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Writer on the Verge

November 18, 2008 by in category Writer on the Verge by Kate Carlisle tagged as ,

Write? Promote? Write? Promote?

I’m writing Book Two, but what should I do about Book One? It’s a quandary every writer faces, but I think I know the answer to this one …

Sell, baby, sell!

Yup, that’s me. Kate the Promoter.

Okay, yes, I’m a little obsessed with promotion right now, but it happens to everyone, right? I’m determined to sell every book printed in order to trigger a second and third printing. Is that so wrong? I just wish I knew how many books my publisher is printing. Then I could really obsess.

But I don’t know how many they’re printing and they won’t tell me, so I’m forced to play with imaginary numbers on the calculator. I carry my calculator around with me, just in case I get the urge to figure out something.

That’s not weird, is it? No, it’s fun. Obsession can be fun. Really. And then there’s bookmarks. I really want bookmarks. I’ve got postcards, but bookmarks can go anywhere. And I’ll need pens. And magnets.

I obsess over my calendar daily. When my book comes out, I’ll need to fill my calendar with lots of speaking engagements. I’ll need to schedule readings, and maybe go on a book tour and meet booksellers and lots of readers. I need to do a blog tour, and contests, and I’ve got to get lots of reviews, do radio interviews, go to every conference in the country.

My protagonist is female, so I’m hoping to speak to a lot of women’s groups. There are women at Rotary meetings, right? And lawyers’ groups, legal secretary organizations, nurses’ associations, librarians, teachers.

Oh, and my protagonist stops for coffee in chapter seven. I wonder if barristas have speakers at their meetings. There’s a connection I could exploit. I wonder if they have a mailing list.

Maybe I need to take a nap.

Kate Carlisle’s debut mystery, Homicide in Hardcover, comes out February 3, 2009. Buy, baby, buy!!

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Writer on the Verge

October 18, 2008 by in category Writer on the Verge by Kate Carlisle tagged as , ,

Another step closer…
I sent my page proofs back to my editor two weeks ago and thought I might take a break.
But within minutes–or so it seemed, although it might’ve been a week or so–I received my Advanced Reader Copies of Homicide in Hardcover. My first book. My first book!!
ARCs aren’t as pretty as the real thing, but they’re a real book, all the pages are there and they’re all put together and bound, like, ya know, a book!
It’s mine. It’s real. OMG!!
I know the phrase “shock and awe” might seem like exaggeration, but that’s what I felt when, after so many years, I held my first book in my hot little hands.
Yippee!!
And objectively speaking, I suppose the ARC isn’t even that pretty. But it’s beautiful to me. 🙂
See that photo of the plain brown book? Not so pretty. Yet … attractive, in a plain-brown-wrapper sort of way. Kind of sexy, I think. 🙂
Here’s a preview of the real deal. Now that’s a beautiful thing!
… there’s that suspicious cat again …

And coming next month, the horrors — er, excitement — of promotion!

Kate Carlisle’s first book in the Bibliophile Mystery series, Homicide in Hardcover, arrives February 2009 from NAL.

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On Finishing the Damn Book

October 15, 2008 by in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Java Plots by marianne h donley tagged as , ,

by Marianne H. Donley

I am taking an online class titled Fast Draft. The idea behind the class is to send your internal editor on vacation. Somewhere nice, of course, like the East Coast where she can bask in the fall colors and leave you the heck alone. Then you’re supposed to write twenty pages a day for two weeks. (For those of you who don’t want to do the math this early in the morning, that would be two hundred eighty pages.) You aren’t supposed to pay the less bit of attention to the quality of your written pages, here quantity only counts.

It was actually working pretty well there for a while. I will admit that I struggled to get twenty pages completed each day, but I was getting much more writing done. Since the start of the class, I’ve been averaging about ten pages a day. Before the class, I would be thrilled with three. No internal editor in sight. When an idea for tweaking an earlier chapter popped into my head, I made a note of it and then forged on.

Then we went to the Poconos on Saturday. What was I thinking? The Poconos are on the East Coast. Yes, the fall colors were beautiful, but the place was just crawling with internal editors. I think at least six of them hitched a ride home with us. Now, they’re crowded into my little writing cubby, whispering things.

Internal editor #1: That first scene in chapter six. You must be joking.

Internal editor #2: But we can tell you how to fix it.

Internal editor #3 It really isn’t funny. It doesn’t move the story forward.

Internal editor #4: Wait, chapter six is fine. Can we talk about the ending of chapter seven? Can we say weak? WEAK!

Internal editor #5: What the heck happened to the dog in chapter four? First she was there barking and then she disappeared. You have to go back and explain what happened to the dog. Short fix. It won’t take you long, a sentence here, a bark there. Two or three hours at the most. You know if you don’t do it now, you’ll forget all about it.

Internal editor #6: No offence, in that scene you just wrote, your heroine is acting like a twit. But I can tell you how to fix it. All you have to do is rewrite her scene from the hero’s POV, so instead of her just cleaning things up, he’s searching for clues. Clues are much better than cleaning.

I don’t think all of the internal editors who hopped into the car are mine. Some of them could be yours. If so, I wish you would call them home. I have to get rid of them, especially the ones who don’t belong to me. I enjoy writing a lot of pages each day and I don’t like all the whispering going on while I write. Sending them on vacation didn’t work for long. Yet, I don’t want to do anything too drastic like tossing them in the septic tank. While that would help get pages done, I really wouldn’t want to work with them after they lived in that environment. In addition, I suspect they won’t be too happy about the whole situation. Since I want to make use of them later when the first draft is done I really don’t want them mad at me. I suspect living in the septic for any length of time would make them all a bit grumpy.

So I’ve decided to give them all sleeping pills in this morning’s coffee. These are going to be long lasting magic sleeping pills, sort of like apple Sleeping Beauty ate (which I guess makes me the wicked witch, but I can deal with that). They are going to stay asleep until I write the magic words “The End” on that last page. So if I have YOUR internal editor hanging around, you might want to get her out of here before breakfast, otherwise she won’t be working until the end of November.

Marianne Donley writes quirky murder mysteries fueled by her life as a mom and a teacher. She makes her home in Pennsylvania with her supportive husband Dennis and two loveable but bad dogs. Her grown children have respectfully asked her to use a pen name, which she declined on the grounds that even if some of their more colorful misdeeds make it into her plots, who would know the books are fiction. Besides, they weren’t exactly worried about publicly humiliating her while growing up.

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Writer on the Verge

August 18, 2008 by in category Writer on the Verge by Kate Carlisle tagged as , , ,

More Conference Talk!

Everyone’s been sharing their conference and post-conference experiences, so I thought I’d join the crowd. And I brought photos–mostly of me, I’ll admit. But ya know, it’s my camera. 🙂
For me, this year’s conference was all about networking with fellow writers and I think I succeeded. Well, I partied a lot, anyway.
I was thrilled to finally get a chance to visit and party with my fabulous blogging group, Romance Bandits, and even had a few chance encounters with the Golden Rooster. (A long story, but visit the blog a few times and you’ll catch on!) Here’s a picture of the Cheeky Chook with Romance Bandit and Kensington debut author Jeanne Adams. Don’t they make a cute couple?
Here’s a shot of me with another Bandita and double Rita finalist, the lovely and talented Avon historical author, Anna Campbell.
Here are a few familiar OCC faces. This was taken the night of the Rita awards. It’s me, with Jennifer Apodaca and Michele Cwiertny. Don’t we all look fabulous?
And here I am with yet another Bandita, Sourcebooks Casablanca author Loucinda McGary. Her first book, The Wild Sight, is out in October and she’s already starting to garner wonderful reviews! We’re showing off our first sale ribbons!
I’ve got lots more photos but an alarming number of friends have threatened me with death if I post them here. I won’t mention any names … but some people are so touchy!
Hope your conference experience was wonderful!



Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile mystery series from NAL debuts in February 2009 with HOMICIDE IN HARDCOVER.

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Writer on the Verge

July 18, 2008 by in category Writer on the Verge by Kate Carlisle tagged as , ,

Conference Overload

Wait. Conference Overload? It hasn’t even started yet! I haven’t even packed. How can I already be overloaded? I haven’t even shopped for the new pair of pants and two sweaters I’ll need. I haven’t been to the hairdresser! I’ll go tomorrow, finally, thank goodness, and I’ll get a manicure and pedicure while I’m there. And I’ll have to drop off the dry cleaning and pick up two prescriptions before I go to the hairdresser. No, there’s not enough time. I’ll have to get the prescriptions after the hairdresser. Hmm. Maybe I can get the prescriptions Monday night after work. Note to self: check hours.

I need more batteries for my camera. And I’d better take my tape recorder in case there are any emergency brainstorming sessions while I’m there.

Thank goodness I bought a new suitcase last week. I’ll need it. But I haven’t begun to pack yet. And I’ve still got to finish making cards for my blog group to hand out–a few thousand should cover it–and whoa! I need new earrings! One of my silver hoops broke.

Overload? Yeah! By the time I actually get to conference, it’ll be like a vacation compared to the weeks spent preparing to get there! One good thing is that for the first time in recent memory, I’m not signed up for an editor/agent appointment. That means I might actually be able to relax, see my friends, meet in the bar, sleep. Oh yeah, I need some sleep.

But not yet. Must make a list. Must not forget flat iron. And bling. Oh yeah, the earrings. Got to buy new earrings.

And don’t forget to pack my postcards. I ordered postcards to show everyone my new book cover. Wait. I talked about my book cover last month here on the blog but I didn’t get a chance to show it off. So here’s a sneak peek …

Isn’t it beautiful? I love it! (You can click on the cover to get a better look. You’ll want to see the cat up close. He looks very suspicious.)

Now I just need to find a place in my suitcase for three hundred postcards so I can show it off to everyone else in the world. Will three hundred be enough? I hope I don’t go over the baggage weight limit. Note to self: check airline baggage weight limit. Sigh.

Anyone else on conference overload? Anyone else excited about conference? Anyone panicking over editor/agent appointments? (Take some deep breaths. Try to remember they’re regular people like you and me. I know, easier said than done.)

Only one more week to go and we’ll be in San Francisco! Then I can finally get some sleep!

Kate Carlisle writes The Bibliophile Mysteries for NAL. Her first book, HOMICIDE IN HARDCOVER, comes out in February 2009.

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