Just Another Paranormal Monday

Ok ok, so it's Tuesday! Sue me!

I've joined in on the Just Another Paranormal Monday blog. It's various members of the new email group Just Another Paranormal Monday. This is a brilliant group idea because it is only open on Mondays! So you only have to worry about being slammed with emails one day of the week. And you will read tons of excerpts and even get some sneak peaks at what's coming up for some of your favorite authors.

If you'd like to join, just click here to send an email.

I hope you will join us and tell others as well. It really is a lot of fun!

Ides of June--Reject Me Baby!

Welcome to the Ides of the Month with Marilu Mann.

We all hear about those First Call/First Sale stories and rejoice along with those celebrating. What about the stumbling blocks on their road to success? What rejections did they face? More importantly--how did they face that rejection? Why did they keep going?

Here's two stories.

The first is from Sandy. She got a long, detailed letter from an editor. The response she got included a few books for her to read so she could get a better feel for that line.

That editor's rejection letter made me feel good. All of the rejection letters I received from SAVING FACE were good, but eventually, I knew I had to set it aside, so I could grow. After several more books, I found the rejections were getting tougher, and the contests I entered, the judges wanted to rewrite my work rather than make suggestions. It really was all wrong. Even though I was improving, I was losing my voice because I did everything anyone told me. I was desperate to get published. It didn't help because the next person would disagree with the first person. At times, I would feel so bad over a form rejection, or a contest score that I couldn't write for weeks and months. One thing that helped me was to go back and read every single good rejection I received, and then I could keep going. The better my writing became the tougher it became to receive a scribbled note on a query letter saying good luck, but it's not for me.

Sandy
S Kay Marshall
MySpace
THE CATALYST and ADDICTION coming soon from Forbidden Publications

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Then I learned that sometimes wine and chips are the cure from Cara Marsi.

Red wine and potato chips. That's my comfort food of choice when I wallow in self-pity after yet another rejection.

When I open that rejection letter, or more commonly, that rejection email, I shed a few tears, vow never to write again, pour several glasses of red wine and open a bag of potato chips.

After several days of wallowing in self-pity, I pick myself up, brush myself off, go back on my diet, and start writing again. Hope springs eternal!

I'm still waiting to hear from a major publisher about a manuscript I submitted in 1998. One of my fantasies is that I've finaled in the RITA (we all share this fantasy), and an editor who rejected the book approaches me at the conference and asks me to send her something. Then I say to her, "I sent you this RITA book, but you rejected it." I recognize that on so many levels this would never happen, but it feels so good to imagine it.


Cara Marsi
Logan's Redemption
Available in ebook, print and Kindle
Cara Marsi

What about you? If you are a published author, send Marilu a note detailing how you dealt with that rejection letter. What kept you going? Let me hear about it and feel free to promo your latest book at the same time.

Guest Blogger - Kacey Smith

First I’d like to say thanks to Marilu for inviting me to be a guest blogger.

So, my first release comes out soon with Amber Quill Press. Obviously, I want you to buy the book, but why would you want to? Well, if you like stories of magic, stories that revolve around the paranormal, heroes and heroines that have a little snark in their attitudes and aren’t afraid to show it, then I think you’ll like my story.

It’s a short story and yet it took me a long time to write. I didn’t know if I could even finish the story, to be honest. I didn’t know for sure where I was going to take it and even if I really COULD take it the direction it seemed to be going.

What I’m ‘tap-dancing’ around here is that I’ve written something I didn’t think I’d ever really write – a true ménage à trois. And yet, that’s exactly where this story started going.

I wrote two strong appealing heroes and then couldn’t choose between them for the heroine. I figured if I couldn’t choose, then neither could she, so why force it? Why not let her have them both?

Well, for one thing, that’s not something I have personal experience with – at all! All of the relationships I’ve had in my life have involved me and one other person, not multiple people. I started to wonder if I really could write this story with both heroes “winning” the heroine.

I finally just took a deep breath, and let the story flow. It turned out to be a good thing. (Grin)

When I’d finished the story, I sent it to a couple of trusted friends to see what they thought – they both gave me different ideas on how to make it better. I took what worked for me and left the rest alone.

Then, I bit the bullet and sent the story in to a publisher that I’ve been reading for some time. Once a year they sponsor a contest to find new authors – the rest of the year they’re closed to outside submissions. I honestly didn’t believe I would be one of the winners, but I thought I’d at least get some good ideas in the rejection (a whole ‘nother topic, right Marilu? (Grin) )

So, I read the guidelines, followed them and sent my entry in to Amber Quill Press. Then I waited, fretted, worried and wondered. When the day finally arrived for the winners to be announced, I HAUNTED my inbox and the website waiting for the announcement of the winners to appear.

Around 6PM that night, I sent an email to my “bestest bud” saying, “Well, I don’t think I won because I haven’t heard from them.” Then I went BACK to my email and THERE IT WAS! The subject simply said, “Amber Heat Wave Contest.” I had to force myself to open it – just positive I’d see bad news (hey, I’m SUCH a pessimist!) The first few words of that email said, “It is my pleasure…” and I knew at that point I was one of the winners!

There were over 200 entries and they picked MINE (and seven others)! Wow. Euphoria! Joy! All those amazing emotions zooming around my brain…

That started my journey to publication with Amber Quill Press – and that journey comes to fruition on June 15 with the release of Tales from the Graveyard Shift: Ghouls.

I hope you enjoy it.

Hugs,

Kacey

PS – I was recently reviewed by Bitten by Books – here’s a link to that review: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=220 and if you’d like to see the cover and read an excerpt, please visit my website at www.kaceysmith.com

Inside the Twisted Mind of a Copy Editor

By: Marie Force, Guest Blogger

Remember the Dr. Seuss book, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!"? For copy editors, our mantra is “Oh, the Stuff You Have to Know." I tease my husband for being like Cliff Clavin, the mail-carrying know-it-all on Cheers. Like Cliff, my husband knows a little bit about a lot of things—most of it what I categorize as “worthless knowledge." If only you could get paid for knowing a little bit about everything... But wait... You can!

Copy editors are the last line of defense on all things written. We proof newspapers, magazines, and books for accuracy, consistency, grammar, and sentence structure. It’s our job to know, for example, which four states are commonwealths (Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—and we like to show off what we know). We’ve got the inside track on redundant phrases such as “general public" and know that something doesn’t become “annual" until it’s been held or done twice. Being a generous species, we’re always pleased to bring these interesting factoids to cocktail parties and social gatherings.

And where do we get all these rules? In the style manual, of course. I remember my first copy editing class in college when the professor said we were going to talk style. Oh cool, I thought, imagining I was in for a discussion about Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren. I soon found out he meant publication style. In the journalism profession, the Bible is the AP Stylebook, published by the Associated Press. The publishing world’s Bible is The Chicago Manual of Style.

Within these style manuals are answers to just about every question a writer or editor could have. Are there periods in a.m. and p.m.? How do I write a date? Do I spell out numbers or use the numeral? Sounds trivial, right? Well, it sort of is, but think about it—if you have twenty different writers on your staff and each of them are doing these things in a different way, your publication descends into chaos. It’s the job of the copy editor to keep that from happening.

In my day job, I’m the editor-in-chief of a national trade publication that focuses on government financial management. When I started 13 years ago, I knew nothing about accounting, auditing, or financial management . No problem, my boss at the time said, and he was right. Words are words. I may not always understand them—although after all these years, I understand them better than I ever thought I would—but I can tell if they are presented incorrectly. It’s my job to make sure the words are accurate and consistent from one issue of the magazine to the next.

One of the first things I did when I got the job was draft a style manual for our publications that we follow to this day. Do I refer to it often? Nope. Why? I know it by heart after all these years. I like knowing it’s there if I need it, but because I eat, sleep, and breathe the rules it contains, I don’t need to check it all that often. So why have it? Because three other people work with me in my department, and I don’t expect them to be as anal retentive as I am. They use the actual document much more than I do.

Copy editors are compulsive by nature. I find at least one error in almost everything I read. Even dinner at a fancy restaurant can turn into a menu proofreading session. I edit street signs, maps, and, well, everything I see along the way. I can’t help it. According to my husband Cliff Clavin, I’m an irritating companion on road trips because I can’t shut off my need to edit. I could argue that at least I’m not spewing factoids about the largest ball of twine in the world...

I offered up two MS copy edits to Brenda Novak’s auction, thinking they’d generate a couple hundred dollars for diabetes. Well, they raised a couple thousand dollars. I was astounded that they went for more than some of the agent and editor offerings. I had no idea there was such a demand among authors for copy editors! This led me to hang out my copy editing shingle for romance writers only, combining my love of all things romance with my compulsive need to edit. I’ve included a link to my website below where you can find more information.

As a writer, this compulsive need to get it right makes for some interesting challenges. I learned early on that I need another set of eyes on my work. My friend Paula, former employee of a publishing company, copy edits all my MSs for me, and I’m always amazed by what she finds. Mistakes that are obvious to me in other peoples’ work are invisible in my own. However, Paula tells me my unedited manuscripts are cleaner than some of the stuff she reviews at galley stage, proof that my compulsion is paying off while driving me slowly insane. This is the so-called “blessing" of being a trained copy editor.

Speaking of galleys... The proofs for my debut novel, “Line of Scrimmage," are sitting here waiting for my attention. I realized last night that I’ve been riddled with anxiety since they arrived. What if I miss something? How will I stand to see a real, live error in my book? This is the curse.

Here’s the shameless plug for “Line of Scrimmage," out on September 1 from Sourcebooks Casablanca: In the Hail Mary play of a lifetime, a sexy NFL quarterback has just ten days to convince his wife to give him a second chance before their divorce is final—and he has to act fast because she’s already engaged to her high school boyfriend. Read an excerpt on my website at www.mariesullivanforce.com.

Thank you to Marilu for inviting me to blog, and I’ll happily answer any questions your readers have about grammar, style, or editing. If I don’t know the answer, I guarantee my husband Cliff Clavin will.

Marie Force is an editor by day and a romance writer by night. She lives with her husband and two children in Rhode Island. Her debut novel, “Line of Scrimmage," will be out on September 1, 2008. Find out more about her copy editing services for romance writers at www.mariesullivanforce.com/MSFManuscript.php.
You can also find Marie at:

• Her website


• Her blog


• Casablanca Authors Blog

Guest Blog: Karen McCullough On Handling Rejection

On a chapter loop, Karen McCullough, multi-published author, answered a fellow chapter mate's request for ways to deal with rejection. Any writer will tell you that rejection simply is. It's a part of the game of being published. Karen wrote such a great post that I asked her if I could share it here on my blog. I think it needs to be seen by more than just our chapter!

I've had more than twenty years of rejections, which means I could probably paper the walls of a couple of rooms with them, and the collection is still growing. I've had a few successes in there, too, but I'm far, far from where I'd like to be in the publishing world. At several points I've been seriously tempted to give it up and do something else. But I can't. I just can't. So I'm still working on getting to that next level, which means coping with a lot of rejections. Over the years, I've developed a kind of plan for dealing with them.

It's a multi-part program and requires some work. It won't remove all the pain of rejection, but it does help. Here's the results of my twenty + years of learning to cope with rejection:

First: Adjust your Attitude: This isn't easy, but there are some things that help and I'll get to those.

The attitude is accepting that if you're going to seriously try for publication, rejection is part of the process. It's part of the learning curve and it's part of the business. Repeat: Rejection is part of the business of being a writer. You Have To Make Peace With It. I hope this isn't disillusioning, but it's the truth. Even multi-published authors face rejection. Think I'm kidding? Just ask on this list how many published authors have never been rejected. This is key: learning to cope with rejection is as much a part of the apprenticeship to becoming a published author as learning to write great stories.

Yes, there are a few lucky people who sell their first novels, who sell everything they write thereafter, who become such big names that the publishers will take anything and everything they write. They're not the norm. In fact, they're the writing world's equivalent of the people who win the lottery. This isn't to say they haven't worked hard to get where they are. You don't get to their level without a lot of hard work. It's just that for every Stephen King or Janet Evanovich, there are hundreds of mid-list and unpublished authors working just as hard as they are and getting lots of rejections. And by the way, Stephen King almost gave up writing due to rejections... If you haven't read his book On Writing, you should do it ASAP.

Second: The Action Plan

Part One: Rejection stings, so do something to compensate. Give yourself a treat for Every Rejection. Surely there's some guilty pleasure that you only indulge on occasion... Mocha Lattes from Starbucks? Milky Way bars? Mine is peppermint bark. You can only buy it at Christmas time, so I lay in a good supply, then put it away, and I only allow myself to have a piece when I get a rejection. If Starbucks is yours, buy yourself a gift card and then only use it after a rejection. Find something that you can use to reward yourself for the rejection.

Part Two: Set a goal. At the beginning of this year, I set a goal to reach one hundred rejections this year. AS of now I've only got twenty, which means I'm behind, but I'm going to start sending out queries for a new novel soon, so I figure I'll make it up. Here's the logic behind the goal: In this business, once you reach a certain level of competence in your writing, getting published involves a lot of luck. You have to hit the right agent/editor with the right project at the right time. There's only one way to maximize your chances of doing that, and that's to keep sending out lots of queries.

The more queries you have out, the better your odds of hitting the right person at the right time with the right thing. While you're querying set a weekly or monthly goal to get so many new ones out in that time.

Part Three: When you get a rejection, give yourself a few hours to be mad, to be hurt, to be depressed. I find some vigorous activity helps me get over it. My floors tend to get mopped after a rejection, or if the weather's good, I'll weed the garden. Then get to work on the next story/novel. The next one is going to be the one that blows everyone away. You should still have other queries out there anyway and you don't want to be drumming your fingers waiting for those to come back.

You want to be ready to be sending out queries on the new project before the final ones have come back on the old one.

Part Four: Analyze the rejections you're getting. Can you find any kind of pattern? If so, how can you address the pattern? The genre isn't one that is selling well right now. (You have to make your book so fabulous and outstanding, someone will have to buy it anyway.) You cross genres in ways that editors won't buy. (Can you rewrite it to make it lean more toward one genre?)

Or you can have my most recent experience. The book I've been sending around most recently is a cozy mystery with a background romantic element. It's gotten about fifty rejections all totalled now, and I now know that if it ever sells it will likely be to a small press or e-publisher. I got a lot of rejections of the "nice but I don't think I can sell it" variety from agents. Not too helpful. But then in one day (Whoohoo! Double helping of peppermint bark!) I got two rejections from agents that said the same thing and spelled it out. Both said, essentially, "nice writing, good story, but you need a strong marketing hook to sell a traditional mystery in today's market." I looked around, and sure enough, the mystery shelves were full of books with specialized appeal. Stories that centered on cooking, on gardening, on the art world, on various hobbies...knitting, quilting, etc. Light bulbs lit up in my brain. My book had no built-in audience the way those did.

By the way, if you get nothing but form rejections, that is a pattern, too. That tells you that some part of your writing is weak, so that it's not tweaking the agents'/editors' interest. Address that! Take some writing classes. Find a critique partner you can trust or join a critique group. Enter contests. All of those can help you spot what your weaknesses are so you can work on them. (Not finaling in a contest counts as a rejection, too, so you it works toward your goal and you get to treat yourself!)

Part Five: Examine yourself and your motivations. Will the rejections stop you from writing? If so, give it up right now and find a more rewarding hobby. There are plenty of possibilities. But if you know that in your heart you can't stop writing, then the next thing you need to do is decide is what you consider success. There's nothing wrong with wanting to write only to please yourself. There are people who do and enjoy it. Maybe you want to write stuff that isn't going to be commercially successful and a small press or e-publisher would be a better choice for you. All those are realistic options. Only you can decide what the ultimate goal is.

But if you want to go for traditional publishing, then be realistic about what it takes and what it means. And remember that the only thing you can control in the business is what you write and what you send out. And every rejection you receive is proof that you're making a serious effort toward your goal. As odd as it sounds, the more of them you have, the better! Every rejection is a step into the professional part of being a writer.

And now, I'll shut up. I only hope some of this is helpful.

By Karen McCullough
Now available from Cerridwen Press: Beneath a Christmas Moon
Shadow of a Doubt, Cerridwen Press
Wizard's Bridge, ImaJinn Books
http://www.kmccullough.com