You’ll be pleased to know that we’re with a new host, thank the lord. Hopefully this one wont cause us as many problems, but if it does, I’ll be back at this blog.

You can now find me at Karenknowsbest.com.

Thanks muchly to Luna, for moving us so quickly.

That’s what Madris DePasture wrote in a New Concepts announcement letter addressed to her authors in 2002/2003.

It would seem that even as far back as that, Madris lacked a certain finesse when dealing with her writers.

Because I’m a bad, bad girl, let me post this warning that she included within one of the letters:

Please remember, this page is ONLY for NCP authors, so don’t give out the address to anyone else. There is no link on the main site going to the Author Lounge, so be sure to bookmark it. The address is http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/authorlounge33.htm

Ooops, again.

That should get some of the authors at the Romance Divas forum anxiously wringing their hands. Yes, I know, I am the devil herself.

Let me post you some snippets anyway, after all, the devil has no conscience:

“Any author who has NOT fulfilled the terms of their contract, or in any other manner behaved unprofessionally, been verbally abusive or just uncooperative, who demands the release of their book, may or may not be given permission to withdraw.

If money has been exchanged and/or time and effort put into marketing your book, we might then decide NOT to release you from your contractual obligations. It’s entirely up to you whether or not you wish to hire a lawyer to regain the rights. If we do decide to relinquish the rights, and state as much via email, do NOT expect to receive further written confirmation just to make you comfortable.

We will not go to any extraordinary lengths to soothe your fears. You are not welcome to submit again at a later time when we have managed to build a market and your work will never be considered again by New Concepts Publishing.

Charming woman.

For those of you who don’t understand and get nervous when you don’t hear anything and want to be continually updated on any and all progress… I’m sorry, but we just don’t have time to hold hands right now. Please repeat this mantra…..NCP is a business with much work to do.

As long as the website is there, they are there. If the phone is busy, it’s a good thing. If my emails have not been answered it’s because they are busy doing the work publishers do in order to stay in business and sell books. I am not being ignored because I’m not important, or because they’re thinking about dumping me. They are busy and I am allowing my fertile imagination to conjure paranoia.

Good grief.

Otherwise, keep in mind that your reputation is our reputation and our reputation is your reputation. If NCP is thought well of, then our authors have status as our authors. If our authors are thought poorly of, then NCP is not considered a good publisher. Whatever doubts or anxieties you might have, when you make NCP look bad, it makes you look bad.

Watch what you say, where you say it and to whom you say it. Don’t share your hysteria, anxieties or disappointments. Don’t play the blame game. Whether you realize it or not, YOU always get tarred with that feather.

I realize that people are either confident, or not. Nothing anyone can say or do can build confidence in those who lack it. Everything anyone says or does can further deteriorate a fragile confidence. However, I am sick to death of hearing ‘we’re not as good as’ NY, or any other publisher for that matter.

I have a feeling she’s not that big on trying to build confidence in the first place.

Rumor has it that Ellora’s Cave is so desperate for ‘romantica’ that they’re asking their authors to add sex scenes to previously written books. Anyone who’s been in the business for a while, and learned their craft, will know that this is a formula that will generally not click.

Hehe, she dissed Elloras Cave. That should go down well with the folks over at EC. We all know how precious they can be.

Before I go further, I need to address one serious problem that frequently rears it’s ugly head in this business, particularly when I try to talk shop to our authors—jealousy. I do understand that this is something that is a part of some people’s nature, hard to control and hard to combat. However, it is a totally useless and unproductive emotion. If it empowered a person to strive harder, then it would have some use. I’ve yet to see that—I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but in general it just causes problems.

Set your jealousy aside. The plain, hard, indisputable fact of life in publishing is that you are an entertainer. Sometimes your ideas appeal, sometimes not. I wish I knew the exact formula to produce highly successful books every time, but no one knows that. Even authors who regularly sell well occasionally write one that flops, and usually some that do not perform as well as others—this isn’t an exact science and it is useless to try to compare your books to anyone else’s.

Hey, it’s not all bad, she does give props to one of her authors:

Now, having said that, I want to give credit where it’s due, Autumn Dawn ‘lucked’ out by writing a wonderfully appealing book, effective promotion, and being in the right place at the right time with the right story.

I wonder she couldn’t just say the author in question did a good job, without having to say that her success was due to ‘luck’?

What a great ambassador for her business eh? I can’t believe how bad she is at addressing her writers. It is possible to write a communication document without leaving the recipients feeling like they just had a fight with a cruise missile.

Oh, and for those folks over at Romance Divas who insist on wringing their hands over the legality of posting Madris’ e-mail, and discussing whether it should have been posted in the first place, rather than concentrating on the fact that your fellow authors are being shafted left, right, and centre, let’s hope you’re never in the same position as Ellen Ashe eh?

Thanks to you-know-who for the link.

I was sent this link by a source so anonymous, even I don’t know who he/she is.

It’s a post from one of the Torquere authors who apparently belongs in the ‘In Crowd’ over there:

Ya know… If I really wanted to hear all the frickin’ mud-slinging that goes on within this biz (namely on blogs), I’d have gone into politics. For the record: I love my publishers. So for those idiots who have nothing better to do than drag pubs through the mud just for the sake of blog hits, feel free to step out in front of a car.

Have a nice day.

Apparently, he/she also writes under the name of Kaye Derwydd. No idea who she/he is of course.

I’ll post some of his accompanying comments shall I? (FreePublicityFreePublicityFreePublicity!)

Torquere, Phaze… I’m happy with my pubs, and I honestly don’t understand where the drive to spout shit about pubs comes from. Between private conversations among friends? Bitch all ya want. But in public? These morons need to learn to get their facts straight.

This is a comment from one of Mychael’s cronies:

Some folks got no manners…
and no awareness of how small the biz really is. Names get noted, and remembered.

And Mychael replies with:

Yup. Which is probably why some of these people start the mud-slinging–either they or someone they know was probably rejected/not happy, and poof! The press in question is officially evil.

This next comment is from another of Mychael’s readers, and I thought it was very telling:

not sure where, who, what was said ect - I agree with you tho’ - it’s one thing to express your concerns about a pub in private - but to post in a public forum is just wrong

The above comments epitomizes a lot of what is wrong with the e-publishing industry right now.

What worries me even more is this sentiment from the Anon who sent the link:

Please don’t name this email or the source. These people are psychos. Note the threats of violence. Balanced - not.

Not much else for me to say really apart from….Am I the only person who’s annoyed at the way Mychael Black has chosen to spell his/her name? Sheesh.

Luna was in the middle of moving everything to another host, but obviously that takes time. I can’t understand why the current host can’t sort this crap out. Flaming incompetent fools.

Anyway, here’s hoping Luna gets the move speeded up.

And here’s hoping that you guys took down this address when I posted it originally when my blog came back up the last time.

Just in case anybody missed the news, but if it should go down again, I’d bookmark this blog, as this is where you’ll find me! Or just put it on Google Reader, or any other feed thingies.

I happened to be reading some of my old author interviews the other day, (Ya know, when the main blog was live)  marvelling over how much my views on Romanceland has changed since I started them, just over two-and-a-half years ago.

Anyway, one of the interviews that amused me greatly was Cheryl Holt’s, so I thought I’d repost it. I think I’ll probably re-visit some of my fave interviews over the next few Tuesdays.

Anyway, enjoy.

Author Name: Cheryl Holt
Website: cherylholt.com
Genre: Erotic Historical Romance
Latest book in shops now: Too Hot To Handle (Sept ‘05) , and Too Tempting To Touch (March ‘06)

Before we begin this interview, I need to check that you’re still grounded and that your head isn’t swollen from all of your success, so with that in mind, what was the last thing you bought at Target, and do you know how much a loaf of bread costs?

I life in a very small town on the west coast of the US, so the nearest Target store is two hours away. I don’t get there very often. Usually I go in the autumn to shop for school clothes for my 2 kids. You have a very glamorous view of my life, which is — in fact — very quiet and very normal. Where I live, a loaf of bread is anywhere from $1.29 to $2.29.

Why did you choose to write erotic romance books, rather than traditional romance?

I started out writing regular historicals, then the publisher where I was writing shut down the lines I’d been writing for, and I was let go, or “orphaned” as they call it in the book business. My first book wasn’t even out on the store shelves yet. It was very depressing.

I needed to get back out on the market and sell something, and the agent I had at the time advised me to write an erotic historical proposal (this was in 1999) because the market was just opening up and it was going to be very hot. I looked right at him and said “what’s an erotic historical?”

I finally wrote one, Love Lessons, which I sold to my current publisher, St. Martins Press, and it turns out that I not only have a knack for writing great love stories, but also for writing very sexy, very hot love stories. It still surprises me

Books such as More Than Seduction, aren’t for the faint-hearted, do you have a certain audience in mind when you write, and if so, what kind of people do you imagine, read your books?

I don’t think about the audience too much, or I’ll drive myself crazy trying to figure out what everybody wants. I get letters that tell me that my books are too sex-packed, that they’re too tame, that they’re too fast-paced, that they’re too slow, that they’re too action-packed, that they’re too boring

Everybody who reads books has such diverse tastes. I simply try to think up a great story, with great issues and great characters, then I write it down, and hope people enjoy it.

Luckily, my editor really encourages me. She likes me to “push the envelope” with stories, to give people heroes and villains that they can love and hate, so I work very hard to do that. But when you have terrible villains, doing terrible things, it can create situations that aren’t what you’d find in a “typical” romance, so my stories leap beyond the boundaries that you’d find in other romance novels.

When you develop your characters, do you model them on people you know in your life, or do they all come from inside your head?

They come from inside my head.

Do you ever get compared to other erotic romance writers, e.g. Thea Devine? If so, how does that make you feel?

I used to, when I was first starting out. I remember one of my first reviews for Love Lessons said something like “if you love Susan Johnson and Thea Devine, you’ll love Cheryl Holt.” I was so proud! Now, people are being compared to “me”, instead of the other way around, and it’s fun to know that people enjoy my books so much.

With the alleged decline in historical romance, do you think it’s risky business writing within the Regency era?

I don’t believe there is a “decline” in historical romance, and I’m not sure where this rumor got started. I hear from fans all the time, lamenting that they can’t get their hands on many good historicals anymore, so it seems like the publishers are releasing less of them, but I think there are plenty of historical fans out there.

Plus, I’m an optimist. I think fans will read any great books, whether it’s historical or contemporary. The past few years, my sales have been fabulous. So “no”, I don’t think it’s risky to write historicals. I don’t think the rumors about a “slump” are true.

Do any of members of your family read your books, and if so, what kind of feedback do you get from them?

No one reads them. My husband would die before he read a romance, and my kids are too young, so they haven’t had the chance.

What does a typical day as a writer consist of?

I get up at 6:30. I get my kids (ages 11 and 13) up and off to school. I exercise (hard! to keep my stress down), I eat a high protein breakfast and take loads of energy vitamins, I take a shower and get to work. I work in an office in my home, and I try to be at my desk by 8:30. I write till 3:30, when my kids get home.

Then, I play chauffeur, driving them to dance lessons, or soccer, or whatever’s going on, and I race back up to my office to write between giving them rides to the places they have to be. I squeeze in another round of exercise, I cook supper, I get everybody to bed, and I write from 6:30 till 10:00 or 11:00. I work on the weekends, too, usually 12-14 hours per day. I work very hard and I work all the time.

Name your top five favourite books of all time.

I can think of two off the top of my head:
Pride and Prejudice
Outlander

Which authors are you glomming at the moment? (reading a lot of?)

I try to read an assortment of women’s fiction, so that I’m always picking up something new when I’m in the bookstore. I’m so busy that I don’t have much time to read for pleasure. I read with an eye toward the market, to see what’s selling, to see what people are buying.

I also try to buy authors who write for my publisher, St. Martins Press. They put out great books, and I like to support them. I’m just reading a St. Martins Bestseller, Something Borrowed, by Emily Giffin, which is very clever and funny. I usually tend to not read romances, simply because I spend so much time writing them, and when I have some free time, I like to do something different

Do you have other close romance writer friends, and if so who are they?

I’ve met a lot of romance authors, but I’m not really friends with any of them. I don’t have time to belong to any loops or groups, and I live a long way from anybody.

When did you realise that you wanted to write books, and who or what inspired you?

I always wanted to write books. From the time I was a little girl, I’d talk about it. I wasn’t ever really “inspired” to get going, but life circumstances pushed me into it. I had my two kids, pretty much back to back when I was 38 and 40 years old, and I was home being a mom, and needing to replace the income I’d lost by staying home. If I had an inspiration, it was money — or the sudden lack of it!

How many times did you get rejected (if indeed you did) before you got published?

I was rejected hundreds of times. The first book I sold was an older romance called The Way Of The Heart, but it was the 7th book that I had written.

I’m a lawyer, so I started out trying to write suspense, which I never sold. I wrote some nonfiction that I didn’t sell, either. I was also constantly trying to find an agent, sending out solicitations and queries. This was over a period of 2-3 years. The most reject letters I ever got in the mail on a single day was eight! This is not a business for sissies!

If you could have a one-to-one conversation with a famous historical figure, who would it be with and what would you talk about?

I would probably like to meet Jesus or Buddha. I’d like to see what was up with them, if I could sense the divinity that has inspired billions to revere them over the centuries. Or, face to face, would they seem like normal men? It would be fascinating to me.

What is your ultimate goal when it comes to your writing?

First and foremost, I want to keep having good sales and keep my numbers growing so that there are publishers who continue to want me. More specifically, I want to continue lowering my numbers on the USA Today Bestseller list, and I want to break onto the NY Times Bestseller list. I also want to establish myself in a second genre, and I’m hoping it will end up being contemporary erotic suspense.

How has the romance industry changed from when you first started writing, and which of these changes were you happiest/unhappiest with?

The publishers do a lot of reprinting of old books, from people who are famous now, but weren’t a decade or two ago when they were starting out. I understand the financial reasons that companies do this — it’s easier and cheaper to reprint an old book then to go to the trouble of preparing a new one — but everytime a reprinted book goes out on the store shelves, it keeps a new writer from having a book there, instead.

If I’d started writing today, instead of a decade ago, I often wonder if I’d ever have gotten published. It gets harder and harder all the time.

A lot of well known authors who first wrote within the romance genre, seem to have moved away from traditional romance, and are now writing paranormals, suspense etc. (e.g. Linda Howard, Catherine Coulter) Why do you think this is?

It’s all about money. The sad fact of the matter is that romances just don’t pay that well, and people are always surprised when I actually share some numbers. I was paid $2,000 for my first romance. (This is not ancient history. It was in the year 2000!) I was only paid $7,500 for my 10th book!

I’m making quite a bit more than that now, but it just takes a really, really long time to start making any kind of significant income at it. The markets are bigger for suspense and other sorts of books.

While there are so many great fans in romance, there are many, many more women who wouldn’t read a romance if it was the last book on the planet. But they’ll read a suspense, or a paranormal. Which is too bad, because romances are so fun.

I don’t know where romance got such a bad reputation, but it’s so difficult for a female writer to hold on for the amount of time it takes to start garnering significant attention and make a living at it. For many it’s just not possible. I was only able to keep on through the lean years because my husband had a “real” job, with a good salary and benefits.

In your vast experience, what would you say was the most effective method of marketing a romance novel?

I use my web page. It’s an inexpensive way to touch base with millions. It works!

Which of your books is dearest to your heart, and why?

I love Complete Abandon. It’s always been my favorite. I liked how the hero and heroine turned out, and I felt like I was able to capture their differences in such a fun, romantic way.

Which of your books do you feel you’re best known for?

Hands down, my fans’ favorite is my first erotic, Love Lessons. If you haven’t read it, I hope you will. It is so great!

I’ve always wondered about this, but as an author, once your books are published, do you actually go back and read them yourself, and if so, are you able to enjoy them, or do you perhaps see things that make you want to chew your own arm off in frustration?

Yes, I read them. It’s fun. By the time they’re actually out on the shelf, it’s usually been a year or more since I wrote them, so it’s fun to go back and remember. It’s like reading a new book.

Just recently, it was suggested that reader reviews aren’t as credible as reviews by your peers, and that only writers/authors should be able to review books in the first place, what are your thoughts on this?

I don’t have a problem with readers reviewing my books, as opposed to peers. But with the web so prevalent, everybody can review now, and I get very mean-spirited and downright cruel reviews sometimes from readers. And I don’t think they understand how personal the book is to the writer, and how they can really hurt somebody’s feelings.

They hurt mine! By the time a book is written and published, it’s usually been a year-long or maybe even an 18-month long project, and it’s really hurtful to have people say hateful things.

I also see that readers sometime don’t understand what they’re reviewing because they don’t know the market that well. I often get scathing comments from people about the sexual content of my books, because they were expecting a typical historical romance, when my books are quite a bit different.

Or once, I had a reviewer on Amazon say something like, “she had these really mean, unlikeable characters that appeared throughout the book. Why would somebody put characters like that in a novel?” They were the villains! And I’m renowned by many as “The Queen of Villains.”

So maybe, writers –when they do a review — have a better understanding of the market and what it’s like for the writer to hear comments about the books. I think that’s where some of the problem is coming from.

A review shouldn’t be so personal. It can really hurt the writer. I work hard and try my best, and with the anonimity of the web, people feel free to say things they’d never say to my face. It can be painful.

Has anything a reviewer or reader said or written about you changed the way you write?

I can’t think of any occasions where that happened. I have a specific style and I don’t know how to write any other way. People either like it or they don’t.

Last year (2005), RWA attempted to try to define romance, and it caused a bit of a furore round the blogosphere, due to the limitations of the definitions. What were your thoughts on this at the time, and do you think it’s possible/necessary to define romance in a way that doesn’t exclude other sub-genres?

I don’t follow the blogs or the furors in the industry. (I don’t have time!) I think a “romance” is any book where the main thrust of the story is a love story between the two main characters. To me, it’s a very big umbrella that includes a lot of books.

When was the last time you went overseas and where did you go?

Last year, I took time off to celebrate my 50th birthday in the French West Indies with an old college friend who turned 50 the same week. We rented a villa on the Caribbean. It was very fun, very chic, very relaxing.

Who are your favourite romance hero and heroine of all time?

Probably Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Then Emma Fitzgerald and John Clayton from my own book, Complete Abandon.

Why do you think a lot of romance readers tend to judge the heroine a lot more harshly than the hero?

I didn’t realize that they do. I try to make my heroines very smart, pragmatic, tough and sexy. My fans love the women I’ve created.

What kind of characters would you say you typically wrote?

I try to write “really, really” characters. I don’t do anything halfway. I like my heroes not to be just “macho” but extremely macho. I like my heroines to not just be “desperate” but on the brink. I like my villains not to just be “evil”, but so over the top that you’d like to throw the book out the window rather than read anymore of their hateful antics.

If only one person could read your book, who would that be? (as in the person who you would want most to read your book)

Oprah!

If you had to pick, who would you say has been most influential within the romance genre?

I would say Kathryn Falk, {K: Dear Lord, remember her?} the founder and President of Romantic Times Magazine. She’s given writers so much coverage, and she’s made the publishing industry sit up and take notice of our books.

{Oh the irony, heh}

What was the last movie you saw?

I saw two this weekend: the remake of “Pride and Prejudice” and Spielberg’s “Munich.”

Name your top five favourite romantic films.

I’m so busy anymore, with my kids and my books, that I don’t go that much. It’s hard for me to pick.

What was the last book you read, and did you enjoy it?

Just read “Devil Wears Prada.” Very fun.

Have you ever written a book that you didn’t particularly care for, and do you cringe if you see people picking it up to read it?

The first five books I wrote when I was at Zebra Books are very poorly written. I was new and starting out as a writer, so they’re not that great, and it’s been a blessing to have them out of print, although Zebra recently released The Way Of The Heart. It’s embarrassing to have people pick it up and not realize it’s a reprint, to have them think that it’s how I write now, when I’m sixteen novels down the road from that book. Also, I always thought my second erotic, Total Surrender, was my worst book of all, but others disagree. I won a national award for it from RT Magazine as the “Best Sensual Novel of 2002″ and it still surprises me to think that I did.

What do you enjoy most about being a writer?

Being able to set my own hours. Working on my own.

What do you least enjoy about being a writer?

The stress and competition. The hard work. The low pay.

As you’ve been there, done it, and have the badge to prove it, what is the number one advice that would you give to aspiring writers out there?

Practice, practice, practice by writing all the time. And when you’re not writing, read every piece of (current) women’s fiction you can get your hands on.

When’s your next book due out, and what’s it about?

My new release will be Too Tempting To Touch, out in March ‘06. It’s about a lady’s companion who travels to London with her employer who is about to become engaged to an earl. The lady’s companion keeps stumbling on the earl, as he’s womanizing around London, and she tries to keep him from philandering before the engagement becomes official. She’s determined to make him practice celebacy. (She doesn’t succeed!)

After that is Too Wicked To Wed, (Sep 06) which is about a woman who’s brother gambles away their estate, and in an effort to win it back, he bets her chastity. He loses, and expects her to sleep with the winner (a gambler and notorious pirate) for an entire month.

Finally, for readers who aren’t familiar with your work, where do you suggest they go to find some excerpts of your numerous books?

On my web page, cherylholt.com, there are “sneak previews” from all of my novels. Usually, this is the novel’s first chapter. Go to the “Books” page, then click on any of the covers, to go to the individuals book page. Down at the bottom, you’ll see the link to the “sneak preview.”

Thanks so much for being so refreshingly candid with your answers, it’s nice when an author says what she thinks without pussy-footing about! {K: Hey, I was naive, what can I say?}

Thx for thinking of me! Let me know if you need anything else.

Apparently, the server crashes are due to high volume of traffic on the blog. Who knew? Traffic overload was never a consideration on blogger, so it didn’t occur to me that it would be the problem in this case.

So basically, when I get to a certain number of visitors on the main blog, (at the same time presumably) it not only causes my blog to crash, but all the blogs that are operating on the same server.

Anyway, Luna, (bless her cottons, her blog is kaput too) is gonna get me my own server (erm, or something like that) so it shouldn’t happen in the future.

What I still don’t understand is why it takes the host company so long to fix this, surely they could have sorted this out in a matter of minutes? A couple of hours at most?

Anyway, the blog should be back by 5pm GMT. Although, you may want to bookmark this blog, include it in your Google Reader, or get the RSS feed for it, just in case my main blog goes down again, because this is where you’ll find me.

Shiloh, just for you, I got rid of the black and red template. *g*

I was just over at Sherrilyn Kenyon’s My Space Blog, reading her latest post. It made me cry.

I know she’s a writer, but it’s one of those posts that really makes you look at your life, and gives you greater appreciation for the things that we tend to take for granted.

Her post begins:

I received an email earlier today that struck me vividly. It was a question from a fan asking me what it was like to live my life. To have good family and everything I have ever wanted and it made me want to cry on so many levels that it drove me here to the keyboard. She asked me how I was able to see my characters so vividly and the answer is simple. I’ve been there.

She continues:

I know what it’s like to live and love with fear, to be mocked with cruelty and to have to try and find shelter through the most vicious of storms. If there is one scene in all the books I relate to most, it’s the one of Zarek walking barefoot through the blizzard, seeking comfort. Of him standing outside, looking inside the cheerful house and wishing with all his heart that he was one of the happy, warm people inside.

At this point, I know I have to read on:

I know what it’s like to live in fear of being hit for nothing more than daring to meet someone’s gaze. There was a time in my life when I was too scared to even ask for a ketchup packet at McDonald’s because I didn’t want to be hit or insulted for the audacity. I know the courage it takes to put your life back together after it’s been shattered into pieces. To boldly stand up in front of the world, raise my fist at it and shout, “I am here and I will not be your victim! I am a human being and I may not matter to you, but I do matter to me and I will not let you hurt me anymore!”

Finding that self worth, that strength inside to stand and fight when all you want to do is curl up and die is the hardest thing. But as my mother so often said, I came into this world backwards and I’ve been that way ever since. Because nothing I ever did as a child was good enough to please those around me, I learned to not care what other people thought of me. If I’m to be judged, it will be for who I am not for who I’m trying to be to make someone else happy.

I will not let my children know the hurtful words that echo inside me from my childhood. They won’t grow up in fear and hurt. They won’t flinch when someone raises a hand near them and they won’t sit with their back to the wall because they’re afraid of being hurt if they let their guard down for even a heartbeat. My greatest gift to them is normality.

That last line really struck a cord with me. So often we think that normality is just a synonym for boring, when really, it probably means that you are loved and cherished by those around you, or/and that you have people around you who make sure that no harm befalls you.

Worst of all, I know what it’s like to be homeless. To live in fear of being found out that I don’t have shelter for my baby. No human being should ever know the degradation of not having enough money to eat and being mocked by others because of it. I have been that person you passed on the road, walking to work in her brown uniform and a light windbreaker in the winter time so that she could work a ten hour shift and then walk home– grateful that I had a job where they’d allow me to buy my dinner at half the price so that I could at least eat one meal that day.

I think that as a reader, I sometimes forget that authors have lives outside their writing. We forget that they have histories and have probably experienced hardships that we know nothing about. We forget that their lives aren’t always the moonlight and roses that we imagine them to be. It’s good to be reminded that after the Happy Ever After, the sometimes harsh realities of real life continues for the creators of the books that we most hold dear.

I wont post any more excerpts on here, but you should really go and read her post, it’s truly heart-breaking, yet at the same time, life-affirming.

Via Lauren Dane’s blog

Well, I may be without the proper blog, but I’m still getting the scoop on the happenings at New Concepts Publishing.

Apparently, a common complaint is that their authors never receive their payments on time, which is never a good thing in E-publishing Land.

This email from one of their authors is typical of the complaints that I’ve been getting about them:

“I make good royalties each quarter even though my last release was in _____. So I’m not an author crying sour grapes. But as sad as it is to say, what your blog said about NCP is all too true.

Royalties are always paid late, if at all without much prodding. I still don’t have a 1099. Well, they did mail me a slip of blank paper with a number on it , and since I did the math,that appears to be my gross earning from last year. My last book didn’t even get any edits. I had to bug the crap out of NCP to insert the ones I sent, and I’m still not sure they fixed every problem. It’s impossible to contact them for help or clarification on issues, which makes it frustrating for authors who need to air frustrations.

NCP was down for two weeks in Nov 2007 and for an entire month no one seemed able to get a hold of anyone. No explanations until after they were down. But come on, if a server went down, does it really take weeks to get it back online? And the customers are always complaining on the loops about poor customer service. It’s embarrassing.

I don’t make a big stink about NCP being a bad publisher, because I don’t want to come off as a complainer. But I did write to the Piers Anthony site describing my own problems, and when authors ask me about them, I tell them the truth. Royalties are good, and if you don’t care about being paid on time, you want communication, edits or a clear publishing date, NCP might be for you.

Also, any author trying to get in touch with the publisher via the author loop, not the reader loop, the author loop, gets slammed for even mentioning problems. The other authors who seem to have a book out every other week, or the newbies who don’t know any better, jump on those with problems and make it virtually impossible to get help even from the people you’d think would support you.

I have heard from several authors off the loops that I’m not the only one feeling frustrated. ….Discontent is everywhere but for a handful of authors, but those handful are loud and frankly, bullying. They threaten authors will be “blacklisted” in the publishing community if they complain.

Sorry to be so long-winded. I could go on and on (gee, I have). But this publisher is terrible. And it’s sad because they have good authors, great covers and decent stories. As soon as I can, I’m pulling all my books once contracts end”.

This author isn’t alone in her dissatisfaction with the company. Many of the e-mails that I’ve been getting, read just like hers.

New Concepts seem to be all about treating their authors like shit, which shouldn’t surprise me, but does, somehow.

Anyway, if there are any more NCP authors out there, with a story to tell, I’m your gal. You can e-mail me on hairylemony @ gmail . com.

As always, total confidentiality guaranteed.

Hence why I’m going to be blogging on here until, I can at least access my admin site again. I’m surprised these people are still business, truly. All I know is that this is the last straw, I’m not staying with them another minute. Well, as soon as I can access the damn blog again.

When I set this blog up a while ago, I wasn’t sure what I’d be writing on it, but it sure has come in useful.

I could go on and on about lack of customer service, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be losing a few customers after this, seeing as their servers seem to crash more often than not.

Anyway, enough whinging from me, I’m off to watch Dancing on Ice, and hope that Zaraah gets into the final round!