April 1st is approaching, and...

The good news is we're selling more books. The bad news is that makes doing payroll a longer and more complicated process.

April 1st is time for quarterly reports and pay checks again. Some will be large, some will be small and a few won't have any sales at all, but all the books have been marketed at many of the larger sites on the web--as many as we can get to.

Each of those sites has to be checked for the numbers of who sold what, the data has to be integrated and compiled, so that each author is paid for every sale they made, no matter where it happened.

This is a complicated process and must be done in the morning when I am fresh, for the last thing I need is to make a mistake. So expect it to take some time away from our regular work. What that means is that if your book is in the process, it will remain in the process, but will likely go on hiatus until the 350-some authors have all been paid what they are owed--a week or two at best.

On the work front this week --

Galleys came back this week from:

Terry L. White for CHESAPEAKE VISIONS

KS Brooks for THE KISS OF NIGHT

Shel Damsky for DEATH ON APPEAL



Galleys went out to:

Elizabeth Eagan-Cox for GHOST MEETS AN ANGEL

Erin Aslin for THROUGH THE CLOUDS


Post production corections came in on:

Joan L. Cannon's MAIDEN RUN


Final Corrected Files went out to
David Berardelli for DEMON CHASER


Books that went to press again (repeat submissions):

Jeanine Malarsky's MAGGIE'S MIRAGE

Elena Bowman's TIME-RIFT


I also finished the typesetting for the non-fiction book
FROM JESUS TO HEAVEN WITH LOVE, by Barbara Garro.

Also please bear with me as April 1 is coming around and the good news is we're selling more books, but the bad news is it will take me longer to pay authors.

arline

Never draw to an inside strait -- writing tip

That was my Daddy's advice when he taught me how to play poker. Do you ever play poker? When I was a kid I wasn’t very good. I always drew to inside straights. I’d keep all my face cards, even if I had a pair of threes. Then I took college math at the advanced age of 40, and learned to figure the odds. I win at poker a lot more often these days.

Now, let’s talk about marketing. Do you play the lottery? Entering writing contests is a lottery. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people enter them, and the outcome is controlled by a matter of the judges' personal taste. The story the selection committee likes best is judged the winner. Still it’s okay to buy a lottery ticket once in awhile. Someone will be a winner and you might just get lucky. But I wouldn’t view not winning as a “failure.” A lottery ticket is an opportunity, never a guarantee.

Writing is a game, too. And marketing stories is also a game. Like any game, it has rules. Manuscripts must be neat, clean and error free. The story must be as good and well written as you can make it. Then you choose magazines that best fit your story’s premise and you also (if you’re into poker) choose markets carefully by the odds. At first you don’t concern yourself with money, but choose new magazines (who are looking for new writers) or you choose magazines that don’t get many submissions.

Where do you think the odds are best? At Redbook where they receive 10,000 manuscripts a year and buy 10? Or at Rosebud where they get about 500 manuscripts a year and buy up to 40?

What if Rosebud is no longer in business -- small magazines come and go, after all. New ones often advertise in the classifieds at WRITER'S DIGEST and that's one good reason for reading the ads....

Saw my first Dandelion today! -- Recipe

It is spring for sure. And here's a recipe from Mary Cox (Bilz) Pace to prove it.


Mary Cox-(Bilz) Pace’s Dandelion Wine

1 gallon Boiling water
2 qt. Dandelion blossoms
3 lb Sugar
1 Lemon; thinly sliced
1 tbsp Good yeast (If using powdered yeast, mix 1 pkg. in half a cup of lukewarm water before adding to the pot and do NOT add it until after pot cools to lukewarm.

Put blossoms in a large kettle and pour boiling water over them. Let stand 1 hour. Strain, add sugar to liquid, boil a little and skim. Allow to Cool.

When lukewarm, add lemon and yeast. Let stand 24 hours, then strain and put into sterilized clean Mason Jars or wine jugs, filling (with some room at the top) as it’s working until only the impurities (lemon, etc.) are left in the bottom of the pot. The wine will be a beautiful pale gold color.

(In making this wine, be careful to keep all stems out, as they make the wine taste rank and give it a dark color). Seal tightly.

Contributor’s Note: Since I’m quadriplegic, I’ll get my sister Donna or my niece Jennifer to pick the dandelions. Then my Mom or Dad will do the thing with the boiling water, sugar, and Mason Jars. Then if it turns out well, I’ll just smile and say, “It’s my recipe!”

Contributed by Mary Cox(Bilz)-Pace, author of How to Promote Advertise and Market Your Published Book (with Arline Chase)...A step-by-step guide that offers tools you can integrate in your own marketing plan....Marketing strategies that have been used by authors to pull their books out of boxes, onto book store shelves, and into a customer's hands.

Update

My business partner, Sandy, was down for a couple of days catching up, so I didn't do much on line. Instead we caught up on things and played with the new computer.

Goint to press in paper this week will be:

MAGGIE'S MIRAGE, by Jeanine Collins Malarsky

DEMON CHASER, by David Berardelli

Galleys received back this week, and corrections will be done next on:

CHESAPEAKE VISIONS by Terry L. White

DEATH ON APPEAL, by Shel Damsky

More later....

No Wrong Way to Do IT -- Writing tip

There's no wrong way to do this. In the beginning, teachers told me again, and again, what I must NOT do. Quite often that advice was contrary to my own instinct for a good story and now that I am a "more mature" writer, I wish I had listened more to my own gut and less to those you said, "YOU CAN'T."

In my writing tips, I will try to give you some pointers on how to do things including how to make up characters. But take it all with a grain of salt. Because it's not always a good idea to limit your character's experiences OR your own. In fiction, your imagination almost always comes into play, when you ask yourself the question, "What if--?"

So ask, "What if?" and then follow your instincts. Don't let anyone tell you, you can't. As Jean Auel once said, when you have written 400,000 words, you will know how to write. So spend your time writing, not worrying about HOW.

Write in Scenes, not Chapters - Writing Tip

In the beginning, I planned everything. Then found that, for me, the characters oten had other plans.

I have learned never to divide my book into chapters until it is finished. I just write the story all in one big file. I also never pad the story to make it a certain length and I don’t advise you to do that either. Write the story one scene at a time. Then go on to the next and the next and so on, always following the action. Some scenes will be only a few paragraphs. Some will be several pages long. Mine average about five pages. Though they can be less than one and up to nine. If a scene runs more than nine pages, I know I’ve lost track of something.

Once the story is finished, I go back and put chapter headings in at scene breaks, between 15 and 20 pages at a time. If I want a three chapter sample, I can go and do that at the beginning of the book -- copy and paste those pages into a separate file called sample, and so on. But I don’t like to break the story up until it is pretty well finished.

The reason is that quite often I find I need to insert scenes in places I had not anticipated.

For instance: in GHOST DANCER, I had no plans for Elaine to come west. She was only to be mentioned as a reason for Christy’s leaving home. Then I wrote a scene and Elaine walked in the middle ot it, saying, “I’ve had a perfectly miserable trip!”

I wrote her out, but she kept coming back. So then I had to go back and write in a scene where she found out a secret and left home, and another scene to show the perfectly horrible trip, and so when she showed up on the train, she had been foreshadowed and the reader was ready for her – and not as shocked as I had been.