Read Around the Rainbow | After The End

August 25, 2023August 25, 2023 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 9 Comments

ReadAroundTheRainbow

It’s Read Around the Rainbow time!!! If you haven’t seen one of these posts before, we’re a group of authors who get together on the last Friday of the month to write a blog post on the same topic. Below you’ll find links to the others, so you can jump around and compare/see what we have to say 😊

This month, we’re talking about what happens After The End.

I wish I knew 😆 Or not.

But we’re talking after the end of the story, not anything else. I don’t really know where I’m gonna put my End, to be honest. I mean, I write in Scrivener, and when I reach The End, I start over. I read the story from start to finish. And I should probably mention that I’m dyslexic, so me having written it from start to finish (because that’s how I write, no jumping around or moving scenes or anything like that) doesn’t mean the sentences make sense to anyone but me 😅 There will be missed words, messed up letters, dropped endings of words, and I won’t see them.

Next step is that I have a long list of words I search for and decide if I’m gonna keep or not – you know the That, Said, Feel, Just, Really and so on. I’m much more lenient these days than I used to be. A few years ago, you wouldn’t find a Feel or Really in my stories. Now I keep the ones I like and delete the rest.

Once that’s done, I do a grammar check. And since comma splice is a thing, I use Grammarlookup.com rather than Grammarly (and now we have the whole A.I. with Grammarly thing too, though I haven’t looked into how clean Grammarlookup is… probably not so much) since Grammarly’s comma splices are a premium feature LOL

Then, I move everything to Word. In Word, I listen to the story. This is where I’m yet again reminded I’m dyslexic because even though I’ve read the story once and done a grammar check, there are A LOT of missing words, misspelt words, words in the wrong tense since –ed is an ending I often drop etc.

Are you tired yet? Because at this stage, I usually want to throw up. Writing is fun, guys! Fixing errors and typos, not so much.

When I’ve reached the end yet again, I contact my lovely beta readers and ask them if they can have a look at it.

Once they’ve read it and sent back their notes, I sit down and go through them. I listen to my beta readers. If there is something they don’t understand, I clarify. If there is a sentence that doesn’t make sense to them, I change it.

I don’t have much ego when it comes to my writing. I always assume others know better (dyslexic and second language speaker) so if they comment on something, I change it. That being said, my beta notes are often easy to go through.

Guess what I do then??

I listen to it again! 😬 Do you know how long it takes to listen to a 50k story? I need to stop writing 50k stories if I want to stay sane (Ha! That ship has sailed.)

Then it’s time to submit, yay! Only… wait. Blurb and cover suggestions and shit.

If you think reading/listening to a 50k story over and over again is hard, try to write a 200-word blurb, and then one that’s 400 characters, and then a tagline for social media on 200 characters.

AND then, you need to provide 7 keywords that fit and also make sense to readers and might be things the readers that might like your book might search for. Good luck!

At this stage, I feel like crying.

Then we have the stock photo death which is when you spend hours scrolling through sweaty cover models. You need to pick a model who hasn’t been on too many covers already, you have to find one who doesn’t look insane, who isn’t standing in some weird pose, and who looks at least somewhat of how you’ve pictured your main character, and who you think your readers might like, and so on.

wine Wine. Wine and chocolate are needed here.

Then finally!!! You get to send the story in to your publisher (if you have one. I do, so I send my story in.)

Now everything is laughs and giggles… until you get an email.

I want to let you all know that I love my editor. Her name is Loukie Adlem, and she is awesome! If you wonder how I feel about edits, my answer is the same as with my beta readers. I have no doubt Loukie knows better than me, and if she changes something, I’m not gonna bitch about it.

At this stage, it’s all about making the reading the best possible experience for the reader. I’ve written it. I’ve told the story I wanted to tell. If a moved comma, a synonym, a changed sentence or whatever will make it easier for YOU to comprehend, to make it run more smoothly or whatever it might be, I’m not gonna argue.

I want people to read my story, and I trust Loukie to want what’s best for it. I know some authors will claim their stories are art (they are, but they’re also products) and are unwilling to change things, who fret about a comma, who wants the sentence exactly as they first wrote it. That’s not me. If my editor suggests a speech tag or an epithet, I will refuse, but those are pretty much my only limits LOL.

So I accept if not all, then close to all changes, and guess what I do once that’s done…

Yup, I listen to it. Again.

If I’m really lucky and Loukie thinks it’s needed, I will then listen to it one more time. BUT by then I’m also crying and considering if maybe writing isn’t what I’m supposed to do.

Then, sometime after, you’ll stumble upon a post somewhere where some idiot – yes, I’m gonna call them that – thinks books are too expensive and downloads them from a pirate site instead.

I don’t think they realise how many hours people (NOT just the author) have invested in every single book. It’s all the hours I’ve spent on it. Then we have the beta readers who invest hours of their time to help get the book out there. Then we have the editor who spends hours doing edits and proofreading. Then we have the people doing the formatting, the uploading to retailers, the cover artists etc.

It’s a miracle anyone creates books.

But we love it, for the most part, right? 😁

Check out what the others have to say!

Read Around the Rainbow | Seasonal Reads

July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 6 Comments

ReadAroundTheRainbow

It’s Read Around the Rainbow time!!! 🌈 On the last Friday of every month, we’re a bunch of authors who get together and share our thoughts on a specific topic, and this month we’re talking seasonal reads – if we read summer books during summer and winter books during winter, or if we’re rebels who read whatever we want whenever we want 😁

You’d think since I write stories for holidays all year around (as Holly Day) I’d read according to seasons/holidays, but I don’t. I might be more likely to pick up a Christmas book during winter, but then we have the whole Christmas in July thing, so might as well read them throughout the year 😆

I think a key aspect is that I’m not very observant when I pick up a book. I tend not to read blurbs, and I don’t really investigate unless I’m on the hunt for something specific. Christmas books, you can often tell by the cover that it’s gonna be a holiday story, but most often I read a book because I think the cover is pretty or because I’ve read something by that author before and liked it.

So do I read summer books in the summer?

Who wants to read summer books at all?! It’s warm and sweaty in the summer, and I don’t want to be there if I don’t have to. If I can tell by the cover it’s gonna be an autumn or winter story, I’ll pick that over a summer image every day of the week. If there’s a beach on the cover, I’m not likely to read it, unless it’s cold and windy and deserted. If it is, I’m there! LOL

That being said, I write books all around the year. Now. When I only wrote as Ofelia, most of my books took place during autumn unless I wrote it for a specific call or there was something in the plot that demanded it being spring or summer.

When I write as Holly, I write the month the holiday takes place in, and I stick to the Swedish climate and daylight hours.

It’s easier to write a summer story in the summer, which of course never happens. I’ve had years when I’ve listened to Christmas music in the middle of summer because the Christmas deadlines are coming up. Whatever gets you in the right mood, right?

So short answer – no I don’t pick my books depending on what season I’m in, but I’m more likely to read a Christmas story in the winter half of the year.

Check out what the others have to say!

Summer/Winter

ninestones

The only thing worse than having a hot neighbor you’re too intimidated to talk to is accidentally hitting his cat with your car. Felix Lane was perfectly content to spend the rest of his days with Sunny, his canary life companion, in their quiet little corner of the suburbs. But then Kirk Shoo with his unusual eyes moved in across the street, and Felix’s carefully constructed life is starting to unravel. When your every bad-boy fantasy lingers at the mailbox, stands too close and smells too damn good, what’s an under-appreciated administrative assistant to do? Besides sneak out the backdoor to go to work? But when Kirk’s cat runs out in front of Felix on his way home, he has no choice but to face the music and his dream man. Unless … What starts as a tragic accident turns into something far more bizarre. And when Felix’s backyard begins to look like a pet cemetery, he has no choice but to come clean. That is, if he can manage to find his sexy neighbor at all.

24dates

When Victor Hill bought a house with his boyfriend, Jian Kouri it was a dream come true. But now, two years later, instead of living their happily ever after, they hardly see the other awake. With Jian out the door before Victor gets up in the morning, and asleep on the couch nearly as soon as he walks in the door, the life Victor imagined couldn’t be further from reality. They don’t talk; they don’t touch, and Victor fears he and Jian have already drifted too far apart. The holiday season is a time for hope, but when Victor comes home to find Jian with a plan to woo him for Christmas, is it too little, too late? The dates are great, and there are filled with Christmas fun to get Victor in the right spirit for the holiday, but are they enough for the two of them to fall in love again? Or is there just too much in their relationship that needs fixing?

Read Around the Rainbow | Challenges in Writing Queer Characters in Various Subgenres

June 30, 2023June 29, 2023 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 8 Comments

ReadAroundTheRainbow

It’s Read Around the Rainbow time! If you’ve missed these posts before, we’re a group of authors who get together on the last Friday of every month to blog on the same topic. This month’s topic is:

Challenges in Writing Queer Characters in Various Subgenres

At first, I didn’t really know how to tackle this topic. I see myself mainly as a writer of paranormal romance, but if we’re to check the number of titles, I have about the same amount of contemporary stories as I do paranormal, then I have a few alien romances and post-apocalyptic ones as a bonus 😁 As Holly, I have more paranormal than I have contemporary, so the majority of the stories I’ve written are paranormal.

Why?

Well, the standard answer is of course that the world is no fun without monsters and magic. And I stand by that. The biggest reason why I read is reality escape, so give me the magic and the things I can’t find in real life.

But if you’re to scrape a little on the surface…

I write paranormal because there I set the rules. Writing queer characters can be a delicate matter. In a paranormal world, I get to decide how society views queer people, if there are laws against queer relationships, if it’s a more forgiving climate than the real world, and so on.

No one can say that I get it wrong because I’m the creator of the universe. It gives me a lot of freedom. A lot.

It doesn’t mean I can make it too outlandish because there has to be something we can connect with, something we can relate to, something we can understand. But for the most part, I’m completely free.

When I write contemporary, I can’t do that. And when I write contemporary, I’m painfully aware of being Swedish. We have homophobia here. We have people with fanatic and fascist opinions. But only about 20% of the Swedish population believe in a god. The people waving a bible and proclaiming love to be a sin are few and far between.

There is plenty of prejudice against queers, don’t think that there isn’t, but when I look at the US, I shake my head. I mean WTF, people?!

And there are cultural differences, of course, many, many cultural differences.

So for me writing contemporary is a struggle. Contemporary should (must) reflect the world we’re living in, but the reality I’m living in isn’t the same as the reality you’re living in. And I’m afraid of getting it wrong.

I could of course do my stories very Swedish, but… I’d be bored.

I always find it interesting what people decide to write. I write paranormal because I feel free. I write contemporary but… reluctantly. I write sci-fi, though I’d say it’s alien romances because there aren’t many sci-fi-y elements since I’d probably mess them up 😅

What you never will see me write is historical. I’m in awe of those who do, but I just can’t fathom writing a story that would take me more time to research than to write. It’s also a matter of interest, of course. And I think (those of you who write historical, feel free to correct me) writers of historical fiction find satisfaction in getting it right. They study clothes, language, events, what cities looked like back then, what people ate, what occupations there were, and on and on the list goes, and you weave it into a story. Whereas I just want the words to poor out of me, paint a world I find entertaining at the moment, and then move on.

I always have this idea that writers of historical fiction are much smarter than me 😊 And I guess I’m lazy. I research things, of course, I do. There isn’t a writer alive who doesn’t research things. But if the research takes longer than the writing, I’m out.

Check out what the others have to say on the matter!