Meet the Villagers: YA Author Emily Ford

This week, we’re interviewing Emily Ford, author of the successful new YA sensation, 2:32 A.M. Having worked with her, Emily qualifies as a Villager-by-association and we’re really proud of her success. The first in the Djinn Master’s Legacy series, 2:32 A.M. is a YA paranormal where a young girl is forced to choose between ordinary life and love, and being inexorably drawn into a world of Genies.  

How did you come to write 2:32 a.m.? 
I've always enjoyed telling stories, and realized I had a knack for the creative while telling ghost stories to my bunkmates at summer camp. As my own children grew, bedtime stories became more intricate adventures, and continued long after it was probably cool for them to want one. 2:32 a.m., and the consequential Djinn Master’s Legacy series began as the "last" of our bedtime stories, sort of like my own legacy for them to enjoy, and perhaps share with their children. By the time the adventure ended, I had written enough for three very full books. I've been editing ever since.... From first word to this moment has been 5 years, and 4 months.  

What was most difficult about it? 
Definitely knowing when to stop!  

What has been the most rewarding about it so far? 
I’m amazed and proud that I actually finished. And no matter how it's received by others, it still remains first and foremost, a bedtime story for my kids. That's enormously gratifying.  

If somebody from say, Pluto, landed in front of you and asked you to tell them about your novel, how would you describe it? 
I would best describe my story as a teenage girl-morphing-into-adulthood-while-being-thrown-into-the-magical-world-of-Genies story.  

Which of your fictional characters most resembles you? 
One of the Genies named Roula. She’s feisty, but fiercely loyal. Strong, but nice to a fault. And she's an exceptionally powerful genie, though totally humble and discreet. She's the perfect figment of my imagination.  

Give us a writing tip. 
Hmmm, well I’m not sure I’m qualified to give advice, but what worked for me was the consistency of writing every single day. No matter how my schedule varied, I carved out work time. Also, for me it helped to write as if I was telling the story out loud. It brought the action to life, at least for me.  

Already fans are clamoring for the next installment, any hints as to what comes next? 
Much more of everything: Action, magic, love, despair, anger, danger, fear… and did I say love?  

Buy it Now!  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/130447
 http://www.amazon.com/m-Djinn-Masters-Legacy-ebook/dp/B0077276KG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1336424855&sr=1-1

Meet The Villagers

This week, we’re beginning a new blog series with authors talking about their books, the long road to publishing and the writing life.

To kick things off, this week we feature  S.G (Harriet) Rogers, whose new book, THE TAXI CHRONICLES is a lighthearted, freewheeling slice-of-life in which cab driver Honey Walker winds up at the intersection of small town life and some big city crime.

VG: How did you come to write The Taxi Chronicles? 

Rogers: I started driving a cab when my husband opened a cab company 5 years ago.  The characters that we picked up and the things they said and did were frequently so funny that it seemed to lend itself to a book.  I wrote the kind of book I enjoy reading.  Funny, fast and a little cocky.  Combined with the problems of a small town cab company, and, yes, we have been approached to transport illegal substances, and you have a natural for a novel.  I just had to learn how to move the plot forward and chill on the sleeping arrangements of the characters.

VG: What was most difficult about it? 

Rogers: Everything.  I had no idea writing a novel was so difficult.  I joined two writing groups.  Both of them have been incredibly valuable in teaching me the craft of writing.  I had no clue about voice, tense, or building plot when I started. 

VG:What has been the most rewarding about it so far?

Rogers: Even with a lightweight novel, the sense of accomplishment is huge.  I finished this project and saw it actually up on the web. 

VG: If somebody from say, Pluto, landed in front of you and asked you to tell them about your novel, how would you describe it?

Rogers:  I call it an airport novel.  It’s a fast read so you can finish it on an airplane between Boston and Chicago.  If you’re a slow reader, you might have to go to San Francisco.

VG: Which of your fictional characters most resembles you?

Rogers:  None of them.  Lucille might be a little like my mother but Mom is 93 yrs old.  I think Lucille is younger than that.  But the scene where Lucille is transporting her husband’s ashes actually took place when my mother and I took my dad out to Wisconsin to be scattered.  When the federal agent asked what was in the box, I said; “Dad”.  He told me that his mother wanted to be scattered at the casino.  She just loved it there.

VG: Give us a writing tip.

Rogers: Discipline.  Try to write every day.  And don’t give up your day job.  Remember even John Grisham couldn’t sell his first novel.

VG: Not to mention there’s plenty of inspiration in your day job if your novel is any indication! We hear the book is the first in a series, any hints as to what comes next?

Rogers: The next book gives Lucille center stage.  It involves the theft of prescription drugs from senior citizens.

The Taxi Chronicles by S.G. Rogers

Watch the Book Trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RV5dZRFf-E

Buy it now at amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Honey-Walker-Adventures-ebook/dp/B007N7094K/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334611965&sr=1-1

or Barnes and Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-taxi-chronicles-sg-rogers/1109738808?ean=2940014167925

How Indie Publishing Has Changed My Thinking by Susan Kaye Quinn, author of Open Minds

Kathryn Rusch has a brilliant article where she uses a scarcity vs. abundance analogy to describe the publishing industry: most every writer, publisher, agent, editor, reviewer was raised in a scarcity model, where book shelf space was limited, publishing contracts few, and rarity was equated to quality. But in today's reality, (virtual) book shelf space is unlimited, anyone can publish, and we are operating in an abundance model where there is an unlimited supply of books. This infinite capacity combined with increasingly powerful search engine capabilities have trained consumers (readers) to adapt to this abundance model, but producers (writers, publishers, etc.) are (often) still stuck in the scarcity way of thinking:

"All those questions writers ask about how to get noticed in this new world? Those questions come from someone raised in scarcity. Being noticed was important because your moment on that shelf was - by definition - short-lived. Writers who understand the long tail know that the way to get more readers is to have more available product. Abundance works, even for the single entrepreneur."

Did I mention it's brilliant? (Go read the whole thing.)

This - literally - changes everything.

I thought I was forward thinking before self-publishing, but the act of going indie, of being up-close-and-personal in the indie trenches, has really changed my thinking about my writing and my author career.

There's a tension in the Indie world about needing to publish quickly, needing to get works out there, because that is what successful self-publishers in the recent past (1-2 years) have done. There's a drive to seek out the best way to promote books, to get on the Top 100 lists, to find the magic key to "discoverability" that will bring more book sales. The connection to book sales is visceral - you can track your rankings and sales by the hour, and those numbers mean something. They are the income that's going directly into your bank account, the funds that make it possible to keep publishing (by paying back your investment) or justify spending your time writing (by providing actual income). So there are huge, tidal-sized forces that drive indie publishers to put out books quickly and promote them heavily in order to connect their books to readers.

The potential to make money in Indie publishing is very real. The days when even "successful" authors had a tough time living off their writing wages is starting to change. As Rachelle Gardner noted in a recent blog post, the typical advance for a first-time traditionally published author is $5,000-$15,000 per book, and most of those first-time authors do not sell through their advance, so that is all the money they will ever get from that book (and if you don't sell through in the first 12 mos, the publisher may not be so excited about buying another book from you). Comparing this to Indie publishing, I know several authors (many, many authors, including myself) who have already earned more than $5k per book, often well before the first 12 months after publication. Of course, many indie authors also struggle to earn back what they've invested in their books, and everyone's experience is going to be unique with this.

But here's the thing: concentrating on what a book earns in the first 12 months is scarcity thinking, a left-over from limited-time-on-shelf. Because if a book didn't hit in the first 3 or 6 or 12 months, it wasn't going to pay back its investment ... because it would become literally unavailable on the shelf.   Books used to go out of print. Now, there is no reason for that to happen.

Abundance thinking says: this book is going to be on the shelves forever. FOREVER. That is a very long time, my friends.

Cue the visuals:

I picked random numbers for this, so you can scale it up or down - thousands of sales instead of hundreds, or whatever. And this stops the race after 5 years, not FOREVER, as noted above. The point being, of course, that slow-n-steady wins the race (the tortoise out-earns the rabbit at about 3.5 years). This isn't just a trad-pub vs. indie-pub comparison; the same lesson applies to two indie books, where one is focused on scarcity thinking (I must have a hit right away; if not, I've failed) and one is focused on abundance thinking (I need to write more, because more books=success). 

The abundance thinker is going to focus on getting another tortoise out; the scarcity thinker is focused on promoting the rabbit. 

When you start figuring out how to build a herd of tortoises, rather than promoting your rabbit, you're starting to think in the abundance reality of today's publishing. Again, this changes everything.

My take(s):

• Writing. Writing is the most important thing. Must spend more time writing. I already knew this, but this framework gives even more heft to that idea. 
• My work is FOREVER. (If this doesn't evoke an existential paralysis, I'm not sure what will.) While the temptation is great to pump out a warren of rabbits (or the herd of tortoises), since my work is going to be out there FOREVER, I want it to be the best that I can produce at the time. In other words, I'm not rushing to write a bunch of books quickly because I know they'll be around to taunt me for a long time. (Also: I love this take that the highest earning self-publishers take 24% more time per word, and write 31% more words per day)  
• Rankings aren't everything. I also already knew this, but having lived through surges in rankings and sales, I can tell you that emotionally it is awesome, fun, and sort of like the sugar rush after eating cotton candy at the carnival. Which almost always makes me want to throw up. Slow and steady sales not only win the race, they're good for my psyche.
• I need to focus on the herd of tortoises. Promotion is still important, and I'm not going to go completely into my writer's cave, just because it's damp there and my friends are here. I enjoy social media too much. But the writing is definitely taking precedence. And I'm thinking not just about this trilogy, but the next, and the one after that. I want my turtles to all play nice in the sandbox together. 
• I still think in scarcity ways sometimes. And that's okay. It takes time for the world to change, and for individual ways of thinking to change. And hearts. Those take the longest time of all. I still believe in creating pre-release buzz - I think it does sell books, even if it's a scarcity way of thinking. I think consumers have been trained by abundance thinking to believe they should be able to find any book they want, but they still look to bestseller lists and other scarcity markers to guide some of their purchasing. That's okay. Our world is in transition. Things will continue to change. But I still strongly believe that the most forward-thinking will be the winners in this new era.

This post is EPIC in length, so I'll stop here. But tell me: are you an abundance thinker or a scarcity thinker? And - whether you're traditional or indie bound - have the changes in the industry affected the way that you think?

*********************

Susan Kaye Quinn is a former rocket scientist, but she writes young adult novels because she loves writing even more than shiny tech gadgets. While her most recent novel Open Minds has been gathering up fans of paranormal science fiction, she’s been busy working on the sequel, Closed Hearts. You can find her on her blog, Twitter or Facebook.

Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy) is available in e-book and print (Amazon, Barnes & Noble).

When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep.

Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can’t read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can’t be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf’s mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she’s dragged deep into a hidden world of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

How to Lose a Reader in Ten Pages or Less by Teresa Kennedy

Agent Impossible by Teresa Kennedy

    Okay, I’ve got a lot of great clients who seem to be hitting what I like to call “the agent wall”. The agent wall means that you, as an author, have done your homework, queried a host of likely author’s representatives with a thoroughly professional query letter, proposal, pitch and sample, only to hit the wall. Polite, form rejections that tell you nothing, nondescript feedback, or no response at all. The situation for authors is SO bad it even has its own internet joke.
Q:“How many literary agents does it take to change a light bulb?”
A: “We apologize, but we are not changing any new bulbs at the moment. Have you considered the benefits of living in darkness?”
    Most untried authors hold the dream of the right agent, making the right six figure deal with a prestigious publishing concern and going on to a host of film options, translation rights, software licenses and action figures. While there’s nothing at all wrong with the dream, it’s about as close to publishing reality as the 99 percent is to the one percent controlling Wall Street. To make matters worse, there are a whole lot of literary agents out there with the same dream, trying to score the big deal, which makes them even more reluctant to take on any untried material.
    If you see the world from the agent’s point of view, the formula is pretty simple: “I will have to put in X amount of hours, trying to sell property Y. Assuming I get an offer, I will take the typical commission of 15 percent over the life of the book. If I can reasonably expect a book to garner an advance of Z plus any royalties that may or may not accrue, is that a reasonable return for my time and energy?” Ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer is no.
    Naturally agents have various ways of coping with that reality, just to give them reasons to get out of bed in the morning. The first type works in volume. They will acquire lots and lots of projects in order to come up with an extensive client list that will make them look important. But a closer look at their sales usually reveals a fairly lackluster record. They’re working the odds. The more projects they have, the greater their chances of a sale—any sale. Like a gambler working the slots, those small payouts aka your advance, aren’t a jackpot, but they give them enough hope to feel like a player.
    The second type of agent is more idealistic. They want to believe. Their dream is to get the books they really believe in, into the needy and grateful hands of the book buying public. There’s just one catch—they usually want you to rewrite it to their specifications. Idealistic types are almost always frustrated writers, or worse, editors who have grown disenchanted with corporate life. They inevitably want to get all up in your creative process, because you, the lowly author, are just another writer, but they are the “professional.” When a writer objects to this sort of behavior, they are inevitably accused of being “difficult”, “egotistical,” or just plain “trouble.”
    As it’s really easy for an amateur author to be intimidated by this sort of grandstanding, you can spend a lot of time languishing in rewrites that is time better spent with the agent making actual submissions. And any time you suspect that an agent is re-manufacturing your book to meet their idea of the market, it’s best to move on.
    The third type of agent spends the majority of their time selling the importance of having an agent. Rather than selling their clients’ books, they are busily promoting their own. This type usually has loads of well-meaning advice about being a writer, finding a literary representative and what’s trending in the industry (much of it for sale). They present themselves as an authority, and will not hesitate to assure you that your future as an author is doomed without proper representation. They will urge you to read their tweets and Like them on Facebook and buy their latest revised and updated guides. What they don’t tell you is that it’s just as hard to find an agent with those guides than without them.
    Now, it’s not my intention to tar all literary representatives with the same brush; a good agent, like a good spouse, is indeed more precious than rubies. But just as in a marriage, the agent/ author partnership means you’re looking for Mr. or Ms. Right, not the first somebody who actually answered your email. After all, good partners work together to attain mutually beneficial goals. So what are you really looking for when you’re looking for an agent?
    Make your wish list. I’ve included a few qualities that I consider essential, add your own. Good agents are people who can go the distance. How long have your candidates been in the business? The agent is your salesperson. How well do they sell themselves and their services? A good agent is a true facilitator. Is this someone with whom you can communicate, compromise and who respects you? Or do they ignore you, evade your questions, argue when issues arise, or dish attitude? How about that prenuptial agreement? If they require a contract, what exactly are the terms? Remember, the agent is supposed to be working for you, the author. If they’re not and your relationship ends, read the fine print before you sign anything. Finding a good agent can be a lot like falling in love. The rush of enthusiasm, the dreams for the future—all those promises. But even the best honeymoons come to an end and reality kicks in. So finally, ask yourself. Do I actually like this person? Or do I just like having an agent?
    Finding the right agent can seem like an impossible task and it’s true that there are a lot of agents out there who can seem like downright impossible people. But at the same time, though good, honest and reputable agents abound in this industry, even the best of them can’t accomplish the impossible. So just as when you’re looking for a marriage partner, it’s important to adjust your expectations accordingly.

Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement By Ed Bott | January 19, 2012, 1:32pm PST

Summary: Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program.

I read EULAs so you don’t have to. I’ve spent years reading end user license agreements, EULAs, looking for little gotchas or just trying to figure out what the agreement allows and doesn’t allow.

I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program.

Dan Wineman calls it “unprecedented audacity” on Apple’s part. For people like me, who write and sell books, access to multiple markets is essential. But that’s prohibited:

Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.

Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.

I’ve downloaded the software and had a chance to skim the EULA. Much of it is boilerplate, but I’ve read and re-read Section 2B, and it does indeed go far beyond any license agreement I’ve ever seen:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

• (i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
• (ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or
• service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

And then the next paragraph is bold-faced, just so you don’t miss it:

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including

without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it.

Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it. Updated to add: By “it,” I am referring to the book, not the content. The program allows you to export your work as plain text, with all formatting stripped. So you do have the option to take the formatting work you did in iBooks Author, throw it away, and start over. That is a devastating potential limitation for an author/publisher. Outputting as PDF would preserve the formatting, but again the license would appear to prohibit you from selling that work, because it was generated by iBooks Author.

One oddity I noticed in the agreement is that the term Work is not defined. [Update: Yes, it is, as I noticed on a fourth reading. It's in an "Important Note" above the agreement itself: "any book or other work you generate using this software (a 'Work')." Of course, that uses the term "work" recursively.] It’s capitalized in the relevant sections of the EULA, and it clearly is the thing of value that Apple wants from an author. Leaving that term so poorly defined is not exactly malpractice, but it’s sloppy lawyering.

I’m also hearing, but have not been able to confirm, that the program’s output is not compatible with the industry-standard EPUB format. Updated: An Apple support document notes that “¦iBooks uses the ePub file format” and later refers to it as “the industry-leading ePub digital book file type.” But iBooks Author will not export its output to that industry-leading format.

My longtime friend Giesbert Damaschke, a German author who has written numerous Apple-related books, says via Twitter that “iBA generates Epub (sort of): save as .ibooks, rename to .epub (won’t work with complex layouts, cover will be lost).” Even if that workaround produces a usable EPUB file, however, the license agreement would seem to explicitly prohibit using the resulting file for commercial purposes outside Apple’s store.

As a publisher and an author, I obviously have a dog in this hunt. But what I see so far makes this program and its output an absolute nonstarter for me.

I’ll be writing more fully on this issue after I’ve had a chance to use the program and to inspect the EULA under a microscope.

Oh, and let’s just stipulate that I could send an e-mail to Apple asking for comment, or I could hand-write my request on a sheet of paper and then put it in a shredder. Both actions would produce the same response from Cupertino. But if anyone from Apple would care to comment, you know where to find me.

Taken from "The Ed Bott Report"

Building Character by Teresa Kennedy

There’s an old joke which goes: “There are two kinds of people in the world—those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.”

There’s a similar line of thinking when it comes to novels and novelists—there are those that think the plot should drive the character and those who think the character should drive the plot. Conventional wisdom dictates that character-driven fiction tends to come under the umbrella of “literary” fiction, while plot -driven works tend to be oriented to a specific genre or category.

Regardless of what you’re writing though, all successful fiction depends upon your ability to create memorable characters in memorable situations. In order to become really engaged in your story, the reader needs to care. And because we share a common humanity, it’s a pretty safe bet they will care first about your characters and second, about what happens to them as the plot unfolds.

Very often, writers rely on characterization   to create a character, when it’s only half the job. As readers, we can wade through a whole lot of information--where Bob lives, what he had for breakfast, what he wore to work, whether he needs to lose ten pounds or hates his wife’s new perfume and tells bad jokes--and still not know anything about him, much less engage with him on some kind of emotional level. And while characterization is certainly important, you haven’t really built a character until the writer uses each of those outer qualities to somehow illustrate the inner life of the man. That means those cold scrambled eggs, his expanding waistline, underpaid job and the lingering smell of that hateful perfume all need to reveal something about how Bob feels about himself and his world.

Plot driven fiction can also give a character short shrift if it relies on situation alone to determine the outcome of the story. Becky may be a young mother and a promising law student unwittingly caught up in an international conspiracy, but nobody is going to care unless being in that situation somehow changes Becky forever. Placing her  “in danger” is simply not enough. It may be that she overcomes incredible obstacles, catches the villains and keeps the world safe for Democracy, but it isn’t going to mean a thing unless she learns something about herself in the process. Maybe the experience changes her priorities, maybe she learns the good guys aren’t always good and that they don’t always win—but whatever her revelation, Becky has to be the one to resolve the plot for the reader in such a way that they are satisfied with the outcome. Otherwise she’s just a person that things happen to—not a person who makes things happen.

To build real, believable and memorable characters, an author has to go the extra mile. It helps to know what makes people tick, but even more important is your willingness to really become those characters, body mind and spirit. It means setting aside your own opinions and judgments and even a really good outline when they depart from the script. It means feeling their pain and sharing their joy, and experiencing their conflicts in sometimes excruciating detail.  And for an author that can be both exhausting and incredibly rewarding. As the great actress Meryl Streep has said (and it’s certainly as true for a writer as an actor,) “To take someone in a really precarious position and truly inhabit their mind and soul is a very dangerous thing to do."

But the results can indeed, be memorable.