FAQ

1. What's the release date for the next Southern Watch/whatever book?

As soon as I can get it out the door. I don't know when that'll be, but if you sign up for my newsletter HERE I promise you'll get an email when it's available. I only send out the newsletter when I have a new release, so you won't get spammed or have your info sold.


2. When is the Girl in the Box/Sanctuary/Southern Watch going to become a movie/TV show? It would be awesome!

Other than "When is the next book coming out?!" this is probably the question I get asked the most. I'm going to be brutally honest here, so hold on to your hats.

Ever seen a favorite book get turned into a movie and have it turn out just WRONG? For every Hunger Games, Harry Potter or Game of Thrones that gets it right, there are a ton of them that just don't. What you loved about the book gets messed up in casting, or in the script, or somewhere in the transition to the screen. Yeah, I've seen those too. And that doesn't even count the books that started through the process of getting made and never actually got done. It's hard to take a book and make a movie or TV show out of it. A lot of things have to go right, and it doesn't take much going wrong to kill a project dead.

I've had offers. I'll entertain more in the future. But authors don't just go out and make movies from their creations. Most of the time authors sell the film or TV rights and whatever shows up on screen (if anything) is done entirely without their input.

I've spent too much time with my characters to just toss her into someone else's hands without care or consideration. If I did make a deal for, say, Girl in the Box, my poor, stout, heroine who doesn't quite fit the Hollywood ideal for body image would probably end up super tall and thin. That probably sounds like a minor quibble (and it is) but as the creator the thought of this and a thousand other character choices I've made being taken out of my hands make me more than a little queasy.

So I never say never, when it comes to a film or TV version of my works. But I'm in a position where I don't have to say 'yes' to it ever, either, if I don't want to. I'm sorry if it disappoints any of you, but I would rather never see them on screen than see it go horribly wrong.


3. I love your books but I found lots of errors in my reading of them! Let me help you fix them.

I will be the first to admit there are errors in my books. There are. Sometimes I miss words, and they don't get caught by my editing team. That happens. What also happens is that sometimes I skip words, I twist phrases, I use the British way of saying something, the American way of saying something, the Southern U.S. way of saying something...I play around a lot with my words. And of course, sometimes I just screw up.

But I'm at a point of diminishing returns on error correction. Each proofreader I add to the mix equals another week of revision time per book. Because I can't just accept someone's wholesale revisions to my books. I actually need to check and make sure that what this person has sent me is a change I want to make. Sometimes it's simple, like when I leave out a key word. Sometimes it's not, especially when it looks like I left out a word, but really I was just doing it on purpose so it sounded more like how people actually talk. I will never choose to follow the rules of grammar when it obstructs the meaning I'm trying to get across. Never, not ever. Pedants, be aware: my writing may not be for you.

Anyway, I'm left with two choices. Assuming I *could* stomp out every single legit error that pulls people out of the reading of the book with just one more pass (which is doubtful), that would add about a week of time per book per year. It would probably be more than that, because I EFFING HATE REVISING. HATE IT. By the last time through, I'm ready to be done with the book forever. Crawling over a manuscript for a fifth time makes my skin crawl, makes me want to curl up in the corner and weep - you get the point. A sixth? Ugh. No, thanks.

I probably get one criticism per month offering to help me fix these errors, spread out over the last four years or so. Call it a hundred complaints. But let's just assume it was one thousand. In that time, I've sold over one million books. That would boil down to one complaint for every 1,000 books sold. (Again, I've inflated that complaint number by a factor of ten, so it's really more like every 10,000 books.) I could either add a week of revision time and another round of crying and screaming and crawling through a manuscript to my schedule...or I could just get the complaints, apologize, and move on with the next book.

Yeah, I know. Some people will take issue with this, say I should do it anyway. But when you write and publish nine books last year, like I did, you start to realize errors are inevitable and that all you can do is your absolute best. I'm self-published, which means I don't have a huge editing team at my disposal. It's me and three others, and they do a great job, but if you're seeking perfection, it's not going to be found here. Sorry.


4. How/where do you get your ideas?

I don't know. A lot of times they just seem to fall from the sky and smack me in the head. Sometimes they come to me while driving, other times when I'm sleeping (those tend to result in me scrawling on a pad I keep by my bed to sometimes hilarious results when I try to read them later - "What the hell did I write here?") For a little more detail, watch this:


5. I have this really cool book I want to recommend to you.

I have several hundred unread books on my Kindle. I've paid good money for books I don't know when I'll be able to read. A few of them were favors for friends (which I still intend to read) but a lot of them were ones where I said, "I want to read this," plunked down money to do so, then got distracted or busy and haven't had a chance to do it.

So, anyway, the moral of this story (and I hope I don't sound like a total asshat by saying this, but I probably am failing on that) is that I will politely listen to any book reco my fans care to give me, the same as I do for my friends. And then I will promptly discard it (pretty much the same as I do with the ones from my friends), because I have too many books to read (and write) at present and I have no idea when I'd actually get around to it. Unless I could somehow stop sleeping? Actually, if there's a book on how I'd never have to sleep again, that's one recommendation I'd gladly take.


6. How can I get a signed book? 

You probably can't - for now. It's too much work for me to deal with the logistics of buying and shipping books to me to be signed, then to you, and I hate the thought of excluding my international audience (because trying to make this happen on an international basis is nigh impossible). So unfortunately, this is just not a viable thing at present.


7. Why can't I find Sanctuary 3-8/Girl in the Box 7-10/any of Southern Watch in audiobook?

Unfortunately, my audiobooks have not sold well enough to even cover the costs (the narrator's time recording/editing/mastering, my time listening to make sure it's all good), and so for the foreseeable future, there will be no more audiobooks in any of my series. That could change if sales pick up, but it is presently very unlikely.


8. Do you actually make a full-time living doing this?

I do indeed, and have since 2012.