Jul
3
About epublishing (and some things you didn’t know you needed to know). Ha! How’s that for one hell of a long title? I don’t caaaaaare
It’s the title of an upcoming workshop I’m doing at NJRW in October (as well as something online for Romance Divas in September), but also the title of a series of articles based on the same information, that I’ve done for the Erotic Readers and Writers Association. I’ve been planning on doing something like this for over a year, but kept putting it off. ERWA offered me the opportunity to do the series via their website and I decided there was never so good a time as now to do it. I’ll never be any less busy!
Writing the articles has proven much harder for me than giving a workshop. I think information is easier to present in person, and there’s much I can’t say in the articles that I would say in a workshop setting (because it’s so much easier to ramble when it’s in person. In an article, you have to be much more linear and that has been difficult for me). I actually enjoy public speaking, enjoy the dynamics of presenting a workshop to a group of people and being able to do a give and take. Hopefully, now that I’ve got this information laid out, I’ll get more chances to present it in workshop form.
The first of the articles: “A Different Way isn’t the Wrong Way” went live today. Since it’s the start of a series, this first article deals with some very basic information on epublishing, the business model and the pros and cons. I have no problem being very honest when it comes to epublishing.
Later in the series I’ll be covering topics like choosing a publisher, myths and realities of epublishing, financial background, how epublishing works, print, etc. Lots of information to be shared! If you’ve ever wondered about epublishing and how it worked, and think I should cover a particular topic, please let me know.
I hope you’ll check the article out, pass the link on to others, and let me know what you think.
Jul
3
I saw
this comment from Rachelle Gardner, a literary agent for Christian literature, on
her blog today. I thought it was a pretty nifty analogy so I wanted to share.
First she said:
You realize, of course, that it’s not necessary for an editor or agent to read a whole manuscript to determine if it’s a “no.” Usually a few pages will do it. It usually does take a read of the entire thing to determine if it’s a “yes,” however.
So really the only two things we can say after a brief meeting and a quick read of a few pages is either “no” or “maybe.”
Which is so true. When I do a call for anthologies, and get all those submissions, I don’t read the entire manuscript of all of them. Only those I think I might like to publish, which, once narrowed down means I usually am only reading the full manuscript of probably 7 or 8. Of upwards to 60 submissions. The other 50? I read the first page, the first couple pages and very rarely the first chapter. I use the anthology as an example, but this is true for all submissions I read. Most often, I can tell in the first page if I’m interested in the book, the writing, the craft, and the voice.
I know this is often hard for authors to understand, but I love Rachel’s analogy in her next comment:
Okay, I’ve been thinking more about Inspire’s comment, and my response. I know it must be hard to understand or accept the truth of what I said, and certainly impossible to like it. But here’s an analogy I think will help.
I went shopping this week for some new clothes. I pored through racks fairly quickly. “No, no, no, no… ” Then I would stop at one thing. “Hmm. Maybe.” And I’d grab that item to take to the fitting room and try on.
I noticed how quickly my eyes and hands could take in a LOT of information about each item of clothing I was rejecting. Color, style, size, texture, pattern, fabric… so many things about each item of clothing registered in my brain in a millisecond. It was easy to instantly reject the ones that didn’t fit what I was looking for.
But the ones that looked, in a glance, to have something I WAS looking for, those I needed to spend some time with.
And here’s the kicker. I would not have been able to tell you “exactly” what I was looking for, except for some basics: business clothing, my size. Other than that, it was wide open. I couldn’t explain it, but I’d know it when I saw it. And I’d know when I wasn’t looking at it, too.
So that’s kind of how it is when we look at those proposals and one sheets and first pages, and listen to the verbal pitch. It sometimes feels harsh from the other side, but the thought process is something like, “no, no, no… hmmm, maybe.”
Yes. And again yes.
There are other intersting comments in that post, go check them out and add your own. I enjoy reading Rachelle’s blog because she’s got interesting insight into publishing that I so often agree with and find myself nodding vehemently. And I also enjoy it because she specializes in Christian literature which I’m less familiar with, and reading her blog has really helped me become better informed about that corner of publishing.
Jul
3
Category: Life |Tagged: random, Tech | 
1 Comment
My laptop had a bit of a meltdown yesterday. IE doesn’t work at all and for some reason, the computer hates Firefox 3.0. I think it’s the fingerprint recognition software on the computer, which I don’t use anyway. But I tried to uninstall it and hey! the computer told me I don’t have admin privileges. Uh huh. So amidst all this, I got some fatal errors when rebooting, it went into system restore and now I’m waiting for an upgrade to Vista Ultimate. I’m hoping that will fix some of my problems, because I’d really like to not have to reformat the whole thing and reload all those programs. That would pretty much suck.
In the meantime, I have the Asus, my old laptop and two desktops to keep me company. Yeah, we’re computer poor in this house. Actually, one of the desktops is new, and wasn’t hooked up, so I spent some time doing that this morning so I could work edits (the old desktop is slow and has Word 2003, which I find awkward to use after using 2007 for so long). I could do edits on the Asus, but it’s small (which is fabulous for traveling and I LOVE it, but I don’t want to work on it for long periods to avoid headaches and eye strain).
The only bad thing is, since I’m not working on my “main” computer, I don’t have my email client set up, so all my old emails are trapped until I get that computer up and running. And I have to go to each account to check my email. Blech. So if you’ve emailed me and/or are waiting to hear from me on something, give it until Monday!
Jul
2
Technorati Tags:
sewing,
crafts,
purseIt’s not going to be an overly in-depth pattern review, but I wanted to do one on this pattern, in case anyone else was searching the web for information on it, as I was a few months ago. They did one at Sew, Mama, Sew, but I always think it’s good to get more than one opinion!
About a month ago, I started making this purse, the flea market bag from the Grand Revival pattern
:
I got as far as making pattern pieces from plumbers cloth (a tip courtesy of seamstress extraordanaire Jane), which I love. It makes them easy to handle and easy to store. I also got the pieces for the purse cut from the cloth I wanted to use—a Waverly home decor fabric for the outside and a cotton fabric for the inside, as well as the interfacing (light interfacing for the lining, a slightly heavier interfacing for the outer bag).
But when I got to the stop of sewing the lining pieces to the handle, I got frustrated. Not the pattern’s fault at all, but my own, because for some reason I had a bobbin that didn’t like my sewing machine and made all my stitches very loose and messy. it took me a bit to realize it was the bobbin and not the tension on my machine, so a bit of frustration commenced. Finally, I had to wind a new bobbin, rip out all my stitches from one side of the lining, and start over. I set the sewing project aside for a bit, since I think it’s worse to sew when I’m frustrated—I get even more impatient and sloppy.
So this past weekend I went back to the project, because the colors are so cute and summery, and I really wanted to be able to carry this purse while there was still summer. Since I’m going to be traveling for a good month starting later in July, my time was getting a bit limited. Now that I had a better bobbin to work with, the sewing went fairly smoothly. I know some people had issues with the corners at the bottom of the bag, but I just took my time and they weren’t bad at all.
Where I started to dislike the pattern was in the handles. Once the body and lining are sewn together, and turned right side out so it’s starting to look like a real purse, you’re still left with two separate handles. The idea is to iron them under and then topstitch them together, as well as around the purse. I thought this was awkward and I wasn’t as happy with the handles as I think I might have been had I somehow been able to stitch them together wrong sides together, and then turn them inside out. It would have made it easier to have them equal widths, for example, which is important since this purse is supposed to be reversible. I don’t plan on reversing it, so I’m not too concerned, I just would have liked a different method of construction.
the last thing that I noticed, which is not the patterns fault but the seamstress’s (that would be me) is that I didn’t get the strap/handle pattern lined up with the body of the bag. Now, this doesn’t actually bother me, but it might someone else.
One thing I didn’t do, but that I’m gong to go back and do, is add some type of closure to the bag. The pattern itself suggest several options, including a button closure, snaps and a velcro tab. I’m going to do the velcro tab since it’s something I can do even now that the purse is already constructed. I just don’t like having it wide open all the time.
In all, the purse is comfortable to carry. I like how wide the strap is. The pattern itself gives you a bunch of options: a bigger bag, a longer strap (so you can carry it messenger style) and the ability to add a petal tie at the top of the strap (where the strap is knotted at the top—I don’t like those because I think they make carrying uncomfortable, but they look cute). I did put an inner pocket in the purse. The pattern suggests an outer pocket as well, but I didn’t want to worry about lining up the fabric pattern to do that, so I skipped it. I don’t get much use out of a front outer pocket anyway, so I was happy to skip it.
Would I use this pattern again? I think I’d like to try it one more time, doing a larger bag messenger style. But I really am not satisfied with the way the handles turned out, so I’m not sure I’d make them repeatedly. I think this pattern would be frustrating for a very beginner sewer, but an advanced beginner (which is how I tend to think of myself) with some patience can do it. I do like the size of this purse. It’s big enough to hold my pouchee, my ebookwise and a few other random things with no problem.
I’m playing with a new plugin on Windows Live Writer. I like that I can do this in 30 seconds. I can add a mini-review if I want, or not at all, just the above image. Since this is a TBR pile book, I feel like I should maybe save my review for TBR Wednesday this month, but I did Patricia Briggs last month, and I don’t want anyone to get bored. So I’ll just say that her backlist continues to keep me entertained and I’m really glad she has a backlist for me to read, because her fantasies are fun! Also, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but if you’ve read this book, you know that Patricia Briggs is not one to save her heroines from bad things and the precedent was set earlier in her writing career—not in the last Mercy book. I thought that was interesting.
