Orycon 34 Promo

Here's a coupon for anyone who'd like a free copy of Masks from Smashwords!

Promotion and marketing is weird.  Not tough, not bad, just weird.  Everyone and no one seems to know what they're talking about.  And I'm not sure I want to spend time and money promoting.  I love doing little things -- designing post cards, business cards and stuff like that.  But ads in newspapers and stuff?  Trying to get on the radio or tv?  Maybe it's a hurdle I have to overcome.  Or maybe my instincts are right.

You gotta just spend time writing, and writing well, and then putting that writing out where people can find it.  Promotion and marketing stuff is what's supposed to help people find your writing.  But with the great flood of self-publishing out there, how much marketing would it really take, and how much would it cost?

Hard to say.  I guess that's why even the big publishers get it wrong with marketing sometimes.

The Trials of Marketing Part One

OMG.

I just spent all day ordering my first ever promotional postcards.

Okay, maybe not allll day.  But it felt like all day because I had to redo the postcards so that they fit within the bleed margins.  I thought I already had, but apparently not.  Also, apparently my powers of math are weak, because they weren't quite proportioned right.  After playing with resizing the existing postcard sides, I gave up and rebuilt them from scratch.

Then and only then was I able to upload them, order them, and I then find out that with the not-cheapest but not most expensive shipping, they will arrive the day before Orycon.

!!!!!!!!!!

That's a little tighter margin than I like, but I'll live.  And they are done.  Done!  For this batch, anyway.  With the heart attack moment at the end of ordering time (finding out when they'll actually arrive) I think I would have preferred to go with a local big box instead and worry about getting the cheaper price later.  Especially since the shipping was scary expensive.  The moolah I saved I basically lost to shipping.  Assuming the quality would have been the same (I'm not sure it is) I think I would have rather spare myself the heart attack and buy the cards at a higher-per price and driven them home myself.

But, having said that, now that I'm a (scarred) postcard-creating veteran, I can save buckaroos by ordering larger batches with essentially the same shipping from the same company.

Or not.  These postcards may not result in any sales.  If not, I guess I'll be out about $60, which is not devastating in the grand scheme of things.  If so, it'll be money well spent even if it only initially sells me a couple of copies.  That'll be a couple of chances for reviews, a couple more chances for the word to get out, but most importantly, a couple of chances for the writing to prove itself (or not.) 

Cowgirl Up

I don' wanna work I wanna lay on the beach w/my handsome young cat Wiz-dom.

Crazy work day today. I finished a couple of stories and sent out a bunch that had come back. That added up to seven (I think) submissions that went in the mail today. One included a rejection my DH found in the mailbox just as we left the house to go to the PO.

Keeping stuff in the mail can be tough for me sometimes. I'm a writer, not a mailer! When I get a rejection, the temptation is to deal with marketing later, say, during the next Ice Age. Or maybe on the night of the next blue moon.

Realistically, though, it's part of my job. It must be done. (Note the passive voice in the previous sentence that neglects to include someone doing the 'it'.)

I suspect every job has some aspect that's a real chore. Some artists groan at having to stretch canvas or watercolor paper, while others loathe the finish work on animal fur. Some writers despise grinding through a first draft, while others put off the review/revision or editing process. Some secretaries hate answering phones while others will tidy endlessly in the hopes of putting off filing or going to the office supply store to restock their work group's materials. And I bet it's a real pain for some of those CEOs to have to bend over to place their golf ball. Seriously, that's gotta be rough!

Anyway, the answer is, if you can't afford to hire someone to do your icky stuff for you, then you gotta cowgirl up and just do it.

I'm feeling all puffed up with cowgirl virtue now.

Stories out: 23

Currently reading: Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (tee-hee-ing-ly recommended)

Yays Galore

A gratuitously adorable kitty and girl pic.

Congratulations to INK member C.S. Cole for her first short story sale! More announcements about that at the appropriate times.

Also, our household had money fall out of the mail the other day. It's great to get royalty checks, especially right now.

More yay as far as the upcoming weekend weather--we should be warming up. Right now it's colder here than in Juneau, Alaska, where the temperature is around 27 degrees F. Compared to us in the teens and smaller twenties. I'm very grateful that the winds have calmed down substantially today, and I'm looking forward to Friday, when the temps will start to rise. Of course as they rise we're supposed to get some incoming dampness. Or the incoming dampness will warm us up. Either way we may get snow or freezing rain, but that'll be fun, too, since none of us really need to go anywhere or do anything important. I'll have to remember to stock up on fresh meat Friday morning, in case we can't get down the hill for the next little stretch.

At some point we'll take advantage of our relatively wind-free, sunny weather and cut a few trees. Which, even more yay, we can add to our firewood stockpile, a pile that is looking pretty scary-small. Yeah, I know, it's sad to cut trees, but these trees are bad. Actually, they're not bad, but ... We have a couple of very dense patches of volunteer douglas fir and the remaining trees will grow much taller, faster, and fuller/healthier with a few of their fellows gone. Mother Nature thins trees at a much slower pace, a combination of chemical warfare and suffocation/smothering that really doesn't seem any less cruel than converting the ones that will get choked out anyway into fuel to help keep us warm. Yay to being warm, especially if our power goes out and we're snowed/iced/snow-iced in. Then the dead trees will be our only source of warmth.

I guess that we're helping the tree bullies win, but it doesn't make horticultural sense to help the weak, possibly already dying trees survive and cut down the healthy ones. Alas, the laws of tooth, claw, branch and root. But, as a gardener, I'm used to the cruel realities of both the natural and the cultured plant world. I've slaughtered thousands of weeds, heartlessly, even gleefully, and pile the corpses to convert into soil for new garden beds.

Now I'm creeping myself out.

Last yay for this entry, I now have 15 manuscripts out in the mail looking for homes. A while back I had ten, the most I'd ever had out in the mail, ever. I'm aiming for at least one new manuscript out in the mail every week for the foreseeable future as part of my new commitment to put my typing where my mouth is. Or something like that.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for more blog posts as weather allows.

Time to Write

I'm at the Fat Straw, prepping to write.  Today I'm writing about a woman with no legs, and I'll possibly go into writing about a woman who has nasty symbols burned into the front of her body if I have time.  I'm also staring at a deadline.  I've crossed the finish line, but I let the manuscript ferment for a bit and I'll taste it today to see if it's ready to go.  If it is, I'll send it out, as I got pinged the other day reminding me that the story is due by September 1.  Piece of cake.  If I'm not done dithering by then, I can't call myself a pro.

Mixed in with all these writing tasks, I've got a field riddled with tansy ragweed that has to get cleaned up before the flowers go to seed.  Sometimes it feels like an uphill task, I mean, for metaphorical reasons, not just because the field is on a hill.  Our neighbors have a field full of tansy ragweed too.  They usually get rid of it early and we're the ones at the eleventh hour pulling things up, shoving the ones gone to seed already into big plastic bags.  Not this year.  We're a little ahead of our usual MO, they're way behind.

It's not fruitless, though, just aggravating.  Like the necessity of marketing--it'll never go away.  Even if I manage to find an agent, I'll still have to send short stories out, write query letters, synopses and proposals, make phone calls, do business.  Would I rather just write?  Heck yeah.  I'd rather just do my regular gardening too, instead of sweating out in the pasture pulling up stuff that shouldn't be there in the first place.  But it's part of owning land, and marketing is part of writing.  You just gotta do it.

On the plus side it's cooled down locally.  Very pleasant writing weather, pleasant gardening weather especially in the early evening, when it's still light outside but the birds are trying out their night songs, and the moon is like a rosy pearl, and it's too bright for stars.  That's my favorite time to be out, as long as I remembered to spray on some bug juice.

It's still bright and warm outside now, but it feels like the perfect hour.  Time to write.

Shock Waves

I'm still not coming back to my blogs as often as usual, and I'm just going to post a few notes today.

We lost one of our white does, Snowflake, to some sudden onset thing.  It might have been bloat.  I've never had a goat get bloat, and it's really the wrong kind of year.  She didn't look anemic, so I don't think it was worm overload.  The only other things that looked wrong is that she had a bit of a dirty butt, so maybe she had diarrhea at some point, and she seemed a bit on the thin side, so maybe she'd been sick for a while but didn't show it.  Anyway, I'm frustrated by the loss.  I sprinkled poppy seeds on her grave and around the property.  Goodbye, sweetie.  You were a good goat.

I've been writing and editing, and I sent out that agent query I wanted to send out.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  Much as I believe that the writing has to stand on its own, I'm not opposed to a little spiritual boost, especially during the current economy.

Like many other genre writers, I'm a little shaken by the loss of Realms of Fantasy.  That was one of the magazines I aspired to be published in.  Word has it that although subscriptions remained strong, newsstand sales dropped off dramatically and the publisher dropped Realms in order to funnel needed funds into other projects.  

This reminds me strongly of the markets when I started my first round of heavy submitting and some of the changes that happened surrounding Weird Tales that disturbed me.  The feeling at the time, with magazines like Midnight Zoo appearing and disappearing with unpleasant rapidity, was similar to what it is now, but back then there was far less a sense of desperation.  (I actually had an offer from Midnight Zoo and the same day I got the acceptance letter I got an email letting me know they'd just folded.)  It seems I do better under an ill-fated star.  Maybe this means this year I'll get an agent, despite everything.

Polishing

I didn't miss a day of blogging for anything in particular.  I met with my new accountant (yay! she's so wonderful I love her!) and handed over some paperwork, shopped at Costco, watched some X Files with the kids (this is their first time seeing it so it's xtra X filesy fun) and went over some manuscripts that are being critiqued today.  I suppose I was pretty darned busy, but I could have squeezed in a hi how r ya somewhere.  

I'm still stuck on the fight scene in the script, although I'm starting to get some ideas that will raise the stakes and hopefully make for a frightening or at least eerie magical fight.  The boy and I also discussed makeup.  I may have to raise his film budget to $20 instead of zero.

As far as the Lucky Labs meeting today, I will have one of my shorts critiqued.  This is the only one that's home right now so I'm eager to hear the comments, polish it up and ship it out.  I enjoy having them out in the big world instead of locked up in my hard drive where no one will see them.  It motivates me to write more stories, though at the moment the script has my writing time tied up.  

Have I thought about turning the script into a short story?  Only just now.  But it's more of a visual rather than a prose story.  The difference bothers me.  I feel like I'm not doing a good job of layering the visual medium, so I'll have to go back through with that in mind.  It also reveals how much sub plotting and layering I'm used to doing in prose work, and the level of depth I'm used to playing with.  In script form I feel like I'm only able to polish a mirror, while with prose I can step right inside.

I got another rejection in the mail(form) and tomorrow is my deadline for getting another query out.  My pile of things to do is starting to look like a pig pile.  Here comes Radcon, and he's six foot seven and 350 pounds.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

The good news with Radcon is that I've been playing with my art mats (which were poorly cut thanks to my primitive mat cutter) and I developed a technique that bevels the edges, looks sharp, and gives me lots of opportunity for expression.  If you're wondering, since I've been working at my day job too, when I get a chance to write the answer is oh, between 11pm and 2:30am when I'm not spending that same window on art.  On mornings when I have to get up with the kids at a wee tad before 6am, this doesn't allow for much sleep (she said, yawning.)  Thank the status quo that I could sleep in this morning.  I still have to work, but I got about six hours of sleep--feels like heaven--and I work a short shift so I can work out at 24 Hr Fitness (maybe soak in the hot tub too,) get home in time to fix a semblance of dinner, finish messing with my last matting projects, and then write.  Oh, and see if I can put together a query.  If I can't, well, I'd rather pay INK a dollar for missing my deadline than turn out another package that will only earn me another rejection.  From the pattern I've seen so far, query letter and synopsis, sharp, opening is torpedoing me.

Masks opening

After receiving a rejection from the wonderful Nelson Literary Agency, I've decided that it would be a good idea to solicit some opinions about my opening.  Anyone dropping by is of course very welcome to comment.  I'm especially hoping to see some opinions from folks who haven't read further into the novel, although comments from INKers and anyone else who's read Masks would be great as always, because I have no perspective left.  Readers who haven't read anything prior of Masks are particularly valuable to me right now because they're in the same emotional space (or pretty close) as agents and editors who are looking at my partials.  

The contest had us submit the first 500 words, but I think I have less time than that to capture someone's imagination.  I decided to go with the cleanest break near 250 words and ended up with about 280.

Here it is:

Mark stared at the robin egg blue ceiling while lying in Lord Argenwain's bed.  He checked the ancient clock that tocked at the far wall in the golden master bedroom.  Almost three in the afternoon.  He had to be at his history lesson soon.  His tongue felt furry and an unpleasant pressure thickened around his mouth and eyes.  Thirst tightened his throat.  He didn’t want to be here, but he didn’t want to leave either.  Bainswell might be bored, or in a mood, or waiting.

The old man stopped snoring.  His fish-like mouth with its stained, long teeth gaped open.  Mark caressed Argenwain's papery skin, concerned.  Still warm.  He held his hand near the old man’s mouth.  Warm, moist breath.  Relief eased through him and he sat up.  Mark worked his hands through his hair.

If the old man died he’d grieve, but it would be a complicated sort of grief.  He didn’t want to think about that, or anything complicated at the moment.

Mark forced himself out from under the covers and padded across the fur carpet into the cobalt tile bathroom, his feet curling from the chill.  Wheat-colored lengths of hair curtained his face as he bent to wash his face in tepid, jasmine-scented water in a marble sink.  He settled his bare bottom on a mahogany chair, grabbed a comb from the vanity, and combed his hair out with his head bowed.  Tension burned in his belly while resignation bowed his spine.  Maybe it just seemed like he’d had one bad day after another because he was exhausted, but a superstitious part of him wondered if a morbai watched from the spirit world, waiting to satisfy its malice.  

As an aside, I hopped over to LitLotRS and found that my good friend had posted a great poem.  Check it out.

Lots Ahead

I've done a lot of critiquing over the past few days.  First pages, Lucky Lab manuscripts, cowriting.  I've also done some polishing on Masks, but not nearly as much as I'd like to.  It's wild, but the dreary kind of wild like when you've been camping for ages with no one else around and all you really want is a home-cooked meal, a hot shower and your own bed.  I'm slowly crawling out from under my backlog, keeping up on the new stuff coming in, and I hope by the time Wednesday rolls around (my guesstimate for when I'll be done with all this) I can sit down and write uninterrupted.

I missed a critique meeting on Saturday.  It started to snow, and snow, and snow.  It was one of those snow storms that dumps several inches in a few hours.  If it had snowed steadily all day and night at that rate we might have seen accumulation that could be measured in feet rather than inches.  As it stood it was very off and on and had mostly stopped by 8pm.  Just a few minutes ago it started raining, which will take our three inches of slush and melt it all away in short order.  I'm surprised that we still have snow--it's about 40 degrees F out there.  The ground is really cold, though.  

Anyway, I'd already missed one Lucky Labs meeting because of work and I was really looking forward to making a meeting for once.  I find critiques so valuable, not just for the feedback but the inspiration.  I try to change locations when I write periodically.  When I write in my office I tend to write writing-in-my-office prose.  The prose freshens immensely when I hand write at work, or tap away on a laptop somewhere, etc.  I haven't had a chance to jostle myself out of this physical comfort zone for quite a while, so it makes critique groups even more valuable.  When I come back from one I feel as if I've been run through a wash and dry cycle.  My mind has had all the dingy grime washed away and the tangles have been brushed out.

Coming up, Radcon.  I've had a chance to pitch informally to coworkers (though I doubt they knew that was what I was doing) and although I'm still not very good at it, I'm starting to find my feet.  I don't think I'll be pitching Masks at Radcon, but you never know.  If an opportunity presents itself I think I'll go for it.  Chances are high that Masks will come back with a 'thanks for your sub but this doesn't fit our needs' note.  It's out of the slush pile, which is really fabulous, but now it's competing with nothing but promising novel concepts.  It feels wonderful to have gotten this far.  I have to be careful, though, not to let my subconscious settle me into a 'far enough' mode.  I'm outside my comfort zone and I'm sure all kinds of little status-quo demons will be busy at work trying to either stuff the worms back into the can or at least building a new, bigger can to keep the worms in.  Heh.  Out of the can and into the compost bin?  

There's lots ahead of me right now.  My life has turned into a page-turner.  I can't wait to see what's going to happen in the next chapter.

Gah!  Weather update.  It looks like this right now (4:36pm):

I was just getting ready to head out to the Olive Garden for a birthday party, too.  Denied!!  The temp was 40 degrees only a half hour ago, and it was raining, like I mentioned earlier in this post.  Now it's at 36 degrees and dropping.  I shouldn't have said anything about the snow melting away.  I have only myself to blame.

Day Off

After three days of work in a row (I know, gee Kami, that's not a whole lot) I now get to play catch up.  That means researching and putting together a submission for an agent, getting the Nissan to Les Schwab (within the hour,) catching up on housework, shopping and I'd also like to get some writing in today.

Fortunately I only work two days next week and they're split, so I'll have plenty of time to get my act together then.

I'm really looking forward to the INK meeting tomorrow so I can find out what my fellow INKers think of the next section of Masks.  

I've been tagged in a blog game by Carissa of Writer in the Trenches fame.  I will discharge my duty to the average of my ability.

The rules:

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Leave a comment on their blog so that their readers can visit yours.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Share the seven (7) most famous or infamous people you have met. Or go with the original 7 weird things about yourself. Or with Sandra's change and list your 7 favorite writing websites. Lots of choices!
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post.
• Include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

The only thing I'm iffy about is the tagging of the seven people.  I like games and all, but a lot of people don't like to be pestered with this sort of thing, and a large percentage of the people I know are this way.  I have some writing webpages on the sidebar, so I'll limit myself to pages I don't have in the side bar.

• Long Ridge Writers Group:  Most of the features on this page are free, including the chat room.  The stuff you pay for is legit and very worth it if you need help bringing your writing to a publishing level.  I know Mary Rosenblum and she's an amazing teacher.  She's also heavily published, disproving the theory that those who cannot do, teach.  I guess she could count as famous, too, sort of.  I don't have experience with the other instructors but I have a feeling they're also excellent.
• Preditors and Editors:  It tickles me that the appropriate title bugs the heck out of my husband because of the deliberate creative spelling.  A valuable resource.  Always, always check this page when marketing your work before you send it out.
• Agent Query:  Can you tell what I have on my brain?  The search function is particularly handy.  Double check agents at Preditors and Editors before you send out your work.
• 101 Reasons to Stop Writing:  I currently have one of their calendar pages as my desktop wallpaper.  It's Shakespeare with the following caption:  You will never be this good.  You're not even Titus Andronicus good, much less Hamlet good.  My twisted sense of the writing life meshes well with this page.
• At Last! Writer Beware Blogs:  A.C. Crispin and Victoria Strauss write about various scams aimed at writers.  Some people are despicable.  Read about them.  Sometimes the scammers discover mention of themselves on the page and attempt to defend their behavior.  That's even more fun.
• The Rejector:  He's a real superhero.  If I had to do his job, I think I'd go mad, mad I say, mad!  Thank goodness I'll only ever contribute to his problems.
• Viable Paradise:  I'm only putting this up to torture myself.  If anyone out there is trying to decide whether to burn a heap of money just to see the pretty colors or to just give it away to strangers, then hey, I'm a stranger ...  Someday, maybe, someday I'll be able to go.  And hey, New England.  Some place I never knew I wanted to see until I read about it.  

And now, I shall do some tagging.  Let's see if I get to seven:

• Coledust:  You've been tagged yet again.  It's good for you.  There are people checking your blog every day, hoping you'll post--I hope that encourages you rather than giving you a shiver of OMG leave me alone.  
• C.S. Cole:  You too are tagged twice.  You cannot resist the power of meme!
• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:  I would have tagged his wife too but I think she wants to keep her blog quiet.  Not that a link here will give her a huge rush of traffic or anything, but you never know.
• The Story of Spaz:  I'm not sure my son will know how to play this game.  It'll be a learning opp, I guess.  I cringe to think what might come up if he wrote seven weird facts about himself.  I'm not sure I'm that brave.
• Chiron Training:  I doubt Rory will have the time even if he had the inclination, but you never know.  I know he doesn't care for this stuff, but on the other hand it's just me tagging him so he won't have to feel obligated.  He can just kiss me gently on the cheek and smile and I'll forget all about it.
• Life in the Land of the Rising Sun:  I can't even begin to guess which way he'll run with this.
• Interrupting Gelastic Jew:  The wonderful Snippy has  given me permission to inflict the game on her.  Yay!

Okay, that took much longer than I expected.  Don't have too  much fun out there, people.  Remember, safety first!

Masks and Amazon

The Masks polish is coming along.  Yes, I'm done with the rewrite (yay!) and now I'm fiddling on a detailed level--line editing, theme stuff, scene choreography, and juicing up or drying out description and narration.  Because this is me and my favorite color is purple, I do more drying than juicing, especially with narration.

The news on Amazon is that Rory's book, Meditations on Violence, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.  Talk about scary moment, especially since we haven't held a copy in our hands yet.  For $18.95 you can have a piece of Rory's brain.  As far as I'm concerned, that's a serious bargain.  

Kick 'em when they're up, kick 'em when they're down

So after working hard on setting up drafts of Chirontraining.com and kzmiller.com on the web, I had to take chirontraining temporarily down due to technical problems with editing that were not going away.  I can't fix any typos, add stuff to kzmiller.com or tweak awkward phrases because the same problems that plague chiron plague kzmiller, but kzmiller doesn't have as many issues as chiron so I didn't think I'd be as embarrassed to leave it out there flapping in the web wind.  Not that anyone except my closest friends will ever look at the darned thing, but there you have it.  My husband's coworkers do occasionally search around for him and he has quite a following on his blog, so chiron really needed to be lots, lots better than it is.  And it will be, provided iPower can fix this.

I'm really enchanted with iPower's low prices.  I'm not enchanted by their extremely long wait times for tech support, usually an hour or more on hold.  I'm sure they're not happy either.  They're flying on a new platform and it's making life difficult for everyone.  They're doing their best for me--I've been passed along to a level 2 tech.  I have to admit I don't know what that is, but it sounds like they've taken the next step to solve the problem.  So wish me luck, wish iPower luck, wish the poor souls who need help with their websites luck as they brave the hold music with a crick in their elbows and sore necks.  And may patience rule the day.

In other news not related to Kami's obsession with getting business-related webpages online, we've had a local flood warning issued by the weather service.  I get to see if our french drain will help deter the yearly flood 'o the office.  I hope so, because I have paper stuff on my floor.  Again.  As usual.

Maybe I'll work on cleaning some of this stuff up today.  Ugh.  On my list of projects during Kami's Marketing Month will be to finish tiling in here and organize my office.  Wish me luck with that too.