If a pop culture archeologist digs you up, does that make you a relic?

I was surprised to hear from Marc Tyler Nobleman when he first emailed me asking if I was one of the women in a music video for Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

Before responding, I googled him and was happy to find a guy who didn’t seem at all like a creepy stalker, but rather like a very hip writer and journalist who just happens to love 80s music videos. He grew up admiring the beautiful women portrayed in what I consider a unique art form at a time when music videos ruled the airwaves of MTV and VH1.

He’d already published a series of interviews called The Girl in the Video, and found such a following that he decided to do a second series, which led him to me.

When I started answering Marc’s questions, I was happily transported back in time to 1989 and an era I danced through in spike heels and tight black dresses, arms linked with fun model friends, and with a boyfriend about to make television sitcom history.

Was it as fun as it sounds? You bet.

I know I seem to be depressed and drinking, but I was actually very happy.

 

Click here to read the interviews of six gorgeous women who could call Billy Joel their sweet boss-daddy for a day.

Poppin' Cherries

Once I’d established myself as a fanfiction writer on fanfiction.net, I found that one of my pet projects was luring new writers out of their shell. I started there on fanfcition.net five years ago as a brand spanking new writer, unsure of myself and timidly posting my first stories. Once I found my footing though, you couldn’t shut me up, and after posting seventy stories, I still love it.

I entered many contests on fanfiction.net and placed in several, tying for first place in a couple and winning second place in some. There were also quite a few in which I didn’t win anything except new readers, which is about as good as gold to a writer.

I’ve also been asked to judge a lot of contests, and I’ve said yes every time I was asked. I hosted one as well with my friend, Thyra10, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, virtually jumping up and down every time we’d get an entry. I don’t mean we literally jumped up and down; I mean we jumped up and down in an internetty kind of way, separated physically by an ocean and a handful of countries.

One of my favorite contests in which I was a judge was the Poppin’ Cherries contest. Writers could only enter if they were virgin writers and had never posted a story on fanfiction.net. This was when I first felt that groove of leading a new writer to water and watching her take her first glorious sip. I’d found joy in writing, and I wanted others to do the same. And some did, I’m happy to say.

Night Orchid was a regular reviewer of my stories. She was bawdy and funny, and I looked forward to her comments every time I posted a chapter. She sent me a message one day and said she had tinkered with a story idea, and asked if she sent it to me, would I use it to write a story. She wasn’t a writer herself, but wanted to see her idea in print.

I tweaked it a tiny bit—just a few minor edits, and returned it to her saying she had already written it and I insisting she post it. When she did, she filled my message box with gushing remarks about how great it felt to be a writer. She got some very nice reviews, and experienced a kind of pride she hadn’t expected. I knew just how she felt, of course, as I’d been there myself not too long before.

Night Orchid never posted another story because shortly after that she died. I’d never met her in person and only knew her real name was Jaime, but a friend who knew her in the real world delivered the news to our little virtual world, and I cried over the loss of her. I’d considered her a real friend in spite of the limitations of our online relationship. And I was glad I’d had a hand in her becoming a writer. I still go back and read her messages to remind myself how happy she was about her accomplishment.

At the same time I was coaxing Night Orchid into the writing spotlight, I was handed the reins to a weekly writing challenge our community had been enjoying for a year or so. The weekly prompts had inspired many of my own stories, and I took the responsibility seriously. I’ve been posting the weekly challenges for four years now, and am proud to say my prompts have inspired many fanfiction writers. I’m particularly proud of the virgin writers who have written and shared their work for the first time.

Now I have a book out and I’m writing more books, shopping others to agents and publishers, entering more writing contests. While promoting my book, I was asked to give a talk at a local women’s group about writing. After I told the story of my entry into what is now my favorite way to pass time—how I took a little women’s writing workshop and then discovered fanfiction and started posting stories, one of the women raised her hand and asked if we could have a writing workshop in our town.

I hadn’t thought of it, but it was an excellent idea. Now I’m no longer the timid new writer, but the teacher, helping a group of new writers find their voice and hopefully a new joy in their lives. Will they go on to write books, publish stories? I don’t know, but I’ve already gotten my reward from Night Orchid. Whatever else comes will be the cherry on top.

 

The heartbreak of Malaprop's

As a new independent author, I’m learning how to get my books into stores as well as to sell them online. I do my own publicity and scheduling, and have set up several book signings by contacting local bookstores and event coordinators.

When my book was first published, I heard from an author friend that Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina, was unfriendly to independent authors, and my heart sank. I grew up in Asheville, and I love the shop. Located in downtown Asheville, it’s a prime example of a very cool little indie bookstore, and I knew I could muster some sales there through social media and local press since I’m from Asheville and still have family and friends in the area. I live an hour away.

I went into the store, armed with my book, and was greeted by a very friendly young woman who gave me a brochure on their consignment policy and the email address of the event manager.

I read the brochure and was struck by two things: a $25 fee to set up a consignment account and a policy preventing books printed through CreateSpace from being consigned. (Their online policy omits the no-CreateSpace line, by the way.)

I had never heard of a fee to set up an account, and I even asked another indie bookstore owner in a nearby town if this was the norm, and she’d never heard of it either and couldn’t imagine what the fee was for. Malaprop’s brochure says: “These fees allow us to accept professionally-produced, self-published books from our local authors.” That line explains nothing, of course, and particularly not why other bookstores have no fee and Malaprop’s does have one. What exactly does it pay for? They get a cut of the sales when the books are sold. What would a fee on top of that be for?

I was also puzzled by the policy that prevents books printed through CreateSpace from being consigned. CreateSpace is Amazon’s self-publishing print-on-demand company. When my original publisher had to close their doors, they recommended that I self-publish the second edition of my book through Amazon and CreateSpace, and so I did. I can’t imagine an easier process. Even though I consider myself to be techno-challenged, CreateSpace made it easy for me to publish my book. And it was free. They keep a portion of the sales, and I have to do nothing beyond setting up the book except spend the money once it’s transferred into my bank account every month.

I’d imagine a great deal of self-published books are printed through CreateSpace only because Amazon is so huge in the print-on-demand business, and I wondered why the Malaprop’s policy excluded CreateSpace books.

I sent an email to the Malaprop’s event coordinator, got no response, and so called as well. She was very nice on the phone, but confirmed that Malaprop’s would not take my book on consignment, and therefore I could not have a book signing at their store. When I asked her about their no-CreateSpace policy, she explained that Amazon was not friendly to independent bookstores (ironic, coming from a bookstore not friendly to independent authors), and suggested I publish my next book with Lightening Source. She said Malaprop’s doesn’t do business with Amazon, and I thought that an odd thing to say since by consigning my books, they’d be doing business only with me, and not with Amazon. She also listed a handful of other local indie bookstores that would likely be more receptive to my book, which I found to be very helpful.

Fairly befuddled, I googled Lightening Source and CreateSpace, and studied the differences, both from an author’s perspective and a bookstore’s. From what I read, CreateSpace is a bit better for authors, and Lightening Source is a bit better for bookstores.

Lightening Source charges fees to authors that CreateSpace doesn’t (including a $37.50 setup fee, which might have been the inspiration for Malaprop’s setup fee?). I looked further for evidence that would justify the Malaprop’s policy, and found that CreateSpace’s fee for wholesale and retail distribution channels is $25, and Lightening Source’s is $12, which might have been a factor in the Malaprop’s logic except for the fact that in a consignment situation, there’s no setting up those channels. The author just walks into the store with a handful of books in her hot little hand and plops them down. No fees.

So, why, you might ask, am I whining about Malaprop’s? Why don’t I just move on and set up signings at bookstores who want me? Well, I have. And I will continue to do just that. But I wanted to get this little injustice off my chest, and I wanted to explain to other local authors who might have heard the rumors about Malaprop’s being unfriendly to independent authors that yes, indeed they are. I hope someday that won’t be the case, that they’ll make their policies more author-friendly like other area bookstores. My hopes for a signing there were dashed by a policy I don’t understand. And yours might be as well unless you’ve used Lightening Source to print your books and don’t mind forking over $25 for no good reason.

How I look signing books at stores that welcome local authors: happy.

 

Going viral

My friend’s blog post has gone viral. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone for whom this happened. I know people who are famous and they get a zillion hits all the time on their websites and blogs, but this is the first time I’ve known someone who was going about her business in comfortable obscurity when suddenly the magnifying glass of the internet appeared above her and hovered there for a bit.

My friend, whom I’ll call Zara, has been generous and honest with me in sharing the details of her experience, which is why I’m giving her a fake name for this blog post.

On a normal day, her blog gets up to two or three hundred hits. But this post, which was written seven months ago, got 500,000 in four days. It started one morning when she noticed it had 2000. Within hours, that number rose quickly.

As Zara’s new readership grew, so did the number of comments on her blog. Most were very friendly, chatting about the content of her blog, which was funny and sexy, but she also got a few trolls. One woman demanded Zara delete her entire blog because of punctuation mistakes, but the woman’s rude comment got deleted instead.

I should back up here and say that English isn’t Zara’s first language. I think it’s her third (out of five), and the fact that she writes in it amazes me. I struggle with just one language, and admire anyone who would attempt to write in anything other than her native tongue.

Sometimes Zara and I edit each other’s fiction, and I’ve grown to rely on and value her input when I write. When I edit her work, I love seeing the language from a fresh perspective, and often think some of her mistakes shouldn’t be fixed, as they add a certain charm to her work that I could never achieve.

I can’t count the number of times I find myself trying to explain things like why we can see far and wide, but not wide and far. We think long and hard but not hard and long. Some things are neither here nor there, but never neither there nor here. Sometimes Zara’s leading man will look his lover in the eye when he should be looking into her eyes. One of my favorites was when Zara’s hero was running to catch up with his love interest. He ran until he was out of breath, and when he finally caught up to her he was “smiling between his pants.”

I haven’t had a man smile between his pants at me for a long time, and gosh, I miss it.

Zara asked me to edit her blog post—the one that 500,000 people have now read. I guess the trolls got to her and she was feeling insecure about her writing. I did as she asked, of course, but when I sent the blog post back with all my edits I also counseled her not to change a thing.

Would I correct Borat’s English? Yakov Smirnoff’s? How about Latka’s on Taxi? Would Charo be as adorable if her English were perfect?

Writing something correctly isn’t always better. Who am I to argue with half a million people? They like her blog. Do they like the content or her language misuse? Can’t it be both? And does it really matter?

While we ponder this, Zara’s fans are piling up, having come from wide and far, and my opinions on her language use are neither there nor here. The fact is, she has become an internet phenomenon in a matter of days, and that takes my breath away and makes me smile between my pants. Go, Zara, go.

I’m much younger when I’m writing romance novels.

My first book was published yesterday. It’s not the first book I’ve written, but it raced to the front of the line when a romance e-publisher sent me a contract, knocking what I thought would be my first two books out of the way.  I let it run, grabbed its tail, and hung on for the ride.

I used a pen name for my new book. I was told by some wise person that I’d have a better chance of finding a literary agent and publisher for my other books if I kept my romantic fiction separate from other genres. So I split myself in two.

I’d been posting fanfiction online for several years using the nic, Suki59. (Yes, we say nic in the fanfiction world. It short for nickname, I suppose.) When I created my fanfiction profile and had to give myself a name, I looked down at my feet and swiped the name of my Chihuahua, Suki, who was snoring on the dog bed in my office. Then seeing that many nics included both a name and a number, I tacked on the year I was born in a terribly short-sighted moment. I became Suki59, fanfiction writer.

When I decided I’d need to be two different writers for my books, I went through a list of pen names I thought sounded right, and later settled on the obvious. Everyone who had ever read anything I’d written other than a handful of close friends already knew me as Suki, and I plucked my last name from the man I married, since I’d never changed my name legally (and certainly didn’t hyphenate to become Susan McNabb-McMinn, although answering the phone that way produces a guaranteed laugh, which I love).

So I became Suki McMinn, writer of vampire novels. When my publisher asked for a bio and a photo, I paused. Wasn’t I supposed to be someone else? And wasn’t my white-haired fifty-something self plastered all over Facebook? And weren’t my model photos of a very young Susan “out there” on the world wide interwebs?  I quickly found a solution and posted a headshot of me at around thirty-five—not the current Susan and not the young modelly Susan, but truth be told, a Susan where I felt my best physically and complained the least about how I looked. Note to those choosing a new persona: pick your favorite age and keep it.

After carefully creating the illusion that I’m someone else, why, you might wonder, am I outing myself here? Because I can’t imagine that anyone really cares. And I’m just not very good at lying about myself. Will it cost me that big agent? Surely not. I’d imagine they have better things to do than worry about how many names I have and which headshots match up with which genres. Not to mention they’d have to take the time to find this blog post. I would think getting an agent will have much more to do with my writing. And I’m starting to think not landing that big agent might not matter anyway. With the shifting sands of the publishing world, we all have more options than ever before that might have nothing to do with getting an agent.

So yesterday, Suki McMinn was born when my first book hit Amazon. Ironically, last month, the real Suki, my sweet Chihuahua, died peacefully in my arms. She was a funny little dog and I got to love her and be her mother for the last sixteen of her nineteen years. She’s gone but never forgotten since I now answer to her name.

In the small town where I live, my friends know about my book, and last week, when I ran into one of them at a party and he said, “Hey, Suki,” I smiled. I thought of the real Suki, but not with sadness. Yes, the pain of her loss is still very fresh, but now I’m Suki too, and that feels good.

Ode to the Robert Palmer Girls

I’ve been busy as a little bee with many writing projects, but everything came to a screeching halt a few days ago when I got an email out of the blue from a guy named Marc Tyler Nobleman.

He’s an author—calls himself a pop culture archeologist, actually. He writes about all kinds of things, but contacted me because he’s doing a second set of interviews with ingénues from iconic music videos of the 80s, and he wanted to ask me about the Billy Joel video I did in 1989, We Didn’t Start the Fire.

Marc finds and interviews women from 80s music videos who didn’t become household names and gets their story, which I love, of course, because I’m one of them. I was going through his list of “The Girl in the Video” women, and he found all five of the original Robert Palmer girls! It made me realize we went through years of emulating those women and never even knew their names.

For many auditions I was instructed to look like a Robert Palmer girl. When I was a trophy girl at the 1988 Emmy Awards, we were all dressed as Robert Palmer girls. When we shot the Weird Al Yankovic video, UHF, we were Robert Palmer girls only wearing Weird Al glasses and mustaches.

 

The prop guy brought reading glasses, so we all had Weird Al headaches by the end of the day.

 

 

For a solid decade, I sashayed to every interview in a tight black dress and gloppy red lipstick with my hair slicked back, and I sat in the waiting room of many a photographer and casting director looking at many versions of myself, all vying for the same jobs.

So, thank you to Marc for doing some digging and finding these women. And thank you, Robert Palmer girls, for setting the 80s beauty standard that kept me employed.

Julie Pankhurst, Patty Elias (Patty Kelly), Kathy Davies, Mak Gilchrist, and Julia Bolino, I bow to you. I shift my weight back and forth in black stilettos holding a guitar to you. Ladies, you rock.

Something I wrote is coming to life.

Of course, I knew it would be a good thing, but I guess I never realized just how good.

I’ve sent in the second draft of my first book to my editor. I noticed our work schedules differ, and asked where she was. Scotland. That’s pretty cool. My first book’s price will be listed in pounds as well as dollars. I feel quite continental.

I was nervous about getting her notes. What if we don’t agree? What if she wants changes that I don’t? After all, I’m under contract now. Will this get sticky?

So far, the answers are all good. I actually loved her first notes. She made suggestions I hadn’t considered and the results were improvements to the manuscript. I felt like she was on my team—helping me make the book better, rather than presenting the nitpicking I’d feared would come.

And today, she asked for my notes to the cover artist, and the whole thing became real in a way I hadn’t expected. Someone is making a cover for a book I wrote. Yes, it’s just a little paranormal romance on an e-publisher’s website. But I wrote it.

Creating art is often a solitary experience, and while that’s not a bad thing, it makes it unusual to share that personal experience with a team, even if’s just a small one. I have an editor. I have a cover artist. I hadn’t considered how fun this part would be, and I’m enjoying every minute.

For the handful of writers I know who are published, I know you understand. And for the gazillion writers I know who aren’t, I know you understand even better.