Lyrical Pens: #simonandschuster

Showing posts with label #simonandschuster. Show all posts

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Sliding into 2020

cj Sez: Fall, autumn, pre-winter, post-summer, turn-back-the-clock-time…whatever you call it, it’s time for state and county fairs. Corn dogs and hot dogs, funnel cakes and cotton candy, games of skill and luck, rodeos and grandstand entertainment, blue ribbon winners and petting zoos, a kaleidoscope of color, a cacophony of beautiful noise, and exciting rides.

Photo by Jeff Johnston

How about that for an exciting ride at the Greater Gulf State Fair? Personally, I would not be one of those people spinning and hanging by a thread that many feet in the air. That said, I hope you had a chance to go to a fair this year.

I feel like I’m on a downward slide to the end of the year—somewhere between Halloween and the beginning of winter (the winter solstice occurs December 21). And my favorite annual greeting pops into my brain: Happy HalloThanksMasYear! Think about it. Right now, many stores have displays up for the generic harvest time and fall colors as well as for every one of those holidays.

NaNoWriMo anyone?

If you’re participating…best wishes for the win!

November is the National Novel Writing Month, and the challenge is to write fifty thousand words, as in 50,000, in one month. Let’s see, “30 days hath September, April, June, and November.” That means you’ll have to write an average of (just a minute, calculations going on) 1,667 words per day. Whew!

If you’re not in a support group (they are very good for encouragement and motivation), there are multiple sources of helpful forums and advice online. There is even an official organization: https://www.nanowrimo.org/

So, shouldn’t you be writing? There are only 27 days left until Nov. 30.

November 30? Now that I think about it, since I get paid monthly, I have only one more payday until Christmas. Aarrgh

cj’s helpful hints for your Holiday Gift Giving List…

The good news is there is still time to get bargains that offer more bang for your bucks, and that’s anthologies! More than one story in a tome, offering hours of enjoyment at one low price.

In addition to getting wonderful stories, the best part about the two listed here is that part of the proceeds will go to benefit worthwhile charities. (P.S. I have a story in each anthology.) HOMETOWN HEROES (benefits the Cajun Navy) is available now . .

FINALLY HOME is set to launch December 10 (benefits animal rescue groups).

Personal Update:

I’ve requested a reversal of rights from Simon&Schuster for my novels CHOOSING CARTER and DEADLY STAR. As of this post they were still free on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. If they disappear before you can grab a copy, you can still order autographed paperbacks from The Haunted Bookshop. (See below.)

I’m hoping to get the novels re-issued with new covers and new names, and if I’m lucky, it’ll be next year. (Seek a new publisher? Indie publish? ¿Quien sabe?)

That’s it for this week’s post. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same. See you next week?

Visit my Amazon Central Author Page = https://amzn.to/2v6SrAj for information about my stories. And if you wind up searching for my name, be sure to use two "t"s in petterson.

TO ORDER an autographed copy of CHOOSING CARTER, DEADLY STAR, and the anthologies HOMETOWN HEROES and THE POSSE, contact The Haunted Bookshop here: The Haunted Bookshop Angela Trigg, the awesome owner and a RITA Award-winning author in her own right (writing as Angela Quarles) will be happy to ship you the book(s) of your choice.

Visit me on Facebook at: cjpetterson/author on Facebook

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Tidbits ...and Have a safe and happy Labor Day

cj Sez: Sending all y'all my best wishes for a safe and happy Labor Day holiday.

My publisher, Simon and Schuster, is among the industry giants stepping up to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey…

Help Offered to Libraries, Bookstores, Shelters

As Texas’ coast awaits the second landfall of the Harvey storm system—which at this writing has produced close to 50 inches of rain in some areas—Simon & Schuster’s education and library marketing department has announced help for damaged libraries.

Any Texas public or school library damaged by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey can have 250 “Best of” titles to help restore collections. Librarians who need information on the offer are asked to email education.library@simonandschuster.com

This from a Crimson Romance editor: “An editing tip: I've noticed this summer, throughout submitted manuscripts and my own reading, a growing tendency to emphasize specific words in a sentence. Save this move for those times when the italics are needed to keep the reader from misunderstandings if they were to read it another way.

“Most of the time, the stressed words only serve to lock the reader into how you would (arbitrarily) read it, taking away the reader's autonomy. It wears folks out mentally to have to perform the book to a rhythm that might not be their own.

“It also makes your characters sound alike, and the poor italics must cover so many other technical jobs (book/magazine/movie titles, self-thoughts, foreign words), it makes your manuscript look intimidatingly busy.”

James Lee Burke “tells” his readers what is happening here….or does he?

“The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums, and a light rain had started to fall when I came to the end of the blacktop road that cut through twenty miles of thick, almost impenetrable scrub oak and pine and stopped at the front gate of Angola penitentiary.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

cj Sez: Every adjective in that sentence works with the verb to carry the action forward. The reader is on the road with the character, sees what the character sees, and ends up where the character does. Burke could have told his readers something to the effect that “It was raining the evening I drove twenty miles through a thick forest and stopped at the end of the blacktop road in front of Angola penitentiary.” Instead, we read a fantastic opening line, and a wonderful example of showing not telling.

Burke’s poetic descriptions are not purple prose. They grab readers and drag them into his story. There is a beauty in the drama, yet the ominous intensity of the moment is conveyed.

Showing vs telling? Yes there are places in a story where some narrative telling may seem appropriate to move the story along, but perhaps not as many as you might think. Showing does a lot to appeal to a reader’s intellect as well as improve pacing. I suggest you can write your descriptions, tell your readers everything, then re-write in a way that shows them. How to do that, you ask? Read, read, and read some more. Get familiar with how your favorite author handles the task. It just takes practice …writing and re-writing and re-writing and re-writing, and . . .

“There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.” James Lee Burke

I’ve had a few of those. (Makes for elephant hide skin.)

That’s all the tidbits for this post.’Til next time, you-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

Please continue to pray for strength, courage, and comfort for the victims of Hurricane Harvey and all those volunteering to help with rescues.

A brief word from my sponsors:

“Bad Day at Round Rock” short story in The Posse anthology @ http://amzn.to/2lQRvcD

cjpetterson/author on Facebook

Simon&Schuster Author Page Amazon Central Author Page

blog at: www.lyricalpens.com

newsletter sign-up at cjpetterson@gmail.com

Sunday, June 25, 2017

My path to publication

cj Sez: I’m happy to again be able to talk with you about my path to publication in the hope that maybe you’ll find a nugget in here that encourages you to continue on your own path.

I didn’t start writing seriously until I moved to Mobile, AL, in 2002. Since then, I’ve written some personal essays and short stories that have been published in several different anthologies, the latest being "Bad Day at Round Rock" in THE POSSE anthology. When Crimson Romance published my first novel, DEADLY STAR, in 2013, my sister said, “You wrote a whole book? All by yourself?” Yep, that was the summation of my perceived writing skills.

My first interest was in screenwriting. In 2000 or 2001, I think it was, I flew from Detroit to San Francisco to take a three-day seminar from Robert McKee who conducts screenwriting seminars in different cities around the United States and has published a book called STORY. His personalization to me in the book was “Write the truth” which is part of his motto and which I study hard to do.

The experience was invaluable because I began to visualize my stories in terms of the characters’ action-dialogue-and scenes that show the story. How characters react and what they don’t say can speak volumes. I see my scenes as if I’m watching them happen, as in a movie. I do know authors who visualize a particular movie star playing the heroine/hero in their books. Is that something you do? I don’t see a specific person. After I sell the movie rights (HA HA), I’ll leave it to Stephen Spielberg or Francis Ford Coppola to find the best mega-star for the role. To be honest, though, I think Pierce Brosnan would be perfect as the hero in DEADLY STAR.

For most us, and I’m very much included in that generalization, we have a wonderful idea on a theme. (Let me say right here that I don’t plot. I’m a pantser or more accurately, a pathfinder. I know how I want the story to end, but getting there is the exciting part for me.) It’s the middle that really gets us. It wants to sag. Like an old married couple, sometimes the excitement fades away after a while—unless, like that old married couple, we work at it.

Working at it may mean changing some things around. When I make changes in the middle, it almost always mean rewriting the first chapter more than a few times. What helps me out is to read the dialogue aloud. Does it sound natural? Are the sentences so complete and full of blah-blah information that they slow the pace of the story? I’m currently reading a contest submission that reads like a daily journal. I appreciate that the author is introducing the reader to the main character. However, there are no teasers that entice me to keep turning the pages until the middle of page three.

Sluggish pacing can happen in any part of a novel, but it very often happens in the middle of a story. When the dreaded saggy middle shows up, I may need to reinvent someone, maybe add another challenge (read that conflict) or two for the protagonist to bring back the thrill. Structured pacing also suffers when I’m trying to get the word count up. As a former journalist and an admirer of Robert B. Parker’s writing style, I write very tight. My first drafts average about 62,000 words. However, extra words that slow the pacing and detract from the story seem to fly onto the pages when I’m racing to type “The End.”

Once I get the concept down and slog through the research, writing any story is all about editing and changes. Sometimes, I see a need to change a character’s name, a story thread, a sentence structure, or, as was true for DEADLY STAR, the whole genre.

DEADLY STAR didn’t start off as a romance. Over the course of writing and editing the manuscript, which took about four years (do I write slow or what?), one of my critique partners thought the story might be marketed as an action/adventure. Another said it was a woman-in-peril story, a third said political thriller. Someone even floated the idea that it was sci-fi.

Then, because there was a love scene in the story—let me add a disclaimer here, it isn’t a bodice-tearing romp—I recklessly entered excerpts of the manuscript into two romance contests. The judges in each thought the concept and story were good, except it needed a happily ever after ending. One judge said she was tempted to throw it against the wall because it didn’t meet the HEA criterion. I decided the story might work as a romantic suspense novel if I made a change, or three, within the manuscript and, of course, changed the ending.

Revisions done, Crimson Romance offered me a contract about three weeks after I submitted my e-query and synopsis, and DEADLY STAR was published eleven months later. I’d stumbled…been pushed, really…into the correct genre.

The message is this: Don’t be afraid or unwilling to make changes in your manuscript but do so with a caveat. Before you make wholesale changes, be sure you’ve looked at the manuscript as objectively as possible. Put the piece aside, for several days at least, much longer if possible.

You can ask any of my critique partners, and they’ll tell you I’m making changes to my WIP as the pages leave my computer and are headed for theirs. I’ve been known to send an immediate follow-up note screaming in all capital letters: DON’T PRINT WHAT I JUST SENT YOU. HERE’S THE LATEST AND GREATEST.

After working with CEOs and vice presidents and directors who loved to thumbprint every piece of paper that crossed their desks, I do understand that my words, no matter how beautiful I think they are, are not carved in stone. And, if I can’t use them in one story, I can save them for another.

When I do need to consider a wholesale change to my manuscript, I try to keep in mind that, as one of my critique partners always said, I am the captain of my story. Change can be a good thing, but to change or not to change is up to me.

That’s all for now. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same. And to all my writer friends, I hope all your characters are happy in your head . . . we're all doing pretty well in mine. Comments? Questions? There's a spot open and waiting for those at the bottom of the post.

And now a word from my sponsors:

COMING ATTRACTIONS . . . Arriving July 10: A new Crimson Romance bundle about athletes and the sports they love, Bodies in Motion, includes Choosing Carter (rafting and off-roading) Watch for it on Amazon.

Ebook bundles still available on Amazon: More Than Friends and California Kisses