Borroughs Publishing E-newsletter

Boroughs Publishing Group E-Newsletter - July 2012 From: Boroughs Publishing Group info@boroughspublishinggroup.com To: etsag1998 Date: Thu, Jul 19, 2012 10:20 am Like Us Follow Us Forward to a friend Visit our web site for more. July 2012 > bpg news > boroughs about town > e-musements > voices Having trouble viewing this email? View it in a browser. Boroughs Publishing Group News @ FIRST SIGHT Our Romance Short Story Contest The SEMI-FINALS have begun. Visit our website and read each story’s first page along with the title and pitch. Voting closes at midnight Pacific Time July 22nd. After our editors weigh in and we’ve tabulated the votes, we move on to… THE FINALS: On July 24, 2012, the first three pages of finalist’s stories will be posted for voting. The announcement of the winner of the @ FIRST SIGHT contest will be made at 5:45 p.m., Friday, July 27, 2012, at our Publisher Open House at the RWA convention in Anaheim, California, and the results will be Tweeted and publicized on our website. TO VOTE Support these wonderful authors. You and everyone you know should visit www.boroughspublishinggroup.com, find the link to the @ First Sight contest, then cast your votes for stories that tickle your fancy and make you want more. You may vote for every story you like. PRIZES ALL FINALISTS will be offered: •A contract to have their story published and sold by Boroughs Publishing Group •A full editorial process to make their story shine THE FINALIST with the most popular website votes will be offered: •A critique by an editor of a full-length manuscript submission to Boroughs, with a turn-around time of two weeks THE WINNER, chosen from our FINALISTS by our editorial staff, will receive: •cover art specifically tailored to the story •A critique by our Editor-in-Chief of a full-length manuscript submission to Boroughs, with a turn-around time of two weeks •75% of the winning story’s net royalties Boroughs About Town (& Country) In Anaheim The Romance Writers of America national convention will be held this year in California, at the Anaheim Marriott, July 25th - 28th You’ll find many of our authors at the Literacy Signing in the Anaheim Convention Center on Wednesday, July 25th from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. RWA remains the best single resource for aspiring romance writers, bringing together authors, editors and all types of publishing professionals. For information about the conference, go to: http://www.rwa.org/cs/conferences_and_events. For information about RWA or a chapter near you, visit: http://www.rwa.org/cs/about_rwa. In Cyberspace For those of you not attending the RWA conference, we invite you to join us at Romance Divas 2012 Not Going to Conference Conference (NGTCC) that takes place July 25th-28th. NGTCC is a virtual conference held on a private forum/discussion board. Boroughs will have a spotlight at NGTCC and we’ll be taking virtual pitches from noon on Friday, July 27th until noon on Saturday, July 28th. We look forward to seeing you at http://romancedivas.com. E-Musements A short monthly piece to show what's happening in the editor-in-chief's brain...and in his office. Besides reading. Lots of reading. It’s Conference Time! What are you doing with your summer? We hope you’re out by a pool, reading your favorite authors. There’s no better time for rest and relaxation than when it’s hot out, and the steamier your reading material, the quicker you’re ready to take a dip. I’m doing a fair bit of reading, myself, though I’m not near water. But this is my job, and one of my year’s highlights is quickly approaching. I’m headed to Anaheim. Romance Writers of America has its national convention every July, and if you haven’t yet checked them out, you likely should. The organization is newbie-friendly and one of the best resources for would-be authors and those with careers on the rise. I’m headed to the con, looking for the next star for Boroughs. What’s great about RWA National? If you added up all the years of experience from all the attendees, you’d probably have more books than the Library of Congress. (Well, maybe not. The LoC has around 152 million, and I don’t want to admit to being that old yet.) Wandering around to hear keynotes and symposia and workshops by the industry’s pundits is well-worth your time, especially at the start of your career. What can be more energizing than hearing tales of success from the people whose work you love? I still remember Sherrilyn Kenyon’s saga, and the hardships she faced. She was an inspiration, and so are many of the other authors struggling to make their voices heard. Hearing what publishers are currently seeking is extremely useful, too, if you have a project near completion that fits the bill. And keeping abreast of industry news is always useful, at the very least to know what you can change and what you can’t. Now, here’s what to avoid. It’s tempting to expect easy answers from these fonts of wisdom that circle the hotel. It’s human nature to desire simplicity and a clear path. “Tell me what to write.” “Tell me what will sell.” “Tell me exactly how I can avoid all the missteps and write a bestseller right from the get-go.” As if it were that easy. Most advice comes from a very specific point of view, and the appropriate POV for your situation switches as much as a first-time author’s narrative. Publishers know what’s selling now, or in last month’s sales reports, and many chase the trend. Authors know what they wrote, because that’s what made them tick; it won’t necessarily drive you. And then there will be those veterans fighting yesterday’s wars, telling you how things aren’t as good as they used to be or that the problems outweigh the opportunities. If you listen to them, you might as well give up now, because this industry of ours is only going to keep changing. You might as well listen to your critique partner who says, “Nobody will ever buy a book about BDSM. It’s just not mainstream.” But you wouldn’t do that. The people working at and coming to Boroughs, we realize this is a time of golden opportunity, a time to hear and be heard. So, go. Learn. Be inspired. If you know the rules, you can break them. But don’t write for yesterday. Our rules are being broken fast and furious, so don’t get too caught up. Just write from the heart, because true emotion will never go out of date. And if all of this industry stuff sounds too daunting…just go read a favorite book by the pool. There’s plenty to be learned by that, too. Voices Where you get to hear the people who make publishing–and Boroughs especially–what it is. Shirley Ann Wilder I dream a lot of my novels. Literally. Though I haven’t published them all. My love for the written word apparently started before I went to school. I was the youngest of six children, and my brother, three years older than I, struggled a bit when he entered first grade. The teacher sent home books for him to practice reading, and I was evidently fascinated by the idea that those funny-looking marks actually meant something. I nagged everyone in the family to tell me: “What’s this word?” “What’s this say?” By the time I started kindergarten, I already knew quite a bit. In those days, children under five years old could ride the bus for free, and because I was short Mother figured she could save a nickel. Imagine her chagrin when passed me off as under five, I took my seat and proceeded to read all the ads posted inside the bus! Even as a small child I knew I was somehow different, and elementary school was less than a positive experience. My parents separated, and my mother became the sole support of the four children still at home. My escape was the school library. They had so many books, and I could read them for free. I especially loved Walter Farley’s series with the Black Stallion. In my fantasy world, I was the kid riding the Black Stallion, and I was the person who rescued My Friend Flicka. My love for horses was almost as deep as my love for books. I began writing stories on the inside of brown paper grocery bags, complete with illustrations, but I couldn’t understand why no one could read them properly. Then my mother pointed out that, when you begin a new sentence, you have to start it from the left side of the paper every time. I had written from left to right and then from right to left, and so on and so on. It still makes sense to me. Think of all the time you could save! When I was eight I convinced my neighborhood pals that we should all write books and sell them to make money to finance our Kool-Aid stand. I ended up writing their books as well as mine, which I pretty much plagiarized from a library book. Of course, our only buyers were parents, so little harm was done. I sold my book to my mother for five cents—the bus fare I’d saved her! After she died, when my sisters and I were getting her house ready to put on the market, I came across a box of photos and keepsakes. In the box was my book, The Talking Toys. My mother had saved it all those years. I doubt that anything I have written since or will write in the future will have the same impact. In high school I wrote poems. They were a lot shorter and didn’t require a plot. Some were about dreamy boys who didn’t give me a second look. Some were about wild horses that roamed the prairies, and later, after I was married, I wrote poems about my children. I went through short periods where I didn’t write at all. Being a mom, a den mother, a Bluebird leader, a backyard swim instructor and on the PTA board took almost all of my time. But I never could quit completely. I found I couldn’t NOT write. I finally got serious about writing after joining Romance Writers of America. It opened a door that I hadn’t known existed, though the knowledge wasn’t immediately happy. I went to my first conference and came home a bit dejected. I had thought I was the only one who really wanted to publish a book! I don’t know where I’d got that idea, but seeing over 2,000 people with the same dream as mine set me back a bit. This writing thing was not going to be so easy. It was going to be even harder because I write less from an outline than from intuition. I become every character in my books. When they get cut, I‘m the one who bleeds. And yet…all that bleeding has paid off. While writing is the hardest thing in the world, it’s also rewarding. I recently sold my novel, Too Many Cooks, to Boroughs Publishing Group, and it’s out now! It came from a recurring dream I had for several nights in a row. I think I was on one of my endless diets, and food was on my mind a lot. But, the story worked. I hope you think so too. So, for all you struggling authors out there, don’t give up your dreams. Write them down!