The argument begins like this… “When you write intricate plots, you always have to change things and rewrite and it’s hard to just write that story straight through.” “Not for me,” says the irritating pantser who goes from start to finish. You’ve probably guessed I’m not a pantser, but a planner. While I do allow creative things to take over, and do embrace that happy accident that solves a plotting problem, I am, at the heart of it all, a technical writer. I’m also whole-brain, and often my right brain and left brain are embroiled in hand-to-hand combat. While those …Continue reading →
The Girls in the Band is doing very well in the charts! Thank you, readers! Here’s the FB live video I did on 19Sept2017 TOPIC: sex in lesbian fiction, menopause as it pertains to readers and writers, an erotica project, and many other things. You could call it live STEAMing, I suppose. LOL. Friend me on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/jaebaeli …Continue reading →
I posted a promo that I’m working on book 4 in the Rain Falls series, and got this response from one of my readers: Cindy Compton YES!!! then maybe a cross-pollination book 2? Pretty peaz… 😜 Kelli Jae Baeli yes there will be another Cross-Pollination book. After i decide which characters. any suggestions? Cindy Compton Sorry I missed this…I thought about that with C-P1, how on earth do you decide which characters to involve in weaving several stories into one captivating tale and still do them all justice without the storyline suffering. But you’re a pro at this, so you always manage to pull …Continue reading →
Shame on me. I haven’t posted a blog in a long time. SO much going on with us lately. Dealing with sudden health issues happening all at once, burned out, exhausted, feeling ill all the time, I was certainly not inspired to write. So I decided to take a 6-month sabbatical. It turned into 8 months when I found out in the middle of it I needed major surgery. So, I had to face my #2 biggest fear, (surgery) and I’ve been recovering from a full abdominal hysterectomy, and after almost 8 weeks, I’m still having some issues, which I …Continue reading →
I have missed sitting down with a physical book and reading. My recent decision to take a sabbatical and just allow myself to be creative and deadline-free, had me standing in front of my fiction bookshelf, seeking something new. Something enjoyable. As most of you know by now, I have become quite finicky about my fiction reading. I read so much of my own work in pumping out work in the last ten years, that I have had little time to read for pleasure, and when I do, it’s inevitably just before I go to sleep, and by then, my …Continue reading →
Recently, I posted a inquiry to my readers, about a publishing aspect of my work. All the responses were encouraging and thought-provoking, but one in particular touched upon some deeper themes. Here it is. TO MY READERS–A QUESTION: As authors, we want to please everyone, but that’s just not possible. For instance, on my newest novella, Saturation Point, I have 4 and 5 star reviews and personal messages and emails that tell me how much they enjoyed the introspective nature of this book, and the characters, but on one review, the reviewer was bored because there wasn’t dialogue on every …Continue reading →
Tropes, in one definition, are “devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.” There are many types, but one, in the subcategory of devices, we see quite frequently in crime shows on TV or in mystery books. There is a crime, and an investigation, and the first suspect is never the true suspect. That also gets into the Red Herring territory. For myself, I have always tried not to rely on tropes, simply because I don’t ever want the reader to easily predict what will happen. But I …Continue reading →
I was reworking the cover for In Absentia (Rain Falls series #2), which I released fairly quickly after Rain Falls, and it sort of fell through the cracks like an orphan. Someone mentioned that I had a bunch of new reviews on it. I didn’t know. Last I looked, I only had 2 on that book… Anyway, I was pleased to see that they were all really good: 4 and 5 stars, which is always a joy, and profoundly validating. But more than that, the readers/reviewers were saying things that reflected what I had talked about with this series. I …Continue reading →
I believe it is a pitfall to think that fiction for lesbians is all that different from/than fiction for straight people. And I can say that as a person who reads largely mainstream fiction, and very little of what is termed “lesfic.” I grew up reading mainstream, and I continue to do so, and I am quite picky about what I read. It’s hard for an author to get and keep my attention, if there are any thin spots in his/her craft. I think I might be in the process of forming a new list of Favorite Authors. So far, …Continue reading →
Somehow I got tag-teamed. TT Thomas and Kathleen Wheeler both tagged me for this Blog Hop, My Writing Process. I suppose i could post this twice, but maybe just once will do. It’s not like the Blog Hop Nazis will chase me down and break my thumbs. So here goes….. 1)What am I working on? You mean besides this computer jigsaw puzzle? (Addicted to those). Oh, writing. My current project is Pitfall (A Jurassic Romantic Adventure Dramedy). Just as most stories begin, I had the what-if : What if two lesbians who are very different, found themselves tossed back 150 …Continue reading →
I received another message from a reader who wanted to know when the third book in the Rain Falls series would be available. And another reader who wanted to know when the 6th on the AKA Investigations series would be out. Though certain delays like my recent relocation to another country and health issues have slowed me down, I sometimes feel like readers think what we do is like making dinner. Granted, I wrote Rain Falls (my first bestseller!) and the sequel, In Absentia fairly quickly; and the last three in the AKA series were produced faster than usual. But …Continue reading →
Reading, especially fiction, has always been at least sometimes described as a means of escape. People read fiction to immerse themselves in someone else’s story. Perhaps because their own is too painful to contemplate. Perhaps because their own is too mundane. Whatever the reason for the escapist tendency of fiction readers, I hope there will always be plenty of them, otherwise, my profession will become a hobby. And I really am rooted in the expression of self through language. Why do I write fiction? Other than the pat answers like it’s who I am. I have to, there’s a reason …Continue reading →
What’s wrong with this sentence? “My only child was struck and killed by a car riding a bicycle home from the beach one afternoon in September.” (From Enon, by Paul Harding) So, there was this car riding a bicycle to the beach, see, and…. {Sigh}. And this book was published traditionally and by Random House, where I assume they have professional editors being paid the big bucks to catch things like that. I’m sure there are a million reasons why an editor could have missed that. Perhaps he had been up too late the night before, perhaps he sneezed and …Continue reading →
(and 3 New Books for the Holidays) I have just completed three books, and am going to make my deadline to get them out for holiday sales. One is a standalone novel in the Crime/Vigilante vein: Another Justice. One is the 5th in the AKA Investigations Series, titled, Also Known as Sleepy Cat Peak, and the other is an anthology of Bold Erotic Stories called The Speed of Dark. The Vigilante one was difficult, in many ways, the erotic anthology, I had been writing in between other projects for some time now; and I was surprised and thrilled that the …Continue reading →
