So Glynn was reading "Come In Alone", a non-fiction collection by Warren Ellis, and...let me stop right here. Isn't Come In Alone just a great title? I can absolutely see those words on a terrific Ramsey Campbell horror novel.
 
But I digress.
 
So Glynn was turning pages in the middle of one of the collection's essays when he told me, "The website needs an author photo." Because somewhere in this book about the comic industry, Ellis apparently talked about how writing professionals need "branding" if they want to be remembered. According to Mr. Ellis (according to Glynn), Neil Gaiman made an effort to brand himself and look how it worked out for him.
 
Because of this, my guy argued that, if people saw my face, they'd remember me -- and "Anne Glynn" -- and our stuff would be this much closer to being branded. But what I thought was, where's Warren Ellis' author photo? It's not on the book that Glynn is holding.

Before I could press forward with my argument, he told me that he first picked up a Patricia Cornwell "Scarpetta" novel when he noticed the writer's pic on the book's back cover. He bought the thing. Bought another one, too, even if he never quite became a rabid fan. He said he probably wouldn't have even flipped through the pages if the photo hadn't attracted him.
 
*sigh*
 
I had so many points I wanted to mention to him. To begin with, Patricia Cornwell (in the picture on the upper left, but you knew that) is unreasonably attractive as a person. I wasn't delighted to learn that Glynn thought, Hey, P.C. is good-looking, maybe she can write. Really, Glynn?
 
Secondly, Ms. Cornwell appears to be clearly more comfortable in front of a camera than I am. Thirdly, she dresses like a woman who knows fashion. If you're male, you might think all women know fashion but not so. This morning, I dressed in jeans and a Mister Rogers' t-shirt. On the t-shirt, it shows the image of a smiling Fred Rogers over the words, You Are Special.
 
And, the thing is, I put this on intentionally. This was my clothing of choice today when I went out for pancakes. Patricia Cornwell is so stylish, I doubt she'd let her housekeeper go out in my regular wear. All of which I shared with Glynn, once we agreed that his two Scarpetta novels were going to the donation box at the local Goodwill.
 
But then he looked all sad-eyed that we didn't have an author photo for this website. So, with another *sigh*, I changed outfits and we went into the backyard for a photo session. (Which brings up, do you believe P. C. would have posed for her back-of-the-book photo if her cameraman had to rely on a $149 Canon Powershot? I don't think so, either.) The photo session took a couple of hours and, in every picture, my smile is kind of...frozen, like I can't wait to stop having my picture taken. Which was not untrue so good job, Canon Powershot.
 
Glynn was kind of committed to the idea now, so he chose the least awful of the terrible photos and I stuck it on this blog. I was willing to brand "Anne Glynn" as a writer who hates having her author picture taken -- but, a few days later, I pulled up a not- really-great, kind of fuzzy, cell shot from when we went to the rodeo in Prescott and put it on the website, instead. I felt it was a little more true to who I am and, I'm certain, Fred Rogers would have approved the switch.
 
Glynn noticed the change immediately. He didn't say a word.

Yes, the title for today’s post is pun-ny. I like puns. I’m not apologizing for it, I’m not trying to explain it, I admit it openly. Many people don’t like puns and those people are wrong, as this article explains. If you don’t like puns, good news, I’m (probably) done for today. If you do like puns, great news, there’s a Pun of the Day site.
 
(Barbie and me, we're in a mood today. Fair warning.)

Now, as you may remember from last week, I wanted to find a beta reader for our latest manuscript. The Good Witch had done a read-through, but this new book is the straightest romance that Glynn and I had ever written and we wanted someone who really knew the genre. So I did what I’ve always done, and I reached out to my fellow novelists.

I posted at the Writer’s Café, asking if anyone there knew of a good approach to finding a sensible, intelligent, and solid beta reader. The only response I received was from other writers, also wanting beta readers – any readers, even if they weren’t sensible or intelligent. No one had any suggestions for me. This was not encouraging.

So I then visited my other favorite writer’s spot, Absolute Write, and I did another post, saying:

The good news is, I've had my new mail-order bride novel read by a friend and she says it's good to go. The bad news is, this same friend liked my only other mail-order bride tale, a novella, and some readers hated that story. I disappointed them. My friend, Krista, was surprised by the response but she doesn't usually read romance.

I'm not seeking an editor or a proof-reader; the book has gone through three drafts and I feel pretty good in that regard. I'm in need of someone who loves romance to read my pages and tell me where I've gone wrong -- or if I've gone wrong, at all.

That evening, the nice S. contacted me, saying she’d take a look. I sent her the pages. (No, ‘S.’ probably isn’t her real name. It’s her real initial, though.)  Three days later, a second reader jumped in. Dani B. said she’d take a look, too. At first, she said I could send her the entire thing if I wanted but she soon changed her mind. Instead, she asked me to send her three chapters at a time.

This is Beta Reader 101. When someone you don’t know needs a reader – especially when they admit that their earlier story inspired dislike – well, a three-chapter beginning seems rather… sensible. This is an intelligent approach, too, because, if those first three chapters sucked, Dani could jump from the reader-ship fairly quickly. (Last pun. Promise.) So I knew she was acting in a sensible and intelligent manner. But was she solid enough to finish the job once she’d started?

I’m telling you now, absolutely. I sent off my first three chapters and, within hours, she was in contact with me. Working from the perspective of a romance reader, she told me what worked and what didn’t, the parts she liked and why she liked them. She shared what didn’t work for her, too, but she was always pleasant and friendly in her responses. She worked her way through the novel in three chapter chunks and, when I sent her the final bits, she was kind enough to say she didn’t want the story to end. She wanted to read more.

A writer loves hearing those words. Glynn became very happy when I shared her email with him.

By the end of my beta reader hunt, I’d found three new readers beside Dani. After receiving the book, one of them never wrote back. S. wrote a few weeks later to say we’d done a good job and L., the last of the group, said she liked it too. Neither had much more to share, but we were grateful for the feedback.

But we are especially grateful to Dani and her three chapter blow-by-blow report. That was golden.

Well, no, I told the Bad Witch, but now I felt guilty about it.
 
(Speaking of "not paying them": If you sign up with Bigstock Photo, they'll give you a free photo download every week. This is a mostly-terrific thing but many of the photos are kind of limited when it comes to how exactly someone would use them. The image on the left is this week's freebie and, thanks to this blog, I found a use for it.)

“If you don't pay people, why do they read your stuff?” the Bad Witch asked.

I sighed. Here’s the thing about the Bad Witch: Even though she’s the Good Witch's mother, and even though her daughter is wonderfully supportive of my work, BW assumes my writing must be beyond bad because she can’t find even one of my books at the local Barnes & Noble. And, as she’s pointed out more than once, she’s found some pretty bad books at her B&N.

BW happened to overhear my conversation with her daughter, and the words “beta reader” were new to her. I explained to BW that a beta reader is someone who reads a writer’s manuscript prior to publication. When she found out that a beta reader goes through the pages for free, checking for story flow, characterization, or clumsy mistakes, she was astounded. I explained that, when the stars align, a beta will find a book they love. They’ll get a chance to suggest changes, interact with a new author, and a good time will be had by all. When she still appeared doubtful, I told her it was like seeing a sneak preview of a movie, weeks or months ahead of everyone else. I’ve done it myself, many times, and it can be kind of a kick.

“But what if the movie stinks?” she asked, pointedly, before leaving the room. And what can you say to that?

When Glynn and I finished our latest manuscript, we wondered how we’d find a beta reader. I asked GW to read the book – I always ask GW to read our books – but she’s not a fan of sweet, historic romance. She normally prefers the twisty stuff and our latest is hopefully exciting and surprising but it isn’t exactly twisty. My romance-writing friend, Sue, would have been a better resource but she wasn’t available.

I needed fresh meat. I needed it bad. (See, those two sentences are an example of the kind of stuff that GW loves. Bad, bad GW.) Normally, I’d have put a call out on the anneglynn.com website but, sadness, I’d killed my Blogger version and couldn’t get this version to come to life. (Bad, bad Anne.) Forced to step outside of my comfort zone, I looked in some new directions.

One place I found was scribophile.com. It advertises itself as, “We're a respectful online writing group made up of writers who improve each other's work with thoughtful critiques and by sharing their writing experience”, which is exactly what I needed – except.

The “except” here is, before anyone can critique your work, you need to build up “karma points”, which are earned by critiquing other peoples’ manuscripts. It takes me several days to beta read a single manuscript, much less several, and that’s when I don’t have a new book to publish. I joined the group – once this novel is out, I hope to have the opportunity to start building some karma – but I knew I’d have to look elsewhere for an immediate reader.

I knew there were paid beta reader services (a/k/a, manuscript critiques, if you want to go hunting for them) but I just kind of feel…itchy…at the thought of a paid service. (I am NOT hugely cheap. Mostly cheap, granted, but not hugely cheap. Anyone with my shoe collection can’t be hugely cheap.) If you check into this, you’ll find that paid beta prices start at the equivalent of a Starbucks cup o’ java – for example, someone at the Writer’s Digest Shop will review 50 pages of a manuscript for three bucks at their 2nd Draft Critique Service – but the fees can climb into the hundreds of dollars, depending on who you select and what you want. What I needed was someone who read my genre, who liked my genre, and who would feel free to say whatever he or she wanted, without any commercial consideration.

I got lucky. I’ll tell you how, and who, next time.

This isn't meant as a threat or anything. I mean, I'm not going to show up outside your front door, asking you if I can stay at your place.
 
Probably.
 
So somebody asked me the other day if I was a Power Blogger, and I didn’t know what that was, so I said, “Yes.” Because (and you should know this), if I said, “No”, then the woman in the check-out line would want to know what kind of blogger I was – and until that moment in time, I wasn’t even aware that there were categories of blogger. Really? If there are Power Bloggers, are there also Weakling Bloggers and Super Bloggers and Almighty Bloggers?

Glynn hopes there are. When I told him about this, he walked around the house, saying “I am an Almighty Blogger!” in a terrible, faux-Scandinavian accent. Which gets irritating surprisingly quickly, I’m telling you now.

When I returned home, I Google’d “power bloggers”. It turns out, these are people who use Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and WordPress post sites with amazing frequency. I mean, they’re offering new material constantly. Some of them offer tips to other power bloggers – did you know there are blogging conferences? And that you should never post on “low audience” subjects? Many of these people are even making a living at it.

Good for them, I say.

Discovering new tidbits by the moment, I learned that posts with images attached do better than those without -- so I'm pretending the guy above is Glynn and whenever the real Glynn shouts, "I am an Almighty Blogger!", this is who I'm picturing -- and I learned that Sundays are a lousy day to post a blog. Since Sunday is my current new-post day, well, it’s time I made a change. (It’s the only change I’m willing to make so far. No Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or WordPress for me.)

See you on Wednesday.

Here it is, time for a new post, and I'm still getting back into the swing of things, you know? When I woke up this morning, I thought, I don't want to make dinner tonight, and then I thought, I don't really want to go to the gym, either, and then I remembered, Oh, it's time for another blog post. And it's not that I didn't have things to write about, it's just that today felt like it should be a very lazy day.
 
Yet here I am.
 
Sitting at the laptop, I had intended to write a post about Chris Enss' terrific success with her book, Hearts West (+ bonus: I once asked her for a favor and she was delightful about it) but then Glynn happened so that idea went out the window.
 
I'd also toyed with the idea of doing a post on beta readers and how to find them (because I've met some very nice people now and this needs some further comment) but that was before the Glynn hit the fan, so to speak. Glynn thinks "the Glynn hit the fan" line is funny, by the way, but he's trying to curry favor at the moment so I wouldn't put too much stock in his opinion.
 
Oh, and the picture above? That's our pint-sized Chihuahua that knows she's a Chihuahua and is quite content to sit on my lap as I pull this blog together.
 
I've drifted off-point but here's the set-up: I was in bed, not wanting to do anything, realized I needed to write a post, and I saw the little envelope symbol that indicates I've received some email. The subject line told me that our second (of two) beta readers was reporting in with her thoughts on our new book. I should have been happy but I felt mildly panicked because...what if she hated it?
 
I mean, yes, the Good Witch liked the new novel but she's a friend and doesn't count. Besides, she wasn't beta-reading, she was just reading. Our first beta reader, Dani B., liked it and shared her opinion openly and strongly, but she's more of a contemporary romance reader and our story is set in the past. Would the novel appeal as much to someone who's used to reading stories that take place in the old West?
 
Happily, the new beta reader, Lee, sent a very supportive email and had very few changes she wanted to see. In fact, there were only three areas of change and all three involved word usage. So I (#1) removed one word, (#2) changed a second word, and then (#3) I went to Glynn for some help. I told him, "Lee wants to know what the word 'doft' means."
 
"Doft?" he said.
 
"You know, from the book. The line you put in, the one that talks about the 'little doft's eyelashes'."
 
"Oh." He gave me the goofy half-smile that means he's not sure if he's screwed up but maybe he needs to apologize for something. He said, "I'm having trouble finding it again."
 
"What?"
 
"It was in one of those books I checked out. I think."
 
"There were a lot of books."
 
"Or it was on the web."
 
"You can't reference it?" I didn't know what to say.
 
When we're writing a historical romance, we both do our research to stay true to the time frame. Not massive research but we make a strong effort. Even if some bits are fictional (i.e., in the late 1800's, there was no Braxton brand of rifle), we try to pattern those bits after the real thing (in this case, there was a real-life Henry rifle). We keep record of what we found and where we found it in case we need to go back to the original source.
 
This time, Glynn had lost his 'doft'. I reminded him, "If it doesn't exist, I don't want our hero to say it."
 
"I can find it again," Glynn protested.
 
"Even though you couldn't locate it the last time you looked?"
 
"It's on the internet somewhere."
 
A few hours later, the word has disappeared from our manuscript. I've written beta reader Lee, with apologies, and I know I have to reformat several pages for the print version of the story. Today will not be my lazy day, after all.
 
On the plus side, Glynn is making dinner tonight.