But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘publishing’ Category

Just Keep Clapping

Publish America is a crooked vanity publisher in sheep’s clothing. But that isn’t the point of this particular ramble.

This morning, I came upon this in the Publish America (PA) thread at Absolute Write. The commenter was responding to another commenter who asked if anyone had privately contacted any PA writers.

I’ve sent a few PMs via Facebook when I’ve seen some authors express dissatisfaction with PA or ask questions that won’t be answered honestly. (…)
Another author, on the other PA page, said the only choice was between 1. PA 2. expensive self-publishing 3. the major publishers, who wouldn’t look at work from unknown authors. When I explained about small presses, he said he would do some research, but then claimed small publishers like Ellora’s Cave were all vanity presses trolling Facebook to destroy PA.

In short, when confronted with the facts about PA, certain writers shove (more…)

The Music of Chaos, Now in Print!

Buy a book or the cute greyhound will have to go back to a miserable life of racing, stuck in a tiny crate all day, fed horrible food, abused.  You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?

Then buy a book, save a puppy dog.

Shorter sales pitch: The dead tree version of The Music of Chaos is now available!

There they are. Some of my author copies of The Music of Chaos, my debut novel.  I tried to enlist the Wonder Horse‘s help in selling, but his version of marketing involved chomping his big, yellow teeth on the books. (Everybody’s a critic.)

My author’s copies arrived yesterday.  Prompting the immediate response of, “Oh, crap. Now I’ve got to sell my book in two formats!”

I love the idea of an ebook. But there’s something about holding your book in your hands, the smell of ink and glue, that makes any writer all … giggly.  Like a schoolgirl. Titter.

Here’s the short version of the book blurb:

“Blind dates are always a train wreck.”

By day, Regan O’Connell is a highly respected project manager.  By night, she’s a Wolfe, a paranormal agent working for a vampire syndicate.

Her two worlds collide when a co-worker sets her up with tall, dark and sexy Jason Lake.  Jason is a Holder, a member of an ancient, all-human organization dedicated to policing the activities of things that go bump in the night. Things like half-vampire Regan.

Falling for the wrong guy is the least of Regan’s problems. There’s a murderer on the loose, and his favorite weapon is chaotic magic, an erratic force with the power to rip holes in the fabric of the universe. And the best way to catch the killer is to get close to Jason, the man who is not only her enemy, but her prime suspect.

Buy it now (please) at Decadent Publishing or Amazon.

For those who want instant gratification, you can download the ebook version: Decadent Publishing, Amazon/Kindle, and B&N/Nook.

Or you can sample a chapter–FREE.

 

Windmills? What Windmills?

I’m hardly one to call for civility and decency.  Snark is my primary means of communication.  But even I have mellowed with age.

As the story of this author kept spreading across the web, as people apparently couldn’t let it go, I started to feel sorry for her.  Yeah, me.  Pity. The cold, dry fig of my heart, started beating.

Perhaps it’s the anonymity of the media, but the Internet can accelerate people from zero to outrage in a microsecond. I see it all time, everywhere. Blogs. Forums. Newsgroups. Someone says the sky is blue.  Someone else takes umbrage to use of the word “blue,” screeching that blue is the color of Smurfs and Smurfs are filthy, blue, child molesters. And off we go…

I’ve seen people on newsgroups rant about (more…)

Monday, Lessons Learned

As I read this train wreck, a few things came to mind…

A) I’m really grateful for editors.

B) It’s really not a bad review.  In fact, I’ve written nastier reviews.

C) People don’t know the difference between “e-published,” “self-published,” and “indie published.”

D) Apparently, the best way to drive traffic to your blog is to write a [slightly] negative review of an un-hinged self-published author’s book.

E) Or, be the un-hinged author who throws a public snit on a review blog. Though this approach, arguably, doesn’t so much “drive” traffic; more like it re-routes a semi-truckload of bad karma in your direction.

via Smart Bitches

Step One, Dig a Hole

Gardeners bury their mistakes.

Whenever I talk about gardening, there is always someone who is quick to say, “I can’t grow anything; I have a brown thumb.” Now, I recognize that this may be an attempt to shut me up.  “Dear Lord, don’t let her start blathering about ‘soil’ again.”

But to the small percentage who say this with genuine chagrin, my reply is: “So do I.  All gardeners have brown thumbs.”

Here’s the thing.  Gardening is as much about death as it is life.  As with any hobby (or profession), success is achieved largely through a willingness to learn from your mistakes, and sometimes, to simply ignore them.

I’m a geek.  I love science-y stuff.  In college, I took Botany and Biogeography.  I know how photosynthesis works and understand the C4 pathway. But often, when a plant dies, I have no fucking idea why. And die, they do.

I gave it the perfect conditions: just enough water; well-drained soil; a touch of compost.  And it still got dead. In this way, gardening mirrors publishing.  You can have the perfect story for the perfect market, and it still gets rejected.  The only difference being, that unlike publishing, I don’t torture myself over Mother Nature’s rejection of my attempts to meddle.

I dig up the dead thing, chuck it in the compost pile, and plant something in its stead. Game over, insert quarter, play again.

And if all else fails, water the weeds.

Like a Roller Coaster

Dunno.  Maybe it’s hormones.  Maybe it’s just life.  But these past weeks I’ve been vacillating between giddy-happy and morose “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

“Boing, there she goes” triggers include everything from politics, New Zealand (poor Christchurch), Japan (sigh, poor Japan), to our lovely New Mexico spring.

Nothin’ makes my goonier than publishing.  Saw the release of my first book, The Music of Chaos.  Immediately wondered if I’d lost my mind by letting the world see what a dog-awful writer I am.  Got a couple of good reviews. Up. Then, back down the rabbit hole of gloom, when I realize that every other author out seems to know how to promote.  “Doomed, doomed, my book is doomed.” (Cue those really great ominous drums from the Mines of Moria in Fellowship of the Ring.)

Meanwhile, The Canvas Thief was (more…)

Ebook Publishing for the Lazy and Unethical

As I noted in my posting at the other blog, my blog got plagiarized. The thieving site, is the ironically named Write (Create) Your Own Ebook (write-your-own-e-book.info/blog/judging-an-ebook-publisher-by-the-covers). I’m not including a clickable linky, because they don’t deserve the linkage.

The site is selling a book on how to write a book without actually doing any of your own writing. They [site owners] demonstrate this with their blog, which steals other people’s blog postings, without giving clear, attribution to the author. (Burying a link at the end, is not clear attribution.) The blog allows no comments; there is no contact information included; and their Whois information is hidden.

Some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but, me I’d prefer cold, hard cash, or at least correct attribution–My name (P. Kirby or Patricia Kirby) on the article–of my work.

Blog plagiarism is theft.

Cross posted at Ramblings from the Desert.

Judging an eBook Publisher by the Covers

And by their web page.

These days new epublishers are popping up like daisies on the lawn. Over at Absolute Write, someone starts a thread inquiring about a press’s bona fides almost daily.

Before you sign a contract, or for that matter, submit a manuscript to a publisher, you should always do some research.  But before you bother to Google, post a question in a newsgroup, etc., there’s one simple way to gauge whether a pub is worth the mouse clicks.

Look at their web page, especially their home page.

A publisher’s page should do one thing and do it well. Sell books.

It’s easier to show than (more…)

There’s No Nice Way to Say, “You Bore Me.”

Alternative title: How Critters Online Workshop Taught Me to Sympathize with Editors

So there it sits. Like a big ole zit on the nose of my (already crappy) day. The form rejection letter. Besides the sense of crushing defeat, there’s that whiny girl voice in my head, who opines, snottily, “You couldn’t even spare me a hint, a sentence, as to why my manuscript is Teh Big Fail?”

For the first emotion–defeat–the only cure is time. (Or alcohol.) But the second–irritation–is easily soothed by my experience at Critters Online Workshop.

I’ve been a member of Critters, off and on, for about five years. I’ve critiqued at least 700 manuscripts, including a half dozen novel length works. To maintain good standing at Critters, you critique approximately 3-4 manuscripts a month. Each week, you pick a story from the pile and have at it.

The experience provides an (more…)

Careful What You Ask For

Sometimes I think the Internet should come with training wheels.

Well, for starters, the reviewers were not professional. They were not objective in what they had to say. I found their comments to be subjective and sometimes downright malicious. Two such blogs that have set themselves up as reviewers of books are “[Blog Name Redacted]” and “[Blog Name Redacted]”. Now, I don’t expect everybody to like my books, but what really gets me is when amateur reviewers use words like “predictable” and “one dimensional”, but they don’t quantify this. They don’t back up their comments with facts.

The above being a blog posting by an author who, having asked for an opinion (review), is unhappy with said opinion.  It’s the writerly version of “Does this make my butt look big?”

It would seem that the unfortunate author is (somehow) unaware that the Author vs. Critic controversy has been flogged over and over on ye ole Interwebs.  The end result is always the same.  The critic comes out the victor with the author looking like a consummate asshat.

Bad reviews, like taxes and death, are inevitable.

My question to the aggrieved author would be this:  What if the blogger(s) had posted a glowing, but simplistic review where she described your book as “wonderful?”  Would you still have written a scathing indictment of her reviewing abilities, demanding that she back up her praise with facts?

I’m-a guessin’ the answer is, “No.”