 Getting Published -- The Long
and Winding Road
I haven't held an actual paying
job outside the home for many years. Most of my books were written while I was
working as a "domestic engineer" and a mother. Being self-employed gave me the
chance to do volunteer work at my kids' schools, such as putting out school
newsletters and chaperoning field trips. Many field trips....
I've always written, just as
I've always breathed. I didn't start trying to sell my work until well into
adulthood, though, and got off to a good start in the f/sf field with several
short story sales. It took a while to sell a novel.
Sabazel was actually the
third novel I wrote. The first two were science fiction and will remain forever
locked away in my closet -- I don't want anyone to blackmail me with them! Let's
just say they were good learning experiences.
Sabazel started a four-book
multi-generational saga which is set in a fantasy Middle East and India and was
inspired by stories of Alexander the Great having an Amazon lover. I then went
on to write contemporary novels set in today's world, albeit a world where
ghosts are real, magic works, and history is far from dead and buried.
I've never written a "straight"
novel, although a dozen or so of my short stories have no fantasy element in
them. I find it even harder to write a story without some sort of romantic
element. I don't do this deliberately, no--I would never choose deliberately to
restrict my sales! Marketing departments and booksellers are only now, I think,
catching up with those readers who like genre-blending books. And you can see
why. If it's your job to get a book into the hands of the public, you have to
tell them what it is, you have to find a slot in the bookstore to put it in.
My recent books are more likely
to show up as mystery than anything else, although
Shadows in Scarlet, for
example, is paranormal romance with a mystery element.
As for why I weave together the
genres, it's because I like getting the whole picture of a situation, not just a
small corner of one. Mystery is a vital part of romance, isn't it? And ghost
stories are fun--in fiction, at least. I've had a couple of ghostly experiences
that weren't fun at all.
I have forced myself to become
more of a plotter over the years, simply because it cuts down on the amount of
re-writing. It's also easier to sell a book if you can describe what happens in
it ahead of time. But I only know so much about the story before it begins --
the main characters, a broad outline of events, the setting. Many of the
specific events and minor characters only come to me as I'm actually writing
them down. I'm still trying to learn to trust myself in this, to go ahead and
start writing it and know that it will come together in the end.
My muse is a handsome young
piper (I wrote about him in a short story titled, oddly enough,
"The Muse") and
he can be a bit temperamental. Drop-dead gorgeous, though.
Aren't they all? |
