The Big Brown Box-Contests

      As my writing career is winding down, I started going through drawers and closets weeding out things I saved that are only taking up space and will never be used again like ancient listings of agents and old contest entries. Why I saved the last, I do not know, but I counted them up, about thirty over a period of five years which probably cost me several hundred dollars in entry fees. In all that time, I garnered one second place for Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball and a third place for Goals for a Sinner which turned out to be the first book I would sell. In both case the prize was a certificate and a full read by an agent. The agent who perhaps skimmed Goals at best, replied she did not want to represent a sports romance and to see her web page for suggestions on how to become a better writer. I think maybe she should have become a better agent and don't know if she still is one. The agent who read Queen was gracious and gave real feedback, said it was a very good book, but alas she only represented young adult novels, not historicals. To this day, she is a Facebook friend that I cherish. The next year, I sold Goals to the Wild Rose Press, and it was the start of a fifteen book series

     So, is entering contests worth the time and money? Many writers' groups sponsor these in order to raise some money for chapters in order to bring in guest speakers and hold events. My now defunct group, HeartLa, did this for several years, and I served as a judge. Our form for judging was quite detailed. We were required to fill in comments from everything from grammar and spelling to character development to plot judged from a synopsis. We were asked to end with a positive comment. Usually, I could think of a few kind words though one historical novel was so bad the only comment I could make was "This needs lots more work." Today, when I give a talk of writing historical novels, I use this as an example of what not to do--for instance spend five pages of the first chapter where a dying woman gasps out a very long back story to her daughter. I never did figure out the time period. At first I thought it was medieval, then early Victorian, then late Victorian. For goodness sakes start with a year and place above the first chapter. As entries were anonymous, I have no idea who submitted it. For all I know, she went on to become a great writer. I don't think contests are a waste of money as you sometimes get good advice, and sometimes not. You have to parse that out for yourself. But don't pin your publishing hopes on winning one of these. Continue submitting to agents and editors no matter how discouraging that is.

     As I took a last look at all my entries before consigning them to the trash bin, I came across an extraordinary final sentence appended to a full page of good advice.  "I would really like to read this book when you get it (The Earl's Ugly Mistress) published." She gave me her email address italy9@cox.net. I tried to contact her but at least fifteen years has passed and the address was no longer any good. I did not come close to winning that contest as another judge gave me very low scores. I seem to be a love me or hate me kind of author. Shortly after, I got busy writing the Sinners series and other books. The Earl's Ugly Mistress was put aside for years even though it was the first book in which Lady Flora, the meddling matchmaker, appeared. I later began at the beginning with Lady Flora's origin story in Lady Flora's Rescue, and the Longleigh Chronicles became somewhat popular as she married off her ten children. As I neared the end of those, I thought what a challenge marrying off the homely and very sharped-tongued heroine of Ugly Mistress was, took that story out, rewrote it to blend into the series. It came out three years ago as number eight of that ten book series and is one of the most popular of the stories. So thank you, italy9, contest judge, who gave me the boost I needed to save that manuscript and not burn it after reading the other judge's comments.

     Just one last caveat. Not all contests are honest or helpful. I rarely enter any now, but was sucked into one for published authors. Sent off my pages with the entry fee--and never heard from them again. Cover contests are often merely popularity contests-who has the most friends or relatives-and are run merely to draw people to the site sponsoring them. All you get if you win is a tiny picture in their newsletter. But good luck to all of you enter real and helpful contests.

The Bottom of the Drawer

      For lack of anything else to do between waiting for the next book, The Benedict's Bride, to come out and starting to write another, I decided to clean out a desk drawer where I'd dumped rejected or unsold pieces of work over the years.  What a jolt of unpleasant memories.

     In college, I fancied myself a poet and wrote several angsty poems full of classical allusions-and they rhymed.  I sent them off to several literary magazines. They returned fairly promptly wit the usual rejection note appended. One stood out, a personal message.  "We are not returning yours poems because they are awful." I did not submit poetry again and should have thrown them out long ago.

     I moved on to short stories and submitted one to Seventeen magazine for a contest.  The Sweetheart Tree did not win and got the usual thanks for submitting message. But up in a corner, someone has penciled in "Keep Writing."  I thought they were just being kind. I guess I threw it out because it is not in the drawer of defeat though I wish I had kept that penciled remark as I learned that such encouragement is rare in publishing which is a hard world indeed.

    Then, I unearthed several Twilight Zone stories as I called them. each with a twist at the end. I submitted one to a fantasy magazine and the same one to a sci-fi magazine. Both rejected it, but I thought I'd at least made an impression with a rejection slip saying my story did not meet their standards of deep fantasy. I was thrilled to see it signed  by Marion Zimmer Bradley who continued on with a sweet apology for not not being able to comment on all submissions because they had so many. Hey, I was happy to have her autograph and promptly submitted another to that magazine which I think no longer exists. My story was also rejected by the sci-fi magazine and did encourage me with "This is charming, but not right for us" not a standard blow off.  The next rejection from Marian Zimmer Bradley came back with the same two messages and what I now realized was an autograph stamp, not a signature. I did attract notice, however. At the bottom of the page was a handwritten message, "We would never, ever print something like this. It is a horror story even though the bad guy gets what is coming to him!"  This last is not an exact quote, but close. Last time I submitted there. The good news is that I sold both of stories for ten dollars each to an anthology of ghost and horror stories. That, too, has gone out of business and was only ever available as an e-book. Don't bother looking for it, but I think it was entitled Horrors and contained my "charming" ghost story.

    Beneath these, more short stories, some never submitted, mostly Twilight Zone stuff again.  For lack of anything else to do right now, I've taken them out and rewritten them. You learn a lot in a lifetime of writing and rejection. Maybe, someday, I'll print a collection of these.

     As time passed, I did learn that my real strength was in writing atypical romance novels, number thirty-nine coming out in May, none of them self-published which a collection of short stories would have to be. That would be a new learning curve for me, and I don't think it would sell anyhow. So keep an eye out for what I am good at, and even those accrued 79 rejections before the first one and fifth novel I wrote sold.

Don't Order One--Thousand of Anything!

 I recently received a small order of my latest book, A Gentleman and a Scholar, the ninth book in the Longleigh Chronicles. I pre-autographed them which saves lots of time later and slapped an autographed by author sticker on the cover. I finally ran out of the 1,000 stickers I had ordered fifteen years ago.  Basically, this means I've hand sold about the same number of books, though some are still in storage. By this time, however, they barely stuck to the covers and often popped off so I was back to saytng, "Yes, it is autographed" as if my signature would ever mean anything in a hundred years. I vowed to only buy a hundred more.  But discovered that although cheap, they only come in 1,000 piece packets. Amazon offered many shapes and styles, but I will never use them all. My daughter is now writing YA SF and if she gets published, I will give her at least half of these or more.

I also purchased 1,000 elegant business cards with my name and full contact information on them, and I mean all, phone number, e-mail address, street address. No, fanatical fans did not track me down though occasionally I'd get a nice note when a person had read one of books and liked it-if only they had dropped a review instead. It did make my day until a spoil sport told me they only wanted to get a free book out of me. Mostly, I got a bunch of annoying phone calls from people who wanted to sell me things. It seems folks would walk through an event picking up cards and selling the information. Even the old Yellow Pages called telling me I could get a lot more painting jobs if I advertised with them. My card said I also painted. I had to explain I did not paint houses, only on canvas, for fun not money. Though I still have 500 cards left, I give them out only sparingly to people who ask for them. If I move or change my phone number they will end up in the trash.

 My e-mail address and blog are listed on my book cards. I used to order 250 of these with each new book that came out because it was the best price. They have the book cover on one side, a blurb on the other, and a listing of all my titles plus the basic contact information. These have been useful, but believe me, 100 of each would have been plenty. I used to include an ISBN number but when one of my publishers went under and I resold the book, I had to throw all of those cards out since the book was recovered and the ISBN no longer correct.

     Swag-readers at events love free swag-and seldom buy a book. Save your money. Even now I have a few foam footballs left from an order of one-hundred and posters I used to give away with the purchase of a book (boy, did that fail). I've had friends who bought 1,000 cheap pens with their names imprinted on them only to find the ink ran dry after a year or so, and they had to be thrown out. My personal favorite swag is an emery board, useful and doesn't go stale. What I am saying is don't go overboard buying swag in your first flush of publishing fame unless you do strike it rich.

My books are not self-published but put out by small e-presses which lately are dropping like the autumn leaves. So far my two still exist for now. I order my books to sell at events from them and do not get any for free which is why I am cheap about giving them away. Still, the self-published often ask me how many copies they should order. I always tell them 100 as that is the extent of your friends and relatives who will buy your first book, but not likely your second, and many will not read it at all. Way back I did order 100 copies of each new book.  I did sell out my first, Goals for a Sinner, my best, Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball, and another entitled A Taste of bayou Water of which I had only ordered 50. Most of the others still have around thirty each laying around in boxes in the storage area ten years later. Now I only order a dozen and will reorder if needed. E-publishers would rather sell e-books. My orders are print on demand. They don't exist anywhere but in my back room and a few available on Amazon, also PODs or used books for ridiculous prices. Contact me and I will sell you one for $20 which includes postage, all but the latest which are $25 because the price of paper has has gone up so much.

Now, I was taken to task by a friend who self-published a memoir of growing up in a small town in the 1950's.  It was well written and had photos of her family. She went ahead and ordered 1,000 copies and sold them all for over twenty dollars each. Why? Every person in that small town wanted to see if they had been mentioned. For the most part, they weren't. It was a very personal story and only notes some stores of which she had fond memories which are now gone. She reordered. Who knows how many are her storage area now. I end by cautioning, don't buy 1,000 of anything.

 

Check your Sales Entries

      This one is for authors who have their publications up on Amazon. Don't we all! From time to time, look at your entries on this venue and others. I have thirty-six books in print. Once a day, I check my up and down status which really means nothing other than someone might have viewed your page. It doesn't mean a sale though you can tell if this happens if you suddenly have a huge status change for the better. My sales page is so cluttered with sponsored ads (paid) that I sometimes have trouble finding my own titles which now runs to three pages because of all the extra ads. I don't know about others, but I rarely respond to any of these ads and some are so far from what I write, I wonder why Amazon placed them there. For a year, I tried sponsored ads which are very reasonably priced though I rarely saw them appear anywhere. Instead of gaining readers, I lost them with four of my books going to No Sales Report which had never happened before. Two were part of my long running and modestly successful Sinners Sports Romances which always sold previously.

     So, I took a look at these entries on my page and found some glaring errors. Sister of a Sinner, one of my shorter books, was listed for sale for $26.45 in soft cover while other titles printed around the same time were $16.00. A used copy was also listed for $26.45, ridiculous when this book is still in print and can be purchased for $16.99 online from Barnes and Noble. No wonder it wasn't selling. I did report this-no answer, no change in pricing. It was also listed as a fantasy which it is not. The young woman in the story does see auras, but despite her special skill, she is kidnapped and rescued by one of the Sinners team members. Well, maybe that is a fantasy but not the kind most people envision.

     Moving on to another in the same series, She's a Sinner, about the first woman punter in the NFL. I predict this will  happen soon. The cover has a woman who really could be a kicker, not some fantasy league babe in a skimpy uniform. The soft cover is fairly priced at $14.99--but it is also offered as a mass market paperback for $53. I wish I had mass market books, but all of mine are print on demand and still in print for $14.99.  Who would pay this ridiculous price for a used book. My only idea is a money laundering scheme. I did report this.  The mass market offering was taken down, only to pop up again a few months later where it still remains. They seem only to target this one book out of my thirty-six over and over. Still can't figure out why. But, do check your entries for such scams.

     I used to post monthly, but can't really see the point anymore as I rarely get any comments though I do get a small number of views and love seeing where these views come from. Today, I had one from Kazakhstan and a large number from China which seems odd but interesting. Possibly, someone is using my blog for other purposes, but I am not computer literate enough to know. So for now, goodbye to my single reader in Kazakhstan.

The Pitfalls of Writing a Long, Long Series

      I love to write series.  My Sinners Sports Romances has now come to a conclusion after fifteen books spanning two generations on the lives and loves of a football dynasty. Sales for this series simply disappeared two years ago for no reason I could discover whether it was the TikTok scam to get free books or as one editor told me, my books were too old fashioned. Young people today want highly emotional one person narrators who spend most of the books trying to solve one problem rather than third person narratives that are often funny, i.e. my books.  Strange, when I first began writing I was told readers no longer wanted first person narratives, funny or not. The book I had offered at the time was Mardi Gras Madness. Eventually, it sold along with Courir de Mardi Gras with three POVS and Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball having one. They remain among my bestsellers and are easy to vend at authors' events but I haven't written anymore. Trends come and trends go, and one of those trends might kill a long running series.

      I wrote four books featuring bull riders that petered out after four books.  I had planned two more. They are still in the back of my mind, and some of the characters have done cameos in other books so they do live on.  Currently, I am working on a ten book series, The Longleigh Chronicles, Regency set historicals that are only now catching on as I finish up book nine. I found that as I worked on this ninth book, I'd forgotten some details as I went along. Fortunately, all of my books are stored on my desk top computer (and a data stick and a Toshiba external drive). I can go back into those files and verify some character's eye color or the name of a servant, etc. that I'd long forgotten. I also keep a list of characters in a paper file with their characteristics written down just in case of computer failure.  As the series expands, I need to keep track of the children born, age, and appearance. It takes a good memory and many backups to write a long series.

    Then there are the things I never considered important.  In Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball which takes place in the 1920s, the heroine buys several Picasso paintings that her bully of a husband hates. She loses everything to get a divorce and starts life over in another town. I forgot all about those Picassos until a reader asked me what happened to them. Gee, I don't know.  Her ex might have slashed them or given them to the maid to sell.  Perhaps they are still in the attic of the house on Prytania Street where Roz once lived.  Interesting question. Maybe they will turn up in another unrelated book some day.

     Once I finish the Longleigh Chronicles, I don't know what I will do.  Perhaps some single titles.  Maybe bring the Longleigh offspring into the Victorian era. I have no idea right now with the tenth book still to write. I am sure something will come to me as I cannot fathom giving up writing, successful or not.

     

    

Selling Books during an Eclipse

      I've sold my books in many, many places and all kinds of weather but never before during a eclipse. My home town sat right on the line for the October 14, 2023 eclipse.  It was also the day of our town's big arts and crafts fair and it's Gumbo Festival.  We were allowed to set up tables and tents the day before, a big help considering it would be hell to find parking the day of. Nothing like having to lug boxes of books and art, and all I need to survive the--a thermos of hot tea, a book to read, a lunch and snacks, water and cold drinks several blocks. So, we arrived at seven a.m. for an event that started at nine. Even then parking was starting fill up, but we got a good spot and started setting up.in a shady space. I cannot do this without my husband's help anymore, and he was chomping at the bit to get me settled in order to put up his eclipse viewing telescope in Blue Dog plaza. I did take more stuff than usual as I didn't have him as a backup to fetch extra books or give me a lunch break. He did leave me with two sets of eclipse glasses as well. I would see the eclipse but not him until four p.m. when we had to pack up. 

     Maybe it was the special circumstances, but people came out in droves and moved between the fair and the gumbo tents all day. The eclipse, not a total one, began around ten-thirty and ended near two-thirty. Eclipses are very slow moving events. The light dimmed, but it did not get dark. In fact, many people didn't realize an eclipse was happening.. The moon blocked the sun to keep the temperature down. I made short trips to an open area and caught it at a crescent, at half, almost full, and then down to just a single bite out of the side before the sun returned. Trustingly, I lent my eclipse glasses to folks who had none-and one pair walked off never to return. After that I required their immediate return. I don't think anyone of those folks bought a book, but yowza, sales were good.  I sold four pieces of mini-art, and two other paintings, rare for me, plus lots of books. In fact, I did have to dash back to the car too get more of two titles, my ever popular Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball and Lady Flora's Rescue, the first title in  my Regency series. Gotta reorder both.

     Afraid my last set of eclipse glasses would vanish, I asked someone headed to the Gumbo Fest to pick up some more from my husband.  She returned to say he'd run out of them, giving away four-hundred. I was sending people to get a view through his sun safe telescope, and he was sending folks to view my art and books.  Not all the six hundred people who looked through his telescope visited me but some did. One woman, as I was starting to pack up, picked out the two titles above and wanted to use Vendmo. Sorry, I only take cash and checks which I grant you is very-old-fashioned. Bless her heart, she ran three blocks to an ATM and returned with the money. What a compliment! Never happened before. I am usually told they will go to the ATM and never see the customer again.

     After the eclipse passed, the temps went up to ninety, sales fell off, and people went home to their air-conditioned homes. As my exhausted husband took down the tent, he said he'd shown six-hundred viewers the eclipse. I told him I'd had my second best day at this event ever, and I'd been doing it for years. There seemed to something magical about the eclipse.  I wish I could arrange one every year on this date. Well, there will be one next April.  We are going to view it in Texas. And no, I will not be lugging my books along--or maybe I should.

Weather to Write

   I enjoy writing when it rains, the sound of it falling and that cozy feeling that no one will come to the front door and interrupt.  Unfortunately, we haven't had rain for seven weeks, a real oddity in Louisiana where we get sixty inches a year and big thunderstorms in summer.  Add on to that the week long temperatures over one hundred degrees. Our backyard weather station registered 109 last week.   Yeah, we're used to heat here but not prolonged heat like this.  One person I know remarked that it seemed to be the Covid seclusion all over again because no one was out on the streets, no dog walkers or early morning joggers. Sure, we have AC in our cars but even buckling a seat belt results in burned fingertips, and the car doesn't cool off much before getting to your destination.

     So what does this have to do with writing?  I should be hard at work on the latest Longleigh Chronicle, A Gentleman and a Scholar, but seem to have the same malaise that I suffered from during Covid.  No urge to be creative.  During Covid, I managed to complete only one painting and abandoned The Aussie Sinner half-written.  It wasn't writer's block.  I knew what I wanted to write but lost the will to do it.  Usually, I have a new title out in January, but that date came and went with no forward progress. If some of my worried fans hadn't asked me when the new book would be out, it might still be in limbo. For them, I got back to work, slowly at first and got it done.

     What did a long hot spell have in common with Covid?  Isolation.  I found I needed to be around people, my art group, book club, my fellow guides at Shadows on the Teche, etc. for sheer stimulation. Unlike some authors, I am not an introvert.  I love the meet and greet and being out in public When cut off from interaction, I fade and begin to doubt if I have any talent at all, so why bother.  I'm not sure if this is unique to me or if others suffer from this as well.

     Of course in Louisiana, we do have hurricanes that cut the power off for days. It is hard to write by candlelight even if you have a power backup on the computer--which will only last a few hours. My admiration goes to people in the distant past that wrote whole tomes using candles and quills or dip pens. I did write my first book by hand and then typed it on a Brothers Electric Typewriter. Let me tell you, using a computer is way easier once you get the hang of it.

      Then, there are other summer interruptions--vacations, two this year, one to a family reunion at Dollywood (which is lovely-you go Dolly Parton) and another to Hawaii. Maybe more on that later, but they do take chunks out of your writing time and interrupt your writing rhythm which for me is get on the computer in the early afternoon and keep butt in chair until I have written a thousand words or must go to make dinner, which ever comes first. Hard to get that back after lazing around in paradise for a while.

     Hopefully, the heat and drought will break. Social life will pick up again in September, and I will feel motivated to write.