Unpublished/Self-Published Author Profile: ROSA LEE JUDE

This post is the second in a series of profiles featuring currently unpublished and self-published authors. These interviews focus on three areas where both those writers who are looking to find success in traditional publishing and those who are taking the self-publishing path must develop strength: pitching their work, pitching themselves, and creating quality, well-edited work.  None of what is shared in these posts is intended to be prescriptive. Also, a profile is not to be viewed as an endorsement of the author or her/his work. If you'd like to be featured, email your responses to the following prompts to JackDouglasHorn@gmail.com. 


ROSA LEE JUDE

Short Bio

Rosa Lee Jude began creating her own imaginary worlds at an early age. While her career path has included stints in journalism, marketing, hospitality & tourism, and local government, she is most at home at a keyboard spinning yarns of fiction and creative non-fiction. She lives in the beautiful mountains of Southwest Virginia with her patient husband and very spoiled rescue dog.

The Enchanted Journey is Rosa Lee’s second series. She is also the co-author of the award-winning time-travel series, the Legends of Graham Mansion. Learn more about her writing life at RosaLeeJude.com.

Facebook.com/rosaleejudeauthor

Twitter.com/rosaleejude

100 words or fewer, describe your book or story. This is your pitch. Make it enticing!

Perhaps Tremble Dawson should have paid more attention to her unusual bosses at the advertising agency or the sparks that fly out of her fingertips. Despite the clues, Tremble is not prepared to learn that her existence is full of secrets from a magical world. Her life is turned upside down when a handsome stranger offers to be a special kind of bodyguard to protect her from an evil force bent on making her fulfill a twisted prophecy. As she discovers her true identity, Tremble realizes there’s a bounty on her future and she must pay the price.

TREMBLE is Book One in The Enchanted Journey trilogy.

Describe your editing (not writing) process. What steps have you taken to polish your story?

The editing process is crucial. For both of my series, I have used a four-step approach with four different editors. My main editor is the first person to edit the finished manuscript (after tons of self-editing, of course). She makes deep edits that encompass not only minor spelling/grammar errors, but also flow, plot issues, and story holes. My next editor focuses on spelling and grammar as well as inconsistencies in the story line. The third editor reads as a true reader and offers opinions/suggestions regarding how the story interests/grabs her and its believability. Lastly, the fourth editor is the “Eagle Eyes” editor. Between each of the previous edits, I have made changes and updates, the last editor is the final eyes on the manuscript and incorporates all of the previous editing tasks in the final read. While this process is going on, the manuscript is also read by numerous beta readers.

Editing is a daunting process. It is every bit as important, though, as all of the drafts that a writer makes throughout the crafting of the story.

Unpublished/Self-Published Author Profile: RYAN COLVERT

This post kicks off a series of profiles featuring currently unpublished and self-published authors. I've come to understand that there are (at least) three areas where both those writers who are looking to find success in traditional publishing  and those who are taking the self-publishing path must build muscle: pitching their work, pitching themselves, and creating quality, well-edited work. There are a zillion and a half places where published and already well-known self-published authors are sharing their insights into these areas, but I thought it might be both helpful and fun for those who are newer to the business--and it is a business--to have a chance to chime in, too.  None of what is shared in these posts is intended to be prescriptive. Also, a profile is not to be viewed as an endorsement of the author or her/his work. If you'd like to be featured, email your responses to the following prompts to JackDouglasHorn@gmail.com. And now over to Ryan.

Unpublished/Self-Published Author Profile:

 RYAN COLVERT

Bio

Ryan Colvert was raised in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, with one grandmother who was devoutly religious and named Mother of the Year for the entire state and another grandmother who played the banjo, smoked a pipe and scared him to death with ghost stories. He loved them both, but you can guess which one he takes after. He lives in the Atlanta area with his husband of nearly 25 years.

http://ryancolvert.com   Twitter: @RyanColvert

100 words or fewer, describe your book or story. This is your pitch. Make it enticing!

A Moroccan fire-spirit trapped centuries ago is free and burning alive every descendant of the one who trapped it.

Jamal Williams is just trying to make ends meet in Savannah, Georgia when he is attacked for the actions of an ancestor he knows nothing about. With no knowledge of the supernatural, he must find a way to save both himself and his unborn child from the spirit—and he has to do it in the middle of the worst hurricane to hit Savannah in a century.

Describe your editing (not writing) process. What steps have you taken to polish your story?

My first step was to identify and fix as many story-level issues as possible by myself. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find everything, but I didn’t want to put it in front of beta readers only to have them point out problems that I already knew about. When I did give it to beta readers, they were a mix of family and friends, readers and published authors. They gave me diverse and valuable insights—for example, the readers tended to focus on how they received certain characters or situations, while the published authors would discuss those things plus structural elements.

(For example,one published author pointed out that there was a weak spot at the end of first 50 pages—an especially bad place for a weakness because most agents ask for the first 50 pages as a partial.)

As a third step I’ve hired a professional developmental editor. In addition to helping me make direct improvements to the current project, this is teaching me things that will also benefit future projects.

What steps have you taken/are you considering taking to build a social platform to promote your work? 

The first thing I did was choose a pen name. That was an exercise in itself, but the reason I chose a pen name was that I wanted a name that was easy to spell, that wasn’t already taken on Twitter and Facebook, and for which I could get the URL. As soon as I chose the name, I created the accounts and purchased the URL to “reserve” them.

Since then, I’ve been blogging (occasionally) and building a Twitter following (still quite small, but taking off lately). At the beginning I blogged about the craft of writing, but then I decided that there are plenty of authors already doing that. Now I focus on things that I think will be interesting to the broader community of readers, like vignettes, short stories and book recommendations.

Win one of five signed copies of JILO!

Win 1 of 5 signed copies of JILO!

Visit me at https://www.facebook.com/JackDouglasHorn/ to see how.

THE LINE is coming to Russia

THE LINE is coming out from Eksmo Publishing in Russia as GRAN' (Threshold). So excited to see this happening.

https://www.livelib.ru/book/1001524569

Coming March 1st!

"Pitch" is coming out  as a solo short March 1, 2016!

JILO Cover Reveal!

JILO cover reveal. Patrick Arrasmith outdid himself once again!

2015

Okay. So we're getting close to the end of the year. Normally, I don't go in for a lot of Auld Lang Syneing, but this has been an incredible year. I wrote two more books this year. Well, maybe it's more like 1.75 books, since SHIVAREE was about 30K words along when I realized it wanted to be a full novel and not just the novella I'd intended. A little known fact about my twisted little Southern Gothic vampire tale is that it is the product of writer's block. I'd committed to writing JILO, and then proceeded to choke. Jilo, the character, had been so easy to write when she was part of Mercy's world, but when it came time to place her in her own, I couldn't get the pieces to come together. I kept working on my novella, hoping that I'd be able to keep from freezing up entirely.   SHIVAREE  enjoyed the attention, and after going back to Savannah and the Coastal Islands to research the Lowcountry of yesteryear, Jilo's story finally came together. Looking forward to April 2016 for JILO's release.

I ended up taking a bit of time off after shipping JILO to my publisher. Rich and I got to spend almost a month in Israel, seeing it from top to bottom. Not sure how my experiences might work their way into any future tales--don't expect a Witching Tel Aviv series--but the trip was a long-time dream come true.

On the family front, BOTH of my stepdaughters started law school this year. And of course, the most wonderful part of the year for me came just a few days ago when we adopted our new Chihuahua, Quincy Liam. Rich saw a posting on Facebook for a rescue dog named Quinn that resembled our beloved Quentin who passed two years ago this week. He casually asked me if I saw the posting, and said we should adopt the little guy. I nearly broke the internet searching for the posting, and, long story short, I'm typing this with one hand while playing with Quinn, now Quincy, with the other.

Hope you all also had much happiness in 2015, and may even more good things be on your way in 2016.