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Dear Lee

Dear Lee,

My husband is a young fiction writer. I recently read his latest manuscript and was shocked when I came to a physical description of his protagonist’s love interest: brown hair, green eyes, 5’4”, birth mark on her left collarbone – she was me! I’ve often wondered if he modeled his female characters after me, but now I’m sure of it.

Here’s the problem, though. This new female character, like most of the others, isn’t exactly cast in a good light. She’s manipulative, fake, and loose (if you know what I mean). While I’m flattered that my husband uses me as inspiration, I’m worried that these characters aren’t as fictional as I used to think. If the girl shares most of her looks and personality with me, should I assume that she shares all of her personality with me? Does my husband think that I’m as phony as the characters he writes? Should I confront him about this?

-A Reluctant Muse
Dear Reluctant;

I wouldn’t take it personally. I’d just be grateful that he isn’t using your best friend as inspiration. Of course, if you want to add some spice to your life channel the “bitch” role tonight…it’s obviously a fantasy of his.
Dear Lee,

There’s an old saying “write what you know,” but I often find myself writing about topics I’m not particularly familiar with and blending them with what I do know. What are your feelings on this? Can you write about something you yourself haven’t experienced or don’t know about or should you stick with what you know?

-A writer in unfamiliar territory
Dear Unfamiliar;

Actually, you are in familiar “writers” territory. Fiction writers utilize two things in their writing: What they know and what they imagine. In really good fiction, the reader won’t know what is really “real” and what is “imagined.” For example, I swore that Tolkien personally knew the Hobbits and was a close friend of Frodo, Bilbo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. You’re on the right track.
Dear Lee,

I’m in the middle of writing my first fantasy/horror novel, and I need some advice. My main character is a vampire on the run from a renegade group of spec-ops werewolves. The council of wizards is also against the vampire, but this is only because the werewolves have been feeding the wizards misinformation, blaming the vampire for their crimes – one crime in particular. You see, the werewolves stole apples from the Garden of Eden, but it turns out that the apples are poisonous. They’ve been feeding the apples to unsuspecting people, saying that the fruit is from the Tree of Knowledge, and the population of the land is starting to drop. The werewolves work for an ancient dragon, Mogro (to complete the religious imagery, the dragon represents the serpent).

Simultaneously, a group of elves is on Venus, battling ghosts sent by aliens to destroy earth. Each elf has a different superpower (one can turn invisible, one can walk through walls, etc.), which gives them an advantage over the ghosts. When the aliens show up, though, the tables might turn.

I want to have these two stories intersect soon. Basically, I’m thinking about adding a love story to the mix by having the vampire meet the head elf (a female), and I wondered if you have any suggestions for how to do this. I’d like to keep the story as realistic as possible, so I’d prefer it if the love story wasn’t sappy.

-Dreaming in Delaware
Dear Dreaming;

The only thing you did not toss in the story is the kitchen sink, but at the rate you’re going, I’m pretty sure it will show up in the mix. I’m just going to toss this out there and see where it lands: You are NOT Tolkien. That being said, NARROW down the focus of your story. As it stands, it sounds like you ingested every fantasy/science fiction novel ever written and are vomiting them back up. Messy, man…messy.
Dear Lee,

In the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” the female lead (Meg Ryan) owns a small bookstore and the male lead (Tom Hanks) owns a large, “big box” bookstore. The large bookstore slowly takes away business from the small bookstore until the small bookstore is forced to close. “Big box” bookstores often publish a lot of books from major publishers and have a wider selection of books, while smaller bookstores are more specialized and have smaller collections, so here’s my question: my book is being published by a smaller publisher, so what are the chances of me getting my book into larger bookstores and getting a larger amount of potential buyers?

-“Big box” means “big bucks,” right?
Dear “NO Bucks”;

There are new book releases being spewed out at the rate of 800,000 yearly. Staggering. There are fewer and fewer independent bookstores and the chains are in the process of forgetting that they themselves are bookstores. So, my advice is to forget bookstores. Okay…you can still do the new author experience and have a book signing at you local bookstore. Invite your family and friends, and you may sell 25-30 books. However, this will not be repeated nationally, so you better start working on your plan. First, consider yourself lucky that a publisher invested in you at all. Now that they did, it is time to invest in yourself. Get your business plan together: establish the vision for your book (mission statement), set goals you need to accomplish to meet that vision, and make a timeline in which to meet these goals. Remember to include your budget - time and money. Then present it to you publisher. They will be very impressed that you are taking your career seriously and will most likely support whatever way they can. (NOTE: Your first book will most likely be the loss-leader. That means you invest more than you make. But, as they say, Romanorum eram non constructum in a dies. My Latin is rusty but I think I wrote” “Rome was not built in a day.” Your writing career will not either.

Submit Your Questions to: dearlee@writersnewsweekly.com.