I have been talking about what makes something a horror story elsewhere and considered IA stories as examples of stories with terrifying monsters, life threatening and intense scenarios, but they just are not horror. I’m trying to articulate why, and I would be interested in Ilona’s take. What makes something a horror story? Will Hugh’s next story be a horror story?
NI
A horror story’s primary function is to terrify. Horror strives to put the reader into a state of fear or helplessness. You should walk away from it deeply disturbed and relieved to be back to your normal life.
When Gordon was in boot camp, I was by myself with two small children in a ramshackle house. For some reason I thought it would be a great idea to read a collection of Dean Koontz’s horror short stories. I was in a fragile state of mind and that collection had a severe effect on my mental wellbeing. I haven’t touched that book since. Well written horror should leave its mark.
Another example. I once read a very short story, and I don’t recall who the author is or what the title is, but the entire story was the author confronting this slimy, algae-dripping, small, nasty creature that crawled of the swamp. I didn’t even finish. I was like, “I’m out.”
Our work isn’t horror, because its primary function is to leave you happy. Our narrative can be very scary and gory, but there is always a happy ending, and such terrifying moments are not the focus of the narrative. The focus is usually on characters, their interactions, the conflicts related to their values, and their search for personal happiness.
When coming up with storylines or plot twist how far out/ ahead are you? Same book? One book? Two books out?
It depends on the book. Right now we are 4 books out on planning. But mostly, we don’t plan that far ahead. It’s just turned out that way with this project.
I’ve noticed that you take time and space to show characters dealing with the after effects of trauma/ ptsd. (Kate, Penelope, Sean…) You show other characters reacting suppotively and with care. Is this simply a by-product of your characters dealing with war/battle type experiences, or do you have experience/ know people who have experiences which have informed your writing/ characters?
Victoria
It’s personal experience and things we’ve seen our friends, coworkers, and family struggle with. I’m not going to talk about it in detail, because these are private issues, but to give you the mildest example. I was never in the military, but because I was Gordon’s dependent, we lived on post at Fort Sill. Fort Sill is the home of field artillery. They shell the hell out of neighboring wilderness. It becomes a soundtrack to daily life.
Not that long ago I was doing something in the kitchen, and I heard a very familiar boom followed by two smaller booms. I stopped what I was doing and thought, “Why is there artillery fire?”
It wasn’t artillery fire. A transformer blew up down the street. It’s been almost 10 years, and I went straight to Howitzers.
It stopped me cold and I had a moment of anxiety. How much worse would it have been if in my mind, the artillery fire was associated with me needing to run for my life, or hunkering down, or watching people I know die?
Sending people to war damages them. Some people like combat and the new version of themselves; some people are permanently altered by it in a terrible way; some people are able to compartmentalize that part of themselves, and some people take the Rogan route where they come back and separate themselves from the society for a while until they can cope with civilian life. And for those who are struggling with the aftermath, the symptoms are not always the “classic” PTSD.
For every conflict our nation is involved in, we need to consider whether the price of doing that to our soldiers is worth it.
Looking forward to all of it. One thing I’m wondering: if you’re now self-publishing, there’s no publisher to find nor contract to negotiate, so what does your agent do for you?
Robert
In traditional publishing, the role of literary agents is clearly defined. They serve as an author’s business representative. They submit their clients’ work to publishers, they vet the contracts, they negotiate advances and royalties, and generally vigorously advocate on the author’s behalf. For that they collect a flat fee of 15%.
For self-publishing, each literary agency’s scope of services is different. Some agencies choose to not be involved with it, some offer bare minimum, and others, like NYLA, are “full-service.”
I know a traditional and beloved author, who is enjoying a very successful career completely unagented. She parted ways with her former agent, and since she mostly works with only one publisher, she is comfortable sticking to the same terms. In self-publishing, an agent seems even less necessary. Why have one, right? There is no publisher.
It’s not that cut and dry. A good agent doesn’t just handle things project by project. They steer the author’s career, and the need for that business partnership doesn’t go away when the traditional publisher is out of the equation. Also, self-publishing generates a significant amount of extra work that has nothing to do with writing.
Here are some of the things our agency does:
- cover design, ebook, print, and audio
- book summaries for retailers
- editorial input
- formatting ebooks
- formatting print
- upload to various retailers in ebook
- upload to print distributors
- maintenance (correction of typos, etc. in published works)
- finding and vetting artists
- negotiating contracts with artists
- finding and vetting audio readers
- quality control of audio recordings
- negotiating contracts with audio readers
- selecting audio distributors and negotiating terms
- finding and vetting editors
- actively seeking and screening promotional opportunities
- negotiating contracts with collector edition publishers
- marketing to foreign publishers through the foreign agency partners
- maintaining brag sheets*
- generating 1099s and reporting taxes
- monitoring compliance with US tax laws via filing foreign exemption forms
- career planning (how many units sold for each title, where, when, what panned out, what didn’t, which series would be advantageous to continue, etc.)
*Brag sheet is a record of the author’s professional accomplishments and sales, listing website statistics, units sold, foreign rights sold, bestseller list placement, awards, and so on.
Some of it we could do ourselves. But some of it we couldn’t. For example, the post about Hoopla which you read on our blog happened because the distributor that NYLA found for the audiobooks happened to be running a promotional ad there. We didn’t know what Hoopla was until that point. We didn’t know we could distribute to it.
Other things that out poor agency handles.
Reviews Glitch
They researched and fixed it.
Copyright Infringement on Amazon
They have their own Amazon rep, so it was taken down in record time.
GA extras, from agent
As you can see, House Andrews generates a massive amount of work. We also generate income, don’t get me wrong, but in the end keeping the self-publishing machine rolling is very much a team effort. Once I’m done writing this, I’m going to go right back to our current project instead of sorting through mountain of admin matters and I think we all benefit from this arrangement.
Thank you for all the time that you take to answer questions! It’s really appreciated!
I love getting to learn more about the publishing industry and other things related to writing. ????
+1!!
+1 always interesting.
Ditto
Same. So interesting seeing how it works.
Heheh, that’s funny about Hoopla. I bought Kate and Edge books in paperback, but I tried Hidden Legacy and all the other series on Hoopla first (ebooks, not audio). Now I am slowly collecting all the books so I can have my own copies….
+1 fascinating to learn about an industry I would know nothing about otherwise
ditto!
any chance that you could/would show your brag sheet? That sounds interesting.
On the horror side, it can be very broad, the original REH Conan stories are a horror variant. you can see the Lovecraftian connections (they were friends).
You can see some of the brag sheet in the About section https://ilona-andrews.com/about/
It hasn’t been updated since 2020 so the numbers are quite a bit better now *quietly adds update to the To Do List*.
We won’t tell Mod R. ????
The BDH always has my back :*
The becoming a writer srory was awesome. I think that making the brag sheet (and it’s becoming a writer story) would make a great blog, for all the people who will miss it here because they don’t do the comments. My friend who I turned on to the site, gets her e mail blog on her phone which doesn’t have an “open in browser” function, so she’s never seen (and enjoyed) the comments, and so will also miss out on this brag sheet link. I will tell her about it and she will undoubtedly be SO jealous. Hint, hint Thanks Mod R, you’re the BEST!
Stephen King says in his nonfiction Danse Macabre that horror is the thing that “sticks in the grates of your mind.” I’ve always thought that was spot on.
Stephen King is who my mind goes to whenever I hear “Horror”. If that genre “leaves a mark” then he is the king. When I was (much) younger, I was reading a short story of his…and a teenage character did something completely horrific to a cat…and I’ve never read another word by him. I was, indeed, horrified.
I agree with the comment on Stephen King. Many years ago I read Pet Cemetery and found I did not like how it freaked me out so I never read anymore of his novels. What can I say, I guess I’m just a wimp.
Exactly me too – I was told a synopsis of this movie and that night had a nightmare that my poor cat died and was reincarnated as a tiger and chased me.
I have a friend who is a decade out from his military service. He was in a jeep that got bombed. I think he was on only survivor. Also, he was a medic so he saw lots of bad stuff. He was helping me with fencing the other day, I use a paslode impulse nailer {yay, drives thru season oak boards but it’s loud!}. He has used this gun nailer before, he knew I had it to put up boards as he was putting in post. Still, he got real upset cause he wasn’t facing me and didn’t realize I was going to use it at the moment. I didn’t realize I needed to warn him. It was very sad.
I avoid all horror but especially films. At the first hint of a suspense tune I’m behind the cushion.
I read The Entrance by Gerald Durrell as a teenager and covered the mirror in my room for months after. Never again.
Yep. To this day, I cannot watch „Pet Sematary“. (shudder)
+1 You and me both.
As soon as I saw there was a baby involved, I just could not. I also stopped reading The Dead Zone, when I saw where that was going. It was just too heartbreaking for me at the time and I do not feel the need to pick it up and confirm it. Finally, I cannot read ‘Salem’s Lot after sundown. Just cannot.
I read “Pet Sematary” (a lot of) years ago. Didin’t even try to see the movie…
Ooops, “Didn’t”, not “Didin’t”…
I’m a huge Gerald Durrell fan and had no idea he had written any horror. I will have to look it up, though I may or may not read it.
Yes, I loved his animal/zoo books.
“The Portrait” by Nikolai Gogol did the same thing to me in college. I’ve avoided his other works since
I live on Fort Sill right now and they’ve been firing all day. Haha. I know what you mean with that one. Fun stuff. ????
I’m so happy the agent question got asked! I’m an indie author and I had that exact same question the other day. Thank you for answering that!
When I was a kid, my big brother had to read out loud „Masque of the Red Death“ by Edgar Allen Poe in school. He test-read to my mother; I listened too. I am 7,5 years younger than him – it scared me out of my mind…
(Now waiting for the international shop sobI can get my BDH tshirt with „guts of my enemies“.. 😉 j
Thank you for answering our questions! I loved UF and PNR because it gives us those monsters with happy endings, without terrifying myself.
Living on a military base does give you some weird coping mechanisms. We got used to the sounds of artillery, live fire and airplanes at all hours. But when we lived on Okinawa my mom called frantic with worry about North Korean missles reaching us. She saw a news story. Would we know what it sounds like since we always have aircraft flying over head? At that point I said yes sure just to calm her, but I lost about a week of sleep realising nope I sure wouldnt…Later I learned we have sirens but yeah its when you stop to think you realise its not normal.
So interesting! Thanks for the insight into self publishing. Wow. It may be more lucrative, but still there’s an immense amount of work that would destroy writing time. Glad you’ve got such a great agent to work with!
I was contemplating what makes horror horror while reading some of T Kingfisher’s horror a bit ago. I don’t usually read horror unless it’s an author I really like. I’m rarely scared by it – and this is clearly a me problem. (Reading The Hollow Places, I was mostly drawn in by the emotional arc of the woman dealing with her divorce and reinventing herself. The horror bit? I mean, it was an entertaining backdrop…)
What stood out for me – and I don’t know how general this is – is that in many other genres I read, when you confront the unknown, you try to figure it out and come to some kind of accommodation with it. In horror, it largely stays unknown – you might get a glimpse of it, but you don’t come to understand it in a general sense. And you count yourself lucky to escape with your life.
Clearly, I’m a genre outsider here – does this fit? Does it fall apart?
That makes sense to me. Storytelling is mainly a chew toy for the pattern recognition machine that is our brain. As Ilona says (paraphrasing here), the author’s job is to stress people out and then make them happy by solving the stress. In real life things happen one after the other, in fiction stuff happens *because* of other stuff. With horror, the disruption remains and the pattern either never gets revealed or is the “wrong” one, not intended to bring satisfaction but challenge the recognition system itself.
Great way to explain this. Thanks, as always.
I’ve been wondering about all the auxiliary needs around self publishing; it seems very time consuming, and out of a creative’s wheelhouse. Thanks for explaining, and I’m glad you have people you can trust!
Thank you for sharing these insights! I appreciate your compassion for those who’ve experienced PTSD. It makes your writing more real and relatable.
Thank you very much for the thoughtful and generous response to my question.
I appreciate how you show that even when war is necessary to protect other characters, it still takes a toll.
Representation of metal health variations helps a lot of people.
I’m not a horror fan in any sense of the word every now and then I’ll get a wild hair and want to watch it or read it then I’m up for hours because my mind is like let’s pull all the scary stuff out but that is very rare or when my husband who loves horror can get me to join in with him. I remember reading a book a long time ago can’t even remember the name of it but it was about a detective that mind linked with a serial killer she was investigating I couldn’t finish it because it scared me out of my mind even though I know it’s not possible my mind still made me think it could happen.
I live in Lawton, right next to Ft Sill! Holy moly! You were so close me at one point, and I’m so freaking happy about that! Is that weird? Oh… moving on!
PTSD… living near a army base, and having a family of Army veterans as well as a couple currently active duty, this is SERIOUSLY close to home for me. As I told a ‘Karen’ coworker, who asked me, annoyingly a few years back “ what do YOU know about it?”
It’s like depression, or cancer… not everyone experiences the same symptoms. My Great-uncle that had been labeled ‘crazy’, and to my mild mannered nephew that just goes QUIET and withdraws…there’s so many different ways they suffer.
Thank you for writing about Walter the ware wolf…it made me think of my uncle. So glad you understand he wasn’t CRAZY.
I remember reading “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson in school at a fairly young age. It was required reading and I was thoroughly horrified. Many years later when I read “The Hunger Games” that was the first thing to come to mind and I could not enjoy it.
I admit it, I love happy endings.
The Lottery messed me up! Also that short story where the young girl remembers life on earth when the sun came out and the other kids bullied her bc they only knew the rain. So they locked her up when the sun actually did come out on this alien world …and she missed it. All these years later…still traumatized…I never could get into Hunger Games either..
I remember that story about the young girl and the rain and sun… I felt so bad (and mad!)… who was the author again? Or the name of the story?
The story takes place on Venus: “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury. He wrote some creepy stuff.
“All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury.
Thank you!
I think that story was called “All Summer in a Day”, and it haunts me to this day.
We did the stage version of “The Lottery” in high school for one act contest competition. This was the mid 1970’s. It’s been on the banned list for probably twenty-five years now, for content reasons.
Okay, that one creeped me out.
But I also kind of loved it, and banning it is awful.
I have lived near Ft. Bragg most of my life. I wouldn’t know what to do if there weren’t window rattling booms now and again.
Dean Koontz scared the absolute mess out of me. I’ve been reading his books since I was 14. I forget which one it was, but I was an adult. It messed me up so badly. that I quit reading his novels. Still, he’s an awesome author.
I’m glad I’m not the only one traumatized by Mr Koontz. I once read Intensity and have never been the same bc it seemed like something that could actually happen. Chance circumstance stories haunt me.
I read Grimm’s Fairy tales when I was really young. The version with Sweetheart Roland in it. I read Snow White and Cinderella and Sweetheart Roland. The part where the stepsisters cut off their toes and heel to get the glass slipper to fit in Cinderella made me shudder.
At one time there was a version of Grimm’s Fairy tales that didn’t have Sweetheart Roland on it. My mom use to say it was the watered down version.
After that horror books and movies don’t bother me.
This was one big cultural shock when I discussed Grimm fairy tales with my UK friends. None of them remembered the dripping blood in the shoe part, nor the wolf’s stomach being cut and stuffed with rocks and sewed back, nor any other of the gory and ghostly details that were definitely present in the Eastern European translations. I don’t even know what they did will all that anxiety-free childhood time of not worrying about their arms being cut off 😀
I don’t remember where but I read an English translation of Fairy Tales that was more true to the Bros Grimm versions. Yep, more blood and violent endings. That does not bother me too much because they are stories (even though some may have some historical basis – look up Catholics saints and martyrs sometime).
I can read and watch certain types of horror, but not all. I think the truer to real life the less I want to indulge. I know things can go wrong with permanent and unhappy results. I can sit through Phantasm and Night of the Living Dead and enjoy Cabin in the Woods, but things like gang violence or death by fire are all big nopes for me.
I once went to visit a friend who had just had surgery in the hospital. She was a little out of it, so I said I could read to her. What I had with me is a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and a bunch of Kazakh epic songs I’d been translating.
Apparently in both cases, the gore level was a little too high for a brain coming off of anesthetic!
I read horror stories every so often. Stephen King’s The Stand is one of my favorite books. I read his short story Boogyman, I think was the title. It was the only story I have ever read that scared me. I couldn’t have my closet door in my room open during the night for weeks. Creepy…..
I tried horror when I was a teenager, maybe earlier. It didn’t traumatize me, but I didn’t like it, and haven’t read any since. Then, (too?) many years later, I read GRRM’s “Unsound Variations”. I am still not sure if that story was intended to be horror, but it sure horrified me. I have not read a word of GRRM since.
Thinking about it, I have read some Poe since I was a teenager. Somehow I don’t find his horror that horrifying.
One of my favorite explanations comes from a tumblr post on the subject:
Fear is knowing that a werewolf is hunting you. Terror is when you see it and it charges at you. Horror is realizing that your feet are stuck to the floor.
I liked your comment about PTSD and ppl who have served. One of the problems is ppl stereotype PTSD, like the stereotype of the Vietnam vets we saw, the Rambos or worse. The thing is,almost everyone I believe suffers from PTSD if they serve in combat,the level and the way it plays out differs of course. To me that is the dangerous part because like an iceberg, a lot is below the surface.
I never served but my father did, he was a WWII eto vet as part of an anti tank battalion under Patton. After he died, his younger brother wrote a letter and he mentioned how much my dad had changed, nightmares,waking up in a sweat,at times going into uncharacteristic rages.
I saw it growing up,only understood it later. If there was a sudden noise, like a busboy crashing dishes, or if one of us kids bounced a ball loudly in the house, he would go into a rage. He also would fly off the handle at really stupid things, like leaving a mess someplace, that didn’t fit.
It obviously affects your views, he hated the military,what he saw as its waste, &was a rare WWII vet that thought Vietnam was a self inflicted disaster ( he didn’t hate the ppl who served, he was angry on their behalf as much as anything).
Me personally I never understood horror in any form, enough horror in real life. IA books are not horror, they can be brutal ( and funny at the same time), but there is a big heart at the center of it.
Your agent seems with their weight in Applebee’s appetizers *smile*
“The thing is, almost everyone I believe suffers from PTSD if they serve in combat, the level and the way it plays out differs of course.”
There’s been a movement to drop the D for Disorder and just label it Post Traumatic Stress, because most of it is in fact absolutely normal and predictable reactions to trauma. And it occurs in settings other than combat as well; any type of trauma produces stress. Combat trauma is better-recognized than most because it affects vast numbers of people simultaneously, so there’s a ton of data on it.
There’s a huge range of responses, many of which wouldn’t meet the clinical definitions of PTSD (which are more about how severe and what kind of a negative impact it all is having on your life.) I support people accepting the responses as normal… and also normalizing that there is a big range of responses, and two people who experienced the same thing might react very differently to it.
I came out of a lot of family trauma. And it certainly affected me – but darn, in terms of the common literary tropes, my career choices should have been junkie, prostitute, or serial killer. (I’m a bioroboticist with a doctorate in neurobiology. And I study martial arts, grow herbs, foster cats, and live in the woods not far from the university. I like my life a lot.)
At the end of one fairly strange day, I ended up taking a late night flight sitting next to a psychologist who worked with trauma survivors (mostly first responders, and people from the queer community). We talked about the neurobiology of trauma and memory, and she talked a bunch about the research into what makes people more and less likely to have major reactions to traumatic events… which gets a bunch into the research into resilience. I’d really like to see more discussion about how much of a range of responses there are to trauma. And more portrayals of people who have gotten considerably better over time, as well.
That’s where individual temperament interacts with environment. The chaotic, dysfunctional home life in my family of origin was not easy on any of us, but the temperamentally introverted responded differently to seven people in a smallish house than the extroverted ones did. And the scientific types responded to the irrational behavior differently than the liberal arts ones, and so forth. The ones who got systematic support appropriate to their individual issues earlier in life had different outcomes. IMO the tendency of human beings to assume their own individual experience is universal, and therefore that of others may be blithely disregarded, is what prevents solving most societal problems.
I was in a severe car accident a year ago. I was explaining to someone recently how much I dislike driving now that Im older. They pointed out that it’may not be age, but likely PTSD from the accident. Didn’t occur to me, but it makes so much sense. Anything traumatic has the ability to cause repercussions (ripper cushions) for an untold time.
Something occurred to my add ridden brain while watching the wonderful Magic Tides podcast. Why does nobody in Kate’s world seem to use solar/hydro/geothermal energy as a power source? I know it’s a total non-sequiter, but wouldn’t magic allow such simple basic sources, like a waterwheel or windmill, work even when magic was up?
Maybe they do, and it’s just not on Kate’s radar while she’s dealing with Impala Worms and whatnot.
As always, I enjoy reading about the publishing industry. I hope you and Gordon will share how well Magic Tides did, though I already suspect the rest of the BDH was as eager as I was to read it!
Not a fan of horror and, for me, fictional horror is uninteresting. Reality is bad enough, or the reflection of reality, when it is well written, and I don’t want it in my head.
When I was a teenager my family watched “World at War” together. I couldn’t even be in the room. It didn’t matter that it was 30 years past. All I could think was that those were real people really dying under horrible circumstances. And I still can’t read anything holocaust related.
Horror to me has psychological menace. If it makes you not t want to go to sleep because you might have nightmares, then that’s horror.
I once read Desperation by Stephen King. That was in 2015. I still regret it until now, because there are times I would remember scenes in there and it really was terrifying. I have burned the book in an effort to exorcise the fear it put in me, but there are moments it comes creeping back.
“Our narrative can be very scary and gory, but there is always a happy ending”
This is exactly why I am such an IA fan (and no doubt why the BDH adores and devours anything IA writes.)
One of the big reasons I love reading IA books is because I love to imagine living in a world where love, decency, and caring always win out over hate, evil, and selfishness. In your books, I know that if I stick with the story long enough, the good guys will get happy endings and the bad guys will get what’s coming to them. I have faith that things will turn out all right in the end.
When things get too stressful or upsetting in ‘my world’ for whatever reason (big or small), it is so nice to be able to take a little vacation in any of the IA books….thank you! ????
^this^
Thank God for editing help. My biggest issue with self published books and kindle unlimited is that no one has edited the books. The author may have a great story, but they get bogged down in minutiae or have plot holes you can steer an aircraft carrier through… I can see that the key to avoiding that issue is to have a publisher.
On the topic of answering questions …
I just finished reading the Kate related books in order through Blood Heir, and after watching the Q&A session, it made some references in Blood Heir make more sense. But the question I always had while reading Blood Heir from the beginning was why Marten kept escaping from Sophia and could find Aurelia’s home. It just seemed odd. So this time I tried thinking through what Marten said about her family. When Aurelia asks Marten in Chapter 7 if she has any family she asks specifically about a mom and dad and Marten answer no, she doesn’t have them or any living relatives. Yet in Chapter 13 when Aurelia talks about her dad (Curran) Marten says “My daddy is nice.” “He brings me treats and presents. But he can’t be with me right now.” “He tells me stories, and he does magic tricks.”
So who is Marten’s dad? At first I thought, could it be Roland? But that doesn’t quite make sense, why would he have another daughter?
As I thought further about how Namtur makes her his apprentice and how she so readily accepted that, it made me wonder even more. Then a thought came to me, is she a family member of Akku? The way that the family was described in Magic Tides made it sound like they had infiltrated many places without notice by being there a long time. I am guessing that they might have an Oracle that saw that Aurelia was going to be involved with Father Hayworth and decided to put Deira in that vicinity to see if she could get close to Aurelia and be “saved” by her so that she became part of her entourage. That type of child would have the ability to escape Sophia, and find Aurelia’s home, and would jump at the opportunity to become Namtur’s apprentice.
So is Marten/Deira a family member of Akku? Will we find out more in one of the forth coming novellas/novels?
Thank you, as always, for such rich and wonderful stories!
We cannot know yet who Marten’s father is, and that is by design. The only clue we have is that it’s someone we have never met before 🙂
Ok, so IA is a #1 bestselling NYT author, but which book actually reached #1? I haven’t followed the early books that closely, and I think it was Magic Breaks, the first hardcover iirc, but is that true??
I also LOVE that cover the most.
thx!
I know 100% Magic Rises was #1 NYT. Maybe Magic Breaks too?
Blood Heir was #2 on USA Today when #1 was Bridgeton’s (the Netflix series had just debuted)- that was insane, the second bestselling book out of all that books sold in the US that week, and it was a self-pub!
I tend to remember Hidden Legacy better for some reason, I think I was more invested in it continuing hehe, no worries there about Kate: Emerald Blaze was #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, Wildfire I believe #1 on Washington Post.
The list goes on but I think Ilona will tell me off for bragging :D. Mod Prerogative ™!
Thanks, I appreciate your info. I have all the Kates on CD and in print, CANNOT WAIT for the GA versions. You are the best, MOD R!!!
I used to spend summers in Seattle with my aunt and uncle. I always brought books with me to read before bed and Dean Koontz was one of my favorite authors, besides John Saul and Stephen King. Dean Koontz was the only author that could scare the crap out of me. Not sure how he is able to make a book that scary that I would sleep with a light on!! I was 14-15 at the time. Hasn’t happened since then. I will have to go back and read his earlier stuff to find that book.
Very exciting about Hoopla! We get access to that through our library; it’s such a nice extra resource.
…… I officially want to be an agent. That sounds like so much fun. I’m sick. But that sounds like a blast! Lol
Fascinating; all of it. Thank you!
Just to be honest, the end of the Edge series has always come to close to horror for me… woman struggles through a swamp fighting of monsters to find her kidnapped mother, and when she finds her she has to kill her because she’s been turned into an abomination.
I think Clean Sweep may have been the first book I ever read on Hoopla, you’ve definitely been on it for years. It’s my favorite library app. Any book I want from Libby comes with a 6 month wait list. Getting to choose whatever 6 books I want per month makes more sense to me than a 6 month wait list for a digital book.
Hi Lena,
Whilst Bayou Moon does contain this very heart wrenching moment, it is by no means the end of the Edge series ????. There are two more books after it! https://ilona-andrews.com/the-edge/
So interesting! Thank you for sharing this information. A former student contacted me last fall and asked me if I’d read and comment on a novel she had written. I referred her to your blog, since you discuss so many aspects of writing, publishing, finding an agent, etc. Great information for emergent writers.
Well, we as the BDH definitely benefit! Thank you to your Agent!
Thank you for the insight! Always interesting to learn about the process.
I’m ready for the next photo to be that man biting into his cup because *surprise* it’s Chocolate and it dribbles everywhere. lol
+1. ????????????????????
Woo Hoo! Magic Tides #1 Bestselling Fiction Ebook, Week Ended January 21, published today in Saturday Wall Street Journal!!
All those things you listed are right on. My wife and I have self-pubbed 20ish titles and wind up doing so much of that by ourselves. Keeping up with Amazon ads is a chunk of time all by itself.
I’d add shopping for movie/TV rights as another function agents can do. We’ve had a few friends sell rights for their novels. Just auditioning voice talent for audiobooks then editing their work is a time suck chore.
We’ve cut back because my wife, who used to do the lion’s share of this, has gone back to work training service dogs for veterans. Your description of how trauma can affect us is spot on.
I heard an interesting comment from a fellow the other day while he was talking about how he ran his business. He said he was at the “who, not how” stage in his business. if he had to think how he was going to do something then it was a sign he should find someone to hire to take care of that aspect of the business for him.
that concept can’t apply to everyone at all stages of their business, but it was a neat look at how at some point the people in charge need to make sure they are spending their time doing what they are good at.
that was absolutely cool to read. I love the job description of your agent, I’d love to work like that. how does one get into that career path???
Internships. 🙂
I’m not a writer but I always enjoy what you share about the process. Thanks!
(If you wrote the text for soup can labels, I’d probably find that interesting too. ???? You have the knack of getting and holding our attention…and I love getting the inside scoop on things).
As a proud member of the BDH, I’m ha-pay you are using your time to write and having the million admin tasks addressed by your agency.
Could you let us know what was the copyright infringement so the book-eating or book-loving horde knows what to look for when we are browsing books to buy/read?
The item was removed by the retailer 🙂
Great questions and answers. I found the question about having an agent especially interesting. It helps remind me about the great amount of work that goes into your books far above and beyond the fabulous writing part. It helps hold me back when I am in a BDH mood.
Very interesting insights , my Mom was in the Military during WW2
So often reading your books I feel I am getting direct insight via you or from Gordon ..it enriches the writing…
Regarding horror: My son (in his late 20’s, living across the country working in DC) and I were working our way through Stephen King’s books. We would read and then discuss on the phone. Until I got to “Pet Sematary”. That was the one that really bothered me and left me unsettled for quite a while. So from then on, my question was always to my son “Is it worse than “Pet Sematary”? And that was my guide as to whether I read it or not. And then I got to the point of why am I doing this to myself. I wasn’t enjoying reading horror. So I stopped. I guess I thought I should be a well-rounded reader. Eh, well-rounded is over rated.
You guys are awesome. Thank you for sharing. Me, I’m just grateful that you two write such fabulous books. I don’t know how you do it, but the background of the Kate books seems so real.
Mod R, I super enjoyed the link to the brag sheet link that had the “becoming a writer journey” story in it. I thought that I’d suggest that a blog with the brag sheet (with it’s story) would be muchly enjoyed by all the people who don’t (silly them) read the comments. My friend who enjoys the blog e mail gets her mail on her phone which doesn’t (alas) have a “open in browser” function and so has no way to get the comments (and any oh so interesting links) when I tell her about the brag sheet’s story she will be SO jealous! *Hint, hint Thanks Mod R, you’re the best!
PS: This comment also exists as a reply to ANOTHER comment about the brag sheet, I just wanted to insure that you see it. Sorry if you already have seen the other one (I know, I’m a terrible pest)
Mod R Hello, it’s me again (yes, I know, I’m a pest) after begging (in two different places no less) for you to put the brag sheet in the blog, I used my brain, and the hints you provided and went to the website and with relative ease figured out how to find the brag sheet without using the handy dandy link that you provided for someone else in the comments. So I can now provide my friend who can’t access the comments (and the oh so handy link) an easy and simple way to access the brag sheet so that she can also enjoy the journey to becoming a writer story on her own. I STILL think that you’re the best for hitting me with the clue stick. ????
My parents were in northern Italy during WWII. They moved to CANADA and eventually they bought the house I still live in in Toronto, which is in the western end where Pearson Airport is. Every once in a while, the drone of the planes on the flight paths to the airport still caused myMother to start/look up.
It wasn’t called PTSD but that WAS PTSD still interfering with her life 70 years later.
Still a tough cookie, though. Gone for 5 years but I still hear her giving me her quiet but on the spot opinions about something I’m doing. Love ya, Ma
Thank you for being so organized. To someone who one day hopes to publish this was very informative. I love your work. Keep it up!
Scariest horror stories for me was Cthulhu. Got stuck on a car trip as a teenager where I ran out of books, so I read one of my brother’s. Luckily it was short stories. I did not finish the book.
I the 80’s I worked for a defence manufacturer. One day a transformer blew in the manufacturing area. All the combat veterans were immediately identifiable because they hit the floor and got under cover. Really telling for the vets that fibbed about combat experience.
Sorry, I stopped reading on “….4 books out in planning”! Yeehaa! will need to revisit that post later for the rest 🙂
Thank you, Ilona Andrews for the post.
Regarding PTSD discussion— when I had the ischemic stroke the other year, the hospital counselor told me it was common problem post strokes. He was correct as I did have symptoms of PT SD and therapy did help.
“For every conflict our nation is involved in, we need to consider whether the price of doing that to our soldiers is worth it.”
THIS!
PS I’m a 12 year USAF vet
RE horror: Interesting discussion! When I opened Magic Bites for the first time, I almost didn’t continue past the first couple of pages because I thought it was horror: “icy wave of fear and revulsion”, “something bad was in my house”, “something large crawled along the hallway ceiling”, the protagonist sitting at the kitchen table with a “nude and hairless” monster behind her — I was like, I don’t think I can go there. (I had already read the Edge books, and they’re as close to horror as I ever want to go. I guess I thought Magic Bites was going to start out scary and get worse…)
I’m so glad I read just a bit further and found out that the girl was totally prepared to deal with the monster behind her!! And then I got to the super-fun parts, e.g., “Here kitty kitty”, and turning the tables on the shapeshifters by using power words on Derek, etc, etc. Kate Daniels became my favorite series ever, and I’ve read it multiple times. I still shudder to think that I might’ve closed that book and missed out on all the fun!
We live within hearing of Quantico. They have facebook page, and numerous other outlets that let us know when ‘Sounds of Freedom’ are going to happen.
Man am I happy for you that you have such a good full service agency. Your work is precious to me and all the necessary associated efforts, administrative and legal, would cripple a lesser being. So glad someone follows the IRS stuff for you and fights for the integrity of your work and intellectual property. Thank you for putting up with it all. If you only knew how happy it makes me to read your stuff. And I am an avid audiobook reader and the narration is soooo important. If audio is available I get it but will do ebook if its not. I am grateful for all you guys do.
A supporting point for PTSD. I spent all of my service working with squadrons or at air stations. Basically I lived at airports all my time in the service.
Sometime last summer the hospital around the corner moved their emergency helicopter landing space to the parking lot behind my house.
First copter to land there (and several since) have flipped me back in time to Marines landing their copters in the field across the street from the baracks.
40 years younger… and 100 lbs less weight and joints that aren’t broken?
nah, doesn’t work. But I called my friend from back then (who used to work on those beasts) and held the phone out the window so he could hear too.
My dogs are even used to the big bird coming out of the sky now.
Thank you for bringing Kate back. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her, and that world. Then I was reading it and it was like visiting family I hadn’t seen in a while. Exactly what I needed! Thank you so much! I am so looking forward to seeing the next adventures of everyone- be it the Wilmington, Hugh, or Julie stories. Whenever and whichever are written, I will appreciate whatever glimpses you share with us.
I LOVE reading about Kate, Curran, Conlan and Julie, more please!