Tag: writing

Flimflam, Thimblerig, and Bunko—Don’t Let Them Happen to You.

Every unpublished author wants to be published. Smart people can be persuaded by schemes designed to exploit that desire when they don’t know what to look out for in order to protect themselves,

The first and most important step in avoiding such missteps is to join a professional organization for writers, preferably one for your genre. I joined Sisters in Crime, an organization for mystery writers, before I finished my first book. I spent five years working on it while getting acquainted (online) with established authors, both traditionally published and self-published, as well as other newbies. Through SinC’s Guppies group (The Great Unpublished), I joined critique groups and did manuscript swaps. Many successful authors stay in the Guppies to mentor newcomers and give guidance. I found my editor and my cover designer through the group. And I learned much that enabled me to avoid trouble on the path to bringing the first book out.

This article examines areas where trouble may lurk and also where it can be avoided: Publishers, Agents, Self-Publishing, and Contests and Anthologies

Publishers:

Characteristics of legitimate, traditional publishers

This type of publisher doesn’t charge you anything. They make money selling your book. Most pay advances, and most require submission from agents. A few small presses take direct submissions, and some don’t pay advances. But they don’t charge the author any fees. A traditional publisher is selective and invests in you. They take care of editing, cover design, and marketing—though you’ll probably have to supplement the marketing.

Read the fine print in a contract with a traditional publisher. When do the rights to a book revert to you? If it goes out of print or is never published, do you get it back? You can sign with a great small press, do well with them, and then they close their doors. Find out what would happen in that case. A number of currently self-published authors were formerly trad pub and got their rights back after their publisher dropped their series or went out of business.

Characteristics of questionable publishers

Any of the following can be a red flag: They require you to buy or to presell a contracted number of copies of your book before you can earn royalties, or you only earn royalties after X number of books have sold—despite being paid no advance. They charge for editing, formatting, cover design, or other work that would be provided by a traditional publisher. You are pressured to buy add-ons such as marketing services. They run ads or send emails inviting you to submit your work and become a published author.

These publishers make money off author fees, not book sales. They often do no marketing. In some cases, you never even get the copies of your book they required you to purchase.

If you do get them, it can be hard to sell fifty—or two hundred—copies of a paperback by an unknown author. Chain stores get their stock from distributors which carry books that are predicted to sell. Small, independent stores have more flexibility, but if they choose to carry your books, most will take them on consignment, not buy them from you. Best case scenario: a store buys a few from you and then sells them.

Vanity Presses

These publishers will produce books such as a memoir to share with family or a poetry collection for your local poetry club to sell for charity. There’s no pretense of creating something for stores or for national sales. This is a reasonable business model, as long as you know you’re dealing with a vanity press. If all you want is small number of books for family and friends, and the prices are moderate, a vanity press may be suitable. Problems occur when businesses operate like vanity presses and try to pass for traditional publishers.

Agents

They are go-betweens who work to get a traditional publishing house to consider your book. The agent only earns a commission if they sell your book. They don’t charge upfront fees. Like traditional publishers, literary agents are highly selective. It takes time and effort to get one to represent you. Some flimflammers have been impersonating well-known literary agents and soliciting authors’ business. Make sure you’re working with a reputable agent who has a record of selling books, and that they are who they say they are.

Self-Published Authors: what you do and don’t need

What you need: an editor—possibly a structural or developmental editor— and definitely a line editor, a proofreader, a cover artist, and several critique partners or beta readers.

Get recommendations for all of the above from the author group you joined. Don’t pick someone from Goodreads or from an ad. I’ve read books by indie authors who’d paid $2,000 to an “editor” who did nothing more than fix the typos. Proofreading is not editing. It’s done after editing.

Wide distribution is in your long-term best interest: Most of your sales will be eBooks. You set the prices, decide when to offer discounts, or when to give away an eBook for free, etc. It’s best to distribute and publish to all eBook platforms, not just Amazon. Don’t put all your eggs in that one basket. While Amazon generally sells more books, their customer service for authors is limited, and if you accidentally trigger some rule that gets your book unpublished or your reviews removed, you don’t want to vanish entirely. Also, I’ve had months when my sales on Apple exceeded my sales on Amazon. Some authors will put a book in KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited for three months in order to get reviews and then distribute widely. You can upload a book directly to Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple or go through an aggregator like Draft2Digital. (They merged with Smashwords, which used to be the other option for distribution and still has its own eBook store.) Draft2Digital/Smashwords will distribute to library services like Overdrive, Hoopla and others, as well Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Scribd, and a number of international eBook stores.

What you don’t need and why:

A stock of hundreds of paperbacks. Paperback sales in stores are minimal for authors who aren’t traditionally published, as noted above. KDP Print, Ingram Spark, and Draft2Digital Print are POD (print on demand). You only need to keep a few copies of each book on hand for local sales and books signings.

 A marketing service. You don’t need a professional helper to purchase ads. Paid advertising is one of the simpler things you’ll do. Your social media accounts and your newsletter should be in your own voice. Marketing services may claim to offer search engine optimization or make other dubious promises like a Bookbub Featured Deal. Learn to do the marketing yourself. Read a book on how to do it. Subscribe to newsletters from David Gaughran, https://davidgaughran.com Dave Chesson https://kindlepreneur.com , and others who give free advice (as well as sell books or products). Read the Bookbub blog and the Kobo Writing Life blog. Learn from fellow authors in that group you joined.

A formatter. If you self-publish the way most authors do, you only have to do some basic things related to font size and white space to set up a Word document that Draft2Digital /Smashwords can format. There’s no charge for formatting. If you use them to distribute your eBooks (and/or publish paperbacks), they take a small commission from your royalties for all the services they provide. Even if you upload directly to Amazon or some other stores, you’ll probably want D2D /Smashwords for library distribution, so you might as well format there as well. Then upload your formatted book elsewhere as needed.

A fee-based full-scale self-publishing service. There are services that package the needs of self-publishing, such as editing, cover design, formatting, printing, and distribution. They’re likely to cost more than DIY indie publishing, and you may have less control over your choice of an editor or cover designer than if you hire your own. Everything the self-pub service company does for you can be done for the same or lower costs with more control when you hire free-lance. Shop around. Get recommendations from that group you joined. If you do everything yourself instead of through a self-pub service, you’ll be ready and able when you want to update anything from the backmatter to the cover to correcting two typos an alert reader told you about.

Contests, Awards, and Anthologies

Many contests are money-makers for those who run them, but of little to no benefit to those who enter. If you have to pay more than twenty dollars to enter a contest or be considered for an award, if you lose the rights to your short story or essay even if it’s never published or goes into an obscure volume that’s never marketed, or if you have to buy copies of the anthology in which it’s published, don’t enter.

The Ultimate Resource: Writer Beware

This web site will give you far more detail than I can. Click on every link and read in depth.

https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/

A good article from an author’s blog, one of the best blogs for writers to follow:

https://annerallen.com/2015/12/5-scams-target-new-writers-spot/

Farewell, Darling Pomegranates

I nurtured them, marveling at their numbers as I watched them change from flowers to fruit. Last year, the two trees produced a total of five pomegranates. This year, I counted seventy-five. It was hard to see them all. Some bunched together in fours, their bottoms mashed flat against each other. I had to prop branches up on chairs to keep them from breaking under the weight of so many fruits and to keep the low-hanging ones from rotting in the bed of succulents below during the rainy season.

This bumper crop happened by accident. One day in the spring, I forgot to turn off the hose. It ran for over twenty-four hours, exactly when the flowers were about to emerge. The trees got excited and flowered like mad. These are not my trees. They live behind some friends’ Airbnb. I water the plants, since the owners reside in Las Cruces. I was proud of the pomegranates, if apologetic about the water bill.

But no one wanted them. Their owners have pomegranate trees at home in Las Cruces. I ate part of one fruit, but I don’t like the taste or texture. I offered them to neighbors and yoga students. No takers. One neighbor did accept one but then confided he was afraid of getting appendicitis from eating seeds. Another friend told me, “No one really likes pomegranates. They just grow them.”

I feel guilty when I throw the perfect ripe fruits away. If I don’t, though, they attract insects. One day, I was heading for the dumpster in the alley with an armful of pomegranates when I noticed a young man walking from the grocery store carrying one small bag. I’d never seen him before in the neighborhood, and guessed he was one of the many the creatives and remote workers who have moved here lately. A Black man of about thirty wearing an old fedora and sporting a goatee, he reminded me of one of my series characters, Jamie. I asked him if he liked pomegranates. He said yes. I gave him some. We made small talk. His accent was Southern, not Australian. Jamie hadn’t come to life off the page. But someone finally wanted some pomegranates.

I’ve discarded more into the dumpster than I’ve ever found homes for. The process reminds me of writing a first draft and then cutting. I nurture the book, but it grows too many subplots and loose ends. Much as I like the look of the glorious full tree, I have to pluck pomegranates and toss them with regret, after gazing at the gleaming red seeds in fruit that cracked itself open in the sun. Such a beautiful achievement for those hard-working trees, those trees I so lovingly cared for. Such unwanted excess. My darlings. The portions of a first draft that I keep are like the fruits I gave to “Jamie.” Not many, but they’re the parts I finally share.

 

 

Hit Send! And then …

I was determined to finish the eighth Mae Martin book last night, winding up the final read-through for minor repairs. I sent it to my editor with a feeling of satisfaction and completeness. Now I miss the setting, the events, and the characters. I spent more time with them than with anyone else over the past two years. To some extent, a fiction writer’s life is always like that. During the pandemic, it was even more so. As social and cultural activities resume and expand, I’m more than happy to take part. The human web of connection is good for my soul and also good for my writing. But I still miss that book. At least writing a series means I don’t have to say goodbye to everyone in it.

I dreamed a new character a few nights ago and am not sure what to do with her. I don’t think I like her. I’ve started the next Mae Martin book already, working on it while my beta readers and critique partners read Chloride Canyon. So far, book nine is a messy, fragmented first few chapters of a first draft. The final product may bear only a weak resemblance to it. Perhaps this new character I dreamed should replace the antagonist in this first draft, since I dislike her. Or perhaps, as with some people I became good friends with over time, the initial dislike will give way to appreciation. But I’m intrigued by the possibility of making her the “bad guy.” I’ll see what my explorations reveal.

A Writing Update

I’ve completed multiple rounds of revision on Chloride Canyon, the eighth Mae Martin mystery. Since I’ve been working on it for years, I can’t give you a number, but the most recent are: the revisions based on feedback from critique partners and beta readers; another pass through the book focused on what the antagonist characters were up to offstage; and the “cut revision,” pruning  restatements, over-statements, overused words, and filler words.

Now I’m into the read-aloud revision, acting the story as if I were an audiobook narrator, which helps with pace and dialogue. This stage gets it ready for editing. It’s due with my editor in late March. Look for it to be published in time for summer reading.

One of these pictures of the canyon will end up on the cover. Special thanks to Donna Catterick for her photography.

Scaring the Bluebirds

I felt bad for alarming them. They’d settled into the tall junipers on either side of the trail. But if I let them sit, I’d have never finished my run. So, three times, making laps of my favorite trail, I scared the newly-arrived flock of bluebirds into flight. Once they were aloft, it was moving, magical, a soul-stretching experience. Thirty or forty bluebirds, the males’ wings flashing like fragments of the New Mexico blue sky.

I have to upend my characters’ lives. Make them fly. It brings out the beauty and strength in them. No one wants to read a book about an easy life. We’d all like to have one, I suppose, but according to the concept of Flow, doing something difficult that we can master makes life interesting, not doing what’s easy. The character arc in a book and in a series is like that. Characters have to struggle and face setbacks before finally they arrive at some version of their goals, changed by the effort. And then, as they get comfortable in a new stage of life, the author comes around the bend in the trail again. The bluebirds take flight.

*****

Bird notes: I have learned that the Western Bluebird lives in most parts of New Mexico year-round, but some from further north may migrate here. This flock arrived in Elephant Butte Lake Park about a week before the state parks shut down again due to the pandemic. The closure may only be for two weeks, or it may last a while, depending how things go. My alternate running route is beautiful, but without bluebirds. I hope they stay the winter, and I can see them again. If I do, I will probably scare them again. I miss them, but I doubt they miss me.

How Plotting a Novel is like Planning a Yoga Class

For me, teaching yoga and writing fiction are about the deeper aspects of being human, not simply about executing poses or providing entertainment. The asana practice or the entertainment is the container for the inner process.

There are two main ways I approach my work in both cases: structure and improvisation. For example, I have general sense a story is about a certain theme and a certain problem affecting a set of characters in a specific setting. There’s interaction among these elements, and sometimes it can surprise me. A yoga class also tends to have a theme, such as a class focused primarily on hip stability and mobility or a class building up to a new asana. How I teach it is affected by the student or group of students.

A story has a beginning, in which the protagonist is in her normal world, in a situation where her strengths and her shortcomings feel comfortable and familiar. But then something changes, making it necessary not only to take action, but to do things she’s not comfortable doing, things that stretch her creativity and courage in confronting a problem that has high stakes for her and for people she cares about yet. The pace increases and the demands become greater as the story progresses.

I start a yoga class with awareness of posture and breath, meeting the students as they are, letting them find where the knots, restrictions, and imbalances are. I observe them and consider what they might need in their asana practice to release some of the habits that tighten their necks, backs, or shoulders. I also take requests, because the students may have concerns and needs I can’t otherwise assess. The first portion of the class focuses the mind, warms up the muscles, and lubricates the joints prior to any significant physical demands. The middle portion of the class is the hardest, with poses that challenge strength, balance, and flexibility.

I respond to my students’ questions and to what I see in their practice with further explorations and modifications. I may need to change direction in midstream, depending on how they respond to my instruction and on how they’re feeling that day.

Similarly, I improvise in writing my books as I discover how my characters respond to what I’ve given them so far. They have as much say in the plot as I do. But if any key elements in the course of a mystery or of a balanced yoga class are missing, my readers or my students will end up feeling unfinished in some way. So, even as I invent, I rely on structure.

Beyond the midpoint is the peak of the experience. The crisis in the plot. Or the asana we’ve been building toward. Everything that comes before leads up to this. Nothing is extraneous. The challenge is equal to the student/protagonist’s ability, though at times it may feel to them as if it’s beyond their reach. That’s where growth takes place. And both are solving a puzzle, whether it’s a mystery or how to organize ardra chandrasana or how to quiet the mind and be fully present.

Then there’s the denouement of the plot or the cool-down and relaxation portion of the class, as everything that came before is integrated and resolved.

*****

A number of my characters practice yoga, though so far my protagonist, Mae Martin, doesn’t. Her friend and mentor, Dr. Bernadette Pena, introduced in The Calling, is an advanced yoga student. Mae’s young neighbors in Truth or Consequences in Shaman’s Blues are devoted to yoga as part of their recovery from addiction. Jamie Ellerbee is one of the most complex characters in the series. Yoga plays an important role in his healing journey, especially as he first begins his studies in Soul Loss.

Works in Progress

I set myself a goal to complete five short stories and get them revised and sent out for critique by November. I’ve somewhat polished three, finished a very rough first draft of the fourth, and have the outline for the fifth.

Writing these stories is forcing me to examine emotional depths within the tight plots of short fiction. It’s my job as a fiction writer to make my characters’ lives difficult. To test them and to explore how they can come out stronger. In some ways, doing this in short works is harder than developing a character arc over the expanse of a long, complex novel. I’m enjoying the work, though. It’s been a chance to reunite with characters I haven’t seen for a while and integrate their personal journeys with those of my protagonists.

Will Baca and Letitia Westover-Brown from Ghost Sickness are featured in the first story. They’re trying to make a go of honest work and an honest relationship, but then someone sends Will a strange gift, and they need Jamie as a healer and Mae as a psychic to solve to mystery.

The next story takes place at the college fitness center where Mae works. No visits with “old” characters here. She finds herself with a new enemy, one who could undermine her future career.

The third story brings back Kyle and Vaughan from Shadow Family and Rex from Death Omen as well as Mae’s stepdaughters. I loved working on it, a project that made me rediscover pre-pandemic Truth or Consequences, as the twins attempt to plant a trivia mystery for Vaughan to solve. Another mystery emerges as a consequence, and the girls want Mae to find out the truth.

The fourth story centers around Montana Chino, a character from Ghost Sickness. She and her sisters, Melody and Misty, have planned a thirtieth birthday surprise for Mae, and then Montana, a hotel housekeeper, gets a much bigger surprise in a tip envelope at work. A tip that could change her life in more ways than one when Mae’s psychic inquiry brings up answers Montana wasn’t looking for.

I haven’t decided if the fifth story is more of romance or a mystery, as Mae and Jamie attend two weddings almost back to back, one in T or C and one in Santa Fe. (Trivia question: What happened in New Mexico in 2013 that would cause this to happen?)

Yes, it’s still 2012 and 2013 in these stories. (The Calling is set in 2009-2010.) I’m moving along. But so far, I can’t skip any part of my characters’ lives. They want me know what they’ve lived through, so I’ll understand them better for the next book.

Boredom? Free Time? What’s That?

Occasionally people have asked me—from six feet or more away, outdoors, of course—if I’m bored yet. My answer: I’m a writer. I’m never bored.

I’m wrapping up another major revision of the eighth Mae Martin Psychic Mystery, but I haven’t had as much time to work on it as I expected. With all “close contact” businesses in New Mexico still closed—and that includes fitness facilities like yoga studios—I should have free time. I’m not taking classes in Albuquerque or teaching classes here in Truth or Consequences. My new running route, a dirt road along the Rio Grande, is two tenths of a mile from my apartment. I don’t drive to Elephant Butte to run in the still-closed state park. I love this road—the river, blue herons, red-winged blackbirds, butterflies, a few blooming cacti, and some unknown plant that smells crisp and green. A dirt road in the windy season delivers occasional little dust storms, but I can’t complain. It’s flat, so I can run without reinjuring myself, and it couldn’t be more convenient.

The time suck is laundry. I live in a tiny apartment. I often rented places this size when I was a professor spending summer vacations in Truth or Consequences, and I realized all I actually needed was two rooms and a bath, not my two-story, two-bedroom townhouse, so when I retired and moved, I downsized. The lack of laundry hookups or space for machines was only a minor issue. After all, I could do a week’s laundry all at once at the laundromat, bring my exercise tubing, and go outside to work out while giant machines did their jobs.

Then, this spring, the laundromat became stressful. Sanitizing the machines and the laundry carts. Asking people to stay six feet away and getting dirty looks for it. I ordered two little gadgets that are life-savers. But they aren’t time savers. The hand-cranked Wonder Wash holds about five pounds of laundry. I have practically no counter space next to the sink, so I have to put it in the (very small) shower, kneel on a towel on the floor to crank right-handed, then get behind it in the shower and do a kind of half squat and crank left-handed to make it churn the other way. Two minutes for a wash, a minute per rinse. Two rinses. Sounds quick, but there’s the filling, the draining, and the wringing between rinses. Then I carry the wet clothes to the electric spin dryer in the living room. It whirls them at amazing speeds and flings the water out with centrifugal force to drain into a plastic tray under its spout. This takes two to four minutes, and again, that sounds quick. But I have to wipe the washer dry and store it behind the sofa, empty the spin dryer’s drain tray, and hang up my laundry without a clothes line. The whole process takes at least an hour per load. Small items drape on the edge of the clothes baskets. Larger items go on hangers on the shower rod. Sheets get folded in four lengthwise, clipped to pants hangers, dried with a fan, then folded with the other side out, fan-dried again, and then refolded yet again with yet another area on the outside. Towels the next day, clothing the next, a day off, and then I have to do more laundry. Five pounds at a time.

My thumb muscles are sore. My upper back and shoulder muscles are sore—and I’ve been doing yoga daily and lifting weights three times a week for decades. I’m still working out while I do my laundry, but it’s not as easy—the workout or the laundry. Amazing. Think how fit our great grandmothers must have been doing the wash for a whole household.

Every time I put away a set of clean, dry sheets and pillowcases, I feel a sense of accomplishment. I did it myself, at home, without sharing respiratory droplets in an enclosed space with other people.

And now, finally, I can sit down and write.

*****

Red-winged blackbird photo by Sarah Stierch

Note: I provided links to the products I discussed so you could see pictures, but they’ve been in such demand they’re sold out.

Social Distancing, Reading, and Writing

Seriously, I want to hug someone. Not touching is strange, and it makes me feel a bit disoriented, not quite myself. I socialize by taking walks with friends rather than going to coffee shops, restaurants, or the brewery. No blues dancing on crowded dance floors for now. A friend I hadn’t seen for two years came to Truth or Consequences for a few days of camping and bird-watching. We met—and parted—with elbow-bumps.

I’ve been teaching yoga without using touch for guidance, and now the studio is going to close for the rest of the month. Art events, music events, the life-blood of my town … I’m not going. It’s difficult, but I can see the wisdom in doing things this way. Prevention.

Fortunately, running in the desert is still an option. And since I have less of a schedule and less of a social life, I can do more reading. E-books don’t even involve going to a store. I can’t run out of them.

And of course, I’ll get more writing done. I’ll probably be writing scenes in which people hug.

*****

The Calling is free on all e-book retailers though April 23rd

Relief and other updates

The relief feels wonderful and yet disorienting. It’s hard to adapt. I have my life back. Book seven in the Mae Martin Psychic Mystery Series, Shadow Family, is with my editor now. I sent it off last night—actually, at around 3:30 in the morning. I know my editor will be sending me sections to revise, but today, I can think about the next book. I can even write a blog post.

Relief came with rain as well. September is still summer, the grand finale of the monsoon season, with temperatures in the eighties, cooler than August by a long shot. It’s rained three times—one drizzle, one thunderstorm with hail and two inches of rain in two hours, and one nice steady all-night rain. Wow! The jewel-colored greater earless lizards need to sunbathe and get warm. When it’s cloudy, they hug the rocks with their wee limbs, seeking every last bit of sunbaked heat from the surface. The baby lizards are out, flawless miniatures of the adults, no bigger than a bug with a tail. I marvel at their toes, and at their orange stripes and green legs, their little eyes blinking up at me. Desert plants are in bloom, yellow chamisa and something purple—maybe some kind of sage. And with all the rain, Turtleback Mountain is more green than red.

The other night I went for a walk with a friend and his dog, hoping to see bats over the wetland by the river, but it was too windy for them. As we were leaving Rotary Park, which is right on the Rio Grande, a coyote started yipping and singing on the bank directly below where we’d been standing a minute earlier while my friend took a dead bird away from his dog. The dog, strangely, wasn’t interested in the coyote, only the dead bird. A whole coyote chorus started across the river as the one on our side would sing and the others would answer. The dog still didn’t care.

White rabbit update. First, her former owner said he only had females, so I’m now calling her “she.” Second, she’s been chased by dogs and by a cat, and someone sprayed weed killer on all the plants she used to nibble on in the yard of the empty trailer across the alley. Fortunately, she finds shelter in our yard. I decided to feed her nightly after all, because I’m going to try a new way to catch her. Her future owners brought a live trap, and we baited it with sliced pears and fresh greens. It may be shocking for her to go to her usual buffet and have a door close behind her, but she’ll escape predators and poisons to be loved and petted. And then it’ll be her turn be relieved. If all goes well, her new owner will show her in the county fair. Because she is so beautiful.