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Unpublished/Self-Published Author Profile: Sybil Ward

This post is the latest in a series of profiles featuring currently unpublished and self-published authors.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.

Sybil Ward
www.sybilward.com (work in progress)

Bio

Sybil Ward is a misplaced Tar Heel, hiding away in a small town in Georgia. She’s been (in order of appearance) a baseball player (a woman before her time), a seamstress, a soldier, an electronics instructor, a multimedia training developer, an IT manager, and now the owner of a web design company. She’s been with the same wonderful man for ages, mothered three lovely daughters, and is now elevating the art of spoiling with a brand new, glorious grandson.

And in the seconds between, she writes stories.

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

THE PAINTED TRUNK

Imagine a trunk – an old, decrepit box large enough to hold a body.

Now, imagine gaining the talent or abilities of anyone – author, actor, artist, athlete – just by putting something belonging to that person inside the trunk. Would you kill for that power?

Someone is.

When Cleopatra Gleason is murdered, Tabitha Spencer inherits the trunk with the request: “…use the trunk and figure out who killed me.” This puts Tabitha squarely in the crosshairs of the killer. If she’s going to stay alive long enough to solve Cleopatra’s murder, Tabitha must first learn to think inside the box.

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

1. I draw a story map, which is actually an outline in pictures, so I can “see” the story. This isn’t a chapter-by-chapter map, this is more a plot point map. It lets me see holes in the story.

2. I read the story backward. Reading backward stops me from filling in the blanks instead of seeing the blanks.

3. One more read/polish from start to finish. Here I concentrate on strengthening the prose, improving the pace. I’m also mindful of the characters, their depth, personalities, etc.

4. Off to the critique group, a few chapters at the time, so I can revise as they critique.

5. If I'm lucky, the ms goes to beta readers.

6. One more serious revision for structure and word count. Here my wish list says professional editor. My piggy bank isn’t quite there yet.

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

The premise of give-give-give-get – I like. I want to build a following by paying attention to and supporting others, sharing my love of paper crafting, reading good books and sharing that experience, sharing my short stories and the bits and pieces that support my novel-length stories. Social, after all, means making acquaintances, even friends. I believe that will translate into supporters, readers, and customers.

All my social media accounts are in grow mode – slow but sure. I have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. I’m also on Wattpad and WriteOn.

Re: Questions

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Unpublished/Self-Published Author Profile: Sean M. Davis

This post is the latest 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.

Bio

Sean M Davis lives in and loves Detroit. He has written weird, disturbing stories for as long as he's been able to write, proven by his story, "Killer Morning," written in second grade. He lives with his partner, Kate, and five furry children.

http://seanmdavis.wordpress.com

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

"In God's Image" will appear in Borderlands 6, coming soon. In it, Viola struggles to hold onto her identity in the wake of God Re-forming the human race without faces.

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

I wrote the first draft of this story as an assignment during the Borderlands Press Writers' Boot Camp 2014. The first draft received good reactions from my fellow grunts and the instructors, but was only 500 words long. For the second draft, I reread the story and answered all of the questions I could possibly think of, trying to create more back and forth for the character. The story is relatively simple after you get past its bizarre set up. After it was accepted for Borderlands 6, I took another run at it, cleaning up the little things I'd missed during the first two passes.

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

So far, I'm not that great at online promotion. I have a blog and I do things here and there (like this interview), but I don't have Twitter or anything else other than a personal Facebook page. I have lots of things on my To Do List, but when it comes right down to it, between my partner, my day job, hobbies, friends, and family, I'd rather spend my time writing. Even submitting stories on a regular basis has been a new development in my career.

I do go to several local conventions where I participate on panels and peddle my wares. Honestly, that's where I enjoy promoting myself and my work, though I understand the need for online promotion.

I suppose at this point in my career, I am more focused on having things to promote.

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Unpublished/Self-Published Author Profile: GWEN DANDRIDGE

This post is fourth 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.

Gwen Dandridge

Bio

I was born in the deep South, but I lived on Long Island most of my first years. It was after I moved to Berkeley, dragging along three small children, that I started to think about creating something more... 

For awhile I managed to bury my after-work creativity into dance. I flitted from Scandinavian to Irish, to English step dancing, to Morris dance and sword. Having a short (or sometimes long) fling with each until finally settling on Morris and English short sword (Rapper) as my favorites. 

After moving to Central California and marrying my love, my creativity has evolved even more, into more tangible forms: mosaics, stained glass, and finally, writing.

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

The dragons came from beyond, demanding a virgin sacrifice. When Princess Genevieve is handed a golden token, she accepts her fate. She must, in order to save her kingdom. But the journey to her final destiny is complicated by the arrival of a 1970s Berkeley co-ed. To Chris, the whole scenario reeks. Where she comes from, corsets are for burning and virgins hard to find. She's sure the dragons are out for more than innocent blood, but the only way to find out is to accompany Genevieve. 

Genevieve is duty-bound–unless Chris is right. Then her sacrifice would mean nothing.

 

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

Painfully slow. I write slowly, I edit faster, but slowly. I rewrite for the second and third and fourth times--slowly. My writing group pokes, prods and generally encourages me to cut out redundancies, to step up to the plate with my plotting and stop whining. 

I make sure that I have a professional copy-editor do a final, Hail Mary, over the whole thing before I send it off with its little wings still wet.

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

I live on Facebook, I barely Twitter, I have a website and an unloved blog. 

I'm very funny sometimes, but not always. Mostly in "The Dragons' Chosen" not so much in "The Stone Lions".