Sitting with uncertainty

As the retreat in rural Tennessee continued, I wrote a number of poems, but nagging at me was getting started on the next novel. I went back through my writing sketch book, where I draft poems, write fictional prompts, and gather ideas, and I typed in about 8 possibilities, prompts that had a nice ring to them or an intriguing character or situation.

And then on the third morning of the retreat, I get up early, having finally adjusted to the time zone change, and I plunged in on one. For the last five days, I have written on this piece first thing. I don't know what else to call it. It isn't a short story. I know that it's way more than that. But is it a novel? Will the characters speak to me for  the next year? Will I find a theme that is substantial enough to build a whole novel around?

I miss the certainty of the last novel adventures, knowing that I was on the right track from the beginning. And yet, this is just another kind of adventure, and I'm willing to take the ride.

The value of having to set an example

I've long known that when I want to learn something, offering a class in it is a good way for me to figure things out. The same is proving true of the retreat I'm currently on. Since I finished Sober Play at the first of the year, I've had trouble getting back into daily writing. And by that, I mean writing new material. I've spent plenty of time in the last two months working on my writing: I've been editing, publishing, and marketing so I'm in the writing, but I haven't been getting up early enough to spend a half hour or more writing something new--new stories, new poems, a new novel.

Part of the stuckness is around what to work on. Each time I've finished something before, I've known exactly what was coming next. I've kind of figured that was how I worked. But this time, I've got 8-10 ideas and none of them is certain. None of them says: Pick me! Pick me! And I've been hesitating and waiting for that to happen.

Now I'm leading a writing retreat in rural Tennessee outside of Nashville and I'm encouraging people to keep writing and work through blocks and just not worry what's going to come of it, and I'm having to take my own advice. So this morning I got up and made tea and went right to the computer and plunged into one of the ideas. I've had to give up the certainty and waiting and just write my way through it. And it feels good.

It's official!

Wednesday afternoon, I signed a contract with Skyhorse Publishing in New York to publish my second novel, Fog of Dead Souls. I'm really thrilled. Even my wretched experience with one of the nasty viruses going around can't dampen my enthusiasm.

There was no bidding war for my book. In fact, 56 or so editors had read it and most had really liked it, but just not enough. Too dark, said one. Not dark enough, said the next. Loved the characters but didn't like the plot, said a third. Loved the plot but didn't like the characters, said a fourth. This had gone on for 18 months, but my agent never lost her enthusiasm or her energy behind the book. "It just takes the right one," she said.

And Skyhorse is that one. As a college mate remarked, now I'm a real novelist. Actually, I started feeling like a "real" novelist, when I started Fog. I'd finished one novel and moved right on to the second. I just love writing them.

I'm excited that my book may have a chance to make it big. I'll keep you posted.

My new books are out and available!

I'm very excited to announce the publication of two new books. The first, The Color of Longing, is a novel I completed in 2009. I had had such a good time writing it that I immediately moved on to writing a second novel (the one that is in negotiation with the publisher in New York). Then last summer I decided I would self-publish Longing, just get it out there and see what can happen. It took me a while to edit it, get it proofread, make some changes, proofread again. But mostly I couldn't seem to paint the image that I had in mind for the cover. Then in November, that happened and I moved ahead.

Here's a brief synopsis:

What’s a guy to do when the woman he’s loved for 15 years asks for help leaving her alcoholic husband? And what if that husband is his best friend? In this unconventional romance, artist Jake Logan makes a painful and inevitable choice that sets him adrift. Crisscrossing the country with his cat Sadie, he seeks answers to his quest from several helpful strangers, but it isn’t until he has a deep spiritual encounter with himself that he begins to find his true way home.

The second book is a how-to book called Sober Play: Using Creativity for a More Joyful Recovery. It promotes using creative self-expression in any number of forms and media to have a more joyful life. This has long been an important part of my own recovery from alcoholism and I wanted to share all I've learned and all I believe about the connection between creativity and recovery.

Both books are available on amazon and kindle and through me at jill@jillkellyauthor.com. If you read one or the other and like it, I hope you'll review the book on amazon for me. Happy reading!

The contract stage of traditional publishing

On my flight to Florida last week, I read the contract my agent forwarded from Skyhorse Publishing, which is interested in buying my second novel, Fog of Dead Souls. In fact, I read it twice. It was pretty accessible in language, and I made a list of about 10 questions for my agent: phrases and sentences I didn't understand and one issue I wanted to reword concerning when the rights to the book revert to me.

My great agent, Andrea Somberg, had made some revisions of her own to protect me and I agreed with all of them. Yesterday we had a good conversation and she will send our revisions on to them.  She doesn't believe they'll give us all we want but we'll see. The negotiations continue.

At the same time, I'm self-publishing two books through CreateSpace, a much faster way to get things out. It's going to be interesting to compare the two processes and their results. I'll keep you posted.

self-publishing adventures

I've been in the midst of self-publishing two books these past weeks. I had hoped to have both books out and about for my workshop with Karen Casey next week in Naples, Florida, but all my efforts have been insufficient to pull it off. Feeling both a bit frustrated and knowing that it's not the end of the world by any means.

While I have dealt with CreateSpace before for clients, this is the first time it has involved my own work. I am impressed with a lot about their system. The customer service folks are almost instantaneously available by phone. I've called four times with questions and had somebody on the line who could help me within 10 seconds. Courteous, friendly. Unfortunately I had a glitch with both cover and "guts" of the book that were unusual and so it took 9 extra days to resolve the color of the cover and the technical issue (involving the em dash), and only today was I able to finally approve the novel and complete the pages and move it on to Kindle as well as amazon. The novel, The Color of Longing, should be available on both starting tomorrow.  
And I just ordered some sent to Florida and some to my house for a book launch next month.

The other book, Sober Play: Using Creativity for a More Joyful Recovery, is still in the design stages. We're awfully close but not close enough to complete all the process before I leave on Wednesday morning. I knew it was ambitious to try to get two books out in the early part of the New Year (the holidays were a hold-up) but it was worth a try.

Negotiating and learning about the publishing contract

I came back from my New Year's writing retreat to the next phase of the traditional publishing adventure: negotiating the contract.

There's a complicated scale for royalties for hardcover and paperback and ebooks, depending on how many you sell (higher royalty the more you sell) but it isn't great under any circumstances. Publishers only really make money with volume sales. They sell the books to bookstores at a 40% or greater discount off the list price and incur all costs of insurance and shipping and buying the books back if they don't sell. A book like mine, by an unknown, unproven author, is a big gamble and they're only willing to invest so much. Maybe it will take off, maybe it will flop. Of course, they want it to be a big seller and so do I, but that depends on so many of the stars aligning just right, so many unpredictable factors.

In the short run, I could probably make as much money by self-publishing as I will initially get from the publisher so it's a gamble for me too. My hope, and theirs, is that their possibilities for exposing it to a wider public in ways that self-publishing can't do will garner us more readers.

At the end of the week's conversations with my agent, I told her I wanted to pursue this with the publisher for the experience of it. To have a traditional publisher and go through all the steps and see what happens. To be honest, this is already farther than I ever thought I'd get. So it's thrilling no matter what!