When people think about doing book promotions, they often think of an author going on a book tour. Doing a book signing or sitting at an author's table at a convention or book store means you get to talk to a lot of new people and (hopefully) get your books into the hands of new readers who've been impressed by your approachability and charm. This can be a lot of fun, especially if you're an extrovert who gets energized by meeting new people.

But even for the most gregarious among us, working a book table is also likely to test your reserves.

The simple act of sitting behind a book table -- whether you're actually selling any of your books or are just there to sign copies -- trips a certain circuit in a certain type of narrow skull. Namely, it triggers the conviction that you, the author, are a mere sales clerk, and therefore not a real person this Rudy McRuderson needs to show any basic courtesy toward.

When I shared a book table with my husband Gary Braunbeck, a guy in a suit came up, pointed at one of his Leisure titles, and said "Ooo, that looks like a spooooky book!" and wandered off making idiotic cartoon ghost noises. At a recent local book fair, a well-dressed soccer mom picked up my book Sparks and Shadows, read the back, then tossed it down on the table with the queenly disdainful announcement "I don't like short stories!"

More commonly, someone will shuffle up to your table, disinterestedly glance over the books you sweated blood to finish on deadline, and then say, "I've never heard of you."

And upon hearing this, your job, dear signing table author, is to give them your most dazzling smile and brightly reply, "Well, now you have! Would you like a bookmark?"

And that cuts to the most basic purpose of book promotion: it's how you let people know that your book exists, why they might want to pick up a copy, and where they can get it. And you try not to alienate anyone (including yourself) in the process.

Make no mistake: promoting your book is work. My first job involved scraping dried poo out of the bottom of snake cages; the darkest depths of book promo can seem comparable. However, the snakes never once thanked me for a clean cage, whereas I have gotten emails from people who've picked up my work at a convention as a result of seeing me read or seeing my materials and consequently became fans.

I can see some of you shaking your heads, resisting my crazy notions. Surely you would never have to stoop to the literary equivalent of scraping snake poop! Isn't writing a good book hard enough? Surely well-written books just naturally rise to the top of any book stack and find their audience like dandelions finding the sun! Isn't all that icky, tiresome promo stuff the publisher's job?

Sure. And it would be great if your publishers threw all their money and effort into promoting your book ... but what if they don't? It would be great if the big book chains automatically ordered a zillion copies of your book and put them up front for all to see ... but what if they don't? What if the publisher gets cold feet about your book's sales chances and releases it as a POD, and now no brick-and-mortar stores will stock it at all?

What then? How is your book going to fare against the hundreds of other books that are published in the U.S. and U.K. each day?

I won't stand here and tell that you actually have to do anything. You still have a book, and what you do with it is entirely up to you.

For instance, you can just be thrilled that you beat the odds and got a book published, send your author's copies to your friends and family, and let the book market remain a black-box mystery you don't involve yourself with. You've got a pretty nice life, and you reached your goal of becoming a Published Author. So what if low sales and low involvement will prevent you from selling another book to that publisher? One book's enough, right?

Alternately, you can feel cheated that your publisher dropped the promotions ball, and bitter that people aren't flocking to the book you poured your heart and soul into. You can wail and gnash your teeth and throw up your hands in defeat. Later, after you've pulled yourself from your inactive funk, you start work on your next project, hoping your first failure hasn't doomed your hoped-for career as a writer. You can always get a fresh start with a pseudonym, right?

Or you can say to yourself, "Hm. This isn't going like I thought it would, but I refuse to let my book go down as a failure without a fight. This is my book, and I know in my heart there's an audience for it out there, and dammit, I'm going to find it!"

And when you're ready to roll up your sleeves and help your book perform as well as it possibly can, that's when you need to start considering what you can do to promote it.

The first, most basic step is one I've already touched on: write a good book. Write the best book you possibly can.

You are, first and foremost, a writer. Worry about promotions after you've taken care of your craft and your deadlines. You can surely do a hard sell and essentially trick somebody into buying a mediocre book, but that reader isn't likely to come back for seconds.

The second step is this: never, ever get stuck with a bad cover.

In this instance, "bad" can mean an ugly cover, but it can also means a cover that doesn't speak to the target audience's aesthetic sensibility, or which greatly misleads readers into thinking the book will be something it's not. The old adage "Don't judge a book by its cover" is widely and utterly ignored by the reading public. People buy or ignore books all the time based purely on the cover art; buyers for book chains may double an order of a book that has a cover they think is especially appealing.

Yes, this is shallow and horrifying, but it's how the world works. A bad cover can kill your book dead. So don't let a bad cover happen to your book if you can help it.

Most big publishers have professional design staff, but these pros often work under crushing deadlines and consequently they do make mistakes. Look at their past offerings and try to get a cover approval clause written into your contract if you have any doubt that they'll give you a good cover. Small-press publishers may or may not be run by people with good art sense, but they'll generally be perfectly willing to work with you if you approach them politely with suggestions.

Not sure if you know what separates a good cover from a bad one? Then take some time to learn a little about the basics of graphic design and typography. Being "artistic" is as much a learned skill as it is a natural instinct; even if you think you're art blind, you probably can learn the basics of good design. And if after Art 101 you're still convinced that covers featuring bluish Poser people trapped in the Uncanny Valley look just fine ... make friends with an artist who likes to read the kind of books you like to write. They can help warn you when a bad cover is about to happen to you.

Developing your graphic design sense and acquiring skills with programs like Adobe InDesign and Photoshop will serve you well as you move on to more advanced book promotion tactics ... but I'm going to save that and more for future entries.

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by Gary A. Braunbeck

Many dim moons ago, when Reagan had just taken possession of the White House and I'd taken possession of my 20s, I decided on fiction writing as a career, unaware at the time that my decision was due to undiagnosed brain damage, the extent of which is still being determined. I was cranking out bad short stories and even worse novels on a magnificent (and if used as a weapon, potentially deadly) Olympus manual typewriter. Its loud, metallic clickitty-clack-clack became the underscore of my Grand Opera of the Imagination, a march, a rally cry, a battle hymn, always singing out You can do it! You can do it!

Yes, we all recognize the above as being Inspirational Bullshit Designed to Make You Urp on Your Shoes. The truth is, that sound used to drive me crazy, because eventually it began to sound like the Failure Police were mocking me as they danced and sang before my eyes in a Kick-Line of Coming Calamity: You're going nowhere/You're doing nothing/No one will read you/You'll die unread. Boogie-oogie-oogie. Sisyphus had nothing on me.

One of the things that used to keep me going was the thought that, if I kept at it and listened to the advice of pro writers whenever I could corner them, I would start to publish, then be paid, then be able to support myself on writing alone. Well, I did keep at it, I did listen to advice from the pros (especially a marvelously encouraging letter from Harlan Ellison to the 19-year-old moi), and I began to publish. My first short story appeared in a small press magazine when I was 22, and now--almost exactly 25 years later--I have somewhere around 200 published stories to my credit, as well as 10 novels, 10 short story collections, 1 non-fiction book, and 2 anthologies that I have co-edited. And there are nights when that chorus line from the Ninth Circle of Hell still puts on its little show, with a Sunday matinee thrown in for good measure. And I wonder why I'm on anti-depressants.

One thing that often appears to beginning writers much as the vision of the Holy Grail appeared to King Arthur is the concept of the Advance. Ah, so elusive she seems, waiting somewhere Out There in your future, wagging her finger seductively, lips moistened and eyes gleaming with yummy promise: I'm here for you, you'll see. Some day, we'll be together.

Cue soft focus, Writer embraces Seductress, Fade Out as echoing voices sing: You finally got here/Don't need to punch the clock/But you remember/There's still Writer's Block!

Ahem. Yes, the last and deadliest phase of going from part-time to full-time writer, from would-be pro to flat-out slave of the muse: the advance.

As I write this, I have a stack of book contracts within easy reach. All have been signed by the proper parties, and all have been accompanied by advance checks. There's just one little glitch in this portrait of the Writer's dream Come True.

I haven't written any of these books yet.

(Not entirely true; work has begun on all and is nearly finished on two; the point is, I've got until October to deliver all five. Boogie-oogie-oogie, cue the kick-line in the wings.)

That's the part of the Pro Writer Fantasy sequence that never enters the picture when the young You imagines that provocative seductress beckoning to you from your future. Yes, it's great to have someone hand you a stack of cash for something you haven't written yet (it's still one hell of a confidence booster), and when you're younger it's easy to think you'll never, ever, under any circumstances, have trouble producing that book you've already taken money for, but somewhere in the theatrical wings of your subconscious Jung and Freud are rolling on the floor, howling with laughter as the Failure Police don their black fishnet stockings ala Dr. Frankenfurter and wait for their cue.

I once promised myself that I would never, ever accept money up front for something I haven't written. As far as my books go, I've broken that promise every time, and so far I haven't locked up, freaked out, melted down, climbed a tower with a rifle in my hands, or taken to reading John Grisham.

But ....

But there's always the waiting chorus line in my head, kept in place by a stage manager who every so often calls: "Places for the Dance of Doom and Despair! Places, please, he's gonna crack this time, I just know it!"

Taking advances up front for something not yet written is a sure-fire way to keep you on edge, and adds (as I've found so far) a certain, feverish, almost desperate quality to the work itself, which gives definite intensity to the telling of the tale. I've had many people say one of the things they like best about my work is its strong emotional content. I appreciate that, because I do like to engage readers' emotions as deeply as possible (there just isn't story without feeling), but to be completely honest, sometimes that intensity comes not just from my imagination, but from the realization that Dear God, I've already taken money for this thing and I Have to finish it, I Have To, Dear God I HAVE TO! What if I can't? What if I go blank, become blocked, flip out, have to take a one-way ride in the Twinkie Mobile to the House of Good Pudding? What Then? What? WHAT THE #@!* WAS I THINKING?

And one lithium later I remember the why I got into this in the first place.

To meet women.

As long as they're not part of certain chorus....

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Everyone who sets out to become a writer wants to be seen as a "real" writer, not a wanna-be or never-gonna-be. It's basic human nature to crave acceptance, status and respect. And even the crustiest, most jaded authors -- despite their protestations to the contrary -- are human beings who are warmed by praise and stung by criticism just like everyone else.

Group hug, anyone? Sure, let's all have a big, fuzzy group hug. You're going to need it. Respect can be very hard to come by in the writing world.

Have you written seven epic manuscripts but not sold anything yet? Average Joe SFWA Active will snort and roll his eyes behind your back when you declare yourself to be a writer in his presence.

Excited because you just sold your first novel? Snarky Big-Name World Fantasy Award Winner won't give you the time of day.

Have you made a long, award-winning career selling dozens of horror and dark fantasy books? Professor Condescendor at the Great North American English Department will pat you on your head and tell you it's too bad you don't do any "serious" work.

And if you've made a solid literary and commercial career writing dark works of staggering intelligence, subtle lyricism and heartbreaking genius, Teen AOL User will be quick to write a negative Amazon review of your latest opus: "This book was teh BORING! There was no action in it at ALL!"

And if you manage to write bestselling works that magically combine high art, genuine chills and compelling storytelling, if you have Professor Condescendor and Teen AOL User and Big-Name Award Winner all clamoring for your next publication ...

... you'll go visit Uncle Insurance Salesman, who'll yawn when you describe your latest book tour and ask, "So when are you gonna quit playing around with that writing crap and get yourself a REAL job?"

The moment you set out to become a writer, no matter how good you are, you're going to meet people who'll put you in touch with your inner Rodney Dangerfield at almost every turn.

So you just can't win, can you? You might as well just write what you want and pay to publish the result at Lulu.com and not worry about what anyone else thinks, right?

Whoa. Not so fast.

You might not always be able to win at the writing game, but there's a right way and a wrong way to play it. And if you play well, you'll (probably) earn the respect of the people who might matter a whole lot to the progress of your writing career.

Because when you get down to bare boards, you want that career, don't you? Writing makes a fine hobby, but hobbyists just don't get the kind of respect pros do. And the beauty of making money at writing is that it enables you to spend your time writing instead of fixing leaky toilets or taking customer support calls.

The most straightforward way of gaining respect in the genre of your choice is to write and sell a lot of excellent work in that genre.

Straightforward, sure ... but not very darned easy. Writing well is hard enough without considering that the average paying publisher might accept less than 3% of the manuscripts submitted to them.

It can take years for talented beginners laboring in anonymity to land first story or novel sales, particularly if they have decided to limit their submissions to high-profile pro markets.

So what's a newbie to do? Fortunately, there are several para-writing activities you can engage in that can both improve your skills and positively raise your profile and respect in the field (and thus your likelihood of getting published).

1. Go to Clarion or the Borderlands Boot Camp. These workshops are often described as "boot camp for writers". Borderlands Press' workshop is held in Towson, MD over a long weekend. There are three of the six-week Clarion workshops in San Diego, Seattle, and Australia. You'll have to compete to get in, pay to stay in, and it's an intense experience that galvanizes some writers and traumatizes others.

At Clarion, you'll work with established pros and other up-and-comers; the networking contacts you make can be invaluable. And if you graduate, you may find that a Clarion credit is enough to lift your submissions out of the slushpile and onto the editor's desk for closer consideration. This golden period only lasts for a year or so after you graduate, but many graduates have made publishing hay from it.

2. Get an MFA in writing. Pursuing a graduate degree of any kind can be quite expensive, and an MFA takes time and work. On the plus side, it gives you a socially acceptable way to spend a few years focusing on your writing. On the downside, MFA programs are rarely receptive to science fiction, fantasy, romance, and horror, so you'll have to bleach your genre roots and learn to put up with a lot of tedious (and potentially discouraging) lit snobbery from your instructors and classmates.

Writing practice aside, an MFA gets you an academic credential -- one that some people may be impressed with -- but not much else. However, having an MFA is a prerequisite to getting a job as a creative writing instructor at most big universities, and becoming a writing professor is a pretty good gig if you can get it. Academia is not for everyone, and MFA programs crank out many more graduates than there are waiting positions, but a professorship is more suited to a writer's creative life than most 9-to-5 jobs.

2a. Or, go to Seton Hill. Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA, runs a unique low-residency MA in Writing Popular Fiction. The goal of the program is to have you graduate with a publishable novel manuscript in your hands; Nalo Hopkinson and Mary Sangiovanni and others have sold the books they worked on in the Seton Hill program. Can you get published without going to school? Absolutely. But if you want to get a Master's degree and you want to work with pros like Michael Arnzen, Gary A. Braunbeck, Lawrence C. Connolly, and Tim Waggoner, you should check out the program.

3. Become an editor at a paying publication. If you're buying fiction and poetry, you get instant credibility -- as long as you make good decisions.

Fortunately, you don't need to shell out the money to start your own publication. There are hundreds of established publications out there, and the vast majority of them are understaffed; they will gladly accept competent volunteers for proofreading and slush-reading.

You'll get to see the submissions process from the other side of the transom, and the experience can be tremendously educational. Hard work and good taste will help you rise in the volunteer ranks until you're a recognized editor. But beware: you may find yourself with so much work on your hands that you no longer have the time or energy to write.

4. Don't ignore the small presses. Yes, the small presses are small. Many don't pay well, if at all. But there are good, respected small press magazines that will get you a bit of pay and a bit more recognition in the genre. No, they can't compete with top-paying markets in terms of exposure. But competition for the best markets is fierce. The writers I've known who've written stories or novels, sent them out only to the biggest markets and given up on the manuscripts when they weren't accepted have all ultimately given up on writing.

5. But by all means, submit to the top markets. A single sale to one of the top markets will instantly raise your profile in the genre and give you much more credibility as a writer. So, if you think your work's solid, give it a shot; just don't fall into a depressed I'm-no-good-I-should-just-quit funk if you miss your target.

6. Don't give up. Did you read #5? I repeat: don't give up. Getting established as a writer will take a while. How long a while? Probably years. How many years? Get a pair of dice; roll 'em. That's as likely a forecast as any. Ultimately, it will probably take longer than you expect. But those with sticktuitiveness are rewarded.

7. Write nonfiction. Editors at paying magazines are deluged with fiction and poetry submissions, but nonfiction submissions are sometimes just a trickle. So, your odds of placing a book or movie review can be pretty good. An article credit doesn't "count" the same as a fiction credit ... but it still gets you a bit of pay and gets your name on the Table of Contents.

8. Follow the Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or, phrased a bit less Biblically: "The best way to get respect is to give it." Or, even more simply: don't be a jerk.

Yes, we all know certain big-name writers who are famously caustic, combative, or just plain unpleasant. Some people unfortunately find a great deal of entertainment in watching established authors snark at the expense of "lesser" writers. Consequently, some beginners mistakenly believe that they, too, can get noticed and get published if they're nasty as possible.

This tends to backfire in a bad way. One talented writer I know who kicked up a lot of dust and got himself banned from forum after forum eventually felt he'd damaged his career so much he needed to legally change his name. No one ever succeeded as a writer because they acted like a huge jerk; the huge jerks in the field have succeeded because they write like angels.

So, go forth and write like an angel and work like the devil. And remember that everyone in this business is only human.

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I was updating my website today, and it finally occurred to me that the casual site visitor might be put off by the fact that I refer to poetry and fiction sales rather than poetry and fiction publications.

"Whoa," he or she might think. "This Lucy person is all money-focused. She's all commercial. Ew. Doesn't she care about art?"

Because I have a mortgage and other bills due every month and Bad Things Will Happen if those don't get paid, and because I am not a trust-fund baby, yes, money is on my mind pretty regularly. But I expect I'm not any more money-focused than most of you reading this.

If I really cared about money above all else, I'd have gone into real estate or stock trading. I surely wouldn't be spending time writing poetry.

Like it or not, those of us who work in the arts in the U.S. have to deal with a capitalist system that doesn't cut us any slack if we've worked very, very hard on our craft all month and yet don't have any money. And the no-money situation is a pretty common one for fiction writers who don't have family supporting them.

It's hard for a beginning writer to sell a story or poem. If you haven't tried it before, you may have no clue exactly how hard it can be. It can even be pretty hard to give your stuff away to a nonpaying lit magazine.

Making a sale is essentially hearing an editor say, "I like this so much I'm picking it as better than 100 other things I got this month, and I'm going to make space for it in the publication I've staked my reputation to, and I'm going to give you money out of my own pocket."

In other words, a sale means a whole lot of editorial approval.

Furthermore, writers' organizations like SFWA and HWA define a writer's professional status by the quantity and quality of sales he or she makes. And the IRS surely demands that I keep track of individual sales; those sales define me as a "real" writer in the government's eyes rather than a hobbyist.

So if those groups are gonna define my status as a writer by my sales, I might as well too, right?

"But what about Art?" I hear some of you cry. "Where's the art in all this pursuit of filthy lucre?"

I care deeply about art. But I don't get to decide if any of my writing is artistic. Art is what happens in the reader's mind, if it happens at all. It's subjective, and I don't get to control it.

What I do get to control is craft. Good craft often translates into good art. And I work as hard as I can to produce well-crafted writing.

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Beginning writers who send out their very first stories to magazines or anthologies don't usually have much trouble keeping track of where they sent them. Why? They can't stop thinking about them!

A new writer often spends her free time anxiously second-guessing herself and her submission decisions: "Ack! A typo! I should have done more proofreading! I should have cut that second fight scene! I should have sent it to Alternate Magazine instead!"

And when the mail carrier comes, she pounces on the pile of mail, hoping for a response, day after day, month after month, but when the ominously thin SASE finally arrives, she can hardly bring herself to open it.

Once a writer has been through the wringer of the painfully long submission-rejection-resubmission cycle a few times, she forces herself to stop thinking about the darned submissions, and focuses on the work at hand: writing new stories.

And that's when the submissions can get muddled in a writer's mind. It's easy to lose track of a rejected submission, thinking that it's still being considered someplace, while it languishes on the writer's desk or hard drive. A worse case happens when a writer inadvertently starts sending the same story to multiple markets at the same time, only to end up with two different acceptances for the same story. And while this might seem an embarrassment of riches to an unpublished writer, at best it's an embarrassment. At worst, the writer is faced with the painful decision of which bridge to burn, since most editors are cranky and overworked and don't look kindly on authors pulling accepted stories out from under them.

So, writers need to have some kind of a method to keep track of their submissions. What kind should you use?

Some writers prefer the simplicity of keeping track of their submissions on paper.

"I used to be a teacher," says writer Kevin Killiany. "I have several old grade books with lots of columns and rows. Each manuscript has its own page. The titles of the stories tracked are written on the cover of the book, with stars next to the ones that sell."

Despite my abiding gadget lust, when it comes to submission tracking I'm also pretty low-tech. I use note cards in a little plastic index card box. Each story/poem/article gets its own card, and each submission is recorded on a line. When I've filled one side of the card with rejections, I know it's time to reconsider my tactics.

The editor at Albedo One approves of my card box tracker: "I would suggest your library card approach is as good as it gets. You do not need to wait for your computer to boot up. You are not snookered when there is a power cut. You have the whole story (if you forgive the pun) in one simple piece of card. In addition, you can be flexible in what you note on the card.

"The only problem with the card system is that you would find it a bit difficult to produce listings of the work you have out in the market," he says. "But then again, how often do you really need to do that?"

Others have used the box tracking method, but became disenchanted with it.

"I used to use notecards in a little plastic box, but a few years ago I switched to a very simple one-page spreadsheet, which I put in a folder with the manuscript itself," says writer/editor Lori Selke. "Same data, slightly different format, no more annoying little plastic box kicking around and getting in the way."

Horror author Yvonne Navarro combines paper tracking with computer software. "Every short story that I finish has its own manila folder," she says. "On the inside left side I write the date and name of the magazine/anthology and the date on which I should receive some kind of a reply based on their guidelines (or my estimate). If the manuscript is rejected, I write that and the date, then start all over.

"To keep track I have a little 'sticky note' program on my computer that pops up a note with the story name when the response should be here. Before that I used a big, full-year write-on/wipe-off calendar, but I never wrote on it -- I used Post-It Notes with the name of the story that I moved from date to date."

As far as computer-based tracking methods go, many writers use spreadsheets.

Writer Daniel R. Robichaud turned to spreadsheets after finding paper records unmanageable. "Once upon a time, I assembled lists on loose sheets of copy paper with the story name and market, written in the order of submission. After a while that became a complete nightmare to manage, particularly after moving a couple of times when loose sheets of paper could and did get lost."

He now keeps separate worksheets in a single Microsoft Excel file for his fiction and nonfiction. "It's easy for me to set up a reminder in the Office Mail program to send queries for submissions sitting in slush piles long after the market's posted response time expires."

Brenta Blevins prefers to use the freeware spreadsheet program found in found in the OpenOffice.org suite. "I like the nice linear quick view of the spreadsheet and being able to sort within my spreadsheet."

Other writers prefer to use online trackers offered by sites such as WritersMarket.com, Duotrope and Writers' Planner.

"The Duotrope submissions tracker is excellent because it also ties into their market listings and reports on response times," says writer E.C. Meyers. "It's online and free, but Duotrope does accept donations towards their operating costs."

"Another advantage of Duotrope is its web accessibility," says Brenta Blevins. "I don't have to have the computer with my spreadsheet -- I can update the submission record anywhere (even on vacation)."

There's a freeware program that many writers such as Bev Vincent use: Sonar 2, which was created by author Simon Haynes.

"I wrote it because I was going nuts keeping track of short story submissions," Haynes writes on his site. "This program tells me which market has each story, whether a story has been sold or rejected and which stories are gathering dust instead of earning their keep."

Of Sonar 2, writer Adam Nakama says, "It's not as powerful as high-end database software, and has a couple of quirks to it, but I don't need the full power of database tracking. (Sonar 2) has a few things built in that are nice for writerly types who don't know how or don't want to program it into their friendly database record.

"It also makes it easy for you to data mine your submissions," says Nakama. "You can see, for example, that you've been sending stories like clockwork to Magazine X for years, but that damn editor just won't accept your stuff, despite you getting frequent acceptances from other magazines on par with it. You may want to consider that your work just doesn't mesh with that editor and move on."

So, as you can see, there are lots of ways to track your manuscript submissions.

Someday, we writers may have access to neural interfaces that can update your entries just by thinking about them. In the meantime, your notebook, spreadsheet, or software is only as good as your own updates. So take the most basic step in good tracking: make sure you write down your submissions when you send them out.

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Every so often, I see a frantic message on Shocklines posted by someone whose computer has crashed -- with the only existing copy of a newly-minted short story or novella dead along with their hard drive.

If your hard drive dies carrying important files that can't be resurrected with the aid of programs like Norton or TechTool, that's a painful way to learn that you must do regular system maintenance like defragging your hard drive and backing up your files to keep them safe. But these days, keeping backups of files is only part of what you need to do to keep your work safe.

It'd be simpler if computers simply worked and didn't crash, wouldn't it? But crash they do, and some of the worst crashes I've seen in my job as a tech support agent have happened because of spyware and virus infections. The Internet has become a truly treacherous place for Windows users (Mac and Linux users are largely immune to such problems at this point) and malware infections can be difficult to remove; the best thing to do is to protect yourself.

The first thing you need to do is to make sure you have a firewall installed and have a decent antivirus program like McAfee VirusScan (my personal favorite) or Norton Antivirus, and have the program set to regularly update your virus profiles. The best antivirus program in the world won't do you any good if you're exposed to a brand-new virus that the program can't recognize because it hasn't been updated (and on that note, make sure that you check for and install system and security updates for your computer's operating system on a regular basis).

The best thing to do is to try to avoid exposing yourself to viruses in the first place. Many people get infections through spam emails that contain viruses masquerading as other types of attachments. So, don't open those attachments promising pictures of Britney Spears cavorting naked with the Queen of England, folks. Don't even touch them.

Also, don't respond to alarming emails that purport to come from your bank or credit card company. Don't click on the links they provide, don't call the phone numbers they provide, and in the name of all that is holy, don't click or call and then provide any personal information or account numbers. These emails are almost always scams intended to steal your information so that some creep can clean out your bank account or go on a credit spree on your dime. These assholes are ruthlessly efficient, and they will start doing this within minutes of getting your information. If you're worried about your account, look up the company's name in your telephone book and call them.

And finally, never, ever email anyone your entire social security number, credit card number, password, etc.

An email is about as private as a postcard, or a conversation on a crowded bus. You would be amazed at the sheer number of people who potentially have access to your emails as they make their way from Computer A to Computer B. This a good reason to never put your social security number on a manuscript that you send through email or in an emailed contract.

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In this article, I'll take a look at the practical economics of trying to make a living writing short fiction in the U.S. This topic regularly comes up on message boards and at conventions. People usually speak in generalities ("You can't make a living writing stories!" "Can, too!") or cite specific-but-individual anecdotes without other data or analysis.

I'm going to take the approach that it is possible to survive on the proceeds from short fiction; the question then becomes, under what conditions can it be done?

Let's start by looking at the U.S. federal government's standards for poverty. The 2006 US poverty threshold for a single person is $9800, which works out to $817/month. A person working 40 hours a week at a job that pays $6.85/hour – which some rural school districts in Ohio are paying teachers, so it's not just burger wranglers bringing home this kind of paycheck – makes about $890/month after taxes.

As millions of college students know, it's entirely possible to survive on $800 (or even less) each month if you're able to split costs with other people and you can approach your financial situation with some savvy creativity.

Let's assume, for this scenario, that you are living with a group of other people in a large house. You are not anybody else's dependent for tax or other purposes (meaning your costs are lowered but nobody's there to bail you out if you can't make your share of the rent) and you likewise do not have any dependents (not even a goldfish). You are not trying to pay off loans or other debts. You live in a city and can use a bicycle, public transportation or carpools to get around so that you don't have the expense of maintaining a car. You are willing to shop at thrift stores, get most of your books and CDs from your public library, and you're not above dumpster diving if the situation warrants it.

Furthermore, we'll assume that you are fundamentally healthy, do not have a drug/alcohol habit, and are not accident prone. The budget we're going to work will not support your blowing $60 at the bar every Friday night, nor will it support the kind of health insurance that would actually keep you from going bankrupt should you actually get sick.

Under the above scenario, you could probably rent a room in a shared house in a student neighborhood for about $200 a month¹. Your share of the utilities might come to $50, your food about $250, your transportation costs perhaps $45, plus $55 for things like aspirin and shampoo and the occasional treat at the neighborhood coffee house.

This means that each and every month, you need at minimum $600 to survive. At $600 per month, you'd be under the federal poverty level and would qualify for food stamps, but getting food stamps as a freelancer is often an unreliable prospect at best so we'll pretend this option doesn't even exist. But be aware that it could be an option, as might other forms of public assistance depending on where you live.

So, we know what you need to make; now let's focus on how you're going to make it.

The SFWA/HWA-designated professional rate for fiction is $0.05 a word. But most markets really don't pay that, and you might not have the luxury of shopping a story around much, so let's go with $0.03/word. At three cents a word, you'd have to sell 20,000 words worth of stories every month at minimum without fail.

Working from the assumption that 30% of your writing has to be rewritten/scrapped or simply doesn't sell for the required amount (and this is a very generous assumption), that output increases to 28,600. But if you think about it as having to produce 954 words a day to make your minimum, it doesn't seem that bad; most proficient writers can crank out a page an hour, so you're looking at 4 hours of butt-in-chair work each day.

By a similar calculation, if you wanted to upgrade your lifestyle and make $817/month, you'd have to write 1200 sellable words of fiction each day.

Things get much better if you're able to write children's stories and technical nonfiction. You can get $0.25/word for children's stories from the top markets; a 1,500-word story at that rate gets you $375; sell two of those and you've earned your nut for the month.

Writers with scientific knowledge and good research skills can sell short technical articles for $0.50 or $0.60 a word; a 1400-word article that might take you three solid days to research and write would earn you $800. Sell one of those a month, and the pressure's largely off. Sell two of those, and you're doing better than a 1st-grade teacher's aide in Delaware, OH. You could get a cat! (If your roommates will let you)

Things get even better if your fiction passes as literature in the eyes of the arts community and you can get yourself a grant every once in a while. (Finding and landing grants is a specialized skill in itself, but good first steps are subscribing to Support For Writers and checking with your state and local arts groups).

However, things get considerably worse if you think about how long it takes some publishers to read and respond to your work, and that many fiction markets don't pay until the work is published. If you send a sellable story out to market, it might be over a year before you see a check for it, even if it gets accepted by the very first place you send it to. Having some savings to fall back on becomes very, very important when you think about the dry spells you might encounter.

Once you've sold a stack of stories to decent publications and have started getting a name for yourself, a producer may notice one of your stories and buy the rights to it for film or television. That's like winning the lottery, both in payout and probability. More realistically, as a "name" story writer, you may be able to sell a collection. Collections are hard to sell to publishers because publishers find them hard to sell to readers, but if you succeed you may get a fairly decent advance of anything from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. The advance for a story collection most often won't be as good as what you'd get if you sold a novel, unless you're clever and you've written a bunch of short stories featuring the same characters and have strung them together to make your collection look enough like a novel that publishers and readers will accept it as such.

And that's the moral of this writeup: if you want a career as a fiction writer, you need to start writing books, and that means writing novels, Harlan Ellison's career notwithstanding.

Of course, you could always try to become a creative writing professor. If you have the patience to teach and the temperament to deal with academia, a faculty position is a pretty sweet gig if you can find one. If you have a Master's degree, solid literary publication credits and luck, you might be able to find a job at a community college. If you want to teach at a large university, though, you'll need an MFA as well as lit credits and teaching experience. MFA programs can be tough to get into^2a, expensive, and will likely mean you have to move to a new state for school ^2b. Furthermore, they pump out many times more graduates than there are waiting faculty jobs.

But what if you don't want to (or find that you can't) write novels, don't want to teach (or can't do an MFA), and you don't have savings to fall back on? A part-time job that doesn't suck out your soul ³ can help tremendously. Some part-time jobs at colleges and public libraries can come with health insurance benefits; competition for these low-paid jobs can therefore be fierce, but they're worth looking for and applying to. Also, check out your local Starbucks; some stores offer health benefits for part-timers. Having a job that doesn't devour your energy but which gets you out of your room (and your own head) a couple of times a week can be a huge mental health boost.

In short, you can survive as a short fiction writer if you're healthy, single⁴, hard-working, prolific, and willing to cut a very low economic profile. A few thousand dollars saved in the bank before you start won't hurt, either.

---

1: If you live in an expensive area, $200 for a room in a 5- or 6-bedroom house may require some very hard searching and willingness to compromise your personal standards when it comes to cleanliness, building integrity, housemate appeal, and neighborhood safety; in very expensive places, it may be virtually impossible. There are other alternatives that determined writers have taken, however. I know of a young male writer who, for about a year, lived in an old van parked behind a friend's small house in California and wrote/submitted stories on a laptop connected to the household wireless network. He showered at the gym at a nearby college and was able to cook his meals in the house. Eventually he started making enough money that he was able to get a proper apartment.

2a: MFA programs can be particularly hard to get into if you've actually been getting paid for your fiction and have consequently been tainted by genre.

2b: Locals need not apply to many MFA programs.

3: The soul-sucking jobs are often well-paid but can cause despair that in turn causes chronic illness and writer's block; if you suspect you might have a soul, it's best to avoid evil jobs if you can.

4: Suffering for your art is noble; making your family suffer for it is bullshit.

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by Gary A. Braunbeck

If you look at a book, usually on the dustcover, paperback cover or somewhere in the first couple of pages you will see something like "'(This author's) writing is a dazzling bravura of wild imagery and nail-biting suspense.' – Reed McReaderson" or "'A wonderful book! I couldn't put it down!' – Gush Auteur".

These little cover raves are known as "blurbs".

I am a firm believer that a handful of strong blurbs can be just as effective as the same number of positive reviews; they're shorter, they're direct, and they reveal nothing spoiler-like about the work in question. This, to my mind, makes them a good alternative for potential readers who don't want to chance having a review give away too much of the story.

Some -- but not all -- blurbs are culled from reviews. Probably half the time (or more) a writer will contact other writers and ask them if they would be willing to read something with an eye toward providing a blurb. I have gotten several wonderful quotes this way, and have also provided them for other writers. (I don't always do this; in the past 4 years I have been asked to read several novels for which, in the end, I couldn't in good conscience provide a blurb because, well...I didn't like them.)

Let me quickly address a few misconceptions about writers providing blurbs for other writers:

1. Yes, a lot of the time these writers know or are at least acquainted with one another -- but that in no way means that a good blurb will be guaranteed. A writer worth any blurb value has his or her reputation to uphold, and publicly praising a bad book won't help that cause one bit.
   
   
2. I can't speak for others, but I myself do read, from first page to last, each and every book I am asked to blurb. (There seems to be a rather cynical belief that writers don't bother reading their buddies' books before giving them a blurb -- while I don't doubt that this happens every so often, it is most assuredly not the norm.)
   
   
3. Yes, any writer providing a blurb is aware that it's going to be used to entice a reader to buy this particular book, and will slant their blurb to that end -- but bear in mind that is because they like and believe in the book to begin with, so its integrity needn't be called into question.
   
   

This is not to say that things can't go wrong here, as well. If a book is saturated with too many blurbs, one gets the feeling that the publisher is overcompensating and perhaps trying to sell you a bill of goods. The first book in Dean Koontz's Frankenstein series has ten pages of blurbs inside.

That's overkill, because the sheer amount of them robs each individual blurb of its effectiveness. You're so numbed by the time you reach the end of the damned things you almost don't feel like reading the book -- which turns out to be quite a lot of good, old-fashioned fun. But because it starts off by pummeling you with page after page of rave blurbs (almost none of which refer to the book itself), you go in with the creeping feeling that someone is trying to convince you a sow's ear is actually a silk purse.

My own personal cutoff point is two pages or a dozen blurbs (whichever comes first); after that, I ignore them. With blurbs, less is definitely more. (The ideal for me, by the way, is a single page containing somewhere between five and ten concise, tantalizing quotes.)

I am very careful to make certain that none of the blurbs used for my books are taken out of context -- I don't want readers to feel that these quotes have been employed to mislead them, and I don't want reviewers to feel that I've misrepresented their theses by "doctoring" their comments.

What it boils down to is that strong blurbs can serve as the middle ground for readers who want some sense of what to expect from a book but don't want to chance having anything "spoiled" for them ... and reviewers can write whatever they damned well please without fear of being accused of "spoiling" anything.

I still think the best solution is to read the first few pages of a book to figure out if you're going to like it or not. But if that's not possible for whatever reason, then seek out a review; read the first two paragraphs and the last two paragraphs if you want to avoid encountering spoilers. If that doesn't appeal or work for you, then turn to the blurbs.

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Have you ever seen or purchased a limited-edition book that came already signed by the author or contributors? Yeah, it's pretty neat getting a book like that, and collectors are willing to pay quite a bit extra for a book signed by a famous writer.

Some people think that the publisher rounds up all the authors for a wine and cheese party at which everybody signs the books, but that's not usually what happens. Trying to get a bunch of writers together in the same room at the same time is like herding cats, and mailing boxes of books around the world is terribly costly.

So, what publishers do is mail around stacks of pages -- signature sheets -- that the authors then sign and ship to the next people on the list. After the sheets are filled with signatures, they're added to the rest of the book's pages and bound into (or simply tipped into) the finished book.

If you aspire to be an anthology editor, be aware that signature sheets -- while they are indeed a cool thing to do for a limited edition -- are often a big huge expensive pain. This is particularly true if there are more than 10 authors involved and they're not local (if they are local, you can attempt to host the aforementioned sheet-signing party and get it done fairly painlessly).

If there are more than 20 authors from all over the country involved in your project and you've got to get everyone's signatures on the sheets, it's just like Disneyworld, if Disneyworld involved sitting in a hardbacked chair for 10 or 12 hours only to have circus midgets rush out of a closet and pelt you with dead fish at the end of your wait.

Things that will likely happen to signature sheets:

1. The post office will go "OMG! Big box = teh bomb!" and haphazardly slash it open with a boxcutter and consequently slice or otherwise munge up the top and bottom sheets in the process. *
   
   


2. At least one author will have carpal tunnel syndrome and not be able to sign the sheets for months and months.
   
   
3. While the author is recovering, one of the author's cats will climb to the top shelf where the signature sheet box has been put for safekeeping, and thoughtfully hork a big wet hairball therein.
   
   
4. While the author was recovering, postal rates went up, thus rendering the postage you included in the box insufficient. Author is dead broke due to having to pay the doctor for carpal tunnel surgery. You will have to overnight a money order to the author to enable her to send the box along to the next author.
   
   
5. Next author in line finally receives the box, then proceeds to pitch a fit because "there are way too many signature sheets" (you included 20% more in a futile attempt to compensate for boxcutters, hairballs, and coffee spills) and thus the publisher is trying to cheat him. So you have to call author up in an attempt to explain the presence of additional sheets to cover for loss, but he's not hearing any of it. Author holds entire box hostage until his wife counts up the sheets and tells him that you were right all along. He signs the sheets and sends them along without apology.



6. Somewhere between Bloomington and Boise, the post office will lose the box entirely. *
   
   Alternate Scenario: the box arrives safely in Boise, but the author's angry drunk spouse believes the box is from a lover, and throws it in the dumpster.
   
   Alternate Alternate Scenario: the box arrives, but is stolen off the front porch by a creepy stalker who's been going through the author's mail; signatures of some authors will later show up on Ebay.
   
   Son of the Return of the Alternate Scenario: After the box arrives, the author's town is hit by a flood, hurricane, tornado, volcano, alien invasion, or plague of paper-devouring locusts.
   
   Regardless: you'll have to print up a whole new set, and reobtain the first bunch of signatures.
   
   

* Both of which can happen to book shipments, too. We recently got a box of chapbooks which had been obviously opened by/broke open at the Post Office, spilled onto the floor, possibly stepped on, and hastily dumped back in the box and resealed. Moral: use strong packing tape and plenty of bubble wrap.

Labels: publishing, signature sheets, writing

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by Gary A. Braunbeck

Many of you who read my posts asked for more essays on the business and technical aspects of writing, so I've decided to offer a handful of basic -- what I hope are common sense -- suggestions on how to fine-tune your writing by avoiding certain mistakes that can sink your story in a hurry.

1: "Its" and "It's"

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one -- has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get it through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its components are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two recent manuscripts sent to me to read for a possible blurb, the friggin' proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

"Its" and "It's" are not the same. Stop doing it. It makes you look ignorant.


2: Profanity

First of all, unless you're writing Christian Young Adult (and even that's up for debate), it would be unrealistic to write a novel or short story wherein one of the characters didn't swear at some point; our lives have become much more fast-paced and frustrating, and a result of that frustration is that people swear more now than they did, say, back in the days of Booth Tarkington's Magnificent Ambersons.

However (you knew that was coming, didn't you?), there is a difference between the way people swear in real life and how they should swear in fiction. I know a guy who would have a full one-third -- if not half -- his vocabulary hacked off at the knees if he were unable to say f**k. I've passed strangers' conversations wherein I picked up at least nine different profanities before they were out of earshot.

I remember one instance, while reading Skipp & Spector's The Light At The End, where in a single line of dialogue, one character used eleven profanities -- including all of the Biggies -- in one sentence; it was rather impressive ... but it was also way too much. Yeah, I have no doubt that there are people out there in the real world who do speak like that, but (and here comes the tip), if you over-use profanity in your dialogue, you rob it of its most important function: profanity is simply violence without action; it should be employed in fiction to either foreshadow or replace violence. If you follow this suggested guideline, you'll not only use less of it your writing, but what you do use will be so well-placed that it will have ten times the impact of an endless string of curses.

Example: in my novel In Silent Graves, there is a sequence where the main character (who's just lost his wife and newborn child) enconters two guys on a city bus who are swearing and cursing and spewing the most unbelievable filth (Andrew Dice Clay wouldn't say some of the things these two guys do); their language is upsetting a young woman who's sitting nearby the main character, and as the intensity of the profanity and filth builds, so does the main character's frustration and anger. It's the only time in the book that profanity of this level is used, and that was a deliberate choice on my part: I wanted it to be as shocking to the reader as it is to the main character, and I wanted it to build along with his anger. Everyone who's read the novel has mentioned this sequence as being very effective, and
inwardly I cheer; I wanted it to be effective, I wanted their language to be shocking, because the increased intensity of the filth that comes out of their mouths foreshadows the violence that ends this sequence.

So: remember that profanity is simply violence without action, and that it should be employed only to foreshadow or replace violence; you'll find that you use less of it, and that what you do use will be all the more effective.


3: Exclamation Points

Admittedly, this one is a personal quibble. However: The exclamation point belongs in dialogue and only in dialogue.

Whenever I encounter an exclamation point used outside of dialogue, I am suddenly pulled from the spell of the story (assuming that it was cast in the first place) and made painfully aware of the writer's intent. It's the writer telling me, the reader, that this! Is! Supposed! To! Be! Exciting! Or! Shocking! Or! Revelatory! It automatically tells me that the writer doesn't trust my intelligence and instincts as a reader enough to let me figure out for myself that something is supposed to shock or stun or scare me.

Consider the following examples, all of them lifted from recent horror stories I've read:

He realized that he hadn't locked the door behind him!
And now they were going to kill her!
They weren't alone in the house!
He was lost!

You get the idea. To say it's melodramatic would be to succumb to gross understatement. The use of the exclamation point outside of dialogue is, to my mind, a lazy cop-out all too frequently embraced by horror writers (and we've all done it, myself included). Think I'm overstating my point? Then try this simple exercise: Pick any of the above-quoted lines, and when you reach the exclamation point, imagine that it's been replaced by the first four notes of the Dragnet theme. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Makes its use seem absurd, doesn't it?

They weren't alone in the house Dum-Da-Dum-Dum.

Keep that in mind the next time you're tempted to use an exclamation point somewhere other than in dialogue.


4: Italics

Like profanity, italics are most effective when used sparingly. From my point of view, italics should only be used to:

• place emphasis on a particular word or phrase;
• indicate a foreign word or phrase;
• cite the name of a book, film, television or radio program, or musical work (as in the name of a symphony or a specific album, such as Mahler's 1st, The Who's Tommy, Warren Zevon's Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School, etc.);
• to insert a brief flashback - be it a sequence of events or a snippet of recalled conversation - within the body of the current narrative; and,
• to set apart the contents of a letter, excerpted lines from a poem, or a snippet of song lyrics (which could arguably be accomplished with the use of block quotes instead, making this last "rule" more of a stylistic choice on the part of the writer).

(Parenthetical pause here: when citing the name of a song or a story, quotation marks are what's required, as in: Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" or Stephen King's "Sometimes They Come Back". The title of the album or collection in which the piece is included would be italicized, as in: Simon and Garnfunkel's Greatest Hits and Night Shift. The differences are subtle, but profound, and not necessarily as easy to discern as one might at first think.)

Remember the Dragnet-theme warning I suggested when it came to using exclamation points? Well I've got a similar warning cue to employ when it comes to italics: imagine that whatever is italicized is being either whispered or Shouted Through A Bullhorn (however circumstances dictate); it's a matter of extremes, like it or not.

An italicized letter or quoted poem? A whisper.

A panicked warning (as in: "Look out!")? A shout through a bullhorn. (And bear in mind that when you combine italics with all caps -- "LOOK OUT!" -- it's overkill; the circumstances under which something like the above is italicized give the words or passage an immediacy that presenting them in all capital letters only diminishes; it's hitting the reader over the head with your intent: DEAR GOD, THIS IS REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT AND I'M GOING TO MAKE DAMN SURE YOU KNOW IT!. Overkill. Don't do that, please. (If you've been paying close attention, you'll know that there's a spot in theis very essay where I overkilled with italics; I did that on purpose, to be annoying, just to help me hammer home the point when you arrived here.)

There is another -- and less directly acknowledged -- reason that it's a good idea to use italics sparingly: like it or not, a prolonged passage of italics quickly tires the eyes while reading. It's that simple.

As a writer, whenever I come to a passage that I know is going to have to be italicized (such as a letter or brief flashback), I apply the same rule to my own work that I do to anything that I might choose to read: no more than 3 pages. That is all that my eyes can take as a reader, so I assume that's my readers' limits, as well. After 3 pages, it just gets annoying; and the last thing you want is for a reader to become more aware of how you're presenting something than of its content.

So: a whisper or shouted through a bullhorn, no more than 3 pages, and you just might find that italics can be a useful ally.

5: Sibilant City

Read this and see if you can spot what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise, it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen. (Subtle, ain't I?)

---

Gary A. Braunbeck is the author of 14 books and over 150 short stories. If you enjoyed this article, take a look at his book Fear in a Handful of Dust: Horror as a Way of Life.

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by Gary A. Braunbeck

In Part 1 we discussed an approach to characterization that was based on nuance -- specifically, visual nuance. I used an an example how much you can tell about a character from the way he or she eats a bowl of cereal. This time, as promised, we're going to take a look at how you can get to know a character from the way he or she puts on or takes off a coat.

I know this may seem silly on the surface, but it works for me. Nearly every story I have written has begun with an image of the central character doing something mundane, but it's the manner in which this mundane task in done that instantly tells me a great deal about them.

Just as a mental exercise, try this: the next you go out to a club, movie, party, or restaurant, over the course of the evening choose five people at random and watch how they both remove and put on their coats. Does this person treat their coat with care, removing it slowly, one arm at a time, and then drape it carefully over the back of their chair (making sure that the lower part doesn't touch the floor), or do they just all but let it drop off of them, and then thoughtlessly sling it over the back of a chair without a second glance, even though a full one-third of it is now spread out on the floor?

As far as putting the coat back on, watch this, as well. Do they exercise care when they do this (again, one arm at a time, slowly), taking time to smooth it out a bit once it's on their body, or do they make a bit of a show out of it, swirling it around their shoulders like Zorro's cape and then jamming their arms into the sleeves with such wide flourish there's a good chance they could take out someone's eye should that other person be standing too close?

This can tell you a lot about your character, albeit in broad strokes, but that's where characterizaton starts. The character who takes care of their coat, who is careful to remove it and hang it off the back of the chair so no part of it touches the floor (and who also exercises quiet care when putting it back on) reveals several things by these actions: this coat is something that has some meaning for them -- it may have been a gift from a family member who is no longer alive (it may even have belonged to that family member, it's your call); it may have been something for which they had to save money every month in order to purchase because they don't have a lot of disposable income; it may be that this coat is one of the few things they feel they look good in; or it may be that this is the only coat they own. The possibilities are endless.

But here is the one thing that you'll know immediately: this is, in all probability, a shy person, one who wishes to blend in as much as possible so as not to draw attention to him- or herself. This is a person who will be all to happy to join in the conversation, but will rarely begin one of their own volition.

Whereas the other person -- the one who just tosses the coat down without a second thought and then makes a bit of a show when putting it back on -- this person is not only an extrovert, but also quite probably someone who, though he or she may have a job, has never really known what it's ike to work in order to possess the basics (like said coat). The coat may have been a gift from a parent (who is still probably alive, and thus able to provide them with a new coat when this one becomes trashed by having half of it draped across the floor so many times); it may be just one of several coats they own, so what the hell do they care?; or it may be that -- like our other person -- this is the only coat they own, but because they need to foster this devil-may-care persona among their friends, they treat it with indifference ... until, of coursde, it's time to leave, and putting it back on allows them to be showy, thus making sure they remain the center of attention.

Like I said, these are broad-stroke examples, but it's a way to begin. Other factors must be called into consideration in order to enrich this scenario; the age and sex of the character in question; the kind of coat he or she is wearing (expensive, something off the rack at Target, something tailored specifically for them, etc.); the circumstances under which he or she is wearing the coat. (I imagine that our first character would exercise the same kind of deliberate care with their coat whether he or she were with a group of people or eating alone -- and wouldn't it be interesting if our second character, when alone, treated their coat with the same care and didn't make a show of putting it back on? It's fun how this works, isn't it?)

Now take it a step further: imagine what's in the pockets of each character's coat. Going with the original conceit that our first character is a shy person who, for the sake or argument, was given the coat as a gift by a deceased parent (perhaps the last gift this person ever received from said parent), they're not likely to stick a used candy bar wrapper in one of the pockets because they couldn't immediately find a trash can after polishing off ... what? (Ask yourself that: what kind of a candy bar would this person prefer, or would they like candy at all? Hmmmmm ....) I imagine that our shy perswon would keep a pair of gloves in the pockets (for when the outside tmperature gets cold) and perhaps their car keys, but little else. Simple and uncluttered.

Whereas our second character would have receipts, loose change, car keys, two or three wadded one-dollar bills they've forgotten are even in there, half a dozen phone numbers scribbled on slips of paper, and a half-eaten candy bar from six months ago that has begun to grow a fungus that is starting to breathe and develop a rudimentary language.

I could go on, but I think you probably got the point of this at least three paragraphs ago.

Keeping in mind what I've discussed, allow me to present you with someone:

Female. Mid-30s. Her coat is wool, with a removable lining. It's tan. It's in very good condition and, in fact, might be thought brand-new until you get close enough to see that it's at least ten years out of style. She removes it carefully after entering the restaurant (she's alone) and instead of draping it over the back of her own chair, places it lengthwise across the other chair at the table, so that the collar is just hanging a little over the back of the chair, and the bottom of the coat hangs a little ways past the seat of the chair, nowhere near touching the floor. She's wearing a wedding ring, but it's on the ring finger of her right hand. She takes her cloth napkin and spreads it across her lap, then smoothes it out. She picks up the menu, takes a small sip from her water glass, and begins reading. If you watch closely, you can see that her hands are trembling slightly.

What's her story? Write about her character in a single paragraph.

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by Gary A. Braunbeck

I've been very lucky in that readers and many of my fellow writers feel I have a certain skill for creating three-dimensional characters. I'm often asked how I manage to do this, so I thought for my next few columns here, I'd go over some of the methods I employ for characterization. Please bear in mind that these methods are those which work best for me and are not being offered as absolutes or -- God forbid -- a template that will guarantee you'll get the same results. There is no such template; creating a multi-layered, believable, sympathetic character is, like everything else one learns about writing, a matter of trial and error.

Before getting any further into this, I need to give you a little personal background so you'll see how I arrived at these particular methods.

For the better part of a decade -- between the ages of 19 and 30 -- I worked as an actor, mostly summer stock and dinner theatre, but I actually got paid to pretend I was someone else. During those years, I worked with an assortment of other actors, all of whom had their own approach to interpreting the particular role in which they were cast.

The late Laurence Olivier was a self-proclaimed "technical" actor -- he worked from the outside in; he would find a walk, a speech pattern, various mannerisms, etc. through which the character would reveal itself to him. While rehearsing a Noel Coward play in which he played a prissy English lord, Olivier was having great difficulty getting a handle on both the character and how to play him. This semi-famous story reached its happy ending when Olivier, passing by an antique store, happened to glance in the window and see a walking stick for sale. He went in to the store, picked up the walking stick, and the moment it was in his hand, he knew the character. (The walking stick, by the way, was described by Olivier as "...one of the ugliest, most ostentatious things..." he'd ever seen, but knew that his character would think it was classy and tasteful.)

I worked with a lot of technical actors. I was one myself.

I also worked with a lot of Method actors. Method actors are an ongoing gift to the world from Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky, an actor, writer, and director from Moscow who created an approach that forefronted the psychological and emotional aspects of acting. The Stanislavsky System, or "the Method."

Without boring you into a coma, I'll try to simplify what "the Method" is. It requires that, if an actor is to portray fear, he must remember something that terrified him and use that remembered fear to instill reality and credibility into his performance. The same with joy, lust, anger, confusion, etc. Stanislavsky's Method also requires that the actor know everything about the his or her character, usually by having the actor write a short "inner history" for their character, past details of their lives that -- while never used on stage -- would nonetheless give the performance even deeper authenticity.

In theory, Stanislavsky's Method is an amazing tool for an actor. It requires the complete submersion of the self into the body, psyche, and thoughts of another person so that an actor's performance rings of the truth.

I use the phrase "in theory" above because, in my opinion, too many actors use Stanislavsky's Method as an excuse for self-indulgence masking itself as research. Don't misunderstand -- when you get a Method actor like Marlon Brando (in his prime), Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Sean Penn, Gregory Peck, Johnny Depp, Lance Henriksen, or Bob Hoskins (to name a small handful) who have the discipline and wherewithal to employ the Method to all its power, and you can have something glorious.

But I didn't get to work with any of them. I got to work with Method actors who would spend weeks researching and writing their "inner history", demand that I address them only as their character (even when off stage), and never, never make light of anything at any time.

The prime example of how Stanislavsky's Method can be turned into rampant silliness happened when I was doing a stage production of Sherlock Holmes and had to do several scenes with the actor playing Dr. Watson. (I played a slimy little safecracker named Sidney Prince.) The actor playing Watson had written a 25-page "inner history" for Watson, researched hand-to-hand combat methods used by British troops during the Boar War, studied medical procedures practiced in London in the 1800s ... and when the curtain rose each night, audiences were treated to his imitation of Nigel Bruce for two-and-a-half hours.

But that's not the silly part. The silly part always happened off stage, right before the third scene of the second act (where Watson confronts Prince). As he and I waited for our cues, the actor playing Watson would drink a cup of vinegar. I asked him why, and this, word for word, was his reply: "Because, Mr. Prince, dealing with you leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

Time to run, not walk, to the nearest exit.

I finally came to the conclusion that for me, as an actor, Stanislavsky's Method was useless. Every Method actor I had worked with wound up giving stiff, overly-mannered, obvious performances (in that it was obvious they were "acting"). I don't know that I'll ever do theatre again, but if I do, I'll use the same "technical" approach that I always used.

But I came to realize that, while Stanislavsky's Method might be useless to me as an actor, it was priceless to me as a writer. I still approach characterization -- especially during the early stages of a story or novel -- from a technical starting point, but almost always fall back on Stanislavsky's Method when it comes time to add emotional depth and authenticity to whichever character is coming to life on the page -- and I won't commit a single word to the page until said character is someone I recognize as an old friend.

I always start with two simple questions, questions that are going to strike you as being a bit silly on the surface, but questions that, for me, reveal so much more than what is simply seen; for the purpose of this column, let's say those two questions are these: How does this character put on his or her coat? and How much milk do they use when having a bowl of cereal?

Since this is already running a bit long, I'll address the second question, and we'll get to the coats next time.

Let's say that this particular character uses just enough milk to barely cover the cereal, thus ensuring that both milk and cereal will be finished at the same time with nothing left in the bowl but the spoon. That's the technical starting point, the outside. Now, let's go in and look a little closer. They do this because they don't believe in waste; they're not the type to dump the last bit of milk down the sink after the cereal is gone. (And if there is any milk remaining, they either lift the bowl and drink it, or set the bowl on the floor so the cat can finish it.)

Why do they not believe in waste? Because they can't afford to be wasteful. They work long hours at a job that manages to pay the bills, the rent, and buy a set amount of groceries each week. But no excesses, no luxuries, ergo, no wasting of the milk. This also suggests that this character may not be the happiest person you've ever met; after all, if they have to be this frugal with milk, then that frugality has to extend to every other aspect of their existence, as well, and with that comes an endless string of commonplace worries that, taken individually, may not seem like much, but cumulatively drain a lot of enjoyment from life.

This character is sitting at a kitchen table that also doubles as the dinner table, because he or she lives in a 3- or 4-room apartment; a nice-enough place that's affordable if not fancy. I'm willing to bet that stashed up in one of the kitchen cupboards is a set of china cups and saucers left to them by a dead relative, cups and saucers that they only use on special occasions, like those rare instances they have company. I'll also bet you that on this character's chest of drawers in the bedroom we'll find a jar filled two-thirds of the way with an assortment of spare change -- mostly pennies, dimes, and some quarters -- that this character is planning on using to buy themselves a nice little something-or-other once the jar is full, maybe a new pair of dress shoes at Target or K-mart.

I could keep going but I think you've got the idea. All of this from simply looking into their cereal bowl to see how much milk they used. And it doesn't matter a damn whether or not any of the information from the above paragraph makes it into the story because I am now well on the road to knowing this person; and the better I know them, the more authentic and believable they will be to the reader, and we will have achieved what Stanislavsky's Method demands: complete, unflinching, undistilled truth when depicting the human condition of the character in question.

Next time, the coats. In the meantime, you might want to think about what we might find in the pockets....

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Preface: This essay was written by Tim Waggoner and is reprinted with his permission. I, too, have had a novel deal go bad under slightly different circumstances. My situation was that I sold a short novel on proposal to a seemingly well-funded specialty publisher, got a contract that everyone signed ... and the publisher abruptly went under three months later when their .com parent company started cutting off less-profitable subsidiaries. I had a lot of the same thoughts that Tim expresses here, so I hope that those of you who aspire to become published novelists will find this piece useful.

---

"They decided to withdraw the offer on your novel."

I hesitated, not quite believing what my agent had just told me. "What? Why?"

"The editor said she was no longer 'comfortable' with the book. Whatever that means."

The publisher in question had made an offer on my novel The Harmony Society over a month before. Not for a large advance, but they had seemed enthusiastic about the book. After years of trying to sell a novel, I thought I'd finally done it -- finally was a Writer with a capital W. And now this.

My agent commiserated with me a bit before promising to keep sending the book around. I thanked him and hung up. I knew publishing was a volatile business and that this particular house had a reputation for somewhat eccentric business decisions. But no longer comfortable with my book?

I felt awful. I'd come so close to achieving my dream of being a published novelist, only to have it yanked away from me -- two hours before I was due to attend a local science fiction convention as an author panelist.

Needless to say, I didn't feel like going. Even with dozens of short story sales to my credit, I felt like a failure and a fraud. I didn't want to have to sit on panels and pretend that I knew what the hell I was talking about. Didn't want to have to face friends and acquaintances and have them ask how things were going with my writing.

I was angry at my agent for pushing the editor too hard for more money and better contract terms, perhaps scaring her off; angry at myself for having been dumb enough to believe that the offer had been a firm one in the first place. Angry that I had no clue exactly what had happened to screw up the deal and that I probably never would. But most of all, I was angry that I had wasted so much time pursuing my dream. A dream which had turned around and bit me hard on the ass.

In the end, I went to the con, if only so I'd have some friends to complain to. They were all perfectly sympathetic, of course, but several of them said with a wistful tone, "At least you had an offer."

I felt like telling them the grass was definitely not greener on this side of the fence, but I didn't. I knew they wouldn't understand. I wouldn't have either, not before.

I moped around all weekend, felt miserable, talked about quitting writing, and stuck more than a few mental pins in an imaginary voodoo doll labeled EDITOR.

Then the con was over, my friends returned home, and I was left with only my wife to complain to. But I didn't feel much like talking anymore. I realized that I'd actually been fortunate to have a con to go to. While it hadn't exactly kept my mind off my stillborn book deal, it had, if nothing else, kept me busy and provided some measure of catharsis.

But now it was Sunday night and stretching before me was my first full week as a failure. The question was, what was I going to do with it?

The next day I sat down and started to write another book.

I wanted to get back on the horse, was afraid that I might never write a novel again unless I did. I used an outline which I had completed some months back so that I wouldn't have to worry about developing a plot and characters. I could just write.

And write I did, well over ten pages a day in between teaching college composition courses and caring for my then one-year-old daughter. I took all the emotional energy churning inside me and channeled it into my book, writing like a man possessed. I finished the novel, titled Necropolis, in twenty-nine days.

I tinkered with the manuscript, editing and revising over the next several weeks, then blasted it off to my agent. But now doubts began to set in. What if I'd written Necropolis too fast, hadn't revised enough; what if it was absolute crap?

Sure, my writers' group liked it, but how could I trust them? They were my friends; they knew how emotionally fragile I was just then. I could have probably scribbled out a grocery list and they'd have praised it as a surefire Nebula contender.

The con had taught me that I needed to keep busy, but I couldn't bring myself to write any more fiction, not then. Nearly a decade earlier, I had worked as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper, but I had written very little nonfiction since. Still, I occasionally thought about getting back to it, and now seemed the perfect time.

I threw myself into reading about nonfiction writing techniques and researching markets. I tossed around different article ideas, finally deciding to write a personal essay about my experience with testicular cancer. I developed a query letter, sent it out to fifty magazines, and sat back to wait. A few days later I received an e-mail from an editor at Penthouse. He was interested in seeing the article.

A couple weeks more, and the article was finished and in the editor's hands. The check was welcome, of course, but I had gained something far more important than money: I felt like my words were valued again -- not by my wife or my writers' group, not even by an editor of a national magazine. But by me. And I needed to feel that way, needed it like a man lost in the desert needs a drink of cool, clean water.

I toyed with the idea of saying to hell with fiction altogether and writing nonfiction exclusively, but I couldn't do it. Despite the instability (and occasional insanity) of a fiction writer's life, I loved it too much to quit. I returned to working on short stories and noodling around with novel ideas. My agent called to let me know he liked Necropolis and would start submitting it to editors.

I'm not the only one who's had a book deal go sour on him, of course. SF novelist J.R. Dunn (This Side of Judgment, Days of Cain, Full Tide of Night) once had an editor send him a two-page letter of revision for a novel. Dunn made the revisions, turned the novel in, and it was rejected.

"Naturally you're going to be furious when your book's rejected," Dunn says, "but you want it to be rejected for good grounds, not a minor technical point." It turned out the editor "basically didn't understand what a radio was. I told my agent to drop the publisher and go on to another, and that's what we did." The novel, This Side of Judgment, came out two years later in hardback to good reviews. Dunn says the moral is "not all editors are idiots" and advises writers to "keep banging your head against a wall" until your book finds a home.

Editor Gordon Van Gelder says that having a book deal fall through is "definitely not common at all." He advises authors to research a publisher to determine size, longevity and stability before submitting. Smaller houses are especially precarious financially.

Van Gelder assures that there is "no stigma" for authors who've had book deals collapse on them, and that actually the book's more attractive to other editors because it had a deal before. For instance, Van Gelder once bought a book by Tanith Lee that had been abandoned after the Abyss line of horror novels folded. Not only did Van Gelder think it a fine book, but it was a sequel and he felt Lee's fans should have a chance to read it.

"It was the right thing to do," Van Gelder says, "plus I made some money for St. Martin's in the process."

Happy ending time. My first daughter is now seven, and my second is two. I've long since gotten over my anger at my agent and continue to have a great working relationship with him. The editor who rejected my book because she was "no longer comfortable with it" was fired years ago. I have a full-time, tenure-track job teaching creative writing at a community college, and I've published over sixty stories in various anthologies and magazines.

Given the mergers and downsizing in publishing over the last few years, and the fact that The Harmony Society was a slipstream novel not easily pigeonholed, my agent and I decided to investigate the possibility of placing the novel with small-press publishers. A recent start-up, DarkTales Publishing, seemed a likely prospect. They publish offbeat horror/dark fantasy novels and have brought out work by such authors as J. Michael Straczynski, Yvonne Navarro and Mort Castle, among others. We decided to give them a try.

And they took my novel, with every intention of publishing it. But after a couple of years, the publisher realized their business had grown too big, too fast, and they needed to slow things down. DarkTales would still be bring out my novel, but they couldn't say when. So, after letting out a long sigh, I decided it was off to market once more.

The Harmony Society finally found a home with Prime Books. The advance was less than that offered by the original publisher, but the overall terms are much better. More important, my book is with people who are enthusiastic about it and who intend to do their best to promote it. If the original publisher had brought out the book, while I would've made more money on the initial advance, there would've been little to no promotion, and most likely The Harmony Society would've come and gone without much notice. I'm confident that Prime will do my book justice. Who knows? We might even sell a few copies, too.

Since placing The Harmony Society, I've also published an erotic mystery novel and a short story collection. As for Necropolis ... well, it's still making the rounds. I'm hopeful that one day it'll be published too, but if it isn't, it won't be the end of the world -- or my career, for that matter.

I've learned the most important lesson an author needs to learn: I don't need publication to feel like a writer. The only thing I truly need is to keep writing.

Final note: all the novels Tim mentions in this essay have found happy homes, as well as several others he hadn't even started at the time he wrote this essay.

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by Tim Waggoner

In Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, magic is accomplished when wizards learn the true names of things. Discover the true name of fire, and it is yours to command. In fairy tales, if you learn Rumpelstiltskin's name, the evil sprite is banished. Speak of the Devil, though, and he shall appear.

Names have power, especially in fiction. Use the right names, and the characters and places you write about assume added depth and resonance. Use the wrong ones, and your story at best will be forgettable, at worst, laughable.

While choosing the right names is never easy for writers of any stripe, authors of science fiction, fantasy (and to a lesser degree, horror) have an especially tough time of it. Mainstream writers can use the names of friends, relatives and co-workers. They can set their stories in their hometown and use the names of its diner, high school, laundromat, altered only slightly, if at all. But where can writers of speculative fiction go to find names for the characters and places which make up their more exotic dreamscapes?

You can start the same place many expectant parents do -- baby name books. Sure, they're full of ordinary names, but they also contain not-so-ordinary ones. A glance through one of my favorites, Beyond Jennifer and Jason by Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond Satran, turned up the following: Adria, Amyas, Diantha, Doria, Garson, Kai, Merce, Sekka, Tamar and Zaraawar. All suitable for a science fiction or fantasy story.

There are other naming resources geared specifically for writers. The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook by Sherrilyn Kenyon contains, as the cover copy says, "20,000 first and last names and their meanings from around the world." The name lists are separated into categories such as Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, German, etc. I often choose character names by scanning the corresponding meanings. Want your fantasy warrior's name to mean brave? Try Cathasach. Want your villain's name to mean dark? How does Duvessa sound? Horror author Yvonne Navarro has complied a volume called The Reverse Name Dictionary which makes this process even easier.

Another resource that I sometimes use to come up with names is the phone book. Uncommon surnames, when used as first names, often have an archaic or fantastical feel to them. Choosing at random for this article, I found Hython, Krabill, Maddala, Norrod, Uffner ... I could go on and on.

Of course, these names don't work only for individual characters. They could just as easily be the names of alien races, or countries in a fantasy land.

Foreign language dictionaries can be of great help. If I'm writing a medieval fantasy and I don't feel like using the tired term wizard for my magic workers, I might turn to my Latin dictionary and find magus and veneficus. Neither floats my boat, so I start free-associating. What do magicians do? They perform tricks. I look up trick and one of the words I find next to it is artificium. With a little tweak, that becomes Artificer. And now I have a term that not only sounds good, it's more original.

A thesaurus works well for this too. For example, in my novel, The Harmony Society, I wrote a sequence which took place in a nightmarish hospital. I went to my Roget's, looked up hospital, and eventually came across the old-fashioned term fever house. Fever House -- what better name could there be for a place of madness and death?

And then there are those happy accidents when names just come to you. While I was in the process of plotting The Harmony Society, I was listening to the car radio and heard the singer refer to "Brother Nothing." Hot damn, what a great name! I thought enviously. But the next time the refrain came around, I realized I had misheard. Brother Nothing wasn't a name; the singer was actually saying, "Brother, nothing you can do will stop me," or somesuch. Thanks to the perversity of my own subconscious, I had a name for my novel's main antagonist.

Lest you become too self-conscious about choosing names, I'll let you in on a secret. Even such inevitable-seeming names such as Sherlock Holmes and Luke Skywalker seem that way only after the fact. It's a bit of folklore that children will grow to fit their names. It might not be true for real people, but it certainly is for fictional ones. As long as your characters' names aren't strings of unpronounceable consonants or inspired by Saturday morning cartoons -- "Look out, Commander Galaxy! Here come the Sinistars!" -- you should be