Tag: publishing

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Small Town Bookstores

About two months back a couple opened a bookstore in Smithfield, NC. That may not mean much to someone who doesn’t live here or are used to having local bookstores on every other block but living in this rural area where the closest Barnes & Noble is 30 miles to the south and Quail Ridge Books (which I love) is 40 miles north makes one appreciate this couple. Yes, thank you for opening Once Upon a Crime just 16 miles away.

Someone quipped on a message board that if there’s not a bookstore, visit a library instead of griping. On some level, I agree with this person, but a library (esp. in a rural county) is limited by its collections and a tight budget. Ergo, if you want to find the latest self-published work by some obscure author, you’re S.O.L. mainly because most libraries don’t shelve self-published books. For example, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey was originally self-published and couldn’t be found in a library. But when its popularity grew and sales went through the roof, a publishing house picked it up and presto, it’s in libraries now. With all that being said, my response to the message board quipper is: if we readers rely solely on libraries for our reading material, we’re missing out on different voices and stories.

But, I digress. Let me get back to this new bookstore. I went to Once Upon a Crime’s grand opening. It’s not sprawled out on a corner lot but rather wedged between other store fronts. To put it bluntly, it’s small, but not too small. Since it was opening day the crowd of people made the interior feel smaller. And truth be told I was glad to see so many people even if we were in each other’s way. It told me I wasn’t the only one pining for a local(ish) bookshop. With that said, the owners had the little place filled with shelves of books and bookish trinkets that makes one go, ‘aaaahhhh look’. I wound up leaving with two books and a coffee mug. Super cute. One of the books I purchased is Missing Sister by Joshilyn Jackson, which I will write a review of shortly. It’s the first book I’ve read by this author, and I’m glad I chose it. That’s all I can say for now.

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Now the Work Begins

I feel like a cicada popping out into the open every so often. Sometimes I forget I have a blog that needs to be visited more than once a year. Yep, it’s kind of sad, but I’ll work on getting better at it. For real this time.

The exciting news is I finally finished my WIP. The beginning, middle and end are complete and hey, it only took me two NaNoWriMos and a little extra. I actually typed the last page on November 17, 2025. After putting the printed copy in a drawer and leaving the file closed for a month, the dreaded self-edit began. Is it perfect?

Hell no. A sharper set of eyes than mine will have to gander at this 82,000-word monster for that to happen.

While my leaf-mold manuscript sat in the dark marinading or whatever it was doing, I started drafting a few query pitches. I’ve learned not to fear the query like I used to. Afterall, this is the first thing that an agent or editor will see of this thing that took so long to write. Might as well get used to writing them. Right? To get comfortable writing a query I had to realize the process is straightforward; hook the reader with an interesting situation and give an abbreviated dramatic overview of what the protagonist has to do to survive, stay out of jail, find a killer, etc.. While writing a query may not be hard, it is tedious.

Didn’t someone say writing was subjective? Yeah, that part. You get what I mean.

Sometime ago I wondered if agents weren’t trying to drive writers nuts. Case in point, the synopsis. Some want a one-pager while others want no more than two pages. What’s left are the ones who don’t specify how many pages they’re willing to read. Keep in mind the synopsis tells the whole story super condensed. We have to spill what happens in the end. There are no secrets in the synopsis. That’s the part that makes writing one so damn tedious.

If agents/editors would just agree on a standard criterion. Say, I don’t know, one page per chapter. Half a page per chapter? That’s doable. That would also mean we writers wouldn’t have to tailor so many synopses. We could have one file titled as such: synopsis/title as opposed to onepgsyn/title and twopgsyn/title. I mean really, what the hell?

The third step into publishing madness is the search for someone out there to send our monstrosities off to. Some agents who will be a perfect fit for our work. I want to give a shoutout to Duotrope about now. I absolutely love this database of agents and publishers and encourage any writer or artist to check it out for themselves. I believe it still offers a month free subscription. The site allows you to search for markets looking for all types of writing: horror, suspense, mainstream; you get the point. Duotrope has a submissions log that proves itself helpful especially for people like me who can’t remember where that story was sent off to.

Truth be told, I’ve spent hours picking and choosing who to send work to. We have to don’t we? Else we’ll be wasting our time submitting to uninterested markets. Reading each agent’s wants and needs is the only way to pick so it becomes a necessity, but it too is tedious.

I hope if you’re out there either finished or trying to finish your novel and you get or have gotten to the submission point, you don’t feel alone resisting the urge to pull your hair out of your head. You’re not. Submitting work is aggravating but necessary and where the real work begins.