October 21, 2019
Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
It’s a trap! I started to compose my answer and realized I was on the path to insulting authors who are different than me. So here we are, stuck.
Because the two are not mutually exclusive- a good author can be both. I haven’t been that gifted or that lucky.
I strive for both, with some caveats. We’ll talk about that later.
When I first attempted to write a book, I wasn’t worried if I was doing it right. I wrote it without chapters, just one long story. My only focus was getting the words on paper and seeing if I could do it. Write a book, that is. And I did. Not a good book, but a book nonetheless.
So I tackled a second one. And I tried to make it more bookish. With chapters and everything. I even paid some attention to crazy things like point of view and settings. And then a third.
And somewhere along the way, I decided I was good enough to share a story with the rest of the world. And I really paid attention to all the things that make a book a book and readable by others. What I didn’t know about was things like finding a target audience and genres and readers’ expectations.
But that gave me the freedom to write my stories without worrying about what readers were looking for. I was more worried about my stories being my stories and not a clone of someone else’s. I read a lot and I was rightfully worried about my stories being original and not heavily influenced by books I’ve read.
With time and experience, I’ve come to understand a bit more about things 
like market share and reader experience. I also understand that my stories don’t dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s of what “generic” reader expectations might be. My heroines are strong without needed men to save them. My mysteries don’t require murders. And, heaven forbid, my cozy mysteries have the occasional swear word.
Now, remember that thing I mentioned we’d get back to? It’s sex scenes. If you’ve read my books, you didn’t find any. It’s not that I object to them, it’s that I feel my stories don’t need them. And frankly, I’ve read enough of them that they have started to get boring. Or unrealistic. And this coming from someone old enough to remember when even one sex scene in a romance was breaking new ground. Readers may want them, but they don’t get them from me.
So, if I answer the question honestly, I try to be more original. Or maybe try is the wrong word. I wouldn’t write any other way. I have to be true to my characters and their stories. Because that’s what it comes down to- my books are their stories, not mine. And I hope readers enjoy them.
You can find out more about my books elsewhere on my page. The urban fantasy/paranormal (notice I didn’t say paranormal romance?) books can be found HERE. The female sleuth mysteries are HERE
Now, I’m off to visit the pages of the other authors in this hop. You can come along by following the links below.
October 21, 2019
Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
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1. Link your blog to this hop.
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sensual feeling of a pen slipping across a piece of paper, leaving behind the words flowing from my brain. Even a pencil will do if that’s all I can find. (I rarely have a problem finding a pen these days. The picture is a small segment of my desk.)
is Jake, Harmony’s ex-lover. He’s based on no one but himself. I’m still not sure if he’s a bad guy pretending to be good or a good guy pretending to be bad, he won’t reveal his secrets. But, I have found pictures that I think represent him perfectly. So, just for fun, here’s Jake!
Take my book Wolves’ Knight as an example. I’d planned out a romance subplot for Tasha, my main character, and even started writing the scene where she and the planned romantic lead got hot and heavy with each other. And promptly got stuck, because she started fighting me. She had a different idea about how things should go. I had to set my ego aside and swap up the plot to satisfy her.
A similar thing happened with The Baron’s Cufflinks. I’d written what I thought was a great chase scene, but something didn’t sit right. The action was great, the words were fine, but it just didn’t work. Then Harmony, my main character, convinced me it was because I’d told it all wrong. That wasn’t the way it happened. I put aside my ego, scrapped the scene, and rewrote it the way she wanted. I have to admit, it was better her way, but I still liked mine! It involved the sheriff and the highway patrol, a bad guy or three, and Harmony throwing her shoes at one of them. Thankfully, I was able to use pieces of it in the revised version.