Mary Ann Marlowe On Starting A New Project

Welcome to the SNOB - Second Novel Ominipresent Blues. Whether you’re under contract or trying to snag another deal, you’re a professional now, with the pressures of a published novelist compounded with the still-present nagging self-doubt of the noobie. How to deal?

Today's guest is Mary Ann Marlowe, a central Virginia-based contemporary romance writer who works by day as a computer programmer/DBA. Her debut novel, SOME KIND OF MAGIC, is scheduled for release with Kensington in February 2017. Its sequel is also contracted for later release.

Is it hard to leave behind the first contract and focus on the second?

Let me start by explaining that I’m answering this for my third book, which is my second contract, because I sold two completed books at once, and my second novel was already finished. My “second novel” blues got transferred to a book I sold on proposal with a little more than six months from contract to deadline. I’m writing this book currently, and the pressure is real.

I’m leaving behind a pair of companion books to work on a standalone. It’s always hard to start a new project for me, but it wasn’t particularly hard to leave behind my first published books. Publishing takes a long time, and the advice is to focus on writing to get your mind off all the things you can’t control. So between signing my first and second contracts, I wrote four more books, and only one of those was in the same world as the first books. All of those finished books were rejected by my publisher, but together, we came up with the premise for the next book they wanted me to write on proposal. 

What I find challenging is writing for the first time toward someone else’s specifications. There’s a benefit to having set requirements since I don’t have to wonder if what I’m writing will ever see the light of day, but the knowledge that it must conform to the agreed upon terms can be a bit paralyzing. Still, it’s an interesting experiment, and I feel fortunate to have been trusted to run with an idea.

At what point do you start diverting your energies from promoting your debut and writing / polishing / editing your second?

Promotion is a low-level constant once a book is in the world. There are conferences and book signings that crop up. Or the book goes on sale and you don’t like the graphics that didn’t work last time and want to make new ones. Writing is for me a high-level constant. I like to hard core draft a book every three or four months and then revise in the interim, so those habits helped me with turning my attention to the new manuscript while juggling the promotion for the debut and the second which is about to release. The amount of time needed to get everything done seems to grow exponentially with every book. 

Your first books landed an agent and an editor, and hopefully some fans. Who are you writing the next one for? Them, or yourself?

I wrote the first contracted books for myself and my close friends with the dream of having readers and hopefully fans one day. Since this next one was contracted, I’m writing it for my editor first, but also for other authors and readers since it’s about a bookshop owner and debut author who makes the fateful decision to respond to a negative review. (Don’t do this!) I wouldn’t have been able to write this book if I hadn’t gone through the experience of publishing my first book. Life is strangely imitating art right now since, like my MC, I’m racing against a deadline for one book while another is receiving advance reviews already. Having reviews crop up while trying to draft can mess with your head if you let it, which is yet another thing I didn’t have to deal with while writing the debut novel.

Is there a new balance of time management to address once you’re a professional author? 

Absolutely. It’s so important to make time for the writing. But there are many more commitments, especially early on as you’re trying to learn what works and what doesn’t. I spend a lot of time talking with other debut authors about promotional opportunities, growing newsletters, maximizing ads, booking interviews, scheduling signings, requesting reviews, writing blog posts. All that is in addition to the volunteer work a lot of us do to pay forward whatever help we’ve gotten from authors a little further along the road to publication. It’s easy to let all of that eat up writing time. I try to use down time at my day job to do a lot of this work or it will eat right through my writing time.

What did you do differently this time around, with the perspective of a published author?

I’m much more aware of marketing this time around. I’m cognizant that my title, cover, and novel need to present as a whole, so I bear in mind what readers are going to expect going in and try to adhere to that expectation without becoming predictable. I’ve learned that you want to find your audience more than just any readers, because attracting the wrong audience – that is people who want your book to be something it isn’t – leads to disappointment and bad reviews. I’m very focused on making sure my next book will follow through on the promise of the title and hook. 

11 Tips To Round Out Your Reading List In 2018

I hit my goal to read 70 books in 2017 last month while I was traveling. There's nothing like a good audiobook an a long flight to boost your reading list productivity. Click here if you want to check out what I read in 2017.

And now it's time to think about 2018.

Usually I just pick a number and try to hit. I range between 60 and 80, depending on what my writing schedule is for the year. In 2017 I read over 70 books and wrote two as well, so for 2018 I thought I'd make my challenge go beyond just a number.

I got the idea after looking at my 2017 reading and realized how many of my books - print and audio - came from libraries. So I broke it down:

23% from library
12% bought at book festivals or directly from author
11% bought from independent bookstores
45% were ARCs

In 2018 I want to accomplish a few things. I want to up my library usage to at least 30% of my list, and I’d like to make a third of my list books that I already own  - I have a TBR that have books I bought 15 years ago on it. I want at least ten of the books I’ve read to have been written before 1900, and I want to read five books not originally written in English.

This is just a sampling of what I'm doing. Below are some ideas for anyone who wants to break out of reading only bestsellers.

1) Read diversely Read POC authors for sure. Read books that have been translated from their original language. Read books not set in your country. Here are are some great lists to get you started, as well as some recs from me.

2) Read short stories Honestly, there are some fantastic anthologies out there, and some great collections from authors you should know, but might not have heard of if you don't wander outside of novels often. I suggest HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES by Carmen Maria Machado, HEARTBREAKER by Maryse Meijer, KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock, and SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH, edited by George R.R. Martin.

3) Read non-fiction Nearly 25% of my list from 2017 was non-fic, and while a lot of it was for research purposes for novels, I truly enjoy reading non-fiction. Suggestions below! ASYLUM ON THE HILL is about the asylum in Athens, Ohio, where A MADNESS SO DISCREET is set.

4) Listen to audiobooks I've always argued that I can read faster than the narrator (which is typically true), but now that you can adjust the speed of the reading on a digital download, audiobooks have become useful to me.

5) Give lit mags a try You can discover knew voices and get a dash of poetry, art, or an essay. Two publications that fit my taste and never let me down are The Indiana Review and The Missouri Review.

6) Read some essays Yeah, I'm serious. It might sound like the last thing in the world you want to do, but give me the benefit of the doubt. Essays are like short stories for non-fiction, and I became a fan in college. It's called a reading challenge, right? So challenge yourself.

7) Read about writing Truly. It can be lovely to have the experience of feeling the intensity of belonging, even when you're entirely alone. The suggestions below can help you improve your craft, or are just good for a read that lets you know that somebody else gets it.

8) Read something that will screw with you The best books are the ones that you can't get out of your head, the ones that you talk over with friends and argue about with strangers. The ones where you're not quite sure what actually happened...

9) Choose a cover art theme Not for your entire list, for sure. But say you only want to read books that are written for adults that have dogs on the cover...

(Here's a fun one. Find fiction written for adults that has a CAT on the cover and is NOT a mystery).

10) Read something you've been meaning to read I have books on my TBR that are over 15 years old, books that have been literally mouldering away waiting on me to pick them up. Find yours. Read them. That's what they're for.

11) Find your Great Unread I mean that author that you have never heard of, and most other people haven't either. But they're really, really good. Mine is someone you're going to hear me talk about a lot this year. Dawn Powell grew up ten miles away from me, and ended up being friends with people like Tolstoy. She was mildly famous in her time, but largely forgotten now. I only know about her because I finally walked up to the moldy historical marker in front of the local library and read it. In 2017 I read seven novels - thousands of pages - by Dawn Powell, and can tell you that she mastered the unlikable character that keeps you reading, regardless.

Wednesday WOLF - Pot Calling the Kettle Black

I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications. I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

In case you're not a smartass like me, I'm going to give you the best sarcastic idiom of the ages: That's the pot calling the kettle black. Oh, how I love that one! It's the socially acceptable way of calling someone a hypocrite.

First off, what does it mean? And secondly, where does it come from?

The idea behind the insult is that the pot (which is the color black) is taunting the kettle for being... black. And by the way, this has zero racist connotations - when the phrase was coined pots and kettles would've been black, not silver.

However, I recently came across another interpretation of it, which I thought was quite interesting. In this version, rather than the pot and kettle both being black, the pot is sooty because it is usually placed directly on a fire, whereas a kettle retains a shiny silver sheen because it's typically on top of a stove. When the pot looks at the kettle, it sees its own reflection and accuses the kettle of a fault that belongs solely to the pot. Got that? We also call it projection. But that's not as much fun to say.

The earliest written use of this saying comes from Don Quixote:

"It seems to me," said Sancho, "that your worship is like the common saying, 'Said the frying-pan to the kettle - Get away, blackbreech!' You chide me for uttering proverbs, yet you string them in couplets yourself."

Later on, Shakespeare would rephrase and use the same idea in "Troilus and Cressida," when Ajax condemns Achilles for faults he himself possesses. Ulysses (one of my favorite literary smartasses) says, "The raven chides blackness."

So now you know, and don't you feel better for the knowing?