The HEA Cafe

Archive for the ‘Writing Life’ Category

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Ooops.  That’s what happens when my blogging day falls on a Saturday, especially a stunningly gorgeous Saturday in spring.  Thoughts of sitting and staring at a screen completely leave my head.

North Florida has three seasons–a looooong summer, and a delightful spring and autumn.  Between autumn and spring there are some cold days which I won’t dignify by calling them “winter”, but they offer a chance to build a nice fire and drink hot chocolate.

Right now though it’s definitely spring.  I’ve been wiping yellow pollen down from my porch nearly every day.  It finally rained, which was a good thing.  We needed the rain and it cleared much of the pollen away.  Yesterday was a breathtakingly beautiful day, with highs in the upper 70′s F and lows in the upper 50′s. I enjoyed my daily neighborhood walk and tried not to think about what it’s going to feel like in August.

It’s also time for spring cleaning.  In addition to the porch, I’ve been cleaning all over the house, clearing out clutter (including a ton of books to donate to the library book sale), catching up on put-off chores, and thinking about the relationship between spring cleaning and our writing.  In the first (and even second and third) draft, it’s not uncommon for my manuscript to get cluttered and messy.  But  I don’t worry about it.  I figure I’ll write it, and then I’ll clear out the clutter, when my mind is better focused on what stays and what goes.  If I try to do too much cleaning as I go, I get bogged down and end up with perfectly polished chapters 1-3…and nothing else.

So do your spring cleaning, and if you’re writing, remember it’s OK to let the clutter build.  Eventually a fresh breeze will blow through, and you’ll get it all cleared out and neat and shiny again.

It’s late, my brain is focused on pain meds and a looming deadline. So I’m doing a rehash, because I’m betting there are more people who visit this blog than who visit mine. Why? Because I’m not popular and RWAOnline is! LOL

This post is about my ongoing experiences and process of  me as a new-to-NY author, and the process that happens from the time a book is contracted and put on the shelf. So all my posts are STRICTLY my personal experiences. Others may have different experiences.
RECAP

Two weeks ago I talked about the transition to NY from ePub. Here’s a brief recap

ePub – contract offers come in email. Contract runs about five pages. Simple straightforward contract with XX percentage on sale of eBooks off publisher website, X percentage on distributor sales and a different percentage if your book goes to print. Overall process with the contract takes just a few days.

NY – the editor calls with an offer to either the agent or the author (if the submission is from a contest, etc.) Once the offer is made, negotiations begin for final monies

However, NY contract negotiations are much different from receiving an offer via email with a contract attached. The contract is generally twice as long, with terms related to foreign rights, trade paperback, mass-market paperback, hardback, eBook rights, etc. The agent reviews and makes changes in the best interest of their client then the contract is sent to the writer. Once the writer, and then the publisher sign the contract, a check is cut and sent to the agent. The agent then cuts a check to the writer, minus the 15% commission.

This is simplified, but it’s pretty much the whole process with regard to the contract and the advance. An important difference in a NY contract is the breakup of the advance. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that depending on the author’s selling power plays into how much of the advance you get up front. I’m not for certain though, and all I can attest too is what I’ve experienced.

I thought about working out a scenario of a fictional advance, but that didn’t seem to work well when I was trying to figure it out, so I thought maybe percentages of my deals will provide a decent picture without talking actual monies (per my agreement with Deidre). Because each contract is different, (both of my Berkley contracts are structured differently payout wise) and you don’t always get the same amount of money or distribution percentages. Keep in mind that this is my personal experience as it’s happening and not compiled scenarios of what goes on with other people. The data shown here is strictly to give you an idea about how the advance might play out.

Next Step – Show Me The Money

Explaining how an advance is paid out is difficult because every publisher and contract is different. For example, the breakout percentage wise for my two-book deal is different from my three-book deal.

Unlike I always thought, the advance is not paid out all at once. You get a certain percentage of the advance at different stages of the game. Below is an example of how my contract is paying out in terms of time frame and percentages

Contract signing paid – roughly 40% of the advance, paid about 4-6 months after initial offer
D&A Book 1 – roughly 17.5% of the deal, paid after the editor is satisfied with the final product
Publication Book 1 – 10%
D&A Proposal Book 2 – 5%
D&A Book 2 – roughly 17.5%
Publication Book 2 – 10%

Remember these are percentages of the overall agreed to advance paid to me for two books. So say the advance is for $100K.

That means the author would get $40K at contract signing, $17,500K on D&A, $10K on publication of first book, $5K for D&A Book 2 proposal, then $17,500K for D&A of Book 2 and $10K for publication of Book 2.

On my three-book deal, the allocation of the percentages are different in a screwy way, and I’ve NO CLUE as to why they’re different. An interesting point to note is that in my contract, if I miss a deadline, the publisher has the right to demand the advance back, and make me pay court fees if I don’t pony up the money. EXCELLENT incentive NOT to miss a deadline.

One More Step Forward

My first deadline was March 1st. I beat the deadline by a week. It’s my goal to do that consistently. I think it will be a great professional behavior to exhibit and it will also make it easier to keep ahead of the writing game. If I can finish a book at least a month before deadline, then I’m able to edit it and refine it in two to three weeks.

I was going to post from this point back, and then I realized a couple of things had happened. So I’ll add a bit more.

With Kismet turned in, I was chewing nails worrying about edits. Cindy emailed late last week and said she’ll only have line edits and that she loves the book. Whew!

UPDATE

Update to original post regarding deadlines – I’ve another deadline coming up and I’m running frantic. In fact, it’s so close, I don’t dare name the day in the event it scares the hell out of my muse and she disappears! Hence, the delay in the post as my new boss keeps me hopping where before I had time to do a little blog prep. *sigh* Suffice it to say, I think I’ll make it, but that incentive is definitely scaring the hell out of me.

My editor emailed me late last week and said she was getting ready to discuss covers with house artists. I’m thinking GOOD LORD it’s just March! But, the sooner I have a cover the better. Cindy asked what I thought about Susan Johnson’s new cover and if I was open to something like it for my book. O. M. G. Hell ya, baby!! I love Susan’s cover, so now I can’t wait to see mine. If it’s half as good that baby will fly off the shelves!

This week, Cindy emailed me with blurb copy. O.M.G. I LOVE the tag lines. The blurbs however need some work. The first thing that had to go was the line, “Until a Sheik rides in from the desert…” First thought? Blazing Saddles and the Sheriff riding into town. Umm…nope, I don’t think so! LOL I reworked the copy some and sent it back to Cindy, agreeing with the suggestion she had and offering up my own. She emailed back saying that she was sending it back to the copywriters. I now understand why Claire Delacroix said to be sure and write a detailed, exceptional synopsis.

If you’re interested in reading more about the process, visit my blog or myspace blog every week or so as I record my experiences.
Monica

Monica Burns – http://www.monicaburns.com
Dangerous, Available Now 4.5 Stars, RT BOOKreviews
Mirage,06/09 | RT Top Pick | 2009 EPPIE Best Historical/Western Erotic Romance
Kismet, Berkley, 01/10

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One of my favorite shirts from the recent presidential campaign said “Change in Which We Can Believe”.   You can find it at CafePress under writers, editors and grammarians for Obama.

Of course, the slogan heard nationally was “Change We Can Believe In”.  Catchy, but not grammatically correct.  I mention this because today, March 4, is National Grammar Day, so proclaimed by the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.

I do not like to call myself a grammar snob, because I make mistakes.  I sometimes (but seldom) misuse “who” and “whom”.  I find my Southern heritage creeping in with “towards” rather than “toward”.  But I am educated enough that grammatical errors in others’ work tend to leap out at me, and this can be a problem. I was reading a historical last week by a well-respected author, and the sentence “He wanted to lie her down…” hit me like the sight of the proverbial turd in a punch bowl, taking me so far out of the moment I was tempted to not finish reading the book. I had already forgiven the author her misuse of “who” and “whom” in an earlier scene, but this was going too far!

There’s the possibility that it was not the author’s error, but the editor’s error.  If so, that is even sadder.  I depend on my editors to keep me in line, to catch those errors that might slip past me, like whether I should have used the word “may” instead of “might”.   The editors I know, the ones who have managed to cling to their jobs in an age when editing appears to be considered a luxury for academic presses, but not necessary for publishers of mass market fiction, I honor those editors.  They are fighting the good fight!

So as you go through your day today, red pen in hand, Elements of Style by your side, be ready to fight the good fight yourself!  Grammar counts!  Spelling counts!  Punctuation counts!

We owe it to our readers.  Someday they’ll thank us for it.  Maybe.  Regardless (NEVER IRREGARDLESS!!!), it’s the right thing to do.

Oh, and if you spot any grammatical errors in this post, please let me know.  I would appreciate it.

Do you ever sabotage your dreams because you refuse to change? Or take a chance? Or admit you’re on the wrong path?

As January’s fresh start fades, we’re at a crossroads. The past stretches out behind us and the future before us. There are as many roads, physical, mental and spiritual, leading away from this moment as there are stars in the heavens. We can hang onto the past and the mistakes we’ve made, rehashing old wounds and reliving bad habits. We can freeze in the moment and refuse to look back or scan the roads ahead, in essence stalling our lives and our careers for a comfortable status quo.

Or we can risk everything and step forward into the unknown.

If saying the word unknown makes you break out in a sweat, I’m right there with you. So much pressure. So much risk.

I was at a crossroads last month with my career. For over a year, I’d been on a different page than my agent.  I assumed the fault was mine; I hadn’t made my expectations clear. Writing everything down, I filled a page with what I wanted and then had a heart to heart talk with her. She reassured me and we moved forward. Unfortunately, within a few months, I again felt we were on two very different pages. I tried addressing my expectations again but now felt like a pesky child instead of a career-focused author. Were my expectations too great? Probably, but my solution was to avoid the issue all together.

According to quantum physics, the hovering of an electron in all dimensions of possibility is what propels the leap to a new nuclear orbit. For me, life is a compass. If I start off in one direction and something doesn’t feel right, I turn my inner compass in a new direction and start off again. However there are times when nothing feels right or what feels right defies logic, and, oh my, I am nothing but logical! So, what do I do? I insist on maintaining status quo. That’s exactly what I did with my agent dilemma. I hovered. I maintained. In fact, I spent a whole year hoping I was finally going to get on the same page with her.

Our styles were too different, and come this January, I knew I had to make a decision. I had to stop hovering in the same orbit and hoping for something better. Having spent years trying to attain a great agent, my logical brain scoffed at my intuition’s insistence that it was time to move forward. To take the step into the unknown.

But during that year, I sold a novel and a short story with no agent involvement. The death grip I had on being an “agented author” had become less strenuous. I had seen possibilities that excited me to my core. Even my logical brain couldn’t stop thinking about them.

So if you’re hovering, do it with an open mind. Your electrons will be moving and your orbit’s going to change, guaranteed. The trick is to see the opportunities that exist on any path or orbit that comes your way.

 

No matter what crossroad you find yourself at this year, cut yourself some slack about picking the right path. Remember, we’re all in this together and the possibilities are as abundant as stars in the sky.

 

P.S. My first paranormal comedy novella, Witches Anonymous, comes out February 24^th. I took a risk and entered a contest – and I NEVER win contests – and found myself on a new career path with this story

It’s 2009.

Stop and think about that for a moment–the year is 2009.  I was born in the middle of the 20th century.  I’m living in the future I used to read about in science fiction, though that does raise the question, “If it’s 2009, where’s my flying car?”

Regardless, it is an amazing time to be alive.  I recall attending a SF convention some years back where there was a panel called “What we didn’t predict”.  One of the items I remember from that discussion was personal computers.  Despite Star Trek’s tricorders, there was almost no writing in science fiction about portable personal computers.  Now we live in an age where my son carries a smaller than pocket-size computer that makes phone calls–the iPhone.

I think this is one reason I enjoy writing historicals.  I’m not a Luddite, far from it.  I enjoy waking up in the morning, popping in contact lenses that correct my vision, turning on a tap confident I’ll get clean and hot water, and turning on a machine that allows me near instant communication with people around the world at an affordable cost.

But when I’m writing a historical, I know I’ll enjoy the research, partly because it helps me appreciate the time in which I live.  One of the books I’m using for my new WIP is called Medical Firsts by Robert E. Adler, and I found this passage on the germ theory of disease:

“Germs cause disease. This simple idea is so much a part of our thinking that it seems as self-evident as gravity…the humdrum basics of medicine–…a quick swipe with an alcohol-soaked wad of cotton before an injection–can seem more like rituals than the lifesaving offspring of a profound concept.”

He’s right. There’s so much we do now that we take for granted, it’s good to refresh our memories as to why these “rituals” are important and why they made such a difference in our world.

At the same time, I don’t want to fall into the trap in my historicals of giving my characters knowledge before their time.  If my surgeon hero bleeds a patient, it’s because he’s practicing state-of-the-art medicine–for his time.  I get annoyed with writers who feel compelled to insert anachronistic information into their historicals because they believe no true hero would bleed an injured man or treat syphilis with mercury.Cover via Amazon

I have little doubt that 100 years from now readers will be looking at the 20th century and saying, “Can you believe it?  They used to treat tumors with poison chemicals, cut them out with knives and burn them with radiation!  How could they have been so benighted?”

I enjoy the research involved in historicals because it’s not only educational for me in crafting my characters and scenes, it reminds me of how much I have now, and what a fortunate person I am.  And if you don’t believe you’re fortunate as well, pause for a moment the next time you go to flush your toilet, and think about what that action would have involved in 1809–both the action of obtaining water in the first place, and disposing of waste afterwards.

I’m glad it’s 2009.  But I still want a flying car.