Among the various pets my kids have talked me into accumulating, our ball python Jawzahr (named for the mythical Persian dragon who chased the sun and moon) gets the most frequent expressions of disapproval from friends and family.

Why on earth would you want a snake? they sensibly ask.

My initial answer was, my son wanted it. He was going through his reptile phase, and he’s such a careful and attentive observer of nature, I wanted to reward his interest with a gift. But over time, I’ve become the snake’s biggest fan.

Jawzahr, unlike our other pets, is neat, quiet, and requires almost no maintenance save for regular handling and a defrosted mouse every week or so. He rewards us with his beauty and peacefulness. I unexpectedly discovered that handling him is good for my mental health, too. He is easily startled, so I must be calm and careful when holding him. This has the effect of lowering my own stress level.

Over time, we’ve learned a great deal about snakes from caring for and observing him, and while this isn’t a benefit I ever thought I wanted, it’s made my frequent wilderness hikes more enjoyable. When I encounter a snake now, I don’t experience a jolt of fear the way I once did. I know how to react, and since most snakes are harmless, I can appreciate such moments as rare chances to observe a creature in its natural habitat.

Our fish tank is a hassle, our lizards are smelly and high maintenance, and our rabbits are disdainful and prone to chewing things they shouldn’t. But the python? He’s lovely.

What’s the best pet you’ve ever had? The oddest?

(PS: If you’re in the market for a snake of your own, check at your local humane society, or look for local breeders on places like Craigslist to help keep the pressure of pet trading off wild populations. Captive-bred snakes are often easier to feed and handle than wild-caught ones too.)

Have you ever wondered how novels get their names? The process usually goes something like this:

I give my book-in-progress a working title. Lots of writers don’t get hung up on whether this working title is a good one, but I’m completely obsessed with names, so I can’t start writing the story with any seriousness until I know what its name is. My current work in progress had a working title of These Three Words.

I love Stevie Wonder. I love words. I love the song of the same name. I love that title. Alas, I knew it would probably be changed. And it was.

After turning in the complete manuscript of a book, my editor usually asks for a list of title suggestions. I say usually, because there are occasions when my title so obviously belongs on the book, there’s no question of changing it. These Three Words, lovely as it sounds, isn’t the most marketable of titles, so I came up with a list of alternatives. This list is used in an editorial meeting during which a title is chosen–sometimes the editors like something on the list, and sometimes they don’t and pick something of their own or ask for another list of suggestions.

The story formerly known as These Three Words is a SuperRomance that takes place during the Christmas season, so I knew we probably needed a Christmas-y title. I also knew I should focus on the elements in the story that tend to sell books. Namely, a pregnant heroine, an impending baby, and a military hero.

The title my editor ultimately chose was Baby Under the Mistletoe. It works because it gives the reader an idea of what the story might be about–babies and Christmas. It’s sweet, happy, hopeful, and warm.

Not every book has been so easy to come up with a name for. In one memorable instance, two other authors and I spent several weeks brainstorming several long lists of titles for a 3-book series we were doing together, and even with all that effort, none of the titles we came up with were satisfactory.

I’m strongly drawn to a well-titled book, though some of my favorite authors have titles I don’t love–often, when an author becomes a franchise, or the publisher is trying to market them as such, the titles are more a part of the franchise packaging than they are an indicator of the content of the story. Those titles drive me batty, because I have trouble remembering them when trying to recommend a book to a friend.

Do titles matter to you as a reader? If so, what are some of your favorites or least-favorites?

I’m blogging today at the fabulous new Blaze Authors blog. I’ve posted the story of how I got my start as a writer.

Check it out, and you can enter there for a chance to win copies of my first two novels (or any other two if you already have those).

Reading the line edit of my upcoming September book last night, I had a rare moment of sheer joy at discovering that I was really happy with something I’d written. I’m usually much more in the camp of “I suck at writing.”

But the thing I was happy about presents a problem for me that I’m not sure how to work out. It’s a character, actually. The hero’s brother in my next release, Made You Look, is the kind of character I love to write. He’s smart and funny, and he’s also bipolar. His life is difficult, he’s insecure, he’s marginally employed… Definitely not the usual romance novel hero material. He’s the kind of guy who only appears as a secondary character in romances.

He’s a great reminder for me that there’s a balance to be struck in creating genre heroes and heroines. Yes, they need to be admirable people, but they also need to have some serious flaws that make them human and relatable. I did manage to create two quite flawed main characters in the book as well, but the hero’s brother is the one who speaks to me most clearly. I’ll be interested to hear reader feedback about him when the book comes out.

So how do we writers best strike the balance between creating flawed characters while still making them heroic? How do you do it, or if you’re strictly a reader, who are some of your favorite flawed heroes and heroines, and why do they work for you?

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware off, no shortcut. ” — Stephen King, On Writing

So what do editors want?

There isn’t any simple answer, because the things that take a book from the slush pile to publication are mostly ephemeral qualities. Most editors really only know what they want when they see it. And any attempts to narrow it down (“What I really want is a gothic vampire action adventure romance”) are more likely to lead to frustration than a book sale. It’s a lot like dating, actually.

You may think you want a certain type of guy. You look for Him. He’s handsome, medium build, blond, blue-eyed, works in finance, and has a great sense of humor and is forceful without being a jerk and sensitive without being a weeny and he never, ever forgets your birthday or your anniversary and always, always knows exactly what you want for Christmas. Also he’s great in bed and preferably is a great Trivial Pursuit player, but you’re a little flexible on this last quality because you can teach him. Trivial Pursuit, that is.

Looking for That Guy is going to leave you wildly frustrated. And what about all the other cool but not That Guy guys out there? You miss out on them.

It’s the same with publishing. If an editor is looking too hard for a certain type of book, she’ll be in danger of overlooking some other wonderful book, so she isn’t likely to look too hard for any certain type of book. And if you try too hard to write the exact book you think your targetted editor is looking for, you’re likely to miss out on what you do well.

And what is that? You have to figure it out by trial and error. You have to listen to feedback from critique partners and editors and contest judges, and you have to decide what feedback you agree with. You have to hone your gut sense about your work by getting it in front of any audience you can and then seeing their reaction. It can take years, but the years are going to pass anyway, so you might as well spend them doing something you love.

And you do love writing, don’t you? Because that’s the only reason to do it. If you love it as much as you love breathing (and by love, I don’t mean you actually enjoy sitting down at the computer every day–I mean that you can’t not write, because not writing would feel a little like death), and if you keep working at it, keep trying to get better, you’ll have the most important reward you can have as a writer.

No, I don’t mean getting published. Though that is a lovely reward. I mean, you’ll know you’ve done your best. And if you’ve done your best, and you’re writing books you love, chances are an editor will recognize it. And she’ll have to have you as her author.

The simple and complicated truth is, editors want great books. They want beautifully written books. They want books they can’t put down. And a beautifully written, can’t-put-downable book is inside you, waiting to get out onto the page. So what are you doing here? Go write it!

This will be the first in a series of posts I do this week on the topic of what editors want. If you have specific questions you’d like me to address in my posts on this topic, feel free to email me (jamiesobrato AT yahoo DOT com) or post your questions in the comments section.

PART 1:

For those of you struggling to sell your first book, trying to figure out what editors want can seem like a maddening and neverending quest. You read the publisher guidelines, you read the how-to-write-fiction books, you google an editor’s name until you come up with an interview they’ve given in which they say what they’re looking for… Maybe you even go to conferences and listen to what the editors say they want. Then you write your book, doing your best to fit your creative vision to the market’s needs. You submit your work, and you get rejected.

Okay, maybe that’s not everyone’s process. It wasn’t even my process exactly when I was trying to sell my first book, but it’s a good representation of what many of us do.

So how do you overcome the frustration of putting in all that work and still not selling the book?

The truth is, you don’t. Instead, you become one with the frustation, you embrace it, you have breakfast, lunch and dinner with it… You get the idea. Frustration is part of the process, and what you do to survive along the way is hold on to any little good signs you get and use those as motivation to keep going.

Maybe you give a pitch at a writer’s conference or in a query letter, and the editor says she loves your idea and that you should send her the manuscript to read. Turn that little bit of good news into the air that you breathe for, oh, say, the next year or however long it takes to get your next little bit of good news.

Just as important though, make yourself aware of what you did well in that pitch, and in that manuscript, that caught her interest. If you write a query that’s good enough to catch an editor’s interest, then take note. What did you do well? Do it again.

If, after submitting your work, you get anything other than a form rejection, glean every little clue you can from the feedback you get. Did the editor invite you to send more? Marvelous. Did she say no to your book and let you know why it didn’t work for her? Just as marvelous, because now you’ve got a road map toward improvement.

And now I have to qualify the above. One of the most important parts of becoming an experienced writer is learning to trust your own judgment about your work. Sometimes I think a book is good enough to sell and I’m wrong, but honestly, that doesn’t happen often anymore. If it does happen, it might be my judgment that’s faulty, but it’s just as likely to be market conditions or editorial taste. The point is though, sometimes, when you write something and you’re sure it’s the best thing you can write and you’re sure it’s going to sell if you just find the right editor–sometimes, you’re right.

The editor who rejected you may not be the right editor for you. So you keep trying until you find the right editor. You learn to distinguish matters of editorial taste from matters of manuscript quality. But that’s a topic for another post…

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2.

Weird (and not so weird) things about cover art at Harlequin:

1. No matter what color hair the hero in the novel really has, it’s probably going to be dark brown on the cover.

2. The person in the more dominant position on the cover is also usually the person who is more dominant in the story. It’s subliminal messaging, telling you subtly what the story is about.

3. Covers that prominently feature the hero’s torso (and little else) seem to sell better than every other kind of cover (this is anecdotal–I haven’t done an actual study, but am just going by what every author claims who’s had one of these mythical torso covers).

4. Object covers (featuring things instead of people), unless it’s for a bestselling author, sell horribly.

5. I can see no correlation at all between what I think are my most appealing covers and how well the book actually sells. It’s all a great big mystery (Of course there are many other factors affecting sales, but I find it strange that I can’t see any pattern. At ALL.).

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” ~Elmore Leonard

Oh Elmore. This is why we love you.

Thinking last night about how hard it is to work up the courage to chase a dream–and keep chasing it for the distance. Every which way you turn, there are people with discouraging words, eager to point out why you can’t do what you want to do. Don’t listen to them. It’s their own lives they’re really talking about, not yours.