Tag: Carina Press

Thunder Moon

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I had to catch the full Thunder Moon at dawn this morning, since last night, appropriately enough, thunderclouds obscured the moonrise.

Love those thunderclouds. Rain all you like!

Yesterday, Angela James, Executive Editor of Carina Press and savvy social media maven, tweeted this:

Angela James
Me to agent: “I’m going to pass on this author. She’s had occasion to be very rude to me & others in the past.” : Be professional

14 Jul via TweetDeck


This is noteworthy because we’ve all suspected it’s possible for this to happen. The publishing community is quite small, often insular, occasionally incestuous (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Whether at conferences or online, we are in each other’s laps much of the time. There are no secrets. When questioned, Angela followed up with:

Angela James

To clarify previous , I’ve never met author, but she’s been VERY rude to me re: past rejection letters. & to readers online as well.

23 hours ago
and

Angela James
I didn’t look at her writing this time.I’m not interested in working w/someone who has no respect for anyone else, readers or editors

23 hours ago
and

Angela James
if I know up front that’s how she acts, and she’s already destroyed her online rep, her writing is irrelevant if she won’t sell

23 hours ago
and

Angela James
also, my stress level is high enough. I don’t need to purposely add something to work situation that would make it worse

23 hours ago

This is pretty much what I would have predicted. Angela is at the helm of a digital-first imprint of a major publisher. She knows that online interactions play a huge role in this world. The days – if they ever really existed – of a writer getting to play the diva and curse anyone who crosses them are well and truly over.

It reminds me of the small town thing.

When I moved to Wyoming for grad school, I went from living in Denver and St. Louis, to a town of 26,000 people. Functionally the population is half that if you only count the year-round population. Now, I was an *ahem* aggressive driver. Not rage-driver, but definitely big-city driver. Other cars were never about people to me – they were simply “traffic.” Nothing personal.

Imagine my surprise when people called me out for it.

“Hey, you cut me off this morning!”

“Geez, how fast were you going down Grand yesterday afternoon??”

“You tailgated me all the way to Safeway – what’s up with that?”

Oops.

Once I got over the fact that these people actually looked in my car and recognized me, I discovered I was now accountable for my driving behavior in a way I’d never been before. No longer anonymous, I had become part of a small community, for better or worse. I had to change my behavior.

I suppose you could argue this impinged on my freedom to be obnoxious. Small towns can be oppressive because they do limit freedom of thought and action. The social mores can be restrictive. But, there’s always the option to leave that community. If the reasons to stay are compelling enough, you’d better learn how to get along with your neighbors.

And if you want them to hire you or elect you to city council? Find a way to be congenial.

It can’t be said often enough: watch what you say in public. Imagine that everything will be heard and remembered, and absolutely held against you in the court of public opinion. People will forgive you the odd slip, but a pattern of continued bad behavior? No no no. My writing buddies and I have the Cone of Silence. All snarkiness must occur inside the Cone.

Make sure it’s really on, too.

What was most amazing to me about yesterday’s exchange was an author replied to Angela saying:

Oh, shit, I said I was *sorry* I called you “picky.”

and

I’m crying now. You’re such a b*#$ch.

I didn’t include her tweet info here, because I think she’s an idiot for posting those and I’ll save her this extra bit of self-induced humiliation. The tweets are still up, though, for anyone who cares to see… and to track that her data matches up to Angela’s author-in-question.

Perhaps it all comes down to learning to take criticism. Live and learn.

When you do get called out for something, like I did? It’s an opportunity for course-correction. Apologize and fix the problem. People will forgive. They’ll eventually forget.

But not if you keep behaving badly.

Stealing My Own Thunder

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Okay, so, yesterday I told you all about my Attack Cupcake at the Harlequin Party.

I know you’re all still waiting to hear how the big outfit went over. You know, the one I angsted about, that took the combined efforts of at least five people to figure out?

Meh.

I don’t really have any good pics of it, but I’m posting this one that I don’t like for posterity’s sake.

The outfit was fine, I think. It didn’t quite gel, I wasn’t Katy Perry in Gautier, but it was good enough.

Or it would have been, except for Cat Woman.

See, I dressed as Cat Woman for the FFP Gathering (lead pic with the ever vivacious Michelle Miles). It was a crazy evening for me. I made sure The Gathering was set up, went to the Carina Press cocktail party, then back to The Gathering. So I just brazened it out and wore the Cat Woman outfit to the Carina Press cocktail party.

It was a total hit.

I thought I’d get some funny looks and snide remarks, but no. Everyone seemed to think I was making a fabulous statement. I kept explaining I was double-booked – they didn’t care. Angela James said she had the urge to grab my ass, but thought it might be sexual harassment, even though she’s not technically my boss. Thankfully I managed to persuade her that she has ultimate power over whether Carina accepts my work and she refrained. She did, however, attempt to talk me into wearing the Cat Woman costume to the formal Black and White Ball later that night.

“Um, this is not a formal outfit by any stretch,” I said.

“Those are totally formal ears!” they assured me.

The upshot is, I put on my very fancy, extremely complicated, layered outfit, that really did look pretty close to what I’d imagined and everyone was disappointed. Over and over they stopped me saying, “Oh no, why did you take off Cat Woman??”

I would respond, “hey, I worked really hard on this outfit!” And they would say it was nice, but I could tell they didn’t care.

They only wanted Cat Woman.

One woman said to me, “you should have worn that costume – then no one here tonight would ever have forgotten the name ‘Jeffe Kennedy.'”

There’s a moral to this tale, though I’m not sure what it is. Any guesses?

Would you have worn Cat Woman to the formal ball?

The Tale of the Attack Cupcake

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Thanks to the hysterically funny Victoria Dahl for this pic of me at the Harlequin party. Yes, this was well after midnight. I still like it.

I talked a little bit about the RWA Conference on Word Whores on Sunday. I’ll keep filling in with the stories this week. But since I already started with the Harlequin party on Word Whores, I’ll finish telling you all about that.

So, I headed over to the Harlequin party late. This is because I was at The Gathering through the PRISM ceremony. (Petals and Thorns took second place – alas no trophy for me! It was still a way fun party.) I dashed out of there, changed clothes, and went down to the taxi stand. The bell captain was loading another group of gals into a cab, so I waited. This pretty young woman walked up to me and asked if I was going to the Harlequin party and would I like to share a cab. We laugh, because we’re both dressed in black and white, so the “going to the HQ Black & White Ball” is such an obvious flag. I am, of course, delighted to share the taxi ride.

She introduces herself: Nalini Singh.

Yeah – way famous, mega selling author Nailini. And, it turns out, nicest person in the world.

We chat on the ride. When we get to the Waldorf-Astoria, she sticks with me and introduces me to people. I got pulled away at one point and lost her. Later I ran into her again and I apologized for poofing. She laughs and says that’s how these parties are. Then she asks if everyone is being nice to me.

Everyone was so great to me.

This party was AMAZING. The DJ played every girl power song you can think of while everyone danced barefoot or in our party-favor Harlequin footy socks. I had a mini-chocolate eclair with gold leaf on it. The coffee stations had bottles of liqueur lined up to be added to your cup at will. I drank flute after flute of champagne. There were stations manned by handsome young men where you could build your own ice cream cone or cupcake.

After lots of dancing, I decided I deserved a cupcake. I chose a red velvet cupcake and the handsome young man swirled cream cheese frosting on it with a pastry bag, then added my choice of chocolate shavings. It was a thing of beauty.

Proudly I carried it, and my champagne up to this balcony area. There I see Candy Havens. We hug. We chat. I feel my plate wobble. We both watch my special cupcake tumble from the plate and splat, icing-down, on the carpet.

We start to giggle. Yeah, who invited us to the fancy party?

I recover and reach to pick it up, but even as I do, this woman facing away from us, taking a photograph, takes a step back to position herself. Candy and I watch in impotent horror as her stiletto heel impales the crumpled cupcake, then rides off with her as she strides away.

We totally lost it. Gasping with laughter, we are unable to stop her, to tell her. She disappears into the crowd.

And, of course, because we were laughing so hard, I hadn’t picked up the frosting splat before another bare-footed guest stepped squarely in it.

Alas.

Oh, and I did get another cupcake. After I cleaned up the first.

I sat down to eat it.

Village Fashion Assistance

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Why, yes, that is Katy Perry dressed in Gautier from the June 2011 issue of Vanity Fair. And there’s a very good reason she’s there for you to admire.

Let me tell you the story.

See, I’m going to the RWA National Conference the last week of June. This will be my fourth time. This year I knew I’d be invited to the Carina party, as one of their authors. Author cocktail party? Pretty much a slam dunk in fashion-planning department.

Now I had a bit of an additional complication, in that I discovered the Carina cocktail party would be right before the FFP Gathering. Not a big deal, right? One party to the next, stick to the same drink, all is fine, tra-la tra-lay.

Only there’s one little hitch: the FFP party is a Superhero theme and I have my heart set on being Cat Woman. I don’t think I’m ruining any surprises here by leaking that, especially since I fully expect to be far from the only Cat Woman at a Superhero party attended primarily by women. In fact, I figured I’d just go to the Carina party in my Cat Woman outfit. It’s pretty demure, since I’ll be more of a Michelle Pfeiffer version than the Halle Berry iteration since, hello, I do not have Halle Berry’s vicious body. Dress myself only in black leather straps? I don’t think so. My costume looks like this (sorry it’s so small) and I figured I could be brassy and just wear it to the cocktail party, too.

But, and this is a big “but,” then I was happily invited to the Harlequin party, too. I wasn’t expecting to, but since Carina is a Harlequin imprint, they included us questionable digital types. It’s after the FFP party, so that’s fine. And, hey, everyone says it’s THE party to go to, so woo hoo! Except, I get the invite and it’s a rooftop Black and White ball, formal dress.

I’ve got nothing.

Clearly I’m not wearing the Cat Woman outfit there. Even if it wasn’t an outfit that can’t be worn outside of air conditioning (lemme tell you, that thing does NOT breathe), it just ain’t formal, by any stretch. I look in my closet – nothing. You know what that means, right?

~FASHION EMERGENCY~

I’m going in a couple of weeks, have practically no time to shop, and no inspiration.

So, I’m getting my hair done – my carefully planned pre-conference beautifying appointment – flipping through Vanity Fair and whining about my fashion emergency to a sympathetic Larry. I get to the above Katy Perry pic and say, this! This is what I should wear. Larry peers over my shoulder. “That’s perfect,” he says, “that’s exactly what you should wear.”

I say, “Um, Larry, that outfit is Gautier and out of my league on so many levels it’s not funny.”

“Oh no,” he waves the scissors in the air, “you could totally fake this outfit.”

He outlines how I’ll do it. Do I have a black skirt I could slit up the front? As a matter of fact, I do. I have a black pleather pleated Jones New York skirt that would work. Put a white lace slip or skirt under it, black heels, black leggings – I love how he never once considers putting white stretch lace on my thighs – with a big white blouse on top, belted with a fabulous Santa Fe belt.

I’m sold.

Of course, this is not so easy as it sounds. (Did it even sound easy?)

Once I left the salon, clutching my pic of Katy Perry in *my* outfit, which Larry thoughtfully tore out of the magazine for me, I began to lose heart.

“Just find a little black dress,” my mother counsels. “You don’t have time for this.”

I went shopping Saturday morning and nothing, just nothing lit me up. I began to despair. Sunday I hit the consignment stores and Goodwill thinking I could cannibalize a wedding dress for the white lace underskirt. Big goose egg.

Then, in Dillards, of all places, I found a big white jacket – spunky, sheer and shimmery. It’s the last one, and I make the sales gal take it off the mannequin for me. It’s a large, turns out, but that works perfectly. I find some black leggings with black lace edging at Kohls. Already bought funky black heels for the Cat Woman look. I’m rolling now.

Back at home, I start Googling for wedding slips. KAK is helping me via IM. But even her Google-Fu, which is very strong, fails. She does, however, find me this fab black corset to wear under the white jacket.

Now we just need the lace skirt, which totally should not be this hard. But it is.

She’s combing eBay. Laura Bickle comes on IM and I catch her up on the Story So Far. Almost immediately, Laura finds this skirt on eBay. It’s perfect. It’s in Hong Kong.

BUT, they have express shipping and it’s not that much overall.

Win!

So, all the parts are acquired or on order. Yeah, we’ll see how it all works out.

I think it will be fabulous. I’ll try to post pics of the final product.

Could never have done this without my pals.

Is Writing a Really Good Book Enough?

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I did a chat with the FFP gals last night and for the first time I was tempted to say one of the things I hear authors say that really annoy me.

One of the gals asked how to get published with Carina Press, because they’re really difficult to get in with. I wanted to say, well, they’re really picky and are pushing for a high-quality brand, so write something very good.

As regular readers know, I hate it when authors give publishing advice along the lines of “write a really good book.”

I dislike this advice for three reasons:

1. It’s self-evident. OF COURSE you have to write something good. Nobody tries to write bad stuff. Sometimes we don’t push the story or the characters as hard as we should. Sometimes we don’t revise enough, or polish enough. But everybody wants their stories to be good. This is akin to the advice to send in your best, most polished work. It implies that there’s some kind of external, quantifiable standard for that. Wouldn’t it be nice if writing was like chemistry and the document changed into a different color when you hit the correct amount of revision? Bing! Now it is GOOD.

Yeah, dream on.

2. It’s pompous. I know I’ve been on this tear lately, but it’s obnoxious when authors preen and suggest to the questioners that, to follow in the author’s footsteps, the would-be just needs to gain that level of awesomesauce. If you say “to do what I did, you need to write a really good book” implies that your talent and skill just rises above everyone else’s like it’s ensured by the laws of physics.

And it’s not true, because:

3. It’s not enough to write a really good book. It has to be the right story, told in the right voice, that pleases the right editor, who convinces the right marketers that the right readers are out there to buy it.

So, I restrained myself from popping out the easy answer. Instead I told them what kind of stories Carina likes. I told them what my editor looks for and what my process was. I offered some leads to research their acquisitions editors, because I believe knowledge and networking always gives more power.

And I’m going to work on that answer.

Digital Publishing – What a Long, Strange Year It’s Been

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Today is Carina Press’s one year anniversary. Word-Whores is hosting one of Carina’s executive staff, Aideen O’Leary-Chung, Director of Digital Commerce for Harlequin and Carina Press. If you hie over there, you stand to win some pretty fab prizes.

It’s funny that it’s been a year since Carina launched. So much has happened since then. Reading through the various posts (there are 20 in all), it’s interesting to hear the reminiscences of the Carina folks. It makes me remember how it all appeared to us, from the outside.

Today is the anniversary of Carina’s launch – when they debuted their first books to the world. But we first heard about Harlequin’s new digital imprint quite a bit before that. The news astonished everyone because, *gasp* Carina would not be offering advances.

This sent RWA into a frenzy. The Romance Writers of America non-profit corporation is one of, if not the most, powerful writers organizations in the world. The venerable standard of RWA has been, for decades, that to qualify as an approved publisher, they must give their writers advances. This has been a non-negotiable standard that, really, any legitimate publisher could meet. It was a low bar for a very long time.

And then the world turned and times changed.

With the advent of electronic publishing, paying the author up front no longer made so much sense. Instead epubs offer authors much higher royalties (~35% for most as opposed to 8-10% for print). Carina chose that business model.

Well, this turned into a BFD, because Carina was an imprint of Harlequin, which means just a subset of the overall company, and Harlequin has been the queen of romance publishing for longer than RWA has been in existence. And boom! Harlequin could no longer be an approved publisher by RWA.

At the time, no one could understand why Harlequin was doing it. They were accused of vanity publishing (where authors pay to get published). People thought they were completely nuts to potentially compromise their publishing empire for, what? some stupid ebooks??

They sorted it out. I believe (and someone correct me if I’m wrong) Harlequin satisfied RWA by legally separating themselves from the Carina digital arm. Harlequin is approved. Carina is not.

And look what the last year has wrought.

Ebooks are now the only part of the publishing market that’s growing instead of losing money. More and more people have ereaders. Everyone wants to digitally publish. I’d love to see a list of all the epubs started in the last six months.

I set my sights on Carina because they have the forward-thinking excitement and savvy of the electronic market founded on the Harlequin rock of excellent business sense. I’m so pleased that Sapphire will be published by them in October.

Happy One-Year Anniversary Carina Press!

All Jeffe, All the Time

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This is Deliverance, by Manuel Nuñez. The same artist who did Strait is the Gate, which I mentioned previously.

Looking him up, I’ve discovered he does commissioned portraits, so now I’ve got this whole fantasy spinning about how I’ll take money from my first wildly successful contemporary fantasy novel and have a portrait done.

Hey – a girl can dream.

At any rate, I’d had an image in mind of a painting of his I *thought* I’d seen, that looked like a woman laid out for a funeral, but I didn’t find it in his gallery. (On the other hand, I see the piece I own has gone up considerably in value, so I’m feeling all nifty about that.) And then I see Elizabeth Taylor passed, so an image of a lovely woman resting in peace seems all fraught today.

My point is: I’m giving up the Jennifer Paris alter ego.

I know, I know. She was with us such a little time. We hardly knew her.

It was just over a year ago that I announced I’d use Jennifer Paris for my Loose Id erotic novella, Petals and Thorns. March 4 of 2010, actually, and now I’m feeling all astonished that it’s been that long. I was all set to type something like “six months ago.” Tempus fugit and all that.

At any rate, in conversations with the lovely Angela James over my contract for Carina Press, she pointed out that if I intend to use Jennifer Paris as an author name, then I should have her as a social media identity.

Angela is quite savvy about social media, I think. Her blog posts and challenges are frequently cited. She’s all over twitter. And she’s really a terrific person to work with. She has emailed with me, answering my questions with genuine friendliness. In an aside, the contracts/legal guy at Harlequin headquarters is also really warm and friendly. I’m already so impressed with this corporate climate. All of this makes me think they know something about creating a virtual community.

So, I’ve bantered back and forth with Angela on Twitter long before this. And with my fabulous new editor, Deb Nemeth. They know me there by my twitter handle, @jeffekennedy. In fact, I was pretty sure the Carina gig would be a go, because I saw Deb started following me on twitter a couple of weeks before I got the actual phone call. Some of that was to see if I’m psycho, I think. Fortunately I managed to fake that well enough not to set off any alarm bells. I would be very carefully composing tweets for a while, thinking through the potential impacts, then I’d forget myself and go off on riffs with someone and – oops.

It’s a good argument for just being yourself on social media – cuz you’ll forget and do it anyway.

I told Angela I was doing the “Jeffe Kennedy writing as Jennifer Paris” thing and she said no, no, no. Actually she said it’s not the same thing at all. Since I really don’t want to “flesh out” Jennifer Paris and tweet or blog as her (she was only a cardboard cut-out anyway), I decided to retire her.

Besides, there’s also now a transvestite porn star with that name. I don’t have to tell you that link is absolutely NSFW (not safe for work), do I? Yeah, click at your own risk.

So, there you have it. Jennifer Paris is officially a one-off. Goodbye, darling – it was fun while it lasted.

Now I’m All Jeffe, All the Time.

Let’s get this party started.

My Big News

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Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone!

If you’re bored today, or simply need a little Mardis Gras fix, without the smells and lack of restroom facilities, NOLA.com runs the parade cams and Bourbon Street Cams. They can be pretty entertaining, but also a time-suck.

Fair warning.

So, a week ago today, I received a phone call, which I alluded to here. It seems appropriate to have excessive partying going on today while I tell you all:

I am signing a contract with Carina Press!!!

~cue happy dancing and jazz band~

The sun comes up over the mountains, shedding light on the happy valley below. Angels swoop through the sky and unicorns perform intricate jigs.

Yes, my new editor, Deb Nemeth, is acquiring Sapphire and Angela James is the one who called me last week. They want to see my other work, too, so I’ll be sending that along. I’m very much excited to be part of the Carina Press family. If you don’t know, Carina is Harlequin’s digital imprint. I truly believe they’re at the forefront of digital publishing. They have all the sterling foundation of the Harlequin empire, along with greater flexibility to step out of the mold. All those funny stories that are kind of fantasy, kind of sci fi, kind of sexy? They want to publish them!

So thank you all, for the love, support and excitement while I was being cagey.

And now…

Laissez les bon temps et romans rouler!