Where Have all the Princesses Gone?

Since I've started writing my fantasy middle-reader, I have come to a conclusion: No one out there bothers to take cool princess-photos of girls between the ages of ten and fourteen. Either that, or I just don't know what search it is that will take me there. 'Tween princess', 'tween princess photography', 'photography of tween princess', 'pre-teen princess', 'pre-teen princess photography', 'thirteen-year-old princess art'... All of these have gotten me nothing but Disney princesses. Why is this? How could this be?

It all started because the main character of my new book is a thirteen-year-old princess. Eagerly, after writing up my initial description of her, I went image-hunting for my pinterest board. I was positive that there would be scads and scads of cool, tween-ish princesses all overt the place, and that I would be sifting through them for hours trying to find the ones that were just perfect.

I found this:

which wasn't terrible and is even kind of cute, but after that I hit a rough patch. Here's a sampling of some of the pictures I've been desperate enough to pin:

Cute, but she's not supposed to look five-years-old or have such a very large head...

My princess isn't from Russia. Or the arctic...

She doesn't have a bosom (or weird, ear-like hair thingies)...

And (in my head, at least) she's prettier than this (is it mean to say that about a drawing???) and isn't wearing a flower head-wreath that really doesn't match her outfit.

Now, I have found a few more images and some are better than others, but none of them are great. Why is this? How can there be so few images of tween princesses? This really stumped me for a while because it seemed like such a strange phenomenon. After all, there are a gazillion super-artsy, super-cool, amazing pictures of little girl princesses, and we all know what happens if you type 'princess' into the search bar (most of them are scantily clad, large-bosomed, sheild maidens). (Or they're Disney.)

And then I developed a theory. You see, girls older than nine and younger than fifteen are the only females on the planet who are too old and/or too cool to be princesses. At ten they've just grown out of that phase, and it's 'baby-ish', and they aren't willing to admit that they secretly want to get dressed up and photographed as a princess until they hit fifteen or so, when they're finally far enough from childhood to admit the truth again without jeopardizing their image.

Doesn't that make perfect sense?

And if it doesn't, then maybe you can come up with some better theory for explaining the age-gap in princess photography subjects - or find the elusive 'tween princesses'  that I can't seem to locate. Believe me, I would greatly appreciate either. I kind of can't stand not having images for my characters - especially my main characters - and this is driving me crazy! And if any of you out there are photographers, would you please, please, please go take some really cool princess photos of girls between the ages of ten and fifteen? (In particular, I need a blonde thirteen-year-old [preferably with a pony] and a petite, dark-haired, fourteen-year-old who looks snobbish. That's not too much to ask, is it?) I'll be eternally grateful for any photos sent my way... 

People regularly ask me if I'm going to try to get Laryn Rising traditionally published (aka, query an agent, have them sell it to a HUGE publishing house, and ideally rake in the dough with a rare-in-this-day-and-age $100,000 advance). That would be awesome. And if I secured such a deal (even if they didn't give me the life-changing advance) they'd design my book cover, edit my book, proofread my book, print my book, and distribute it to bookstores. Where it would sit on a shelf that millions of readers flocked to with like-minded books.

And therein lies the problem. My book has no genre, and in the publishing world no genre means 'no shelf'. End of story for the first time author (most of the time).

For those of you who have read Laryn Rising and are tempted to disagree with me, let me put it to you this way: it's dystopian, but only for the first three chapters; it primarily takes place on a space ship, but other than that there's nothing scifi about it. (Seriously, hardcore scifi junkie's would tar and feather me if I tried to sell it under that genre. They would be up in arms. They would cry out in reviews that there was no science, no technology, and no alien invaders, and my book would be mud.)

It's the nature of the beast, really, because the whole point of Laryn (and her sisters, and the 500 other Fed girls) going on the ship is to join with a civilization that has no technology. They just use the ship to get them from Earth to Nequam, and let the hired crew do all the sciency stuff. It's almost anti-scifi, if you think of it that way. They grow vegetables, learn how to use paper, tend animals, cook their own food, and about the only technical aspect of their lives are the sliding doors. The ship probably does use 'warp drive' and cool things like that, but my characters certainly aren't aware of it.

And it's not fantasy either. There's no magic. No other-worldly creatures. No fantastical elements at all, other than the idea of space travel and inter-galactic colonization which really fit much more neatly into the scifi category anyway. (Although, if inquiring minds want to know, once they get to Nequam it's a whole new deal - and genre. Nequam is a different world with it's own creatures and-- well, I'd hate to give too much away before Laryn actually gets there...)

Technically, Laryn Rising would be considered speculative fiction, ie, not fantasy, not sci-fi, but out-of-reality in some other vague sort of way. (Consequently, this is also where vampires and werewolves belonged until Twilight). But when was the last time you walked into a bookstore and said to yourself, "Hmmm, I think I'll go check out the Speculative Fiction shelf today,"?

That's what I thought. And that's what the traditional publishers thought as well, which means that more than likely even if they read my book and loved it (which of course they would), they would hand it back to me (with great sorrow in their eyes) and say, "Although this is the most astounding work of fiction any of us here at [insert name of giant publishing house] have ever seen, we regret to inform you that there is no shelf for you. You are unmarketable."

And this, Dear Reader, is why I have chosen to self-publish. Although there is always an exception to the rule, let's face it - the odds are stacked against me on this one, and I have decided that rather than spend the next decade of my life querying every publishing house in the world with the vague hope of becoming 'The Exception', I will accept my place as 'The Rule' and write something else next. Something that has a shelf.

A big shelf, that millions of people flock to, and that publishers like [insert name from above] love to fill.

With that said, since Book Two in this current series finishes Laryn's story, the project I've decided to work on next is juvenile fiction of the very, very, very fantastical sort. And I am so excited, because I have come up with the coolest story ever - and my kids each get a starring role. It's already titled The Gift of the Cornesh, and it involves large, silver eggs that hatch out mythical, magical creatures to the rare and very lucky person who finds them. For a glimpse of pieces of what this world looks like, go here and check out my pinterest board for this next adventure. I've only just gotten started on it, but I'm already in love with the world of Kylandria and all the amazing things that are possible there.

Any thoughts on this latest decision? I'd love some feedback...

About Book Two...

This has been a common source of questions lately. And although there are those who want to know what happens to Laryn in that book, and what happens to her sisters, and what Nequam/Plymouth is like, mostly I'm just getting a lot of 'WHEN WILL IT BE OUT!!!!'

This is a great question, and I love any and every person who cares enough about Laryn (Book One,Laryn Rising) to ask it. And, for those of you wanting to know, it shouldn't be long. My final draft (ie, everything in it is set, and only punctuation and other proofreading-type changes will be made) has already been proofread, and it's now awaiting another run-through. When I'm done with that I'll have two other sets of proofreaderish eyes go over it, and any ensuing changes will be made.

Meanwhile, my cover artist has been enlisted, and she says she'll start working on it later this week. Maybe. She's pretty amazing, so I have high hopes that she'll be able to come up with something that feel/looks right in no time, and from there all I'll have to do is get the book formatted for e-book publication. I use the term 'I' loosely here, because we all know that my sister Laura will actually do all the formatting. I'll just be there for moral support. After all, it's the least I can do since she works for free, right?

All of this makes the projected launch date of Book Two March-ish. I'm shooting for March 1st, so we'll see how that goes. As for the title of Book Two, I'm 95% settled on Finding Shemballah. Should that change, I'll be posting the final title before I publish - and I'll probably be looking for feedback as well, since I like getting as much input on these things as possible.

In other news, my good author-friend Val-Rae (check her books out here) is currently helping me get Laryn Rising ready for printing! I am super excited about that, since it was not something I was going to be able to do myself. I mean, if I were on an island and the only way off was to figure it out, I could probably have done it eventually - but I'd have been sick of coconuts and very tan by the time it was accomplished.

Can't wait to put Book Two out there! And thanks so much to everyone for all the great feedback on Laryn Rising. It really is the best part of this whole process:)

Invisibility. It's Such a Drag.

Don't you think? Well, thanks to Amazon's free promotions, for the next 48 hours Laryn Rising will be blessedly visible as a free book on Amazon. I really don't know how readers find books on promotion. It's like this big, magical mystery that completely evades me. If I were to go on Amazon right now and try to find my book listed as free-for-today, I would be lucky to find it.

Yet there are all these Amazon wizards out there who will not only find it, but download it. And they'll do it at all hours of the day and night. It's crazy, they're crazy, and I love them.

I've had a lot of people ask me lately about marketing my book, and how my sales are going. When I tell them that I'm getting ready to run another free promotion on Laryn Rising they always look at me a little funny and say, "Free? Why would you want to give it away for free? What can you possibly get out of that?"

I can totally understand why someone would ask this question - especially when you tell them that you hope to give away not just a few books, or a few hundred books, but a few thousand books. Seriously, the more the merrier! And the reason? Because out of every 500 people who download my book for free, about 450 of them will put it in their kindle archives with all the other (hundreds) of books they regularly download for free (because remember, these people are the Free Book Wizards who do this all the time) and hopefully they'll get to my book someday. Statistically speaking, only about twenty of them will actually buy it and read it right away, and should all twenty of those wonderful people recommend it to five people (even if they tell them that it is the most amazing and life-changing book they have ever read), only a few will actually remember the name of the book once the conversation is over - and even fewer will take the time to find it and buy it while the recommendation is fresh in their head.

If you do the math you'll quickly realize that you have to give away a LOT of books to get any sort of immediate return in your sales. I think most of us know that generally we read a book because someone we know read it and recommended it to us. Even if you hear about a book that sounds interesting, aren't you way more likely to buy it if one of your friends says, "Yeah, I read that book and it was amazing!"? So if you consider the fact that virtually NO ONE will ever hear about my book unless they stumble onto it through a random amazon search or hear about it from a friend who read it, my future sales depend on these free promotions - and on the people who read my book and pass it on.

So yes, it is with great relish and anticipation that I offer my book - FOR FREE - to the world for the next 48 hours. So if you know anyone who got a new Kindle or Ipad for Christmas (I'm not on the Nook at the moment) then by all means tell them to get my book while it's free! Then tell them that if they're super awesome they'll read it (starting tomorrow), review it (probably the next day, because obviously they won't be able to put it down), and share it with everyone they see for the next week. (Or month.)

Oh, and if you want to read my first author interview, check it out here on my sister's hilarious blog (but be warned, it can be rather addicting once found - particularly if you enjoy comic realism) and find out all sorts of things you'll never learn about my book anywhere else (because only my sister would ask those questions).

Consider Me Reformed!

For pretty much my whole life (as in up to this minute) I have been a happy-go-lucky reader of books. I read a book, and if I love it I probably tell my friends to read it - if I remember - but other than that I simply move on and find another book. Happily. Completely oblivious to the plight of the poor author who is desperately hoping that I will do something to promote the book that I loved so much.

It's true. Until I became the desperate author, I never really thought about the fact that reviewing a book on amazon, pinning a book on pinterest, sharing it on facebook, emailing a link to my friends, or even simply being a member of goodreads might actually help promote a book that deserves promotion. Now, however, now I get it. Big time. Basically, because my book is not in bookstores (yet), not sitting around on someone's coffee table or even on their bookshelf (because there is no paperback available - yet), unless someone happens to put in one of the searches on amazon that brings my book up, they will never know it exists.

Therefore, they will never be able to buy it. Even if they would want to should they have come across it.

Isn't that tragic? And so incredibly fatalistic! Gah! It practically gives me hives just thinking about how hard it is to get my book out there. Seriously. And so, I am now going to make a public vow that from this moment forward I will pay more attention. If I read a book that I love, I will check the reviews - and if there aren't more than 200, I will write one. I will then check the publisher, and if it is an indie book I will pin it, share it (somewhere), and add it to my shelf on Goodreads.

And while I'm on the subject, I would like to thank all those (especially all those who don't know me personally) who have done any of these things for my book! It is so exciting to find it pinned, or shared, or to have someone tell me that they read it because a friend sent them an email with the link and a big fat recommendation. These things almost always lead to someone else somewhere finding my book, and that has to happen if it is ever going to get anywhere.

(Or if I'm ever going to be able to buy my husband the truck that I promised him. The same future/imaginary truck that made him suddenly much-more-supportive-of-his-author-wife's-authoring, if you get my drift.)

Basically, what I'm saying is that without awesome people willing to help promote my book, there may not be anymore of them. (Let's face it, my husband is an awesome guy, but he only has so much patience.) So thank you again to anyone who has done anything to spread the word about Laryn Rising. I will be forever indebted.

In Which I Contemplate Taking Up Pictography

Thanks to my new method for revising and my amazing new proofreader, I have passed another milestone when it come to Book Two in my Chronicles of Nequam series.

I am now ready to read the whole blasted thing out loud.

I kind of hate this part, but unfortunately, I think it's way too valuable a step for me to skip. (After all, I need to see how the characters' lines will sound when they make a major motion picture out of it, right? Hey, it could happen...) For those of you who have never written, then rewritten, and rewritten, and rewritten, think of it this way:

Imagine a book. A good book. Even a book that you really really love. Now, imagine that you are stranded in a cell with that book - and nothing else. So you read it. Then you read it again. And again, and again. Somewhere in here you take to carving pictographs on the wall with your fingernails, because the sight of the book makes you feel just a little bit crazy. Then you read it again - out loud.

Essentially, this is the basic process for revising a book.

I will say that the task isn't nearly as daunting as I first thought it would be. When I decided to read Laryn Rising out loud I looked at some books on cd and figured it would take about thirteen hours. I think it took more like fifteen, but still that's really only the equivalent of sitting at a desk for two regular work days. It took me more than two sittings, of course, because of irritating things like work, and laundry, and children who want to eat Every. Single. Day. (Wouldn't it be awesome if humans were more like pythons and only required a meal every five to fourteen days? I fantasize about such things...) (And please note that I do love my children. And I do feed them. Most of the time. If there were just more hours in a day!)

Book Two is about 20,000 words longer than Laryn Rising, which means it will take me longer to get through, but I'm trying to feel geared up for the challenge. It would probably be easier to face if I hadn't JUST finished going through it, but it's either work on Book Two or start trying to format Laryn Rising for printing. Since we know how I feel about anything involving the word 'formatting' (see previous post) we can safely assume that at this point I'm still hoping the Formatting Fairy will visit my house one night and do it for me.

I admit it's unlikely, but as miracles have been known to happen I will continue to put that off for now. After all, it's only fair to give the Formatting Fairy as much time as possible to get to my project, right?

My Dilemma

I have so much to do - but I can't decide what to work on first.

First, there is Laryn Rising. Sales of the e-book are going great, but I need to get a paperback version out there. Unfortunately that means getting the whole cover designed and formatted, and getting the interior book design done. In an idea world, I would simply shell out scads of money to have both of these things professionally done.

Newsflash: This is not, and never has been, an ideal world.

Newsflash #2: I do not have scads of money.

And so, I am forced to do as much as I can the hard/do-it-yourself way. I do have my limitations, however, and there is probably no way I could do the cover design and format without losing my sanity completely (and having it turn out disastrously). Therefore, I will be paying my amazing cover artist to do that part for me - but as that requires coming up with money, I'm trying to be optimistic about when I'll get that done. The interior design I will attempt to do myself. By 'myself' I of course mean that my sister will probably end up doing 9/10ths of it for me due to my complete inadequacies in all areas of life involving the words 'computer formatting', but out of a sense of duty I will be sitting next to her and sweating over the whole project (and over the fact that she could suddenly drop dead and leave me to figure out my mail chimp, website, next book, and all other things involving 'formatting' by myself). Conclusion: Laryn Rising is still classified under the 'Not Done' project heading, and is therefore still putting demands on my time and energy.

Second, there is Book Two, which I believe will be called Finding Shemballah. (Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, btw.) This book is complete, and all developmental editing has been finished. This leaves me with the tedious clean-up work, which will require going through the blasted thing at least three more times myself, and then sending it on to my amazing proofreader (whom I just discovered amongst my very own family members. Who knew! If anyone wants her services, she's up for hire...) There's also my cover to stress over (see my pinterest page for progress) and the map. How did I forget the map! Of course writing about Plymouth required me to draw a map, but it didn't occur to me until the other day that I now need to find some professional map-drawing-person to 'professionalize' it for the book. Where are these professional map-drawing people? Does anyone know where they hang out? (Preferably one who loves working for free, and isn't interested in scads of money...)

And then there's Book Three. Prequel to books one and two, and set in Plymouth one hundred years prior to the Fed girls' arrival. I. Must. Write. This. Book. It's kind of non-negotiable - yet it's driving me crazy. I finally decided to set it aside and start a completely unrelated project. Inspiration hit, and I sat down and plotted an entire novel out in no time. I was all set to start it when I came back to Earth and realized that I need Book Three. Why? Because I can't wait to write books four and five of The Nequam Chronicles, and neither will be possible unless I finish this prequel.

At least now I know how I found the time to write the first two books. It seems that while there is time in my life to sit and work on one major project, things become much more complicated when I start layering them all over each other. I used to wonder why author's wanted to go away to quiet mountain retreats to write when it was so easy to sit in your kitchen and hammer it out... Now all I can think about is a quiet little shack someplace, with no phone, no one wanting dinner (why do they insist on eating every day!) and no laundry. I can only imagine what I could do with five days of such an existence. Of course, I'd have to bring my sister, or half the stuff would never happen...