World Building
October 5, 2025 by Tracy Reed in category Writing I’ve been writing romance fiction for a while and this year, I got a revelation about world building. Chalk it up to naivety. I thought deep world building was reserved for paranormal or fantasy genres. Not contemporary fiction.When I wrote my first couple of books, I used the city of New York as my backdrop. I included local landmarks as points of reference to make the stories more relatable. I stand by my decision to do so. To this day, when I include New York, I sometimes use my old building number, not the full address out of respect for privacy to the current residents. However, life and time moves forward and some places mentioned no longer exist which made my stories dated.
When I started writing, I reached out to a well-known author and asked for advice on how to better my writing. I was shocked at her answer, Don’t read any authors in your genre. I followed that advice for quite a while. Then I was at a conference and heard an author say the opposite. She reading other books in her genre greatly improved her writing. I started reading books in my genre, incorporating some of the craft I gleaned and she was right, I saw a vast difference and improvement in my storytelling.
Fast-forward. This year I decided to only read new-to-me black romance authors. I am embarrassed to admit I had not heard of any of these phenomenal authors. In reading their work, I have learned so much about storytelling and world building.
In my own writing, I have extracted characters into spinoffs, but I hadn’t included the characters and places across my other books. World building. I reviewed a couple of my books and realized I had dabbled in world building, but not like the women I had been reading. I noticed they had created schools, cities, brands and products, celebrities, media outlets, retail and other businesses that were used throughout their stories. They even crossed over characters. One author has a prominent celebrity who has ties to characters in some of her other books. In her book world, everyone knows him and is familiar with his work.
This clever world building got my creative juices flowing. I had a list of places mentioned in two of my series, but not like she did. I’m in the course of rewriting a book and I’m doing this world building. I’ve taken a magazine briefly mentioned in one book and carrying it over to another book. It’s going to be one of the media publications in my writing world. I’ve also taken one of the retail stores that belongs to a character and making it a shopping destination for my writing world. I’ve got a lawyer from one series who is the mentor and friend to a lawyer from another series.
World building like this has opened my eyes to deeper story telling. We’re supposed to be fiction writers, but how good are we at our craft, if we aren’t making full use of our creative muse. If you haven’t really committed to world building, I encourage you to do so. Get a notebook and start building your world. 0 1 Read more
Tracy Reed: Our October Featured Author
October 1, 2025 by Tracy Reed in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Featured Author of the Month tagged as Beautiful Men, fashion, Sophisticated Romance, the Big Apple, Tracy Reed
Tracy Reed: Our October Featured Author
A California native, novelist Tracy Reed pushes the boundaries of her Christian foundation with her sometimes racy and often fiery tales.
After years of living in the Big Apple, this self proclaimed New Yorker draws from the city’s imagination, intrigue, and inspiration to cultivate characters and plot lines who breathe life to the words on every page.
Tracy’s passion for beautiful fashion and beautiful men direct her vivid creative power towards not only novels, but short stories, poetry, and podcasts. With something for every attention span.
Tracy Reed’s ability to capture an audience is unmatched. Her body of work has been described as a host of stimulating adventures and invigorating expression.
Find Tracy on Social Media
Books by Tracy Reed
Building My World
September 5, 2025 by Tracy Reed in category Writing
I have been a published author for ten years. I need to pause at that number. I’m amazed I’m still in this space. I’m also surprised I still have several stories yet to tell.
Call me ill-informed. I thought world building was limited to fantasy and paranormal writing. When I started storytelling, I freely used real landmarks in my books, which was good, I thought. Listing familiar landmarks gave the reader a point of reference. But as time and the world changed, some of those landmarks ceased to exist. I felt keeping them in my books made the stories dated. I don’t write historical, although in time, today’s contemporary fiction will become historical in a sense.
So, I made an artistic decision to remove the real landmarks and replace them with fictional ones. I was now world building.
I was further encouraged to do this after reading through the catalog of another romance author. I love her style, but what caught my attention was how she cleverly interjected this one character through out most of her catalog. In some way or other, he and his family, and some of the locations are mentioned throughout her catalog. It was brilliant and got me to thinking how I could do the same thing. In a sense, I had dabbled with this when I pulled a barely mentioned character out of The Alex Chronicles and gave him his own story, A Southern Gentleman. Jeremiah and Avery were secondary characters in a couple of The Alex books. They are now part of The Alex Chronicles world. They may also pop up in another book or series later.
This author created a world with celebrities, gossip magazines, fashion designers, university, sports teams, a luxury hotel chain and some other businesses. Once you start reading her books, at some point you begin to wonder who might pop up, because she drops hints throughout the books. All you have to do is pay attention. It’s like that game Clue. In this case, most of the characters lead back to one family.
Reading her books really stirred my creative juices. I thought about the books I’d written and some in the works. I’m doing a rewrite now and I’ve brought over a couple of elements from another book. I also created a list of fictional New York and San Francisco locations, because most of my books are based in those locations.
I’m jotting notes for a new series that will be loaded with world building. It will also be the first time I do a sports theme, which is way off brand for me. But once I add a few fashion and faith elements with some heat, I think it will be good…I hope.
World building is easy when you think about it. All it takes is a little imagination and I’ve got a lot of that.
Some of Tracy’s Books
0 0 Read moreSelf-Review
August 5, 2025 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed, Writing tagged as corrections, editing, errors, review
Recently, I was given the opportunity, to assist a couple of writers with proofreading. For the record, when I complete a project before sending it to my editor, I send my book to a proofreader. I ask my proofreader to check story flow, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. The projects I worked on, involved those basic items.
Once I completed the first proofreading project, I needed a palette cleanser and read one of my books. Let me clarify, this project wasn’t the only reason I re-read my books. I wanted to amp up my special edition omnibus. So, I dove in ready to be entertained, only to discover the book was crawling with errors. I was shocked. The very things I tell people to look out for in their books, is what I was guilty of in this book. I don’t know how I or my editor missed the glitches. I’m not sure if errors happened during the formatting process, or when.
What’s the lesson? Don’t assume the file is clean just because you used it make a different version of the book. I assumed, because all I was doing was cutting and pasting, the files were clean…error proof. The joke was on me, they weren’t. I hear you asking, how many errors…is it even worth your time to update the book? I maintain, readers will forgive approximately five errors (I know there’s no set amount of acceptable errors). Anything over that and your book and writing gets a bad reputation. In this case, there were enough noticeable errors to make me look like a novice writer.
So, while kicking myself for the over abundance of errors, I noticed how different my writing had become. In case, I hadn’t mentioned, the books I’m talking about are the first book I published and the other two in the series. When I started writing, I was writing a different genre…steamy Christian fiction. Now, my preference is Contemporary Romance with faith elements and heat. This series is a prime example of how my writing has changed. Although the books center around one couple, the tone in all three are different.
The other thing about these books is, they’re told in third person. Again, this is because I was trying to fit into a certain romance genre. I personally like multi-voice. That’s not to say I won’t write in third person. I will when I feel that’s what the story calls for. I have a duet, which works well in third person, but the books in the omnibus really would read better in multi-voice. I’m seriously considering re-telling these stories in multi-voice.
There’s just one major problem. If I rewrite them, what do I do with the original books? My solution is to repackage them with new covers, titles and update the original stories. And possibly make the repackaged books exclusives to my bookstore.
Have you thought about or repackaged a series? If so, what was the reader response? How often to you re-read your books?
Books by Tracy Reed
Updating Your Newsletter
May 5, 2025 by Tracy Reed in category WritingThere’s been a lot of chatter amongst indie authors about selling direct. Publishing is going through a strange time. I won’t single out where the blame lies. For me things haven’t been as I had planned, but there are still time left in the year to make some changes.
I made two writing goals for this year. Amongst the things were open my online store, upgrade my newsletter and release at least one audio book.
I will be honest, I didn’t think dipping my toe into audio books would be as involved as it is. I thought all I needed to do was select which book I wanted to bring to audio life, select a narrator and editor and upload it the audio platforms. Those steps are required. However, I discovered looking for the perfect narrators was a little more involved. Not only does the voice need to fit the story/characters, the narrator needs to have a following and be one I can afford.
To prepare for my journey into audio books, I went on an audio book binge. I also touched based with some narrators I met at Steamy Lit Con. The narrators have been very helpful explaining the ins and outs of doing audio books. Overwhelmed is an understatement. Once I processed the information, I realized I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was to jump into audio books. I also had no idea how expensive it is to do audio books. I say expensive, because I am choosing not to do royalty share and the size of my books. I write BIG books which translates to an expensive investment.
I’m also trying to figure out if I want to do different narrators for different series. This question is another reason why instead of releasing an audio book this summer, I’ve pushed this goal back to the end of the year.
What I have been able to accomplish, is my online bookstore and upgrading my newsletter. Upgrading my newsletter was a little easier than I thought. I use Flodesk which is creative friendly. I hadn’t been using it a manner that showed my creative style. After watching a Book Funnel newsletter webinar, I gained a little insight on how to make some changes.
I used to publish a digital magazine, but it never occurred to me to use a similar style for my newsletter. I don’t like to overshare my personal life with readers. My reasoning is because I feel they want to hear about my books, not about what type of moisturizer I use or how I like my coffee. Instead, I’m trying out something I hope is welcomed, a who dunnit game. My upcoming release is the last book in a series and it reveals the answer to an ongoing question. So each newsletter installment features a possible suspect.
So far, I think this is the best newsletter style for me. I use different layout blocks with links that force readers to visit my website. I’ve discovered doing this generated some hits to my direct sales links. Side note…Have my direct sales increased or surpassed my other platform sales? No, but I haven’t really pushed direct sales, because it took so long to set up the direct links. (I’ll save conversation about direct links later). Plus I needed or wanted to make sure my print books were well stocked and that I had a POD (print on demand) source I liked. So far for me, the POD I’ll be using is BookVault. I love their work (more about them in another post).
Let’s be real, a newsletter can be difficult to master, but it is the best way to communicate with your readers. We have to remember, social media is good. However, you don’t own those followers. Social media decides which of your followers to share your posts with. But you control who on your mailing list, gets your newsletter.
Recap: Make your newsletter, informative, fun and a reflection of your style.
If you’re interested in trying Flodesk, clear the link https://flodesk.com/c/9APFWB and give it a try.
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