Category: An Author’s Life

An Author's Life, Book Lovers, Fiction, North of 40 and 50 plus Authors

Chamein’s Available Novels

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Not His Type

When Marcus a high-profile New York baseball player known for his relationships and dalliances with models, actresses, and singers unexpectedly falls in love with a curvy woman who by all accounts is not his type. This unexpected love affair takes this both by surprise and brings up many insecurities of Cathy Chambers who can’t believe he’d fall for a curvy woman and love her curves and all.

 

The More Things Change

In this sequel to Not His Type, full-figured beauty Cathy Chambers must deal with her own insecurities, the media, and her fiancé’s ex-girlfriends while planning her wedding to the man of her dreams and baseball royalty Marcus.

 

Bliss Inc

Paige Baldwin and Matthew Smythe meet when Paige ditches another endless blind date and Matthew escapes his brother’s engagement party. The only single man there, he feels like the door prize. They end up in each other’s arms, just for one night. But, oh, what a night! Matthew, a high school history teacher, wants to see Paige again but doesn’t know where she lives. Paige, who owns Bliss, Inc., a wedding-planning company, can’t stop thinking about him. When she wins a prestigious contract to plan the wedding of Michael Smythe and Jennifer Klein, it turns out that Michael is Matthew’s brother. The duo is formally introduced, and their love affair burns up the rails between Long Island and Harlem. Will love triumph over race and class?

 

Waiting For Mr. Darcy

Three friends over forty still wait for Prince Charming in the form of their favorite Austen character, Mr. Darcy. Not quite ready to turn in their hot chick cards for the hot flashes of menopause, they’d like to find a man who is charming, smug, intelligent, and cute to share the primes of their lives with (even if one of them doesn’t know she’s looking and he’s closer than she thinks). Together they navigate this brave forty-plus world and find out Mr. Darcy is closer than they think.

 

 

Mixed Reality

When popular New York City Mayor Douglas Brennan is tapped to be the next junior senator from New York, a secret dalliance is discovered, and the mayor and his wife find their once happily married life threatened by a dangerous political storm.

North Of Forty

Cecelia Carter, Sasha Simms, and Nadine Peterson have worked hard and gained the upper hand in work, life, and love. As curvy women in the bridal world, an industry that’s more about size and image than about the actual marriage, they do their best to keep their clients focused on love, and a life well-lived beyond the “I do.”

 

I Take This Woman

As the senior editor for Stillwater Publishing, Abigail Cole was the editor from hell. She could bring the mightiest scribes and the biggest egos to heel with the stroke of her famed red pen. However, when the days of the well-crafted book at Stillwater went out of the window in favor of celebrity tell-alls and novels written by the latest neophytes du jour, Abigail packed up her red pen, moved onto greener pastures and started a successful public relations firm with her best friend, Shana Collingsworth.

After seven seasons as quarterback for the New York Giants, Sam Best retired to focus on his legacy and build his future with his fiancée, Maria Carrangelo. So when he was offered a contract to write his life story, it was a no-brainer until he discovered putting pen to paper was harder than he thought. When his manager Reggie Shaw realized his client needed a life preserver, he asked his friend Abby to un-retire her red pen to work with Sam.

An Author's Life, Musings of A Writer, North of 40 and 50 plus Authors, View from the inside of a Literary Agents office

Still Writing After All These Years- Books By Women

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I had the opportunity to write an article for Women Writers, Women’s Book. The site was launched in 2011 to be another platform for contemporary women writers and authors around the world writing in English. Its mission is to encourage and promote the visibility of women writers. We are particularly interested in the edges, the intersections between genres, nationalities, languages, arts, cultures.

Barbara Bos is the managing editor and owner of Women Writers, Women’s Books. With sections such as, writing, interviews, recommended reads, agent’s corner, submissions, library 2021, author genie, hybrid publishing, and ask BLIX, Barbara has lovingly and judiciously curated a site that both supports and encourages women writers.

Barbara was born in Holland. After finishing University she left for the UK. Since then she has uprooted herself twice more, currently living with her family in a small village in Galicia, North-West Spain.

 

You can read Still Writing After All These Years

http://booksbywomen.org/still-writing-after-all-these-years-by-chamein-canton/  

 

For more information about Books By Women, visit their site

http://booksbywomen.org/

An Author's Life, View from the inside of a Literary Agents office

An Author’s Life- Dealing with Rejection

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For this blog post, we are going to talk about something we hate, rejection. In life, we are prepared to hear the word no. Our parents get us started on learning the meaning of the word. However, hearing the word no when it comes to something like a manuscript you poured your heart and soul into, that can sting. Therefore, to help take a bit of the burn away, I’m going to address rejection from a publisher professional’s perspective.

You can barely put a finite number on the number of manuscripts publishers receive every year. Some estimate the number to be between 3,000-5,000 a year. Regardless of whether it’s a small or large agency, literary agents receive thousands of submissions a year as well.

In terms of the number of books published, Forbes estimates there are 600,000-1,000,000 books published in the US alone. In 2014, a report from Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Surveys used the data from 9,000 respondents and concluded that those who completed a manuscript. 23% succeeded in becoming traditionally published, which is 13.4% of the total panel, All of that aside, there are things you can control to help increase the odds of agents giving you a serious look.

 

  1. Target the right agent.– If you’ve written a sci-fi fantasy novel, you don’t want to pitch it to an agent that handles contemporary women’s fiction. Literary agents are like doctors, while all doctors know the basics of medicine, they have specialties. You can research agents to see what genres and/or sub-genres they represent. If you can’t find anything online, query them directly. Most are happy to respond.
  2. Make sure you deliver the story you pitched. I once received a pitch for a romantic mystery that blew my socks off. It had all of the elements and the pitch looked like it belonged on the inside jacket of a trade paperback. I received nearly 500 pages, and after reading ten chapters, nothing I was promised in the pitch was there.
  3. Make sure your writing mechanics are up to snuff. Agents give fiction writers a wide berth. Dialogue reflects the way people speak, which isn’t proper English. That’s a given. However, grammar and sentence structure is important. If you didn’t grow up with uncles who were English teachers, you would do well to invest in a grammar software program such as Grammarly. You might also want to consider hiring an editor to go over the manuscript to tighten it up before submitting it.

Even if you have checked all the right boxes, sometimes agents aren’t taking on new clients. Sometimes being offered representation is purely a matter of timing. If you’ve queried and submitted several partial or full manuscripts, take a little time to re-read your work and make adjustments if you need to. If you’re not part of one, join a writer’s workshop group. Getting other perspectives and feedback can be very helpful. If you don’t want to go that route, get in touch with a community college or university’s English department and talk to a professor. I know many authors who have worked with English and American Literature grad students to get their manuscripts in shape. The last thing I recommend is to put it away for a week or even a month. This will allow you to come back to it with fresh eyes and a refreshed perspective.

Lastly, don’t give up.  Some of our most lauded literary names received countless rejections before they broke through. Keep writing as long as it makes you happy.

 

Our Next Post Will Cover Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing, and Hybrid Publishing, what they’re about, and how to determine which works best for you.

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