On writing biographical historical fiction...

When I was a kid, we had a set of Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedias. Somehow, I absconded with them and claimed them as my own, I suppose because nobody else in the house used them. They sat on my largest shelf, in my closet, and whenever I was bored or curious, I'd pull one of the volumes down and read about faraway places and events of long ago. Sometimes I'd lose myself for hours in those musty pages. The advantage to this odd hobby of reading reference material for entertainment later resulted in me becoming part of the high school quiz team and someone who was, for awhile, mildly obsessed with Trivial Pursuit because it was the one board game that could hold my attention.

More than anything, I became intrigued with historical figures: Richard I, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Cleopatra . . . When I discovered Jean Plaidy's historical fiction and her series on the Plantagenets, I was in heaven. Later, much later, I decided to write fiction revolving around prominent historical figures. I find it utterly fascinating to take known facts, read a variety of interpretations by non-fiction writers, and then develop my own understanding of what motivated them, what their fears, hopes and dreams were. You begin to realize that it's not always easy to comprehend why they did what they did - and a big part of that is because morals, gender roles, social rules and expectations and politics and religion were so vastly different in the past from what they are now.

Since putting some of my writing in public view, what I've further come to discover is that tackling biographical historical fiction is a tricky business. Some people love it. Some don't like it at all - maybe they find it boring, overdone, or they approach it with expectations that are so rigid, that it would be nearly impossible for any writer to deliver a proper rendition that would please them. I've occasionally heard that it's difficult to do biographical fiction well. But how is this any different than writing about a completely fictional character? Either the story is engaging to the reader - or it isn't.

Previous portrayals of a historical figure - be it in books or movies - can affect people's opinions of that person. And that can be a high wall for any writer to overcome. I'm constantly challenged by readers' perceptions of Robert the Bruce, as many people believe he betrayed William Wallace, which he did not. I honestly didn't realize when I began writing about real people how strong those preconceived opinions can be. Or how vocal some history buffs can be about them. No matter what light you paint a real person of the past in - or even a group of people or a particular event- it's bound to get someone's dander up.

I'm curious to know how some of my blog readers feel about this. Do you read biographical fiction or prefer not to? Does it depend on the writing? Do you go into it with an open mind? Have you ever put a book down because it contrasted too much with what you believed that person to be? Have you ever read a novel that totally changed your understanding of a real person?

Until later,
Gemi

A List of Helpful Links on Self-Publishing

I was about to title this blog post "Technology Hates Me" after a week of living on dial-up internet, but my good wireless connection is back (knock on wood) and today I've gotten oodles done without having to haul my laptop to the library, wondering when it's going to overheat and blow up on me.

So finally, I can offer up a list of web resources for those considering or in the process of self-publishing. The books mentioned at the end of my previous post are a fantastic start and contain just about everything you need to know to proceed in a step-by-step fashion. I recommend spending a lot of time reading about the process and considering both the ins and outs before plunging in. You'll be investing either a fair amount of time or money in getting your book into print, depending on whether you do most of the prep work yourself or hire experts to do part or all of it, so it's not something entered into lightly. As I'm discovering, though, it can actually be quite an exciting endeavor.

Here's a short list, in no particular order:

1) Publetariat - Founded by April Hamilton, Publetariat is an online community of indie authors. You can find just about everything on this site, from articles that cover every aspect of self-publishing to where to find a cover designer. With so many energetic individuals contributing, the content on this site is constantly changing. Visit it often!

2) iStock Photos - When you get to the point of needing a photo for your cover, iStock is overflowing with professional and artistic pictures to choose from. I could spend hours there just looking. And they are very reasonably priced, too.

3) Lightning Source - If you're going the print-on-demand route, Lightning Source will not only print your book as needed, but get you listed with major distributors, like Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Baker & Taylor, and Ingram.

4) Createspace - Prefer to go the Createspace route? For those who plan to publish a single title or who desire a little more assistance, look into it.

5) Self-Publishing - A Yahoo discussion forum composed of authors and small publishers, as well as typographers, reviewers and bloggers. I suggest reading a few books on self-publishing and then if you have any specific questions during the process, you can ask it here or in the next list.

6) pod_publishers - another Yahoo discussion list for Print on Demand publishers. As with the list above, make sure you have a basic knowledge of POD before posting any broad questions here. Both lists are worth just sitting back and reading for awhile to glean knowledge from.

7) Digital Text Platform - Want to publish direct to Kindle through Amazon.com? This is the place to start. You may want to visit the Kindle discussion boards first (listed on this page) to get a feel for how things work.

8) Frequently Asked Questions about the ISBN - Don't know what one is or how to get one? Check here.

9) Bowker - Ready to purchase your ISBN(s)? In the U.S., a single ISBN will cost you $125; the cost for 10 or more is $250.

That should be plenty to get you headed in the right direction. My connection already went down once during the writing of this post, so I'll launch this one out there while I can.

Happy publishing,
Gemi

Turning Your Manuscript into a Book, or . . . Lo and Behold, My Computer is More than a Glorified Typewriter!

It’s true! I first started writing on a Royal typewriter thirty years ago – you know, the kind with the round keys that if you missed them your fingers would get pinched in a wiry web that had the tension of a bear trap? And you had to use carbon paper if you wanted to make copies? Remember this sound: “Tap, tap, tap, tap . . . tap, tap, ding! Click.”? Transition from that to the first computers and, wow, no more need for White-Out, plus a dot matrix printer eliminated the use of carbons. Given what computers can do today (spell-check makes us all look smarter than we are), is it any wonder more people are writing books now than ever?

This past week – or two, it’s all becoming a blur, because this is actually fun if you have OCD like I do – I’ve been formatting my manuscript in Word in order to make it look like a proper book. (Let me mention here that creating a Word document is just one step, after that comes creating a pdf file that your printer or self-publishing company will accept.) If you plan on formatting your manuscript yourself, two books I heartily recommend are: Aaron Shepard’s Perfect Pages and Michael N. Marcus’s Become a Real Self-Publisher. I like the latter for its straightforward step-by-step directions and the former for additional details about specific steps. Then, if those start to make sense, invest in Pete Masterson’s Book Design and Production: A Guide for Authors and Publishers. This last one not only gets into the nitty gritty of various fonts and page layout, but also has an extended glossary on terms that you can refer to during the self-publishing process, as a lot of the terminology will sound like a foreign language at first. Formatting a book interior really isn’t rocket science; it does, however, take time to learn about all the hidden features of Word that you never knew existed and create a professional looking interior. If you don’t have time, but do have money, there are businesses who will provide that service for you. Being the penniless writer I am, with time on my hands, I embrace learning something new. It makes me feel – what’s that word that Oprah uses? Ah yes, ‘empowered’.

So what have I learned in the last two weeks? A boatload. For starters, ‘styles’ is a feature that allows you to be consistent about headings and sections. ‘Headings’, btw, are not to be confused with ‘headers’. I figured out how to alternate the headers at the top of the page so that the title is on the recto (right-hand) page and my name is on the verso (left-hand) page. I also learned how to turn off pagination, headers and footers on specific pages by inserting section breaks and breaking the link to the previous section. Confused yet?

A word of caution here: if you turn hyphenation on in Word, you can be sure it will insert the hyphen in the wrong place within a word at least 25% of the time. That means I sat here with a dictionary and checked every single hyphenated word for hours. I also figured out how to turn spell-checker off for a specific word if I didn’t want it hyphenated by going to the Review tab and clicking on Set Language.

Widows and orphans are something else to be aware of at this stage in the process. No, not women whose husbands are deceased and children who’ve lost their parents. Widows are the last line of a paragraph that has spilled over onto the next page and are followed by the glaring white space of a scene break or the end of a chapter. Orphans are the first line of a paragraph at the bottom of the page following a scene break that stand alone, or they are also a lone word at the end of a paragraph on a line by itself. To the typographer, these are egregious errors that upset the delicate balance of a meticulously designed interior layout, and thus must be eradicated. To the rest of us casual readers, they just look . . . irregular, sloppy, blech. You can set Word to eliminate widows and orphans, but this will sometimes leave you with an uneven number of lines between the left and right pages. The alternative is to finagle individual paragraphs by inserting or deleting words or sentences so that you have neither widows nor orphans and every page contains the same number of lines – which is a huge amount of work.

One last thing: I am in love with Drop Caps – those fancy, oversized letters that shoulder their way into the opening paragraph of every chapter as if to say, “Here I am and I am beautiful.” Yes, you are beautiful, Drop Caps. You remind me of the Book of Kells. You are timeless.

Aside from learning lots of minutia, I’ve also had to make a lot of decisions. What size to I want my book to be? How big should the margins be? What font to use for the text, for chapter headings and for my beloved Drop Caps (sigh . . .)? After all this, I think I may have missed my calling in life. Maybe instead of a writer, I should have become a graphic artist or book designer. I won’t kid you – this is a lot of work and I feel like I am learning a new job for which I had zero qualifications. But, having an end product in mind – that wonderful thing called ‘my book’ – it makes all the time invested in learning worthwhile. Happy publishing!

Until later,
Gemi

E-books: Their pricing, the cost to publish them and what do they hold for the future of writing?

When I discuss self-publishing with other writers, one question I'm often asked is, "Are you going to put out a paper book or an e-book first - or both?" Granted, a lot of debut authors going the self-pub route see e-books, whether through Kindle or Smashwords, as an easier, lower cost option. Without a publisher (and all their inherent expenses) to set pricing for them, that leaves the question of what to price an e-book wide open for the self-pub author. Ultimately, yes, I do plan to put my books out as e-books, but first I'll introduce them as p-books (lingo for 'paper books'), primarily because most of the people I personally know don't yet own an e-reader and don't read enough to warrant them buying one.

Recently, Amazon announced that starting in June it will pay authors 70% of the Kindle list price. This deal states that the list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99. Currently, many self-published authors are offering their Kindle titles at very low prices, like 99 cents... or even free - the logic being that readers are more likely to sample a new author if they can get the book for practically nothing. Their plan then is to build a readership base, in the hopes that they can later charge more for subsequent works. While I follow this logic, I can't say I agree with it, for the simple fact that it devalues the artist's efforts and the product they have to offer. There is also the problem of perceived value and 'you get what you pay for'. I just can't go there. To research, write and polish a work of historical fiction can take me up to two years (although I'm sure if I had a deadline of any sort, I could drastically reduce that time-frame). I believe the product I put out at the end of that time is worth something more than pennies.

Anita Davison's blog, in her post An End to Those Pesky Rejection Letters?, talks about whether this door to publishing for writers is a good or bad thing. And Mirella Patzer analyzes the emergence of e-book readers and their impact on the future of how we read in her blog post Reading, Then and Now.

Traditional publishers have been arguing that even though printing, shipping and warehousing costs are eliminated with e-books, there's still a lot of expense associated with them, like editing, cover art, marketing, and physical overhead (those Manhattan offices aren't exactly cheap). A recent New York Times article explores the dilemma of e-book pricing by traditional publishers.

How much would you shell out for a self-published e-book? $9.99, $4.99, $1.99 or would you only try it if it was free? Art Edwards discusses e-book pricing in his post: "How Much Would you Pay for a Self-Published E-book?".

So folks, that's a lot to digest. The bottomline is that publishing is in a state of fluctuation. Technology is changing so fast that by the time I get one thing figured out, it becomes obsolete. The economy is putting a squeeze on publishers and consumers and that all trickles down to the would-be author, as well as established authors.

Until later,
Gemi

The White Queen, by Philippa Gregory

The White Queen, by Philippa Gregory, is the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of Edward IV, during the struggle for England’s throne between the Lancastrians and Yorkists . Spanning a period of two decades, this book begins in 1464 with a widowed twenty-seven year old Elizabeth boldly standing in the road, waiting for the newly victorious king to pass her way so she can beg for the return of her lands in order to provide for her two sons. Five years her junior, Edward is renowned as much for his conquests of women as he is his enemies on the battlefield. So when he arrogantly tries to seduce Elizabeth, sexual tension simmers as she rebuffs his overtures and keeps him at arm’s length.

Madly in love with him despite her resolve, Elizabeth is swayed by his persistence and they are secretly married. So begins Elizabeth’s new life. Aware of how quickly favor and fortune can fade, Elizabeth quickly entrenches her family into the royal web of marriages and titles, and thus the Riverses vault into power – evoking the jealousy of those who have been bypassed.

Gregory handles the enduring love story between Edward and Elizabeth admirably, beginning with the sizzling encounters of a newfound passion, and carrying through the stages of jealousy that flare up as Edward’s appetite for other women resurfaces, followed by reconciliation and on to a more mature mindset of the connection that inexorably ties these two together.

At a few points during the story, Elizabeth gives lengthy recounts of some of England’s most pivotal battles. While vividly detailed, they occasionally feel a bit detached in comparison to the rest of the story. That factor notwithstanding, Gregory manages to unfold a very complex time in England’s history, while still keeping the many threads and players involved distinct.

Throughout, there is an interwoven element of witchcraft and the myth of the water goddess Melusina. At first, this component’s relationship to ongoing events may not be entirely clear, but in time it becomes a very interesting twist that adds a unique element.

All in all, The White Queen is a dazzling tale of romance, ever-shifting loyalties, and one of history's greatest outstanding mysteries – the death of the two princes in The Tower – as lived through an incredibly strong and determined heroine. Perennial Gregory fans will not be disappointed, as this is one of her finer works.

Until later,
Gemi

The (self-publishing) journey begins...

So what next? What if, as a writer, you've done everything the books and experts said you should - joined critique groups, sought professional assessment, studied the craft, written story after story and buffed each one until if you rubbed any harder you'd flay the poor thing? It's entirely possible that your work is simply crap, that you wouldn't sell unless you had a skilled ghostwriter, a six(or seven)-figure marketing campaign and had run for the vice presidency (not naming any names here). Maybe you weren't persistent enough and gave up too soon? Maybe you just weren't lucky enough to land on the right editor's desk at the right time? I know firsthand that what is salable and a hot commodity one year, may not be the next. How commercial an editor perceives your work to be has a lot to do with whether they'll take an interest in it.

Heaven knows I've been dogged. I hope I can tell a good story. But for whatever reason, the door to opportunity has not yet opened up for me via the traditional publishing route, despite having a literary agent whom I adore and admire and who has been a relentless champion on my behalf. While I try my darndest to refrain from spewing negativity in public, let's face it, the world of publishing as we know it is changing. Fewer new authors are being taken on. Publishers are cutting back on manpower and titles. Amazon is at war with the big publishers. And e-books and POD are floating in the wings, ready to take over center stage. While a lot of folks see this as a bad thing, maybe it just means things are going to be different in the future? Agent Nathan Bransford wrote a very thought-provoking post recently called 'It's a Great Time to Be An Author'. It's worth reading.

So what next for me? Write another book? Umm, eventually, but before that I'm going to journey down a new road: self-publishing.

(Gasp.) Really? Isn't that the 'kiss of death' in the world of writing? Like some giant graveyard where writers who couldn't hack it get buried with their delusional dreams? Meh, possibly. I'm sure it's often true. But not always.

In the months to come, I'm going to use this blog as a self-publishing journal. I believe there are a lot of other writers in my shoes. Some may have considered self-publishing, but they shy away from it for one of two reasons: 1) the stigma attached to it (see above), or 2) the expected costs and learning curve involved. Since I'm not ready to chuck my beloved stories in a drawer and forget about them (neither the ghost of Robert the Bruce nor Queen Isabella would forgive me), I'll brave both the naysayers and the effort it takes to realize my dream - which is to share my books with readers.

For now, here are a few current historical fiction authors now published by major houses who originally self-published, along with links to some of their stories:

Maggie Anton (Rashi's Daughters series, Plume) - After publishers initially took no interest in her book, Anton self-published and sold 20,000 copies in 18 months.

Elle Newmark (The Book of Unholy Mischief, Simon and Schuster) - Newmark came to writing later in life and after getting passed over numerous times and sinking into a funk, she finally got mad and took control of her own fate.

C.W. Gortner (The Last Queen, Ballantine) - Read about Gortner's careful consideration before he decided to self-publish and how it turned out for him.

Want more names of successful and well-known authors who self-published at some point in their careers? You can find them here and also here. I think you'll recognize a few of the names.

Up next, some of the steps I'll be taking before sending my book off to the printer.

Until later,
Gemi

Hope

Hope. Every human being knows what it is. It's what most aspiring novelists survive on. We slog away at our day jobs, writing in the few spare hours we can carve out of our already full week, or devote our lives to looking after our families, multitasking to the point of insanity. We type in solitude hour after hour, living inside our imaginations and drawing discipline from the Muse we cannot shake, with only a distant hope that one day some editor will deem our labors worthy of publication and thus validate all the hours that we have sacrificed in the journey. Writers generally don't write with fantasies of becoming rich and famous. Most, I believe, are more practical than that. We write because we want to share the vast depths of human emotion, allowing us to connect with others. We write to be read.

What has often kept me going in this elusive pursuit is the recurring daydream that one day I'll be in an airport bookshop and see someone standing there holding my book. MY book. That creature that I slaved over, wept over and sweated over day and night, for years, at the expense of my ever-dwindling bank account, to the neglect of housework and exercise and a hundred other things I could have done. And I would see that person, eyes fixed on the pages, completely absorbed, and know that I had done something rare and wonderful - breathed life into the name of a historical figure centuries long dead, and for someone else, if only for a few hours, made them real and alive. Just as writers like Alexandre Dumas, Sir Walter Scott and J.R.R. Tolkien did for me as an adolescent, convincing me that that is what I, too, wanted to do in life. That is a writer's hope: to be read, to share, to entertain, to put a finger on the soul of another human being.

Through the years, I have ridden the roller coaster of hope – often doubting the power of my words or my skill in arranging them, sometimes spurred on by a smattering of confidence when someone else took notice and said encouraging things. I have come tantalizingly close to that pinnacle of validation when an editor's interest has been piqued – and deflated by indifference when it was not. Assured that persistence is an element to success, I quietly soldier on, even as I see those more talented than me mirroring the same game of wait and hope and try again. A few make it. Most do not. The assumption for those who do not garner a traditional publishing contract is often that their writing is not good enough. But having come to know some very, very talented writers still struggling to be discovered, I don’t believe that anymore. The same, I’m sure, is true for actors and singers who march to audition after audition, hoping to be that one in a million who’s in the right place at the right time.

So, after years of trying the traditional route and never getting a foot in the door – what next? Stay tuned, this could get interesting . . . I have a plan. There's always hope. Sometimes we just have to look for it in other places.

Until later,

Gemi