Conference Is Coming! Are You Ready To Submit?

The ACFW conference is right around the corner!

And you’re ready! It’s time. Really time. You’ve been writing and rewriting this book for eons. Or at least it feels like eons. You want to submit it, get going on your stellar writing career. Time’s a wastin’!

Maybe you haven’t been working on it for eons, but you went to a conference or two, and you’ve heard an editor say she was really looking for the next great romance author to groom and you have just the story.

Or finally, one of the BIG PUBLISHERS is actively seeking speculative fiction and your space navy story is ready for the picking.

Perhaps your story has been through a critique or edit of some kind. A reader (mom, dad, sister, best friend, hubby, wifey) LOVED it. They want more! Now.

So you rush your baby off to an editor or agent. Maybe some of you rush it off to someone like me or Susie here at My Book Therapy.

To Go Indie or Not To Go Indie

The world of publishing is in an upheaval.

Amazon, the “book” web site we all used to peruse for our books is doing all they can to command the publishing world.

They say they believe books are to be affordable. They claim to care about both the reader and the writer. But not much at all for the publisher.

So there’s been price wars between the Big 5 and Amazon. With Barnes & Noble somewhere in the middle.

Word is traditional publishers are trying to preserve literary excellence. And trying to uphold the hardback.

Of which they’ve been trying to do since 1939 when the paperback started taking over publishing.

So it’s price v quality again. The aristocracy – the hardback v. commoner – the paperback.

Publishers are being swallowed up like minnows by big fish Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House and Macmillan.

While they are trying to hold onto the old way of doing things — or so it seems — Amazon continues to innovate.

Recently, they came up with Kindle Unlimited. For $9 a month, you can borrow all kinds of books. But the Big 5 have been excluded from this feature.

Breaking Down the Basics of Tension

All right. You’ve read my post before on tension but I’m not sure I can stress it enough.

Tension is key!!

TENSION! TENSION! TENSION!

I’ve been doing some reading lately, amid deadline fever, and found the tension to be on this low side.

The stories were good. Well written. Great characters. But at some point, I found myself skipping pages because I just couldn’t wonder around inside their heads my more.

Here’s the deal. This is just the truth. Tension talks.

The more your characters dialog, the more likely they are to say things that make one another mad, or reveal a secret, perhaps say something embarrassing or something controversial and an argument starts.

Dialog is the gas pedal for tension.

Being At The Top Of Your Game

As I write to you from my turret tower, my friend Carrie sitting on the floor with my dog Lola, I gaze out my window at my farm…

Wait, there’s no farm. Pardon me, I’m a bit punchy. I lapsed into Christmas in Connecticut.

I finishing a rewrite, How To Catch A Prince. It’s been a little over a month now. I know some people, who shall be nameless, Susan May Warren, write whole books from scratch in that amount of time, but I am not such a writer.

I’m getting fast but I’m like to mull. Chew. Think. I’m the kind of person who comes up with a fabulous retort or brilliant response to a conversation three days later.

But then no one cares to hear my amazing insight.

I process. Or iProcess. Whichever. I am a Macophile.

Anyway.