Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 121

Mira Lyn Kelly - Getting the Call - Exploring Category Romance

Please welcome my guest, Mira Lyn Kelly!#All about "The Call"If you're an aspiring author, you'll know what I mean when I say we all have fantasies about "The Call." Some may be vague and general, others elaborate and detailed. Mine were definitely of the latter variety, and usually followed by self-directed mental disclaimers about realistic expectations and directives to spend my creative

Exploring Category Romance - Elle Kennedy

Please welcome my guest, Elle Kennedy.#Romantic Suspense: Finding a BalanceWhen I first started submitting to Silhouette, I have to admit, I had no idea what I was doing. I read Intimate Moments (now Silhouette Romantic Suspense), and I thought, I could write these. But after several rejections, I realized that reading romantic suspense is a lot easier than writing it. So before I submitted

Laura Barth on Category Slush Piles - Exploring Category Romance

Please welcome my guest, Laura Barth! Laura works with the Harlequin Blaze and Harlequin American Romance lines.#Many hopeful writers probably wonder about the process that results in either a rejection letter, a revision request, or--for the lucky few--a contract. So I thought I'd try to dispel some of the mystery by explaining the typical path of a category-romance slush manuscript from the

Exploring Category Romance - A Category Romance Is Like a Sonnet

Category romances, also called series romances, are to me the epitome of romance as a genre. They're short - mostly about 200 pages or 50,000 - 60,000 words long. The term category comes from the various lines such as Harlequin Presents or Silhouette Desire, each of which has specific requirements that may be related to style of plot, subgenre, or level of sexual content. These lines are

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover Excerpt - Kickass Heroines

This excerpt comes from The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover. #"Give us the horses or you die," the lead rider demanded. He was a big man, heavily bearded and, like all three of the brigands, wearing a mask bound over his eyes and nose."No!" the Duchess said.Henri grinned in reflexive agreement--never the horses!--then his belly went cold with horror. He should have spoken up

Short Fiction Questions & Inspirations Playlist

While I'm at it with the Short Fiction FAQs, does anyone have any additional questions I should include? I'm going to make a compiled file and post it on my website.And, since it's Friday and I should have some content, this is a version of my most recent playlist, all songs I find inspirational in one way or another. Well, except for the first one, which is the lead-in, and has a different

Short Fiction FAQ: Part Three

Question: What is a possible path to breaking in to invitation-only print anthologies, if I have already sold stories to magazines?I would first find out which publishers issue the sort of anthology that's suited to your stories, then look at the list of authors to see if you have any contacts: authors you know, friends of authors you know, authors who share an agent with you or one of your

Short Fiction FAQ - Part Two

Question: Is there a market for erotic flash fiction? Will agents and editors think I can't write novels if most of my sales are short fiction?There is not a huge paying market for flash fiction, but there are some markets. I would browse this page regularly.For publications that don't specifically mention accepting flash fiction or short-shorts, it rarely hurts to ask. The editor might need

Short Fiction FAQ - Part One

Establishing yourself as a writer of short fiction can pay a little money and, more importantly, establish a "track record" which can help in making valuable contacts among your fellow writers, editors, and agents. Short fiction also provides experience with writing to spec (answering calls for submissions), dealing with editors, reading contracts, locating reprint opportunities, and discovering

Writing is In the Mind

So much of writing is in the mind.Not just coming up with ideas and arranging words into sentences. To write novels, to keep up the sustained effort necessary, a psychological approach to writing is often required. For me, that is. I have to bully myself into it. Cajole. Nag. Reassure. I have to be all things to myself, just to survive putting between 85,000 and 100,000 words on paper in