If I sound like a man, there's a reason

If you have read more than one of my books by now, you have certainly picked up on the fact that I love to write from the male perspective. In fact, in my new Art of Love series I am staying in a male character's perspective longer than ever. I am intentionally making the heroes the center of the story. I wanted to show a fractured family that was mending itself. I wanted to explore a strong relationship of an older father to his adult sons. In a way, I feel like these three books will be a truth about familial male bonding that I don't think gets a fair shake most of the time. There are lot of really good fathers out there. We mostly only get to hear about the bad ones.

It is a well-known writing risk for one gender to write too much from the perspective of another. In all honesty, if I had sent Carved In Stone to a traditional publisher of romances, the first request I would have gotten from them would be a recommendation to change the primary talking character to the heroine. Being able to take the risk of writing from a male perspective with readers, instead of publishers, is just one more reason I am grateful to be an Indie author. Am I going to always get it right? No. I'm not a man. However, I am adventurous enough to try living with my character in the male perspective and seeing what readers think.

So why do I do this? I love men. Okay, maybe that doesn't sound right. How about I just say that I like them a lot. I see their imperfections and their humanity, their weaknesses and their strengths. None of that offends the female in me, even if I roll my eyes or walk off in a snit. I have an empathy for their preference to be the hunter instead of the hunted in relationships. I understand the sacrifice it is to commit fidelity to just one and give up culling the herd of available females. At my age, I can tell you there are many, many women who are just the same regardless of what statistics are put out about such things. Look at how many women divorce after forty and you'll start to understand what I mean. Genders are not so unalike in their relationship thinking and sexual needs as science would like us accept, especially if you understand older women. I sincerely enjoy exploring this by creating both male and female characters who bust the "norm"and just live life on their own terms.

To play armchair psychoanalyst on myself, I would say I seek to explore what it is to be male so I can understand the chaos of being female. I was raised by a single mother and do not know my biological father. There were men in my household, but I took care of them, not the other way around. I was terribly in love with a boy in high school who repeatedly broke my heart until I chewed off a leg to escape the trap of my feelings for him. I was married twenty-three years to a man who oozed manliness, but had an unfortunate negative outlook on life. Divorcing him cost me things I can't even begin to describe.

Finally at the ripe old age of 41, I found the best man I have come across who in twelve years has taken me through all the above again. He is over a decade younger than me. The heartbreak and frustration came with the rest of the package. The difference is that at least the current male genuinely likes me and will chase me down when I walk off in a snit. For that, I'm still deeply glad to be the one he culled from the herd and kept. Maybe like my 50 year old character Alexa in Dating A Cougar, I guess I just have a thing for sexy former Marines. Or maybe I'm just a crazy female. It's hard to tell sometimes.

If I lost the current love of my life for any reason, it would shatter me. But now I know myself. I would eventually just start the process of trying to connect to another male all over again because I like spending time with men. Now you can see why I ended up writing stories about humorous relationships.

I follow the blog of fellow writer who is man attempting to write scenes and characters that women will appreciate. He wants to create believable female characters, believable sex scenes, and ultimately a romantic relationship that his female readers will buy as real. Many of his blogs are explorations of all that is woman. I find them funny, but also genuine and sincerely admirable.  I like him for that alone, though I intend to buy the book he is working on so diligently.

I am including a link here to a favorite blog post of mine that Dave Thome wrote about translating "Chickish into Guyese". This post was short and simple. His comment about after thirty years later still being able to "vividly photoshop" himself into his friend's place in feeling a woman underneath him still makes me laugh no matter how many times I read it. It is the voice of an honest male. It is direct. And the ring of truth in it is absolutely undeniable. His female readers will respond to his writing voice because they will know, simply know that he gets it or is really, really trying to do so.

Writers choose to write about what they admire and/or what they long to understand more. When I write from the male perspective, this is certainly the case for me. It is my hope that my sincere appreciation of all things men and male comes through in my work, even when my sense of humor gets the better of my writing. Nobility and perfection are not nearly as interesting. I'd rather have real. Still, a happy ending would never be possible in my stories if my male characters did not prove out to be the good guys that most men sincerely try to be in reality.

Mainstream optimist seeks AARP interview

When I hit the 2000 downloads for Dating A Cougar at Smashwords at the end of my first three weeks of being published, I had a strong feeling that my work would sell after that. As I got inundated with learning about self-publishing, a giant light bulb in my brain started glowing just like it does in cartoons sometimes. I got this great idea that other unpublished writers nearing or over 50 needed to know that dreams of being published were possible in a world now open to Indie authors. Of course in order to spread the word, I had to find a path to the right audience.

Being a card-carrying member of AARP since the age of fifty, I send an email to them on March 21, 2011 asking if they would review Dating A Cougar which featured older characters in a genre romance or be interested in talking to me about what it was like being published finally at my age.  I got a very nice note back on March 30 informing me that AARP only reviewed "mainstream, widely-distributed books targeted to the over 50 age audience". So I wrote them back and told them my books did that, plus they drew an even wider readership because of the humor.  I was making over 50 sexy and doing a pretty good job of it.  I ended my reply with an admonishment for them to re-think their book review policy and get back to me if they changed their minds.

My downloads of Dating A Cougar at Smashwords at the moment I write this blog entry are 7550+. Last night I calculated my downloads of Dating A Cougar at Amazon which are over 13,000 since they made it "free" in the Amazon UK channel.  I have no visibility to the exact number of downloads at Apple where I have 144+ reviews on this one book and 806 book sales in April for the other two in the series. I guess I don't know what AARP means by "mainstream, widely-distributed". You can't distribute much more widely than the internet. That's how the writer from Bloomberg Businessweek found my book.

Harrison Ford is on the cover of the newest AARP magazine I currently have in my house. He's a hell of a good-looking guy and that grin of his is certainly worth a cover. But I can't help thinking that many readers of their information might be just as interested in the fact that as an average person I am launching a second business at age 50+ and it's starting to look like I just might be on to something good for myself. Oh--and I found a way to be happy as I try to deal with the fact there are more years behind me than ahead for me.

Now I know most published Indie authors are looking to sales numbers for their books that draw the big New York publishers and might get their books into the NYT book lists. Maybe I should be thinking along those lines myself at this point, but I'm not there in my head yet. Maybe six months or a year from now I might be.

Funny as it seems, my original instinct remains to share my self-publishing journey with other financially struggling and restless Baby Boomers like myself who still want to make their dreams come true before they die. AARP can keep Harrison Ford or some other sexy hunk or babe over 50 on the cover. I just wish they would allocate some publishing space to the rest of us less glamorous achievers on the inside. We have some moderately interesting stories that could be inspiring to their members.

When my company downsized and I left in 2009, I renewed with AARP for five years. I thought they would be a helpful support group to look to and they are about many, many factual things. But they aren't really focusing on realistic needs with merely providing appealing pics of celebrities. Baby Boomers are motivated by seeing the dreams of each other come true. We look at the person riding in the car with us and say "yeah that's great, maybe I can do that too".  Face it, AARP. If your members are not Harrison Ford by the age of 50 in their lives, it is unlikely they will ever be. Laugh all you want, but you know that's both reasonable and true.

So motivate the rest of us, AARP.  Acknowledge less famous members making real achievements. Try putting age 50+ entrepreneurs on your covers. See what kind of response you get. Look, keep the membership dues. I'll give you the five years I've already paid you for to convince me that you "get it".

Just call me a "mainstream, widely-distributed optimist targeting the over the age of 50 audience".

"Middle class author" makes article in Bloomberg Businessweek

(For an explanation of my title and why I refer to myself as a "middle class author", see this blog entry.)

The book and cover of Dating A Cougar made it into a marketing article in Bloomberg Businessweek!  The article is about marketing to the "cougar" demographic. Check this out.

I did not know about this until today.  A friend of mine sent me the most awesome email in the world this morning. Her husband accidentally came across this in a magazine his sister had saved for him from mid-May. It was truly one of those accidental things the universe does to get to word to you about something important. He was looking through the magazine early this morning when he happened across the cover picture. She said he ran upstairs to show her when he recognized my book. Three books were mentioned in the artcle. Two were shown.  I give Dara England full credit for making the cover design do justice to the story contained within it.

The article in Bloomberg Businessweek, May 16-22, is called
"The Cougar Economy," on pages 74-75 of the print version. It's about cougar dating sites, conventions, websites, etc. It has a half-page of graphics accompanying it, sort of a collage of cougar-related items. My book cover for Dating a Cougar created for me by my totally awesome cover designer shows up in the collage and is mentioned in the article.

The online article has the same content as the hard copy article, but a different title. The book, Dating a Cougar, is mentioned in paragraph six that begins, "Nevertheless, a special name is..."

The sentence that mentions the book says, "...The greater cougar industry has expanded into books (Dating a Cougar, Hot Cougar Sex, A Christian Cougar), television (real-life cougar Courtney Cox's Cougar Town and the reality-TV show The Cougar), and even the big screen."

Here's the online article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_21/b4229073020278.htm

Here's a link to the graphic that accompanies the article in the hard copy. You'll see the book cover there: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_21/b4229073856796.htm

Now Released: Carved In Stone

Carved In Stone (Book One of the Art of Love Series) is now available at Smashwords and Amazon.  Hopefully, it will be available at Barnes and Noble later today (Tuesday) as well.

Now if the publishing gurus are able to get to everything this week, Carved In Stone should ship to Apple, Sony, Kobo and Diesel on Thursday or Friday.  I'll come back and amend this info if I find out differently.

Check out my website at  www.donnamcdonaldauthor.com. I revamped my website a bit over the long holiday weekend and now have links to sale sites. This is the easiest way to check out the books and find an immediate link to your preferred retailer. I am not at Kobo yet (should be in early June), so that link is still missing. I will add Kobo as soon as it becomes a reality for me.

Thanks for taking a look at the new series. Let me know what you think. The characters are a little more intense than the first series, but I did try to lighten things with some humor.  If you want to read the background of this series, check out this blog entry about the first book.

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate all the messages, emails, blog comments, and Facebook posts? Well, I do. I really appreciate hearing from readers.  Thanks so very much for taking the time.

Confessions of a "Snuggie" middle class writer

My significant other listens to NPR's Planet Money pretty faithfully. When I got back from a writer's meeting on Saturday, he was practically vibrating about this one.  He insisted I listen to it and respond because Jonathan Coulton's story in the music industry is basically my story in the romance novel industry.  I was writing books that didn't fit the existing published romance genres well. Coulton is writing music that doesn't fit anyone's genre but his--which is gutsy and the most artistic part to me. He believed in himself and what he was doing and just did it. How can you not admire that regardless of your opinion about his art?

While this Planet Money podcast is about the music industry, the discussion contains some great examples of what traditional industry thinkers are really worried about concerning anyone making money from artistic Indie efforts. They talk about his uniqueness not being repeatable and say he's a "Snuggie" musician who is just lucky/good at marketing (as if this was a bad thing).

Somewhere else in the debate Coulton is also referred to as a middle class musician. I believe his earnings last year for selling his songs at $0.99 each was a half million dollars. Middle class? Not hardly. With a master's degree, I made 23K last year teaching college English classes at four colleges and universities as an adjunct and had to have two other part-time jobs in order to keep paying the bills. Middle class? Every middle class person I know is having to work multiple jobs to maintain a reasonable standard of living in this economy. Coulton is a successful musician in a field where it is hard to make a professional living. He is doing well for himself and working to achieve his success. He is anything but middle class. His efforts are admirable.

Let me summarize Coulton's sins as mentioned by NPR Music Industry specialists who co-interviewed with the regular Planet Money host (these are the same sins as those frequently mentioned against any Indie writer--see Konrath's blogs):

• he was having fun
• he was giving some work away free
• he was talking directly to his fans/customers (and having fun doing this as well)
• he was writing songs for a niche market (computer software programmers mostly)
• his was "undervaluing" all music sales by pricing his songs so cheaply
• his success wasn't repeatable by the average person (as if true art is supposed to be mass repeatable)
• he didn't "earn" his money--he got lucky (this was implied by every criticism)

Here's the link to the podcast if you're interested in hearing it.  I highly recommend it if you are an Indie or thinking about becoming one:  Via @nprnews: The Friday Podcast: Is This Man A Snuggie? | http://t.co/svDpqqx
 
Here's the answer I posted on NPR's blog (along with several other Indie writers who commented):

I found the Coulton story incredibly inspiring and validating for my own journey as an Indie.
As a fiction writer, I tried going the traditional path. Like Coulton in music, I did not fit the mold. In March,I self-published several books on Smashwords.com that had been rejected by agents and editors. I made the first one totally free so readers could see if they like my writing before they put out money. The second and third books are priced at $2.99. I have another book out this month and one in early July.

These are humorous romances featuring older characters. My readers range from ages 20-60. It is looking like I will be able to earn a living and do something I love that makes other people happy. If anyone calls me the "Snuggie" of middle-class writers, I would just laugh about it on all my social media sites. My readers would probably love it.

If I'm paying my bills and happy AND if my readers are willing to pay for my work and happy, what other success is more worth having as an artist? Super fame does not look as happy a condition to me.

Is what I do repeatable or can any other writer do this? Yes, if they can write a story readers want to read. It is repeatable. I am planning to repeat it over and over myself.

Birth Announcement: Carved In Stone out to editor

For a writer, there really is nothing like finishing a book and getting it out to the editor.  I am still hoping to get it back, revised, and published by the end of May, but it's looking more like the first weekend in June now.  Sorry.  It turned out to be a more complex story than I thought. 

After this week, the analogy of book writing to giving birth suddenly makes sense to me. I had Chapters 1-16 finished for ages. Even the beta reader finished those several weeks ago. It was the last five chapters that hurt the most and took me more than two weeks to resolve. When this one was finally finished, it really was like those first few hours after birth where a mother stares in shock at the new human that came out of her and wonders how it all happened. Too tired from labor to appreciate the higher purpose of creating new life, all the mother can think is "Thank God, that work is over." That's exactly how I'm feeling right now to finally see this book finished. My characters and their emotional problems wore me out. If it wasn't for the women fighting over my hero in the final scenes, I'd have never made it. It was the most fun I'd had with them in over a month.

So tonight I'm exhausted and tomorrow (May 15) is my birthday. I can only say thank you to the muses for granting me one more. Finishing a story is the best birthday present in the world for me this year.

Read Chapter 1 posted in a note on Facebook. 

Also, the cover was finished this week, too. Thanks to my cover artist Dara England for another fun one! 

Living the crazy Indie life

My day job has demanded all of me for a week now, and working on my stories has been something I could only dream about doing, but regardless of other obligations, I see my writing as a business deserving my attention. I continue to spend a bit of time each day doing what I consider to be the "business" side of Indie publishing.

The first thing I do is check email in all locations and answer all notes from readers, websites, my editor, my cover artist, and well--you know what I mean. It's only a few minutes--maybe twenty--a day, so it takes little time. I'm not exactly overflowing with them yet on two books, but I consider each one very important.

Next, I want to find out how I am doing so I first head to Smashwords. I check download numbers at Smashwords for Dating A Cougar (Book One of the Never Too Late Series) which is still free there. I see interest in that book as a barometer of interest in all my work so noting that downloads are hitting the 4400 hundred mark at two months is very encouraging. The ten reviews about it are equally so and make me want to go back to my writing immediately. To those of you tracking real numbers, my publish dates on Books 1 and 2 were both in mid-March so I had two weeks of sales on Book 2 before the official end of the Smashwords first quarter.  I just received my first royalty payment from them. It was a grand total of $15.13. Are you laughing? If you are, I can understand your mirth, but I will quote a fellow Smasher and kind mentor Brian S Pratt about this first payment and just say it was $15.13 I did not have so I was very excited to see it. I am using the proceeds to help me pay for the cover of Carved In Stone which is Book 1 of my new series releasing this month.

After I have gotten my warm fuzzy from Smashwords, I jump over to check Amazon to see how I did overnight. Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world buy while I am visiting dreamland. Based on their net 60 pay habit, this month I finally get a payment from the March proceeds at Amazon which was also about two weeks worth. It's about $35 before taxes. I was pleased. The April proceeds I will get in June will be about $80. This is the first week of May and I have three books up now. Dating A Cougar is .99 cents. The other two are $2.99 each. Since May 1, I have sold 38 books total in seven days for a total of about $50.  If I do that good every week, my May royalties (paid out in July 60 days net) will be around $200 before taxes for just those two books. I plan to have Carved In Stone out in a few weeks and Dating A Metro Man (Book 4 of Never Too Late series) out in June.  I am nothing but excited at the possibilities of what having more books for sale might mean.

Then the last thing I do is pop over to Facebook and try think of something to say to the readers and friends who post to me there. I do the same for Twitter which I am just finally getting the hang of after a couple of months. If I'm feeling really brave, I might go check a few reviews. I keep hoping to see some positive ones at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Sony. Now and again I might see one or two. It seems unhappy readers post the most <sigh>.  As I blogged before, these are needed and useful, but I'd like to see the positive ones there, too. Amazon and Smashwords have the best reviews. I know as a consumer and book buyer that I read reviews to see if I want to purchase. So I understand their importance, but I like them to be organic. The best ones are those from readers who just want to say "loved the book, loved the characters, and looking forward to reading you again". I have those and I remind myself frequently to be grateful.

All of the above, including email, social networking, and checking reviews, takes me about forty minutes and I do it once in the very early morning, and sometimes again in the late evening if I have the energy.

Writing this blog is the longest time I spend during the week. It takes me about an hour to write it and another to agonize over whether I should post it or not. The agony seems to be the writer equivalent of an actor's stage fright. But if you're reading this, then you already know that I eventually pull up my big girl panties and put it out there for you.

What I guess I want to say in closing is that the business stuff just seems like such a natural flow to me. I've had a business before that was ten times more demanding and I worked on top of it. When my day job contracts end as they are going to next week for me, then I will use most of my time until they start again to write. I can't tell you how good that feels. I just can't. If you're a writer, and you love to write, then all I can say is Indie publishing has given me the life I have dreamed about and wanted. If you believe in the "math" of sheer numbers (check out blogs of JA Konrath, Barry Eisler, and Dean Wesley-Smith), then at the speed in which I plan to publish books, in a year or so I might not need a day job.  If it were not for the writing risks I took with my work this year in abandoning the traditional route and just putting my work out there for the masses, I would not even have this possibility. 

So if you are hanging on the precipice and wondering if you should spread your wings and try to fly, check out me and all the other Indie authors who are out there learning.  It's hard work, but that's nothing new for any of us, right? Two months in and still hopeful, I'm very satisfied to be living the Indie life.