I’ve been seriously writing (serious meaning not only writing but submitting my work for publication) since 1997. The first contest I ever entered was the Glendale Public Library’s Short Story Contest in Arizona. My story, “Grandma Jo’s Alligator Honeymoon,” placed 3rd.

I thought that was a pretty good showing for my first contest. Since then I’ve entered dozen more contests, and have racked up several Honorable Mentions, 3rd Places and even a couple 2nd Places, but a 1st Place has eluded me. (Well, I did sort of get one for an essay I wrote. And I think $5 or $10 for it too. But I also think it was split between other winners. It wasn’t a true 1st place.)

But today I received a surprise package in the mail from Writers’ Journal. I’d forgotten I’d entered their Fiction Contest back in January. I submitted “Night of the Villistas,” a historical romance. I thought maybe I’d gotten another H.M., or maybe it was a package trying to solicit a subscription.

Nope, it was a winner’s packet, complete with my complimentary copy with my story in it, a certificate, and $500! Hot damn!

I’ve always loved the story but could never seem to get it accepted anywhere. It always got great compliments but it just never seemed to be right for anybody.

Until this contest. I’m glad I didn’t give up hope and kept believing in it. It was the little short story that could!

I’ve been moaning to my writing gal pals (specifically Chris of Candid Canine and Jan of the newly launched Your Space and Time) how I’ve been on this awful rejection streak. It’s lasted like six months! (But it feels like a freaking lifetime!)

Last year, even with starting it off one-handed, sick from the chemo, and battling for my life, I somehow managed to write. It actually inspired me to keep going.

It was also one of my most productive fiction submission years since 2007. (I submitted 46 stories then. I did 29 last year, compared to only 10 in 2008! However, I did have some major life upheaval in 2008, so I do have to take that into consideration. Yet overall I was still down. In 2005 and 2006 I was submitting 50 and 60 pieces a year. In 2004 I did 80!)

Anyway, when I got the news I had cancer I did some soul searching and decided, as much as Wayne hates it and thinks I’m wasting my time and tries to discourage me with his pessimism, writing is my passion and not pursuing it denies my authentic self happiness. Which is just no longer acceptable.

So…I set out on a quest to write, write, write and submit, submit, submit during my good weeks. (Meaning, my non-chemo, wretching into my pukey bucket every five seconds weeks.)

I was on a roll until mid-August. With the exception of one flash at Flashes in the Dark, everything else was getting rejected. Or the publishers were going out of business. Or they flat just never responded period.

I got discouraged and decided to instead focus all of my energy on Haunt Jaunts.

I told myself I’d also work on Shadyside, my horror novel, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was suddenly gripped with not being able to handle the rejections.

Which has never happened to me. Rejections usually inspire me to try harder. Not this time. They were paralyzing me from acting. Both writing fiction and submitting.

But by the end of last year, I had that itch again. (And it wasn’t just from the case of Shingles I got! It was that itch to write.)

I’m never short on story ideas. I was getting more and more every day. The red book I store them all in was growing and growing.

I know Life can be cruel, but no way would my Muse be sending all these ideas if I wasn’t supposed to do something with them.

So, I resolved to get back on the horse. It throws me off again? Tough. Wipe off the dirt and get back on again. And keep repeating that process until I’m able to stay on that darn horse!

Well, what do you know?

Sylvia from Bylines, which I’d been featured in twice before, wrote with an acceptance congratulating me on my essay being included in this year’s calendar too! I had given up hope on that one because I usually hear back from her way before December. She’d had some Life challenges too which had caused a delay, but the calendar would still be released.

Woohoo! That was my first streak-breaker!

Then this morning I checked emails and had one from Lori at Flashes in the Dark. She was writing to tell me that my submission “Between the Wolf and the Dog” (my first one not just for 2010, but as part of my “Ride That Horse No Matter What!” campaign) would go live on January 18th.

SWEET!

Streak broken! Confidence reboosted. For now I have a grip on the reigns.

But if the darn horse bucks me off down the path, which I know it will, woo doggie, I’ll be ready to brush myself off, tend any bruises, and get back on it again. Yee haw!

Yep, that’s me. Cowgirl Courtie, saddled up and ready to ride in 2010!

When I first signed on with PublishAmerica back in 2004, I did so with my eyes wide open. I read all the chatter about how bad they were. How they were a POD/vanity publisher. How they didn’t have much in the way of submission standards and would take any old author, just look at the experiment those sci fi authors did. (Supposedly well established sci fi authors got together and threw together a crap book that PA accepted for publicatlion, even though it was ripe with all kinds of errors.)

I agreed they were POD…as in Print on Demand in the form of using that for their publishing method. But they never charged me a dime to produce my book, so they weren’t vanity. But, as people still do, they associate POD automatically with vanity.

However, I decided to take my chances. I looked at it as a learning experience.

Here’s what I learned:

1. The importance of editing. PA had a sort of editing process, but, no, it was neither very good nor very elaborate. I was assigned an editor, but they didn’t do much in the way of editing my work. When Beneath the Morvan Moon was released, there were at least five errors of various proportions (mostly typos or left out words) that readers pointed out to me. One or two I see even in the big New York publisher books. Five was too many.
2. The importance of price point. The price was too high. Upon release PA offered special pricing, $18.95. For a trade paperback book that was 80,000 words long (250 pages), that was about $4 higher than what most trade paperbacks were going for. But the $18.95 was a special price. It was a new release discounted price from the real price of $21.95. Well, that’s just ridiculous but…
3. I’m my own worst enemy. I learned I could talk myself into believing my book would be different. Somehow it’d become a hit, I could negotiate with them to lower the price, and I’d work my butt off to sell, sell, sell. Well, that all sounds nice, but what it boiled down to was I wasn’t being realistic. I talked myself into believing something other than the facts that were at hand. Which was PA’s pricing stunk and…
4. Publisher’s have reps –some better than others. If a publisher isn’t listed with Ingram or Baker & Taylor, or they don’t accept returns, booksellers don’t take the author seriously. When I first published PA didn’t accept returns. It’s hard enough for a first time author with an independent press to get bookstores to agree to a signing, but PA made it even harder.Which leads to my next revelation…
5. Promotion! The harder an author has to work doing promotion, the less time it leaves for the writing. I fully understand that I have to do some face time when marketing and promoting my own book. But when I have to spin my wheels finding all sorts of other avenues to do that because regular avenues are closed down to me…it wastes a lot of valuable time.
6. Back to the importance of price point. But the number one thing truly is the book’s price point. Not only did PA’s stink, but their pricing methodolgy didn’t make an iota of sense. Instead of lowering my book’s price after 4 years and way slow (okay, void) sales, PA ended up raising my book’s price from the ridiculous amount of $21.95 to the completely ludicrous amount of $27.95. Come on, for a trade paperback? Who the hell is going to buy that?
7. Integrity with royalities. Not that I’d made much in the way of royalties (thanks in part to their crap pricing), I’d had no trouble with receiving royalties statements. Even when I’d sold no books, I got my statements on time telling me as much. But last year I attended Southern Festival of Books and the organizers ordered a bunch of copies. I never saw a royalty check from that. However, almost a year later I received a royalty statement saying I owed $30 for the return of my books. I called PA immediately to cry foul. “How can you ding me when you never paid me to begin with?” No response. I emailed and asked the same thing, “Hey, you’re trying to say I owe you $30 but you never paid me that to start with! What’s up?” Again, no response. So I learned that, yes, PA is pretty shitty about screwing authors out of royalties if they find a way to do it.
8. A lesson in desperation. The number one thing I learned is I’ll never get desperate enough to use PA ever again. Their products are way too overpriced for the marketplace. They know how much they expect each author to sell to friends and relatives to make a profit. And if you happen to sell beyond that and have a hit on your hands, great! They’ll do even better. But overall their concept plays on author emotions and on the kindheartedness and support of friends and loved ones to buy an author’s book.

Overall it was an excellent learning process. However, I hope to find a different publisher for one of my next books and have a better, more positive learning experience!

The past few years I’ve really toyed with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo. Lots of writers I either know or follow do it.

Take for instance Lisa Logan (whose blog is Writing in My Wildest Dreams.) One of her recent posts is about how she’s participating in NaNoWriMo again this year. It’s her fourth year. The projects she did in the previous three years all have been published or are under contract. (She shares some great tips for how to successfully cross the finish-line, btw.)

Her post was really inspiring and motivating. I’d love to do it and be like Lisa, but November sucks for me to dedicate time to just my fiction. Not with Thanksgiving in there. But this year I thought, “Even with Thanksgiving I can do it! Or at least I can try. I’ve been wanting to for so long now!”

Last year I vowed to…but that’s when I was starting to go downhill from what I’d later learn was the cancer ravaging me. I was lucky to accomplish much of anything back then.

The November before (2007) Wayne was in the process of moving home after a five month separation. (We were separated because he’d taken a job in Florida and we were planning to move. I’d stayed behind to sell the house.) The last thing I wanted to do was take any more time away from my marriage. I was too happy to have him home and not have the stress of constantly keeping the house clean weighing me down!

But this year, ever since September, I’ve been thinking about NaNoWriMo. Which of the many book ideas I have would I pick to be my NaNoWriMo project?

That was part of the problem. I couldn’t decide. And then Wayne informed me he has two weeks off and he’s going to be taking vacation, where do I want to go? Plus there’s Thanksgiving, and I have to get my port out…well, that cinched it. I know what happens when I’m interrupted too much. I meltdown and don’t write. The last thing I need is to start another book and get pulled away from it and leave it hanging.

So, I’ve decided while I’m officially not doing NaNoWriMo this year, I am going to use the time I do have to finish one of the books I have started.

Here it is November 3rd though and I’m still trying to figure out which book to concentrate on! Shadyside (a horror), The Girl of His Dreams (a romance), The Dungeness Curse (a paranormal romance), Dot’s Girls (women’s fiction), The Painting Circle (women’s fiction), or A Past Life Love Story (romance/women’s fiction)…decisions, decisions.

Maybe I’ll figure it out tomorrow!

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, I wish you speedy fingers and strong cups of coffee or tea!