Appearances

We checked out Trader Joe's, the new "different" grocery store yesterday. Interesting reactions. My hubby saw nothing different than what we can get at the usual supermarket; I noticed many different choices. However, both of us agreed that much of the... um... ambiance... came from same old product but very different packaging. Which makes me think of what the experts say about having the "right" book cover.

Fourth Tuesday

I had a good time at the writers' Fourth Tuesday meeting last night. Fourth Tuesday is an informal writers' meeting established by Michael Kalmbach, facilitator of the Rochester Library Writers Group. It meets in various coffee houses and is open to any writer. There is no structure, just whatever comes up. My husband is starting to call it, "Rochester's answer to the Algonquin Club." It's amazing how many fertile "word drops" (as one of our group says) can happen in what is ostensibly an informal conversation.

E-books

More and more I am intrigued by e-book publishing. A friend is urging me to get with it and get NICE GIRLS DON'T BITE launched as an e-book. Well, I'm studying how to do it. Although Amazon's instructions are step-by-step clear, they are still sometimes daunting to a user. Hypothetical example: "Next, save your text in FLUB.dub format." And I'm sunk. What's a FLUB.dub format and how do I do it? I'm afraid of getting halfway through a launch, screwing up, and having a half-book out for people to laugh at.

Where I'm At

Hello, Blog.

I've been gone for some time. Maybe my first re-entry should be a clarification of where my writing has taken me.

NICE GIRLS DON'T BITE (campy paranormal mystery novel, has been making the rounds of begging for an agent.) DEATHBLOW (police procedural novel, has been making the rounds of begging for an agent.) MURDER BY ACCIDENT (farce play script, is looking for a few theatres to give a shakedown performance, four community theatres are reading it.) ULTIMATE GLAMOUR (farce play script, in process of its third polishing.) SLEEPER (a three-woman narrative horror play script, one-third written.)

I switched to writing plays a) because that's where my degrees and training are and b) I was getting grumpy about taking a year to write a novel and having no success getting an agent, let alone seeing it published. A play can be written in a much shorter time, and one deals directly with producing and publishing venues--not with an agent first.

Starting to Query

DEATHBLOW is finally finished. 73,000 words read, re-read, corrected, re-written, every flaw ferreted out. I have sent a query to my four top choice agents. Those who say they are (a) looking for crime fiction, (b) they encourage new authors, and(c) who have a sales list of the sort of authors that I would like to become some day.

So, just when I thought my manuscript was flawless, and I'm sending the first chapter to an agent, I notice a typo! Give me strength.

Now that I have my third mystery novel done, The Man I Married zings this thought at me. My strong suit, he says, is humor, and instead of police crime, I should seriously write funny crime or funny detective novels—whatever. He's got a point. I have written humor columns for newspapers for years, and I crack myself up. It's something to consider.

Common Writing Mistakes

I find the most common "stupid" mistake I make in writing can be titled the I Knew What I Meant mistake. For example, my alpha reader will say, "What's your detective talking about? He's referring to his notes, but notes from where? From whom?" I say, "From the people at the fireworks, of course." And he says, "Well, maybe you know that, but you've got to tell your reader that." And my mind says to me, "Duh!" because he is absolutely right and I have made that stupid mistake again.

I use "stupid" mistake to distinguish this type of error from my other "careless" mistakes, "inaccurate" mistakes, and "bad writing habits" mistakes. To name only a few of my mistakes.

The big lesson in this post is that a person should always, always have readers. Bless them!

Self-publishing

I have been reading various justifications regarding self-publishing recently, written by self-published authors. The points I see made most often are: (1) Self-publishing does not have to mean lack of literary quality, because authors who strive for excellence often self publish. I will admit this is true. (2) Self-publishing is a viable option in the face of increasingly picky agents and publishers. I will agree that agents and publishers are becoming more selective.

I have quibbles, however. (1) As a reader, I can trust that traditional publishing guarantees that I'm not going to pay good money for absolute dreck, whereas with self-publishing there's no artistic winnowing---it's a crap shoot. (2) As a writer, I ask myself, if no literary professional thinks my book is good enough to invest money in, why would I, a literary amateur, invest in its publication?