It's Fall - do you know what your next book is?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

 Fall is my favorite season. Maybe it’s that Halloween thing, maybe it’s the “back to school” energy, maybe it’s the Santa Ana winds that were so much a part of my life growing up in Southern California that I made them a character in The Space Between, maybe it’s just that you get a jolt of ambition because it gets cooler and your brain returns to some functional temperature.  

Because it’s sort of ingrained in us (whether we like it or not), that fall is the beginning of a new school year, I think fall is a good time for making resolutions.  Like, about that new book you’re going to be writing for the next year or so. 

Myself, I have so many books to finish right now that I can’t let myself think about any new ones until I get at least ONE more done.  I’ve taken the idea of multitasking to a near-suicidal extreme.  But I’m not complaining – not only do I have a job, I have my dream job. 

However, given what I blog and teach about, I am aware that this is a perfect time for OTHER people to be thinking about THEIR new books.  Because, you know, it’s September, but November will be here before you know it.

I’m sure many if not most here are aware that November is Nanowrimo – National Novel Writing Month.  As explained at the official site here, and here and here, the goal of Nanowrimo is to bash through 50,000 words of a novel in a  single month.  

I could not be more supportive of this idea – it gives focus and a nice juicy competitive edge to an endeavor that can seem completely overwhelming when you’re facing it all on your own.   Through peer pressure and the truly national focus on the event, Nanowrimo forces people to commit.    It’s easy to get caught up in and carried along by the writing frenzy of tens of thousands – or maybe by now hundreds of thousands - of  “Wrimos”.  And I’ve met and heard of lots of novelists, like Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) Sara Gruen (Water For Elephants), and Lisa Daily (The Dreamgirl Academy) who started novels during Nanowrimo that went on to sell, sometimes sell big.

Nanowrimo works.  

But as everyone who reads this blog knows, I’m not a big fan of sitting down and typing Chapter One at the top of a blank screen and seeing what comes out from there.   It may be fine – but it may be a disaster, or something even worse than a disaster – an unfinished book.  And it doesn’t have to be.

I’m always asked to do Nanowrimo “pep talks”.   These are always in the month of November. 

That makes no sense to me.

I mean, I’m happy to do it, but mid-November is way too late for that kind of thing. What people should be asking me, and other authors that they ask to do Nano support, is Nano PREP talks.

If you’re going to put a month aside to write 50,000 words, doesn’t it make a little more sense to have worked out the outline, or at least an overall roadmap, before November 1?   I am pretty positive that in most cases far more writing, and far more professional writing, would get done in November if Wrimos took the month of October – at LEAST -  to really think out some things about their story and characters, and where the whole book is going.   It wouldn’t have to be the full-tilt-every-day frenzy that November will be, but even a half hour per day in October, even fifteen minutes a day, thinking about what you really want to be writing would do your potential novel worlds of good.

But you know what?   Even if you never look at that prep work again, your brilliant subconscious mind will have been working on it for you for a whole month.   (Cause let’s face it – we don’t do this mystical thing called writing all by ourselves, now, do we?).

So here’s my topic for the day, and possibly for my next blog as well:

How do you choose the next book you write?

I know, I know, it chooses you.   That’s a good answer, and sometimes it IS the answer, but it’s not the only answer.  And let’s face it – just like with, well, men, sometimes the one who chooses you is NOT the one YOU should be choosing.  What makes anyone think it’s any different with books? 

It’s a huge commitment, to decide on a book to write. That’s a minimum of six months of your life just getting it written, not even factoring in revisions and promotion. You live in that world for a long, long time.  Not only that, but if you're a professional writer, you're pretty much always going to be having to work on more than one book at a time.  You're writing a minimum of one book while you're editing another and always doing promotion for a third.  

So the book you choose to write is not just going to have to hold your attention for six to twelve months with its world and characters, but it's going to have to hold your attention while you're working just as hard on another or two or three other completely different projects at the same time.   You're going to have to want to come back to that book after being on the road touring a completely different book and doing something that is both exhausting and  almost antithetical to writing (promotion).

That's a lot to ask of a story.

So how does that decision process happen? 

When on panels or at events, I have been asked, “How do you decide what book you should write?” I have not so facetiously answered: “I write the book that someone writes me a check for.”

That’s maybe a screenwriter thing to say, and I don’t mean that in a good way, but it’s true, isn’t it?

Anything that you aren’t getting a check for you’re going to have to scramble to write, steal time for – it’s just harder. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, or that it doesn’t produce great work, but it’s harder. 

As a professional writer, you’re also constricted to a certain degree by your genre, and even more so by your brand. I’m not allowed to turn in a chick lit story, or a flat-out gruesome horrorfest, or probably a spy story, either. Once you’ve published you are a certain commodity.  

If you are writing a series, you're even more restricted.  You have a certain amount of freedom about your situation and plot but – you’re going to have to write the same characters, and if your characters live in a certain place, you’re also constricted by place.  Now that I’m doing a couple of paranormal series, I am learning that every decision is easier in a way, because so many elements are already defined, but it’s also way more limiting than my standalones and I could see how it would get frustrating.

Input from your agent is key, of course - you are a team and you are shaping your career together. Your agent will steer you away from projects that are in a genre that is glutted, saving you years of work over the years, and s/he will help you make all kinds of big-pitcure decisions.

But what I’m really interested in today is not the restrictions but the limitless possibilities. 

How DO you decide what to write?

And even more importantly – How do you decide what to READ?  

Because I have a theory that it’s actually the same answer, but we’ll see.

Happy Fall, everyone!

- Alex

Workaholics not so anonymous

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I don't have a problem.

It's the easiest thing in the world to say. Easy to say because this is America, where hard work (note that it's "hard" work, not "easy" work)  is not just rewarded, it's canonized.  Easy to say because "all my friends do it." Easy to say because people all around you would kill to have your career, so you should be grateful. Easy to say because IT WORKS.

Writing is my job. No one supports me—I do this for a living. And I do make a living at it, which all my life I was told couldn't happen. Well, I've made it work for pretty much my whole adult life.

So I never thought I had a problem. Why should I think that? In Hollywood, workaholism is the job description. You better love it, want it, because you're going to be doing it every waking hour, and by the way, who told you you needed eight hours of sleep? Workaholism is the standard for Los Angeles; ambitious people from all over the country, all over the world, come here since to "make it" and that's created a whole culture of ambition—and workaholism. I've been immersed in it so long it was the only thing I knew. It was a huge shock to live in the South and be surrounded by people who didn't live that way; I felt like I was set on 78 rpm while almost everyone else was on 45.

And writing is one of those things that you can never fully turn off, anyway. Maybe it IS just the job description.

Add to that that given the recession, we're ALL working too much. All of us who are lucky enough to have jobs, that is, and with so many people who don't, it's the last thing you're going to complain about. All my friends with "real" jobs are working harder than ever before because staffs have been cut everywhere and the staff that remains is expected to pick up the slack. And hey, at least it's a job. So given the national (world) circumstances, it's crazy to even bring up the question.  Isn't it?

Is there such a thing as workaholism, anyway?  It's not in the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a crime writer's favorite light reading), like the other isms. There may be treatment centers for it in California, but then we also have treatment centers for workaholic pets. If you see what I mean.

So - iit's a time that no one can complain about working, all my friends do it, and it works.

And yet... I think I have a problem.

I don't know what exactly to do about it. You can stop alcohol and pills and gambling and Internet porn. You can reprogram food binging. You can't quit work cold turkey.

But I'm not naive about treatment for this things. I was a functioning anorexic for a while (another "ism" that's easy to dismiss if you're rewarded for it). Never to the point of hospitalization, but certainly flirting with the deep end.

So how did I get out of it? I didn't seek treatment, but it was about that time that I started practicing yoga and meditation (which I didn't know at the time is considered one of the most effective treatments for anorexia), and some in-depth journaling (therapeutic writing instead of professional writing). The obsession faded, maybe to be replaced with work - although the work was already there.

So I know the treatment for balance is more yoga, more meditation, more "self-care", as a therapist would say.

This is all coming up because I've been working my way through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, as I mentioned in the discussion here on Monday.  I'd been aware of Cameron's creativity books and workshops for years, but I never knew that she used principles of recovery to break through creative blocks. There's some serious healing to be had in that book.

And this week I got to a chapter on workaholism (and other blocks to creativity).  Well, I'd been with the program up until then, but workaholism as a block to creativity? That does't even make sense.

She poses a list of questions entiled The Awful Truth which begins:

1. Tell the truth. What habit do you have that gets in the way of your creativity?

I read that and scoffed. Is she kidding? I'm creative 12 hours a day. I have so many creative projects going I can't keep them straight.  I have four book contracts, two spec books, I've got the first book up in my new e-book business, I'll have the second up next week....

Oh.

I see.

Hmm.

2. Tell the truth. What do you think might be a problem? It is.

Okay, so my problem is overextension. Yes, it is a problem.

3. What do you plan to do about the habit or problem?

So here we are. I can't stop working, and I have no idea what I am going to do about the problem, but I have taken the first step. I've admitted I have a problem.

And my question is (Tell the truth:) Do you? 

Here's an interesting tidbit for discussion. Professor Bryan Robinson, a major researcher in this field, identifies four kinds of workaholics:

- Savoring Workaholics, (low work initiation, low work completion, high procrastination)

- Attention Deficit Workaholics (high work initiation, low work completion, high procrastination)

- Bulimic Workaholics (high work completion)

- Relentless Workaholics (high work completion).

I haven't been able to find more complete definitions, but certainly I am familiar with the low work completion/high work completion gap. Busyness is not working, as far as I'm concerned; the only work that counts is the work that gets finished. So I'm definitely not one of the first two. I can't figure out what a Bulimic workaholic would be, which maybe means I am one, but I think relentless is more apt.

Anyway, thought I'd throw that in there.

But what do you guys think? Is workaholism just part of a writer's job description, or a serious behavioral dysfunction? Is it a problem, but better than the alternative? Is it okay as long as it works?

Anyone out there have anything to confess?

And even if none of this applies to you, do you think that we're quietly headed for a national problem because the recession is forcing all working people to overwork?

- Alex

Looking Back, Looking Forward

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Zoë did a brilliant thing in her post last week – a looking back and looking forward at her career as a writer, and JT said something about all of us maybe doing it.  Which is just like JT, who is so good about one-year plans and five-year plans and that kind of grownup thing.

Well, maybe Steve’s post yesterday scared me into acting a little more like an adult, because I decided to do the career review thing for myself today, and the rest of you can do what you want.

A career is always evolving, I guess, it’s not just a writer’s career that does. And it’s interesting to look back over my career and see how certain patterns emerge. Today I'll be looking at the fairly positive ones, not the horrific soul-crushing mistakes that take years to recover from. That's another post.

So a first really clear pattern is that every 5 to 10 years I have moved from one medium to another, always incorporating what I’ve learned from each previous incarnation.

I started off not as a writer but in theater, at eight or nine, first acting (a lot of it) and dancing, then directing and choreographing. I didn’t start writing until college.  But in theater,  without meaning to,  I was learning all the jobs required to write: acting, directing, set design, lighting design, choreography, musical direction, props….  I also did a stint in video production in there somewhere.

I graduated from college and worked for a couple of years in an improvisational theater ensemble, which was more great training, and a totally fabulous time. But I started getting these– feelings. Whispers, you might say. They weren’t all that coherent really, but I was picking up on a message that sounded suspiciously like: “No one’s ever going to pay you to do political theater in Berkeley.”  It’s a coals to Newcastle kind of thing.

So since I’d already been to New York, and I knew I didn’t want to write for Broadway (or Off-), I decided - not all at once, but in a sort of gradual tipping point from “maybe” to “okay, let’s just do it” – that I’d move down to LA and become a screenwriter. Yes, just like that. You really have to love California; from birth we are completely inundated with T-shirt and bumper sticker messages like “Follow your bliss!” “Do what you love and the money will follow!” “Feel the fear and do it anyway!” 

Even more amusing- we actually believe all that.

So I moved down to LA and became a screenwriter.  Pretty much just like that.  Well, I worked in development for about a year and a half while I was writing my first script, and of course I was working my ass off learning the craft and the town and everything it takes to actually accomplish it all, but it really did happen pretty much like that. 

This is another example of a pattern that established itself early in my life. I’d be subliminally pushed to do something and then I’d power down, one might say obsessively, and make it happen. I directed my first full-length play at 16 by pretty much the same process; I landed an unheard-of gig (for a 17-year old!) in college directing a full-scale musical every year with an actual budget and in fantastic theater venues.  The Universe is very supportive of inspiration, I find.

I won’t go into my Hollywood years, it’s too convoluted a story for one blog and I still have the PTSD issues. I’ll just say I made a good and sometimes great living as a screenwriter for a long time until I started getting those feelings again– this time more like something was going terribly wrong in the industry. A lot of this was coming from being on the Board of Directors of the WGA, the screenwriters’ union, and getting an insider look at changes happening in the film business. I started getting whispers again– something like: This is insane. Save yourself.  Get out.  Or at least, diversify, as they say in the financial business.  And so I wrote a book. At night. Screenwriting became my day job as I sweated over the novel, one page at a time.  Sometimes one paragraph or one sentence at a time.  But that’s how a book gets written.

And that book sold and was nominated for a couple of awards and suddenly I was in another career. Just at the right time, I have to say, given what’s happened in the film business since I wrote that first book.

So now for the last five years I’ve been making my living at books. I have five published novels out, with numerous foreign editions, and a non-fiction workbook of my Screenwriting Tricks workshops. I have contracts for four more books, and every day I am incredibly grateful to be making a living at what I love (or some days, love to hate) in the middle of this terrible recession.

But -  I’m getting that feeling, again.  That – “Time to change” feeling.  “Diversify,” the voice whispers. Sometimes it’s not much of a whisper; sometimes it’s a bolt straight upright in bed with a voice in my head screaming DO IT!!!!  kind of thing. I mean, I have contracts for now, but what’s the business going to look like in a year?

Yes, I am talking about indie publishing.

We’ve been having these backstage discussions at Murderati about where we want the blog to go from here, and my own very strong feeling is that we need to be talking even more about e books and indie publishing. So I am putting my blogging where my mouth is and am going to do a series of posts on how the changes in the publishing business are affecting me and how I personally am dealing with it all.

I already have a toe in the e book business. Screenwriting Tricks For Authors is up on Amazon for Kindle, and I’ve been loving getting that direct deposit to my bank account every month; it really helped back there around Christmas when my advance check was taking about forever to show up. And a few weeks ago I finally buckled down and figured out how to get the book up on Smashwords, in all those formats that Smashwords does, and on B&N for Nook. And once I did, I felt like a complete idiot for not having done it before.  It is instant money that I could have been getting all along.

Back to the portfolio analogy for a moment:  it’s an income stream. As a professional author, I have many income streams. I get advances for my new books, I have a backlist that generates royalties, I have royalties from foreign publishers, and now I have e book income, soon to have much more, if things go as I’m planning - all in concert with my agent, of course.

The thing writers don’t talk about enough, I think, is how we actually manage to make that combine into a real living.  Well, I can tell you for myself, and for most of my friends who have NOT broken into the huge advance category but are still making a full-time living at writing books: how it’s done is by constant, grueling work to get more product out there to create more income streams – on top of writing the best book you can write every single time. It’s not very pleasant, truthfully – it means firing on all four burners 24/7.  But that’s nothing new - it seems to be the job description. Everyone I know does it.

Now, e books are a freaking ton of work that I’ve just added to an already overflowing plate. I am now responsible for lining up all kinds of support people that my publisher has always provided: proofreaders, editors, cover designers, formatters, technical services – and there’s a lot of new technical stuff I’ve had to learn myself, which I must say is not my forte. It’s overwhelming, which is why I haven’t fully done it before now. But I think it’s going to be crucial to have some eggs in that basket, so I’m biting the bullet, for real.  To mix all kinds of metaphors, as you all know I love to do.

And honestly, the control and flexibility you get with indie publishing is exhilarating. One thing I’ve discovered is that you can create your own formats. For Screenwriting Tricks, I have been working on and off for most of the past year on an extensive revision of the first book, incorporating all the things I’ve been learning in my own workshops. And then I realized – Why revise the first one?  At a $2.99 selling price I can put out another book that has a different focus, and people can choose which book is best suited to their needs, or get both – two whole workbooks for the price of one paperback novel! That’s an incredible thing. And I can price it that way and still make money because the royalties are so high.

So, in the next couple of weeks I am going to be releasing two new e books, the second Screenwriting Tricks book and a spooky new original e book novel: The Space Between – plus the Thriller Award-winning short story that I based that novel on: The Edge of Seventeen. And I’m going to write some posts documenting the process I’ve been going through and the resources I’ve discovered that helped me do it all.

It’s a whole new world, but it’s an exciting one, and I hope I can convey it in a way that might open some doors for other people thinking of taking the plunge.

So, a couple of questions.  Do any of you do periodic reviews of your careers to see how far you’ve come and where you want to go from now?  Do you find patterns?

And what about this e book thing?  Have you done it?  Are you thinking of doing it?  It’s coming up on Solstice, time for some serious manifestation.   Follow your bliss!!!

-  Alex

Which of Your Books Should I Read First?

by Alafair Burke

I am a better writer today than I was in 1999 when I started my first book, Judgment Calls. 

I make that observation neither to apologize for my debut novel nor to boast about my current abilities.  In my humble and biased opinion, Judgment Calls is a good book.  I'd say PW and Booklist were probably about right in describing it "a solid first effort" and a "promising debut," respectively.  (Proving that reviews can be scattered, The Rocky Mountain News may have been overly generous in comparing it to the "best of the genre," while The UK's Guardian was undoubtedly harsh in dubbing it their "Turkey of the Year.")  And though I say I'm a better writer now than I was when I wrote that book, I know I can still develop further in my craft. 

But the objective fact remains that I am better today than I was then.  So, therefore, are my books.  In fact, after just finishing my seventh novel, I can say (and I think my readers would agree) that each novel -- without exception -- has improved upon its predecessors.  I chalk the advancements up to hard work and confidence.  I try to write every single day, challenging myself to be better with each session.  And with each book, I have been more willing to trust my instincts, experiment with form, and follow my characters on their journey.

It turns out I am not the only writer who believes she has improved with age.

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a Q&A with Lisa Unger at The Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan about her new book, Fragile.  I asked her whether she viewed her earlier books, published before she was married under her maiden name Lisa Miscione, as part of the same body of work, or whether she preferred the later Lisa Unger novels to be treated as works by a different author. 

I found her response to be such a wonderful description of how many of us might feel about our development as artists.  She expressed a sincere pride in her early books and made clear that she was not one of those writers who seek to distance themselves from certain books through the use of another name.  But she also noted that she started her first book, Angel Fire, when she was nineteen years old.  She tries to become a better writer everyday (I obviously liked that part).  And, interestingly, she said that readers who picked up Angel Fire and Fragile would not recognize them as having been written by the same person because she was not the same as she was as a nineteen-year-old.

Harlan Coben recently found a different way of expressing a similar observation about his own work.  When his first novel, Play Dead, was re-released, he wrote the following note for the front of the book:

If you ever doubted Harlan's ability to be humble and funny, you probably don't anymore. 

The writers I most admire aren't the ones who shoot out of the gate with a shattering debut that subsequent books just never quite measure up to.  They're the ones -- like Lisa and Harlan and Laura Lippman and Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane and Lee Child and Karin Slaughter-- who keep rolling out bigger and better books, delving deeping into their own souls to find fresh material year after year after year.

But there's one question that I'm asked multiple times a week that must give pause to any writer who believes she's improved with every book:  Which of your books should I read first?

In some ways, there's really no better question to find waiting in your e-mail or on your Facebook page.  It means a new reader has found you.  Someone has heard about you from a friend or has finally seen your name enough times to be interested in your work.  Woot! 

The downside to the question is you've got to answer it.  And what's the right answer, particularly if you write a series?  No matter how hard you've tried (as I do) to make each book work as a standalone, most genre readers like to proceed in order.  On the other hand, if you've become a better writer with each book, you might know (as I do) that, as proud as you are of that first novel, it's not as good as the last.  So, for me at least, there is no short answer.

What I want to tell people is to read in order, but to expect each book to get better and better, and to stick with me through the end.  But that sounds simultaneously boastful and apologetic.  It also assumes a new reader is going to devote herself to your entire oeuvre.  So instead I say each book can be read alone, referring readers to the chronological list on my website.

I have to admit that when asked that impossible question, I wonder whether it would be better to be one of those people who torpedoed out of the gate only to come to a slow limp in later books.  And when I say "better," obviously I don't mean better.  I guess I mean something like luckier.  No, I mean easier. 

To explain what I mean, let me invoke some television shows as examples, since I love me some TV.  I absolutely loved Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty at the get-go.  Great characters.  Great hook.  Pulled me right in.  And then, you know, stuff happened.  Silly stuff.  Lame stuff.  But I was already invested, so I didn't stop watching.  Other shows -- shows like Friday Night Lights and, as I've been told at least, True Blood and Mad Men -- had impressive enough starts but then blossomed into some of the best series on the tube. 

Creatively, of course you'd rather be the creator of the higher quality material.  But commercially?  An early peak can be pretty sticky as far as an audience is concerned.  If my first book had been my best, it would be so easy to tell new readers to start there.  Start with that first, awesome book, fall in love with the characters, and then stick with me even as I phone it in.  See how easy that would be?

But I don't want writing to be easy.  I don't want to phone it in.  I'm incredibly proud of the fact -- yes, fact -- that I've written seven books in about a decade, each being better than the previous.  I hope to write twenty more in the next two decades and be able to say I'm still a better writer every day.

But, my God, that trajectory sure does make it difficult to answer that damn question:  Which of your books should I read first?

So what do y'all think?  If I writer's early books are good but not as great as the later ones, how do you hook a new reader in?  How do you talk about your body of work without apologizing for or distancing yourself from those early books?

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Stand By Me

By Allison Brennan

So . . . I was originally going to write about the difference between FRUSTRATION and DISCOURAGEMENT in pursuing publication, but then a news story caught my eye, and I was going to write about THAT but when I logged onto the Murderati Members Only site, I discovered that one of my more knowledgeable fellow bloggers has a brilliant post on the very subject I was going to discuss . . . 

So I went back to my FRUSTRATION v. DISCOURAGEMENT idea. Only, I don't want to talk about being frustrated in this business, or discouraged. Because tonight I'm elated.

No, I haven't hit any lists recently, nor have I heard any good news. In fact, as far as careers go, mine is in limbo. I've had some major upheavals recently, and honestly, probably shed more tears over writing and the business of writing in the last four months than in the four years I've been published. 

But I am elated. I'm calm because there's one thing I have now that I never had at the beginning of my writing career:

Friends.

Okay, don't feel too sorry for me. I had friends of course, and a very few who I consider close personal friends, like Trisha who I dedicated SPEAK NO EVIL to. (My first book I dedicated to my mom; my second to my husband; my third to a fallen sheriff's deputy from my adopted hometown. So Trisha is a dear friend who got my fourth dedication!)

But in THIS business--publishing--"friends" means something completely different.

We have MySpace friends. And Facebook friends. People follow us on Twitter and subscribe to the RSS feeds on our blogs. They are FRIENDS--in the broad sense of the word. They either like our books, or want to learn about publishing, or met us at a conference and liked our humor (that would be Toni, not me!), or think that by friending us they are networking because my friends are your friends, in a mi casa et su casa kind of way (and no, I don't speak Spanish--I took three years of Latin in high school--so if I got that wrong, don't shoot me.)

But true friends are those you can vent to. Those you can commiserate with. Those who will stand by you No. Matter. What.

In publishing, especially when you're in the same relative field of fiction, your friends can also be your competition. But true friends don't consider that a reader may have to chose between their book and yours on pay day. A true friend will always give you the best advice they can because they love you and want you to succeed--because your success has nothing to do with their success.

In 2008, I attended the RWA conference in San Francisco. I regularly attend both Thriller Writers and Romance Writers because (surprise) I write romantic thrillers that I think appeal to both sides of the line. I went to the RWA conference coming off a great Thrillerfest, but at the same time I was stressed because of personal family issues and I was president of PASIC, the Published Author chapter of RWA, and had a major event to host. Evidentially I offended someone because I didn't recognize them or I didn't pay proper homage or I said something wrong. I don't know, because I only heard about this third hand. It hit me then for the first time that maybe--just maybe--I needed to change. That when I left my hotel room, I needed to be "on" and "alert" at all times. 

I didn't leave my hotel room much that conference. 

But one person was there for me, and understood what I said even when I didn't make any sense. (Ah-ha! you're all thinking, it must be Toni. You're right!)

I have had some major ups and downs in my career, and Toni has stood by me from the very beginning. I have a few other friends who have always stood by me as well, and they know who they are. But when the world comes crashing down, or when I have terrific news, Toni is the first person I want to talk to.

I only met Toni after I sold, but before my book came out. We met online though Backspace, a group for writers (which I have sorely neglected of late.) We were both attending the first ThrillerFest in 2006 (Right after my first B2B2B trilogy came out.) Toni confessed that she was nervous and an introvert (she doesn't act it, but she is! Trust me!) and wanted to know if I'd have a meal or two with her. We ate virtually every meal together, talked until the wee hours of the night, and I was so blessed that she actually liked me. (Toni is smart, funny, and a far better writer than I can ever hope to be.)

As my career progressed, I realized that sharing information or fears or worries or highs or lows wouldn't be taken the same way by the same people. For example, if I am at all critical of something in my career, I have a half dozen people telling me they wish they had my problems. I want to shake them and say, really? You want them? You want to stay up until three in the morning for two weeks, knowing you have to get up at seven to get the kids to school because you have a tight deadline? But the grass is always greener, and some people think that the life of a bestselling author is all glamour and bon-bons and working 10-to-2.

Except the people who know better. 

There's an urban legend that may be true, may be false, but I'm inclined to think it's true. Apparently, someone cornered Nora Roberts in the elevator at one RWA and said, "OMG, I want to be you." And allegedly, Ms. Roberts said, "Really? You want to be me?" And then laid into her. 

I read JT's facebook status yesterday. On Saturday, she was working on her next book. I was working on revisions. My friend Christy Reece posted early in the morning that she was editing all day. 

I'm not sharing all this to get sympathy. I'm sharing today because I want you all to look around you. Who is the one person you can count on No. Matter. What? Who will stand by you if you rob a liquor store, murder your boss, or  . . . oh, wait. Sorry. Scratch that.

Who will stand by you while you vent? Complain? Even if you're wrong, they'll listen and give you loving correction, because they love you and want you to succeed. No matter what.

Thank you Toni, I would never have gotten through these last few months without you standing by me!