The thing about grieving, some say, is that there is no thing about grieving. No single thing anyway. No rules for how long it goes on. Today author L.A. Starks shares what happened after the initial punch of her grief. (Explained in Part I of this Moment.) And what she makes us realize is that just as there is no discrete end to the grief process, so does the act of “making it” continue, one step at a time.

The sudden, untimely death of publishing guru Linda Houle in July 2013 led her business partner, Lisa Smith, to close down the 200-author, 350-book publisher L&L Dreamspell. I was one of those two hundred.

All of us grieved for Linda and expressed our condolences to her family and to Lisa.

We began to make other plans, looking for new ways to keep our books connected to our readers.

The first cold reality was that vendors took Dreamspell e-books offline immediately—something which demonstrates that an e-book can indeed go out of “print.” As an author, there is little more difficult than seeing a much-labored-over e-book vanish. Then, wholesale distribution channels like Ingram and Baker & Taylor also began shutting off Dreamspell books.

Our print editions do continue in limited runs on the resale market and on consignment at understanding independent and national bookstores. (For example STRIKE PRICE is available in print from online vendors at Amazon and at several bookstores on consignment.)

Yet starting over, for that’s what’s ultimately required, has also taken forms such as self-publishing and sending manuscripts for approval to new publishers with whom Lisa Smith connected us. Yes, the dreaded query letters.

Some with books that don’t fit those publishers’ genres are finding other e-book and print publishers.

The Dreamspell authors maintain a group loop. We cheer news of each new blog, success, and book release.

My own recent “made-it moment” happened in August in a Swiss hotel—itself a setting ripe for a thriller—by e-mail. Traditional, royalty-paying e-book publisher StoneThread accepted the first two books in my series and asked for more!

Literally a few days ago, 2013 StoneThread published the all-platforms e-book edition of 13 DAYS: THE PYTHAGORAS CONSPIRACY!

The e-book edition of STRIKE PRICE is due out in 2014. I am outlining book three of the series, with more planned.

The resolution isn’t complete. While a limited print run of STRIKE PRICE survives, I will soon need a new one, somehow. Yet this remaining hurdle only reminds me how excited I am about my own, fresh made it moment.

L. A. Starks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in northern Oklahoma, and now lives in Texas. Working more than a decade for well-known energy companies in engineering, marketing, and finance prepared Starks to write global energy thrillers. In addition to her two Lynn Dayton books, 13 DAYS: THE PYTHAGORAS CONSPIRACY and STRIKE PRICE, two of Starks’ short stories have been published by Amazon Shorts. Her nonfiction has appeared in Mystery Readers Journal, The Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, and other publications.

It’s difficult for writers to say what–or who–inspires them, but for L.A. Starks the trajectory was clear. Even as she mourned the loss of one of the closest people in her life, she was steeped in the inspiration this person provided. When another loss followed hard on the heels of the first, the idea of getting up again must have seemed that much harder. But L.A. did just that, resulting in the release of her latest thriller. Maybe that’s the truest Moment of all: getting up again when you have to, and letting the writing carry you away.

I have celebrated the publication of two books and three short stories in various ways; however, for my most recent Made It Moment I nod my head to three women.

I want to recognize my younger sister, Linda Lewis, who passed away in September 2010. Some years ago while living in Malaysia, she read a draft of my first book, 13 DAYS: THE PYTHAGORAS CONSPIRACY. When I received her comments it was a welcome jolt to realize the book and its characters now existed apart from me, like the adult Athena bursting from Zeus’ head ready for battle.

I was writing the second book, STRIKE PRICE, when my sister was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. The disease had already spread and would be terminal. My motivation drained away, replaced by the need to spend time with my sister for what remained of her life.
After her death in 2010, it was difficult to resume writing. I pushed through completion precisely because I’d promised myself STRIKE PRICE was my sister’s book. Indeed, in 13 DAYS, there was one character she told me deserved a different fate. I took that into account when I wrote STRIKE PRICE.

Here’s when the second and third women enter. While my sister was still alive, Lisa Smith of L&L Dreamspell approved one of my short stories for inclusion in the DREAMSPELL NIGHTMARES anthology, and later, approved 13 DAYS for an e-book edition. In the midst of grief over my sister, the publication of those two was a moment not of wild joy, but of quiet consolation that a respected editor liked my work and found it commercial.

I had already learned about L&L Dreamspell’s approach to publishing—their company was one of the first to successfully publish e-books—through the work of the “second L,” Linda Houle. With Lisa at the editorial helm, Linda was the business visionary who saw books through to completion, designed covers, and got them launched with vendors such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Overdrive, and Kobo.

In early 2012, I got the good news about L&L Dreamspell’s acceptance of STRIKE PRICE from Lisa Smith and it went into the publishing queue. Then later that year we, the two hundred-strong Dreamspell author group, got the bad news about Linda Houle’s cancer diagnosis. Yet we knew Linda was undergoing chemotherapy and that she expected to recover. She continued working and Lisa took on additional responsibility, with every hope the Dream Team would soon be over this bump.

In the spring of 2013, we learned Linda’s cancer had unfortunately returned. She hoped to once again beat it with the help of chemotherapy. STRIKE PRICE was edited. Lisa and I handled tricky Cherokee syllabary font formatting issues with the expertise of a technical specialist at the Cherokee Nation. Despite her rough days, Linda Houle persevered in designing the cover and issuing STRIKE PRICE in both e-book and print editions. She remained cheerful and hard-working.

It was with immense sadness in July that the Dreamspell author group found out from Lisa that Linda Houle’s cancer had spread to her brain. Linda, the second Linda for me, passed away within days.

My Made It Moment, the publication of STRIKE PRICE, serves as tribute to the vision of Linda Lewis, Lisa Smith, and Linda Houle.

L. A. Starks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in northern Oklahoma, and now lives in Texas. Working more than a decade for well-known energy companies in engineering, marketing, and finance prepared Starks to write global energy thrillers. In addition to her two Lynn Dayton books, 13 DAYS: THE PYTHAGORAS CONSPIRACY and STRIKE PRICE, two of Starks’ short stories have been published by Amazon Shorts. Her nonfiction has appeared in Mystery Readers Journal, The Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, and other publications.

Gloria Alden’s Moment reads like a how-to for emerging mystery writers (thank you, Louise Penny, for the validating and encouraging term). How to find community, how to connect with other writers, how to make the best use of conferences, how to decide between self- and traditional-publishing. And ultimately, how to feel like you’ve made it as a writer. That’s the best how-to of all.

Almost fifteen years ago I started writing my first mystery novel. I had been reading mysteries since I was a young girl so it was a natural this was the type of book I’d write. Because I was teaching full time and also an avid gardener, which filled up much of my spare time in the summer, it was three or four years or maybe more before I finished that first book. I started sending out query letters and with each rejection, I stopped for a while and did some more revision and rewriting then after a few months or so, I’d send another one. Meanwhile, I started on the second in my cozy series with a gardening theme – what else? I continued writing and editing and sending the occasional query letter.

Then in 2006 I read about Malice Domestic and decided to go to this mystery writers/fan convention. I drove from NE Ohio in my little Mercury Tracer wagon with my best friend and two cousins who toured the DC area while I stayed in the hotel and attended my first ever mystery event. I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store; so many interesting panels and so many mystery writers I’d both read as well as some I’d never heard of. There were hundreds of authors, aspiring authors and fans, who just loved a good mystery. I made some friends that year who are still my friends. Some only online, but some I meet in person every year when I return to Malice Domestic in the spring.

It was there I learned about Sisters in Crime and their chapter, the Guppies. I joined both and it changed my writing world. No longer did I feel isolated now that I belonged to a mystery writing community. The Guppy list serve answered questions, gave advice and in general was supportive of both our good news and our bad news. Through the Guppies I’ve taken online writing classes and joined their subchapters like Press Quest, Agent Quest, STORY SUCCESS and it’s where I also got my fantastic critique partners. Now that I belonged to a writing community, I started to feel like a real writer. Almost, that is. I still hadn’t published anything other than poetry.

Then the Guppies decided to put out an anthology of short mystery stories. I hadn’t written a short story since I was a freshman in college, and even though it won an award for a best freshman short story, it wasn’t published. I thought it might be fun to write a short story so I wrote one based on a few characters from my books. It was too long for the word count, and I wasn’t willing to delete enough to meet that, so I wrote another one, “The Professor’s Books,” which was accepted and appeared in Fish Tales, the Guppy anthology right before Malice 2011. When I heard it was accepted, it was almost “my made it moment.” When I finally got my copy of the book in my hands, it was even closer to “my made it moment.” But though family and friends congratulated me, they didn’t really understand the importance of this. So it wasn’t until I went to Malice that year and actually was signing the page in Fish Tales where my story started for people who had the book that I really felt “My made it moment.”

Since then I’ve had five short stories published and another that will be published in October. I won the Love is Murder short story contest for “Cheating on Your Wife Can Get You Killed” which appeared in Crimespree Magazine. I made it into the new Guppy Fish Nets anthology, and an online magazine, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, but most recently my big thrill was having my first paranormal short story “Once Upon a Gnome” appear in Strangely Funny, an anthology put out by Sarah Glenn, the editor of Mystery and Horror, LLC, a new publishing company. I found their first anthology to be full of great stories and very well edited. I’m so pleased to be one of those accepted. They also accepted my short story, “Norman’s Skeletons” for their anthology coming out in October, “All Hallows’ Evil.” I have found writing stories to be such good fun and rewarding if not financially, at least emotionally.

So what about my gardening mystery series? With much encouragement from my fellow guppies and following those who went indie, I’ve self-published my first two books; The Blue Rose, and Daylilies for Emily’s Garden, and my third, Ladies of the Garden Club should be out some time next month or November at the latest. My made it moments for the books are the praise I’m getting from people who have read both books and are begging for me to hurry and get the next one out.

Gloria Alden taught for twenty years then retired to have more time to write. She enjoyed mysteries since she was a child so it was natural that she would write them. Since gardening is a passion of hers, she wrote THE BLUE ROSE, the first in the Catherine Jewell gardening mystery series. The second one, DAYLILIES FOR EMILY’S GARDEN is out as well. The third in the series, LADIES OF THE GARDEN CLUB will be out sometime in the fall of 2013. She has written a middle-grade mystery, THE SHERLOCK HOLMES DETECTIVE CLUB, short stories (four published and a fifth to come), and many published poems, too.

Not only will this Moment make you laugh–check out the first line of the bio and tell me you didn’t stifle a snort–but it also reminds me of a truism we writers should never forget. Books are beads on a necklace, connecting readers and books together.  It’s not about amassing books written, copies in print, attendees at an event, or downloads. Instead, like the most precious pearl, both readers and books must be appreciated each single one at a time.

If you are looking for a Halloween gift or read, both Sarah Glenn and her compatriot featured tomorrow have something up their sleeves. If you’re looking for wisdom to go with your scare, well…look no further than this page.

I started writing and drawing stories when I was very young. I began with Black Stallion fan fiction, if you can believe that. I moved to drawing the human figure with Betty and Veronica, then the X-Men. I moved on to other subject matter, including a 10,000-page saga I co-wrote with a friend best titled, “Meet Your Favorite Prince of Amber and Boff Him”. Eventually, I began writing stories with my own characters in their own settings.

I loved reading as a child. It was the best thing ever, and it was only natural that I should want to write stories myself. I wanted to create places and stories that would draw other people into them the same way books hosted my own imagination. I couldn’t imagine anything nobler.

When did I feel I’d made it? I’m still working on ‘making it’ as an author. I’ve had several short stories published, plus one novel, and it’s a pleasant surprise each time it happens. No movie deals or six-figure advances so far. The moment I really felt that I’d ‘made it’ as an author was more personal than financial. A reviewer for my first novel wrote to ask to review any sequels I did to All This and Family, Too. Some months later, I mentioned on my Facebook page that I was working on one, and she posted a squee. She was a reader that wasn’t a friend, a relative, or even someone I’d ever met in person. Somehow, I had managed to draw a perfect stranger into my world—someone who wanted to visit it again. For me, that was more validation than the acceptances I’d received… not that acceptances aren’t lovely things.

Sarah E. Glenn, a product of the suburbs, has a B.S. in Journalism, which is redundant if you think about it. She loves writing mystery and horror stories, often with a sidecar of funny. Several have appeared in mystery and paranormal anthologies, including G.W. Thomas’ Ghostbreakers series, Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, and Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology. She belongs to Sisters in Crime, SinC Guppies, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and the Historical Novel Society.

Sarah edited two different newsletters and was a first round judge in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine’s 2003 “Slesar’s Twist Contest”. More recently, she has been a judge for the 2011 and 2012 Derringers. Interesting fact: Sarah worked the Reports Desk for her local police department, and criminals are dumb.

Every Made It Moment is a small moment for me. This forum has provided inspiration during my struggle to get published, friendship, and the gift of mutual of support for over four years now. Judy Hogan’s return to the blog–her first moment and second moment appeared last year–is an especially close connection. You see, once I finally reached the starting line of my own long journey, Judy was there to welcome me. Literally host me and my family in her home, then Judy came out with members of her community when I got to appear at the wonderful McIntyre’s Books. So, Judy, welcome back to the blog. My virtual arms are extended to greet your success.

CAROLYN HART TO THE RESCUE

In late 2011, learning that Killer Frost, my first mystery novel, would be published was my first big thrill. Then, when readers wrote to me how much they liked it, I felt that closure writers long for: people read and liked my book. People who hardly know me like it. Jenny allowed me two “Made It Moment” blogs for book one.

The highlight of the pre-publication period for the second book, Farm Fresh and Fatal, was receiving Carolyn Hart’s enthusiastic cover blurb. I had two quotes I was happy with, but I’d had trouble finding a third one, so I’d finally decided not to worry about it.

Then I went to the Malice Domestic Mystery Convention, an annual trek for me now. Carolyn Hart was being honored for her lifetime contributions to the mystery community with the new Amelia Award, and during her interview she commented: “Write what works for you and reflects you. Don’t write to a trend. Write what you want to write.” I very much agreed with her, and I had, in fact, been helped when I was in my twenties by reading similar wisdom in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own:

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

I wrote up the Malice Convention for the Sisters in Crime Guppy newsletter, First Draft, and quoted Carolyn on this wisdom. When I sent it to my editor, I sent Carolyn an email alert about using her quote and about its also being on my blog for May 12, 2013. To my surprise she wrote back that she liked my Malice report and wanted to link to my blog from her website. That was an honor. It turned out that we’d both taken our BAs from the University of Oklahoma, she in Journalism (1958) and me in Letters, i.e., Literature, History, Philosophy, and Foreign Languages (1959). We’d never met until Malice, and we still haven’t spoken to each other in person. I began hunting up and enjoying her books, and she bought Killer Frost, read and liked it. I had one book out, and she had fifty. When you’re at the very beginning of being a published mystery author, it was quite a lift already to have the interest of someone who has been publishing for many years.

I’d already sent all the book information to Mainly Murder Press for my October 1 release, but I thought about how supportive Carolyn had already been, and how I’d seen her name and enthusiasm on the backs of other mysteries I’d read. Would it be too much to ask her for a blurb in late May? I decided, given everything else, that she probably wouldn’t mind, so I asked, and she said yes. I mailed her the manuscript, and within a week, she sent me the quote:

Farm Fresh and Fatal features an appealing protagonist, an intriguing background, and well-realized characters. Readers will enjoy these characters and empathize with their successes and failures. In the tradition of Margaret Maron.

How that boosted my spirits. She also urged me to use again Julia Spencer-Fleming’s blurb from Killer Frost, which I had already decided to do. “A charming puzzler of a traditional mystery, this classic academic mystery debut is a pageturner populated with layered, interesting characters. My hat is off to Judy Hogan on a stellar debut. I look forward to the further adventures of Professor Penny Weaver at St. Francis college!”

Having someone farther up the ladder in the mystery world recommend my book was such a gift, a third “made it moment.” Thank you, Jenny.

Judy Hogan was born in Kansas and has lived in North Carolina and in the Triangle area for 42 years. She brought to the state a new poetry journal (Hyperion, 1970-81) and in 1976 she founded Carolina Wren Press. She has been active in the area since then as a reviewer, book distributor, publisher, teacher, writing consultant, and organizer of conferences, readings, and book signing events. In 2009 she helped found a new Creative Writing Program at Central Carolina Community College in Pittsboro.

Her first mystery , Killer Frost, a Malice Domestic contest novel finalist, was published by Mainly Murder Press in 2012. Farm Fresh and Fatal is out in 2013. She has published poetry with small presses and two prose works, Watering the Roots in a Democracy (1989) and The PMZ Poor Woman’s Cookbook (2000). Between 1990 and 2007 Judy taught American literature at Kostroma University and worked on cooperative publishing with Kostroma writers and exhibits of their artists.

She’s active in environmental and community issues in Chatham County.  She also teaches Backyard Chicken workshops through CCCC in Sanford and Lillington. Judy lives and farms in Moncure, N.C., near Jordan Lake.

As some of you know, I gave thirteen years of my life to reaching the starting line, to getting a book on the shelf. This Moment contains a partial explanation of why. I first met the author, Sandy Hutchison, at a writers retreat and workshop in the Berkshires. To say that this experience was strange–and momentous–is not to get at all its uniqueness and color. I left with friends who are dear to me after almost a decade, and Sandy is one. When you finish reading, I think you will understand why. Writing is a business of some talent, a lot of perseverance, and most of all, heart. Sandy’s got all three, and I feel privileged to share this Moment, and her friendship.

My “made it moment” has nothing much to do with success as a writer. I’m still working on that. But it has brought me a different kind of success.

I wrote the first draft of The Awful Mess: A Love Story over a decade ago, during the debate over the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson. It was read by a number of agents, and I was told it was a good book, but a hard sell. So I put it away and moved on to the next one.

Still, writing it soon changed my life for the better.

You see, my heroine Mary gets into an awful mess that includes a job loss, a mortgage she can no longer afford, and a scandalous pregnancy perfecty timed to destroy a promising new relationship. Throw in her unraveling ex-husband and eventually even her life is at risk. (It’s a twist on The Scarlet Letter, actually, but you don’t need to know that to enjoy it.)

When she’s at her most isolated, Mary takes an older friend’s advice and starts volunteering in a local food pantry. And she finds great satisfaction in doing so, even as she dreads the day she’ll need help herself.

Now, I’m as prone to fantasizing about my imminent success as any writer. One day in the shower, I found myself wondering what I would say if an interviewer asked me about my own volunteer efforts.

Um… would PTA and Sunday School count?

Damn. My heroine was doing more for her community than I was. How embarrassing!

Not long after, a small piece in the local advertiser caught my eye. A food pantry needed regular volunteers. So I went to their open house, and I signed up for a regular shift.

Like most volunteers, and like Mary, I soon discovered that I got way more out of it than I gave. Perhaps most of all, I got to feel a part of my community in ways I never had before. (How did she figure that out before I did? I wrote her! Kind of weird, that.)

Anyway, I also got to see up close how many families are struggling. Yes, sometimes people are just messed up. An occasional client clearly feels entitled. But most often, we help people who are having difficult transitions between jobs or homes or relationships or illnesses or disabilities or whatever. Or we see people working over forty hours a week and finding that it’s simply not enough to pay for food, utilities, transportation, and health care. In all cases, the groceries we give — a week’s supply per month at most — simply help to tide them over.

That’s why during September, which is Hunger Action Month, I’m dedicating my net book earnings for the the month to Feeding America via this virtual campaign page.

This is coinciding with a special 99-cent offer for The Awful Mess: A Love Story (Sheer Hubris Press, June 2013). (Yes, I recently decided to publish it myself. You can sample early chapters free on the book’s Amazon page).

Naturally, I’m also hoping this promotion will help me get the word out about this ebook. Here’s my request: If you give it a try while it’s at this bargain price, and enjoy it, would you consider donating a little something in non-perishables to your local food pantry (or Feeding America, or another charity that helps people who are food-insecure)?

Heck, would you consider contributing something even if you never look at my book? There are families in your community or somewhere not too far away that need that help right now.

And thank you, Jenny, for letting me share this. (This lovely blog is clearly another example of helping others!)

For two decades, Sandra Hutchison’s career has shifted between teaching, writing, editing, marketing, and advertising, all of which she enjoys. She founded Sheer Hubris Press in 2013 in order to publish her novels and try using all of these skills at the same time. (With a few months under her belt now, she doesn’t necessarily recommend that you try this at home.)

Born and raised in the Tampa Bay area, Sandra survived a snowy December transplant to Greenfield, Massachusetts in high school and has stayed in cooler climes ever since. She is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has an MA in fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire. She currently lives with her husband and son outside of Troy, New York, where she teaches writing at Hudson Valley Community College.

Carolyn Rose is a frequent contributor to this blog as her last guest post reveals. This one may be my favorite yet. In it, Carolyn likens substitute teaching to being thrown to the lions–and lays out a plan for writers to come out stronger for it, and their books, too.

Now what kind of writer do you have to be to pull all that off? A good one. Read on…and learn about the giveaway!

What I Learned as a Substitute Teacher And Used as a Writer

When my long career in TV news ended in 2001, I turned to substitute teaching to make ends meet—or at least come close to meeting. Fortunately my husband had a job, so I didn’t have to take every assignment the automated sub-locator system called to tell me about.

Barbara Reed, the protagonist of No Substitute for Murder and No Substitute for Money, doesn’t have that luxury. Barb is single and struggling. She has to take every job—no matter how difficult or demanding.

If you have ever subbed, you know all about difficult and demanding. If you haven’t had the “pleasure” of filling in for an absent teacher, cast your mind back to the days when you were in high school. If you’re anything like I was, your goal was to disrupt the class and drive a sub to the brink of a breakdown—all without getting into major trouble.

Guess what?

That hasn’t changed.

I sometimes compare myself to those inflatable punching toys with the weight in the bottom—the ones that right themselves after they’re knocked over. I try to roll with what comes and still be standing at the end of the day.

A few deceptively simple concepts help me do that. They also help me write, connect with readers, and “suffer the slings and arrows” of publishing and promoting.

• It’s good to have a plan
• Don’t get too comfortable
• Project confidence
• Think before you speak
• They won’t all like you

It’s good to have a plan. On my first day as a sub, I got a late call to fill in for a middle school teacher struck down by stomach flu. I arrived on the run to find an administrator covering the first class. “I can’t find any lesson plans,” he warned me in a tense whisper. As it turned out, they didn’t exist; the teacher hadn’t made any. I found out later that she never did.

Writers call that pantsing. Writing by the seat of your pants. I used to do a lot of it, but that looonnnnnggg day of subbing cured me of full-out pantsing. I don’t outline to excess or plot every little movement, but before I start a book, I figure out how it will end and most of what will happen in the middle. Then I get all that down on index cards. Knowing I’ll change the first paragraphs many times, I don’t worry about that until I finish the first draft.

Don’t get too comfortable. One night my husband wondered why my feet hurt after a day at school. “Don’t you just sit behind the desk?” he asked.

I laughed for about ten minutes. “If you went into a cage with a bunch of lions,” I asked, “would you sit down?”

I might spend 5 minutes of a 55-minute period in a chair. The rest of the time I’m moving around the classroom. That lets me connect with more kids, offer help, and spot small problems before they become big ones.

As a writer, getting too comfortable with my characters and plots can be dangerous. I might miss something, leave something out, fail to knit up all the loose ends of logic, or not even notice that those ends are dangling.

Project confidence. Let’s go back to that lion image. One survival scheme is to make the lions perceive you as larger, stronger, and braver than you are. In the classroom I stand as tall as my 62 inches allow. And, while I don’t use my outdoor voice, I do use one a notch or two below it so back-of-the-roomer sitters can hear.

I use the same techniques when I speak to writers’ groups and classes. If I don’t come across as confident about my books or the workshop I’m putting on, my audience won’t have confidence in me. If they can’t hear me, they’ll make sure organizers don’t invite me back.

Think before you speak. There are a lot of words that will get a laugh in a high school classroom—some you might utter unintentionally because it’s almost impossible to keep up with teen culture. Meanwhile, actual attempts at humor may fall flat or be taken the wrong way.

I remember that when I’m writing dialogue. The possibility that what a character says may be misunderstood or intentionally misinterpreted can put a whole different spin on a conversation—and on the plot.

They won’t all like you. No matter how many kids I connect with along the way, there will always be a few who wish I’d get out of their space and out of their school. It could be that one of us is having an off day. It could be a personality conflict. It could be the generation gap. The result is that anything I say or do is wrong. And they have ways—not always subtle—of letting me know.

The same is true of readers and reviewers. The ones who don’t like my books use those dreaded one-star reviews to make their case. I don’t let those reviews get to me, but I don’t write them off. I consider what those reviewers had to say and why they said it, and I consider what I might learn to improve the next book.

Someday soon I’ll turn in my sub keys for the last time. But I’ll keep the rules as long as I have the will to write.

If you’ve got rules to share—about writing, working, living, or even lunching—please stop by and leave a comment.

Jenny and I will draw three names from those who comment and I’ll give each one an e-copy of one of my books.

Carolyn J. Rose grew up in New York’s Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. Now getting her quota of stress as a substitute teacher, she lives in Vancouver, Washington, and founded the Vancouver Writers’ Mixers. Her hobbies are reading, gardening, and not cooking. She is the author of a number of novels, including No Substitute for Murder, A Place of Forgetting, An Uncertain Refuge, and Hemlock Lake.

She has also authored five books with Mike Nettleton, her long-suffering husband. He recently released a solo effort, Shotgun Start.

How do you write a Made It Moment when your earlier non-fiction book has won an Agatha award? Haven’t you already made it? Leslie Budewitz is no stranger to the writing world, and no stranger to this blog. (Her first guest post appeared here almost two years ago). But you’ll see two things from the Moment you’re about to read. One, Leslie is a great writer. You can imagine how the prose in her debut mystery sings from the details she evokes below. And two, there are always things to strive for. Leslie found hers in the power of myth, and one legendary quotation.

By the way, because this is a debut novel–and you know how I love a debut–we’re going to be giving away a copy of Leslie’s first novel to one lucky commenter. Leslie will be here to respond to comments and select the winner later in the weekend because she’s at an arts festival right now with her new book.

I’d say she’s made it.

One winter a few years ago, my hunny and I watched Bill Moyers’ 1988 interviews, “Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth.” (I’d missed them the first time. Probably had my nose in a book.) What struck me most was Campbell’s fervent urging: “Never underestimate the value to the Universe of the fully realized life.”

That quote became my motto. For years, it was taped to the top of my computer monitor. Now, it’s framed and sitting on a shelf near my writing desk.

I finished my first mystery in 1996, and though it was short-listed for the St. Martin’s Malice Domestic prize for the best unpublished first traditional mystery, it didn’t find a home. Actually, it did: It moved into the closet in my study and settled in, along with three of its closest friends, on the top shelf. They do not pay rent, and they do not scrub toilets. Happily, they don’t leave empty beer bottles lying around, so as tenants go, those old manuscripts are pretty decent. They remind me that I’ve been working hard on my writing for a long time. On craft and at publishing. Met a lot of characters on the page, and a lot of great people online and in person—because of writing.

But after four unpublished novels, two unsold nonfiction proposals, and a historical novel that just would not take shape, I’d had enough. I wrote and sold several short stories and quite a few magazine articles. But fiction and I weren’t on good terms.

Then I remembered Campbell’s advice. Without serious devotion to writing, my life wasn’t “fully realized.” I am a better, happier person because I spend much of my time with people who only exist because I made them up. And I needed to get back to it.

So I hauled out one of those proposals, revised it, and sent it out. It became Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure (Quill Driver Books, 2011), winner of the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction, and an Anthony and Macavity nominee.

But as wonderful and exciting as that is, the best thing about writing that ms. came when I finished and realized I wasn’t done with mystery. I had to find a way to have as much fun writing fiction as I’d just had telling other fiction writers how to do it. I had to realize my dream.

So here I am, with one mystery just out, one turned in, and one in progress.

Thanks, Jenny, for letting me share this. And for letting me tell other aspiring writers: Campbell was right.

Death al Dente, first in the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, debuts from Berkley Prime Crime in August. The series is set in a small, lakeside resort community in Northwest Montana, on the road to Glacier Park, near where author Leslie Budewitz lives. Leslie’s second series, The Seattle Spice Shop Mysteries, will debut in early 2015.

Leslie is also a lawyer. Her first book, Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure (Quill Driver Books) won the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction, and was nominated for the Anthony and Macavity awards. Leslie blogs about the law for writers at www.LawandFiction.com and talks mystery at www.LeslieBudewitz.com.

Is there a rift between traditional and self-publishing? Or are they two different, yet viable paths to the same goal–that of bringing great books to readers–each with its own set of pros and cons? If there is a rift, could it be a temporary one? Or is it more an unbridgeable chasm?

The author you’re about to meet and I may differ about the state publishing is in, and the role traditional publishers have to play, but we are in lockstep when it comes to what makes us as writers. It’s a sense of connection. Of belonging to a community of writers and to the readers we write for.

To my mind that kismet between David and me provides all the answer to the above questions we will ever need. Unbridgeable? Not even close.

My made it moment began the day proof copies of my first novel arrived. ON THE LEVEL is my first work of fiction but not my first book. Nonetheless, my hands shook as I opened the carton containing the proofs. I knew that this was a trial run, designed to catch errors missed by me and sharp-eyed proofreaders. But holding the glossy cover and flipping the crisp pages brought back familiar feelings associated with major life events like exchanging wedding rings and holding a newborn child. Seeing my book for the first time was joyous and dream fulfilling, but also scary.

ON THE LEVEL was the result of my efforts at personal reinvention. I had left my job, determined to live life more on my own terms. One item on my to-do list was to learn how to tell a good story, a story that people would read for fun and think about after all the pages were read. Like my protagonist I’m a fanatical do-it-yourself-er, so I chose self-publishing partly to sidestep the crumbling legacy publishing system but mostly to experience all the steps in book creation.

The culmination of my made it moment came a few weeks later at a book signing event in the library, arranged by a critique group in which I participate. Surrounded by smiling and enthusiastic people, I discovered something I hadn’t expected. Somewhere along the way I’d become a member of a community of writers and readers. I belonged. It felt very good.

At nine years old David Edgar Cournoyer had his first and last job in the publishing world as a paperboy after he sold his leather crafts business to another fourth grader. Since then he has been a textile worker, plastics fabricator, independent researcher, builder, college professor and for one year was Interim Dean of the School of Social Work at a large eastern university. By training he’s an Anthropologist. By aptitude he’s a builder. Thanks to great coaches, study, and much practice, he’s also a writer.

Doug Wynne has one of the best lines I’ve ever read about books in this Moment–it’s like something Stephen King could’ve put in ON WRITING–but it was the photo of Doug before an event that jumped out at me even before I’d had a chance to find that pearl. As many of you know, I’ve done, um, a few events over the past six months. And that blend of hope and excitement and of course a tad of trepidation, not to mention the expression that says, Man, do I really get to do this? on Doug’s face struck me as exactly how I feel every single time.

I think every reader and writer will find a piece of themselves in Doug’s Moment to come. Parents, dreamers, hopers, seekers. Now well into my own debut year, spent living on the road, I am thrilled to hearken back the Made It Moments forum with this one.

“How did you know you’d made it?”

Like many of the writers who’ve appeared in this space, my first reaction to the question is: I haven’t. I’m published by a small press, and I’m in no danger of landing in a different tax bracket anytime soon because of book sales. But I have enjoyed some thrilling moments over the past year, which saw the publication of my first book in October of 2012, followed by my second this month. Since no single event stands out as the defining moment, I started this post by making a list of the highlights, figuring that I’d pick one to write about.

Was it the moment when I got off the phone with the man who said he wanted to publish my first novel, told my wife the news, and felt her jump into my arms in the hallway of our apartment? Definitely a contender. Or how about ripping the shipping paper off of the first ARC of that book when it came in the mail, and seeing the gorgeous cover for the first time in print? Also a big thrill. Could it have been the time I opened an email from my in-laws to find the first photo of the book “in the wild” on a bookstore shelf, or reading good reviews of it in Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal? Maybe it was meeting a couple of fans at a Barnes & Noble signing event and discovering that they had come out to buy signed copies of a book they’d already read for free through Library Thing just because they liked it that much. One of them even wanted me to sign his iPad cover because he’d read it as an e-book first. How’s that for a Made It Moment?

The truth is…each of those little triumphs was mixed with the anxiety that my moment as a writer might not live up to its full potential, or might not last. I doubt we’d be compelled to write books in the first place if we weren’t sort of ambitious and restless types, always dreaming and looking to the horizon, but I tend to agree with most of what Buddha had to say about the suffering that comes with desire and attachment, even if I don’t always take his advice.

When you get published, you start worrying about earning out your advance. When you score that cool bookstore gig, you worry that not enough people will show up. When you get a good review, you wish for a rave review, a starred review.

So I’m grateful to Jenny for getting me to make that list because it distills the past year and reminds me of all the awesome support I’ve enjoyed from my publisher, my bookstores, my friends, family, and readers.

But when people like your first book, you worry that they might not like the next one as much.

I wrote the first draft of Steel Breeze before The Devil of Echo Lake found a publisher. I wrote it without being self-conscious, and I wrote it thinking that it might be the first thing I’d get published if Echo Lake didn’t sell.

I wrote from the heart about the things that scare me most: the prospect of losing my child, or of him being in danger, the possibilities of losing my wife or my freedom. In other words, I wrote about the things that are far more important to me than books and whether or not I’m “making it.” And in the process I also had some things to say about war and tribal karma and the cyclical nature of violence. My main intention was to tell a thrilling story, but my concerns about the human race are written between the lines, and let me tell you—those fears are bigger than the fear of bad reviews and poor sales. And writing about them is therapeutic. If I didn’t write about my fears, they’d just be banging around my head keeping me awake at night.

As I write this post it’s a busy week around our house with the book coming out this weekend, and my five-year-old son catches wind of that. Right now he’s a big Harry Potter fan, but a few days ago he asked me, “Daddy, will your books be around when I grow up? Because I’d like to buy them someday and read them. Will they still have Steel Breeze at the bookstore?”

It hit my heart in a cool way to hear him ask that, and I told him, “Well, I hope so, but don’t worry, I’m saving copies for you.”

And that is the magic of books. They’re vehicles for sharing our most personal insights, our fears and dreams, with other people across space and time. That’s why we write. Not for money or fame. When you write a book and send it out into the word, you have no idea whom it will reach or when. No idea what will come of your story living for a while in the mind of another.

Books may be products, but novels are shared dreams. Sometimes they’re shared nightmares, but don’t you feel better when you have someone to share a nightmare with?

My Made It Moment came last night when I walked into one of the local bookstores hosting my release events and saw the copies of Steel Breeze they had in the window. I’d already seen advance review copies at the World Horror Convention, but because of some last minute changes, this was the first time I held a final copy of the book in my hands. As I flipped it open to the page where it’s dedicated to my son, I remembered him telling me that he’d like to read it someday, and I thought, “I made this. With the help of some great people, I made it.”

Douglas Wynne is the author of the rock n roll horror novel The Devil of Echo Lake, which was a first place winner of JournalStone’s 2012 Horror Fiction contest. His second novel, Steel Breeze, is a crime thriller about a modern day samurai serial killer. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and son and spends most of his time hanging out with a pack of dogs when he isn’t writing, playing guitar, or swinging a sword.