Tag Archives: art

The Road to Publication #8: The Photo Shoot

Posted on July 16, 2012 | 18 comments

If you don’t have professional pictures, be prepared that you will be expected to make an appointment with a photographer for marketing materials.

When you do this… Learn from my mistake… don’t schedule it a few days before the pictures are actually due.

I went on a Saturday.  The pictures were due Tuesday at the latest.  No problem, right?

Okay, so I am sure you are expecting me to say that the photo shoot was a disaster.  No, it wasn’t.  On the contrary.  What it was, though, was LONG.

I have a new appreciation for models.  Believe it or not, it’s not easy to hold your body in one position and constantly tilt your head in different directions.  And leaning back and holding your head at a certain angle is PAINFUL.

Granted, I could have said, “boring head shots only,” but if you’ve been hanging out here for a while, you know that’s just not me.  Yeah, I got some boring head shots, but I got some really artistic head shots as well, along with full body poses and fun stuff.

This is where my problem came in.  Time.  I wanted to hand my portrait in on Sunday so I could work on the final proof of Last Winter Red to offer it up to slaughter submit it to the editor Monday or Tuesday.

I opened the proof disk to find 325 photographs.  Ugh!  (A good ugh, but still Ugh!)

It took me a few hours to narrow it down to 60 shots.  Then I narrowed those down to 27.  Then I took those and got vainly anal about them.

I have a lot of great shots that are fun and show more of my personality, but looking at other author shots, they are all pretty much the same.  The photographs of me that I loved were all looking away from the camera, but my husband and I decided to look right at the camera for something more engaging.

I did end up sending two shots to the publisher.  One was a full body shot with my socks off.    The other was a normal portrait shot.  (I know, socks off sounds weird… felt weird doing it, too, but I have a ton of socks-off pictures in my “love it” file.

The publisher ended up cropping the “socks off” picture into a portrait.  Not too original, but it looks nice.

What can you learn from this?  Save time and money when you get your pictures taken and only get boring stuff done.

However, if you have the time, get a whole slew of them done, and get some great pictures that you can have fun with on your web site, or treat yourself to a nice picture of you for a change rather than only having pictures of your kids on the wall.

More than anything:  ENJOY IT!  Consider it pampering.  Once in a while, everyone deserves a little “it’s all about me” time.

18 Comments

Posted in Marketing Madness, Road to Publication, Senseless Ranting

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The Cover Reveal-Seeing your name on a book jacket for the first time.

Posted on May 21, 2012 | 83 comments

***Woa.***

So, I was rattling through my email the other day, and my buddy Jenny Keller Ford sends me a message saying: “Did you see the cover with your name on it yet?”

So, yeah, I scrambled through all my emails, searching frantically, and low and behold… there it was.

The contract felt pretty real, but let me tell you—seeing your name in big bold print with cover art…

I called my kids in.  My five-year old said, “Oh, okay.  Can I have a snack?”

The Monomaniacal Middle Grade Reviewer looked at it, gave me a hug, and went on about his business.

My eight year old, Thank Goodness, stared at it with wide eyes and a big poop-eating grin on his face, saying, “That is soooo cool!”

Later on, my husband came home and finally got to see it.  I can’t remember his exact words, but it was something like, “Wow.  This is real, isn’t it?”

I think he actually needed something to validate it in his mind.   I tried to explain what an anthology was, but until he saw the cover, I don’t think he actually “got it.”

So, without further ado, here is the cover for the Make Believe Anthology.

So, what do you think?  Pretty cool, huh?

83 Comments

Posted in Road to Publication, Uncategorized, Writing to a Deadline

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When you don’t agree with your child’s teacher.

Posted on May 20, 2012 | 33 comments

Why, oh why, are there people in our public school system teaching children how to write that have no idea about basic fictional writing principles?

My son came home the other day with a low grade on a story he had written.  No biggie, I’m not an ogre—until I read her comments, that is.  My husband sat at the head of the table watching me with hands folded.  I think he was waiting for me to blow a fuse… which, admittedly, I did.

My husband said, “I didn’t see anything wrong with it.  I wanted to see what you thought.”

This is the comment.  Hold your breath…

“Don’t use so much dialog in your writing.  Dialog kills a story.”

Okay, so I took a deep breath, and read his story.

He had done a horrible thing.  He had allowed the dialog to tell his story… without a STITCH of show versus tell issues.  It was actually GREAT.  (No explosions, but that’s okay.  He’s the quiet one)

His story was realistic, believable, and perfectly constructed.  Now, I understand that writing is subjective, but to grade him down for writing correctly?  UGHHHH!

My husband raised an eyebrow and said, “I would LOVE for you to go in and talk to her about this.”

Yeah, he would think it was funny if I got taken out of the school in handcuffs.  This teacher is not to fond of my son to begin with (he’s a giggler and she is a drill sergeant)  We’re just biding our time until we can get him out of this class.  My husband had growled his way through a few parent teacher conferences with her already.

So, what did I do?  I explained to my son that he had written it correctly, and sometimes you are going to be judged unfairly.  I told him that I want him to know what is right, but next time give her exactly what she wants to get the grade, but know there is a better way to do it.

(It’s sad to give real-life advice to an eight year old)  I just know that there is no winning with this woman, and she, unfortunately, is in a position to make my little guy miserable for the rest of the school year.  Believe me, if it were the last day of school, she’d totally have gotten a writing lesson from me… I just need to think of what I’m doing to my child as well.

A week later he came home and said, “Mom!  I wrote a really bad story and she loved it!”

I looked at his new story.  It was 100% tell, no feeling, no dimension, flat characterization.  And she wrote “Nicely done.”

I cringed.  “Okay, but you understand that this is NOT the correct way to write, right?”

He laughed.  “Yes Mom.  I tricked her.”

What’s really sad, is the chances are the 23 other kids in the class don’t have a parent who’s an author.  They will all leave this class thinking they are great writers.

And people wonder why there are so many bad manuscripts out there in the pipeline?

“I don’t know why these agents are rejecting me.  Mrs.  So-And-So from third grade said I was a genius.”

Sad, really.

Have you ever been in a situation like this?

33 Comments

Posted in Senseless Ranting

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Flash Fiction Friday on Tuesday – Calm after the storm

Posted on May 1, 2012 | 21 comments

Set the timer for five minutes.  Ummm…  Rain…  Go!

The unyielding drumming of rain on the skylights rattles the room.  The lamps cannot even penetrate the dismal dread of the storm.  Clouds swirl and billow overhead, while lightning demands attention as it crackles through the sky.

Stop.

Silence.

The eye of the storm.

The wary stand, and open their doors.  The porches damp, the yards flooded. 

The clouds break overhead.

Sunlight?

Beyond the trees, a glow of cheer appears.  A giant bow of color reaching across the sky.

I smile, and raise my eyes to the sun.  Dread falls from my soul.  Banished.  Life starts anew.

Okay… that was a little weird.  For a minute I think I was writing poetry.  I never know what’s going to shoot out of my fingers when I set that timer.

21 Comments

Posted in Flash Fiction

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The Art of the Conflict – Keeping your Pacing while keeping your reader engaged.

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 30 comments

Recently I was speaking to some writers, and the topic of “art in writing” came up.  We were talking about art in conflict, and I think some people didn’t quite “get it”.

Writing sometimes can get “stale”.  I know, I’ve caught myself doing it.  It’s really easy to get caught up in your dialog, especially during a conflict.  The dialog will start shooting out of your fingers.  This character says this, that character yells that.  You have a clear vision of the scene, but you just type out the dialog part.  Problem is, since you have the “clear vision” you “see” what is happening when you read it back to yourself, and you might not realize that the “art” is missing.

One of my beta partners called me on this about 8 months ago.  He told me that it sounded like my characters were sitting there on each side of a table reading lines of a script to each other.  There was nothing else happening but dialog.

I was a little surprised by the comment.  After all, they were raising their hands, slamming their fists, throwing things… weren’t they?  Well, honestly… only in my head.  That’s the way I envisioned it, but I forgot to add that to the “art” of the conflict.  When I read it back… he was right.

My challenge was then, to go back and CREATE the art.  In doing so however, I needed to make sure I didn’t SLOW DOWN the conflict.  I needed to keep it flowing.  I needed to keep the pacing.  I needed to keep the intensity of the scene.

Much easier said than done.

That is why it is an “art”.  It takes trial and error, and practice.  If your “art” pulls your reader out of the story, and reminds them that they are reading, or even worse… makes them start skimming to get to the good stuff… you have spoiled your story for the sake of art.

The author who can create art, and keep the reader engaged, is a true storyteller.

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Posted in Author Advice, General Writing Tips

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