The Thrill Begins

by CJ Lyons

Twice a Virgin!

Thought that would get everyone’s attention!

Ask any published author and they can tell you about their first time…first time getting The Call, that is.

They will remember exactly where they were, what the weather was like, who was there. They’ll tell you about that giddy feeling when their editor (or agent) said those magic words: we want to buy your book.

My Call came in 2004. I experienced all the usual spectrum of emotions: elation, terror, skepticism—this must be a joke, right? Or some horrible mistake? Followed by the glow of accomplishment.

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By Julie Kramer

I’ve spent my career as a television news producer, doing investigative stories, field work, live shots and newscasts. Often I’d complain how much easier my work would be if I didn’t have to stick with the facts. So when I tried writing fiction, what a surprise to hear me complain how much easier my work would be if only I had some facts.

My point is, fiction is harder than it looks. For those of us geared in reality, making stuff up can feel like cheating. Once I worked through that issue, I found my news skills to be an excellent foundation for fiction.

First, deadlines didn’t scare me. Read the rest of this entry »

By JT Ellison

May 9th, 2006.

It was a lovely spring afternoon, and my parents were visiting as they drove across country on their bi-annual trip between houses. We were watching A History of Violence, and I remember squirming with the slightest bit of embarrassment because we were at the cheerleader scene. Definitely the movie to watch with your parents, I’m telling you. So when the phone rang, I was relieved, it meant we could hit pause. I looked at the television screen right before the caller ID, Viggo’s head had juuuuuuust disappeared, and I was mentally cursing my ability to hit the pause button at precisely the worst moment when I glanced at the caller ID screen and saw the 212 area code.

Cue heart pounding.

Cue exceptionally bad word, starting with F and ending in me. “F*&# me, it’s Scott,” I said, with the utmost delicacy. Hey, I am a crime fiction writer, after all.

By Jordan Dane

Dateline: www.jordandane.com …

In the dead of winter, Jordan served as a checkpoint volunteer on the Iditaski Race in Alaska. JD got flown to a remote no-frills lodge via small floatplane that departed from a frozen lake and landed on the iced-over Yentna River. (Part of this endurance cross-country ski and snowshoe competition follows sections of the Iditarod Trail.) JD checked for mandatory gear, watched for signs of hypothermia, and helped feed the international mix of race participants.

• Jordan once sewed a 6-foot banana—complete with zippered yellow peel and bruises—and camped outside the house of a relative of Mike Nesmith, the wool hatted Monkey. (Mike and Davy Jones were visiting San Antonio at the time.) Wisely, neither Monkey came out of the house that weekend.

• Jordan created a promotional button that was named Best Slogan of the Year in a national energy magazine. The button was featured on the front cover. The slogan? “Ask me if I have gas” The next year, JD followed that success with another button – “May all your gas be natural”.

• As an architect working on the development of downtown San Antonio, JD’s father named the San Antonio River - the Paseo Del Rio.

For more information on the adventures of Jordan Dane, author of No One Heard Her Scream, please visit her website at www.jordandane.com.

By Jordan Dane

I must admit, I was skeptical about blogging in general. It seemed like the most successful people blogged with such regularity and innovation that I only saw it as a potential time drain without any impact on sales. Then, I found the MySpace version of blogging and began to tinker. Here’s what I discovered:

MySpace is FREE and can be used as a business tool for authors. The site claims over 200+ million registered users. And most of these users list their book preferences with great enthusiasm. The MySpace community is an electronically linked group of customer leads. It’s not just for twenty-somethings trying to hook up or Dateline’s mechanism to identify future pedophile guests. And did I mention MySpace was FREE?

My brilliant web designer created my blog on MySpace for a minimal fee. Building a brand, I believed it was important to carry over a consistent design. I also linked my website to my blog to run contests easily, show excerpts, and allow my blog buddies to navigate between my blog and website with ease. Plus, I have a direct sign-up to my mailing list on my blog site, a definite recommendation. Once I had a MySpace blog, I began to explore. Read the rest of this entry »

By CJ Lyons

Secret One: Write the damn book!

Of course, the all important first step is to finish a manuscript. Maybe not even one, it might take several. Most people don’t realize it, but the average published author writes over half a million words before they sell.

Let me repeat that. Half a million words.

We may hear of those “overnight” successes, but they are rare.

Just be prepared that you might not hit a home run the first time out—but that’s all right, because you’ll be building contacts and learning valuable tips that will help your writing career. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kelli Stanley

I’m a lot of things, but I’ve never considered myself a thriller writer. Oh, I hope I can generate thrills when needed—a description of a damp, dank underground religious temple, especially with a corpse on the altar, can coax a few goose bumps. But here I was, already madly crossing genres with historical mystery-cum-hardboiled noir. I never considered joining ITW.

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By Laura Benedict

So, you wrote and sold your first book. Congratulations! How did you do it? If you were like me, this is what you did:

1) In mid-March, you visited your long-suffering agent of eight years who tells you to stop writing stuff no one will read and to get on the stick and write a “thriller or something.”

2) Mortified, started said thriller on the airplane home.

3) Realized, “Hey, it’s what I most enjoy reading, anyway! Why didn’t I do this years ago?” Read the rest of this entry »

By Laura Benedict

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t read a single review of my debut novel ISABELLA MOON when they came out.
I’ve reviewed books myself on a freelance basis for a Michigan newspaper for over ten years, I’m married to a writer, and I have many writer friends, so I’m deeply aware of how affecting reviews—both positive and negative—can be.

But any writer who says he or she doesn’t read reviews of their books is probably fibbing. It’s a sore, sore temptation to listen in on what folks are saying about your baby, even when you suspect that someone out there is going to claim it’s ugly as sin.

The early word was not great. Two out of the Big Four—Kirkus, PW, Library Journal, and Booklist—were stinkers. They weren’t just bad. They were cruel. And I mean cruel, as in, “who did I piss off to get this kind of treatment?” cruel. As a writer, that was my first, defensive reaction. They couldn’t have possibly read the same book I wrote! The other two were better, but equivocal. I knew I should’ve been grateful: not everyone gets her first book reviewed by the Big Four. I found myself saying stiff-upper-lip things like: “Well, I wanted to run with the big dogs. Guess I’m off the porch, now!” Read the rest of this entry »

By Rebecca Cantrell

My father was a teamster and I don’t have TV, so I was doubly unprepared for picketing with the WGA writers in November. I took a morning off from my vacation, googled to find the nearest studio, and headed over. I hit the jackpot, because Disney and ABC are right across the street from each other so I could walk two lines.

ME

I’m a writer. And I’m here to help.

Usually that just makes people collapse in gales of laughter, but this was a writer-friendly crowd.

Someone immediately gave me a sign and I marched back and forth in front of the Disney entrance with a group of picketers. It was weird seeing all those writers together outside, squinting at the sun. Mostly, we’re an indoor species. Read the rest of this entry »