The Fifth Screwup

A lot of writers think they don't need their own editor.  They think they're going to publish with a publishing company and it will take care of their editing for them.  It is true that a publishing company will probably get up in your business and ask you to make changes to your manuscript.  However, it's also true that a publishing company will not want to work with you if your work is unedited (they'll call it rough).  They want to work with hardened writers who are used to making compromises.

On the flip side, if you decide to go the indie route (self-publish without the financial backing of a publishing company), you're going to hit a roadblock.

Professional editing is expensive.

You're also very likely to despise your first editor with a potency that surprises you.  It's so expensive and time-consuming that you will want to bypass the whole process because writing a novel was supposed to make money, not cost you money.  Most editors that advertise on the internet have a rate of $5 for every 1,000 words.  This means that you will be very lucky to get your manuscript edited for less than $1,000.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that my math sucks because it should only cost $300 to have a 60,000-word manuscript edited.  I promise you, my math is impeccable.  It took me a long time to acknowledge this, but this is the truth: a manuscript needs a minimum of three rounds of editing.  You will be lucky if you only need three rounds.

Each round of editing has a different purpose.  Allow me to explain.

Content Editing

Imagine you're in an art class and your art teacher is explaining how to draw a perspective drawing.  You draw the vantage point and every line you put on that page is working with that point in one way or another.  Some lines hold up others, but everything is acknowledging that vantage point.  Content editing is like someone taking your perspective drawing and erasing every line that doesn't play to the vantage point in some way.

Every word that doesn't help the plot, continue the themes, entertain the reader, speed up the action, foreshadow what is to come, or emphasize a point has to go.  This means that your manuscript is going to suffer a very substantial drop in its word count.  If you have written exactly 40,000 words, it's going to feel like the editor has cut off your arm.  You had written a novel, and now it's a novella, and you won't be able to turn it back into a novel.  In my experience, content editing is irreversible.  You can't add more to your story after without needing to go back and do another round of content editing after the adds.  Granted, you may improve your product, but doing two rounds of one layer of editing is going to be hurtful to your morale and your budget.

Copy Editing

This is when the editor puts each individual sentence under a microscope and asks if that sentence is effective.  This means that all ambiguity that existed in your drafts has to go.

This process is another place where beginners suffer because a lot of the changes suggested by the editor are correcting sentences which may not be technically wrong.  Sadly, that doesn't mean they aren't wrong.  Writing needs to be snappy, and if it isn't, then it needs to be fixed.

Also, it can get overwhelming how many changes the editor suggests, especially when there are over a dozen changes on a single page and there are two hundred pages.  They think that if they were a good writer, there would be fewer corrections.

Proofreading

I find that proofreading needs a different set of eyes.  You can use the same editor for content editing and copy editing, but you need a different editor for proofreading.  One may be tempted to think that you could have a friend do your proofreading because what you need more than anything is a fresh set of eyes and they would charge less than a real editor.

And you would be wrong.  Here's why:

1. Unpaid proofreaders take forever.  They have other things to do that are important and your book is not number one on their list of things to do.

2. They won't find all the errors.  No proofreader (even professional ones) find all the errors.  Many professionally published books have mistakes in them.  I saw one today!

3. They think that because the book is not yet published that there is still time to make substantial changes.  There is not.  You are at the end of the project.  You will not make everyone happy with your project.

4. Your relationship with your friend is more important than any book.

In conclusion, you need an editor.  Everything you have done may end up being a wash if you don't have one.  HOWEVER... online editorial services tend to prey on the insecurity of new authors and make them feel as though they are failing because they didn't do enough rounds of editing.  This can be a bit much when the average self-published ebook sells fewer than 250 copies (which generates a lot less income than the $1,000 I mentioned earlier).

You're going to need to try different things to find your balance when you edit your manuscripts.  I have hired editors.  I've done it myself.  I've taken help from teenagers who have acted as beta readers (they were my fans).  I've printed my book out and marked the crap out of it.  I've read it out loud and put on bloody stage plays in my bedroom.  I've begged for help from English teachers.  I've taken multiple grammar courses at a college.  I've privately redone my child's grammar lessons by myself.  I've used different word processors to try to fix the errors.  I've worked with editors at publishing companies.  And I've spent more money on editors than I've made with my books.

I still have people come up to me and inform me that there was actually a mistake on page 215 of my book...

No one can be perfect at this.

The only thing you need to remember is that there are going to be mistakes while learning to do this.  Handle your mistakes, either by fixing them or by forgiving yourself for them.  Then you can smile, even when there is a mistake on page 215... and 216.

The Fourth Screwup

Yes, we've arrived at the fourth place a novelist is likely to screw up.  This is at the end of the book.

I don't want to write a whole post about all the horrible things that can happen at the end of the book, but I do want to touch on one problem that happens at the end of nearly every project (book or not).  You're sitting at 97% complete and... you die.  I don't mean you literally die, but you die.  You've got like two chapters left to finish and you're scared, bored, and itching to move onto a new project, nothing looks right, you think you're stupid, and the last little bit is this unbelievable grind.

I find the only way to conquer this is to just sit down one day (without planning it) and just say, "Today, I'm finishing this!  If I get nothing else done today, that's fine.  Today, I'm finishing this!"  I sometimes accompany that wild declaration with an actual roar, but that's what I need to do to get pumped up.  So, sneak up on it, and don't let it go until you break its neck.

You are not to be trifled with.  You won't even be defeated by yourself.

But that's not the problem I wanted to address today.  The main purpose of this post is to talk about what happens after you've finished writing your first book.  In order to finish the book, you have used some time that you don't usually use to write, and that means that some of the things you usually do are lagging behind.  You write the glorious words The End, set down your manuscript, and abruptly realize you need to go make muffins, run a list of errands, follow up with other projects, and basically live your life the way you were leading it before the writing bug ate your heart.

It's quite some time before you make it back to your manuscript.  You have plans to submit it to an editor or a publishing company, but before you do either of those things (editors are expensive and there's a lot of stiff competition for publication), you decide to read over your manuscript to see if there's anything you can do to improve it by yourself.

Very wise.

Except you're about to get dropped on your bottom.  Psst!  It's going to hurt because your manuscript is not going to be as brilliant as it was when you left it.  When you get a bit of space from your project, you start to notice a few mistakes.  Scratch that... a lot of mistakes.  There are typos, to be sure, but there are also foundational mistakes.  Your writing style is not consistent.  You have not maintained reader sympathy with your characters.  Parts of the story are missing because they seemed so obvious in your head, so you didn't spell them out to the reader and on the re-read, you have no idea what you're eluding to with your careful prose.  And more.

It's very discouraging.

I recommend reading the manuscript again and writing two wish lists.

One list is about things you can see that are obvious fixes for this particular manuscript (cut this out, add this).

The second list is things you wish you did better generally.  This list refers to mistakes in your book that are so large, you can't possibly fix them without starting your manuscript over (things like voice or losing reader sympathy).  The thing is, no matter how brilliant your original idea was, by this point, you're done with it.  So, if you're going to correct this manuscript, you need to have written nothing on your second wish list.  If it's your first whack at writing a novel, you have to set this manuscript aside and label it as practice.  Then you have to start again with a new idea.

Coming up with a new idea terrifies some authors.

There is nothing to be afraid of.  As you get better at this, ideas will come easier and in larger quantities.  Sometimes people who approach me with an idea for a novel have no intention of writing out their idea themselves.  They want me to do it.  I always find it amusing that they think I'm starving for ideas.  I have made myself into an idea factory.

Your second attempt at a novel with a new story will be better than your first.  You'll figure out how to solve some of your fundamental problems while at the same time, correcting your writing style as you go so you don't keep making the same technical errors every step.  Don't be afraid.  You don't get something for nothing and the price of admission is practice.

The Third Screw Up

Of all the screwups, this one is my least favorite.  For all you novelists out there, this is not going to be news.  For everyone else, please know that bringing this up brings me no pleasure.  Remember that I was once a lowly writer who wanted to be a novelist... so, yes, the thing I am going to mention has happened to me.

Sometimes, someone tells me they've written a novel and they ask me to have a look at it.  They send over the electronic file and I open it.  Before I read any of the text, I check the word count because I'm concerned about this problem.

It's 15,000 words.

I write the author back and ask them where the rest of it is, hoping that there's more they haven't sent me for some reason.

There isn't more.  That's all of it.

Then I have the very non-fun job of informing them that their novel is not a novel.  It's a short story.

The author is confused.  There are chapters.  There are over twenty of them.

I get to explain that it doesn't matter that they cut their writing into chapters.  It's still not a novel.  To help explain, I start at the beginning.  500 - 20,000 words is a short story.  20,000 words to 40,000 words is a novella.  40,000 words to 60,000 words is a lazy man's novel (a lot of Harlequins are written in this range).  60,000 - 100,000 is a perfectly respectable novel with the sweet spot being at approximately 86,000 words.  100,000+ is for high fantasy authors who have really decent publishing companies backing them.  Independent authors can't market books of that length.  The word count is too large and there ends up being too much paper involved in the production of the book for it to be profitable. 

The author is embarrassed because they thought they'd written a novel.  Not only that but cracking out those 15,000 words was really hard for them.  I know.  Like I said, I've had this happen to me as well.

Getting past this problem requires a two-prong strategy.

First, you should think about the fire in your belly.  That fire inside you needs to burn long and hot.  Basically, this means that you have to angry.  You need to feel like books and their authors have let you down.  You need to want to make something different than anybody else.  If all you want to do is write the sorts of things you enjoy reading, you may not have enough fire to power your dream.  You need to believe that you have something to offer than no one else does, that your contribution to the writing world is INDISPENSABLE.  You need to be on fire.  If you feel this way, this setback will be nothing more than a blip and you'll soon pass over any embarrassment you felt writing a short story and trying to pass it off as a novel.

The second thing to note is that you are only at the beginning of your journey.  I'm an old hag and as an old hag, who has been doing this for twenty-five years, I can tell you, you're going to get better.  Things will flow better as you get more practice.  I can write 15,000 words in a day if I'm left alone to do it.  What was once rough will become smooth.

The Second Place a Novelist Screws Up

In my last blog, I talked about how even really good ideas have challenges attached to them.  I'm going to talk about that a little more today.

One time, I heard someone's idea for a novel.  It was an erotica parody and the idea itself was pretty entertaining, but the second I heard it, I knew the person who had that idea could not do it justice.  In order to write a successful parody, you can't just make fun of the genre.  That's not good enough.  If someone is familiar enough with a genre to get all the jabs, then it means your audience likes the genre.  You can't just slam it through a wall.  At the end of a successful parody, you finish with a love letter to the genre.  To pull it off, you have to love that genre.  I was betting that the guy with that hilarious idea for an erotic parody had absolutely no love for erotica, and thus would be unable to pull off the necessary second half.  Start with the jokes; finish with a kiss.

The disaster happens when the author sits down and starts writing.  They finish to the end of their introductory plot arch and then they're left scratching their head.  What are they supposed to do next?  They don't know.  They think they're blocked, and they are.  They aren't writing.

Writers get blocked when there's a disconnect between their expectations and their ability.

Sometimes it's because a writer notices a gap in popular storytelling, and they wonder why no one has written a story that follows the missed pattern.  They think that because they spotted it, they're the one to write it, but finding storytelling ideas this way does not account for a particular author's skills.  It's like applying for any job that's available, not your dream job.  You can plod away at it, but it might be like climbing a mountain with toothpicks.  It's going to take forever and it won't be very much fun. 

Other times, it's because an unpracticed novelist expects that because they have been writing adorable little projects for years that the skills they learned writing those can easily be transferred to a larger project.  They're going to find out that that isn't necessarily the case.  I always say that a novel is 60,000 words, but you can easily make more than 60,000 mistakes.  That's because it takes skill to manage multiple plot lines, character arches, ongoing themes, foreshadowing, and provide consistent writing throughout a piece.  Sometimes people who only write tiny pieces do not have a regular voice they write with.  They read back their writing and oops!  They're discouraged because when they read someone else's book, it looked so effortless; they thought they could easily write a novel too.

Those are just two ways that our expectations can murder us.  We want to be smart.  We want others to think we're smart.  We want to be creative about what we write about and how we write it.  Yet that is not coming through on the page.

We need to let go of our expectations.  Forget about planning a manuscript you think will be profitable.  Instead, write something from your heart, and don't worry about writing well.  For your first book, just try to make it to 40,000 words.  In your next manuscript, focus on getting to 60,000.  You'll be so much smarter about how to craft a plot after your first two attempts.

And I know no one wants to 'practice' writing.  Everyone dreams of getting it right the first time and being a huge success.  That's something else you're going to have to let go of.  No one writes their best stuff at the beginning of their career.  If you analyze why you're writing and it's because you want a ton of attention, fame, and money... maybe find something else to do.

The Very First Place a Novelist Screws Up

Conception.

You wouldn't think that a person could screw up on their writing before they've written a word, but I've found that that is the most likely place for a person to screw up.  Let me explain why.

Sometimes, I have people approach me and ask me if I'm a writer.  I reply that I am a novelist, and they proceed to tell me they have a great idea for a book.  At this point in the story, I'm inwardly groaning because there is no right way for me to respond to them.  Without having heard their idea, I know it's good.  People are smart, inventive, and creative.  A person would not sit a novelist down and tell them an idea for a book that wasn't going to appeal to someone.  They tell me their idea and it's great.

But even great ideas have challenges attached to them.  If I tell this aspiring author the troubles attached to their idea, they are going to feel deflated, defeated, and they'll give up. 

If I tell them their idea is great without attaching a specific warning, something else will happen that is equally bad.  They'll get really excited and they'll tell me a lot more about the story than the simple premise.  The creative pistons in their head will start firing and they'll tell me every part of their story that they've worked out.  This is a mistake, but I let this happen many times before I realized how big of a mistake it was. 

You see, talking is a form of expression.  So is writing.  If you performed an experiment by writing a fresh draft of the same short story every Friday for a month, then read them over to try to choose the best one... I bet you'd pick the first one.  I don't know why your first half-brained attempt is usually the best one, but it is.  I have written many things that were excellent, but for some dumb reason, I lost my first whack at it.  I've had to pick up the pieces and replace it with other text which isn't as good.  It's a second try instead of a first try.  Back to the aspiring writer, they've had their first whack at their story talking to a woman in a park, not on a page where it can be recorded, studied, and possibly improved. 

Months later, I run into this person again.  I slap them on the back (if they make me listen to their idea for a novel for more than five minutes, I reserve the right to slap them on the back), and I ask them how their novel is coming.  They look at me like I'm the body they buried in the woods last summer because they thought they were never going to see me again.  They choke their response.

They haven't worked on their book since we last spoke.

I slap them on the back again and remind them that there are lots of things in life that are more important than writing novels.  They shouldn't give it another thought... but they do.  A little later in the conversation, they'll sidle up to me and ask me timidly if I have finished writing the novel I was working on when we talked last.  I'll tell them I have, and they will be reduced to ashes at my feet.

You see, when we had our conversation about their perspective book, they felt a surge of validation as creative energy flowed through them.  They felt like they were a writer (without actually having any idea how much unpleasantness that word carries because all they can see is the elusive glamor attached to any artsy pursuit).  After all, they were having a conversation with a writer who was acknowledging them as a writer.  They felt talented, appreciated and their brain sealed the idea as fulfilled and finished because they had received their reward.

When I confronted them about the status of their project, I stripped them of all those lovely feelings about their idea, but also about themselves.  I've made them into a person who only knows how to run their mouth without actually buckling down and writing.  They're embarrassed.

I'm unhappy too because it was not my intent to embarrass them.  I was trying to be supportive and friendly.  Back in those days, I didn't yet recognize the cycle of people who like cornering authors in public and begging them for feedback on work that doesn't exist. 

The solution?  For me, I try to pull the plug on writers telling me their ideas.  I remind them that if they like their idea for a story, that's all they need.  Someone out there will like it.  They don't need anyone's permission to write.  Neither do I.  Neither do you.  So, go write. 

His 16th Face - The Introduction

Welcome!  This is probably the last post I will do about His 16th Face for a while.  It turns out my books are very popular for plagiarism, and fighting off the dogs will be quite the adventure.  Anyhoo, I wanted to give you lovely readers a taste of the excellent story that this is.  Also, I'm looking for reviewers. In particular, I need a couple readers to nominate me for awards and stuff like that.  So!  If you read the introduction and want to read more, I will supply you with a free ebook of His 16th Face in exchange for a few little promotional bones.  If you are interested, please PM me on Facebook or email me.  Whatever suits you best.  The book is 257 pages long and roughly 89,000 in case you are worried I'll be giving you something as hefty as Kiss of Tragedy. 

Without further ado:

THE INTRODUCTION

“What's going on?” I whispered, startled in the darkness.

“I'm holding you,” Christian explained evenly.

Though he was familiar, the feeling of his arms around me was not. He lifted me clean off the bed as if I weighed nothing. In the rocking chair, he settled my head into the space between his chin and his shoulder. His breath feathered down my nose to settle on the moist curves of my lips. 

I had to remain calm. If I showed I was excited, even with my heartbeat, the monitors would show it, the nurses would come in and the moment would be lost. I had to stay steady, pretend his warmth, his shape and his closeness meant nothing.

“Why would you do that?” I asked. Though I had never been given this much of him, already I wanted more—his voice. “Did the doctor tell you something about my surgery that he didn't tell me?”

“No,” Christian said, brushing my hair away from my face.

It was the blackest blue in the hospital room, but there were dashes of light everywhere: my monitors blinking my condition, the lights from the building across the courtyard, and the strip of yellow light under the door. We swayed in a waltzing rhythm in the rocking chair, almost like we were dancing. The chair was in the room because I was still young enough to be in the pediatric wing of the hospital. When I looked at it, I tried not to think about all the dead children who had been rocked, and felt their last moment of comfort, before they took those fateful steps into the world of spirits. I thought about the bodies they left behind and wondered how long children had continued to be rocked, even after they had left their fragile bodies behind.

Christian, my would-be guardian angel, held me like a princess in that chair, close to my monitors. He had never rocked me before, and certainly never visited me in the middle of the night. He should not have been there outside visiting hours, but he was there—the greatest gift I had ever been given. Nights alone in the hospital were the hardest. How many times had I dreamed someone was there with me, holding me? I shivered in my happiness. He pulled a blanket over my body and tucked me in like a little girl, except I was being tucked into his arms—enjoying every moment. He smelled expensive and like the grown-up man he was.

He was not holding me because of my girlish dreams. He simply didn't have the heart to stay away. Teenage girls dying of heart disease were irresistible, in that they couldn't be left alone. His feelings for me could not be what I wished. He sat in the chair and held me, a girl so perfectly on the cusp of womanhood, and rocked me as if to lull me to sleep.

If I had been dying under ordinary circumstances, perhaps he would not have visited me after midnight. My tragedy was deeper than the death that loomed ahead of me. Three months before, my parents had both been killed in a car crash. It was a thoughtless accident. My mother had been driving my father on a slick rainy night and while applying her lipstick, she slammed into the support beams of a bridge. She killed them both instantly.

The wreck never seemed real to me.

The problem was that I had never had much to do with my incredibly rich parents. I was always away from them, with nannies or tutors who tried to teach me ballet and how to play the piano. I was only mediocre at any of these paid-for activities. My mother wasn't good at anything, except looking pretty, which she was skilled at beyond belief. Sadly, I contrived to look nothing like her.

The closest I had ever been to my parents was when they first found out I was sick and that my life was in danger. They pawed over me and petted me, making a fuss. It didn't last. It couldn't last. Not only were children incredibly boring company for socialites, but the gloom that came with the frequent hospital stays took an incredible toll on them. They couldn't handle it. I wasn't getting better and my decline was not fast enough to be a source of drama meaty enough to feed them.

That was when my father gave me a gift. He didn't understand much about me or my specific needs, but he understood that I shouldn't be alone. He asked an acquaintance who worked near the hospital, Christian Henderson, to look out for me. Dad needed my companion to assume guardianship since neither of my parents lived in Edmonton, where I was receiving my treatment. He needed someone he could understand, so he didn't get another nanny. He gave me Christian.

And Christian was glorious. He was patient, thoughtful, bright, so charming and heart winning, it was impossible to explain. I liked him better than all the doctors. He was a young man, not yet thirty. He wore button-down vests that suggested lean muscles underneath and had a habit of turning his entire body into nothing but angles. He would rest his elbow on his knee and place his forefinger on his temple to make triangles and diamonds of his limbs. Speaking through breaks in his fingers, his words always sounded better. Sometimes he’d place one finger on his nose bridge and the other between his eyebrows and look at me through the angle of his fingers like he was looking at me through glass that helped him see better. Truthfully, I realized that until he looked at me that way, I had never been seen. When my eyes shly met his, I thought that neither my parents nor I were off to a terrible place in the hereafter. After all, there had to be a heaven since there was a Christian.

He took the news of my parents’ passing hard. I knew that was why he had snuck in that night. I had surgery coming up in a few days and there was a very real possibility that I might not wake up from it. He held me and I couldn't feel alone, because he was there.

I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and said to him softly, “You don't have to worry about me this much. It doesn't matter.”

His eyes flicked toward me.

“It doesn't,” I said, continuing listlessly. “I'm going to die soon. You know the odds I'll live through my next operation aren't good. That was why my parents weren't here. My mother couldn't stand to watch me die, and now she won't. Like the little match girl, there will be plenty of people to greet me when I slip out of this world. It doesn't matter, because I was hardly even here.” I hoped my words would ease some of the pressure he felt, but I was only fourteen and didn't know how to spin it to make him feel the relief I wanted for him.

Christian looked at me and his eyes were all compassion and personal unrest. “And what if I was your fairy godfather and could twirl you around and make one final wish come true?”

I scowled. “The last thing I want is for you to be my father.” My chest hurt and I put a hand to it.

Christian lifted my free hand and took my heart rate. He never paid attention to the monitors and insisted on feeling my heart for himself. My body betrayed me by showing my enthusiasm. Christian could feel the difference. He didn't like the result and reached for the call button.

“Stop it,” I said, putting a hand to his chest. “Can't I have a different heart rate when you offer me a wish? What's your heart rate?”

He laughed slightly and offered me his wrist.

“Can I listen to your heart instead?” I whispered.

“Is that your wish?”

I nodded solemnly.

He smoothed out his shirt over his heart and allowed me to hear it. Listening to the soft pounding made my insides melt, but then another sharp pain flared in my chest.

I gasped and curled myself into a ball.

“Are you all right?”

“It's passing,” I gasped, rubbing my chest. “It's passing. It's okay.”

He put a hand to his forehead and tried to smooth out his concern. I had pains in my chest so often, and the small ones didn’t mean much. “I'm sorry, Beth. When your father asked me to watch over you, I hoped I'd bring you flowers once a week, along with some contraband, and we'd laugh a bit.”

“This level of tragedy was not what you expected?”

“No,” he breathed. “This is exactly what I expected. Exactly what I've already gone through many, many, times. Only this time, it feels worse. Like you're mine and I should be able to save you. Like I should be able to stand as a fortress between you and death, and I can't. I can't do anything.”

I had to think of something for him to do that would comfort him, and make him feel like he had done something for me. My brain settled on a thought I had every time I closed my eyes for a procedure. “If I can have one more wish. There is something I want. Something you can do.”

Christian's fingers ran in little patterns down my arm. “Tell me.”

“You could kiss me.”

“I can't,” he said, his voice clipped in the darkness.

“It's the middle of the night. No one would know. I would carry it to my grave. I don’t want to die without being kissed and there is nothing else I want.”

It was silent as I waited for his answer. Finally, he said, “If I do this, you can never tell anyone.”

I gave my promise.

He shook his head slightly like he didn't want to before he turned, bent his head, and touched his lips against mine. At first, he stayed perfectly still with his lips sealed shut and the slight fluttering of our breath intermingling. Then ever so slowly, he began moving his lips, and it was completely wonderful. He understood! I didn't want a little girl kiss like a peck on the forehead. I wanted a full-blown, romantic kiss that would leave me windblown long after it was finished. I responded by kissing him the way he kissed me. It was only seconds before he had taken it too far and my heart was hammering out of control. My monitors began beeping wildly and Christian suddenly let go of me.

He looked at my flushed cheeks and the smile on my face.

“This is wrong,” he said defiantly.

“I won't tell anyone,” I reassured him and tried to think of something to say that would make him kiss me again.

Before I could say another word, I was neatly deposited back in my bed, Christian had flicked my bed lamp on and a nurse had entered the room to check on me.

“I'm going to be moving Beth to a different hospital,” he informed her curtly.

“You can't,” she stuttered. She had been my nurse for a long time. “She can only be moved by her legal guardian.”

“That's me. I'll be removing her tonight.”

The nurse was appalled but took him to the front desk to make the necessary arrangements. There was a lot of work to do to get me transferred to a different hospital.

Something inside Christian had snapped. I had never seen him like that before. He had always been friendly. When my parents died, he had been both crestfallen and charming to make my pain less, but in those moments after he kissed me, he had changed completely to a man I didn't know. The boyish charm was gone in a single breath. Suddenly, he had become someone who knew all about action and even how to change the entire world.

My head was spinning as I was detached from my machines and bundled into the backseat of his car, where he had set up a bed for me. He buckled my seatbelt and closed the door. I pulled a gray wool blanket over my legs and gazed at him as he got behind the wheel. I had never felt so safe in my whole life. Then we were on the road with the stars being the only things moving as quickly as we were. Where we were going, I didn't know. Why he thought a different hospital would be better didn’t make sense to me. I was already at a better hospital, which was why I wasn't near my family in Toronto, but in Edmonton.

It didn't matter.

What happened next has always been a blur in my mind. I don't even remember getting out of the car. I remember green walls and the operating room lights in my eyes. Then, nothing. In my haze, I knew they were going to cut me and I didn't know if I would wake up again. I looked around for Christian, but I didn't see anyone. There seemed to be no one there but the doctor. Then the anesthetic kicked in and there was blackness.

That was my last operation. I had another scar down the center of my chest to add to my collection, but I never closed my eyes on an anesthetic again. My recovery felt slow, but was fast according to the new doctors in Mexico when I awoke. To my astonishment, I was recovering at a private hospital in a tiny village on the coast and spent most of my days lounging on the beach and sipping something cold.

What treatment did these doctors have that the doctors in Edmonton didn't? Aside from my scars, I felt perfect.

The whole while, Christian was there, reading to me, then diving into the water for a quick stretch. He needed a lot of quick stretches.

I asked him questions in those days. What happened? How was I healed? He always pretended he didn't hear me and if I pressed the question, he would walk away, promising to be back soon. I was too weak to hound him and eventually I understood that he would never tell me what happened, or what he had done.

In his silence, I finally understood that he had done something unthinkable, possibly criminal, something he did not believe he could do to stand as a fortress between me and death. It was a secret. He would look at me across a room and I could feel secrets simmering between us, secrets we had together and secrets we kept from each other.

My secret was the love I felt for him because my feelings for him had to be caged. We couldn’t be lovers. He was a man thirteen years older than me, and he had become my legal guardian. The reality of that fact meant that everyone believed that our relationship resembled parent and child, even if he was not my biological father. How unsavory it would be if the people around us got an inkling of my feverish longing. It had to be hidden from everyone: from him, from the world, and sometimes from myself.

Alone, I could acknowledge my true feelings. I loved him completely. I dreamed of the day when the secrets that stood between us would crumble to dust and only we would be left.

Thank you for reading!  I hope you enjoyed it.  In case you'd rather not have the pressure of helping me out with promotion, you can always buy your own copy.

His 16th Face is available for purchase at the following online bookstores:

Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1999249852?pf_rd_r=TEW9B4TE0TREZVS0J89K&pf_rd_p=6fc81c8c-2a38-41c6-a68a-f78c79e7253f

Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/His-16th-Face-Stephanie-Orman/dp/1999249852/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=stephanie+van+orman&qid=1589578436&sr=8-3

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/his-16th-face-stephanie-van-orman/1137024234?ean=2940164077167

KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/his-16th-face

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1019233

Google Play Books: https://books.google.ca/books/about/His_16th_Face.html?id=1pbiDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

Lulu Bookstore: https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/stephanie-van-orman-and-shafran/his-16th-face/ebook/product-698dde.html

And more!  Wherever you buy books, I'm probably there.

A Memorable Launch - His 16th Face

If you were to buy a copy of His 16th Face, this is what would be on the back of the book.  

Christian is the wrong man for Beth to love. Everything about him is forbidden. If he loved her, it would be a crime. If she loved him, she would be overlooking a hundred lies.

She knew when she woke up on a beach in Mexico after years of battling heart disease, that he had risked everything to save her. The past always catches up to him. Hunted, he must change his name and change his face, as if he never even existed.

The price of love is unimaginable.

Here's an excerpt on the cover:

"Have you ever been in love with a liar? Have you ever been in love with someone who is completely pretentious? They're lying to you. You know they're lying, yet they could ask you for absolutely anything and you'd give it to them. Why? Because you trust that liar. You trust something in their expression, in the brush of their fingertips, and the promise of devotion in their eyes no matter what the last thing they said was.”

Rogan’s expression had split in half. That was what happened when a practiced liar had to play a part but still had to feel within himself. The half that was Rogan looked annoyed, while the half that had been my Christian was visibly moved. “You shouldn’t love that kind of man, Beth.”

I ruffled my hair. “No kidding. How I feel about you is just as bad. I know you’re wrong for me. I know you don’t want to love me and you’re just sitting on that couch now because you’re worried I won’t be safe if you don’t. I love that you feel that way. Stay. I’ll make you dinner.”

I have rarely been so pleased with my presentation of the hero of a story as I have been with Christian Henderson.  During the weeks leading up to my release, I was reading and rereading him, trying to make him perfect.  I was so busy that I completely missed the fraudulent copy of Whenever You Want that went up for sale on Amazon in early April.

I honestly thought I was too small time to have to deal with unauthorized versions of my novels and working it out basically ruined my release day.   It ended up being pretty easy to work with Amazon to prove my ownership and get the unauthorized copies removed, but still... the fraudsters ruined my release day because instead of posting happy, super-pumped ads everywhere, I was composing communication with Amazon and trying not to sound crazy... which totally happens when someone who has no right to sell your book is charging more than you are.  Don't even get me started on the super cheap cover they gave my book or the font they used to spell out my name.  Ugh... the losers can't even steal with style.

The one thing that was positive about the whole thing was how chill I was when I handled everything.  It was like the alarm inside me labeled 'freak out time' stayed off no matter how many times I glanced at the dashboard.  It was never time to freak out because I am never going to quit doing this. I plan to write until I die now, so I'll have to learn to deal with this stuff.

I don't really know when the moment came, that I became a person who will not stop writing.  I suppose it was like the day that comes when you pick up your child and unwittingly you will never pick them up again.  It came so gradually, you don't know the exact day.  Even if you put your child down saying they're getting too big to carry, there still might come another day when you lift your child up in your arms and carry them.  I remember my mother carrying me on her back when I was 17.  My ankle was hurt and she carried me.  In the next moment, my boyfriend was carrying me.  Dear sweet Christopher, who took me from my mother's arms, married me as early as he could and made me a mother.

This book is dedicated to him, Christopher, who has been by my side for over twenty years with his unerring confidence, his smile that has all the fun in it, his willingness to be reckless in his own calculated way, and all those little things that make him the perfect muse.  This book is more for him than any other I have ever written.  He loves this book.  It's his favorite.  I can't wait to write the sequel to show all of you where a man like that can take you.  Watch for it.

P.S. Happy Mother's Day to my mom who will not see this blog.  You raised a girl who calmly handled one of her greatest fears on release day.  May my daughter also deal with thieves and robbers by cracking her knuckles and typing it out.