by John Byrne Barry | Oct 19, 2016 | Albuquerque to Berkeley, Bones in the Wash, Page-turners with a Conscience, Wasted
(Here’s a distilled version of the author talk I gave at the Great Valley BookFest in Manteca on October 8. Thanks to Toni Raymus for inviting me.)
I’m skeptical about branding. Sure, everyone knows that 15 minutes can save you 15 percent on lizard skin. But I’ve sat through enough branding meetings over the years to decide a brand wasn’t relevant for me as an author.
Until I came up with one.
This past summer, I was asked for a title for my talk here at the Great Valley BookFest. Four words or less. I came up with “page-turners with a conscience.”
After my author talk at the Great Valley BookFest in Manteca.
I wasn’t thinking brand then, just title, but it is a brand, my brand — a distilled marketing message that defines who I am and what I write.
I didn’t have this brand in mind when I wrote my two novels, but it was there in the back of mind. I hadn’t found the words. Arguably a brand is more important for marketing than writing, but having this brand is already helping me write my third novel. (A family drama about euthanasia.)
I know I want the story to race like a rollercoaster, but give the reader something to think about.
I’ve been a reader all my life. I can’t imagine life without reading. My father was an English professor and my brother is as well, so I’ve read my share of literature.
But I’m a lazy reader. If something doesn’t grab me, I stop reading. I’m not in school anymore. I don’t have a test to ace or a paper to write. So I read a lot of mysteries and suspense. I love reading a book I can’t put down.
Take The Firm, by John Grisham, who’s laughing all the way to the bank. Twenty-plus years ago, I stayed up till 3 am at camp reading it by headlamp. It tore to the finish. But it was ridiculous. The protagonist took on the mob and the FBI with one hand behind his back. To make the plot sprint, Grisham sacrificed character development and believability. And there was nothing to think about once the book ended.
What I want to read and write are books that move like The Firm, but with three-dimensional characters, believability, and some sort of moral dilemma or nuanced choice that gives the reader something to think about.
Now to the conscience part. What ties my books together — I have digitally combined them in Albuquerque to Berkeley: Two Election-Season Thrillers, for only 99 cents — is the daunting challenge of doing the right thing. Not just in politics, but in family, love, and murder.
In my first novel, Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher, set during the 2008 presidential campaign in New Mexico, ambitious Albuquerque Mayor Tomas Zamara is charged with doing “whatever it takes” to deliver the state’s five electoral votes for John McCain. He has a strong sense of right and wrong — one of my friends said, I know you’re writing fiction, because your protagonist is a Republican with integrity. But Mayor Zamara understands that politics is like playing football on a muddy field. If you don’t get dirty, you’re not giving your all.
In Wasted, Brian Hunter, a wannabe investigative journalist covers the “recycling wars” in Berkeley, finds the body of his friend Doug crushed in a bale of aluminum, and sets off to find the murderer, all the while chasing Doug’s ex Barb, now a suspect in his murder. Brian is convinced that the big bad corporation, Consolidated Scavenger, is responsible for the murder, and blinds himself to the possibility that it could be Barb.
At the center of Wasted is an idealistic, but dysfunctional collective called Recycle Berkeley, or Re-Be. What I aimed to do, and succeeded, according to many of my readers, is portray this collective as the good guys, well-intentioned, but flawed in huge ways. And the bad guys, Consolidated Scavenger, aren’t all bad. They have a record of taking over companies and using their lobbying muscle to influence regulation, but they’re also more efficient than Re-Be, and less corrupt than many of the companies they’ve absorbed. And though Brian would like to peg them for this murder, he can’t unearth any evidence they killed Doug.
In short, I’m attracted to things that aren’t black and white. To the fifty shades of gray in between. (I might have grabbed that as a brand, but it was taken.).
That’s why I like this “page-turners with a conscience” brand — my books are entertainment more than literature, but they’re not just galloping plots. The characters face tough moral choices.
My goal is to aim for that sweet spot between best-selling mindless entertainment reading and literary masterpiece.
Though my writing style and subject matter are totally different, I’ve been very influenced by the British spy writer John Le Carre — I’ve read about 20 of his books. His early Cold War books, the good guys, the Brits or Americans, are often very compromised. In their zeal to defeat the Soviets, they become just as bad as they are. Of course, the life of a spy is characterized by deception.
One of the first books of LeCarre that was not about the Cold War was Little Drummer Girl, which starred an Israeli secret agent who went undercover as a Palestinian, and as he becomes more embedded in Palestinian society, he understood their situation more and it became harder for him to see things in black and white.
I’m going to read a scene from Bones in the Wash, featuring Mayor Zamara’s antagonist, Sierra León, a precocious hometown girl who’s made good a political operative, and has returned to Albuquerque from Washington D.C., to run a statewide coalition supporting Obama.
As editor of her high school newspaper, she covered Zamara when he was a city council member, and later, for the University of New Mexico Daily Lobo, his campaign for mayor. He doesn’t know her, but recognizes her face and her name. She pressures him to live up to his reputation of integrity, but he doesn’t, and the dirty tricks he engages in work. This drives Sierra crazy, and this scene is her talking with her father about this over dinner at an outdoor cafe.
“The thing is,” said Sierra, “I feel like such a chump playing by the rules. It’s not just being punked. It’s them shutting down voter drives, running sleazy racist ads. Cliff says we should play dirty, and I don’t want to, but I’m starting to think he’s right. Integrity is just a selfish indulgence.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe. I mean, I’m a model citizen. I don’t litter. I bring in milk for coffee and other people use it without ever buying any themselves. I play by the rules and it doesn’t make any difference. The goopers are cheating left and right, but all the news is about us cheating. Their lies carry more weight than our truth.
“You know, you look at the news and what people talk about and you get the impression that the nitty-gritty of politics is the people running, their characters, their positions on the issues, and of course, that’s partly true. But underneath that is this whole business of setting rules, like who can vote and when, and the Republicans are evil genius and meta on that front. I hate it that I actually admire what they did even as I despise it. If they can manipulate the rules so it’s harder for the poor and young and old and disabled to vote, then they have an advantage no matter how weak their candidate is.
“They just ran this sleazy, racist ad too, well, a third-party group did that, but I’m sure the McCain campaign knew about it. We’re a third-party group and we take seriously this rule that we’re not supposed to coordinate with the Obama campaign, but right-wing groups ignore this rule blatantly, and never get called on it, except by us, but then they just say, oh, it’s partisan attacks. That’s what’s so infuriating—”
“Slow down, mija.”
“If only there were some impartial referee, like at debate club, some thoughtful observer who says, well, you got more votes, but you broke the rules, so we’re going to subtract points. The right does whatever it wants, rules be damned. I’m just so tempted to get down in the gutter and give them a taste of their own medicine. I can feel the blood lust.”
“What would that mean?”
“Well, we’ve been doing some oppo research. Opposition research. Not so much McCain as his local surrogates, like the mayor, who has a reputation for being a clean, straight-and-narrow kind of guy, but that’s just an act. He has skeletons in his closet too—and I don’t just mean the bones of his wife in the wash. I covered her disappearance when I was at the Daily Lobo, and before that, his campaign for mayor. In between, there was some scandal that didn’t get much play.”
Her father wasn’t nodding his head, but he was listening intently. He licked his lips, rubbed his cheek with his hand.
“We could make a big deal about that,” she said, “sully his reputation. I mean, this is not how I like to operate, with personal attacks and all that, but after what he’s done, he deserves it. This insistence on being honorable gets in the way. When the stakes are high, it’s a liability—”
Lamar didn’t wait for her to stop. “So you want to fight the bad guys by acting like them?”
“I don’t want that. I want to win. That’s why I’m going zombie over this.”
“Can I tell you a story?”
She nodded. She knew she didn’t have a choice.
“You eat.” Lamar had cleaned his plate and drunk his beer. Now it was getting cool. He buttoned up his long-sleeve shirt, wiped his mouth again with the threadbare turquoise napkin.
“Once upon a time there was a farmer who was gearing up for spring planting when his horse ran away. When he told his neighbor that afternoon, the neighbor said, ‘That’s terrible news. Disastrous. How are you going to get your beans planted?’
“The farmer shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Bad news, good news, who knows?’”
Sierra, with her mouth full, waved her fork. “You told me this before,” she said, “but go ahead, please.”
“I’ve also told you before to slow down and not talk with food in your mouth,” he said, signaling the waiter for another beer. She made a face at him. “The next day, the horse returned with a wild white stallion, strong and spirited, and the farmer reported this to his neighbor, who said, ‘That’s great news. You’ve got another horse to help with the plowing.’ The farmer says, ‘Good news, bad news, who knows?’
“The next day, the farmer’s son started training the stallion to pull the plow, and the horse threw him off and he landed hard and broke both legs. When the farmer told his neighbor, he said, ‘What bad news. You were counting on your son for the planting. How can you possibly get the ground ready for your beans without him?’
“Of course, you know where this is going. The farmer says, ‘Bad news, good news, who knows?’ And then the next day, the king’s men come to conscript able-bodied young men into the army to fight the Mongols or whoever. The farmer’s son can’t even walk so they don’t take him. Predictably, his neighbor is ecstatic. ‘This is great news.’
“Whereupon the farmer says, ‘Good news, bad news, who knows.’ And so on.”
Sierra held up her fork to take the floor, but finished chewing first. “So what you’re saying is if we lose the election, I shouldn’t jump off a bridge because some day in the distant future, I might get a pony. I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation.”
(Read more of Bones in the Wash at bonesinthewash.com.)
I have one more reading before Election Day — Sunday, October 23 at 2 pm at the Tam Valley Cabin on Tennessee Valley Road in Marin County.
Election-Season Author Tour poster
by John Byrne Barry | Sep 22, 2016 | Albuquerque to Berkeley, Bones in the Wash, Wasted
I wish I could say I’ve written and published a new book. That’s half true. I’ve published a new book called Albuquerque to Berkeley — Two Election-Season Thrillers. What’s new is the packaging, not the pages. (All 677 of them — that’s the estimate of Kindle “pages.”)
To “celebrate” the political season, I’ve brought together my two novels — the award-winning Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher, set during the 2008 presidential campaign in New Mexico, and Wasted, a “green noir” mystery set in the Berkeley recycling world, against the backdrop of a pivotal city council race.
What ties the books together is the daunting challenge of doing the right thing. Honesty is the best policy, right? Except maybe in politics, family, love, and murder. In Bones in the Wash, ambitious Albuquerque Mayor Tomas Zamara is charged with doing “whatever it takes” to deliver the state’s five electoral votes for John McCain. Though he has a strong sense of integrity, he knows politics is like playing football on a muddy field. If you don’t get dirty, you’re not giving your all.
That’s why I call these novels “page-turners with a conscience” — I’m aiming for that sweet spot between trashy beach reading and literary masterpiece, where the plot gallops like a racehorse, but the characters are three-dimensional and face tough moral choices.
In Wasted, Berkeley reporter Brian Hunter investigates the “recycling wars,” finds the body of his friend Doug crushed in an aluminum bale, and hunts down the murderer, all the while trying to win the heart of Barb, Doug’s former lover, now a suspect in his murder. In his zeal to tell the truth about the threat of a corporate takeover of the local recycling collective, he tells a few white lies to get information. And maybe he keeps some of the truth to himself instead of publishing it. It’s a murky business, this truth-telling.
(Here’s veteran journalist Mark Mardon’s take on Wasted: “It’s a colorful cast and crew you’ve assembled to tell this rowdy romp, which tells more about journalism than about recycling. Using the recycling industry as a way to get into the slimy business of journalism keeps this from being a ‘message’ book about the virtues of recycling. It’s more about the shady business of hunting down a good story.”)
Albuquerque to Berkeley is only $3.99 — for two election-season thrillers. Tell your political junkie friends.
by John Byrne Barry | Sep 2, 2016 | Bones in the Wash
How and Why I Gave Away My First Book to Attract New Readers to My Second
Despite the headline, I’d prefer to frame my book giveaway as an experiment, not a failure. I tested the strategy of making my book free and got definitive results — fewer sales or reviews than my modest projections. A successful experiment, but a failed strategy.
My hope was that by giving away my well-received first novel — Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher. — I would gain sales for my second book, Wasted, a “green noir” mystery set in the Berkeley recycling world, as well as more reviews.
I published Bones in the Wash more than two years ago, and, being new to book marketing, didn’t realize that unless I tirelessly flogged the book, no one would know about it, let alone buy it. I hosted a fun and successful book launch at a cafe near my house in Berkeley, which attracted more than 50 people and I gave talks at the California Writers Club in Berkeley and Marin. I wrote blog posts and pitched the book on Facebook, Twitter, and GoodReads. I started an email newsletter, and sent notes to friends and colleagues.
I tried a variety of blurbs. Here’s one:
One half political thriller, one half family soap, and one half murder mystery — that’s right, it’s a novel and a half — Bones in the Wash careens through the pressure cooker of the 2008 presidential campaign in New Mexico, where straitlaced Albuquerque Mayor Tomas Zamara grapples with a fierce opponent, a volatile new woman, a demanding family. Oh, and he’s a suspect in his wife’s murder.
Response to the book has been heartening. I now have 60 reviews, including the most recent one, just posted a few days ago.
Five Stars: I didn’t want to have to put the book down when I had to.
And last December, I was thrilled to win the Best Book 2015 from the Bay Area Independent Book Publishers Association (BAIPA). My award even included a $200 check. Did it increase sales? Not much. I posted about my award several times in several places, and it barely moved the needle.
Doesn’t make much difference that the book is good if potential readers don’t know it exists.
I had read many posts suggesting that making your ebook free was a way to find new readers who then might write a positive review and/or purchase your other books. That sounded like a good plan.
I heard a presentation at a California Writers Club–Berkeley meeting by South Bay author Chess Desalls, about how she’s gained readers for her series of four young adult time travel books with a BookBub promotion. For a price, BookBub promotes your free or discounted book to its email list of millions. But BookBub is tough to crack. I submitted Bones twice and was rejected twice. (Desalls did suggest that a giveaway is more likely to be effective for a series — my two novels are distinct, with different characters, different settings, even different genres.)
Despite the BookBub rejections, I have succeeded in getting my free ebook downloaded by more than 5,000 potential readers, far more than I expected. With minimal promotion.
My first step was uploading a new digital version of Bones in the Wash, with an ad for Wasted at the beginning, and a letter to the reader at the end, asking for a review, and suggesting they might like Wasted. Then I made the book free on Smashwords. Amazon will not let you set the price to free, but they will match the lower price elsewhere. (I did, as suggested, first lower the Kindle price from $2.99 to $0.99)
Nothing happened at first. Then I asked four different people to go to the Amazon page and click where it said “lower price elsewhere.) The price stayed at $0.99. Then, a week later, Amazon changed it to free.
The next day, without me doing anything, Bones showed up as a featured free ebook on Digital Book Today, as one of the Top 100 Free Kindle Books on Amazon.
On its first morning, it was one of the top 10 downloads. Within the first week, more than 3,000 people downloaded the book.
Because this was an experiment, I set some goals, which I thought were extremely conservative. I estimated that I’d get one sale of Wasted or the paperback version of Bones in the Wash for every 100 ebook downloads. Here were my projections for April and May.
| April 1 |
15 |
25 |
5 |
| May 1 |
35 (cumulative) |
60 |
10 |
The downloads kept coming. By June 1, there were more than 5,000 downloads, many times more than the number of books I’ve sold.
The sales and reviews trickled in. Slowly. One here, two there. Two five-star reviews showed up on Amazon. But mostly, nothing. Except more downloads, and even they tapered off.
I got a little obsessed, checked my sales and reviews three, four times daily. I reminded myself that it takes people a while to read the book. They might have other books in their queue ahead of mine. They might like to download free books, but not read them.
Soon enough, I realized my modest 1 percent estimate was too high.
Because I was busy with other things and thought this promotion would spur sales more, I did hardly any other marketing, so I presume most of the sales and reviews I did get were as a result of this giveaway gamble.
I included my email in the book, and got two notes, including a lovely one from woman who’s been fighting voter suppression and appreciated that I was able to illustrate that issue in an entertaining way, and that my protagonists demonstrated integrity and bravery. (She also said she was going to pick up Wasted, and there was a purchase the next day, though Amazon doesn’t tell me who the purchaser is.)
Here are my numbers as of August 15.
| March |
4423 |
9 |
15 |
5 |
30.20 |
| April |
337 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
11.36 |
| May |
373 |
3 |
1 |
4 |
12.23 |
| June |
38 |
6 |
0 |
0 |
14.20 |
| July |
24 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
3.95 |
| August |
22 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0.00 |
| Totals |
5141 |
21 |
21 |
15 |
71.74 |
Note: The Bones sales include international sales of the ebook, as well as paperback sales.
So the book sales, of 42, which most certainly include some sales not related to the free promotion, amounts to 0.8 percent of downloads. Not too short of my goal. Maybe it’s better to call this a disappointment than a failure.
As for reviews, I didn’t even come close to my projections. I ended up with 11 more Bones reviews on Amazon and four more on GoodReads, and my average rating went down. The 11 Amazon reviews averaged 3.6 — including 1 3-star, 2 2-stars, and my first 1-star. Before the promotion, I only had 4- and 5-star reviews.
Here’s what that 1-star reviewer said:
Truly Terrible: If you can get past the author’s ameturish (sic) writing style, and if you can get past the unimaginative characters, and if you can get past the lack of any semblance of a good story line, and if you are a liberal, then you might actually like this book for some reason beyond my personal understanding. However, if you appreciate good writing, then you would be smart to not even touch this book. It is terrible. Period.
Guess he or she didn’t like my politics.
That’s another downside of free — it’s more likely that people who might not appreciate the book will download it just because it’s free.
Or was.
That’s the last part of my experiment. To raise the price back to $2.99 and see if anyone buys it now. And to share this post far and wide and see if that finds me any new readers.
I welcome your comments.
by John Byrne Barry | Dec 15, 2015 | Bones in the Wash
This past weekend, I was thrilled, surprised, and humbled to receive the 2015 Best Book Award from the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association for my first novel, Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher.
As I joked with a few people, the last thing I remember winning was a bag of manure. (I was happy about that too — it was a home composting event and the chicken manure was high quality.)
Of course I imagined winning this award, but the web page with the submission rules said winners would be notified by mail, and I assumed that meant before any awards ceremony. I was at the monthly meeting on Saturday because I was moderating a panel on editing, which started right after the awards were presented.
I actually won two awards. A few minutes earlier, I received the award for best fiction (mystery and science fiction). That too, was a surprise, and, not knowing there was an overall best book award, I was happy to win, but figured I was done.
Now I have leverage this award into more readers and more book sales. I’ve added the award to my Amazon Author Central page, but that’s not going to make any difference unless I drive more visitors to that page.
The important thing about the award is the encouragement it gives me to keep on plugging on my next book.
by John Byrne Barry | Feb 24, 2015 | Bones in the Wash
I hosted a book launch a year ago today in Berkeley for Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher.
My first book, my first launch. Pretty exciting. And nerve-wracking.
More than 50 people showed up—standing room only—and though most were friends and family, there were a few strangers in the mix, which was heartening. (It helped that the Mo’ Joe Café, where we did the launch, was a block from where I lived for 25 years and walking distance for a bunch of my friends.)
My friend Bob Schildgen, author of Hey Mr. Green, served as M.C. and read a passage. My wife Nanette and my son Sean also read excerpts. I delivered a brief intro about how I came to write the book, read a few pages, and answered questions.
I was thrilled with how well it went—it felt like a smash success. (Scroll down to see some photos.)
I even ran out of books to sell. I sold 22 books, including the one I was reading from, which had a couple of pencil marks. (I thought I would be tempting the fates if I came to the launch with too many books.)
That book launch was my single best day for selling the book, but sales since have been disappointing. A year later, despite continuing to get positive response and reviews, I can sometimes go a month without selling a book. I did a better job writing my novel than I have marketing it, but I believe that even if I were a marketing superstar, it would be an uphill climb.
I expected that marketing my self-published first novel would be hard, and I was right about that. I thought, however, that I had managed my expectations pretty well. Looking back, even my modest projections seem overly ambitious.
The actual publishing wasn’t too hard—I mean, other than rewriting the book a dozen-plus times and incorporating suggestions and corrections from many readers and editors. Getting the book formatted for Kindle and trade paperback took at least a month, and a lot of careful proofreading, but it was straightforward.
I am close to completing my next novel, Wasted, a “green noir” mystery set in the world of garbage and recycling in Berkeley. I wrote Wasted before Bones in the Wash, and am now rewriting it one more time. Response so far has been positive—most everyone has enjoyed it and three people said they raced through it in a day or two. That’s what I like to hear. And that was the advance reader copy. It’s now at least 3 percent better! 🙂
My hope is that when I launch Wasted this spring, response will continue to be favorable and maybe I’ll sell a few copies of Bones in the Wash along the way.
More photos here.
by John Byrne Barry | Dec 22, 2014 | Bones in the Wash
True confession: I have, more than a couple times in my life, poured over a steamy passage in a bookstore or library because, well, because it was steamy.
I’m not the only one. Some of those passages were in best-selling books.
As a writer, however, sex scenes, steamy or otherwise, are, pun intended, hard to get right.
This fall, I’ve done a couple readings from my novel—Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher—and I devoted some of my time to talking about writing sex scenes.
Talking about politics, family, and sex at the Oakland Public Library. Thanks to Tim Jollymore for the photo.
Since there were a number of writers in the audience, I asked for a show of hands of those who had written sex scenes. More than a dozen each time. Then I asked how many were satisfied with what they wrote. Only a few.
I also asked everyone, as readers, how satisfied they were, again, pun intended, with sex scenes in novels. Mostly, not so much.
Which begs the question: why include them? Sure, they’re titillating, and yes, sex sells. But plenty of fun and successful novels are sex-free zones. You could argue that sex is part of most people’s lives, so why wouldn’t it be in novels, but so is peeing, and few authors show their characters going to the bathroom.
Response from readers to Bones in the Wash has been heartening. Reviews have all been positive, some effusively so. But not everyone liked the sex scenes. My wife, for one, and the women in her book group, who discussed the novel one Thursday evening when I found somewhere else to be.
I asked around. One woman friend said several phrases—“ravaged” and ‘his hardness found her wetness”—read like “a cheap grocery store romance.” Ouch! “And take away from the book,” she added, “which I loved.” That was certainly not my intention. It wasn’t just women—one man said the explicit sex didn’t do anything for him.
So I rewrote some of the sex scenes, and uploaded a new version. I think the book is better now, but I’m curious as to what you think. Here’s some before and after.
First, an easy one. This excerpt comes—spoiler alert—after a flash flood has unearthed the bones of protagonist Tomas Zamara’s long-disappeared wife Vera in a wash outside Santa Fe.
| original |
revised |
| Tomas was not interested in making love, and Tory didn’t tease him or touch him suggestively like she often did. But in the middle of the night, in the moonless darkness, they found each others lips and his hardness found her wetness and they moaned together in two-part harmony before falling back to sleep. In the morning, the sky was bright and the sun was blue. |
Tomas was not interested in having sex and Tory didn’t tease him or touch him suggestively like she often did. But in the middle of the night, in the moonless darkness, they found each other’s lips and made love slowly, tenderly for a few minutes before falling back to sleep. |
Better, right? What was I was thinking? Was I thinking?
Here’s another, from a few chapters earlier. Tomas lived in Albuquerque and Tory in Santa Fe, so on their first several dates, he did a lot of driving. So she suggested on their next date, they do a “sleepover.” No sex, but he wouldn’t have to drive all the way home.
| original |
revised |
| He expected they would make out a little, but sleepover, to him, implied sleeping. Tory had other ideas. She leaned into his chest. “I love to snuggle,” she said.
She didn’t so much attack him with her kisses, as pull him towards her. Welcoming him. It had been a long time.
He reached under her nightshirt. No underpants. Wet. She wriggled into his finger and purred as he rubbed her. She nuzzled her nose to his. “You tricked me,” she said. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”
After she came, she took him in her mouth, and oh Jesus Christ, how is this happening? |
He expected they would make out a little, but sleepover, to him, implied sleeping. Tory had other ideas. She leaned into his chest. “I love to snuggle,” she said.
She didn’t so much attack him with her kisses, as pull him towards her. Welcoming him. It had been a long time.
He reached for her. She nuzzled her nose to his. “You tricked me,” she said. “You know exactly what you’re doing.” |
That was simple. Just take a few sentences out. Then, in the morning:
| original |
revised |
| He slept, and woke at daybreak with a throbbing erection.
Nothing unusual about that, except that here he was in bed with Victoria Singer, Hurricane Tory, her calf resting on his ankle.
She opened her eyes, yawned, then smiled.
“Hi.”
They kissed, dozed, kissed some more. And then, suddenly awake, he found himself straddling her, his arms rigid, elbows locked, their heads at the foot of the bed, her unkempt hair spilling over the side. She held him between her fingers and guided him towards her, dipping him in her juices. Knocking at the door. Full of anticipation and desire.
She was so present, her eyes, bright and playful, locked onto his. Her smile beguiling. Then she crossed a line from delight into a focused intensity. She was hardly breathing. He was hardly breathing.
Then he slipped in. Plunged in. Quickly. Deeply.
Did she take her hand away? Draw him in? Was there permission there? Or did—?
He pulled out. Broke from her gaze.
When he looked up again, she had that same intent and lustful look, and didn’t look concerned at all. “A preview,” she said, and then her face relaxed into a grin. As if in slow motion. “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
“Rumi?”
She nodded.
“Aren’t most previews more than a few seconds?” he said.
“You’re the one who pulled out.” |
He slept, and woke at daybreak with a throbbing erection.
Nothing unusual about that, except that here he was in bed with Victoria Singer, Hurricane Tory, her calf resting on his ankle.
She opened her eyes, yawned, then smiled.
“Hi.”
They kissed, dozed, kissed some more. And then, suddenly awake, he found himself straddling her, his arms rigid, elbows locked, their heads at the foot of the bed, her unkempt hair spilling over the side. She held him between her fingers and guided him towards her, dipping him in her juices. Knocking at the door. Full of anticipation and desire.
She was so present, her eyes, bright and playful, locked onto his. Her smile beguiling. Then she crossed a line from delight into a focused intensity. She was hardly breathing. He was hardly breathing.
Then. Then. Did she take her hand away? Was there—?
When he looked up again, she had that same intent and lustful look.
“A preview,” she said, and then her face relaxed into a grin. “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
“Rumi?”
She nodded.
“Aren’t most previews more than a few seconds?” he said.
“So I’ve heard.” |
Again, the same scene, with fewer explicit words. Better? Is less more? I thought so before. Now I’m not so sure. Or I could have cut more.
Are these minor “improvements” worth all the teeth-gnashing? It’s hard to know. (Though I think eliminating the word “ravage” from my vocabulary is a no-brainer.)
Let me go back to the question I asked above: Why did I include sex scenes?
(btw, we’re talking about five, six pages out of 400. Most of the book is not about sex.)
For me, the answer is because they reveal character.
Sex is something universal that just about all adults engage in, but because it’s private, emotionally charged, and the participants are exposed and vulnerable, it shows who people are in ways nothing else does. There’s also plenty of religious and cultural baggage associated with it, and that can add richness and texture. And because sex is private, readers tend to be curious about how other people, fictional or not, do it.
The best sex scenes aren’t necessarily the steamiest. Great sex doesn’t make for a great scene. What’s often more interesting is when things go wrong. Where instead of ecstasy, the lovers experience distress or embarrassment or loneliness. Which they usually keep to themselves.
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