Archive for March, 2011
Saturday, March 19th, 2011
I owe you a sonnet on Michelle’s and my hotel experience last weekend, and I’m good for it. But this fine Saturday morning, my family’s whirling like a runaway top, and I’m chasing dust bunnies in their shadows trying to keep up. So, here’s some of the things that gave me some Internet happiness (or double-takes) as I re-entered my “normal” life this week.
I’ve never worried about aging, never had a “list” of things I needed to do by a certain age to feel fulfilled, never looked back (much) at some point in the dwindling past thinking THOSE were the days.I accept every morning (and I know it’s a blessing) that better stuff is ahead. The “it’s all downhill from here” perspective of some? Forgeddaboutit.
So, I give you 4 Cool Women Making 40 Fantastic.
I do drink expensive, designer coffee, but only because Starbucks makes it the best, the way I like it (incredibly strong, yet decaf and doused in tons of fat-free milk and so cold you can feel your throat bracing itself just before you take your first sip).
What I don’t do is indulge (very often) in the pastry in their cases or the hot chocolate or the other “light” and yummy looking things they offer that, to me, seem just a little too good to be true. Not to mention the fact that if I ate that much sugar and fat in the middle of the day, I’d be in a coma before I managed to drive wherever I was headed next. But I know others love the goodies, and I don’t judge.
Except, when I see the latest “mini” bites of heaven tempting folks as soon as they walk in Starbucks door. Birthday cake pops and mini cupcakes and tiny red velvet woopie pies… OMG!!! If my low blood sugar wasn’t the one thing about my system rivalling my thyroid problems for top billing in the making me sick department, I’d have dove head first, love at first sight, into the pastry case.
(more…)
Tags: anna’s world, creativity & inspiration, travels and memories
Posted in I Hear The Craziest Things | 3 Comments »
Friday, March 18th, 2011
“We teach others how to treat us,” I told a group of students last weekend, when we shifted into the communication skills portion of our weekend together. In the Psychic Realm I’ve created in my Legacy novels (and in the fringe science I base my psychic world building on) our minds teach our dreams how to transport us while we sleep. Our “every day” programs our resting realities.
I’ve promised for a while now to post regularly about what I’ve learned writing Secret Legacy and what I’ve created in both it and it’s sister book, Dark Legacy. We’re grooving toward an exciting May/June launch/re-launch season for both projects, so let’s get busy talking about the spooky and not-so-spooky stuff that enthralls me about the mind’s power to create.
Yes, our dreams are for encoding memories and filtering out the chatter and rebooting for a new conscious day. But sometimes the unconscious noise is too important to move on from, no matter how determined we are to lock it away. And it’s these the seeds from which our strongest, most recurring dreams evolve.
As we stay unaware when we’re awake, our dreams tend to crank up the dial on dealing with whatever need/goal/fear is being repressed. They actually take on the challenge of getting us back on the track of facing the inevitable truth, that the energy we most avoid is the reality we most need to confront. So we do. Over and over. In dream cycles that keep the emotions of whatever’s challenging us in the forefront of our minds, even if we turn away from the details themselves.
Does this mean we’re subconsciously programming the very dreams we need, in order to confront our demons?
Some believe so.
No, not THAT somebody, but it is a cool album. You should check it out ;o)
In Secret Legacy, the programming is more intentional. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream curcit, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, good vs. evil, Inception, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, parapsychology, physics, precognition, psychic, psychic children, psychokinesis, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | No Comments »
Thursday, March 17th, 2011
We asked students last weekend to share every worst case scenario and fear they’d heard or thought about the way digital options seems to be consuming traditional publishing. What are the rumors? How bad do you think it’s going to get. What are you chances now of ever getting a book contract and seeing your stories in a reader’s hand?
My agent (Michelle Grajkowski) and I had been fielding industry questions and trying to get folks to open up for about an hour. It was the get to know you beginning of the conference. Folks were understandably guarded at first, talking with someone they thought might one day be an asset to their career (Michelle, not me, though I’m always good for an entertaining hour or two of conversation ;o). I’d tried to get them to ask digital publishing questions a few times, but no takers. Then Michelle helped me open the floor for comments.
“What have you heard?” we asked. “What do you know? Don’t worry about how bad it sounds. No holds barred.”
Ah. We’d struck upon the thing to ask a room full of people who’re starting to accept you into your group. More, “Let’s get the the big ugly monster out of the closet.” Less, “Let us know what you’re afraid of.”
Michelle and I had talked about this approach on the drive over from the town we flew in on to the on where we’d be teaching all weekend. We were pretty sure what we’d hear.
And we weren’t disappointed:
- Digital publishing is helping finish off the Mass Market segment of printed book sales.
- Bricks and mortar stores are disappearing from the landscape.
- Book store chains are closing, filing for bankruptcy or up for sale.
- Racks/slots for books in the remaining discount stores are dwindling.
- Online printed book sales are lagging behind digital sales.
- Self publishing digitally may be the only way non-branded authors can make money publishing in the near future.
- It’s becoming difficult to distinguish a “publisher” from a self published digital book, at least on sight.
- Badly written and produced digital books are flooding the market.
- 99 cent digital book prices devalue books in general and make it impossible for newer writers to make any money at all.
- It takes so long to find a publisher traditionally, print advances are shrinking along with sales and royalties, publishers are struggling and going under, and an agent gets to take a bite out of whatever you do make–why not skip all the middle men and go it alone like everyone you see all over social media making a fortune self-publishing.
- Publishers opening digital-only imprints aren’t offering authors advances, are offering little or no promotion that the author doesn’t have to take the lead in, and are making no promises of income from royalties. Therefore months/years of work could result in little or no profit for the author whatsoever.
The list goes on… Like I said, nothing new.
Except, the point we made later that night after everyone had pretty much agreed that we’d all heard the above list and more and didn’t know what to think about it, is that IT’S NOTHING NEW.
Michelle and I called this the Reality Check portion of the evening program. Here’s what we shared with the group, and believe it or not it made everyone a little more comfortable and contemplative and thinking a little more big picture about all the above stuff that, let’s be honest, makes all of us want to hind our heads in the sand until the dust settles…
When the mass market publishing model began to dominate the scene, we used as an example, it was seen by many as a threatening wave that would spell the end of the more valuable but pricey hard cover novel, and the independent book store that didn’t want to shelve endless cheaper-to-produce-and-stock paperbacks. And, well, it pretty much was. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, digital promotion, digital publishing, Dorchester Publishing, ebooks, ePublishing, gallies, indie publishing, Legacy Series, Michelle Grajkowski, promotion, reviews, Secret Legacy, Three Seas Literary Agency, writer, writer resource, writing, writing articles
Posted in Publishing Isn't for Sissies | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
Jenni made one thing clear about Conflict Lock last week: the conflict box seems simple enough, but when you try to chart conflict without motivation, which is essential to drill to the core of what drives your external story, things can get tricky. Lets get right to some examples to illustrate what we mean (review our posts from last week again here and here if you need to catch up), then I’ll wrap things up at the end of the post and get back to talking about what’s MOST important…character ;o)
My first pass at the conflict box for my WIP was a fail:
Pretty good, right?
But notice the amount of yadda yadda. Never a good sign in a chart that’s supposed to be very simple. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, brainstorming, conflict, conflict box, conflict lock, critiquing, fiction, fiction writer, narrative structure, novel, novel structure, plot, plotting, publishing, writing, writing articles, writing coach, writing craft, writing resources, writing workshops
Posted in How We Write | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
More I Hear the Craziest Things Friday (after HoWW tomorrow and PIFS Thursday), where we’ll delve deeply into the kinetic mess I call travelling. “But what’s the thing about conferences?” you ask after reading the title of this post…
I taught with my fabulous agent last weekend, Michelle Grakjowski. And when we weren’t embarrassing ourselves in restaurants driving the wait staff crazy, we got to know 35 amazing people from the Rochester/Syracuse areas of New York. We talked publishing industry trends (particularly the rise of eBooks and digital publishing as major players), I taught an interactive version of my character planning and rewriting workshops (with a dose of drafting/improvisation to round things out), and we did one of my favorite things–discussing the communication skills that can make or break your career.
But that’s just the framework. The mechanics. The syllabus. My handouts are detailed and up on my website and a lot of the nuts and bolts of what Michelle and I teach can be taken away from just reading them.
The thing about conferences, especially magical events like this, is the energy. The dynamic of learning. The growing connection that began Friday night when after about an hour everyone loosened up and took me up on my offer to tell us every horrible thing they’d heard about digital publishing and everything they were scared about it doing to their careers.
Then Michelle and I started leading the group through a reality check that was cathartic for everyone. Yes, it’s scary out there. But the thing is, it always has been. (more…)
Tags: anna’s world, creativity & inspiration, travels and memories
Posted in What About Everything Else? | 6 Comments »
Monday, March 14th, 2011
The Central New York Romance Writers are an amazing group. Michelle Grajkowski and I just had our best weekend workshop experience EVER with them. The travel thing is always bizarre, though. I hear the craziest things…
Did you know milk has more calories when you cross the California state line?
At the Subway where we grabbed lunch Friday on the way to our afternoon “meet and greet,” this sign on the sneeze guard in front of the sandwich counter of course caught my attention, if no one else’s.
In case you can’t read it–it says 1% low fat milk has 160 calories everywhere but in California, where it magically increases to 180 calories.
I mean, really? I get what this might mean: a larger container of milk is used in the California region; the caloric definition of “1% low fat” might be gauged differently based on California FDA regulations; CA cow’s milk has given up worrying about how it looks in HD and has let itself go, and, really, what’s 20 extra calories when you’ve already hit 160… (more…)
Tags: anna’s world, creativity & inspiration, travels and memories
Posted in I Hear The Craziest Things | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Last week’s PIFS’s NetGalley post earned top billing in blog hits for a single article. There’s a world of authors searching for digital publishing and promotion information. Today, let’s look at the growing popularity of using a Team Approach to releasing books independently. It’s exciting to see groups of authors who would otherwise self publish on their own are working together to share knowledge and skill sets and experience.
Dorchester’s PR team will be back soon (I should have a schedule of their PIFs visits to share next week), discussing specifics about the amazing things they have planned for Secret Legacy and other direct-to-digital titles they’re spotlighting this spring. But that’s a hybrid NY publishing model. What about the solitary author with a backlist he/she wants to re-release or a new work of fiction he/she wants to digitally distribute, when the traditional publishing route isn’t a viable option?
Jenni Holbrook-Talty is with us today (in her non-How We Write capacity) to talk about her journey into the independent digital publishing arena with business partner Bob Mayer. Last year, he asked her to put her business and IT experience to work to help him re-release his best-selling backlist on the digital stage. The result was Who Dares Wins Publishing (WDWPub). Their learning curve was steep. There was progress, mistakes, work and rework, and the frustration of dealing with a kaleidoscope vendors and formats and packaging requirements. Until they finally began producing quality product that fans are now snatching up daily through outlets like Amazon, Sony, and iBooks.
I asked Jenni why she thought their partnership worked, and why she’d recommend something similar to other authors thinking of digitally publishing independently.
She said, “The team approach allows each member to utilize their talents to their fullest capacity. We used Bob’s years of training in the world of Traditional Publishing to begin the process of publishing his backlist. I had been published by a reputable ePublisher and understood some of the things about digital publishing that Bob’s background didn’t. He knows the business better than most, but he didn’t have the technology base that I had, so by merging the two together we were able to put his books, my books, and other authors’ books out there for our readers to enjoy. The team approach also frees up our time so we can both do the one thing we love the most: write. Right now, I know Bob is going through some edits of his next release due out 12-April while I’m taking care of some necessary business obligations by finalizing the copy edits for Devil’s Sea and put the book back into production.” (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, Bob Mayer, digital promotion, digital publishing, Dorchester Publishing, ebooks, ePublishing, gallies, indie publishing, Jenni Holbrook--Talty, Legacy Series, LJ Sellers, NetGalley, promotion, Randy Ingermanson, reviews, Secret Legacy, Who Dares Wins Publishing, Write It Forward, writer, writer resource, writing, writing articles
Posted in Publishing Isn't for Sissies | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Jenni’s going to explain the Conflict Box over on her blog today. HoWW is all about plot this month, and it’s time to get serious about the external conflict that drives story and our critiques. And unless you lock and load your protagonist’s central goal and what stops him/her from achieving that goal, your plot won’t believably propel the protagonist or the reader through the story.
You can tell from Jenni’s and my last two posts, that plot isn’t my drafting happy place. Character is. But, as I’ll be teaching once again this weekend with the Central New York Romance Writers Mini-Con, character IS plot. Your two lead characters (the protagonist and antagonist) must have external goals that are in conflict with each other, in every scene/chapter/act of the story, or you’re not crafting characters that will drive each other to grow and change on the page. And, the part I like best, those external goals and conflicts must derive from who these people are as characters BEFORE you create the on-the-page situations and obstacles that get in the characters way.
A hard and fast rule: the protagonist’s goal must drive the antagonist’s conflict in your story, and vice versa. Think of it in revers–if the antagonist of your novel isn’t complicating your protagonist’s race to achieve his goal, you don’t have much of a story, right? No matter how beautifully drawn your characters are, you won’t have the core external conflict that will keep a reader turning pages to see what happens next. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, brainstorming, conflict, conflict box, conflict lock, critiquing, fiction, fiction writer, narrative structure, novel, novel structure, plot, plotting, publishing, writing, writing articles, writing coach, writing craft, writing resources, writing workshops
Posted in How We Write | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
“Wake up,” I say to my son from the front passenger seat of our SUV, about 10 hours into a 16-hr drive to New York that we started the night before so we could drive the bulk of it when it’s dark outside and there are fewer cars on the road.
This is six or seven years ago. He’s stayed up playing video games with the friend who’s come with us for the trip, and even though it’s eight in the morning he’s still out of it.
“Wahgrmphwhmgh,” he says, or something like that.
“Hey, man,” his friend says. He’s actually the son of close family friends. He’s like the older brother my son’s always wanted. “Wake up. I want waffles.”
“I need a Diet Coke,” I add. We’ve been trying to get him up for five minutes. Considering he doesn’t need much sleep, it takes nothing short of a nuclear blast to get him going in the morning, even now, six years later. “You don’t want to be the one who keeps Mom from her Diet Coke, do you?”
“Grryahgghmfph,” he mumbles next.
My husband snores from the driver seat next to me. Good thing we’re already parked in front of the Waffle House.
“Come on man,” our friend says, “no one here speaks Wookie. Wake up!’
I can’t hold in my snicker.
“Speaks what?” I ask. (more…)
Tags: anna’s world, Cookie Monster, creativity & inspiration, Parenting, Teenagers, Wookie
Posted in Things My Teenager Says | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 7th, 2011
A great comment came in last week–that the lead characters in Inception were merely a band of thugs raping people’s minds to get what they wanted. The commenter poses an interesting question: Is doing something wrong ever right, because you believe it’s the only viable choice?
It’s the EXACT moral (psychic) delima that was the original idea for my Legacy series.I wanted realistic lead characters facing complex delimas for which there are no easy resloution. Because even good people make bad choices sometimes. I’m not sure Inception’s creators were going for the same thing, but there are parallels, nonetheless.
I’ve started a conversatin about this very thing, BTW, over on Kindle Boards, so stop by and chat a bit out there, too.
What’s your take?Not just about either Inception or the Legacy books–though they offer a great framework for the topic. What are you looking for in a book that explores the epic dynamic of good vs. evil, only the good guys are not all that good and the bad guys are doing what they’re doing for causes they find just (they’re true believers). (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, fantasy author, good vs. evil, Inception, Legacy Series, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 3 Comments »
