A very interesting topic! And one that, as a romance writer, I thought I'd never have to deal with...until I wrote a book about a female spy, called Secret Love.
This book was published back in 2011, but I got the rights back when that publisher was bought by new owners.
It was re-edited and re-published in 2016. I think it's been improved.
But the old publisher assigned me an editor I will always be grateful for. Dave Field was his name, and when he sent me the first round of edits for my book, he asked me about a crucial scene in which I had the heroine, a trained spy, involved in a gunfight with some IRA agents that she's been embedded with. For one thing, I hadn't mentioned anything about what kind of guns would be used. And I never gave any thought to how agents in those circumstances would act, to be sure their adversaries were disarmed, or otherwise unable to cause any more damage. When he queried me on this, I replied that I write romance, not gun battles. And that my readers would be reading for the romance of the story, and they wouldn't know, or even care about details like that. Boy, was I wrong!
He told me that his wife and his mother-in-law are both hunters who own multiple guns and rifles. They'd both turn up their noses in disgust at my lack of details concerning something that an agent was sure to be well aware of, and trained to do. I read his suggestions about what make and model of guns would be capable of doing what I had depicted them doing, and he also pointed out where I had my agent not performing critical steps to be sure the area was safe, once the bullets stopped flying. I was very grateful to him for supplying me with knowledge that I'd never thought to research. And when this book was being edited for the second publisher, I made a point of putting his name in the forward, to thank him for his input. And I kept the improvements that he'd made.
The second book in the series, Undercover Lovers, has not yet been assigned an editor. I'm not sure when it will come out. But it has a deranged serial killer who is hunting the heroine. There are a few scenes of violence that involve him. Then later in the book, the man she falls in love with is taken prisoner when he's on his last assignment with the agency, and he gets disavowed.
In my book, the plan to rescue him from a dungeon prison in a country that I invented that's in the Middle East, requires multiple agents disguised using burkas, so no one sees their faces. When it was first published, a reviewer was offended and said that I was being disrespectful to Islam and some cultures, by having characters use the burka as a disguise. I have Muslim friends who assured me that this was not disrespectful, so I didn't think too much of it. But shortly after that, I read about two Arab men who had been arrested in the USA for committing robberies while disguised in burkas. I wonder if she criticized them also?
I've written violent action scenes in my third Minnesota Romance, where the heroine is a retired spy; in my two vampire novels, and in the werewolf books that I'm writing now. I try to be just graphic enough to get the scene to appear in the reader's mind, but not so gory that it turns off my readers. I hope I've managed to do that.
To find out what the other authors on our Round Robin list for this month think, please check them out, on Saturday, July 21 or after:
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1i2
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
A.J. Maguire http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com
Judith Copek, //http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
This book was published back in 2011, but I got the rights back when that publisher was bought by new owners.
It was re-edited and re-published in 2016. I think it's been improved.
But the old publisher assigned me an editor I will always be grateful for. Dave Field was his name, and when he sent me the first round of edits for my book, he asked me about a crucial scene in which I had the heroine, a trained spy, involved in a gunfight with some IRA agents that she's been embedded with. For one thing, I hadn't mentioned anything about what kind of guns would be used. And I never gave any thought to how agents in those circumstances would act, to be sure their adversaries were disarmed, or otherwise unable to cause any more damage. When he queried me on this, I replied that I write romance, not gun battles. And that my readers would be reading for the romance of the story, and they wouldn't know, or even care about details like that. Boy, was I wrong!
He told me that his wife and his mother-in-law are both hunters who own multiple guns and rifles. They'd both turn up their noses in disgust at my lack of details concerning something that an agent was sure to be well aware of, and trained to do. I read his suggestions about what make and model of guns would be capable of doing what I had depicted them doing, and he also pointed out where I had my agent not performing critical steps to be sure the area was safe, once the bullets stopped flying. I was very grateful to him for supplying me with knowledge that I'd never thought to research. And when this book was being edited for the second publisher, I made a point of putting his name in the forward, to thank him for his input. And I kept the improvements that he'd made.
The second book in the series, Undercover Lovers, has not yet been assigned an editor. I'm not sure when it will come out. But it has a deranged serial killer who is hunting the heroine. There are a few scenes of violence that involve him. Then later in the book, the man she falls in love with is taken prisoner when he's on his last assignment with the agency, and he gets disavowed.
In my book, the plan to rescue him from a dungeon prison in a country that I invented that's in the Middle East, requires multiple agents disguised using burkas, so no one sees their faces. When it was first published, a reviewer was offended and said that I was being disrespectful to Islam and some cultures, by having characters use the burka as a disguise. I have Muslim friends who assured me that this was not disrespectful, so I didn't think too much of it. But shortly after that, I read about two Arab men who had been arrested in the USA for committing robberies while disguised in burkas. I wonder if she criticized them also?
I've written violent action scenes in my third Minnesota Romance, where the heroine is a retired spy; in my two vampire novels, and in the werewolf books that I'm writing now. I try to be just graphic enough to get the scene to appear in the reader's mind, but not so gory that it turns off my readers. I hope I've managed to do that.
To find out what the other authors on our Round Robin list for this month think, please check them out, on Saturday, July 21 or after:
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1i2
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
A.J. Maguire http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com
Judith Copek, //http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
