Happy Release Day to Sid Hamer

There is always a still, quiet space before tragedy, when the future is known to the spirit and the soul quakes with the coming.

In an age before the great flood when the world was new, the beauty of one young woman drew more than admiring glances. Atarah saw the stranger in her troubled dreams before he approached her. All he wanted was a drink from her jug of water, or so he said. But of course, a drink was not all he wanted.

She escaped the Watcher, Semjaza until after her marriage to her father’s wealthy relative, Naaman. Semjaza came to her in a moment of weakness, a moment when she needed a kind touch, and with the lie she told her husband her journey to the abyss began.

How could one mistake change the course of her life? And how would she escape Semjaza and find redemption for her indiscretion?

THE POISON JAR is now listed on amazon.com, soon to be available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon Kindle, The Book Depository (UK) and Divertir Publishing. There are links on my website www.sidhamer.com or just type in Sid Hamer or The Poison Jar.

I want to thank my publisher, Ken Tupper (Divertir Publishing) for taking a raw manuscript and turning it into a novel of which I am very proud.

My five years of research into the antediluvian time period and people was and is an experience worthwhile in its own right. If I hadn’t written a word, I would still feel blessed to have taken this journey but having said that, my joy is magnified because I can share it with all of you. The Poison Jar is just the first installment in a series that will cover six generations and I am hard at work on the second manuscript.


www.sidhamer.com
http://www/amazon.com/author/sidhamer

Skyfall: Bond, James Bond

I’m fortunate that my husband and I share many of our tastes. We lean the same way politically and have similar values. Irish football Saturday is a given. There’s no fighting over the remote as we both like science fiction and fantasy along with a dose of action movies. Romantic comedy has it place and so does reality TV. So while he may pick steak over chicken and forgo my chocolate for his health shakes, we agree on James Bond.

I don’t know where it started for him, but I was too young to appreciate the first Bond movies. That’s where cable came in. Once the number of TV stations exploded, there were Bond marathons everywhere taking us back to those slightly campy early ventures. We liked the gadgets, the cars, the overdone villains, the dry innuendos. We became fans for life.

So it went through the ‘80’s with Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton, though we agreed Sean Connery was our favorite. Into the ‘90’s with Pierce Brosnan playing a slightly more haunted Bond. Then came that relatively long break where the series lay dead. Suddenly, a newcomer burst onto the scene. We were skeptical. A blond Bond? Hmmm.

Casino Royale was a revelation. It was modern. It was hard. Who was this dark troubled James Bond? This character mixed regret with dedication to duty. Queen and Country didn’t necessary mean a lack of feeling. Not only us, but the world had a new favorite Bond.

That included our children. What’s the point of having kids if not to brainwash your tastes onto them. And as they grew to teens, who’d rather sit in their rooms than do anything with their parents, we still have Bond in common. In a parent coup, the whole family went to Skyfall together.

To avoid spoilers I’ll just say the Skyfall had all the Bond ingredients. The huge edge-of-your-seat-chase scenes. The Austin Martin. The fun reminders of previous movies. Iconic characters and a really creepy villain. (This villain was the best of the three Daniel Craig movies.) Exotic locations that have been ‘shaken, not stirred’. Destruction and mayhem galore. But unlike previous decades, this Bond has back story. More light is shed upon his character with each installment.

And speaking of installments: how does the Bond success provide lessons to writers that are looking to create their own series? Stay tuned. That will be the subject of my next post. 

Getting the Call: Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Here is a reminder that success takes patience. Careers in writing do not blossom overnight. Thank you Kathryn for sharing your story and showing us that there are many levels of triumphs. The ones we yearn for in the beginning of our journey may not be the ultimate accomplishments we believe them to be. There is much more to come because it truly is an expedition into the unknown.

I started writing The Heart of the Rose after my only child, James, was born in late 1971. I was staying home with him, not working, and was bored out of my skin. I read a horrible historical romance one day and thought I can do better than that!

So I got out my old typewriter with the keys that stuck, my bottles of White-Out, carbon paper for copies, and started clicking away. I tentatively called the book King’s Witch because it was about a 15^th century healer loved by Edward the Fourth who was falsely believed to be a witch. At the library (no computers or Internet back then) I did tedious research into that time in English history: the War of the Roses, the poverty and civil strife between the Red (Lancasters) and White Rose (Yorks); the Earl of Warwick and Edward the King.  His brother Richard the Third.  A real saga. Well, all that was big back then. I was way out of my league. Didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I just wrote. Reading that original version (a paperback released from Leisure books in 1985) now I have to laugh. It was pretty bad. All that archaic language I used (all the rage back in the 80’s). Yikes! But people, mainly women, loved it.

And so my writing career began. That was 40 years ago. It took me 12 years to get that first book published as I got sidetracked with a divorce, raising a son, and having to get a real job. Life, as it always seems to do, got in the way. The manuscript was tossed into a drawer and forgotten for a while.

Then one day years later I found it in my bottom drawer and decided to rewrite it; try to sell it. I bundled up the revised pile of printed copy pages, tucked it into an empty copy paper box and took it to the Post Office. Plastered it with stamps. I sent it everywhere The Writer’s Market of that year said I could. And waited. Months and months and months. In those days it could take up to a year or more to sell a novel, in between revising and rewriting to please any editor that would make a suggestion or comment. Snail mail took forever, too, and was expensive.

In the meantime, I wrote another book. Kind of a fictionalized look back at my childhood in a large (6 brothers and sisters) poor but loving family in the 1950’s and 60’s. I started sending that one out, as well. Then one day an editor suggested that since my writing had such a spooky feel to it anyway, why didn’t I just turn the book into a horror novel. Like Stephen King was doing. Ordinary people under supernatural circumstances. A book like that would really sell, she said.  Hmmm. Well, it was worth a try, so I added something scary in the woods in the main character’s childhood past that she had to return to and face in her adult life, using some of my childhood as hers. I retitled it Evil Stalks the Night and started sending it out. That editor was right, it sold quickly.

But right before it was to go to editing, the publisher, Towers Publishing…went bankrupt and was bought out by another publisher! The book was lost somewhere in the stacks of unedited slush in a company undergoing massive changes as the new publisher took over. I had a contract and didn’t know how to break it. Heaven knows, I couldn’t afford a lawyer. My life with a husband and son was one step above poverty at times. Back then I was so naïve. That was 1983 and that take-over publisher was Leisure Books.

As often as has happened to me over my writing career, though, fate seemed to step in and the Tower’s editor that had bought my book, before she left, told one of Leisure’s editors about it and asked her to try to save it. She believed in it that much.

Out of the blue, in 1984, when I had completely given up on the book, Leisure Books sent me a letter offering to buy Evil Stalks the Night! Then, miracle of miracles, my new editor asked if I had any other ideas or books she could look at. I sent her The Heart of the Rose and Leisure Books promptly bought that one in 1985, as well; labeling it, and asking me to sex it up some, as an historical bodice-ripper (remember those…the sexy knockoffs of Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss’s provocative novels?)!  It wasn’t a lot of money for either. A thousand dollar advance and only 4% royalties on the paperbacks. But back in those days the publishers had a bigger distribution and thousands and thousands of the paperbacks were printed, warehoused and sent to bookstores. So 4% of all those books did add up.

So my career began. I sold ten more novels and various short stories over the next 25 years –as I was working full time and living my life. Some did well (my Zebra and Leisure paperbacks) and some didn’t. Most of them, over the years, eventually went out of print.

And twenty-seven years later, when Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13^th and 14^th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks, including The Heart of the Rose – and I said a resounding yes!

Of course, I had to totally rewrite The Heart of the Rose for the resurrected edition because my writing when I was twenty-one was immature, unpolished and had been done on an electric typewriter, with lots of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. Then also in those days, editors told an author what to change and the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it.  I also totally rewrote the book because, as was the style in the 1980’s, the prose was written in that old-fashioned prose using thees and ayes. The dialect of 15^th century England. There were sex scenes I had to tone down. It was awful. So I modernized the language, cut all the redundant adjectives and adverbs and helped the characters to grow up a little (they were so dramatic).  The Heart of the Rose-Revised Author’s Edition published by Eternal Press in November 2010 (http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615722327 ), hopefully, then is a lot better book than it ever was in 1985. It should be…I have had thirty-nine more years of life and experiences to help make it a better book.  Author Kathryn Meyer Griffith

***

All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s Books available at Amazon.com here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Kathryn+Meyer+Griffith

                                                                                                                                                

About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had sixteen (nine romantic horror, two romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel, one historical romance and two murder mysteries) previous novels, two novellas and twelve short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.                                                                                                   

Websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer)

http://www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.jacketflap.com/K.griffith

http://www.shoutlife.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith 

http://www.romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

Family of NaNoWriMo

Many of my friends and fellow writers are now buried in NaNoWriMo, trying to produce as many words as possible in one tremendous month of effort. I salute their dedication and commitment from afar. Constructing a novel in a month takes a special batch of skills. You either are very good at outlining your plot ahead of time, you possess boundless imagination that never fails, or you simple write fast and never run out of words. It seems like a combination of those talents are necessary to a successful NaNoWriMo. I can do none of those things, but I can and will cheer for you from the sidelines.

I definitely enjoy seeing all the people shouting out on twitter, their blogs, and on AQC. As we are reminded in so many places, it’s not about the destination. It’s the journey. Where writing is usually a solitary endeavor, NaNoWriMo not only encourages a flow of words and ideas, it creates a joint sharing of the pain and triumph. It can surround writers in a sense of family. Their work becomes bigger than a single person as they encourage others. I may not get to 50,000 words in a month or even 5,000, but I’ll be joining you in shouting out my smaller accomplishments.

Good luck, writers.

The In Between Drift

Now that I have finished writing and editing Dodge the Sun, I’ve been thrown into a strange twilight zone of in between writing. It’s a dark land full of indecision and hesitation. The fact that I concentrate on a single project at a time instead of working on multiple ones makes the move harder. After spending an entire year inside one manuscript, living in the characters’ heads, it’s difficult to jump forward. There’s a strange reluctance to put aside these very real people you’ve created, and put all your energies into something new. I tend to drift and do no writing. It’s almost like a grieving process.

So I’ve given myself two months, and it’s time to get back into the swing. I miss creating. But do I go back and work on an unfinished project? Maybe try a short story to stop the drift until I’m ready for a full novel. Keep drifting by continuing to concentrate on querying while entering agent contests and not write at all? Start a sequel? Jumping into something large and totally new? It’s not an easy decision, especially with upcoming edits to Kindar which will interrupt anything I start.

I guess I’m trying to say that there will probably be a blog slowdown as I find my way. For now I’m trying to write a prequel short story to Kindar. It’s not really flowing yet. My word counts wouldn’t make me a NaNoWrite star. It is progress. A hundred words at a time is good enough for a start.

Does anyone else go through the twilight zone in between projects? How do you handle it and how long does it last for you?  

  

Location, Location, Location

My family was recently in Chicago to take our daughter to visit an art college located right in the heart of downtown. We were surrounded by somber-colored sky touching buildings set against the brilliant blue color contrast of Lake Michigan. The nearby parks and sidewalks boasted hordes of strangers, many of them tourists just like us. And always the sounds of ceaseless traffic. So much to see, so much variety.

We didn't get to see much of the city because of our business at the college kept us inside, but we did make a stop at Millenium Park to visit a Chicago landmark. The parking garage where we left our car was actually directly below Cloud Gate or as it is better known, 'The Bean'. This shiny bean-shaped sculpture reflects the skyline of the city. It's been in several movies and is really a beautiful sight. 

I did get in a little writing research on our day of fun and adventure. Our path took us to within blocks of where I set the ending of my latest novel, Dodge the Sun. Not far from 'The Bean' (just to the right in the picture below) is a spot where the skyscrapers almost meet Lake Michigan. It's a place with the narrowest gap between buildings and water, and that's where I set my finale. Of course when I wrote those chapters I was miles away in Indiana. I got a chance to see whether my memory from dozens of daytrips to see Cubs games or visit the Field Museum and Aquarium matched the actual scenery. I think I came pretty close. A successful trip all around.

Getting the Call: Danielle Ackley-McPhail

This week we have a special Getting the Call from someone who knows all sides of the publishing business. Danielle Ackley-McPhail is an accomplished writer who also happens to be the project editor and promotions manager for Dark Quest Books. (I do believe I had a partial with them before my novel got placed elsewhere. That makes us family, just like a visit to Olive Garden.) Thanks so much for sharing your story and your colorful cover art, Danielle. Perhaps if readers have some questions for you in the comments, you might shed some light from the publisher's perspective. Tips for promoting new books being high in my own thoughts.

Getting Making the Call: Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Sheer. Dumb. Luck.

Yes, those three words say it all. Way back in my misspent youth I volunteered on the AOL message board The Amazing Instant Novelist. The board was as a support group for aspiring writers. They held two weekly contests and had many discussion boards where people could post their writing for feedback from the site’s dedicated staff, as well as fellow posters.

Eventually I showed up—and commented—often enough I was asked to become official. NOVL tGift was born. This meant that in addition to doing what I was already doing, I also “hung” out with the staff in private chat rooms. The primary topic, of course, was writing.

I can’t tell you how many ideas came from my participating in this site.

No, really…if you asked, I couldn’t do it.

What I can tell you is that without those private chat sessions my first novel never would have been published. Yesterday’s Dreams started out as a story. Just a basic idea of a pawnshop specializing in items linked to a person’s soul. One story turned into a couple of chapters, and so on. The feedback was great, the story fun, but I didn’t realize for a long time that I was writing a novel. Initially I was posting the chapters on line as I wrote them with hokey little animated gifs and everything. See, at that time AOL was just starting to offer free home pages to their members. I wasn’t very good at it, but I had fun playing with their set-up software.

Let me tell you, though…You can put as many links as you want to email the author, but it virtually never happens. I think for the three years it was posted I received maybe five emails commenting on the story and site. But you know…that was all it took.

See, one of those emails…It was someone claiming to be an agent. They wanted to see the story when I was done because “they knew a couple of publishers who might be interested”.

All of a sudden I was writing a novel.

Now you might think that would be motivation for me to get it done.

You would be wrong. Oh, not because I didn’t want to. No. Because I had no friggin’ idea what I was doing! It took me another two years to finish that novel. When I was done it was, as they say, a hot mess. But you know, that guy was still around, so I figured what the heck. I emailed him and very quickly got a response. “Great! Email it to me and I’ll take a look.”

Oh! No no no! (That was what went through my head.) See, email submissions were less formal and less common then. I had all kinds of nightmares of having finished this thing and having it stolen out from under me. Of course, I wasn’t going to turn away from the opportunity either. The first thing I did was print out a copyright registration form and fill it out, print the manuscript, and package it up for UPS. Then I went hunting. I checked out the guy’s member profile and found a link to a publishing website. I visited that site and did some digging. Eventually I found a phone number and I called.

Most of the time you hear dead silence it’s a bad thing, right?

Nope. Not this time the receptionist answers and I ask if the person emailing me is connected with the company. She goes quiet for all of about a minute and then says. “He’s the publisher.”

I immediately hit send (and mailed my package) and then proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually I received a very apologetic email and an offer.

Now before you start to hate me for having it too easy this was the smallest of small presses and about all they officially did for me was get my foot in the door and give me a rather shaky credibility that I had to build up considerably over the years. Unofficially? They showed me the possibilities…and I ran with them.

You want to know how? Please do visit my official website, www.sidhenadaire.com, and take a look at what I have accomplished over the last ten years based on recognizing possibilities.

Bio: Award-winning author Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for over seventeen years. Her works include the urban fantasies, Yesterday's Dreams, Tomorrow's Memories, Today’s Promise, and The Halfling’s Court, and the writers guide, The Literary Handyman. She edits the Bad-Ass Faeries anthologies and Dragon’s Lure, and has contributed to numerous other anthologies.

 

She is a member of the New Jersey Authors Network and Broad Universe, a writer’s organization focusing on promoting the works of women authors in the speculative genres. She can be found on LiveJournal (damcphail, lit_handyman), Facebook (Danielle Ackley-McPhail), and Twitter (DMcPhail). Learn more at www.sidhenadaire.com.

Ding, Round Two: Hook, Line and Sinker

Today begins the second round of the Hook, Line and Sinker contest run by the super kind and energetic Summer Heacock, Kat Ellis, and Dee 'Writes for Apples'. Our Hooks and Lines were judged on whether they might appeal to the needs of the invited agents. Thirty YA entrants were chosen from seventy-five. Also twenty middle grade and twenty adult made the second round.

The exact time the winners of round one would be announced had been leaked on twitter, but I had no way of getting to a computer. As it's Tuesday, and Tuesday is our no special (gym, art, library, music) day, there was no way to escape twenty needy six-year-olds to look over the listings. 1:30 came and went, and I couldn't stop wondering. Curiosity is a terrible thing. It eats at your nerve. I sweated it out and was astonished to see my name. I'm very grateful and relieved to have made the second round. There were many fabulous entries submitted by talented writers. I'm glad to be among them.

Now we get to include our first 250 words from our manuscripts as our Sinkers. Then we'll be re-scrutinized and further cut down to groups of ten per genre with ten extra favorites. That makes a total of forty entries which go into the third round. Then the wonderful and intelligent agents will ... But that's wishful thinking and getting ahead of myself. First things first. The Sinker.

I wanted the Sinker to end with a hook. Something to make readers want to see what happens next. I picked the best hook sentence in my opening page, then pruned a bit until the block of paragraphs fit into the required 250 word limit. My finished rough draft landed on exactly 250. That seems like a good omen.

I call it a rough draft because I'm hoping for suggestions and ways to improve. Please shout out if you there are any typos. If you see a way to tighten the flow, let me know. (Ha, a rhyme ) Anyway, here it is, my Sinker:

Edit: Some changes made.

The magic anklet jangled against Little Bit’s leg with every step, an irritation she couldn’t scratch at the moment. The over-full laundry basket occupied one hand while her other gripped the railing. The wicker handle balanced against her right hip, digging in with each stride. Creaks and shifts came from the wooden stair which wound in a spiral around the outside of the tower. She shuddered and kept her eyes fixed on the treads, careful not to look at the twenty foot drop through the gaps. Why did the tower have to be so high?

At last, she reached the square landing of oak planks. Hidden from prying eyes by the tower, she set down the basket and knelt to hike up her cotton skirt, embroidered with clover and their purple blossoms. A wink of gold glittered in the morning sun. The chain of delicate gold links clasped around her ankle, mocking her with its fragile appearance. Little Bit reached for the anklet, then chewed her lip, but like a sore tooth, she couldn’t resist probing.

She squared her shoulders before taking the chain in either hand, feeling its strange heat burn her fingers. A sting as though a thousand nettles increased with each pulse of her heart.

“Come off!”

The tiny links refused to part.

With a gasp, she released it. Hateful thing. New burns crisscrossed over faded scars to cover her hands. She put sore fingers in her mouth. His magic would never let her go.

Pitch Woes

So I've been trying to come up with a snappy pitch for a contest this weekend. (See the official Hook, Line, and Sinker Contest announcement here.) It's been a struggle to put it mildly. I started by taking bits and pieces from my query letter, half a sentence here, a phrase here. Ugh, that got me nowhere. Why was I torturing myself? I had the query letter, done, finished, complete. It had produced results. Why did I need a pitch? I wasn't planning to use one. I'm not one to attend writer's conferences. Too shy. Can't take time out to travel. They are kinda rare in Indiana. So why?

Well, it's good practice for one. When those well-intentioned people ask 'what's your book about' a pitch would give me something to spew out. Plus, truthfully, it was a challenge. I wanted to see if I come up with something. I do love a challenge.

Back to the drawing board. A change of direction and help from a beta reader (You know who you are, thanks tons!), several more revisions, and I might have something I can live with. Still, I'll take any suggestions I can get. If you dear readers have better thoughts, please put them in the comments. Whether I make the contest window or press send a second too late, now I'll have a pitch.

Hook for my YA fantasy, Dodge the Sun: They didn’t have nursery-rhyming cannibals or super-sized possums on her farm—only cows. A deteriorating shield forces Little Bit to evade lethal radiation from the sun while she searches for New Chicago. Oh, and the mage back home forgot to mention she isn’t a hero, or even human—she started life as a rabbit.

The contest also requires one super stand alone sentence. So far I'm torn between two possibilities, which I  must decide soon because the contest is tomorrow morning.

Line 1: Better to be a corpse brought back to life, a Frankenstein monster of bits and pieces.

                 

Line 2: If Markus didn’t comprehend whether she was woman or beast, soulless or filled with grace, no one could.

Edit: I made it into the contest and I used Line 1 with the correction of Frankenstein's monster. (Thanks, Lori!) The results of the first round judging will be Tuesday afternoon--October 16th.

Getting the Call: Lynda Williams

Today I'm happy to bring you an author who actually wrote a short about the despair she felt trying to break into publishing. Now she has not one, but seven books published. That's quite an accomplishment. Here's proof that it can be done and there is a market for a well-developed fantasy series. Welcome to Lynda Williams.

Michelle, I would love to share my "Getting the Call" story with you and your readers and to include the link to my story Going Back Out which I wrote when I was feeling despair about ever being a real writer because I couldn't see how I'd ever compete with the "big guys". The writer-analogy is about Gadar, a Reetion pilot who is depressed to discover Sevolites really do fly harder than she can. But, as Ann reminds her, they don't fly for her reasons and the people she flies for need HER. When you focus on what you are doing, and why, then fears about how loudly you can do it fade away.

Easier said than done, of course, but I have often re-read Going Back Out myself, particularly when I felt angry about some very loud success that jarred me emotionally for the sake of the implied messages about immoral behavior being okay so long as you win. My own "Getting the Call" message has to be when Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy bought Throne Price. I had sold a couple short stories before but the Okal Rel Saga was my big dream. Alison Sinclair and I sold Throne Price to Edge late in the last millenium. At the time, the "buzz" in the writerly world was all in favor of "shorter, meaner, harder", or at least so it seemed to me. A ten novel saga about the struggle to find the common sense to stop destroying the world, and brutalizing people, in the fight between cultures for dominance, felt like a dark horse. But I had lived and labored in the Okal Rel Universe for thirty years. I wasn't interested in doing "something else". 


Now, a mere 30,000 words shy of completing a ten-novel project, with Part 8: Gathering Storm due soon, I am glad I had the courage to keep flying for my own reasons. And this is what really makes it worthwhile -- so are the readers who love my characters.

Lynda Williams, author http://www.okalrel.org/books.html http://okalrel.org/blog/ (Reality Skimming with Michelle Carraway, Tegan Lott,Richard Bartrop)http://clarionfoundation.wordpress.com/tag/lynda-williams/ (with David Lott)Opus 6 (with editor Paula Johanson)

Cover Reveal for Grave Intentions

Who wants some eye candy, ladies? I'm so happy to share with you the cover of my friend Lori Sjoberg's debut romance novel, Grave Intentions. This one is on my wish list for Christmas. Aside from holding the first royalty check or the first hard copy in your very own hands, I'd imagine getting the cover art has to be the biggest thrill of a writer's life. This is when it actually starts to feel real, when the truth sinks in--I'm about to be published. So here it is with Lori's words of what the experience was like:

A lot of thought goes into cover art. Not only must it appeal to potential buyers perusing bookstore shelves, but it also has to catch the eye of anyone scrolling through books via online merchants. In a matter of seconds, the cover needs to convey genre and mood in a way that makes the reader think "MUST. BUY. NOW!" 

In general, authors have little say about what goes onto their covers. That was the case with Grave Intentions, and I was a little anxious when I finally received the artwork from my publisher . Would I be saddled with a butt ugly cover? Would I be embarrassed if my friends or family found it on Amazon? (As you can see, I'm a glass half empty kind of gal.) I clicked the jpeg with trepidation…and was pleasantly surprised!

All of the necessary elements were present: the scythe to indicate the book is about reapers, the bare-chested man candy to show the novel is a romance, the dark blue background to accentuate said bare-chested man candy, and the vivid text to highlight the title and author. It catches the eye in both full and thumbnail sizes. And most important of all, my name was on the cover of a book! The thrill of seeing that for the first time was indescribable.

Grave Intentions:

He’s handsome, reliable, and punctual—the perfect gentleman when you want him to be. But this dream man is Death’s best agent—and now he’s got more than his soul to lose…

One act of mercy before dying was all it took to turn soldier David Anderson into a reaper—an immortal who guides souls-of-untimely-death into the afterlife. But the closer he gets to atoning for his mortal sin and finally escaping merciless Fate, the more he feels his own humanity slipping away for good. Until he encounters Sarah Griffith. This skeptical scientist can’t be influenced by his powers—even though she has an unsuspected talent for sensing the dead. Her honesty and irreverent sense of humor reignite his reason for living—and a passion he can’t afford to feel. Now Fate has summoned David to make a devastating last harvest. And he’ll break every hellishly-strict netherworld rule to save Sarah…and gamble on a choice even an immortal can’t win.

The youngest of three girls, Lori never had control of the remote. (Not that she’s bitter about that. Really. Okay, maybe a little, but it’s not like she’s scarred for life or anything.) That meant a steady diet of science fiction and fantasy. Star Trek, Star Wars, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits – you name it, she watched it. It fed her imagination, and that came in handy when the hormones kicked in and she needed a creative excuse for being out past curfew.
After completing her first manuscript, Lori joined the Romance Writers of America and Central Florida Romance Writers. Now she exercises the analytical half of her brain at her day job, and the creative half writing paranormal romance. When she’s not doing either one of those, she’s usually spending time with her husband and children of the four-legged variety.

Her contact info is: www.lorisjoberg.com

www.facebook.com/AuthorLoriSjoberg

@Lori_Sjoberg (Twitter). 

Getting the Call: Linda Hays-Gibbs

Great news! I'm able to bring back these inspirational stories. I want to send out thanks to Terri Bruce for using her connections to bring new authors forward to share how they got published or landed agents. Allow me to introduce Linda Hays-Gibbs. I just met her and already I admire her determination.

When I saw the email that offered writers to write about how they got the call, I thought this would be very interesting.  I think I always had the call.  I made up poems and songs when I was three and wrote stories as young as six.  No one seemed interested in them as my mom was very sick and died when I was young.  My father didn’t believe a girl needed education.  I did have some teachers that tried to encourage me a little.  I was told to bring my imagination under control. I always made good grades so I did what I was told.

 

I was told by my Latin instructor that my translations were so interesting, I made his teaching career and made his class the most exciting he ever had.  All I know was I tried to translate but my imagination got in the way every time.

I started writing poetry in a journal for my daughter some years back because I was throwing away my poems.  Bea said, “Mom make a book of them and send them off to be published.”  “I said, no one will publish this mess.”  I did send them off and they were published.  I was amazed.  “Sailing in My Sunshine” was my first published book.

You see, I went back to school and got a degree in Anthropology.  Not what I wanted but what the school pigeon holed me into.  It was a mistake but I got a BA.  I wanted creative writing.  I did have a minor in it but all my professors, again said, I was too imaginative.  I didn’t have any order about me. In other words, I had no talent.

I was an older student.  I was Disabled and a widow.  I did not get any scholarships and finally felt like I was not wanted.  I went for my Master’s in Secondary Education after being turned down three times by the Creative Writing department.  It was simply I had no talent. I did get 28 credits in Graduate work as a teacher and taught for a while at local schools but it was not what I wanted.  I became too ill and could not walk to their classes and quit.

A light finally went off in my little brain.  I could write if I wanted to. There was no one to stop me.

Suddenly, I said, to heck with this.  I want to write so I will write.  I don’t need their permission.  I started writing novels. “He Would Make Her Pay” was my first novel and it was very painful.  It had my life intertwined in it and the 1960s were painful. I wrote “Escape into Magic” to escape.  I did not want any real life.  I wanted dreams.  Next I decided I wanted to write about Regency England.  It was all I read.  I love Romances in Regency times.  I wrote “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls” it was so much more fun but the publisher I had was not helping me.  I looked for another publisher.  I sent off my work and still had little confidence.  All the battering I had over my writing still hurt.  Eternal Press took “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls.”  Then I waited for reviews.  I chewed my nails and pulled my hair. 

The first review I got was not that great but wasn’t really bad.  I thought well there you are.  You aren’t that good but then I got seven more reviews and they were all great.  The first great review by Marilyn Rondeau made me cry. I was so happy.  I ate up each word and knew that I should never let anyone keep me from my dream.  Her review made my call real.  It became real to me.  I had two publishers and four books published but it wasn’t real until that review.  It made an old woman’s heart sing.  I now have another book coming out November 1, 2012. It is called “Angel in My Heart, Devil in My Soul.” 

I am writing the third in my angel series, “Morovani, The Guardian Angel”. I also have a novel almost finished called, “The Crazies”. It’s a little bit of a clean satire on “Fifty Shades of Gray.” I am afraid I have stories coming out of my ears but it’s still a scary time because these stories need to sell so I am told.  I only know that when Marilyn said my stories were worth something I believed her.  I came out to play, and I have been earnestly playing ever since.  I love it.  Writing is so much fun but you do need verification.  Marilyn was my verification.  I want to thank her again for my review that made my call official.

***

Linda D. Hays-Gibbs was born in Mississippi and lives in Alabama. She went back to school late in life, graduated with a BA in Anthropology from University of Alabama.  Reading is like nectar from the Gods to Linda and writing is just plain fun. Her great, great grandfather is Daniel Boone and she found that out by researching her family herself.

       Her fourth book, “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls” really meant more to her because she worked on it for such a long time and because Linda was determined to make her writing much better than it had been.  Kim Richards and Sally Odgers from Eternal Press are inspirations for her. Barbara Metzger, one of her favorite authors gave Linda encouragement too.  Linda loves writing and hopes to continue to do it for the rest of her life along with anything she can do for her God and children.

www.lindahaysgibbs.blogpot.com

www.lindahaysgibbs.pbworks.com

www.facebook.com/rosedru

www.twitter.com/Rosedru63

Blurb for Angel in My Heart, Devil in My Soul: He was a killer, a merciless, emotionless, machine for death.  She was and angel of love and hope and the woman of his dreams.  She could not be around evil, it would kill her and he was all that was evil and foul.  How could she dream of a man like that?

     When he held her in his arms and kissed her she felt her heart stutter and start and moaned when her dream dissipated into the night air.  He caressed boneless pillows of angel dust and silently cried when he awoke.  How could he live without her?

My #AskAgent Answers

I happened to be viewing my twitter account this morning when agent Michelle Witte (who I queried the day before) asked for questions at #askagent. Being in the middle of sending out queries myself, I had plenty of questions. At various times during the hour I hung around, there were up to six agents involved, including Janet Reid. I fired off a few questions and received some varied answers. Here are my questions and a few from others in the session that I found interesting:

How can you tell if an agent who reps YA prefers fantasy or contemporary? One agent responded. He suggested you check their website or any interviews they had done, and what they’ve sold lately. Now, I always check an agent’s website (if they have one) before I send a query letter, but I don’t always find what form of YA they favor even on the website. Sometimes I have to send the letter and hope they are interested in fantasy.

If the query letter doesn’t spark your interest, do you look at the pages or hit delete? I got varied answers on this one. Janet Reid said she doesn’t look at pages if she doesn’t connect with the query. Two other agents, including Michelle Witte, said they still check out the pages as writing a novel is very different from writing a query letter.

Do you like some short chitchat somewhere in a query letter or would you prefer we stick to the point?  Again I got varied answers. Both agents from FinePrint Literary said get straight to the point of telling what your book is about. The other agents said they don’t mind chitchat as long as it is short. I usually stick straight to the point in my query letters.

Does being published with a small press help or hurt your query chances? One agent answered and said she likes to know this information. That wasn’t a direct answer to whether it helps or not. Another poster asked the same basic question. Does a small press in your bio help you get out of the slush pile? Several agents answered this time and said yes.

Another question that I didn’t ask, but found helpful was whether to double space your pages included inside a query letter? Janet Reid gave this a big yes. Other agents said you should double space, but that going through email often erases the formatting or plays tricks.

Someone asked about low word count in YA Contemporary. The agents said anything under 40,000 was a novella. When asked if editors are looking for novellas or whether agents will rep them, one agent replied she’d had an editor ask for novellas recently. Most others didn’t represent them unless it was an established client.

Someone asked about advances. Whether you have to pay them back if you don’t earn out?  The answer was no. There was a brief discussion about the average size of an advance, but I didn’t pay close attention. I think it was somewhere between $500 and $10,000.

It was a helpful session, and it certainly makes me respect the agents that they would take the time to help writers on their Saturday morning. Joining Twitter has definitely paid off.