The HEA Cafe

Hi everyone! This is my first post in the HEA Cafe. I’m very excited to be here. I’m going to be talking about using two pen names.

The conventional wisdom is to pick a genre and a name and establish yourself there before branching out into other genres and using other names. So, did I follow conventional wisdom? Nope. Some imp of perversity pinched me and I now have two pen names in two genres. Actually, since the two books I sold were so different I didn’t want any of my readers to get content shock.

 As Darcy McKenna, I write romantic suspense. My debut novel is out currently in e-book format and will be out in print October 19th from The Wild Rose Press. The premise of FATED LOVE is soul mates. And what happens if someone who isn’t your soul mate believes he is.

As Renee Russell, I write historical fiction with a literary slant. My debut novel as Renee came out this past January. KATE’S PRIDE is a cross between Gone With The Wind and To Kill A Mockingbird.

So, now I’m out there in the real world and the internet world trying to build a base for two different names at the same time. That can be a little confusing for me. I have to make sure I write down which name I’m promoting at a given time. Am I Darcy for this promotion or am I Renee? Or am I both? Gah!!!

I actually had two separate websites for a brief period, but that became a problem because there’s not enough time in the day to work my day job, write more novels, promote the two that are out there and try to keep up with two websites. So I contacted my web host company and asked them to walk me through the process to fix it so that no matter which name or website is entered into the search the person will end up at one website. That’s worked out much much better.

So, what do y’all think? Have I made my life that much harder by using two pen names at the beginning of my career? I know there are others out there who have done this too. How is it working out for you?

 Darcy

aka Renee

www.darcymckenna.com

www.reneerussell.com

Crap! I’m Published! Now What? installment 1

Wow. Exactly 9 months ago today, I got the call telling me that HarperCollins did indeed want to buy my book. (I’m sure they meant me. I didn’t believe it at first, but after having examined the contract approximately 4,000,000 times, I am now convinced they meant me.)  I got the call at 4 p.m. CST on a Friday, on a holiday weekend. I had given up. My editor had said an offer would be coming by Friday, but by my calculations, it was 5:00 in New York and I was gonna have to wait until Tuesday the next week. So I was cleaning off my desk when my cell phone rang.

I guess she showed me. (Not that I’m complaining.)

When the chapter pubs were signing up for blogging dates here at the cafe, I almost didn’t take a slot. I’m still new to this whole thing and it still feels very unreal. My first book won’t even hit the shelves until January 2009! Do you know how fraudulent I feel calling myself a published author when the only thing I have to prove that is a signed contract? (Again, no complaints. But really, I can’t carry around my contract just to make me feel legit. Can I?)

So I decided that my blog theme should be Crap! I’m Published! Now What? Because I’ll be honest, I’m learning as I go. Thank the writing gods I have a fantastic agent who is good at answering questions, doling out advice, and guiding me along the career path I had already started working toward.

Speaking of agent, I think that’s where I’ll start.

I got lucky when I signed with Deidre Knight of the Knight Agency because she is the kind of agent I needed. She is communicative and positive and when I need a nudge, she knows how to push without being obnoxious or offending. I need honesty and guidance and not to feel like my questions are an imposition. So, I got very lucky when I signed with Deidre because frankly, I didn’t know what kind of agent I needed until I had her.

Not everyone signs with their perfect agent on the first go around. And most unpublished authors don’t know what kind of agent would be right for them, so they sign with the first person who offers and then months (or minutes) later, they regret it.

Sit down and ask yourself some questions. How would you like to conduct business? Do you need a little hand holding at times or are you a hands off, only call me with an offer kinda gal? (or guy. Sorry, fellas.) Do you want to know exactly what the editor said, or do you just need an idea? (And trust me, there’s a difference here and you need to know if you can handle the exact wording of a rejection or if you just want to hear, “They passed. We’ll keep trying.”)

Do some research. Ask fellow writers what they know about certain agents you’re interested in. Ask them how their agent conducts business. (Not every writer will open up about this. Some get a little woo-woo weird about these kinds of questions and that’s okay. It takes all kinds. Respect their privacy and don’t take it personally.) Does the agent you’re interested in have a web presence? That’s a good way to find out how professional he/she really is. If they blog, become a regular reader. See how they react to certain questions. Are they impatient or just to the point? Do they have a tone that sends your warning flag a flyin’? Are they warm and friendly but never answer any questions?

Your gut is an amazing tool. Use it.

Make a top 5 list and search those agents out at conferences and just chat with them. Listen to them on panels and mark them off your list if something doesn’t feel right.  Chat with their clients. Don’t just query every agent out there. Be selective and be honest with yourself about the kind of agent you want.

The perfect agent for me may not be the perfect agent for you. That doesn’t mean they’re bad agents. (Well, some are, but hopefully you’ll have done your research and will be well informed.) Finding the right agent is as subjective as this business. I should’ve bought a lottery ticket the day I signed my agent, because it was my lucky day.  Don’t rely on luck and your horoscope to lead you to your future business partner.

Do your research. Ask questions. Read the blogs. Be selective and listen to your gut.  Oh and most of all, write a damn good book so you’ll have your choice.

Peace y’all,

-Mel
My Blog
My Space

I’d planned to write my blog entry about something useful and controversial like serial commas during editing (and if you don’t think that’s controversial, you don’t know many editors! LOL!) But a thread on another writing site I visit changed my mind. You can see from the title here that my new blog topic is also quite controversial, so much so that it’s a sharp knife, stabbing at the psyche of every writer I know—whether published or not. Raise hands, now. How many of you have heard this in your writing life?

“It’s only a hobby. You’re not getting paid (or paid enough,) so writing can’t be your job.”

How many of you have been so incensed by the statement that you want to reach out and strangle/slap/kick the person? After all, nobody would walk up to someone working a minimum wage job and say that. It’s tactless and thoughtless and insulting. Heck, I know career burger flippers and waitresses who struggle with their salary, but LOVE their job and never would want something different. And even some multi-published full-time authors don’t make much more over the course of a year than a fast food/discount store position. Plus, let’s not talk about how much more tax we pay as self-employed people, rather than W-2 employees, or the lack of health insurance.

I think one of the big problems is that people look from the outside and only see that “product + money = career” while “product - money = hobby. But if the writer identifies with BEING a writer, then that’s their career. It’s an internal thing that can’t be judged from the outside . . . and SHOULDN’T be judged from the outside. I see articles and posts and blogs from writers who have never wanted more than to write. It’s their calling. It screams in their soul—struggling every day to get out. How can a life’s calling, one that you’ve trained for and practiced, NOT be considered a career? That is one of the Webster’s/Oxford definitions, after all. “A profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling.”

But what about the hobbists? Are they somehow less of a writer because it’s not—in their own mind—a career? Should they give up publishing because it’ll never be their “career?”  This is an important question to me because I’m one of those hobbists. I identify with being a paralegal, even though that’s not where my money is coming from presently. So, to me, writing IS my hobby. It’s just a well-paying one with lots of benefits. But in my heart and brain, I’m still a paralegal who’s taking a break from the day-to-day business of it. I still keep up my certifications, though, and read equally as much new case law as fiction. Part of me desperately misses pursuing my career, even though my present job is paying well and has the potential to pay REALLY well.

In my mind, my attitude toward writing takes nothing away from someone who considers writing their career but doesn’t make money, whether “presently” or “ever.”
Yet, in some writing circles I dare not state my personal feelings on the subject. Even my co-author, when I said writing was my hobby (albeit a well-paying one) said never to speak that out loud again. If she ever began to consider writing a “hobby” she might as well stop and never pen another word for the rest of her life. The thought of it made her sick to her stomach. I know she’s truly sincere, but it seems so strange to me. I hear “How dare you!” as often as “Well, that’s your opinion, I suppose,” from various friends and acquaintances in the business, and aspiring authors frequently take special affront at the view—like, why should I have a spot on the bookshelf if it doesn’t scream in my soul? I have no RIGHT to earn the prize when apparently it’s some sort of lark to me. I get nasty rep points and angry emails from those who feel I’m dissing the entire of the writing community by sharing my belief.

But the thing is, I consider a “hobby” just as important—quality wise, as anything I would do in my career. It has no less status in my head. I still seek perfection in each book/story I produce. Does someone who makes fine furniture as a hobby do any less of a job because it’s not the main source of paying the bills? Actually, most of the time, the quality is MORE exacting in a hobby, because you’re living up to your own standards. So, a person with already high standards seeks to constantly improve. It must be perfect, and nothing less will do—no matter how long it takes to produce.

So, I ask all of you who read this: How do YOU think of your writing? Is it hobby or career? Does it matter to you whether someone feels the opposite? Does it stress you out? Let’s hear your views!

Synopsis From Hell

I despise synopsis writing. I’m a pantser, and I’d never written a synopsis BEFORE finishing the book. But a couple of weeks ago, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of needing to write a synopsis for a book where I’d only written 50 pages.

Writing this synopsis was ten times worse than writer’s block. All I could do was sit at the screen and wonder what to put on the page. I know how to write a synopsis, when the book is already written. That’s easy for me, but how was I supposed to write one BEFORE I’d written the ending. Now I had written about 50 pages of the book, but it still didn’t help me much figuring out what to include in the synopsis. Sure I had an “idea” of what the black moment might be like, but what else did I need?

Outlines - Fault Lines

I don’t follow a formula, outline, etc. when I write. Words just flow out of me, and then I go back and edit. But you can’t do that with a synopsis. Think of it as being a map. A map for what direction the book is headed in. I’d never drawn a book map before, so I went surfing on the net. I figured, hey someone out there has an idea for how to write a synopsis.

Now you’d think Google or Dogpile would yield tons of results on how to write a synopsis. Umm, no. Either I wasn’t spelling synopsis correctly or there the knowledgebase was running a little dry. But then I found her!

Alicia Rasley

She had this wonderful article on the three acts found in a book. http://www.sff.net/people/alicia/artthreeacts.htm

So here I was reading the article, and suddenly it was like being in calculus class. If you’ve ever taken calculus, you know that understanding it requires you to accept the fact that “it just is.” A concept I found difficult to grasp until two weeks before the end of the semester. The lightbulb came on! It was wonderful. I could finally accept that calculus just is.

I share that with you because when I was reading Alicia’s article, I had one of those “calculus just is” moments. Here it was in black and white. Everything I needed to go into my synopsis. Alicia had laid it all out for me. The result was magic for me. I took the headings from Alicia’s article, and opened a document in Word, where I listed the primary points from the article.

Setup
Initiating Event
External Conflict Emerges
Antagonist Shows Up
Conflict Rises
The Reversal
The Point of No Return
Crisis
The Dark Moment
The Climax
The Resolution

Under each header, I wrote a brief blurb, scene, explanation for the action that occurs under the header. I did this for each one all the way through to The Point of No Return or it might have been Crisis. I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m thinking, WTF do I do now??? For two days I couldn’t write another word. I was in the dark about how to finish the damn thing. Then it hit me. Why not work backward! I had a basic idea of how I wanted the book to end, so I essentially worked my way back to get those last scenes in my head.

The Resolution

In the process, I wrote one of the best synopses I’ve ever written. Now the process outlined above may or may not help you write a synopsis, but as I tell my kids, you have to at least try it. If you don’t like it then you eat or do something else. While it might seem like a formula, it isn’t really. It’s just a list of the necessary ingredients that have to go in a book and the writer has to add in those same ingredients to a synopsis. It’s taken me five long years to have my “calculus just is” moment when it comes to synopsis writing, but now that I have, it’s going to be a lot easier from here on out.

Monica Burns

Mirage coming October 2007, Samhain Publishing (excerpt)

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Good Morning everyone,

As many of you know, RWA (Romance Writer’s of America) held their national conference in Dallas last week.  So this week, I’d like to ask those who attended a few questions for those who couldn’t attend for whatever reason.

1.  What’s your strongest memory of the event?  Paint it in words for us.

2.  What piece of knowledge did you pick up that you think we all HAVE to know to succeed in our writing careers?

3.  What was the funniest thing that happened at the event?

4.  What Marketing trends did you hear about?

5.  Would you go the the conference next year?  Why or why not?