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Retreat = moving forward

So, the Washington Romance Writers annual retreat was this past weekend. This is my home chapter, and my favorite writer’s confab, mostly because it feels more intimate (and so, so supportive) than the bigger events. It feels so different I didn’t even tweet during the day and a half — a true retreat from the press of e-life.

I was inspired by talks by Kristan Higgins (“What are you prepared to do?”), Cathy Maxwell (“You’ve got talent!”), and especially Sherrilyn Kenyon — whose story I am still chewing over. As she said, I had no idea of her or her life, and how much can I know of anybody else’s, either?

I got good reactions during my pitch-to-agent sessions, and another reminder that I need to Always Be Marketing. That includes using a real photo, not my beloved anime mug, as my avatar. But the camera is traditionally indifferent or hostile to me, really, just no love at all. It’s so bad that sometimes at relatives’ houses I secretly steal their worst pictures of me and trash them (sorry, grandma). Just thinking of getting photos taken makes my smile turn grimacy and my face break out.

BUT marvelous planners that they are, the retreat organizers had invited a photographer who has a magic about her that set me so at ease. After another member raved about her photo session, I went and signed up for the very next session so I couldn’t back out and had no time to worry about it. And we did it — and found 4-5 images that look pretty good! She’s tweaking them, so I won’t get them for a few weeks, but that’s one giant to-do item checked off the list. All because I went to retreat. Thank you Barbara Woodard, photographic designer.

Posted 04 May 2011 † nickyp § Marketing § Thinking § Writing ‡ Comments (0) °

Everybody’s an editor

Cleo offers some guidance on my mind-map for the next story.

Posted 25 April 2011 † nickyp § Just fun § Thinking § Writing ‡ Comments (0) °

Paperback writer?

So, I’m working up a proposal for my next historical, after rough-drafting a contemporary in February and March. A bunch of the same issues keep cropping up, or is it the tree pollen distorting my field of view?

Story-wise, I seem to be building another set-of-three structure, with three pairs of protagonists-antagonists and interlocking stories. Maybe it’s too much Dickens in my diet, but I seem to want to explore many angles of a subject, be it second-chance love, duty vs. family, or whatever. Unfortunately, this is what got last year’s story rejected — too many subplots and not enough focus on the main romantic couple (one editor suggested I cut every subplot out). Am I treading down that same (reject, reject) path again? What could I do differently?

Career-wise, I am very tempted by the idea of e-publishing/self-publishing. Advantages: quicker potential payday; I can “be an author” now; I have more control over my content. Disadvantages: I’d need to spend money on my own editor, cover designer, and text-coder; I’d need to spend time now on marketing; I worry that if the story isn’t “good enough” to find a publisher, what makes me think it’s good enough to publish any other way?

One twist: I could write the interlocking stories as standalone novellas, and sell those as e-versions, and then gauge the interest in my weaving them together into a longer tale. The more successful current e-pub authors have a lot of content to sell, while my books are long and intricate and take a year or more to finish so I have not so much to sell. And if a 30k-word novella and a 120k novel both sell at 99 cents, what is the advantage to making it a novel? The pool of e-authors is relatively small now, but surely will explode; maybe now is the time to take advantage of a smaller market?

Or is this all jumping the gun? Maybe I should just keep writing the novels, and when I have five or six good ones, and when I have exhausted the query-submit-agent-publisher route, then turn to e-pub. But I want to be an author now. But I want to be a good author more. And while I want to make money from my writing, I can wait another few years to do it: If our current economy holds steady, I won’t need to get a more-immediately-lucrative second job until the end of 2012.

All this mental buzz (plus my bad reaction to the tree pollen) has cut into my writing time this week. That won’t get me anywhere. Weekend of writing coming up (with a break for the DC science writers’ workshop). And — great timing — the next weekend is the Washington Romance Writers annual retreat; maybe my fellow scribes have found some answers.

Posted 21 April 2011 † nickyp § Marketing § Thinking § Writing ‡ Comments (0) °

Stealing Trust: Marylanders Speak Out

The video my husband produced for the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, about victims of financial fraud, opens two weeks from today, May 4 at 7 pm at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore ($8, $3 members). Come one, come all! Or watch more parts of it on MCRC’s YouTube channel. UPDATE: Shows added: June 14 at the Enoch Pratt Free library in Baltimore; July 11 at the SE Anchor library in the Highlandtown section of Baltimore.

Posted 20 April 2011 † nickyp § Just fun § Thinking ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Life is learning

Life is Learning | HHMI iPad app Promo from Small Mammal on Vimeo.

Neuroscience Nobelist (and Dana Alliance vice-chairman) Eric Kandel has a sense of humor, too.

Posted 19 April 2011 † nickyp § Brain science § Just fun ‡ Comments (0) °

Conventioneering

This week, I’m headed to Los Angeles for the RT Booklovers convention. It’s put on by RT Book Reviews magazine, formerly Romantic Times magazine but it’s branched out to cover most genre fiction (mystery, fantasy, horror, etc.). I’ve not been before, but I hear it has fun parties and good workshops. Unlike the other writing conventions I’ve been to, this one looks like it has a “-con” feel. Like Comicon and Otakon, there are many chances to dress up in fantastic garb, for the faery ball, the steampunk soirees, the vampire ball, and more.

Plus, this one has tracks for readers as well as writers, booksellers, and librarians. For readers, there are lots of chances to see many favorite authors and meet new ones. For me as a writer, this is a great chance to hear what die-hard readers like and dislike and what they’d like to read more of — here’s hoping it’s long historical fiction with romantic elements!

I’ll ride the reader track for a day or two, but I’m also looking forward to two business panels, one of editors and one of agents, on what kinds of stories they’re looking for right now. There are a lot of seminars on how e-books are changing how we sell our stories, too. Plus the Mr. Romance contest!

You can follow the goings-on via Twitter, hashtag #RT11.

Posted 04 April 2011 † nickyp § Books § Marketing § Writing ‡ Comments (0) °

Treating mind diseases with brain pacemakers

I have a new post up at the Dana Foundation blog, “Are we overeager to surgically stimulate the mind?” Here’s the top:

When is a new brain treatment ready for the real world? After many trials and much research, the therapy known as deep brain stimulation (DBS) was approved by the FDA to treat Parkinson’s disease and tremor. There is strong evidence it works as well or better than drugs in some cases of these motor-circuit disorders, as you can see in these “60 Minutes” clips featuring Sybil Guthrie (pt 1 before surgery, part 2 surgery and after). Now DBS is being tried to treat diseases such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s, and severe depression. While it is still considered a very experimental treatment for the latter two cases, in 2009, the FDA bypassed its normal procedure to approve the use of DBS for OCD without first requiring the years of research to prove it works on that disorder.

This relatively quick action was praised by doctors and researchers who work with people who have severe OCD. For these patients, there is very little treatment that works, and though their disability can be great, their numbers are too small to entice device makers to spend the money on potentially profitless experimentation. But some in the field have sounded a warning.

Read the rest at danapress.typepad.com.

Posted 04 April 2011 † nickyp § Brain science ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

National Poetry Month

In honor of National Poetry month and the people who die in our country’s many wars, here’s one of my favorite poems, from the book MORE POEMS, by A.E. Houseman:

XXXVI

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

Another of my faves is “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” by Randall Jarrell.

What are your favorites? “My Mistress’ Eyes…” or something by Emily Dickinson (see earlier post)? I’d love to learn some new ones.

Posted 02 April 2011 † nickyp § Just fun ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Release the queries!

So, I’ve started shopping my latest story. Here is the work-in-progress description. Next week, I’m thinking of adding another excerpt on the blog from later in story. Like the news lately, it’s about unarmed people gathering together and facing threat from armed forces. [UPDATE: Uh-oh, the scene also has a couple spoilers in it, so I'm holding off. The good news is that means it's tightly woven and, it is to be hoped, exciting.]

Manchester, 1819 — After a broken engagement and rushed marriage, Madeline Wetherby struggles to adapt to her new role as a merchant’s wife and to a new style of town, changing rapidly as machines displace skilled workers. As whispers of rebellion grow, a mill is set on fire, and Manchester starts to roil in the summer heat, she discovers her birth father is one of the weavers her husband is putting out of work—and a radical leader. Now she must decide whether the family she longs for can be made of the man of her heart or the people of her blood.

I see this as the sort of book chatty book clubs would enjoy. It’s not a “straight romance,” but it has more romance than a “straight historical.” It’s a cross-over, mashup, reading delight!

Posted 21 March 2011 † nickyp § Books § Marketing § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , ,

Law & the Brain

Last week, as part of Brain Awareness Week, I sat in on a conference in New York called “Law & the Brain: How Recent Advances in Neuroscience Impact the Law.” My story is up on the Dana Foundation site, along with a lot of links to other resources in that vein.

The story has a lot of good stuff, but as always some good bits got left out to make a coherent story — after all, there were 10 hours of lectures and discussions. So I tried a Twitter “delay-stream” (like a live-stream only a few days later, so I could see what really resonated, using hashtag #LawBrain. Got a little response, so I might try it again.

A big chunk of what I couldn’t cover was about juveniles, brain development, and the law. I’ll be going to another conference on kids and brain development at the end of April, so maybe I can sneak some of the info there. But for now, this was my favorite quote: “The human beings around a teenager act as their frontal lobes,” said Abigail Baird of Vassar. “Parenting a teen is gradually handing over to them pieces of their frontal lobe.”

Posted 20 March 2011 † nickyp § Brain science ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , ,