Madness and Mayhem, or, What I’ve Been Up To Lately….

Is it March 1 already? [insert expletive here] Well….time does pass, like it or not. And it’s been a busy time. Let’s see… in January I went to MarsCon and had a great time. In February I went to the Wicked Winter Renaissance Faire with minions and husband in tow and had an amazingly fun time; a post about the Experience That Is Wicked Faire is languishing half-done in my drafts folder as we speak. I might manage to finish it….but might not. We’ll have to see on that.

I’m currently preparing for SheVA Con this coming weekend; Peter Beagle is the Guest of Honor, so you can just imagine how excited I am about attending this one! (For those clueless about that name: very. And go look him up. Seriously.) Then I get to wrap up my intensive writing class over the next three weekends. That class is going extremely well so far, and I’m beginning to think about finding a spot locally to teach as well.

That project will have to wait, though, until the April Madness has passed. I love being over-committed in all directions, and this year I’ve sat myself right in the middle of a ton of work. I’ll be running a series of blog posts about April events, so I won’t bore you with it here–but rest assured there will be plenty of opportunities to catch up with me and get that book signed or ask me writing questions next month!

This blog is also going to be seeing more and more guest blog posts as time goes on: Steven Savage, of course, is contributing twice a month, on the fifth and the twentieth. I have a followup interview with Tina Morris coming out this month as well, and I’m working on scheduling a guest blog post with authors Becky Mushko and Michael Sullivan. So there’s going to be a lot of content coming out over the next few weeks!

Elsewhere in the webbysphere, I have a review of a rare acoustic performance of local favorites Coyote Run aimed to come out through Green Man Review, along with interviews with the various band members. Look for that to post over at GMR sometime before the end of March! (editing update: the post has just aired, in August 2011, due to unexpected delays along the way. On the other hand, it’s a triple-howl: two reviews and an interview. So that was worth waiting for!)

I’ve taken on the job of posting a monthly update for Mercury Retrograde Press authors; the first one should be posting today, so wander over and check out that blog if you have a moment. We are an impressive bunch of overachievers, if I do say so myself….

And finally, I’m hoping to get another bizarre short story into a dark, bird-themed anthology–this will be my first (mature) attempt at writing a spooky story. Hopefully it will … err … fly. (Couldn’t resist, sorry).

Aaaaand….. that’s it for updates this month! Thanks for reading, as always; and remember to keep smiling–just for the hell of it!

 

Past and Future Days….

I’ve found myself musing, as my second book launch approaches, on how I’ve changed over the past year. The new reality I live in, and where I’ll be in another year. My goal at one point not too long ago was to have an agent. Then it was to get a publisher. Then it was to convince people to come to my book launch. Then it was to book as many convention appearances as I could afford. Now I’m aiming to convince people to come to my second book launch–which is complicated by the fact that I’m running three of them this time.

Along the way, my understanding of everything from the writing process itself to the business of writing has radically shifted. I started out believing that Big Press was the only way to go, and that Small Presses were tantamount to self publishing. After signing with a small press, I turned that 180 for a while and thought Small Press was the only way to go, and that Big Press was almost universally evil. Along with that, of course, went a dislike of Big Chain Bookstores and a strident waving of the flag for independents.

In the past year, however, I’ve spoken to very happy Big Press midlist authors and very unhappy Small Press authors; very unhappy Big Press authors and very happy Small Press authors. I’ve heard C. S. Friedman publicly and privately praise DAW as an awesome house to work with, and I’ve seen Night Shade Books go under the SFWA’s disapproval. I’ve read Holly Lisle’s rant on the problems with Big Bookstore models and read through the resulting flurry of comments, many of which made very good sense, both pro and con. I’ve spoken to indie bookstores who turned their noses up at me because I didn’t have a Big Name Publisher behind me, and worked with more than one local Barnes & Noble who went out of their way (and still do) to carry & promote my books. I’ve also seen B&Ns out of state flatly refuse to even consider carrying my book because Corporate won’t give the individual stores enough autonomy. I’ve donated copies to libraries that were friendly and grateful; I’ve handed my book over to librarians who looked at me like I’d just crawled out from under a foul smelling rock.

All of which is in service of saying: it’s all individual, when you get right down to it. As a writer, I don’t believe I can afford to look at “overall” and “general” and “trend” information. I need to look at what I want to accomplish, and then find someone who will support me in that goal, regardless of what the industry and the economy and the profession at large is doing. The trends–bookstores closing, publishers failing, economy tanking–whatever you want to say is the current state of the world–doesn’t matter. Really. If I run my life by what everyone else sees, I have no business being a writer.

Holly Lisle, in her rant, makes some good points. She also depresses me mightily; because if your career can be so dead after three books that you literally have to change your pen name to continue as a writer–if the mechanized selling practices of chain bookstores can kill your books without ever giving them a chance at life–then I’m totally screwed and I’ll never make enough to pay for a can of soda, so I may as well get a day job and forget about all this writing crap.

But. 

I also see examples of writers like Michael Sullivan beating the odds through bizarrely unlikely paths. I see moderately talented authors who put advertising and promotions at a high priority (by the way, that description is not aimed at Michael) succeeding where astoundingly talented prima donnas–who refuse to lift a finger to do anything but write–fail.

This is the world we live in today. If you can’t stand to be out in public, better cultivate a friend who loves the spotlight, or hire a really good publicist. I used to be utterly terrified of public appearances, of *gulp* giving speeches and trying to convince hordes of strangers that my book is worth reading. I had to get over that. Now I’m reasonably decent at promoting myself and learning more all the time. That’s the decision I had to make: not to look at all the ways to fail, but to shove through and make a way to succeed.

So stop listening to trends and forecasts of doom. For every Big Store and Big Press and Big Name without a heart, there’s someone who’s desperate to help you–yes, you out there in the back row–I hear you thinking that I’m talking out of my ass right now. Listen: you have to go out and find the people who want to help–because they don’t even know you exist yet. Holly Lisle is an excellent source of information on writing and writing careers; her how-to books have taught me a lot. So has Writing-World. This blog is another great resource (sorry, had to plug that in there). So are dozens of other site and people and places. The tools are there. The resources are there. Never mind how Big any given Name is. They are individuals, just like you & me. Some of them will help you, if you take the steps to ask.

So stop talking about the obstacles to advancing your writing career, stop reading about it, and go do something about it…right now! And keep trying until someone says Y E S!!