Played by a Scoundrel

I should have done this a long time ago. I'm sorry, Stephanie. It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

Stephanie Ellis' latest book is now available on Amazon. It was so much fun to edit and I really feel like it turned out great! Stephanie is one my new favorite authors and she's got such a great voice and a wonderful way of telling a story. I highly recommend this book and hope that you all will show her your support. She definitely deserves it.

In Defense of Self-Publishing

The issue of self-publishing has become a hot topic in recent years, especially with the emergence of e-readers and e-books. As a side note I use self-publishing to mean both self-publishing and e-publishing in this post, even though there can be some significant differences.

Even five years ago, self-publishing was looked down on by the literary world. It was an industry for those who couldn't get picked up by a real publishing house, so they paid others to print their books for them. There were some really awful looking self-published books out there that were poorly edited and desperately need a new designer. However, this is no longer the case.

I will admit that I used to be a publishing snob. I shouted from the rooftops about how authors should never ever think about self-publishing their books. I have repented and am now a full believer in the benefits of self-publishing.

There is so much to benefit small authors who want to be able to share their stories with the world. Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble and a number of other sites offer the ability to sell your story for a reasonable price. You can either have each ordered book printed and shipped to the buyer through the hosting site, or you can have your readers buy your book and have it delivered electronically to their e-reader...or both! Authors keep almost all of the profits and don't have to deal with contracts or small advances. Only a small percentage of the total cost of your book goes to the hosting site and the rest goes in your pocket.

While self-publishing is great, there is one thing to remember. Self-publishing doesn't make editors obsolete. The success of the book is often based on customer reviews and I've seen many self-published books with poor reviews with the main complaint being that the book needed to be edited. A second set of eyes really helps because it can be hard to edit your own writing. I know this for a fact. Even as a professional editor, I always have someone else look over my writing, especially if it's going to be critiqued. This part of the post may seem self-serving, but even if you don't decide to use my services when self-publishing, you should still find someone to read through your work to make sure it flows and makes sense and to check for any blatant errors before publishing.

I am a strong advocate for authors to bypass the big publishing houses in order to keep all the rights to their book and most of the profits as well and to go ahead and publish with amazon.com and other such sites. This new trend in self-publishing is not only beneficial to authors but also to freelance editors, like myself, who want their authors to be successful with their writing and to be able to benefit from their work and creativity.

Stephanie Ellis

Stephanie Ellis has hired me to work on her book Played by a Scoundrel, which will be released later this year. She currently has two books available on Amazon.com, Saved by a Scoundrel and A Brush with Love. 

She is a very talented Regency period Romance writer, and I'm very excited to work with her.

If you'd like to learn more about Stephanie, her current books, or the projects she's working on, you can visit her website.

Editors are people too

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Most people expect editors to be completely infallible when it comes to writing. I think this is ridiculous. I can understand that as an editor I should take the time to proofread the things that I put on this blog and that I should edit any ads I post or emails I send out, but, honestly, that's asking a lot. Even when I do this I don't always catch everything because I'm human. I will make mistakes in my writing. And often I just want to write something and have it done without stressing about every single comma.

When I'm working, I'll stress about it, but when I'm not I probably won't. I trust myself and my writing abilities enough to not feel the need to fill my life with undue stress. To prove it to you, I'm not going to read through this at all before posting. Let me know if you find any errors. If you find tons, I understand, but if not please don't feel the need to persecute me needlessly. It doesn't make me feel good to receive emails from people who just want to be jerks online because they don't have to encounter a real person who has feelings. grrrr...

I promise you I will be the best editor I can possibly be and that if you are ever significantly unhappy with my work I will make it up to you in whatever way I can, even if that means not getting paid.

Scandal of Love

I recently finished my final edit of Janelle Daniels' book, Scandal of Love, and she now has it available as an ebook on Amazon. It's a great story and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a fun read. You don't have to be a romance lover to love this story. It's quirky and fun and has just the right amount of intrigue, suspense, and romance.

It was great getting to edit it and help her with this process and I'm really looking forward to her next book, Masquerade Secrets.

Janelle Daniels

I was recently hired by Janelle Daniels to work on her upcoming novellas. She is super talented and a joy to work with. Check out her website for info about her experiences with writing and what she's currently working on. She also has a novelette available on Amazon.com, His Mysterious Lady. I'm really exited to work with her and to see her progression as an author. I'll be giving you more updates on what she's working on and when to start looking for more of her books on Amazon. She has a wonderful voice for historical romance and is definitely an author you'll want to keep an eye on.

As a side note, I've sort of put the writing helps on hold. I know I said they would be a weekly installment (and that I only ever did one) but I've been rather busy with other projects and won't be keeping up on those for the time being.

Punctuation: Quotation Marks

I've been thinking long and hard about what this first writing help post should be on and I've decided to keep it simple. As we go on these will get more in depth and interesting but for today I'm going to focus on some basic punctuation rules and common mistakes involving quotation marks. Pretty simplistic, I know, but it's a start.

Closing quotation marks come after periods and commas but are used before pretty much everything else: question marks, exclamation points, colons, semicolons. The exception to this is when these end punctuations are part of the quoted material.

For example:
Which of Shakespeare's plays has the line, "Get thee to a nunnery"?
"You're late!"

When a character's speech continues for several paragraphs there is no closing punctuation at the end of the each paragraph until the final paragraph, however, each new paragraph begins with opening quotation marks.

Quoted material within a quotation is set off with single quotation marks

For example:
Sally asked, "When did Dave give you the command to 'see to the vending machine and restock it'?"

Hope this clears up a few issues. Remember that these are commonly missed things that I often see in writing and this is in no way a definitive list of quotation mark rules. I made sure to look these up in my Chicago Manual of Style for accuracy (yes I knew the rules but it never hurts to double check) and there are plenty of other quotation mark guidelines that I could mention, many of them complicated and obscure but still interesting and useful.

I hope this was beneficial to someone out there wanting some basic quotation mark rules. Let me know if there are any other topics you would like me to write about during my weekly writing helps. These will keep getting better as we go on and hopefully someday there will be something here that you will find helpful.

New Direction

While I am still running my freelance business I have decided that I also want this blog to focus on basic writing helps for any writers who might want a good information resource. I'll start posting on a weekly basis with general information for improving your writing with posts going up on Thursdays. Hopefully this will be beneficial to those of you out there wanting basic writing information. If you like what you see here please follow me and refer me to your writing friends. The first writing help post will start this Thursday. See you soon!

Read Adventure Books

I was recently asked by Dave Stone, self-published author extraordinaire, to edit his next masterpiece. He also gave me copies of the books he has written so far and I have loved reading them. They are definitely fun reads. You can check out his books and learn more about him at his website, Adventure Books for Boys and Girls.

Melaleuca

Thanks to Melaleuca, Inc. for hiring me to do some proofreading for a new project of theirs. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. Their products are both effective and environmentally friendly and I am very impressed.

Starting Off

I decided about a month ago to advertise my services on craigslist and have had more success so far than I ever could have imagined. Almost everyone I talked to in my program at school said that freelancing was hard and almost impossible unless you had first had experience in a publishing house or other company that would be willing to hire you as a freelancer. But I thought, it doesn't hurt to at least try. And it certainly doesn't.

I'll keep everyone updated on how I'm doing professionally and be creating pages regularly to provide more information about my services.