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From 200 rejections to Amazon top 200!

Sibel Hodge

Ever since I was old enough to scrawl my first word, which was Halibaaaaa, I knew I wanted to write books. OK, so the word didn’t actually make sense, and it might take a little longer for me to actually string a whole sentence together, but that didn’t put me off. I was going to write books and no one would stop me…

 From when I was really young, my mum encouraged me to read. “If you can read books, you’ll never be bored,” I remember her telling me. I secretly think it was a ploy to keep me out of her hair and quiet for a while. I was always a loud kid with lots of energy, and always getting into some sort of trouble with the boys down our street. (Yep, even then I was a sucker for boys!). After discovering the wonderful world of books, I thought I’d have a go myself, and remember scribbling down stories whenever I had a spare moment. Shame I was only six, and there was no way anyone would publish a book with I Want Big Girls’ Knickers in the title.

When I was in secondary school my favourite subject was English language. I’d lose myself for hours. And even though I hadn’t thought about my forthcoming career before I left (apart from being Wonder Woman or an astronaut), I knew, even then, I had a love of creating. I also loved to make people laugh from an early age. In the beginning, it wasn’t intentional. I was always saying ridiculous things that I thought were quite serious. Like the time I went to the butchers shop with my nan, and the lady behind the counter asked where I was from. “South America,” I said. (I know, where the hell did that come from? I must’ve had an overactive imagination from the start.) So when people started laughing at me, I thought, hey, this is pretty fun! We live in such a hectic world and laughter is a perfect way to de-stress. Because my personality is quirky, fun-loving, and slightly nuts, it was probably a given that I would eventually write chick lit, although I have recently delved into the dark side of my brain (which is a pretty scary place to be sometimes!) and written a psychological thriller.

 But when I left school no one mentioned writing as a career. It was all boring things like secretarial jobs, travel agents, office work. I didn’t even know about creative writing courses until about ten years ago! I think they considered that writing wasn’t a “proper career.” No one suggested journalism or further education in writing. So what was a girl to do? Although my mum wanted me to go to University and study to be something like a doctor or lawyer (eeek!), I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do for a career, so I flitted from one job to the next, trying to find something that interested me, and eventually ended up working for the police for ten years. So there I was, too busy paying the mortgage, working shifts, and living in the rat race of life to have the proper time or opportunity to write a novel. It didn’t stop me trying, though.

It was drastic things like splitting up with a boyfriend that made me start my first novel when I was about seventeen. I never got further than the first three chapters, though, because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, other than using a typewriter! Then I started another one (I got dumped again – can you see a pattern here?) when I was about twenty-three, and ditto (I’d hate for those to ever see the light of day). I just knew that I loved writing and therefore it stood to reason that one day I’d do it, didn’t it? And although I look back now and think I wish I’d started writing earlier, actually, I have to say, that it would’ve been bad timing. Back then I wouldn’t have had anything to really write about. A lot of the things that go into my books now are based on my experience of life. People I’ve met, places I’ve been, books I’ve read, things I’ve done, struggles I’ve achieved. At twenty-three, what did I really know about any of that?

And then five years ago, hubby and I had had enough of theUK. We got fed up with the constant grey weather, bills that seemed to increase as you looked at them, working constantly to pay them, and never having quality time for ourselves or our family. Right, it was time to make my childhood dream come true and move somewhere exotic, where the cost of living was lower, and we would actually have time to enjoy each other and life again. Then I would finally have the time and opportunity to dedicate to writing. Yes, we’d have to sacrifice a lot of things to achieve it, but it would be worth it in the end. So we moved toNorth Cyprus, and it was like my brain suddenly said, Hallellujah! Now we divide our time betweenCyprusand theUK.

I didn’t actively think about what I was going to write, but a year after we’d moved there I had an exciting idea for a story, using my unique Turkish Cypriot/British cultural heritage, and my debut romantic comedy Fourteen Days Later was born. Then I actually became the guinea pig for the sequel, My Perfect Wedding! But it was all very well completing my dream of writing a book, but until it was published, no one would get to read it.

So I started querying hundreds of agents and publishers. I got too many rejections to even count! OK, small white lie, a while ago I did count them out of morbid curiosity, and it was a whopping two hundred!

I did come close a couple of times to being traditionally published, but it never quite worked out. It was either, “one group of editors liked it but another didn’t”, or “the chick lit market is saturated”, or “we love it but…”

When I first looked into publishing independently, platforms like Amazon Kindle didn’t support international authors. So the way I saw it, I had two choices. Either I could write another book, hone my writing skills and learn all I could about my craft, and wait for an opportunity to come up, or I could let all the rejection letters get me down, think my writing career was over before it had begun, and stick my head in the oven! Since heat tends to turn my curls into a ball of frizz, it was no contest, really. I wrote my next novel, a chick lit mystery called The Fashion Police, and waited. Because I knew, I just knew, that I COULD do this. I could write novels that people wanted to read. If only I could get the chance. 

In the meantime, I also entered several writing competitions. And while I was still getting the dreaded rejections, Fourteen Days Later was shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Prize 2008 and received a Highly Commended by The Yeovil Literary Prize 2009. And The Fashion Police was a runner up in the Chapter One Promotions Novel Competition 2010 (and later nominated for the Best Novel with Romantic Elements 2010 by The Romance Reviews). Surely I was doing something right, wasn’t I? But I STILL couldn’t get a publisher!

Then last year, when Amazon opened up their doors to non-US authors, I uploaded Fourteen Days Later and The Fashion Police onto their Kindle store. I couldn’t believe it when I finally saw my books on sale. It was scary, rewarding, exciting, amazing – so many experiences rolled into one.

But what if no one liked my novels? What if I had all bad reviews? What if all the two hundred rejections were right? What if, what if…?

Time for a deep breath, Sibel. If you want to be an author, you have to repeat this mantra everyday… “I can do this. I can do this. I CAN do this.”

So I did.

And boy am I glad I did! The first month with Fourteen Days Later and The Fashion Police, I sold 44 books (another eeek!). Then I released my third novel, a romantic comedy called My Perfect Wedding, and later released my second chick lit mystery Be Careful What You Wish For. In the last 6 months alone I’ve sold over 40,000 ebooks, and all my novels are consistently in the Amazon top 100 genre categories for humor, contemporary romance, comedy, and romantic suspense. My highest overall sales ranking to date is 136, just missing out on the Amazon top 100 bestseller charts. Considering there are over 900,000 Kindle books on Amazon, that’s not bad!

And this is one lesson I’ve learned in the last couple of years…You can do anything you want to in life. It may mean you have to go a different route than you originally planned, but if you’re determined enough and believe in yourself, you can overcome any obstacles.

So I’m toasting all you women out there with my glass of wine. Cheers to dreams and making them come true! Looks like I got my big girls’ knickers after all!

You can find Sibel’s books in paperback and all ebook formats. For more info, please check out her website

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon  and Barnes & Noble . To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.

 

  

HOW A BIG YELLOW TRUCK CHANGED MY LIFE

(for the better)

An orange peel grapple is a big machine. Excavator on the bottom. Long arm in the middle. And a metal grapple on the end that looks like a horror movie claw. The base spins. The arm moves up and down. The grapple grabs stuff like SUVs and big piles of metal.

You may come across one while driving, and if you have a little boy in the car, you may have to pull over to watch the thing move cars into a tractor trailer. Otherwise, nothing about this machine will rock your world.

But an orange peel grapple changed my life.

My life was a complete disaster at the time. Though I had a beautiful baby boy and a good husband, I had a job in an industry I swore I would never return to, at a company that wanted nothing more than to suck the blood directly from my heart with a curly straw. This, after I had already sold all the blood in my heart to the film industry, which after a few meetings and screenwriting awards, looked like it might want to take a sip from that straw.

A sip, because as good as things were looking, I saw a long road in front of me. My work was not “commercial enough,” and my manager had made it clear that years would pass before I would be able to convince anyone that this lack of commerciality was a quality that was, well, commercial.

But no. My husband lost his job, and I found work in the fashion industry soon after. What I rapidly discovered was that, though out-of-towners could schedule meetings back-to-back all over town, Angelenos were expected to take a meeting at the last minute, or blithely accept a rescheduling. My boss, on the other hand, had no interest in moving around my personal days, and my sick days dwindled in my first three months on the job. It took only a few months for the meetings to dry up and for me to start writing a Santa Claus script out of desperation.

So, the blood-sucking fashion job with the inflexible hours was right next to a scrap yard, which apparently opened at the crack of dawn because when I got there at seven thirty every morning, the orange peel grapple was already grabbing away. If I had a minute, I watched it go up and down as I clutched my coffee, and I thought, one day I should get a video camera and film this because my son would love it. Really love it.

My son was about eighteen months old and just learning to talk. I missed him while I was at work, adored him when he was awake and with me, and the rest of the time, I found room to resent him for taking me away from writing. He was then, and has remained, a fireball of energy. His teacher alternated between calling him a Jack Russell terrier and a buzz saw. He is also obsessive. Right now, he has a room full of Legos. Before that, it was Thomas the Tank Engine, and before that, it was trucks. Big yellow trucks. He wouldn’t fall asleep unless he gripped a toy truck in each fist. When he received a Tonka loader for Christmas, it was love at first sight. He called it “lolo.”

One morning, with the vision of that big ‘lolo’ that I would later know as an orange peel grapple dancing in my head, I dialed a friend’s number. I’d known this man from Brooklyn, and he’d come to Los Angeles a few years earlier to attend the American Film Institute. Most importantly, he had a camera. When I got his answering machine, instead of asking him for the camera, I said something else entirely, something like, “Hey, wanna produce a kid’s video together? Here’s the pitch. Trucks. Okay, bye.”

That moment may not seem pivotal, but most turning points don’t when they happen. That moment, I took control of my creative life. My friend called me back the minute he got up, and we began the journey toward becoming business owners. We did not pitch the idea around town, and we did not ask permission to bring the work to the public. We put the DVDs on Createspace, and eventually had to hold inventory to meet the demand.

Lolo Productions and the Totally Trucks series have had ups and downs, but the process taught me two things. One, my concepts need to be simple. If I can’t pitch it in five words, it’s not a concept I should develop. My second lesson is that I can be in control of my product and my creative life. If I think something is worthwhile, I can bring it to my customers. Becoming the producer and publisher of my work means I understand now what agents and studio executives meant when they said “commercial.”

Without my son, I never would have taken the life-sucking job. And without that job, there would have been no orange peel grapple. And without that scrapyard, there would have been no Totally Trucks. No eye for the commercial and no control of self-publishing. Who knows what I would have made without all the things that pissed me off for interrupting my work

website: http://fashionismurder.com

Amazon link: 

Dead Is the New Black (Fashion Avenue Mysteries)

<ahref=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005MEG38C/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=loloprodu-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005MEG38C”>Dead Is the New Black (Fashion Avenue Mysteries)</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=loloprodu-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B005MEG38C” width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

Nook:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dead-is-the-new-black-christine-demaio-rice/1105858865

        

Just Me and James Dean…by Cheryl Bradshaw

When I was a little girl I used to make up stories at bedtime for my younger sister, Michelle.  The most vivid centered on a boy and a girl who received a piece of gum for Halloween in their trick-or-treat bag, and when they chewed it, they were transported to a magical land where they were granted unlimited wishes.  Even at such a young age, the process of concocting stories was effortless.  My mind revolved like the reel of a movie spinning inside my head.

I spent many hours daydreaming as a child.  Back then everything was as beautiful and white as a freshly painted fence.  I fantasized about the day I would get married, the children I would have, the house I would own, and the life I would live when I was all grown up. 

When I was a teenager, my mind still swirled with girlish hopes and dreams.  I remember lying on my bed in my room staring at a poster on my wall of James Dean.  He was hunkered down on the seat of a motorcycle, and Marilyn Monroe was perched behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist, and her head resting on his shoulder.  I wanted to jump into the poster like the girl in A-Ha’s Take on Me video and ride off into life’s highway, just me and James.  Together, forever.

When I became an adult and moved out on my own to attend college at the tender age of eighteen, I thought I had my whole world figured out.  I’d developed a slight obsession with Agatha Christie and knew mysteries and thrillers were the perfect genre for me as a writer.  All kinds of ideas flowed for the first novel, and I thought I was on my way.  There was just one problem: I never started writing.    

Why? 

I wasn’t prepared for the events that were about to take place in my life or how they would affect my journey.  Life didn’t turn out to be the dream I thought it would be, and I struggled—a lot, and faced challenges and trials that at times seemed more than I could bear.  My relationships didn’t always work out, and all the babies I hoped to have didn’t come like I’d planned.   There were times when I felt like my life was like a shattered mirror, and I was on my hands and knees desperately searching for all the pieces of myself so I could glue them back together and feel whole again.  During those times I wondered how many other women out there in the world felt the same exact way. 

Time went on and I struggled, but eventually I picked myself back up and I healed.  With a new lease on life and a positive attitude about what I’d overcome, I thought about writing again.  In 2009 I wrote Black Diamond Death, the first novel in my Sloane Monroe series.  Sinnerman followed six months later and now I’m hard at work on the third, I Have a Secret. 

As I sit here and write this, I’m shocked that I am being so candid.  Normally, I safeguard my feelings.  To say I’m a private person is an understatement, but I feel compelled to get this out.  My message in all of this is to never lose sight of your hopes and dreams.  Never forget who you are, where you came from, and what you are capable of accomplishing in your life.  And if you have a passion, foster it with everything you have inside you.  Let it shine.  Let it breathe.  Let it be. 

When I pondered about the dedication I would use for Sinnerman, my direction was clear and I wrote the following:

This book is dedicated to anyone who’s ever had a dream. We have but one life, and one opportunity to live it.  Make it last, make it count, and make it the best it can be.  Live your dreams, I know I am.

Today, I’m no longer waiting for James Dean to ride up on his shiny black motorcycle.  I’ve fallen for a different kind of boy now, one who dreams of wide open spaces and a simple life.  One who wants to be a cowboy when he grows up.  Now the poster I see in my visions is one of man hoisting me up on the back of his trusty steed while we ride away together into the Wyoming sunset.

If you asked me ten years ago if this was the life I thought I wanted, my answer might have been no, but if you asked me today I would say I’m right where I’m supposed to be.  My life isn’t perfect, the challenges are still there, and I still have a lot to learn about myself.  But no matter what the future holds for me, I know one thing for sure: I’ll never stop writing.

*******

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.

*******

Cheryl’s book’s on Amazon:

Black Diamond Death (Sloane Monroe Series—Book One)

Sinnerman (Sloane Monroe Series—Book Two)

Whispers of Murder (A Novella)

To learn more about Cheryl, visit her here:

Blog for Readers

Website

Twitter

Facebook

    

 

WRITING FROM A FLOUR SACK

by

Dani Amore

 

Fact:  I was born on a bathroom floor.  Literally.  My arrival into this world was followed seconds later by an unceremonious drop onto the cold tile of St. John’s Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.

You see, I was the fifth out of six children.  My mother knew my delivery would be fast, but the nurse at the hospital insisted she go to the bathroom before the doctor arrived.

 Later, after the drama and I was pronounced healthy, my mother told the doctor that the nurse should have listened to her, that she had warned the nurse that the baby (me) was going to arrive any second.  That, having already delivered four children, she knew her body pretty well.

The doctor said, “Five kids, huh?  Maybe you should tell your husband to keep it in his pants.”

 True story.

 ***

 Both of my parents were born in Italy.  They emigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s.  My father always said the biggest difference between Italy and America at that time was that you could work your ass off in Italy and have nothing to show for it.  If you worked hard in America, you could eventually become wealthy.  He started a construction company and worked 6 days a week, from dawn to dusk.  Eventually, he was successful.

 My mother raised six children. 

 She is a strong woman.

 Both she and my father share a love of aphorisms.

 The one I remember most?  “A well-made flour sack stands on its own.”

 It was almost like a mantra with her.

 At a key point in my writing life, that phrase came in handy.

 ***

 So there I am.  I’ve got a full-time job in advertising.  I’m writing about products that suck, working for people I can’t stand, and with two good friends, drinking every night after work.  At a little bar not far from the office.  I’m averaging about five or six drinks a night.  Every weeknight.  More on the weekends.

 But on those weekend mornings, I’m writing fiction.  Just short stories that I try to picture in The Paris Review.

Everything gets rejected with remarkable efficiency.

One night, probably half in the bag, I come across THE DAY OF THE JACKAL on television.  The original movie is pretty campy and the remake with Bruce Willis is a pure load of crap.  But the book.  The novel by Frederick Forsyth is one of my all-time favorites. 

The scene on television is the best part of the movie:  It’s where the Jackal is sighting in his rifle.  He paints a little face on a small melon, then blows it apart from 500 yards away.

There’s no epiphany.  I go to bed.  But as I toss and turn, vodka fumes in a cloud around my pillow, I think about the narrative structure of the story.  I’ve read the book several times.  Even have a collector’s edition.  The chase.  The tension.  The violence.

When I wake up the next morning, I make an especially strong pot of coffee.  I push aside my short literary fiction, and start a new story.

It’s about a hitman and a female escort.

Later that day, during some interminable meeting where everyone is throwing out insidious phrases like “let’s get on the same page,” and “think outside the box,” I realized what I was doing.

I was writing to please others, instead of focusing on the kind of stories and books I like.

Crime fiction.  Thrillers.  Suspense.

I had forgotten one of my mother’s cardinal rules.

A well-made flour sack stands on its own.

***

I know it sounds melodramatic.  But the truth is, everything changed after that night.  I still despised the advertising industry, but I no longer let it bother me so much.  I begged off going to the bar with my friends, instead choosing to work out and then get some writing done in the evenings.

Eventually, I finished several crime novels.  Even landed a big New York literary agent.

But a funny thing happened.  My agent, and publishers, seemed to have endless debates about how to market me.  Should I be a hardboiled crime novelist?  A thriller writer?  A traditional mystery author?

There were suggestions to change this book and change that one.  Then change it back.  Then change it to something else.

But now I had learned.  I was smarter.

I told them thanks, but no thanks.

It was time to stand up and be the writer I wanted to be.

So I became an indie author.

And when my first book became a Top 10 Mystery on Amazon, I knew I had made the right decision.

Never underestimate the power of an Italian mother armed with an aphorism.

Dani’s Books on Amazon:

Death By Sarcasm

Dead Wood

The Killing League

To Find A Mountain

To learn more about Dani, visit her at http://www.daniamore.com

            

 

A KINKY ADVENTURE IN ANGLOPHILIA

By Anne R. Allen

When I started writing funny women’s fiction fifteen years ago, if anybody had given me a realistic idea of my chances for publication, I’d have chosen a less stressful hobby, like do-it-yourself brain surgery, professional frog herding, or maybe staging an all-Ayatollah drag revue in downtownTehran.

As aCaliforniaactress with years of experience of cattle-drive auditions, greenroom catfights and vitriolic reviewers, I thought I had built up enough soul-calluses to go the distance. But nothing had prepared me for the glacial waiting periods; the bogus, indifferent and/or suddenly-out-of-business agents; and the heartbreaking, close-but-no-cigar reads from big-time editors—all the rejection horrors that make the American publishing industry the impenetrable fortress it has become.

But some of us are too writing-crazed to stop ourselves. I was then, as now, sick in love with the English language.

I had three novels completed. A fourth had run as a serial in aCaliforniaentertainment weekly. One of my stories had been short-listed for an international prize, and a play had been produced to good reviews. I was bringing in a few bucks—mostly with short pieces for local magazines and freelance editing.

But meantime, my savings had evaporated along with my abandoned acting career; my boyfriend had ridden his Harley into theBig Sursunset; my agent was hammering me to write formula romance; and I was contemplating a move to one of the less fashionable neighborhoods of the rust belt.

Even acceptances turned into rejections: aUKzine that had accepted one of my stories folded. But when the editor sent the bad news, he mentioned he’d taken a job with a smallUKbook publisher—and did I have any novels?

I sent him one my agent had rejected as “too over the top.” Within weeks, I was offered a contract by my new editor—a former BBC comedy writer—for FOOD OF LOVE. Included was an invitation to come over the pond to do some promotion.

So I rented out my beach house, packed my bags and bought a ticket to Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where my new publishers had recently moved into a 19th century former textile mill on the banks of the river Trent—the river George Eliot fictionalized as “the Floss.”
 
George Eliot. I was going to be working and living only a few hundred yards from the ruins of the house where she wrote her classic novel about the 19th century folk who lived and died by the power of Lincolnshire’s great tidal river. Maybe some of that greatness would rub off on me.
 
At the age of… well, I’m not telling…I was about to have the adventure of my life.

I knew the company published mostly erotica, but was branching into mainstream and literary fiction. They had already published the first novel of a distinguished poet, and a famousChicagonewspaper columnist was in residence, awaiting the launch of his new book.

But when I arrived, I found the great Chicagoan had left in a mysterious fit of pique, the “erotica” was seriously hard core kink, and the old building on theTrentwas more of the William Blake Dark Satanic variety than George Elliot’s bucolic “Mill on the Floss.”

Some of my fears subsided when I was greeted by a friendly group of unwashed, fiercely intellectual young men who presented me with generous quantities of warm beer, cold meat pies and galleys to proof. After a beer or two, I found myself almost comprehending their northern accents.
 
I held it together until I saw my new digs: a grimy futon and an old metal desk, hidden behind stacks of book pallets in the corner of an unheated warehouse, about a half a block from the nearest loo. My only modern convenience was an ancient radio abandoned by a long-ago factory girl.
 
I have to admit to admit to some tears of despair.

Until, from the radio, Big Ben chimed six o’clock.
 
That’s six pm, GMT.
 
Greenwich Mean Time. The words hit me with all the sonorous power of Big Ben itself. I had arrived at the mean, the middle, the center that still holds—no matter what rough beasts might slouch through the cultural deserts of the former empire. This was where my language, my instrument, was born.
 
I clutched my galley-proof to my heart. I might still be a rejected nobody in the land of my birth—but I’d landed on the home planet:England. And there, I was a published novelist. Just like George Eliot.

Three years later, I returned toCalifornia, older, fatter (the English may not have the best food, but their BEER is another story) and a lot wiser. That Chicagoan’s fit of pique turned out to be more than justified. The company was swamped in debt. They never managed to get meUSdistribution. Shortly before my second book THE BEST REVENGE was to launch, the managing partner withdrew his capital, sailed away and mysteriously disappeared off his yacht—his body never found. The company sputtered and died.

And I was back in the slush pile again.

But I had a great plot for my next novel.

Unfortunately, nobody wanted it. I was now tainted with the “published-to-low-sales-numbers label and my chances were even worse than before.

So I wrote two more novels. Nobody wanted them either.

Then I started a blog. I figured I could at least let other writers benefit from my mistakes. My blog followers grew. And grew. The blog won some awards. My Alexa and Klout ratings got better and better. Finally, publishers started approaching ME. (There’s a moral for writers here—social networking works.)

And finally, six years later, another publisher, Popcorn Press, fell in love with FOOD OF LOVE and sent me a contract. Soon after, they contracted to publish THE BEST REVENGE, too.

And this September, a brand new indie ebook publisher called Mark Williams International Digital Publishing asked if I had anything else ready to publish.

Just happen to have a few unpubbed titles handy, said I.

He liked them.

So in October and November of 2011, those three new comic mysteries will appear as ebooks: THE GATSBY GAME, GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY, and SHERWOOD, LTD (that’s the novel inspired by my English adventures.) Popcorn Press will publish paper versions in 2012. THE BEST REVENGE debuted as an ebook in December, with the paper book to follow in February.

A fifteen-year journey finally seems to be paying off.

Did I make some mistakes? Oh yeah—a full set of them. But would I wish away my English adventures?

Not a chance.

*******

Links:

Blog http://annerallen.blogspot.com

Twitter @annerallen

 Authorpages:  At Amazon.com , at amazon.co.uk , on Facebook 

SHERWOOD, LTD

(Romantic comedy/mystery: MWiDP) A penniless socialite becomes a 21^st century Maid Marian, but is “Robin” planning to kill her?  Buy at amazon.co.uk , amazon.com, or Barnes and Noble

THE BEST REVENGE

(Romantic comedy/mystery: Popcorn Press) A suddenly-broke 1980s celebutante runs off to Californiawith nothing but her Delorean and her designer furs, looking for her long-lost gay best friend—and finds herself accused of murder. Buy at amazon.co.uk or amazon.com and in paper at Popcorn Press or in paper at Amazon.com .

                         

Turning Medieval by Sarah Woodbury

 Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint those moments in your life where everything is suddenly changed.  When you look across the room and say to yourself, I’m going to marry him.  Or stare down at those two pink lines on the pregnancy test, when you’re only twenty-two and been married for a month and a half and are living on only $800 a month because you’re both still in school and my God how is this going to work?

 And sometimes it’s a bit harder to remember. 

Until I was eleven, my parents tell me they thought I was going to be a ‘hippy’.  I wandered through the trees, swamp, and fields of our 2 ½ acre lot, making up poetry and songs and singing them to myself.  I’m not sure what happened by the time I’d turned twelve, whether family pressures or the realities of school changed me, but it was like I put all that creativity and whimsicalness into a box on a high shelf in my mind.  By the time I was in my late-teens, I routinely told people: ‘I haven’t a creative bone in my body.’  It makes me sad to think of all those years where I thought the creative side of me didn’t exist. 

When I was in my twenties and a full-time mother of two, my husband and I took our family to a picnic with his graduate school department.  I was pleased at how friendly and accepting everyone seemed.

And then one of the other graduate students turned to me out of the blue and said, ‘do you really think you can jump back into a job after staying home with your kids for five or ten years?’

I remember staring at him, not knowing what to say.  It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about it, but that it didn’t matter—it couldn’t matter—because I had this job to do and the consequences of staying home with my kids were something I’d just have to face when the time came.

Fast forward ten years and it was clear that this friend had been right in his incredulity.  I was earning $15/hr. as a contract anthropologist, trying to supplement our income while at the same time holding down the fort at home.  I remember the day it became clear that this wasn’t working.  I was simultaneously folding laundry, cooking dinner, and slogging through a report I didn’t want to write, trying to get it all in before the baby (number four, by now) woke up.  I put my head down, right there on the dryer, and cried.

It was time to seek another path.  Time to follow my heart and do what I’d wanted to do for a long time, but hadn’t had the courage, or the belief in myself to make it happen.

At the age of thirty-seven, I started my first novel, just to see if I could.  I wrote it in six weeks and it was bad in a way that all first books are bad.  It was about elves and magic stones and will never see the light of day.  But it taught me, I can do this!

My husband told me, ‘give it five years,’ and in the five years that followed, I experienced rejection along my newfound path.  A lot of it.  Over seventy agents, and then dozens and dozens of editors (once I found an agent), read my books and passed them over.  Again and again.

Meanwhile, I just wrote.  A whole series.  Then more books, for a total of eight, seven of which I published in 2011.

And I’m happy to report that, even though I still think of myself as staid, my extended family apparently has already decided that those years where I showed little creativity were just a phase.  The other day, my husband told me of several conversations he had, either with them or overheard, in which it became clear they thought I was so alternative and creative—so far off the map—that I didn’t even remember there was a map. 

I’m almost more pleased about that than anything else.  Almost.  Through writing, I’ve found a community of other writers, support and friendship from people I hadn’t known existed a few years ago, and best of all, thousands of readers have found my books in the last year.  Here’s to thousands more in the years to come . . .

 Links:

 My web page:  http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/

My Twitter code is:  http://twitter.com/#!/SarahWoodbury

On Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/sarahwoodburybooks

Links to my books:  Amazon and Amazon UK
Smashwords  BarnesandNoble  Apple

 

 

            

  

     Suzanne Tyrpak

Holes   

I used to think I had to be perfect. Of course, I fell short of perfection on a regular basis so I frequently felt like a failure.

The only way to prevent failure is to hide. If we don’t put ourselves out there, we can’t fail.

To prevent myself from failing, I hid in a fantasy world. As a young child, I longed to be a ballerina. I loved to dance, but more than that, I wanted to escape into the fantasy world of the ballet. I wanted to live inside a fairytale, and in my mind, I did. I invented worlds I could escape to, perfect worlds that seemed more real to me than life. Meanwhile, I ate, and ate, and ate. Not ideal, if you want to be a ballerina. My reality never matched my inner world.

I created this pattern, this external and internal disparity, throughout my life. I brought it into my marriage, convincing myself that my marriage was perfect, while in reality it was a mess. Instead of leaving, I found escape in writing. I lost myself other times: ancientEgypt, ancientGreece, ancientRome—worlds as far away from my reality as possible. In my writing, I disappeared for hours, days, years. I got a job working at an airline so I could travel and do research. I got an agent. I felt sure I would be published.

Then my world fell apart. After nineteen years of marriage, my husband wanted a divorce. I fought it. Divorce didn’t fit my idea of perfection, my fairytale. I viewed this loss as a disaster, but in truth it was an opening, a hole leading me to greater understanding and compassion for myself and others.

I was broke, trying to live on what I made at the airline. I was lonely. I had no time to write. Worst of all, I had to admit my life wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect. Forced to accept myself with all my imperfections, I discovered that the more I could accept myself, the more I could accept others. Even my ex-husband. To this day, we remain friends.

Because I no longer had time to sit down and write for hours, the kind of time it takes to write a novel, I wrote short stories. I wrote about my experience, about my struggles as a woman of fifty going through divorce and entering the dating world. Initially, I wrote the stories for myself as therapy. Then I began to share the stories with my writing group. They encouraged me to submit the stories to magazines, and several were published. I read a couple of stories at our local library and people laughed. Then my good friend, Blake Crouch, convinced me to publish the stories on Kindle. A frightening prospect. What if my stories weren’t good enough? What if they weren’t perfect?

At first I resisted. I’d had two literary agents, and a longtime dream of being traditionally published. Self-publishing didn’t fit my idea of perfection. But, in reality, I no longer had an agent, and I hadn’t worked on a novel for several years. What did I have to lose? Nothing. So I published Dating My Vibrator (and other true fiction).

My world changed, not because I was finally published, but because I changed. I finally found the confidence to pursue my dream despite my imperfections. I found the courage to stop hiding and put myself out into the world. This freed me.

I rewrote my novel, Vestal Virgin—suspense in ancient Rome. Originally, my characters were a bit flat. Why? Because they were too perfect! I hadn’t looked at the manuscript for two years, and a lot had changed for me in that time. I rewrote the book with a cold eye: cutting, digging deeper. My characters became multifaceted, real people with flaws.

I became busier and busier, caught in a whirlwind, trying to hold down a full-time job, write, promote my books and have a life. Trying, once again, to be perfect.

And then the universe stepped in.

I had an accident at work. While moving a jet stair (which weighed over 1,000 pounds) away from the aircraft, my right foot got crushed. I fell, screaming, onto the tarmac while passengers onboard the plane watched. A coworker rushed me to the hospital for the first of three emergency surgeries. I suffered intense pain due to nerve damage, broken and dislocated toes and, ultimately, amputation of a toe. As I write this, I’m still recovering.

I spent five weeks at a nursing home, a good place for me (even though most of the patients were over eighty years old), because it would have been close to impossible for me to take care of myself at home. While there, I had a chance to meet a lot of the patients and residents. All of us had obvious holes.

 I learned a lot from the other patients. And I was forced to face my own mortality. Aging offers us the gift of acceptance. In order to age gracefully, we must the release the idea of perfection. We learn there are some things we can change, and some things we must accept. And, when we accept what is, we may find the good in even the most difficult situations. We learn to accept the holes in ourselves and others. We even welcome imperfection.

Since the accident, I’ve been thinking about holes a lot. I’ve been thinking about being whole, in relation to loss. How can loss make a person whole? I’ve learned that loss can make a person strong, more self-reliant. Loss can make us more compassionate to ourselves and others.

Where I had a toe, there’s now a hole, and that hole reminds me that I’m not perfect. But, despite my imperfection, I am whole. I am me. It would be ridiculous to think that I am any less of a person, because I’m missing a toe, because I have a hole. Just as it’s ridiculous for any of us to think we must be perfect.

Physical wounds can’t be hidden as easily as emotional and psychological wounds. And that’s a gift. Physical wounds make us confront our mortality, our humanity. Physical wounds can’t be denied. They are tangible and force us to accept ourselves, with all our imperfections.

It’s impossible to get through life without being wounded. Some wounds are obvious. Others are internal, even spiritual: the loss of the ability to trust, to connect deeply, to hold a friend and know that you are loved.

We run away from wounds. Try not to look at them. We think they’re signs of weakness, but our wounds—the holes in us—provide a doorway, a soft spot in our armor. We walk around armored, protecting ourselves with platitudes and false smiles, never touching our own vulnerabilities, afraid to share our tender rawness with another or even with ourselves.

If we can touch the tender spots, allow ourselves to feel fear, sorrow, loss, we become closer to wholeness. The more we accept our holes, the more compassion we can have for others. When we feel compassion we are able to connect. We are able to expose our soft underbelly to another human being and share the salt of our tears, the sweetness of our joy. That’s what I want to write about, that’s what I want to share, because salt makes all the difference between a bland, protected life, and a true life: pulsing, bloody, messy, passionate and truly whole.

Flaws, or holes, are what make a character seem real—in life and in fiction. Perfection is impermanent, an illusion. A person who seems too perfect is repulsive. We don’t trust him. We know that person can’t be real. Holes speak of truth. Holes allow us to connect, to ourselves and to each other. Our holes make us human, make us beautiful. Holes allow the light to shine through.

If someone had asked me last spring, “Would you give up a toe in order to learn, in order to have time to write your next novel?” I might have said, “Yes.”

Funny, how life works.

   

 

Mrs. So Got It Wrong Agent.

After writing forever, I decided to finally go down the independent road in 2008. At that time, it was called self-publishing and the track I decided to take was POD. Part of my reason for the move was that my books had been declared commercially viable by the UK literary consultancy that assessed them, but in every instance they were declined by the Big Six.

The only time I had any sort of meaningful comment prior to POD publication was from a highly regarded English agent who said she loved the novels and knew she would kick herself for declining but felt I lived too far away to engage with. I know I reside in the southern hemisphere, in a place called Australia, but this is a new world in which we exist. Amazingly there is a thing called email, something else called Skype and even video-conferencing, so I was rather gobsmacked at her antiquated approach. This, I felt, was the time to take my destiny in my own hands!

You see, I was getting older and with age comes a degree of intransigence and that was when I took up the POD offer… basically in a fit of disgust at the ‘old ways’.

I did everything right: good covers, great PR, super website and then a blog with which to engage with the reading public, even radio and print media interviews… you name it, I did it. Book Two came out and I continued to sell to a niche market online and in stores. At one point, my first novel took the prime display position in bricks and mortar stores, selling more than any other unknown first release for that chain.

Then, whilst working on A Thousand Glass Flowers, I had the misguided idea that it would be nice to secure an agent who could handle all this PR and marketing stuff and maybe help me push the barrow further. With the success of the first two novels under my belt, with stats of web and blog hits as well, I contacted the first Australian agent on my list.

Imagine my surprise when two days later, on a Friday afternoon, she rang me to talk business.

Her first comment after a loud monologue on her credentials was ‘Why in the hell did you POD your first two books?’ Ironic snicker followed this acid question.

‘Because I was tired of submitting the old way and getting nowhere in a very long time.

‘But you’ve signed your own death warrant.’

‘Then why are you talking to me?’

‘I am intrigued that you managed to get the web hits and the book-sales you have.’ Her tone was sarcasm incarnate. Something about good books and hard work was on the tip of my tongue.

I was so flummoxed at this point that I allowed her to ram-raid me and roast me. Heaven help me, I agreed to send her mss of the first two novels (even though they had been published!) Perhaps I am a masochist. Who knows?

She read them and sent them back slashed to pieces. These were fantasy novels about love, loss, grief and revenge, novels that have secured 5 star reviews. She had deleted every conceivable piece of emotion from the manuscripts so that they expressed nothing. If she read them right through, I’d have been surprised as she asked elementary questions about the plot resolution… questions that were answered in the denouement of each of the novels. Her editing was unbelievable, her spelling appalling and she got my name and address wrong for the return of the mss. Now remember… this is supposedly one of the top agents in my country, top obviously not equating with manners and sensibility.

When I rang her to say politely, thanks but no thanks, she lambasted me and said, ‘You are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Small-time.’

My reply was that if she had taken me on, what a good talking point she would have had about her exciting new author. As it was, I continued, I was declining any further involvement with her as my books were out there and selling.

‘You have committed professional suicide.’

***

In the last three years, this agent is the only negative in my writing career and far from depressing me, it proved to be the biggest shot of tenacity in the arm! Reverse psychology at its very best!

So guess what, Mrs. So Got it Wrong Agent, I’m having a ball. The books are now in e-form and selling well. My third novel consistently took a place in the Top 100 of Kindle novels in its category not long after publication. I’ve sold across the globe, I have a niche following, I’ve made the friends of a lifetime and I am master of my own destiny. There are two further books to be published in The Chronicles of Eirie and in a step sideways, my first ever historical fiction will be published in February.

And at this point in my life, I don’t regret not having an agent one bit!

***

Addendum: Whilst writing this piece for the anthology, I nursed my little muse, the dog who would jump up behind me on my chair and sit whilst I typed. He had terminal cancer and in the intervening time between publication of the anthology and the posting of my piece on these blogs, he has gone quietly to his rest… a brave, funny companion who was my inspiration. I dedicate the above tale to him… to Milo.

Brief bio to help with an intro if you need one!

The best way to describe myself would be to use a quote written about me by Mark Williams on a recent blog (http://markwilliamsinternational.com/)

Here it is: ‘She lives in Tasmania, has a pet Tasmanian Devil called Gisborne, eats kangaroos’ testicles, has the most ridiculous one-star ever awarded on Amazon, and wrote a novel on Twitter…’

Believe it or not, most of it is true. My husband and I own a farm so we do have lots of kangaroos around, but the testicles? Ugh! As to the Tasmanian Devil? I wish I did have one for a pet, but as recently reported in the Huffington Post, http://huff.to/f3zxSd the poor little things are suffering the ravaging effects of a disease that is bringing them to the edge of extinction. Better the scientists and conservation zoos look after them than me. And I do have a one star rating on Amazon… a woman bought my first book thinking it was an embroidery book despite the blurb and then gave ME a one star despite HER mistake. And yes, myself and 50 others wrote a Jane Austen style novel on Twitter, [(#A4T) http://www.austenproject.com] which was mentioned by The Times (UK) no less as it took off earlier in the year.

Me in a nutshell!

 Website: http://www.pruebatten.com

Blog: http://www.mesmered.wordpress.com

Facebook: Prue Batten

Twitter: pruebatten

Books may be purchased at: Amazon.co.uk http://amzn.to/v2mosZ

And at Amazon.com http://amzn.to/rHBVoy