Help! Harlequin + Mills and Boon

Writers, I would appreciate your help right now:

As you know, a couple of weeks ago I sent a submission to Harlequin's NY office. Their website states that it often takes 6-8 weeks for them to process submissions and that one should not give up hope of a reply for 3 months. I sent my submission snail mail which means you can figure it was about 3 days until they recieved it. So, with that in mind, it has been a very short time span since I submitted.

Today, I arrived home to a hand-addressed manilla envelope from Harlequin. It was not my SASE. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited. I opened it up to find a print-out of sumission guidlines from Mills and Boon. Going back to the envelope, I realized it had been sent all the way from the Mills and Boon office in the UK. I did not pay for postage. There is no other note in the package.

I don't understand what has happened here. Do you think they want me to re-submit to Mills and Boon this time? Why would a company pay the $2-3 of airmail charges to sent me a print-out of their submission guidlines which are posted clearly on the internet. I never requested guidlines and never contacted this office.

I am confounded. Help!

Free, Free, Free

Hey guys, this is just a short post to let you know that I am running a promotion today and tomorrow wherein both of my books will be free on kindle. I hope you read and enjoy. If you do, please remember that reviews are an indie author's best tool and leave a few words on Amazon. I'd really appreciate it and I love to hear people's thoughts on my work (even bad ones).

The Gates of Nottingham

So Many Secrets

Motivation

I know that many of the people who stop by this blog are writers themselves, most of them struggling through the indie market. So, today, I have a question for you.

What keeps you motivated?

I'll admit that I am not always super motivated. I go through periods where I think, "what is the point?". Still, I love to write and I always come back to it, usually within a matter of weeks. I doubt that I'll ever quit writing for a truly significant period of time.

We all have to start somewhere. For writers it's a blank page, an idea, and hopefully a plan. That's the easy part. The difficult part is all of the rejections and the years of work chasing a dream. Very few people work for free. Cabinet makers don't install cabinets because they love to do it. Writers do write, paid or not, because they love it. By nature of our passion for our work, we make it seem cheap to others.

I follow new people every day on twitter and get followed by new people too. Almost all of them are writers and most of them have not yet been published. With so many great novels floating around, it's easy to see why it is such a fight to sell anything. The longer you're in it, the more clear that becomes.

Yet, we keep trying. Hope over experience. I think that is a wonderful thing. Sometimes people have to look at all of the ways to fail, and still say, "I can succeed."

Vikings and Harlequin

I mentioned before that I was re-working my Viking novel for a Harlequin Historical submission. Harlequin has a long history of putting emerging authors on their feet. Did you know Kay Hooper started with Harlequin?

Though this is a path I am interested in following, I do not intend to abandon my self-published novels. Just this evening So Many Secrets got its first Amazon review and I could not be more thrilled. I may be entering The Gates of Nottingham in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award later this year as well. I have copies of both novels at home awaiting a book-signing which I had put off because the holidays did not seem to be the best time to do it, so that should be happening this month as well.

I checked the Harlequin website for any novels involving Vikings and found only one short story contained in a volume of three. An Amazon search came up with this. Barnes and Noble produced this. As you can see, there really hasn’t been many novels published through this company with a Viking protagonist.

This seems strange, given the romance genre’s penchant for strong, tall, brooding, dominant, scantily-clad warriors. Just the word Viking produces a strong image and I think that is good for this type of novel. I also noticed while browsing that most of their Viking novels seem to involve the hero and heroine in a captive/captor situation, which my novel does not.

This is why I think my novel would be a great fit for this company. It would be in keeping with their general standards but it would also be something a little new.

So what do the edits involve? Well, I’ve already written ten new pages which push the romantic relationship a little further. My hero, Yngvarr is a quiet man, but I realized that if this was going to work for Harlequin he would need to open up about his feelings more. There were exchanges between Yngvarr and Ceara which were touched on in the early drafts but needed to be fully fleshed out to work in a romance. For example, because Yngvarr is stranded in Ireland with only the clothes on his back and winter is approaching, Ceara knits him a sweater. I mentioned this, but for a romance novel I know it can be a more touching scene. I’m actually going to work on that later tonight.

My physical descriptions were also too weak for a romance novel in the early draft. I described Yngvarr as uncommonly tall and lean, with white-blond hair, a strong forehead, and a slightly hooked nose. Do you see my mistake here? No mention of the muscles! No swooning over his sheer good looks! Don’t worry, it’s fixed. Ceara is, of course, beautiful, but contrary to most romance heroines she is very tall (6’1”) and very curvaceous. What can I say? I have an extremely tall family of women and I think tall women need a shout-out. After all, it can be a little hurtful that most heroines seemed to top out at 5’4” with 5’7” being giantess height. I don’t want my tall girls feeling left out.

I’ve sent Harlequin the query and synopsis already. Their website says they generally take 6-8 weeks to process queries, but it could take up to three months. So, I decided that by sending off the query I would give myself the incentive to really focus on my re-writes. Honestly, in four days, they are practically done. When I focus, I focus.

I’ll let you guys know what happens next!

The New Year

I'm back! I hope everyone has had a fantastic holiday season celebrating (or not) in their own special way. I will admit that I am usually a complete grinch. Most years see me grumbling pretty much from Thanksgiving until the new year. This year, however, was different. For whatever reason, I was really excited about Christmas.

The tree went up two days before Thanksgiving. *shock, horror* My mom's hand-painted village was also fully assembled before turkey day. Likewise, my shopping went splendidly well and quickly. No last minute shopping or lame stocking stuffers for once.

I took down the tree and the village today, ready to reclaim the living room. Actually, this is an improvement on the years where I spent Christmas day taking down all of the decorations in between cooking the meal.

The highlight of the season for me must have been listening to local radio DJ's get so bored with the standard Christmas music that they just started playing European Christmas music. I am now well acquainted with Sweedish Christmas carols.

This time of year always sees me more focused on my writing. I suppose it is because I have a winter birthday that makes me antsy and there's no sunshine, and therefore less distractions. Right now, I'm actually working on a plan to edit my latest novel into something suitable for Harlequin. Honestly, I just want to make some money off of my work and, out of curiousity, I checked their site to see if they required agents for submisions. They do not. So, I will be re-working the Viking novel into more of a romance (nothing too lurid) and seeing how it goes. I think I will write an entire post about this later.

***But that's enough about me. Tell me how your season's been. Happy, hopeful, sad, lonely, exciting... this is the one time of year where community's really try to pull together and I do think that is wonderful.

Happy New Year Everyone!

All That Glitters

***Before I tell you about my bizarre dream, I want to tell you that both of my books are FREE on Kindle today. The Gates of Nottingham is here. So Many Secrets is here.

Last night, I dreamed I was crossing a vast desert. I was with about twenty young people and we were all dressed in drab khaki t-shirts and pants. There was one truck and on the back of it was one barrel of water. We had to walk because only four people could fit in the truck, which idled along next to us. The barrel of water was about one quarter full, we were only half-way finished with our trek, and already we were so thirsty it was painful.

Night fell and the wind began to howl in the distance. Terrified of a sandstorm, we crammed as many people as we could into the truck and into its bed. The unlucky huddled beneath it. We had no blankets, no tarps, no protection. The wind hissed closer and closer and, exhausted, I fell asleep.

When I woke, it was to cast my eyes on a beautiful forest. Sun dappled down from between the needles of California redwoods. From the bows of the redwoods hung Spanish moss. I sat up to see a large river, blue as the Mediterranean sea winding its way through the forest. There was a formation of blue rocks a little way up the river and the angry white foam which spewed up around it was the only interruption to the utter peacefulness of this mighty river. Back in the trees, away from the clearing where my comrades and I slept, thick heads of lettuce, chard, and cabbage grew as tall as my waist.

Others began to wake and look in awe around them at this strange forest. A thin, blonde girl sprang up from the lawn and dove directly into the water, eager to soothe the long days of heat and sunburn.

My comrades argued about how on earth we had ended up here and why the truck was left behind. “I don’t care,” I said, “I’m going to drink and drink and drink.”

I got up and walked into the river until I was submersed to my knees. The water was warm and crystal clear. I dipped my hands into it and drew the water toward my mouth, only to find that it was mud. Again and again, I tried but the water always turned to mud in my hands.

A scream caught my attention. My comrades pointed past me, so I turned to see the blonde swimming by the rocks. Above the rocks, an enormous crocodile, larger than any real beast swam toward her. We screamed at her as the crocodile slithered up the rocks to sun himself. She could not see him for the sun in her eyes, but she swam back to the banks of the river all the same and crocodile did not move.

Once it too swam away, I edged back toward the river and sat at the water line, starring longingly at the water that looked so pure but turned to mud in my hands. A huge nugget of gold lay to my left. Enchanted, I picked it up but it quickly transformed into a regular, blue rock, so I dropped it. Then, I saw that on the sandy bank, beneath no more than four inches of water were thousands of perfect almonds and cashews. I bent and pulled them out of the water and they turned to miniature pumpkins in my hands. Surprised that they did not turn into something worse, I laid them on the lawn where they immediately rotted into a black liquid.

Incredibly disheartened, I glanced up to see the blonde about to eat a leaf of lettuce from the giant plants just up the slope. I screamed that they might be dangerous, that everything here was rotted, warped, or was cursed and she might be poisoned. She brought the leaf closer to her mouth…

Then the dog jumped on my bed and woke me. Is that a heck of a dream or what? Was it some sort of unconscious allegory? All that glitters is not gold? All things are tarnished by human touch? I, personally, am insecure about ruining things? I don’t know, but that forest was one creepy Stephen King type of place.     

So Many Secrets Release and Contest

            This is a little belated, but So Many Secrets is now available on Amazon! As luck would have it, my scheduled release date fell during the week that I was transferred departments at work, and more specifically on the day that I had jury duty. It has been available since the 24th, as I announced it would be, but I am only now posting about it here and elsewhere on the web.

            To celebrate my second published novel, I am holding my first ever contest. Depending on how it goes, there may be more to come. The winner gets a free, autographed, first print edition of So Many Secrets and the chance to name a character in the second novel of my Northman trilogy.

            Contest Rules:

1. You get to pick a baby name! That’s fun, right? There are just a two caveats:

2. It must be a male name.

3. It must be correct to Scandinavia during the period 500AD-1000 AD. The novels are set between 816 and 820 AD, but I like to give myself leeway.

4. That’s it. I will check on the historical accuracy of the names. I do not claim to be 100% accurate all of the time, but to make this a little more difficult and to keep my writing in line, I don’t want this to be an anachronism. I will choose the name I like best. It’s going to be strictly a matter of taste, so please don’t assume you didn’t pick a perfectly lovely name if you do not win.  

If you do not want to wait, So Many Secrets is available on Kindle here and in Print here. The screencap on the print addition should be uploaded soon, but the cover is the same as seen on the Kindle addition and on my post below.