Name: MD Moore
Book Title:
Waiting for the Cool Kind of Crazy
Genre:
Fiction/ Family Saga
Publisher:
Black Rose Writing
Purchase on Amazon
Thank you for your time in
answering our questions about getting published. Let’s begin by having
you explain to us why you decided to become an author and pen this book?
MD: It’s funny, actually. My first
writing forays weren’t even in fiction and weren’t done for me. At the time, I worked for a guy who had no
writing ability whatsoever, but who was responsible for writing professional
letters to the medical community. He asked
if I would look over what he wrote and it was terrible. I gutted it, rewrote it, then gave it back to
him. He was amazed at my writing ability. I began editing all of his
correspondence. One day, one of my
co-workers saw what I was doing, was impressed, and told me I should try my
hand at writing. The idea was intriguing
so I took some classes at the local community college on fiction writing,
bought some books, and attended local writer’s conferences. I entered a writing contest and was a top
finalist among several hundred entries, giving me validation that I actually
could write so I decided to pursue it as a career. As far as penning this particular book, the
subject actually came fairly easily. I
worked in my state’s most acute mental hospital and there were stories all
around me; peoples whose lives were so effected by their mental illness that a
writer working in that environment couldn’t help but want to tell their
stories. One of my main characters,
Cece, is the schizophrenic mother of my protagonist and her character is loosely
based on a patient whose family came to visit her nearly every weekend. As she was the only patient I worked with who
was married with children, she intrigued me.
The pain as well as the patience her family showed every week made me
want to tell a story about how mental illness touched the life of my
protagonist and how it manifested itself in him from his childhood to
adulthood.
Is this your first book?
MD: Yes. It is the first book I completed though there
were a lot of misfires now crammed in drawers.
With this particular book, how
did you publish – traditional, small press, Indie, etc. – and why did you
choose this method?
MD: My
book was published by a small press, Black Rose Writing. I went with them because I felt they would be
able to nurture my career along better as a first time author than a large,
traditional publisher would be able to do with a debut novelist. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be willing to
work with a large publisher for my next novel when expectations and
understanding of the publishing business are better understood, but for my
first novel, this was a great way to go and Black Rose has been great to work
with.
Can you tell us a little about
your publishing journey? The pros and
cons?
MD: This has been every bit as
difficult as you hear it will be. You keep
hoping that you are going to be the one who is going to find the best New York
agent – hell, I half expected that someone would hear through the grapevine and
come calling to get a first peek. In
reality, I had to practically beg my family to take a look (an exaggeration,
but
What lessons do you feel you
learned about your particular publishing journey and about the publishing
industry as a whole?
MD: There are two lessons I learned well.
First, an author, especially a first time novelist, has to get their
manuscript as close to perfect as possible.
This means learning your craft through classes, self-teaching through
books, peer review and critique groups to name a few methods. Then you must write and rewrite and rewrite
then rewrite again, then cut out half of what you’ve written and rewrite
again. It’s grueling, but it takes what
it takes. I’ve judged writing contests several times and am always amazed at
some of the entries where it is clear that the entrant didn’t bother with so
much as a spell checker before submission.
This is an extremely competitive business and a first time author has to
understand what they are up against to get any one to take notice of their
work. If you don’t work to get your
writing in the best condition possible, you’d be better off spending your time
on another endeavor because you won’t likely be rewarded in this one.
The
second lesson is perseverance. If you do
work to be the best writer that you can be then you must take that next step
and get it out there for others to judge - be it a critic, an agent, an editor,
a publisher – someone who can help you take your book to the next level, either
personally or professionally. You won’t
likely reach your goal in the first week after completion. It took me nearly a year of dedicated
searching to find the right publisher for my novel, but ultimately it was worth
it to finally hold my novel in my hands with a real cover on it, not just a
three-ring binder.
Would you recommend this method
of publishing to other authors?
MD: It’s hard to recommend a certain way of publishing to aspiring
authors. This way worked well for me,
but for someone else a large, traditional publisher might work great. A lot of people self-publish
successfully. The small publisher worked
well for me and I would recommend it strongly as a generalization, but would
have to know the author and what they are trying to publish to offer more
personalized advise on how they should publish.
What’s the best advice you can
give to aspiring authors?
MD: The first piece of advice I would give would be to really soul search
to be sure that this is what you want to do. This is a hard business to break into so make
sure that you are in this for the long haul.
This leads to my second piece of advise and that is, if you do have what
it takes and you have a story in you that you have to get out, by God, stick
with it and get your story told. Fight
to make it the absolute best it can be then work your tail off to get it to
that next level. You work so hard to
write the book, finish the journey and let the world read it, however that has
to happen. The last piece of advice is
to listen to people who have done this before, especially successfully. They have so much to teach and most people
who I’ve met in this industry are truly the nicest people and they want to help
you. They generally have really good
advice, even if it’s not necessarily the advice you want to hear. Two quotes from Winston Churchill seem to
sum up my advice: “Courage is what it
takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and
listen” and “Never, never, never, never
give up.”
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