We all have little things that drive us crazy. Some of our pet peeves are perfectly reasonable, some…not so much. Today I’m going to share the one thing that really drives me up the wall.

First off, if I’m in this situation, I’m probably in a face to face conversation which means something has gone terribly wrong forcing me to emerge from my cave and make eye contact with people. These conversations go a little like this:
 
Person: So, what do you write?
Me: Right now I’m working on a romance series that takes place at a school for paranormal creatures.
Person: Oh, so like Harry Potter?
Me: No. They are all adults, attending a university…and they’re gay.
Person: So like Harry Potter fan fic?
Me: No, it’s nothing like Harry Potter. There are all kinds of paranormal beings, werewolves, vampires, etc.
Person: Ooohhh…
Me: *sighs in relief thinking they finally get it*
Person: So it’s like Twilight?
 
WHY? Why do people take any one aspect of a story and compare it to popular fiction? Are they trying to tell me it’s all been done before? Yes, vampires have been done before. Aliens have been done before. Magic has been done before. But when you take one aspect and just assume my book must be just like the first book you can think of that also has that in it, I kinda want to strangle you like a cartoon Homer taking out Bart. And since I’m an anti-social hermit, there is a chance I just might do it. I bet no one in prison will suggest my stories are derivative! 

Justin Smith was small for his age and constantly bullied. But as difficult as life was, he was surviving it. Then one day a new guy comes to his school and flips his world upside down.
​
Francis Scott is trying to start over. New school. New house. New life. But when he sees a student being bullied, his past comes back to haunt him and for once, he gets to do what's right.

Get for free on Amazon Nov. 17-19

​So as I lay in bed sick, YouTube has decided to take me to some very strange places. And one of those places was a Dr. Drew video where a conservative calls a trans woman "sir" and in response, she grabs him by the neck and threatens him with bodily harm. 

And that's not even the part that bothers me. Because sometimes when people do things that upset you, you respond in ways you probably shouldn't. That's just part of being pissed off.
​
What bothers me is no one is reacting as if she's responding in a way she probably shouldn't. Even in kindergarten they taught us it's not okay to hit people cause they upset you. That still holds true when you're forty.

Watching this play out made me realize my offense is irrelevant. I brought it up before because I saw it like stepping on someone's foot. People don't mean to step on each other's foot, and if you point out they did, they'll probably be more careful not to do it in the future. But that changes behavior, not ideas. They might decide if what they said offended me then they shouldn't say it, but that doesn't open up the dialog necessary to change their minds. 

So yep, while I'm sure I'll be offended again in the future, I'm resolved not to let it show.

Giving away a couple of books on All Romance for the next two weeks. And I'm also sharing the ones that are always free. Hope you like them.

Dragoste Academy: Bayne and Lucas (Always Free)​
When a lecherous werewolf falls for an aloof nymph, he pursues the dryad's affections, only to realize his persistence may be killing it.

Get my books for HALF OFF at AllRomance!

Marketing is by far the hardest part of being an indie writer. First off, writers tend to be less social than most of the populace. We spend day after day at our computers typing away about alternate worlds and then we're supposed to come out of our cave and impress people. Pfft. Good luck with that. So today I'm going to share another lesson I've learned through fucking up. May it help you avoid the same mistakes.

I, of course, assumed the problem lied with the book itself. Because I'm dumb. I didn't think for once that the blurb I wrote at 4am with one eye open might be the reason no one, anywhere wanted my book. Nope, didn't occur to me once.

There are several issues with this blurb. Most of it having to do with me paying absolutely no attention to what the people who'd read this kind of book want to be promised is contained within. People reading the Love Unleashed series want brutal, aggressive and sexy. I promised them "love and friendship". *pukes* I'm sorry, I must have gotten this book confused with my fluffy bunny romances. My bad.

So, how did I discover I was a moron? When I published Marked and it performed the way I was expecting Ravaged to perform with none of the benefits Ravaged had, like being a prequel to Pillaged.

This one I wrote around 10pm when I had both eyes open. As you can see it contains more words that will jump out at the kind of reader who will want to read this book: BRANDED AND DEGRADED, COLD AND ALOOF OWNER, FEAR OF BEING DISCARDED, LIFE DEPENDS ON PLEASING HIS MASTER.

These things scream "buy me, buy me" to the type of person into that stuff. In the other one, the type of person into "friendship and love," which is vague as hell, isn't looking for a sexy slave story. And to write that the lord "would do anything for him", was I drinking? I made my hero sound like freakin Bella.

But moving on from past mistakes. This is how you avoid doing what I did:

• Take off your writer's cap. You are now a marketer. The book is your product and you must treat it as such.
• It's not about the plot. Writers tend to write vague blurbs because they are afraid of giving away too much. Blurbs aren't a summary, they are a sales pitch. Don't worry about giving away the plot, worry about saying the things that the prospective reader is looking to hear.
• Don't be vague. In an effort to "save the good stuff" people will write very vague blurbs, but remember, no one has decided to buy it yet. Saving the good stuff might mean no one picks up the book to see what the "good stuff" is. Vague blurbs may as well read as "Once there was a character, who went somewhere, and did something and it was cool." Oh yeah, I see people falling over each other to get to that one.
  
• Imagine this reader and figure out what they want. Like I said before, while love and friendship is a major theme in my story, that's not what someone looking at my darker more brutal works are coming for. They want the pain, the fear, the drama. So a more appropriate blurb highlights those aspects. You need to figure out what your reader wants from your story and promise them it's in there.
  
  When writing your blurb pretend instead of trying to explain to a reader what it's about, you're trying to get a friend to read it. If I was trying to get my best friend to read the Scarlet Letter I wouldn't be like, "In 1642 a young woman endures a harrowing trial through which she tries to maintain her dignity." But that's how a lot of blurbs read. I'd be like, "She got pregnant in a Puritan town while her husband had been missing for years and she wouldn't tell anyone who the father was, so they decided to punish and humiliate her for it." Which description would have you more likely to pick up the book?
  

So that's it. All the tips and tricks I have for writing blurbs better than I did. If you have any other secrets feel free to put them in the comments.

And if you'd like updates about my new releases, special offers, discounts and promotions, feel free to join my Readers' Group. I hate spam and I promise not to spam you.

If you're not a writer or don't frequent writing sites, this post won't mean much to you. But if you are a writer that hangs out on writing sites, I'm sure you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Someone wondered how the misidentification of passive voice started, this was my answer:



My guess is at some point someone said, "Hey, a lot of your sentences are passive, for fiction you should use more active sentences."

And they were like, "Passive?"

"You know instead of She was bitten by the dog say The dog bit her."

And they saw the lack of "was" as the difference between those two sentences and went forth to spread the word that "was" is evil.

So armed with this new found knowledge, these internet warriors scratched out sentences like "She was running out of time" and replaced them with "She ran out of time" because it's more "active" ignoring it no longer makes sense. Or if they realize it doesn't make sense, something super awkward like "She began to run out of time."

As people killed off the wases ruining their great literature, they realized right next to them were -ing words. Those were also removed when the sentence was fixed, so clearly those were bad too.

Then someone somewhere saw verbs with -ing were gerunds and therefore their foe had a name! (even though it's only a gerund when being used as a noun so actually applies to zero percent of the cases they are against)So they decided, in the name of good literature, the gerunds and the wases must be destroyed!

And then self-publishing got big and people needed platforms. But other people didn't care what they had to say...unless they were teaching writing. So taking their shoddy knowledge, they made blog posts, which they later turned into e-books. And the grossly incorrect fallacies spread. And now they had authority! It's in a book! It's on a website! It must be true!

Sure they could have been spending that time learning about story structure and characterization, but that shit's hard. Easier to do a "find all -ly" in Word.

/end rant

I have two books on sale. The first one is the College Pack which consists of three stories. All of which take place in a college setting. Frat House Rulez, Games We Play and Maid for You.

College Pack - Amazon

The other is Love Unleashed. Three stand alone stories about D/s romances that all take place in the same brutal alternate reality. This collection contains Pillaged, Ravaged and Seized by a Mercenary.

Love Unleashed - Amazon