Jackie Barbosa

Tweet This Post

While we were on vacation in Yosemite, my oldest son (12) was playing in the snow in the courtyard with his best friend while my husband and I and the other boy’s parents were inside the lounge having a drink. He honestly wasn’t doing anything that SEEMED particularly dangerous…all the adults had seen what they were doing and shrugged it off. But just after our beers arrived, the best friend came running in to inform us that my son had broken his teeth. I am sure you can imagine my reaction!

Turns out they were throwing snowballs at each other. My son reached down to get a handful of snow, turned around, and tripped over a rock. He fell and before he could get his hands out to catch himself, he hit a low lamppost dead-on with his front teeth, chipping both of them pretty severely.

I defy any mother to see that and not a) want to weep and b) have visions of dollar signs dance in her head.

Fortunately, though, there was no nerve involvement and within a couple of hours, the pain had abated to the point that we decided to stay through our originally planned vacation (there was some talk about coming home early right after it happened), and the kid even went snowboarding the next day. (We earned the title of “the dental family” as apparently, the story of how he broke his teeth made it all over the mountain by the end of the day.

Yesterday, we went to the dentist, and the x-rays were reassuring. There’s no telling, of course, whether the trauma will ultimately kill the teeth, resulting in the need for a root canal/crown, but there was no visible internal damage. In the afternoon, we went back and the dentist (who squeezed us in at the last minute and stayed late for us) patched him up. And I swear, if I didn’t know…I’d never know!

This is one of those times when I’m exceptionally glad I live in the era of modern dentistry!

Tweet This Post

So, I’ve just returned from a rejuvenating vacation in Yosemite National Park, complete with picture-postcard perfect snow and a really kick-ass day of skiing (although, toward the end, it was a bit like skiing in mashed potatoes due to the white-out conditions), and I’ve now got a few minutes to announce my posting schedule for the next few weeks.

As it happens, I’m an old-fashioned girl in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is in the celebration of the Chistmas holiday. I’m a big believe in the REAL twelve days of Christmas (i.e., Christmas Day through Epiphany). This means my kids are always whining by the second week of December, wanting to know why we don’t have a Chistmas tree up yet when everyone else in the neighborhood does. I explain that I like to get the tree later so it can stay up longer…because my goal is NEVER to take down the tree before January 6.

What does this all mean to you? Well, it’s simple. I, with the help of elevent other wonderful authors, will be giving YOU a present every day from the 25th through the 5th in the form of a steamy/erotic short story for download. On the 6th, I’ll bundle all twelve stories up into one neat package and make it available both in pdf and for Kindle. And it will be free, free, free!

Now, doesn’t that sound awesome? So, here’s the line-up:

December 25th
Anna Leigh Keaton
December 26th
Lacy Danes
December 27th
Katie Allen
December 28th
Raine Weaver
December 29th
Amy Ruttan
December 30th
Christine D’Abo
December 31st
TJ Michaels
January 1st
Karen Erickson
January 2nd
Alisha Rai
January 3rd
Amie Stuart
January 4th
Emma Petersen
January 5th
Jackie Barbosa

So, get ready to curl up with some hot reads to keep you warm…and please, spread the word!

Tweet This Post

Okay, I’m not really leaving or anything drastic like that (just in case you were terrified at the prospect of never reading another one of my posts, lol), but I AM going to be taking a hiatus from my regular blogging schedule from tomorrow until Epiphany. That doesn’t mean there won’t be new content on the blog, but instead of my musings about writing, publishing, and my other little nuggets of wisdom (I use the term loosely), I’ve got something a little more fun in store for you. I’ll let you in on that tomorrow .

But first, I want to do my “thanks for all the books” piece. Lots of folks have been posting their favorite books of 2009 recently, and although I’m no book reviewer and have no intention of becoming one, I wanted to thank the following authors for providing me with some of the best books I’ve read this year (or any year). Titles are listed in alphabetical order by author, so don’t think of this as a list with rankings, because it’s not!

• Ann Aguirre for Blue Diablo
• Liz Carlyle for Wicked All Night
• Victoria Dahl for Start Me Up
• Tessa Dare for Surrender of a Siren
• Margaret Mallory for Knight of Desire
• Courtney Milan for This Wicked Gift
• Amie Stuart for Hittin’ It
• Scott Westerfeld for Uglies (which didn’t come out this year, but…)

So, to all those authors, you made my year. Thanks for all the books and keep up the good work.

Tweet This Post

I said I’d post a definition of RWA terms for authors, but in light of the fact that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I thought I’d take a break from controversy for a couple of days and post my tips and tricks for a great turkey while someone might benefit from them. It’s taken me years to hone my turkey cooking skillz, and I must say, after a decade plus, I think they’re pretty mad .

So, here are the things I do that I believe lead to a juicy, delicious bird:

1. Brine that baby!

I only started brining a couple of years ago, but it makes (IMO) a huge difference in both the flavor and the moistness of the meat. The main thing about brining, though, is that most of the commercially packaged brines are way too salty, and even the recipes for homemade brines call for far too much salt for my taste. Last year, however, I adapted a recipe from my local newspaper and I really like the results. Here’s it is, with my adaptations:

3/4 cup Kosher salt
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
10 whole cloves
3 teaspoons black peppercorns
1 quart of apple juice
1 quart of water
1 cup of orange juice
Peel of one orange or tangerine
3 teaspoons dried thyme
3 teaspoons dried sage

Combine all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for another 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature.

When the brine is cooled, put your turkey (fully defrosted) in a large, sturdy plastic bag. (You can buy brining bags at the grocery store, but they’re expensive. I find a clean plastic trash bag works just as well and is way cheaper…just double it if it doesn’t seem sturdy enough.) Pour the brine into the bag and close it up so that the entire turkey is submerged in the liquid. Place the entire thing in your refrigerator (if you have space; I never do) or use a cooler with plenty of ice to keep it cold while it soaks. I brine for 1 hour per pound of turkey. This year, I’m doing two 12-lbers, but that doesn’t mean I’ll double the time. I might brine slightly more than 12 hours, but not much.

2. Cheesecloth

This is a trick I learned from my mother, who learned it from the Joy of Cooking. Instead of using one of those turkey bags in an attempt to keep the breast meat from getting dry/overcooked, I soak cheesecloth in ice water, then drape it over the breast and wings. I then drizzle some drawn butter or olive oil over the cheesecloth to keep it moist until the first basting.

Throughout the cooking time, I rebaste over the cheesecloth about once every half hour with the pan drippings.

When you take out the turkey, the cheesecloth may stick a little to the skin (which will be a nice, crispy brown) and peel some away, but I can pretty much guarantee the breast meat won’t be dry (unless you REALLY overdo the cooking time; then all bets are off).

If you use either of these tips, let me know how it works out for you. Also, feel free to post your own tips and tricks. I seem to learn something new every year about how to make a better turkey, so I’m always looking for ideas .

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tweet This Post

I remember a time when I wrote for the fun of it. When I had no idea what the “rules” were and the words just flowed out of my head and onto the page. Yeah, most of them were crap, but I didn’t know they were crap, so it didn’t bother me. I just enjoyed the process of committing the story in my head to paper…or the screen, as the case may be.

Somewhere along the way, though, writing stopped being fun. I’m hard-pressed to say exactly when it happened. Probably, that’s because it didn’t happen overnight. It was a more gradual process. I learned more about craft, more about the should’s and shouldn’t’s. I became a much better writer in every objective sense than I was when the words just flowed and I didn’t care if they sucked or not. I had a few short stories and novellas published by an epublisher, then a novella collection published by a New York house.

Wow, I was a real writer! What an accomplishment!

But the joy? It’s gone. Writing has become a chore, about as much fun as cleaning the bathroom and with even less reward. At least someone is always grateful when I clean the bathroom. My wonderful CPs and a few friends aside, nobody seems to care one way or another whether I ever write another word.

It’s not just that I haven’t been able to sell anything since Behind the Red Door. Oh, sure, that’s part of it. If I were feeling some love from editors, my own love for the task of writing might be considerably stronger. But it’s more than that.

You see, I’m starting to wonder if I have had an inflated opinion of my own skills. Maybe I’m just really not any good at this. Maybe the reason I’m not selling anything is because…duh, I don’t deserve to.

A couple of days ago, I clicked on a Twitter link to a book for sale on Fictionwise. A book with a (in my opinion) ridiculous premise and worse cover art. But this book has obviously sold hundreds of copies and most of the ratings by readers are “Great.” It has a few “Good” ratings and a couple of “Averages.” No “Poors.”

By comparison, my ebooks’ reader ratings on Fictionwise are about evenly split between good and average. I have a few greats. A couple of poors. But in general, it’s pretty clear that the typical reader has a lukewarm response to my books. Oh, they don’t hate them, but they don’t love them, either.

But it’s not just buyers at Fictionwise who feel lukewarm about my work. Oh, I get generally good ratings from most reviewers, but I’ve never managed to garner a recommended read or top pick or anything like that. And I’ve yet to receive a single piece of fan mail from a new reader since my print book came out. I’ve gotten some fan mail from my ebooks, and some readers who’ve contacted me in the past wrote to tell me they liked Behind the Red Door, but it doesn’t seem to have garnered me a legion of new fans.

What am I to take away from this? I always write the best book I can, believe me, but the best book I can write is apparently not the book that editors or readers are all that excited about. I could launch into a screed at this point about the lowest common denominator and the inability of “the masses” to recognize true quality, but even if I thought it was true that my books were “too good” for the general public (which I don’t), it doesn’t really matter. If no one but a handful of people loves my books, there’s not much point in pursuing a career in writing. Especially if I’m not getting any pleasure from it myself.

I’ve said before that the only way to be sure you’ll never be published is to give up. But I’ve been published. So? Do I keep trying to get published when it’s about as much fun as slamming my finger in a door or do I close the book on the “writer” chapter of my life and move on?

I’m sure this whole post sounds like a combination of a self-pity party and a cry for attention, but I’m not looking for anyone to tell me I’m too talented to give up or otherwise exhort me to keep the faith. I’ve heard that plenty of times already (usually from those devoted CPs and friends, bless them), and it hasn’t changed anything. I’m still not sure why I should keep at it.

Right now, what I genuinely want to know is how anyone knows it’s time to quit. Not just writing, but any pursuit where the relative likelihood of success is small and the cost of continuing to try is high—in blood, sweat, tears, time, money, whatever. When does someone who desperately wants to be a major league baseball player decide it’s time to give up the dream and focus on a “real” career instead? When does someone whose life ambition is to be an actor realize he’s probably got a face for radio (or maybe just doesn’t have as much talent as he imagined)?

So, what do you think? When is it time to throw in the towel?

Tweet This Post

I suppose one of the advantages of having a blog is that, every once in a while, you get to use it just to rant about how bad life sometimes sucks. It just happens to be extra appropriate that the crap went down on WTF Wednesday instead of some other day of the week.

Every year about this time, the company I work for (which shall remain nameless for a number of reasons) holds an educational conference for our clients. Since I’m an instructional designer (meaning I write lots of training materials), I do quite a few of the sessions every year. Normally, we hold the conference live at a local hotel, but this year, the decision was made to go virtual due to the recession and the fear that many of our clients wouldn’t be able to attend. The parent company hired a third party vendor to handle the technical aspects of the conference.

Or so we thought…

The first sign things were not going well came this morning when the first live session was broadcast. The sound kept cutting out. Eventually, there was no audio at all. Dandy. The vendor couldn’t seem to figure out what the problem was, so the session was eventually cancelled.

Now, I had my own live session at noon. At this point, I was starting to think bad thoughts about what was going to happen when it was my turn to broadcast. Maybe it was stress or panic, but all of a sudden, I started having migraine precursors (for me, that means auras and aphasia). Not knowing whether I have to go in or not at this point, I took some Tylenol 3 and crossed my fingers that they’d decide to postpone the session so I could sleep in a dark, quiet room.

No such luck. “Come in, they’ll have it sorted out by then.”

So, I went. Fortunately, the drugs were working pretty well so I didn’t have a bastard of a headache, but when the time came for my session…you guessed it…no audio. After 20 minutes of dicking around, the presentation was cancelled and now I’m supposed to do it tomorrow instead.

As if this weren’t all irksome enough, I had a little time between leaving the office and picking up my kids, so I stopped on my way home at the B&N, planning to pick up Tessa Dare’s Surrender of a Siren. I know from experience I can rely on B&N to shelve books on their release date if not before, whereas my Borders tends to be slow (they didn’t have my book out for a couple of WEEKS after the release date).

Yeah, right. This ONE time, when I most needed a good comfort read to curl up with, B&N failed me. The book isn’t out yet and I didn’t have time to try anywhere else.

Waaaah!

Okay, so, tell me about your latest terrible, horrible, no good, really bad day. Because misery loves company!

Tweet This Post

So, after Saturday’s look into the statistical improbabilities involved in NY publishing, I first want to add a few caveats. Because, while statistics say a lot about how hard it is to get published in NY and stay there, they don’t say much about individual experience. In other words, statistics provide generalities, but assuming that they apply perfectly to you as an individual isn’t right, either.

Those numbers (some of which are validated and some of which are just my own best guesses based on my “insider” knowledge of having friends in the biz who’ve either gotten–or haven’t–multiple contracts) might make you think I’d just chuck the whole pursuit of another NY contract right out the window on the theory that it’s like playing the lottery, and there’s not much point in trying. (I do NOT, in fact, play the lottery. I always figure I win a dollar–or five or whatever the going rate is–by NOT playing. It’s 100% guaranteed rate of return if I don’t play.)

Getting a contract from a NY publisher isn’t really a lottery, though, any more than getting a contract from a epublisher is. (Epublishers don’t publish everything that’s submitted to them, either, though I believe one of the knocks against them by many outsiders is the perception that they can and will publish “anything.”)

But bottom line, the author does have a limited amount of control over getting that contract. There are no guarantees for any one project, but I do believe that honing one’s craft and keeping at it will ultimately lead to a sale–and then another and another. You just have to be willing to suffer a lot of disappointments and rejections before that happens. (Note: not all authors DO suffer those disappointments and rejections. There are a few geniuses out there–I count some among my friends–who could probably write the phone book well enough to go to auction with it. But we can’t all be those writers.)

So, no, I’m not anywhere near giving up on getting that next contract. I have a project on submission right now and, while I’m not counting on an offer for it, I’m still hopeful. But if that project doesn’t sell, my agent and I will sit down and discuss what’s next. Sooner or later, we’ll hit on the right combination of factors (story, voice, etc.) that snags that next offer. I have complete confidence in that.

But in the meantime, I would be foolish to overlook the opportunities epublishing presents for me to continue earning some income from my writing. For all the fantasticness of the “guarantee” of income an advance provides to the author, it’s only guaranteed AFTER you get an offer of publication. If you’re between contracts, it can be a long time before you see any guaranteed money, and until you get that next contract, everything you’re writing is earning you EXACTLY $0. Unless and until you sell something, you are guaranteed to be writing for free.

And that’s where epublishing comes in. I definitely draw a line in the sand between the projects I write with the intention of trying to sell them to a NY publisher and those I write with the intention of getting a contract from an epublisher, but I love the fact that I can write those shorter, slightly quirkier manuscripts and find a home for them where I can earn SOME income on those sales. To me, the possibility of earning even $50 on a story that (because it’s 25k in length or less) takes me relatively little time to write and that I wanted to write anyway seems considerably more sensible than thumbing my nose at the “unfair epub business model” and holding out for the “guaranteed” advance I may not get for months or even years.

Now, it would be a wholly different matter if I didn’t LIKE and WANT TO write stories that are a good fit for epublishers and a poor fit for most NY houses. In that case, I can see why it might be a waste of my time and effort to write for so little return on my investment. But the truth is, I enjoy writing those stories, I like the regular income stream they provide, and I am sure I get some benefit in terms of name recognition and new readers by putting out new stories on a regular basis.

Furthermore, if these were the only kind of stories I wanted to write, I imagine I might be perfectly content to be only epublished for the foreseeable future. And I could imagine a quite comfortable income from doing so, not because any one of those ebooks would earn as much as NY-published book, but because put together, my ebook backlist (once built to a certain level) could easily sell enough copies to approach the average NY advance. That’s especially true for writers who can reliably hit bestseller lists at the bigger epublishing houses.

I kind of forgot where I was going with all of this, lol, so let’s see if I can sum up. It seems to me that RWA is so focused on the “guaranteed income” provided by an advance that it doesn’t see it’s promoting a model in which the vast majority of its members will never see a dollar from their writing or if they do, they will work for years or even decades before they do and may have to work for years or decades for no pay BETWEEN those income streams.

I’m not saying epublishing is perfect. Anyone who is under that impression need only read my article on The Perils and Pleasures of Epublishing to understand exactly what I see as its pitfalls and potential problems. But it does offer a space for writers to grow their careers and their skills and, yes, earn a little income from their work, even if it’s less (or a LOT less) than $1,000 per title (and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times–a ridiculous amount to apply evenly to all works from 20k-100k words in length).

The advance model is definitely “better” than the no advance, high royalty rate model…for those whose books are selling to the publishers who provide those advances. But to demand that all publishers must offer a $1,000 advance to be “legitimate” or worthy of recognition is simply blindered, because it doesn’t recognize how few authors are actually able to consistently and reliably achieve sales under that model.

Tomorrow: It’s All About the Pie.

Tweet This Post

…or What RWA Would Rather You Didn’t Know about Publishing.

I hate math. But sometimes, it is very useful to illustrate a point.

1. Getting an agent (or at least, a good, reputable one) is hard.

   Most estimates say agents offer to represent about 1% of the authors whose projects come across their desks. Realistically speaking, although there are many more than 200 reputable literary agents in the US operating at any given time, you probably only have about 200 out there who represent projects in your genre/sub-genre. It is, of course, entirely possible that the 200th agent will be the one who offers to represent your project. Still, statistically speaking your chance of getting an offer of representation from an agent on any given project remains 1%…you just get that 1% chance 200 times (and a 99% chance of rejection the same 200 times).

   Of course, that’s just per project submitted. Few authors write only one manuscript and rest their entire career hopes on that one book. If you keep at it and you work to hone your craft, the chances you’ll eventually snag an agent are probably close to 100%. But it takes time, effort, and perseverance as well as a modicum of talent and a lot of skill. Some people who want to be writers are lacking in one or more of these areas and, honestly, they’re the ones who account for 95% of the 99% of projects agents reject.

   But even if you’re a hardworking, talented writer, it can be a long time before you fall into the category of the 5% who get requests, let alone the 1% who get an offer of representation.

2. Getting an offer for publication from an NY house is even harder. 

   Even if you have achieved #1, the chance that any given project you submit to an NY house will sell is small. Editors in traditional print houses say they offer contracts for publication to approximately .5% of the manuscripts they read. The percentages are probably higher for agented manuscripts than unagented, but there are also some houses you can’t submit to without an agent and those houses still have similar acceptance rates, so although you probably have a better than .5% change of getting an offer from one of the ten or so houses you’ll submit to through your agent, the chance that any single project will sell can’t be much more than 25%. And I’d bet that’s a generous estimate.

   Of course, as with agents, a pass on one project doesn’t mean you won’t eventually sell a different project. But even with a good, reputable agent, there are some authors who don’t ever sell a manuscript. Often, that leads to a break-up with the agent and starting over from scratch again.

3. Getting one offer for publication doesn’t mean you’ll get another.

   It’s an article of faith among unpublished writers that getting that first contract for publication is the Holy Grail. Once you have it, you have credibility. You have been validated as an author. You have arrived. And now it’ll be comparatively easy to sell the next project. And the next. And the next.

   Ahhhh, how I wish it were true. The stark truth, however, is that selling the first project may be easier than the second (or the third, or the fifth). Because now, editors aren’t just looking at your book and whether they like the concept and the voice enough to take a chance on it. No, now they are also looking at your past sales figures. How did your last book do? Did you sell-through? Earn out your advance? Have a high rate of returns? Publishers are wary of taking a chance on an author whose previous books haven’t done well. You might get around this by taking a new pen name or just because you find an editor who loves this book more than life itself and is willing to put his/her reputation on the line for it, but the first is a pain in the neck and the second is even more unlikely than selling your first project was.

   I’m not trying to be a downer, here, but the realities are pretty stark. An author I know recently said she’d heard only 2-3% of writers get a second contract offer. Now, I’m not exactly sure what that statistic means. It might mean only 2-3% get an offer from their first publisher for the book that fulfills the option clause, and it’s probably not a lifetime statistic. But I certainly know plenty of authors who have yet to land second contracts (myself included, lol) and a fair number of others who’ve been cut by their publishers and have yet to find another house because their sales data showed no improvement over time or because WalMart didn’t order copies or any number of other factors totally outside the author’s control. I won’t name any of them, of course, because who wants to be associated with that sort of statistic, but face it…this business can be brutal, even to multi-published authors with a long track record, to say nothing of those of us newbies who are trying to break in and make a name for ourselves.

4. Even authors who are successful in areas #1, #2, and #3 rarely earn enough money from their writing to call it a “career.”

    I won’t belabor this one, but an Author’s Guild survey has shown that the average income for a published author is $10,000 per year. And that is gross, not net. Agent’s fees and costs associated with promotion are not taken into account in that figure. 

   I believe that survey also showed that roughly 15% of authors make a sufficient income from writing not to have a day job, and another 5% earn enough to be the sole breadwinner for themselves and/or their families. The remaining 80% write on the side, and consider any money they make to be, at best, supplemental income. The ones who do make a living at it are often fortunate enough to have a spouse/significant other who earns enough to support the family during the author’s “lean” times, or are capable of writing quickly enough to juggle multiple contracts and/or put out three or more books per year.

   Now, that’s across all genres, not just in romance, and it’s possible that on average, romance authors do slightly better than that. But even if romance authors do, on average, twice or three times as well as that, it’s hardly what I’d consider “career” income, especially when the costs of doing business are taken into account.

So, why did I go off on this depressing little statistical rant? Well, because I’m tired of the mythology that surrounds traditional print publishing. Of course, this is related to RWA President Diane Pershing’s latest open-mouth-insert-foot into the question of advances and publisher recognition, but it’s more than that. It’s an honest attempt to get everyone to face facts.

Ms. Pershing is completely correct that most authors won’t earn $1,000 on a single work published by an epress. I think that’s absolutely 100% accurate. I know I have yet to do so, and I’m not embarrassed or ashamed to admit that. Some authors certainly do earn that much and more, but it depends a great deal on many factors: the publisher, the genre/sub-genre, and the author’s name recognition/brand.

But at the same time, the notion that an author has somehow reached the Promised Land once she’s gotten a contract from a publisher that pays a $1,000 per book advance is equally flawed. I’ve just outlined all the reasons that’s not the case. Yet RWA’s policies on this matter obscure this fact and make it seem as though that advance means something objectively that it simply doesn’t. And it needs to stop, not just because it’s delegitimizing a huge chunk of RWA’s membership and a growing segment of the market its authors have for selling their work, but because it’s giving far too many unpublished members a much too rosy view of the real world of publishing.

Tweet This Post

Well, I got to this so late today that I’m afraid all I can manage is a list of things that have made me say WTF at least once today:

• The continuing fallout from the Iranian election fiasco. Let’s hope we see real change for Iranian people as a result of this. They deserve it. Otherwise, WTF?
• Read an article today about the continuing overmonitoring/overcollection of Americans’ emails by the NSA. Including, apparently, President Clinton’s. (Well, I bet his emails are a lot more interesting than mine, actually.) WTF?
• There are only two more days left before school is out and my kids are home all day. Wasn’t it just September? WTF?
• There is no beer left in the house. WTF?

Please, feel free to share your own personal expression of the WTF’edness of life. We all need to vent every now and then!

Tweet This Post