Advice from my new editor, Maudeen Wachsmith:
“So hang on tight. We’re going on a terrific ride. It may be a bit scary and you’ll feel like screaming at the ups and downs, but like the roller coaster, you’ll feel good after it’s all done.”
Most of my life, I’ve been happy to remain in the shadows, anonymous. As a nurse, I chose to work in nursing specialties where the patients and I interacted only briefly. As a nurse in the recovery room, the patients were just awakening from general anesthesia; they seldom remembered the care I provided to them.
But now, as a writer, one of my jobs is to promote myself. To “create a platform,” whatever the heck that means. I think it means that my job is to sell myself so that I can sell books. Okay. This is uncharted territory for me.
Before my life as a registered nurse, I was a journalist. I worked at daily and weekly newspapers in Missouri and Kansas. That job gave me a little bit of notoriety, but honestly, not much.
Please allow me to share my 15 seconds of fame with you. I was working as the lifestyles editor for The Sedalia Democrat in Sedalia, Missouri. I wrote a weekly column, entitled “Solo,” about my life and the people in it. One day at the library, I was checking out books, and the young woman behind the counter looked up at me, her eyes full of wonder. “You’re Annette Drake,” she gushed. I thought, oh, crap! Do I have too many fines to check out books? She said, “I always read your column. I love your writing.” Wow! I didn’t hear those words often, especially from my editors. I thanked her and left. Funny how I remember that incident more than two decades later.
So now with a book coming out this summer, an e-book, no less, I’ve got to start promoting it. My publisher, Tirgearr, will help, but as a new writer, a lot of it is up to me. So, here are a few of my ideas:
The book takes place in Lexington, Missouri. I’ve drafted a letter to the only bookstore in the town to ask if they will carry my book and perhaps allow me to do a reading when I visit Missouri this summer.
Likewise, I plan to query the newspapers in Lexington and ask if they will review the book. I also hope the daily newspaper here in Spokane will review it.
My publisher sent me a long, long list of blogs that review books. I’m to contact these and inquire if they will review my book. This, I can do.
They’ve also sent me some help: my editor, Maudeen Wachsmith. I’ve never met Maudeen in person, but already, she’s become an authority in my house. When I voice my many, many doubts about this book, my husband says, “I don’t know. We should ask Maudeen.” When I ask him if I should write this scene that’s been playing out in my head or is it too late to contribute more to the manuscript, he says, “I don’t know. We should ask Maudeen.”
Here’s more about my new literary godmother: Maudeen owned a bookstore near Tacoma in the early 1990s, then edited a magazine for readers and writers of western fiction. She has also been a contract reviewer for Amazon. She lived on Bainbridge Island from 1995 to 2001, so she’s rubbed elbows with some pretty well-known authors, including Susan Wiggs and Kristin Hannah. Maudeen also owned a book promotion company, “The Book Wizard.” She tells me she will ask Kristin Hannah to review my book and contribute a quote. Yikes! Kristin Hannah is going to read my book? Really?
In her most recent email to me, Maudeen wrote, “So hang on tight. We’re going on a terrific ride. It may be a bit scary and you’ll feel like screaming at the ups and downs, but like the roller coaster, you’ll feel good after it’s all done.”
I guess I better put my hands and arms inside the cart, huh? Next: When will Celebration House be in a printed version?
Do I take this leap of faith? Tirgearr Publishing is a small, independent publisher that opened its doors in February, 2012. Nothing haughty or high-brow. No six-figure advance. No office in New York City. Do I leap?
On Wednesday, Tirgearr Publishing in Ireland offered me a contract for my first novel, “The Celebration House.”
In the past two days, I’ve thought and thought. I asked fellow unpublished writers for advice. I contacted the leader of my local writing guild, but no response. I queried the local law school, asking if a professor or a law student would review the contract. I was told their services are for senior citizens only.
So I turned to the people I trust most: my husband, my daughter and my mother-in-law. They all diligently read the contract. None of them could find a questionable clause, i.e. author shall sign over first-born child. Real sorry about that, Meg.
I googled the company. Tigreaar has more than 30 e-books available for sale on Amazon. My contact, Kemberlee Shortland, has published numerous romance novels.
Last night, I attended a new writing group. I sat and listened to these other writers for two hours. They shared their words, and they shared their excuses. One young woman said she hadn’t worked on her novel for a year because she was too busy with college. Another writer said she was too busy with her newest grandchild to write. Few of them brought in printed versions of their work, so they read aloud. More excuses: the printer was misbehaving or they didn’t have time before the meeting to print their pages.
And I think of myself. All of my life, I have wanted to be a professional writer. I always talked about this, but I never actually did it. Until “The Celebration House,” I had never finished writing a book. Now I have. My middle-grade novel, “Bone Girl,” is complete and next weekend, when I attend the western Washington children writers’ conference, I’m shopping the manuscript around for an agent or editor who loves it as much as I do.
And so it comes down to me: do I take this leap of faith? Tirgearr Publishing is a small, independent publisher that opened its doors in February, 2012. Nothing haughty or high-brow. No six-figure advance. No office in New York City. Do I leap?
Yes. I do. “The Celebration House” will be published this summer.
Hands and arms inside the cart: Next, the business of self-promotion.
I found this in my email inbox yesterday. I wanted to share it with you:
“Hi Annette.
Thank you again for sharing your work, The Celebration House, with us,
and for your interest in Tirgearr Publishing.
We put the book before our editors and they’ve come back with a very
positive response. You have a clear voice and your writing is engaging and easy to read. The plot is focused and your protagonist remains firm
through the storytelling. There are clear, emotive scenes; you have a
good sense with visualization. There are a few editorial issues here,
but nothing that can’t be worked out during the editing process.
If you are still interested in placing this book with Tirgearr
Publishing, I would be very happy to send you a contract to look over.
Let me know where you stand and we’ll move forward with this book.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kemberlee
Tirgearr Publishing
http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com”
There’s a lot of ways that my world changes because of this email.
To begin with, there’s the money. I stand to make tens of dollars from this news!
But what I’m most fascinated with is this: people who read my book will be seeing the images and meet the characters that have existed only in my mind. I’m fascinated with this idea.
I know of so many amazing writers who have not had this opportunity. I feel lucky. I feel blessed. Publication offers me a sense of validation, that my writing isn’t just rubbish. It has value, if only 99 cents for an e-book. Sold!
Roger Ebert, 70, died last Thursday after a lengthy battle with cancer.
I grew up with Ebert. I remember watching him and Siskel hash out movies I’d never heard of and likely would not see at the one-screen theater in my hometown of Brookfield, Missouri.
I read today that the congregation of that delightful Baptist church in Kansas plans to picket Ebert’s funeral. Wow! Good for him. Ebert has joined the ranks of the soldiers who died serving our country. I hope those same Christians picket my funeral, though I feel pretty certain they won’t. I’ll never do anything as noble as give my life for my country or win a Pulitzer Prize.
For me, movies were an escape from the humdrums of life in a small Missouri town. I made good use of that one-screen theater. It’s there that I saw Kevin Bacon dance in “Footloose,” and I saw violence like I’d never known in “The Killing Fields.” I even had my first date there. My father drove me to and from. My date and I saw “Poltergeist.” Stephen Spielberg scared the bejesus out of me.
I define the decades of my life by what movies I watched. As a kid, I’d lie on our living room floor and watch wonderful black and white classics like “Francis the Talking Mule” or Shirley Temple in “The Little Rebel.” At my Grandmother Drake’s house on holiday get-togethers, we watched Johnny Weissmuller in “Tarzan.” On Friday nights, a television station in Kansas City hosted the Friday fright-night movie, with a dazzlingly real plastic skull and a creepy announcer. I watched wide-eyed as Dracula stalked his next victim.
My college days in the mid-1980s were all about going “Back to the Future” with Michael J. Fox. My sorority sisters and I rented a VCR from a local video store and watched whatever nightmare Stephen King dreamt up. Scariest flick: “The Shining.” Most poignant: “The Dead Zone.”
When I became a parent, I lost touch with movies until my children were old enough to be dragged along to the theaters. My oldest daughter and I loved attending the dollar theater just a few blocks from our house. When my twins came along, I couldn’t manage all three at a theater, so we rented movies. We kept Blockbuster in business as long as we could by watching old movies, like “The Dark Crystal,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Willow.”
One of my favorite things to do is rent a copy of an original film and a copy of the remake and compare the two. The original is almost always a better film. Some examples are “3:10 to Yuma” and “Flight of the Phoenix.” The one exception to this rule is “True Grit.” The Coen Brothers made a fantastic remake of the John Wayne original.
My favorite movie is “Bowfinger,” with Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy. This movie makes me laugh every time I watch it. During the most challenging days of my life, I’d retreat from the world and watch “Bowfinger.” Within 30 minutes, I felt better. I guess that’s the magic of movies.
An amazing kids author, Laini penned the Dreamdark series and Daughter of Smoke and Bone, among others. I credit Laini for helping me name the place where my future characters wait to be written: my green room.
In April of 2010, I attended a writing conference and heard the keynote speech by Laini Taylor, the author of the Dreamdark books. This young woman, with bright pink hair, told the audience that her biggest struggle as a writer was her quest for perfection. Because of this, she had a long list of books that she wanted to write someday, but for now, the characters in this book waited in a green room in her mind.
Many of the things that Laini talked about resonated with me, including the idea of a green room for my books. Like her, I have books that I want to write that I haven’t started yet. Unlike Laini, my characters don’t stay in the green room, watching the current broadcast and waiting their turn. Nope. They’re not so patient. They follow me around, peering over my shoulder at what I’m currently writing, saying, “My story is way better than the one she is working on now. When is it going to be my turn?”
Right now, four stories burn:
– A who-dunnit comedy involving four writing friends and a past-her-prime diva author, entitled Killing Candace Oberman. Spoiler alert: Candace’s husband is the bad guy.
– A middle-grade novel about the trek from the Midwest to the Pacific Ocean. The first part takes place during the 1840s; the second part occurs during the Dust Bowl years.
– A cozy murder mystery that takes place at the Iowa State Fair.
– A book based loosely on the life of my mother: a young woman is stricken with polio and because she cannot run and play, she learns to play the piano. She later teaches music in a small, rural school and takes her group to a state choir competition.
But today, I’ll polish Bone Girl, which I’ve started shopping to literary agents. The book is done. I’m just fine tuning.
One last thing: when I wrote this blog entry, I was curious about the term “green room.” It’s defined as a room provided to artists to wait before they are called up to perform. Would you believe the term was first used in 1678? Yep. Playwright Thomas Shadwell used it in his play The True Widow.
Hands and arms inside the cart, please. Next: My love affair with movies.
Yesterday, I took my two children to see the Japanese animated film, “Spirited Away,” directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s a masterpiece of storytelling and my daughter’s favorite movie. She and I were afraid her younger brother, who turns six years old today, wouldn’t understand the nuances of the film. But our worries were for naught; he was mesmerized.
That is the power of good storytelling: wrapping up the reader, or in the case of this film, the viewer, in the story and whisking them away to a magical place. I think storytelling is an inherent quality of being human, like the ability to make music.
I know people who have no use for fiction. They read only non-fiction; they consider anything else a waste of time. I feel sad for these people because I believe through storytelling, we share our histories and our humanity.
I awoke last night from a dream, in which former co-workers and supervisors treated me as a pariah because I no longer work in healthcare. To these dream characters, I have no value because I no longer work 12-hour night shifts. I know this is me worried about our finances, but I woke up believing their sentiments: no job = no value.
It takes time to find for every writer to find a niche. I know this. Success isn’t going to come overnight. Right now, my dream to make a living with my words requires the quality I am least capable of: patience. I have to stay on this path, whether it leads me uphill or down. Some days, that’s easier said than done, especially when the rejections show up in my Yahoo inbox. Dreams like the one I had last night are not helpful.
So this morning, I turned to the journal I keep about my middle-grade novel, Bone Girl. Below is the first entry I wrote:
Date: October 10, 2011
“Here’s what I believe: I believe, with all my heart, that I have beautiful stories inside of me. Beautiful stories that will inspire and awe and entertain and lift people out of their misery and into a place where they feel the sun on their face. I believe that. I believe I can use the power of the written word to make this place better. I’m not shooting for great. Better. I can make life better with my stories, with the people that speak to me every day, but whom I’ve chosen to ignore most of my life. It’s time to stop ignoring those voices.”
Hands and arms inside the cart, please. Next: Visiting my green room.
Two baby moose mosey through our front yard in Eagle River, Alaska, and stop to inspect Sylvester, our 1968 16-foot Oasis travel trailer.
annettedrake.com 