Here we are... part two of the navigation relocation we have shamelessy disgused as useful advise:)

How do I get published?
Write something first!
It amazes me how many people ask me this, because they have an idea, but don't want to waste time on it if it isn't likely to get published. As that applies to around 99% of stuff that has been written, it's a singular waste of time to even worry about it. My advice? Write. Rewrite. Rewrite again (and again and again). Find an agent. Never give up.

Where can I do a course?
There are any number of reputable writing/editing courses being run though universities and TAFE colleges all over the world.

If you're interested in World Building, next year Sonny Whitelaw and I will be running a series of Master Classes at Supanova  in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane.

The details are here, but please be patient  and check back often for updates because the site only went live (as a test) yesterday and technically it's still under construction. You can't actually book anything on the site yet, because we need the Web Warrior and his army of minions to do their bit and Ticketek to send us their coding for the booking form.

Can I send you my MS? Will you pass it on to your agent?

No.

Will you give me an assessment of my MS?
I used to answer a flat No to this question, too, but I've mellowed. I will read 1000 word excepts, but only under strict guidelines as part of the Supanova Master Classes.

A few other things you must understand about my assessments:

• I am an author, not an editor. What you will get is simply my opinion on your writing, style, plot, etc.
• Assessing manuscripts takes time, specifically, time away that I could be writing and earning a living, therefore, I must charge for this service.
• Sending me your work will in no way assure you of an easy "in" to the publishing industry. I cannot promise to pass your MS on to either my agent or my publishers.  

If you want a critical assessment of your work by an editor, then I suggest you contact a reputable company like Edit or Die who will charge you a fee for some very sound advice. If you are chasing an agent, just remember, the good ones will not charge to read or assess your MS. They will say either yes or no, and you probably won't get a reason if they turn you down.

I have a short story I'd like to publish...
Try a magazine like agog! The aim of agog! Fantastic Fiction is to bring together exciting, compulsively readable stories in the fantastic genres of SF, horror and general fantasy. The central criteria are quality, excitement and fun. They want stories which engage the imagination, maintain a thrilling pace, and rocket the reader into an astounding world of speculative imagination. Think of the sort of excitement once generated by the pulp SF magazines! They offer a small payment and this might be the place for you to start. You could also try Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. There are others out there, but I don't submit to them often enough to have a list handy:)

With the Web Warrior (he liked that name best, btw... what a boy) working on the new navigation for the website, a few things are going to get shuffled around soon and one of them is the "Advice on Getting Published" page that is currently linked off the "Meet Jennifer" page. (You of course, know all about this link, didn't you?... hehehe)

Anyway, I'm going to reproduce the information here in the blog over a few days, so that it will be filed with all the other Writing/Publishing Tips, and much easier to locate.

Advice on Getting Published

My experience has been that if you are a writer in your heart, it's never too late to get your stories down on paper. My agent has one author whose first book is about to be published. She is 80.

My advice is simple... write.

Very few authors get their first work published. I have a closet full of half-written, unfinished work, dating back to 1973, but every word of it was valuable and a lesson in getting to the point where I could produce a saleable piece of work

The other thing to bear in mind is that there are millions of good ideas, but whether they can be developed into a full-blown novel is an entirely different story.

If you seriously want to develop an idea into a novel, there a few things you need to do.

1. Write a synopsis. It doesn't have to be detailed and it can be changed, but you can't write a novel if you have no idea where it's going to finish up. This was a lesson it took me 20 years to learn.
2. Study the genre you are writing for. Don't write a romance if you've never read one. Know your market.
3. Try to be original. They claim there are only seven basic plots and if you are writing for a market like fantasy, then you need to come up with a new twist on the genre. Publishers are bombarded on a daily basis with wizards/elves/dragons/heroic quest type novels and in order to get yours looked at, it needs to stand out from the crowd. Having said that, don''t be so original nobody understands your work unless they're stoned.
4. Don't even think of sending your work to a publisher until it's completed. Unknown/unpublished authors are a risk. No publisher will take you on until you have proven you can actually produce the goods, unless you already have huge credibility in your chosen field.
5. Develop a thick hide. If you can't take criticism, then don't play in this playground. Having your work edited can be soul destroying. If you are sensitive to harsh judgment, this is the wrong game for you.
6. Don't get emotionally attached to your work. Let it go. Sometimes that wonderful description of a grain of sand just doesn't fit anymore, and if you don't get rid of it, the editor will. Publishers are in the business of producing books that will sell and that means they aren't terribly interested in authors who won't listen to their professional advice. You might get your first book into print, after rejecting all the editorial changes because how dare that illiterate cow change a word of my masterpiece, but unless you win the Nobel Prize for Literature or achieve spectacular sales, you'll be hard pressed to get the second one published.
7. You don't need a mentor. You can either write, or you can't. Having someone hold your hand isn't going to make the job any easier. Writing is a lonely job. All the authors I've met I was introduced to since I was published...
8. Give your work to someone else to read, preferably people you don't know very well, but trust to give you an honest opinion. Join a writers group on the net (there are some good one out there) and post your samples of your work for others to critique.
9. Write, write, write... The world is full of people with good ideas. The published authors are the ones who sat down and got them written.
10. Be prepared to rewrite. Ernest Hemingway said that the first draft of anything is crap. He was right. My personal record for producing a novel is 6 drafts. If you don't think you can go over and over your story twenty or thirty or a hundred times without going mad, then it's probably not a good idea in the first place. My first novel went through about 14 rewrites before I sent it off and at least another 4 after it found an agent, and then it was edited by the publisher.
11. Writing crap is fine. I do it all the time. I find it far easier to fix up the crap than think up the good stuff in the first place....
12. Once you've written it, put it aside for a month or two, then go back and read it again. You'll find a lot of what you thought was brilliant is now dreadful. This aids the rewriting process considerably.
13. Don't overwrite. This is a common fault among new writers. Good writing is getting your point across in as few words as possible. For example : The ground beneath his feet was muddy... can just as easily be written as "The ground was muddy" (Where else would the ground be, anyway).
14. Pay attention to grammar and spelling. Even a brilliant story can be rejected by a publisher because it's just going to take too much work to fix up the poor grammar.
15. You have to start somewhere. Don't get bogged down in the quality of your work in the first draft. Accept that it will need fixing up later and get on with the story. A perfect first chapter is useless if nothing comes after it.
16. The other thing I should stress is that you must believe in yourself. If you don't  honestly, truly, believe that one day you'll see your name in print, then it will be very easy to give up.

Well, thanks to the Webgoddess, here it is...

~ Visit the Amazon shop~

Well, finally, Amazon.com have listed the US hardcover edition of The Immortal Prince, (it's been on the Canadian Amazon site for months...go figure). They have the release date listed as 13 May 2008. I thought it was coming out in June, so that's good news for all the people who keep emailing asking me when they can finally get a their hands on a copy in America.

No sign of any cover art yet. Not even sure who's doing the covers. I'm not worried though, because Tor do spectacular covers and I've loved every one they've done so far.  I'm expecting something creative, eye-catching and preferably with a Jedi. Even a palm tree or two, perchance... :)

And while on the topic of the Tide Lords series, I've had three people ring me so far to tell me there is a fabulous review of The Gods of Amyrantha in the November edition of Good Reading Magazine. The Webgoddess rang me yesterday and read it to me. It fills one with a warm fuzzy glow, I have to say, when someone (not your mother) uses words like "superb" to describe a book you've written... hehehe. Webgoddess has promised to email me a copy of the review. I checked the GR website, but all they have a tantalising one line teaser which says: "This is exceptional storytelling..." probably to make you go out and buy the magazine:)

GOA is still #1 on the Doubleday Quest Bookclub Bestseller list, too, which is very nice, too:)

Anyway, I will post the Good Reading review when I finally get my hands on it. In the meantime, for US and Canadian readers who want to pre-order The Immortal Prince, here is the link to Amazon.

Having had the benefit of a sound Catholic education, (yes, that was me... private school girl, box-pleats, blazers and all..hehehe), I was indoctrinated as a child with some fundamental beliefs, that no amount of life experience will ever rid me of. Useful things. Things like the power of a short, sharp crack over the knuckles with a wooden ruler as a piano-teaching aid.. that sort of stuff:). Oh, and that everybody has a Patron Saint.

What the nuns failed to warn me about, though, and which I have discovered through bitter experience,  is that in my case, my Patron Saint happens to be Murphy and his laws apply to me so profoundly that I automatically assume something will go wrong in any undertaking I am involved, just so I can get in first.

So, I had to laugh when this came through on the email the yesterday at...ahem.... work. Some of these aren't very original, but they're very true. And opening the email crashed my computer. Go Murphy:)

Murphy's Lesser Known Laws

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
2. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.
6. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.
7. The things that come to those who wait will be the scraggly junk left by those who got there first.
8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.
9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
10. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.