Old Friends

Over the years I've had the great privilege to make acquaintance with some spectacular writers. One of my old favorites is Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series. I had an email from Bob the other day with an update on what Baby Shark and the rest of her motley crew are up to, and he asked me to share the news with all of you:

GOING DIGITAL AND GETTING THERE
Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series

It was sad news when Capital Crime Press, my honest, hard working publisher, decided to throw in the towel, but more than that, it was scary. How about the agreements with the distributors? Where were readers, bookstores, and libraries going to find my books? And what made it the scariest was how fast change was happening all around me. How could I be surprised, though, with major bookstores going belly up and taking their WiFi and coffee bars with them? Larger publishers than mine were calling it quits; eStuff was replacing dead tree stuff so fast it just felt rude. Okay, maybe books must go, but why not with a little more dignity? Nope, no time for that––the future had arrived.

The truth is, I wanted to go all Pollyanna and believe that things would take care of themselves, after all, folks weren’t going to stop reading books––were they? So I let a little time slip by before reading some altruistic Joe Konrath rants and seeing the light. Joe has a way of throwing that switch. No more dragging my feet, I had to go digital.

For me, going digital meant penning 2nd editions of the first four Baby Sharks and releasing them on Kindle. This was the beginning of the “process” part of leaving one world and entering the next.

Okay––making the books available for Kindle readers was step one. But how about all those folks who like holding a “real” book in their hands? After all the badmouth that has been given Print On Demand (POD) by the traditional publishing guys (to serve their own purposes, I fear), I was happily surprised to learn that POD books look EXACTLY the same as the book traditional publishers print. Hooray! That meant all readers would be served.

So, new covers for the PODs would need to be arranged, as well as some other details, since I was now the publisher, but it was all within reach. I think it is fair to say that Amazon (Kindle) makes it easy to self-publish, but that’s relative. If you want to go this route, be prepared to exert some effort. It ain’t rocket science, but there are many niggling details that must be addressed. Patience and perseverance are required, and also some thick skin, since there is still a lot of resistance to “going it alone,” even if it is the American way.

The final stage of the “process” is the marketing, of course––the Sisyphean task of making folks aware of your books. Amazon offers help, but as in all things, you must help yourself, as well. I am now in that final stage. Here comes some marketing.

FREE BOOKS!!

Baby Shark will be offered free for five days on Kindle –– Click HERE on May 18 thru May 22, 2012 for your free book. The purpose of free books is to introduce the series to those who haven’t yet read it, and to re-kindle (you should excuse the pun) an interest in the series with those readers who’ve been there, done that. The other books in the series will also be offered free in the near future––go to www.robertfate.com for that information.

If the free dates slip by you, borrow the titles from the Kindle library, that’s free, too. Ain’t it great? However, some restrictions may apply, as they say.

When you go to robertfate.com to read all the fabulous reviews, be sure to check out the Book Club section, some new stuff there.

More marketing––watch for the summer 2012 publications of Baby Shark’s Showdown at Chigger Flats, book five in the Baby Shark series. And, Kill the Gigolo, a contemporary standalone with a male protagonist and a femme fatale that is a real piece of work.

TWEETS –– If you also live on Twitter––Beginning May 18th, please Tweet this: Free Baby Shark on Kindle http://tinyurl.com/freebabyshark

Best wishes and happy tweeting.

“Digital” Bob

Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series, is a Marine Corps veteran who studied at the Sorbonne in France, roughnecked in the oilfields of Oklahoma, fashion modeled in NYC, sold show scenery in Las Vegas, and has been a chef in Los Angeles. As a Hollywood special effects technician, he won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, a ceramic artist, and his daughter, a cum laude graduate of USC. A regular guy, he has a dog, two cats, and a turtle named Pharrell.

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If you want to find out more about Bob Fate and his fantastic series, in my previous life I did a few interviews with him that you can peruse at your leisure:

• Interview with Robert Fate (March 2007)
• Robert Fate Returns to the Lunch Room (April 2008)
• Lunch Room Surprises

Happy reading!

Overwhelmed!

Great big thanks going out to all who responded to my beta reader request - the list is officially full, and I'm both thrilled and honored, as well as beyond grateful.

Exciting things are afoot here in the study - stay tuned!

A Call to Arms

Up with the chickens. It's 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning and I'm awake. Awake enough to be thinking. Of course, once my brain wakes up it's hard to shut it off, anyway.

This always happens. I work the day job three days a week, and on those mornings I sometimes have to drag myself out of bed just to get to work on time. But on the mornings I get to sleep in, what does my brain do? Wakes up early, of course! Why is that?

I know why it happened this morning. Wednesday night was "group" night - I've said before I have the most amazing critique group. EVER. And the most amazing critique partner a writer could ask for. (I'm so blessed.) - and I got jump-started. Seriously jump-started. JT introduced me to Scrivener, and I am in love. Love, love, love. This is a fabulous tool for writers and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get organized in a hurry. I've already spent several hours working with it; I'm officially addicted.

We also put together a game plan for my writing career. I've been slogging around the study trying to make a go of things for too long; it's time to take some serious action - to stop trying and start doing.

So I'm up early on a Saturday morning, doing just that. It's snowed a bit here in Middle Tennessee - oops, just looked out the window, change that to snowing - and I'm tucked in and ready to get down to business.

Help wanted. To wit, I need beta readers. If you're interested, please click here to send me an email - tell me a little about yourself and why you'd like to read for me. I'll take the first 10 responders and we'll go from there. In advance, I thank you.

And now, Harry and I are settling down to work. Enjoy your Saturday, whatever you're doing. And read a book - it's good for you!

Music of the moment: Soundtrack, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Bookmarks

Over on Twitter I follow the #fridayreads hashtag. The other day I tweeted that I'm reading too many books at once. This is scary but true. To keep track of things myself, as well as to share them with you, here's a list of the books which currently have one of my bazillion bookmarks in them and are sitting in various stages of "being read":

• Bram Stoker's Dracula. I downloaded this to my Nook for PC application and am currently on page 304 (of 406, not including endnotes).
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: Book 4 - Prince Caspian.
• A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield.
• Coach Wooden by Pat Williams with Jim Denney. This is a biography of one of the most notable 20th-century sports figures the U.S. has ever known. The book actually belongs to my husband, as it was a gift from my parents, but I snagged it first. =)
• My friend River Jordan's Praying for Strangers. I really am almost finished reading this one.
• Flipped Out. Fifth in the DIY series by my sweet pal Jennie Bentley. Amongst the "thicker" books on my nightstand, this lighter fare is just right for a quick wind-down before bedtime.

In the words of J.K. Rowling, I think that's probably "quite enough to be getting on with."

I've been working the day job all week but actually have tomorrow off. Think maybe I'll devote some time to changing at least one of these from "currently reading" to "read".

What's on your "currently reading" list?

Getting Something Accomplished

Sometimes I do my best thinking in that short span of time between my brain waking from a deep sleep and the rest of my body figuring out that I'm actually awake. I've spent the better part of the last month trying to figure out what to do with this book (the one I'm writing, that is), and this morning I woke up thinking it shouldn't be this difficult. Hard, yes. As HelenKay Dimon said in the post I referenced on Thursday, writing is hard. Being a writer takes work. But JT is forever saying that writer's block is merely your story's way of telling you something isn't right (yes, that's paraphrased, because she says it much better). So I've realized in my minor epiphany that what's wrong with this book is that I'm trying too hard to fix it when I'm not sure what the problem is.

I've done this before, of course. My previous manuscripts have all had one tiny little thing wrong with them that I couldn't see until well after the book was written but still not working. Once I figured out what that tiny little thing was, I was able to fix it, and now I have two pretty decent manuscripts completed. I discovered this morning that I'm at that point now, the point where the blinders I wear when I write have obscured the bigger picture so that I can't see the problem.

So my goal is to pull the blinders off, to look at the manuscript from an objective standpoint, and to find that missing element that when screwed in place will make this machine work like it's supposed to.

The to-do list is longer than my arm, but my CD player, John Williams, a few cats and one miniature beagle are here to keep me company, and with this fresh perspective I'm pretty sure I can get something accomplished today.

Wish me luck.

Expanding My Horizons

The TBR pile. There are still something like 150 to-be-read books on my bookshelves. I have managed to knock a few off (off the list, I mean, not off the shelves) - after A Kiss Gone Bad, I read The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes, Pride and Prejudice and The Help - but by way of Christmas presents from my mother the numbers haven't changed much (we've added Dragonfly in Amber and Flipped Out to the stack).

Sigh. I do love to read.

The Classics. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love classical music. So the following shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you. Cue segue ...

My lovely and talented sister-from-another-mister and critique partner J.T. Ellison teamed up with equally lovely and talented authors Erica Spindler and Alex Kava to create a unique project - a novella in 3 parts, with each writer's protagonist working to bring down the same serial killer. It's called Slices of Night and is available in ebook format (I recommend the Nook version from Barnes and Noble). At its release on Christmas Eve it was available at a discount, and in order to read it I downloaded the Nook for PC reader. I love this thing. As avid a book (a hold it in your hands, read it over and over until it falls apart, made of actual paper book) lover as I am, having access to thousands of books at the click of a mouse is kinda appealing. With my download, I received 5 free ebooks, one of which was Pride and Prejudice - which, of course, I had just finished reading in the above-mentioned handheld form. Another was Bram Stoker's Dracula.

[Insert maniacal laughter here, accompanied by rubbing together of hands and gleeful skipping about the room.] With one Jane Austen under my belt and Stoker in my grasp, I decided to launch myself onto a classics reading binge. And that's the part that shouldn't surprise you.

Of course, this means the TBR pile has grown exponentially in the time it took me to type out this paragraph.

I have several "collections" heretofore mentioned (if not on this blog, then somewhere) of some of the best-known and best-loved stories of classic literature: John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson. I have the complete works of Shakespeare, as well as the celebrated cases of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I'm thinking when I finish reading Dracula that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a worthy applicant for my attention.

Renovations. In the meantime, the study makeover project I started before Thanksgiving is pretty much complete, and in my new cozy personal space I'm hard at work on the next manuscript. The storyboard is perched on an easel next to my writing desk, and the layout is coming together. I'm spending today (a rare day off alone) doing the kinds of things we writers do ... shaking off the day-job dust and getting back on track. I am inspired by the brilliance of my comrades-in-arms; this past weekend I ran a quick copyedit on JT's latest manuscript (it's amazing), and this morning I read this post about working hard at a job you love.

So here I am again, working hard.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good read.

Learning to Focus

Do you ever have those days when you feel all out of focus and then something brings you back in? Life is busy, busy, busy - but for some reason I can't put my finger on, some days I feel like I'm just going through the motions. It's a very strange feeling to be out of touch with myself. I like having something to focus on because it helps me feel grounded. In touch. Having a purpose. Like working on the to-do list, which is getting out of hand again. Or reading a really good book. I did that this week. It reminded me why I do this writing thing.

Remember the Bookshelf Inventory Project? I've started at the top of the list and am working my way through the 150+ books I haven't read yet. Finally. One down, 149 to go.

First up was A Kiss Gone Bad by Jeff Abbott, an author I met several years ago at my favorite mystery fan conference in Birmingham. It's the first in his Whit Mosley series, and it starts the series off with a bang. Great stuff. I read Black Jack Point (Whit Mosley #2) shortly after (or was it shortly before?) I met Jeff and came by this copy of AKGB recently. Normally I like to start at the beginning of a series. When I don't have that opportunity, I like to go back and catch up when I can. In this case I'm glad I did.

I used to swear I'd never read more than one book at a time, and yet here I am years later doing just that. On my nightstand at the moment are several books with bookmarks in various places. I'm still plugging through The Chronicles of Narnia although it's been a while since I picked it up so I can't remember which of the 7 books I'm currently in the middle of. I'm finally getting to finish my pal River Jordan's Praying for Strangers. Shakespeare's Othello is my latest hunting ground for a title for the current WIP. And from the monstrous and never-ending TBR pile, I've just picked up Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. (Yes, shame on me, I haven't read it yet. Better late than never.)

In the midst of all this I'm working on the WIP, querying agents with the first two manuscripts, and prepping the study for a major decorative overhaul. (Today, I spackled. Spackled!)

I updated my Twitter profile yesterday to include a bit more about me than just "Author of romantic suspense." Because there is more to me than that, really. I think that may have been what started this state of focus I'm finding myself in. Today I actually (re)joined Publishers Marketplace (here's my page). Watched an industry video from an agent I queried. Wrote this blog post. And did I mention I spackled?

I suppose that by doing all these things I'm learning how to stay in that focused state. ("Things that make you go, hmmm ...") Maybe I should do stuff like this more often.

What's your focus on today?

Time Out

It's been a long week.

A long week.

I've decided that time is relative. Isn't it funny how we say "It's been a long day" or "It's been a long week" when the day or the week we've just lived wasn't any longer than the one before? There are the same number of hours in a day, the same number of days in a week. But when you've had a week like I've had, you know what I'm talking about when I say it's been a long week.

Everything's okay now. It's Saturday. It's an absolutely gorgeous Saturday here in the Mid-South. At my house it's 57 sunny degrees, and I'm staring out my kitchen windows at blue sky and green leaves, dogs in the yard and hummingbirds on the feeder. I'm sitting here listening to my iTunes playlist with my query letter and my agent list up and ready to work on, as well as a printed copy of the next manuscript in its very roughest condition on the table next to me, ready to start polishing. The house is quiet. Life is good.

It's also the first of October. The first of a month that's going to be incredibly busy for me - in my "real" life, that is. Not sure yet what's going to happen in the other half of my life, that half that involves the queries and the agent search and the writing and editing and submitting and everything else that goes along with it. I do have a plan, which is to spend as much time as possible on this side whenever and wherever I can.

Do wish me luck, won't you?

Music of the moment: My iTunes ("Mom's Playlist") is running in alphabetical order by song title. Crocodile Rock (Elton John) just ended. Now playing is Crucified with Christ by Phillips Craig & Dean. Yeah, it's an eclectic mix.

Remembering

September 11, 2001. I've seen a lot of blog posts and news stories over the past several days about what has come to be known as "9/11". There will be hundreds - even thousands - more today, the 10th anniversary of a day no one in America thought they'd ever see. There will be church services, temple services, and yes, even mosque services that will commemorate this day in one form or another. A lot of people will share a lot of memories - answering the question, "Where were you ...?"

Over the past 10 years I've done my best to avoid 'remembering' 9/11. I turned the station on the TV when anything about it came up. I didn't want to relive that day, didn't want to see the images, didn't want to hear the countless stories of loss and suffering. Of course I was affected by it. I don't believe there's a single person in this country who wasn't affected by it - everyone knows someone who knows someone who knew someone ... no one can rightly claim otherwise, because we live in a tiny little world where everyone is connected to some degree. And it wasn't that I wasn't 'remembering' - it's a day I'll never forget, just as millions of Americans will never forget. It was all just too personal, just too overwhelming. Just too incomprehensible. But I'm confident I wasn't alone in my aversion to the endless coverage, the endless stories, the endless heartache, the endless tears.

That's changed now. Somewhat. I still don't like to see the horror of that day splayed all over the television. What I'm beginning to appreciate more, in addition to the stories of heroism and sacrifice, are the accounts of coincidence and salvation, Divine intervention and genuine compassion. I read one such story yesterday, a firsthand narration of the events of that day by author Meg Cabot, who lived in Manhattan, mere blocks from the World Trade Center. Meg's story touched me in a way that made me realize there are probably hundreds if not thousands of stories just like hers, that help make a little sense of an otherwise senseless event.

Our story isn't nearly so touching or heartbreaking, but since it's true that everyone has a story to share, I'll share mine. It was an ordinary Tuesday at our house - except that I was home, in bed and asleep, sick with an upper respiratory infection that would keep me knocked down and away from work for nearly a week. My husband had the day off as well, and we'd put the kids on the bus and gone back to bed.

The phone rang somewhere around 8:00 a.m. our time. It was the kids' godmother, a longtime family friend who works at the corporate office of one of the major banks in downtown Nashville.

"Are you watching the news?" she asked.

"No. What's going on?"

"Turn on the television. It's bad. It's just really bad." And she hung up.

We turned the TV on in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

From that moment on, for the rest of the day and into the evening, we were glued to the coverage. It was horrifying. Unfathomable. We kept asking ourselves the same question over and over: How could something like this happen?

When our kids arrived home from school that afternoon, the first thing our son, then 10 years old, said when they walked through the door was, "The Twin Towers collapsed!"

They sat with us and watched the news. We prayed. We cried. They asked questions we couldn't answer. We prayed and cried some more. Their godmother called back later, sobbing. Some of the 3000 people who died in the towers that day were colleagues, people she talked to on the phone every single day at work. One of them always addressed her as "Hotshot." She said, "I can't believe I'm not going to hear him say, 'Hey, Hotshot' ever again."

What do you say to that?

All we could do then, and all we can do now, is offer a shoulder to cry on, a hug, and a prayer. (Brace yourself, 'cause I'm gonna preach for a second.) Our pastor said in his sermon this morning that 9/11 was a wake-up call to America. That it should be a wake-up call to Christians everywhere: We need to pray for this country, for its leaders (even if we don't agree with the way they're running things), and for its protection.

Lastly, and most especially, pray that nothing like 9/11 will ever happen again.

God bless America.

This, That and The Other Thing

A little of this. "This" is my life in the real world. That is, I have a day job. True, it's only part-time, but that makes me a part-time writer. A lot of writers have day jobs. Unless you're Lee Child or James Patterson or J.T. Ellison or Tess Gerritsen or Nora Roberts or Charlaine Harris, you pretty much have to have a day job, because there's that little matter of having bills to pay and kids to send to college and ... well, you get the general idea. I'm sure there are more of the fortunate few I didn't mention by name, but it's a scant few compared to the rest of us thousands of writers who haven't achieved that status. The writers I did name have bills to pay and kids to send to college, too, but they also have something the rest of us don't - writing is their day job. It's a goal, a dream, an ambition that a lot of us aspire to, to be able to write and not have to work a day job. I know I do - I want to be a writer full-time, instead of part-time. Now that's not to say I don't love my day job. I wouldn't be there if I didn't, because it's truly a blessing to work where I work. But I know in my heart of hearts what I'm meant to do, and I look forward to that "someday" when working a day job will be something I won't have to do.

"This" is part of what's been occupying a majority of my time over the past several months. But only part. Read on.

A little of that. "That" would be the other half of my life in the real world - my family: one very supportive and understanding hubby; three great kids; and our zoo (three dogs and three cats). Each and every one requires a chunk of my time, though obviously for different reasons. Our summer seemed nonstop this year, filled with church camps and fishing trips, movies, shopping for groceries and shopping for school, a new drainage system in the front flowerbed and a new puppy, car repairs and car repairs (and yes, I said that twice), visiting relatives, birthday parties and family dinners, both in and out. Our oldest is out on her own now. Our son and his girlfriend found an apartment to share for their last two years at college. Our youngest is deciding on her own career path and where she wants to go to school next year. All of them still need advice from mom and dad on a regular basis. Not to mention that my husband and I do like to spend time together occasionally. But there are only so many hours in a day, and only one of me to go around. It's a balancing act. Which brings us to ...

A whole lotta the other thing. A writer's life is a lot of hurry up and wait. Hurry, get that manuscript finished. Hurry, write that query letter. Hurry, get it submitted. Now wait. And wait. And wait some more. And while you're waiting, hurry up and write the next one. Over the past few months (in between the this and the that), I have been working furiously on a revision of a novel I wrote some years back, whose time just hadn't come yet. Now it seems it may have - it's being looked at. In the meantime, we're still waiting to hear on the first one, which is in the hands of an agent who offered to read it. We're in that fingers-crossed holding pattern at the moment with the first two, but I'm about to start working on the next one. Because that's what we do, us writers. We write.

Among other things - you know, a little of this and a little of that.