Hot! Hot!

It's been a scorcher this week here in Michigan! No amount of watering is saving my flowers. When those little plant sticks say 'full sun' I don't think they had this in mind. The heat reminds me of when I lived in Arizona as a kid. If course, I was not such a wimp about hot weather then!

I'm currently working on my 5th book in the School for Brides series. I can't believe it's only been a little over a year since The School for Brides came out. I also sent out a novella series idea to my agent is week. It's a bit steamier than my Bride's books, with a scandalous setting, but not too crazy. Hopefully, she'll like it. If not, I'll try again until something sticks!

Tip: To get in (or stay in) the publishing game, you need to keep going forward. Keep pitching new ideas, keep up with the market, never lose sight of the prize. And when you take a battering, mope, cry, eat chocolate, and then jump into the next project. Tough skin is required in this business!  

Summertime

I don't know what it is about summer. My creative energy always takes a pass. Is it the heat? The fact that the kids are home? Laziness? Who knows? I do work, it's just harder to drag myself into the chair. Am I the only person who feels that way?

Not everything falls aside during the summer months. There are camping trips, swims in the pool, BBQ's on the grill. It's the time when I force myself to bump up the exercise, eat less comfort foods, and enjoy more fruits and veggies. Does it help? My hips don't think so, but I do feel more energetic. 

On thing that never loses energy is our cat. Currently he's playing with a toy mouse on the floor behind my chair. He's shoved it under the trash bag I'm using to clear off my desk and is having a grand old time recovering the toy. In a minute, I'll toss it across the room and he'll chase it. Then, as he is a fetch cat, he'll bring it back and we'll play that way for several minutes, until he gets bored and moves onto something else.

I hope he doesn't get bored too soon. Then I'll have to get back to work.  

The Power (and danger) of Reviews

I've heard that Regency historical fans are the most loyal and enthusiastic of any romance readers. They love history, the craziness of the time period, and the fun of escaping into another world. And they are indeed wonderful. I also know that some readers will hold your feet to the fire to for historical accuracy. This is a good thing. Historical authors want to be accurate, although mistakes can be made. We, as authors, do our best. We love Regencies, too. That's why we write (and read) them! 

I work hard to get my books right, though sometimes titles can be a bit befuddling to even an obsessive like me. The British do love their titles. Some nobles had (have) so many titles that even their own mothers had to have been confused. I recently read a book from a fairly big name author who called her duchess Lady, Lady, Lady. Duchesses are Her Grace, Your Grace, Duchess, etc. Neither she or her publisher caught that one. Though I admit to twitching while reading, the story was otherwise good and I enjoyed the book. I've found that most readers do the same. They fall in love with the romance between the hero and heroine and forgive a typo or two. That's why we love them!

Many authors suggest not reading low reviews as they can kick you in the confidence. This is true. However, tastes very wildly. One reader's hamburger is another reader's Filet Mignon. A book can spend weeks on the NYT Bestseller List and not be a hit with all readers, while a little book by a newbie author may be the best book in the history of the history of books. Who knows? It's all about what you like. All an author can do is write the best book she can and hope the story strikes a happy cord in her readers. Typos and all.

  

A Writing Career

I was thinking today about how long it took me to find the right project and get published. I was not an author who sold her first book! My career was a slow learning process. I didn't even know about one inch margins when I started. Sad, I know! I read and took workshops and read some more. I joined RWA back in 1999, my local chapter two years later, and learned, learned, learned all I could about writing and the publishing business. From the first few pages of my first book, I knew I had to finish the manuscript once I started. I wanted to know how the story turned out!

I started writing with the goal of being NY published and not once wavered from that path. And there were times when I was certain that selling would never happen for me, but then I'd get a 'nice' rejection letter telling me I was so close and I'd be off and running again. If an editor took the time to write a personal letter and tell me how much she enjoyed my writing style, plot, whatever, I knew I was heading in the right direction. No more more form rejection letters for me. I kept growing as an author until I finally sold. It wasn't easy.

Tip: The one tip most authors hear most often is to never give up. That's fine, but eventually all authors (musicians, artists, actors, etc.) need to take a good hard look at themselves, and their work, and decide if their career is advancing in the right direction. If not, then they make adjustments. This could be as simple as taking more craft classes, stepping out of the box with their writing, or changing course altogether. Because if you want to be published bad enough, work for it. There are no short cuts! :-)   
  

Week One (and a half!). Book 4

I'm up to about 3500 words on book 5 and am feeling the love. I always like starting a book and this one is fun because the hero and heroine meet in the first sentence. Hint: She is mortified with what she sees! I also received revisions last week for book 4 and am working on those. I have a tendency to over think my editor's suggestions (I want them to be perfect!) so a few revisions can take me a week or so to do. For anyone who gets writers block, I know the feeling. Some days it takes a crowbar and a lot of determination to pry any creativity out of me. Today is one of those days!  

Tip: RWA National is coming up and many authors will be pitching editors and agents. My tip is to not only polish your pitch, but also have a really good (1-3 sentence) elevator pitch for a second book idea, in case the A/E is lukewarm on the first and you have extra time. It worked for me! I sold the second book that I pitched!

I've been missing for so long, that I almost forgot I had a blog! :-) When I'm working on a book with a tight deadline, my brain only has that one focus. When I'm not creating, I'm staring at mindless TV, watching ducks and frogs on my pool cover, or gazing off into space while plotting my next chapter.

A friend told me that I should write about writing, so I'm going to do that. I just started my new book this week and thought I'd post about that and other stuff that comes up. If anyone would like to look over my shoulder and see what I'm doing, check back. I'll be here!

Taking a break!

Tonight is the last drawing for the gift cards. Good luck!

I've decided to take a break from posting until after the holidays. My kids will be home from school and I want to get some pages written without having to get them up early. Plus the next two weeks will be family time and I want to do fun things, clear out the mess that our house has become from building the new addition to our house, and put everything away. Sounds fun, huh?

So I'll see you after the new year. Happy holidays! 

Sunday's winner!

If June Manning is the winner off a FB post last week! I believe June M. who posted here is also the same person? Contact me at the email off this site with your address. I'll be sending out the cards this week! Congrats!

And the winner is....

The winner for today's drawing is Amy S! Contact me at writercherylannsmith@comcast.net and send me your address for the Amazon Gift Card! Congrats!

Moving

We are moving into our new addition and the house is a mess! Am I the only person who hates moving? We are shifting half of the household over to the new space. At least it isn't across town! 

The gift cards came today! They are very cool. Came with instructions for use, too. Amazon thinks of everything!

I've been getting behind. I have over 200 unread emails, laundry is piling up, and I've been slacking on my blogs. It's difficult to keep everything moving forward when December demands so much time. We don't even have a tree yet! Plus, our carpet is getting laid at this very moment, we have to move half of our house into the new addition before Christmas, and my kids have all sorts of functions before school lets out for the year.

Starting after Jan 1st, I will be getting back to the posts of my writing journey. I have many things to share. There will also be new stuff, too! A newsletter is in the works and I have two new novella/novels coming out next year!

My contest is still on and I'm still taking names for the drawings. My question today was whether anyone was watching the new show, Once Upon a Time. If not, what is your favorite romantic fairy tale?

10 Days of Christmas Giveaway!

I'm excited! I'm giving away 10 gift cards over 10 days starting today! All you have to do is post a comment here or on my Facebook page to be entered in the drawing. Or, if you can't access those, send an email from this site and I'll get your name from there. Everyone can enter and the drawing is random, with names drawn from a hat!

This is my thank-you to everyone who has participated on my blog and FB over the last 8 months since The School for Brides came out. Really for anyone who wrote a letter or bought a book or just loves romance.

Happy holidays, everyone! 

Stepping away from history for a moment/Contest

Good morning,

It's been crazy busy around here! Holiday stuff, a GDRWA party, and a new contract! I love that Berkley is continuing the 'Brides' series! Thanks Wendy! I'm about 70 pages into the new book and am having fun. My heroine is in danger. Nothing is better than that!

I'm having a new contest. Starting Monday, I'll be drawing for Amazon gift cards and I may throw in books occasionally, just for fun. We'll see! I'll be taking names from posts here and on my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/cherylannsmithauthor

I know there are issues with posting here. Goggle Chrome and Mozilla Firefox work. I'm sorry about that! Also, if anyone wants to send me an email through this website, your name will also be included. Starting Monday! I don't want to miss anyone!

I'll be back to my regular posts soon!

Raven

Good morning. A contest is in the works! I'll be giving away Amazon gift cards! Details soon!

Since I talked the other day about my Native American heroine story, I thought I'd post an excerpt so you can read a bit about my 'Pocohontas' book! Mistakes and all. The reason I'm posting them is to show my stumbling upward progression as a writer over the years. 

Late Autumn, 1756


The loud rumbling sounds coming from behind the make-shift curtain brought a reluctant opening of lids while Raven snuggled under her blanket and wished the morning light would flee for a few minutes more. Sleep laden eyes turned slowly to the window to seek out the hour. Through triangle shaped gaps in the sagging shutter, Raven could see that daylight was slowly creeping through the coal dark night, putting it on notice that morning would soon be upon it.

See, no John Smith! And no horse POV either! Yeah, progress! 

Planning a holiday contest!

I'm in the planning stages of a holiday contest. A giveaway a day for the days leading up to Christmas. Keep checking back for details. I need to get this set ASAP!

P.S. I know some readers have problems posting here with the new Google Chrome change over (Firefox works too!). So I'll also take it to my Facebook page! We don't want to exclude anyone!

Previous posts

If you enjoyed the agent story, please look below starting at Day One (utterly clueless) for more crazy stories from my writing life. Thanks!

How to get an agent banned from RWA conferences

Okay, this header is a bit misleading. I didn't get him banned on purpose, I swear! This is what happened.

I was in DC at my second conference. Still wet behind the ears, I went to my first one-on-one pitch appt. After an introduction, I began to nervously pitch my book. It was about a Native American heroine and a former soldier, set in Michigan during a troubling time in our history. Lots of action, lots of sexy romance, danger, etc. When I finished, he stared at me for a few seconds then said something about how it sounded like a cross between Pocahontas and some other character I can't remember. Wait. Just because the heroine was Native American did not make her Pocahontas! It was my time to stare. Wasn't he listening? Then he proceeds to tell me that he wouldn't know where to market a historical romance anyway since he was more of a science fiction and mystery guy.

Um. Did he take a wrong turn on his way to the Mystery Writers conference? After leaving him, I stewed. Then I stewed some more. Now, I didn't want to make waves, but I was mad. This guy didn't know where to market historical romance? What was he doing taking pitch appts at an RWA conference? A free vacation? So I went to the check-in desk and told the lady my story. It felt good to vent. Then I forgot about it and happily moved on.

Sure. A few days after the conference, I got a phone call from national. They had several complaints about him and wanted to know my story. To this day, I never saw him taking pitches an RWA conference again. But don't feel bad, he has not suffered the loss of RWA. His agency is successful, he agents his favorite sci-fi and mystery writers, and he no longer has to take pitches from a romance writers like me!   

First Conference

My first RWA conference was in Chicago in 1999 and I took the family with me. I don't remember much about that conference other than I had a group pitch (thank goodness) with a Pocket editor. She requested from almost everyone. The memorable part came when my younger daughter (age 2) wouldn't stop crying one afternoon and hotel security came to our room. If we couldn't quiet her down, we had to go. Nice! It took some work, but everything worked out. She was good the rest of the week.

It was fun and I was hooked on RWA conferences. I wish I could have taken home one of the cows that the city had placed along the streets. They were very cool.

Coming up: Washington D.C. and the disaster pitch. Hint: It wasn't my fault! 

First Contest

Good morning. Okay, so I ran off to my computer to look up RWA and discovered a wonderful world of other romance authors. Who knew there were so many of us out there? And just as quickly, I also discovered RWA writers contests. So I picked out one and entered. When the scores came back, they confirmed what the editors (and now agents, too!) were saying. My book was no where near ready for publication. I had so much to learn.

Here are some of the judge P-9's comments:

Opening is good
Premise is diluted with too much thinking about background.
Needs tightening
I could get excited when it focuses!  
(Score 23/40 points)


Judge U-7 said this:

I did not get hooked until page 5 when the rifle shot is heard
Both characters were very well described
Point of view is sometimes confusing
(Score 26/40 points)

Though I'm sure I grumbled a bit during this time, I knew if I was serious about writing as a career, I needed to keep going forward. I consider this book a first try in the learning process. So Catherine's Choice went into a file and I moved on.

**By the way, while going through my rejection letters, I realized I've been literally rejected by almost everyone in publishing at one time or another! More rejection letters to come!

RWA and Submissions

As previously mentioned, my book (Catherine's Choice) started out on a typewriter, then a word processor, then a computer. During the 5 years spent writing this book, I got married, had kids and worked a job with an airline. But I did eventually finish the book of a billion pages (Okay more like 500 or so) and had no idea what to do with it. So I went to Literary Marketplace and started my hunt for a publisher who took romance novels.

After making a list of prospective publishers, I sent out queries and chapters. When the rejection letters came back, they all went something like this:

Dear Author or Dear Writer

Thank you for your query. Unfortunately...

Signed, The editorial department

It was enough to make me give up writing all together. I'd spend 5 year on this book and  no one wanted it? How could that be? 

After the flurry of rejections died down, I realized that I needed an agent, someone who would see the beauty of my manuscript and get me sold. So I cold called (yes, yes, I did) the first agent I could find who took romance. I wish I'd written down her name because she changed my life. After asking her about submission for her agency, there are a long pause on her end, then, "Have you ever heard of Romance Writers of America?"