J.C. Moore On Pitching A Series

If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today’s guest for the SHIT is J.C. Moore. author of the Maggie White Mysteries, debuting September 2020 with Murder in the Piazza from Level Best Books. Her short fiction has appeared in Mystery Weekly, and she is the editor of the Mystery Writers of America Midwest newsletter. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, as well an established marketer and entrepreneur. A transplanted New Englander, she lives in Chicago with her husband and two boys. 

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

Not a lot! I’d spent all my research energy on the agent hunt, and I went into the submission side of it pretty blind. I think I thought it was all out of my hands at that point, and that my agent would handle everything. 

Did anything about the process surprise you?

I had two surprises: 

Most of all, I was delighted how interested editors were in my story! I went through a long, long querying process until I landed the wonderful Dawn Dowdle as my agent. I’ll be honest, she wasn’t at the top of my agent list when I first started submitting. I had my eye on big time New York agents who worked with many high profile authors. I was delighted when many of those agents expressed interest in my MS and said some very kind things about my writing. But they ultimately passed, saying they just didn’t think they could sell it. 

So when I signed with Dawn, I was concerned about the marketplace. If the other agents don’t think they can sell my book, can Dawn really deliver? I didn’t have anything to lose with her putting it on submission, but I was prepared to hear that editors were passing, since that’s what the agents who’d rejected my story said they thought would happen. So the fact I got an offer was a wonderful surprise. 

The other thing that surprised me, though, was the submission package that Dawn put together. I’d written my book as the first in a series, but I didn’t think much about what the other books in the series would be about since I wasn’t going to write them until someone bought the book. After all, what if my editor had major changes? It’d be crazy to plot out the rest of the series, right? 

But Dawn sent me a note along the lines of, “Oh, and please send me the descriptions of the next two books that we can include in the submission and we’ll get it out the door.” Whoops. I could have spent the past few months while going through querying hell working on that! But instead I took about 15 minutes to write titles and two-sentence descriptions of four stories, and I told Dawn to choose the ones she thought were best and send them along.

Well, she liked them all, so she include them all in the packet, and when I got an offer, it was for all five titles. I signed a contract for three (I didn’t want to sign away the next five years of my life) and now I have to figure out where to take those stories. And I’m delighted about it, because otherwise I’d be facing a completely blank page for the next books. Now, at least, I have something a prompt. It’s not thought out and it may make me crazy, but I think constraints help the creative process. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself!

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

It didn’t even occur to me to do that! Dawn told me every editor who had it, and I just sort of forgot about it until I got her update email each month telling me who’d passed and why, who still had it, who else had requested it, etc. 

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors? 

Gosh, it varied all over the place. I just checked my tracker, and the first submission went out in June and the offer came in October. Some rejections came within the first month, others took longer. Once we had an offer, though, it got the remaining two publishers to read pretty fast. 

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety? 

I like to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, so I told myself—and I think I really believed it—that it was OK if the book didn’t find a home. I’d gotten enough positive feedback to know that the story was good and that my writing was great. That was enough for me to be determined to write another series, smarter this time. After all, the chances of hitting it the first time out were pretty slim. And I had the confidence that I could always self-publish my first series if I wanted to. 

That said, in my heart of hearts, I wanted that validation that comes from a publisher on my first book out, and so I was beyond pleased when the offer came through.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that I think the best thing to do while on submission is work on something else. Your success isn’t tied to this single book. If you plan to be a pro, you’ll have other books in you.

Just getting to the submission stage is a huge milestone, and whether a publisher thinks the market is right for your story isn’t the point. The point is that people who know the industry say you have what it takes, otherwise you wouldn’t be where you are. So go out and write another book. You’ve done all you can on the one that’s waiting to be read by an editor. 

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

I had many rejections! And as I’ve written ad nauseam above, I was prepared for them. I was more delighted when big publishers read it and said they loved the book. It was disappointing when they said they didn’t think they could make it the breakout they needed, but I understand the economics of publishing well enough to realize their needs are not the same as mine, or those of readers. Not being the top of their charts doesn’t mean I can’t have a long and successful career in this industry. 

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

Editor’s feedback was based on the marketplace, and whether they thought my title would be big enough for their lists. That’s economics, which is different from art. And while I was disappointed, I didn’t take it as a rejection of my work. I didn’t set out to write the next big thing. It would be great, of course, but I really wanted to delight readers looking for a fun, traditional mystery in a fabulous location, and the feedback I received told me I’d accomplished that.

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?

I received a phone call from my agent. She’d told me in advance that she emailed with bad news and called with good, so when I saw her name pop up, I knew it was something great.

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

I did wait because I’m a cautiously optimistic person. Even though Dawn had told me the publisher was making an offer, I didn’t tell anyone except my husband until the contract was signed. Because until it’s signed, who knows what could happen?

It was hard, but no one was asking me about it. My writing friends all knew what a loooong process it was, and my non-writing friends had lost interest long ago. Well, not really lost interest. But writing and publishing is such a slow process, they weren’t tracking every piece of the puzzle. They really just want to know when they can buy the book!

7 Tips to Write a Book that Leaves a Legacy

By Lynne Golodner

As a writer, by nature and by training, who was always close to my grandparents, I realized as I grew older, and they did as well, that if I didn’t capture their stories, they might be lost forever. So, in my 20s, I sat down with both of my grandmothers and my lone living grandfather and interviewed them over a series of months to collect their stories into a book the whole family could enjoy.

My grandfather and I used this project as an excuse to go out for lunch together and get to know each other in new ways. I recorded our conversations for later transcribing. 

One grandmother and I took our journey down memory lane slowly in the nursing home where she was confined. The other grandmother, who lived until almost 92, pulled out so many scrapbooks and photo albums to pore through, prompting stories about long-forgotten photos and lots of content for my writing. 

When my last grandparent died just before Thanksgiving in 2013, the whole family flocked to Michigan for the funeral. Arriving a few days before, and able to celebrate a subdued Thanksgiving together with so many relatives, I pulled out the book I’d written about my grandmother and ran to a copy center to multiply it for everyone in town.

We spent Thanksgiving laughing and crying as we read her stories, “heard” her voice in the dialogue, and peered wistfully at the pictures alongside the narrative. And then each family returned home with a copy of my grandmother’s life stories in hand.

People write books for a lot of reasons. When it comes to a nonfiction tome about your life, whether memoir or straight autobiography, you could be doing it for many reasons – with the most compelling being the ability to leave a legacy long after you’ve left this earth.

A distant cousin of mine who lived in New York and was more a part of my mother’s generation than mine, traced his family back several generations and wrote a huge book about what he discovered. Reading it taught me lessons about my own heritage and ancestry from a new angle – stories of beloved relatives that I’d never heard or considered. And, it introduced me to characters in my own life story that I’d never met. 

All of this taught me things about myself as much about the people who came before me. 

The biggest question I ask writers in my book coaching courses is, “Why do you want to write this book?” 

That question is followed by “Why now?” and “Who is your audience?” 

Discovering answers to these questions is the first step toward writing a book that leaves a legacy. 

Once you know who you’re writing to, and why, do some free-writing to help focus your storytelling. Set a timer for 10 minutes and see what comes up in answer to these questions: 

1. What life lessons would you like to share?

2. What are your top 2 or 3 experiences that changed you?

3. What do you hope people will remember about you?

4. What do you think is your life’s mission?

5. Do you have a sense of personal purpose or meaning? If so, what is it?

6. What are your favorite memories?

7. What are your worst memories?

After this exploration, you’ll have a lot of fodder for writing! In fact, you may have more than enough for one book, and that’s OK. Because you’ve recorded these ideas on paper, you can start with one and dig in, and then focus another book on the next topic. Who knows – you may have several books or a series in you, just waiting to come out!

Once you get started, focus your time and structure your writing. I like to create an outline of chapters to guide my progress. Then, I set a daily time and place for my writing.

I also set weekly goals – like, this week I’ll write chapter 1. Or, I need to get through the first 10 pages by Sunday. Structuring your book project into manageable chunks makes it easier to complete. 

I never edit while I’m writing a first draft. That’s for after the whole manuscript is done. Sometimes, especially when I’m writing about a period of time in my life, I may need to do research about that time or place in history. I just write a note in all caps where I’ll need to add some factual details and keep writing.

Finally, to leave a legacy with your book, it’s important to be honest, get vulnerable, and focus more on your journey than on what you want to tell others. By writing descriptively about your experiences, with details, dialogue, and compelling characters, your readers will glean the lessons you want to convey from the narrative. Tell the story more than the lessons – the legacy will come out more powerfully if you do! 

Lynne Golodner is the author of 8 books, with her ninth due out in February 2021. A former journalist, she is the host of the Make Meaning Podcast (www.makemeaning.org), a book coach, and a marketing/PR professional (www.yourppl.com). Lynne lives in Huntington Woods, Mich., with her husband and four teenagers.

Krysten Lindsay Hager on Putting Anxiety on the Page for Teens

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today’s guest is Kyrsten Lindsay Hager, who writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, crushes, fame, first loves, and values.  Her debut novel, True Colors, won the Readers Favorite award for best preteen book and the Dayton Book Expo Bestseller Award for children/teens.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

For In Over Her Head: Lights, Camera, Anxiety, I wanted to have a character in her teen years who was suddenly in the position where she could have everything she thought she wanted so she could see what it was really like. In this case, Cecily’s goal was to be an actress and she was also dreaming about dating her favorite singer/songwriter because she connected so deeply with his lyrics. I put her in a place where she got to do both those things (music video audition), and let her see if it (the career, the fame, the high profile relationship) was all it was cracked up to be. To be honest, my own pop star crushes from my teen years motivated me as well.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I expected Cecily to have some anxiety about acting and modeling and being thrown into this new world of fame, but as I began writing, the singer/songwriter character, Andrew Holiday, began having his own issues with anxiety. I didn’t plan for that to be part of the storyline, but I kept picturing him having anxiety before doing radio interviews and feeling the pressure from the record companies. It came out of nowhere, so having him open up to Cecily about that became a real bonding point for the two of them. That whole plot point deepened their relationship and made you root for them as a couple.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper? 

I wanted to have Cecily experience a dream career moment. I gave her a magazine photo shoot opportunity that she got from Andrew’s recommendation. I knew I was going to basically throw her into the deep end of the pool with that and she’d have to see if she really wanted this lifestyle. However, when I was writing it, I was listening to a song called, “Flesh and Bone,” by Marina and it inspired me to change that scene from just being about Cecily to showing how the established models deal with insecurities, too. The two models, Neneh and Scarlet, witness Cecily having an anxiety attack and I had them share their own stories of insecurities to show we all have our moments of self-doubt.

After I wrote that scene, I had two other changes. One was that I had Cecily’s grandma feeling overwhelmed in this new exciting world, but then I had the photographer ask her to model as well. I loved the idea of a woman starting a new adventure in the years she thought she would be retiring.

I also wanted to show that we all have our own strengths and talents that we bring to the table. I decided to have Cecily feeling insecure about working with established models, but then she brings her acting ability to the photo shoot and really stands out. She walks in feeling like she isn’t as good as the others and then overhears stylists saying she doesn’t deserve to be there, yet she relies on her talent and shows what she brings to the table. My original idea was to see if this was the life Cecily wanted, but in the end the scene changed to show how we all deal with self-doubt and think everyone else has it together but us. 

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I do get story ideas often because I’m very curious about things. I think that’s why I enjoyed being a journalist because there was something new to learn about all of the time. I read lots of articles and books and watch documentaries and biographies on TV. If I find a person or topic that seems interesting then I want to know everything about it and I look up and read tons on the subject, so that’s how I fill my creative well. 

I’m very visual, so I keep a lot of photos that inspire story ideas. I have a drawer full of pictures I’ve taken from magazines and I also keep Pinterest boards full of photos.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

If I can imagine dialogue between the characters, then I stop and jot that down because organic dialogue is so important to a story. I try to stay focused on one thing at a time, but if that spark comes along, I do follow the shiny object.

 I have 5 cats and one Dalmatian puppy (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I’d have to say my mother would be mine as she’s my sounding board for ideas. She’s also one of the few people who will drop everything to sit and listen to me go on and on about imaginary people. She’s read all of my work, so she has great input, but most often she just lets me ramble until I’m ready to get back in there and write. She actually inspired what I’m working on now because I wrote a story about a breakup and she kept saying she liked the guy my character breaks up with and I kept laughing saying, “She’s moved on, why can’t you?” And then I realized if my mom was so attached to the guy, then there must have been a reason. So I started working on a story about what he does next.

I also have a little Virginia Woolf plastic doll on my desk that my husband bought me and I admit I have had a conversation or two with her. If she could talk, she’d probably ask me to clean off my desk as she’s nearly been crushed by a pile of notebooks a few times.