So you STILL want to an author, eh?

Then focus Daniel-san.

When I read my rejection letters the other day, I think it was pure stubbornness and a sense of entitlement that kept me going. And anger. What really pushed me up against the wall was a rejection letter from an agent who had me rewrite my book two times before deciding it wasn’t good enough for her sell. If that agent hadn’t pissed me off, I never would have found the courage to ask the Avon Romance editors if they were looking for a book like mine. I might not be here today dishing out this advice.

But here’s the funny thing about maturity: three years later, I’m grateful to all of those agents who passed on that early version of Hot Tamara, especially the one who made me so mad. They eventually led to me to my agent, my editors, my fabulous publishing house and all the people who got behind my book and promoted the heck out of it. So I guess my point can be summed up by Mr. Miyagi who told Daniel Russo in Karate Kid, “Okay to lose to opponent. Must not lose to fear!”

Now where were we? You sent out your queries to your top ten agents.

1. The response has arrived and she wants a partial or a full. Oh my God! She likes me! Hurray!
   
   But what if she wants an exclusive and you still have nine other agents with your query?
   
   Now focus, Daniel-san. Most agents ask for exclusives because they operate on limited time; in fact, they do most of their reading on the weekends at home. So why should an agent bother to read your work if you have other agents reading it and then you decide – before she can make an offer – to go with another agent?
   
   Your response should work for your business and her business. Admit that you have queries with other agents and you would be happy to grant her an exclusive read on the partial for three weeks. (If it’s a full, I’d give her six.) Most agents are happy to go along with that as long as you honor that agreement.
2. But then another agent responds after you have sent off the partial to the first agent. Now what?
   
   Again, focus Daniel-san.
   
   Respond that you have granted Agent-A a three-week exclusive read on the partial. Would they consider waiting until the end of that period?
   
   If they get miffy, then don’t bother. You owe it to yourself and your book to make the best decision possible. Trust me; no agent is better than a bad one.
3. An agent really likes your work and offers to represent you. (For the sake of brevity, let’s assume she already read the full, etc.) Remember that finding an agent is like dating. You wouldn’t marry someone after the first date, would you? You want to get to know each other, see if you have common values and goals.
   
   AAR (Association of Artists’ Representatives) has a great list of questions to ask a prospective agent. A note of warning: never sign with someone who charges agency fees. More than likely, she is not a real agent. And by the way, I tried to link to the AAR website but the server was down.
4. When you agree to sign with your agent, start talking about (a) how she will market your book and (b) how you will establish a career. You should have some ideas of publishing houses that might be a good fit. Don’t rely solely on your agent. This is a business partnership and you should have an active role in this venture because you, mi amiga, are the one who wrote the book. Your blood, your tears and your weekends went into its creation.
5. Write a business plan. This doesn’t have to be a formal document. Mine is a document in which I write down all those impossible dreams. It also keeps me focused and reminds me why I am a storyteller. I blush as I write this but I also cut and paste the nice emails I get from readers.

There are so many websites and “book doctors” who are willing to part writers from their money. Here are some of most helpful sources that I know of (please feel free to share others in the comments!):

Romance Writers of America

Orange County Chapter of RWA

Marcela Landres

Harlequin's Learn To Write Portal

Pen on Fire

Writers Digest

UPDATE: I am donating a free critique and a signed copy of IN BETWEEN MEN this weekend at www.themichelefund.com. This fund was set up to help a fellow writer who was diagnosed with breast cancer in Feburary. They also have critiques offered by Patricia Gaffney, Susan and Harry Squires and Lisa Valdez.

Thank you Erica!

Erica Orloff posted a picture of my writing desk at her blog! It started a really cool discussion about writing spaces and I'm thinking of painting my room yellow because someone mentioned that it's a good color for creativity. (Hey, I'll stop at nothing to make writing easier!)

My gal pals and I discovered a cool book Friday night. Yes, we were fueled by bellini's, martini's and good-old estrogen. Anyway, it's called Colorstrology and I think this will be a fun writing tool to create characters.

Later this week I'll post the second part of my thoughts on selling a book. In the meantime, rock on.

Mary

So you want to be an author, huh?

Then listen up.

The moment you send out your finished manuscript, you are going into business. Forget about baring your soul, writing the book of your heart and caring for your muse. On second thought don’t forget about that completely, just put them away somewhere safe while you concentrate on selling your book.

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Take a good look at your finished book and compare it to the stuff that’s out there. By the way, don’t compare yourself only to the best sellers. Porque, you ask. Well, more than likely their agents and editors probably won’t look at a new author. They might. But chances are they won’t. So take a peek at the midlist authors and the newbies and check who’s acknowledging whom. If you like a particular author’s work and your book falls into the same genre put that agent on your list.
2. Buy a subscription to Publishers Marketplace and do some more research. Find out who sold what to whom and the name of her agent. Pay attention to what is selling and if you see a trend, go the other way. That sounds counter productive but its sage wisdom, my friend. By the time those books hit the stores, the trend will be over and there will be a new craze in its place. Chick lit, by the way, is not a trend. It has become its own genre.
3. Compile your top ten list of agents. Now go and do more research on those individuals. Do they only read exclusives? Are they still accepting unsolicited submissions? Do they only want a query letter and synopsis, or the first three chapters? Do they accept email queries? Are they coming to a conference near you?
4. Drum the following into your head: the writer must have a thick skin to withstand criticism and rejection; but the skin must still be thin enough to take in the world around her. If an agent passes on your work, it’s not personal because they don’t know you. Think about it: do you buy every book you see at Barnes & Noble? I don’t either. Agents and editors are people with individual likes and dislikes.
5. Write your query letter and synopsis. And then rewrite them a second time, a third time, a fourth time … get it as close to perfect as humanly possible.
6. When your chapters are ready, your synopsis is snappy and your query letter sparkles, it is time to submit.
7. While you wait for a response, do two things:

• Decide how you will respond to exclusive requests from agents. This is important because if you do this incorrectly or try to be sneaky, it could back to bite you in the ass, big time. (Then again, I’m a Buddhist and we take that stuff pretty seriously.) So if an agent asks for an exclusive read on a partial, don’t hide the fact that you have queries out there. And give her a time limit, so you don’t end up waiting for weeks on end with other agents who want to read it, too. This is a balancing act of making sure your needs are met, and conducting your business in a professional manner.
• Get to work on the next story. Now is the time to bare your soul, write the book of your heart and care for your muse. Put away your business hat and don't think too much about how to market it. As an artist/entreprenuer, you have to know when to switch your concentration. (If only it was as easy as it sounds!)
  

Note that I’m talking about finding an agent, not an editor. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have someone in your corner. Yes, yes I know I met my editor first, but I was really really lucky to meet my agent who negotiated that first contract. I was so damn happy that I would’ve given my soul to Avon to publish Hot Tamara. But my agent, wise woman that she is, wouldn't let me and it was the start of a beautiful friendship.

And no, you can't have her. (Just kidding ... well, sort of.)

More to come next week!

Cheers,
Mary

The Big Wup

I don't know about you but all this chatter about "quiet birth" and the impending arrival of the golden babies is kinda stale. But the thing that really baffles me is this whole notion of quiet birth. Apparently the fascination with it means that people really do believe what they see in movies and on TV: that women in labor yell, scream and curse with every contraction. As a veteran, I can say with confidence that some not all women yell, scream and curse. And usually this occurs when the baby is crowning. Trust me, if you had to push something the size of a large navel orange through your hoo-haa without an epidural, you'd scream too.

I was quiet because the pain was suffocating. I couldn't muster the energy to let out a lusty "f%$!-s@#*-b&%*!-motherf%$!er" if I had wanted to. Every contraction sucked me under to bat me around until it spat me back out for an all-too short reprieve before doing it again.

So get over it people. Katie and Angelina will be fine without you looking over the curtain.

On Titles

I was supposed to writing a pivotal flashback scene for my latest WIP when I found the following article on book titles. For the record, In Between Men and Hot Tamara have not been used previously. Although I haven't done a porno title search, so perhaps I've spoken too soon.

Say That Again? Books Recycle Titles

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
Tue Apr 11, 3:19 PM ET

NEW YORK - Choosing the title of a Harlequin release can be as challenging as actually writing the book, with the author and editors sometimes sparring for weeks over the precise word or words to entice that imagined reader on the supermarket checkout line.

But when romance-suspense novelist Heather Graham submitted the manuscript for her latest, an exotic thriller about piracy and murder set in part off the Florida coast, everyone agreed that Graham had chosen the perfect name: "The Island."

"Nobody here can remember any sort of resistance over that title," recalls Margaret Marbury, executive editor of MIRA Books, a Harlequin imprint that released Graham's novel earlier this year. "It seemed almost too easy."

Easy, perhaps, because so many others have used that title before.

According to the American Library Association, dozens of works have been called "The Island," including a children's book by Gary Paulsen and a thriller by "Jaws" author Peter Benchley. Marbury acknowledges that she didn't know the title was so common, but she wasn't surprised.

"Most really good titles have been used before," she says. "It's very hard to find something completely original."

The library association, responding to a request from The Associated Press, compiled a wide range of popular titles. "My Sister's Keeper," for example, has been used by Shirley Lord, Jodi Picoult and at least five others. Other familiar names: "Not Guilty," "Judgment Day" and "Time and Again."

Writing about your life? Watch out for "My Life," claimed for millions of readers by Bill Clinton, but also used by Marc Chagall, Magic Johnson, Burt Reynolds and Isadora Duncan. Other books have the more formal "The Story of My Life," most famously Helen Keller's, but also works by Clarence Darrow, Ellen Terry and Giacomo Casonova.

Romance, mystery and other genre books are particularly likely to have recycled titles, because of the vast numbers that are published and their brief lives in the public's memory — meaning a name can be brought back within a few years.

"The main thing is not to choose a title that's memorably associated with another book," says Harlequin executive editor Leslie Wainger. "In theory, you could call a title `Gone With the Wind,' but why would you? Some titles have been used a number of times, but there's no single book that's been called classic."

Inevitably, repeat titles cause confusion. A library patron in Fremont, Mich., requested a copy of "Leap of Faith," the memoirs of Queen Noor of Jordan. He instead received, and read, a Danielle Steel novel of the same name. Karen Traynor, director of the New York-based Sullivan Free Library, acknowledges that she was thrown off by the release this year of two books called "Gone," by Jonathan Kellerman and by Lisa Gardner.

"In the system where we order books, you can do it by title or by author, and because we weren't aware that two books called `Gone' were being published, both suspense thrillers by popular authors, we only ordered the one by Lisa Gardner," she says. "It was only when patrons started asking for the Kellerman book that we realized we had made a mistake."

D.W. Buffa, who writes courtroom thrillers, recalls trying to think of a title for one of his works featuring San Francisco district attorney Joseph Antonelli. The author's original idea was "Trial by Ordeal."

"I liked it because the book touches on English law questions and titles ought to reflect something about the story itself," says Buffa, whose novel was published last year by Putnam. "But they didn't like `Trial by Ordeal,' so somebody at Putnam came up with `Trial by Fire.'"

According to the American Library Association, at least 20 books have been called "Trial by Fire."

"I had no idea how many other books had that title," Buffa says. "I suppose it's because `Trial by Fire' is a fairly common phrase and any time somebody's had to go through some difficult ordeal, among the three titles that pops into somebody's head is `Trial by Fire.'"

"They're all cliches," Harlequin's Wainger says of commonly used titles, "but cliches become cliches because they so perfectly encapsulate an idea. It's a phrase that resonates."

Titles cannot be copyrighted, but authors have been known to claim rights. In the early 1990s, publisher Otto Penzler was ready to release Stephen Solomita's "A Good Day to Die," only to be contacted by the lawyer for a writer who had already used that title.

"The lawyer said, `This is our title' and `You can't do that,'" says Penzler, who currently runs Otto Penzler Books, a Harcourt imprint.

"So I looked the title up and found there were 13 titles that preceded his book. And I said, `Which of those writers did you steal that title from?' And I never heard from the lawyer again."