Got up at 4 AM to work since Kaziel wouldn't let me sleep any longer. Made
scones for hubby and kids, but Boo boycotted. He wanted his pancakes so while
the scones baked, I made his fave and heated his apple cider. What did I get out
of it? A cup of nonfat yogurt and half the banana. Oh well.



BTW a lot of folks have asked how I find time to cook. It comes from being a
short order cook and caterer. Very few things I make are hard (there are some
such as my Old English casserole that is time consuming or BBQ) but most from
start to finish only take half an hour which is faster than take out. And a lot
healthier. The hardest and longest part of the crepes I made last night was
pulling the pastry out of the package. Seriously :)



Now it's back to work for me :)

 

 

 

Hugs!

What a busy day. To begin with, the storms from last night tore up the cemetery so we had to rebuild a couple of tombstones and reposition lights. It also knocked out about half of the fog machines and killed them. They ended up not working right.

Had to pick up Boo first thing in the morning from a sleepover. His best friend's birthday is Halloween so they had the party last night instead of tonight.

Roo had a spend over at our house so we had a houseful of teenage boys. Bug was up to his usual antics. Alethea came over and hubby forgot to tell his parents were coming. So we had a major houseful of people all the way around.

Lee and I went to find more tombstones while hubby and Howard tried to salvage the yard.

Then dinner was our usual Halloween smorgasbord. We had our mummy dogs, halloween pasta, wormy beans, halloween cake, German potato salad, ravioli, and lots of other good things.

Then I had to rush to get dressed while kids dressed. Roo had a party to go to and the others went trick or treating with friends. Lee and I handed out candy while hubby went with Boo and inlaws. We heard many a kid be afraid of coming up the walkway. It was very, very kewl.

Erin brought his kids by and I got great hugs from his adorable ones. They all looked awesome.

Then after it was over, we had our annual Halloween cocoa and sat chatting before the fire. We had a blast.

Now it's time to watch a scary movie :)

Good night everyone. Hope you had a great day. If you'd like to see the photos of the house and other fun things, you can visit the MySpace or Facebook pages, or as always, our site http://sherrilynkenyon.com/photos.php?album_id=28

Hugs!

A question that comes up fairly regularly through emails and at signings is what determines the length of a book? Why are some the size of Acheron and then others, such as Fury’s story, novellas?

It reminds me of the old southern saying, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog.” When I write a book, I have absolutely no idea how long it’ll be at the onset and I’m often taken by surprise.

Case in point, I thought the Warrior would be one of those books that would come in really long. But as I wrote it, it ended up being the normal 102,000 words or 410 pages. A NY pubbed novel comes in on average (depending on genre) 250-400 pages (55,000-100,000 words). That’s what the publishers consider a “novel.” And for new writers, they really don’t want you going on over the 100,000 word limit. Novellas or short stories for anthologies come in usually around 100 pages or 20,000 words. In anthologies with a lot of authors, the stories are smaller such as Zeke’s story in Blood Lite or Thomas in Elemental. And then there are “gift” books that are pubbed 50,000-60,000 words (200-240 pages).

That being said, I’ve had plenty of novellas that I started to write that ended up being way too long. One Silent Night was only supposed to be 200 pages as a gift-sized book, and it ended up being over 400 (Same with Upon the Midnight Clear which came in over 300 pages instead of its 200). The Dream Hunter was supposed to be in an anthology, but by chapter two, I realized I had too much story in it for 100 pages and so it was moved to a novel. When I started Fury’s and Simon’s books, I realized they couldn’t carry a whole novel by themselves. Too much of their backstory was already out there and had I tried to fill 400+ pages, it would have been redundant and boring (two things I try never to be). I would much rather a book come in at a normal length than fill it full of unnecessary or even worse, boring details just to make it longer.

Then we have those gems such as Fang, Talon, Acheron, Nykyrian and Syn’s books which come out really, really long. Good news for the fans, but bad news for my writing schedule as that usually causes other books such as Darkness Within to be moved as I wrote too far past a deadline for the book to be brought out on time. It’s kind of a double-edged sword for all of us.

The good news is, I never, ever rush a book to be done. My philosophy is simple. I’d much rather have a book moved than bring one out and it not be the absolute best I can make it. You guys might not like the story for whatever reason, but I can always look you in the eye and say honestly, “I did my absolute best on this and I gave it my all. It was what I thought it should be, it was the length the characters told me it should be, and I am thrilled with it.”

Another question that comes up a lot and is tied to this one is the price and format of the books. Why are some hardcovers and some more than others?

As I’ve said many times in the past, I have no control over this at all. No writer does. When SMP announced Dark Side of the Moon would be hardcover, I panicked so badly that I refused to turn it in because I thought no one would pay a hardback price for one of my books. I tried everything to keep the series in mm, but I had to turn the book in due to my contract and it came out as a hardcover in spite of all my objections. I really was terrified.

I never know what price will be charged for any of my books, audiobooks, ebooks, etc. until I seem them in the store. All of that is determined by the publisher without any author consultation. I often have books and stories come out that I don’t even know about such as the mm reissue of Blood Lite which I didn’t know was out until Kat brought it to a booksigning for me to sign. Publishers don’t always remember to tell us things like that :D

I’ve been told that some formats are determined by market such as the NP/NE trade that was done to get the books into specialty stores. I’ve no idea why the BAD books were done as trades. I don’t know why some anthologies are trades and some aren’t either. I think the marketing and sales depts determine that, but I don’t know for sure as I’ve been told different things by different houses at different times. Again, they never consult us on these matters. I think it would stun most readers at how little control an author has over most aspects of their books and careers.

We don’t even have final say on what goes into the book. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made corrections on the galley pass and handed it in, only to have those corrections not make it into the final book. Bad Attitude, first paragraph is a mistake I corrected twice before publication and yet there it is, in print, with the mistake I fixed because the production editor has final say on whether or not they accept my corrections or the copy-editor’s. There are many of those in the original Paradise City and Daemon’s Angel. Frustrating to say the least. I personally hate when I make a mistake, but I really hate to be held accountable for something someone else made wrong after I had it right.

Unfortunately, that’s the nature of the business. If you find typos in the books, please let us know so that we can alert the publisher. Send them to Kim at officialdh@gmail.com Thanks!

This brings me to the next oft asked question: Can you come to my town for a signing? I would LOVE to. Unfortunately, I’m only one person and with the exception of the BAD Agency books, I write my books by myself which takes a lot of time :) And again I have no control over where they send me. I do make suggestions based on fan requests, but my publishers don’t really listen. Case in point, I asked to be sent to Minneapolis and they sent me to Ann Arbor. I’ve been trying for years to get to Savannah or Charleston and they sent me to Raleigh-Durham. Montreal– made that request many, many times, Calgary too, but they keep sending me to Toronto. I’m actually very lucky that they let me come to Canada at all as I’ve been told by many other authors that it’s hard to get to Canada for a tour.

What I’ve been told is that it is extremely expensive to put an author on tour (given the going rate on plane tix, I have no reason to doubt this is true- and no I don’t fly first class unless I use my points to upgrade). So publishers pick cities where they can get the most people and sell the most books to help offset the cost of the tour which makes sense since publishing is a business and the publisher doesn’t want to go broke sending authors on the road. In this economy, publishers have seriously cut back on tours altogether. This is why they usually only tour for the hardback releases and not the paperbacks and why they send authors to major cities.

And the last question that you guys keep writing in everywhere: Hollywood. No, we haven’t sold any rights to Hollywood at this time. We’ve had some interest, but it hasn’t gone any further than that. Sorry. It’s absolutely not up to me. I would love to have my books as a series or movie, but so far it’s nothing more than a dream. However, if any of you know Sam Raimi, please feel free to pass along my name to him ;)

Hugs!

Whew what a blur the last month has been. Between DragonCon, book launch, Kcon, deadlines, edits, manga, etc. I haven’t had five minutes to even think straight. And we’re still not done. I have New Mexico and Thanksgiving trip with family to think about.

But first the blog I’ve been promising. And let me say a massive THANK YOU to everyone who came out the signings and for Kcon. You guys looked awesome. There are a ton of pix we have to post, but I have Carl and Bryan working on something for the site and they don’t have the time right yet to get them uploaded. I’m hoping to have more news on the site front next week. We have 2 more segments of the new site that need to be launch, one of which includes reintegrating the social network portion of Menyon back to the main site. Bryan just upgraded the RAM on the server... again. We think this will stabilize it, but every time we think that, we get more of you at the site and need to upgrade again :) I’m not complaining. I’m very grateful to have all of you. You’re just keeping my web guys on their toes :)

We’re also working on new tshirts for the League and the new Get Thee Behind Me, Bitches slogan. The GTBMB buttons are in and they will go out in the next fan club packet. The Sanctuary ornaments are in too and they will go out in the Dec mailing to the fan club.

There is just so much news and I’m working on the next newsletter to get everyone updated. Oh and one question that has come up– SMP truncated the BON excerpt so you can no longer read the first 9 chapters online. I had no idea they were going to do that. If you see anywhere we have it on the site, please email Kim or Carl officialdh@gmail.com and let them know so we can remove it.

Speaking of, the BOF commercial is even BETTER than the one for BON. I can’t wait for all of you to see it. It’s H-O-T.

Carl has also suggested that we have a new section added to the newsletter called HOLLYWOOD UPDATE since that’s the #1 question we’re asked. Of course the answer is, nothing yet LOL. We might do that.

We’ve also heard that there’s a rumor that there will be no K-Con next year. This isn’t true, but we are altering it a bit and it will have to be moved out of Oct since Comic Con NY has moved to the weekend we usually reserve for K-Con. We’re looking at doing it in August and we are trying to get the cost of it way down for attendees. I’ll have more details as we get them. So please stay tuned.

As always, there are tons and tons of things in the works, but for now, I need to get my little booty back to work :) For those who want daily snippets, please remember to see me on Twitter http://twitter.com/_sanctuary

Hugs!