For the Love of Writing

How To Use Free Mind, Part One: Creating A Simple Plot

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:43:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I blogged, and I thought I’d start blogging regularly again. The idea for this 3-part blog series came to me randomly while using the free mind map software called “Free Mind”, which you can download here (it lists the versions by operating system).

I’ve found mind mapping to be an effective way to just get an idea down on paper, without worrying about structure or character development or anything specific about the story. When you mind map a plot in particular, you just focus on the basics first and anything specific later.

The basic things you’d need for your mind map are:

· Title

· Main Character(s)

· Conflict

· Theme

· Setting(s)

· Genre(s)

For an example, I’ll show you the mind map process I’d use if I were to mind map an old story I wrote years ago, back when I had no clue what the rules of writing were. If I were to rewrite it now, it would need a major reworking of both the plot and the characters. But for the sake of the mind map example, it will also allow me to keep it simple.

The story, at its core, was a coming-of-age fantasy (specifically, portal fantasy) novel, about a girl named Lucille who discovers a mystical doorway in a forest and a wolf chained by that door. The wolf—a shape shifter—explains that he has been waiting for years and years for someone to set him free and for that someone to journey back to the world beyond the door, and help him vanquish the evil. Now, we have our basic idea.

Opening Free Mind, you should get a blank mind map. If not, go to File> New to get a fresh mind map.

In the middle of the page you should get something like this:

Click that circle and you should be able to edit the text inside the circle (called a “node”)

Here’s where we insert our title: SAPPHIRE PRINCESS. Depending on your novel, the title will be different. If you are still trying to figure out your title, put: WIP in the node bubble. To help figure out your novel’s title, I wrote a previous blog post on finding titles here.

Next, right-click that bubble and you should get a lot of options. Click the option with the light bulb, labeled ‘New Child Node’. A line should appear with a text box.

Label this text box: Main Characters.

Next, who are your main heroes? Do you have a name for them? If so, right-click the Main Characters node and click New Child Node (or press: Insert, on the keyboard) however many times to insert one or more main characters. In this case, I have at least four main characters: Lucille, who is the main heroine. Her mentors—the wolf-shifters—Akoto and Silver and, finally, the main villain, Resmiel.

Within each character’s text node, write as many attributes about them that you know. Age, gender, race, odd clothes or physical looks, favorite color or pet, anything specific to them within the story like powers, or their past, or their role within the story—anything that comes to mind.

If you can’t figure out something or if there is a reason for that trait important to the book, write the question or elaborated answer in a child node connected to that particular trait, like in the example below:

The next thing you should put in a node is: Conflict. Conflict could be as simple as your character missing the bus and having to get to their destination another way, or as complex as saving the world from alien invaders. A few questions to ask yourself when considering the different threads of conflict are:

· What or who will your characters face in the story?

· What will your hero have to face in regards to the villain?

· What will he/she need to come to terms with?

· What will tear her down, both physically and mentally?

· What will be her goal/goals within the story?

· What or who will stand in her way, in regards to succeeding those particular goals?

Create a child node from Conflict to include each main character. Then create nodes from their names, put a possible conflict or conflicts, and add additional details (in more nodes) if required. Some conflicts will involve each character or will be between two characters (such as the main hero and the villain). For this example, I’ve just done a few regarding the character Lucille.

Creating a new node from the title node, the next thing you will detail is: Theme. Theme is possibly the most challenging thing to boil down in a book. What are we trying to say, beyond all those perfectly constructed metaphors? What are we trying to tell the readers? What does this scene, this character, this idea, object or symbol contribute to the overall book, to the big picture—the theme of the book? Your theme could be anything from racism, to good vs evil to love conquers all…so long as the scenes and the plot reflect it.

Next would be Setting. Where does your story take place? What time period? What’s the name of your city or town or fictional world? What details about the place(s) are important? Put them in nodes if needed.

Finally, the final node you can add is: Genre. What is your novel? Where would you put it on shelves? Would it be a paranormal romance? A fantasy? A historical? A science-fiction novel? As each genre has its rules and requirements regarding plot, it’s important you know what exactly you’re going to write. You can’t have novels straddling too many genres, otherwise it gets confusing for both readers and publishers to know exactly what group and to whom this book is marketed for.

Hopefully this process, while time-consuming, will be helpful in creating a sort of outline and a plot for your novel.

Stay tuned for part two of this series, How To Use Free Mind, Part Two: Figuring Out Character Conflict.

Thanks for reading!

- HC

Getting the Call: E.B. Black

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:00:00 +0000

We are switching gears this week to hear from a writer that decided to go the self-publish route. It sounds like E. B. Black knows a thing or two about marketing and promoting. I'm sure her new book will go far.

Some authors publish their book after getting a call from an agent, other authors publish after getting a call inside themselves. The second kind of call was the one I received.

Most people don't know this about me, but years ago, I ran a general talk forum that was somewhat popular. My friends all tried to do the same and their forums died quickly. I expected that to be the case with me as well.

Instead, my forum lasted for two years, until I deleted it. It had hundreds of thousands of posts and hundreds of members. How did this happen? Because I advertised for my forum every day. I added content to it regularly and held contests on it. I was obsessed with it and got lucky finding the target audience for it.

When I decided that I wanted to be a writer, I began by writing every day. I dreamed that someday I'd be published and in every Barnes and Noble store, until I met several members on AQConnect. I was trying to write my first query letter and needed advice.

I heard about how many of them had self-published. I read their books and was impressed by the quality of them. I realized that although it's very unlikely that a self-published book will sell a lot of copies, it's no less unlikely than me getting a publishing contract and becoming a bestseller.

It reminded me a lot of running that forum and I was thankful for that experience. Advertising is very similar. People get just as annoyed with spamming links to your forum as they do with spamming links to your Amazon Buy page. I learned basic HTML and graphic design in order to keep the lay-out of my forum nice. Now, I use those things to create cover images and format my e-books.

Self-publishing is not for people who don't like doing everything themselves. It's a lot of hard work that doesn't always involve typing out stories. I find it relaxing, but not all writers will feel the same. Because everyone's path in life isn't identical.

Your heart and experiences will call you in the right direction. Follow it.

----

E.B. Black lives in SoCal with her family and two rottweilers. She daydreams about dressing up like a necromancer for Halloween and fantasy worlds she can throw her characters into.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/writerblack
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003033921752
Blog: http://deathauthor.blogspot.com/
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Medusas-Desire-Death-Series-ebook/dp/B00ABMAW5K/

Getting the Call: Jennie Bates Bozic

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 21:14:00 +0000

Here's a dose of inspiration just in time for Thanksgiving. I'm sure this author is very thankful to be handled by a great agent. Welcome to the latest success story from another AQC regular, Jennie Bates Bozic. She has just recently got the call and is now on submission for her novel, Damselfly. Good luck and best wishes!

My “Getting the Call” story is different than most because, to those who don’t know my full story, it probably looks like everything worked out for me in record time. But it’s true that every overnight success is ten years in the making. In my case, it was eleven.

I began working on my first novel during my sophomore year of college in 2001. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did know that the world coming together in my head wouldn’t let me go. For the next nine years, I worked on it from time to time, but would give up in frustration. I had no idea how to write a novel and I didn’t have the self-discipline to really go after my dream. But I still wrote in pieces. I jotted down pages worth of notes. I shared my scraps with friends and their responses encouraged me to keep trying. I bought lots of books on writing and storytelling and spent hours wandering around bookstores, trying to get inspired.

After dozens of false starts, I set that book aside and tried a different one. That went a little more smoothly… until the hard drive of my computer died and I wasn’t able to retrieve my work. It was gone forever and all I had left were the chapters I had emailed to friends.

Two years ago, I got married and my husband got fed up with me constantly complaining about how much I wanted to be a writer. “Why don’t you actually write then instead of talking about it?”

I was mad at him for about an hour, and then the truth of his words sunk in. So I started writing. I went back to my first book and cranked out a rough draft. I took a class in writing for children and young adults. A year later, I had an extremely rough draft and a terrible query letter.

I really wanted to make sure everything was completely ready before I sent my first query letter, so I started revising. As I chopped and sliced and rewrote, the sad realization that my writing reach exceeded my grasp settled down on me. My skill still wasn’t at the level it needed to be.

I knew at that point that it would be all too easy to give in to frustration and self-pity. I had worked SO hard, often getting in my daily thousand words even if I’d worked twelve hours that day, and it still wasn’t enough. But feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to get me any closer to my goal of being a professional author.

So I sat down and thought long and hard about the kind of story I could write next and I came up with Damselfly. I wrote the query first and ran it by several people to see if it sounded appealing. The feedback was encouraging, so I poured myself into writing that novel. Seven months later, it was finished and I sent out my first queries.

To my great surprise, the first response I got from an agent was not a rejection – it was a full request. Three weeks and two more full requests later, I woke up one morning and checked my email. There was an email from one of the agents who was reading my novel. My heart sank and I opened it.

And then I screamed. My husband came running in from the other room, convinced I was dying because I am so NOT a screamer. All I could do was babble incoherently and hold up the phone so he could read the email himself.

Steven Axelrod wanted me to call him at my convenience to discuss representation.

It took me a couple of hours to work up my courage, mostly because phone calls with anyone other than family and close friends make me incredibly nervous, which was why I had not included my phone number in my queries. He offered representation right away and then we spent some time discussing what that would mean. I asked most of my questions, but in my nervousness I forgot about half of them. Then I told him I would get back to him in about a week because I needed to let the other agents know.

And thus began the longest week of my life. Eight days later, after an extended deadline due to Hurricane Sandy, I was thrilled to accept Steve’s offer. I couldn’t be happier and I can’t imagine a better agent for my book and my career.

Hopefully I’ll be getting another call soon – this time with the news that my book has sold!

-----------------------

Bio: Jennie Bates Bozic’s first "book" was a short kid's story about a brother and a sister who are sent to Saturn as astronauts and meet an alien named Kleppy. Bestseller material there, I tell you! She has a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Hillsdale College and a diploma in 3D Animation in Visual Effects from Lost Boys Learning. She has spent the last four years creating visual effects for film and television. If you've watched shows such as The Walking Dead, Grey's Anatomy, The Event, Heroes or Greek, chances are that you've seen some of her work. She is married to a wonderful man that she met in the World of Warcraft and they live in Los Angeles with their two cats.

Jennie's website - http://www.jenniebatesbozic.com/

Getting the Call: Tony Thorne

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:09:00 +0000

Welcome to a special Getting the Call on a Friday, coming to us from all the way across the pond as they say. We've heard from many writers, but this has to be one of my all time favorite writer success stories. If this doesn't give you a dose of inspiration to keep querying or finish that NaNo project, then you picked the wrong hobby. Thank you, Tony, for sharing your dedication to growing and improving as a writer.

WRITING SPECULATIVE FICTION - my own therapy?

Where amateurs are concerned, fiction writing is a hobby, a spare time art-form. An alternative to one's regular occupation, i.e. the day job. Indulged in, perhaps, as a form of therapy, or even for a spot of light relief. I’m using the word 'amateur' to imply non-professional, defined as 'unpaid labor', which brings me rapidly to the subject of Speculative Fiction.

Most editors, nowadays, probably suspect there are more writers around than readers ... and the art of genre fiction writing is becoming a form of therapy mostly indulged in by amateurs. Perhaps not just as a hobby, but a way to express and analyse one's feelings about the world, and where it's going, and communicate them too. There are easier ways to relieve one's feelings when it comes to pure therapy. In some countries they sell little clay idols, hideous to behold. With just a little imagination, a suitable one can be identified with the galling frustration of the moment. Rage and indignation does the rest. One's trials and tribulations presumably scatter in the breeze with the dust of the manikin as it crumbles in a hairy fist, or shatters against a convenient stone wall.

It seems a lifetime ago when to become your own psychiatrist, the minimum you needed was pencil and paper; but nowadays, a laptop computer is more convenient. Anywhere can become a couch and it's more socially acceptable than talking to one’s self… or beating up your partner.

So put it all down ... scribble away, unbutton that creative belt and let it all hang out. Put all your frustrations down in a story. Develop your characters and let them tell your conscience how you feel. Above all be honest with yourself, even if it hurts. You may discover that it often does.

That's how I got into all this, with the success I've experienced to date. I'd like to be a really wealthy writer, but I suspect I’ve left it too late in life. More important to me though, is the fact that I recognize and have adjusted to, my own limitations.

I spent about twenty five years, in different companies, designing and building up product lines, travelling the world, setting up distributors, crumpling the competition, getting the best out of my staff, listening to their problems, and solving them. Occasionally even my own when I had time. The closer I got to the top of the tree, the more I longed to turn in my collection of emotion-screening masks for an axe, and hack away at the plastic feet of all the false idols I seemed to be worshiping I was fed up with the commercial rat-race, and the way it submerged my appreciation of the simpler things in life.

I resented the never-ending battle, necessary to just stay level let alone to advance, and I was filled with remorse at the neglect of my home-life and family. Worst of all, my conscience was wearing me down. It refused to believe my contrived excuses and justification for what I was doing. I eventually realized that I really wanted to give it all up, but I needed the money. Some kind of Do-It-Yourself therapy was the only solution that appealed to me.

On aircraft, in trains, restaurants, waiting at airports, anywhere I had the time and the inclination I made notes and kept them. Some of them later turned into cynical poems, several with scientific themes, and I had many of them published. I was also well received whenever I could fit in time to give readings, on various club evenings, as well as radio and TV.

I did have a few short stories accepted, a long time ago, back in my SF fan days, but my first new project was a soul-searching, experimental, self-published, semi-autobiography work, entitled HOW TO BE A CHIEF EXECUTIVE. It took two years to write, and get off the ground, in between all the time I spent developing, and promoting international exports of advanced technology instruments and equipment. Well, last century, I did get a medal from the Queen for that day job, and the book did modestly well too, but whatever I spent marketing it, always brought in orders that almost exactly balanced my costs. This century however, it is available from Amazon and other outlets as an eBook and a paperback, and the revenue arrives at no cost to me at all.

Then one day I finally threw in my executive job and went to work for myself, as a computer programmer and instructor, specializing in developing AI software, which could generate business programs. With no more international travelling, I soon I found I had more time to start writing genre fiction again, and this century I’ve managed to complete over a hundred stories, including shorts and novelettes.

Relevant magazines, anthology publishers, and websites began to take my work, and I had success in several competitions. I’ve also won awards for a couple of my self-published collections, TENERIFE TALL TALES, and MACABRE TALES.

My first novel, POINTS OF VIEW, was published just before my 86^th.birthday this year, by Eternal Press, in the USA. Yes, I’m still progressing, and in addition to being nearly ready with my second novel, I believe now that there can be contentment in approaching the limits of one's abilities. The trick is to get as far as you believe you can, or maybe even stop just before that.

http://www.tonythorne.com/

Getting the Call: Kathryn Meyer Griffith

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:33:00 +0000

Here is a reminder that success takes patience. Careers in writing do not blossom overnight. Thank you Kathryn for sharing your story and showing us that there are many levels of triumphs. The ones we yearn for in the beginning of our journey may not be the ultimate accomplishments we believe them to be. There is much more to come because it truly is an expedition into the unknown.

I started writing The Heart of the Rose after my only child, James, was born in late 1971. I was staying home with him, not working, and was bored out of my skin. I read a horrible historical romance one day and thought I can do better than that!

So I got out my old typewriter with the keys that stuck, my bottles of White-Out, carbon paper for copies, and started clicking away. I tentatively called the book King’s Witch because it was about a 15^th century healer loved by Edward the Fourth who was falsely believed to be a witch. At the library (no computers or Internet back then) I did tedious research into that time in English history: the War of the Roses, the poverty and civil strife between the Red (Lancasters) and White Rose (Yorks); the Earl of Warwick and Edward the King. His brother Richard the Third. A real saga. Well, all that was big back then. I was way out of my league. Didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I just wrote. Reading that original version (a paperback released from Leisure books in 1985) now I have to laugh. It was pretty bad. All that archaic language I used (all the rage back in the 80’s). Yikes! But people, mainly women, loved it.

And so my writing career began. That was 40 years ago. It took me 12 years to get that first book published as I got sidetracked with a divorce, raising a son, and having to get a real job. Life, as it always seems to do, got in the way. The manuscript was tossed into a drawer and forgotten for a while.

Then one day years later I found it in my bottom drawer and decided to rewrite it; try to sell it. I bundled up the revised pile of printed copy pages, tucked it into an empty copy paper box and took it to the Post Office. Plastered it with stamps. I sent it everywhere The Writer’s Market of that year said I could. And waited. Months and months and months. In those days it could take up to a year or more to sell a novel, in between revising and rewriting to please any editor that would make a suggestion or comment. Snail mail took forever, too, and was expensive.

In the meantime, I wrote another book. Kind of a fictionalized look back at my childhood in a large (6 brothers and sisters) poor but loving family in the 1950’s and 60’s. I started sending that one out, as well. Then one day an editor suggested that since my writing had such a spooky feel to it anyway, why didn’t I just turn the book into a horror novel. Like Stephen King was doing. Ordinary people under supernatural circumstances. A book like that would really sell, she said. Hmmm. Well, it was worth a try, so I added something scary in the woods in the main character’s childhood past that she had to return to and face in her adult life, using some of my childhood as hers. I retitled it Evil Stalks the Night and started sending it out. That editor was right, it sold quickly.

But right before it was to go to editing, the publisher, Towers Publishing…went bankrupt and was bought out by another publisher! The book was lost somewhere in the stacks of unedited slush in a company undergoing massive changes as the new publisher took over. I had a contract and didn’t know how to break it. Heaven knows, I couldn’t afford a lawyer. My life with a husband and son was one step above poverty at times. Back then I was so naïve. That was 1983 and that take-over publisher was Leisure Books.

As often as has happened to me over my writing career, though, fate seemed to step in and the Tower’s editor that had bought my book, before she left, told one of Leisure’s editors about it and asked her to try to save it. She believed in it that much.

Out of the blue, in 1984, when I had completely given up on the book, Leisure Books sent me a letter offering to buy Evil Stalks the Night! Then, miracle of miracles, my new editor asked if I had any other ideas or books she could look at. I sent her The Heart of the Rose and Leisure Books promptly bought that one in 1985, as well; labeling it, and asking me to sex it up some, as an historical bodice-ripper (remember those…the sexy knockoffs of Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss’s provocative novels?)! It wasn’t a lot of money for either. A thousand dollar advance and only 4% royalties on the paperbacks. But back in those days the publishers had a bigger distribution and thousands and thousands of the paperbacks were printed, warehoused and sent to bookstores. So 4% of all those books did add up.

So my career began. I sold ten more novels and various short stories over the next 25 years –as I was working full time and living my life. Some did well (my Zebra and Leisure paperbacks) and some didn’t. Most of them, over the years, eventually went out of print.

And twenty-seven years later, when Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13^th and 14^th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks, including The Heart of the Rose – and I said a resounding yes!

Of course, I had to totally rewrite The Heart of the Rose for the resurrected edition because my writing when I was twenty-one was immature, unpolished and had been done on an electric typewriter, with lots of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. Then also in those days, editors told an author what to change and the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. I also totally rewrote the book because, as was the style in the 1980’s, the prose was written in that old-fashioned prose using thees and ayes. The dialect of 15^th century England. There were sex scenes I had to tone down. It was awful. So I modernized the language, cut all the redundant adjectives and adverbs and helped the characters to grow up a little (they were so dramatic). The Heart of the Rose-Revised Author’s Edition published by Eternal Press in November 2010 (http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615722327 ), hopefully, then is a lot better book than it ever was in 1985. It should be…I have had thirty-nine more years of life and experiences to help make it a better book. Author Kathryn Meyer Griffith

***

All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s Books available at Amazon.com here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Kathryn+Meyer+Griffith

About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had sixteen (nine romantic horror, two romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel, one historical romance and two murder mysteries) previous novels, two novellas and twelve short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.

Websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer)

http://www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.jacketflap.com/K.griffith

http://www.shoutlife.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith

http://www.romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

Getting the Call: Danielle Ackley-McPhail

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:23:00 +0000

This week we have a special Getting the Call from someone who knows all sides of the publishing business. Danielle Ackley-McPhail is an accomplished writer who also happens to be the project editor and promotions manager for Dark Quest Books. (I do believe I had a partial with them before my novel got placed elsewhere. That makes us family, just like a visit to Olive Garden.) Thanks so much for sharing your story and your colorful cover art, Danielle. Perhaps if readers have some questions for you in the comments, you might shed some light from the publisher's perspective. Tips for promoting new books being high in my own thoughts.

~~Getting~~ Making the Call: Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Sheer. Dumb. Luck.

Yes, those three words say it all. Way back in my misspent youth I volunteered on the AOL message board The Amazing Instant Novelist. The board was as a support group for aspiring writers. They held two weekly contests and had many discussion boards where people could post their writing for feedback from the site’s dedicated staff, as well as fellow posters.

Eventually I showed up—and commented—often enough I was asked to become official. NOVL tGift was born. This meant that in addition to doing what I was already doing, I also “hung” out with the staff in private chat rooms. The primary topic, of course, was writing.

I can’t tell you how many ideas came from my participating in this site.

No, really…if you asked, I couldn’t do it.

What I can tell you is that without those private chat sessions my first novel never would have been published. Yesterday’s Dreams started out as a story. Just a basic idea of a pawnshop specializing in items linked to a person’s soul. One story turned into a couple of chapters, and so on. The feedback was great, the story fun, but I didn’t realize for a long time that I was writing a novel. Initially I was posting the chapters on line as I wrote them with hokey little animated gifs and everything. See, at that time AOL was just starting to offer free home pages to their members. I wasn’t very good at it, but I had fun playing with their set-up software.

Let me tell you, though…You can put as many links as you want to email the author, but it virtually never happens. I think for the three years it was posted I received maybe five emails commenting on the story and site. But you know…that was all it took.

See, one of those emails…It was someone claiming to be an agent. They wanted to see the story when I was done because “they knew a couple of publishers who might be interested”.

All of a sudden I was writing a novel.

Now you might think that would be motivation for me to get it done.

You would be wrong. Oh, not because I didn’t want to. No. Because I had no friggin’ idea what I was doing! It took me another two years to finish that novel. When I was done it was, as they say, a hot mess. But you know, that guy was still around, so I figured what the heck. I emailed him and very quickly got a response. “Great! Email it to me and I’ll take a look.”

Oh! No no no! (That was what went through my head.) See, email submissions were less formal and less common then. I had all kinds of nightmares of having finished this thing and having it stolen out from under me. Of course, I wasn’t going to turn away from the opportunity either. The first thing I did was print out a copyright registration form and fill it out, print the manuscript, and package it up for UPS. Then I went hunting. I checked out the guy’s member profile and found a link to a publishing website. I visited that site and did some digging. Eventually I found a phone number and I called.

Most of the time you hear dead silence it’s a bad thing, right?

Nope. Not this time the receptionist answers and I ask if the person emailing me is connected with the company. She goes quiet for all of about a minute and then says. “He’s the publisher.”

I immediately hit send (and mailed my package) and then proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually I received a very apologetic email and an offer.

Now before you start to hate me for having it too easy this was the smallest of small presses and about all they officially did for me was get my foot in the door and give me a rather shaky credibility that I had to build up considerably over the years. Unofficially? They showed me the possibilities…and I ran with them.

You want to know how? Please do visit my official website, www.sidhenadaire.com, and take a look at what I have accomplished over the last ten years based on recognizing possibilities.

Bio: Award-winning author Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for over seventeen years. Her works include the urban fantasies, Yesterday's Dreams, Tomorrow's Memories, Today’s Promise, and The Halfling’s Court, and the writers guide, The Literary Handyman. She edits the Bad-Ass Faeries anthologies and Dragon’s Lure, and has contributed to numerous other anthologies.

She is a member of the New Jersey Authors Network and Broad Universe, a writer’s organization focusing on promoting the works of women authors in the speculative genres. She can be found on LiveJournal (damcphail, lit_handyman), Facebook (Danielle Ackley-McPhail), and Twitter (DMcPhail). Learn more at www.sidhenadaire.com.

Getting the Call: Lynda Williams

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:25:00 +0000

Today I'm happy to bring you an author who actually wrote a short about the despair she felt trying to break into publishing. Now she has not one, but seven books published. That's quite an accomplishment. Here's proof that it can be done and there is a market for a well-developed fantasy series. Welcome to Lynda Williams.

Michelle, I would love to share my "Getting the Call" story with you and your readers and to include the link to my story Going Back Out which I wrote when I was feeling despair about ever being a real writer because I couldn't see how I'd ever compete with the "big guys". The writer-analogy is about Gadar, a Reetion pilot who is depressed to discover Sevolites really do fly harder than she can. But, as Ann reminds her, they don't fly for her reasons and the people she flies for need HER. When you focus on what you are doing, and why, then fears about how loudly you can do it fade away.

Easier said than done, of course, but I have often re-read Going Back Out myself, particularly when I felt angry about some very loud success that jarred me emotionally for the sake of the implied messages about immoral behavior being okay so long as you win. My own "Getting the Call" message has to be when Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy bought Throne Price. I had sold a couple short stories before but the Okal Rel Saga was my big dream. Alison Sinclair and I sold Throne Price to Edge late in the last millenium. At the time, the "buzz" in the writerly world was all in favor of "shorter, meaner, harder", or at least so it seemed to me. A ten novel saga about the struggle to find the common sense to stop destroying the world, and brutalizing people, in the fight between cultures for dominance, felt like a dark horse. But I had lived and labored in the Okal Rel Universe for thirty years. I wasn't interested in doing "something else".

Now, a mere 30,000 words shy of completing a ten-novel project, with Part 8: Gathering Storm due soon, I am glad I had the courage to keep flying for my own reasons. And this is what really makes it worthwhile -- so are the readers who love my characters.

Lynda Williams, author http://www.okalrel.org/books.html http://okalrel.org/blog/ (Reality Skimming with Michelle Carraway, Tegan Lott,Richard Bartrop)http://clarionfoundation.wordpress.com/tag/lynda-williams/ (with David Lott)Opus 6 (with editor Paula Johanson)

Getting the Call: Linda Hays-Gibbs

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:53:00 +0000

Great news! I'm able to bring back these inspirational stories. I want to send out thanks to Terri Bruce for using her connections to bring new authors forward to share how they got published or landed agents. Allow me to introduce Linda Hays-Gibbs. I just met her and already I admire her determination.

When I saw the email that offered writers to write about how they got the call, I thought this would be very interesting. I think I always had the call. I made up poems and songs when I was three and wrote stories as young as six. No one seemed interested in them as my mom was very sick and died when I was young. My father didn’t believe a girl needed education. I did have some teachers that tried to encourage me a little. I was told to bring my imagination under control. I always made good grades so I did what I was told.

I was told by my Latin instructor that my translations were so interesting, I made his teaching career and made his class the most exciting he ever had. All I know was I tried to translate but my imagination got in the way every time.

I started writing poetry in a journal for my daughter some years back because I was throwing away my poems. Bea said, “Mom make a book of them and send them off to be published.” “I said, no one will publish this mess.” I did send them off and they were published. I was amazed. “Sailing in My Sunshine” was my first published book.

You see, I went back to school and got a degree in Anthropology. Not what I wanted but what the school pigeon holed me into. It was a mistake but I got a BA. I wanted creative writing. I did have a minor in it but all my professors, again said, I was too imaginative. I didn’t have any order about me. In other words, I had no talent.

I was an older student. I was Disabled and a widow. I did not get any scholarships and finally felt like I was not wanted. I went for my Master’s in Secondary Education after being turned down three times by the Creative Writing department. It was simply I had no talent. I did get 28 credits in Graduate work as a teacher and taught for a while at local schools but it was not what I wanted. I became too ill and could not walk to their classes and quit.

A light finally went off in my little brain. I could write if I wanted to. There was no one to stop me.

Suddenly, I said, to heck with this. I want to write so I will write. I don’t need their permission. I started writing novels. “He Would Make Her Pay” was my first novel and it was very painful. It had my life intertwined in it and the 1960s were painful. I wrote “Escape into Magic” to escape. I did not want any real life. I wanted dreams. Next I decided I wanted to write about Regency England. It was all I read. I love Romances in Regency times. I wrote “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls” it was so much more fun but the publisher I had was not helping me. I looked for another publisher. I sent off my work and still had little confidence. All the battering I had over my writing still hurt. Eternal Press took “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls.” Then I waited for reviews. I chewed my nails and pulled my hair.

The first review I got was not that great but wasn’t really bad. I thought well there you are. You aren’t that good but then I got seven more reviews and they were all great. The first great review by Marilyn Rondeau made me cry. I was so happy. I ate up each word and knew that I should never let anyone keep me from my dream. Her review made my call real. It became real to me. I had two publishers and four books published but it wasn’t real until that review. It made an old woman’s heart sing. I now have another book coming out November 1, 2012. It is called “Angel in My Heart, Devil in My Soul.”

I am writing the third in my angel series, “Morovani, The Guardian Angel”. I also have a novel almost finished called, “The Crazies”. It’s a little bit of a clean satire on “Fifty Shades of Gray.” I am afraid I have stories coming out of my ears but it’s still a scary time because these stories need to sell so I am told. I only know that when Marilyn said my stories were worth something I believed her. I came out to play, and I have been earnestly playing ever since. I love it. Writing is so much fun but you do need verification. Marilyn was my verification. I want to thank her again for my review that made my call official.

***

Linda D. Hays-Gibbs was born in Mississippi and lives in Alabama. She went back to school late in life, graduated with a BA in Anthropology from University of Alabama. Reading is like nectar from the Gods to Linda and writing is just plain fun. Her great, great grandfather is Daniel Boone and she found that out by researching her family herself.

Her fourth book, “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls” really meant more to her because she worked on it for such a long time and because Linda was determined to make her writing much better than it had been. Kim Richards and Sally Odgers from Eternal Press are inspirations for her. Barbara Metzger, one of her favorite authors gave Linda encouragement too. Linda loves writing and hopes to continue to do it for the rest of her life along with anything she can do for her God and children.

www.lindahaysgibbs.blogpot.com

www.lindahaysgibbs.pbworks.com

www.facebook.com/rosedru

www.twitter.com/Rosedru63

Blurb for Angel in My Heart, Devil in My Soul: He was a killer, a merciless, emotionless, machine for death. She was and angel of love and hope and the woman of his dreams. She could not be around evil, it would kill her and he was all that was evil and foul. How could she dream of a man like that?

When he held her in his arms and kissed her she felt her heart stutter and start and moaned when her dream dissipated into the night air. He caressed boneless pillows of angel dust and silently cried when he awoke. How could he live without her?

Getting the Call: Anna Walls

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:41:00 +0000

More proof the road to publishing is a process. Sometimes your location itself proves the biggest challenge. What do you do when you're miles away from the nearest agent or writers conference?

Did I get the call? Most certainly not. What I got was this really cool little toy, a Dell laptop. It was my very first computer. I had no internet and I had no intention of getting such a thing, not that I had a clue how. That meant that my cool little toy was little more than a glorified typewriter.

By coincidence, since my boys were done going to school from here (they were both in town going to Job Corp now), I had loose leaf binders laying around and plenty of notebook paper, so like I’ve done only two other times in my life, I started writing down a story just for the heck of it. I’d read every book in the house multiple times and going to a bookstore was impossible.

When I was presented with this little computer, my son showed me how to work it and some of its features and then it was all mine. So what do you do with a glorified typewriter? One thing is for sure, it took up less room on the table than my notebook and someone was always setting a cup or some tools on my paper (grrr). With no other ideas, I started to type my hand-written story into my computer. When I caught up with myself, at first, I thought I’d write some and then type that, but it didn’t take me long to just give up on the notebook. I mean, grammar and spell check, and copy and paste? You just can’t find that kind of thing in a notebook. Haha

Such was the very first beginnings of my first published book, King by Right of Blood and Might. It took me upwards of two winters to finish that book, but during that time, I learned lots of things about my cool little toy too. It had a Paint program, and now I could draw pictures and maps. I drew a lot of pictures for that book, only a few of which remained in the finished product.

When I finished it, I did a little checking around into the publishing idea, but quickly discovered that publishers required agents and I didn’t know how to find one. My boss at the time gave me this big fat book with contact information and requirements listed for just about any kind of publishing anyone might want to do, but by the time I was looking, the information was outdated and I had nowhere else to turn.

I found AuthorHouse in the phonebook and sent for a publishing package but even that avenue died, as it was far too expensive. But, I still had my little toy and my winters were filled with discovering these brand new books no one had ever seen before, least of all me. I experimented with the rules of magic. I traveled to distant planets. I even visited Earth from far far away. And many more adventures, only just beginning to see the light of day.

Then the saddest day of my life opened the way for my publishing career to start. My mother died, but there was an inheritance I didn’t expect. Suddenly, I had enough money to see a book published. It was both the best and the worst investment I have ever made. The best because I had a book out there people could read, available on Amazon, no less. The worst because of the publishing avenue I chose. AuthorHouse is a subsidy publisher; they make their money from the writer so whatever the finished product is makes no difference to them. It doesn’t matter if sales go nowhere; they got their money. It was up to me to figure out how to advertise; their only help was to tell me to get a Facebook account and a Twitter account. Well darn, that required internet.

Two years later, after much research, we did just that, also thanks to the money I inherited from my mother. Now my little cabin in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, had a piece of 21^st century technology hanging on the side of it, and now I’m doing amazing things like blogging and marketing and lets not forget, doing this interview.

Another thing the internet has allowed me to accomplish is finding publishers I don’t have to pay. Early this spring my second book, Prince in Hiding, went live and apparently hit Amazon by storm (for me anyway). In June, 32 books were sold. In July ,18, but come August, 137 were sold, and just blew me away. Most of those sales were eBooks and they are the craze these days, but not so long ago King by Right of Blood and Might also grew an eBook (not by my request) with no sales from that quarter that I know of.

This year has been an exciting one for me. Through another publisher, The Speed of Dreams is scheduled to come out in February. Then again, sometime in late May, book 2 of my Making of a Mage-King series will hit Amazon with, I hope, as much enthusiasm as Prince in Hiding. The balls are all starting to roll. My stories are starting to find homes. Pretty soon I’ll have to buckle down and write up some more.

King by Right of Blood and Might can be found here

Prince in Hiding can be found here

My main writing blog is here

My personal blog is here

My blog novel, The Fortunes of Magic, is here

Enjoy

Getting the Call: Kate Evangelista

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:58:00 +0000

Everyone who has ever looked, or plans to look, for an agent should read this story. Getting the call is not the end of the road. I really want to thank Kate for sharing her tough experience. I'm glad she's found where she belongs, and hope she will come back in October for the release of her second novel.

The Call – A Break-Up and a Triumph

When I decided writing was my career of choice, I had naïve (some might even say fantastical) ideas about the publishing industry. I had it all plotted out: write a book, edit it, submit, get an agent, get published. Five easy steps, right? I see many of you shaking your heads. I was totally wrong and I’m not afraid to admit it.

A year and a mountain of rejection letters later, I finally got “The Call.” That one phone call every budding writer waits for like a girl with a crush on a boy. In less than thirty minutes, my life changed. I got an agent! I had already accomplished four out of my five steps. I was feeling good about myself.

Little did I know that I would become one of those horror stories I’d read along the way to getting an agent.

Almost another year and five rejections from editors later, I got another call.

One of the things you want from an agent: a champion of your work no matter how low you feel about it.

During this fated call, I made the decision of maybe stopping the submission and maybe moving on to another novel to submit. My agent readily agreed. This was the second red flag, the first being I had a hard time getting in touch with said agent.

Still the naïve writer I was, I decided to pitch a novel I had been thinking of writing. Agent gets really excited about this novel and says it will sell easily. This enthusiasm propelled me into writing said novel in a month. In the meantime, I submitted another novel to keep said agent busy.

When I finished writing my third novel, I hurriedly edited it then submitted to my agent. The reply was a very long email that basically said the second novel I had sent was crap with concerns that since I wrote third novel in only a month it would be crap too. I quickly realized agent had not read third novel and had already judged its worth based on my other two works.

Another thing you want from an agent: Someone who will encourage you to do better and that your book will get published. Basically, someone who doesn’t give up.

This didn’t happen. Instead I was put down when I was already feeling low.

So, having once gotten out of an abusive relationship, I recognized the signs and fired said agent. The next email after the firing added insult to injury in that agent finally read third novel and said it was my strongest writing yet. What was I to make of that?

Like any girl fresh from a break up, I was determined to prove myself. I revamped my query letters and submitted to agents and smaller presses. I got the most Full and Partial requests in my writing life during this trying time.

Vindication wasn’t far. I knew it in my bones.

I also gave the universe a deadline. I said if I didn’t get an agent or a publishing contract by the end of the year, I would boldly plunge into self-publishing.

It works to give the universe a deadline because a month later, I signed my first book contract, which produced Taste, my debut novel released last April 30, 2012.

I’d since signed three more contracts after that: two of which are for YA trilogies and one for a companion novel to Taste. The first of one of the trilogies comes out this October. To date (since breaking up with my agent) I have one book out and seven more on the way, three different publishers in all.

The biggest lesson learned? My naïve views of publishing were just that. There are so many roads to a writing career. Just because you don’t have an agent doesn’t mean you won’t get published. And just because you have an agent means you will get published.

I found my vindication, and I’m living my bliss.

“The Call” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. If you get your dream agent, I’m happy for you and wish your writing career the best. If you don’t have an agent yet, it’s not the end of the world. Go for smaller presses. They take care of their writers better, instead of getting into a Big House and being just one of many mid-list writers who can get dropped without a second thought.

At the end of the day I write because I want the stories in my head to be read. It doesn’t matter what road it takes to get to the readers so long as it gets there.

Taste Blurb:

At Barinkoff Academy, there's only one rule: no students on campus after curfew. Phoenix McKay soon finds out why when she is left behind at sunset. A group calling themselves night students threaten to taste her flesh until she is saved by a mysterious, alluring boy. With his pale skin, dark eyes, and mesmerizing voice, Demitri is both irresistible and impenetrable. He warns her to stay away from his dangerous world of flesh eaters. Unfortunately, the gorgeous and playful Luka has other plans.

When Phoenix is caught between her physical and her emotional attraction, she becomes the keeper of a deadly secret that will rock the foundations of an ancient civilization living beneath Barinkoff Academy. Phoenix doesn’t realize until it is too late that the closer she gets to both Demitri and Luka the more she is plunging them all into a centuries old feud.

Amazon:
B&N:
Kobo:
The Book Depository:

Author Bio:

When Kate Evangelista was told she had a knack for writing stories, she did the next best thing: entered medical school. After realizing she wasn't going to be the next Doogie Howser, M.D., Kate wandered into the Literature department of her university and never looked back. Today, she is in possession of a piece of paper that says to the world she owns a Literature degree. To make matters worse, she took Master's courses in creative writing. In the end, she realized to be a writer, none of what she had mattered. What really mattered? Writing. Plain and simple, honest to God, sitting in front of her computer, writing. Today, she has four completed Young Adult novels.

Author Website: www.kateevangelista.com

Twitter: @KateEvangelista

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kate-Evangelista/165693410143202

Find Taste on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13484226-taste

Crescent Moon Press page for Taste: http://crescentmoonpress.com/books/Taste.html

A Little Pep for Your Salt!

noreply@blogger.com (Ree Vera) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:32:00 +0000

Don't you just love the title of this post? I do! Come on...admit it...you're totally smiling right now ;)
Now that I got that little grin on your face...
I wanted to share a little pep talk with y'all. I actually wrote this for a close group of friends when all of us were struggling to get back on the writing train. I was reading it again today and thought--What if someone else really needs to hear this? So I will share this overly peppy (and slightly amended) pep talk with all you awesome writers out there! Time to clean those slates of ours. Wipe away the old, broken promises we made when it comes to our writing.
Come on now!
Clean slates everyone! Clean slates!
*gives one last scribble, crazed laugh, then wipes clean*
There. Ahh...fresh.
Now...How dare you? Oh yes. You! How dare you let those wicked lies fill your head?
I mean those evil haters that whisper failure into your ears. You know the words.
"You started this years ago and you haven't finished."
"You're never going to be published."
"Nobody is reading it. Nobody likes it."
"You're wasting your time."
"You should be doing something else."
"Ugh, you're still chasing that dream?"
"I love you but maybe it's time you..."
"I believe in you but..."
Or worse! The things we say to ourselves are sometimes more horrible! I've heard them..I KNOW.
"I suck."
"I'll never be as good as..."
"I'm never gonna get a deal. I'm never gonna finish. I'm wasting my time."
"I can't get it right."
"Omg! I have to rewrite again? I should just give up."
See what I mean? We're just awful to ourselves. So quit it! What kind of talk is that? Huh? Chin up, shoulders square. (move hips side to side heh heh) Now shake. Shake says I! Just feel that negativity roll right off.
Haha this sounds like a bad workout instructional :D
Now see, it's all gone.
Now listen close: You are master, ruler, captain, etc...of words. You make them come like nobody else. Oh yes. When letters see you settling in to write they just scramble toward you. They practically beg for you to turn them into something fantastic. "Me! Pick me! Use me!"
Oh yes. You hear them? They're calling you now. You are incredibly gifted. Talent can't be bought or taught...and you are TALENTED. Genius is what you are. Brilliant! Must I say it again? Okey dokey...YOU ROCK! Like boulders in a great typhoon. Or maybe like spuds on blue soil. Yeah...umm.
Oh you rock! Just like the robin in that song.
Now repeat after me: I am the bomb. I am a sexy, naughty little writer who is uber talented. I am going to do this. I will keep writing until I finish--and I will finish--and it will be amazing. I know my story is worth telling. Worth reading. And people will love it! I will let any bad things slip through my ears because they are evil and wretched and not true. I am going to write. I am going to work toward my word count this week knowing I have people in my corner who are rooting me on. And I will...above all...LOVE WHAT I DO.
Now don't you feel special?
I hope so. if not, we're going to have to have a chat, you and I.
Well, I hope this has been sufficiently perky for y'all. Until next time!
Happy Writing!!

Getting the Call: MarcyKate Connolly

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:12:00 +0000

Believing in ourselves can be the hardest part of being a writer. The lack of validation from legitimate sources can be a killer. I got a chance to read a couple of chapters of MarcyKate's Monstrous and the voice blew me away. She may not have know it, but I think everyone else knew this book stood out from the crowd. Once again, you have to keep up your courage because it's persistence and talent that pays off. I want to wish MarcyKate the best of luck with her submission process. I'm doing a happy dance for her, too!

First, thanks so much for inviting me to do this guest post, Michelle!

Like many other writers, I’ve spent several years in the query trenches, writing, re-writing, and submitting, all in the hopes of finding that one agent who loves my work. I’ve had more than my share of highs and lows. The 3^rd novel I queried came particularly close, garnering a large amount of requests, but in the end, no offers. So when it came time to query MONSTROUS (my 7^th book, but 4^th I’d decided to query), I had reached a point where I was paralyzed by fear.

I was absolutely (and foolishly) terrified to send out this book. I was scared to send it to my crit partners. Then once they approved, I was afraid to send it to agents. I was even nervous to enter it into blog contests (which normally I love to do!). MONSTROUS is hands down the weirdest and most challenging book I’ve written to date and I was very emotionally invested in it. The thought of it coming close and not being good enough to get an agent yet again stalled my forward momentum, despite my full awareness that I was being a complete ninny.

Then came the Writers Voice Contest in May (hosted by the lovely foursome of Brenda Drake, Cupid, Krista Van Dolzer, and Monica BW). I got up the nerve to enter and was shocked and thrilled that 3 of the judges wanted my weird little book to be on their team. By the time the contest ended and the agents had voted, I had several requests for MONSTROUS.

This was exactly the push I needed to start sending out queries. I began researching agents on my list who I thought would be a good fit with renewed gusto, but still held back a little. I queried in fits and starts and only when I was in a Go Big or Go Home frame of mind. I’d send them out late at night before I could think better of it and usually woke up the next morning thinking I was crazy to have done that. This was not my normal querying process by any means! Usually I’d send out 5-10 at a time to a range of agents so I didn’t burn through my top picks before perfecting my query. But this time, I felt confident my query and first pages were good (it was just the rest of the book I worried about!) and I ended up querying only my A-list. I was blown away by the response – I only sent out 20 queries, but my request rate was about 70%. Including the ones from contests, I had 18 requests for MONSTROUS.

But, of course, I was still getting rejections – it’s inevitable. About 6 weeks after I sent out the first batch of queries, I got an email response from an agent as I was walking home from the train station. I nearly fell over when I saw the preview of the message on my phone read “Would you be available to chat this week?” I kept telling myself she probably wanted major revisions and that she wasn’t calling to offer. But it was an offer! And she was lovely and she was excited about my book and I was pretty much on cloud nine! After I talked to Agent #1, I nudged everyone else reading my book (8 at the time) and all the outstanding queries (another 5 or so). A couple got back to me bowing out, others with requests.

One of those requests happened to be from a particular agent who I’d long considered to be someone I’d give my right arm to work with, so I was over the moon that she wanted to read MONSTROUS! I sent the manuscript off right away and she got back to me later that night to let me know how much she was enjoying it so far. She finished reading within 24 hours and emailed again, gushing about my book (!), to arrange a phone call.

That was about the time my head exploded.

Fortunately, I managed to pull myself together for our call a couple days later! Agent #2’s enthusiasm for her work, her clients’ books, and MY book completely blew me away. Add to that the fact that her suggestions for revisions were spot on and she was easy to talk to, and I had a feeling she was going to be the right agent for me.

The happy dancing officially reached epic levels (to the point where the excessive flailing was scaring my dogs)!

But I still had several agents reading and wanted to be sure I gave everyone who was interested serious consideration. You really don’t know how you’ll click with an agent until you talk to them. Out of those agents, I received another offer and had another Call with Agent #3. She was as excited about MONSTROUS as the other agents, her clients loved her just as much, and her sales record was stellar. She was even easy to talk to. I could tell she’d be a great advocate for my book.

Then came the hard part – I had to make a decision. All three agents were awesome. I felt certain they’d all work hard to sell MONSTROUS and they were all interested in helping me build a career. It was both wonderful and terrible because I’d have to say no to two of them and there’s nothing I like less than disappointing people (especially nice, awesome people).

But when it came right down to it, I kept coming back to Agent #2. I felt like we really clicked over email and the phone, and she’d made a point of keeping in contact over the course of that week. Not only did I like her ideas for revision just a little more than the others, but her level of enthusiasm was higher and I believed that would translate over during the submission process to editors. When I finally emailed Suzie Townsend to tell her I was delighted to officially accept her offer of representation, part of me was terrified it was all just a dream and she’d email back “Just kidding!” Fortunately, that was NOT the case J We’ve been working together for the past few weeks preparing to go out on submission and she’s been absolutely fantastic!

BIO: MarcyKate Connolly is a writer and arts administrator who lives in New England with her husband and pugs. She’s also a coffee addict, voracious reader, and recurring commuter. She blogs at her website and the From the Write Angle group blog, and volunteers as a moderator at AgentQueryConnect.com. Her work is represented by Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary & Media. Her short story “Connected” was recently published in the Spring Fevers anthology by Elephants Bookshelf Press.

LINKS:

Getting the Call: Suzanne van Rooyen

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:08:00 +0000

This week's author has a ton on her plate. Suzanne has broken into writing by heading in more than one direction, providing more proof that a boatload of talent with determination and perseverance are the key. Very cool cover, Suzanne, and a big congrats on the agent offer! I hope you'll come back again and share more details for the December release.

My journey to publication has been a bit of a whirlwind. I've always written, but never really thought of being a writer in terms of career. It was only in 2010 when I began writing Dragon's Teeth that I had any inclination of trying to publish.

What started out as a short story grew into a novel for NaNoWriMo 2010 and after another two months of daily writing, became Dragon's Teeth. I submitted my manuscript on a whim to Divertir Publishing, wanting to take the first step towards being a real writer. I expected a rejection, I hoped for some feedback, I never ever expected a publishing contract.

My almost year long journey from signing the contract to seeing my book in print taught me so much about the writing industry and about myself as I writer. I owe a huge amount of thanks to Elizabeth Harvey (my editor) and Ken Tupper (publisher) for investing in my story. It was the publication of Dragon's Teeth that made me realise that what I really wanted to be was a writer, because that's who I've always been: a storyteller.

In the wake of Dragon's Teeth, I joined the online writing community Scribophile where I continued to learn about writing as a craft and about the industry. I started following author and agent blogs, I discovered Duotrope and the world of writing no longer seemed like a magical, far away realm but something real that I could be a part of. In the past year, I've had fifteen short stories published and have gradually been stepping up the ladder towards pro paying markets.

I've also been writing, a lot! Being a musician, I understand the importance of practice; the dedication, discipline and perseverance it takes to perfect an art. I write every day, even if I only manage a couple hundred words.

After Dragon's Teeth, I wrote two other novels. Obscura Burning pretty much wrote itself in a lightning bolt of inspiration that had me abandon everything else for the two weeks it took to write out the first draft. A YA science fiction novel, Obscura Burning is about a troubled boy who finds himself tossed along the space-time continuum in the wake of tragedy. I queried agents for this novel but the feedback, while consistently positive, made me realise that my very dark and edgy novel was going to be a tricky sell for traditional publishing. I turned instead to indie publishers and within a few weeks had an offer of publication from Etopia Press. Obscura Burning is now tentatively scheduled for release December 7.

The other novel was Daughter of the Nether, a YA mythpunk story set in a post-apocalyptic world. I entered this manuscript into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award earlier this year and never expected to end up a semi-finalist. My journey with this novel is far from over but after four months of consistent querying, I just had an offer of representation! My head's still spinning about that!

Putting my journey into a few paragraphs, makes it all sound fairly easy, but it definitely was not. The hours spent writing, the hours spent curled up in a ball of self-doubt as the rejections rolled in, the hours spent editing, revising, staring at a blank page – writing really isn't for the faint of heart, but determination and patience can pay off. It was Einstein who said, “Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work.” And any writer can attest to that!

Bio: Suzanne van Rooyen is a South African speculative fiction author currently residing in the snowy wastes of Finland. She is the author of Dragon's Teeth (Divertir Publishing, 2011) and Obscura Burning (Etopia Press, December 2012). Her short fiction has appeared in Golden Visions Magazine, Earthbound Fiction, Niteblade and several others. Although she has a Master's degree in music, she prefers writing strange tales and conjuring weird worlds, and playing in the snow with her shiba inu.

Links:

Website: http://suzannevanrooyen.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzanne-van-Rooyen/304965232847874

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5306442.Suzanne_van_Rooyen

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Suzanne_Writer

Getting the Call: Calista Taylor

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 17:19:00 +0000

You never know what the future will bring as Calista Taylor found out. She took a tough situation and went her own way with her steampunk writing, not only getting published, but also self-publishing, and starting her own business. Anyone in need of book covers can rely on her expertise. Congratulations to her for having her non-fiction steampunk book released next month and check out her available steampunk fiction.

I’ll admit, my path regarding agents hasn’t exactly been a straight forward one. I never got “the call”, but rather an email from the woman who would soon be my agent and would represent my steampunk romance and mystery, Viridis. Unfortunately, soon after signing, the agency dissolved—not exactly what you want to hear when you’ve finally managed to land an agent. Luckily, my agent and several others formed their own agency, and I was brought along. Again, another unfortunate turn of events occurred six months in when the new agency decided to drop adult fiction and stick with YA and stories for a younger audience. Part way through submissions, I found myself agentless. Not exactly a fun situation, and I was forced to shelve that book and the second I had written in the series.

About a month later, I blogged about making a leather corset to wear to a steampunk convention. Low and behold, an agent read it and thought he could really sell a steampunk craft book and wanted to know if I’d be interested. Amazingly enough, without ever having to query, I found myself with a new agent, though this time it was for a genre I’d never even considered—non-fiction. That book ending up selling, and will be available in the next month under the title, Steampunk Your Wardrobe.

In the end, with the market turning favorably towards ebooks, I decided to dust off my steampunk fiction series, and self-published it myself. I’ll admit, it’s been a pretty amazing ride, and with my next book, Jack—A Grim Reaper Romance, I ended up half-heartedly querying a dozen agents before deciding to self-publish it myself. Even better, and completely unexpected, was the cover design business that got started when I self-published my first series.

Publishing can certainly be a rough and rocky road, but I’ve learned that there are many paths, and one seldom travels in a straight line.

---

You can find Calista and her fiction books at her cover creation site. Her very cool steampunk craft book is on Amazon.

Getting the Call: Me, Michelle Hauck

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:07:00 +0000

Here’s a surprising turn of events, this week’s Getting the Call post is my own story. I started this series of posts at a low point in my journey. It was a time when the rejection letters piled up, and I needed a jolt of inspiration. Perhaps, somehow, I hoped reading about others’ success might rub off or maybe reveal a clue to a hidden secret. They were intended to lift my spirits and the spirits of other people, not that I believed other people would ever come to this blog. But you did.

When I started querying my first manuscript I had no clue. I didn’t know the rules of writing, of how to write a query letter, or of what made a good story. To give you some idea of the awfulness, the manuscript, an epic fantasy, was 167,000 words. My cheeks heat up just thinking of everything I did wrong. It was a flop, a disaster. I began doing research by reading agent blogs. I got help on my letter from other writers. The results didn’t improve. I ended up with three requests out of somewhere around seventy letters sent. All three were swiftly followed by rejection and, in one case, even worse news. The agent with my partial had passed away. I felt terrible.

I did the unthinkable; I shelved my baby. You read the words of other writers about how they trunked their first manuscript, but I never thought it would happen to me. It did. By now I knew Heartsouls would never work in its current state. It lacked conflict, and the characters ran wild instead of adhering to the plot. There wasn’t a nice clean stand alone ending. It needed a total rewrite. Instead I started a new story.

In this second story, another epic fantasy, I did everything right or so I thought. I kept to the plot. I understood query letters, or at least the idea of how they should work. I didn’t rush off to query my first draft. To my eternal good fortune, I found Agent Query Connect where other writers with a clue share their experience. I took advantage of the critiquing marathon for Speculative Fiction writers to improve my skill at editing and get some feedback on Kindar’s Cure. I collected a double handful of beta readers and spent months editing before sending out a query letter. Guess what happened? Kindar got three requests. Oh, it did get personalized comments. In fact, it got more of these than requests. ‘I love your concept, but …’ There was always a ‘but’.

All my research and careful preparation and I got the exactly same number of requests. Three became a taboo number. I was cursed. Those rejections kept coming in and they hurt big time. Even I noticed that I didn’t laugh or joke as much as I used to. The revise and resubmit Kindar got came back another ‘no thanks, not for me, but good luck with finding someone else to represent you’. Then the third and last full came back as a form rejection. No words of advice, just a form rejection. A few weeks later that agent left the business. Oh, God, it was happening again!

But this time there was a difference. I knew Kindar was a good story. I knew it was well written. Give up? Heck no!

I began to submit straight to publishers. And hey, a lot of them didn’t want query letters. Right away I got a request for a full. My kids thought I was nuts, running around the house in a victory lap at seven in the morning. I got other requests mixed among the rejections. My numbers were higher. I ran a percent of requests to submissions over twenty percent. Partials went to fulls overnight in one case. Still the rejections overshadowed everything else. And guess what? The requests became stuck at three. There it was again. The number of doom. Time went by and I immersed myself in my work in progress, refusing to think about Kindar.

In June a different publisher opened their submissions. Low and behold, I got another request. I did it! I passed the cursed number three to become four!

I didn’t lose the habit of checking my email like a junkie. One Sunday night, pretty late, I gave my mail one last look. The first publisher to request, Divertir, showed up in the inbox along with some more innocent letters. Crap. Do I open it first and get the bad new over, or do I save it for last and hope a little longer? I opened it first. It was short. Ah, rejection for sure. They’d been awfully busy but they wanted to let me know they’d like to publish Kindar’s Cure. What? I read it again. Then again. It kept saying the same thing! There was no victory lap. I sat there in total shock. ‘Uh, husband, they say they want to publish.” Husband wasn’t impressed. He took bad new harder than I did; he wouldn’t allow himself to get excited anymore. I don’t think he’ll believe it until the book is in his hands.

Several weeks later, I find that I’m agreeing with my husband. This good news didn’t happen to me. But it did! Divertir gave me a tentative release date and everything. I have an editor. Me, an editor. It doesn’t seem real. In fact, to be perfectly truthful, it’s been a little scary. It’s a leap whether it’s signing with an agent or accepting a publisher. You’re signing over something you created and putting it in strange hands.

The connections I made through this blog series were invaluable. I followed Terri Bruce’s and other writer’s advice before signing. I had the contract looked over by a friend who knows his stuff. I asked lots of questions. I think Divertir will be a good fit for me. They are a small place, but that makes me comfortable. They listen to what their authors think and work with the authors to make their visions came to life. I won’t get lost in a crowd there.

I used to think getting an agent or publisher was the ultimate goal, the end all. Getting the Call would be the happy ending to the story. It’s much more. It’s a new beginning to a whole other story.

Congratulations to Terri Bruce!

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:25:00 +0000

In place of a Getting the Call post today, I'm excited to have a Happy Release Day post for Terri Bruce! Her novel, Hereafter, is out! She'll be back soon with a report of her very emotional feelings at this big day. I know that Terri went through a lot trying to bring this moment about, including a ton of work with a very short window to her release date. You can read her Getting the Call story here. And she will be enjoying a Meet the Author chat tonight at Eternal Press' web site and asks that everyone join her at 7:00EST. Check it out as there will be door prizes and who doesn't like free. I'll be ordering my copy of Hereafter and sending her a photo for her wall.

Getting the Call: Hope Gillette

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:51:00 +0000

Here's the story of a new friend of mine who has been very generous with her time. Hope's first book will be releasing in August. She also writes YA fantasy and has been practicing and perfecting her craft since childhood. I wish her all the best on her upcoming book and invite her back for a release party.

I was ten when I first summoned the nerve to showcase my writing to the public. At that time, “the public” consisted of the three younger girls sitting near me at the back of the school bus. With more than an hour ride to and from school, I had taken to writing in a notebook, and one day my constant scribbling was met with curiosity by my peers.

While I was initially reluctant to read them my stories of mystical places, otherworldly beings and strong heroines, I found myself reading almost daily on the bus and running up the hill to my house to finish the next chapter for the following day.

That love of writing and the thrill of enthralling an audience kept me typing through my entire school career and into my professional life. It is a steady flow of creativity that never stops—even now that I have signed a contract for my debut novel, Journey Through Travelers’ Tower.

I wrote J3T, as I call it, to prove I could write something outside of the cookie-cutter fantasy genre. While I will always harbor a deep love of elves, dwarves, dragons, wizards, and princesses, I knew if I wanted to break into the young adult market I was going to need something unique.

During an evening thunderstorm, a story about the childhood fear of monsters evolved into a multi-dimensional world unknowingly entering a struggle between good and evil. Into this world were born Quin and Klass, two orphaned sisters with a latent ability to Read. This talent sees them through separation, battles, torture, enslavement, love, and the final triumph and union of their world.

Satisfied with the story line and the characters, I completed the manuscript in a record number of months, sent it to an editor, and polished the final copy to be sent for review.

I don’t remember getting the call from my publishing company as much as I remember receiving an email stating they enjoyed my novel and wanted to offer me a contract. I had queried publishers directly, having received advice from fellow authors to avoid the hassle of agents if at all possible. (This is something I recommend new authors research. I make no recommendation either way.)

Leery of skipping the middle man process, I queried a small sampling of publishers and was pleasantly surprised to receive interest back from the majority of them. Due to certain exclusive review policies, I selected the presses which seemed most reputable and those without a listing on Preditors and Editors!

Among those was Divertir Publishing, a small press out of New Hampshire. While the company was still growing and relatively new in the commercial world, a wonderful mention of them in Writers Digest clenched my decision to submit sample chapters.

After a refreshingly short review time, I received an email offering to publish my novel. For someone who had been writing for decades, I was speechless from the knowledge my story would one day be available to the masses. I read the contract thoroughly and then had it reviewed professionally. Content none of the provisions seemed a cause for concern, I signed on the bottom line and opened the door to professional writing.

You might think that’s where the story ends, and for many people the journey does conclude with a publisher taking over the reins on a project. For me, however, because I was an unknown author starting with a small press, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

I immediately started posting my short stories in online forums to generate a following. I submitted my writing to contests and online magazines. After placing in the top 100 in a national Writers Digest competition, I found that little slice of credibility opened up many more doors. I was able to get my work published in international circles, and as I became more confident in my writing, I was able to eventually quit my veterinary job and become a freelancer writer.

Now, as a writer for national and international companies, my name is no longer that of an obscure author, but of a woman who has a complete professional and creative writing resume.

As for my YA novel, its debut is still a dream come true for me, but I have learned to express my love of writing in so many other ways along this journey. Getting the Call changed my life unquestionably; it has touched every aspect of my personal and professional life, and I look forward to the challenges and accomplishments that are sure to come.

Find Hope at her website.

Getting the Call: Robert Lewis

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:39:00 +0000

This story gave me chills, though I can't believe he did it without beta readers. There's talent! I'm glad to welcome Robert Lewis--our first male guest Yay!-- as he shares his story. I also met Robert through Agent Query Connect. (The place to be if you write, people. Go there.) You know him there as ThrownBones. His novel, Untold Damage, releases April of 2013. I hope he'll come back for a release party.

The Call.

It’s actually really funny, because after over a decade of working towards getting an agent, I never really got “The Call”. I got “The Email”. My wife got “The Call”, as it came to our home in the middle of the day while I was at work. She happened to be home because she was recouping from rotator cuff surgery.

Let me give you a little bit of history before I continue…

Previous to the thriller that landed me my fabulous agent, Barbara Poelle, I had written an urban fantasy novel. I’d shopped it EVERYWHERE I possibly could. I literally queried like two hundred and fifty agents. Yes, you read that correctly. Only received a few requests for partials, maybe one full. All for nothing.

About halfway through those agents, I realized I would need another book.

One day I was sitting at my desk wondering what that book would be. On the corkboard I have above my desk were two pieces of writing. One was a short story I’d placed in an online literary journal. This story was about a junkie shooting up in a confessional and it was called Needle Priest. It was my personal favorite. The other was a bit of flash fiction from the POV of a child killer as he fed his latest victim before killing her. That one was called Little Visitor. It was up there because it was THE ONLY piece of writing that I’d ever done that my wife felt had that magic “something”. I was literally sitting there looking from one to the other… junkie… child killer… junkie… child killer… junkie GOES AFTER A CHILD KILLER!

But how can I make that happen, right?

Because he was an ex-cop.

And so Mark Mallen was born. Out of sheer desperation. After that, the book came pretty quickly. I never showed the book to anyone, really. No one ever read the drafts. I workshopped the opening chapter one time. Other than that, the only people to ever read the novel were the agents who had requested partials or fulls. And no, I do NOT recommend you do it that way. I felt I could do it because by that time I’d been writing long enough (over ten years) to feel confident enough in my inner critic. And also? Honestly? I felt in my gut that THIS one was going to be “The One”, the book that got me an agent.

Anyway, once I was done, I went over to one of the greatest websites around for writers, Agent Query. The agent database on that site was invaluable to me. I worked like a dog on the query, and even took the plunge and used an outside editor to look it over and help me with it. I ended up using The Editorial Department. They were fantastic. It wasn’t cheap, but I really wanted to get this one right.

I started sending out queries in January 2009. I sent Barbara an email query on February 28^th, along with a partial of the first thirty pages. Barbara was on my “A” list because when I was researching her, I found a LOT that I loved. She didn’t mind turning a “maybe” into a “yes” and this worked for me as I felt that if I didn’t have a “yes” of a book on my hands, I sure as shit had a “maybe”. I also read that she had told one prospective client that she would get into a monkey knife fight to represent that client’s book. How could you NOT love her, right?

By this point, mid-March or so, I had a handful of fulls out. I nudged Barbara via email on April 30^th, using the original email so if she needed to, she could reference back to our conversation easily. And by nudge, I mean politely nudge. These are very busy people, with a stable of clients, a barn-full of manuscripts, and a warehouse of queries to read. I gave her eight weeks or so, then nudged. She emailed back that very day, thanking me for nudging her and at that time requested the full. I sent it off, feeling like this was going to maybe be good.

May 15^th, the day it happened, was graduation day in the college department where I work. It’s literally the busiest day of the year, hands down. I was running around like a mad dog. Got a chance to check email once. I think it was sometime in the early afternoon. There was an email from Barbara, saying she’d just called her husband to cancel their dinner plans as she was loving the hell outta the book and that she would call me when she was done. Well, you can imagine how THAT made me feel, right? I gave her a very enthusiastic, though professional, response telling her that I was happy to hear she was enjoying the book, and that I was looking forward to chatting. About an hour later, as I was exiting the building to where I work to set up the champagne and food for the graduating students and their parents, my cell rings. It’s home calling. I answer, thinking that my wife needs me to pick up something on the way home to help alleviate the agony she was enduring after her operation.

“Hey,” I said.

“You have an agent,” she replied.

And you know what? I almost cried, right then and there. Seriously. I mean… I’d been looking for an agent for well over thirteen years if you add in the years I’d spent writing screenplays. I’d been writing six days a week, on average forty-nine weeks a year in all that time.

Yes, I had to fight back the tears.

My wife then told me that Barbara had chatted her up a bit, and that I should check my email, which I immediately did. And there was “The Email”. I now have that email pinned to the corkboard over my desk, and have ever since that day.

That was May, 2009. It took us another 2.5 years until I got my two-book deal. And the book that landed me my agent wasn’t even the book that sold! I had to write two MORE books before we got to one that did it. One thing to always remember: a really good agent believes in you and your talent, not just the book. They want to help build your career.

One last thing: you have to play the long game here. Just assume it’s going to take a long time. That way if it doesn’t, then cool beans and you’re happily surprised. And if it does take a long time? Well, then you’ve already been prepared for that eventuality.

My story is, if anything, a really a good example of never giving up, never giving in. And if it can happen for me, a guy who was dyslexic as a child and dropped out of high school mid-way through his second year, it can happen for anyone.

Happy writing!

Robert Lewis is represented by Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Agency. The first novel of his Mark Mallen series, titled Untold Damage, arrives 04.08.13 via Midnight Ink.

Getting the Call: Jean Oram

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:51:00 +0000

I'm so pleased to mix things up a little after the holiday week and bring you an agented non-fiction writer. The method of getting an agent is a little different for non-fiction where the proposal and your platform are so important, but The Call emotions are the same.
Jean, it sounds like your book and blog would appeal to so many people. Especially in the summer, it is so hard to come up with ideas that get kids involved and away from the electronics. Thanks for sharing your story!

Getting The Call for my nonfiction children's 1,001 play ideas book is a bit of a long, rambling story.

How the Book Idea Came to Be:

When my daughter was about a year old I saw an idea for a bean plant teepee in a magazine. (You grow beans up a bamboo teepee frame to make a mini fort.) My daughter wasn't old enough at the time to enjoy it so I snagged it out of the mag and slapped it in a notebook.

And thus The List began. Within two days I had HUNDREDS of kids play ideas written down. They literally poured into my brain after glueing that one magazine picture in the notebook. My mom laughed and said I was writing a book. At that point I was a school librarian on maternity leave, but not a writer. A book wasn't a bad idea though.

The First Queries:

About 700 play ideas later, I typed them up in my computer and queried them straight to a publisher. Yeah. This long list with a few instructions. I got rejected. I shrugged and carried on with life. I had tried. (And I think a part of me knew the book wasn't what it should/could be yet.)

A few years later I got into writing novels. That's when I learned about query letters (what makes 'em good), how to write a bit better (okay a WHOLE lot better), what a literary agent was, etc.

After querying a few novels, I decided… I should give away my list of kids play ideas. So I whipped up a website, put some of the ideas on it and pretty much forgot about it. I didn't even publicize the poor site. I just let it languish. Oh, and I blogged about some of the ideas for awhile. Like, one a day for over a year and burned out.

It all lacked something.

Plus, I was way too chicken to really tell people about my site and get enthusiastic about it all. Way too scared. And I needed to build a platform and put myself out there if I wanted to do this. As well, I still didn't quite know what my niche was. Play ideas, yes. But? There was something missing. And, of course, a part of me (read that: a large, secret part of me) hoped people would magically discover my site and make it that whatever it wasn't.

A Push From Friends:

Around that time a friend in the publishing world, Molli Nickell, encouraged me to query literary agents. She started sending me information on how to write a nonfiction proposal and offered to critique my proposal for me. So, I wrote one. She provided feedback and off it went to agents. I can't recall exactly how many, but it was like 10 or so. It didn't feel right to pursue it at that point.

WEbook came along and I entered some stories and then tried their querying system. I queried some fiction projects and also a few nonfiction queries for kicks. No replies. Again, shrugged and moved on with fiction work and improving my craft. The timing didn't feel right.

By now many years had passed since The List began and I was pregnant with #2. My critique partner and friend, Calista Taylor, was approached by literary agent Neil Salkind of the Salkind Agency after finding her online. He was looking for someone to write a steampunk craft book. (Coming out this fall!) She signed with him and got a book deal in a matter of days and then asked him if he'd be interested in my project. (Got to love friends who believe in you!)

He told her to ask me to send a query. So I sent off a query as well as my (updated) proposal in case he was interested. (Meanwhile I was worried how this was all going to pan out since I knew I could end up on months of bed rest and possible a lengthy hospital stay with this pregnancy--what was I going to do if this whole book thing worked out?)

He was. Within five days we had a signed contract for representation.

Getting The Call:

Neil replied to my query within a day or two (with apologies for taking so long if you can believe it) and asked if he could call me. That morning he had to delay the call by a few minutes. Why? He was selling a book. (Good omen? I dunno, but I like it!)

It was strange. I wasn't really nervous. I was calm and felt almost like it wasn't real. My mom was over working on the stained glass piece she had made me for my birthday when Neil called to discuss my project. I wouldn't let myself believe that he might offer to represent me.

We chatted for about 10 minutes and in that time he totally pinned my project in the bigger market and what he saw happening in the world of parenting. It was incredible. It was inspiring. It was like someone cranked the shutters on my mind all the way open. (I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this and that he still saw the potential in my lame and misguided query.)

During the call I couldn't think of any questions to ask. And those that I did I ask, I think I asked twice. Everything he said just made sense. Plus he was way ahead of me. He was already brainstorming foreword authors and had a new title in mind. Did I have any thoughts on what we could add to the title?

Um… Uh? Hello brain? Any thoughts?

It was like I had been ambling along down the sidewalk and he'd zoomed by in a speeding a car and grabbed my hand. Problem was my (pregnant) brain was still back there ambling on the sidewalk, struggling to waddle fast enough to leap back into a position where it could do some thinking.

There wasn't much for me to say or to ask, but I felt I had to say something. The call doesn't last 5 minutes! (He offered to represent me in the first five.) And how do you accept? What do you say? What words do you use? I accept you because you complete my project? You are the missing piece?

The poor guy probably thought I was mental. My mind was galloping with all these new thoughts and my mouth felt like it needed to move!

But I didn't gush. I was professional--if a little slow sounding.

After The Call:

The big thing about The Call was this: Neil understood the vision I had for my book. He shared it, but also saw it in relation to what was going on in the world around us. He got it more than I did! And suddenly I could see what my project really was and how it could make a difference in the world.

I was inspired.

This. Could. Happen.

I went upstairs after the call (still a bit stunned around the edges) and said to my mom, "I think I have a literary agent. I have an agreement to sign." And then I sat down, watched her work on the stained glass on the dining room table. (And later went and made notes, printed out the agreement, signed it, and sent it back.)

Now:

It's been a year and a half since The Call. In that time we've come very, very close to a publishing contract in a very crowded and specific market. In that time I have learned A TON! Currently, I am updating my proposal. (Neil provided all sorts of great insight and tips on how to improve that 54 page document for our first go 'round and now I am adding things in that I have done in the past year and a half.) We plan to hit the editors again this fall, if not sooner. Wish me luck!

Thank you Michelle for allowing me to share my story on your blog. And thank you to Neil for all his hard work. Here's to more editor queries this fall!

BIO: Jean Oram is a mother to two healthy kids--and didn't end up on more than a day of bed rest after all. Wahoo! She loves to write and is currently working on breaking into the magazine market to help expand her audience and nonfiction platform. She loves to ski, play, climb trees, read, moderate for her writing friends over on www.agentqueryconnect.com, pin play ideas on Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/jeanoram), talk play with parents on Facebook (www.facebook.com/Itsallkidsplay), tweet funnies and play articles on Twitter (www.twitter.com/kidsplay) as well as blogging about silly play and other great fun things for kids on her website and blog (www.itsallkidsplay.ca). She also has a blog about writing (www.jeanoram.com).

Fire in the Night - When Life Sucks, Write It

noreply@blogger.com (Raven Clark) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:27:00 +0000

There is an old saying, “There is no substitute for experience.” After last night, I can tell you, this is true.

As a writer, it’s our job to make our readers feel every experience our characters go through on a visceral level. We must place our characters in jeopardy (for without that, there is no conflict), put them in the worst possible situations and watch them get themselves out of said situations, all the while summoning forth every emotion we can from the character’s gut, even, and perhaps especially, the most intense and frightening.

Grief. Rage. Hatred. Fear. Many writers have written their characters into scenes most of us only see in movies and television. Floods. Tornadoes. Car crashes. Hijackings. House fires. But how many of us get to experience those things before we write them?

It’s one thing to write about a car crash or a house fire based on how other writers write it, or through a second hand account. It feels a whole lot different to write about something like that after you’ve gone through it.

Ok, let me back up and tell you the story.

On Friday night, the hubby and I were at home, enjoying his first week off in six months. We’d invited my BFF to come down from Brantford for the weekend. It was one of those perfect weekends where you think nothing could go wrong. Hubby had made us his famous sausages (famous in our house anyway), and we’d spend a few hours watching one of our favourite TV programs before my friend and myself decided to leave hubby to his internet surfing and turn in for the night. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours when I heard people screaming outside on the street.

Someone was screaming bloody murder, right outside my house. In retrospect I should have jumped up and gone to check things out right away. But I had just been ripped from sleep, and I was still in that confused state you’re in when you come out of a dream. That, and the neighbour who was yelling and his girlfriend fight all the time, often having public shouting matches in the street every so often. I thought this was just another fight.

Then my hubby went to the door, and I heard him talking to a panicked sounding neighbour. Little did I know, he had already called 911, and while I had slept on, outside, a nightmare unfolded. But something in the neighbour’s voice began to seep into me now. I scrambled out into the living room. And that’s when I heard it.

Outside, from what sounded like the backyard.

Crackling.

Still confused, I tried to see what was going on. Then the neighbour said, “The house next door is on fire.”

I tried to ask if we should leave the house, but the neighbour had left, my hubby was on the phone, calling 911 for the second time. Amazingly, my friend was still half asleep.

Then, someone came up the steps and I heard a man’s voice, fearfully say, “That house is going to blow.”

It was as if those words snapped me out of a daze. I can’t describe the fear those words imprinted on me in a way that does it justice.

The three of us bolted from the house. I remember someone helping me down the stairs, and then we were running. I remember sparks flying, and a large chunk of burning ash flying passed my head. My friend froze for one horrible moment as the house next to us burned from the inside out, an orange blaze trapped inside a flimsy shell.

I remember ordering my friend to run. My hubby grabbing me and pulling us along. I have terrible knees, and they were screaming in pain, but the glow of orange light chased me from behind and I kept going.

“That House is going to blow.” Those words. Yeah, I ran faster than I have run in years.

Once we were across the street, I looked at the blaze and saw that in fact two houses were going. I thought ours would soon catch flame.

I remember that horrific moment when I realized our cat was inside and there was no way to get her out. She hides, and when she does, finding her is impossible. I think that’s when I started to scream for someone to get her out. I started to cry. I remember my friend holding me while my hubby tried to see if our house was going to go.

I noticed that the street was filled with people and at some point, fire trucks had pulled up our street, at least 4 of them, along with at least one police car. And smoke. There was so much smoke.

I remember us having to walk through it, down the street to get away from the blaze. The smoke was like a thick fog. I couldn’t breathe. None of us could. I couldn’t see. I could hear my friend behind me, and feel my hubby pulling me through the wall of white.

When I could see again I was down the street and a neighbour was helping us up her steps, her on one side, hubby on the other. She gave us water, a bathroom, and for my friend and I who have trouble standing for extended periods of time, places to sit.

We were safe. For us it was over.

Our house remained untouched. It would be the next day before I would realize how close it was to going up. The metal fence that runs between our house and the next had melted, burning half way to the side of our house. Our entirely wood house.

Our next door neighbour’s house and the one beside it are unliveable. The fire gutted the homes. At least temporarily, four families have no place to live.

With the seriousness of the fire and how hot and dry things were, all it would have taken was one spark, one falling piece of orange debris, and our house wouldn’t be here. My hubby, my friend, my cat, or I, might not be here. Had the wind carried the flames and smoke in our direction, our house would be gone instead of the one on the other side. We are all alive and unharmed, because a neighbour had the sense to get us out in time.

Because the wind chose to blow north instead of south.

Now, at the time, I was barely thinking from one moment to the next, and much of the details I only recall now, as I write this. But now, I find myself trying to notice which details would stand out on a page and how various characters in my novels might react, what they might notice. I’ve written more than one fire scene, but how differently will I write it when another one is called for, now that I have witnessed one firsthand?

I might be tempted to go for the obvious. The memory of how the smoke choked me. The distinctly fearful voice of the neighbour telling us to get out. The almost eerily calm way my hubby called 911 even though this was the second time he called, the house next to us was ablaze, and they still hadn’t come. The way my friend froze, staring at the flames in horror. The absolute horror that my cat might die and our house be devoured in flames.

Many writers seem to have similar ways of describing things and when they replicate a scene such as this from somewhere, they tend to duplicate the same sensory details as everyone else. But after you go through it firsthand, what might you see that wouldn’t be in the text if it was second hand or based on something you saw on tv or read in the paper?

To me, as a writer who puts this in prose fit for a book, the neighbour’s voice wasn’t just fearful, or filled with the concern for others that mirrors the good Samaritan tone you always hear about. It carried the edge of a steel blade as it’s pulled free with a concerned hand. (Yes, you can tell I wrote medieval epics. LOL).

To me, the smoke didn’t just choke or block my view with a wall of white. It seared my throat and closed my airways until I wondered if I could breathe long enough to get through it. My throat hurt for a good day afterward.

When the neighbour said the next house was going to blow, I didn’t just picture us all dying as our house was consumed in flames. I pictured orange death roaring toward me for one final moment before I saw my hubby’s and my friend’s faces reduced to fiery light, and then my own life gone in a single blast of agony.

I wasn’t just gripped with fear of losing our home or our cat once we got outside. My mind raced with thoughts of what we would do if we lost either, knowing we had nowhere to go.

And hours later, when I could think straight again, I worried that my friend’s parents would refuse to let her near our house once they heard about this. I was even afraid this might be the last time I visited with her.

And the whole time, I remember thinking not only how lucky we were to have come out of this unscathed, but how fortunate we were that my hubby happened to be on holidays, that he’s almost storybook hero cool in a crisis, and that a hundred other things that could have gone wrong, didn’t. I doubt my friend and I could have gotten out without him. I kept thinking, if I didn’t believe that a benevolent god watches over us before, I do now.

And as a writer, when the need for such a scene arises, as painful or frightening as it may be, I will try to put myself in the head of those who lost their homes, imagining how they feel so that I can better describe how my characters feel. Not with the same clichéd descriptions everyone else uses, but with the much more powerful, rare, real life descriptions that come only from seeing or feeling it first hand.

My point. Most of us are never faced with the kinds of ordeals we as writers must thrust upon our poor characters, and I would never hope or wish for this to happen to myself or anyone again. But these things do happen in real life. And when they do, there is no better way to make a book come alive, a scene feel more real for our readers, than to mine the worst, and best, events of our lives for our stories, putting the diamonds we find amidst the rubble onto the page and letting the readers see it as though they are there with us every step of the way.

R.C.

Lit to Film: The Hunger Games

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:52:00 +0000

Today’s Lit to Film post is on The Hunger Games, a YA dystopian fantasy by Suzanne Collins. Picked up by Lionsgate and released in March 2012, both the novel and the film follow our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, and her struggle to win the Hunger Games—a televised, annual event where twenty-four tributes from the ages of 12 to 18 are taken from each of the twelve Districts where they live, to fight to the death in order to entertain the public. This event ensures that the government keeps its citizens under their control.

The film follows the book closely, however there are slight differences. The novel is told in Katniss’s first-person POV, while the film explores a broader scope. Along with Katniss’s reactions, we see how the Districts react to the death of their loved ones and the reaction of the villain, President Snow, to this growing unrest in the Districts.

Another difference between the two was the visuals. In the novel, Collins did not go into too much detail with Katniss’s surroundings, how people dressed and spoke. It all felt a bit vague. In the film, everything—to the settings and costumes and accents—gave viewers a clearer picture of the futuristic setting and the strangeness of the Capitol. There were also advantages in world building that the book couldn’t explore like the arena control room. We see the advancements of this world and how exactly the Gamemakers throw obstacles in the way of the tributes.

Another difference was the pace. In the first half of the novel, the pacing was slow with moments of tension, setting up for the tributes time in the arena. Once the tributes entered the arena, the pace picked up. In the film however, the set up and preparation seemed quicker then the scenes in the arena—the pacing became uneven, seemed to drag in places then speed up again and lacked the same punch that the novel had.

Speaking of punch, a thing that struck me was that the film did not carry the novel’s message of how our culture has become desensitized by violence. In the novel, I felt the horror of the violence, could feel the characters react to it and gained an emotional attachment. In the film, I expected the same but, instead, did not. There felt like little to no visceral reaction from the characters, not enough emotional attachment—thus not enough investment. The characters felt a bit distant to what was happening to them but perhaps that’s a personal preference.

Overall, I am satisfied with this adaptation. Not sure which version I’d prefer out of the two though, both had their advantages and disadvantages.

Which one—the novel or the film—in your opinion, was the best version?

Getting the Call: RC Lewis

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:54:00 +0000

I'm so glad to bring you a site moderator from Agent Query Connect, RC Lewis, one of the bosses who snap fingers to keep people in line and answer questions. (Just kidding on the finger snapping. She goes for the toes.) Once again, AQC is the place to hang out to rub shoulders with the agented and famous. RC writes YA, and I'm certain we will be hearing more news from her in the not distant future. What a fabulous author head shot, by the way. I love the black and white.

I've dubbed the day I got The Call the best-worst day ever. It was awesome in the end, but I thought it'd kill me.

It was a Wednesday. I had a full day of work at school, and I was also looking for a new job out of state, so I had two phone interviews scheduled—one during my morning prep time and one during lunch. I also had to sit on an interview panel for an applicant to be my replacement in the afternoon, and Wednesdays meant staying at school until five. Lots of end-of-the-school-year things to do, too, so I already knew it'd be a busy day.

Just before the end of my morning prep time (and that first phone interview went nicely, thank you), I got an email from one of eight agents who had my full. She wanted to know if there was a time we could chat.

Commence panic mode.

After a little back and forth, we decided she'd call me at seven that evening. Plenty of time for me to get home, get settled, and carry out a professional phone call. I proceeded to tell myself it might not be THE Call—some agents like to call and hash out possible revisions, get a feel for the writer without necessarily offering representation, right?—and carried on teaching my physics class.

The rest of the school day was semi-normal, if hectic. No substitute showed up when I was supposed to go sit on that interview panel, so there was a bit of running around. The interview was long, and I didn't get much done after school, but finally I hit the road to head home.

Major backup on the way to the freeway. A traffic light at a major intersection was out, making it a four-way (well, more like twelve-way) stop. No problem, just delayed me maybe ten minutes. Onto the freeway!

MEGA backup. They decided to start a major road resurfacing project that day, during rush hour. This was a much bigger delay. I should've gotten home just after six. I walked in the door at 6:52.

I took a deep breath, kicked off my shoes, and answered the phone when it rang.

The Call was great. We talked about the manuscript—what she loved, questions she had. We talked about what I want to be as a writer and how she works as an agent. We talked for over an hour, and I've probably forgotten half the conversation. (I do remember that my critique partner texted me five minutes before we finished to say, "Are you STILL on the phone???")

For me, it turned out to be The Calls. After notifying other agents (and ending up with a total of eleven fulls out), the following Tuesday became Agent Phone Call Day. I talked to four more agents that day alone—one of them cold-called me during my prep time, which was cool, but startling.

In the end, I signed with the agent who offered first (Jennifer Laughran). Not because she was first. A couple of the others made it REALLY difficult for me to decide, and I had to think hard through pros, cons, and what I really thought would be the best fit.

You can find RC at twitter or her blog, Crossing the Helix, besides AQC.

Getting the Call: Amber Leah Brock

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:42:00 +0000

If there is one thing to be learned from these posts, it's the value of persistence. I'm glad to welcome a new friend and writer of historical fiction, Amber Brock, who has this quality in abundance. She wasn't afraid of tweaking her manuscript until it sparkled enough to catch an agent. And she also names her picture file "Me" which means we think alike. Her novel sounds like my kind of story, I'll be looking for it on shelves soon.

In October 2011, I “finished” my historical novel, Blessed Among Women. I thought, hey, this is just like what’s in bookstores! I need to get this to a publisher! Then I did a little research and found out that you don’t send a novel to a publisher, silly, you send a query letter to a literary agent. So I sat down to write a query letter. And boy, did I bomb. I’m deeply ashamed to admit that I went after some of the top agents in the field with a poorly-written query letter and a 55k word “novel”. When their assistants got done wiping tears of laughter from their eyes, I got form reject after form reject.

So I dug back into the novel and made additions that enriched the story, and then completely re-wrote the beginning when my beta readers made the comment that it was a good novel “once they got into it”. To me that said the beginning was too slow, so I concentrated on my strong suit (dialogue) to make the opening punchier. Then I joined the “Where Past is Prologue” critique group on Agent Query Connect and learned invaluable lessons.

In January I started the querying process again and got my first requests for pages. Hooray! Then I got form rejects on pages. Ouch. So I set it aside—stepped back, worked on other projects. I thought I had shelved the novel, but it kept whispering to me from my Documents folder. I read Writing the Breakout Novel, On Writing, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and, for the thousandth time, Bird by Bird. Then I thrashed my novel into submission based on what I learned. I attacked my query with the same fervor, and then started sending again in March.

That’s when things really started to happen.

I started getting requests—I was still getting rejections, but now they were personalized, with real suggestions to help my novel, and invitations to re-submit. I incorporated those suggestions and then sent another batch. If it sounds like I sent a lot of queries, it’s because I sent a lot of queries. Over 130. Maybe even way over 130. 130 is when I stopped counting. If you can’t tell, I’m deeply stubborn. Plus I had tons of support from my husband and family. I’m glad I kept going!

So I sent my just-good-enough query plus the first 30ish pages to Clare Wallace of the Darley Anderson Agency (among others—I sent out batches of ten). Within a couple of days, I got an email from the agency’s editor, the delightful Vicki LeFeuvre. She and Clare and read the first part and wanted a synopsis and a full on exclusive. When they read the full they approached me with a suggestion for revision that would draw the novel more to the “faction” side of historical fiction (basically, they wanted me to draw in more of the true historical element that inspired the novel). I considered it, decided I’d give it a shot and see how I felt about the changes.

Well, they’re the experts for a reason. The suggestions strengthened the novel enormously. I sent the revision and got an email from Clare a couple of weeks later. I was actually standing in the grocery store when I opened the email! She said she wanted to talk about representation. Let me tell you, there is no better feeling than standing in the frozen foods aisle reading those words. Several days later my phone was ringing and I was trying to keep my cool.

We talked for about thirty minutes, but I knew immediately that she was the right one. Her vision for the novel perfectly aligned with mine, and she was excited to hear about the other projects I’m working on. She sent me the contract later that afternoon. I haven’t stopped celebrating since!

Author bio:

Amber Leah Brock is a sometime Spanish teacher who moonlights as a novelist. She lives in Atlanta with her English teacher husband and their three crazy rescue dogs. Her novel BLESSED AMONG WOMEN is loosely based upon the unique love triangle between Henri II of France, his wife Catherine de’ Medici, and his lover Diane de Poitiers. You can follow her on twitter at @AmberLBrock. She whines about writing at allmyfriendsarepretend.blogspot.com.

Getting the Call: Precy Larkins

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 20:05:00 +0000

I get to introduce another fellow member of AQC's Speculative Fiction Forum. I have to say that forum is the place to be if you write fantasy, paranormal, science fiction, or horror. It must be in the water because they're getting agents or publishing deals right and left.

A big thanks to Precy Larkins for sharing her story. Our husbands must be cut from the same cloth, because mine refuses to get excited anymore. When I give him any news he rolls his eyes and says he's not getting his hopes up. Now I can make him read your story and say na-na to him. It does happen.

For me, I didn’t get The Call, but The Email.

Rewind back to May 3^rd. I woke up early because I had a doctor’s appointment that morning. The day before, I’d received great feedback on my query so I decided to send out two, just to test it out. While waiting at my OB’s clinic, I checked my email because I’m highly neurotic like that. Or maybe it was the pregnancy hormones making me extra neurotic. Anyway, there was a partial request sitting in my inbox. I might have fist bump my husband, who was there waiting in the lobby with me. Since he’s not a writer, he merely smiled. Sheesh.

The next morning, I woke up two hours earlier than my wake up time. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Sans eyeglasses or contact lenses, I squinted at my iPhone screen just to see if there was an email secretly delivered while I was asleep.

There was one. And it went something like this: Your query intrigued me so much that I read your partial first thing this morning. Would you please send me the full manuscript?

I grabbed my glasses and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Yes, I confess: I write on my kitchen table. Ever since I got a laptop, the kitchen has become my office. Which is really nifty since, you know, snacks are within reach…but that’s for a different story. Onward.

I sent the full with fingers crossed. In the meantime, another full request came in my inbox. It was shaping up to be a very good day. But then it was the weekend, and the crickets learned a new song in my inbox. My eye probably twitched a lot during that time. Hm. Can’t remember.

Tuesday! Tuesday came (and we’ll just skip over Monday because nothing ever happened that day, except for swollen ankles) and this time, I woke up four hours earlier than usual. I think I was dreaming about emails and possibly zombies along with them. Anyway, I of course did the most sensible thing to do when one’s groggy and highly disoriented from having just woken up from a nightmare: I checked my email.

It was The Email. The one that said I’m no idiot and someone other than my mother likes my book. No, wait, the word was LOVE. Someone loves my book. All of it. It wasn’t a “hey, I like your book but I’ll like it better if you’ll just twist a few scenes around” kind of like. It was a “I was totally captivated (CAPTIVATED!) from beginning to end”.

I waddled down the stairs to get to my laptop (because, you know, I needed to see it bigger and make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating from squinting too much at that tiny phone screen). It was real. And then I panicked. I didn’t even have a list of questions handy! I thought I would be waiting for months before anyone with my full sub gets back to me with their feedback. This is where your writing friends come in. This is where you’ll send them a freaking-out email with Help Me! stickers plastered on every space of your letter, and they’ll respond back with much squeeing and a handy-dandy list of what to ask Fabulous Agent Who Loves Your Book.

Because Fabulous Agent is based in Germany, there was no The Call, but lots more of The Email going back and forth. After letting the other agents who had my query and full submissions know I had an offer of representation, I had to wait again. Ten long days with six more fulls out. Eventually, the deadline came, and with all loose ends tied and out of the way, I was able to type those wonderful words to Fabulous Agent: I accept your offer of representation.

This was my first ms to query, and I landed an agent within six weeks! I couldn’t believe it. Still can’t believe it sometimes. J

Author Bio:

Precy Larkins is a mother by day, a dreamer by night, and a writer in between. She grew up in the Philippines, a country steeped in superstitions and rumors of enchanted beings roaming the woods. She now lives in Utah with her husband and three kids. She’s represented by the lovely Julia A. Weber of J. A. Weber Literaturagentur GmbH.

Precy maintains a blog and a Twitter account, where her friends know her affectionately by her nickname, Cherie. Her Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy novel, HIDDEN, is a story of a girl battling demons in her head only to find out they are real. With dark magick and soul-suckers on the loose, and a boy who can’t be trusted, she must use her visions to survive the world hidden beyond her own.

Getting the Call: Gail Eastwood

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle 4 Laughs) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:41:00 +0000

A first! A writer actually came to me to be included in these inspirational posts. Gail Eastwood’s call for her regency romance came ten years ago, and now she has stuck her foot back in the door and taken up her pen again with ebooks. I'm sure time doesn't dull down the tremendous feeling of getting that first call. Your cover art is beautiful, Gail.

Authors often get asked “What have been the best and worst moments in your career so far?” In my case, those moments happened all at the same time, when I got The Call. But let me lead you up to that moment. In the process of getting there, I had taken a lot of baby-steps, and had even received an “almost” call from an editor.

You need to know that I am not a “fast” writer, one who easily dashes off two or three or even more books in a year. When I set off on my journey to publication, I planned not to send out my first book until it was finished, so I could get a head-start on the next one while that first manuscript was making the rounds. Great plan, right? Well, I had joined a writers group, learned of some contests, and decided to enter a couple, just to get feedback. I had a few chapters. I struggled to write the synopsis, but I did it.

No one could have been more surprised than I was when my submissions won both contests I’d entered! The winning submissions were being sent to editors, so you may understand why I was also a little panicked. By the time I heard from those editors, I had –gulp—FIVE chapters finished.

One editor said sadly that she would have been interested, but her line was shutting down. The other editor was very excited about my book! Was it completed? If not, how soon could I get it done? She had an open slot in her schedule and wanted to buy it, but she could not buy on a partial from a new, unpublished author.

As a new, unpublished author, I had no idea how fast I could complete the book, but I was pretty sure not fast enough. I despaired, thinking I’d blown it. My door of opportunity had opened, but I wasn’t ready when it did.

The smart thing I did was get an agent at this time. The contest wins and the editorial interest gave me a step up in attracting some positive attention, and through my writers group I heard of an agent who, after gaining experience assisting an established agent, was starting her own “stable” of authors. I sent her my work, which she loved, and then met with her at a conference in NYC. We hit it off so well (talked in the lounge for two hours straight), we agreed to work together.

That was the final step that really led to my getting the “real” call. When my agent got a call from NAL/Signet looking for manuscripts, she sent over what she had of my book – NINE chapters by then –not quite half the book. “They want to buy it, but you’ve got to finish it first,” she told me. So much for my great plan!

I worked my tail off to finish A PERILOUS JOURNEY (nothing like an agent breathing down your neck to help with that!). Then I waited, wondering if it really would sell. Finally, editor Hilary Ross, the grand dame of editors in my genre at that time, was on the phone. “I love it, I want to buy it,” she said. Euphoria!! The Call!! “But you’ll need to cut 100 pages.”

One hundred pages. That was ¼ of the manuscript! Yikes! I knew I could say no. But really, who does that? Say “no” to The Call? Here’s what went through my head that day:

1. Signet is my #1 choice of publisher, the one at the top of my list, the one I never really expected to sell to.

2. Hilary Ross is one of the most respected editors in the business and she has been doing this a long time.

3. If HR thinks my book can lose 100 pages and be better, she must be right.

And finally,

4. This is my “trial by fire.” If I am going to be a professional author, I should be able to do this.

So, I said yes.

Days later, after my friends talked me out of my panic-induced total paralysis, I set to work on the book, and taught myself some of the best lessons in editing (and pacing) ever! But that’s a story for another day/blog. Thanks, Michelle, for letting me share my tale. There are a few lessons in it that I hope may be helpful for other writers! I’ll be happy to chat if anyone wants to know what I think those are!

Find Gail and more information about her books on her website (www.gaileastwoodauthor.com), which includes her blog “Musings on the Journey”, and on Facebook (www.facebook.com/gaileastwoodauthor).

Her first book, A PERILOUS JOURNEY, is available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes, to be followed in July by AN UNLIKELY HERO, a related story, and more to come.

Gail Eastwood has come back to the fold after ten years of being out of the writing game. Originally published by Penguin/NAL as an author of Signet Regencies, she feels like a new author all over again now as her backlist begins to be reissued as ebooks, and she works on a new one! She writes what she calls “Regency romance with a twist of suspense” although her award-winning first book, now available for Kindle etc., is more of an “adventure romance”. She was hailed for expanding the boundaries of her sub-genre, pushing for more complex plots and deeper emotions.