Guest Post: Marilyn Meredith on Place

Marilyn Merdith, Author of Angel Lost


"A pervert threatens women joggers on the beach, a robber threatens wealthy homes on the bluff, and an angel watches over over the townspeople from a downtown window.  F. M. Merediths' latest Rocky Bluff P. D. novel is a gentle human drama about loneliness and change, through which the reader is pulled, page after page, by an assortment of compelling criminal curiosities." -- C. N. Nevets

In the past few weeks, I’ve read some books by fairly new authors. In a few there has been an important element missing, the sense of place. Some of my favorite books are those that I feel like I know exactly what the area looks like where the characters are living, working, talking, and experiencing the things that are going on with and around them.

What I try to do when I’m writing a scene is to see it through the eyes of my point-of-view character. (In my Rocky Bluff P.D. series the POV character may change from scene to scene.) I want to be sure that the reader knows where that character is, what the place is like, perhaps the smells, and of course the weather.

In Angel Lost a lot of the action takes place during foggy mornings. Fog is wonderful for setting a mysterious scene. It swirls around, it hides what’s coming, and it can be frustrating. I’ve lived in a beach community much like Rocky Bluff and the fog is relentless at certain times of the year as it rolls in from the ocean and sometime seems to swallow up everything around.

Rocky Bluff is a beach community. The heroine of this story, Stacey Wilbur, must jog along the beach in the fog in an effort to catch a man who exposes himself to female runners. One of the members of my critique group gave me suggestions about how that would feel. And of course, anytime you’re near the ocean you’re going to smell the saltiness and hear the waves crashing against the shore. The sound of the waves blurs other noises, including if anyone is coming towards you on the beach.

The town of Rocky Bluff is not a real town, but I can see what it looks like in my imagination. A stream bed runs beside a rocky bluff that rises up like a cliff. On top of the bluff are expensive homes. They have no beach access, but many have spectacular ocean views.

In the older part of town, beach cottages, many in disrepair, are closest to the shore. The downtown areas with the shops and restaurants are located on the main drag, Valley Blvd. The rest of the town rises up the hillside with the freeway passing over. Orange groves and ranches are on the other side.

The police department is not only understaffed but hasn’t been upgraded with any of the new equipment the larger police departments have access to. Even the Chief’s Office is shabby, furnished with items the Chief has brought from his own home. (This whole situation makes it necessary for the RBPD to solve crimes in the old fashioned way—investigating and asking lots of questions. When necessary, outsiders will be called in to help.

When Stacey and her fiancé, Detective Doug Milligan, marry, they plan to live in Doug’s small Victorian, with its enclosed front porch and only two upstairs bedrooms. This means Doug’s renter, Officer Gordon Butler must find a new place to live as Stacey’s young son, Davey will need his own room.

Stacey has her dress for the wedding, a light blue gown of material that she describes as gossamer. Her dream for the ceremony includes the decorations for the church.

As things happen in the story, I hope that I’ve given enough of a description of the places that the reader can imagine much the same as what I envisioned in my mind as I wrote.

Even if an author is writing about a real place, not everyone has visited so it’s necessary to describe enough that the reader can visualize what the area looks like the characters inhabit. Sometimes, the setting can almost seem like another character. I hope that’s what I’ve done in Angel Lost.

Angel Lost will be available this month at the usual places, and for an autographed copy from my website http://fictionforyou.com/ and it will soon be available on Kindle and for other e-book readers.

F.M. Meredith aka Marilyn Meredith

Angel Lost

As plans for her perfect wedding fill her mind, Officer Stacey Wilbur is sent to trap a flasher, the new hire realizes Rocky Bluff P.D. is not the answer to his problems, Abel Navarro’s can’t concentrate on the job because of worry about his mother, Officer Gordon Butler has his usual upsets, the sudden appearance of an angel in the window of a furniture store captures everyone’s imagination and causes problems for RBPD, and then the worst possible happens—will Stacey and Doug’s wedding take place?

F.M. Meredith, also known as Marilyn Meredith, is the author of nearly thirty published novels. Her latest in the Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series, from Oak Tree Press, is Angel Lost. Marilyn is a member of Writers of Kern, EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, including the Internet chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit her at http://fictionforyou.com and her blog at http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com.

Ryne D. Pearson: The 139 Steps

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Rejection slips are the butt of jokes made by authors in bleak humor.  Snoopy used to make quilts out of them.  We hate them so much that laughing at them helps us cope.  But those of us looking toward the querying process still dread the day we start getting cold, heartless form rejections.

Successful thriller writer Ryne D. Pearson might have preferred cold, heartless form rejections at the start of his career.  What he got instead were personally crafted letters that disparaged his talent and his book.

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One hundred and thirty nine.

That is how many rejections my first novel received before it found an agent. Three weeks later he sold it.

I keep those rejections in an old cardboard manuscript box, tucked in the envelopes in which they came. Each addressed by me as was the norm back in the early 90’s when I was trying to break in. In essence, with each SASE (how I came to hate that acronym) I was facilitating a bit of my soul to be chipped away every time the mailman arrived at my house.

Because, you see, among the standard ‘not right for me at this time’ type of reply, there were many gems that were, well, particularly nasty. Shall I share?

‘You are not talented enough to compete with the thousands of professional writers in this industry...’

‘This is not my type of book, and if it were I would hate it.’

‘Your efforts would be better directed toward other endeavors.’

‘Who do you think you are sending this to me?’

‘Do you have a fireplace?’

‘I am insulted by the violence in this. I do not represent trash.’

Now, there were a few more, but those were the best. And these were not from fringe agencies. All were from respected literary agents, three of whom still work in the industry today.

What did I learn from these responses? Mostly that, in at least a few peoples’ eyes, I suck. But I also learned to take it. To swallow the vitriol and keep going. Why?

Because I didn’t believe them. I believed in myself.

The night after I received rejection #139 I decided to dig back into the novel and see if there was anything more I could do to it. The next morning I pulled out all those neatly typed and stacked pages and began flipping through. Reading it for the hundredth time, it seemed.

Then the phone rang. It was an agent at Curtis Brown who wanted to know if the novel was still available. I set the pages in my hand aside, clicked my pen shut, and sat down.

I was right, and they were wrong.

Ryne Douglas Pearson

Ryne D. Pearson is the author of several thrillers, including Top Ten, All For One, and Simple Simon, the novel that was the basis for the Bruce Willis / Alec Baldwin movie Mercury Rising.  He also wrote the screenplay for the 2009 sci fi movie Knowing.  Coming soon, Pearson will be releasing a science fiction short story, "Specimen," and will be releasing two novels this year.  You can follow him on Twitter, where he talks about writing, life, and bacon.

.Nevets.

Aliya Whiteley: You're Not Always Brilliant

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Most writers know the sting of criticism.  We know it's going to come.  When we believe in our writing, we also want to believe in everything we've written.  Historical fiction novelist Deborah Swift has talked here about the importance of developing a thick skin.  As avant-garde blackly comic crime author Aliya Whiteley discovered, though, that no matter how good a writer you are, you need to be open to criticism.  You can be a good writer and still need to change what you're currently writing:

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Before I was a crime writer I was a sci-fi writer. Before that, when my first novella was published, I was an experimental writer. And before that I was a writer of terrible romances.

I'm glad to say this romantic claptrap stage did not last long, but it did give birth to three particularly ugly manuscripts which I'm determined to keep locked up in a cupboard forever-more. But writing terrible romances taught me a lot about pace, and structure, and character; the form of the romance novel is not flexible, so I learned the craft of telling a story in which the hero must kiss the heroine by chapter two and they have to have moved on to at least third base by the end of novel, while having some sort of reason to keep bumping into each other that doesn't overshadow the kissie bits.

One of these horrible efforts actually made it to the acceptance stage. Caught By The Cougar (I told you it was terrible) got picked up by a brand new E-Book publisher back in the days when nobody bought E-Books. And a professional editor got her mitts on my ugly baby. She ripped it to shreds, and rightly so, but boy, did it hurt. I seriously considered ignoring her thousands of comments - after all, I had written a book and someone was going to publish it, so it had to be brilliant already, right? - but in the end, common sense overcame my ego and I got down to the business of making all my passive sentences active, and taking out most of the awful adverbs, and tightening up the pace where it flagged, and slowing it down when the hero and heroine got to the making out stage. I learned a huge amount from that experience, and I am undoubtedly a better writer because of it. I spent months making changes, and at the end of it, I had a book that wasn't bad. It still wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. Of course, my careful editing took so long that by the time I returned the manuscript the E-publisher had already folded.

When someone really criticises your baby, you want to put your hands over your ears and pretend that they're an idiot who didn't understand the first thing about your writing. But learning to be open to criticism and to act on it when necessary - this is what turns an amateur into a professional, I think. It's a painful process. But I'm glad I went through it.

I'm also glad it was never published. But that's a retrospective gladness.

Aliya Whiteley

Aliya Whiteley is the author of Three Things About Me and Light Reading, both also available in the US after-market.  Light Reading is also available on Kindle.

Approach Your Goals Like an Aikido Master

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If you haven't, please do check out the post I did over at the Literary Lab today.  It was entitled, "Write like a Sword-Wielding Martial Artist,"   The topic was writing bravely, and we had an amazingly open conversation about our fears in the comments thread, too.

I got a couple of private responses, as well, and one of those addressed something I'd actually like to go ahead and answer tonight.  Think of this as a companion post to this morning's.  The comment I got from my friend had a lot of window dressing on it, but boiled down to this (apologies to my friend for the coarse paraphrase):

"It's all well and good to be brave, but I can't bear to have the publishing industry break my heart again. I care too much, and it just cuts too deeply."

On the first day of aikido class, our master told us, "You want to know how to avoid getting beat up in the bar at ten o'clock tonight?  An aikido master will tell you to stay  at home at ten o'clock tonight."

Later on, when we were practicing the defensive application of some foundation movements, he had us work in pairs.  As half of us took blows to the face he said, "You know to avoid getting punched in the face?  Don't put your face where his fist is heading."

What I said to my friend was significantly less pithy, but perhaps got to the same point:  There's a difference between being brave and being reckless. If you're an athlete with a lot of concussions, and it's at that point where they're getting worse and more frequent, it's not brave to submit yourself to situations that make another one likely. It's just reckless.

Likewise, if you're a writer whose spirit is crushed by rejection, it's not necessarily brave to submit yourself to that. It might just be reckless. Especially if you are writing mainly for the sheer pleasure of doing so, and do not have a strong drive to be published.

I went on to suggest that  people treat ailments of the body very differently than ailments of the spirit.  We think the quarterback and the  fighter who get concussions every outing are stupid if they don't  retire.  But so often we think a person who opts to not pursue public acclaim for their creativity is weak.  In the way way, many of us are smart enough to protect our bodies when we're physically injured, but feel ashamed if we try to take care of our spirits in the same way.

That's not brave; it's reckless.

Bravery should always be exercised within boundaries of what you want to accomplish and what is a price that you are willing to pay.

I absolutely believe that bravery in writing is essential for the development of your writing.  Here's a quick hit-list, though, of what that does not mean:

1. That any given fear of mine has any particular relevance to any one else.
2. That anything that seems ill-advised is something which must be conquered.
3. That every writer needs to fully develop their writing.
4. That each of us is equipped right now to face confront every fear or obstacle.
5. That bravery in publishing has anything to do with bravery in writing.

Yes, I want every writer I know to be brave in their writing, because I want them all to be the best writers they can possibly be.  But I know that this is a lifelong process that takes steps.  We all have things we need to protect, and it's just as bad to brutally expose our vulnerabilities to wound after wound as it is to bottle up our writing.  And heaven forbid I ever equate bravery in writing with any part of the submission, querying, or publication process.  They are completely different.

So, dear writers, you need to look at yourself.  Know your goals.  Know the prices you're willing to pay.  Know what your fears are.  And then look at your writing and be brave, but not don't treat your own spirit with careless disregard.

.Nevets.

Soundtrack for writing this post provided by S. H. E. (Taiwan) and Chen Guo.

Today is Lab Day!

Kendo
photo by Harald Hofer

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Just a quick heads-up.

If you haven't yet, make sure you read yesterday's post with Jennifer Hillier's excellent profile in overcoming her struggles of query hell and beyond.

I wanted to put up a quick post today to let you know that I've written a guest post over at the Literary Lab today: "Write Like a Sword-Wielding Martial Artist." Please be sure to visit and let me know what you think!

.Nevets.

Jennifer Hillier: Defining Your Writing Career

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First of all, I'd like to announce that Roberta Walker won last week's contest hosted by guest author Deborah Swift.  Roberta, as a reminder to never give up on your publication path, Deborah would like to send you a signed copy of her book, The Lady's Slipper.  Please visit Deborah Swift's website to get her e-mail address and contact her to arrange for shipping.  Congratulations!

Now, on to this week's profile.

Every author can relate to this: you're written a project, you believe in it, and you hope with everything you've got that it's going to be accepted.  If you're not self-publishing, you hope it's accepted by someone who wants to publish it.  And you hope and hope and hope until you're going to bust.  Debut author of psychological suspense Jennifer Hillier reminds us that any one project does not define a career.

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I experienced a few dark weeks while I was on submission last spring.  My agent started subbing to a handful of editors last May, and by mid-June, three rejections had come in.  I thought I'd be a pro at handling them, because after all, I'd survived Query Hell (where I racked up 48 rejections from agents), but I wasn't prepared for what it would feel like to be rejected by big-name editors at big-name publishing houses.  Unlike agents, who mainly rejected my queries, these editors were rejecting my book.  And while their rejections were kind and personal, they were also very specific, and they really, really stung.

Intellectually I knew not to take it to heart, but every time someone rejects you – for any reason – it sort of chips away at your self-esteem.  I knew the odds of selling a debut novel in this market were slim – my agent had made damned sure my expectations were realistic – but still, I hoped.  And with hope comes disappointment.

Then one day, after a particularly great writing session on a new novel, it suddenly hit me that whether CREEP got published or not, I was still a writer.  I had as many chances at this as I was willing to write books.  And I did want to write books – lots of them – because that's what writers do.  We write.  This realization made me feel so much better.  I felt like a weight had been lifted.  No matter what, I was going to be okay.

Two weeks later, my book sold.

Jennifer Hillier

Jennifer Hillier's debut novel Creep will be published by Simon & Schuster in July 2011.  Best-selling author Jeffrey Deaver says, "Jennifer Hillier's Creep is top-of-the-line thriller writing. You better call in sick, because you're not going anywhere until you finish reading. Oh, and you might want to lock the door too. Just to be safe."

Deborah Swift: A Hard Time Creating Believable Characters

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Writers face all sorts of rejection and criticism.  Some of it is helpful.  Some of it arbitrary.  Some it is just plain contradictory.  Historical fiction novelist Deborah Swift knows how hard hard this, especially the more vulnerable and honest your writing is.  She faced scathing rejections on the path to publishing her first novel, The Lady's Slipper, and then scathing criticism after.  But criticism doesn't mean a book is a failure.

And she's going to give away a wonderful reminder of that to someone, too!

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A writer has to have a thick skin, which is a big ask precisely because we spend so much time battling to expose our sensitivities in our work.

When I first wrote my historical novel, The Lady’s Slipper I wrote it for enjoyment. Some friends read it, liked it a lot, said it was really gripping and encouraged me to send it to an agent. I chose from the Writer’s Yearbook an agency who represented authors I enjoy reading. The agent took me on. I was completely bowled over by her response, as it is one thing friends liking it, and quite another (so I thought) to convince a professional. My agent said she would start sending it out to publishers straight away, and they’d love it. I naively thought that everything would be plain sailing from then on.

Rejection after rejection poured in. The novel was “overwhelmed with period detail,” the novel was “thin on period detail”. The main character was “unlikeable”, the main character was “sympathetic” but the plot needed work. The plot was “engaging, but it wasn’t for us.” In other words twelve differing opinions, but all were clear on one thing – they weren’t going to publish. The agent was fantastically supportive, but suggested that as she’d run out of publishers I should shelve it and start a second. I wondered what the point would be if nobody was going to read them.  But I was hooked on writing, so I did begin another novel, and began to regain my love of the process of storytelling.

At the same time I went back and edited The Lady’s Slipper again, scrutinising it and trying to bear in mind all the radically different opinions, but more to the point paying attention to my own inner compass.
A few months later I sent it to a mainstream publisher that takes unsolicited submissions. To my delight they decided to publish. The publishing house was one that had already rejected the manuscript when it landed on a different editor’s desk.

This is when I first began to realise that even within the publishing world, readers are readers and all have very different tastes, and that includes editors. An editor is going to spend hours and hours poring over your book, fighting for the right cover, wrangling with you over edits, talking to the marketing department. Who can blame them if they say they have to completely love a book before they will take it on.

Since the The Lady’s Slipper has been published, the discrepancy in readers’ opinions, particularly “professional” reviewers has been astonishing. Imagine my horror at this; “Swift has a hard time creating believable characters” a review which is now plastered all over Amazon. Even though there are several underneath it saying such things as “Her characters are so real that they linger in the mind long after the book is back on the shelf” - to a writer the bad reviews hurt. Even if it is only one reviewer in the whole world that feels that way, the review is out there putting people off before readers even give the book a chance. You need to have a thick skin to take this sort of criticism and not hang up your pen. You can read the full dire review here.

So my message to writers is this – there is probably at least one reader out there who will enjoy your book, so be as authentic about your own story as you can. (I rejected the advice from one publisher that The Lady’s Slipper would stand more of a chance if I re-wrote it as, god forbid, a Regency novel) If you are lucky, that one enthusiastic reader will also be an editor, a publisher or a professional reviewer.

And develop that thick skin.

I have an autographed copy of The Lady’s Slipper to give away to a writer whose novel or story has been rejected, to remind them that the end might only be the beginning and to keep writing.(open worldwide) Reply to this post to be entered in the draw.

Deborah Swift

Deborah Swift writes character-rich historical fiction with a touch of intrigue.  Her first novel, The Lady's Slipper, is available in both the UK and the US.  Her second novel, The Gilded Lily will be available from Pan Macmillan and St. Martin's press.

.Nevets.

Ryan David Jahn: It Can Happen

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Most writers who've been around realize that it's not easy to make it big.  Most savvy writers understand that, even a published novel has usually had a huge pile of rejections.    A lot of writers try to protect their emotions by assuming the worst.  Writer Ryan David Jahn was living the struggle for a long time.  Now he's won the prestigious John Creasey New Blood Dagger award, has published three books, is published internationally, and has a contract for another three books.   Here's his story:

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I came close to quitting once. I’d been writing since I was ten, first in a school notebook, then with a used typewriter my stepfather bought for me at a garage sale once he realized writing for me was what baseball had been for him (he’d played semi-pro ball). First it was short stories, then it was it novels. Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two I wrote four or five novels. None of them got anywhere. They shouldn’t have. They weren’t very good. 


When I was twenty-two I got an idea that seemed better suited to screenplay format than novel format. I wrote the script in three days, sent it off to a major screenwriting competition, and a few months later learned that my script was a quarter-finalist in said competition. I decided screenwriting was easier, and besides, I wanted to make a living as a writer and most novelists couldn’t make rent on what they earned writing.


For the next seven years I focused exclusively on screenplays. I optioned a couple scripts, did a work-for-hire gig, turned down another work-for-hire gig, and came to hate writing. I came to hate the constraints of the screenplay format. I came to hate the movie industry, the fact that scripts weren’t viewed as pieces of art in and of themselves. I worked hard on writing them well. Nobody who read them cared. They wanted to know if they could attract a star to play the lead. They wanted to know how many set pieces I’d written into them. 


But worse was this: something like one in ten screenplays purchased in Hollywood becomes a film. The idea that even if I managed a small career as a screenwriter -- and I’d had a few small successes -- I might never see a script become a movie depressed me more than I can say. The idea of that was worse than simply not being good enough. If I wrote a story and everyone agreed it was terrible, then I could work to get better. But writing stuff that people responded to, writing stuff that earned me money, while still failing to reach an audience … well, to my mind, you hadn’t told a story if nobody’d heard it, and I’d spent the last seventeen years speaking to an empty room.


I decided I was finished with writing. I started looking into getting certified to teach. I could go back to school. It would take a couple years, but I had to do something. Writing obviously hadn’t panned out. It was time I faced that reality.


Around the same time I decided to quit writing, I lost my day job. 


I’d been working on a reality TV show, the season ended, and, after working on the show for five years, wasn’t called back. I shouldn’t have been called back. I was in the middle of a pretty deep depression and had done a terrible job on the most recent season. 


So there I was, unemployed and not writing. I went down to a couple temp agencies looking for work. I got my name into their systems. I called them regularly. There was no work. I went to construction sites and didn’t find work there either. I collected unemployment checks. 


In May -- a month after losing my job -- I decided I’d give writing one more shot. I’d bang out a Western novel and try to sell it to one of those publishers that made their money with the library market. I got fifteen thousand words into it when my hard drive crashed and I lost my work. 


Well, that seemed like a pretty definite sign. I really was finished now.


Except I wasn’t. 


Three months later I started a different novel. A novel I wanted to write. I didn’t think much about whether it had a chance of selling. I didn’t have to. I was writing this one simply because I wanted to write it. I had quit trying to write for a market. This was just something I was doing because I loved doing it. I was writing it as I had written my earliest stories, out of the sheer pleasure of creating a world on paper. 


It felt better than anything had felt in years. It felt right. It felt like the first drink of water after a long hike through the desert. This is what I had been missing for years without even realizing it. At some point I had begun to focus on the wrong things. 


I finished the first draft before the end of September. I finished a draft I was happy with by early December. I decided I liked it well enough to try to find a publisher for it after all. I thought it had more life in it than anything I’d written in a long time.


A month later, on January 8, I was offered a contract. The book came out eleven months after that. My second novel came out seven months after that. My third novel is scheduled for release in July next year. And I’ve just signed a contracted for three more books. 


The best career decision I ever made was to stop trying to have a career and instead to once more, as I had as a teenager, write for myself. 

Ryan David Jahn

Ryan David Jahn is the author of the award-winning Acts of Violence, soon to be released in Germany (February 28) as Ein Akt der Gewalt and in the US (May 31) as Good Neighbors.  Both are currently available for pre-order.  His second novel, Low Life, is now available in UK hardcover.  Watch for the UK Release of his third book, The Dispatcher.

.Nevets.

Michael Malone: When You Don't Expect IT

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Sometimes it's easy for those of us authors who have not yet been published to look at stories from authors who have track-records or are making a splash and disconnect ourselves from their stories of overcome challenges to meet success.  It is as if, to us, they are special and have received a special blessing not dispensed to us.  Debut Scottish crime writer Michael Malone has signed a contract to publish his first novel, but as recently as last September, he was a "regular joe" just like the rest of us.  For Michael, it's all about persistence -- something that often pays off when you're not expecting it.




Do you have a dog? When there’s a knock at the door, who’s the first to reach it? The dog, right? If the door goes 100 times of an evening, the dog will run to it every time. And the thing is... it’s never for him.


That, my friends is a facile, but effective description of persistence. A quality that writers and artists, indeed anyone, working in a creative field or anyone with a goal has to master.


The creative world is full of stories of people who persisted until...One of my favourite writers is a fella called R.J. Ellory. Roger wrote 22 novels in 15 years. He amassed over 600 rejection letters and yet he kept going until...


Where would you have given up? When would you have decided that enough was enough? 20? 120? Would you have sold your computer to the Samaritans and jumped off the roof of the nearest library shouting – you’ll never know what you could have had!  Would you have reached anywhere near 600? Or would you have like Roger, kept on going until...


Roger often talks about having a constancy of purpose. I love that. How does one achieve such a thing? Constant reminders? Keeping in touch with your goal? Giving yourself permission not to be distracted by television, housework, gardening, youtube, plucking your earlobes (honestly, the more I lose on my head the more it grows elsewhere)?


Thinking of my own journey thus far, their have been a fair few disappointments and a goodly number of rejections to deal with. Yet, taking my cue from Roger I persist...


My work ethic is not quite as focused as Roger’s. I’m part driven and part lazy bastard. Not the best combination. I wrote two novels in three years. I attracted an agent who was distracted by other clients and other ambitions and the books got nowhere. This was a big learn for me. Attracting an agent may be A Big Step but it is no guarantee. Still I dealt with the disappointment – eventually - and moved on...to novel 3 and while I was submitting this novel I began work on novel 4.


I came close with novel 3. Very close. A major publisher was so serious they were talking to me about what pen name I might use.  There is an American author called Michael Malone who beat me to it by a few years. 


It fell through. I was crushed. I was like Man Under a Giant Boulder Crushed. I went into a huff with the world. I had a petted lip the size of the skip on a baseball cap. Pushing the boulder off with a few choice curses – bastards was the mot juste if memory serves me well -  I carried on working on book 4 never losing sight of the overall goal. I will be a published writer. I will earn my living from writing. This became my mantra.


I attracted another agent. This one was prepared to work hard for me. And she did. Most of the big publishing houses in London have read my crime novels. Again, I have come very close. Some of the rejections were a basic “thanks, but no thanks” and in some ways this is easy to deal with. They didn’t “get” the books. Fine. It was the rejections that turned the books down in rave terms. “Had to stay up all night to finish...” “I LOVED the main character”, “Michael Malone is an accomplished writer who tells a satisfying tale”.


They say that and then they say NO? What the fuck is going on here? I’ve also been turned down because I have written a book set in Scotland. It appears the major UK publishing houses have a quota of Scottish based crime fiction. Who knew? And is this a form of marketing racism? Whatever, it is damn disappointing, I can move to Manchester, dude.


Each subsequent rejection has strangely become easier to take.  The first few were difficult. I say difficult, in essence I wanted to crawl into a hole, suck on my thumb till it shrunk to the bone and never come out. A few walls were punched. More than a few curses were thrown into the air. I might have said the C word a few times and the F word.  And maybe even the other B word. On each occasion it took a couple of days for the cloud of defeat to disperse and for me to regain my equilibrium.  And a positive expectation.


Now? I’ve gained enough experience to see that I was moving one “NO” closer to a “YES” with each knockback. 


Let's give all of this activity some context: fourteen years have passed since I finished that first novel.


More recently, my book was on the desk of two of the largest crime publishers in the UK and two independents. One of the majors I am alluding to here said I was " too good to let go" but they didn't have a space for me. They would hold on to me until some space became apparent. Two years later and I'm still waiting. 


This is a form of torture, people!


It was the Scottish thing again. Frustrated? Yes! Giving up? Hell, no! More months have passed and one of the indies came through with a tentative offer. They had applied to the English Arts Council for funding and they were optimistic about receiving it. They wanted to use some of the funds from this towards bringing me and my book to the market. They would know by the end of January 2010. Could I hold on until then?


Could I hold on? This was a cue for some air-punching and dancing.
The calender jumps beyond January 2020 and no word. I sent a polite email. There was a swift response. It seems they had just heard that morning that their funding request had been rejected. They could no longer afford to publish my book.


To say I was devastated would be like saying Wikileaks are currently making a bit of nuisance of themselves. However, I've found that losing myself in my work is the best possible therapy. I would simply write the book that was so good they couldn't refuse me, so I got back into book 5; finished that and began work on book 6. By the time I finished book 6, which was around the end of October I was back in touch with the small independant.


They were in an improved situation and they could make a full offer. I signed and returned the contract just a few weeks ago and I've now sent them the manuscript so we can begin the editing process. 

Perseverance. What is it? The ability to go through the fear of failure, the fear of success (yes, I know its crazy, but it’s real) the rejections, the frustrations, the defeats and come out the other side with your goal still alive and intact in your mind.


F.Scott Fitzgerald said you should never mistake any single defeat for a final defeat.


Winston Churchill said, ‘never, never, never, never give up.’


When I started out writing this post, I didn’t intend for it to turn out like a lecture, but I’m sorry I’m not going to apologise (see what I did there). It is what it is. 


To be fair, it’s probably an epistle to me, but I hope you get some benefit from it.


I’d like to leave the final few words to Calvin Coolidge.


“Press on. Nothing can take the place of persistence. 
Talent will not; the world is full of unsuccessful people with talent. 
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. 
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. 
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”


Here’s to pressing on.

Michael Malone

You can keep up with Michael Malone and find updates about his publication and the start of what will hopefully be a knock-out career, at his blog: May Contain Nuts.

.Nevets.

R. N. Morris: When There's Nothing Left but Guts

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Most authors have experienced rejection.  Many of us have faced it so many times we begin to take it for granted.  British author, R. N. Morris came face to face with the worst sort of personal rejection -- truly an author's nightmare.  He calls it his, "darkest moment," and now he's on the other side of that moment, with four published novels and another in the works.



I remember meeting my agent for coffee. He ‘d been my agent for a number of years but without managing to place any of my novels. I have actually lost count of the number of novels he’d tried – maybe three or four. Maybe more. It’s a blur. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been able to get the scripts on the desks of the right people but there had been no takers. Apparently I’d come very close a couple of times, but something had always got in the way. One editor’s reaction was typical, if brutal: “I won’t be able to sell enough copies.” That was for the novel my agent had just been submitting and our meeting was to let me know how things were going. Badly, was the short answer. “Your name is starting to meet with some resistance,” he told me. I asked what he meant. “Well, when I tell editors I have a new novel by you, they say, ‘Ah, yes, we know him – don’t you have anyone else?’”


That was pretty much the lowest point of my writing life. As far as I could see, this was the end of the road. Either I change my name, or give up. That was the way it seemed. I didn’t like the idea of changing my name – it seemed a deceitful thing to do. I also didn’t like the idea of giving up. I decided to try one last throw of the dice. I’d had this idea for a detective novel based on Porfiry Petrovich, the magistrate from Dostoevksy’s novel “Crime and Punishment.” I shared the idea with my agent. “Yes, that might work,” was all he said. But it was all the encouragement I needed.


Actually, I had two last rolls of the dice. There was another idea that I had to get out of my system first, an idea that had also been obsessing me for years. A story about a guy who went round collecting mementos from scenes of tragedy or disaster. I decided I had to write that first and then get on to the Porfiry Petrovich idea, which I felt would be harder and would require more time to research. I wrote “Taking Comfort”, my first published novel, in a frenzied eight weeks. Then I started work on the novel that would become “A Gentle Axe”, my second published novel, immediately.


So I didn’t give up. I don’t know what I did – or how I did it. I wrote the two books that I most needed to write – the two books, also, that I was most afraid of writing. Maybe I learnt, not to give up, but to let go.

R. N. Morris

R. N. Morris has written a contemporary thriller, Taking Comfort, and three literary mysteries set in Dostoevsky's Russia, the most recent of which is 2010's A Razor Wrapped in Silk, now available in  the UK and in the  US on Kindle and from resellers.  His previous novel, A Vengeful Longing, is available in Australia, and the first St. Petersburg mystery, A Gentle Axe, is available as an audio book in South Africa.

.Nevets.

Marilyn Meredith: Persistance Pays Off

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Many writers, when confronted with the bleakness that exists in the publishing industry decide to take refuge outside of the major presses in seek solace among the small publishers.  If you know anything about my views on writing and publishing, hopefully you know that I view all avenues as valid, and that I believe every author must find the venue that's a personal fit.  The bad news for people who seek refuge among small publishers is that it's not a panacea there either.  There are rejections and glitches everywhere.  The good news, as mystery author Marilyn Meredith explains, is that persistence pays off if you keep your chin up and keep plugging away:

Despite what you see in movies and TV, getting published is not easy. Oh, yes, there are lots of ways to do it yourself these days—but that doesn’t mean people will buy your book. You need a good book that has been professionally edited and it definitely helps if a publishing company is the one who published it. After that, you must do lots of promoting on your own no matter who publishes you. Something I didn’t know in the beginning.

In my case, my first book was published after nearly 30 rejections, after every 5^th rejection I rewrote the book. At the time I neither belonged to a critique group or had a clue about professional editors. When the book came out I thought I had it made—surely anything I wrote after that would be published. Wrong. The editor who bought the book left the company and her replacement didn’t like the next book I submitted. I found another publisher—but one that wasn’t the caliber of the first publisher.

When I started writing mysteries, I began another large collection of rejections from agents and publishers. A mystery was accepted and published—50 copies was all that was printed and were sold at my first book signing. The publisher disappeared. I found another small publisher who republished that book and later she published four in my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series. Sadly, she died unexpectedly and the publishing company along with her. So I was back to searching for a publisher.

I have no idea how many rejections I’ve received over the years, possibly more than 100. In the meantime I read many books on writing, attended lots of writing conferences, joined a critique group that I still belong to, and spent hours and hours rewriting and editing.

At this time, I have two mystery series being published by two different small presses. I still write, read my chapters to my critique group, rewrite, and both publishers have editors who go over my work and make suggestions and ask for changes.

This is my advice to anyone who wants to be a writer:

1. Read the kind of books you want to write.
2. Read books on the craft of writing and go to writers’ conferences.
3. Write and rewrite.
4. Have someone critique your work whether it be a critique group or someone who know something about writing. (If you hire someone, make sure they are a professional.
5. When submitting, read the publisher’s guidelines carefully and do exactly what is asked for.
6. Never give up.
7. Keep on writing.

Marilyn Meredith,

http://fictionforyou.com

For a complete listing of all of Marilyn Meredith's works and how to purchase them, visit her website.  Marilyn's most recent book is The Invisible Path, which is available in both print and electronic forms.  Watch soon for Angel Lost!

.Nevets.

Gary Corby: Optimism Through Confidence

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For many years, new authors have struggled with innocence.  Filled with hopes and dreams, the reality of the publishing industry can become too much to bear.  In today's world with a thriving community of agents, editors, and and fellow authors on the internet, authors often struggle from the opposite extreme.  They know the challenge of publishing; they know the odds their facing; and it can seem impossible.  Gary Corby, well-received debut author with Minotaur, was kind enough to describe how he himself, as an internet-savvy and industry-wise author, was able to fend off pessimism:


I love your phrase, "the pursuit of publication has dark moments."  I'd say when you query, it's one long dark moment, with only a tiny spot of light in the far-off distance, towards which you stumble, and unfortunately, the light's an oncoming locomotive.


I'm fairly sure every single published writer went through a depressed period, totally convinced that they and their book were doomed.  This is only rational, because on the odds, they were doomed!  It's a sometimes quoted statistic on the nets that agents receive 10,000 queries a year, from which they will sign perhaps 1 or 2 writers.  If anything, I'd suggest that is slightly optimistic.


I was aware of these depressing numbers long before an agent showed any interest in me, but that didn't stop me querying, and it shouldn't stop you.  You have to push through those numbers.  But don't ignore them; instead, use them to make your book better.  What I did was this: behind me as I write are shelves with a few thousand books.  As I worked through my manuscript, from time to time I would pull down one of my favourite books and read a few pages.  Was my own work at least as good as this published book?  If the answer was no, I went back to work.  Because you are not competing against those other 9,999 hopefuls.  You are competing against yourself, to be as good as the books you love.

Gary Corby

Corby's first book is Pericles Commission, now available in the US and available in his native Australia on 4 January 2011.  His second novel is slated for release in the US in October/November 2011. 

Corby writes historical mysteries set in Ancient Greece, told with authenticity and a vibrant wit.

He also keeps an active blog and Twitter.

.Nevets.

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In case you missed the first entry in this series of authors' detailing how they faced and overcame the challenges of publishing, please see this: RJ Ellory.

RJ Ellory: In the Den of Arbitrary

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Many of us are tangentially aware that there is an element of the arbitrary that runs strong in the publishing world, as in any other realm where the choices of individuals are of high importance.  Bestselling British author RJ Ellory is aware of this more keenly than many.  He has kindly offered this recounting of his struggle to kick start his now award-winning writing career:


I started writing on November 4th 1987, and between then and July 17th 1993 I wrote something every day except for three days when I was going through a divorce.  I completed twenty two novels in that time, something in the region of three and a half million words, and at different times I was in discussion with a couple of agents, with one or two publishing companies, but nothing ever really got as far as I would have liked.  I wrote first of all in longhand, and then I got a typewriter, and finally ended up with an Amstrad dedicated word-processor that took about half an hour to warm up!  


I spent those six years sending the material I was writing out to British publishers, and received about five hundred  complimentary, very polite, Thanks, but no thanks letters.  I also have two lever arch files with something in the region of three or four hundred straightforward format rejection slips.  This is just from companies that didn’t even look at stuff.  I understand the sheer volume of work that a handful of people have to wade through in a publishing house.  People have given me figures on just how many unsolicited scripts come to the major publishing houses each week, and that figure is astounding.  


It wasn’t that British publishers didn’t like my work; they just felt that they couldn’t ‘sell’ an English writer writing US-set novels.  They advised me to send my work to the US, and I dutifully complied.  I then received many, many letters from the US publishers saying that they liked my work, but they didn’t feel they could sell an English writer writing US-set novels!


Despite this Catch-22 situation, my belief was that if I just kept on going I would eventually find the right person in the right company at the right time.  I had this datum from Disraeli who said, Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose.  Nevertheless, after six years of doing this I finally thought ‘Enough’s enough’, and I stopped writing.  I then studied music, photography, all manner of things, and didn’t go back to writing until the latter part of 2001.  


It was then that I wrote ‘Candlemoth’.  I sent that to thirty-six publishers, thirty-five of whom sent it back.  All except Bloomsbury, and an editor there gave it to a friend who gave it to a friend, and it wound up at Orion with my current editor, and we have now worked together through eight books.  Despite his initial enthusiasm for the book, it still took him four moths to convince his colleagues that they should publish the book!  Since Orion signed me there have been a couple of comments made by a couple of publishers I have met about how they should perhaps have pursued things with a little more tenacity back in the early days.


The earlier unpublished stuff will probably stay right where it is in the loft.  It was a different genre, more supernatural in a way, and I write better now anyway.  I think the time away from it between 1993 and 2001 made me more succinct, gave me a greater clarity about what I wanted to say.  I have gone back recently and read some of my earlier work and it was a little verbose.  But hell, it was good practice!


Now it’s a different game.  Now I know the things I write are going to be read, and that makes a lot of difference.  It has its own issues, its own obstacles, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.  As John Lennon said, Find something you love, and you’ll never work another day.

R. J. Ellory

Ellory's books, which are all available in the United Kingdom, include A Quiet Belief in Angels and The Anniversary Man, which are also available in the United States.  (His other books often be found in the Amazon.com marketplace in the US, as well.)  His latest release is The Saints of New York.

Ellory writes psychological suspense with a literary touch and human warmth, and a voice that echoes around your imagination until it lands in your heart to stay.