I’m sitting here, pondering my career as an author, and I must say, I adore it.  Most people don’t get to say that.  Most people have jobs that they don’t absolutely love.  Most people consider their job a “grind”.  Those few people who do find jobs that they’re good at, that they love, are blessed indeed.

And sure, being an author isn’t even my #1 job.  I’m a wife and mommy first, a homemaker, who takes care of my family.  In my house, I wear many hats.  Errand runner, bill payer, maid, cook, teacher.  True, I enjoy some of those jobs better than others, but my writing I absolutely adore.  I don’t adore scooping the cat litter.  I don’t adore going to the grocery store.  But I adore getting on my computer and writing stories of love and triumph.

Perhaps it’s *because* I’m a housewife that I write.  I’ve heard a lot of people mention that lonely housewives write romance novels.  Well, I’m not lonely.  I’m a housewife, true, but I’ve always wanted to do something in this world.  I’ve always wanted to be “somebody.”  Sure, I’m the most influential person in my children’s lives.  I feed them, clothe them, teach them.  Through them, I can indirectly touch the world.

However, I want to touch it myself. (Hehe, that’s what she said…)  Ahem.  lol

There are times when I get stir crazy staying in the house all day long.  But “going out” involves packing up 5 kids – and then supervising those 5 kids wherever we go.  It’s not an easy feat.  I suppose after my other hats are worn, the author hat allows me to whisk away to another world for awhile.  It allows me to give people the happy ending we sometimes know doesn’t happen in real life.

It allows me to build a world my readers can picture.  It takes my readers into MY imagination for a time.  And that’s a powerful thing.

But it also gives me my ME time.  The time I need to recharge to be a better wife and mommy, so I’m not always so stressed out about everything.  It allows me to have control over something, when sometimes I don’t have control over other things.  It’s an outlet of hope, too, in a way, because I control the lives of my characters, and I know that no matter what I throw at them, they’ll always have each other.  And that reinforces my relationship with my hubby.

There are many reasons why I write.   And I love them all.  Without my writing, I’d be staring at these walls, probably feeling a bit trapped in the life I lead.  But I have an outlet that allows me to be creative and share with others.  An outlet that gives me the opportunity to make something of myself and also allows me to keep my sanity.

And a job that can do that is a job you should never take for granted.

~~Becka

I know, I know, boo-the-frick-hoo, Becka.  Most folk don’t even have ONE of those much less BOTH.  Well, in my own defense, both of my gadgets were gifts. I probably would never have shelled out THAT much money for either device for myself.  However, since there are some articles out there and questions swirling about the Kindle vs. the iPad as an eReader, I thought I would throw my thoughts into the ring.

Plain and simple, the iPad can do more.  And with the ability to do more, it is therefore more convenient.

Being the online eBook author that I am, I am married to my email/twitter/facebook/blog.  I’m on umpteen lists and groups, I scour events for promo ops, I send my thoughts out in 140 characters.  I’m an Internet addict, I freely admit.  When the Internet goes down, I feel like Helen Keller.  I begin to devolve.

Now that you understand I’m always “in the know” as much as I can be, then you can understand why I’ve forsaken my Kindle.  I do most of my reading in bed.  And just before I open that eBook, I’m doing my final email checks, Twitter checks, maybe posting an update on Facebook, perhaps surfing the web.  Once I’m done, I open my Kindle App and away I go.  Who wants to put down the iPad, fumble for the Kindle, and try to find your Mighty Bright (or just turn on your light)?  It’s just more…convenient.  I’ve already got it on my lap.

Is Kindle’s eInk more readable?  Yes.  Is Kindle more comfortable to hold?  Yes.  Is Kindle lighter?  Yes.  Is Kindle less expensive?  Yes.  If all you want to do is read eBooks, Kindle is for you.  Or the Nook.  Or the Sony eReader.  Whatever.  But the iPad is for Internet junkies like me.  Those of us who must have their brain jacked into the Matrix 24/7.  It’s too…inconvenient to reach for another device to read an eBook when the iPad can do it too.

Is it a Kindle killer?  For me… yes.  But only because I appreciate all the other things I can do on it.  And I LUVED my Kindle before I had my iPad.  So there are some of you out there who will LUV your Kindle as well.  And maybe there are some hardcore readers out there, who, like me, have both, but still prefer to read eBooks on their Kindle.  I can respect that.  Backlit books can be an eyestrain.

However, I rarely go read on the deck during the day or on the couch (unless I’m sick and forsaking the housework).  Most of my reading is in bed.  And I like to read with the light off.  Which means, I either need the eBook to be backlit, or I’ve got to whip out the Mighty Bright that clips onto my Kindle.  And let me tell you – the name of that thing ain’t lyin’.  It has two lightbulbs.  Even on the lower setting of one bulb, it’s mighty bright, and it might just disturb your bedmate (if you’ve got one).

IPad’s backlit screen, however, isn’t that bright.  You can set the brightness, actually.  It’s not like you’re reading a book in bed with a Maglite.  LOL

I’m not sure what to do with my Kindle at this point.  Thinking of giving it to my daughter, since she loves to read.  It makes me sad, that I have forsaken it.  While it lasted, we had a short, passionate love affair.  But now that I’m in bed with my iPad, I’m in it for the long haul.

~~Becka

Life has a funny way of bringing you down, then bouncing you right back up.  I’ve had a string of both rejections and sales recently, the most recent being the rejection of both THE FALL OF JERICHO and RENEGADE at Carina Press.  While I’m disappointed they don’t like my westerns, I have resolved to sell these two stories, as they happen to be two of my favorites.  (Don’t authors say that about every book they write? lol)

Anyhow, undaunted, I’ve decided to send them both on to Samhain Publishing.  However, my editor is currently slammed with submissions, so she can only do one at a time.  She has JERICHO right now, so RENEGADE will have to cool its boot heels a little while longer.  Don’t worry, intrepid western fans, the book is worth the wait. 

Submitting a book is kind of like throwing magnets at a fridge and seeing which one sticks.  However, I’ve never been one to submit a book at more than one house at the same time.  I guess it just kinda rubs me the wrong way to tell one interested publisher that you’re going with the other guy.  So I torture myself by waiting to see what one publisher has to say before resetting the submission clock.

However, if these rejections have gotten me down, a few positive notes have brought me right back up again.  First of all, I got my first round edits on both RIDE THE LIGHTNING and MARK OF THE B*E*A*S*T*.  Both editors said they really liked the stories, but my editor for MotB said she loved the book and could hardly put it down.  Authors LOVE it when the ol’ ego is stroked.  Heh.

My other editor for RtL gave me a great idea for the ending, which I won’t spoil for you, but kind of brings a clash of future meets past in ideology (since it’s a time travel).  That was unexpected, but I loved it, so I added it in.

Also, a couple of my readers have told me out of the blue that they read, and loved, HIGH NOON, my one and only western (currently) at Samhain.  (Thank you Cindy and Kathy!!)

Through all of this hoopla, I have noticed a new trend with eBook pirates.  They’ve found me.  I’ve hidden from them for years, not finding any of my books on the premiere sites, until a few months ago, it was like the Becka Big Bang, and suddenly everyone was pirating my books.  However, since this amazing, disturbing discovery, I’ve noticed my sales have noticeably been on the rise.  Are these two events related?  Probably.  If a reader reads one book for free and really likes it, sure, they can go back for more freebies with the pirates, or sometimes, they can choose to support the author they’ve pirated.

I’m not advocating eBook piracy here, but I’m choosing to look for the silver lining.  If any of my new readers have found me through nefarious means, all I ask is for you to spread the love and get me more readers.  Support a scrounging author!  LOL   Hey, I love me some hot pirates, but even those pirates, at the end of the book, end up buying the cow, even though they probably already got the milk for free… Heheh

So with this grand turn of events, my many rejections, my few acquisitions, I have made a decision.  I’ve told you about my five year goal – from five years ago – and I tried this year, I really did, to break into the big leagues.  But it seems as if the universe at large is telling me “NO!”  Therefore, I will let go of that dream and concentrate all my will and determination to become the Best Damn eBook Author Ever (or at least the most prolific) and try my hardest to become a Big Fish in this eBook pond. (Which won’t be a pond forever, and is even now probably a lake.  With an outlet to the ocean.)  But until the day when everyone is reading eBooks, I want to build my audience, get people to know and recognize my name in eBook romance, and become more than just a “run-of-the-mill eBook author”.

I’ll be THE Rebecca Goings.  And I’ll be kicking some ass.

~~Becka, who thanks the many editors over the years who’ve rejected her stories, for those rejections have now strengthened her resolve to become a force to be reckoned with in the eBook world.

I’ve been thinking about this topic lately.  I first began thinking about it when one of my husband’s friends asked me if I was still writing those “love” books.  Then he stopped and said, “No, I mean romance, which has nothing to do with love.”

Needless to say, I was perturbed by this comment, but this seemed to be the consensus of my husband and the rest of his guy friends.  “Romance” is the ooey-gooey saccharine-sweet puppy love of flowers and chocolates, while real “love” is enduring, a rock in the storms of life.  As my husband likes to call it, “Love is not a feeling, it’s an act of your will.”  (He gets that from a song lyric, btw. lol)  Basically, what that means is, the lengths you are willing to go for another person.

However, you go online and hundreds (if not thousands) of readers and authors of the romance genre will yell at you until they’re red in the face that the books they read and write are about LOVE, the true, enduring kind.  Some of them even go so far to say it’s splitting hairs, that love and romance are the same thing.

For me, I can see both sides of the coin.  However for me, I believe love and romance go hand-in-hand.  Love is the bond you have with another person that allows you to share life experiences, while romance strengthens that bond.

And I’m not talking about candlelight dinners and skimpy lingerie.

Here’s the definition of romance:

1. A love affair.

2. Ardent emotional attachment or involvement between people; love: They kept the romance alive in their marriage for 35 years.
3. A strong, sometimes short-lived attachment, fascination, or enthusiasm for something: a childhood romance with the sea.
4. A long medieval narrative in prose or verse that tells of the adventures and heroic exploits of chivalric heroes: an Arthurian romance.
5. A long fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary or mysterious events, usually set in a distant time or place.
6. The class of literature constituted by such tales.
7. An artistic work, such as a novel, story, or film, that deals with sexual love, especially in an idealized form.
8. The class or style of such works.

Romance, to me, is snuggling.  Holding hands.  Telling your partner they look nice.  Reassuring them you still find them attractive.  Defending them to others, and being their cheerleader when something they’re facing seems too insurmountable.

For those of us who write romance, being told we don’t write about “love” smacks of ignorance.  YES, I see and acknowledge the difference between romance and love.  HOWEVER, by book’s end, both characters are in it for life, they have moved beyond the “omigawdheslookingatmewhatdoido” stage into the “Now let’s build a life together” stage.

And here is the definition of love:

8. (initial capital letter) a personification of sexual affection, as Eros or Cupid.

Okay, folks, if you don’t already know, you’re probably not a reader of this blog from way back.  I’m a geek.  I’m a big-time geek.  I’m a Browncoat, I frakkin’ hate toasters, Scorpy and Harvey–I hate to love ‘em, Mr. Spock is my wingman, my best friend is a Wookiee and I’m homeless since my home planet of Gallifrey was destroyed somewhere in the Pegasus galaxy.

My heroes are Wil Wheaton, Bruce Campbell, and Neil Patrick Harris.

I’ve played D&D for 15 years, I love board games, and I’ve sat around with friends and had lengthy end-of-the-world discussions involving certain scenarios and what we would do should the zombies finally attack.

After all this, it shouldn’t be too far of a stretch for you to realize that one of my two favorite sitcoms is…you guessed it…Big Bang Theory.

If you’re not familiar, it is a show about 4 best friends, each a genius, each a geek, and their social ineptitude when it comes to dealing with people.  You have Raj, the man from India who cannot even talk to women unless he’s drunk, Wolowitz, who likes to think he’s a ladies’ man (when he’s anything but), Leonard, who’s had a crush on Penny in 4B since the start of the show (who, of course, is a total hottie), and you have Sheldon, a man who is so far removed from society that he’s almost childlike in the way he deals with the world.

In all the seasons of BBT, we’ve never seen Sheldon “fall in love”.  The seasons have revolved around Leonard, some shows involving Wolowitz, some with Raj, and yes, some with Sheldon, but as Wolowitz has finally found the one girl who can put up with him, I’m thinking perhaps Sheldon should have some time to shine.

You see, Sheldon is my favorite character on the show, and is arguably why the show is so wildly popular (aside from the geeky references you either get or you don’t).  People tune in to see what he would do next.  He seems perfectly happy in his own little world, and needs to have things “just so” in order for his world to flourish.  NO ONE can dare sit in HIS SPOT on the couch.  Every day of the week is a certain take-out meal from different restaurants.  He’s got some OCD going on in there, but he’s such a lovable character, like a young child you just want to take under your wing and protect from reality (even though he’s a grown man).

My point?  Well, I would love for the show to grow a bit.  And by grow a bit, I mean take the focus off Leonard and Penny, Wolowitz and Raj and let Sheldon have a love interest.

True, they would have to tread lightly.  As I’ve stated before, Sheldon is somewhat a fragile snowflake, but if done right, I think they can pull it off.  Obviously, she could not be a genius.  I don’t believe Sheldon could be with a woman “on his level”, as by his very nature, he has a certain arrogance that yes, he really does know what he’s talking about.  I don’t think they should give Sheldon a hottie, as Leonard is the one who went this route.  I don’t even believe they should give him a woman who is a little socially inept herself, like the girl they gave Wolowitz.

No, what Sheldon needs is a GEEK.  And here’s how I’d do it.

The guys hang out regularly at the comic shop.  This is where he should meet her.  And I think she should work there.  The guy who owns the shop could hire a new girl, and she could help Sheldon find some rare and obscure comic.  They could even have a comic-off, meaning “quizzing” each other on their knowledge of comics.

Eventually, she becomes friends with the group, and the guys know Sheldon obviously likes her.  Imagine the comedy gold right there.  The awkwardness of his clumsy courtship, the way she’s willing to put up with him and his quirky-ness.  Knowing Sheldon, he might try to give up or think he’s not worthy, or just plain not know what to DO.  And then you have Wolowitz giving him pointers on how to score with the ladies (OMG, I’m laughing even now), Penny telling him what women want from a man (and Sheldon failing miserably at being a white knight), Leonard telling him to just go for it if he really likes her, and Raj, well…maybe her geekery would be cause enough alone for him to like her, so they can have another player on Halo night (assuming Wolowitz bails due to his new lady love).

I just love Sheldon.  I think he’s quirky, but he’s so dang adorable.  Since I am also a fan of romance (orly?), I often think about what kind of woman would put up with him.  He’s obviously not “dead”, since he managed to get to second base with Penny (not romantically, but she was injured and needed help getting dressed from a fall in the shower) so c’mon, Bill Prady and the writers of the show.  Give us a Sheldon love-interest!  He gets the shaft so often that I feel the poor guy needs a happy ending of sorts, in more ways than one.  And just imagining THAT alone makes me giggle.

Will we ever see Sheldon find a woman, other than Penny, who will sing him Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty?  Please, please, pretty please?!?

Sincerely,

~~Becka

It’s funny what you start out as and what you end up becoming.  Many of you might not know or remember, but I started out as an Inspirational author.  I wanted to write for Heartsong and Steeple Hill.  But I got rejected by both and picked up by the now defunct By Grace Publishing.

After a time, I tried my hand at mainstream romances.  Found not only was that more lucrative, but it was more fun (for me, anyway.)  I enjoyed writing sexual tension and the full culmination of a romance.

Lemme tell ya, that confused more than one reviewer.  Heheh

So I decided to write mainstream full time and drop the Inspies all together.  Now, all my Inspies are out of print since By Grace Publishing went under.  They’ll probably stay tucked away and those of you “lucky” enough to read them can say, “I remember when…”

Then came the Harlequin Desire.  I read them by the truckload.  Thought hey, I can write one of those!  Tried my hand, but ultimately got rejected.  Plot line wasn’t what they were looking for.  But after I wrote a few contemporaries, I realized that is not my genre of choice.  Becoming a Desire author might not be where I want to go.

But paranormals are great!  Fantasies can be fun too.  And Westerns are a rootin’ tootin’ good time!  I actually decided awhile ago my historical novels would be Westerns.  Why?  Well, I enjoy Regency/Victorian England as much as the next author/reader.  But, I believe enough authors are covering the genre.  And aside from a random pirate novel that might be fun, maybe even a Medieval, my desire to write in historical England isn’t that great.  Besides, when’s the last time you went to the romance section and saw Westerns all over the place?

You don’t, really.  I want to change that.  I want to help my friends, like Beth Williamson, and other authors, like Cheryl St. John and Kate Bridges bring them back.  They’re my favorite genre to read AND write.

I was talking to another author friend of mine about how much more prolific eAuthors are than print authors.  Sure, we get a lot  more in royalties, but our audience is a niche.  We have to write many more books to “pay the bills” than a big-timey successful NY author might.  Writing one book a year would be stifling to my muse!  LOL

Therefore, while I’m looking for bigger and better pastures to publish in, I am in no way turning my back on the small ePresses.  I know I’m very prolific.  I don’t think any agent or big name publisher I get is going to want to release a story by me every couple of months, assuming I don’t have a multi-book deal (hey, one can always dream!)  Anyhow, there’s just some stories I have that might not jive with more traditional publishers.

But you never know, right?  My plans for today might not be my plans for tomorrow.  If I’m picked up by an agent or a well-known publisher, obviously my writing will gravitate toward that, writing more books for them, perhaps pitching a series, etc.  You never know.  If I’m not, then I’ll continue to do what I’m doing.

But like I said before, sometimes where you plan to go isn’t always where you end up.  We’ll see which way I go at the end of the day. 

~~Becka