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Guest Post by Lori Verni-Fogarsi

Chick Lit Plus
Guest Author Article

“The Nitty Gritty Process of Being an Author”
By Lori Verni-Fogarsi, author of “Momnesia”

What kind of a title is that? For heaven’s sake! It sounds as if being an author is nitty. And gritty! Which it both is and isn’t. The truth is, if your goal is to have strangers read your book and have it be successful, there is far more involved than the pleasure of writing.

Everywhere I go, I meet people that say, “You’re a published author? Omigod! I have a great idea for a novel but can’t get around to writing it!” (This is largely because everyone I come across gets a bookmark foisted on them.) My advice? Just write it. Don’t worry about what you’re going to do with it later. Get your story out of your head and into the computer.

They look at me dubiously. “But how am I going to get it published?” My answer? “If you don’t write it, it can never be published.”

The next step is to be a cruel and brutal monster against your own work. How many words is it? More than 90,000? It’s too long. When I first finished “Momnesia,” it was 130,000 words and rest assured, finding 40,000 words to cut was extremely painful, yet necessary. Along the way, I did my spelling and punctuation corrections, and formatting.

Moving on, it’s time to let someone else mess with your work. And I don’t mean your mother, sister, or husband—not even if they’re an editor. I mean an impartial professional who has no personal stake in your life. Who will tell you if something stinks and praise you if it sings. Who knows that Roller Blades is supposed to be capitalized, and is not afraid to tell you that almost ALL of your parentheses need to be removed. They will identify characters that need development, inconsistencies in the timeline, and redundancies that cause readers to glaze over. Pay them. It’s worth it.

Here is the point where I could easily launch into a series of additional articles: Whether to seek an agent or self-publish, unusual aspects to keep in mind for your book’s cover, the roles of additional professionals, the marketing you’ll have to do. How to make your book stand out as the professional, highly readable work that it is (as opposed to an unedited, too long thing that people may read once but will never recommend).

One of the most common questions people ask is, “How long did the process take?” “Momnesia” took me a year to write, a year to edit, and a year to launch. As of the writing of this article, its success is still to be measured (release date was 3/16/12 in paperback and Kindle). “Everything You Need to Know About House Training Puppies and Adult Dogs” took two years. It was published in 2005 and I still receive a decent royalty check every quarter.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips! I invite you to join me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/LoriTheAuthor), and find additional resources on my website, (www.LoriTheAuthor.com). Happy authoring!

P.S: This article was 868 words. Too long! See? I had to edit it to a length that people will have time to read—all 526 words of it! (Um, perhaps still a teeny bit too long.)

Interview with Elizabeth Marx

Why did you want to write Binding Arbitration?
I was writing another novel, a historical fiction book, and I hit a wall where I didn’t know where to take the story next. I had just visited Indiana University for a baseball reunion weekend and an idea started to weave its way into my mind about a cutter, what they call townies on IU’s campus, and a big time jock. I started asking myself what would happen if they fell in love and he went to the big time and she was much more than a townie. Once I started writing the contemporary it flowed very smoothly, probably because I felt I knew the characters and settings so well. I decided to put the other historical novel on the backburner, I’ve never finished it, but I went back to it recently and am thinking I’ll rework it into a fantasy trilogy.
What is the hardest part about writing for you?
Right now the hardest part is finding the time to write. I launched four books at about the same time, so I’m doing all I can to promote them. My website is also in the works and should launch this month and that’s a lot of work, finding the right images, making sure you have all the right content. Writing itself usually flows pretty well for me, if I get stuck its usually because I’m somewhere I don’t want to be in the story, in Binding at one point I stopped for two week because I just couldn’t bring myself to do something that I knew I had to do. Luckily, all my characters live in my head, or unluckily in this case because Cass kicked me and said, “You just gotta do it.” And I said, “I’ve gotta do it, got it.”
What is the most rewarding part of being published?
Recently someone reviewed Binding Arbitration and in her review she said she had a very special connection to it. When I emailed her, she told me her personal story which paralleled Libby’s journey in some respects and she told me how touched she was by the story. Most of my reviews say they laughed and they cried reading this book, which means to me as author that I succeeded in getting you to know Aidan and Libby, because would you cry over a perfect stranger’s story? It might make you sad but you wouldn’t want to cry. I guess what I’m saying is I like knowing I can touch you with my words.
Are you currently working on another novel?
I’m always working on a novel. The second book in the Chicago series, which doesn’t have a title yet, is about an interior designer and a race car driver. They both come from prestigious backgrounds, but one of them gave a baby up for adoption and the other one was given up for adoption. Both of them have preconceived ideas about the other and they love to rub checkered flags in each other’s faces, the problem is that a checkered flag means caution, and these two don’t catch on until they’ve passed the finish line. It features a magical black cat; Santana is willing to sacrifice its nine lives to keep them together. I’m about four chapters into the book.
I have a paranormal romance that’s almost complete, it’s about a vampire who has been yearning for something for 600 years—it’s not blood that Sebastian Pearce wants more than anything the human world has to offer—the House of Imperials needs a breeder.
Do you have a writing routine you try to stick too?
I’m trying to develop a new routine where I write a few days a week all day and then do marketing a few days a week all day. So far I haven’t gotten a lot written other than guest posts and interviews, but once my web site goes up I hope to go to the back and forth routine.
How important do you think blogs and/or social media are to authors?
I think blogs are very important, especially to Indie authors. They give authors a platform where they can display their work. Unfortunately, the time of the bookstore is rapidly coming to an end. I don’t relish the day, because I love hanging out in bookstores and libraries but authors will need places to promote their books and blogs and social media are the place to accomplish this.
What is your advice for aspiring writers?
I believe that authors are born not made. I think it’s a talent, and like any other talent, the more you practice it the better you will become. I believe a good education supports your talent. Then an author needs lots of life experiences. I think a good writer is naturally curious about many things and very observant, they have the ability to arrange disjointed ideas into stories and make them believable to readers.

Samantha, thanks so much for taking the time to interview me, it was a pleasure.
Elizabeth Marx
http://www.elizabethmarxbooks.com

Interview with Monica Millard

When did you know writing was for you?
I’ve always loved writing, but mostly used my stories and poetry as personal expression to help work through what was going on in my life and held them to be private. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I made a goal to work on my follow through that I was going to put my focus to writing and actually completing a novel. It was one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had and I’ve been hooked ever since.

How would you describe your books?
Eek! That is such an open ended question. I’m hoping they’re a little escape, each of them into a world that holds its own magic and beauty, in both setting and characters. That’s what I think of the books I love. So I hope mine are the same. Everything I write has an element of the fantastic, whether that’s sci-fi, fantasy or paranormal because those are the worlds I love to spend the most time in.

What is the hardest part of the writing process for you?
Editing, hands down. It’s my least favorite part. Writing is creating, learning, and discovering. Editing feels more like work.
What are your favorite genres to read?
Sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal. But really anything that is showing me things I haven’t seen before.
What do you want readers to take away from your story?

I think the overreaching arc for this story is how perception makes the world you live in and how a change of it can change your world entirely.
How important do you think social media is for authors these days?

I think most authors wouldn’t be able to reach 90% of their readers without it and may never have gotten the courage to write or reach for publication without the resources social media provides. I think it’s essential.

What would be your advice to aspiring writers?

Find a good critique group or beta readers who will give honest feedback. Take it to heart and figure out how to improve your writing based on their responses. And get a Twitter account. It’s the greatest tool out there to help you connect with other writers.

Author Profile: Rebecca Coleman

Author Name: Rebecca Coleman
Website: http://www.rebeccacoleman.net/
Bio: A New Yorker by birth, Rebecca Coleman grew up in the close suburbs of Washington, D.C., in an academic family. A year spent in Germany, at the age of eight, would later provide the basis for the protagonist’s background in “The Kingdom of Childhood.” She first learned about the Waldorf School movement at age 14 and quickly developed a fascination with its culture and philosophies. After studying elementary education for several years at the University of Maryland, she graduated with a degree in English, awarded with honors. She lives in suburban Maryland with her husband and their four young children.
Title: The Kingdom of Childhood

See my review of The Kingdom of Childhood
Bio retrieved from rebeccacoleman.net

Author Profile: Nicolle Wallace

Author Name: Nicolle Wallace Website: http://www.nicollewallace.com/ Bio: Nicolle Wallace is a bestselling author and political commentator who appears regularly on news programs such as ABC’s…

Interview with Zoey and Claire Kane

How difficult is it to write as a team?
Writing as a team is a lot of fun. It’s actually not that difficult. But it wouldn’t work with just anybody. Writing with my mom gives me freedom to feel like I can argue over a scene until it is just right… and boy can we argue. If we are arguing, we have to banter until we’re giving each other high fives in excitement. By the time we agree, we are so excited that our high fives get screwed up and we end up whacking each other or get nothing but air.

When did you know writing together was the right decision?
We entered a 3 Day Novel contest. It was so much fun sitting side-by-side typing, and occasionally stopping for a meeting of the minds. We gave each other goose bumps with our scenes, so we knew then it was right.

What is the most rewarding part of being published?
The most rewarding part is receiving comments from people who like our stories. Of course, we like them, because we wrote them. But for others to say they like them, too, that is validation.

Where does the inspiration for your novellas come from?
Mom and I live crazy, adventurous lives for inspiration and we love bouncing ideas off each other.

Do you have a writing routine you try to stick to?
Zoey now does most of the writing and she likes to type 5 pages at a time! Woo! I come in and insert scenes, help make sure the pacing and flow is just right and offer my 2 cents along the way. Almost every day we have a meeting.

How important do you think blogs and/or social media are to authors?
We just set up a blog and are awaiting followers to sign up (hint, hint), and our Twitter account is @Zoey_Claire

I think it is extremely important. Twitter helped us with the blog tour and it has helped so many other authors.

What is your advice for aspiring writers?
My best advice is to let loose, let yourself type out the scenes with excitement. Lose yourself in the romance, adventure, mystery and intrigue.

What do you like the most about the first in the mystery series, The Riddles of Hillgate?
Well, for one, the name and the cover! I love it. If I had to choose a scene, it would be the one where Mom and I are sneaking up on a killer in the middle of a rain storm, outside the mansion.

What do you like most about the second in the series, Cruise to Murder?
There is so much I love about Cruise to Murder. If I had to pick something, I guess it would be the continual excitement throughout. Our books are no way slow paced. You won’t be skimming pages of our mysteries. There’s just too much fun going on.

Last thoughts for our readers?
Visit our blog to enter to win a $25 Amazon gift card giveaway: http://zoeyandclaire.blogspot.com/ And thank you, Samantha, for interviewing us on your beautiful blog.

About Zoey and Claire:
Claire has a Masters in Journalism, was Editor for Eye Witness Magazine and can’t make Irish Rum Cookies to save her life.

Zoey has dabbled in modeling, is a licensed real-estate agent, seeks for treasures (great and small), and is often underestimated.

Together, Zoey and Claire are a mother-daughter mystery solving duo. During their downtime, they dream of island men whisking them away.

(Claire and Zoey are also fictional, and their authors are a real life mother and daughter who use their names as pseudonyms. Don’t tell them that, though.)

Interview with Dina Silver

CLP Q&A with Dina Silver:

When did you know writing was for you?
By the time I went away to college, I knew I wanted to write professionally. I studied Journalism and thought I would be a news reporter one day. Could still happen?

One Pink Line is such an emotional story, and I’ve read that it’s based on
true events in your life. What was it like creating these characters and
their journey?
One Pink Line was actually inspired by my girlfriend’s life story. And while the book is pure fiction, many of the instances throughout the book closely parallel her life and her wonderful little family. Woven into the novel are also many of my own life experiences, including stories from high school and college. It was really a lot of fun to create characters based on people from my past.

What is the hardest part of the writing process for you?
Probably feeling the need to fill a number quotient. I don’t mean daily, more like overall. Sometimes my stories are better told with fewer words, but I feel the need to ‘fill space’ so to speak. A habit I’m trying to break.

What are your favorite genres to read?
My tastes are all over the board. Anything from murder mysteries to historical romance. I also consider myself a ‘bestseller reader.’ I like to read what’s popular and stay current with what other readers are chatting about.

What do you want readers to take away from your story?
Great question. There are so many different emotions, as you mentioned, that the story touches on, but ultimately what initially drew me to it was the underlying love story between Ethan and Sydney. My hope would be that people truly enjoy it for that reason. I, myself, am a sucker for a great love story and I really wanted to do justice to that part of the theme.

How important do you think social media is for authors these days?
Unfortunately, very important. People who like to read also tend to like to chat about it, blog about it, and connect with other readers and writers. Can you be successful in reaching an audience without social media? Sure, but it will be much more of a challenge.

What would be your advice to aspiring writers?
• If people you trust give you criticism, take it.
• Get a killer cover for your book. Don’t just have your brother-in-law design one for you because he knows how to use Photoshop.
• Don’t just get involved in social media, engage in it
• Stay active on Goodreads.
• Reach out to book bloggers.
• Once your book is out there being read, ask people to leave reviews for it on Amazon. You’ll be surprised how many people don’t even realize that it’s an option.

Guest Post by Carol Mason

The Writer’s Life: Upsides and Downsides

I get to work from home.
Upside: You can write all day in your PJ’s if you want to. Washing your hair need only happen twice a week. Showering isn’t really even essential: the only person who gets to see you is the person delivering your online shopping to the door. Gas to the office costs nothing. You never commit road rage in your quest to not be late. No one monitors how long you spend on the Internet. You can take a personal phone call. Or twenty. You can do nothing all day and lie about it – no one knows what you were going to be doing anyway, so how can they punish you for things they don’t know about that you haven’t done? You set your own deadlines. You have no one sabotaging them, no one stopping you from reaching them. The sky is therefore the limit to what you can achieve. Though, admittedly, your achievements usually fall far short of the sky. Because…
Downside: Sometimes being steps away from your bed, the fridge, and the cupboard where you keep your alcohol, is a curse rather than a blessing. Sometimes you are lonely and have no one to have a chuckle with or to sound off to. The cat and the dog don’t cut it. You discover their intellectual limitations pretty fast when you attempt to take a coffee break with them and engage them in a spot of plot problem-solving, and all they do is purr at you, or give you a pair of your own socks to play tug-of-war with. Then other times when you’re far from lonely and your writing is on a roll, people won’t leave you alone. They knock at your door, peek in your blinds, try to coax you with warm cookies. They know you are in there. When you try to ward them off by insisting that you keep proper office hours, they smile that smile that says that they think you are just trying to sound like a normal person – not a kept woman – which half of the neighborhood assumes you are anyway, because you walk your dog at random hours of the day.
Once in a while you get the urge to physically harm telemarketers. Sometimes that actually feels good.
You create entire fictionalized worlds in which you get to live for the time it takes to write a book.
Upside: It’s unbearably fun when you come up with a great book idea. When after very little thought, you already have a good sense of who your characters are, of their individual challenges, and even how things will end for them. You see the book soaring up the bestsellers lists; maybe even being made into a movie. You will write this book in half the time it has taken you to write the others. You are so excited to make it all happen that you don’t even bother mapping out the book. You just dive in and start writing in your toothpaste-stained sweatshirt, with a serious case of bed-head. At this point, you love your life. You think yourself incredibly lucky that someone is paying you to be a writer. Woo-hoo!
Downside: This lasts for about the first chapter. Then you realize that, knowing your beginning and knowing your end are just brackets that frame a big problem: you’ve got no plot. A plot is the life you give to your characters and the journey you take them on. But you can’t give your characters a life when you don’t really know them. And like people, characters in books are hard to get to know. Trying to force a plot is like trying to pull out your own tooth with a pair of pliers. Surely it’s best then to just let a plot closely mirror life? It just flows on from some place where it begins… But the story of your own real life has a slow unfolding every day. Sometimes not much happens. Sometimes you go nowhere. But if nothing much happens in your plot, and it’s going nowhere, then, alas, so is your career. Despite the theoretically fabulous process of writing a book, by the time you finally write the words The End, you realize you have never been more relieved by anything in your life – except when you wrote your other two books, and the memory of that is still so traumatic that you’ve never re-read them since they got published. But then an odd thing happens. A tiny part of you knows you will miss laboring over that book because when every time you read it, it makes you laugh and cry in all the right places – where you imagine your readers will laugh and cry too. To care so passionately about the lives and loves and heartbreaks of people who don’t even exist, yet can reduce you to such extremes of your emotions, feels like your own best measure of success. And then you realize that must make you slightly off your head. There surely has to be a less madcap way to earn a living.
The writer’s life is never boring.
Upside: That is certainly true.

Carol Mason is the best-selling author of The Love Market, Send Me A Lover and The Secrets of Married Women – all recently re-released as Amazon E books for $2.99. For the month of March, Carol will be donating 50% of the proceeds of her E book sales to breast cancer. See her website, www.carolmasonbooks.com for more details, or jump right onto Amazon and buy the books.

Shelly Bell Fundraiser

SHELLY BELL HOSTS FUNDRAISER
During 25th Annual National Eating Disorders Awareness Week,
Themed Everybody Knows Somebody, Feb. 26-March 3

Observing 25 Years of Working for a World Without Eating Disorders

Farmington Hills, MI— February 23, 2012 — For Immediate Release — Shelly Bell will host a Fundraiser during the 25th annual National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (NEDAwareness Week) in an effort to bring public attention to the critical need to raise awareness and funding to battle eating disorders in the U.S.
WHAT: For each digital copy of A Year to Remember sold during NEDAwareness Week, Shelly will donate one dollar ($1) to the National Eating Disorders Association.
WHEN: February 26, 2012-March 3, 2012
WHERE: A copy of A Year to Remember can be purchased for $4.99 at www.soulmatepublishing.com, www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com.

During NEDAwareness Week, thousands of people come together in communities across the country, hosting events to raise awareness about body image and bring national attention to the severity of eating disorders, which are mental illnesses (not lifestyle choices) with devastating, often life-threatening, consequences. While there is hope and recovery is possible – particularly with early intervention – many people suffer from long-term effects of these illnesses.
Themed Everybody Knows Somebody in 2012, some of the many events planned for the week include presentations and health fairs in schools and on college campuses; screenings of informational films; fashion shows featuring men and women of all body types; art shows; The Great Jeans Giveaway; and NEDA Walk fundraisers.
NEDA encourages individuals to get the conversation started in every community by pledging to do just one thing to raise awareness and provide critical information on eating disorders and related issues. Everyone can participate by planning and/or getting involved in local NEDAwareness Week events and activities; providing information and resources; and by encouraging community members to model acceptance and celebration of diversity in body shapes and sizes.
For information on how to get involved during NEDAwareness Week: www.myneda.org
U.S. Statistics on Eating Disorders: As many as 10 million females and 1 million males in the U.S. battle anorexia or bulimia. And as many as 13 million more struggle with binge eating disorder. Millions practice disordered eating due to an obsession with dieting ● Four out of 10 Americans either suffered or have known someone who has suffered from an eating disorder ● For females between 15- and 24-years-old-old who suffer from anorexia nervosa, the mortality rate associated with the illness is 12 times higher than the death rate of all other causes of death ● 40% of newly identified cases of anorexia are in girls 15-19 years old ● There was a significant increase in incidence of anorexia from 1935 to 1989, especially among young women 15-24 ● There has been a rise in incidence of anorexia in young women 15-19 in each decade since 1930 ● Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting and taking laxatives ● Girls who diet frequently are 12 times as likely to binge as girls who don’t diet ● 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner ● 81% of 10 –year-olds are afraid of being fat ● The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds ● Most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women ● 46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets and 82% of their families are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets.
Shelly Bell’s debut book, A Year to Remember, follows a food addict’s road to recovery as she searches for her soul mate under the watchful eye of the nation. A recovering compulsive overeater, she wrote A Year to Remember to share her strength and hope with compulsive overeaters and food addicts everywhere.
The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), headquartered in New York City, is the leading U.S. non-profit organization supporting individuals and families affected by eating disorders. NEDA serves as a catalyst for prevention, cures and access to quality care. Each year, NEDA helps millions of people across the country find information and appropriate treatment resources through its toll-free, live helpline, its many outreach programs and website. NEDA advocates for advancements in the field and envisions a world without eating disorders. For more information, visit www.NationalEatingDisorders.org

For Treatment Referrals, Visit www.NationalEatingDisorders.org
Or Contact NEDA’s Live Helpline: 800-931-2237
Monday – Friday: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. (EST)

Contact:

Shelly Bell — (313) 550-3313
Sbell987@aol.com