Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to guest post on the blog of Jeni Chappelle, editor extraordinaire. I spoke about the agony of the edits.
As a writer that has been edited and an editor that has worked with writers, I’d like to paint you a picture.
You’re a writer, and you just received a massive developmental and line critique from the editor you hired. You open it up and gaze into the glaring image of comments and track changes that have made your once monochrome document into a rainbow of color. Your heart gives a little squeeze. Tears poke at your eyes. You haven’t even read what the editor has to say yet, but you see that rainbow and it evokes memories of literally every test you ever got back from a teacher to find it marked in red. Then you start reading the comments and suggestions. Some make you nod. But some cut to the bone. You want to hurl explanations at the editor. Couldn’t they understand? Why weren’t they getting what you were doing with your words! You’re caught somewhere between anger, sadness, and a sort of numb defensiveness, and you don’t know which direction best serves you as a writer.
And that’s okay. Getting edits should hurt.
To read more of this post, and to check out the rest of Jeni’s blog, click here.
Today on the blog, author C.S. Woolley is here to spread awareness about a very cool service available to authors and readers alike. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please welcome Ms. Woolley to the blog!
What is Authorgraph?
By C.S. Woolley
Being able to get books signed by your favourite author is something that is truly special, and the rise of e-books seems to be making that harder – or is it? As you may have guessed, e-books, especially kindle books can now be signed by the author. No, you don’t need to get a collection of Sharpie autographs on the back of your e-reader. Instead, you can use Authorgraph to do it for you.
I’m glad you asked! Authorgraph is a completely free service for both authors and readers to use. What it does is allows authors to register on the site with their book catalogue and in turn allows readers to request autographs from their favourite authors. So it doesn’t matter where in the world the author or reader are, a signed book is only a click or two away.
As the service is free, it’s a relatively simple process. You need to sign up before you can start getting Authorgraphs, and you can do this by either filling out the form or choosing to connect to the service through Twitter. If you use the form option to register, you’ll need to verify your account using the link in the email that is sent out and off you go. If you use Twitter, you’ll need to add a few personal details in your account section before you can start. But it is a relatively straight forward and quick process.
In order to get an Authorgraph, the author must be registered on the site, so this can mean that some of your favourite authors might be missing, but you can always send them a message and get them to sign up so you can get their autographs.
To help guide you through the user process for readers, here is a step-by-step guide with some screenshots.
First you find the author or the book that you want to get authorgraphed by using the search bar at the top of the page. Once you’ve found the book, then you simply click on request authorgraph! It takes one click and a screen will pop up.
The pop up screen gives you the option of sending a message to the author as part of the authorgraph request. You might have a question you want answered or a dedication that you want included with the authorgraph, or you may want to tell the author about how much you enjoyed the book or have a story to share with them about how reading their book changed your life. You just type whatever you like in the message box and click add message. Alternatively, you may just be happy with the authorgraph, if so, then just click skip.
If everything has gone smoothly, the next screen you will see is the confirmation that your request has been sent. Then it’s up to the author to fulfil the request. Once it has been, you’ll get a message that it’s arrived and you can view your Authorgraph. Some will be flat signatures, others will appear before your eyes as though the author is signing it for you at that very moment.
What if I am an author and want to register on Authorgraph?
It’s free for any author to register on Authorgraph and the process is the same as the process for signing up as a reader. Once you have verified your email with the site, you can view your author page. On the top right nav bar of any screen is the option to add books.
All you need to do is put in the ASIN of the book you want to add. You can do this for multiple books. It takes a minimum of a few hours for your books to be added, so don’t worry if they aren’t there straight away. You can only add them one at a time though.
Once you’ve got your books uploaded, you can choose how you are going to sign your authorgraph. You can use a signature that is generated by the site or use their drawing tool. The drawing tool is a little hard to deal with if you don’t have a digital pen or aren’t used to using your finger or a mouse to sign things online. Because of this, if you aren’t confident with using the drawing tool, you may want to stick with the site generated signature.
If you do brave the drawing tool, then when the signature is opened, it will be revealed to the reader as though you are writing it for them then and there.
The other nice option that Authorgraph has, is it allows you to send personalised messages along with your Authorgraph, even if they haven’t requested something. It’s a chance for your to hone your standard inscription i.e. Stan Lee had “To x “Excelsior! Your friend, Stan Lee” as his standard inscription.
Once you’ve fulfilled the order, you can see the Authorgraphs you’ve sent under “Your Requests” on the drop down menu, under your profile icon. Similar for readers, you can see all your Authorgraphs under “Your Collection.”
And that’s all there is to it. Authorgraph is a great tool that allows authors and readers to bridge the distance gap and lets readers get autographs without having to wait for hours in long lines. Plus, authors don’t have to get hand cramps signing books all day. It also lets readers see all the books that the favourite authors have published in one easy place, and you can see if there are any missing from your collection that you may want to add.
I started using Authorgraph in 2016 and think it is one of the best services out there for readers and authors alike, and is one of the more underrated tools.
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C.S. Woolley (Caroline Sarah Woolley) was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire and raised in the nearby town of Wilmslow. From an early age she discovered she had a flair and passion for writing. She currently lives with her partner, Matt, and their two cats in Christchurch, New Zealand.
She has published many books in her mystery series Nicolette Mace: The Raven Siren, as well as a series of adapted classics for Foxton Books, and a series of modernised Shakespeare and workbooks to help with GCSEs. Her upcoming series include Alpha Sigma, The Children of Danelaw, Dark Hearts, and The Children of Ribe Story Books. C.S has taken part in charity projects that produced content for Standing by the Watchtower: Volume 1 & Volume 2, Indie Visible Volume 1 and the 12 Days of Christmas in Stickleback Hollow. C.S has also acted in several plays and films including Weekend (2011). She loves horse riding, including show jumping and cross country, Formula 1, tennis, free climbing, singing, boxing, dancing, playing guitar, cricket and is also an avid PC and console gamer.
Today, I have another writing friend here to give everyone a new perspective on research. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the post. Please welcome Morgan Smith to the blog!
Fact and Fiction – Pulling it Together By Morgan Smith
I have said from the very start of my writing career that I don’t do “writing advice.”
That was kind of a lie, because now I’m going to tell you about the terrible, dangerous nexus between all those carefully garnered facts and writing fiction.
Beware, beware: because the days/weeks/months you’ve spent organizing all those incredible details into easily-accessible files can trip you up.
It’s called the info-dump for a reason: it will appear like giant walls of text: blow-by-blow summaries of exactly how the monetary system in your world/14th century France works; recipe-by-recipe descriptions of forty-seven different kinds of food served at a medieval banquet; long political diatribes detailing the exact relationship of one peerage to another in a semi-feudal society.
You must resist. You must. Plenty of authors don’t, and while there are readers who like a fictional story to read like a high school text book–I’m not saying there aren’t–the vast majority of readers are looking for something that takes them out of themselves, without the destination being a classroom. Most readers are, in the end, looking to escape, and nowhere is this more true than in fantasy fiction.
You, as the writer definitely need to know and care about every bit of this. You need to know your world inside and out. It’s really the only reliable way to make sure your world holds together as tightly as the Great Wall of China.
But the hook in this enormous net of factoid fish is that your readers really do not care.
They don’t need to know those details and frankly, they don’t want to. There is nothing that will stop a reader faster than stepping outside the story to deliver a History 101 lecture on currency exchange in the fictional 1200’s.
But then, why bother doing all that work?
And this is where the authorial magic trick occurs.
When you know your stuff, it shows. You only need the most minimal of details to make your reader feel that they are in good hands–because for some reason, when you really, really know your apples, you don’t need to deliver all those details.
It all somehow magically bleeds through in the way the prose gets out. The reader senses that there is authority there without the writer having to prove it by listing all the minutiae out. They can feel the reality, BECAUSE you aren’t spending 20,000 words showing them the skeleton underneath the flesh.
And they will rave about your world-building, even though you have only twitched the curtain aside for a microsecond, and given them the merest glimpse of the mechanics. They’ll feel it, and they’ll know it, and they will sink deeper into the story, never daring to let go.
And that’s a reader worth having.
Morgan Smith is a former goatherd, a textiles geek, and occasionally an archaeologist. She is also the author of several fantasy novels including “The Shades of Winter”, “Casting in Stone”, and “A Spell in the Country”, a romantic fantasy called “The Mourning Rose”, and a memoir about growing up hippie in the 60s. Her life is held together by caffeine, cigarettes, and cheap granola bars, and she will drop everything to go anywhere, on the flimsiest of pretexts.
They said ill winds blew at her back. They said she was cursed: a hex, and a jinx. And it was true: everywhere she went, no matter what she did, misfortune seemed to follow in her wake. But that, of course, wasn’t the worst of it.
A Spell in the Country Book 2 of The Averraine Cycle
An aging band of sea raiders set out on one last voyage of revenge, and get a whole lot more than they bargained for.
The Mourning Rose
Manners meet magic in this tale where curses mix with curtseys, and Charm takes on a whole new dimension.
Flashbacks (an unreliable memoir of the ‘60s)
A collection of memories about growing up hippie in Toronto, during one of the most interesting periods of the 20th century. Not to mention the sex, drugs and rock and roll…
On Saturday, I sat down with fellow Inkwell Council member, Megan Manzano, and Craft Quest’s Ari Augustine and Maria Tureaud for a livestream about writers and self-care. Check it out below.
Today I’m sitting in on Craft Quest’s YouTube page with a short video containing my 4 step rule for handling a critique. Check it out below, and be sure to join us live on Saturday at 5PM EST for a live panel on self-care for writers! Hope to see you then!
Today, I’m guest posting at All the Way YA about the emotional and professional lead up to my decision to shelve my first novel. Here’s a snippet of the post.
The Order of the Key was my dream novel, the book of my heart. I invented the idea for it when I was fifteen years old and I never expected to be shelving it, unpublished, twenty years later.
Jeez. Twenty years later. I don’t think I ever thought of it in those terms.
To be fair, I haven’t been working on it this entire time, and the book I’m stuffing in the musty shelf of my mind is definitely not the book I started with. The version I’d created at fifteen contained a completely unlikeable, hormonal, emotional (possibly based on myself) super-cool highly powerful sorceress teen, and she hunted vampires as she romanced her way through a team of stalwart heroes. Hey, cut me some slack. It was the age of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it showed. The current, much cooler, much more mature version involves a fun and likeable geek who blunders her way through a semi-corrupt organization that fights interdimensional monsters and manages to find herself leading the rebellion to overthrow the corrupt portion of it.
When I say it has grown by leaps and bounds, I’m not just talking about its intriguing premise. The writing of the original novel was horrid. But it was the first thing I’d ever finished. I was proud of it.
To read the rest of the post, check it out on All the Way YA.
This weekend has been and will continue to be a super exciting weekend. On top of a birthday gathering with my two beautiful two year old nieces (honestly, the highlight of my weekend), this has been a great writing weekend.
Yesterday, I appeared on a live panel discussion on Youtube, which I managed to advertise on most of my social media platforms, but didn’t manage to post about here! That’s because my computer had decided to die the night before. Thankfully, I knew this was coming, and was ready with a new laptop and my backup files on my hard drive. Unfortunately, this left me scrambling to get the new guy updated in time to film the livestream, with a slight disregard to promoting it.
The good news is, even if you didn’t spot my social media posts, you can still view the archived version of the livestream here. Just like the previous one, this will be run by Craft Quest, and will feature myself, and fellow authors Megan Manzano, Maria Turead, Ari Augustine, and Vivien Reis. This time we’re talking all about cliches, tropes, and stereotypes.
In addition to that, today, Sunday at 2PM EST, I’ll be chiming in on a twitter group chat to help authors prepare for Camp NaNoWriMo, which is quickly approaching. Join us today at #WhereWritingHappens, to participate, and you could win a Printable Packet for writers, created by Ann at There is Magic!
If you’re interested in joining Camp Nano, I am hosting a cabin where we can all talk over our writing, and hopefully provide helpful encouragement! Comment below with your username if you want to join!
Lastly, stay tuned. Later this week, I will give you a heads up on a special guest post I will be making on All the Way YA, a great source for the real deal behind being a YA writer in this industry.
I’m usually better about giving you guys notice when I’m going to be somewhere or do something, but my 9-5 work life has been absolutely insane lately, which basically meant I worked until I came home and knocked out from sleepiness and stress. However, there is an important thing going on today, TODAY, that I would love for you guys to attend from the comfort of your own home.
Today at 5PM EST, I will be appearing on the first ever live stream over on the YouTube channel Craft Quest which you should totally subscribe to. Craft Quest is a great YouTube channel, looking to help writers, which we all know is my bag. So today, together with Craft Quest team Maria Tureaud and Ari Augustine, YA Fantasy Author Vivian Reis, and one of my Inkwell Council co-runners, Megan Manzano, we will be discussing starting your story–beginnings.
It will be a live stream, so you can send in questions and pick our brains. I’m so excited to hear what questions you have waiting for us, and to get to sit on this virtual panel with so many great people in the writing community. So come check us out, that’s 5PM EST on the Craft Quest Youtube Channel.
Oh, and you should subscribe to their channel, because they will be giving away three copies of Scrivener, an awesome writing software, once they hit 300 subscribers.
Hello everybody! Today I am guest blogging over on Jacy Sellers’ blog. She’s been hosting a new series called MOTHER WRITERS, where authors discuss their methods of managing their careers as Mamas, while simultaneously trying to further their careers as writers.
Check out my installment to this collection, called “Kill the Superstition, Save the Writer” where I discuss how to survive as a writer even when you can’t find your perfect writing situation. And while you’re there, check out the rest of Jacy’s blog.
Today I’m hosting a cover reveal for Hearts are Like Balloons, a new YA novel by Candace Robinson. This cover reveal was organized by Lola’s Blog Tours. The cover is designed by Jenny Zemanek from Seedlings Online.
Hearts are Like Balloons
By Candace Robinson
Genre: Contemporary
Age category: Upper Young Adult
Release Date: June 30, 2017
Blurb:
May Falkner’s past two years have been a rough road. When her father suddenly passes away, May needs to find a job to help out her mom and regain some control over her life. Working at the bookstore helps her heal, laugh, and hope again. It also leads her to cross paths with Nico Evitts, who begins as just a co-worker, but becomes so much more
When it all becomes perfect, because there is no perfect, life steps in to prove once again that it all can crash down harder than before. This is a story about finding yourself, love, and the things in life that are still here.
Hearts are like balloons. Sometimes they inflate… Sometimes they deflate…
About the Author:
Candace Robinson is just your average hemiplegic migraine sufferer. Her days are spent writing, book reviewing and traveling through books. She live just outside of Houston, Texas, where it feels like the hottest place on Earth with the crazy weather. No, seriously, one day it’s 30 degrees and the next it’s 70 degrees! She resides with her husband and daughter.
Justine Manzano ~ Author 