Pearls of Fire, Dreams of Steel – A Journey into Print

I am what’s called a slow adopter of technology. I’m not the draggiest of the late-comers, but I am a far cry from the cadre of those eager to try out all things shiny and new, especially electronic gadgets. I got dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of cellphones when my tempestuous younger daughter started community college and for various reasons it was important that she be able to contact me in a speedy fashion (and vice versa, although less crucial). We tromped down to the physical store and came away with a pair of stupidphones, sequential phone numbers, and a family service plan. Needless to say, one of the first things she did when she was on her own was to get a smartphone with a new number. My stupidphone lasted almost another decade, when I broke down and joined the app-generation. (I am gradually learning new things to do with my device, although I keep leaving it at home or forgetting to charge it, which tells you how important it is to me on most days.)

My relationship with e-readers followed somewhat the same path. I kept having the thought that one would be handy but there wasn’t money in the budget for it (and it wasn’t high enough priority to shove other things lower on the list – I had plenty of paper books to read, after all). That same daughter, now in college, passed on her very-early-version Kindle to me, and I loaded up a bunch of BVC editions and jumped in. I took that Kindle with me while taking care of a friend in the final months of her life. Being able to carry around an entire library in an object the size of a thin paperback opened up a new world for me. Now I tuck my much newer e-reader into my purse whenever I expect to have to wait, and I get a lot of reading done that way.

In these two examples, I was the consumer, the recipient of technology or technological products. As a professional writer, though, I have learned how to actively use this technology. I came of age as a writer long before electronic publishing appeared on the horizon. My first sales, in the early 1980s, were to print markets, mostly mass market books, anthologies, and magazines. Vanity presses existed but were not to be considered by any serious author (money flows to the author, remember?) Fans produced various ‘zines, using mimeograph or ditto machines. Eventually publishing shifted from print-only to the digital era. For a time, neither publishers nor agents considered how to treat royalties for sales of electronic copies, but eventually terms that were more fair to authors became the standard. I watched and tried to stay informed. Then I found myself in the same state as many authors: I had a growing list of out-of-print novels and an even longer list of stories in out-of-print anthologies and magazines.

Enter Book View Café.

Original Vision vs. Compromising With the Market

A recent discussion with a fairly new, immensely talented writer highlighted for me a dilemma that most of us will face sooner or later. What do we do when what we really want to write, when the stories that catch on fire in our imagination, do not fit into a neat marketing niche? All of us fall somewhere along the spectrum from safely, predictably commercial to unclassifiable, idiosyncratic, and therefore of no interest to traditional publishers. One highly successful genre writer confided in me that her fantastic sales numbers were the luck of the draw. “I happen to write stories that are commercial and draw a large audience,” she said. “It's my natural authorial voice.”

I also know writers who are so original in their vision and so delightfully quirky in their execution that editors throw up their hands in frustration because although they adore this author’s work and see the author as the next great literary voice, they cannot envision a way to market it. In the best of times, such authors found a home in the midlist, and that still happens, although less frequently now than when editors had more power (and the freedom to discover and nurture new authors).

If you believe in your work, how can you be sure but this is not infatuation with your own words but that your work truly is of high quality? Every writer I know goes through spasms of self-doubt. Writing requires a bizarre combination of megalomania and crushing self-doubt. We need the confidence to follow our flights of fancy, and at the same time, we need to regard our creations with a critical eye. Trusted readers, including workshops like Clarion and Clarion West, critique groups, fearless peers, and freelance editors can give us invaluable feedback on whether our work really is as good as we think it might be. Of course, they can be wrong. It may be that what we are trying to do falls so far outside conventional parameters that only we can judge its value. It may also be that we see on the page not what is actually there but what we imagined and hoped.

ToC: The Usual Path to Publication

My essay, "The Magic Phone Call," is among many delicious, terrifying, inspiring stories of how authors managed to "break in" to publication (and no, there is no "usual" way). These have been edited by Shannon Page, and the resulting anthology will be released in early June (and is available for pre-order here.)

I'm in such great company!

Cherie Priest: How I Skidded Sideways Into Publishing

Alma Alexander: Don’t Try This at Home, or, This Can Only Work Once

Mark Teppo: Mapping Uncharted Terrain, or, How I Got Here (Though I’m Not Sure Where “Here” Is)

Laura Anne Gilman: Two Paths

Jim C. Hines: The Goblin’s Curse

Katharine Kerr: That Long Winding Road

David D. Levine: How to Sell a Novel in Only Fifteen Years

K. Tempest Bradford: It All Happened Because of Netscape Navigator

Ada Palmer: The Key to the Kingdom, or, How I Sold Too Like the Lightning

Ken Scholes: My Path to Publication, and My Other Path to Publication

Nancy Jane Moore: The Long Winding Road

Jennifer Brozek: No One True Way

Rhiannon Held: Timeline Key Points

Jo Walton: Not Deluded: How I Sold My First Novel

Chris Dolley: First Sale

Brenda Cooper: With a Little Help from a Poet

Chaz Brenchley: My First Book

Tina Connolly: Going from Short Stories to Novels in 60,000 Easy Words

Randy Henderson: My Finn Fancy Adventure in Publishing

Elizabeth Bourne: The Gypsy Curse

John A. Pitts: My Path to Publication

Mindy Klasky: April Is the Cruelest Month

Amy Sterling Casil: I Was Rejected, Then Sold the Same Story to the Same Editor!

Deborah J. Ross: The Magic Phone Call

Phyllis Irene Radford: My Road to Publishing, or, Tiptoeing Through Mine Fields

Sara Stamey: How I Became a “Real Author”

Trisha Leigh/Lyla Payne: Making It

[archives] Blackberry Writing

I'll be head down into revisions of Thunderlord for a while, but on my morning walk, I noticed the blackberries are ripening. So here's a post from  a few years ago, Enjoy!

It's blackberry season, and as is my custom at this time, I went out this morning to pick from the brambles along our little country road. (We have our own patch, but the berries ripen later because it's in a shadier place.) I try to do this early, when it's cool and I'm not having to squint into the sun for the higher branches. As I picked, I thought about the story I'm working on (and currently stalled on 2 scenes-that-need-more), and also writing in general.

Blackberries are tricksy things. They can look ripe from where I stand, but turn out to be all red at the base. Sometimes I can tell the moment I touch the berry -- it's too firm and too tightly attached to the stem. I have to be ready to give up on what looked like a great prospect and move on. When I'm in the flow of picking, it seems I don't even have to think about this. Isn't this like a story that seems promising but doesn't yet have the necessary depth? Occasionally -- well, more than occasionally -- my mind gets set on "this berry gets picked" and I force the issue. I'll glare at the red parts and either pop the berry into my mouth ("for private reading only"). Berries that are almost-ready go well in oatmeal. I freeze quarts and quarts of them for winter breakfasts. They're too sour on their own, but they blend well, adding pleasantly tart notes. That's not unlike taking several different story idea, none of which can stand on their own, and setting them at cross-purposes to make a much more interesting tale.

Various Thoughtful Posts for July

Meet the Wendiceratops, named for discoverer Wendy Sloboda:

Unlike any other dinosaur, this creature’s skull is ringed with bone protrusions that curl inward toward the animal’s nose like gnarly crochet hooks. “They remind me a little bit of a weird sea anemone or something,” said Ryan, the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. 

The dinosaur also has a medium-sized horn over its nose. The researchers suspect that it had horns over its eyes as well because its relatives, like Triceratops, boast prominent eye horns.  The researchers hypothesize that the dinosaur’s lavish array of horns may have helped it attract mates, “just like modern birds, which have all these ornate plumages and long feathers and short feathers,” Ryan said. Another possibility is that the horns allowed males to demonstrate their strength and fitness to the opposite sex, just as big-horned sheep butt heads to determine who will get to breed with the female.

BookEnds on "The Death of the Midlist." Ever since I can remember, writers have been lamenting 'the death of the midlist.' Midlist is just that, neither best sellers nor abysmal failures. If that sounds blah, remember that this is where some of the finest writing falls. Writing that isn't mass appeal mind candy but is solid enough to generate a modest but loyal following. 

Here's the truth as I see it where the midlist is concerned. Authors who languish in the midlist are not going to be given contract after contract just to remain midlist authors. That's not what the midlist is about (at least not these days). The midlist is a place for publishers to grow authors from. Its where great books go to grow. A publisher will always have a midlist of some sort because a publisher will always be buying new books from new authors and somewhere along the way someone is going to have numbers that aren't top selling numbers, but aren't at the bottom either. When those authors come along the publisher is going to look at those numbers to see which direction they are going and what can be done to boost that author, those books and those numbers into the top selling range.
When rumors abound that a publisher is cutting the midlist it isn't mean that a publisher is taking out one kind of book over another, it means the publisher is making room for more. Have I ever told you that I'm an eternal optimist?

From Astronomy Picture of the Day, gorgeous clouds in Rho Ophiuchi

Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark. Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center of the featured image.

How to Succeed as a Writer in 2015

As the year begins, I — like many, many writers — contemplate what I can do to further my career.

This applies whether we are traditionally published or self-published, or hybrids, partaking of both worlds. Publishers aren’t doing much in the way of promotion except for their biggest sellers, which leaves out most of us. More and more, traditionally published authors must do the same sorts of publicity as those who are going it alone. We are the ones to set up bookstore signings, place ads, plan blog hops, execute campaigns on social media, offer book giveaways, etc.

Success all boils down to having a product to sell, and in this case it’s the best books we can write. Tell a whopping good story in clear, accessible prose. But that’s not sufficient in itself. Many, many wonderful books fail to garner a readership (and many talented writers find themselves without a publisher because their sales are lousy). This is so unfair, I could weep.

The challenge is connecting those “best books” with readers who will adore them. We can’t count on readers wandering into a cozy local independent bookstore, where they will see our latest proudly displayed on the “New And Recommended” shelf. The internet is flooded with announcements and exhortations to Buy My Book! that readers have become deaf. Self-pimpage becomes not only monotonous but a turn-off. They make many potential buyers (like me) disinclined (to put it mildly) to even take a look at those books.

So if writing a fabulous story isn’t enough and relentlessly publicizing it on every social medium yet devised turns readers off, what else can we do? To answer this, I took a look at what factors do contribute to a writer’s success.

All Sorts of Great News

... some about my work, others just plain delicious. This week's round-up:

The latest Sword and Sorceress, just released, includes my story, "Pearl of Tears." It's a companion piece or reflection of "Pearl of Fire" from S & S XXII. The narrator, and the consequences of her actions, wouldn't leave me alone. The anthology is available in ebook and print editions from the usual places.

From Book View Cafe, a delicious and awesomely wonderful anthology of "author's favorite" stories (edited by me and Pati Nagle). "From the fantasy and science fiction of our roots to steampunk, romance, historical and mainstream; from humor to life’s hardest challenges, across the spectrum from light to dark. Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda N. McIntyre, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and many more." Here's the link to order it or download a sample story. The Table of Contents:

GUEST BLOG: Chaz Brenchley on "Being Ready to Publish"

British writer Chaz Brenchley (who also writes as Ben Macallan and Daniel Fox) offers a perspective on self-censorship and who decides when an aspiring author is "ready."




We were talking to a wannabe writer and proffering wise words and good advices, as one does; and she used a phrase that only underscored for me how much people's approach has changed. A line I use a lot on panels and so forth is that I'm the last generation for whom writing really was a lonely business; these days it's all beta-readers and critique groups and writing dates in coffee-houses and scallions of advice and encouragement on the internets. Scallions and scallions.

And one of those advices, clearly, is that you have to reach the stage of being "ready to publish". Of course this has always been true, in the sense that you have to learn to write, you have to acquire craft before anyone is going to publish you - but that was not a judgement we ever made for ourselves. We wrote stuff and sent it off, contributed to the great slushpile mountain on which the publishing industry was built, began our precious collection of rejection slips. Other people told us when we were ready to publish, in the form of an acceptance letter and a cheque.

These days, apparently, you tell yourself that you're not ready yet; or your critiquing group tells you, or the internet does it, or... Maybe you subscribe to that notion that you have to write a million words before you're up to standard?

I'm really not sure how I feel about this. Keeping the slushpile down, easing the burden on agents and editors, encouraging people not to submit until they've worked up their craft, surely that has to be a good thing? But, I dunno, engaging early with the professionals also has its advantages. Even building that collection of rejections does no harm. And I'm uncomfortable with the self-censorship inherent in the idea, people not submitting work because in their own judgement or that of their friends they're not yet "ready to publish". I worry that there are people out there diligently writing, counting and trunking their million words. And then expecting to publish, because they're ready now.

I have no structured thoughts on this, just an uncomfortable twitch. Probably because I've spent, lo, these thirty-five years sending stuff out whether I was ready or not, and encouraging others to do so, and... yeah. Things change, and perhaps that is no longer the best advice - but I still stand by it. Make them turn you down, don't do it yourself. Make them all turn you down. And then go round again, because there's always someone new who hasn't seen it yet, and it only takes one person to say yes.


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Chaz Brenchley has been making a living as a writer since he was eighteen.  He's the author of nine thrillers, including Shelter, and two major fantasy series: The Books of Outremer, based on the world of the Crusades, and Selling Water by the River, set in an alternate Ottoman Istanbul. His newest releases are House of Doors and House of Bells.
As Daniel Fox, he has published Dragon in Chains, Jade Man’s Skin and Hidden Cities, a Chinese-influenced fantasy series. As Ben Macallan, he has published the urban fantasy Desdaemona, with the sequel Pandaemonium.

A winner of the British Fantasy Award, he has also published five books for children and more than 500 short stories in various genres. His time as Crimewriter-in-Residence on a sculpture project resulted in the collection Blood Waters. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000, and now lives in California with two squabbling cats and a famous teddy bear.

Gatekeeping in the World of Ebooks

In this day, when social media are saturated with writers touting their self-published novels, it seems that anyone can write a book. Anyone with any talent or ambition, that is. Certainly, anyone willing to plug along and generate 80K or 100K words can do so.

On the other hand, so many of those who want to write never follow through, and of those, many never complete their project. To have finished a novel is an achievement, regardless of its quality or marketability. I think that's worth taking a moment to appreciate. We lose sight of how extraordinary this is, and miss out on the benefit of taking a moment to savor this accomplishment as a cause for celebration and pride in itself. Instead, we turn to publication as a source of validation. Sometimes there are intermediate steps, such as feedback from a workshop or critique group, or the search for an agent. But all too often, the next step is to format the book, slap it up on the internet, and voilà, one instantly becomes a "published author."

The very ease of self-publication removes the gatekeeper function formerly performed by editors and agents. This is not entirely a bad thing. Both have been wrong in the past, and marvelous works -- particularly those that are "too difficult" or "too controversial" or simply do not fit into current marketing niches have had a difficult time finding a publishing home. (Case in point: A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle, which received 26 rejections.)

GUEST BLOG: Catherine Lundoff on “Adventures in Marketing: Promoting My First Novel”

Book promotion: the thing most of us love to hate but have to do. What follows is an overview of what I did before and after my first novel was published in May, 2012.

Back in the misty regions of 2011, my publisher (Lethe Press) and I agreed that my first novel, Silver Moon, would be published in 2012. Armed with a copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s BookLife, I started planning. I knew I was going to need all the marketing help I could get and practice makes perfect and all that.

I started out by trying to define my book. I had to understand what I was selling, apart from “my first novel.” Silver Moon is a novel about a menopausal woman who turns into a werewolf. It is also about developing a community and starting a new life. And my protagonist begins to come out as a bi woman over the course of the novel. It is not, however, primarily a romance nor is it erotica. This description helped me identify possible target audiences for the book: older women, werewolf fans, fans of LGBTQ fantasy, general fantasy readers, etc.

Then I moved on to what I had to work with.

Editors Are Your Friends

There's a tendency among newer writers (and -- let's face it -- all of us, at one time or another) to regard editors as adversaries. First of all, acquiring editors are gate-keepers. They're the ones with the power to say No, the ones we have to get past in order to get our books accepted and paid for. They're the ones we think of bribing with chocolate, or placating and cajoling and offering the sekrit handshake to.

Then, once we've cleared that hurdle, we have to face editorial revisions. It isn't enough that we've toiled and toiled and turned ourselves into knots getting a book accepted -- now they want to us to change stuff! To alter our peerless prose! What if they want us to do something that's wrong, wrong, wrong for the book? Where do they get off telling us what to do, anyway?

Madeleine E. Robins made a wonderful comment on this:

My constant refrain, when I'm talking to would-be, wanna-be, and future writers, is: "editors are your friend. They keep you from going out in public with your slip showing and pieces of spinach caught in your teeth. Yes, there are some editors who are, um, overzealous. But most of them have the best interest of your work at heart, and I doubt there exists an editor anywhere who gets up in the morning saying "How shall I screw up great works of prose today?" 

What is sad is that twice I have been informed by someone in the crowd that editors were just wanna-be writers who were taking out their disappointment on the text before them.

While many editors are also writers, many are not and never want to be. They love editing, they love "midwifing" wonderful books -- they want to fall in love with yours and make it the best it can be. It is such a joy to work with an insightful, skilled author. Truly, such a professional is an author's best friend. 

Choosing Books

SF Signal offers a list of October releases, complete with many shiny covers, here, and asks "Which of These 112 SF/F/H Books Coming Out in October 2011 Do You Want?" (SF = Science Fiction, F = Fantasy, H = Horror)

This gave me a chance not only to look over the field, get a sense of what's new and trendy (in cover art/design as well as theme/subject), but also to observe my own process, to watch what I am attracted to. First off, there was the sheer visual pleasure of many gorgeous covers. Then the pique of interest in seeing new works by authors I love or newer authors whose careers I have been watching. I love celebrating the successes of my friends. Beyond that, a few things stand out for me.

There are genres and topics I simply am not interested in, and no amount of advertising foo-foo, raving reviews, or brilliant cover art is going to change my mind: war porn, zombies, tie-ins to media I haven't seen and which has no appeal for me, series I've given up on/didn't work for me. Then there's a subcategory of books I might pick up if I know the author or someone strongly recommends them, or out of curiosity if I happen so see it in a bookstore (or, more likely, in a dealer's room and I know the dealer); this includes tie-ins for media I have seen (there are a lot of media tie-ins on this list).

Then there's a vast amorphous grouping, about which I feel like an Independent voter. I'm willing to be convinced, so give me a reason to be interested in this book. I'm slightly more likely to take a look if (a) the cover does not have macho men with guns/swords, (b) is from a publisher I consider interesting, such as many of the smaller presses.

Last, but should be first, come the books I know I want to read. I know the author or his/her work, I've heard something about the book, I've loved the series. It strikes me that the personal connection or previous work trumps glitz.This definitely biases me against new and unfamiliar authors. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, the bias rankle my sense of fairness, and I know I'm depriving myself of books I might adore. On the other hand, my book buying budget isn't unlimited, so I do need to pick and choose. Let's face it, if I'm given a choice between a new book by one of my favorite authors and one by someone I know nothing about, human nature will prevail.

Surviving as a Writer (Or Artist...Or Musician)

Isadora Duncan (1878-1927)

There's no dearth of articles on strategies for financial survival. The internet abounds in them, some excellent, but many more that seem to be unfounded blatherings. At a time when publishing is changing faster than news can spread, a person can say just about anything and be right part of the time. This isn't one of those. This is about surviving psychologically.

The two sorts of survival are connected. Struggling financially, being unable to support yourself with your writing (insert as appropriate: art, dance, music, etc.) is frustrating and discouraging. I think it's even more so when reaching that readership, that group of people who love your work and for whom your work has enduring value, is part and parcel of the rewards of being a writer. I also think that each one of us forges our own way through the thorn-forest of publishing/getting paid/writing/dreaming. Here are a few things that work for me. They might be helpful to you, too.

If the only thing I loved about writing was getting paid for it, I'd probably give up and go back into health care. If I either hated or was indifferent to the writing itself, it simply wouldn't be worth the hassle. At least, seeing sick people get better comes with warm fuzzy feelings and a regular paycheck. I'm fortunate in that writing fiction isn't the only thing I can do, or do with a little refresher training. Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful to get paid. It just isn't sufficient in itself for me.