E. Prybylski's Blog, page 7

Fallen Friday: Tea

Her name was Grace. She was the barista at my favorite coffee shop, and I saw her every morning on my way home from work. And every morning she gave me the same bright smile. “Good morning, Lisa,” she chirped as I walked in. I knew it was nothing but good customer service, but it always felt personal. Maybe it was because I was just lonely enough to believe it.

I smiled back. “Good morning.” I was usually the first one in the shop when it opened since I worked night shift and got off work about the time the shop opened.

“You want your usual?” she asked, already plucking a cup from the stack of them behind the counter.

My usual. A chamomile tea with a shot of sweet dreams. Sometimes having a fae barista makes your day just a little better.

“Yeah, please. It was a long one.” I leaned both hands on the counter and yawned.

“You catch the guy yet?” she asked while she put together my tea.

I’d told her the morning before that I’d been chasing after a killer. I sort of regretted it since a lot of the time people treat you differently when they know you’re a cop. Grace, however, had taken it in stride. Either she didn’t care enough about me that it mattered, or she liked me enough that it didn’t. At least now she knew why I liked the sweet dreams in my tea.

Grace bustled about, adding honey to my tea and humming while she did so. The sound soothed nerves frayed by long hours working overnights on cases that had no happy endings. In truth, happy endings don’t exist in homicide. The happiest ending we get is when we catch a killer, and even then we catch them only after they’ve killed someone.

It was then I realized I hadn’t answered yet. “No, not yet. I’m hoping we’re close, though. The magic division is on him. He left some spell components at the last scene. I think we’re closing in. I just hope we get him before he kills anybody else.”

“Me too. How long have you been on the case?” She set my cup on the counter and slid it toward me.

I wrapped my fingers around the paper to-go cup and sighed. “Few weeks now. He’s killed four people.”

Grace put her hands over mine on the cup. “You’ll get him. I’m sure of it.”

When I looked into her sparkling violet eyes, I almost believed her. I smiled some. It felt like my mouth should’ve made a creaking noise from disuse. I didn’t smile much. We don’t tend to in homicide. “Thanks, Grace,” I said, looking down at where her hands sat over mine.

“Hey, uh, just a random question,” she asked, releasing my hands and heading over to the cash register. “But I was invited to a party tomorrow. I was wondering if you might wanna go?” She didn’t look at me as she asked, but the detective in me read her body language. Blushing cheeks, hunched shoulders, fingers looking for anything to be busy with.

I sipped my tea. “I haven’t been to a party since college.”

“Oh, sorry. I just—”

“I’d love to.”

She lifted her head, a brilliant smile pouring across her beautiful features. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

She jotted down her number on a napkin and slid it across the counter to me. “Call me when you get up?”

“All right. Will do.” The tea tasted better this morning. Or maybe I just noticed it more.

Grace smiled at me again, and it felt like sunrise all over again. Maybe everything in the world didn’t suck. “Cool. Oh, uh, I’ve got your tea. It’s on me, I mean. Well, not on me. You have it. But…” She sputtered a couple more seconds, and I let her. It was precious.

“I get what you meant, Grace.” I smiled again. She seemed to like it. “I’ll call you tonight.”

“Cool. Yeah. Okay.” She nodded.

I headed out to my car and climbed in, sitting for a minute in the quiet and sipping at my tea. She’d done something else to it this time. While, yeah, it definitely had that soft, ethereal quality I knew would help me sleep when I got home, would chase away the demons in my dreams, this time it did something else.

Or maybe it wasn’t the tea.

That day, in my dingy little apartment on the wrong side of town I dreamt of flower fields, of Grace laughing, and of sunrises. And when I woke up feeling lighter and like I could breathe again, I called the number she’d given me on the napkin.

E. Prybylski has been in the publishing industry as an editor since 2009, starting at Divertir Publishing and eventually partnering with her close friend Richard Belanger to begin Insomnia Publishing.

Ever since childhood, E. has been an avid reader and writer of fantasy. The first chapter book she remembers reading is The Hobbit, followed swiftly by most of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. In high school, she perfected the skill of walking while reading without slamming into anyone. Mostly.

When she isn’t reading or writing, E. is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a B.A. in European history from SNHU. In addition to her many historical pursuits, E. is a musician of multiple instruments, a cat mom, and a loving wife to her husband, J. E. also speaks out for the disability and chronic illness communities being a sufferer of chronic migraines and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Marketing Your Book

Let me start this by saying I’m not an expert. However, I have been doing a lot of research leading up to my forthcoming book at the end of this year, and the experts I have listened to, talked to, and followed have all said about the same things. I’m not going to get into details about Amazon keywords and algorithms here, however. I want to talk about marketing in general.

One of the first things I learned about marketing is the power of your brand. Which is a terrifying notion to most of us authors who would much prefer swaddling ourselves in blankets with a cup of tea, a book, and hissing at anyone who gets too close. However, the liberating thing about branding is that the only person who decides what’s included in your brand is you. You show your public only what you want them to see, so if you don’t want them to know something about you, it’s as simple as not telling them.

The way I decided what my brand included was to pull out a piece of paper and write down words I wanted associated with me in public. These are things I post about on public-facing social media, and what I talk about in blog posts, my writing group, or any other public space. My list of the things I explicitly am including in my brand is:

HistoryMartial artsD&DVideo gamesEditingBad jokesCatsDisability / Mental Health

Now, I might mention other things on my social media in public, but those things are what I am specifically talking about and including in my branding. When a fan thinks of me, those are the things I want them conjuring up. Other than, of course, my books and their content.

With those decisions made, I have geared my public-facing social media to include those things. I share and re-tweet memes, jokes and make comments about those things. Those public feeds are still authentically me, of course, but they’re a curated version that removes a lot of the more personal things from the public eye. You’ll note that my faith and my political views aren’t part of my brand. Which isn’t to say I don’t have either, but I am not looking to make them a large part of my brand.

So, knowing my brand, I post things related to that. My Twitter is full of writing advice, D&D comments, pictures of my favorite dice, and me talking about playthroughs on various video games. I also mention my migraines and do some advocacy about disability-related things. While I post links to my twice-weekly blogs and do talk about my novel on there, you’ll note that nowhere in that list of things does it include spamming people.

Marketing one’s book is a delicate balance between making sure people know you have one (and helping them find you) and not drowning them in a constant flow of “BUY MY BOOK!” because doing that is the equivalent of being That Guy with a megaphone on the corner of a public street. Sure, people might hear you, but nobody wants to. Or the junk mail in your inbox. We are inundated with constant marketing on a daily basis. Between ads on every single website we go to, ads on television, radio, and on platforms like YouTube and also on social media, we are caught in a marketing deluge that nobody signed up for.

It’s my job to stand out from that somehow.

My approach has been organic. I’ve had this blog since 2009, and I have about 1,200 followers. Now, on average I get around 30 views a blog post. Sometimes more. Instead of trying to constantly convince people to follow my blog or screaming about it from the rooftops, I post content people are interested in and engage with. My goal here is to give people a reason to want to see what I have to say. To be interested in me.

While, yes, my numbers of social media followers and blog followers is small compared to a lot of the powerhouse marketers out there, I also haven’t had a product to sell beyond my editing, which has been word of mouth, and I’ve only started doing any kind of serious marketing in the last couple months. However, the kind of engagement I get and the interactions I have with people are organic which, to me, is of serious importance. People follow me on Twitter because I give writing advice or talk about subjects they like.

Heck, even this blog is marketing. Why? Well, you’re reading it, aren’t you? You’re interested in what I have to say on the subject and either clicked through from my social media to get here or maybe found me through WordPress itself. Either that or you’re one of my regulars, in which case, hi! (Shout out to Helen Bellamy. )

The reason I bring that up is because marketing isn’t all loud ads or screeching about buying you products. My approach is specifically in value-added marketing. I give people things in exchange for their time and the hope that my name is the one that comes to mind when they think about who they want to edit their next book or where they might buy a neat novel. That’s the contract I’ve made with all of you: you get interesting content, my name lives in your brain for a little while with a positive connotation (I hope).

While all of this certainly sounds terrifying to those who haven’t done it (I was really anxious when I started), I’ve realized that marketing can be broken down to a series of simple repeating tasks that you can schedule. It’s not an all day every day sort of thing, and that helped me manage the scope of things.

For example, I try to write my two blogs a week in advance. As I write this, I have two blogs out from where I’m writing (today is July 7th). Scheduling in advance gives me some leeway in case I end up with a migraine or terrible pain flare. Also, using Hootsuite to schedule the announcements of my blog posts and other such things on social media means I don’t need to do it all myself the day-of. Which is why my blog posts go out at 8am instead of like 6pm. These options help me keep myself organized and allow me to put things together when and where I want them.

Since I have significant ADHD, it also helps to have scheduling available because things just wander out of my head sometimes or I will end up hyperfocused on a project and suddenly it’s three days later but I know literally everything about the reproductive habits of squirrels in Asia. (That’s only a slight exaggeration–it’s not usually squirrels.) My brain is an interesting place.

When it comes to social media engagement, I hang out on a few specific hashtags on Twitter that help me reach the people I am marketing to most ( #WritingCommunity #PubTips #AmWriting ) and engage in a few Facebook groups where I talk shop with writers. I also run my Discord writing group as advertised on the front page of my blog here. While my method isn’t the fastest to getting a million subscribers/watchers/etc, it’s been a slow and steady growth over time that I’m comfortable with.

My hope is that when my book launches this December, I’ll be able to kick over into new audiences and grow faster, but the first book is usually not some huge blockbuster unless you catch lightning in a bottle. It takes time to get noticed and develop a readership. As an author, I’m in this for the long haul because I’ve been in the industry long enough as an editor that I am comfortable saying I know what to expect, so that’s what I’m working on.

E. Prybylski has been in the publishing industry as an editor since 2009, starting at Divertir Publishing and eventually partnering with her close friend Richard Belanger to begin Insomnia Publishing.

Ever since childhood, E. has been an avid reader and writer of fantasy. The first chapter book she remembers reading is The Hobbit, followed swiftly by most of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. In high school, she perfected the skill of walking while reading without slamming into anyone. Mostly.

When she isn’t reading or writing, E. is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a B.A. in European history from SNHU. In addition to her many historical pursuits, E. is a musician of multiple instruments, a cat mom, and a loving wife to her husband, J. E. also speaks out for the disability and chronic illness communities being a sufferer of chronic migraines and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Fallen Friday: Editing from the Otter Slide

I know, I know. “But E,” you say, “Your Monday blog is about publishing industry stuff! What sorcery is this!” Well, this week I wanted to talk about something more writery (it’s a word now, hush) than just regaling you with tidbits about my setting. Instead, I kind of wanted to discuss what it was like having my work edited by another professional editor. In case you’ve never had it done before, this is what it’s been like for me.

First, I want to say as a disclaimer, my editor is my friend Mel. We joined the publishing industry around the same time, and we’ve worked together for most of it, so I knew what to expect from her mostly. I’ve seen her work before, but we haven’t really done a lot of work together. Her blog is mostly her art, but you might see some writing here and there. She’s a delight. Go see her stuff! We’ve been friends since college, so I also knew without a doubt I could trust her. Plus, she also works at my publishing company, so when she’s ready to publish her book, I’ll be working on it.

My imposter syndrome keeps needling me and telling me I don’t really know what I’m doing. That nobody will like my book. That nobody will care. It’s this constant mantra playing on loop telling me I am going to be nothing but a disgrace.

Now, as someone who has been editing other people’s writing for over a decade, I can safely say I’m an expert at it. It’s not new to me. But being edited? I’ve not had that much. Plus, it gave me exposure to how another editor might work differently. It’s been an interesting experience.

Before I sent Mel my manuscript (teehee, alliteration), I self-edited it twice and then ran it through PerfectIt and SmartEdit, which are my editing programs. They obviously didn’t catch everything, but I sent her the cleanest manuscript I could have, so the majority of her edits were her asking about continuity errors, catching places where I overused a particular word (“though” is my nemesis), and catching the occasional typo or punctuation error.

We did tussle a little over some of my writing habits. I like starting sentences with prepositions and have a bit of a choppy writing style. At least with this series. The main character is often confused, and things happen quickly. As a result, the choppier style works. I will also admit fully that I am heavily influenced by Jim Butcher’s writing, and he does that a fair amount. But anyone who has read much of my writing in the past would not be surprised to learn that.

Overall, however, it wasn’t the humbling experience I feared. Not because Mel is unkind or overly critical or anything, but because my imposter syndrome keeps needling me and telling me I don’t really know what I’m doing. That nobody will like my book. That nobody will care. It’s this constant mantra playing on loop telling me I’m going to be nothing but a disgrace.

I know it’s not true, but that doesn’t stop the brain weasels from whispering to me.

In fact, Mel’s editing being light and mostly focused on the spots where I made silly mistakes (or leaving jokes in the margins) helped reaffirm the fact that maybe I do know what I’m doing. That maybe I’m not an imposter.

Of course, the reality is that I studied creative writing in college and started writing as soon as I was old enough to hold a pen. I’ve taken a number of creative writing courses and studied with several incredible mentors whose critiques, edits, and encouragement have helped me a great deal over the years. I’ve been studying writing intensely since 2006 when I started taking classes at SNHU, my alma mater. While my degree is in European history focused on the Renaissance, I was only a few credits shy of having my minor in creative writing when I graduated.

While it’s a pipe dream of mine to go back to college for my MFA in writing, I doubt that will happen due to financial and physical constraints. But hey, a girl can dream.

My novel, which is due to release this December, is the culmination of decades of work and experience. And that shows. Now, do I expect my first book to be a huge bestseller, topping charts, getting me interviews on Oprah? Definitely not. For one, I don’t even know if Oprah has a show anymore. But regardless, it is the fulfillment of a dream I’ve had since I was very, very young. And now, at thirty-five, I’m taking my first steps toward fulfilling it.

Going through my book line by line with a good friend whose expertise I trust has been incredibly helpful for my confidence because, not only is she my friend, she is my peer. She actually enjoys my writing. Which is an incredibly exciting thing to be able to say. She makes silly jokes about my characters with me, and she is looking forward to seeing what comes next. That kind of support is invaluable.

Is there the instinct to stick out my chin, dig in my feet, and say ‘No, I said what I meant to say!’ Of course. We all have that. But the reality is that I trust these people. I wouldn’t have asked them to edit my writing if I didn’t.

Not every author is as blessed as I am to be able to work with a dear friend as an editor. However, I can say for sure that working with someone you can laugh with, share jokes with, and who you feel comfortable with makes the process easier. Not everything about having your work edited is fun. There are times when I’ve really had to hit authors upside the head with a clue-by-four and tell them they needed to fix something. It can sting. Mel convinced me of a few things I was iffy on, but ultimately I decided she was right. If you trust someone and hear their advice for what it is (a genuine desire to make your work succeed), it takes a lot of the sting out.

Sure, nobody likes getting told they have parsley stuck in their teeth, but I’d much rather have it pointed out to me before I go out in front of everyone else. And that’s what this process is. Mel is finding all the things that could be embarrassing mistakes before I show things off to the public. Heck, even my blogs have another set of eyes on them. My friend Josh (hi, Josh!) is helping me clean them up before you folks see all my typos. He, too, is an editor.

Last week he made some important points to me about mentioning some things in my blog regarding religion in my novel. It was good feedback, and it gave me an angle I hadn’t considered before on something. So I accepted that I needed to fix it and went back to do so. Is there the instinct to stick out my chin, dig in my feet and say, “No, I said what I meant to say!” like a petulant child? Of course. We all have that. But the reality is that I trust these people. I wouldn’t have asked them to edit my writing if I didn’t. So if I trust them, I also have to set my ego aside and consider what they’re saying. Also, they’re both professionals, so I at the very least ought to give them the respect that deserves.

I know Josh is reading this, but if Mel does: thank you. You really are as good as I keep telling you, you are. And if anyone needs a good editor, she’s definitely someone you can trust to work with. I know I do. Josh? You’re amazing also. Honestly, he’s really good at picking out things that should be phased differently with regards to sensitivity reading, and his knowledge of pop culture can be very useful in avoiding sticking your foot in blunders. (Even if I am still naming my main character Cassiel, to heck with Supernatural.)

E. Prybylski has been in the publishing industry as an editor since 2009, starting at Divertir Publishing and eventually partnering with her close friend Richard Belanger to begin Insomnia Publishing.

Ever since childhood, E. has been an avid reader and writer of fantasy. The first chapter book she remembers reading is The Hobbit, followed swiftly by most of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. In high school, she perfected the skill of walking while reading without slamming into anyone. Mostly.

When she isn’t reading or writing, E. is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a B.A. in European history from SNHU. In addition to her many historical pursuits, E. is a musician of multiple instruments, a cat mom, and a loving wife to her husband, J. E. also speaks out for the disability and chronic illness communities being a sufferer of chronic migraines and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

When Are You Ready For An Editor?

I see this a lot. Authors regularly come to me with books that just aren’t ready for me to look at the way they’re hoping. That isn’t to say I can’t help, but they’re trying to put the final polish on a book that hasn’t yet been cut, so to speak. While I’ll do the job they ask of me if they’re sure that’s what they want, it isn’t usually the best option.

So, in order to answer this question to its fullest, let’s start with discussing the types of editing available as well as other services that are related to this whole mess. I’m going to do this in order of where they come in the writing process, earliest to latest, so that way you can gauge where you are and see what you might need.

Book Coaching

A book coach helps you find your way through the process of writing a book. I provide this service to clients who are looking for organization, guidance, and structure. While coaching is unique for each client, it often looks like us meeting every week or so and discussing where an author is, what challenges they faced that week, how much they’ve written so far, and tackling things that are keeping them from making the progress they want. I also typically give lessons on structure, critique scenes or chapters, and help them stay on track with regular check-ins, even if we aren’t meeting every week.

Developmental Editing

This phase helps you put together the bones of your story. Hiring a developmental editor is for a manuscript that is pretty early in the process. A developmental edit addresses structural changes to a story–things like pacing, characterization, character development, and other such broad stroke items. That isn’t to say a developmental editor will make chop suey of your manuscript. Recently I worked with a client who was struggling with structural problems between acts one and two, and I advised that they add some scenes. The issue for them was they weren’t super clear on where the exact break between the acts was supposed to be. I didn’t advise the client delete anything wholesale.

I had another who needed a lot of structural work for pacing because partway through the story they didn’t know exactly where they were going. They figured out the thread toward the end of act two, but there was a lot in the middle we had to work out. We cut out the chaff and zeroed in on the things that needed doing.

If this sounds like a big, scary process, I promise it doesn’t have to be. A good developmental editor is there to help you tell your story the best they can in your voice. We aren’t trying to tell it in ours. If a developmental editor feels like they don’t get your book or aren’t giving you feedback you need, it’s totally okay to cease work (though it’s best practices to pay people for their time) and find another editor who you mesh better with.

To go back to the analogy of gems, this is where we start examining the quality of a raw gem to see what we can help you create out of it. We see the promise; we just need to get out of the surrounding rock.

If this sounds like a big, scary process, I promise it doesn’t have to be. A good editor is there to help you tell your story the best they can in your voice.

E. Prybylski

Line Editing

Line editing is going through the manuscript line by line (hence the name) and looking at things like word choice, sentence structure, and clarity. This is the phase where we iron out how many adverbs you really need (yes, you’re allowed to use them), help you use stronger verbs, give you insight into how to use your voice to its fullest advantage. This is the kind of editing people usually think of when they think of editing. It typically costs more than developmental editing and copy editing because it is the most labor-intensive for the editor in terms of hours spent because we need to evaluate every single word of the manuscript.

As before, of course, the intent of this is not to sanitize the author’s voice. Your voice. I’ve done blogs on author voice in the past, though I can’t find any more recent than 2011, so it’s probably due for an update. However, the long and short of it is: your voice is the way you write that makes you unique from any other. It’s not about whether or not you use adverbs or semicolons or what have you. It’s bigger than a sentence or word.

In order to really change or alter an author’s voice, I would either have to rewrite the entire thing myself or make such substantial changes to every single sentence that it is unreadable. These changes are bigger than punctuation or correcting inaccurate grammar. They’re also bigger than helping an author avoid passive voice, flying POV changes, and other such things. Don’t fret.

In the gemstone analogy, this is where the gem is cut.

Copy Editing

Copy editing is the highest level of editing. At this point, the editor doesn’t care if you used too many adverbs, if you wrote the entire thing in passive voice, and so on. Well, that’s mostly true. It’ll still make our hair stand on end, and we might leave you a comment, but we aren’t going to fix it for you because we’re not being paid to.

While in some parts of the editing community, line editing and copy editing are smooshed into a single service (I often do both at the same time), if someone just pays for copy editing, that’s what they are going to receive. If you are hiring an editor for copy editing, a few things are expected: you have either self-edited to the point where you are confident your book says what you intend or you have had another editor(s) review the book already to your satisfaction.

As you can see, this is also pretty far down the list in order of what happens when. Hiring someone to copy edit your book too early (if you plan on adding/changing scenes or doing a line edit) will just mean having to pay for one again later. While, yes, copy editing is less expensive than line editing, I wouldn’t skip that phase unless you really know what you’re doing. I have clients who come to me just for copy editing on their fiction, and they are extremely good at what they do. They’re experienced authors who don’t really need me to go word by word to make sure everything’s where it ought to be.

If you aren’t an experienced author who really has a good handle on all the bits and bobs of writing, I wouldn’t skip around. However, you might be able to find editors willing to work with you in your price range, so if money is an issue, shop around and see who’s available and at what price. That said, editing is one of the industries where you tend to get what you pay for. If you see someone charging a fair chunk of change, there’s likely a good reason for that.

In our gem cutting metaphor, this is the polish phase.

If you aren’t an experienced author who has a really good handle on all the bits and bobs of writing, I wouldn’t skip around. However, you might be able to find editors willing to work with you in your price range.

E. Prybylski

Proofreading

Finally, we get to proofreading. This is done when the book is formatted to make sure everything is caught and clean. If you are doing an ebook only, it may well be done in Word, but traditionally it’s done either in print or in the software the book is being formatted in. This can include things like making sure leading and kerning are correct, catching widows and orphans, and fixing up any last-minute typos. It is the very last look before something goes to print.

Proofreading is the absolute final step in review before your book is published. This is the final pass, and the last pair of eyes. Ideally it should be different from whoever did the other rounds of editing. I always advise two editors look at a project before it goes out. Even if one has done the rest of the editing process, having a fresh set of eyes to catch typos and find last-minute errors is invaluable.

When publishing novels through Insomnia, we always pass them back and forth to another editor in the company for this final run before the book is published for realsies. While this step may not be doable for all authors, I cannot overestimate the value of it.

SO!

All of that explanation out of the way, when should you hire an editor? The real answer, at the end of the day, is: It depends.

E. Prybylski

All of that explanation out of the way, when should you hire an editor? The real answer, at the end of the day, is: It depends. Where you are in the writing process tells you what kind of editing you want and who to look for. Absent you hiring a book coach to help you get your work on track, however, you should wait until you’ve finished your first draft and done at least one round of self-editing.

That means you finish it, have a celebratory glass of your favorite beverage, wait a few days, or a week or more for some folks, and then re-read what you wrote. Take notes. Outline your book again based on what you wrote (that’s a blog for another day that I’ll do) and really evaluate your novel. Then maybe send it to a beta reader or twelve. Once you’ve done that, then see where you’re at. If your story structure is solid, and you don’t think you have any pacing problems? Start looking for a line editor.

When in doubt, too, you can contact an editor to tell them where you’re at, what’s going on, and ask them what you need. Many editors perform manuscript evaluations for a reasonable fee in order to give you specific feedback about what you need, where, and why. They may pitch specific services to you, also.

I’ve had authors come to me for a line edit and I’ve told them what they really need is developmental or copy editing. It can go either way. While a manuscript evaluation may feel like an extra expense, the reality is it can save you a lot of money in the long run, and it’s worth considering if you’re feeling wibbldy about where you are in the process.

For what it’s worth, and to plug my services down here at the bottom, if you are interested in any of these types of editing, want a manuscript evaluation, or just in general are looking for help figuring out what you next step is, you can contact me through my editing website, and we can talk through what you need. If I’m not the right editor for you, I know many in multiple genres who may be able to help. I have resources to help you find what you’re looking for. That service is free. I’m here to help, not wring every penny out of you.

E. Prybylski has been in the publishing industry as an editor since 2009, starting at Divertir Publishing and eventually partnering with her close friend Richard Belanger to begin Insomnia Publishing.

Ever since childhood, E. has been an avid reader and writer of fantasy. The first chapter book she remembers reading is The Hobbit, followed swiftly by most of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. In high school, she perfected the skill of walking while reading without slamming into anyone. Mostly.

When she isn’t reading or writing, E. is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a B.A. in European history from SNHU. In addition to her many historical pursuits, E. is a musician of multiple instruments, a cat mom, and a loving wife to her husband, J. E. also speaks out for the disability and chronic illness communities being a sufferer of chronic migraines and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Fallen Friday: Thorny Theological Issues

This isn’t a spoiler, since it’s on the cover, but my main character in Fallen is a fallen angel (like the title didn’t give it away, right?). As a result, I put a lot of work into considering how angels and demons work in the setting and how I want to address them. It took a lot of consideration because on one hand, I’m a Christian and want to do justice to my faith. On the other, this isn’t a Christian book series. Which will become apparent to you pretty quickly, and I am expecting some heat for the way I use angels. Just remember that this is fiction.

I did a fair amount of research on angels in the book of Enoch as well as in Kaballah and other sources before settling on which choirs exist in my setting and how they work. I still don’t have every single detail laid out, but the basic foundation is all present, and since my editor and some of my beta readers have been curious, I figured this was a good time and place to discuss exactly what I am doing! Also, some of this may be subject to some measure of change as I write the series, since it’s not all codified yet.

While studying, I learned there are multiple types of angels that are listed in various places, and I didn’t want to use all of them. Also, depending on which scholars you read, the hierarchy is different, and Jewish and Islamic folks use different names from Christians. I defaulted to using the Jewish names since it was as close to the source material as I could get and, being a history nerd, I like using the more authentic names rather than Anglicizing them. Also, there’s no Anglicized version of some of the types, so writing some in English and some in Hebrew and mashing them together didn’t appeal to me.

The angel types I went with are as follows, in descending order from most power to least powerful.

SeraphimCherubimOphanimErelimMalakimIshim

The way I am using archangels is that it’s a position, not a separate species of angel altogether. I chose to go that route because there are only six of them (not counting those fallen like Lucifer), and it gave me the opportunity to work in their roles and their functions. Basically, I have it that the six archangels are more or less the top tier management who oversee the duties of those assigned to their purview. I’m not going to bore you with the exact details of what angels do what, and what each looks like when not adopting a human guise (though the ophanim are the wheels with eyes). I’m not writing an RPG, after all. At least not now. Though the idea has crossed my mind.

Demons are structured similarly to angels, though it’s far less organized because, by nature, they tend to be more chaotic and less likely to fall in line. I haven’t worked out all the various types yet and what I’d like to call them, but it’s more or less a broken mirror of heaven’s ranks.

However, for demons, an archdemon is a demon who was once an angel. There aren’t a ton of them, all things considered, and they tend to be excessively powerful. Their power, of course, does depend on what kind of angel they were when they fell. An archdemon who was once a seraph is obviously more potent than a demon who was a malak. I need to do a little more work on exactly who is what in Hell, but at this point in my novels the exact “structure” of Hell hasn’t been extremely important. All you need to know, for the most part is “demons bad.”

I also recognize that Islam has its own structure for angels, but I know nothing about the faith beyond the fact that it is similar in many respects to my own but distinct and different in many others. I don’t know enough about Islam to utilize their theology, and I don’t want to do them a disservice by trying. I know it’s present, and I respect it. However, as I say further on, the reason I chose my own religion to alter is because that’s what I know, and I don’t want to appropriate someone else’s.

Now for the parts that are likely to cheese people off because this is where my “this is FICTION” comment comes strongly into play.

The way I have the reality of God in this setting is that God is the creator deity. He is not the explicitly Abrahamic deity of Yahweh. The creator, which the angels just usually call “the Father” or “Father” is too big for any religion to understand and too big for human comprehension. While much of Fallen takes place in a Christian setting and dealing with Christian people (this is largely stemming from me writing what I know), the angels are servants of the creator, not the church, and as such they aren’t innately Christian, themselves. My main character would be just as comfortable in a Jewish temple, a Mosque, or in a Buddhist temple as she is in a Christian church. Angels are just as likely to quote the Bible as they are to quote another religion’s scripture beause all of them are right, and all of them are wrong.

In addition to that, the polytheistic religions actually have some merit.

God created more than just angels and the races of the Earth. He also created the elohim (note: different from reference to God as Elohim. Capitalization matters here). Elohim, in Hebrew, is a plural word for “gods” or “deities.” While we could dig into Christian theology here, I really don’t want to because, as I said, my series isn’t a Christian book series explicitly. It’s urban fantasy with some Christian overtones not dissimilar to Dresden Files or Supernatural, which both deal with angels and demons but aren’t Christian fiction.

So what are the elohim?

In my setting, they are more powerful than the seraphim. They were God’s first, his eldest creations. Creatures who interacted with the elohim saw them as gods in their own right, and many of the elohim didn’t try and dissuade them of the notion. To human understanding, they are gods, though they derive their power through their connection to the divine source, the creator Himself.

(Also, to note, I refer to the creator as male, but the reality is the deity isn’t gendered. This is, again, a case of “write what you know,” so I’m most comfortable referring to the deity as male pronouns.)

The point of the religion in these books is this:

Everybody is right. Everybody is wrong.

So, then we come to the question of why use the Hebrew words for things if it’s not going to be Jewish/Christian?

Honestly, it’s because that’s what I’m most familiar with. I am Christian, myself, and studied Christianity and the history of the Bible in college (in a non-religious sense). While it’s feasible to use another religion’s words for the concepts and such in my books, I admit fully that I don’t know enough about them to do them justice, and I don’t want to appropriate another culture’s living faith systems for my fiction. I’m okay using my own. It’s my belief that my religion is big enough to handle some fiction using our words.

Further, creating and imposing an entirely new and different religion as the “true” religion and laying it over the real world with all its religious and historical complexities didn’t work for me. It would be incredibly complicated, and it would require an incredible amount of world building to accomplish properly. Which would then require me to alter my characters into unrecognizability almost, and I didn’t want to do that. As such, I decided to use the framework I know and alter it slightly.

Beyond that, the angels speak an entirely different language. They wouldn’t call themselves “seraphim” or “malakim”; they’d use the Enochian words for it. My main character uses those words for herself because she’s mostly interacting with Christian folks in the first book, and it’s the easiest way to explain it.

As to why I didn’t write this to be explicitly Christian and be done with it, it was a choice based on the fact that my theology in the story didn’t work as being Christian alone. While the first few books about Cassiel are explicitly about an angel’s experience in the world, some of the other ones are decidedly more terrestrial.

Just as a teaser, I have vague ideas for some other themes:

A licensed necromancer dealing with ghosts and the undead.A former CIA operative who had to retire but is still doing her work. Vaguely reminiscent of a supernatural Burn Notice.A few books dealing with vampire politics and ancient beings.

My husband also has some ideas kicking around for novels in the universe that he’d like to write. We’ve worked on this setting together for years, and there are some stories from some perspectives he’d like to tell.

The meta-plot for the series, well…I’ll leave that for you to piece together yourselves. But I promise there is one. All these threads tie together in various places. There is a method to my madness.

This time.

E. Prybylski has been in the publishing industry as an editor since 2009, starting at Divertir Publishing and eventually partnering with her close friend Richard Belanger to begin Insomnia Publishing.

Ever since childhood, E. has been an avid reader and writer of fantasy. The first chapter book she remembers reading is The Hobbit, followed swiftly by most of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. In high school, she perfected the skill of walking while reading without slamming into anyone. Mostly.

When she isn’t reading or writing, E. Is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a B.A. in European history from SNHU. In addition to her many historical pursuits, E. is a musician of multiple instruments, a cat mom, and a loving wife to her husband, J. E. also speaks out for the disability and chronic illness communities being a sufferer of chronic migraines and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Advice In Context and Style Guides

I come across writers all the time who are bucking “the system” and posting rebellious tweets or Facebook messages about how they’ll keep their adverbs in (thank you very much) and how much they hate editors and how much they’re keeping very single dang comma. While I don’t always agree, I understand the frustration and backlash against what they see as prescriptivist, pedantic nonsense.

As you may have come to expect from me, I’m going to be straight with you here: they’re not all wrong.

The problem with a lot of the writing advice I’ve read, seen, and had given to me even by well-meaning and experienced authors has been that it lacks context. Let’s look at, for example, the injunction against using adverbs in prose. The reality is, adverbs have an important and valuable function. They’re a part of language for a reason, and I won’t tell you otherwise. The sticking point that isn’t usually explained along with the “avoid adverbs” advice is that you should avoid them when a stronger verb is available. The example I always give is: “he ran quickly” vs. “he sprinted.” In this example, “ran quickly” is redundant due to the presence of good, descriptive, solid verbs that could be used in place of it, so it weakens the writing.

As in all things here, adverbs (and pretty much everything else, if I’m honest) should be used like you use salt in cooking: The correct amount of salt enhances a dish, too much destroys it, and everyone’s taste differs. Also, certain genres are more forgiving of some types of tropes and language uses than others. YA would likely be more accepting of adverbs than, say, epic fantasy. The readership has different expectations.

Note: I am NOT in ANY WAY implying that epic fantasy is superior to YA. It’s not. They’re just different. I love both genres.

And this is just one example!

As someone who hangs out in writing circles and dispenses advice, the key for most things authors wrestle with is context. An “info dump” (aka. expositionary passage) is utterly necessary in some genres and places. There are right and wrong ways to go about it, but in SF/F you just have to get the world building out there sometimes, which means dropping it on your readers. In some subgenres of fantasy (like epic fantasy) readers live for the Tolkien-esque descriptions of kings and queens of old and historical events and so on. I think space opera sci-fi has a similar bent.

My point here is that writing advice shouldn’t be discarded wholesale, but contextualizing the rules to explain what, where, when, and why too often goes by the wayside. That’s how you end up with the idea that all adverbs are forbidden and any setting information is info-dumping and all the other misguided advice.

My point here is that writing advice shouldn’t be discarded wholesale, but contextualizing the rules to explain what, where, when, and why too often goes by the wayside.

E. Prybylski

Unfortunately, as a byproduct of that misguided advice, you end up with authors ready to heave all convention out the window and end up hateful and suspicious of editors. I’ll admit to being kinda sus, but so long as we’re not playing Among Us you’re probably okay. Probably. All joking aside, though, editors aren’t all pedants. In fact, the vast majority of the ones I know see variations in language as healthy and something to be celebrated. Also, we want to support you, not tear you down. That wouldn’t help anybody.

Another thing most people don’t tell writers is that grammar and punctuation has multiple styles. Most folks wouldn’t know AP from Chicago, and that’s why we editors have a job. Beyond that, many publishers (like mine for example) have in-house style guides that cherry-pick the punctuation norms we prefer. Oxford Comma? Style. Spaces around em-dashes or ellipses? Style. Using UK or US spelling? Style. Commas as breaks in ways other than strictly defined? Depending on their use, it could be pulling on older styles of comma usage. Also a style.

The key thing, however, is that whatever you do, do it on purpose. If you are messing up and trying to cover your butt by claiming you, uh, meant to do that, it’ll be obvious. I always advise to my clients to learn the rules first. Learn the irritating, pedantic, prescriptivist rules. Then once you know them, have internalized them, and understand them, at that point you can start breaking them. If you are doing things out of ignorance, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to back things up and will just be wrong and inconsistent. And that won’t be a good look for you.

However you choose to go about it, consider making your style guide something you codify. Do you spell it “gray” or “grey?” I infinitely prefer “grey.” I don’t have a good reason why except for the fact that I grew up reading UK authors, and some of their spellings and conventions leaked into my internal lexicon (thanks, Anne McCaffrey and Tolkein). This style guide serves two very specific purposes. The first is to make sure your work is internally consistent. If you are consistent in how you do or do not use specific linguistic tools, it shows you are doing it on purpose. Now, there’s a chance that you’ll be wrong (I have an author who struggles with terminal punctuation in dialogue, for example), but if you’re consistent it’s also easier to fix with find/replace. Second, this style guide will be something you can provide to your editor so they know what you want when they’re editing your book. While they may have feedback to give on your style guide, if they know your intent, it will require less of an attempt at mind reading.

One thing to note, however, is if you are traditionally publishing, the publisher will have a house style guide that will supersede your own. You may not get a say in it at all, and at that point you’re rubbing up against the realities of traditional publishing. While it provides you with the benefits of not having to do and source everything yourself, you lose certain elements of creative control and are bound by the regulations of the publisher. The good news is, though, publishers have reasons why they want things the way they want them, so it’s not just arbitrary, and they aren’t going to ruin your book. Well, any good publisher won’t, anyway. I can’t account for jerks.

E. Prybylski has been in the publishing industry as an editor since 2009, starting at Divertir Publishing and eventually partnering with her close friend Richard Belanger to begin Insomnia Publishing.

Ever since childhood, E. has been an avid reader and writer of fantasy. The first chapter book she remembers reading is The Hobbit, followed swiftly by most of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. In high school, she perfected the skill of walking while reading without slamming into anyone. Mostly.

When she isn’t reading or writing, E. Is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a B.A. in European history from SNHU. In addition to her many historical pursuits, E. is a musician of multiple instruments, a cat mom, and a loving wife to her husband, J. E. also speaks out for the disability and chronic illness communities being a sufferer of chronic migraines and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Fallen Friday: How Do Centaurs Wear Pants?

When working on Fallen, I’ve come across a lot of these questions like the title of this blog. Do they wear pants at all, or do they just let it all hang out? Is that legal? Is it moral? Well, my solution was that centaurs aren’t usually in cities since they’re not comfortable there. They prefer large, grassy areas and dirt roads (better on their legs and feet), so since my books are set in Boston, I don’t need to know.

But, since I mentioned it, I’ve decided that they don’t wear pants since they couldn’t don them. Instead, they have small magical items (necklace, ring, etc.) which hides their bits away and makes them more or less a Ken (or Barbie) doll. Smooth.

It’s not that bits are offensive. They aren’t. But when we’re talking human-level sentience, if two-leggers need to wear things covering theirs, I imagine the laws involving four-legged creature like centaurs would have to be similar. And given the shape of a horse body and human torso… Well, I have enough trouble putting pants on as it is. I don’t want to think about yet MORE legs and booty, thanks!

Honestly, a lot of my world building has come down to the question of how magical races would integrate with modern society. Satyrs? Well, that’s easy. They just have pants designed for their leg shape. They could definitely wear pants like the human races do. That one was easy. Where do vampires get food? From consenting adults or blood banks. Also, your fae barista might give you an extra shot of glamour to help you get in the right headspace for a big interview. Things like that.

The thing that I’m really thinking about in terms of all of this is how magic intersects with police work. For example: there are many creatures who can change their physical appearance at will or shapeshift entirely. Now, a therianthrope’s DNA is likely the same whether they’re an animal, in their beast form, or in a human guise. So that would only confuse the visuals. You get a therianthrope bull in a china shop on camera, you won’t know what they look like as a human, but you might see some identifying marks. Plus paw prints, DNA, and so on would be traceable, I imagine.

Of course, I am fully aware that this stuff all flies in the face of real biology. A centaur could not exist, scientifically speaking. Nor could dragons or shapeshifters. I’m not even going to go there because, honestly, this is fantasy. I’m here for the magic. I love science, but this ain’t it!

Doing this kind of world building is a lot of work. There are a lot of intricate pieces to the series as I’m working on–more than just the cosmology of angels and demons. I have to deal with vampire politics, the laws around certain kinds of magic, and so much more. While the story starts from the POV of just one character, the series is actually much bigger than what it seems to start. I have plans for several trilogies, some stand-alone novels, and all of it ties into the meta plot, which is a lot. I’ll discuss a little of that in a future blog post (no spoilers, I promise).

However, this kind of daydreaming is one of my favorite parts of writing. A lot of us writers really get into the “what if” parts of our story crafting, and I’m no different. Using the modern world as a framework was the easiest thing I think I could have done because all the world building I do can exist on top of already-existing structures, which makes things easier. For my high fantasy novels, I have to create everything. Not only the magic bits, but the countries, factions, world, laws, and so on. It’s far harder than this. Or, at least, it’s more complicated in some ways. I still have to answer questions like how centaurs wear pants, but I have to do so on top of figuring out what the name and structure of the centaur country would be.

How do you think centaurs wear pants? No, really. How?

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7 Classic Query Blunders

I started my career as an acquisitions editor and still deal with acquisitions. Through that experience, I can tell you there are a few things that will always make me stomp my feet and scream. In fact, I may even throw my hands up. Queries are a hard part of writing, but there are a few things you absolutely must get correct to avoid being sent the dreaded form rejection letter. While I’m not saying you’ll absolutely be accepted if you avoid these mistakes, your likelihood of acceptance is vastly higher.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

Not following guidelines.
While a lot of writing has things that are wibbldy and wobldy and wishy-washy, query guidelines are not. We ask for specific things because they’re what we absolutely need to know, and we need that information as efficiently as possible. For example, if someone sent my company, Insomnia Publishing, an erotica novel to publish, I’d reject it without looking at the rest of the query. No offense to erotica (I have erotica writers I’m close to, and the genre’s dandy in my book–hurr, I made a pun), but we aren’t a romance/erotica publisher. We are only speculative fiction.
Writing “fun” queries.
If you’re writing a query as the main character or trying to do something funky with fonts or images, please don’t. I know you’re desperately trying to stand out in my inbox. But making the background of your email lime green and your text fuchsia will cause me a migraine and net you a rejection out of hand. It does make you stand out, that’s for sure, but standing out doesn’t always mean good things.

Write me a query that’s honest, to the point, contains the I information I need, and is polite and well-formatted. That will make you stand out. If you want to use a font that isn’t Times New Roman, Size 12 (that’s the industry standard), feel free to use other easy-to-read fonts like Garamond, Georgia, Cambria, etc. While I can’t speak for other editors (and if they list a font requirement in their guidelines use it), so long as it’s easy to read and standard, I won’t complain.

Unless you send me a query in Papyrus. Just. . . just don’t.
Word counts outside of what we ask for.
This won’t be an immediate failure unless it’s dramatically outside our maximums and minimums. Our listed maximum is 120k words for high fantasy and historical novels. If your novel is 130k words, I won’t burn your query in effigy. If it’s 220k words, I will probably pour myself a glass of Moscato, pop some fruit in that, drink it, and send you a rejection.

While you can argue until you’re blue in the face that if writers like Stephen King and George R. R. Martin can do it, so can you, it doesn’t mean we can afford to take that risk at this point in time. The overheads are going to be outrageous. The cost to edit, format, and (assuming print) print and ship that is going to be horrendous. Unless you’re Stephen King magically sending me a query (Hi, Mr. King, I’ll accept anything you send me.), you’re going to have to abide by what we can see as acceptable risk.
You haven’t explained your genre well.
This part is hard, and I get that. But if you send me a book and describe it as a fantasy/historical/cyberpunk/paranormal/sci-fi/romance, I am probably going to go right back to the wine. In fact, just writing that makes me twitch a little. While it’s tempting to try and label your book as every genre it might cross over into, I really just need the main details.

If it’s a cyberpunk/fantasy? Great. I’m a Shadowrun fan. I can grok that. But when the genres don’t make sense together or you don’t explain it well, I’m just going to be confused and turn it down. I need to understand what I’m looking at immediately. If you can’t make that clear, your book is too complex and needs revision, or you don’t have a clear enough view to market it.

Part of this question about genre comes down to: who is the target market for this book? If I can’t pinpoint a target market of people who will want to buy this, I can’t sell it. If I can’t sell it, I don’t want to publish it.
Your query is poorly-written.
If your query is full of grammatical errors and questionable word choice or excessively over-written, I am going to expect that of the book. We’re all human, and if you have a typo in there (like for some reason I write “youo” like 98% of the time I type “you”) it’s not going to break you. But if it’s written with heavily passive voice, purple prose, or an obvious and poor understanding of sentence construction, it tells me the book is going to be the same. Perfection isn’t necessary, but being solid and clear? Yeah, that’s a requirement.
Your tone.
I’ve been in this industry long enough that most of the time I can identify a nightmare client from tone. I have received hundreds of “you’re just a literary hack who doesn’t understand my genius” responses over my decade working in the industry. I can recognize the author who is convinced that they are the embodiment of Tolkien or Heinlein. If you strike me as someone who will be an utter nightmare to edit, you’ll get a rejection.

I know that sounds harsh, but for every person who is too full of their own genius that they cannot understand why I’d want to change a single comma, there are dozens of brilliant, motivated authors eager to learn and improve and willing to work with an editor.
Your marketing plan is disorganized or non-existent.
My company has recently started requiring marketing plans from our authors in the query. It doesn’t need to be huge, but it has to show that thought has been put into it and that you’re willing to do the work needed to make your book a sucess. This is because we have run into situations where authors refuse to market, cannot market, or have no plans whatsoever to market, and as a result they do nothing to help move books. While marketing is a complex subject for another blog, know that coming to the table with a plan with clear, actionable steps (even if it’s something as simple as: weekly blogs, engage on social media to grow readership, blog tours) will make you instantly more appealing.

While I have no problems helping our authors market and giving them all the tools I know of, I am not a publicist, nor does my company have the money to hire one. They’re expensive. And if we did hire one, it would be to work with us on some of our bigger titles, not every single one. (Much as larger companies only will have 2-3 major titles per quarter/period that their publicists focus on.) Marketing falls to authors a lot of the time, and there’s only so much we can do about it.

In reality, there’s also only so much I can do for an author. I cannot build an author page for you, make your Facebook author page and populate it with content, create an official author Twitter for you, or write your blog posts and develop your email list for you. Those are things I absolutely cannot do for you even if I wanted to. So go into it with a plan if you can, and do some study ahead of time to learn at least a little about what’s needed.

IngramSpark has a good checklist of how to handle a book release and what to do when, so I’ll leave the marketing conversation here and let you read that checklist to help you plan things out.

This is by no means a complete list of things that might turn an acquisition editor off, but it covers the big ones that come to mind when I think about queries. I know some of these may sound a little harsh, but try and remember that acquisitions editors often deal with hundreds of emails a day for larger companies. Our process is usually streamlined to be as efficient as possible and allow us to spend as little time as possible reading a query before making a decision on it.

I’ll be frank, too, I often make a decision on whether or not I want to read more of the story based on reading the query, the first paragraph or two, and then glancing at the synopsis. While I may read the whole two chapters we ask for if something grabs me (if it does, go you!), but I am operating purely on: “Does this fit? How much work would this take to publish? If we put in the work, will the author fulfill their end of the bargain?”

An author’s job doesn’t end when editing is over. In fact, it’s just beginning when you sign the contract because, beyond writing, you have editing and then marketing. It’s not all sunshine and roses to get an acceptance letter; you have to keep pushing if you want to be successful. If you don’t, nobody wins.

Also, as an aside, in case you were wondering, yes, the title of this does resemble a Princess Bride quote. Just know that Princess Bride quotes are always lurking. Waiting. Stalking me. And now you know my dreadful secret: if you think it might be a pun know that it probably is.

An author’s job doesn’t end when editing is over. In fact, it’s just beginning when you sign the contract because, beyond writing, you have editing and then marketing.

E. Prybylski

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Why Publishers Won’t Steal Your Book

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or an expert in the law. My understanding comes from contact with people who know more than I do about US copyrights. If you have questions or concerns, please contact a lawyer.

Let me start by saying there is no accounting for jerks in the world, and there are jerks. However, the vast majority of publishers fall into the category I am going to describe in this blog for the reasons I give. There are also authors who plagiarize or steal other authors’ works (and I don’t mean fanfic writers–you folks are fine in my book). However, I have yet to meet a publisher who would steal an author’s book.

The reality is this: the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t add up when it comes to stealing your book.

Even if you were the next Tolkien, Martin, King, or Hemingway, the reality is that there is so much work and money that goes into investing in a book to be published that stealing your work to publish without you wouldn’t be worth it. On average, one pass of editing for one of my clients is between $800-$2000, depending on the type of editing and length of the novel. When we are publishing a book, there is a minimum of three passes ($2,400) plus typesetting (another $750 minimum), cover design ($250+), an ISBN ($50ish), uploading to Ingram ($25) and so on. By the time it hits the market, we’ve spent around $5,000 in work and assets on this book. And that was calculated with the absolute minimum in editing. It’s usually closer to $1,200 per pass worth of work.

The reality is this: the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t add up when it comes to stealing your book.

E. Prybylski

And that’s a clean book that doesn’t require extensive work. (Not that we’d take a book that does for exactly the reasons above).

Also, royalties tend to be around 15% net for print books and 35-40% net for ebooks. Most of the time, after Amazon, Ingram, and other parts of the distribution network take their bites, a book that sells for $15.00 as a print book might net a $4.00-$5.00 profit for the publisher. And 15% of that is about $0.75 per book that goes to an author. For ebooks, you’re getting 40% of the 30% the publisher makes off of your $5.99 book. Or about $0.10. Sure, if you sell hundreds and hundreds of books, that will add up over time, but it would require a huge success for that to be worth the fiscal risk of being taken to court.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that, legally, copyright in the US begins the moment you start writing your book. Even before you register it. This means that even if you pitch your book to publishers/agents before you’ve obtained a copyright through the process, you are protected. While defending your copyright in court is easier when you’ve obtained a copyright from the government, it’s certainly possible. And if someone does steal your book, you can sue them into oblivion.

None of these costs have taken marketing into account yet, either. Which is time-consuming and can be expensive depending on the routes you choose.

From a purely dollars-and-cents point of view, the math just doesn’t add up for a publisher to steal your book and try and cut you out of the deal. The amount we have to invest into every book we launch means that, before we could rake in that sweet, sweet, illicit dough, we’d have to invest a lot of money, hope you don’t catch us, and then put the book to market and spend even more money and time on marketing all while Snidely Whiplash twirling our collective mustaches and hoping you don’t notice.

The long and short of it is, it just isn’t worth it. No offense, but your book isn’t worth that risk and that investment if we could get taken to court over it. No matter how good it is, your book just isn’t good enough for me to risk my livelihood, future work, mortgage, and future children’s college funds over on the wild guess of a return.

Besides. I’m an author, myself. I don’t want to steal your books. I have my own I’m publishing.

Now, are there cases where authors will steal each other’s ideas, and stories. There have been a lot of lawsuits over it, and that is something to watch out for (which is why I strongly discourage authors from writing anything on Wattpad unless they’re making it public forever and never intend on trying to make money from it). You should be careful who you share your manuscript with before you copyright it and/or publish it. That’s a thing you should be aware of. I’m not saying not to workshop things with fellow authors (again, the vast majority of them have their own projects and genuinely don’t want to steal yours), but you should be conscious and aware of things and use caution.

Ultimately, you may well want to copyright before querying, but not because the publisher is likely to steal it from you. In fact, they may well expect you to have copyrighted your book in advance. It’s an important part of the process, and you should do it. However, it’s got nothing to do with publishers stealing your writing.

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Fallen Friday: The Setting

Welcome to another edition of “Fallen Friday!” If you weren’t around for last week’s, this is my new blog series where I talk about the journey I’ve undertaken to get here, my writing, and also about the novel itself as well as its setting! While you can learn this in the book, I figured sharing some of this stuff in advance couldn’t hurt. Fallen isn’t due out until December, and I don’t know if I can keep all this in for that long!

Like I mentioned last week, my novel’s setting is inspired by a mixture of the movie Bright on Netflix and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series along with no small dollop of Holly Black’s Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside. While you may or may not recognize all the influences, the most obvious one at the first contact is Bright.

The setting of the Smoke and Magic series addresses a similar question to that movie: what if magic were commonplace, and fantasy races were all real? Now, unlike Bright, the world isn’t/ a post-modern dystopia where the elves live in the fantasy equivilent of The Aerium from Altered Carbon. (Yeah, I know, I’m a Netflix junkie. So sue me.) Instead, society is more or less like it is in the real world. Mostly.

My novels are mostly going to be set in the city of Boston, MA because I live quite close to the city. I haven’t spent a great deal of time there in person due to a combination of finances and physical disability, but if Google Streetview tracked steps like my Fitbit does, I’d have probably clocked several marathons by now. I have also been to the city a number of times (Logan Airport, the Boston Aquarium and museums and zoo, The Royale to see VNV Nation perform, and so on), and I’m a historian who is intimately familiar with the history of the city. I also live in New Hampshire, so the historical New England buildings are hardly foreign territory for me. My family church is with a year or so of the establishment of Old North Church in Boston.

So what does it mean that magic is commonplace in the world?

Well, for one thing, there are degrees in it from Harvard. While you won’t meet her until book two, there’s a character who has a degree in it. Magic is, of course, quite regulated. It’s commonplace insomuch as there are many people who can do it, how magic is used and by whom is tightly-controlled. Particularly things like necromancy (which will show up later in the series). Small things like illusion magic (the fae use it a lot) to alter hair color, eye color, and so on? Not considered much of a big deal in most circumstances, though it can make police work a nightmare if you have no idea what the person really looks like. They have special units for that.

Those with magic are considered “metas.” Some species are entirely comprised of metas (like the aforementioned fae) while others only have the occasional meta. Species like therianthropes are also considered meta since their shapeshifting, while a product of nature, is a form of magic. Metas are, generally speaking, broken up into two categories: active and passive. Passive metas are individuals like therianthropes whose magic is (typically) limited to shapeshifting and healing wounds or a vampire’s ability to exist.

Generally speaking, about 40% of the population is meta, with the bulk of the non-meta population being made up of humanity. While there are many other species in the world, humans reproduce the fastest. Some of the long-lived races, like elves, have few children and typically at more or less a replacement rate since elves can live for centuries. Biology saw fit to ensure they wouldn’t over-populate the world and kill off life on the planet. Most of the species with excessively long natural lifespans have similar parameters to their biology.

So what about things like dragons?

Yes, well, dragons certainly existed, though they were in fact hunted out in the Medieval ages so far as anyone knows. Any who weren’t slain by knights have long since gone into hiding. And just as well for the most part–they were extremely powerful creatures known to cause a great deal of trouble for folks. What with the hoarding and such. Not exactly ideal neighbors a lot of the time.

So what does that mean for the day-to-day?

Well, you still have computers and cell phones and Internet. The world still exists as we expect it to on average. However, there are folks with heating and cooling handled by runes instead of forced air. They still require charging and maintainence, but it’s cheaper that way. Also, there are flight rules for winged creatures communting. And there are cars designed for bigger creatures. And, you know, centaur standing room on trains and busses.

Some things like World Wars are also a little different, but I don’t want to get too far into that in this installment.

E. Prybylski has been in the publishing industry as an editor since 2009, starting at Divertir Publishing and eventually partnering with her close friend, Richard Belanger to begin Insomnia Publishing.

Ever since childhood, E. has been an avid reader and writer of fantasy. The first chapter book she remembers reading is The Hobbit, followed swifty by most of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. In high school, she perfected the skill of walking while reading without slamming into anyone. Mostly.

When she isn’t reading or writing, E. Is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a B.A. in European history from SNHU. In addition to her many historical pursuits, E. is a musician of multiple instruments, a cat mom, and a loving wife to her husband, J. E. also speaks out for the disability and chronic illness communities being a sufferer of chronic migraines and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

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