traditional publishing – My Life in Paragraphs

The Long and Winding Road to Publication

My most recent novel, Blind Turn, has had the longest and most winding road to publication of all my books. I looked back through my files to try to figure out when I started writing it – as best as I can tell, I began writing it in 2010.

I was inspired to think about this because it was chosen to be the Ereader News Book of the Day for this Friday, August 30. For one day it will be just 99 cents!

So, if your reason for not buying a copy has been that you don’t want to spend the money, here’s your chance to get an e-copy for less than a dollar. There’s not much you can buy for less than a buck these days, so I hope you’ll take a chance on me..]

Back to my long and winding story, which I’ll try to keep brief by sharing it in a timeline:

1,000 True Fans: Myth or Legend?

If you’re an artist or entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard Kevin Kelly’s famous assertion:

To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only one thousand true fans. (Kevin Kelly)

I went back and read his original blog post from 2008 this morning. While his words make complete sense, as a traditionally published author, I think I’d need more like 100,000 true fans.

Here’s my math logic: Continue reading “1,000 True Fans: Myth or Legend?”

The Difference Two Weeks Makes…

“When you woke up this morning were you still a big shot author with a new puppy?”

That was the text I got from my husband who was out of the country on business this week.

And it does feel like a ‘pinch-me’ kind of week. My memoir, Another Good Dog, sold to Pegasus Books for publication summer 2018, and after fostering 95 puppies and dogs, I’ve finally decided to ‘foster fail’ and adopt a puppy from our current litter.

Rewind two weeks. Continue reading “The Difference Two Weeks Makes…”

World Tour!

Today is Practicing Normal’s book birthday!

The long wait is over and it is officially published! Shew!

Now it’s time for the book tour! I’ll be on tour with Practicing Normal for the next two months!

Really? Continue reading “World Tour!”

Guess What?!!

I’m interrupting this regularly scheduled post, to give you an exciting update (at least for me):

Unbeknownst to most of you, I’ve been agent-less for the last year, having parted ways with my previous agent who was a really delightful person, but who just wasn’t a great fit for me for a multitude of reasons that would be unfair to air here.

That said, Continue reading “Guess What?!!”

Anybody Can Write a Book, Right?

It used to be that if you wrote a story and it appeared in book form, then you were published.

Okay, maybe it still is like that, except now there are qualifiers. The unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question is how were you published?

It feels a bit like the battles I stepped into after my second child was born when I stopped working full-time and stayed home to raise children. The working mothers vs the stay-at-home moms. The assumptions flew both ways and were equally unfair and at times, ridiculous. We were all still doing the hard work of being mothers.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about traditional publishing and self-publishing. Continue reading “Anybody Can Write a Book, Right?”