The View from My Room This Morning
//Category: Blog
//Sapphire!
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I’m over at Word Whores today, talking about Release Day for Sapphire.
And today I’m headed to Puerto Rico for the day job, but I’ll at least try to post pictures here. Thanks to the magic of virtual scheduling, I’ll be on a number of blogs, etc., this week. The schedule is on the home page, should you feel like you want to find me.
Can’t imagine why you would.
I’d stick around here for the pretty pictures, if I were you.
Pearls, Frilly Apron and a Keyboard
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I went to a conference many moons ago, for women leaders in science. I was but a lowly grad student at the time, but there were several hundred high-powered female scientists there, many leaders in their fields. As they gave presentations on their career paths and accomplishments, a theme began to emerge. Finally, one woman stood up and pointed it out.
Every single woman was attributing her success to chance.
“I was lucky enough to get a place in X’s lab.”
“Somehow I ended up with the grant doing Y.”
“For some reason, I was handed the opportunity to do Z.”
The woman who pointed this out suggested that the speakers stop using this phrasing and instead acknowledge that they took advantage of opportunities open to them because of their hard work, talents and skills.
They tried. They were terrible at it.
Now men have no problem with this it seems. I know I’m generalizing, but if you had a series of male scientists speak about their career paths and accomplishments, you’d hear a different story. Men seem to be able to value the work they do in a way the women don’t so much.
This is on my mind lately because I know a number of women writers who are full-time writers, who also handle all the domestic duties. In some ways they fit the scathing cliche of the housewife and/or mother, who also writes. And yet, many of these women are quite successful writers. Maybe it’s not a female thing. Maybe it’s a “I’m home all day so I can handle the home stuff” thing. I’d be interested to know how many male full-time writers follow this same model.
The thing is, I work from home, doing my environmental consulting day job. And I do not handle all the domestic stuff. David does the meal-planning, grocery-shopping and cooking, which is huge, I think. I handle the cleaning, dishes, laundry – which I pretty much save for the weekends. Yes, even the dishes. Ours is not a spotless house. But, I also receive a salary for my day job and I get consistent feedback that it’s valuable work.
Neither of which happens when you’re a writer.
No steady paycheck. No co-workers expecting a certain level of production. No annual performance reviews.
So, I wonder if the full-time writers feel the need to “make up” for the time spent at home, staring off into space, by at least keeping a clean house and providing nutritious meals. But doesn’t that devalue the work of writing?
I’m trying to decide what I think.
Still Got the Radio
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So, I did a radio interview last night.
And it was super fun.
Desmond Haas has a website called the Romance Radio Network and he interviews authors over the phone, then posts it on his site. I’ll also get to post it here on my own website. Yeah, you can listen to me babble on. Like you have nothing better to do.
At any rate, Desmond read Sapphire before the interview and seemed to love it! Well, he said he loved it and then he gave all sorts of specific reasons for it. That was the best part: he really “got” the book. It’s always lovely to get compliments or good reviews, but the very, very best part of being a writer is talking to someone who understands your characters. He had insightful observations about who they are that hadn’t occurred to me, but were right on target. He also described the story in a different way than I’d thought of it, which showed me new and illuminating elements. Best of all, I tend to think of myself as a pretty feminine writer, so for a guy to think I got the male side of the story right. Well, that’s just amazing.
SO fun.
You know what else is fun? When I went to grab that link, like a good hyperlinking blogger kitty, I saw this:
Can you see what that says? Here, let me show you a close-up. You know you want me to.
Ya-huh! Ya-huh! <- that’s me doing an end zone dance. Not pretty. Be glad you can’t really see it.
I’m sure this will change in the blink of an eye (which is why I screen captured it for posterity). This is all pre-orders, so thank you all for that. For pre-ordering, for saying such lovely things about the story, for sharing the love.
Cupcakes all around!
Left Brain Overload
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So, as I may or may not have mentioned, the day job is CRAZY right now.
As in, more work than can be humanly accomplished.
So, it’s taking a great deal of focus for me to get the work done. I’m getting through it, meeting my deadlines (so far), but I’m not getting anything else done. That is, no writing.
At work they’ve given me minions, lots of junior staff to help me. This is a great thing, except that I have to be able to tell them what needs doing. I can’t go off to some appointment and leave Mickey alone with all those broomsticks. Yeah, we all remembered what happened then. So, the upshot is, I have to be online early, because my minions are on the east coast. I have to deal with the emails that accumulated overnight. I’m digging into the day job by 7 am.
Now, long time blog followers will immediately see the problem here.
That’s right! This is totally fucking with my rituals!
*Ahem*
Yes, I’m taking deep, cleansing breaths.
David suggested that I just flip my usual schedule. Instead of writing in the morning, then switching to day job, I’d do the reverse. I know a lot of people do this. I tried it yesterday. I worked at the day job from 7 to 4. And then I had nothing left. I could have worked more, but my creative side had fallen asleep. Or taken off for the beach. She’s probably drinking dirty martinis somewhere and lolling in the sun.
She’ll come back, David reassured me. When you have the room for her.
And that’s just it. The day job is sucking all my brains, like a zombie shuffling relentlessly forward. (That analogy is just for you, Sullivan.)
It’s interesting to me, when I find the limits of what I can balance.
At any rate, at least I’m not involved in the National Book Awards brouhaha. What an exceptionally poor series of decisions there. And poor Lauren. Here we all are already paranoid when we get awards that it’s a mistake. Then for her, it WAS!
May the attention and sales make up for the pain.
Promo Push
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So, Sapphire comes out a week from today!
You can even preorder it from Carina (for epub format) or Amazon, if you’re a Kindle fan like me.
It’s exciting, yes, but complicated by the fact that I’m flying to Puerto Rico on Sunday the 23rd for the day job and I don’t know what kind of internet access I’ll have. So, this last weekend I played forward-balancing. I had a list of 13 things I needed to do for the release. Carina alone has about four things to write/fill out for the release day. Which is great – don’t get me wrong – one of the things I love about Carina is their commitment to marketing their books. Still, it was a lot to do, with that and filling out interview questions and writing guest posts.
On Saturday night while we watched movies, I played arts and crafts with bookmarks. Ribbons and shinies. I fell asleep in my chair while cutting ribbons into bookmark-length pieces. (This may have had as much to do with the Jamesons I’d been drinking as much as me being tired, before you feel sorry for me.) I woke up, my hand still clutching a fistful of sapphire-blue ribbons.
It seemed like a metaphor for something.
At any rate, the ghosts of me should be all over the internet even while I’m in a Spanish-speaking US territory asking them about “agua” over and over. You’ll see my lovely and dedicated friends making noise for me.
What would I do without all of you?
Each one of you gets a blue ribbon. Maybe even with a sparkly on the end.
I know – don’t say I never gave you anything! 😉
A Fairy Thing
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I’m over at Word Whores this lovely Sunday, talking about doing fairies my way.
The Wages of Professionalism
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I wonder why I only get these eerie iridescent colors at sunrise and not at sunset? Something to do with the air being cooler? Doesn’t seem logical, but there it is.
I’m sure there’s an explanation for it and I just don’t know what it is. Some things there aren’t sound reasons for. Like a lot of publishing.
Yesterday, Angela James posted a very interesting piece to the Carina Press blog about how the acquisitions team works. And why that team rejects about 40% of what their editors recommend for acquisition. See, Carina uses freelance editors. You pitch to them, send them your work, maybe revise and resubmit. The editor can reject the stauthor history, marketability, editorial needs of book and why they did (or in some cases did not) love it. For established authors, we look up sales figures, both from Carina Press, if they’re a returning author, and via Bookscan, if they’ve published elsewhere. We discuss what we know of the author’s writing and sales history, what they’re like to work with, how popular the genre is, merits of the manuscript, how much work it will need, and how it fits into our program.ory at any point during this process, but if she decides yes, then she has to write up a report for the acquisitions team to convince them to accept the work for publication. (They also write up reports for the rejected works and Angela often tweets those reasons, which can be educational. She recorded ones from the other day here, if you’re interested to see.)
What’s interesting about the breakdown of that 40% rejection from the acquisitions team is all the information they take into account. Among other things:
- author history
- marketability
- editorial needs of book
- sales figures, both from Carina Press, if they’re a returning author, and via Bookscan, if they’ve published elsewhere
- author’s writing and sales history
- what they’re like to work with
- how popular the genre is
- merits of the manuscript
- how much work it will need
- how it fits into Carina’s program
Regular readers know where I’m going with this. Yeah, it’s the piece that none of us wants to think about. We want each new story to be judged on its own merit, as its own bright and shiny individual thing. It might be, but there is a constant running through this: the author. We cannot afford to be difficult to work with.
I know, I know – you’re pointing to certain Famous Authors renowned for behaving badly. But they make TONS OF MONEY. Which excuses all most sins. Being an artist is never an excuse to be unprofessional. Not with deadlines, not with how you handle edits, not in elevator gossiping. Just never. Because we live in an age where there really *is* a permanent record. Nothing ever dies on the interwebs.
Another Carina Press editor and author, Rhonda Stapleton, posted a story on her blog the other day about how she had to reject a manuscript that she really enjoyed, because Carina is not handling that genre. She was sorry to do it – until she saw that the author in question posted snippy comments about the rejection. Which left her feeling like she’d dodged a bullet. Who wants to work with someone who’ll snark about you behind your back?
No one. And that’s who we’ll get.
For Your Immediate Attention
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The moon put on another gorgeous show this morning, so you get full moon pic, redux.
Before I had my website redone, I posted my blog on Blogger. Funny how I phrased that, like my blog is this abstract concept that floats in space until I find a place to park it. At any rate, this website uses WordPress. Apparently with WordPress comes huge amounts of spam commenting. Now my website designer uses Akismet to block the bad comments, but they all go to this spam folder.
I can’t help looking.
See what they do is say flattering things about you and your blog, then slip in a link to another site. Or blatantly pimp some device. Zune is big for this. No, I have no idea why. Most are in the slightly distorted English featured in Nigerian bank emails. This seems to be its own language now, which I propose we call Spamglish.
So, some just seem to be admiring comments, relying upon the user link for clickage:
Recently, I didnt give so much thought to writing comments on blog entries and have left comments even less. Checking out your insightful page, will probably encourage me to do so more regularly.
Your place is valueble for me. Thanks!…
Some act like they’re giving substantive feedback, which is never related to the topic:
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I was reading something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your linear perspective on it is diametrically contradicted to what I read to begin with. I am still pondering over the various points of view, but Im tipped to a great extent toward yours. And irrespective, thats what is so super about contemporary democracy and the marketplace of thoughts online.
My spouse and i felt very ecstatic that Chris managed to finish up his investigations via the ideas he received from your very own web pages. It is now and again perplexing to just find yourself giving away ideas that some other people could have been selling. And we also see we have the website owner to thank for this. The explanations you have made, the easy web site menu, the friendships you help foster – it’s many sensational, and it’s really helping our son and the family feel that that issue is amusing, and that’s wonderfully serious. Thank you for everything!
Others just blatantly pimp something:
How to get a six pack fastWill show you how to get a sixpack fast
Or are weirdly random, probably cribbed from posts they actually pertained to:
Sooo cute I cant believe those are made of eggs. Thanks for sharing the info. Ill also make stuff like those.
Ralph, Im wanting into your concern. I know whats causing it, its only a make a difference of finding a viable solution.
Those are easy. It’s the ones that I *want* to believe, that fluff my vanity, that are the hardest to delete:
This is very interesting, You’re a very skilled blogger. I have joined your feed and look forward to seeking more of your magnificent post. Also, I have shared your website in my social networks!
Hey, it could be true, right?
This one is the one that I’ve hesitated over. I’ve kept it in the spam filter for several days now. It’s not in Spamglish, but it does share some features in common with these others. And Akismet did call it spam. I even looked at the link and it looks like vacation photos. But I’m wary that it’s a trap.
I don’t normally comment on blogs.. But nice post! I just bookmarked your site
All of these, by the way, were in the filter this morning (except the last one). That means 13 came in over night.
At least they’re entertaining to read!
Rude Awakenings
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Harvest Moon sets just at sunrise this morning – just lovely.
Have I ever mentioned that our dog, Zip, is pretty much completely deaf? Yeah… He’s an older dog now and it happens. Most of the time it’s not that big a deal. He’s a border collie, so he responds well to hand signals. And he’s generally pretty well behaved. Because he can’t hear, he’s less sensitive to being disturbed by outside noises. So, no more pacing at night or running to the window to see who’s going by.
However.
He dreams like a son-of-a-gun. Couple this with no sense of his own sound-production….
That’s right. 4am he had a bark-attack. Full volume, right next to the bed.
Oh. My. God.
I sat up bolt upright. The kitties went sailing. You know how in stories people say they feel like their hearts might burst? Yeah, that. Nothing like a huge adrenaline kick yanking you out of a deep sleep in the early morning.
I could swear I have an epinephrine hangover today.