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Harlequin entered into an agreement with Author Solutions to stick a vanity press branch off of their publishing tree. If you get rejected by Harlequin, you'll get a nice referral to Harlequin Horizons in your rejection letter.
*waits for that to sink in*
Yes. It sucks. Greatly.
The referral isn't to a free service to help you improve your writing, oh no - it's to a vanity press that will take THOUSANDS of your dollars to PRINT a copy for you. Something, btw, that you can get done for FREE at lulu.com or pay much less for at other places. But, this is HARLEQUIN, thus it has a much more glamourous shine to it than those other places.
But crap is still... well, crap.
Needless to say, all hell has broken loose. The RWA, MWA and SFWA have all dropped or censured Harlequin, pulling them off their lists of eligible presses for membership. And there's still serious movement afoot as to how this is going to turn out.
Now, I hear you say... what's wrong with a vanity press?
Absolutely nothing.
*puts up hand*
Selfpublishing and vanity publishing are perfectly valid ways of printing your work. If you're a poet, if you've got a cool family history, if you've got that local area cookbook you've been dying to get into print - these are great things to go that route with.
Quick definition: Self-publishing - YOU go and buy a block of ISBN, YOU arrange for the printing, YOU get to do the distribution, YOU own the company. Vanity press - YOU do NOT own the ISBN, the company does. THEY will print copies up, but YOU still don't own the company. Depending on how much work you want to put into it, both are valid ways of getting your work into print.
But. This. Is. Not.
Not if you want to sell fiction. Not if you want to be a romance author. Not if you even want a bound copy to give to an agent. (HH says this in their promo. NO agent will look at a bound copy of your manuscript. It goes directly into the trash and you've used up your first publishing rights. Harlequin should and DOES know better.)
Be aware of what's out there. Don't make a bad decision based on a name.
Victoria Strauss has some excellent posts up on Writer Beware here about this topic.
Just be careful out there.
:D
And... of course, as with all things, wee plot bunnies are running rampant in my mind about a sequel. Already. As if Reb and Bran can't just settle down for a FEW minutes of peace and quiet.
;)
Get ready for a wild few weeks as we get READY TO PARTY!!!
Just got the final galleys for "What God and Cats Know" - which means, after a full two days of NOT looking at anything for more than a few minutes, I can throw myself wholeheartedly into this final, FINAL reading of what I think is a darned good book!
Only SIX weeks to go until it releases from Lyrical Press!
and here's another tasty tidbit you'll ONLY find here!
***
The alleys were dark, dank and smelt like fresh urine. I ran down one, paused at an intersection then turned on my heel to charge down the other, feeling the hot breath of a Hunter.
Skidding around yet another corner, I lost my balance and slammed into the wall, hard. All I could do was flatten myself against it and hope my first strike would disable him, maybe even kill him.
The Hunter was on me before I could catch my breath, straddling me with little effort. I stared up into the feline face, trying to recognise it even while I strained to force myself to Change.
The mouth opened, the canines dripping with hot saliva. Arching his back, he screamed at the sky above us then dove down, aiming for my exposed neck.
I had nothing. Not even a whisper of extra strength, my weak human body nothing more than a shadow of what it could be. Lunging forward, I smashed my forehead into the feline face.
The tactic worked. Releasing my arms, he brought up both hands to cradle the injured nose, roaring his disapproval and pain.
Then I woke up.
He was still there.
***
Can you wait six weeks?
CAN YOU???
(well... you're going to have to!)
:D
And... just signed up for a Samhain ad in RT for the June 2010 issue to promote "Blaze of Glory"! With a review as well!
Yes, you *do* have to think that far ahead when it comes to promotion and the like... but within limits. There's no use pushing a book that's not coming out for months and months because you'll lose your edge and by the time it does release, it's old news to those people tired of hearing you prattle on already.
I'll be kicking up the promo for "What God and Cats Know" in the next few weeks as we head for a January release. Being an ebook, there's no problem with worrying about shipments to bookstores, and studies seem to show that ebooks have a much longer life cycle than the paper version because it *is* always available!
Meanwhile, they're closing the Borders stores around us. In a fit of stupidity, the nearest bookstore will be a good hour's drive away.
:P
I'm working on my Nano, "Spring Cleaning" (over 8000, yes!).
I just sent in suggestions for the cover art of "Blaze of Glory".
I'm waiting for the final galleys for "What God and Cats Know".
and...
I'm getting that little nudging in the back of my mind to write Castle fanfiction.
*facepalm*
In the midst of a migraine headache/dreaming sequence.
Then I woke up... and realised that I still had to DO the actual writing!
*laughs*
But... chugging along at about 1800 yesterday, getting ready to get a cuppa and start the day. Have to fill out ANOTHER form for the final galleys of WGACK...
and then... more writing!
huzzah!
So... yesterday I'm out at the local Panera, spending some fine time with my sweet laptop and trying not to do too much on the novel, since I have the mad dash that is NaNo coming up next week.
Wonderful time surfing around, listening to CNN and updating all the programs that I can, since I don't have wireless at home and thus my baby is orphaned until we go out someplace with wireless.
Get up, head out to the nearby WalMart, come back to the Starbucks a block away, sit down with a sweet cuppa chai tea and prepare for some ebook reading, or something like that.
Nogo on the powercordo.
I try EVERY outlet in the place and the light on my laptop doesn't come on. I know it's running on battery power and that's only an hour or two, max. I even unplug the lamp in the corner, doing that dim ambience thang, to make sure that it's not the shop's owner being a jerk by only have one or two outlets on.
Nada.
Okay. Not panicking. I can and I do backup writing info on flash drive, shut down and wait for the Wookie to pick me up so we can go to Best Buy. Figure that either it's the power cord OR the laptop itself. Either is not a good situation, since I'd have to send to Toshiba for a new power cord OR have Best Buy ship the baby out for repairs.
But... what can I do? So I snuggle with my DS, get frantic with Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Scrabble and Puzzle Quest Galatrix.
Hubby shows up - we test his power cord with my laptop, but wrong model. Right make, Toshiba, wrong model.
We go to BB.
Laptop. Works. Just. Fine. Thankyouverymuch. BB Geek Squad fellow looks at me like I'm the stupidest woman EVAH.
Come on home. Works. Just. Fine.
Wookie points out, and I DID NOT KNOW THIS, that different laptops use different voltages. Thus, if the manager of the Starbucks had turned his outlets down so that the lamps plugged in would provide a dimmer light; that whole MOOD thing, then a laptop that needed More Power would Not Work.
Like mine.
And other, more recent models, who run on less power, would. Could. And Did.
Argh.
So... while I'm happy that the baby is still thriving and surviving (after seven years!), it's a warning to those of you with older models - suddenly you may find that your cord isn't working, and it's NOT THE CORD.
D'oh!
Now... NaNo beckons!
Huzzah!
I've decided to toss my hat into the NaNoWriMo ring yet against this year for a variety of reasons - first, and mostly, being that I have sold my 2007 and 2008 NaNo novels - "What God and Cats Know" and "Blaze of Glory" respectively, and thus I'm trapped in the horror that is a streak, and to quote Kevin Costner in Bull Durham (THE best baseball movie ever!) "a player on a streak has to respect the streak".
Now, you think, she just said that she was working on a steampunk novel. Shall she put it aside and start anew? Can she?
I say, nay!
What I *am* going to do is clock my wordcount at midnight on the 31st (probably after partying in SL) and then ADD 50,000 to it so that I play fair. Sure, I could start a new novel but I don't think I want to - and to be brutally honest, with only 20,000 words on "Spring Cleaning" done, I need something to force me to get it done and at a decent length.
So... November will be another silly month of dragging the laptop into the den and writing while watching and giving support in Second Life to all the other NaNo writers and hoping that lightning strikes a third time.
It'd be nice.
:)
We have a cover! Check out the cover for "What God and Cats Know" at http://bit.ly/199U9H and get ready for January 4, 2010!
January 4, 2010!
Now you know what to do with your Christmas gift money, right?
*laughs*
As soon as I have a book cover, I'll have it up as well - but the clock is ticking!!!
There's no such thing as a "Purr"-fect murder…
Rebecca Desjardin thought she had put her past behind her...until a dead "cat woman" appears on the front page of a local tabloid.
Street-smart and sassy, Rebecca is a survivor. Outcast from her Felis family because she can no longer change shape, she’s adapted to the world of men, and is quite capable of taking care of herself in her sometimes challenging career as a private investigator. But for her success she pays a price, her heritage, which she must keep secret at all costs.
Along for the ride, investigative reporter Brandon Hanover has his own troubled past. A photograph of the dead woman was supposedly slipped under his door, marking him as a possible suspect in the murder. Now all he wants to do is find the killer, clear his name, and get a good story…And maybe find out more about this mysterious woman he might be falling for.
Content Warning: Violence, Sexual Situations.
Now... you know you're interested, right?
;)
Interesting article here about what Amazon's policy is, regarding what they can and can't remove from the Kindle. Not really much there, but they had to clarify due to the idiotic problem that happened with the Orwell book.
I'm of two minds here - first, obviously I'm not keen on anyone knowing or being able to know and delete what I would have on ANY ebook reader... but I feel for the Amazon folks, who had to do something or face a huge lawsuit by the Orwell estate due to money lost by these pirates that put up the book as their own. There should be better gatekeepers at Amazon, and I'm sure there are NOW to keep such nits from grabbing money due rightfully to authors and their estate, but Amazon was really caught between a rock and a hard place and deleting the book from all Kindles that had purchased it was the lesser of two evils. Still, their PR department really sucked when it came to communication about same, and they should really be picking up the slack and assuring the public that it's not going to be a mad rush to delete books whenever someone at Amazon gets a bee in their bonnet about something. Well, it's a brand new world out there and someone's got to start somewhere...
Good Lord.
"Bee in their bonnet".
I truly am getting old...
;)
Definition for gaslight fantasy: Not so technical stuff.
Definitiion for steampunk: VERY technical stuff.
I always find it interesting when a story looks at me and says, "No, you're not that tech-savvy to do this!" and chugs along in its own path.
Does anyone else have different definitions?
Does it matter?
*curious look*
I've got a tentative release date of April, 2010 from Samhain Publishing for "Blaze of Glory" - it releases about the same time as the Romantic Times convention in Columbus, Ohio, so I'm debating if I should perhaps go to the convention and push it there. It'll be the ebook release, with the paper version coming out in the early months of 2011, as per my contract. I'm anxious to see how a superhero romance book does, to tell you the truth - and I'm still in shock that I get to list Samhain as one of my publishers!
We dropped about three grand on the car for a "new" transmission - since Ford doesn't have any current Taurus model that's compatible with ours, we went with the dealership's suggest and got one from their factory, refurbished or some such thing. Of course, now it's acting up and we barely got it back. Probably going to get another "new" one installed while it's still under the dealership warranty, but it's a pain to deal with rental cars, etc. while getting the problem solved. Of course, they pointed out the Nice Shiny New Taurus on the lot for "only" $40,000, but that's a wee bit beyond our reach right now.
*chuckles*
Waiting for the next stage at Lyrical Press for "What God and Cats Know" - I believe now it's off to the copy editor, who will probably find many errors that the editor and myself missed. There's about seven stages a manuscript goes through at LP, so you can bet that by the time it goes to press it's been picked over time and time again. Sure, some errors may still get through thanks to human nature, but it's certainly not for lack of effort! And it's a much better book than it started out to be, thanks to ND's magnificent editing and suggestions. If anyone ever says that he/she doesn't need editing, smack them in the side of the head.
Off to the doctor's this weekend to see what's up with my hip. I fear that old age is finally catching up with this old broad, since I can't sit at the computer too long before pains go down one leg and it aches almost all the time. Of course, dislocating two joints in my spine in my misspent youth may have something to do with it... *sighs* But at least my broken finger is finally healed and it doesn't hurt too much to type. Although the Catholic in me says something about pain being good for the soul or something... drat it!
And it's time for the Autumn Writers Exhibition in Second Life!!! Each year the kind souls at the Written Word, Jilly Kidd and Hastings Bournemouth, arrange for a series of tents and stalls to be put out on land donated by Thinkerer Melville for writers to showcase their works and services, both in and out of Second Life. I participated last year, but frankly didn't have much to put up. This year I'm tossing up links to Samhain and Lyrical, giving away some short stories, and pointing them to my virtual bookstore in SL where I provide links to Project Gutenberg books, highlighting the number of classics that are in the public domain! It'd be better if I actually had books to sell, but it's definitely a chance to do some PR for the next year!
And... that's about it. Other than to note that Zyngo is still my poison of choice in SL and camping at casinos my new hobby.
:)
I am *very* pleased to announce that my superhero novel, "Blaze of Glory", has been picked up by Samhain Publishing!
Please visit their website and see what fantastic authors they have, and which I am honored to now be one of.
I shall now run around the house screaming even louder.
That is all.
I'm quietly freaking out.
Got offer for "Blaze of Glory".
eep!
*runs from room*
more news when paperwork finalized....
I do think that there's definitely a spot for self-pubbing - poetry, nonfiction and so forth, where you know the sales aren't going to be great, depending on how your contacts and connections are.
It's often heartbreaking to see someone boldly rush into self-pubbing without realising the amount of hard work it takes to be successful - or worse, think that they're self-publishing when they're just subletting their work out to a small vanity press. If you selfpub, go the entire way - buy the ISBN and arrange for the printing. You'll make and save more money in the long run since you're the boss... but you'll do a lot of solo promotion and it's a hard road to walk. If you do, get the books out there on how to do it right.
"No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" !
Stop by, take a look and spread the word about yet another fine publication!!!
Add it to your bookmarks for continued reading fun!
:)
