Suck it up, Princess

I fully understand that the book is the author’s baby, something they have sweated tears and blood over for weeks, months, in some cases even years, but there comes a time when the author needs to pull up her big girl panties, tie a knot, and move on.



So the publisher ignored your carefully prepared fact sheet and the cover art looks nothing like you envisioned the heroine to be. If the hair color and body shape is reasonably accurate, and she’s not pictured in the snow when your story takes place in midsummer, and the title and your name is spelled correctly, then it’s time to suck it up, Princess. Publishers produce cover art on a budget. There are also house style rules that must be obeyed. Other quirks include things like some fonts don’t translate into various download formats so can’t be used.



Acting like a drama queen because the heroine’s hair is too long or too short is usually a waste of time. If you ask nicely, the artist may be able to change it. If the publisher says no, accept that, tie a knot and move on.

Sometimes I watch on chat loops as arguments about the placement of commas, or whether or not a word is hyphenated, go on for days or even weeks. Most publishers have a house style manual. You may always have written using the Oxford comma. Many publishers have now deleted it. They are not going to reinstate it no matter how much you argue.

Similarly with hyphenation. Go to www.onelook.com. That will give you an idea about how a word is usually spelled. But even so, if house style is to spell it a different way, then that’s the way it’ll be.



For something not house style, if you want it spelled the way 2 out of 27 records show it, I don’t think the publisher will agree. Again, you can ask politely, but prepare yourself for rejection. The author’s job is to write the book. Once you sign a contract you agree to follow house style and editing processes. If you spend the entire editing cycle in tears, maybe this is not the publisher for you. Submit elsewhere next time. Live and learn. Or go Indie. That way at least you have control over your cover art. But remember, if the way you spell and punctuate in your Indie book is too different from the norm, you’ll pull your reader out of the story and they won’t buy your next book. Meanwhile, suck it up, Princess.



Helen Woodall

Freelance Editor

http://helenwoodallfreelanceediting.blogspot.com/



**Amarinda here...Want a good, experienced editor who will not piss around with your book and who has actually been in the business more that 2 seconds? I totally recommend Helen Woodall.

Paperback writer...

Dear Sir or Madam will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look

Writing? Wanna' write? Go for it...anyone can do it...

Stop stuffing around...

...and write woman!!! Back tomorrow...think evil, delicious thoughts while I'm gone...

Random thought # 9127…

Is it easier to write sex when you’re having sex or is it like being an athlete where you perform better without sex before the big game?

Just pondering slotting A into B and the perils of doing so either knowing with cold blooded intention you do so to write a story or whimsically because you’re buzzed from sex - and then which one makes a better read? And then there’s the thought that too much thinking gives you a leg cramp as does sex…it's all too hard or maybe too soft...

Hmmm…

32 Chinese women arrested for writing gay erotica - PinkNews.co.uk

32 Chinese women arrested for writing gay erotica - PinkNews.co.uk

Imagine the carry on if western women who write male-male romance got arrested? Human rights are dodgy in China

So, in robot world...

…otherwise known as Canberra, the capital of Australia, I spent a small part of life, after coming back from living in London and travelling the world, going to University. Now some people love Canberra. They love the formal, rigidity of the place and the stick up the arse rules and social conventions. And then there’s me. I hated it. Rules? Oh please? Dressing the right way and saying the right thing? Oh fuck off. I believe Popeye summed it up best when he said ‘I am who I am.’ Anyway – back to University – I went to the one in Canberra because I was a ne’re do well and they were the only one who’d accept me. So I turned up in an attempt to do a BA, or as I like to call it a ‘bugger all’, in journalism. No, I didn’t want to be a journalist. It was just a course I picked out of the blue and thought – yeah okay, I’ll take a crack at that.

The point of my rambling? I had to attend a creative writing unit/class for a semester. We had to write – as the course name suggests – creatively and then read it to the class on a regular basis. I sucked at this. The reading out loud wasn't the problem. Public speaking, to me, is easy. I'm a natural ham. It was always the content of my work that went down like a lead balloon. One of mine I read – part of a horror romance – and everyone stared at me. What was wrong with it? Well everyone else in the class had attended some basketball game the previous night and they had all written about basketball. The lecturer said I needed to ‘think a little more about my audience and experience life’ before I wrote the stories that I did and that ‘maybe creative writing wasn’t for me.’

Why do I mention this now? Well, I’m going to use that horror romance story from the robot years in my current Amarinda story. I still went on to finish my degree in Communication/Psychology at a different Uni. I still don’t conform and I write some creative – non basketball – stuff when the mood takes me. The moral of the story? Don’t let wankers drag you down or you'll never do anything in life.

**mannequin pic is from a store in the Darwin mall.

Amarinda Jones
Penn Halligan
www.amarindajones.com
www.amarindajones.blogspot.com
Be daring...read an Amarinda book

Have it the way you want...

I was doing some writing and banging out all these terrible, filthy, sexy words on screen. And the things the characters were doing to each other? Most interesting. As I wrote I thought back to when I started this writing gig. Then, I was subbing only to one publisher. Why? I was dumb and new. I’m still dumb but older. Anyway that publisher had strict rules about what words could be used to describe sex and other stuff. ‘Dick’ was never to be used to describe a penis. And ‘baby’? That wasn’t a term of endearment to them. They considered it somehow pedophilia to have the characters say something like -“Baby, I love you.”

That publisher was very limited in their views. I believe it was because they were the big fish in a small pond and they had power over the e-book erotica market. A lot of writers feared their wrath and were too scared to do anything but follow rules. Of course now the e-book pond has grown and multiple new publishers have arisen changing the market even more and for the better. How so? Competition. It’s a great thing. There are new genres, more open minds about the everyday reality of language and the use of words and bodies. It also means writers don’t have to agree to blindly follow the management of one mob. They can pick and choose who they send their work to and – more importantly – 99% of the time they can write the way they want without their ‘voice’ being changed to fit some publisher diva’s personal belief. Creativity should never be packaged in a box because someone says so.

Amarinda Jones
Penn Halligan
www.amarindajones.com
www.amarindajones.blogspot.com
Be daring...read an Amarinda book

Phase number 57…

I have written anything in ages and it’s been good. So good in fact that I’m not going to do any more writing. That phase of my life is over. What next? Well, I’m thinking once I get myself established and the dust settles at my new locale I’m going to take a crack at publishing – let’s face it every boy and his dog seems to be doing it. How hard can it be? Besides I have worked with some suspect publishers and have learned all the ‘what-not-to-do’ things. I just have to do the reverse of that.

Will I fail? Will I succeed? Who knows? It’ll be fun trying.

Amarinda Jones
Penn Halligan
www.amarindajones.com
www.amarindajones.blogspot.com
Be daring...read an Amarinda book