Book Review: 'Struck by Love' series by Syrie James

Struck by Love series

Floating on Air by Syrie James

I was delighted when Syrie James asked me to read and review the two books in her Struck by Love series of short contemporary romances. Both stories, set in the 1980s, concern themselves with strong heroines trying to carve out their places in the world (usually male-dominated worlds) and heal from past relationships.

The settings are very evocative and help drive the plot. In Floating on Air, our heroine Desiree is a radio DJ and lives in Anaheim, California. The local beaches and Catalina Island feature prominently in her journey to love with successful businessman Kyle. I used to work in radio so liked that side of the story as well.

Two Week Deal by Syrie James

Music is also a key theme in this book, which is beautifully done.

In Two Week Deal, we are off to Lake Tahoe and Heavenly mountain. I love to ski and spend time on the water so the setting appealed to me very much. Kelli is trying build a freelance career as an illustrator in the cutthroat advertising industry. An impulsive decision leads to an irresistible proposition which could jumpstart both her career and her love-life. The hero's domineering ways didn't sit well with me, although Kelli decides in the end that he can compromise after all. Kelli is Kyle's younger sister, and it's great to see his story continued in this one.

Syrie's prose is so gorgeous and lyrical that sometimes it feels like poetry. A joy to read.

Both stories quickly progress from attraction, to infatuation, to love and talk of marriage (in a matter of days!). I am not a fan of insta-love, but after reading the author's note I see it's like a family tradition which is so lovely. You can read more about the real-life inspiration behind Floating on Air on Syrie's blog.

Both books also wrap the endings up quickly, with not much time between the black moment and the end - but I suppose this must be common in shorter romances.

Overall, these are two marvellous books with plenty of spice, strong heroines and incredible heroes. Highly recommended as escapist reads with tons of heart.

The Value of Writerly Companionship

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For many years, I have been afraid of letting my writing life cross over into my real life. I wouldn’t freely divulge my writing hobby among casual friends and acquaintances… though people accidentally finding my blog when it was under my real name sort of gave the game away. While I had overseas-based online writing buddies, I didn’t think joining a local real-life writers’ group would offer me much more than one conference a year and maybe some writing tips. Or perhaps I was just too much of a scaredy-cat to get over my shyness and put myself out there.

How wrong I was. Through Twitter, the great networker of our time, at first I followed like-minded writers in the US and UK, gradually finding Aussie authors. I’d been following a couple of Kiwi authors for a while, but eventually I came into the sphere of some active RWNZ members. One of them was so kind as to chat with me about my writing and invite me to the local chapter meeting. She was so lovely I just couldn’t say no.

At the meeting I met a variety of wonderful people who welcomed me in and were eager to find out about my writing journey. Shortly thereafter I joined RWNZ officially and have since enjoyed all the subsequent meetings, the newsletter and recently, the email loop. Unfortunately I won’t be able to go to this year’s conference due to a prior commitment (although that commitment is going to be pretty awesome).

I’ve already learnt so much. Not just about the craft and different approaches to writing, but about the various avenues to get your work out there. It’s amazing really: writers come in so many different personalities and tastes, but at the heart of it we all love to do the same thing: create characters, worlds and emotion.

These people are my people, and they get/understand so many parts of me like no-one else in my life can. I feel validated in all my quirks, methods and neuroses. I feel encouraged. I feel less crazy. And even though it’s early days, I feel a bond with this group. It’s still daunting rocking up to a large group of (mostly) ladies I barely know, but it gets easier each time, and when the writing discussion starts, I lap it up.

So if you’ve been thinking about joining a writer’s group, any group, I say go for it. If I scaredy-cat like me can enjoy it, you can too.

So How's That Book Coming Along?

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Sometimes it seems like there is nothing more complicated, drawn-out, fulfilling, frustrating, and bewildering as the (attempted) path to publication. One of the most satisfying thing for a writer is to share the journey with other writers. Perhaps no-one else can understand just what it's like.

That doesn't, however, stop other people in your life from asking about it. With my first completed MS, I was extremely open about it. I told people I was writing a book.

"So how's that book coming along?" they'd ask me, whenever I saw anyone.

"Good, I'm writing lots," I could respond, or, "Nearly done!"

Then I went through edits (or what I thought were edits) and sent it to some people to read. And sadly, some of those people went quiet! (the irony is sort of amusing)

So when people would ask, "what's happening the book?" I could say, "I'm polishing it."

Then I submitted directly to publishers (you can do that here in NZ), and told people about it. I collected rejections.

Next I researched the international market, and discovered agents, querying, publishing blogs (I became a Miss Snark devotee). I poured myself into the process. When people asked me about the book, I'd try to explain how it works, and they'd assume I could just sign up with an agency (a bit like how you can sign up for a talent agency). Then I'd have to let them know that, actually, my work had to be good enough and, as of yet, it hadn't passed muster.

These enquiries, while well-meaning, tend to become tedious and sometimes downright depressing. With my current WIP, I've only told close family members, and those who happen to google me ;-) I don't really want to talk about it in person (unless I have super-dooper good news, of course!). It's like rubbing salt into a wound when I'm trying hard to convince myself there is no wound. If someone asks me what I did on the weekend, I'm no longer going to say, "I was working on my book". And yet I like being open online, as other writers know what this road is like. So there is the potential of "real life people" keeping up with my tumultuous process. At the moment this compromise seems to be working, but at times it feels like a double-life.

How public are you with your writing goals and progress? Do you like to talk about where you're at?

Leaving the Nest

I am starting to share my WIP with some beta readers. Just drip-feeding it by chapter, so that:

 

a) I can keep working away on the rest of it in the meantime and

b) So they can opt out at any time, like products you get from an informercial

 

It makes me excited, to finally share what I've done. It also makes me petrified, because maybe what I've done is absolute rubbish. But I'd rather have these readers tell me that, than send it off to agents in a sorry state. I have some readers who are writers, and a couple who are good friends/avid readers. At least for those who've read my previous stuff, I'm pretty confident that this is a whole lot better.

 

I knew my first chapter needed the most work, because I'd added so many extra notes in there while I was completing the rest of the draft, and when I first wrote it I was telling myself the story so there was too much exposition. I cut over a thousand words during this edit, but I also added stuff in to flesh out the characters (now that I know them better) and lay some more groundwork for what's to come. I did a fair bit of editing as I went with the latter chapters, but as I tackle them again I know I need to step out of the story and focus on the other elements. And I'm looking forward to reading it again because, you know, I like it.

Balancing Writing and Networking – How Do You Do It?

This week for me has been all about interacting with people on blogs, twitter and email. The main realisation I’ve come to is that this networking stuff all takes a lot of time.

I have a full time job, and it’s pretty demanding. I generally have 2-3 hours a day which I can spend on non-working, -eating, -cooking or -cleaning duties. Most of the time I could get in at least an hour of writing. A lot of the rest of it is spent catching up with writing and non-writing stuff online, reading, exercising, a bit of TV and hanging out with the people/pets in my life. This week however, I’ve only managed an hour total of half-hearted editing.

The first thing is Twitter. I don’t know how everyone does it. It’s not hard to send out the odd tweet about what you’re up to, or cool links you’ve seen. But the advice is to actually ‘network’; to join conversations and build relationships. The amount of time it takes to do this baffles me. Just trying to read everyone’s tweets is a huge time-sucker. Because of time zones, by the time I catch up I’m usually about six hours behind, so I’d look stupid replying to stuff, especially in the rapid-fire conversations a lot of writers seem to have with their groups of friends on Twitter. A lot of the time the subject matter is specific to local things, which I know nothing about, and it seems like I’d be butting in anyway. Even once I find more local people to connect with, I still wonder how on earth I’ll keep up with it all. I’ve download TweetDeck and I’ve started making lists, but there’s still the same volume of stuff. It’s different from when I used to use Twitter just to catch up with official news sources and special interest sites. Trying to actual communicate back in the other direction seems to take a whole lot longer. The thing is, if I had more time it would be very enjoyable.

Then there’s blogs – both trying to update mine and reading/commenting on other people’s. I’ve used Google’s RSS reader for a long time and I love it. My mission at the moment is trying to read things in a timely manner, so any comments I make are posted in a reasonable timeframe. I’m also subscribing to lots of new feeds which isn’t helping this goal.

So I’m keen to find out how other people are staying on top of all this stuff. Your occupation is a job, writing is a job, managing a house is a job, and now social networking is a job too. How do you handle it all? How much time do you spend doing these things each day? Any tips for how to network effectively without it sucking your life into a virtual vortex?

Coming Out of the Shadows

I’ve been a happy lurker for many years now. Apart from some activity on the boards at The Republic of Pemberley a loooong time ago, I haven’t really contributed to many discussions online. I use Twitter a lot, to catch up on news and trends, but I haven’t tweeted until this week when I set up a new account with my real name. I don’t have a personal Facebook profile – I just look over my husband’s shoulder to see what our friends are up to. Now I’ve claimed a ‘page’ for myself there, but I have no idea what to do with it. I don’t even know if you can friend/like other people when you have a page rather than a profile. And I don’t see there’s much point getting that going before anyone knows who I am... right?

So I think the first baby steps are to start commenting on other blogs, and on writer’s forums. I’ve sometimes clicked on a commenter’s profile and come through to their blog, so maybe that might happen to me if I say something interesting. I think this is the main reason I haven’t contributed to things previously – I just don’t think what I might say will be interesting enough.

The thing is I would like to strike up some friendships online, and/or have people respond to stuff I put out there on this blog. I really identified with something Natalie Whipple said a while ago – that for one reason or another most friendships had never stuck in real life... then she went on to say that she knows her writer friends are friends for life. I came over all emotional when I read that. It seems like the YA community is a lot more active than the rest though, so I’m not counting my chickens. I also live on the other side of the world from most of the writing community, which is a tad inconvenient for real life stuff. But that’s OK. All I can do is put myself out there, like I am on this blog, and see what comes of it.