BOOK PUBLISHING SECRETS: HOW TO PUBLISH YOUR BOOK!

Book Publishing Secrets Behind The Peruke Maker by Ruby Dominguez

2009-11-10T15:16:00.000-08:00

Driven by a mystical dream I had after trying on a 100% hand-tied human hair wig that I purchased online as described to be harvested from a reliable and youthful donor.

I woke-up from the dream in shivers, seemingly reliving a dark history of a young woman’s horrifying fate named Bridget and her father’s (The Peruke Maker) vindictive quest for justice beyond the grave.

Eerily, I believed that in Salem, Massachusettes from three centuries ago, the Peruke Maker’s Shop lay hidden behind a forgotten and abandoned room of an old crematorium built-up with dust and cobwebs with a finished white wig still sits by the boarded up window to this day.

Wefts of yak, goat, horse and human hair, fishhook-like needles, pomade, powder and a wooden head are laid down on a work table wherein a pair of rusty scissors, entwined with strands of Bridget’s red hair eerily rests by the wall mirror.

So, I have decided to travel to Salem, Massachusettes on a book tour this October 2009 and investigate the existence of the Peruke Maker’s Shop, and to retrace the agonizing ordeal of his daughter, Bridget in Gallows Hill.

THE PERUKE MAKER – The Salem Witch Hunt Curse, is my first published book written as a screenplay.

It was my initial intention and still is, that it becomes a Halloween blockbuster movie.

In the meantime to generate a buzz, I opted for self-publishing/vanity press for immediate distribution to the e-world.

It didn’t take me long to discover Outskirts Press via internet and then submitted my manuscript for their consideration and acceptance.

And now my book is available in 25,000 internet stores around the world.

A highly professional publisher, who holds your hand every step of the way down the road to success!

Outskirts Press services offers me a variety of marketing options inclusive of a PR Marketing Assistant/Leah Zions and a PR Publicist.

It took me 1 year of dreaming about it, 1 year of research work, 4 weeks to put down into written words, and another 2 years to crystallize the story.

Submitted it to Lejen Literary Consultant – Lee Levinson for a script coverage analysis and after 2 months received it back with a good review.

Thereafter, it took Outskirts Press approximately 2 weeks to review and accept.

Words of inspiration to other writers:

When all things fail, let your passion be your retirement plan.

As writers we are very fortunate to be living in an electronic world wherein there are no boundaries for success! Virtual book tours are testaments to sayings like, “What a small world

What’s next for Ruby Dominguez?

I shall be promoting my second and third publshed book titled, ROMANCING THE CLADDAGH – The Curse of Macha (horror/romance) and IT’S OVER MICHAEL, But….(romance/comedy) and in between writing my fourth book, THE RED DRAGON’S TRIANGLE – Boudicca’s Curse (mystery/horror).

The author, Ruby Dominguez is challenged by the conflicting complexities of the past and future. Undeterred, she strokes with pen the somber and bright hues of her visions. She currently resides in San Francisco and works in the field of property management/leasing. She has been a recipient of the “Editor’s Choice Award,” by the National Library of Poetry in 1999 and 2007 for her published poems in the SHELTER OF SHADE. Visit her website at: www.outskirtspress.com/theperukemaker, www.facebook.com/theperukemaker and blog at www.salemcurse.wordpress.com.

Meggie's Remains by Historical Fiction Author Joanne Sundell

2009-09-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Has it only been five years since I almost lost it all, giving new meaning to the “literary pitch?” I’d flown to Albuquerque to collect my very first win in a Romance Writers of America, chapter contest; this one with the Land of Enchantment Romance Authors in New Mexico. The moment I saw the contest posted in the RWA Report—the Rebecca Contest—I had to enter something, since Rebecca is the name of my oldest daughter. It’s a sign, I thought; hopefully a sign of good things to come. Darn if it wasn’t! My third completed manuscript, Matchmaker, Matchmaker, won!

You would think that when given the opportunity to make a pitch to editors at the LERA Conference, I would pitch my winning historical romance, Matchmaker, Matchmaker. Nervous and naive, I sat down with the likes of NAL and Five Star-Gale, and rambled on with another manuscript. I still don’t know what I was thinking . . . but I do know I wasn’t thinking! Russell Davis, the-then-Five Star-editor, actually congratulated me on my contest win at the beginning of my pitch, and I still didn’t get it! When politely asked to submit my manuscript of choice to Five Star-Gale, I snail-mailed my second, completed novel and not my contest win.

Months went by before I got “the call,” saying thank you but . . . no thank you. It’s the answer I expected, being rejected. But wait, the call wasn’t over. Five Star-Gale asked if I had something else I might want to submit. When given this golden opportunity, you bet this time I sent in my contest winner! Some time later I got the call again, saying thank you and let’s talk sale!
That one moment will ever withstand the test of time as “the moment” in my writing life . . . five years and counting.

Joanne Sundell’s first sale was in 2005, to Five Star, Gale, Cengage Learning. The prime market for Five Star Expressions is the library market, but Five Star’s books are also available on-line at Barnes & Noble and all bookstores. The Five Star Expressions line is a combination of romance and women’s fiction. Joanne’s particular interest is in historical romance with suspenseful elements.

To date, Joanne’s sales to Five Star include: MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER (06), A…MY NAME’S AMELIA (07) also out in Large Print, THE PARLOR HOUSE DAUGHTER (08) also out in Large Print, MEGGIE’S REMAINS (09), & THE QUAKER AND THE CONFEDERATE upcoming series (5/10, 9/10). Joanne’s first sale was reviewed nationally by Booklist, her second by Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly, and her third by Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist. A…MY NAME’S AMELIA garnered a top 4&1/2 star rating from Romantic Times Magazine.

History is always a strong character in Joanne’s books, with her first four stories set in colorful, turbulent Colorado history and her next, a two-book series set in Civil War Virginia. As important as it is for Joanne to convey a strong, credible, historical flavor of the time, it is equally important for Joanne to portray strong, credible heroines and heroes. A strong, determined heroine deserves an equally strong and determined hero. Joanne grew up reading romance, historical and contemporary, falling in love with heroes and heroines from Regency England to the American West, from London’s pubs to Colorado’s ski slopes, loving that moment when the hero and heroine meet and fall in love. That moment to Joanne is the moment when Jane Eyre meets Edward Rochester, when Elizabeth Bennett meets Mr. Darcy … that’s the heart-stopping, passionate moment for Joanne in romance. That moment is what led her to attempt traditional, old-fashioned historical romance.

With her three, Colorado-mountain-raised-children grown and off on their own adventures, Joanne lives part-time in Colorado and California, with her husband and their entourage` of felines and huskies.

Joanne is a member of Colorado Romance Writers, Romance Writers of America, Women Writing the West, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and Los Angeles Romance Authors.

e-mail Joanne: author@joannesundell.com

www.joannesundell.com
www.joannesundell/blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/joannesundell

COMING FOR MONEY by F.W. vom Scheidt

2009-09-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

I have always followed a creative life; and, as a result, never seem to have followed a usual route or done anything in a usual manner.

How I got published is no exception.

Because I have an encompassing business career, which always has more work than hours in the day … and, for that matter, does not even have a regular day because I work simultaneously in many different times zones, I suppose I have not felt the same need to publish as many other writers.

Yet I have always sought to maintain my integrity in a struggle with questions that have no answers ... who am I … why am I here … what comes after this life.

And, because of that, I have always written.

Following the adage of writing from what you know best, I wrote from my first hand-hand experience accumulated as a director of an international investment firm. I wrote as truthfully as possible of the world of international finance — not with the over dramatization so common in film and television, but with an intimate telling through a first-person narrative ... of what it can be like to labour in the world of money spinning ... of how the money’s immense leverage for triumph or disaster doesn’t so much corrupt people as corrupt the way they treat each other ... of how the relentless demands of the money so often deprive you of sufficient time and energy to live through the events of your emotional and interior life.

The plot advances along questions arising from how we relate to our careers: How much money is too much? And how fast is too fast in life? And the central character advances along deeper questions in his own life: How do we cope with love and loss?

The story follows Paris Smith. As he steps onto the top rungs of the corporate ladder, he is caught between his need for fulfillment and his need for understanding; between his drive for power and his inability to cope with his growing emptiness where there was once love. When his wife disappears from the core of his life, his loneliness and sense of disconnection threaten to overwhelm him. When he tries to compensate by losing himself in his work, he stumbles off the treadmill of his own success, and is entangled in the web of a fraudulent bond deal that threatens to derail his career and his life.

Forced to put his personal life on hold while he travels nonstop between Toronto, Singapore and Bangkok to salvage his career, he is deprived of the time and space to mourn the absence of his wife and regain his equilibrium.

In the heat and turmoil and fast money of Southeast Asia, half a world from home, and half a life from his last remembered smile, he finds duplicity, friendship and power --- and a special woman who might heal his heart.

Overall, it is a deeply felt story about the isolation of today’s society, the prices great and small paid for success and the damages resulting from the ruthless exercise of financial power.

Yet, although it is a literary novel, it is also fast-paced and highly readable. By the time I had finished writing it, I recognized that readers would find the details fascinating, and would find the characters real, and not easily forgotten.

Because of this, it is the first writing that I have wanted to publish for wide circulation.

Prior to this, my primary fans have been editors who have followed my writing, always been supportive and encouraging, and always patiently promoted that I bring a book to print.

Finding a publisher was not as difficult as I thought it would be.

I retained a professional editor for final proofreading; the editor showed the manuscript to a publisher, Blue Butterfly Books; and the publisher accepted it on first reading.

As incredulous as it may seem, I would not have published with them simply because they offered me a contract.

Upon introduction, I was greatly impressed.

The company is founded on the mission statement of the publisher, Dr. Patrick Boyer, to bring to the market "interesting and important stories that are well-written for a wide audience."

All facets of the organization are entrepreneurial, and the people have great energy and dedication.

They publish some engaging and thought provoking non-fiction, especially in politics, history, public policy and biography; and they are building a selective list of high quality fiction. Their books have been very well received.

The website is: www.bluebutterflybooks.ca

Coming For Money has just been released, and is starting to attract a lot of attention.

As usual, in not following a usual path as with so many other parts of my life, I jumped straight from keyboard to published novel without an agent.

But I am looking for a high quality film production deal.

So I would be interested in hearing from an agent who would like to take on this initiative.

F. W. vom Scheidt is a director of an international investment firm. He works and travels in the world’s capital markets, and makes his home in Toronto, Canada. He is also the author of a new book, Coming for Money (Blue Butterfly Book Publishing), a remarkable and provocative novel about the world of international finance and the human quests for success, understanding and love. You can find out more about his book at http://www.bluebutterflybooks.ca/titles/money.html.

FREEDOM OF PRESS by Balthazar Rodrigue Nzomono-Balenda

2009-09-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

I hope my story can inspire any writer around the world, who is determined to find a publisher that’s willing to publish his/her works. I have been asked to share my experiences on how I got published by Pumpupyourbookpromotion.

On June 2008, I was publishing poems at the International Library of Poetry’s website (Poetry.com), as I received an invitation to Las Vegas by the International Society of Poets, which was one of the world’s largest poetry organizations. I was invited in Las Vegas because I was one of the nominees as Poet of the Year 2007. I was invited because of my poetic accomplishments at Poetry.com. It was an opportunity for me to meet the Pulitzer Prize Laureate, W.D. Snodgrass, Academy of American Poets Past Chancellor David Wagoner and others. But I couldn’t go in the U.S. because I wasn’t well physically and I was sad about it.

Somewhere in July 2008, I was talking with one of my acquaintances about my poems, while we were at a library in Kolding (Denmark). I also showed him the letter I received from the International Society of Poets.

He recommended that I write a book because he saw a potential in me as a writer, but I didn’t. I was afraid to write a book because I thought that I would make a fool out of myself to the world. I didn’t think that I could write good books and I always dreaded that people won’t like my books.

And then I thought about it and I decided to get help from a Danish library, in Kolding concerning finding a publisher. I was willing to find a publisher everywhere in Denmark, but common sense told me that I had to try to find a publisher in the U.S. because most of my poems are written in English and the book market in the States is bigger than in Denmark.

On August 2008, I decided to give it a try. I decided to write my first book and find a publisher across United States and Canada. But I faced lots of challenges because some publishers wouldn’t allow me to publish my book, because I don’t live in either the States or Canada. But I didn’t give up and I still had hope that United States or Canada are the places for me to publish my books.

I contacted Trafford Publishing from Canada and they were willing to publish my book, but I realized that I realized that I didn’t have enough resources and it would be too expensive for me to get my book published.

I felt like hope was gone and I almost quit writing my book. In September 2008, I was publishing my poems as usual at allpoetry.com. Accidentally, I found I-Proclaim’s website. I was very skeptic about their services because many publishers always ask for money before they publish your book. But I decided to get out of my comfortable zone and take this chance, which I might never of gotten.

I-Proclaim was very supportive and they helped making changes, when they weren’t satisfied with the way my document looked. In January 2009, my first book of poetry, The Depth of my Soul was published. In February, my second book, The Struggle of Power and the Fight for Survival and other books, like Freedom of press the sitting duck and Silent Talking. Currently, I am working on my fifth and last book of the year, which going to be a non-fiction book, thanks to the opportunity, I-Proclaim has given me.

My hope is that you get published and that you may be happy, when you look at your first book. Don’t give up on yourself. I know it can be frustrated, but keep on moving and do something remarkable. Don’t let someone’s negative opinion become your reality.

Balthazar Rodrigue Nzomono-Balenda is not only an author and a poet, but also a student, multimedia designer and translator. His previous books include The Depth of My Soul and The Struggle for Power and the Fight for Survival. Balthazar became interested in poetry by accident in 2003 when he wasn’t satisfied with the way things were going in his early studies and in the Danish society. His latest book is Freedom of Press: The Sitting Duck. You can visit Balthazar on the web at http://www.redroom.com/author/balthazar-rodrigue-nzomono-balenda.

Diary of a Mad Gen Y er by Marcus Dino

2009-09-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

I decided to publish my second novel Diary of a Mad Gen Yer as an E book. I had my manuscript published by my publisher, Summertime Productions am now in the process of getting my book onto major Ebook sites such as Smashwords. This is in contrast to my first book Fifi, Anything goes in the Double Os which was first published as a hardback by Iuniverse in 2003 and as paperback by Airleaf in 2005. Why did I use an E book publishing platform as opposed to publishing Diary as a printed book? There are several reasons:

The first reason is that e-publishing is more convenient than print publishing. Assuming you have a publisher who gives you the author, a lot of freedom, I can get an e-book published in a week after writing my manuscript as opposed to twelve months. I can make editing changes overnight as opposed to say waiting a month for my changes to come back from editor. It is much easier to market an e-book than a printed book. I can send review copies to reviewers by email as soon as my book is published. I can show my target audience and fans samples of my e-book on my website within days after I have finished writing my manuscript.

Expense is another major reason why I chose to e-publish my book. Face it print publishing a book can be a major expense. There are expenses to the publisher if you self publish, expenses to a professional editor, marketing expenses, etc….With e-publishing you pay a fraction the cost of print-publishing your book. Of course like an author or publisher you want to test the ‘sale ability’ of your book. What if sales are slow and there is little interest in your book? The potential losses are smaller with e-publishing than with printed-book publishing.

Your target audience, what’s more convenient, seeing a book advertised on the net where you can download it onto your PC or e-book reader in a matter or have to drive to several bookstores to see if they even have the book or place an order on the Net and wait several days plus pay shipping costs? E-books are just so user friendly and convenient for readers. E-books have potential if not now but perhaps in the near future more potential for a greater target audience than printed books do.

Editing, no matter how hard we and our editors fine comb our books, typos and grammatical errors still may appear after we have published our books. How exhilarating does it feel to finally see your printed book on a store shelf only to feel a big let down when you see a few glaring typos in the book. With e-publishing you can take care of those glaring typos in a matter of minutes as opposed to the time and expense to have your print books reprinted to take out the errors.

Is e-publishing perfect? Far from it, at this point only a small percentage of the reader population reads e-books. But that population is growing, especially with the younger generation such as the gen y audience, the people I try to target for Diary and Fifi, my first published book. Illustrations may be cruder and less refined than books that are printed, and of course as we all know, e-books may be subject to piracy, that is why writers need to copyright their books to the hilt. Finally the disadvantage of the convenience of getting an e-book published quickly could lead to poor writing and sloppy editing.

But at least in my opinion the benefits outweigh disadvantages and at least in the foreseeable future any books that I publish will initially be published as an e-book.

Marcus Dino has had an interesting professional career, first as an Aerospace engineer, next as a passionate math teacher teaching in urban Los Angeles which he currently still does, and finally, as a part time literary fiction author. It is Mr Dino’s being a die hard movie buff that led him to writing Diary of a Mad Gen Yer in addition to his first novel, Fifi, Anything goes in the Double Os, first published in 2003. Mr Dino is a graduate of Chapman University and he also has Masters Degrees in both Education and Electrical Engineering. Diary of a Mad Gen Yer and Fifi can be found at www.smashwords.com and www.summertimproductions.net. Mr Dino’s personal website which includes numerous blogs, short stories, and poems involving his central character Fifi Larouche, which helped inspire him to write his anthology, Diary, can be found at www.authorsden.com/marcusdino.

Murder Mystery Novelist J.R. Hauptman talks about publishing The Target

2009-09-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

After another person discovers that I have written a book, I usually know what the next question will be. That is; “How long did it take you to write your book?” When I answer, that it took nearly twenty years, there inevitably comes the question “Why?”

The easy answer I usually give is that, “I didn’t know how it would turn out!” Perhaps too glib and short an answer but it usually saves a lot of words, an excellent skill for a budding author to develop.

I began the book about five years after I lost my job as an airline pilot during the turmoil of the early years of airline deregulation when a corporate raider took control of our airline, drove the company into bankruptcy and used that as a pretext to tear up our labor contracts. There was a great deal of loose talk at the time that it was a wonder that someone had not assassinated this person who was regarded at the time as “the most hated man in the industry.” The obvious answer to this question is that you want your airline pilots to be “rational” people and that “rational people” don’t set out to kill their boss!

I contemplated these questions sometime after I decided to return to aviation when my new career as a securities broker went down in flames with the stock market Crash of ’87. Faced with the prospect of starting all over at the bottom of the flying business, it occurred to me, what would I do if I were in the mountains on my elk hunting stand and this individual happened to coincidently walk out in front of me? Would impulse overcome rationality?

Not knowing the answer, I wrote the first few chapters of the book and set out to find a writers agent. At that time self-publishing was virtually unheard of and unsurprisingly, my first thirty or so author queries were met with total rejection, at least from the agents who had the courtesy to respond. Some expressed shock that I would even consider writing a novel on this subject. I guess they hadn’t heard of murder mysteries.

As we all know, getting past rejection is easier said than done and I devoted my energies to finding another airline job. I caught on with two charter outfits that promptly went bankrupt themselves before I landed a job with an airfreight outfit and settled into a steady routine that lasted for nearly twelve years. I had thought that I would be able to complete the book during that time, since being back in the flying business had presented me with much in potential material and possible story scenarios, but my progress was much too slow.

Mandatory retirement from the airlines was followed by a job flying corporate jets and another excuse for the lack of writing discipline. The answer finally came from what we all know too well; to be successful as an author, YOU MUST WRITE! Perhaps it is trite, but it is something we have to tell ourselves every day. I had come up with the final plot for the book when I was still flying airfreight but it remained for me to set goals: a total page count, a chapter outline and a word goal for each chapter. Once organized, it was “only” a matter of fleshing out the story. I say that tongue-in-cheek because it still took two more years to finish, even once I had adopted a more disciplined approach.

I was even able to add a denouement to bring the story into the present time and the first edition was published just before the deregulation of the securities and banking industries led to the nearly total meltdown of our economy.

Of course, finishing the book is only half the story; getting published is entirely another matter. Frankly, it is a rarity these days for a first time, unpublished author to land a contract with a major publisher, unless one is a celebrity or a politician. From bitter experience, I know that bulk mailing query letters to literary agents is a waste of postage, ink and stationary. Queries must be specifically targeted to the preferred genre of the agent. One agent replied in her rejection note that what I needed was not an agent, but a publicist. I hired a nationally prominent publicity firm and it was not long before I realized that I could exhaust my retirement funds with very little to show for it. By this time it was obvious that I would have to self-publish and with the guidance of a good friend and mentor, it became clear that the best way to promote sales is through the internet. I am about to enter my third month of online promotion with a virtual tour organized by Dorothy Thompson of Pump Up Your Book Promotion and the internet exposure has grown exponentially.

In the end, I believe your success as a writer is a direct result of your determination and your confidence in the quality of your writing. You must be brutally honest when you ask your self and your readers whether you actually have a good book!

I have been fortunate to have lived a life of rich and rewarding experiences that have provided me with enough writing material to last for the rest of my life. If your life has not yet yielded the “big story,” start with the small ones, especially the one you lived today.

J.R. Hauptman has been a professional pilot for nearly a half century. Barely twenty years old, he began as a military pilot and for almost two years he flew combat support missions in the Viet Nam War. Upon leaving military service he was hired by a major airline and was initially based on the West Coast. His flying career was interrupted by the turmoil that racked the airline industry during the early days of deregulation. In the interim, he worked as a travel agent, a stockbroker and even trained dogs and horses. In the late nineteen-eighties, he returned to aviation, flying jet charters and air freight. He concluded his career flying corporate jets and now lives in Florida. He is completing his second work, a non-fictional social commentary and surfs every day, waves or not. You can visit his website at http://www .caddispublishing.com/.

How I Got Published by Christian Fiction Author Jimmy Root, Jr.

2009-08-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

A permanent fixture etched in my childhood memories is that of an ancient hymn. It was sung off key by parishioners seated in wooden pews with the harsh strands of an old organ dragging it along. But not only the gusto of the singing stuck in my mind, so did the truth of the words. “It took a miracle to fling the stars in space.” From that tender age onward I have been convinced that miracles happen.

There are those that believe the art of getting a book published rests solely on hard work. They are the real blood, sweat, and tears aficionados. They might even be classified as literary sadists. You know; those that believe an author must suffer through years of angst and nail biting just so that they can be classified as having “paid their dues.” But what happens when someone comes along and breaks the rules by way of a miracle or two?

After I had notched the last period on the manuscript of Distant Thunder, Book One of the Lightning Chronicles, I joyfully and expectantly began the search for a publisher. I was clueless, but clueless can be good, at least when it comes to that part about angst and nail biting. No one told me that I was supposed to plow my way through months, maybe years of rejection. No one coached me on how to write a query letter for submitting the manuscript. I simply pressed forward, formed what I thought was a decent query, implemented my Google search button, and began.

"No one told me I was supposed to plow my way through months, maybe years of rejection."

For those of you who are now beginning to shake your head in disbelief or click your tongue on the back of your teeth like a school teacher lecturing a wayward second grader, you have to realize I am totally given over to the miraculous. Yes, you heard it correctly. I believe in the miraculous. From the way God works with those who seek him, to the way cool things happen for those who persevere and believe, I believe in miracles. In the case of the publishing of Distant Thunder, hard work and a miracle worked hand in hand.

Over two hundred query letters were pecked out on my keyboard. Manuscripts were sent. Selected chapters, synopsis, outlines, and character sketches were divided up and handed out over the internet. It all happened in gleeful bliss. And then the responses began to flood in. No! Sorry! Not what we’re looking for at this time! Check with so-and-so. Nice idea, but not our style! We don’t publish new authors, ever! Over two hundred queries attracted over two hundred rejections. But something in the back of my mind said, “Don’t give up. This book is good.” So I folded perseverance into a prayer for a miracle! That is when it happened. I received a positive response in the form of a contract exactly four months after beginning the hunt. And then another contract arrived, and another. Three contracts in all. I chose the one that fit my needs the best, American Book Publishers, and Distant Thunder became a reality.

If you are getting discouraged in your hunt for a publisher, I have some advice. Keep looking. Learn from the rejections. Persevere! In the meantime, polish your work in every way. Then, when you are working your hardest, step aside from the angst and allow yourself to believe for a miracle. Miracles still happen.

Jimmy Root Jr., has served as an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God since 1982, including service in Nebraska, Missouri, and a seven year term as a missionary in Colombia, South America. Jimmy is the lead Pastor of Family Worship Center of Smithville, a growing suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. Married to his wife Jean for twenty-nine years, the Roots have three grown children. Root is a 1981 alumnus of Central Bible College of Springfield, Missouri where he majored in Biblical Studies and Pastoral Theology. He is also an alumnus of Southeastern University, Lakeland Florida, where he majored in Intercultural Studies. A lifetime student of Biblical prophecy, Jimmy is also the Professor of Eschatology, The Study of End Times, for Berean University through the Northern Missouri District School of Ministry. He is a featured speaker at Churches and other venues, and is the host of “The Bible Uncensored” radio broadcast heard on radio stations around the country. His writings, both in book form as well as his blog, are purposed to be a wake-up call to a sleepy American church that seems to be losing a truly Christian World View. Distant Thunder and its sequels, A Gathering Storm and Then Comes Lightning, will reveal to the adventure/thriller aficionado the reality of the coming fulfillment of Biblically prophesied events. You can visit his website at www.lightningchronicles.com or his blog at www.prophecyalert.blogspot.com. Connect with him on twitter at www.twitter.com/JimmyRootJr and Facebook at www.facebook.com/jimmyrootjr.

THE DEPTH OF MY SOUL by Balthazar Rodrigue Nzomono-Balenda

2009-04-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

To be honest with you, I never thought that I would imagine myself publishing a book. It was one of the things, I feared to do. But now, it is a hobby to me and I enjoy it. I began to write my first book, “The Depth of My Soul” in August 2008. I struggled to find a title, which suite my book. Before I began writing my first book, I spent time looking for a publisher who would value my book. However, I had doubts finding a Danish publisher, who would publish my book. Then I decided to look for publisher on the internet across United States and Canada, but there were publishers that would not allow anybody to publish their books, if they aren’t residents in United States or Canada. In September 2008, I wanted to publish with Publish Today, which is situated in Owings Mills, Maryland. However, they don’t do any direct marketing or sales for books. They provide a small marketing packet that would give me helpful tips to start selling my book. I did not have a good approach about this idea because I expected to find a publisher that would let my book be available on his website.

I discovered Trafford Publishing, which has offices in the U.S. Canada and the U.K. I really wanted to publish my book with them, but I came up with the conclusion that I wasn’t financially stable enough to publish a book with them. Trafford Publishing is one of the most credible publishers, I have discovered because they have a wonderful service to new authors, who want their books to be published.

I kept struggling finding a publisher that would value my talent as a writer. Between October and November 2008, I gave up on finding a publisher that would publish my book and I put the idea of me writing a book aside. When I went at www.allpoetry.com , I found a publisher that promoted their service and it was about becoming a published author in minutes. I was very sceptic about their offers, but I decided to give it a try. I was very glad at first. However I had face struggles with the margins of my documents and it took me a while to get it publish. When my book got published, I was very happy.

Balthazar Rodrigue Nzomono-Balenda is the author of the book of poetry, The Depth of My Soul. You can visit his website at www.ganymedeweb.com.

Virtual Book Tour: Publishing Secrets of Women's Fiction Author Shaila Abdullah

2009-03-05T04:19:00.000-08:00

As a young teen, if I had known about the perils of breaking into the literary market, I might have quit early and not attempted to write any short stories. Selling a dozen or so shorts to Pakistani magazines in the 90s didn’t seem like a hard task, but years later, when I completed my collection of short stories, I realized how tough it is to sell a short story collection. Agent after agent gave the same response: they loved the writing but short stories are a hard sell. It was then that I decided to self publish through iUniverse—an experience I immensely enjoyed as I was able to control many aspects of publishing and marketing by myself. Being a veteran designer for over 15 years, I designed the cover of the book and all the marketing materials myself. The effort paid off. The collection was internationally recognized, garnered much media attention, and won the Norumbega Jury Prize for Outstanding Fiction and the DIY Festival Award.

In early 2006, I had an agent and encouraged by the success of the collection, I started working on my novel Saffron Dream and received a grant from Hobson Foundation for that work. My agent and I parted ways a year later because we had very different vision for my future. It was then that I decided to approach small publishers with my novel. When Victor Volkman of Modern History Press offered to publish it, I gladly accepted the offer. The publisher is known to get behind his authors 100% and actively participate in making their books successful. Volkman is very inclusive, listens well to his author’s suggestions, and responds to their needs in a timely manner. He is also great with ideas on marketing and book promotion. With him, there is no waiting for the phone to ring. If you have a question, you can bet that it will be answered at once. I didn’t have to do much arm-twisting to design the book cover for Saffron Dreams. Again, I actively participated in the marketing of the book and designed all the marketing materials, including the website for the new book.

There are a few benefits of going traditional versus going self-published. You have more avenues available for promotion. Despite the recent popularity of some self published titles, the stigma still exists around self-publishing.There are many reviewers and even book festivals out there that would not consider your book if it is self-published.

Perhaps my path has not been riddled with hurdles as some, but I do appreciate how tough the market is and applaud every author for picking up their pen and trying. We are all in this together and need to help each other with ideas, suggestions and yes, occasionally even with blurbs.

FREE GIFT

You can find a wealth of information on my website at www.shailaabdullah.com including a reading guide, excerpt, reviews, and buying information. For those with comments and questions, I can be reached at shailaabdullah@gmail.com. If you comment on this posting and leave your email address, you will receive a free e-book called A Taste of Saffron, containing recipes of dishes mentioned in Saffron Dreams. Readers who sign up for updates on my website will get a free excerpt of my 2005 book, Beyond the Cayenne Wall.

Shaila Abdullah is an award-winning author and designer, based in Austin, Texas. Her creative work focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of Pakistani women and their often unconventional choices in life. Her debut book, Beyond the Cayenne Wall, is a collection of stories about Pakistani women struggling to find their individualities despite the barriers imposed by society. Among other accolades, the book won the Norumbega Jury Prize for Outstanding Fiction and the DIY Festival Award. Abdullah received a grant from the Hobson Foundation for her new novel, Saffron Dreams which is about the trials and tribulations of a 9/11 Muslim widow. Abdullah has written several short stories, articles, and personal essays for various publications, such as Dallas Child, Web Guru, About Families, Sulekha, Women's Own, She, Fashion Collection and a magazine of the Daily Dawn newspaper called Tuesday Review, etc. She is a member of the Texas Writers' League. A Pakistani-American, Abdullah is also a seasoned print, web, and multimedia designer as well. See a complete bio at http://www.shailaabdullah.com/bio.html.

Virtual Book Tour: Publishing Secrets of Religious Leader and Author Jerry Pollock

2009-02-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

I am grateful to be sharing this journey with your readers. Thank you.

After writing and publishing seventy-five articles in peer reviewed scientific journals and books, and writing grants to fund my research in the Oral Biology & Pathology Department as a Professor at Stony Brook University, I thought I was a writer. Wrong! When it came to write my spiritual memoir, Divinely Inspired: Spiritual Awakening of a Soul, it was a very different experience. My first draft of my incomplete biography was about five-hundred plus pages. I just wrote and wrote wanting to capture every moment. When I looked at what I wrote, I said, “This stinks,” I need help.

I read Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual and picked out an editor, Gail Kearns, from his list at the back of his book. This was back in 2002 as the first edition of Divinely Inspired was published in 2003. The paperback came out as a second edition in January of 2009 under our Shechinah Third Temple, Inc. publishing wing. You wouldn’t want to have read Gail’s comments if you were me. “This is not a book,” she wrote and she was right. I went back to the drawing board and now instead of wrote and wrote, I cut and cut. What would be Gail’s response this time. “Well now Jerry, you have the makings of a book. You are about 80 percent there.” I was ecstatic. I now added a copy editor, Barbara Coster, listed in Dan’s book and Divinely Inspired soon was ready for publication.

I looked for a Publisher and quickly found out that no one is interested in a memoir of someone like myself, who is not a famous person. What the hell did they mean? I was a Professor and I was not only writing about my life, I was writing about miracles and God’s intervention into my life. Who wouldn’t be interested to read my book? The better question to ask might have been, who would want to read my book? So I gave up on the publishers and tried contacting agents. For the two or three who responded to my queries, the answer was the same as the publishers. Being a more than a little defiant and stubborn too, I threw caution to the wind and self-published. God leads humans in the direction they wish to go.

The self-publishing meant learning a whole new industry. I had to get my ISBN, my LCCN, find out about and learn book design programs, get a Book Cover Image, seek endorsements, and learn how to organize a book. With a lot of grit and inquisitiveness, I managed to put a book together. I was fortunate that my colleague, Phil Garant, at Stony Brook University was writing his own academic book and he helped me with the Adobe PageMaker program. I was also lucky that my youngest daughter Erin married Magnus, a graphic design artist and wonderful human being. My son-in-law is an exceptionally gifted artist but this was his first attempt at a Book Cover. I flew from New York to Los Angeles, and then Magnus and I drove to visit Alan Gadney and Carolyn Porter, marketing specialists, who told us exactly how to set up the Book Cover. They also set up our initial publicity campaign. Little did I know that writing and publishing the book was only five percent of the endeavor. The remainder was marketing which turns out to be far tougher.

The research for the book required more than two years of my time. I had a full time job as an academic at Stony Brook. I began writing the book after the unusual spiritual experiences I had in late 1998 that carried over to 1999 and thereafter. After about a month of writing, I realized that yes I was a scientist, but I didn’t know anything about my heritage and not much about anything else outside of science. Just about every day in the wee hours of the morning, I would be reading. I read the Hebrew Bible, parts of the New Testament, a bit of the Qur’an, other books on different religions like Buddhism, articles and book descriptions of the soul and faith, the origin of life and the universe, Creation and Evolution, and human anthropology. I condensed all of my readings into the Epilogue chapter of Divinely Inspired. Your readers may find the Epilogue interesting. My original ideas are penned in this last chapter. It’s where my faith came together with my science. I will always be a scientist, but I now have unshakable belief and trust in God. You can’t separate my science from my faith and vice versa. I see God as the master scientist responsible for both Evolution and Creation.

Although Divinely Inspired is an incomplete biography, I now realize that without writing my memoir, I probably wouldn’t have written the Messiah Interviews five years later in 2008. Maybe my third book will be another five years from now. I would like to complete the trilogy. In my dreams, I would like to tell God’s story in His own words so that humanity would know Him. It is prophesied that we shall know God in the Messianic Age at the End of Days; that is, if we are lucky enough to be admitted. I write about this in the Messiah Interviews.

You can find out more about me, the books, and our Third Temple Nonprofit by visiting our website at www.shechinahthirdtemple.org Go also to the Blog for additional information and publicity. If readers are interested in speaking with me, they can contact me at jerrypollock@bellsouth.net

Again thank you for the opportunity to share with your readers. May I wish all of you much joy and happiness.

Jerry Pollock is the author of seventy-five scientific publications. His background includes both a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Pharmacy from the University of Toronto, a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and Postdoctoral training in Microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Pollock is currently Professor Emeritus in the Oral Biology and Pathology Department in the School of Dental Medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island. Jerry’s first writer of the arts book, Divinely Inspired: Spiritual Awakening of a Soul, was a spiritual memoir originally published in 2003. The second edition of Divinely Inspired will be reissued in Paperback on Jan. 1, 2009. His ‘not so fictional’ novel, Messiah Interviews: Belonging to God, due out also on Jan. 1, 2009, is Jerry’s way of giving back to the Creator. Jerry is married to Marcia, his bashert or destined one. They reside in Florida.

For more about Jerry and his work, please visit www.shechinahthirdtemple.org.

Virtual Book Tour: Publishing Secrets of Historical Fiction Author J.A. Hunsinger

2009-02-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

This is the worst time in publishing history for a new author to get published. I spent a solid year sending submission packets to literary agents because you cannot approach publishers directly, only through an agent. Agents have their very own criteria for submissions, so do your homework, otherwise forget it. The effort was futile, heart-wrenching, and a waste of my time. Unless you have a controversial topic that is certain to cause a flap, or are already famous, you can forget the agent/publisher route.

I formed a publishing company and I work with BookMasters, Inc. and copy editors to publish, print, warehouse, and distribute my works. At this point, it is virtually the only avenue to publication. Be warned, it is expensive and that is why the road to publication is fraught with obstacles.

J. A. Hunsinger lives in Colorado, USA, with his wife Phyllis. The first novel of his character-driven, historical fiction series, Axe of Iron: The Settlers, represents his first serious effort to craft the story of a lifelong interest in the Viking Age—especially as it pertains to Norse exploration west of Iceland—and extensive research and archaeological site visitations as an amateur historian. He has tied the discovery of many of the Norse artifacts found on this continent to places and events portrayed in his novels. Much of his adult life has been associated with commercial aviation, both in and out of the cockpit. As an Engineering Technical Writer for Honeywell Commercial Flight Systems Group, Phoenix, AZ, he authored two comprehensive pilots’ manuals on aircraft computer guidance systems and several supplemental aircraft radar manuals. His manuals were published and distributed worldwide to airline operators by Honeywell Engineering, Phoenix, AZ. He also published an article, Flight Into Danger, in Flying Magazine, (August 2002). Historical Novel Society, American Institute of Archaeology, Canadian Archaeology Association, and IBPA-Independent Book Publishers Association, are among the fraternal and trade organizations in which he holds membership. You can visit his website at www.vinlandpublishing.com.

J.A. Hunsinger will be on virtual book tour in March and April '09. Please visit his official tour page here to find out more about his new book, Axe of Iron: The Settlers!

Virtual Book Tour: Publishing Secrets of Heroic Fantasy Author R. Scot Johns

2009-02-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

Do you have a novel that you’ve written but have struggled to get published? Have you spent endless hours crafting a work no editor will ever read? If your answer is “yes,” then you’re not alone. In fact, you are only one among a vast majority of authors whose long labor goes unrewarded. Certainly many of these have neither the skill nor talent it requires to rise above the others in the highly competitive world of commercial fiction. But then, many of them never intended to do so. Most books simply don’t fall into that category, and so have little chance. Trade publishers run a multi-billion dollar business, and they just can’t take the chance on very many manuscripts of esoteric interest.

This is the predicament I found myself in upon completing an epic seven-hundred page historical fantasy novel. On agent that I queried replied with the brief, but pointed question: “364,000 words, are you kidding?” This from an agent who purportedly represented fantasy fiction. I responded in kind with: “Have you never heard of Robert Jordan?”

So it is that many of us with valid works are stranded outside the standard commercial channels (I feel justified in calling my work “valid” as it has since received rave reviews). But the face of publishing is changing. Today’s technology has made it possible to publish your own work, not through marginal vanity presses of ill repute, but rather by taking matters into our own hands, much as authors such as Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin did before us. Print-on-demand technology and internet marketing bridges the gap between the authors and their audience, bringing the writer and the reader together. Today there is no need for high-priced middlemen who do little to promote your work, and pass on less when it comes to profits for the author.

Rather than waiting idly by for more replies like the one above, I started my own publishing house to produce my own books, and I did it for little more than a few hundred bucks. Today I own and operate Fantasy Castle Books, have complete artistic control and ownership of my work, and gain 100% of the profits from my novel. It’s been a long road with a steep learning curve, but I can tell you there is nothing better than success that comes from one’s own efforts. For an ongoing and in-depth discussion of the process, visit my blog at http://authoradventures.blogspot.com.

R. Scot Johns is a life-long student of ancient and medieval literature, with an enduring fascination for Norse mythology and epic fantasy. He first came to Beowulf through his love of J. R. R. Tolkien, a leading scholar on the subject. As an Honors Medieval Literature major he has given lectures on such topics as the historical King Arthur and the construction of Stonehenge. He owns and operates Fantasy Castle Books, his own publishing imprint, and writes the blog Adventures of an Independent Author, where you can follow his progress as he writes The Jester’s Quest, his second novel. You can visit his website at www.fantasycastlebooks.com.

R. Scot Johns will be on virtual book tour in March '09. Please visit his official tour page here to find out more about his new book, The Saga of Beowulf!

Virtual Blog Tour: Publishing Secrets of Inspirational Author Sheri Kaye Hoff

2009-02-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

Sheri Kaye Hoff resides in Parker, CO with her husband and three children. She is a Life Coach and owner of the Sheri K Hoff International Coaching Company. She teaches college classes as an adjunct faculty member and has earned her Master of Arts in Organizational Management. Her new book, Keys to Living Joyfully, offers a way of living a meaningful, successful and joy filled life.

Ms. Hoff is a personal and executive life coach. Spirituality is a vital part of her life's work. Prayer and meditation are integral pieces of her daily ritual, which enables her to pursue her life's passions and live a truly joyful life.

Her words on faith are derived from her own Christian walk and spiritual self-discoveries. Her action steps mix faith and years of leadership training, mentoring, and management. Sheri Kaye Hoff suffered the tragic death of her younger brother when she was a teenager and struggled for years to rediscover the capacity to feel joy and to enjoy her successes. She has a heart felt desire to pass on her knowledge and discoveries that have led to a truly transformational life. Ms. Hoff publishes a free weekly inspiration newsletter, Coach Sheri's Weekly Inspiration Tips. The Sheri K Hoff International Coaching Company also offers:

* Teleclasses.
* Webinars
* In person small and large group Coaching
* Corporate Training
* Keynote speaking
* Seminars
* Individual Career and Life Coaching (For a limited time- receive a free introductory one hour life coaching session)

You can visit her website at www.lifeisjoyful.org.

Throughout my life, I was always interested in why some people were very successful and other people with the same or more potential were not successful. I read hundreds of books on leadership, motivation, and inspiration. I also experienced tragedy in my family at a young age,which left me dealing with post traumatic stress disorder for years afterwards. I experienced remarkable positive change and felt very deeply in my heart that I wanted to reach out to other people who were trying to find happiness. I write from a Christian faith perspective, however, I also, encompass some of the concepts of positive thinking and the law of attraction. I wanted to write a synthesis of everything that helped me get better and truly experience joy—and I wanted it to be simple, workable, and easy to read. I wrote from the heart-the words just poured out of me-time seemed to stand still when I was working on my book. From the time I started writing seriously for the book, Keys to Living Joyfully: I finished in five weeks. I decided to self-publish through createspace in order to have my book available quickly. I hired a graphic designer to create a beautiful cover and found the perfect person, Michele Caron, creator of mylifecoach.com to write the Foreword. From start to finish, the whole process took five and a half months. I have accomplished one of my life dreams and am still in awe when I wake up each morning.

About the book:

Keys to Living Joyfully is an inspirational book on experiencing joy, peace, passion, and energy in daily life. It is designed to demonstrate the powerful roles of thoughts, action, and faith. The book is a merging of Sheri Kaye Hoff's spiritual life and lifelong interests in leadership and motivation. The ideas presented in the book are techniques and processes that have worked for the author and clients. Foreword is written by Michele Caron, creator of MyLifeCoach.com
The book, Keys to Living Joyfully, was born out of a heartfelt desire to share the keys that lead to living a transformational life. Ms. Hoff is a personal and executive coach working with individuals, small businesses, and corporations. Her words on faith are derived from her own Christian walk and spiritual self-discoveries. Her action steps are a mix of faith. love, leadership skills, and management experience. Chapters include topics such as: Is your heart thinking right? And how to tap into intrinsic motivation. This book, Keys to Living Joyfully, offers the techniques and insights that move people towards more peace, joy, energy, and passion in everyday life.

Sheri Kaye Hoff will be on virtual book tour in March '09. Please visit his official tour page here to find out more about her new book, Keys to Joyful Lving!

Virtual Book Tour: Publishing Secrets of Fantasy Authors Bruce Skye

2009-01-20T11:26:00.000-08:00

A former technical writer, detail is important to Bruce Skye. His research for the Deathsong Chronicles included medieval armor and fortresses, as well as Celtic names and magic. "If you create a world, it must be consistent. And that's what I strive for Grayrider's world to be. I've built a database of material for each of the Deathsong Chronicles. Those databases aid me in keeping the world the same from book to book. "When I wrote Grayrider, I followed the advice of Stephen King. I did not write the book following any sort of outline. I have no more idea than my readers do when I write a novel what will happen in the midst of the story. It makes it more exciting for both the readers and myself." You can visit his website at www.bruceskye.com.

A New York agency readily took my novel Grayrider. A publisher she suggested also seemed to like my work and wanted to publish it. So, what’s my big secret to being published?

In a simple word, practice makes perfect. I had written several modern day suspense novels. This work all agents rejected. But Grayrider had been an idea which had been kicking around in my head for years and I finally put it on paper. And in doing so, I finally found a winning combination of fantasy and suspense a publisher seemed to like.

About the book:

Gabriel, the exiled king of Rivalin, comes before King Airell to warn him the Ansgarian army will invade his kingdom before the night is over. Airell tells him he has no one to send. Gabriel wants revenge for the murder of his family by the Ansgarians. He decides to fight the incursion without help.

As this takes place, Deirdre (Airell’s daughter), flees the kingdom of Cynyr north of Boadhagh. She knows now her mentor, Morrigan, created the Ansgarian army her father has fought for years. She goes south to warn him of her. Because Deirdre does not believe in herself, the young sorceress has difficulty in performing magic.
Once she is reunited with her father, she tells both he and Grayrider about Morrigan. Her power is growing; only Gabriel’s magical sword may yet destroy her. He must go to Cynyr to fight her. He agrees if Deirdre attends him, seeking her counsel.

That journey will be a deadly and momentous one for them both.

Bruce Skye will be on virtual book tour in February '09. Please visit his official tour page here to find out more about him and his new book, Grayrider!

Virtual Book Tour: Publishing Secrets of Contemporary Fiction Author William Petrick

2009-01-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

William Petrick is an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer/director who has created programs for National Geographic, Discovery, MTV, Court TV and many other cable and broadcast networks. He is currently a senior producer with Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. You can find out more about William's book by clicking here.

After trying to entice an agent for many months, one finally signed me up but the book went nowhere. Next, I took some advice from a publishing exec in New York who suggested I write to editors as well as small, independent presses. Pear house actually had seen a short story of mine in a literary magazine and so were receptive. I was worried about what would happen at a small press but it has been incredible. Neither my book nor my emails are ignored and they have been extremely supportive from edit to launch. One secret: their editor inspired me to re-do the last third of the book. I was wildly resistant at first but, in the end, made it a much better novel.

About the Book:

Struggling documentary producer Michael Burns has traveled to the remote Maya Mountains of Belize to capture exclusive footage of the last surviving curandero. The traditional Mayan healer may hold the key to discovering new medicines among the vast, uncharted flora of the rain forest.

But with a violent civil war spilling across the border from neighboring Guatemala - and Burns inexplicably drawn to the aging curandero's American apprentice - the filmmakers stumble into a more explosive story than they ever could have imagined.
At once an adventure and an exploration into the nature of perception, THE FIVE LOST DAYS exposes the clash between modern culture and ancient beliefs.

Purchase THE FIVE LOST DAYS by clicking here!

GUEST BLOGGER: Book Publishing Secrets of Beverly Stowe McClure

2009-01-08T21:03:00.000-08:00

Beverly’s Journey to Publication

When I was a child, I hated to read. Even though my eighth-grade teacher sent my poem “Stars” to a high school anthology and it was published in Young America Sings, I hated to write.

In high school, book reports were a nightmare. I was shy and standing in front of the class to tell about a book was pure torture. Thank heavens for the jacket flap copy, as if the teachers couldn’t tell. In spite of my rocky relationship with books I attended Midwestern University, which meant more reading: one hundred children’s books for my Kiddie Lit. class, in addition to texts for the other subjects. What was I thinking?

To my surprise, I survived college and graduated cum laude. Then I became, of all things, a teacher. And in the process I discovered what I’d been missing. Books were fun. I also started writing. Happiness magazine published my first article. More of my work was published in Ladybug, Focus on the Family Clubhouse Jr., and other children’s magazines.

Being daring, next I decided to write a novel. So I started brainstorming ideas, but couldn’t come up with a good one. On a visit to Charleston, SC, my family and I took a walking ghost tour of the historic district. The tales the tour guide told them about resident ghosts in many of the Victorian houses intrigued me. I’d write about a ghost. And my ghost was kind enough to whisper in my ear one evening and introduce herself. Yes, I hear voices, and they often turn into my characters. So I wrote Phoebe the ghost’s story.

It took me about a year and a half to write my YA novel, Listen to the Ghost. Then I sent queries to several of the big NY publishers. While I waited for replies, visions of new cars and houses and big advances danced in my head. It didn’t turn out quite that way. No one wanted my story. After a couple of years of generic form letters, I got discouraged and put the manuscript aside to concentrate on other writing.

One day, I was reading a message board that mentioned Twilight Times Books, a publisher of e-books. I knew nothing about e-books but checked their Web site anyway, and discovered the publisher liked paranormal stories. So I took the manuscript out of the filing cabinet, dusted off the cobwebs, edited the manuscript again, and sent a query. Lida Quillen, the publisher of TT, asked to see it. A few months later I had a contract.

The e-book was a finalist in the Dream Realm Award competition in 2003. But the best was yet to come. TT had started their print line of books, and in 2005, Listen to the Ghost was published in trade paperback. That’s almost as exciting as giving birth, and less painful. It only took 8 years for my dream to come true.

I now have two more YA books published: Secrets I Have Kept and my latest, Rebel in Blue Jeans.

Four more novels are under contract with various publishers: Caves, Cannons, and Crinolines; Just Breeze; I Live in a Doghouse; and Kate, Little Angel Sometimes.

Yay for small publishing houses. My only regret is that I waited so late to start reading and writing.

http://beverlystowemcclure.wordpress.com

http://rebelinbluejeans.wordpress.com

Beverly S. McClure started her writing career early—though she approached it kicking andYoung America Sings screaming—when her eighth-grade teacher sent her poem “Stars” to a high school anthology and it was published in . She graduated from Midwestern State University and became a teacher. As soon as she discovered Dr. Seuss and other great children’s stories, she willingly put pen to paper and had stories and articles published in Ladybug, Focus on the Family Clubhouse Jr., U. S. Kids, Jack and Jill and other leading children’s magazines, including an article that was reprinted in a Scott Foresman Pre-K anthology and a breakout article that appeared in the June 2007 issue of Writer magazine. A multi-published author, Beverly’s Listen to the Ghost and Secrets I Have Kept are available in trade paperback. Her latest release is Rebel in Blue Jeans, and she has four more books under contract. A member of the National Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and their North Texas Chapter, Beverly is the mother of three grown boys and lives in the country with her husband, Jack, where an occasional deer, skunk, or armadillo come to visit. For more about Beverly and her work, please visit http://beverlystowemcclure.wordpress.com

GUEST BLOGGER: Book Publishing Secrets of Contemporary Fiction Author William Petrick

2009-01-07T19:13:00.000-08:00

After trying to entice an agent for many months, one finally signed me up but the book went nowhere. Next, I took some advice from a publishing exec in New York who suggested I write to editors as well as small, independent presses. Pear house actually had seen a short story of mine in a literary magazine and so were receptive. I was worried about what would happen at a small press but it has been incredible. Neither my book nor my emails are ignored and they have been extremely supportive from edit to launch. One secret: their editor inspired me to re-do the last third of the book. I was wildly resistant at first but, in the end, made it a much better novel.

William Petrick is an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer/director who has created programs for National Geographic, Discovery, MTV, Court TV and many other cable and broadcast networks. He is currently a senior producer with Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. You can find out more about William's book by clicking here.

Lloyd Lofthouse V-Logs Book Publishing Secrets

2008-12-31T10:42:00.000-08:00

We have a special guest for you today at Book Publishing Secrets of Authors. Lloyd Lofthouse, author of My Splendid Concubine, begins his 2nd month of virtual tour stops with a terrific video of how to get published. Enjoy, but leave a comment for Lloyd below and you could win a virtual book tour for yourself if you're published or a $50 Amazon gift certificate. Good luck!

Enjoy the show!

As a field radio operator, Lloyd Lofthouse was a walking target in Vietnam in 1966. He has skied in blizzards at forty below zero and climbed mountains in hip deep snow.

Lloyd earned a BA in journalism after fighting in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine. Later, while working days as an English teacher at a high school in California, he earned an MFA in writing. He enjoyed a job as a maitre d’ in a multimillion-dollar nightclub and tried his hand successfully at counting cards in Las Vegas for a few years. He now lives near San Francisco with his wife, with a second home in Shanghai, China. Lloyd says that snapshots of his life appear like multicolored ribbons flowing through many of his poems.

This link takes you to Lloyd's 'Vietnam Experience' page filled with photos. He took many of them. Since Lloyd still has to edit the photos so they load faster, this page may load slow for older computers.

This link will take you to a media piece from a Southern California newspaper that Lloyd copied and posted on his Website that will give you an idea about his teaching years.

If you are interesting in learning more about Lloyd's teaching experience, you are welcome to read about it at AuthorsDen. 'Word Dancer' is a memoir of the 1994-1995 school year. He kept a daily journal that year. He is using that journal to write 'Word Dancer'. Everyday, when he arrived home, Lloyd wrote an entry in that journal. It sat on a shelf in his garage for fourteen years gathering dust. Spiders moved into the binder and built a nest. After all those years, Lloyd forgot he'd written it. When he was cleaning the garage, he found it again. Lloyd started reading, remembering and writing. Everything he writes in 'Word Dancer' happened. He's using a primary source as his guide. Memory may be faulty, but a daily journal written the day an event took place is as accurate as it can get from the author's point-of-view.

Accomplishments: Lloyd's short story "A Night at the Well of Purity" was named a finalist for the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards.

As a teacher, Lloyd found satisfaction in the number of students that published nationally and internationally while attending his English and journalism classes.

You can visit his website at www.mysplendidconcubine.com.

Driven by a passion for his adopted country, Robert Hart became the “godfather of China’s modernism,” inspector general of China’s Customs Service, and the builder of China’s railroads, postal and telegraph systems, and schools, but his first real love is Ayaou, a young concubine.

"Love for ones wives' sister is typically forbidden by most Western religions, but the most successful Westerner in Chinese history is faced with this conflict. "My Splendid Concubine" is the tale of Robert Hart who deals with matters of his lust and how to deal with them the Chinese way, which so conflcit with his upbringing. The Taiping Rebellion doesn't help matters, him making enemies of established and skilled mercenaries in the process of protecting his interest and the women he loves. "My Splendid Concubine" is packed cover to cover with intriguing characters and plot, a must read for historical fiction fans and a fine addition to any collection on the genre."
--Midwest Book Reviews

"What makes this story something other than a cliched period piece is the fact that Lofthouse drew his narrative from fragments of Hart’s own diaries which Hart himself was supposed to have burned before his death. Hart was a prodigious correspondent, and the 40 odd volumes of letters he left behind became a foundational document for modern Sinologists-including John King Fairbank-who sought reasons for modern China’s highly problematic entrance into modernity.

If even half of Lofthouse’s narrative is true, it’s a stunning work that enmeshes imperialism, modernity, miscegenation and plain old desire in a sweaty matrix of destruction and painful birth."
--City Weekend Magazine

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of David S. Grant, author of BLEACH / BLACKOUT

2008-12-23T05:18:00.000-08:00

I am the author of Corporate Porn, Emotionless Souls, and The Last Breakfast. My current book I’m promoting is the double novel Bleach|Blackout from Offense Mechanism, an imprint of Silverthought Press.. Bleach tells the tale of coming back home for the holidays to find decadence that forces a look inside. Blackout is a dark comedy with the theme of living moment to moment. A story about living.

My journey into the world of fiction started in 2003 when I originally wrote Bleach. I would go on to self-publish this book and promote via press releases and email. During this time I also wrote many short stories that found their way into literary journals and online writing communities. A couple of these stories found their way onto Silverthought.com. In 2004 I wrote my second novel, Corporate Porn, and was fortunate to be considered (and chosen) as part of the first books published by Silverthought Press. To promote Corporate Porn, postcards where printed and distributed, I promoted via online channels (blog, MySpace, etc…), and also coordinated a book signing.

During this time I also started writing a sequel to Bleach, later to become Blackout, and published through Offense Mechanisms, an imprint of Silverthought Press, in April 2008 as a double novel (complete with topsy-turvy covers). For promotion this time around I have focused very heavily on online websites featuring authors, promotion through my website (http://www.davidsgrant.com), and approaching local bookstores, introducing myself, and gauging interest on selling my books and/or hosting a signing isn’t easy, but necessary. Most books will not be sold through bookstores, but it’s still important to make your work available whether through purchase or consignment basis.

Online I have utilized the social network MySpace as well as the writing social network Author’s Den. My website (http://www.davidsgrant.com) serves as a portal to all of my works (publisher websites), reviews, articles, and contacts. Craigslist and EBAY are two additional online avenues that are free and allow authors to sell their work to a much larger audience than would typically be available through traditional channels.

I have found much success through Pump Up Your Books virtual (online) book tours. I am currently on my third virtual tour (this is one of the stops!) and am able to promote across multiple channels via interviews, reviews, and articles.

My next novel, Blood-The New Red, is scheduled to be published in 2009. I expect to utilize many of the areas I have used in the past as well as build on the network I have created and create new opportunities.

Thank you for having me. I do believe anyone that reads Bleach|Blackout will enjoy themselves. The humorous story, littered with pop culture throughout, will have you knee deep in the characters addictions before you know it. Thanks again. -David

About the Author:

David S. Grant is the author of Corporate Porn, published by Silverthought Press in 2006. David's first novel Bleach and sequel titled Blackout are now available through Offense Mechanisms, an imprint of Silverthought Press. Also, newly published in 2008 the novel The Last Breakfast and short story collection Emotionless Souls through Brown Paper Publishing. David lives and works in New York City.

About the Book:

Fans of fluffy romance novels and that all-too-familiar, over-hyped, edge-of-the-seat crap should steer clear. This is life at its most jaded. Offense Mechanisms is proud to present Bleach | Blackout by David S. Grant, two novels about drugs, sex, revenge, the corporate crunch, and the inevitable unpleasantness of life and death.

You can visit David's website at www.davidsgrant.com/ to read an excerpt!

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of Steven Verrier, author of TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART

2008-12-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

I’ve been writing seriously since I was a teenager … first songs, and then I got hooked on prose while attending university … thanks in part to one of the greatest teachers I ever had, Prof. Frank Ledwell of the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, who mentored innumerable young writers during his distinguished career there. After completing undergraduate studies in Canada, I spent many years living and working overseas, particularly in Japan. Somewhere along the way I earned graduate degrees at Columbia and the University of Iowa, and I continued to write … getting some short plays published, along with articles and a nonfiction book titled RAISING A CHILD TO BE BILINGUAL AND BICULTURAL, based on my and my Japanese wife’s experience raising our children to be fluent in both parents’ native languages and cultures. More recently I’ve been concentrating on fiction, and my first novel, TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART, was released by Saga Books earlier this year. A second novel, PLAN B, will be published by Saga Books in 2009.

TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART, though not my first published book, is my first published novel. It’s the story of Don Fisher, a middle-aged misfit—just about everything has gone wrong in his life—who finally meets the sort of woman he’s given up on ever meeting. This happens while he’s on vacation in Venezuela. The woman, Ana, is Colombian, working as a waitress in Caracas, and while the two don’t exactly have a storybook romance, a child is conceived during Don’s vacation. He doesn’t learn this until he’s back in the States, but from that point on his energy is directed toward marrying Ana and bringing her to live in the US. Little does he realize the obstacles US Immigration is about to put in his path.

As to the road TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART and its author traveled en route to publication, it’s been long, bumpy, and often uphill. But if a writer writes about what he knows … from his own unique perspective … he’ll end up with a book no one else could have written. Whatever else happens, he’ll have something to be proud of … and I am proud of this book.

I plan to be around for the long haul doing whatever it takes to carve out a significant writing career. I appreciate every little step along the way, and I appreciate every little bit of support I get. For information about TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART or about Steven Verrier, visit stevenverrier.com, and drop me a line telling me what you think about this book.

Advice? Develop a thick skin. Be The Little Engine that Could. There are few successful writers that couldn’t paper their walls with rejection letters. Whatever your long-range plans may be, set little goals along the way, and be patient when even the tiniest steps take far longer than you’d imagined. And, of course, grit your teeth and be ready to outlast every obstacle you face.

Steven Verrier, born in the United States and raised mainly in Canada, has spent much of his life living and traveling abroad. He is the author of RAISING A CHILD TO BE BILINGUAL AND BICULTURAL (a prizewinning book published bilingually in Japan) and various short dramatic works for the student market. His first novel, TOUGH LOVE, TENDER HEART, was published in the summer of 2008 by Saga Books. Currently he is living with his wife, Motoko, and four sons in San Antonio, Texas. You can visit his website at www.stevenverrier.com.

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of Travel Memoir Author Jenny McGill

2008-12-02T14:05:00.000-08:00

Drama & Diplomacy was self-published in Mexico. That is where I worked and lived. Although I didn’t intend it to be a memoir, that’s what it turned out to be. I had experiences in my job as a consular agent for the U.S. Government in Puerto Vallarta that were so diverse and bizarre I wanted every U.S. taxpayer to know where some of our tax dollars were going. Many highly-educated Americans have no idea what consuls do in foreign countries. In fact, most of them don’t even know how to spell it. I still hear them called ‘counselors’, and they are, but much more.

Allen Drury won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960 with his book Advise and Consent. He went on to write many other novels, science-fiction and non-fiction before his death. Allen was a frequent visitor to Puerto Vallarta, and we became friends. Allen used to tell me, “Jenny, you have a book in you. Keep notes.” I would tell him that nobody would believe it, even if I did write a book. His response was always, “Just keep notes.”

I kept notes, or rather copies of reports I made on the more far-fetched cases. I retired from my position, but I kept that bag of notes for about ten years. And then one day I decided to clean some of the clutter from my life, so I burned the notes. That is when I got serious about writing a book.

Unlike Dr. Roberta Islieb, author of Preaching to the Corpse, I didn’t do enough researching about publishing, literary agents or editors before jumping into the frying pan. I was eager to get my book out there. I sent out a few queries. I couldn’t say I was devastated by the number of rejection slips I received. I was never even sure my query was received, so I don’t know the feeling of dejection.

I was introduced to a retired literary agent who agreed to read my manuscript and give me tips. She corrected the name of the town where she lived and told me, “One of the first things you should know is that you never bind a manuscript!” She told me literary agents like to lie in bed at night and read, throwing page by page aside as they are read.

The only reason I had bound it was an editor friend of mine had offered to read and give me suggestions. I used up a ream of paper printing out my cherished manuscript, only I called it My Book, not a manuscript. She started reading it and wrote me that she went to bed with a smile on her face and woke up laughing the next morning at the antics described on the pages. She laid my work on the night table. The cat came along and knocked it to the floor. She couldn’t put it back together in order again. I had not bothered inserting page numbers. I knew in what sequence they should be read and I figured that job was up to the printing company.

I trusted spell check on my computer, but since I was working with a keyboard configurated in Spanish and I was typing English, I decided it should be proofread. The retired literary agent had suggested that my husband read the manuscript out loud to me so I could hear how it read. He reads very well so we gave it a try. He read; I changed text around. He read and I caught some errors and he caught some. I re-typed and we both read again. Once we were absolutely positive there were no typos or misspells, we were ready to share with the rest of the world.

I knew several authors who had successfully self-published, and I thought maybe that was the way to go. I knew a young man who had been visited by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents when he was a kid because he had hacked his way into some high security files in Washington, D.C. I promised him I would never divulge his true identity or whereabouts if he would design the book cover and he agreed.

The first edition was a success. The Senior Editor of Mexconnect.com, the one whose cat knocked my unnumbered pages off her night table, came to the fancy book signing held in the luxurious seaside Villa Verano. The retired literary agent came to help her collect money from the sale table. Many of my characters wandered through the gardens and became reacquainted; some of whom had not seen each other in twenty-five years. I was Alice in Wonderland.

And then someone pointed out that I had misspelled Colombia, not once, but twice. Be careful of the automatic correcting toolbar. It seems that some of the chapters were in a different font size. Paragraph formatting is very important, I discovered.

As I was going through the throes of birthing Drama & Diplomacy, some of my friends suggested I would be able to write a How to Write a Book when I finished. They were wrong. Drury was not around to guide me, but I talked to him on a daily basis. John Huston was not around to encourage me on, but the man who wrote his biography, An Open Book, was. William Reed, author of Rocks & Shoals: Memoir of a Navy Mustang and the Cuban Submarine Crisis, Mexican Odyssey, and Huston’s bio encouraged me to revise and publish the second edition, which I have done. It has been edited by two editors.

My secret tips are do what any good writer should do, not what I did. I’m working on a historical novel, which I may self-publish, but I think I would go with Publish on Demand. I would still confer with my thug book cover designer. I would number the pages and not bind the manuscript. I would still ask my husband to read out loud to me, but I would find six or seven or more proofreaders, and DEFINITELY ask my editor to put my manuscript in, and not on, the night table.

Jenny McGill grew up in the Deep South in Mississippi. After schooling she moved to Dallas where she met her husband, Howard. Their love of

Mexico

brought them to an early semi-retirement in 1973 in Puerto Vallarta.

Jenny and Howard, moved to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in 1973. She was appointed consular agent by the U.S. State Department in 1982 and spent fourteen years in that position.

Upon retirement, the McGills sought out the tranquility of the western Sierra Madres in the small village of Talpa de Allende, Jalisco. There she devotes her time to writing, promoting local artists and gardening. She says, “My love of robin-egg blue skies, breath taking sunsets that only God could paint, and music, which falls softly on my ear, is reason enough to be in Mexico.” You can visit Jenny on the web at www.mjmcgill.com.

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of Southern Women's Fiction Author J.L. Miles

2008-11-23T14:56:00.000-08:00

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO GETTING PUBLISHED

by Jackie Lee Miles

My agent is shopping my latest manuscript and let me tell you the waiting is killing me. As a matter of fact, just this morning I noticed my hair is definitely grayer than it was last week.

When she first sent it out, we got an immediate response from a major publisher and boy was I excited. They raved about the author voice and the premise. They asked if the author had another book that could be packaged with it. Then they took it to committee, whatever that means, and the next thing you know they were saying things like, “It’s not for our list after all.”

Bummer. I felt like dumping my head in the washing machine while it was on the spin cycle. That got me thinking about all the authors out there that now have N.Y. Times bestsellers. Did they ever want to stick their head in the washer? I’d call them up, but I don’t have there numbers. Plus they’d think I was crazy so I’d probably just tell them how much I enjoyed their book and not mention their washing machine.

Maybe placing a project is so frustrating because of the way I first got published. I went to this book conference. At the reception I literally bumped into Ron Pitkin, the president of Cumberland House Publishing. He was kind enough not to notice I spilled his drink and asked what I was working on. When I told him fiction, he promptly replied, “That’s a crap shoot.” Definitely not what I wanted to hear. I mean, I’d paid good money to come to this conference and he’s raining on my party, big time. “Well,” I said, “that’s too bad, because I have a dynamite opening line.” I was prepared to walk away, when he gently took hold of my elbow and said, “So what’s your opening line?”

“The morning I died, it rained.” Keep in mind this was long before The Lovely Bones.

“God! I want to see that book,” he said, doing an about face.

“Ah, I don’t have a book,” I said. “I have a great opening line and a hundred pages.”

He asked if I had it with me. “Of course. I’m getting it evaluated in the morning. It costs forty-five dollars.”

He told me to give it to him, he wouldn’t charge a thing. I immediately went to my room and brought back the pages. I had a prologue, and the last chapter and the epilogue along with the rest of it. It wasn’t finished, but I knew where it was going.

Mr. Pitkin thanked me and went on his way. Come Sunday morning with the conference over, everyone was checking out. I spotted Mr. Pitkin making his way toward me and thought, oh-oh, this is where he’s going to pull the rug out from under me and tell me to get a real job. To my surprise he handed me the manuscript and said, “I want this and I want it yesterday. Go home and finish it!”

I figured if I took forever to finish it he’d never even remember that he liked it. I stayed up and wrote around the clock for the next five days, took the weekend off, stayed up again and wrote around the clock for the next five days and sent it off to Mr. Pitkin. I marked my calendar for three months, thinking it might take that long for him to get back to me. I started in on my second book. Just like all the books on writing said to do. The following Friday evening my phone rang. I answered. A voice said, “This is Ron Pitkin at Cumberland House and we’re going to bring your book out in hardback.” I said, “Ya? And I’m the tooth fairy.” And I hung up on him. The reason I did this is that the only person other than my husband who knew I’d sent off the manuscript was a good friend of mine who can mimic any voice he’s ever heard. He’d been going to this conference where I’d met Mr. Pitkin for years and has heard him speak many times. It had to be this friend playing a joke on me. Not a very funny one either. I wasn’t amused.

I went upstairs to comb my hair and put some lipstick on. My husband was starving and wanted to go and get something to eat. Poor thing, he probably was starving. I stopped cooking when the kids left home and I took up writing. No sooner did I get to the bedroom when the phone rang. This one has caller ID, the others don’t. I leaned over and saw CUMBERLAND HOUSE flashing on the screen. I’d hung up on Mr. Pitkin for real!

I picked up the handset, leaned into it and barely whispered “Hello?”

“What’d you hang up on me for?” he said. “Ah, it’s a long story, a very boring story,” I said.

“Well, we’re bringing out your book in hard back and bumping back our memoir piece on Dale Earnhardt (he’d been tragically killed), to make Roseflower Creek the lead book. What do you think of that?”

I was hyperventilating and finding it impossible to speak. I did my best. “Didn’t you say fiction was a crap shoot?” I asked

“Yes—and it is,” he said.

“Then I think your crazy or my protagonist got herself a miracle. What do you think of that?”

Mr. Pitkin laughed and said he’d be seeing me. This is a true story and a pretty amazing way to get published. I should have known there’d be rocky roads ahead. It brings to mind the old adage if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Oh well, maybe after the storms pass, I’ll find a rainbow. One can always hope. In the interim I’ve got everything crossed, including the hair on my husband’s head—all three strands.

Jackie Lee Miles is the author of Roseflower Creek, Cold Rock River and the newly released Divorcing Dwayne. Dear Dwayne debuts April 1st, 2009. Visit the website at www.jlmiles.com. Write to Jackie at Jackie@jlmiles.com

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of Mystery Novelist Robert Greer

2008-11-19T06:50:00.000-08:00

As far as I am concerned, there is only one publishing secret and that is to treat writing as a job, which means for most people that they must firmly plant themselves in a chair and work at the task of writing as one would approach any other job. Write everyday and try not to treat your job like a hobby or a lark. I typically write three hours every day when I’m working on a novel, generally ten months out of any year.

A second secret that I might share relates to the fact that if you’re going to get into the writing game, it’s best to come with a portfolio. A portfolio that shows that you are capable of doing what you claim you can do. That portfolio can include examples of ones technical writing, if you’ve been a technical writer, short stories if you are a short story writer, or writing for a local newspaper, or your fraternity or sorority newsletter, for example.

Aside from those two tips, I’m not certain that I have any other secrets of value.
Robert Greer is the author of the mystery novel, BLACKBIRD FAREWELL. You can visit his website at www.robertgreerbooks.com.

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of Joanna Bloss, Co-Author of GRIT FOR THE OYSTER

2008-11-18T05:18:00.001-08:00

My secret to getting published has to do with networking. I collaborated with three other authors for our book Grit for the Oyster. My introduction to this project ultimately came through an email I received almost ten years ago. That email came from an editor (who now is a friend and co-author) asking my permission to reprint one of my magazine articles. Faith (the editor) and I began corresponding and have maintained contact for many years. A couple years ago Faith attended a writer's conference and met Suzanne, (who roomed with the other author, Deb) who shared with her the vision for Grit. Faith thought I'd make a great addition to the team and Suzanne was game. It was Suzanne who introduced me to my next publisher, who invited me to submit a writing sample. That publisher hired me to contribute to several of their anthologies, and eventually asked me to write a book.

For me, it's all about networking--connecting with fellow writers and taking advantage of the little opportunities that have come my way. I've learned not to sneeze at little opportunities. It's amazing how the so-called coincidental contacts I've made over the years have opened doors to opportunities I never would have found on my own.

My best advice is to stay connected, meet people, exchange business cards and ideas, and take advantage of writing opportunities--even if they look small at the beginning. You never know what doors might open.

Joanna Bloss is co-author of GRIT FOR THE OYSTER: 250 PEARLS OF WISDOM FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS. You can visit her website at www.joannabloss.blogspot.com.

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of Romantic Thriller Author Dave Donelson

2008-11-13T22:38:00.000-08:00

Unless you publish your book yourself, there is no easy way to see your book in print. It took more than five years for my romantic thriller, Heart of Diamonds, to go from concept to published novel, but it was an interesting journey.

The book started with what I thought would be a sure-fire hook. I ran across a Time Magazine article about the famous televangelist Pat Robertson and the avaricious relationship he had with Mobutu Sese-Seko, the dictator who raped the Congo for over thirty years. When I found out that Robertson, the founder of the 700 Club and one-time Presidential candidate, owned a diamond mine in the Congo—probably operated by near-slave labor—I felt I had to write Heart of Diamonds.

A couple of years later, I had a finished manuscript and it was time to take it to market. I wrote a query letter, drew up a list of agents who handled this kind of high-concept commercial fiction, and started making submissions.I had been through this process before, so my expectations were very realistic. I knew it would take an almost endless stream of submissions until I happened to hit the right agent at the right time in just the right way.

I stopped counting submissions after the first 200. It was obvious from the replies that 90% of the agents didn’t bother to read my letter, much less consider the book. I had used several different versions of the query, followed every set of rules for submission, and still couldn’t raise any interest.

Still, a handful of agents requested sample chapters and a couple even asked for manuscripts, so I experienced occasional glimmers of hope. The most important thing, I knew, was to never give up.

While I was looking for prospective agents online, I ran across a new publisher, Kunati Books, who said they accepted non-agented work and were looking for edgy, provocative fiction. That description fit Heart of Diamonds perfectly, so I followed their online submission instructions to the letter and crossed my fingers.

In the meantime, though, I didn’t sit back and wait for an answer. I kept up my search for an agent with more queries. Before I became a writer, I had a long career in sales management, so I knew perseverance was one of the most important elements of success. I devoted an hour a day to researching, preparing, and sending out queries.

Several weeks later, Kunati requested a complete manuscript. Again, I responded quickly, being careful to send them exactly what they requested in the form they wanted. The deal wasn’t closed, though, so I continued to send out queries.

Finally, about six months after my initial submission to Kunati, I got a phone call from Derek Armstrong. We talked about the strengths and weaknesses of Heart of Diamonds, how it could be marketed, and how much time and effort I could devote to promoting it myself in complement to Kunati’s efforts. An offer was made and accepted contingent on acceptable contract terms.

During the next couple of weeks we went back and forth over some contract details and I had an attorney who specializes in intellectual property law look it over for me. I signed the contract, the advance was paid, and the first part of the journey was over. Heart of Diamonds was on its way to bookstores.

Dave Donelson is the author of the romantic thriller, HEART OF DIAMONDS. You can visit him on the web at www.davedonelson.com or www.heartofdiamonds.com.

Guest Blogger: Book Publishing Secrets of Southern Women's Fiction Author Karen White

2008-11-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

Hmmm, publishing secrets. Makes me think that after I tell you, I'm supposed to kill you.

OK. The story of how I was published.

About twelve years ago, when I was a stay at home mom with two small children, I sat down and started writing my first book. I wrote a sentence at a time until those sentences became paragraphs and those paragraphs became chapters. I didn't stop to think about the market or anything else except writing a book that I would want to read. I guess in the back of my mind I figured I'd want to sell it at some point, but it never occured to me to think about the logistics.

It seems simple and naive, and it probably was. But I'll tell you that those years (yes, I said years--it took me about 3 years to write and edit that first book) were some of the most fun writing days of my career. There's something to be said about being contracted for your writing, but writing without a contract (and its inherent deadline) can be a freeing and wonderful experience.

I joined a national writers organization, Romance Writers of America and their local chapter, Georgia Romance Writers, knowing that my book wasn't really a romance but not really knowing what to call it. It didn't matter, because RWA was, and still is, a welcoming environment for all writers, as well as a wonderful source of knowledge and comaraderie. RWA puts out a terrific monthly magazine for all members filled with valuable articles and information---as well as writing contests sponsored by RWA chapters all over the country. I started entering a lot of these contests--always looking for those that had published authors as judges since, I figured, they'd be the ones most qualified to tell me whether I should give up my day job or not.

I entered one where not only were the finalist judges published authors, but the finalists for each category were going to be sent to a top literary agent in New York. I didn't have any such lofty hopes as finaling--I just wanted the written critique by two published authors. In the end, I wound up not only finaling in my category, but winning it, too. That top New York literary agent liked the manuscript so much that she offered to represent me. She sold that book and every book since then and is still my agent.

So that's my story. I will, however, add the caveat that despite a quick start and being in a place now that I love, my career path hasn't been so fast and easy. I've hit road blocks (including being dumped by my 2nd publisher) but in the end I find that I've learned something at each bend in the road--and that to be a career writer you have to KEEP WRITING, regardless of how steep that mountain in front of you looks!

Karen White marries her passion for Charleston, the architecture of the area, and its history and legends in her new novel THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET, the story of a real estate agent who, though she specializes in homes in the city’s historic area, detests them. To do so, Karen had to conjure up and face a universal horror—renovation. Unlike her recent book, The Memory Of Water, for which she physically confronted her lifelong fear of deep water for the sake of research, this time out she enjoyed a metaphorical wallow in the joys associated with restoring a one hundred and fifty year old house and garden and let her characters deal with the pain.

White’s protagonists face everything from a leaky roof, old fountains, and cracked cornices to overgrown flowerbeds, paint chipped ceilings, disintegrating plaster and warped floorboards. For herself she saved the best. Her research included luxurious strolls on the streets of Charleston, sampling and choosing restaurants such as Magnolias, Gaulart & Malicelet, Cru Café, Blossom and Anson for her characters to enjoy. Rumor has it she also did a bit of shopping at RTW on King Street and spent an afternoon on the Battery visiting White Point Gardens. Relishing the architecture and choosing among Victorians, Federals, Colonial Revivals, Queen Anne, Dutch Colonials and others, along with the amazing range of colors and appointments, Karen eventually placed the house at the center of her story at “55 Tradd Street” in the downtown historic district and, inspired by an actual house on that street, imagined it as a Federal style single family home.

Italian and French by ancestry, a southerner and a story teller by birth, White has moved around quite a bit in her life. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she has also lived in Texas, New Jersey, Louisiana, Georgia, Venezuela and England, where she attended the American School in London. She returned to the states for college and graduated from New Orleans’ Tulane University. Hailing from a family with roots firmly set in Mississippi (the Delta and Biloxi), White notes that “searching for home brings me to the south again and again.” She and her family now live near Atlanta.

It was love at first sight when White first visited Charleston and South Carolina’s lowcountry in 1995. She says it was “inevitable” that she would set several novels in the area, as she did with 2005’s The Color of Light, which Booklist praises as “an accomplished novel about loss and renewal.” Three years later, she returned to the there with The Memory Of Water and, now, to Charleston with THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET. Her love of the southern coast shows no sign of abating. Her next novel, The Lost Hours (May 09) is set in and around Savannah.

Karen White’s work has appeared on the South East Independent Booksellers best sellers list. Her recent novel The Memory of Water, was the Borders Books and Atlanta & Company’s Book Club Selection for May, topped off at the end of the month with their live, television interview with Karen. The Memory of Water, which is well reviewed in Atlanta Magazine and an array of other print and online book media, and was adopted by numerous independent booksellers as a book club recommendation and as a featured title in their store. It’s been back to press five times since its March 2008 publication, the first time within its first four weeks on sale. It is one of NAL/Accent’s fastest selling titles.

Adding to the excitement of The Memory of Water’s March 2008 debut, was the resounding, continued recognition achieved by White’s 2007 novel Learning to Breathe. This spring Learning to Breathe was honored with a National Readers’ Choice Award, the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, and the Virginia Romance Writers HOLT Medallion. It was also named a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s Award for Best Novel, the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence and the Georgia Author of the Year Award.

White credits years spent listening to adults visiting in her grandmother’s Mississippi kitchen, sharing stories and gossiping while she played under the table, with starting her on the road to telling her own tales. The deal was sealed in the seventh grade when she skipped school and read Gone With The Wind. She knew—just knew—she was destined to grow up to be either Scarlet O’Hara or a writer.

In addition to THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET, White’s previous novels include Learning to Breathe, Pieces of the Heart, and The Color of Light.

You can visit her website at www.karen-white.com.

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Book Publishing Secrets of Suspense Mystery Author Richard Roach

2008-11-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

A warm Texas howdy to one and all. I’m Richard E. Roach and the title of my book is Scattered Leaves. You may order it, if you care to, at Amazon.com. It’s a knock ‘em down and drag ‘em out crime story. Ben McCord, more or less self-trained geologist and mud-logger, comes home after experiencing a blow-out to find his wife raped and murdered. After that things go down hill.

As to how to get published is concerned…the easiest way is to pay the publisher. Some folks like this method and even make a little money. In my case I felt if my work was good enough, I’d eventually find an agent and they would find me a company that would want to print my book. Finding an agent has changed considerably in the last thirty-four years—it’s much harder now—and even when you find one, they may not sell your manuscript. I’ve had two agents and they sold exactly nothing for me. However, I haven’t given up on them. I'm trying to get one right now.

To get published your must have infinite patience and be willing to face the hundreds, maybe thousands of rejections that you will surely get. Keep plugging away at it and someday, if you live long enough, someone will like what you’ve written.

If you can find a qualified person to edit your material and I don’t mean a hired-gun; I have reference to an acquaintance or friend, a person who truly likes your writing and admires your work, he/she can furnish the fuel to fire up your engine and keep you going in weak moments when you feel low enough to slide under a snake’s belly. This kind of human being is difficult to round-up, but you will meet them…IF you keep writing.

If you’re writing to get rich, I would encourage you to give it up and get a real job. Most of the people I see writing now-a-days are doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs. People like this certainly don’t need any help from a grammar school graduate like me. My words are written to lighten the load of the poor soul who’s writing because he has something to say. Always remember Hank Williams said he got his inspiration for his songs from comic books because they represented life as he saw it.

Good luck and God bless you. May you road be smooth, and your path downhill with the wind at your back. Oh, yes…you’ll need a warm coat. Winter is on the way!

Suspense/Mystery author Richard Roach was born in 1931 in Galveston, Texas. Short stories of his have been published in Man’s Story 2, Happy 2007, Vol. 20 and Bibliophilos 2006, Vol. 42. His first novel, Scattered Leaves, hit the book stores on September 1, ’08, and his second novel, Scattered Money, will be published in 2009. You can visit his website at www.richarderoach.com.

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Book Publishing Secrets of Romantic Suspense Author Mary Burton

2008-11-06T05:38:00.000-08:00

So what is the secret to a great story that editors want to publish? Characters that are impossible to forget. Readers want your characters to draw them into a story and lead them through an adventure. They want to fall in love with your hero and heroine. That want to fear your villain. They want to cry and laugh. They want to care.

To this day when I start writing a new book, I focus on my characters first. All (even the secondary characters) have full back-stories, quirks, talents, strengths and weakness. Though you may not ever see it in the book, I know where they went to school, favorite foods, Myers-Briggs personality test scores, and even their zodiac signs. Only when I’ve gotten to know my characters do I start thinking about the plot, which I design to play to the characters’ strengths and weakness.

My latest book DEAD RINGER was one of those rare books that just kinda came together. This wasn’t just blind luck (well, there might be a touch of that) rather it was because I knew my hero and heroine so well. By the time I sat down to plot the book, I could tell you so much about Jacob and Kendall. The plot played on and used their fierce independence and different backgrounds to create constant tension and conflict.

Want to hear a confession? When a story isn’t going well and feels flat, it’s because I haven’t done my homework on my characters. Even after fifteen novels and four novellas, I still read books on characterization and attend workshops about character development.

So when you sit down to work on your latest book, ask yourself if you really know your characters. I can guarantee when you get acquainted with your hero you’ll find that your story really starts to pop.

Mary Burton confesses to a baking addiction and a fascination with the people who hunt serial killers. The former is genetic. The latter began during the twenty years that the Southside Strangler, D.C. Sniper and the Hampton Roads killers stalked her home state of Virginia. These killers terrorized residents and claimed twenty-six victims before their capture

Why did they kill? What demons drove them? How did they choose their victims? Burton’s questions led to inspiration and the USA Today best selling author began developing the characters whose horrific assaults would drive the plots of her romantic suspense novels I’M WATCHING YOU and DEAD RINGER.

Her commitment to realism in her writing has led to eye-opening interviews with local law enforcement, forensic seminars and the firing range. She is a graduate from the Henrico County Citizens Police Academy and attended Sisters in Crime’s three day Forensic University program.

A Virginia native whose family’s Richmond roots run as deep as the nation’s, Burton graduated from Virginia’s Hollins University and began a career in marketing. After a decade she decided to do something about the myriad stories buzzing around her brain, which seemed to dare her to try to write them down. She took up the gauntlet, left her job and began her first novel. That very first manuscript, a historical romance, was published in 2000.

The world of serial killers seems like a far cry from that book, a western set in the Colorado of 1876, and it is. Yet Mary notes that “the dark side of life is always just beneath the surface for all of us,” including in fiction and, in that first book, the protagonist flees a rapist and escapes to a new life. “For that story the crime was merely a plot device.” Now, crime and the destruction it creates are integral to her stories. “I’m exploring the power of premeditated violence and how it changes my characters’ lives.”

Placing a romantic relationship side by side with the story of a serial murderer may seem daunting, but as Mary says “life goes on despite us and—especially in the face of horror and loss of control—it’s important to me to show the resilience of human beings, who somehow, someway eventually find hope even under drastic circumstances, who continue to believe that good can conquer evil, and who still can’t help falling in love.”

As a reader and writer of suspense novels, Burton sees a link between intense, unforgettable real-life emotions and the allure of fiction dealing with crime and relationships.

“I think it’s beyond the appeal of police procedures and forensics and the untangling of a mystery. People have long used fiction in all forms to safely face real life horrors. With fiction, they are in control. They can stop the story at any time. They can appreciate and try to understand the characters’ motives and emotions, experience the commitment of those trying to stop the killing, touch as much or as little of the fear as they want, and be comfortable knowing the atrocities aren’t real. They can even afford to have some empathy for the killer. Through it all, they’re confident that justice—so often elusive—will be served.”

After selling her first novel, Burton wrote eleven more books for Harlequin and four contemporary romantic suspense novels for Silhouette before entering the dark world of multiple murderers and their motives. Once there, she wrote her romantic suspense novels I’M WATCHING YOU and this November’s DEAD RINGER, both published by Zebra Books. Her novella Christmas Past appears in the 2008 holiday anthology SILVER BELLS along with stories by New York Times best selling authors Fern Michaels and Joann Ross, and award-winning novelist Judy Duarte. Previously her story Snow Maiden was featured in the USA Today best selling anthology A Hero’s Kiss.

Born and raised in Richmond, Mary Burton is an avid cook as well as baker, and even volunteered as a kitchen assistant at a local culinary school to hone her skills. When not writing and researching she can be found hiking, doing yoga and playing with her miniature dachshund puppies, Buddy and Bella. Currently, she is working on her next novel.

You can visit her website at www.maryburton.com.

Book Publishing Secrets of Horror Writer Joel M. Andre

2008-10-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

The first thing I am going to tell you to do is stop worrying about how you are going to get published. If that is your main focus of writing, you are writing for all the wrong reasons. I have been goofing around with writing from a young age, not because of anything more than the enjoyment it brings me.

Of course, I suppose it also doesn’t help I don’t write for the mainstream audience either. I am graphic, use coarse language, and write dark poetry. In 1999, I submitted a poem entitled, ‘The Midnight Express’. This was for the fun of saying, there I did it, now I can move on.

A small time magazine got a hold of the poem, and paid me $20 to go ahead and publish the poem. I went ahead and purchased the magazine, now years out of print, just to hold a copy of something in my hand that my name was on, outside of the school newspaper. I thought I was pretty good at that moment, and submitted the same poem to the International Library of Poetry. They were great for stroking my ego, and as long as I paid them $60 for a hard cover book, I too could enjoy the benefits of being featured in one of their collections.

They were the hard way of learning, that in the literary world, not everyone wants to be your friend, some are out there to take advantage of others and stroke their egos enough to lure them into a fantasy world, where money is shelled out to a frivolous end.

I continued to move forward though, and I continued to churn out poems and short stories to publications. I had plenty of poems get published over the years, and oddly 13 short stories. Most of what I wrote, I told while it was good, it would not appeal to a general audience. Again, it was too dark and graphic, and controversial. I took a stab at writing poetry from a loving stand point, and although, I don’t feel a part of me was in it, it turned out to be a bit more successful than what I previously had written. It was at that time I realized, I will still writing, but not where my heart was. If you sacrifice your soul to find happiness, you find out you end up with pain and regret.

So I folded my hand, and cashed in my chips. I was thankful for all I had learned through the journey, and I took that away with me. I started to write ‘A Death at the North Pole’. I killed off Santa Claus and tormented his family and friends with a vengeful female cop. Instead of going mainstream, I went independent. I knew it wasn’t something a publisher was going to print, it was violent, killed an icon, and was brutal and graphic. I loved writing it, and I received some great positive response to it.

But one thing still baffled me, when a recording artist goes independent it is great, they are showing courage and strength. When a writer goes independent, they are considered a hack, and talentless. Some of the best authors I have read have been independent authors, not following a mold is a very powerful thing.

The point that I am making, is don’t rule out independent publishing to get your feet wet in the publishing world. If you got something you believe in, chances are other people will take an interest too. The work is harder, but the pay off is greater. You get the blood, sweat and the tears of the whole process. You get a chance to find your soul, and take a stronger sense of pride in your work.

Joel M. Andre was born January 13, 1981 in Cottonwood, AZ. He began writing back in 1994 on a personal level, discovering the passion and feeling the words brought him. Although more of a hobby at the time, he collected his works and in 1999 released the poem The Midnight Express. It received positive feedback, and was quickly followed by For the Salem Witch. To date Joel has released over 60 poems, and 3 books.

Pray the Rain Never Ends was the first book, which includes the poem he wrote for his nephew Christopher Andre. A gripping work that shows a different side to the creator of work that usually holds a darker flair.

The follow up book A Death at the North Pole brought a new side of Joel out. This was a dark journey through a winter wonderland, and provided a more in depth look at Joel and his long form writing.

Most recently Joel released the book Kill 4 Me, a technological ghost story, of a woman haunted by a vengeful spirit through the use of a cell phone and computer.

With a passion for writing, you can tell Joel loves what he does. Although some would say his imagination runs more left field, there is no denying his original thoughts and ideas will provide enjoyment for years to come.

You can visit his website at www.joelmandre.com.

Book Publishing Secrets of Fantasy Author Sienna Skyy

2008-10-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

When I completed my first novel, I always sent my query letters through an overnight courier with a signature required so that a prospective agent was sure to take notice. And then if said agent should request a copy of my manuscript, I devised a contraption (an ingenious one, if I do say so myself) where, when you opened the lid, a jack-in-the-box sprang out with my manuscript in hand.

Yeah, I’m lying. I did none of that.

But I do admit I was tempted to do something wacky. I knew that half the time, queries languished in the slush pile without ever having been read. I knew there were gazillions of other writers in the same boat I was in, and we were all competing for the same agents. There were rumors of agents receiving hundreds of submissions a week. If I did something wacky, someone would AT LEAST notice me. What if I let my creativity fly with the query process? Cookies, tchotchkes, singing telegrams!

Well, I’m sure most of you have more wisdom than I did when I entertained these ideas. You’re probably all aware that if you do something wacky, you tend to be known as a wacko. Fortunately, unaccountably, I did nothing drastic. I clung to the notion that if I proceeded with dogged professionalism, things would work out. Oddly enough, they did.

In the beginning, I read several books about the publishing process so I could get as much perspective as possible. This was a good move—I learned a lot. I also read message boards and got a sense of how other writers were doing. I then followed the industry conventions and wrote query letters. I think I sent out about four or five. Of those, I received two rejection form letters and the others just sort of vanished to the wind.

At this point, though I was willing to write a million letters if need be, it dawned on me that I might learn more if I got face time with other writers and discussed ideas and experiences. To do this, I attended a few conferences. This turned out to be the most brilliant move of all. Not only did I meet lots of writers at these conferences, but I also met agents and editors. I learned how to pitch in person, and I learned how to zero in on those who were possible matches for my work. Some of the editors and agents requested my material, and when I sent it to them later, the fact that they’d requested it meant I had a much better chance that they’d actually read it. The odd thing was, after meeting these people at conferences, I realized that they really were, well, people. They’re people who are sometimes overwhelmed by tons of nervous writers vying for their attention. I found that I was most successful when I was relaxed, friendly, and above all, professional. And the beauty of it was, I was making so many contacts at the conferences that I actually had choices. I didn’t have to follow-up with anyone I didn’t like.

The first real nibble came from an editor—one from a major house. I even went so far as to do some re-writes based on that editor’s request. At the same time, another editor I’d met at a different conference was also interested, as were three agents. I’ll tell you what: agents take much stronger notice when you’re already in talks with an editor or two. I wound up signing with an agent who was my absolute top choice.

In the end, I didn’t make deals with either of those two original editors. Fortunately, however, the leverage I gained from their level of interest did help me to sign with the agent, and he went on to sell my first novel.

So I’d have to say that my original publishing success came from a combination of networking, diligence, and luck. It took me about two years from the time I started looking to the time I actually I signed on the dotted line with my agent—and another year before I actually had a publishing contract. But as agonizing as that period was, I learned so much about the industry, the process, and the craft that I wouldn’t shorten that timeframe even if I could. And most importantly, I resolved to focus my creativity where it matters most: the story.

Sienna Skyy comes from a long line of storytellers, and from the moment she learned to speak she began telling tales of her own, many of which were reflections of the beautiful city where she lived. She got her start by exploring lyricism in the form of song, and was inspired the combination of literary fantasy and rock music that was prevalent in her early years. (Nowadays they call it classic rock.) She believes that art and music and literature are different forms of the same wonderful thing. She also believes that knights exist today though they’ve stopped wearing shining armor, and that magic is waiting just beyond the surface of the things we see. Sienna Skyy lives in Gotham City, and is surrounded by animals, of both the human and non-human variety. She is currently working on the next novel, Otherworld Quest.

Book Publishing Secrets of Young Adult Author Cate Cavanagh

2008-10-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have done pretty much what all writers need to do. I developed a long list of credentials by writing pro bono for newsletters, ezines and websites. I write in multiple genres so I can pretty much be found easily on search engines and I have dedicated quite a few years to this. At this point in time I believe I am somewhat known and have begun networking which is broadening the scope of where links to me can be found. I publish a metaphysical newsletter which features creative colleagues which generates interest in them while also generating interest in my newsletter and my work from their sites as well.

Getting books published was a daunting task! I ran the gamut of queries to big and small publishers, big and small agents although I have to say I never get a good feeling about focusing on an agent for some reason. I think it's because I just didn't want to restrict where I could my work.

Then a few years back a book publisher accepted my first book, Gifts Of The Spirit. The publisher was PublishAmerica and therein began the nightmare. No aspect of the contract was honored including assistance with placement in bookstores. The discount to bookstores was also prohibitive so bookstores would not purchase copies. In addition, there was no returnable policy. All of these detriments meant one thing: I was not able to get my book in bookstore. The book was online but, with a no return policy interest waned. Then there was the royalty: forty-nine cents one quarter! How could this be? After all ten per cent of $19.95 was $1.91 per book so how could a royalty be forty-nine cents? Incredible. Add to this that the book's pricing was also more than for a standard paperback trade book.

Soon, I connected with other writers who had also been led down the primrose path by PublishAmerica. We organized and began a campaign to get out of our contracts which PublishAmerica was unwilling to do. After a year of coordinated press releases urging the public NOT to buy our books, articles about the fraud that had been perpetrated and even television appearances by myself and another author we were all suddenly released and in the same month! This was absolutely necessary in order to pursue other publishers with our books. We won.

Three of my books had then been accepted by a small publisher and then after some months, the publisher folded. The thought of doing all the letter writing and proposal sending all over again to the possible end of finding another publisher of the same cloth of PublishAnmerica was something I simply did not have the patience to want to do.

Encouraged by the successes of Dan Millman, best selling author of "Way of the Peaceful Warrior" which was self published and the success of my friend and contemporary Janet Elaine Smith who is a bestselling author and self published I chose the self publishing route.

The truth is many authors are choosing this venue and I believe it is a movement for creative control over what is written rather than assuming one can only be recognized if "published."

The truth is big and small presses are inundated with so many queries, proposals and manuscripts I believe most of them are never even looked at. This is my personal opinion. Secondly, there is nothing wrong in investing in yourself and your work much as one would invest in a business venture in which there is confidence.

The world of publishing has changed and so has the breed of writers who are less dependent on the parochial conventions that used to measure success. Today's writer has more confidence in themselves and their product.

I chose Star Publish LLC for my publisher and I have not regretted it. Like all publishing houses you do need to research who you are considering as some are on the par of PublishAmerica which some of my colleagues have shared.

I do not regret self publishing. I am pleased with the quality of my book and the turnaround time from submission to availability is very quick which frees me to work on other projects without continuing the time consuming and often frustrating task of trying to submit as I have before.

I know my work, I know I am excellent and I deserve to be in control of my own career.

To view my book trailer, please visit quantum spirituality.tripod.com and my blog: something magicalinourmists.blogspot.com

Cate is a published author, GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT, as well as a syndicated columnist in the spiritual and metaphysical genres. In addition she is a published print columnist in New York and was political commentator for WJFF radio in New York and podcast commentator for. Her work also appears in a number of new age publications including but not limited to Self Growth, Lightsource, E Spirit, Grannymoon, Witch's Voice and Pagazine. She also writes for Circle of Stars a New Age ezine and is an eclectic Witch.

You can visit her website at www.quantamspirituality.tripod.com or her blog at www.magicwithcate.blogspot.com.

Book Publishing Secrets of Poet Laura Grossman

2008-10-10T09:10:00.001-07:00

My own personal story for getting published was that I tried many times and sometimes an editor would say the work has great potential which helped me to persist in my publishing goals. I found Publish America on the computer and had emailed to them a cover letter and sample of my poetry. They liked it and so I used them. I couldn't wait for a NY publisher because it would take too long a time so I used Publish America. I wrote my first poetry book - The Sighing of the Winter Trees - because it helped me break into the writing field.

Laura Grossman graduated from Lehman College with a degree in English literature and won several awards from poetry contests. She has attended poetry readings and has enjoyed positive feedback on her work.

You can visit her website here.

Book Publishing Secrets of Donna Blasor-Bernhardt

2008-09-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

I tried for at least 20 years to get "Waltz With Me, Alaska" published. This was the story of me, my husband and two kids and the thirteen months we spent living in a tent in interior Alaska. This was not the first book I'd had published. No, I'd been living off my published works for a long time....there were around thirteen books in print by the time I got around to writing Waltz With Me, Alaska. But they were all self published. This book I wanted to be printed by a publishing company...one I didn't have to spend my money on. They would spend theirs.

I started by sending it to the publishing houses and watching it be rejected because I didn't have an agent. There must have been at least 50 rejections and most of the places hadn't even read the manuscript. They all said "Get an agent."

So I started trying to find an agent. This alone was time consuming and frustrating. I finally succeeded by going to a writers conference in New York and I ended up with an agent. And after a year of having her, she still hadn't even read the manuscript. So I fired her and kept searching. I went through several who didn't have the time they needed to help me. Then I found an agent in Anchorage, Alaska (we live in Alaska and this, I decided, would be handy) The only reason I got him was because I had an offer from a very big person in Hollywood to make my book into a movie (his mother is a well known movie star) and I needed an agent. So this Anchorage agent signed me immediately. Long story short here...the hollywood guy wanted to change the end of the book...instead of a success story, he wanted to make it a tragedy. This didn't sit well with me because this was MY story and a success. We argued over that fact, but in the end, I never signed the contract...I also lost the agent.

I had gone through half a dozen agents, before deciding once again, to try it on my own. In the meantime, I kept writing and I listed a short blurb about "Waltz" online, with the hopes that a publishing company would see it and want to publish it. Within a month, an agent emailed me, telling me she liked the idea of the book and would like to see the whole manuscript. She added, if she liked it, she'd represent me. Well,I was done with agents, but this was really what I waiting for! I remember wondering if she really was a legitimate agent. I mean, why was she searching the internet for books? There must be an awful lot of writers who sent her stuff. Still, after waiting a couple of days and weighing my decision, I decided to try it. It was the best thing I've ever decided to do! I sent the manuscript to her and she read the entire book in one evening, and immediately emailed me with a contract and the news that she would represent me with anything that I wanted her to represent. She also had me write a script for the movie.

The long and short of this is she got it published, and it didn't take her long! It came out in February 2004 and is listed on Amazon and represented around the world! Less than a month after the acceptance of "Waltz With Me, Alaska," I received more good news from her . A second book (also non-fiction) had also been accepted by another publisher. It was printed in April 2004...less than two months after "Waltz."

I still don't know what happened ...just that it did happen. I'd gone through agents, gone without agents, went to writing groups and conferences and even have a writing group which I head. Nothing had worked at all. My secret, it seems, is when I finally gave up and decided whatever was to be would be...that's when it all happened! And however it happened, I'm glad it did.

******
Waltz With Me, Alaska is the compelling true story of Dick and Donna Bernhardt who leave their Anchorage home and build a log cabin in the Alaskan wilderness to raise their family. Unable to complete the cabin before winter, a thirteen month struggle to survive in an old army tent with no conveniences and no neighbors ensues. Temperatures drop to 70 below zero. Every day is perilous, but peril and hardship are great teachers. The family works, loves, laughs and cries together while surviving the winter, completing their log cabin and living happily ever after.

Donna started out writing poetry...in the second grade! She kept on writing poetry throughout her schooling and into her married life. She used to send a poem to her husband in his lunch every day. Time marched on and they found themselves moving from Anchorage and living in the woods of Tok, Alaska. This is where her writing took off. She wrote a poem about the way they were living at the time...in a tent in the wilds of Alaska, and her hubby secretly read it and took it to the editor of the local newspaper. The people of Tok enjoyed it so much she was offered her own poetry column (which 32 years later she's still writing). She produced some small books of poetry. Ten years went by and she continued writing and speaking to the buses in Tok, reading from her books and meeting people.

Then her husband died suddenly and she still had kids to raise. She couldn't work in any capacity due to the injuries she suffered in a truck wreck, so she borrowed money and put together a few more books, and sold more and more of them, enough to make a decent living from them and put the kids through school, becoming known as the Poet Laureate of the Alaska Highway. She met reporters and TV people alike who would come to her tiny cabin to interview her. She was on Paul Harvey, and interviewed by dozens of people including Peter Jenkins and appeared on TV and many of the nation's papers and was included in several books.

Donna advanced to writing a small childrens book or two and a couple of recipe books in addition to the poetry books and small non-fiction books. She then decided to write screenplays and larger non-fiction books. She wrote a screenplay about their "tent" winter and six or seven more. But her non-fiction books are her prize possession. Although it took her a long time to see them published, she now enjoys the sales of her latest two: "Waltz With Me, Alaska" and "Pioneer Road." Donna's website can be seen at http://www.alaskawintercabin.com.

THE DEATH WIZARD CHRONICLES by Jim Melvin

2007-12-25T21:58:00.000-08:00

Before debuting as a novelist, I was a journalist at a large newspaper for 25 years. So I became accustomed to seeing my words in print. What I wasn't accustomed to was the ugly "R-word" so peculiar to book publishing.

Rejection.

I started out believing that my accomplishments as a journalist would impress the large publishing houses. Man, was I wrong ... at least when it comes to fiction. As far as the editors at the major houses were concerned, I was just another debut novelist writing in an absurdly glutted genre.

I worked at the St. Petersburg Times from 1978-2003 and then was lucky enough to retire while still in my mid-40s and become a full-time novelist. In September 2004, I wrote the first word of Book One (entitled The Pit) of my six-book epic fantasy. Seven-hundred-thousand words later, I am in the final revision process of Book Six. I finished The Pit in January 2005 and immediately began a search for an agent. Through luck as much as anything else, I was accepted by an agent just a month after I sent out my first queries. (At the time, he was relatively new to the business and not yet snowed under. Now he's top of the line, and he rarely has the time to even consider debut novelists, much less sign them. So maybe this is my one big secret to getting published: Find an agent who is relatively new, do as much research as possible to make sure he or she is legit, and then take the plunge.) Needless to say, I was excited. After all, I had heard that only one in a hundred debut novelists manage to secure an agent, while 50 percent of those who do eventually are published.

Immediately, my agent began submitting The Pit to the mega-houses, but first-time fiction is an extremely difficult sell nowadays. In some regards, it would be easier to win the lottery, buy the publishing house, appoint yourself president, and then publish your book than it would be to gain an acceptance in the traditional manner. By the middle of 2005, kindly worded rejections began trickling in. And they kept trickling in. The next thing I knew, it was 2007 and I still didn't have a deal, despite the fact that I was convinced I had written the great fantasy epic of the past ten years. The problem was, me being convinced and them being convinced were two different animals.

Finally in early 2007, a publisher came along that agreed with me. When Rain Publishing Inc. (a mid-sized, traditional house based in Canada) accepted my series, I was thrilled to finally have achieved what to me was a lifelong dream. Yet even then my excitement was muted. I was higher on the ladder than those who had chosen self-publishing, but by no means was I guaranteed to become the next J.K. Rowling. The smaller the house, the smaller the distribution. And don't even get me started on the marketing end of things. I could go on forever.

So now, Books 1-3 already are in print and Books 4-6 will be out by the end of February 2008. It's been a whirlwind, to say the least. But fun at the same time. Will I become the next J.K. Rowling? Probably not. But at least I've got a puncher's chance.

And I throw a nasty overhand write ... er ... right.

Jim Melvin is the author of The Death Wizard Chronicles (Rain Publishing Inc. Sept. 2007), a six-book epic fantasy. Please visit his blog at http://www.deathwizardchronicles.blogspot.com/.

DEVIL'S ORCHESTRA by Sydney Molare

2007-12-21T00:18:00.000-08:00

The best way to get published traditionally? Give editors what they want. Bottom line.
And what do editors want? They want a well written story, that requires minor editing AND which you deliver on time.

Authors have to face the fact, you get no more than five seconds (and that's stretching it) in that query letter to grab the editor. So no need to put the tasty morsels of your work in the third paragraph or on page two. It's got to be in-you-face or as the marketers call it, guerilla tactics, from the jump.

Once you pique their interest, your manuscript has got to be polished. Yes, editing costs, but not editing may cost you more. Use the latest technology (text-to-voice translation, speller checker) as well as a human editor and have your work spit-shined and honed to the best of your ability before you send it to your agent to shop.

A story an editor or their reader knows "flows" nicely and in which they actually "get" the message you are conveying the first time out of the gate has a better chance of being published than the I-like-it-but-it-needs-a-lot-of-work story. Time is money and the less time spent editing on their end, the quicker they can make money for both the writer and publishing house.
And always note your deadline. This needs to be every published authors mantra: Deliver what they asked for by the time asked for. A deadline is given for a reason and it's normally because: That's when they need your material in order to reach their next deadline in the production process. Let your reputation be for delivering on time.

Having done the self-published as well as traditional route, I would also have to say, putting your work out there gets you noticed. When I first queried agents, I stuck the self-published version of the work inside. They didn't have to guess what came after the first three chapters. It was there from beginning to ending.

Despite what many critics say, taking a chance on self-publishing has never been a downside for me. Heck, I've already got a product and track record so they can judge for themselves whether I've got the writing style they want.

In my opinion, the biggest secret is this bottom line is: Give the editors what they want.

Thanks for having me!

You can visit Sydney at www.sydneymolare.com.

PREACHING TO THE CORPSE by Roberta Isleib

2007-12-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

I'm a Ph.D. clinical psychologist who's spent more than half my life in school. Plus I have a typical New England obsessive and guilty work ethic.

So when I'm presented with a seemingly insurmountable challenge and getting published surely fits that bill, I turn to my most finely-honed skill: research.

In 1998, I hatched the idea of writing a mystery about a woman caddie on the men's golf tour and her pal, a sports psychologist. With Tiger Woods mania incinerating the PGA Tour, I was sure the story idea would be a natural.

Besides, this was fun! Any time I spent on the golf course or attending tournaments or even reading golf magazines was, you guessed it, research.

After an agonizing two years of writing, rewriting, and rewriting some more, I felt I was ready to look for an agent. I knew there was no magic formula for this subject, and I had absolutely no contacts in the publishing business. So again I turned to the process I knew best--research.

I studied Elizabeth Lyon's The Sell Your Novel Toolkit and Jeff Herman's Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents. And I read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and Sheree Bykofsky's Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Published, and Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages.

I made huge charts of agents who had interests like mine (mystery, sports, psychology), or who had some feature in their personal background that made me think we might connect, or who had sold books with some similarity to mine. I attended mystery conventions (Bouchercon, Malice Domestic, and Left Coast Crime) and talked with people there about the publishing process.

I attended the International Women's Writers Guild Meet the Agents forum in New York City (http://www.iwwg.com/) . I groveled in front of everyone I knew even remotely connected with the publishing business. And I suffered through multiple rejections and shouldered gamely forward, my skin toughening by the hour. Finally, I hired an independent editor to give me fairly inexpensive but useful feedback on my manuscript. When I'd finished my rewrites, she
directed me to several agents.

Around the same time, I dragged myself into New York City for a second round of the IWWG's Meet the Agents hysteria. One hundred and fifty wannabe writers crowded the hall to hear nine agents speak about their areas of interest. Then, as Hannelore Hahn, president of IWWG, put it, we rushed like wolves to the front of the room, and lined up to give our two minute pitches to the agent we felt most closely matched our interests. The agent I chose asked for a three-week exclusive look at my manuscript. I sent it off, working to keep my expectations low. Two weeks later she called with the news that a second agent had seen the manuscript on her desk, read it,
and wanted to represent me. Hurray!

Next came the agony of my agent passing the manuscript around to various editors and receiving polite rejections. After about six months of this, an editor at the Berkley Prime Crime imprint of Penguin Putnam expressed interest in my idea and my character with a caveat. They wanted my character to start out as a golfer, not a caddie. At home, I kicked and screamed
and said "no way!" On the phone, I argued politely and persuasively. But the editorial board felt that a series featuring a prime time player would sell better than if the character was in a supporting role; it was their way or no way. So, like Kenny Rogers, I knew when to fold'em, and Cassie Burdette went to the LPGA qualifying school in my first mystery, Six Strokes Under.

That was almost six years ago and my seventh book has just hit the bookstores: PREACHING TO THE CORPSE, second in the advice column mystery series (Berkley.) These are the only "secrets" I know: hone your craft, polish your work, toughen your hide, network, network, network. And repeat.

Good luck!
--
http://www.robertaisleib.com/blog
http://www.jungleredwriters.com/
PREACHING TO THE CORPSE, Berkley Prime Crime, in stores now!

Tags: book publishing, book publicity, virtual book tour, Roberta Isleib, Preaching to the Corpse

BEE BALMS & BURGUNDY by Nelson Pahl

2007-12-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

The first thing we did as far as promotion was align with a charity and then write and distribute a few e-news releases/ezine articles; the media loves and needs charity in its news. You find your heartwarming angle and you can sell the news. If I did it again, I'd start in the real world instead of online. If you're willing to put just a little bit of money into your campaign, you can end up with guaranteed press. There are a lot of ingenious firms and angles out there today.

The move I'd most recommend is finding a charitable tie-in, mine is breast cancer, and then create your news angle and approach your local news outlets. Sounds cliché, but
if you live in a city of 100k to, say, 600k, they're dying for people like you. It's such a manageable size with only so many potential stars. Yet, those cities have to fill newspapers, radio shows, and TV news broadcasts just like their counterparts in larger cities. If you live somewhere more vast, a major metro area, find your section of the metro and begin there. Find a community newspaper or smaller radio show or a
local retail outlet or a charitable program that needs an expert in your market/industry/genre, and create the next big thing; make yourself into a hero, into a bona fide HOME-GROWN star. Then, you can take that press nugget and ease into other markets. "Hey, look at what kind of press he gets in Moline? He should be on the cover of the Arts section in Des Moines. Put him there!" Now, that's a little melodramatic, but you get the point. It's all image, you know? It's not like today's Hollywood is brimming with talent; the town simply sells "image" by the boat-load.
Get it?

Also, we learned the whole SEO game recently. That, to this point, has been our only real online promotion. We're in the process of establishing an affiliate program, as well as a couple of other unique angles, but thus far the SEO has yielded roughly 10,000 unique visitors per month.

Most effective has been word of mouth. Now, that doesn't mean that we receive a majority of our books sales via word of mouth. It merely means that when someone recommends our books to a friend, family member, or colleague, the close rate--or "sell rate"--is almost 100%. That's gold to anyone marketing themselves.

Nelson Pahl is the author of BEE BALMS & BURGUNDY. You can visit his website at http://www.nelsonpahl.com/ or his blog at http://www.nelsonpahl.blogspot.com/.

Tags: online book promotion, virtual book tour, Nelson Pahl, BEE BALMS & BURGUNDY

THE JAGUAR LEGACY by Maureen Fisher

2007-11-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

Hi. My name is Maureen Fisher. Whenever someone asks me if I have always wanted to write, I usually consider lying. After all, it would be more exotic to portray myself as a thwarted genius, a driven individual scribbling pearls of wisdom on small scraps of paper all my life, forced by fate into the nether world of management consulting. In the end, I always blurt out the truth. “No way. Nuh-uh. Not in this lifetime,” I say, shaking my head. “Writing was the last thing that crossed my mind until five years ago.”

It’s like this. When I was in grade seven, I stood up in front of my long-suffering classmates, heart hammering in my skinny chest, and droned out my first public speaking assignment—a memorized essay I had compiled about dinosaurs. I covered the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous waterfronts. At least ten of my classmates dozed off and one appeared to fall into a full-fledged coma, alarming Mr. Hughes, my teacher. Indeed, my performance was so pitiful, he must have felt sorry for me, because he gave me another chance. “You have until Monday morning to redeem yourself, young lady,” he intoned. That gave me exactly three days to pull together a brilliant speech.

Being a staunch advocate of pain avoidance and a coward to boot, I turned the problem over to my mother, knowing full well she would jump to my rescue. She rose to the occasion and spent the weekend writing a delightfully funny story entitled, “On Housebreaking a Puppy.” On Monday at 10:00 a.m., I delivered a brilliant essay that knocked the socks off my delighted classmates and a relieved Mr. Hughes. Nobody fell asleep this time. My classmates thought I had developed a sense of humor over the weekend, and my mother and I received an ‘A’ for our efforts. After that, I figured, why mess with success? My mother wrote another couple of polished pieces brimming with adult humour to round out my primary school writing career in style, and I slunk into high school with high marks, low self esteem, and a conviction that I couldn’t write an essay if my life depended on it. Feeling like a total fraud, I made no attempt to write another creative word outside of essays and technical reports for several decades.

Fast forward many years. Over time, I grew tired of wearing little business suits, struggling with panty hose, and fighting rush hour traffic. I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I was certain of one thing—it wasn’t a consultant. One sunny day in June 2003, a good friend and primo energy healer (she refers to herself as a “soul healer”) called up our spiritual guides, guardians, and gatekeepers to channel an unforgettable session during which I made a life-changing decision. I walked out of her house knowing that I wanted to write books. Not dry, boring, technical treatises, but fresh, funny romantic suspense novels.

And so the seed of a thought took root. Always an over-achiever, I quit my day job to attend a five-day seminar entitled How to Write a Novel. After all, how hard could it be to write a novel? Thousands of authors did it every year, some of them more than once. I read a couple of how-to books, joined the Ottawa chapter of RWA, rolled up my sleeves, and plunked myself down in front of the computer. As I stared at the blank screen, I held onto my thought for dear life — I am writing a romantic, funny, sexy, scary, exciting, knock-their-socks-off novel.

One year and 104,167 words later, I finished my first draft, dusted off my hands, and announced to my critique group, “There! It’s finished.” After the shrieks of laughter subsided, they pointed me to a book entitled The Basics of Editing Your Novel, and I realized the fun had just begun. I re-worked that sucker several hundred times, cursing the thought that had spawned this monster.

Another year slipped by. Finally, I was ready to unveil my new baby and submit the cherished manuscript to a lucky editor. I formulated new affirmations: “An editor out there is waiting for THE JAGUAR LEGACY,” and, “THE JAGUAR LEGACY is a mega-best-seller.” After the first five, or maybe it was six, rejections, I admitted to myself, to God, and to my critique group that there might, just might, be a teeny, tiny problem with my writing. I hit on the brilliant idea of entering contests. At least, I thought, I would receive feedback on what I was doing wrong.

Boy, when I’m right, I’m right! Learning can be humbling. I soon discovered that the only way to survive the crushing blows of constructive criticism would be to treat the entire process as an academic exercise—an advanced degree in novel writing, so to speak. So each time the contest results arrived, my first priority was to consume my entire body weight in chocolate. Then, I shoved my ego out of the way, analyzed the judges’ comments, and absorbed the critique. After all, I had paid for this punishment and I wanted my money’s worth.

Turns out I had made every beginner’s mistake in the book. For the next twelve months, I removed all head-hopping; I chopped the dreaded back story from the first five chapters; I ridded my book of pesky adverbs by making each verb as punchy as possible; I switched from passive to active tense; I threw away my first three chapters and started the story at the beginning of the action; I forced my characters to confront their greatest fears; I trashed some of my favourite scenes because they didn’t move the plot ahead; I ramped up the suspense; I addressed all five senses; I anchored all conversations to specific actions so there were no ‘talking heads’; I made sure I described the location of each scene; I switched to deep third person point of view. I nipped, I tucked, I tightened, and I never stopped learning my craft.

Little by little, the comments grew more complimentary. On August 18, 2006, the moment I had been dreaming of for three years arrived. Twenty-one rejections, six tons of chocolate, six hundred and ninety-seven re-writes, and two first prizes later, I received ‘The Call’ from Lachesis Publishing for my first book, The Jaguar Legacy.

And it all began with a single thought.

Maureen Fisher is the author of the paranormal romantic suspense novel, THE JAGUAR LEGACY. You can visit her website at www.booksbymaureen.com.

Tags: Pump Up Your Book Promotion, virtual book tour, Maureen Fisher, The Jaguar Legacy, paranormal romantic suspense

SAVAGE SURVIVAL by Darrell Bain

2007-11-25T17:33:00.001-08:00

There are no "Publishing Secrets" that I know of. My first hard cover novel, Savage Survival, is the culmination of years of work, writing and more writing. Becoming an author of a full length fiction novel is something almost anyone can do. Getting it published in an altogether different matter, and again, I think it happens simply as a result of working at your profession.

Writing is one of those professions where the supply is way, way greater than the demand. That means there's only room for a certain number of authors to have their books published other than vanity publishing, paying to have it done. All that means is that you have to work at your craft until you're the one out of a hundred who gets their novel published by a legitimate publishing house.

I began writing in 1990 and almost immediately fell prey to a scam artist masquerading as an "agent". That one mistake, not doing the research necessary to find a decent agent, cost me probably ten years of not seeing my work published. I almost gave up when the scam was revealed, but then persisted, knowing I did good work, but now I had to overcome the onus of having been mixed up with crooks and sham publishing houses.

In essence, I started all over, just about the time E-books, sometimes called electronic or digital publishing came along. I kept writing and posted a couple of my novels on the internet where they were seen by an E-book publisher and the rest, as they say, is history.

Within a few years I became an icon of the E-book industry and this year, after winning the Dream Realm Award for best science fiction novel of the year, found that I have won every major award offered by the e-book industry.

In the meantime, my novels were slowly finding their way into print as trade paperbacks, borne on my reputation as an e-book author. Now, with most of them in print and with Savage Survival being published in hard cover I feel as if I have finally arrived. And if that wasn't enough proof for me, I was asked to collaborate on a new novel with Travis S. Taylor, a noted scientist and best selling science fiction author for Baen Books. This book, Human By choice, will be published in July of 2008.

But I repeat: none of this came about through any secret. I worked and kept working. I tried and kept trying to make my work better. I didn't give up in the face of adversity. All this can be found in my autobiography which is a story in itself. Fans began asking about my life. I published some excerpts of it on my web site and a publisher found it interesting enough to ask me to turn it into a book. It has been published as an E-book under the title Darrell Bain's World Of Books and will come out in print in 2008 under the same title.

Secrets? There aren't any secrets. Get to work. Keep writing. Study your craft. Don't give up. And don't waste your time trying to find a secret to getting published. There isn't one.

Darrell Bain is the author of SAVAGE SURVIVAL (Twilight Times Books, Sept. '07). You can visit his website at www.darrellbain.com.

Tags: Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours, online book promotion, author publicity, virtual book tour, book promotion, Darrell Bain, Savage Survival, science fiction

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-21T11:16:00.001-08:00

THE RESURRECTION OF LADY SOMERSET by Nicola Beaumont

2007-10-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

My publishing career began when I was in third grade--yes, I know, mine and everybody else's--But I wrote a little poem for a Department of Defense Schools publication, and it was chosen to be published. To this day, I still have a copy of that book. The poem is silly, but it got me hooked on writing. Although my career did lapse between third grade and adulthood, the creative spark didn't. It manifested itself in many ways--poetry, journalism, short stories, drama, music.

And then one day--because I'm a hopeless romantic--I picked up a sweet Harlequin romance. My first reaction was, "These would be sooo easy to write," so I decided to become a romance author. This attitude, of course, was extremely arrogant of me, because they are not easy to write, but what did I know? So, I wielded my word processor, pumped out 50,000 of the most awful words ever strung together, and sent them to an editor (which she promptly rejected)...and then I strung together 60,000 words that were not quite as bad as the first 50K, but still not near enough to good to be considered a viable story. This is the road to publishing--putting together words that don't work until your craft is honed to the point where the letters you string together are not just words, but a journey, a getaway for your reader which takes them to another place for a time. I've found over the years, that unless I apply three distinct Ps to my writing, I do not find success, and so I try always to keep them in mind. Those three Ps are: Practice, Prioritization, and Perseverance.

Practice: never stop learning. I've been writing seriously now for almost twenty years, and I can still find ways to improve my skill. I listen to constructive criticism, tips from other successful authors, I read similar pieces to analyze how others construct stories, and then I utilize the information to write my own stories. To write is the only way I can improve my writing. I think of it in the same way I would a sport: I can't win the game if I don't show up for the practices. The adage is true: Practice makes Perfect.

Prioritization: Unless I make time to write, I don't get any writing done. It doesn't matter how much I want to write, if I let other things get in the way, then no words are formed, no story woven. And in turn, no story submitted for publication. So, I deliberately allot time to write.

Perseverance: My novel, The Resurrection of Lady Somerset (Sept. 2007), is a testament to perseverance. When I wrote this one, I submitted it to a contest in which it took second place. I was thrilled, and thought it would be picked up right away. It wasn't. But I wasn't discouraged. Rejection is a part of publishing. But, during this time, I experienced some things within the publishing world which made me decide to hang up my ink and quill, and I chose to forget this business of publishing novels. I turned my attention strictly to Christian non-fiction (which I still do write).

There's a funny coincidence to publishing: If you're not submitting, you're not selling. I wasn't selling any novels, but then, I wasn't submitting any, either.

And then, one day, after many years, a friend of mine asked me to help with a writers' conference--and I started thinking about this manuscript I had laying in a drawer (well, in a file on my computer). This story was my pinnacle to the point at which I wrote it, and it was a shame I had laid it aside. The bug was back. I opened up the manuscript read it. And you know what I found? The story wasn't half bad. Of course, because I'd continued to write (albeit, non-fiction) I could see flaws in the text, and so I edited the manuscript and submitted it to a publisher--who promptly rejected it! I began to feel as if the story would never be published. But I still did not give up. I submitted again. Eventually, it found a home--and then it received a 4-Star review from Romantic Times Magazine! Where would this story be had I not persevered through the rejections? And how long ago would it have been published if I had not taken a hiatus in submitting it? Perseverance is the key.

So, my advice to novices: Utilize the three Ps: Practice, Prioritization, and Perseverance. But more importantly, enjoy your writing; publication should be the icing, not the cake.

Nicola Beaumont is the author of THE RESURRECTION OF LADY SOMERSET (Wild Rose Press, Sept. '07). You can visit her website at http://www.inicola.net/.

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Nicola Beaumont

THE FAT LADY NEVER SINGS: HOW A HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM FOUND REDEMPTION ON THE BASEBALL DIAMOND

2007-10-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

I started by sending a manuscript to an experienced editor and asked him to provide me with a full critique. After that, I read numerous back issues of Writers Digest, The Writer as well as any other writing book and internet article I could get my hands on and then started in on several more revisions before resubmitting the book to the editor for additional advice.

I wanted to get the book published before I turned fifty, just a life goal of mine I guess, so I was turned off by what I was reading about mainstream publishers and how stacked the odds were against me being a first time unknown author. I downloaded the Internet Book "The Fine Print" and read the comparisons of self publishing houses and came upon iUniverse. After submitting the book to them and receiving their input, I realized the book needed even more work to make it as good as it could be. After an additional full edit and a proofread, I finally had the quality of book I wanted. Unfortunately, I learned the harsh reality that no matter how good the book was, there were some mainstream publishing companies that wouldn't even touch a self-published book no matter whether they liked my pitch or not(or so they said) and embarked on self marketing. Happily, I learned later that even if I didn't self publish, I would very likely be marketing the book myself anyway.

My words of wisdom?

Read everything you can about traditional publishing and self publishing before making your decision( both online, at your local library and your local book store, there's a lot there). There are distinct advantages and disadvantages to both. If you decide to self publish, get a copy of the downloadable book “The Fine Print” which will enable you to compare all of the self publishers so that you can make an informed decision. Also check out Angela Hoy’s Whispers and Warnings section of writersweekly.com After I chose to self publish, I picked iUniverse because even though I was a demanding author, they persevered with me. Once you have chosen your path, then get ready as the old indian in The Outlaw Josie Wales said to "endeavor to persevere."

Steven M. Reilly is the author of the sports memoir, THE FAT LADY NEVER SINGS: HOW A HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM FOUND REDEMPTION ON THE BASEBALL DIAMOND. You can visit his website at http://www.thefatladyneversings.com/.

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Steven M. Reilly

RIGHT TO RECOVER: WINNING THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS WARS OVER STEM CELL RESEARCH IN AMERICA

2007-09-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

When I started my research I was sure that a publisher would want to publish my book. I asked for higher guidance and met Valerie Connelly of Nightengale Press one week later. I pitched my book idea to her and she accepted it right there on the spot. That was easy, I thought.

The next week I signed a contract with Nightengale Press and went to work in earnest to get my book finished by January 1, 2007. It was a deadline we both thought was realistic. What I had not expected to encounter was having the field of stem cell research change so rapidly. I kept finding new material and meeting new people in the field. It was hard to find a stopping place! My deadline came and went, and I was still digging through the material I had gathered. Still more was coming in.

I was almost ready to send the manuscript to Valerie at the end of January. That’s when I met Don C. Reed. Don has a son named Roman who was paralyzed in a college football accident ten years ago. He established the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act, “Roman’s law” and has gathered more than $40 million to research geared toward the cure of paralysis. He also worked on the passage of California’s Proposition 71 and knew everyone in the stem cell research field. I spent the next two months collecting more information that really needed to go into the book. In fact, the book wouldn’t have the punch it carries without the information I gathered from Don and his colleagues.

Finally, the book had to go to print if it was going to meet the printing date and go with Valerie to BEA in June. After the galley copy was printed full of errors but time was up! I continued to rewrite, edit and polish the book. I sent 24 pages of changes to the text for the final version. Since Lightning Source had to make so many changes after they have set up the print.

The final version will be printed at the end of this month.

Yvonne Perry
Author of RIGHT TO RECOVER: WINNING THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS WARS OVER STEM CELL RESEARCH IN AMERICA
http://www.right2recover.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Yvonne Perry

SOUTH BEACH CHICAS CATCH THEIR MAN VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR

2007-09-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

I had written my first book in the fifth grade as part of a class project and I knew then that I wanted to one day be a writer. Of course, my parents had different ideas and being the dutiful daughter, I took a slight detour, but even during that detour, I always made stops along the road to continue writing. During college and then law school, my pile of books to read and novel were always at my side until finally, after my daughter was born, I decided to commit to becoming published. I felt I had accomplished many things except one – following the dream in my heart.

With that dream firmly in my mind, I devoted more time to my writing and learning more about my craft. I ended up taking an adult education class taught by none other than Fern Michaels, a New York Times best-selling author. She also turned out to be a neighbor at time which was quite exciting. Fern was delightful as a teacher and very down to earth. She also surprised me by asking for my manuscript when the class was over – she wanted to send it to her editor because she thought I had potential.

I was floored and so happy. Fern did send it out, but it wasn’t quite right for her publisher who asked me to write something contemporary. I tackled that and a two years later, had a new book. I sent that one out repeatedly, but it didn’t sell. In the meantime, I had started work on yet another book when I attended a NJRW conference (a great conference by the way. This year it’s on Oct 5 and 6). I met Gwynne Forster there and we started talking about our projects. She told me to send my book back to Kensington and I did. A few weeks later I got a letter saying that while that book was too long, did I have another. Included in the letter were a set of guidelines. I knew my new novel would work and sent it out.

It sold and eventually I would sell another 7 to Kensington. A success story some might say, and yes, it was until the line I was writing for folded.

By then I was in the mood to write something darker and started a vampire story. I began to shop it around and all I heard was, “It’ll never sell. No one is buying vampires.”

That didn’t stop me. I had to write this book and I did over a Christmas break. I shopped it around some more and ran into a Harlequin editor who I knew. She asked me what I was working on and I explained, only I knew it wasn’t right for them. Imagine my surprise when she said, “Send it.” I did and after many months of negotiations and revisions, Harlequion acquired what would become the first book in the ongoing THE CALLING vampire novels (I am working on another 3 for 2008 and 2009 which will bring it 10 books in the series).

So, what was I to do next? I’d done contemporary romances and was starting to build a name in paranormals. I needed a change of pace and decided I wanted to do a story about female relationships. Four friends actually in sexy South Beach . I had an agent by then and was certain that editors would receive it well and so with the synopsis and three chapters done, we sent it off.

What happened? Editors knew I could write a romance and I could write vampires, but could I write something about relationships? I quickly found out I had to write the entire book. Not easy to do when you are already working a full-time job, but I went home and so as to not lose momentum, worked on that book every free hour I had.

A month later, the book was done and within a few weeks, I had accepted an offer from Simon & Schuster for that book – SEX AND THE SOUTH BEACH CHICAS – and three others. SOUTH BEACH CHICAS CATCH THEIR MAN is the follow-up to the first story. I knew when I had finished the first book that the stories of all the friends were not yet over. In particular, I wanted to explore the relationship between Sylvia and Carlos, but also, the relationship between Sylvia and her mother, Virginia, since it reminded me so much of the friendship and love that my mom and I had shared. Plus, I wanted to show that forty-something women could be sexy!

I guess the moral of this story is – never give up. The publishing road is one filled with detours, bumps and sometimes immense potholes, but if writing is your passion, you’ll find a way to navigate around those obstacles and keep to your journey.

Caridad Pineiro
Author of SOUTH BEACH CHICAS CATCH THEIR MAN
http://www.caridad.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Caridad Pineiro

DOMINIC by Hazel Statham

2007-09-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that when I started writing at fifteen it was with no thought of publication and it remained so throughout the years. It was just a compulsion that wouldn't be ignored and I wrote for myself, thoroughly enjoying recreating my own historical world. I am fascinated by history, especially the Regency and Georgian eras and I devoured books by Georgette Heyer and other like authors. However, when I married at twenty-three I had less time for writing and for several years wrote very little. It wasn't until I had to finish working through ill health that the urge to write came upon me again and I wrote four books in quick succession. My compulsion to write had returned!

When I had produced my fifth novel, a friend suggested that I contact an agent and gave me an address in Sarasota. I contacted the agent and was immediately accepted. However, I soon found that it was not a good agency to be with and withdrew my work. This discouraged me from sending out my work to anyone else.

Wanting to improve my writing, I joined a writers' group at our local college. The lecturer who headed the group was very complimentary about my work and strongly suggested I tried approaching a publisher but I was still not convinced. However, when my husband also started badgering me to submit, I started looking for a suitable publisher to approach. As all my work is done on the computer, it was to the interned I turned in my search. I wanted a publishing house that would accept electronic submissions but, sadly, there appeared to be none in the UK, so I turned my attentions to the USA. To my delight, there were several publishers who would accept submissions by e-mail and I contacted All Romance Books who appeared to be seeking the type of novels I wrote. To my utter delight they immediately offered me contracts on both the books I had submitted. 'Dominic' was published in July, 2005 but sadly, before 'My Dearest Friend' reached the shelves, due to the owner's demise, the company closed.

At this time, I was awaiting a heart bypass and, believing I had had my five minutes of fame, I just didn't have the energy to start approaching new publishers. However, shortly after my surgery, purely as a morale booster and heartened by my previous success, I decided to seek publication once more. This time, I sent out three manuscripts and was amazed to receive contracts for all three within six weeks. I was to be a published author once again! Wings ePress took 'Dominic' and 'My Dearest Friend', whilst Triskelion took 'The Portrait'. I then submitted yet another to Wings, 'His Shadowed Heart' and they took that too.Everything appeared to be going exceedingly well until, just before 'The Portrait's' September release date, Triskelion went into liquidation.

So far, the review sites have been very generous about my books and it has encouraged me to continue with my quest for publication. I currently have two more manuscripts out with publishing houses but, for the moment, my rights to 'The Portrait' are still tied up in the bankruptcy hearing. However, once they are released, I will be looking for another home for that too.

In the main, I write solely for myself with no thoughts to markets or trends, I just listen to my characters telling their stories. Publication is a very exciting and rewarding bonus and I am constantly amazed and delighted that others enjoy my work.

I would say to anyone who has the desire to write - just do it - you will be surprised at what you can achieve.

Hazel Statham
Author of DOMINIC
http://www.hazel-statham.co.uk/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Hazel Statham

ONLY MOMENTS by Nick Oliva

2007-09-10T00:00:00.001-07:00

“Only Moments” was originally written within the cyclical theme of Birth, Death, and Rebirth over ten years ago. I focused on the unforgiving world, the false hope of technology and religion, incorporating one’s own search and questioning of the spiritual aspects that provide some measure of meaning, and then tying it into the romance of total devotion of man and wife. Some might call it a fairy tale romance, but there are many “high school” relationships that have survived the test of time, however difficult. These two characters are both heavily flawed but those flaws are what binds and drives them with their deep passion for music.

The road, throughout the novel is representative of one’s life path and sense of curiosity and discovery. I spent years coming very close to the publication of this book through the Irene Rodgers Literary Association but as close as it was, it didn't get published. I eventually put it on hold for years until I was motivated to attempt it once more.

As time went by, I realized that I had to include the events of the World Trade Towers but needed to wait until it wouldn’t seem as if I was using those events just to capitalize on public sentiment. As it turns out, the waiting was for the better. The characters lived in New York City at this time and it gave me a chance to expand upon the themes echoed throughout the book as well as break a few rules and show a glimpse of the secondary character in her own words. I’m sure I will receive much criticism for the breach, but I don’t care, as rules are made to be broken occasionally. Considering those who do the criticizing most of the time, those critics usually have nothing to show and have taken no chances in the fields that they critique.

The first Saturday in October 2004, I woke up and couldn’t move my left leg at all. I had a fever over 102 and had my wife, Joan take me to the Emergency Room. It was there that I was diagnosed with a spinal infection, probably caused by cortisone injections. Dr. Derrick Duke -the man who saved Roy Horn’s life after Montecore, the tiger that had just about severed Mr. Horn’s head from his body accidentally at the Siegfried and Roy Show at the Mirage -was called in and he explained the severity of my situation. Far from routine, I would be fighting for my life. I underwent a 5-hour emergency operation that and afterwards had Vancomycin intravenously pumped into my arm directly to my heart for the next eight weeks to fight off the spinal infection.

On the second day after the operation, while in critical condition, about 2 AM in the morning, still hooked up to the heart monitors in ICU, my heart stopped for 12 seconds. I experienced an out-of-body phenomena that catapulted me into another world. This happened twice while I was there. My experience was very similar to the fiction I had written in this book many years ago. Much like the character Chris, I came back with a different understanding and as I fought to come back to the living, the transition left me with a totally changed perspective. It was my life imitating my own art. I spent the next five weeks wired-up in the hospital.

In January of 2005, Dr. Duke operated on my neck and screwed a titanium butterfly on my cervical spine and I got the use of my right arm back.

In short, I recovered, although my left leg is still disabled from nerve damage that is more than likely permanent, I moved on with a new determination to get this book published among other things. I went through incredible things with my near death experience. It showed me that the things I believed in, the core of my beliefs, were really right in line with what I went through. This reinforcement of my life’s search renewed the vigor of discovery within me and gave me the impetus to push forward and get this book published.

I chose a "print on demand" (not a vanity press) publishing house as the major publishers cannot be bothered with new authors. Almost all publishing houses are headed to POD as it is cost effective and it eliminates returns from bookstores. Remember, it's about money and unless you are a celebrity or a murderer or both, you have little chance of them signing you unless you are a proven commodity.

Once published, now comes the hard part, getting it read, getting it sold. There is no one way or miracle formula. It is persistence of effort, constantly keeping alert to opportunities to promote and market yourself. It will cost you money and time even if you are published with Random House or Doubleday. You have to promote yourself. If you can afford the cost get a public relations firm to assist you nationally with radio interviews and book reviews (fewer and fewer newspapers even do reviews of books now). Call your hometown newspaper, try sending copies to local periodicals for review.

The measure of your success depends on what level you want to achieve. Be careful that you do not set unrealistic goals and set yourself up for failure and despondence. Take a little chunk at a time. Start with a web presence, create a blog, get your family to buy the book (a major task believe me!), get your friends to buy the book even though they expect it for free because "you are their friend." Explain to them how they should support your cause as once your "make it" you will mention their name on Oprah's show. Tell them anything, just get sales going before your book goes into obscurity.

Stay positive. Many people will tear into your to make themselves look good.

Accept reality. Perhaps your book isn't up to snuff. Go back an rewrite and make it clear to your audience and target market.

Don't assume! Never assume that the world needs another book.

Why is yours so special?

What makes it stand out? Does it stand out? Remember this-your finished a novel. 99% of the people who start one don't and rarely does anyone even begin one. You are part of 3 billion people in this world. Do the percentages. One percent of 3 billion is 30 million, one tenth of that is 3 million and one tenth of that is 300,000 and that is roughly how many books get published each year. That means you have 1/100th of a chance to be a part of 300,000 books that are for sale. That's a sobering thought! So don't get your hopes up or your expectations too high. On the other hand, do it for you! That's who counts anyway. You did it, you accomplished an incredible thing. Don't downplay it because you aren't on Oprah, or the movie of the week isn't based on your book. Life is about the little things. Enjoy them and be proud! Smell the roses.

Nick Oliva
Author of ONLY MOMENTS

http://www.onlymomentsbook.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Nick Oliva, spiritual romance

THREE STEPS TO INVESTMENT SUCCESS: BUYING THE RIGHT ART, ANTIQUES, AND COLLECTIBLES by Scott Zema

2007-09-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Meet Scott Zema, highly educated and very experienced art, antiques, and collectibles dealer and appraiser--inexperienced at publishing!

Getting my book Three Steps to Investment Success: Buying the Right Art, Antiques, and Collectibles into print has been a bigger struggle than I thought it would be. But in contrast to many authors who apparently spend years and their health trying to interest the publishing powers-that-be in trying to publish their works, I thought, after a a very short struggle--what the hell am I doing?

Let me explain.

I tried mainstream agents and one publisher, was told I had writing talent, but found that a combination of bias against the topic and a lack of interest in this specialized area--even sans any submittal on my part--seemed to doom the effort. Keep in mind that except for one feeble effort published in the early 1980's, I believe that my book is truly the only book on the topic of art, antiques, and collectibles investment in the whole corpus of published literature.

After a fairly short period of dealing with rejection, I thought--what the hey--all the tools for self publishing and promotion already exist in the computer. Not only that, but assuming as an unpublished author the IF I managed to land a contract through an agent for a book, my compensation for that initial contract would probably be in the low thousands of dollars (I make that in a few days as an appraiser), I would be in bed with several partners and have to jump through their hoops, and would receive fractional compensation on any copies sold!

So I had a website design team design my book and put it into adobe format. Then I featured my book for sale on my own website, downloadable (with a security key to prevent unauthorized internet distribution) and payable with a credit card. It certainly seems cheaper and easier than going the traditional route, and perhaps more lucrative if done correctly...
I feel that going through the internet has to open doors for authors, and that correctly done, it must prove some kind of threat eventually to traditional publishers. Anybody can publish now.

Scott Zema
Author of THREE STEPS TO INVESTMENT SUCCESS: BUYING THE RIGHT ART, ANTIQUES, AND COLLECTIBLES
http://www.arklimitedpublishing.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Scott Zema, art appraiser

PARTIALLY HUMAN by Dwayne G. Anderson

2007-09-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

My name is Dwayne Gerald Anderson and I am a young Canadian author who hopes to succeed in the publishing world and make it big. Through my written works, I have found a way to express my deepest thoughs, concerns, and emotions.

Ironically, as a child, I wasn't much of a creative person. When I was in an early grade, I was given an assignment by the teacher that no one else got. While the other students were to write a creative story of their own, I was already given a story to work with. My job was to fill in the missing details as to how the main character solved his problems. This was my first experience in creative writing. I later wrote and illustrated a storybook about a spider and a tortoise that was pretty silly, but I did enjoy the experience, and the teacher loved it.

In my teens, I wrote fiction for the Rugrats, All Grown Up, and later, Futurama. Last year before the Christmas season, I wrote a christmas-themed fiction story for the animated movie "Cats Don't Dance," which was posted on Christmas day.

My writing career as a novelist began in September 2001, not long after the events of 9/11. I even dedicated "Alien Conflict" to those who lost their lives in the tragedy as well as those who struggled for world peace which was a very serious issue in the book. This however was my weakest book in terms of story telling as I never bothered having it proofread. It didn't sell many copies as well, almost all of them were bought by my dad to sell in his store, and he still hasn't sold them all.

My second written book was "Hellfire Apocalypse", published in 2004, one and a half years after Alien Conflict was published. It too was a weak work, and hardly sold any copies at all before the publisher went out of business.

My third recently published book is also my most ambitious. "Partially Human", based on my own experiences of being different and living with Asperger Syndrome, is the story about a teenager who suddenly finds his life turned upside down when a shocking personal secret about him is revealed that he is carrying the genes of a dying alien species. Now, all he has left are his family, friends, girlfriend, and a select few others who come to sympathize with his plight.

Partially Human deals with many issues that are very real to teens and young adults in society. Each of the major characters faces at least one of these issues that happens to people in real life, such as being alienated, a teen unwed mother, drug usage, loss of family, domestic violence, abuse, and finding where you belong.

I spent three months on the rough draft of Partially Human, then spent the next three years in my spare time doing some serious editting, proof-reading, and reading it over. When I was finally satisfied, I searched for a publisher. Everyone I submitted it to rejected it. It was finally accepted by one publisher, but it went out of business before publication was completed. Finally, I found Infinity Publishing, and in late April, I held the proof-copy in my hand. The finalized product was published in May, and I am very proud of how it turned out.

I hope to get my message out to the readers that we can live in a world without prejudice and ignorance, and instead, live in a world where people are accepted for who they are and not rejected for being different.

Dwayne G. Anderson

Author of PARTIALLY HUMAN

www.geocities.com/andersondwayne/dwaynegand.html

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Dwayne G. Anderson, young adult science fiction

JUDGMENT FIRE by Marilyn Meredith

2007-08-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Trail to Glory, an historical family saga based on my own family's genealogy was published by Dorchester about 22 years ago. This was back in the days when you typed the whole manuscript out and sent it in a box with another box inside with the right postage for it to come back to you. By the time it was actually published, it had been rejected nearly 30 times with many rewrites in-between. I probably spent more on postage than I received as an advance.

I was thrilled--but dumb. With contract in hand, I should have found an agent before I signed. Because I knew no other published writers, I didn't have anyone to go to for advice. When I received my author copies, instead of using them to get reviews, I gave them away to friends and family. I told you I was dumb.

Of course I thought the way would be easy from there--was I ever wrong. The editor who bought my book at Dorchester left, and when I sent in my next book, her replacement wasn't interested.

I found a publisher for it--Two Ways West. The books looked wonderful, but the publisher turned out to be a crook--eventually I got all the books that were printed and sold them myself. Since that time, I published it myself and sold out several times.

This all took a lot of time, and I was writing and writing. Mysteries mostly. I've had two publishers who died and was electronically published, long before anyone knew much about that including the publisher.

And yes, I've had agents, several over the years, but basically found publishers on my own.

Now I'm happily published by Mundania Press and a couple of other e-publishers. The second in my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series coming from Mundania, Judgment Fire, will be out this month and can be purchased from http://www.mundaniapress/, or through my website, http://fictionforyou.com/ or ordered through your local bookstore.

My advice to all new authors who are having trouble finding a publisher, is look for new avenues of publishing, but do some investigating and find out what other authors of that publisher have to say. Though writing is a complicated business that keeps changing, it is a business. Learn as much as you can. It's all out there on the Internet, easy to find out. Never let rejections get you down. Keep writing and submitting.

Marilyn Meredith
Author of JUDGMENT FIRE
http://fictionforyou.com/
http://www.policewriter.com/
NEW BLOG at http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Marilyn Meredith

EARRINGS OF IXTUMEA by Kim Baccellia

2007-08-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

The idea of Earrings of Ixtumea came to me back in 2002 as a dream. I have very vivid dreams. I could see myself in a thick jungle setting, following behind a very buff warrior. At the end of the clearing he pulled aside the huge leaves of a tree for me to witness my first glimpse of an ancient world.

The idea of writing a fantasy with Latin mythology woven throughout had been with me since my days as a bilingual teacher in a LA county school. I loved fantasies but was sick of the usual British-orphan-is-the-chosen-one. Plus I was taking post graduate classes, one of which was Chicano Studies, that opened my eyes to the rich history of my own ancestors.

I learned so much those two years. Plus I couldn’t deny the yearning I had to go back to writing. I’ve always been a writer but put it aside when a college professor told me that I wouldn’t be a great novelist until I experienced more of life. I was only nineteen at the time but his words crushed me. But after nearly twenty years, I decided to try again.

I started by taking a novel writing class at UCI extension program. While there I met my now writing mentor Lou Nelson. She helped me learn how to do plot work and actually write my story using a story paradigm. I learned about character arcs, faulty thinking, and denouements. I also found my passion of writing had never left me.

But I found having a newborn, teaching full time, and writing was a hard balancing act. I decided to take some time off from teaching. It then took me another two years to write and finish the first draft of Earrings. I went to a number of writing conferences to help me network with other writers. I also got to pitch my story to some agents and editors. The biggest highlight for me was meeting one of my favorite fantasy writers, Terry Brooks, at the Maui Writers Conference. He asked me which of his books was my favorite and when I told him, he admitted that was his too.

Writing the story is the easy part. Then came the querying. At first came the form letter ‘no’ but then some personal comments came back. But the one that really helped was from an editor of a YA imprint who took the time out of his very busy schedule to offer to help me with suggestions on how to strengthen my story. I called. He went over what my strengths were and then gave me very valuable feedback on how to tighten my story. No, he didn’t offer me a contract but I’ll never forget his kindness. Yes, I sent him a thank you card. And, yes, I used the suggestions he gave which ended up making my story stronger.

I ended up going with an epublisher who’s idea of making e-serials out of stories intrigued me. I thought Earrings would be perfect fit. Plus I love unique ways of doing things. A month later my book came out in e-book format and now it’s out in print.

The one thing I’ve learned through the whole process of writing and publishing Earrings is this; don’t give up. Try, try, and try again. Also if an agent or editor offers suggestions, take him/her up on it. I know this sounds cliché but each ‘no’ is a footstep toward receiving that elusive ‘yes’.

Kim Baccellia
Author of EARRINGS OF IXTUMEA
http://www.virtualtales.com/
http://www.kim-baccellia.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Kim Baccellia

The Art of Getting Published by Robin Jay

2007-08-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

I want to take advantage of having this space to help writers to achieve their publishing goals. Having originally self-published, I later sold my ms. to a publisher. This gives me a unique perspective and I’d like to share why I hired an agent and then sold my book. I went into the financial aspect in detail on http://www.bloggingauthors.blogspot.com/, but it may be helpful to learn what I went through to get to that point.

After more than 3,000 client lunches and seeing my sales increase by more than 2000%, I knew I was onto something. I wanted to share my success secrets with other sales people. And I wanted to become an author. After 18 years of selling advertising, I was ready for a change and I chose writing. Yes, that part is simple enough. As a huge advocate of the Law of Attraction, I knew that I would be able to create whatever I wanted.

I began writing on Sundays, while working a 60+ hour week selling advertising for a magazine. Even my days off were packed with chores and my evenings were spent with clients. No one ever becomes a huge success working a 40-hour work week. Study the people you admire and you will learn that most of them work most of the time.

I began writing my book, “The Art of the Business Lunch ~ Building Relationships Between 12 and 2” in March of 2001. (http://www.robinjay.com/). I had received a dreadful diagnosis and didn’t think I would live to see that summer. After being healed, I knew I needed to change directions, so I threw myself into my writing. Then came 9/11. I thought my topic seemed frivolous and that professionals would never “do lunch” again. Well, even though nothing will ever be the same, life goes on…and people still needed to eat and conduct their business, so back to writing I went.

In September, 2003, I attended the Maui Writer’s Conference. It was a divine experience and I loved it so much. I really started to feel like a writer. I worked with renewed passion. It was hard not being able to recharge my batteries between working so hard at the magazine and then working non-stop at home on weekends.

Then, in November, something happened at work that compelled me to review my situation. I decided that I had enough money saved up to resign from my job, work through my 6-month non-compete, get my book published and reevaluate my situation.

Well, after 6 months of working for myself, I knew I would not be returning to advertising sales any time soon. I am a wonderful boss! I self-published my book and hosted a tremendously successful launch. I sold out the banquet room for a book launch luncheon at the Las Vegas Palm Restaurant to more than 80 guests and the following week, we did it again for about 40 more guests. Everyone bought lunch and a copy of my book. It was a tremendous experience.

The reason I self-published was because I could not entice an agent in Maui and I did not know any other way to get one, other than to attend writer’s conferences and pitch and pitch and pitch. All of the agents seemed to believe that my book was nothing more than a magazine article. I knew otherwise. There is a lot to know about building relationships in business. There is so much going on that a business lunch is never just about lunch. And what about the job interview luncheon, the networking luncheons, etiquette and appropriate behavior? What can you hope to accomplish from a business lunch done right? Is it ever okay to order alcohol? When should you bring up the subject of business? And how can you avoid awkward silence, since sometimes a business lunch can be as uncomfortable as a blind date?!

In June, I attended the Book Expo America in Chicago and found a distributor. By September, I was looking for a publicist. I met Bambe Levine, who is in New York City, through a mutual friend. We hooked up and got along wonderfully well. She read my book and wondered why I was not with an agent. I told her that the agents I had met in Maui didn’t believe in my project. She quickly rattled off the names of three of the top literary agents in New York City. I called them all and they each said they would love to work with me. Ahhh – connections. I guess the literary world is no different from every other world.

I signed with Al Zuckerman, founder of Writers House and before long, he came to me with an offer from Career Press, a trade, non-fiction publishing house. My book was right up their alley. He advised I take the deal and I did. And the rest, as they say, is history. I had to pull my self-published edition off of Amazon and was only allowed to sell it directly, in the back of the room, when I was speaking professionally. This sale, as rewarding as it was, set me back a year. That was hard financially, since my monthly expenses did not change from my ad sales days.

Today, my book has been sold in TEN languages worldwide and my speaking career is solid. I have contributed to two anthology books in “The POWER of Mentorship” series, including “The Millionaire Within” and “For the Woman Entrepreneur.” Filming is underway on “The POWER of Mentorship: The Movie” and I am a featured mentor in the film. And I recently learned that I just had a chapter accepted into “Chicken Soup for the Wine Lover’s Soul,” due out in November.

I haven’t stopped! The leap of faith I took paid off. I didn’t believe that the agents I met with in Maui knew more than I did about the appeal of “The Art of the Business Lunch.” Having been in sales for so many years, I knew that I was sitting on a great book with a great topic that people would want to read. I literally did whatever it took to get published…and, believe me, it took a LOT! I work at least 12 hours every day, promoting my book and myself. Being a professional speaker has also proven to be tremendously rewarding. I enjoy sharing with others and I know I am doing what I was meant to do. I speak on many topics aside from the business lunch, including Business Protocol & Etiquette, the Special Secret of Sales Success and Understanding Different Personality Profiles. It’s been an incredible journey and one that is definitely not for everyone. But for me? It’s been like coming home.

Robin Jay
Author of THE ART OF THE BUSINESS LUNCH
http://www.robinjay.com/

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Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Robin Jay

You Are More Than Enough: Every Woman's Guide to Purpose, Passion, and Power

2007-08-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

My most recent book, "You Are More Than Enough: Every Woman's Guide to Purpose, Passion, and Power" was published by the first publisher I approached. I attended the Henderson Writer's Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada and while attending wrote a query letter about my idea. I showed the letter to two agents and one publisher's representative. The representative took my letter back to his publisher and called to say they were interested. I met with his boss a month later who said she wanted the book and six months later I turned in my manuscript.

It helped that I had several other books which had been published previously and I am a motivational speaker. Publishers today want to work with someone who will promote the book as much if not more than they do. I do three things every day to promote the book.

Judi Moreo

Author of You Are More Than Enough: Every Woman's Guide to Purpose, Passion, and Power
http://www.judimoreo.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Judi Moreo

The Enchanted Self's Publishing Roller Coaster Story

2007-08-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

Hi, I'm Dr Barbara Becker Holstein, Positive Psychologist and author of four books, plus a book I edited for my mom, Mrs. Bernice Becker, of her short stories. My publishing journey started when I spoke at a conference about The Enchanted Self(R) concept that I had recently developed. This was back in the early 1990's. You can find out all about The Enchanted Self at http://www.enchantedself.com/. But basically in a few words, this concept, probably the first Positive Psychology system for women, involves a central premise. The premise is that we feel happier, enjoy life more, have inspiration, passion and success, if we draw from our own strengths, talents, coping skills and potential as we go through our daily living. This means knowing who we are in a positive way, recognizing what is right about ourselves, not what is wrong.

All of my books, web teaching, articles, workshops, etc. since that time have been inspired by The Enchanted Self. That even includes my newest book, THE TRUTH, I'm Ten, I'm Smart and I Know Everything!

But back to my story. An acquisition's editor from an academic press, Gordon and Breach, came up to me at that conference and we began to talk. She felt that my Enchanted Self material had the makings of an academic book. I was delighted but a little shocked. Long story short, she worked with me over several months to develop the outline, begin the first chapters, etc. Kathleen O'Malley was wondeful and I am forever grateful. That book came out about two years later after many adventures, including being printed but waiting in the belly of a ship for months off the coast of Singapore. When I finally had THE ENCHANTED SELF, A Positive Therapy in my hands I was practically ecstatic You can find that book which is a wonderful easy read, even though geared to people with some understanding of the therapeutic process on my website or Amazon, etc.

I'm going to skip now to THE TRUTH, I'm Ten, I'm Smart and I Know Everything. I was so shocked when this book came to me, as it is such a different format than all my other writings. It is fiction, and an easy read. But I knew instantly I was in touch with positive universal truths that had to be shared. I also knew this was the best format-a girl's diary. I tried a couple of agents with no success. Then I couldn't hold any longer. I know this book will have wonderful adventures and I'm ready to roll. I already have the framework for a movie version and/or a play.

I just had to jump in and get started. I couldn't go through agent after agent.and loose my momentum. Thankfully, I found a wonderful women's press ready to publish it: LadyBug Press. Georgia Jones, the publisher is a great, talented woman and helped me all the way. Check out her books and internet radio shows at www.ladybuglive.com And that is most of the story. But not all-there is the wonderful professor in China who has already translated THE TRUTH into Chinese and then there is the second book in what I realize is a series-already more than half written. In the first book the girl is 10-11 and in the second book she is 12-14 and still teaching us wisdom and reminding us of all we can be.

My words of wisdom are to stick to your dreams but always be ready to think and create your book into a reality, our of the box!

Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein
Author, THE TRUTH, I'M TEN, I'M SMART AND I KNOW EVERYTHING
http://www.enchangedself.com/

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Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein

YOU HAD ME AT HALO by Amanda Ashby

2007-07-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

I had been writing and submitting books for almost six years before I got my agent (the amazing Jenny Bent from Trident Media) and over that time I had about 12 completed books and loads of proposals as well. I think the reason it took so long was because I wasn't quite sure what sort of books I wanted to write, so I tried my hand at just about everything (though my
lovely cps thankfully stopped me before I started writing my serial killer idea!!).

However, after a particularly brutal rejection, I did consider packing the whole thing in. Of course this didn't last very long, but after a dark night of the souls, I decided that there was a good chance that I might never get published and that therefore I should just start writing the sort of books I really wanted to write.

The next book I wrote still didn't get me an agent, but the rejections were getting a lot more detailed and I felt like I was getting closer. Then my dad died, and on the day of his funeral I kept imagining that he was somewhere upstairs supplying an alternative commentary to his funeral. This was the trigger for a book idea and I wrote it, got an agent and a book sale all within six months of his death - which after six years of trying, all suddenly felt a little bit surreal (in the best possible way of course!!)

The book, You Had Me at Halo, is actually coming out on August 7th and I've since sold two young adult books to Puffin.

Amanda Ashby
Author of You Had Me at Halo (August 2007 NAL)
Zombie Queen of Newbury High (Spring 2009 Puffin)
http://www.amandaashby.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist, Amanda Ashby, You Had Me At Halo

How to Submit

2007-07-20T21:40:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Publishing Secrets of Authors!

If you are a published author and you would like to tell the world how you got published, send us your story! Was it a rocky road or did it come easy for you? Did you start with an agent and get a NY publisher interested or did you become published by some other means? Do you have words of wisdom for other writers who would like to become published authors?

Tell us how you got your most recent book published and we'll post it here at PUBLISHING SECRETS OF AUTHORS!

Please copy and paste the following information into an email and send it to thewriterslife(at)yahoo.com. Please put "Publishing Secrets of Authors" in your subject line.

Name
Book Title
Attach book cover to email or send us to a link to where we can grab it
Selling page (where you want customers to go when they click on your book cover - this can be your website, Amazon, or any place where you would like customers to buy your book
Short bio
Edited guest post of how you got published with word count of 500 words - 800 words.

Thank you and we look forward to your secret to becoming a published author!

Dorothy Thompson
CEO/Founder Pump Up Your Book Promotion PR
http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/

Tags: Publishing Secrets of Authors, book publishing, virtual book tour, public relations firm, blogging authors, book promotion, book publicist