How to use this Page

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling has debuted on Apple’s Top Paid iBooks in the U.S. this week at No. 2.

Apple has released its top selling books list for paid books from iBooks in the U.S. for week ending 6/23/14. Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich and All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner also made the list this week.

We’ve included Apple’s entire list after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Janet Evanovich has inked a deal with Random house four more novels in her Stephanie Plum series. She also sold four novels in a series co-authored with Lee Goldberg.

Peter Evanovich negotiated the two deals with Random House Publishing Group publisher Gina Centrello and Ballantine Bantam Dell publisher Libby McGuire and from, the author’s agent. In 2010, Evanovich signed with Ballantine Bantam Dell after working with St. Martin’s Press for 15 years.

Here’s more from the release: “The new Evanovich-Goldberg series will feature FBI agent Kate Winslow and international fugitive Danny Cole and will be a thrilling combination of crime, romance, and adventure. The first in the series is scheduled for publication in fall 2013. The next Plum novel, Notorious Nineteen, will be published this November 20, 2012 and just out now is Wicked Business, the second book in Evanovich’s No. 1 bestselling series starring Lizzy and Diesel.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Every week, I spelunk into the Writer’s Digest archives to find the wisest, funniest, or downright strangest moments from our 92 years of publication.

Today: Here’s to Janet Evanovich (and that we all might one day hit it as big as Janet Evanovich). The author of the bestselling Stephanie Plum series celebrates her birthday this Sunday, so I did some rooting around, and found our most recent interview with her. It’s from 2007, and you can read the full thing here.

As someone who begins to nod off at the thought of making giant, classic outlines (and instead prefers free-range, perhaps dangerously vague stream-of-consciousness explorations), I was intrigued by Evanovich’s more simplified “storyboard” process.

Here’s how to outline like Janet Evanovich—plus a frank, honest example of what some of it looks like, from one of her actual storyboards.

Evanovich: Storyboarding is a little more visual. When I’m plotting out a book, I use a storyboard—I’ll have maybe three lines across on the storyboard and just start working through the plot line. I always know where relationships will go, and how the book is going to end. When I storyboard, they’re just fragments of thoughts. I write in three acts like a movie, so I have my plot points up on the preliminary storyboard. Another board I keep is an action timeline. It’s a way of quickly referring to what happened a couple of scenes ago. The boards cover my office walls.

WD: IT’S MORE SCENE-ORIENTED THAN AN OUTLINE MIGHT BE, THEN?

Evanovich: Exactly. Because I know the relationships, and I already know my characters and how I’m going to reveal my characters to my readers—how I’m going to feed them information about that character. That stuff doesn’t have to be in my outline. What I have to outline is action and plot because I’m not particularly good at that.

Do you outline? How in depth do you go? Share your thoughts in the comments section. I’m building up another dangerously tall stack of review copies at my desk, and will pull the name of one random commenter next week to receive a few cool new writing  books.

Happy Friday.

(Also, some preliminary blog procrastination today has led me to discover how good Evanovich’s website is. Not a bad thing to check out if you’re looking to sharpen or start your own.)

–

Like what you read from WD online? Don’t miss an issue in print!

GalleyCat contributor Jeff Rivera interviewed bestselling novelist Jackie Collins for mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? feature.

Collins revealed her plans to self-publish an updated version of her 1979 novel, The Bitch, as an eBook. Collins (pictured, via) will continue working with her traditional publisher for other books.

Follow this link to read the whole interview. Here’s an excerpt: “If it ends up doing very well, I will continue to self-publish books probably because I’ve got a series of short stories that have never been published. And I’ve always said to my publisher, ‘I’d like to do a book of short stories.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, short stories don’t sell.’ And dealing with publishers, it might be fun just to deal with myself. I always say, ‘If you have faith in something, do it yourself.’”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Do negative reviews stop people from reading your books? Over at her blog, novelist Shiloh Walker disputed that claim in a passionate essay.

Check it out: “That negative review isn’t going to kill your career. Will it stop a few people from buying your book? Possibly–because that book may not be right for them. And FYI, one of the rants lately was that negative reviews discouraged people from reading … readers aren’t discouraged by ‘bad’ reviews. And guess what–that negative review may be the very thing that entices another reader to buy your book.”

We were so inspired by her work that we checked negative reviews of ten authors at Amazon–counting the massive amount of one-star reviews received by bestselling authors. Twilight topped the list with 669 one-star reviews. Read this list before you complain about your next bad review.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Do negative reviews stop people from reading your books? Over at her blog, novelist Shiloh Walker disputed that claim in a passionate essay.

Check it out: “That negative review isn’t going to kill your career. Will it stop a few people from buying your book? Possibly–because that book may not be right for them. And FYI, one of the rants lately was that negative reviews discouraged people from reading … readers aren’t discouraged by ‘bad’ reviews. And guess what–that negative review may be the very thing that entices another reader to buy your book.”

We were so inspired by her work that we checked negative reviews of ten authors at Amazon–counting the massive amount of one-star reviews received by bestselling authors. Twilight topped the list with 669 one-star reviews. Read this list before you complain about your next bad review.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Authors Janet Evanovich and Kathryn Stockett have each sold more than a million Kindle books, joining what Amazon has termed the “Kindle Million Club.”

The authors join the likes of Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly and John Locke, who have also passed the million mark in sales of their eBooks in the Kindle Store. According to the release, Stockett is the first debut novelist to reach this milestone.

Evanovich’s latest novel Smokin’ Seventeen has spent more than 100 days on the Kindle Best Seller list. Stockett’s novel, The Help, has been No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list and was just adapted into a film.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Random House Publishing Group will relaunch its Loveswept imprint as a “digital-exclusive imprint,” reviving a romance line that originated at Bantam Books in the 1980s. Explore more than 900 titles from the original line at RomanceWiki.

The original Loveswept imprint featured early work by writers like Sandra Brown, Janet Evanovich and Tami Hoag. Random House will also revive the original tagline: “Love stories you’ll never forget by authors you’ll always remember.” The books will also be released in a trans-Atlantic partnership with Random House Group U.K.’s Transworld Publishers division.

Here’s more about the line: “The 2011 Loveswept publishing program will be a digital-exclusive imprint, comprised of original, newly written e-books, as well as beloved Ballantine Bantam Dell romances and classic Loveswept titles. The program launches with eight titles in August, and continues with one new e-only release monthly in the fall.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Forbes named her one of the top 10 bestselling authors of the year. She’s rumored to have signed a $50 million deal with Ballantine Bantam Dell. And in my in-depth interview with her in at mediabistro.com, Janet Evanovich discusses another revealing fact. She is looking for co-authors, three or four of them, in fact.

Just as James Patterson partnered with lesser known co-authors, Evanovich is now looking to do the same. With the success of her last partnership with Charlotte Hughes, this could be the opportunity of a lifetime.

“There are tons of really good writers out there,” Evanovich says, “but for one reason or another, they just have not had the support that allowed them to build audiences.”

In today’s interview, she discusses exactly what type of co-authors she is looking for and how you can go about submitting yourself for review.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Janet Evanovich

Publishers Weekly ran an article in last week’s magazine that posed the question, “Is any author worth $50 million?” This comes as a response to the recent news that mega-bestseller Janet Evanovich has announced she is leaving St. Martins Press and signed a four-book deal with Random House. Random House reported in their press release that 75 million copies of Janet’s 33 novels have sold worldwide, so she certainly seems worth the investment. Her first book with Random House’s Bantam Ballantine Dell division will be released mid-2011. Two of the books will be Stephanie Plum novels and the other two novels will be in the author’s newer “Unmentionable” series.

Katherine Heigl is set to star in ‘One for the Money’, the first in Janet Evanovich’s wildly popular Stephanie Plum series. According to Variety, Reese Witherspoon was previously attached.

KATHRYNN DENNIS is the author of Dark Rider and Shadow Rider. The Romance Times Reviews recently awarded Shadow Rider 4 Stars! and writes: "The color, vibrancy, and excitement of the Middle Ages allows Dennis to create a memorable tale of two people whose destiny is tied to a mystical colt. Dennis tells her story with passion, drama, and a love of animals that will enthrall readers."

Horses take center stage in her stories. I asked her if pets are a hinderance or a help to plotting? (naturally!)

Pets and animals have a lot to contribute to plot—I’m not talking about Old Yeller, or Black Beauty, where the animal is the plot, but rather books where the animal plays a role, though not so prominantly. Animals can be developed as stand alone characters that take action and thus move the plot in a particular direction, or they can add a layer of character to their owner’s personality. How, exactly, do they do that, you ask? The literature is rich with information on the human-animal bond and why people choose the pets they do. It’s called pet-owner profiling. Pets and animals in the story help the reader get into the head of the human characters. There are good studies which suggest pets are an extension of their owners—in looks and in behavior. People tend to chose pets that look like them, much like they choose a human life-partner. Take a look at Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, and Jake Gyllenhaal with their dogs. It’s hard to miss the physical similarities. Pet owners also tend to choose pets with personality traits like their own. Turns out you can learn a lot about a person’s character just by knowing what kind of pet they own. Here’s what the seminal research by Kidd and Kidd (1980) tells us about pet-owner personality traits:

• Cat lovers are high in autonomy and low in dominance and nurturing.

• Dog-loving men are high in dominance and aggression. Dog-loving women are high in dominance, too, but low in aggression.

• Horse lovers in general are assertive, introspective, and self-concerned, but limited in cooperativeness, nurturing, and warm human relationships. Male horse-lovers are aggressive, dominant, and less expressive in general. Female horse-lovers avoided aggression and are easy going.

• Turtle lovers are hard-working, reliable, goal-oriented, and see the world as lawful.

• Snake lovers are unconventional, informal, novelty seeking, and unpredictable.

• Bird lovers are contented, courteous, expressive, social, and altruistic.

Pet owners in general are considered to be more nurturing and low in autonomy, no matter what kind of pet they own. I’ve noticed dog and cat-loving characters enrich a fair number of romance novels (for an early example, think of Georgette Heyer’s Ulysses in Arabella) and the personality of a male horse-owner certainly has the makings of a historical romance hero—think cowboys, knights, and men who were rich enough to fox hunt. Dominant men. Aggressive, alpha males who had trouble expressing themselves (until they met the heroine, of course).
.
I keep thinking about Rex, the hamster in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. Rex embodies the character of a bounty-hunting woman who keeps a hamster for a pet. She’s high in autonomy and not especially nurturing. Neither is Rex. Both make me laugh.
I’ve not seen many romances where a character owns a nontraditional pet (fish, lizards, or pocket pets like Rex), but I’m sure they are out there.

There are also some interesting reads on the pathological condition known as pet hoarding. Profiles of hoarders suggest the condition is a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder and affected people usually come from chaotic, unstable homes. Just google pet hoarding and you’ll turn up a fair number of psych reviews on the topic.

If you’d like to dig deeper into pet-owner profiling, check out Why We Love the Dogs We Do: How to Find the Dog That Matches Your Personality by Stanley Coren (Simon and Schuster; ISBN 978-0684855028). There are some interesting chapters in there about dogs (breeds) for introverts and extroverts, dominant people, not-so-dominant people, trusting, or controlling people, and an in-depth examination of the dogs owned by various leaders and famous personalities--what their dog-ownership reveals about their non-public personality.

If you understand your character, the character will drive the plot. Not the other way around (a pitfall for writers). So pets can enrich the plot, especially if they are used as character enhancers. They are only a hindrance if they serve no purpose. I love an author who can weave a pet into a plotline or incorporate a pet or an animal to enlighten my understanding of the owner’s character. As a reader, can you recall pets that helped move a story along, or helped you better understand the character of their owner?

I’ll give a free copy of SHADOW RIDER to a randomly chosen commenter!

Thank you, Martha, for inviting me to blog!

For more about Kathrynn Dennis, please visit for a plot interview where we asked Kathrynn about her writing process, with an emphasis on plot.

(NOTE: I had the great honor of working with Kathryn on her book's early development.)