Happy Father’s Day to the dads out there. Including mine. *waves*
Here’s my opportunity to publicly praise my husband, the designing dad. He’s spent more hours than I can count walking a fussy baby on his shoulder, drawing pictures, reading stories, watching kid movies, hiking around wearing a child in a backpack and generally being a terrific dad. He’s a pro and he’s only been at it 3 years. 😆
So the website is getting a bit behind. I will get some updates together for dates and titles if nothing else on upcoming stories. Need to get the fall releases onto the site along with the 07 titles. I have two scheduled for 07 so far, one for EC, one for St. Martin’s Press. I don’t think I’ll worry about anything beyond title and date on those until we get closer to the end of 06, but I should at least have ’em listed.
Schedule looks like this:
TBA Sept. 06, Wolf In Shining Armor, Ellora’s Cave
Nov. 1, Night Music in Beginnings: A Samhain Anthology, Samhain Publishing
Dec. 7, Yule Be Mine, Cerridwen Press
TBA 07: Only Human (Torrid Tarot: The Star) Ellora’s Cave
July 07: Wild Wild West, St. Martin’s Press
Miss Lonely Hearts is in there but the new date will get set after I turn in the ms.
The husband and I have our updated 5 year plan down, complete with short term goals. It was time. Our 5 year anniversary is in Sept. and everything in our lives has changed 100% since then. I have my writing planned out, too, although Night Music has a hurry-up on it that may shift the order of things a tad.
The official title of the Samhain antho that Night Music is part of has been announced! It’s Beginnings: A Samhain Anthology Vol. 1. Can’t wait to see what the cover will be. Same cover image will be used for the print anthology and the individual ebook (each story will be available for individual download as well as the combined print book, giving readers more options).
In an attempt to keep the blog from sinking into discussions of how many pages I wrote the day before, I’m trying to come up with educational or entertaining entries while I plow ahead. Today’s is my list of 10 recommended books for anybody interested in writing for a living.
1. Zig Ziglar’s Secrets Of Closing The Sale. Excellent sales techniques, and that’s what a query letter needs to do: sell.
2. Henriette Anne Klauser’s Write It Down, Make It Happen. All about the magic of having a written list of goals.
3. Napoleon Hill’s Think And Grow Rich. It’s not all about money, it’s about mental focus and commitment to a goal.
4. Norman Vincent Peal’s Power Of Positive Thinking. The negatives can really get you down and hurt productivity. Creativity doesn’t thrive in a negative environment.
5. Jay Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing. Marketing and promotion is expensive. Guerilla Marketing is all about effective marketing on the cheap. It’s geared to small business owners, but if you’re a freelance writer, that’s what you are.
6. Richard Bolles’ What Color Is Your Parachute? Lots of good tools to define what you really want to do. Writing is broad. There was a time when I thought I’d be happy to earn a living doing any kind of writing. Technical writing cured me of this belief.
7. R.H. Jarrett’s It Works. Short and simple booklet on getting clear about what you really want. Motto is “If you know what you want, you can have it.” The tricky part, of course, is knowing what you want.
8. Martin Levin’s Be Your Own Literary Agent. Very educational book about contract terms and what they mean, the business of writing and publishing. Includes sample cover letters and query letters, clear explanations of standard industry terms, very very useful stuff.
9. Gregg Levoy’s This Business of Writing. Deals with topics like coping with solitude and fear, how not to sell out, all sorts of things useful for living the writing pro life.
10. Mike P. McKeever’s How To Write A Business Plan. I need to update mine again, but I wrote one before I sold and I’ve followed it. There are tons of good books on how to write a business plan, software that walks you through it, it doesn’t have to be hard. But I do think you have to think it through, and a business plan makes you do that. How much can you reasonably expect to earn, how much will you have to write and sell to be able to quit the day job, etc. Who do you plan to sell to. You have to answer very specific questions and I think that’s invaluable.
Writing up a storm and waiting on lots of things. I should be getting cover art for Yule Be Mine (Cerridwen, Dec.) and Wolf In Shining Armor (EC, Sept.). Waiting on some paperwork stuff. And already wondering about the Aug. RT issue, which will have reviews of Catalyst and The Gripping Beast. There’s always a bunch of things in various stages of production/progress, which I like. Never a dull moment.
Cruising ahead on the stories in progress. The blogging may get boring while I have my head down, because I’m so wrapped up in the process. One thing, though, I really am going to order those Montana Boots and wear them to the next booksigning I do, because dress shoes and I do not get along. I have blisters on my heels from Sunday. I know I can’t wear my hiking boots to appear in public, but I ought to be able to get away with a cool pair of cowboy boots, don’t you think?
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