The joy and insanity of being a writer

By Sandy Lender, fantasy author

Northeast Missouri State University, now Truman University, prides itself on offering a liberal arts education to graduates. I got out in four years with a degree in English and a liberal arts education that has garnered me a 15-year career in magazine publishing and public relations/marketing, but my true passion, the "career" I've nurtured since I was about six years old, is writing. And I don't mean journalism. Yes, journalism and editing are what have paid the bills the past 15 years (and will continue to do so), but fiction writing...oh...fiction writing is what has kept me alive.

It's probably going to be the death of me.

Let me explain. If you're visiting this site, you've probably been drawn here by an interest in books or authors or a writer's lifestyle or something along those lines. Let me give it to you straight. All writers have a touch of insanity about us (this is normal). We usually carry a muse around with us, but this is not always by choice. We complain about characters fighting for their rights, refusing to conform to our wishes in a scene. We go on writing binges that keep us up until 3 a.m. before collapsing next to our computers just to get up and start typing again when the sun blazes in to wake us around 7, skipping meals, showers, potty breaks and phone calls until some aspect of reality forces us out of the writing cocoon. We will tear a room to shreds looking for a pen if an idea has just struck us. And woe to the fool who gets between us and a piece of paper when we get hold of that pen...

Because I've experienced the insanity described above, I've been lifted up by hearing stories of people who have enjoyed my first published novel, Choices Meant for Gods. Now I get to read comments on my Amazon.com page of people claiming Nigel Taiman is "by far" their favorite character, or "I want to be just like Chariss when I grow up," and I feel this lump of pride in my darlings rise in my throat.

That's the joy and insanity of being a writer. You pour your heart and soul into the work; and pray that someone out there likes it, too. Now here's the hard part. People have to read it to like it. They have to know it exists to read it. So you have to get it to them.

Enter the marketing and promoting aspect of the new author's job. I attended the ArcheBooks Publishing's Professional Novelist Workshop about two weeks before receiving my contract for Choices Meant for Gods, and had attended the Naples Press Club Writers Workshop the week before that, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of the marketing nightmare new authors faced. I was ready. Lay it on me, I thought.

Now I'm on the last day of a two-month online book tour I organized myself, contemplating repeating a moderately successful instore book signing at the local Barnes & Noble that I organized myself, and managing six blogs (including www.todaythedragonwins.blogspot.com) for the promotion of my fantasy novel that I've organized myself, preparing a spate of press releases I've written myself that I'll spew forth like water from an erupting sprinkler next week, etc. Do you see a trend there?

New authors are on their own. Unless you have the few thousand dollars it takes to hire a publicity firm/PR agency to send out press releases for you, you're on your own. I don't have a few thousand stray dollars and I don't trust people who charge less than professional rates to do a professional job.

I take hope in the fact that even J.K. Rowling was once in the same boat I'm in now. She was down to her last food stamp as the story goes when that fateful call came: Her little story about a boy named Harry Potter had been picked up. I've already had my call. Choices Meant for Gods is published and out there. Now I need my lottery winning event to propel me into J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter status, but, for right now, I'm going to just keep writing deep into the night and reading those fabulous e-mails that praise Nigel and Chariss. Because making a living at this would be nice, but, truly, the writing binges that result in someone singing Chariss's praises are the real joy and insanity of being a writer.


I'd like to thank my host today for posting this guest blog article. And I'd like to thank everyone who made the CMFG Online Book Tour the raging success it's been. You know that paragraph above where I said new authors are on their own? I'd like to correct that. We actually have each other. Without each of you, the name Sandy Lender wouldn't be all over the internet right now, and readers wouldn't be one click away from http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=dp_return_1/104-9089752-5140754?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1175821346&sr=8-1 to pick up my epic fantasy novel. And new author Sandy Lender is grateful to every one of you.

"Some days, I just want the dragon to win."

Welcome A Dragon to the Blog!

Today we’d like to say a warm hello to writer Sandy Lender, who is visiting this blog as part of her online book tour. Sandy’s high epic fantasy novel titled Choices Meant for Gods has just been published by ArcheBooks Publishing. Check it out on http://www.archebooks.com/BookIDX/Indexes/Fantasy/CMG/CMGDesc.htm and read the interview with Sandy below.

Sandy will be available throughout the day to answer your questions, so feel free to post comments.

“Choices Meant for Gods” is an intriguing title. How does it relate to your book?
The lead character, Amanda Chariss, doesn't believe in herself at first. She views the confidence everyone else has in her as misplaced. Now, as she goes through her arc, she still has some reticence about the things she's asked to do, but she gets more comfortable with her role, but she still thinks the decisions she's asked to make are choices meant for gods, not a simple mortal girl.

I hear there are dragons in your book. Are they beautiful or scary?
There are two main dragons in the book. The first that we meet is terrible. She's an evil goddess as old as time itself who can actually morph between "human" and dragon form at will. And as frightening as Julette is in human/goddess form, you really don't want to see her in her dragon form…someone's probably going to get eaten.

The other dragon is wonderful. When we first meet him, he's just a fledgling—absolutely adorable and endearing. He lands on Chariss's balcony at night and watches her through the curtains because he's curious about this new human at the Taiman estate. And then one night Chariss catches hold of him…


Who are you when you’re not a writer?
Oh my…I don't think there's a time when I'm not a writer. I guess I have brief spells of insanity when I'm at Duran Duran concerts. I think my muse avoids me then because I'm just too loud. But I literally keep pen and paper with me at all times. I work for a magazine publishing company, so even my "day job" involves writing. Almost everything I do involves communicating through some means or another, and it's usually with the written word.


What made you decide to start writing?
Honestly, I think I was born with the desire! I used to write little stories for my great grandmother when I was a child; I wrote little one- and two-sentence "articles" for the class newsletter in first grade; it's just something I've always done.\

Who has influenced you the most in your writing?
There's a list, actually, that ranges from Jesus Christ, who kept me from getting too out of hand with the violence in Choices Meant for Gods (and who reminded me that Nigel and Chariss are NOT married—thus CMFG sports a PG rating instead of something insane like triple X), to Duran Duran to the Anglo-Saxon warriors that the Old English scops immortalized (I really want to meet the fellow who wrote Beowulf when I get to Heaven—I want to shake his hand!) to the Master of All Writing Charlotte Bronte.


Tell us about your road into the Published Kingdom.
This story would be horrific if not for the happy ending. I started out with the same depressing query-letter routine that most writers start out with. I'd research agents that represented fantasy authors, figure out which ones would accept new clients, send this sparkling query letter demonstrating my knowledge of publishing (I'd been in magazine publishing for 12 or 12+ years at that point as an editor and writer) and marketing. No one cared. Rejection-letter city, right? That got old fast, so, rather than continue getting beat up by that process, I decided to try something different—bypass the gatekeepers, as it were. I ended up going through a move in there, too, relocating to Southwest Florida to help someone in my life pursue his dream to go back to school. When I got to Florida, I joined a group that had a Writers Conference where I had a pitch session (which you can read about in the May 25 archives of www.alisonkent.com/blog) with ArcheBooks Publishing's Bob Gelinas. He accepted my manuscript and sent me a contract. Problem solved! I had my foot in the Publishing Kingdom door. And I am eternally grateful.

I cannot tell you how much effort it takes beyond that step, though. Holy cow. Marketing and promotion is not the job of the publisher in this industry these days. Even your high-n-mighty New York publishers don't have mongo budgets for marketing, and what budgets they do have are reserved for their big-name authors, not newbies. So a new author in the publishing industry has a path to beat through the underbrush to get noticed amid the 400+ titles being released each day to the marketplace. That's one of the reasons I'm in the middle of an online book tour for Choices Meant for Gods. I want to get my name out to as many online viewers as possible to let them now there's a new fantasy author on the scene. And that's why I'm grateful to you for letting me stop by your blog on that tour. You may not realize it, but you're providing me a great opportunity today and I thank you.


Please describe your usual day to us.
I'm up at 5:30 to prepare for the day. I post the Word of the Day and some other marketing-related and writing-related articles to my blog at www.todaythedragonwins.blogspot.com. Then I'm off to work (I have an hour commute) where I write and edit and produce magazines. After work, depending on the day, I'm either attending class, attending a writers meeting, or hitting a place to get a non-traditional venue to either hand out flyers about Choices Meant for Gods or sell the book on consignment. Once I get home, I fire up the computer to assist Nigel with his blog http://sandylender.blogspot.com because I can't really let him post without overseeing what he's writing about me. The evenings also see me editing Book II of the Choices trilogy, prepping future blog posts, managing the online book tour, helping out other writers with blogging questions (I give seminars on this topic), and writing. Now that the person I moved down here to support in following his dream has abandoned me and the house to foreclosure and bankruptcy (ooh, sounds like I made a mistake, doesn't it?), I have a few odd errands that interrupt my schedule, but I still make time to entertain my pet bird and keep up the marketing and promotion. Oh, once in a while, I eat. I usually go to bed around 1:30.


How much do you read?
A lot, considering my schedule! But I have found that most of my reading lately has turned into work, which is a shame. I'm reading specifically to provide reviews for other authors who need support in their marketing efforts.

Who are your favorite authors and why?
Hands down: Charlotte Bronte. (Are there other authors?) Seriously, I've been a Bronte fan since I read Jane Eyre one summer in high school. Holy cow. I think it was the first book that made me so mad I wanted to throw it across the room. The wedding scene (and everyone who's read it will understand) made me actually react out loud. And has anyone visiting today read Villette? Ugh…you read this fantastic story and get all the way to the end expecting roses and love and happiness and "oh, they finally get together," and Charlotte rips the rug out from under you in like the fourth- or fifth-to-last paragraph. That was another one of those moments where I was gasping at the page thinking, "She did not just end it that way." She's another one I have to meet when I get to Heaven…


Quick, sell us your next book.
Well, considering the working title may change, this may be odd. Choices Made by Gods is the sequel to Choices Meant for Gods, and it shows us Chariss growing in her role as the protector of a god who has just lost his power and who has an evil dragon hot on his trail. While Nigel Taiman struggles to keep her at his estate and bound to his side, the forces of prophecy, and the armies converging on his front lawn, threaten to take Chariss away. And it turns out he was right to try to make her stay…

Finally
Yvonne, thank you again for hosting me today at your site. I've enjoyed the questions you've had, and I'll check in to see what questions or comments I can answer from your visitors!