Who is accessing this site with the search terms:

• Secret Society Girl Downloads
• Under the Rose (Ivy League) Downloads
• Rites of Spring Break lit download
• Tap and Gown lit download

I am wondering if you realize that you are attempting to steal my books. I followed your search string and see that you did, indeed, find free copies of my book online. These books were uploaded by thieves, and when you download it, you are also a thief. You may not feel like a thief, because you didn’t walk into a store, stuff a copy of my book down your pants, and walk out — but that’s what you are.

Maybe you think you have the right to steal my book because the last two have not yet been published in Brazil. Well, let me tell you something: if this kind of thievery continues, they probably won’t be. Why should a publisher pay me money to publish a book whose potential readership (i.e, those people who have read the first book and want to continue on with the series) have already stolen? They won’t buy it. Why bother?

Maybe you think you have the right to steal my book because I’m an author and you are under the mistaken impression that all authors are rich and won’t miss the money. People tend to think all authors are rich because they read these newspaper articles about how JK Rowling is the richest person in England and Dan Brown owns a private jet. But those kind of authors are really, really rare. Most authors I know have day jobs just to pay the rent. Believe me, when you steal a book from most authors, we feel it very keenly indeed.

When I go to these sites where thieves and pirates have uploaded copies of my books online, I see that they have been accessed thousands of times. Thousands of times! Sometimes the number of people who have stolen one of my books is larger than the number of copies my publisher has told me they’ve sold. Sometimes it’s larger than the number of paper copies my publisher has printed. And that’s the other problem with stealing my book. You may think you’re a huge fan of mine, but what you’re actually doing is ensuring that I don’t write any more books. And the reason for that is, when someone steals your book, it doesn’t count as a a sale, no matter how much the thief says they love your book and writes you fan mail about your book. It doesn’t count. And when a publisher looks at your book and sees that they printed very few copies, that they sold very few copies, they say to themselves, “Well, this isn’t a very popular author. Let’s not publish any more of her books.”

And then you never read another book by me again.

I’m not stupid. I know not every one of these thousands of thieves would buy my book if there were no “free” copy to steal, the same way I might take a free sample of chicken teriyaki at the mall food court without having any intention of buying the chicken teriyaki the restaurant is selling. But the difference is, the food court guys know they are giving away free chicken teriyaki. They’ve decided to do it. I do the same thing right here on my website, where you can not only get a free sample of each book in the form of the first chapter, but you can also read a heap of free stories. Stories that are right there to read for free, with my blessing!

You would never dream of going into the kitchen at the restaurant and filling yourself up a bowl of chicken teriyaki and walking away, would you? Well, that’s what you’re doing when you steal my book. And when you come to my website and TELL me that you’re stealing my book, it’s a slap in the face. Because you came to my website. You saw my picture. You know I’m not some faceless robot churning out books, but a real person, with a mortgage, and a family to feed, and college loans to pay, and a job that I might lose if you keep stealing from me.

I know books are expensive. I know you don’t have a lot of extra money. I know that you just love my books so so so much and you just can’t wait until you can get a legal copy of the new one and won’t I please understand.

I know these things. And I want YOU to understand that it is stealing. I want you to understand that if it keeps up, I’ll never be able to write another book again, either to buy or to steal. Because my publisher doesn’t count thieves as fans, and they think to themselves, “Well, no one reads her books.”

And I want you to understand how hard it is for me to make the stealing stop. I know some writers who spend 10-20 hours a week writing takedown notices to websites. That’s time they could spend writing. And the reason it takes so long is that these pirating websites make it really, really hard for you to get things taken down. Most of them will not accept a standard form letter, and if you try to send them a polite, standard “I’m the copyright holder of this work please remove it from your site” letter, they send you back a nasty email about how they don’t care what you say unless you say it in the exact order they want you to. They send you a nasty email about how you are getting in the way of progress. They put up nasty notices on their sites saying that they will not comply with any request unless you serve them in writing, by snail mail (even though they can steal from you online). They put up nasty notices on their site — which, btw, you can never email a real person, or even have an email address — just fill out a form five or six times before their image verification software chooses to accept it — saying they will not comply with any requests unless you give them your personal address and phone number. Yes, that’s right: they don’t even have names or email addresses, let alone street addresses or phone numbers, and yet you have to include all that stuff of your own — you have to give all that information TO THE THIEVES before they take your stolen work off their site. And then, sometimes, they put your letter with your personal information up on their site for people to mock you and harass you with. Do you have any idea how heartbreaking it is to have to beg thieves on a daily basis to stop stealing from you? To have to write certified letters to the stick-up man in the dark alleyway just to get him to stop shoving that gun in your face and taking your wallet? And have him tell you that YOU’RE in the wrong and you haven’t asked him to stop in triplicate with a notary?

That’s how ridiculous this is.

I could spend all my writing time chasing these people down and begging them to take my work off their sites. I know writers who do that. But that’s another way not to have any more books out — if I don’t write anymore.

So all I can do is say please do not steal my books.

Thank you.

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Okay, I know I’ve been a bad blogger recently. But I’ve also been so swamped. I’m up to my neck in killer unicorns, guys, plus I’ve got house guests. Plus I’ve got these little monsters to contend with:

And as you can see, that white one ain’t so very little.

Anyway, the winner of the Betina Krahn Giveaway is ELISA V. Elisa, email me with your address to receive your prize.

And, since i”m not fit for blogging at the moment, we’re just going to do another giveaway. yYy! This one has two prizes. I’m giving away the first two books in Jeri Smith-Ready’s WVMP Radio urban fantasy series: WICKED GAME and BAD TO THE BONE. Better yet, they’re signed! W00T!

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Jeri at a booksigning up the road in Maryland. Here we are at Constellation Books in Reistertown, a darling indie bookstore located in a beautiful old house:

Every time I think I’m “done” with vampires as a trope, some writer comes along to freshen things up, like Smith-Ready with her OCD radio DJs. The musical references fly fast and furious in these two novels, which led one of my fave old local DJs (before the format switched on HIS station and sent him packing) to say:

Jeri Smith-Ready’s vampire volume WICKED GAME will make your corpuscles coagulate with corpulent incredulity. It’s for youngbloods and old jugulars alike. Whether you devour it on SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY or just before DINNER WITH DRAC, simply turn off the 50-inch plasma, lay back, and LET IT BLEED.

— Weasel, WTGB-94.7 the Globe, Washington DC

How awesome is that?

Anyway, leave a comment here to enter. I’ll be giving way one copy of WICKED GAME and one copy of BAD TO THE BONE.

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Today, I’m doing a giveaway of historical author Betina Krahn’s new romance, MAKE ME YOURS. It’s a marvelously fun romp through Victorian England with a spunky widowed innkeeper named Mariah and the bachelor gentleman Jack whose assignment from the Prince of Wales it is to find her a new husband… because the prince likes all his potential mistresses to be married. Only problem is, sparks start to fly.

If you haven’t read this author before, here’s a quiz to determine whether or not Betina Krahn’s books are right for you:

1. I like books with the following characterizations:

a) Clever women who always come out on top.
b) Sexy, intelligent men who meet their match.
c) Fully-fleshed out secondary characters who add to the tapestry and texture of the story.
d) All of the Above
e) I prefer books with dishwater heroines, cardboard heroes, and secondary characters who might as well be patterns on the wallpaper.

2. I prefer my books to be:

a) Funny
b) Moving
c) Historically accurate
d) All of the Above
e) Dull

3. I read to be:

a) Educated
b) Entertained
c) Turned on
d) All of the Above
e) Rendered headachy

_______________________________

ANSWER KEY:

Mostly As: You should definitely be reading Betina Krahn!
Mostly Bs: You should certainly be reading Betina Krahn!
Mostly Cs: You should indubitably be reading Betina Krahn!
Mostly Ds: Betina Krahn is probably going to be your new favorite author
Mostly Es: Dude, what are you doing on this blog? Please leave. Just, I don’t know… evaporate or something.

So, what’s your score? Tell me in the comments section and be entered to win a copy of MAKE ME YOURS.

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set piece: (n.) an important dramatic or comedic highpoint in a film or story, particularly those that provide some kind of dramatic payoff, resolution, or transition. (Source: Wikipedia)

set piece: (n.) A situation, activity, or speech planned beforehand and carried out according to a prescribed pattern or formula. (Source: American Heritage Dictionary)

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Last week, I got into an interesting conversation about set pieces with blog book reviewer Angie of Angieville. Well, I was thinking of them as set pieces. I don’t know if that’s how she thinks of them, or if readers tend to think of them at all.

Some writers I know call them tent pole scenes. They are the scenes that you are plotting your story around — the big scenes that keep the story aloft. I’m someone who plots my books in advance. this seems to confuse a lot of writers, who think I literally look at every scene and go “And now she lifts her hand, and now she crosses the room.” I don’t tend to even think of scenes when I’m plotting my books — with the exception of these big tent pole scenes — the scenes that I ABSOLUTELY know that the book will have in order for the plot to proceed as planned. The other scenes are string between the tent pole scenes. I know certain bits of information need to get out from scene to scene, but I’m not sure exactly how that’s going to play out in every single scene in advance.*

What is interesting to me is that the scenes I tend to think of as absolutely vital and pivotal to the story when plotting, though they almost always make it into the book as written, they may not be as vital as I originally thought. They certainly may not be as vital to the reader as some other scene — one that I may not have even planned.

Which is why this Laurel and Hardy still is so illustrative to the way I write (with apologies to Maureen Johnson, who usually has a monopoly on the use of classic film stills to illustrate her writing lessons).

So here we’ve got Hardy, Laurel, and a hapless bystander about to build something.

When I am plotting a book in advance, I’m Hardy. Decisive. Clueless. I think I know exactly what I want and exactly where I think it’s going to go. I’m saying “Right here. Right here is the big scene on the sandbar.”

When I’m writing the book, I’m Laurel. I’m saying, “There, there, Hardy. I do not think you were right about this. Nice try though. It worked in your head. On paper, it’s a certifiable mess.”

And when the book comes out, I’m the dude in the uniform, and the readers are all saying, “Wow, that shower scene was a real humdinger,” and I’m going, “About that scene on the sandbar…” ::THUNK! Boardinface::

Which is fine. Great, in fact. I love it when I’m surprised by a powerful moment or turning point in my books. And I love it when anyone responds to any moment in my books, whether it was something I myself was concentrating intently on or not.

When planning out series, I often find myself imagining scenes years and years in advance of the moment I actually get to write them. I wrote the aforementioned “sandbar scene” in summer of 2007. I first imagined it in summer of 2005. I recently wrote a scene into KU2 that I’d been imagining also since 2005.

There’s a lot of built in pressure to writing these set pieces. Since they’ve been living in my head so long, I worry if they don’t conform to what I’ve been imagining when they finally get down on paper. Sometimes I approach them with genuine excitement and anticipation. “I can’t wait to finally get this down!” Sometimes, I approach them with fear and trepidation. “Uh-oh. I hope this works out as planned.”

But when they do work out, it’s magic. When I sail into a set piece, a piece I’ve pictured, dreamed of, been excited to weave into my story for months or years — and it unfolds as I planned — or even better — it’s fantastic. One of the absolute best parts of my job.

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* This is, I feel the need to point out, the reason I put my plot boards together AFTER writing. It’s a comparative assessment against my synopsis, so I can see how plotlines actually played out on a scene by scene basis.

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I am of two minds about posting this. On one hand, the casting decisions have cast a dreadful pallor over the entire production. (Pun intended.) On the other hand, other than the part where the dude takes off his hood and it’s so not Aang, I feel like I recognize this. I recognize the sets, I recognize the shots, it all seems so right. Like a cartoon come alive.

Looking at this is like the first time I saw the teaser trailer for LOTR and it was a shot of Eowyn stepping out of Edoras and looking over the mountains and I turned to Sailor Boy and went, “Wow, this film looks like such a LOTR ripoff,” and then it actually was LOTR and my heart soared.

Dare I give M. Night another chance, even after the mess he made of the casting? (Jasper as Sokka? Gah.) Even after the unbearable dreck that was The Lady in the Water? (Please, please, M. do not cast yourself as Firelord Ozai. Please.)

(Or, even worse, Roku. For the love of everything holy.)

Dare I hope that this could actually still be good?

(Thanks to my brother-in-law for sending this to me. He’s become quite the Avatar fanboy ever since SB and I turned him on to it.)

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