Bundoran Press, the publisher for the Blood & Water anthology, has released a tentative cover.

J.E. Taylor is beginning to wind down her month long Blog tour.  You can find the rest of her tour here.  I’m happy to help her promote her latest offering here, and be sure to check out the rest of her tour.   You can see her previous Guest Blog posting here.  - Gerald

Gerald was kind enough to let me pirate his blog today for a stop in my Crystal Illusions blog tour. I’ve been a lot of places on the web this month and have had quite a fun time with all the folks that have swung in at each blog.

Did you know Gerald has a manuscript that, in my humble opinion, should be available for readers to enjoy? Well he does and I’ve had the pleasure to read and comment on this. I know he’s probably shushing me as we speak, but this is one of the reasons why I blazed my own trail and built my own publishing company (www.novelconceptpublishing.com).

Fantastic stories like his should not line a drawer or a hard drive. They should be available for readers to enjoy.

I know quite a few folks who are making a run for it in the traditional publishing realm and I can’t fault them, because for those lucky enough to garnish the top shelves in the traditional publishing echelon, they get the marketing clout of the big six. But most authors fall into the mid-list or below and they struggle in this scenario. While they may have a big name label – they still have to do the majority of the legwork to market their books.

Independent publishers offer a good compromise to the big six and some even offer those coveted advances, however, most can’t afford to pay an advance, or if they do, it is minimal. They do, however, offer a bigger cut of the royalties, which is appealing, especially when the contract includes cover art, editing and formatting. If you’re looking at small presses – just beware of the ones that charge for these services – they are just a guise for vanity publishing.

I believe you as the author shouldn’t have to pay for editing, formatting or cover art and the publishing house should at least do a cursory request for reviews. However, like mid-list traditional publishing authors, you will have to take an active role in marketing the book. Your job is not done once the book hits the proverbial shelves. It isn’t like Field Of Dreams where if you build it they will come – that’s a farce and to be a success at anything requires a great deal of work.

So now that you’ve read my ramblings on the publishing industry, where do you fall in the traditional versus indie game?

Thanks for checking in and if you’re in the market for a good mystery – take a look at my latest book, Crystal Illusions.

http://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Illusions-Steve-Williams-ebook/dp/B007JBWCIQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331505187&sr=8-1

Assistant D.A. Carolyn Hastings has an uncanny knack for putting away criminals. With one of the best prosecution records in recent history, her future as Manhattan’s next District Attorney looks certain. But her sixth sense for winning cases threatens to work against her when she starts seeing a string of murders through the eyes of the killer.

With suspects piling up as fast as bodies, and the motives of those closest to her questionable, Carolyn doesn’t know who to trust. When the FBI assigns Special Agent Steve Williams to the case, Carolyn discloses her deepest fear – that the man she loves may be the one responsible for the city’s latest crime spree.

The only thing Steve knows for sure is Carolyn has an inexplicable psychic connection with the killer, and all the victims have one thing in common…a striking resemblance to Carolyn Hastings.

And he knows it’s only a matter of time before this psychopath knocks on her door.

Praise for CRYSTAL ILLUSIONS

“Taylor has a strong thriller where every single character has reasonable doubt flashing like a neon sign hanging over them, and right from the beginning you are trying to guess who the killer really is. Gripping, rich and magnificent – crime whodunnits don’t get any better than this!” Author Poppet / Gemma Rice – Author of Quislings, Blindsided, Djinn and Dusan

Until next time,

Ciao.

JET

The Table of Contents for Blood and Water has been posted.  It’s an honor to be included in such good company.

Drowntown by Camille Alexa
Bubbles and Boxes by Julie Czerneda
Phoebastria by Jennifer Rahn
Hard Water by Christine Cornell
Rabbit Season by Fiona Moore
Not a Drop to Drink by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime
Scrabbling By Isabella Hodson
Bad Blood by Agnes Cadieux
We Take Care of Our Own by Kate Heartfield
The Parable of the Clown by Derek Künsken
Blue Train by Derryl Murphy
The Cow’s in the Meadow, the Blood’s in the Corn by Margaret Curelas
Rash of Flowers by Ryan McFadden
This is the Ice Age by Claude Lalumière
Storm by Gerald Brandt
Little Canada by Kevin Cockle
Spirit Dance by Doug Smith
The Great Divide by Brent Nichols
Digging Deeper by Susan Forest
Watching the Human Garden  by Jean-Louis Trudel

Blood and Water will gather the stories of the new resource wars that will mark the next fifty years – stories of conflict and cooperation, of hope and despair – all told from a uniquely Canadian perspective. Conflicts with America over Canada’s resources, Canadian solutions to global problems or personal narratives of coping with change and conflict inspire the stories. (paraphrased from submission guidelines)

I’m pleased to announce my first short story sale.

Storm will be appearing in Blood and Water, an anthology edited by Hayden Trenholm, and published by Bundoran Press.

Blood and Water will gather the stories of the new resource wars that will mark the next fifty years – stories of conflict and cooperation, of hope and despair – all told from a uniquely Canadian perspective. Conflicts with America over Canada’s resources, Canadian solutions to global problems or personal narratives of coping with change and conflict inspire the stories. (paraphrased from submission guidelines)

Editor Hayden Trenholm is the Aurora and Sunburst Award nominated author of “The Steele Chronicles” trilogy and two-time winner of the Aurora Award for short fiction. He is also a produced playwright. In his other life, he has spent most of his career advising decision makers on critical issues around land and resources.

Since 2006, Bundoran Press has been publishing quality Science Fiction & Fantasy titles.

2011 has been an interesting year for me.

• I’ve had a couple of publishers ask for a full of my last novel (in late 2010)… they still have it.  I’m sure they’ll get to it eventually.
• I’ve been working more and writing less.
• I’ve lived through a renovation that went 100% past schedule (overlapping another renovation that started in 2010).
• I got my office back, after a year of a half.  It’s nice to have a place to work.
• I’ve made a couple of new friends.
• I’ve lost a friend.

Basically, the year has been a bit of a write off.  I’ve been under renovations since August 2010, and that can throw a serious wrench into the best laid plans.

Bring in 2012.  I’ve got big plans for you!

We had to go to using reCaptcha to separate bots trying to be users from real users.  I know it’s a pain, but the bots were taking over.

Well, it’s been awhile since I posted anything here. The good news is that I’ve been busy. The bad news is I haven’t been busy writing.

Just to let you know what I’ve been working on, take a look at this: (This used to be a fully finished basement, until we got some water leaks)

We’re getting there…

You’ve done the research.  You’ve done the plotting.  You know your characters.  The outline is (mostly) complete.  Now it’s time to get your butt in the chair and do the real work.

And it’s so hard.

Every word on the page oozes a disgusting odor of pure and utter crap.  Each sentence is dull and uninspiring.  The paragraph sits like a blob on the paper, having no true form or substance or reason for its existence.

Yes, you took so long in research and outlining, that your skills have gotten rusty.  You no longer remember the difference between an adjective and an adverb.  You plod forward anyway, replacing every existence of ‘said’ with a more colorful word… ‘gasped’ would fit right there, or maybe ‘yelped’.  Thirty seconds later you remove it and place the hidden said right back where it belongs.  When did writing become so hard, you wonder?  When did the flow of words that moved from your mind, to your fingertips, to the keyboard, and finally to their deserved place on the screen, stop?  Who shut off the damn tap anyway?  Ah, yes.  It was the months spent on research instead of writing that did it.  Type something in on Google, hit Wikipedia.  Heck, go to the damn Library.  It’s easier than doing any real work.

Well, the time for that is over.  Sure, you might do a quick search here or there to fill in a detail.  Maybe Solitaire isn’t such a time sink after all.  But at the end of the day, you must have accomplished your writing goal, whether it’s a single page, 1000 words, or just 10.  Set the goal, meet it, and progress shall be made.  Before you know it, the rust will have disappeared, the tap will be turned back on, and the story will be written.

Then you can start revising.

I’m a member of a fabulous on-line writing group called Backspace.  Many of our members are published authors, and I made an offer to them.  Write a guest blog, on (almost) any topic you like, and I’ll post a link to their book(s) in the side panel.

It’s The End Of The Publishing Industry As We Know It

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the death of the publishing industry.  There are those who applaud its supposed imminent demise, those who decry it, and those who deny it’s happening at all.

It’s no secret I have no great love nor admiration for the traditional publishing industry.  I believe they have gotten old and stodgy and way to settled in their ways.  Their emphasis on the bottom line has given rise to a  lot of same-old-same-old garbage taking up space on bookstore shelves.  While they shower their big name authors with support and riches – most of whom, in my humble opinion, couldn’t come up with a fresh idea for a story if their lives depended on it – they toss their mid-list and debut authors into a shark filled pool with neither life vest nor spear gun and expect them to survive if they hope to get a contract for another novel.

This emphasis on the bottom line has also narrowed the hoop of fire any aspiring author must jump through to the point that unless you’ve written something that’s been written a dozen times before, your chance of even getting an agent, much less a book contract with a major publisher, are somewhat less than that snowball’s chance in hell.  I doubt that some of the great ones like Vonnegut or Heller could even get published today.

Recent technological advances have begun to rock this boat of complacency and rocking it hard.  eBooks, eReaders, Publish On Demand, book reading applications for cell phones and the ability to get the book you want when you want it from the Internet is taking its toll on the publishing industry just as it did on the music and movie industry.

In addition, the ability to self-publish has opened the floodgates to all the wannabe authors out there.  I’m pretty sure this last is not a good thing.  A lot of really crappy books are going to get ‘published’ but then, a lot of crappy books already get published by the traditional publishing houses so I suppose it’s a toss-up.  But that whole can of book worms is not the topic of this post.  If you’re interested, I’ve touched on this subject briefly , and will no doubt touch on it again at some point on my blog.

The point I’m trying to make here is that I don’t believe the publishing industry is dying.  Some of the big six publishing houses may bite the book dust, which may or may not be a good thing, but the industry overall is not dying: it’s changing.

What I’m seeing is the rise of small, independent publishers like my publisher, .  These small publishers straddle the fence between the bottom line and publishing exciting, creative books from new authors with new ideas and a fresh perspective, a perspective the traditional publishing industry has lost.  As newspapers and magazines are dropping their book review sections, I’m seeing the rise of high quality book review blogs like Book Slut, Book Wenches, Un:Bound, Clover Hill, Women24, Author Poppet and Will Write For Love.  Sites like , and are out there connecting authors to the most vital part of their, sometimes insane, urge to write: readers.

For the last few decades, the marketing department’s of the major publishers, with their voodoo logic of what the reader wants, have been the gatekeepers to what actually gets to those readers.  This is changing and that, I believe, is a very good thing because, in the end, it is the reader who is truly the gatekeeper.  Write a good book, get it edited by a competent editor, find a graphic artist to create a great cover, get it reviewed in as many places as you can and the readers will find you.

That is the way publishing should be.

Here: http://www.ejknapp.com/2010/09/for-want-of-an-editor/

Rebel e Publishers: http://www.rebelepublishers.com/

Books Slut: http://www.bookslut.com/

Book Wenches: http://www.bookwenches.com/

Un:Bound: http://hagelrat.blogspot.com/

Clover Hill: http://cloverhillbookreviews.blogspot.com/

Women24: http://www.women24.com/

Author Poppet: http://authorpoppet.wordpress.com/

Will Write For Love: http://www.willwriteforlove.com/

Good Reads: http://www.goodreads.com/

Author’s Den: http://www.authorsden.com/

Red Room: http://www.redroom.com/

Author Bio:

EJ Knapp has published several short stories in obscure on-line magazines, most of which no longer exist, though he insists this is not his fault. Besides Stealing The Marbles, he is also the author of a non-fiction work, The Great Golden Gate Bridge Trivia Book – not his idea for the greatest title in the world – published by Chronicle Books in 1987. It has been reissued as an eBook titled Secrets of the Golden Gate Bridge and is available at Smashwords, the Amazon Kindle store and other fine eBook retailers.  For a more detailed bio, see http://www.ejknapp.com/about-ej/

The article is on World Building in fantasy.  The author goes into research and using the real world in his world building.  The video is fantastic!

From: Worldbuilding Fantasy, Using Reality



Carl Sagan was a Professor of Astronomy and Space Science and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, but most of us know him as a Pulitzer Prize winning author and the creator of COSMOS. That Emmy and Peabody award-winning PBS television series transformed educational television when it first aired in 1980, but now, thirty years later, it’s gone on to affect the hearts and minds of over a billion people in sixty countries.

No other scientist has been able to reach and teach so many nonscientists in such a meaningful way, and that is why we celebrate Dr. Sagan, remember his work, and revel in the cosmos he helped us understand.

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/carlsaganday

It’s an ad for a chain store in Arizona: Bookmans

(Image from 2008, sorry)

Honestly, I can’t say it any better than my friend EJ: Banned Books Week

If you plan on buying or reading a book this week, make it one of the ones on the list.  Don’t let a minority few decide what we can and can’t read… make that decision yourself.