Tag Archives: Best Endeavours

BEST ENDEAVOURS: Best Welcome. Jane Cable’s blog about what happens once that digital publishing deal is in the bag continues.

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Jane Cable, publishing, writingBEST ENDEAVOURS
 
Jane Cable’s blog about what happens once that digital publishing deal is in the bag continues.
 
BEST WELCOME
 
For those of you who are really paying attention and haven’t yet lost the will to live with my burblings, last week I mentioned that one of the tasks on my list was to get to grips with my shiny new membership of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. I had, of course, been aware of the organisation for years and joining was one of the first things that Agent Felicity advised me to do but I needed publishing contract to be admitted to their hallowed halls as a full member. 
As soon as I had the contract I filled in the application form and sent off my cheque. In due course a membership pack thudded through my letterbox (not its fault – everything thuds onto the chunk of slate behind our front door) and I eagerly scrambled my way through the papers to find out all the ways I could fully engage with the association.
So I fired off some emails; to the website co-ordinator, the libraries’ liaison officer, the named contacts for the Cornish and South chapters (having feet in more than one geographical camp). And with some trepidation sent another cheque for the winter party. In London. With crowds of people. People I didn’t know. Gulp.
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Very soon my inbox was filled with emails welcoming me to the RNA, and before long I was sharing online conversations and writing experiences with authors I knew only from their Amazon profiles. The genuine warmth left me feeling as though I was snuggling into a very large and fluffy (in a not remotely Barbara Cartland way) blanket and joining a group of writers who believe in co-operation because they know it works. And, well, because they’re positive, interested, interesting and overall friendly folk. 
The emails gave me the courage I needed to venture towards Twitter with the #TuesNews hashtag and @RNATweets handle. Nervously I tweeted about a lovely review I’d received for The Cheesemaker’s House. Within minutes the retweets had started and within hours reached a level I had previously only dreamt of. New follows and followers, my online network expanded in directions which are perfect for me. And what’s more I will actually meet some of these lovely people; both in London next month and at the chapter meetings in Cornwall and in Southampton.
Throughout my business life I’ve believed in the value of networking and although it sounds sexist I also think women understand the process of giving your time and energy to virtual strangers better than men. Not all RNA members are women by a long chalk, but most of us are, because that’s the way the cookie crumbles in the writing world. 
There’s also something about the genre of romance itself; those who write it, write about people. So we’re interested in people. We like people. And that attitude shines from the RNA like no other organisation I’ve ever had the privilege to belong to.
 
Jane Cable is the author of two independently published romantic suspense novels, The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree, and a sporadic contributor to Frost. The Seahorse Summer tells the tale of how two American soldiers born sixty years apart help forty-something Marie Johnson to rebuild her shattered confidence and find new love. Discover more at www.janecable.com.

BEST ENDEAVOURS: Best Of Days: Jane Cable’s Digital Publishing Journey

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Jane Cable, publishing, writingBEST ENDEAVOURS

Jane Cable’s blog about what happens once that digital publishing deal is in the bag continues.

BEST OF DAYS

That’s it – the manuscript has been emailed to Endeavour and acknowledged. In four to six weeks I’ll know how much more work I have to do.

So how do I feel? Exhausted – and suddenly very uncertain about my book. Of course the logical part of my mind tells me to get a grip; all I’ve done is a little tweaking and tidying up – they’ve read The Seahorse Summer, for goodness sake – and they’ve bought the rights. So of course it’s going to be fine. The tired, emotional part of my brain, however, is so mashed up I got motion sickness on the elevator in Sainsburys. No kidding.

But last night in my favourite pub, The Victory Inn at Towan Cross in Cornwall, an important aspect of my book was validated when conversation around the bar fell to a former soldier who was going badly off the rails. In so many ways they could have been talking about one of the two GIs in my book, Paxton.

Now when you tackle a subject like combat stress it’s important to get it right. I was lucky enough to be introduced to a former para turned fitness instructor who was prepared to tell me what he’d seen and heard from the soldiers under his care in Afghanistan after they came home from setting up Camp Bastion. The sense of isolation when separated from their unit on leave. The struggle returning to normal family life and relationships after all they’d experienced. How combat can scar a man in ways unseen. How fireworks are never the same again.

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Readers of Frost will be no strangers to Words for The Wounded, the charity set up by author and contributing editor Margaret Graham. The charity supports soldiers suffering from combat stress and I very much hope that I can do something with The Seahorse Summer that can help them in this work.

In the meantime, with the editing finished, what now? Feet up for a while? Not a chance… there’s a huge ‘to do’ list of tasks which have been swept to one side and too long ignored; a vast amount of marketing to be done – both in advance of The Seahorse Summer and for The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree which have been sliding down the Kindle charts while I’ve been busy editing; and, of course, picking up the threads of my current manuscript again.

But as for today? I’m on the north Cornish coast and the sun is shining. Quite honestly, I think I deserve a little break.

 

Jane Cable is the author of two independently published romantic suspense novels, The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree, and a sporadic contributor to Frost. The Seahorse Summer tells the tale of how two American soldiers born sixty years apart help forty-something Marie Johnson to rebuild her shattered confidence and find new love. Discover more at www.janecable.com.

 

 

 

Best Endeavours Technical Best: Jane Cable On What Happens After You Sign That Digital Publishing Contract

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Jane Cable, publishing, writingBEST ENDEAVOURS

Jane Cable’s blog about what happens once that digital publishing deal is in the bag continues.

TECHNICAL BEST

I feel as though I know every word of The Seahorse Summer off by heart. And that can’t be a good thing. My real battle with editing over a short period of time is coming to the manuscript fresh and able to concentrate on what’s actually on the page, not what I think is there.

It’s just as well I’m on the last lap now, the technical points which are often overlooked. None of them rocket science but mistakes which are all too easy to make and not so simple to spot: a ‘by’ for a ‘my’; a missing indefinite article; and the multiple perils (for me at least) of punctuating dialogue. Yes, I could leave that to the proof reader but I’d like to submit a manuscript which is as perfect as possible.

I have another task for this week too. Quite some months ago I was asked to judge the Autumn Writing competition for one of the better writing groups. The subject matter – A Ghost Story – poetry or prose – and now the entries are sitting in my inbox. To be honest they will be a welcome distraction.

Best Endeavours Technical Best: Jane Cable On What Happens After You Sign That Digital Publishing Contract writing, amwriting, publishing

Most helpfully the group’s website gives a critique guide which can double as a framework when editing your own manuscript and for anyone embarking on the process I thought it would be useful to summarise:

Plot
Is the plot believable? Is it too fast or too slow? Too simple or too complex?

Characters
Too many characters or too few? Are they real people, or flat cutouts? Is it easy to confuse one with another?

Setting
Too many locations or too few? Too much description or too little?

Dialogue
Too much or too little? Do the characters have different voices? Are their words believable?

Viewpoint
Do we stay in one viewpoint, or change? Does the chosen viewpoint work?

Ending
Is the ending too sudden or too slow? Does it follow logically from the story? Does it leave the reader satisfied?

Technical Points
Are there errors in grammar, spelling, layout or punctuation? Are there factual mistakes?

Having some sort of structure helps you to step back from your own work and see it more as others do. Not an easy task, by any means, but an essential part of the writing process. If you don’t belong to a writers’ group you may well have completed your manuscript in glorious isolation. If you aren’t against a deadline, put it down for a few weeks, read something else, get out into the real world for a while so you come back to it fresh.

At the very least, pick up a few ghost stories and settle down with a cup of tea to enjoy them.

Jane Cable is the author of two independently published romantic suspense novels, The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree, and a sporadic contributor to Frost. The Seahorse Summer tells the tale of how two American soldiers born sixty years apart help forty-something Marie Johnson to rebuild her shattered confidence and find new love. Discover more at www.janecable.com.