I just realized I was remiss in not posting this here (as I’ve been remiss in not posting here at all, which has really been nagging at me).

Starting Monday I’ll be hosting a self-editing workshop on the ESPAN RWA forum. It’s not too late to sign up and the sign up cost is extremely reasonable. Details below:

January 18, 2010 Self Editing Workshop by Angela James

Join Angela James as she shares some of the common pitfalls she’s seen in submissions and contest entries. She’ll give you ideas, tips and tricks for polishing and self-editing your manuscript. Discuss things such as dialogue tags, whether all forms of “to be” really are evil and just what you’re doing to your life expectancy with your use of that exclamation point. Through it all, she’ll be available for clarification and questions in order to help you on your way to a cleaned-up manuscript.

This course will run over several days on the forum, so you can pop in and out as needed to ask Angela questions or see the new information she’s posted. So, you don’t need to be available at any certain time of day, but you do need to sign up for the course to attend.

Angela James Bio:

Executive editor of Carina Press, Harlequin’s digital-only press, and veteran of the digital publishing industry, Angela James is a
well-known advocate for digital publishing. James has enjoyed a long and varied publishing career that has included ownership of an independent editorial services business, work as a copy editor for electronic book and small press publisher, Ellora’s Cave, and executive editor for Samhain Publishing. James frequently travels to regional, national and international writing conferences to meet with authors and readers, and present workshops on digital publishing for both authors and readers of all genres of fiction.

To sign up for this course, visit the ESPAN website.

The course will have special pricing (as we kick-off our new series of workshops) of $5 for ESPAN RWA members, $10 for non-ESPAN RWA Members and $15 for non-RWA (please choose your option)

That’s me! Today anyway. I’m not blogging here but I blogged at THREE other places today.

At author Lauren Dane’s blog for her Writerly Wednesday post, I blogged about finding time (to write, edit, promote or do whatever it is we want to do).

At Whipped Out, I wrote about my Thanksgiving menu and shared links to the recipes I’ll be using.

And at the Carina Press blog, I asked for help!

Happy Thanksgiving to my US friends! I’ll be cooking up a storm for the next two days and then, Friday? Shopping!

I wanted to take a moment and post a thanks to everyone who has taken the time over the past week to pass on their well wishes and enthusiasm, both here and on Twitter, other blogs and forums. I am so appreciative of all the things you’ve said and all the encouragement that you’ve given me.

It’s been an interesting experience, the process of moving to a new company and changing jobs. Certainly, it’s something I’ve done in the past. I mean, I had a career as an occupational therapist before I entered publishing, and I held several jobs there, as I worked my way up the career ladder in that field. But never before has one of my job changes taken place so publicly and it’s been…somewhat disconcerting to say the least. It wasn’t unexpected for me that people would take interest in this move, but what did come as a surprise were the people who reacted negatively, bitterly and some with outright anger. And the people who seem to be waiting for failure. I wasn’t quite expecting that, or those who took it seemingly personally. I promise you, it wasn’t personal. I wonder if there’s something about the smaller, more intimate setting of digital publishing that makes people seem to react more strongly to this than when editors move within traditional publishers?

So this last week has been this weird roller coaster of emotions, one I’ve never experienced before in relation to a job change. I have another post planned to give you some insight into one interesting part of that, which I don’t mind making public since it’s about my personal reactions. But here I’ll just say I’m very thankful for my friends and family, who have been rather forced to go on the emotional roller coaster with me, when I’m sure there were times they’d have liked to leap off (without helmets, even). And I’m also glad for the Quartet Press partners, who are amazingly pragmatic, and who’ve shown such good faith and belief in me. I needed all of that this week.

But now that the first week has passed, I’m looking to the upcoming months of building and planning. Starting a new company is never a smooth ride, but I’m going to do my best to make it as smooth as possible. Thankfully, I know some of what to expect and I have a game plan, along with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for what we’re building. I tell you, it has potential.

So, again, for all of the positive energy you’ve sent my way–thank you!

You know when you sit and try to imagine what life will be like or what you’ll be doing in one, two, five years and even your most wild imaginings don’t quite get it right? That’s where I’m at right now.

Last spring I was approached by someone I admire tremendously and have always held a bit of awe for, Kassia Krozser, about the possibility of joining her and her partners in their new publishing venture, Quartet Press. I said no. I wished them luck, said I’d do what I could to spread the word and help them succeed, but I said no. After all, I’d already helped start and build one publisher, had watched it grow and gain traction in the publishing world and really, who has the energy to start over from scratch and do it all over again? But it turns out Kassia and her partners weren’t ready to give up on me. They came back to me months later, wanting to discuss what it would take, and flattering me enormously (hint: I am not immune to compliments and ego strokes. A girl does like to be reminded of her worth from time to time, after all). Apparently, they thought I had something to offer, some skills that would be an asset to Quartet Press, and a presence in the digital community that was valuable to not just them, but to authors and readers.

Eventually, they hit all the right notes for me and Josh (whose birthday it is today, btw, so thank you, babe, for sticking it out with me these past few weeks while I was a basket case of nerves and decisions). So here we are today, with this press release and me confirming that, yes, in a decision not made easily or lightly, I have resigned my position with Samhain and have taken on the position of editorial director at Quartet Press.

When I joined Samhain in 2005, I didn’t know what to expect. I was excited and hopeful. Though digital publishing had been around for years, in some ways it was still in its infancy. People wondered how Samhain could be different than the other publishers out there. I had some ideas, but what I did know is that I was going to do my damndest to help build the best company possible. Four years later, I know so much more about digital publishing and I think it’s been clear over the years that I’m both passionate about it and passionately believe in it.

One of the reasons I ultimately decided to make the difficult decision to move to Quartet Press was because I do believe in digital publishing. I think there’s a lot of room for more quality publishers, whether they’re publishing romance or something else. I think that more quality publishers within digital publishing can only benefit those already there, including publishers, authors and readers. On the upside, I helped build this with Samhain once, a publisher I continue to love and have faith in, and I believe I can do it again. On the downside, starting all over and proving myself and my publisher one more time. No pressure there.

Cheer us on, or wait and see. Regardless, I hope you’ll all come along for the ride.

(Edited to add: This is a guest post written by Shannon Stacey)

You’ve seen the view from the Executive Editor of Samhain’s side of the desk here, but I thought today I’d give you a glimpse of the view from the other side. What’s it like, as an author, to go through the editing process? I’ve done it eight times, so I’ll give you a quick overview and then I’ll offer up a few specifics that might help if you’re thinking of submitting to Samhain.

(Obligatory caveat: Angie has been my editor throughout all my contracts with Samhain. Other editors may do things differently, plus the working relationship between an editor and each of her authors varies. Therefore your mileage will, as well.)

FOREVER AGAIN was published in January of 2006 (it was one of Samhain’s four launch titles), which means we probably started the editing process in the fall of 2005, therefore Angie has been my editor for almost four years. I’m not really sure how she feels about that…

Anyway. I’m a fairly clean writer, so our process is generally two rounds of edits and a round of final line edits.

Round One: Oh my achin’ ass. These hurt. The comments in the documents (edits are done electronically through track changes) are scary enough, but it’s the general impression in the body of the email that really makes you cry. This is where you hear your hero’s a flaming asshole or your secondary guy (and future hero) is a little creepy. Maybe you didn’t develop the romantic arc clearly enough on the page so the HEA isn’t believable. Or the dreaded I just don’t love it. In the document there are cheerful little speech bubbles pointing out plot holes and awkward sentences and timeline issues and pet words and…just about everything a writer can possibly do wrong in a book.

Round Two: With the heavy lifting out of the way, this usually seems a little easier, but the magnifying glass is out for the fine tuning and a thousand little errors need to be fixed. Okay, not a thousand. (Well, again, your mileage may vary.) If there was a large issue that required substantial rewriting, those sections will be edited and there’s the question of whether it effected other parts of the story.

In both rounds, commas are fought for and typos are fixed. Issues are hashed out. For two books in a row, Angie and I went ’round and ’round about the capitalization of Navy. I lost in both cases. I’ve learned through almost Pavlovian conditioning to trust Angie’s judgement. When I disregard her suggestion, the reviews criticize that element. When I implement a change she suggested, the reviews love that element. Seriously.

Once the book’s edited within an inch of its life, it goes to…Final Line Edits: This is a crucial step in the book’s process and, though I stet a lot of issues dealing with voice and such, I’m always blown away by the number of things the final line editors catch. Usually syntax/grammar/spelling/typos and such, but they’ll also speak up if they think a comment needs to be made. The FLE for NO SURRENDER questioned the clarity of an event from 72 HOURS that’s mentioned, as well as commenting on the timeline of the ending.

Just for fun, here are my five favorite editorial comments from Angie:

5. Is this a word?
4. Something about this sentence just isn’t right.
3. Hello run-on sentence!
2. I don’t think this is a word.
1. This sentence is just kind of…ugly.

If you’re thinking about submitting to Angie, there are a few things you can do to help ensure your manuscript doesn’t make her do something rash. Like running off to Las Vegas, where she’ll stand around on the street sucking down suspiciously disguised beverages, for example.

10 Things You Might Want to Doublecheck in Your Manuscript Before Subbing to Angela James:

1. Make sure none of your adverb adjective combos or whatever they’re called are hyphenated. (“Softly-mounded” for example.) I keep putting them in, she keeps taking them out.

2. Be certain, especially in love scenes, that none of your characters’ body parts are autonomous. Hands and eyes that go a’roaming remind her of Thing from The Addam’s Family. Funny, but not so much with the sexy.

3. Check, doublecheck and triplecheck your timelines. She bags me every single time I convince myself nobody will catch a timeline glitch. They’re one of her “things”.

4. If you’re one of those writers who fires off a draft, figuring you’ll polish it up if she accepts it because that’s what editors are for, you might want to submit to a different editor. At a different publisher.

5. Watch for a lot of thens and and thens. I’m especially guilty of this synopsis-like construction during love scenes and fight scenes—scenes that I’m heavily choreographing in my head and trying to translate onto the page. (Yes, the following comment exchange is for two paragraphs in a love scene and there were more on the page. Ouch.)

6. Pronoun confusion. Make sure every one of your pronouns clearly belongs to the character/item/whatever it’s supposed to. Angie’s very hung up on pronoun clarity. Also— Reflexive pronouns. Umm…I’m still not sure what that even means. Certain usages of himself or herself, for example, will earn an editorial handslap. Since I don’t quite get this rule, I just write and then change it when she points it out. Better for you, though, if you do it right.

7. The dreaded ECHO. I’m not sure how an author can really check for this other than reading very, very thoroughly, but using the same word too often too close together is a common author quirk and a common editorial comment. If you can get rid of this, you’re that much cleaner. She has some kind of magic Repetition Radar.

8. Make sure modifying phrases are modifying the correct subject. This is HUGE with Angie. Another of her “things”.

9. Don’t give a lot of characters names beginning with the same letter. She’ll notice. And right now you might want to avoid naming all of your characters “C” names because…well, just because. (A little inside tidbit from NO SURRENDER: The young woman the DG has to rescue will always be named Claire in my heart. In the book it’s…something else. Isabel? Isabella? Something that doesn’t start with a C.)

10. The standard warning to avoid starting multiple paragraphs with the same word, whether it be a name, the or and. And watch the junk words—just, so, that. She hit FOREVER AGAIN so hard on my “that” usage, I still shudder to remember the edits. I think it took several books for her to break me of that habit. Do a find on “that” and challenge every single one.

As a matter of fact, she was rather traumatized the first time she had to ADD “that” to one of my books. I, of course, gloated.

Okay, if you made it all the way through that overly-long post, comment to enter to win a DIGITAL book from my backlist! Ask a question if you’ve got one or make a comment or just say hi and at 9:00 am est Friday Sunday I’ll randomly draw a winner!

Since I’m no longer with Samhain, I’ve deleted this call. If you want to submit an angel or demon story to me, I’d love to see them, any length, any heat level. It broke my heart to leave this anthology behind. You can send them to me at Quartet Press: submissions@quartetpress.com

I had pre-posted a blog over on the Samhain blog but am just now getting a chance to log in and post about it here. If you’re interested in knowing what genres sell well and which aren’t quite as popular, head over and give it a read.

For those following along, I’m currently in the Wisconsin Dells on an unscheduled stop at a resort with a huge indoor waterpark. A nice break for Brianna. I should make it home by Wednesday with just enough time (Thursday) to pack (and get a haircut and a pedicure, yeah, I’m insane for all this back-to-back traveling but it’s worth it!) for my 8 day trip to the WRW retreat and then RT. Wheee

I was interviewed by Nikki from Hooked on Romance today. While I am still traveling (I’m at my destination, but busy with family stuff), I’m going to pop in over there a few times to answer questions. There’s also a chance to win some free ebooks!

I’ve been wanting to write this post for awhile because, in the last month, my number of Twitter followers has tripled. It’s kind of weird and a little…puzzling because I’m fairly certain I’m 1) not that interesting and 2) more than a little inane. Maybe most of them are Twitter spammers. I did theorize that most of the people who “follow” don’t actually pay attention. That’s okay with me. I’ll still carry on the way I have been.

But that said, I think it’s important, if you follow me (or are thinking about it) that you know a few things.

1) I don’t autofollow (and hey, Twitter is getting rid of that feature anyway, but even so, I don’t follow automatically). In fact, if you look, I don’t follow a lot of people. It goes up and down depending on what I feel I can keep up with. I usually end up following someone because either someone else has recommended them or because they’ve replied to me on Twitter and I’ve decided I want to see what they’re saying at other times as well.

2) Not following you doesn’t mean I’m not interested in what you have to say, only that I can’t keep up with very many people. Don’t take it personally, please. Which leads to…

3) I think one of the best ways to manage your Twitter experience is to be willing to unfollow. I go through and unfollow/follow every couple weeks. Again, don’t take it personally (though I will take it personally if you unfollow me. KIDDING!)

4) Twitter is not my work. I don’t get paid to Twitter (or blog). If you read my blog, you know it’s a mish-mash of everything. My Twitter is even worse than that. Please don’t follow me if you expect only convo about publishing, books or editing all the time. You won’t like me. Plus, I Twitter a lot. I like Twitter. I try not to Twitter the really banal stuff, but I have my moments. And did I mention I Twitter a lot? Yeah. You might want to think about that before you follow me. Especially if you don’t like hearing about toddler vomit.

5) If you reply to me, I will try to reply back. I think I do pretty good at that. As long as there’s a response I can make. But there are times when I won’t respond back because I don’t have a response, am busy and away from Twitter, or just plain miss your reply. If you had a question and I didn’t answer, I probably missed it. Just ask me again, please! Also, I love it when people convo me on Twitter. It’s better than “speaking” into a vacuum. And I’ve found my Twitter followers are pretty funny people (who make good book recommendations!)

6) Just because I’m Twittering doesn’t mean I’m 1) not working or 2) at work. I know, seems contrary. But being online doesn’t mean I have to be working. I like to be online just for fun like everyone else. But also, if you see me Twittering, I’m just as likely to be doing so in between working on something. Either way, please don’t draw conclusions or make assumptions or have expectations about me based on whether I’m Twittering or not.

7) If I’m at a conference, I might Twitter workshops, etc from the conference. You might want to unfollow me during that time if it’s not of interest to you (and then follow again if you want). I don’t mind! I know what’s of interest to me is not of interest to everyone.

Last, please don’t query me on Twitter (or Facebook) unless we’re engaged in a conversation that would invite you to. I put my email address on my Twitter page so if you have a business-related question, you’re free to email me!

As announced on Twitter this morning, I’m super excited to tell you that Samhain is going to start offering our front and backlist in DRM-free EPUB format starting in May. We’ve got a good jump on this, we just need to give our over-worked formatter time to get it all together. Many of you know that I’m a big fan of standard formats, like EPUB, and also a huge believer in not using DRM. Samhain (and really, most epublishers that I know of) don’t use DRM and never have so for us the big announcement is really the addition of the new format, not the DRM-free.

Did you know that Samhain editors are on Twitter? www.twitter.com/samhainpub You’ll find most of the Samhain editors Twittering there, as well as our submissions coordinator. They Twitter about submissions, edits, editing, and life in general. Plus, we’re going to start doing some Twitter contests coming soon!

In the conversations from Twitter file: this past weekend I asked for recommendations for political thrillers and action adventure novels in the vein of Nelson Demille, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. I got some great recommendations (and am always happy for more if you have them). I started with two recs. One from agent Deidre Knight for The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano. I bought it and loaded it onto the Sony last night. And devoured it. It’s a totally compelling read. The author has a very readable narrative voice and I had to keep turning the pages to see where the story would go next. The main character is interesting, though not entirely likeable, but that actually works for the book because she’s not a perfect character, but an entirely real one with real flaws. I don’t regret spending the $10 for this book and I highly recommend it!

The other recommendation that I followed up on was James Rollins. I decided to go with Sandstorm, the first in his Sigma Force series. I read the first few chapters after I finished The Girl She Used to Be and enjoyed them. I’m looking forward to this evening when I can pick Sandstorm up and keep reading!

The Twitter pitch (twitch) post is still going strong. I’m going to pull some of the favorites and highlight them in a blog post this week.

Last, unrelated to publishing but relevant, I’m going to be traveling a lot in the month of April. We just decided (today) to road trip to my parents’ in North Dakota for Easter. We’ll leave early next week and won’t come back until the following Wednesday. I’ll have a day to pack and regroup before I head to WRW retreat and from there to RT for a week! I’m a little tired just thinking of it but excited because we’ve never gotten to spend a holiday with them since we’ve been married (or since Brianna was born) because of the distance and work schedules. So yay!