Conference Adventure!

by Mary Altman, Nick Conrad, Mackenzie Walton

A choose-your-own-adventure game for you! Come to our conference and see what happens to you! Here's the setup:

You’ve waited months for this day to arrive. Your clothes have been packed and repacked as you figured out that perfect ensemble, you’ve honed your pitch to an art form, and you’ve had those brand new business cards double-printed and stored away in a silver card carrier. You are ready to take the writers conference by storm.

The conference is hosting a reception the night before registration. Tomorrow, you and your fellow authors will have a chance to pitch to a fabulous editor, but tonight it’s all about unwinding, having a good time and meeting each other.

Standing at the door, you spot three conspicuous attendees: a very young, very pretty blonde sitting at the bar sipping a daiquiri she likely purchased via fake ID; a somewhat frumpy but extremely friendly looking middle-aged woman sitting alone at a table and cradling a cup of coffee between her hands; and an uncomfortable-looking older gentleman fumbling about at the buffet.

So go! Have fun! http://redlinesdeadlines.googlepages.com/

Conference Vignettes

Yep, every editor has them--funny, frightening, freaky or fantastic anecdotes about things that happened at writer conferences.

So what's the most interesting conference story you've got?

1. The pair of authors who actually did it (and we'd all thought it was just a publishing industry urban legend): They followed me into the bathroom and stood outside my stall trying to convince me to buy their Nintendo fanfic. 2. The male author who heard me begging for chocolate to revive me during a multi-hour pitch session, and went to a lot of trouble to track some down and send it over to me. And he wasn't even on the list to pitch a story to me! (His wife's a lucky woman, to have a man who understands the importance of chocolate.) 3. The local paper covering the writer conference asked to interview me about e-books and Ellora's Cave. The resulting article was very nice--except that two-thirds of it was about why I wear hats at conferences and what I thought of the local food specialties. 4. A male author, upon hearing that I edited erotic romance, asked if I wanted to dominate him and show him what a bad boy he was. 5. During a mix-and-mingle, an author and I struck up a friendly conversation. Not bothering to look at my name tag, she reached over to pat my hand and asked me if I was here to support my romance-writing mother. 6. During a pitch appointment, one of the authors was so nervous that she asked if she could read from a note card. Unfortunately, she read so fast and slurred her words so badly that I could only catch every third word. I felt like such a monster for asking her to try again. 7. I was so nervous during my first conference that I couldn't work up the nerve to approach people. Thankfully, several ladies noticed me being the wallflower and came to adopt me. I immediately was able to relax and enjoy myself. 8. An author booked a pitch session with me for her "erotic romance". It was the semi-autobiographical story of a child enduring horrendous abuse - sexual, emotional, physical. The author went into far more detail than I could stomach. She was astounded and annoyed when I said it wasn't the type of book we published, it wasn't an erotic romance. "But it has lots of sex!" she retorted. She refused to grasp my explanations that "romantic" and "erotic" are not defined by merely the act of sex - especially when that sex is violent rape or child abuse. 9. I arrived at the conference hotel with the worst cold ever - exhausted, so congested I could barely breathe, throat too sore to speak, bleary eyes. After waiting in a loooong line to check in, I was informed my room would not be ready for several hours. I almost cried. Several members of the host chapter spotted me. They introduced me to a group of writers eating in the restaurant so I'd have someone to sip soup with, then they sat with me in the lobby, fetched me hot tea, even covered me in a blanket! One of them got me checked in so I didn't have to stand in line again. I felt so guilty for being a burden when I was there to "work" for them, but their pampering and care were just the support I needed to make it through the weekend. 10. Warn the waiters! Yeah, they probably knew it was a luncheon of romance writers. But apparently no one told them it was erotic romance authors, whose table conversations about the books they were writing and reading were quite, umm, explicit. And then the speakers got up - and, knowing their audience, didn't hesitate to call a cock a cock! Those young male waiters were neon red. When it was my turn to speak, the microphone kept cutting in and out, so I ignored it and spoke very loudly - unfortunately, the mic would kick in for a few seconds here and there, always when I was saying "sex", "fucking", or such. 11. While pitching her book to me, an author burst into tears. The story sounded very moving, but it was rather uncomfortable to sit there while she sobbed over her own book. 12. To reiterate the lesson illustrated by Number Five, name tags are very useful tools. I cannot count the number of times people have asked me what I write, if I'm someone's husband, or if I am with [insert various other press names here]. 13. The first night of the conference was followed by a complimentary trip to a local comedy club. All went well until afterward, when the cab company failed to send the requisite second cab and six of us were stranded at the club. The conference coordinator called the company several times, but it was one-thirty in the morning before we finally managed to get a ride back to the hotel--and what came for us was a tiny sedan. We were too tired to wait any longer, so we all crammed into the cab. There were four of us in the three-person backseat, and two people had to sit on other passengers' laps. As we rode back, the coordinator said, "All right, who's hungry? Let's hit a drive-through! My treat!" There is no better way to break the ice with a bunch of strangers than to sit on one another's laps and then bond over burgers and fries. And yes, we got food for the driver too.

The Great Hunt

by Mary Altman

The thrill of the chase. The exhilaration of the hunt. There’s nothing quite like the pulse-pounding excitement of tracking, spotting and running a publishing professional to ground—and there’s no hunting ground more fertile than the halls and ballrooms of a conference hotel.

But before you release the hounds for the coming conference season, please take a few moments to consider how best to approach the agents and editors you may have the chance of ensnaring. Publishing professionals can be tricky beasts, but remembering a few key points will help you both walk away unscathed.

1) Food for Thought. I had been warned about networking before I attended my first conference and knew to always be polite, professional and approachable. My publisher hadn’t thought to tell me that if I managed to be all three all the time, I would be half-starved for my pains. Dinner conversation is a wonderful thing, and it can be exciting to realize you have a publishing professional at your table. But please let him or her take a few bites between questions. It’s hard to listen to pitches when my stomach is protesting so loudly.

2) Keep Your Eyes Open. Conferences give name tags for a reason—to keep us from embarrassing ourselves. The only thing more mortifying than introducing your good friend What’s Her Face is making an incorrect assumption about the person sitting next to you. If my name tag says Publishing Professional or Editor, asking me what I write or whether I’m here to support my mother (!?) probably isn’t the best conversational icebreaker.

3) We’re People Too! One of the things I wanted to constantly remind authors during my first few conferences was that I was just as nervous as they were. Meeting people can be nerve-racking, especially if you want to make a good impression. Remembering that the publishing professional standing there looking aloof may be just as anxious as you could help nudge you in the right direction. For example, at my first RWA conference, in Denver, Colorado, several lovely ladies went out of their way to make me feel comfortable and relaxed.

4) Keep it in Your Pants. It doesn’t matter that I edit erotic romance for a living. If anyone grabs me and pulls me aside, then proceeds to tell me in shockingly explicit language (and trust me, I know from explicit!) about their sexual experiences or, God forbid, ask me about mine, I will reach for the pepper spray. Don’t ignore the person in favor of the title and don’t assume that just because I edit spicy books, I want to hear about your prowess with a bullwhip or your teenage high school fantasies.

5) The Gossip Lounge is Open. Editors have good memories for bad behavior and we just love sharing zany conference stories. Do not become my next entertaining “and then he asked me if I wanted to dominate him!” anecdote. Act friendly but professional and editors will have only good things to say about you.

Conferences should be just like real life magnified. Yes, you need to get in there and be aggressive. Track down that editor you’ve been dying to meet, make that elevator pitch, strike up a conversation in a bar. But also keep in mind that editors are people too. So before you blow your bugle and shout “tally ho!”, think about how you’d like to be treated…and whether or not you’d like to be chased to ground.

Teach the Children...

By Raelene Gorlinsky

Just my personal opinion, but not only do many schools do a poor job of teaching good writing skills, they make the whole subject boring and distasteful to kids. It frightened me when I walked into my son's classroom some years ago and saw a plethora of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors in the teacher-created signs and posters around the room. How many of those kids will be able to write a decent essay for a class assignment, produce quality work in college - let alone turn into the next generation of great authors that I want to read?

So, pending a complete restructure and modification of school curriculums and textbooks, you as parents (or grandparents or aunts/uncles or...) can start your young kids on the path to actually enjoying punctuation and grammar and such fun topics. How? Why, by reading them books that teach these things in a fun and interesting way! And, yes, such marvelous learning aids do exist. Here are a couple to get you started on showing your children the shining path to future bestsellerdom.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves - the children's picture book version of why commas really do make a difference! By original author Lynne Truss, illustrations by Bonnie Timmons

Blurb: "You might want to eat a huge hot dog, but a huge, hot dog would run away pretty quickly if you tried to take a bite out of him. [...] see how forgetting to include a comma or placing one in the wrong spot can completely change the meaning of a sentence--with hilarious consequences."

And then there's her companion book about apostrophes, The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage Without Apostrophes.

Illustrates the shift in meaning precipitated by missing or misplaced apostrophes.

World of Language series by Ruth Heller


The first thing that wows you about these books, and will bring you back to them again and again, are the lush, incredible illustrations.

But they actually do teach parts of speech and sentence structure in a highly entertaining and memorable way. Your kids will LEARN from these.

Up, Up and Away : A Book About Adverbs
Many Luscious Lollipops : A Book About Adjectives
Merry-Go-Round : A Book About Nouns
Behind the Mask : A Book About Prepositions
A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns
Fantastic! Wow! and Unreal! : A Book About Interjections and Conjunctions
Mine, All Mine : A Book About Pronouns
Kites Sail High : A Book About Verbs

Good Grammar Guides

Remember those grammar and style and word usage reference guides that you learned about way back in school? The ones that gave you all the "rules" and made your writing appropriately formal and pedantic -- IF you happened to be writing a school term paper, or for a solemn professional journal or such. A lot of the old standard writing guides are out of date (yes, our language does change) or just not as applicable for informal fiction writing. But not to despair of having someplace to look up those thorny punctuation or verb tense problems, or figure out which word you really mean! There are lots of modern and FUN guides available now. 1. Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness (A Dictionarrative) – Karen Elizabeth Gordon 2. Torn Wings and Faux Pas (A Flashbook of Style, a Beastly Guide Through the Writer’s Labyrinth) – Karen Elizabeth Gordon 3. The Well-Tempered Sentence (A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed) – Karen Elizabeth Gordon 4. Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English – Patricia T. O’Conner 5. Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions – Harry Shaw 6. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation – Lynne Truss (And for extra fun, get the children's picture book version by Truss, illustrated by Bonnie Timmons, and "Eats, Shites & Leaves: Crap English and How to Use It" by A. Parody.) 7. Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins (The Careful Writer’s Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears and Outmoded Rules of English Usage) – Theodore M. Bernstein 8. Sleeping Dogs Don’t Lay: Practical Advice for the Grammatically Challenged – Richard Lederer & Richard Dowis 9. Word Court – Barbara Wallraff 10. Lapsing Into a Comma (A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print -- and How to Avoid Them) - Bill Walsh 11. Grammar Gremlins (Taming the Mischief-Makers of the English Language) - Don K. Ferguson 12. The World of Language series of children's books by Ruth Heller. Yes, children's books, but clear and concise -- and beautifully illustrated. Merry-Go-Round (nouns), A Cache of Jewels (collective nouns), Kites Sail High (verbs), Many Luscious Lollipops (adjectives), Up, Up and Away (adverbs), Behind the Mask (prepositions) and more. 13. Chicago Manual of Style - "The" style guide for many. Be sure you use a current edition, many things have been updated over the years.

For EroRom, E-Pubbed = Top Seller

Author Robin L. Rotham (http://robinlrotham.com/index2.html) has painstakingly compiled statistics about how, for erotic romance authors, previous exposure through e-publication relates to future success in print book sales. Yep, we're not surprised at all that so many erorom authors started out with (and in most cases are also still with) e-publishers.

Per Robin (and provided here with her permission)--
At this moment on Amazon.com, for print books:

1) The TOP 10 Erotica bestsellers were written by e-published authors.
2) 4 of those 10 were actually published by e-publishers -- EC and Samhain.
3) 13 of the top 25 Erotica bestsellers were published by e-pubs -- EC, Samhain, NCP, and Loose ID.
4) 40 of the top 100 Erotica bestsellers were published by those same e-pubs.
5) 13 of the top 100 Romance/Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost bestsellers were written by e-published authors (that I recognize -- there may be more).
6) 6 of the top 100 Romance/Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost bestsellers were published by e-pubs -- EC and Samhain.

(Robin accumulated these figures by hand, many hours work. Ahem, I'm going to have to have a word with her editor - shouldn't she be working on her next book? ;-0 )

Learn the Basics

by Donna Hoard

Advice from a Copy Editor

Are you bubbling with wonderful ideas you’d like to share with the reading public? Good writing takes lots of imagination and creativity, but as a copy editor, I’d like to address the more practical side of your work. You really need to know the basics.

Your manuscript must be readable and fairly clean, or it won’t be considered. You need to check grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Then, give it to several trusted critique partners for more input. It’s nearly impossible to edit your own writing. Your mind sees what you meant to write, not what is actually on the page.

Consult references books and websites.

My favorite reference book is The Chicago Manual of Style. I also found these highly rated style books on Listmania, under Essential Books for Copy Editors:

Garner’s Modern American Usage by Brian A. Garner
Words Into Type (Third Edition) by Marjorie Skillin and Robert Malcolm Gay

There are many grammar sites online. Here’s a link to Writing World.Com, which has assembled several links to get you started:

http://www.writing-world.com/links/grammar.shtml

Remember, it’s best to use websites associated with universities and other reputable sources, rather than “Buffy’s Best Grammar Site Evah”.

Compound words can be extremely difficult. Often, there is more than one “correct” version. There are many online dictionaries, but my favorite is OneLook (http://www.onelook.com/), which searches multiple dictionaries. This can help you decide whether the word should be solid, hyphenated, or open.

Sometimes it’s easy—if you type “party goer”, OneLook redirects you to “partygoer”, your only choice. Sometimes it’s a question of seeing which usage is most popular. If there are two entries for “bow-tie”, four for “bowtie”, and fourteen for “bow tie”, then the best choice is obvious. Keep in mind, editors give more credence to Merriam-Webster than Wikipedia.

Do your research!

You may think small details are unimportant, but readers will be annoyed if your character does something “wrong”.

For example: A Waikiki resident throws his suitcases into the backseat of his ’57 T-bird, drives on Kalakaua Avenue toward Diamond Head, then arrives at Honolulu International Airport.

Knowledgeable readers know that a ‘57 T-bird does not have a backseat and Honolulu International is in the opposite direction from Diamond Head.

An author can lose credibility making such mistakes. It might pull readers out of the story—or make them want to throw your book across the room.

No matter how esoteric the subject, you’re bound to find some links in search engines like Google. Again, consider the source. I recently visited a grammar site that had the spelling error “past participal”. A big clue to use another site!

Search.

The Find or Search feature in your word processing program is a wonderful thing. Please use it!

Accumulate a list of common mistakes to check. Yes, there is a difference between “any more” and “anymore”, and when you are “prone”, you are lying facedown. And please, please, please, learn the difference between “lay” and “lie”.

The checklist may be a little extra work, but you have the assurance that you haven’t missed a single occurrence of a particular error. If you’ve misspelled or misused a word once, chances are there will be more of the same.

Please be kind to your editor; learn from your mistakes!

Also, if you decide to write a series, please refresh your memory about the previous book. Compile a fact sheet about your world and characters. The heroine from a previous book who makes a guest appearance in the next installment should have the same eye color as she did in “her” book. And a character should have the same last name as before. (Yes, these mistakes actually happen.)

Also keep in mind that different publishers have different styles. So even if you think you’ve written the Most Perfect Manuscript Ever, you and your editor may need to tweak it a bit to comply with the house style.

Content editors welcome an innovative, entertaining story, but if the basic writing skills are missing, no matter how wonderful your story is, it’s likely to be rejected. Editors can’t be expected to teach Writing 101.

Rejection, Romance & Royalties: The Wacky World of a Working Writer by Laura Resnick

by Raelene Gorlinsky

Recommended Reading!

This book should be required reading for all authors, aspiring authors—and editors. It is a collection of Ms. Resnick’s articles from various periodicals, including Nink (monthly journal of Novelists Inc.), SFWA Bulletin, and Romance Writers Report, about aspects of the publishing business and the business of being a professional author.

Ms. Resnick has an entertaining style, so the book is a pleasure to read. But it is the information contained that is most important. Despite her occasional diatribes against publishers and editors (and what author doesn’t feel that way sometimes?), she offers a huge amount of information and practical advice to authors. She tells it like it is, faces the rough realities of trying to support yourself as an author.

The best articles related to the “craft” and career of an author, in my opinion:

The Luck Myth - Yep, it’s persistence, not luck, that gets you the breaks.

Passion - Why you feel the need to write, and how to have a “spark” in your writing.

Copy Edits We Have Known and Hated – Funny and scary anecdotes: “a good copy editor is worth her weight in chocolate, a bad one makes you jumpy about copy edits for the rest of your career.”

…Does Not Meet Our Needs at This Time – “Professional writers get rejected. All of the time. Even by their own publishers. Even by editors who like them personally and like their writing. In fact, multi-published, award-winning writers get rejected all of the time.”

Labelismization – The marketing aspects of determining genre, establishing a “brand” for your books.

It Can Happen Here—And Often Does – “Bizarre mix-ups, infuriating screw-ups, and wacky mistakes that are out of the writer’s control.” Like having your name misspelled, your book misprinted.

Orphans of the Storm – When your editor leaves the publishing house.

Going Public – Perils of booksignings.

How Long Does It Take? – To write a book…

Jabla – Writer’s block, disappearing writers, one-book wonders.

The Artist’s Knife – “Just as the artist’s knife scrapes, folds, and carves one’s talent and vision into a masterpiece, the writer must find her own inner knife to refine, regroup, and dig deep when challenges arise and plans founder. The writer must carve her talent into work that builds her career.”

Habit Forming – The process of writing is different for every writer.

Of course, for sheer fun, read the article “Enlarge Your Penis”, on addiction to the Internet.

Pub News: National Novel Writing Month Begins

Across the world, writers are stocking up on caffeine, strapping themselves to their keyboards, and struggling to meet their word count goals for the day. At the end of the month, exhausted and triumphant, they’ll have 50k of their latest novel and a new feeling of community accomplishment.

That’s right—it’s November 1st, marking the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) began in July of 1999 in the San Francisco Bay area. Its statement of purpose is simple: write a novel in a month. 175 pages, 50,000 words. What began as a literary block party in California has become an international juggernaut. Forums keep authors in touch, word count bars keep them honest, and the intense deadline keeps them working. There’s even a NaNoWriMo for kids!

To find out more, head over to http://www.nanowrimo.org/.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Vampires and shapeshifters of the more unusual kind. 1. Bunnicula by James Howe depicts a rabbit that sucks the juice out of vegetables. 2. In Kate Steele's upcoming book, What the Cat Dragged In, one of the heroes is an owl shifter. 3. Gabriel, the hero of Megan Sybil Baker's Gabriel's Ghost, shapeshifts into a Kyi-Ragkiril, a winged demon. 4. Jonathan Raven of Lynn Michaels' Nightwing is an archaeologist whose soul or "self" was split into two parts by an evil, immortal Egyptian soul-eater -- one half is a ghost, the other a vampire. 5. In Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" series, the vampires are perfectly able to go out in sunlight...if they don't mind sparkling as if they'd been doused in glitter. 6. Clive Barker's Cabal introduces us to a zombie werewolf hero. 7. Bearwalker by Steven Lee Climer and Lori A. Soard tells the story of a man who turns into a bear when enraged and is driven to murder. 8. In N.J. Walters' Stefan's Salvation and Eternal Brothers, a group of power-hungry humans form a vampiric cult, believing that power is passed through the ingestion of blood. 9. Kij Johnson's The Fox Woman tells the story of the feud between a Japanese family and a den of werefoxes...and what happens when the shapeshifting heroine falls in love with the human hero. 10. In The Cat's Fancy by Julie Kenner, a normal housecat turns into a woman after falling in love with her owner. 11. The Woman Who Loved Reindeer by Meredith Ann Pierce tells the story of a human woman who falls in love with a reindeer shapeshifter. 12. The vampires in Marly Chance's Been There, Bit That are not affected by sunlight and have a lifespan fairly close to that of humans. 13. In Jaid Black's Trek Mi Q'an series, the planet Khan-Gor is inhabited by barbaric humanoids who can shapeshft into kor-tar, gargoyle-like creatures with wings and spikes on their bodies. The Khan-Gori are so feared by the rest of the galaxy that they have closed off the planet to outsiders.