Writers in the Storm

by Lisa Norman

Let’s be real: the phrase “email marketing” can make a lot of us twitchy.

We’re writers, not brand strategists. We know how to build rich, emotional worlds—but a newsletter subject line that converts? Ugh. That sounds like a corporate memo, not a love letter to our readers.

But here’s the thing: connecting with your readers isn’t about marketing. It’s about play. It’s about building that same sense of delight, curiosity, and “what’s next?” that keeps someone turning pages at 2 a.m.

Want proof? Let’s talk numbers.

In the entertainment world (yes, that includes us!), the average email open rate hovers around 40%. That’s fantastic. It tells us readers want to hear from creators. But what they don’t want? A sterile sales pitch.

Side note: when we talk “open rate” we aren’t talking about the actual email content, but we’re only evaluating three things: subject line, snippet, and our name recognition. The connections and expectations that we’ve built with our fans are an important part.

One author I know—who typically gets great engagement—once sent out a short email that simply announced a release date. No story. No spark. Just the facts.

Her open rate dropped to 15%.

It wasn’t a failure. It was a signal. A reminder that readers aren’t just waiting for updates—they’re looking for a connection. A release date is helpful, sure. But without a sense of story or delight, it can feel like inbox noise.

On the flip side, I have a client with a tiny but mighty list. She sends newsletters that read more like story snippets than marketing—playful, reader-centered, full of voice—and her open rate? A jaw-dropping 70%. Her readers want to support her creative career, because she’s made them feel like part of it.

Another client, with a much larger list, consistently hits 50% open rates. Her secret? She shows up with personality, with behind-the-scenes peeks, and sometimes just a moment of real-life chaos. Her newsletters aren’t about her books—they’re about connection.

And yes, they almost always include links to buy books. This isn’t about not selling, but about connecting with readers deeply before selling.

What Makes Readers Actually Open Your Emails?

Here’s what we’ve learned from the inbox trenches:

• Be Personal—Not just “use their name,” but actually sound like yourself. Write like you’re talking to a reader who adores your weird little universe.
• Offer Value—Give them something to smile about, think about, or save for later. A deleted scene, a writing blooper, a book recommendation—anything that adds to their day.
• Invite Curiosity—Tease, don’t dump. Keep them wondering what’s around the corner.
• Be Consistent—A familiar voice gets opened. You don’t need to be weekly—just dependable. Like a favorite author showing up with a new chapter.

And About Those Numbers…

Open rates can be wildly helpful—and also completely misleading.

Many readers use email privacy tools and tracking blockers, especially with Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection. That means your open rate might be under-reported… or over-reported. Either way, it’s not the whole story. Click-throughs, comments, and replies tell you more. Actual connection tells you everything.

Readers are Friends not Food Sales

Your readers aren’t waiting to be “converted.” They’re waiting to be invited in.

The moment you stop pitching and start playing, something magical happens: they look forward to your emails. They open, they click, they reply, they care.

And isn’t that what we all want as writers?

What would your readers most like to receive from you?

About Lisa

Lisa Norman's passion has been writing since she could hold a pencil. While that is a cliché, she is unique in that her first novel was written on gum wrappers. As a young woman, she learned to program and discovered she has a talent for helping people and computers learn to work together and play nice. When she's not playing with her daughter, writing, or designing for the web, she can be found wandering the local beaches.

Lisa writes as Deleyna Marr and is the owner of No Stress Writing Academy. She also runs Heart Ally Books, LLC, an indie publishing firm.

Interested in learning more from Lisa? Sign up for her newsletter or check out her school, No Stress Writing Academy, where she teaches social media, organization, technical skills, and marketing for authors!

Top image from depositphotos.

by J. Scott Coatsworth

Sometimes we writers get stuck in a boring backwater, with nothing exciting at hand to move the story along. That’s when this little sleight of hand trick comes in handy.

Let’s say your characters are on a quest for the fabled Sword of Bighands.

They’re sitting around a thick iron-banded wooden table at the Borderlands Pub, a dark, seedy, local hangout where you can buy anything from drugs to human slaves. Or a really good guide to get you out of Bordertown and across the great Scorched Desert, to the fabled Treasure Lands on the other side of that hot, dry, shimmering expanse of red sand.

Your characters are talking about the long trek ahead, sharing war stories, and sipping on curiously ice-cold mead. And they’re absolutely bored out of their gourds.

So what can you do to liven things up?

Put a Wolf Under the Table

What would happen when your new pet wolf appeared in the midst of those tangled legs and began to snarl and bite at all the soft body parts within its reach under that beer-soaked table? When someone lost a finger (or worse) and people started to react with screams, falling backward out of their chairs and maybe even fighting back against our poor displaced wolf while the rest of the Pub looks on in startled confusion?

When your plot slows to a crawl, one of the easiest ways to fix it is to throw in an unexpected element that turns everything on its head, and sends the story racing off in a new direction. Just think of the questions this plot bunny raises:

• Why is there a wolf under the table?
• Who put it there?
• Was it there the whole time, and only woke up and snarled when someone stepped on its tail?
• Is it a werewolf?
• Why am I just standing here while said wolf slaughters my fellow questers?

Example:

I had a rather boring scene in one of my novels with several of my characters sitting in carriages, en route from the city to a manor out in the countryside. It was raining, and one of the POV characters was staring out the window, brooding on his life and his fate.

For a paragraph or two, it was fine, but after four or five, even he began to roll his eyes at me.

I needed a wolf:

Aik grabbed hold of the handle above the door, peering out into the falling rain. “I don’t think so. It’s—”

The carriage lurched forward and then down, sending him flying into the front of the cabin. 

Aik caught himself with his right hand, saving himself from a probable broken nose. There was a horrid grinding sound, and then everything came to a screeching halt with the carriage laying at an awkward angle.

Boom. Wolf added. Okay, so it’s not a literal wolf. Instead it was an unexpected and sudden event. The carriage had broken a wheel, stranding Aik and his two companions and their driver in the middle of an old iron bridge. They did the sensible thing and started to replace the tire. 

Sometimes One Wolf Isn’t Enough

A low rumble quickly grew into a crescendo, and the bridge began to sway crazily under Aik.

“Quake! Hold on!”

Malin dropped the wheel, and it bounced away, rolling down the shaking bridge. He reached for the carriage, but a jolt threw him back against the rail, where he collapsed to the ground.

Wolf number two—an earthquake—is just as unexpected, and immediately complicates the issues caused by wolf number one.

Now our boring riding-in-the-carriage scene has been transformed into a thrilling run-for-your-life one as our characters scramble in a mad dash to get off the bridge before it collapses. And as a bonus, our poor friend Aik still has all his brooding worries going on in the background.

These events also set things up nicely for a reveal of the secret Aik has been hiding from his best friend, which itself sends the story careening off in a new direction.

Plot wolves can take many forms—physical events, surprise arrivals of other characters, secrets revealed, etc. For a master class in this technique, check out the most recent version of Lost in Space. This show regularly releases two or three plot wolves per an episode, creating chaos and plot movement (and making the phrase “Things are not looking good for our heroes” run through my head almost constantly).

Caution

You do have to be careful about overusing this device, though. Wolves are an endangered species, after all. Too many plot wolves, and your readers may start feeling like sheep being fleeced with the same trick, especially if your characters escape unscathed every single time.

Still, the “wolf under the table” is a surefire way to add a little life to a tired plot arc and get things moving again.

And if you need some additional inspiration, I may have a pack of wolves (at a decent discount) to sell you.

While I have modified it, I first ran across this concept in a session given by author Damon Suede.

Have you used the wolf under the table (or similar) plot device?

About Scott

Scott lives with his husband Mark in a little yellow bungalow with two pink flamingoes in Sacramento. He inhabits the space between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine, he devoured her library. But as he grew up, he wondered where the people like him were.

He decided it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Waldenbooks. If there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

His friends say Scott’s brain works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He seeks to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected.

A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, Liminal Fiction, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction reflecting their own reality. Scott was the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for almost three years. His author webite is J. Scott Coatsworth.

by Mara Purl

“What genre do you write?” This has become as ubiquitous a question as “What kind of books do you write?” and both questions often receive the same reply.

It should be an easy answer for an author to provide, but sometimes isn’t, as genres have grown more complex. The added “categories” were supposed to make specific kinds of books easier to find. Yet, to some extent, the added complexities have made finding what a reader of shopper or librarian wants harder. And, despite the added listings, there are times a book gets slotted into an ill-fitting box.

This business of being stuck in the wrong genre can be frustrating, and even damaging to a brand, a book, or an author.

Let’s talk about Romance

Romance is a fabulous genre with its own challenges. I've listened to colleagues in this genre share about the rigorous discipline required to fit all its requirements. This post isn't about disrespecting Romance.  

After decades of battling for recognition, it's now well-established, taken seriously for the money it earns and the rankings it gets. There's a spot for it on the New York Times bestseller list, which is an important benchmark.

Romance novels inevitably include an element of predictability. We know the couple will get together in the end, and the fun for the reader is watching the protagonists overcome the obstacles, while the author adroitly places challenges and roadblocks in their respective paths. And I am one of those readers on occasion, totally enjoying and sometimes admiring the work tremendously.

What about when a genre doesn’t quite “fit”?

But what do authors do with the “extra” material that won’t fit within the strict bounds of Romance? What about career choices and parental challenges, friendships and competitions, sibling rivalries and unimagined losses? In other words, what about the rest of life?

All these elements are the purview of Women’s Fiction. There is no such category on the New York Times bestseller list, perhaps because there’s an assumption that this is just a fancier word for Romance, or that anything that’s popular and aimed at the female audience is, in fact, Romance.

What is Women’s Fiction?

It used to be defined as fiction written by women. Think Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), to name a few authors of bygone eras, some of whom chose to write under male pen names. 

The term did a one-eighty during the last decades of the twentieth century, describing not fiction by women, but rather fiction for women. Though most practitioners were female, there were notable exceptions, like Nicholas Sparks. 

In the twenty-first century we find ourselves with what is probably the best definition so far: fiction about women.

Key Elements of Women’s Fiction

Women's Fiction may or may not end with the expected partners finding their happy-ever-after. Although that key urge to find the right partner may be an important part of the story, other urges and goals are equally important and sometimes predominate. 

The woman in the story is finding her identity, her career, her purpose; she's untangling her snarls, examining her mistakes, gathering her courage. The reader can identify with some of these elements, whether in reviewing old choices of her own or wrangling with her own future. 

Who’s Reading Women’s Fiction?

While the hottest trend for younger readers of Romance in this moment is Romantasy, the biggest volume of devoted readers age 40 and up is digging ever deeper into Women's Fiction. This may be why "Chesapeake Shores," "Virgin River." and “Sweet Magnolias” have such avid followers.

Whether in the form of books or television episodes, what do these series offer? 

• Multi-generational characters
• A sense that the protagonist is interested in more than sex with her chosen partner
• Storylines that tackle personal and professional challenges with more frank realism and startling authenticity than what Romance usually offers. 

Challenges I’ve Encountered as a Women’s Fiction Author

Things are getting easier now, as I find excellent company amongst authors with more expansive storylines. But not too long ago, readers who picked up one of my books in a bookstore, believing it to be a Romance novel, were disappointed and even irritated.

Why?

Because my novels don’t guarantee the traditional happy ending. If the reader sticks with my saga, she’ll see those happy endings arrive . . . eventually.

Why the delay? Why the frustration? Probably because that’s my lived experience.

When I fell deeply in love in my 20s, I believed my own happy ending/ happy beginning had arrived. But the man took off for other adventures and I had to lick my wounds and start over. Heartbreak taught me a lot about myself, about the world, about the journey. I did, eventually, find my soul mate and our marriage gets better year by year.

Authors are advised to “Write What You Know”

At least for my primary storyline, that’s what I’m doing. So my protagonist’s disappointments turn out to be important lessons that ultimately lead her to a fantastic relationship.

Big Names who are Switching Genres

I’m certainly not alone in battling the genre storm. Robyn Carr, for example, a marvelous and very successful author, has said for several years that although yes, her novels include a romantic element, they are about the protagonist’s whole life. While embracing her original designation as a Romance author, she was also an early adopter of the term Women’s Fiction, encouraging readers, and perhaps more importantly, publishers to expand their awareness. In Nora Roberts’ most recent interview, she explained that she has roots in Romance, “But I don’t write romance anymore.” 

What is my fervent desire for my readers? 

I wish for them to find a sense of wholeness and purpose right alongside my protagonists. I want women to feel empowered not only to find and enjoy a beautiful romance, but that everything else in their lives is equally important and fulfilling.

Do you read or write women's fiction? What challenges have you encountered in the genre? And do you have any reading recommendations? Please do share your answers in the comments!

About Mara

Mara Purl is the best-selling author of the Milford-Haven Novels & Novellas a series of Women's Fiction books which have won 75-plus book awards, appeared on multiple best-seller lists, and are based on her hit Milford-Haven, U.S.A., with 4.5 million listeners on BBC Radio. Mara wrote for the A.P., the Financial Times of London, and Rolling Stone among many others. As an actress, Mara is best known from Days Of Our Lives and she's a frequent speaker and presenter at local and national book events, has served on the boards of author and publishing organizations for 25 years, and has taught writing and literacy programs in Colorado, California, Alaska, and Japan.

You can find out more about her at marapurl.com