Just Right

On my recent vacation to Wisconsin, I went through all the seasons weather-wise. Cold, Better, Just Right, Too Got. I liked the Just Right days the best, when the sun was shining, the wind wasn't blowing hard, and the air smelled clean and clear.

It's hard to get anything just right, and that includes writing. In between spending quality time with the DH, my dog, and my good friend, I did spend some time on my work in progress,  A Perfect Angel. I'm happy to say the book is coming along nicely.

However, as of yet, it's not Just Right. When I think it's right, it'll go to my great editor, Helen Ginger, to also check it over. When it's Just Right, it'll be released. I'd thought the process would be faster, but a quality book is worth the wait.

Morgan with Rascal at Culver's
on the way home from vacation.

Find Morgan Mandel's
Mysteries and Romances at
http://amazon.com/author/morganmandel

Excerpts also at Morgan's Book Links Blog
http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com

Facebook:
http://www.facebooks.com/morgan.mandel
Twitter: @MorganMandel
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Audio Books by Margot Justes

I’m thinking of putting Blood Art out as an audio book. Let’s start with the fact that I’m technically challenged, and am in fact a luddite. Such a lovely word for such a technically challenged person, but to be fair I’m much better that I was. On the other hand, I could only improve...you get the drift.

However, a friend thought I should try it. What did I have to lose? Nothing except a great deal of time, and what is left of my sanity.

I followed her instructions and went on ACX, an Amazon company that will handle everything once you register the book, and hook up with an ACX authorized narrator/producer. Simple, right? Nope. Not for me.  Not at all.

ACX has a list of approved narrators, and the field has to be narrowed down to age, voice, accent, male, female, etc...all the criteria that would fit my story perfectly.

The next step is to select a narrator-did I say that getting all the criteria is time consuming... Selecting the narrator takes even more time and patience. You listen to countless voices until you find the perfect one. The next step after the narrator selection is sending the all important e-mail and request an audition. Keep in mind, even if you have selected the narrator, it doesn’t mean the narrator will take you on.

So far, I registered the book. There are option on payment to the narrator; royalties only, that means the narrator would receive 20% of the sale of the audio book, I would

receive  20%, and I would be tying up the rights for 7 years. Another option would be to offer a small stipend and royalties. The other option is to pay the narrator/producer up front, and I’d keep 40% of each sale. The rates are anywhere between $100 to $400 hundred dollars an hour. According to ACX, my book would take 9 to 10 hours to produce.

It is an interesting learning process, and we’ll see how far I get.

Cheers,

Margot  Justes

Blood Art

A Hotel in Paris

A Hotel in Bath

A Fire Within

www.mjustes.com

One Degree Makes A Difference! by DL Larson

No, this isn't a science project, not with test tubes and beakers, anyway. Call this an incentive for aspiring writers to keep working, to keep pushing forward when all seems frivolous and time-consuming. The reason is simple ... one degree makes a difference.

Water is hot at 211 degrees.
Water boils at 212 degrees.

One degree makes all the difference.

The same may work in your writing career. Now is not the time to turn off the burners and say your writing experiment failed. Don't be content with lukewarm, make things bubble! Go for sizzle and rolling. Experiment with the temperature of your words.

Heat brings life to your story. Creating a boil uses energy. Maintaining a boil requires skill and timing.

Don't be afraid of the heat. Cozy up and sweat ... because one degree can make all the difference!

Til next time ~

DL Larson
www.DLLARSON.com

Letting Go by Margot Justes

Letting go of a finished manuscript is rather painful, at least for me. In a way, preparing for a new release is sort of like giving birth-plenty of anxiety and wonder. Is anyone going to like it? What should or could have been done differently?  Was it ready to go out? Will it ever be ready to go out?

That is all part of the writing process, the editing process, correcting the editing process, another read through, going back to the editor, and final read through...you get the drift-a seemingly never ending process.  At some point one has to give ‘birth’ and let it go.

Once you give birth, the trepidation begins, and it truly is sort of like giving birth. The wonder of the little person you brought into the world sinks in and then overwhelming terror grips you. The tremendous responsibility for that precious life you have assumed as a parent will last for the rest of your life. Now that is commitment.

At the onset, releasing a new book is giving birth to a new project, but it is only a story and once the butterflies settle down, and rationality prevails, the hope is that readers will enjoy the tale, and feel happy after they read it. It is after all a story, and not a lifetime commitment to parenthood. It may just feel like it for a brief moment.  

Cheers,

Margot  Justes

Blood Art

A Hotel in Paris

A Hotel in Bath

A Fire Within

www.mjustes.com

Finding Your Voice! by DL Larson

One of the most confusing aspects of writing is finding your own voice. This mixed-up industry of publishers, editors and agents want fresh voices, but then further explain they are looking for the pace of (insert author's name) and thrill of (insert author's name) with the character insight of (insert author's name.) It all feels as if they are at a restaurant ordering not from the menu, but asking the chef to prepare something special just for them.

And they are! But writers beware! Writers are not short-order cooks. Writers need to discover and develop their own voice. It takes time and effort.

Rather than trying to satisfy publishers, editors and agents, satisfy yourself first. It's wonderful to be asked to write a certain way, but if your own voice has not been developed fully, no one will ever say I'm searching for someone like (insert your own name here.)

Tips for finding your voice:

1. Keep your personality in your writing. Too many times a writer tries sounding - well, writerly. It doesn't work. We each have hundreds of aspects to our own personality, from being light-hearted to heart broken. Yet each of us does light-heartedness and heartbreak differently. It's our unique personality that develops our characters and our story.

2. Don't be a copy cat. This will delay developing your own writing style and voice. When I'm writing, I rarely read; I want to maintain my own voice, my own style. I don't want outside voices influencing my writing. When I'm not writing, I read, read, read, to discover how others before me have accomplished and developed their books.

3. Write fast! I still write my first draft with pen and paper. It's silly, I know, but something clicks and my mind is in sync with my fingers and off I go. I can't write as I used to - I take more breaks, but I enjoy the process of the words forming on the page without my stopping to evaluate them. There will be plenty of time for that later.
I encourage you to practice, practice, practice writing fast - on a computer or with pen and paper. The mind is set free to develop at its own pace and the other part of the mind, that critical side, is silenced for awhile. Your voice will surface from the pages. I love that part of the writing process.

4. Play around! With words, sentence length and depth. Play with strong verbs. Ditch the adverbs and adjectives your English teacher loved. Play with bold words, strong words, HUGE words. Be silly, be sad, be energetic, but never plodding.

5. Repeat often! Finding your voice takes time with mega doses of practice. Athletes don't step out onto a court or field and expect to perform well without previous effort. They train, they study, they practice daily. They build their strength day by day. A great writer will do the same.

Til next time ~

DL Larson
www.DLLARSON.com

New Interview with Mystery Author Kaye George

My new interview is up at Mysterical-e with the fabulous Kaye George about her unique Neanderthal mystery.. 

And there's news about authors  Camille Minichino, Luisa Buehler and Terrie Moran .... Be sure to take a peek!

Sending Out A Query! by DL Larson

After a conference, writers become excited and a bit anxious to respond to an invitation to send a query that an agent or publisher asked for. Here's a few tips I've learned over the years.

1. Respond! Respond in a timely fashion.

2. Visit the website! The agent/publisher may not have been explicit in how they want material sent to them. Many have detailed guidelines on how and what to send. I've noticed one change in several that sends me in a tizzy every time - a request for material to have a .3 indent in paragraphs rather than the standard .5. Beware of this. It might be a test to see how well you as an author follow directions or their publishing company has changed to this method and it has become standard measures for them.
Also, many prefer to have all material inserted into the body of the query, no attachments. So read the guidelines thoroughly.

3. Send only what is requested in the website, UNLESS, you have been told otherwise. The standard use to be the first three chapters. Now, the first ten pages is requested more frequently.

4. Be sure your synopsis is action packed. Make it exciting. A tough job, I know, but worth the effort in order to sell your book.

5. Remind the agent/publisher where and when you met them. Connect, connect, connect! That means calling them by their names! Address your query to a specific person!

6. Be ready for a rejection, but hopeful for a request for more. Pretend you are shopping for shoes. 'They may look adorable on the rack, but bite your toes when you try them on!'

7. Continue to search for other possible agents/publishers while you wait. Don't let time go by with only one query advertising your product.

8. It's okay to brag a bit. If you have finalled in a contest, mention this in your query.

9. Share your website address, your blog site, etc. Mention your writing in other areas if it is pertinent to your book.

9. Many now want a 'marketing plan' from the writer. This slips easily into the conversation when you mention your blog writing or other venues you have to sell your book. Mention your target audience and how you want to reach them.

10. Your query should be one page! Think of the TV show, "Minute To Win It." That's all you really have to grab the agent's attention.

Now's the time to dig in, polish your query and synopsis, and then ... send it out!
After that, refer back to #7. Keep searching, keep seeking for an agent or publisher that YOU want to work with.

Good Luck ~

Til next time ~

DL Larson
www.DLLARSON.com

MAC Address?

I like to plan ahead for vacations. One feature my provider offers is that I can switch my smartphone to an Internet hotspot, which can come in handy when I use my laptop out of town.

The first thing to do is decide how many Gigabytes I'll probably use. Then, a call to my provider will turn the hotspot feature on. After that, it's just a matter of clicking on the wifi tab on the laptop, looking for the address of the phone and typing in the security password.

For extra protection, I can also designate the MAC addresses of which computers or phones can only connect to my hotspot.

That sounded good, but what confused me was how to find the MAC address. When I Googled how to find the MAC address, and received instructions for using the command prompt to find it. By doing that, I came up with three addresses. Which was the right one?

A call to Dell gave me the answer. (It pays to have a service contact with them, believe me. They'll do all sorts of stuff like remove adware or provide answers to strange questions)

Anyway, the guy at Dell told me to go to the Control Panel, Then Network and Sharing Center, Click my Active Internet Network, which is the network I'm currently using, then Click the Details tab, and lo and behold, one of the details is called the computer's Physical Address.

Physical Address = MAC address

That address is the same, no matter which Internet network I use.

The instructions above are for my Windows 8.1 computer, but for Windows 7, you'd go to the Control Panel and look for Network and Internet first, then do everything else the same.

Hope this helps any of you who might wish to make a hotspot from your phone sometime, and secure it from everybody jumping onboard. Of course, nothing is foolproof, but designating MAC addresses provides an added measure of security.

Morgan Mandel
Find all my mysteries and romances at
http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com

Amazon  Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/author/morganmandel

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/morgan.mandel

Twitter: @MorganMandel

The Mysterious Mona Lisa by Margot Justes Redux

I first published this blog in 2012, because the research continues to this day. Scholars want to know who she was, and  discover anything new about the masterpiece.

In my paranormal release Blood Art, Mona Lisa is a demon. Even now centuries later the mystery surrounds her. Because of the never ending search for something new, she was the perfect choice for a demon who survived centuries, and haunted my hero.

The Prado Museum conservators  have solved another Mona Lisa mystery. Or have they?

It seems that for many hundreds of years the museum held in storage what was long believed to be a replica of the Mona Lisa.

As you might have guessed, it isn't just a copy. Using infrared technology they found that the portrait was painted in Leonardo's studio and most likely was painted by one of his students while Leonardo was painting the original Mona Lisa.

The painting at the Prado in Madrid, did not have the flourishing Tuscan landscape that the original portrait had, the background instead was coated in black varnish.

Using infrared reflectography, a system by which they can see underneath to the changes the artist makes before the final finish, known as under-drawings. The same landscapes were found as in the original painting.

It is believed that artists even in Leonardo's time used students, who helped or copied their works of art. We recognize Leonardo's genius now, many centuries later, but in his day, he was one at one point one of those 'starving artists' trying to survive and put food on the table. I guess times have not changed that much, the same can be said in this day and age.

I wonder who are the true masters of today. Centuries later, when we're long gone volumes will be written about their magnificent talent and far reaching foresight. Who will make the cut? Are there contemporary true masters who will survive and thrive through the ages?

On a happy note, A Hotel in Bath is a finalist for the RONE award. 

Cheers,

Margot  Justes

A Hotel in Paris

A Hotel in Bath

A Fire Within

Blood Art

www.mjustes.com

What Do You Need As A Writer? by DL Larson

Attending a writers conference reminds me of the movie, 'Forrest Gump,' you never know what you're going to get! Great speakers may inspire, other writers may give insight to a technique or venue, or an agent may ask for the first 30 pages.

All of the above happened to me at the Spring Fling Writers Conference. Our other bloggers have already mentioned what a great conference we attended. The professionalism was in high quality and quantity. Seeing and visiting fellow writers and friends was better than the chocolate they served!

I arrived home tired and a smidge depressed. I call it the 'let down' factor. I knew I wouldn't sell many books - too many other authors with BIG names usually take the participants hard earned money, so that wasn't it. I visited with many people and attended insightful workshops where the speakers encourage audience participation. I met new people, laughed with old friends, and helped a gal in the bathroom. I pitched my idea to one agent and stopped and chatted with a gal in the hall about ebooks, only to realize she was a speaker from Pennsylvania and made time to talk to me! How awesome is that?

Overall, my time spent turned out to be a valuable experience. As I drove home, I contemplated my life as a writer. I need a few things still. I need a writers group closer to my home. I've needed and wanted that for years. I missed not having a weekly/monthly conversation about writing. It has left a HUGE hole in me. I've tried a few groups over the years and dropped out for various reasons, mostly because they don't hold up to the caliber of a RWA writers group.

Knowing what I need is one thing. Finding a solution is another! So writers, I mean YOU, out there beyond the city lights ... what do you do for writers support? I'd love to hear how you solve the need to be with other writers.

Share your solutions with me!

Til next time ~

DL Larson
www.DLLARSON.com

A few pictures of the Conference:

Top: Sonali Dev with her new release
2nd: Morgan Mandel
3rd: Simone Elkeles & me (with her new YA release)
4th: Ann Macela
5th: Book Beat Babes DL, Morgan & Deb St. John