Yesterday, I got a request for a full manuscript after an agent read the partial. Eight weeks ago, I got a request for a different full manuscript from Harlequin Mills and Boon after they read the partial. Since then, I have smiled at a lot of strangers, taken time to admire the clouds on the mountain, and have had, in general, a positive outlook on life. How easy it is to make a writer happy, yet it is not easy at all. It requires months and months, and sometimes years and years of hard work and diligence, and let's not forget the long weeks of waiting. Although I've had two positive experiences, I am still waiting for the agent's and Harlequin's decision--decisions that will ultimately change my life. Did I say life? Yes, writing is my life. I love my family and my job as a dental office manager, but I am constantly thinking about my writing and creating new and hopefully exciting stories--perhaps ones that will catch the attention of a big publisher like Harlequin and a New York agent.
For now, I am content to smile at strangers and admire the puffy clouds over the mountains, but I am ever aware of the wait. Will today be the day a decision is made? If not, I'll wait and see what happens tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Desert Dreams 2010 Conference
Wow! I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. A lot has happened. One of the most exciting things is that I pitched to an agent and she asked to see my new book as well as a brief synopsis of the others. WooHoo. Then I get back after having a wonderful time at the conference and Harlequin Mills and Boon has requested a full on the partial I sent them at the beginning of the year. Can't get much better than that! This is a picture of me and by dear, sweet friend and critique partner, Kathryne Kennedy,
author of the The Relics of Merlin series, and her new series The Elven Lords.
author of the The Relics of Merlin series, and her new series The Elven Lords.
Here's my new May release. The Dragon's Secret. I just learned that it's up for a Library Journal review. Before I rush off to do final edits and polish my submission to hook an agent, I highly recommend the Desert Dreams Conference, always held in Scottsdale, AZ in the spring of every other year. It was full of helpful information, so many editor and agents I couldn't keep count, and the Chaparral Suites Hotel is my favorite. Lastly, the ladies that put his on, are absolutely the friendliest and most helpful people you'll ever have the good fortune of meeting.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Stage Fright and the Dreaded Pitch
It's been some time since I've posted. A lot has been going on. I'm trying to get an agent and I'm trying to polish a medieval to pitch to an editor at the Desert Dreams Conference comping up in April. I have had an agent most of my writing life who did all my "pitching" for me, so needless to say, I'm nervous about it. I always sound like a dork trying to summarize a novel into a few creative sentences. when I go to a job interview, I'm confident, precise and know exactly what I can deliver. Not so when faced with the one person who could take my writing career to the next level. So, with that said, and while I wait to hear from an agent, an e-publisher, and Harlequin in England, I'll just take a deep breath and get back to editing.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Optimistic Authors
We authors are a special bunch of optimists. We can get a terrible rejection and still find something good in it. Rejections are part of the business we’ve chosen. We’re writers and in order to get our work out there for the public’s enjoyment, we have to have publishers and editors and agents if we’re lucky enough to get one these days. And, all of the people behind the scenes involved in ‘getting out work out there’ have an opinion—some not so flattering resulting in a rejection. Some are kind, and tell us that although it was an enjoyable read, it didn’t quite fit what we‘re looking for. Boy, if I had a dollar for each time I heard that phrase; I could hang up my word processor and take up oil painting.
Then there are those that tear apart your work and suggest that you do a total rewrite on a submission you got rave reviews on from your critique group, friends and family. You scratch your head and begin to feel unsure. I’ve even asked myself, is this my book, or does it belong to the person I’m asking to look at it? Is it my style or there’s? If I change it, will they take it? Because it will take weeks to fix what they say is wrong—maybe longer. Sometimes this works, and sometimes not. Sometimes they (whoever is looking at it) is just having a bad day and have decided to dissect your manuscript because, in simple terms, they can. And, we can’t ask questions or complain too loudly, because we sent it to them for consideration in the first place. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could send back an email and ask, “Can you tell me what you liked about it? Can you elaborate on what you didn’t like so I can learn from my mistakes?” Ahh, wouldn’t that be nice. But there’s a fear we might upset that person and who knows, we might want to send a different manuscript to them someday. God forbid we upset an editor!
Does any of this make sense? Probably not. But it’s better than self-publishing. Therefore, we are forced to take bad rejections and try to find something good in them because we are optimistic authors, and that’s what we do. We are ever eager to bare our souls to editors and agents and hope that they won’t be too painful when they say no.
Then there are those that tear apart your work and suggest that you do a total rewrite on a submission you got rave reviews on from your critique group, friends and family. You scratch your head and begin to feel unsure. I’ve even asked myself, is this my book, or does it belong to the person I’m asking to look at it? Is it my style or there’s? If I change it, will they take it? Because it will take weeks to fix what they say is wrong—maybe longer. Sometimes this works, and sometimes not. Sometimes they (whoever is looking at it) is just having a bad day and have decided to dissect your manuscript because, in simple terms, they can. And, we can’t ask questions or complain too loudly, because we sent it to them for consideration in the first place. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could send back an email and ask, “Can you tell me what you liked about it? Can you elaborate on what you didn’t like so I can learn from my mistakes?” Ahh, wouldn’t that be nice. But there’s a fear we might upset that person and who knows, we might want to send a different manuscript to them someday. God forbid we upset an editor!
Does any of this make sense? Probably not. But it’s better than self-publishing. Therefore, we are forced to take bad rejections and try to find something good in them because we are optimistic authors, and that’s what we do. We are ever eager to bare our souls to editors and agents and hope that they won’t be too painful when they say no.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Christmas time once again and New Mexicans are continuing the age old tradition of lining their homes and driveways with Luminaries. New Mexico is a state with annual wind speeds around eight miles per hour capable of exceeding thirty during the winter. We see an average snow fall of six feet with temperature shifts of about fifty degrees between day and night to melt the snow. So one may question why New Mexicans continue the Christmas tradition of filling small lunch bags with sand and a votive candle as a form of decoration. If you’re like me, an explanation is well overdue.
Originally the Luminaries were ignited as huge bonfires initiating the holiday season and were accompanied by smaller individual bonfires lit as a way of inviting Christ into ones home, this beautiful tradition also served to help reduce the amount of nearby flammable material and was followed by the post holiday tradition of rebuilding cindered homes and extinguishing the Bosque.
This tradition began to loose popularity along with the concept of placing lit candles upon Christmas trees to create a festive glow called arson when New Mexican were unable to afford the cost of increasing insurance along side natural gas prices during the holidays.
The tradition then changed to filling lunch sacks with sand and placing within a small votive candle. These sacks were then placed upon the house and driveway with little fear of fire because they were quickly extinguished by wind and slush and continuously supervised by the individual responsible for the now traditional “ hourly re-lighting” ceremony.
This tradition continued for another hundred years when New Mexican ingenuity again kicked in with the latest development of electric luminaries. These evolutionary marvels managed to provide unwavering electrical light supported within a plastic frame and covered with a plastic “lunch bag” look alike. However, this use of modern technology also serves to greatly reduce the cumbersome weight of the luminaries and requires that these decorations be nailed in place or stuck down with silicon caulking.
With this latest chapter in New Mexican decorations comes the new holiday tradition of retrieving your plastic bags from the neighbor’s yard and “re” re-sticking your plastic frames to your adobe roof. So to all New Mexicans out there rebuilding their home or restuccoing the holes you nailed into your adobe, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Originally the Luminaries were ignited as huge bonfires initiating the holiday season and were accompanied by smaller individual bonfires lit as a way of inviting Christ into ones home, this beautiful tradition also served to help reduce the amount of nearby flammable material and was followed by the post holiday tradition of rebuilding cindered homes and extinguishing the Bosque.
This tradition began to loose popularity along with the concept of placing lit candles upon Christmas trees to create a festive glow called arson when New Mexican were unable to afford the cost of increasing insurance along side natural gas prices during the holidays.
The tradition then changed to filling lunch sacks with sand and placing within a small votive candle. These sacks were then placed upon the house and driveway with little fear of fire because they were quickly extinguished by wind and slush and continuously supervised by the individual responsible for the now traditional “ hourly re-lighting” ceremony.
This tradition continued for another hundred years when New Mexican ingenuity again kicked in with the latest development of electric luminaries. These evolutionary marvels managed to provide unwavering electrical light supported within a plastic frame and covered with a plastic “lunch bag” look alike. However, this use of modern technology also serves to greatly reduce the cumbersome weight of the luminaries and requires that these decorations be nailed in place or stuck down with silicon caulking.
With this latest chapter in New Mexican decorations comes the new holiday tradition of retrieving your plastic bags from the neighbor’s yard and “re” re-sticking your plastic frames to your adobe roof. So to all New Mexicans out there rebuilding their home or restuccoing the holes you nailed into your adobe, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Self Promotion
DO IT YOURSELF PROMOTION
You’ve sold a book, that’s great, enjoy the big “Yes, I did it, and everything’s wonderful” feeling. Bask in the joyous thought that you are a published author. At this very special time, it’s important to just savor the moment, because you’re about to experience another emotion associated with being “published.”
Mental Overload. We’ve all heard about—if not experienced—writer’s block. Well, if you ask me, writer’s block is fairly mild to what you’ll feel when you’re asked to participate in promoting your book—especially if you’ve never done it before. Another word for promotion is advertising, and another word for advertising is spending, and from there we can go to credit and on down to debt. Advertising can be a costly venture as well as overwhelming to the novice or inexperienced.
Nowadays, an author’s expected to give away bookmarkers, small gifts; nail files, sachets of sweet smelling herbs, chocolates with their logo on them and lip balms, a personal favorite.
However cool these little gifts may be, they all have a price. Therefore, the first thing to determine in self-promotion is how much you can spend. In most cases, I base what I’ll spend on my advance.
One of the very first things the newly published (as well as aspiring authors) should do is get a website. And, because this is a do-it-yourself handout, I’m going to give you information on free, do-it-yourself websites. Most of the search engines (Yahoo, Comcast, MSN and Google) offer free sites. Check them out and choose the one that best fits your needs. Hint: Friends with the “know” are always better than stumbling around by yourself, so ask your author friends about their sites.
Decide what you want ahead of time. View other authors in your genre and see what they’ve done. It will also give you a better idea of how much or how little to put on your page. Consider putting the following on your opening page: name, bio, clip art that would best fit your genre, most recent book cover, links to your favorite sites, etc. Don’t worry if you don’t have much on your page at first. It will fill up quickly once your book has been submitted for reviews. Many free sites allow multiple pages. There are many free clip art sites and free font sites available on the internet. What you choose will be a matter of personal preference, so plan to spend some time at your computer to check them out.
Reviews: Once you have your title and release date, you can start planning when you’ll have certain items available for promotion. One of the first things to do after you’ve created your website is to obtain book reviews. Ask your editor for a list of reviewers. All reviewers have contact information listed on their site, and it’s rare to find one that isn’t happy to help determine if they’ve received your book. Plan ahead. Many review sites have long waiting lists. Query them and find out when they want to review your book. Find out if they’ll accept PDF files, or if they want an advance reading copy (ARC or galley) and comply accordingly. And be prepared to wait. Query reviewers 6 months before your release date. Keep a list of the sites you queried, and follow up if they don’t contact you when they said they would.
Hint: Most review sites offer author interviews too!
Group Ads: Placing professional advertising in a magazine is expensive. The bigger the ad, the bigger the expense. If your budget allows, consider a group ad. These usually consist of five or six authors on one page, sharing the cost. Color ads are more expensive. Jumping on a page with 4 other authors isn’t so bad. The more the merrier…I mean cheaper.
Bookmarkers/Postcards & Business cards: I’m going to give you the best information of your life…well maybe not, but it’s sure to help you produce professional looking promotional material at a fraction of the cost. It’s Avery.com. There you’ll find a free program named Design Pro. This program contains everything the do-it-yourself author could want, and you can personalize what you make with your logo or your book cover. It has everything mentioned above including t-shirt/tote transfers, mailing labels, thank you notes and much, much, more. Stop reading this and go to your computer. What are you waiting for? It’s free!
Word Processors: Let’s face it, without Word and all the glorious functions it contains (spell checking) many of us wouldn’t be authors. Word is not just for typing manuscripts and screenplays. It’s a program made for the do-it-yourself author. It’s capable of helping you produce wonderful posters and bookmarkers, too.
Office Supply Stores: Even the do-it-yourself author needs supplies, and the best place to get these is your local office supply store. Most will carry a full line of do-it-yourself brand business cards, post cards, and mailing, book and CD labels.
Make an impression: When you submitted your manuscript to your publisher you had one chance to make an impression. This applies to the bookstores and libraries and readers you’re going to present with the things you’ve made. Office supply stores also make large, free-standing posters of your book cover that will sit nicely on a book-signing table for very reasonable prices. Hint: Put your book cover on thank you notes and send them to reviewers, bookstore managers and librarians—anyone who’s done something nice for you. Not only is the proper thing to do, they’ll remember your book and who wrote it.
You’ve sold a book, that’s great, enjoy the big “Yes, I did it, and everything’s wonderful” feeling. Bask in the joyous thought that you are a published author. At this very special time, it’s important to just savor the moment, because you’re about to experience another emotion associated with being “published.”
Mental Overload. We’ve all heard about—if not experienced—writer’s block. Well, if you ask me, writer’s block is fairly mild to what you’ll feel when you’re asked to participate in promoting your book—especially if you’ve never done it before. Another word for promotion is advertising, and another word for advertising is spending, and from there we can go to credit and on down to debt. Advertising can be a costly venture as well as overwhelming to the novice or inexperienced.
Nowadays, an author’s expected to give away bookmarkers, small gifts; nail files, sachets of sweet smelling herbs, chocolates with their logo on them and lip balms, a personal favorite.
However cool these little gifts may be, they all have a price. Therefore, the first thing to determine in self-promotion is how much you can spend. In most cases, I base what I’ll spend on my advance.
One of the very first things the newly published (as well as aspiring authors) should do is get a website. And, because this is a do-it-yourself handout, I’m going to give you information on free, do-it-yourself websites. Most of the search engines (Yahoo, Comcast, MSN and Google) offer free sites. Check them out and choose the one that best fits your needs. Hint: Friends with the “know” are always better than stumbling around by yourself, so ask your author friends about their sites.
Decide what you want ahead of time. View other authors in your genre and see what they’ve done. It will also give you a better idea of how much or how little to put on your page. Consider putting the following on your opening page: name, bio, clip art that would best fit your genre, most recent book cover, links to your favorite sites, etc. Don’t worry if you don’t have much on your page at first. It will fill up quickly once your book has been submitted for reviews. Many free sites allow multiple pages. There are many free clip art sites and free font sites available on the internet. What you choose will be a matter of personal preference, so plan to spend some time at your computer to check them out.
Reviews: Once you have your title and release date, you can start planning when you’ll have certain items available for promotion. One of the first things to do after you’ve created your website is to obtain book reviews. Ask your editor for a list of reviewers. All reviewers have contact information listed on their site, and it’s rare to find one that isn’t happy to help determine if they’ve received your book. Plan ahead. Many review sites have long waiting lists. Query them and find out when they want to review your book. Find out if they’ll accept PDF files, or if they want an advance reading copy (ARC or galley) and comply accordingly. And be prepared to wait. Query reviewers 6 months before your release date. Keep a list of the sites you queried, and follow up if they don’t contact you when they said they would.
Hint: Most review sites offer author interviews too!
Group Ads: Placing professional advertising in a magazine is expensive. The bigger the ad, the bigger the expense. If your budget allows, consider a group ad. These usually consist of five or six authors on one page, sharing the cost. Color ads are more expensive. Jumping on a page with 4 other authors isn’t so bad. The more the merrier…I mean cheaper.
Bookmarkers/Postcards & Business cards: I’m going to give you the best information of your life…well maybe not, but it’s sure to help you produce professional looking promotional material at a fraction of the cost. It’s Avery.com. There you’ll find a free program named Design Pro. This program contains everything the do-it-yourself author could want, and you can personalize what you make with your logo or your book cover. It has everything mentioned above including t-shirt/tote transfers, mailing labels, thank you notes and much, much, more. Stop reading this and go to your computer. What are you waiting for? It’s free!
Word Processors: Let’s face it, without Word and all the glorious functions it contains (spell checking) many of us wouldn’t be authors. Word is not just for typing manuscripts and screenplays. It’s a program made for the do-it-yourself author. It’s capable of helping you produce wonderful posters and bookmarkers, too.
Office Supply Stores: Even the do-it-yourself author needs supplies, and the best place to get these is your local office supply store. Most will carry a full line of do-it-yourself brand business cards, post cards, and mailing, book and CD labels.
Make an impression: When you submitted your manuscript to your publisher you had one chance to make an impression. This applies to the bookstores and libraries and readers you’re going to present with the things you’ve made. Office supply stores also make large, free-standing posters of your book cover that will sit nicely on a book-signing table for very reasonable prices. Hint: Put your book cover on thank you notes and send them to reviewers, bookstore managers and librarians—anyone who’s done something nice for you. Not only is the proper thing to do, they’ll remember your book and who wrote it.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Finished!
It’s a wonderful feeling to finally finish a book, especially if you obsess over unfinished books like I do. I’ve been writing for over 10 years, published 8 books and only have one unfinished book saved in my 'things to do folder'. But this book was especially annoying. As a published author it’s not uncommon to query unfinished manuscripts, and I’ve got a good track record of finishing. I even have an agent willing to look at this new book with one stipulation, she wants it finished. So, the western romance I started ages ago and then decided I didn’t like so much, hung over me, begging me to get excited about it again. Then a few weeks ago, I realized why I didn’t like it. My hero was boring, so I did a complete rewrite. From start to finish. I conjured up a new hero who I instantly fell in love with. That’s the important key. If you can’t fall in love with your own hero, no one else will either. So, like this picture of cholla that sat between me and my destination on my last trail ride, don't let things get in your way of completing the ride. Buckle down, be careful not to get 'stuck' and finish. You'll be happy you did.
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