Meet Author Bruce Hale!
Website: BruceHale.com

Bio:
Edgar-nominated author Bruce Hale is passionate about inspiring reluctant readers to open books (and read them). He has written or illustrated more than 25 seriously funny books for children, including the popular Chet Gecko Mysteries series and the comics-novel hybrid, Underwhere.

An actor and Fulbright Scholar in Storytelling, Bruce is in demand as a speaker, having presented at conferences, universities, and schools across North America – from the Maui Writers Conference to the Surrey International Writers Conference in British Columbia. His acting resume includes regional commercials, theater, and an independent film, The Ride. Bruce also sings with the VocalPoint jazz group of Santa Barbara.

Featured Book:

Snoring Beauty
by Bruce Hale
Illustrated by Howard Fine

A furious fairy. A cruel curse.
A princess enchanted by a spell. 

Think you know the story of Sleeping Beauty? Better think again. This fractured fairy tale tells the real story of Sleeping Beauty — warts, scales, and all. 

And guess what? She snores. (A recommended read on Oprah Winfrey’s Kids Reading List)

Interview:
Q: Describe the journey you took to write and publish this book.
A: This book was a long time coming. I wrote it in 2000 and sold it back in 2001, then revised it several times working with one editor. He wasn’t able to find a satisfactory illustrator, and the project passed to another editor when he left Harcourt. She asked for another couple rounds of revisions, then chose Howard Fine for the illustrations. An excellent choice! The book finally came out in 2008.

Q: What is your typical writing day like?
A: Unending hilarity and dazzling inspiration. But seriously…

I usually exercise and handle e-mail in the mornings, then start writing after lunch. I write (or revise, as the case may be) until dinnertime. Sometimes the writing flows, sometimes it’s like wading through concrete. But I keep showing up each day, whether the Muse joins me or not.

Q: Describe at least one specific technique you use to incorporate humor into your writing.
A: The Technique of Three is one of my favorites. You create a list, where the first two items are normal and the third is unexpected/bizarre — like “tall, dark, and full of zits.”

Q: Share tips you’d like to give to an author who wants to do Virtual School Visits.
A: Think visually. Be sure to take advantage of the strengths of the medium. It’s not as immediate as an in-person visit, but you can hold nearly anything — sketches, toys, crafts, whatever — up to the camera, and kids can easily see it.

Do you ever feel like you’re reading Greek when all you’re trying to do is read through a market guide or publisher’s submissions guidelines?

Download this fun matching game to learn some of the most common acronyms in the children’s writing industry. For added fun, print out a copy for each of your writing buddies and try to complete the answers during your next critique group.

Acronyms

(Don’t peek, but the answers are listed upside-down at the bottom.)

I know a lot of you are interested in writing alphabet books and ABC articles. So am I! That’s why I’m excited about my brand new teleclass that I’ll be teaching for the National Writing for Children Center. I’m now part of the faculty here at the center and will be teaching a new teleclass every month.

You can join me live on Thursday, November 12 at 10:00 Pacific Standard Time! Just click on the link today or tomorrow to register at The Children’s Writers Coaching Club. Then call the number they give you and join the fun!

If you can’t make it at that time, it will be available as a download afterwards.

Happy writing…from A to Z!

Hi My name is Humphrey. I’m a cat. You may already know that. But what you may not know is that I’m also a writer. And today, I want to tell you about putting on your editor’s hat.

Do you like to edit your own manuscripts? You know—self edit? Come on…really?

I don’t.

I mean, it’s just not the cat’s meow.

But I know I should. I know I’m supposed to. I know it’s what a cat’s gotta do to learn how to be a successful writer. So I decided to break my habit of neglecting this part of my writing life.

The first thing I did was get myself an editor’s hat. You know—first you wear the writer’s hat and then you take that off and put on your editor’s hat? Right? Well, I didn’t have an editor’s hat. So I went out and got one. Like it? It even has a little mouse at the top and this twirly thing to twirl around. It’s purrfect for a cat like me. You should get one, too!

After I finish my first draft of my manuscript, I set aside some time to edit. And now I make sure it isn’t the drudgery it used to be. I make sure it’s fun!

I put on my silly editor’s beanie. It gets me in the mood to have fun, dude. Then I get out my special highlighter pens. I splurged and bought some wa-ay cool ones that I can use to make neon colors and decorate all over my manuscript. (They don’t even have a cap to lose, but click like a ballpoint pen.) Since I have neon yellow and neon pink and neon orange, now I’m HOPING to find mistakes in my manuscript just so I can mark ‘em on my page and turn the boring black and white little marks on the paper into bright, fun, colorful pictures.

I know my weaknesses, too. So I made a list of ‘em. Here are the first three, for starters:
1. Don’t always use punctuation correctly.
2. Weak verbs.
3. Poorly constructed paragraphs without a clear beginning, middle, and end.

I also printed out some self-editing checklists from how-to-write books, and articles I found on the Internet. These lists remind me to check for realistic dialog, show don’t tell, and lots of other important stuff.

I take my highlighters and have some fun! First I look at every single sentence I wrote in my first paragraph. I highlight the capital letter at the beginning of the sentence in pink. I highlight the punctuation in that sentence in yellow. Then I make sure to check that I used that punctuation correctly.

If I’m not sure about the punctuation rule, I look it up in my reference books. But hey—my reference books aren’t bo-o-oring like yours might be. Oh no! First I made specially decorated book covers for each one of ‘em so they’re bright and colorful, not scary-looking or over-the-top academic. Then I got my highlighters out and really decorated the pages I use the most to remind me what the rules are that I most often forget. Plus, I got sticky notes in all shapes and sizes to stick on the pages I look up over and over again. I want to save my energy for chasing mice, not for flipping through the pages looking up the same rule I’ve used a zillion times before. Like I said—I want this self-editing thing to be as fun as a cat can have it.

So hey—how about you? Are you having fun when you self-edit your manuscript? If not, do something about it. Make it fun, like I did. Now editing’s my favorite part of writing. Not! But really, it’s way more fun than it used to be. Especially when I put on my editor’s hat. And nibble on tunafish…but that’s another story.

-contributed by Humphrey, Nancy’s writing buddy

Meet Author Dianne E. Butts!
E-mail:dbwrites@juno.com
Blog: Deliver Me
Web site: Dianne E. Butts, Freelance Writer
Twitter: http://Twitter.com/DianneEButts

Bio:
Dianne E. Butts has more than 225 publications in over fifty magazines and fifteen books. She has written for national publications such as Focus on the Family magazine, The Plain Truth, Light and Life, The Lookout, On Mission, Enrichment Journal, Bible Advocate, the Salvation Army’s War Cry, and the international Christian Motorcyclists Association’s Heartbeat. She has written for denominational take-home papers including Live, Evangel, Purpose, Standard, and Encounter for teenagers; for online publications including CBN.com, Crosswalk.com, TheChristianPulse.com, and Now What?; as well as devotionals including The Quiet Hour and Devotions. She writes frequently for writers in Christian Communicator and Cross & Quill. She has sold short fiction to Live and Evangel, and has a story appearing in Focus on the Family’s Clubhouse, Jr. in 2010. Her articles have been published in Great Britain, Bulgaria, Poland, Canada, and Korea.

Dianne’s book contributions include Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Best Stories of Faith, Zondervan’s New Women’s Devotional Bible, and the just-released book God Encounters: Stories of His Involvement in Life’s Greatest Moments (Howard Books, October 2009).

Her current project is a book of true stories of unplanned pregnancies, Deliver Me, which may end up being her second self-published book. Follow the progress of this book on www.DeliverMeBook.blogspot.com.

Dianne offers a free, monthly e-mailed e-zine for writers. Subscribe on her web site at www.DianneEButts.com.

When she’s not writing, Dianne enjoys riding her motorcycle with her husband, Hal, and gardening with her cat, P.C. The trio lives in Colorado.

Featured Book:
Dear America
by Dianne E. Butts
Ampelos, 2002

Written in the weeks following 9/11/2001, Dear America: A Letter of Comfort and Hope to a Grieving Nation talks about grief, presents the Gospel as a 5-act story, discusses some differences between Christianity and Islam, answers some questions about Muslims, and gives readers ideas of how to go on with God. The book, which sells for $6.95, is available on Amazon.com and Dianne’s web site.

Interview:
Q: Describe the journey you’ve taken as a writer.
A: I never started out to be a writer. I didn’t dream of writing since I was three years old like so many writers’ interviews I’ve read. My writer’s journey started when I was a teenager and I wrote a few “poems”—or at least I thought they were poems because they rhymed. I entered one in a contest to be used in our high school yearbook (but I lost out to the Beatles and the lyrics to their song, “The Long and Winding Road”).

However, my high school English teacher got her hands on some of my poems (I can’t remember how. I was certainly too shy to share them!) and she took an interest in me. One day she took me down to the school library and introduced me to Writer’s Digest’s Writer’s Market. She showed me how it worked and showed me how to format my poems for submission. We sent one poem out to three places and got two rejection slips. I remember one of them said, “This sounds like a Hallmark card.” I took that as a compliment although I knew that’s not how they meant it. We never heard back from the third place.

Then my writing journey paused for a dozen years.

I married in my twenties and we followed my husband’s job to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where I went to work in a gas station/rental shop. The ladies I worked with there were Christians. I’d gone to church some when I was a kid, but really didn’t know much. I’d even “prayed the prayer of salvation” and had “given my life to the Lord” when I was younger—several times! But not knowing any Christians and with no one to teach me or answer my questions, my weak faith wilted every time. But these ladies talked with me about Christ and answered my questions about Him and God honored those previous professions of faith and the more I learned about Him and the Bible, the more on fire I became.

I deeply wanted to share the faith I now understood, but, still being very shy, I had no idea how to do so. Then I started thinking, “What if I could write an article and get it published?” Because of Mrs. Hodges in high school, I knew what to do. I went to the library in Steamboat Springs, found the reference section and the newest volume of the Writer’s Market, and I was thirty years old when my writing career began. That was twenty years ago. Now it’s my passion to help others understand God and His story in the Bible, primarily through writing.

Q: What is one word of advice you received as a writer that you would like to share with others?
A: Probably the most valuable advice I received is to study the publication or publishing house before you submit. I consistently hear editors say they receive so much material that they can’t use and it’s obvious the writer has never seen their magazine or looked at their published book catalog. Writers who do this are seen as real amateurs. This type of submission clogs up the system and hurts all writers because fewer and fewer editors will continue to accept freelance submissions.

The new twist on this idea for me is your advice, Nancy, to really study children’s book publisher’s catalogs and find something to query them on. I learned early on that authors need to make sure the book publishing house they are approaching publishes the type of book they want to write. But to basically forget about the type of book we want to write and just look at their catalog and find something we can write for them is new to me. But it has that “Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?” feeling!

Probably the next word of advice I received that has really paid off is, “Go to a writer’s conference.” I started out writing alone, but I soon heard of the Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference and went. This past spring I went to that same conference for the twentieth year in a row. Besides what Mrs. Hodges taught me in high school, nearly everything else I’ve learned about writing for publication I learned there, not to mention the friends and contacts with editors I’ve made which have helped me get my foot in the door at magazines.

Q: What are some benefits of self-publishing a book?
A: For one, you stand to make more money per book sold than you would earn from royalties. Royalties on books are often less than a dollar per book sold, sometimes much lower. I heard a multi-published author at a recent conference say he earns 10 cents royalty per book sold. With a self-published book, you can often earn several dollars per copy sold, but that assumes you’re able to sell copies of your book! Many self-published authors find they don’t really have outlets to promote and sell their books. This is one of the biggest lessons I learned with Dear America. Ask yourself, and answer realistically,

- Who are my potential book-buyer/readers?
- Where are they and how can I reach them?
- How am I going to let them know about my book?

Another benefit to self-publishing is that you have complete control over your book, but that’s also a great challenge. As I consider self-publishing Deliver Me, I don’t know if I’m making good decisions about things like the back-cover copy and the price. And what am I going to put on the cover that will cause someone to pick up my book and consider buying it? I don’t have a committee or a sales department behind me to help me figure these things out like a traditional publisher does.

Finally, perhaps one of the biggest benefits to self-publishing, next to making more income from the sales of your book, is the time factor. Authors considering self-publishing probably already know you can wait years for a traditional publisher to respond and finally say “no thanks” to publishing your book. Sometimes we just need our book out, or need it out now so we don’t miss opportunities. Finding a traditional publisher can take months or years, with no guarantee you’ll ever find one interested in publishing your book. Once you do find a traditional publisher who wants to publish your book, it will be 18 to 24 months from the time you sign a contract before your book is out.

On the other hand, if you self-publish your book, you can have it out in 6 months or 3 months or even just a couple weeks after delivering your computer file to a printer.

Q: Share one tip you’d like to give to an author who is considering self-publishing a book.
A: This is a huge, all-inclusive “tip,” but honestly the one thing authors need to do when they’re self-publishing is to know what you’re doing. Please don’t think just because you’ve sent your proposal out to a couple publishers and haven’t heard back in a couple months that you should just find a printer and pay to have it printed! I’ve heard countless stories like this and the author, after spending tens of thousands of dollars, usually ends up with a garage full of books he or she can’t sell.

You MUST do your homework!

Find out about ISBNs and bar codes, because you can’t sell your book on Amazon or in stores without them. Do a budget and figure out what you might have to spend. How much is your cover going to cost you? Interior design? Do you have the skills or someone to put it all in the format a printer requires? Does this person know where the preface and title page and footnotes go? For goodness sakes don’t you dare go to press without hiring a professional editor! How much will that cost?

Are you going to hire a self-publishing company to do all this for you? Have you checked out numerous companies and compared prices and packages? Have you checked the company to see what others thought of working with them? There are some scams out there so ask around and check out any companies you’re considering so you don’t get taken!

How are you going to sell your book? Are you a speaker with opportunities to sell the book? If not, how are you going to reach readers?

When you find a buyer, how are you going to collect the money? Through your web site? How will you deliver the book? By mail? What about collecting sales tax and shipping? Or will your self-publishing company do “order fulfillment,” which is doing all this for you?

Do you know the different between Print-On-Demand (POD) publishing and off-set printing, and do you know which is right for you?

I’ve talked with some would-be authors who don’t even know the difference between going with a traditional publishing company and self-publishing. When they fork out a bundle of money to have their book published, they just think this is how it’s done. They have no idea about being paid advance and royalties by traditional publishers. They have no idea what they’re getting or what they need for their book to be a success. If you don’t know how traditional publishing works, then I’d say you don’t know enough to self-publish your book and make it a financial and business success.
There’s so much to know and learn. Search the internet or get some books, like Dan Poynter’s The Self-Publishing Manual, and learn all you can. I’ve learned a lot. I also have a lot left to learn. This is what my blog at www.DeliverMeBook.blogspot.com is all about. On this blog I’m writing about what I learned while self-publishing Dear America, what I’ve learned since, and what I’m doing to make my next self-published book—which may well be Deliver Me: Hope, Help, and Options When You’re Facing an Unplanned Pregnancy—a financial and business success. (That proposal is still out to a few traditional publishers and I’m waiting to hear from them, but in the mean time I’m actively writing the manuscript and getting ready to self-publish if I don’t find a traditional publisher soon.)

I’m sharing everything I know about self-publishing in my blog in order to help other authors successfully publish their books and not end up with a bunch of money spent on a garage full of books they can’t sell. There’re enough of those stories, and I want our reader’s stories to end better!

Thank you, Nancy, for inviting me to be on your blog today. I hope your readers find this information useful. It has been great fun!

Thank YOU, Dianne, for all your wonderful tips and encouragement! -Nancy

These past few months have been all about my new book for writers, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career. Over the summer, I shared marketing tips on strategies I was using to help market my book. Then during October, we had a Virtual Book Tour to celebrate its release.

I’ll continue to market my book in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. Here on my blog, I’ll share about my journey now and then so hopefully, you can learn more about writing for your own personal journey.

Right now, however, I’m getting ready to write a brand new book! It will be the second in my series of books for writers. It’s title will be: Yes! You Can Write Beginning Readers.

I thought it might be fun to share here on my blog some of the process I go through to write a new book. For starters, I already have a signed contract to write the book. That means according to the Triple Crown of Success, I’m writing this manuscript for the goal of earning income. (To learn more about how you can use the Triple Crown of Success to land contracts before you write your manuscript, read my book, Yes! You Can.

I already have a deadline for March 30, 2010 to submit the manuscript. I’ll start writing this new book in January. Why am I not writing it now? Because I’m working on another book deadline now that’s under contract and is due December 30, 2009. As a career writer, that’s how I guarantee I’m earning income. I line up book contracts for the months ahead: some with an advance or work-for-hire for cash now, and some with royalties where I’m projecting earnings after the book comes out.

But even though I’m WRITING one book now, there are a bunch of things I’m working on to GET READY to write my new book in January. That’s what I’ll be posting about on my blog in the weeks ahead from time to time. I thought you’d like to learn all about how to get ready to write a book that’s under contract. That’s why I’ll be giving you an inside peek in the days ahead.

Hi. I’m Humphrey. I’m a cat. I’m also a writer. (Some of you already know that.) As a writer, when I want to do research, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.

For instance, recently I’ve been working on a manuscript about cats during the American Revolution. So one of the books I decided to read was John Adams by David McCullough. But I didn’t just read the book. That’s not the cat’s meow. I made sure to read all the footnotes in the back. Especially the names of the research sources David used to write his book.

I mean, why try to reinvent the catfood can? Why try to find all the good research sources on my own? I just sneak a careful peek in the backs of my main research books and see which sources they used. Then I read ‘em, too. It makes my job so much easier!

So when I read in the notes that David McCullough loved reading the book Humphrey Clinker, I knew I wanted to read it, too. After all, the title character has a great name, don’t you agree?

So I visited WorldCat (Anything “cat” has got to be good!) and found the library closest to me that carried the book. Then I ordered it in. This is a picture of me reading it. I look pretty studious, don’t I?

So there you have it. One of my biggest research secrets. Who let the cat out of the bag? Now you can try it, too.

Meet Author Jennifer S. Burrows!
Blog: Jennifer S. Burrows Children’s Author

Bio:
I was born and raised in central New York. I had a great childhood with two brothers, one older and one younger. My mom constantly taught us to have fun no matter what, like even if you were stuck in a camper in the rain. My dad was a science teacher and constantly taught us about science. I thought visiting caverns and viewing lunar eclipses in the middle of the night were normal family activities.

I went to college to be a teacher. Both my undergraduate and graduate degrees are in education. I was a fifth grade teacher before my husband and I started our family. I’ve always wanted to write children’s books. And now I do.

Featured Book:
The Canada Goose and You
by Jennifer S. Burrows
Illustrated by Margery Day

This nonfiction picture book explains the life and characteristics of the Canada goose by relating them to the child and his world. Each page ends with a question that is answered by “HONK!” — inviting the young listener/reader to “honk” along! Gorgeous illustrations accompany the text. For grades preK to 3.

Interview:
Q: Please share about the amazing journey you took to write and publish this book.
A: I received a rejection from a publisher for one of my manuscripts. After starting to read, Yes! You Can . . . Write Children’s Books, by Nancy I. Sanders, I decided to try her methods. I queried that same publisher with other ideas better suited to their needs. The publisher was interested in one of the topics, Canada geese. So, I submitted a book proposal on Canada geese. Soon after that, I had a contract to write the book.

Q: Describe part of the research process it took to write this manuscript.
A: I read many, many books first. Then I studied reputable websites and online references.

Q: What are some of the benefits of belonging to a critique group?
A: My critique group improves my manuscripts in ways I never could have thought of on my own. I always bring my best writing to my group. Yet, they have never said to me, “Yes, that’s perfect!” Their fresh eyes always find holes in the manuscript and issues I couldn’t see. My manuscripts are always better after I get feedback from my critique group.

Q. Share one tip you would like to give to a children’s author about writing nonfiction.
A: Don’t be afraid of any topic. You don’t have to be an expert. You just have to be willing to research and learn about a topic.

Guess what just arrived at my front door?

WriteShop Primary Book C!!!!

That’s my cat Humphrey, checking it out. He was almost as excited as I was to rip open the package and peek at the beautiful books inside.

Books A and B were feeling lonely waiting for Book C to arrive from the printing press. But finally, it’s here, after months of hard work on the part of the test families along with Kim Kautzer and Debbie Oldar, the publishers of WriteShop and their wonderful line of homeschooling material that teaches kids how to write.

And on WriteShop’s fantastic blog, they’re offering a 10% discount coupon for WriteShop Primary Book C. But you’ve got to hurry hurry hurry ’cause the discount expires on Saturday, October 31.

I talk with a number of writers who live far, far away from a regular writing group. Recently someone from Canada and someone else from the UK contacted me, looking for other writers to form a group online.

If you’re one of these writers who doesn’t live near other people who write, don’t despair. You can join us and take the Periodical Challenge, too! Schedule a special writer’s mini-retreat and have fun targeting the manuscript of your dreams. Here are some suggestions for your funtabulous day:

Get Organized: Prepare a pocket folder and place several file folders inside to help organize your notes for this special event.

Choose a Target Publisher: Decide on the magazine publisher of your dreams that you’d be thrilled to be published with. If you’re not sure, browse through your market guide for ideas.

Read the Submissions Guidelines: Look online for the submissions guidelines so you know exactly how to connect with the magazine.

Find a Sample Article: Read through copies of your target magazine and find an article similar to one that you’d like to write.

Type a Sample Article: Take time to type out the sample article you found so it will help you have a feel for the one you want to write.

Brainstorm: Think of several ideas that you’d like to write about and then choose one.

Prepare an Outline: Make an outline of the points you want to say in your article or the plot of your story from A to Z.

Write a Cover Letter: Write a short cover letter to submit with your article or story. Introduce your article, list your writing credits, and explain how it will fit into the magazine.

Write the Manuscript: Start writing the first draft of your manuscript during your mini-retreat! Then, come back and finish it so you can send it in.

After you’re done writing the manuscript, submit it to the periodical of your dreams. Then do a cartwheel. Congratulations! You took the Periodical Challenge!

If you’d like a certificate to hang on your wall, send me an e-mail at jeffandnancys@gmail.com and I’ll e-mail you a jpg file of a certificate that says you joined us and took the Periodical Challenge.