HELLO EVERYBODY

I'm very happy to be joining the Crime Sistahs. Like Angela, Pamela, Gammy, Patricia and Lisa, I write about murder and mayhem, with my stories set in the glittering 1920s. My latest book, DARKNESS AND THE DEVIL BEHIND ME, features a society reporter who covers a young woman's disappearance and the million-dollar heist that occurred after it. Visit my website to learn more.

In addition to writing, I also edit fiction for up and coming authors at Gentle Pen Editorial Services, and so for my debut column on Crime Sistahs, I'd like to don my editor's hat and write from the point of view of someone who works with authors and tries to help them strengthen their story presentation.

"BUT YOU JUST DON"T GET IT!"

What editor hasn't heard that cry? It's usually delivered by an irate author at the tail end of a conversation about areas in which the author's manuscript needs serious revamping. When I tell an author that his or her manuscript is unfocused, for example, and the response is that I "just didn't get it," I'm tempted to respond, "No, I didn't, because it just wasn't there." But since it's Gentle Pen Editorial Services, I press my lips together and smile.

Yes, you might have the misfortune of having an inept or ignorant editor, someone with such a narrow breadth of taste, interests, knowledge or experience that he or she really is incapable of understanding what you're writing about. That does happen. But it could be that your editor is right. In short, if your editor didn't "get it," then Dear Reader might not either. Even when your editor is wrong, he or she has given you valuable information about where your manuscript could be misinterpreted or falls short in credibility.

What provokes the author's cry? It's usually when I've conveyed that there's a fundamental problem with the initial concept, or mentioned an underdeveloped or unfocused plot, or unmotivated or stagnant characters. Or I might have said that the concept was strong, but the execution weak. Somewhere, on the journey from mind to paper, the images, the pathos that so gripped the writer's imagination and made the story vibrant have become faded or blurred. They've lost their crispness, their edge.

Sometimes, the "don't get it" cry follows criticism not about the entire manuscript, but a specific scene. The editor really didn't "get it," and it was because the author left out relevant information that he or she assumed was common knowledge. In such instances, both sides need to sit down and figure out what details -- sometimes, it's only two or three -- must be inserted.

There are times, of course, when an editor's question really does seem to reveal dazzling, inexplicable ignorance. Never mind. It's worth your while as a writer to listen.

In one of my books, for example, there's a horrific lynch scene. My sleuth/hero witnesses it. Worse, the victim is someone he cares about. One of my readers wanted to know why my sleuth didn't intervene and "save" the friend. That my hero would "just stand by" and let his friend die wouldn't do, this reader said. Well, I was incensed. To intervene would mean death, I responded. If the character died, then of course, the book died with him. Privately, I muttered, "How can she even ask that? Doesn't everybody know what lynch mobs were like? Why would anyone suggest that I have my character intervene?" (This reader, as it happens, had partly grown up in England, and probably didn't know the history of lynching.) I dismissed the criticism with an "Oh, but she just doesn't get it!"

But then I thought about it. The fact is, heroes are heroes because they rise to the occasion. They don't listen to common sense. They are, in fact, uncommon. So ... maybe she was right. My hero couldn't follow the common sense path. He had to be heroic. But how to implement that logically? How to make sure he survived? I thought about it and a solution did come, and I daresay the story was better for it.

More recently, a writer approached me about her work, saying that she was having a lot of negative feedback about the heavy use of dialect. She'd indicated the dialect through the use of misspellings, odd punctuation, etc. She said that people in her writing workshop "just didn't get it." Of course, they didn't, she said. They were very different from the characters in her book. Why should she listen to them?

Hmmmm ... I read an excerpt and promptly told her I agreed with her readers. I also told her that the best stories, the ones we remember, rise above restrictions of class, race, gender, religion and nationality. They speak to the human condition. She should strive to tell a story that everyone would "get" because it spoke to their hearts, and not to sabotage that effort by use of systematic errors in her copy. She was a very talented writer and understood.

In summary, your editor could be dumb or ignorant or both. He or she could be a frustrated writer who is simply power-tripping and just loves to tear apart other writers' talented work. But it's more likely that he or she really does love books, really does want to be supportive, and has a width and breadth of knowledge that makes him or her a good test subject.

So please, if you're tempted to simply dismiss an editor's comment out of hand, don't. Pause, take a deep breath, and listen. You're very likely to hear something quite worthwhile.

Next week, I'll talk about when to listen, but not necessarily obey ...

In the meantime, thanks for bearing with me through this long entry! I look forward to filing again next week.

- Persia

THERE’S A BOOK IN YOU!

WEEK SEVEN: THE EDITORIAL PROCESS

Now that you’ve got the deal, you should be able to relax and just wait to see your book in the book stores! Unfortunately, not quite. This is where the second part of the major re-writing begins, the editorial process. This is when your publisher takes what you are convinced is a completed manuscript and starts shaping it according to their vision of what will make it more marketable for their readers.

Editors usually have very specific ideas of the types of books that will sell to their readership. Clearly they believe that your book is one of those, otherwise they wouldn’t have given you a book deal. But often much to the chagrin of the author, this doesn’t preclude often extensive editorial changes. In many cases this is helpful and in fact does make the book better, in other cases, the author feels as if their work is being compromised by an overly aggressive “red pen.” My feelings on the editorial process are to assume that the comments are given with the desire to make the manuscript as good as it can be, but by the same token, to decide what you will agree to and what you cannot. It’s usually a balancing process where you have to compromise but where you also must determine which comments, if any, go to the heart of your book, and if accepted could severely compromise your vision.

Usually you will go through several rounds of editorial comments before your book is completed and ready for the copy editors. Copy editing is a critical part of the editorial process and ensures that your book has all of the proper grammatical and other editing and stylistic changes. Often, with a smaller press the author does essentially a lot of the copy editing, but it is preferable to have it professionally done. It’s very difficult to copy edit your own work because you are so close to it. Overall the editorial process can be gratifying as you see your book shaped into something even greater than you had imagined or frustrating as you see your vision chipped away, but either way it is a critical part of getting your book out there.

Next week we’ll talk about marketing your book and some of the things that authors can do to get the widest possible audience. For more information on my book A DEAD MAN SPEAKS, check out my website www.adeadmanspeaks.com, or you can email me at adeadmanspeaks@yahoo.com.

Hello, All,
Letting you know I’m b-a-a-ack! Where have I been? In book hell, trying to finish up my suspense thriller. Well, I did it, I’m done. I titled it Dead Stop--found out there’s a film with that same title. Boo. Which just means there’s nothing new in the universe, especially titles.

FYI I’ll be blogging on Sundays and will be slinging tidbits around relating to all things theatrical, ‘cuz that’s my special interest. Will be doing film reviews, interviews, and keeping an eye out on the book option market, and noting who's selling what. Would welcome additional tidbits!

In the meantime, read below and laugh. This compilation of Worst Analogies appeared on the yahoo listserv of fellow writers, all graduates of my alma mater, Seton Hill University and its graduate Writing Popular Fiction Program.



WORST ANALOGIES...EVER

~ He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the
East River.

~ Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only
one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

~ The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,
this plan just might work.

~ The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating
for a while.

~ He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but
a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or
something.

~ McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled
with vegetable soup.

~ Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides
gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

~ She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.

~ She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes
just before it throws up.

~ The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

~ He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as
if she were a garbage truck backing up.

~ She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

~ It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to
the wall.

~ The brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

~ I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name
for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don't speak German.
Anyway, it's a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little
square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don't know the name for
those either.

~ He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

~ The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you
fry them in hot grease.

~ The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr.
on a Dr Pepper can.

~ He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a
guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those
boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high
schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those
boxes with a pinhole in it.

~ The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a
bowling ball wouldn't.

~ From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,
surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy"
comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.

~ Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

~ Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the
center.

~ Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a
movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall
Man."

~ Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the
grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left
Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19
p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

~ John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met.


Hope your holidays are happy.

Blessings,
Gammy L. Singer

Continuing Education

One thing I always tell aspiring writers who seek my advice about getting published, is to learn as much as they can about the publishing business, which is pretty solid advice. But, what I should really be telling them is that no matter how much they learn about the publishing biz, there’s always more to learn along the way.

Here three things you usually don’t find out until after you’re published.

1. Not all authors are created equal.

There are three main levels of authors in the world of publishing, and for the record, I’m not referring to talent. I'm referring to sales. At the bottom of the heap you have debut authors who've yet to make a name for themselves, at the top of the heap you have what are referred to as top tier authors a.k.a the ones who's books sell like hotcakes and who get big royalty checks and attention, in the middle you have midlist authors, which accounts for 99.9% of all authors, myself included. Being a midlist author just means your books sell consistently but you’ve yet to reach top tier blockbuster sales status.

2. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.

Most authors have to do their own book promotion. Some are more successful at it than others. I once heard about an author who spent over $30,000 promoting a book without much luck. I’ve heard of publishers spending big bucks on promotion for a book they’ve deemed the next big thing only to have it flop. No one really knows what works when it come to book promotion. It’s usually not one thing but a combination of many things. Just do what you can comfortably afford to do because the rest is really up to chance.

3. Beware of the Green Eyed Monster.

One of the most self-defeating things authors can do is to compare themselves to other authors. Every author’s situation is different. For example, author A and author B both write in the same genre and have books that came out the same time. Author B is jealous of author A because A got a bigger advance, massive publisher support, and has sold 25,000 copies, while B got a much smaller advance, minimal publisher support, and has only sold 8,500 copies. But what B doesn’t know is that A’s print run( how many books printed upfront by the publisher) was 150,000 copies. B’s print run was only 10,000 copies. In the publishing world, selling 8,500 copies out of a 10,000 copy print run is considered a success, while selling only 25, 000 copies out of 150,000 copy print run is considered a big flop. Guess who’s career is in jeopardy? And it’s not author B. Don’t be so worried about how well you think another author is doing. You may not know the whole story and the time you waste worrying could be time spent writing.

Later!
Angela

Untold stories

I heard from my editor last week. You may recall she's contracted me for two more books, this time contemporary romances. I sent her a synopsis for a story, but she requested a change that would impact the plot so greatly that I shelved that story and started a new one. I'd really grown to like the first story idea, although I admit I like this new one even better.

The story idea rejections I'm accumulating makes me wonder about the number of untold stories floating around out there. Counting my ideas alone, we have the two sequels to On Fire, my September 2007 romantic suspense; the first contemporary idea, which my editor just rejected; the sequel to You Belong to Me, my November 2006 romantic suspense; an epic fantasy trilogy; and my island mystery series, which is generating rejections as we speak.

It's not my intention to throw a pity party. Honestly. I know it may sound that way, but that's not my intention. I'm truly fascinated by the fact that we may have millions of orphaned story ideas hovering around us.

I'm obviously incredibly naive. All this time I thought, as writers, we'd come up with ideas and, as long as we told the story well, it would find a home. But this experience has shown me, the market has much more to do with the stories I sell than I originally thought.

Patricia