The Virtues of a Small Publisher II: Why did you choose a small publisher?

Virtues of a Small Publisher Sleuthfest Panel Members: Back row from left: Lesley Diehl, Cindy Cromer, Mike Dennis; Front row from left: Lynnette Hallberg, Marty Ambrose

We are continuing our discussion of small publishers this week.  I think there are many good reasons for using a small publishing house.  During the Editors and Agents Panel at Sleuthfest, several panel members pointed out that advances with large publishers are getting smaller, publicity support is shrinking, less editing occurs, and midlist authors fear their contracts may be terminated.  Given this picture, many small publishers with their emphasis on more intimate and supportive relationships between author and press court talented writers and offer them a home where personal contact and input into the process is part of getting into print.

Myths about small publishers abound.  You pay them.  Not true.  That's a vanity press. They have no way of distributing your books once they are in print.  That depends upon the publisher, but most use Ingram and Baker and Taylor, as do the larger houses.  Your local bookstore cannot return the books.  Also not true in most cases.  There is no vetting process nor editing with a small publisher.   Again that varies from house to house.

I'm certain there are other myths.  I'd like to take this blog to clear up misconceptions about small publishers as well as be honest about what a small publisher can and cannot do for you.  This week I'd like your input on why you decided to go with a small publisher.  It's your decision whether you want to name your publisher or not, but I'd like to hear about the paths you took to publication and how they are working for you.

In the next few weeks we'll be talking about other aspects of going with a small publisher,so stay tuned here.

Inspiration in Orlando and the Issue of Small Publishers versus Epublishing

Early Spring in Mickey's Home

 

Mickey Inspires and I Respond

Okay, so now all of you who have read my blog know how I adore cows, but I want to confess another love.  I’m crazy about Mickey Mouse.  My husband has bought me two watches in the fifteen plus years we’ve been together.  One was a Mickey watch, the other Minnie.  As many years as we’ve been wintering in Florida, it was only five years ago I finally got to go to Disney for my birthday.  We were in the Magic Kingdom for the afternoon parade, and I think I was as thrilled by the characters as the kids there were.

That was then and this is now.  We just returned from the Mystery Writers of America Conference sponsored by MWA FL Chapter.  It was held in Orlando at the Royal Plaza.  There is no place one can go in Orlando without being exposed to the Disney brand.  It’s kitschy, I know, but I love it.

There’s no way hubby will repeat our visit to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot or to any of the parks (too bad Harry Potter), but we did go to downtown Disney several nights while at the conference, and I got my Disney fix.  It didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect all the days we were there with the exception of Sunday when a cold front blew in.  I could have walked around the Marketplace and Pleasure Island for hours.  I’m usually crowd-avoidant, but the throngs of people only added to my excitement.

Along with the ideal weather and fun setting, the conference continues through the six years we have attended to be a source of information and inspiration.  Theirs is nothing as inspiring as being around other writers, some still struggling, some highly successful.  I moderated a panel on the virtues of a small publisher.  Throughout the three days preceding my panel, I heard about traditional publishing, the big six, editors and agents.  At the other end of the evolution of the publishing process were numerous discussions on panels and in the bar about self-publishing, the e-book market.

I expected the attendance at my panel to be small, and coming as it did at the very last slot of the slot of the panels late Saturday afternoon, it was.  If I thought the attendees would be sleepy, they weren’t.  A discussion ensued about small publishers and e-publishing.  It was a heated encounter, one I decided to let spin itself out with advocates on both sides of the controversy over why publish with a small publisher when a writer can take everything by self-publishing.  Maybe I’m stretching a point, but I think our panel became a hot topic, one I hope the conference can address directly next year. 

Pair my childish pleasure at the fun venue with my favorite writing conference and the time in Orlando was near perfect, perfect enough that I recommitted myself to writing the really quirky, not the merely funny.  What would that be?  The answer is waiting for me on my computer, and I can’t wait to get to it.  I’ll keep you posted.

Where to find dead bodies: A writer’s short guide to victim placement for prime effect

A pastoral Florida scene, but what's under the water? 

 

 

 

 

I was talking the other day with my critique partner about a popular event in the Big Lake area, a festival I missed.  It’s called Mud Fest, and it occurs each year at this time.  The article about it in the paper focused on the controversy between the fun seekers and the environmentalists over whether driving four wheel drive vehicles through wetlands is ecologically sound.  Well, of course it’s not.  But the thought of churning up the wetlands with those giant, really behemoth wheels got me thinking about what else other than vegetation and probably snakes, toads, and frogs might be uprooted.  I thought of a dead body, and knew I had to attend this event next year.  The opportunity to locate a body in all that muck is just too appealing for a mystery writer.

There are the usual spots for placing bodies to be discovered by amateur sleuths, unknowing passersby or police such as face-up (or face-down) in a swimming pool or other body of water—I wonder why they’re rarely found at the bottom of the pool.  Imagine how exciting a read if someone dove innocently into the water and landed on a body.  That gets the adrenaline pumping more than a casual, “Oh look.  There’s a body in the Smithington’s  pool.”

In abandoned houses, on the street, in the trunks of cars, in a garbage dump, in churches, apartments, state parks, on beaches, in motels, bodies find their way into the most familiar places in our lives. How about some uncommon ones?  This is my favorite way to go.  Put the body someplace unexpected.  Give your reader an extra shot of surprise and do it in the first five pages of the book, of course.  You can see why Mud Fest churned up more than dirty swamp water for me.

Here are some of my favorite locations: in a brew barn from A Deadly Draught or in the dumpster of a classy country club as in Dumpster Dying.  Perhaps in a beer cooler at a barbeque festival.  This one is the location in the second of my Big Lake mysteries entitled Grilled, Chilled and Killed due out this fall.  I do not avoid the more mundane locations, but I may sprinkle the scene with mysterious or, in the case of a humorous mystery, funny elements to get the reader’s attention.  For example, in Grilled, Chilled and Killed, the body is not only stiffening up in a beer cooler but it is covered with barbeque sauce and someone has shoved an apple in the victim’s mouth.  An over-the-top description of the body, but the clues are significant in solving the murder. 

In my brewer’s series Hera, my protagonist, has found her neighbor’s body on his brew barn floor.  In the second book, someone else discovers a body, but it is in her brew barn.  Now the brew barn has become an almost mundane place for murder, but in this case the question surrounding the death is whether it was suicide or murder.

If murder is not shocking enough, the writer can always locate a body in a wholly unexpected place.  It’s an attention grabber, and one the writer can use to advantage by making the location generate its own set of clues.

How do you like your bodies?  With a double shot of surprise, murder plus odd location, or decaffeinated, face-down in the Smithington’s pool?

Cows and Why I Love 'Em!

These are not cows.  These are sandhill cranes, not usually found in a city.  Definitely a rural experience.

I just came up for air this week as I completed work on a draft of my book which will be the second in my Big Lake murder mystery series.  It’s entitled Grilled, Chilled and Killed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about cows lately.  I love cows.  I grew up with them on a farm in northern Illinois.  Until I was sixteen, we milked a small herd of Holsteins, then Dad sold the milkers, and we fattened cattle and hogs.  The latter was much less demanding of my father’s time.  He no longer had to get up early to milk nor was he tied to milking twice each day.  There was only once in all those years that my dad was too sick to milk.  He was ill on other occasions, but he got out of bed to milk anyway.

I spent a lot of my childhood years out in the barn with him.  He played the old radio tuned to either opera or country music while he milked.  He claimed the cows liked it.  They never complained at his choice of music and they gave a lot of milk, so I guess they did like it.  I never helped him with the cows, but I followed him around while he cleaned utters, placed the suction cups on teats, poured the warm milk into a pail and hauled it back to the cooler.  My job came after he finished.  I washed the utensils, the big milkers and pails, hoses and teat cups by hand in big stainless sinks in our basement.

Our cows were a part of my daily life.  Only when I became a teen when school activities took me away from the barn did I miss a day smelling the manure, sweat, and hot, creamy milk in our dairy barn.

There are few pictures of me as a young child because my parents couldn’t afford a camera, but the one I treasure is of me with a Guernsey calf.  I was told she was my calf thought I don’t know if that is really so as I have few memories of her specifically but I know I named her “Essie” after myself (I couldn’t pronounce the Ls in my name).  As an adult cow, she was the only of her kind in our Holstein herd.  Dad said it was so we could have a little cream with our milk.

The calf I followed through her calf childhood into adulthood was a Holstein, and I didn’t keep an eye on her because I was fond of her.  My grandmother had given me a pair of red knitted gloves for Christmas when I was about eight.  I loved those gloves.  In the winter, the calves came into the barn for the night and were held in a small pen near the milking stanchions.  I often fed them hay through the bars of the pen.  One of the calves took the hay and the mitten off my hand, chomped down on both and swallowed.  I remember her distinctively and until she grew to give milk as an adult.  She had one eye with black eyelashes, the other with white.  She was forever the cow I despised.

Ah, autumn in the country

I got pink eye (conjunctivitis) from the cows one fall and was out of school that year (fourth or fifth grade) for weeks.  I kept reinfecting myself and, because it is so contagious, each infection meant I had to stay home for several days.  Mom and Dad could do little to keep me away from those cows, so it was months before it cleared up.

Holsteins are big, really big, very big when you’re a five year old told to round up Mary, one of our most cantankerous cows.  She wandered away from the others and never wanted to come in from the field.  I reluctantly pursued her toward the stand of oaks and she turned and rushed me.  Dad told me to turn and face her.  To me that was like facing a freight train bearing down on me.  I ran.

Dad didn’t always do so well with these huge beasts either.  Until we went to artificial insemination, we kept a Holstein bull.  They are always in a vile mood.  The bull was housed in a pen with a fence that was over eight feet tall and made of study rails.  Yet he never failed to get out somehow.  When he chased my grandfather up the windmill, Dad laughed.  But he did the same thing several months later to my dad and somehow he didn’t find that as funny.

Farm life and the cows we raised and milked there are a part of my childhood.  In some ways they are my childhood, as much a part of who I am now as my DNA.  I carry that life around in my soul and I write all my stories from it as I believe do many other writers of cozies.  No wonder I fell so comfortable positioning my protagonists in the country.  It’s not in detailed descriptions of rural Florida or of the Butternut Valley in upstate New York that I fashion the atmosphere and setting of the book.  My country roots write the people and their relationship to their land.  Storms, drought, floods, wild animals, herds of cattle, cowboys and horses, snakes and gators are the stuff of their lives and their adventures.  It’s country.  They are my adventures.  After all, I’m a country gal, and I write country.

I'm baaaaaack!

Did you think I got lost?  Or was swept away by the flood?  Naw!  I just got busy or lazy and took time relocating to my winter home.  To remind you of the beauty down here, the picture above is of Lake Okeechobee at sunset in the winter. Look.  No snow.

This year I want to discuss different aspects of writing and try to get my readers more involved in the blog.  So look for something different here.  I’ll try to post twice each month.

Whose Story, Whose Imagination?

Here’s something I found in The Palm Beach Post on Friday, Dec 9.  It was entitled “Harry Potter and the Imagination Thief” and was written for the LA Times by Talya Meyers, a doctoral student at Stanford University.  In examining the J. K. Rowling’s website, Pottermore, Ms. Meyers suggests that, although meant to be interactive, Rowling provides so much information about Potter’s world after the end of the books that those who visit the site may be disappointed to learn what they imagined might happen to Harry and his friends is not at all what Rowling says happens.  Meyers contends that by telling us what Rowling sees as Harry’s future (her imagination) she steals what we the readers might have imagined.  I’m extrapolating now, but I assume Meyers is saying that if Rowling had written another book with all this information in it, that might have been fine, a continuation of the Potter story, but instead Meyers says Rowling has added to what is already contained in the books and given us the Potter world beyond them.  We are not free to imagine for ourselves what Potter’s life might become as he grows up, raises a family, and ages.

I wonder if this is why I usually don’t like a movie better than the book.  The movie makes the book concrete, and what I’ve imagined reading the book is replaced by the movie’s take on the look of a character, the color of a house, the way the character delivers a line.  This isn’t always true for me.  I hear Tom Selleck’s voice each time I read a Jesse Stone novel by Robert Parker.  That works for me.

So here’s my question.  Where does the author’s imagination end and the reader’s begin?  And should an author step in after the fact to assert what happens or what was really meant?  Does the book once published become the readers’ or is it the writer’s?  Perhaps authors can expect once their work is published to engage in a dialogue of imaginations between them and their readers. Pottermore might become this kind of place.  The site is still in the testing stage, so perhaps we must wait and see.  What do you think?

The Cowboy Returns

Today I'm interviewing Glenn Nilson, author of Murder on Route 66, his debut mystery featuring bad boy biker Bobby Navarro.  Glenn has just returned from his cross country trip on his motorcycle promoting the book.  Unfortunately he returned to the clean-up of a flooded basement and a few other jobs around the house, but he's eager to share his adventures. 

L.  I know the high point of your trip for me was when you got home, but what was the high point of the trip for you?

G. There were many high points, the people I met, riding through country I enjoy so much, seeing old friends. But, I'd have to say the high point was sitting on the patio with my friend and biker buddy, Abe Martinez, sipping good whiskey and talking far into night. On the business side of the trip, it was probably driving into Tucumcari for the first time since I did my research for the novel and seeing an announcement on the marque at the chamber of commerce announcing my signing.

L. What was the low point?

G. That's easy. Sitting in a motel in Gallup, hearing how much the stream had risen, hearing that roads were closed, eliminating options for a high place to go to wait out the flood, and knowing there was nothing I could do about it, nothing I could do to help someone I love and wanted to protect. That was tough.

L. I know you’re writing a sequel to your first mystery and that it will be set in the southwest also.  Can your wife expect you to take another trip cross-country to promote the next one?

How long do you think you can fool her wife into believing you’re promoting your books and not just simply having a good time with your biker buddies in Las Cruces, NM?

G. She's never said she loves the idea of my taking off on a motorcycle for several weeks. I don't expect that to change. I don't blame her. I wouldn't like it if our roles were reversed. She also knows riding has been an important part of my life for a very long time. I'd have to say, if there's another trip, we both know the time for us to talk about it is never when I've just completed the last one. As to the second part of the question, I don't think I've ever had her fooled on setting my story in the Southwest as a good excuse to go there. What better?

L. Why do you like the southwest as a setting so much?

G. That's a good question, especially given what I've just admitted. In part, I like the Southwest as a setting because I love the Southwest. Guilty. But I like it as a setting because it's a land that can render people into a simpler mix of qualities and character. It sometimes calls upon them to stand as tall and strong as they are able. That's good for writing strong characters facing intense challenges.  Plus, the West always seems open to me. It feels free, unfettered. I think that makes it easier to convey basic values and morality issues, critical to a murder mystery.

L. Is your protagonist Bobby Navarro like you?

In some ways he's like I'd like to be. But he's a fictional character, and I know I have to let him be who he is, and I have to be who I am, and I'm happy to have it that way. I like Bobby, and I like who he is. I don't want to make him "like" me, even if we might share a thing or two in common.

L.  You wife says you are a sour dough expert.  In fact, she tells us that when you and she traveled cross country by car that the vehicle smelled like booze because you insisted bringing it along.Tell us about sour dough, how you make it, and why you like to cook with it.

G. Sourdough is a mixture of flour, water and an active yeast culture living off the flour and water mix. It's like a pet, you have to care for it, feed it, house it, and so on. You can start a culture by introducing the yeast, or you can let the yeast, present in the air, come and settle in for their new home. Once a good culture is established, you just have to maintain it. Part of that means using it, and there are dozens of delicious things you can make with sourdough, including pancakes, breads, and even cakes. One of my favorites is making sourdough English muffins.

L. My favorite sourdough is your flat bread on the grill.  We could have it tonight if you’d buy propane for the grill. What don’t your reading fans know about you that might surprise them?

G. When I was growing up, around twelve years old, my mother taught me to cook on a wood stove.

L.  I’m not surprised at that.  It’s all about food with you, isn’t it?  Tell us what’s in your saddle bags other than food, of course.

G. That’s like asking my mother what’s in her purse...everything I can get into them. Actually, since I like the long ride so much, my saddlebags are the result of careful selection. In the right hand bag, accessible away from passing traffic when I’m parked along the roadside, I keep my rain gear, gloves and facemask if I’m not already wearing them, a polar fleece pullover for cold weather, and my tools. I’ll usually have a leather vest folded on top of it all. I put my clothes and other travel gear in the left saddlebag, and the rest of my gear in a backpack I carry fastened to the back of the sissybar (backrest behind the rear seat).

L. Tell us about the places you stayed on your trip.  I understand you avoided Hiltons and other fancy places.  What motels attract you?  Why?

G. While I may have a destination stopping point once in awhile, like Tucumcari was, I usually start looking for a motel when I’m running out of daylight and the odometer tells me I’ve put in a good day’s run, usually four hundred-fifty to five hundred miles. I like to watch for billboards advertising lower priced motels at an upcoming exit when I’m on an interstate. If not, I’ll drive through a town and check out the motels on either end. I prefer small towns to cities. On this trip, I wanted to stay in motels from the heyday of Route 66. There are quite a few available, and they help convey the romantic nostalgia of being on the Mother Road, especially the ones with the little car ports. I remember staying in them traveling with my parents as a kid. They were exciting as part of the adventure then, and still are. One I stayed in, the Blue Swallow, in Tucumcari, is known all over the world among devotees of Route 66. The owners have done a terrific job of making it up-to-date comfortable while preserving the ambiance of the past. I love Hiltons, but the old places just add something to a bike trip that seems to work. Plus, they’re cheaper.

L. What do you know about writing that you didn’t know when you began? 

G. Since I first began writing, or left on my tour? Oh, Lord...where to start. I’ve always loved writing and wanted to write. So many people want to write and even have thoughts for a good story. What I know now is that you have to learn the craft, the genre, and the market. Writing is a skill which has to be developed, shaped and honed to a fine edge. It takes work. Lots of work. Writing is a business, so you have to develop some business skills and a business approach as well. Finally, there’s a big difference between “writing” and “being a writer.” When you truly think of yourself as a writer, you not only see the world differently, you engage the world and the people in it differently. That really sank in on my trip. I’m a different person as a writer. It’s exciting, and it feels good.

L. What advice would you give beginning writers?

G. Join some writing associations and groups, and attend their functions. You need to be around other writing professionals to become one. A critique group at the local level is helpful, and a chapter of a national organization is as important to a writer as any professional association is to some other avocation. Then, write, write, write.

L. Why don’t you and your wife write together?  Don’t you like her?

G. Yes, I do. Question answered. We love talking with each other about writing, even sometimes talking about our own work. We’re supportive, interested, and enthusiastic. We write differently, however, and with different voices. Trying to merge everything into one effort probably would be disasterous.

L. How can your fans find you and how do you promote your book if the readers missed you on your tour?

G. The easiest way to find me is on my website, www.glennnilson.com. They can also reach my blog through my website and read about my tour there. In addition, I will continue to do other signings and presentations, such as the one I have scheduled at Huntington Memorial Library in Oneonta, NY Oct. 17th.

L. Thanks so much for joining us.  I know your time is precious because your wife has assigned you the job of cleaning our the flooded basement and there’s also a rumor that she talked you into building a storage shed.  You’ll hardly have time for riding, writing, or cooking, unless you go get that propane before dinner.

Now it’s your turn.  What question would you like to ask readers?

G. How do you find the books you enjoy reading, especially books by authors with whom you weren’t familiar before?

Not Again!

   Water heading toward the house

The fire department to the rescue

Let's see: there were the spring floods wiping out my willows, then Irene just two weeks ago throwing wind and rain around the area, and then Wednesday when Lee's rain blew in, and it rained, and it rained, and it rained.  The county closed the roads early on Wednesday so my next door neighbor and I hunkered down in her house.  We watched the water overflow the banks and begin to creep up on our houses.  Then it got dark, and we had no idea how high the water was.  We knew our cellars were filling up.  By eight Wednesday night, I had over three feet.  She and I listened to the continuous rain and hoped the flood wouldn't reach the houses, and we'd have to be evacuated by boat.  She has two kids, two dogs and one cat.  I have my two cats.  There were no shelters we could reach because of roads closed and bridges out.  I didn't sleep.  

By morning the water had stopped rising.  It had come up to my garden, swung around the pine tree in the back yard and flooded my other neighbor's field on the right of my yard.  Finally, the water began to recede.  It was time to call in the fire department to pump me out.  They did,  Twice.  And although my furnace was under water, once dried out, it ran.  How lucky can I be?

I am grateful for not having experienced the devastation others have.  Entire towns have been wiped out, roads and  bridges down,  houses toppled and swept downstream.  Most of what I experienced was fear not knowing how high that water was Wednesday night.  I admit I was terrified. And then there's my wet, moldy cellar.  I left that for Glenn to empty and clean when he rides in here sometime the end of this week.  Oh, right, you didn't know?  He missed all of this because he was still on his motorcycle journey. 

Much as I like to move beyond these events, this one will have a lasting impact.  Not only did the flood remove the five to ten feet of bank we'd rescued after the spring high waters, yesterday when I went out to determine if it was still too wet to mow, I noticed a series of cracks in the ground developing.  These run parallel to the stream about ten feet from the bank's edge.  They are deepening, a sign the bank will soon break away.

Have a look:

I guess I won't mow.