#navbar-iframe { display: none !important;} The Naked Page: Hey Look, A New Post

The Naked Page

Author Jamie Sobrato's Diary

8.22.2006

Hey Look, A New Post

If you're wondering where I've been for the past month, I had a summer book deadline, which is something like having a Christmas book deadline, only without the presents. Basically, summer deadlines, especially right-after-RWA-National deadlines, suck.

So I just finished the book yesterday. Whew. Call me relieved. My hair is falling out, I have a cold, and there is a towering pile of laundry nearby. I'm not sure which of those is the most significant detail, but at least the book is done.

I wrote nearly every day for the past month, and now all I'm good for is sitting around at the playground handing my kids snacks and reading books and magazines I could only gaze longingly at during deadline mania.

So, what did you do on your summer vacation? Me, I wrote a book.

26 Comments:

At 4:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Jamie! I am so glad to hear you finished your book! I cannot wait! I noticed your post about your webpage and was wondering why it was not updated! I cannot wait for October to get A Whisper Of Wanting!! Ok, so I cannot find a snippet of what it is about anywhere!! Help a girl out will ya!

 
At 8:05 AM, Blogger Tim said...

Hey welcome back, Jamie! :-) Congrats on finishing the new one... mine is still a WIP -- work in progress -- and probably will be for A WHILE. I'm going on Vacation next week... then it'll be back to the 3000-word-a-day, six-day-a-week grind. But I'm pleased so far. :-D!

 
At 12:43 PM, Blogger SQT said...

Err, I started a blog. Not the same as writing a book, but hey, it's something to do.

Theresa aka SQT

 
At 12:49 PM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

Hi Lorrie, and thank you for the kick in the pants about updating my website. I will post here as soon as I get some new book information on there. Ahem. Soon. Very soon.

A little teaser on A Whisper of Wanting... The heroine is a kick-ass cop with an attitude (imagine Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight) and the hero is a devil-may-care Hugh Grant type, a journalist with a thing for girls in uniform. After an embarrassing incident a few years earlier involving too much alcohol and the hero's inability to, um, rise to the occasion, the heroine isn't aboue to let the hero get in her pants again, no matter how hard he tries.

That's where the magic lust potion comes in, so to speak. Heh. Stir in a crazed killer just released from prison, and you have the story in a nutshell. Or something.

 
At 12:50 PM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

Have fun on vacation, Tim! 3000 words a day, six days a week? No wonder your book's going to be a thousand pages long. :-)

 
At 2:06 PM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

Theresa, that's cool you started your own blog. I checked it out briefly and it looks interesting. I'll give it a longer read later.

 
At 2:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear Lorrie,

I'm supposed to be helping Jamie update her website. Don't worry - we'll get there.

Cindy

 
At 3:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh Jamie!!!The book sounds awesome!!! I like the switch up a man with a thing for a girl in uniform!! I love a man in uniform, my DH is an army man! By the way he loves Blazes too! Of course he does right??

 
At 3:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cindy, I understand! Summer keeps us all soooo busy! I am sure Jamies site will be up and running soon!

 
At 6:33 PM, Blogger Tim said...

Thanks, Jamie. :-D I plan to... then it's two days of volleyball officiating and a concert fest on Saturday before back to the OTHER grind on Sunday. Hey... gots a question for you writers here (other than me): Is it just me or is it easier at times to WRITE than to NOT WRITE? And is the reverse ALSO true? Just wondering. :-) After all, is it not in the Ten Commandments: "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy writing... excepting those cases in which a deadline looms, in which case this commandment shall be null and void"?

 
At 6:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

What I did over summer vacation. . .
I wrote a dirty mad lib.

My department at school has suddenly decided that mad libs are the key to teaching parts of speech (can't do the mad lib if you don't know what a verb is, right?) every time they say mad lib I think fondly of the um, dangling snakes and everything. And sometimes I laugh, but they expect strange behavior, so it's okay.

Oh, and I got a head injury and roomed with Jamie in Atlanta, and wasted lots of time on the internet, and wait, you don't want to know EVERYTHING I did last summer? okay. . .

 
At 6:16 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Tim, I must've been writing when you posted. I'm no writing expert, but yeah, the drafting process when you're really rolling with the story and the characters are coming alive is pretty exciting and addictive.

I'm in the dreaded revision stage right now, so no such fun for me.

 
At 10:22 AM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

I agree that the first draft stage can be really fun and addictive when it's rolling along well. I love that part.

I play games with myself to keep from getting too caught up in making everything perfect and or thinking about it too much. I make a little chart that has an hour and a corresponding page number, forcing myself to write, say 3, 4, 5, or 6 pages and hour, depending on how fast I'm feeling like I can write that day. It forces me to just depend on my subconscious or my instincts about the story to keep going and not stop and dawdle too much. So the chart might look something like:

10:00 - p 130
11:00 - p 135
12:00 - p 140

This is especially helpful when I have to write a lot of pages in one day, because every time I reach an hourly goal, I get to delete that line of the chart (I make it at the bottom of my Word document), and it gives me little incremental goals to look forward to on my way to the big goal for the day.

Anyway, I don't really go back and read what I've previously written during the rough draft stage, and when I'm writing really fast, sometimes after the first draft is done I go back to read it and can't remember that I've written half of the stuff.

 
At 10:28 AM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

Lorrie, thank you for the compliments on my upcoming story!

I heard a statistic at the RWA National conference that something like 25% of romance readers are now men. I thought that was pretty shocking, and I had to wonder if they're all reading Blazes. :-) (except for Tim, who's also reading those Regency romances :-)

 
At 10:30 AM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

Cindy has been exceedingly patient with my non-responsiveness to her kind requests that I actually send her some info to update my website with...

 
At 3:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, you did send me SOME info, but I'm greedy and I want it all.

Or maybe I'm lazy and want it all, so I don't do something twice.

Yes, I think I'm lazy.

 
At 8:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have a really hard time believing that so many men read romance. Hubby helps me brainstorm sometimes, and he gives me the slang term a man would use in certain instances, but even he admits that he won't be reading my books after I'm published (she says with confidence...). And I don't mind that at all. I can't imagine asking any of my male friends to read one of my books. They're just so...female. lol

Maybe the men just read the hot parts and count that as having read the book. And I think that's a great idea. If it's Blaze, they could learn a LOT. ;-)

 
At 3:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Speaking of men romance books, I gave some Blazes to my sister in law and she told me the other day her DH was sitting on the couch reading one! I am sure he skipped to the hot parts. He kinda gave me a weird smile when I told him she told me he was caught reading it.

 
At 3:40 PM, Blogger Tim said...

Just a word in defence of those of us of the male persuasion who actually DO read romances... and in a little bit of role reversal... ;-) I started reading them a few years ago and have had to force myself to read other books in order to read non-romance so it doesn't get stale. The lady I'm kind of talking with right now can't stand them. IF she reads them at ALL, they're Inspirationals.

 
At 5:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, I'll always take a man who reads romance over a woman who doesn't!

You know, none of my friends are romance readers (although, I don't know a lot of people who read much fiction at all--losers. LOL) and I just don't understand that. How can someone "not stand" romance? What's not to like? The possibility that two people can actually put each other first? The absence of blood and gore? Oh, wait--the hot sex. Ugh. What kind of people write that garbage??

 
At 8:48 PM, Blogger Tim said...

Just a question: how many books a year does the average H'quin writer put out? And what's considered prolific? I know this will be at least your third this year in Rocktober, Jamie, but I was just curious. :-D

 
At 11:31 AM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

Hey Tim, I don't think anyone has compiled official statistics on your question, but probably a majority of Harlequin/Silhouette authors are publishing 1-2 books a year with that publisher. Some are writing for other houses too, and some aren't. Some are writing that many because that's all they can write in a year, and others are not getting the publisher support to write more, and still others don't want to write any more because they are selling elsewhere.

Most authors consider 3 books a year the minimum one can sell and earn a semi-decent living writing for Harlequin, but that is slowly changing, I think, as sales decrease across the lines. And also, 3 books a year is considered fairly prolific by some.

4-6 books year is definitely quite prolific, and some authors are writing that many, but they usually have to be selling to 2 different lines to get that many sales. Most lines don't want to publish more than 3 books a year by any one author, though there are exceptions.

If I had to take a wild guess about percentages, I'd say maybe 50% of authors are writing 1-2 books a year, 30% are writing 3 books a year, and 20% are writing 4+. Again, that's my totally non-scientific guess.

Me, I have been trying to sell a 4th book per year for the past few years, because I write fast enough to write more than 3, but something always manages to trip me up, like, you know, proposals getting rejected and such. :-/

 
At 11:34 AM, Blogger Jamie Sobrato said...

I forgot to mention too that lots of authors have day jobs they either can't or don't want to give up, because steady employment is a thousand times more secure than being a full-time writer, and of course we authors don't get pension plans or health benefits. And day jobs do limit one's ability to produce books.

 
At 2:36 PM, Blogger Tim said...

Thas cool. :-) I was just curious. :-) Between steady jobs and the fact that I've started the process to become a volleyball official (and already got my recommendations for Scorekeeper with Line Judge next), it will be QUITE a while before I'm writing 4 books a year, although there are days when I think I could do that much and then I start typing and I realise 2 or 3 is more realistic -- even given the length of some of H'quin's books. :-)

 
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