It's Like SYTYCD

Every three months for a little over a year now, I have a new kind of writing challenge. And by that I don't mean the same challenge every time, but something new, a challenge like I've never had before.

You know how, after a big exercise day, you'll wake up the next morning sore in places you didn't know you had muscles?

It's sort of like that, but in a totally awesome, cool way. Only I'm exercising writing muscles I didn't know I had. In some cases, it's felt like I didn't even have the muscle at all, and I'm developing it as I go.

It began, if memory serves, back in the spring of 2012, when Heather came up with the brilliant idea (she comes up with great ideas quite often) and invited me and Sarah to join her.

The idea: Write and publish clean romance novellas in anthologies. For each anthology, invite three other proven romance writers we know and respect. Everyone involved helps promote the anthologies, which then, in theory helps fans of any given writer involved to get new readers.

Plus, how fun is that?!

So far we've published four collections under the Timeless Romance Anthologies brand, each with a theme going along with the seasons: Winter Historical, Spring Vacation, Summer Wedding, and Autumn Suspense. One thing that continues to impress me is how differently each writer involved interprets the theme. Every novella is so different from the others, and that's part of what makes the collections so fresh and fun.

One big thing we've heard from readers is how glad they are that the novellas are clean. That means there's no content in them beyond a PG rating. More specifically, as for the steamy factor, you'll find nothing steamier than kissing.

Heather and I attended the first Romance Novel Convention this summer and came across a writer who thanked us for writing clean romance. She herself wrote erotica, yet she didn't want her teenage daughter reading the kinds of books she wrote. Not yet, at least, not until her daughter hit adulthood and could make an informed choice.

I don't think any of the writers who've been involved with the anthologies would ever suggest that they're only for young readers—not by a long shot. But it's nice to hear that kind of feedback and know that there's a need for what we write even beyond our intended audience of grown women. (For the record, I've used my sixteen-year-old daughter as a beta reader, and she's read some of the collections. They're that clean.)

Yet embarking on this journey felt intimidating, to put it mildly. Years ago, I read every short story by L. M. Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables fame), which were being republished in collections (grouped by the editors into themes—a fun coincidence). I remember thinking that I'd never, ever be able to write something so short, that my story ideas needed a novel-sized chunk to tell. 

Keep in mind that LMM's "short" stories aren't that short; they're really more like the length of novellas we're using for our anthologies, which run 13,000-15,000 words, roughly 45-50 pages double-spaced in Word.

Something like twenty-five years after reading those stories, I'm faced with the prospect of writing not one, but many stories in the space of about 13,000 words, after a decade of writing novels at least 90,000 words long. My longest novel, At the Journey's End ran close to 115,000 words. So, yeah. I needed a big paradigm shift to make this work.

The first thing I had to do is boil down how exactly I'd write a novella. Fortunately, I've been writing long enough that I know roughly how long my typical scenes end up being: in the neighborhood of 1500-2,000 words. I figured that gave me roughly six scenes to work with to introduce the characters, setting, and conflict, build to a climax, and resolve the plot, especially with the romantic thread. I also knew that I didn't have room for much of a subplot (something that became an additional challenge with the Suspense collection, which required a subplot to work).

I created a very basic outline—a skeleton, really—of the plot for the Winter collection. I remember writing much of that story, which is set in a very snowy, very cold canyon, while on a family trip after spending a day in Island Park, Idaho, in the middle of a very hot summer.

We're currently in the middle of production for our fifth anthology, which will feature historical stories set in Europe, and we have our brand-new cover to reveal.

Here it is:

  Two thoughts:
(1) Isn't it gorgeous?

(2) Did you notice whose name is written first? (AAAACK!)

I'm trying to stave off a panic attack at the thought of my story leading the collection. That's what readers sampling the anthology will read when they decide whether to buy it. (Eeep!) Part of my nerves may be because this novella has been my hardest one to write so far (which is saying something), although I'm not sure why. I do have a theory, though.

Remember the whole exercise/muscle analogy? I don't think it's too far off. Memory fails me when I try to recall who first came up with this next oh-so-fitting analogy: for the three of us involved in every single one of the Timeless Romance Anthology collections, the exercise is not unlike So You Think You Can Dance, where dancers are thrown different styles and genres each week and are expected to excel in them.

The ballroom dancer has to suddenly do disco. The ballet dancer is assigned hip hop. The tapper must perform contemporary.

Do it, and do it well, or be voted off.

In our case, of course, the stakes aren't as high as winning a cash prize and the title on a reality show. But I still consider each challenge something special, and I strive to do my best with every novella.

We have a devoted fan base, which grows with each new collection. I want to give every reader a smile and maybe a happy sigh at the end of each story. I give each one everything I've got.

That's not to say my knees won't be knocking as this next collection goes live on November 4; they totally will be.

I'm just glad we don't call our collections So You Think You Can Write...

(Find the Kindle versions here! Or get them on the Nook or the first two collections in other formats from Smashwords.)

Writing Journey: Pronunciation Guides

Up today: Answering a question L. T. Eliot (also known as Lexicon Luvr) posed some time ago:

[Writers creating pronunciation guides for audio recordings] is a new phenomenon to me, and I've only ever heard it mentioned once. How long has that been going on?

I can't speak for other writers and their experiences with their publishers, of course, so what comes below is based on my experience.

For my first five books, Covenant released an audio version on either cassettes or CDs (in one case, both). In each case, the book was abridged.

My first two novels (Lost Without You and At the Water's Edge) are my shortest ones. I had to cut them down to 48,000 words, but since they were each right around 70,000, that wasn't terrible to do. It wasn't fun by any means, but I could cut out descriptions, shorten dialogue, delete actions and tags, take showing portions and make them telling, and the like. Abridging took out a lot of the voice and personality of the book, but the basic story was left intact.

And then . . . well, THEN I had to cut House on the Hill. It clocked in at 102,000 words. Remember, it had to be hacked down to 48,000.

Yeah. Had to cut that puppy by more than half. The final version had entire scenes and subplots stripped out. For example, readers didn't see Abe's father or even know much of Abe's background. There just wasn't time for it.

At the Journey's End was even longer, by more than 10,000 words (I think it was around 114,000 words total). By that point, they were toying with whether they'd still do a cassette version. If not, I'd get to keep an additional 5,000 words because CDs hold more. But the final decision wasn't made early enough, so even though that book is only on CD, I still had to cut it to 48,000.

Spires of Stone was a bit shorter than At the Journey's End, and I got to cut it to 53,000, so it wasn't quite as miserable to cut, but I still hated it.

If memory serves, Spires was also the first book they requested a pronunciation guide for, but what they asked for was relatively minor. I had to clarify any names or terms that might be confusing. I remember writing character personality descriptions, but not much else. That book was released fall of 2007.

In hindsight, had my sister not been the one reading At the Water's Edge (2004), I probably would have needed to submit a guide, because it has Finnish names and words that would totally throw off your average American reader. That's why I requested that Mel read it: she knows Finnish pronunciation as well as I do, so she didn't need a guide.

By the time Tower of Strength came out, a new decision had been made: Covenant heard its customers asking for unabridged books and agreed to do them! (And there was much rejoicing in the land!)

However, there was a consequence to that decision: unabridged books are (obviously) longer. Therefore, they cost more to produce (both in actual CDs as well as in paying for a reader and other costs). Ergo, they couldn't afford to put every book onto audio.

So while they'd have fewer novels on audio, those that got audio versions would all be unabridged.

The result: Tower of Strength (2009) wasn't given audio. I was rather relieved: no butchering of my book! On the other hand, if it had gotten audio, there wouldn't have been a need to butcher it. But cutting it down wouldn't have been as painful, since Tower is my shortest historical.

I didn't have a 2008 release, so between the small guide for Spires in '07 and no audio for Tower in '09, the first "real" guide I've had to do was for Band of Sisters. (Did you catch that? It's on unabridged audio!)

The pronunciation guide for Band of Sisters was rather involved. I was surprised at how many names and terms they wanted me to explain. I had to include actual pronunciation symbols based on Merriam-Webster's style.

I also had to describe the characters, but this time it wasn't only their personalities. I had to describe their voices. Does Nora have a high or low voice? What about Kim? Does Marianne have a noticeable accent? Does Jessie have a unique tone? What about Brenda? Does she talk fast? And so on.

I had to go reread portions of the book to really listen to my characters talk so I could describe their voices. (That probably sounds bizarre to anyone who isn't a writer, but to me, these women are real, and I can hear their voices in my head. No, I don't need medication.)

Back to the question: How long have the pronunciation guides been going on?

Short answer: somewhere in the ballpark of three or four years, and in that time (at least in my experience) they've become more specific and detailed.

That's a good thing, I think. I don't mind spending a little extra time on a guide since I'm no longer sweating over abridgments. And the guides really benefit everyone. The final product is better, since the actor reading the book knows going in how every person should sound and how to say possibly confusing terms, and the listener has a better experience with the story.

The guide avoids problems like the actor finding out 2/3 of the way through the book that whoops, this character has a southern drawl or this one has a gravelly voice, and this one speaks low for a woman . . . and that they've been reading it wrong the entire time!

Lots 'o Giveaway Winners

I've had two giveaways going on at the same time over here, and today I'm announcing the winners.

FIRST GIVEAWAY:

Rachelle Christensen's OfficeBox/Wrong Number giveaway has two steps. First, the 25 blogs participating each pick a preliminary winner who gets a prize package that includes:

• A ScrapMaBob
• A self-healing cutting mat
• A ribbon box

(That's a retail value of about $48.00.)

The 25 preliminary winners go on to be part of the grand prize drawing for an Original OfficeBox and a copy of Rachelle's new novel, Wrong Number.

The Lyon's Tale preliminary winner of the prize package is (drum roll, please . . .):

THE MOTHERBOARD from Crazyland with her first (required) entry of simply commenting on her favorite item. (It pays to enter!)

SECOND GIVEAWAY:

This one was to encourage readers to spread the word about our super-successful Triple Book Launch (more to come on that in another post). Thanks again to every single person who came and supported us. It was such a great night!

I promised a full set of my four temple novels (House on the Hill, At the Journey's End, Spires of Stone, and Tower of Strength) to the grand prize winner, plus two runner-ups who'd each get a copy of my grammar guide, There, Their, They're: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd.

Winners:

The four-book set goes to . . .

Alexis of One Cluttered Brain!

She was bound and determined to win by getting as many entries as she could, even though she's not in Utah and couldn't attend the launch. Thanks for spreading the word, Alexis!

The two people who get copies of There, Their, They're:

1) Krista

AND

2) Elizabeth Morgan

Congratulations to all three!

(Ladies, be sure to e-mail me your snail mail address so I can get your prizes to you!)

Share the Launch Love

It's almost here!

Sarah M. Eden, Julie Coulter Bellon, and I are revving up for Friday's Triple Book Launch Party!

THIS FRIDAY, March 12

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Deseret Book at University Village

(East of University Mall in Orem)

Get ready for a bunch of great door prizes. (They'll be announced here soon. We've got a bunch of awesome stuff!) Friday will be a ball.

Whether you love Regency Romance, Thrillers with lots of suspense (and a little romance thrown in!), or women's fiction (or know someone who does!), you won't want to miss this event.

But WAIT! There's more for YOU.

We want to spread the word about the launch as far and as wide as possible.

Welcome to the "Share the Launch Love" drawing!

The more YOU do to spread the word, the better your chances of winning. (I'm totally not above bribery.)

THE PRIZES:

An entire FOUR-BOOK set of my temple books: House on the Hill, At the Journey's End, Spires of Stone, and Tower of Strength.

(That's a value of over $60.00!)

TWO runners-up will get a copy of my grammar book, There, Their, They're: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd.

HOW TO ENTER: SPREAD THE LAUNCH PARTY LOVE!

Be sure to leave a comment FOR EACH SEPARATE THING YOU DO so I have a fighting chance of keeping track of the entries.

-TWO ENTRIES: Put the Triple Book Launch Party button on your side bar. (The image is at the top over on my sidebar. Just copy and paste it to your blog). You must also LINK the button to the event's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=338177993233&ref=mf

HOW-TO UPDATE: For Blogger users, simply copy the image and add it to a picture gadget. There's a spot in the dialog box where you can add a URL to link the picture to. Copy and paste the FB link above, then save.

-THREE ENTRIES: Blog about the launch party, including date, time, location, and name all three authors involved, including links to all three authors (author websites or blogs).

-TWO ENTRIES: First you must do the blog post (above). In that post, include all three book covers featured at the launch. (Courting Miss Lancaster, Dangerous Connections, and Band of Sisters).

Here are the covers, just to make things really easy for you:

-ONE TO FIVE ENTRIES: Tweet the event. (Include a link to your tweet in your comment.) Receive an additional entry each time you tweet the launch (maximum once a day) between now and Friday. (Leave a comment each time, with a link for each tweet.)

-ONE ENTRY: Mention the launch party in your Facebook status or news feed. (Include a link in your comment.)

-ONE ENTRY: Follow The Lyon's Tale. (If you're already a follower, just say so in a comment; an immediate entry!)

-ONE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter.

-ONE ENTRY: Become my fan on Facebook (use the nifty Facebook fan badge in the sidebar).

-ONE ENTRY: Follow Sarah M. Eden's blog.

-ONE ENTRY: Follow Julie Bellon on Twitter.

-ONE TO THREE ENTRIES: Link back to THIS POST (not just my blog; use the permalink) and share it via Facebook, Twitter, on in a blog post (the same blog post as above works!).

(It would also be awesome if readers would invite their Wasatch Front-living friends to attend. If they're on Facebook, go to the event page and click on "share." I have no idea how to track invitations like that, but we'd sure appreciate it!)

Drawing ENDS Friday, March 12 at 4:00 pm Mountain Time.

Winners will be announced after the launch (and, quite possibly, a long nap).

***TOTAL POSSIBLE ENTRIES: TWENTY-ONE!***

Ready . . . go!

(Hope to see you Friday!)

Writing Journey: Audio Double Hockey Sticks

I entered the publishing world at a rather odd period: right as cassette tapes were making their exit and CDs were making their debut.

As a result, my first novel's audio was put on cassette. My second was available on both cassette and CD, and my third was only on CD. I was right at the transition period.

This was also a period where nearly every Covenant novel was available in both print and on audio. Slight problem, however: audio sells less, but has new costs like paying an actor to perform the thing, so they always insisted that the author abridge the book down to a particular length to help on production costs.

When the full transition to CD was complete, it brought me a slight measure of joy. This may sound like a small thing, but for a writer, it was huge: the CDs they used could hold 5,000 more words of air time than the cassettes could.

That meant less abridging. Instead of cutting my book down to 48,000 words, we had to cut books down to only 53,000.

Let's put those numbers into perspective.

Abridging my first two books wasn't too hard. Oh, at the time, I thought it was a hideous brand of torture, but I had no idea how good I had it. Those books were in the neighborhood of about 70,000 words. Cutting them to 48,000 was taking out roughly 1/4 of the book.

I could take out descriptions, condense paragraphs, summarize sections, and so on, but keep the entire story intact. It wasn't fun by any means, but it was quite doable.

With At the Water's Edge, I was particularly concerned about the Finnish words and names being pronounced correctly. I could do it, in theory, but I knew I'd probably talk way too fast and get ridiculously nervous and end up sounding like a fool. So I had them audition my sister for the reader, and they used her. Mel and I sound remarkably similar (to the point that her husband has mistaken me for her on the phone), so if you ever listen to the audio of that one, you can pretend it's me!

My next book, House on the Hill, clocked in at about 102,000 words. It was book #3, which, as you recall, was still on both cassette and CD. I had to cut it down to 48,000 words. That means more than half of the book had to be at the mercy of the delete key.

Entire characters and subplots from the original don't exist in the audio version of that one. I listened to my first two audios, but nearly 5 years after that one, I still haven't listened to it. I don't have the heart.

Next book: At the Journey's End.

In theory, I should have been dancing with glee, because this was when the transition to CD was complete, so I had an additional 5,000 words to work with, right? After all, I had to cut the book to 53,000 instead of 48,000.

Yeah, well, slight problem: the novel was 114,000 words. Ahem. So even with those extra 5,000 words, I still had to cut a higher percentage, because the book was so dang long. ARGH! I think I managed to cut it well enough, but again, I haven't listened to it. I hope it makes sense.

When you cut a book that much, it becomes almost a summary; you have to suck out any personality and flavor of the original. You lose the essence of the real thing. That's why I almost cringe when I hear that people have listened to my books; I know they have no idea what my writing and my stories are really like.

I just hope the audios aren't butcher jobs. (On one hand, I do count my blessings in that I get to do the abridging and not someone else!)

Next up: Spires of Stone.

The book and its rewrites and edits gave me fits for months on end. By the time I had to cut it for the audio, I was ready to torch it anyway. I think I managed to cut it all right. The audio part of the process was such a blur that I don't really remember. I just did it and handed it in.

Haven't listened to that one, either.

Now here comes the interesting part: Covenant has changed their tune. I don't know what was behind the decision, but I'm guessing they've realized that most people don't want abridged books. If they're going to listen to a book, they want the whole thing.

So here's the latest: Covenant's putting out fewer audio books (because they can't afford to put out everything unabridged) but whatever they are putting out is unabridged.

Can I hear a hallelujah?!

The result of this is that Tower of Strength had no audio at all. That was bittersweet. For once, I didn't have the misery of having to hack away at my own book and leave a bloody mess on the floor. (Especially since authors pretty much never, ever saw any royalties on audio books anyway. Long story there, but the whole audio thing was an exercise in futility. Something we had to do, but it really did no good.)

On the other hand, a contract clause was changed that meant I would now be far more likely to get royalties from an audio book, not to mention that with a book unabridged, people would be more likely to buy it. Plus I didn't have to abridge anything.

Regardless, I didn't get the audio on Tower. Like I said, bittersweet.

This time around, with Band of Sisters, I haven't heard either way whether I'll get the audio. That'll be a decision up to the marketing department, what other titles are being released during the same period, and which they figure will be most likely to sell audio copies.

For now, I am simply grateful that never again will I have to sit at the computer wondering, How in the world can I tell this story in so few words and have it make any sense whatsoever?! ARGH!!!!

Those days are gone! YES!!!

PS #1: Today is the 4A State Football Championship. My nephew is playing in it (He's #24 for Timpview). It's also my alma mater. Today's their shot for a 4th consecutive state title. Cross your fingers for the Thunderbirds!

PS #2: The Utah Chocolate Show runs today and tomorrow at the South Towne Expo Center, 11 am to 9 pm. Tickets are $7 at the door. If you see my sister Mel (the director) say hi for me! My other sister, Michelle, will likely be hanging around the demo stage and running stuff there. Say hi to her, too! Mel may need to jet at some point this morning to see part of the game. I don't know how she'll manage to even open the show while her son's in a championship game. Yowza!

Stupid Google Alerts

Admit it. You've Googled yourself, haven't you?

But you don't have to anymore. You may have heard of the nifty Google Alert tool, which searches for any phrase you tell it to once a day, and then Google e-mails you the results.

Kinda nifty.

For a writer, Google Alerts are really convenient. For example, you can set up an alert on your book title so you'll be notified of book reviews you might not have found otherwise on a blog or news site you didn't even know existed.

I have a friend with a relatively small blog who wrote about her experience with a particular book, and within a day, the author had commented on her post.

How do you think the author even found her blog? It had to be with a Google Alert.

Awesome and convenient, no?

Definitely. Especially if your book has a title like many of my friends' books. Say, When Hearts Conjoin, or The Mazerunner, or Farworld or All the Stars in Heaven or Abinadi.

For my friends and their books, if Google finds their titles somewhere, there's a pretty good chance that the post or article is going to be about their book.

And then . . . well, then there are my books.

Do you have any idea how useless Google Alerts are for my titles?

They are all common phrases.

Let's take a look: House on the Hill

For that one, my daily Google Alert e-mail used to consist of a good dozen or more links, most referring to tourist descriptions of places they'd visited.

"We visited this beautiful house on the hill . . ."

After months and months of daily e-mails with not a single link about the actual book, I finally deleted the stupid alert.

Oh, and what about, say, Tower of Strength?

Do you have any idea how often that phrase is used whenever someone describes a loved one who has been a support? I didn't, until I created an alert for the phrase.

I swear, I get links all the time about family tragedies and how the father or the mother or whoever was a "tower of strength" for the rest of the family. Or it's a romantic tribute from one spouse to another. ("You are my tower of strength . . .")

Any time a celebrity dies, I can guarantee I'll get a bunch of "tower of strength" links about whoever is supporting the family.

Great for them. Not what I'm looking for.

Let's look at my other titles, shall we?

At the Journey's End

Another phrase tourists use. Also, I've discovered, a common name for places like bed and breakfasts. Another deleted alert.

Spires of Stone

Not quite as common as the others, but still used a lot by people in describing architectural structures they see on travels, whether it's cathedrals or whatever. I haven't deleted this alert, because I don't get dozens and dozens of irrelevant links. Just several regular ones, and every so often, there will be a real one referring to the book. Still annoying, mostly useless.

Lost Without You

A common phrase peppered throughout blogs. Since the book is out of print, it's pretty rare anyone blogs about it anyway. Alert deleted.

At the Water's Edge

Common descriptor that pops up regularly in articles and blogs. Lots of irrelevant links. Another out of print book. Another deleted alert.

There, Their, They're

You'd be amazed at how often word nerd people like me post about these homonyms . . . in this order. That's the weirdest part. I get links all the time about their misuse, and they're listed just like this. It's eerie. In all but one case, it's never been about the book.

The most useful Google Alert is simply my name, and that usually does the job well enough, because usually, if someone's going to review a book, they'll include the author's name. I'm likely to find out about it even if I'm not alerted with the title.

But then there was the time a Google Alert on my name informed me that I'd died. It sent a link to an obituary of an Annette Lyon from New York. That was disconcerting in a Twilight Zone sort of way.

Fortunately, this Annette Lyon is alive and well. And my next book's title (sounds like they're keeping it as Band of Sisters) isn't a common household phrase.

Maybe I'll finally have a useful Google Alert on a title!

Where Book Ideas Come from

Recently, I've had several people ask where I get the ideas for my books. Some of my unpublished manuscripts are so bad they'll always be unpublished, but here's a book-by-book look at my published books.

I'll start with the most recent and go backward:



With most of my historical novels, I haven't had a clue about what the story will be until I learn about the temple and the area. Since I'm very big on the history being an organic part of the story, I need to know about the setting before I can come up with a plot or characters to fit it.

With Tower of Strength, I researched the settlement of Manti and the temple there for several weeks, making notes and marking spots in the text of several publications, but I really had no clear idea for a story.

Then one day as I was blow drying my hair, Tabitha showed up in my head. I heard her say, "It's Tab, not Tabby. I'm not a cat!" I grinned, knowing I'd found my heroine.

From that point, I knew enough about the area that I was sure Temple Hill and some of its history needed to figure prominently in the story. But those events were way before the construction of the temple and therefore several years before Tabitha was born. I knew I'd need a character that was a child during those years. (Which is why Fred is several years her senior.)

Early into the drafting, I uncovered Mantia's story and groaned. GREAT. More research. In an area I knew nothing about. So I hit the Internet and studied up on horses and horse training. Such. A. Pain. (But in the end, totally worth it.)


As I mentioned in a recent Writing Journey post, Spires of Stone is essentially a retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. I've always loved that play and wanted to retell the story. The trick for this one wasn't finding the idea, but finding a way to adapt a classic to the 1800s and work in details about the temple in a natural way.

At the Journey's End was a bit like Tower of Strength in that I was several weeks into the research before I had any clue what the story would be. I had lots of cool ideas about what could happen (and things that had happened) on the Honeymoon Trail that led from Arizona to St. George, but I also knew there was no way to tell all of them.

Thanks to all the horror stories I read about one area of the trail, I knew pretty early on that there would be a disaster in that spot. (Something that apparently takes most readers by surprise.)

One thing I did know going in was that Abe would need a strong reason to leave Utah. Plus, he needed someplace else to go that had Mormons. I'd recently read about a lynching that really happened in Salt Lake City around this time. That tragedy provided the perfect impetus Abe needed.

Once I settled on him going to Arizona, his story wasn't the hard one to come up with. It was the heroine's. Fortunately, Maddie showed up on her own a couple of weeks into the research, and I could breathe a sigh of relief. Now I had both sides of the equation and could move forward.


House on the Hill, my very first temple novel, came about after I read my parents' copy of Nolan P. Olsen's Logan Temple: The First 100 Years. I picked it up after getting married in the Logan Temple myself, and after reading the book, I knew immediately that there was a story there I had to tell. But it wasn't until after I read the book again, made a master chronology, and started looking at the events and dates that I figured out a story to go with it. This book went through a lot of drafts and revisions, especially in the early stages. Writing a historical for the first time was pretty terrifying.

I managed to buy a copy of Olsen's book for myself a few years ago. It's out of print again, so I'm glad I snagged it when I had the chance. Sometimes I get e-mails asking where you can find the book. I've seen it for sale at online used bookstores and even Deseret Book's online auction. They're out there, just hard to find.

As I've mentioned before, Abe came about after I read a paper on Native American children who were indentured by Latter-day Saints. It was such an intriguing idea that I knew right away who he was and where he'd come from. He remains a favorite character for a lot of readers.


As some people have guessed, At the Water's Edge was somewhat inspired by my parents' own love story. But only inspired by. The vast majority of the book is pure fiction. Here's where it dovetails with reality:

My dad served a mission in Finland. He returned several years later on graduate research and met my mother at church. (Check, check, and check for Kenneth.)

Mom became the black sheep of her family when she was baptized, and her father threatened to kick her out of the house if she joined the Church. (Check and check for Annela.)

But that's as far as the story mirrors reality. Mom was seventeen when she was baptized, not an adult in her twenties with a messed-up, live-in boyfriend. All the rest of the story is out of my head. One big difference is that both of Mom's parents were against the Church, not just her father.

I made the mistake of telling one of my sisters that our parents inspired the story right as I handed over a few chapters for her to read. She came back with tears in her eyes saying, "Did Grandma really say that?" I had to burst her bubble. Sorry, no. This is FICTION. Annela's mother isn't Grandma (who was very much against Mom's baptism). Grandma never expressed support like Annela's mother does. (It's a novel. Pretend. Made up!)


Lost without You was sparked by a dream. (Wouldn't it have been nice if that dream yielded millions like Stephanie Meyer's dream?! :-D) At the time, I had two children. In the dream, I knew I was going to die soon, and my two regrets were that I couldn't say good-bye to my husband and that I couldn't tell him to find a good mother to raise my children.

Up to that point, I'd been adamantly opposed to him ever remarrying were I to die. But that dream showed me that if another woman were to truly mother and nurture my children as her own, that I would praise and honor her for doing so.

That was the kernel of the idea.

Next week I might go into some other ideas, such as what prompted Band of Sisters, coming out next spring, and my the dust-gathering murder mystery I really should do something with


Today's Tour Stop:
Author Bee's Blog (Therein I discovered what that smell is.)

Temple Trivia: St. George

The settlement of St. George was so significant to building the temple there, that that's what I'm focusing on today, rather than on specific temple stories. (I can go into those another time.)

After I learned about the settlement of southern Utah, I'm amazed anyone stuck around. Many didn't.

The original reason for getting a settlement down there was so the Latter-day Saints could be more self-sufficient. The Civil War had broken out, which led to a decrease in the cotton supply out West.

Combine that with the fact that Brigham Young didn't like to rely on outsiders for anything, and he decided that the Saints needed a way to get their own cotton.

(I found it ironic that even when the Cotton Mission was up and running, they always, always relied on dyes from back East to color the fabric.)

They'd already had success growing flax in what is now Utah Country, but they needed a warmer climate for cotton.

After scouts came back to Salt Lake and described the area, a lot of people were understandably wary. Volunteers were requested to settle the "Cotton Mission," but only one man raised his hand. The next week, Church leaders just called people from the pulpit, folks who had the skills they needed (everything from farmers to blacksmiths to coopers and even a mineralogist and a fiddler).

I'd heard about those kinds of mission calls and always marveled that the men just accepted their calls and did their duty. Not this time. About a third declined. They knew what a harsh environment they were being asked to live in. No, thanks!

Of those who did go, some turned around and went back as soon as they saw the area, and still more left after giving it a go for a time. The heat and other issues just made eking out a living there hard.

One early trial was an outbreak of malaria. (In the desert. I know; I don't get it either.)

A continuing problem was the Virgin River. The settlers had to dam it to reroute the water so they could actually water their crops. They spent much of the winter of 1861-62 making a dam and ditches. In the spring, floods washed out the dam and filled the ditches with mud. This delayed building their homes.

The dam washing out (and then rebuilding it) became a common theme: it broke again and again over the years, making it hard to grow food and build shelter, let alone to grow the cotton they were there to produce.

The settlers eventually began construction on a tabernacle, and then, on the counsel of Brigham Young, construction on a temple. I go into some of the challenges in building the temple in At the Journey's End, so I won't here. Just know that the people had their work cut out for them. I would have sat down and cried.

By the time the Cotton Mission was disbanded, there was quite a large settlement, and living there wasn't quite as big a sacrifice.

One interesting item is that a handful of people who were originally called to the Cotton Mission made a point of growing a token amount of cotton in their gardens every year even after the mission was closed.

Their reasoning: They'd been called to grow cotton and hadn't ever been released from that duty.

The early settlers had little in the way of material goods, and they sacrificed greatly to build both a tabernacle and a temple.

At first glance, building a temple there doesn't make much sense. The bulk of Church membership certainly wasn't in the area. The Salt Lake Temple was under construction (although it wouldn't be done for some time). Before long, the Logan and Manti Temples were being built and would serve more members of the Church.

In the end, President John Taylor, who became prophet shortly after the dedication of the St. George Temple, explained why it was built there: "Because there was a people living here [in St. George] who were more worthy than any others. Who were more worthy of the blessings of the temple"

Essentially, only the best of the best not only agreed to go down there, but they stayed and endured and sacrificed greatly because of their faith and dedication to God. That devotion was repaid with the blessings of eternity.

I'd say it was worth the price.

Today's tour stops:
An Ordinary Mom (in which I'm long-winded with thoughtful questions I've never been asked before)
If You Give a Mom a Moment (where she quotes lines from the book and tells why they resonated)

A Video & A Graphic Novel

First, a reminder about my TWO book signings happening TODAY. See the sidebar for times and places.

My techno-genius teenage son figured out how to compress the file of his animation so Blogger could handle it. (Missed the still-shot? It's on this post here.)

For those who wanted to see the goblet turn into a sword:



Another gem: this week's Tuesday tour stop was too great to pass up. Rob Wells has a brilliant sense of humor, and what he created for his tour stop was so original that Mormon Times even picked it up and linked to it.

Click the picture to enlarge and laugh at a mini graphic novel called Bethany's Story, created entirely with my book covers. I tried to get it to post here so you could click on it to enlarge, but my techno-idiocy is shining through again.

To see the graphic novel (and laugh), click HERE.


Today's tour stop is one that touched my heart. Keith Fisher, who I met years ago at a writing conference, is one of the dearest men alive. He talks about reading Tower of Strength to his dying father in the hospital. I'm still misty over it:

Keith Fisher at LDS Writers Blogck

Winners #4 & Writing Journey: Part X

First, announcing the next set of FIVE winners from my giveaway:

1) TWO people get the Love Notes CD of romantic music performed by Glenn Hatch. Those two people are LexiconLuvr and SO.

2) The SLC Baby Bandz gift pack goes to Lolli.

3) The Sew Sara bib goes to Krystal.

4) And The Worldwide Ward Cookbook goes to Brooke.

Congratulations, all!

Winners, be sure to send me your mailing address so the sponsors can get your prizes shipped! (annette at annettelyon dot com)

Tomorrow I'll announce the Grand Prize winner of the Colorado Kernels gourmet popcorn gift basket. (Not entered yet? This is your last day. Do it quick on the giveaway post!)


Now, continuing the Writing Journey series:

Part I Part II Part III Part IV
Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII
Part IX

Unfortunately, in the end, the financial risk was deemed to be still too high to publish girl chapter books like the two I'd submitted about St. George.

Let me say one thing: rejection stings. No matter what.

It's painful, it's icky, and it makes you miserable. You never, ever get used to it, even after you've been published and even when you can intellectually see past the situation and know it's nothing personal.

To make matters even stickier, right around this time I also submitted a YA fantasy I'd written years before, since Covenant had done a few of those (like K.L. Fogg's Serpentide and David Farland's Of Mice and Magic). They didn't take it, either.

I guess the good part is that these rejections didn't crush me like others in the past had. But it was still difficult and, well, not fun.

You'd think that being published (having my fourth book accepted and in the pipeline at that point) would have given me this great self-confidence and ego armor. Hardly.

Also, know that just because you've been published doesn't mean you'll continue to publish. I know lots of authors who have gotten rejected by their own publisher after having more than one book published by them.

There are simply no guarantees in this business.

I was given the green light to submit the girl series elsewhere. I did. Within a few months, I got an answer from the other big LDS publisher. Basically, they said the same thing: we love the idea, great manuscript, but it's not a financial risk we can take.

I knew the books were so specific to Utah that they likely wouldn't work on a national level, even if I took out the religious stuff. I knew this, but I still took out the religion and tried finding an agent for it. Of course, I was told that yup, it's too regional to work nationally.

Delightful.

Getting the rejections on these chapter books was frustrating in a new way, because I wouldn't have ever written those stories if someone else hadn't suggested it first. I felt like I'd totally wasted time, effort, and emotional energy to create something that was for naught.

Then again, it was totally my fault for getting my hopes up and spending all the time on what was a doomed experiment from the start. My daughters were particularly disappointed, because these books were the only things I'd written that were sort of for them. Bummer.

I still have those two "St. George Girl" books, and I might put them up for download on my website some day as e-books if I find some interest in them.

I reluctantly set them aside and moved on to plotting my next temple book: Salt Lake. Once again, I was burning daylight (a common theme with me . . .).

I'd spent the first several months of the year researching and writing those two chapter books, and while I'd also done some work on the Salt Lake book, I hadn't made much progress. And here it was April again.

Would I be able to pull off practically the same timetable as I had with ATJE (get it written, polished, and submitted by the end of the year, and have it not stink)? Yowza.

When I first started the research, I had no idea what story to tell. For starters, as you likely know, the Salt Lake Temple took a whopping forty years to construct. Obviously I couldn't cover all that time.

A tricky issue was that for much of that time, construction was pretty uneventful ("Let's see, this year we laid another row of stones . . .") What would the story be, and where between 1853 and 1893 should it take place? Once again, I had nothing. No characters, no plot. Last time both of those came after I started the research. So I dove in and hoped someone like Maddie would show up.

But this time, I was antsy on a different count. For years, I'd wanted to write a modern-day adaptation of my favorite Shakespeare play. I'd even written notes about certain scenes and how I'd make them work in a contemporary setting. I'd envisioned entire scenes with characters and dialogue . . .

Now? Well, I had willingly stepped into a historical box and had promised to stay in it for a while at least.

Man . . . too bad I couldn't write that Shakespeare book. It would have been a ball.


Today's tour stop: Overstuffed.

Writing Journey: Part IX

Part I Part II Part III Part IV
Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII

Happy, happy! About three months after I submitted the St. George Temple book, it was accepted for publication, to be known thereafter as At the Journey's End. Amazingly, my editor didn't ask for any major rewrites. There were a couple of minor things, but overall not much, especially compared to some rewrites I'd had in the past.

I'd worried a lot that writing a book as fast as I did this one would make the quality go down. I hated reading writers who stopped caring about the craft and just pumped out one book after another. I never wanted to become that writer.

Somehow, things just gelled with this book.

Once again, I loved, loved, loved the cover. Let's gaze upon its splendor, shall we?

(Three cheers for real artwork and a great designer!)


I liked the title they picked because several people reach a "journey's end" in both physical and symbolic ways.

Even better, for the first time ever, I got a fall release (September!), which meant a few things.

I'd get to attend the LDS Booksellers Association convention in August, a big trade show where LDS publishers and retailers roll out their fall lineup and show off their wares. I'd be able to attend the Covenant lunch with authors and bookstore owners before my very own signing at the convention where I'd have a banner of my book cover that was at least a yard tall (talk about COOL and surreal!).

I decided to pitch the idea of a temple book series to Covenant. I sat down the with new managing editor (whom I love . . . Hi, Kathy!) and my then-editor, Angela. They thought the concept was awesome and encouraged me to go forward with my next temple book.

Side note here:
It's really hard to tell my writing history both coherently and chronologically, because there's so much overlap of what happened when. So far in this post, I've referred to when ATJE was accepted and the LDSBA Convention, which were months apart. And then I backtracked by almost a year to when I first had the temple series idea and met with Kathy and Angela about it but hadn't yet drafted ATJE (even though last week's post had me submitting it).

This same thing happens with every book, so if you go back and read this whole series, you'll find lots of places where I'm backing up and jumping forward. A lot of the stories overlap in time.

An example from right now: I wrote Tower of Strength about two years ago. The following year, I wrote (tentatively titled) Band of Sisters, which won't be out until 2010 (another year from now). Since submitting that one, I've drafted yet ANOTHER book, which only a handful of people on the planet have seen a word of.

While you draft one book, you're often editing or proofing another and sometimes promoting a third. All at the same time. I don't talk about them overlapping in this series. They're discussed as individual stories and books.

Currently I'm two books out from Tower of Strength, yet as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's brand, spankin' new.

This publishing thing is a trippy time warp.

Back to the story:
As I left the meeting, Angela had another idea for me. There had been some talk about doing historical chapter books for young girls (think: American Girl books for Mormon girls). The big hurdle: cost.

The LDS market is relatively small. Many of the costs associated with any book are the same or at least close to the same regardless of the book's length (evaluations, graphic design, typesetting, etc.). Plus, you can't do print runs into the tens of thousands like Scholastic can, you can't charge only five bucks for a copy, because the cost per book is so much more.

And really, what parent is going to cough up ten or fifteen bucks for a book for their kid if they can get something the same length in this month's school book order for $2.95?

So it's tough to make a profit on that kind of thing. (This is one big reason there is so little youth fiction in this market.) But . . . what if you could cut costs, such as on editing and revising? Maybe, just maybe there would a chance something like that could work. Mmmmaybe.

It was suggested that in order to try that kind of experiment, they'd need a writer who had a historical/research background and who could 2) turn in a clean manuscript quickly that didn't need a lot of editorial time.

Angela said that while there would be no guarantees, I might be the right person to try the experiment.

The idea excited me. I put it to the side long enough to finish and submit ATJE (see, I'm backing up in time again . . .), then got to work writing a book about a girl whose family is called to help settle St. George.

In preparation, I read as many historical chapter books for girls as I could find (the American Girl books but also lots of other, similar, titles by other publishers). I got a good feel for the kind of storyline, format, and length these books need. I had two daughters right in the target age, so I picked their brains and had them read some of those books too.

Going in, I thought it wouldn't take much additional research. Boy, was I wrong.

As Angela had asked, I wrote two short chapter books instead of just one (if this idea were to work, we'd need more than one out per year).

She'd warned me that there wasn't any guarantee on the project. So as I sent in the two manuscripts, crossing my fingers, I thought,

Please tell me I didn't just waste months of work!

Today's tour stop: Write Stuff

I'm also the guest poster at The Apron Stage AND at Blog Segullah. Come visit me!