stayed home and eaten ice cream in front of the television. I suck. I am too stupid to be a writer.

Acceptance. Okay. Even though I am the biggest schmuck in the world, there has to be SOMETHING I can do to save my bacon.

Just in case, I checked the trunk again, and the parking lot, in case that book dropped from the heavens and landed, say, in the hedges or on one of the many hybrids and Volvos in attendance. Nothing. My brain-wheels started turning. As I paced the library’s driveway, two minutes until show time, my mind bounced between daring to recite what I could remember of the reading (not much), and driving to the nearest bar. Just then, the results of Bargaining showed up. No, a book did not drop on my head, although I sort of wished something heavy would have, maybe Stephen King’s latest, to put me out of my misery.

As I was contemplating how to explain my soon-to-be-absence-and subsequent-public-drunkenness, a friend walked out of the library. A friend who lived in Woodstock. She saw my stricken face. I told her the story.

“You want me to go home and get my copy?”

Thanks to this angel, I did my reading—ironically, a scene where one sister reassures the other, with total lies, that their fledgling holistic health retreat would not be a flop—and everything was fine. The audience did not believe the story I told them about the black hole that ate my books, but they did find it amusing.

What have we learned, boys and girls? Of course, do the preparation. Rehearse the reading. Wear the jewelry, if that’s your thing. But first, put the damned books in the damned car. Better yet? Keep them there.

(Previously published on Indies Unlimited.)

To keep the conflict in the forefront of my squirmy writer brain, I keep asking myself, “What does this character want?” Okay, right now one of my protagonists wants chocolate and a shoulder rub. Lovely aims, but hardly enough to make a reader stick around for three hundred pages. The conflict is too easily resolved. She can go to the store to buy chocolate, or pay a massage therapist to tend to her aching muscles. BUT… what if she is driven to the point of obsession to create the most sinfully delicious chocolate on the planet because her mother died in a freak chocolate fountain accident before she could realize her dream of being the next Willy Wonka? What if she is so hideously deformed that all of humankind recoils from her, except for the nice guy down the street…who is marrying a total bee-yotch next Saturday, and our gal is contemplating nefarious behavior involving rat poison and a bear trap?

Now there’s some conflict.

This thing your character so desperately wants can be large as freeing the slaves of Egypt or as small as getting a pretty waitress to agree to a date. This goal could look insignificant to some people, but it should be difficult for the character to obtain. Because coupled with a desperate want is the potential risk of not getting it. There are consequences. What is the character willing to put on the line? Pride? Dignity? A fortune? His life? Her marriage?

So, for example, you have a guy willing to ditch everything he knows and loves for a chance at a better life. Yet that’s still not enough, folks. You have to make me care about this guy. If you’re going to stick young Ishmael on a doomed whaling ship helmed by a vendetta-obsessed captain, give me a reason to root for his survival. If he’s two-dimensional or a total douchewaffle, I’ll root for that sucker to sink.

So here are some ways you can raise the stakes and heighten the conflict in your stories.

• Make me empathize with your character. There are many excellent ways to do this. One involves good, solid character development, and I highly recommend you check out JD Mader’s recent Indies Unlimited articles on the subject. Give them flaws. Make them human. Even the bad guys. Make us like them, or at least care what happens to them.

• Try not to give your protagonist an easy way out…unless that’s the way he or she rolls. If a character chooses a solution that on the surface seems quick and painless, let there be consequences for taking the shortcut. Show us the fine print on that deal he penned with the devil. For instance, a dude’s marriage is failing. Instead of working on it, he goes out looking for distraction. Glenn Close comes on to him at a party and takes him home for a night of stupefying abandon. But…SHE’S EVIL! SHE BOILS BUNNIES! See? Consequences. Now he has to kill her. Which is lots harder because she. Simply. Will. Not. Die.

• Keep throwing your characters curve balls. Aha! Your protagonist detective, a former ninja who lost his hand and his wife in an unfortunate throwing star accident, just found some possibly incriminating DNA on a samurai sword. Mystery solved? No! It’s inadmissible in court! And he trips on his way down the stairs after a horrible argument with his pregnant teenage daughter who wants to move to Alaska with her forty-year-old boyfriend. Now, hobbled by a twisted ankle, family problems, and lack of evidence, he has to work even harder to catch the bad guys. See, we care more about him now, and we want to stick around to see how he’ll break the case.

• Bounce characters off each other. This creates all sorts of sparks. Not only does your protagonist want something desperately, but this jerk is standing in her way. What’s she going to do about it?

• Use your words. Yes, grasshopper, you can ratchet up conflict by the very words you choose. Or don’t choose, as the case may be. Short sentences at the right time are magical. When the moon is full. Or something howls in the distance. The door creaks open. A hand shoots out. Long, yellow claws drip blood. See? Looking over your shoulder, are you? Ha. That’s exactly what we want. At the height of a confrontation, we don’t want extra words cluttering up the view.

How do you make conflict work in your writing? Or do you need some?

(Note: this post originally appeared on IndiesUnlimited.com.)

Yet without having known Bill, I might have never written Drawing Breath. Heck, he’s one of the reasons I keep writing fiction. He was one of my heroes, although I never told him. If I had, he probably would have laughed and changed the subject. He believed in doing art, not talking about art, and he didn’t consider himself a hero. Despite having cystic fibrosis and being in pretty rough shape at times, he just went about his business, did his breathing therapy, took his medication, and poured his passion into the activities and people he loved, even though he was already way past his “expiration date.”

We silly humans can put blinders on when looking at people with horrible chronic diseases. As if they’re saints or something. Bill was flawed, like all of us. Human, like all of us. He could have a temper, especially when he sensed he was being humored or pitied. He blew deadlines. He spaced on details, which led to sometimes sad and sometimes comical results. For reasons I could never fathom even though he explained it to me (patiently) dozens of times, he was a big fan of professional boxing and especially Muhammad Ali. But he could also be sweet and thoughtful and kind, often when you least expected it. He never had a real girlfriend, and that made me horribly sad, because he had so much to give and was so infinitely lovable. Maybe that’s also one of the reasons I wrote this book. But muses work in funny ways. As the character of Daniel became less Bill and more Daniel, the love I wanted to give him became more complicated, more demanding, more human.

Drawing Breath is dedicated to Bill, although he’d probably tell me to stop talking about him and get back to work. So I do. I put my head down and write another novel, and another, and another.

Frankly, I don’t understand how a writer can stop at just one novel, but I also don’t understand why some people like black licorice or sheep brains or boxing, either. Or why my husband can open a box of Oreos, eat one cookie and put the rest away. The world is a strange and fascinating place.

But as I get ready to publish a second novel, I’m looking at this writing stuff from a new perspective. It’s like I’ve climbed a mountain, and now that I’m sitting at the summit scarfing down Gatorade and trail mix and feeling pretty good about myself, I look around at all the other, higher mountains and think, “Damn. The view might be a lot better from up there. But I also might have to run from more bears and rattlesnakes. And I might get a cramp.”

I hate cramps. And rattlesnakes.

It’s exciting, yet scary, to be near the top of that next summit. I’m all sweaty and out of breath and my cheeks get so flushed people look at me funny and ask if I need a ride to the emergency room. But when else in my life will I be able to say I’ve done something that Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Sylvia Plath, and John Kennedy Toole have not? (Well, to be fair, I’m sure Plath and Toole would have written second novels if they hadn’t offed themselves.)

The other exciting part is that having written and published a first novel, I am better prepared for putting out a second. The experience of working with a small press taught me how to handle most of the marketing tasks myself. Not that I’m necessarily going to be a pro at it, but I’ve learned the basics. I now know that I need a release plan, one with built-in flexibility, because invariably something goes wrong. I’ll need a few reviews. A good sherpa. Friends to help me pimp-uh, spread the word. And hope that my preparation will meet with luck.

Then the scary stuff rains down. What if the myth is true that second novels often fail to live up to the expectations of the first? What if this one totally sucks? What if people hate it so hard I consider alternate career paths? Those ladies who do makeovers at the Macy’s cosmetics counter always look like they’re having a good time. Maybe I can do that.

Or, even scarier…what if it means I’m in this thing to stay? In that case, there’s only one thing to do: put my head down and start writing the third.

This blog formerly appeared on Indies Unlimited.

One of the best ways to avoid pain (aside from hiring an assistant to grab your brilliant prose out of thin air while you pace about, sipping martinis and admiring the garden) is to move and stretch frequently as you work.

Ideally, strive to get out of the chair every forty-five minutes or so. Yeah, I know. “What? Leave my writing? I’m on a roll!” But I went through the same resistance. It was hardly a surprise to my physical therapist when I started having neck, shoulder, and back pain and degenerative disk problems in my early forties. To keep writing, I had to break up my “butt to chair” time. I took to pacing around the house on my breaks, still in “book head,” working out problems or spinning lines of dialogue I would then type out when I returned to my computer. I made it work because I had to. Writing was too important to me to let pain derail my passion.

Not ready to give up your chair time? At least start with this set of stretches, which you can do right at your computer. Try them every couple of hours throughout the day or whenever you’re feeling stiff, to keep your blood circulating and give your muscles a break. (Note: Never stretch into or through pain. If any of these stretches hurt, stop. If you have serious back, neck, or other health problems, consult your doctor or PT before trying new exercises.)

1. Reach your arms out in front of you. Interlock your fingers with your palms facing your body. Gently stretch, hold for ten to twenty seconds, and release. Do this twice more.
2. Fingers still interlocked, raise your arms as high as you comfortably can. Hold for ten to fifteen seconds.
3. With your arms still above your head, grasp your opposite elbow with each hand. Gently bend to the left and then to the right, holding from eight to ten seconds per side.
4. Gently shrug your shoulders, holding them up for three to five seconds, then releasing fully. Repeat twice more.
5. Scoot forward in your chair. With your left hand, reach behind your back and grasp your right wrist. Slowly lower your head so you’re looking at your left breast. Let your right shoulder relax into the stretch as you very gently pull at your right wrist. Hold for ten to twelve seconds and repeat on the other side.
6. Bring your arms in front of you and press your palms together, fingers pointing toward the ceiling. This is an important stretch for the muscles and nerves in your forearms. Hold for ten seconds.
7. Press your hands together as in #6, but flip them downward so that your fingers are pointing toward the floor. Do not rotate hands past your comfort zone. Hold the stretch for ten seconds.
8. With one arm raised toward the ceiling and the other pointing to the floor, stretch both arms. Hold for eight to ten seconds, then reverse.
9. Scoot forward in your chair. Press both hands into your lower back at about the level of your sacrum. Slowly lean backward, feeling the stretch in your chest, shoulders, and neck. Hold for ten to fifteen seconds, then repeat.
10. With your arms hanging straight down, shake those hands out for eight to ten seconds.

That’s it! You’re done! Now get back to work.

(Note: this post previously appeared here.)

Consider Cruella de Vil from A Hundred And One Dalmatians. Would she inspire the same fear if she were named Becky Jones? Would Hannibal Lecter be as menacing if he were Sheldon Greenblatt? What about “Call me Fred?” Doesn’t have quite the same je ne sais quoi, does it?

But how do you come up with just the right name for your character? Here are a few things to think about:

1. Choose something age-appropriate. If I’m writing an American, middle-class character about my age, I think back to high school. Kathy, Lisa, Donna, Mary, and Karen were very popular names for girls, and there were a lot of guys named David, Steven, and Mike. Not that you wouldn’t find something more unusual floating about, but in fiction, readers are more likely to go with the probable than the possible. If my character is in her thirties, he or she may have a spunkier name like Jason, Jennifer, Stephanie, or Stacy. (My thirty-something protagonist of The Joke’s on Me is named Frankie.) A teenager may have been named after his or her mother’s favorite pop culture star. Hence the number of Ashleys, Olivias, Justins, and Britneys floating around.

2. Choose something regionally, ethnically, or culturally appropriate. This is a dicier area, because you don’t want to offend your readers by using a cultural or ethnic stereotype. If you have a character in your story who comes from an ethnic or cultural group different from your own, do some research. In some countries, babies are given very specific names based on their meanings. In some cultures or religions, it’s considered bad luck to name a child after a dead relative, while in others, this is done frequently and almost expected. What has helped me is a directory of worldwide baby names with their meanings. And my good friend, Google.

3. Consider your character’s role in the story. An unlikely hero (or heroine) may have an unassuming name, like David Copperfield or The Grapes of Wrath‘s Tom Joad. Or, a timid character saddled with a heroic name (or a larger-than-life relative’s name) may struggle to fill those big shoes.

4. Avoid making a name into a “reading bump” if possible. I loved the name Lisbeth for one of my characters, but my writing group’s feedback convinced me to change it to something simpler because they kept getting stuck on it and feeling distracted from the story. She’s now Liz. No harm, no foul, no “reading bumps.”

5. Unless you’re writing comedy or a funny children’s book, avoid any name that rhymes with “said.” I never thought about this until I wrote a contemporary novel in which I’d named the husband Ted. Imagine page after page of “Ted said” and all those readers laughing to themselves because of the unintentional rhyme. I actually considered putting the whole thing in present tense so I wouldn’t have to deal with that particular issue! It was much easier, and better for the story, to change the husband’s name.

6. If your character cries out for an unusual name (think Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye or Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces), he or she will most likely pay the consequences, just as in real life. But this is rich material for character development. These consequences (teasing, bullying, even scorn for being named after an infamous figure) may end up shaping the character.

7. Still stumped? Open the phone book, peruse baby-naming books, or scan popular culture for an interesting, appropriate name.

How do you name your characters?  What are some of your favorite character names from the books you’ve read? Any that you felt didn’t fit the character? Or fit him or her exceptionally well? Any name you’re really tired of hearing? Let’s talk about it!

March 26, 2012; Phoenix, AZ – On April 1st, 2012 at 8 a.m. Pacific time, Indies Unlimited – the premier multi-national, multi-author web site for the Independent Publishing industry – will announce a new and innovative ‘reverse marketing’ book promotion tactic developed by founder Stephen Hise.

“Mr. Hise is an innovator and mastermind,” Indies Unlimited co-administrator K. S. Brooks said in a written statement. “This new method is definitely not for everyone, but I believe it could start a new trend in the marketplace. Indie book promotion will definitely be impacted, and quite frankly, may never be the same again. We’re looking forward to sharing Mr. Hise’s perspicacity with the industry.

”Stephen Hise founded IndiesUnlimited.com in October of 2011 to provide a platform for independent authors to share and exchange ideas, knowledge, expertise and frustrations; and, for readers and reviewers to become exposed to the amazing depth and array of talent in the indie community.

For more information, go to http://www.IndiesUnlimited.com

###

Contact: K. S. Brooks
Co-Adminstrator
Indies Unlimited
ksbrooks@ksbrooks.com

“Crisply written and filled with irony, The Joke’s on Me is fun and witty with snappy dialogue sure to please those who like their romance with quirk and spirit. This is a great first novel and I hope to see more from Ms. Boris in future. I will certainly put Ms. Boris on my authors to follow list.” – Karen at The Parents’ Little Black Book of Books

Read the whole review here.

The same goes for contemporary fiction. That dead fish, the curdled milk, the rancid orange juice could be your book. Sure, contemporary fiction is, in its essence, contemporary. So why do some novels hold up over time and some quickly get that “not-so-fresh-feeling?” How do you avoid stamping an expiration date on your work?

Trouble is, contemporary life moves fast. Technology moves fast. The news cycle moves faster. Publishing a book is glacial in comparison, especially if you choose the traditional or small press publication route. By the time your manuscript goes through editing, proofreading, acquisitions, more editing, approvals, and printing, the bit you wrote about Snooki’s baby might be old enough to start preschool, and the world will blink at you in unison and wonder what the heck you’re talking about. This reaffirms my faith in humanity, but it’s not so great for your fiction. Here are some things to watch for if you want to keep your book fresher longer:

1. Pop culture references. Pop culture is the soundtrack of your protagonist’s angst; it’s the wallpaper of your contemporary novel. You know what happens to wallpaper. We love it, we love it, we love it, and…then we hate it. It’s out of style. Bring on the wood paneling! And so on. Certain things have staying power. This is why we call them classics. Game shows. Bad commercials. Horror films. Chick flicks. Sitcoms. Keep your references generic if you don’t want to “date” your novel. For instance, my character catches the latest action film. It barely registers because he’s pissed about a business deal gone wrong. Answering his wife’s query about the plot of the movie, he just says, “I don’t know. Stuff blew up.” Voila. We know what he saw. Five years later, when the book is released, you’ll still know what he saw. No matter who is the reigning master of the CGI explosion. It’s the same with music. Some is iconic. Opera. Duke Ellington. Miles Davis. Heavy Metal. Led Zeppelin. Reggae. The Beatles. Some isn’t. In an early draft of The Joke’s on Me, I had a sulky teen blaring White Zombie. Where are they now? Well…not in my novel. The band reference I opted for was simply “loud and angry” and didn’t break up the month before my publication date.

2. Celebrity comparisons. Don’t tell me your male lead looks like Bradley Cooper, Ryan Gosling, or Chris Hemsworth. First, a slice of your audience might not know who they are. Second, depending on their career trajectories, your flavor-of-the-month could flame out or end up in jail, in rehab, or in hiding by the time your book is released. Over the years I’ve had to axe references to Anna Nicole Smith’s diet pill endorsement (she died from an overdose), Lindsay Lohan’s acting (her career is in intensive care), and Britney Spears (self-explanatory.) “He flashed a movie-star smile that seemed to deepen the cleft in his chin and attract every straight female in his gravitational field,” holds up better than, “People told him he looked like (insert name of this week’s hot stud here).” Icons work here, too. Give your hot blonde Marilyn’s curves and pretty much everyone knows what you’re talking about.

3. Buzzwords. Quicker than you can say “Urban Dictionary,” catchphrases and slang words appear and disappear. Use them sparingly in dialogue to set a character in a generation, sub-culture, or socioeconomic group (peace out, dude), but try to keep them out of your exposition, or else you risk confusing your readers.

4. Technology. Remember the older Seinfeld episodes when Jerry had one of the first cordless phones, which had a huge slab of a receiver and a telescoping antenna? By today’s standards, it looks like he’s speaking on a World War Two-era field phone. Try not to do that to your contemporary fiction. Certain technology, like e-mail, text messaging, and cell phones, is an inevitable part of everyday life, and accepted as almost generic these days. Watch out for specific references, though, unless you’re using them for comic effect. For example, the poor sucker who cornered the market on Betamax or Zune. I think I made a mistake referencing Wikipedia pages and YouTube in a recent book. Who knows how long those will be around?

Finally, be wary about using writing fads and gimmicks. For about thirty seconds in the eighties, Jay McInerney wrote fast-paced, second-person prose that captured reviewers’ eyeballs and spawned a disappointing string of imitators. Write in your own voice. It’s yours. You earned it. You will write better in it than in the ill-fitting cloaks of your literary heroes. Forever.

(Note: This post originally appeared on Indies Unlimited, at http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2012/03/20/does-your-novel-have-an-expiration-date/)

But what he doesn’t know is that he has secret powers beyond his understanding. These are called into action when a mysterious visitor shows up at his fort with a gift and begs for his help to save her world. After wrestling with himself about how or even if he can help with such a daunting task, and why he, of all people, has been chosen, he is drawn into a universe of endearing, magical creatures: a witch in training, a young vampire, a smart aleck pixy, and a teenage werewolf who becomes a good friend.

I don’t want to give too much of the story away, because it’s lots of fun, but overall I loved Gage’s wry sense of humor and positive spirit, even as he doubts his abilities. I like the relationship between Gage and his four-year-old sister, Sydney, who is wise beyond her years and adores her brother with every fiber of her being. And I really grew to care about the characters, even the ones who aren’t always so nice.

While adults are present in the story, and lend their influence, support, and encouragement to the kids, the kids are the real heroes, which is one of the best things about the story and about middle grade and young adult fiction in general. After a while, I even found myself forgetting about Gage’s autism as I fell into Nicole Storey’s sweet, funny, scary tale.

For any child who feels different, who feels cast out, this story shows that we are all human underneath, all want to make a difference, all want to have friends.

I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel, so I can spend more time with my new friends.