All You Need Are Words, Right? Wrong!

Taking the Writing Plunge at Age 49 Without Hitting Bottom

When I was a teen, I dreamed about seeing my name on a book cover. What fantasy. As the years advanced, publishing my fiction became a beacon growing dimmer as ambition’s clarity succumbed to reality’s thick mist. My full time design career and life kept me busy. I wrote marketing materials and newsletter articles. Didn’t that count for something?

I hated admitting it, but a serious mental roadblock halted me from publishing my fiction. Writing fiction rescued me when I needed catharsis from real life. I loved my fictional words too much to chance sending them to suffer ugly rejection. Silly but true.

A lay off at age forty-nine provided me a punch in the jaw and a swift kick in the ass. Artistic fulfillment sat me down, handed me a stiff drink and asked did I want to jump back into the corporate hamster wheel? No. I did not.

What did I want to do?

I wanted to see my fiction published during my fiftieth year. Time to celebrate my fiction, not marketing blather about branding real estate. My gay male romance mixed with fantasy and dark comedy, which one publisher accurately called a niche within a niche within a niche, demanded release. The idea sounded insane.

Tough. I needed to publish. I needed a place to start.

I immediately stumbled into the beginning writers, “I’ll write short stories and get noticed,” trap. Only speed demons adept at producing short stories reap the rewards here. Being a slow demon, it took me four weeks to produce a short story that might gain me $50. Not a smart decision.

I tentatively shoved a few novels at agents until one informed me that my romantic heroes weren’t “likable” or “heroic” enough. Ouch. Chasing down an agent felt like climbing up from the Grand Canyon’s bottom carrying the mule I had rode down on. Even if an agent did accept me, I feared I wouldn’t have a book published before my social security kicked in.

After much research, a bright bolt sizzled down in grand wisdom. Why not check out e-book publishers? Some of these publishers specialized in gay male romance. Perfect. Fact checking and author opinion led me to trust a select few.

Now what? Before my feet grew new ice cubes, I took the plunge.

Novellas seemed like a grand place to begin. Novels with training wheels offered less stress on the mind. 30,000 words sounded less intimidating than 70,000 words. I wanted to offer something new, not a novel that I had worked on for years. I still shielded my “special” words.

After only one rejection, Dreamspinner Press picked up my first novella Canes and Scales. Time from receiving the contract to publishing: under six months. The contract arrived on October of 2010, which meant I wasn’t published at age fifty, but at least I had unlocked the door. Novella number two, To Save A Shining Soul, followed in May. Divine Devine’s Love Song arrived in November. Silver Publishing released my first novel Temptation of the Incubus in October 2011. I finally allowed one of my protected species to wander free and surprise, the novel survived.

Three novellas, a few short stories and one novel published in my fifty-first year of life. Not bad.

Also not good. Publishing’s giddy joy had led me to make serious mistakes. I owned no game plan and no support system. Mistakes threatened to make me a quick blip on the reading radar.

The first mistake I made was throwing out too many different subjects. The three novellas fell under the gay male romance genre, but a fantasy featuring a prince and Elven bed slave, a dark comedy about a divinity student and a demon in Hell and a cyberpunk thriller did not create consistency. My novel was a supernatural dark comedy about a lovesick demon. At least I threw another demon into the mix. Still, readers appreciate consistency from a new voice. I needed to settle down and stop running amok like a happy puppy trailing the toilet paper around the house.

Which leads directly into mistake number two: many romance readers relish series. They want to see the characters that they have invested time in return for fresh adventures. I am planning a sequel to Canes and Scales. Readers indicated that they wanted to see more from the characters. I do too because I love all my characters, but I needed to plan the sequel before I grabbed the toilet paper.

My publisher at Dreamspinner warned me about my tendencies. Yep, someone should have listened to good advice.

Another serious error? Not planning my promotion in advance. I discovered that perceptive writers start promoting their book the minute they signed a contract. They whipped up such interest that when the book emerged, they watched the word of mouth sales spread. My book sprang free, panicked and almost disappeared until I caught up with the promotion, promotion, promotion whirl. Once I had signed my contract, I should have established a blog, a website, something as a touchstone for potential readers. I learned to attend author chats, start a Twitter account and to promote on Facebook. Promotion is endless but necessary.

I worked in marketing in my previous career, but marketing yourself is painful. I fled from performing the deed. After plenty of panic, I now own a game plan. 2012 will be the year that I emerge from impending blipdom because the need to feed the writing beast is a never-ending perverse joy. A little self-confidence is essential. It sounds cliché, but if I don’t believe in me, no one else will either.

Eventually I’ll learn to regard rejection as a mere word and not a monster with teeth.

That is another lesson.

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Published authors – what mistakes did you make that you wish you could do over?  Unpublished – any questions for S.A?

Sarah M. Anderson tackles the subject of Authorial New Year’s Resolutions.

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Bio:
I can never decide between red or white. Creating visual art and word art occupied my professional life until word art triumphed.

Reading Gordon Merrick at age nineteen sounded a wake-up call. Ten years of running B-Side, an indie music magazine, provided me wild characters and fictional situations. While traveling to interview bands, writing gay romantic fiction percolated in the background. Thirty years of gay romance lurks in notebooks and the computer. My stories now enter the free air.

When not obsessing over ways to describe romantic encounters, I enjoy cooking, gardening, traveling, arguing politics and teaching my house bunnies tricks. Unfortunately, the furry furies refuse to answer e-mails or blog posts.

Two anthologies, Greg Herren’s Blood Sacraments and Neil Placky’s The Handsome Prince, contain my short stories.

In 2011 Dreamspinner Press released Canes and Scales, To Save A Shining Soul, Baron’s Last Hunt and Divine Devine’s Love Song.

Silver Publishing unleashed Temptation of the Incubus in October 2011.

About all I am a slave to words. I hope my words connect to my readers.

S.A. Garcia’s World of Words

So, if contests offer so many advantages, why—other than publication—would an unpublished writer ever retire from the contest circuit? Read on for seven signs it might be time to take the writing contest golden parachute.

1. You spend more time on contests than actual writing. How much time does it take to format and polish each contest entry? If, during the course of a week, you spend more time preparing your entries than writing new words or editing your manuscript, ask yourself if this is time well spent.

2. You spend more money on contests than other areas of your writing development. Look back at your writing expenses for the past year (if you aren’t keeping track of your business expenses, you should). How much did you spend on contest entries? $100? $200? More? Consider whether or not those dollars might’ve had more impact if they were spent on classes or conferences.

3. You never move past the synopsis and first three chapters. Your synopsis and those chapters shine like they’ve been scrubbed by Mr. Clean, but the rest of your manuscript is full of dust bunnies and dirty dishes. Do you receive contest feedback only to rework and polish your manuscript AGAIN—sending your storyline and draft into complete upheaval? If you’re currently a one-trick pony, consider spending your time on your next manuscript instead of another contest.

4. You receive inconsistent feedback from first round judges. Does one judge applaud your well-crafted characters while another deems them cardboard? Does one judge think you have a fabulous premise and another that your story isn’t “high concept” enough? If judges’ comments fall into a wild scatterplot and you find each bit of advice more confusing than the last, you might consider cutting off the flow of head-scratching feedback.

5. You final consistently, but receive no requests from the final round judges. If it’s to place your work in front of the right editor or agent, but you’re not receiving requests, look at whether your manuscript is suited to the lines/agencies you’re targeting. But if your work is garnering consistent, helpful feedback, that might be benefit enough!

6. The feedback you receive paralyzes you for days or weeks afterward. Who hasn’t encountered this scenario? Contest results come through email and you open the message immediately, only to have your heart sink into your stomach…or lower. You ask yourself: what did she mean by my pacing was off, characterization was thin, premise was cliché and heroine was TSTL (too stupid to live)? If this type of feedback sends you into a total zombie-like funk, decide if the judges’ comments are worth the Prozac you’ll need later. Remember, not all first round judges are published, have PRO status or have even completed a manuscript themselves. Of course, you should read and consider a judge’s feedback, but don’t assume every judge knows more about writing and crafting a story than you.

7. You have solid critique partners who catch the same issues as contest judges. Do you have two or three writers who read and critique your work on a regular basis? If so, and they’re commenting on the same issues as your first round contest judges, consider utilizing your trusted CPs for free rather than paying to enter a contest.

Do some of these signs sound familiar to you? If so, should you retire from the contest circuit permanently? No, but if you decide to stay in the game, prepare yourself before entering the next contest: limit the amount of time and money you spend, prepare for both negative and positive feedback and understand your goal for each contest entry.

Good luck with with either an early retirement or your future contest-related pursuits!

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How have writing contests helped your writing career? How have they hurt it?

Be sure to drop by Monday when author Maisey Yates is here to talk about bi-racial romance.

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Bio:

Kelsey Browning writes contemporary and paranormal romance with a hint of southern sizzle. In her former life, she worked at one of the ten largest universities in the U.S., raising money and teaching students how to land their dream jobs. These days she pursues her dream job of freelance and fiction writing, which provides excellent benefits such as unlimited coffee and an office dress code that permits flip flops.

She’s also a co-founder of Romance University blog where the mission is to empower writers, entertain readers and understand men. Originally from Texas and after four years in the Middle East, she now lives in Southern California with her IT-savvy husband, baseball-obsessed son and seriously spoiled dog. She’s currently at work on the first book in a new paranormal series.

Screams and Broken Trampolines

“Good morning. Your coffee is ready.” My dear husband bends down and kisses my forehead before he heads out for work. “Have a great writing day.”

I roll over and lazily look out the window over the lush Kentucky bluegrass meadow outside. The birds are signing, I see a few deer nipping at the berry trees, and the reality sets in….

“Hurry up. The kids’ lunches need to be made. I’m late.” My dear sweet husband screams waking me from my wonderful dream.

I shield my eyes from the sun blasting through the window, and look out to see my dog having a barking match with the neighbor’s dog, bikes thrown down, and balls all over the yard, not to mention a beat up trampoline.

Before I get my foot on the floor, one of my four teenage boys run into the room needing a shirt ironed before school, and another one dangling a squeezed up tube of toothpaste in the air because I forgot to get some at the grocery store.

Now my real day can begin….

I wish I could say I go to my office with a cup of coffee in hand and read and respond to my emails, blog, check Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites.

I don’t. I send my teenage boys off to school and get ready for the day job that I have in order to pay the bills. I go to said day job, come home, take boys to various extra-curricular activities, and then my writing begins.

Sleep? What’s that? I drink over TWO pots of coffee a day!

When Jen asked me about my writing process, I thought I was going to choke on my coffee. What writing process? The more I thought about it, the more I realized I do have a writing process. It’s just not a traditional process.

Some writing days are better than other. But I do write everyday and usually 2k words, I just take it with me. I wrote my first book under a tree during my son’s football practice.

My writing process begins with an idea, characters and I let them live in my world, in my head. I keep a writing journal with me (even at ballgames, honor clubs!). The story comes to life and I write. I write in school car line while waiting for my kids, the veterinarian’s office, grocery store line, church (yes! God wants me to be successful and make people happy with my words.), I don’t plot, or create really cool color coated charts. I just write. Generally by the end of the day, there are over 2k words that I have to put in my laptop…sleep? What’s that?

Seriously though, if someone really wants to be a writer, you make time for it. And even though my writing process is different, it works for me. In six years, all my boys will be out the door, and then I’ll have that dream of waking up looking out at the Kentucky bluegrass.

Tonya’s debut novel, Carpe Bead ‘em, hit Amazon’s best sellers list in under three days of its release and made it on Amazon’s exclusive Movers and Shakers List.

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Okay, RU crew, tell us about your writing process. Do you carry a notebook with you wherever you go? What about  a voice recorder on the nightstand just in case you wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea? What works for you?

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Do you use a software writing program? Gwen Hernandez joins us on Monday to discuss the highlights of Scrivener and why it’s become an integral part of a writer’s toolkit. 

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Bio:  Tonya Kappes is the author of Carpe Bead ‘Em, which hit Amazon’s Best Seller’s list only six days after its debut. The Ladybug Jinx hit Amazon’s Best Seller’s list on the first day it was released.

Tonya has also authored two short stories which can be found in the Something Spooky This Way Comes and Believe Anthologies. Her co-authored, non-fiction book The Tricked-Out Toolbox, helps writers explore the best promotional and marketing strategies for their career, will debut January 2012.

Besides being the co-founder of the beyond quirky writer’s grog The Naked Hero (www.thenakedhero.com), www.thewritersguidetopublishing.com). 

When she’s not writing about quirky characters and even quirkier situations, she’s busy being the princess, queen and jester of her domain which includes her BFF husband, her four teenage boys and two dogs.

Why write a series set in a small town? Once upon a time, Tonya grew up in a small town and it helped shaped her into the woman she is today. To this day, she still loves going home.

So, mark your calendars for the date of her first blog: July 13, 2011!

In the meantime, let’s give Sara a big RU welcome!

BIOGRAPHY:

Sara Megibow, Associate Literary Agent
Nelson Literary Agency, LLC

Sara has worked at the Nelson Literary Agency since 2006. As the Associate Literary Agent, Sara is actively acquiring new clients! The Nelson Literary Agency specializes in representing all genres of romance (except inspirational or category), young adult fiction of all subgenres, science fiction/ fantasy and commercial fiction (including women’s fiction and chick lit). Sara is an avid romance reader and a rabid fan girl of super sexy and intelligent stories.

Nelson Literary Agency is a member of AAR, RWA, SFWA and SCBWI. Please visit our website www.nelsonagency.com for submission guidelines, FAQs, resources and sample query letters. Sara’s Publisher’s Marketplace site (www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/SaraMegibow) is a great place to find more about her personal tastes, clients and recent sales. You can also cyber stalk Sara on twitter @SaraMegibow.

Welcome to RU, Heidi!

Kelsey: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome in your career?

Heidi: So far, you mean, right? LOL  Because I’m sure there’s another one just around the corner—there always is.  Probably the biggest challenge I’ve faced, and the one that threw me for a loop for a while, was when the bottom fell out of the western historical market.  That’s all I was writing at the time, so when they stopped doing well, I was truly up the creek.  Did I want to keep writing them, knowing that even if a publisher bought them, sales would be lousy?  Or did I want—and need—to do something else?

It took some soul-searching, and a lot of hard work, but I opted to go the reinvention route and try my hand at series contemporary instead.  Looking back, I can see that the death of western historical was actually a blessing for me…it led me to the category world and Silhouette (now Harlequin) Desire, which I love. But there were more than a few frantic moments while all that was going on, believe me.

Kelsey: What are your thoughts on launching a romance writing career through category romance?

Heidi: I think it’s a great idea!  Category is a fabulous place to be, and it really teaches you to be a better writer.  Writing category teaches you to write tighter, to write within a certain structure, and to edit yourself.  (Just because they’re shorter doesn’t mean they’re easier to write; in fact, the opposite is probably true.)  A lot of wonderfully successful single title authors started out in category, and a lot have continued to write both because it is such a satisfying place to be.

Kelsey: What are the most prevalent craft problems you see in unpublished manuscripts?

Heidi: To be perfectly blunt, I see a lot of writing out there that’s just plain bad.  But I also see a lot of unpublished work that’s simply lacking voice and vibrancy.  The grammar and such might be fine.  Structurally, the writing is solid, but there’s nothing compelling about the storyline or writing style; there’s no emotion, no flair, and nothing that draws a picture in your mind, so that it really just feels like words on a page. When I sit down with to read a book (or an unpublished manuscript), I want it to suck me in and play cross my mind’s eye like a movie.  I want to see, feel, hear, taste, smell everything the same as the characters do, and to not be able to put the story down.  Or if I do, I want that story to linger in the back of my mind, calling to me until I can get back to read a bit more.

Kelsey: What’s the smartest business decision you’ve ever made for your writing career?

Heidi: I like to think I’ve made a lot of smart business decisions…and only a few low I.Q. ones LOL…but the smartest would probably be leaving an agent who didn’t believe in me, wasn’t enthusiastic about my work, and really didn’t care about me one way or the other to find one who’s the exact opposite.  It was not a smooth transition, and there was some down time when I was quite agentless, but in retrospect I still think it’s the wisest career move I’ve ever made.

Kelsey: What do you feel it takes to break into the single title contemporary romance market?

Heidi: That’s a tough one, especially these days.  Right now, it seems that everything is paranormal, paranormal, paranormal.  But it also seems that just about everything that could be done along those lines has been done in one form or another.  I think the best advice that can be given on this is the same advice that’s been given time and time again:  Write the very best book you can.  Don’t worry so much about the market and trends; follow your heart and your gut and write what you love to read.  When the passion is there, it will shine through in the writing and get you noticed, regardless of what’s hot or what’s not at any given moment.

Kelsey: What’s the most valuable piece of writing advice you’ve received?

Heidi: To take in as much information as I could, like a sponge, but to pick and choose what I wanted to believe and which bits of advice I would follow.  You hear a lot of advice out there.  Authors talk about how they do things and what’s worked for them, and you think you need to follow in their footsteps.  When the truth is, you need to take what you like and leave the rest.  Find your own path, your own process.  Jumping out of bed at 6a.m., getting dressed, and going into an actual office space to write for eight hours straight may work for some authors…but rolling out of bed at noon, padding around in pajamas half the day, and then settling down to write until 3a.m. works for others.  No one should ever tell you you have to do something exactly this way or that way, and you should never think you have to do something exactly the way someone else does to be successful.  Not even Nora.

Kelsey: How do you keep your creativity alive?

Heidi: Hallucinogenic drugs and vast quantities of alcohol.  No, wait.  Caffeine.  No, wait again.  Okay, there is probably a certain amount of caffeine involved.  But, really, I think I just love what I’m doing.  I love telling another new story about a new set of characters.  I love coming up with the ideas for new stories.  So while there are times you might find me banging my head against the wall or playing Spider Solitaire because I am desperately trying to avoid having to actually deal with my plot problem, I really enjoy finding out what happens next, seeing what pops up in a story that I might not be expecting, and having a good writing day.  And I love finishing a story, then going back through and realizing it’s even better than I thought it was while writing.  (Because there’s a point in each manuscript where I’m convinced the entire thing is a pile of steaming dog poo and I’m going to have to start over, even though I only have a week and a half left on my deadline.)  And then I love the moment when I get to rub my hands together and say, “Okay, what do I work on next?”  I usually know what I need to write next—unfulfilled contracts have a way of keeping you uber-organized on that score—but I never quite know how I’ll begin or where that story will take me.

Kelsey: What do readers tell you they like best about your stories?

Heidi: The word “delightful” pops up in reviews for my books and in reader letters quite often.  And I love it!  I can’t think of a bigger compliment than to be told one of my books delighted someone.  Or kept them reading into the wee hours of the night.  I think readers like my books because the characters are real and relatable.  I also throw in a dash of humor and sexiness, which I think is always appreciated.  And my goal, really, is to simply entertain you.  I’m not trying to impress you with my handle on the English (or any other) language, or teach you something, or save the world…well, not through my books, anyway …I just want to give you a really good, fun, and sexy story that will hopefully leave you with a smile on your face—and eager for my next release.

Kelsey: How do you handle a poor review?

Heidi: I burst into tears, rail to the heavens, mope around for days, and sometimes try to take my own life in utter despair. LOL  Okay, so the temptation for some of those is there, but really, a review—good or bad—is just one person’s opinion, and I don’t always care what that person thinks.  It’s true that some of them can be quite mean-spirited, but when they are, I always stop to  wonder how massively unhappy that person must be if trashing one of my books makes them feel better.  And sometimes it’s just a matter of being a bad match of book to reader.

So, yeah, there are times when I might scowl and silently flip a negative review the bird, but then you give them exactly the amount of attention they deserve—which is zero—and move on.  The good reviews far outweigh the bad, thank goodness, so those are the ones you want to dwell on. And really, my focus tends to be firmly planted on the next book—the one I’m currently writing or the one that’s just come out—anyway.

To ramble on a bit here, let me share a quick anecdote that will put reviews and the like into perspective:  When it comes to my second “Chicks with Sticks” book, LOVES ME, LOVES ME KNOT, people pretty much either love it or hate it.  No middle ground.  And I got a lot of flack over one of the opening scenes where the heroine drugs her ex-husband and ties him to the bed for a little good, old-fashioned forced seduction.  Yep, there it is—the immediate knee-jerk reaction.  You are either hating that concept right now, or thinking, Ooh, that sounds interesting… Readers either love it or hate it.  I happen to love it.  And knowing the characters as I do, there was no question they belonged together, and that the scene was merely a catalyst to shake them up a bit and get them back together.

But some of the reviews I got for this book were brutal. B-r-u-t-a-l.  And it was disheartening at times, to say the least.  Then one day, I got a letter from a reader who loved the book.  (One of the few. *g*)  She had read it several times already.  It was now her favorite book.  And she swore that I had saved her marriage.  Apparently, she and her husband were going through a situation very similar to my hero and heroine, and the word “divorce” was being tossed around quite freely.  Then she read LOVES ME, LOVES ME KNOT and began to see her husband and marriage from a completely different perspective.  Her letter made cry…and it made all of the nasty reviews and negative feedback the book had gotten before that disappear.  A thousand negative reviews on Amazon can’t hold a candle to one heartfelt reader response like that.

Kelsey: What’s something you’d like your readers to know about you or your writing process?

Heidi: That I’m writing as fast as I can. LOL  And that I’m all over the place sometimes—category, romantic comedy, paranormal—but follow me.  PLEASE!  No matter what books come out with my name on them, I promise I will always give you a fun, sexy romance with an extremely satisfying happily-ever-after ending.  I will not leave you hanging and (hopefully) I will not disappoint.

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RU Crew, Heidi will pop in today, so feel free to ask her any questions I missed. What’s the best writing career advice you’ve ever received? Remember, Heidi has generously offered to give away a book from her back list (winner’s choice) to three lucky commenters today! (US residents only, please)

Don’t miss Wednesday when Laurie Schnebly Campbell is here to talk about Mental Spas for writers!

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Bio:

Heidi Betts is the daughter of an Arabian sheik and a Las Vegas showgirl, as well as the heiress to the Chocolate is Better Than Sex Candy Company fortune.  Because of this, she eats chocolate in all its many delicious forms for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in-between snacks . . . without ever gaining an ounce on her perfect five-foot-nine, size zero figure.

Each and every one of her breathtaking, award-winning novels has been adapted to film and gone on to become a phenomenal box office smash, featuring such mega-stars as Hugh Jackman and Sandra Bullock, Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, and Harrison Ford and Charlize Theron.

Heidi readily admits that she is only able to write such passionate love stories because of her real-life happily-ever-after romance with superstar actor Dwayne Johnson, who makes every day a fairy tale.  When she’s not writing or making hot, toe-curling love with her “Rock” of a husband, Heidi can often be found riding naked on horseback (a la Lady Godiva) along the beaches of Malibu or hobnobbing with the rich and famous on Martha’s Vineyard.

If you’d like to experience your own perfect, idyllic life just like Heidi Betts, be sure to take the little purple pill.  (Not the red one.  Never the red one.)

Check out Heidi at her website and blog!

In the past, I’ve blogged about nine things an author’s website must do, and seven things an author’s website must have (a guest post at Nathan Bransford’s blog). Today, we’re adding seven more secrets of successful sites—what your website must be:

Findable
Bottom line: a website’s no good to you if no one can find it. Make sure your website doesn’t block search engines, or put up any barriers to them finding your site. Links to your site with your name as the anchor text (the text of the link) can help search engines to find and rank your site for your name.

If possible, YourName.com or YourPenName.com is the best address for your site. Lots of free hosting services (including Blogger) will let you redirect your site to YourName.com (some for a modest fee). If YourName.com is taken, try to get something as close to that as possible by using initials (especially if you’re using them in your credits) or an extra word such as “author,” “writer” or “books.” Note that hyphens, i.e. Your-Name.com, are used less often and can be harder to remember.

Useable
Visitors to your website should be able to navigate easily and find what they’re looking for. Use an easy-to-understand set up: generally, websites have navigation links horizontally below the header and/or on the right or left sidebar. Also, think carefully about what you call the various areas of your site. “About me” or “Biography” is a lot easier to find and understand than “Everything you ever needed to know” or “100 things.”

Shopable
Imagine you’ve just finished a book by a great new author and you head to her website to see if she has any others. Great, she has some listed—but how can you find them? She doesn’t say! Are they out of print? Do you have to order them through her? (How?) Should we resort to Amazon? Ooh . . . pretty books . . . what was that author’s name again? Ooh, sale!

Give your website visitors an easy way to get more of your books—give direct links to your books where they can buy them.

Shareable
If you want your visitors to tell their friends about your site, make it easy on them. Include links to email articles from your blog, or share them on Facebook and Twitter. But even more important than making it easy to share your site is making your site worth sharing. Give your visitors an experience they’ll want others to have, whether that’s laughing, loving or learning, and then give them a way to share that experience.

Professional (yeah, I ran out of ables)
This site is your business card, your TV commercial, your sales flyer and your public persona all rolled into one. Being professional doesn’t mean being stodgy, but it does mean putting your best foot forward in attitude and appearance. Match your design and your writing style on your site to your chosen genre. You can be funny (even irreverent!)—and you should be if you’re writing humorous books—and still be professional.

(The same rule goes for your interactions all over the Internet!)

Informative
One of my pet peeves is visiting “thin” sites: sites with almost no content or information. You don’t have to be the next Wikipedia, but you should have enough information to draw visitors into your site, let them know who you are, maybe even let them see what you’re working on. One of my friends had an editor approach her about her book from what the editor read on her website. If you have your first pages or chapter polished for a contest or querying, I think it’s a good idea to make them available on your site as well. And don’t forget your About page—let us get to know you!

Fun!
A fun site doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire somebody to create a bunch of animated games tangentially related to your works. A “fun” author’s site should include bonuses. It could be games or contests, or it could be something as simple as deleted scenes from a published book. If you’re lucky enough to have a group of dedicated fans, help them to interact and build a community (and don’t forget to participate!).

Conclusion
Whether you’re preparing to query or publishing your pentology, your author website can work for you and for your visitors. By making sure your site is findable, useable, shopable, shareable, professional, informative and fun, you’ll create an experience your website visitors will want to repeat, whether they’re agents, editors or readers.

Remember, I’ll be critiquing three lucky commenters’ sites! Critiques will be posted Thursday. (If you’d prefer not to be critiqued, just say so in the comment.)

Photo credits: frustrated—Sybren A. Stüvel; asleep at computer—Aaron Jacobs; loving your site—Chris Champion

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Do you have a website? Is it all you want it to be, or does it need work?

Join us on Wednesday, May 11 when Douglas Mendini of Kensington Publishing shares his marketing knowledge with us. And don’t forget to come back on Thursday, May 12 to read Jordan’s critique of three websites, chosen from today’s commenters. (Be sure to include a link to your website if you’d like to be considered for a critique.)

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Bio:

Jordan McCollum is an award-winning aspiring author, but she’s also a mother, wife, knitter, baker, and blogger—and busy! She formerly worked in search engine marketing and was editor of Marketing Pilgrim, an Internet marketing news blog, until last year.

She currently blogs about crafts, motherhood and writing craft, and she writes romantic suspense and thrillers. If she ever says anything about starting another blog, slap her. Seriously.

Jordan is on Facebook here.

Visit her website here: http://jordanmccollum.com/

So, without further ado, here’s Allie!

If you write category fiction–or aspire to–chances are at least once in your career you will meet up with the literary phenomenon known as the continuity mini series.  A publisher-initiated series of 3-5 books that run over a specified story arc, these turn the usual creative process a bit on its ear.  You want to think through this opportunity, if offered, because there are definite upsides and downsides:

So why say “yes”?

You were asked, and that’s a good thing.   You can’t sign up to do one of these, you have to be invited.  While I might argue there’s not too many reasons to turn down a paying offer of any kind from your publisher (particularly in this market), there are some implied confidences of quality and reliability in such an offer.

It’s an opportunity to collaborate. Yes, it’s going to mean hundreds of emails or even its own Yahoo group, but it may be a chance to exercise new collaborative muscles.  It’s frustrating in some respects–writing by committee is never a smooth business–but a valuable education.

You may get to play with the big dogs. Every continuity usually has one or two big name authors as an anchor, the same way anthologies do.  A continuity gives you the best possible introduction to another writer’s fans: a place in a story they already care about.

If you hate coming up with book ideas, that part is done for you. Yes, your job is to flush out the story arc in ways that reflect your voice and give life to the characters, but the basic plot line is laid out in advance.

Sounds great.  Why wouldn’t you do a continuity?

It’s not your idea. And that may really bug you.  This is, essentially, work for hire, which also means you don’t own the copyright.  Still, work for hire is work, and these days it may not be wise to look a work horse in the mouth, if you know what I mean.

It may not be your editor. If you love your longtime editor, chances are he or she will not be the person handling this project.  You’ll most likely have to work with someone new, or at the very least add a third partner to your team.

It’s hard. The books are sequential, but are written nearly simultaneously.  That means you’re writing off an ending someone else hasn’t even written yet.  Details have to match up on the fly, which can make for massive confusion and no small amount of rewriting.   You’ll be given a “bible,” a detailed synopsis and character descriptions for both your book and the entire series, but it doesn’t cover everything.  And should you attempt to deviate, the ramifications can be whopping.

It’s a team sport. Collaborations aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.  If you like to write your first draft all at the last minute in a frenzy of procrastination, you’ll make yourself and your continuity partners crazy.  If you finish too early, you might have to go back repeatedly to make adjustments based on what your partners have written.  And you’ll most likely have to share your work before it’s finished, so if that makes you cringe this might not be for you.

Am I glad I worked on the Alaskan Brides series?  Yes, but I’ll be the first to admit it was tough.  I would never have looked to the Gold Rush on my own, so I was introduced to a fascinating culture and subject I might never have otherwise discovered.  I stretched new creative muscles, and that is never a bad thing.   I put another tool in my toolbox, another avenue for work from my publisher, and that’s never a bad thing.  And I had the opportunity to work with two wonderful authors, Linda Ford and Dorothy Clark.  All in all, not a bad deal.  Not a bad deal at all.

* * *

Thanks, Allie!

RU Writers, Would you write a story for a continuity series, if asked?

RU Readers, Do you love reading continuity series? Did you realize so much was going on behind the scenes to bring you a great read(s)?

Be sure to stop back tomorrow for our Ask an Editor column, brought to you by the lovely and crazy-talented Theresa Stevens.

Allie’s bio:

An avid knitter, coffee junkie, and devoted chocoholic, Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and non-fiction.  The enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, Allie spends her days writing books, buying yarn, and finding new ways to avoid housework.  Allie hails from Connecticut, moved to the midwest to attend Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Chicago, Illinois.  The “dare from a friend” to begin writing has produced two parenting books, fourteen novels, and various national speaking engagements on faith, women’s issues, and writing.  Visit her website at www.alliepleiter.com or her knitting blog at www.DestiKNITions.blogspot.com.

YUKON WEDDING

Publisher:
Harlequin Love Inspired Historical
April 2011
ISBN #978-0373828630

A gold-rush town is no place for a single mother. But widow Lana Bristow won’t abandon the only home her son has ever known. She’ll fight to remain in Treasure Creek, Alaska—even if it means wedding Mack Tanner, the man she blames for her husband’s death. Mack sees marriage as his duty, the only way to protect his former business partner’s family. Yet what starts as an obligation changes as his spoiled socialite bride proves to be a woman of strength and grace. A woman who shows Mack the only treasure he needs is her heart.

In 2010, I was fortunate enough to win the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense with my book, Nearly Departed in Deadwood. After the shock wore off and the celebrations slowed, I returned home from Cloud Nine. Then I began to plan how I could make this contest win work for me. For the past year, I’d been building my platform, trying to increase my name recognition, and working on taking my writing career to the next level, whatever that was. Winning the Daphne came at a perfect time. I was ready for the boost.

Following are some of the ways I used the contest win to work for me:

1. Press Release: I wrote a press release and sent it to several small to mid-sized newspapers that covered the areas of the country where I knew my potential audience was the greatest.
2. Blogs: I accepted invites to post articles and participate in interviews on several blogs, spreading word about the win while networking with other writers and potential readers.
3. Book Cover: On the cover of my book, we put a big golden medallion to draw customers’ attention and inform them the book won a “National Award.”
4. Free Reads: Suddenly, many writers and readers were curious about my book, interested in reading bits of it. So, I shared excerpts of the story with them, making new friends and fans along the way. These same folks are bending over backward to help me sell the book now that it is out. They are wonderful!
5. Quotes: I mentioned the fact that the book won the Daphne when asking fellow authors if they would be willing to give me quotes/blurbs for it. The contest win helped me secure several excellent quotes.
6. Promotion: As soon as my book was published, I sent out email blasts telling everyone that a Daphne du Maurier winning book has been published. This was a slight twist on the usual, “My book is published!” email, and being different is good in a crowded market.
7. Thanks: Because my parents’ words stick with me even now, I try to continually remain humble about the win, keeping in mind that winning involves a lot of luck. I try to express my gratitude in print often for those who created/ran the contest and judged. Giving thanks is much appreciated in this industry. I always appreciate it when I’ve helped someone and they say “Thank you” and will be more willing to help them again in the future.
8. Daphne Contest: I try to promote the Daphne du Maurier contest whenever possible in voice and print. I also agreed to help judge this year’s Daphne entries again.
9. Blogs (again): I am touring the blogosphere now that my book is out, talking about all that winning the Daphne can do for a career in order to give other writers ideas and hope in this sometimes brutal business.
10. Tell the World: My publicist continually uses the Daphne win as a selling tool, such as showing those newspaper articles (see #1 above) that tell about my win. Also, on Amazon, I made sure there is mention of the win in my product description to help convince readers it’s worth their dime.

These are just some of the ways I’ve used the Daphne to work for me.

So, if you enter writing contests (or are thinking about entering a contest), I ask you: What will you do if you final in or win the contest (after your finish celebrating and sober up)? How will you make it work for you?

RU Interview

RU: How many manuscripts did you write before you were published?
AC: I wrote eight manuscripts. Nearly Departed in Deadwood is number seven (I finished writing my eighth manuscript—the next book in the Deadwood Mystery Series, Optical Delusions in Deadwood—prior to getting Nearly Departed in Deadwood out the door). I’m currently writing my ninth manuscript, Dead Case in Deadwood, the third in the Deadwood Mystery series. Man, that was a lot of numbers ending in “th.” Ha!

RU: How long was it from the time you began writing seriously and the time you were published?
AC: I think it’s been over thirteen long years—too long to keep an accurate count. Although, I did get married, finish college, and have two kids in the midst of it all, plus work a full-time day job, so I have some rolling blackouts throughout parts of those years.

RU: Why do you think this particular manuscript sold?
AC: Because of several things: 1.) It won the Daphne du Maurier award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense; 2.) It has great audience potential built into it thanks to the setting and title; 3.) I have spent years building a platform and name recognition, which translates into a lot of supportive fans for the book right out of the gate (which appeals to a publisher).

RU: What surprised you about the sell?
AC: That it became more of a partnership than a sell. You see, I was offered an opportunity to partner with the publisher and share in all aspects of publishing my book. I’ve learned so much in the first three months of this year about the publishing business, and I have a better understanding as to why publishers make some of the decisions they do—decisions I often questioned as an author. While this has not been an easy venture for me, I enjoy having more control in the future of my book.

RU: What challenges have you faced since you sold that you didn’t realize you would encounter?
AC: I had no idea of the many hurdles when it comes to getting a book out through as many distribution channels as there are. I also didn’t realize there were so many distribution channels. It’s really incredible the networks that have been set up by publishers over the years, and the networks being built for eBook publishing now. It’s stressful, exciting, and fun all at the same time.

RU: Is there anything you wished you’d done before you sold?
AC: Written more books. I have four other books written and needing some work before going out to the world, but I wish I had an even bigger backlog of manuscripts. It’s much easier to fine-tune and edit than stare at that dang blinking cursor on a blank page.

RU: What’s your best advice for writers who are still waiting to sell?
AC: Be patient. Publishing is not a game of quick wins and overnight successes. While you’re waiting to sell your book(s), work on building your platform so that when you sell, you have readers who want to buy your book. Five years ago, I asked myself the following question: If I had a book published, who would buy it besides my mother? That’s when I realized I had a lot of pre-publishing work to do and got busy building an audience for my books.

RU: Do you have anything else you’d like to share with the Romance University readers?
AC: Yes, another bit of advice—test everything. I am constantly testing my “products” to see what gives me the response I’m looking for from a reader/fan. When I say in my Acknowledgments that it takes a village to make Ann Charles successful, I’m not just blowing hot air. I have many readers and editors, several for every draft. I also test promotional products on my friends and fans. I test ideas and articles on others. Everything. The world is my QA lab, and I’m out to deliver high-quality products, whether the products are stories, book posters, key chains, workshops, or whatever.

RU: And last, will you tell us all about your debut book?
AC: I’d love to!

Irony is having a big ol’ fiesta and Violet Parker is the piñata. Little girls are vanishing from Deadwood, South Dakota, and Violet’s daughter could be next. Short on time and long on worry, she’s desperate to find the monster behind the abductions. But with her jerkoff co-worker trying to get her fired, a secret admirer sending creepy love poems, and a sexy-as-hell stranger hiding skeletons in his closet, Violet just might end up as one of Deadwood’s dearly departed.

“The first time I came to Deadwood, I got shot in the ass.”—Violet Parker, Chapter 1

Nearly Departed in Deadwood is the first of many books in the Deadwood Mystery Series. It has mystery, romance, suspense, and paranormal—all in one big genre stew. It’s available all over God’s green earth, and we’re working to make it available on the moon, too.

Stay tuned for Violet Parker’s second book, Optical Delusions in Deadwood, which will be released in May 2011 as an eBook and July 2011 as a print book.

***

RU Writers – have you thought of how your life might change with a contest win?

Join us on Monday as NYT Best Selling Author Lori Wilde talks about the differences in writing contemporary romance and external plot-driven sub-genres like romantic suspense.

***

Ann Charles is an award-winning author who writes romantic mysteries that are splashed with humor. Her debut mystery, Nearly Departed in Deadwood (Released in January 2011) not only won the 2010 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, but also has been selected as a finalist in the 2011 Romance Writers of America Golden Heart® contest. A member of Sisters in Crime, the Guppies, and RWA for many moons, she has a B.A. in English
with an emphasis on creative writing from the University of Washington.

When she is not dabbling in fiction, she is penning writing-related articles or standing on her workshop soapbox, sharing what she has learned over the years about the craft and self-promotion. Visit her at www.anncharles.com or www.anncharles.com/deadwood.

You can also find her at http://www.1stturningpoint.com, where she and over two dozen other authors, reviewers, and PR consultants have joined together to teach and share (and learn from each other) all sorts of great information about promotion for both unpublished and published authors.

She lives near Seattle with her clever husband, charming children, and one incredibly sassy cat.

We’re pleased to welcome debut author Al Leverone as our guest today.

I’m really excited to be here today. My invitation to appear at Romance University stemmed from a post I read at Vicky Dreiling’s blog written by your very own debut author, Adrienne Giordano, regarding her path to publication; a post which struck a nerve with me the moment I read it. I emailed Adrienne relating some of my own debut experiences and she very graciously invited me to share them. So here I am!

“The path to publication.” It sounds so civilized, doesn’t it? Four words that make the journey seem like a bucolic Sunday stroll through a quiet rose garden, tea cup in hand, bees buzzing in the background, hummingbirds . . . uh . . . humming. Masterpiece Theatre. Sir Lawrence Olivier. Dignified. Scholarly. In reality though, at least for me, the journey was less a Sunday afternoon stroll along a quiet path than a confusing, terrifying trip through the Amazon. With no guide. And no machete. And definitely no map.

I decided about four years ago that I wanted to write fiction; genre novels, specifically. I’ve always been an avid reader and a good writer. In fact, writing might be the only thing in this world at which I truly excel. How hard could it be, right? 

So I wrote a manuscript. I figured I would finish it, polish it, send it out to all the major publishers and wait for the offers to come rolling in, then pick from the best one. And to answer your question, Yes, I really was that naïve. Once I discovered the major New York publishers don’t take un-agented manuscripts and haven’t for decades, I shook my head in frustration and decided to do the next best thing: get a literary agent.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to snag an agent? It was like being back in high school trying to get a date again, only worse. Because now, all the guys were trying to date all the girls, and to top it off, you couldn’t just ask her out, you had to submit a query letter first, and if she decided your query letter measured up, then she would allow you to ask her out.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer. And, oh by the way, the answer is no. Usually delivered via form letter.

The activities in those last two paragraphs represent roughly three years worth of struggle, during which time I wrote three complete novel-length manuscripts and parts of three others. And I was getting nowhere. Oh, I would receive the occasional request for a partial from the occasional agent, and every once in a while—woohoo!—a request for the full manuscript, but the end result was always the same. While their responses indicated I definitely had the skills, there was always something that kept the agents from being interested enough in my work to commit. Like I said, it was high school all over again, only without getting stuffed into my locker.

That was when I decided to try a different tactic. I would begin submitting to smaller, independent publishers, most of whom have no qualms about receiving work from authors without representation. And my thriller titled FINAL VECTOR, about an air traffic controller who gets tangled up in a plot to assassinate the President of the United States, was almost immediately received enthusiastically by this really cool Indie outfit outside Chicago called Medallion Press. They liked FINAL VECTOR. They wanted FINAL VECTOR. They would release FINAL VECTOR as a mass-market paperback in February, 2011. And just like that, the kid who couldn’t get a date was on his way to the prom.

Cue the violins and sappy music, cue the walk into the sunset, cue the happy ending, roll credits, fade to black. End of story.

Except that wasn’t quite the end of the story.

I signed my contract with Medallion for a mass-market paperback release of FINAL VECTOR in late December, 2009. In mid-March, 2010, I was upstairs working on another manuscript when the telephone rang. I have three children, ages 22 to 18, and it’s not an exaggeration to say the telephone is never for me, so I ignored it. But this time it was for me. It was a representative from Medallion, calling to tell me that due to the rapidly-changing environment in the publishing industry and the lack of profitability in mass-market paperback as a format, Medallion was exiting the MMPB world completely.

Their plan was now to release an ebook edition of FINAL VECTOR. I had a long talk on the telephone with Medallion’s Director of Sales and Marketing regarding this new plan and I was left feeling less than enthusiastic. My dream since I was a young child had been to one day hold an ink-and-paper book in my hands which said “Allan Leverone” on the cover; I had never once imagined myself holding a portable hard drive with a reading screen.

So I agonized. I went back and forth over whether to request a reversion of the rights to FINAL VECTOR from Medallion. I had a signed contract in my possession stipulating a mass-market paperback release of my book, so I was quite certain I could walk away, no blood, no foul. But was that what I really wanted?

By March, 2010 I had owned my own Kindle for six months and loved it. I’m an avid reader of thrillers and horror novels and in that half-year had probably downloaded and read at least a dozen books on it. I had done a lot of research and knew that the ebook market was exploding on an unprecedented scale, basically keeping the publishing world afloat while simultaneously scaring the crap out of “traditional” publishing. So would an ebook release of FINAL VECTOR really be so bad?

After three weeks of soul-searching I decided, no, it would not be so bad. I bought into Medallion’s new plan and let FINAL VECTOR ride with them, and, boy am I glad I did. In the year since receiving that disheartening phone call, ebooks have continued to be the ten ton elephant in the room, assuming a bigger and bigger profile in the publishing landscape. It’s exciting to be part of a revolution that represents the first real change in how books are packaged and consumed since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the fifteenth century.

All of which brings me back to my original point: that the “path to publication” isn’t really a path at all. It’s more like a meandering, dried-out riverbed, and you have to pick your way over the boulders and through the mud, sometimes striking out through the jungle for a while but always making your way back to that riverbed in the end. And, oh yeah, by the way, watch out for those flash floods, because they just might wash you away if you’re not ready for them.

But nobody said it would be easy, and what fun would that be, anyway?

Al, thanks for sharing your experience with us today.  Ever have to choose between a traditional print publishing versus an e-publisher? Any thriller writers out there? If you have questions for Al, ask away!

Be sure to join us on Wednesday, March 30th for our two-day pitch workshop with Diane Holmes from Pitch University.

* * *

Allan Leverone is a three-time Derringer Award Finalist for excellence in short mystery fiction as well as a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee. His short fiction has appeared in Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Shroud Magazine, Twisted Dreams, Dark Valentine, Mysterical-E and many others, and his debut thriller, FINAL VECTOR was released February 11 by Medallion Press. Learn more on Facebook or at www.allanleverone.com.

Website: www.allanleverone.com

Publisher’s website: www.medallionpress.com

Blog, “A Thrill a Minute”: www.allanleverone.blogspot.comVideo

Book trailer for FINAL VECTOR: www.youtube.com/watch?v=86g7_negT8o

In May 2009, one of the biggest editors in romance at my dream publishing house offered me a three-book contract. I had worked for years to achieve this.

But that’s backstory. The story I’m going to tell today is what happened next. I call this story “What I Learned on After-the-Sale Vacation.”

First (since I am also a professional historian, and historians love to tell the punch line before the joke), here’s The Big Lesson I Learned: Nothing changes. Well, yes, your book ends up on bookstore shelves and lots n’ lots of people read it and tell you they adored it. This is fantastic. Actually, it’s way beyond fantastic. But nothing inside you changes. All that eagerness, all that love and passion and emotion I put into my writing, all that heartbreak and anxiety and uncertainty and frustration and fear and sheer boiling mania I felt before I made that sale is still with me. It is part of me. Succeeding in this manner has not changed me as a person. Ten years at a Zen monastery and some really good therapy might. But that’s also another story.

What did I learn, in practical terms?

1. First-week sales are HUGELY IMPORTANT. Great first-week sales land you on bestseller lists, which then go into promotion for your next book, which then sell more of that next book. They also help determine whether the big buyers will buy your second book in quantity. Do whatever you can to encourage readers to buy your book in those first few days. This includes promoting your book through social media (Facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.) and mailings to booksellers and book clubs before the book releases.

A Lady's Wish by Katharine Ashe

2. Professional contacts are crucial for creating a buzz for your first book. But you must start networking early. I don’t mean four months before your release date. I mean four years. At least one or two. Volunteer for positions in writers groups that will help you meet industry people. Every positive contact you make during these years will serve you well. I was co-chair of Programming for my local RWA chapter for two years before I got published. In planning monthly programs I met industry luminaries whose effect on my career has been significant. This takes time and effort, but it is incredibly fun, and it ensures that your name is familiar to influential people when your book hits the stands.

3. Take your time. When I learned of the eight-month space between the release dates of my first two books, I groaned. How would this build an audience? But I spent those months learning about promotion and, more importantly, writing the best books I could. That time also gave me the creative space I needed to propose an additional project to my editor. That project became my e-book, A LADY’S WISH (March 15), a $1.99 delicious little novella tied into my print trilogy, to be released two weeks before book 2 of the series, CAPTURED BY A ROGUE LORD (March 29). We invented this e-novella as a promotion for the print series, but it turned out to be super fun to write! It never would have happened, though, if I’d been rushing. In the crazy-speedy world of publishing, time can be a writer’s friend.

4. Don’t be surprised when people you thought would embrace your triumphs do not. Be gracious. No matter what. No. Matter. What. (Graciousness always feels better to me anyway.)

5. All bloggers are not created equal. Many are magically wonderful and I cherish them—like the women of Romance University! Other bloggers are not interested in furthering your career. Some are unprofessional. Take very great care in planning your blog appearances.

6. Fan mail is worth it all.

***

If you are a published author, did you learn any crucial lessons after your first sale? If you are yet-to-be-published, tell us what you are doing now to prepare for those months between your first sale and book release, because we’d love to give you a high five and “Way to go!”

Don’t forget to join us on Monday, March 14 as Sally Bayless pops in to tell us about her writing journey.

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Bio: The American Library Association’s Booklist named Katharine Ashe one of the “New Stars of Historical Romance” and her debut historical romance, Swept Away By a Kiss, was nominated for Best First Historical Romance in the Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Awards. Katharine lives in the wonderfully warm Southeast with her husband, son, two dogs, and a garden she likes to call romantic rather than unkempt. A professor of European history, she has made her home in California, Italy, France, and the northern US. Please visit her at www.katharineashe.com.