Thank you, expert found!

Dear BDH,

I’m looking for an insect expert for some brainstorming regarding research for the book involving imaginary oversized insect monsters. If you are reading this and happen to be an entomologist who doesn’t mind answering a few questions, please email me at ilona@ilona-andrews.com.

Dear BDH, please do not volunteer your friends without asking them first.

The post Entomologist/Biologist first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

You do such a wonderful job describing people so that we can almost visually see them, the little details that just make a person come alive in our imaginations.  How do you keep from everyone blending together?  Do you search for images? Do you just imagine that person?  Do you people watch and think, that person looks like a __?  You are more subtle than white hat good guy, black hat bad guy, but you are still able to get that across or not as the case may be, when it’s a character we go back and forth on, is he/she a good guy, a bad guy, a neutral guy etc.

The problem with describing people is that if you just stick to the physical descriptions, many of them will sound the same. There are only so many hair and eye colors and skin tones to go around. Augustine and Declan Camarine both are tall, blond, and green/blue eyed. So is Arland. To make the characters distinct, we have to reach past the physical descriptions.

Augustine:

Augustine nodded, his stunning face a picture of businesslike politeness. He was inhumanly beautiful. A prince, with his blond hair perfectly styled to complement his flawless features, elegant, confident, just a hair away from absolute perfection. She saw it for exactly what it was – armor.

Declan:

She stopped just before the ring of wards and looked at his face. Her heart skipped a beat. His features were carved with breathtaking precision, combining into an overwhelmingly masculine yet refined face. He had a tall forehead and a long straight nose. His mouth was wide, with hard narrow lips, his jaw square and bulky, yet crisply cut. It wasn’t a face whose owner smiled often. His eyes under thick golden eyebrows froze the air in her lungs. Dark grass green, they smoldered with raw power. She suspected that if she stepped over the stones and touched his face, he’d spark.

(Declan is from ON THE EDGE.)

Most of us have a protective figure in our lives. Maybe it’s a parent, or a spouse, or a sibling. Someone who loves us and protects us. Think about that person. Chances are, what you are remembering isn’t just a set of features but a feeling that person creates.

Writing characters is kind of like that. You are trying to evoke a feeling in the reader, and if you are successful, they will fill in the blanks.

Imagine a medieval setting, a city drenched with rain, and a long bridge.

Today after four pm a man called Lecke would cross the Estret Bridge. He was a scummy, sniveling prick, the kind of character that makes you wait an entire book for a rock to fall on his head and crush his skull.

You’ve pictured something. Zero physical description, but most likely there is something happening.

He was a slight man, with reddish hair and sharp features, and something about the unsure way he held himself reminded me of a possum. I had a feeling that if someone set off a firecracker next to us, he’d fall on the ground and pretend to be dead to avoid the danger.

If you tag the way the character makes the protagonist feel, it will go a long way toward keeping the characters distinct.

He was a slight man, with reddish hair and sharp features, and something about the sure way he held himself reminded me of a mongoose. I had a feeling that if a line-backer-sized attacker lunged at us with a knife, he would take them down with a single kick, take the knife away, and end up on top of them, pressing the blade to their throat.

Same description, different people.

They reached his office, where Lina sat at a pristine desk, presenting the last line of defense to the visitors. The desk was crafted from polished metal with a single white orchid growing from a simple pot. His secretary chose to match the orchid today. A white dress hugged her body, perfectly tailored and form-fitting, yet elegant. Her deep emerald hair, wrapped in a trendy twist, shimmered with peridot highlights. Her eyebrows were black and shaped with laser precision, and she had selected green and black to accent her eyes and mauve to tint her lips. As always, the effect was stunning.

Lina looks like a white orchid. We associate white orchids with elegant settings and often professional environment.

As far as the actual physical description, yes, image searches are your friend. Find an actor or a stock image of a person you would like to portray and write down the vibes. Less is often more. Most of the time authors tag age, hair color, skin tone, possibly build. But not always. There is a reason why Tall, Dark, and Handsome exists. Most people will picture someone when given that description.

Without an emotional connection, Bear is just a German Shepherd. With it, she is the Best Girl Ever.

What if I cannot picture images in my head?

You might have aphantasia. That’s what the image search is for. I probably don’t have it, since I have no problem recalling images of people I’ve seen or picturing random objects with life-like clarity. Nor do I have problems recognizing people and I’m often able to correctly identify two similar looking actors. But if you ask me to imagine a character from scratch, I will end up with a smudge instead of a face. It’s just not something that I can do without reference. It hasn’t hampered me any.

Your supporting/side characters are always awesome and have raised my expectations of how clear and unique the side characters can be. I read another book recently where the main characters were distinct and well-developed but I kept getting the side characters mixed up because they were all alike and vague. For HA, what goes into developing side characters alongside (or compared to) your main characters?

We are all the main characters of our own story. Let’s take Barabas. In his own story, Kate is a side character. She is a friend and an ally, but his goals might conflict with hers. He has his own storyline.

This is a double-edged sword sometimes. The main character is our compass. We perceive their world through their eyes, and when our perspective changes, we are often overly protective of the view point character.

One of the interesting examples of this is Nick Feldman. Imagine the story from his point of view. You idolize your father and turn yourself inside out trying to get Greg to notice you, but no matter how hard you try, your father remains distant. And then your father shatters the family so he can go and take care of the daughter of some woman he apparently has been in love with for a decade and everything you know is a lie.

But you keep going. You follow in your father’s footsteps, despite his disinterest and abandonment. You join the Order, just like he did, and you excel. And then you find out that the woman he chose to guard is a monster with enough power to enslave an entire city. And her father is a bigger monster.

You confront Greg and ask him why, and he tells you that it is his duty. And then he dies, the bastard, leaving this mess unfinished and you holding the severed ends of your pitiful little feelings. Only later you understand that he was trying to influence this woman to keep her from becoming a living Armageddon that would cost thousands of lives. And you wonder, wouldn’t it have been easier and safer to just slit her throat and take out her and her father in the same blow? Why, it would be public service. If she gets a wild hair up her butt, she might enslave the entire country and there won’t be much anyone can do about it. Except that you are a knight and you have principles, but you do wonder.

Now she has a son. She wants to be friends. She says you are her brother and her kid calls you Uncle. Fuck this shit.

That is a completely different plot line. And you have to feel for Nick, who at one point was a little boy desperately wanting his father’s approval, but right now some of you are wanting to explain how none of this is Kate’s fault and Nick just doesn’t understand.

Hehe. My evil work is done here for the day.

The post Characters: Stories and Descriptions first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

I heavily debated posting this. I might still take it down, because I’ve long ago decided that the internet doesn’t need my “wisdom.” Also, I am bitter and jaded. However, we keep getting repeated questions and there is some weird erroneous stuff floating out there. With that caveat, here is the basic primer on who does what. If for some bizarre reason, you see some value in this and want to keep it for reference, here is the PDF.

It might have typos in it. Writing it was stressful, leave me alone. If you are a trad author and want something included in the PDF or this post, drop me a line through the contact form.

Manuscript – the file you are working on. Complete manuscript – finished work of fiction that has not been through professional edits.

ARC/Galley – Advance Reader Copy. File the publishers send out for early reviews. Usually, post-copyedit but before the proofread. See below.

Developmental/Content edit – the edit that focuses on storytelling: plot, pacing, characterization, etc. The content edit takes the longest to get and the longest to get through.  This is the time to make large changes if needed.

Copyedit – the edit that focuses on grammar, punctuation, fact checking, and narrative inconsistencies.  Clunky sentences, unclear sentences, mutating names, eye color, people sitting down after they already sat down – all of that gets corrected here.  Last chance to make significant alterations.

Proofread – final chance to fix minor mistakes. Do NOT make significant alterations at this stage. Every time you mess with your sentences, you are introducing errors that the copyeditor will not see. Also, the typography has been set at this stage, and the book has been prepped for printing. Minor fixes only, unless something really must be corrected.

The publishing house will often state that they will charge you money if you make too many edits at this stage. The wording can be found under the Editing Section of your contract and will read something like:

The cost of the Proprietor’s alterations in the proofs in excess of ten percent (10%) of the initial setting cost will be charged against the Proprietor’s royalty account, except that the Proprietor will not be charged for corrections arising from the typesetter’s failure to accurately reproduce the copy-edited manuscript.

I’ve never had it happen, but I saw it once.  The author rewrote significant parts of the book and repunctuated almost every compound sentence.  It is very rare, so don’t stress out about this and fix what must be fixed, but keep your corrections small.

If you are rephrasing sentences at this stage, try to keep the number of characters the same, so you don’t screw up the paragraph layout. If you add too much, the paragraph will run over and it’s a bigger fix on their end.

Yes: “Her dress was white.” (20 characters) -> “She wore white.” (15 characters.)

No: “Her dress was white.” (20 characters) – > “She wore a white gown that was the color of fresh snow that fell at the first hint of winter in the month of Freezeyourbuttoff.” (128 characters.)

To quickly find out the number of characters, highlight the problem in Word and click on the word count in the bottom left corner. Include spaces in your count.

People

People you usually have contact with are marked with *

Content editor*– the person who does the content edit. When you are published by a traditional publishing house, your primary editor does your content edit.  That editor is your main point of contact. They do not work for you. They work for the publishing house. You are not an employer and employee, but colleagues and peers. If you are coming from the selfpublished side, there may be a tone shift here.

 Your content editor is your advocate, and they usually know what they are doing. They are invested in your book’s success. They want the book to be a commercial and critical achievement. The function of the content editor is to shape the manuscript and identify problematic areas. They may suggest extensive changes, and they may propose solutions that will not work for you. If this happens, don’t panic. Address the problems themselves, even if you fix them in a way that the editor didn’t anticipate. As long as the problem goes away, most editors will be fine with it.

Occasionally, you will get an editor who will insist on their way or the highway. The buck stops with you. You can refuse to make edits but consider this route very carefully. Most of the time, if you don’t make the changes they suggest, the book will likely still get published. Cases where the book was pulled because of editorial differences are very rare and are usually initiated by the writer, but the publishing house has the power to cancel the book.

Look at your contract under something like Deliverables or Delivery of the Manuscript. The wording will be something like:

This is a very old contract boilerplate. Note that they reserved the right to edit your manuscript whether you like it or not. Your agent should get this clause crossed out.

What happens if you received an extremely light or no content edit: yes, this happens occasionally, especially if the editor has a large volume of manuscripts lined up. If the content editor checked out, there is not much you can do.  Trust that you wrote a good book and perhaps look for a new publishing partner for the next contract.

Editorial Assistant* – this is the assistant of your editor. This person is very helpful. If you need admin things, like updated files or clarification of schedule, this is the person to ask.

Managing editor* – this editor is incredibly important. This is the person who puts everything together: copyedit, proofread, etc. This is the deadline person, the on-top-of-everything person, and you may see their comments in the manuscript, which they will read several times, often saving your bacon when you mess up and nobody else catches it.

Copyeditor – the person who does the copyedit. Usually a contractor. Most of the time copyedits are outsourced. If you get a good one, always request them back. If you get a bad one, ask to switch.

More corrections is usually better than less, even if it makes you want to scream, because at least you know they scrubbed the manuscript. If you get a copyedit that is superlight, you are in trouble.  You can hire your own CE to edit on top of the publisher’s subpar copyedit. The publishing house will not care. If you scan the copyedit, and it is light, and you see a typo on page three they missed, you need to email the editor and ask if there is any additional time you can request to go through it. Usually, they can get you an extra week or two, although not always. Then you run to your favorite freelancer and chuck the manuscript at them.

People get very upset when this happens, because the publishing house takes a huge percentage of the profit and the expectation is that they will provide quality edits. Bottom line on this: you can waste a lot of energy being upset, or you can hire a freelancer. Since your name is on the cover, everything is your fault, and the readers will not care that the publisher’s CE fell down on the job. They will only care that the book has errors that detract from their experience.

Proofreader – usually a contractor. If you have your own private beta readers, now is the time to throw the manuscript at them and ask them if they snag on anything typo-wise. This is the final scrub before publication.

Art director – the person in charge of your cover.  Check your contract.  If it says cover approval, you can veto the cover.  If it says cover consult, you can offer an opinion, but they will go on without you. Everybody else’s opinion often overrides yours. The wording will be something like:

The Publisher will consult with the Proprietor concerning the following, but the Publisher’s decision with respect to such matters will be final:

upon the Proprietor’s written request, the cover concept of the Publisher’s initial edition of the Work;

An email is a written request, and trad publishing houses will absolutely talk to you about the cover.

There is a very limited amount of influence you can exert here. Once they paid for the cover, they like to stick to it.  Yes, you can occasionally get them to change it, but I’ve known people who flew to New York to make personal appeals and still failed. Take it from someone who has had more than one cover mocked by the readers: it is what it is.  Fight the good fight but save your energy. If the book has commercial appeal, word of the mouth will compensate for the damage of the ugly cover.

Cover artist – person who creates the cover image.

Cover design – person who creates overall look and adds typography to your cover.

Editorial designer – person who creates the layout and determines typography.

Publicity* – the person who arranges publicity that does not require money. Interviews, ARCs, social, etc. Book tour – publicity. Maybe be named as publicist, director of publicity, etc.

Marketing* – the person that is responsible for ads and other advertisement that requires money. Incentive boxes for preorders – marketing. Usually, marketing manager or director.

NOTE: marketing and publicity spheres overlap. Sometimes marketing will ask for an interview, and publicity will ask for commissioned art. When posting information on your website, such as “For review copies, contact NAME,” list the publicist, not the marketing manager.

Marketing and publicity are an iceberg. Authors do not see 80% of it. Sometimes that iceberg is tiny. I remember when “online promotion” meant your editor would mention the book title on their Twitter. Yes, you do still need promote on your own. Not, it’s not fair. The world is mean and publishing is meaner.

What to do when there is a conflict: go to your agent. They take their 15%. Let them earn it.

Gratitude Etiquette: get a lot of questions about this for some reason. It is always nice to acknowledge people who worked on the manuscript. Ask the publishing house, and they will give you a list. You are under no obligation to thank people if you don’t like what they did for your book. This is fully your prerogative.

Business gifts are nice but are never expected. If you send nothing at all, nobody will notice or be upset. A handwritten card is always appreciated. If you are sending gifts for the holidays, try to find out what people like. Don’t just send chocolate. Everyone sends chocolate. Sometimes people like cheese or will request a small donation in their name to their favorite charity. Please check to make sure that you are donating to the causes your recipient supports.

I need tea now. Oy.

The post Trad Publishing: Editing and Production Glossary first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

We’re staying in the realm of food today, but moving on to more sensitive matters. The kind that can divide nations, friendships, and apparently the BDH comment section.

Yesterday’s discussion of the appropriate substitution between heavy cream, double cream, single cream, whipping cream, half-and-half, clotted cream, and crème fraîche reminded me of this diplomatic incident. (To put your minds at ease, for the bean recipe you can use any type of cream that doesn’t curdle, but thickens when heat is applied. You can look at fat percentages if you want for guidance, as long as you don’t mention Miracle Whip and Cool Whip to me. I’ve had them explained so many times and I still cannot make heads or tails of it.)

You’ll be forgiven, with everything else going on in the world, if you missed the great cultural incident that was The Great Flapjack Dissension of ’25. It began innocently enough, with the Back To School fourth episode of season 16 of the The Great British Bake Off.

Flapjacks, not as you know them, indeed. Our American friends took to social media in horror.

“What are these granola bars? Where are the real flapjacks? Have the Brits finally lost it to tent fumes?”

Accusations of narrow-mindedness and language evolution digs were thrown back. The social media world of desserts was in a brûlée and there didn’t seem to be a way to peace.

In fairness, the Bake Off has committed culinary crimes against egg and country before, so the outrage was not unmotivated. One cannot mention the GBBO Mexican Week in polite company, but I recall the s’mores incident, when Paul Hollywood requested something involving Italian meringue (?), with chocolate ganache (??), sandwiched between digestives (?!), lightly singed with a blowtorch (!!!). And if that didn’t just take the giddy biscuit, he deducted points when the confection was “too gooey”. Those weren’t s’mores, they were s’lesses.

In this case, however, the flapjacks are perfectly legitimate. In the UK, flapjacks are an oaty tray bake, golden-syrupy and buttery squares of soft goodness. Apparently, up North people eat them with custard, though I still suspect that might be a joke my friends played on me. The name underwent the rebranding in the 1930s, but the details seem to be lost to time and treacle. If you know the explanation, please chime in!

In the US, they stayed more faithful to their original etymology, from flap (“to toss sharply”) and jack (“a generic object”), and are basically a pancake. It’s simply one of those differences of old, like biscuits (flaky buttery wonders, not actually ‘a bit like scones’ at all), and biscuits (shortbreads and cookies, live-in-a-jar sort of things).

The moral of the story is perhaps that when even the humble flapjack or random cream can divide us, we’ll simply have to double down on efforts to embrace our differences. If werewolves and vampires can share a cup of coffee and run together naked in an inn orchard…actually, you know, that might not be the best example of camaraderie in adversity. Steve does tend to take things literally, and I don’t want an international streaking incident on my conscience.

You get the gist though.

Come, thou shalt go home, and we’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days, and moreo’er puddings and flap-jacks, and thou shalt be welcome.

– William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act II Scene I

The post Bake on, Bake off first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

It’s Monday! Before you boo, we’re ushering in a week when classic museum heists are back on the news, the clocks are about to turn back, and it’s hard to focus pocus on anything but tricks and treats.

The immortal Texan wereferret hedgehog diaspora fun in Friday’s comment section have once again proven that we are a mighty Horde in STEM (shenanigans, tomfoolery, escapades and mischief). What better time to encourage a little creative BDH chaos?

There are famous subreddits called Explain a Book (or Movie) Plot Badly, where people summarize beloved stories so inaccurately, they become masterpieces.

Think:

Professional nephew goes on long walk and loses jewellery.

Lord of the Rings

Or:

Girl lands her man after she dries her hair, shows off her legs and stops talking.

The Little Mermaid

Naturally, we must try this with Ilona Andrews books. Here’s my go at the first one:

Ex-warlord with attachment issues discovers the power of cows, gardening, and unconditional love after cursing at a unicorn.

I know you can do worse!

Pick an Ilona Andrews book, novella, or even a free snippet and explain the plot badly in the comments. Be as misleading as possible while staying technically accurate. If your summary makes another reader snort tea out their nose or makes Ilona message me with “MOD R, NO!” you’re doing it right.

Go forth, BDH. Confuse newcomers, alarm Goodreads, and make Caldenia proud.

The post Explain the Plot Badly first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Thank you for all the blog prompts. I wanted to answer this one sent to us by an aspiring author:

Since I started writing, I hate everything I read. Reading used to be an escape. It makes me feel like I’ve lost a part of myself.

I think I’ve talked about it before, but coincidentally, Grace Draven and I chatted about this very issue this morning, so I thought I would go over it one more time, while it’s still fresh.

There is no one way to become a writer. There are as many roads to publication as there are authors. But for a lot of people, the evolution of writing follows the general pattern outlined below.

Voracious Reader Stage

We begin as readers. We devour books in a high volume. When I went to the library as a child, I would come out with bags of books, the maximum I could check out. When I took my children to a bookstore, we approached the counter with stacks of novels and manga. Books are inhaled.

People don’t often acknowledge it, but reading is a creative experience. The reader imagines, feels, speculates. All of this is a creative endeavor. It enriches our inner world. The majority of people stop here.

Selective Reader Stage

At this stage, we figure out the specific genre or the type of story that we like and we actively look for it. Because we’ve now read a lot of stories, there is some impatience when the story is too familiar or doesn’t handle certain things well.

‘I Can Do Better’ Stage

The frustration with not finding the exact story we want to read mounts. We’ve found some near misses, where the story comes close to what we want to read, but they still fall short of the mark. It occurs to us that we can just write our own story and make it exactly the way we want it to be.

This is the first writer stage. At this point the work produced is often derivative. We are rehashing what we’ve read and trying to improve on it.

‘I Hate Everything’ Stage

We’ve made our first clumsy attempts at a narrative and showed it to people, and we have some constructive feedback. The feedback hurts. We begin to actively focus on improving our writing, because pain is an excellent teacher and we are trying to avoid it. This is the point where we learn things like “show, don’t tell” and “passive voice” and so on.

Writers are hypercritical of themselves. We also tend to obsess. At this stage, once we see some technical flaw, we focus on it like a laser. We literally cannot unsee it.

For a lot of people, this is the stage where we experience repeated rejections if we are submitting our work to traditional publishers or primarily negative reviews and low sales if self-publishing.

It’s very easy for all of this frustration to turn inward and create a volatile mix of being insecure about your work and at the same time angry about not finding an audience. We are still in the critical/improving our writing stage, so when we look at other published works, especially bestsellers, we mostly see flaws.

You’ve all probably seen reviews that rage about how this dreck could possibly be published when the reviewer’s work is so much better. There is no reviewer more vicious than a writer at this stage.

This is a normal step in writer development. Most commercially or critically successful authors move out of this stage, but some stay here for the duration of their career. It is a very stressful place to be.

Finding What Works Stage

This is the stage where our perspective on the narrative changes. Instead of focusing on what is wrong in the current bestseller, we focus instead on what is right.

This makes logical sense. If a book reached bestseller status or achieved critical acclaim, then its pros outweigh its cons. It is serving something to the readers that is working for them. We need to figure out what it is and apply it to our own writing. Yes, this other novel has flaws. But what is it that this book does right? How can we make it our own?

A writer in this stage finds a balance. We now know what magic we are trying to bottle, we apply it to our writing, and a lot of times, it works. Suddenly we have readers who are asking for more. This is a period of professional growth. Sometimes it can be explosive, sometimes slow, but for the majority of writers who reach this stage, it is lifelong.

We can now read and enjoy fiction again. We develop some confidence in our own craft and give ourselves permission to be proud of the things we wrote because we achieved whatever it was we set out to do with the story. By focusing on the most important elements, we can give ourselves and others some grace regarding small things like overuse of a particular word or funky dialogue tags that previously would have derailed our enjoyment.

If you are stuck in the hatred stage, it is normal. You can get out of it by figuring out what you like about books, finding novels that explore that, and making a conscious decision to focus on how they pull it off.

Hang in there. This too shall pass.

Example:

If I like the subordinate/boss romance trope, I’m going to read a bunch of stories with that trope. I can spend my time picking apart clumsy sentences or ridiculous plot devices, but what I really need to focus on is the power dynamics and the emotion of the relationship. That’s what makes the trope work.

So what are the things that these types of books have in common? Well, the subordinate must be underappreciated. Or perhaps they are appreciated as a professional but are invisible as a person.

Something then causes that subordinate to leave. (This is the change in status quo and this is where we would start our story.)

Perhaps someone else comes in and is held up as their replacement. Or the subordinate has been quietly in love with their boss, but now a clear romantic interest appears on the boss’ horizon, and the subordinate gives up. They feel like they are stuck and staying is torture.

The subordinate attempts to separate and exit the boss’ orbit.

The boss suddenly realizes that there is a gaping hole in their life. It gives them a new perspective, so they pursue the subordinate, at first in a professional and then in the emotional sense.

Why does this construct work? Because there is an inherent injustice here. A lot of us feel underappreciated. To make this plotline successful, we must use that and convince the reader to sympathize with the subordinate. At some point, the readers need to pound their couch armrest with their fist and yell, “That jerk! It’s not fair!”

We then derive pleasure as readers from watching this emotional injustice being corrected. The boss cannot live without this person. They realize they are a jerk. They must atone. Bring on the grovel.

A lot of pack romances use this trope: he is the alpha, she is his sort-of-mate for political reasons, oh but wait, he is bringing in a different woman who is much more badass and the previous political relationship is set aside. But now she will get emotional revenge by leaving so he can struggle.

Your challenge, should you accept it, is to list books that use this storyline in the comments and let us know why you liked them. Please be kind. We are looking to move away from criticism here toward things that bring you enjoyment as you read.

Editor Point of View: Rossana Sasso, Developmental Editor

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
Jodi Picoult

Ilona took us on the lover’s journey between an author and their storytelling craft. First comes the passionate stage. Desire and obsession sweep us up, and we ignore everything but their flutter. Then come the growing pains of settling down, when the lover moves in and things aren’t always rosy. They disrupt our routine. We hate how smelly their favourite snack is. We get fixated on winning every squabble and dig our heels in over where the coffee mugs should live. Eventually, mature love arrives and we learn to be a team. Respect, trust, and collaboration help us fall into a mutual rhythm. Every day together is a little better than everything that came before.

I see the editor’s role as the relationship therapist in this equation. As long as the author and the story still have something to say to each other, it will all work out.

Perfection isn’t the goal, or what makes the journey worthwhile. Writers play their fictional worlds into existence. It’s a ludic urge, a heartbeat that will be preserved at the core of the story and convince the reader to keep reading. Passion and inspiration join together with an idea and shape the narrative organically.

Trying to write in widgets, or by a process of reverse-engineering an artificial arrangement impervious to criticism, will usually lead to writer’s block and burnout—a slog to the finish line and many weeks spent on my editorial couch. Stakes won’t feel high enough, calls to action will be repeatedly refused and underwritten, genre promises broken by darlings that refuse to die, and readers’ expectations shrivelled, unmet and unclarified. And I’ll be able to tell when my couple is just moving furniture around, rather than addressing the structural issues.

The lessons and friction of the I Hate Everything stage are bitter, but they’re necessary and proof that you’re levelling up. Just as a happy marriage isn’t achieved by mechanically ticking a list of bullet points every day, storytelling isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being true to yourself.

The magic isn’t gone. You’re just learning how the spell is cast.

The post The Two Sides of the Reading Coin first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

When Mod R sent over the list of questions, my first instinct was to dismiss it, but then I realized that she is going to spend a long time posting individual replies and that time needs to be spent elsewhere.

So let’s talk about the special editions.

What is a special edition?

A special, or collector, edition is a beautiful edition of a book, usually hardcover, made as a keepsake item. It’s a trophy for your bookshelves. A lot of special editions have foiling on the covers, new cover art, extra art, bonus fiction, and painted edges. Some special editions are printed on archive-quality paper.

Special editions can be produced by specialty small press, book clubs, bookstores, or authors directly. For the purposes of this conversations, all these entities are referred to as the publisher.

Anatomy of a special edition.

Here are some terms used to describe the different parts of the special editions that we get questions about.

Dust jacket – a piece of paper, often with the printed cover or design, that wraps around a hardcover book.

Sprayed edges – the pages visible from the side view of the book. The edges can be uniform in color, they can feature a design, or they can be gilded with metallic finish.

End Papers – When you open the book, before you get to the title page, you will see an illustration that covers both pages.

Color Insert – a full-page color illustration in the middle of the book.

Why do the special editions cost more?

The production cost of a special edition is significantly higher. Some of them use high quality paper. Some have a lot of art. Just the new cover and end papers alone can run in excess of 10K, depending on the artist involved. Then they have to be printed, shipped to the publisher, sold, and then finally shipped to consumer.

Some of that price also comes from exclusivity. Most of them are printed once and never again. Reprints are very rare.

How can you buy special editions?

Depending on the publisher, special editions can be sold to the public directly or can come as a part of a subscription model through a book club.

For example, Subterranean Press functions more like a bookstore. They print a certain quantity of the special editions, and anyone can buy them through their website and sometimes other retailers.

By contrast, the Arcane Society is an exclusive book club. You pay a fee every two months and the Arcane Society sends you a box with two hardcovers, art prints, and a pin. Sometimes Arcane Society releases special boxes, which are available for sale to the public. When those boxes are released, the AS members receive a code, which allows them to access the sale of these special boxes before non-members can buy them. Thank you to Ann Giardina Magee for explaining the process.

The FAQ

I have questions about the special editions.

First step: has the publisher announced the special edition? Is there an actual announcement from people selling these things?

No – the special edition does not exist. Hold all questions until the announcement. The special edition may be in production, and the author themselves might accidentally mention that the special edition is coming, but until the people who are making it are ready to tell you about it, it does not exist.

Yes – Amazing. Direct all your questions regarding that special edition to the publisher.

If the author is the publisher – and you will know this, because the author will be selling the special editions exclusively through their site – ask them. Otherwise, ask Arcane, Subterranean, Owlcrate, or whoever is printing and selling the special editions.

Don’t ask us. We can’t answer your questions.

We have never done a direct sale special edition. All of our special editions have been through specialty publishers. Sometimes our regular publisher makes a deal with the specialty publisher directly, and we are informed of it. Sometimes we make a deal with a specialty publisher through our agent. But in all cases, we do not control distribution, layout, choice of artist, etc. We are consulted, and they ask our opinion, but ultimately the choice is theirs. We just collect our share of the royalties.

Therefore, here is a list of questions that we cannot answer for you.

When will something ship? – ask the publisher.

What does the special edition include? – ask the publisher.

Will it be available internationally? – ask the publisher.

Will there also be an early access code? – ask the publisher.

How is this edition different from the normal book? – ask the publisher.

Who is the artist? – ask the publisher.

Is the art AI? Do you support AI artists? – ask the publisher.

Questions We Can Answer

Why are you doing special editions? – because some people want pretty copies of the books for their shelves and we like money.

I don’t like how the artist envisioned the characters.

Don’t buy the special edition. Purchase is strictly voluntary, and money is too hard to come by to spend it on a collector book that you don’t love.

The characters have the wrong hair/eye/skin color.

One time at a convention, a woman came up to us at a signing, and she was angry. You see, the artist of our Kate Daniels had made a massive mistake and nobody caught it. Between our publisher and us, surely we could get our act together and make sure that Kate, who was a blonde, would be properly depicted on the cover.

I gently told her that Kate has dark hair. She argued with me. She pulled out a book. And then she got angrier and told me she would never buy another of our books again. She had come to right a great wrong, and instead found out that she was mistaken. She felt embarrassed and lashed out. I wished her well.

Your recall might not be perfect. This is a normal human trait. Stuff morphs in our heads, sometimes mixing with other stuff. So please check the text before getting upset.

A note regarding skin color: please try to let go of the preconceived notions of what people of different ancestry should look like. Human genetics don’t work like watercolor pigments. For examples, look up beautiful Eartha Kitt and Kitt McDonald, her equally lovely daughter.

While the final say remains with the publisher, most of them do ask our opinion and if we see something egregious, we will voice our objections.

AI art? AI books?

A lot of us reject the usage of AI in art and fiction. People are genuinely worried about it. Artists and writers work very hard, and most of us don’t earn enough. To see our opportunities shrink because of a language model that was trained on our stolen work is infuriating.

People have come up with all sorts of random criteria identifying the intrusion of AI into our creative space. Weird hands, light sources that make no sense, ellipses, using 3rd person, writing faster than others and so on.

None of that means anything. Hands are difficult to draw. Established artists sometimes have lighting that doesn’t make sense. Ellipses have been used for centuries.

Unfortunately, this urge to protect now led to some kneejerk reactions. We’ve had accusations of AI usage on Candice’s work, on Luisa Pressler’s work, on our work that was written over a decade ago. Someone accused Helena Elias of doing AI art on the Arcane Edition, and we have seen every stage of those paintings, from initial sketch to the final. We asked for alterations and saw them implemented.

Most of us have no idea when art or fiction is AI unless someone left a prompt in or there are melted extremities. We need to be careful that in our rush to right a great wrong, like that woman I mentioned above, we don’t inflict emotional damage on human artists and writers. It hurts.

Please consider carefully before accusing someone of AI usage. As Mod R put it, mislabeling can hurt the very people we are trying to protect.

You’ve always been against paywalled content, why did you include exclusive bonus content in special editions?

… Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of my face when I read this question, or this blog post would be a lot more entertaining, heh. Most of the time I can understand how BDH arrived at something, but occasionally the logic doesn’t quite add up.

Here is where I think this came from:

In the past, people have repeatedly asked us why we don’t monetize that free fiction we post on the blog by going through Patreon or Substack. We stated – repeatedly – that as of right now, we do no have plans to implement the Patreon model.

Patreon is a service that charges readers monthly subscription for access. Patreon has been very helpful to many authors, and we may consider it in the future. However right now, it doesn’t work for us. We have readers on limited income, foreign readers, etc, for whom that cost might be prohibitive, and honestly charging $5 for monthly access would mean we have to write $5 worth of fiction every month. We have our hands full right now.

I think the statement above must’ve been misunderstood or misremembered, and someone concluded that we promised that all bonus fiction will be forever free. That’s incorrect.

We did not promise free bonus fiction. We said that we are not monetizing the blog. All novels we have published and will publish are “paywalled content.” You have to pay for them to read the story. They are exclusive to whoever is publishing them. They are not blog posts.

A special edition book is not a blog post, either. It is an actual book. It is edited, formatted, bound, and sold. For profit. People are paying premium prices for it, so they should get some bonus fiction. Sometimes it’s something that has been published before on our site but never appeared in print and sometimes it’s brand new stuff.

I understand that there is a bit of FOMO going on here. We choose bonus content carefully. Usually, it isn’t something that is crucial to enjoying the story. Most special editions also have a limited period of exclusivity, one to two years, typically. So all temporarily exclusive content will be available widely eventually but there is no guarantee that it will be free.

We hope to continue to release fun bonus stuff. Some of it will be posted on the blog. And some will be available for purchase. This is a business. We write to earn money.

We have given BDH a lot of extras over the years, so much so that some of it got caught up in the annual archiving and caused some distress. We will be releasing some of the bonus content in themed anthologies through our store in the near future at a steep discount, so if you want to throw us a couple of bucks to say thank you, we will be very happy to accept it. This way you will get to keep it, it won’t be archived, and it will be a lot cheaper than buying through a retailer.

::hug: I hope that clears things up. Dear Mod R, the next time you get a question regarding special editions, please send this link in response.

The post Special Edition FAQ first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Amazon lifted KU exclusivity for libraries. More information in this article from New Shelves.

My question is to the librarians among us. Will your libraries be taking advantage of this feature? Is this something useful or will this have no bearing on your library collections?

The post Kindle Unlimited and Libraries first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.