07.22.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:42 pm by Kay
To update my writing efforts with Woman’s World:
I have submitted seven pieces of romantic short fiction. I have received three form letter rejections, one “well-written but not right for us” (or words to that effect), and one “well-written” which also included an invitation to rewrite and resubmit.
Wheeeeeee!!!!!!!!
I did! And what a wonderful exercise it was. The suggestion was made to change the point-of-view and I did. It became a much better story. If nothing else, I’ve learned how looking at the same story from a different and in this case, more personal, angle can change it. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know that, but it was a good repeat lesson for me.
So, I hope it worked and was good for the magazine also!
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04.16.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:28 pm by Kay
It’s a bit embarrassing to realize that I haven’t updated this site since–egad!–September. My apologies. There aren’t any reasons, or more importantly, excuses. I just haven’t. I’ve been keeping up with my blog at kaysisk.blogspot.com instead.
However, I’ve decided to try something new in the way of romance writing. I still enjoy the complexity of novel writing, but I’m giving short story composition a try as well. Inspired by a few online articles and a recent email-workshop, I’m working on stories for Woman’s World magazine.
It’s very different having hero and heroine get to the point of “this could turn into something real” in 800 words. That’s less than four double-spaced pages. It has made me examine each word and turn of phrase very carefully. I’ve been surprised at what digressions I can do without when the word count is on the line.
So far, I’ve submitted three but have not received an answer, either acceptance or rejection. I’m working on a fourth.
Wish me well, and I will truly do better at keeping you informed.
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09.23.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:00 am by Kay
First of all, I’d like to apologize for being seemingly invisible during the summer. My last post was in May. May? Where did the summer go? No, really. Wasn’t it just May? And now, it’s almost October. Time to get crackin’.
I started to sew with real, store-bought patterns when I was 14 and in Home Economics I. I think we all made the same blouse first, then were allowed to branch out. Through the four years I took HomeEc, I advanced to suits and linings and fancy buttonholes. I think my sewing skills were always more highly developed than my cooking, although I still do the latter (by necessity) and the former has dropped off.
Economics would be the principle reason: shopping wisely, you can buy almost any garment cheaper than you can purchase the pattern, good fabric, and spend the labor in fit and construction. That has not, however, stopped me from saving all my old patterns because I’ve always believed the more times you make it, the cheaper that envelope of tissue paper becomes. As each garment is made of different fabric, they are still “new.”
So my patterns are old and used. In many cases, the envelopes are torn and they’ve been repackaged in zippy bags. I may even have that first blouse pattern if I looked really hard. I have four drawers of patterns. Four. They’re arranged by garment: blouse, dress, coat, etc. There’s a drawer for children and one for costumes and home decorating. The last two are evergreen so I can justify keeping them, while the rest, I really should think about letting go.
So what does this have to do with being a writer? Well, we fall into patterns. We write the same type of heroes, the same type of situations, no matter we use different characters and locations which subtly change the way the book looks and reads. We specialize in comedy or romantic suspense. We become good at it. Perhaps we become bored and decide to change our pattern, to go to another genre, write a beta hero instead of an alpha. We take a huge risk. Will our readers follow us? Will they stay with us? Will we still like what we’re doing?
After all, don’t styles change? Change in length (shorter books, longer skirts), change in fabric (erotica, cotton or polyester), change in design (comic covers, plaids). What we enjoyed reading or wearing in the 60s or 80s, we won’t necessarily enjoy (or look good in) now. Still, we hang on to our ‘keepers’, books or patterns. Somehow, it’s been far easier for me to divest myself of my old books than my old patterns.
I’ve written a book which is women’s fiction. It’s being considered by an agent. Of course, I hope she considers it worthy. But it was making a new pattern to put it to paper. It was a risk to see if I could get it constructed.
Then there’s the work-in-progress. It’s a contemporary romance; it’s the old pattern but in a new fabric. It’s still comfortable. But while I work on it, I’m thinking about the new pattern, wondering if making it the second time–writing another women’s fiction–would be easier than the first. Knowing how it’s constructed, how it fits… But it too would be of different fabric, lay differently on the model. So much to consider.
I guess there’s a reason I’ve kept all my old patterns and keep buying new ones. Comfort, balanced with risk.
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05.31.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:41 pm by Kay
Sometime this last year, amid the Kindle and the Sony eReader and the iPhone, sometime in this maelstrom of digital awareness, I crossed over into new territory, me and all my formerly e-published compadres. At some point, e-published has stopped being a hang-up as the reading public scrambles for new and different content for its reading devices. At last, the world is catching up with the one I joined 10 years ago, and I have gone from e-published to d-published.
Gee, it’s been 10 years since I signed my first publisher contract. Then, e-published meant available by download file or a CD-Rom for your computer to read. Then came the Rocket eBook reader and those files went mobile. But that didn’t last nearly long enough. It was simply ahead of its time.
Now, it would appear that just about everyone is d-published, available in a variety of formats to suit every taste. So I guess it’s time to welcome the rest of the world to my world. That would be the world wherein we’re all digitally published.
Oh–and still available in print too!
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05.03.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:49 pm by Kay
When I started writing over 15 years ago, I didn’t tell anyone. It was a challenge to myself to see if I could have a story idea, start a book with it, and then finish said book. My teenage sons quickly found me out because I would be hurrying to finish writing just as they came home from school, but they kept my secret. I’d wager it was because they were male, my sons, and thought nothing would ever come of it, so why bother telling anyone, much less their dad.
But about the time I finished that book, The Mermaid and the Eagle, I saw an article in the regional paper about a writer’s conference in Dallas. It was three days long and not something I could disappear to between breakfast and supper. In order to go, I’d have to confess what I’d been up to between 1 and 3 each afternoon.
There was minor condescension, but I got to go with nothing else but a ‘be careful on the road.’
It was a general writer’s conference put on by a Dallas-Ft. Worth writers’ group which I believe is no longer functioning. I know the conference fell by the wayside in the mid-90s. It was a true eye-opener for me, a series of ah-ha moments wherein I learned I didn’t know anything except I had the constitution to finish a book.
I went to two others, then switched to all-romance conferences when I joined Romance Writers of America in 1996. I immersed myself in the myth and story-telling of my genre, all the while acknowledging that basic craft and writing techniques were the same across all genres.
I just returned from the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation conference. It served a general audience and included many sessions I would never receive from RWA: freelancing, regional magazines, travel writing. Since, as well as writing romance, I now freelance for a regional magazine, McKinney Living, I found all of these to be very interesting and helpful.
I think I’m going to have to get out more.
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01.26.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:13 pm by Kay
The contest season, that is. For romance novels published in 2008, the time is now (or even a bit past), to be entering the contests sponsored by local Romance Writers of America chapters. Since Wedding Belle Blues was published in January 2008, it is eligible for contests which allow electronically published books, and I have entered it in three: The HOLT from the Virginia Romance Writers; the National Readers’ Choice Award from the Oklahoma RWA; and More than Magic from Romance Writers Ink, again in OK. I won the HOLT for Short Contemporary with A Suite Deal in 2003, so I’ve a bit of excitement over that one.
These are reader-judged contests. What a wonderful way to get your work in front of the romance-loving public.
The Grandmother of the contests is the RITA, sponsored by the RWA and judged by its published members. I was a finalist in the non-published contest, the Golden Heart, in 1997 for what became Lyla’s Song. I didn’t win, but it made the RWA conference in Orlando much more exciting that July.
I’ll keep you posted.
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12.05.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:25 pm by Kay
When I was first e-published in 2000, the word on the web was “cutting edge.” To be e-published was to be the wave of the future. It was merely a matter of a couple of years and the rest of the publishing world would catch up. The same was true of print-on-demand, by which my books are also available. Soon, kiosks would appear in Barnes & Noble and Borders and customers for small press books (and out of print and hard to find) would merely make a selection and wait for the final product.
Well, half the dream is closing in on reality. With Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony e-Reader, and the proliferation of SmartPhones with ebook reading capabilites, e-publishing is finally coming into its own. The big hint was when traditional publishers, such as Harlequin, started making all their books available in the various e-reading formats. Of course, that’s still the downfall: all the formats. It’s an e-book version of Sony vs. Beta from the 80s. No one has really won out yet, nor has the price of the devices dropped to the below $100 mark, but just the fact that publishers and manufacturers are taking the process seriously is encouraging.
My books are available not only from my publisher, Wings ePress, but also Fictionwise, which offers many incentives to buy there, never mind that my portion of the royalty is curtailed. If reaching the e-reading public is the name of the game, then it’s a fine place to start.
As to everyone else who enjoys the pleasure of a book in hand… I’ll let you know when I see the first POD kiosk.
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10.26.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:33 pm by Kay
I’ve started writing a new book. As I’m a “pantser”, a seat of my pants writer (as opposed to a plotter), I have no outline. I haven’t spent two months detailing my characters’ every move. To do so would, to me, be the same as writing the book. It would also restrict me in case my characters should decide to take a different turn. Think of all the time I’d waste trying to pull them back into line with The Plot. So, no, I give myself a set of circumstances, put a couple of people in need of a happy ending in them, and dive head first into reaching my destination, said happy ending.
But to start a new book is to start a new family. Here are people I’ve thought about, but not fully met. I know the color of her hair (honey blonde), the twinkle in his eye (he hasn’t a clue). I know my third person point of view, the one who wants to see that everyone learns a lesson along the way to their happiness (his mother). I know the setting (small town Texas), the industries involved (a used book store, a public library, a smoked turkey concern). I know who’s rich (him), who’s not-so-rich (her), who’s resentful (her family), who’s greedy (but greedy for what?). I know there are secrets. Lots of secrets. Secrets kept from him (he doesn’t recognize her), secrets kept from her (why her mother really hates his), and secrets kept from the reader (what caused all this ill-will). And then there’s a mystery: who kept a diary in the margins of the tattered book entitled The Perfect Groom?
Truth be told (or written), I don’t even know all the answers. That’s why it’s exciting to start a new book, to plunge into the pages and find out what these wonderful characters have to tell me. To sit down at the computer and find someone else has just knocked on the heroine’s door–and neither of us saw him coming.
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09.03.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:20 pm by Kay
I’ve long realized that there are a few movies which, despite the fact that I own copies of them, I’ll still watch when I happen upon them on TV. Ever After, Speed, Never Been Kissed, Dave. I watch because I’m waiting for the pay-off. In the case of each of the above, it’s The Kiss. As I’m a romance author, this doesn’t come as a surprise to me and it shouldn’t to you.
However, there’s another movie I own and will watch from whichever point I tune in, and it’s not because of a kiss. The amorous happenings are somewhere in the middle and a happy ending is not in the cards. Titanic I watch for the concept of One.
If you’ll remember in the movie, the excavation/exploration crew is hunting the Titanic. Having found it and the safe where the jewels were to be, they’re disappointed when the find for the loot is a bust. Onboard comes an old lady and her granddaughter. The former has a story to tell and no one but the boss is particularly interested. Still, she starts her tale.
With an audience of One.
Soon, as we weave back and forth in time, between the story of her and her young love and the further exploration of the wreck, her audience increases. Slowly, she mesmerizes the entire crew. I love watching the rapt faces increase in number.
It’s my pay-off, the audience I want for my books. Word of mouth is a powerful tool, perhaps the best selling tool out there. All it takes is a mesmerized audience of one. That’s what I want and whom I’m writing for. One. One person to love my book and then tell another. And another.
And, of course, then to pick up another book.
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07.24.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:22 am by Kay
I shall assume that this is your first visit to kaysisk.com. A heart-felt welcome. If you came from the link in the McKinney Living Magazine, a extra dose of welcome for you. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed meeting with Louis Miller and reliving his dance career. It was a joy-filled afternoon.
Please browse around my site. I started writing my “stories” when I was in West Ward Elementary (now Nell Burks Elementary, and yes, Miss Nell was my second-grade teacher, as well as my mother’s!). I still have some of my literary efforts from my high school days. I now write contemporary romance novels. (As opposed to historical or paranormal for those of you just learning about the romance genre.) Each book has its special page listed to the right.
Under ‘Links’ you’ll find favorite blogs and review sites. ‘Romance as I see it’ is an archive of my web articles from several years ago.
‘Buy the Books’ takes you to my publisher, Wings ePress, Inc. That’s the best place to purchase my books, either as ebook or print. Just search on my name. If you have a Fictionwise account, they also carry all my books in eformats. On Amazon, the Zshop of PawPrints will do it for print books.
Lastly is the link to my blog, Sisker’s Lair. Here I have my day-to-day musings on everything from the raccoons in the pear tree to our trip-diary from Australia last February. I have a lot of fun with my blog. I consider it a running commentary about my life in small town Texas.
Thank you for coming. Please, come again.
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