Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog

I’m actually enjoying writing again.

I’m happy to say that writing is coming along really well these days. It feels good to have the creative wind at my back again. I credit this to my son, Eric, who has picked up the reins and is helping me with his deaf brother. I didn’t realize that having to do so much with him on my own was taking a toll on my creativity.

What I’m working on.

I am hopeful that I will get four books out this year. I just published Masquerade Bride. I’m on track to publish The Preacher’s Wife on June 29. (It’s being edited as we speak.) I’m in the last 1/4 of The Science of Love (Book 2 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series). I am coming up to the halfway point in Love Me, Love Me Not (Book 1 in The Marriage Mart Series), and I believe I can make this a novella as long as I keep the plot on point. I have started The Old Maid (Book 3 in the Oregon Series. It comes after The Preacher’s Wife.)

I have put my horror romance on hold. I lost interest in writing the story as soon as I got to the horror part. I know. It’s ironic that I enjoy reading horror, but writing it isn’t so interesting to me. I’d rather write the romance. I might finish this book someday, or I might just let it go. Only time will tell.

Getting back to reading indie books.

I fizzled out on the big traditionally published books at the library because after a few months of reading them, every audiobook I was coming across sounded so much like what I’ve already read. So I am back to looking through indie books again. I rely on Red Feather Romance (romance only) and Bargain Booksy (multiple genres) to find new authors. Thanks to Karen J. Mossman, I learned that I can listen to books on my iPhone by using the Alexa app. It’s robotic, though, and after a while, I do get a headache, so I can’t listen to it for a long period of time. I miss the days when I could physically read books, but we deal with what we have. I understand the frustration human narrators feel when authors choose to use digital narration to get their books in audio, but most indie authors can’t afford to pay someone to narrate the books. For readers like me, we rely on audio. I will listen to books using Alexa, but it’s easier on my ears to listen to the digital narration retailers are offering indie authors. I don’t get headaches on the retailer digital narration. Indie books offer the best variety. There’s not enough of these books in audio.

Stuff in the romance genre I don’t understand.

Going through the daily emails to look for new authors, I have noticed a lot of romance books feature two tropes that has me wondering, “Why is this popular?” I would say that over half of the books I’m coming across have these in them.

1. The billionaire hero. Why does he need to be a billionaire? Since when is a millionaire not enough? I get how women love the security of man with money, but this is just excessive to me. What can a billionaire do that a millionaire can’t? Why not make this guy a trillionaire? I wonder if trillionaires will be the next big trend. Why settle for owning huge corporations when your hero can rule countries or even several regions of the world instead? Personally, I prefer my romances to be more within the realm of possibility. Just give me a man who works hard and can pay the bills. He still provides, and better yet, he’s not as likely to run off to his mistresses behind my back. Loyalty is key to a happy marriage, and that is ultimately what romance should be about.

2. The grumpy hero (or even the grumpy heroine). How is this type of character desirable? I have been around grumpy people. They are miserable to be around. All they do is complain. They can be given the perfect day and find something wrong with it. Over time, all these people do is drag you down with them. You start off optimistic and excited about the world, but after some time with these people, you find that enthusiasm for life slowly draining out of you. I have yet to see a real-life example of a sun-shiny person bringing the grumpy one up. It’s always been the other way around. Grumpy people are toxic. Why not just have an average, well-adjusted character who is searching for love? Your average person can experience pain and grief just like a grumpy person. It’s okay to show that side of things. The difference is they don’t live in that state day-after-day. They have their happy moments, too.

Stuff I love to read in horror stories.

Speaking of “grumpy”, I noticed I was ragging on stuff I didn’t like in the horror genre in a couple of posts I’ve done on this blog. Today, I thought I’d mention the tropes I do love.

1. I love it when the book opens with a prologue showing that someone or something has ruined someone’s life. We see a terrible ending for this very first character that shows up on the page. This is a wonderful use of foreshadowing. Without coming out and telling the reader that danger lies ahead for our main character, the reader is shown that they are about to face a harrowing experience. For me, this setup revs up the anticipation and makes me enjoy the beginning of the story where things are going well for the main character. I can enjoy those sunny moments because I know it’s about to turn dark. The moment when things start to turn dark is when the real excitement begins.

2. It’s fun to see how our phones, computers, gaming systems, and other technological items can be used as a plot device. For example, there was this story about a game a person played that brought the malevolent characters from the game into real life. Another I read was about an ebook that people download on their phones, and after reading the story, some kind of entity related to the story started to kill them. One I just read this past week was a short story about two YouTubers live-streaming their visit through an abandoned Christmas park. The format of a live-stream was a great way to present the story playing out in “live time” and how commenters were able to help without physically being there.

3. I love creatures from folklore. What’s really intriguing about this one is how the folklore is discovered, what the folklore really is (according to the author’s explanation), and what can be done (if anything) about to stop it. This one taps into a lot of fantasy, and that excites the imagination.

On the writing business side of things…

Why is “seven figures” the new “six figures” goal in the writing community?

It used to be that six figures a year was impressive. Now, it’s not enough. Like the millionaire hero in the romance genre, the “six-figure author” has become irrelevant. Lately, the emails I get for marketing is all about “seven figures”. Just today, this is one of the workshops that will be featured at the online conference I am going to attend: Seven-Figure Success Under the Radar (and With Little Social Media). It’s topics like this that will dishearten the average author. Instead of them seeing the ability to just pay their bills as a reason to rejoice, they are going to feel like a failure because they aren’t making the all-coveted “seven figures”.

Also, if that author who isn’t making “seven figures” has good, solid advice, they will be less likely to be taken seriously because the community, as a whole, believes that only authors who do make “seven figures” are worth listening to. I see authors barely making anything give wonderful advice in the writing community, and they are quickly smacked down with a comment like, “Where’s the proof of your income to show us that you know what you’re talking about?” These commenters aren’t factoring in something important: part of this business is simple luck. Luck has nothing to do with talent or marketing prowess. Luck can be as simple at timing. That is how I did as well as I did back in 2010-2015. I had a lot of books out at the time when ebooks were just taking off. If I had started any later, I would not have made what I did.

I’m starting to think that marketing is a waste of time.

Seriously, I do think that these days. (Plus, marketing doesn’t make me more creative. If anything, it sucks the joy of writing right out of me.) Over the past three years, I spent more money on marketing than I ever did before, and my income never went up. The one thing I didn’t do was Amazon ads. For one, I’m not in KU. I can’t see how Amazon will prop up an author who isn’t exclusive to them. An author who is partially in KU and partially wide ran ads on her KU and her wide books, and the KU books did a lot better. My second reason is that I went to a writing coach last year, and he told me the numbers that authors are spending on ads and how much they make. When you subtract the expenses from the income, these authors are barely making a profit. Granted, these are merely stories I’ve heard in passing. I’m sure there are exceptions out there where someone is spending very little on Amazon ads and seeing a huge return on investment. (Luck might be a factor we’re unable to measure in this scenario.)

I would rather write the next book and put the marketing money in a Roth IRA. I am 51. I could have done much better by doing this earlier in life, but it’s better late than never. When I hit rock bottom and had to sell my house, I swore I would use whatever money was left from the sale and invest it into something I couldn’t touch for a decade or so. The Roth IRA locks the money in and forces me to be good with my finances. I have done much better with that decision than I did with any marketing tactic I’ve tried. I choose to invest in the S&P 500 since has a good track record of going up. (Yes, you have your dips, but if you track the graph over 100 years, you can see it goes up. The S&P 500 is the top 500 companies in the US.)

I don’t know what the answer is in other genres, but in romance there are four things that have helped me make money over the years. So if you are in romance and are looking for ideas, this would be my advice (for what it’s worth). 1. Write the next book. The more books you write, the better your chances are of being found. Also, you get to give your current readers something new to read. 2. Write a series. Make each individual book a complete story. No cliffhangers. The happy ending is mandatory. 3. Make Book 1 free if you’re wide. (If you’re in KU, you don’t need to worry about this one.) 4. I have found ads on the free books, especially Book 1, to be the most effective use of my money on ads. I have noticed the best results in running those ads on Written Word Media. I sign up for the promotions in the Freebooksy, Bargain Books, and Red Feather Romances. If people enjoy the free book, they are likely to buy the others. (I have found no one going on to buy any books through BookFunnel promos, which is why I stopped doing them.)

Balance out the writing.

As important as it is to write the next book, I don’t think aiming for a lot of words every single day is good. Back around 2015-2017 or so, there was an author who amassed a good following of authors by instructing them how to hit 5,000 words a day. A year ago, I wondered whatever happened to him because he was a big name in the indie writing community for a while. It turns out he’s no longer writing books. He burned out. He was also writing stuff to market instead of stuff he loved. I suspect the amount of words he made himself write coupled with the push to only write stuff to market took its toll on him.

I won’t lie. This is not an easy business. Anyone who thinks that it’s easy to go through everything it takes to create a book and publish it has no idea what this business is really like. There are some really great days where you feel energized and ready to go, but there are also days where you feel like doing anything BUT writing. Even knowing everything I do, I have times when I want to walk away from it all. Then I will get a story idea that excites me, and I remember why I love to do this. That spark with an exciting new story idea is the only reason I’m still here after I started publishing on Amazon and Smashwords back in 2009. If it wasn’t for that spark, I would have left a long time ago.

I don’t know what keeps you going if you’re a writer. It’s could be something other than that spark of an exciting new idea. Whatever the situation, balance is important. Be realistic about how much you can write. Don’t go by someone else’s writing schedule. They are not you. They don’t have your strengths and weaknesses. They don’t have your personality. They don’t have your background. They don’t have your family situation. They don’t have your genetic blueprint. (I do believe our genetics plays a partial role in our lives on what we can and can’t do.) What works for them works for them because of all the components that make up their life. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re a failure. They aren’t walking in your shoes. Do what works for you and ignore them.

The AI witch-hunt is scary.

Back in 2009 when I started, I never imagined the day would come when people would be questioning who wrote the book…other than a ghostwriter (who was a real human being and often not part of the indie world.) Now, I am seeing posts, articles, and videos about AI and writing books. What makes this scary is that innocent authors are being accused of this, and no one stops to wonder if the person making the accusation is right or not.

An author I personally know was recently accused of using AI in his cover art. He did not use AI. He is very much against the use of AI. He hired out for the cover on his book, and there were real people with real pictures (purchased on sites like Shutterstock) who made the cover for him. I hope this never happens to him again. I can understand his fear. I worry about this kind of thing happening to me as well. It’s frightening to know that a stranger who doesn’t even know an author can ruin an author’s career without any proof. I miss the days when the indie’s biggest concern was not being taken seriously because they didn’t find a traditional publisher for their books.

This is a standalone romance.

I am not going to make this part of a series. Originally, I was going to, but I have other stories I would rather work on. Exciting stuff is coming.

Description:

She longs to be witty and beautiful. Instead, she’s a shy wallflower. Can a bold choice rewrite her story into a romance for the ages?

Miss Marie Kiefer asked her father to arrange a marriage for her, but on the eve of her wedding, she makes a complete embarrassment of herself when she meets her intended. She can’t help but think that if she were charming and witty, she could have her pick of suitors. Then she would be guaranteed a love match. 

In this Regency romance, Marie will get her chance to do just that.

This is a G-rated romance. 

Where you can find it:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple

Google Play – ebook

Google Play – audiobook

Smashwords

Everand

It’s been a while since I did a post on what books I’m working on, so I thought it’s time, especially since I actually have something worth sharing. I’ve been able to pass off the bulk of the work I’ve been doing for my deaf son to his older brother. Long story short, they will be moving into an apartment together this summer, and we have most of the stuff arranged. That has freed me up to being able to get back to writing on a more consistent basis. I’ll still step in to help when needed, but I should still have a reliable routing moving forward. I am grateful to Eric, my second son, for being willing to help me with him.

With that aside, here’s what is going on…

Masquerade Bride is coming out Friday

I finally have a new book coming out. It’s a standalone book. I will give more details in my Friday post.

If you want details now, you can click here.

Today, I finished the first draft of The Preacher’s Wife!

I am looking to get this out in June. I don’t have a date set yet. The next few days will be dedicated to going through initial edits. This is probably going to sound weird to most people, but I feel led by the Holy Spirit to make this one free. I feel that a large portion of this book was inspired by God, so this is one that I think He would want as many people as possible to read, and the best way to do that is to make it free.

The good news is that I went back to The Wilderness Bride and set it back to Book 1 in the Oregon Series. It feels good to get that off my To-Do List. So now I am back to making this one Book 2 in the Oregon Series.

I am over halfway in The Science of Love

Books in the Marriage by Chemistry Series

I might even be at the 3/4 point. I know how I need to end things in the book, but I am trying to decide how to connect where I am now to that ending. I am hoping to get this one out in August or September.

I have started a brand new series in a new Regency world

I feel like it’s time I departed from my old Regency “world” so I can embark on a new one with a whole new cast of characters and a new “feel” to them. I would like these to be novellas. I already have five ideas for it. At the moment, I’m thinking these will all be sex-free romances. I know a lot of you will read romances with or without sex. One thing I like a romance writer to do is be upfront with the heat level in the romance. Unlike other genres, the heat level matters in whether or not the book is something a reader wants to pick up the book. I know it is for me. Even after reading a lot of thrillers and horror novels, I still love romance the most of all the genres. Sometimes I’m in the mood for spice, and sometimes I’m not. So I will select a romance based on my mood at the time. Therefore, I am being upfront with the heat levels in my romances.

Okay, so this is going to be a series of romances that will contain just kissing and hugging. I might throw in some necking (who knows?), but for the most part, these will be G-rated romances. I am hoping they will be cute and fun. I want to put in a lot of humor into these. I also want these to be novellas since I’d like to write shorter stuff for a change. So I am focusing on keeping the storyline simple. No more weaving in subplots or diving into side characters like I usually do.

Don’t worry, I’ll write longer books in other series. Some series need to be more intwined with other stories in a series for character growth. I will go where those series lead. But for now, the five ideas I have for this specific series don’t require that kind of depth.

I don’t have a cover for the book I started a couple weeks ago yet, but I finally (after a lot of debate) came down to the title: Love Me, Love Me Not. And I have picked “The Marriage Mart” for the series title.

After The Preacher’s Wife, what’s next?

As most of you know, I work on three books at a time. I find that to be my sweet spot. I have put aside the horror romance I’m doing. I’m at a point where I need to think about what to do next. That’s why I was able to start Love Me, Love Me Not.

Once I am done with my round of edits in The Preacher’s Wife, I’m sending it off to my editing team. These people are instrumental in polishing it up. Once I hand this book to them, I will start on my next romance. The question is, what will it be?

Right now, I’m thinking that it’ll be Book 3 in the Oregon Series. I don’t have a title set for it. This would feature Rorie, a character I created in The Preacher’s Wife, who is older than average. She’s a spinster living with her controlling parents. I don’t remember if I placed an age on her. I’ll remember when I go over the edits for The Preacher’s Wife. I have it planned for her to marry a man in his 50s, possible mid-50s. I had a request back in 2024 (I think) to write a romance with characters who are older than average. Finally, I will get to do this. I have the right plot! So this book is the main contender for the next book I’ll be working on.

Another possibility would be Book 3 in the Love Under Desert Skies Series. I know the main plot. Blaze is going to have to get coached on how to “woo” Faye, and I know that the underlying plot is for the group to find out why a woman is pretending to be Faye. But for some reason, I am blocked. I might need to toss out something about the plot, or maybe I need to look at the plot from a different angle. Until I can resolve the block, I think it’s best to wait.

So that settles that. Book 3 of the Oregon Series it is. Now to come up with a title and a cover. 🙂

I have enjoyed a lot of the stories I’ve been reading lately. It’s been a real pleasure getting back to reading for the sake of enjoyment. Most of the books I read over the past few years have been geared to writers. While it’s been educational (and, I admit frustrating since most marketing advice does not work), I forgot what it was like to read for fun. There’s definitely a benefit to taking time to just enjoy what you’re doing, rather than doing something because you feel like you have to.

Anyway, as I’ve been reading more thrillers and horror stories, I’ve noticed three specific things, and I thought I’d mention them because I love to blog, and it’s fun to share what I’m learning about storytelling. Granted, these things do not happen in every thriller or horror story, but they happen often enough that they’ve gotten my attention.

As a disclaimer, these are all traditionally published books that you’ll find in any brick-and-mortar bookstore and your local libraries. So this means big publishing houses are just fine with these three things, which also means these editors are allowing these things to get a pass. So next time someone clowns indie publishing, just remember that big publishing houses aren’t perfect, either.

Okay, so these are three things I’ve noticed:

1. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear!”

I have lost track of how many times a victim in a book has cried and begged, “Please let me go. I promise I won’t tell anyone that you’re a psychotic killer. I swear!” Since when has this tactic ever worked? I have yet to read a book (or even see a movie) where the killer decides to let the person go. The killer knows the person is lying. There’s no point in using this line unless the killer actually lets the person go.

It’s best to leave this empty threat out. Because, let’s fact it. If the person does manage to get away from the killer, they’re going to tell. They’ll get cops involved. They’ll get journalists involved. They’ll get their crazy relative with a shotgun involved. They’ll get a monster involved. Somehow, someway, they will get something or something involved because they won’t want that killer coming back to get them. That is why the killer never falls for this empty promise.

Now, I think it would be refreshing to read the person tell the killer something like, “If I ever get out of this, I’ll tell the entire planet what you’ve done!” That would be hilarious, and, given the right emotional buildup, a satisfying f-you to the killer.

2. The “will they or won’t they” romantic subplot

Honestly, I am just fine reading thriller and horror stories that have no romantic elements in them. I actually find them more enjoyable because the author focuses strictly on the main plot. I don’t know why, but it seems like most authors in the thriller and horror genres have no idea what a “romance” actually is. They seem to think romance is simply a “will they or won’t they” equation.

This is how it goes. Character A and Character B are obviously attracted to each other. The reader doesn’t need to be told this. The reader can see this setup right away. But instead of the author just delivering on this pretty quick into the story, the author will drag the whole thing out until the story is almost over. It is exhausting, and quite frankly, I end up skipping this stuff because it does nothing for the plot.

So what am I talking about? Let me explain. Character A almost tells Character B how they feel. For whatever reason, Character A chickens out by “saying enough but then not enough”, or, if Character A is still talking, the author throws in some generic interruption into the conversation, such as another person enters the room or something falls from the ceiling and almost kills everyone. Another variation of this is when Character A does actually/finally admit their feelings, but Character B assumes these feelings aren’t sincere. For example, Character A proposes, but Character B thinks Character A is only proposing to save her from financial ruin, not because of true love. So then Character B can’t say yes but then proceeds to mope or cry about it when alone. Ugh. Why not just ask Character A for clarification if it’s needed? Why assume something? How hard is it to just sit down and have a conversation? Then we’re freed up to get to the story we came here to read. Last time I checked, someone does not pick up a thriller or a horror novel to read a romance. They are there for the thrills and chills.

Now, I will add an exception to the above statements. If the book is a thriller or horror novel where Character A loves Character B but doesn’t know if Character B is the killer, then the “will they or won’t they” makes sense. It’s a vital part of the plot.

3. A lot of women in thriller and horror stories are “impaled” by their love interest.

Just about every single thriller and horror story that contains a sex scene will have the man “impale” the woman. At first, I thought, “What a weird choice of words.” All I could think of was Vlad the Impaler, a real life person who went around impaling people. I was ready to forget the word when I came across more of them in different books by different authors with different publishing houses. These were all consensual sex scenes where the woman wanted to be there. She wasn’t forced into it.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the word “impale” on Google. This is what it means in verb form, to “pierce or transfix with a sharp instrument”. This is an example given in how to use it in a sentence: “His head was impaled on a pike and exhibited for all to see.”

Since when is a penis “sharp”? Last time I checked my husband, his penis did not end with a point. With that fact aside, the word “impale” conveys brute force that is painful. I have read a lot of romances, and there is not a single one I’ve come across that uses the word “impale” to convey sexual intercourse. I know we’re not in a romance novel, but it’s still important to use the right wording if you’re going to have a sex scene. A better word would be “enter”. Just say, “He entered her.” Or you can use the words “penetrate” or “went into”. Sex scenes are not complicated, but the right words do matter. You don’t want a reader to pause in the middle of the story and think, “Ouch. That would hurt.”

***

That’s all I got for now. Despite the things above, I have enjoyed the stories themselves. They don’t take away from the overall experience. I just thought they were amusing and wanted to mention them.

I love the movie Inception. It’s one of my all-time favorites. But there is one subplot in the movie that has never resonated with me. That subplot is Cobb and Mal’s love story. No matter how many times I’ve seen the movie, I have never “felt” that they loved each other. The actress is convincing, but the actor is not convincing. I don’t care how many times the actor winces or tears up or gives that “I can’t give her up” look, it is just not convincing. The other day as I watched the movie, I think I figured out why. In real life, the actor who plays Cobb has a reputation for only dating young women, like 25 and under, though I did a quick search and saw he broke the record with a couple of them actually being 27. I am not here to badmouth the actor. (That’s why I’m not giving his name, though the movie is so popular that I’m sure most of you know whom I’m talking about.) I am here to point out that I believer there is a connection between the actor’s real experience with love and his movie portrayal of love. In real life, he just goes from one woman to another. You can’t build a foundation for a deep, meaningful love while doing that, and I believe that is showing in this movie. He tries. I can see he’s trying. But it’s just not landing.

And then I think of writers, because ultimately, my mind goes toward writing.

The process of writing fiction requires the writer to tap into their emotions. If you are going to be in the character’s head, you also have to be in their heart. It doesn’t matter what the character says and does. In order to flesh the story out, there must be emotion. Emotion is the “why” of what a character says and does.

Emotion comes in a range, of course. This requires you to be open to the highs and lows of the human experience. I know we’re tempted to overlook the negative emotions, but they’re just as important as the positive ones.

I’m going to go into an example in my own past because I think it best illustrates this in light of me being a romance writer. When I was 12, I began writing romance. I asked my mom to read some of the stuff I wrote, and she said she had trouble connecting with the characters. “I don’t feel anything for them,” were her exact words. I struggled to get into the characters’ emotions for the next couple of years, but no matter how hard I tried, the depth of emotion just wasn’t there.

Then when I was 16, I began to date. At 17, I had a boyfriend I was crazy about. He was my first love. I experienced all of the flutters and thrills of being in love because of him. Then I moved from Ohio to Florida, and that forced us to break up. (Back in 1993, you could only keep in touch by snail mail and phone calls. After a few months of that, the distance took its toll.) I took the breakup hard. Being in love with him was the highest pleasure of emotion. Breaking up was the greatest sorrow I had ever gone through at the time. It took me a long time (like years) to finally get over him.

I look back on that time, and I am grateful for it. All of it. The highs and the lows. If I hadn’t had that experience did I was a young adult (and super dramatic about everything), it wouldn’t have impacted me as much as it did. When I was 25 and serious about marriage, I was a lot more level headed. I made the decision on which man to marry based more on “what kind of man” he was than how many flutters and thrills he gave me. But I will add that I made sure I picked someone who gave me flutters and thrills. I fell in love with my husband as much as I had fallen in love with my ex-boyfriend. Only, since I was older, I had a better perspective of what being a wife would entail. I had matured. When I picked up writing romance again in 2007, I had been married for seven years. I had four children. I not only had experience on being in love and having gone through a break up, but I had experience on what it took to sustain a marriage, too. All of that was my real life training for the romance writer I eventually became. If I had not gone through all of that, I would never have been able to feel deeply in the romance arena. I needed to feel deeply in order for my characters to feel deeply. Whenever a reader tells me they “felt” what my characters felt, it’s one of the best compliments I’ve ever received because that was what I originally struggled to get right.

You need to open yourself up to the emotions that are in your genre. Here in the US, people seem afraid to allow themselves to feel things that aren’t pleasant. When I was 20, my mom died, and I saw a psychologist who wanted me to see a psychiatrist to put me on Zoloft (a pill to numb my pain). I didn’t do it because, as a Psychology student in college, I learned it’s important to go through the five stages of grief. All of those stages are necessary to properly heal. My sister did take Zoloft and told me she had to stop because the Zoloft made her unable to feel anything at all. She couldn’t even feel happy.

Life will get messy. It will get hard. It will get uncomfortable. We can’t take away pain when it enters our lives. Pain is necessary. But on the flip side, life will also be amazing. It will be wonderful. It will leave us feeling like we can walk on clouds. We need both sides of the coin. The coin is always flipping. It doesn’t stay consistently on one side. We live in an imperfect world, and as long as it’s imperfect, we have to deal with that reality.

We can bring this to our writing. We can present the highs and lows of the human experience before the reader through our characters. Readers will connect with characters who feel deeply. They might even see a part of themselves in those characters. The beauty of fiction is that we can throw anything we want into a world we create. It doesn’t matter what the genre is; there is going to be a given range of emotions in it. Your setting and plot will structure that range. For example, a drama is going to feel different from a comedy. Also, a science fiction adventure into an unknown world is going to feel different from a small town contemporary romance. There will be parameters you’ll be working in, but you get to choose them. You get to decide what well of emotions from your own personal experience that you will draw from. Then you can use those emotions to pass on to your readers.

I believe this will make the story more meaningful to you and the readers who enjoy it. A story where a bunch of things just happen is a “meh” story. But a story where the reader is emotionally engaged with the character is a story that will be “felt”, and a story that is “felt” is one that has meaning to the person who reads it.

Out of the many thrillers and horror novels I’ve been listening to over the past couple of months, I finally found one that gave a solid deliverance on the “creep” factor. My definition of the creep factor is when the reader is going along in the story and suddenly, out of nowhere, the reader gives a slight shudder and thinks, “Ooh, that’s creepy.” It’s a subtle thing, but I think it’s one of the most powerful elements in fiction meant to put someone on edge.

In another post, I mentioned how fond I’m becoming of creature horror, or, as it also seems to be categorized, “dark fantasy”. I only borrowed The Last Word from the library because it was about an author taking revenge on a reader who gave his book a 1-star review. Being a writer, I thought it might be funny to read about an author going unhinged because of a bad review. (I mean, no author likes getting those kind of reviews, but we usually just cry about it in the writing groups. We don’t actually try to kill the reader.)

There were parts of the book where I did chuckle. The back-and-forth between the reader and author about “good” writing was hilarious, especially when the reader fogged up a window and wrote the word “amateur” on it. He was right outside the house, watching and waiting for the right moment to kill her, but the fact that she was willing to stop everything to keep up with their argument about his bad writing was funny.

This book, however, is not a comedy. It is a full-on thriller. In the prologue, we’re given the initial interaction between the reader and the author. The reader 1-stars his most recent book, he asks her to take the review down, she refuses, he’s like “I won’t ask you again” in a way that lets you know he’s ready to go after her, and she responds with a “good”. This is the beginning of the back-and-forth dialogue that’s picked up later in the story.

Chapter 1 is where the first creepy moment came up. I’ve been exploring how the author managed to successfully deliver on the creep factor, especially so early in the story. The author did not rely on anything in-your-face obvious. He went with the subtle path, and that is what I’d like to be able to do. Right after the prologue, the reader is going in-and-out of sleep, and she thinks someone is watching her. But when she fully rouses herself out of sleep, no one is there. Then she searches the house and verifies she’s alone. Then we are given the fact that she’s housesitting in a remote area along the beach. The nearest house is about a quarter of a mile away. Most of the time when authors give a play-by-play account of a character’s actions in their stories, I get bored, but this author managed to make every action a revelation into “who” she is and “what” she wants. These things taught me something about her personality and her background that I would not have figured out otherwise, and that made those play-by-play accounts effective. The author also did this in snippets throughout the story so as not to info dump on me.

So anyway, early on, we establish that this reader is a loner whose only companion is a dog. Her goal is to disappear from the rest of the world. She does communicate with one other person, and that is the owner of the house that is a quarter of a mile away. The two houses all have huge windows so they can easily see into each others’ places. They use telescopes to communicate via white board where they write messages. Usually, they play hangman games. On this particular day in Chapter 1, the owner of the other house glances over at her place, jumps up, and hurries to write on the white board, “Someone is with you.” or something along that line. Given the guy she thought was watching her while she slept, that message and the guy’s startled reaction (jumping out of his chair) creeped me out. The author set the foundation for the creep factor at the beginning of Chapter 1. He didn’t rush into it. It just slips in after her very calm and relaxing morning. That is effective.

She does not believe him. Apparently, this character in the other house has a habit of pulling pranks on her, so she has a good reason not look over her shoulder. She laughs it off with a “nice try” message on her board. He replies that he’s serious. There’s a little more to the conversation, and toward the end, he writes, “Killer is still behind you by the way,” and that was the second creep factor.

Of course, nothing happens to her at this point. If it did, we would lose the creep factor. It’s important that the build up has time to develop, and this author did that very well. When things really ramp up, we are ready for it. The author does slip in something about her not being sure what’s real or what’s not, so there were times when I wondered if she was imagining some of this stuff that was happening to her. Then you are left wondering who you can trust and who you can’t because more characters slip into the story as it progresses.

Another thing the author did really well to make you wonder what exactly was real was alternating between the reader’s narrative (where we get her point of view of events) and a “nonfiction” book written well after the events happens (where we get an “unknown” character’s perspective of events). (I hope that makes sense.) I really enjoyed this back-and-forth between her point of view and the unknown character’s point of view. They contradicted each other in certain places. For example, the reader says she wrote the word “amateur” on the window. The unknown character reported that she wrote, “please don’t kill me” on the window. (Given how she questioned her sanity early in the book, we really do wonder who is right.) I have never read a story that took that approach to building up the suspense like this before, and I think that made the thriller element of this story very effective.

In the end, we do know what was real and what wasn’t, so the author didn’t leave us hanging. He answered all the questions he posed. This story was really well done, and I’ll continue to dissect different elements of it in the future as I strive to make my own writing better.