PaperBox Books

Coming December 15th to PaperBoxBooks.com

Bigger Than My Heart by Carolyn Maine As if being the oldest of nine children… well almost ten, isn’t complicated enough, Susan is faced with even more decisions when two very different guys come into her life, both demanding her attention.

Review of Bigger Than My Heart:

This is a charming story about Susan, the oldest of nine kids with a tenth on the way. She has two awesome friends who help her navigate the onslaught of parental interference and family responsibilities and manage to actually have a life. Then comes Woody, the geek from her Dad’s firm and Silas, a dream come to life.

Can things get any more complicated?

Carolyn Maine has captured the complex life of teens in this fun romance. We can all relate to the challenges Susan faces. Everything from part time jobs, bratty little brothers and which guy to take to the prom.

No Comments | In: Awesome Links, Book Review | tags: bigger than my heart, carolyn maine. | #

Coming December 15th, 2010

Grey Areas by Jessica Dall Willow and her friends had no idea their bond was anything exceptional until James joined their group. At first, they were skeptical of his insistance they were Eudaimons but soon, they are forced to flee for their lives in a clash of black versus white, with battlelines blurred by grey areas.

Bigger Than My Heart by Carolyn Maine As if being the oldest of nine children… well almost ten, isn’t complicated enough, Susan is faced with even more decisions when two very different guys come into her life, both demanding her attention.

Closing the Circle by P.A. Wilson A serial killer is stalking Felicity Armstrong. Can Agent Sam Barton and the rest of the FBI stop him before he kills all her friends?

No Comments | In: Awesome Links, What's New with PBB | tags: bigger than my heart, carolyn maine, closing the circle, grey areas, jessica dall, new titles, p.a. wilson. | #

So I’m feeling good. I’ve exceeded the NaNo minimum count and I’m within reach of my own goal. I know, what a way to jinx it.

I decided I could take a half an hour to look at a bright shiny. Scrivener for Windows is in Beta and I wanted to see what it’s about. No, I didn’t download it. I’m not completely crazy. I did look at the video here. After looking at the video, I went to my calendar for December and made a note to try to get on the beta if it’s still open.

Two reasons I think this will be a great tool.

You can edit on line. Up to now, I’ve printed out my manuscript in scenes and analyzed each scene for revision. I printed it out because Word isn’t that easy to navigate when you are looking at it piece by piece. With Scrivener, I can update the index card with a note on each scene and save a tree.

The other reason, I can plot and research all in one document. Yay.

Finally for all you Apple lovers out there, I’m still not going Mac. Why? Well, with Scrivener I can save in a number of different formats, but not a .doc. Most services that upload and prep books for e-publishing need a .doc format. So, I’ll hang onto my Windows laptop and applications.

One more big tip. If you complete NaNo and verify your win, you get a 50% discount on the purchase price of Scrivener for windows. Here’s the info.

Happy Writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Happening in the Market, Opinions, Writing Tips | tags: editing, NaNoWriMo, Process, Writing Tips. | #

Hi, it’s almost half way through National Novel Writing Month. How are you doing?

Sometimes people get stuck in week 2. The passion meets reality and you realize that it takes a lot of time to write the minimum words. Your story still calls to you but life keeps getting in the way.

Don’t be disheartened. This week ends eventually. Keep dropping words on the page. Even if you can’t manage the whole 1,667 you can make some progress. Take the words you didn’t write and add them to the weekend, or another day where you might be able to find more time.

Good luck.

Perry

No Comments | In: Writing Tips | tags: NaNoWriMo, Writing Tips. | #

So, how is it going. I know that might sound crazy – it’s only day one for us – but its a good idea to manage your NaNo time. This month, our posts will be about surviving/thriving through National Novel Writing Month.

Sue will be giving you tips from her pantsing point of view – I think she started the month with an idea of her story and maybe some characters. I’ll be giving you tips from a plotter point of view – I started the month with a clear outline of my scenes (and I have the idea noted of the next two books in the series). What’s important is to remember whether you think you are a pantser or a plotter, you can find value in all the tips.

So, my tip of the day is to look at your calendar, where will you be challenged to find writing time? Take your word count goal and divide it by the number of days you know you can write. Now you have an idea of what you face.

It doesn’t mean it will work, but I have to write about 3K a day to make my goal based on my calender (several days where I probably won’t be able to write). Now I know for every day I don’t make 3k, I have to add a catch up day – I can do 8k in a day but it’s pretty intense.

Happy NaNo

Perry

No Comments | In: Writing Tips | tags: NaNoWriMo. | #

It may seem odd that a publisher is giving advice about writing your first draft, but it’s not.

The first draft is the foundation of your story. No matter how much you change it in revision, the first draft is there for you to change. If it’s in your head, it’s impossible to revise.

Right now there are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs about how to survive NaNo and the advice is helpful, but if you have never experienced getting a first draft on the page from the Once upon a time to they lived happily ever after you may have reservations about the process.

If you think it’s not worthwhile barfing words onto the page just to make the word count, don’t worry. I have barfed out 2 first drafts this way and it was never as bad as I thought when I started revision.

If you think the effort of writing the draft in 30 days is not worth the result – after all, it takes months or years to write a book. I found something surprising when I did my first NaNo, writing everyday was easier. I lived the story; I didn’t have to figure out what just happened before I wrote. I didn’t have to look up what my characters looked like, or what motivated them, because it was only a few hours since I last worked with them.

Mostly though, it’s the community. Writing with other writers is validating. It’s not the lonely experience of the stereotype. It’s fun, noisy and energizing.

Give it try.

Perry

No Comments | In: Writing Help | tags: NaNoWriMo, Writing Tips. | #

A quick tip on finding those typos and repeated words – and maybe awkward sentences – that you and your critique group missed.

We all groan when we see that typo that everyone missed (I’ve seen them in published books). The best way I’ve found to help minimize – or eradicate – them is to listen. Not read out loud but listen.

Reading out loud can be a great way to hear the dialogue but I find that I tend to read what should be there rather than what is there.

Have someone read to you – if you can find a careful reader who is also patient with your need to stop and change stuff.

Use an online text to speech program. You can Google text to speech and you’ll find tons of free downloads. I use NaturalReader and find the mechanical voices helpful. It stops me from getting lost in the story and forces me to listen.

With NaturalReader, I copy blocks of text in and open the document separately. That allows me to pause when I hear something that doesn’t sound right and make the change in the document. When I’m done, I just copy the corrected text in and listen one more time.

Important to know.

This is my last step in revision. Doing it too early means you’ll correct text that will change and you are spending energy for no purpose.

Happy writing

Perry

2 Comments | In: Writing Help, Writing Tips | tags: revision, Tools. | #

It’s only 15 days until you can type your first words into your NaNo novel.

Unless you are one of the adventurous few who decide what to write when you sit down on November 1st, you probably have some idea of what you are going to write.

Between now and when you type your first words, there are things you can do that will help you survive and thrive.

Sign up at National Novel Writing Month and poke around the forums. Look for tips people have posted and find your region.

If you live in the Vancouver BC area, there’s VancoWrimo where our great Municipal Leaders post the information on the kick off, local write ins and eventually word wars.

Find buddies who are also participating in NaNoWriMo, you may be able to set up a challenge between your buddies – if you are at all competitive, a challenge will help you get the last few words on the page every time.

Work on your characters, profile them, interview them, write a little back story. If you know your characters inside out, they will carry you through the days when your plot falters.

Practice – try writing for 15 minutes with no interruption, figure out how many words you crank out. This will be useful when you need to get past the block. If you can write something for 15 minutes you might find the creativity starts to flow.

Above all, remember that NaNo is supposed to be fun too.

Happy writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Writing Tips | tags: NaNoWriMo, writing advice. | #

Happy Thanksgiving Canada. Happy Columbus Day America

We’ve been receiving a number of submissions lately that deal with difficult subjects like child abuse and sexual orientation. These subjects can make for a story with depth and meaning – if handled well.

Unfortunately, the subjects are not often handled that well. The top two issues seem common: preaching and jamming on the delicate subject for no story value.

Preaching – no one likes to read a sermon about why they should feel a certain way. Preaching is not just paragraphs of exposition. You are preaching when your characters have a fight and their dialogue is a simple iteration of a stance.

Jamming the subject in means you don’t have a real story reason to have the subject. For example, your story is a mystery and your character doesn’t know he or she is gay. This plot line would be great if the character’s sexual orientation was critical to the solution of the mystery. It’s not useful if you just use the story to tell the reader they should be more compassionate or understanding.

How do you make sure you aren’t putting your soapbox into your story? The most simple approach is to ask yourself ‘is this critical to the story?’. If you can’t easily point to why it is, do one of two things: take it out of your story or change your story so that it does become critical.

Keep trying to bring difficult topics to the page.

Perry

No Comments | In: Submissions, Writing Tips | tags: revision, writing advice. | #

I had this conversation with one of our authors yesterday.

What makes a good proofreader?

They’d had people read their book before submitting and got rave reviews, yet we picked out several issues that made their novel unpublishable as submitted.

So how come we saw what their highly educated, beta-readers missed?

Our author hit the nail on the head when she stated that the ‘eyes of experience’ are different from the ‘eyes looking for casual entertainment’.

Their story, like many we’ve reviewed, is great. It’s fast paced, suspenseful and makes you want to keep turning the pages until the end.

BUT, also like many we’ve reviewed it’s like the writer is so busy ‘writing’ they’ve forgotten the story they’re trying to tell.

I do this too, luckily I have my proofreaders there to keep me in line.

Who makes a good proofreader?

Proofreaders (also can be called beta readers) are people that you trust to tell you the problems with your story. They have to understand you are asking them to find errors not gloss over them.

I have two sets of proofreaders. All of them are writers.

I’ve chosen writers because they have a better handle on the craft of writing that the average reader. Fellow writers also seem to have a better understanding (in general) that I’m not asking for their approval.

I need them to find my errors so the editors, publishers, and readers don’t.

They expect the same from me, it’s not a one sided relationship

Added bonus:

As we critique each others work, we become better writers ourselves. There are common mistakes we all seem to make and it’s so much easier to see them in someone else’s writing.

What do proofreaders actually do?

My first set of proofreaders and I go through each chapter line by line looking for story inconsistencies, bad/passive wording, fact and logic flaws. These guys are out for blood. Their job is to look for anything close to a mistake. They’re brutal.

After I’ve gone through and made the adjustments from my first set of proofreaders. I send my complete manuscript out to a different set of readers. These are folks who have no idea what my story is about. They read it from start to finish, just like someone who has purchased my book. They are also brutal.

The last thing any writer wants is to be told, “I love your book, I wouldn’t change a thing” by their proofreaders. It means they haven’t done their job.

Good luck in your editing.

Sue

No Comments | In: Submissions, Writing Help | | #