jana_denardo

So I'm staring down at the pipe at a very busy August. On the 14th Snowbound is out. On the 19th Boldly Go my freebie Vegas wedding story will be out. On the 21st out comes Soldiers of the Sun, my second novel. It's going to be fun. Hectic. Insane.

But can I just say I'm thrilled that people are buying all three Soldiers stories. I have sales of the novella and pre-sales for the above mentioned ones. I couldn't be happier.

And the domain for my webpage has been purchased and my friend is busy working on it now.

I'll be hosting the cover reveal for Soldiers of the Sun on tuesday so be watching for that.


I did in fact finish Camp Nano and would have put some graphics up if freaking photobucket didn't try to download a virus into my computer via its shitty ads. Instead of a graphic how about a taste of the opening pages of Blood Red Roulette. That's more fun anyhow.


This was no place for a ghost hunt. Arrigo had thought that even before he started out for his destination, Delilah's Diner, a greasy spoon hanging onto the 1950s with the tenacity of a bear trap. He remembered the location from the other week when he had been in the area on his actual job. As an enforcer for the Chiaroscuro, he had taken down a renegade vampire just a block away, in a biker bar called The Alibi. As a vampire himself, Arrigo belonged to an organization helping to keep ill-mannered and dangerously violent supernaturals under control. About the only thing worth noting in The Alibi had been a cute blond bartender. As for the vampire he had been sent there to end, the idiot was so young, so full of himself, it hadn’t been much of a fight.

Arrigo knew when Delilah's Diner crossed his desk at his day job at Taabu and Giancarlo's Psychic Advisement and Paranormal Investigations, it couldn't possibly be part of the new business he was considering: a ghost walk. Las Vegas had a few, but if Tripadvisor was to be believed, they were light on history. He hoped to come up with a tour backed up by Vegas history, with some good ghostly stories and a reasonable walk. It was a perfect job for vampires and there were several young vampires in town who weren't old enough to be out in the sun, like he could be, who could be tour leaders. Arrigo thought there was probably a joke in there somewhere, a vampire hunting ghosts.

Deliah's was too far off either the Strip or Freemont Street to make it good for the walk, not to mention it was a sketchy side of town. Still, he could add it into a book he'd been commissioned to write about haunted Vegas. Also it afforded Arrigo the chance to swing by The Alibi. He wanted to know more about the family who seemed to run the place, or at least the hot blond. The gray-haired, bearded man who screamed redneck with the bayou accent to back up the image held no interest for Arrigo other than to inspire distaste because of the hostility he lorded over the two young men who worked the bar with him: one was the blond that had caught his eye and the other was brawnier with darker hair. Arrigo decided they were obviously his sons from the way they interacted. Their accents were Louisianan, Cajun, actually. Arrigo figured they had come west looking for new homes after Hurricane Katerina like so many others. He knew a whole clan of vampires who gave up the New Orleans cliché and moved to Tempe, Arizona. Arrigo recognized the accent because he had lived in the Pontalba Apartments in the French Quarter once upon a lifetime ago.

Since he was on that side of town documenting haunted diners, Arrigo decided to stop at The Alibi, even though he hardly fit in. Maybe he'd see the hot blond. Those stunning blue eyes, short golden curls, and a muscular build got his motor running. Arrigo never discriminated between sexes when intimacy was concerned. Not that Arrigo had approached the blond and probably wouldn't tonight either, at least not in The Alibi. This sort of bar probably thrived on gay bashing, and he was not in the mood to get into a fight with people he’d gladly drain down to the last drop.


And I wanted to add another of those 100 things about writing here too

( 100 Things #91- Newish trends I like. )

There was a lot of angst, disappointment and giddy joy going around on my social media hang outs this past week. It was the sign ups for GRL conference which is a big one in the gay romance genre I write in. I have to say I had disappointment but not because I didn't get a featured author spot (did you see the The Big Bang Theory episode where the boys are frantically clicking on their laptops trying to get Comicon tickets? Yeah it's like that to get a spot), but because I know I can NOT go.

And for the foreseeable future I can not go. It's not a matter of money or desire. I would love to go as a supporting author or just plain guest the first time (I would hate to jump in with both feet having never been there at least once before). But my job gets in the way. And for me this sucks just a little. Certainly GRL and other conventions are not going to suddenly make me a bestseller and I can quit my day job (I'll never be able to quit that unless I write the next 50 Shades of crap, but that's a whole other conversation for another time). That said, going to these conventions is an excellent way to network with other authors (there are some I would very much like to meet.) and with fans.

However, professors don't usually get time off. It's understandable. We DO get off at least part of the summer and between semesters. Now a lot of us do research in the summer so it's not just us lounging pool side for three months. Others, like me teach in the summer too. Here's the rub: if I were an English professor, I could legitimately claim a writing convention as building my craft and making me a better professor. I'm a scientist. Want to know how gay literature relates to my job? Yeah, not much.

In theory I could burn my personal day to go but that leaves me rushing there and back again and paying a lot of money for the experience which won't be as good as it could because I don't have the time to give to it. And that's provided I can find an exercise for my students and/or someone to cover my class. Also it has to be approved before I could burn that day (granted my school wouldn't hassle me over that).

My years before teaching were spent seeing patients. Conventions doubled as vacation. Even now as a professor, they still do. I have trouble breaking that mind-set. So in my head I'm paying 400-500$ for a weekend where I see just the inside of a convention room AND I lose pay to do it. Yes, the other way to see it is doing something positive for my writing career and it's hard to get hard numbers to quantify the value of making the trip.

So I thought okay, let me try a smaller convention. I'd be a little fish in a very big pond at GRl. At least at a smaller con, I might be more noticeable. Shira Anthony mentioned one in Florida in July. I'm assuming she meant Rainbow Con and Queer SF has a table there, which is a good thing since I write genre fiction. Naturally I teach in July. I would have to miss one day of the convention because a day of summer school is like a week of regular school and I would need to be there. I'm not counting it out.

However, if anyone knows any good conventions in May/June, tell me about them please! That would be ideal for me (barring Memorial day weekend when I'm already at a science convention).

Yeah, I have to admit it: My process can be annoying as holy hell. Okay not so much the actual writing but my way around writer's block or the way I puzzle out difficult to write passages. General it goes like this. I find someone who is foolish generous enough to talk me through it. They offer suggestions. Sometimes it's exactly what I need. Sometimes it ends up in me going 'no, that can't work and here's why!'

And believe it or not that is very helpful. While I'm busy telling them why it won't work something that WILL work shakes loose in my brain. Take this weekend. I'm busy telling evil_little_dog why her suggestion won't work and OMG I've just written a bunch of stuff that will never work and I don't know what to do (and she's probably thinking STFU) and bam, it occurs to me, hey try this! This will allow you to use what you wrote without spoiling what comes next and hey it might even foreshadow something. Wow, my brain is wonderful. Go brain go.

Of course this process has to annoy the fuck out of anyone without range of it. It annoys ME, but apparently my brain works best with conflict and stress. You give it either of those things and it works. Give it peace and serenity and it finds another excuse to play Bejeweled Blitz. My muse is sort of an asshole sometimes but at the end of the day it gets the work done. And my friends only want to slap me a little a lot.

( #88 gutting your baby )

And totally random but Chuck Wendig is hosting a Year End favorites post over on Terrible Minds Here is mine:

1) Favorite novel of the year? Skin Game by Jim Butcher

2) Favorite non-fiction book of the year? The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

3) Favorite short story of the year? Broken Phoenix by Edmond Manning

4) Favorite movie of the year? Guardians of the Galaxy

5) Favorite TV show of the year? Gotham

6) Favorite song of the year? All of Me by John Legend (yes I know it’s from 2013, but I live in BFE and it didn’t start playing til this spring here)

7) Favorite album? The Circus At The End Of The World by Abney Park (ditto what I said for song)

8) Favorite video game? Criminal Case, yeah, it’s just a hidden object game on Facebook but I’m trying not to play games because I get too sucked into them.

9) Favorite app? Mlife, a slot machine simulator that lets you earn points towards things in Vegas owned by the Mlife group (the Mirage etc). Okay technically this is one I think I’d like. I have a dumb phone…

10) Favorite [something else] of the year? I’m going with favorite moment. Holding my very first published novel, Kept Tears, in my hands (couldn’t get the box from the publisher opened fast enough). A little self-centered? Yes, but it’s my favorites list so…

Some days you have to sit back and wonder 'is my story cursed?' We all have one. The novel that doesn't save your changes. The novel that is lost repeatedly in hard drive crashes (disc failure, flashdrive failure, didn't back up into the cloud). The novel that develops five problems for every one you solve. You start whimpering whenever you even think about that story even though you love it.

For me, right now, that's Soldiers of the Sun. I'm TEN months behind on getting it sent to a publisher for consideration. I've had first reader issues. I've lost edits I've made. Edits they made. I come up with fixes only to find they don't work.

Last night I was almost ready to whip it into the correct format for the publisher and then remembered I found a stack of hard copy edits when I was house cleaning. I made them this summer and kept them just in case my flash drive died before I got home. It didn't. But I DID check them and sure enough...they hadn't saved. I about wept. It's weeks worth of work lost.

I have to fix it again. Then I realized I had a timing issue (relatively easy to solve) and I still have a dialog issue. This is 1932 but the characters don't really sound all that 1930ish. They didn't in the other couple in this series either so I don't have to load it up on slang but I would like more. This will not be an easy fix. I look at this novel and just despair. I think it's a good one but my god, it's been a long hard labor and delivery.



And I decided to get my nano time wasting out of the way early. I've mocked up a cover for my Vampires in Vegas project.

There is one thing to always remember about historicals, the people who read them then to know their history. They will not hesitate to point out if you're wrong. I remember this even though it's been several years, a 20-something member of one of my on-line writers group cheerily announced she was going to write a historical but she found research boring so she wasn't going to do any. Several of us tried to point out that this would probably Not. Go. Well. We got that 'shut up, old people' attitude. I wonder sometimes if she ever really tried it.

The big things in history are pretty easy. Not even all that much research needed to find copious amounts of material. It's the little details that can be a downright bear to find. And not every historical period is as 'glamorous' as others. Victorian, Regency, Roman, you're covered. I'm struggling to find out things for the 1930s (especially specifically for Pittsburgh that isn't steel mill orientated). Yeah there's the Depression, thanks for that. Never knew. Rolls eyes. Now, it is important to find out things like when was Prohibition lifted (one of my first readers thought it was earlier than it was).

But what I really wanted was, how did every day life go? Yeah I asked grandma who was less than helpful (in spite of being married with a kid by then so I know she damn well remembers it). I have remnants of it in her house. My friend silvrethorn mentioned the other day about the rural areas not even having electricity or running water in the 19-teens (I forget now why we were discussing this other than she's writing a historical as well with the extra added layer of 'fun' because it's in another country, another language). Grandma had the kerosene lamps, the bowl/pitcher wash up combo, the metal wash tubs (we store wood in it now), cast iron clothes irons (I use it for a pannini press) and an outhouse (until 1952). The other grandma had the ginormous radio.

And that's what I mean by little things. In Soldiers of the Sun, Temple is an enormous fan of the radio. He loves music, loves to dance and is a radio drama junkie. He, like the other demon hunters, live in apartments inside the Soldiers' complex. It's not that spacious but the man has the biggest radio he could jam in there. It occurs to me, however, that some readers will have no idea that the radio I'm talking about isn't some little thing on a shelf (it is described a little).

So today I was at the Mothman Festival which was great for story ideas. Let's be honest, my upcoming holiday contemporary short story is an aberration for me and crazy stuff like Mothman gets my mind whirling (and let's not think too hard on the idea of normal doesn't enter my thoughts too often). It's my tradition to always go to the Mason Jar, a sizable antique store in Point Pleasant (gets me out of the sun, it's one of the few shops that doesn't die in PP's sadly decaying city center and I love antiques). This time I found two 20s-30s radios. Either of them would be perfect for Temple (wish they had the dates more specific) so I thought I'd share them.


This one is probably a little newer. It has knobs.

This is more what I had in mind. The door is used as volume control. If I had a house instead of a crappy apt, this one would have come home with me. I love it. It's in beautiful shape.

So yes, definitely, dig as much as you can to find those little details.

So I was thinking about reviews lately, mostly because I haven't been getting too many and while the empirical data behind whether or not it helps sales isn't as solid as I'd want it to be, I think it would help some. No, this isn't me begging for reviews (but if you read something of mine and you liked it, I'd love you to go to Amazon/Goodreads etc and at least put a star rating.

Both Stanford & Harvard agree that even negative reviews can drive sales (and no I'm not suggesting we go a-trolling). Pretty much for the same reason banning a book or movie drives sales; we want to see what the fuss is about.

I saw on Brain Games a clip talking about the psychology of the star rating, how people will go to Amazon to buy, well just about anything, and if faced with two similar products that are more or less the same price, they'll buy the one with the ratings vs the one without it. Our brain wants direction and it perceives the ratings as such, even if the reviewer doesn't know shit from shinola (and we've all had that reviewer whose talking about things you're not even sure are in your book or can't figure out the character names or things real things aren't real etc). If we see a lot of stars, we're more likely to buy that item.It's a little scary how that works.

So reviewing most likely does matter. It helps the author grow and keep on writing. More sales certainly gives the publishing house more confidence in the author which leads to more books being available.

If you want to help your favorite authors, take a few minutes and write a review or at least spare a few seconds to slap some stars on it. It matters and we'll love you for it.

( 100 things #80 Believablity and it's importance. )

And in completely other news, and very good news at that. Project Fierce Anthology is now up for pre-order. I'm in this great cause with so many other talented authors. The money raised goes to help LGBT homeless youth around Chicago. My story Nothing But Himself is urban fantasy and I really had a great time writing it. I would love to revisit the story.