The New Freak on the Block
Hi Everyone,
I’m Patricia Eimer, paranormal romantic comedy writer with Entangled Publishing and new kid here on this particular writer’s block. From now on I’ll be your host for the craziness that is life as a new, full-time author/stay at home mom every 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month.
So the important question you should all be asking yourself right now is – why aren’t we pelting her with stones? No, no that is not the question you should be asking yourself please put down the stones. No, you in the back, you can’t hide it behind your back for later. Put down the stones. Thank you.
No, the important question you should ask yourself is why do I give a flying penguin what this random person on the internet has to say? Well there’s the obvious – this is a writing blog for new writers and I’m a new writer. But that’s pretty simple. I have a slightly better answer for you. This is a blog for new writers and I am a new writer who fell into a publishing contract on accident. No seriously. Totally on accident.
Let’s start at the beginning. I was born in the middle of a balmy night…. Wait, that’s too far back. Let’s go back 14 months or so. Halloween 2010. Before that I’d been writing short stories and fanfiction anonymously on the internet and putting it out on various sites but I’d never done anything with it because come on authors are real writers and I wasn’t one of them. They were the cool kids and me? Well I’m a mathematical economist by trade. No really. I have a nice shiny looking degree hanging on the wall and everything. Three of them in fact. They even have signatures.
That’s not important though. What’s important is I was not one of the cool writer kids. I was a poser who liked to scribble behind a pen name. Until someone from the internets, a friend through the screen you could say, signed me up for RWA. Paid the fee and everything. And then I met another friend through RWA who wanted to do Editpalooza on Savvy Authors but didn’t want to do it alone. So I chipped in some cash and signed up. Because you know I had this manuscript I’d been playing with that maybe one day I would send to an agent. If the stars aligned and my attempt at the Krispy Kreme diet left me looking like Heidi Klum. Yeah, I’m what you call ambitious.
And that’s where it took off. Because six weeks after Editpalooza Liz Pelletier called and asked me to submit Luck of the Devil to her new publishing house—Entangled Publishing—and uttered the magical word every writer loves to hear: series.
Then came publicists and blog tours and all sorts of craziness. Meanwhile I just nodded my head and smiled, hoping against hope that no one would realize that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Because if no one knew that I was a total fraud who got lucky then they wouldn’t kick me out of the cool kids clique
Which has been a blessing and a curse. The curse is that because I refused to speak up and get my nose to the grindstone early I’m playing catch up now. The blessing is that my cool kids? Well they really are cool and not in that teenage clique sort of way. They’re cool in the way that they understand you have no idea what you’re doing and they’re there to help and not once have they snickered or pointed at the math geek in their cool writer midst.
So that’s why you should read what I have to say. Because I’m going to make the mistakes all the cool kids already know to avoid. And if you’re out here, with the new publishing kids or the prepubbed kids you can see my mistakes, have a good laugh at them (trust me I do), and then learn from my mistakes so you can make even better mistakes as we all chug along on our quests to one day rule the publishing world in an iron fist while cackling maniacally from our comfy laz-e-boy thrones while well oiled, buff young men in loin cloths hand feed us grapes and rub our feet.
Not at the same time of course. One guy with grapes, one guy on the left foot, one guy on the right foot, and another with a palm frond. Or maybe two palm fronds? You know what? I’m going to go work out a formula on the correct ratio of nubile young serving men to world dominating authors. Then I’ll go work on my latest novel. So have a good two weeks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have serving studs and a calculator to get back to.
10 comments:
Very nice post, Patricia. Awesome of you to share your mistakes with us so we can hopefully avoid them!
Melinda
So funny, Patricia. I can't wait until you perfect the formula for the, um, buff young men. Or at least until you write about them again! Congratulations on your well-deserved success! :)
Great post, Patrica - and I know exactly what you mean about the nodding and smiling and really hoping no one notices...
Thanks Melinda and trust me there are enough mistakes that I've made to fill up a years worth of columns just on my first book.
Tracy, right now I'm trying to figure out if the number of buff young men should be influenced by the temperature outside and if that's an absolute value or not. i have a feeling it's going to be an ongoing process of discovery.
Nina, Dorie from Nemo is in my head all the time going "just keep swimming, just keep swimming". The problem is half the time I'm swimming into the shark's mouth instead of away from it.
Hi Patricia-Great to meet another 'new' kid. Congratulations on your pub successes. I wish you many, many more!
Aspiring writer to new writer, I'm looking forward to keeping up with you and wild career...love your avatar too, where did you get that sex gal???
Nanc
Barbara -- thanks it's nice to meet you too.
Nancy -- She's manipulated off a picture I got from Istockphoto.com and it's nice to meet you too.
HI Patricia! What a great post - truthful and funny and something every writer feels - I know I did!
Great post, Patricia. I look forward to hanging with you here!
Newbies untie! Oh....no it's newbies unite :)
Yay, NKotWB!
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