I love the idea of having a Muse. Not a grand, ephemeral, spiritual Muse, but an actual Muse. The kind of Muse that can sleep on the bed and follow you around the house, like a dog. Dogs make great Muses. They always come when you call them. Especially when  you have a piece of meat in your hand. 

Cats in general do not make reliable Muses. My Muse is Smokie the Ragdoll cat; I introduced him in my Fat City Mysteries as Elfie, Kate’s Ragdoll. (I changed his name and gender to make sure he didn’t know I’d “used” him as a character!) Elfie née Smokie is a great character, but a finicky Muse. He turns up to lend creative inspiration only when he damn well pleases. Mostly he’s pleased when I’m opening a can of tuna.

Recently I wondered about famous writers and their muses. I did a little digging: 

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most potent Muse was probably his wife, Zelda.  Her Muse-dom came with a catch, however: she refused to marry Fitzgerald until he could support her in a lifestyle befitting America’s first celebrity flapper. Fitzgerald sprang into action. He quickly cranked out THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, and published it to critical success. Zelda agreed to marry him soon afterward. Then she set about making the rest of his life a living hell. 

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Rule about Muses: Don’t marry them.

Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway had a similarly bad outcome with one of his Muses, journalist Martha Gellhorn. The couple met at a bar in Key West (where else?). She later became his third wife. Gellhorn was reportedly too strong and spirited for Hemingway. She dumped him.

The Hemingway Rule about Muses: See the F. Scott Fitzgerald Rule.

I’m beginning to see a trend here. Famous writers are inspired by living, real people. People with whom they have hot, torrid affairs, but are better off not marrying. 

Hmm. Those of us who are happily married to non-Muses will simply have to find our creative inspiration another way. 

What about you? Do you have a Muse? If so, send us a picture. We’ll post the pictures this Friday. You can send the picture of your Muse to killzoneblog at gmail dot com.

I have a bad habit of overusing pet words in conversation. Every once in a while I’ll seize on an appealing new word and insert it at every opportunity.

Often I’m unaware of this repetition until someone points it out to me. Usually that someone is my youngest sister. 


“Is ‘draconian’ the new word of the day?” she’ll ask helpfully.  “That’s the third time you’ve used it today.” (I figure her obsessive need to point out my verbal flaws is a youngest sister thing.)


I’ll think back and realize that yes, I have been overdoing draconian. I’m on a draconian diet. The city council passed draconian new trash-day parking fines. And so on.


“Epiphany” is another word I’ve pounded into the dust. If I ever have another epiphany in my lifetime I’ll have to keep it to myself, because that word has been banned in my circle of close friends and relatives. I call them my Beta Chatters.

I’m always looking for signs of Word Repeatus Syndrome in my writing. And I usually find it. I’ve learned to do a global edit for any suspicious words. Suspect words include any that I particularly like. For example, “halcyon” would be a word I’d check, just because I like how it sounds. I’m probably a recidivist repeater of that term.  I’d also check  ‘recidivist’. If the word appears more than two times in the manuscript, or once in a chapter, I rewrite it.

I always check for repetition when a beta reader asks  about the meaning of a word. You can get away with using an unfamiliar word once, but do it twice and you look like you’re trying to be a pretentious know-it-all. (See last Friday’s post).


What about you? Do you have a tendency to overuse favorite words? Do you make a special effort to root them out during edit?

By: Kathleen Pickering  www.kathleenpickering.com

Great news for the self-published author looking for a marketing boost above the pile: Kirkus Indie reviews self-published works.

Believe it or not, word of mouth is still one of the strongest motivators for sales. Book sellers, librarians, book clubs, reviewers—your best friend—will all have an answer if ask, “Have you read anything good lately?”

Here’s where Kirkus Indie comes in. To quote them directly, “The Kirkus Indie program gives independent authors a chance to obtain an unbiased, professional review of their work, written in the same format as a traditional Kirkus review with the same chance of earning the coveted Kirkus Star.

Our Indie program curates the self-published segment of the industry to help consumers and industry influencers (such as publishers, agents, film producers, librarians and booksellers) discover books they may otherwise never find.”

The beauty of a Kirkus review is that you, the author, can chose whether or not the review goes public. If you don’t like the results, use the 250-300 word critique to improve your work and move on. However, should you be tickled to the tailbone about how your book was received, not only is the review yours to publish as you see fit, Kirkus will  post the review on their website at no extra charge. (The fee, I’ll discuss later. I want you to see the good stuff first.)

In addition to the website review, your review also gets distributed to their licensees, including Google, BN.com, Ingram, Baker & Taylor and more.

And if that’s not enough, the editors will consider your  review for publication in Kirkus Reviews magazine, which is read by librarians, booksellers, publishers, agents, journalists and entertainment executives. Plus, the review may be selected as a feature in the Kirkus email newsletter which distributes to more than 50,000 industry professionals and consumers.

Now, you ask, who does the reviewing? Meg LaBorde Keuhn, COO of Kirkus Media recently told Author Cheryl O’Donovan in a RWR article that editorial integrity is sacred to Kirkus. Only professional reviewers who are genre experts, independent and totally unbiased are hired.

O’Donovan cited author Darcie Chan who said a Kirkus Indie review played an important role in helping her make self-publishing history by selling over 500,000 e-books and counting. The Kirkus Indie review encouraged readers to take a chance on her as an unknown author.

Nice.

Kirkus Indie is the fastest rising segment in the Kirkus organization, being followed closely by its new editorial service. (Visit Kirkus Editorial for more info.)

What’s the catch? You pay for your review.

Standard service with a 7-9 week response time costs $425. Express services for $575 returns your review within 4-6 weeks. Kirkus Indie requires two copies of the published book or completed manuscript. For e-book only format a manuscript PDF is sent directly to the editor.

Now, we all know that the self-publishing industry is booming. This author believes that obtaining a favorable review from an established reviewer branded with an 80 year reputation for being the toughest book critic in the world makes good business sense.

What do you think?

Write on, my friends!

xox, Piks

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

If another person asks me whether I have read Fifty Shade of Grey I will scream (I haven’t by the way) – though far worse are the well-meaning acquaintances who eagerly ask whether my current book is anything like it (because, of course, a historical mystery writer would be writing erotic fiction wouldn’t she?!)


My answer is always the same – no…no, I’m not particularly interested in reading about sadomasochistic sex and no, I’m not particularly interested in writing about it either. I’m also not all that interested in reading or writing fan fiction though most of the women I know who have read Fifty Shades of Grey are surprised when I tell them this is how the trilogy initially began – as a homage to Twilight’s Edward and Bella. 


I don’t know a great deal about fan fiction but it would I guess Fifty Shades of Grey is the most successful of its kind (even though, obviously, it has moved beyond this now and has it’s own characters etc.)  and seeing its success it got me thinking about why people write fan fiction and how the original writers/creators feel about this. 

Obviously the likes of Jane Austen aren’t with us to provide pithy bon-mots on the whole “Pride & Prejudice with Zombies” phenomenon but I am sure many authors have mixed feelings about their fans writing works derived from their own. It must be a strange feeling reading someone else’s take on the characters and worlds you have created, and I wonder how I would feel if this happened to me. To be honest I would just be amazed that any of my books had inspired fan fiction:) but, after that, my true feelings would probably be pretty mixed about the whole thing. Would I feel flattered? Dismayed? I’m not really sure (and it would depend, of course, on the nature of the fan fiction involved).

So what about you? As a reader have you ever been inspired to write fan fiction? As a writer, what would be your take on it? 

I have a close relative whom I’ve loved dearly for nearly half a century. It was only after we became social media friends, however, that I discovered she is an avid partisan. Make that rabid partisan. Whenever I open Facebook, my Notification globe bleeds red with urgent missives–it’s her daily in-flow of videos, cartoons, and other headlines designed to enlighten me about the hanky-panky of political evil-doers.

Other friends and family proselytize across a spectrum of political thought, and beat the drum for pet causes. One matriarch frequently emails me jokes making sport of one candidate in particular. (She knows I like the guy, so I have to assume she’s being passive aggressive–a common, if somewhat unlovable, trait in my family.)

I used to get irked by the chatter. Sometimes, especially when someone forwarded me a particularly outlandish bit of Internet lore, I’d retort with articles of rebuttal, or a link to Snopes.


Now I’ve changed my thinking. It’s been a rough week for America, and we’re heading into a hotly contested political season. People are cranky.We’re not just cranky at the other guy’s candidates. We’re pretty much ticked at our own candidates, too. Everyone’s upset about different things, and no one is coming up with great solutions. Or any solutions.


When I was at Wellesley years ago, we had a biannual tradition known as Primal Scream. On the eve of final exams, we’d run through the hallways collecting haggard, haunted-looking freshmen. We’d gather them on the roof of McAfee Hall and tell them to scream. Just scream as loud as you can, we said. Get it all out. There we’d stand, 40 or so young women strong, screaming from the roof at the top of our lungs. God knows what the campus police must have thought about Primal Scream. And then, slowly, we’d begin to laugh. Huge gales of giddy, exhausted, exam-demon purging laughter. Somehow cleansed, we’d return to the books.


I’m beginning to see the outcries on social media as our society’s Primal Scream. Instead of standing on a rooftop, we’re tweeting and venting from Facebook and Twitter.


Thirty-plus years ago in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network”, an anchorman loses his cool on the air. He exhorts his viewers to get mad, throw open a window, and scream.  Back in the day the idea of a raving anchorman was an absurd, darkly funny notion. Now it’s SOP. This will give you an idea: Yesterday when I was playing Howard Beale’s “Network” speech on my laptop, my husband padded through the room.


“It’s just the same old news over and over again,” he complained, mistaking Chayefsky’s Academy Award-winning speech for a cable news opinionator.

As an author, I try to curb my instincts on social media. For example, I’ll reread this post three times to make sure I’ve purged it of any identifiable sectarian tilt. But I no longer resent speechifying by family and friends. I have reframed it in my mind. I see us all standing at our windows and on the rooftops, unleashing our malaise into the dark. It might be a cleansing thing for the collective soul.


In your author role, do you steer clear of politics, religion et al online? Have you ever stepped unwittingly into a hornet’s nest by expressing a particular view?

Hey guys, it’s Reader Friday, and we want to know what’s on your mind. Do you have any burning writing questions you’d like to ask the TKZ’ers? Post ’em in the comments. We’ll be monitoring the blog today, and will update it with answers. (Of course, you can ask non-writing questions too, but your results may vary!)


Meanwhile, let’s play a game we haven’t played in a while. Grab the closest book to you right now. Not the best selling book, or the most impressive, but the closest one. Now turn to page 67. What is the third sentence on that page? Post it in the Comments, and we’ll try to guess what book it’s from. Or if we can’t, we can make up a title! Whoever posts should come back later in the day and reveal what the title is.


Here’s one to start:


“I will never forget that moment.”