My Newest Novel - Hidden Library

Hello, My Dearest Readers!

As some of you may know, I'm set to release the second spell book, Hidden Library by Winter Solstice 2020. 

This is the sequel to Behind His Mask, except the main characters are not Sarah and Evander.   This time, we go to Emi's old coven where her cousin Veda is having troubles of her own.  Veda dreams of the day when she'll have one of her books included in her coven's hidden library, a special place for housing spell books.  Except before such a thing can happen, Salinger strides in with his newly authored spell book.  He thinks nothing of the honor of having his spell book included in their sacred place, and only which girl from Veda's coven he can spirit up north.  

I love romance.  I love this romance.

Of all the books I've written, I feel that this one captures the spirit of my hometown.  Those of you who know of the sleepy little prairie town where I grew up will undoubtedly find all the witches, conjuring, spells, switchblades, and needles in this story surprising.  But to me, it feels perfectly natural.  There weren't the exact things portrayed in the book, but there were bats swooping, Venus shining like a diamond over the horizon, white clouds lit by moonlight, and cousins everywhere.  I had way more cousins than Veda.  

I wrote this book at the lowest point I've had in 25 years of writing.  As I worked and reworked it, I had a deep fear growing inside me that it would be my last.  I wish I could explain how I found the time and how the book turned itself ever so slightly so that I was able to finish it.

It's a special book to me because the whole time I was writing it, I was thinking that it couldn't be about this one thing.  When I got to the part where I was supposed to put the twist in, the twist was nowhere near good enough.  I had to pause, figure out who I was, what I had to write, and what this book was really going to be about.  At first, I shied away from how great this story could be because I was scared to talk about something I feel so strongly about, but in the end... it was about the thing that made me uncomfortable.  It's about a lot of things that make me uncomfortable.  

That's where it is brilliant.  

This story takes me in its arms and whispers in my ear that it understands my struggles, fears, and disappointments.  I cry at the end of Behind His Mask and I cry when I read certain passages in Hidden Library.  It's funny because I don't do that.  I don't cry when I write like a sap... until I do.  So far, I have written 22 books and these two are the only ones I cry in.  

Here's the link to preorder the ebook on Amazon.com.

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Library-Second-Spell-Book-ebook/dp/B08P6LKC5B/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1606855048&refinements=p_27%3AStephanie+Van+Orman&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Stephanie+Van+Orman

The Final Screwup

The final screwup is my screwup and it's the screwup I always make when I screwup.

I began writing because I discovered a world where I could express myself until I was finished.  That luxury is not available for very many people very often.  You have something you want to say?  A coffee date with your friend will end.  Someone's ear will get sore on the telephone.  Your therapist's buzzer will ring.  It will get dark.  Someone will fall asleep.  Someone will reach the limits of what they can stand to listen to and snap.  

I can talk longer than anyone can stand to listen.  

And I get it.

When I'm the listener, I'm like that too.  Someone wants to go off on a rant that literally goes on for hours?  I can't stand it.  I might be very happy to hear everything they have to say in manageable ten-minute chunks, but not a neverending verbal tirade.  

So, I shut my mouth and opened my hands.  Through a novel format, I can talk about whatever I want for as long as I want.  I can go over the text and perfect it, smooth out the wrinkles, make it more interesting, and say exactly what I want to say in exactly the right way.  It's beautiful.  So often I say the wrong thing, but when I write it, it's as close to perfect as it's going to get.  

It's also extremely pleasurable to write the book I want to read, but it has a downswing, which is the screwup I'm alluding to.  I have very little interest in reading other people's books.  My husband reads to me for at least one date night a week.  Anything he reads is cloaked in the power of his personal mystique and doused in his credibility, even if the writing is trite, but I rarely read anything by myself.  I have probably read four books this year.  This makes me feel like an incredibly selfish writer.  

People often want me to look at their work, or tell me about their work, and offer my opinion.  It makes me want to look around to see if there's anything I can use to light myself on fire.  Stopping, dropping, and rolling is an effective ender of conversations if there ever was one.  Mostly, there's nothing handy and I have to endure the conversation or the paper stuffed in my hands.

This is usually what happens.  I look over the first page and notice a lot of problems with their writing on a technical level.  If I were to get out my handy red pen and start marking it up, I would make the author cry, because they would have looked over it carefully to make sure there were no grammatical errors.  Yet, effective writing is not merely free of grammatical errors.  Notice I did not say 'creative writing'.  I said 'effective writing'.  I was not trained in 'creative writing'.  I was trained in 'effective writing'.  Thus, when I edit, I cut anything that doesn't move.  Think of it as throwing out anything that doesn't spark joy and doesn't serve a strong purpose.  

Naturally, I can't say what I think or mark up the paper.  I'll crush their soul or piss them off.  Little do they know that when I'm alone with my manuscript, I make it bleed and refuse to listen no matter how hard it screams.  I can't even explain that to the person who is showing me their work.  They won't believe that I take my precious words and cut them viciously.  Going soft on my edits will not produce extraordinary work.  But the person in front of me is very new to writing and very tender.  They don't understand the bigger reasons for the edits and unless I am carefully diplomatic, they'll think I'm a monster.

Of course, I am a monster, but let's not get into that now.

Instead, let's talk for a moment about the mistakes I have printed into books that I have sold (or tried to sell) in bookstores.  YES!  There have been mistakes because I used to go easier on myself.  There will always be mistakes, but I wouldn't be a novelist if I didn't grind myself to dust trying to remove them.  Whoever is showing me their work is merely enjoying the creative process and is unprepared for what I have to do a manuscript to get it up to snuff.  There isn't just one round of brutal editing.  There are FIVE!  And more if I don't think the book is ready.  If I find too many mistakes during the last round, then we go again.

The long and short of it is that their writing isn't good enough and I can't tell them.  I don't know if that isn't also true about my writing no matter how much effort I put into it, and I don't feel like being persecuted because I'm in the middle of the learning process.  What I do know is that no matter how much someone claims to be ready to hear criticism, they're not.  I can't walk around setting people on fire and then trying to put it out with my spit.  They need encouragement, not criticism.  AND SO DO I.

This happens when I'm supposed to read other people's work online too.  I start reading something and I'm supposed to offer a favorable critique, but I can't. So I say nothing.

This is my greatest screwup as a writer.  

I will never build a strong group of author buddies who love my work, share it, I love their work, share it, and we're all enriched by each other's fan bases.  

No matter how well I write, this will always bite me in the bum and handicap me - the greatest screwup of all.

Hopefully, next time I'll be closer to being ready to release 'Hidden Library' and I'll have something to promote.  Hopefully.  

The Eighth Screwup

Let's talk about advertising, marketing, book reviews, and awards.

This is where we separate those that have money for their project and those who do not.  You need the talent to write your book.  You need to practice to bring your craft to a whole new level...  AND you need to have a secret hoard of dragon gold to pay to advertise it when you're finished.

There are a lot of people who are willing to take your money in order to market your book.  I get emails from them, telling me they think my new book is marvelous (there's no way they've read it) and they think the readers on their mailing list would love to buy my book.  A spot in their newsletter only costs $25.  Websites that promote books do this too.  Cover slot only $35, and they'll send out information about your book in their next newsletter.  Promotional packages cost between $10 and $400.

Stuff like this.

I don't know how well any of that stuff works.  My Facebook feed is full of people who have tried all this stuff for promotion and got nowhere.

Remember those digital publishing companies I mentioned in my post about ebooks?  Yeah, they won't help you much with advertising.  They'll put it all on your shoulders.  You know why?  Because this sort of thing is super expensive and very much like playing random games in a casino.  Who knows what's going to stick?

Now let's talk about book reviews.  Getting them is an enormous pain in the rear.  Finding someone who is willing to sign their name to a review, saying your writing is good is rare.  Also, Amazon really cracks down on reviews that have been paid for, and A LOT OF AUTHORS PAY FOR REVIEWS.  I've been working hard at getting reviews in 2020 and I'm starting to get better at it.  It does mean giving away a lot of books and doing a lot of begging.  Turns out, I'm not that bad at either one of those things.  

Now let's talk about book awards.  If I decided to be in charge of a book award program, it would become my part-time job, and here's how I would run it.  I would charge $40 for each book to be entered into the contest.  The top award would be $500 with three lesser prizes of $200, plus another ten honorable mentions.  This means I would only need 28 people to enter in order to pay for the program, but let's be real.  There are 5,000 ebooks published a day.  So many people are desperate to become authors that more than 28 people would enter with an entry deposit of only $40.  That's less than a lot of the ad campaigns I mentioned above.  I would send each of the entries a banner to put on their social media advertising the award and get a boatload of free advertising directly to the writing community (they're my customers).  After the submission deadline, I pick up the manuscripts and anything I can stand to read gets shortlisted.  I can drop anything I don't like without reading it to the end.  I can weed through thousands of manuscripts this way, by dropping anything that rubs me wrong immediately.  Chances are I would only like a few books well enough to finish them.  I'd sort through those and choose my big winner and my three runners up.  It would also be pretty easy to choose ten honorable mentions.  I'd make them all banners to put up on their social media so they give me more free advertising.  And cablooee!  I keep all the extra money!

Okay, I would never do this.  I hate reading.  I wrote the above because that's what my internal monologue says whenever I read the info packets for writing awards.  I'm staring at the deposit amount versus the prize amount and I think it doesn't add up.  The entries are probably generating a lot more money than what they're offering as prizes.  They can argue that they're paying the selection committee and I could argue that for myself with my setup above.  I just find it hard to believe that it could be a fair contest since the judges could stop reading with one mislaid sentence.  Reading stuff that sucks is soooo hard.

By the way, not all literary awards ask for a deposit.  Those awards don't offer a cash prize either, but those people are going to heaven FOR SURE.

Soooo... Advertising... you'll lose money.

The Seventh Screwup

I promised we could talk about ebooks and today we will.  

Let's start with digital publishing companies.  They don't publish print books and they don't prep manuscripts or covers for print-on-demand.

Do you know how long it takes to do the graphic design for an ebook cover once the art is complete?  Not long.  It's an absolute cakewalk compared to making a cover that wraps around a paperback.  Along the same lines, do you know how easy it is to prepare an ebook for publication compared to something that has to go to print?  Again, it's a snap.

Digital publishing companies prey upon writers who know how to write but do not know how to independently publish a book.  They'll lend you a hand with editing without being too handsy (unlike traditional publishing houses who are risking a lot and can get very handsy), they'll help you with a polished looking cover, and they'll do all the technical things you have no interest learning.  They'll skim a little off the profits on your ebook for themselves and everyone is happy.

These guys are less choosy than a traditional publisher.  You're way more likely to get a publishing deal with one of them.  Their standards are a lot lower because they have a lot less on the line.  They have invested very little capital in you (just what they paid for your cover art).  They'll put a few minutes into your manuscript in order to prep it for publication, they're tech-savvy and they're building an empire, so the more manuscripts the better.

Because their standards are lower, if you get turned down by one of them, it may mean that you are not ready to be a published author.  

However, do not despair.  Even if they turn you down, and you're done working on your manuscript, it's okay.  Go to a free writing website like Inkitt, Wattpad, Fictionpress, and post your writing there.  You can work with sample audiences there and get a feel for what people like.  You will have to write more than one book... but you were always going to have to write more than one book.  

The Sixth Screwup

Should I go with a traditional publisher or should I self publish?

If you are a new author and a publishing company is willing to publish you... something is probably wrong.  It might not be anything much, but whatever it is... it will probably amount to you not making much money.  It's actually pretty likely that you'll lose money.  

I see stuff all the time where new authors are asking if it's normal for publishing houses to ask their authors to put up money to get the ball rolling.  No, this is not normal.  Do not work with them.  

Here's how publishing works roughly.

You go into Chapters (or another book store), and you buy a book that costs $20.  Immediately, 40% (or $8) of that is going directly to Chapters just to keep your book on the shelf.  Of that $20, approximately $3 is paying for the book to be printed, $2 is paying for the shipping from the printer to the store, $5 is going to the publisher (which pays for the editing, cover art, design, marketing, and ads), $2 goes to the author (less if the author has a literary agent). 

If you self-publish, you pay all those fees yourself.  You pay for the printing, shipping, editing, cover art, design, marketing, and any ads.  If the bookstore fails to sell your book by a deadline, they may keep your book and sell it for whatever they can get for it.  As soon as a book in a bookstore is discounted, you can bet your booty-tailed-britches the author is no longer getting paid.  As a matter of fact, the author or the publishing company is losing money.  If the book store can't sell your books at all, a box of books to arrive at your house.  You may be able to sell them yourself, but also... maybe not.  Still losing money.

This means that a publishing company that does print books basically won't take you on unless they're certain you can bank.  These days, they mostly recruit independent authors who have already have a huge following.

Selling your own print books is a lot like selling Avon or Tupperware.  This means that people who love you and want to support you will buy your book. Once that dries up, you'll run out of people to sell to.  The people who know and love you probably won't enjoy reading your book.  I know that sounds rude, but it doesn't have much to do with your writing.  Reading things written by people you know is weird.  It's a weird experience.  They might not want to read any more of your books.  Don't take it personally.  You are going to need to find a bigger market than the people you know if you're going to survive.  

From the math I presented earlier, you've probably figured out that you are going to need to sell books into the tens of thousands in order to even make this worthwhile even as a side hustle or to come close to making minimum wage.

Put simply, you are not going to be able to find a publisher who isn't full of crap.  If you try, you will waste a lot of time trying... unless you already have an in with a publishing house.  

Personally, I think you should wait a bit before investing a lot of your resources in print books.  Sometimes they're flawed and you can't sell them.  Only order a few and see how it pans out.  

Next time we'll talk about ebooks.

The Fifth Screwup

A lot of writers think they don't need their own editor.  They think they're going to publish with a publishing company and it will take care of their editing for them.  It is true that a publishing company will probably get up in your business and ask you to make changes to your manuscript.  However, it's also true that a publishing company will not want to work with you if your work is unedited (they'll call it rough).  They want to work with hardened writers who are used to making compromises.

On the flip side, if you decide to go the indie route (self-publish without the financial backing of a publishing company), you're going to hit a roadblock.

Professional editing is expensive.

You're also very likely to despise your first editor with a potency that surprises you.  It's so expensive and time-consuming that you will want to bypass the whole process because writing a novel was supposed to make money, not cost you money.  Most editors that advertise on the internet have a rate of $5 for every 1,000 words.  This means that you will be very lucky to get your manuscript edited for less than $1,000.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that my math sucks because it should only cost $300 to have a 60,000-word manuscript edited.  I promise you, my math is impeccable.  It took me a long time to acknowledge this, but this is the truth: a manuscript needs a minimum of three rounds of editing.  You will be lucky if you only need three rounds.

Each round of editing has a different purpose.  Allow me to explain.

Content Editing

Imagine you're in an art class and your art teacher is explaining how to draw a perspective drawing.  You draw the vantage point and every line you put on that page is working with that point in one way or another.  Some lines hold up others, but everything is acknowledging that vantage point.  Content editing is like someone taking your perspective drawing and erasing every line that doesn't play to the vantage point in some way.

Every word that doesn't help the plot, continue the themes, entertain the reader, speed up the action, foreshadow what is to come, or emphasize a point has to go.  This means that your manuscript is going to suffer a very substantial drop in its word count.  If you have written exactly 40,000 words, it's going to feel like the editor has cut off your arm.  You had written a novel, and now it's a novella, and you won't be able to turn it back into a novel.  In my experience, content editing is irreversible.  You can't add more to your story after without needing to go back and do another round of content editing after the adds.  Granted, you may improve your product, but doing two rounds of one layer of editing is going to be hurtful to your morale and your budget.

Copy Editing

This is when the editor puts each individual sentence under a microscope and asks if that sentence is effective.  This means that all ambiguity that existed in your drafts has to go.

This process is another place where beginners suffer because a lot of the changes suggested by the editor are correcting sentences which may not be technically wrong.  Sadly, that doesn't mean they aren't wrong.  Writing needs to be snappy, and if it isn't, then it needs to be fixed.

Also, it can get overwhelming how many changes the editor suggests, especially when there are over a dozen changes on a single page and there are two hundred pages.  They think that if they were a good writer, there would be fewer corrections.

Proofreading

I find that proofreading needs a different set of eyes.  You can use the same editor for content editing and copy editing, but you need a different editor for proofreading.  One may be tempted to think that you could have a friend do your proofreading because what you need more than anything is a fresh set of eyes and they would charge less than a real editor.

And you would be wrong.  Here's why:

1. Unpaid proofreaders take forever.  They have other things to do that are important and your book is not number one on their list of things to do.

2. They won't find all the errors.  No proofreader (even professional ones) find all the errors.  Many professionally published books have mistakes in them.  I saw one today!

3. They think that because the book is not yet published that there is still time to make substantial changes.  There is not.  You are at the end of the project.  You will not make everyone happy with your project.

4. Your relationship with your friend is more important than any book.

In conclusion, you need an editor.  Everything you have done may end up being a wash if you don't have one.  HOWEVER... online editorial services tend to prey on the insecurity of new authors and make them feel as though they are failing because they didn't do enough rounds of editing.  This can be a bit much when the average self-published ebook sells fewer than 250 copies (which generates a lot less income than the $1,000 I mentioned earlier).

You're going to need to try different things to find your balance when you edit your manuscripts.  I have hired editors.  I've done it myself.  I've taken help from teenagers who have acted as beta readers (they were my fans).  I've printed my book out and marked the crap out of it.  I've read it out loud and put on bloody stage plays in my bedroom.  I've begged for help from English teachers.  I've taken multiple grammar courses at a college.  I've privately redone my child's grammar lessons by myself.  I've used different word processors to try to fix the errors.  I've worked with editors at publishing companies.  And I've spent more money on editors than I've made with my books.

I still have people come up to me and inform me that there was actually a mistake on page 215 of my book...

No one can be perfect at this.

The only thing you need to remember is that there are going to be mistakes while learning to do this.  Handle your mistakes, either by fixing them or by forgiving yourself for them.  Then you can smile, even when there is a mistake on page 215... and 216.

The Fourth Screwup

Yes, we've arrived at the fourth place a novelist is likely to screw up.  This is at the end of the book.

I don't want to write a whole post about all the horrible things that can happen at the end of the book, but I do want to touch on one problem that happens at the end of nearly every project (book or not).  You're sitting at 97% complete and... you die.  I don't mean you literally die, but you die.  You've got like two chapters left to finish and you're scared, bored, and itching to move onto a new project, nothing looks right, you think you're stupid, and the last little bit is this unbelievable grind.

I find the only way to conquer this is to just sit down one day (without planning it) and just say, "Today, I'm finishing this!  If I get nothing else done today, that's fine.  Today, I'm finishing this!"  I sometimes accompany that wild declaration with an actual roar, but that's what I need to do to get pumped up.  So, sneak up on it, and don't let it go until you break its neck.

You are not to be trifled with.  You won't even be defeated by yourself.

But that's not the problem I wanted to address today.  The main purpose of this post is to talk about what happens after you've finished writing your first book.  In order to finish the book, you have used some time that you don't usually use to write, and that means that some of the things you usually do are lagging behind.  You write the glorious words The End, set down your manuscript, and abruptly realize you need to go make muffins, run a list of errands, follow up with other projects, and basically live your life the way you were leading it before the writing bug ate your heart.

It's quite some time before you make it back to your manuscript.  You have plans to submit it to an editor or a publishing company, but before you do either of those things (editors are expensive and there's a lot of stiff competition for publication), you decide to read over your manuscript to see if there's anything you can do to improve it by yourself.

Very wise.

Except you're about to get dropped on your bottom.  Psst!  It's going to hurt because your manuscript is not going to be as brilliant as it was when you left it.  When you get a bit of space from your project, you start to notice a few mistakes.  Scratch that... a lot of mistakes.  There are typos, to be sure, but there are also foundational mistakes.  Your writing style is not consistent.  You have not maintained reader sympathy with your characters.  Parts of the story are missing because they seemed so obvious in your head, so you didn't spell them out to the reader and on the re-read, you have no idea what you're eluding to with your careful prose.  And more.

It's very discouraging.

I recommend reading the manuscript again and writing two wish lists.

One list is about things you can see that are obvious fixes for this particular manuscript (cut this out, add this).

The second list is things you wish you did better generally.  This list refers to mistakes in your book that are so large, you can't possibly fix them without starting your manuscript over (things like voice or losing reader sympathy).  The thing is, no matter how brilliant your original idea was, by this point, you're done with it.  So, if you're going to correct this manuscript, you need to have written nothing on your second wish list.  If it's your first whack at writing a novel, you have to set this manuscript aside and label it as practice.  Then you have to start again with a new idea.

Coming up with a new idea terrifies some authors.

There is nothing to be afraid of.  As you get better at this, ideas will come easier and in larger quantities.  Sometimes people who approach me with an idea for a novel have no intention of writing out their idea themselves.  They want me to do it.  I always find it amusing that they think I'm starving for ideas.  I have made myself into an idea factory.

Your second attempt at a novel with a new story will be better than your first.  You'll figure out how to solve some of your fundamental problems while at the same time, correcting your writing style as you go so you don't keep making the same technical errors every step.  Don't be afraid.  You don't get something for nothing and the price of admission is practice.