Bloggers are not writers

Writers ask me this: “Why was my work rejected, all my blog buddies loved it!”. So, what? Just because you blog doesn’t mean you can write. Being a blogger does not make you a writer. Being a blogger make you a blogger. Same with RPG. RPGers hack out a few phrases of fan-fiction dialouge for a single character and it goes to their head and they go off telling every one they are a writer. Like hell they are. Bloggers and RPGers fan themselves with vain praises than bitch and moan when editor after editor throws the work back in their face and tells them it’s no good. They can’t understand why. Why? I’ll tell you why. The differance between a writer and a blogger/RPGer is the same as the differance between a tiny stream and the Grand Caynon.

This guy sums it up nicely. According to Zoltan, the writing squirrel:

The Rules- If you write, they must be followed.

Here are the rules I believe in, and that I use when I write and critique:

 

1- Please use proper grammar. If you dont care enough about your work to take the time to polish it and make it right, then I dont care enough to read it.

2- Please use proper punctuation. Same as above.

3- Please dont tell me its my fault that I “Didn’t get it.” Its the writers responsibility to make me understand, and to make me feel pleased as a reader. Period.

4- Please know how to write. You must understand exposition, good dialogue, pacing, plot and all of the other elements that are mandatory for a good story.

5- Edit before you post.

6- Show me, dont tell me.

7- Please avoid first person, at all costs, unless your writing skills are excellent. “I said…” “I feel that…” “I walked along…” When done poorly, first person seems like a list of actions, or at best, a live journal entry. Use third person, please

 

Once the above rules have been met, the more serious and constructive criticism comes into play:

8- Take your time. Make each sentence say something, and further more, mean something to the next sentence, to the paragraph, to the next paragraph, to the page, to the chapter, and to the whole story.

9- You must edit your work. Read it aloud to yourself. Surprisingly, that points out a lot of mistakes that only reading it wont do. Go paragraph by paragraph. Does it make sense? Did you contradict something you said or established earlier? Is it necessary?

10- Dont drag something out. Describe a setting, give us a mental picture, and move on. Find a happy medium between over-description and over-simplification, and stay there.

11- Write honest dialogue. You should never write something that you cant picture saying. I dont mean content wise, im talking about form:

-”Would thee accompany me to thine own home?” That makes me cringe.

-”Can I walk you home?” “Would you care for an escort home?” those are much better.

Also, dont write in slang. Its sloppy, and no one wants to read it.

12- Write good characters. Who am I investing my emotions in? Why should I do so? Who can I identify with? One sided, stereotypical cardboard characters are far too common. Give people personality; humanize them; and above all, make them evoke some sort of emotional response from me, the reader. Action and words should tell us all we need to know about them, not by the writer describing the words or actions.

Show different sides of your characters. Good guys do bad things, and bad guys usually have one or two decent qualities. Show us exactly that, and make it seem more real to us. We need to identify with everyone you write, even if its in some small way.

13- Avoid clichÃ?. Tempting bar wench’s; Silent, brooding men at arms; Young farm boys that hold the key to everything; The wise old wizard who helps a clueless groups of would be hero’s along; The evil tyrant, who lives only to do evil deeds…Sure, you have to tread on familiar ground sometimes, but be original. Write it in your own way.

14- Establish a setting. Can we feel the world youre creating? Are we drawn in by it, or are you simply telling us about it?

15- What is the point of the story? You dont have to say that right away, but foreshadowing is good. A hint of what is to come. Does everything you have written, serve the story as a whole? You can always go back and add some foreshadowing that will serve a purpose later.

16- Dont lose focus. Know what youre writing, where youre heading, and have a reasonable idea about where you will end up. Then, spend the length of your story taking us there. Not too fast as to miss things, or make them seem trivial, but not too slow as to bet anxious or bored.

17- Please be subtle. Dont tell us everything straight out. Dont be blatant about things. Let us discover things on our own, even if we draw the wrong conclusion. Dont make things over obvious if youre waiting to give them away or explain them down the road. Write it, then let it breathe.

18-Know your story. Why is Tom angry? Where did Alanna get her name? “Where did Krieger get his sword? Nothing just happens. You dont have to tell us everything, and in some cases you flat out shouldnt, but you should always know and from that knowledge, you will write a better story. Keep us guessing and wondering at the little things. Dont spoon feed us everything. Its like a musician explaining his song; In the same way that what he knows about its origin made it what it is, while the way I interpreted it made it my own.

19-Make sure you are consistent throughout your work. Dont jump back and forth between tenses; dont insert plot devices simply to give the characters something to do;

20- Be mindful of the POV (Point of view) in which youre writing. When writing from different characters POV’s, make sure that what they are thinking is true to them. Make them have their own personalities. Each person should have their own views, rationale, and way of thinking. Your main character should be the POV you use the most, although switching to others is good from time to time. It keeps things fresh, and can add mystery, especially if you show a POV from a less than favorable character or a villain.

21- Stay true to the genre youre writing in. Dont be clichÃ? and unoriginal, just be reasonable and give the reader something in the ballpark of what they expect. Dont add a robot into a fantasy story. For the most part, stick with convention.

22- Themes. All good stories will represent how you view things, and how you feel about the world around you. What is the theme of your story? Does the tone lend itself to the theme? As a reader, if I identify with the theme or message, I will surely want to read on, and will most likely enjoy doing so.

23- Plot. Is there conflict? Is there tension? Do the characters actually serve a purpose? the structure should look like this: A conflict arises, things go right, things go wrong, the characters react, things conclude, then you wrap it all up. That is obviously a loose structure, but basically it holds true. The fun part is fleshing those parts out, and adding your personal touches in between them.

24- End your chapters in a dynamic way. Whether with an event, a revelation, or a dramatic sentence or two, make me say “Ok, ill read just one more chapter.” Thatâs just a thing I like to do, and further more, that I like to read.

 

A strong theme, an engrossing plot, proper structure and form, identifiable and human characters, a familiar setting, and an attractive style; these are all needed with no exception.

 

While most of these are concrete rules of writing, some of them arenât, and all of them are my opinions. My opinions may not be shared by all. Then again, if someone doesnât think that the above needs to be followed, they most likely should be writing in the first place.

12:37 PM – 4 Comments – 4 Kudos – Add Comment

He doesn’t say if he was the creator of this list or not, but I’m assuming that he is. I’ve been telling writers this same thing for years. Glad to see others have a head on their shoulders.

Are bloggers writers? Yes writers can be bloggers, but think of it this way:

How many blogs did  you take home from the library last week?

~~EK

Conventional Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing,  “Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me”.  After reading her article, I have to say that basicly, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on “how to write.” Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so “forcing myself to write” is not a problem. And during those periods when “real life” heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My responce to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do.  So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependant on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, tthose stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you  wait tables? Drive a school  bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career? If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelyhood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My responce to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personaly I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I  write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a sence by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into  a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are differant.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My responce to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not realy sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a “native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of previous contact with humans”. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revilation to the world, that no one had befor known: My books, the Twighlight Manor seires, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewritter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscipts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxs worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Noetbooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after haveing hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style.  They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the “odds” of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My responce to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing,  “Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me”. 

~~EK

What Does “Non-Genre” Mean?

Many publications say they only accept “Non-Genre Fiction”. A common question writers ask is: “What is Non-Genre Fiction? Doesn’t all fiction have a genre?” I had just read this post and noticed a debate over what is the meaning of Genre Fiction VS Non-Genre Fiction had begun on it’s comments.  Being an editor, I think I can be of help here. So, here is my answer to that question. I hope that some of you find it helpful when submitting your future stories to publishers.When a publication says, “they’re non-genre focused”, they mean that they only want literary fiction and will automatically refuse all stories that a genre driven. A genre driven story is one that falls under the following:

Romance

Fantasy

Sci-fi

Horror

(and the many other such genres out there)

Genre driven stories are focused largely on promotion of their genre and the story focuses totally on that genre. I.e., a romance focuses on a girl’s romantic infatuation; a fantasy will focus on the life of elves wizards and he-men type characters fighting evil in a epic quest; sci-fi focuses on alien life forms traveling from one planet to the next and other such sci-fi type things; horror focuses on scaring the pants off the reader

When a publisher say “they’re non-genre focused” they want to see a slice-of-life story about the day (or week or year) in the life of so-and-so… this is what is known as non-genre or literary fiction. The story focuses on real-life type characters in real life type situations; stories that real like they could be the life of the guy next door or the girl down the road. Non-genre stories tell a story that is not dependant on a fantasy quest or the eloquent narration describing the alien landscape or the steamy sex-scenes. They simply tell a story about life and thus have no genre.

Well, that’s what I see it to mean. Feel free to comment on your own veiws as to the meaning of “non-genre”.

~~EK

Submission Guidelines for Moonsnails

 

Basic Submissions Guidlines:

This is a quick overview of our basic guidelines. See our fully detailed guidelines for each seperate genre on our Submission Guidelines website.

Status:
Moonsnails is currently accepting submissions

Title:

Moonsnails Magazine

Magazine Format:(projected)

Quarterly: 6″ x 9″, 96 – 132 pages per issue;
60 lb bright white paper, B&W text; 10pt glossy laminated perfect bound full color cover

Circulation:

world-wide though print on demand

Contact Info:

Wendy C. Allen, editor-in-chief, twighlightmanor@yahoo.com

Submission Format:

Send in body of email, 12pt Courier or Times New Roman or Send at attachment .RTF 12pt Courier or Times New Roman.

Payment:

copies only at this time; buys one time rights, (the right to print story in one issue; author retains copyright)

responce time: 2 – 6 months

Needs:

Short stories up to 13,000 words.

Literary Genre fiction. Cross-gen OK.

Rarely uses poetry. Poetry used only if it can be considered a full-fledged story, complete with characters and plot. Never accepts free-verse.

Genres Accepted:

Sci-fi, Fantasy, Gothic Romance, and “mild” Horror

Sub-Genres and Cross-Genres Accepted:

Action, Adventure, Alien Invasion, Alien Realms, Alternative Histories, Amateur Detective, Americana, Ancient Civilizations, Animal Stories, Biographical Fiction, Christmas, Classic Literature, Colonial America, Cryptozology, Dark Fantasy, Dragon Tales, Easter, Ethnic Fiction, Espionage, Faerie Realms, Fairy Tales, Family Sagas, Fantasy, Folklore, Frontier Sagas, Furries, Futuristic, Ghost Stories, Gothic Romance, Halloween, Hard Science Fiction, Haunted Houses, High Fantasy, High Seas Adventure, Historical, Horror, Humor, Inspirational, Kung Fu, Literary, Mad Scientist Sci-Fi, Mermaid Tales, Military, Mystery, Murder Mystery, Paranormal, Pirate Tales, Psychological Thiller/Terror, Regional: Maine, Regional: Quebec, Romance, Science Fiction, Serials, Short-Shorts, Slueths, Space Fantasy, Space Travel, Spiritual, Sword & Sorcery, Supernatural, Suspence, Thiller, Time Travel, Twilight Zone style, UFO stories, Unicorn Tales, Utopian Realms, Victorian, War, Western, Wizard Tales, Young Adult.

Things Rejected:

Rejects all stories that contain:

abortion, animal abuse, child abuse, cutting, death glorification, depression, depressive self-pity, drinking, drugs, elder abuse, erotica, expose`, gore, hatred, hunting, politics, pornography, sex, smoking, swearing, suicide, vulgar verbology, and stories about “how my teenage years were crap”.

Stories must be family friendly and rated PG-13 or less

Poetry Needs:

We focus on short stories, thus rarely use poetry.

Sometimes accepts poetry, at best it’s only 4 poems per year, IF it tells a story and has strong characters. Same as fiction needs, seeks longer “epic length” story poems akin to Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlin, Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven or Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs & Ham. Prefers long rhyming poems with strong characters and a strong story plot.

Poetry Rejects:

Same as fiction rejects, plus: Does not accept free-verse poetry, haiku, short poems, poems without characters, poems without plots, meaningless ramblings, odes to…, poems without rhythem, or any other type of poem that does not tell a complete story from beginning to end.

Cover Art:

Usually done “in-house”, but well consider submissions of full-color photography or paintings, covering any genre. Always seeks beach and ocean themed photos or paintings. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered. Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list. Buys one time rights.

Art & Inside Illustration:

Usually uses spot illustrations and copyright-free/public domain illustration, but well consider submissions of B&W, pen & ink, line art only … no pencil, no shading, no grey-scale, no color, our printer well not accept them. All illustrations must be 4″ x 6″ or smaller and camera ready. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered.  Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list.

Advice:

Best advise: buy a copy of Brian Froud’s Faeries. Use it as though it were our Submissions Guidelines. Treat it as your Writer’s Bible. Use it to create believable fantasy characters. Never go anywhere without it. If you want to write for us than consider Brian Froud your new best friend, read everything he ever wrote. Study every painting he ever did. Watch every film he ever created. Watch the 2 movies written by Brian Froud: Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Read the Retief series by Keith Laumer and The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. We like that kind of sci-fi best.

Watch Star Trek (the original series), Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, X-Files, and Tales From the Dark Side. Let them inspire you. If your story would make for a good episode on one of them, than we want to see it!

We like to see strong characters. Character driven stories. Well written plots. We like fantasy realms, dreamscapes, and alien planets. Creativity is always welcomed. Pirates are always good, we need more pirates. Always seeking stories about Mermaids, Sirens, Dragons, Unicorns, or other creatures of the Realm of Fay. We like to see characters that Brian Froud would have created.

Let your imagination run wild.

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Business Plans: Moonsnails Magazine: We’re Back!

In fall of 2005 Twighlight Manor Press announced that it was planning the release of a new magazine, which at that point was untitled and it‘s genre unknown. Our original idea was to keep it local; local writers, local sales, local flavor to the stories. Market research, however showed us that that would be a very unprofitable venture that would doom our magazine to failure before it’s fifth issue. We had to rethink out plan.

Over the next several weeks we threw around ideas and finally decided that the magazine would be a fiction “literary journal”. At first we planned on “all good fiction”, but than after studying the market, realized that this was virtually a bottomless pit, that would result in more manuscript submissions than our tiny staff of four would be able to handle.

Another thing we decided early on, was that, we wanted to stand out on bookstore shelves. Looking at other magazines sold at a local bookstore, Nonesuch Books in Saco, I discovered something. Rack upon rack of magazines, where all the same: 8×11” glossy and flimsy issues, that would not stand the test of time on a bookshelf, given them a shelf life of just 3 weeks. (This short shelf life was according to a study I found online.) According to that study, only a few magazines would be shelved and saved to be read again and again for several years. These magazines had good content and a sturdy binding. I went to Nonesuch Books looking for magazines with good content and study bindings, and was amazed at how few there actually were. In the end I found only three, out of the hundreds of magazines the shop had on the racks. By the end of this stage in our study we came to one conclusion: this magazine, was NOT going to be a 8×11” glossy; instead it would read like a book, with crisp white paper and a square bound “paperback” cover.

After some more market studies, we came to the conclusion that rather than focusing on fiction in general, we would instead use the same rule we use for writing: Write what you know. In our case it would translate into: Publish what you read. All four of us are sci-fi buffs. Sci-fi movies, sci-fi TV, sci-fi comics, sci-fi books… well it seemed only natural that we would thus choose sci-fi as the genre for the new magazine.

By January of 2006 we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do with the magazine. On Space Dock 13 (the website) we announced that the magazine was a defiant go, and we were planning it’s release later that year.

With our genre in mind, we set out the name our new magazine. After several weeks of debate, only one thing was agreed upon: that the magazine must have a sci-fi sounding name and that it should reflect our local home base, namely that we are on the world’s most beautiful beach: Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

In April 2006 we introduced the world to two new websites. The first was the message board for writers: A Writer’s Desk. It was our hope that through here we would find new talent seeking to be published in our magazine. A message board built entirely to promote the magazine, today it stands on it’s own and has no connection to the magazine at all.

Our second Website was of course the homepage for our magazine. We had finally decided on a name, and that name was: Moonsnails. After a walk to the beach that cold April, me and my three brothers returned home with tote bags filled with Old Orchard’s most beloved seashell: the Atlantic Moonsnail. Later that day, while sorting the shells on the lawn, it hit me: Moonsnails was the perfect name for our magazine, it kept the local flavor and it sounded sci-fi. Later that week Moonsnails homepage went online.

By the end of April 2006 we were getting quotes from various printers, both local and online. Announcement went out with the news that Moonsnails would see its public release in September of 2006. We were off and running, and than came May 9, 2006 and the flood that washed away all of our plans, destroying everything we owned and bringing Twighlight Manor Press to an instant standstill. We lost everything, the building was condemned, and nothing survived. As far as the business was concerned, we were back at ground zero.

That same day, as a result of the flood, my dad went into a coma. In July of 2006, my dad awoke from the coma and returned home disabled and in my care. In September of 2006, instead of releasing Moonsnails, we found ourselves in the midst of fight to save our land from a local land shark. The result was my dad’s return to the hospital. In October of 2006, a fire swept through. What little we had that survived the flood, was destroyed in the fire and we were faced with fighting out Maine’s frigid winter in a tent, a fate that did not sick well with my disabled dad’s rapidly failing health.

In January of 2007, things took a turn once again, this time in our favor, and we found our selves with electricity, heat, and a roof over our heads, for the first time since May 9, 2006.

Reunited with my computer, I was amazed to find, that in spite of the flood, in spite of the fire, the hard drive remained intact, and with a few minor repairs, it runs as good as new. It looks like hell, a bent mangled mess, but who cares, all my files are still here! All my plans and templates, all those months of research and market studies: they had survived! With that knowledge in hand I set out to pick up the pieces, and once again, plans are underway, full speed ahead, to bring Moonsnails into production.

And that brings us to today. Nether flood, nor fire, nor cold of winter, could stop Moonsnails. Moonsnails rises once again.

~EK

testing tags

having a problem getting posts to show up… testing to see if tags are working yet

Attack of the POD People! They are not evil.

Are you a self publisher? Maybe you have a manuscript you want published, but you are not sure if self-publishing is right for you? I’m a self publisher myself and I’m always looking for ways to improve, so as you can expect I spend a lot of my “blog reading time” looking for blogs that help writers in general and self-publishers esp. Well, today I came across a new blog I hadn’t found before. My search lead me to this post:

POD is not Vanity is not Self Publish

April 1st, 2007 · No Comments

POD is a technology. It’s a way to print books. It’s quite useful for printing small quantities, particularly if there is intermittent demand. LOTS of publishers who are not vanity houses or scam mills use POD technology. University presses spring to mind, as do very small limited runs of very tightly focused books. POD is not evil.

Vanity presses can use POD technology OR they can use webfeed technology. Vanity presses are essentially printers with some support staff. They’ll help you print up nice editions of whatever you want. You pay for this. It’s called vanity because they don’t acquire the book. Acquire means there is an editorial staff choosing particular books to publish. Vanity houses do not maintain lists, issue catalogs or sell books in bookstores. Vanity presses are not evil

Self publishers can use POD technology or webfeed technology. Self publishers are not vanity presses in the everyday sense of the word. They are “vanity” in the sense that there isn’t an acquisition but the two phrases are used to mean different things in publishing. Lots of people self publish for a lot of reasons. Self publishing is not evil.

POD/scam mills are companies set up to persuade you, the author, that printing your book with their company is the equivalent to having it acquired by a publisher. They charge you money. Unlike a respectable vanity press, they don’t copy edit or produce high quality products. They are out to make money on volume. They prey on author’s insecurities and lack of knowledge. POD/scam mills are the scum of the earth.

Whether a company is the scum of the earth depends on how they run their business, not how they print their books.

There are several POD companies that do not try to persuade you that you have but to print up books with them to be on your way to fame and glory. Lulu and CafePress come to mind. There are others I’m sure.

– Miss Snark, the literary agent

[via To Publish a Book]

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to the authour of this post, I say:

bravo!

*insert clapping smilie here*

every one with a manuscript should read this post, if you know someone with a manuscript pass this on to them.

~~EK