The tag lines are always so appealing: “Get published now!’, ‘Have you book read by a professional editor without the agent’, ‘Become an author’. As I get closer to needing to find a publisher or an agent these ‘services’ seem so great, but, aside from largely being scams, they also defeat the purpose. Anyone can write something. I’ve written hundreds, thousands, millions of words. Very few of them are worth being published, worth being given to the world, worth asking people to pay money for. I’m not a paid blogger because my random semi-frequent musings aren’t up to that level of quality and most of my stories aren’t either. A few are, I hope anyone, and I intend to prove it by getting them published in an editing medium. I want them to complete against all the other author’s out there, in my genre, and be of a higher quality. It is that competition that validates my writing as being worth being read and what makes publishing both so hard and so worthy a goal.

Vanity presses are a shortcut and a dangerous one at that. Publishing is a business built around selling books. Vanity publishers are built around reading fees and editing contracts. They have no stake in selling the book, so they don’t. They play on the best intentions of a eager author and leave them something that is by and large unsellable, unmarketable, and disappointing.

http://www.aeonix.com/vanity.htm: an article on why they’re scams

http://everything2.com/node/606645: another one with a short list of vanity presses.

http://www.sfwa.org/BEWARE/vanitypublishers.html: another great list with resources for researching publishers.

http://selfpublishing.suite101.com/article.cfm/avoiding_selfpublishing_scams: Avoiding publishing scams

Hope these help! Wish me luck in getting published!

Second: What is it?

It’s an open call for ‘hint fiction’ submissions.  They define hint fiction as stories of 25 words or less that suggest a larger story.  It’s a pretty cool writing game and starting August 1st (ending August 31th) they are taking up to three submissions via email for an anthology scheduled for next year.  The caveat, you can only send two submissions unless you link to the their submission guide.

Here it is again. Hint Fiction Submission Guidelines!

I don’t have my submissions prepared yet, but I’ve got a few ideas rolling around.  Good fun!

About.com has a running list of writing contests that end in May. Some end on the first so get those envelopes out soon!

Standing on the back of a boat in eighty degree heat, I was shaking. We were in the Caribbean on a “very special” family vacation, as my mom called it, and my dad and I were about to go parasailing. I wasn’t afraid of heights, and I’d probably done much more dangerous, and much more stupid, things before. Sure, hanging in the air five hundred feet above the ocean, being pulled along like a kite attached to a speed-boat driven by a rum-punch drinking, gold-toothed native didn’t thrill me. But it did look cool, your feet lifting off the earth, a parachute around your shoulders, and the sea beneath your toes.

My excitement rather quickly gave way to nerve-fueled adrenaline as our harnesses were strapped on; the driver’s gold tooth caught the sunlight as he shouted instructions, none of which I heard. And then the boat was no longer there, and the wind was tugging – hard — at our backs, taunting our parachutes to come play. Higher. Higher.

It seemed my stomach had abandoned me and stayed behind on the boat, the wimp. I looked over at my dad, who was grinning – or was his face simply stretched by the relentlessly strong wind? And inexplicably, I began to laugh; why feel afraid when exhilaration is available too? I laughed harder; I’m a bird! I’m a plane! I’m Superwoman!

That turquoise gem of a sea sat lazily below our bare feet; the island looked paler from this view, almost a mirror image of the clouds dotting the sky above. The driver signaled us by pointing with both hands over his head: “Higher?”

My dad and I both gave him the thumbs-up. The rope was let go to its full length, and up we flew. All too soon, the driver began to reel us in. But as we drew closer to the back of the slow-moving speedboat, I realized that this was the best part: forget the birds and planes (and even Superwoman), I’m James Bond!

That feeling lasted approximately twenty-four hours. The following night, my parents were mugged on the same beach that speedboat had picked us up from. My dad was shot through the hand. (The result of punching one of the muggers in the face). After a nerve-wracking trip to the island’s two-room hospital, where a gynecologist removed the bullet, my dad was determined O.K. He’d have to see a non-gynecologist doctor in the States, so we flew to New York the next morning. My older brother, who is in the NYPD, met us at the hospital, and promptly chewed our dad out for once again landing himself in the hospital. He also questioned my dad’s sanity.

“Dad, trust me, always just give them your damn wallet. Is this worth it?”

Scott’s partner, who stood beside him in the tiny room, snorted.

“Yeah, Scott, like you don’t give ‘em what’s coming to them down in Brooklyn.”

“I have a badge. And a vest.”

I nodded along with my mom and younger brother, but I kind of understood my dad, who was now proudly declaring, “They didn’t get my wallet!”

I watched as he argued with Scott, waving his bandaged hand around. I began to picture two thugs approaching my parents on that dark beach, only now I was with them, instead of babysitting my younger brother back in the room. As the images continued to form in my mind, I thought, why shouldn’t we fight back? Sure, my dad is an example of the prime reason why not, but maybe if the playing field had been leveled a little, the outcome would have been different.

Right before I turned twenty-one, I began graduate school in New Haven, Connecticut. It was a new apartment, a new city, a new chapter. My parents were healthy and safe in Florida, and I was loving my uber-academic environment. Still, almost inevitably, something was missing, or out of place somewhere. I spoke to my mom about it, whose first question was,

“Are you happy?”

“Sure, yeah, I mean I like it here, Mom. My apartment, my school –”

“Okay, but do you feel safe there?”

I had to think about my answer. I didn’t want her to worry more than she was already, but in truth I didn’t feel safe. Not anymore.

When I was a little girl, I thought, as many children do, that my parents were invincible. That our little corner of the world was impermeable. Seven years ago, I was a fourteen year old high-school student in Goshen, New York, and September 11th happened. Pandora’s box shattered my sheltered sense of reality.

A few years later, when asked what he thought about the overwhelming percentage of Americans who oppose the Iraq War, Dick Cheney answered, “So what?”

This effectively diminished any remaining positive thoughts I had towards the current state of affairs. And to top it all off, I managed to waste a good few months with a now ex-boyfriend who, let’s say, didn’t mind showing he was stronger than I was.

So no, Mom, I don’t really feel all that safe and secure anymore. In fact, I feel like a walking six o’clock news story waiting to happen. And I hate it. I’m studying to become a journalist, so that one day maybe I can travel and explore and write about what I see. But for now, I should be able to walk home from my parking garage at night. I didn’t tell my mom all of this, of course, but my prolonged hesitation told her enough.

“Listen, sweetie, I was just talking with Donna, and she told me about this kind of Israeli self-defense class that her son is taking. It’s called Krav Maga, and it’s supposed to be pretty intense. I think its what the Israeli troops learn in training? Anyway, her son loves it. Why don’t we look into it? It’d be really good for you to try, you know, even just to learn some basics. You’re all alone up there…”

She paused for a breath.

“You’ve already looked into it, haven’t you, Mom.”

“Well there’s a class right near where you live! And it’s difficult to find these Krav Maga places, you know. Look, I’ll give you the number of the instructor, just see what he has to say, and just try it if it sounds good. Maybe you actually won’t hate it.”

Predictably, I was skeptical at first, and it took three phone calls with the Krav Maga instructor for me to convince myself to go to the studio.

And predictably, my mom was right: it was intense. I was one of two women in the large class, which included some men who looked like they could probably fare just fine without martial arts. But when I met the instructor, I knew instantly he was one of those people you simply cannot dislike. And the class turned out to be, well, one of the best things I’ve ever tried. It’s a bit like Fight Club, but with grappling gloves and a little less blood. After a few weeks, I became part of the camaraderie between my classmates, and I felt like Ed Norton after he lives with Tyler Durden for a while. I felt great: harder, stronger, and much less afraid walking home alone at night. I invested in a heavy bag, worked out hard on my own, and it showed in class. My punches and combinations were more accurate, my roundhouse kicks stronger and less shy.

We also worked with plastic guns and knives in class; the gun exercises tended to bring about flashbacks. After a while, though, all I saw was my partner’s gun and my hands, and soon I was able to take the weapon away from my “attacker,” and then demand his wallet.

I still do Krav Maga in that same class, and I feel like a new person every time. I’m not flying above the ocean like Superwoman, but when I hit that heavy bag, or my partner, it’s like my feet are landing on the back of that boat all over again. I wonder if MI6 is hiring…

Most interesting one on there:

“Whatshouldireadnext.com – Users enter their favorite book and they are a recommended a new book based on analysis of the reading preferences of other registered users.” Very cool!

Enjoy!

And here’s one more that’s not on the list: Helium Marketplace.

On shorter works, like say, this article, I can manage a decent collection of ideas: lure the reader with a hook (I’m bad at outlining), provide some humor (ba dum ching), lead into an explanation of the topic (outlining), provide the meat (some links to outlining resources), close out with a discussion of the middle section, and then end it all with another hook to bring the writer back. It’s a simple process I’ve done a billion times so I barely even bother to write it all down.

When it comes to novels though, I completely fall apart. I’ll jot down a few ideas for the intro and maybe a few key scenes that I want to get to, but I leave the plot loose and dive into the writing before I even know all the characters names. I jump into my new story excited and enthusiastic. I want to see where my intro takes me and figure out clever ways to get from there to next big scene.

It never quite works out that way though. I get lost between A and B. Characters get disjointed, continuity errors start to pop up in the seams, entire plot lines get tangled and lost. The solution, of course, is better outlining and so, below I’ve gone some links on different methods other writers have used to outline their stories.

6 Steps to Outlining

Outlining in 30 Minutes

Outlining Form

How to Outline Your Novel

I guess you know what I’ll be doing tonight! If anyone finds anymore good articles on outlining send em my way!

…

Except books. By and large the only advertizing books get is, at best, a few cover shots on a stand at the front of a book store. With the rare exception of a Harry Potter with got news coverage, there’s no advertizing to bring people into the bookstores in the first place. People looking for books go and get what they’re interested in. Everyone else lives their lives never knowing what or if anything has been published at all.

I’m not a publisher and I can’t change the industry, but it’s hardly any surprise that the average book only makes, at best, a few thousand dollars when it has to go up against millions of dollars worth of better known and better advertized competition. This website is more small attempt at breaking into the publishing world, encouraging readers, and getting the word out, but there are plenty of books passing me by as well.

Should publishers buy radio and TV spots? Should book signings and readers be a bigger feature? What about the internet? It’ll be big for sure. Maybe talk spots in podcasts? All possibilities, but I haven’t seen any of them. With all this choice, what does everyone think the best solution is?