Bookshelf Snooping - Jamie Debree

1. Your childhood favourite

Hmm...that's a toss up between Trixie Belden, Sherlock Holmes and Jack London's dog/wolf stories. Loved them all. 

2. Your current favourite

Wow. These are harder than I thought they'd be! I can't choose just one. The Immortal Brotherhood series by Lisa Hendrix has be waiting rather impatiently for the next one, and that's paranormal romance (viking shifters - whew!). "Night of Wolves" (fantasy) by David Dalglish recently surprised me as really being quite fabulous (I don't read much fantasy), and this time of year my top pick for literary fiction is "Comfort and Joy", a short story by Craig Lancaster (new last year). Oh! And my favorite horror read this year was/is Cupid's Maze by Mark Souza. It's another short story, but amazing (and seriously freaky!). 

3. Your top five authors

Of all time? Restraining myself to fiction: Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Arther Conan Doyle, Grace Livingston Hill, Issac Asimov. Well, today, anyways. I mean, there are so many....

As far as modern authors go...I suppose I'd pick: James Rollins, Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child (as a team), Michelle Davidson Argyle, Samantha Hunter & Vivian Arend. 

4. Book(s) you’re reading now

"The Donzerly Light" by Ryne Douglas Pearson (seriously intriguing and kinda freaky)

"A Walk in the Snark" by Rachel Thompson (okay, but not really my thing)

"The Big Sky, By and By" by Ed Kemmick (local journalist, true stories from Montana, fascinating people)

5. Book(s) you’ve pretended to read

Half or more of the books I was assigned in college, fiction and non-fiction. Who has the time to read, study *and* work full time? I skimmed them all, and still managed to get decent grades... 

6. Book(s) you’ve bought for the cover

You're seriously going to make me admit this? Fine. 

"When You Dare" by Lori Foster is one - for the cover and the trailer. Because I adore half-naked men. Well, most men, actually, but...I should really just stop there....

To redeem myself, I also bought "Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance" by Sara Poole for the cover. I still haven't read it, but I love how it looks on my nightstand...and I do want to read it eventually - sounds really good (historical thriller).

7. Book you’re a champion for

"Society of the Mind" by Eric L. Harry. It's a hardcore cyber-thriller two inches thick, but buried in the freaky AI-based plot is a lot of deep philosophizing that will just blow you away. Or it did me, anyways.

8. Book that changed your life

Well that's a tough one. Books have been quite literally shaping my life since I could read...so maybe we'll go with the McGuffy Readers, which are some of the first books I read for actual "school time" when I was home schooled at an early age. I still have them around somewhere, and they are veritable smorgasboards of literature, poetry and bits of wisdom, all bound up in unassuming volumes. 

Cliche as it sounds, the Bible had a profound impact on me as well...both philosophically and as far as prose and story-telling goes. 

9. Book you most want to read again for the first time

"Gone with the Wind", perhaps. Or "Call of the Wild" by Jack London. I often re-read cheap romance novels, but I'd love to experience those two again as if reading for the first time. 

Then again, it wouldn't be the same experience now, would it? Would my adult perceptions hinder that first-time enthusiasm, I wonder? 

10. Book you turn to for comfort

Hmm...I think I mostly need escape more than comfort from books. When I'm stressed or need a serious mental break, I'll mainline romance novels - preferably Harlequin Blaze, one after the other for *days* on end. I think because the core of a romance novel is hope, and the promise that everything will work out okay in the end.  

11. Favourite line from a book

"Jo never, never would learn to be proper, for when he said that as they stood upon the steps, she just put both hands into his, whispering tenderly. "Not empty now," and stooping down, kissed her Friedrich under the umbrella." - Jo March, Little Women *sigh* 

Thanks Dolly - this was fun! 

All About Editing - Jamie Debree

Do you love editing, or hate it, or somewhere in the middle?

It kind of depends on what day you catch me. For the most part, I don’t mind line-edits, but I’m not fond of revisions. It’s too much like real work. ;-) When I’m close to finishing edits on a novel-length work, I hate them with a passion, because I’m completely sick of the whole project by then and just want it to be over so I can move on.

Do you edit as you go? Or do you start only after the first draft?

As far as storyline and plot points go, I try to edit as I go. I try to make the first draft as free of plot holes and things that might need major revisions as possible. I’ve even gone so far as to move the plot in a different direction if it’s heading for something that will require major revisions to earlier scenes. As for line editing, I have to be able to read it without cringing too badly so I do pay attention to basic spelling and grammar, but I’ll leave that at “good enough” until the draft is done and I can get some space from it, and have other eyes helping me spot problems.

Do you have a definite method for editing? If so, would you like to share something from it?

After I finish a draft, I send it out to beta readers and ask for revision notes. While I’m waiting for those to come back, I have the story on my kindle and do a read-through, making my own revision notes. Betas are welcome to send line edits too, but I’m really after big-picture stuff at that point...does the story work, did I leave any gaping holes, are the characters in need of “whatever”. Once I get those back, I go through and revise all the big picture stuff, fixing whatever line-edit level items I come across as well. Then I send it to my editor, and she marks all the nit-picky grammar/typo/technical stuff (and deletes a ton of commas), as well as any final problems with continuity or plot she sees. Then I go through again and finish the edits from that. I do a final proofread as I’m formatting the books for publication, and I send out reader copies to friends for proofreading as well.

Any tips you've learned from your experience?

It’s pretty much pointless to line-edit before revisions, in my opinion. It’s inefficient to work on prose at the sentence level if those sentences could be cut in the revision process.

I absolutely cannot edit my own work to a polished form - I need other eyes on it to catch everything I simply don’t see. There are people out there who claim to self-edit, but I wouldn’t, personally.

No matter how much you revise and edit, there will always be a mistake or two that makes it into the finished book. It doesn’t matter how you publish either - odds are very good something will be overlooked. That’s just how it is.

Anything else you would like to add - pet peeves, things that make you want to pull your hair out (editing related), joys and wonders of the process?

My biggest pet peeve is that my comma splices aren’t considered proper grammar. LOL I love the sentence structure involving comma splice (ie... “She raised her glass, then looked at him over the rim.”), and hate that I either have to take the comma out, or add an “and” to make it correct. And I rant about it every chance I get - because dang it, I want to use that structure! But I change it anyway, because the prose needs to be transparent to the reader if possible, and most readers get hung up on the lack of “and”. I do try to draft without them now, but they still slip in...a habit that is extremely hard for me to break.

My greatest joy is when I’m line editing, and I actually hit on the *perfect* wording and structure for the emotion I want to convey at that point. Most sentences are just...well...sentences, but every once in awhile there’s just that perfect turn of phrase that I can’t believe I wrote. I love that. :-)

Thanks so much for inviting me to participate, Dolly - this was fun!

A full-time webmistress by day, Jamie DeBree writes steamy, action-packed romantic suspense late into the night. She resides in Billings, MT with her husband and two over-sized lap dogs. Her latest book is Desert Heat, available at http://brazensnakebooks.com , Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For more information and to connect with her via social media or email, please visit http://jamiedebree.com.

Your Writing Journey: Guest Post - Jamie Debree

What do you write?

I write romantic suspense under my name, and erotica under a pen name. I'm also plotting a thriller/horror novel that will be written under another pen name. Gotta have variety.

How long have you been writing?

On and off since high school...seriously for about 2 years or so.

What got you started?

Giving up, actually. I was going through a particularly rough spot with regards to my writing and serious self-confidence issues, and I decided to walk away from writing altogether since I couldn't seem to get my act together and polish anything up to submit. I couldn't stay away though, and decided to just start a web serial on my blog and write purely for fun, with no pressure to publish. Ironically, taking the pressure off opened the gates, so to speak, and I've been writing regularly ever since.

A few important lessons you have learned along the way:

Writing rules are just guidelines. It's good to know what they are, but there's room to wiggle.

A story always benefits from another set of eyes for editing/proofreading.

Different publishing methods all lead to the same result – readers get the story. Options are best left open when it comes to getting your work out to people.

Too much pressure to write for a specific market can kill a story. Better to let it be what it needs to be, and worry about how to get it out after it's done.

What priority writing is in your life at the moment?

Very high – right up there with the day job and the hubby, though Halloween is sort of getting in the way at the moment.

Is it a hobby, career, potential career?

A second job at the moment, and definitely a potential career. With any luck, it will turn into a bonefide career in five years or so.

Can you see yourself writing for the rest of your life, regardless of financial / popular success?

Yep – absolutely. Since I'm self-publishing, my work will always go out no matter how much/little money I make on it, or how successful I am. There are people out there who read/like my work, and that's who I'll keep writing for, no matter how small the audience is.

Anything else you may want to add:

I'm incredibly grateful to be part of the online writing community. The people I've met and connected with have really made a huge difference in not only my motivation, but the quality of my writing and my overall confidence in it. It's an amazing group, and one I hope I can give back even a fraction of what I've gotten out of it.

Thanks for having me, Dolly – this was a really fun interview!


Jamie DeBree
Author of Tempest (romantic suspense)
Available in ebook and paperback from Amazon& other online retailers.
http://jamiedebree.com

Guest Post - Jamie Debree: From Serial Story to Novella: The Evolution of Tempest

Thanks so much for hosting me, Dolly. I always love visiting your blog. :-)

When I first came back to writing after a long hiatus, I looked hard at why I wanted – needed - to write. I determined after some serious soul searching that not only did I need to write for myself, but I also wanted to entertain people. Would I write if no one was reading? Probably not. So I decided to launch a serial story on my blog, for anyone who happened by to read. That first one wasn't very good, but I learned a lot writing it, and determined to do better with the second.

So the next time, I used the free Create-A-Plot course (http://hollylisle.com/index.php/Workshops/learn-how-to-create-a-professional-plot-outline.html) from Holly Lisle's web site to literally pluck a plot out of thin air and create my first scene outline. That's how Tempest was born.

From reading other serial works online, I knew that the most important part of writing a serial novel was to hook the reader both coming and going. I needed to draw them in at the beginning of the scene, and leave them wanting at the end so they'd come back again for the next installment. That had to be blended with a sentence or two of "reorientation" for each new installment so readers wouldn't have to go back and read the last chapter to jump  right in. It seemed to work well – readers were commenting, and coming back for more week after week. I loved drafting Tempest and I decided to clean it up for publishing after the draft was finished. Because the entire draft had already been published on my blog, it wasn't eligible for traditional publishing – so I decided to self-publish.

Naturally, those scene transitions that work so well in serial writing to reorient readers who have, in essence, walked away from the book and come back don't really work at all in a more traditional format. I basically had to rewrite each transition between scenes to remove repetitive names, actions, and extra information that was no longer necessary. In some cases, this just meant cutting a sentence or two, but in others, it gave me the opportunity to expand descriptions make the prose both richer and tighter. Description is not my strong suit, and I have to add a lot when I revise my own work.

Something else came from those serial transitions that I wasn't expecting. By far one of the most common comments I get about Tempest is that it moves so fast – people can't put it down. I guess I sort of planned it that way, but only insofar as I wanted people to come back each week for the next scene. I wasn't thinking about a linear book when I wrote it, but the same transitions that kept people coming back to the serial apparently pull people along through the book. Basically, I "fell" into that writing style through serializing the story, and I'm glad I did. 

I'm very pleased with how Tempest turned out, though I can't read it again because I'm absolutely certain I'll find more things I wish I'd changed or improved or fleshed out. One thing is for certain though – I'll keep serializing drafts for as long as people will read them. Aside from allowing me to share my work with those who might just surf by the blog, it's been an excellent learning tool to help improve my writing.

Tempest is available in ebook and paperback at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Jamie-DeBree/e/B0040048K4/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

or in multiple digital formats at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/21024

Connect with me through my web site: http://jamiedebree.com, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NovelistJamieDeBree, and Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JamieDeBree. 

Guest Post: Jamie DeBree - Why I Write Romance?

Throwing Back the Covers: Why I Write Romance

The first page of prose I ever wrote was a literary-style piece describing a cabin in the woods. Every detail from the grain of the wood boards and bird song to the moss on the forest floor was accounted for. Back then, I saw myself someday writing grand, sweeping literary works that would contain such beautiful descriptive passages that people would weep at the sheer genius.

Now I write stories that would make my mother blush. I fully intend to give her a copy of my first published book someday with the caveat that she’ll probably want to skim pages xx – xx. Oh, and xx – xxx as well. Hopefully she won’t be too embarrassed to pass a recommendation along to her friends…

There are a lot of stigmas that come with being a romance writer – and even though I’ve been reading romance novels all of my life, I wasn’t at all sure I was ready to handle what people might think of me if I started writing them. So I tried everything else first.

I started a sci-fi story with only an underlying romantic element. The romance took over within the first chapter.

I plotted a sweeping adventure/thriller story – and couldn’t keep my characters’ out of bed and in the game, even in the synopsis.

I wrote a bloodbath of a horror novel (strange things happen during NaNo) wherein the bodies were stacking up by the hour in a very intense, closed off, gruesomely paranormal situation – and my main characters still managed to fall in love, even though they both died at the end!

I tried to write a mystery/suspense wherein my heroine would never fall for a man, because she was far too focused on getting sensitive information away from her abusive ex. I wanted her to be the snarky “tough chick” who rides off into the sunset on her Harley at the end of the novel, content to be alone. Yeah, right. In my world, women enjoy men. A lot. Even if they don’t want to at first. It’s probably because I have always related well to men – more so than women.

At that point, it was pretty clear that I was meant to write romance novels. I quit fighting it and just let my stories come out as they needed to, complete with sizzling bedroom scenes, a dash of suspense and many happy endings (pun intended). I still feel a little funny admitting that I write romance novels when people ask what type of books I write (most people who ask are men), but I’m getting over it. Most of my stories have a suspense element in them, which seems to make the guys feel better about the whole thing.

I think the reason that romance comes so naturally to me is that I’m fascinated by emotions and the connections people form (probably should have been a sociologist). I’m interested in why people act or react the way they do to others, and how that affects relationships. I’m a total sap for a “happily ever after”, which is a guarantee in a romance novel. I want to believe that everything works out in the end, no matter how tough the journey is. In my stories things always work out, even if it’s not the expected outcome.

With any luck, I’ll join the ranks of the published in the next few years. I’ll be sending out queries this summer.

To follow my writing journey & connect with me, I blog at The Variety Pages (http://varietypages.jamiedebree.com), I’m on Twitter as @JamieDeBree or Facebook as (you guessed it) Jamie DeBree. I’m always looking for new friends…

Thanks so much for having me, Dolly – I love this series, and can’t wait to see who’s up next. :-)