Category: Uncategorized

I had a few comments yesterday on my slush pile post that asked for more detail on how I negotiated my contract with Midnight Ink in 2008. At the time, I didn’t have an agent, so I just did the best I could.

I’ll quickly point out that I would never choose to negotiate a contract without an agent. Here is an excellent blog (written by editor Moonrat) explaining why having an agent is essential.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work out the way we’d like.

The best information on Do It Yourself Contract Negotiation was on two different agent blogs: the “Agenting 101” series (look for it on the right hand side of the page. There are eleven references) on the Pub Rants blog by agent Kristen, and a blog entry called “Ten Things to Know if You Go Commando” on agent Janet Reid’s blog.

Another site I found helpful showed a sample author contract, just to give you an idea what the document may look like: www.writecontent.com.

The Absolute Write writers’ forum also ran an interesting couple of articles: http://tinyurl.com/yfgu3uv and http://tinyurl.com/yz47l29 .

A guest post by agent Holly Root with Waxman Literary Agency on negotiating contracts: http://tinyurl.com/ybedos7 .

A series called “Contracts 101” on the BookEnds Literary Agency blog:

http://tinyurl.com/2rneqq
http://tinyurl.com/yaebq3t
http://tinyurl.com/y882fn5

What I did on my end:

I told them right away I wasn’t represented. They offered to wait a few days to see if I could get an agent to help me with my contract. At the time, though, every agent I was waiting to hear from was on summer vacation.

I didn’t accept their offer on the phone and they didn’t ask me to. I just very politely thanked them for being interested in Pretty is as Pretty Dies. They emailed a contract and asked me to take a look at it.

I asked good friends who write for Midnight Ink what a fair advance might be. They gave me what they thought might be a range. Since they’ve been established writers for a decade, I looked at the lowest part of that range when coming up with a fair advance for a newer author, like me.

I checked online resources where genre authors had disclosed their own advances, etc.

Everything I read said publishers expect a counter on different points. They likely don’t expect it as much from authors, but it wasn’t going to be like they were going to say, “Actually? Never mind.” if they were presented with a reasonable counter. I didn’t double the amounts or anything crazy like that.

They came back meeting me halfway with most everything.

Negotiating your own contract still isn’t the way you want to go if you have a choice. I wouldn’t want to do it again! But if you’re in that situation, don’t sweat it. There is information readily available online—do the best you can.

Helen Ginger on her excellent blog, Straight from Hel which follows and reports publishing news and trends, linked to a story in the venerable Wall Street Journal that proclaimed the death of the slush pile.

Although the story, if true, would give every agent and editor in the business cause to celebrate (can you imagine wading through such an enormous number of submissions?), I think that rumors of the slush pile’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

As recently as early last year, I was a slush pile girl myself. And it worked out pretty well for me.

I started out with a very small Southern publisher for my first book, A Dyeing Shame: Death at the Beauty Box in 2006.

Wanting to try my luck in the Big Leagues, I started researching. I decided trying out with the Medium Leagues made the best sense. Midnight Ink, a well-respected mystery subsidiary of Llewellyn Worldwide, was accepting manuscripts. Amazingly enough (at the time), they wanted full manuscripts. I read this part several times. Full manuscripts. Mailed to them. This was unbelievable enough to give it a go. Plus, I respected the award-winning mystery authors who were published by them.

I took an online course on synopses (MI did want a one-page synopsis along with the full.) I tore up a bunch of synopses but finally got one I thought would work. I mailed it off…the synopsis and the huge sheaf of papers that made up Pretty is as Pretty Dies, single-sided.

I believe in covering my bases. I sent cover letters and synopses or queries to other publishers for the manuscript—including Penguin’s Berkley Prime Crime.

I sent queries to agents (mainly online queries, but probably ten mailed ones.) I was rejected a bazillion times.

Months later? Many months later? I found out that Midnight Ink wanted Pretty. I was delighted! They had a great plan for marketing, cover, etc.

I continued receiving rejections for Pretty from other publishers. No one else asked for a full, so I didn’t tell anyone that the manuscript was off the table.

I queried agents again.

More rejections from agents—even with the contract in hand.

I read on blogs—particularly Pub Rants—(thanks, Kristin!) how to negotiate a boilerplate contract. I counter-offered and did the best I could under the circumstances. It worked out well.

Roughly a month after negotiating my contract with Midnight Ink, I heard from my current agent. The system just takes a long time, y’all. They’re all inundated with emails and mail.

My Midnight Ink editor and I were about two months into revisions when I heard from Penguin. Pretty is as Pretty Dies had, being an unsolicited manuscript, gone into the slush pile. What’s worse? The editor that I had sent my original query and first 30 pages to had left Penguin at the time my email arrived at their office.

The other editors had taken on that editor’s slush pile, working through hers as well as their own.

Months later? They’d discovered Pretty—and were interested. After some quick checking, they’d found the Publisher’s Weekly blurb saying that Midnight Ink had it under contract.

Amazingly, this editor emailed me to congratulate me on my deal with Midnight Ink and to say that they were sorry they couldn’t have published it at Penguin.

I was absolutely stunned. Could I pitch them another series? I asked. I’d come up with one soon. I loved working with Midnight Ink—and it would be great to work with Penguin too.

At that moment? I had no series ideas at all. I was caught completely off-guard.

But they were interested in a series based in Memphis. An epicurean mystery with a Southern accent. I could submit the first three chapters and they’d see if my vision for such a series would work out.

It did work out. And thankfully I had my excellent agent helping to guide me through the waters this time.

But neither series was pitched to them by my agent. Both got to my editors through the slush pile. In both 2008 and 2009. My process of being pulled out of it reflected a tremendous amount of luck in the form of timing. I hope it also reflects the amount of research and effort I put into it…despite the rejections I received. Perseverance goes a long way with writing.

I know what the Wall Street Journal is getting at. It’s a tough world out there. Publishers aren’t able to hire the manpower to wade through the slush. Agents are facing layoffs at their agencies, too.

But there’s still slush. And there are still folks out there reading it. God bless them.

************************************

I did some blog housekeeping Sunday. Do you read Mystery Writing is Murder? Are you listed in the blogroll in my sidebar? Also, I’m opening up Fridays (soon) for guest posts on ‘writing process.’ In addition, the blog is available for promo spots for authors with upcoming and new releases. For more information, please check the post: http://tinyurl.com/ybm3s58

Martin Luther King day was a school holiday for my children. The evening before, I got an email from my friend. “Could we set the girls up with a playdate at our house tomorrow? How about early afternoon? I have a doctor’s appointment at 3:00.”

I wrote back, typing quickly. “Sure. We’ll pop by around 12:30. Thanks!”

I continued working on some other emails, a blog post, and part of my book. Then I suddenly stopped. Wait. My friend has a doctor’s appointment. On a day when there’s no school. Oh. It would be better if the playdate were at our house and during her appointment! I called her the next morning and she was so delighted not to have to take her daughter to the appointment.

Sometimes I’m really slow.

This is why, when I’m trying out a new idea, a new plotline, or a new character, I take a minute to consider all the angles.

Maybe the protagonist has a friend who was this interesting, street-preaching card shark with a fine art collection…he could make an interesting informant and this quirky sideline character. (I’m just making this up as I go along, y’all—I know you’re thinking, “This doesn’t sound like a Myrtle Clover or a Memphis BBQ book to me!”)

Or maybe it would be better if the murder victim were this person. Then the suspects could be drawn from different worlds—from the gamblers, from the art lovers, from the impassioned evangelists.

Could the murderer be this oddball character? It might be a good cover. The person seems so innocuous and fun—but they’re really deadly.

Or maybe the protagonist could be the preaching, art-collecting gambler? And his good friend who bridges two of the three worlds is murdered—which could provide a believable reason for him to do some sleuthing.

You can go through this same process with things besides characterization. Try it with setting. Maybe you have two characters who need to discuss something. You’ve got them going to a diner—wait. You always have them in a diner. Let’s make it someplace really different this time: Chuck E. Cheese. A perfect place to meet with an informant or to have a drug deal because all the mommies there are way too distracted to be suspicious of underhanded activity.

Or maybe you’re sick of characters meeting over food, period. Your protagonist decides to question the underworld informant at his office—which just happens to be a well-respected CPA firm.

This is easy to do with plot, too. You could take a tired scene—the heroine going down into the spooky, allegedly deserted basement. The reader is probably pretty sick of that approach, you decide. So what if she turns the handle of the basement door…just to make sure it’s locked. But it’s not and some depraved creature slams against the other side of the door, forcing itself into her sunny, happy kitchen with the rooster wall clock and polka-dotted dishtowels.

The more I take an idea and twist it, the more interesting it usually gets. And I’ve usually given the scene, character, or setting more depth and freshness.

How do you improve on your original plan or idea?

I have two manuscripts that are in the pre-submission stage. One is far along in the process—in the hands of my agent and going to Midnight Ink in ASAP, and the the other is in the first draft stage (going to Penguin before my April 1 deadline.)

I took a two week break on my next Myrtle Clover to work on my next Memphis BBQ book–I have a hard time working on two manuscripts at once.

When I came back to my Myrtle Clover book about a week ago? I couldn’t find the revised file. I’d rewritten the first three chapters completely…where were they?

I spent three hours looking for the corrected file. I looked on my desktop. I looked in My Documents. I even looked in my Downloads folder. Nothing.

I checked the files I’d emailed to myself. I checked my thumbdrives. Nothing.

The computer had eaten my file. But it was my screw-up.

My mistake (besides neglecting the backup that I nearly always make)? I should have just immediately started the rewrite again.

Every time I rewrite chapters from scratch they end up better than they started out.

It’s tedious. It’s annoying. It makes me grind my teeth.

But the text is better.

Finally I accepted that the chapters were gone. I sat down and tried remembering where I’d gone with them the first time. Then I started writing.

Have you messed up? Lost a file? Accidentally deleted one?

Try to calm down. This is a big one. I was in orbit for at least an hour.

Stop the recriminations. Really, does it matter now if your puppy ate your outline? (Yes, this happened to me several years ago when I made an outline. It was one of many factors that made me decide against outlining. You can even lose hard copies of things–not just the electronic version.) It’s definitely quicker to accept the text is gone, not be too hard on yourself, and start working on that section of the manuscript again.

Piece together your thought process from the last time you worked on the project. Where were you going with the plot and characters? If you were revising, then were you cutting text, adding text, or rewording?

Build on the foundation of what you’ve already got. There’s usually still something there…on paper, on an email you sent someone, in some random Word folder. It might be an early draft or only brainstormed ideas. Take what you’ve got and then add to it.

Help ensure it doesn’t happen again. If your mess-up involves backing up, then you’re in luck—there are a multitude of methods of backup these days. Thumb drives/USB drives are incredibly cheap now and, to me, easier to use than CDs. My all-time, lazy method of backing up is emailing the document to my Gmail account. It’s accessible on any computer and it’s there. Too bad I didn’t back up those first few chapters. There are also external hard drives you can buy, online storage, etc. My husband now has me hooked up with a USB and a program (SyncToy) that automatically saves to the USB as many times a day as you set it up to save. Even if I don’t think about it, the computer application will.

Have you lost data? What’s your backup method?

I did some blog housekeeping yesterday. Do you read Mystery Writing is Murder? Are you listed in the blogroll in my sidebar? Also, I’m opening up Fridays (soon) for guest posts on ‘writing process.’ In addition, the blog is available for promo spots for authors with upcoming and new releases. For more information, please check the post: http://tinyurl.com/ybm3s58

I’ve been thinking about 2010 plans for my blog and there were a couple of ideas I had for guest posts this year. Also, I wanted to update my bloglists in the sidebar (which is always a work-in-progress), and so I’m working on that in the next few days, too.

1)I’ve been interested in hosting guest posts on different series of topics. There has been some interest in writing processes lately, and I’m always really interested in other people’s ideas on the subject.

What I thought I’d do is to open it up to guest bloggers. What’s your writing process? And to make the series run more logically, I think it would be great to divide it up into:

Prewriting (What you do to prepare.) This could include brainstorming, research, reading writing reference books, how you decided on your genre, finding and refining your original idea, and—if you do it—outlining or storyboarding. Or anything else you do to prepare for writing.

Writing (The actual process.) This could include how you schedule it into your day, what your writing goal is, how you develop characters or plot, etc. Do you start at the beginning? Do you hop around as you write? Or you can write about any other part of your writing process.

Revision. Do you revise as you go along? Do you revise after your first draft is done? Do you revise for grammar and spelling errors first or for global changes like more character depth, etc. Do you mostly reword during revisions, or do you slash out extra verbiage? Do you find that sometimes you need to add text? You can also write anything at all about your revision process.

I’d like to have them run on Fridays. It doesn’t matter if we get 5 people writing on pre-writing and then 8 people writing on writing, and 10 writing on revision. That will work out fine because we all have different approaches.

You can include links to your blog or website, pictures, etc.

If you’re interested, please email me at elizabethsguestpost@gmail.com and let me know which part of the writing process you’re interested in covering. I’ll try arranging them in order—first prewriting, then writing, then revision. I’ll make sure the posts are Tweeted and out on Facebook, etc.

I’ll email you back to work out the details and date for your post to run. It might take me a few days to work it out (and I’m under a revision deadline right now), so bear with me. :) It will probably be next Friday (Jan. 22) that I manage to launch the series.

******************************************

2)Also, if you have a new release coming out this year (and I know a couple of you definitely will) then I’m open to guest posts with book covers, buy buttons, and author photos. Let me know your release month and I’ll get it set up. Again, if you could shoot me an email at the above address.

*******************************************

3)Finally, I’m doing some bloggy housekeeping. If you’re a blogger and read “Mystery Writing is Murder,” is your blog in my blogroll in the sidebar? If not, let me know in the comments and I’m happy to link up to you. If you lurk—no problem! I’m a lurker myself, so feel free to pipe up once and return to lurking if you’d like. It’s just that sometimes I think my linking falls through the cracks, and I don’t want to miss anyone.

Thanks everyone!