Behind The Garden Gate

Februray - The Month of Romance

2012-02-06T13:16:00.000-05:00

by Nicolette, Editor - Black Rose Line

February, the month of love and romance, I would like to take this chance to thank and applaud all of the writers. Who better to represent this month than all of you, romance writers. If you are published, thank you for entrusting your stories to all of us at the TWRP. If you are secretly toiling away at a story, keep at it. We are waiting to read your words.

I am your biggest fan! And your biggest cheerleader!

The hardest thing I have to do is write a rejection letter. It takes a very brave person to submit a story. And every story deserves to be told but there are times when they need a little work before they are ready to go out into the world. When you do get that rejection letter think of it as the next step in the process and please keep on writing. Jump right back in.

Take the time to learn the craft. All the technical aspects of writing can be studied and learned. Take advantage of all the resources available. However, the most important thing a writer brings to the table is passion. Be open and free. Don’t hold back. Allow your characters to take you on the adventure. It’s their story let; them tell it. If you give them a chance, they will push you to the edge and hopefully right over.

Don’t be afraid of taking the big risk. Be daring, love is a crazy thing, it makes people go far beyond what they would ever dream. It pushes to extremes never thought possible. As a writer of romance, you need to be willing to take that leap and bring us all along with you. Create the world you want to see. Experience every minute detail and then share it with the rest of us.

More importantly have fun. This should be pure enjoyment. Love what you are doing; love each word that is put on the page.

Don’t be afraid of tapping into your emotions. It may be uncomfortable but it breathes life into characters when the emotions come from a real place. Embrace them, use them, they are the tools you’re going to need. Allow yourself to experience the highs and lows of the characters.

Listen to the voices in your head. They will guide you through your story.

And remember, no holding back!

I fell in love with romance novels at a young age and never looked back. I love the stories, the ideas that love can conquer all and that there is a happily ever after. It gives me hope in a world where so much is focused on the negative. It’s my escape into a better world where I know that no matter what happens, no matter how dark the dark moments get, it’s all going to work out for the best. My hero and heroine are going to find their way back to each other because their love is strong enough to carry them through.

The process isn’t always easy but never give up your dream. We are here to help and cheer for you. Waiting excitedly for your stories release.

Adjectives in Series

2012-01-17T10:45:00.001-05:00

If you are a native speaker of English, you understand the order of words in a sentence without too much thought; certain patterns exist that help us make sense of nouns, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, and adjectives in a way that communicates our thoughts clearly. This is called syntax.

River the to going you are? No. Are you going to the river?

Unless you’re Yoda. But he isn’t a native English speaker.

Within those rules of syntax are hidden conventions such as the natural order of adjectives used to describe a noun. Would you say “the yellow smelly old six buckets”? No. A native English speaker would want these words to fall this way: the six smelly old yellow buckets.

Why? And what about commas separating the adjectives?

This is where further analysis reveals tricky little rules and a couple of easy tests to help a writer or editor out.

In English, we generally organize serial adjectives in this order:

1. article (the, a, an)
2. number or quantity
3. observations/ judgments (terrible, stinky, interesting, nice)
4. size
5. shape
6. age (old, new, ancient)
7. color or pattern
8. origin (American, French, Asian)
9. material (cloth, iron, wooden)
10. qualifier, often considered part of the noun (rocking chair, dish soap, soup tureen)

Another example, no commas needed: six dozen long-stemmed red roses

This English for Students website has more information and a great chart to help determine the best order for a series of adjectives—simply plug in the ones you want to use and the order is predetermined. The only missing category is quantity, which we usually express first or just after the article, if one is used.

Once you have your adjectives arranged in the order that sounds best to your English ear, how do you determine if commas are needed between them? In theory, you could write “the twenty creaky little squarish antique green Martian wooden soap boxes” and not need commas. For most purposes, that is far too many adjectives to stick together. However, it illustrates a point. In the correct order, you won’t need commas.

If you use the adjectives “out” of order, perhaps to emphasize one over another, then place commas around the one that is out of order.

The new, cherry, American muscle car (article, age, observation (cherry = cool, neato, keen, awesome, spiffy), origin, qualifier)

If you use two adjectives from the same category (coordinated adjectives), you will need a comma to separate them.

The beautiful, fragrant rose (both observations)

Kim Kautzer at In Our Write Minds shows two ways to test whether you need commas or not by using “and” between them or by reversing the order of the adjectives.

One way to test whether a comma is needed between adjectives is if you can use the word “and” (or other conjunction) without changing the meaning of the phrase.

The beautiful and fragrant rose = yes, so a comma is needed.

“A wealthy business broker” changed to “a wealthy and business broker” = no, so no comma is needed.

A second way to test whether you need a comma is to switch the order of the adjectives. (This method is only practical if you have two or three, rather than all nine types).

The fragrant, beautiful rose = The beautiful, fragrant rose. Yes, a comma is needed.

A business wealthy broker = no; the order cannot be changed and still make sense, so no comma.

May the mysterious, overwhelming gray fog of grammar and comma rules lift for you on this issue.

A Good Showing by The Wild Rose Press

2012-01-16T06:07:00.000-05:00

For the fourth time in a row, The Wild Rose Press has secured the title of "Best Publisher of the Year" based on voting results from the Preditors and Editors annual poll. http://www.critters.org/predpoll/final_tally.ht

Not only did we take the top spot for Best Publisher but our very own editor, Laura Kelly also came in first place as Best Editor of the Year.

In addition, Lori Graham held her position as one of the top 10 editors in the field for the third year in a row coming in at number 6 this year.

Under Best Artist - our own Tamra Westberry came in #2 and she also came in #7 for Best Artwork for her cover on "Immortal Justice"

Also in the top spot - our very own romance author Sharon Donovan took first place for her short story in the romance category - "Charade of Hearts"

KM Daughters - one of our writing teams - took two top ten spots - #4 for Best Romance Novel with "In The St. Nick of Time" and #6 for Best Author.

If I missed anyone - my apologies! I'm trying to catch all of them but we couldn't be more proud of all the successes!

In the upcoming weeks we should be able to get the little icon that gives us bragging rights and I can't wait to see it on the website for the fourth year running.

Now its back to work and living up to all the accolades. Happy 2012 indeed!

Boys of Summer - Special Call For Submissions

2012-01-04T22:30:00.000-05:00

The Wilder Roses

Call For Submissions

Boys of Summer (Stories to Release May 2012 – Sept 2012)

The boys of summer are ready to turn up the heat. The Wild Rose Press is looking for your hottest m/m erotic stories from 5K to 20K for the Scarlet Rose line. Is your hero sweating on the ball field, ripping up the waves as he hang tens, or is he striker on the soccer field scoring more than goals? We want summer themed stories with hot men in hot situations. Bring the heat and bring the boys of summer.

If you are interested in writing for this series, please email a brief (two paragraph) synopsis of your story idea to diana@thewildrosepress.com. We're looking for stories with strong summer elements and and those that relate to summer activities. In other words, lots of fun in the sun and hot sweaty/wet bodies.We want a variation on summer themes so this will be part of the consideration for stories selected for the series.

Deadline for submission is March 1, 2012.

If you have any questions, contact Diana at diana@thewildrosepress.com.

A New Year in the Garden

2012-01-01T14:43:00.003-05:00

A new year and a new outlook.

It’s 2012 and time for change. Whether you want to set new goals or renew those good intentions that just didn’t happen in 2011, the first of the year is a perfect time to make a fresh start.

For me, this year I’m determined to manage my time better. I always use a planner but this year I’m actually going to try to stick to the schedule.

The Wild Rose Press is also making plans and setting new goals. We are looking for tummy-tugging love stories across all the lines. And we have several series that are still actively seeking submissions such as the Millionaire’s Club and other series that are about ready to roll out. So if your goal is to find more time to write, we’ll have some wonderful ideas to inspire you. Check this blog regularly to see our calls for submissions.

The Wild Rose Press is also going to be a several conferences and conventions this year. We hope to see you at EPICon in San Antonio, RT Book Reviews Convention in Chicago and our own writer’s retreat at the Silverspur Ranch in Bandera, Texas.

The holiday season the authors once again contributed their favorite recipes to the Garden Gourmet. This recipe book is our free gift to you. You can download it directly from our website.

We also had a exclusive giveaways through our newsletter. Be sure to sign up for our weekly releases and to receive special offers only for our newsletter subscribers. Click to Join

We want to thank you all for a wonderful 2011 and wish you only the best in 2012!

Twas the Night Before Shutdown

2011-12-12T01:00:00.025-05:00

‘Twas the night before shut down, and all through our house,
      All the editors were sighing, and letting go of their mouse.

The cover models were hung (hee hee) on the covers with care,
      In hopes that the readers would drool and stare.

The great manuscripts were edited and all have been read,
     As visions of more submissions danced in our heads.

With RJ at her computer, and Rhonda in her pjs,
     The editors are poised for a few easy days.

When over in Crimson there arose such a clatter,
     A villain on the prowl was as mad as a hatter,

Away to the department the editors flew like a flash,
     But the bad man was caught and tied with a sash.

The hand on the breast of the heroine vampire,
     Her body parts tingled, as if on fire.

When what to our unbelieving eyes should appear,
     But one lonely cowboy with all the right gear.

With a mighty stud, so lively and thick,
     We knew in a moment it must be erotic.

More rapid than eagles the senior editors they came,
     And we whistled, and shouted, TWRP would never be the same.

Now Nicole! Now Diana! Now Stacy, Amanda, and Leanne!
     On Callie Lynn! On Lori! On Kathy and Roseann!

To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
     To the faery department we went, to all have a ball!

As elves, ghosts, and other creatures fly,
     When we see these characters we look to the sky

So all around us in the air they flew,
     With a variety of costumes, and some dragons, too.

And then in a twinkling we heard in the hall,
     A Civil War soldier with a lilting southern drawl.

As we were turning our heads and looking around,
     A modern day hero was what we found.

He was dressed in his finest from head to his boot,
     His clothes were tight fitting, and we let out a hoot.

A bundle of manuscripts he had flung on his back,
     The host of good stories TWRP would not lack.

The manuscripts—so many! The plots how they varied.
     Thank goodness, the hero and heroine were not married.

The older heroine is welcome her too.
     Her experiences are old, but her love life is new.

Lords and ladies, and a man in a kilt,
     Oh we love how those Scottish heroes are built.

A sweetheart of a story can warm a reader’s heart,
    But unless behind closed doors the characters are apart.

Give me a cowboy who just rode into town.
     Or a vamp and a were, but please not a clown.

An erotic, oh dear, can make us so hot,
     But please make sure the manuscript has a plot

We looked in the pack for a manuscript to take,
     Saved the stories on our computers for after the break.

Putting our flash drives in a very safe spot,
     The Christmas cheer made us feel like a tiny tot.

We sprang to our computers for one last time.
     We needed to end our little rhyme.

So here us exclaim as we shut down and go out of sight,
     Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

~composed by Allison Byers
    Historical Department Editor

Is It Hollywood Enough

2011-12-05T06:13:00.000-05:00

Is it Hollywood Enough?

by Editor Maggie Johnson

…your manuscript, that is.

You can hardly argue that plenty of money is being grossed by Hollywood movie makers. And weren’t you planning on accruing a little money yourself from the sales of your book? Then why not follow a proven money-making formula? When writing and editing (and re-editing) your manuscript, keep the following filming fundamentals in mind.

Actions speak louder than words…especially in the opening scenes. Many authors want their readers to become as intimately acquainted with their characters as they are, so they start off giving us the hero’s or heroine’s back-story for several pages. Imagine that each of these paragraphs is an intertitle (the printed narration or dialog between scenes in the silent film era). Take your musing one step further and decide how many of these narration cards you are going to be willing to read (Thirty? Ten? Or is even three too many?) before you get up out of your seat, go back to the box office, and politely (or perhaps not so politely) ask for a refund?

Plunk your reader’s into an action scene immediately. Their back-stories will emerge in future scenes and dialogs with other characters. But be sure each of these factoids is really necessary for us to understand the protagonists. Some of this stuff really does belong on the Cutting Room Floor. Believe me; those Hollywood Film Editors are not hired just because they’re pretty, any more than your book editor was (present company excepted).

While we’re on the subject of opening scenes, let’s talk about the Set Designer. Good set designing is subtle. When you finish reading those twenty-something intertitles, are you ready for the camera to slowly pan the entire scene and take in the rich jade-colored brocade sofa, the plush, cream-colored carpeting, the wild rose-patterned wall paper, the leaded cut-glass lamps and then move onto the details of the Costume Designer’s wares?

Maybe not…maybe you would rather experience these things when the heroine catches the spiked point of her stripper heel in the cushion of the hero’s rich jade-colored brocade sofa as she clumsily attempts to strike an alluring pose. (We’re watching a romantic comedy, by the way.)

If there is one passive verb I could excise from an author’s vocabulary it would be “wear” in all its forms and tenses. I would much rather have another character use their vision to translate their perception of the outfit for me.

Yes: He looked so hot in his torso-hugging white T-shirt and skin-tight jeans. But what was with the hideous fuchsia cowboy boots?

No: He entered the room wearing a white T-shirt, jeans and hot pink boots. (I told you it was a comedy...maybe not a complete laugh riot though.)

Now, let’s bring in the Dialog Coach. There’s got to be plenty of it to keep the viewer/reader engaged. It’s got to be realistic, and it’s got to be deep. (Superficial dialog serves no purpose except to irritate the reader.) And it’s got to be linear. Not every movie (or book) can be a re-make of “Groundhog Day.”

We don’t want to witness a conversation between the two love interests and then listen to Mary tell her best friend Sally exactly what she and Harold discussed. Yes, yes, we know that in real life Sally is going to go home and tell her live-in pool boy her own version of the conversation; but we’re selling fantasy here, the reader is getting bored, and we need to move the story forward. We’ve got to fit this all into an hour and forty minutes. Oh yeah…that’s the movie version…sorry.

And my final rant is about the Product Placements. In Book World…it’s pretty much the opposite of Movie World. The President, Mr. Big Shot of Big Shot Company, Inc. is not going to fill your pockets with endorsement fees. In fact there’s a likelihood he will do the exact opposite. Do you really have such a powerful marketing plan that your book sale profits have budgeted in the costs of the lawsuit when Mr. Big Shot sues you for trademark infringement? Awesome! Could you share it with us? I mean…since you’re in the sharing mood and all.

I know…you want your leading lady to be trendy…but what about the readers who buy your book three years from now? Will Denise’s trendy 2012 Big Shot Company dress be so passé by 2015 that she will seem to have no sense of style, giving an uncomplimentary twist to her character development? How sad.

A good friend of mine, Mr. Dickens (we called him Charlie) did not rely on the use of brand names, but instead meticulously described his characters’ togs and material possessions to point out their precise stations in life. Charlie could still be pulling in a pretty penny (as his books are still very popular) if he hadn’t had the misfortune of passing away more than 140 years ago. And then there are those pesky public domain laws. Alas! And…indeed!

Characters Who Inspire, Tuna Fish Sandwiches, and Not Giving Up by Lori Lebonde

2011-11-28T10:13:00.003-05:00

How many times have you considered tossing in the towel on a manuscript you know is good but you’re sick of working on it? Or maybe it’s close but just not coming together like it should, so you shove it away, hoping it will age well, like fine wine?

Or do you shudder at the idea of revising, editing, and proofreading your manuscript as many as seventy-two times? (Yes, that’s the latest statistic I’ve heard from successful, multi-pubbed authors.) Perfecting your craft and fine-tuning your manuscript is tough work and not for the faint of heart.

So what should you do?

Take a leaf out of your own book and do what your characters do: they persevere. They don’t give up.

When your characters confront external obstacles, do they shrug and walk away? No. When their goals are too distant to grasp, do your characters decide those goals aren’t really worth the effort after all? Unlikely. When your characters’ motivations evolve and reshape their thoughts and actions in scary or unfamiliar ways, do they race back to their comfort zones—and stay there? No—not if your plot and character arcs progress properly.

Or what about the young men on my local high school football team, which was undefeated…until yesterday? Those boys worked hard seven days a week, often in the cold and pouring rain, to finish their season only one game away from the state championship—a new record for our town. The student fans, parents, and community members who attended every game (sometimes driving hours each way and usually filling the visitors’ stands more than the home team stands were) were so supportive of those boys that newspaper articles mentioned the team’s “twelfth man on the field” and its impact on the team’s success and morale. One fan’s story sticks in my mind: She didn’t have a son on the team, yet she made a protein-packed tuna fish sandwich every week for the team’s running back—despite being at her mother’s side nearly 24/7 for weeks following the mother’s October heart attack and subsequent bypass surgery. Some weeks the woman used high-end tuna, or more expensive bread, or fat-free mayonnaise, all in an effort to keep the sandwich interesting and to give the player even a tiny edge—or so she said. In reality, she demonstrated and reciprocated the boys’ inspiring commitment to their goals, and overcame roadblocks and challenges and turmoil.

So where do these football players and fans—and your own book’s characters—draw their strength to trudge onward, despite the obstacles, the big goals, and the unknown path to the end zone—or the happily ever after?

I don’t know, actually, where the real-life characters draw their strength from. It’s different for each of us, I bet. But your fictional characters get their determination from you. You created them and festooned them with their traits—good and bad—and imbued them with appropriate goals, motivations, and conflicts. You’ve given birth to them. They’re yours. And, once born, they will always exist.

You can use them to help inspire yourself—to persevere, to not give up, to forge ahead, and to tackle the obstacles, including the internal ones. You’ve created those characters and guided them to a happily ever after, so you have it in you to do the same for yourself and finish your manuscript. Right?

And along the way, eat a tuna fish sandwich or two.

By Lori LeBonde
Scarlet Rose Editor

Nano Ending Coming Soon!

2011-11-22T15:22:00.000-05:00

To all of you hard at work on a project for Nano - please keep going. You can do it. To keep you motivated here's a couple quotes from Mark Twain on writing:

My works are like water. The works of great masters are like wine; but everyone drinks water.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out th wqrong words.

We write frankly and fearlessly but then we "modify" before we print.

Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

Now stop reading blogs and go finish your project. November 30 is only a week away!

Rhonda

What are you looking for as a Publisher

2011-11-21T07:31:00.000-05:00

What are you looking for?

That’s a question I hear a great deal in my role as managing editor of the historical division. Well the truth is pretty simple. We’re looking for a well written romance set against an historical back drop with historically accurate details, a compelling conflict, and a satisfying happily ever after ending.

Usually that answer causes some glazing over of eyes. Well of course we’re looking for all that, and the historical details aside, that’s pretty much what TWRP is looking for overall. So allow me to answer a slightly different version of that question.

What aren’t you looking for?

I’m so glad you asked! J

While we never like to say never, there are some plots that are always popular (marriage of convenience, best friends falling in love) and others that have been “done” so much that readers (and, admittedly, editors) tire of them.

Heroine in disguise. It’s been said that more than 100 women donned uniforms and marched off to fight during the Civil War… we’ve seen submissions for each and every one of them L . It’s not that we haven’t published some of these stories with great success and it’s not that we don’t enjoy or appreciate them, but they’re difficult to make work no matter the genre. Yes some big name authors have used this plot device many times over but I’d advise anyone interested in submitting such a story to one of our historical lines to please, please make sure you’ve found a fresh, unique approach to telling it. We’re pretty tired of the same twists that particular plot entails.

The female doctor. Again, we’ve published a lot of these. And again, history tells us there were not a lot of female doctors until the mid 20^th century. In the US, nursing as a profession wasn’t even thought of until mid-Civil War, so it’s understandable that authors are drawn to this plot device to show caring, nurturing heroines. But we see queries almost daily where the heroine wants to buck the constraints of society by becoming a physician. I’d like to challenge our authors to find another way to show how strong and brave your heroine’s are. She can still be a healer and she can still help others... but unless you’ve come up with something truly unique and new….this one has been done to death.

Weak conflict. We say this all the time, but it really is what makes the difference between a great read and a mediocre one. If your hero and heroine’s conflict can be resolved with a simple conversation “by the way, I gave birth to your child five years ago” or “I didn’t really sleep with Peggy Sue” then you have weak conflict. Give me external reasons to keep these two apart as well as internal. Maybe she can never love a gunfighter, maybe he’s got a death sentence hanging over his head. Keep me turning those pages to find out how they’re going to work things out and stay together.

It’s a miracle! Speaking of conflict resolution…If your heroine can’t have children and refuses to marry the hero because he wants a large family, don’t have her miraculously turn up pregnant on page 351. If the hero is dead set against marriage and children because his last wife died in childbirth and he blames himself , don’t have him change his mind out of the blue on the second to last page without some life altering event to explain the change of heart. We all love happy endings but please make them satisfying. And if you have kept the reader guessing for 350 pages, don’t insult her intelligence by eliminating the conflict just because you’re closing in on 90k words and want to wrap things up.

The first draft. If your writing is full of passive voice, telling rather than showing, abrupt PV shifts and talking heads (dialogue with no layers of detail, emotion and/or setting), brush up on your mechanics before submitting. We know how excited you are to have finished your baby, but the time to polish is before submitting . Don’t make the mistake of thinking the editors will tell you what you need to work on; that’s what critique partners are for. We see such a high volume of submissions and can only publish the cream of the crop. You’ll drastically increase your chances if you submit a highly polished MS. Remember, there is no such thing as good writing…. only good rewriting!

And last but not least….

I have no clue, I just submitted my story to a bunch of places. It is a waste of both author and editor time when we receive a submission that doesn’t fall within our guidelines. If you don’t know whether or not your story fits the romance mold, find out before submitting. And if you aren’t sure what the word count limit is for the line you’re targeting, please double check. If you’re over word count, the time to trim is before you submit. I can assure you that the editor will not read your entire 150k MS and tell you what scenes to cut. Instead you will receive a friendly note suggesting you trim and resubmit.

So let me reiterate that we’re looking for well written, historically accurate romance… but there are a few plot twists we’ve seen a little too much of lately. Short stories are a hot with readers right now (have you heard about our new Love Letters series? See below for the guidelines) and holiday themed stories rae always a treat since we see so few.

Wishing you all an enjoyable holiday season and lots of writing time in the new year!

News of an arranged marriage

Dear John letters

Unexpected inheritance

Mail order bride

Death of a loved one

We regret to inform you

Sometimes… a letter changes everything.

In the historical series Love Letters a character’s life is forever changed by the receipt of a letter, Let your imagination run wild as you consider what life-altering news would be in your hero or heroine’s envelope and how it would lead to the love of a lifetime.

Stories must be historically accurate and suited to one of the following lines: American Rose, Cactus Rose, English Tea Rose, Vintage Rose. Story length should range between 20,000-25,000 words. The letter must occur within the first three pages of the story.

Please follow the general submission guidelines on the website for formatting and submit through the queryus@thewildrosepress.com. “Love Letters Series” should appear in the subject line, as well as your title.

Thanksgiving and writing Romance

2011-11-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

Lara Parker

BLack Rose Editor

This being my first blog post I couldn’t come up with anything to write about, even started to fret since my date was fast approaching. Then it dawned on me early one morning while I sat on the couch with my two dogs and a fire roaring in the fireplace (yes, even us Floridians build fires when it’s chilly outside)…November, the month of giving thanks.

Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday you see a lot of stories centered around but maybe that should change, at least perhaps I should consider it since I have so much to be thankful for. In these times of commercialism (Christmas decorations were out at Target one day after Halloween decoration displays were revealed in late September) I wonder if folks, including myself, really appreciate what Thanksgiving is all about. Giving thanks for the good things in life, being thankful that the Mayflower and her sisters traveled long tedious miles to bring settlers to this great country, even if it is in a shambles at the moment.

So while I know this post is really short, I am thankful I could write it and I am anxious to see if I have any Thanksgiving themed stories come across my desk next year (even though I edit for Black Rose, it’s possible to have a shapeshifting settler with a zombie turkey sidekick, right?). I hope you count your blessings each day and are thankful for your family or friends, that great job or just for the air in your lungs.

Until next time,

Lara

Happy Veterans Day

2011-11-11T06:44:00.000-05:00

Two of these handsome Marines (the ones on either end) are from Adams Basin and I've known both of them since they were literally born. Thankfully they are all home this year safe and sound having served in Afghanistan all last year.

Happy Veterans Day to all of you who have served our country and our gratitude to the families who stayed behind and worried and loved you. All of you deserve this day of thanks and I sincerely hope you feel the love of those of us who you so bravely protected.

The First Five Pages

2011-11-07T01:32:00.001-05:00

I love this time of year. The days are getting shorter, leaves are falling, and the holidays are just around the corner. Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite celebrations. I began working at The Wild Rose Press around this time several years ago. My name is Anne Seymour, and I currently work as an editor on the Crimson Rose line. I always love a good mystery, especially when the hero is as hot as the suspense.

The one aspect, in my opinion, that marks the difference between just a manuscript and a GREAT MANUSCRIPT is THE FIRST FIVE PAGES. During this critical point in a story, the author must pull the reader in and hook their interest, or the reader will become apathetic toward the characters—and probably not finish reading the book.

Sounds shocking, right? How can an author open a grand story, introduce sympathetic characters and evil villains, begin the action and conflict, but yet confine all above mentioned aspects to a mere FIVE PAGES? An insurmountable task one might say, right? But maybe not; let’s discuss the basics now.

First, we must unlearn all that we have learned previously about writing. I studied all the great works in Literature during college. James Fennimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Henry James, etc. wrote stories in omniscient point of view employing the writing method of “telling” the action instead of “showing” it. This technique removes the reader from the action of the story instead of insisting the reader to take part with the characters in the act. A reader must be immersed in the action and emotionally involved with the characters by the end of the fifth page of a story. Make the reader unable to do anything but participate with your characters.

Next, find an opening line that will grab attention. For example, “Take it easy. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.” Sunny jerked her arms back hoping to slow the pace of the large-framed detective who continued to drag her from the bar with unwavering force. “Calm down, Wildcat. You’re only making it harder on yourself.” He didn’t slow his stride, or ease the firm grasp he had on her arm as he walked beside her.” In this example, (Some Like It In Handcuffs by Christine Warner—coming soon from The Wild Rose Press) the author introduces the hero and heroine within the first four sentences while adding humor and sexual tension. The reader is hooked now, determined to learn more and join the story.

Finally, make sure to include ONLY necessary information at this time. The first five pages are not for any of the following:

n Back-story: while back-story will be needed in any novel, it should never appear in the first five pages! Use back-story sparingly and only when needed throughout the novel, but never allow it to be longer than a few paragraphs at a time.

n Secondary Characters: Introduce these characters later in the story. Reserve the main characters (hero, heroine, & villain (if there is one)) for the beginning.

n Descriptive or Non-Action Scenes: Describe the setting later. The first five pages should not be filled with paragraphs of how beautiful the sky, trees and meadows are. Also, no Non-Action scenes! Start with a fight scene, a murder, etc. Grab attention.

While this is a brief overview, I hope I’ve mentioned good points to consider. If any are interested in another more in-depth discussion, please comment and let me know. I would be happy to offer another blog discussing this further. Until then, enjoy the season and keep writing!

Anne Seymour

Part 2 NaNo - Are you ready?

2011-10-31T08:21:00.000-04:00

(Part 1 of this blog was posted on Wednesday - regarding NaNoWriMo) by Nancy Swanson, Editor

"If one gets used to translating into a novel one's experiences, one's ideas, what one has to say becomes a novel; one is left with no raw materials for another form of literary expression. ...when I was 28 and not at all sure that I was going to carry on writing, I began doing what came most naturally to me. Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic." ~Italian writer Italo Calvino

P. G. Wodehouse "was writing a story [...] about two young men [...] getting into a lot of trouble, and neither of them had brains enough to get out of the trouble. I thought: Well, how can I get them out? And I thought: Suppose one of them had an omniscient valet? I wrote a short story about him, then another short story, then several more short stories and novels. That's how a character grows."

About writing, he said: "Always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a great slab of prose at the start. I think the success of every novel — if it's a novel of action — depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, 'Which are my big scenes?' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through? I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, 'This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay,' you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them."

François Mauriac, considered one of France’s great novelists, said: "Every novelist ought to invent his own technique, that is the fact of the matter. Every novel worthy of the name is like another planet, whether large or small, which has its own laws just as it has its own flora and fauna."

And, "If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads."

Novelist R. K. Narayan, born in India in 1906, said: "Everyone thinks he's a writer with a mission. Myself, absolutely not. I write only because I'm interested in a type of character and I'm amused mostly by the seriousness with which each man takes himself."

Perhaps not in total agreement with the above advice is the work of Belva Plain, whose critics were not always kind — one called her books "easy, consoling works of generous spirit, fat with plot and sentiment, thin in nearly every other way and almost invisible in character development." But her readers loved her books, all best-sellers. Her first book, Evergreen, was published in 1978, by which time she was a grandmother in her 60s. She wrote longhand in spiral notebooks, and produced a novel about every year or so. ~from The Writer’s Almanac of October 9, 2011

George Mackay Brown, a Scotsman who wrote poetry, essays, fiction, and travel books, told Contemporary Authors: "I believe in dedicated work rather than in 'inspiration' [...] I believe writing to be a craft like carpentry, plumbing, or baking [...] In 'culture circles,' there is a tendency to look upon artists as the new priesthood of some esoteric religion. Nonsense — and dangerous nonsense moreover — we are all hewers of wood and drawers of water; only let us do it as thoroughly and joyously as we can."

NaNoWriMo Time

2011-10-26T09:34:00.000-04:00

contributed by Nancy Swanson, Editor

NaNoWriMo http://www.nanowrimo.org/ is coming up, and some of you are going to try again to put together the requisite number of words per day and by the end of the month. Well, good luck to you, and here are some quotations to help and encourage you, mostly from and about famous writers..

Elmore Leonard has written more than 40 novels — as soon as he finishes one, he starts on another. He's famous for his advice for writers. In 2001, he published a piece in The New York Times called "Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle." He gave 10 rules, things like "Never open a book with weather"; "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue"; "Avoid detailed descriptions of characters"; and "Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip." He wrote: "Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

He said: "I feel that I learned to write Westerns by reading and rereading For Whom the Bells Tolls. [...] But I was not influenced by his attitude, thank God. My attitude is much less serious. I see absurdities in serious situations, influenced in this regard by Vonnegut, Richard Bissell, and Mark Harris, and this shows in my writing. It's your attitude that determines your sound, not style."

When Leonard started writing, he was also working as a copy-editor for an advertising agency. He woke up every morning at five to start writing — he wouldn't let himself turn on the coffee pot until he started to write. At work, he would stick his hand in his desk drawer and write in a blank notebook. He wrote five books and 30 short stories that way, before he quit to be a full-time writer. ~from Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac for October 11, 2011

"I would encourage you all to read, read, read. Just keep reading. And writing is another skill. It's practice. It's practice. The more you write, the better you get. Drafts--our kids are learning the first draft means nothing. You're going to do seven, ten drafts. That's writing, it's not failure, it's not the teacher not liking you because it's all marked up in red. When you get to be a good writer, you mark your own stuff in red, and you rewrite, and you rewrite, and you rewrite. That's what writing is." ~Michelle Obama in a speech on May 25, 2011

"Keep on writing, no matter what! That's the most important thing. As long as you have a job on hand that absorbs all your mental energy, you haven't much worry to spare over other things. It serves as a suit of armor." ~Playwright Eugene O’Neill

Cover Points by Angela Anderson

2011-10-24T11:10:00.004-04:00

Everyone, yes EVERYONE, judges a book by its cover. Even when the book is written by your favorite author, you still check it out. Why? Most readers are visual and detail oriented. The cover helps complete the image in their head of what they "think" the story is about. It is then up to the written page to either fulfill or disappoint.

So what should authors be thinking about when the consider their "perfect" cover? Believe it or not, this thought process should begin as soon as you begin sketching out the storyline and your characters. If you want a cover that is not just an honest reflection of your story but also one that will help it sell, consider the following:

Scenes/locations: Can the cover artist find an acceptable representation, regardless of whether your story is set in Colonial New England, the depths of space, or contemporary Manhattan? Depending on the stock art site, this might be a challenge, offering you the choice of something that isn't "historically" accurate or a background that must be pieced together. Collages have their place in cover design, but too much is NOT a good thing and rarely looks realistic. So make it easy for your artist--stay true to your concept but offer a simplistic backdrop that can be easily replicated.

Time: Period pieces are a big draw for many readers because it puts us in a time and place we've never experienced. However, be aware that due to photo stock limitations, you may not always get an authentic representation. So, again, keep your settings general to give the artist more latitude with the images. The final product will stay truer to your vision and the reader will have an easier time buying into the idea.

Characters: Here's a challenge for you...go to your favorite stock photo site and find a voluptuous redhead with violet eyes in a white laced "pirate-style" shirt being held by a 6 foot 6 inch muscle-bound man wearing leather pants with long black hair and a shock of white just over his left eye. Nothing...yeah, I thought so. Cover artists have just as hard a time finding that "perfect" couple shot, and the job can be made even more difficult if your sexy duo is so specifically detailed. Offer good descriptions, but understand that some "people" just don't exist in the real world.

Level of heat: Asking for a barely clothed couple in an embrace so hot that it melts the screen will get you exactly that. It's vivid, eye catching, and bound to draw in the reader. For many publishers and authors, heat sells. Ensure that the cover you request can keep pace with the sensuality of the content. Otherwise, the whole package becomes a lie that the content can't live up to.

Angela Anderson

Editor/cover artist

Author / Experience Diversity

2011-10-17T00:04:00.001-04:00

Author / Experience Diversity

I have always considered myself a very accepting person when it comes to different cultures and life choices. I try not to judge people for who they are or what they do with their life. If it works for them, and they are happy, then good for them.

Not too long ago, I attended a conference that opened my eyes to lifestyles I’d heard/read about but never really experienced firsthand. Doms and Submissives, polyamorous marriages, bondage. I realized I have led a very sheltered life. I have read about people in Dom/Sub relationships, and how some Doms will make the Sub act as their end table, or will make them eat out of dog dishes. I was fascinated at this particular conference to see a Sub being led around by a leash.

I never expected to be shunned for being straight and monogamous. I consider myself to be friendly. When I come out of my shell, I will talk to anyone. And more often than not, people respond to my smile and the gesture. However, at this conference, I had two people shun me when they found out I was straight and married to my high school sweetheart. I couldn’t understand why that would bother anyone.

There are so many different cultures, races, and lifestyles out there…so many I am ashamed to admit I know nothing about. Though my parents raised me to be accepting of everything, to never judge a person simply by the color of their skin, I remained ignorant to how they lived.

I still choose to accept that everyone makes their own choices in life, that just because they are different than me doesn’t make me better than them. It’s a lesson I think everyone needs to remember. No one will love everything that you do, or believe the same way you do. If that were the case, this world would be a boring place.

The next time you find yourself crinkling your nose at the oddness of the person you see wearing a fuzzy bunny costume hitting on the 6’6” cross dresser on the corner, take a breath and remember: they probably think you are just as odd.

Love yourself for who you are, and everything else will fall in line.

Johanna Melaragno- Editor

Crimson Rose

Did I do that?!

2011-10-10T06:57:00.003-04:00

Hi! Callie Lynn here. First I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain!

I'd like to talk about something I've come across quite a lot recently in Black Rose submissions. I believe that for the most part this is done unintentionally and not in anyway meant to copy another author's work, but it may be construed as plagiarism or at the very least a copyright issue. So with that said, let me move on to the point.

I have noticed several story submissions on my own desk recently that have mirrored other works dangerously.

With a lot of emphasis and I might add a good amount of very good books, movies, and shows out there in the last several years on the subject of vamps and shifters, I notice more and more submissions are coming in with all too familiar themes, storylines, and even down to character and setting. While watching everything you, as an author, can in the genre you enjoy writing in the name of research, which by the way I do myself, we must keep in mind that NEVER and I do mean NEVER are we able to adopt any piece of that original work for our own. Nor may we borrow characters from those works. Characters are part of copyrighted creative works and may not be used unless express permission is given by said creator.

For instance, I have recently delved into several older vamp series which many have perhaps forgotten about and noticed similarities on some of the mythology of the creatures who we adore. "Moonlight" depicts Nick St. John as a PI gumshoe-type vamp who sleeps in a freezer and is able to move around in daylight as long as it is overcast much like those in "Twilight." "Blood Ties" goes the opposite direction with the human, Vickie Nelson, a police detective turned PI due a progressive eye disease and who partners with 450 year old vamp, Henry, a descendant of royalty who sniff out nothing but otherworldly evil-doings. These are great stories and unique in their own way. But though some of the finer points may mirror other stories you can not borrow the obvious.

Things such a daywalking, no heartbeat or pulse, changing to counterpart animal on the full moon or whenever the mood urges you is fine. No reflection or having a reflection, all fine. Needing to feed every day or once in awhile due to age, again fine. The thing is to beware of having a group of teens or adults who live in Forks that are vamps. That is Twilight to millions of people and especially Stephanie Myers who owns rights to her story and her characters.

More recently the infamous "True Blood" has give us even more unique twist to vampirism, as well, wolf/shape shifters, demons and so much more. We eat all these shows up as well the many authors such as Laurell K. Hamilton, J. R. Ward, Anne Rice, Christine Feehan, and so many others who have created such lustfully attractive monsters with hearts and hot bods. But as writers, we need to figure out a way to create unique storylines and different themes with a risk that no one has thought up yet. How do we do that while our minds are wrapped around the awesome books, TV series, or movies we have rolling around in our heads? Well, my friends, there in lies the question. Only you can answer through your own means of filtering out what's already been done.

The moral of this post is to be aware of what you write. Be careful not to weave a wonderful tale that comes too close to something that has already been done and by all means, NEVER borrow characters from other's work. You do not want to find somewhere down the line that you have stepped on someone toes or copyright.

Callie Lynn Wolfe

Senior Managing Editor

Black Rose Imprint

The Wild Rose Press
callielynnwrp@aol.com

Write What You Know

2011-09-30T16:43:00.002-04:00

Hi. Kathy Cottrell here, a couple days early and representing the Last Roses of Summer in our garden. I'd like to talk about using what you know in your writing.
Having attended a number of writers conferences over the years, I've had the privilege to sit in on any number of workshops, the Craft Tract being a personal favorite. One which stood out the loudest came when Nora Roberts told the audience, 'write what you know.' Coming from one of my writing heroes, the advice made sense―except I wondered how I, as a nurse [then] could ever turn a doctor into a hero. If you don't know where someone had their hands last--not an appealing thought as far as I was concerned.
Then came the day when I heard Tess Gerritsen speak at a New Jersey Romance Writers conference. She spoke about how her roots in writing dated back to her medical residency days in the ICU and observing what the nurses―whom she spoke of with great respect and affection―were reading: category romances. Wow. A physician who spoke of nurses with respect. I had to read one of her books. Let me tell you, after devouring “The Apprentice”, I was hooked. Tess Gerritsen writes what she knows!
As a teenager, living in a rural area with little to do and no way to get anywhere, I read anything I could get my hands on. I discovered a book by Frank G. Slaughter in my parents' library, a Civil War story about a female spy and a male battle surgeon. Very bloody, lots of guts, gore and suffering. Right up the alley of a fourteen year old with an over-active imagination and way too much time on her hands. Thoroughly hooked, I proceeded to sign out every one of his books from the school library as well as the library in a neighboring town. It wasn't until I later that I learned Mister Slaughter was actually a medical doctor.
This author had the ability to put me in the moment of a battlefield hospital scene, suffering right along with the physician and his patients. One of Dr. Slaughter's contemporary novels, “Daybreak” featured the trials and tribulations of a physician working in the mental health system prior to the advent of effective anti-psychotic medications when pre-frontal lobotomies and electroshock therapy were considered last ditch efforts to treat intractable psychiatric problems. Very chilling stuff for this young woman who was about to head off for three years of nursing school in―you guessed it―a state psychiatric facility. By the end of my schooling, I'd passed more Thorazine and Mellaril than any thousand nursing students―and no fresh lobotomies, thank you very much.
As a young wife with a graduate student husband and two small kids, money was tight. I lucked out when I discovered a second-hand book store which stocked copies of Robert K. Tannenbaum's legal thrillers featuring Assistant District Attorneys Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi. With each book I learned about the steps in the legal process, evidence that can degrade over time or be lost by dumb luck or stupid accident, “eye witnesses” who don't see everything, and a how-to manual for criminals who want to beat the system. It came as no surprise when I learned this man spent many years in the Manhattan DA's office, prosecuting the worst of the worst. Writing with a sharp wit and biting sarcasm, after more than thirty years, Mr. Tannenbaum's books continue to hold my interest. Another instance of writing what one knows.
Lastly, I'd like to blow the horn for one of my nursing as well as writer heroes: Eileen Dreyer. After many years in category romance [writing as Kathleen Korbel], Eileen―an experienced ER nurse―was called up to the big leagues with a series of medical thrillers set in and around St. Louis, Missouri. Invariably her heroines are nurses with advanced training [such as Eileen herself] in forensic evidence collection, death examinations, and critical incident management. Using gut-busting humor, Eileen makes the everyday come to life and answers the question, “What if?”
In closing, I challenge any author to look at their everyday life and incorporate something they find there into his/her writing. Okay, so maybe you don't have an exciting job which includes passing bed pans or inserting suppositories, but do you have a volunteer job you really love, something that gives back ten times more than what you put in? I have a friend who volunteers at a soup kitchen, another takes calls on a domestic violence crisis line, a third takes an AA meeting into the county jail every week.
Do you have an Aunt Helen [like me] who retired from the Navy Nurse Corps at the rank of Lieutenant Commander after serving in World War II and Korea? [It was very rare in those days for a female to rise to that rank.] Do you have religious connections you might tap for a secondary character? I know an author who pumped her priest uncle for the scoop on how to get around the priest-penitent privilege and the sanctity of the confessional―and yes, under certain circumstances, it can be done.
Could where you live or go for a vacation be turned into a setting so vivid readers want to move there? One of the Class of '85 stories was set in the Adirondack Mountains. Believe me, the author nailed it.
What turns you on? How do you fill all those empty hours in your life? Do you attend festivals or state fairs? How about protest marches? Out of the Dark, a September 2010 anthology from the Last Rose line featured a protest march that turned into a riot. The author was a veteran of protests from back in the 80's and 90's; it was clear she knew what she was talking about. The description spoke to me as an editor as well as a woman.
As an editor and a reader, I have developed a second sense for what rings true and what comes from someone who took the easy way out when it came to doing his or her homework―and not all were unpublished. Do not depend on legal whodunits on the big screen or mystery illness of the week on TV for accuracy. If you want to know which shows portray accurate situations, ask someone who's already in The Biz. I myself DO NOT EVER EVER watch any of the “CSI” shows, “House”, “ER”, “Law and Order, SVU”. The shows earning the highest ratings do not always consider the truth because they would lose viewers.
In closing, I suggest that to put realism and depth in your WIP, add what you know.

Top Ten Peeves We Would Rather Not See, Part Two

2011-09-26T19:31:00.000-04:00

Hello and Welcome Back!

Here is the second part of our combined post, Top Ten Peeves We Would Rather Not See, by Sweetheart Rose Editor Vicky Reed and Crimson Rose Editor Laura Kelly.

6. Writers who think every line of dialogue must be answered, and every inner thought conveyed to the reader, in case they ‘don’t understand’ what you are trying to say.

If a reader doesn’t understand why your character says or does something, it’s because you haven’t fleshed out that character well enough. Telling the reader why Indiana Jones hates snakes isn’t enough. You need to show it. Through dialogue and action.

Dialogue is action, by the way, and only dialogue that moves the story forward needs to be included. Excessive dialogue slows the story down, and only bores the reader.

What really bogs down a story is when every time the hero or heroine speaks, we get a mental assessment of what they said by the other party, before the other party speaks.

Don’t have them think their responses and feelings, have them act upon them, preferably with a conflict-enhancing line of dialogue. (Not bickering, as stated in last week’s post).

7. Don’t tell us what the characters are about to do, then show them doing it.

Susie had a plan, first she’d sneak out the back door, then go to the store and buy a wig and some make-up, and then she’d sneak back to Joe’s place and find the missing key, but she’d make sure Dave saw her, so he would follow her, and then Joe would know what Dave was up to and could arrest him. And on the way, she’d call the SWAT team, just in case there was trouble.

Just show her sneaking out the back door, shopping at the store, making her phone call to the SWAT team and then showing up at Joe’s apartment. Make us wonder what’s going to happen, next.

Another thing we see a lot of is writers who think laying out their character’s plan in this way, ahead of time, then having that plan go awry when the character tries to put it into action, equals conflict. As in “Oh, no, Susie was going to go to the store and buy the wig, but they didn’t have any for sale. She’d have to go with plan B.”

If plan A never happens, that’s even more pointless than telling us Plan A, then showing us plan A. It just frustrates the reader.

8. Writers who don’t know how to end the scene with a hook.

A good hook can be a snappy line of dialogue that leaves the reader wondering what will happen next, and pulls them into the next scene, or chapter. A lot of writers seem to have trouble getting their characters out of the room, or scene. Or ending the day. Never end the scene with your character going to bed alone. It might give the reader the idea to put the book down and do the same.

9. Point of view violations.

When you are in a character’s point of view, you can only see, hear, taste, smell and feel what that character sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels. And you can only describe what they are experiencing using vocabulary your character would use. What self-respecting alpha male describes anything as “horrid?”

Beware of using your own extensive writer’s vocabulary instead of limiting dialogue and internal narrative to words your characters would use. What construction worker hero would describe the heroine’s hair as ‘golden tresses?’ Her golden tresses flowed over his arm as… This is you, the author speaking, and using omniscient POV, to boot, which only distances your reader from the story. If your hero wouldn’t notice the color of the wallpaper or delicate brocade of the furniture, then let that be described in the heroine’s POV.

10. Overuse of qualifiers.

Make every word count. Do a word search and take out every even, just, actually, really, usually, generally, especially, that doesn’t have to be there. He just wanted to see her one more time. She didn’t really even know his name. That wasn’t exactly what she’d meant to say. She wasn’t generally a fast talker. He wasn’t especially fond of turtles.

Last, but not least, put your manuscript on a low-that diet, and take out any ‘that’ that does not add to the story. Otherwise, you’re just padding your word count.

Here’s hoping you’ve found at least one way to improve your manuscript after reading these two posts, or, better yet, found out you’re a better writer than you thought!

Wishing you all the best in your writing endeavors,

Vicky Reed
Laura Kelly

Top Ten Peeves We Would Rather Not See - Part I

2011-09-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

By editors Laura Kelly and Vicky Reed

This is a two part blog post, presented by Vicky Reed, Sweetheart Rose Editor, and Laura Kelly, Crimson Rose Editor. Vicky kicks things off with our first five pet peeves, and Laura will continue next week with the last five pet peeves and a bonus tip. Are any of these in your manuscript? You might be surprised.

1. The story is filled with happy coincidences that magically solve problems for the hero and heroine.

A good example of this is the romantic suspense where the hero and heroine are trapped. The hero dropped his gun into the elevator shaft to save the heroine from tumbling to her doom, the building is on fire, and a killer is on the loose. It looks like the end for our dauntless duo—but suddenly, a SWAT team arrives.

Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright, once said that if you have a gun above the mantelpiece in Act One, you’d better shoot it before the curtain falls. In other words, if you lock your hero in a building with a crazed killer, and set the basement on fire, tell your reader who the hero is, what he does, and why SWAT is keeping track of him—before they break in.

Write down the major plot points. Does everything flow logically from point A to point B? If not, then re-think your story line.

2. Writers who manipulate the plot to suit their ideas of what a nice scene would be, and it doesn’t logically follow the plot.

Usually this involves some clichéd love scene. Maybe after being rescued your hero and heroine are caught in a torrential downpour and find shelter in a ramshackle tenement. It’s cold, they’re both soaked, wind is whistling through the bug-sized cracks but--despite the blue tinge to their anatomy--they stop to have sex.

Like like that Seinfield episode where George yells, “I have shrinkage,” events have to contain logic. Unless you’ve laid the groundwork to establish your hero is a superhuman sex machine, sub-zero temperatures are the opposite of a turn on. So are sand, insects, reptiles, or rodents in the vicinity, and scenes where they haven’t bathed in days, but the minute they are alone and supposedly ‘safe,’ they have sex.

3. Characters not acting in character.

In Linda Seger’s book, Creating Unforgettable Characters, she explains that every character is the result of how they grew up, their background and their core personalities. We are the sum of our parts. A person’s qualities in turn imply other qualities. A former policeman can be expected to know something about guns and the law. A heroine presented as a savvy businesswoman can’t go around making one bad decision after another. Every action is filtered through experience and background. Once you create a person, you must remain true to who and what you have created.

4. Characters who stomp, stalk, clench fists and glare at each other, exhibit no self-control and are victims of their emotions, including passion.

A character who stomps around with her fists clenched, glaring at the hero until the touch of his hand makes her hot for him is two-dimensional. A well-drawn heroine has emotions that are true to her background and core personality. Nobody has only one or two emotional reactions, and as we grow, we learn to exert control over our actions. It’s all a part of growing up.

5. Writers who think bickering equals conflict.

Every word should push your story forward. Bickering is verbal quicksand. Once the snappy comebacks stop, is there anything preventing your hero and heroine from falling into each other’s arms except word count? Tell me why your hero and heroine can’t be joined, and then—put that gun on the mantelpiece.

That’s enough for today…come back next week for five more of our personal pet peeves…

Thanks and happy writing/revising!

Cover Art From A Marketing Perspective

2011-09-14T15:36:00.001-04:00

Every author envisions the perfect book cover with characters on the cover that the artist seemed to pluck right from your head. Mood, setting, tone—it’s going to be perfect. But wait, the cover hits your inbox and it’s nothing what you expected. Take a breath and relax.

TWRP has wonderful cover artists. With the limited information you provide on a cover request sheet, we hope you have a cover you can be proud of. What you might not know is that before it was ever sent to you, your cover has already been through an approval process. So what does marketing look for in a cover?

Every publishing company has a brand. If you look at the evolution of TWRP covers, you’ll see a progression from plain colored backgrounds with text for shorter works and side banners on every book to show the Rose Line the book is from such as Cactus Rose or Crimson Rose. To what we now have—beautiful custom cover art for every title. But now that there isn’t a banner on the side, we still want to showcase our brand of romantic fiction on our book covers. Our covers have that indefinable quality that represents the romance of a Wild Rose Press book.

But marketing also considers other qualities. Is the font easy to read? Can a reader clearly see both the title and your name? If the book is going into print, does the cover showcase well in large full sized image as well as thumb sized for digital etailers? And is the cover clean and concise enough to be recognized scaled down for some etailers? A cluttered cover, a cover that is too dark or too light won’t stand out on a website with thousands of other covers.

To go a little off topic. By the time you’re ready for a cover your book has been contracted and is probably somewhere in the editing stage and it’s a bit late for changes. So here is some advice. When you finish your story and you’re ready to submit, think about the title. A long title is going to clutter the cover. A common phrase will have dozens to hundreds of books with the same title. To give an example, I plugged Homecoming into the Kindle.com search bar and had 191 possibilities show. A title that begins with The, A, or An are going to be lost in the etailer catalog.

So when you get your cover, know that we don’t just consider the beautiful couple on a beach at sunset. But we also want a cover that reflects our publishing house and will be recognizable as your book. Your legible name and title and the overall cover are the best first impression you’ll have for your book.

Lisa Dawn

Marketing Director

Is It a Romance?

2011-09-04T21:08:00.001-04:00

You may be surprised to learn that one of the most common reasons I reject manuscripts isn’t poor writing, a lackluster plot, or lack of character development…it’s that the novel simply isn’t a romance. With the growing popularity of “chick lit” and women’s fiction, the line between romance novels and other fiction marketed to women has become blurrier. However, The Wild Rose Press is still a ROMANCE publisher, which means all our books must have a romantic relationship at their core. So, how do you know whether you’re writing romance or more general women’s fiction? I’ve put together a list of some questions to ask yourself and use to evaluate your manuscript. If you’re at the beginning stage of a writing project, you can use this checklist to determine whether the story you want to tell is really a romance and, if so, how you can make sure the focus stays on the romantic relationship. If you have a completed manuscript, this list will help you decide which publishers are best for your work—and may spare you a few rejections in the process.

1. When do the hero and heroine meet?

In a romance novel, I like to see the hero and heroine meet in the first chapter if at all possible, unless there’s a really good reason to put off their meeting. In women’s fiction, where the focus is more on the heroine, the author may take a few chapters to develop the main female character before introducing a love interest. In romance, the female character still develops and changes—but she does so within the context of the romantic relationship. If your hero doesn’t appear till Chapter 3 or 4, there’s a good chance you’ve got a women’s fiction novel rather than a romance.

2. What point of view are you writing in?

Romance is generally written in third person, alternating between the hero and heroine’s viewpoints. Chick lit is more often written in the first person, which makes sense, since this places the focus more clearly on the heroine. I have accepted romances written in the first person, either exclusively from the heroine’s point of view or alternating between the hero and heroine. However, the vast majority of successful romances are still written in third person. In addition, while some genres of women’s fiction might include a wide variety of characters’ viewpoints, romance usually limits the POV to the hero and heroine. While a romantic suspense might include a few sections from a villain’s POV, unless there’s a compelling reason to use a third POV, it’s usually a safe bet to stick with your hero and heroine’s viewpoints.

3. Is the romance the main source of conflict?

Yes, I want to see a well-rounded heroine who experiences character growth in all aspects of her life. However, if you find that the character’s job, or female friendships, or relationships with parents or children (just as a few examples) are taking up more page space than the romance, you probably have women’s fiction on your hands.

4. Is there a Happily-Ever-After ending?

In a romance novel, readers expect and are gratified to see the hero and heroine come together for good by the novel’s end. In women’s fiction, there’s a broader range of possible conclusions to your story.

I hope you find these tips helpful, and remember, rather you’re writing inside or outside the romance genre, it’s always a good idea to consider the specific expectations of your market throughout the writing process. That way, by the time you finish writing and revising, you’ll have a good idea of where to submit your manuscript.

-Stephanie Parent, Editor, Champagne Line

What makes a good cover?

2011-09-01T16:38:00.000-04:00

Words of wisdom from two of our amazing, talented cover artists:

It's hard to explain from a cover artist stand point what makes a good cover because designing is sort of an organic process for an artist. What I'm going to try to explain is what you should think about when requesting a cover. As far as composition, most of the time, less is better. Trying to request a complicated cover with too many elements will make for a messy cover, kind of like trying to put to many flavors in a cake. Also, white space is your friend; don't feel like every inch of the cover needs to be covered with something, it can be a very successful cover with lots of white space.

What I would suggest when making a cover wish list is concentrate on one or two items that are central to your story line like the setting and a good description of your characters.

For example: A contemporary suspense set in a dark alley of New York, blond heroine, dark haired hero looking pensive. Well you get the idea.

Also, watch being too picky if the characters on the cover don't look exactly like your characters. As long as they allow the tone of your book to come through and it's attractive from a marketing standpoint, I wouldn't sweat it! I've had authors nit-pick covers into ugliness because they want it to look exactly like their vision, but sometimes that's just not possible, so they passed up an opportunity for an amazing cover.

Artists have to work from stock art, so they likely can't get your characters exactly. Here's an example, a long haired blond man. Likely, that's just not something the artist is going to be able to find for you in stock art, but if they can have an attractive couple kissing, for example, and it makes the cover pop, I wouldn't worry if the guy doesn't have long blond hair.

So that's my short advice on making a cover great, let the artist eye for design and overall composition for marketing purposes make you cover pop. If you give them room to work that way, I guarantee your cover will rock! - From Cover Art Designer Rae Monet of Rae Monet, Inc. Design

***

I love to create covers! I love to please! But there are times when those two things concepts simply collide.

Case in point, the historical lines. The author has a grand idea of what she/he envisions for the cover.

I have spent hours in search of an auburn beauty with green-eyes, wearing a blue period gown with a sapphire pendant in her hand as part of the story.

Oh dear heavens, I can only photoshop so much, so let's get creative here, because 'I WILL NEVER FIND THAT EXACT PHOTO'. What really needs to happen is some fantastic photographers loading the stockphoto sites with vintage, historically dressed romantic figures, and not some cheesy costume party picture. Don't get me wrong, if I were a writer and had a vision, I would love to see the cover come to life, looking like the pages from my book.

What a joy when I get close and the author writes back, FABULOUS, I LOVE IT!!!! And that is where the collision erupts into a masterpiece and life if good, until the next cover! - Tina Lynn Stout, TWRP cover artist

Write your heart...

2011-08-30T13:28:00.003-04:00

Hello, my name is Christine Kuczmynda, and I'm an editor here at The Wild Rose Press. I work with Nicole in the Historical plot of the garden and with Diana in Scarlet.

As an editor and a reader before that, I've seen many, many different types of books come through our doors. Some manuscripts I just know the author's trying to push through because the topic is what's 'in' right now-or they're trying to do a twist on a popular theme. For example, if we still accepted YA novels, I'm sure there would be a million and one about high schoolers falling in love with vampires.

Now in theory there's nothing wrong with this. And if the story is well-written with dynamic characters, it definitely works.

However, if you aren't writing your heart, or your passion, it shows on paper. It's lifeless, or cardboard. Flat characters. Or crazy ideas. Things that may make even the most prolific romance reader cringe in horror.

As a writer, I'm aware that my first completed novel is not ready for prime time publishing. But I think about it frequently. I love the hero and heroine. I still love the story. And I'm sure at some point I'll take it out, dust it off, and give it a rewrite.

Getting published is important-a dream of most writers. We, here at TWRP love to help authors' dreams come true.

But don't forget to write your heart.

Something started you on this path. Don't lose sight of it.

Pronouns

2011-08-22T08:23:00.000-04:00

The word pronoun is taken from the old French, “pronomine.” Literally translated, it means instead of a noun. He, she, it, they, you, this, that, which, who, are pronouns. So what?

So…repeating a pronoun is like repeating any other word—dog or husband or elephant. Pronouns are my pet peeve, as many of my authors have learned. Thankfully, they’ve also learned why, and been open to eliminating the overuse of them from their stories.

How do I write in my character’s point of view if I can’t say her or she—you ask. Don’t get me wrong, you can use the pronouns, just hopefully not overuse them. I’ll give an example or two, so show how it can be done. Yes, it’s work but worth it, I think.

Example: Brenda drew in a long, deep breath and let it out in a slow hiss. Then, the memory of the day she received the job offer came to her mind and a hint of a smile crossed her face. She’d been in a terrible mood after engaging in verbal combat with her new publisher. 5 pronouns

To eliminate pronouns, it could say: Brenda drew in a long, deep breath and let it out in a slow hiss. The memory of the job offer brought a smile that widened at the thought of the new publisher’s face, handsome with a hint of a quirkiness that hadn’t been showing today. Her smile died at the thought of the verbal combat he’d initiated. 2 pronouns

Here, we’ve eliminated a few pronouns and some telling, but notice that we’ve also developed Brenda’s character as she relates her opinion of the new boss’s quirkiness, and the fact that he’d instigated the confrontation between them.

One more example: That was the question of the day, Lana thought, since he was out of town the day she interviewed with John Richards. Just then, the door flew open. She jumped so high she swore she floated above the sofa for a split second. A man in an expensive suit strode toward her and she heard her heart thumping. His eyes washed over her and his brows raised in recognition. 11 pronouns

This could say: That was the question of the day, since he was out of town during the interview with John Richards. Just then, the door flew open. Lana jumped so high she envisioned dangling over the sofa like a wind-chime. A gorgeous man wearing an expensive suit strode across the carpet and her heart jack-hammered in reaction. His glance showed appreciation. His brows raised in recognition. 5 pronouns

In this example, we’ve done away with some telling, cut the adverb count in half, eliminated 5 pronouns, replaced a too-common image (heart thumping) with jack-hammered, and added a simile (like a wind-chime).

As I said above, getting rid of pronouns is work, but after a while becomes second nature. Your final result is tighter and more detailed.

Historical Department Announces a New Series

2011-08-17T05:56:00.000-04:00

I read an email the other day that said students set to enter college this fall are the first who have never lived in a house where the telephone have cords, and think of a pop star—not a princess—when they hear the name Fergie. It went on to name several other things they’re missing out on, but it definitely got me thinking. Then came the news that the daytime soap All My Children would be canceled this fall, prompting my 11 year old son to look at me in confusion and ask “What’s a daytime soap?”

I’m forty something and when I think of my high school days, I remember running home to catch the soaps that came on at three o’clock—General Hospital, Guiding Light, Another World (and in later years, my favorite of all time, Santa Barbara). My friends and I would watch together over the phone --which, yes, was attached to the wall, but years of stretching made the cord juuuuust long enough to reach across the living room to the sofa. There was nothing worse than Friday afternoon at 3:59 p.m. in the soap opera world—the doorbell would ring and our current heroine in distress would be handed a letter, sit down in her beautifully decorated home, slit the envelope open, read it …and clap a well manicured hand over her perfectly painted mouth. Fade to black. Cue the closing credits.

Is it really possible that kids my son’s age will never know the agony—the brutal anguish!!—of not knowing what will happen on your favorite soap until Monday? The wait was interminable! Was it bad news—was it about the husband who had been missing for five years (or at least since the last actor to play him asked for a raise…) Was he dead? Or worse, now that she had found happiness with someone else, was she learning he was still alive and laying in a coma (covered in bandages, naturally, after some very convenient reconstructive surgery)? We would have to wait three entire days (gasp! Practically an eternity!) to find out.

How did we ever survive it?

My son lost interest in my explanation long before I did but the trip down memory lane made me realize… kids his age (and even a decade older) don’t know the simple joy—or heartache—of receiving a letter in the mail (the relatively instant gratification of email just isn’t the same, IMO). Or even the act of gathering your special pen and paper, address book and stamps, actually sitting down and composing a letter, tucking it into the envelope, licking the flap to seal it and walking to the corner mailbox (when was the last time you saw one of those?) and dropping it in the box. Then, depending on who you sent it to and where they lived, you waited anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to hear back. And oh, what excitement when the mailman (I’m quite a ways down Memory Lane, and at that time there were only mail men—I promise I’m not being sexist. *G*) brought you a letter. Sometimes those letters contained life-altering news: a proposal, news of an inheritance, the loss of a loved one, the birth of a new family member, the dreaded “Dear John” letter… the possibilities of what lie inside that innocent-looking white envelope were endless.

Today the historical department of TWRP debuts a new short story series called Love Letters. In this series a character’s life is forever changed by the receipt of a letter. Earlier this year invitations were sent out to a select number of authors to write stories to launch the series. As of today, with the release of the first story in the series (Beth Trissel’s wonderful Into the Lion’s Heart) we’re opening this series to submissions. The guidelines can be found below.

Whether you’re one of our current historical authors, or an author who has always thought about writing historical but has never taken the plunge, I hope you’ll read the guidelines and consider writing a story for this wonderful new series. Let your imagination run wild and consider what life-altering news would be in your hero or heroine’s envelope. Because sometimes… a letter changes everything.

For more information on the Love Letters series, or questions regarding the submission guidelines, please feel free to contact me (or any member of the historical team) at ndarienzo@thewildrosepress.com We’d love to talk to you about Love Letters!

Love Letters stories can be:

News of an arranged marriage

Dear John letter

Unexpected inheritance

Mail order bride

Death of a loved one

...anything you can imagine that would alter someone's life!

Stories must be historical in nature and suited to one of the following lines: American Rose, Cactus Rose, English Tea Rose, Vintage Rose (for more information please visit the individual pages for each of these lines. Story length should range between 20,000-25,000 words. The letter must be within the first three pages of the story.

Scare me to death...please!

2011-08-15T08:35:00.001-04:00

Hi...I'm Ally Robertson, an editor for the Crimson Suspense line. 'Suspense' is the operative word here. I receive countless submissions that just aren't suspenseful enough. We need danger...threats...maybe a little violence...yes, even death. I want you to keep me on the edge of my seat. I want you to make me worry for your characters. I want your bad guy (or girl) to give me chills. Of course, there has to be romance--we're a romance publisher, after all. But, in the SUSPENSE line, I also need some danger and devastation. I need to see it soon, too. If your character hasn't experienced anything harrowing in the first chapter, you don't have a suspense.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly how soon the danger should come, but the first scene is an excellent place for it. I will, however, settle for the first chapter. I've received partials of the first three chapters where absolutely nothing frightening or the least bit worrisome happens. Sometimes, the writing is good and the romance is good. In that case, it's probably just in the wrong line.

If your heroine has a psycho ex she's running from, just having her mull over all the bad stuff he did to her in the past isn't enough. Something should happen early in the story to at least make her think he's caught up to her. A dead body is always good...not literally, not in real life, but in your story. If, for example, someone the heroine knows dies under suspicious circumstances, if it looks like psycho ex could be involved, you've probably got a suspense.

Some examples where you likely don't have a suspense are, first and foremost, if nothing threatening or mysterious happens in the first few chapters. Or, if nothing happens during your story, period. For example, if you have a story where the townspeople talk about killings that took place years ago, and no one is in danger now, you probably don't have a suspense.

So please, before you send us a suspense story, make sure you hurt or kill or maim someone (IN YOUR STORY, THAT IS), or at least severely threaten and/or terrorize them. And do it soon. Otherwise, you might have a stellar romance...but you just don't have a suspense.

Ally Robertson
Editor
Crimson Rose - Suspense and Intrigue

Let's Get Closer!

2011-08-08T06:07:00.000-04:00

Distant Writing:

Hello, I’m Corinne MacGregor, and I’ve been an editor here at TWRP for about four years. It seems our editors have touched upon so many wonderful topics that I wondered what I could add this week. Then something came to mind, an issue I often encounter as an editor: distant writing.

Distant writing is something that stands out and is a problem because it interferes with the emotional enjoyment or connection with the characters in a story. Reporting something after the fact is not as exciting as letting the reader experience a scene as it unfolds for the characters.

It’s more fun to read a story if you’re involved and can almost hear, smell, see, touch, and taste what the point of view character does. Also, the inner happenings of the non-POV characters can be shown through expression, body language, tone, etc.

Here are some words that can be rephrased to take a story from distant writing to more in-depth, emotionally alluring writing:

Heard, saw, watched, thought, knew, and my favorite ;) “felt.”

When I see these in a manuscript, many times I’ll ask the writer to be more direct and “get under the character’s skin” so to speak.

While being more direct, the writer can involve the character’s emotions. Make it relevant to the character. For example, instead of “She heard footsteps coming up the stairs” this could be rephrased as “With each creak of the step, growing louder as he ascended, her excitement grew. She clasped her hands together and chuckled.”

Seeing words such as “saw” and “felt” draw a reader from the story by putting distance between the characters and them that shouldn’t be there to be engaging. Those words give it less of a feel of fiction and more like one of journalism/reporting.

Adverbs, especially those that end in –ly do the same thing. They water down writing and should be avoided where possible. There you go! Happy writing.

Hey! Why Did You Change That?

2011-08-04T10:20:00.000-04:00

by Nancy Swanson, Editor and Production Coordinator

As we send edits back and forth, sometimes I’ll get a question from an author asking me about a change I’ve made in editing. What the author has written may be perfectly good in many respects but not be acceptable according to our particular style guidelines. If your hero is wearing a tee shirt, for instance, we will say no, he’s wearing a T-shirt. Your heroine’s dress may plunge in a vee neckline, but he has a T-shirt.

Every publishing house has its own set of rules for the formatting and style of its products. Here at The Wild Rose Press we have CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style) as our primary standard. Then we add a few idiosyncrasies of our own.

For instance, if you are a British author we let you keep your spelling but require the punctuation follow U.S. rules, including periods and commas inside quotation marks, generally, with those quotation marks double rather than single. We like commas in sentences using direct address, too: “Oh, John, are you leaving?”

Like all rules, they have their exceptions. The one British spelling we won’t let you keep, and won’t let anyone else use, either, is “alright.” “Alright” is simply not all right. We are positive-minded people and we love “all right.” Things may be already altogether lovely, but they’re not alright, even if you can find the word in the dictionary—they’re all right.

Would you rather say it’s OK? We sympathize, but we’ll ask you to make that “okay” despite the origin of the word.

For some word changes, you might check the dictionary for the correct or preferred spelling for the meaning you want. A mantle, for instance, is usually a cloak or covering, while what’s over a fireplace is usually a mantel, instead. Other spellings and usages are regionally influenced or might depend on the context. If your characters are in the Wild West and a grizzled, tobacco-spitting old codger is in the scene, he’s not going to talk like the dapper Easterner who just blew into town, for instance.

What you don’t have to worry about...

Too many spaces between words – we have an easy fix for that when we format the galley proof.
Whether dashes are the right size – as long as you have two hyphens, an n-dash, or an m-dash wherever you want a dash, we will take care of that, too.
Underlining vs. italics – we can accept either one, but with underlining the editor will have to change each to italics during editing.
What type font to use – or any other formatting details. We will make sure everything is in order for publication, and you will see it before it goes out.

One more thing to consider...

Your editor sends you a galley file to proof and you see large gaps between words in some lines. What’s this? Can we fix it?

It’s caused by the necessary formatting for production. You can fix it by rewriting those sentences to include more and/or smaller words in the affected lines. When the manuscript is justified, so you have straight margins on each side, the spaces between lines have to make the words stretch from one side to the other. Several long words together mean the spacing has to be more conspicuous. We applaud your excellent vocabulary skills, but “all things in moderation” is a good maxim.

To wrap up...

Never be afraid to ask questions – we welcome them; it’s how you learn – but sometimes the answer is going to be something as simple as “that’s how we do it here” and you’ll have to be ready to accept that.

Top Reasons for Rejections from TWRP

2011-08-01T17:27:00.000-04:00

The following list was put together after a discussion on our editor loop about the top reasons why an editor here at TWRP rejects a manuscript. We hope these will come in handy for everyone who writes for us or is attempting to get contracted.

Rejection reasons from TWRP Editors

My last dozen or so rejections have been for either 1) poor control of POV, which leads right to a shallow emotional layer, or 2) the story isn't enough of a romance but is women's fiction with some romance tossed in.

POV issues seem to crop up more and more in submissions. I've also had several that fall far short of the romance we are looking for or have so many plot lines and characters that the romance is too deeply buried to really shine.

Another reason that I see over and over again is passiveness. There is just no vibrancy, tension or action to bring the story alive.

I get a lot of stories where the hero and heroine marry halfway through and she gets pregnant, then the rest of the book has only external conflict keeping them apart (villain or distance).

Since I'm in Faery, I get excellent scifi/fantasy stories that boil down to not being romance. No conflict between hero and heroine. Their goals align too early. I really enjoy some of the stories and the artistry of the writers, but they won't work for TWRP.

Lack of originality. I can't tell you the number of stories that begin with someone ditching their wedding or returning to town after a long absence. Also, I turned down an awesome story, a sort of sequel to a story that's sold a ton of copies--because it wasn't a romance.

I'm with the pov issue and the stories that don’t fit our line. It is like they do not read the guidelines for what each line or what TWRP is looking for.

Telling, not showing, lack of focus (story is all over the place), passive writing, pacing problems, and lack of control over POV issues. I do get a lot that are not a romance, as well.

Scarlet has the same issues everyone else has mentioned. Substandard writing, not within our guidelines, and not romance but flat out erotica.

POV is a big one for me followed very close by 2 dimensional characters with no deeper undertone--as in conversations that have people just standing there talking with no action or inflection and telling descriptions with no depth

POV, and lack of relationship depth.

The conflict shouldn't feel contrived or made up just for tension. The elusive "voice" thing is also important for me.

Sometimes a story is well written but the voice is I guess you'd call it DULL.

Like everyone else I struggle with the telling writing, not romance and pov. My problem with pov though is when they think it is okay to have ten of them.

As we get the initial queries in, it is really irritating when they obviously haven’t read our website and they haven’t included things like a synopsis

I see too many authors who don't understand why NOT to use a hundred points of view.

Keeping with Black is predominantly vamp and shifters, originality is a big contract breaker as well.

My pet peeve is the lack active writing and use of the senses. You know when you lose yourself in a story(you seem to be part of it) and you're still thinking about it days/weeks later? You are literally still 'feeling' it? I look for strong imagery and use of senses as well as a deep and true romance(emotion-I want to laugh and cry and literally share the characters emotions) and a unique storyline. I have been fortunate of late to receive some really awesome and different story threads and I might add strongly written!

There you go writers - take these words and heed them. Go over your latest manuscript and see if you fit any of these rejection flags and see how to change it. As always, you will grow the more you write so never stop trying.

Rhonda

Where is my book?

2011-07-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly.

Let’s look at circumstances outside our control, and ways to cope professionally. During many stages of the publishing process, we are at the mercy of someone else’s perception of time passage. Patience is a must; however, at some point a nudge asking “Did it get lost?” is appropriate. Where is that point?

For simplicity I will go with the generality that our author is female (because most of our submitters are) and the editor is also female (since at TWRP at this time, we all are).

Author sends her query to the publisher; she has followed all submission guidelines and expectations. Normal here at TWRP: author will immediately receive an automated response that her submission email was received and she will be contacted by the appropriate line shortly. If a week has gone past and you have zero response to your query—by all means, re-send your query. You’re going to get tired of hearing this, but emails can get lost in cyberspace. Our entire company is online, and our staff communicates mainly by email. We are not in a central location all in one building together. We’re scattered across the U.S. and Canada. For five years this has worked very well for TWRP, but occasionally emails disappear and must be tracked down.

Our editor in chief looks over every query and forwards them to the appropriate line’s senior editor. The senior editor alerts her staff of editors a new query is available, and we all glance over the blurb and synopsis. One of us responds with interest in the project, and is given the go-ahead to contact the author. We are required to respond to queries within 30 days of their arrival at the company. Sometimes this takes mere hours, other times a few weeks could pass before the query is in the correct hands. We like to choose projects that interest us, which is in the author’s best interest as well. Who wants her story evaluated by an editor who dislikes that particular setting or type of character, who finds the plot clichéd or boring? Or an editor who has too many other manuscripts on her desk to evaluate and so does not give proper attention to the new one? We try to be careful not to dismiss any query—to that author, her story is the most important one on our desk.

If the editor contacts the author to request the partial manuscript, or the whole manuscript in the case of shorter works, the author gives her manuscript to the editor, likely a person she has never met. Again, this is a file sent by email. Files can become lost. If you don’t hear back from the editor within a few days that this manuscript was received, send a quick note asking if it was received. I look at multiple emails a day from many authors, other editors, other departments—I don’t always remember to hit “reply” after going out to Word to verify the new file opens and going to the company database to log receipt of the file. I am human—I get distracted.

Now the waiting begins. The editor is reading the author’s baby. Or is she? 30 days go by…60 days…90 days. The date the editor said she would respond (she did give you a date, didn’t she?) is past and no word? The author needs to send an inquiry about the status of the project. In the light of “no news is good news,” the manuscript may be still in the evaluation process. When I receive a partial manuscript, I put it in line behind other projects that came in ahead of it. They’re all date-stamped and evaluated in order. Many times this means I edit a contracted work for two weeks then spend a Sunday reading four new manuscripts in a row. I don’t like having a to-be-read pile hanging over my head longer than 30 days but I often do. When those partials turn into full manuscripts of 80-100K, they loom in a much more scary format. How long does it take you to read a 400-page book? How about six books that size?

We editors have a helper system here at TWRP. Editors need to be the decision-maker on a manuscript, so we do read them ourselves, but our opinion does not need to stand alone. We have an in-house focus group of volunteer readers who help us scour manuscripts. They give us an honest opinion of strengths and weaknesses in a manuscript, which helps us decide if revisions need to be made, whether before or after offering a contract—or whether to reject. BUT this reading group is contacted by email, files sent back and forth to them, time for them to read—more waiting. Author is waiting for the editor, who is waiting for her readers. An organized editor will remember to alert her author that a delay can be expected if the deadline she set is approaching. But even that email can go astray.

After contract, the author has more waiting. Edits. Second edits. Possibly third edits. Committee decision on the best version of the blurb to sell the book with. Cover art. Copy edits. Galleys. All of these stages involve emailing a new version of a file back and forth. How much time does the editor or author allow to pass when the file is out of her hands before she should become worried it is lost?

I am beginning to learn that 10 business days is when questions of “where is the file?” become relevant. Five weeks is the outside time limit of any waiting I have done as an editor, with the exception of waiting to hear when a finished book is scheduled for release, and then waiting for that glorious release date to arrive.

If too much time has passed, you can always send a note to your editor asking for an update. Be polite and non-pushy, but you have a right to know where your story file is in the process, and whether it has become lost. It’s been known to happen.
_____

Kelly Schaub has been an editor on the Faery Rose line since September 2007. She has ushered 25 published titles through the garden gates of TWRP and hopes for the privilege of many more.

The Joy of Revision

2011-07-18T07:00:00.007-04:00

Books aren't written—they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.
—Michael Crichton

So you received a rejection notice from a Wild Rose Press editor. She was encouraging but firm about certain changes you need to make to your story. You take a few weeks to go over the manuscript, revising it with an eye to her suggestions, and now you’re thinking about sending it back to the editor for another look.

But how do you know when you’ve done enough? It’s easy to underestimate the amount of time and patience it takes to revise a manuscript. Cosmetic changes aren’t enough—revision calls for heavy lifting. So here are some questions to ask yourself as you evaluate your manuscript (questions adapted from Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway) along with links to helpful articles in our Greenhouse:

Is the story about something? Is there conflict? Are your characters interesting people who have defined goals? Do those characters change in some way, from the beginning to the end? GMC: Conflict

Does the story begin with a hook? Did you give the reader a reason to be interested in the story? Is there tension in your story and is that tension apparent on the very first page? Grabbing the Reader on the First Page

Are your characters real or do they seem more like stereotypes? Are their emotions clichéd? Building Believable Characters

Does the story make sense? Do you show the reader enough to make the setting and your story clear? Bringing in the Senses

Have you avoided overwriting? Kept your characters’ emotions from being overwrought? Ways to Make Your Writing Stronger

Have you pared your story down to the essentials? Does every scene function to both move the story forward and show the reader something about the characters? Self-editing for the Flabby Writer

Piece of cake, right? So how do you know when you’ve done enough? Try doing a comparison between the original version and your revised version using MS Word’s Compare feature. You should see significant changes on every page—if not, time to get back to work. Good luck!

Wild Rose Press in NY!

2011-07-04T03:50:00.014-04:00

New York was amazing! Fun, full of energy and life--and our fabulous authors. I was lucky enough to meet some of them before the Keynote luncheon on Wednesday.

Diana Bellew

Diana Bellew, Rebecca Clark and Maggie Van Well

Lynne Marshall
We'd planned to get a table together, but couldn't fight the crowd and ended up separated. There were literally thousands of women, all looking for a table.

I was lucky enough to sit next to the fabulous Roni Denholtz and Lynne Marshall

...and take chicken pictures while I enjoyed their company.

I missed seeing Anita Mae Draper, although we connected for a short time on the phone. There were a lot of dead spots in the hotel. I suspect it was because of all the concrete, and the internet barely worked. I tried to upload some pictures but after getting the equivalent of dial-up I gave up. I was so happy to get home.

I'm proud to say everyone I met was thrilled to be part of our Wild Rose family. Until we meet again next year--it was great seeing you in person. We have a truly wonderful garden.

Classic Contemporaries

2011-07-03T20:18:00.014-04:00

I inherited my "romance-reader" gene from my mother. On quiet evenings, after the dinner dishes were washed and my younger sister was tucked in bed, she curled up on a comfy chair in the living room. One hand held a paperback; the other, a chocolate bar (I also inherited her chocolate addiction).

She loved the early series romances. Every month, like clockwork, a shopping bag filled with that month's releases appeared at the house. Eventually I began to sift through her bag of goodies, and as a teenager, cut my teeth on masters like Anne Mather, Violet Winspear, and Betty Neels.

Back then, heroines tended to be nurses, nannies, and secretaries. The men they fell in love with were wealthy and aristocratic: doctors, tycoons, owners of islands and kingdoms. Settings included everything from the businessman's London to the rancher's Australian Outback. (No heroine could resist a rugged, suntanned hero on a horse.) And I always looked forward to a new book by Betty Neels. An English nurse herself, Neels transplanted her heroines to Holland, where they met and fell for proper Dutch doctors.

Our new Champagne series, The Millionaire's Club, pays homage to these classics--with a modern, edgier twist. We're looking for submissions between 20k and 60k. Stories must be rated spicy to hot and must contain a fully depicted and fully consummated love scene. For more details, check out our website or feel free to e-mail me at roseann@thewildrosepress.com.

Keep reading and writing!

Roseann
Senior Editor, Champagne Rose

FIRST, SECOND, OR THIRD.

2011-06-29T19:41:00.000-04:00

Let’s talk about a subject that is very near to my heart. One that can get an author querying her work rejected faster than a ballplayer can hit a home run.

Yes, I’m using baseball terms because in the scheme of things or your manuscript, you, the author, have the choice to use the point of view of your choice. However, if you are writing romance, for the most part publishing houses prefer third. Although, I have read some really great work with a first person point of view.

Now, how to you decide what to use, well that can be as confusing as who’s on first, who’s on second, or who’s on third as my husband use to say just to make me crazy.

It doesn’t have to be hard, however it does have to be right, no matter what point of view you decide on. My preference if you are querying the Faery Rose line is third. I like to see the hero and heroine’s pov. I also, don’t mine the villain or an occasional secondary character if it moves the story plot along.

A good rule of thumb when you are writing third is to make sure that you only describe what you can see. You can’t see me so if you were to make the statement Amanda Barnett’s hair is up in a ponytail, unless you were in the room with me, you would be wrong. However, you can say that due to the band left behind when I take my hair down, you believe I wear my hair up a lot. That might not be the best scenario, so let’s try this one.

We will use one of the editors on Faery, I’m sure Frances Sevilla won’t mind. If she and I are having a conversation and she walks out of the room in anger, I can only guess her hands are clenched in fists, or she’s mouthing off unfavorable attributes toward my innocent self. Yet, if I hear a thump on the wall and then hear her yell, I can safely assume she has used one of those same fists to punch the wall. Poor Frances.

Remember, you need to view point of view as you would by peering into the lens of your digital camera. You can only capture a picture of what you can see. Not hard at all, is it?

First person you can only guess at other character’s thoughts because you are not in their minds, and neither is your reader. You must show if they are sad, angry, etc, by remarking on how their eyes flash or tears are rolling down their cheeks.

I hope that makes sense. I will not be addressing the issue of using second as a point of view. I only want to make sure that the authors who are reading this realize that when we evaluate a manuscript, if you which point of view frequently, head-hopping as some call it, then you not only confuse the reader, meaning an editor, but also pull a reader out of what could be an important part of your work.

So instead of running the bases at full speed, take time to decide if the point of view you are using is right for your work, and if it is done correctly. YES, I know there are NY Times Best Selling authors who do have more license when it come to flipping back and forth, but your goal is to deliver the best work you can to get an editor interested in contracting your work. Believe me, the fundamental basics are a key part when I look at someone’s baby.

Take care and write on!

Relating to Chickens (and other experiences)

2011-06-20T08:27:00.002-04:00

While racking my brain over a topic to blog on, my chickens sidetracked me. Anyone who has had any sort of conversation with me knows I can always bring the topic around to chickens. Imagine my delight when it dawned on me I could combine two of my favorite things in the world (chickens and reading) into a blog. So what do chickens have to do with reading? Read on and find out.

I read. A lot. I am the proverbial girl with her nose stuck in a book. I walk through the house at bedtime to let the dog out and in, feed the fish one last time, give the cat a treat—all with a book in my face. I can’t help it. My husband doesn’t get it. My parents are not readers. It’s just the way I am.

So, those chickens. You don’t often come across books with chickens. Everytime I read a book with chickens in it, I can tell whether the author has real experience with chickens. The details of the sounds they make, their movements, and their personalities—if you have spent any time with chickens, you will learn their idiosyncracies (taptaptap—don’t worry it’s just the hens begging at the back door), just as you would with any other pet. What? You don’t have pet chickens? I highly recommend them. What other pet lays your breakfast?

I have recently read two books where chickens had some sort of role. One has a single hen who is favored by a goddess. The hen makes little chirrups and I can hear her when I read those passages. My hens make the same noise. The other story’s climax and resolution take place in and around a henhouse, and the hens pop up throughout the story, usually in trees (ever seen a chicken in a tree? Ridiculous sight!). The hens put up an unholy racket during the big scene, and I laugh every time I think of that scene (usually at 6:22 am when my hens start demanding their daily release into the back yard).

Both of these stories will always stick with me. I will enjoy them again and again, as well as recommend them to others because I identified with story elements. I always find I relate to a book and identify with a story’s characters if we have something in common. It could be the smallest detail (the hero has a chipped tooth? So does my husband!) to something important (the heroine dislikes conflict and acts as a mediator in hot situations? So do I!). These details are what round out a character and give them lifelike qualities. I delight in authors who pull on real life experiences and inject those experiences into their story. Those details are what pulls the reader into the book. It’s why I avoid non-fiction. I want to be in the book. I want to know the characters and escape to their world.

My advice? Write down all those funny stories and memorable experiences. Draw on your life’s experiences for ideas and inspiration. Better yet, go get a chicken.

Whew! Has it been a year?

2011-06-19T16:11:00.004-04:00

Less than 8 days before RWA Nationals and I'm still looking for shoes. Has it been another year? I could have swore last year I'd shop the sales and have my bag packed and ready to go.

I'll be in New York next week, taking pictures of the many ways RWA does chicken for lunch and blogging Nationals for TWRP.

If you see me, stop by and say "hello!" I'll be in the lobby of the Keynote Luncheon Wednesday afternoon, an hour before the doors open. I'd love to meet you, and hope to see you in New York!

You Want Me To Actually READ My Final Galley? Isn't that Your Job?...words of advice from Nan Swanson in Production

2011-06-13T06:13:00.000-04:00

Do you ever wonder what happens to your book in those weeks between the last time you see the galley and when you get a final version with the release date?

You thought you had polished to perfection before you ever submitted your manuscript to The Wild Rose Press, after all. And the editor must have thought it was pretty good, to offer you a contract for it.

But then she sends you an edited copy with track marks all over it – a comma here, a word there, a question, a comment, a quibble... Okay, so you fixed every one of those little problems and even saw a few other spots that could use some tweaking and tweaked them and sent it back.

Lo and behold, back it comes from your editor in a little while with a few more questions and comments, and again you fix and tweak and return. Isn’t it about done now?

Next she sends you a galley, or maybe what she calls a pre-galley, and she asks you to read through and if you see any typos or anything you want to change...oh, but wait. You can’t just change this copy. It’s made so you can’t do anything to it.

What did she say? Make a list with the page numbers and the line numbers? And maybe some words or a phrase so she can be sure what you want to change? Well, you guess you can do that. But it’s a pain, and you get about halfway through the book (at the most) and figure that must be good enough. You haven’t found much of anything you want to change, and you haven’t noticed anything wrong with punctuation, just that one quotation mark that’s two spaces away from the end of its sentence. There can’t be any errors in the last half of the book, can there? Your editor is going through it, too, so she will catch any other errors, surely. And didn’t she mention a copy editor going over it? Well, it will most definitely be perfect. Nothing to worry about. Anyway, you’re busy writing on your next great romance novel and switching gears to proofread the one that’s nearly ready for publication is just such a bother...

After you send in your list, your editor puts in your corrections, asks you to approve the copy she has attached, which you do without even looking at it, really – it doesn’t have any marks on it, to direct your attention to any problems, so why worry? – and she sends the edited manuscript to the copy editor. If the copy editor finds any typographical errors or other problems, she hashes it out with your editor (wonderful person, isn’t she, to deal with all these picky little things!) and gets a final galley from the production department.

You have already approved it, so can there really be any need for you to look at this final galley, as your editor requests? But you skim through, and it looks lovely with all the margins lined up and everything, the chapters all starting at the same place on their first pages. The dedication makes you cry a little. You do wonder about the paragraph about the author on that page at the end; does it make you seem rather colorless, uninteresting? Hmmm. It could use a little more work. After all, you haven’t even thought about it for months, not since you sent in that form that came with the contract. And is the excerpt at the very beginning quite the right thing to grab a reader? Maybe you should look for a better scene to put there. As you flip through the book to find a better excerpt scene, you happen to see a paragraph you can’t possibly have written. It’s the idea you had in mind, but surely you didn’t write those words. It would be much better said this way...and so you write the improved version (in a separate document, of course, since you can’t change this thing the editor has sent you). Gosh, would there be any more paragraphs like that in here?

You feel the need to check, and you end up reading the whole book and finding a dozen more places where you are sure you have a better idea for the wording, and you write those into your notes for the editor, too. Well, it’s a good thing you happened to see those, isn’t it? You feel sure your editor will be delighted with the improvements you’ve made, and you send them off to her with a note saying, “Approved with these changes. Could I please see it once more, to be sure?” It’s only ten pages of items for her to coordinate with what she has already.

That strange sound, like steam escaping from a valve, is evidence of your editor’s “delighted” surprise. How many times has she asked you to check the copy? How many times have you had the opportunity to read through the entire manuscript to make any changes in wording that you would like to make? And now you are rewriting? More sounds of hissing steam from the production person as she makes yet another galley copy for your editor because of your belated changes.

To answer the original question: once that final galley copy is made and double-checked for formatting accuracy and approved by you and your editor, it goes to the final production department, where it is assigned a release date. A final release copy is made and sent to you along with the date. A lot goes into making that final release copy. Having to change it is a major operation, so we hope you won’t again find paragraphs you’d like to change to sound a little better. We’re always happy to make necessary changes, although we would like them found earlier than the release copy. But rewriting? revision? word, phrase, and paragraph changes? Please do that during the regular back-and-forth editing, read and re-read carefully whenever your editor asks it of you, and then you can breathe easily when you draw the line on such modifications after giving your approval to a galley.

...Nancy Swanson, Production Coordinator

Technology is our Best Friend and our Worst Enemy

2011-06-11T07:34:00.000-04:00

I love technology. I mean I truly do. I'm not a geek nor do I even attempt to pretend to be. I know what I know and what I don't know definitely goes over my head but I completely and thoroughly love being a part of this world where technology changes literally overnight.

The fact that I can sit here looking out over beautiful Lake Ontario on a Saturday morning and send a note to someone in any country I choose and they will get it instantly amazes and impresses me. When my son was deployed in 2009, being able to "talk" with him on the computer literally a world away from him saved my sanity.

However, when that technology fails us, life can be very very scary. This past week, The Wild Rose Press experienced a severe malfunction when we switched hosting companies and our email system completely shut down for 8 days. It was as if someone had put me in the middle of the dessert with no food or water or cell phone! Looking at my inbox as it lay empty or worse seeing the "bounced" replies come back as I tried to reach out to staff members had my heart racing and not in a good way.

We should all plan for disasters even if we don't like to think about them. At The Wild Rose Press we planned for a complete breakdown in technology. We have back-ups of all our files, every manuscript ever published, cover art, contracts, everything backed-up in a secure location. We also require our staff to have back-ups of their computers. But we never thought about the email system. It was secure, it worked fine, why would it ever not work? We never thought to have a secondary system in place in order to communicate with staff in the evening of a situation like this. We were naive. This was a serious wake-up call and showed us that with all the technology in the world at our fingertips, we could be brought to our knees in seconds.

Its always good practice to save your most important documents, manuscripts, digital family photos, anything like that somewhere secure and offsite. It doesn't necessarily have to be a bank safe deposit box - although that's the best answer in my opinion - but it could be as simple as the home of someone you trust - another family member or best friend - anywhere that is not the same physical location as your computer. In the event of a natural disaster you would have peace of mind that your back-up was safe.

Another alternative to that is an online storage facility that for a small fee will allow you to back up your entire computer online. I believe there's a company called www.mozy.com that will automatically back up your computer on a schedule you set for an annual fee. If something were to happen you could access everything you need. Think about it. Its one less headache after all if you have to deal with something truly out of your control.

The Wild Rose Press emails are all up and running as of this morning. If you sent in a query or an email to any of us between June 2 and June 10, please resend. We look forward to being in touch with all of you.

Rhonda Penders
Editor-in-Chief

2011-06-05T13:59:00.001-04:00

One of the things I most enjoy as an editor is meeting author’s characters. We all have our favorites. Characters who become family. We love to visit them within the pages of books. Wondering about them long after the story is over or waiting impatiently for the next installment of their lives.

What draws us to these characters? What makes them become real enough that we want to know more about them? To know their stories? To invite them to dinner? And in some cases wish we could be them?

As both an editor and a reader, I look for depth. For layers that give a character the feeling of reality. We all know people who are a bit mysterious. Those friends or family members that make us want to dig deeper. The same can be said for characters on the page.

Young girls often dream of their prince charming. The actual specifics differ for each dreamer, but for the most part we want handsome, charming, strong, loyal and while we are young we want perfect. Then as we grow wiser, we know that no one is perfect.

Heroes and heroines need to be a bit “messy.” Something that makes them less than perfect. While the idea of “character flaws” may seem a bit cliché, there is a lot of truth behind the statement. We look for flaws. And when we don’t find them, we become suspicious. Someone who is too perfect is someone we can’t trust.

As an editor, I look for characters I can relate too. As an editor in Black, I admit to favoring hero’s who have a bit of the “bad boy” hidden inside them. Or even in plain sight. There is nothing more attractive than a hero who is rough on the outside and tender on the inside! A character that struggles, learns, and grows is much more likable than one who remains stagnant.

Characters also have to have consistency. While there is nothing wrong with a surprise or two, reader’s need to feel that a character’s actions or feelings are true. A hero who is afraid of snakes (think Indiana Jones) who jumps into a pit full of slithery critters to save his love is much more believable than one who suddenly decides to keep snakes as pets. A heroine who has always been afraid of heights who suddenly scales a cliff in order to save her child and lover is someone we all can connect with. But changes in behavior that have no understandable basis will leave the reader dissatisfied.

I like a character that has history but not too much. As a reader, I want enough background that I feel that I can understand a character’s motivation. Those little things that make him or her tick. At the same time as an editor, I don’t want to be buried under unnecessary back-story. There is definitely a balancing act to keep in mind when character building.

I have to shamelessly put a plug in here for Black. Though this applies across the lines. We are looking for strong and sensual characters in Black. Our guys and/or gals are otherworldly and as such, we like them to be sure of themselves. At the same time, there is nothing wrong with a heroine who needs to grow into that strength or a hero who may battle what he really is. Bottom line, we want characters we can relate to.

I look forward to meeting your characters. To inviting them over and hopefully visiting them again and again.

Lill Farrell
Black Rose Editor
The Wild Rose Press
lillmf2@aol.com

Conflict -- An Editor's Dream

2011-05-31T14:26:00.002-04:00

One of the things that I see a lot of is conflict without substance. It's become my new little catch-phrase, actually. And I think the concept of conflict is maybe a little vague. Or more precisely "Strong conflict"

Strong conflict is something that takes more than a conversation to work out. It's not just having two divergent character types banging heads and being beligerent or alpha. A strong conflict involves the following set up:

External conflict influences the hero and heroine internally, by targetting their internal beliefs (that are founded on their backstory experiences) and impacts their goals to the point that it makes them resist leaping into a solution.

A person cannot resolve their internal beliefs by having one conversation and everything's good. It takes working through those beliefs, and the events the hero/heroine encounter must contribute to that resolution. The events are either related to the external conflict, or related to the emotional relationship.

Let's look at a somewhat stereotypical example:

Hero is a wealthy businessman whose wife died and left him with a young child. Heroine is the woman he loved as a teen, who was from a poor family and "the wrong side of the tracks". They were involved as teens, but he left her suddenly. Ten years later, after his wife's death, they are reunited through professional endeavors.

Non-existant conflict:
They meet, there's a conversation along the lines of:

Hero: Susie, my parents forced me to. I never wanted to leave, and while I cared for my wife, I was in a loveless marriage. Please be mine again.
Heroine: Oh George, I've loved you too! Yes, that's all I've ever wanted.

Weak Conflict:
They meet, there's a bit of animosity between them. A bit of snide remarks on her part, his banging his head mentally, accusing himself of being a fool, since it's a Champagne title, they hit the sheets, sparks fly, and no one discusses what happened in the past. Eventually after a few chapters of a happy resolution being present in the writing (but not through character's actions or writings) they consent to forgive, forget, and move forward. Afterall, they've been working on this joint professional venture famously, they share core beliefs, and what happened in the past was out of youthful ignorance and the domination of powerful parents.

In this example, the author has made an attempt at keeping them apart. But the grounding isn't present. Both characters love each other from first meeting, always have, and their conflict is on the surface level. Actions portray it, but it isn't internally grounded. One conversation can resolve it between them. And while the conversation may not be as weak as the example in no conflict, it's still a situation that can be resolved by a conversation.

Strong Conflict:
They meet, there's a whole lot of animosity between them because the reason he is on the job conflicts with the reason she is on the job. Both have strong beliefs in their position and their work. They are at polar opposites, so it appears, within their moral compass. Adding into this the heroine feels intense betrayal, that she wasn't good enough for him because of financial positioning or her lineage. The hero, is anguished over what he did, but his reasons for leaving her had nothing to do with his parental domination, (although on the surface that's how it appeared), were in attempts to forge a path for them to be together.

When he came back to get her, she was gone no forwarding address and her parents wouldn't speak to him. Lo and behold, HER parents are the reason they were forced apart.

Yes, they can discuss this. Yes, he can swear to the truth of it. But although that conversation resolves why their teenage love came to an end, it does not address the larger issue of now that they are adults they are at odds with their core beliefs in relation to this professional set up. But before they can resolve it conversationally, they have to have their misconceptions proved wrong. Not just stated as wrong proved wrong.

The external plot -- the professional endeavor -- triggers them to act in ways that force them to grow and evaluate their individual standings. One of them must grow and change internally after doing something (the wrong something) that puts a divide between them, that seems insurmountable.

So if you have an environmental engineer opposing an oil mogul, the oil mogul must go ahead with the plan that damages the environment, despite feelings for the environmental engineers stance on the situation. External factors trigger something that points the oil mogul to the environmental engineer's motivation, and the oil mogul must scramble to right the situation. If the oil mogul doesn't right the situation, the love is forever lost.

These actions are what leave the reader on the edge of their seat, turning pages, wondering "How in the world is this mess ever going to get resolved?"

Conflict is a complicated entity. But if an author keeps in mind STRONG conflict, grounded in personal beliefs that are triggered by internal circumstances, and far deeper than one conversation can resolve, the odds of mastering conflict is significantly increased.

Good luck and keep on writing!

Editor's Creed

2011-05-14T08:47:00.004-04:00

As an editor, it is never our intention to shoot down your dreams. It is our intention to offer the tools you need and guide you to your goal--Publication.

It is not our intention to be cold and critical but to teach and inform, to show you how to better your stories, perfect your words. Make your projects shine.

I believe I can speak for any of The Wild Rose Press editors and say that our least favorite thing in the world is to write a rejection to an aspiring writer. However, it does offer us the chance to aid you in your pursuit to contract your work with us or another publisher if you choose to heed the explanation so carefully woven into your repectfully written letter detailing "why" your story or book was rejected.

Rejection is never comfortable, but taken constructively only helps to make you a much stronger, more vivid writer. Pay attention to every detail, every explanation your editor gives you. She is trying to mold you into a publishable author. One who stands out. One who doesn't land in the proverbial slush pile after the first paragraph.

I've listed some hints we drop so often I know you are more than sick of hearing them, but we continuously see these problems with submissions:

First and formost, please follow guideline requests. That is why we put them up. Time after time we receive submissions that are not formatted properly. We are not interested in your fancy fonts and a pretty manuscript. All that does is make it more difficult when it comes time to format for galley. Always use .rtf formatting. Nothing else--ever!

More on guidelines. Pay attention to individual line content needs. For instance: you are submitting to Black Rose. Did you read the guidelines carefully? If so, why am I receiving a story about Faeries and time travel when my line handles vampire, wereshifters, demons, and all the darker less whimsical creatures of the paranormal genre? If your stories have witches/warlocks/gargoyles, whatever--be sure the story elements are dark and include one of the above mentioned entities, otherwise it is more likely a Faery fit. Study the needs of each line thoroughly BEFORE you submit. If in doubt at any time, we are always happy to guide you.

Proofread, proofread, proofread... We can't stress this enough. When a manuscript comes in that is filled with typos, spelling errors, wrong words and clearly not proof read, YOU WILL BE REJECTED. This is just plain lazy. NEVER allow your work to go out the door without a thorough going over. Always have two or more people proof you work. As editors, we have to have a cold read(copyedit) done(someone to go over a manuscript to be sure WE didn't miss something!) So rest assured YOU need to do this as well. Don't skip important steps. Critique partners are excellent for this. They will also be able to pick up plot problems, redundancy, inconsistencies, etc. All of which WILL get you a rejection or a revision request at the very least. TWRP does offer a critique group. I've encoded the link for you to follow, why not check it out?

A word about copyrights, brand names and trademarks. Be aware when mentioning products, music, people(actors, authors, singers etc.) there are issues that may arise including copyright and trademark infringements. It is best NOT to go there at all. As editors, we flag these and WILL insist that you change such items.

The above are a few things that are constant headaches for us as editors. I want to mention another thing I have recently come across in closing. Please beware of the thin line between a story idea and plagerism!

I recently had a submission that was titled similar to a blockbuster series and even took place in the same locale! This is a definite no, no. You can not write a spinoff of another author's works nor use their story ideas in any fashion that is close to the original.

Something else you must be diligent about is not referencing characters from other works in your stories. Seems innocent enough especially in a postive light but not a good idea. The best way to handle any potential problems of this sort is to NOT do it at all. I can't stress this enough.

I would now like to share with you, the author, our MISSION STATEMENT as editors:

To endeavor to make your writing the very best it can be, whether we enter into contract or not. Know that we are only trying to help you. Never to discourage only encourage and teach. Polish your story and make your writing shine!

Thank you.

Callie Lynn Wolfe, SE Black Rose

Don’t forget the simple things…

2011-05-09T06:37:00.008-04:00

That’s a good lesson in life as well as writing. Don’t forget to take a moment to raise your chin, close your eyes and glory in the warmth of the sun on your face. Don’t forget that sometimes a good grilled cheese sandwich and bowl of soup can be just as special a supper as a full chicken dinner with all the trimmings. Don’t forget to appreciate a few small, simple miracles like a close parking spot opening up on a miserable, rainy day or a song on the radio that brings a happy memory and smile to your face just when you need it. And don’t forget that if your hero has a goatee in the first chapter, unless you mention somewhere that he shaved it off, your heroine’s hand shouldn’t slide over a smooth, chiselled jaw during their first love scene LOL.

Sometimes it’s these simple details that trip up an editor’s read of your manuscript—Wearing a jacket, then on the next page, rubbing a hand up her bare arm, the friend of a heroine who came to the bar with her but was never heard from again, having a minor emergency come up and the heroine—who say, is an artist in the story—suddenly states she’s a nurse and can help, or an ex-boyfriend showing up out of the blue at the exact moment you need him to for the conflict point, but the hero and heroine are on a Caribbean island three thousand miles away from where she had ever dated the guy in the first place.

I’m sure my authors will tell you one of my favourite words during edits is VALIDATE. Yes, I can see them nodding their heads vigorously, laughing and rolling their eyes at the same time *wink*.

These simple details can be catagorized in two ways: Oopsies and Drop Ins:

1) Oopsies: These are details that are mentioned, and then never mentioned again—perhaps they were an idea in the first draft, but as the storyline and panster writing played through, that thread and/or idea was dismissed for a better one, but, upon the second or third drafts of the story, a detail or two were missed when cleaning those sections up. This could be as simple as a mention of a purple shirt, but then in the next scene on the same day it’s a pink skirt instead. These details could also transform into a person, like an overlooked secondary character who came with your heroine to the bar—if you forget to mention she either left or reference your heroine saying goodbye at least (ie: VALIDATING the secondary character’s existence), then it looks like your heroine just ditched her friend, and readers may not take too well to that LOL. Another example could be a description detail like the goatee one earlier, or perhaps she had a scar on her cheek or a secondary character wore glasses.

If those character details aren’t carried through--VALIDATED--throughout the story by both the physical reactions (ie: the scrape of the scar beneath his fingers when he brushes a finger down her cheek) or shown (as in perhaps the habit of pushing her glasses back up her nose when agitated), then the characterization and writing is weakened and thus so would be the faith of the reader also. So keep an eye out for these details before an editor finds them, because, thankfully, they are an easy fix--simply delete or VALIDATE with a simple phrase or two of explanation.

2) Drop Ins: These are my favourites—or should I say my, "Are you serious?" moments. An example of these details would be the minor emergency where the artist is suddenly now a nurse and can help. Are you serious? How convenient! Or the ex-boyfriend popping into the scene on a tropical island thousands of miles away from where the heroine had dated him. Are you serious? How convenient! LOL, yes, they sound simple and are way too easy to write in because they are convenient--the easy way out so to speak--but in reality, it is contriving the plot—making the conflicts work for you rather than in a natural, believable way.

The good news is that these can also be a very simple fix--simple, but important--most often with a well placed sentence or even just a phrase of VALIDATION earlier in the story. A small mention of a nursing school, or a griped comment about her ex and how he used to travel south a lot, again, placed earlier in the story can smooth the flow and enhance the believability factor rather than damage it. Basically, VALIDATING your backstory before you need it, so when the more important events occur, you’ve already set up the base of belief for the reader.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not talking info dumps of backstory to back yourself up (that would only open a whole other can of technical problems LOL). I’m simply saying a well placed comment or sentence earlier in the story can do the trick, VALIDATING your character and making you as the author look clever for the streamlined thread.

Sometimes in the excitement and deep concentration of getting your plot and romantic thread just right, simple details get overlooked like a paper coffee cup gusted down the middle of the road by the speeding traffic. But simple little details can sometimes make or break a story for an editor—make them hand you a contract, or send you a polite, no thank you.

Yes, reading through your manuscript with an eye for anything that doesn't fit will help, but this is also where a critique partner can come in very handy—a second set of eyes not so deeply involved in the story yet, and who will be able to pinpoint details that were missed or overlooked BEFORE you submit. They can truly be invaluable to a writer. (If you would like to find a critique partner and don’t know where to start, we do have a link on our website: http://thewildrosepress.com/publisher/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1388&Itemid=127)

So, don’t forget to remember the simple things in life and in your manuscript….because sometimes the simple things can be the biggest part of your day.

2011-05-02T01:00:00.003-04:00

Happy Anniversary

So what do those words bring to your mind? Romantic candlelit dinners with the most incredible person in your life? Cake and ice cream surrounded by balloons? Trips to exotic ports? Buying yourself the perfect outfit which, of course, makes you look fabulous? Going off for a weekend cabin getaway?

The great thing is that any of these (and so many more) is wonderful ways to celebrate an anniversary.

But may I suggest another – reflection extraordinaire.

I was sitting here tonight thinking about Wild Rose approaching our fifth anniversary. What an incredible mile marker. But it got me wondering how each of us looks upon our own lives.

As you develop your writing career and need some encouragement, may I make a suggestion? Pick a date as your “start” date. For many writers, they don’t remember a time in their life when they didn’t write. I don’t doubt that is absolutely true. But given that, pick a date that makes you happy. Use that date as your anniversary each year. Put it on the calendar and circle it in red.

Then each year on that date, plan some time for yourself. Take the time to look at the path you’ve chosen. Do you have half-written manuscripts lying around? Pull them out. Read them through thoroughly. If they strike a chord, maybe it is time to take them out of mothballs and use those creative juices. If not, why? Be honest with yourself. Why? Some (sorry to say) are just bad and should be put to rest. Others just aren’t quite ready for this time and place but can be put away properly for that event. Then there’s the idea that gets your creative juices flowing and the words seem to jump right on the page.

So, you’ve looked at the written word. Now what? Take some time to evaluate your skill package. Make a list (yes, I am the queen of lists). First, list the attributes. Given that you are the only person who will see this list, it is really important to be honest with yourself. Once you have gone through that, now list those areas where you feel weak. Review them carefully and brain storm about how you can overcome or prop up those areas. For example, if you struggle with staying in the proper point of view, maybe a critique partner is the way to go. Check out our website and get hooked up with that person. Or maybe there is a book on setting up dialogue that you can read. Of course, there are blogs everywhere that you could join, as well as the various loops that TWRP hosts.

Next, spend some time reflecting on the overall events that have helped you get where you are. It is important to keep track of contests won, books published, letters of appreciation or good reviews that you’ve received, and so on. Yes, we have all received rejections and the information gleaned from them is important. No, that doesn’t mean you have to do everything contained within the rejection. Sad to say, editors are human and we do have personal opinions. So, something that I reject might be accepted by another editor. However, if you take the time to really review the rejection, you are sure to find something you can use to improve your skill package.

That being said, though, reflect on the positive things. Pat yourself on the back for wherever you are in your career.

Finally, take a look at where you want to be in five years. Feeling adventuresome, where do you want to be in ten years? As you look at all of the work you have already done, what will it take to get you where you want to be in that timeline? One very critical part of this last step…well, every step actually, is to write it all down. After all, that is your chosen career path, right? If you can muse for the characters playing in your mind, why can’t you put that same muse to work for you?

So Happy Anniversary Wild Rose Press. It has been quite the ride and one that I am glad to be a part of. And beyond that…Happy Anniversary, Dear Author. Celebrate where you are and where you are going.

Once your homework is over, let’s revisit that first paragraph. How will you celebrate your next anniversary?

Lori
Senior Editor, Crimson Rose

The Editor–Author Relationship : From the Starting Shot to the Finish Line

2011-04-25T00:01:00.015-04:00

Someone once asked me what I liked about editing. I had to think for a moment before I answered. Once I put my ideas together, I discovered it’s hard to put those feelings into words without sounding presumptuous. Why? Because I’ve never received a manuscript that I didn’t believe I couldn’t enrich. And what I mean is not just that “I” personally could perfect it. No, it’s that “anyone” in general can usually find something inside every manuscript to correct or improve upon, no matter how many times you read it.

Anyone who’s been in a critique group, or who has ever written anything themselves, knows that every time you review something you think of another way to say the same thing. (Just like this BLOG. Given time, I could rewrite it over and over again and never be totally satisfied. I’m doing it right now—changing words each time I spell check it. Argh!)

· Is it better this way or that?

· Had you already written it that way once before?

· Do you have the emphasis on just the right words?

The questions go on and on, the analysis of each sentence and each punctuation mark becomes an agonizing quest, and the word choices are even worse. You type the words “The End” almost in self-defense. Everything must have an inevitable ending—writing your manuscript, revising it, editing it, and finally producing it. Misstep along the way and the next step can’t be taken.

With each manuscript, the editor is the one encouraging the author to take those steps, to make the move from point “A” to point “B” without being too quick about it, and to yet still move forward in a positive direction.

Once the book is formatted and comes back in galley form, it’s time to take off your creative hat and put on your glasses. This is the time for details not creative changes; all those misplaced modifiers should already be put in their places. Now is the time to search and destroy extra spaces, commas in place of periods, an instead of and, extra lines, or missing words. What the copy editor or spell check didn’t catch ends up in your lap.

Crossing the finish line with all your I’s dotted and your T’s crossed comes down to you, the author, to do that final inspection. I guess what I like is that from submission to sales, we are your advocates, the ones cheering for your success like a parent with a child, like a partner or a teammate, and then we’re with you at the finish line ready to high five you when those awesome reviews come in heralding your newest creation as the best book ever.

What I like most about editing is being a small part of each book I edit. It's as satisfying as doing anything creative on my own. And there’s always the side benefit of getting to read so many fantastic books.

THE END

( Ah, those words are in self-defense; I do have a few books to go edit. GRIN )

Frances Sevilla

Faery Rose Editor & Cheerleader

The Wild Rose Press Turns 5!!

2011-04-22T18:08:00.000-04:00

Join us for a celebration! April 27 - May 1, 2011

5 Days and $500.00 worth of prizes!

www.groups.yahoo.com/group/thewildrosepress

www.groups.yahoo.com/group/thewilderroses

Agonizing Over Rejections

2011-04-17T17:49:00.000-04:00

The Wild Rose Press is known for its kinder more personal rejections—a vast difference from those received from some publishing houses. My first impersonal one read something like: Dear Author, Your story does not fit our publishing house at this moment. We wish you all the best in finding the right place for your manuscript. Sincerely, The Editing Team. Wow, I wondered why it didn’t fit. I wondered what they were looking for. I wondered if they even read it. Many more followed that first one, never giving me any insight into what I had done wrong.

I was depressed for two days after my first rejection. No, not the ones I received, the first one I wrote. As heartbreaking as getting a rejection, writing one is much more difficult. I agonize over every word, worried I may be crushing someone’s dreams.

That’s why each letter I write is so tough and definitely not a task I relish. And whether it is an established author or a new one, the letter is still the same. The author should know why the story wasn’t quite ready for publication at TWRP. Could it have been in need of more showing and less telling? How about an adjustment on the amount of points of view? Does the sexual tension need to be increased? Was the plot good, but the mechanics needed some work? Maybe it was an overused plot. Or the manuscript lacked any type of proofreading. And in historicals, the accuracy plays a big part in acceptance or rejection, especially vocabulary. Someone from the Wild West isn’t going to say okey-doke. It wouldn’t fit the time period. (FYI – Okey-dokey wasn’t used until 1932.)

When doing a rejection, I make sure I’ve addressed the author by name, and that I’ve spelled it correctly. Next, I’ll look over my notes in track changes and write a paragraph for each major error I have noted. Finally, I’ll look them over again, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. For the newer authors, I may direct them towards TWRP Greenhouse or suggest finding a critique partner. TWRP also has a critique group called The Rose Trellis. I’ll also include with the rejection letter a self-editing guide sheet. My established authors get the same helpful letters—a letter of suggestions, not criticism.

And still, knowing I’ve done my best to help the author, the anguish continues as I place my cursor over the send button and press. So, when you receive a rejection from any editor at TWRP, please realize we want to help you to continue blooming and growing so that you will become or remain a WRP rose.

As I always say at the end of my letters, I wish you all the best in your writing endeavors.

Allison Byers
Historical Editor

You Want Fries With That????

2011-04-13T00:01:00.003-04:00

I'm beginning to wonder if the notion exists that the epublishing industry and the fast food industry are on the same par. Short on nutrition and service, just get ‘em in, get ‘em served, get ‘em out.

In the past few weeks I’ve (or someone I know) experienced the following: (disclaimer: before you read this and think “gasp! She’s talking about me!” rest assured, I am not. If these were isolated instances, they’d hardly be worth mentioning).

Hurry it up! An established author urging her editor to “hurry up and finish” her edits because a friend had just received a release date and it was five months from now. So since release dates were “getting out there” the author wanted the editor to hurry up. Having experienced this one myself, I can tell you that the first reaction from the editor is to think “well, sweetie, maybe if you’d sent me a cleaner manuscript to work with…” Sure I may love your voice as an author, and your heroes may make my toes curl and the love scenes make my heart pound…but I’m still going to thoroughly edit your manuscript. If you truly want to shorten your turn around time, take a look at the last MS you and your editor worked on. What did the edits focus on? Less ly and ing words? Removing dialogue tags? Over or under punctuation? Before submitting your new MS, go over it one more time with an eye toward strengthening the areas you focused on last time. You and your editor will both be happier with the turn around time.

Response times. When I send an author edits, whether she’s a brand new author I’ve just rejected with a two page list of revisions or an established author whom I’ve sent a handful of edits on a contracted MS, I don’t expect it back in my inbox the same day. Certainly not the same hour! Boomerang resubmissions or jumping on your edits doesn’t show me how efficient you are, it tells me you don’t proof read, that you’re not careful, that you don’t—to borrow a line from Hallmark—care enough to send your very best. And that means I’m going to go over those revisions even more thoroughly since I can’t depend on you to do so. Which means I‘ll need to set aside even more time to work on them... which means you'll be waiting that much longer to get them back from me.

And just between us, sometimes an editor likes to put a little space between time spent working on a story. I don’t want to re-read an entire MS again a week after I just finished editing it. Give me enough time for the story to feel fresh again—chances are if I told you to take two weeks, I penciled time in my schedule to work on it again fourteen days from now; sending it back thirteen days early isn’t going to change that. Make those revisions right away if you need to, but let the MS sit for a few days. Then look it over again before sending it back to your editor. You’ll be surprised at the things you missed—and in the long run, it could make the difference between needing a second (or third) round of edits…or proceeding to final galleys.

Did you get my email? Huh? Did you? Did you? I really love it (she said, tongue firmly planted in cheek) when my busy inbox is made even more full by this type of email. While you, the author, may only be working with one editor at a time, chances are your editor is working with several different authors at once. Most of us sort our emails daily and address them in order of importance. I try to respond to all emails within 48 hours, but like you, I enjoy taking the occasional weekend or holiday off, and –also like you--sometimes unexpected things arise that throw my best laid plans asunder. So if you sent me an email late Friday afternoon, please don’t send me a “did you get my email?” message first thing Monday morning... followed by another one Monday afternoon... and another one later Monday afternoon... Wait at least 48 business hours before checking back. Obviously if you have an editor who consistently ignores your emails, that’s a different issue, but 48 hours is a good rule of thumb for checking back on a non-urgent email.

OMG! My release date is when???? While I am not in charge of assigning release dates, I think ours are more than fair. Sure your friend may have gotten a faster release date, but not every manuscript follows the same pattern. When you entrust your work to TWRP, you’re entrusting our team of professionals from the preliminary reader who read and recommended your story, to the editor who took the time to polish that story and make it sparkle to the cover artists who brought your characters to life right on down to the copy editor who had the last look at your MS and the production folks who put all the pieces together and released it.

And none of that can be accomplished in the time it takes to visit your local drive through.

Arming Yourself with the Marketing Basics

2011-04-11T06:00:00.001-04:00

Arming Yourself with the Marketing Basics

My Space, blogs, Yahoo loops, live chats, websites…

An author has an arsenal of options available to them—so choose your weapon.

The best advice I can give you is to do something you enjoy. If you’ve never been a blogger, don’t enjoy visiting and posting on other blogs, then don’t start a blog. If you don’t like a lot of email in your inbox, then posting to yahoo loops isn’t for you. The Internet is limitless in its reach, but it can also be overwhelming. Don’t try to do everything, but plan the best use of those marketing minutes. And if something isn’t working for you, move on. You can easily take the pleasure out of writing by trudging through promotion hell.

So starting with the basics

• A signature line – Every email you send is an opportunity to tell someone about your book. However, don’t overwhelm your contact. A simple signature line will include your name, website, and perhaps the title of your current release. If you don’t have a website, use your publisher’s website, but make the website link to your book buy page.

• Blogs – Blogs are free and easy to use, but the important aspect is to be consistent and be persistent. It takes time to build a readership.

• Websites – They should do more than look good. Most authors have a website, but are you using yours as a promotional tool? It’s nice to have photos, signing dates, release information and buy buttons. But your website can do more. Showcase your talents. This is a reader’s first taste of your work. Give them excerpts and give them a reason to return. One option would be to offer a free short story to anyone who signs a guestbook. Hold monthly contests. This is a great way to start building a mailing list. Also, update your page. New reviews, new releases, any news should be posted.

• My Space, Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, the list is endless. These sites are very user friendly. These sites are also free. Like all public venues, it is important to make a strong professional page. Social Networking is also a promotional juggernaut, but it doesn’t have to be a huge time drain. Check your page once a day, Tweet once a day, spend thirty minutes a week requesting friends and utilize the features. Social Networking can give you a great web presence without overwhelming your promotional minutes.

• Live chats – Many review sites have chat rooms and many publishers have chats. The Wild Rose Press holds a weekly chat in their website chat room on Tuesday nights at 9 pm ET. These are great places to meet readers. When hosting a live chat be sure to let your author personality show through. If you write romantic comedy, you’ll want that light jovial tone to come across. This is a way to let readers get to know you the author.

• Yahoo loops – Do you start your own or work with what’s out there? Once again this boils down to time. Most review sites and publishers have Yahoo loops for promoting your books. However, I think one of the best solutions is combining forces. If you’re going to start a loop, ask a few fellow authors, writing in similar genres, to join you. Then you aren’t alone in keeping the loop active. (I also think this is a good idea for starting new blogs.)

However you choose to market your work, be sure it reflects you as a writer. Think about whether you want hot, nearly naked men on your website if you write sweet romance. When someone visits your website or other promotional spot, they should instantly recognize your brand. Branding helps a reader understand who you are as a writer and what they can expect from your books regardless of the genre.

Lisa Dawn
Marketing Director
The Wild Rose Press
www.TheWildRosePress.com

The Millionaire's Club Series

2011-04-07T11:22:00.003-04:00

We are announcing a new series in the Champagne Rose line this morning. Its called "The Millionaire's Club" and we are open for submissions as of today.

Remember the old Harlequin romances with the dashing rich hero and the heroine who usually wasn't rich at all - sometimes it was the Executive and his secretary or the nanny and the widowed father or even the housekeeper and the handsome rich guy - any of those scenarios or any others you dream up are what we're looking for. How about those marriage of convenience stories - yes we have a rule against married heros and heroines but these are different and we can bend the submission guidelines for these. My very first romance I ever read was called "A Marriage of Convenience" and it sits on my shelf today. Just think - that's where all this began - hahaha.

Our first story will go out in June "The Chauffeur Wore an Evening Gown" by Roni Adams will kick off this series and will hopefully be the first in a line of fantastic old time contemporary reads. But make no mistake- old fashioned or not - these are modern day HOT - the heroes are hot, the heroines are swept off their feet and their coming together is explosive. Keep in mind that Champagne is our hottest line before Scarlet and we want these couples to go all the way in every way your imagination takes you.

Submission requirements for the Millionaire’s Club.

Length – 20K – 60K (not full length - these will not go to print)

Rated Spicy to Hot (see details on both ratings below). Champagne Rose stories must include a fully depicted and fully consummated love scene to be considered in this line.

Spicy: Contains detailed love scenes, including descriptions of foreplay and consummation.

Hot: Contains sizzling detailed love scenes and explicit content, which may be offensive to some. This is not erotic romance. No extreme graphic language.

Send submissions to Queryus@thewildrosepress.com

Please feel free to pass this along to your writers groups, blogs, etc. You may send questions directly to me at rpenders@thewildrosepress.com

Rhonda

Finding Your Muse

2011-03-30T21:14:00.002-04:00

Do you ever wonder what that means? When a writer talks about their "muse" or finding their "muse". The proper dictionary definition is as follows:

Greek Mythology Any of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science.

2. muse

a. A guiding spirit.

b. A source of inspiration.

So you can see that "muse" is simply inspiration or the guiding spirit who brings inspiration whichever way the writer tends to believe. Writers who can't seem to find what to write or the words to put on the page will blame it on writer's block or their muse not talking to them.

Here at The Wild Rose Press we have an answer to this problem and its our annual writer's retreat. This year being held May 12-15 in beautiful Asheville, NC with the Smokey Mountains for a backdrop.

If you're a writer and you'd love to spend some time away from everything in the hopes of revving the creative juices and finding your muse consider joining us. There's a link to information on the website.

Even if you aren't a writer, who couldn't use a weekend away to curl up with your favorite books, hang out with friends or make some new friends and soak up the sunshine of the NC spring time.

Hope to see you there!

The Difference between Sweetheart and Champagne

2011-02-24T16:50:00.003-05:00

Oh my God! You totally rejected my story, and it was "perfect" for your line. The hero and heroine didn't have visible sex and I threw in a cute child. How could you do this to me? Would it help if I added an adorable dog?

Sweetheart is a "sweet" line. It's true what little sex occurs happens behind closed doors, but there are a few fundamental differences between Sweetheart and Champagne Rose, the two contemporary lines at The Wild Rose Press.

A child doesn't count.

Neither does a dog.

The centerpiece of every Sweetheart Rose is the growth of the emotional connection between the hero and the heroine. It's that yearning to find the perfect person, and the feeling that maybe--just maybe--this is the one person who'll see you for who you are, love you madly and still be there holding your hand when you're old and wrinkled.

Because of our target audience, excessive swearing and strongly graphic depictions of sexual attraction don't work. If your heroine spends all her time staring at the hero's crotch, or you "close the door" after the hero slides his hands under her skirt, a suggestion would be to shift the focus to what your people are feeling and shut that door a little earlier.

We're in the business of warm-fuzzies, and while a child or pet are good elements, they need to work for the story. There's a big difference in a heroine with a son she leaves at daycare while her story plays out with the hero, and a heroine who will stand up and fight for her son, even if the hero happens to be her son's teacher.

If you have any questions, let us know. We're always looking for a warm, feel-good read.

It's February! A perfect time for Sweetheart Rose

2011-02-12T18:17:00.003-05:00

Welcome to the Sweetheart Line of The Wild Rose Press. February is a great month to dust off that sweet contemporary you have tucked under your bed, because we’re actively looking for submissions, and fresh, new voices.

Before you hit send we’d like to talk about a few things guaranteed to get you a second look.

Make sure it’s line appropriate.

Just because there isn’t a fully consummated sex scene in your story doesn’t mean it belongs in Sweetheart. Characters who depend on swearing for characterization, use degrading terms for the other people in your story, and can’t stop obsessing about the hero’s crotch are not a good fit. Keep the focus on the growth of the emotional bond between the hero and heroine.

Make sure your hero or heroine isn’t married or engaged to be married.

You wouldn’t want your spouse or fiancée to mess around on you and we don’t want that either. The hero or heroine in a Sweetheart Rose must be available and free of formal obligations.

Create a fresh spin on traditional stories.

There are a lot of bed and breakfast owners out there in the world, and most of them end up in Sweetheart. If you have a secretary/boss romance, accountant-biker, or CEO and nanny story, find a way to put your own personal spin on it.

It’s not about the details. It’s about the pertinent details.

If your heroine gets up, takes a shower, savors breakfast, picks out her clothes, and drives to work, it does nothing to advance the story line. You don’t have to start with the action, but it helps to start closer.

Too much backstory.

Most people don’t look at a friend and go into immediate flashback, or reflect on why they wanted a cat. Be ruthless. If it’s not pertinent, leave it out and trust your reader.

Remember, it’s all about the people.

Even if you have the most gorgeous world-building and killer grammar, you need people a reader can identify with. Show us the insides of your characters, and why we should care about them.

We’d love to see your stories.

Submission Call for Yellow Rose!

2011-02-10T13:22:00.002-05:00

Honky Tonk Hearts

Lonely hearts seem to gravitate to the Lonesome Steer Honky Tonk.
Owner and bartender, Gus Rankin, has seen his share of the wandering souls cross his bar and dance floor over the years—he'd even like to think he helped a few find true love along the way.

Submission Information:

One pivotal scene MUST take place at the Lonesome Steer Honky Tonk. This could be the hero and heroine's first meeting, the black moment, big finale, a scene where important information is divulged or an important realization is made etc.

Other than the above requirement, your story can be anything and anywhere within the genre of contemporary cowboys. It can take place from Texas to Alberta, Alaska to Australia. Wherever a cowboy rides, works, plays or competes could be the setting for your story as long as at some important point, their hearts cross the threshold of the Lonesome Steer Honky Tonk.

Whether your hero's truck breaks down near the honky tonk, friends take your heroine there for a good time, or either one stop for a break on a long journey, the possibilities for this series are endless and we are excited to see where you as authors can take a couple of honky tonk hearts.

Submitting Specifics:

Word count: 20,000-40,000

Honky Tonk Hearts will be a limited series of 12 to 15 contracted stories so it is important to do your best, write with heart, proof, proof, proof and submit!

Please follow the general submission guidelines on the website for formatting and submit through the queryus@thewildrosepress.com. Important: Use the subject line: TWRP Honky Tonk Hearts Submission: YOUR TITLE

For questions please feel free to email Stacy D. Holmes, Senior Editor of Yellow Rose, at stacy@thewildrosepress.com

Background Information:

The Lonesome Steer Honky Tonk: A few miles outside Amarillo off historical Route 66, the large wood-paneled structure boast a large neon star with a single flashing steer riding away from it. Inside, a long bar runs the length of the back wall, a dance floor takes up a large chunk of space with old round tables filling most of the rest and two pool tables tucked in the back corner. A small stage hosts Open-Mike Nights on Sundays, Karaoke Thursdays and a booked band most Saturday nights with the other nights filled in with a big old jukebox or the DJ. The establishment offers food when the kitchen is staffed, but the Lonesome Steer can never seem to keep cooks too long and waitresses come and go—Gus is always ready to lend a hand when someone comes in down on their luck.

Gus Rankin: His hair is more grey than dark brown these days and a handlebar moustache sits prominently on a face tanned and weathered by the Texas sun.
Tall, broad and still in good shape although a bit of a belly hangs over the buckle of his faded blue jeans, you can usually find him wearing his favorite black leather vest with a light denim shirt beneath.

Though he prefers to man the bar, every once in a while he sneaks back to his messy office, takes a break in the rickety, torn leather chair and props his feet on his desk as he smiles at the bulletin board filled with pictures from couples that have tossed aside their lonesome hearts to take a chance on love.

Keira Rankin: Gus's daughter works at the honky tonk alongside her father. She keeps the books, waitresses and does a little Karaoke when the stage gets quiet on Thursday nights. With long blonde hair, soft doe eyes and heart-shape face, she's the spitting image of her mother, Gus's one and only true love who died ten years ago when Keira was fourteen.

Marshall Dekes: This part-time bartender/DJ is a good old boy with a bit of a past. Tall, dark and handsome, he keeps to himself but is there whenever Gus needs work done around the place.

Important Note: The above-mentioned characters are to be used as "mentions only" and not as main or important secondary characters. These established characters are spoken for and will be used to finish the series when the time comes. Use them to create atmosphere and realism in your scenes at the Lonesome Steer, but then leave them there LOL.

Submission call

2010-11-15T22:42:00.005-05:00

Are you looking for something to do on a quiet winter afternoon? Well, I have the answer for you!! Crimson Rose, of The Wild Rose Press, has issued a call for Christmas manuscripts under the series title

Red Christmas

Someone's ready to kill the holiday...

The parameters for the submission call are:

The manuscripts should be between 7,500 and 60,000 words as given by Microsoft Word

Each story will need to contain Santa Claus - either the hero or the villain needs to be using a costume as a part of the story. Maybe an undercover cop, or a hitman masquerading as Santa to slip in places, or...

All queries need to be emailed to me at lori @ the wildrosepress.com by March 1st. Please send a query letter with an embedded synopsis as the first step. Put Santa submission in the subject line. If we request a full manuscript to review, this manuscript will need to be in a Word document using Times New Roman size 12 font and be double spaced in rich text format.

You will receive a confirmation email once we have the query.

We have space for six Christmas releases for 2011 so get your story in early. The spaces will be filled in the order they are contracted.

If you don't feel, though, that you can get a Christmas story put together, Crimson Rose readers have been asking for shorter manuscripts. So we welcome any topic or any holiday in these 7,500 to 60,000 manuscripts. Just follow the instructions for queries on our website http://www.thewildrosepress.com/.

We are looking forward to hearing from you and if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at lori @ the wildrosepress.com. Happy Writing!

Lori Graham, Senior Editor

Jewel of the Night

2010-11-03T22:26:00.002-04:00

Crimson Rose released the winner of the Jewel of the Night Submission today - Guardian of the Jewel. We want to thank all of the authors who submitted and who are still submitting. It was a great call and we got some really enjoyable stories to add to our catalogue.

Guardian of the Jewel has already been reviewed, receiving a 4 rating from Once Upon a Romance. Stop by Crimson and check out the Jewel stories as they release. What could be better than a lovely blue diamond and some incredibly heroic male characters. Believe me, you don't want to miss a single one!

No Kitchen Party? Whassup?

2010-10-29T20:21:00.002-04:00

Sorry, folks, I had no chance today to finish my Kitchen Party ghost story (if anyone's reading... Anyone out there?), and tomorrow I'm on the road all day, going from Cape Breton to Miramichi, NB. The soonest I can post the last part will be Sunday evening. Look for it after your trick-or-treating!
Cheers,
E

KITCHEN PARTY, Part Three

2010-10-28T15:31:00.001-04:00

Continued from October 27.

At the back door, Kath wrapped her arms around her much taller son and rocked him back and forth. “I know, I know,” she whispered. “He was such a good soul, old Badger.”

Iain lurked behind Will. There were too many people. He’d never get through the kitchen without going through someone. He went back outside and drifted around the house toward Beth’s green presence.

The grief and stress of the past couple of years had dimmed her aura to a sludgy olive. Iain’s time was growing short. He’d managed to influence her to come home to the family; they’d ease some of her burden. But he had only a few days left before his next passage.

He came through the wall behind Beth. Her glossy, honey-brown hair slithered over her shoulder to her waist, freshly washed—he breathed in—but he couldn’t smell it anymore. She heaved a shuddering sigh.

Iain whispered, “Oh, sweetheart, you’re so lonely. Will you let someone love you again?” He wanted to see her aura glow spring green again, with flashes like sunlight through trees, before he had to leave.

Tassie had circumnavigated the room to return to Beth’s knee. “Up.” She climbed to her mother’s lap and nestled into her shoulder. Her thumb crept toward her mouth.

Beth stroked the baby-fine hair and, with the other hand, tried to reach her tea mug.

Kath resettled beside her and passed her the mug. “Now we’ll hear some tunes. Will brought his fiddle.”

Beth glanced up—“Iain’s brother, Will?”—and stilled.

An Italian angel—black curls to his nape, deep velvety eyes, broad shoulders crowding his father at the kitchen table—had just put his bow to the fiddle strings. He looked up, caught sight of Beth, and froze. The bow skittered down the strings with a squeal.

The crowd applauded, laughing. “What song’s that, Will? Don’t know that one.” Will shook his head.

Kath called, “Play us ‘The Mortgage Burn,’ dear.” She leaned closer to Beth. “That will take his mind off Badger, his dog. Badger had a good long life, but it was his time.”

Will launched into a fast, rollicking tune. Feet stomped. A guitar came out and joined in. An aunt at the piano in the parlour raced to keep up.

Tassie woke up from her doze and gaped at the dancers clacking their heels on the floor. “Mummy?”

“Is that…step dancing?” Beth reached out to Flora, who had reappeared from the bedroom, drawn by the music.

“This is your first kitchen party, isn’t it, dear. Yes, folks are out stepping as soon as the fiddler starts up.”

Beth couldn’t look away from the flying fingers and flashing eyes of the musician. Iain’s brother, Will, the one she hadn’t met yet.

Come back tomorrow for part four.

KITCHEN PARTY, Part Two

2010-10-27T18:41:00.003-04:00

Continued from October 26.

Iain traced his brother’s blue-green aura through the mist. Will’s signature flashes of bright gold humour were absent this day. He sat on the wet grass in his backyard, stroking the rough coat of his old collie, whispering his good-byes.

“Ohhh, Badger. You had that dog a long time. I’m so sorry, man.” Iain tried to pat his brother’s shoulder, but, as usual, his hand disappeared into Will’s wool jacket. They both shuddered.

Will wrapped an ancient, hairy blanket around the collie and placed him gently in the pit. With a nearby shovel, he pushed soggy clumps of earth back into the hole.

“You have to go to Mum’s house tonight, bro. Go see the folks, okay?”

Will patted the earth, leveling the the mound. He flipped his dripping curls out of his eyes.

A glow in the everpresent fog caught Iain’s eye. “The phone. Answer the phone and go see the folks. Answer the phone, answer the phone, answer the phone.”

Will pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket. It buzzed. “Whoa.” He flipped it open. “Hi, Ma…Yeah, I just buried him…I’m not really up for a crowd tonight—”

Iain got right into Will’s ear. “Yes, you have to go! Go see Mum. Go see the folks. Go, go, go.”

“Okay, just for a while…Yeah, I’ll bring the fiddle.”

Iain smiled.

Beth weaved through princesses and ninjas crowding her mother-in-law’s chilly sunporch. Long, black, false hair and a witch’s hat crowned Kath’s stout body. Her rigidly permed curls held the wig out from her head.

“Come here, sweetheart.” Iain’s mother lifted Tassie from Beth’s aching arm. “Sit, Beth. I’ll bring you a cup of tea.” Kath turned to her tiaraed and sequined second youngest grandchild. “Boots on the mat, and mitts on the radiator, dear.”

Flora kicked off her winter boots and shook her charity box. “I got lots of change in my box, and I Silly Stringed your mailbox, but Shonny said I could.” She ran with a gang of cousins to the bedroom.

Kath turned to her eldest grandchild, who was supposed to be the responsible adult guiding the little ones. “Shonny, you’re cleaning the mailbox tomorrow.”

“I know, I know.”

Tassie was content cruising from auntie to auntie, smiling for pieces of cookie. Beth was temporarily off duty. She found an empty corner on the settee to survey the chaos. There was Uncle William at the table, shouting in her father-in-law’s ear. He didn’t look depressed. Was the entire family packed into Kath’s kitchen? Kath came back with two mugs of tea and a slice of banana bread and sank down beside her. They sipped in blessed peace for half a mug.

Beth said, “Flora’s seeing her father again. Or hearing, maybe.” She nibbled her banana bread.

“It’s been two and a half years since he passed. It’s good she still remembers him.” Kath waved to one of the aunties coming around with the teapot. “That’s why you came home to Cape Breton, isn’t it? Iain’s family is now your family, yours and the girls’. You can’t be everything for them.”

“You’re right, I know. With more family around, maybe they won’t need the imaginary dad.”

The screen door banged.

“Here’s Will.” Kath patted Beth’s arm and rose. “Don’t get up, dear. You’ll lose your seat.”

Come back tomorrow for part three.

KITCHEN PARTY Installment One

2010-10-26T19:23:00.002-04:00

The signal approached through the cloudy ether. Iain couldn’t see the wires from this side, but the glowing electric impulse zipped along the path the wires took on the mortal plane. The phone was about to ring, but they’d never find it. His lovely, frazzled Beth needed this call. Maybe his girls would hear him. He puffed a breath of air past Flora’s inky curls.

She looked up from her purple ponies. “Daddy?”

Briiiiing!

“Girls! Where’s the phone?” Beth scraped back her sticky hair with both hands and glanced over the boxes covering the scratched hardwood floor.

Briiiiing!

Flora and Tassie thundered down the hallway. “Daddy found it. It was in the bathtub.”

Imaginary dad syndrome had popped up again. Well, the grief counsellor had said the imaginary dad might come back in times of stress. “No, please don’t answer it, Tass—”

“Heyyo? They’s gone, Mummy.”

Beth sighed. “I know, dear. I’ll call them back.”

The girls looked at each other, and both disappeared into the hall.

Beth checked the call history and dialed the last caller. “Hi, Christie, did you just call here?...Yeah, Tassie still answers by pressing End.” She peered down the hall to see what the girls were into. “Why’s William depressed?...All right, see you at five.”

Whispers hissed from the kitchen. Beth rounded the corner and gasped. “Flora, get down from there.” She swung her five-year-old off the rickety stool and latched the cupboard door that wouldn’t stay closed. “In the interest of safety, ladies, you should know the Halloween treats are not in the kitchen. Or the bathroom, either.”

Four bright, dark blue eyes blinked at her.

“That was Aunt Christie. Nana’s having a kitchen party tonight to cheer up Uncle William.”

“No, no, no!” Tassie plopped her soggy diaper onto the black-and-white floor tiles.

“Mummy, he’s too scary. He has scraggly eyebrows, and he shouts. And we have to go trick-or-treating.” Flora crawled under the metal table, old enough now to be retro-chic.

“He only shouts because he’s a little deaf, and we’ll go trick-or-treating with your cousins on Nana’s street. Did you find your costume?”

“My princess dress!” Flora scurried out from under the table and dashed toward the bedroom.

Beth grabbed Tassie’s T-shirt tail before she could follow. “You are too stinky for words, sweetpea, and me without my gasmask.” She caught up the diaper bag on the way to the bathroom.

Come back tomorrow for Part Two.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-25T21:24:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone, I just love this time of year...the colorful leaves, pumpkins, the scent of wood smoke in the air, Halloween decorations, spooky stories, ghosts, and let's not forget the candy. I wanted to wish you a happy and fun season!

My name is Corinne MacGregor, and I'm an editor for the Black Rose line at TWRP. I've been with this line for many months now, but I started out a few years ago with Champagne then did a stint with the historical line (which I adore) and then Hummingbirds, the overflow department, where I got to see manuscripts from different lines. It's been so much fun reading those submissions and discovering great new authors.

The Black Rose line is an interesting place to work. Paranormal is something I've always been interested in, and Black Rose offers so many choices. Currently, we here in this line are looking for spicy or very hot stories. Personally, I'd like to see more short stories. We don't seem to get as many of those as we do the full-length novels, and short stories have their own type of charm.

How about crossing genres? I love that. A paranormal historical perhaps? Those would catch my interest. So, if you write darker paranormals, send them in! Do you have a new take on things? Great! Black rose does accept manuscripts that are sensual, spicy and hot, and make sure the story is a romance. Thanks, and have fun.

Happy and Romantic Hauntings

2010-10-18T21:01:00.002-04:00

Hello All!

I want to add my Happy Halloween Hauntings to Callie's. This time of year, is as Callie pointed out, a favorite for those of us who dwell in the dark side of the garden.

Of course we are lucky enough to dwell with the darker creatures all year long! But there is nothing like this time of year to bring out the sexy vamps, weres, shifters and other creatures of the night. Wouldn't it be great to trick or treat (or as my children said when they were young "spooooky night") and bring home a truly luscious and hunky treat like those found in the Black Rose line?

Growing up in Southern California we had many spooky haunts but one of the favorites as a teenager was one certain fire road leading up to the mountains. It was of course created for firefighters to have easy and direct access in case of fires but over time it took on a life of its own.

There were several stories as to different spooky occurances, missing persons, ghostly sightings, sinister cults, etc., that supposedly happened along this dark and lonely streatch of road. The one that was told and retold the most was of the ghostly woodsman and his crew who haunted the top portion. We would dare ourselves to drive the road slowly, always intent on making it to the top but scaring ourselves silly long before reaching our goal. I've never been sure if the things we saw were the results of over active imaginations or if there truly was truth to some of the tales.

This year I hope to have the opportunity to experience a true ghost hunt (in the style of Ghost Hunters).

I hope that you will join us in the darker side of the garden during our Halloween celebrations. We welcome one and all.

2010-10-17T08:08:00.029-04:00

Holy haunted house!!! I woke this morning and realized we are midway through October! How does that happen? October is my favorite month and, of course, being a Black Rose editor Halloween is, by far, my favorite holiday:)

Note:(The above picture is an actual house which is part of an old insane asylum that we used to haunt when I was a teenager. It has been deserted for many years and holds a gruesome history that has been replayed on Ghost Hunter episodes and historical discussions through time. I remember sitting in the middle of the night staring into the wooded area surrounding this compound shaking with adrenolin coursing through my veins. Ah... the bravery of youth! A Philadelphia radio station has been known to hold a Halloween Haunted house event at this location in the past. I believe more currently that most of these buildings may have been demolished. But I am sure that miserable and mistreated souls still haunt these sad grounds.)

In case you don't know me, I am Callie Lynn Wolfe, Senior Editor of TWRP's Black Rose Line. And, of course, this is our most active time of year, as you can well imagine. We are busy interacting with all our friends from the darker side of the garden.

An oasis of silvery moonlight shining down upon alabaster statuary in an Old
English Rose garden filled with you guessed it--Black Roses. In our midst are the to die for vamps, the hot weres, the fiesty demons and, of course, we are always looking for the elusive gargoyles as well other creatures our authors can scare up from their very vivid imaginations. Our heros and heroines are predators but they do have a soft side. You just have to know to pull it out of them:)

We will be dropping in and out to guide you through ebony paths and silvery forests for the rest of the month. The Black Rose staff is Lill Farrell, Joel Walker, Eilidh Mackenzie, Corinne MacGregor and Amanda Barnett all of which will share their scariest moments with you. I will be stopping in periodically with my special haunted memories as well.

I wish you all a very ghoulish and frightening Halloween and a most Blessed Samhain. Now I must prepare for the annual masquarade and dance of the dead celebrations. Please do join us. We would love to have you--literally!

Dark blessings,

Callie~

From Faery Rose Editor: Sarah Hansen

2010-10-14T23:21:00.003-04:00

Glorious October

October is my favorite month, hands down. September, April, and May are pretty good too, but I have a special spot just for October. It’s my birthday month (29, of course), and entails all of my fall favorites: pumpkins, apples, fall colors, and reading!

The days have been fantastic in the Midwest; warm and sunny with rich blue skies. The trees wear their tapestry of warm-toned foliage. And, best of all, the nights get cool and dark with a touch of spooky in anticipation of the upcoming holiday. As I sit in my favorite reading nook, listening to the night sounds, I imagine I can hear the whisper of a hunting owl, swooping through the woods. A coyote keens in the distance, and I snuggle with my softest blanket and dive into a great read.

Right now my favorites are short paranormal romance stories. Ghosts, dragons, mermaids, time travelers, and more abound through my imagination, drawing me in to their depths. The heat of attraction and realization warms me up as the temperatures outside drop.

Please, keep me happy and write me a story. Hot and short, but fully developed and exquisitely written, with all the elements needed to fit the Faery line. I’ll look forward to seeing your story.

Sarah Hansen

From Faery Rose Editor, Claudia Fallon

2010-10-12T18:59:00.001-04:00

I read someplace that writing a short story/novella can be harder than writing a novel. If so, consider the latest call for submissions a challenge, all you novelists out there!

Remember, a short story/novella is not a novel outline so don’t treat it as one. To get into the mood, read some (preferably fantasy) to get the feel. (Hint: check out the Faery line at The Wild Rose Press.) Break a few down and analyze them to see how the author sets everything up. You can’t spend pages and pages describing the heroine or the spooky old house she inherits from a mysterious great-aunt she had never met before in a short story. You have to be thrifty with your words and write tightly. Every sentence must contribute.

Just because it’s a short story you’re writing doesn’t mean you can dash off something then send it off. We do have standards here. We expect polished manuscripts. That includes plot, action, setting, description and character development. It includes proper spelling, punctuation and manuscript formatting. And there absolutely must be a HEA (Happily Ever After) ending. That can’t be stressed enough.

Last but not least: get your story critiqued. Just because it’s short doesn’t mean it won’t benefit from a pair (or more) of discerning eyes. If you don’t have a critique partner or group, consider finding one, or start your own. Check out the Rose Trellis , a critique group sponsored by The Wild Rose Press. You can find out more by visiting http://thewildrosepress.com/publisher/ and clicking on TWRP Critique Group.

Good luck and I look forward to reading your submission!

Claudia Fallon

Faerie - Where you discover uncommon love stories.

2010-10-07T00:04:00.003-04:00

SEARCHING FOR UNCOMMON LOVE STORIES? - You've come to the right place. Like the Seeley and Unseeley courts in the elusive world of the Fae, the Faery Rose line consists of both light and dark elements of the paranormal world, each necessary and complementary to the other.

The worlds in our books are not exclusively found here on earth or, for that matter, even on this plane of existence. The common ground with any book in the Faery line, is that the reader truly has to suspend their sense of reality when they open the book, either as an eBook or in paperback.

The true pleasure of the read is escaping the day-to-day pressures or doldrums and being transported through time or space, immersed in ghosts or witches, dragons or pixies, water nymphs or angels, off world beings or different dimensions. The reader can count on one thing from the start -- a satisfying romance with a happily ever after, or at the very least, a happy for now ending.

Just as there is seldom a good plot without conflict, a satisfying romance without love, or light without dark, a Faery Rose story could be sweet or spicy, full of adventure, danger, sorrow, and joy in addition to being just a good old-fashioned love story. Let one of our books take you away this month . . . you decide where you want to go.

Hot Nerds Manipulating the Universe

2010-10-04T00:00:00.003-04:00

[Interior: evening. Two writers IM about submission opportunities]

Crit partner: The paranormal line at Wild Rose Press is looking for short fiction.
Author: Huh.
Crit partner: Got anything paranormal?
Author: Well, I have this one with a ghost in it and a heroine who time travels back to when he was alive—‘cause they’re like soul mates and stuff—and then she lives there with him until she becomes her own grandmother.
Crit partner: Does she ever come back to the present?
Author: No.
Crit partner: Send it in. What’s the worst they can say?

Faery Editor Kelly Schaub: (sigh) It’s probably historical line instead of Faery.

What I do want to see in short submissions: I want to read about men and women who make their own fate and choose to be together. I don’t believe in “soul mates.”

Our senior editor, Amanda, pointed out earlier that time travels are hot hot hot for sales. Along with that, my own research points at cowboys amping the sales numbers—cowboy in the title + cowboy on the cover = win. And I am a Browncoat. If you know what that means without scanning Wikipedia, you’re already in my camp.

I love me some space cowboys.

So yeah.

Short length (45K down to 7.5K). Space cowboys who time travel.

More seriously, I enjoy heroes who are not only physically good to look upon but highly intelligent. Think Commander John Crichton from Farscape (PhD in aeronautics, designed and built his own spaceflight module which shot him through a wormhole to travel in alien lands…and he’s good looking), Quinn Mallory of Sliders (genius inventor who developed “sliding” from one alternate universe to another…and pretty darn cute), Dr. Sam Beckett of Quantum Leap (invented a way for man to time travel within his own lifetime…handsome, moral) and of course Captain Mal Reynolds of Firefly, the best space cowboy ever (with the exception of Captain Kirk). Mal and Kirk didn’t have to be smarter than average; they live, fight, and love in the future. No emo metro-males need apply at my desk.

The heroine must be able to keep up and hold her own, but not be so kick-ass that she diminishes the hero’s masculinity or cannot be feminine and vulnerable. Some characters who strike the right balance: Princess Ardala and Colonel Wilma Deering (both from Buck Rogers of the 25th Century), Officer Aeryn Sun from Farscape, Zoe Washburne from Firefly—heck, any of the women on that show; Kaylee, Inara. Think of the female officers on Star Trek.

We are facing a high amount of competition both between TWRP and other publishers and within our own house to put before our readers the very best stories we can offer. Manuscripts must be highly polished, ready to go, with all the necessary literary pieces and parts before they’re offered to us. Watch your junk words (just, very, some, often, always, nearly), passive verbs (was/were), and sentences beginning “It was/There was/were.” Be sure you have believable and discernable goal, motivation, and conflict for hero and heroine, and that they work at cross-purposes to the relationship until the very end of the story. Make them work for that Happily Ever After!

Kelly Schaub
Editor
Faery Rose

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

2010-10-03T09:15:00.001-04:00

Hear ye, hear ye. Come one, come all! Faery
Rose line has need of short submissions that
will tempt and intrigue, engage and enthrall.
Fantasy heroes and heroines who
master time using magic or science;
their goal to achieve their heart's desire.

Submissions shorter than 45K
are what we're looking for, and if there's not
a "happy ever after" then your work
won't make it through our door. We want romance,
conflict, and sensuality in spades.
So brush off your magic wands, find your heart,
and fly your faery wings to the nearest
keyboard. Make us happy to say "Welcome
to Faery Rose. Pull up a magic broom,
have some ambrosia, and play in our space.

Happy Paranormal month here at The Wild Rose Press

2010-10-01T00:48:00.000-04:00

Kicking off the first half of the month you have moi, me,
Amanda Barnett & our lovely editors. Let's kick back
and have a good time. And don't forget our sister line
Black Rose, under the wonderful direction of Callie Lynn Wolfe,
will be handling the rest of the month.

Let me tell you a little bit about the Faery Rose line,
we've changed a bit over the years. Picture your hottest hunk,
sexiest heroine, and put them in a scenario that's both magical
and sensual. Now, that doesn't mean you can go erotic,
that's our Scarlet line, but we do like to see some spice
in our submissions but we do also like sweet, spicy, and hot.

Don't worry if you cross over the line,
we'll get your work where it needs to go.

Faery is so much more than Faery creatures.
There are immortals, dragons, space warriors and more.
Our line spans so many different characters.

What we're looking for are short submissions
no longer than 45K with a time travel theme,
but remember your avenue of time traveling has to be
magical if you return to the past. I'd love to see more
romances where the hero and heroine go back and forth,
it makes for a nice mixture.

Of course that's what I like, but our other wonderful editors,
Claudia Fallon, Sarah Hansen, Kelly Schaub,
and Frances Sevilla will be taking their turns,
and I'm positive they will tell you what they like also.

The bottom line is we need the hero and heroine
to have goal, motivation, and conflict to make the
romance into something readers will buy and want to keep
on their keeper shelf. I know I have several favorite authors
and I keep their books and take them out to read months
and even years after I first read them. It's like having an
old friend stop by. Also, if you are submitting always look
at our guidelines. We want happy ever after or at least for now.

Ghosts are fine but I want the hero and heroine to be able
to be together in actual bodies. Call me old fashion
but I like the sensuality of knowing they can actually
touch one another. Science fiction is also a wonderful
sub-genre for us.

Now settle back, Twitter, Facebook, whatever method you use
to get the news off and tell your friends to drop by.
We love new faces as well as our cherished and dear friends
already here at The Wild Rose Press.

And a big shout out to all our Faery Rose authors:
Thank you for a job well done.
Editors at faery, you rock. Couldn't do it without you.

Amanda Barnett/Senior Editor/Faery Rose

September 2010 Newsletter Now Out!

2010-09-07T17:53:00.001-04:00

Ahh, that time of year again when the kids go back to school and everything starts to settle back into a routine. Though we might dwell on the slowly shorter days, the fall brings with it one of the most colorful times of the year and many more activities and new experiences.

One of the best activities on a cool day or night is curling up with a good book. Whether one of paper or the new technology of eReaders, which are just as easy to laze on the couch with these days, sneaking away a little time just for yourself is always a treat.

So settle in and check out the latest edition of our main newsletter where we talk about the new technology, tell you about our "Movie" experience, show you how sometimes the best comes in Last and give you a few ideas of books you may just want to curl up with on a cool autumn afternoon.

You can find the newsletter here: http://www.thewildrosepress.com/publisher/newsletters/WRP_September_Newsletter_2010.pdf

Come Fall into tecnology with us this season!