Blood Feuds and Freelancing, Not Necessarily In that Order

Morning, my dearies! I've been a bad (and stomach-fluey) blogger this week, but I'm feeling better and hopefully right back into the swing of the Mon/Wed/Fri thing.

Since I missed a couple posts and have lots to share, let's break out the bullet points.

• The Rachel/Kari Blood Feud now has not only a website, but also a trailer. However, said trailer is about as fair and balanced as Fox News, so I suggest you stay away. Do not watch it. At all. Forget that I even mentioned it. Or linked to it. Or that it exists. Kari is mean. Boo. (Vote Anchored!)
  
• I'm writing a bazillion-part series (okay, more like five, I think) on Reena Jacobs's blog about the creative work that goes into self-publishing a book and how to go about evaluating and hiring folks to help you do things like developmental edit, copyedit, proofread, cover art, and interior layout. If you've ever thought about self-publishing your own work (or about hiring an editor to help you get something up to snuff for traditional publication), you'll want to check this out. If you have any questions about anything I've covered or not covered, feel free to leave them in the comments. Part I and Part II are already up. Part III comes out on Friday.
  
• In an effort to keep my ass in the chair long enough to get Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen turned in under deadline, I've taken to writing bits of it live in a public Google document. For those of you who've never used gdocs, there's basically a chat box down one quarter of the screen and a document editor taking up the other three quarters. I've been inviting people in as viewers, not collaborators, so you can only type in the chat box, but while you're there you can watch me writing Crescendo in real time; the words show up on the page as if you were standing over my shoulder watching the screen while I type. Sometimes everything comes out nice and smooth and it's really fun to watch; other times, there are long pauses while I look things up or try to figure out where to go next. Often, there are hilarious conversations going on in the chat box. If you'd like to join in on this, email me at metarachel (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll invite you into the document. (Keep in mind that you'll be jumping in in the middle of whatever scene I'm working on at the time; the prior material is not posted.)
  
• Side note: I accidentally worked some light BDSM into Crescendo. I was as pleasantly surprised by it as Rik and Ayden were.
  
• If you've ever wondered why ebooks are sometimes priced higher than their paper counterparts, or why novel-length ebooks are generally between $6 and $10 from small e-pubs even though they're not physical, I got into a long conversation about it this evening over on the Kindle Smut group on Goodreads. You do need to be a member of KS to read that, but it's an open group (anyone can join with a single mouse-click), and also an awesome group. I've met some amazing friends, readers, and authors over there, and encourage everyone to check it out whether they're interested in the ebook price discussion or not. If you've an aversion to joining Goodreads or KS for whatever reason and still want to know about ebook pricing, let me know and maybe I'll make a blog post out of it in the near future.

Okay, I think that's enough for today. Thanks for waiting me out, folks, and I'll see you in gdocs!

Bleeding at the Computer: A Guest Blog and Ebook Giveaway by Cara Marsi!

Evening, folks! We've got a special guest and fellow Noble Romance author stopping by this evening: Cara Marsi. She's here to talk about writing and the evolution of her new release, Cursed Mates, and also to give one free copy away to a lucky commenter!

Let's start with her gorgeous cover and blurb, and then I'll turn the floor over to her.

Nick Radford is a reluctant werewolf who's been fighting the Beast within for nearly 500 years. He's never killed a human, but the Beast is gaining strength and Nick may not be able to ward off his inner demon much longer. Kyla Yaeger is an elite were-hunter with a scarred past. Her life's mission is to slay the werewolves that slaughtered her parents. Her quest has brought her to Maine, where she's been summoned to destroy the werewolf terrorizing the quaint little village of Heavensent. The last thing she needs is to get distracted by her mysterious—not to mention hunky—new neighbor, Nick Radford. By the time Kyla learns Nick is her target, she's already fallen for him, making her task of killing him that much harder. She is torn between her love for him and her duty to kill her sworn enemy. Nick fights his forbidden love for Kyla, knowing she is duty-bound to kill him. Kyla and Nick must join forces to fight an even bigger threat—one that will destroy all humanity. Only by their combined powers, can they destroy the evil and bring an end to a centuries old curse.

And now Cara, beneath the jump.

Since Everyone Else Is Doing It . . .

Ah, the narcissistic navel-gazing that is the year-end review. Added to my lemming-like urge to follow the rest of the blogosphere over the wrap-up cliff, and here we are.

But really, such things can have value. For one, it helps with the motivation to look back at where you started and where you finished the last twelve months. It also helps the ego, if the year has been good, particularly when your December has been inundated with rejection letters on the upstream swim that is finding an agent to represent you in a genre in which you're not already published.

. . . that may or may not have been my December.

*whistles innocently*

So, allow me to present my year in milestones and celebrations:

First Published Novel

Yeah, that was pretty exciting. The contract was actually signed toward the end of 2009, but the book didn't release until August of 2010. I'd been writing professionally for a long time, working on everything from press kits to the Huffington Post to ghostwriting books for other people, but this was my first novel under my own name. I had the wild good fortune to be edited by Tal Valante, who taught me something new nearly every day. She made Counterpoint a better book, and she made me a better writer.

Since then, I've had the wild good fortune of many glowing reviews, happy readers, and--a first for me--fans. The contract for the sequel had been signed before the ink was even dry on Counterpoint. And people have threatened kittens to try to speed me through writing Book 2. All in all, I believe the word I'm looking for here is "elation." Also "gratitude": for Tal, of course, and for all my readers who made my first novel a success.


First Company in the History of the Facility of the Year Awards to Win in Two Categories

This has absolutely nothing to do with novels, but everything to do with writing. I was hired by a company called MannKind (yes, they have a sense of humor), makers of a new inhalable insulin, to write a contest submission for their new facility. I knew nothing about the biopharm industry, or drug manufacturing, or even FOYA, yet somehow I wrote a 40-page entry--half white paper and half History of MannKind's Facility--full of words like "cryopelletizer" and "bulk lyophilization." I even knew what they meant by the time I was done :-)

I mention this because MannKind became the first company in the history of the awards to win in more than one of the contest's six categories (equipment innovation and process innovation, to be specific). This was kinda huge. It also led to more work on another contest entry for the 2011 FOYAs. With luck, I'll be mentioning that entry next year as another win.


An Editing Client Makes a Six-Figure Sale

My day job is freelance writing and editing. I do a lot of "book doctoring," also called developmental editing. Sometimes a client comes to me only with a concept. Other times they come to me with a first draft that needs a lot of love and attention. I had the pleasure of working on a book last year called Shmirshky: Think Inside the Box. That's hilarious when you realize the book is about menopause. The writer, Ellen Dolgen, is also hilarious. We tore this book apart, rearranged chapters, cut out the fat, polished the prose. She made the decision to self-publish. A couple months ago she wrote to tell me she'd sold North American reprint rights to Hyperion (who tragically renamed it Shmirshky: Pursuit of Hormone Happiness) for a number I don't feel comfortable repeating in polite any company. She's my second self-published editing client to crack a six-figure sale to a major house, but you know what? It never gets old.


My Second Novel

Speaking of never getting old, I sold my second novel this winter to Noble Romance Publishing. That's Anchored: Belonging Book One, which I've blogged about in the past and which releases on January 17. (Don't forget to follow the release party blog tour for tons of fun and free books and swag!)


My Goodreads, Blogger, and Twitter Debuts

I'm kind of a hermit, so getting out there in the world and interacting with people on social networking sites was a whole new experience for me. And what do you know . . . I loved it. I met a ton of great people, made new friends, even met a future co-writer. Which brings me to my next milestone:


My First Five-Day Novella (A.K.A. "NaNoWriMo Is for Wimps")

As my regular readers know (heh, "regular"; I've been blogging for a week :-p), I just completed a 25,000-word M/M cyberpunk novella called Break and Enter with the illuminating Aleksandr Voinov. First draft in four days. Editing on day 5. I'm pretty sure I broke something in the process, and I don't mean a record :-p But it was exhilirating. And it reminded me of what a person is capable of with the right kind of heart and inspiration and elbow grease and support.


In fact, this whole post reminds me of what a person is capable of with the right kind of heart and inspiration and elbow grease and support. I hope you've found it so as well, because otherwise I'm probably just sounding obnoxious :-p It's been a damn good year for me. And I'm looking forward to next year with enthusiasm and hope.

How about you? What are you proud of this year? Trumpet it from the hilltops; everyone deserves a little recognition every now and then.

Happy New Year, folks!

It's THE FUTURE! (And a teaser for Break and Enter)

Break and Enter, you say? Yes, that's the official-for-now name of the M/M cyberpunk novella co-written by me and Aleksandr Voinov that I was talking about in my last post. Complete at 25K words in four days. Mostly the right words, too, and more or less in the right order. Not even bad sex gets finished that fast. I'm still not sure how it happened, but I blame Aleks. If he suddenly goes missing, nobody look in my basement. I would never, ever kidnap him and make him help me crank out a novella a week. Seriously, what kind of person do you think I am?

Oh . . . Right.

Today is editing. By tomorrow we'll have the query letter and synopsis (whose writing I'm currently avoiding by doing this blog post). Six days from conception to submission to our first choice publisher. Not sure we'll be their first choice though. "I can just see the rejection letter now," said Aleks: "You made two editors throw up."

But honest, it's a love story. I promise. In THE FUTURE!

As for THE FUTURE!, it's become my new answer to everything. "Where's the cat, honey?" "In THE FUTURE!" "What's for dinner?" "THE FUTURE!" (As you can see, sometimes it works better than others.) One of the many wonderful and joyous things about co-writing is the discussions that come up in the process. Aleks and I were working on Break and Enter in Google Docs, which meant we could both edit the same document at the same time. When he was writing a passage, I could sit back and watch the smexins appear on the page like magic. And comment on them relentlessly in the document's chat box. Toward the climax (of the story, you pervs!), Aleks wrote a line about our hero getting to break our villain's expensive flat-screen TV. I immediately changed this to holo-screen, and reminded Aleks (say it with me now), "It's THE FUTURE!" Since then, it's sorta stuck.

So, yeah. I'm sure you cared about that much more than this teaser I've delayed posting so I could share our story with you. But just in case you didn't, here's the teaser below the jump:

Unleashing the Muse

This has been an interesting month for me. I told myself in November that I could spend the rest of the year working on anything I wanted that wasn't Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen. The idea was to spend some time and creative energy moving away from the series that swallowed most of my year (in the best possible way though, I assure you. Well . . . okay, maybe the second-best possible way) and focusing on projects that had fallen to the wayside. It's easy to let things slide when you always have an excuse ("I'm working on the novel!"), so I decided to bank that excuse, and bank the novel, and see where it would take me.

(Worry not, Counterpoint fans; it will still be out this fall.)

The first thing I did was revisit an old story sitting in a drawer (and by "drawer" I mean 2003 Dell laptop missing both the "m" and the comma key), a short little novel about modern-day slavery. I remembered, suddenly, my fondness for that piece when I'd written it, all the things I'd hoped to say with it, and--let's face it--all the dark kinks I'd written it to indulge. I thought, Hey, why not, I've got time now. I pulled it out, polished it up, and sold it in a week to the first house I subbed it to. That story of course is Anchored: Belonging Book One, releasing January 17 with Noble Romance Publishing. (**Insert obligatory plug for awesome, prize-filled Release Party Blog Tour here**)