Review: No Mercy

I'm not sure when or where I stumbled across Wendy Cartmell's No Mercy, a collection of short stories, but I'm thrilled I did. From the first word to the last, this collection is engaging, interesting and extremely well written.

For starters, the formatting in No Mercy is perfect. I couldn't find a mistake, and you know how hard I look. But I didn't read the entire collection of stories in one sitting, when I promised myself I'd stop after one, just because it looked pretty. After the first thrilling tale, which introduced Cartmell's gruff detective Sergeant Major Crane, I wasn't about to put No Mercy down.

Each story was unique, but they all fit together well to showcase Cartmell's singular style. She writes descriptively, easily drawing the reader deeply into each tale before neatly ending the story with something altogether shocking -- and sometimes triumphant, or chilling, or sorrowful. The title of the collection sums it up perfectly, because Cartmell pulls no punches with her clear, sharp voice that shines in every page. Every little mystery was fascinating, and I'm looking forward to reading much more from Wendy Cartmell in the future.

Writing 101: Using Pen Names

How do you feel about using a pen name? Everyone's got an opinion, even your readers. Crafting the perfect pen name is a little like writing the perfect novel...only the name is probably going to stay with you a lot longer. If you don't use the right one, you'll make things unnecessarily hard on yourself.

What's in a Name?

Stephen King. Anne Rice. Stephenie Meyer. What do all the big, blockbuster writers have in common? Names that are easy to remember and easy to spell. That's very important when you want readers to start looking for you on Amazon, Google and everywhere else you exist. By the same token, you don't want to publish books under a name that's too simple. Type John Smith into Google and you're going to get way too many results.

What's Wrong with Your Name?

Friends and family aren't going to recognize you by a pen name (and neither will all those people from high school who need to feel envy). Don't you deserve recognition for your fabulous self-publishing achievements? Sure you do, but if your real name is a thirteen-letter nightmare you've got to be reasonable. If you were lucky enough to be given a simple, easy to spell but unique name, then use it. If you weren't, try toning it down a little. Authors use initials, nicknames and small changes to tweak their own names into something that looks a lot better on a book jacket.

If that's still not an option, you might need to choose a pen name. But the truth is, lots of writers aren't very good at choosing their own names -- even those who fill their own books with believable, poetic and beautiful character names.

Picking the Right Pen Name

Once you begin establishing yourself under a pen name, you're no longer your own person. Your name will be all wrapped up with your reputation, with the public image you present, with the books that you write. Every time someone looks at your book, that name will be attached to it. So choose a good one.

• Don't go gimmicky. You write erotic fiction, so maybe a pen name like "Rose Pleasure" sounds like a great idea. It's not. There are very few examples in writing where gimmicky names actually work -- and most of those examples are in children's books. Pen names like Dr. Seuss and Lemony Snicket are more than vaguely ridiculous, but you have to get a little silly to spend lengthy amounts of time with kids so that works out okay. Otherwise, don't create a gimmicky name. Why? Because you want to get some sort of respect from your readers, and you want to be regarded as a professional. Choose a silly, gimmicky name and you'll never be taken seriously. 

• Don't go too exotic. It's tempting to come up with a name that's so fresh, so new, so exotic-sounding that no one could ever mistake it for anything else. Writer Poppy Z. Brite, for example, stands out for her unusual name. Problem is, it's way too unusual. Poppy Z. Brite sounds like a pen name, and anything overtly fake is always hard to take seriously.

• Don't go famous. Some names should really be off limits because they're already too well-known. If you publish something under the last name of Hitler, for example, you're clearly setting yourself up for failure and everyone you want to attract is just going to be confused. Try to avoid Presidential, movie star and other famous last or first names because you need to establish yourself on your own; you don't want someone else's name baggage bogging you down. 

Picking the right pen name isn't easy. Keep it simple, keep it decently unique, and keep it sincere-sounding -- like a name that someone could actually have. Above all, try to pick a pen name that says something to you, or about you, or that means something to you in some way. One day, an interviewer is bound to ask you about your pen name, and you're going to need an interesting story to go with it. That's what people expect from writers.

Review: The Teacher's Billionaire

I"m still a little confused by how much I liked The Teacher's Billionaire. The idea isn't exactly a new one -- your basic doomed couple who each come from completely different worlds. Their worlds collide, lust ensues, trouble looms...will they or won't they? Sure it sounds formulaic, but somehow it doesn't read that way. Christina Tetreault doesn't break any of the rules, but I completely fell for her enchanting tale anyway.

I'm not one for romances, particularly those in a contemporary setting. I can only tolerate love stories if they're steeped in history, something I actually find interesting. But somehow, this sweet romance kept me captivated and still followed the familiar genre formula.

 Tetreault's writing is so vivid, the characters so alive, that everything seems completely believable. A working-class teacher in Boston who works hard, gossips with her friends and doesn't feel so secure in her looks meets, and completely charms, a well-known Fortune 500 bigwig who just happens to be utterly gorgeous and all too eligible? Yeah, it could totally happen. I know it could, because it did in the pages of this book -- and I was so swept up in the story I never doubted it once.

The heroine's situation is pretty average, at least at first, but when a dark family secret comes to the fore she gets dragged into a new world that seems light years away from her run-of-the-mill Boston life. I would have liked to spend a little more time in Callie's world before the plot kicks in -- everything happens rather suddenly in the very beginning of the book -- but I liked her right away. She's not unbelievably gorgeous, or saintlike in her perfection. She's just a normal girl in a totally unusual situation, reacting to it as sensibly as she possibly can.

The unusual situation has an amazing smile. His name is Dylan, and he's your typical one percenter born in England and now engaged in American politics. Okay, so maybe typical isn't exactly the right word, but even he is totally believable. Tetreault beautifully gets inside his head and makes him seem like a pretty normal guy with normal guy hang-ups, despite the Adonis-like body, made-for-magazines face and highfalutin family connections. The reader sees him working out in the gym (that explains the rock-hard abs), and knows why he has a bit of a playboy reputation. It's easy to fall in love with Dylan, with Callie, with everything about the Sherbrookes -- and honestly, I was ridiculously happy when I learned that this is only the first in a continued series about the fascinating family.

 But it's not perfect. The paragraph indenting and justification are inconsistent and poor throughout, and you could go crazy trying to count all the missing commas. Aesthetically, this ebook isn't at all pleasing (I haven't seen the paperback version, so I won't speak for that), but it is beautifully written so that helps to balance the scales. I'll take an ugly book over a badly written one any day. I can't wait for the next installment in the series, for whatever Christina Tetreault writes next, and I'll definitely re-visit this book again and again. This one isn't going to be deleted from the Kindle anytime soon.

Writing 101: Adding Images to an eBook

Putting the text into a book is hard enough -- adding images complicates matters significantly. Writers have all sorts of reasons for inserting images into their books. In cookbooks, travel books and children's books, pictures are an absolute must-have. But writers in other genres may also wish to add a helpful visual aid to their work. A family tree, a map -- these are a common enough sight in many types of books. So...how do you add these elements to an ebook?

Images and eBooks

So, you want to add a pretty picture to your ebook. It is possible, but if you don't know exactly what you're doing it's going to become a frustrating, tedious affair -- and you may not succeed.

• Find/create the image. First things first: get the image you want to place in your book. Make sure you know where it's located on your hard drive, so you can get to it easily. You won't need it again until the book is finished and ready to be formatted.
• Open your conversion software. You probably already know that the word processing document you've used to write your book isn't ebook-ready. To turn it into something an ereader can deal with, you need to convert it. For that, you need conversion software. Open up your chosen program and load the book up as usual. 
• Add the image. Using the File settings, open the picture(s) you want to add to the book in the software program. You'll have at least two files loaded into the program: the book itself, and your image. Add all the images you want in the book.
• Add the HTML. Use the HTML editor to add the proper code to the file so the image will appear. First, find the exact location where you'd like to place the image within the book. Now, add your code. It's <img src="the name of the image file.jpg" width=500 height=300>. Write the title exactly as it appears in the file name; the full path is not necessary. Add any extra codes to make the image appear the way you want it (<center>, </center> etc.) and adjust the width and height values as desired.
•  Finish the conversion. Follow the rest of your conversion process normally, and preview the ebook to be certain the image is appearing the way you want.

It takes a little extra time and effort to add images to ebooks, but once you know the process it's fairly straightforward. An image can be a wonderful aid to readers, particularly if the book is set in a fantasy world or there are complex family ties for them to follow. Avoid sizing the image any wider than 600 pixels, as it may not read well on ereaders when sized larger than this.