The Grand Dame of women’s fiction and romance, is my pic as my all time fav author. And I was lucky enough to meet her.
Author Archives: Peggy Jaeger
#fridayfive 2.23.2024
5 more tips for new authors. These are some more things I wish I’d known before I got my first publishing contact.
- plan for the long game. There’s a saying that everyone has one book in them. That would make you a one-and-done author. Don’t be a one-and-done author. Make this a serious career and plan for it like you would if it were a job out in the workforce.
- don’t write to market. Ever. Today’s hot vampire is tomorrow’s cliche. Today’s dark fantasy fae is tomorrow’s no-sales story. Write what you want to write, not what the market at the moment is telling you is hot.
- don’t overload yourself with social media. You don’t have to be everywhere, posting constantly. I learned this lesson early on when all I was doing was creating content and not creating stories. Pick a lane and make yourself an expert at it.
- never stop learning the craft. Take courses. Go to conferences. Read craft books. Never stop learning. Your writing will only mature and get better if you do.
- networking works. Join a writing group. Start locally and move to the national level. Many times it really isn’t what you know but who you’ve met that can give you a leg up in the business. Learn that lesson early in your career and it will truly help you.
Filed under #fridayfive
Throwback Thursday 2.22.2024
I’m looking back this year on old blogs that I wrote back in the day. This one is from August 2019 and featured the books from my I think are binge-worthy. Of course, I’ve had a bunch more published since then, lol. But these were IT at the time! Enjoy this little trip down blogging-lane.
This month on N.N. Light’s Book Heaven, it’s a celebration of Bingeworthy Books
I’m lucky enough to have my current Limitless Release DIRTY DAMSELS as one of those books being celebrated as bingeworthy – an honor, believe me!!!
I’m thrilled to have any book of mine thought of as one that has to be finished in one sitting! I have several favorite authors, who, when they release a new book, I devour immediately, unable to put it down until I know how everything resolves. And even though I read mainly romance, with the ending a guarantee of an HEA, an ending I KNOW is coming, I still can’t wait to finish the book.
SO, this got me to thinking ( you knew that was coming, didn’t you? Hee hee): what, exactly, must a book have in it to make it a binge-worthy read for me?
- A heroine that I can get behind who’s independent, strong-willed, compassionate, snarky – if she can be – and willing to stand up to people and situations because she believes in drawing a line in the sand when things are wrong. She will never be weak-willed, nasty or mean, and she will always, always, fight for the underdog. She doesn’t go along with the crowd like a lemming but forges her own path. And despite any troubles or conflicts that come her way, she always believes in herself and her capabilities. Oh, and I don’t care if she’s a size zero or a triple XL. All of Nora Roberts/JD Robb’s heroines are examples of women like this for me.
- A hero who doesn’t have to be conventionally tall, dark and handsome, but can have a face he fits into. He must be smart, he must be inherently kind ( even when he’s being an absolute prick), love the heroine as if his life depended on it, be honest and truthful ( even when he needs to lie for plot reasons, hee hee) it doesn’t hurt if he’s witty or snarky and his ability to remain calm in chaotic situations is a must.It also doesn’t hurt if he’s seen the bad parts of life and survived some trauma, either. Sandra Brown and Lisa Kleypas‘ heroes are examples of men like this.
- A plot that is believable and not contrived. Sarah Morgan and Tami Hoag are experts at this.
- Dialogue that flies off the page and makes me feel as if I’m listening to two people actually talking to one another. It takes a special kind of writer who can do this, seamlessly, and make you flip those pages one right after the other, anticipating what these two are going to say to one another and how they are going to say it. Jill Shalvis and Lauren Layne have this gift. In spades.
- Secondary characters I could see as my friends if they were to walk off the page. Again, nobody does this better than Nora in her JD Robb persona ( In my humble opinion.) The characters of Peabody, McNab, Summerset, Mavis, et al are all people I could see myself meeting for drinks and going to book club with!
- A setting I’d love to visit or live in. The way Janet Evanovich writes her scenes of New Jersey in the Stephanie Plum books is perfect for an example.
Each of the writers I mentioned above is a binge-read author for me. The moment they release new books I stop whatever it is I am doing, whether it’s cleaning the house or writing my own books, and readreadread until I am done.
My greatest, secret wish is that I am a binge-worthy author for a reader!!
get your copy here:
Hopefully, it will be a bingeworthy read for you!
Until next time ~ Peg
Filed under Writing
11 months…
Here’s what they don’t tell you happens when you lose your mother.
- the grief is, at times, physically debilitating to the point you can’t move, breathing is difficult, and you lose all mental focus.
2. you will reach for the phone too many times to ask your mom something, only to realize at the last moment she is no longer around to answer your question. Same goes for when you have something fun you want to share.
3. internal anger builds like a volcano, bubbling and churning and getting hotter until it needs to release and erupts into the air, covering you and everyone around you with the ash of incapacitating emotions.
4. things you never worried about before now become looming, potentially life-altering events, so much so, the worry begins to blind you to reality.
5. you will lose sleep ruminating on everything you ever said or did to make your mom angry and wish you could take back every single word.
6. you will have entire conversations in your head about past moments – both good and bad – with your mom.
7. Foods, smells, and certain phrases will trigger you into a downward spiral of emotions.
8. the holidays are awful.
9. Mother’s Day is soul-crushing.
10. you think you’ll never feel like a normal person again, or ever be able to get your joy back.
11. the worry and dread that you will lose another loved one, suddenly and without warning, is overwhelming.
I’ve gone through every single one of these phases so far, these past 11 months…some, multiple times during a single day.
Would I have been able to deal with them better had I known they would occur? Most likely, not. Sometimes, forewarned isn’t forearmed because you simply don’t know how you are going to react to a situation until it is upon you.
Grief is a living, breathing, all-consuming entity that takes over every aspect of your life. Tack on guilt to that and you’ve got the equivalent of an emotional tsunami.
There have been so many times in the past 11 months when I’ve gone through a gamut of emotions in a single day. Hell, a single hour. Rage. Horror. Guilt. Crying jags – really ugly ones. The kind no other human should witness you go through.
I’ve been mean to people when they ask how I’m doing and I just want to scream at them, “HOW THE F**K DO YOU THINK I’M DOING??!!”
I’ve pulled out of author and book-signing events at the last minute because I knew it was going to be too much for me and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself with my unscheduled crying.
I’ve pulled away from friends because I didn’t want anyone to ask me how I was doing because…see above.
I’ve had difficulty writing my happy, love-forever stories because I just can’t find the happy in me, or on the page, some days.
I’m astute enough of a health professional to know that the best friend of grief is depression and the two hold hands more often than not when one is dealing with loss. I’m also enough of a stubborn bull Taurus to not seek help but to attempt to resolve that depression on my own.
And right now the logical part of my brain is asking, “How’s that going for ya?”
11 months… unbelievable.
Filed under Writing
#goodreads giveaway announcement
Hey kids- popping in here on a Saturday to let you know that I’m running a Goodreads Giveaway from today until March 1st. for copies of my soon-to-be-released suspense/thriller RETRIBUTION.
6 teenage girls have been kidnapped, brutalized, and murdered in the Washington DC area and the FBI’s SPCD Unit – the Sexual Predators of Children Profilers – are nowhere close to finding the monster responsible. How are the victims chosen? How does the killer find them, contact them, lure them into his sick web? Questions the team has no answers for.
When a high-ranking US Senator’s daughter is the next victim, SPCD team leader, Tucker Petrie, is forced to call upon retired profiler — and his last partner — Kella O’Brien for help. Kella’s been out of the game for 10 years, but her expertise and insights into a serial killer’s mind are unparalleled. If anyone can discover who this madman is, it’s Kella.
But as the team rushes to prevent another young girl’s death, clues the killer leaves behind have Kella wondering if his endgame is all about…her.
You can enter the giveaway portal here, GIVEAWAY, for a chance to win.
I’d really appreciate it if you could add the book to your WANT TO READ list, too. Here’s where you’ll find that button if you’re not familiar with it:
The book releases on 4.23.2024 and the giveaway ends March 1. Good luck and even if you don’t win a copy, I hope you will preorder it. Early reviews and opinions of the story have been amazing and I’ll be sharing them soon.
Be well, and thanks, kids. ~ Peg
#fridayfive 2.16.2024
To go along with the myths from last week’s post, today I’m talking about 5 tips for new authors. Things I wish I had known before I ever published.
- Back everything up. To the cloud, to a different drive, a different computer, a thumb drive. No matter what it is you want to use, just back up your work. Every time you write. Every time.
- Don’t accept the first offer for publication that comes your way. I know you want to be a trad published author. But not every publishing house is the same and some won’t have your best interests at heart at all. research research research them before you submit, and if you receive an offer of publication. Hand in hand with that…
- get a lawyer to go over any contracts you have to sign.
- NEVER pay a publisher to have your book put in print. THEY incur the costs, not you. If they want $2000 upfront, run. Fast. As far away as you can.
- Start writing that second book while you’re shopping your first around. You want to build momentum and the only way to do that is to produce.
Filed under #fridayfive
#throwbackthursday 2.15.2024
This little gem is from June, 2017…
Recently on Facebook, I saw a post that was shared hundreds of times called THE DECLUTTER CHALLENGE, a 30-day challenge to get rid of clutter and stuff in your life. A random sampling of the days’ tasks includes: purging 2 kitchen cabinets (day 7); cleaning out your wallet (day 9) and your purse ( day 10); cleaning out the freezer ( day 18); donating unused toys ( day 25). The challenge ends on day thirty with the simple task of CLEAN. I guess what you clean is up to you, but I took it to mean, clean your house.
This challenge, naturally, got me to thinking about how I could declutter my writing. All writers have catch words or phrases they like to use, especially when writing dialogue. If we actually wrote how we spoke, the readers would be bored out of their gourds. For instance, would you seriously want to spend money on a book where every dialogue started like this:
#1. Hey, Bill. How are you?
#2. Fine, Jim. How are you?
#3. Can’t complain. How’s the family?
#4. Doing well. Yours?
#5. Same, same. So how, about those Red Sox?…
you get the idea. This is drivel. We may speak like this in real life, but in fiction, it’s a death knoll.
So that’s one way to declutter your work: check the dialogue. Can you get the idea across without all the folderol of “hi, how you doing’s?”
Another way I know I personally clutter up my writing is by using too many extraneous words to convey my thoughts. A quick search of my current work in progress yielded this:
the use of THAT – 89 times
the use of To her/to him/ for her/for him -56 times
the use of adverbs ( the bane of my writing existence) 91 times. EEK!
I really need to work on decluttering these words, don’t I! Hee hee
Other things that writers should declutter are phrases like “seemed to,” “tried to,” “began to.” Writing is much stronger and moves quicker when sentences are declarations and use an active tense.
For example: Her natural, spicy scent seemed to surround her body.
Better example: Her natural, spicy scent of ginger and peach, surrounded her.
Other words that can probably be eliminated a fair amount of time and still allow the sentence to convey what it needs to are:
move, push, reach, bring, pull, went, brought, press and came( to denote going or coming from somewhere)
It’s a good practice to utilize the SEARCH for options in your word processing program to nit pick and eliminate words you use excessively after your first draft is written. This will make the editing process more about the story line and capturing what you intended to say instead of needing to remove excess words.
Oh, about that 30-day Declutter challenge. yeah, I survived for three days. Then I was exhausted. Maybe I should develop a 12 month declutter challenge. You know…do one thing a month instead of 30 in 30 days? Thoughts? LOL
When I’m not decluttering my life and my writing, you can find me here:
Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triberr
Filed under #throwbackthursday
