Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 31
April 7, 2020
How I got there: Writing Mysteries, Science, Fiction and Fantasy (Part II)
Though I started out reading mysteries and writing them, Star Trek’s arrival on the scene changed that.
The series had just gone into syndication in Los Angeles the same year women got into West Point. Both these were big deals for me because everything I’d read and was generally out in the media said I was important enough to be…well, much of anything.
Here, we had women becoming officers in the prestigious military academy.
And Star Trek? Uhura was on the bridge!
Looking at it from today’s perspective, Star Trek itself never did have really good roles for women. The Orville did what Star Trek couldn’t.
But at that time? It was far more than what I’d seen. The bridge was an important place. She was doing something important.
Star Trek also was a very different show. Its roots were in the Western, so there was a lot of fun action but not violent. The stories had a lot of characterization. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy didn’t always get along, but they remained friends.
The show felt incredibly different. Was all science fiction like this?
Not everyone felt that way. The special effects…aliens…I was often told in school that I was weird for liking Star Trek. That I should like Little Rascals (also airing on KTLA), which I couldn’t stand; or the Fonz (very hot in the hearts of many teens). I didn’t understand the appeal of the Fonz either.
One woman from our church kept saying that her son had worked on the set and everything was so fake. That has me scratching my head today. All TV is fake. Your point?
But Star Trek got me to read science fiction. Now I mined the library for those books. We had all the classic authors of the pulp era.
Small problem though: I didn’t like the adult books. I know from Dean Wesley Smith that the genre started like the Western—you know, good guys win. It was very popular at that point. Then it veered away from that and lost popularity as a genre.
So I liked the children’s books (probably called young adult today). They were adventures in space and very exciting to read.
But writing it? I wasn’t even thinking about it. Because fantasy was yet to come and that’ll be in Part III.
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More Reading
How I got there: Writing Mysteries, Science, Fiction and Fantasy (Part I)
April 6, 2020
It’s Cover Refresh Time!
There’s a lot of discussion about writers not being able to be productive with what’s happening out in the world. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Anne Allen have both discussed this. I’m not able to write at all, so I’m focusing on the tedious tasks that I struggle to get to…like ebook refreshes.
These refreshes replace the interior of the book with the new template, as well as the cover. I’m just setting them up right now and will have a burst of uploads once the world gets back to normal.
Onward to the fun stuff! Ze covers!
5 Futuristic Women
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The one on the left is the original cover, and the one on the right is the new one.
This is one of my early covers. I only did it about four years ago, but it now just feels dated.
So the update on the left. I particularly like how the astronaut woman’s feet are pointing to the cover where you would open the book (well, if it wasn’t an ebook). I also think it feels a little more space age than my original choice.
10 Fantasy Stories I
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Like above, left is the original cover, and right is the new cover.
I struggled finding a good cover for this book. Pictures of women for fantasy books are hard to find. At the time, this was one of the few that had character relatively fully dressed. So this was what I could find, not necessarily what I really wanted.
For the new image, I actually still had trouble, but for a different reason. Most of the fantasy covers are BROWN! But the cave is pretty cool and she’s got that heroine pose (and clothes!).
Horrors when I did the interior build. One of the stories was retitled, so this book definitely needs the update.
Action Tales I
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As before, left is the original, and right is the new cover.
The left is a relatively new cover for me. I only did it last year. But in that time, two things happened.
The first was the the program I use for the cover, Adobe Photoshop Elements, stopped working. It told me I didn’t have enough RAM. That turned out to be a fixable bug. But I thought I would have to upgrade my computer, so I got GIMP as a temporary fix. Well, the program was difficult to use and not all the fonts were available. That’s why the titles look different.
The second thing was that my computer failed. I was able to recover almost everything, but I did lose the original of this image.
So I have a new image and cover. I liked this one so much that I found three others to use on future refreshes.
More to come!
April 5, 2020
How I got there: Writing Mysteries, Science, Fiction and Fantasy (Part I)
I recently published my first mystery, Golden Lies, which has gotten picked up by 18 libraries! I thought would be cool to talk about how I ended up writing what I do.
My earliest memory of reading books was a series of picture books about a horse named Blaze. I think everyone up in horse books sooner or later.
I wandered into the Misty horse series next, with its wonderful covers. That’s one of the things I enjoyed about the children’s books, because I’m very visual. The covers told me something about the book. Adult books seemed rather uninteresting by comparison.
Then I landed on Nancy Drew. The library had this wonderful row of yellow spines, second shelf from the floor. Next to it was the Hardy Boys, with their blue spines. They didn’t do much for me. The Bobbsey Twins was also by the same publishing company, but our library only carried a few.
Clearly, they knew where their audience was! We had more Nancy Drews than Hardy Boys.
I devoured all of them. I loved the covers, which showed Nancy in a bit of danger or mystery. When I checked out a book, I always flipped through and looked at the illustrations. That’s something I miss in books, too.
I loved reading Nancy’s adventures. There wasn’t much for girls in those days. We’d get the horse books, nurse romances, and the girl detective books. Not just Nancy Drew, but also Trixie Beldon and Kim Aldrich.
I even drifted into adult territory, hoping to find books with girls at least in them. I landed on Phyllis Whitney’s gothic mysteries, though I found first-person very strange looking!
But there still wasn’t enough. A friend in fourth grade, Rebekah, was writing a school play. That made me think I could write, too, and I immediately wanted to write a mystery novel. My parents encouraged short stories instead.
I created my own girl detective Sharon McCall, who had the hair I wanted (Peggy Lipton hair. The Mod Squad was in reruns then). She had lots of dogs and cats and solved mysteries. I illustrated the stories sometimes, but my friends also enjoyed reading and illustrating them.
Every opportunity I had, I wrote story after story.
Then I entered the 7th grade and something new came along: Star Trek.
Coming next in Part II…science fiction and fantasy…
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April 2, 2020
Rejection Letters—What the Heck Does that Form Letter Mean?
You’ve sent your story off to a magazine and next thing you know it comes back with a generic paragraph. Very polite, very neutral. Maddeningly, it doesn’t seem to tell you anything at all!
These last two weeks, I’ve been struggling with being creative because the craziness around me is very overwhelming. I can’t work on a novel-length project, and I’m struggling a bit with short stories. So I sent out four existing short stories, including one that had just been rejected with a form letter.
Why Don’t Editors Send Out Comments?
This is a pretty common question from writers. They want someone to tell them what they’re doing wrong so the can get published.
Unfortunately, the editor of a magazine or anthology doesn’t have time to hold everyone’s hand. He’s got to put out a magazine or a book.
Or, there’s no profit in telling someone you just rejected what they did wrong.
But there’s a second reason…
Bad behavior of writers. There’s a lot of people who have meltdowns when they are told why their story was rejected. When I did critiques on the writing message boards, I would periodically run into a person who really off the deep end. It’s very frightening!
What does the form letter mean?
It was only after I started getting personal rejections for stories that I understood exactly what happened with my stories when I got a form rejections.
There is no guessing if you’ve received a personal rejection. The editor will make comments that you can tell are about your specific story.
One of the four mentioned above got a personal rejection. The comment was that the story was choppy and the characterization between the two characters hadn’t been developed enough.
These were both true. I’d been experimenting with pacing using sentence structure and went overboard with that story. It was very obvious once I revisited the story.
The second issue was because I laser-focused on getting the theme on the first page. Unfortunately, that caused me to do the story out of order and a discussion that happened between the characters was later than it should have been.
But circling back around to the story that got a form rejection…
The editor didn’t get off the first page. I think he did get down the first page and it wasn’t right for the anthology. But I’ve also gotten form rejections where I doubt if they read more than a sentence.
The fix for all this? Push yourself to learn new skills. Don’t ask other writers what you’re doing wrong. Just pick a new skill and try it out as I did with the pacing. It’ll work or it won’t, but you’ll learn something.
What’s the strangest rejection you’ve gotten?
More Reading
Submitting to MagazinesHow to Write for an Anthology ThemeX Marks the Spot is available for Preorder. It’ll be out on April 15.
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March 31, 2020
Submitting to Magazines
With the social distancing, we’re all experiencing, now is the perfect time to write and submit short stories. They’re much smaller and much easier to manage projects if your attention span is struggling.
I’ve spent the last few weeks wrestling with the overload of information, cutting off news from most of my social media. I’ve been trying to write several stories, including one for a deadline today. I ended up redrafting a story that got rejected because I’d done an experiment with pacing that didn’t work.
When should you submit?
I’m pretty sure that most calls with deadlines that close get them either upfront or at the last minute. You probably want to more in the middle.
I had a story in with one magazine when another call popped up that the story, Cartographer of Fortunes, was perfect for. The first magazine did a form reject, so I squeaked into the second magazine’s submission window with a day to spare.
I got a personal rejection. The editor loved the story and would have accepted it—but he already had nearly all the stories he could use. I was too late!
Read the Guidelines
Review the guidelines to make sure you checked all the boxes off. You’ve got the right genre, the right topic, and that the manuscript is formatted properly.
Writers have gotten into petty snits over fonts. The editor wants Courier New (okay, maybe not likely anymore). The writer hates Courier New and wants to use Garmond.
Just follow the magazine’s rules. They’re the ones looking for stories so they make the rules.
Make sure also that you include your name, address, and email on the first page of the manuscript. If the story is accepted, you just made it easier for the editor to do the contract.
The Cover Letter
This was always something I worried about. I thought it mattered more than it did. You just need a simple template:
Dear (Editor Name, pasted in from the site):
Attached is my 3,000-word science fiction short story, “Title of Story,” for your consideration.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely.
If the guidelines request any additional information, just put it after the first paragraph.
Most importantly is to let the story fly.
What’s the most interesting story submission you’ve done.
More Reading
X Marks the Spot is available for Preorder. It’ll be out on April 15.
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March 29, 2020
A Day in the Life of Coronavirus Chaos
I’m on week 2 of fulltime telework. My brain is ready to short circuit. Because work has shut down most normal activities, I’m doing the one thing that my creative brain doesn’t like at all. It needs to be done, but it’s mind-numbingly boring.
I’m getting through the days with looking at the headlines of ONE print newspaper and ONE glance at an online news site (mostly because of work). No watching the news on TV. Heck, when I’m watching TV, I’m muting the commercials. There’s way too much of “we care. We’re helping you with Coronavirus.” Newsflash, media. If you have to tell us you care, you have a huge marketing problem.
I woke up Saturday to a lot of rain. We’ve alternated between a few rainy days, and then one sunny and warmer. The cherry blossoms look like they will pass through without going to peak bloom. But once the rain pushes out and the sun pops out, pollen’s going to be bad.
Writing with the Writing Nerd
I did some early morning writing on two short stories. The fantasy looks to be a false start, though I like the idea itself. Just not sure how to start it, or where. It uses non-24, where the circadian rhythms get scrambled.
The mystery is historical, set in the same era as Golden Lies in a fictional town of Balboa Bay (Morro Bay in real life, so I don’t’ have to get the town details accurate. The working title is Banjo, which is the name of a dog who goes for a walk to find a crime.
I’m taking the writing bit by bit. Even with cutting off the news media, the chaos is still overwhelming for me. It’s hard not to be when getting out of the house ends up being only grocery shopping.
I also submitted two stories, a mystery called “One Red Shoe” and a science fiction flash fiction called “The Schedule.” Looking also at getting “Pirate’s Quest” out the door this week, but it needs a bit of fixing in the opening.
Nerd Adventures
After that, I hopped out on the road, literally to get on the freeway and drive out for a bit, then turn around. My car’s been sitting all week, and it needed a good freeway run to keep the battery charged. Waze annoyed me when I set it so I could find my way back (having hopped off and randomly drove through streets) with a red warning label: Why are you driving?!
Lunch was a pick up at my favorite restaurant again. I’m doing my part to keep them in business. The pickups made me realize it isn’t just good food, but the people at the restaurant that I like, too. I miss that.
TV watching has included some of the older shows, like Hart to Hart. Hollywood is very anti-marriage. When H2H was first created, the network wanted the couple to bicker and not get along. The producers and actors held firm to what it is, and the show is a joy to watch.
In one of the episodes, Jonathan’s past girlfriend is getting married, but something appears to be wrong with the whole thing. Jonathan and Jennifer to rescue. There’s a brief joke from Jennifer about old flames. Jonathan tells her she’s the only one for him, and you can tell right away that she was only joking.
Absolute trust in each other.
Since I’m looking at the older TV shows, what have you been watching? What’s your popcorn show for Coronavirus stress?
More Reading
Interview with Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers on Hart to Hart. I didn’t know Cary Grant was the first choice for the show lead.
Since It Takes a Thief was mentioned above….I saw this show when it went into syndication originally. I remember liking it, but curiously, none of the episodes were memorable. The show was a product of the spy craze created by James Bond, that then died out abruptly (that’s why Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea went from spies to monsters and aliens).
Coming up on Tuesday: Submitting stories. Thursday is on What form rejections mean.
March 22, 2020
A Day in the Life Amidst Virus Chaos
What’s happening now reminds of me when I broke my right foot in 2016. I was on no weight bearing for at least two weeks. That confined me to my house essentially except for doctor appointments and a stop at Panera Bread on the way back to get something that was just different.
Cooking terrified me. No weight bearing meant I was balancing on one foot and leaning against the counter while I prepared food. Having a knife in hand to cut vegetables? Well… I had a lot of scrambled eggs and smoothies.
I’m really glad I spent the time learning how to cook without recipes several years back because it’s serving me well now. A lot of people are finding out they have a problem because they don’t have the cooking chops (this is why spaghetti sauce and pasta are selling out. That was a staple of mine before I got better at cooking).
Morning of the Writing Nerd
My Saturday morning started as a sinus zombie again. The DC area went from 79 the day before to 53 and rainy.
First thing was an attempt at the farmer’s market in Old Town. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be open or not and they didn’t have anything online. So when I showed up, the market square was empty.
Off to Trader Joe’s instead. Since I was 30 minutes after they opened, I was going to do a fast assessment and see if I needed to abort the shopping mission. But they had changed their hours, so I was 30 minutes early. I stood out in front and chatted with a British guy.
By the time TJ opened, the line was over 1,000 feet. Yikes! The employees counted out fifty people and let us in. There was a limit of only 2 each of everything, so no one could take all of one item. I zoomed in and did my shopping in 7 minutes flat.
Back home, I lazed out the morning, watching The Greatest American Hero. Some joker decided to show the episode about bald guys in white t-shirts trying to steal the smallpox virus from a testing site. Next episode was more of a Hollywood staple: character gets amnesia and forgets that he’s a superhero.
I tried a walk in the morning. People were out and about, walking their dogs, or just walking like me. You have to. When I broke my foot, I couldn’t do that. The best I could do was go outside and sit in the sun. Connection to nature is very important for creatives.
The DC area is just in the very early stages of spring. So it’s a wonderful surprise to see the delicate pink blossoms of a cherry blossom tree or a dusting of the dogwood petals blowing in the gutter. The birds are out, setting up their orchestra for the spring. On my walk, I kept hearing barred owls everywhere.
Lunch was a to-go order from my Thai restaurant. I love the food, but I’m finding that take out doesn’t cut it. Eating out is also about the people who run the restaurant. You can tell a place is happy when they recognize regular customers. The chef has come out to talk to me on many occasions.
Afternoon of the Writing Nerd
I started my afternoon stumbling across a writing book that caught my attention. Yeah, I promised myself not to spend so much money on books in these austere times. The books still won.
The book is called F*ck the Details: Fewer Words, Sharper Stories. I’ve always wrestled with the details of the story. A lot of my sticking points have been trying to get more details into the store. I’m not detail-oriented, and frankly, it makes me write slower.
Worse, I can’t leave it out and add it through cycling later. It was a habit to leave it out in the first place, so I don’t want to revisit it.
This book has a different approach to adding the details. One that might work better than what I’ve been doing.
And with that, I started writing the first scene in Heroes Portal.
First contact with the story had me changing my character worksheet for the protagonist.
I think also having a moratorium on the news has made a difference too. I didn’t realize how much of a drain it normally was until I cut off this last week. I’ve been having trouble writing for the last few months, and I think this might have contributed to it. For the creative, so much news is like a slow poison.
Anyway, since we’re all in the same boat with not a whole lot to do, the first scene of Hero Portal is up for your reaidng pleasure. I’ll see what else I can post. Enjoy!
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Hero Portal, Chapter 1, Scene 1
This awesome photo is by Mexitographer from Istock Photo.
Ever since the aliens came, I wondered if they’d been here in Ancient Egypt times and gave us cats. ‘Cause there was a Calico with brown patches who kept climbing up my back to see what I was doing under the kitchen sink.
She was a pretty little cat, all skinny and lithe, her purring machine humming away. She’d already staked me out and knew I was a softie. But I needed to get this drain unclogged.
“Cat, you need to move your crazy butt.”
Wedging my hand under her belly, I relocated her to the yellowing linoleum. By the time I had the gunk ball plopping into my plastic bucket, the cat was back, sticking her head in the cupboard. Her tail brushed my nose, a cat mustache. But not crazy cat butt. Stinky cat butt.
A pair of wrinkled hands reached down to pick up the cat. “Alistair, behave,” admonished the customer.
Alistair? Who names their cat Alistair?
But then I supposed I’m not one to complain about names. My name is Dice Ford. The Dice is actually short for Candice. Yeah, you’re probably making that face, too. I hate the name, and Candy…just…no. I’m not being called a food. My mother hates it, but that’s okay. She hates that I’m a plumber, too.
This was my fourth call of the day. Second clogged drain, one water heater rusted out, and a lost ring. I’d been glad to leave that last house. Taken longer than the water heater. The couple was probably still fighting.
I tried not to look too much at the customers. I saw all shapes and types and sometimes I wasn’t always kind with my thoughts. Never had blurted out anything stupid but I didn’t want my thoughts on my face. This customer was old. Not old the way you think, though she was in her eighties. No, she was old in the way some people simply are, regardless of their age. Like they’d put up with too much in the world and used up all their years.
“How much longer?” she asked.
No hints of impatience. It was an art form to figuring out how long I should take to satisfy the customer. It was a clogged drain. But if it took ten minutes to fix, the customer would squawk at the cost. So I always did a little fourish. You know, made it look more difficult.
“Almost done,” I said.
Behind the customer, the TV on the breakfast nook table flashed. The melodious voice of one of the aliens filled the tiny kitchen. The customer turned to watch. It was one of the aliens I’d seen around doing interviews. News media ate him up. He was talking about how they were still looking for the right superhero.
“What do you think of them?” the customer asked.
“The aliens?” I latched my wrench around the pipe joints and tightened it. Difficult in the work gloves but I didn’t want to get bit by a brown recluse.
“They’re downtown, you know,” the woman said. “They have a Hero Portal set up in the convention center.”
I hadn’t heard that, but I’d been making an effort to not pay attention. Too much drippy love from the media. They weren’t questioning anything, except what the aliens wanted. Me? I had enough of my mother’s lawyer side in me to be a cynic. People were stupid if they thought the aliens were handing out technology and superhero suits from the kindness of their two hearts.
Alistair squirmed in the woman’s arms, so she let the cat jump to the floor. The kitty immediately scurried back to me on soft feet, inspecting the open cabinet.
“You going to the portal?” the woman asked. “Everyone’s talking about seeing the aliens in person.”
“I’m sure my boyfriend will take me,” was all I could manage.
It was at least true. Jason would be all over the Hero Portal. He’d been talking about flying out to Los Angeles to visit the one there, convinced he was the one destined to a superhero. We’d had our first major fight over it. He’d wanted me to pay for the plane ticket since he couldn’t afford it. I told him to save up for it. He told me I was ruining his chances.
I left the cat inspecting the dark and mysterious hole and stood up to turn on the water. Drain flowing smoothly again and no leaks below. I removed the glop bucket and started putting back the cleaning supplies. The calico came out, triangle nose poking at the bucket like it contained catnip. I quickly snapped on the lid before the kitty got glop all over her pretty white fur.
“Do you think they’ll finally find a superhero?” the woman asked.
I stowed my tools in my red toolbox. Alistair batted at my hands like she had fists. “There must not be very many people with the right DNA. Kind of like a needle in a haystack.”
But the question bounced around in my head as I stowed the bucket and toolbox in my van. The aliens had Hero Portals set up on all the major continents. Not one person claimed a suit.
Then what the heck were they doing with our DNA?
March 19, 2020
3 Ways to Preserve the Creative Side
Image from IstockPhoto, provided by SunRay BRI Cattery RU
One of the problems with all the craziness going on this week is that it’s very hard on the creative side, or the muse.
Limit news sources
The media wants to sell us with headlines. They also don’t care about us, beyond what they can sell to us. There’s a constant barrage of “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” That takes mental energy to absorb. When I was in Desert Storm, we lived in minute-by-minute fear we were going to be attacked.
All this is very hard on the creative side. For the first few days, I gave up on any kind of writing. The energy simply wasn’t there. But I took control by doing all of the following:
Unsubscribe to daily news emails. Even seeing the email like is like a bell going off to keep reminding us that we should be afraid.
Unsubscribe to any news sites in your social media feeds. This is the same problem as the emails, only the email is just one. On a place like Facebook, you might get barraged with ten articles. Just no.
Limit your news to one source. I’m a paper subscriber, so that became one newspaper that isn’t doing as much hysterics as everyone else. I also stopped looking at anything on TV. It seems like it’s a long time ago, but those used to be how we got the news and we went the rest of the day without.
Limit your time. If you go online for your news, stick to the main page, look at what you want, and then get off. Then STAY AWAY!
Cut off social media. I’ve been shocked at how many people will send post after post on Coronvirus to be “helpful.” It has the same impact as the news screaming at me constantly. So I’m off Facebook for the moment.
Exercise
Exercise of any kind is very good for your creative side. Just make sure you pay attention to any guidelines from your doctor. When I was locked down four years ago due to a broken foot, I still did some limited exercise—I had a lot of rules from the doctor on what I couldn’t do then because I was no weight-bearing. I still managed something.
These are some things you can do:
Walk. If you’re not on lock-down, just take a walk down the street. Washington DC is starting to bloom, so I can check out the white flowers on the dogwood trees and listen to the birds. There’s also a lady who walks her dog when I go out. The dog’s got a topknot!
Use the walk to help you mentally separate from what’s going on. I have to deal with Coronavirus at work. At the end of the day, I shut off my computer and head outside for a walk to reconnect with my creative side.
Do other kinds of exercise. Especially if you’re in shelter-in-place. It’s too easy there to do nothing and keeping your body moving is essential t keep your creative side happy. You can grab exercise here and there all day—and the tools are available to you in your house.
Jack La Lanne, the godfather of exercise, was big about keeping the exercise simple. A machine with weights is nice to have, but there are exercises that you can do with a towel or a pair of cans or a book. His famous “bicycle” is done sitting in a chair.
I’ve been doing things like calf raises or chair squats while I wait for the computer to boot up. While I’m waiting for sites to load, it’s bicep curls, chest flys, or wrist curls with coconut milk cans.
Be Prepared for Plan B
You might have to do some things differently because of how you feel and respect that you may not get done what you want.
I normally write in the evenings and on the weekends. With the chaos of the last few weeks, I’m only able to do some early in the morning before work takes me back into it. I consider it lucky that I’m getting anything done at all.
It’s very important during these stressful times to protect your creative side. What are you doing for it?
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March 17, 2020
6 Business Writing Tips From Pro Fiction Writers
The business side always gets neglected by writers. A lot of people tend to think that all they need to do is write the book and somehow the rest will magically happen. Even in the writing of the book, there are choices you can make that may help with the business side if you know them. Onward!
Control what cover you get. While it’s true that the publisher won’t give you any say when they create the cover, you have other options available. When you write the book, include 3-4 more visual scenes. That way, they can be used for the cover. (Dave Farland, Superstars)
Entice Hollywood to option your book. Hollywood likes visual, so following tip #1 may also get some movie interest as well. (also David Farland, Superstars)
Include your address, phone number, and email on e-manuscripts you submit. It’s easy to leave this off when you’re sending a manuscript as an email. Why would an editor need the address when they’re simply emailing you? Because the editor copies and pastes the address into the contract. (Kevin J. Anderson, from the Monsters, Movies, and Mayhem submission call)
Write short stories for anthology calls. Even if you’re not published or don’t have much published, you can land in an anthology with big names. Readers will come to the anthology to read David Gerrold and then see your story (Jonathan Maberry, Superstars). Side note: I’m in an anthology with both of these writers!
Reread the magazine guidelines before starting a project, and reread them before submitting. The first part is to make sure you don’t have it wrong in your head and end up wasting time on the story. The second part is to double-check yourself on the little details. (Sheila Chandra, Linda Adams)
Schools love having writers talk to middle grade. Start local and talk to the local librarians and then you can expand nationwide. The schools may even pay a stipend to bring you out. (From Superstars…did not write the writer’s name down).
Got any business tips you can share?
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