There Is No Such Thing...

EDITORIAL NOTE: what follows is MY OPINION about trends in behavior amongst authors and their various audiences including reviewers and other authors. It is in no way meant to be taken as a treatise on what you should read or enjoy. Please do not take it that way. 
Liz

I've been following a few recent internecine public spats in the author world.

It's not a new thing, this concept of authors behaving badly, especially towards each other.

 I was recently dismayed to find out that one of my favorite authors (although I surely don't agree with all his politics) Jonathan Franzen has his very own hater group in the form of none other than successful  authors Jody Picoult and some other one I have never heard of but who is a NYT Best seller apparently. They got themselves in a snit over the fact that Franzen's most recent (amazing yet difficult) novel "Freedom" got such great press and he got the cover of time Magazine (this was a couple of years ago but people are still "belly aching" about it apparently). Wonder how Ms. Picoult feels about all the covers her best selling compatriot E.L. James has gotten since?

I can surmise from this that making a zillion dollars telling stories about teenagers dying and selling them to Hollywood is not enough for some authors to just...enjoy? Comparing "My Sister's Keeper" with books like "Freedom" is to my English Lit Degree Holding Mind sort of like comparing "East of Eden" with "War and Peace." Two good and famous authors writing two very different books for two very different reading audiences. Both well executed in their own right, and, given the opportunity, books that are worth reading. But comparing them is an exercise in total futility.

But my point is more along the lines of ... how much harm do you do yourself as an author when you react to such attacks? Having been the victim of a pretty nasty twitter flaming campaign last year, when a few bloggers/reviewers/readers felt that my book Paradise Hops was, um, let's say, "unsatisfactory to their needs as readers" and felt a need to attack pretty much everything I have written and claim that I was "an author worth avoiding at all costs." And having been talked down off the ledge after engaging with them in direct messages asking that they are welcome to talk with me about what they didn't like about any of my 20 or so books--because one of them said "this is my 7th book by this author and I can tell you she sucks"I come at this sort of thing with a bit of knowledge at least on my own, small, scale.

There are all sorts of examples of authors coming to the defense of their work in inadvisable ways. From sending your husband out to engage with a bad reviewer, reporting bad reviews to the FBI, to having a public snit on your blog about being witch hunted (when your book is being optioned by Warner Brothers), to big-timers dissing dead famous authors, and video Best Selling Author author-on-Best Selling author rants all the way up to our new favorite "OMG did you see what E.L. James did at RT?" (I didn't attend, nor do I ever plan to but this "recap" of the craziness is just a perfect example of why we should all ... grow the hell up and find something worthwhile to care about).

Authors love to hear themselves talk, or read their own words repeated. But as tempting as it may be, when my Stewart Realty series REALLY hits it big and I am in the HBO Green Room watching it be filmed with a cast of my choosing, I won't take the time to slam anyone else, no matter how much I think my hero is hotter, my plots stronger or my cable deal better. Promise. It's what grown ups do, the non-back stabbing thing. It's easy to diss those who are way up on top of the mountain  where we wish we could get a toehold. Just google "Fifty Shades of Crap" and see what you get. But honestly, no matter how much you cringe when you hear the phrase "holy crap," or read the word "Laters" (that one gets me every time) you gotta get your head around the fact that the dang book touched some kind of nerve that we are all coat tailing on to some extent.  And there will always be "that book" that is loved, hated, blessed as life changing and excoriated as the reason why our youth are culturally illiterate. It's "erotic romance" this year, next year it will be something else.

...this is funny...

I don't care for 95% of what's being touted as "best selling" and I really don't like all the copy catting that's going on which, in typical pop culture fashion, is being snapped up by publishing houses and movie studios alike.  But it will run its course, just like everything else, including gut wrenching stories about kids with cancer (Hey! Jodi Picoult, you did that first. Maybe you should pick a fight with John Greene instead?). But reading about all this nonsense behavior between authors who should know better or at least be too busy enough counting their money and thanking their fans to care? I really, really don't like that.

 I'll give you a real estate comparison: we all once thought the "all white kitchen" was the bomb. Then, everybody got a white kitchen. Now, we hate them and they are a reason to bid a house down because the kitchen "needs work." I think we will get to the point in the next year or two when the thought of a sexual Dom and his innocent new girlfriend makes us all want to stick our fingers down our collective throats. But for now, it's what's hot. I've written a version or two of myself, sans the "innocent" part. And my advice to authors tempted to behave badly in public when their version of it falls flat while others are flying high? Don't. Because you lose credibility. Because there IS such a thing as bad publicity.

I'm not saying don't have an opinion about books you read.  Just resist the urge to turn your green eyed monster into a personal rant, on line. It's bad form.

But, just so you know, this sort of thing has gone on for a long time. I give you, the top ten harshest "author on author" insults (there are more):

10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876)

“An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

9. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

8. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger

“I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”

7. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923)

“Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’….One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!”

6. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning

“I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.”

5. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948)

“I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”

4. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898)

“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE.

3. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce

“[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”

2. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922)

“A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”

1. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928)

“My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”

Yeah, those guys knew how to toss an INSULT.

*egregious promotional moment because I don't have a Jamie Mcguire/E.L. James/Sylvia Day karma fairy on my shoulder*
Three of my personal favorite Liz Crowe books:

Essence of Time

Paradise Hops

Vegas Miracle







are all on sale right now! Just $1.99 for each of these three novels. I've made the titles live to link to Amazon but they are on sale at B&N and ARe as well. Click here for excerpts and blurbs.

Behave yourselves. It's a jungle out here...

cheers
Liz
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Square Peg

I do a lot of things that seem a little out of the norm.  

None of it was planned really.  

I guess you could say I'm a real pantser, even in life.

I don't brew beer. There was a time I knew very little about it (like five years ago). Then, about five years ago, a couple of guys came to me with a six pack, a business plan and a proposal. Now, I have my own "persona" and well-known caricature ....

I never read romance novels. But someone put a book in my hand five years ago by a woman named Shayla Black (Wicked Ties. I will never forget it). And a whole new world of reading was opened to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Reader, big time. My parents used to half-joke that I would weed the garden with a book in my hand (I did). I write reviews of books actively on Goodreads. And I still prefer my "romance" tinged with realistic heat and more complex characters and plots.

The degree I earned in English Literature at the University of Louisville (Go Cards) implied that I read for days at a time for four years straight (Ok, four and a half, I had a very fun "lost semester" in there somewhere).  I can have conversations about Milton, Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Shaw, Blake, Austen, Bronte...the list is endless and somewhat boring. However, having come in to my own to a certain extent as an author I have a renewed respect for using many of the literary stalwarts as your guide through the minefields of "getting better."

I never dreamed of living overseas. When my spouse called me as I sat trying not to puke, coming to terms with a third, very accidental, pregnancy and said, "well I took the job in Japan," I had no clue I'd be embarking with my two and nearly three small children on a 7-year, 3-country stint as semi-professional ex-pat American. And I have channeled it accordingly.

Yet, here I sit, part owner of a successful microbrewery and beer bar, manager of staff, inventories and promotions, and asked to speak more and more about my "role as a woman in the beer industry."

I also have 20 books published now and can say that at least a few people have heard of me. And I have a shelf and head full of memories from Japan, England, Turkey and all the places we visited in between.

All of this came with a price, mind you. I no longer consider a tidy and perfectly clean house a priority like I once did. I am positive my kids can get very well fed via the delivery and carry out menus around Ann Arbor. I'm only half a believer in the power of small businesses--we only are as strong as we are willing to support one another and have been disappointed by a few in this town lately. My natural, very not-latent cynicism has been magnified a thousand fold by the eye-popping levels of professional jealousy and bizarre need for certain in the writing profession to thwart those of us merely attempting to make a living. As well as the level of ego that abides amongst even "fans" of certain famous writers and the lengths they will go to make sure "their writer" is always considered better than all others. 

Oh, and "small business owner-slash-semi-best-selling-author" implies a few things (sans the blood and gore I guess)

It's a bit of a jungle out here. But I will tell you whenever I get frustrated, unhappy, or hurt by what some folks say about me in public (or on the internet, if you consider that "public") I turn my full attention back to the brewery, which gives me a reality break, big time, moving among folks who are less concerned about tearing down the competition and more about making a great product and selling it. Oh, professional jealousy exists in the brewing industry to be sure, especially among the zillions of us scrabbling around at the bottom of the pan for scraps of drinker attention. 

And I will say without a doubt that the group affiliated with this particular blog: Romance Books 4 Us, is hands down the MOST supportive, LEAST judgmental or snarkily jealous of any I have yet encountered and for that I am ever grateful.

I like to think all these slightly less-than-normal choices I've made have allowed me to concoct stories and characters who defy the "norm" as well. There is room for it all, of course. And the plethora of authors who have gone before me are a mere testament to the fact. But as I approach 50 years old I  look back and say that I'm proud of the choices I've made, even the bad ones. And that calling my books "character driven fiction" as opposed to "romance" is probably a fairer representation of what I do. I love to experiment with styles and genres and have done the gamut of things available to me within "contemporary erotic romance." From menage, to man-love, to cougars, overt BDSM action and less obvious "themes," I do at times set these stories in less-obvious places....like breweries.

My life has been, in a couple of words, messy and complicated--less that some, more so than many. And that translates directly to how I craft my stories and the characters in them.

 I'm on the cusp of something new as I work my way through the final novel of my best selling Stewart Realty series. I'm dealing with clear and very challenging issues of addiction and how one young man's compulsions can destroy lives, no matter how many people keep trying to love him. It has opened up options in my own head as I write and I find myself doing different things with "love scenes" (hinting at them, talking about their aftermath as opposed to the nuts and bolts of the actual act for example) and with dialogue (using fewer "tags" and making it more direct and brutally real). It's been a real trip I tell you and it has me in its grip, especially as I miss one of my characters within it desperately but since I was the one who took that person away, I guess I must deal with the consequences.

Forgive the rambling but as I am very very deep in the writing cave I tend to wax philosophical, especially as I face down my own fears about how I plan to end this thing.

Take care and happy reading, writing, drinking, or whatever it is you do that brings you joy.

(And Happy Mom's Day to those celebrating. I am by writing for 5 hours, uninterrupted while my spouse carts our son up North to his May semester Zoology class in the field. Then by going to see my first and only book boyfriend: Jay Gatsby, on the big screen. I know it's gotten meh reviews but I don't care. I can't wait to see the spectacle the way I have always pictured it)

Feel free to leave an equally rambling comment about your inspirations as an author. Or, as a reader, which authors transport you the way Fitzgerald has always done for me. (and yeah, that book contains the Death of a Major Character too).

P.S. If you have not given my Stewart realty series a shot (and I know some of you have and I thank you) you can now get the first three books (a.k.a. The Jack & Sara Trilogy) in a cool "boxed set" book bundle.

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****

When Is It Romance?

If you have read any of my books, be they the best selling Stewart Realty series, the popular Turkish Delights series or any of my brewery-based or other stand alone books you know this about me: It may be called "romance" but sure doesn't feel like it all the time.


I have a new book releasing Monday called Paradise Hops which is a brewery based book, with a fairly typical seeming set up.  My heroine has experienced a horrible, personal tragedy that has left her emotionally scarred. Hero #1 appears in her life at a moment when she is starting to pull herself back together and he is Capital P Perfect, at least on the surface. Hero #2 shows up not long after that, with a complete Imperfection that draws her like a bee to a flower.

Seems fairly simple, on the face of it "erotic romance" wise. She will choose one, then the other, then they will both tumble into the sack together, joyous and happy as a completely unrealistic threesome.  Don't get me wrong. I have written several "menage" stories and enjoyed the heck out of them but realize them for what they are--pure fantasy.

No, in Paradise Hops the decision is partially made, then discarded, then a completely life altering plan falls into place for my heroine which takes her far away, geographically speaking from both hunks #1 and #2.  Those two men must not only work together, they are forced to come to terms with each other as human beings, competitors for her heart, and ultimately, friends.

Fate however--she is truly a Bitch on wheels in this book. And what transpires tests the limits of both my heroine who has rediscovered her former independent, feisty self through all this and then is flattened once more when she returns, early, from her overseas adventure facing a new reality that is even more chaotic than when she left.

I like doing this--taking "romance fiction" conventions and turning them on their ear, making the reader gasp with the rawness of pretty much everything at least in this book.  Sex, turmoil, personal growth,  humor, with a twist at the end that takes away any possibility of "happily ever after choose your man for the night" threesome opportunity (not that these very real men would ever consider THAT an option) all set in a backdrop of successful craft brewing--the ARC reviews are stunningly glowing.  When I hear words like: "Don't let the love triangle in the blurb fool you. This is NOT your average romance novel. It is so much more than that." And "Harsh, surprising and real--it had me up all night to finish it." And "Brutally emotional, many times funny, a journey of personal growth for three people that comes with white hot erotic moments." I say: Job Accomplished.

Paradise Hops is available on pre order through All Romance E books where it is a best seller already.

Here are links to some reviews:
http://flirtyanddirtybookblog.com/2012/10/01/new-release-october-15-2012-paradise-hops-by-liz-crowe/
http://www.looking-for-a-breath-of-life.blogspot.com/2012/09/arc-review-paradise-hops-by-liz-crowe.html?zx=f8b34ddcb60b6b57
http://sinfullysexybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/paradise-hope-by-liz-crowe.html
http://cblsreviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/paradise-hops-by-liz-crowe.html?zx=2df2619c5bec7885
http://www.delphinareadstoomuch.com/2012/10/paradise-hops-by-liz-crowe-review-and.html
Blurb:

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 A brutal attack left Lori Brockton convinced she was damaged goods. By the time she emerges from hiding two years later, ready to run her family's famous brewery, she's determined to be independent--never rely on anyone ever again. Nearly a year of working in every corner of Brockton Brewing Company, from warehouse to pub, front office to kitchen, teaches her all she needs to know about the business. Then, she comes face-to-face with masculine perfection in a suit and her world is rocked in more ways than one. Garrett Hunter is the new Brockton business manager who takes one look at the beautiful, sad young woman and his entire existence coalesces around winning her heart. 

But standing between Garrett and what he believes is his true love, is a six-feet six-inch blond-haired bad boy brewer.

Eli Buchannan is a craft beer rock star, recently hired by Brockton to drag the company into the 21st century. He brings innovation and attitude plus a prima donna ladies man reputation.  But he's sworn off anything resembling commitment, personal or professional, after getting burned at his last job on both fronts. 

Garrett Hunter is “The Perfect Man” -- handsome, successful, stable, eager to settle down. Eli Buchannan... is not.  Compelling, smoking hot, creative and elusive, he represents everything Lori Brockton should avoid.  But just as she makes a difficult choice, a drastic life-changing shift occurs, and nothing is ever the same again.

Click here to enter a contest to win a copy of it, or my best selling start to the Stewart Realty series Floor Time.