Jordan Summers

RAINE!!! YAY! Drop me an email with your address and I’ll get Halfway to the Grave to you.

Because I have ‘packer’s brain’ and don’t have much to say, I decided to hold another contest. I went out today and bought Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost because I love it. I love it so much that I’m going to give someone a chance to win my copy. I’ll have dh pick a winner on Friday. Good luck!!!

Just added: Jeaniene just made the NYT Bestseller’s list with this book. Told you all that it was good.

The Salvation Army has came and went. It’s nine something and I’m still shredding documents. How’s your day? LOL!

After spending the past two days packing, I have to say that I’ve finally reached the saturation point. I cannot believe how much crap I own. It’s crazy. I have just about every workbook that I’ve ever received…strike that…I do have EVERY workbook that I ever received at a conference. I’d ‘planned’ to go through them once I got home from the various conferences. I managed to skim them all. Read a few pages, but other than that, they’ve sat in my office closet gathering MASSIVE amounts of dust. Did I mention the mountain of magazines I found? That whole out of sight, out of mind thing is true. Sigh.

Today, I plan to tackle the rest of the bookcases in the hall. It shouldn’t take me too long. I still have the bookcases in my office. (They hold my reference books.) Actually, thinking about it, the books have been the easiest thing to pack. It’s everything else that’s tough. But I don’t want to talk about packing anymore. It’s boring and not very much fun.

I’ve decided to name a few of my favorite authors by category. Yes, I’m stretching for something to talk about. While I’m at it, if anyone has an idea for what I should write over the next couple of weeks throw it out there. I need all the help that I can get right now.

So back to the authors…I’ll start with my favorite paranormal romance writers: Lora Leigh (truly love her Breed series), Christine Warren (she writes some of the best characters), Angela Knight (love her vampires), Lynn Viehl (dark and atmospheric) and Jeaniene Frost (super urban fantasy romances (Bones sigh)).

Favorite historical authors: Lisa Kleypas (enchanting), Stephanie Laurens (comfortable), Christina Dodd (charming), Julia Templeton (scorching) and Sylvia Day (smoking).

Favorite contemporary authors: Michele Albert (consistently strong), Beth Ciotta (so endearingly funny), Jill Shalvis (terrific romances), Cherry Adair (enjoy her special ops) and Erin McCarthy (always entertaining).

Favorite urban fantasy authors: Patricia Briggs (Love her Mercy series), Rob Thurman (Love her characters’ attitudes), Laurell K. Hamilton (the old stuff rocks), Carrie Vaughn (Kitty can do no wrong) and Charlaine Harris (consistently terrific). This was actually the hardest category for me because I have so many favorites.

The final category is misc. because I wasn’t quite sure where to put these authors: Stuart Woods (entertaining mysteries), Matt Reilly (mind popcorn), James Rollins (action/adventure), Douglas Preston (fun monsters) and Dean Koontz (great intrigue).

Now it’s your turn. Who are your top three favorites?

I was thinking today about the differences between being published vs unpublished. And yes, I know there is the obvious one (book in store vs book on computer). That wasn’t exactly the direction I headed in mentally. I was actually thinking about it in terms of how things changed for me and how the biggest difference is the time I have to write a book.

When I first started writing, my goal was to finish a book. Once I’d done that, then my goal turned toward getting published. Both these things happened relatively quickly for me. I finished by first book at the end of 2001/beginning of 2002, then wrote my second book the summer of 2002 and sold it that same year. I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts how it probably would’ve been better had I taken more time to learn how to write before selling. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s the truth. I would’ve felt more confident as a writer had I had more time to ‘practice’.

The one thing I never realized when I was unpublished was how much of my time would be spent trying to ’stay published’ once I sold. No one tells you about that part of writing. I mean you hear mentions of published authors being rejected, but I never fully grasped how hard it was going to be to sell continuously. You have your whole life to write that first book, but after that, you’d better be fairly productive or you won’t stay published for long. Heck, even if you are productive that doesn’t guarantee you’ll continue to sell.

Another major difference between being published vs unpublished is the amount of time you have to devote to the business side of writing. I have a good agent now, but that still doesn’t stop the amount of work I have to do outside of writing. I never realized that once you got published you’d have to fight for time to write. Weird, eh?

I don’t mean this post to be bitchy because I honestly don’t feel put upon and I’m in no way bummed out. These are just some of the things that have changed since I got published and were on my mind. If you are a published author, what has changed for you that you didn’t expect? If you’re unpublished, what do you expect to happen/change once you sell?