Category Archives: Colette Black

Have a Dream? Win a Book!

Business Colette Black Giveaways The Writing Life 8 Comments

Want to win one of the LAST of the limited-edition hardcover copies of “Drawing out the Dragons,” personally signed by James A. Owen? Post on twitter (#JAOfreebook), fb, in our comments section, or anyplace on the internet about someone/something that inspires you, mention James and this fictorians post, and let us know about it in our comments section. For each mention, we’ll enter your name in the drawing. The winner will have their signed book shipped free of charge. We’ll run the contest until midnight, Thursday Oct. 18th, and announce the winner Friday morning, Oct. 19th. Play today, and tell a friend. James Owen’s book is for writers, artists, and anyone with a dream to achieve.  It even saves lives.

One of my greatest inspirations was my older brother. It may sound cliche, but the situation won’t. At the spurring of his wife, my brother earned a degree in accounting. He hated it, didn’t earn his CPA, and after a year teaching in a small high school in Northern Arizona, he divorced, started working construction to pay the bills, and remarried. As their kids grew older, his wife suggested it was time to pursue a job he liked. She worked extra hours so he could enter a training program, and he now works as a helicopter mechanic. In his forties, he made a complete career shift and he loves his job. It was his dream.

Sometimes, we think achieving our dreams means a big paycheck, a prestigious academic piece of paper, or celebrity status, but I don’t think that’s the point. Achieving our dreams is working our butts off so we can do what we love.  I like the part in Disney’s motion picture, “Tangled”,  where they sing about having a dream, especially the really big guy who wants to collect miniature unicorns. That seems simple and pointless to some, but the point is, there’s no dream too big or too small, every dream is individual, and we’re never too old to engage in its pursuit.Your dream is not mine, but we gather here at fictorians because we have similar dreams–we want to write. Our goals may be different in what we want to achieve with that writing, but the story drives us. I once expressed the great sense of belonging I feel at writing conventions. James Owen smiled at me and said with absolute understanding, “You’ve found your tribe.”

Yes, among you, my friends, I have found my tribe. Thank you. Now, go forth and fulfill your dreams for good, whatever they may be.

Why I like to write myself into a corner

Colette Black Conflict Craft & Skills Ideas & Plotting Rewriting No Comments

Most writers say your first idea is cliché, your second idea is mediocre, so you should always go with your third or fourth. For this reason, I like to write myself into a corner, or at least plan myself into one. But that’s bad, you say? I don’t think so. At least, not always.

The reason I think it’s a good idea is the same reason I think most of us, at least me, get ourselves stuck in the first place. We’re going along with our story saying to ourselves, “Well, if this happened, this character would do this, then this would happen…” You get the idea. But we reach a point and go, “Uh-oh, then everyone dies, or then this plot-point won’t work, or then we can’t end up over here.” The corner. But, this is where we can force our mind to come up with a better story, and NOT by saying, “well, if so-and-so does this then it’ll work.” The whole reason we ended up in the corner is because so-and-so wouldn’t do that. We have to come up with a better twist that will allow our characters to be true to who they are, while still moving the story forward. An example:

A few days ago, my family and I were driving in our van listening to a book on CD. I wont’ name it, but some of you will figure it out based on this example. Please know that this author is heads and more heads above me in every area, but this one scene….

We have a quick-thinking girl who has the ability to light anything that’s not alive on fire. Her and her friends are being chased by worm-filled, worm-controlled zombies. Listening to this, my kids immediately said, “Zombies means dead. Light them on fire!”

It took forever for the character to finally figure it out, then it took forever for her to figure out she could save energy by just setting their heads (their control-center not full of worms) on fire.

The comment was made, “Well, how could the author do anything different? If she figured it out immediately then the zombies are no longer a danger.” (The corner)

So we played around with the truth that this character would immediately, or at least very soon, come upon the solution herself. So how could one keep the story going?

“Wouldn’t it be cool if she lights them on fire, but the body explodes and worms fly everywhere and the heroine and her group are nearly contaminated.”

Now that’s chilling, it ratchets up the suspense, and it makes the obvious solution a surprising added danger.

“But then they have no defense and they’ll all die.” (Corner)

No, then it makes sense for her to wait before lighting their hair on fire, or for her to  just ignite the tops of their heads as a last resort, and since the brain is left mostly intact by the little wormies, it makes sense that their fat bodies won’t be close enough to the fire to puff up like popcorn and explode. But of course, it’s easy to be critical of someone else’s work. Like I said, this writer is brilliant, but I used this small scene as an example because my family had fun playing with the plot.

A couple of months ago, I found myself in a corner with a book I was working on. I struggled and struggled with how to move the plot forward. I won’t bore you with the details, (mostly because it was complicated and spanned several scenes) but I worked out the semantics and turned a mediocre middle into a hair-raising rise in tension that went much better than  originally intended.

So, if your characters are pushing your story into an unsolvable dilemma, maybe instead of trying to steer them clear of the danger, let them take you to the cliff’s edge. Like them, on the brink of utter destruction, you might find an unexpected twist that will catapult you to a higher ledge with a better view. Just make sure it’s not a convenient fix. I’ll talk about those in my next post.

Can Goldfish Channel Muse?

Author's Perspective Colette Black Making Progress as a Writer The Writing Life No Comments

I’ll tell you  now, if you didn’t figure it out from the title and the picture, this post is a bit silly. Which is kind of sad since we’ve just had two amazing, interesting, and informative posts. And no, it’s not about the band, though I do have “Uprising” as my ringtone.

The thing is, I had my son’s goldfish nearby for quite a while. First, in my study. Then, in his room next door. The water sloshed through the filter creating white noise, the little goldfish swam around as I came in and out of the room, and occasionally I  stopped to give them an extra snack while they kissed at the edge of the glass.

They died.

No, I didn’t overfeed them. My daughter brought home a couple of new fish she’d won at a school fair or something. We put them in with the others.  Buttercup survived her initiation, though she swam sideways for a while. The other wimps didn’t have her evasive abilities. They  failed their mount wannahockaloogie test, and  the rest of the fish ate them. Even Buttercup eventually succumbed. We should have cleaned the tank as soon as I found the first skeleton stuck to the filter’s intake. I was busy, my husband was busy, and my son thought it looked cool. It was like something out of a Fringe episode. Within hours the whole tank was black and all the fish had died.

I had trouble focusing on my writing after that. I liked writing when it was quiet, with no background noise, not even light music. But without the fish tank, it was too quiet. Even the trees waving outside my window didn’t dispel the eerie silence.

I needed my muse back. In the nick of time, summer came, and I discovered a tall floor fan makes great white noise.

But eventually summer will be over– though since I live in southern Arizona it may take a while–and I’ll have to turn the fan off.  Maybe it’s time I had my own pet, instead of the numerous ones my kids take care of.  Or maybe I’ll just set up the tank and forget the fish. Any suggestions?

Oh, and yes, after it went black I put on some gloves and cleaned the tank. My bio-hazard disaster will not be blamed for an upcoming apocalypse, nor will it be a source of a post-apocalyptic story. Although….

 

Gini Koch: Why I Like Traditional Publishing

Colette Black Guest Posts Publishing The Writing Life 3 Comments

Q&A with Gini Koch

Q: Tell us a little about yourself and your career as an author.

A: I’m a wife, mother, have dogs and cats (the Canine Death Squad and the Killer Kitties), ride horses, and up until a couple of years ago, I worked full time for Corporate America. I wrote for six years before I ever considered trying for publication, and it took four more years to get good enough to BE published. I landed a great agent in December 2007, got a 2-book deal with DAW Books in May 2008, and have been happily writing like mad ever since. I’m published in 6 pen names, so far, in short, mid-length, and novel-length fiction. I write the Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series for DAW Books/Penguin, the Alexander Outland series for Night Shade Books, and a variety of shorter fiction series and stand alones for Musa Publishing.

 

Q: You have contracts with one of the majors in publishing (DAW Books/Penguin), a smaller house (Night Shade Books), and with an e-only publisher (Musa Publishing). What are the differences?

A: Because I have great editors at all three houses, I’d have to say that speed is probably the biggest difference between them. Ebooks, by their nature, can go up faster than anything else, and smaller presses have less layers to go through, so they tend to move more quickly than Big 6.  There are other differences (advances tend to be larger from the Big 6, for example), but I think speed to publication is the difference I notice the most.

 

Q: What’s it like to work with a NY publishing company?

A: Very cool. There are a lot of advantages to being with the Big 6, including worldwide distribution. There’s a lot of hurry up and wait involved, but you adjust to it. The pros tend to outweigh the cons. Plus I’m with DAW, which is just a fabulous imprint, run by amazing people who love books and authors, so it’s pretty much livin’ the dream when you’re with DAW, and then you add in all the cool Penguin folks and worldwide reach and, I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty darned great.

 

Q: What are the reasons you think this is still the best way to publish?

A: In this day and age, coming out in favor of “traditional” publishing feels kind of risky. But you really can’t beat getting an experienced, professional editor, a big name cover artist, and a full sales force selling your book into bookstores all over the world. Traditional publishing means you have gatekeepers. Are they always right? Of course not. Are they right a lot? Absolutely. And the checks and balances of traditional publishing mean that you’ll have a professional product when you’re done, and that really does matter, especially when you’re starting out.

BTW, I consider my epublisher to be a traditional publisher, just as I do with my Big 6 and small press publisher. They do the same things — provide editing, cover art, promotion, support.

 

Q: Why did you choose to send some of your books under different pen names through smaller publishers?

A: LOL. You make an error in assumption. The publishers choose what they want to publish, not the agents or authors. I write under a variety of pen names. My shorter works are not appropriate to go via Big 6, since they’re not in the business of publishing short stories, novelettes, or novellas all that often. Musa, by way of being an epublisher, was a much more appropriate place to send my shorter stories, regardless of the name I wrote them under. And, Night Shade loved Alexander Outland: Space Pirate, which made them the right publisher for that book. So far, none of my publishers have asked me to change which pen name something’s written under, and I hope that continues.

I’m a firm believer in starting at the top and working down. I’m also a firm believer in getting the best out of my time. While I still submit to anthologies and such because I like them and like being in them, for the majority of my shorter works, going with an epublisher I trusted was, for me, the better use of my time than doing the submit and wait process with the paying short fiction markets. I get editing, covers, etc., and I don’t have to spend all my time submitting and keeping track of said submissions. I promote all the time, so adding on promotion for additional titles is a natural extension.

And for novels, going with the publisher that loves your book is the right move, at least 9 times out of 10. DAW loved Touched by an Alien when they read it, Night Shade loved Alexander Outland: Space Pirate when they read it, Musa loved my various titles when they read them. And because my books are with publishers and editors who love them, they get the benefit of that love.

 

Q: What difference does having your books with one of the Big 6 make in terms of exposure, gaining new readers, getting onto panels at conventions, and so forth?

A: It’s huge. HUGE. I have worldwide distribution because of Penguin. Note: availability and distribution are not the same thing. Anyone on the “net has worldwide availability, but getting people to know you’re there is like trying to make them choose your one grain of sand over all the others.

Distribution, on the other hand, means my books are in bookstores all over the world, giving me a worldwide fan base. And that’s how you gain readers — they’re able to find and buy your books.

As for getting onto panels, my first panel as a published author was at San Diego Comic-Con in 2008. That would have never happened if I hadn’t been with DAW/Penguin. So being with the Big 6 is a tremendous advantage.

 

Q: Do you consider an agent necessary these days?

A: Absolutely, possibly more important today than ever before. The top agents in the world cannot make a publisher take a book they don’t want. However, a good agent gets your book read by the right editors, and normally much faster than you’ll ever manage yourself.

Plus, your agent deals with contracts, runs interference between you and your editors, is the person making the calls about money, deadlines, disagreements, and so forth. I think having that buffer is important for authors — I want someone I can trust looking carefully at contracts and spotting what isn’t beneficial to my career. I can and do read my own contracts, but I prefer to spend most of my time focused on writing and promoting.

 

Q: Why do you think the advantages in having an agent, editors, and book cover artists are worth the smaller percentage of profit you gain working through NY compared to smaller publishers or self-publishing? Or do you?

A: Oh, I absolutely see the advantages outweighing getting a smaller percentage of profit, especially for those beginning their careers.

Daniel Dos Santos is the cover artist for my Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series. Dan’s one of the top artists working in science fiction and fantasy. There is no way in the world I could have afforded to hire him if I’d gone it alone. And I know that his covers are responsible for a goodly number of my book sales.

A small percentage of a big number is far better than a big percentage of a tiny number. Never forget that. You have to weigh your financial options carefully, and always err on the side of being too conservative, because expecting to take the world by storm gives the cosmos far too much leeway to have a good laugh at your expense.

 

Q: What’s it like to see your name on a bestseller list the first time?

A: It was very exciting. I don’t have big enough print runs to make the New York Times bestseller list (yet!) but I’ve made the Barnes & Noble bestseller list more than once. And it was a thrill each and every time.

 

Q: What are your views on self-publishing?

A: I think it’s brilliant for experienced authors with an established fan base. If you have books that are out of print, heck yeah, get those puppies up there for sale. Your publisher doesn’t want to continue your series? Absolutely, go for it. You have a new series that you want to publish that’s getting the “we don’t really know how to market this” type of rejections? Again, go for it.

The key words in this are “experienced”, “established”, and “fan base”. Because experienced authors will put up a professional product (as in, something that’s been professionally edited, is spelled correctly, is punctuated correctly, actually has a coherent narrative, and so on).

Three years ago when I said I was an author absolutely no one asked me who I was published with. Now? Now I’m asked who my publisher is nine times out of ten, and this is by readers, not those in the industry. Once they know I’m with an established publisher, then they get interested in my books again.

Why is this happening? Because there’s a lot of utter garbage being self-published, and readers are getting wary. There’s only so many times you can get an individual to buy a bad book before they assume any and all self-pubbed books are terrible — and it’s a low number per person.

For every indie author who puts out a fabulous product, there are thousands who type “the end” to their first draft, ever, and toss it up there to be sold. These books that are in no way ready to be published, let alone read by someone outside of the author’s immediate circle, do terrible damage to everyone involved with publishing.

If you’re going to self publish, do yourself and everyone else a favor and ensure — via means other than yourself and your immediate friends and family — that your book is of the highest quality possible. That means doing more than one draft, editing, ensuring it’s spelled and punctuated properly, ensuring you’re using the right words (their, they’re, and there are NOT the same and all mean different things, for example), putting forth some effort to have a good cover. It means ensuring that your book is well written, has a coherent narrative, has a start, a good and not saggy middle, and a satisfying conclusion. You know, all the things that the publishing industry, especially the Big 6 and small presses, look for and demand.

Sadly, the very people who need to heed this particular warning will read it and assume that it’s not directed towards them. But it is. New and newer authors are rarely as ready as they think they are.

 

Q: What about those who just go for it and self-publish anyway?

A: I wish them all the luck in the world. No matter how you publish, it’s going to be a lot of work. It’s going to be more work for someone who doesn’t have an established name and fan base. Is it doable? Sure. The more work you put into an excellent product (your book), the better your returns will be.

I’m going to be self publishing a title myself — the official announcement is coming shortly. It’s an exciting addition to what I’m already doing. Self pubbing does not mean that I’m leaving DAW/Penguin (I’m not) or any of my other publishers. It means that I’m at a point in my career where I feel that I can experiment with this aspect of the publishing industry and see how it works for me. And I can do that with a level of confidence because I’ve been inside the traditional publishing process for several years now, and I know much more and can apply it to my self published title in the same ways I apply that knowledge and experience to my titles with Big 6, small press, and epub.

 

Bio

Gini Koch lives in Hell’s Orientation Area (aka Phoenix, AZ), works her butt off (sadly, not literally) by day, and writes by night with the rest of the beautiful people. She writes the fast, fresh and funny Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series for DAW Books and the Martian Alliance Chronicles series for Musa Publishing, and, as G.J. Koch, the rollicking Alexander Outland space adventure series for Night Shade Books. She also writes under a variety of pen names (including Anita Ensal, Jemma Chase, A.E. Stanton, and J.C. Koch), listens to rock music 24/7, and is a proud comics geek-girl willing to discuss at any time why Wolverine is the best superhero ever (even if Deadpool does get all the best lines). She speaks frequently on what it takes to become a successful author and other aspects of writing and the publishing business. She can be reached through her website at www.ginikoch.com.