Getting the Call: Lynda Williams

Today I'm happy to bring you an author who actually wrote a short about the despair she felt trying to break into publishing. Now she has not one, but seven books published. That's quite an accomplishment. Here's proof that it can be done and there is a market for a well-developed fantasy series. Welcome to Lynda Williams.

Michelle, I would love to share my "Getting the Call" story with you and your readers and to include the link to my story Going Back Out which I wrote when I was feeling despair about ever being a real writer because I couldn't see how I'd ever compete with the "big guys". The writer-analogy is about Gadar, a Reetion pilot who is depressed to discover Sevolites really do fly harder than she can. But, as Ann reminds her, they don't fly for her reasons and the people she flies for need HER. When you focus on what you are doing, and why, then fears about how loudly you can do it fade away.

Easier said than done, of course, but I have often re-read Going Back Out myself, particularly when I felt angry about some very loud success that jarred me emotionally for the sake of the implied messages about immoral behavior being okay so long as you win. My own "Getting the Call" message has to be when Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy bought Throne Price. I had sold a couple short stories before but the Okal Rel Saga was my big dream. Alison Sinclair and I sold Throne Price to Edge late in the last millenium. At the time, the "buzz" in the writerly world was all in favor of "shorter, meaner, harder", or at least so it seemed to me. A ten novel saga about the struggle to find the common sense to stop destroying the world, and brutalizing people, in the fight between cultures for dominance, felt like a dark horse. But I had lived and labored in the Okal Rel Universe for thirty years. I wasn't interested in doing "something else". 


Now, a mere 30,000 words shy of completing a ten-novel project, with Part 8: Gathering Storm due soon, I am glad I had the courage to keep flying for my own reasons. And this is what really makes it worthwhile -- so are the readers who love my characters.

Lynda Williams, author http://www.okalrel.org/books.html http://okalrel.org/blog/ (Reality Skimming with Michelle Carraway, Tegan Lott,Richard Bartrop)http://clarionfoundation.wordpress.com/tag/lynda-williams/ (with David Lott)Opus 6 (with editor Paula Johanson)

Getting the Call: Linda Hays-Gibbs

Great news! I'm able to bring back these inspirational stories. I want to send out thanks to Terri Bruce for using her connections to bring new authors forward to share how they got published or landed agents. Allow me to introduce Linda Hays-Gibbs. I just met her and already I admire her determination.

When I saw the email that offered writers to write about how they got the call, I thought this would be very interesting.  I think I always had the call.  I made up poems and songs when I was three and wrote stories as young as six.  No one seemed interested in them as my mom was very sick and died when I was young.  My father didn’t believe a girl needed education.  I did have some teachers that tried to encourage me a little.  I was told to bring my imagination under control. I always made good grades so I did what I was told.

I was told by my Latin instructor that my translations were so interesting, I made his teaching career and made his class the most exciting he ever had.  All I know was I tried to translate but my imagination got in the way every time.

I started writing poetry in a journal for my daughter some years back because I was throwing away my poems.  Bea said, “Mom make a book of them and send them off to be published.”  “I said, no one will publish this mess.”  I did send them off and they were published.  I was amazed.  “Sailing in My Sunshine” was my first published book.

You see, I went back to school and got a degree in Anthropology.  Not what I wanted but what the school pigeon holed me into.  It was a mistake but I got a BA.  I wanted creative writing.  I did have a minor in it but all my professors, again said, I was too imaginative.  I didn’t have any order about me. In other words, I had no talent.

I was an older student.  I was Disabled and a widow.  I did not get any scholarships and finally felt like I was not wanted.  I went for my Master’s in Secondary Education after being turned down three times by the Creative Writing department.  It was simply I had no talent. I did get 28 credits in Graduate work as a teacher and taught for a while at local schools but it was not what I wanted.  I became too ill and could not walk to their classes and quit.

A light finally went off in my little brain.  I could write if I wanted to. There was no one to stop me.

Suddenly, I said, to heck with this.  I want to write so I will write.  I don’t need their permission.  I started writing novels. “He Would Make Her Pay” was my first novel and it was very painful.  It had my life intertwined in it and the 1960s were painful. I wrote “Escape into Magic” to escape.  I did not want any real life.  I wanted dreams.  Next I decided I wanted to write about Regency England.  It was all I read.  I love Romances in Regency times.  I wrote “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls” it was so much more fun but the publisher I had was not helping me.  I looked for another publisher.  I sent off my work and still had little confidence.  All the battering I had over my writing still hurt.  Eternal Press took “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls.”  Then I waited for reviews.  I chewed my nails and pulled my hair. 

The first review I got was not that great but wasn’t really bad.  I thought well there you are.  You aren’t that good but then I got seven more reviews and they were all great.  The first great review by Marilyn Rondeau made me cry. I was so happy.  I ate up each word and knew that I should never let anyone keep me from my dream.  Her review made my call real.  It became real to me.  I had two publishers and four books published but it wasn’t real until that review.  It made an old woman’s heart sing.  I now have another book coming out November 1, 2012. It is called “Angel in My Heart, Devil in My Soul.” 

I am writing the third in my angel series, “Morovani, The Guardian Angel”. I also have a novel almost finished called, “The Crazies”. It’s a little bit of a clean satire on “Fifty Shades of Gray.” I am afraid I have stories coming out of my ears but it’s still a scary time because these stories need to sell so I am told.  I only know that when Marilyn said my stories were worth something I believed her.  I came out to play, and I have been earnestly playing ever since.  I love it.  Writing is so much fun but you do need verification.  Marilyn was my verification.  I want to thank her again for my review that made my call official.

***

Linda D. Hays-Gibbs was born in Mississippi and lives in Alabama. She went back to school late in life, graduated with a BA in Anthropology from University of Alabama.  Reading is like nectar from the Gods to Linda and writing is just plain fun. Her great, great grandfather is Daniel Boone and she found that out by researching her family herself.

       Her fourth book, “My Angel, My Light As Darkness Falls” really meant more to her because she worked on it for such a long time and because Linda was determined to make her writing much better than it had been.  Kim Richards and Sally Odgers from Eternal Press are inspirations for her. Barbara Metzger, one of her favorite authors gave Linda encouragement too.  Linda loves writing and hopes to continue to do it for the rest of her life along with anything she can do for her God and children.

www.lindahaysgibbs.blogpot.com

www.lindahaysgibbs.pbworks.com

www.facebook.com/rosedru

www.twitter.com/Rosedru63

Blurb for Angel in My Heart, Devil in My Soul: He was a killer, a merciless, emotionless, machine for death.  She was and angel of love and hope and the woman of his dreams.  She could not be around evil, it would kill her and he was all that was evil and foul.  How could she dream of a man like that?

     When he held her in his arms and kissed her she felt her heart stutter and start and moaned when her dream dissipated into the night air.  He caressed boneless pillows of angel dust and silently cried when he awoke.  How could he live without her?

Getting the Call: Anna Walls

More proof the road to publishing is a process. Sometimes your location itself proves the biggest challenge. What do you do when you're miles away from the nearest agent or writers conference?

Did I get the call? Most certainly not. What I got was this really cool little toy, a Dell laptop. It was my very first computer. I had no internet and I had no intention of getting such a thing, not that I had a clue how. That meant that my cool little toy was little more than a glorified typewriter.

By coincidence, since my boys were done going to school from here (they were both in town going to Job Corp now), I had loose leaf binders laying around and plenty of notebook paper, so like I’ve done only two other times in my life, I started writing down a story just for the heck of it. I’d read every book in the house multiple times and going to a bookstore was impossible.

When I was presented with this little computer, my son showed me how to work it and some of its features and then it was all mine. So what do you do with a glorified typewriter? One thing is for sure, it took up less room on the table than my notebook and someone was always setting a cup or some tools on my paper (grrr). With no other ideas, I started to type my hand-written story into my computer. When I caught up with myself, at first, I thought I’d write some and then type that, but it didn’t take me long to just give up on the notebook. I mean, grammar and spell check, and copy and paste? You just can’t find that kind of thing in a notebook. Haha

Such was the very first beginnings of my first published book, King by Right of Blood and Might. It took me upwards of two winters to finish that book, but during that time, I learned lots of things about my cool little toy too. It had a Paint program, and now I could draw pictures and maps. I drew a lot of pictures for that book, only a few of which remained in the finished product.

When I finished it, I did a little checking around into the publishing idea, but quickly discovered that publishers required agents and I didn’t know how to find one. My boss at the time gave me this big fat book with contact information and requirements listed for just about any kind of publishing anyone might want to do, but by the time I was looking, the information was outdated and I had nowhere else to turn.

I found AuthorHouse in the phonebook and sent for a publishing package but even that avenue died, as it was far too expensive. But, I still had my little toy and my winters were filled with discovering these brand new books no one had ever seen before, least of all me. I experimented with the rules of magic. I traveled to distant planets. I even visited Earth from far far away. And many more adventures, only just beginning to see the light of day.

Then the saddest day of my life opened the way for my publishing career to start. My mother died, but there was an inheritance I didn’t expect. Suddenly, I had enough money to see a book published. It was both the best and the worst investment I have ever made. The best because I had a book out there people could read, available on Amazon, no less. The worst because of the publishing avenue I chose. AuthorHouse is a subsidy publisher; they make their money from the writer so whatever the finished product is makes no difference to them. It doesn’t matter if sales go nowhere; they got their money. It was up to me to figure out how to advertise; their only help was to tell me to get a Facebook account and a Twitter account. Well darn, that required internet.

Two years later, after much research, we did just that, also thanks to the money I inherited from my mother. Now my little cabin in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, had a piece of 21^st century technology hanging on the side of it, and now I’m doing amazing things like blogging and marketing and lets not forget, doing this interview.

Another thing the internet has allowed me to accomplish is finding publishers I don’t have to pay. Early this spring my second book, Prince in Hiding, went live and apparently hit Amazon by storm (for me anyway). In June, 32 books were sold. In July ,18, but come August, 137 were sold, and just blew me away. Most of those sales were eBooks and they are the craze these days, but not so long ago King by Right of Blood and Might also grew an eBook (not by my request) with no sales from that quarter that I know of.

This year has been an exciting one for me. Through another publisher, The Speed of Dreams is scheduled to come out in February. Then again, sometime in late May, book 2 of my Making of a Mage-King series will hit Amazon with, I hope, as much enthusiasm as Prince in Hiding. The balls are all starting to roll. My stories are starting to find homes. Pretty soon I’ll have to buckle down and write up some more.

King by Right of Blood and Might can be found here

Prince in Hiding can be found here 

My main writing blog is here 

My personal blog is here

My blog novel, The Fortunes of Magic, is here

Enjoy