Tag: writing fiction

Housekeeping Details

Just heard from my publisher–my full book cover is final, and I have a QR code I can slap on all my marketing materials so people can order just by pointing their phones at it! I just ordered VistaPrint bookmarks that I plan to hand out at events.

I have one event coming up–Hurricane Baby the play is having a staged reading coming up. I’ve got everything ready to go to it all lined up–hotel room, ride, etc. I’m looking forward to that. More details will be available closer to time. But I’m looking forward to it.

My new writing has been on hold lately. We have had a lot going on in my family and in my work life, and I’ve honestly been too exhausted to concentrate on my work-in-progress. I hope to be able to change that soon.

And my publisher has said pre-orders are already coming in. So that made me feel good!

Whew. Will ride already. Wish me well with further info and events to come soon! See code below to order Hurricane Baby: Stories for delivery August 2024!

Terror

So I wrote last week about being really excited that Hurricane Baby had opened for pre-orders.

This week I’m writing about the terror.

I started having really high levels of anxiety about the idea of my book in the hands of readers and thinking about “What if they don’t like it? What will people think about me as a person after reading this?”

And I just kept letting my mind spin out of control with those thoughts.

What finally broke the spiral was an email from Lisa Cooper Ellison, an author I admire very much. She wrote about her recent micro nonfiction that had been published in the Tiny Love Stories feature in the New York Times and how she simultaneously felt a surge of pride and a wave of fear. Fear of not handling all the attention in a good way, fear of not being able to leverage the opportunities the publication might give her, etc.

It felt so validating that someone else felt the same kind of feelings I was feeling when something so wonderful had happened in her writing career. I wrote her an email letting her know that she had helped me come to grips with my anxiety.

So now the fear has worn itself out after bedeviling me for several days. I feel much better knowing that those feelings are common to other writers also and can be overcome.

So I am back to normal now (as close as I’ll ever get to that) and am ready to continue this journey. Onward!

FOR SALE!

Good afternoon! This past Friday night, I got the note from Madville Publishing that my book, Hurricane Baby: Stories, is now LIVE FOR PRE-ORDERS!

Go to the left-hand menu and click on the book’s title to see the brand-new webpage for my book, and you will see a button to click to pre-order my book through Madville Publishing’s site with delivery scheduled for August 20, 2024. As the book goes live in other places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org, I will add those buttons for you to click on as well. If you want to support your local bookshop as well, you can go and request that they order/stock it.

This page will be updated as I do events, readings, signings, and appearances. If you would like me to come do a reading or speak at your event, school, library, or festival, use the contact form to let me know, and I will see what I can work out!

This past weekend, I went to the annual meeting of the Mississippi Philological Association, which was held by the Mississippi School of Math and Science on the campus of Mississippi University for Women, where I studied for my MFA. I read the first story in the collection, “Still Waters”, and was terrified the whole time. I’ve never read anything as intense as that story out loud in public before this, and it showed. My mouth was so dry I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish it. It was well-received by the largely academic crowd, which made me feel good.

But this event, where I know people are going to be spending their hard-earned money on a book I wrote, is momentous. My life is not going to be the same again after this year. But I think that’s good. Keep growing, keep writing, keep learning. That’s my takeaway. Onward and upward!

Not Quite Ready

Reading proof pages hopefully for the last time. So that has been the work this weekend.

I’ve also been busy on my work-in-progress Looking For Home. I’ve got the last third as far as I can take it without having the other parts written. And knowing me, I’ll do something in the other two sections that will necessitate more changes in that last third section. So I am pushing along!

It’s been a little difficult doing the switch because that old talk in my head about wasting my time is still there! I was hoping that having a published book would quell that voice forever. But apparently in my mind, I’m still not allowed to write just because I enjoy it and I’m good at it.

I have to remind myself that I don’t have competing priorities anymore. I work for an employer and that’s important. I do some housework and cook meals at night. But otherwise, my free time is for me to work on what I feel led to do. My writing is one way I feel that I can reach out to people and make them think about things they might would rather not. And that’s important. No matter what else needs doing–my writing is important, and I can spend time on it without guilt.

Back to proofreading! Onward!

Single-Digit Fidget

My publishing company keeps saying we go to print six months before publication.

You know what?

That’s this week on February 20!

So I am nervously anticipating that I get to put up pre-order links and my new website page this week as well!

I have been reading about all the emotional whiplash that happens to new authors with an eye to moderating my expectations and all that. I like being prepared. Because I don’t want this whole wonderful accomplishment to throw me off emotionally. Because my stability is worth a lot to me.

But it’s up to me to manage that–so I am trying to keep my expectations in line with the fact that I’m a new author, I don’t have a big pre-made audience to sell to, and I have to understand all that I can control is my reaction to events. I can’t control what others do or say. I can’t control what kind of reviews i get or anything like that. I can just put it out and do what I can to move the needle–and leave the rest up to God.

Like I said when I prayed that day to give my pledge to the church. It’s all up to him. I’m just to give him the glory that is his. I gave the book my best shot for success revising and sending it out. I plan to keep doing that with events and publicity where I can get them. I’m going to start to introduce the book the first weekend of March at the Mississippi Philological Association at my alma mater, the Mississippi University for Women.

I’ll be reading what I can of Still Waters, the first story in the collection, at a panel of other creative writers. I’ll attend other panels while I’m there, probably just the creative writing ones. It’s kind of a full-circle moment for me–when I was in my last year of grad school at Mississippi State University, I read a paper I had written on James Thurber, the great American comic writer, at the MPA Conference that year–also at the W. So I will mention that before I start reading.

(My parents were at that conference since it was only a few miles away from their house. My daddy later asked me was my paper supposed to be funny? I said yes sir, it was. He was scared the audience was laughing at me in a mean way so he decided to check.)

So that’s what I’m preparing for this week. Wish me well!

Success?

So last week I told you about my pitch meeting with a publisher at the HOMEGROWN festival. I told you I looked up his email address and sent him a thank-you note for listening to my pitch and taking my materials and being so encouraging. I told you I didn’t know what was going to happen as a result of the meeting, but I felt good about it.

So Monday I got an email back from the gentleman, and he said for when it’s finished for me to send it through the regular submission channel but be sure to specify in my query letter that I had pitched it to him and what event I had pitched at! So that’s a connection I would not have made had I not stepped out and just did the thing. I’d never done an in-person pitch before, but I was calm and confident in my story, and now I feel so much further ahead of the game than I did for Hurricane Baby!

So now I am starting a list of who this book is going to go to first once it’s finished, beta read, edited, and revised. One is my current publishing company, another is the group that published the original novella, another is this company, another is a contest where Hurricane Baby was a semi-finalist, and another is one where I got the very kind personalized rejection. That’s five for the first shot of it. I hope to start sending it out in January 2025.

Just goes to show where you have to put in the work, be persistent, and believe in yourself. I am learning more and more about this process and what all effort goes into a finished book. I don’t have all the answers, certainly. But I am committed to share my journey with you all and be as transparent as possible about how things are working (or not working) for me. Makes me feel less alone in the journey and makes me feel good that i can provide information that I wish I had known when I was starting out.

Happy writing!

Juggling The Work

Well, since I don’t have the final proofs for Hurricane Baby yet, I am working on my three-novella project Looking for Home. I only have two more scenes to write for this POV before I’m finished and can go back further into the past and write the first POV character, Carlton Dixon. Right now I’m working on the POV of Cassie Beck, the adopted teenager that comes to find Carlton, claiming to be his daughter by his teenage girlfriend, Merrilyn Beck. (Cassie’s POV is the part that sold for the novella anthology.) I’ve already outlined what I want to do for Carlton’s POV and Merrilyn’s POV, so that changed a few things that happened in Cassie’s POV. And I’m sure that when I’m finished with the first two parts, I will need to revise Cassie’s part again. But that’s OK.

I want to finish the new draft for this project before Hurricane Baby comes out in August. And I am chipping away, bit by bit, paragraph by paragraph. I am keeping up with my daily word count in a notebook so I can see when I write best and have the best production and figure out what goes well on those days. Is the outlining helping or hurting? Is it better to plan out what I’m writing beforehand or write without a net to catch me if it goes awry? That sort of thing. We will see.

Kicking around ideas of who to pitch publicity opportunities to for Hurricane Baby. I’m looking at book podcasts, regional magazines, radio shows, newspapers, festivals. Once I get to pre-orders, I’ll start sharing that link around. Just getting together my ideas and what all I want to do. I hope I can start getting the word out seriously by then. Wish me well!

COVER REVEAL!

Finally able to get back to my computer after some illness and traveling and able to reveal . . . the cover for Hurricane Baby: Stories, due out in August 2024!

I want to thank Jacqui Davis for her design work here in realizing exactly what I’ve always had in mind for the cover of this work. Appreciate the whole team at Madville Publishing for taking on this project and awaiting the next proof copy with bated breath! Much love to all!

First Proof Copy!

So last Friday I got Hurricane Baby’s first proof copy, a preliminary PDF of what the book will look like once it’s printed. I was so moved by the care my publishing company is taking with this book! Art on the title pages, beautiful formatting within, just wonderful work so far!

My job was to proofread it yet again. And guys–I found over a hundred and seventy typos. I was appalled at myself. I have been slaving over this manuscript for almost twenty years. And I found commas that were supposed to be periods and periods that were supposed to be commas and double periods and sentences without periods at the end and a very few spelling errors (thank the Lord). Inconceivable that I even got any kind of hearing from anyone I sent it to. The line-editor before this proof had found over three hundred errors.

I was so embarrassed for little ol’ me, sending something so flawed out into the world. I had checked and rechecked and run grammar and spelling checks over and over. I had read it printed out, onscreen, everything.

But I don’t need to just beat myself up–so now I have a plan. I know my eyesight isn’t good and won’t improve any as I get older. I am going to have to magnify up the font to I guess the size where the manuscript will have 500 pages and read line by line at every stage of writing. I don’t want to embarrass myself like that ever again.

So now it is back in the hands of the publisher, and I will wait patiently to see what comes next. I think it will be a final proof copy that I will read again for errors, then in February it will go to print!

SO EXCITING AND GETTING REAL!

Moral of the story: editors are human, and so are you. But taking the time to re-read is never wasted. Other eyes are a big help, too. Let’s be careful out there!

Line-Edits!

I got line-edits last week! So I spent yesterday working on that project. Only 335 punctuation corrections! (Ugh.) I did notice a trend–a lot of em-dashes had been typed incorrectly, and I LOVE using em-dashes, especially in dialogue. And I love writing dialogue. So that was that.

Only content question the editor had was about Leilani, James’ second wife, having such an unusual name. I did not know this–it’s Hawai’ian for “royal child”, which was perfect for the spoiled baby of the family! But that was only a happy accident–I certainly didn’t think that up while I was writing, and it’s doubtful that Leilani’s parents would have either. So I dreamed up a new explanation for why her parents named her that–that you will have to buy the book to see :).

Now it goes for formatting into InDesign, then another read to make sure nothing horrifying mechanical-wise goes through once it’s converted to a PDF. Then I read proof versions, then it goes back into design for final formatting of the text.

I am trying so hard to be calm and professional in my interactions with them, but I can’t help for my joy to come out! It’s really getting real! In eight months, my book will be out on bookstore shelves, Amazon, Barnes & Noble! A big goal for my life since I was a very young thing! I have been writing stories for FOREVER. Treasure stories cribbed from the Bobbsey twins’ adventures when I was a kid, teen romances when I was a teenager, short stories in my first Master’s program–I’ve had stories in my life longer than almost anything except my parents. And I’m so close to having a book!

It boggles my mind how far I’ve come.

Onward!