Debut Novel, No Backlist – 25 Things You Need to Know If You’re Thinking About Self-Publishing

  • January 10, 2012

# Be willing to take risks. On the Island is an adult contemporary romance novel. The book I’m writing now is straight-up women’s fiction. I’m worried about the genre shift, but I’m going to jump out of the airplane anyway; the chance to expand my readership is my parachute. I don’t know if anyone will like my next book, but I promise to bring my A game.

# Cover. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t cut corners with your book cover. If your cover art looks like something my nine-year-old designed using clip art and MS Paint, you won’t be taken seriously. Actually, my nine-year-old is pretty talented and she could probably come up with something better than a few of the covers I’ve seen. Your cover is the second most important thing to spend money on when you decide to self-publish (professional editing is the first). I started writing Covet last summer, while I was waiting to submit On the Island to my editor. I already knew my main character had wavy blond hair so when I saw this image the heavens parted, angels started singing, and I got goose bumps everywhere. All this image needed was my name and the title. Notice the dark font? That’s called learning from your mistakes.

# For the love of all that is holy, part II, hire an editor. I had two for On the Island: a developmental editor and a copyeditor.

# It’s great if you have more than one title to self-publish, but what if you don’t? I can’t help that On the Island is the first book I ever wrote. I’ve been encouraged to get the next book out there as soon as possible, but I don’t have a trunk novel to re-work or anything languishing on my hard drive. Frankly, I’m not a fast writer and I’ll never be as prolific as some authors.

Who Do Your Characters Look Like?

  • January 7, 2012

Lately a few people have asked if I pictured anyone for the main characters in On the Island . Since I see the book in my head as a movie when I’m writing, I did have a general idea of T.J. and Anna’s physical appearance, but I didn’t think too much about whether they looked like real people or not.

Now that I’m being asked the question more frequently, I thought about it and decided that Anna might look a little like Courtney Cox because of her blue eyes.

Crack Dip

  • December 12, 2011

Every now and then, I look at my blog diagnostics to see the search words and phrases that bring readers to funny in the ‘hood, read by approximately 30 people each day (and I LOVE you folks, by the way).

The two most popular words that are leading people to this blog, at least in the last eight weeks, are CRACK DIP.

I’m not surprised. I’ve blogged about crack dip before, in this post. And since the holidays are upon us, everyone probably wants to take the dip to their office potlucks and holiday parties. My co-worker, Jess, made a batch the other day, just for the hell of it, and we decided crack dip made a fine breakfast indeed. If you’ve never had crack dip, don’t judge. If you have, you’re probably nodding and thinking, “Yeah, I could totally eat that for breakfast.”

If you want to make crack dip, here’s what you need:

 

Go to Super Target and buy their Archer Farms brand habanero and roasted pineapple dip (it’s in the same aisle as the pickles and olives). Buy three or four jars so you’ll always have it on hand. Dump the whole jar into a medium-sized bowl.

 

Next, add two packages of Philadelphia brand cream cheese. Leave it out for a couple hours so that it’s very soft. Really mix this together well. You don’t want big chunks of cream cheese, and sometime it helps to use the back of a big spoon to smooth them out.

Use the reduced-fat kind if you want (it won’t affect the awesomeness of the dip). Do not, under any circumstances, use the fat free crap because I’ll be notified telepathically, my head will explode, and zombies will eat my brain. So don’t do that, okay?

After you’ve combined the cream cheese and the habanero and roasted pineapple dip, add an 8 ounce package of shredded Kraft sharp cheddar cheese. Mix well.

This next part is important. You’re going to add diced red onion, but not too much (start with a few tablespoons and add from there). I once thought that if a little red onion was good, a whole lot would be better but all it did was overpower the dip and I had to throw it away and start over which made me cry. So be careful. You can always add a little more, but you can’t take it out once it’s in there.

Mix, cover, and refrigerate for at least an hour. Serve the dip with Ritz crackers. I am partial to the festive snowflake-shaped version during the winter holidays.

No matter where you go, if you bring this dip people will love you. They’ll stand around the bowl raving about it and you’ll have to give everyone the recipe. My friend Wendy gave it to me back in 2008 and I’ve been making it ever since. Occasionally, someone will turn their nose up at crack dip when you tell them what’s in it, but after you force them to try it anyway, they’ll be the one parked next to the bowl shoveling in dip-covered crackers like it’s their job. I guarantee it.

My friend Bethie texted me the other night to ask what kind of salsa you need for the crack dip. My BlackBerry was dead or in my purse or something and I didn’t get the message in time. I knew she wanted to take crack dip to work the next day and I felt bad because even though I texted her back the next morning, it was probably too late for her to make the dip. No worries, though. She texted back that if you google Tracey Garvis Graves crack the recipe comes right up.

*Excellent*

So do me a favor. Make the dip and then come back to this post and leave a comment letting me know if you liked it.

Happy holidays and enjoy!

Tracey

An Ultra-Newbie With No Backlist Sell-Publishes Her Debut Novel

  • December 7, 2011

I love Joes’s blog. I’ve learned a lot by reading his posts, and I’ve often heeded his advice. While I’ve no desire to jump into the fray regarding the self-publishing/traditional publishing debate, I will state that self-publishing was the best choice for *my* book.

Occasionally I see comments from readers that say Joe’s transition to self-publishing was a no-brainer. He was already traditionally published, professionally vetted if you will, and he had a backlist he could upload to KDP. Self-publishing was easy, some said, if you had those things. lready

What if those of us that wanted to self-publish had neither? Confession: Before I wrote On the Island, I’d never written a novel before. I didn’t have thousands of words languishing on my hard drive, nor did I have any trunk novels shoved in a drawer. What I had was a bucket list, and one of the items on it was WRITE A NOVEL, right above SEE THE EAGLES IN CONCERT (done!).

I wasn’t a complete writing neophyte. I used to write when I was in college at the University of Iowa. I took a creative writing class taught by one of the members of the Writer’s Workshop and got an A. After I transferred to Grandview College, a small Liberal Arts college in Des Moines, I took another creative writing class and got an A in that one, too. I still have the hand-written note from the instructor that said, “I think if you work hard you will be published someday. No kidding.”

After I graduated, I spent my time doing what most twenty-somethings were doing: working and socializing. I didn’t write much of anything and I really put my writing on the backburner when I got married and started a family.

Fast forward to 2008. My kids were in school all day and suddenly I had the urge to write again (the house was also dead-quiet which probably had more to do with it than anything). I started a blog, the content of which was read by tens of people per day. I enjoyed it. I had fun with it. I wasn’t interested in search engine optimization, or increasing my followers, or monetizing the blog by junking it up with ads. Honestly, I was mostly concerned about my dad finding it and discovering that the f-word was sprinkled judiciously throughout my posts.

The main reason I started the blog was because I wanted to start writing again and thought it would be a great way to flex my creative muscles after years of non-use. And it was.

But then I wanted more. I was spending time writing posts when what I really wanted to do was write a full-length novel.

“Have you ever written a novel before?” people asked.

“No,” I said. “But I figure the best way to teach myself how to write a book is by writing a book.”

So I did. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, either, but I figured it out as I went along. If I didn’t know the answer, I googled it. I used every single online resource I could find. I spent hours on writing message boards, soaking up information, and I wrote. Six months later I had a rough draft. I celebrated. I had an almost-book sitting on my hard drive.

In the meantime, I was approached by a writer on Absolute Write.com. She had seen my query letter

Don’t rely on social media to sell your book for you. Take a look at your Twitter followers right now, and the people you’re following. How many of their books have you bought? Maybe one or two.

Nike advertises. Coke advertises. So should you.

1)Myth: All self-published books are crap.

Truth: A lot of self-published books are crap, but not all of them. Myth #8: People who read can tell when a book is self-published because the standards of production are
lower.
Truth:

2) Myth: Self publishing won’t cost you anything at all.

FALSE. Okay, maybe you *can* self-publish your work for free, but you shouldn’t.

Happy Release Day for Amanda Bonilla’s Shaedes of Gray!

  • December 6, 2011

I met Amanda Bonilla last winter on The Twitter when we were both participating in an #askagent session. She took the time to answer one of my questions and when I checked out her profile and noticed she lived in Idaho (which people are always confusing with Iowa), I felt an instant kinship.

Over the course of the next six months, Amanda and I began to chat on Twitter and we started following each other’s blogs. We became friends on Goodreads and we corresponded on Facebook. Amanda’s friend Cassy was the very first person to like my Facebook fan page and I got to know Cassy a lot better when she started guest posting on Amanda’s blog Swords, Boots, and Shadows. I’m a major fan of both Amanda and Cassy and one of these days I’m going to have drinks with them.

Today is the day that Amanda’s debut novel Shaedes of Gray is being released. I bought it as soon as I fired up my laptop this morning and I’ll be reading it at lunchtime and after work. I really need to read about Tyler and Xander, and I will more than likely read this book straight through and be exhausted on Wednesday, but I don’t even care.

If you like urban fantasy and want to buy Shaedes of Gray, click here.

Happy release day, Amanda.

xoxoxoxoxox,

Tracey

The Half Diet

  • December 3, 2011

Now that the holiday season is in full swing, women everywhere are trying to figure out how to mitigate the effects of endless cocktail parties, department potlucks, and an unlimited supply of alcohol and sugar.

Last month we started brainstorming solutions at work and I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t on board with any of the options that were suggested. Jen is a fan of the 17-Day diet, but when I looked it up none of my favorite holiday things like chocolate martinis, fancy, frosted sugar cookies, and crack dip were on it, so clearly that wasn’t even going to make the short list.

Kendra wanted to know if I was interested in doing The Dukan Diet with her.

Me: What the hell is The Toucan Diet?
Kendra: Oh my God, that’s what we thought it was called, too. But when we googled it we found out that toucans eat berries and rats so we double-checked and it’s Dukan, not Toucan.

I googled this diet and you basically eat nothing but meat in the first phase, aptly named “attack” which I would have to change to “Oh, hell no.” It sounds horrible.

Kendra: So, do you want to try The Dukan Diet with me?
Me: Not even a little bit. I’m going to do the half diet instead.
Kendra and Jess: We’ve never even heard of that.
Me: That’s because I just made it up this very second. I’m just going to eat half of everything on my plate from now on. Easy-peasy, George and Weezy.

So I started doing that. I gave Jess half my sandwich and chips the other day because she didn’t have time to run down for lunch. Then Karen and I split a sandwich and chips. Then Jess and I shared a grilled cheese and fries and she was kind of bitching about the small portion, but she still split with me.

Then I came back from the cafeteria a few days later and Jess and Kendra were eating beef burgers (oh God, why? I can’t stand beef, and especially not in loose-meat form. Gah).

Kendra noticed the lunch I was carrying. “Neither of us can split with you today, but don’t you dare throw half of that sandwich away. Just eat it.”

“I paid for it,” I said. “I can do whatever I want with it and I am not a garbage can.”

“Save it for us. We might want it later even though we just ate one-and-a-half beefburgers. We’re doing the one-and-a-half diet. You know, to bulk up for winter.”

“Hibernation preparation?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

“Are you mocking me? I feel like you’re making fun of my made-up diet.”

Jess: I almost gnawed on my own arm I was so hungry after splitting lunch with you the other day.

Me: Yeah, but you didn’t get hungry until the end of the day. I told you all you had to do was go home, make dinner, and eat half. I can’t make this any simpler.

And ha, ha, they wanted that half sandwich later but they were SOL because I gave it to Karen.

“This morning when I got dressed I fit into pants that are a size smaller than I usually wear,” I announced when I got to work on Friday. “They were conveniently still hanging in my closet from when I exploded out of them last year due to all the ass-sitting that comes with writing a book. They slid right on today, though. Might even be loose.”

Suddenly, everyone was all interested.

They had questions on the mechanics of the half diet. We had a round-table discussion at work to fine-tune it and come up with some additional parameters (like how to handle alcohol). We told my boss Jean all about it so I’ll probably get an award or something for lowering everyone’s BMI. I promised I would design a handy flowchart to illustrate exactly how the diet is supposed to work.

Here it is:

FAQ’s

What foods are weird to divide in half?

Any fruit or vegetable because no one ever got fat eating that shiz. Don’t do something lame like eat half a banana, or half a carrot. That’s stupid.

What about a bowl of cereal? Can I only eat half of it?

You can eat the whole thing, but don’t use a giant mixing bowl and don’t choose cereal that comes with a toy. I am quite fond of Kashi cereal but only the kind with honey and almond flax because the other kind is like eating petrified twigs and little puffs of styrofoam.

Eat this

Not that

It even says twigs and puffs in the description which they should be trying to downplay so obviously everyone in the marketing department at Kashi is high.

Potato chips and french fries don’t sound very healthy. Have any real nutritionists weighed in on this diet?

Well aren’t you Judgy McJudgypants. I agree, chips and fries are not healthy but the salad bar in my company cafeteria scares the living crap out of me and I make much healthier choices for breakfast and dinner. And no, I did not solicit the opinion of any nutrition experts for my made-up diet. It is simply the concept of moderation with the addition of wine in a whole-bottle serving size which means it’s freaking awesome.

What about soup. How do you eat soup?

Please stop asking silly questions. Eat it with a spoon, and serve yourself about half as much as you really want. It will still be plenty.

What if I go to Cheesecake Factory or Outback Steakhouse?

Take three other people with you and share one entree.

Will you pose in a bikini like Kirsti Alley when you’re done with the half diet?

Don’t be ridiculous. Kirsti wore pantyhose under that bikini and I don’t even own pantyhose.

How many pounds will I lose on the half diet?

I have no idea. Try it and find out, and then report back to me. Please take before and after photos. I promise not to put them on my blog.

Maybe.

So, who’s on board?

My Favorite Things

  • November 11, 2011

Like Oprah’s list, only way more awesome and a heck of a lot cheaper.

1. Fuggs. These are fake Uggs from Target and since I’m not a pretentious suburban poser, I have no problem wearing them. In the interest of full disclosure, I have a pair of real Uggs but they’re not waterproof and since winter in Iowa is snowy and wet, wearing them outside is like ripping a twenty dollar bill in half each time I step into a slushy pile of whatever Mother Nature has dumped on us. Fuggs aren’t waterproof either, but they’re cheap enough to be almost disposable when spring arrives. Lately, Lauren has been asking for a pair of real Uggs. My response? “Oh, hi. You’re eight. No.”

So, Fuggs. Get some.

2. No-chip nail polish. You know I love getting my nails done (despite what happened to me back in 2002. I mean, what are the odds of that happening again? Probably high, but that toenail grew back juuuuust fine). No-chip manicures are the result of a product called Shellac which is guaranteed not to come off for 14 days. That’s two weeks of ignoring your nails and doing other things with the time you used to spend at the salon. Plus it dries almost instantly. You can dig in your purse for your keys or accidentally bang you hand against the car door when you leave and there will not be so much as a smudge.

This product, it is revolutionary.

3. Aquaphor – In the wintertime, when the offspring are sick and have chapped lips and cheeks, I tell them the Aquaphor fairy is going to pay them a visit. I sneak into their rooms before I go to bed and rub it all over their faces. Then, I rub it all over my feet and put on super-thick socks because you know what’s not sexy? Dry, cracked heels. My friend Karen uses it on her lips and I know of someone else who is fond of applying it to her elbows. It’s universal. Rub it anywhere you want.

4. Clinique Superbalm moisturizing gloss. I used to be a cherry ChapStick girl. I had it in my car, my purse, the bathroom, my nightstand, and my makeup bag. Seriously, I had it everywhere. But then Clinique had one of their bonus buy thingies and I happened to be walking by and now I have about 10 tubes of this lip gloss.

Well played, Clinique. Well played.

5. Victoria’s Secret Incredible bra. My friend Lisa told me about these. “The straps self adjust!” she said. I was intrigued. According to the product description, it’s the most comfortable bra in the universe. Yes, yes it is. Buy one today.

You too, can look like a supermodel.

6. E-readers. Or eReaders. Or ereaders. Or EReaders. I’m not going to debate which one is best *cough*Kindle*cough* because I think the important thing to point out is that you will love whichever e-reader you choose. I know some of you are all, “But I want to hold the book in my hand,” and to that I say “blah, blah, blah, save some trees.” I turned my friend Kendra into a Kindle lover the other day when I let her take mine on a business trip. She loved it and even though she texted me from DFW to ask, “Can you get People.com on this bitch? I need to know what’s going on with Demi and Ashton,” and I had to write back and say, “No, ding-dong, it’s not an iPad,” she’s buying one anyway. At around a hundred bucks (or less), the Kindle is a freaking steal. Hey, you can pick one up at Target when you’re buying Fuggs and Aquaphor. You’re welcome!

7. Starbuck’s skinny peppermint mocha. 100 calories for a tall. Tastes just like the regular version. We have a Starbuck’s at work, but I don’t usually indulge because I drink an astounding amount of coffee every morning when I’m writing and if I had more at work, I’m fairly certain my aorta would explode. But my friend Jen, who sits right across from me, said the skinny peppermint mochas are to die for so one of these days I’m going to buy one, strap on my heart rate monitor, and see just how high I can get my beats-per-minute.

8. Yoga pants. To clarify, I don’t do yoga in yoga pants, I write in yoga pants. And the reason I don’t do yoga is because it bores me silly. I’d rather spend an hour in my basement on my treadmill or NordicTrack (which is a cross-country ski machine that no one in the entire world owns or loves but me) with my iPod at an eardrum-splitting decibel level than contort my body in a room with a bunch of other people who may or may not be making sounds I don’t want to hear. Amy tried to sell me on The Yoga and I went to class with her, but OMG, the time, it stood still. It was way too quiet and I kept looking for a clock which apparently they hide because of people like me.

9. Trader Joe’s peeled and cubed butternut squash. I have a great recipe for butternut squash soup, but peeling a squash and cutting it all up is a major PITA and a good way to slice your hand open. Thanks to Trader Joe’s, making soup is no more difficult than opening the bag and dumping the squash onto a sheet pan for roasting. I also use an immersion blender because I found out the hard way what will happen if you try to puree a big, hot batch of butternut squash soup in a regular blender. The mess, it was epic.

10. Honda. Okay, so this one might be a bit more expensive than the other items on the list. It’s no secret I’m a Honda girl. When your dad owns a Honda motorcycle dealership, and has for the last 44 years, it’s hard not to be.

But the real reason Honda made this list is because I am now the proud owner of this:

A Honda CR-V. Mine is black and I got it a couple weeks ago. After driving a full-sized SUV for 9 years, I am very excited to have something a bit smaller. It’s not quite as cool as the 5-speed Acura I drove in my pre-offspring days, but it’s got everything I need (4-wheel drive, XM radio, and an iPod dock). It also has about 73 air bags and some other important stuff I wasn’t paying attention to when the salesman explained it which is why I did something wrong with the defrost the other night. Also, I’m pretty sure a new car means I’m guaranteed to hit an eight-point buck. Any day now.

“I love new cars, and I live in your ‘hood.”

So, what are some of your favorite things?

Tracey

Look What Happened While I Was Out Having Dinner

  • November 11, 2011

#69 on the Genre Fiction, Romance bestseller chart.

#23 on the Genre Fiction, Action and Adventure bestseller chart.

#16 on the Fiction, Action and Adventure bestseller chart.

It may not stick for long, but I’m having a fabulous evening.

T.

The Curse of the Sophomore Novel

  • November 8, 2011

And then Chuck Wendig, a writer whose opinion I greatly respect, because OMG he is awesome recommended Alison Dasho on The Twitter, and she became my editor (the manuscript for Covet is due to her on June 30th, 2012. I am penciled in so now I have an actual deadline, not just one of those self-imposed deadlines I was so good about meeting).

For the record, I am scared shitless about that.

Being the underdog is awesome, because once you’re on top of anything there will be those who aspire to knock you back down. We’ve all seen it in Rocky and The Karate Kid. Vision Quest, one of my all-time favorite movies from the 80’s (and the soundtrack, don’t even get me started. Love it).

Being the underdog is good. Being the last singer to perform on American Idol is good. Being the last speaker in a debate.

And here’s the thing. I blew off a shitload of stuff when I was editing On the island. I mean like sleep and newspapers and television and

And here’s the other thing: I really want to work on my third book, title No Mountain High Enough, because there’s a scene that takes place in Pakistan that I want to write so freaking bad that I’ll write the rest of the damn book just so I can. And I’m not sure if any of you know this about me but I am obsessed with high altitude mountain climbing. Like if they needed someone to volunteer at base camp in Nepal for Mt. Everest, I’m totally their girl. And even though it would be scary I’d love to climb at least through the Khumbu icefall (I’d train, and all that shiz because I’m serious when it comes to this). I am not kidding, guys. I have a massive literary crush on Jon Krakauer because he documented the whole Everest tragedy

No One Can Say We Don’t Go Balls-Out At Work

  • October 24, 2011

Sometimes I struggle to come up with a topic to blog about. Those of you who have been with me from the beginning probably remember the good old days when I blogged about my ____ or my _____ or other. In other words, when I shared my embarrassing moments funny stories with you. I know this blog has been sort of focused on my book lately, and I feel bad that my posts aren’t always of a humorous nature. This blog is called funny in the ‘hood, after all.

But sometimes, if I’m lucky, blog posts practically write themselves and my fingers fly across the keyboard because the words are coming out so fast I can barely keep up.

This is one of those times.

I work with some really great people who are not only smart, and helpful, and kind, they’re a freaking laugh-riot.

Seriously, these girls are a comic gold mine.

So when Kendra walked in the other day with a half-eaten container of cheese balls and announced, “My girls wouldn’t eat these so I brought them in for us” I should have known it was about to become one giant, collaborative stand up routine.

First of all, we fell on those balls like rabid dogs. With a sales pitch like Kendra’s who wouldn’t? We couldn’t get our fingers covered in day-glo cheese fast enough, despite that fact that it was, like, 9:03 a.m.

We’ve been eating these balls all week and I decided to document the hilarity via a series of quotes scribbled hastily on post-it notes and stuck all over my desk. I took several high-quality photos with my BlackBerry, too.

You’re welcome, Internet.

Here’s what the jar looked like a day or two after Kendra brought them in. Add a diet coke and you’ve got the breakfast of champions.

“Did you know they’re gluten free? Says so right here on the jar so it must be true. There are 832 balls in the jar and there’s 2% dietary fiber per serving,” Kendra informed us. “Probably no one should eat that many,” I pointed out.

“I don’t know if I can handle balls for breakfast,” I said. Karen tried to sell me on them. “They go really well with coffee.”

The lid to the jar makes a handy plate.

“The inside of my mouth is starting to hurt from sucking on all these balls,” Kendra said. “My fingers are getting so messy,” Jess added.

By Thursday, I was wondering how we were going to get all these balls eaten. “I don’t know if I can look at these balls one more day,” I said.

Look, they’re everywhere.

Kendra: “We’ll be fixed in our goal, flexible in our approach.”
Me: “What? Where the hell did you hear that psychobabble?”

There are vampire-boys roaming the employee cafeteria. There’s free coffee, tea, and, occasionally, all the krispy kremes you can stuff in your piehole.

And an almost bottomless container of balls.

Top that, world.

Kendra keeps me updated on the whole Demi/Ashton situation. I can’t tell you what ______ is, but I know if Demi’s getting too skinny or if Ashton has a love child (he totally does).

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