Michelle Cox's Blog, page 38

Blanche and Her Mother

Blanche Eustace was born on July 12, 1904 in Council Bluffs, Iowa to Richard Chambers and Edith Norbis.  Richard was born in upper New York State in a town called Watertown, and his family apparently came to America over 200 years ago from England.  Similarly, Edith’s family could also trace their origins to Plymouth, England.  Blanche says that ancestry was always a big source of pride in her family.

Blanche’s mother, Edith, grew up on a big farm in Kansas, but it seems she hated country life, so, at sixteen, she ran away to the town of Manhattan, Kansas and got a job in a hotel there.  Before her father discovered where she had gone and came and got her, she managed to meet Richard Chambers, a travelling salesman just starting out, who just happened to be staying at the hotel where she was employed.  Eventually the two married and moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa because Richard though it was an ideal place to raise children, of which they eventually had three: Martha, George and Blanche.  Richard was gone most of the time, travelling from town to town, so Edith was the one who raised the kids and took care of the house.

Martha eventually married, although to a man Edith and Richard did not approve of.  George also married and moved to the large ranch that Edith and Richard owned in Nebraska and became the ranch’s manager.  That left only Blanche at home, who was fifteen years younger than Martha.

By this point, Edith had had enough of small town life, so when Blanche finished school, Edith decided to move to Chicago.  She had somehow attended the Chicago Exposition back in 1893 and had fallen in love with the city.  Since that time, it was her dream to get back to Chicago, and she saw this as her chance.  She didn’t divorce Richard; she just moved.  So now instead of Richard going “home” on the weekends to Council Bluffs, he went “home” to Chicago.

At first Edith and Blanche stayed at a hotel until Edith could find a suitable apartment.  Blanche says that her mother was a very hard woman to please, but they finally found something decent at Sheridan and Pratt.  Neither Edith or Blanche got a job, and instead spent almost all of their time together, especially since, says Blanche, her mother always acted younger than her age.

In school, Blanche’s favorite subject had been Latin, but in now in Chicago, her favorite thing to do to pass the time was to play the piano, which she had been doing since age 5, and to go out dancing.  Apparently she loved any kind of dancing, even the new dances, such as the Fox Trot, which were becoming all the rage.

When Blanche was just 14, America entered World War I, and she and her mother traveled to Camp Dodge in Iowa, where Blanche’s brother, George, was a new recruit.  It was at Camp Dodge that Blanche first met Peter Eustace, who was the attendant at the information desk the day Edith and Blanche turned up looking for George.  Peter was 13 years her senior, but they wrote letters to each other and eventually fell in love.  When Blanche turned 18, they were married.

Fortunately, Peter was never shipped overseas, and when the war ended, the young couple took up residence in Chicago, where Peter’s family was from.  They found an apartment on the north side, and Peter worked as a commercial artist.  After about five years, they bought a home in Park Ridge, which, Blanche says, was considered pretty “far out” of the city at the time.  They remained there for about four years before moving to Evanston and then Oak Park for the school system, where they remained for over twenty years.  They bought a big house there because Blanche thought it was important for each of their four children to have their own room.

After all of the children left, Peter and Blanche moved to a smaller house.  Blanche says that they always had similar tastes in things and really enjoyed staying home together.  Eventually, though, Peter passed away of a stroke when he was in his eighties.  Blanche says that she “woke up one day a widow.”  Not long after his death, she suffered a stroke as well, which has affected her right side.  Despite the stroke, she was able to live independently for several years before experiencing more problems.  Recently, it has become obvious that she can’t live alone, so she made the reluctant decision to go to a nursing home.

Blanche is a very quiet, sweet lady who is easily intimidated.  She shrinks away from loud noises, including loud talking.  If addressed quietly and intelligently, however, she will respond and will hold a conversation with pleasure.  At the home, she is interested in any of the “intellectual” offerings, such as discussion groups or listening to classical music.  She also enjoys reading and watching PBS.  As a rule, she does not enjoy big group activities but prefers the company of one or two residents or that of her two daughters, who visit frequently.

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 19: THE DREADED NEWSLETTER

Eventually, darlings, your pesky publicist will get around to asking you how the newsletter is coming—as in, where is it?  When you try to explain that you weren’t really planning on having a newsletter (I mean who reads newsletters?), they get irritated.

“Well, how do you plan to draw readers in?” they will undoubtedly ask in a smug sort of way.

“Website?” you suggest feebly.

“Well, how are you going to get people to the website?”

“Email people?”

Exasperated sigh.

“I don’t know!  Isn’t this your department?  There’s not much really on the website, anyway.”

“Yes.  We noticed.  How’s the blog coming?”

“Well, good.  Sort of.”

“Listen.  You need a newsletter to let your fans know what’s happening in your life.  You know—upcoming events, great blurbs, links to your website and blog, updates on how the book is coming, you know . . . stuff like that.  People love that!”

Do they? I wondered with more than a trace of suspicion.  And who are these “fans” of which they speak?  My biggest fan seems to be the rather needy dog that annoyingly follows me around half the day.  Even my kids aren’t all that enthused by my presence.  And, just for the sake of argument, assuming that I do have a few real people who are interested in my progress (not just my siblings and my best friends, and maybe my husband), I don’t have any news to share!  No events or blurbs (great or otherwise), no long blog archive to leisurely peruse or even any real updates on the book—after all, the editor is just now dusting it off (see Step 17)!

“Are you still there?”

“Yes, I was just thinking that . . .”

“Listen, we’ll put Sophia (again with the names, see Step 8) on it.  She’ll help you with the first few and fill in the empty space.  How about a “cover reveal”?

This sounded vaguely obscene.  “A cover reveal?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yeah, you know—you reveal the cover for the first time to the world!”

“Well, I already put that up on Facebook a few months ago . . .”

Another exasperated sigh.

“Well, no one told me not to . . .”

“Okay, scrap that idea.  How about Top Ten lists?  People love that.  Sophia can help you come up with some.  You know, like “Top 10 Celebs” you’d want to read your book, or your “Top 10 Summer Beach Reads,” or “Top 10 Chick Flicks” you recommend . . . stuff like that.”

“Well, that’s not really newsworthy . . . And what does it have to do with my book?”

Low growling sound.  “It’s not always supposed to be about the book!  We keep telling you this.  It’s supposed to be about you.  You’re trying to brand yourself, create an image, a persona.  Remember?  You’re trying to build a platform!  You have to start somewhere.”

I tried to focus.  But I couldn’t help wonder what “Top 10 Summer Beach Reads” had to do with me, either. And anyway, what’s a beach read (see Step 15?).  And even if I did succumb to this, I suspected I would have to make them up, as somehow I guessed that listing Bleak House, or Far From the Maddening Crowd, or As I Lay Dying would not be all that attractive on a summer reading list.

The phone call having ended somewhat abruptly after this exchange, I was left alone with my disjointed thoughts.

So, basically, I reiterated, ticking things off on my fingers, I am supposed to 1) create a newsletter that has no actual news and 2) apparently send it out to friends and family, or whoever happens to be in my email contact list, like the appointment scheduler at the dentist, to 3) direct them back to a website which also doesn’t have anything substantial on it or 4) back to a rather empty author FB page that so far merely vacillates between shared Huff posts and silly polls about who makes the best Darcy—Macfadyen or Firth? (Well, that’s sort of literary, isn’t it?)

Anyway, I’m sure you cannot have failed to conclude the obvious, dear readers, by now.  No need to excessively spell it out beyond simply stating that building a newsletter is just one more chapter in the Emperor’s New Clothes, or the chicken and the egg or the “build it and they will come” thing.  One more little piece of the puzzle.

I will put your minds at ease, darlings, and tell you that now that I am much further down the publishing road, a newsletter is actually helpful in letting your “fans” (or people who are at least mildly curious) know what’s happening lately and to drum up excitement for not only the book, but for you!  If nothing else, it’s a nice place to keep everything straight, even for yourself.  A one-page summary of your writing life, month by month, if you will.  And not to worry – eventually you really will have people who admire your work and want to get to know you.  And you will have news!  So persevere through this rough beginning and start building.  They will come!  I promise.

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STEP 19: THE DREADED NEWSLETTER appeared first on Michelle Cox.

Her First Job Was Teaching in a One-Room Schoolhouse

Margaret (Maggie) Devinson was born on January 10, 1902 in Sault St. Marie, Michigan.  Her parents were John Williams and Bridget Kennedy, both of whom were born in Canada.  John was of English descent, and Bridget was Irish, but Maggie never wanted anyone to know that, preferring to call herself English.  John worked as a machinist for Hicker Brothers, and Bridget cared for their seven children.

Maggie was raised Episcopalian and managed to graduate from high school.  From there she took a summer college course at Marquette.  When the class ended, she returned home and was shocked to discover that while she was away, her mother had applied for a job for her to teach “country school” for the winter.  Maggie wasn’t sure she really wanted to teach in a country school, but her mother insisted, so dutifully, Maggie obeyed her.

“Country school” turned out to be a one-room school house where she was expected to teach all eight grades, made up mostly of farm boys.  Though nervous at first, Maggie grew to love this job and said she learned more teaching this way than from any college class she ever took.  When school finished for the summer, she took another summer class at Marquette and then returned to the country school to teach for the winter again.  Because it was so far from her parents’ home, however, Maggie had to live with families closer to the school.  She says that during her second year, she lived with a French family who insisted she only speak French, so she had no choice but to quickly learn it.

The next part of Maggie’s story is vague.  Apparently, after teaching “country school” for a few years, she either ended up taking classes at the Eastern Michigan University at Ypsilanti or she traveled down to Pontiac, Michigan to be closer to where her sisters were living.  Whichever the case, she somehow met Charlie Sefton, who was attending the University of Michigan and was an up-and-coming musician.  Maggie and Charlie spent a lot of time together, Charlie even teaching her how to play the piano by ear.  Eventually the two fell in love, and Charlie gave her an engagement ring.

At this point, however, Maggie’s parents got involved.  While they enjoyed Charlie’s music, they were very opposed to the marriage.  One evening when she was at home, Maggie’s father pulled her aside and begged her to give Charlie his ring back, stating that as a musician Charlie would no doubt live a “wild” life and would come into contact with all sorts of “seedy” characters. He was worried that Maggie would likewise be pulled into what he perceived to be an underworld.  Heartbroken, Maggie agreed to abide by her father’s wishes and broke off the engagement with Charlie.  She continued to follow Charlie’s glowing big band career all her life, however, cutting out newspaper articles about him and pasting them in a scrapbook.

Time passed, and Maggie eventually fell in love again.  This time with one Phillip Devinson, who was from a very good, old Michigan family and was just finishing up his law degree.  Maggie’s parents very much approved of him, and she and Phillip married when she was just 28.  Phillip decided not to practice law, however, but went into real estate instead and then worked for an insurance company.  Later in life he started his own business.  Maggie, in the meantime, continued to teach, though it was hard to find full-time positions because she didn’t really have a real teaching degree.

The couple started out living near Phillip’s parents but moved to Chicago after about seven years.  It was in Chicago that their only child, Cynthia, was born when Maggie was nearly forty.  The family went back to Michigan for a few years and then came back to Chicago again in 1953, where they bought a house on Jarlath Street in Lincolnwood and remained there permanently.

Maggie found work as both a CNA and a part-time teacher, though the school she was working at in Lincolnwood finally told her that they would have to let her go eventually because she did not have a degree.  It was apparently the motivation she needed to go back to school and finish, as teaching was her real passion in life.  Eventually, she earned her degree and graduated and was thrilled to be allowed to stay on at the school she loved in Lincolnwood.

In 1977, Phillip died of alcoholism.  Cynthia says that Phillip was a very difficult man to live with and that her parents’ marriage was not the best.  Since his death, Cynthia and Maggie have lived together in the same house on Jarlath and have become quite close companions.  Besides teaching, Maggie enjoyed playing the piano, reading, drawing and painting and gardening.

Maggie remained a very independent person until just a few years ago, when, Cynthia reports, she started getting a bit confused.  Maggie has slowly started to need more help, which Cynthia has been able to provide, despite getting on in years herself and having her own health problems.  Recently, however, when Maggie was hospitalized due to a bad bout of the flu and dehydration, Cynthia, facing a surgery herself, was not able to bring Maggie home to care for her.  Instead, she made the difficult decision to place her in a nursing home.  Cynthia feels terrible about the situation, particularly since she says that Maggie was furious and flew into uncharacteristic rages when Cynthia told her at the hospital what the new arrangement was to be.

At the nursing home, however, Maggie is calm and cooperative, though she often seems confused and teary-eyed.  She does not seem to understand her admission and is preoccupied with the belief that Cynthia will not be able to find her here, despite the fact that Cynthia visits often.  Because she believes her stay here is temporary, Maggie does not seem to want to make any lasting relationships with the other residents or join in activities, but instead sits for hours, waiting for Cynthia to come and take her home.

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical Guide STEP 18: THE DOWNWARD TREND

Last week, dear readers, we introduced the painful concept of the editor and the resultant slashing that will more than likely begin forthwith on your beloved manuscript.  Granted, all manuscripts benefit from a nice haircut and concentrated grooming, as it is impossible for the writer to catch every mistake.  However, “how much is too much?” you might be asking.  How long should your manuscript ideally be?

That, darlings, is a rather tricky question.  Some of it of course depends on genre, but if we are referring to adult fiction, it is generally believed that the word count should be anywhere from 80,000 to 120,000 words to land in the “safe” zone, particularly if you are a debut author.  Some genres, such as science fiction, however, are allowed to stretch the upper limits due to the necessary increased word usage needed to world-build.

Sadly, I began my first novel, Love’s Labor Found, without the benefit of any of this apparently common knowledge.  I toiled away, typing and typing and typing, until I finished, clocking in at a mere 224,000 words.  Having spent most of my life reading Dickens, Trollope, Tolstoy, and the occasional Catherine Cookson saga, generously mixed up in recent years with the likes of Ken Follett, Bernard Cornwell, and Paullina Simons, my effort did not seem gargantuan at all, but rather, somewhat average.

It was only when I began submitting it to agents did the hard, cold truth of the current publishing landscape hit me.  Notice I didn’t say contemporary or modern as those adages represent too broad a time period to accommodate the fickle trends that come and go in the time it takes to watch a Vine clip.  I was going to say something like . . . in the time it takes for the wind to blow something in, but that actually requires a bit of time for at least a cold front to move in.  We’re talking lightning speed here!

Okay, so all joking aside.  No one, obviously, was even willing to read my first novel, so into the garbage it went.  I started over and created a new novel, one of my sources of pride surrounding it being the fact that it was only 94,000 words!  Beat that! I thought smugly.  To my horror, however, that is exactly what they publisher/editor combo wanted to do.  Beat it by about 10,000 words to make it a slim, trim 84,000 words.

“Buy why?” I almost cried.  “Have you even read it?” I asked for what seemed the hundredth time.  “All the way through?  It’s been on a diet since the moment of its conception.  I don’t think there’s any fat to trim!”

“Listen,” was the reply.  “Novels are trending down.  Even 70,000 isn’t unheard of.”

“70,000?  But that’s like a novella.  A longish short story, even.”

“It’s not up to us.  We’re just trying to follow the market.  People’s attention spans just aren’t there.  No one wants to read big books anymore.”

“But what about Outlander?  That’s pretty big.”

“She’s an established author.”

“So . . . people can control their attention spans for established authors but not unknowns?”

“Look, if the books are long, we have a harder time getting them into bookstores.  There’s only so much shelf space.  Bookstores can’t devote that much of their limited shelf space to gargantuan novels.”

“Have you been in a bookstore lately?  There’s not exactly a whole row of hardcover Pillars of the Earth hogging up a whole shelf.  There’s usually one copy of any given book.  No matter how popular it is.  Maybe they have more in a box in the back.  Is that what you mean?  There’s not enough storage space in the back?  And aren’t most books sold on the internet or on kindle, anyway?”

Irritated sigh.  “Look, can we slash your book or not?”

And here, darlings, is your moment of truth.  If you are with a hybrid publisher, you are lucky in that you even get to be part of the above discussion.  If you are with a traditional publisher, your opinion, as the author, doesn’t count for much.  Your baby is whisked away into the operating room, and all you can do is sit in the waiting room, biting your fingernails, and hope for the best.  As a self-published author, you are definitely more in the driver’s seat, which is delightfully freeing, but can be dangerous as well, for all the obvious reasons.

You should always, dear readers, submit your work to a quality editor, but to what end?  To tighten, cut out the unnecessary, smooth the flow—all of the above, by all means.  All manuscripts need to be adequately groomed.  But be true to the story, not to the direction the market seems to be, dare I say, blowing?  After all, one never knows which way it might go next, though the obvious answer is that the pendulum can only go one other way.  It’s a simple back-and-forth mechanism.  It’s really more a question of when.

And speaking of going back the other way, yours truly has personally heard the conversations of various baby boomers who deplore the skinniness of the new novels these days, saying that “there’s hardly anything to them, and yet they charge the same price!  We want our money’s worth!”

And there’s something to be said about this, darlings.  Aren’t they, after all, the ones with all the extra time and expendable income, not to mention the attention spans that were at least capable of winning a World War?  If we’re going to cater to anyone, perhaps it should be to them.  Something to think about.

*News Flash!  I’ve just been informed that since I wrote this a few hours ago, the new and improved target word count for novels is now 70-100,000 words.  I stand corrected.  Or do I?

The post How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical Guide

STEP 18: THE DOWNWARD TREND appeared first on Michelle Cox.

“After That, I Was Henpecked!”

William Sanders was born on January 16, 1921 in Tennessee to Lamar and Ivory Sanders.  William reports that he has many brothers and sisters and many half-siblings as well, but that he can’t remember exactly how many.  He attended two years of high school, and when he was twenty-one, he married his childhood sweetheart, Kalisha Jones, who was just sixteen at the time.  William is fond of saying that he and Kalisha were “country people” who had had grown up and attended school together.

Shortly after their marriage, however, World War II broke out, and William enlisted in the navy.  He served in the South Pacific and ended up in the jungles of New Guinea, New Caledonia and Manus Island.  In total, his tour of duty lasted two years, six months and eighteen days, and in all that time, he faithfully sent his check home to Kalisha each pay period.  When he returned home, however, he was shocked to find that Kalisha had taken all of the checks and opened her own account with them.  William promptly went to the bank to get the money out, but they refused to allow him access because his name was not on the account.

Kalisha chose this moment to tell him that she wasn’t going to go back to doing whatever he told her to do and that she wanted her own money.  “After that,” William says, “I was henpecked.”

Upon being discharged from the navy, William was offered job at the arsenal in Milan, Tennessee, but after a couple of years, there were changes in management and he had to move facilities.  He was given the choice of a job at either of the arsenals in Joliet or Alabama.  William chose Joliet because of the racial tensions in Alabama, so he and Kalisha moved to nearby Kankakee first and then later to Joliet itself.  William relates that he really enjoyed working at the arsenal in Joliet and eventually became a supervisor.

A dark cloud was brewing, however, in that William seems to have neglected to pay the IRS some tax money amounting to $64.00.  William claims he planned to finally pay the back taxes out of his next pay check, but it happened to coincide with Kalisha’s yearly Christmas trip back to Tennessee to see her mother.  Kalisha had planned on the extra money for the holidays, but when William told her that she was going to have to skip it this year, she cried so much that William finally gave in.  The IRS was not as compassionate, however, and got the arsenal involved, who for some reason fired him for it on December 17th.

Depressed, William decided he needed to go to Key West for a change of life and scenery, but Kalisha thought this was a ridiculous idea.  William was determined, however, and went without her.  Kalisha instead stayed in Joliet with their daughter, Maggie.  William sent money to them for a while, but then got sick of it, saying that if Kalisha wanted money she would have to come to Florida to get it.  Of course she refused, and that was pretty much the end of their relationship.

William remained in Key West working construction for about nine months before returning to the Chicago area and finding a job at a lumberyard in Berwyn as a shipping and receiving clerk.  His IRS troubles followed him, however.  By now, the amount William owed the government was over four hundred dollars.  Unlike the arsenal, the lumberyard did not fire him but instead garnished his wages until the back taxes were paid.

William says he was a hard worker at the lumberyard and that his boss liked him so much that he never allowed him to take a vacation but paid him extra instead.  William, it seems, after many years of this, just couldn’t take it after a while and, needing a break, took off for Tennessee to visit his mother and remained there for over six months.  Eventually, though, he knew he had to return to his old life and wrote to his boss asking him for his job back.  Surprisingly, his boss agreed, and William went back to the lumberyard and worked for several more years before quitting and getting a job as a janitor at the Brach candy factory, where he happened to be working during the famous case of Helen Brach’s disappearance.

Eventually, William retired due to severe arthritis in his hands and back.  He is also now suffering from kidney disease.  All of his ailments have caused him to have to live in nursing homes for the last several years.  He remains estranged from Kalisha, whom he believes is still living in Joliet.  He has had some contact over the years with his daughter, Maggie, though she is partially handicapped herself and unable to care for him.

For the most part William seems to enjoy his life in the nursing home.  His memory is perfectly intact, and he loves talking about the past with the staff and a few of the residents who are able to carry on a conversation.  He was an active member of the American Legion, the VFW and the Elks and loves gospel music, movies, and smoking a pipe.  His favorite drink is Budweiser.  He says he used to try to drink hard liquor when he was in the navy, but it didn’t agree with him.

William appears to be a very gentle, charming, easy-going man, but he says that in his youth he was very hot-tempered and that he was prone to fighting to deal with stress.  If someone crossed him, he says, he immediately wanted to fight him.  “It’s a terrible thing to have,” he admits.  “You do things you regret later, and it hurts you.”

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 17: THE EDITOR ARRIVES

Just when you thought, dear readers, that nothing exciting was ever going to happen with your manuscript, like, let’s say, print it — an email will suddenly materialize alerting you that an editor has finally been assigned the task of dusting off your forgotten, lonely tome, presumably sitting these many long months in someone’s inbox.

Lest you begin to feel understandably disappointed, darlings, that all this time your manuscript has apparently not been the object of communal admiration as you had once suspected, nor was it the subject of some secret behind-the-scenes book club amongst the publishing house staff, remember that I did try to warn you against these imaginings quite some time ago.

No, not only have they not been excitedly discussing your novel’s many merits, they seem to have also misplaced it.  Fight the urge to respond inappropriately when the newly assigned editor asks you to resend.  It is not worth digging through stacks of emails to find the one where you really did attach it and to whom it was sent exactly.  Just oblige them.

But while your finger hovers above “send,” it is normal, darlings, to be flooded, once again, with doubt.  And, if you are anything like yours truly (an unfortunate perfectionist), you will at that moment painfully consider whether you shouldn’t just, well, read it over once last time.

I readily confess that I did indeed succumb to such doubts, ridiculously laboring under the hope that my manuscript, after being diligently reviewed by said editor, would somehow come back marked “perfect!”  I even fantasized about setting some sort of record for having submitted the most error-free manuscript of any she had ever read!  Surely you can guess where this is going.  But I digress.

Reluctantly, then, I moved the mouse from send to print and sat down to look for any last, straggler run-on sentences or improperly-used commas.  What began as a quick perusal quickly devolved, however, into a slow, torturous filling of the margins with frantic notes in red ink.  I was horrified to discover that the manuscript, having sat in my own saved files for many months while I wrote the next book in this series, was a complete disaster!  Not from a punctuation point of view (of course), but from a content point of view.

Having spent the last months writing the second book of the series in which these characters were developing very nicely now, I was shocked to find how stiff and awkward they were in the first book.  I read scene after scene in which I thought to myself, “she shouldn’t say that,” or “he should have said it like this,” or “this bit is too clumsy,” or “this needs to be explained more.”

In a true, anxiety-ridden, near-panic mode, I emailed the publisher and asked if I still had time to, well, change things.

“Change things?  Like what do you mean?  I thought you were sending the file to the editor.  We have to get going on this.”

Get going?  You’ve had months, I thought, irked, before I realized that this applied to me as well.

“Well, you can have a little bit of time, but not a lot.  How much time do you need?  And what kind of changes are we talking about?”

“Oh, a just a few,” I fibbed, sweating profusely at this point. 

“Okay, how about a week?”

A week to rewrite the book? I gulped and kicked myself that I had spent these last months cavorting with the characters in book two when they so clearly needed me back in book one.

Needless to say, I managed to put everything else in my life on hold so that I could crank this out, a nearly impossible task when one has three children and a bumbling sort of husband.  I was finally persuaded to “just send already” what I hoped was the new-and-improved version, though it still felt clunky, with the editor’s assurance that I had nothing to worry about, that there would be many iterations before anything was finalized.  Plenty of opportunity to change.  Or so I was led to believe.

And here’s where the advice part of today’s Guide comes in.  (You were wondering, weren’t you?)  To make the most of your editorial experience, darlings, keep the following in mind:

Make sure your final draft really is the best it can be. Even after its been out with all of the alpha and beta readers and tweaked profusely, leave it sit for several months (at least three) and then go back for a “final” edit before you hand it over to your editor.  You’ll be surprised at what you find.


When you get the first draft back from the editor, here is yet another chance for you to look over the whole of the text, not just the bits they marked in red in track changes. Your eye is  tricked into addressing these obvious problems, not realizing that every time you send this thing back in, your window narrows for other changes not first flagged, excepting of course obvious spelling issues or typos.


Reading the pre-ARC version is definitely not the time to read for content and flow of dialog. They do not like making those types of changes at this stage in the game, and in fact they seem irritated when you suggest it.  When you attempt to defend yourself by saying that you thought you had a lot of chances to change things, they remind you that these sorts of things should have been done pre-submission or definitely during the first-round of editorial drafts, not now, for God’s sake.  Further attempts at defending yourself by saying that your eye was tricked by the red markings will not go far with them, either.


Do not allow them to slash your book so that it is less than 80,000 words because this is where they predict the market is going. Stick to your guns.  You’re allowed up to 120,000 words, so use them if you want to.  (More on this next week.)

My overall advice, then, dear readers, is not to wait until the last minute.  Once the editor is on board, things move quickly, so be ready!  Don’t get caught with your proverbial pants down.

The post How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical Guide

STEP 17: THE EDITOR ARRIVES appeared first on Michelle Cox.

Still Able to Sing

Winifred Hughes was born on June 1, 1905 to Italian immigrants and was one of eleven children.  Winnie attended grammar school until she was just nine years old when she came down with an unknown childhood illness that left her deaf.  She did not receive any schooling after that and taught herself to sometimes read lips.  She stayed at home and helped her mother with all of the children, watching as each one grew up and left home, longing to be one of them.

Finally, in her twenties, she was able to find a job with Hart, Schaffner and Marx as a bastings remover, a job she enjoyed very much.  Her life continued uneventfully, her time off from work mostly being taken up with duties at home.  When she was in her late thirties, however, everything changed for Winnie.  She met a man at work, Montgomery Hughes, who was thirteen years her senior and in charge of all the tailors.  Winnie fell madly in love with him and they eventually married.

Montgomery and Winnie never had any children, the family’s belief being that they purposely prevented it because Winnie would not be able to hear the babies cry.  Instead, they devoted themselves to their nieces and nephews and delighted in having them come and stay from time to time.  Winnie taught them to play Crazy-8’s and was always, they now recall, in a happy mood.  The nieces and nephews spent every New Year’s Eve at Uncle Montgomery and Aunt Winnie’s house, who always had lots of fun things planned for them.

For a time, one of Winnie’s brothers, Omaro, came to live with them when he was discharged from the war after developing Parkinson’s.  Winnie and Montgomery generously cared for him until he died.  According to the family, Winnie and Montgomery had a very happy life together and were very much in love.  Winnie loved baking, sewing, and gardening – her specialty being fruit trees.

When Winnie was 52 and Montgomery 65, the couple decided to retire.  Eventually they moved to a retirement community in LaPorte, Indiana, but they were only able to enjoy it for a few years before Montgomery passed away.  Winnie stayed at the retirement home for a little while on her own before deciding to move back to Chicago, where her nieces, Dorothy and Jean, could look in on her.

Winnie has remained very healthy until age 81 when she broke her left foot, causing her to go and live with Dorothy for a time.  Unfortunately, however, she then broke more bones in her left leg and even her left hip.  Winnie was then confined to a wheelchair while her leg healed, during which time Dorothy had to care for her full time, despite the fact that her own health was not very good.  Eventually, Dorothy just couldn’t cope with the situation, so there was no choice but for Winnie to go to a nursing home.

Winnie seems to have made the adjustment to a nursing home as well as can be expected.  At times she seems depressed and withdrawn in her room, but at other times enjoys sitting in the day room reading the newspaper from cover to cover or visiting with Dorothy’s daughter, Bonnie, who lives nearby.  For the most part she remains the very happy, positive person she has always been all her life.  Her family says that she was always in a good mood, never stressed or upset by anything.  She took life as it came and enjoyed whatever it brought.

Winnie looks forward to visits from Bonnie, who is able to communicate with her in their own way, as Winnie never properly learned sign language.  Her deafness prevents her from interacting with the other residents or participating in activities.  Though Winnie never speaks except to sometimes say a garbled “I’m mute” to people who attempt to talk to her, she is still, amazingly, able to sing, in Italian, the songs her mother once sung to her as a little girl before everything went silent.

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 16: “THE SUB-GENRE MYSTIQUE”

Having last week broken down the difference between literary and commercial fiction, this week, as promised, we will turn our attention solely to commercial fiction and attempt to demystify the many genres into which it is broken, including the ridiculously inordinate number of sub-genre splinters.

Probably the hardest to get a handle on would be the many different types, or slight variants, of what one could call contemporary or mainstream fiction, especially when it comes to women, to whom much of it seems to be marketed.

For example, there exists women’s fiction, which is pretty much synonymous with book club fiction.  Slightly lighter, perhaps, in content or tone would be: chick lit, summer reads, beach fiction, and airport fiction.  Add to this the relatively new genre, aptly called new adult fiction, which is for the 20-something crowd and is basically a step up from YA but with more sex and violence.  But how is that different than beach fiction, for example, or even airport fiction?

Even more confusing are such categories as urban fiction:  a novel set in a city that explores socio-economic realties; realistic fiction:  stories that could have actually happened (What?  Doesn’t this describe most fiction?); or how about roman à clef :  a novel in which real people appear but with invented names.  Surely these are meant to be some type of joke, aren’t they?  (See last week’s entry “Spin the Genre.”)  Or is this genre menagerie merely the result of our need to categorize and endlessly compartmentalize things for easier understanding, and ultimately—dare I say—marketing?

So what to do if you’ve happened to write a novel about a 20-something, impoverished female secretary who works in the heart of the city for a young Barack Obama (but in the story he’s called Bart Obin) who is fighting for women’s rights, but meanwhile she’s madly in love with an older man, a handsome doctor, whom she eventually has an affair with.  After he dumps her, she grows internally and becomes a stronger person and realizes that she actually loves her shy, bookish neighbor and they run off and get married?  On a beach.  And there are discussion questions at the end.  What genre would this gem fall into?

Safest, I think, would be to just list it under the big umbrella, which would be contemporary fiction, unless you and/or your publicist (see how they’re involved in every part of this?) decide you really want to angle it towards women, at which point you should then call it chick lit or book club fiction.  You’re sure to sell more copies that way.

You would think, wouldn’t you, dear readers, that it would be easier if you just picked one of the easier genres, like, let’s say, mystery?  But not really.  You should know by now, darlings, that nothing in this process is easy.  Even with a seemingly innocuous genre, there are loads of quirky sub-genres to fit it into.

For example, when my own book, A Girl Like You, was born into the world, I naively assumed that its given name would be “mystery,” as that is actually what it is, but I did not understand that it required a first name as well, and possibly several middle names.  When I accordingly googled mystery, I was naturally shocked to find the following listed as types, or sub-genres, of “mystery”:Amateur Detective

Child in Peril

Whodunit

Comic/Bumbling Detective

Cozy

Courtroom Drama

Dark Thriller

Espionage

Forensic

Heists and Capers

HistoricalInverted

Locked Room

Medical

Police Procedural

Private Detective

Psychological Suspense

Romantic Suspense

Techno-thriller

Thriller

Woman in Jeopardy

Young AdultAs my eyes quickly scanned the list, I’m not ashamed to say that I felt a slight wave of panic.  How could I ever settle on just one?

Carefully I tried to reason it out.  My book was set in the ‘30’s, so obviously historical, and it involves an amateur detective of sorts, but also a real detective.  And there is a flavor of a woman-in-jeopardy to it and some comedy, but romance is a huge part of it, too.  Historical mystery?  Romantic thriller?  Romantic suspense?  Historical romantic mystery?  Whodunit?   I even toyed with cozy for a while, but it seemed edgier than a cozy.  How about cozy-with-an-edge?

Irritated, I flung myself back in my chair and decided to put a call in to my publisher.  Though this was never stated outright, I instinctively felt one only got so many calls, so many lifelines as it were, but this, I thought, warranted one.

    “There is no such genre as historical mystery,” the publisher stated simply.  “There’s really only historical fiction or mystery. We follow Ingram’s categories.”

    Blasted Ingram–again!

    “But . . . but . . . what about all of those other ones out there?  What about, you know, police procedural, and all of that?” I whined.

    “Oh, that’s good for marketing, but it’s not what really matters.”

    Not what really matters?  What does then? I wondered, but stopped myself there and hung up, guessing the answer and not really wanting to dwell on it.

With a sigh, I chalked this whole discussion up to one more thing I don’t understand about this business.  To this day I don’t really know if my book is more historical fiction, more a mystery, or more romantic suspense, so I routinely call it something different each time, hoping that it will appeal to a wider base this way, though I’m sure this is the very wrong way to go about things, as I vaguely recall some old saying about what happens when you try to please everyone . . .

Ultimately, then, darlings, my advice is, when all else fails—in this department or in any other— to make something up.  Remember, you’re a writer!  You should be good at this sort of thing!

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STEP 16: “THE SUB-GENRE MYSTIQUE” appeared first on Michelle Cox.

He Saw Her Through the Bakery Window

Beatrice Wills was born on February 17, 1917 in Chicago to Emil and Petra Schmidt, both of German descent.  Emil worked as a coal and ice man, and Petra cared for their two children, Beatrice and Agatha.  The family lived on the northwest side of Chicago and were members of the St. Alphonsus parish.  Both girls attended grammar and high school, and upon graduation, Beatrice got a job in a bakery.

Her future husband, Lawrence Wills, would often tell the story of how he passed by the bakery one day and, upon peering in the window, saw Beatrice working there and instantly fell in love with her. Many weeks followed in which he strolled past the bakery, each time hoping to catch a glimpse of Beatrice, until he finally worked up the courage to go in, contriving a story that she had sold him a stale cake.

His plan seemed to work because, rather than be offended by his complaint, Beatrice says that she liked Lawrence right away.

As it turned out, Lawrence’s friend happened to be dating Beatrice’s cousin, so it was a good way for the two of them to get to know each other better.  Lawrence and Beatrice dated for three years and then got married in 1942 at St. Alphonsus.

At the time of their marriage, Lawrence was in the air force and was forced to move around the country often, especially after the war broke out.  At first, Beatrice attempted to travel with him, but it proved to be too difficult, so she eventually returned to Chicago to live with her parents, getting a job downtown at the war bond office for the duration of the war.  Fortunately, Lawrence was never shipped overseas and returned home safe and sound after a 44-month tour of duty.  For a short time, the couple continued to live with Beatrice’s parents until they found a house of their own on Richmond Street, near Addison, where they spent their whole married life.

After the war, Lawrence found work as an architect, and Beatrice remained a housewife.  They very much wanted children, but when they finally discovered that they couldn’t have any, they applied for an adoption through St. Vincent’s.  Fifteen months later, they were overjoyed to bring home their two-week old son, Howard.

Beatrice says they had a happy life and that she and Lawrence enjoyed staying home as much as going out.  When they did go out, they loved to go dancing and often went to the big dance halls of the day, including the Aragon, the Trianon, and the Merry Gardens.  They also loved to bowl.  Separately, Lawrence enjoyed gardening, and Beatrice was fond of playing sports, her favorite being basketball, and likewise loved to read, bake and crochet.  She held part-time jobs on and off over the years because her doctor advised her to “get out of the house” sometimes.

Lawrence died at age 75 of cancer, and since then Beatrice has been struggling with various health problems as well.  She did not want to go and live with Howard and his wife, Betty, so she arranged to have a nurse come once a week to the house on Richmond.  Recently, however, she was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with terminal liver disease, forcing her upon discharge to go to a nursing home to live.  She chose to go to the same one as her daughter-in-law’s mother because she always reported that she liked it so well.

Beatrice is an extremely cheerful, sweet woman who is easy to talk to.  She always seems to be in a good mood and optimistic and is pleased with how kind everyone has been at the nursing home so far.  Only once or twice has she been seen crying about her condition, and when asked if she is okay, she quickly stops and claims to be fine.  It is difficult to say how much she may be hiding about her true emotional state, but she seems determined to make the best of what little life remains for her and really desires to be happy.

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 15: “SPIN THE GENRE”

Today, dear readers, we will pause to have a short discussion regarding genre, as this seems to be relevant of late with comp. titles and endorsements swirling round in previous steps of this Guide.  I mean, after all, how can you properly find titles similar to your own book or authors to solicit in your particular genre if you’re not entirely sure what your genre is?

At first glance this issue seems like something one should have had decided, or at least had a pretty good inkling about, before one ever took up pen and paper.  Sometimes, however, a book has a way of morphing into something else by the time it’s finished, leaving one confused, among other things, as to what it really is, including to which genre it belongs.

If this is the case, darlings, do not worry; you are not alone in your bafflement.

Today’s market is filled with genre categories that yours truly had never even heard of prior to this writing-a-book endeavor.   Imagine my surprise when—in my own desperate attempt to uncover which shelf my book should someday inhabit—I began googling and found such bizarre entities as:  beach fiction, chick lit, women’s fiction, new adult fiction, literary fiction, summer reads, contemporary fiction, urban fiction, book club fiction, airport fiction, realistic fiction, mainstream fiction, etc.  I could go on and on.

How on earth, I wondered, could all of these genre fragments exist in the same dimensional plane?  Aren’t they really all the same or, at most, slight variants of each other?

What followed then was a moment of delusional paranoia in which I began to suspect that this genre explosion was perhaps the result of an after-hours marketing session gone bad where someone had had the bright idea to play a little game called “Spin the Genre” which would involve, quite simply, having to come up with a new genre if said bottle of perhaps vodka (empty by now, of course) landed on you.  I envisioned it going something like this:

“Okay, okay,” says one of them, taking a swig of his drink for inspiration, the bottle having just unfortunately landed on him.  “How about ‘chick lit’?” he says blearily, causing the others of course to burst out laughing, some of them spewing their cocktails and thus correspondingly thumping each other on the back. 

“That’s actually a good one, Smith!” says another one of them, presumably the leader.  “Write that one down!”

“Don’t be stupid!” nervously chuckles the least inebriated among them.  “Women would be up in arms if we came out with that one.  You know, because it’s demeaning and all that.  Calling women ‘chicks’,” Smith continues, with only a modest slur.

“Want to bet?  If it’s trendy, they’ll want it!” the leader says, pushing a buzzer somewhere.  “Let’s get Jones on it right away.  He’s a whiz at demeaning women without anyone noticing.”

But I digress.  We all know that this is not true.  At that point in the conversation, the bottle was probably only half-empty.  When it was well and truly gone, the following genre gems would have no doubt surfaced: epistolary, existentialist, absurdist, magical realism, prison lit, and roman a clef, to name a few.  (These are all real, by the way.)   And let’s not forget the sub-genres, of which there are hundreds.

Before one can differentiate between the genres and the sub-genres, however, one must take a big step back and differentiate between the different types of fiction, of which there are two main camps:  literary and commercial.  Briefly, I will attempt to explain each for your better understanding.

Literary fiction is usually characterized as having beautiful, thought-provoking prose that explores a deeper theme or internal character development rather than necessarily emphasizing plot.  It is usually slower paced and is a work that exists as or borders on the artistic and is perhaps destined to become a classic.

Commercial fiction, in contrast, is more plot-driven and usually involves the characters overcoming a challenge or reaching a goal.  It appeals to a wider audience and is usually read for entertainment, though its prose can be equally well-done and enlightened.  It is commercial fiction that is broken down into all of the genres and subgenres, more and more of which seem to appear every day, as hinted at above.

The very best description of literary fiction vs. commercial fiction that I have ever come across is found on the blog of literary agent, Nathan Bransford.  I highly encourage you, darlings, to take a look!  It is both highly amusing and informative, and he will explain it much better than I can:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2007/02/what-makes-literary-fiction-literary.html

That being said, I am very much aware that we have not yet resolved the issue of genre itself.  We are, however, disappointingly out of space, so we will resume this topic next week and likewise attempt to demystify the subs!  Stay tuned!

 

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STEP 15: “SPIN THE GENRE” appeared first on Michelle Cox.