Monthly Archives: May 2009

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It’s a sad, disheartening thing to realize that some of the people you admire are fakes.  FYI, I’m not naming names, I’m not giving hints, I’m not taking stabs at anybody.  This is just something that has been bugging me for a while and I decided to blog about it.

I’ve made some really good friends since I started writing.  Some are great friends.  I’ve got a handful of very close friends, and more than half of them I know from online…a couple are readers, and a couple are writers.  These are the sort of friends you know you can always count on, the kind of friends who will love you even when you’re being an ass…and they have no problem telling you that you’re being an ass.

Some people that I’d previously admired have just risen higher on my personal ladder-Nora Roberts, for one.  SL Viehl/Lynn Viehl, for another.   I’ve always loved their writing and since I started spending time on line and seeing them online, well, it went from adoring their writing to respecting the hell out of them.

But there’s a flipside.

People who I thought were friends really aren’t. People who are out to use anybody and everybody to their fullest and then when they are done, you cease to exist.  And they are good at it.  I’ve got a pretty decent bullshit meter and while I can usually recognize a user from a mile off, there are a few that slid under and that both irritates and saddens me.  I don’t always spend a lot of time investing in a friendship-I can be very much a loner and when I do spend the time on a friendship and then later learn that while I was developing a friendship, they were just being a leech…well, it just really sucks.

Writers I use to love to read, I just can’t read anymore because I’ve seen too much asinine behavior from them.  I’ve heard them knocking down fellow writers, mocking others, showing the most ridiculous petty jealousy.

There are writers who present this ‘persona’ to the world and they get so involved in it, they expect everybody to just go along with it.  Up front and honest, when I’m online, whether here, on myspace, facebook, in a yahoo group or at another’s blog, I’m ‘on’ so to speak.  I’m wearing my professional hat and I’m going to do my best to act like a professional.  I try to maintain that professional demeanor but that doesn’t mean that I’m being a fake.  I’m me…just the professional me.    I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not, I don’t make myself seem other than what I am.

I don’t like it when others pretend to be something they aren’t. I’ve made the acquaintance with some who aren’t ‘on’.  They are acting.  They’ve created this whole new persona to present and it’s not really them.

I don’t like fakes.  I don’t like users.  I don’t like petty jealousy.

I’m discovering there is no writer eutopia.  Damn it.

edited to add…the conversation in comments went a little off track.  Nothing wrong with that, but I suspect it could easily become heated and since I work to keep things friendly here, I’m shutting it down before it happens.  Sorry, folks!

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Jane over at Dear Author had a great post up about online promotional don’ts.

She hit most of my major pet peeves like…

4. Don’t have a blog with a bunch of flash. No matter how cool you think it looks, it’s a good bet that at least half your existing or potential readership will be annoyed and click away.

Now I’m not sure if she’s talking flash like a website with flash installed, or just a lot of sparkly, shiny, animated junk.  But I hate both.  I don’t like flash websites.  And I abhor cluttered looking websites.  All those animations or bright colors or sparkly font may look pretty to some authors are actually just annoying.  Some may well love it, but you stand a big risk of losing half your potential visitors within the first five seconds.  I spend way too much time looking at a screen and I like the websites I visit to be uncluttered and simple.  That doesn’t mean you can have a pretty website, but flashy doesn’t mean pretty.  Flashy usually just means annoying, IMO.

8. Don’t ever type a comment or blog post while angry.  Step away, call a friend, eat an entire pie.

Oh, man, I can’t second that one enough.  There have been times when I’ll have a comment, but I’ll wait until two hours later to say it just because I’m so frustrated and I know better than to do anything until I’ve cooled off.  No matter what the topic is, when you’re angry, it’s too easy to lose objectivity and when you lose objectivity, it’s very, very easy to end up looking like an ass, even if you’re not in the wrong.

9. Don’t spam readers. Authors are on facebook, twitter, goodreads, librarything, and every other social network on the internet but the readers on these places are there to interact and not to be spammed.

Don’t spam authors, either!  I swear, there are days when I get invited to ‘fan’ ten different authors on facebook…by the author themselves.  Use your status update if you want to let people know about your author page.  It’s so much easier, and it requires no action on my part unless I decide to ‘fan’ the author.   And egads…do not post on an author’s blog/guestbook/facebook/myspace page just to promo your own work.  It’s rude.

10. Don’t be fake. In other words, don’t try to adopt a persona that you are not. Readers flock to authenticity and turn away from facades. Unless it is a damn good facade.

I don’t even want to get into this one here, because I plan on blogging about it later. 

Some commentors also hit on things like sig lines and music on websites.  I hate music on websites.  I hate long sig lines.  So I don’t use music.  I don’t mess with long sig lines in my email… because if it annoys me from somebody else, it’s going to annoy people when I do it.

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So the question came up again.

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How do I go about getting published?

And I gave the same answer…which was a nonanswer to them, probably.  There is no simple answer to that question.  Talk to ten different published writers and they are likely to give you ten different stories about how they got published.  We all take a different route.  Some of us will have some things in common… Jaci Burton, Lora Leigh and I all started out with epublishing and it was right around the time erotic romance was getting noticed by New York.   For me, it made getting into New York easier-I got an offer for a novella, which helped me get my foot in the door and from there, I found an agent.

Before I sold with Ellora’s Cave, I’d submitted a few category-type romances to Harlequin and received a couple of rejections.  I’d queried one agent. I didn’t join RWA until a year after I’d started writing for Ellora’s Cave and other than the one query, I didn’t bother looking for an agent until the chance to write a novella for Berkley came along.

But somebody else will tell a completely different story.

I really wish I could say there’s some time-proven, well-known road to getting published, but there just isn’t.

There’s a lot of luck involved-getting your book in front of the right editor at the right time.  I had one story get passed over by pretty much every editor-there was only one editor left and she was the one who loved it and offered me a contract.  The very last editor.  I got into erotic romance just before it really took off and that helped me get established and build a reader base and without that reader base, I probably wouldn’t have caught the attention of the editor at Berkley who offered me a contract for a novella.

Luck & timing…they play a huge part in this business.  Books that are selling now wouldn’t have likely sold ten years ago.  What’s sold ten years from now may be something that wouldn’t sell right now for love or money.

There is no clear cut path. In my opinion, it’s a lot like making your way through a dark, unfamiliar room…you just stumble along as you go and wait for the timing and the luck factor to kick in.

One of the best things I can recommend to those looking to get published is just to immerse yourself in the industry in general.   Some useful industry blogs I like:

• Lynn Viehl/SL Viehl aka PBW
• Nathan Bransford
• The My First Sale posts at Dear Author

The best advice I can offer personally

• Keep writing.
  
• Don’t look for a quick and easy route to getting published-there isn’t one.
• Be prepared…because selling the first book isn’t the hardest part.  It’s selling the next one, and the next one, and the next one…and writing the next one, and the next one, and the next one…