I've just been reminded that, although "The Tiger's Cub" won't be available for the public via Amazon.com until November 1st, Write Words Inc. will be able to do advance copies for reviewers, bookstore buyers, etc. as soon as the last corrections are confirmed and I've completed the final edit. If you are in a position to do a review for a newspaper, magazine, Goodreads or are a buyer for a bookstore, please leave me a comment or email me at debi_emmons@yahoo.com if you would like an advanced copy.
For those who have suggested posting my book trailer video to Goodreads, Amazon, and other such sites, there is a minor problem with that thought: I don't own full copyrights for the materials used and am therefore banned from doing so. Per the rules of You Tube, I am able to post there because I openly list the sources for the songs and photos I've used, thereby giving credit to the official holders of the copyrights, which gives me permission to use the materials until such time as someone objects.
Of course, if you're a model who matches a character description or are a musician with a song you think would work for another version of the trailer - and you're willing to grant me limited permission to use your image or song - please get in touch with me. Elizza-Rayn Belle Louve and Lycidas Stone are personal friends of mine who volunteered their time as a favor in exchange for public recognition, so I am very willing to do the same for you.
Of course, as I progress with the science fiction/fantasy novel, I'll be looking for models, artists and musicians for a book trailer video for that. Since the title I came up with when I was writing the first portions of it in 1980 has way too many other connections, I'm looking for something other than "Castles in the Sky" to call it, so if you'd like to read a bit and see what you come up with for a title, I'd be willing to take any suggestions. Once again, contact me for more details.....
Thank you for visiting.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Recharged and ready for the next step.......any day now.......
Here's the deal.
I took a week away from civilization for a much needed mental recharge.
I returned to find that we're down a cashier at my retail job, so I've suddenly gone from 20 hours for the week to 36 hours for the week, cutting back on how much time I have to deal with anything with the release of "The Tiger's Cub"....
There was a message from my publisher about re-editing the final corrections she did on the galleys, but she hasn't put it up on the site where I can "grab" it and do one final read through. Due to a glitch in a file I wanted to work on during vacation, I re-read "Night of the Tiger" and found several "corrections" that the editors had made on that one that I missed in 2002. I'm eager to go through "The Tiger's Cub" one more time to make sure NOTHING slips through on this one....
I have all kinds of new ideas on how to advertise, but need an advance copy of the book in my hot little hand to bring around to local bookstores for their buyers to be able to read before I can take that next step, but need the corrected galley first.....
In other words, as life usually goes, I'm in a "hurry up and wait" pattern. I'm very ready to get the final edit done and have a book in hand to advertise, but need to be patient.
I HATE being patient..... *grin*
I took a week away from civilization for a much needed mental recharge.
I returned to find that we're down a cashier at my retail job, so I've suddenly gone from 20 hours for the week to 36 hours for the week, cutting back on how much time I have to deal with anything with the release of "The Tiger's Cub"....
There was a message from my publisher about re-editing the final corrections she did on the galleys, but she hasn't put it up on the site where I can "grab" it and do one final read through. Due to a glitch in a file I wanted to work on during vacation, I re-read "Night of the Tiger" and found several "corrections" that the editors had made on that one that I missed in 2002. I'm eager to go through "The Tiger's Cub" one more time to make sure NOTHING slips through on this one....
I have all kinds of new ideas on how to advertise, but need an advance copy of the book in my hot little hand to bring around to local bookstores for their buyers to be able to read before I can take that next step, but need the corrected galley first.....
In other words, as life usually goes, I'm in a "hurry up and wait" pattern. I'm very ready to get the final edit done and have a book in hand to advertise, but need to be patient.
I HATE being patient..... *grin*
Monday, July 29, 2013
Recharging the mental batteries
I've been away from civilization for a week, spending some quality time with my husband in the woods of Northern Maine for our 30th Anniversary. I'll share more about how and where I recharge my batteries and where the publisher has taken me while I was away once I've had a couple of days back at work to get my mind out of loon songs and nothing to do but enjoy.
In the meantime, feel free to join me on Facebook for some photos of the recent trip.
https://www.facebook.com/Tiggette
And thank you for all the visits. It was thrilling to return and find I'm over the 300 visits mark in just over a month of blogging. I'm honored.
In the meantime, feel free to join me on Facebook for some photos of the recent trip.
https://www.facebook.com/Tiggette
And thank you for all the visits. It was thrilling to return and find I'm over the 300 visits mark in just over a month of blogging. I'm honored.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Advertising suggestions for new writers
Since I have no budget for advertising and my publisher doesn't provide any form of advertising, I've been studying ways to advertise for free. You Tube offers a great service in that they allow you to use material that's copyrighted by a third party as long as you publically state that there are third party copyrights involved - and you basically put up a video with the understanding that, if someone asks you to take it down because they don't like you using their photos, music, etc., you WILL take it down with no arguments.
Of course, other ways to get your work noticed involve little things such as free web sites (hit me up to get directed to a tutorial for HTML if you want to make your own site), Facebook "fan pages" (again, hit me up if you can't figure out how to do this on your own), and, naturally, blogging....
Speaking of which, if you're from a country other than the U.S. and you've come to visit, I want to thank you VERY much! I have a lot of friends in the U.S., so visitors from my home country are welcomed, but sort of expected. It's those of you who are coming to visit from places where I don't knowingly know anyone that make me feel truly honored.
So, here are the links to the You Tube book video trailers that I've put together to introduce the books I've written. If you have a suggestion on how to make these better, I'm all ears, and I'd gladly take a suggestion on a different program than Microsoft Movie Maker if it will allow me greater creative freedom on these projects - and if you're a musician who would like me to redo the visual with YOUR music included, I will gladly advertise your work along with mine!
Blessed be!
Night of the Tiger book video trailer
The Tiger's Cub book video trailer (Actually, this one was done first and should be considered "the rough draft".....*grin*)
Of course, other ways to get your work noticed involve little things such as free web sites (hit me up to get directed to a tutorial for HTML if you want to make your own site), Facebook "fan pages" (again, hit me up if you can't figure out how to do this on your own), and, naturally, blogging....
Speaking of which, if you're from a country other than the U.S. and you've come to visit, I want to thank you VERY much! I have a lot of friends in the U.S., so visitors from my home country are welcomed, but sort of expected. It's those of you who are coming to visit from places where I don't knowingly know anyone that make me feel truly honored.
So, here are the links to the You Tube book video trailers that I've put together to introduce the books I've written. If you have a suggestion on how to make these better, I'm all ears, and I'd gladly take a suggestion on a different program than Microsoft Movie Maker if it will allow me greater creative freedom on these projects - and if you're a musician who would like me to redo the visual with YOUR music included, I will gladly advertise your work along with mine!
Blessed be!
Night of the Tiger book video trailer
The Tiger's Cub book video trailer (Actually, this one was done first and should be considered "the rough draft".....*grin*)
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Remember that four letter word? Well, if I have to do it, you have to hear about it....*grin*
I'm back to reading through "The Tiger's Cub". Count along with me to see how many times it's been edited versus the writing time, and come to your own conclusion as to whether or not I'm a little obsessive about this.....
First, around the middle of the summer of 2011, a handsome young character introduced himself to me in a dream sequence. I kept trying to stifle him so that I could continue working on another piece in which the writing was happening really slowly, but he was persistent. I wrote the introduction and first two chapters in late 2011/early 2012. I did an edit, copied it onto my web site and formatted it properly.
Second came the month this past spring when I made the mistake of letting Chase take over. The rest of his story took 25 days to write, leaving me with bruises on my wrists from the edge of my laptop before he released me and said the story was done. As soon as I finished the writing, I ran the spellcheck/grammar check program, corrected the issues (with the exception of the corrections to the spoken words, some of which are meant to impart the dialect of the area), and then did a quick edit to make sure there weren't any obvious holes in the story.
Next, I checked the requested submission format, reformatted the story to specs, and read through again, correcting things that were ALL IN CAPS to italics or underline if the word needed to be specially stressed. I did another edit to make sure that I didn't miss anything in terms of the special format requests from the publisher.
The story went out to the publisher, got edited there and formatted into the galley that goes to the printing press, and then got returned to me for another edit and my approval of the cover and typeset used.
Five times the charm? I just got the galley proofs back with the corrections made, and am doing another edit to make sure all is perfect before it goes to print. This was about the time that I shirked my duty on the first book and ended up with an error that bugs the living heck out of my little OCD demon.
Of course, when I get my advanced copy, I'm also going to edit before I place an order for copies to use for book signings and, if anything jumps out at me, I'll still have one last chance for a correction before it goes into production....
So what do you think? Am I a little obsessive or not?
(and I apologize for not doing the advertising post. It's next....)
First, around the middle of the summer of 2011, a handsome young character introduced himself to me in a dream sequence. I kept trying to stifle him so that I could continue working on another piece in which the writing was happening really slowly, but he was persistent. I wrote the introduction and first two chapters in late 2011/early 2012. I did an edit, copied it onto my web site and formatted it properly.
Second came the month this past spring when I made the mistake of letting Chase take over. The rest of his story took 25 days to write, leaving me with bruises on my wrists from the edge of my laptop before he released me and said the story was done. As soon as I finished the writing, I ran the spellcheck/grammar check program, corrected the issues (with the exception of the corrections to the spoken words, some of which are meant to impart the dialect of the area), and then did a quick edit to make sure there weren't any obvious holes in the story.
Next, I checked the requested submission format, reformatted the story to specs, and read through again, correcting things that were ALL IN CAPS to italics or underline if the word needed to be specially stressed. I did another edit to make sure that I didn't miss anything in terms of the special format requests from the publisher.
The story went out to the publisher, got edited there and formatted into the galley that goes to the printing press, and then got returned to me for another edit and my approval of the cover and typeset used.
Five times the charm? I just got the galley proofs back with the corrections made, and am doing another edit to make sure all is perfect before it goes to print. This was about the time that I shirked my duty on the first book and ended up with an error that bugs the living heck out of my little OCD demon.
Of course, when I get my advanced copy, I'm also going to edit before I place an order for copies to use for book signings and, if anything jumps out at me, I'll still have one last chance for a correction before it goes into production....
So what do you think? Am I a little obsessive or not?
(and I apologize for not doing the advertising post. It's next....)
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Let's Make Some Magic!
I used to love a Benny Hill sketch in which he played a person who didn't speak English well. The tag line for the character, delivered with a German-type accent, was "Learning, learning all the time"...
I often find myself repeating that line in my own life.
One of the first things I learned about when I started writing was "copyright". When boiled down to the most simple terms possible, copyright exists when one creates something, whether one goes through legal channels to get a registered copyright or one just puts the words "copyright [this year] by [creator's name]" on an original product. It basically prevents someone from claiming your work as their own so that they can't make money off your sweat and tears. But as with all things, copyright isn't all black and white. There are some grey areas allowing "use without intent to claim the rights".
I ran into a bit of a copyright issue when it came to the covers for my books, as I wanted to use a model to represent a character on the cover for "The Tiger's Cub". Since most of the story revolves around the character of Chase, I learned a bit about search engines when I didn't know anyone to represent the handsome, green eyed young man who was whispering in my ear and showing me scenes from his life. "Night of the Tiger" had covers put together by artists the publisher knew, so there was never a copyright issue, since the art works were specifically created for the book on a computer screen. I wanted something a little more eye catching for the second book.
Frustrated at first when my search tags were bringing up results that, when I first was doing searches for my friend for the use of his older computer became tagged as "pink bunny slippers" (because I would type in something like "Parking regulations" and get boating laws), I walked away for a bit and went for a walk. Then I came back in and, although I don't remember exactly what tag words I put in, I suddenly found myself looking at handsome green-eyed men. One in particular must have made me make an interesting face, because my daughter came over to see what I was looking at....
The model's name is Theo Theodoridis, a Greek man who has a LOT of photos on the internet. In the particular photo I was looking at, he is partially reclined, looking into the camera with what can best be called "a Mona Lisa smile". My daughter looked over my shoulder at the screen, did a double take, and said "OMG! That's Kyle!"
Hearing my own thoughts as I stared at the photo, I had to do a little copyright research about being able to use the photo (and others) to represent my handsome trucker on a fan page on Facebook. The simple explanation of the "grey area" is this: If one posts a photo on a web page that is copyrighted by someone else, but ownership isn't clear enough to allow contact with the owner to request permission to use, it is acceptable to post the photo along with a link to the site where the photo was found and to name the person who appears there. Should someone request a "cease and desist" pertaining to the use, the person who has "creatively borrowed" the photo must take it down. I cheerfully put up some photos of Theo Theodoridis that evoked scenes from the book - and had fans drooling and sharing my fan page with their friends. A few other suggestions for Teresanna came in as the fans realized what I was doing. Jarah Mariano, a beautiful bathing suit model, was chosen to represent the character, bringing in some men to like the fan page for "Night of the Tiger'.
With his parents thus represented, the search for Chase continued.
Several suggestions, some that I agreed with and some that I didn't, came through from the fans who had read the post about what I was doing, and then, searching for something else entirely, I suddenly found him: the young male model who, like Theo, jumped off the page at me as the representative of Chase. In terms of what I was searching for, he was the "pink bunny slipper", as he had nothing whatever to do with the search tags I had put in, but when I looked at the green eyes, the dark hair that looked almost as if he had combed it by just running a hand through it on getting out of bed, the shape of the face - and that smile - I knew I had found my Chase for the book that was, at that point, just a couple of chapters based on a dream sequence I'd had over the summer of 2011.
The model's name is Dylan Griner, a young man who moved to Los Angeles from the mid-west to pursue a modeling career, which I found out while visiting web sites looking for other photos. I found several more photos and started a playful "contest", putting the various young models who had been suggested for Chase next to photos of my representative for Kyle and my representative for Teresanna, allowing the fans to "like" the one they thought looked most like he might be the offspring of Kyle and Teresanna.
Dylan Griner, my personal choice as the person who most looked like the real-life representative of the young man I was seeing in my mind's eye, won the contest, so on Facebook and within the introductory chapters of "The Tiger's Cub" I put up on The Northern Bard, he became the face of Chase Benton. Imagine my surprise when, among the other notifications I got one day on Facebook, there was the notification that Dylan had "liked" the fan page for "Night of the Tiger", where his photos were part of an album I had titled "Advance Photos for a New Tale"!
Thanking him for liking my page, I mentioned that, should he ever want me to remove his photos, all he had to do was ask. He responded, confirming that he was just getting started in his modeling career and was "flattered by the attention". It was the start of what has become a very interesting association with someone from the other side of the United States from where I live....
Fast forward to this past winter, when the characters from the historical romance I was trying to complete started to argue about where the next chapter should go. Writing on that piece, which wasn't exactly speeding along, faltered to the "struggle" stage, then progress stopped entirely. Going back to edit and try to find out where I had gone off the tracks, I found that I was putting myself to sleep trying to read it. Frustrated, I set it aside and, in an effort to get my creative juices flowing again, I started to look at the photos for the characters of Aloriah Starbird and Chase Benton that I had been collecting into the "advance photos" album for almost a year. Despite my internal argument that Chase and Aloriah wouldn't be old enough for the romance part of the tale until 2017, the characters were very pushy. They wanted their story told. I emailed my publisher about it, and she informed me that "chronological time doesn't matter in stories" and encouraged me to start working on it.
I started off on February 24th, focusing my thoughts on Chase and Aloriah by starting a separate fan page on Facebook for "The Tiger's Cub". I transferred the photos I had of Dylan Griner to the brand new page, tried again to find a plus-sized model to represent Aloriah, but still couldn't find anyone with the right look. Then I made the mistake of releasing my hold on the tight leash I had kept on Chase in my head.....
You may have heard the old adage about trying to close the barn door after the horse has escaped. Yup. That was what it was like to try to rein Chase back in once he gained his place in my head. When I was at home, my hands were on the keys of my laptop, madly typing to try to keep up with the images flooding my mind. When I had to go in to my part time job, Chase was almost constantly whispering in my ear, firming up the next scene before I got home. In the few moments that he wasn't driving the bus, I was in touch with a new young model in my area about having her get together with a photographer for some "in character" shots for Aloriah. (She owed me some favors, so she was willing to do a photo shoot with an amateur photographer friend of hers who wanted to practice doing shoots with models, as he had mostly been working with the natural beauty of Maine. They both did the shots for free and signed release forms that allowed me to use the resulting photos however I wish - remember that copyright thing? Yes, these two very nice Maine people, who actually have also been granted the rights to use the photos however THEY want, granted be carte blanche.) I sent a message to Dylan Griner about whether or not he was interested in being the cover model for the book, admitting that I'm not rolling in dough. He was willing, but unfortunately, the old copyright copperhead raised it's nasty head and bit me in the nether regions. We weren't able to get permission to use any of the photos from Facebook for the cover....
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
With the exception of the first three chapters of "The Tiger's Cub", the book, driven almost entirely by the intense, stubborn character of Chase, was written within 25 days. Editing went just as quickly, and before Easter, I had sent off the manuscript to the publisher, who asked the innocent enough question: "Do you have any thoughts on the cover?"
A contest among my friends and fans ensued, with a particularly sexy photo of Dylan (which one of my photographer friends in Massachusetts dubbed his "I'm sexy and I know it" pose and which a friend from Maine referred to as his "cougar bait" look) taking the biggest number of "likes". As mentioned above, when Dylan approached the photographer for permission for us to use his copyrighted work as the cover, I got my first "cease and desist" request, as I not only got refused for the use on the cover, but had to take down that super-sexy photo from everywhere I had ever posted it. Bummer. Back to the ole drawing board, and the loss of a photo that looked the most like the character who, at that point, had pretty much taken over every waking moment of my life.
Unable to find any of the photographers who had posted photos of Dylan who were willing to give permission for me to use his photos without me having to take out a major loan to cover their fees, I approached the photographer whose Photoshop skills had garnered the most "likes" during the cover contest. I sent her the photos of Elizza-Rayn Belle Louve - who I know personally as well as professionally - to see if any of the photos her friend, Kevin James, had taken would work for the cover. Jodie Burkett and I brainstormed, I sent her an RTF version of the tale to help her focus her creative energies, and, for the better part of two months, we were in constant email contact. All I can say about Jodie is that it takes a very special friend to go through that insanity with me without driving through the several hours of traffic that separate us to strangle me....
When none of the photos from the first photo shoot were quite what we wanted for the cover, I arranged with Elizza and her boyfriend, who could pass for Chase from the back, but who doesn't have the green eyes for a close up, to meet me in Portland, Maine - which is a harbor town with some streets that have that old world look of the photos from New Orleans I was looking at. We did a photo shoot on a damp evening (which works well for New Orleans, which is always damp because of being lower than sea level) on a nearly deserted street with me standing in as a photographer (and not a very good one, I might add). That photo shoot yielded a couple of nice photos - but not what Jodie thought we needed as a creative vision for the book cover. Some more brainstorming, some lessons for me on what I needed to try to get out of my models, and I tried again.
Again, some interesting photos, but not what Jodie was looking for.
By this point, the "horse trading" I was doing to pay Jodie for her work was escalating. The single author-signed copy of "The Tiger's Cub" that she had been promised for having the winning cover in the cover contest became two signed copies of "Night of the Tiger" and three of "The Tiger's Cub". I upped the ante with the possibility of a trip to Massachusetts from my end to hand deliver the books, as this woman has been a sister-at-heart since she was helping me through the pain and frustration while I was out of work with a back injury, but we've never met face-to-face. I'm very glad to be able to trade books for the work she did for me, but I still think she's getting the fuzzy end of the lollypop....
One more lesson about how to get the look on Elizza's face that Jodie thought would work best for the book (more about where I needed to be standing and what I, as a photographer, should be saying to her), one more trip to meet with Elizza (who also was getting the fuzzy end of the lollypop, as this was all above and beyond the favor she owed me, so I scraped together some cash to be able to give her), and EUREKA! We had the photo we needed for the cover! Bonus points that, as the photographer, I had the copyrights for the photo and had the model's signed permission to use it as I saw fit!!
Working in Mardi Gras colors to represent New Orleans (royal purple, emerald green and gold), putting in a tiger face from a stock picture (with no copyright issues) to represent Chase, and with the photo of Elizza to represent Aloriah, Jodie made a cover image that made me say "Oh YES!!"
The image was put into the specific format that the publisher requested and was sent off to join the manuscript. Then the waiting game began while the publisher cleared out some of the work that had snowed her under before I sent in my manuscript, had her editor go through my manuscript, added the other elements to the book cover that needed to happen before printing, and got the manuscript into the galley proofs, which show how the book will look when it goes through the printing process.
In short, between mid-February and the end of June, when the galleys made it back to me for editing, I felt as if I was visiting Hogwarts, making magic a part of my daily life while trying to maintain a normal, every day personality for the Muggles in my life who don't understand the writing world. While I wait for the corrections to be made to the galleys and the first copy of the book to roll off the printer for me to be able to give my final blessing before it goes into full-on production and is offered as both a paperback and ebook on the many sites that are selling it's predecessor, I still am having a little trouble living in the Muggle world again.
But then again, there IS the book about media marketing I'm reading to be able to learn new techniques to advertise a book without an advertising budget, keeping me in Chase's world and in contact with the handsome young model who looks like the real world version of my character.....
For the next post, I'll get deeper into some of the new things I'm learning about advertising once you have a book to promote.....
I often find myself repeating that line in my own life.
One of the first things I learned about when I started writing was "copyright". When boiled down to the most simple terms possible, copyright exists when one creates something, whether one goes through legal channels to get a registered copyright or one just puts the words "copyright [this year] by [creator's name]" on an original product. It basically prevents someone from claiming your work as their own so that they can't make money off your sweat and tears. But as with all things, copyright isn't all black and white. There are some grey areas allowing "use without intent to claim the rights".
I ran into a bit of a copyright issue when it came to the covers for my books, as I wanted to use a model to represent a character on the cover for "The Tiger's Cub". Since most of the story revolves around the character of Chase, I learned a bit about search engines when I didn't know anyone to represent the handsome, green eyed young man who was whispering in my ear and showing me scenes from his life. "Night of the Tiger" had covers put together by artists the publisher knew, so there was never a copyright issue, since the art works were specifically created for the book on a computer screen. I wanted something a little more eye catching for the second book.
Frustrated at first when my search tags were bringing up results that, when I first was doing searches for my friend for the use of his older computer became tagged as "pink bunny slippers" (because I would type in something like "Parking regulations" and get boating laws), I walked away for a bit and went for a walk. Then I came back in and, although I don't remember exactly what tag words I put in, I suddenly found myself looking at handsome green-eyed men. One in particular must have made me make an interesting face, because my daughter came over to see what I was looking at....
The model's name is Theo Theodoridis, a Greek man who has a LOT of photos on the internet. In the particular photo I was looking at, he is partially reclined, looking into the camera with what can best be called "a Mona Lisa smile". My daughter looked over my shoulder at the screen, did a double take, and said "OMG! That's Kyle!"
Hearing my own thoughts as I stared at the photo, I had to do a little copyright research about being able to use the photo (and others) to represent my handsome trucker on a fan page on Facebook. The simple explanation of the "grey area" is this: If one posts a photo on a web page that is copyrighted by someone else, but ownership isn't clear enough to allow contact with the owner to request permission to use, it is acceptable to post the photo along with a link to the site where the photo was found and to name the person who appears there. Should someone request a "cease and desist" pertaining to the use, the person who has "creatively borrowed" the photo must take it down. I cheerfully put up some photos of Theo Theodoridis that evoked scenes from the book - and had fans drooling and sharing my fan page with their friends. A few other suggestions for Teresanna came in as the fans realized what I was doing. Jarah Mariano, a beautiful bathing suit model, was chosen to represent the character, bringing in some men to like the fan page for "Night of the Tiger'.
With his parents thus represented, the search for Chase continued.
Several suggestions, some that I agreed with and some that I didn't, came through from the fans who had read the post about what I was doing, and then, searching for something else entirely, I suddenly found him: the young male model who, like Theo, jumped off the page at me as the representative of Chase. In terms of what I was searching for, he was the "pink bunny slipper", as he had nothing whatever to do with the search tags I had put in, but when I looked at the green eyes, the dark hair that looked almost as if he had combed it by just running a hand through it on getting out of bed, the shape of the face - and that smile - I knew I had found my Chase for the book that was, at that point, just a couple of chapters based on a dream sequence I'd had over the summer of 2011.
The model's name is Dylan Griner, a young man who moved to Los Angeles from the mid-west to pursue a modeling career, which I found out while visiting web sites looking for other photos. I found several more photos and started a playful "contest", putting the various young models who had been suggested for Chase next to photos of my representative for Kyle and my representative for Teresanna, allowing the fans to "like" the one they thought looked most like he might be the offspring of Kyle and Teresanna.
Dylan Griner, my personal choice as the person who most looked like the real-life representative of the young man I was seeing in my mind's eye, won the contest, so on Facebook and within the introductory chapters of "The Tiger's Cub" I put up on The Northern Bard, he became the face of Chase Benton. Imagine my surprise when, among the other notifications I got one day on Facebook, there was the notification that Dylan had "liked" the fan page for "Night of the Tiger", where his photos were part of an album I had titled "Advance Photos for a New Tale"!
Thanking him for liking my page, I mentioned that, should he ever want me to remove his photos, all he had to do was ask. He responded, confirming that he was just getting started in his modeling career and was "flattered by the attention". It was the start of what has become a very interesting association with someone from the other side of the United States from where I live....
Fast forward to this past winter, when the characters from the historical romance I was trying to complete started to argue about where the next chapter should go. Writing on that piece, which wasn't exactly speeding along, faltered to the "struggle" stage, then progress stopped entirely. Going back to edit and try to find out where I had gone off the tracks, I found that I was putting myself to sleep trying to read it. Frustrated, I set it aside and, in an effort to get my creative juices flowing again, I started to look at the photos for the characters of Aloriah Starbird and Chase Benton that I had been collecting into the "advance photos" album for almost a year. Despite my internal argument that Chase and Aloriah wouldn't be old enough for the romance part of the tale until 2017, the characters were very pushy. They wanted their story told. I emailed my publisher about it, and she informed me that "chronological time doesn't matter in stories" and encouraged me to start working on it.
I started off on February 24th, focusing my thoughts on Chase and Aloriah by starting a separate fan page on Facebook for "The Tiger's Cub". I transferred the photos I had of Dylan Griner to the brand new page, tried again to find a plus-sized model to represent Aloriah, but still couldn't find anyone with the right look. Then I made the mistake of releasing my hold on the tight leash I had kept on Chase in my head.....
You may have heard the old adage about trying to close the barn door after the horse has escaped. Yup. That was what it was like to try to rein Chase back in once he gained his place in my head. When I was at home, my hands were on the keys of my laptop, madly typing to try to keep up with the images flooding my mind. When I had to go in to my part time job, Chase was almost constantly whispering in my ear, firming up the next scene before I got home. In the few moments that he wasn't driving the bus, I was in touch with a new young model in my area about having her get together with a photographer for some "in character" shots for Aloriah. (She owed me some favors, so she was willing to do a photo shoot with an amateur photographer friend of hers who wanted to practice doing shoots with models, as he had mostly been working with the natural beauty of Maine. They both did the shots for free and signed release forms that allowed me to use the resulting photos however I wish - remember that copyright thing? Yes, these two very nice Maine people, who actually have also been granted the rights to use the photos however THEY want, granted be carte blanche.) I sent a message to Dylan Griner about whether or not he was interested in being the cover model for the book, admitting that I'm not rolling in dough. He was willing, but unfortunately, the old copyright copperhead raised it's nasty head and bit me in the nether regions. We weren't able to get permission to use any of the photos from Facebook for the cover....
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
With the exception of the first three chapters of "The Tiger's Cub", the book, driven almost entirely by the intense, stubborn character of Chase, was written within 25 days. Editing went just as quickly, and before Easter, I had sent off the manuscript to the publisher, who asked the innocent enough question: "Do you have any thoughts on the cover?"
A contest among my friends and fans ensued, with a particularly sexy photo of Dylan (which one of my photographer friends in Massachusetts dubbed his "I'm sexy and I know it" pose and which a friend from Maine referred to as his "cougar bait" look) taking the biggest number of "likes". As mentioned above, when Dylan approached the photographer for permission for us to use his copyrighted work as the cover, I got my first "cease and desist" request, as I not only got refused for the use on the cover, but had to take down that super-sexy photo from everywhere I had ever posted it. Bummer. Back to the ole drawing board, and the loss of a photo that looked the most like the character who, at that point, had pretty much taken over every waking moment of my life.
Unable to find any of the photographers who had posted photos of Dylan who were willing to give permission for me to use his photos without me having to take out a major loan to cover their fees, I approached the photographer whose Photoshop skills had garnered the most "likes" during the cover contest. I sent her the photos of Elizza-Rayn Belle Louve - who I know personally as well as professionally - to see if any of the photos her friend, Kevin James, had taken would work for the cover. Jodie Burkett and I brainstormed, I sent her an RTF version of the tale to help her focus her creative energies, and, for the better part of two months, we were in constant email contact. All I can say about Jodie is that it takes a very special friend to go through that insanity with me without driving through the several hours of traffic that separate us to strangle me....
When none of the photos from the first photo shoot were quite what we wanted for the cover, I arranged with Elizza and her boyfriend, who could pass for Chase from the back, but who doesn't have the green eyes for a close up, to meet me in Portland, Maine - which is a harbor town with some streets that have that old world look of the photos from New Orleans I was looking at. We did a photo shoot on a damp evening (which works well for New Orleans, which is always damp because of being lower than sea level) on a nearly deserted street with me standing in as a photographer (and not a very good one, I might add). That photo shoot yielded a couple of nice photos - but not what Jodie thought we needed as a creative vision for the book cover. Some more brainstorming, some lessons for me on what I needed to try to get out of my models, and I tried again.
Again, some interesting photos, but not what Jodie was looking for.
By this point, the "horse trading" I was doing to pay Jodie for her work was escalating. The single author-signed copy of "The Tiger's Cub" that she had been promised for having the winning cover in the cover contest became two signed copies of "Night of the Tiger" and three of "The Tiger's Cub". I upped the ante with the possibility of a trip to Massachusetts from my end to hand deliver the books, as this woman has been a sister-at-heart since she was helping me through the pain and frustration while I was out of work with a back injury, but we've never met face-to-face. I'm very glad to be able to trade books for the work she did for me, but I still think she's getting the fuzzy end of the lollypop....
One more lesson about how to get the look on Elizza's face that Jodie thought would work best for the book (more about where I needed to be standing and what I, as a photographer, should be saying to her), one more trip to meet with Elizza (who also was getting the fuzzy end of the lollypop, as this was all above and beyond the favor she owed me, so I scraped together some cash to be able to give her), and EUREKA! We had the photo we needed for the cover! Bonus points that, as the photographer, I had the copyrights for the photo and had the model's signed permission to use it as I saw fit!!
Working in Mardi Gras colors to represent New Orleans (royal purple, emerald green and gold), putting in a tiger face from a stock picture (with no copyright issues) to represent Chase, and with the photo of Elizza to represent Aloriah, Jodie made a cover image that made me say "Oh YES!!"
The image was put into the specific format that the publisher requested and was sent off to join the manuscript. Then the waiting game began while the publisher cleared out some of the work that had snowed her under before I sent in my manuscript, had her editor go through my manuscript, added the other elements to the book cover that needed to happen before printing, and got the manuscript into the galley proofs, which show how the book will look when it goes through the printing process.
In short, between mid-February and the end of June, when the galleys made it back to me for editing, I felt as if I was visiting Hogwarts, making magic a part of my daily life while trying to maintain a normal, every day personality for the Muggles in my life who don't understand the writing world. While I wait for the corrections to be made to the galleys and the first copy of the book to roll off the printer for me to be able to give my final blessing before it goes into full-on production and is offered as both a paperback and ebook on the many sites that are selling it's predecessor, I still am having a little trouble living in the Muggle world again.
But then again, there IS the book about media marketing I'm reading to be able to learn new techniques to advertise a book without an advertising budget, keeping me in Chase's world and in contact with the handsome young model who looks like the real world version of my character.....
For the next post, I'll get deeper into some of the new things I'm learning about advertising once you have a book to promote.....
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
The ghosts in the machine.....
Here is how life is currently happening for me:
My children are grown and out of the house, so I'm only working part time - but it's retail, so I'm working strange hours.
I have one book lounging about, selling slowly but steadily, on a few internet sites. I'm maintaining a fan site on Facebook.
I have a second book in the hands of my publisher, with a release date set. I'm reading about Media Marketing. I'm working on some of the ideas from the book, currently writing a blog and putting together a book video trailer to advertise it like a movie release, and it, too, has a Facebook page to maintain.
I'm trying to decide which of two nearly finished tales should be the next piece I concentrate on. I'm leaning toward finishing the sci-fi/fantasy story, as it's the story that has been in the drawer longest, has all the notes gathered into one space, and has both a beginning and an end, but a few gaps in the middle. But the voices of the characters in the historical romance are insisting on speaking as well.
So I'm trying to manage my time. I do my chores around the house while keeping track of what time I need to get ready for work. When I take breaks, I'm at the computer, working on the video or this blog. On my days off, I'm gathering all the notebooks, scraps of paper, etc. that have the sci-fi/fantasy tale scribbled through and am gathering them into proper order. The ghostly voices of my characters for the book have started to whisper, both in groups among themselves and as single entities, and I suspect that they will be stepping forward as soon as begin to edit. They will encourage me, guide me, and eventually take me over to write the missing parts.
Then I'll be back to editing, selling, advertising......
You know - the things we've been discussing in this blog.
My children are grown and out of the house, so I'm only working part time - but it's retail, so I'm working strange hours.
I have one book lounging about, selling slowly but steadily, on a few internet sites. I'm maintaining a fan site on Facebook.
I have a second book in the hands of my publisher, with a release date set. I'm reading about Media Marketing. I'm working on some of the ideas from the book, currently writing a blog and putting together a book video trailer to advertise it like a movie release, and it, too, has a Facebook page to maintain.
I'm trying to decide which of two nearly finished tales should be the next piece I concentrate on. I'm leaning toward finishing the sci-fi/fantasy story, as it's the story that has been in the drawer longest, has all the notes gathered into one space, and has both a beginning and an end, but a few gaps in the middle. But the voices of the characters in the historical romance are insisting on speaking as well.
So I'm trying to manage my time. I do my chores around the house while keeping track of what time I need to get ready for work. When I take breaks, I'm at the computer, working on the video or this blog. On my days off, I'm gathering all the notebooks, scraps of paper, etc. that have the sci-fi/fantasy tale scribbled through and am gathering them into proper order. The ghostly voices of my characters for the book have started to whisper, both in groups among themselves and as single entities, and I suspect that they will be stepping forward as soon as begin to edit. They will encourage me, guide me, and eventually take me over to write the missing parts.
Then I'll be back to editing, selling, advertising......
You know - the things we've been discussing in this blog.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Life on the block - the writer's block, that is......
When trying to decide what to consider next in this blog, my mind started going over a lot of things I've read in the past. You see, when I stated in an earlier posts that I read - a LOT - I neglected to mention exactly what I read. I could start a list here of genres, authors, etc., but for the sake of trying to keep these posts short and informative, let me just say that, if it doesn't move out of my way, I'll read it...
This includes parts of books that a lot of people will either skim over or skip entirely: the preface (usually written by the author), an introduction, or a foreward (the latter two often written by an associate of the author, but not always). My reasoning behind this behavior is quite simple: The publisher or author thought that information had to be included in the book for a reason, so if it was important enough to be included, it should be important for me to read it.
I've learned a LOT about my favorite stories and my favorite authors by reading these sections of the books. It's the kind of information that I've been trying to share here for others who want to write, but who, like many of my friends and relatives, don't take the time to read the preface, the introduction or the foreward before leaping into the deep water of the first page of a book with both feet.
One of the things that is mentioned frequently is writer's block, that ever-popular bane of a writer's existence, when the muse who has been whispering in the writer's ear suddenly takes a trip to the Caribbean, leaving the writer staring at a page for hours, days, weeks or even months with no idea of where to go from here. A frequent question from the people I've been talking to about writing is this: "What do you do when you hit a block?"
My common answer is this: "I get a bigger sledge hammer. Or sometimes it's a situation that requires dynamite."
Oh yeah. THAT'S a popular answer for the person who has seriously hit a major work blockage and has been struggling to continue with a story for a long time! I usually get the stink eye for several minutes while I'm coming up with a real solution for them to try. But what do I really do?
I usually hit that brick wall at a point when the story has gone somewhat off the beaten path, and I've followed the wrong character into a quagmire. Sometimes, I get away from my writing space and do some mindless chores, letting the character I've been following stew in his/her own juices for a bit. After doing some dishes, or running a load of laundry, or scrubbing out a toilet, the inspiration strikes and I can return fairly quickly to the tale, sometimes backtracking just a few feet to where the trail becomes solid again. Sometimes, though, removing myself from the quicksand that the character led me into requires resorting to a four-letter word that we've already discussed: it's time to edit!
When reading my work from the beginning, there is often an "a-ha" moment, when I see the spot where I was led off the proper trail and down some dead-end footpath. If I change a word here and a sentence there, I'm saved and can continue writing the tale, often with no further "hick-ups". Sometimes, however, I find myself following the same path and getting bogged back down in the same spot, where the mosquitos are the size of small cars, and the quicksand threatens to suck me down into a world where I'll never write again.
The latter scenario is when I put the story into a drawer and walk away quickly, pretending I never saw that world of lost souls. Eventually, the voices from that tale come back around, so I pull it out, re-edit, and continue on my merry way. I've almost never had a story that dried out completely, and the one that comes to mind as one of the few that did wasn't a total loss. One of the characters from it drank a special formula and became a character in another story, with a sexier physique and a more exciting story to tell.
This includes parts of books that a lot of people will either skim over or skip entirely: the preface (usually written by the author), an introduction, or a foreward (the latter two often written by an associate of the author, but not always). My reasoning behind this behavior is quite simple: The publisher or author thought that information had to be included in the book for a reason, so if it was important enough to be included, it should be important for me to read it.
I've learned a LOT about my favorite stories and my favorite authors by reading these sections of the books. It's the kind of information that I've been trying to share here for others who want to write, but who, like many of my friends and relatives, don't take the time to read the preface, the introduction or the foreward before leaping into the deep water of the first page of a book with both feet.
One of the things that is mentioned frequently is writer's block, that ever-popular bane of a writer's existence, when the muse who has been whispering in the writer's ear suddenly takes a trip to the Caribbean, leaving the writer staring at a page for hours, days, weeks or even months with no idea of where to go from here. A frequent question from the people I've been talking to about writing is this: "What do you do when you hit a block?"
My common answer is this: "I get a bigger sledge hammer. Or sometimes it's a situation that requires dynamite."
Oh yeah. THAT'S a popular answer for the person who has seriously hit a major work blockage and has been struggling to continue with a story for a long time! I usually get the stink eye for several minutes while I'm coming up with a real solution for them to try. But what do I really do?
I usually hit that brick wall at a point when the story has gone somewhat off the beaten path, and I've followed the wrong character into a quagmire. Sometimes, I get away from my writing space and do some mindless chores, letting the character I've been following stew in his/her own juices for a bit. After doing some dishes, or running a load of laundry, or scrubbing out a toilet, the inspiration strikes and I can return fairly quickly to the tale, sometimes backtracking just a few feet to where the trail becomes solid again. Sometimes, though, removing myself from the quicksand that the character led me into requires resorting to a four-letter word that we've already discussed: it's time to edit!
When reading my work from the beginning, there is often an "a-ha" moment, when I see the spot where I was led off the proper trail and down some dead-end footpath. If I change a word here and a sentence there, I'm saved and can continue writing the tale, often with no further "hick-ups". Sometimes, however, I find myself following the same path and getting bogged back down in the same spot, where the mosquitos are the size of small cars, and the quicksand threatens to suck me down into a world where I'll never write again.
The latter scenario is when I put the story into a drawer and walk away quickly, pretending I never saw that world of lost souls. Eventually, the voices from that tale come back around, so I pull it out, re-edit, and continue on my merry way. I've almost never had a story that dried out completely, and the one that comes to mind as one of the few that did wasn't a total loss. One of the characters from it drank a special formula and became a character in another story, with a sexier physique and a more exciting story to tell.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
In my own little corner, in my own little.....straitjacket?
We've all heard those sayings about creative people, right? Those old proverbs that get repeated generation to generation. One of the first ones I remember hearing was this one:
"An artist must suffer for his art."
When I first heard this one, I didn't understand it. Why would someone purposefully suffer in order to be able to draw, or paint, or put words together to make poems, stories, novels? In the books I was reading at the time, the typical "Dick and Jane" stories, Dr. Seuss, comic strips by Charles Schulz, none of the characters seemed to have any particular suffering behind them unless you counted poor Charlie Brown, for whom nothing ever seemed to go quite right. Of course, I still thought in those days that I was "normal", especially after seeing Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella". After all, when she sang "In My Own Little Corner", Cinderella aptly described what play time was like for me, even though I didn't have to be in my own little corner to be able to pretend that I was someone or something else, living an adventure instead of just being quiet so that my little brother could have a nap.
I started learning about suffering when I started going to school, when I had to pull back into myself in order to be accepted by my peers. If I let my imagination go too much when playing during recess, creating extravagant stories to go with the games they wanted to play, I was ostracized for being "different". Keeping the scenes and characters who inhabited my head locked up made them fight harder to be set free, making me act even stranger than when I was telling people about what my imagination was showing me. There were a few friends who appreciated my special gift and allowed me to release some of the stories into play, but by the time one of my older sisters was given a diary to put her thoughts and secrets into, I was on the verge of needing to be committed to a rubber room.
I had an epiphany. I needed to buy a notebook/diary and start putting some of my thoughts into it. But first, I needed to earn some money, because money was always tight at my house, so my parents couldn't afford to get me a notebook on a whim...and that was about when I found this quote in a book on the bookmobile that came to our small town during the summer (we didn't have a town library) while looking at paintings by great artists:
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not." - Pablo Picasso
I asked myself "why not", and started going around to the neighbors, looking for odd jobs to do. I mowed lawns for a couple of bucks per mow. I picked peas for the price of ten cents a bushel. I basically hired my young self out to any neighbor who needed something done that they were unable - or unwilling - to do themselves, and although I was never rich, I always had enough to get what I really needed or wanted. When I didn't need a new notebook or the pens and pencils to write my thoughts in it, I used my earnings for embroidery floss and yarn, as my Memere was trying to teach me "all those things that girls need to know how to do", so I was learning to knit, crochet, embroider, and sew. When I had enough supplies for whatever Memere and I were doing, I would occasionally treat my friends to the penny candy, as a single thin dime, if properly spent, would fill up a small bag with enough sugary goodness to make one sick if all eaten in a single afternoon.
Of course, I also was learning a work ethic in those early years, as the people who hired me would pay me at the end of the job, so if I did a poor job, they would dock my pay accordingly. I learned to do a good job if I wanted good pay, and if I did the job well enough to have my "employer" give me an additional tip...THAT would encourage me to work harder and do an even better job. I have a strong suspicion that this job ethic is why I also have the attitude that I do toward writing.
I initially write something simply because I've learned over the years that it does me no good at all to try to keep everything stuffed in the dark recesses of my brain. If I overstuff my brain pan, I'll eventually be getting myself stuffed into a padded cell, because there is a finite amount of brain space that can be used for keeping all the things up there that I need to be able to access. I edit my material because, when the voices of the characters stop pushing the story along, I need to confirm whether this is something that should be put into the proper format and sent off to a publisher, or whether this is something that is incomplete and should be tucked into a drawer for a little while. And last but not least, should the piece I've written be good enough to mean I get paid for doing it, I'm willing to accept what the publisher offers, as they are the "employer" who expects me to do a certain job a certain way, so they should be able to pay me what they think I've earned.
As to that "suffering" thing? I think I now understand it. My books would be pretty boring if my only experience was the good in life. At this stage in my life, I've lost many of the people in my life who encouraged me to become the person that I am. There are holes in my heart where these people lived, and those losses sometimes come into my work as part of a character's past. I now understand Charlie Brown, who was different from his friends and was ostracized as I was. I go into life with my eyes wide open, seeing all the horrible things that happen in life, absorbing those experiences whether they happen directly to me or not, and I later release them back into the world as part of one of my tales.
And the quote that now seems to have become a part of me is from one of the most famous "suffering artists" of all, Vincent Van Gogh:
"If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
The voice that used to tell me I couldn't write is now silenced. The only voices I hear are the characters within my head who are whispering parts of their stories to me, which I now put into files on my computer until such time as I'm working on that character's tale. The imagination that I used to have to hide has become my means of having a little spending money tucked away to be able to buy special treats for those I care about.....
"An artist must suffer for his art."
When I first heard this one, I didn't understand it. Why would someone purposefully suffer in order to be able to draw, or paint, or put words together to make poems, stories, novels? In the books I was reading at the time, the typical "Dick and Jane" stories, Dr. Seuss, comic strips by Charles Schulz, none of the characters seemed to have any particular suffering behind them unless you counted poor Charlie Brown, for whom nothing ever seemed to go quite right. Of course, I still thought in those days that I was "normal", especially after seeing Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella". After all, when she sang "In My Own Little Corner", Cinderella aptly described what play time was like for me, even though I didn't have to be in my own little corner to be able to pretend that I was someone or something else, living an adventure instead of just being quiet so that my little brother could have a nap.
I started learning about suffering when I started going to school, when I had to pull back into myself in order to be accepted by my peers. If I let my imagination go too much when playing during recess, creating extravagant stories to go with the games they wanted to play, I was ostracized for being "different". Keeping the scenes and characters who inhabited my head locked up made them fight harder to be set free, making me act even stranger than when I was telling people about what my imagination was showing me. There were a few friends who appreciated my special gift and allowed me to release some of the stories into play, but by the time one of my older sisters was given a diary to put her thoughts and secrets into, I was on the verge of needing to be committed to a rubber room.
I had an epiphany. I needed to buy a notebook/diary and start putting some of my thoughts into it. But first, I needed to earn some money, because money was always tight at my house, so my parents couldn't afford to get me a notebook on a whim...and that was about when I found this quote in a book on the bookmobile that came to our small town during the summer (we didn't have a town library) while looking at paintings by great artists:
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not." - Pablo Picasso
I asked myself "why not", and started going around to the neighbors, looking for odd jobs to do. I mowed lawns for a couple of bucks per mow. I picked peas for the price of ten cents a bushel. I basically hired my young self out to any neighbor who needed something done that they were unable - or unwilling - to do themselves, and although I was never rich, I always had enough to get what I really needed or wanted. When I didn't need a new notebook or the pens and pencils to write my thoughts in it, I used my earnings for embroidery floss and yarn, as my Memere was trying to teach me "all those things that girls need to know how to do", so I was learning to knit, crochet, embroider, and sew. When I had enough supplies for whatever Memere and I were doing, I would occasionally treat my friends to the penny candy, as a single thin dime, if properly spent, would fill up a small bag with enough sugary goodness to make one sick if all eaten in a single afternoon.
Of course, I also was learning a work ethic in those early years, as the people who hired me would pay me at the end of the job, so if I did a poor job, they would dock my pay accordingly. I learned to do a good job if I wanted good pay, and if I did the job well enough to have my "employer" give me an additional tip...THAT would encourage me to work harder and do an even better job. I have a strong suspicion that this job ethic is why I also have the attitude that I do toward writing.
I initially write something simply because I've learned over the years that it does me no good at all to try to keep everything stuffed in the dark recesses of my brain. If I overstuff my brain pan, I'll eventually be getting myself stuffed into a padded cell, because there is a finite amount of brain space that can be used for keeping all the things up there that I need to be able to access. I edit my material because, when the voices of the characters stop pushing the story along, I need to confirm whether this is something that should be put into the proper format and sent off to a publisher, or whether this is something that is incomplete and should be tucked into a drawer for a little while. And last but not least, should the piece I've written be good enough to mean I get paid for doing it, I'm willing to accept what the publisher offers, as they are the "employer" who expects me to do a certain job a certain way, so they should be able to pay me what they think I've earned.
As to that "suffering" thing? I think I now understand it. My books would be pretty boring if my only experience was the good in life. At this stage in my life, I've lost many of the people in my life who encouraged me to become the person that I am. There are holes in my heart where these people lived, and those losses sometimes come into my work as part of a character's past. I now understand Charlie Brown, who was different from his friends and was ostracized as I was. I go into life with my eyes wide open, seeing all the horrible things that happen in life, absorbing those experiences whether they happen directly to me or not, and I later release them back into the world as part of one of my tales.
And the quote that now seems to have become a part of me is from one of the most famous "suffering artists" of all, Vincent Van Gogh:
"If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
The voice that used to tell me I couldn't write is now silenced. The only voices I hear are the characters within my head who are whispering parts of their stories to me, which I now put into files on my computer until such time as I'm working on that character's tale. The imagination that I used to have to hide has become my means of having a little spending money tucked away to be able to buy special treats for those I care about.....
Thursday, July 4, 2013
That four-letter cuss word: EDIT
By special request, I'm going to try to write about the part of a writer's life that is a necessary evil: that word EDIT. (With apologies to those who read this before I tried to put in a single word - and accidentally wiped out the blog entry when, for some reason, the program decided I didn't want to just edit, but to start over. This is the most radical way to edit something....*sigh*)
When I sit down to try to edit my work, this quote always comes to mind: “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” - Dr. Seuss. The good Dr. reminds me that I need to make sure that my work doesn't have extra words that it doesn't need to tell the story.
The first step in editing for me is to remind myself how the publisher wants the submission to appear. For instance, Write Words Inc., the current publisher I work with, likes the manuscript as follows: "Manuscripts should be single spaced, without any extra lines between paragraphs." (They also prefer that new paragraphs not be indented on the first line.) Since I've been conditioned by creative writing courses to do my writing as double spaced with indented paragraphs, I start by doing a "select all" and reformatting the entire piece. It boggles my eyes to read the story this way, but since it is how the editor that works for the publisher will see it, I need to see it this way.
The second step, while the computer is reformatting, is to take myself away from the piece and get into the proper mindset. I try to forget who these characters are, what happens in the story, and approach the piece like it's my first time reading a new author. I tend to see more mistakes this way.
I also tend to read out loud anything that strikes me as odd. If my husband is in the room, he'll either note something that needs to change or state "That sounded good." While reading aloud, I return to what I learned in the Drama Club in high school about punctuation: "A comma is a pause, a semi-colon is a longer pause, a colon adds a side note, and a period is a full stop." If I'm out of breath at the end of a sentence, punctuation needs to be corrected. (This also helps me to locate paragraphs that are one long run-on sentence.)
Once the RTF file goes off to the publisher and is returned to me in the print galley - the printing proof that shows how it's going to look in book form - I have to sit down and edit it again, just to make sure that there isn't anything that the editor missed. For instance, from my current work, we have this line: "Chase had intended to just end the show there, but when he turned his back to his father, Kyle flipped shirt of his uniform inside out, changing the color from white to black, then pulled out a ninja mask and pulled it on."
Anyone notice the mistake?
This line was written in 2011, was put up on my web site, and had been edited past at least twice. It was in the galley proof that I finally noticed and made this correction: "Chase had intended to just end the show there, but when he turned his back to his father, Kyle flipped THE shirt of his uniform inside out, changing the color from white to black, then pulled out a ninja mask and pulled it on."
Something I learned from my first book was that, even though it's been edited repeatedly and you think all is well, you really have to put yourself in the proper mindset before editing it again. "Night of the Tiger" had been published as an ebook for several years, had been put out as a limited edition paperback, and was about to be offered as a Print On Demand paperback by my publisher. I had been sent a galley proof to edit, and I corrected all the things that had been pointed out by other readers, but missed this sentence: "Tanya’s face went ghostly pale, but she looked directly into Kyle’s eyes, waiting for him to blink just once, then she waited for him to turn away in hatred."
This line occurs in Chapter Eighteen, when Tanya has been severely injured in a motorcycle accident. She has a tube down her throat because of a collapsed lung and can't speak, so the doctors and her love interest have devised a blink system for her to answer "yes" and "no" questions. (One blink for "yes" and two for "no".) Kyle has just asked her if her real name is Teresanna Montesallo, a name that Kyle just heard a man say in the hospital lobby when the belligerent man was insisting his step-daughter was brought to this hospital. (Kyle has also been shown a police report about a young woman who witnessed the beating death of her mother, then disappeared seven years prior.) She has to admit to the man she's fallen in love with that she has been lying to him, and the original line was written like this: "Tanya's face went ghostly pale, but she looked directly into Kyle's eyes to blink just once, staring up at Kyle in utter misery while she waited for him to turn away in hatred."
Had I been paying attention and caught the change in the galley before the book went to print, I would have pointed out that KYLE wasn't the one with a tube down his throat, blinking responses to questions. But since I missed it and only found it due to a letter from a reader who pointed it out, the publisher has refused to correct the line since the book is already in print.
Does this screwed up scene reflect back on the publisher and her editor? Oh, heck, no! It comes back on me because all the readers think I wrote it that way on purpose!
So, when you edit a story, poem, or what have you, make sure you're paying CLOSE attention to what you're reading. I currently take the galleys and get them printed out, then go over each page carefully, marking all gafs to report for correction, but also making sure that the editor hasn't changed things so that they make no sense. It's not the publisher and the editor that this reflects on, it's YOU as a writer!
Hope this helps you to edit your work in the right frame of mind. If not, try to get a friend or colleague to read it for you and give constructive criticism. It's better to be too picky rather than send in sloppy work that will get you rejected.
When I sit down to try to edit my work, this quote always comes to mind: “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” - Dr. Seuss. The good Dr. reminds me that I need to make sure that my work doesn't have extra words that it doesn't need to tell the story.
The first step in editing for me is to remind myself how the publisher wants the submission to appear. For instance, Write Words Inc., the current publisher I work with, likes the manuscript as follows: "Manuscripts should be single spaced, without any extra lines between paragraphs." (They also prefer that new paragraphs not be indented on the first line.) Since I've been conditioned by creative writing courses to do my writing as double spaced with indented paragraphs, I start by doing a "select all" and reformatting the entire piece. It boggles my eyes to read the story this way, but since it is how the editor that works for the publisher will see it, I need to see it this way.
The second step, while the computer is reformatting, is to take myself away from the piece and get into the proper mindset. I try to forget who these characters are, what happens in the story, and approach the piece like it's my first time reading a new author. I tend to see more mistakes this way.
I also tend to read out loud anything that strikes me as odd. If my husband is in the room, he'll either note something that needs to change or state "That sounded good." While reading aloud, I return to what I learned in the Drama Club in high school about punctuation: "A comma is a pause, a semi-colon is a longer pause, a colon adds a side note, and a period is a full stop." If I'm out of breath at the end of a sentence, punctuation needs to be corrected. (This also helps me to locate paragraphs that are one long run-on sentence.)
Once the RTF file goes off to the publisher and is returned to me in the print galley - the printing proof that shows how it's going to look in book form - I have to sit down and edit it again, just to make sure that there isn't anything that the editor missed. For instance, from my current work, we have this line: "Chase had intended to just end the show there, but when he turned his back to his father, Kyle flipped shirt of his uniform inside out, changing the color from white to black, then pulled out a ninja mask and pulled it on."
Anyone notice the mistake?
This line was written in 2011, was put up on my web site, and had been edited past at least twice. It was in the galley proof that I finally noticed and made this correction: "Chase had intended to just end the show there, but when he turned his back to his father, Kyle flipped THE shirt of his uniform inside out, changing the color from white to black, then pulled out a ninja mask and pulled it on."
Something I learned from my first book was that, even though it's been edited repeatedly and you think all is well, you really have to put yourself in the proper mindset before editing it again. "Night of the Tiger" had been published as an ebook for several years, had been put out as a limited edition paperback, and was about to be offered as a Print On Demand paperback by my publisher. I had been sent a galley proof to edit, and I corrected all the things that had been pointed out by other readers, but missed this sentence: "Tanya’s face went ghostly pale, but she looked directly into Kyle’s eyes, waiting for him to blink just once, then she waited for him to turn away in hatred."
This line occurs in Chapter Eighteen, when Tanya has been severely injured in a motorcycle accident. She has a tube down her throat because of a collapsed lung and can't speak, so the doctors and her love interest have devised a blink system for her to answer "yes" and "no" questions. (One blink for "yes" and two for "no".) Kyle has just asked her if her real name is Teresanna Montesallo, a name that Kyle just heard a man say in the hospital lobby when the belligerent man was insisting his step-daughter was brought to this hospital. (Kyle has also been shown a police report about a young woman who witnessed the beating death of her mother, then disappeared seven years prior.) She has to admit to the man she's fallen in love with that she has been lying to him, and the original line was written like this: "Tanya's face went ghostly pale, but she looked directly into Kyle's eyes to blink just once, staring up at Kyle in utter misery while she waited for him to turn away in hatred."
Had I been paying attention and caught the change in the galley before the book went to print, I would have pointed out that KYLE wasn't the one with a tube down his throat, blinking responses to questions. But since I missed it and only found it due to a letter from a reader who pointed it out, the publisher has refused to correct the line since the book is already in print.
Does this screwed up scene reflect back on the publisher and her editor? Oh, heck, no! It comes back on me because all the readers think I wrote it that way on purpose!
So, when you edit a story, poem, or what have you, make sure you're paying CLOSE attention to what you're reading. I currently take the galleys and get them printed out, then go over each page carefully, marking all gafs to report for correction, but also making sure that the editor hasn't changed things so that they make no sense. It's not the publisher and the editor that this reflects on, it's YOU as a writer!
Hope this helps you to edit your work in the right frame of mind. If not, try to get a friend or colleague to read it for you and give constructive criticism. It's better to be too picky rather than send in sloppy work that will get you rejected.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
And now, a word from our sponsors....
This isn't an official blog. It's just an advertisement....
The galley (proofs) for "The Tiger's Cub" have been received. The book layout had been edited and corrections sent to the publisher. The cover layout has been edited and the color corrected to Mardi Gras colors. All is "go" for the November 1st release.
Now we return you to your regularly scheduled program....
The galley (proofs) for "The Tiger's Cub" have been received. The book layout had been edited and corrections sent to the publisher. The cover layout has been edited and the color corrected to Mardi Gras colors. All is "go" for the November 1st release.
Now we return you to your regularly scheduled program....
The Day I Met Siskel and Ebert Via Snail Mail
I don't remember who was the first person to tell me this, but there are two words that wanna-be writers need to always remember: Writer's Market.
If you've never seen this really thick book anywhere, the Writer's Market is a yearly publication that is tremendously helpful if you're looking for a publisher for your work. It lists literally thousands of publishing houses broken down according to what you've written, whether it be a book, a short story, a play...and each publisher lists such things as addresses, names in the company for you to contact, what they publish, how to submit....
In short, the Writer's Market could probably be a writer's bible for those of us who can't afford to get an agent to sell our work for us.
In my own personal collection, I have two copies of this "bible" - one from 1989, when I was trying to decide whether the Playgirl story was going to be followed up with some other work, and one from 1997, when I began to actively seek out a market for my nearly completed romance novel. Scraps of paper in the 1997 edition mark a couple of the "big name" publishers who had published books similar to my story. Somewhere in one of the two filing cabinets in my "home office" where I keep all the things I consider to be important are the rejection letters from those publishers I contacted. I keep such things as a reminder that, while I've mostly seen complementary reviews on the internet from the first novel, there are the people I think of as "The Siskel and Eberts of the Publishing World" who read my cover letter and nothing else before rejecting my work. When I start to feel my ego getting the better of me, I go back into my writing file, pull out one of these very critical letters, and bring myself back to the real world.
What can I share from my own experiences with the budding writer?
Simply this: Writing the novel, play, short story, or what have you is the easy part of the job. Writing a good cover letter to sell your material is another matter entirely, and something that I suggest you practice - a LOT. It's a lot like the cover letter you write when sending your resume off for a job. You have to sell yourself, and if you do a good job of it, you can sell your work to the highest bidder.
I suck at selling myself, whether it be in the job market or the writing market, a truth that became self-evident when the letters I had sent out to try to sell my book slowly returned. Some of those letters weren't even opened when they arrived at their destination, returning to me with a little hand-written "no thank you" either attached with a taped-on post it note or written directly on the envelope. Having had the first attempt at selling my work go so well, it didn't take too many of those rejections before I was starting to question whether my mother-in-law was perhaps right about me and that I should take all the work that was sitting in a desk drawer and start a nice bonfire with it.....
But then I got an email from a friend of mine, who had another friend who was just starting up an internet business and might be able to help me get started.
For those who haven't read any of the brief bios I have attached to my book, I was born, raised and still live in Maine, where the traditional jobs that kept our forefathers alive are dying out. Those who value our way of life and want to remain in Maine have come up with creative ways of making enough money to survive. Thus it was when, in the summer of 1998, I was introduced to Connie Foster, who was starting an internet company she called "Ebooks on the Net". She had heard about a new media called "electronic books", in which the publisher basically put a novel up on the internet for sale, gave limited permission to the buyer that would allow the buyer to either read the novel on a computer or to print out a single copy of the work to read the old fashioned way, and cost a lot less to produce - and therefore purchase - than a traditional book. This was before electronic book readers, such a Kindle or Nook, were available to the public, so instead of continuing to bash my head against the walls of an industry that had antiquated standards for what made good reading material, I could get in on the ground floor of a budding industry that may or may not turn into something good.....
Willing to try anything, I sent off my manuscript via email (in Rich Text Format, which is what Connie requested) and held my breath. The next thing I knew, I had an acceptance letter in my mailbox that contained a very specific contract, stating that I was only selling the rights for my work to be sold as an electronic book, leaving me open to be able to sell the book elsewhere as a paperback, should I be able to get a buyer, or to self-publish a paperback with a local print shop, should I be able to drum up the money to do so. Within a couple of months, there was a beautiful thumbnail "cover" and a brief description of my story on Connie's web site, I started seeing small checks at the end of each quarter with the royalties I had earned from the sales, and I could proudly proclaim myself as a "published novelist".
The friend who had connected me with Connie, wanting to be able to have a copy of my book on her bookshelf so she could brag that she was friends with a published writer, loaned me the money to go to a printer in Denmark, Maine to have a limited amount of books printed. The one problem I encountered was that the beautiful cover that had been designed by Connie's friend, Fannie Glass, couldn't be increased to an 8 x 5 cover without "pixilating" (a new term for me at the time), which made it look much less impressive, so I learned a new trick: How to make a book cover. It was a very sad attempt, one I have never been proud of, but it served to allow me to get 200 copies of the book printed for my friends who wanted a signed book. In order to make back the money I had borrowed, I started out selling these "limited edition books", basically selling them at just enough to make back the cost of producing them and mailing them. When sales petered off, I put the rest into a closet that isn't used for much else, and thought that was the end of it.
But in the way of today's world, new technology began to make electronic books popular. Connie's tiny business was bought out by another ebook publisher in Maryland in 2002. My book was one of the ones that the new company liked enough to offer me a new contract, with a sexy new cover, and a redistribution contract that would allow my ebook to be offered on such web sites as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The quarterly checks, still not showing massive sales for the book, but showing that it was selling pretty steadily, continued to come in.
When the publisher decided to step into the Print On Demand market in 2008, allowing for books to be printed on truly nice paper instead of printing massive editions of cheap paperbacks that might clog up bookseller's shelves for years before the last copy was sold, I got offered another contract to allow this to happen. Thrilled, but seemingly still unable to sell myself to bookstores, I learned that advertising takes LOTS of money - and since I don't HAVE lots of money, I've continued to get very modest quarterly royalty checks, which are a nice little surprise whenever they arrive, but not enough to cover a major advertising campaign.
In the meantime, the redistribution clause from my prior contract allowed Amazon to offer my ebook in other countries. Imagine my surprise when I was demonstrating to a boss that one can Google a name and pull up all kinds of interesting things - and I discovered that my book was available in such places as Germany, England, Canada, Spain.....
(In short, when I first joined the internet community in 1997, my name brought up exactly three search results on Google, two of which were people who shared my name. Now, as pointed out by a cousin who was just trying to confirm my home address before trying to surprise me with some family heirlooms he wanted me to take charge of recently, I'm "everywhere".)
So, the basic lesson I wanted to share when I sat down and wrote this post, which seemingly has turned into a novella, was this:
1) Just because you're getting rejection slips from the big publishing companies doesn't mean your work isn't good, sometimes it just means that you have to find the right market. Keep trying, and don't forget to approach small local companies.
2) Listen to your friends when they suggest something that is a little unorthodox for you to try. The worst case scenario is that you have someone read your work who will give you critical ways to correct the issues that are causing your work to be rejected. The best case scenario is that you may find your work getting into a new market before it becomes popular, sliding you in on the ground floor of a new technology.
3) Just because you aren't making the kind of money Stephen King is making doesn't mean that you aren't a successful writer. While you're busy doing other things, your work may be going places you never expected it to go.
4) Even if you can't afford a massive advertising budget, you can afford a free web site service where you can start a personal web site that may eventually gain international attention from those places your work has gone, but you never have. You can afford to spend some time in social media and make new friends who can help you by suggesting other free ways of drawing attention to your work, such as blogging. You can afford to spend a little time sharing your experiences and making the world a better place for struggling writers and artists who can learn from your mistakes, and thereby make even more friends.
For the next post, I'm going to take a deeper look at some of the boring parts of this job for a new friend I've made through this blog. Hopefully, by working together, we can defeat the Monster of the Editing Lagoon and discover another new writer......
If you've never seen this really thick book anywhere, the Writer's Market is a yearly publication that is tremendously helpful if you're looking for a publisher for your work. It lists literally thousands of publishing houses broken down according to what you've written, whether it be a book, a short story, a play...and each publisher lists such things as addresses, names in the company for you to contact, what they publish, how to submit....
In short, the Writer's Market could probably be a writer's bible for those of us who can't afford to get an agent to sell our work for us.
In my own personal collection, I have two copies of this "bible" - one from 1989, when I was trying to decide whether the Playgirl story was going to be followed up with some other work, and one from 1997, when I began to actively seek out a market for my nearly completed romance novel. Scraps of paper in the 1997 edition mark a couple of the "big name" publishers who had published books similar to my story. Somewhere in one of the two filing cabinets in my "home office" where I keep all the things I consider to be important are the rejection letters from those publishers I contacted. I keep such things as a reminder that, while I've mostly seen complementary reviews on the internet from the first novel, there are the people I think of as "The Siskel and Eberts of the Publishing World" who read my cover letter and nothing else before rejecting my work. When I start to feel my ego getting the better of me, I go back into my writing file, pull out one of these very critical letters, and bring myself back to the real world.
What can I share from my own experiences with the budding writer?
Simply this: Writing the novel, play, short story, or what have you is the easy part of the job. Writing a good cover letter to sell your material is another matter entirely, and something that I suggest you practice - a LOT. It's a lot like the cover letter you write when sending your resume off for a job. You have to sell yourself, and if you do a good job of it, you can sell your work to the highest bidder.
I suck at selling myself, whether it be in the job market or the writing market, a truth that became self-evident when the letters I had sent out to try to sell my book slowly returned. Some of those letters weren't even opened when they arrived at their destination, returning to me with a little hand-written "no thank you" either attached with a taped-on post it note or written directly on the envelope. Having had the first attempt at selling my work go so well, it didn't take too many of those rejections before I was starting to question whether my mother-in-law was perhaps right about me and that I should take all the work that was sitting in a desk drawer and start a nice bonfire with it.....
But then I got an email from a friend of mine, who had another friend who was just starting up an internet business and might be able to help me get started.
For those who haven't read any of the brief bios I have attached to my book, I was born, raised and still live in Maine, where the traditional jobs that kept our forefathers alive are dying out. Those who value our way of life and want to remain in Maine have come up with creative ways of making enough money to survive. Thus it was when, in the summer of 1998, I was introduced to Connie Foster, who was starting an internet company she called "Ebooks on the Net". She had heard about a new media called "electronic books", in which the publisher basically put a novel up on the internet for sale, gave limited permission to the buyer that would allow the buyer to either read the novel on a computer or to print out a single copy of the work to read the old fashioned way, and cost a lot less to produce - and therefore purchase - than a traditional book. This was before electronic book readers, such a Kindle or Nook, were available to the public, so instead of continuing to bash my head against the walls of an industry that had antiquated standards for what made good reading material, I could get in on the ground floor of a budding industry that may or may not turn into something good.....
Willing to try anything, I sent off my manuscript via email (in Rich Text Format, which is what Connie requested) and held my breath. The next thing I knew, I had an acceptance letter in my mailbox that contained a very specific contract, stating that I was only selling the rights for my work to be sold as an electronic book, leaving me open to be able to sell the book elsewhere as a paperback, should I be able to get a buyer, or to self-publish a paperback with a local print shop, should I be able to drum up the money to do so. Within a couple of months, there was a beautiful thumbnail "cover" and a brief description of my story on Connie's web site, I started seeing small checks at the end of each quarter with the royalties I had earned from the sales, and I could proudly proclaim myself as a "published novelist".
The friend who had connected me with Connie, wanting to be able to have a copy of my book on her bookshelf so she could brag that she was friends with a published writer, loaned me the money to go to a printer in Denmark, Maine to have a limited amount of books printed. The one problem I encountered was that the beautiful cover that had been designed by Connie's friend, Fannie Glass, couldn't be increased to an 8 x 5 cover without "pixilating" (a new term for me at the time), which made it look much less impressive, so I learned a new trick: How to make a book cover. It was a very sad attempt, one I have never been proud of, but it served to allow me to get 200 copies of the book printed for my friends who wanted a signed book. In order to make back the money I had borrowed, I started out selling these "limited edition books", basically selling them at just enough to make back the cost of producing them and mailing them. When sales petered off, I put the rest into a closet that isn't used for much else, and thought that was the end of it.
But in the way of today's world, new technology began to make electronic books popular. Connie's tiny business was bought out by another ebook publisher in Maryland in 2002. My book was one of the ones that the new company liked enough to offer me a new contract, with a sexy new cover, and a redistribution contract that would allow my ebook to be offered on such web sites as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The quarterly checks, still not showing massive sales for the book, but showing that it was selling pretty steadily, continued to come in.
When the publisher decided to step into the Print On Demand market in 2008, allowing for books to be printed on truly nice paper instead of printing massive editions of cheap paperbacks that might clog up bookseller's shelves for years before the last copy was sold, I got offered another contract to allow this to happen. Thrilled, but seemingly still unable to sell myself to bookstores, I learned that advertising takes LOTS of money - and since I don't HAVE lots of money, I've continued to get very modest quarterly royalty checks, which are a nice little surprise whenever they arrive, but not enough to cover a major advertising campaign.
In the meantime, the redistribution clause from my prior contract allowed Amazon to offer my ebook in other countries. Imagine my surprise when I was demonstrating to a boss that one can Google a name and pull up all kinds of interesting things - and I discovered that my book was available in such places as Germany, England, Canada, Spain.....
(In short, when I first joined the internet community in 1997, my name brought up exactly three search results on Google, two of which were people who shared my name. Now, as pointed out by a cousin who was just trying to confirm my home address before trying to surprise me with some family heirlooms he wanted me to take charge of recently, I'm "everywhere".)
So, the basic lesson I wanted to share when I sat down and wrote this post, which seemingly has turned into a novella, was this:
1) Just because you're getting rejection slips from the big publishing companies doesn't mean your work isn't good, sometimes it just means that you have to find the right market. Keep trying, and don't forget to approach small local companies.
2) Listen to your friends when they suggest something that is a little unorthodox for you to try. The worst case scenario is that you have someone read your work who will give you critical ways to correct the issues that are causing your work to be rejected. The best case scenario is that you may find your work getting into a new market before it becomes popular, sliding you in on the ground floor of a new technology.
3) Just because you aren't making the kind of money Stephen King is making doesn't mean that you aren't a successful writer. While you're busy doing other things, your work may be going places you never expected it to go.
4) Even if you can't afford a massive advertising budget, you can afford a free web site service where you can start a personal web site that may eventually gain international attention from those places your work has gone, but you never have. You can afford to spend some time in social media and make new friends who can help you by suggesting other free ways of drawing attention to your work, such as blogging. You can afford to spend a little time sharing your experiences and making the world a better place for struggling writers and artists who can learn from your mistakes, and thereby make even more friends.
For the next post, I'm going to take a deeper look at some of the boring parts of this job for a new friend I've made through this blog. Hopefully, by working together, we can defeat the Monster of the Editing Lagoon and discover another new writer......
Monday, July 1, 2013
Nobody puts Baby in a drawer!
Let me tell you something about the characters I thought that I had "created": They seem to have developed their own back stories when I was doing other things, and the next thing I knew, the voice of my little sexy stripper was whispering from a back corner of my mind. "You KNOW that wasn't the whole story! Let me show you the rest...."
The more I tried to ignore her, the louder the voice became, and soon my handsome trucker was also starting to whisper "You KNOW there's more to tell. You just need to make the time to write it down."
I'm not sure how this works for other writers, but in my case, if I try to ignore the whispers, the characters start invading my dreams. First, it was the girl I had named Tanya LaMonte. Unlike other exotic dancers, she wasn't just in it for the money.....and she wasn't going to let the short, steamy piece I wrote for the Playgirl article be the only thing anyone ever knew of her.
Kyle soon joined her, showing me scenes from his younger life, well before he was a truck driver who just happened to walk into a bar in New York to watch a petite woman pretend to be a tiger. His sexy, lady killer smile started haunting me, even during the day, and, for the sake of my own sanity, I started writing scenes into notebooks, which joined the magazine in my drawer. Other notebooks were in my drawer as well, with characters who were still speaking now and then, but none of them talking as loudly as Kyle and my young lady, who had revealed to me that Tanya LaMonte wasn't her real name. She began life as Teresanna Montesallo, the daughter of a disowned rich girl named Linda and her Asian one-night-stand, whose name she never knew, but who Linda thought looked like Bruce Lee...
I really must say that writing long tales in notebooks or in short spurts on a typewriter is not ideal for me, especially when the characters are only showing you short blips that aren't necessarily presented in order. I wanted a computer, even though in the days that I was wishing for it, the computers of the time were basically word processors, unlike what we have today. My first computer was "purchased" through what my mother likes to call "a horse trade": My husband traded our full sized pickup with a lady who needed to get herself, her two daughters, and their possessions back to her home state. In trade, she gave us a Datsun pickup and a Tandy HX 1000 computer.
The computer had only 256 mb of memory, so everything I wanted to put into a document had to go on a floppy disc. Each time one wished to use the computer, the floppy disc had to be brought out, any changes made to the document, and then it had to be saved often just in case the computer suddenly shut down for any reason. I liked this system better than the notebooks, because as a new scene was suggested by the characters, I could go back and insert it into the document.
Then came the day that the Tandy made an odd, high pitched noise, belched a puff of smoke out of the back, and stopped functioning.
A friend came to the rescue, pulling a Compac computer he had relegated to a closet in his house out of storage and giving it to me for the price of some web searches he needed done. But I discovered the first lesson about doc files: They don't necessarily work on a computer that they weren't written on.
Using the notes in my notebook and trying to reconstruct as much as possible out of the things that had only been written in the Tandy files, I slowly put the story back together. I was about 3/4 of the way through the tale when the Compac computer suddenly stopped working. I found out about virus protection and the fact that, when you put a disc into a computer that has been infected with a virus that slowly kills it, the discs are corrupted and can't be used elsewhere.
We got another computer, and for this one, we got anti-virus protection installed. I started again. By this time, I had a child who was starting to learn about computers, and he showed me how to save my work in several formats so that, no matter which computer I opened the files on, one of them would surely NOT be corrupted, and I would be able to keep the work safe. I worked on the reconstruction of my story whenever I could, but with two small children and a full time job, there isn't much spare time.
Then I injured my lower back. I was restricted to "no bending, no lifting, no twisting" for two full months. What else could I do? I finished writing my book, edited it, then tried to find a buyer.....
In my next post, we'll discuss publishers, rejection slips, and how good friends can be....
The more I tried to ignore her, the louder the voice became, and soon my handsome trucker was also starting to whisper "You KNOW there's more to tell. You just need to make the time to write it down."
I'm not sure how this works for other writers, but in my case, if I try to ignore the whispers, the characters start invading my dreams. First, it was the girl I had named Tanya LaMonte. Unlike other exotic dancers, she wasn't just in it for the money.....and she wasn't going to let the short, steamy piece I wrote for the Playgirl article be the only thing anyone ever knew of her.
Kyle soon joined her, showing me scenes from his younger life, well before he was a truck driver who just happened to walk into a bar in New York to watch a petite woman pretend to be a tiger. His sexy, lady killer smile started haunting me, even during the day, and, for the sake of my own sanity, I started writing scenes into notebooks, which joined the magazine in my drawer. Other notebooks were in my drawer as well, with characters who were still speaking now and then, but none of them talking as loudly as Kyle and my young lady, who had revealed to me that Tanya LaMonte wasn't her real name. She began life as Teresanna Montesallo, the daughter of a disowned rich girl named Linda and her Asian one-night-stand, whose name she never knew, but who Linda thought looked like Bruce Lee...
I really must say that writing long tales in notebooks or in short spurts on a typewriter is not ideal for me, especially when the characters are only showing you short blips that aren't necessarily presented in order. I wanted a computer, even though in the days that I was wishing for it, the computers of the time were basically word processors, unlike what we have today. My first computer was "purchased" through what my mother likes to call "a horse trade": My husband traded our full sized pickup with a lady who needed to get herself, her two daughters, and their possessions back to her home state. In trade, she gave us a Datsun pickup and a Tandy HX 1000 computer.
The computer had only 256 mb of memory, so everything I wanted to put into a document had to go on a floppy disc. Each time one wished to use the computer, the floppy disc had to be brought out, any changes made to the document, and then it had to be saved often just in case the computer suddenly shut down for any reason. I liked this system better than the notebooks, because as a new scene was suggested by the characters, I could go back and insert it into the document.
Then came the day that the Tandy made an odd, high pitched noise, belched a puff of smoke out of the back, and stopped functioning.
A friend came to the rescue, pulling a Compac computer he had relegated to a closet in his house out of storage and giving it to me for the price of some web searches he needed done. But I discovered the first lesson about doc files: They don't necessarily work on a computer that they weren't written on.
Using the notes in my notebook and trying to reconstruct as much as possible out of the things that had only been written in the Tandy files, I slowly put the story back together. I was about 3/4 of the way through the tale when the Compac computer suddenly stopped working. I found out about virus protection and the fact that, when you put a disc into a computer that has been infected with a virus that slowly kills it, the discs are corrupted and can't be used elsewhere.
We got another computer, and for this one, we got anti-virus protection installed. I started again. By this time, I had a child who was starting to learn about computers, and he showed me how to save my work in several formats so that, no matter which computer I opened the files on, one of them would surely NOT be corrupted, and I would be able to keep the work safe. I worked on the reconstruction of my story whenever I could, but with two small children and a full time job, there isn't much spare time.
Then I injured my lower back. I was restricted to "no bending, no lifting, no twisting" for two full months. What else could I do? I finished writing my book, edited it, then tried to find a buyer.....
In my next post, we'll discuss publishers, rejection slips, and how good friends can be....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)