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Publishing Methods:
What is a Writer & How Does a Writer Become a Published Author?

Publishing Methods: What is a Writer & How Does a Writer Become a Published Author?

Rev. Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. EelKat, Yahoo! Contributor Network

Mar 20, 2010 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

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This article all started because I was asked a very simple question. I was asked it by several people over the course of several years. Each asker had their own spin on the question, each telling a different tale of how they came to think of it.

Most question askers are looking to become writers when they ask me this. They tell me of hopes and dreams and of one day making millions off their bestselling novel. Because their stories were always the same, I think I’ll draw on one story which was quite different, not asked by someone looking to become and author, but rather asked by someone looking to discredit an author.

One particularly mean spirited woman sent me a very long and angry letter filled with hatred for her next door neighbor, explaining that her neighbor “lived on section 8, couldn’t hold down a real job, ONLY had an associate's degree, and claimed to be a writer, but she knew the neighbor was not a writer because, all of his novels were self published and only sold on Amazon.” She railed on for several pages. I replied to ask her why it mattered the guy was on section 8 and she replied back that “only lazy deadbeat bums get section 8”.

Hmmm. I replied back to tell her that 78% of the families currently living on section-8 got there from either a hurricane, a tornado, or a forest fire, and asked how she knew the guy could not hold down a job. She replied back to say that “well he’s a writer!” I asked what that meant, pointing out that I too was a writer. She replied with “well writing is not a real job!” I asked her if she read newspapers, watched TV or movies, read magazines or novels or college text books”. She said “yes, but those were written by real writers making real money, they don’t live in section 8 and they all have Masters Degrees”.

I replied back to tell her that 84% of all traditionally published writers do not make enough on royalties to reach minimum wage and work 2 part time jobs in addition to writing. I asked her what the point of contacting me was, what exactly did she want to know, what answer was she seeking? She replied “I want to know what a writer is. What is the difference between a writer and an author? He says he’s a writer, but I know he’s not because I have a Master’s Degree in English and he only has an Associates Degree.”

Master’s vs Associates seemed rather pointless to me, so I asked why she brought it up. She said “Well, ALL published authors have Masters Degrees in English and Journalism.” Hmmmm. Odd I can’t think of a single famous published author who has either, I said to her, adding that education has nothing to do with a person is a writer or not, nor does living conditions, heck I was homeless for 7 years and I never let that stop me from writing!

What makes a person a writer and how does a writer become a published author?

A writer, simply put is one who writes. Everyone who writes on a regular basis is considered a writer whether or not they have ever been published.

Writers can mean those who write for newspapers or those who write fiction, those who write for medical journals, or those who write TV sitcom scripts, heck, even a kid jotting down thoughts in their diary is a writer. They are all writers because they all physically write things down. They all get Writer's Block. That is a very general description, I know, but I have to start somewhere, don’t I?

If I was to start detailing all of them, I'd have to write an encyclopedia on the subject, so, for the sake of simplicity, in this article, we will assume, for the sake of this article, that a writer is one who writes fiction in novel or short story format. Now, back to the question: What is a writer?

A writer is someone who writes, probably every day or nearly so. Usually they feel compelled to write, as though they have no control over it. It is as though they will die if they cannot write something down. Their every fiber burns with the sensation, the uncontrollable passion, that they must put words to paper in order to survive. They feel every emotion their characters feel: the love, the pain, the horror, the fear, the anxiety, and the lust for adventure. They not only feel their characters, they become their characters. Everything in life sparks a new story idea. They awake at night from their sleep to jot down in notebooks. They pull their car off the road to write down ideas on the edges of maps. They are obsessed with the fever that is coming known as writing. That is a writer.

An author however, is generally perceived as a writer who has been published. For some writers, it is enough that they write, publishing their work is not their goal. For most writers, however, the goal is to become a published author. The trick is being published. You have many options. Which one should you choose? Let's look at your options:

Self Publishing

Vanity Press Publishing

Traditional Publishing

(Because it took me so long to explain each method - I moved each section to it's own separate article for each. Clicking the above links will take you to each of those Associated Content articles.)

In other words: All Three in Summary

Self-publishing is you starting your own business (a publishing house) and earning an income.

Vanity press is you doing a lot of hard work, getting your book printed, and possibly being scammed out of the money that should be yours, while they get rich and leave you with nothing, unless of course you can sift through the scams and find one that is not a scam.

Traditional publishing is you hiring a business to do the work for you and you both earn an income.

Can a Book be Both Traditionaly Published AND POD Self-Published?

If you self-publish via POD than you have printed up this book's "first edition" and when you finally find an agent and the agent finally finds you a traditional publisher, you will only be able to offer "second edition" (also known as "reprint") rights. As a general rule, unless the book as sold over 10,000 copies a publisher will not buy second rights.

The average book sells just 500 copies. (at the average 4% royalty of wholesale price that averages out to : $1,000 - $1,500 total pay for you the author for the entire life of the book)

Rarely does a first book make over $2,000 for it's author.

The average life of a book is 3 months. (meaning the publisher pulls it off the shelves and stops selling it just 3 months after it went to print)

In order to keep you book in print past those 3 months it must become a "bestseller".

In order to become a bestseller, you must sell an astronomical total of 10,000 copies in that 3 months time.

Most publishers DO NOT promote your book. The books that become bestsellers, had an author that put a lot of their time and money into marketing the book themselves. Most books, regardless of publisher, sell only as many books as THE AUTHOR promotes. This is true wither you publish via Scholastic Books (with it's 100 new titles each month, including Harry Potter) or Twighlight Manor Press and it's 10 books every other year.

Basically all a book publisher does is list your book in their catalog and hope that book stores choose to stock it on their shelves.

Books (such as Harry Potter -- traditional published--- and Eragon ---self-published---) get famous, not from the publisher's promotion, but from THE AUTHOR'S having gone out there and told everyone under the sun how great their book was and paying large amounts of their own money (we are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars of the author's private pocket money, money they already had BEFORE book's release, in the case of such authors J.K.Rowlings, Palini, Steven King, etc.) for advertising in such newspapers as The New York Times. Eragon, a self published book, became an over night best seller because of a single one day full page ad in The New York Times, that cost Palini's parents over $14,000! Within a few weeks he had big name book publishers begging to sell the reprint editions.

So you see. What you the author are willing (or can afford) to pay for a marketing campaign, is going to determine how many book you sell, not who you choose for a publisher. Keep in mind that when you see ads for book, either in newspapers or on tv, those ads were paid for by the author him-herself, NOT the publisher.

Most writers, once hit in the face with the harsh reality of these facts, never attempt to write a second book, which is why there are so many one book authors out there.

On the other hand a self-published POD book never goes out of print and you earn 100% of the profits off the retail price.

If you are willing to promote and market your book hard enough, you'll make more money in the long run by self-publishing, because you can keep selling your book for the next 10 or 20 years.

If you want to do both POD self publish AND traditional publish, than you MUST do it the other way around. Traditional publish first and POD later.

Your best bet is to hold off on the POD right now, and focus on finding that agent. Let the traditional publisher buy the first edition rights, get paid your advance and your royalties, let them sell the first edition, than next year after the book has gone out of print, you bring it back out as a POD reprint and continue to sell it for the rest of your life. (A lot of authors do this and after writing 4 or 5 books, they have a pretty steady monthly income coming in.)

I hope this helps.

So What Should I Do?

You've reached the end of this lens and you now have a better idea of the different roads you can take to get your book published. Now the question is, which of those roads should you choose?

I'd recommend that regardless of which you choose to do, you should at least self-publish one book when you are starting out. Why? Because there is no better, way to learn what it takes to bring a book to your readers. By self-publishing a book, you the author, can't just stop after writing the script. When you self publish, there is no editor for you to send the MS to. You are the editor. YOU must strive to up your editing skills and edit the MS yourself. This is not only a great learning experience, but it well help you to be less critical of editors you may deal with in the future.

After editing the book, you must than track down a printer to print up copies of your book. This like-wise is a good learning experience for beginning writers. It helps you to understand the difficulty that publishing houses have to deal with when getting your book into print: typesetting, cover design, layout, format, getting an ISBN, etc. etc. etc. It'll do wonders to open your eyes to the reason it takes 2 to 3 years for a publisher to get your book in stores.

Lastly, you must do all the marketing and research and advertising yourself. You must track down dealers and distributors. You must contact bookstores and place adds in newspapers. Once you have put in time and money into selling your self-published book, you'll have a greater understanding of the work that your publisher puts in.

In the end, there are two advantages to self-publishing your first book:

#1.) You won't head to a publishing house all high and mighty and demanding to see your book on shelves next week. Yes, many first time authors approach publishers and editors with such demands, in fact, 9 times out of 10 a new write comes in, acting like they a the greatest thing since Stephen King or J.K.Rowlings, and they often say as much. They seem to think that publishers just wave a magic wand and voila, a book suddenly appears. By self-publishing their first book, they get knocked off their high horse and get to see the publishing world for what it really is: a lot of hard work, time, and money, with very little return.

#2.) Secondly, by having self-published your first book, you now know how to do it again, and do it better next time. Why is this important? Because less than 1% of all manuscripts that are sent to publishers, well ever get published. Nearly all MS are rejected, tossed out, or mailed back unopened. If you should find that you are one of the millions of authors who publishers reject, you can always say: "I did it before, I can do it again!" That way you have something to fall back on if your next greatest hit, gets ignored by the publishing houses.

Sites Every Writer Should Check Out:

Publishing Law Center: Copyright, trademarks, intellectual property, contracts, licensing, rights, PubLaw Update Newsletter Legal information for publishers of magazines, newsletters, books, and multimedia products including copyrights, trademarks, contracts, licensing, & rights. A wealth of information for authors, editors, agents, and publishers looking to learn more about their field.

U.S. Copyright Office U.S. Copyright Office is an office of public record for copyright registration and deposit of copyright material.

US ISBN Agency - ISBN Assignments, SAN, Bookland EAN Bar Code Symbols, Technical Information and Advice No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers.

Bowker provides technical advice on uses of the ISBN standard to the publishing industry.?

Also includes SAN and EAN Bookland Bar Code information.

US ISBN Agency - Important message about the ISBN resale scam! No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers. This online scam is reaching alarming levels. Read the ISBN's warning. Help put an end to the ISBN resale scam!

Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Welcome to the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Working to create a more informed, empowered, and efficient book industry supply chain. Get informed answers to all your publishing questions.

The Library of Congress The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. The #1 authority on publishing laws.

Bar Code Service from Bowker - ISBN, Bookland EAN Images and Graphics Bar Code service from Bowker saves time and effort;electronic one stop shopping provides uniformly accepted bar code graphic files of the highest quality, and learn how and where to use your bar codes.

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month National Novel Writing Month is an annual novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world. Check out the forums, for a massive user-written source of information on making your next book the best one ever.

A Writer's Desk: The Author's Corner - Home Page Welcome to The Author's Corner! Here you well find items selected just for the writer in you. This Amazon Store is brought to you by A Writer's Desk, the forum for writers. Our product list is always changing and being added to, so look around today and come back tomorrow to see what's new!

This article was originally published in August 2007 under the title Publishing Methods is copyright to Wendy C. Allen and The Twighlight Manor Press, and is reprinted here with permission.

What is Self Publishing?

Rev. Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. EelKat, Yahoo! Contributor Network

Mar 20, 2010 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

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What Is Self Publishing? My Explaination:

A self publisher, is an author who gets a business license, buys the ISBN #s, hires a printing press (print shop/printer) to print the books, than sells the books themselves. The author keeps 100% of the profits, because no one pays royalties; you keep 100% of the copyright (which btw, does not cost a penny). You market the book and distribute the book yourself through local bookstores, a personal Website, your blog, and on online bookstores such as Amazon.com.

Self-Publishing gets it's name from the fact that the author does everything themselves.

The author gets their book printed up in two common ways:

1) They hire a local or online print shop to print up the book all at once. Most printers require a 5,000-copy minimum, with cash up front, though it is common, for printers to require a minimum of 20,000 copies. Printing up your books in this manner, unfortunately requires the author to have a very large sum of money all at once. If you choose this method, be sure you have taken into account the cost of printing the book, which for most writers is rarely under $30,000 and often more than $200,000, and this money has to be paid to the printer BEFORE they will print up your book.

2.) The other method is to hire a print-on-demand printer. These may or may-not ask for money up front, depending on how they run their business. To find out more about print-on-demand, simply scroll down to the POD section of this article.

It should be noted, that regardless of the method you use to have your book printed, you are the publisher. The company that printed your book up, is just a printer and only a printer, never are they considered the publisher.

What Wikipedia says about Self-Publishing: Self-publishing is the publishing of books, micropublishing on-line works and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers, or by vanity presses. Although it represents a small percentage of the publishing industry in terms of sales, it has been present in one form or another since the beginning of publishing and has seen an increase in activity with the advancement of publishing technology, including xerography, desktop publishing systems, print on demand, and the World Wide Web. Cultural phenomena such as the punk/DIY movement, the proliferation of media channels, and blogging have contributed to the advancement of self-publishing...read the rest of the Wikipedia article

Should You Self Publish?

Only you can answer that question. There are hundreds of reasons to self publish your book. Likewise there are hundreds of reasons NOT to self publish your book.

I self publish, and people always are asking me if I recommend it to others, and you know what? They get shocked when I don't! Why? Well, for me, self publishing works, because I write in a very tiny niche, for which there is almost zero interest and is next to impossible to find a publisher for, simply because my niche is "not marketable enough". I write chap-books (too long for a short story, too short to be a novel), short story anthologies, plays, and niched non-fiction. So, for me it works because the sales market is so small, that I'm able to personally market to pretty much every one interested in the niche. It is pointless for me to even attempt to traditionally publish my stuff, because there simply is not enough demand to warrant it being mass produced.

However, if I was going to write something that would cover a wide audience, I'd send it out to traditional publishers, because they are better equipped to reach the mass market.

Of course the other thing is, I don't as a general rule write novels either. There is a huge world of difference from self-pubbing plays, anthologies, and small niche non-fiction books, and trying to self publish a mass marketable fiction novel. Self-pubbing fiction is very hard to do and not recommended (by me) to anyone seeking a wide readership.

As a general rule, self publish only if you are writing one of the following:

a short story anthology

a book of poems

a technical journal (which will only be read by a 100 or so college professors)

a non-fiction niche market (alien abductions interviews; sky-diving how tos; etc.)

a local history book or local travel guide

a play

a memoir

a church/business/family cookbook

The reason for sticking only with these types of books, is because these are not going to sell many copies to begin with, thus traditional publishers won't bother wasting their time on them. They'll sell 10 to 100 copies per year at best, even with a traditional publisher's best marketing team promoting it, and because of this, they are best suited to small press or self publishing instead.

So, if your book does not fall into one of those categories, than avoid self publishing it.

I do recommend, however, that you self publish a book, before you go on to anything else. It doesn't have to be anything much, maybe just a 30 page book of poems which you will only hand out to your cousins at the next family reunion, and try to sell a few copies of off of your MySpace page. The reason I recommend this, is, because it gives you a first hand "feel" of the actual publishing process and will help you to better understand the inner workings of what a publisher does to get your book, typeset, printed, and marketed. Think of this "first book" as a sort of test run learning exercise to see if you really want to self publish your other books later on, and not as a book that will make you rich and famous.

Remember, when you self publish, you are very unlikely to ever become either rich or famous, and you will have an extremely difficult time traditionally publishing later on, due to the "invisible rift" that causes many editors to not look kindly on any author who ever self-published a book, regardless of their reason for doing so.

(IMPORTANT:Never "test run" a book which you plan to "later" traditionally publish, because once you've self published it, traditional publishing houses won't republish it. It is very hard to convince them that they should REPRINT your book, if you didn't sell thousands of copies within the first few weeks of it's self published run!)

Before You Self-Publish: What you should know, and how to avoid the scams!

US ISBN Agency - ISBN Assignments, SAN, Bookland EAN Bar Code Symbols, Technical Information and Advice No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers.

Bowker provides technical advice on uses of the ISBN standard to the publishing industry.?

Also includes SAN and EAN Bookland Bar Code information.

US ISBN Agency - Important message about the ISBN resale scam! No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers. This online scam is reaching alarming levels. Read the ISBN's warning. Help put an end to the ISBN resale scam!

U.S. Copyright Office U.S. Copyright Office is an office of public record for copyright registration and deposit of copyright material.

Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Welcome to the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Working to create a more informed, empowered, and efficient book industry supply chain. Get informed answers to all your publishing questions.

The Library of Congress The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. The #1 authority on publishing laws.

Bar Code Service from Bowker - ISBN, Bookland EAN Images and Graphics Bar Code service from Bowker saves time and effort;electronic one stop shopping provides uniformly accepted bar code graphic files of the highest quality, and learn how and where to use your bar codes.

IMPORTANT info for first-time self-publishers!

Many self-publishers are also first-time publishers with little or no knowledge of the laws regarding copyrights, ISBN, EAN, and other such things. All those online sites can confuse those new to publishing. Problem is, many sites offering, "advise" to new self-publishers are run by scam artists seeking to make a quick profit and leave you hanging. How can you avoid being caught in their snares?

1.) NEVER pay money to buy a copyright! If you wrote the book, you own the copyright.

2.) NEVER buy an ISBN from anyone other than ISBN.org themselves! They are the ONLY ones who can assign your book an ISBN.

Some popular online printers used by self-publishers.

So you wrote a book and now you want to self-publish it, but don't know how. Check out these top printers used by thousands of successful self-publishers worldwide.

Lulu.com - Self Publishing - Free Looking for self publishing resources? Lulu.com lets you publish and sell and print on demand books, e-books, online music, images, custom calendars and photo books.

Publish Your Own Book - Morris Publishing The leader in book printing and manufacturing for the small publisher, self-publisher, or business. We offer perfect binding, comb binding, 3-Ring binding, and plastic coil binding.

CafePress.com : Create, Buy and Sell Unique Gifts, Custom T-Shirts and More Known for their custom t-shirts, sweatshirts, bumper stickers and unique gifts the CafePress.com Marketplace is also one of the top places create and sell your own books.

What is POD Publishing? How can I become one of the Pod-People?

There is a common change that is overtaking thousands of authors all over the world. They no longer send their manuscripts in for consideration to be published. They are writing books faster than ever releasing two or three books a year instead of one every 2 or 3 years. This new mutated breed of authors are no longer authors as we know them... they are: The Pod-People!

The Pod People have invaded the earth. Editors run away screaming in terror. Publishers shake their angry fists vowing revenge, and agents devise plots to put an end to this newfound reign of the pod people. Yet, in the daily lives of the average civilian, people have no idea of this invasion that has taken the publishing world by storm, uprooting every tradition that traditional publishers hold dear.

But who are these Pod-People and what have they done? They are authors who have turned their backs on traditional publishing and set out to self-publish. Not only do they self-publish, but also they do it using the Print-on-Demand method.

Print on Demand or POD for short is quite simple: the book is stored on a computer hard-drive and when a customer wants to buy it, the printer prints up, one single solitary copy. Just one. Not 10,000, not 1,000, not 100, not even 10... just one single copy, custom printed and bound just for you. This environmentally friendly method saves trees by not having tens of thousands of copies stored away in a warehouse not being sold. This method uses small sheets of paper, not giant rolls with lots of scrap-waste, also helping to save trees. There is no longer the need to store 2,000 unsold copies of your book in your basement. And best of all, your book NEVER goes out of print, it's always there, always available at any given moment, and ten, twenty, fifty years from now, it'll still be in print whenever a customer asks to buy one!

Where to find more info about POD:

Warnings and Cautions for Writers--Print on Demand About Literary Fraud and Other Schemes, Scams, and Pitfalls That Target Writers

What about LuLu.com? Are they a printer or a publisher?

The answer to that is they do both. They offer two services: one is free and the other you have to pay for.

For their free service, they are a print shop, which you, the author and publisher hires to print up copies of your book. In this instance, you are the publisher. You are self-publishing a book. LuLu is simply the printer.

For their paid services they act as the publisher, provide an ISBN#, print their name in the book as the publisher of the book, and market your book for you on Amazon.com. In this case, they are the publisher.

In both cases, you, the author, keep all copyrights, and all profits. In addition, in both cases you never pay the costs of having your book printed. LuLu.com is paid by the customers who buy your books. LuLu.com takes a commission off the cover price of the book, which varies depending on if it's a hardcover or paperback; has b&w text or color pictures; is 4" x 6" or 8" x 12". For most books, they get $4 - $7 per book. You the author get to pick your own commission. How? LuLu's commission is automatically in the cover price; your commission is determined by how much you decide to sell the book for.

Example:

Let's say that for the book you have chosen, LuLu takes a $4 commission, yet you decide to sell the book for a cover price of $9.95. When a customer buys the book, LuLu takes their $4 and you get the $5.95 extra.

I'm Self Published! ... Now What?

Need to find a distributor for your self-published book? Here are a few to help you get your book up and running.

Amazon.com Advantage The world's largest bookseller and the self-publisher's best friend. Be sure all of your titles are listed here.

Wal-Mart Stores Online Product Submission It may be harder for a self-publisher to get accepted to become a Walmart Vendor, but it's well worth filling out these forms, because if you do get accepted, your book could end up on 5 million store shelves.

C&B Books Distribution C&B BOOKS, was started in 1995, by Carol Rogers & Brenda Piper. The motivation behind this book business, was the lack of affordable books written by black authors. Focuses on self-published books.

Barnes&Noble.com Another great place to get your book listed on.

AbeBooks: Sell Books Join AbeBooks to sell used, rare, and out-of-print books worldwide.

MBR: Publisher Information Book Reviews, Book Lover Resources, Advice for Writers and PublishersHome / Publisher Information

Need More Help in Self-Publishing? Check out Dan Poynter, and his 130+ self-published books!

Amazon.com: Profile for Dan Poynter Find, shop for and buy at Amazon.com

Dan Poynter's Books Google's list

Para Publishing - Welcome to Para Publishing Writing Books: Guidance and Tips for Creating Your

EmpoweringMessages.com - Who is Dan Poynter? The mission of Empowering Messages.com is to empower people who are short on time yet long on motivation. Interview with Dan Poynter.

Dan Poynter Interview - Publishing and Book Promotion Dan Poynter is an authority on self-publishing and low-cost book promotion.

Sites Every Writer Should Check Out

Publishing Law Center: Copyright, trademarks, intellectual property, contracts, licensing, rights, PubLaw Update Newsletter Legal information for publishers of magazines, newsletters, books, and multimedia products including copyrights, trademarks, contracts, licensing, & rights. A wealth of information for authors, editors, agents, and publishers looking to learn more about their field.

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month National Novel Writing Month is an annual novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world. Check out the forums, for a massive user-written source of information on making your next book the best one ever.

US ISBN Agency - ISBN Assignments, SAN, Bookland EAN Bar Code Symbols, Technical Information and Advice No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers.

Bowker provides technical advice on uses of the ISBN standard to the publishing industry.?

Also includes SAN and EAN Bookland Bar Code information.

A Writer's Desk: The Author's Corner - Home Page Welcome to The Author's Corner! Here you well find items selected just for the writer in you. This Amazon Store is brought to you by A Writer's Desk, the forum for writers. Our product list is always changing and being added to, so look around today and come back tomorrow to see what's new!

Plagiarism.org : Learning Center : Plagiarism Definitions, Tips on avoiding Plagiarism, Guidelines for proper citation, & Help Indentifying Plagairism Welcome to Plagiarism.org, the online resource for people concerned with the growing problem of internet plagiarism. This site is designed to provide the latest information on online plagiarism. The penalties for plagiarism can be surprisingly severe, ranging from failure of classes and expulsion from academic institutions to heavy fines and jail time!

Getting Reviews For Self-Published Books Book Reviews, Book Lover Resources, Advice for Writers and PublishersHome / Writing & Publishing / Advice / Getting Reviews For Self-Published Books Home | Advice IndexGetting Reviews For Self-Published BooksMany (probably most... but I know for a fact it is many) major metropolitan newspaper bo...

This article was originally published in August 2007 under the title Publishing Methods is copyright to Wendy C. Allen and The Twighlight Manor Press, and is reprinted here with permission.

What is Vanity Press Publishing? Should You Try It? Beware of the Vanity Press Scam Artists!

Rev. Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. EelKat, Yahoo! Contributor Network

Mar 20, 2010 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

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Vanity Press is Not Self Publishing:

First off, know that Vanity Press Publishing and Self Publishing are two hugely different things. When you self publish you start a business, and hire a printer to print books under the name of your business. Self Publishing requires a lot of legal work to set up, because you have to actually form your own small press publishing house.

Vanity Press on the other hand, is you going to a Self Publisher and asking them to publish your book for a fee, because a traditional publisher has already rejected it. In Self Publishing you publish the book yourself. In Vanity Press Publishing, you pay some one else to publish the book for you.

It is very common for a Vanity Press to promote itself as helping you to self publish your book. Beware of a Vanity Press that tells you you are self publishing through them. This is a red light alarm bell, that there is a scam operation at work. If they print the name of their Publishing House on any page or on the cover of your book, than you HAVE NOT self published your book. The only way for you to be a self published author through an Vanity Press, is if YOU are the owner of said Vanity Press.

What Is Vanity Press Publishing?

A vanity press is a print shop/printer/printing press, which does all the layout, designing, font setup, cover design, and printing for you. Most will say that they are the publisher and not you, even though they ask you to pay to have the books printed.

Vanity press publishing is very similar to self-publishing. It differs in that it usually costs a lot more, and more often than not, for a poor quality item. So you have to be careful to check out reviews written by authors who've used the company, before you put all that money into your book.

Vanity Press gets it's name from the fact that it is most often used by authors who have had their manuscripts denied by several traditional publishers. These authors generally only want to see their name in print, and usually have enough cash laying around to pay to get a lot of copies of a poorly written manuscript printed up by a publisher who rarely pays royalties. In other words, a Vanity Publisher is a publisher who is paid by the author to publish a book.

Not all Vanity Publishers are bad, produce poor quality, or are scams, the problem is that it's so easy for scam artists to start a Vanity Press, that it is some times difficult for an author to shirt through all the scams to find the few that are not scams.

Vanity publishing has been around for well over a hundred years, and some of the world's great classic authors used this method. Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, just to name a few. It was very common during the late 1800's and early 1900's and most of the books we consider the great classics of that period, were published via vanity press methods. Of course during that time period there was a huge scam operation going around as well, and it is what we call today "Traditional Publishing"!

In the 1800's the Big Press Publishing Houses were notorious for publishing books, putting the editor's name down as the author, and cutting the author off with nothing. It was because of this huge scam operation of editors stealing manuscripts from authors, which resulted in today's copyright laws and the popularity of Vanity Press.

In it's centuries old history, Vanity publishing has had a long and successful history and many authors prefer it to other publishing methods. It was only in recent years, with the oncoming of the Internet, that term "Vanity Press" became synonymous with the word "scam".

Unlike traditional publishers, vanity publishers always ask you to pay the printing costs of your book, up front (often with a price tag in excess of $20,000). Most Vanity Presses usually ask you to pay money for them to edit your manuscript. They also often charge you extra if you want a color cover. In some cases, if you don't pay the extra you end up with a blank sheet of colored paper cover with black ink, so be sure to find out what they offer before you agree to pay for their services. Rarely is a color interior an option. Only a few Vanity Presses produce books of actual "book store quality", so be sure to ask for sample copies of their work so you know ahead of time what type of paper they use.

Some Vanity Presses offer to sell your books through their home page Website. A few offer to list it on Amazon.com for a fee. More often though, it is up to the author to do the marketing for the book, so be sure you find out what services they do when it comes to marketing your book and getting it in front of customers.

WARNING: Beware of The Vanity Press Scam Artists!

Over the years, literally thousands of Vanity Press operations have come and gone... often disappearing with tens of thousands of dollars from the author, who never sees their book. In the early 1990's, there was an alarming rise in scam artists poising as Vanity Press Publisher, given rise to a massive breakdown in author trust in any small-press publishing house. Luckily, this scam seems to have died down, and Vanity Press publishers are once again what they were originally: A publisher who is paid by the author to publish a book.

Do beware of the telltale signs that the vanity publisher is a fraud artist and not a real vanity publisher: The fraud ones usually charge you for such things as "the right to keep your copyright", or to put an ISBN # on your book.

A common trick the scammers use is to promise to pays you a percentage (royalty), after you first pay them for the books. The royalty they pay, though it may sound high at first, is actually very low. You don't see that money until after they have deducted what you "owe them" for printing the books. In short, they make money, while you go broke, and you may or may not get to keep the rights to your book, depending on how much money you paid to buy your own rights back from them.

The scam artist vanity publishers are illegal, if you think you have run up against one, be sure to report them to the B.B.B.

BEWARE: The Anthology Scam!

One of the most common of all Vanity Press scams is what is commonly referred to as "The Anthology Scam". Sadly, these scams are often promoted to teens and young adults by none other than their English teachers! The problem here is that many English teachers are just that: teachers. They teach you how to write, but they know nothing of the publishing field and rarely are published themselves. Personally, I think it would be best is all English teachers were required to be published authors, so that they would know better than to recommend these no good scams to their students, but alas, nothing in life is perfect. But, let's take a look at these scams.

There are three types of anthology scams out there: Poem Contests, Short Story Contests, and Photography Contests. Only two of these are important for writers to be aware of, but all three run under the same basic principles.

Usually you will hear about them via a classified ad. One common place to see them is in the ever popular magazine for teenage girls: Seventeen. Go to the store, pick up a copy of Seventeen magazine, flip to the back and it won't take you long to find it: an ad proclaiming to be holding a short story, poetry, or photography contest. They tell you to hurry up and send in your entry, that it'll be considered by professionals and if you win, yours will be published in their next upcoming anthology.

What they do not tell you is this: there are NO LOSERS to this contest! EVERYONE who submits their poem or short story, will be published in the anthology. There are no editors rejecting manuscripts, and oddly, though they tell you this is a contest, there is NO PRIZE!

So you'll get published in their anthology. Well, whoop-dee-do! So will every one else who entered. Now comes the crucial point. Who will read the anthology? No body. Why? Well, send in a poem, and you'll find out why about 6 months later, when you receive a post card in the mail, telling you that the anthology is now in print, but that you can only buy it "direct from the publisher". They'll give you some line about how it's "so exclusive" that they can't offer it up to local bookstores, and "not even Amazon" is being allowed to sell it. They'll glamorize the exclusiveness of this book several times, telling you how great and wonderful it is to be part of this "limited time offer" to "buy the book" during it's "only print run". At the bottom of the post card is a place to add your credit card information, followed by "a one time offer" to buy this anthology "at the low half price of just $99.95".

I pity these poor would be poets and story writers who fall for this. They are so taken in by these glamorous claims and their desire to see their work in print, that they quickly dish out the $99.95 cover price. When they get the book, they find that it's printed on shoddy newsprint, in an 8pt font which can't even be read by someone with 20/20 vision AND a magnifying glass.

One thing writers need to keep in mind here: there are very few REAL publishers who actually publish short story anthologies, and when they do, it is a single author anthology, which compiles many years' worth of short stories previously published in magazine (for example: Stephen King or Kieth Laumer). The author has to be pretty damn famous to begin with, for any publisher to even consider publishing a short story anthology.

Short story anthologies are a hard sell, and 90% of the publishers who produce them, are scams which make money by selling copies of the anthologies to the authors and their families. These books never see mass production, never go on store shelves, and are not even listed on Amazon! If you come across a request for poems or short stories for the inclusion in an anthology, I seriously recommend you do a background check of this publisher.

There are some anthology publishers out there (the Chicken Soup series, probably being the most popular) and if you can find one, than go ahead and send in your work. Just remember when it comes to anthologies, this is an area where writing scams are the most rampant, so tread lightly, and know what to look for, and if it starts looking like a scam, than walk away.

Some anthology scams are hard to tell from real publishers. After you submit your short story they will send you a letter asking for "edit requests." Watch out for these sly devils! These scam artists know that you are not going to fall for a contest that "accepts everything" so they have devised a plan to make their scam "seem real".

Here are three real "edit requests" one such scam sent to one of it's contestants:

---- The story setup is very linear - could you start in media res and flash back?

---- Some of your characters are two-dimensional.

---- Could one of your supporting characters have a treacherous secret mission? Just a possibility.

I do question one of the requests they have listed: "start with a flashback". uhm . . . is this not sending up red flags to any one else? Starting a story with a flash back is one of those major biggie no-nos that publishers use as a reason for rejecting a story. It is very difficult to find a publisher who is actively promoting let alone requesting, that stories start with a flash back. Most, readily cut flashbacks, beginning, middle or otherwise.

Secondly, if they think your characters are "two dimensional" than why did they accept your story? In my experience if the characters are perceived as two-dimensional, the publisher will not even consider the story at all. This is a huge issue for most publishers, one that they hire people to write articles about, one that editors rant on their blogs about, one that agents get all huffy about. It's a really big issue. A MAJOR big issue, and one that is usually really hard to change, due to the fact that the author tends to have great difficulty in changing a character once they have created it. As a general rule, editors actively seek out three-dimensional characters, and than request story/plot changes. An editor will receive several thousand manuscripts each day, and 90% of those have two dimensional characters, and are instantly rejected.

The last request is typical of what a real publisher would ask of you. Most real edit requests coming from real editors of real publishing houses, will consist of grammar changes for clarity, style changes for saleability, the cutting of flashbacks to maintain ease of story flow, and plot changes to maintain reader interest. Yes, change requests are normal. But the first two change requests are NOT normal requests you would see coming from a real publisher.

The best way to avoid the scams, is to get to know as much as you can about the publishing business. While you can't always avoid all scams, you can go a long way to avoiding most scams.

As a general rule, real publishers DO NOT take out classified ads. If you saw it in a classified ad, than you can bet it's a scam. Real publishers don't need to take out classified ads because their books are available on bookstore shelves, and any author wanting to send them a manuscript, only has to open to the copyright page to find the publisher's address.

Some Real (non Scam) Vanity Press Printers:

Morris Press Cookbooks - Cookbook Publishing for Fundraising or Keepsake Organizations, businesses, churches, schools, clubs, and non-profit groups from across the United States have raised thousands of dollars by publishing a fundraising cookbook. Families have published a cookbook as a heirloom or keepsake.

Publish Your Own Book - Morris Publishing The leader in book printing and manufacturing for the small publisher, self-publisher, or business. We offer perfect binding, comb binding, 3-Ring binding, and plastic coil binding.

BookSurge, part of the Amazon group of companies Self-PublishingPublisher Services Bookstore Author Resources FAQs

iUniverse - Self Publishing Company iUniverse, the leading book publisher, offers the best book publishing services in the self publishing industry. Chosen as the leading print on demand book publisher among self-publishing companies.

Sites Every Writer Should Check Out:

Publishing Law Center: Copyright, trademarks, intellectual property, contracts, licensing, rights, PubLaw Update Newsletter Legal information for publishers of magazines, newsletters, books, and multimedia products including copyrights, trademarks, contracts, licensing, & rights. A wealth of information for authors, editors, agents, and publishers looking to learn more about their field.

U.S. Copyright Office U.S. Copyright Office is an office of public record for copyright registration and deposit of copyright material.

US ISBN Agency - ISBN Assignments, SAN, Bookland EAN Bar Code Symbols, Technical Information and Advice No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers.

Bowker provides technical advice on uses of the ISBN standard to the publishing industry.?

Also includes SAN and EAN Bookland Bar Code information.

US ISBN Agency - Important message about the ISBN resale scam! No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers. This online scam is reaching alarming levels. Read the ISBN's warning. Help put an end to the ISBN resale scam!

Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Welcome to the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Working to create a more informed, empowered, and efficient book industry supply chain. Get informed answers to all your publishing questions.

The Library of Congress The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. The #1 authority on publishing laws.

Bar Code Service from Bowker - ISBN, Bookland EAN Images and Graphics Bar Code service from Bowker saves time and effort;electronic one stop shopping provides uniformly accepted bar code graphic files of the highest quality, and learn how and where to use your bar codes.

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month National Novel Writing Month is an annual novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world. Check out the forums, for a massive user-written source of information on making your next book the best one ever.

A Writer's Desk: The Author's Corner - Home Page Welcome to The Author's Corner! Here you well find items selected just for the writer in you. This Amazon Store is brought to you by A Writer's Desk, the forum for writers. Our product list is always changing and being added to, so look around today and come back tomorrow to see what's new!

This article was originally published in August 2007 under the title Publishing Methods is copyright to Wendy C. Allen and The Twighlight Manor Press, and is reprinted here with permission.

What is Traditional Publishing?

Rev. Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. EelKat, Yahoo! Contributor Network

Mar 20, 2010 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

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What is Traditional Publishing?

A traditional publisher hires editors who read your MS, which you send to them. They receive thousands of MSs each week. It may take up to 2 years before they get around to reading yours. After they read it, they either reject it or accept it. If they accept it, you well be sent a contact (and often with a recommendation that you go over the contract with your literary agent/lawyer before you sign it). Once you sign the contract and send it back, than the publisher's lawyer checks it to be certain that all is in order (and done legally). The publisher is given a "temporary copyright" allowing them to print and distribute your book to the public. In most cases, you still own the copyright, but while the book is in print from the publisher, you can't do anything with it until it goes out of print.

They hire an editor/typesetter to type set and spell check your MS. Cuts and additions are not unusual at this point. You the author have no control over this, and it is not unusual for an author to read the finished book and ask: "When the hell did I write this?" or "Where is that chapter I wrote on....?" Next they hire an artist to create the cover art. You the author has no control over this either. Finally, they distribute the book to bookstores worldwide. You never own them a cent. They pay you royalties. Some also pay with advances. Most do 100% of the marketing and promotion, as well. You the author are free to sit back and relax, while the publisher does the work, leaving you with plenty of time to write your next book. Something Self-published and Vanity Press authors can only dream of, while they are rushing about writing press releases, and hunting down places to sell their book.

Traditional Publishing: Small Press vs Large Press vs The Big Five:

Once you jump into the publishing race, a term you'll start to hear is "The Big Five". You hear warnings, not to even attempt to submit to The Big Five, unless you have already published three or4 books and have a high-fee agent. You'll hear others say that it was one of The Big Five who gave them their first big break. On one hand authors will sing their praises, while on the other hand, authors tell the worst horror tales of their evil corrupt editors. What's a beginning writer to do? Whom should you believe? The answer, believe all of them, until you have a good reason to believe otherwise. Why?

Well, when it comes to publishing, about 90% of the publishing houses classify as Small Press. Small Press simply means that they are a Traditional Publisher, who pays author royalties, but they publish less than 100 titles per year. Vast majorities of Small Presses publish less than 10 titles per year. Many Small Presses only publish titles within their "niche market". Some publish only cookbooks, others publish only law books, some only publish books about their local history, some publish only horror, others publish only books written by women over 50, and so on and so forth.

Small Press is by far the easiest to be published by, esp. for the first time author. However, the pay is often very low, advances are rare, and payments may even be a "one-time-fee", such as $1,000 payment regardless of how many books are sold. While payment is low, many authors prefer Small Press, because they often keep the book in print for many years, and do more to promote the book than larger publishing houses do.

Large Press Publishing Houses are what most authors strive for. Higher payouts, a name that most people have heard of, and usually bigger sales. Most pay an advance (usually less than $5,000), and 4% - 12% royalty. They usually have a catalog and keep titles in print less than 2 years.

The Big Five are the mega giants, whom nearly everyone in the world knows their name, and whom most every author sends their manuscripts to, regardless of how many other places they are also sending it. They pay in large advances and higher royalties, but most titles go out of print in just 6 months or less and usually the author has to sing away reprint rights, meaning the book can never be reprinted by anyone else.Who are "The Big Five"?

The Big Five: They are the five giants of the publishing world, known for gobbling up Small Presses and spitting them out under a new name. Sometimes they even take turns buying out each other, and then they become The Big Four or The Big Three. But who are they? What are they? Why should you try to be published by them?

They are not actually five publishing houses, but the way they buy and sell each other out, usually there are five big names being thrown around at any given time, so the term "The Big Five" is just easier for most authors and editors to say.

But who are they and why should you try to be published by them? I can answer that in one word, well, two: Harry Potter.

Who reading this article has a copy of Harry Potter near by? Pick it up; look at the name of the publishing house. What does it say? Scholastic Books. Yep, Scholastic Books is one of The Big Five, possibly the biggest of the big house publishers out there. If Harry Potter hadn't been picked up by Scholastic Books, chances are, that no one would ever heard of it at all. Why? Because Scholastic Books has nearly unlimited finances and a marketing team that can literally make or break a book.

Random House. Dell. Penguin. Signet. Bantam. DoubleDay. TOR. Who hasn't at least heard of Harlequin Books? These guys are not only big press, they are monster-sized huge press. Because they are so big, unfortunately, your chances of getting your foot in the door are rather slim and requires that you hire the best agent money can buy. Why? Because these huge publishing houses, shred anything that comes their way that was not sent to them by an agent. It won't do you any good to explain why you don't have an agent in your cover letter, because they will never even open the envelope. Each of these publishers get an average of 15,000 manuscript submissions each week, many of which they never open. The secret to being published by one of The Big Five, is to go out there and make a name for yourself, write a best seller, hire a high profile agent, and than do what your agent tells you to do.

Sites Every Writer Should Check Out:

Publishing Law Center: Copyright, trademarks, intellectual property, contracts, licensing, rights, PubLaw Update Newsletter Legal information for publishers of magazines, newsletters, books, and multimedia products including copyrights, trademarks, contracts, licensing, & rights. A wealth of information for authors, editors, agents, and publishers looking to learn more about their field.

U.S. Copyright Office U.S. Copyright Office is an office of public record for copyright registration and deposit of copyright material.

US ISBN Agency - ISBN Assignments, SAN, Bookland EAN Bar Code Symbols, Technical Information and Advice No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers.

Bowker provides technical advice on uses of the ISBN standard to the publishing industry.?

Also includes SAN and EAN Bookland Bar Code information.

US ISBN Agency - Important message about the ISBN resale scam! No other source can assign legitimate ISBNs to US publishers. This online scam is reaching alarming levels. Read the ISBN's warning. Help put an end to the ISBN resale scam!

Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Welcome to the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. Working to create a more informed, empowered, and efficient book industry supply chain. Get informed answers to all your publishing questions.

The Library of Congress The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. The #1 authority on publishing laws.

Bar Code Service from Bowker - ISBN, Bookland EAN Images and Graphics Bar Code service from Bowker saves time and effort;electronic one stop shopping provides uniformly accepted bar code graphic files of the highest quality, and learn how and where to use your bar codes.

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month National Novel Writing Month is an annual novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world. Check out the forums, for a massive user-written source of information on making your next book the best one ever.

A Writer's Desk: The Author's Corner - Home Page Welcome to The Author's Corner! Here you well find items selected just for the writer in you. This Amazon Store is brought to you by A Writer's Desk, the forum for writers. Our product list is always changing and being added to, so look around today and come back tomorrow to see what's new!

This article was originally published in August 2007 under the title Publishing Methods is copyright to Wendy C. Allen and The Twighlight Manor Press, and is reprinted here with permission.

Published by Rev. Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. EelKat

❤ Horror/Romance/Sci-Fi Author ❤ Damballa Weddo Priestess ❤ ❤Hoodoo Rootworker ❤ Artist ❤ Script Frenzy ML ❤ ❤ 9-time NaNoWriMo winner ❤ Loves Lord Sesshomaru ❤ Find me @ http://e... View profile

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EelKat On Writing

Ranked #7,514 in Squidoo Community, #454,848 overall

Why do you write what you write?

How do you come up with ideas?

What techniques do you use?

These are the questions so often asked of writers, and here, are my own answers.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing

My work schedule is very flexible. It has to be, when you work a farm and run an animal shelter. You have to be *on call* to take care of the animals on a moments notice 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with zero vacations. It's not like having one or two house pets, not when there are around 200 animals under your care at any given time. It takes a lot of work, more hard labor than the average person has to deal with. You learn to work your writing career around other aspects of your life, and for me and my life, the animals come first and I write around their schedule.

As for my schedule itself? I do not write to a set "hours per day", nor do I write a set amount of "words per day", though I do have a mental goal to write over 1,000 words each day. In the early days 1,000 words a day was a big number, but now, it might as well be 100, because I have no trouble with 3,000 a day or more now. So maybe I should up my daily goal? In any case I try to write three times a day. Writing every thing all at once in one long stretch would probably bore me to pieces, because my attention span for any project will only last a few hours at best. I have to be constantly working on something new. It's part of the reason I work mostly with short stories and non-fiction articles, because if I can't finish the entire project in three hours or less, it'll get tossed aside.

What I do is, I write small segments or scenes from my book/story. Say a conversation between two characters. Or maybe the description of a room. Something like that. I find this easier, because I can see a very clear beginning, middle, and end. Not the beginning, middle, and end of the entire book. Not the beginning, middle and end of the entire chapter. Just the beginning, middle, and end of that one scene, which in most cases is 2 to 4 paragraphs long or about 600 - 800 words. Well, that takes me almost to my 1000 word goal right there.

My work schedule evolves around writing these segments. I make it my goal to write three of these segments each day. One in the morning as soon as I wake up, before I even get out of bed. One in the afternoon, when I get back in from taking my dog out for his daily walk. One in the evening, last thing just before going to bed. It takes about 15 - 30 minutes for me to write each segment. Or about 40 minutes to an hour and a half each day. In the end I end up with about 2,750 words written at the end of the day. My evening segment is usually the longest, because after every body (people and animals) have gone to bed, than I have several hours of absolute quite and that's when I do my best writing, which usually lasts from 10PM to 3AM. On days when I don't have a lot to do, I extend my morning and or afternoon writing segments, to as long as 3 hours each, meaning that some days I'm writing for as many as 11 hours a day, which explains the days that I write 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 words in a single day. In a single sitting, the most I ever wrote was 11,000 words, which means that if I pushed myself, I could write as much as 33,000 words per day. However, this is something I usually only do for the National Novel Writing Month contest in November, and the rest of the year I just write bout 4,000 to 7,500 words a day.

Anyways, When you take it and break it down into tiny chunks like this, it seems like you haven't written very much at all, when in fact you have gone well above and beyond your word count goal.

A writer doesn't solve problems. He allows them to emerge.

-- Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Do you write fiction or non-fiction? Or both?

Both. It depends on my mood really. My fiction stuff falls into one of two categories: either it's a story for my Twighlight Manor universe, or it's a retelling of some folk lore or fairy tale. My non-fiction stuff is scattered widely, from essays about comic book characters to how-to guides for writers to autobiographical articles about events in my own life to my thoughts on God and religion to any other odd thing that pops into my head and asks me to write about it.

Do you keep a journal or a writing notebook?

Oh my... do I have one? Nope, I have uhm... a hundred or so! LOL! I started my first one back in the 1970's, and I go though a couple a month. Mine vary from spiral bound notebooks, to clothbound books, to tiny 3x5 pocket sized notebooks, to huge 3" ring binders packed full of loose-leaf. I'm a rabid keeper of writing journals, because everything under the sun gives me ideas to write about so I keep track of my ideas as soon as I think of them. I never go any where with out one.

If you write fiction, do you know your characters' goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?

"Whether or not you write well, write bravely."

- Bill Stout

Do you find books on plotting useful or harmful?

I'm not sure. I have several in my collection, but so far have only read two of them. One I liked quite a bit, though I can't say it actually helped me with plotting my stories, it was helpful in other ways, but oddly not for plotting! I wouldn't say any book for writers is actually harmful, because all have different things to teach us, and I always learn some thing new from every one I read. Much of the info in many of them, though will only apply to a handful of readers, but what one reader finds helpful, the next reader will have already known for years, so it depends not only on the info in the book, but also on the info the reader has already learned elsewhere as well.

Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?

A little bit of both, depending on my mood. Some days, I just feel like doing other things: sewing, embroidery, reading, etc. Days like that I just can't get in the mood to write no matter what I do. Most days, however, writing is like breathing, and I can't concentrate on anything else but writing. It's actually more of a controlling force, that takes over and burns and hurts if I do not start writing.

Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?

Both. I scatter back and forth, depending on my mood. Usually I write every spare second of the day, even while cooking and while eating. Pretty much any moment I'm not doing something with my right hand, I am writing.

"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

- Gloria Steinem

Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?

Are you a morning or afternoon writer? Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)

I usually write in my strange illegible to anyone but myself, long hand. Yes, I did create my own *written language* and that is how I write. It is sort of phonetic English, but somewhat like a cross between short hand and italic writing, written very, very small and very, very fast, and only people who are used to seeing me write it are able to decipher my hand written pages. When I start writing like this, I write 10 or 12 sheets per hour (approx. 3,200 words). In pen and paper I am a speed writer. Oddly, I type at less than half that speed, rarely typing more than 1,200 words per hour. This is due partially to the fact that I did not learn how to type until I was in my late 20's, and I type one handed, with three fingers. It takes me days to type into my computer, words that took me under an hour to write.

Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One? Or do you let the story evolve as you write?

I never know ahead of time what I am going to write. I simply write the words as they come to me. Usually I don't know what I've written until after I go back and read it.

Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write.

-- James T. Farrell

Does what's selling in the market influence how and what you write?

Nope, not at all. I'm more likely to be reading and reading the classics. Stuff written in the 1800's is my usual cup of tea. I read a lot of 50's and 60's sci-fi. I read more comic books than I do anything else. And of course non-fiction makes up about 70% of my reading list. I am usually bored out of my mind by books that are on the New York Times Bestseller list. It amazes me the dull crap that is on that list, time after time. I really hate mainstream fiction. Modern literary fiction doesn't hold my attention at all. If it isn't gothic (think Jane Eyre) than I won't read romance. The only new fantasy book that held my attention through to the end of the book, was Harry Potter. Fact is, I never was one to go with the flow. My theory is, that any dead fish can float with the flow, it takes a live fish to swim against the crowd and held up the waterfall. So, as a general rule, if every one else is reading it, you can be certain that I am not.

Editing/Revision - love it or hate it?

Addicted to it. I rewrite almost every thing I write, wither it needs rewriting or not.

Can you be both an editor and a writer?

You can, but it's a lot harder to do. Editing other people's work, the mistakes just jump off the page at you, but when you start editing your own work, it's easy to skip past nearly every single mistake. It requires having 2 or 3 different spell checkers on your computer, because each has words they miss. Running your work through each of them though, should get most every thing you missed, but still you have to manually check everything your self afterwards. Plus spell checkers are not going to notice a lot of mistakes like passive voice, run on sentences, that you typed he instead of she, or that in chapter one you said David was allergic to mushrooms but in chapter ten you had him eating mushroom pizza. You have to pick up on those kinds of mistakes yourself.

How many hours a day do you write?

Depends on my schedule. Taking care of the animals (feeding, watering, opening gates, closeting gates, etc) takes me about 3 hours a day on an average day, but on days I clean the barn, it takes about 8 hours, and medical emergencies can take up the entire day and you wouldn't believe the way roosters can find to get hurt, and with hundreds of roosters running around, there's a lot of emergencies needing help. Running a farm is a full time job, running a farm as a rescue, is a full time job with lots of over time. Gardening takes up another few hours per day. Embroidering my Sesshomaru kimono takes about 3 hours a day. Than there's walking the dog, changing the cat litter (a chore in itself when you have 12 cats), cooking, eating, plus I need time to sleep, time to spend with family, time to read, time to sew, and than there are the days when I have to go shopping, go to one of the 5 libraries which I haunt, and run all sorts of odd errands. In the end, I don't have time to write during the day, so I usually do my writing from 9PM to 3AM, which ends up with me writing and average of 6 hours per day. And yes, that does mean I only get about 4 hours of sleep each night.

Why do you write what you write? You Write Some Pretty Violent Stuff, Alarmingly So. Some of your stuff is violent that it can%u2019t be mass produced because no publisher will touch it. Why So Violent?

The most common questions I get asked about the Twighlight Manor series are:

Why is it so very violent?

You don't think you could write a little less graphic do you?

I know there needs to be a better understanding of mental health and animal rights, but do you have to use so much real-life details? Couldn't you tone it down a bit? I'm finding it hard to read.

Men are not all evil you know. They don't all treat women like cattle. They don't see young girls they way you say they do. Most men really are good you know. Can you portray a man as anything other than evil? Just once I'd like to see you write a man as kind and loving.

Why do you never write a happy ending? Why does everything you write end with heart break and death and pain and suffering? The best books have happily ever afters. Can't you just once write something with a happy ending?

My Writing Process: Why I Write What I Write

Why do I write all male characters as evil? Why are all my victims young girls? Why do animals rise up and practice Draize Eye tests on humans? Why do I get inside the heads of mental health patients and write the world of pain and confusion they see? Why are the gory detail so very accurate? Why do I never write a happy ending?

There is a simple and easy answer to all of this: I write what I know.

What do I know? I know that real life is hell. I've lived through hell. I have lived through things that the average person would never think about let alone have to live through. Life is hell, there are no happy ending. There are no happy endings in the real world. I write what I know. I can not write a happy ending because I have never seen one.

I can write graphic details of what someone looks like dissected, cut up, and body parts strewn all over the place, because when I was 14 years old my best friend was murdered, dissected, and pieces thrown all over the yard. I was the one who found him, and in spite of what had been done to him, he was still alive and did not die until nearly 48 hours later. I never left his side, even though his side was no longer there and his heart was beating on the outside of his chest. I can write details about such violent murders and the horrid deaths that follow, because I have seen it first hand. I write what I know: I know the horrors of violent murder and disturbing death.

People with mental health issues need understanding not sugar coated pills and push into the closest. I supposedly have Aspengers. My grandmother had autism. My grandfather was delusional (thought he was a prophet of god), schizophrenic and bi-polar. I have seen first hand what people with mental health issues have to go through just to survive. I know what I have to live with and how hard it is to live with the human race when the human race would rather medicate you than be your friend. I write about mental health issues and through the eyes of these people, because it is what I know and I write what I know.

Maybe it is just the men I grew up around, but I have a really hard time seeing men as anything other that evil. My grandfather, 2 of my uncles, a bishop, several men from my local church, and an ex-boyfriend (all LDS/Mormon priests by the way) all had one thing in common: to tell me that women served no other purpose in life than to do everything her husband commanded and have as many babies as possible. They also said such things as: Wives who get beaten deserved it. A woman should be seen and not heard. Women in the workplace are doing the work of Satan. Women are a dime a dozen. In the next life I'll have seven wives, just think, seven slaves to do my bidding. Women who cut their hair are whores. Women who wear pants are whores. Women who work out side the home are whores. Any girl over 16 and not yet married is doing the work of Satan. Women with no children are going to be cast into outer darkness for not doing what god commanded they do. Any girl over 18 who has not yet had a baby has something wrong with her. I don't know a single man who did not marry a girl half his age. I myself was *destined* to marry a 37 year old priest when I was 12. People wonder why I remain single at my age, but I can not say I've learned to trust men, and the men I've known personally, have never had anything good to say about females, plus I've never seen a real man treat women with anything other than violence and contempt. I've seen a lot of violence from men to their wives. One woman in our church comes to church each week with a different injury: once a broken jaw, twice a broken hand, several times a broken wrist, black eyes are common, once she was in a wheel chair with both legs broken. Her violent husband went on the become our bishop. Though he was the worst of the wife beaters in out church, he was not the only one, men said it was their right as a husband to put the females in their place. These are the type of men I grew up around and these are the type of men who grace the pages of my books, because these are the only type of men I have ever known, and I find it very difficult to write about things I do not know. Sure I've seen the good guys in books and movies, but they are not real. Real men are mean, and I write what I know, I write what happens around me, and I've yet to meet a man who treated women any different than the men in my stories treat their women.

(I can say however, that the men I've talked with online are a far cry from the men I've known in my daily life, and that does give me some hope that not all men are like the men I've known personally, and my newer stories have actually started to reflect on my interaction with men on forums. Some of the male characters in my stories have toned down quite a bit in the last year or so.)

I love animals. When no human would be my friend, animals were always there for me. I was very young when one of my uncles lost his two dogs and it was later found out that those two dogs, my friends, had gone to a pound which later sold them to Proctor and Gamble. Those dogs died at the hands of scientists and the Draize Eye test. I have hated Proctor and Gamble ever since, protested, and boycott them, and became the most outspoken local resident for animal rights. I write what I know and my animal rights protesting of Proctor and Gamble quickly became part of the Twighlight Manor series.

In short, I write what I know, and what you read in the Twighlight Manor stories is largely based on actual events from my own life retold through the eyes of some very odd vampire like alien characters.

People don't like what I write, because it is not pretty and it forces them to see the dark side of the world we live in. People want rainbows and sugar sprinkles, but all I give them are dead bodies and blood.

I do not write happy endings. I kill off main characters, women get the hard end of every deal, men are violent, and my villains always get away with their crimes because that's just the way real life is like it or not.

Where do you get all your ideas? How do you come up with ideas?

I think the above answer pretty much answers this question as well, don't you think? Basically, I get my ideas from life. Little things in life inspire me to write. When a hurricane sent a tree crashing through our house, a tree likewise crashed through the side of the Twighlight Manor. When our dog had puppies, one of the dogs owned by Zetasha Swanzen had puppies. Nearly everything I write was based on something that happened in my life, or some thing that I saw happen around town, or some thing that happened to someone I know, and most often something that happened at church. The real world is filled with so many odd things, that it is hard to keep up with everything I find to write about.

For example, in one story a small child gets hit by a car, the very wealthy doctor involved turned over a $20,000 settlement. The doctor's chauffeur (who is the main character of that story btw) went on to become an obsessively safe driver . . . Overly obsessively, overbearingly slow, and safe driver with a phobia of small children. The story deals with how the accident affected the chauffeur, who by the way, is Etiole's uncle (Etiole is my usual main character throughout the series). The accident itself is not in the story, it is mentioned in passing in a flash back, with the story taking place some 30 years later after the accident, when he meets by the chance the now adult girl whom he had hit so many years ago. She never knows who he is, but he recognized her name. The story focuses on the mental turmoil and guilt this man has suffered through the last 30 years as a result of the accident.

Where did the idea for that story come from? I'll tell you. Once upon a time, I feel madly in love with a beautiful antique Cadillac. I created a character (the chauffer) so that I could write a story about that car. Rycliff Liore and his car went on to become pivotal, though minor, characters in many of my stories. I really wanted that car, really badly, but the doctor would never sell it, so I settled instead for writing stories with that car in them. Then came the day that the doctor who owned the car died, and his family put the car up for sale. I wanted so badly to buy the car, but was not able to come up with the money, however, I did go to look at the car, and upon seeing it up close, I noticed it had at some point sustained massive damage to the front fender. It had been repaired, but when you obsess over classic cars the way I do, not even the best repair jobs pass by my eye. The family told me that the car had been in an accident only a few weeks after the doctor had purchased the car.

A few days later, I mentioned to my family, my desire to buy the doctor's car, and I was told by my grandmother a story which I had never heard before. When her youngest daughter (my aunt) was 2 years old, she had chased a ball out into the street, and was struck by an oncoming car: a brand new Cadillac owned by the town's doctor. Back in those days there was no ambulances, no 911, and the nearest hospital was hours away. Without thinking the doctor grabbed the girl put her in the car and drove like mad to the hospital. No one expected my aunt to live, the doctor paid the bills and opened a $20,000 fund account for the girl. Back then $20,000 was like a million dollars today. The money, sadly was stolen before she reached 18 years old, and back in those days, money stolen from a bank was gone forever unless the money itself was recovered, so she never saw any of it.

This story amazed me. I looked up local records, and low and behold, it turned out to be true; the car I had been using in my book, had a real life story that was better than anything I had ever written about it or the fictional chauffeur I had created to drive it. But that got me to thinking: why did the doctor hold on to that car for the rest of his life. Most people, change cars every few years, they do not keep the same car 20, 30, or 40 years like that. I checked with his patients and found out that he had never driven any other car since the accident. This intrigued me, and so my chauffer one day in one story revealed the dark secret of his past and why he would drive nothing but this car, ever: many years ago there was a young girl chasing a ball . . . And thus my story of the chauffeur's long held guilt was written.

For me, writing is exploration; and most of the time, I'm surprised where the journey takes me.

-- Jack Dann

You live in a huge multi generational family & have a ton of pets: How do you get writing done with all those people & animals a When you were a teen, what did you think of novels for teens?

I loved Nancy Drew, and even today The Three Investigators rank among my fave books I ever read.

I like novels for teens that don't talk down to them, though, and that is pretty hard to find. It's like the author is saying: "I'm an adult and you're not" I really hate it when books take that approach.

As a teen I read mostly the old classics though: Jane Eyre, Plato, Hamlet, stuff like that. At that point in my life I considered a lot of books for kids and teens to be *below* me, so I refused to read them. Oddly though, 20 years later, as an older and wiser adult, most of the books I now read are for an audience aged 8 - 16 years old. Funny how things happen that way.

What kind of books did you read when you were a kid?

Dr Seuss of course (still read him . . . Love Green Eggs and Ham). I read Treasure Island, Little House in the Big Woods, Charlotte's Web, The Secret Garden, Five Little Peppers, and the King James Bible when I was 9 years old, and wrote a 4 page report on each of them. By the time I was 15, I had read most of the books considered *classics*: Jane Eyre, A Christmas Carol, all 7 volumes of the Little House books, Tom Sawyer, Hamlet, Island of Blue Dolphins, Pippi Longstocking, Silas Marner, Wind in the Willows, Black Beauty, Oliver Twist, etc. etc. etc. I was also reading biographies of all the US president's, famous scientists (George Washington Carver and Louis Pasteur being my faves), revolutionary war heroes, etc.. Benjamin Franklin became my hero and idol, and so I started reading everything he wrote and every thing everyone wrote about him. I read one book a month, the first couple years, but by age 12, I was reading a book a week. Yes, I was a major nerd.

What's you're favorite part of writing?

The actual act of writing. I love to just sit and write. It's so peaceful and relaxing; it's almost like meditation. I like the whole repetitive motion of it. It doesn't really matter to me what I write as long as I'm writing something. Writing is my release from stress, something which I am in bad need of I'm afraid.

How do you get past all the frustrations that come with trying to be a successful writer?

I'm guessing that what you are referring to as a successful writer, is someone who has published a best selling novel that is bringing in a lot of cash. Am I right? I don't worry about success, fame, money, etc. I don't write for any of those reasons. Not one of them comes up as very high on my list of things to strive for.

I write because it is what I enjoy doing. I feel that success is being happy with your life and with who you are. I am happiest about my writing when people tell me that something I wrote touched their hearts. I am saddest when people tell me that they hated or was deeply disturbed by something I wrote (which is a rather common response, actually). I would like my words to inspire people to action, but I don't like it when my words inspire people to send me hate mail. I've gotten so much hate mail via email the past two years that I have stopped reading all emails which are not from people I know personally. My mental and emotional stability is such that I can not deal with hate mail at all.

 You've written stories about talking cars, but I've read that talking objects in books is a no-no. What do you think?

You know what? I just do my own thing, and I don't let people saying I can't do this or that stop me from doing it. Who says you can't have talking cars, flying cats, and jogging toasters in your book? It's your book, write it your way.

I have too many book ideas! I jump from one to the other, and never get anything done. . . Do you ever have this problem and what do you do about it? 

What about the finances of writing? What are they? How do you deal with them?

Writing doesn't really have any finances.

Once you've got a computer, you are all set with that for 7 or 8 years.

Pens, I get 12 pack Crystal Bics at Wal-Mart for .99c. I have to buy a new pack about every other month.

Paper is .88c for 100 sheets. I go through about 5 per month.

Binders to hold papers in, are less than $2. I buy a new one about every 3 months.

Internet costs are monthly and vary depending on the service you use.

A printer costs $35, plus $25 a month for ink, and $4 for 500 sheets of paper.

Reference books I usually get used or take out from the library.

And other than that, there are no finances with writing.

Self-Publishing, well that's another matter. If you self publish, you have to buy your own ISBN's from the government and buy EANs, and register it with the Library of Congress, and all those other forms the government requires you fill out, all of which amounts to about $400 for each book you publish. If you are not an artist, you have to hire one to make you cover art, which could cost you anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars depending on what the artist charges per hour and per painting. Than you have to pay the printer to print up the copies, which varies in cost from .20c to $20 per book, and depending on how many copies you print up, that could be anywhere from $2,000 to $200,000. If you use a print-on-demand printer, than you can escape the printing costs, though, and this is highly recommended for paperback books.

How many words do you usually write a day?

It varies. Some days, I'm really lazy and only write a hundred or so words. Some day I'm really productive and write as much as 20,000 words (down with multiple sittings through out the day and not stopping to eat or sleep, this is not a recommended course.). The most I ever wrote in one sitting was 11,000 and took about 6 hours to do. However, those are the two extreme ends of the line. On an average day, I usually write somewhere between 2,000 to 7,500 words per day.

Why do you write what you write?

.

Do you read/write poetry?

I read it, but don't write it. I don't care for most modern poetry. I prefer the classics, or those written like the classics. For me, it depends on the poem... some I really REALLY love, and some I really, REALLY hate.

My 2 fave poems are The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning and Annabel Lee by Edgar Alan Poe. I like poems that rhyme AND tell a story (plot, characters and all).

Random poems however, stuff that doesn't rhyme, stuff without a plot, stuff without characters, stuff that doesn't tell a story... poems like that I just can't stand at all.

When it comes to poetry, I want to meet the character, I want to know what they are doing and why they are doing it, and I want it to be done in rhyme.

Oh yeah, and than there's Dr Seuss. Huge fan. I love Dr Seuss.

What genre are you most comfortable writing?

I guess over all you could say I write fantasy, though it is fantasy with a heavy dose ofsci-fi and an awful lot of bloody horror, and just a touch of romance.

Dear friends, casual acquaintances, total strangers, and people who will deny they know me:

My name is Wendy C. Allen.

I am a writer.

I write fiction.

What is my genre? I really don't know. I do not stick to just one. It depends on my mood Isuppose.

Some of my work reads like horror. A lot of it in fact actually looks like horror, feelslike horror, and bleeds like horror. Haunted houses. A serial killer. Cannibals. Freaks.Vampires. An insane asylum. Yep, on the surface it looks an awful lot like horror. Gothicmaybe?

But then there is the heart of the story. The romance. The lovers. The affairs. Theheartaches. It may look like horror but it leans heavily toward romance as well.

Of course let's not forget the star ships. The aliens. The laser weapons. The portal throughsolid matter. The intergalactic space wars. The planet made of ice. Another planet made offire. The mad scientist bent on eternal life. The theme seems to just scream science fictionand space opera.

But wait, I'm overlooking the faeries, namely the Phookas and Sirens, those mischievouscreatures from Fae. And the evil sorcerer bent on global intergalactic domination. The icedragon. The talking cats. A pink frog and his blue zebra. The mushroom forest. Eight foottall humanoid birds. And blue skinned creatures with formidable "magic" powers. It'sstarting to sound like fantasy now.

What is my genre? I have no idea and quite frankly, I really don't care. I write theTwighlight Manor series and it is a genre unto itself, I just follow its story to wherever it may lead. Why should I pigeonhole it into a one size fits all genre?

 LensesLink List: e-books for writers

Write, Create & Promote A Best-Seller.

Have you ever wondered why some writers earn millions of dollars and sell tens of thousands of books, while others struggle to earn back even the smallest advances?

Do you know what makes one book outsell another?

How do you attract new readers to buy your books in droves?

Are you still trying to find a way to get your book published and onto those shelves, in front of readers where it belongs?

You Are Considered a Renegade Writer. What Exactly is it that Makes Your Stories So Unconventional?

The biggest complaint most people have, right off the bat is Etiole. Simply put, the world is not ready for a drag queen as a main character. And even if he wasn't a drag queen, no publisher will touch a book where the hero is also the owner of a 17th century whore house and his girls are all under 18. Than there is the fact that this guy is not even human, but a *vampire-like* creature who feeds of the life energy of young girls. Etiole is the main character throughout most of the series, and usually the cause of most of the complaints.

Than there's the alternate main character, father of Etiole, and the schizophrenic owner of The Twighlight Manor, Sir Roderic. This man has schizophrenia, a mental disorder that is frighteningly nothing like the way it is portrayed in the movies and a shear hellish nightmare to live with. Many of the stories in the series are written through his eyes. Very few people are able to cope with a person who suffers from schizophrenia, even fewer people know what clinical schizophrenia even is. No one wants to know the truth of this frightening disorder, they would much rather read about the Hollywood-ized version of it, as it is much more sugar coated. I don't believe in sugar coating things. People usually have a hard time reading very far into one of my stories about Roderic and his *haunted* house. Note here, that The Twighlight Manor is not in fact haunted. This is one of Roderic's delusions that went extreme and scared half the Humans into thinking the place was haunted.

And than of course there's EelKat herself. Talking black bobcat, Queen of Planet Diona, sent to Earth to write a report on what she found there, and what she found was Proctor & Gamble, slaughtering thousands of animals. Her report back home was not good, and an intergalactic outcry went out to take the Human law of *Do unto others* and turn it back on them, with EelKat leading the slaughter as animals rose up and took over the test labs, doing to Humans what Humans had done to them. These stories are considered *too graphic* to be readable.

The Twin Emperors Vielder and Melaca (Roderic's father), builders of the Twighlight Manor, and their collection of Human heads, causes complaint, as does their capture and enslavement of several Chinese families. The *wax museum* (taxidermed Humans) they built into the Manor, tends to be a complaint as well. These two are responsible for Humans being the main course meal served at the Manor as well.

The Lansquin, Blackbird, and the Red Dragon are the cause of the most extreme out rages over my Twighlight Manor series. The Lansquin being a religious leader gone power crazed, Blackbird his cannibal bodyguard, and the Red Dragon his fanatical serial killing follower. While the Red Dragon was mentioned off hand in several of the older stories, these three made their actual on scene debut, in the 1993 edition of Friends Are Forever. It was the addition of this bloody trio that caused most of the problems I had with the Twighlight Manor stories. These three are especially not liked by LDS/Mormon readers, largely due in part to them being based almost entirely on my life growing up in the LDS church, with the Lansquin being a little bit too much like a temple worker, for most LDS readers to digest. The Red Dragon takes Brigham Young, The Avenging Angels, Jack the Ripper, and the Dali Killer and rolls them into one person killing in the name of religion. Once these three come in, every one forgets all the other complaints they had. Any story with this trio in it, sends my readers into hysteric spasms, partially for the blatant protest of religious dogma and partially for the *medically correct* graphic details of their crimes.

I did once ask an editor about the possibility of my series going mass produced. He thought that for starters I would have a really hard time finding a publisher willing (or crazy enough) to even touch a series like this. Secondly, even if I could find a publisher, it would be highly unlikely that anyone would buy many copies, due partially to the gory graphic nature of the details and partially to the in depth look inside the dark side of some controversial issues. He warned me that on top of that, I would also have some serious problems with politically correct laws, plus he said I'd have to remove the Chinese slave labor, the underage girls, some of the religious outrage, everything that could be considered inspiring to terrorists, and most of the medically correct graphic details of the murder scenes; and even than, if the series ever did go into mass production, it would likely be banned faster than any other book in history.

Did I take the editor's advice and make changes to make my stories more *reader friendly*? Nope. Well my future stories be written in a more reader friendly manner? Are you kidding? LOL! No way!

Does having a metal illness affect the way you write?

I suppose the correct question would be, wither or not I have a mental illness. I think of illness as being ill, and I do not feel ill. I think mental illness is more correctly termed as an alternative personality, though I suppose most would say personality or mood disorder, some thing like that. Whatever. I think the most accurate thing to say is that I've had way too much stress in my life, and seen far to many violent deaths of my close friends and family. I wonder if it's possible I had a nervous breakdown at some point and just never knew it. I mean, imagine you were to get up one morning, go outside to your garden and find your best friend, laying there chopped up into about 30 pieces. Not many people have to live with that kind of a memory in their heads. That happened 20 years ago, and I still have nightmares. I just never really got over it. You don't ever expect to see something like that. But yes, me, being the way I am, affects every thing in my life, so of course it affects my writing. In fact, I think if I was what people called *normal* or *sane* I don't think I would be able to write at all.

In 1991, my best friend was brutally murdered, (the killer was caught the same day and executed by lethal injection shortly after; which I did actually protest, due to my being very much against the death penalty) . That is when I stopped talking. That is also when I started writing stories about serial killers. By 1993, the Twighlight Manor (a haunted house), rather than the VISION-D8 (an intergalactic star ship) had taken over as the main setting for my stories, and what was formally known as The Friends Are Forever Series, was re-written and re-released under the new title The Twighlight Manor series. My stories were no longer aliens and star ships fleeing from comet struck planets, but now took a darker turn and where filled to overflowing with death, murder, a freezer full of heads, cannibals, talking animals that rose up and slaughtered humans, and a house that ate people. The walls of my new books dripped blood.

This new bloody version of Friends Are Forever, was read by many members at my church (LDS/Mormon), who suddenly cried out in an uproar of complaints at the alarmingly detailed nature of the brutal murders in my book. The bishop received so many complaints from Sunday School teachers and church members alike, that he contacted The Pine Land Center Mental Health Institute, telling them that I was a dangerous schizophrenic (the first time I was accused of schizophrenia, btw). The counselor from Pine Land came to church one Sunday and pulled me out of class to meet with him and the bishop. Though the bishop requested they straight jacket me and lock me up claiming he thought me to be demon possessed, the counselor concluded that I was deeply stressed over my friend's recent murder and nothing more, that this was a normal response for someone who had been the person to find their best friend chopped up. This however was the last time I attended my meetings at church in any semblance of normality. I continued to attend church every week for the next 15 years, however, I was now shunned, and usually made to sit alone at the far side of the room. If I tried to sit with any one, they not only moved to a different seat, but they took the chairs and moved across the room. Eventually I was asked to sit in the hall instead. Today, there is hardly a person who knows me personally, who does not maintain the theory that I am schizophrenic, originally because of the incident with the counselor from Pine Land Center, though today they now accuse me based on my cloths and my obsessive writing habits. My friend who was murdered, would be the last friend I ever had, as no one since the day at church, will even speak to me, and thus my own silence grew out of the fact that I no longer had a living soul to speak with. Without anyone to talk to, my writing habits grew ever more manic, with some days seeing me write as many as 20,000 words per day, as every thought to pass through my head, was now written down on paper, rather than spoken. Everything. I started creating characters on paper, for the sole purpose of being able to have some one with whom to have a conversation with, and that is how I got started in writing these interviews with myself. With no one willing to talk to me, I had to divide myself in two and talk to myself instead, which I did on paper, with one version of me asking questions while the other version of me answered them. Every time I read a book or watched a movie, I would want to talk about it with some one, but having no one to talk to, I instead wrote up the conversation on paper with a character from my books, usually EelKat who was the original character I was writing about way back in 1978, and this is how, by 1997, I had become known as both Wendy C Allen and EelKat, two separate, yet the same individuals. Today there is not a thought that passes through my head that does not end up written down, simply because while the average person talks, I am not in the habit of talking any more and thus write down what I have to say instead. Basically, it's like watching TV: you have one channel that is the real world, and one that is only in my head, and the real world channel got so bad, depressing, lonely, and painful to live in, that I just turned it off completely and went looking for friends elsewhere. All of this came about as a direct result of the incident with the bishop and Pine Land Center.

(For those who don't know, Pine Land Center was one of the nation's last institutes for dangerously insane people. Pine Land Center only gets called in, if they think you are criminally insane, and too crazy to be kept at a normal style local mental health institute. You have to be pretty far gone to get locked up in Pine Land Center, and the fact that counselors from Pine Land came right into my Sunday School class and took me out, told people that I was not only crazy, but I was extremely dangerous as well. Due to this incident, I have never again been accepted at church, I've tried changing wards, but unless I move out of state, I can't find a ward that doesn't already know to shun me the moment I walk though the door. Pine Land shut down in 1995, several church members now accuse me of witchcraft and say I put a curse on it. I say they are crazier than me, if they really truly believe that. The really odd thing of all this is, that many members who today, shun me, were not members at the time of the Pine Land incident, and shun me, not knowing why they are shunning me, but do so, simply because others told them to. I find that kind of follow the church leader attitude alarmingly bizarre .)

Well, my 1993 edition of Friends are Forever, caused such a mass outrage locally, that it never went into mass production, and was instead locked away in a safe, after members burned nearly every copy of it. I believe my copy, of the now infamous 1993 revised version of Friends Are Forever The History of The Twighlight Manor Volume I, Third Edition, may be the only one to still exist. It stands as a testament to just how far off the deep end I can write, when driven by my wild, free wheeling emotions, as well as how far off the deep end people can go after reading a book. It amazes me, when I stop and think about it, and realize that what I wrote terrified those people so badly, that they actually became terrified of me, and thought that I should be institutionalized, based on the words I wrote in a book. If there is one thing I am certain of, it is that I am able to write in such a way that I can touch people's innermost souls and move people to action. I fear that putting this book into mass production, will cause a far greater outcry on a much more massive level. I remember how those people, my so called friends, responded, and than think of what it would be like should strangers respond like that: THAT truly terrifies me.

Looking back at my other answers here, I'm seeing a trend in my answers, and it looks like my mood affects my writing quite a bit. Well, that's easy to expect I guess, as I have been asked more than once if I was ever diagnosed as bi-polar. Nope, I wasn't, but that's only because I don't go to doctors. The going theory held by most people whom have meet me face to face is that either I'm schizophrenic or I have Aspengers, or maybe both.

Bi-polar, schizophrenic, Aspengers, who knows, who cares; either way, I'm a very high strung person driven by wild mood swings, and that affects my writing quite a bit.

. . .

The biggest problem with my writing style however, is the fact that I simply sit down and start writing. Literally. No matter where I am, or what I am doing, I simply sit down and start writing. This is such a huge problem, that you almost never see me go out in public unaccompanied by another adult. This is also why I do not live alone, why I do not drive a car, and why I can not hold a *regular* day job. I sit down where ever I am, when ever the mood strikes and just start writing. If you ever see a comic book character sitting cross legged on the floor in the middle of the milk aisle at Wal-Mart, writing away, well, that's me. I actually can not walk in places where I will have to cross the street or a parking lot, unless I have some one with me to guide me across the road, because I frequently, just stop to write right there in the cross walk. It's a problem I have, and a really bad one that has caused me to be nearly hit by a car on countless occasions, because my mind no longer see things around me. I once sat down and started writing, and didn't stop for 48 hours . . . Did not eat, did not sleep, I completely lost track of time. I was totally taken by surprise when I realized the 2 whole calendar days had passed before I noticed it, because to me, it seemed like no more than 20 minutes had passed. The odd thing about this, though, is I only started doing this less than ten years ago, and this seemed to have happened shortly after a month with 4 deaths: first my horse, than my grandmother, than my dog Blackie, and than my other dog Muffin. All four of them died with in 3 weeks of each other. Stress, seems to be the triggering factor that shuts off my brain and causes me to not see or hear anything or any one around me and makes me simply start writing in an uncontrolled and unstoppable manner.

This *shutting off* and writing is the same reason why I rarely speak to people, because fact is, I rarely see them. I see the streets, I see the buildings, if there is a car made prior to 1975, I see that car and that car only and not the other cars speeding by. They simply become totally invisible to me. I do talk to people if I notice they are there. The trick is to get me to notice that you are there. Like I said, it's like watching TV, and I have to switch from one channel to the other in order to notice you there. If I shut off the world in my head, I can see people around me and talk to them fine, the problem is, switching my mind out of the world I write about and into the real world where people around me live. It's not easy. I know when I stopped talking. I can tell you the exact date: August 21, 1991, the day my best friend was murdered. I know when I started turning off the real world too: after the things that happened at church with the bishop and Pine Land Center. The real world simply became more than I was able to handle on my own and I had no friends or family to turn to.

This also explains my cloths. You see, I dress no different than the characters of my books, and to me this is perfectly normal, as it is the way all of them dress. I don't notice that real people are dressed different than me, because I don't very often see the real people around me, and it is not until some one comes up to me and asks me why I'm dressed like I am, that I am brought back from one world to the next, and see that, yes, in this world, I am dressed quite a bit different from other people. Of course, my cloths, started when I was just 4 years old, and I was wearing my Wonder Woman underoos under my Cinderella dresses . . . I always did dress like a comic book hero gone princess. No one paid any attention to it though, until after I was about 22 years old, and people started questioning why I didn't wear *normal* cloths, but the fact is, for me they are normal, because I have never worn any thing else.

Does having a mental illness effect my writing? Most certainly. It effects every thing in my life. But than again, as I have never been diagnosed as having a mental illness, there in lays the question: why do people think I have a mental illness?

As you can see when people say they think I have schizophrenia, or Aspengers, they are not saying so in jest, to be funny. They are very serious, and often very frightened of me when they say it. In nearly 40 years, I have yet to have a friendship last more than 6 months, because most people, once they get to know me, are completely terrified of me. At first they meet me and think I'm in costume and acting in character, and they think of it as some sort of role playing game, but once it dawns on them, that this is no act, this is no game, that my mind is what my mind is, and that I am like this 24-7-365, I never hear from them again. If I do hear from them again, it is only to ask if I have considered medication to make me *normal* yet. My question is, Why would I want to be *normal*? What incentive is there? None that I can see.

Would you encourage or mentor someone?

By that you mean, encourage people to write like I do? Mentor people who want to write in a very grassroots, in your face, not afraid to speak you mind and tell it like it is, fashion? Is that what you mean?

I would always encourage every one to follow their heart, and do what is best for them, and stand up for what they believe in. If that means becoming a writer, than so be it. But I would also warn them, that sometimes standing for what you believe in means standing alone, and standing alone while others are trying like hell to pull you down. You got to have a strong back and a hard skin if you want to follow my lead. My books have caused people to try to straight jacket me and lock me away in an asylum. My books have resulted in paint balls shot at our family's car and the windows of our home. I've had pictures of guns left on my front door. I had the town manger (another member of our church btw) rise up and try to throw us off our land. I have had to live on the streets in a tent built out of a tarp and some cinder block. All because people really, really, REALLY hated the things I wrote. If you are going to take a stand, and then write a book about it, than you sure as hell better be ready to keep right on standing no matter what people throw at you, because once you write your book, there is no looking back and no backing down. People will come at you, and they will come at you hard. I may not agree with what you write in you book, but you can sure as hell count on my to be the first in line to fight for your right to say it, and I will never tell you not to write it. Only Nazis burn books. Only Nazis try to take away you right to freedom of press. The is America, but believe me, you'll never know the price of freedom until you try to write some thing that is considered controversial.

Would I mentor some one? Not likely. I've not had many good experiences with humans and I no longer put myself in a position where I'm going to have to deal with them. I still write stuff that make people hate me, but I no longer go out in public more than a couple of days a month. You get enough paint balls shot at you, and you'd stop going out in public too. Mentoring people to write like me, maybe, at some point in the future, yeah, but not right now.

I have discovered that the only way I am able to deal with people is in a retail situation. I've been a sales representative for 14 years now, and these costumers come in and they see me as nothing more than a sales girl doing my job. People are very non-judgmental of sales people. They have a predetermined idea about what a sales girl is, long before they come into the store, and that is how they see you. These people have no idea who I am, and they don't care who I am either. They are there to buy something, and I am just a name on a tag who is helping them to buy whatever it is they want to buy. That for me is a breath of fresh air. So many people have judged me in my life, always giving me ultimatums, always telling me to obey or else, always telling me I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity, it's just nice to be able to be around people who don't look at me and see the evil sinner woman who wrote that awful book of the devil. In the store, people see me, the sales associate, they don't see me the writer, and they treat me very, very differently as a result, and I find that very, very weird; refreshing, but weird.

Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they?

Writers write. You would be amazed at how often people over look this fact. Writers write. They don't sit at a desk staring at blank paper all day, or lounge around coffee shops chatting with friends or sleeping in, or surfing the net in their underwear. They actually sit down and write words. People always have this mental image of writers as millionaires who do nothing all day. Fact is the average fiction writer gets paid $15,000 a year and works a day job to pay the bills and feed the family. A lot of new writers make less than $5,000 a year. A well paid writer is a writer making $30,000 a year. You want to be the millionaire writer like Stephen King? Than sell the movie rights to your book, because that's the secret to becoming a millionaire writer: not writing books, but signing movie contracts. My advice to every one looking to become a writer is this: do a reality check. Ask yourself, can you live on a $5,000 a year income for the first 3 or 4 years? Can you discipline yourself to write for 5 or 6 hours a day, every day, year after year? Is all you got, your one great novel, or can you write a new one every three months for the rest of your life? Are you willing to give up time with family and friends, just so that you have enough hours per day to write? Can you work on a deadline and meet that deadline with enough days to spare to write a complete rewrite? Are you able to handle an extremely high stress career? If you can't answer yes to every one of those questions that you should not be trying to become a writer.

Newbies dream about writing. Newbies like to research data. Newbies like to design book covers. Newbies like to tell people they are going to be a writer soon. But newbies never seem to get much writing done. Newbies write one 100 word poem a month and think they are a writer. Newbies do everything under the sun, except write, because they are looking at writing as a hobby, something to do for fun, rather than seeing writing for what it really is: as job, a career, an income.

This surprises some people, but writers write 5 or 6 hours or more each and every day. Writers write at a rate of 2,000 or 3,000 words per hour. Writing is long hours and hard work. Writing is a lot of hard work, and because you are self employed there is no boss to tell you what to do and when to do it, so you have to be your own boss and set a strict work schedule for yourself. It doesn't have to be a 9 - 5 work schedule, and it could even be a 3 hour day 2 days a week work schedule, if you want, but you must have some sort of a schedule.

Write EVERY DAY!

Write every day, even if you don't feel like it.

Every writer has a day when they wake up a say: "I don't feel like writing today." But you know what, if you are a career writer; a writer who writes as a career, you can't do that.

Why?

Well, how many times have you woken up and wished you didn't have to go to work/school? But did you call your boss/teacher and tell him: "I'm sleeping in today, sorry, I'll come to work/school tomorrow." No, you didn't, because you'd have been fired/expelled. You got up and you went to work/school anyways, because that's what you have to do, like it or not.

Writing is the same thing. Writing is a career. You get paid to write. Writing pays the bills and puts food on the table. You don't write, you don't get paid, you don't get paid, you don't eat. You can not take a day off from work, even when you work at home as a writer.

Write every day, even if you REALLY don't feel like it.

Now maybe you are the kind of person who would call your boss and say you was sick even when you were not. If you are, than eventually it well catch up with you and you will lose your job. You miss one day, and than you miss another, and it catches up with you quick and you lose your job as a writer, because a writer who isn't writing is not a writer at all!

Do not give in to your feelings. Push them aside and write anyways. You'll be glad you did

If you are a writer, remember that writers actually write. You know, words. Little black things on paper. You write to make money. To make money, you must sell your words. You can't sell what you haven't written yet. You don't write, you don't publish. You don't publish, you don't get paid. You don't get paid, you don't eat.

In short: just write, and than write some more, and after that, write a little bit more. The more you write the better you become. There's no better way to become a better writer, than just sitting your ass down and writing.

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The content of this lens was created by Wendy C. Allen compiled in part from posts on Star Log Pink, Star Log White, EK's Writing Blog, EK's CosPlay & Sewing Blog, Xavier's Nest, and EK's Business Blog, the official blogs of author and artist Wendy C. Allen, a.k.a. EelKat. Reprinted here on Squidoo with permission.

EK's Star Log and it's sister sites Copyright © Wendy C. Allen 2004-2008.

Star Log, Space Dock 13, The Twighlight Manor Press, Moonsnails, Buried Treasure, Copper Cockeral, Black Bobcat Fashions, Purple Peacock Patterns, The Rabbit Hole, and Xavier's Nest Copyright © Wendy C. Allen 2003-2008.

Twighlight Manor, EelKat, White Rock Asylum, Planet Ptarmagin, Crystonite Chronicles, Etiole, Sir Roderic, The Swanzen Family, and all other related characters, info, writings, names, images, and content Copyright © Wendy C. Allen 1978-2008.

Reuse of these names, characters, writings, and images are not allowed without prior authorization.

All content written and designed by Wendy C. Allen unless otherwise stated. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted without the express permission of the author. All rights reserved.

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Autistic Author, Artist, Card Reader, Hoodoo Rootworker, Damballa (Voodoo) Priestess, Exorcist, Dollmaker, and Art Car Designer.

aka The Sea Witch of Old Orchard Beach

owner of:

The Goldeneagle aka The World's Most Haunted Car

&

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