A.J. Maguire

Tag: Writers

  • Author’s Take on BookSirens

    A few weeks back I went ahead and gave BookSirens a try. I will put their link at the bottom of this post if they interest you, and if you’re an Indie author looking for reviews, they probably do. They have two plans you can choose from when you sign up, one for if you’re doing multiple books a year and one for if you are like me and only have one (maybe two) coming out.

    First note — It has to be an ARC. They deal with Advanced Reader Copies only. There’s no shoving an old book up there. The reviewers on this site have been promised to see books that haven’t hit the market yet.

    You put your Cover Art up – in my case, we went through several and it was informative to see which cover caught the most attention.

    You put up multiple formats of your book (all digital formats) so that you can reach the widest base of readers.

    And then you sit back and wait.

    Just like you would if your book just came out, only in this instance you have BookSirens pushing your book to their Readers. And as I signed up to be a Reader as well, I can tell you that they are on top of this. I even reviewed several books and intend to review more.

    The cost is perfect. Especially if you’re like me and paying 50-100 bucks for a single review makes your little Scrooge come out and snarl.

    Note to Other Review Sites out there — I’m a parent. While I understand that to earn money you have to spend some money, that’s the price of a decent pair of glasses for my kid. Or a night out with my kid. If I have to choose, it will always be the kid. And I guarantee you, in today’s economy, we are all having to choose right now.

    BookSirens has a nice, clean site that is easy to navigate. Payments are made as you go, so you aren’t paying a bulk price up front for X amount of reviews because they don’t guarantee that you will get any. If a reader wants to check out your book, they charge you only when that book has been downloaded.

    I will say that the most popular books on there are the same popular books out for sale – Romance books. So if you’re like me and your book is only glancing in the romance department, the reviews are going to be less than if you have a scantily clad person on your cover. That said, reviews are worth their weight in gold, so even if you only get a half dozen, that’s still a half dozen you didn’t have before.

    SO!

    I do recommend them if you are looking to publish a book in the future. You can check them out HERE.

  • The Media Kit and Me

    I’m a little late in the game here.

    Blame good books keeping my occupied.

    Or parenthood.

    Maybe even my fur-babies.

    Whatever the reason, I am late to the game of Media Kits, which are apparently something I should have been doing this whole time with my novels. I might have done something smallish for Paw Prints on the Wall last year, but it was nothing like what I have discovered is customary for a new book release.

    I’ve had a Bio for ages that I quite like, but it has been… you know… ages. So I thought to freshen it up some for this new book. But, you know, I prefer to talk about fake people and fictional scenarios. It’s gross to talk about myself. I feel so… weird.

    100-200 words about me?

    Ugh.

    Fiiiiiiiine.

    BIO:

    A.J. (Aimee Jean) Maguire has been writing about women rescuing their men since 2008. She loves stories in all shapes and sizes, which means her novels tend to run the full spectrum of fiction, but her favorites tend to be fantasy and science fiction. She is currently living her own happily ever after in Central Massachusetts with her husband and son, where they are surrounded by far too many pets. On the weekends she enjoys exploring the many historical sites peppering New England or hunting for lighthouses on the coast.

    So that’s just shy of 100 words, but it’s a work in progress and it’ll fit nicely on the back end of a book.

    But you know what else is supposed to be in a Media Kit?

    A Q&A Tip Sheet.

    Yes, that means I ask myself 10 questions and then answer those 10 questions for people to use as an easy cut and paste for their blogs and things.

    I’m still working on this one.

    And for the record… there’s a ton more on the list. Some of it is already done, such as book information with the synopsis, cover image, contact information and book details, but it can be more than a little overwhelming to look at on the surface.

    For those curious, I got most of this information from Reedsy, which has some invaluable information in it for authors. You should check them out CLICK HERE.

  • Writing and Parenthood

    School is officially out for the summer here. My son is happily lazing for these first few days – probably a week, really – and as his parent I am dutifully hunting for ways to keep him occupied and learning. Which, to be fair, will probably only last a week or two and we’ll both get into a routine where I’m constantly interrupted from writing due to his very existence.

    Because he needs food.

    Or he found a funny video.

    Or he wants to include me in on his own writing schemes and ask for advice. (Be still, my beating heart!)

    Yes, I have encouraged him to do this. He’s 15. I’m 90% certain he can get a tiny part-time something or other at this age doing something on a farm or landscaping or whatever. Because this experience is important. Clocking in and out and being held accountable for certain hours of your day is, in fact, paramount to survival in our society.

    And it’s humbling.

    I hated working in fast food, but I wouldn’t trade the experience of having done it. You won’t ever see me snarling at some poor Schmoe at the cash register for getting my change wrong, because I was once that poor Schmoe. So, yes, I want my son to put himself in those shoes for a summer or two.

    Not at fast food yet, though. That can be next year or the year after.

    So where, or where will my writing time be?

    I suppose we will have to see. He does have interest in web design and such, so I might let him try his hand at building me a brand spanking new website over the summer, which would cut down transportation costs and permit me to write more, but it loses the “Clock in and Out” part because… you know… I’m his mother.

  • Evolution of a Book Cover – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

    SO.

    Book covers are hard.

    We’re coming close to the release of Nora and the Werewolf Wedding and I thought for sure I had my book cover all settled. You’ll recognize it. Its sort of been everywhere at this point. And I’m not saying I don’t love it, because I do. I just realized that there wasn’t much TO it. And that it might not be a great representation for everything the novel has in it.

    I mean, the title alone tells us it is supernatural. You can’t have werewolves and not be smack dab in the middle of paranormal or fantasy genres. And I suppose the title hints to romance as well because of the whole wedding aspect, but it’s vague because we don’t know if Nora is the one getting married or someone else. (Yes, it’s someone else.)

    So I went back to the drawing board, as it were, and was hunting for maybe something else that might fit. This one got shot down by my husband pretty quick because he felt the wolf aspect was overdone for the genre. I’m still not sure I should have listened to him, but he DOES read the Paranormal/Urban Fantasy genre, which this book fits into. The romance is really secondary to the plight of poor Nora and Derrick, FYI.

    As a woman, I like the picture. It’s pretty. And I want to ruffle some wolfie ears and snuggle in the snow. But. I’m not sure it really tells us what the story is about either. So again back to the drawing board and hunting for ideas here. I want mystery and danger and romance and werewolf-paranormal-magic-something in my cover!

    So, I really liked the moon in this one. There was a sense of romance because of the couple, and that great big moon is a little unsettling. The tree, however, did not really match the setting. The majority of the book takes place in Allegany New York, near the lake and some super pretty forests and such. There seems to be too much black on the screen too. It’s not super eye-catching, you know? And while the wolf aspect can be subtle with the moon, it didn’t quite hit the spot.

    And BEFORE you ask, no. None of these are AI generated.

    SO!

    Now we come to the one I think I have settled on. It could change between now and August, but presently I love the blue in this one. It catches the eye. And I have the romance of the couple, and the wolf howling in the background. And that great big moon.

    (Brief reminder that you can PREORDER Nora’s first book through Kindle!)

  • Nora, Updates, and Radio Silence

    For those who have been following along, they’ll notice that aside from Round Robin Blogs it has been a little quiet on my end. Which is unusual for someone who tries to get a post up a week while shouting excitement about the upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding. ((See that COUNTDOWN at the side of the page!!))

    To be blunt, life has been happening.

    And when Life has not been happening, I have been working steadily on edits for Nora and the Autumn Duke – the second book in Nora’s series, due to be released in 2024.

    Which brings me to a Writing Truth — Sometimes you have to sit back and deal with Life. It isn’t being lazy and it isn’t something to criticize yourself for. There is a major difference between procrastination and not having the brain space necessary to approach the page, and it is important to learn that difference.

    And honestly, once you’ve dealt with Life in whatever capacity you need to, your writing always benefits. You’ve learned something new to put in the pages of your work, and that is equally important.

    So.

    Where have I been?

    I’ve been doing Life.

    What am I doing now?

    Still hard at work with Nora’s second book, which I hope to have completed this month. If not this month, then certainly the beginning/middle of next. I’ve included some pretty covers – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding’s official cover is easy to recognize, but we have some placeholder covers for the second novel too.

    Once this book is done, I’m looking at a change of pace. I have several fantasy short stories that I would like to compile into an anthology and set out for sale in time for Christmas. This is partly because Torven – that tiny novelette I wrote all those years ago – cannot be printed anymore due to new guidelines at Amazon. The anthology will include a copy of Torven precisely so that you can get it in a printed version again. So don’t be shocked when you find it is no longer for sale. It’ll be back.

    That shouldn’t take me past August, though, and I still hope to start working on Tango Five – the third book in the Tapped series – starting in September.

    ALSO…

    Advance Reader Copies of Nora and the Werewolf Wedding are starting to generate some reviews. Thus far these reviews have made me smile. Readers are enjoying Nora and I look forward to seeing what more might be said. If you want to join my review team, you can find it at Book Sirens, which is a new thing for me. It’s free, with the request that you leave an honest review after, but the spots are limited.

    Happy Reading/Writing everyone!

  • Making Pretend People Seem Real – April 2023 Round Robin

    This month we’re looking at how we breathe life into the characters on the page.

    Or, as I like to put it, how we make pretend people seem real.

    Without sounding completely unhinged… Or, well. I suppose it’s going to sound completely unhinged no matter how I put it, but the majority of my characters show up in my head with voices and mannerisms intact. That isn’t to say I know everything about them, but that their behavior is there, and the process of writing the first draft unveils the why of that behavior.

    If I were smarter, I would design a character from scratch, but I’m afraid that’s just not me.

    The best way to make the character come to life and feel like a three-dimensional, honest to goodness human being, is putting them in a situation that everyone can relate to. In Sedition, the opening pages have my main character Trenna in a bar-fight-duel thing, which is a lot of action and not many people can really relate to that. Her mannerisms are clear, her desire to maintain neutrality in a highly tense political setting is seen, but she doesn’t come to life until she is standing with her ex-boyfriend saying goodbye.

    Because everyone has an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever.

    We’ve all been there. We know that unsettled pang that hits when you see that person fresh after a breakup. Everything that happened hangs in the air and everything that might have been taunts you. Giving Trenna that moment is what made her come to life.

    In Tapped, we have Devon Barlow trying to fix hauling equipment on an interstellar ship. Again, not something a lot of people can relate to. But we have all worked somewhere that has faulty equipment because the powers-that-be haven’t coughed up the cash to fix it proper. His frustrations hit a familiar chord, which brings him to life.

    Last example, I promise…

    In my upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we open with Nora waiting for a vampire and an elf to talk to her. Not precisely something we can experience in real life, but sitting in an uncomfortable chair, listening to a clock ticking, and getting a knot in our shoulder is a bit more common. Focusing on the immediate details and allowing the character to share not only what they see, but how they see it, brings that character – and the story itself – a vibrancy it otherwise would lack.

    Nora doesn’t just see a vampire. She sees a svelte, opulent woman with more poise in her fingernail than Nora possesses in her whole body. And this tells us more about Nora as a person than three pages of backstory ever could.

    So that is my trick, I guess, for bringing fake people some realness.

    I take real stuff that people can relate to – a breakup, a cheap boss, feeling frumpy – and I put it front and center. Check out what some of my fellow authors do to breathe life into their characters by following the links below.

    Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

    Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

    Diane Bator https://dbator.blogspot.com/

    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2TY

    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

    Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/

    Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com

    A.J. Maguire https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ ((YOU ARE HERE))

    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

    Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

    Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/

  • Character Backstories – March Round Robin 2023

    This month we’re unveiling the topic of Character Backstories, why they’re important, and how we manage to get the information onto the page without a snooze-worthy info-dump. Because nobody likes an info-dump. Even if it’s told in a snarky voice in the narrative, readers recognize an info-dump when they see one.

    So… how do I convey important information on the page?

    First, let me express that not everything in a character’s backstory is necessary for the narrative to move forward. So the very, very first thing I have to ask is if this information is relevant. If it isn’t, it’s tossed. Maybe one day it’ll come out in an anthology somewhere, but if it has no bearing on the current storyline it can be set aside.

    Yes, even if it explains why Character A is so emotionally closed off.

    The truth is, sometimes a little mystery is good. Readers are smart, and creative, and allowing them to wonder is a good thing.

    The character of Johanna Rorry – also known as Jorry – stars in my Tapped series and she is complicated: she’s commanding, overbearing, and too sharp for gentler company. Granted, she’s in charge of a starship and everything in outer space is designed to kill humans. She is also a veteran who has been through a galactic war. Just knowing those two pieces is enough to explain some of that overbearing behavior away, without diving into a major info dump.

    You know there’s trauma hiding behind her, even if it isn’t expressly explained.

    What I do give are small snippets of memory.

    People are the sum total of their experiences. Memories crop up in the natural course of the day. It’s no difficult thing to imagine such happening for our characters on the page. So if the information is relevant, if it hints toward something I’m going to unveil later on, I go ahead and put something in the way of my character that brings out a memory.

    For instance, in my upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding we see an empathic wizard coming to terms with how different the cultures are between living in Boston and living in Fairy. There is some trauma in her past, which I reveal through tiny snippets of memory, the first of which can be seen below.

    –SNIPPET — Nora and the Werewolf Wedding —

    Except for the occasional hairdresser, no one had brushed my hair since I was a child and for a heartbeat I was distracted by the gentle scrape of bristles across my scalp. Memories uprooted, unbidden but clear, and I could almost hear the melodic hum of my mother’s voice as she helped prepare me for bed. I could not have been more than seven, hugging a doll whose name was something like Regina, and basking in the attention. She was all warmth and light and gentle teasing, with a soft chuckle that seemed to echo into the quiet room.

    But on the tail of that memory a dark staircase leading down, my own voice sounding small as I called for mother. I could feel the chill of the basement reaching for me, long shadows pooling at the bottom of the stair, and dread crept up my spine.

    Grief pricked fresh and I blinked back the burn of tears, shoving hard at the memories. Meredith was not my mother, she was performing a service, not providing comfort, and I needed my wits to survive whatever dinner was waiting downstairs.

    SO!

    Readers can glean that Nora remembers her mother a little, but thoughts of her mother turn to a shadowy staircase and a strong sense of fear. We know something important happened in the basement, and there’s the promise that eventually this part of her backstory will come to light, but we keep a little mystery in the mix because there are things happening and Nora needs to concentrate.

    Memories like these are an organic means of adding backstory into a narrative without clogging the page with an info-dump. The majority of my books use them and until I learn how to be better at it, I’ll probably keep adding them.

    Check out how my fellow authors manage Character Backstory!

    Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

    A.J. Maguire https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ ((YOU ARE HERE))

    Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2Sr

    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

  • An Author’s Journey – Recording an Audiobook

    I have long held the dream of recording one of my books on audio. It’s why I bought a fancy microphone years ago – which loitered on a shelf collecting dust until I started producing this blog into a podcast. I love audio books. I listen to them often.

    Or, well, my husband listens to them more than I do now based solely on his use of the car. I am blessed with the ability to sit down and read and call it “work” because authors must also be readers. It’s the single best means of learning how to tell a story effectively. I am also blessed with a husband who works very hard to permit me the time to do all that reading and writing.

    But not every is as blessed as I am.

    And in fact, it wasn’t all that long ago when I relied on audiobooks to get my reading in because I was a single mother and there just weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, let alone read.

    So when I say I understand the value of audiobooks, I mean it.

    Now we come to the nitty-gritty of recording an audiobook, which… isn’t as nitty-gritty as I feared it would be. I walked into this fearing the worst, that I would not be able to afford the programs to help me record and that I would not be able to understand how to edit an audio file.

    Well, there are other fears too. Such as the idea that people would wrinkle their noses at the sound of my voice, and I’m sure some people will. My pitch and tone could remind them of a hateful person from their past, or they might just dislike it in general, but those are issues that are outside of my control. So while there’s a small portion of me screaming in self-conscious dismay, I cannot let the things I have no control over hold me back.

    If you hate my voice, I’m sorry.

    Happily, you can pick up the stories I tell, or even this blog, and read it without having to hear me.

    Circling back to the nitty-gritty… I found a lovely site called Podcastle that has helped me immensely with recording Nora’s book. I’m still working with it because, quite frankly, it got super cold for a little while and you could hear my space heater rumbling away in the background. The choices were to hear my teeth chattering away as I read the manuscript, or wait until the weather was more amenable. And because I’m already a bit of a baby when it gets too cold, I chose the latter.

    For editing the audio files… I confess I am still working on that. Thus far it seems alright? But I am also not an audio-master and I suspect before I’m done I will be reaching out to try and find someone who is more familiar with the task. They will probably hear things/catch stuff that I haven’t been able to.

    Regardless, it’s been a brave new adventure for me and I’m excited to see the finished product.

  • The Great Genre Battle

    For those of you who have been along for the ride, you know that I have been writing a series of books that revolve around a supernatural counselor. Or rather, a counselor who counsels the supernatural who live amongst us.

    Both work, really. She is a wizard, after all.

    In any case, I have fought with the defining genre almost since the moment of the book’s inception. I thought at first it was straight Paranormal Romance, but as the story grew I became convinced it was Urban Fantasy because, quite frankly, the love story isn’t the main focal point of this first book. In fact, it isn’t the focal point of the second book either. However, when stepping back and looking at the whole of the series, the love story written there actually is the focal point.

    There’s just a lot of world/setting/stuff to get through in order for that love story to come to fruition.

    I will be honest and say that I thought it couldn’t be Paranormal Romance unless there was a vampire-killing group who all wore leather pants and kicked some serious batoosh on the page. But I am also honest in that I am basing that assumption on a bazillion book covers. It isn’t a genre I normally read, which is weird because internet algorithms keep flashing their covers at me. The books I frequent are marketed as Fantasy Romance.

    Which…

    Yes, as a matter of fact, Nora’s books could feasibly be called Fantasy Romance as well. The only issue being that it is set in contemporary times and in our world, which lends itself to the Ubran Fantasy genre.

    However, the setting is not a major player, which my research tells me is one of the defining elements of an Urban Fantasy. Something about that setting has to be made into a plot issue in order for the book to qualify, and I’m afraid it’s all just trimmings insofar as Nora’s books go. The main driving force behind Nora’s books are the relationships between the people.

    Because she’s a counselor. And an empath.

    This is what leads me to the idea that it is Paranormal Romance, even if we don’t have the love story as the focal point. Nora’s story is complicated. We learn a lot of things about bright folk living amongst humanity, the existence of Fairy, and the policing force set out to keep bright folk in line.

    We’ll put it this way: it bends genres.

    It mixes and matches.

    It’s the beginning of a love story.

    It’s an adventure.

    And it has werewolves.

    So it’s a lot of fun and in the end, don’t we want to have fun when we read?

  • Worldbuilding and Me

    So, not that long ago I picked up Million Dollar Outlines by David Farland and I loved it. I have often struggled with Outlining versus Discovery writing because I fell into the category that once I had dreamed up the whole thing into an Outline, I no longer had the motivation to write the story. Mr. Farland’s advice to take the middle ground has been life-changing. I do still write that sketchy outline (I’ve shown pictures of it before) but especially at the beginning of a novel I feel free to toss that puppy out the window once I get going.

    Like I did with Last Child of Winter recently.

    No, seriously. 30% of that outline got tossed because the characters on the page led me to something a little different.

    So I’m still Discovery Writing, seeing where the characters lead, but I have a rough idea of where I need this story to end. And since this book is about a Talent Show, all roads lead to the stage.

    But I think the part that I loved most about Million Dollar Outlines is that he gave me space to brainstorm. He admitted to sometimes staring at a blank screen for an hour and working things out in his head, and to be frank… I always got frustrated with myself for doing that.

    An hour staring at the screen with no words pouring onto the page? Such waste! Such laziness!

    Except, it isn’t.

    There might not be anything written down, but every single time I do it, I come away with a better grasp of the story I’m telling. This is why I keep notebooks and pens beside my computer. Because I can jot things down and circle/highlight/underline juicy bits that I need to explore later.

    But when it comes to worldbuilding, sometimes things come out in the process of discovery writing too. Such as when this last week I was confronted by a Faery tradition regarding the Fates. No spoilers here, but suffice… it took me by surprise. I had been so centered on the fact that Fae folk had been forced to acclimate to living on Earth that I hadn’t really looked at all the traditions they left behind. Looking into this aspect of their culture has deepened my understanding of the world, the characters, and the story I am telling.

    So, Worldbuilding and Me… I suppose this is all to say that writing is amazing and I deeply enjoy being surprised by what shows up on the page.

    Happy writing, to those of you who do so. Happy Reading to everyone!