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To finish my book, I retired from nursing and splurged on three weekends in mountain writing retreats with an instructor. Beautiful weather, clean air and writers talking writing. Marvelous! On the third weekend, I finished it. Then I spent four days at a writers conference where I learned so very much more.

Two freelance editors I’d paid to review the first twenty pages advised me it was ready to market. Twenty-nine literary agents declined to represent me. They liked it, “but not enough.” One of them asked me to send something else.

Something else? You’ve got to be kidding! I've sweat blood over this baby. How much blood would you want me to lose?

That taught me not to pour all my energy, my creativity into one project. Work on several things at once.

The idea curling around in my head for Cry of the Bells, written under the name Dee Ann Palmer, was a romantic suspense, but I hadn’t the first clue what it was. It was finished when I joined Romance Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. In RWA, I learned it was a romance that didn’t fit any of the standard romance markets, such as Harlequin, and no wonder the agents hadn’t accepted it. Through SinC, I realized it had suspense elements.

I suggest that unless you’re some kind of genius you need to learn the genres, how to craft a book and what the market’s like. Join groups, take classes and attend writers conferences. Cry of the Bells might have been a different story if I’d understood all of this as I was writing it. I’d written from instinct.

Without an agent and not aware I didn’t always need one to sell a romance, I went to the Internet to look at markets. I knew about electronic publishing and other small presses through a workshop in my Sisters in Crime chapter, and I sold my book to the first e-publisher I contacted. It’s still available in trade paperback through BookSurge, Amazon and Valencia Writers (that’s me). I also sell it for $5.00 in pdf or html electronic format.

However, today my publisher is Amber Quill Press, and they’ve released three other books written under the name Carolina Valdez. I’ve also written a host of novellas and a short story for them.

Friday. . .potpourri.

Carolina Valdez – Where passion unlocks the sweet ecstasies of love
http://www.carolinavaldez.com