Tag: publishing

Limited Visibility

~ Meg

I’ve nearly completed the revision of Three Empty Frames, Book One in the Bucks County Novels. However, I may not be able to query an agent with that book. I am researching this question at the moment, but the very fact that it has been self published will most likely prevent it from being considered by an agent. I’m trying to find out if pulling the book from Amazon will negate that status.

With that in mind, I have to make some decisions. Do I revise and edit the fifth novel: Breaking Bread (still needs a new title) and query with that manuscript? Would I need to make it a stand alone story or will its status as a series book be beneficial? In other words, if the agent likes this story, will they be more likely to take a look at the previous books in the series despite their being self published? Or will an agent see ‘series’ and run screaming?

I could also resign myself to viewing these series stories as good ‘practice’ for a novice writer and just leave them as they are on Amazon. My next move would be to complete the World War One novel and query with that. After all, I have always called that the book of my heart.

I’m sort of just thinking out loud, here. Thanks for listening.

 

The First Novel – A new direction

~ Meg

It has been a tumultuous couple of months. Despite some upsets, much good has come of them. Taking a break from blogging made me realize how much effort and time I had been devoting to thinking up new material to post about. I have been distracted from my primary goal: writing and publishing novels.

In redirecting my efforts, I realized I almost need to start over in this process. Four of my novels in The Bucks County Series are published on Amazon. The fifth is in the hands of my beta readers —that one can sit on the back burner for the time being. So far self publishing has proven to be less than successful. Why? Because all the marketing and promotion fall back on the author. I have neither the time or the stomach for it.

And that is how I fell into the trap of blogging on nearly a daily basis. I love writing —that is what I want to do. I was telling myself that a popular blog would help me to promote my books. That hasn’t happened. Granted, I’m also not hitting the reader in the face with book promotion every time I write a post. That’s how timid I am about marketing. What I need is someone to do the marketing for me.

Back in early 2015, when I finished my first novel, I tried finding an agent but my fragile ego couldn’t take rejection. After only six tries, I gave up and self published through Amazon. That is not how it works. Many popular and successful authors have been rejected numerous times —sometimes for years before an agent finally agrees to represent them to a publisher. I need to brace myself for this possibility and not let it derail my process.

I also realized that my self published novels need to be the very best they can be. If an agent is even remotely interested in your query and the first five pages you send along with it, they are going to look for you in the cyber world. They will find your Facebook Author Page, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkdIn, and WordPress blog. They will find your Amazon and Goodreads Author Pages. They will see that I have four self published novels. These need to be ready for view —even a brief one.

With that in mind, I have revisited my first novel: Three Empty Frames.  Three Empty Frames_02_HR_front_2In three years since I wrote the first draft of this book, I have learned so much. Fortunately, I feel like the story is strong and it’s just the writing that needs polish. And that is what I have been doing the last couple of months —putting my efforts into making Three Empty Frames ready for an agent. And while I do, I am educating myself on the query process, taking webinars on finding an agent and reading everything I can about how to do this successfully. Hopefully I won’t have to wait years for someone to take a chance.

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

~ Meg ~ 38 Comments

Turn and face the strange. Or in this case the mistakes and awkward bits of my first draft.

I've done the first reread of Breaking Bread. Next comes the rewrite in which I have two major changes. For one, I'm adding a scene I left out that will explain some of the extreme hostility of Maya's mother. That part of the conclusion is thin and it needs a few paragraphs to flesh it out.

The other change is this: Kiki Curtis-Stevens. It's not that I don't like the name, I do. But… Kiki is my niece Kathleen's nickname. Fortunately, she doesn't read my blog. I think. When I first wrote the character, 'Kiki' just popped into my head and I went with it. Honestly, I never intended to use the name all through the book, I just never came up with anything better. But I don't want the criminal to be named after my niece!

I gave Kiki the full name of Katerine, the Italian version of Katharine, so one possibility is to call her Trina Curtis-Stevens instead. That works pretty well except that it sounds very similar to Tanya. Trina and Tanya. Tanya and Trina. Close enough be confusing. So now I'm thinking about changing Tanya's name as well. I named one of their cousins Stacia and I might swap their names since the cousin has no role in the story other than being mentioned. Aren't you glad you don't have to read this story again?

Just a side note: I mentioned to a few of you that I considered an evil alternative ending:

When they discover that Tanya has been paid twenty-five thousand dollars to sabotage Maya's cafe? The financier is really Brad. An obsessed Brad who only sees the cafe as an impediment to getting what he really wants: Maya. In this scenario, Brad gets increasingly jealous and possessive which results in driving her closer to Juan Paolo and that in turn triggers violence against JP, etc, etc…  (I hadn't worked all of it out, obviously…) Any of you who read Book 2: Seeing Red will get the connection here to Brad's half brother Ethan, the football player/stalker. So I figured I already wrote that story in Seeing Red. Still, it would have been fun! And unexpected I think.

Ok, back to work…

Header Image: Ian Cleary