Focus Locked: Target Acquired

If you compare yourself with others,

 you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

--Max Ehrmann

As 'tis the season and all that, I've been doing a fair bit of pondering about my focus as a writer. Why DO I do this...thing, where in I pour my guts out onto the page, subject the result to ridicule via rejection, review and rantings from dissatisfied readers. The grueling, sometimes disheartening editing and revision process follows even after I've managed to find someone willing to touch what I've written. I try to re-craft the story by blurb and cover art next, knocking my head against the wall of re-re-creation of my characters and story into pictures and a few pithy sentences that will make that elusive unicorn--the Average Reader--pick up the thing and read it.

Then OMG OMG OMG RELEASE DAY, that seems so Climactic..... until you realize how anti-- it is.

And then...obsessively checking rankings and ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads until figuring out that you probably should stop doing that, if you plan to keep your self-esteem intact.

And then: the promotional bonanza/blitz/extravaganza/blog tour-o-ramas begin as you beg, plead and gnash your teeth until people agree to at least read your blurb and give you a "thumbs up" on a book site.  While trying very hard not to throw your laptop into the drywall as you watch books you've read and discarded as simple/bad/trite/formula climb charts you can only dream about associating with your own, hard-working author personna.

Do not get me wrong here gang. I'm not whining. But every single one of you/us has been in these various positions at various times in our "process," hoping that our indie/self/small pubbed masterpiece will catch the wandering eyes of those agents who've been "snapping up" all the "new adult" novels and slinging them up on Those Lists. And don't kid me. I know we all hear words like "St. Martins's, Kensington, Harper Collins Penguin (some of you the Big H and/or Carina) and get all dewey in our lady parts.

So, what to do? How to focus? How to fix your sights on a goal and work your way towards it with all the "do this, no do that. Blog. Don't Blog. Self-pub. No, just write and you'll get heard." advice swirling around us like a noxious mosquito cloud that simply will not disperse?

I try to draw parallels between the trajectory of my writing career and my brewery's success. They both started pretty much about the same time, back in 2008/2009. When I used to walk into Whole Foods, or Meijer, or Kroger, or (in Southeast Michigan) Busch's Fresh Market and Hillers I would go straight for the beer cooler and gaze, longingly at all the "shelf space." Which is our term in the retail goods business for the highly sought after real estate at eye level or near by for our products. I would plan, and plot and blog and study and read and brew a little with my brewer, then go back to planning, plotting, blogging, face booking--the usual stuff. Hoping to make that break. I never got red in the face furious over the stacks of Bells' Brewing Oberon or the Founders Dirty Bastard, or any of the other Michigan brews.  No, I understood where they came from, how they got there and was willing to bide my time and provide a product people wanted, trusted and loved.

Conversely I would go into a bookstore (you remember those, right?) and get so upset I'd have to walk right out again. All those books, so many of them just crappy in my English Major's opinion but making zillions, with  "expansion packs" and gaggles of readers surrounding their Big New York Paid for Promo Table Right in the Front, or whatever the hell. I would nearly choke over their....success.

So I have been taking a few steps back from that self-righteous nonsense, and thinking hard about the way I feel when I see the entire cooler filled with Bud/Miller/Coors and the other cooler that I must share with twenty, or thirty or, yes fifty craft microbreweries.  I don't want to scream and make a scene in the beer aisle. Those companies have had years, decades, in some case centuries to get where they are. I, on the other hand, have had about four years.  We've come a long damn way in that time, and are acknowledged as one of the few breweries to: 1.  turn a profit in year one and 2. expand after 18 months.

As a writer, I am ahead of some of you. But am way behind the successes of many more of you. It's how things work. People write books and become successful,  working hard to write more books and become even more successful. I'm sure Ms. James has her next set of books ready as we speak, no?  You guys EARNED your place, just like the Boston Brewing Company, Yeungling, Shiner, Bells, Dog Fish Head, and all those guys did. Working hard, taking the steps, doing the time, and starting over again determined to craft quality and make it better every time.

I have some goals, sure. And one of them involves writing a mainstream, political, thriller set in the not so distant future when the wealthy upper class of women suddenly become infertile and the government takes over of the once natural process of procreation. A bit of a Handmaid's Tale/Logan's Run/Children of Men mash up if you will sans the creepy sex surrogate stuff. I am going outside my comfort zone with it and will shop it to some of those panty-dampening Big Dogs just to see if I can be heard.  However, lucky for me, I am getting heard by a few more, every day, and get up every morning determined to hit whatever stage I'm at with whatever book and whatever promotion and beer of the month and keep gathering them in. One reader and drinker at a time.

UP FOR BEST ROMANTIC SUSPENSE OF 2012 AT LOVES ROMANCES CAFE!

Don't give up. But don't let the success of others discourage you. It's tempting. I know. I've done it. (And I still can't get past That Table in Barnes & Noble so I just don't go there anymore).  But I've got my target acquired now and plan to hit that bullseye, once my dues are paid.
cheers
Liz

Shameless Promotional Moment: Healing Hearts, the launch novella for Decadent Publishing's Challenge Series has been receiving lots of great reviews. The most recent is here:
http://literatiliteraturelovers.com/2013/01/10/review-excerpt-healing-hearts-challenge-series-1-by-liz-crowe/

AND because I really do want to know the answer: Tell me what you do when you feel like all that you're doing (writing, revising, editing, submitting, revising, editing, promoting, writing) feels like a long slog to nowhere?  Because we ALL get that way....c'mon, give it up.

****all photos are the property of the author****

The Airing of Grievances 1-5

OFFICIAL BLOG POST WARNING: 

WHAT FOLLOWS IS MEANT TO BE READ WITH TONGUE STUFFED FIRMLY IN CHEEK. IF YOU ARE UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO DO SO, OR FOR WHATEVER REASON HAVE MISPLACED OR SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR......

MOVE ALONG. 

you have been warned.

Ok, I'll admit it. I never really watched Seinfield. In my defense, while it was popular I was living over seas, schlepping my 2 and then plus one kid around from Japan, to Turkey and then to England. But even when I did watch it I sorta scratched my head at it, finding it a bit too....precious? is the word that sprang to my mind--"trying too hard" was also a phrase that kept cropping up.
However....
There was one thing that Seinfeld "invented" that I really really love:
FESTIVUS.

Now, mind you I am a PK (Preacher's Kid). And Christmas was and is a HUGE deal for me on many levels. I love the (fairly romantic) story at its core and all the beautiful classical music written in honor of it. I never tire of Handel.
But, the hilarious concept of a "festival for the Rest of Us" in which you are allowed to air a year's worth of grievances....THAT resonates with me.
So. In honor the 2012 Festivus Season (which I will be celebrating with a Festivus Ugly Sweater Party in my beer bar on 12/23) I give you:
LIZ'S AIRING OF 5 GRIEVANCES (with some help from HANS the Muse, being all Santa sassy):

5.  Dear Skinny B*tch who "Helped" me at The Gap buying jeans:  Being a size 10 does not make me fat. It makes me normal.  I am a healthy, 5'8" female who has carried and  born three good-sized kids.  I eat healthy foods and I exercise but not as much as I should and I drink more alcohol than I should, whatever. I don't need to be made to feel like a mooing heifer by you, in your size negative 2 skank jeggings that you couldn't afford if you didn't have that minimum wage job in an overpriced store.

4.  Dear Makers of said Overpriced Demin: Some of us like to keep our clitoris covered when we go out in public. Could you please stop calling jeans "low riders" when you mean "barely over your pubic hair if you have any?"  I swear that there are women with money to spend who would love to not force our muffin tops on the unsuspecting public.   I am one. And I would buy your jeans.

3.  Dear Barely Engaged Waiter at A Busy Popular Downtown Ann Arbor Restaurant: You may not know who I am (shocking, really as my 14-year old asked me the other day if we could "please go somewhere in town where you don't know everyone in the room?") but I run a bar, among other things. I am the most forgiving and sympathetic tipper you will ever (ever) serve in your entire "service career."  If your "service" is so unthinkably bad that you are flat out stiffed on a nearly $200 meal bill, You Suck and should consider a new job, maybe in phone based customer service for computers? I had the shakes for an hour after not living a single dime for you. I know your boss. He has been notified.

2.   Dear General Reading Public: I write fiction. From Scratch. What I do is hard work. I don't write "smut," or "sex books," or or anything that you think is beneath you so much you have to make fun of it. Sit down, open up your laptop and crank out 150,000 words in 3 weeks on any subject that is coherent, has a plot, more than 2 characters and doesn't head hop or get passive and contains sexual situations that don't read like IKEA instructions or use the words 'bulbous,' 'juicy,' or 'honeypot'. Then you may converse with me in calm tones about our craft. Otherwise shut the F$#@ up.

1.  Dear Big Publishers (those of you who are left):  If you think copycat after copycat story of sassy but tender-hearted virgin meets billionaire emotionally damaged dude with some soft ropes and a flogger is The Next Big Thing--congrats. You have just stumbled onto what 11 zillion readers have already read and moved on from.  Well done being behind the curve.  Move on and find something new please.  Yeah, the Random House flunkies got a fat Xmas bonus thanks to That Book. But I think it's time to find a "new" new thing, no? (p.s. hit me up after you read this. I have some ideas for you).

So there you have it! The 5 things that piss Liz the F%$# off to the point she is willing to toss them out on a giant blog to "air."

Happy Festivus or whatever it is you celebrate. Drink Craft Beer. Anything else and the terrorists win.
cheers
Liz











HONEY RED: a Menage for Real Life
releases 12/30/12

Pre-order here:  https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-honeyred-1008941-145.html
Blurb:
Two men suffering from visible and invisible wounds meet by chance circumstance.

Nick Traynor and Ian Donovan spend a lot of time and effort keeping it very hot, only physical, and purely superficial. But when their resolve starts to slip, a woman is tossed into their midst.

Hannah Williams wants nothing more than to do her job until something better comes along, but is forced to own up to her visceral reaction to Ian, her new boss, and later to Nick, his sometimes lover. 

Lust has a funny way of turning into companionship, and eventually evolving into a deeper connection. Faced with the internal and external complications of their potential three-way relationship, they begin to heal and trust, to consider that it might work. Then life tosses them a hardball, forcing them back into their respective corners, where each must choose what is most important.

Three people determined not to commit, thrown together by fate and undeniable attraction--their nights heat up and emotions run high in spite of a claimed mutual desire to "keep it simple." In the process of honest self-discovery, can they learn that while love is never simple, it is definitely worth fighting for?

 Excerpt: 

He had called the production shots in the brewery from the beginning. Gavin took whatever Ian and his staff of trained brewers made and sold it, not vice versa. It had worked for them. They’d grown from nothing to one of the bigger craft breweries in Michigan inside of six years. Thanks in no small part to the deep pockets the five investors Gavin had recently procured.

Ian respected the hell out of his brother, with his suave manner, his charming patter, clean cut suits and the women who flittered around him like moths to a flame. But damn if Ian didn't curse the man nearly daily for hiring this fiery red-headed temptress who seemed to think that he would be scheduling his brews around her sales. She shoved a computer tablet under his nose. “Look at this.”  Her foot tapped out a familiar rhythm. The “Ian is a stubborn asshole and I’m telling Gavin” one.

He took a step back, trying to get her scent out of his nose. Luckily, she was in full on bitch-mode so he could be pissed, and not horny. Besides, he had his own issues, trying to get Nick to answer his calls, to reconnect. The man was an expert at avoidance so Ian was about to give up, let the one-off be just that. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and took the device. A graph flashed red, indicating that they were running low on their flagship hoppy lager.

“Yeah, Hannah, I know. I updated the damn thing this morning.” He turned away from her, addressed his next comment to the empty fermenter that had fucked up his last batch of that very beer. He had a service call in on it, but believed he’d already identified the problem. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” she yanked the computer out of his hand, brushing his arm with hers in the process, making him shudder and need some distance. “You’re sorry?”

“Yeah, you’re deaf?”

“No, you dickhead, I’m not. But ‘sorry’ isn’t gonna cut it this week. I made a huge sale of the Hopped Up Lager and you know it. I put it here,” she tapped the screen, which flipped over to her shiny new sales reporting system that had become the bane of his brewing existence. “You saw it. I know you did because I see you logged into the shared file and…”

“Listen,” he turned away from the stainless steel vessel and glared at her. “I didn’t sabotage this damn thing on purpose. It failed, okay? Broke, blew a gasket, something that I am attempting to diagnose, or would be if I weren’t occupied being reamed out by you.”  She blew out a breath, started to speak, but he held up a hand. “Spare me. You’re gonna have to short the order. It happens. Jesus.”

“Unacceptable.” She spit out, tucking the computer under one bare arm. She was parading around the brewery in her sales suit, a tight black skirt, sleeveless silk blouse and the patently obnoxious way-too-high heels. Ian forced himself not to drag his eyeballs up and down her frame as that first moment he saw her, with her legs up in the air on her ass on the brewery floor kept replaying. He would not give the bitch the satisfaction. “I need five pallets filled and ready in a week. Make it happen, brewer.” She spit out the last word, emphasizing his role as opposed to hers he guessed, then started to turn on her stiletto heel. Fury made the edges of his vision redden.

Without realizing he was doing it, he reached out, grabbed her arm, spun her around and ground out, “It won’t happen and you know it. Stop coming down here and acting like such a bossy…” he looked down and bit back the word he wanted to use. Her skin was hot under his palm and his body was reacting to her proximity, which only made him madder. She looked at his hand, then up at him, her crazy blue green eyes snapping with something he thought he recognized. He tightened his grip, dragged her closer. “Tomorrow morning five-thirty a.m. Be here.  Wear jeans, a T-shirt and your hair pulled back. I’m sick and fucking tired of trying to make you understand this process. You are gonna brew with me. To appreciate what we do, so you can get exactly how pissed off you make everybody with your ridiculous demands.”

Her eyes flickered down his chest. The distinct sensation of painful erection made him clench his jaw. “I’m busy tomorrow morning.” She whispered.

Ian moved directly into her space, and let their bodies graze each other on purpose. “Yeah, I know. With me.” He leaned over her, keeping his hand on her arm.  Dear God he was horny. He hadn’t had sex in nearly two months, refusing to remember that last time for a lot of reasons. He wanted Nick so badly at that moment, issues and all, he could practically taste the man. But of course, he was somehow within a split second of laying a tongue-tangler on the annoying, frustrating, hot woman in front of him. Tempting as it was, he stopped, let go of her, stepped away.