Writing links: travel writing contest and getting published with academic presses

It's Monday and I'm in my usual post-book slump, having finished Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863. It's my latest American Civil War book for Osprey Publishing and as you can see from the link it's already available for preorder and at least one fine person has already preordered it! I've discussed here before why readers preorder books. It's a sign of loyalty and interest, and I'm glad they show that!

Enough blather about this Midlist Author. I promised some writing links. Transitions Abroad is running a travel writing contest that's well worth a look if you are a student writing about travel. You can win up to $500 plus publication!

The other link comes from fellow writer Dianna Graveman, who recently attended a panel on getting published by the academic press. She gave a link to a post by Beth Mead, Lindenwood University's MFA Program Director took notes on the publishers' panel that are well worth a read for anyone writing literary fiction and thinking of submitting to an academic press.

New Writer's Handbook Offers Inspiration, Advice

Back in March I did a post on Embracing the Term Midlister, which has been quoted by a couple of sites as sort of a statement of purpose for this blog. Now it has been published in a slightly altered form in The New Writer's Handbook, Volume 2, published by Scarletta Press.

I just got my author's copy in the mail and I have to say I'm very proud to be sharing its pages with the likes of U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Newbery Award winners Shannon Hale and Kirby Larson, and dozens of other successful writers.

The chapters are loosely organized by themes such as Creativity & Motivation, The Craft of Writing, Pitching Your Work, Internet Marketing Skills, Business Savvy, and Last Words & Literary Thoughts. I'm in the final category. I'm not sure how literary my thoughts were, but I always like to get the last word. Most of the contributions are only two to four pages, making them easy, bite-sized bits to read before, during, or after your writing day.

I haven't read all the contributions yet, but I've already learned many things, especially from the Internet Marketing and Business Savvy sections, which I'm weak on. I'd prefer to write all day and leave the business and marketing sides of my career to someone else, but who would that be?

Several key themes run through this book, and they repeat what I've said many times on this blog: you have to put a lot of time and thought into your writing, you have to be a clear-headed critic of your own work, and you have to keep at it. If you only buy one writing book this year (besides the indispensable Writer's Market) you'd have a hard time finding a better book than this one.

Writing Success Story: First Person Queer Wins the 20th Lambda Literary Award

Friend and fellow Madrileño writer Lawrence Schimel has edited dozens of anthologies and won numerous awards. A week ago an anthology he co-edited with Richard Labonté, First Person Queer, won the 20th Lambda Literary Award for Best Anthology. This book is a collection of essays on all aspects of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender life and was published last year by Arsenal Pulp Press. Today Lawrence shares with us how he got to where he is today.

"I began writing primarily for themed anthologies rather than magazines, and pretty quickly gained a little bit of a reputation for writing very short pieces (which are always easier for an editor to find room for) that fit the theme (you'd be surprised how few writers actually do submit work that is relevant). I also got to know many of my fellow contributors, both at conventions and online, so I began pitching ideas for my own anthologies, primarily to publishers who already knew me because they'd published work of mine already in anthologies edited by others.

"I'd published a story under my own name in the anthology Dark Angels: Lesbian Vampire Stories edited by Pam Keesey, and when I met the publishers of Cleis at a convention they remarked that it was the first time they'd read a story written by a man which felt like it had been written by a lesbian. At the time, I'd been editing a number of gay male erotica anthologies under a pseudonym, and many of my most reliable contributors were women who wrote under male pseudonyms, but it was much rarer for men to be writing lesbian material, and I suggested an anthology on the subject, of each side writing from the other point of view, and they liked the idea, and that conversation become Switch Hitters: Lesbians Write Gay Male Erotica and Gay Men Write Lesbian Erotica. I asked Carol Queen, a writer I knew and whose work I admired, to co-edit it and she said yes and since the publisher had been interested in working with her for a while, everyone was happy. Carol and I went on to edit a companion anthology of non-fiction personal essays, PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality, also for Cleis, which also won a Lambda Literary Award back in 1998.

"In the sci-fi field, I had appeared in a few dozen DAW anthologies, starting with my first professional sale to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress series. But many of the anthologies had been co-edited by Martin H. Greenberg, and since we had a working relationship already, I pitched him with a few ideas in the DAW model, and he liked them and pitched them to DAW, and since they were familiar with both Marty's and my work, they accepted Tarot Fantastic and Camelot Fantastic (and we did an extra non-Tarot-specific anthology The Fortune Tellers, too, as a spin-off from Tarot Fantastic).

"Pitching an anthology is always a tricky thing, especially for someone with little or no track record, because you need to get commitments from authors (if not actual pieces) before you can get a commitment from a publisher... But of course, most authors with enough reputation to interest a publisher are busy with confirmed projects, so they can't take the time to write something on spec... So it's a sort of catch-22, you need the one to get the commitment from the other and vice versa.

"In my case, since I am primarily an author, even though I have edited many anthologies and have won awards for my anthologies, I fell into anthologizing through the back door as it were, and I'd already built up a reputation as a writer beforehand through the numerous anthologies my own writing appeared in. I'd sold to 21 anthologies by the time I turned 21 and to 44 anthologies by the time I turned 22... so by the time I sold my first anthology a few years later, I'd already appeared in well over 50 anthologies. I don't write as often for anthologies any longer, since I'm often too busy with my own books, but my work has now appeared in over 200 anthologies."