• Barry Petersen, author of the heart wrenching Jan’s Story, is a Denver Post bestseller and managed to snag the #1 spot in the Paperback Nonfiction category. WoOt. If you know anyone with Early Onset Alzheimer’s, this is your bible.

• Kim Kircher, author of the fabulous The Next 15 Minutes, has a lovely review in the Mountain Weekly News. If you are experiencing tough times, this is your bible.

• Gay Culverhouse, author of the riveting Throwaway Players, has a lovely review in ForeWord Magazine. “Her book is an essential read for athletes, coaches, parents, and football fans.”

I love my authors.

We don’t have a model done yet (she’s working on it now), but here’s the graphic. Yes, yes, we all realize there should be more time for drinking heavily, but writers are busy and have much to do!

HOW DOES I ORDER?

All orders should be sent to the beagle’s email – beagle@behlerpublications.com – with your order and contact info. The beagle will finish her margarita and contact you!

I know what she means. I have this glorious new hip, for which I will always consider my surgeon my personal savior and hero. Thing is, that hip joint is about as tight as the beagle’s wallet when it’s her turn to buy a round of drinks. I have to continually stand up and stretch it out. Sucker doesn’t just let loose all easy-like, I have to take a few steps, stop, gorgle my hip around, take a couple more steps, more gorgling, until it loosens up enough to where I don’t walk like a pregnant water buffalo trying to carry a bowling ball between her knees. And the longer I wait, the harder it gets downstream.

Walking normally is going to take work by stretching out some very expensive spit and glue – if my hospital bill is any indication. I have to be willing to get off the couch, knowing it’s gonna yankle, in order to have a good outcome.

And it’s no different when revising your story. It’s one thing to have the story sitting in our heads. We think we have it all figured out…until we start putting it down on cyber paper. If you’re on a deadline, then you have no choice but to strong-arm through the fog. And this isn’t a bad idea because it’s forcing you to get something down.

Too many times I see authors set their hair on fire when it comes to revisions because they feel they got it right the first time, and the idea of making changes is as horrific as the beagle contemplating sobriety. This is the predicament my friend had. Her book was good enough to get a good agent, who sold it to a good publisher. But that doesn’t mean she’s bulletproof.

There are always revisions. Srsly.

Your editor will give you sound advice and be very clear about the parts that need smoothing over, or further development. I remember my editor slammed me with writing an entire new scene in Donovan’s Paradigm. In the original version, I’d merely alluded to the scene in conversation, but she came back at me with a, “Oh, not so fast, Pricey. That’s a huge scene that I’d like to see.”

Oy. Vey.

I worried about word count, I worried about context, I worried about transitioning this new scene into the story. And on and on. I whined. I begged. I drank pitchers of margaritas long into the night. The beagle laughed, I cried. And then I slapped cheeks and told my bad self to grow up and write the damn scene. It wasn’t easy because I had to do a lot more research. And you know what? That remains one of my favorite scenes in the book because it developed my main character on a medical level, while getting into her head on a personal level in the height of a major emergency. Many docs who read the book thought I was a fellow doc because I had gotten into their heads.

And I have my editor to blame.

The one thing that might help you in your writing career is to tell yourself that, yes, your book is finished to the best of your abilities, BUT, that you also realize that it really isn’t done until the cover is wrapped around the pages and it’s sitting on bookstore shelves. Your editor is your unbiased set of eyes that sees past your unyielding love and perfection, and knows where your book can reach the pinnacle of yumminess. Yes, that’s a technical term.

Instead of fretting and biting your nails to the quick, increase your BIC (Butt In Chair) Index and get cracking. Whining and moaning gets you nowhere. Sit down and write that new scene, even if it feels wrong. Get something on paper because once it’s there, you can always go back and refine. And as you refine, your mind opens up to what feels right (write?). And who knows? That new scene your evil editor made you write will turn out to be your best.

Muscling through is how you get ungorgled – and yes, that’s another technical term.

*thanks to Janet Reid for the link.

What every editor or author would love, right?

That is all.

Oh wait, that’s not all…I just designed an I Can Haz Purse out of it with some different “time” sayings. Wheee. I’ll get it on the blog page as soon as I make it.

*Thanks, Sue Roebuck!

Alas, we become a moving target 365 days a year, and today was no different. Even though I’m still recuperating from hip surgery, I’m still answering the phones because we’re in the middle of a big publicity campaign and I have a lot of radio stations calling me right now. So this morning, I became that target, which is easier since I’m more stationary than I am moving.

The setting:

In the family room, lazing around on the couch with business phone and laptop on the coffee table. The cooking channel is on, and let me just get it out there…am I the only one who thinks Ann Burrell is Guy Fieri’s less attractive twin sister? That hair!

Ring, ring!

Pricey leans over and nabs the business phone where the usual blippity blah blah intro ensues.

“Hi, I met you at ABC Writer’s Conference…”

Ooo…stop right there. I meet hundreds of people at conferences, and I’m always surprised that I’m expected to remember which author is on the other line. Even giving your name will often draw a blank in my quasi-working brain.

“I’ve been querying for over a year now and have gotten nothing but rejections. Could you tell me why you rejected me?”

Blink blink.

“Um. I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember you or your story, let alone the reasons behind your rejection.”

“What? You rejected me last Monday. Are you people that callous that you can reject and just forget all about us?”

I know it sounds really mean, but yes, we can. And do. The problem is that the author is caught in the vortex of her own tornado, and she’s oblivious to the other tornadoes that circle about our office. She is so concerned about her own “ish” that she’s not thinking clearly. And she doesn’t know anything about the industry and thinks we accept calls as freely as Harry and David.

Thing is, taking calls are how Harry and David make money. Not so for editors. We make money by selling books, and this precludes me from taking time out of my day to explain to an author why a story didn’t interest me. I do have sympathy for authors looking for feedback, but calling me isn’t the way to go about it.

The long and short of this is that you should never, never, ever call an editor about your rejection. Join writer groups, enlist a group of beta readers, use whatever you need to feel confident about your book.

And really…addressing me as “Dear Sir…” well, that’s just plain bad karma.

No, I don’t mean they’re poorly written, they aren’t anywhere close to my zipcode – meaning nonfiction/memoir/biography. I received a 325,000 fiction novel – instantly deleted, historical fiction – also instantly deleted, romance, paranormal romance, young adult, and fantasy.

I’m starting to get a bit cheesed off (for which I could blame the Vicodin, except I quit taking it) because I’ve never seen such a huge clump of silliness. I’ll admit that I don’t suffer fools well and tend to let my impatience get the better of me, but this is over the top. In my relative infirmity, am I channeling my inner hose baggery because even a spec of navel lint is currently more active?

It’s not like my submission guidelines aren’t prominently displayed, so what is it? Chutzpah or the elusive Missing Brain Syndrome? I have had plenty queries that start out with, “I know you don’t publish YA paranormal romance murder mystery historical fiction, but I’m taking the chance you’ll be so wowed with my writing that you’ll reach for a contract.”

Dude. Really?

Only thing I’ll reach for is Pepsid.

I know this is the season to be more charitable, but isn’t this also the season to be mindful? After all, I’ll toss the offending query and say rude things about the author’s lack of reading comprehension. OTOH, the author will awaken the next day and be just as clueless as they were the day before. And the day before that.

And sure, it’s irksome for me because I open each query with a sense of anticipation and excitement. Will this be “the one”? And instead, I match growls with the beagle and hit the Delete button. Since there are a finite number of hours in a day, I get a case of cranky pants over having my time wasted. Likewise, I would think these authors wouldn’t get a thrill up their leg over wasting their own time, either.

One went so far as to contact me a month later, which was this past Friday, to inquire if I’d read their paranormal romance query. I deleted it, unanswered. They called me. CALLED ME. They were pretty snippy about it, too. “I queried you, I emailed you, and nothing. How RUDE!” Ok, I admit that I had popped my last Vicodin and my patience wasn’t where it could have been, but I gritted my teeth and asked if they’d taken the opportunity to read our submission guidelines.

“Huh?”

“Sub-miss-ion guide-lines,” I repeated very slowly.

Click. *facepalm*

So how ’bout you? Have you experienced a continued irritant that makes you want to climb on top of a bar stool and scream, “What the h-e-double hockey sticks are you thinking?”

Surgery went so well that the doc released me a day early. Upon getting home, I realized the walker was getting in my way, so I tossed it aside and started using the cane instead. Talk about a Tiny Tim moment. Who gets a hip ripped out and has a new one pounded in and doesn’t need a walker for a while? So the walker is back in the garage and the cane is tootling me around now.

But while I was in the hoosgow for a couple days, I never forgot my first love – publishing. Upon coming out of my drug-induced fog in Recovery, I began banging out an email to one of my authors. The nurses started cracking up. I peeled my eyes open and mumbled out a, “What…the job waits for no one.”

One of the nurses kindly wrapped her fingers around mine and suggested my fake keyboard, made up entirely of heating blankets, could hold off for a bit and, perhaps, I could write a real one in a few hours. Guffaw. Truly one of the dumbest things I’ve done in a while. Just don’t call me undedicated.

That said, my thoughts of late have been a bit more inward than I prefer. I like to look to my blessings around me, rather than focusing on me. I had my first whack on the head yesterday, when I talked to my fantastically talented author, Amanda Adams, author of the April release, Heart Warriors. I’d blown her off for several days because I was in a flu-fog and barely remembered to feed the beagle, let alone carry on a sentient conversation.

Just talking to Amanda about book promotion reminded me why I love this publishing thing so much. I get to work with the most talented people in the world. Their causes become my causes. I’m a fuller, more well-rounded, informed, thoughtful person because of my authors. Their stories humble me because they’ve overcome great odds to be where they are today, and I constantly ask myself whether I could do what they do. They inspire me in ways I’d never imagined. How totally cool is that?

Here I was blathering on about a silly flu, when Amanda told me her son is facing a pacemaker surgery. What a complete idiot I can be sometimes. Who cares if I’m coughing like a ten-pack-a-day smokestack? A little guy, only nine years old, is getting his chest cracked open for the sixth time to have a pacemaker inserted. And what’s worse is children’s heart defects gets a mere 1% of all that money the Heart Foundation takes in with their various money boxes you see at the grocery store and their numerous fundraising drives. 1%. And that’s because they have no representation on the Heart Foundation boards.

So yah, Amanda’s cause has become my cause. Not only is her book a bible to anyone who has a CHD child or a special needs child, but she’s taking up the fight to get more money for CHD families, who are invariably millions of dollars in debt due to countless surgeries. The honor is mine to publish amazing books like this.

I couldn’t have done any of this had it not been for a rotten scam publisher who destroyed my first book and pissed me off enough that we created our own publishing company.

Over the years, I’ve learned to lean into the black moments because, while they’re scary, I see so much good come on the other side. It gives me hope that even though I’m going through a rough patch, there’s something to learn and grow so I can move on to the next level. Sorta like Tetris. My authors teach me this every day…grace through adversity. Aren’t we all trying to reach for that brass ring in our personal carousels?

So how ’bout you? Have you been thankful for those dark times, and did they portend something wonderful? I hope so.

The beagle and I wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving. The blog be going dark for a few days until after surgery. Bless you all!