17 Tips for Stranded Manuscript Submission

1. If you are submitting your manuscript on paper, type the document. Do not submit a hand written version. (Rejected)
   2.Use a single, clear font, 12 point size. The best to use is Courier or Courier New. At the very least, ensure you use a 12 point, serif font. Something like Arial with be Rejected.
   3.Black print on white paper. The only acceptable choice.
   4.When printing out your submission (rather than submitting it electronically), agood quality plain white paper is a must. Print only on one side of each sheet.
   5.Include your name and contact information at the top left of the first page. Put an accurate word count at the top right. Put the title half-way down the page, centered, with "by Your Name" underneath. Start the story beneath that.
   6.If you chosen to write under a pseudonym, put that beneath the title but your real name in the top left of the first page.
   7.Put your name, story title and the page number as a right-justified header on every subsequent page, in the format Name/Title/Page Number. You can also just use a key word from your title and not repeat the whole thing on each page.
   8.Left-justify your paragraphs. Right margins should be "ragged".
   9.Ensure there is at least a 1 inch (2 centimeters) margin top, bottom, and left, right, around your text. This is to allow annotation to be written onto a printed copy.
   10.Use double spacing for all your text.
   11.Don’t insert extra lines between your paragraphs.
   12.Leave the first line in the chapter start out a the left margin.
   13.Indent the first line of each proceeding paragraph by about 1/2 inch (1 centimeter). Usually one (1) tab keystroke,
   14.If you want to indicate a blank line, (Scene Break) place a blank line, then a line with the # character in the middle of it, then another blank line.
   15.Don’t use bold or italic fonts or any other unusual formatting. To emphases a piece of text you should underline it.
   16.Put the word "End" after your text, centered on its own line.
   17.If you are submitting on paper, don’t staple your pages together. Package them up well so that they won’t get damaged and send them off.

The Eve Beguilement

After several yeas of  starting over and editing the manuscript, I just wrapped up the rough draft of  The Eve Beguilement. The 137K  word story took a lot of twists due to the delay in the translation of some of the journals and records, but it's finally done.

I'm doing typo read through of The Adam Eradication. I will edit the The Eve Beguilement, while I get From the Garden Cast flushed out. It's at 26,464 word, so only 100K or so words to add. No big deal. :-))

Working Cover: The Eve Beguilement

Hi everyone,

Take a look at the working book cover (not the final) for our second book "The Eve Beguilement".
This is the web version so the colors are not what then are in real time.

Incase you can't read the text on the back cover.

The MacKenna Saga
Book Two
The Eve Beguilement
   Kalen and Mayla return to Mayla's family's Outlands estate. They hope to leave the past behind settle into a peaceful life. That is until an attempt is made to abduct Daniella and kill Kalen. While seeking answers for the senseless crime, Abel Santiago, Mayla's middle brother returns. Convinced Kalen is guilty of murder, and  angered by his family's unquestioning support of him, Abel attempts to kill Kalen. After recovering from the near fatal attack, Kalen travels to the nearby town of Solana and interrupts two men in the midst of kidnaping a woman. The crime uncovers an even darker secret the Central Council is concealing, hundreds of Arrisian young women are missing.
   Suspecting his enemies Maria and Jenna are involved, he investigates. Following a lead from the kidnapers, Kalen, Mayla, Jamie Santiago and three roving patrol officers travel to an isolated corner of the Outlands on a rescue mission. But the mission turns in one of survival, their own.
   Separated from their friends, Kalen and Mayla stumble on the kidnappers’ hideout, and derail Maria's plans. Their interference thrusts him and the entire Santiago family into a life and death struggle that destroys the Santiago estate and threatens the lives of Mayla's family. Another attempt to kidnap Daniella, followed by a mid air attack on her and Connor O’Dell sends Kalen and Mayla hunting for the conspirators.
   During the ensuing battle to rescue Daniella and Connor Kalen tries to uncover the reason one of the riches, most powerful woman in the colonies would risk death to accomplish her mission. Jenna and Maria escape, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake, one Santiago dead and another near death.

I would appericate any comments.

A 'Microsoft' email you should avoid at all costs

"Danger Will Robinson, danger!"
I reviewed this warning from Kim Kammando a local radio personality about a Microsoft E-Mail going around. Instead of me telling you about it just click on the link and read for yourself. Kim's claim to fame. 'She is your digital goddess.' She's good and if you've never heard of her check out the rest of her website when you're done reading

The link to the site is no longer active My apologies
http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=14152&utm_medium=nl&utm_source=alerts&utm_content=2013-03-07-article-in-body-b

Self Editing: The Bane of Self-Publishing

Think how many times you've received a reply to an email you sent out, only to noticed that your original text contained errors. It turns out that editing one’s own writing is remarkably difficult. Once they are initially missed, errors tend to become "invisible" to a writer when they review their work. Our eyes skim past them. A lot of new writers make the critical error of self-editing and think they are done.

If the publishers of writers like James Patterson. Issac Asimov, Sue Grafton, Robert B Parker, Raymond E. Fiest all require an editor to review and check their work. What makes any of us first time writes believe we are better and don't need an editor.

My co-author and I had our self-published Tyranny series picked up by a publisher in Las Vegas. What was the first thing the owner did? He tore out the first chapter (literally). We had to create a whole new chapter starting in a different place. Next he took a scene from book one and had us move into to book two. Next he underlined all the placed where we did tell and not show. We sat together in a marathon session over a weekend and removed all the places he raised objection. Now the company editor is taking her turn and bringing up very good points about character development, scene description, and repetition in the story. The process is frustration at times but necessary.

I'm doing a last read-through of The Adam Eradication. I printed the entire manuscript, got away from my computer and started reading. While the manuscript is complete, and was edited twice, this read is pointing out a boat load of typos made while removing my telly pros and replacing them with pros that help the reader to see the story.

This brings to mind an elderly woman I met. She wrote a book and was very anxious to get it published. So anxious in fact she didn't want to bother having an editor read it at all. This was huge mistake, made by those who decided to self publish.

Concerned about her book I request she allow me to send the first five chapters  to the woman who did the first edit on my book. She went through the pages as a courtesy. What this editor returned shocked to woman into taking a second look and she paid the editor to run through her manuscript.

She received her red-lined manuscript back entered the edits and corrections. This writer figured she was done. I tried to convince her to have someone outside her family read through it one more time. Her reply, I made all the changes, it's ready to go.

She had 500 copies printed. After receiving  cases and cases of books, her son took one home to read. He returned it to her three day later, red lined, pointing out errors on almost every page. Her concept is a good one, but instead of book worth reading she had boxes of books that are good for little more than starting a fire.

My first editor did the work and I made the corrections. But The Adam Eradication, being my first book, I found what I considered holes in the story and proceeded to plug them. Enter a good friend (enough of a friend to tell me the truth) she did the second edit. The first thing she did was cut the last 10 chapters (48K+ words). Her analysis. Your book ends at this point. A good piece of advise. I used those 10 chapters to start the second book. (Never trash anything you've written, archive it. A good idea can be reworked to fit somewhere else)

Throughout the edit she deleted whole paragraphs as redundant. Some writer suffer from this problem some do not. I was anxious to get the story to press and rushed though the last edit. After publishing the book I gave several copies away. My friend's wife read the book and sometime later handed me her copy. She said "I love you story but --"  The book was marked with over forty sticky tabs each on a typo. Though minor typos, I learned my lesson. Fifty fire starters.

Editors cost money. Not as much as publishing an unreadable book. This mistake marks you as an armature, not serious about your craft. This kind of attitude will stop readers from ever considering reading any future work you publish, no matter how much you improve. And without someone finding your story compelling enough to look past your mistakes, no published will take you seriously in the future.

What can an editor do that I can't?  What can an editor do that you can't? An editor will read what you wrote, not what you think you wrote. A good editor will find your inconsistencies, help you with the language appropriate for your genre. For instance a steam punk novel's use of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc will be different from those used in a science fiction novel as will a fantasy fiction novel will differ from SF or romance. Next, an editor will point out your flaws in the construction of paragraphs, scene breaks and poor character development. Some writer's characters all talk the same. A good editor will point this out and help you see how to vary your character's personalities. A good editor will tell you when you've shifted you POV(Point Of View) If character A is you POV character you cannot have character's B thought in a scene or describe a scene through character B eyes. You can if your novel is written from an omniscient POV, but few good writers use this POV anymore.

An editor will spot problems with spelling, punctuation, and grammar that can escape your notice.
Does the phrase familiarity breeds contempt. Well, familiarity with your subject can result in explanations and descriptions that are incomplete or confusing to readers. What you see in your minds eye is always what you've put on paper. An editor will ensure that your copy is intelligibly and concisely written.

You may also ask yourself why an editor is necessary when your word processing program already has spell checking capabilities. Spell check, it turns out, is only partially effective at catching problems. For example, homonyms (e.g., council/counsel) you won't find these flagged. Words used nonsensically are regularly accepted by a spell checker. These programs have nothing to say about confusing, ones needlessly wordy, jargony or telly prose.

One of the biggest helps is to join a writer's group. You read your work aloud and they critique your writing. Be advised, while most groups offer good non threatening environment, you need a thick skin, because it is still hard to hear your writing evaluated by others.

You took the time and effort to create a good story. Give it the polish and attention it deserves.