A Little Self Love for a Writer

Recently I edited a book written by an 82 year old man who has lived an incredible life. I can't wait to attend his book launch in April. One of the underlying themes of his story - his life story - was how he lived with the fear he was never good enough. This from a man who has amazing insights and has done amazing things in the world of Canadian dance and choreography.

So who am I compared to this extraordinary man?
First of all, I've stopped comparing myself to other people. Other writers.
I will never be like them.
I am me.

I have written many books.
I have published seven novels and submitted one more for publication.
I was a part of several anthologies.
I have published short stories in magazines.
All along, I knew all this in the back of my mind, but I've never let myself ENJOY my successes. I've always completed one project then bounced onto the next one with the drive to do more. To PROVE myself.

Prove myself to who?
To everyone in my life who ever said, "That's nice, but you should be a..."
To the guy who told me to give up and get a real job.
To the voices deep inside of me that's always told me, "You're not good enough," "You'll never get published," "You'll never be able to write full time."
Fear tells me all those things are true.
Logic dictates I keep the full-time job but write for the joy of it.

The writer in me says:

1. write
2. publish
3. take editing jobs
4. do a bit of freelance writing
5. marketing, marketing, marketing
6. surround myself with the positive - both people and inspiration

So what does a writer do to stay positive and not let the voices get her down?

1. Join a writing group. I've been a part of one for twelve years.
2. Join groups that will help with book exposure, events, information and recognition. I've joined the Crime Writers of Canada as well as Writers Community of York Region.
3. Send books to local libraries to get my name out and offer to do events.
4. Have books available in local bookstores.
5. Have an online presence.
6. Find people to review your books and host you on blogs.

So where to start? Take a deep breath, make a list, and take one baby step at a time.

Keep on reading and post a review for the books you love!

Diane Bator

Author of Wild Blue Mysteries & Gilda Wright Mysteries

Introducing:   Book4: The Painted Lady

The pieces of Christina Davidson's life have built up into place over the past few months, despite the one last secret she's trying hard to hide. When Leo Blue returns to town, then people from her past turn up, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble and the only people who can help her now are the men of the Wild Blue Detective Agency.

Leo Blue can't escape Packham nor the life of a private detective no matter how hard he tries. Six months after the murder of artist DJ Gage, the prices of Gage's paintings soar. When a woman winds up dead and a forgery is discovered in the local art gallery, Leo has to find a murderer and a forger.

Writing Contests: bad or good? by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo BWL Author Page

During my exciting and scary journey toward publication, I traveled many roads. I first ventured into the submission path from where I sent my manuscript to dozens of publishers, most of them through snail mail. Over the following months I received acknowledgement letters, then rejection letters. Some were the standard "we're sorry to inform you--" printed rejection letters, while others were nice handwritten rejections. Still, the result was the same. Thanks but no thanks.

I'd received responses from about half the publishers when a friend and fellow unpublished author sent me a link to a free contest. A new publishing company was about to open its virtual door and it was looking for authors. My friend hadn't finished her manuscript yet, but she thought I might be interested. There were a few obstacles, the biggest one being the deadline. The contest ended at midnight that evening and it was already 6pm. I read the rules. They wanted an email with my name, and the first three and last three pages of my manuscript. Nothing else. No synopsis. No blurb. No bio. And most importantly, it was open to unpublished authors.
 
Getting a first contract is a lot like getting a first job. In order to get the job, you need experience, but you can't get experience unless someone gives you a job. Likewise, many publishers will only accept submissions from published authors or agents, and agents won't take you as a client unless you're a published author. You gotta love catch-22.

Back to the contest... I didn't have much time to think about it, but I figured there could be no harm sending six pages out of three hundred, so I sent it--and forgot about it. A month later, the publisher emailed me back saying I was one of twenty semi-finalists. She now wanted to read the entire manuscript, and if she liked it she would offer me a three-year contract and publish it in ebook. I only had a few days to answer. Well, all the questions I didn't have time to ask a month earlier flooded my mind. The first one being: is that new publisher real? It's hard to find information on a company that isn't in business yet. A nice website with the words "coming soon" under "books" was the only indication I had the company existed... Not reassuring I know.

If you browse "free writing contests", you'll stumble on a huge list. Many are free legitimate contests with legitimate prizes. So, is entering contests a good idea? First word of advice: do your homework. Make sure this is a legitimate contest. Read the fine prints. Make sure your manuscript meets the requirements. What's the prize? Is it worth your time and effort? Is there any string attached or any hidden cost associated with that contest? Like getting a free score for your manuscript only to learn you have to pay a fee if you also want to read the feedbacks from the judges.

That brings me to paid contests. Is it better to enter a contest for which you pay an entry fee? Does it make the contest more legit? Or is it a creative way to scam writers? Again, do your homework, like for a free contest, but also add the question Is it worth the money? In most cases, I'd be inclined to say No, don't waste your money. That being said, a month ago I did something I had never done before,  I entered a paid contest. Why you may ask? That's a fair question.

I stumbled on it in December. It was a short-story creative contest in which they randomly assign you a genre, a subject, and a character. Once they sent me my categories, I had seven days to write a 2,500-word-or-less original story. If I pass that first round, there is a second round, then a third. So why did I shed that money for a contest in which over 4,000 writers participated and I have zero chances of winning? Had I had any glimpse of hope of winning, it would have vanished the moment I received my categories. Genre: sci-fi. Subject: exotic pet. Character: interior designer.

Let's be honest here. I write romantic suspense. My idea of a short story is 45,000 words. I wrote one sci-fi story in my life. Back then I was in grade 8, it was a fanfic (I'm fairly certain the term fanfic hadn't been coined yet), I typed it on an old-fashioned typewriter (that was before home computer), and I shared it with my friends during math class. The only pet to ever make it in one of my stories was a cute little terrier by the name of Snowflake who got lost in a snowstorm, and I based her character on my granddoggie. That's as exotic as I got. And an interior designer? That wasn't an occupation I had ever considered for any of my characters. My chances to make it to round two? Slim to none.

So, did I enter for a chance to win money, a publishing package, writing software, and get a detailed critique? No, I would have ended up with more money in my wallet had I not entered, I have three great publishers, my laptop has all the software it needs, and my editor provides me with plenty of critics. The thing is, I started a new novel over the summer. I should already have finished it, but in mid-August, big changes happened in my personal life--good changes, great changes--but changes that affected my ability to write. Basically, these changes took away my writing time--until last week.

Last week was also when I was scheduled to write that short sci-fi story. The contest forced me to get that writing time back--and write. And I wrote that short story in 36 hours. Am I happy with the result? It's not bad for a 2,400-word sci-fi with an exotic pet and an interior designer  😂 but most importantly, it got me writing again. After I finished it, I went back to my summer novel and finished another chapter. So why did I pay money to enter that contest? To get that creative juice flowing and to whip me into writing again! For me, at that precise moment in my life, it was worth the money. Granted, a kick where I sit might have been a cheaper alternative, but probably not as productive.

Now you may wonder what happened to that new publisher's contest...

Sending six pages was one thing, but the entire manuscript to a self-proclaimed new publisher I knew nothing about entered a different category. I'd heard stories about writers who shared their manuscripts with a critique group only to see their stories stolen and published under a different title by someone else. I'll admit I was scared and suspicious. After all, that publisher had only read six pages. At the time I didn't fully comprehend the power my few pages  might hold. In the end, I emailed my manuscript (and kept a copy of the email). I figured I had nothing to lose since all I was getting were rejection letters...or worse, no letters at all. A few weeks later, I was offered a contract for my novel and assigned to an awesome editor who took me under her wing. Unfortunately, the publisher closed its door a few years later, but then my editor dragged me with her to a different publisher where I published more books. My gamble in that new publisher had paid off. Thanks to that contest, I became a published author, and from there, doors that might have remained closed began to open.

There are lots of good writing contests out there for published and unpublished authors. Don't shy away from them, but be careful and selective. They are not all created equal.

Happy reading & writing! And good luck!
 JS

 J. S. Marlo's Website

Welcome to February - the Month for Lovers

 

If you haven't visited our Canadian Historical Brides Blog 

February is the perfect month to meet all the Brides

Since February has long been regarded as the month for lovers, it seems only fitting that here at BWL we make this the month for celebrating our historical and time travel romances.

 

BWL PUBLISHING'S FEBRUARY RELEASES

Crafting conversations

She's lover shopping, and her new boss could never be the goods on her wish list

https://bookswelove/net/authors/brown-priscilla-romance 

My contemporary romances include quite a lot of dialogue which I always enjoy creating. Time spent working on a particularly significant exchange between the two main characters usually exceeds that taken when writing the appropriate same number of words for narrative.

An effective conversational exchange can move the story forward, divulge information including relevant elements of the characters' histories, illustrate personality, foreshadow events, generate tensions, and more. I like to think that one of the most important functions of dialogue is to establish communication from the characters to the reader. I want the reader to get to know them, their personalities and speech habits, to feel drawn into their world, to worry about them, love or hate them, laugh or cry with them.

When I've completed the first draft of a conversation, I read it aloud, listening for each character's word choice, sentence length and absence of complete sentences as is of course common in dialogue, tone, style, nuances. Do the speakers sound natural and distinctive from each other? (Or do they sound like me?!)  Is the conversation original?  Is the purpose of this conversation evident, or is it inconsequential chat? (Though sometimes 'chat'  has a place. In Class Act, Gina does talk a lot, and Lee jokes that she has a PhD in chatting.)  I must make clear who is speaking, so the reader doesn't have to pause to check or to re-read. Having fixed glitches obvious when read aloud, my critique partner reads it. Her comments reveal points needing attention which I hadn't spotted. Several drafts later, I'm able to construct a dialogue which satisfies me.

The lead characters in Class Act are experts in zippy repartee. In high school, Lee and Gina bounced banter off each other. Fifteen years later, with no in between contact, they've just started working together where he is the boss, and they're struggling to maintain the barrier between professional and personal. In this extract, Lee is playing saxophone in a jazz concert by the beach.

He unscrewed the wine, poured two glasses and handed one to her. "Only one for me." he said. "I've go to stay halfway sensible or I won't find my notes. You finish it."

 She took a sip."I really like this wine, but I wouldn't be able to walk back." 

"That's why I brought the blanket. The sand's soft, you can sleep on the beach."

"But the tide might come in and drown me, and I have to go to work tomorrow."

"I could tell your boss you've drowned."

"No, I wouldn't  dare not turn up." She shook her head. "You don't know my boss."

"Oh? Is he tall, dark and handsome? Tell me about him."

"He always needs a haircut, and he's fierce. I don't think he does any work because his desk looks like it's just come from the laundry, all clean, shiny and ironed. He just uses his office as a place to play the saxophone. I do all the work."

"What a lazy wretch. You should take your case to the fair work organisation."

"I already did. They said to have patience, because he's heading for an international career as a saxophonist, and then I can have his job."

He didn't respond. Had he taken seriously her last few words, that she wanted his job? She did, but not for a year or two. She glanced at him. Nah, no way was he thinking about work. His jewel eyes glowed. Their silver lights sparked, sending her a message in flashing neon. Trouble. Lee Wylde was going to be big big trouble tonight. Trouble she didn't know if she could handle. Or wanted to.

"Amazing how we still do it," he said softly.

"Do?" She wrenched her glance from the begging-to-be-touched wisps of black hair curling around the edges of his open shirtfront.

"Carry on like that. Like when were were at school."

Now I'm off to a cafe to do some secret eavesdropping, perhaps to add to my notes on conversations. 

Happy reading, Priscilla.

http://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

P.S. I have no monkeys in any of my stories. I couldn't resist adding these two having a serious discussion.

 

Welcome to My Grandparents’ Village by Margaret Hanna

For Details and Purchase links for 

Our Bull's Loose In Town click this link

“Village of Meyronne and Hanna farm, ca. 1927"

I grew up on the farm that my grandparents, Abe and Addie Hanna, homesteaded in 1909 and in the farm house that they built in stages between 1917 and 1926. The village of Meyronne, Saskatchewan, only a quarter-mile south of the farmhouse, was carved out of the southwest corner of the farm when the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) came through in 1913.

Where is Meyronne? you ask.

The village – what is left of it – is situated on Highway 13 in southwestern Saskatchewan. The highway is officially known as the Redcoat Trail but it might be more correctly called the Ghost Town Trail. Drive along it and you are hard pressed to see many of the towns that used to exist. Now that almost every grain elevator is gone, what is left seems to disappear into the landscape. A few houses and trees. Possibly a church. Maybe an abandoned school or garage. Maybe a falling-in rink. Perhaps a gas station alongside the highway. Nothing more.

A hundred years ago, it was very different. Thanks to the Canadian government’s propaganda, everyone wanted a piece of Saskatchewan where all you had to do was throw the seed on the ground and sit back and wait for the bumper crop to put itself into the bins. Or so the brochures implied. The reality was somewhat different as the homesteaders soon discovered.

The place was booming. Farmsteads consisting of a house, barn, and granaries existed on almost every quarter-section. Towns were strung along the rail line like beads on a necklace, six to seven miles apart. Each town had elevators, churches, schools, town halls, hotels, banks and businesses, and upwards of 100 to 300 inhabitants, plus the surrounding farm population.

So many people settled in Saskatchewan in the early years of the 20^th century that some optimistic soul predicted the province’s population would soon reach 20 million!

Boy, was he wrong!

Today, Saskatchewan's population hovers just above 1 million. Most people live in cities. The surviving towns and villages are mere shadows of what they once were. They were emptied out as younger generations moved into cities where better education and job opportunities awaited.

I was one of those who left.

Meyronne has pretty much dried up and blown away. Only a few families still live there. Almost all lots are vacant.

“Meyronne Main Street, 1913"

It wasn’t always thus. At its height, in the late 1920s, about 350 people lived there. The village boasted three grocery stores, two hardware stores, a butcher shop, a druggist, three cafes (run by Chinese), a laundry (also run by Chinese), a shoe repair shop, a boarding house, two livery stables, three lumber yards, a post office, a pool hall, the Bank of Toronto, a blacksmith shop, three garages that sold either Chevrolet or Ford cars or Massey Harris farm equipment, a three-storey hotel complete with café and beer parlour, a lawyer, a doctor, the Royal North West Mount Police barracks, the CPR station, a confectionary (ice cream, anyone?), Knox Presbyterian (later United) Church, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, the public school, the separate (Catholic) school, the Memorial Rink with both skating ice and two curling sheets, a post office, a telephone office, five grain elevators, and a nursing home/hospital.  To the east was the sports ground, the cenotaph, and the cemeteries – one for the Presbyterians and one for the Catholics, well-separated by a fence.

Village and district gossip, as well as news from elsewhere, was disseminated via The Meyronne Independent, run by R. “Bobby” Johnson.

CPR Station, Meyronne, ca. 1920”

It was the junction of two CPR lines – one from Moose Jaw to Shaunavon, the other from Swift Current to Meyronne. The station master was busy with shipping and receiving freight, sending and receiving telegrams, and selling passenger tickets. The CPR section manager lived there; he monitored the rail lines and ensured the water tower and coal shed were full for the steam engines that passed through twice daily. Highway 13 ran through the centre of town.

It was a happening place.

Then came 1929. A combination of the depression and drought – the “Dirty Thirties” – hit  southwestern Saskatchewan particularly hard. It was essentially the end of Meyronne and many other villages in the area. The decline was slow but steady. By the 1950s, when I was growing up, the village was only a shadow of what it had been. It declined even more after Highway 13 was re-routed a half-mile north and when the CPR stopped, first, passenger service and eventually freight service. Today, only a few houses, the Catholic church and the cemetery remain.

History Buffs

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The old cover and title...which I loved...
may still show up at some sites.

~

You may have heard the joke, now enshrined upon an Acorn TV t-shirt:

HISTORY BUFF

I'd find you more interesting 

if you were dead.

Not a very nice sentiment, but, sadly, this is often true of hard-core history fans.  

This is the 29th, which is two days past the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which took place on January 27, 1756. Traditionally, it is supposed to have been a gray, bitter day. Wolfgang's mother, typically for the 18th Century European women, lost most of her children. Wolfgang was her last child, 

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born frail, and lucky to have survived his first hasty transport  to the cathedral on the Domplatz of Salzburg. His full name was Johannes Crysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus. In German translation "Theophilus" becomes "Gottlieb" which in time, after a visit to Italy by the young prodigy, became the now familiar "Amadeus." 

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Wolfgang A.M. got well and truly into my head. My vinyl + CD collections, dominated by Mozart and Haydn testify to this. Upon hearing just a few notes of almost anything he wrote and I can win at a game of "name that composer". Maybe not the exact title of the composition, but I certainly known the Maestro when I hear him. I have a long history with this guy. 

Here are pictures from the local Lebanon, PA newspaper taken in the early 2000's.

A nice newspaperman (some of them aren't) came to the house, took pictures and asked lots of questions. To my surprise, much of my somewhat embarrassed chatter made it into the paper. It was a bit strange to have gone public with my mad obsession. 

That day, though, even my orange tiger cat "Hamilton" got into the act, as you can see, doing his "cute kitty" bit to the hilt.  You can see how long ago it was by the size of that monitor. And you may also readily guess what book I was working on while these pictures of me and my favorite cat were taken.

Back then, I had a party for Wolfgang every year, with a top notch bakery cake from a now defunct bakery. How pleased I was when I went into the back of the shop to speak to the chef and found a young German expert in residence! He was sympathetic; he knew exactly what I wanted. The first cake he made had musical notes as well as a host of lovely little white flowers with purple hearts.  One of the last cakes from this talented pastry cook is pictured below.     

  

Has this ever happened to you?

The Ghost of Mozart appears in The Mozart Brothers

  

I had one experience that mirrors this image at the very height of my mania. One Halloween, Mozart appeared to me in my PA kitchen. I was making spinach lasagna while playing Don Giovanni at full rock'n'roll volume. Mozart's appearance led to a leap from one side of the room to the other, those pink high top sneakers I loved apparently giving me wings. 

This date, I knew, had special significance. Don Giovanni had premiered in Prague on that same date in 1787.   

Poor Wolfgang! He was terribly pale and he looked ill, too. Just a flash--and then he was gone, but I was -- once I got over the shock of what I'd experienced -- deeply honored by that hallucinatory visit. 

Around this time, there was an active local writing group in the area to which I belonged as well as to the RWA, one of the few writer's associations that accepted the humble unpublished. This various group of writer friends from Maryland and Pennsylvania had talent; we were all going to conquer the world. 

The idea to have a birthday party in the dark days of January appealed to everyone in the group.  An example of the invitation follows: 

Mozart's Birthday Party, January 26, 2002

1 p.m. until Finale

~~Opera, music, & conversation with

writers & poets & web spinners~~

Refreshments:

Syllabub, tea, coffee, cake, hot chocolate, champagne

Homemade bread, savory steak & kidney pie & other refreshments

It was all great fun. I do look back upon those parties fondly. 

Thank-you everyone who has read this far for your indulgence as I reminisced about those high energy early days. It also gave me an opportunity to show off the smart new covers for my three Mozart-themed books.

The masterwork by a talented chef.

Believe me, it tasted as good as it looks.

Happy Birthday, dear Wolfgang! The Vienna Series, covers shown above, are all dedicated to you by your humble servant, just one of your fan girls, all these centuries later.

~~Juliet Waldron

Hope you will take a look!

All my historical novels may be seen @ these links:

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