The Business of Writing: Being a Professional Writer #ASMSG #IARTG #MFRWOrg

Author Nikki Tysoe from London, UK
(c)2008 by Alan Moore, Wikimedia Commons.

Although the concept of the "lonely writer's garret" still carries a certain romantic flair, once a writer has transitioned into preparing to make money off his or her words, he or she becomes a professional writer. 

But what does that mean, exactly?

Writers being creative beings, this can mean a number of different things in terms of personal appearance, behavior, and habits. For the writer who wishes to be perceived as a professional, these aspects center upon various demonstrations of common courtesy... the exercise of which seems to be eroding in this day and age of Internet anonymity.

Yep, I have my "Mom hat" on again. Feel fortunate that I'm not into taking selfies, or you'd be treated to my "hairy eyeball" look too! :D

Branding.
I can't say it any better than Nikki Woods did in this article published 8/4/15.

Correspondence.
As a professional writer, you should always remain mindful of how you come across to your audience, not only in your books or articles but in everyday correspondence tasks. This applies (but is not limited) to email and "earthmail" interactions with:

• Literary agents, editors, cover and interior-layout designers, promotional companies, accountants, and other service personnel, prospective as well as contracted.
• Booksellers and other event organizers, both before the event as well as giving thanks afterward. In fact, expressing appreciation can be the fastest way to a return invitation.
• Book bloggers and other reviewers, when asking for reviews as well as optionally expressing thanks for a helpful review; and never engage a reviewer if you are in any way dissatisfied with the review. I already covered that advice in this blog post, but IMO it cannot be emphasized enough. (Insert "hairy eyeball" selfie. Again.)
• Your fans—and this goes double for anything written online, even in "private" messages. Since any site can be hacked or otherwise monitored, the best policy is to presume that nothing is truly private, and structure your interactions accordingly.
• Anyone with whom you need to send followup correspondence.
• Can you think of any sector I have missed? Please leave a comment letting me know which ones! :)

Deadlines.
Now there's a loaded word! For journalists, deadlines are usually perceived as just a means of structuring one's workday. For everyone else, especially those of us who write book-length fiction or nonfiction, adhering to content delivery deadlines that are established by another party such as a publisher can be problematical at best. And yet delivering a completed manuscript on time will set you apart from the madding crowd of authors who play fast-and-loose with their time—and with their editor's or publisher's patience.

Public appearances offer a slew of opportunities to present yourself as a professional writer.

• Online. I have already covered fan interactions; here I refer to things such as the random tweets, retweets, pictures, videos, and status updates that you choose to share to your sundry social media platforms. As you decide upon your online persona, make sure that it jives with what you write, for that persona will become a part of your author brand. And then tweet/retweet/share accordingly. For example, if you write Christian fiction, I would advise against saying anything in a tweet that you wouldn't say in church!
• Book vending & signings at bookstores and conferences. Your in-person persona should also jive—or at least not conflict with what you write. On the other hand, if you write about serial killers, I strongly suggest that you do not act like one in public! (Unless it's a PR stunt for your book promotion, but still, I'd think twice about using that tactic. :D) You can get a lot of mileage from being courteous, respectful, and appreciative of customers, non-customers, and event hosts alike, regardless of what type of books you write.
• Writers' conferences. If you're a member of the Romance Writers of America, I don't need to tell you how to present yourself as a professional in this type of venue. You know already—or you should. Although I haven't attended a RWA National convention since 2011, I can pretty much imagine what 2015's looked like: out of 2,000 attendees, 1,942 were power-suited women (whether publishers, editors, agents, or authors), 55 were similarly attired men, and the remaining three were newbie women authors who didn't receive the dress code memo, showed up in blue jeans, and missed the entire first day of panels shopping for an emergency power suit and accessories. Okay, I jest... but barely.
  
  The dress-code memos will, of course, vary by genre. At a typical World Fantasy Convention you'll see no shortage of suits, but very few of those will be draped over authors, who sport pretty much whatever tickles their fancy, short of character costumes. Although come to think of it, I haven't attended a WFC since the debut of the first edition of Dawnflight in 1999, so you tell me if character costumes are in vogue at these non-fan cons now!
  
• The grocery store. The what? Yes, there is always the possibility that you could be recognized in a chance public encounter, so your appearance and behavior choices matter there too.

As I always told my kids as they were growing up, no one will ever fault you for being polite, gracious, appreciative, respectful, and kind. And the people you impress with your professionalism may just remember those choices and become extra supportive of you and your work!

***

All this month, you are invited to...
— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Add Kim to Google+
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter and/or YouTube follow
...and each action this month is good for one chance to win an e-book copy of Snow in July. Please enter often, and good luck!

#RockingSummerRomance spotlight on Bootleg Broadway by @DianaLRubino prohibition

Booze, music, sex, murder, Prohibition... New York... What a time to be alive!

So reads the tagline of BOOTLEG BROADWAY by Diana Rubino, and it looks to be a most intriguing read. I shall let you decide for yourself! 

In this sequel to FROM HERE TO 14TH STREET, Vita and Tom McGlory and their three children are struggling to make ends meet.

It's 1932. Prohibition rages, the Depression ravages, and Billy McGlory comes of age whether he wants to or not. Musical and adventurous, Billy dreams of having his own ritzy supper club and big band. On the eve of his marriage to the pregnant Prudence, the shifty "businessman" Rosario Ingovito offers him all that and more. Fame, fortune, his own Broadway musical…it's all his for the taking, despite Pru's opposition to Rosie's ventures.

Meanwhile, Pru's artistic career gains momentum and their child is born. Can anything go wrong for Billy? Only when he gets in way over his head does he stop to wonder how his business partner really makes his millions, but by then it's far too late…

Diana talks about the birth of Bootleg Broadway:

With FROM HERE TO 14TH STREET set in 1894, I needed to set this a generation later, which happened to be the 1930s—with Prohibition and the Great Depression as the backdrop. This is the first book I ever wrote where I created the characters first, with nothing to do yet. The plot developed the way it did because of who they are. My goal was to get Billy into one mess after another. This era couldn’t have been more suited to Billy’s adventures, a few of which he barely escaped with his life.

Nicknames from real life:
As in FROM HERE TO 14th STREET, a lot of characters have nicknames like Piggy Balls and Dirty Neck Bruiso. I sat around the table with my surviving aunts and uncles who were then in their 80s and 90s, and they rattled off these nicknames from ‘the old days’ in Jersey City like they made them up yesterday. That was a standard Italian neighborhood custom, everybody had a nickname. Some were more descriptive than others. But you didn’t just ‘get’ a nickname. You had to earn it.

Diana's favorite passage from BOOTLEG BROADWAY:

Pru had kept closemouthed all day about what she was giving him, although he badgered and hounded her, but she wouldn’t give in.

As Ma began divvying up the rum cake, the doorbell rang, and Da came back with a long box. “This thing’s heavy. What’s in here, Pru? Billy’s tombstone?”

Billy cut the ribbon with the cake knife and slid the lid off. Wads of tissue paper filled the box. As he removed the last layer of covering and revealed what was inside, they all gasped—a sculpture of a naked man, in all his masculine glory—and fully aroused. He had one hand on his hip and one foot upon a pedestal on which was inscribed in bold letters, “BILLY.”

“Oh, crap.” His face turned red hot.

Diana says:

This was the first book I ever wrote where I created the characters first, with no storyline whatsoever. All I knew was that it was during Prohibition, and I wanted to get the main character, Billy McGlory, into one mess after another.

Here’s a prime example of that, in this excerpt:

Heading south on Madison Avenue, I heard the siren. I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the unmistakable Greyhound radiator ornament of the Lincoln behind me. Cop car. All the gangsters drove Lincolns, which had a top speed of 80, so the cops had to get Lincolns to keep up with them. I tried to get the hell out of his way—he must've been going to a robbery or a diner or something. I pulled over, and he pulled up next to me. Oh, shit. It was me he was after.

I rolled down the window and asked sweetly, "Yes, sir, what can I do for you, sir?"

"License and registration please."

"Uh—what's wrong, officer? Did I commit a traffic violation?" As the son of the ex-Chief of Police, I should have been real comfortable around cops, but to tell the truth, they scared the hell out of me. The cops my father knew weren't the crooked ones. They were the straightassed ones, just like him, who fought Tammany and made a career out of busting crooks. They didn't have a price, like the rest of them. Hardnosed bastards, some were frustrated politicians and not smart enough to get into law school, so they enforced the laws from behind their badges. Hell, I was all for law and order, but these guys sometimes took it too far. "Your back license plate is missing."

Relief drained me. "Oh, drat. It must've got stolen. You know this city—just crawlin' with thieves."

"License and registration, please," he repeated, in what passed for a more menacing cop voice. Now he assumed his cop stance, pudgy fists on meaty hips, waiting while I dug through the glove compartment, tossing aside all the crumpled up sheet music and junk crammed in there. Oh, that's where my emergency pack of cigarettes was, and that old box of prophylactics! But damned if I couldn't find the registration.

"Uh—I can't find it, but it's my car, honest. I mean, it was a gift to me, but it's been paid for, it's not stolen or anything. I can probably find it in my penthouse. You wanna follow me there? It's only two blocks aw—"

"Step out of the car, please."

Uh-oh. I felt my bowels burning. I had two briefcases bulging with two shitloads of money in the back seat.

He poked his head into the car. "What's in the briefcases?"

"Uh—I dunno. I'm doing an errand for somebody."

"Yeah, I'll bet you dunno. Step aside, please."

"Hey, you got a search warrant?" I demanded.

But demanding a search warrant from a New York City cop was like demanding a shot of Scotch from Satan in the middle of Hell.

I didn't want to look. I turned my head and flattened my palms on the roof of the car, like I was being searched. I heard the clicks as he sprang the latches and his not-so-surprised "mm-hmmm" as he checked out the contents.

"Who you doing this errand for, sonny boy?"

What was with the "sonny boy"? He wasn't much older than me. I knew he just wanted to put me down. Screw that. I've been called a lot worse by much better cops than him. He obviously didn't know who I was. "Uh—I'd better get a lawyer or something."

"You'd better come with me."

"Look, uh—you wanna just take a few bills outta there and forget it?” I asked, real generously. “I mean, uh—we're all in this mess together, ya know—"

"Bribing an officer of the law is a very serious offense, sonny boy. You'll have to come with me. Park your car there, please."

"Here? But there's a hydrant here. I'll get a ticket."

Purchase BOOTLEG BROADWAY:

The Wild Rose Press | Kindle | Amazon Paperback | Nook | iTunes

***

All this month, you are invited to...
— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Add Kim to Google+
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter and/or YouTube follow
...and each action this month is good for one chance to win an e-book copy of Snow in July. Please enter often, and good luck!

DAWNFLIGHT's 50th Amazon Review! #ASMSG #IARTG #MFRWOrg #BZBooks #BYNR

Okay, so 50 reviews on a single platform for one book might not seem like a big deal for anyone who has seen (or has been fortunate enough to write) books with reviews numbering in the thousands, but I am very proud of the fact that these are fifty honestly obtained reviews.

And by "honestly" I mean that no arms were twisted (at least, not too strenuously :D), no reviews were swapped, and no reviewers were paid any remuneration other than receiving a free copy of the e-book.

This could explain why it took nearly sixteen years—yes, years—to log 50 reviews for my award-winning debut novel, but such is life in the publishing biz!

Oh, and what does reviewer #50, Sara S., say about Dawnflight?

5* Awesome Arthurian romance

Love this! Great characters. Very hard to put down. I want more.

Good news, Sara, there is more!

In The Dragon's Dove Chronicles, of which Dawnflight is the first installment, we have:

• Morning's Journey (book 2) which picks up the morning after Dawnflight leaves off
• The Challenge, a stand-alone novella that takes place about ten years after Morning's Journey
• And, if you would prefer to try before you buy (though at 99 cents, it's nigh impossible to go wrong on any of my titles :), there is my perma-free (in the US) stand-alone novella excerpted from Morning's Journey titled The Color of Vengeance.
• Book 3, Raging Sea, is still a work-in-progress, and its most recent excerpt may be read on this blog post. I hope to have it available for sale by the end of the year.
• Full-length books 4-8 also exist in various stages of completion, and I may elect to publish other novellas set in this world as well. Stay tuned!

Other novels in my corpus include:

• Liberty, winner of the 2015 BooksGoSocial Best Book award, a historical romance featuring a female gladiator and her impossible love for the son of the Roman governor of Britain
• Snow in July, a paranormal romance set in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings
• King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court by Mark Twain as channeled by Kim Iverson Headlee, my sequel to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, a science fiction/fantasy futuristic time-travel comedic political satire

Thank you for stopping by today, and I hope you've found something to pique your interest. Perhaps you can be my 50th reviewer for another of my titles! If you review books on your blog and you're interested in having a go at one or more of my books, the following review tours still have openings:

• Liberty (Aug. 24 only), sign up by leaving a comment on this page. Yes, I understand this is late notice but I figure the mention couldn't hurt!
• Dawnflight (Sept. 14 for sure, possibly another spot Sept. 28), sign up page is this one.
• The Challenge 3-Day Release Blast (Sept. 16-18); sign-up sheet TBA.
• Morning's Journey (Oct. 12, Oct. 26), sign up by leaving a comment here.
• King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court (Nov. 16, Nov. 30), sign up on this page.

***

All this month, you are invited to...
— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Add Kim to Google+
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter and/or YouTube follow
...and each action this month is good for one chance to win an e-book copy of Snow in July. Please enter often, and good luck!

Dog Days with The Dawnflier (August 2015) #MFRWOrg #ASMSG #IARTG

(c)2015 by Kim Headlee.

I don't often remember to photograph my booth setup, but this time I wanted to make sure I did, since I was graciously given permission—and equipment—to display two of my antique quilts at the 2015 Patchwork Quilters Jamboree. 

The quilt on the left is a twin-size hexagonal pattern I plan to give to my daughter after she finishes college. Its colorful top was one of the last assembled by my husband's grandmother, who died in 1965, and I squared it off, added the backing, and quilted it with individual French knots made of multicolored yarn. On the right is a quilt top that's perhaps twenty years older, composed entirely of feed sack fabric, which I backed with solid cotton and turned into a patio curtain.

In spite of the presence of numerous industrial fans, as well as a smaller unit that the event organizers encouraged me to bring for my booth, I felt the Dog Days quite keenly that weekend!

With August comes the return to the classroom for my husband the high school math teacher, as well as our daughter. In fact we help her move back into her apartment in a couple of weeks. Once that emotional dust settles—and I get the house back to myself!—I look forward to returning to a much more productive writing schedule.

My next scheduled public appearance is Saturday, August 29 at Celebrate the Arts, Main Street, Tazewell, VA. In the meantime, I invite you to check out my latest release that's set in the realm of The Dragon's Dove Chronicles titled The Challenge. Also, the review tour for Liberty will be starting soon; stay tuned! And thank you very much if you are one of the bloggers who has agreed to host Liberty or any of my other books. :)

It's really too hot to write any more today, so keep cool and keep reading!

***

All this month, you are invited to...
— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Add Kim to Google+
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter and/or YouTube follow
...and each action this month is good for one chance to win an e-book copy of Snow in July. Please enter often, and good luck!

Cover reveal: Time to Love by Angela Ford @AngelaFord67 #timetravel romance

The Business of Writing: Professional Editing #indiepublishing #ASMSG #IARTG

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge ca 1920,
US public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

You can slap together a collection of words, dash off a DIY cover, upload it all to Amazon, and call yourself a writer. You might even make some money doing so, and good for you if that happens to be the case. 

Being a professional writer, however, entails ever so much more than the technical definition of earning money for one's efforts implies. 

One of the biggest complaints I hear—and see—with books written by independent authors is the sheer volume of grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. In fact I would go as far as to say that poor editing is a leading contributor toward the subpar reputation of indie books as a whole. 

Mistakes will catapult a reader out of a story faster than you can... think. And if you believe your readers won't notice or care about poor editing, then I respectfully suggest that you are underestimating—and alienating—a large sector of your audience.
 
That's not a risk that I'm willing to take with my own fiction, and I hope you agree.

To be fair, books churned out by the Big Six (or Five, or whatever the ever-collapsing count du jour) publishers often contain glaring errors too. The first edition of my novel Liberty, published by HQN Books in 2006, had sections of missing and repeated pages in three different combinations (!!), which proved to be a nightmare for me when trying assemble good copies for personal appearances. That wasn't an editing issue, of course, but it's a graphic illustration of my point that mistakes do happen at even the highest levels of the publishing business.

The bottom line is that authors who are contracted by large publishing houses already enjoy a level of respectability that's built in to the system. The rest of us must do our level best to achieve respectability on our own, and the first step toward that goal is to hire a good quality professional editor, and perhaps even two: one for content editing and one for copy editing.

My primary editor is Deb Taber, and I simply cannot say enough good things about her work. She is the consummate professional, she knows the English language inside and out (and, with regard to my projects, sideways :D), and she offers encouragement along with suggestions for improvement. I get nothing for mentioning her here other than the satisfaction of knowing that you will receive the highest quality feedback if you choose to hire her to edit your work.

Someone else whom I commend to your attention is Robin Allen of Griffin Editorial Services. I have known her for going on 15 years now, and all the copy editing work she has ever done for me has been absolutely top notch. Again, I get nothing for the mention other than knowing that you will be as delighted with her editing work as I have been.

You say you cannot afford to hire a good editor? I say you cannot afford NOT to.

Budget for it, or set up a crowdfunding campaign if you must, but please do not be tempted by those who claim that you can successfully edit your own work. The fact is that the human brain is wired to see what it expects to see, thereby making it impossible to remain objective where the editorial process is concerned. 

I implore you to help halt the downward spiral in perception of the quality of indie writers' works by hiring professional help to make your work be the absolute best product that it can be.

***

All this month, you are invited to...
— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Add Kim to Google+
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter and/or YouTube follow
...and each action this month is good for one chance to win an e-book copy of Snow in July. Please enter often, and good luck!

#RockinSummerRomance Spotlight on Lori's Redemption by Pamela Thibodeaux @psthib

Add more fire to your summer with this short-story spinoff of Tempered Fire by Pamela Thibodeaux, Lori's Redemption!

Synopsis:
Lori Strickland (introduced in Tempered Fire) has always been known as her father's "wild child" with no desire to change until she meets ex-bull-rider-turned-preacher Rafe Judson. Her attempts to change her wanton ways come to naught until she realizes redemption only comes with true repentance.

Excerpt:

Lori headed toward Recluse, Wyoming after another round of rodeos where the cash and prizes vaulted her to the next level of achievement. She hadn’t thought of Rafe in months. Hadn’t allowed herself to think of him, and wouldn’t indulge in useless fantasies now.

She’d made peace with the fact she was nothing more than a bad seed and there was no way around it. Oh she tried to be good. She stayed out of the bars for weeks on end, attended the prayer services before or after each rodeo when available, even visited with a group of supposedly devout believers who traveled a state-wide circuit within the national itinerary, but nothing seemed to help or make an impact on her life. Nor had she found the support she’d hoped, only judgment and criticism. Answers to her questions only incited debates until she was scorned for her doubt and unbelief or shunned completely. Maverick was right when he said there was no in between and since she couldn’t succeed at being good, Lori figured she’d be bad.    

Just as she had all of her life.

More than once she thought about calling Stanley or Amber or even Lexie for counsel, but was too ashamed to admit the total mess her life was in. She even considered quitting. Just give up and go home. But she was too close to making pro status, too close to the culmination of the dream that began in her heart nearly four years ago.   

A dream she once thought came as a directive from God.

Now, she knew better.

God didn’t give success to losers; the devil lured them into it then left them to their own devices no matter how hard they tried to be good. Besides, even at her best, there was no way she’d ever be good enough for a preacher.

Purchase links:
Kindle | Nook | Smashwords | Deeper Shopping |

About the Author:
Award-winning author, Pamela S. Thibodeaux is the Co-Founder and a lifetime member of Bayou Writers Group in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Multi-published in romantic fiction as well as creative non-fiction, her writing has been tagged as, “Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ and reviewed as “steamier and grittier than the typical Christian novel without decreasing the message.”

Find Pamela at:Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter @psthib

***

To learn about Sir Robert Alain de Bellencombre, hero of Snow in July, and Kim's unique challenges in writing about him, please visit the RLF Blog. (And help her earn "Top Blogger" points there, thanks! :)

***
Enter this great Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 gift card!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
 

***

All this month, you are invited to...
— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Add Kim to Google+
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter and/or YouTube follow
...and each action this month is good for one chance to win an e-book copy of Snow in July. Please enter often, and good luck!