Tag Archives: writing business

Continuing the “My Best Mistakes” series of blog posts . . . .

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis) Very early in my career, when my first book, Children of Amarid, was the only one I had out, I responded publicly to a online review from a less-than-delighted reader. Amazon was still a novelty (no pun intended) as was the notion of online reader reviews. (Hard to imagine, right? That the idea of readers offering reviews of the books they’d read should have been new and different and even a bit odd?) I don’t remember what the reader in question objected to about the book, nor do I remember what I said in my public response. The original book is out of print now — only the 2016 reissues are available on the site, so our exchange is lost to the ages. All I know is that someone criticized the book, I didn’t take the criticism well, and I took it upon myself to write a reply and post it to the Children of Amarid Amazon page.

But that’s not quite what this post is about.

SPELL BLIND, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Alan Pollack) Some years later, soon after the release of Spell Blind, the first book in The Case Files of Justis Fearsson, another Amazon reviewer panned the book because my book was “a blatant rip-off” of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, “a ludicrous case of copycatting.” For the record, I didn’t copy Dresden at all. I had only read the first two books of the series, and the “copycatting” the reviewer claimed I’d done amounted to using tropes of the genre, not elements of Butcher’s work. And so I responded to the review, wanting to set the record straight.

But that’s not quite what this post is about.

At this point, you might have sensed that I have a problem. There are writers out there, I know, who couldn’t care less about bad reviews of any sort. Clearly I am not one of them. It’s not that I’m thin-skinned. Well, not really. If people don’t like my books, so be it. I write for me, because I understand that we can never please every reader. Even if ninety-nine readers out of a hundred love our book, there will always be that one reader for whom something just doesn’t work — the characters or the setting or the magic or the prose. Something.

My problem, and I know I am not alone in this regard, is that I can get all those nice reviews, but the one on which I’ll fixate, the one I’ll remember, is the lone bad one. I think it’s tied to imposter syndrome, and to every other insecurity I have as a writer. And as I say, I know I’m not the only professional who is like this. Certainly, when I see a review that misrepresents my work, or impugns my professional integrity, I can’t help but obsess over it a little. That’s what happened with both of the examples I’ve already cited.

That’s what happened with another book in another series, which was reviewed in a fairly high profile publication. As it happens, this third review was mostly positive. The reviewer liked the book. But they also said something about the book, a mild criticism, that I felt was simply untrue. I didn’t respond publicly. I sent the author of the review a private message, thanking them for their kind words about the book, but pointing out that they had gotten it wrong in this one regard.

Why did I do this?

Because I’m an idiot. Because despite my protestations before, I AM thin-skinned about my books. I take editorial feedback really well, but I respond terribly to public criticisms that I feel are unjust or inaccurate. To my mind, reviewers — professional reviewers, those who merely comment on bookseller sites, and all in between — ought to keep in mind that their words can have an impact on people’s livelihoods. If they have legitimate criticisms, so be it. But they need to take care to get their facts straight. Okay, off my soap-box.

Where was I? Oh, right. I sent a private message to the reviewer. I never heard back from this person. But they reviewed my next book, and they took their revenge. Publicly. Brutally. Cruelly. Their review of that next book was one of the most humiliating things that has ever happened to me in my career. It was unfair. It was relentless. It misrepresented the book. The review left me heartbroken, because I loved the book. Still do. And I am certain this review came about as a direct result of that message I sent after the first review. It was my fault. True, the reviewer didn’t have to take their revenge in the way they did, but still, I should have known better.

Because writers are told again and again never to respond to reviews. Most people will tell writers that they shouldn’t even read their reviews. Clearly, I have struggled throughout my career to follow both these bits of advice. In fairness, I have finally gotten better about all of this. I do not respond to reviews anymore. I rarely read them. But as mistakes go, this was a big one, and it is one I’ve made too often.

Don’t do what I did. Write your book and move on to the next. Promote the hell out of every publication. Pay attention to your sales numbers. Don’t worry about your reviews. Don’t go to your Amazon pages and scroll through the ratings. If you have to read your journal reviews, so be it. Who am I to criticize? But don’t obsess over them. Don’t fixate on the negative phrases. And for God’s sake, don’t respond to them.

And if you can do all that, you’re a better person than I am.

Keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part II — A Bad Contract Is Worse Than No Contract

February 15, 2023 David B. Coe

Last week, I kicked off the latest Professional Wednesday blog post series, “My Best Mistakes,” with a humorous story about my behavior at a convention early in my career. I hope you enjoyed it.

This week, I turn to more serious matters, because the fact is certain mistakes can have serious consequences for our careers. Before I begin, let me reiterate something I wrote in last week’s post: Some of the stories I tell in this series of posts will include other people in the business and/or will touch upon published works of mine that I am still seeking to market. In the interest of discretion, I will be keeping some details purposefully vague.

The events I’m going to describe took place many years ago, as I was putting the finishing touches on one of my early epic fantasy series, and I was looking forward to my next project or projects. This is common for writers even today. We are often a book or two ahead of the publishing schedule, particularly if we publish traditionally. And so as we are waiting for the last book or two of a series to wend its/their way through the production process, we are usually turning to the new shiny. And this was especially the case back in the years I’m talking about here, when self-publishing was not yet a Thing, and big-house traditional publishing was excruciatingly slow.

I had recently met a small press publisher at a convention, and this person expressed interest in publishing my next work. This publisher was ambitious, articulate, charming, and seemed to know the business. Put another way, they talked a good game. They had some big name authors writing for them already and they made it very clear they wanted to add me to that mix. It was flattering really, and they probably knew it.

To that point in my career, I had only written for Tor Books. Tor was and is a great house. Their reputation is global, as is their marketing reach. They brought me out in hardcover with all of my early books, as they did almost all their writers. They put out a beautiful product, they took out big, glossy ads in Locus and the Science Fiction Chronicle. They hosted THE big party at WorldCon each year. There was, in short, a certain cachet that came with being a Tor author. And I liked that. On the other hand, even as my star was rising early in my career, I remained a small fish in the big pond that was Tor.

And so, being a relatively big fish in the pond of this small publisher had some appeal. Add to that the fact that this publisher offered to match or beat the numbers in my most recent contracts with Tor, which had been generous, and I was eager to give working with this person a try. Never mind that all of it sounded too good to be true. I wanted in.

I signed a contract for several books. And if the publisher needed a little extra time to come up with the promised advance . . . well, it was a small press after all. It was understandable, right?

No, not right. That was our first warning that all was not as it should be, although it shouldn’t have been.

So far, I have made it seem the only problem with the contract I signed was that the small press publisher couldn’t do all they promised financially. But there was more to this episode than that. The books I sold them weren’t ready either. The concept needed a ton of work, something I didn’t realize at the time, didn’t WANT to realize at the time. But it’s true. I would later publish a much-changed iteration of this concept with a different publisher, but back in the mid-2000s, when all of this took place, the books were a shadow of what they could and should have been. The publisher’s failure to see the flaws in the original concept should have been a warning as well.

All of that said, I eventually did get my initial advance, and I eventually turned in the first book. When I got it back from the publisher, who was now also my editor, the manuscript was very nearly unmarked. “Looks great. Found a few typos and phrases that don’t quite work. Get the revisions back to me as soon as possible.” That’s a paraphrasing of the feedback I received, but it’s an accurate one and it set off alarm bells in my mind. I knew the book needed more. I didn’t yet know how much work it needed, but I knew it wasn’t essentially publication-ready. As it turned out, this was another sign that my publisher’s resources — financial, yes, but also in terms of time and human resources — were spread way too thin.

Within eighteen months of my signing the contract, the small press was on the brink of bankruptcy. We managed to get back the rights to the series, but only because my agent and I acted quickly and decisively. The series could have gotten caught up in the bankruptcy proceedings and then we might never have been able to sell the later iteration of the books to a different publisher. The publishing company folded not too much later. As far as I know, the publisher/editor I worked with briefly is no longer connected to the publishing world.

So, what are the lessons here? Let me start by saying that the lesson is NOT to avoid working with small presses. I have worked with several in recent years and, with one other notable exception, have had great experiences. Small presses are, to my mind, the future of the industry and a wonderful option for writers of every experience level.

No, the lessons are these:

1) If the promises made to you by a publisher (or, for that matter, by an agent) sound too good, too optimistic, too perfect, take a long, close look at the contract and at all the information you can find about the enterprise. Talk to other authors who have worked with them. Learn all you can. We all like to be told what we want to hear. We all want to feel wanted by our publishers. But flattery and rosy scenarios are no substitute for solid information. Because the old adage holds true: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

2) Don’t rush into anything. Don’t rush to get that first contract signed, unless you’re truly confident you’re a good match for the publisher. Don’t rush to bring a book or series to press unless you’re certain it’s ready. Don’t hurry into any publishing arrangement because you need the money quickly. Actually, that’s probably good advice for any business venture in any field. But it’s particularly important when we’re peddling our intellectual and creative property. If we rush into selling, say, a car, we might not get as much as we should. But if we rush into a publishing contract we can lose access to our artistic creation. If my agent and I had waited another month or two, that’s what would have happened with this series of books. Better to be patient. Better to delay the realization of our ambitions than to destroy any chance of realizing them.

And 3) Beware, beware, beware. The vast majority of the people I know in the publishing industry — writers, editors, agents, publishers — are honest and hardworking. They are in the business because they’re passionate about books and stories, and they want to do good by the people with whom they work. But there are a few — yes, I could drop names; I won’t — who are in it to make a buck, and don’t care who they hurt along the way. There are others who through malign intent or sheer incompetence seem to turn to shit everything they touch. Before you sign to work with anyone, make certain you know what category they fall into.

Keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Monday Musings: The Story of the Storyteller On My Desk

February 13, 2023 David B. Coe

In May of 1994, Nancy and I took our first trip to New Mexico. (We have been back several times since, and we’re always looking forward to our next visit; it is one of our favorite places in the world.) By that time, we had been married for three years, and we had been talking about visiting the state since the beginning of our relationship. Early in that year, Nancy told me it was time to plan our visit, because she was ready to start a family, and, she said, “this time next year, I expect to be pregnant.”

Yes, ma’am. She was more than right, by the way. Our older daughter was born in May 1995.

At the time, I was still in the dreaming stage of my career. I had started work on the book that would become my first published novel, Children of Amarid, and an editor from Tor Books had expressed interest in the series. My agent at the time was negotiating terms with Tor, and already I was learning an early, nerve-wracking lesson about the slow pace of New York publishing. We had yet to sign a contract, and I despaired of ever doing so.

One of the many joys of visiting New Mexico is experiencing the artistry of the native peoples there. The various Pueblo communities produce their own styles of jewelry, pottery, wood carving, and other forms of visual art. During that first visit, I was drawn in particular to ceramic representations of the Storyteller, the embodiment of oral tradition, a symbol of shared history and community lore. Storyteller figures are typical rendered as open-mouthed (in the midst of relating some tale) with smaller figures — children, ostensibly — perched around and/or on them. The Storyteller can be of any gender. They can also take the form of an animal or bird, and they can support any number of smaller figures on their lap, their limbs, their shoulders.

I saw the figures as a symbol of my dream of being a professional writer, and I wanted desperately to find one to take home with me. Unfortunately, the figures are intricately crafted, and their price reflected that. I couldn’t find one that both spoke to me and was affordable.

As part of our visit to New Mexico that spring, Nancy and I made our way out to the Acoma Pueblo. Acoma is known as Sky City, because it is perched on a gorgeous, craggy mesa in the desert west of Albuquerque. It is one of the oldest communities in all of North America, and it is known for, among other things, its exquisite pottery. You can’t drive to the top of the mesa, but rather must park below and walk up. And you can’t just wander the community on your own. You can only access it by taking a tour.

During our tour, we encountered many people selling pottery in front of their homes. And at one table, a mother displayed her wares beside those of her young daughter. I think the girl must have been around 7 or 8, give or take a year, and she had made a few small bowls, seed pots, and dishes. And she had made a tiny storyteller. As one would expect, it was quite crude compared to those we had seen for sale back in Albuquerque (we hadn’t yet been to Santa Fe or Taos), but something about the figure spoke to me. Maybe is was just that the storyteller was so cute. Or maybe it was that the girl herself was so proud of it. Or maybe I saw in this child’s early effort to follow in her mother’s footsteps something akin to my dream of becoming a professional writer. Whatever the reason, I asked the girl how much it cost.

She looked at her mom, seeming surprised that she might actually sell something. Her mom said, “Five dollars.”

“I’ll take it.”

I handed the girl the money. She wrapped up the storyteller she’d made and gave it to me. And Nancy and I followed our tour to another part of Sky City.

Acoma Kiva, by David B. Coe That was a magical day in many ways. Acoma was as beautiful as we had been told, the pale red stone of the Pueblo seeming to glow beneath a deep azure sky, wooden kiva ladders rising above their structures and reaching toward the clouds. At one point, I spotted a rainbow in the clouds overhead — there was no rain, just the prismatic color, which appeared for a moment and then vanished. I think I was the only one on the tour who saw it. I believed that, together, the rainbow and my little storyteller were omens, signs that my dream would, in fact, come to pass.

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis) Two months later, I got my first contract from Tor Books. Children of Amarid wasn’t published for another three years — that first book needed a lot of editorial work. But I was on my way.

Nearly twenty-nine years later, the storyteller I bought that day in Acoma still sits on my desk, right beside my computer screen. I look at it every day, and it still represents for me the dream that launched my career.

I wish you a wonderful week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Professional Wednesday: My Best Mistakes, Part I

February 8, 2023 David B. Coe

A new month, a new blog series. Not that I’m committing to doing a series every month. Really, I’m not . . . .

[Sigh] What have I done . . . ?

Over the course of my career, which has spanned more than twenty-five years, I have managed to accomplish a lot of things. But it has occurred to me that I have also made some pretty interesting mistakes. And maybe readers would learn something from hearing about a few of them. Certainly they might be entertained. And so, with this week’s post I kick off my “My Best Mistakes” series. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m going to start with a story a number of you might already know from one context or another. If you have seen me on panels or at readings, you might well have heard me tell it. If not, here you go. (And a note pertaining to this post and others to come — I will be telling stories that almost invariably include other people and/or published works of mine that I am still seeking to market. In the interest of discretion, some details of these mistake-stories will be kept purposefully vague. I hope you understand. If you don’t understand . . . well, I really don’t care.)

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis) Very early in my career — like, one book in — I attended a very large convention as a guest. It was by far the largest, best-attended con I’d been, too, and at first I was a bit star-struck by the whole thing. Unfortunately, that didn’t last. Read on.

One of my panels was on character-building. Or at least I think it was. Maybe it was on things that happen to us when we write. Or things we can talk about that will allow an impulsive, full-of-himself-young-writer-with-one-lonely-book-to-his-name to do stupid things. I was on the panel with three other authors. Two of them I didn’t know, though they seemed to be solid mid-list authors, each with several publishing credits. The third was a giant in the field. This writer also published with Tor, my publisher, and might well have been one of their three biggest names. I was nothing compared to this person. I was lint.

Somehow, the discussion turned to that wonderful creative moment when our characters begin to do things that we don’t expect, that we don’t necessarily plan. I have written and spoken about this quite a bit. To my mind, it is the moment when we discover that all the work we’ve done to create realistic characters has paid off. They are acting of their own volition in a sense, though of course we are still creating them. The creation is just happening deep in our hind-brains, making it SEEM that they are independent, sentient beings. That, at least is how I felt — and still feel — about it.

The big-name writer disagreed. This person responded to what I had said about this by telling me, in no uncertain terms, in front of a roomful of people, that if my characters were not doing exactly what I expected, I was doing it wrong. And be “it” this person meant “writing.”

“You are the god of your world,” this person said. “You control everything.” End of story. As it were.

The other two writers quickly dropped out of the conversation. They sat at the panel table, staring at their hands, keeping silent, and allowing this other idiot — ie. Me — to keep on arguing the point. Because they were very smart. Much smarter than me. I. Whatever.

Me? I just kept on arguing with the big name, the person who could crush me and my career like a bug if they chose to. Because I was right and this person was wrong. That’s what I thought. (Still do, honestly, but that’s beside the point.) Finally, in my growing frustration, I said (at volume, with heat) “If you write them like puppets, they’ll read like puppets!”

And then I realized what I’d done. Big name. Room full of people. Me saying, essentially, that this person wrote flat, boring, lifeless characters. Holy fuck.

As I have said before in other venues, in that instant the entirety of my tiny little career flashed across my eyes. I figured I was totally screwed. Worse, I had screwed myself.

Now, as it turned out, I was fine. The conversation shifted to another topic. I kept my voice down and my opinions blandly neutral for the rest of the panel. And afterward, I apologized profusely. The big name author was gracious, kind, generous, and forgiving.

I was fortunate. I also learned a valuable lesson. Panel discussions can grow heated; the best ones sometimes do. But even when they do, we must remain polite, and we must always refrain from making any of our statements sound personal or targeted. Because that’s the courteous thing to do. But also because we are always going to be on panels with a mix of people, some of them less experienced than we are (or at least equally lacking in experience) and some of them more experienced, with greater reach and a greater capacity to hinder our career advancement.

I got lucky that day. The person at whom I directed my statement understood I was speaking without thinking, in the heat of the moment. Other authors might not have been so understanding. I could have done real damage to my career.

So that is this week’s mistake. In future weeks, I will focus on different sorts of missteps — bad business decisions, bad reactions to reviews, etc. I hope you find the stories helpful.

In the meantime, as always, keep writing.

Bell Bridge Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Invasives, LonTobyn Chronicle, Tor Books, Writing

Professional Wednesday (On Thursday): About Deadlines

February 2, 2023 David B. Coe

Yes, this is a Professional Wednesday post, going up on a Thursday morning. And it’s about dealing with deadlines and professional obligations, which should give you some hint as to where this essay is going . . . .

I apologize for not getting my Wednesday post up on Wednesday. I would say it won’t happen again, but that would be dishonest. It’s rather likely to happen again at some point. Read on . . . .

Deadlines and obligations are part of any profession, but they seem to loom larger in the literary world than in most others. We writers tend to work in isolation. We don’t go to offices to ply our trade. We have few meetings. We don’t wind up on committees or task forces or action groups or anything of the sort. We have, essentially, one professional duty: We are expected to turn shit in on time. That’s a slight oversimplification. Yes, we have to compose lovely prose. We have to construct narratives, develop characters, create settings, tease out themes and moods and emotions and the like.

But in presenting our work to the outside world, in moving from the creative process to the marketing of our work, our responsibilities come down, largely, to deadlines. Deadlines for submission, for revisions, for copyedits, for proofs. And I don’t mean to downplay the challenges deadlines can present. Being able to create on demand is THE defining attribute of a professional artist. We don’t wait for the muse. We don’t create when the mood strikes us. We produce regularly, and often we do so on someone else’s schedule.

I have been on both sides of deadlines: I have written to them, and I have imposed them on writers sending material to me for editing. And so, I feel confident in discussing how to manage them and how to handle the conversation when we know we’re going to miss them.

The Outlanders, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis) The first deadline I missed was on my second novel, The Outlanders, the middle book of the LonTobyn Chronicles trilogy. And I had good excuses. Between the time I started writing the book, and the day the first draft of the manuscript was due to Tor, our first child was born, my mother died, my father died, and my siblings and I had to settle my father’s estate.

Being a first-time parent was glorious, but it consumed my days and disrupted my nights. Losing both my parents in quick succession was brutal, and the loss of my father hit me particularly hard. HIS father was still alive (my grandfather was over 100 at the time), and his mother had died in her nineties. We thought he would live forever. His death devastated us all.

With the deadline for The Outlanders approaching, I reached out to my editor at Tor Books and told him the book would be late. How late? I had no idea. I was stuck, an emotional wreck, and I didn’t know how to get unstuck. But I promised him I would get it done, if he could just be patient with me. He was, and I did.

That conversation was hard, but it was the right one to have. Looking back, however, I realize I should have initiated it months earlier. The first lesson of dealing with deadlines is this: As soon as we understand that we are going to miss a deadline, we need to alert our editors (and our agents, if we have representation). Missed deadlines impact our publishers as well as the other authors in the publishing queue with us and behind us. A deadline is an obligation with consequences beyond our own lives, and we owe it to the people doing business with us to be as honest and forward-looking as possible.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books) Yes, sometimes we think we’re going to miss a deadline, and then we make it. And if we alert our publisher prematurely, we could lose our spot in the queue. So be it. That’s the price of acting professionally. When our older daughter first was diagnosed with cancer, I told my editor and my agent what had happened, and let them know I was probably going to be late with the novel I was writing. As it turned out, writing that book — Invasives, the second Radiants novel — was a wonderful escape, and I met my deadline. But I had given up my publishing spot and so the book was released later than I had hoped. It wasn’t that big a deal. As I say, the most important thing is be up front about the situation with those who need to know.

Sometimes, we fall behind on our writing not because of life events, but simply because we’re struggling with the story, with the writing itself. Again, communication is the key. In that case, we should reach out to our editor. Let them know we’re having trouble. It may be that a conversation with someone who knows the story, who understands what we’re trying to do with the characters, who might even have already published previous books in the series, will help us clarify our thinking and get us back on track and on schedule. At the very least, it will alert our editor to a potential problem with the upcoming deadline.

And sometimes we just bump up against the realities of the creative process: It doesn’t always conform to our scheduling and planning. Art can be messy and inefficient. In making our commitments, in accepting deadlines in the first place — and usually we have the opportunity to agree to a deadline or to ask for more (or less) time — we have to keep this reality in mind. We have to plan well. We have to avoid setting ourselves up for failure by agreeing to a more ambitious timeline than we are capable of meeting. Once we have have made our commitment, we have to budget our time and then stick to the calendar we’ve set.

In the end, there is really no secret or magic formula to any of this. We must be honest — with ourselves and with our colleagues. We have to do the work. And we have to anticipate problems before they arise.

Easy-peasy. Usually. Every once a while, missing a deadline can’t be helped. And then a Wednesday post goes up on a Thursday.

Keep writing.

Baen Books, Bell Bridge Books, Belle Books, Blogging, Case Files of Justis Fearsson, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Invasives, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, The Chalice War, Thieftaker Chronicles, Tor Books, Writing

Professional Wednesday: The Twisted, Tortured Story of THE CHALICE WAR

January 25, 2023 David B. Coe

The Chalice War-Stone, by David B. Coe My “What matters?” series of posts will conclude next Monday, after a Monday Musings post this week that straddled the personal and professional a bit more than usual. In the meantime, I am using today’s Professional Wednesday post to begin pivoting toward the impending release of my new series, a contemporary urban fantasy that delves deeply into Celtic mythology. The series is called The Chalice War, and the first book is The Chalice War: Stone. It will be released within the next month or so, and will be followed soon after by the second book, The Chalice War: Cauldron, and the finale, The Chalice War: Sword.

In my experience, every new project has a story (no pun intended) and this one is no different. Back in the summer of 2009, I was in a bit of a career doldrums. Blood of the Southlands, my third epic fantasy series, was complete, and all but the third book had been released. The series had done well critically, but sales were a bit disappointing — a pattern I had encountered before and would again — and I was trying to figure out where to go next. I had pitched the first iteration of what would become the Thieftaker series to my agent, and she was trying to sell it to Tor Books. But, as always, the publishing world was moving at a snail’s pace, and I had nothing to do.

Within half a year, I would be working on the Robin Hood novelization and starting to convert Thieftaker from an epic fantasy to a historical urban fantasy. But for the moment, I was without a project.

And then an idea came to me — a sudden flash of insight into what would become a pivotal scene in Stone. I took the idea and ran with it. First, I read a ton of material on Celtic history and lore, taking copious notes and figuring out how I might create modern-day versions of the heroes and deities I was reading about. Then, my research complete (for the moment), I began to write the first draft of a contemporary urban fantasy.

I didn’t do much outlining, but rather allowed the novel to take me where it might. And boy did it take me to some interesting places. It started in an imagined bedroom community in northern Virginia, soon evolved into a cross-country trek on U.S. Interstate 40, and wound up on the Strip in Las Vegas. The Battle Furies — the Morrigan — showed up. Turns out, in addition to being goddesses who fed on strife and human suffering, who could turn themselves into a winged horse (Macha) and twin giant ravens (Badbh and Nemain), who drove armies to a killing frenzy and men to uncontrollable lust, they were also Vegas nightclub singers.

Thieftaker, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath) I finished the book and showed it to my agent. She liked it a lot, but thought it needed work. She was right, of course. But by that time, I had signed the contracts for Robin Hood and the Thieftaker books. Not too long after, I finally sold the Fearsson series to Baen Books and so had that trilogy to get through.

But I never forgot my Celtic urban fantasy, or its heroes Marti and Kel. When I had some spare time, I went back and rewrote the book, incorporating revision notes from friends and from my agent with my own sense of what the book needed. I rewrote it a second time a couple of years later, and having some time, started work on a second volume, this one set in Australia (where my family and I lived in 2005-2006). I stalled out on that book about two-thirds of the way in, but I liked what I had. By then, though, I was deeply involved with the final Thieftaker books and the Fearsson series. And I was starting to have some ideas for what would become the Islevale trilogy.

The Celtic books languished in a virtual trunk, not forgotten, but ignored. I didn’t know how to end the second book. I knew the first book needed another rewrite. And I had no idea how to complete the trilogy.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books) But I had been through this before. The first book in the Case Files of Justis Fearsson went through at least half a dozen iterations between the first draft, written in 2005, and its eventually publication in 2014. I first came up with the basic concept for Invasives, the second Radiants book, in 2009. It sat on my computer desktop for more than ten years before I actually used it.

I revised Stone yet again, and in so doing, came up with an idea of how to complete the second novel. I rewrote what I had written of that novel, and this time got past whatever had held me back and managed to complete it. And in finishing that volume, I came up with an approach for the third book. It was daring, and quite different from the first two books, but it worked. I set that one in Ireland, and also in the Underrealm.

Finally, in 2021, I had a conversation with Deb Dixon, my marvelous editor at Bell Bridge Books. She asked me what I was thinking of writing next, and I said, “Well, I have this series I’ve been working on — a contemporary urban fantasy steeped in Celtic mythology . . . .”

Her response: “Yes, please.”

The moral of the story should be clear: Never, ever, give up on a project. Sometimes we’re not ready to write the ideas we have. Sometimes our imagination outstrips our creative abilities. At other times, our careers take us in other directions, and we’re not yet ready to pursue projects that we know we want to write eventually. And at still other times, our ideas come to us piecemeal. We can’t see the entire work, but we know there is something there worth writing.

All three of these things were true for me. On some level I knew what I wanted to do with the Celtic books back when I wrote that first iteration of Stone. But I wasn’t yet a good enough writer to do justice to the idea. I had other projects that were more fully formed and that I needed to work on in the moment. And so I did. And the idea for the trilogy took time to percolate.

In the end, these are books I love, stories I’m proud to see come to fruition. I look forward to sharing them with all of you.

Keep writing!!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: What Matters, Part IV — Money

January 23, 2023 David B. Coe

Say you don’t need no diamond rings,
And I’ll be satisfied;
Tell me that you want the kind of things,
That money just can’t buy.
— John Lennon and Paul McCartney

We were bound to get to money eventually, right? For weeks now, I’ve been writing about the things that matter and those that don’t. It seemed inevitable that I would come to financial issues before long. And here we are.

Let me start with a spoiler. I am not going to tell you that money is unimportant, that what matters is what’s in your heart, what brings you joy. I’m not going to tell you to throw off the bonds of our Capitalist mindset and devote yourself entirely to your art. Money matters. You can’t eat what’s in your heart. You can’t use your art to keep warm and dry and safe. You can’t retire on dreams and professional contentment. Call it a necessary evil. Call it a source of comfort and pleasure. Call it whatever the hell you want. But don’t kid yourself: In this world, we all need money to get by.

My father struggled early in his professional life, at a time when my older siblings were kids, and he worried about finances quite a bit. Those worries contributed to an authoritarian streak in his parenting. Later, by the time I was growing up, he had established himself in the world of finance and was earning a healthy living. We weren’t truly wealthy — we had family friends who were, so we saw the lifestyle of the rich up close — but we were comfortably upper-middle-class. In my memory, we never worried about money. My dad was far more easy-going in those later years. When unexpected expenses arose, he would shrug and say, “It’s only money.” Which, of course, is an attitude born of privilege.

My brother Jim tells of going with my father to his office in lower Manhattan when Jim was just a kid. My father showed Jim where he worked and said something along the lines of, “I could have been one of those guys with a corner office and a lot of money, but I chose to be a husband and father instead.” That’s a paraphrasing, but a close one, and it is indicative of my dad’s priorities. Again, though, it’s also something one can only say from a place of comfort.

I’ve been rich, oh baby, I’ve been poor;
Been in love a couple of times before.
If I had to choose, you know, between the two,
I’d take both rich and in love; I ain’t no fool.
— Paul Barrere, Little Feat

My father’s example has guided me for much of my life. Yes, I want my books to sell. I want to make money as a writer, and I take advantage of opportunities as they come my way. But when my daughters were younger, I tried to prioritize family in choices between home life and profession. And I have always worked hard to make my books as clean and polished as possible, even when I’ve known that I might make more if I took less time on each project and squeezed out more publications every year.

As a result, I have enjoyed more critical success than commercial success, and at times, my sales performance has bothered me. Once, when I was lamenting another well-reviewed book that hadn’t sold very well, Nancy asked me, “Would you want it to be the other way around?”

The question brought me up short. “What?”

“Would you be happier if your sales were great, but your reviews were bad?”

It took me all of three seconds to answer. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Then stop complaining.”

Wise woman.

At this point, you might be saying, “You know, for a guy who said he wouldn’t tell us money is unimportant, you sure seem to be telling us just that.”

To which I say, “Well, yes and no.”

Money matters, no doubt. I would like to be making more as a writer, and I’ve felt that way for much of my career. But money is not all that matters. Not by a long shot. For each of us there exists a balance — things we will do for a paycheck and things we won’t. I have the luxury of making choices that are similar to those my father made. Nancy earns a good living and she wants me to write with joy, with satisfaction in my work, and with respect for the boundaries we have placed between our professional lives and our private life. An approach born of privilege? Absolutely. And so I would never judge anyone who makes different choices, who emphasizes the commercial end of the profession. We all have to do what is right for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our goals and desires.

This is a Monday Musings post, but these closing graphs have the feel of a Professional Wednesday essay, and so allow me to offer a few bits of business advice. First, do not rush into any contract or business arrangement. Most of the people I have encountered in publishing are honest and care deeply about the written word. Most, but not all. Read your contracts before you sign, and ask questions, not just of the person you’re signing with, but of friends who know the law and the business. If you have any doubts about any provisions, don’t sign until those questions have been answered to your satisfaction.

Second, don’t give up your day job until you’re absolutely certain you can. I gave mine up many years ago, and so I am not really in a position to give such advice. The fact is, though, had I know as much then about the vicissitudes of the market as I know now, I might have followed a different course. This despite the fact that Nancy and I have never really wanted for much or had to worry about finances.

And third, remember that once your words are out there, there’s no taking them back. Take pride in your books and stories. Make them as good as can be. Long after the money from a specific book or story sale has been spent, the work itself will still be available for readers. In my opinion, you want those words to represent the best you have to offer at the moment you published them.

They toss around your latest golden egg,
Speculation — well, who’s to know,
If the next one in the nest,
Will glitter for them so.
— Joni Mitchell

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Professional Wednesday: Three Ways To Help Your Short Fiction Submission, and Three Ways To Doom It

December 21, 2022 David B. Coe

The deadline for submissions to Artifice and Craft, the anthology I’m co-editing with Edmund Schubert for Zombies Need Brains, is ten days away. December 31. As of this writing, we are closing in on 400 submissions. The anthology will have a total of fourteen stories, seven of them from anchor authors. Meaning we can accept seven stories from all those submissions. We will likely wind up with about 500 subs — maybe more. They just pour in during the last week.

Noir, edited by David B. Coe and John Zakour, an anthology from Zombies Need Brains So far, we have received some very good stories. We have also received far, far more that won’t make the first cut. And so I thought I would go over again, briefly, the things that can make or break a story submission, at least for this editor.

To start, here are three things an author can do that might well doom their chances of having their story accepted.

1) Fail to follow the guidelines. I have said this before and will continue to say it until I’m blue in the face, because it sometimes seems I’m shouting into the wind. Every market for stories (and novels, too) has guidelines — GLs for short — that they want authors to follow. These are basics: acceptable fonts, line spacing, margins, etc., as well as presentation instructions, such as what information should appear on the first page and what a cover letter ought to say. Following GLs could not be easier. All one has to do is read them and then follow them. That’s it. And yet, you would be amazed at the number of submissions that don’t do this.

GALACTIC STEW, edited by David B. Coe and Joshua Palmatier Will I reject a story simply because it is single-spaced instead of double-spaced? No, I’m not quite that mean. But when reading a story, knowing I have literally dozens more waiting in the queue, I will only tolerate so many flaws before I reject it. Remember, I have 500 stories to choose from. I can and will find what I’m looking for. No story is ever perfect, so ask yourself, do you want to expend one of your flaws on formatting? Or do you want to present your story correctly so that I can judge it on its artistic merits? The answer seems self-evident to me.

2) Fail to write a story that’s on theme. Again, this would seem so obvious as to be silly. And yet . . . . ZNB anthologies are themed. All of them. And those themes are not suggestions, they’re requirements. The anthology’s theme is written out plainly in the call for submissions (along with the GLs). And yes, if a story isn’t right on theme I WILL reject it. It can be the best story ever, but if it’s not on theme, it will not be in the anthology. Period. Full stop.

3) Fail to write a full story. This one is a little less self-evident. The word limit for each submission is 7,500 words. The GLs don’t give a word minimum. But this is my fifth time editing an anthology and never have I given a top rating to any story that was shorter than, say, 2,500 to 3,000 words. It’s not that I’m imposing a minimum of my own. It’s just that these anthologies are not venues for flash fiction. That upper word limit of 7,500 words is sort of a hint telling you that we want to see story depth, character development and arc, narrative complexity. We want to see excellent ideas that are fully realized, and it is very hard to do that with flash fiction. Over the past couple of months, I have read too many pieces of fiction that offered great ideas, but didn’t do nearly enough with them.

Okay, so what three things can authors do to give themselves the best chance of having a story accepted?

1) I abhor the cliché, but think outside the box. As Joshua Palmatier, owner and publisher of Zombies Need Brains, has said, don’t assume your first idea is your best idea. The most obvious ideas often come to us first, and if they’re obvious to us, they’re likely to be obvious to everyone. Make your story stand out by exploring the second or third idea, by looking for an idea that isn’t obvious but is rich with narrative possibility.

2) Write with emotion and passion. Too many of the stories I’ve read consist of dialogue and almost nothing else. Others take a kind of epistolary approach, by telling the story in the form of documents — court transcripts or product descriptions or something similar. Clever, but devoid of character development, and, as such, often devoid of emotion and tension as well. Stories need to touch our hearts. Clever is fun, but in the absence of passion, it’s probably not enough to gain acceptance to such a selective anthology. Delve into the emotions of your characters, because that is how you will reach the emotions of your readers.

3) Give us a twist or two. Just as your first idea might not be the most original, your most obvious narrative path might not be the most fruitful. Beware writing the pat ending, the contrived plot, the convenient “surprise.” Take your story in directions that make sense without being predictable. Yes, that can take work, but no one ever said this was going to be easy.

Best of luck with your submissions! And keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Falstaff Books, teaching, Writing

Monday Musings: Additional Thoughts On Writing and Teaching

September 26, 2022 David B. Coe

After a wonderful weekend at the Hampton Roads Writers Workshop (kudos to Lauran Strait and all those who helped her make the conference such a success), I am reminded again of why I love to teach writing, to talk about craft and the business in such a setting.

As with so many things in the literary world and publishing business, no one is going to get wealthy teaching at writing workshops. Don’t get me wrong: Those of us listed as presenters for the event were housed, fed, and paid honoraria for our time. The conference charges its attendees a reasonable amount for all that they offer, and they do not in any way take advantage of their instructors. But I can also tell you that I worked hard on my talks beforehand, preparing them with care so that my presentations would take full advantage of the time I was allotted. I know for certain that my fellow presenters did the same. And then we spent the weekend giving our talks and speaking formally and informally with the conference attendees. If we were to take the time to calculate what we earned for all our work on a per hour basis . . . Well, let’s not go there.

In this way, as I mentioned, writing workshops are a lot like other elements of professional writing. If I were to figure my novel writing earnings on a per hour or per word basis, if I were to do the same with my editing work— But no. That way lies madness.

The greater point is that the vast majority of us who write DON’T think in those terms. Because while we do get paid, and we would, all of us, love to earn more as writers than we do, we don’t do it for the money. We do it for the love of the written word.

And so it follows that I don’t teach at writing conferences for the money, though it is nice to be paid, and shown in that small way that our time and effort and expertise are valued, I teach writing because I love to talk with fellow writing professionals and those who hope to be professionals at some point, about what we do. Edmund R. Schubert, my dear friend and colleague, gave a terrific keynote address at Hampton Roads and he expressed this idea so well. He compared it to churchgoers who speak of being spiritually fed (or not) by a sermon or sanctuary service. And he quoted a pastor who said that if one goes to church (or synagogue or mosque or temple) just looking to be fed, without looking for ways to feed others, they are missing the point.

I go to writing conferences hoping that my talks will “feed” those who listen, creatively, intellectually, professionally. But I also go to them because I know that the give-and-take of a writing session will feed me in turn. I will come away inspired, filled with a deeper appreciation and understanding of my craft. As I did this past weekend at Hampton Roads.

My time with Edmund and also John Hartness, who was there as well, as a presenter and book dealer, fed my need to hang with old friends who share my passion for and frustration with this crazy business. My conversations with fellow presenters I hadn’t known before this weekend offered me new perspectives on the writing industry and new friends who I look forward to seeing again at future events. And my interaction with the attending students, a diverse group who varied widely in age, writing level, life experience, and creative aspiration, filled me with renewed enthusiasm for the ongoing “conversation” in which all storytellers engage.

Yes, in recent posts I have lamented the state of the literary market. But writing is not going away. Storytelling is not going away. One need only experience first-hand the passion of these up-and-coming writers, who are not doing it for the money, who are struggling and working and honing their craft without having yet earned much of anything from their creative endeavors, to know that the future of our craft is not about the troubles in New York publishing. It is about the next generation of writers and their collective voice. And the generation after that one. And so on.

The publishing behemoths in New York can change, or at least make the attempt. They can cut advances, and shake up their staffs, and look to the mammoth booksellers with trepidation, wondering what their next pronouncement might mean for the bottom line. But readers still want a great story. Small booksellers still market books because they love literature. Small presses still publish great stories knowing that they are putting something positive and powerful into the world, even if their profit margins are, well, marginal. And writers of all levels still write the tales that burn in their hearts, and give voice to the characters they encounter in their ever-active imaginations.

Storytelling lives. The conversation continues.

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, teaching, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Hampton Roads Writers Conference, and the Hardest Writing Topic to Teach (For Me)

September 21, 2022 David B. Coe

This week I head to the Hampton Roads Writers Conference in Virginia Beach. I’ll be teaching several workshops over the three days I’m there — a two-hour master class on “Point of View and Voice,” a ninety-minute class on “Character and Character Arc,” and two one-hour classes, one on “World Building” and one on “Pacing and Narrative Arc.” I always look forward to conferences like this one, in large part because I love to teach, and I love to talk about the craft of story telling.

Recently, some of you may recall, I wrote about the difficulties inherent in encouraging aspiring writers given the state of today’s literary market. I don’t believe teaching at the workshop contradicts or undermines what I wrote in that post. If students ask me about the business side of writing, I will be brutally honest with them. And even if they don’t ask the questions, I will not misrepresent the publishing industry or in any way downplay the difficulties currently faced by new writers.

Teaching writing, though, is always a service, always a worthwhile thing to do. Whether someone wishes to write professionally (despite the odds) or write as a hobby — or something in between — it can never hurt to hone those skills. I don’t ever intend to be a professional photographer or musician, but I am always looking to improve at both and would gladly attend photography workshops to learn new techniques. (Provided I can find the time and the money to do so — those workshops are spendy!) Put another way, if I can help any writer improve their skills and get more enjoyment out of their literary projects, I believe I have done a good thing.

I have taught on previous occasions all the topics I’ll be covering this weekend, and I can safely say that pacing and narrative arc are far and away the toughest to teach. Why? Because, they are somewhat amorphous topics. Point of view has definite categories and approaches. It has “rules” most writers tend to follow and most editors tend to look for. I have developed techniques and mechanisms for character development that I am more than happy share. And world building is a process with which I am very familiar and which can be broken down into component parts as a way of rationalizing a complex, sprawling endeavor.

Pacing, though, is all about feel, about instinct. I can talk about things I try to do myself, in my own work, but even those discussions tend to stray into the realm of analogies and metaphors, ways of describing something that defies description. A lot of what I have learned over the years about pacing and shaping narrative arc, has come out of trial and error, mistakes I made in one book or series and corrected in the next, or the one after that.

So why try to teach it? Because, quite honestly, despite the difficulties inherent in talking about a subject that is so hard to pin down — or perhaps because of those challenges — some of the best teaching sessions I’ve ever had focused on this subject. As the topic grows harder to discuss, I find, the classes on the topic grow increasingly interactive, until all in the room are working on ways to conceptualize and contextualize the conversation. In other words, it becomes a team effort, and that helps everyone in the room.

I plan to approach the class in three ways — one is conceptual, relying on those analogies I mentioned earlier; one is visual, using drawings to show how narrative arc ought to progress in a book and in a series; and one is pragmatic, focusing on those narrative mechanics that help us with pacing and that are easiest to discuss in concrete terms.

As I say, my past experiences with teaching pacing and narrative arc have generally been pretty good (and I just jinxed myself) so I am hoping this one will be, too.

The other thing I love about teaching at conferences like Hampton Roads is the opportunity to hang out with other industry professionals, and I believe the coming weekend will be especially fun, since two of my favorite people in the world, Edmund Schubert and John Hartness, will be there as well. In fact, Edmund is one of the conference’s keynote speakers.

So that’s what I have on tap for my end-of-week/weekend. I hope yours is great.