Each story must somehow involve coffee as a major plot element. It’s not enough if an unrelated story is set in a coffee shop. I will also consider a few TEA stories as well. These stories must feature an element of the fantastic (fantasy, SF, light horror). No literary fiction please.
For the moment, I will only consider reprints. If you published a story that you feel might fit the theme, please e-mail it to me at ufopublishing at gmail dot com. Please include information as to where and when it was first published, and confirm that the rights have reverted to you.
Writers with romantic intentions, come hither. The fourth volume of New Hampshire Pulp Fiction is lounging languidly on a velvet divan, making eyes at you. It’s time to make your move.
Submit your stories of love lost, passion fulfilled and unrequited devotion — all deeply embedded in New Hampshire places and culture — to Elaine Isaak at nhpulpromance@gmail.com and perhaps you too can be a part of this local publishing phenomenon.
Story length: 8,000 words or less Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2013 Planned for release: before Valentine’s Day, 2014
Got a market notice you want listed in future Market Mondays on Speak Coffee to Me? Send along the link with the words "Market Monday Plz" to @EileenWiedbrauk on Twitter.
Gorgeous Krampus art from a book
I have absolutely no association with
other than drooling over the art: Krampus: The Yule Lord by Brom.
Specter Spectacular II: 13 Deathly Tales closes to submissions on Saturday, but don't despair you writers of the macabre! Also on Saturday, June 15, Kate Wolford will start reading submissions for a Krampus based anthology as part of a joint venture between World Weaver Press and Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine.
Description: You know the Jolly Old Elf of Christmas, right? Of course you do. You can’t avoid him. Yet, Santa Claus isn’t just a kindly old expert at breaking and entering and leaving gifts he didn’t actually buy for the children of a house. At least he isn’t in Austria and many other parts of Europe. In these ancient places, where, perhaps, the old, old gods still add a touch of mischief, Krampus is the angry, punishing sidekick of St. Nicholas (Santa’s counterpart in much of Europe). Known for his willingness to punish rotten children, Krampus might even be considered Santa’s dark side or evil twin. Krampus is the sort of guy more and more North Americans want to explore. He’s definitely having a moment this side of the Atlantic. To that end, World Weaver Press and Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine are pleased to announce a joint venture: An anthology of Krampus short stories. Although the book is yet to be named, we hope you’ll explore every possible Krampus angle via short stories. He’s a nasty old dude, and we hope your imaginations will get the better of you.
Anthology editor Kate Wolford ran a mini Krampus story contest for Enchanted Conversation last Christmas where there was lots of interest -- it was certainly the first time I'd heard of the Krampus! -- and gives her insights on what she's looking for in the upcoming anthology: “Krampus taps into a kind of ancient darkness that captures the spirit of winter. He also seems to lend himself to humor and horror and maybe, a bit of magic. I think the story possibilities are endless and intriguing.”
World Weaver Press is a publisher of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction, dedicated to producing quality works. As a small press, World Weaver seeks to publish books that engage the mind and ensnare the story-loving soul.
I'm editing a second Specter Spectacular anthology for World Weaver Press. Submissions are open now through June 15, 2013 (details). The first anthology was subtitled 13 Ghostly Tales and this time it's 13 Deathly Tales, allowing us to still include some awesome ghost stories but also expand beyond the spirit trope.
The inbox is seeing a lot of moment-of-death stories, and I encourage writers to look beyond that to the ... beyond. I've been pretty vocal about looking for some great stories of psychopomps (literally meaning "guide of the souls" but I also love the "death midwife" description), and I still want to see more such submissions. I'm also encouraging relevant connections to current society whether that's funny grim reapers glued to their cell phones, displaced Valkyries, parallels between a callus Charon ferrying souls across the river Styx with unscrupulous coyotes shepherding people across the border, or modern folklore retwistings.
In addition to my April A to Z blogging challenge, I'd like to share the following from Northville Review:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/jNQXAC9IVRwFirst video uploaded to YouTube: April 23, 2005
YouTube: The planet’s third most visited website, where the averageuser spends 15 minutes per day, every day. Where memes live, andnaivete dies. And, at last...the subject of The Northville Review’sSummer 2012 issue!
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: -- Look for “Summer 2012” on our Submishmash page. It’s toward the bottom.-- Send us a story, a poem, an essay that is somehow related to anembeddable YouTube video.-- “Somehow related to” is deliberately very open-ended. If youretrofit a video to something you’ve already completed, that’s betweenyou and your deity.-- “Embeddable YouTube video” is not open-ended. Click “Share” andthen “Embed” to make sure the video is embeddable. Submissions withoutthis will be rejected.-- Include a link to the YouTube video and a bio in your cover letter.-- Work selected for publication will run underneath the correspondingembedded video.-- PLEASE NOTE: If your submission is accepted and your video goesdead on YouTube before the publication date, so does your work. Choosewisely. Tip: It’s probably not a good idea to send anything relatedto Prince.
DEADLINE: June 30. This is NOT a top secret project. Feel free tospread the word.
QUESTIONS? northvillereview@gmail.com or whatever social media works for you.
Three interesting markets to make note of on this Thursday. Three markets that are riddles to me -- ones I hope you can solve by finding work to send them even if I can't.
Mistress of the Macabre, to be published by Dark Moon Books, is looking for horror stories -- the kind that actually scare you -- written by women for an all-female authored anthology. 1500-6000 words. Pays $20 + contributor's copy. Deadline: June 30. More info.
I absolutely love the title Mistress of the Macabre -- say it aloud a few times and I'm sure you'll soon be agreeing with me. You just can't say it more than once without an attitude. So much fun.
While I write a lot of creepy little stories, I can't say I've got anything that I'd call truly scary -- mostly scary how bad the writing is. . . . But then again, how scary can I be if I'm quoting Love Actually to prove my chill factor?
Bibliotheca Fantastica, themed anthology from Dagan Books wants "stories having to do with lost, rare, weird, or imaginary books, or any aspect of book history or book culture, past, present, future, or uchronic. Any genre. Although the fantastical is not essential per se, stories should evoke a sense of the fantastic, the unknown, the weird, wonder, terror, mystery, pulp, and/or adventure, etc." Under 10,000 words. Pays $0.02/word. Deadline: March 31. More info.
Every time I look at the Bibliotheca Fantastica call for submissions I kick myself; I have a fabulous premise that fits in these guidelines but no plot with which to make it a story!
Fairy Tale Review, Yellow Issue. Fairy Tale Review is a magazine producing one issue per year featuring work which entangles itself in the folkloric. Of recent, they've been working with guest editors who shape the issue and theme of the single issue that they work on. The last issue's theme was "lost children. This year the theme and the issue title are the same thing: yellow. Poetry, fiction, essays, drama, creative nonfiction, comics, illustration. I believe this market is non-paying but I could be wrong. Deadline: May 31. More info and the editor's take on how "yellow" is a theme.
I'm completely stumped on how to take that from the abstract to fiction or poetry that relates to the folkloric. The editor's description that she's interested in writing that worships and dements yellow. We would like you to knock on yellow’s door and invite her out to play, somehow did not make a light bulb or even a pen light go on over my head.
It's hard to think about April with its post-thaw mud, tender green tree buds and the unspoken promise of light jacket weather when each morning I open the blinds each wondering how many inches of snow will be on my car today. But it appears that many people already are. Maybe it's just, you know, planning ahead on their parts. I hear some people have been known to do that though I can't say I ever plan much beyond that night's dinner if I can help it. Or maybe it's that we all desperately need something to look forward to in order to get through this bleak time of year. Whatever the case, there are some interesting writerly things coming your way this spring.
Angry Robot is throwing open its doors to unagented novel queries for two weeks in late April. They did this last year and signed three new authors. They're only interested in epic fantasy and YA sf/f. More information is on their website.
April is also the month of Script Frenzy, NaNoWriMo's dramatically inclined little cousin.
Of these three, I'll probably only get involved in the A to Z challenge. I tried it last year and it went well ... for a while. But since people and their online chatter have me thinking about it ahead of time this year, I've started generating a list of topics (and, gasp, even a theme!) and hope to succeed in making all 26 posts this time around.
The following markets are looking for themed speculative material with a romantic twist or romantic elements. The first is looking for novella length stories -- and if that's not to your liking, the second market only takes work 7,500 words and under!
Entangled Publishing, Steampunk Anthology: (royalties only) Entangled Publishing is an internet startup company. They publish both print and ebooks and have a strong leaning toward paranormal romance novels (adult and YA) from what I can tell. Right now they're putting together an anthology of short steampunk fiction with romantic elements, deadline December 1. They write:
Will Smith, Jude Law, Robert Downey Jr., Hugh Jackman, and Sean Connery have done fabulous things for the sexiness of steampunk. Even when quirky technology is merely hinted at in alternate, historical-feeling world, moviegoers have clamored for more. Whether they’re donning brass goggles, lacing up steel corsets, or hopping onto the nearest airship, the heroes and heroines in steampunk fiction have captured the minds of readers. Entangled Publishing is seeking submissions for a Summer 2012 Steampunk anthology. Submissions must:
Be 20,000 to 30,000 words in length
Contain strong romantic elements
Heavily feature steampunk technology and the alternate world it exists in
All heat levels will be accepted, but erotic elements must not be the main focus of the story.
Escape Collective Publishing: Orbital Hearts Anthology (royalties only)is looking for stories that revolve around relationships (romantic and dysfunctional, preferably) and also contain speculative elements (aka "fantastic" elements). Up to 7,500 words. Deadline December 1. They're also running a cover art contest if that's up your alley. They write:
We’re looking for tragic romances, hopeless relationships, unrequited love and (of course) broken hearts. Don’t misread this! Although we want stories that revolve around dysfunctional romantic couplings, we are only interested in stories that also contain “elements of the fantastic.” This anthology is open to submissions from just about ANY genre you can imagine that fits the theme – and we hope to get many submissions that cross over genre boundaries. Try to avoid cliches that rely on weird pairings as their primary theme; we want tragedy, drama, and originality. Surprise us, entice us and woo us into a destructive angst-inspired spiral with your words!
Looking for places to submit short fiction? Particularly if you're working in the vein of fantasy, science fiction, horror and that unclassifiable "weird fiction" realm? Then check out the following markets and calls for submissions.
Mirror Dance(nonpaying market) is a free online magazine of fantasy in all its sub-genres, including magic realism, urban fantasy or contemporary fantasy, sword & sorcery, fantasy-of-manners, and stories with mythological or folkloric themes. They're looking for poetry ASAP to fill their next issue, but are set on fiction. They write:
All the fiction slots for our Winter 2011 all-flash issue are full, but we are still looking for poetry, especially narrative poems and pieces that blur the lines between poetry and prose. All non-theme submissions will be considered for Spring 2012. Please mention in your cover letter for which issue you’d like us to consider your story or poem, if you have a preference.
Mslexia publishes only female writers. They're seeking submissions for Issue 53 on the theme "In the year 2212…" Deadline: 28 November. They write:
Two hundred years hence, will we be teleporting or living in caves? In peaceful eco-cities or war-scarred refugee colonies on a distant planet? Cast your imaginative spotlight into the future and tell us what you see. Please send up to 4 poems (of up to 40 lines each) or up to 2 short stories (of up to 2,200 words each).
Dagan Books: Bibliotheca Fantastica Anthology seeks submissions for a themed anthology sent between December 15 and March 31. Stories up to 10,000 words--I'm excited that they're willing to look at longer shorts(!) What they want:
Stories having to do with lost, rare, weird, or imaginary books, or any aspect of book history or book culture, past, present, future, or uchronic. Any genre. Although the fantastical is not essential per se, stories should evoke a sense of the fantastic, the unknown, the weird, wonder, terror, mystery, pulp, and/or adventure, etc.
Wicked East Press: Witch's Brew ($5 flat rate payment) seeking stories of witches by December 31 for anthology. (They do lots of anthologies, check out this page to see what those themes are.) Ideally in the 3,500- 7,000 word range. What they're looking for:
Creepy, crawly stories that celebrate the various aspects of witch’s and their livelihoods. Most all genres acceptable, as long as the story fits the anthology theme. This is a collection of stories to be enjoyed by everyone, please keep excessive cussing and sex out unless integral to your character.
Realms of Fantasy is closing ... again. Supposedly. Pardon me if I don't believe that they're actually closing this time. Twice before they've delivered their swansong performances. Then, post-swansong, someone has leaped in from offstage and saved the magazine with a giant cash infusion.
Of course both times that happened, the new publishers didn't change enough about the publishing model to make the magazine viable. In its current format, it bleeds money. Sure, they can say in their swansongs that there are "not enough" subscribers, but a different magazine with a different owner would have changed the model and made the current number of subscribers be "enough" to keep that model open.
Anyway, they've cried wolf twice before. If this time really is when the wolf comes for them, I can't say anyone will know -- we'll all still be waiting for the announcement that they're coming back.
A quick hello to those of you who've arrived at Speak Coffee to Me via Rachel Harrie's Blog Campaign! If you've not yet joined, you have til the end of the month to do so here. The rest of this post is relevant writing links, irrelevant links, an a few snips of news from life at large.
Ann Vandemeer steps down as editor of Weird Tales,releasing a formal announcement earlier this week. Vandemeer has edited the magazine for several years now along with multiple anthologies. She's won a Hugo for her editing work and while there's only a handful of powerhouse sf/f editors out there, there's even fewer female editors -- so why is she stepping down? Because Weird Tales has been bought by someone who wants to edit it himself. Okay, fine I guess. You buy a cool toy you want to play with it. I understand. And hey, if you've got lots of money and you want to run your own magazine, why not buy the longest running speculative magazine in North America? Guess it sure as heck beats starting from scratch. Vandemeer is magnanimous in her open announcement of resignation, but she makes it pretty clear that she didn't want to leave ... makes me wonder if she's feeling terribly magnanimous on the inside. Maybe under the new guy's direction the covers will get less eerie; the Ann Vandemeer covered always skeeved me out.
Recently, while encountering a problem for an e small appliance I found my new favorite for instruction in a long list of don'ts: CAUTION: do not incinerate. Thanks. Because I generally burn all electronic devices I purchase rather than, you know, use them.
I totally want moo.com to hire me. For what, I'm not quite certain. But I would be awesome as a Moo employee. I love the ethic, I love the product, I love the face which Moo presents to the world. I'm a creative thinker and doer (though I have no design education beyond a bunch of high school art classes and a couple college art classes which I really should have taken pass/fail). I'm a college writing teacher and that means I engage constantly in critical assessment and redrawn definition -- if my audience is confused the first time, I reach outside the box for a wacky-pants means of making understanding. Okay, admittedly, that may not be synonymous with "teacher" to everyone, but it is in my world. Love the visual and tactile and the world of words. People who have no artistic talent look at what I can do and tell me I should be an artist; people who make their livings doing art look at what I can do and pat me on the head: I know my limitations. I have basic web design skills; this means I can't build you a new look from scratch, but I speak the language of those who could. I'm a good organizer. When I have a task and a deadline, I see it through to the end.
Did I just pitch myself on my blog where no one with a job to offer will ever likely read it? Oh yes, I did.
Newborn mammals are cute no matter what they are: sloths!
I bought the cats "indoor cat food" which differentiates itself from the regular stuff by the same brand as having 10% fewer calories and more hairball-fighting fiber. I mixed it with the remains of their old food, as per food-changing-instructions, and they managed to eat ALL the old food and leave the new stuff. Picky bitches. Actually, I'm more amazed that they could isolate individual kibbles than put out at their eating habits.
On Facebook this week, people realized how many friends they had who lived on the east coast as status messages regarding the earthquake flooded personal news streams. Meanwhile, Californian's snickered ... but they may have gotten snobby too fast. Because when an earthquake hits the East Coast unexpectedly, it's not the physical destruction that you have to worry about, it's the naked men with knives.
I'm reading Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke for the first time ever -- and I'm loving it! (no spoilers, plz! I still have another 100 pages to go) Clarke has such great, simple prose. As a writer, I'm totally in love with his style! That's not to say his sentences are all short, blunt, and uncomplicated. Not at all. The sentences themselves are often complicated in construction, and the man knew how to use a semicolon. But they stay clean and unadorned with poetic quirks that could trip up the reader, especially as Clarke is describing some mentally complicated situations such as explaining all the different ways of orienting and reorienting one's sense of "down" in a low gravity situation. That sort of imagining and reimagining of space had me thinking that this narrative would make a great film using today's technology and a sense of space and inversion akin to that we saw in Inception. And lo and behold! IMDB.com says there's a Rendezvous with Rama film due out in 2013! ... and apparently Morgan Freeman, of all people, is pushing for the project to happen/finish.
Post Secret is coming out with an APP this September!
I wrote several secrets and sent them in years ago to Post Secret. They didn't make the website or books (as far as I know). I wrote a few more -- real secrets this time not just the "barely a secret" items I had first sent). But I never sent them. I kept them in my apartment. And then I moved them. And now, I don't know where they are. I wish I knew. Because I would send them. Their absence both scares and excites me.
Edited to add: oh and if you were following from last weeks' linklove+life post, know that the foot is slowly getting better. I'm still annoyed by it, at times and it lets me know if I stress it out with too much walking, but it is much, much better.
There are many forms of perseverance needed in the writing game. And one of them is to keep submitting our work to new editors.
I, apparently, have an unusually thick skin when it comes to submissions and rejections. But here's what I know: C.L. Moore submitted her first short story, "Shambleau" -- the first short story she had ever written -- to Weird Tales in 1933. It was her favorite magazine. They accepted it, and subsequently published almost all of her early fiction. Moore, in a candid essay in the back of a 1960s edition of her collected early stories, said that if the Weird Tales editor hadn't accepted her story on the first try, she probably would have stopped writing.
I'm not C.L. Moore. You're not C.L. Moore.
And I don't say that meanly -- Moore's work is intriguing but there's a reason she occupies an important space in the history of science fiction and not in the literary importance of the genre.
I say I am no C.L. Moore because I have sent out one story. And it was rejected. And I did not stop there. I sent it out again. And again. And again. And, on at least two occasions, I'd given up on a story or poem and then had an editor contract the work. I am no C.L. Moore because if the editor doesn't accept the story on the first try, I don't stop trying.
And that is why I encourage everyone reading this and hoping to make it as a writer to not be C.L. Moore.
Last summer, I was encouraged to make 100 submissions. Be they short fiction or novel queries, I was to complete 100 of them. It was suggested that 100 was a reasonable goal; that if you set your sights for 100 it was a high enough number that you would be in the mental game for the long haul while also likely to achieve some sort of publication before reaching the 100th submission.
The next day I was asked to give a goal for the upcoming year, so I said 100 submissions in a year! Meaning: I want to be published by this time next year!
That's when I made this little chart on the outside of a file folder and tacked it to the wall over my desk. 100 Submissions by July 15, 2011 it says. The white area is a 10 x 10 grid to which I affix a star (or a hello kitty sticker) every time I send a story out on submission.
Below is a manila envelope for the rejection slips. Seems practical. Don't be depressed by rejection slips. It's like being depressed by dog poop. You own the dog. You enjoy the dog. You have this bond, this friendship. It will, at some point, poop. You can't be a practical person and a dog owner if you are depressed by poop. Likewise, you can't be a practical person and a writer if you are depressed by rejection slips.
If you haven't already noticed, it's June and my chart has a lot of white spaces on it yet. There are only 15 stars (save you the trouble of counting). But I'm proud of those 15. And there will be more before July 15. Progress is progress -- progress is perseverance -- and I love my chart. I also love the square that I colored in yellow in the top row. Yellow background means the submission got published.
This chart hits several motivating factors for me: it's prominently placed so that I see it every day, it's colorful, fun, and it is interactive. If not sparkly star stickers, what motivates you to keep going?
So I don't normally post about when I make a submission to a journal or anthology -- there's all sorts of reasons why. Everything from the superstitious don't wanna jinx it to the vanity based don't wanna look stupid if I don't make it comes to mind. And I especially don't blog when a submission isn't picked up. However, this post isn't about making a submission to a market or the market's reply, it's about how damn, amazingly geeked my thirteen-year-old self is right now.
When I was about thirteen, somewhere in that seventh to ninth grade range, I read a lot of Sword and Sorceress anthologies. They were all short fantasy stories focused on heroines -- right up my alley. I particularly remember the S&S anthology with the cover at left. I'm absolutely certain that was one I owned not I borrowed from the library or theLiz.
Back then, Marion Zimmer Bradley was still editing these anthologies. After she died, the series went on a little hiatus and I lost track of it.
A year or two ago, I found out that the yearly series had been revived by Norilana Books, with Elisabeth Waters as editor. And perhaps what was even better was that I found their submission guidelines. I made a promise to my thirteen-year-old self that I would submit a story to S&S.
The month-long submission period came. And went.
I changed my promise to I'll submit ... someday.
I'm here to report that someday is today. My thirteen-year-old self would be reporting to you, except she's too busy doing a happy dance.
Of course I would love to be published in this anthology, but for the moment, the act of sending in a story is far more important. Sending in the story means that I'm now engaging a world that brought me joy as a reader.
I think I lose track of that sometimes -- we all probably lose track of that sometimes. In the race to get published, then the race to get more -- more readers, more prestigious markets, more publication credits -- it's easy to submit to markets that we've never read. Some would even claim it's necessary. But there's undoubtedly something warm and fuzzy about submitting work to a market that has, at any point in your life, brought you joy.
And in case you're like my mother and think that "on sale now" means you can go buy the issue, don't reach for your wallet just yet. The issue is free! But my story is about a mail order company -- and yes, they're running some sales.
Titled "Garbage-to-Gold Spindle! On Sale Now!" the story is a humorous bout of correspondence from a mail order catalog to one Mr. Stiltskin. At only 1,800 words, it makes for a quick read.
Actually, brevity is the name of the game for this issue of Enchanted Conversations. None of the ten pieces published in the issue are longer than 2,000 words.
Reading over the issue, I have to say that I was impressed with the poetry (which I approached with unnecessary skepticism as I've often seen folk lore meet poetry in unflattering ways). Particularly impressive was the quiet and soulful poem "Other End of the Tale" by Gerri Leen. I was also impressed by another quiet and thoughtful tale, the opening short story "Little Rattle Belly" by Mae Empson. There's even a nonfiction essay on spinning and the history of linen toward the end of the issue, "Straw Into Gold," written by Elizabeth Creith. Also enchanting was the final story of the magazine, "The Duchess's Boy," by Louise Quenneville, wherein a gnomish duchess wisely states, "I know about making bargains with humans, and they are not to be trusted to keep their end of the agreement.
Perhaps I could have titled this post simply "how to appear as a professional when you publish" and left out the distinction of self-publishing -- but presumably, if you publish with a house they are at least going to advise you on publicity if not provide you with a small amount of it.
(Not book tour publicity, but at the bare minimum all of the following information. And most likely, they'll do some of the work for you.)
One of my good friends is a theatrical publicist who likes the same kind of fiction I do. Last week, when the Amanda Hocking headlines and chatter were strong, I mentioned the situation to my publicist friend. She read the article I sent her and began scoping out "this Amanda Hocking woman."
Speaking as a publicist, my friend declared two things to me: (1) Ms. Hocking might be making a good deal of money but she's not a professional and (2) Ms. Hocking absolutely needs a publicist.
(1) Ms. Hocking might be making good money but she's not a professional. This declaration comes from the notion that one must dress for success if one wants to succeed. That to be taken seriously you must put your best foot forward: you don't show up to court in fluffy slippers or chew gum in front of the Queen. When in Rome, behave in a way that makes the Romans think more of you, not try to kill you before you get back to the Tardis.
Mixed metaphors aside, what I mean is that having a web presence is not the same as having a professional web presence.
I thought about getting into a discussion of the differences between person, personal, and persona, but I think that is another post all in itself. For the sake of this post, I'll say that your web presence should not be "you" it should be your "writer-on-the-internet persona."
With that in mind, I get to things the publicist told me:
If you're selling something (a book, a watch, your cupcakes, your skills as an actor, tiny pieces of your soul), your presence on the internet should not be just a blog. You must have a website. Should you also have a blog? That's entirely up to you. But your blog should be in your website not in place of it.
If you're working toward publication and don't have a novel to promote, then a blog is a great platform building tool. You can chat with other writers and develop connections. And someday when you have a novel to promote, you can incorporate your blog into your website.
There are many free and easy ways to create a website. Engage them. If you're selling something (as in making money from sales), upgrade to the low level package which doesn't run ads. The low-level upgrade on sites I've checked out like webs.com has a monthly rate that's about as much as a grande latte. Or at very least use wordpress to create a site that looks as little like a blog as you can make it. Unfortunately, as much as I love blogger, a blogger.com site will always look like a blog.
Your website should have separate pages for your publications, bio, press kit, and news.
Publications: where you list and link your novels. Use cover art. List and link your short stories. Use the magazine's cover art.
Biography: write it in the third person. It's a biography, not an "about me." Look at the "About the Author" in the back of your favorite book -- it's written in the third person, not the first.*
Press kit: pertinent facts and cover art for those who may be interested in reviewing, interviewing, or writing articles on you/your books.
News: not what you ate for lunch. This page should list and link all the places you've guest blogged; list and link all your favorable reviews and all reviews (favorable or not) from big venues; articles written about you/your book; places your press release has appeared; places you have or will be appearing, lecturing, signing, or teaching; and future release dates.
Don't put your direct, personal, non-professional email address on the site. "She's got her hotmail listed!" my publicist friend shrieked when she poked around Ms. Hocking's blog. "First off, it's not professional," she told me. "Second, you don't want that kind of email going into your personal account. Third, it should be going through a publicist or agent or at least your mother." Then she amended the statement further: even if you-the-author manage this account, it shouldn't be your main account and it shouldn't sound like your main account. It needs to sound professional because it's @authorname.com (not @hotmail or @gmail or @yahoo), and it should be something like contact@authorname.com or publicity@authorname.com or the like. Something that does not suggest OMG we can be bffs if you stalk me and send me a :) email after you finish each chapter of my book and an lol mssg after each of my #CharlieSheenIsAnAss tweets!
(2) Ms. Hocking absolutely needs a publicist.
Lastly, hire a real publicist. No, don't run out and do it now. But if you find yourself in the prized position of having local and national news media interviewing you and reporting on your success, or if you find yourself getting nominated for national awards, then don't try to do it all yourself.
A publicist is not like a personal assistant; she takes on many clients at once so you don't have to have oodles of work for her to do all the time. But for a media blitz, she's worth having around.
Ms. Hocking posted last week that she had spent several days doing nothing but answer emails, and it frustrated her because it was taking time away from her writing. Hopefully that made her see that she needs to hire help (at least temporarily) to deal with her sudden fame.
A real publicist would advise her on all of the above and more. A real publicist would weed through the emails. A real publicist would provide someone for the press to contact instead of contacting the author directly and having honest-to-god interview requests getting mixed in with fan/stalker/plz-tell-me-the-secret-of-your-success emails and ignored for lord knows how long. Most importantly, a real publicist would take care of publicity and let the writer have time to write.
*Where a bio should be written in the third person, I've been assured that a blog's "about me" should be in the first person. Your choice between the two depends on what persona you want to bring to the table, a professional writer with published novels, or a personable blogger writing about her journey.
There's been a lot of internet chatter about Amanda Hocking and her self-publishing escapades this week. USA Today, The Huffington Post, Business Inisder, and her local NBC news affiliate gave her some air time (see video, though the first 30 seconds is just the anchors talking about wtf a Nook is).
"Rejected by countless book publishers" seems like a subjective phrase which *might* have just been blown out of proportion. Ms. Hocking got fed up with the system at age twenty-five. She submitted each subsequent novel she wrote to fewer and fewer agents (as per admission of her own blog).
Most agents will tell you that it's often not the first book you write that's the first book you sell. In Ms. Hocking's defense, she claims to have written 19 novels, many as a teenager. Now, no offense, but I remember what I wrote as a teenager and I teach teenagers writing and that teenage writing has about as much chance of making it with a publisher as I do of winning the lottery on any given day. Eragon = lotto winner.
Also agents (and successful traditionally published authors) point out that most writers do rounds and rounds of queries--sending out ten queries a week for months--before they find the right fit for a successful agent-novel-author experience. It's about finding an agent who is passionate enough about your book to want to sell it as much as you do, not finding someone to schlep paper for you.
Anyway, I bring this all up because I have my doubts about how the news media is portraying her "perseverance." But that's just me.
But it turns out she didn't need to persevere or gain a sound understanding of the publishing industry. She'd already done "market research" by browsing the Wal-Mart book rack (Ididn't make that up), she wrote YA paranormal because she it was what she saw the most of. She knew it was hot, so she stuck it up on Amazon, B&N, and several other epub platforms and made it available POD through Amazon's Lulu. Less than a year later she's self-published eight novels and one novella out and, according to her blog, sold over 900,000 units. Priced at $0.99 or $2.99, Ms. Hocking makes 30% or 70% of that as profit, respectively. According to her local news station, she's made enough to buy a house in cash.
Ms. Hocking is twenty-six and impatient. IMHO.
I don't mean to misrepresent her. It appears that she already feels enough of the internet is doing that. So I won't take some of the pot shots that I could. But I'm the kind of person who believes in the strength of patience, perseverance, and education. Formal education is helpful, but education is out there in thousands of different forms, you only have to ask for and accept it. Reading agent blogs daily is a form of education. Researching publishing is a form of education, learning grammar and style is a form of education. Knowing you need a good copyeditor is a form of education. Learning about things like book bloggers before you jump into the world of epublishing is a form of education. Reading books on craft, being part of a workshop, finding a critique partner, subscribing to publishers marketplace, reading in your genre, reading out of your genre -- these are all forms of education, patience, and (if you keep writing with all you're learning) perseverance. A classroom with a teacher in it isn't necessary to learn.
I'm twenty-seven, only one year older than Ms. Hocking, and I think that if there had been an easy way for me to throw my work into the sales arena when I was twenty-two, I might have done it. But I'm not that impatient now. And I shudder to think of my work when I was twenty-two given all I've learned in the interim.
Ms. Hocking also writes on a recent blog (to clear up things "the internet is saying ... about me"), that she feels a "tremendous sense of urgency, like if I don't get everything out now and do everything now, while the iron is hot, everything I've worked for will just fall away." This also leads to the feeling I get from looking at all of the facts (those presented by her in interviews and those presented on her blog) that her ebook sale boom is the result of impatience.
The SF/F/H writer list serve I'm on is in a tizzy contemplating the viability of the e-publishing-- the phrase "future of publishing" has been bandied about so much that it's ceased to hold meaning for me. Those who seem the most interested are people who are writing "between genres" or in not easily defined areas of the market who don't feel the traditional publishing market is open to them. Meanwhile the listserve's many voices are not really paying mind to the fact that Hocking is writing in a market that's not just hot, it's hott: YA paranormal romance.
Ms. Hocking's first novel has a good concept, but its market niche is one that is begging for content. My local Barns & Nobel has devoted an entire shelving section to "Teen Paranormal" -- more space than "Christian Fiction" gets . . . and on the conservative west side of Michigan, that means something. This is the one genre where publishers can't put out enough material to meet the demand.
Believing that you can epublish in a different genre and take off the same way is a mistake. IMHO. What sells and what doesn't is always hit or miss. No one knows what the next big seller is going to be. But let me present a case to back up my opinion.
Consider this: as much as I am a part of the cult of Firefly, I knew the moment I saw the first episode why it had only lasted one season (obvi, I was watching on Netflix). A space western could have been one of those things that exploited the interstices of genre and boomed, but it exploited the interstices of two declining genres -- dying genres, if we're going to be morose. The space opera and the western haven't been doing well in print or on screen. Speculative fiction has been there, but all you need to do is look at the declining number of episodes each new cast/crew of Star Trek made to see the writing on the wall.
So just because the internet is a way to publish in a declining genre without the editors fearing the decline, doesn't mean success will come your way. There's a guy out there trying to raise $3,000,000 to get Firefly back on the air (or air on the internet). Will his internet grass roots movement catch fire? Grass fire? Prairie fire? He wants people to pledge $40 per season to see the show online. Maybe he'll make his goal. Maybe he won't. But he's got one giant plus on his side: people have already seen the show. It's been on air, on TV, on Netflix, and in traditional theaters (Serenity). This "unproducible" TV show was produced -- your "unpublishable" novel hasn't been published.
The point I'm making: could this Amanda-Hocking-success-story happen for a writer not working in Teen Paranormal? Yes. Would I bet on it? No, I'd bet against it. And I'd make a big wager.
What I do see as worthwhile, competent epublishing ventures or --go forth and epublish now:
Authors publishing their out of print backlist (or like JA Konrath, publishing the backlist and then writing more books in the same series and epubbing them)
Authors publishing short story collections of work previously published by magazines or anthologies (Chuck Wendig).
It's very, very, very hard to convince a publisher to lose money on your short story collection -- because "short story collection" to a publisher is a bit like taking a lighter to money just to watch it burn. The publishers who do pub short story collections do so because they are dedicated to art -- and usually have dedicated grant money. But if you can say look at my short stories published in magazines X, Y, and Z, now collected in one place for a low low price then hey, maybe I'll buy that. Literally.
I'll post Monday on the how to be a professional and a self-epublished author information a publicist recently gave me after a discussion of the above news articles and blog posts. It was all good information that I was going to put here, but this post has gone on far too long.
Realms of Fantasy Magazine has once again been saved from the brink of destruction. (My previous post on the subject here.) This is beginning to feel a bit like one of those Bugs Bunny spoofs of Hamlet where he's dead, then he's back to deliver more instructions, then he's dying again, then there's more speech to be made, then he's really dead ... except he has one last line to deliver.
Good news ElizabethTwist! That subscription you ordered won't be canceled! They're switching owners without a break in production. Although you can still get the December issue free as a PDF off their website.
I was recently reading the introductory material in a Best of anthology that spoke of Realms as one of the "big four" fantasy magazine. This was a new distinction for me but I can see where they're coming from. The "big three" of speculative writing are Analog, Asimov's, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. But Analog and Asimovs slant toward sci-fi, though they do occasionally publish things I would consider fantasy. So if you want to look at the top fantasy magazines, you really need to broaden out to Realms which might publish science fantasy but not science fiction.
The fiction fantasy magazine Realms of Fantasy announced that they are closing for a second, and probably final time. A few years ago, the struggling magazine announced it was shutting down only to be bought by another publisher who hoped to turn the magazine around. They only missed one issue -- which says a lot about the character and dedication of their editorial staff. But Realms, a full-sized glossy magazine with interior illustrations as well as cover artwork, needed to change drastically if it was to keep going in a recession, and sadly, Realms changed only slightly.
You can read the publisher's farewell, the editor's farewell, and the farewell from the founder and fiction editor, all online at rofmag.com
by Arthur C. Clarke for the first time ever -- and I'm loving it! (no spoilers, plz! I still have another 100 pages to go) Clarke has such great, simple prose. As a writer, I'm totally in love with his style! That's not to say his sentences are all short, blunt, and uncomplicated. Not at all. The sentences themselves are often complicated in construction, and the man knew how to use a semicolon. But they stay clean and unadorned with poetic quirks that could trip up the reader, especially as Clarke is describing some mentally complicated situations such as explaining all the different ways of orienting and reorienting one's sense of "down" in a low gravity situation. That sort of imagining and reimagining of space had me thinking that this narrative would make a great film using today's technology and a sense of space and inversion akin to that we saw in 
. And lo and behold! IMDB.com says there's a Rendezvous with Rama film 
anthologies. They were all short fantasy stories focused on heroines -- right up my alley. I particularly remember the S&S anthology with the cover at left. I'm absolutely certain that was one I owned not I borrowed from the library or 
