Category: blog

What covers reveal – and a cover reveal

Posted on February 24, 2017March 11, 2017 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

Exciting news! I’ve received the cover from my designer for my current novella, Family Matters, a sequel to The Good Neighbor and Home for Christmas.

I’ll let you in on a secret—my designer is my daughter, Rosey Hudson. Feel lucky to have such a talented graphic artist for a daughter because it allows me to maintain a lot of control over the look of my covers, as well as getting her invaluable feedback.

And don’t forget The Good Neighbor is still 99¢ – until the end of February.

If you already have a copy of The Good Neighbor, make sure the Automatic Book Updates for your kindle are turned on. (See how HERE.). I’ve made a few small changes, a few—ahem—typos and commas that I just couldn’t stand for and I want everyone to get them.

I’m not planning to release Family Matters for quite a few months, but I’ll be sending free Advanced Reader Copies to everyone who lets me know they’ve reviewed The Good Neighbor on Amazon or GoodReads. Just email me at judy@judithhudsonauthor.com .

I have definite ideas about what I want my on my covers . If you’ve read my books you’ll know that I don’t write a lot of graphic sex, and I didn’t want my covers to promise something the books didn’t deliver. (No naked male torsos on the covers, although there are a few shirtless firemen scenes.)

Seriously though, I feel the cover is a contract between me and my readers, and to me these books are first and foremost a story about a woman. Sure, she has people in her life and one of them is probably a man who (spoiler alert!) she falls in love with, but I feel like the stories are more than just the love story. (And yes, a few of the men’s struggles have featured strongly too.)

Right now, I’m reading a book that really spelled out my feelings about the value of romance books, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, by Leslie Daniels. The quirky protagonist Barb thinks she’s found an unpublished novel by the late Vladimir Nabokov and so acquires an agent to try to sell it. The agent gives her a stack of romance novels and suggests, with her journalism background, that she try writing one. So Barb settles down to read them.

She says in the quote in my opening:

“I read the romances. They played me as if I were a piano, my grandmother’s black baby grand. I could feel it happening, like a drug taking effect. The drug was tenderness. It didn’t come from the sex scenes but from right before, right after. The narcotic was not lust but the tenderness between people, the love in spite of their unlovableness.”

That’s what I want people to feel when they read my books, that inspite of our unlovableness, there’s someone out there that can love each one of us.

Now, I can relate to this protagonist because I didn’t read a romance novel until I was in my mid-thirties. My mother didn’t read them and I didn’t have an aunt who passed them on to me. I read mysteries. Then I stumbled on a Norah Roberts book (Tears of the Moon, the Irish Jewels Trilogy) at the library and Oh my God!

I’d never heard of Dame Norah (I know – deprived!) and gobbled up every book I could get my hands on. I tried other authors, enjoyed some, was disappointed with others, so when I read Barb’s comments on romance today in the Nabokov book, it struck a chord.

Barb also goes on to say, “Lust is like a robin attacking his reflection in a pane of glass again and again.” I don’t think I’d go quite that far. (grin)

Thanks for reading Fortune Bay books.

Judy

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Cuba

Posted on January 23, 2017February 9, 2017 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

We went to Cuba for a week just before Christmas and I came home with more questions than answers. Most of what I’m writing here today was told to me by local Cubans because, after only one week on the island, I can’t pretend to really understand the situation or what life is like for the average Cuban.

I’ve always heard that the embargo’s been tough on the Cuban people, but people I met on the trip told me that now they have the double and triple whammies of the collapse of the Soviet Union (and the virtual elimination their assistance toCuba) and economic problems in Venezuela, one of their key trading partners.

But the people we met are making do with a smile. “We have the wonderful weather,” one of them told us. “And music and dancing.”

The country is beautiful country, and the people are very friendly, making do the best they can. I came home with a new appreciation of all we take for granted.

We’d heard unemployment was high, but online sources peg it at 3.5% – Much lower than Canada, the US and the UK’s 7.2%. Sounds good, but as is often the case in Cuba, all is not as it seems.

One young man who worked at the resort told us he made $500 per month, but it goes directly to the government and they reimburse him with $40 per month.

That’s for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. He felt lucky to have the job, though, because he said unemployment was so high. Not what I see in those outside reports, but where do they get their figures?

We soon started tipping for absolutely everything. A one CUC peso tip, equivalent to one US dollar, is really nothing to us but 1/10th of his weekly wage, and he was highly paid compared to many. He said, quite openly, that

to make ends meet, almost everyone has a black market business going.

A cigar factory in the town of Jaruco. I assume the bars on the windows are for ventilation and to keep people out. There didn’t seem to be glass.

I don’t know how many people offered to sell us cigars that the company “gave” to a member of their family who worked there. We visited the home of one of our guide’s family members in what looked like a middle class neighborhood in a medium sized town. They had 4 tiny rooms for at least 4 people, acceptable by our standards and I think well off by Cuban standards. Their tiny back yard was full of chickens in cages – no doubt a source of extra income.

This, along with a small refrigerated compartment on the left was all of the food available at this government store. Fine if you wanted olives or coffee.

The stores are woefully under stocked. Much of the meat, all beef, and most vegetables are not available to the local people, only to the tourists.

There is not much a visitor can do about that, but we can help out with consumer products. I had always heard that you should take things, almost any “thing”, to leave with the people you meet, but it didn’t really sink in until we saw how few “things” there were in the stores. Or, I should say “the store”, because in many towns there is really only one government run store.

One of our guides happily showed us his watch and cell phone and shoes and said they were

The extent of the dry goods in the government store, the only store in town.

all gifts, hand-me-downs from tourists. We became increasingly generous with tips to everyone we came in contact with because I hadn’t brought an gifts to give away. I often thought of the drawer of old cell phones and glasses I could easily have brought. Anything, even shampoo, is valuable. One young man said he used it to barter for an eye examination.

Apparently the wonderful free health care system is not as wonderful as we have been led to believe.

Old cars were everywhere, but we saw lots of horse-drawn buggies too. Gas is expensive.

Long waits and shortages – or complete lack of availability of medicines – is common. I asked about the food vouchers I had heard were given to every person. Not really any more, I was told. One thirty-something young man said he remembered when he was a boy there was milk for children for breakfast, but not anymore.He said it was particularly difficult for old people without family. They receive one very poor meal a day at a public facility that he said was very unhygienic.

No one has internet in their homes.

For us, the week turned out to be a break from computers and internet. They system at the resort was so difficult and frustrating to use that we soon gave up completely. The country has only had WiFi for a few months. In town squares, you see people clustered around cell phones and I soon recognized these as WiFi zones.

Uniformed children getting onto a school bus.

In many ways the people are well educated – Cuba is known for its universal education system – but except for the lucky few, it ends with high school. It was hard to really understand how the system there works in such a short visit, because there are large gaps in what the people know about the outside world and possibly even what they know about how their own country is run. That might all change with the coming of the internet.

Comparing our two systems, social and political, is like comparing apples and something that is not fruit at all.

Someone gave me this mind boggling explanation of how one person can sell a house to another, something which for some reason, I was told, is illegal, unless you do it like this – Couple A owns a house. Man B wants to buy it. Woman A divorces Man A, on paper, and keeps the house. Then she marries Man B. Then she divorces Man B and remarries Man A, leaving the house with Man B. The same process is followed if you want to sell a car.

A walk in the beautiful, overgrown Hershey Gardens.

The trip has left me with a lot to think about. About freedom of information and, obviously, about our consumer system, both the good and the bad.

Cuba is a beautiful country though with a rich history, friendly people and contagious music.

They are struggling to provide visitors with the best they can offer, but a lack of supplies means any hotel is at least one less star than it advertises. But don’t hesitate to go. Our visits are so important to their economy, to the people and their ability to feed their families.

If you’ve visited Cuba, I’d love to hear your memories.

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Have a Ferry Merry Christmas

Posted on December 30, 2016 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

I wrote this post a few years ago, but it seemed apropos again this year.

Merry Christmas to all and I wish you a happy New Year.

One snowy night before Christmas, I waited with an expectant crowd in the parking lot of the Nanaimo ferry terminal on eastern Vancouver Island. The crowd was buzzing with excitement. An entire family in Santa hats arrived, adding to the festive air.

Lights spilled out the open terminal doorways highlighting the falling snow. We don’t usually get snow on Vancouver Island, maybe a couple of days each winter, but in this particular Christmas season we, like most of Canada, had been battered by wave after wave of snowstorms.

Taking ferries to and from the mainland is a fact of life for islanders everywhere. As I waited in the dark parking lot for my daughter, I thought back to the first time I spotted her, blurry through my tears, among the hundreds of students pouring out into the parking lot on her first Thanksgiving weekend home from university. Now, years later, she lives in Vancouver and once again the ferry was bringing her home for the holidays.

But what about my husband? I’d taken him to the tiny Nanaimo Airport two weeks before in the middle of our first, blinding snowstorm to catch a flight east to attend a family emergency. When we got to the airport we discovered nothing was flying out that day – but if he could get the ferry to Vancouver, he might still catch his connecting flight. In almost white-out conditions, we made a run for the ferry and he did just make his flight that day.

Now, two weeks later, as I slogged through the snow to pick up my daughter, I wondered if he’d get home the following night in time for Christmas. My trusty Rav 4 made it to the ferry, the windshield wipers barely clearing the window before the sticky snow covered it again, the headlights showing only the swirling snow ahead.

My daughter and I stopped at the airport on our drive home to see what the chances were of my husband’s flight making it in the next night, Christmas Eve.

Apparently zero to none.

In the empty, echoing airport, we heard an attendant tell a traveler that the bags he’d last seen two days before in Vancouver might be in the truck of lost luggage that had just rolled off the ferry. And that they might get the trucks unpacked in the next few days.

“But tomorrow is Christmas eve,” he wailed. “All of our presents are in those bags.”

“Sorry,” the attendant said.

Although we here on the coast love to complain about holiday ferry sailing waits, the fact remains that, barring gale force winds, the ferries will make it through. They’re our stalwart link to the mainland and, for me, on this unusually snowy Christmas, the ghostly white ship was the envoy responsible for pulling our family together.

It kept on snowing right through Christmas Eve, but finally, at noon on Christmas day, my husband made it home, with his bags, on the ferry.

It’s the same story for families up and down the coast, from Saltspring to the Queen Charlotte Islands. In good times and bad, and when all else fails, we count on the ferries to keep our families together.

I hope you made it together with you and yours this Christmas.

See you in the new year.

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Is it Romance or Women’s Fiction?

Posted on November 29, 2016 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

Romance and Women’s Fiction are genre classifications that matter to publishers and book marketers, but if you ask most readers and many writers to explain the difference, they will look at you in confusion.

The difference confused me for years too, and the only reason I’m bringing it up at all is that I just saw a multi-book giveaway that was called Women’s Fiction, but many of the covers looked like Romance to me. I think it doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as the reader can get a good idea from the cover what kind of story s/he’s getting.

To me, the difference between the two genres has to do with what writers call the main character’s story arc – from low to high, lonely to happy, unfulfilled to fulfilled, confused to working [something] out. In a longer book, there can be more than one arc, and Women’s Fiction (when using the phrase to specify a genre, I’ll capitalize it) are often longer books with more complicated plots. And they often have a significant romance plot, although not always – think Jodi Picoult.

wf-arc

But to qualify in the publishing industry as Women’s Fiction, the [something] the main character is struggling with has to be the main story line, starting on page one and ending on the last page, and the romance and other sub-plots are shorter.

In a Romance, the the romance plot line should be front and centre, almost on the first page,

romance-arc

definitely in the first chapter. Other plots are definite subplots. shorter and less intense.

I call my books romantic women’s fiction because like a lot of other authors, the stories fall somewhere in-between. The issues usually involve family, alcoholic parents, lost pregnancy, and they are the stumbling blocks that the characters have to overcome before they can accept the happily-ever-after that’s staring them in the face.

Kind of like the struggles many of us have faced. Kind of a lot like life.

Thanks for reading Fortune Bay.

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Making a Family Album with Shutterfly

Posted on November 25, 2016March 22, 2020 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

shfly-2-copy

Okay! Now for the fun part of making the album. But first let’s recap:

Step #1 – Gather your photographs, prints, slides and digital. Do a preliminary sort. Consider, is everyone involved accounted for? Think about which images need sprucing up (brightening, adding contrast or color correction). We’ll look at that next week.

Step #2 – Scan slides and prints. Put everything in neat, orderly digital files. (Hear me laughing. I still have way too many pictures!) Copy all the pictures you think you want to use into a separate file, named shutterfly book.

Okay, we’re ready to start. Let’s take a preview walk-through of the Shutterfly online system that I always use. There are other systems out there, and mybe you’ll choose on of those, but I’ve found the quality with shutterfly is excellent and any customer support we’ve needed has been fast and efficient.

BIG HINT – if you are ready to go and can get right to it, the price discounts usually increase (prices go down) towards the end of every month, so try to have your project ready to push the print button at the end of the month. Also, look for online coupons.

It is the busy Christmas season, but you might be able to get your book done, printed and delivered before Christmas if you start right away. I regularly have them sent to Canada, no problem, and have even sent a wedding book to Australia.

Now, to start. As you’ll see, Shutterfly makes many other products besides photo books, but try to stick with me and not get lost.

Go to www.shutterfly.com and open an account
Click on Photo Books under the shutterfly tab
Click on About Photo Books
Scroll down to read about the three ways to make your book. We are going with the middle, Custom Path, but if you feel you’re in over your head, you might want to give the new Make My Book service a try. Or if your photographs are in chronological order (like from a trip), you might want to use the Simple Path and adjust them on the page later. (It will load them chronologically and then you can drag and drop to where you actually want them.)
Click on Custom Path.
Choose your book size. We started with 12″ x 12″, a nice size to hold, and now always get our books that size. being the same makes them nice and orderly on the shelf. Hold some other books and try to visualize the result and make your own decision. At this point you are not locked into anything and can make and abandon the whole book for no charge – but you won’t want to when you see the great results!
You see the percentage discounts kicking in. It will probably go back to full price at the start of the month.
Click on a size and go to the Book Ideas section. Again, you can switch it later. I usually stick with Modern Black, a traditional/portfolio black, but I’ve used a grey theme for a winter wedding and a brown, gold and green theme for a fall wedding. If you are wilder than me, one of the other themes might appeal to you. Different themes have different “embellishments” built in, but you can choose other embellishments from outside your theme later if you want. WARNING – Your photographs are the star of this show, don’t let the do-dads overpower your story.
Click on a theme and click through the tabs above the sample book to see the different backgrounds and embellishments available with that theme.
Click on the arrows at the sides of the book to scroll through a few pages to get a feel for the theme. when you find one you like, select it.
Take the tour. The every-10-minute save is a great feature. More than once, on my old computer, it crashed and I lost all my work.
Click Add Photos, from the prompt. If they are on your computer choose Upload.
click Add photos, or Upload.
navigate to the Shutterfly book folder on your computer and open it. If nothing shows up, click the image/jpeg(*.jpeg) menu and choose All Files.
Select your pictures to upload. Try 10 images to start. To add multiple images at one time, hold the ctrl key and click on the images you want, or if they are all in a row, hold the shift key and click on the first and last to select. Once selected, click Open.
Here my photos are moved to the new page.
For this demonstration, I’ll click the All button at the bottom of the screen and little check marks appear on each image selected, then I’ll click done
I’m going to place them all on the pages myself. I think it’s fun. You can decide for yourself.
Here are my pics at the bottom of the book page, uploading one at a time. (1 left to load)
Click the little arrow to open the book.
Scrolling through the Layouts tab on the far left side of the screen, I see that it is not showing me very many layouts. I could go to the + Get More Layouts section on the menu at top.
Click Photos on page and click on all the numbers. I see my old favourites come up already checked. You may have to choose yours. Then click Add to Project. After a minute of loading the layouts, you’ll see this Number of photos bar appear (Image below) and can choose the layout you want. Then drag and drop your pictures onto the page. Not happy with the result? Click on another layout template. Drag and drop to your hearts content.

Think of it as creative play and remember to HAVE FUN!

Double click on a photo on the page to open an easy editor page.
Click the Pages tab near the bottom left to drag pages into another order.
The faint green outlines of boxes on the page are for text. Click on one and a typing box will appear. The green line will not show in the finished book, so you leave them blank, they will disappear.
Check out the Storyboard, Arrange and Book tabs at the top.
If you’ve chosen Simple path, you will want to check each page carefully. The pictures are placed on the pages by the computer and I’ve seen people’s heads cut off by mistake. You may also want to change the layout, highlighting different pictures or eliminating some completely by dragging them off the page.
Remember to SAVE before you close up.