The Black Dagger Brotherhood (34 page)

All of the above can certainly help—but all of it is also a time suck. For me, the writing must come first, and I've had to take the guilt out of all the other things I could be doing on the promotion front. The bottom line is, you need to write the best book you can . . . then worry about how to promote it. There are a lot of times when I've had to make choices about what not to do because I've needed to write. It's hard, though, and I know a lot of authors who struggle with this issue. You have to do well in the marketplace if you're going to stay published—but there's a lot that we as authors don't have control over, and promo sometimes feels as if it is the only thing we can do to increase sales.

And now . . . for the single most important piece of advice I've ever been given.

The Golden Rule:
Do the best you can for where you are
. This deceptively simple concept transformed me, and it was a gift that came at just the right time: If you check out the acknowledgments in my books, you'll see that I always thank “the incomparable Suzanne Brockmann.” There's a good goddamn reason for it.

Let me paint a picture. Way back in July of 2006, I went to the RWA National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. At that point, Dark Lover had come out in September of 2005 and, against all odds and expectations, had hit the New York Times extended list three weeks after its release. Which made NO sense on a lot of levels. Then Lover Eternal was released in March 2006 and it did even better, staying on the extended list even longer and selling spectacularly well. Readers were starting to get a head of steam up about the Brothers, and my publisher was really excited and my agent was totally thrilled and Dark Lover was up for the RITA for best paranormal. . . .

And I was . . . about to have a nervous breakdown.

See, one year prior to all this, I'd assumed I was never going to be published again.

When I went to Atlanta, I was losing it. I had no clue why the Brothers appeared to be working in the marketplace, I had no control over whether they would continue to do well, and it was incredibly difficult to go from being myself (grotty little writer in her boxers and her slippers) to being J. R. Ward (this, like, wunderkind thing).

Now, I'd had the good fortune of meeting Suz Brockmann through the New England chapter of RWA a couple of years before, and was, like most people I knew, in awe of her and her success. I was also a total fangirl over her work, having read it for years.

Plus, she was (and is), as they say, wicked nice.

By some stroke of luck, Suz agreed to see me for a quick one-on-one at that RWA in Atlanta, and my mom and I met her in a quiet hidey-hole in the hotel's massive lobby. As we all sat down, I wanted to make a good impression and try to not show how clueless and terrified I was. And I was terrified. Good news is in some ways harder for me to deal with than bad news because I trust it less . . . and at the moment I truly was at the end of my rope from self-doubt and fear and disorientation.

So Suz and I are talking and she's giving me all this great business advice and everything . . . and in the back of my mind I'm thinking,
Don't lose it, don't embarrass yourself. . . .

I almost made it. Until she sniped me with kindness.

Toward the end of the meeting, Suz puts her hand in this little cloth bag she'd brought with her and takes out this book. Leaning forward, she says, all casual no-big-dealy, “Hey, I brought you an ARC of my new book.”

I looked down at what she was holding out to me. To this day, I remember precisely what the cover of it looked like: shiny white with a little red pattern, the title in bold with her name underneath.

I reached forward and carefully took the book.

The thing is, I've read Suz for years. She's like Elizabeth Lowell to me. She's the author I curled up with at night and read until my eyes went double from exhaustion . . . and I still kept going. She's the one who I can remember seeing at a conference with a hundred people standing in line just to meet her—for two hours straight. She's the gold standard for being kind and nice to readers. And she's the one who wrote the book that I read and then walked around my condo for hours in tears over because I was convinced I would never be as good as her on her worst day.

I fucking lost it. Took that damn ARC to my chest, curled around it, and cried all over myself.

In. Front. Of. Suz. Brockmann.

And my mother.

On the third floor of the lobby of that hotel in Atlanta . . . so it was in public.

I still cringe.

Suz, of course, handled it graciously, and listened as I blubbed on about the fact that I was fricking losing it and I didn't know if I could keep the quality of my writing up and I wasn't sure whether I would be able to meet the deadlines and I was worried about not doing the very best job that any author now or in the past or in the future could do with the opportunities I'd been given.

Suz let me go on and on, and when I'd worn myself out like a hamster on a spinning wheel, she looked at me and said she knew exactly what all that was like. She knew precisely how it was to want to be perfect and do a perfect job and somehow earn the success you'd been gifted with. The thing was, she said, as time passed she learned that if you shoot for absolute perfection, you're going to fail by definition—and that “perfect” simply cannot be the standard, because you will burn yourself out.

Doing the very best you can with where you're at is what matters.

When I was younger, particularly when I was doing the lawyer/corporate America thing, I nearly killed myself trying to be perfect, and I was on the same path back then with the writing. But Suz opened my eyes—and I figured what worked for her was good enough for me.

(Note: I asked her to read this part before this book went to print to make sure she was comfortable with being mentioned—and she said that the advice she gave me was a “pay it forward kind of thing”—it was first given to her by a wonderful Harlequin writer, Pat White, who got it from a book called
The Four Agreements
by Don Miguel Ruiz. Now I'm passing it along. Kind of cool, huh.)

So, look, on the publishing journey . . . don't beat yourself up. Do the best you can. Inevitably, real life is going to get in the way of the quality or the quantity of your writing . . . or your enthusiasm or your faith in your dream . . . or your success. Know this going in, and find yourself some good support, whether it's friends or other writers or your family or your dog—and remember that there are only guidelines, no hard-and-fast rules for anything, whether it's craft or business or success. I always temper whatever advice I give with the caveat that what's worked for me may not be right for someone else, and that everything is just an educated guess. And that's okay.

Because miracles happen.

Every day.

The thing is, if you don't put yourself out there, it makes it a lot harder for them to find you. So, please, take a chance and see where it leads. And be kind to yourself along the way. At the end of the day, all we can do is believe in ourselves and work hard . . . the rest is left to fate.

Oh, and be grateful.

I know I am.

A
lot of writers who are starting out on their journey to get published ask me questions about query letters (which are the correspondence you send out introducing you and your project to agents and/or editors) and proposals.
Writer's
Market has some good examples of query letters. Bottom line is keep it on one page, detail your project succinctly, but with enthusiasm, and list your writing credentials (such as any publishing credits you have, contests you've won, and professional memberships [like RWA]). Include also any relevant personal information that pertains to the particular material (i.e., you're a pediatric nurse who's writing about a heroine who's a pediatric nurse).

Proposals are generally the outline of your book, which is all about telling, not showing, and the first three chapters of the manuscript. What follows is the exact proposal I sent out for the Brotherhood through my agent (you can read the first three chapters in the book if you like). Right off the bat, I'm going to tell you it's way too long—so if you follow this example, I encourage you to do one full version for yourself, then pare it down for agents/editors. I made up the format myself—I'd never seen anyone else's proposals at that point and just focused on what I would want to know about the series if I were an editor. I will say that I think the layout works especially well with paranormals—you'll note I include the rules of the world as well as an overview of every major character and their role not only in the book, but in vampire society.

For me, it's cool to go back and read it through and see the changes in content. The vast, vast majority of the discrepancies that show up are because I misinterpreted what I saw, or because I saw more later which changed the implications of these original scenes. In a few cases, however, the differences came about because there were holes in what I was shown and I filled them in with stuff I made up. For example, when I first saw Phury and Z, I didn't know they were twins, didn't know much about them at all. Rather than leave the slate blank, I developed some background for them both that I thought was suitably dramatic. The truth came out though as I actually drafted the full manuscript.

And the same was true for the way
Dark
Lover ended. While I was outlining, the scenes stopped coming to me at the point that Wrath was in the clinic after he got shot. That just didn't seem like the right way to end the book, however, although it was all I had. I tried to come up with more—and I put in some things—except I sensed that wasn't what really happened. Fortunately the rest of the scenes downloaded during the writing, and the Brotherhood ended up together, still in Caldwell, at Darius's compound.

You will see that I made no mention of the Omega—that was because he wasn't clear to me. At least not until the drafting! Then I knew more than enough.

You'll also note, particularly in the introductory section, that I talk about my having “given” Wrath a critical weakness or “constructed” a situation to bring a woman into his life. This was, of course, not how things went down at all—but I was understandably wary of telling editors that these vampires were in my head, telling me what to do! I figured it was a good idea to present the story as though I was at least nominally in control of the material. Even if the truth was anything but that.

And I never did use
uta-shellan
in the series. I just went with
shellan.

Oh, and the anticipated word count?
Waaaaaaaaaaaaay
off on that one!

Last word: I've reproduced the file below right off my computer and it's not going to be copyedited as part of the editorial process of this insider's guide—what you see is exactly what went out to market, mistakes and all. The purpose is to show that I did my very best to make sure there were no errors, but there are and though that's not desirable, it still sold. This is not to encourage laziness—but part and parcel of the whole no-one's-perfect thing.

By J.R. Ward

Single Title, approx. 100,000 words

A well-constructed world of vampires can amplify the very best elements of romance: hot sex, high stakes, and soaring emotion can come together in a unique, contemporary setting. For this kind of book to work properly, the Rules of the World have to be firm and unyielding and these laws must be constructed to encourage acts of heroism and sacrifice for love. Contrasts are critical and have to play strongly through out the plot: strength vs. weakness; righteousness vs. evil; loyalty vs. betrayal; love vs. hatred; loss vs. communion; these essential forces must all be represented. The heroes need to be supermen facing foes of worthy stature. And the heroines need to have strong backbones and sharp intelligence.

And did I mention there has to be lots of fantastic sex over the course of steamy nights? Yeah, I guess that comes under the hot sex part.

In planning this book, I started with a warrior hero who needs to be healed by love. Wrath is a four hundred year old vampire, the last of his line, the only pure bred of his race left on earth. He has incredible physical strength, he's menacing and sexy, and he's blind. With respect to his disability, I thought it would be important to give him a critical weakness. His lack of sight forces him to rely on others and provides a good contrast to his otherwise physical invincibility. His poor vision does not hinder his ability to fight, however.

Wrath has been at war with members of a dark arts society of vampire hunters since he went through his transition. Vampires in this series are born without their race's characteristic features: fangs, super strength, longevity, photophobia, and the need for blood don't come to them until some time around their twenty-fifth birthday when they undergo an agonizing physical transformation. To survive, they don't drink from humans, they need a vampire of the opposite sex.