Are You on BookBub?

 

Are you on BookBub? Just a quick note to introduce you to BookBub, if you haven't heard of it already. BookBub is a great place to: Follow your favorite authors (I follow authors like Kristin Hannah, Nicholas Sparks, and Elin Hilderbrand). See what books authors are reading and recommending (I have recently recommended 4 books, including A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner and The Wish by Nicholas Sparks). Keep up with new releases.  Jersey Girl Book Review recently reviewed Summer’s Wisdom on BookBub and concluded with this: 'Summer's Wisdom is a heartwarming and thoroughly enjoyable story. You can't help but root for Jamie as she discovers that her world is filled with a loving family and friendship, along with a sense of belonging, finding love, following one's passion, and that she's ultimately in control of how she lives her life with self-acceptance and happiness. Summer's Wisdom is an inspirational and feel good women's fiction story that will pull at your heartstrings, touch your soul, and leave a smile on your face." Buy Summer’s Wisdom on Amazon I hope you are all having a great start to 2022! Well wishes, Heather

Suicide Notes: Notable Writers Who Committed Suicide

Photo Credit: Heather Hummel Photography

"What do you write?" Any writer will tell you that this is the first question asked when people find out what they do for a living. It's not like identifying yourself as a doctor because most doctors will indicate their specialty, such as "I'm a cardiologist," or "I'm a chiropractor." But when writers' tell people that they are a writer, they prepare to explain what kind of writing they do.

My writing career can't be pigeon-holed because I write both nonfiction and fiction books as well as articles. "I've written two novels and am working on my third. Oh, and I'm ghostwriting four books for clients," is my current explanation-in-a-box.

It's easy to forget that authors started writing out of their known genre as well. Stephen King submitted several short stories to publications and tacked the rejection slips to his wall for several years before selling his book (and later the movie), Carrie. His book On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft, now in its 10th anniversary, intertwines his biography with advice for writers that many wannabe writers pay hundreds of dollars to learn in workshops. Very few people knew that lawyer turned author, David Baldacci, was writing a novel until he had already signed a contract with a publisher. He was a closet writer who spent much of his childhood and "free" time while in law school writing stories. Later, he penned Absolute Power late at night and on weekends. Even now his work is published in several different genres...there is no pigeon-holing David's work.

 

Photo Credit: Heather Hummel Photography 

Every writer's story about their struggles, their early days, and when they broke through varies. Sadly, some became bigger than life authors after their lives ended. Sylvia Plath's work shadowed her husband's, Ted Hughes, until after the event of her suicide. Sylvia's suicide brings up an interesting reality -- Wikipedia has a link that lists hundreds of seasoned writers who committed suicide. One of them, Jean Amery, penned a book titled, On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death. In 1978 he followed his own advice and suicided. Evidently the philosophies on the pages he wrote were validated in his mind to the point of taking his own life.

In reading about the lives and deaths of the writers in this category, the reasons for suicide were evident -- medical or mental. I suppose that would be true of anyone who suicides, yet in reading the biographies of these writers, many of them felt that they set themselves free when they died. Some were unable to continue writing due to their medical or mental restraints; therefore, perhaps, they felt their lives were not worth living beyond that point, as evident in the letters they left behind. (I now wonder if any writer who has suicided did not leave a written note?)
 
My first novel, Whispers from the Heart, portrays a high school English teacher who copes with the suicidal death of one of her students. She uses journal writing in the classroom as a tool for the students to heal and try to understand why someone with so much life ahead of them would cut it short deliberately. This is a question rarely answered by the people left behind to grieve. It becomes about coping more than understanding.

In Sylvia Plath's case, she fought clinical depression for several years, but before ending her life, she realized and admitted to a friend that through her thoughts she created the distressing aspects of her life. In the biographical movie, Sylvia, Gwyneth Paltrow plays Sylvia and tells her friend, "You see, if you fear something enough you can make it happen." Unfortunately, she felt she learned this lesson too late.



Follow Heather Hummel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HeatherHummel
This post originally appeared on my Huffington Post blog. 

Is Your Author Bio Up to Par? 10 Tips on How to Write an Author Bio

Kind of like kids knowing they need to eat their veggies, authors know the importance of a well-crafted bio, but that still doesn't mean they like writing one.

Several years ago when I taught writing workshops through Barnes & Noble in Charlottesville, VA, the first exercise I had students do was write their author bio. The cringing, seat shifting, pen-tapping task gets them every time, and every single one of them groaned in unison. And yet, by the end of that first class, they proudly took home a well-crafted bio to stick on their refrigerator. To my surprise, each one returned the next week to see what hoops I'd make them jump through next.

That teaching experience taught me that authors really, truly despise writing their own bios. To help the medicine go down a little easier, I came up with my top 10 tips for writing a quality author bio:

1. You will need up to three versions of your bio. (Yes, I thought you'd love to hear that!) Write an extended bio for your website, proposals, interview sheets and media kits; a medium length bio for queries, guest spots on other websites and shorter marketing material; and a brief bio as a byline or for limited character social media websites.

2. Go ahead -- brag! Start with your greatest writing achievement. As an aspiring author, even one published article in the local paper counts and should be highlighted.

3. Leave your demographics for the end and keep it brief. Though the mere fact that you were born is awesome, as a new author, it's more important to establish yourself as a writer first.

4. When listing book publications, should you have any, italicize the title and do not put in quotation marks. Include the publisher and year published in parentheses after the title: i.e. Title of Your Book (Publisher, 20_ _).

5. Refer to yourself in the third person. On the longer bios, I personally like to interject "Heather" a few more times rather than using the pronoun.

6. The credibility an award gives a book can change the life of it! However, note only awards that are relevant to your writing. For example, if you write nonfiction gardening books and you won an award for your outstanding garden, then brag about it. Alternatively, if you won a blue ribbon for your brownies, but you write science fiction, leave out the blue ribbon (but feel free to send me the brownies!). Be sure to update your bio as the awards come in. When two of my books won awards within the same month, I immediately updated my author bios on my website and other places.

7. BS? BA? BIS? MBA? Ph.D.? When it comes to education, much like awards, if your degree is relevant, then note it. If you have a Ph.D. in psychology and are writing a book on teenage bullying, then certainly note it -- it's a credential. Alternatively, if your degree is in architecture and you changed careers to write children's books, unless your book is about how to build the coolest Lincoln Log cabin on your block, you can leave the degree out (especially in the short bio). I have a BIS degree in English and Secondary Education from the University of Virginia. These credentials support me as a writer, writing coach and workshop instructor, so I use it in my long bio.

8. Your bio will change dramatically as your career advances. In that same Barnes & Noble class, I showed student my 2007 bio and my then 2010 bio. It's amazing what a difference three years can make. I started my 2007 bio with the fact that I "reside in the midst of the Blue Ridge Mountains" because I thought it sounded really cool and literary at the time. I learned that where you live isn't so important. It was my publishing credits that advanced my career and changed my bio. Think of it like this -- it's not where you write, it's what you write!
Bonus: If you haven't read Stephen King's On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft, I highly recommend it.



9. If you can, have a professional (or at least a really good) photographer take a quality author photo of you. I used a photographer in Colorado and it took more shots than words on a page to capture the perfect shot. Once you have it, use it shamelessly. Most authors are not recognized by what they look like unless they're John Grisham, who resides here in the midst of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and author of dozens of books including, A Time to Kill: A Novel and Rogue Lawyer. But, an author photo is needed for your book's jacket, your website, social media and press kit (at the very least). Take the time to do it right. (You can read my previous article titled "The Relevance of a Professional Author Photo.")

10. Browse the Internet and look in the books on your bookshelves for ideas. Especially read the bios of authors who write in your genre.

11. Bonus tip: Read your bio aloud when you finish writing it. You'll know immediately if something doesn't sound right.

Follow Heather Hummel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HeatherHummel
This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.  

Two Facebook Features Every Author Should Be Using

The number of titles available on Amazon has increased at an unfathomable rate. For example, when I first published through McGraw-Hill in 2008, there were two million books on Amazon. Kindle wasn't a contender at the time, so this number represented paperback and hardcovers. Today, there are over 24 million paperbacks, over 8.5 million hardcovers, and almost 1.3 million Kindle titles. At the time of writing this post: in the last 30 days, 104,606 new Kindle titles were released. That's a lot of authors.

With the need to make their book stand out against tens of millions of others, an author needs every tool in their toolbox. So, image my surprise when many of them weren't taking advantage of two critical Facebook features.

Works At

I continued to be amazed by the number of times I went to a Facebook friend's "About" section on their timeline only to discover they didn't have their Facebook author fan page linked as their "Works At." Worse yet, many times it simply gave the generic term of "Writer at Author" and when clicked, it went through to a generic "Author" page.

I realized rather quickly that too any authors simply didn't know about the Facebook feature that allows them to link their fan page as their "Works At" on their personal profile. When I posted both on my timeline and in one of my writing groups asking if authors knew about this option, the responses in the comments confirmed that many of my friends and fellow writers hadn't known about this option, and they quickly went and added it.

Michelle Miles, a romance author of A Knight to Remember: 3 (Realm of Honor), and well over a dozen other novels, was one of those authors who took the tip to heart and quickly updated her "Works At" to lead her friends to her fan page. Miles is the perfect example of the point I was making. She has nearly 3,000 personal Facebook friends and just over 800 Likes on her author fan page (rather than the other way around). Now that her "Works At" reads "Michelle Miles, Romance Author," rather than "Author," the expectation is to drive those few thousand friends who haven't already Liked her fan page over to her page as new Likes.


I'm focusing on authors here because they are the ones I interact with the most on Facebook. However, any self-employed individual who has a Facebook fan page should consider doing this.

It's easy to update the "Works At" section. Simply follow these steps to update your profile:

• In the "About" section, click on Edit
• In the box that says, "Where have you worked?" start typing the name of your fan page.
• Click on it when it pops up as an option.
• Be sure to also remove any titles that click through to a generic page.
It's that simple.

Cover Photos


While we are on the subject of fan pages, I should point out that one of the features Michelle Miles was already taking advantage of was optimizing her cover photo. While Miles has over a dozen books in publication, her fan page's cover photo strictly features her Realm of Honor series. Had she used more, let alone all 15 book covers, she would have overwhelmed visitors with visual overload. Reducing it to the Realm of Honor series attracts readers to that series who will likely go on to find and read her other books as well.

For best results, your cover photo should be sized at 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. Any smaller and the image will be stretched. Any larger and part of the image will be hidden. Your cover photo essentially works as a billboard for your books (or service/product). As a professional author, your cover photo should be professional in design and branding.


Author and public speaker, Valerie Ramsey, utilizes her cover photo with images of her book cover and two of her modeling images with a few keywords laid in to describe her. In this cover photo, her brand is represented and visitors instantly establish a feel for who she is when they visit her fan page.



All photographers should be utilizing both of these Facebook features as well. One example is my own Heather Hummel Photography fan page, which has this image as my cover photo. The four images used in the cover photo showcase a sample of my work that is represented by Agora Gallery in New York City. I intentionally chose four images that shows both the diversity of my subjects as well as the continuity.

These are two simple features that should be used by every author, public, speaker, photographer, and anyone else with a business they are promoting. If you aren't sure how to create a cover photo and have a limited budget, go on www.Fiverr.com and hire someone. It's not that difficult with the right tools, and as an author, you already have the graphics -- your book cover and author photo.

Note: Speaking of author photos, be sure to read my article on the Relevance of a Professional Author Photo.

Follow Heather Hummel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HeatherHummel
This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post. 

What Compels an Agent to Sign an Author? Q&A With Literary Agents Jeff Kleinman and Michelle Brower (Part III of III)

In this Part III of the series from my interview with literary agents Jeff Kleinman and Michelle Brower of Folio Literary Management; they continue to shed light on the industry by discussing what compels them to sign an author and how willing they are to edit. 

Q: What compelled you to make offers to the last authors you signed?


Michelle Brower
Photo Credit: Folio Literary Management
Michelle: I have two very different examples of authors who came to me, and they are both really great in their own ways. One author I signed earlier this year came through my slush pile. Her novel is literary women's fiction, and we are in the process of selling it now. The great part is that we didn't know each other at all. She really was a blind submission. The one thing that made me sign her was that the quality of her novel really drew me in. It worked in terms of pacing and plot, and it had a really interesting concept. All of those pieces came together and made me pull it out of the slush pile, read it and decide to offer on it. She has a career, but being a novelist is what she always wanted to do, and now we are making it happen. I really love when that happens because I do think there are a lot of very talented writers out there who aren't living in New York or attending the same parties or know colleagues who referred them to me or who don't have that kind of connectedness to the industry; and yet, they are good writers who have an excellent book. I hope to be the person who helps get them out there into the world.

The other example, which is a very different way of going about landing an agent, occurred while I was working with an author who published her first novel with a major publisher 10 years ago. It didn't do very well and her agent has since left the industry. She wrote a new novel and hired a freelance editor for it, and that editor contacted me and suggested I read it. I read it. I loved it. I offered representation and found out that there were seven other agents who also offered her representation! So, I had to really, really fight for her to choose me. I fought very hard, and so I'm very, very excited about that one as well. She wrote a great book, and as I said earlier, that's the heart of what is really important.

Having connections is better than a platform because, honestly, when one of my authors recommends a friend who's in their writing group, I pay attention, even if they're not always for me. There's something about having somebody I already know, like, and whose work I respect pass me something to look at.

For self-published books, I don't know that it takes an immediate platform, but what it takes is a lot of engagement, especially community engagement. We certainly encourage all of our authors to be on Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads and Instagram. It's really important to actually connect with a reading community, and for self-published authors that's pretty much the best and only way they can get the word out about their book.

I have definitely picked up authors who have been self-published because I've seen that they've managed to find an audience without anyone's help. Then I read their book, and I can see where I can actually be of help to that author. That's when it works.

Q: Do you edit clients' work?

Jeff Kleinman
Photo Credit: Folio Literary Management
Jeff: I have been known to sit down with an author, develop the concept with characters and an outline, and then they send me three chapters at a time. That kind of incredible micro-level attention, however, is only the case for clients I already represent. For example, I was reading a revised version of a novel, and while reading it I got lightheaded, my fingers went numb, and I was hyperventilating! It was amazing. But, about halfway through it disintegrated. We had a long discussion about it, and he is now sitting down and reworking the outline. So, yes, I will work incredibly hands-on, but almost only ever for someone I have a relationship with.

Ultimately, an author needs to submit the best manuscript they can possibly deliver. The worst that can happen is when I pass on a submission, and I tell the author that I liked everything except X, Y and Z. and they respond with, "Gosh, I was afraid of that." Or "I hoped you wouldn't notice." Believe me, we notice. So, although we are willing to work with people, we want to work with people who are ready to be worked with.

Q:If you had one message for Indie authors, what would it be?
 
Michelle: We are not here to be mean to them. We are not here to keep them out. We are here to let in the books we think can work with. We are gatekeepers, but it's not because we don't like an author, and it's not because we don't think their work is good or that we don't think it has an audience. We just don't know how to find that specific audience. We're not out to say no to authors, we actually want to say yes. But, if you look back at the numbers I gave you about my slush pile (see Part II) we just can't. There are a lot of Indie authors who want to stay Indie. I think that's a great choice for many of them. However, some want to use the fact that they found their audience as a way to break into traditional publishing. I think both of those scenarios can work.

Jeff: The reality is, it's a brave new world of publishing, and agents are only one part of it.

Thank you to Jeff and Michelle for sharing their industry expertise, views, and stories!

Read Part I of the series
Read Part II of the series
Follow Heather Hummel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HeatherHummel
This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post. 

Indie Authors Seeking an Agent: Take Note! Q&A With Literary Agents Jeff Kleinman and Michelle Brower (Part II of III)

"If a book has 250 reviews with 4 and 5 stars, and 70,000 in sales, 

this author has a lot of promise." 

-- Michelle Brower

If you're an Indie author looking for an agent, take note! In this Part II of my interview with literary agents Jeff Kleinman and Michelle Brower of Folio Literary Management, they open up about industry numbers that tend to grab their attention by sharing the importance of Amazon rankings, reviews, price points, and book sales.

Michelle Brower: Photo Courtesy of Folio Literary Management
Q: How many book sales does it take to impress an agent?

Michelle: It definitely depends on genre because an author would need more romance sales to actually impress an editor in that market; whereas in women's fiction, historical fiction, or literary fiction, an author doesn't need quite as many sales. What I'm ultimately looking for is sales north of 60,000. But, a book's price point is also important. I cross-reference those two numbers to calculate about how many sales a publisher would be able to reasonably expect.

Price point matters because 50,000 sales is not just 50,000 sales. 50,000 sales at $.99 is one thing. 50,000 sales at $3.99 is another. 50,000 sales at $6.99 is entirely another. We can't sell books at $.99 and make money. Because of these factors, we find the e-book market to be very price sensitive.

As for free, if an author had 30,000 free downloads, we can't really use that as a number to determine whether or not it would translate well into the traditional market.
 
Q: How important are Amazon rankings?

Michelle: Amazon rankings are important for different reasons. I actually think they are really important if you want to grab the attention of an agent because that's mostly how someone would see a book... when it pops up higher in rankings. Those could have halo effects. For self-published authors, I would generally recommend starting with a little bit higher price point, but getting sales so that the rankings improve. The more readers hear about and buy a book, the more the book gets reviews, and it sort of all snowballs.

Ultimately, the ranking for us is really not what we are looking at though. Why? Because it doesn't matter at the end of the day if a book ranks #2 on Amazon because it sold 1,000 copies in one day but it never sold anymore or very few.

Q: How important is it for an author to have more than one book?

Michelle: It's critical for an author to create a relationship with their readers by having more than one piece of material. I always look at the relationship between the author and their readers. Most of the successful self-published authors will get a new reader on their second book who will go back and read the first one.
If an author has a series, that can definitely help, but I also think it's just the book. If a reader likes an author, they are more likely to go back and purchase something else or wait for the next release. I think that that's something in publishing that's not really considered the brand. It's actually the author who is the brand. If an author is doing well, readers will come back whether they are sci-fi, fantasy, or romance.


Jeff Kleinman: Photo Courtesy of Folio Literary Management
Jeff: Michelle is right because readers who like an author's Book X would also be interested in Book Y. I had an author who wrote three books, and the first two were stand-alone. The third one has a really, really great character that everybody wanted to read about. However, readers didn't necessarily read the other two books because the character wasn't in it. So, it's not going to be just about the author. It depends on how strong a character is. That is something any author should be thinking about as they write because in order to have a loyal fan base, you need to make a character who is strong, quirky, and interesting enough to support multiple books.

Keep in mind that readers buy the successor books for one of two reasons. One is an author whose name they start to trust and the other is because of a character they start to trust. For example, a lot of times they won't know the author, and they just want to read more because of the character. Jack Reacher is a great example. A reader can know Jack Reacher, but they might not know Lee Child is the author.

Q: How influential are reviews?

Michelle: We tend to put reviews into two sections: customer reviews from Amazon or GoodReads only and "other reviews," because we know there are a lot of services out there providing reviews. Some of those "other reviews" have made a big difference for authors. For example, Darcie Chan had a Kirkus Review that ended up really launching her.

Reviews are intensely important for visibility. I'm generally looking for a book with upwards of 100 reviews, and that they're good reviews because certainly if a book has 200 reviews with several 2 star reviews, that won't interest me. So even though I'm looking at upwards of 100, I'm more comfortable somewhere in the 300 range. I think that at 100 reviews, a book doesn't have the sales yet to necessarily translate into traditional publishing.

Reviews are important because they affect visibility in the Amazon system. Amazon has algorithms I don't pretend to begin to understand, but one of the pieces is the number of reviews and at what level. It's important for self-publishers to work at increasing reviews and hopefully having them snowball into more reviews and sales.

Ultimately, when presenting to a publisher, I provide a cross-section. If a book has 250 reviews with 4 and 5 stars, and 70,000 in sales, this author has a lot of promise. Alternatively, if a book has 200 reviews and only 10,000 sales, it's going to be so much more challenging to present them and say, "You should invest money in this author."

***
Did you miss Part I? Click here.


Follow Heather Hummel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HeatherHummel


This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Wrestling with the Wrath of Writer's Block

Staring at a blank page and not having the words flow the way they did last week, or even yesterday, is every writer's nightmare. Writer's block can feel paralyzing, especially with a deadline fast approaching, and it can often leave writers wondering if they should give up on their craft. Some would say it's a rite of passage. Others would argue it just takes shaking things up.
To help out, I tracked down willing writers of various genres who have faced the plague of writer's block, and who were willing to share their cures or tips for preventative maintenance.

Novelist: Hildie McQueen

Writer's Block, or "Where was I going with this" syndrome affects all authors at some point. While working on my latest book The Rancher, I became so frustrated. My poor hero, Grant Gentry, sat on his horse without a clear destination and I thought, well crud, nobody wants to read this boring crap. So I did what I normally do, I walked away from the story.
That is my secret. When you hit a brick wall, turn around and walk away. For me there's nothing like a drive down long country roads to clear the mind and get the story back on the right path. Sometimes I even invite the hero or heroine along.
It's amazing what drives in rural Georgia does to the characters in my head. They loosen up and start talking. Maybe it's the fresh air, or maybe they're afraid I'm going to kill them off?

Playwright: Everett Robert

As a playwright, the most important thing for me to write is dialogue. When I'm struggling to hear a character's voice, I'll often stop whatever I'm doing, turn off the music or noise and go to a coffee shop, walk around a college campus, or go to a retail store. I find that writer's block doesn't come from a lack of "ideas," but rather a lack of "voice." Listening to other voices helps me tune in my muse to the character voices I'm struggling to hear.

Novelist: Julie Benson

When I wrote Bet On a Cowboy I suffered from writer's block. The charismatic man I loved enough to give his own story clammed up on me. My heroine wouldn't share her internal conflict with me. I feared I'd miss my deadline for my first book written under contract. At a workshop I attended with Jayne Ann Krentz and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, they said to keep writing until the story makes sense. Trusting them, that's what I did. When I hit the major love scene on page 137, suddenly everything made sense. I knew the answer -- my heroine wanted children but didn't think she'd ever have a meaningful relationship. I added a scene at the beginning with her checking into having a child through artificial insemination. The rest of the book practically wrote itself from there. Now when writer's block hits I know that as long as I keep writing, eventually everything will make sense.

Fiction Writer: Daniel Sherrier

Exercise is a wonderful remedy for writer's block. Writing, obviously, is a sedentary activity, but being sedentary is how cobwebs form in your brain. That might help if you're writing about cobwebs, but otherwise, they'll just get you stuck. So, go out for a run, take a kickboxing class, or even just a brisk walk might do the trick. You'll come back to your work feeling energized, and you'll have done something your body needs anyway. Your entire self wins -- and your book does, too.

Ghostwriter and Novelist: Heather Hummel

As a ghostwriter, my clients often provide me with the basic concepts for their books, sometimes even an outline and some material. However, it's up to me to organize and write the rest of the material to complete their book for them. To do this, and to write my own novels, I've always had two effective muses that prevent writer's block.
One is cycling, as I have been known to write entire chapters in my head while pedaling on long bike rides. I see my laptop as the tool for putting the words down, but much of my writing actually formulates in my head while riding. (The trick is remembering them later when I go to type the words on my laptop.) For this reason, I tend to ride alone, so I can quiet my mind with only the whirl of tires on the pavement beneath me.
My other muse is photography. Because I'm also a land and seascape photographer, I find the cross-creative roles feed on one another. If I'm feeling stuck with a chapter, I load up my car with my camera gear and my two dogs (they make great assistants) and head out to spend time photographing Mother Nature. By the time I return home, I am always refreshed and ready to write again. Having the mix of visual and written careers keeps me motivated on both fronts.

If you have a favorite muse, please share them in the comments below.

Follow Heather Hummel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HeatherHummel
This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post. 

Too Sexual for a Biblical Tale? Rachelle Ayala Stops by to Chat about MICHAL'S WINDOW

This was an interview I didn't want to pass up! Rachelle Ayala is here to talk about her somewhat controversial book, MICHAL'S WINDOW - the big question is, are the love scenes to sexy for a biblical book? Let's find out...

Heather: MICHAL'S WINDOW is your first novel (and by the way, I love the cover!). What inspired you to write it?

Rachelle: Believe it or not, reading the Bible. Michal is a relatively unknown character, one that everyone loves to hate. Perhaps it's because she was a princess, but in any case, Michal's life is about loving to the fullest and losing everything for that love. The Bible depicts her as assertive, cunning, and opinionated. In a time when women's feelings were not important, she not only loved David, but acted quickly and decisively to save his life. Later on, she dared to speak her mind to her husband even though it displeased him.

Michal would have felt more at home in our century than her own times, and I felt this remarkable woman's voice had been suppressed for way too long.

Heather: Since this is a biblical story, did you expect it to have controversy around it? 

When I set out to write Michal's story, I decided to make it well-rounded and gritty. I would immerse the reader into her innermost emotions and feelings and not "hide" anything that might be unsavory or deemed sinful.

I was not trying to write a sermon or a Sunday school lesson, but a novel that had historical elements woven with imaginative subplots in a way that would allow the reader to share Michal's experience.

Heather: MICHAL'S WINDOW has been criticized for being too sexual in nature, going against its biblical category. Do you consider the scenes to be sexually explicit or are you shocked by the reactions from some readers?

On the whole, the vast majority of my readers (including several pastors' wives and Sunday school teachers) have enjoyed the story including the steamy bits. Of course there are those who have never been exposed to any semblance of sex in a story with Biblical characters, and I understand how they may feel. I stand by my rating of "mild", because most of the descriptions are metaphorical and deal with what Michal is thinking and feeling. Of course, David's descriptions tend to be a bit more physical. There is one scene in particular where it got a bit hot and heavy, but this was written from David's point of view. A man just sees sex differently than a woman.

Sex is an integral part of the relationship between Michal and David. I debated leaving it out, but I would not have been able to show the reader the intensity of their attraction, obsession and yes, love, because they did love each other deeply. At the end, the reader should hopefully understand viscerally how it felt to be Michal, a woman ruled by love but caught in the challenging situations of her life.

Heather: Do tell about your second novel that's in the works. Is this going to be a series? 

Oh, I'm having fun with this one, Broken Build, a romantic suspense set in Silicon Valley with a software build engineer as the protagonist. This one has a simple premise. Could a man ever love a woman who had harmed him in the worst possible way? And I don't mean broken his heart, or stolen his money, or cheated on him with his best friend. But something much, much worse. I'm not going to tell you what it is because I structured this story in a way where things are revealed at the same time the character who is most affected by it finds out. It is a story for reader participation, whether throwing their e-readers into the wall, or laughing until their sides split, or howling and screaming at my characters while racing with them to solve the mystery.

On the surface, it's about broken software, broken cars, and broken lives. But it is a hopeful message that has a quirky ending. I'm not sure about a series yet, but there are quite a few characters that can be developed further (of the ones that aren't killed off or arrested).

Heather: Besides writing, what are your passions? Your muse?

I have a lot of passions, probably too many. I love music, playing the violin, mandolin and mountain dulcimer: classical and folk music. I've also made 23 mountain dulcimers, but I left off when the writing, revising and editing chores got too time consuming.

Nothing beats the first draft, and that's where my muse is. It's slinging words onto the screen without abandon, love-at-first-sight-daring, eating, sleeping, and dreaming my characters, and living through them. And most of all, it's the raw agony, the yawning void or the pressure-cooker fury, and blissful love with starry eyes, and having those emotions dictate the story. Too bad I only get about a month or two of first draft fever, then it's off to critique groups and the grind of revision and polishing.

I don't try to be controversial, but I also do not think about guidelines when I write. I go where the bare, naked emotions take me and I like to go deep. Just today I was commenting on someone's blog where she felt bullied by people telling her that she overstepped some line in her writing. Here's what I told her:

"If you don't have some people hating what you're doing, you're not doing it passionately enough." - Rachelle Ayala

Michal's Window, a provocative love story involving King David, is available at Amazon, Barnes &Noble, and Google Play
 

Author Bio:

Rachelle Ayala was a software engineer until she discovered storytelling works better in fiction than real code. She has always lived in a multi-cultural environment, and the tapestry in her books reflect that diversity.

When her hyperactive imagination is not in the mind of her characters, Rachelle enjoys social networking, reading and music.

Rachelle lives in California with her husband. She has three children and has taught violin and made mountain dulcimers.

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Self Publishing Statistics Continued - Who are the Top Earners? You Might be Surprised!

The second half of the previously posted article. More numbers and facts!

Self-Publishing Statistics – Who are the Top Earners? (via ePublish a Book)

Continued from Self-Publishing Statistics: Women fare better than men at making money from self-publishing So what are the factors that make the difference between the Top Earners (the respondents who said they could live off their royalties) and the others? Two third of the Top Earners are women,…