Sandra Gulland's Blog, page 43

Post-conference highs (and lows)

..I've been negligent, not reporting in. Usually that means that there's too much to say. I'll begin in brief:

Editor Dan read my manuscript. He did not say "It's perfect." He raises the bar high (and that's what I want from him), but all the while I'm inwardly groaning, wanting to play. I feel that way now — but once I'm in the thick of it, that will be where I want to be.

In preparation for rewriting The Next Novel, began rereading Mistress of the Sun: I could so easily take a pencil to it!

I...

First reader and other fears

..The second draft of The Next Novel is being read right now by Dan Smetanka, a wonderful free lance editor in L.A. Am I nervous? You bet! This is its first public airing. In preparation for the next revision — the third draft — I'm rereading it myself. I've been dreading doing this, but now that I'm a good 100 pages in, I feel more at ease.

Not that there aren't problems, both big and small. I've a lot of work ahead. I marvel at the writers who are able to create a coherent novel in a year o...

Travel research tips for writers of historical fiction

..I recently received this e-mail from a reader: 

I am working on a manuscript of historical fiction and plan on traveling to the sites associated with my tale (Wales).  I was wondering if you had any advice you could share as to how you visit the places in your stories.  How do you absorb/experience them in a way that you take into your writing? Given your current travels in France, I thought this would be a particularly opportune time to ask.  

Because of the travel complications this...

Forging historical fiction when facts differ — or are scarce

..In response to a question on a historical fiction list about forging fiction from little fact (or from differing "facts"), historical author Elizabeth Chadwick posted this wonderful answer:

You do as much background research as you can, both the narrow and the broad, into the person, their lifestyle, and the times in which they lived.

If there's not a lot available about them, then you research the people who interacted with them — their lifestyles, and the people who in turn interacted...

..I get wonderful emails from readers, but this charming ...

..I get wonderful emails from readers, but this charming account especially moved me.

Dear Ms Gulland

Some people have said that I should not make the following admission but I
have, on a number of occasions, fallen foul of female acquaintances when I
have occasionally admitted that, as a male baby boomer privately educated in
the UK, I tend to overlook books by female authors. I can only be truthful,
and have always put it down to education and "conditioning" by the boys'
school I attended, along ...

Joyce Carol Oates on "biographically fueled fiction"

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Fact-based fiction? Biographical fiction? What does one call fiction that is based on the life of a historical character. I like Joyce Carol Oates' expression: "biographically fueled fiction."
Here's what she had to say about it in a review of a biographical novel about Emily Dickinson in the New York Times Book Review:

In these exemplary works of biographically fueled fiction it's as if the postmodernist impulse to rewrite and revise the past has been balanced by a more Romantic wish to...

Going public: Marketing 301

..I very much like this blog post by Robin Black on book promotion, especially:

Whatever your natural inclinations, as an author with a book to sell, you are going to have to become (or fake being) outgoing, highly sociable and downright thrilled to be stared at by—if you're very, very lucky—a crowd. Not to mention grateful, which is actually very important.   

Related posts: 

Net marketing for Ludites: Part 1

Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 2 (Cracking the Social Net)

Net Marketing...

Hola, Hello, Bonjour!

Here is my latest newsletter: 

http://bit.ly/SGnewsletter

And here is the correction I immediately had to send out regarding the date of my Paris reading. (I've also added some details about it.): 

http://bit.ly/Parisreading

Come join me in Paris -- why not? 

Contract love

..I love my Canadian publisher, HarperCollins Canada. After a winter away, I came home to a pile of mail, including the contract for The Next Novel. I don't get a new book out that often, so I forget how striking the first page of their contracts is. It reads:

We believe that a book's most precious element is its creator; that the publisher's role is to produce a work of lasting value and offer it to the public with confidence and commitment; that the author's opinions on publication...

Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 6 (Your Fans)

..This is the last in this basic Net-Marketing series. There is, I'm afraid, more and more that onc can do. (Blog tours, for one: see the link below.) But all that can evolve later, and only if you wish. Basic, what you've done, is set up a way to catch people's attention, and, hopefully, in the process, attracted them to your book. You've got fans. 
Fans is kind of a blow-up way to say that you've got enthusiastic readers: and they are a precious bunch. They are your core support. Treat them...