Jacqueline C. Thomas - Romance Novelist

The Lake Michigan Affair

NaNoWriMo 2019 Eve

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To most people October 31st. is celebrated for Halloween. For the writers in your life this day is known as NaNoWriMo Eve. This magical day is the eve of one of the largest collective novel-writing programs to kick off in the United States. NaNoWriMo, or Nano as I call it, stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is you dedicate one month to write a novel, at least fifty-thousand words. When my husband and I met, he was the prolific writer in our relationship. I dreaded November because I know I became a “book widow,” as he feverishly typed away in his home office. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

After I wrote my first book, a couple of years back, my husband challenged me to do Nano. I believe it went something like this, “you’re a writer now, I bet you have another book in you. Do you think you can do it?” Never one to back down to a challenge, I committed to completing my first Nano ever. I wrote The Lake Michigan Affair in three weeks. At the time I was working for a local organization that threw a massive Christmas celebration for the town and I knew that I would not have the bandwidth to organize that event and write. I had the idea, a devout Catholic woman who falls in love with the new Catholic Bishop of Chicago, but little else. I set off and working under pressure, the story grew before me. I look back at it in awe. Two years later after several re-writes and copy edits, I am seeing representation for The Lake Michigan Affair. It amazes me, I still can’t believe I had that story in me.

Last year for Nano, I wrote another novel. It was the story of friends who work together. They go through a horrific tragedy and are brought together in grief. There’s only one catch, she’s married, he isn’t. What drew me to this story is that the characters had always had a “thing” for each other, an attraction that neither had ever acted upon until this turning point in both of their lives. What I loved about this project is the main character Emily, is flawed, she breaks Gabe, her love interest’s heart, not once but twice! This was a challenge to write and still make her likeable. I started this book with an idea of unrequited love between two friends that blossoms into something more, spurred on by tragedy.

There is one scene in this book that I especially love. It is where Emily has hurt Gabe badly, and she comes to him to reconcile, not even realizing that is why she is there. Gabe has just lost his mother and is back home to sign over the keys for the sale of his childhood home. She comes over to be supportive of Gabe and they end up sleeping together. I love this scene because it is so intimate. They end up getting stuck at Gabe’s childhood due to a snowstorm. Together they build a fire in the fireplace in the living room to stay warm when the power goes out. However, they have no trouble staying warm, making love to each other all night. I love this scene!

This year as I gear up for another Nano, once again I have my idea in mind. I feel like I have my main character loosely configured and her love interest or interests. This time there is no marital affair, other matters of the heart are afoot though. I am so excited to be able to start Nano this year. I love this program so much. Life is busy, and finding time to write is a struggle but for me, knowing there is a deadline, that the first draft should be done by the end of the month is exhilarating. What excites me, even more, is the story that is yet to come. I guess I am easily entertained because I am always in awe when I complete a work, that I came up with that story.

The one thing I am not looking forward to is the halfway point. It is usually at the end of the first act, or before the climax that I have a crisis of confidence and am tempted to scrap the entire thing. I have done this with everything I have ever written, with the exception of Come Sail Away with Me. Here’s hoping that this year’s doubts are manageable and I won’t give up. My personal motto has always been one word, “relentless.” Be relentless in goals, that means not giving up and telling myself, even if the book turns out to be garbage, I didn’t give up. I have never finished a book and thought it was trash, by the time I got to the end. Sure, it might need a massive amount of work, but the story is there. So if I can give one piece of advice for those of you who are doing Nano this year it would be this, DON’T GIVE UP… KEEP GOING!

See you all at the end of the month with our books in hand!

 

If you’d like to learn more about NaNoWriMo, click here.

What’s Next for McKinley Park

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I am assuming, hopefully that if you choose to read this blog post that you read some or all of McKinley Park. If my assumption is correct, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart! I was overwhelmed in the best possible way by all of the constructive feedback I received while I was writing it and afterwards. Siting here “finished” with it, the flaws glare at me. It makes me think of my elementary school art teacher, Mr. Brignoni. He was an older Italian man who professed that the first mark you made on the paper was what was intended all along. I can see him now with his salt and pepper moustache, saying, “no, Jackie, that is how it was meant to be.”

While writing is an artistic expression, Mr. Brignoni’s ethos does not fit here. Revisions and rewrites are part of the process. I wrote and published McKinley Park pretty much as I went along, except for the last few chapters which were written in one sitting. The work as it stands now is rough, not just grammatically but developmentally as well. I am so grateful to those who reached out along the way to help me correct as I went, especially you Terry. To a certain extent, publishing a book a chapter at a time has its challenges, and as McKinley Park sits now, they are visible.

So what’s next? Well, last week I came across a tweet from the romance book reviewer, Jamie Green form the New York Times. She put a call out for indie authors who had published online to submit their books for possible review. I shared the tweet out right away to those fellow romance authors who had romance books out there. I didn’t think about it for myself. The Lake Michigan Affair, for which I am seeking representation is not self-published, I prefer to go the traditional route with it. Driving home Friday afternoon, an idea struck. What if I had McKinley Park copyedited and did a full revisional rewrite, self published it as a full book, and submitted it?

I really thought about this, much to my husband’s annoyance. I had always heard that if you were seeking the traditional publishing route that self-publishing was a no go. I don’t want to do anything to hurt my chances for The Lake Michigan Affair and the other works I have unpublished. My husband, who’s opinion I value, advised against it. The next day I asked my sister who is an author and an indie-published pro, what she thought of the idea. She said, “Do It!” Hmmm, complete opposite opinions. So what does any self-respecting Y’er do, ask the internet of course? So I posed the question to the Twitter Writing Community, publish or don’t. I was surprised that overwhelming responses that said to do it. I still continued to think about it.

With NanoWriMo approaching, which I have done for the past three years and love, and the thought of a rewrite for McKinley Park, the writing plate feels a bit heavy. So right now I am thinking about how to juggle a new project and McKinley Park. Or Nano or do I focus on my rewrite only? If I did a rewrite, I would most likely pull McKinley Park down from my site but that is also a lot of content gone off of the site. Hmmmm, more questions. I am not sure what the right answer is here. I know it is a long shot that McKinley park would be chosen to be reviewed, but on the miracle that it was, making its debut in the New York Times would be a life-changing moment for me. Like my sister said, “what do you have to lose? It’s the New York Times, Jack, your dream, go for it!”

So that is where this sits as of now. I am still unsure of taking the chance. What would you do reader? Let me know in the comments below.

When the Words Aren’t There

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(Cheers to the words!)

 

The first book I ever wrote, I dreamt. I mulled over the idea of writing it into a book for a day or two, then sat down and did it. I wrote the first book in a week, or at least the first full draft that week. The whole experience was lifechanging for me, as cliche as that sounds, it is true. I knew writing was something that I would do for the rest of my life. I am very blessed not to have a shortage of creative people in my life, and I remember them talking from time to time how creativity wasn’t flowing, and their process was stilted. I remember thinking to myself how ridiculous this sounded… Then karma laughed.

From the first book on, I have never stopped writing. The words have always flowed out of me pretty easily; the inspiration was there. Sure, I’ve had difficulties with sections of every piece I have ever written, but these were manageable hurdles. I am the sort of person that when I set my mind to something and commit, that’s it, I’m not done until I have accomplished what I set out to. “Arse in chair,” is what we say in our house when it comes to writing, meaning sit your butt in the chair and just write, no excuses. Sounds simple enough.. again karma laughed.

Last May, I ran into some health issues, and the scare of a lifetime thus far, yet I kept writing, it saw me through. I poured all of my nervous energy into McKinley Park, letting myself fall into Rachel and Ben’s world. Writing was a haven and comfort as I nervously waited for test results. I was also raising my two children, one who has special needs, working a full-time and sometimes demanding job, and completing my Master’s degree in public relations, but no matter what, I kept writing. My test results came back, and although I was in the clear, I still needed significant surgery, life-altering surgery.

I don’t know anyone who likes surgery, but I hate it. The anaesthesia makes me violently ill for days, but there was no way around it. So the surgery was scheduled; meanwhile my most challenging course of my graduate career kicked off at the same time, a statistics course disguised as a research course. I am not a numbers person; I am a letters woman. I knew with surgery and this course, which I was not going to defer, that I was going to have to put writing on hold for a while. I finished up McKinley Park and stopped writing. It was the weirdest sensation not to be building a world for two people to fall in love in. There was this nagging feeling like I was forgetting something. I suppress the urge to write, knowing that school, work, and healing were going to take all of the bandwidth that I had.

I made it through the surgery with relative ease, and I am grateful for it. I am usually a complications magnet, but things went smoothly. I was told that it was going to be painful, but I had, had two kids by C-section, one of which was 10lbs! I knew pain; I wasn’t scared. This was a whole other ball game, folks. I couldn’t write even if I wanted to. As the days at home dragged on, I wanted to write, but I knew I couldn’t, between being too tired, or hopped up on pain pill, and not in the good slightly unstable author way. (That’s a joke.) Then while I was home healing, the statistics course went from a difficulty setting of 6 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10. Have you ever tried to compute statistics while on heavy pain medication? Let me tell you; it is an experience, one that I never want to repeat.

Slowly my body got stronger, and I returned to work. The statistics course from hell ended and the next course in my graduate program started. I thought to myself that I was finally in a place where I could start writing again. McKinley Park was just about done being published; it felt like the right time to start something new. I was ready…. but where had the words gone? Where was the inspiration that had once come so easily? Reassuring myself that this would take time, I didn’t push, something in me knew not to push. I know I have mentioned it before, but I am not a patient woman. I try to be, but I know I am not. Inspiration was not happening fast enough for me.

Finally, I had a thread of an idea, and I sat down and started writing, only to pitter out two chapters in. It was forced; the words weren’t flowing as they had before. I let myself stop, something I never do. I knew this wasn’t the right idea for right now; I could always come back to it. I found myself missing writing, but not able to write creatively. One of my biggest pet peeves are those who are creative and drone on about process, I am the “arse in chair,” girl, yet here I was. Now what? If you miss it, then put your arse in the chair and start writing.

While I was preparing for and recovering from surgery, I also put my querying efforts for The Lake Michigan Affair on hold. I knew I did not have the bandwidth to give the querying process the time it required. I told myself to take the time not writing to focus my efforts here instead. That did not go well either. Deep down, I secretly wondered if I had broken this magical gift that had allowed me to write so effortlessly before. Had I suppressed the desire to write into complete dormancy?

The inspiration was not there, to accompany the words, even though I engaged in things that I knew would spark my creativity. Everything felt flat. I continued to push, to no avail. I was not one of the writers I had previously rolled my eyes at, as karma’s laughter was now a full side-aching, knee-slapping, tears down the face roar of laughter. I was not pleased.

Then the other night as I was laying in bed, I had the most surreal experience. It was almost like the characters I had written were all suddenly there, fresh, at the top of my mind. It felt like a hug from friends. There was something about it that was comforting and reassuring. I started to think about each of them and their stories. All of the other feelings about writing fell away, and it felt freeing. I fell asleep that night feeling like I had sat in my grandmother’s kitchen, that warm feeling of being loved. The next morning, still thinking about the experience from the night before I sat back and thought about the stories I had created.

My first book has a great story, but the writing was poor. It was the first thing I had ever written creatively at that point. I had planned to rewrite it last spring in California, on the coast where it takes place, but life had other plans. I told myself I would not revise it until I was on the coast. I wanted to be where the story took place. I opened the book in Scrivner and started picking at the first chapter, making corrections and reworking parts of it. Before I knew it, I was well into chapter 3. Those first characters I had ever created were there, welcoming me back. In the back of my head, I kept telling myself to stop; this was not when and where this project was supposed to get rewritten.

Finally, last night as I sat and rewrote/ edited further into the book, I told that inner voice to shut the hell up. Now is the time to rewrite this book, I knew  I needed the familiar, needed to see that even in my first attempt to write, I was capable. As I write this now, I am itching to dig back in and continue working on the book, the desire is there, and it feels great. Maybe this book is like writing with training-wheels until I am ready and steady enough to create from scratch again. Whatever it is, I am incredibly grateful and going with it.

The Irony of a Query Letter

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(Like the perfect cocktail, the ingredients for the perfect query letter must be just right)

 

When I wrote The Lake Michigan Affair, the book I am currently querying, I didn’t set out to write a book that I would want to publish. I had written my first book, ever and had loved the process. My husband encouraged me to do it again, to write another book. I wrote The Lake Michigan Affair during NaNoWriMo. I had a loose idea of the story and the first sentence when I started. I knew Rosalie, the main character really well, her voice was strong.

When I finished the book, I walked away in awe of what I had created. I never thought I would write a book, let alone two, up to that point, and in a month no less! I edited the book and handed it out to my two trusted beta readers. I braced myself, just because I thought it was good, didn’t mean they would. They both came back with constructive criticism, a sign of a true beta reader, but overall said I needed to publish the book, it was more than good enough.

I have spent the past two years, editing and revising, making it as perfect as I possibly can to go out in the wide world. Finally, after much prodding, I decided to try to publish the book. I knew I wanted to go the traditional route. Leave it to me to take the more difficult route, not that any publishing route is easy. I began to read any resource I could get my hands on to start crafting my query letter.

The query letter is the letter that you send to a potential agent about the book you have created and who you are. Basically, it is the sales pitch for your book, the first of many. I started back in February, naively thinking I had written a great letter. I sent the letter out in earnest. The first draft of the letter held most of the components needed, in a loose order as they should have been put. If I am being honest, it was a trainwreck.

Here is where the irony comes in, I am working on a Master’s in Public Relations, I know how to study and learn, I write marketing pieces every day, yet I cannot seem to get this letter correct. I was commenting to my husband my distress at not getting that magical cocktail that is the query letter correct, and my deepest fear that my query letter is destroying any real chance that the book will even get looked at.

What is even more ironic is not being able to sell my own work in a letter. I write marketing pieces almost daily.  I know that I really only have to get it right once! If an agent asks for the entire book or more pages, I know I have got the “query cocktail” right. Now, I am speaking completely out of my depth here, but I am hoping to only have to ever query an agent once. I have several books finished, and I do not want to go through this process for each one, I would like to be a wealth of work for my agent. This idea may be completely absurd, maybe each book has to go through the process each time.

As painful as it is, I could handle the work not being good enough but my fear is that the agents aren’t even getting past the letter. I continue to scour the internet for advice, tips, tricks. I am not a quitter and I know that the best things in life are earned. I am earning this, hopefully, each letter revision at a time. I feel like that famous line from, Game of Thrones, “You know nothing, John Snow,” but more like “You know nothing Jackie Thomas.”

There are no shortcuts to where I want to be, well maybe there are a few, but they are not in my reach. I can’t buy my way in, nor am I the child of any celebrity, so I am going to have to keep plugging away, head up, shoulders back and onward.

Where Inspiration Comes From

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After reading a great novel, or seeing a brilliant film, I am often left with the question of, where did the inspiration for this come from?” I’ve always had the thought of inspiration as something that struck, like lightning but in fact, sometimes inspiration is slow, and closer resembles influence rather than inspiration.  Shakespeare said all of the world is a stage. I could not agree with him more.

I am often in awe of where inspiration and influence show up in my writing, sometimes it is from the most mundane or random things. I am always in awe to see where things pop back up. For instance, a few years back I watched a British documentary about one of the grand hotels in London. I found it interesting but didn’t think any more about it after I watched it. Earlier this year, I wrote a romantic novel set in part in a grand, old hotel, the type of hotel that is an institution, and a cultural landmark. It wasn’t until I was deep into writing the work that, I needed to visualize the hotel and the images from the documentary came to mind. I did not set the book in that exact hotel, in fact, the hotel in the book is completely fictitious, but I could see the influence of the hotel in the documentary.

I really enjoy television shows and documentaries that take people out of their comfort zone, to see how they or other’s react. I think this is the writer’s equivalent of gold! I am also in graduate school, furthering my study of communication. There are so many social nuances within a culture that it makes inspiration and influence robust. I think this is why I enjoy the study of communications so much because, in a way, we are writing our own stories, and when one acts or reacts out of the norm, it is interesting. It is how and what we communicate that makes writing so much fun at times. I love to put myself in my character’s shoes and logically look at what their reaction should be.

I have always had an overactive imagination. As a kid, I always thought it was a bad thing. I won’t lie, sometimes it got me in trouble. As an adult I love my overactive imagination, it is my happy place. My childhood was a non-traditional and although it was difficult, at this point in my life I would not trade it. I have come to realize that all of those difficult situations not only made me the person I am today but have given great inspiration for writing.

For instance, the book that I am currently querying, the main character, Rosalie, is trapped in a life where religion dictates her life. A large part of my childhood was spent in church, against my will for the most part, where religion dictated what was done or not done. I grew up in a similar atmosphere to the one Rosalie lives in, where a wife is expected to be a wife and a mother, and that is her main function in life. Luckily for me, I saw past that and rejected that idea. It caused quite a stir when I finally did step away. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that it is wrong to have the goal of being a wife or a mother, just as long as the woman has free will and choice in the situation. My point here is, that I would have never thought that I would’ve written a book about a romance within a particular religion and the implications that has. While the denomination of religion is different from Rosalie’s from the one I grew up in, it translates very well. Inspiration and influence really do come from the most random places sometimes.

When I go through something difficult, I often say to myself to observe the situation and the players involved, it might be useful later for writing. I try to look for the silver lining in all things, so a bad situation can possibly serve a purpose, rather than being just a rotten time. When you live with a writer, nothing is safe. We are observational people and experiences good or bad are recorded. I love to see how random things pop up in my writing. I often wonder when I am reading other’s works and it makes me think of something if that is where their influence came from.

What influences you? Tell me in the comments.

Now, this is the hard part..

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When my husband and I first moved in together he was writing fiction regularly. I was a “book widow,” one who had lost their partner to the craft of creative writing. We were both working two jobs and in college. Every spare moment he had was spent writing. I was happy for him and annoyed at the same time. Then the editing process began and that took twice as much attention. Once his work was complete then came the job of querying. He queried via snail mail, this was old school, now everything is done online.

Years later I began the process myself. My first book came flying out of me, I couldn’t type fast enough. Jon was supportive and brought copious mugs of tea and coffee, and later wine. As I’ve moved on, and began other creative works, the ease of writing is not always there. I had to work at writing, sometimes it was easy and the words just flowed and other times it is work. Then there is the task of finding a decent amount of time to write, not to mention crippling doubt at times and the dreaded writer’s block. The more I began to write, the more I realized it wasn’t so easy, it is work. Writing isn’t always fun, it is having to push through those times where it doesn’t feel like it is going well, that makes it work.

I naively remember finishing the first work that I thought might be good enough to actually try and publish. Jon, said to me, that the book needed an edit like I had never edited a work before. I had the book printed at my local printer and got my red pen out to edit. Editing was difficult! I laughed at myself for thinking writing was the difficult part. I went through my book word by word with my pen, marking typos and misspellings, plot holes and pulling out things that did not belong. Once the first edit was done, I did it all over again with a different color pen to make sure that I agreed with my initial notes and edits.

With my marked-up manuscript, I sat down in front of the computer. Holy cow, if I thought writing was hard and editing was difficult, then making the corrections in the work was formidable. I once again laughed at myself thinking, you thought writing was hard, and then editing on a hard copy was rough, making the edits is the real hard part. Once I got all of the edits in, I had the book reprinted and repeated the process all over again. Finally, after two to three passes at this, I felt the book was in a solid enough spot where if I wanted to I could send it out to the world for querying.

I wrote a book doing Nano-Wri-Mo, after my husband and sister put me up to it. The work that came out of that month turned out to be strong enough to go through the editing process. I have been editing this book for well over a year. At my husband’s urging, I began to think about seriously shopping it out to agents. I dug into what it would take to find an agent, and once again laughed at myself, thinking writing and editing was the most difficult part of the process. At least with writing and editing, I was in the driver’s seat.

I began to research how to query, how to write the pitch, where to find these amazing people, literary agents with their magical ability to bring a book to market. There are a million sources to find this information, some legit and other sources were as slimy and as sleazy as they come. Researching how to query took so much time, that there was little time to actually write. Then I had to work on my pitch letter. Writing my pitch letter was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

Now I am in the process of querying my book The Lake Michigan Affair. Each time I fill out a query form or send off an email with my pitch, I literally have a wave of nausea. I have just started this process and it is nervewracking. I have received a few rejections so far and that is a strange mix of emotion too, relief, sadness and determination to keep going.

Someday, when I do get an agent and move through the next steps of the process in bringing work to market I wonder if the trend of “this is the hard part” will begin all over again. Hopefully, time will tell!