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The End. Two of the most famous and widely known words in the written language.

I love the word The End. I often start my writing with some “end” in mind and work my way back. I say “some end” because every once in a while the ending that I had conjured is not what it turns out to be. We’ve all been there I’m sure, the detour of the creative mind and the characters we dream up. However, for the most part, I try to stick to what I set out to accomplish as the finality of the story.

The words The End are sacred to me. They hold the secret to the final resolution, conflict, and issue to whatever I’m trying to convey. When you eventually read the words The End, that’s it, it’s the full loop. You have reached the last stop on your ride of reading for that particular tale.

I recently had the pleasure of penning in my first fictional novel: Isabella, My Rose, the words The End. A story about a couple’s journey and struggles within their marriage, and the miraculous birth of their daughter born with a congenital limb deficiency who becomes the pinnacle in their relationship, in keeping it all together. Honestly, I had mixed emotions after I finished it. I knew I couldn’t go any further, but yet I felt it was time to conclude the story. Similar to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.

But are you really done when you reach The End? Is all that labor of furious writing complete? If you are just writing for yourself and it’s a personal escape, well then, I guess you can end where you want. Maybe not, who knows, that’s an individual decision. However, for those writers like myself who want to publish their writings, it really isn’t The End, is it? I currently have two people editing my novel. I know there will be changes, but will their feedback change my ending? Hmm…I don’t know. That is between me the writer, and the message I’m delivering. I do know that if ever I get the opportunity to entertain the interests of the publishing industry; there will be plenty of enhancements to be made.

So even if you penned “The End,” the road to the bookshelves can be an uneven path full of cracks and rolling pebbles. The End may be done, but that my friends is only the Beginning. Keep writing. May the pen always be in your hand, and the words flow from your mind.

[Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D., better known as Dr. Ni, is a radio talk show host. I recently asked if she would do a guest post about what she's looking for in the work submitted to her.]

I was standing on a hot, sweaty street corner waiting, interminably, for the slow-ass 23 bus.  The six or seven of us gathered there quietly not fighting for the miniscule space in the shade under a definitely unloved something straining to be a tree.  We couldn’t fault it; it was trying with everything it had.

The only sources of true entertainment were the two addicts, an interracial couple, madly in love, dancing, walking, talking and occasionally nuzzling while waiting for the bus.  Their love, we could see, was clear, pure, honest, and vivacious, and they didn’t care who saw.  Neither looked a long way from their last high, but my heart leapt when I saw the female, either Latina or white, holding fiercely to and reading, a book.  Literature, I thought, in the hands of someone who needs it! Then I saw the title.  Knife Assassin.

So when you ask me the rationale behind the choices for my radio show, “Poetry & Prose & Anything Goes with Dr. Ni,” I tell you that I want my listeners to hear the best writing out there; if they tune in, I want their ears dripping in anticipation.  I want their appetite for good words whetted and then sated in the way that only sweet potato cheesecake can make a gourmand smile.

Keep in mind that I am, and have been for 13+ years, a professor of literature, and therefore I want poems and prose with evidence of study and the development of craft.  To give you an idea, here is a definition of poetic art that I gave to the Kelly Writers House for whom I did a poetry workshop in 2005:

Why poetry:  Poetry works because it bypasses the intellect and goes straight for the gut, the soul, what lies underneath your tame and ordinary conventions, ideas, and feelings about the world.  It takes you out of your commonplace feelings and arouses, touches something deeper, something you feel only in your solar plexus, something you feel only when someone surprises you and knocks the wind, momentarily, out of your sails.  That gasp for breath, of recognition, that’s what you’re going for as a poet.  You want your audience to recognize but be stunned, startled by that recognition.  You want them shocked awake by what they instantaneously understand.Poetic language: By poetic language I mean metaphor, simile and imagery as your nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs; as your building blocks with which to communicate.  Poetic writing is about density (of image and metaphor) and compactness of language; you are communicating in symbols, but you are compacting those symbols so tightly that you express 5 pages in six or seven stanzas.  Your medium is the comparison, the putting of a thought or concept into its mirror, an image:  the way in which a flower unfolds, the way in which a bee approaches and pollinates, the way in which a mirror smashes against a wall and proliferates into a million and one shards.  Tell us about your news item and its effect on your world using image and metaphor and simile.  Tell us by showing us through what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you envision, what you hold every day in your hands.

Do you see what I mean by development/evidence of craft?  I want poems and stories for the show that leave a reader THINKING, recovering from an emotional onslaught, yes, absolutely, but I want their brain teased into motion as well.  Density, complexity, sophistication:  I want all three evident in the prose or poem, and it must be a great listening experience as well; if writing is not fun for the reader, does not pull the reader in—especially against his or her will—if it is not magnetic, kinetic, and instructive what then is the point and who will ever care?
   
You may wonder why I put “and instructive” in italics.  I am one of those old saws who still believes in the ideals of the Black Arts Movement.  Literature is supposed to give us tools for living, is supposed to tell us how others survived the impossible, the improbable, the unjust so that we too can do the same—with our dignity intact, with a sense, even, of majesty and grace.  Literature is supposed to arm us for Mr. Charlie, whoever and whatever our Mr. Charlie looks like.  That tree needed love and attention and water, and that female in love and recovery needed stronger sustenance than Knife Assassin would ever be able to offer.  To face the cruel twists and turns of fate sober will require knowledge, solace, tales sophisticated and honest with characters real in their bravery; characters enough like her to help her envision acting with similar courage and fortitude.
   
The 23 bus did, eventually, come, and I left that tree there, alone, unloved, unwatered.  Soon to be another fatality in this city of mounting bodies.  As I boarded the bus I tried very hard not to look at that woman and the book that, in her hands, would continue to break my heart.

The Early Years: a writer’s roots
By Jen Wilding

Between the ages of 5 and 12, if you’d have asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you both a ballerina and a detective. From ages 13 to 16 I would’ve answered: psychologist. From ages 17 to 21? A musical theatre actress. From ages 21 to 23? I would’ve replied that I am a stage and film actress, so of course, I would like to make some decent money acting. However, at 30, I make my living as an executive assistant, and I dread the inevitable questions indigenous to first-time introductions about my occupational identity. Of course, I could go on and on about my talents doing important corporate things for important corporate people, but at the end of the day, I want to say that I’m a writer and leave it at that.

I am a writer. Saying this out loud is like finally having a sex change after years of being raised the wrong gender, at least, to the extent that I feel writing chose me and not visa versa. I don’t remember consciously aspiring to be a writer; it’s just been a lingering identity recognizable only in hindsight. In fact, whenever I imagine the type of person who is a writer, I imagine someone far different than myself: someone who looks more intelligent, like a professor with reading glasses always dangling from their neck who gets up early enough to watch the sunrise, drinks coffee black, enjoys a cigarette now and then, has a garden, cherishes books other people use as step stools and door stoppers, and has a rare-vintage wine collection. Oh, and has a fireplace. But, even in the days of putting on my ballet shoes and thinking that they would be many sizes bigger someday, I was writing.

I won my first literary award, if you will, at age nine, as a Young Author’s school finalist. My story, The Attack Lawnmower, which I authored and illustrated, was about a family who purchased a lawnmower on sale at a department store only to find out that it has an evil mind and will of its own, wrecking havoc on homes, lawns, and hair of neighborhood pets. It was ultimately more comedy than horror, as far as genre goes, despite the dramatic title. Not exactly Pulitzer material, but good for a laugh or two (if you’re an eight year-old).

I sold my first poem at age eleven. It was a comedic poem called The Christmas Craze that poked fun at how outrageous people become during the winter holidays, likening this to an infectious disease, as part of a fifth grade assignment. After I read the poem aloud to the class, a fellow classmate asked me for a copy of it. Soon, other kids in my class were asking me for a copy of the poem. Since I started finding all the work involved in amateur self-publishing to be a nuisance (trips to Dad’s office photocopier), I began informing my fellow students that a copy of The Christmas Craze would run them a whole dollar, thinking this would deter them from requesting copies. Instead, they happily handed over the buck. Some of them even skimped on their school lunch for days to buy my poem at the end of the week. After a while, it wasn’t just my classmates, but other students in the school that were finding me to buy my poem. I was a poem pusher! (I read the poem again recently; it’s terrible. Suffice to say, there are people in Kentucky that I owe a hot cafeteria lunch.)

In high school, I wrote a winning political speech. Tabitha, a fellow classmate, wanted to run for Class Vice President. She had a lot of great ideas and was passionate about making them happen, but was insecure about campaigning because she lacked the popularity of the beautiful, blonde cheerleader who would be her opponent. I offered to pen her speech for the candidate assembly, articulating her own ideas and enthusiasm. She accepted my offer and ran for office. The speech was a hit, she won the election, and the cheerleader was dumbfounded. Teachers approached Tabitha and told her it was the best speech they’d heard in fifteen or so years of teaching. For me, it was a very feel-good contribution not unlike the proverbial, after-school special that ends with the school outcasts getting their overdue validation. The cheerleader, upset, asserted that Tabitha was undeserving of the win because she didn’t even write her own speech. I was happy to inform skeptical students that plenty of notable politicians employ the use of speechwriters on a regular basis.

In my earlier years, I never dreamed that I would grow up and publish a poetry collection, write award-winning stage plays, or draft a fiction novel. After all, I don’t smoke, I prefer my coffee with cream, I don’t have a garden or a fireplace, and there’s a long list of literary classics I’ve yet to crack. But, when I think back and take inventory, it does appear writing has been with me since childhood. Today I can say that I grew up to be a writer, albeit one still discovering what that really means, crafting corporate correspondence by day, and at night, spinning stories about ballerinas and detectives.

Today’s Spotlight is on Chicago Writers Association member Diana Zwinak.

How 18 people came to write more than 70,000 words in November
and lived to tell about it
By Diana Zwinak

I believe that teenage writers have a wealth of creativity inside them that should not be ignored and that our schools’ curriculums, focused as they are on standardized tests, push many students away from acquiring the very skills that teachers want adamantly to drill into their heads. For this reason, and as a response to the needs of several of my students, I created a non-profit corporation (Teen Writers and Artists Project) that tries to help supply these teenagers with the outlet that they so desperately crave. This is beginning to take up a serious amount of time, but when I am not tending to my corporation, or writing my own work, I am teaching at a rural high school in Illinois. Our entire student body is less than 500 students. However, last year 17 of them started the journey to became first time novelists, at least by NaNoWriMo standards. It all started on a pretty typical day in November. . .

Students in my high school English classes never know what to expect. In the course of a typical day I may get overtaken by inspiration several times and spontaneously start bouncing up and down in front of the classroom, a signal that I am about to send the whole class, or a select few adventurous souls, off on a project that takes us places we never even thought of before. That is what happened to us that day in the middle of the first week of last November.

I had just started my first attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. I was brimming with the exhilaration of just writing without a direction, just letting words flow for once. I hadn’t written in this way since high school or early college when I seemed to be a pipeline of words that poured forth and shaped themselves into their own amazing projects destined after a little tweaking from the internal editor to become pretty solid creations. I had honestly forgotten how good that felt.

So I was telling my students about it. They thought I was nuts. Most of them have never attempted to write anything beyond the papers demanded of them by the school system, and once they get to high school in our district, these papers become dry and unimaginative. Wrapped up in the MLA style manual and a formula that makes them easy to grade, they are boring to write. Students soon lose interest in writing at all, much less writing well. However, these papers are also designed in such a way that the department believes their are sure to learn various skills mandated by the state, so I can see why they exist in the format they do.

But that day I was filled with the joy and the lightening that true creative freedom can bring, and I challenged them to try to take part in the project with me. The NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s program allows students to make an agreement with a teacher and set a word goal for themselves. Students are not restricted to the 50,000 words that adult novelists are given. I offered my students 25 extra credit points if they set a word limit and succeeded. If they got half-way to their goal, they got 50 percent of the points. A quarter of the way got them 25 percent and so on.

Seventeen of my students took me up on the offer. Surprisingly, many of them were not from actual classes I taught but from my creative writing club at the high school. These people weren’t currently taking classes with me so they could not earn extra credit for their work. Some worked individually, some worked in pairs. Six of my students met their word goals and several NaNoWriMo novels came into existence. Everything from love stories to teen angst and horror stories poured through their fingers and into their computers. Periodically, students would turn their novels in to me electronically so that I could upload their novels into the NaNoWriMo counter.

My students who wrote the greatest amount of words 17,220 out of a contracted goal of 12,500 wrote a semi-Gothic exchange of letters between two twins battling for survival against their emotionally abusive father. One twin was sweetness and optimism; the other was eerie and weird. Overall the novel flowed well and descriptively for a piece that was not given a chance for a rewrite. They were proud of the work they had done and were presented with blank books to serve as journals to honor their achievement.

As a whole the student body of Indian Creek High School in Shabbona, Illinois had set a goal of 50,000 words. They wrote 70,430. Not too shabby for first timers.

Most importantly of all these students were given a chance to attempt a feat their peers would not. They came away having felt the joy of unbridled creation, and the confidence of accomplishment. One memory that sticks out in my mind was the day one of my freshmen came to me describing with wonder how she had cried uncontrollably while she wrote the scene in her novel in which her heroine died. She was amazed and I was pleased that she could feel so deeply for someone she created. I smiled and nodded, remembering the times when I , myself, have lost my heart to a character.

Upon completion of the project, all students’ names and word counts were posted on a bulletin board in my classroom, and any other passing student who dared to comment negatively on someone’s lower word count was asked how many words they had written last November. I never had that problem with the participants. Those other students got my point fairly quickly.

This year we plan to start outlining in October. We will approach it in a more organized manner, and I hope to complete more that 1900 out of my own 50,000 word goal. I also plan to offer NaNoWriMo Young Author support groups to teens in the Chicago area that are planning to try. Anyone interested in having a support group in their community can contact me at TeenWritersAndArtistsProject@gmail.com. Or they can visit our weblog and online journal link at TeenWritersAndArtistsProject.blogspot.com or through our page on myspace.com

Today’s Spotlight is on Chicago Writers Association member, Lisa Maroski, author of The One That Is Both.

Exploring the Frontiers of Language    Many years ago I read a small book called The Limits of Language. It had been written much earlier, in 1962–a collection of essays by philosophers, scientists, and writers who all pointed to a boundary of sorts. If there were a sign at the border it would have said something like “Caution: No Adequate Language Beyond This Point.” However, none of the authors did any more than point at a dark void; none offered a solution, none ventured into that void. I resolved to be the person to do that. I have taken some first tentative steps, which I will share in the hope of sparking someone’s imagination, to join me in this adventure into a frontier as exciting as deep space, deep interior space this time.

My own quest began while studying physics and Eastern philosophy. From both those perspectives, the world seemed to be a paradoxical unity, not the nice linear, rational world that I had been conditioned to expect. The interpenetration of opposites–such as body and mind, energy and matter, subject and object–was more compelling to me than analyzing them in their separateness. And aside from clumsy compounds, such as bodymind, there was no way to express succinctly the dynamism, cocreativeness, and inherent unity of such oppositions. In graduate school, I experimented with equally clumsy constructions, but it wasn’t until I hit upon the idea of getting away from the alphabet that I struck paydirt. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s look a bit more closely at the boundary. If you come from the perspective that each thing we have a word for is a separate entity distinct from other entities, then the language we’ve got will do you just fine, and you can stop reading this. If, however, you come from the perspective that everything is profoundly interconnected, then the limitations of language become more evident. The very act of predicating, of saying X is Y keeps X from ever being one with Y. My friend, Steve Rosen, describes this limit very concisely, “Of course, any act of predication, any assertion that ‘X is’ or that ‘X is not,’ is an act of circumscribing X, rendering it finite, implicitly (if not explicitly) turning it into an object that is cast before the subjectivity of the predicator. Quite irrespective, then, of the explicit content of my thoughts or words, when the form of my discourse is that of predication, implicitly I finitize, objectify, create an other. Therefore, in predicating self, I actually produce what is other, what appears over against this existential self that predicates.” In other words, our language implicitly keeps the subject and object separate, keeps the unity of interpenetration of such opposites forever a poetic metaphor.

This is not the case in some languages. A Navajo woman once explained that when they say something like “I see the mountain,” it is implied that I am also that mountain, that it is not separate from me. English implies that is absolutely must be separate.

So how do we expand this language, English, to be able to express that inherent non-separation of subject and object? How do we increase the bandwidth of our language?

I have taken a stab at it by inventing new types of words, words that don’t have letters but have graphic images, since images show relationships. Here is an example of what one of them means: “fu-an-gu: its meaning translates roughly as ‘the deeper you get, the less it looks like itself, and when you reach the core, it looks like the opposite of what you started with.’” (Check out my book to see the actual graphic.) This concept embodies the paradox of wholeness, wherein you express the simultaneity of opposites. That is one way to increase the bandwith of language. I’d love to hear your ideas for other ways.

Lisa Maroski, author of The One That Is Both
website: http://murder.booklocker.com/www.theonethatisboth.com
blog: http://paradoxplayground.blogspot.com

Today’s Spotlight is on Chicago Writers Association member, FRank Creed.

Tackling the Big-Hairy-Business-of-Writing-Monster:
How to Shave and Exfoliate This Bad-Boy Without Bruising or Laceration.

by Frank Creed

At the beginning of 2006, I learned my first novel would be published. I jumped on the bed until the biz realities of being a published novelist went upside my head. That mother of a problem spanked me hard. I was an artist who’d spent a lifetime learning craft. My only online writing connection then was Elfwood.com the web’s largest amateur sci-fi/ fantasy site. Big help. Mother’d brought me up right, so I stopped jumping on the bed, and began jumping on the Web.

Intimidated by technology? All you need to know is how to use a web-browser and an e-mail program. Add a tasteful website and a real domain name to that ask-Santa list. As you log BOCHOK (butt on chair, hands on keyboard) time, steeling the courage to tackle the big-hairy-biz-reality-monster, focus on this one purpose: networking. Your job is to help your publisher sell your book—trust me, it’s in your contract. Bad news? Gone are the days when an author can retire to a cabin and just write. Worse news is that the biz-monster eats time. His diet seems to be a minimum three hours biz-time for every word-count hour, and if you don’t feed him, he can kill your career.

Why network? We use viral-marketing to build web presence infrastructure. Before the web, viral-marketing was called word-of-mouth buzz. Demographics show that the overwhelming number-one reason someone reads a book is because it’s been recommended by friend or family. Infecting print, radio, and television mediums through the real-time-modern-encyclopedia called the internet, and thereby infecting readers, is known as viral-marketing. Web-presence simply refers to an author’s visibility on the internet. This is achieved by laying an infrastructure of sites, blogs, and memberships. Web-presence is measured with tools like hit-counters, Technorati-ratings, and Googlability.

If you’re not genuine and kind throughout your infrastructure, you’ll get tagged as a spammer or board troll—friends of the biz monster willing to help kill a career, so use some propriety in your networking. Be passionate without being desperate. Live the Golden-Rule and be courteous. Help others and just tack-on your signature links. If you don’t use sig-links, get-over-it and write some. Make it easy for readers to learn more about you.

I spent eight months furiously Googling, bookmarking, joining groups, kissing palms and shaking babies. Even though I write in the nonexistent speculative fiction sub-sub-sub-genre of Biblical end-times sci-fi, I was stunned at the quantity of tools and people like me I found scattered across the web. (Let me pause and say I’m not cramming religion down any throats here—the following context will work for any writer’s niche.) Authors whose genre begins with the word “Biblical” all consider our work to be some kind of ministry. As such, my motivation for founding the Lost Genre Guild was to gather the tools and people I’d found scattered across the web, for the Boss’s glory. That, and Christians who are spec-fic genre fans pack the grudge that G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Frank Peretti and Stephen Lawhead were the only known Biblical-Speculative-Fiction authors published in the twentieth century. As readers we were starved. Quick tip: don’t starve a guy stubborn enough to spend a dozen years on one novel.

Point is, Google your niche very specifically. Use a variety of subtly different parameters. Christian spec-fic has three main sub-genres: I chased sci-fi, fantasy and horror *cough spiritual thriller cough*. Then I replaced “Christian” with “Biblical”, and did it again. Then I did it for every sub-sub-genre I could think of. Take the time to chase and scan the first two hundred results—you won’t believe the useful things that don’t Google well. Central gathering points for your niche may already exist on the web, and some charge membership fees (the Lost Genre Guild does not). To have genre-specific resources at your fingertips is worth thirty bucks a year. If you can’t find a guild or writers’ club for your niche, start one. A specific fiction-ministry is LGG members’ motivation, but authors of any niche share a bond. Find others out there doing what you do. Band together and share what you know. Network.

For those still reading, here’s a couple cookies. The Lost Genre Guild began as a private invite-only Yahoo newsgroup. I spent another eight months networking and promoting the guild. What began as a handful of artists now consists of publishers, editors, web-show hosts, production studios, promoters, blog tourists, and one unofficial cat. According to a spring of ‘06 Writer’s Digest issue (that the cat messed-on and I pitched), religious, not just Christian, fiction is expected to explode over the next five years. I’ve heard echoes of this anticipation over the last year, and the fact that the local Barnes & Noble’s has three times the Christian fiction shelf-space as the biggest Christian bookstore *cough gift-shop cough* is a biz reality. If you write religious fiction, you’re in the right place and time. And here’s a fun fact: an LGG member wrote the Wikipedia definition of Biblical Speculative Fiction. Network.

If any CWA member would like an export of my mostly categorized favorites-file containing thousands of writing bookmarks, send a blank e-mail to frankcreed@insightbb.com with “bookmarks” as a subject line. Obviously Christian or Biblical Speculative Fiction authors would benefit most, but all my months of research is bound to help anyone. I oughta be burnin’ disks and sellin’ this stuff.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, the web is a writer’s whetstone.

To God be the glory,
Frank Creed

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Home: www.frankcreed.com
Author Blog: frankcreed.blogspot.com
Book Review Blog: afrankreview.blogspot.com
Lost Genre Guild Site: www.lostgenreguild.com
Lost Genre Guild Blog: blog.lostgenre.com
The Underground Series: End Times Sci-Fi

[Lisa Laing included this from Jennifer Stevenson.]

I was a dedicated but clueless writer when I joined in the winter of 1998. Chicago North educated me in how romance works, sure, but they also educated me in basics of the publishing industry, information I’d been craving for twenty years. I learned the things that make the realization of my ambitions seem possible.

CN also prepared me to get The Call, prepared me to negotiate with agents as well as editors, prepared me for a realistic understanding of how success happens in publishing. I learned when to fire my agent (fired her soon after!) and when to hold my peace, do my job, and earn my clout. I learned how to impress my editor =after= she’d loved and bought my book, how to work with departments within the publishing company, how to negotiate the cover art and promotion issues which many authors will tell you are nonnegotiable.

CN has a library of over 700 tapes and CDs, recordings of seminars, workshops, and speeches by writers, editors, agents, book distributors, publicists, and other experts in the field. One winter, I listened to every one of them while trapped in traffic in my car. What Chicago North members couldn’t teach me directly, I learned through our library.

Best of all I got unremitting support. And laughed at a lot–I write humor. In the writer’s groups I’d attended before, too often the message was, “Why should you ever get published?” At Chicago North, the message was, “This can work. How can we make it work?”

In 2003 I sold my first book, TRASH SEX MAGIC, to Small Beer Press and CN taught me how to promote it. In 2005 I sold a two-book deal to Del Rey and landed a terrific agent. In 2006 CN gave me a wonderful opportunity to meet the Borders buyer for romance, which I could then parley into a third sale to Del Rey before the first two books had even been published. If I had not been prepared for these opportunities by my RWA chapter, I wouldn’t have known how to take advantage of them. I owe everything to Chicago North.

Jennifer Stevenson
TRASH SEX MAGIC
Small Beer Press 2004
THE BRASS BED, April 2008
THE VENUS MACHINE working title, May 2008
THE HAUNTED PORN FACTORY working title, June 2008
Ballantine Books

My first book was pubbed by a small press that had 13,500 initial orders, filled 9,000 of them, and canceled the rest. They pleaded insufficient funds to print enough. When they finally did reprint nearly a year later, the paperback came out from Ballantine the same week, and Ballantine forced the small pub to withdraw the printing.The same publisher did my next book, and went out of business the week after it was published.

The first of these books has stayed in print (paperback) for 34 years, and the second over 10 yrs — when pubbed by major houses.

Of my remaining twenty-four books, eleven have been pubbed by major houses, the others by small presses. Though the major houses sometimes haven’t been active enough, the advances have all been in five figures and the sales have provided me a living.

Of the small press books, three were pubbed nicely, sold well enough (even foreign and book club deals), and were solid. Of the others: One publisher very nicely told me she couldn’t pay $1500.00 in royalties until a year and a half later. Another didn’t pay over $20,000 for more than a year. Another has held the rights to two books for over twenty years on the bogus claim that I owe him money (I can’t afford to sue). Another explained that my book wasn’t available through Ingram because she couldn’t afford to deal with Ingram. Another accepted a book, never published it, and never told me why.

The generous side of me believes that small presses are simply so strapped for funds that they can’t operate effectively. Another side of me thinks they’re amateurs playing a game meant for professionals.

An eloquent example: Bantam pubbed four of my novels, paid no attention to me, averaged 100,000 in sales, and paid promptly. Small presses flattered me, promised special treatment, messed up in a hundred ways, and didn’t pay.

As an editor with a big house for thirteen years, I never saw an author have trouble over money.

This is my actual experience, told in literal truth. Leave your ego behind and take your choice.

Win Blevins
Author of GIVE YOUR HEART TO THE HAWKS, STONE SONG, etc.
Website

[This was previously posted to the Murder Must Advertise forum and is posted here with Mr. Blevins's permission]

Marlys Marshall Styne, author of Reinventing Myself: Memoirs of a Retired Professor, graciously took time to interview me last week. This morning she posted the interview on her award-winning blog, “Never too Late!” (first place award from the Illinois Woman’s Press Association in 2007)With the first round of questions, Marlys sent this note:     “I have a feeling that you may not want to or be able to answer some of the questions, but I would like to get something a bit different from the interview I’ve looked at.”

“Since my blog is generally serious and partly about writing, I want to include things I honestly want to know about you. Writing a “puff piece” is just not what I do.”

I’m hoping you enjoy the different approach. 

“I live in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. I retired in 1999 after 40 years in the English Department of Wilbur Wright College, on Chicago’s Northwest Side, where I was department chair for 7 years and Wright’s Distinguished Service Professor for 1995-96.

I advocate writing for everyone, and hope to encourage my fellow senior citizens to write. I am a member of the Illinois Women’s Press Assocation, the Story Circle Network, the Authors Marketing Group, and the Chicago Writers Association and a volunteer at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Abstract:
“Retired seven years, widowed six years, childless, seventy-three years old, depressed, the author set out to find contentment through reflection and writing. Reinventing Myself: Memoirs of a Retired Professor is a series of personal essays recounting that quest and some of the experiences that came before it.” [Infinity; ISBN: 0-7414-3208-0]

Reviewed by: Margot Wallace (6/25/2006)
“Few people have the imagination and fortitude to reinvent themselves. Marlys Styne had not only the will but the talent to become a writer. Clearly the process of exploring memory has resulted in a the beginning new memories. As she and we reexamine her life, we discover that gumption has been there all along. How many professional women don leather suits, fling a leg over a back seat, and hang on for miles and days as hubby drives his motorcycle all over the world? How many widows see themselves as interesting, separate from a spouse? How many retirees find a second calling? In the reinventing of Professor Styne, the tense is important. She didn’t reinvent herself in a gush of self-discovery, she’s been doing it quietly all along. As for her current iteration as a writer, pay close attention. Her style is straightforward and unadorned, which may speed you past the not inconsiderable wit of a life well observed.”

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Tags: Styne, Book Tour, Seniors, Memoir