Publishing Pulse: July 25, 2014

This Week at Query Tracker
The profiles of several agents were updated this week. Please make sure you double-check every agent's website or Publisher's Marketplace page before querying.

We also have TWO success stories this week! Congrats and best wishes go out to
Toby Tate and Shawn McDonald. Read their interviews and be inspired to write your own success story.

Remember--you'll reach success when you find the agent who is perfect for your work. Be sure to read each agent's profile carefully and visit other links such as company websites and blogs. Follow them on social media sites and get a feeling for what they really want. The better you know the agent, the better you will know if they are the right representative for your work. Blindly querying agents without regard for their guidelines or repped genres only delay the process--not only for you but for other writers.

Using QueryTracker.net will help you become a well-informed querying writer. Use the resources to your advantage and seek the fastest, straightest path to finding your ideal agent today.

This Week in Publishing
Wondering what formats you should be using for your ebooks? This article discusses the evidence of trends between genre and types of reading device.

Novice writers enjoy the bliss of crafting their art and following their dreams. Once the business side manifests, however, the prospect of all we have to do to become and remain published authors is often enough to scare us back into the writer’s closet. Here are some tips to avoid becoming crushed by the big world of making it.

Speaking of dreams...have you ever woken up with a great story idea and wished you made more of it? Here’s a great piece on how to train yourself to make the most of those story-fertile dreams.
 

Thomas Snow ‏@snowglobeman Tweeted...In dreams the words come back to us. In dreams we remember our souls. It was real. It was timeless. May we dream on pic.twitter.com/o0FFLmkYqK

Have a great weekend, everyone!


Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who, despite having a Time Turner under her couch and three different sonic screwdrivers in her purse, still encounters difficulty with time management. Visit Ash at www.ashkrafton.com for news on her urban fantasy series The Books of the Demimonde (Pink Narcissus Press) or stop by the Demimonde Blog at www.ash-krafton.blogspot.com . The final story of the trilogy, WOLF’S BANE (Demimonde #3), is now available.

Ten Things I Need to Tell You. . .About Dreams Coming True

On October 1st, I celebrated the release of my debut novel, a mystery called Murder and Marinara. I have typed those last nine words dozens of times, yet I never tire of them. And that's part of what today's post is about. In the land of publication dreams, there lie some hidden realities--some wondrous, some worrying. And I've gathered a few of them for you in this handy list:

1.The time between signing the contract and your book appearing in print is anywhere between forever and eternity, give or take a month. Seriously, it's a long process. So hang on and enjoy the ride. In the meantime, you'll do things like approve cover sketches and edit jacket copy. That's the fun part. (Revising your entire manuscript with "track changes" on, not so much.)


2. Saying "my editor" is almost as much fun as saying "my agent." But don't overdo it.

3. Most people will be happy for you. I have an inbox full of treasured messages of congratulations from family and friends who were giddy with excitement and happiness for me. My best friend from kindergarten showed up at my signing with a bouquet of roses, a bottle of bubbly, and a gift card to an Italian restaurant. Then she bought seven books. That's some love right there.

5. A few will not. Here and there you'll come across those who are envious or unhappy about your success. It's a sad truth, but part of the cost of this momentous achievement. Maybe they're frustrated writers themselves. Or maybe you've said "my editor" one too many times.

6.  You will be a raging diva the week before launch. While it is all wonderful and exciting, the time right before release has an effect similar to that steamy, frothing stuff that Dr. Jekyll drank. About a week out, you'll start twitching; be prepared for bulging eyeballs, bouts of tears, and flashes of temper. Thank goodness your family loves you.

7. Prepare to be obsessed with numbers. Sales numbers. Amazon numbers. Numbers of stars on reviews. Numbers of bloggers on your tour. Numbers of review copies that go out. Numbers of ratings on Goodreads. Numbers of friends on Facebook. You get the idea. I'd like to provide more examples, but I have some flow charts I'm working on at the moment.

8. Have ready answers to the following questions: How long did it take you to write the book? and How did you get published? Hands down, these are the two questions I get asked the most.

9. The party is the best part. Have one. It can be four friends and a pizza, but celebrate. There's only one first time. And finally. . .

10. Having a pen name may pay off in unexpected ways:

The beauty of alphabetical order.

A Jersey girl born and bred, Rosie Genova left her heart at the shore, which serves as the setting for much of her work. Her new series, the Italian Kitchen Mysteries, is informed by her deep appreciation for good food, her pride in her heritage, and her love of classic mysteries, from Nancy Drew to Miss Marple. Her debut novel, Murder and Marinara, released October 1. An English teacher by day and novelist by night, Rosie also writes women’s fiction as Rosemary DiBattista. She lives fifty miles from the nearest ocean  in central New Jersey, with her husband, two of her three sons, and an ill-behaved fox terrier. You can visit Rosie on Facebook, Goodreads, or at www.rosiegenova.com.

Making Your Dreams Your Reality Part II

By Kristy Lahoda | @KristyLahoda

So, I left off in the last post encouraging you to find your dreams and to incorporate them into your reality. Now the question becomes, How is this done realistically when it’s not part of your nine-to-five job? 

Despite only having forty pages of my novel written before my twins were born, I was proud of what I had accomplished. It seemed like a good start, but when I would tell people that I was writing a novel and how much I had written, very few people seemed impressed. I want to encourage you to not become disheartened by the lack of support by other people—often it will just serve to discourage and distract you. So how do you write with an extremely busy schedule, despite lack of understanding and encouragement—against the odds?

Be deliberate. After my twins were born, they were in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for six and a half weeks. I was on maternity leave with no obligations at home. It was the perfect time to write, but I was emotionally drained. A phrase familiar to NICU families is “two steps forward, one step back” and we lived that for a month and a half. During that time I reflected on my novel and how I was going to use my maternity leave to accomplish as much as possible while taking care of and enjoying the twins. I set a goal. I decided that once the babies were home, I would take advantage of my maternity leave and write because I might not ever have that much time off of work again. And I did. They came home at the beginning of October and while they slept 18 hours a day, I wrote. I had to be very conscientious about not getting distracted with other things that weren’t as important, but I was moving along quickly enough that my husband challenged me to get to 100 pages by New Year’s Day. I accepted his challenge and suddenly I had a third of my novel written. 

Once I went back to work it took eleven months to finish my novel. The only time I had available to write was in the evening hours after the twins were in bed and during naptime on the weekends. However, I still thought about the novel while I wasn’t writing. When busy doing something that didn’t take a lot of concentration, I would use that time to plan scenes in my novel. I usually knew what I wanted to have happen in the next scene, so I would dwell upon certain questions: How could the characters accomplish what I needed them to do? What did I need to research for the next scene? And so on. This time was invaluable. I highly recommend planning while you are busy doing anything that doesn’t involve much of your mental faculties.

Writing involves sacrifice, as does any other worthwhile endeavor. I wrote not only because I wanted to accomplish an important goal in my life, but also with the hope that there would be a day when I could write professionally at least part-time. I still don’t know if that is going to happen, but I chose to sacrifice the time then for a potentially better future for my family. Was it worth it? I believe it was, but balance is the key. Even though my writing took away quality time from my husband, not to mention cuddle time with my twin babies, my husband was very supportive because he saw that spark in me that he hadn’t seen in a long time. He knew that while I was writing, I was fulfilling an innate desire. Without his encouragement and support, it would not have been worth it. 

Decide whether your writing goals will be detrimental—especially to your family. Do the pros outweigh the cons of your sacrifice? If you have personal time available and you feel a drive to write, then spend some of your free time writing each week. It doesn’t have to be a lot. The important thing is to be consistent, but not militant. Keeping a word or page count per day, even if you don’t write every day, works for many writers. If you feel that you are not spending enough time with your family or doing other things, take the day off from writing and spend your day doing something else. Chances are, it will refresh you and it might give you the inspiration that you need to continue pursuing your dream.

Kristy Lahoda, Ph.D., is an explosives analyst contractor in a crime lab as well as a science content editor for a major educational publishing company.  She writes Christian forensic suspense and discusses forensics on her blog called Explosive Faith.  You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

If you have a forensics question for Dr. Lahoda that you'd like to see answered on the QueryTracker Blog, send your question via Carolyn Kaufman using the email link under Contact Us in the right-hand column of the main QTB page.

Making Your Dreams Your Reality

By Kristy Lahoda | @KristyLahoda

I’ve had a lot of dreams since I was young, and at first glance, one might say I have failed to fulfill them. In fact, there are days when I almost convince myself that this is true. Thankfully, those days are few and far between.

Though my life hasn’t turned out exactly the way I envisioned it, in a way, I believe I have fulfilled every memorable dream I had in childhood. I remember sitting in the hallway during church services when I was young and writing books during the sermons. I wanted to be an author. Next, I wanted to be an architect.

By late elementary school, my best friend and I were pretending that we were detectives and forensic chemists and making up “secret” mixtures. Fast forward to high school, when I absolutely loved chemistry. It was during those years that I became fascinated with explosives. In college, I majored in chemistry and decided I wanted to be a forensic scientist. This was before forensic science was on the general public’s radar—before CSI Las Vegas aired. I graduated and was offered a job at a private forensic lab and turned it down. Was this a mistake? Mostly, yes. But, a lot of good things came out of my choice.

I decided that I didn’t know anything about forensics or analytical chemistry and that I should go to grad school and learn before working in a crime lab. Knowing what I know now, nothing trumps experience. I was fortunate enough, however, to do my research for a professor who had worked at the FBI as an explosives researcher. It was a perfect fit for me. Another really good thing to come out of my decision to go to grad school was meeting my future husband the last year I was there!

I also got the itch to start writing a forensic crime novel, but only wrote about twenty pages. I never had a plot and thought that things would just come to me as I wrote. I didn’t spend much time writing, so I didn’t get anywhere. After a short post-doctoral stint, I hoped that I would be able to get a job in the explosives field. Nothing. In fact, I was unemployed for almost two years. While unemployed, I began to get the itch to write a book again.

I did profuse amounts of research and filled up several notebooks. I came up with ideas, talked them over with my husband, and we brainstormed together. I had a plot and an outline of the first fifteen chapters and an idea of how I wanted the ending to turn out. Just after I wrote the Prologue, I was offered a job as a science content editor at a major educational publishing company.

Over three years later, I have yet to work full-time in the forensic field, but is that stopping me from finding fulfillment? Does that mean that I can’t still enjoy forensics? Of course not! I’ll let you in on a few nuggets I’ve learned along the way.

First, don’t give up on your dreams! Second, sometimes you just have to get creative. You never know when an opportunity will present itself. Third, there are many avenues for achieving similar goals—this is where creativity comes into play. Professionally, editing never entered my mind, but after being unemployed for so long, I got creative in my job search. I realized that being a science content editor combined my interest in writing with science. A year and a half ago, I got the opportunity to be an explosives analyst contractor for a crime lab. This has greatly enhanced my writing—it comes straight from the source, not just what I imagine working in a crime lab to be like. Living what you are writing about goes a long way with agents.

I have found a way to incorporate the different things I wanted to be growing up with the reality of not always getting to do what I wanted or what I envisioned my life to be like as a grown up. I wanted to be an author, architect, detective, and a forensic explosives chemist. In reality, I am a full-time editor and an explosives contractor, who has found a way to combine my passions—I am the architect, or writer if you will, of forensic explosives suspense. I want to encourage you to find a way to incorporate your dreams into your life.

Are your dreams long forgotten? If so, find them! What are you passionate about? What do you enjoy doing? Take away your obligations and/or money limitations for a moment. If you could do anything, what would you do?

Now, is there a way to incorporate your dreams into reality? Are you unemployed? Make good use of your spare time. When you aren’t looking for employment, which admittedly can be a full-time job in and of itself, start working on things you’ve been meaning to do. Maybe you haven’t had the opportunity to live out or experience your dreams in the way you were hoping. Since you are a writer, maybe this can be through writing…or maybe there is another avenue that you haven’t yet thought of! I am here to tell you that you can use the gifts and talents you’ve been given despite your restrictions, you just may have to get creative.

Kristy Lahoda, Ph.D., is an explosives analyst contractor in a crime lab as well as a science content editor for a major educational publishing company.  She writes Christian forensic suspense and discusses forensics on her blog called Explosive Faith.  You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

If you have a forensics question for Dr. Lahoda that you'd like to see answered on the QueryTracker Blog, send your question via Carolyn Kaufman using the email link under Contact Us in the right-hand column of the main QTB page.

Unleash Your Creative Genius!

Few realize the way dreams have shaped our world. I'm not talking about the aspirations of visionaries, but the literal dreams people have had while sleeping. If you are like most people, your dreams are forgotten within moments of waking. Here are some tricks to help you capture – and make the most of – your creative power.

Trick One - Stay in Bed

The average human spends one third of their life sleeping. Twenty percent of that time is spent dreaming. Dreams are a good source of new material for writers, but how can you capture them? The first step is to stay in the half-awake state for just a few moments longer. Keep your eyes closed. Think about your dream. Try to run through it from beginning to end; this will help you remember it later.

“I woke up from a very vivid dream,” says Stephenie Meyer on her website regarding the origination of her book, Twilight. “Though I had a million things to do, I stayed in bed thinking about the dream.” Later that day she penned it in its entirety. Readers will recognize it as the now-famous meadow scene.

Trick Two – Write It Down

Otto Loewi nearly failed to capture the dream that led to his earning the Nobel Prize. He dreamt of an experiment that would prove once and for all how nerve impulses were transmitted. He woke up long enough to scribble his idea on a scrap of paper, but the next morning couldn’t read his own handwriting. The day that followed was, he later said, the longest of his life because he could not remember his idea. When he dreamed of it the following night, he jumped from bed and went straight to the lab to conduct the experiment that made medical history.

Take a lesson from Loewi. Write legibly or use a computer to record the details of your dreams.

Trick Three - Look Deeper

Don’t be afraid to look for a deeper meaning in your dreams; the answer to a problem may be just under the surface. Albert Einstein dreamed he was sledding down a hill at night, faster and faster until the stars blurred as he reached the speed of light. This dream gave birth to his Theory of Relativity.

Trick Four – Expand and Expound

Robert Louis Stevenson gleaned many plots from dreams, most notably that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His wife related how, one night, Stevenson cried out so horror-stricken that she roused him. “Why did you wake me,” he protested, “I was dreaming a fine tale!” She described how the next morning he awoke exclaiming, “I have got my chilling shocker, I have got my chilling shocker!”

Stevenson discovered he could dream complete stories and go back into the same dream on succeeding nights. If you have a dream you want to expand upon, or a plot in which you have reached an impasse, think about it as you fall asleep. You may be surprised when you wake with more material or a solution!

Trick Five – Pick a character

Have you ever started out as one person in a dream then seamlessly become someone else? Some experts believe we play all the characters in our dreams. For writers, this means we can expand our repertoire endlessly. Pick a character (any character!) from your dream, and you should be able to understand their viewpoint and motivations.

This trick gives you as an author great versatility. That boogie-man that chased you in your dreams the other night? You already know how he thinks, and can nail his voice in your writing.

Trick Six – Invigorate and Inspire

You may be surprised to learn that Thomas Edison invented, among other things, the power nap. He renewed his creativity by curling up on his workbench to sleep for twenty minutes at a time, often gaining great flashes of insight on a particular problem that had been plaguing him. He trained himself to remain in that in-between sleep state for as long as possible.

Artist Salvador Dali took this technique one step further. He napped with a fork clenched in his fist, held out over a plate he’d set on the floor. As he began to doze, his grasp relaxed and the fork clattered onto the plate, waking him. He would immediately sketch the images he had seen in his dreams.

While you don’t need to go so far as finding a workbench or plate and fork, a short snooze will give you a burst of energy and some fresh inspiration to go along with it.

Why It Works

The dreaming mind is free of all the creativity blockers that are usually present in the conscious mind. While you sleep, the power of your creativity has free reign over your brain. Dreams take you to new and exciting worlds. Your writing will be more vivid; as far as your brain is concerned, you are writing about places you have been and events that have happened to you, albeit while dreaming.

Don’t be surprised if ideas come to you in their entirety. “…because I had dreamed it, I couldn’t believe I had written it,” said Paul McCartney of Yesterday after waking with the song in his head. “I thought, ‘I’ve never written anything like this before.’ I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!”

Apply It!

Keep a dream journal and write your dreams down. If you don’t have time to log the whole dream, write down a few details. You may be surprised when you come back to your notes and discover that you can recall the dream in its entirety. Refer to your dream journal often, most especially when inspiration seems to run dry. It's possible to weave many dreams into a single story.

Now, close your eyes, dream big, and let the magic of your own creative power come to you!

How to Unleash Your Creative Genius - Six Tricks to Capturing Dreams Part II

For those of you who missed last week's article, you can find the first four tricks here.


Trick Five – Pick a character

Have you ever started out as one person in a dream then seamlessly become someone else? Some experts believe we play all the characters in our dreams. For writers, this means we can expand our repertoire endlessly. Pick a character (any character!) from your dream, and you should be able to understand their viewpoint and motivations.

This trick gives you as an author great versatility. That boogie-man that chased you in your dreams the other night? You already know how he thinks, and can nail his voice in your writing.

Trick Six – Invigorate and Inspire

You may be surprised to learn that Thomas Edison invented, among other things, the power nap. He renewed his creativity by curling up on his workbench to sleep for twenty minutes at a time, often gaining great flashes of insight on a particular problem that had been plaguing him. He trained himself to remain in that in-between sleep state for as long as possible.

Artist Salvador Dali took this technique one step further. He napped with a fork clenched in his fist, held out over a plate he’d set on the floor. As he began to doze, his grasp relaxed and the fork clattered onto the plate, waking him. He would immediately sketch the images he had seen in his dreams.

While you don’t need to go so far as finding a workbench or plate and fork, a short snooze will give you a burst of energy and some fresh inspiration to go along with it.

Why It Works

The dreaming mind is free of all the creativity blockers that are usually present in the conscious mind. While you sleep, the power of your creativity has free reign over your brain. Dreams take you to new and exciting worlds. Your writing will be more vivid; as far as your brain is concerned, you are writing about places you have been and events that have happened to you, albeit while dreaming.

Don’t be surprised if ideas come to you in their entirety. “…because I had dreamed it, I couldn’t believe I had written it,” said Paul McCartney of Yesterday after waking with the song in his head. “I thought, ‘I’ve never written anything like this before.’ I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!”

Apply It!

Keep a dream journal and write your dreams down. If you don’t have time to log the whole dream, write down a few details. You may be surprised when you come back to your notes and discover that you can recall the dream in its entirety. Refer to your dream journal often, most especially when inspiration seems to run dry. It's possible to weave many dreams into a single story.

Now, close your eyes, dream big, and let the magic of your own creative power come to you!

Would you like to post this article on your own blog? For a free download, enter suzette saxton in the search engine on GoArticles.

How to Unleash Your Creative Genius - Six Tricks to Capturing Dreams

Few realize the way dreams have shaped our world. I'm not talking about the aspirations of visionaries, but the literal dreams people have had while sleeping. If you are like most people, your dreams are forgotten within moments of waking. Here are some tricks to help you capture – and make the most of – your creative power.

Trick One - Stay in Bed

The average human spends one third of their life sleeping. Twenty percent of that time is spent dreaming. Dreams are a good source of new material for writers, but how can you capture them? The first step is to stay in the half-awake state for just a few moments longer. Keep your eyes closed. Think about your dream. Try to run through it from beginning to end; this will help you remember it later.

“I woke up from a very vivid dream,” says Stephenie Meyer on her website regarding the origination of her book, Twilight. “Though I had a million things to do, I stayed in bed thinking about the dream.” Later that day she penned it in its entirety. Readers will recognize it as the now-famous meadow scene.

Trick Two – Write It Down

Otto Loewi nearly failed to capture the dream that led to his earning the Nobel Prize. He dreamt of an experiment that would prove once and for all how nerve impulses were transmitted. He woke up long enough to scribble his idea on a scrap of paper, but the next morning couldn’t read his own handwriting. The day that followed was, he later said, the longest of his life because he could not remember his idea. When he dreamed of it the following night, he jumped from bed and went straight to the lab to conduct the experiment that made medical history.

Take a lesson from Loewi. Write legibly or use a computer to record the details of your dreams.

Trick Three - Look Deeper

Don’t be afraid to look for a deeper meaning in your dreams; the answer to a problem may be just under the surface. Albert Einstein dreamed he was sledding down a hill at night, faster and faster until the stars blurred as he reached the speed of light. This dream gave birth to his Theory of Relativity.

Trick Four – Expand and Expound

Robert Louis Stevenson gleaned many plots from dreams, most notably that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His wife related how, one night, Stevenson cried out so horror-stricken that she roused him. “Why did you wake me,” he protested, “I was dreaming a fine tale!” She described how the next morning he awoke exclaiming, “I have got my chilling shocker, I have got my chilling shocker!”

Stevenson discovered he could dream complete stories and go back into the same dream on succeeding nights. If you have a dream you want to expand upon, or a plot in which you have reached an impasse, think about it as you fall asleep. You may be surprised when you wake with more material or a solution!


Keep your eye out for the second half of this article next week. I'll reveal the 5th and 6th tricks as well as ways to apply these techniques to your writing!