Writing is just the beginning!

So, you have this fantastic idea for a story. It takes a few days to jot down all possible ideas, figure out character names and fill in all the blanks in the plot.

We won't even discuss complete scenes popping into your head when you've finally remembered where your bed is - scenes so good you feel around for your note book and pen in the dark (the one that lives beside the bed) and start scribbling this scene down (so you can SLEEP), figuring out what you jotted down in the dark is always an adventure.

You write in note books, on the back of pages, type for hours and more hours and THERE! it's finished, your awesome story! Of course the first three times you read through it, you find humourous typo's, missing words and endless pieces that seemed like a good idea at the time, but not so much now. So that's it, it's done!

Wrong! Now you need to go through it AGAIN and figure out a summary (synopsis = bad word) to send to the publisher. I do my synopsis after the story is finished, because my characters NEVER behave and do what I've plotted them to do. I'm not sure if it's easier to do it before you write or not ... hmmm.

It's sent to the publisher, you're done! Not really! When a contract is signed, after you're finished the happy dance and telling E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E you possibly can. You begin edits. These are much different then your edits, these are the proper edits. It's entertaining at times to see how someone else interprets what you've written, mostly in a good way. Edit 1 , 2 and 3 is done! Whew!

Hopefully somewhere in all of this you get the proof of your book cover - which becomes your new picture on facebook, myspace and pretty much anywhere you can put it! The cover artists are completely brilliant and have with one picture made your story real to you! You take your fantastic cover and turn it into bookmarks, posters, ad's ... anything you can come up with that will help at some point promote your book.

Excellent! But we're not finished yet ... final edits more changes and fixing really silly (aka stupid) lines that aren't right, but were right in your head at the time.

YES! We're finished. The book is released. Kick back and relax ... not! Who is going to know that YOUR book is out there to buy if you don't tell them? P-R-O-M-O-T-E anywhere, everywhere and then promote some more.

This has been a whole new learning experience for me. I am great at jumping in and helping any author I've read or talked to, promote ... but promoting my own, that's been interesting to say the least.

I've managed to find the places, or some, to do the promoting and let the readers know that my book is now available. Book chats, loops, blogs and pages. Not to mention book stores and libraries. We can't forget facebook, myspace, twitter and Ning either. There are websites for books, for trailers and for authors too. The lists are never ending, the updates never stop.

ALL of this and I only have ONE book so far, there are more on the way, but I have to stop and wonder how authors that have a long list of books out there do it. When do they have time to write the fantastic stories that they write? The fantastic stories that I need to absorb like most people do sunlight? Truly, they are amazing people!

I only hope I can live up to the title of "author" in comparisson to the brilliant people that I've met in the past few months that have welcomed me and encouraged me when I jumped in without looking ahead.

Now that I've got all of that out, I think I'll go do some writing. Just remember the next time you read a book that you loved because it made you laugh, or cry or both - drop the author a thank you note and tell them about it. They're writing it for YOU and working hard to get it to you.

Until next time...

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Amira Press

Jacqueline Paige

~never predictable~

BELTANE MAGIC

http://jacqpaige.webs.com/