JM Madden talks about writing across genres (Guest Author)

Donna:  Welcome to my blog JM! Why don't you start by telling readers how you got started writing romances.

JM:   Hi Donna! Thanks so much for having me here today. It's a real privilege, because I think you've done a fantastic job with your writing career so far, and I'm anxious to see what new hurdles you're going to overcome.

Available at Amazon

I went a different direction from what you did. I joined Kentucky Romance Writers back in 2008, because I wanted to explore what I considered to be a hobby at the time, my writing. I received a lot of helpful guidance, and in 2010 finally got up the nerve to start submitting to some publishing houses. I loved that e-books were on the rise, and a brand new company had caught my eye- Decadent Publishing. They had fantastic covers and appealed to me as a contemporary writer. Within 3 days, I had an acceptance email (which made me bawl like a baby).  I released Second Time Around at the end of December 2010.

Second Time Around is a contemporary romance, and the heroine is a cop. The biggest piece of advice I was ever given as a writer was to write about what you know. I was a deputy sheriff for nine years, so it seemed natural to me to go in that direction. And living in Kentucky, the horse industry is predominant in everyday life. Add in a broken romance, a secret child and a naughty horse and you have a romance.

So, it released, and my fingers were flying with new enthusiasm. I didn't even care if I sold one book. I was now a published author.

Available at Amazon

Donna: In 2011, you have become a published author across multiple romance genres. Is there one genre you identify with most? For example, you and I both tend to classify ourselves as "contemporary romance" writers at times, but your work has gone way beyond that now.

JM:  When the chance came around to write an Urban Fantasy for a second publisher I knew, I jumped on it. It was fascinating to me to build my own little world in my mind and on paper. I can't imagine ever writing historical romances, because your details and research have to be spot on, but with genres like fantasy/urban fantasy/sci-fi, you can make the details your own. You can shape the world how ever you want. It was very freeing to stretch my writing legs, so to speak. Burning Moonlight, featured in the Urban Moon Anthology, was written within about two weeks, and it was a blast to write. I really feel like I learned a lot from the experience.

Available at Amazon.

Contemporary romance is my niche though, and when Decadent created the 1NightStand series, I was immediately interested. Wet Dream was created in about two weeks. It was definitely spicier than anything I had written before, but it flowed so easily. The heroine is a strong woman (mandatory for all my romances!) and the hero is a wounded veteran trying to rescue her from an embarrassing situation. Ginger, the woman, just happens to be Cameron's version of a walking wet dream, so when she propositions him, how can he possibly say no? I've gotten a lot of feedback on Wet Dream, and I'm thinking about a follow-up, where the two meet again for their happy ever after.

 Turquoise Morning Press

I like variety in my writing, and I like erotica, so I've recently released a fourth book under another pen name, Jade Morgan. Texas Iron is a male/ male romance, and another chance to stretch my writing legs. I've personally never seen two men together, so it was kind of like writing the urban fantasy, you create your own details.

Donna: What's next for you creatively?

JM:  I think I'm going to jump into the self-publishing pool. I'm working hard on a returning veteran series, tentatively titled 'Coming Home'. It's about a detective bureau staffed entirely by disabled veterans. It will definitely be romance, but it will (hopefully) be suspenseful as well. I'd like to have the first of the series out January/February, with the second out a couple months after that. With all the veterans returning home, I hope it does well and reaches an audience.

I can't seem to limit myself to one genre though, so I'm also working on a post-apocolyptic dragon series that has me fascinated. Serious world building. It, too, will be self-published. In fact, I'm booked well into 2012 with self-pubbing, but if a new sumbission call tickles my fancy, I may squeeze something else in. It's all about reaching a wider audience with your work.

Donna: This is not another question, but rather a note to my blog readers.  I'm not just a fellow author, I'm also a fan of your contemporary work. I've read both Second Time Around and Wet Dream. Both were good, but I loved, loved, loved the couple in Wet Dream. And I'd love to read more of their story. It was a pleasure to host you today.

JM: Donna, thank you so much for having me here! It's been a blast recapping the past year, and I'm amazed at what I've done. And super excited about what's coming! Happy Holidays to everybody!

See all JM books on the web:  http://www.jmmadden.com/
Follow her on Twitter:  @authorjmmadden

What Is The Color Of Love?

I am the least political, least activist person among most of my friends, so this kind of post is hard for me to write. First let me get the rant over with which is to say just once I'd like to see something amazing and positive about Kentucky hit the news. I rant this because recently my state made it into an article for the Huffington Post and I'm still reeling from what I read because I am naive enough to hope it was some sort of mistake.

Having grown up during the Civil Rights Movement and Women's Liberation, I am unable to read articles like this and remain unaffected. But as a romance author, it's also hitting my heart. I refuse to think that love is bound by color, by ethnicity, or any other man-made label used to catalog differences between people. Differences should enrich our lives with each other, not be used to try to legalistically bind our souls.

This is why I think so many romance authors are drawn to writing and creating paranormal worlds where characters are committing eternally to a werewolf or a vampire or some other immortal creature with bizarre differences from the human character who opts to love them. Committing for centuries certainly ranks above the human "until death do you part" on the fidelity scale. Then there are the cases where committing to an immortal ties your life to theirs which means if they die, you do too. That's a bit more connected than most of us ever want to be to a spouse.

The timing of me seeing this article is ironic, especially since I hadn't even opened my Huffington Post email in a week or more. Yet in Captured In Ink which released over the weekend, I start to delve into what are still referred to as "interracial relationships". I don't think of them that way, or at least I rebel strongly at thinking of them that way, but certainly there are still many people who do think of them as outside the norm judging from the Huff opinion poll at the bottom of the article.

In my fifty years of observation, a person moves along through life until romantic love steps into their path, and the human container for that love is always a bit of surprise for most of us. Odds are the person we connect to will likely be someone closely matching us in appearance or beliefs, but that is about math facts, population distribution, and the landscape of current society. Sociologists can explain this much more succinctly, but my point is that is certainly NOT the only option.

I joke about my family being it's own United Nations group. My sister-in-law is Japanese. My step-brother met and married her while he was serving in the Navy and stationed on a ship near Tokoyo. She is fiesty and fun and speaks English with a Kentucky accent because of my mother.
My son with his Scots-Irish-Cherokee heritage is in love with a woman from Kawait who is truly one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, both inside and out. If they marry, their children will be incredibly attractive. In both these cases, it just seems normal in my family that these unique couples work out their cultural differences to be as inclusive as possible, for their sakes and ours. Love provides a bridge for that. Lots of famous writers before me have pointed out that love is the only bridge that ever works. It is not a new idea to love everyone like you love yourself.

Bruce is from Indiana, of Scots-German origins, but very worldly because of his military travels. I'm from Eastern Kentucky and won't even go into the background I hale from except to say I'm from a nationally famous feudal family of Scots-Irish-Cherokee descent. But I didn't start dating Bruce for or despite his physical characteristics or even his novelty as a younger man. He was raised Catholic and Lutheran while I am Protestant in ways I typically refuse to acknowledge ever having been. He's Republican and I'm--well, not Republican. Believe me when I say I would not have had to look hard to find reasons to exclude the man I loved above all others from my life. I just chose not to.

Where do you draw the line at what differences matter to the heart?

Love is meant to be inclusive, not exclusive. That's it's natural motivation within us and that's the love I will always write about in my books. I just hope with everything in me that my grandchildren living in the connected global world of the future have the wisdom to accept the love they find for themselves without stopping to question things like the alleged acceptability of the color of the package it comes in.

Beauty is subjective and that's as it should be. We want to draw to ourselves the kind of connections that help us become more than what we are alone.

To grant permission to yourself and others to admire beauty outside the norm is soul expanding. That permission is true progress. I just get sad when articles like the one I read come along because they make me realize that I probably won't live to see that permission become the typical thinking of the future. But then neither did Dr. King.

I guess I'll have to be content with knowing I did what I could by creating a better world in my books.
 
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Addendum Note:  In double-checking the link in this article, I discovered there was a second article. Apparently, the initial decision is being "reconsidered" due to flood of angry protesting from the national church group and local attendees. Turns out the vote was 9 people out of 35-40.  Now I'm admittedly not great at math, but seems like the others could have axed the idea before it got that far by voting against it. Coming from a small town myself, I suspect small-town-people politics were involved. So the end result isn't great, but it's at least better. Perhaps there is some hope for this world after all.

Profound Thinking About Poetry

This is an amazing TED Talk by performance poet, Sarah Kay. The first poem she recites is "If I had a daughter". It is powerful alone, but the entire talk is worth a listen. Poetry is not my first love, but I connect with the souls of other writers who are here in this world emptying themselves on a regular basis to share something of value with the rest of us. These are the artists of the present and the future.

Seth Godin has decided to publish Kay's poetry. I'm going to buy it. Ms. Kay has a new fan in me.

Learning The Love Code

Recently, I managed to finally find a bike helmet that was my size, on sale, and with a Snell safety rating high enough to satisfy Bruce. Then I climbed on the back of his bike and we took off. It was my first bike ride in twenty or more years and was both scary and exhilarating. I felt like Jessica in Carved In Stone going for her first ride with Will.

For those of who have never ridden, a unique thing about riding a motorcycle is that you can't talk to each other in most normal bike helmets. At first I thought not being able to talk was going to be a problem since I was the one on the back and completely out of the driving control loop, but then something very interesting happened in the first few minutes of the ride.

We developed a physical code, or in other words, a way to talk without talking.

Sitting behind Bruce, I learned to squeeze my knees on his hips to indicate my readiness for him to accelerate. My thumbs were hooked in handles on his jacket made for hanging on and I could squeeze his sides as well with my fingertips. Thirty minutes into the ride, we were having whole conversations with him pointing out scenes of interest and me squeezing to show him I understood. Then when we stopped at crossroads, he would reach back and pat my knee to indicate when we would be taking off again.

I could literally have ridden all day, not speaking in words. (I also quickly realized I could also easily retire my "thigh master" if I rode often enough as well, but that's another story.)

Anyway, our physical only communication made me realize that people in love who are truly intimate also use codes. They seem to be as unique as the couple is, though there are some generalities. People who have been married over ten years, and who really get along, talk more with their gazes than they do with mouths. Sometimes in fact the gazes say one thing, while the mouth is saying another. If you are paying attention, you can practically see the sarcasm floating in the air above their heads. They can have arguments, show amusement, or indicate a willingness for other more interesting physical activities with nothing more than the right "look" in their eyes.

I think I do that in my books, especially with the older couples. There is a scene in Created In Fire where Michael and Carrie are fighting about frozen yogurt bars and Shane is demanding to know what's up in the debate. Will and Jessica look at each other, have immediate and full comprehension, and have to turn their backs on the younger people in the room so their physical expressions don't give away their understanding. Well, that and Will was embarrassed a bit, as usual. The older couple is quiet for a long time during the fight until Jessica breaks the silent communication between them by teasing Will.

So in a way, talking in words can actually interfere with the code. Maybe that's what goes wrong in some relationships. Maybe it's just better at times to enjoy not talking, skip the sarcasm, and squeeze your knees when you're ready to accelerate.

Edin Road Radio Interview

In this interview I read Chapter 2 of Captured In Ink (Book Three of the Art of Love series) and talk with Jesse Coffey about the rest of my work. Warning: Southern Accent.

Listen to internet radio with EdinRoad on Blog Talk Radio

Never Too Late Series Now In Print (update w/photo)

It has taken me several months, but finally the Never Too Late Series is available in print. I can't adequately describe the feeling of holding a physical copy of a book in my hands. Seeing the books in print was another one of those moments of my author journey that literally stopped my heart momentarily just before making it take off racing again.

I made the print as large as I could and tried to use a font that is rounded and easy to read. Basically, I wanted my older readers to not have to pull out their strongest reading glasses just to see the content. I chose a standard size of 5.5" x 8.5" which was the size of most of the trade paperbacks in my own collection of tomes. It also seemed to me to be the most common size of trade paperbacks at my local independent bookseller, Joseph-Beth.

It was important to me to keep the ebook covers, so I waited a bit for the print cover artist to have time in her queue for me. I have to brag because it was such a good call on my part and yet another decision I feel lucky about having made as an Indie author. So kudos to Amanda Kelsey at Razzle Dazzle Design for helping me extend Dara England's wonderful work on the ebook covers into print versions.

But if you are a reader, you're probably not really interested in the details of my choices or how happy I am at holding my work in my hand with my name on it. No, you just want to know where the books are being sold and how to order them. I sincerely thank all my readers for asking about print copies for month and months, and for being patient.

The books will be on sale at www.amazon.com sometime in next 5-7 days. They are available for sale now at the Create Space ebook store at the following links.  The cost per book is $13.99.  I think you will be pleased with how the books turned out in print. They are literally the ebooks brought to 3D life.

Buy Dating A Cougar

Buy Dating Dr. Notorious

Buy Dating A Saint

Buy Dating A Metro Man

A Reluctant Baby Boomer's Last Stand

Did you ever peel the labels off cans of food for a practical joke? No? Maybe my mind works differently than most people's. Labels are useful as a way to identify and classify things, but they can certainly cause limitations when you apply them to yourself, others, or your characters in a story. Even the good ones can draw a box around a person's definition that is very hard to escape.

"Baby Boomer" is a label I picked up and started using to define myself when I turned fifty. Up to that point I was just grumpily dealing with being "over 45". Someone gave me the book Boomer Babes: A Woman's Guide to the New Middle Ages. After reading it, I started to think of myself as someone who could simply choose not to be old, or at least not to be old in the same typical way as other women I knew. I decided that being labelled a "Boomer Babe" might be a pretty good thing.

Then I did research.

I am a huge fan of the Urban Dictionary for many reasons. One is that I sometimes teach Intro to Linguistics and find the idea of average people defining new words and terms to be fascinating. Though I do believe that the very proper Samuel Johnson, who is typically credited with creating the first dictionary, is looking down on English speakers now and shuddering over the corruption of his life's work. I know I shudder over what I learn sometimes, including the fact that there really is such a thing as "too much information".

This happened when I looked up "Baby Boomers" in the Urban Dictionary. Submissions from people I'm old enough to have given birth to are full of blame for what they feel my generation has not done well. The vitriol in the contributions made me start thinking hard about that "Baby Boomer" label, because I'd gone from my perception of it as the "free-spirited older woman" contextual meaning to the "generation that caused all the problems in the world" one .

Writers well know that words have power and that a great deal of that resides in the images created in a reader's mind about the word's meaning. "Meanings" hit the brain as instanteously as the words are read.

For example, can a "rape survivor" ever have great sex again? I tackled that subject in Carved In Stone in a slightly different way. My 47 year old heroine lectures the 53 year old hero and tells him that after thirty years of therapy, she is doing just fine. She tells him that he is the one with the problem because my hero turns down intimacy with the heroine because of the label in his head, not anything genuinely true about her. It is about Jessica's struggle to shed a label in this case and I can tell you after thirty years the frustration level is high.

Many writers use labels with contextual definitions to set up a character precisely for the purpose of putting them through the change later. If the character is labelled and described as a "nice guy" or a "good woman", a reader typically picks up the book knowing full well that the label is going to be ripped away at some point in the story.

Maybe the labels we choose in real life function the same for us. At some point in the story of our lives, they'll be ripped away. Then we're like those cans of food in my practical joke, uniform on the outside, but quite different on the inside. If all the cans in the pantry look the same, there's really only one method of discovery.

My mother was mad at me for a very, very long time.

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If you haven't read it yet and are interested, Carved In Stone is on sale during the month of November for .99 cents.

Here are several links to where it can be purchased and downloaded (Kobo hasn't adjusted the price yet, but it should happen soon):

Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Apple (via iBooks), Sony, Kobo