Tag Archives: publishing

The joys of working with a small press


I’ve been having so much fun! Four years ago, when I published Recycled Virgin, I created Somewhat Grumpy Press, and decided I wanted a Pallas cat to represent it – but then I was coping with the pandemic, a pending move, and my MS, and I realized it was getting beyond me to manage.

So I gave the press to the current very capable publisher, Tim Covell, and he is racing away. He’s taken it into a more professional status, created the official logo, organized all the business bits of the press. The press has a stable of seven authors (so far) and has published eleven books! He’s worked hard to get them into bookstores of the brick and mortar kind as well as the online sources. It takes a lot of legwork.

I don’t know about you, but I find this impressive, given the pandemic, Tim’s other projects, and his full-time job.

In my travels as an author, I’ve also had the chance to meet Anne O’Connell of OC Publishing, and Cathy Mackenzie, of Writing Wicket. They also all run small presses and they all really work hard for their authors. It makes me want to support them.

And it makes it fun to do promotion for me and our books. I hate doing promotional things, but there’s something much more pleasant when you feel well-looked after by your publisher. I know my books are important to SGP, and that’s a feeling it’s hard to get from larger publishers, if you can even get them to publish your books. (He’s trying to get me to do TikTok, though, and I am not persuaded…but at least I can argue…and he’s done good promotion for Spit & Polish to date.)

There are lots of fraudsters out there – do check Predators and Editors and Writer Beware to be sure you are with a good publisher – but I highly recommend the small press experience. You may have to pay for some services (fair enough, given the time these things take), but as long as you take care, it’s well worth it. Do be careful of the presses who demand lots of money upfront, or people who offer services with an additional cost (like offering to film YouTube things for you as a high cost). You need to do your homework.

It’s important, too, to do your work beforehand – write your very best, get it edited a few times, get it in good shape, then contact the publisher. They don’t take every offering – their time is limited, too – but it’s likely you will get a friendlier response than the depths of silence often received from the larger presses.

I’ve recently taken training from the Editorial Freelancers Association and Queen’s University in developmental and structural editing. I’ve edited 5 books to date and so far they’ve been well-accepted. I’ve got two more pending and one in its final stages, but I might have room for editing your writing – if you need a developmental editor, please contact me, and we can talk. I’d love to help you turn your project into a successful book. You can reach me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and through here.

Have you had experiences with small publishers? Editors? Was it good? Bad? Indifferent?

On the joys (?) of revision


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“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”
―Bernard Malamud

So went the quotation in my email from Writers.com. (I highly recommend this newsletter, btw) I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, adjusting prose to make it clearer and more bright, to enhance the emotions in your first draft, to make your words sing – that can be pleasurable. I personally like the hack and burn part of revision, too, where you look through your tome and realize this bit AND that bit, and also the other bit, could really be thrown to the wolves (or if decent, tucked into a file for use later).

But I am licking my wounds a bit. My publisher has sent out advance review copies of my book to people and of course (probably my fault as I was pushing for release), it went out with multiple typos in it. People have noticed and commented. Sigh. One or two (you know who you are, DP!) helped me find the more egregious ones. Bless them.

Since it was exposed to some of the masses, my publisher and I have gone back and forth and back and forth, correcting things — but I’m certain little errors remain. I’m equally sure some eagle-eyed readers will find them and helpfully point them out to me so that I can revise it again.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that I will hire a copyeditor for my next book. Editors are good things (of course I would say this, being one myself). They can see things that the author misses in all sorts of places. I love my editing work. It gives me the chance to REALLY read a story, see it in its wholeness, try to help the author bring forward what they want. I’ve had great pleasure in my editing jobs – I do mostly developmental and line editing, which doesn’t require me to copyedit. Phew.

Because I realize the limit of my capabilities. I am not a copyeditor. I need helpful eyes for this. And my glasses aren’t doing it.

So, just to liven things up a bit, I will send a surprise to anyone who spots a typo in the officially released Spit & Polish book. Send me a message here, and I’ll contact you. What will it be, the surprise? Well, you will just have to wait and see…

Meantime, why not join me today, February 27, 2024, for an interview about the book and the writing process (I imagine there will be some shuffling in shame about errors), today at 4 pm AT, 5PM Eastern, 12noon Pacific on Youtube, Facebook, etc. Or you can watch me and the wonderful Anne O’Connell of OC Publishing on her YouTube channel later. It’s so generous of Anne to have me on. If you watch the show, look through her other interviews, too. She is a very generous and interested interviewer.

And don’t forget to pre-order your discount ebook before the official release date of February 29, 2924. After that things will be full price… Check out Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, and more. The paperback will be available February 29th everywhere – just ask your local store to order in a copy for you. Or you can order directly from Somewhat Grumpy Press, too. I do hope you enjoy it!

On being seen, or sending out advance reading copies of my latest book…


My lovely publisher at Somewhat Grumpy Press has assembled my book and we are creeping closer to the actual official publication date. I’m at the point of sending out “advance reading copies”, which for me is a very scary thing. (PS: this is not the final version of the cover – we all know the back looks cut off…)

See, when we write, we’re alone. We wrestle with words, shape them up, get them edited and sent to Beta readers – but that’s all while the book is still in its malleable state. We can change things, big things, and always do. Now, though, I’m hoping readers will be captured by the finished story, enjoy it, perhaps even like it enough to write me a sweet review (or a bad one, after all, all press is good press, really). But what if they finish it and go…”meh?”

Suddenly we are seen, our toils are judged, and as we are gearing up for the release of the book, we have to remain enthusiastic about it – happy to market it and speak kindly of it and more. That’s hard to do when the response is lukewarm or missing.

So as I wait for feedback, I find myself wanting to hear back if the story touched people at all, if they liked the main character, if the nursing stuff rings true. I wouldn’t mind if they say the book is a waste of paper and severely damaging the planet by killing trees for no known reason (well, yeah, I would mind but I’m trying to be a grown-up here). A reaction is always something.

Imposter syndrome is rife in authors – I imagine even Margaret Atwood feels nervous when she sends her babies out into the wild, and she has piles of accolades behind her. It’s something about creating things out of your head…hard to put out your creative soul for the world to judge.

So readers, of my book and others, be kind to your authors. Write them a review. Let them know they’ve been seen, even if you don’t love what they’ve written. Maybe it’s written well? Maybe the spelling is correct? Writing is lonely enough without an utter silence when a book is released…

I’ll be publishing excerpts on this blog from time to time – I hope they intrigue you. Let me know!

(I released my first book, Recycled Virgin, at the start of the pandemic. No book launch, no reading events. Hard to market. Reviews crept in, slowly slowly. Check out its page to read them. Heartening. Still proud of it. You might enjoy it, too.)

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Cutting cutting cutting


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It seems to me a lot of my life is spent cutting – physically, as I clip threads and cloth, virtually as I edit my writing and try to help others with theirs. I like to to throw a bunch of material on a table, pull off a long stretch of fibre, toss as many words around as possible.

Trimming at first seems easier, once the ideas are in place. But that’s deceptive. It’s easy to end up with too much to handle, to have threads and yarns and stories get tangled in knots as you try to work with them. Teasing out sense from the resulting mess can take longer than choosing words, threads, fabric properly the first time. Hard to do when you are just learning, difficult habits to break even as you gain experience. Thank heavens for editing, and the chance to rework.

Just ran across an excellent article by Jason Hamilton with the Kindlepreneur folks, listing the words you can and should minimize if you want to be read (writing for yourself is always a good idea, but some of us don’t feel validated until our reading is read by others and cheered or booed), and it threw a bit of salt on my writing wounds. I just know I simply use too many of these words all the time, repeatedly, inappropriately, and when I sit down at my computer I can hear them trying to escape into my writing. (as they just have, by way of an example).

“Just” is a pernicious weed in my writing. I pluck it out, it creeps back in. I overuse “felt”. Looking over my recent creation my ever helpful ProWritingAid told me I had my poor heroine say, “She couldn’t help herself” do something many many times, surely not the approach I wanted for a strong female character!

I have trained myself to flinch at adverbs, but I kindof like playing with run-on sentences. They are dangerous friends, though, easily transforming themselves into sets of wrongly linked clauses. Unplanned hilarity can result. And while I am all for unplanned hilarity, it is hardly appropriate in a death scene. Well, most of the time.

And so, and so, like the boy in Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, I must grab my Vorpal sword, gird my loins, and get cutting.

One, two! One, two! And through and through 

      The vorpal blade went (goes) snicker-snack! 

It’s going to take me a while, and golly I do wish I hadn’t sent my inelegant MS out to be looked over already. I have hopes, though, that one day, like the aforesaid boy, I’ll be able to cheer “Oh frabjous day! Callow! Callay!” and chortle in my joy.

And maybe, just maybe (she says, violating already her hard fought principles) someone else will chortle with me.

(On a side note, I highly recommend ProWritingAid. It catches the most amazing things, like when I start every sentence in a paragraph with the same thing, or when I babble on vaguely. It’s worth the investment, IMHO. Of course nothing helps more than a good editor, an outside set of eyes, particularly an understanding set. If you’re looking for one, check out Somewhat Grumpy Press, where I work with another great editor to help others avoid these problems and others.)

Happy writing!

Learning Editing


I’ve recently decided to use my writing and editing experience and years and years of writing classes and conferences to start a side hustle of editing. Well, it’s not really a side hustle. Since I’ve been sidelined by MS, my regular hustles have faded into the mists of time, and while I’m just finishing up my second novel, that doesn’t bring in the millions I’d envisioned as a writer in grade 4. Royalties are somewhat less…

Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

So editing will have to be a main hustle.

I’m the sort who wants to ensure I have the right qualifications to do a job, so I’ve been taking classes from the Editorial Freelancers Association, and I’d like to highly recommend them. They make my brain kick over and that’s a good thing.

Those of you who do editing know how lovely it can be to edit someone’s writing who writes well. Just a couple of nudges here and there, mainly facilitated by the fresh set of eyes, and it’s all happiness and light. I love that.

But editing the bad writer – well, I’ve had experience with that, too, and it isn’t as happy as the above. It’s so hard to apply correction without sounding like that Grade 8 teacher who demanded you copy their discussion exactly. It’s also hard not to take over sometimes, try to fix things, especially when the writer you are working with is begging you to do so.

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels.com

I edited a friend’s book recently and inserted in the document this comment, “Consider adding more to this activity to raise the tension”, only to get the revised document back with my exact words typed into that space. Sigh.

Of course this is an easy way to see whether the author you are working with actually is reading your comments, I suppose. And there is the joy of taking a manuscript forward to make it better, especially when the writer sees it themselves and charges forward on their own. I love that, too.

In any case, this course I’m taking on Developmental Editing has given me all sorts of tips about how to tackle stories good and bad. It’s changing my own novel, too, as I apply the techniques to it. I’m adding the things I’m learning to those I’ve gathered from my existing experience writing several published articles and stories, editing several novels, and judging contests for Bony Blithe, the 3day Novella, Atlantic Writing Competition, and more. Outside of my fiction work, I’ve written and edited non-fiction, research reports, press releases and media campaigns. I’m also a retired nurse and epidemiologist.

Need some writing edited? I’d love to help you out! Contact me at dorothyanneb at gmail.com or through Somewhat Grumpy Press.

Being Seen (and read) or where the heck did that chin hair come from?


Well, it’s out in the wilds. The ebook version is launching on Saturday.

The book. My book. By me. All alone.

Recycled Virgin (Scleratis Series Book 1) by [Brown, DA, Brown, Dorothyanne]It all seems such a small story, so meaningless. I mean, I like it, but I am having trouble dealing with the thought of my friends reading it and then having to make a comment on it, either positive or negative or, ugh, patronizing. One fellah commented that “some of my chapters seemed fun.”

I’ve taken out a contract on that guy, and YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! (Kidding, of course…)(Well, maybe…)

But it’s all a bit like doing a public speech, and meeting and greeting people afterward and when you run to the washroom at the end of the festivities and peek into the mirror, maybe giving yourself a confident, “you did it, girl!” smile, you notice a 3-foot long chin hair sticking straight out and wiggling with every lip flex.

Did they see it? How could they miss it? How do those things grow so damn fast? You know you’ve peered at yourself in your home mirror, holding your face every which way and shining lights and there was NOTHING THERE that morning, and somehow this hair grew like Jack’s beanstalk in a matter of hours. images-2

You wonder in a panic if the hair scraped the face of the people you were talking with, and if they felt it and decided not to comment, like those friends who don’t tell you you have spinach in your teeth or that your hem is tucked into your tights… Maybe they were being gentle with you, sensing your inner fragility, realizing that under chin hairs can destroy any semblance of professionalism. You can see it is almost reaching the mirror, across the sink.

Of course, you have not brought hair removal devices with you and it just won’t leave to tugging, so then you have to go out and REJOIN the mob, knowing full well your hair vine will be spotted by EVERYONE.

I took my beloved dog Pickles to the groomer once and when I was picking him up, shivering and pinkish and looking hurt to his soul (which is why I ended up grooming him after this because he didn’t find it so traumatizing, but I digress), and the groomer, who I had trusted with the animal I loved the most in the world (the kids were in a horrid stage, and let’s not mention the ex) told me that the dog hairs from her clients had slipped off and rerooted themselves in her face.

I gazed at her, non-plussed. What does one say? It seemed wrong to talk then about the biology of facial hair and how it didn’t behave like a seedling. She, after all, had a few sprouting from her chin. All different colors, she pointed out, because of all the different dogs. I was left speechless.

The more important issue was why did she mention this to me?

Well, yep. I ran my hand over my chin when I got into the car and sure enough, a hair-vine was extruding from my face. How long had I been going around like that? Who knew? Cos, you see, once these hairs grow a certain length (you official beard growers know this), the hair gets all soft and molds itself to your face. Well, unless it is yearning for freedom. Then it reaches out, struggling towards the unwary, terrifying them. Whacking against walls and tangling in scarves…

So, the book thing is sending its little horrifying curls out into the world and I keep wavering between singing and dancing (and being profoundly grateful for the support friends and family have shown me) and wanting to pluck it like a chin hair out of existence.

Either that or grow a beard so it all seems like it should be there, filling my author’s face with other books and articles and writing like a demon to get things out. (Next book: DIsgusting the Devil is on the assembly line) Creating a new framework so that this one eases gently into a crowd and thus is less obvious as a solo event. Maybe it’s time for me to embrace my writing beard?

So, I hope you have a look at my book, maybe read it, write a review, hostile, friendly, grumpy or bored. I’d love to hear what you think…No, really, I would. Just let me check out my chin…

 

 

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Submission Madness


In “the Secret Life of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4”, by the hilarious Sue Townsend, Adrian’s class is on a field trip when the bus driver, driven to the ends of his nerves, submits to motorway madness. All of the kids arrive home safely, but shaken, and the bus driver gets a well-deserved rest.

We’ve all been there, right? In the car, with howling kids? My oldest son just about lost his hearing thanks to the endless screaming by the middle one. I’ve felt that madness slip over me. (My sister still tells the story of me putting them out of the car.)

Well, today a different madness came over me. I started submitting things to publishers and journals. All sorts of things. Stories that have lain fallow for months, little ditty poems that struck my fancy, shorter or longer versions of other works in progress (called WIPs by the trendy Humber).

It’s not strictly speaking a sane process. I mean, I could work on these stories longer, could probably edit them for another few years, but there’s something about being in this crazy Humber program that makes me want to take it all seriously, start sending things about. It’s been a while since I was published, except in our local grass-roots poetry journal, OHForgery (which I love).

Oh, I’ve sent things in for competitions, sure. Won a few. Placed in a few others. But going for the publication thing – hesitant. See, in a contest, you can always argue there were so many competitors that you couldn’t possibly be expected to win. So when you don’t, that’s cool. No self-abuse required.

But when a journal writes back, no sorry, this isn’t for us, well, it chews a bit of your soul away. Immediately you start the inner walk of shame.

So today, I’m sending out submissions like I used to send out flirts in online dating. Send out lots, you don’t notice the no replies as much. Someone usually replies pleasantly…

Of course, if I don’t, I’ve got some lovely Writers Tears to drown my sorrows…

http://redroom.com/member/dorothyanne-brown/writing/first-date

Smashwords: Amazon’s Hachette Dispute Foreshadows What’s Next for Indie Authors


Interesting posting, well worth a read.

Smashwords: Amazon’s Hachette Dispute Foreshadows What’s Next for Indie Authors.

The Writer’s Union and the art of gentle discouragement


writers union blue cropI was lucky enough to be able to attend a Writer’s Union workshop yesterday. I say lucky, because, as a writer without a book published by a “real” publishing house, I can’t be a member, so it was a bit like being invited to a frat house but not allowed to drink.

It was an interesting workshop on the new face of publishing, on the glories and challenges of self-publishing, the thrills of being offered an impenetrable contract from a “real” publisher, the shame of self-publishing that remains, since oh so much self-publishing is garbage.

I learned a few things I couldn’t have picked up hanging about on web street corners, but the prevailing thing I learned was to keep a sense of humour about writing and publishing and BY NO MEANS expect to make money at it.

Well, I knew that.

But it hits a little harder when a prize-winning author in adult and child books (from REAL publishers) still struggles with contracts that give her less than the Writer’s Union suggest. Or when the originally REAL published author who has turned to self-publication tells you that she still hasn’t made back the relatively small investment she made. And still mentions self-publication with a wisp of shame.

They laughed, both of them, whenever money or joy was mentioned. They mentioned they had their books with them for sale. No one bought any. It was fairly discouraging.

On the other hand, they emphasized the work that goes into writing a good book, and in a way that was reassuring. I keep getting people asking me about why I don’t send in my things to publishers and such, but these authors emphasized the need for many many many many revisions, at least 4 years of production, and then more revisions, preferably by a professional editor. So I am off the hook a bit for the manuscripts that languish unloved (but, I hasten to say, still percolating in my head) on my computer.

When is your stuff ready to send out? “When you feel like you are going to throw up if you have to read it again,” was the jist of things.

I’m only a bit nauseated. I think I need some more revision time. And now, yes now, I feel like I want to do it. Despite the discouragement.

Why? Well, if my mum were still around, she’d tell you why. I’ve always been a bit bloody minded. If someone tells me I can’t do something, that simply means (to me) that they don’t know me. My mum, for all her faults and our arguments and her preference for my brothers, told me that I could do anything I put my mind to. She told me this every day of my life and hers.

It’s in my genes.

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So when someone says, oh, this is horrible and you will hate it and you won’t ever ever ever succeed, well… my mum inside me rises up, with fire in her eyes, and says, “WHO are YOU?”

She really shoulda been a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

Check out the Writer’s Union website for all sorts of helpful information, including sample contracts and a list of editors and agents. Plus a contest or two. Well worth a visit!

And maybe, maybe, one day I can become a member. For now I’m hoping to join the Whiskey Association of Halifax. Membership is easier there, and it might help with the other.

Infographic: 4 Key Book Publishing Paths


Infographic: 4 Key Book Publishing Paths.

Excellent post by Jane Friedman. Writers should subscribe.