Isabelle Drake

I spent a chunk of July doing something I'd been avoiding, reading my own blog. Not all of it. But enough. I'd been meaning to assess things and tidy the place up for over a year, and cleaning means going back through, and going back through means thinking, considering, and making decisions. I’ve been keeping this blog for over twenty years, so, yeah, a lot to think about and go through. I got to work. I deleted posts that no longer serve anyone: contests that closed a decade ago, giveaways for books that have since gone out of print, announcements about events that came and went while some of you were off living your best life elsewhere. Nobody needs a link to enter a drawing that ended in 2009. Or do they… No, they don’t. Next up, the labels. If you'd clicked one before, or looked at them, you might have found a mess. I had eighty-three of them. There were labels used once. There were three different ways of saying the same thing. I got them down to twenty-three, so n...

The past couple months were filled with conference travel.  In early March, I attended an academic/literacy conference in Baltimore. It's an event I've attended on and off for over a decade. When I first started attending, I went as an MFA student. The faculty of the MFA program I was attending told us the event was a blast - super fun! I am, and was back then, all about having fun especially if it involves books and writers. So, expecting the sort of fun I typically had at a writing event, off I went.  As it turned out, as I figured out the first time I went, it was not that kind of fun. I found the other attendees to be a tad stuffy at times. No laughing in the halls. Very literary. As it turned out, it was a serious event filled with serious people. I did have the promised "good time" but it took some rethinking on my part. Once I caught on to the serious nature of the event, I decided not to tell anyone I was a romance author. Meanwhile, over the years, I continue...

Its recording season for me. I've been busy chatting with writers, scholars, and some other writing community folks. Something I like about interviewing writers, each has a new and unique story to tell. We all put words on paper (or the screen) but we each do it differently.  I ask, what's the story behind the story, because I want to know what motivates people to write what they do. Sometimes poems turn into stories and scholarly research turns into a poem. Anything can happen. You can find my podcast, Washington Square OnAir, done under my "real" name, on Spotify and all the other podcast places . 

Dark author humor of that particular breaking point right before you switch it up.

 In 2008, I headed off to LA for my first “big” signing. I was writing for Ellora’s Cave and the signing was part of BookExpoAmerica . The book expo was huge, filled with (maybe) hundreds of publishers that were there showing off the books they currently had available and the books to be published in the upcoming year. The idea was to connect with booksellers and other book distributers in order to get the books—old fashioned paper books—on the shelves—old fashioned actual shelves—in the stores—old fashioned brick and mortar stores. At the time I was new to publishing. The posts I wrote about the trip were among the very first posts I published on my blog. I was, obviously, excited to be in LA, signing books and being part of the sparkling excitement that is LA and the buzzing excitement that was BEA. BEA doesn’t exist any longer. COVID, no need to say more, right? But I attended a couple times, and it was always Big Fun and attending often made me feel like I’d Made It. This past...

Write the entire first draft.  While polishing up that first draft, get a subscription to  Publisher's Marketplace . Make a list of agents/editors who are selling/buying a manuscript similar to yours.  Continue examining the market. Occasionally skim:  Publisher's Marketplace . When your manuscript is ready to be ready, start querying. Prepare the query: https://isabelledrake.blogspot.com/2014/11/killer-query-quick-madlibs-style.html You can get agent/editor submission information from Publisher's Marketplace (above). Agentquery.com is a good source for agent information. Keep track of the queries. I’m old school so used paper. I used 3x5 cards because they are big enough and small enough. Send the submissions. Keep track of those as well. Include what you sent, etc. At the time you send them, you may think you would never forget, but consider the possibility that you will forget. There is a good chance you will want the information later. For exampl...

  In June I attended a research institute in Ohio. It was a scholarly thing, populated by grad students and independent researchers all studying some aspect of pop culture. My research project was on Betty and Veronica from the Archie Comics prior to and after the Comics Code Authority approval process.  While I was passing through the stacks, I spotted a shelf filled with issues of True Story , a confession genre magazine I published with in the very beginning of my writing career. Naturally, I had to make a video - see above. The confession magazines printed stories they claimed to be the darkest confessions from all around the world. Looking back now, I think they are much like the reality shows of today. The stories fill the same niche. At the time, I was all about the money and learning to be a writer.

Isabelle Drake was born in 2005, the year I (Melissa Ford Lucken) published my first erotic romance, Everglades Wildfire, with the long defunct Venus Press. She, I, published several titles with Venus Press before moving on the publish with the now infamous Ellora's Cave. For those more recently delivered to this romance book scene, Ellora's Cave was The first big publisher of erotic romance. Being an EC author was, despite quick and sad the way things ended, great. Big parties, big promotions, and truly great readers. In addition to having fun, I learned much writing erotic romance. One thing I learned about my writer self is that I like writing what "they" tell me I can't. If someone adds to that message that I shouldn't write something that doubles the likelihood that I will be writing it.   The entire time I've been building my career as an author, I've been building an academic career. Sometimes people think I kept the two parts of myself separate...

  Had fun with Marty Vee who I met at Rally of Writers. I was happy to accept her invite to join her on Romance Writers Therapy and chat about scene structure, critique partners' best practices and The Sixth Sense. Enjoy this craft heavy episode!

Isabelle Drake was born in 2005, the year I (Melissa Ford Lucken) published my first erotic romance, Everglades Wildfire, with Venus Press. She, I, published several titles with Venus Press before moving on the publish with the now infamous Ellora's Cave. For those more recently delivered to this romance book scene, Ellora's Cave was the first big publisher of erotic romance.  Being an EC author was, despite quick and sad the way things ended, great. Big parties, big promotions, and truly great readers. I learned a lot writing erotic romance. One thing I learned about my writer self is that I like writing what "they" tell me I can't. If someone adds to that message that I shouldn't write something....that doubles the likelihood that I will be writing it.

 No doubt you’ve heard about ChatGPT and know that it is a generative writing tool that creates written work on demand. It’s AI, and it’s here. As a writing professor, its arrival has given me reason to rethink my assignments and my concepts about academic writing. As a fiction writer, its give me reason to ponder my future as an author. Will we soon be reading fiction created by AI? So, I zipped over to the site to see what “we’d” create. A while back I posted the story ChatGPT wrote for me , pretending to be me. Below is another. Here’s what I asked it to do for me: Write a 500 word like Isabelle Drake’s Servant of the Undead. Here’s what it started to write: ________________________________________ As a servant of the undead, Lily knew that her life was not her own. She had been born into a family of vampire hunters and had been trained from a young age to fight against the creatures of the night. But when she met Marcus, everything changed. He was a vampire, but he was also kin...

After a faculty discussion on the invasion of AI, Chat GPT in particular, I did what I'm assuming many other writers have done these past few days. I asked Chat GPT to write me a story. Specially, I asked it to "write a 500 word story that reads like author isabelle drake."  It gave me a story. Yes, there is some satisfaction in knowing that Chat GPT can find me online and form a concept of what I write. But, can it write like me? In short, I don't think so. I have to admit, I like the story's final two paragraphs, the concept of them anyway. But the actual writing is pretty poor. Here's something I am sure of: readers prefer good writing over bad. So, I'm not worried about AI replacing me any time soon. The first paragraph is OK. But the literary wheels fall off pretty quick with the excessive filtering. In the story below, I highlighted the filtering by italicizing  it. Filtering is bad writing because its telling rather than showing  or describing. It...

  hit here for the January newsletter Last spring and over the early part of the summer, I wrote the third book in my Tribe of the Undead series . The task was both exciting and intimidating. I've never written a book 3 before. (!!) I wanted to produce a story that would satisfy readers, of course. The story needed to continue on from the end of book 2, of course. The story needed to be similar in tone and vibe to books 1 and 2 but also different. Some of what I wanted to accomplish with the first 2 books had already been achieved. One of the main character's story had concluded yet the other main character's story had not. This sounds simple now, but it took me a while to 'get' that. In the beginning of the project, I did what I usually do, simply started writing. I created a new main character and wrote several chapters. Then, also as usual, I got stuck. This is where I understood that writing a 3rd book in a series, while challenging, also has perks. Many element...

Here we are in the middle of the summer: barbeques, day trips, family trips, and hopefully-some extra time for reading. This summer, I'm rereading  Servant of the Undead  and  Mistress of the Undead , the first 2 books in my  Tribe of the Undead  dark, erotic horror/urban fantasy series. Why am I rereading my own stuff? I'm working on book 3 in the series,  Disciple of the Undead . Wow are these books dark! The last fiction book I wrote was the very fun, upbeat and romantic,  Not Home for the Holidays . Writing something so different is both challenging and fun. One piece of writer advice that is out in the world is that authors should stick to one genre so that readers will know what to expect from you and your work. Since you're reading this newsletter, you already know I don't follow that advice. My fiction falls in several genres. I also write academic articles and chapters and non-fiction books. In July 2019, I attended the Popular ...

  If I'm ever on TikTok this is what you'll see...  Not so glam or funny, but its how it gets done.

Last month, I had a great time in Chicago at Spring Fling 2022, I had the absolute treat of sitting down with Shay Baby from Brown Book Series .  We talked about books, what the world was like when I first started writing, and my advice to my 15-year-old self.

  Questions for the author, answer prior to workshop Answer these questions in general: How do you make yourself want to write? How do you create authentic characters instead of generic ones? How do you keep readers reading?  Answer these specifically in regard to the workshop manuscript:  What are you looking for feedback/help on? What story/message/etc are you trying to tell? What are you hoping the reader gets from your piece? Who do you think your audience would be? Questions for the reader, discuss during workshop Overall story experience: How does the title contribute to the story experience? Does the movement of the story feel organic? How does the transformation depict the 5 story elements? Is the story being told or revealed? How does the setting contribute to the overall experience? Character: What do the characters in this story want? Does the story have life such as a transformation in the life of the character? What makes the charact...

James Frey, in his book, How to Write a Damn Good Novel II, takes the concept of the fictive dream a step further than a singular focus on concrete detail. “As a fiction writer, you’re expected to transport a reader. Readers are said to be transported when…they feel that they are actually living in the story world and the real world around them evaporates” (6). In this transported state, the reader’s subconscious—the area where sensory input is processed and decoded—has been engaged and is the primary source of response. Tapping into the reader’s subconscious requires more than carefully selected details; it requires a delicate linking of details to story components such as action and characterization. Frey describes three sequential steps that enable the writer to reach the subconscious of readers and thus fully transport them into the fictional dream. Sympathy: “Sympathy is the doorway through which the reader gains emotional access to a story” (8). The first step in connecting the ...

  What's the story behind your latest book? One of my earliest memories is of a cereal box—Super Sugar Crisp, now called Golden Crisp—with an actual, playable cardboard ‘flexi record’ printed on the backside. My mom had just taken the box from the grocery bag, and it sat on the kitchen table, waiting to get stored. At age 4, I was already a music fan and pop culture scholar in the making, so I was both fascinated and excited. Still a preschooler, and so not great with scissors, I enlisted by big sister’s help in cutting the record from the package. I’m guessing the box, missing most of its backside, ended up in the cupboard. The small album, featuring brightly colored images of Archie and the gang, played at 33 1/3 speed and had 4 songs from cartoon band, The Archies, including one of my favorites, the mega-hit,  Sugar, Sugar . The flexi-record stayed on my family’s turntable for at least a day. Which, in little kid time, is forever. Fast forward about two decades, and I...

When a show is titled after the setting, viewers know the setting counts big time. In Riverdale, the place is everything. That wasn’t the case in the classic comic world of Riverdale. That pleasant anyplace serves mainly as a background for the antics and events of Archie and his light-hearted high school gang. It is so unimportant that the writers could create an ever-changing town with museums, airports, and other landmarks that came and went over the decades as the stories needed. As a result, there was no reason for creating a local history to impact the storylines, and the town of Riverdale did little to influence the actions of the characters.   The Riverdale of Riverdale couldn’t be more opposite. The setting of Riverdale itself is the character most changed from the classic comics. This new place is more than a backdrop, it complicates the plotline and motivates the characters. The Gothic setting gives the show a dark edge. Broken families, hearts, and spirits replace t...