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Pitchapalooza in Review

Published by Kelly on March 1, 2011

Last night I attended a Pitchapalooza event at the KC library and learned a lot of great things about how I can improve my ability to pitch The Redheaded Stepchild, both in query letters and in casual conversation with people. Here are a few of the takeaways I got:

  • Finding good comparison titles is really important. I need to do a better job of this, cause I’ve really got nothing. But I haven’t been working that hard at it, either.
  • Your pitch should give the pitchee an idea of a beginning, middle, and end to your story. This is a challenge for me since the plot is not chronologically structured, but there’s definitely room for improvement.
  • Ending with a question is a way to hook the audience and build intrigue.
  • You must make the intended audience fall in love with the main character (even if they just love to hate him).
  • Use your pitch as a way to demonstrate what a great writer you are. It shouldn’t sound like a use car salesman’s pitch.
  • Think of your book pitch as if you’re pitching a movie, and think to yourself, “who’s the guy on the poster?”

If you’ll recall, one of my goals for the year was to attend more of these events, so I am glad I went, even though I didn’t get picked to pitch. It was a free event, but I had some leftover cash so I bought the book and got the 20-minute consultation with @TheBookDoctors (find them on Twitter). So here is my pitch from last night… stay tuned for the refined version.

My book, The Redheaded Stepchild, is a series of non-chronological, thematically structured slice-of-life short stories about a young woman coming of age in a small town and her complicated relationship with her newly-appointed but icy stepmother.

Don’t get the wrong idea; it’s far from a Cinderella story. There are no singing animals, evil stepsisters, Prince Charming, or happily ever after – just a small town girl trying to establish her identity as anything else and leave her mark on the world, while struggling to escape the reality of where she comes from, and what her life is now.

At around 65,000 words, this 12-story book has the flexibility for publication as a series or as an entire manuscript. It is a work of mainstream literary fiction that will have a focused appeal to women and young adults, but is written for all who love a great story and have an appreciation for detailed prose.

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Weekly writing challenge 1/1/2011

Published by Kelly on January 10, 2011

As part of my writer goals for 2011, I am making myself write something every week. One of the things that helped keep me motivated last year was to give myself a weekly writing challenge. If I got inspired by something, I made it my challenge to put it to paper. If someone threw out a challenge, I picked it up. Some were easier than others, some ended up getting killed in the creative process, and some turned out to be phenomenal.

I was handed this challenge by one of my Twitter followers who is hosting a contest. I typically don’t go for writing contests because they usually have some ridiculous price tag and a ridiculously unattainable or puny prize. I also typically don’t bite for horror, because it’s not really my genre, but then again, I don’t really have a genre so I figured I could pull it off. It may or may not be as predictable plot-wise as every horror film from the 1980s, and may or may not be far too much like Rosemary’s Baby, but I hope what it lacks in originality it makes up for with literary merit and proseworthiness. But you be the judge of that.

New short story – The Rainbow Prison.

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2010 in writer review

Published by Kelly on December 31, 2010

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is always a time of annual reflection for me, and as I was reflecting on the year that was 2010, I realized how much of a success it has been, and here’s why:

  • I had a total of seven manuscripts published in either print journals, online magazines, websites, or some other medium. Before this year, I had none.
  • I had nine works get accepted for publication. Two of them (ironically enough, the first two) have yet to go to print, so I can’t really count them in the “published” category. What can I say? The world of traditional print publishing is slow.
  • I got a book deal. I didn’t take the book deal, because it was really crappy, but if I can get a really crappy book deal, chances are I can get a less crappy book deal if I keep at it.
  • I started reaching out to other writers, booksellers, and other publishing industry people on Twitter. My relationships on Twitter are directly responsible for three of those seven publications.
  • I pimped my writing – mainly my novel – at South by Southwest and reached out to industry people at the trade shows. This led to two of my publications, both of which were accepted for the site’s best-of-the-year collection.
  • I got a Kindle. This is going to help me understand how writing for this medium is different and will also give me instant access to other independent writers like me and their work.
  • I read. It should be common sense that all writers are readers, but I think we take it for granted. Every time I read something from another author I learn something new.
  • I began participating in an organization to help me with better public speaking skills. I have this pesky slight stutter that comes and goes, and I am an introvert like most writers, and feel uncomfortable talking about my own work, like most writers.
  • I wrote more than 1o new manuscripts. I started far more, but part of a writer’s work is killing the crap.

So, I would say that on a semi-professional writer’s level, the year was a wild success. But I have to keep getting better. Since resolutions are just imaginary, unattainable pipe dreams, I set yearly goals instead of New Year’s Resolutions. Here are my writer’s goals for 2010:

  • Join a writer’s group. I didn’t do it this year because I am not sure if I will be in Kansas City for an entire year, and I didn’t want to pay the year’s dues if I wasn’t going to be.
  • Attend book tour and other events at local bookstores. I’ve already signed up for Pitchapalooza by Rainy Day Books next month, and I attended my first book tour event this year and couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it before. The more I see how other people talk about their work, the better I’ll know how to talk about my own.
  • Give out more business cards at South by Southwest than I did last year. It was my first attempt last year, and I have to get more shameless about it.
  • Write something new, even if it’s just a sentence, once a week, for a total of 25 new manuscripts.
  • Read more books, with 50% of them being independent authors. The Kindle will come in handy here 🙂
  • Publish 10 manuscripts. If I can get 9 accepted manuscripts in one year, I can get at least 10 more if I try harder.
  • Submit something every week. This is always the goal, but I don’t always reach it.
  • Start submitting my novel to both agents and independent book publishers, especially those who specialize in e-print.

I think this is a good set of attainable goals, and I look forward to all that 2011 will bring.

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New poem up: The Split Fingernail

Published by Kelly on December 29, 2010

I wrote this poem a couple days ago and as standard practice dictates, I came back to it today and put my official stamp of approval on it. It’s called The Split Fingernail and it includes a made-up word, gravy, and lots of other cool detail.

It’s about this pesky fingernail I have that has grown in split down the middle for the last 3 years, after smashing it when I was working a side waitressing gig trying to make ends meet as a member of the newly-divorced.

Enjoy 😉

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The writer’s dilemma: carspiration

Published by Kelly on December 1, 2010

Any writer will be able to brandish on command the handy-dandy notebook they carry with them at all times for the moments when ideas strike that must be either written down or forgotten forever.  If they’re anything like me, though, these moments almost always happen while driving.

I spend about an hour in my car every day going to and from the office, and cruelly enough, my moments of inspiration usually happen after a particularly difficult day.  I’m one of those who refuses to talk on the phone while I am driving as well, so even if I were to try and make a voice note, it would probably be just as dangerous as writing out my brilliant idea that comes to me in the car.

Writers – how do you deal with “carspiration”?

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New poem up. They should call it NaPoWriMo.

Published by Kelly on November 12, 2010

Well, it’s National Novel Writing Month, but I am not writing a novel. I have several reasons, all of which I can back up with my own flawed logic. Regardless, I did set a goal for the month, a goal to finish all the works in progress that plague me. My second goal was not to start anything new until I accomplished the first goal.

So far, I have broken both goals. I have only finished one work in progress, and I wrote a new poem. What can I say? I just kinda happened. Besides, you can’t stifle inspiration when you are lucky enough to get it. Anyway, I was down in Springfield, MO, my old stomping grounds back in college, and I drove by the bar I used to go to several times per week back in my heyday. It was “our bar”, with the other half of the our being my ex-husband. The building is vacant and looks exactly the same.

It inspired me to use it as a metaphor for the dumbest decision I ever made. It’s called Culley’s Pub: An Elegy. Check it out.

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New Short Story: The Camera

Published by Kelly on October 25, 2010

Last week I was struggling with whether to finish either of the 2 short stories I’ve been working on for what seems like ages and whose writer’s block has given me fits of semi-insanity, or tabula-rasa it and start over, when a friend told me a crazy story.

It was all about how he found this camera while we were in Lawrence, which I remember, and how he found the person it belonged to, just by the pictures that were on it and his powers of deductive reasoning. Well, the truth might be stranger than fiction, but I’ll let you be the judge of just how implausible this really sounds. Check out The Camera and let me know what you think.

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The winding Internet road

Published by Kelly on October 15, 2010

Do you ever start at one place on the internet and end up on a completely different place, with only vague recollection of how you got there?

Today, I was late at work waiting for some other people to provide some stuff for me, so while I was waiting, I decided to catch up on some Google reader. As much as I try to stay up on what’s going on in the industry, it’s really tough, and I often fail. Still, there are a few choice sites that I like to make sure I’m always up on. One of them is midlist thriller writer J.A. Konrath’s blog – A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. I rarely read an entire post end-to-end, because they are often long and I am lazy, but I was entranced by this one. If you’ve dealt with anyone offering you a book deal, which I have and to this day am SO glad I declined, even though I am a nobody, take 5 minutes and read this post. It’s a lot of fun.

After I read the entire post, I did something else I almost never do – I left a comment, and took some time to read some of the other comments. I typically avoid these because I get overly emotionally involved in comment arguments between strangers hiding behind the safety net of anonymity the internet affords and my temper starts flaring. These things never matter, so it’s usually just best I leave them alone. I once read 3 pages worth of comments on an article about Uggs. People have some seriously strong pro-Ugg and con-Ugg opinions. Despite my general avoidance of comment spaces, I decided to troll the comments on this post for A) other writers and industry professionals I can follow on Twitter and B) to see what the response was on this very flagrant post.

One of the comments left was this:

Hi — love the post! I’m an author and I run a small independent publishing company (Bucks County Publishing) and we are primarily involved in paperbacks but we do eBooks too… it is a side thing really because the overhead is so little to do it. We price all of our full length eBook novels at $2.99 and anything shorter is $1.99. Simple pricing. It is ridiculous that these publishing companies want to gauge the customer OR kill the medium…. or both.

I, too, am an author, and I love small independent publishing companies. So I decided to check out their site, and see if they were accepting submissions, because I am a predatory author. As it turns out, they are, and as far as I can tell, it would be a really really good fit for me and my work. Then again, I’ve thought that about lots of book publishers I’ve submitted to who have summarily rejected me. Still, what luck to just find this by link-jumping on the internets. Then, I got to thinking about other neat things I’ve stumbled upon by random internet jumping…

Line Zero: I heard about this new print journal on Twitter. They were looking for submissions for their first issue, I submitted, and I got accepted. Really, I just lucky at the right time with the right journal.

LinkedIn is notorious for sending me down these weird internet paths. Somehow I got from a friend’s LinkedIn page to Smashwords, and that’s how I found out about them. I am still evaluating whether I want to take the ebook self-pub route, but if and when I do, this will be how I do it.

Rose City Sisters: Another Twitter find. The site editor started following me on Twitter, put out the call for submissions, I threw a flash fiction thing together, and decided it would be a good venue for getting some flash fiction practice under my belt. They’ve posted 2 of my stories since.

The volunteer thing I didn’t get: Another stumbly motion on Twitter.

Oh, and I guess I should mention that I found J.A. Konrath’s blog when I was doing some research for a post on this site regarding my distaste for SASEs.

So, if we’re counting, three of my publications came from internet-winding, even if they’re on independent sites and journals. If the Bucks County Publishing people publish me, that’ll make four. Not too bad for just messing around on the internet and finding the right opportunities at opportune moments. Maybe I should just set aside an hour a week for internet “creative space.”

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My first short story publication!

Published by Kelly on October 11, 2010

Happy Columbus Day, everyone! I got an email late last night that Line Zero, a new quarterly arts journal, is going to pick up Two Steps Forward! I almost didn’t believe it, but I took a look at the site this morning and on the post with the finalist announcements was my name.

http://linezero.org/literary-finalists/

The issue comes out in November and I can’t wait to see it. This is a brand new journal, just opened for submissions at the beginning of September. I heard about them on Twitter, I think. It just goes to show that it pays off to keep track of emerging players in the market and get in on the ground floor!

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