Karen McCullough

Those of you who know me, know that two years ago yesterday was an incredibly worrisome day. On September 29, 2011, my daughter Sarah was 29 weeks pregnant and on bed rest due to pre-eclampsia. (For you Downton Abbey fans, it’s what killed Lady Sybil.) On September 30th, her pre-eclampsia progressed rapidly from moderate to severe. By that evening, she was in the hospital having an emergency C-section. William Michael Quodvultdeus Gerdon was born that evening. He was 2 pounds 10 ounces and was whisked off to the NICU, where he would stay for the next seven weeks.

He was very, very lucky and very blessed to get an incredible level of care.

With God’s blessings and the great care of the NICU at Memorial Hospital, South Bend, Indiana, he has developed into a normal, happy, healthy child.

Here he is on his first birthday, September 30th, 2012:

And now he’s now a happy, healthy two years old:

Plus, he has a little brother: Cassian, now almost five months old.

https://kmccullough.com/kblog/yes-its-been-a-while-and-heres-why/

I don’t read as much as I used to, mostly due to lack of time, but I like to keep my Kindle well stocked with material for vacations or those nights when sleep eludes me. My e-reader carries a number of old favorite books, comfort reads for when I need it, new books from favorite authors, and stories from authors completely new to me. I’m not particular about whether a novel is published by a major publisher, a small one, or self published. I base my buying decisions on whether the blurb intrigues me and the opening grabs me.

One thing I have learned from hard experience, though. If I’m not familiar with the author, I always download the sample text. If there isn’t a sample available, I don’t buy it. There are plenty of other intriguing stories. If the sample is well written and grabs my attention, I buy.

One thing that will guarantee I’ll pass on a story is poor grammar or usage. I may not be typical in this because I’m a former editor myself, but repeated errors just totally bounce me out of a story.

I’m actually still surprised at the number of sample chapters I’ve downloaded where writers who call themselves authors don’t know basic punctuation and spelling. Even if someone isn’t really confident about the mechanics, this is so easy to fix there’s really no excuse for it. Hire someone to edit your manuscript before you put it out for public consumption. Sadly, though, I’ve also found that most writers who haven’t mastered basic grammar generally don’t do well in other facets of storytelling either. Even a great story idea won’t work if the creator doesn’t have the tools to tell it well.

Just a few days ago I got burned again, even though I downloaded sample chapters before I bought the book. The first few chapters of this story, which I won’t identify, were nicely done – clean, vivid, and appealing. But then the writing deteriorated. Initially good punctuation began to fade into run on sentences, missing commas, and other grammatical ills. A few misused words showed up, then the writing became vaguer, sentences became awkward, and telling took over from showing.

I recognized the symptoms of a phenomenon I’ve heard agents and editors talk about: manuscripts where the first few chapters have been workshopped and critiqued into smooth, clean storytelling, but the rest of the story hasn’t enjoyed the same attention. Worse yet, this story had a terrific beginning that fizzled into a welter of unnecessary flashbacks, repetitive story events, and shallow characterization. A good idea drowned in the author’s inability to plot in ways that would show how her characters wrestled with their problems and grew and learned from what they experienced. Another draft or two could have turned this blah effort into a gem.

It’s sad that in the rush to self publish, too many authors are taking shortcuts that will likely short circuit their careers rather than take the time and make the effort to craft a product that will have readers clamoring for their next story.

This breaks my heart:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/barbara-mertz-writer-better-known-as-barbara-michaels-and-elizabeth-peters-dies-at-85/2013/08/08/e92bb442-004b-11e3-9a3e-916de805f65d_story.html

Her books are among my very favorites, and she’s been one of the biggest influences on my own writing.

Ammie, Come Home, written under the Barbara Michaels pseudonym, is still one of the scariest novels I’ve ever read, and probably still my favorite. Among my other favorites are Into the Darkness, Witch, Wait for What Will Come, Prince of Darkness, and all of the Vicki Bliss novels, which she published as Elizabeth Peters.

Her stories had an almost perfect mix of adventure, mystery, suspense, romance and humor. Her characters were intelligent and acted like it. A lot of the Barbara Michaels books had paranormal elements, sometimes things that stretched credulity, but she could make them believable by the way she based them in historical fact and a sharply, observed, detailed setting.

RIP, Barbara Mertz. You will be missed, but you’ve left us a wonderful legacy of special stories.

I’ve been writing for almost thirty years now and I’ve been published for twenty of those. I write mystery, romantic suspense, paranormal, fantasy, romance, and science fiction. Frequently I combine several genres in the same book. Nearly all my books are described with more than a single genre label. A GIFT FOR MURDER is mystery with romantic elements, while A QUESTION OF FIRE is romantic suspense and WIZARD’S BRIDGE is romantic fantasy.

I recently outdid myself for crossing genres with my original ebook, THE WIZARD’S SHIELD, which (I swear!) has elements of mystery, fantasy, suspense, adventure, romance, and possibly science fiction.

It’s fun to let my imagination take me wherever it wants to go, but it’s not a great strategy for career success.

Most people who build a following do so by writing a series of similar books or at least books in the same genre. Think Stephen King, Janet Evanovich, J.K. Rowling, etc. (Some are even accused of writing the same book over and over, but that’s a different blog post.) Most authors find success only when they are known for doing a particular kind of book or series. Not necessarily the same book, but similar to each other in some important ways. Publishers and fans expect it.

So I knew that writing so many different sorts of books would practically guarantee I’d never go far in the publishing world. And yet I’ve done it anyway.

I had to.

I don’t know if I have a short attention span or get bored easily, but I find it drains me to do two books in a row in the same genre. I keep wanting to do something new and different with each new story I start. I need a new challenge, a fresh direction.

It’s not like I’ve ever made a decision to write in multiple genres. It’s just worked out that way. I can only write the stories my creative brain comes up with.

Apparently I have a wide-ranging imagination, and one that refuses to be contained in the same box time after time.

When it came down to making a choice between writing what needed to be written and writing what might give me a chance for a more successful career, I chose the path of writing what I had to write.

Smashwords is having their Summer/Winter sale during the month of July, and my books are included in the promotion!

Free books:

Programmed for Danger  (Coupon code: SW100)

The Night Prowlers (Coupon code: SW100)

Books that are half off:

A Gift for Murder (Just $2.00 with coupon code: SSW50)

A Question of Fire (Just $2.00 with coupon code: SSW50)

The Wizard’s Shield (Just $2.00 with coupon code: SSW50)