Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts

Monday, January 9, 2023

On Finishing Manuscripts by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

 

 Vanessa Hawkins Author Page


Exhausted and overcome by Christmas and another completed manuscript, I have naught the energy to write much more this month. So I shall give you fine readers this: a poem on finishing manuscripts. Enjoy! 

Twas the night before New Years, 

And all in the house,

A mother was writing

and trying to rouse

her creations! 

Of romance! and fear! and conclusions, 

but kiddos indulged with sugar lllusions

won't sleep. And now it is half past the hour, 

and mother, up late, is starting to sour,

and so as the hen scratch digs wounds on the page, 

she worries her ire is starting to rage, 

but despite all her kids and her spouse and chores, 

she finishes early, the manuscript soars!

from 'in progress' to 'finished'

my, what a delight, 

but now everyone's sleeping

she's up past midnight.

 So the New Year is gone, 

and the fireworks done, 

and now all she has left 

is to edit...

No fun. 

Hope everyone had a Happy New Year! :) 

Monday, August 9, 2021

Writing What You No? by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

 Vanessa Hawkins Author Page


Is it the ninth again? A month goes by fast when you're doing jack! Well... maybe not Jack but certainly his young brother Zilch. As I scratch my head wondering what to write about, I suddenly remember that I have published another book! 


Well, maybe not JUST published, but it came out a few months ago. Unlike Ballroom Riot--which has damsels and dragons and romance and as many F Bombs as a small army barracks--my other book, A Child to Cry Over, is about a young, eight year old girl who is convicted of the murder of a two year old boy. 

Yeah... it's a bit heavy!  
Ballroom Riot= Light as a lady's fart
A Child to Cry Over= Heavy as the solid stuff!


I wrote it a little while ago actually. Before I had my daughter and when I was a callous young woman with no heart or soul and who had tons of time to sleep or brush their hair and could go to the bathroom by herself without a tiny human having to attend every single time. 

Every. Single. Time.

But regardless of whether I could write such a book now that I am a mother, I did write this one, and I set it right dab in the middle of my hometown in rural New Brunswick, Canada. Which had... more than it's fair share of unsexy results. 


See, my little pee-brained, not-yet-famous-but-maybe-one-day author voice told me it was a good idea to write what you know. Write a book about a little girl who grows up in rural NB and jot down all her observations about the place in which she lives. The local people will love it! Until some aspects don't paint the town in a great light... then watch out.

Let me tell you, I got my fair share of critics! As well as some great accolades, mind you, but some people were under the impression I was bashing my home town! Nooooooo! Not at all...

Okay maybe some, but not really. If I didn't love Not Here, New Brunswick, I certainly wouldn't be living there, right? Right. 

Honestly though, it's a nice place.


But despite my sentiments, I did get some flack. I also got a lot of local interviews and newspaper articles so... I mean, no regrets! Writing what you know works! But it also meant that people knew who I was. I got private FB messages, texts, calls! so people could tell me what they thought. Which IS pretty cool but also hella awkward depending on the situation. And it's not to say I never got those kinds of things from family and friends before... but its just... now I got it from people I didn't know... 

 
You read my book and live close to me and want
to talk about it?! Oh. God. No.

Which was an experience to say the least... And Mostly good. 

Mostly...

But it has certainly opened my eyes in regards to writing in a real setting. You're not going to please everyone, so please yourself I guess. Which is funny considering my next book is an erotica.

My puns are funny to me at least...


Wait, what was the point of this blog post? Oh yeah. Writers beware! Oo~ooh! Writing about your hometown and not having the good sense to change any or most of the names in that hometown may be baa~ad! Oo~ooh! And if you do it anyway? Be prepared for lots of messages and  .....*&(#%@( . Oo~oh! 

Or not. I mean, maybe no one wants to read your drivel anyway. 

I want to read your stuff George! Don't cry... 
You just need to write it before the sun explodes.



Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Can you tell a book by its cover?...by Sheila Claydon

Once, long ago, I wrote under the pen name Anne Beverley, and Golden Girl was my first published book. Then I wrote more books, still as Anne Beverley, until my family eventually persuaded me to stop hiding behind a pseudonym and write under my real name. That earlier book was still out there though, and to say the cover looks dated is an understatement!


Original cover

Then, many books later, the publishing house that owned it closed and the publishing rights returned to me. I sold it on to another publisher on the proviso that it would now be published under my real name. But in the field of publishing things are not always straightforward, so in the end I had to agree to Sheila Claydon writing as Anne Beverley, as well as a new cover. One that was certainly an improvement on the first.


Second edition cover

Then, a few years later, the same thing happened all over again. Another publisher, this time Books We Love, another cover and, finally, Golden Girl published under my own name. By then this book had been out there for a long time, so now it is a vintage romance with characters behaving a little differently than we expect them to in the twenty-first century. The heroine is still feisty though. It just takes her a little longer to get there!


Third edition cover

Now, thankfully, all my books bar one are with BWL Publishing, and I am very happy indeed about that.

In my next blog I will introduce another of those early books together with the covers they have had over the years. In the meantime, if you would like to have a taster of Golden Girl, then go to the Book Snippets page on my Website and let it take you back to what it was like to be a secretary in a large company in London and Paris in 1964. Manual typewriters, desk phones connected to a central switchboard, no screens, hardback dictionaries, shorthand dictation, blotting paper...I could go on. It was a different world except for one thing...people still liked to read romances. And if you would like to let me know which of these is your favourite cover, I'd love to know.



















Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Oh, The Changes I've Seen - Janet Lane Walters #MFRWauthor #BooksWeLoveLTD #writing #Publishing #Novels #Shortstories


Murder and Mint Tea (Mrs. Miller Mysteries Book 1) Bast's Warrior (An Alternate Egypt Book 1) The Leo-Aquarius Connection (Opposites in Love Book 5)

Oh, The Changes I’ve Seen

 

When I was first published in 1968, publishing was a thriving business. The thriving remains the same but the changes astound me. I didn’t realize how many there were until I began to look at this. Now I was seriously writing long before I was published. I spent several years studying the short story before I put down much more than ideas. I’d been a reader all my life and writing seemed to be the next extension. I’ve seen many changes in the publishing of fiction. I no longer write short stories, though I do some novellas. Most of my writing is in genre fiction. So settle back and let’s look at some of the changes I’ve seen.

The Writing

Not only has my writing changed but so has that of other writers. When I began this adventure, I realized I was a minimalist. But more on that later. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed.

 

Books became shorter. When I first began with a novel most books ran at least 80,000 to 120,000 words. For a time that prevailed and those lengthy descriptions of people, places and things went on for paragraphs and sometimes pages. Now we try to make a few words do the work of many.

The passive voice wasn’t frowned on. When I look at my first short stories and saw the amount a passive voice, I wanted to go back and rewrite them. Now the active voice is the way to go and we’re not telling stories, we’re showing them.

Now the next big change I’ve noticed is with dialogue tags. “said she,” used to be the way dialogue was tagged. Asked John. Rather that she said or Jon asked. Then there was this tag. “said she while she walked across the room to close the window and cut the draft.” We now shorten these kind of phrases and clauses a lot.

 

Content

 In the past 50 years, the content of stories has changed, especially in the romance field where most of my books are set.

In 1972 when my first romance novel sold, there were romances out there but the content has changed with time. Romance was often entwined with a mystery or an inspirational message. Books we might have considered romances today were more in the main stream manner. Nurse-doctor romances were there and that’s where I began. Being a nurse gave me an insight into the medical world. There were many differences from the romances written today.

The internal conflict was more important than the romance. Body parts were avoided, except for lips and mouth. Romance seemed to focus from the neck up. Anything else was taboo. One of my published romances out in 1983 had all mention to breasts removed. But times were changing. Sex was perhaps hinted at but the couple seldom reached the bedroom door. The proposal and the kiss came near the end of the book. There was usually a triangle with either the nasty sexy female opponent or the heroine having to choose between two men who were either both great guys or ones not so great. Macho men came a bit later.

There are probably other trophes out there but most of the romances were sweet.

 

Publishers

When I published my first short story, there were many magazines for short stories. I’m sure I sent the first one I wrote to about twenty  or more magazines before someone bought the rights to publish. Then magazines began to disappear. Some were large magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and others were smaller. I even sold two stories to magazines that ended publication before the stories saw print. I was able to keep the money they paid. I used to buy The Writer’s Handbook every year for the listing on publishers. 1983 is the last one I remember buying, probably because I went back to work as a nurse for a few years.

What I’m going to give you a summary of the markets for each kind of story and then the publishers for that year.

 

Short Story Markets 1983

Science Fiction and Fantasy 13 magazines

Detective and Mystery 10 magazines

Romance and Confession 9 magazines

Fiction there were 6 pages of listings

Children 34 magazines

YA there were three pages of listings

Book Publishers

Hardcover Publishers there were 10 pages of listings

Paperback Publishers 2 pages of listings

Romance Publishers 14 Publishers

 

There were also self published manuscripts that were mostly chap books of poetry.

And there were always Vanity publishers

 

Changes Continue

From the 1980s through the 1990s publishers consolidated and merged leaving fewer places for an author to sell books to a publisher without an agent. These mergers are still happening.

Then came electronic publishing. I was early in publishing this way and the number of small publishers expanded and contracted daily. During those years, I sold well though at first the books arrived on floppy discs. Those were exciting and some unpleasant days. Being part of something new was fun. Having friends who were or were not published making snide and hurtful remarks wasn’t fun but I endured. I endured so well that many of my fellow romance authors who were the most vocal against me are now published electronically.

An ereader arrived and that boosted sales. Then Kindle and other devices that were slimmer and lighter came and selling ebooks became the thing.

Lately, audio books have taken off. Self-publishing is popular. Reading books on one’s phone is now a trend. Who knows what will come next and I hope I’m around to see the next great leap.

 

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