Confessions of a Multi-Genre Author by Cindy K. Green

Cindy K. Green

When you start in this life we call the writing game, one of the first things you learn (after how to utilize proper POV, of course) is that as a published author you must brand yourself. That means you sell your name more than any particular book. When you pick up a Stephen King or Nora Roberts novel, you know what you’re getting before even reading the blurb. Readers need to get to know you—how you write and what you write. In the large New York publishing houses, their authors typically have to BRAND themselves and only write in but one or maybe two genres. But…what about those of us who love to skip around and experiment in the genres?

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. There are some big names who jump around in the genres. James Patterson is known for his mystery/suspense/thrillers. But he’s also penned some award-winning young adult titles and even a series of romances.  

When I’m asked: ‘What do you write? What’s your genre?’ I seriously have to make out a list. And I make no excuses for it. I love skipping from genre to genre, stretching my writer’s legs or fingers—or to be more precise my imagination and my writer’s niche. It keeps the writing fresh and exciting. I finally branded myself in a general sense with ‘Humorous, Heartfelt, Spirit-filled Fiction.’ My subgenres include: Inspirational Contemporary & Historical Romance, Young Adult, Chick-lit, Romantic Suspense. I’ve even written a high fantasy. I told you it was a lot.

So, I’ve been asked, ‘how do you write in all those genres? I feel like I’d get confused.’ Well, here’s my confession—it’s very easy to get confused. If you write in several genres you have to go through steps to bring it all together. Let me take you through an example.

I’ve recently been writing two different YA series. In doing so, I had to purge from my mind the voice and tone of my just finished historical western. I was now an almost eighteen-year-old girl full of insecurities while watching my life spin upside down. So, first step, I have to read some YA books. A little Meg Cabot, some Jenny B. Jones and a bit of Melody Carlson and I’m set. I listen to music that’s for the young or young at heart. And then I watch lots of teen movies. Basically, I get into the mindset of the American teen. (I also have a teen living in my house and that’s the best prep work there is.)

I do something similar for whatever genre I’m writing. It’s like I’m priming myself to write. You see there is a tone, a set a verbiage that is necessary to each sub-genre. I have to get myself into that place before I start writing. Now if you only write in one genre that isn’t really a problem. No matter what you are reading or watching it won’t affect your writing. You’ve trained yourself how to write your genre. But when you write several genres, you have to equip yourself to write many different ways and your muse needs a reminder as to what hat to put on today. 

Dora here. Do you write in multiple genres? If so, how do you "prime" yourself to write?

If not, have you considered writing in a different genre?

****

Cindy K. Green has worked as a middle school history & English teacher, a frozen yogurt server and a golf magazine employee. Today she's a multi-published, award-winning author, a mother, a wife, and a homeschooler too. This native Californian now resides in North Carolina with her husband, two boys, and two cats named Chloe & Kassey.

Connect with Cindy:

Join her newsletter by sending an email to cindy@cindykgreen.com. Visit her website www.cindykgreen.com & her blog cindykgreen.blogspot.com. She's on Facebook (Cindy K. Green) and Twitter (@cindykgreen) too. Connect with her on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/cgreen0224/ and Google+: https://plus.google.com/+CindyGreenAuthor/posts as well. 

Her latest release Andrea & the Five Day Challenge is a Christian YA novel, the first in the Aubrey Christian Academy Series. A Bible Study Challenge, a Prayer Journal and Homecoming. The combination just might change her life.

Buy Links:

PelicanBook Group

Amazon 

ChristianBook.com

The Y Factor By Anya Novikov

Anya Novikov

Any reader, not to mention any writer, knows how much William Shakespeare has influenced modern lexicon. Every day we see terms such as sea change, foregone conclusion, sorry sight, and fool’s paradise. All his. In fact, any cool term that isn’t a cliché probably originated with Will.

Does this happen in everyday modern life? Indeed, made-up terms and definitions burrow into our vernacular--and dictionaries, all the time. Think of bromance, a non-sexual, non-romantic close relationship between two guys. How about buzzworthy? Something whether by internet or word of mouth raises massive interest?

Ever heard of emoji? You know, those tiny icons and images used to express emotion when words just won’t do.

So...should we use stuff like this in our writing? Will a certain phrase or lingo stick our stories story permanently in a particular year, or setting? Or will readers think us hopelessly old-fashioned if we don’t use updated stuff in our books?

Right now, I’m especially thinking about the trend, or should I say trendY way of adding Y to words to make then adjectives. I mean, we’ve always had sleepy, grumpy and gooey.

Well, and trendy itself.

But lately, Y is becoming ever-present. At a session at the RWA conference last July in Atlanta, a presenter clearly annunciated, angsty and tropey.

I had a reader like my books because they aren’t judgey.

Articles in my local Sunday paper recently discussed Pinteresty and Tumblry social media. An actress’s hair was described, not as auburn, but auburny. And an upcoming TV series heralded as flash-forwardy and flash-backy. Both.

A program I like to watch features amateur home cooks. One judge hailed a contestant’s effort as a restauranty dish.

Since I’ve made myself aware of the Y factor, I’ve heard or read twisty, moley, and spammy. Oh, let’s not forget James Bondy.

But I find myself falling into the trap. On a recent trip to Leadville, Colorado, I extolled hubby to find a “local-colory” place to eat. Texting our daughter after a particular uninspiring stretch of highway, I called Hotchkiss, Arizona “a little deserty place.” And when she responded with a picture of her baby kicking back after playtime, I described him as looking “relaxy.”

Maybe all of the above will start appearing regularly in books. Dictionaries. Blogs.

Will they appear in my books? Can’t say.

Y-et.

Dora here. LovelY, Anya. lol

What about you? 

Have you noticed any trends in writing?

What are your favorites? Least favorites?

The Circle Girls: Once Upon A Witch
Purchase Link

Anya Novikov lives on California’s Central Coast with her firefighter husband. They thank the Lord every day for their sweet family, good health and many travels. Although Anya writes full time, she finds she misses “high school” because, she always learned much more from her students than she taught! She’s got a Contest Page so check it out . . . and keep in touch. Connect with Anya:
anyanovikov.blogspot.com
anya.novikov@aol.com

The Circle Girls: Once Upon a Witch 
God will give you blood to drink . . . An ordinary teenager finds out what witch-hunting is all about—in her own everyday world.
When Deliverance “Delli” Willis, an ordinary, almost-sixteen-year-old, finds herself dreaming wild dreams, she’s amazed when some of the stuff appears during her classroom unit on the Salem Witch Trials: When a dream girl of 1692, who shares Deliverance’s name, finds herself entranced by a mysterious man in the woods, Delli finds a new neighbor walking through her family avocado grove.

Eager to share the handsome newcomer with her circle of friends, she doesn’t realize the danger of someone unique entering the closed loop. Fingers point, jealousies surge, lies are cast, sides taken—and people are out for blood. It’s a modern-day witch-hunt that collides with 1692 in ways Delli never dreamed.

It will take lessons from her dreamscape and a stand against bullies to tighten Delli’s faith in our omnipresent God.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead by Anya Novikov

I'm happy to host Anya Novikov, a YA writer and enthusiastic supporter of this blog. Have you ever thought that this world's gone crazy? Young people acting worse than ever and it's all going to you-know-where in a handbasket? Well, Anya has done some research on another period in history and found that folks are not all that different. Here's her take on what history really teaches us. - Angie

After I read Little Women for the first time at age eight, I knew someday I’d be a writer.

Indeed, I got by-lines and awards writing for the high school newspaper. I co-edited the senior yearbook. Got excellent grades on college term papers but . . . I can confess it now:

Only when I took on a position teaching Freshmen English did I really understand how to write. Breaking it down, stripping it to the bone for fourteen-year olds finally brought me comprehension. Honed my own understanding, and resurrected my own skills. I mean, I knew how to get it right. I just hadn’t understood why.

Along with the students, I drew spider diagrams for pre-writing. Helped them with their rough drafts--required to be handwritten. Yapped endlessly about the No-No List. (“Do not use second person; its/it’s are not the same thing, nor are there/their/they’re. Use semi-colons sparing if at all. Don’t use ‘the end’ because your conclusion statement should BE the end. Bleh bleh bleh.)

Oh, and we had a dictionary unit. They learned how to check spelling and definitions in the grubby class set of thirty Merriam-Websters.

Most of all, we worked on uncovering their “voice.”

Then the big kahuna: a typed final copy. Oh, yes, I started out in the days of the dinosaur: the typewriter.

Technology hit us all over the heads quick, though, and I can’t deny embracing The Computer and Word Processing myself. No more messy white-outs. No more re-typing a whole page because another phrase or word would work better.

No more endless drafts because you could firm up the rough draft in Word. Save it. Fix it...

No more...shall I admit it? Yes, I use Merriam-Webster online. I fix it with a fast click when little red squiggles dance underneath a glob of letters . . .

Yet I rather yearned for the Old Days when Raymond, a dear, C-plus/B-minus student turned in a wondrous paper I had to fail. I knew him, his skills. His voice. It just wasn’t his work.
Tearfully, he vowed the work was his own.

To impress me, he’d hit “Synonyms” to find bigger, fancier words whenever he could. (Such explained his use of magnanimous.) And yes, I accepted his re-write.

And technology bit in other ways. Later on, I double-checked a boy’s college-admission personal statement. He gushed about his eagerness to attend Pepperoni University.

(Spell Check doesn’t know Pepperdine.)

One last area I hoped I hammered home to those legions of rapt students: The comma. “Of course there are rules, but when in doubt, leave it out. Put one in if you read your sentence out loud and naturally pause. Always use a comma after an introductory clause or phrase.”

Bleh bleh bleh.

Anyway, in the recent past, working with editors now and reading voraciously, I’m finding the comma is leading a different life. Why is it now so acceptable to smush introductory clauses and phrases into the main sentence without the comma?

Why is the final comma in a series so ignored? Grrr. I guess I’m just too old school.

Just today, I read an article on an animal shelter fund-raiser where “the food will be prepared by professional chefs, and dogs and cats from the shelter.”

Obviously not written by one of my former students. ☺

Anyway, those days I spent back in “high school” also inspired my first-ever Young Adult romance, The Circle Girls: Once Upon a Witch, recently released and part of the launch of a brand-new line, Watershed Books.

You see, in addition to freshman, I also taught American Literature to Juniors, and the Salem Witch Trial unit was always their favorite. Somehow, someday, I knew that grim time in history would gel into a story suitable both for teens and their parents. It isn’t about witchcraft at all — nor were the trials in 1692. It’s about finger-pointing, bullying, refusing to take personal responsibility. And I loved writing every word of it, used SpellCheck and synonyms . . . and made certain I got those commas right!

Since I write Western romance both inspirational and secular under another name, I must admit I wonder what the future holds for Anya (my pen name). Will my love of American history and literature continue to worm its way onto the page?

Will those good and evil prep-school kids have more adventures? Learn more lessons? Do I retain enough of my high school “voice” to write another?

I don’t know. But so far, it’s been a good ride. Or should I say, write?

Click to Tweet
It’s about finger-pointing, bullying, refusing to take personal responsibility. Click to Tweet
"Pepperoni University," because Spell Check doesn't know Pepperdine. Click to Tweet
Most of all, we worked on uncovering their “voice.” Click to Tweet

Anya Novikov lives on California’s Central Coast with her firefighter husband. They thank the Lord every day for their sweet family, good health and many travels. Although Anya writes full time, she finds she misses “high school” because, she always learned much more from her students than she taught! She’s got a Contest Page so check it out . . . and keep in touch.
Connect with Anya:
anyanovikov.blogspot.com
anya.novikov@aol.com

The Circle Girls: Once Upon a Witch 
God will give you blood to drink . . . An ordinary teenager finds out what witch-hunting is all about—in her own everyday world.

When Deliverance “Delli” Willis, an ordinary, almost-sixteen-year-old, finds herself dreaming wild dreams, she’s amazed when some of the stuff appears during her classroom unit on the Salem Witch Trials: When a dream girl of 1692, who shares Deliverance’s name, finds herself entranced by a mysterious man in the woods, Delli finds a new neighbor walking through her family avocado grove.

Eager to share the handsome newcomer with her circle of friends, she doesn’t realize the danger of someone unique entering the closed loop. Fingers point, jealousies surge, lies are cast, sides taken—and people are out for blood. It’s a modern-day witch-hunt that collides with 1692 in ways Delli never dreamed.

It will take lessons from her dreamscape and a stand against bullies to tighten Delli’s faith in our omnipresent God.

For more information about The Circle Girls, click here. Or check out my review of her book here.

Writing for the Young Adult Market By Krista McGee

Krista McGee

Know your audience.
Young adult writers need to spend time with teens, get to know them. Writers can’t assume their adolescent experiences will translate into comparable experiences for 21st century teens. The reality of life as a teenager today is radically different from what it was twenty – or even ten -- years ago. Though the pressures are similar, the pace at which kids are exposed to those pressures has increased dramatically. The avenues through which those pressures come are far more varied, subtle, and dangerous. Teens today develop friendships over Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, Path…They rarely pick up a home phone and think a PC is an ancient artifact. Their computers are handheld, and much of their self-image can be found within the slim confines of their iPod Touch. The stories that will resonate with them acknowledge all that – and more. Even if the story is set in the past (or future), current realities must be considered.

Write for a specific audience.
No matter what you write, you won’t be able to appeal to all teens everywhere. Teens, like adults, have varied interests, are at different places socially, spiritually, and emotionally. Some writers in the Christian market cover pretty heavy subjects  – drugs, sex, suicide. They address those themes, not because they are seeking to push the envelope, but because their audience faces those issues at school and at home, and those writers want their readers to see those issues handled from a Christian perspective. On the other hand, the audience I write for are predominantly Christian kids who are truly seeking to live the Christ-life. I don’t discuss sex, drugs, and suicide, not because I want to avoid those topics, but because my audience wants to hear more about how to deal with apathy, how to grow in their faith, how to find their self-worth in Christ and not in the opinions of others. My books do not appeal to all audiences, but I never intended them to. I write for a specific audience, and I am overjoyed when I get emails from readers thanking me for speaking to them through my stories.

Keep it moving.
Teens today don’t like to wait. Thanks to DVRs and Youtube, there is little need to watch commercials – at least not for more than 5 seconds. They can complete research for their term papers online in one night – no scouring books after finding them with the card catalogue. Food is fast, and opinions expressed in 120 characters or less. As much as some of us want to spend several pages developing our exposition, we just can’t. Descriptions have to come between dialogue, a sentence at a time. And dialogue has to be fast, moving the plot along.  Less summary, more action. Cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. Keep the kids turning pages or you lose them – after all, they have a group chat and an Instagram daily challenge they could be doing right now.

Dora here. Do you write for the YA market?

What are some of the challenges you've faced and how did you overcome them?

About Krista McGee

When Krista McGee isn't living in fictional worlds of her own creation, she lives in Tampa and spends her days as a wife, mom, teacher, and coffee snob. 

Right Where I Belong
Purchase Link

Natalia’s about to discover her place in the world . . . and it’s not following in her father’s footsteps.

After watching her father jump from one marriage to the next, Natalia has completely written off love. And when her father divorces his third wife—the only one who has been a mother to her—Natalia is ready to write him off too.

Needing a change of scenery, Natalia leaves her home in Spain and relocates with her stepmother to sun-soaked Florida. But she didn’t realize just how far a new school, a new culture, and a new lifestyle would push her out of her comfort zone.

One of her biggest surprises comes from Brian, a pastor’s son with an adorable smile, who loves God with a sincerity that astounds Natalia. She doesn’t want to fall for him, but she can’t seem to avoid him long enough to get him out of her mind.

Love is the last thing Natalia wants. Even so, God has her right where she belongs.

Because Jesus’ Love is Better Than a Vampire’s…

by Krista McGee
How did I get started writing? It was 2008 and my high school English students were so engrossed in the popular vampire novels that they were completely ignoring my lectures on dangling participles and misplaced modifiers (shocking, I know!). So I read the books, and I immediately recognized why these students – the females especially – loved them so much: This was what we all crave. We want to be loved, cherished, treasured so much that someone is willing to give up everything for us, sacrifice himself for us, tell us and show us every day in many ways that we are his beloved. But these books – and the romance within their pages – fell short. No man will ever meet all our needs. No earthly romance will ever fully satisfy us. We are the Bride of Christ, and until we fully embrace that relationship, we will never be truly fulfilled.

So I thought to myself, “Someone ought to write books for teens where Jesus is the main character, wooing the girl to Himself…” That thought got stuck in my mind, wouldn’t leave. And from that thought, the idea for my first novel, First Date, was born.

First Date, loosely based on the book of Esther, is the story of a teenage girl thrown into a situation she doesn’t want to be in, surrounded by people very different from those she is used to because God wants to use her in ways she never expected to be used.

I wrote the book in the summer of 2009 with no assurance it would ever get published, and no confidence that I could even finish it. I left home with my laptop in the mornings, going to the public library, Panera, or anywhere I could find some quiet space to write. God gave me just what I needed each day. I’d wake up to repeat that process again the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. By the end of the summer, the book was written.

God directed the next steps in ways only He could. He opened up the door for me to get an agent and, with her help, to find a publisher willing to take a chance on me. In the fall of 2010, I signed a three-book contract with Thomas Nelson.

Each of the three books in that series is loosely based on a biblical woman, and each of them has Jesus as the main character, wooing the girls to himself – in different ways, to different girls, in different circumstances. Starring Me is based on the story of Isaac and Rebekah, and Right Where I Belong is based on the book of Ruth.

Last spring, I signed another contract with Thomas Nelson for a young adult dystopian trilogy. The first book in that series, Anomaly, will be out in July. For more information on that or any of my other books, please visit me at www.kristamcgeebooks.com on Facebook at Krista Abney McGee or Twitter @KristaMcGeeYA

When Krista McGee isn't living in fictional worlds of her own creation, she lives in Tampa and spends her days as a wife, mom, teacher, and coffee snob. 

Dora here. What about you?

What inspired you to write in your chosen genre?

Right Where I Belong
by Krista McGee

Natalia’s about to discover her place in the world . . . and it’s not following in her father’s footsteps.

After watching her father jump from one marriage to the next, Natalia has completely written off love. And when her father divorces his third wife—the only one who has been a mother to her—Natalia is ready to write him off too.

Needing a change of scenery, Natalia leaves her home in Spain and relocates with her stepmother to sun-soaked Florida. But she didn’t realize just how far a new school, a new culture, and a new lifestyle would push her out of her comfort zone.

One of her biggest surprises comes from Brian, a pastor’s son with an adorable smile, who loves God with a sincerity that astounds Natalia. She doesn’t want to fall for him, but she can’t seem to avoid him long enough to get him out of her mind.

Love is the last thing Natalia wants. Even so, God has her right where she belongs.