I organized large conferences for many years, so I look at conferences a bit differently than the average person. Some participants would skip the luncheon (paid for by their employer) to go shopping. Others would skip sessions and stand in the halls to snack and chat with colleagues.

But as  a writer paying your own conference fee and attending to improve your writing, make connections, and learn how to get your book published; you need to be strategic.

A writers’ conference is an investment of time and money so be sure to use both wisely.

Money

First, money. Preregister so you get the lowest rate. Make your hotel reservations early so you can stay in the conference hotel. You’ll save on transportation and won’t miss out on evening networking opportunities. Blocks of rooms at the reduced conference rate run out early. Reserve as soon as you consider attending, and if you aren’t 100% sure you’ll go, mark your calendar so you can cancel by a certain date without paying a fee.

Plan Your Schedule

Review the conference program and highlight any workshops or events of interest. Then go back through time slots where you have more than one workshop highlighted. You can often make the decision the day of the workshop but now you are armed and ready with your finalists identified.

If consultations are offered with agents and editors, do your homework. Read their biography statements and make sure they work with your genre. Note any deadlines for advanced readings.

Network

At meals and breaks don’t just chat with your friends — you can talk to them at home for free. This is your opportunity to connect with the new people around you. If you are shy by nature, know that many writers are and most do want to network at conferences. Just smile at your neighbor and ask, “Tell me about your writing.” What writer could resist such an invitation?

If there are receptions, breakfasts, happy hours, or other types of networking events, attend. You might meet your new beta reader or even your future agent!

And don’t sell too hard. Yes, you have refined your elevator pitch until it is irresistible but give it a rest. When editors, agents, and other writers are mingling they want to relax and get to know you so it may not be the best time for your spiel. Unless, of course, an editor turns to you and says, “Tell me about your book.” Go for it!

Collect business cards from your new connections and make notes each night so you don’t confuse the fantasy author with the biographer. Send followup emails a few days after the conference to those you want to keep in contact with. Follow, friend, and link up with any people you enjoyed connecting with in person.

Work the Workshops

Divide and conquer. If you attend with friends, you can share notes from different workshops. Even better, share the costs of purchasing recordings of the sessions. I am still listening to the sessions I couldn’t attend at the recent 31st Annual SDSU Writers’ Conference. Some of the sessions I did not even highlight have been packed with useful information.

Wondering which conference to attend? Chuck Sambuchino’s post on “Which Writers’ Conferences are the Best to Attend,” lists a nice selection complete with links.

Above all, go, enjoy, and learn!

Share

Please share your conference strategies and your favorite writers’ conferences.

LC Scott, owner of eFrog Press, reflects on books, publishing, indie authors and writing in Take the Leap.

Last weekend I attended a wonderful conference—the 31st annual San Diego State University Writers’ Conference. Careful coordination ensured that writers at any level of experience gained new information and had the opportunity to network with fellow writers, published authors, literary agents, and editors from major publishing houses. There was a nice mix of major speakers, practical workshops, consultations, and networking time.

Should you invest the time and money to attend a writers’ conference? Here are my ten reasons why I think it could be worth it.

1. Meet other writers
Writing is a solitary experience. You sit alone at your computer typing away, persevering, but it is comforting to meet others who share your passion. There is something magical about meeting other writers. Imagine the power of being surrounded by hundreds (or dozens) of writers.

2. Meet published authors
I have heard dozens of authors speak and have never heard the same publishing journey twice. It is inspiring to hear how other real people fulfilled their dreams of publishing their book, whether through a legacy publisher or the indie route. You will learn about the many different ways to make your dream a reality.

3. Form a writing group
It is important to read to a live audience not made up of adoring (or critical) family members. Putting together a group of nearby writers to meet on a regular basis and critique each other’s work is invaluable—and free.

4. Discover beta readers
When your manuscript is “done” (note the emphasis), you need a few trusted readers to read your draft. You need feedback on parts that are confusing, boring, and even parts that soar. You do not want to delete the most powerful sections if you are asked to tighten the story. And, of course, you can reciprocate and read their drafts.

5. Speak with agents
Many conferences have literary agents available to meet with authors one on one. Sometimes you send a few pages before the conference and sometimes you get ten minutes to pitch your book. The job of a literary agent is to acquire works from promising authors so don’t miss this opportunity.

6. Meet with editors from publishing houses
Writers’ conferences are one of the only ways to meet with an editor directly without going through an agent or being miraculously found in the slush pile of manuscripts. Research the publishing houses represented so you can pitch to an editor who actually acquires books in your genre.

7. Learn about the publishing business—yes, it is a business

Some aspiring authors are a little starry eyed about publishing but it is a business first. Legacy publishers will not acquire your book unless convinced it will make money for them. And if you plan to indie publish, a very real option, you want to make sure that your investment in editing, cover design, formatting, etc., will be recouped by book sales. In addition, there is the matter of ISBNs, barcodes, copyright, contracts, and other legal issues. Do your homework.

8. Learn more about your genre
When you hear authors in your genre speak, consider reading their books and then connect with them through social media. Immerse yourself in reading books in your genre so you are aware of the sometimes-unwritten rules that passionate readers of this type of book expect the author to follow. And also be aware of when you can take risks and deliberately break those rules.

9. Discover current trends
After two or three days at a writers’ conference you will undoubtedly notice hot topics in your genre. Beware of blindly following trends. It can take years to publish a book (often two years) so the popular books now were pitched two or three years ago. Agents and editors are often looking for something new. Many writers with no real interest in teens jumped on the YA bandwagon because of the phenomenal success of the Harry Potter and the Hunger Games series. Agents and editors were gagging on stacks of YA fantasy and dystopian manuscripts—and probably still are. Write what you know and love.

10. Understand your role in marketing—including social media
Marketing is the key to finding readers.  Whether you are with a legacy publisher who connects you with their publicist or you are going it alone, you will have some role in marketing your book. Conference workshops showcase winning strategies from successful authors. You can learn how much marketing you want to do and how best to invest that time.

What have you learned at conferences?

Would love to hear how you have benefited from writers’ conferences. What has been most helpful for you?

Coming Soon: Tips on making the most of your conference experience!

Wynne McLaughlin is a video game designer, screenwriter, and television writer. He is a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, west and the International Game Developers Association. His first novel, “The Bone Feud,” an action-packed true story of dinosaur bone hunters in the Wild West, will be available as a free download from Amazon.com on Tuesday, November 18^th and Thursday, November 20th .

Of Dinosaurs and Desperadoes—Writing “The Bone Feud”

“An action adventure novel about dinosaur bone hunters in the Wild West? How did you come up with an idea like that?” Great question.  For me, the journey that eventually led me to write The Bone Feud began when I was just five years old.

Today, the North Shore Shopping Center in Peabody, Massachusetts, is a huge, multilevel mall, but in the mid-1960s, it was an open-air shopping center with a small selection of kiddie rides at one end. The year I entered kindergarten the shopping center sponsored a dinosaur exhibit. They brought in a number of life-sized fiberglass models of dinosaurs on wheeled trailers and parked them beside the amusements for the kids to gawk at. There was a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Stegosaurus, a Triceratops, and an enormous green Brontosaurus (which today we know to be an Apatosaurus) that looked very much to me like Dino, the family pet from one of my favorite cartoon shows, The Flintstones. I’ve no idea how accurate these representations were, only that, in the wide eyes of a five year old, they were magnificent. It was right then and there that my lifelong fascination with dinosaurs began.

I immediately proclaimed that when I grew up I wanted to be an “archaeologist” and dig up dinosaur bones, but my mother patiently explained to me that archaeologists don’t dig up dinosaur bones, and that what I actually wanted to be was a paleontologist.

In the years that followed I fell in love with all things science. My father took me to the Harvard Museum of Natural History to see real dinosaur skeletons. I began to collect rocks and a few small fossils. I became enraptured by the Apollo space programs and watched in the grainy footage of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon in awe, on a tiny, flickering black and white television. I owned a chemistry set, a telescope, a microscope, and a working scale-model German steam engine that I’d won in a contest, for building a whacky Rube Goldberg machine that ate spaghetti. I was determined to become a scientist of some kind.

Science is Hard

My disillusionment came in junior high school when I discovered that a large part of any science degree involved advanced mathematics, something for which I had no natural talent. I was “numerically challenged,” but I loved to read, and for me, reading science fiction was the next best thing to studying science. I was such a voracious reader that eventually becoming a writer was inevitable.

I began to write screenplays and eventually moved to Los Angeles. I was in my early 20s, waiting tables and tending bar to pay my bills while I wrote. Eventually I got my break and ended up spending the better part of ten years writing for film and television. Today I make my living writing and designing video games.

The Bones of Contention

Before I left the film industry, around 2000-2001, I stumbled upon a nonfiction book by author and newspaper journalist Mark Jaffe. Entitled The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science, it detailed the history of the events known variously as “The Bone Wars” and the “Great Dinosaur Rush.” These events came about when two paleontologists made a remarkable series of discoveries, unearthing the remains of some of the greatest of the Jurassic dinosaur species we know today.

A straightforward re-telling of their story would have been somewhat dry, and ultimately quite depressing. These two men, Professor Edward Drinker Cope and Professor O.C. Marsh, were compulsive, jealous, driven men, and their bitter feud ultimately destroyed them both. But the events surrounding the story captured my imagination. This happened in the late 1870s at the height of the American Wild West. In the course of their travels, Cope and Marsh crossed paths with an amazing array of colorful characters who have been heavily romanticized in Western fiction over the years: Wild Bill Hickok, P.T. Barnum, the great Sioux leader Red Cloud, and many others. As I read their stories I began to see within them the bones of a fantastic adventure tale. I saw wonder and magic in these events, and I became determined to take their story and make it my own.

“The Truth Is Bound To Be Somewhere In Between.”

I made notes on all of the most interesting characters and events and wrote them on a series of index cards, posting them on a giant corkboard. I moved them around, combined some events, and altered others. I compressed timelines and took liberties with historical fact. In the end, I was satisfied with the structure of the story I’d created, but there was something missing. I needed a lens to view the story through. In short, I needed a storyteller.

At about this same time I read the fabulous revisionist western Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger. I’d become aware of the novel after seeing the Dustin Hoffman film of the same name. Both the novel and the film used a framing sequence—“bookended” scenes—that had Jack Crabb, the 121 year old main character, recounting his story in flashback to a curious historian.

I’d learned, from Mark Jaffe’s book, of a newspaperman who had published a number of stories about Cope and Marsh’s feud in the New York Herald. I made William H. Ballou my stand-in for the historian. But who would be telling him the story? I didn’t want to use Cope or Marsh, or any of their known associates. I wanted an outside perspective; someone peripherally involved with the story, but not a scientist. I wanted someone the reader would immediately identify with. An everyman.

As I was sitting at my computer thinking about this, our cat leaped up onto my lap. He was an older cat, an orange tabby that had been with my wife for over a decade before I met her. He was the star of a hundred stories my wife had told me over the years. Garvey had the most adventuresome spirit of any animal I’d ever met. If only he could talk.

And just like that, my fictional hero James Garvey was born.

Breaking All The Rules

I finished the screenplay for The Bone Feud a few months later and was convinced that it was the best thing I’d ever written. I had my agent send it out, and I had some initial interest, but ultimately nothing came of it. It broke all the rules. It was a big budget period piece. It had an ensemble cast rather than one or two starring roles. And it was a Western. Westerns have been a hard sell since their golden age in the 50s and 60s. So, I put it on a shelf, but I never forgot about it. I’d fallen in love with this story and these characters. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I just couldn’t give it up.

A few years ago I dusted it off and began to turn it into a novel. I knew, as written, it would be a short novel, and I briefly considered padding it out. I could add more descriptive text, additional scenes, or more back story to make it a more marketable length, but when it came right down to it, I didn’t want to do that. This was exactly the story I wanted to tell, and the way I wanted to tell it.

The Parts That People Skip

One of my writing heroes, the great Elmore Leonard, said, “When you write, try to leave out all the parts that readers tend to skip.” That was his style. He left out big descriptive paragraphs, kept things as lean and as fast-moving as possible, and revealed character through dialog. That’s what I tried to do. In the end, I wanted to create a novel that filled the reader’s head with images, and kept them compulsively turning pages.

My favorite early review said that one of the things they most enjoyed about The Bone Feud was that “It was almost like watching a movie in my head.” That was entirely my intention. I hope the rest of my readers feel the same way.

FREE Download!

You can download The Bone Feud for free today, Tuesday, Nov. 18^th, or on Thursday, Nov. 20th, at Amazon.com. If you enjoy it, and you’re willing to post a review of the book on Amazon, I’ll be forever grateful.

Lynda Pflueger has written nine biographies for children.  Her books have been favorably reviewed by Kirkus, School and Library Journal, and Booklist. Thomas Nast: Political Cartoonist is the fourth book in the Spotlight Biography Series.

One day, while researching an article on collecting, a book fell from the shelf above me and hit me on the head. I rubbed my head for a few seconds and then reached down and picked up the book.  It was about a man who collected political cartoons. His favorite cartoonist was Thomas Nast.

I’m a history buff, particular US history. I love visiting museums and libraries. Nothing pleases me more than to roam around dusty old archives and find newspaper articles or photographs I can use in my books. Sometimes my discoveries come from unusual places and surprise me.

I was intrigued by Nast’s story. After the Civil War, with only his pen as a weapon, he helped bring down a notoriously corrupt group of politicians called the Tweed Ring in New York City. Nast continually harassed the ring with his drawings and often focused his attention on William M. Tweed, the leader of the ring. In one drawing entitled “Brains” Nast drew Tweed dressed in a three-piece business suit and replaced his head with a money bag to signify the money he had stolen from the city.

I also fell in love with Nast’s drawings of Santa Claus inspired by Clement Moore’s poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Nast portrayed Santa Claus as a jolly old fellow with a white beard and round belly.

Then I came across one of Nast’s drawings entitled Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner and I knew I had to write about him. In the drawing Uncle Sam is carving a turkey, next to him is Columbia, and sitting around the table are Americans from around the world:  Germany, France, Britain, Africa, China, Italy, Spain, and Ireland. At the bottom of the drawing on the left side Nast wrote, “Come One Come All,” and on the right side, “Free and Equal.”

I started collecting all the books and magazine articles I could find about Thomas Nast. I traveled to Morristown, New Jersey, where he lived with his family. I spent days at the Morristown and Morris Township Library going through Nast’s scrapbooks, drawings, and other memorabilia. Afterward, I walked across the street to the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum and saw several of Nast’s paintings. I also discovered the Thomas Nast Society and purchased several copies of their journal. Finally, I was ready to sit down and write.

Queried Publishers

I completed my first draft and then sent out query letters to six educational publishers. Five months later an editor called. She was impressed with my query letter. Her publishing house was starting a new Historical American Biography Series. She wasn’t interested in a book about Nast at the time; but wondered if I would like to submit a proposal for a biography of someone on their list. She gave me a choice of five people. I chose Stonewall Jackson and within a week I submitted a proposal. Timing was important because they wanted the complete book in four months.

I met my deadline and a year later the first book in the Historical American Biography series, Stonewall Jackson:  Confederate General was published. A few weeks later my editor called with the news that Kirkus had favorably reviewed my book and commented it would find fans with Civil War enthusiasts.

Over the next few years, I wrote several other books for the series. Then one day my editor called and asked if I still wanted to write about Thomas Nast. I enthusiastically responded, “Yes!”

Thomas Nast: Political Cartoonist Published

The first edition of Thomas Nast: Political Cartoonist was published in 2000. This year, I updated the text, added hyperlinks, more photos and a new cover for an ebook version. For more information about Thomas Nast and upcoming writing projects visit my website at LyndaPflueger.com. The ebook is now available online.

Note:  The images used in this blog are from the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, reproduction numbers: LC-USZ62-787, LC-USZ62-42027, and LC-USZ62-85882.

Please Share

Tell me about your publishing journey. I doubt it started with a book falling on your head, but would love to hear the details.

L.C. Scott is the founder of eFrog Press and an author. Her many years of teaching at the high school and university level and her freelance writing career have prepared her to lead a team of experts to guide both fledgling and experienced authors through the maze of indie publishing. Today on Take the Leap she shares how she explains the use of Word’s Track Changes for authors.

Word’s Track Changes tool is a wonderful resource for both editors and authors. It allows an editor to add comments into the document and also to make changes that the author can later review and accept or reject. But authors unfamiliar with this tool can be confused when they receive the book’s file with Track Changes implemented.

So, if you are an author new to this feature in Word, I am going to demystify the process of using Track Changes to respond to your copy editor’s comments and edits.

Viewing Edits in Track Changes

When you open your file in Word, the Track Changes should appear in your file. If you don’t see them, go to the Review Tab and click on the Track Changes button until it is highlighted in orange like the example above. Now your edits should appear in the document.

How to Use Track Changes to Review Editorial Suggestions

One of the easiest ways to use Track Changes is to go to Review Tab > Changes section (see far right in graphic above) and click the Next button. You will be taken to the first editing suggestion. Then you can click the Accept button with the blue checkmark or the Reject button in red.

From the drop-down arrow under both the Accept and the Reject buttons you will be given the option to move to the next edit. There are other options like right clicking on the edit itself, but I find the Accept/Reject buttons are the easiest way to move through a long document and view each suggestion from the editor.

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Seasoned journalist and food blogger Laura Grouch interviewed author Nancy Johnson about the release of her new YA Civil War novel. To mark the anniversary of the Battle of New Market, Shenandoah, Daughter of the Stars will be a free ebook on Amazon today and tomorrow, May 15 and 16.

Even though it took place more than 150 years ago, author Nancy Johnson believes Americans of all ages would benefit from knowing more about the Civil War.

They especially need to know that young people also gave their lives in the struggle, as shown in her third book, Shenandoah: Daughter of the Stars (ebook $3.99; paperback $9.95). The Battle of New Market, which took place on May 15, 1864, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, was notable for the participation of nearly 250 military cadets—the youngest only age 15.

When Johnson was teaching grades four, five and six in California, she realized her students didn’t know much about the great War Between the States. “I wanted to spark an interest in a part of history that I believe is still influencing us today,” she said. “The divisions between North and South, conservative and liberal, black and white, are still an element of life in this country.”

Though she is a native Californian, her own roots reach back to Civil War days. Passed down in her family were letters from relatives, Union Army soldiers, who were in the midst of those battles and who described life during that time.

The Origins of Shenandoah

So when she was looking for a new project, her husband suggested, “Why don’t you go write a book?” Johnson decided to make use of her family history and do just that.

Her first young adult novel, My Brother’s Keeper, was set in the thick of the Civil War, from Northern Virginia to Gettysburg and back to Appomattox, drawing on a rich vein of family history and mementos.

She followed it up with A Sweet-Sounding Place, about Moses, a black youth from Massachusetts who encounters a runaway slave named Samantha.

Now comes the third in the trilogy, “Shenandoah: Daughter of the Stars,” which describes events from the viewpoint of Hannah, a Southern girl who nonetheless believes slavery is a great moral wrong.

Inspired by a visit to the Virginia Military Institute, Johnson weaves a battle fought by its young cadets alongside the Confederate Army into the story. The Battle of New Market was a victory for the Confederate Army. General John Breckinridge called on VMI’s cadets to fight Union soldiers. Forty-seven cadets were wounded, and 10 later died of their injuries. One of the characters in “Shenandoah,” Charlie, is a VMI cadet who is wounded in the battle.

“While doing research for the second book, we went to the Shenandoah Valley, and happened to be there on the day the Virginia Military Institute cadets did their re-enactment of the battle,” Johnson recalled. “Right then, I knew this would be the beginning of my third book.”

A Strong Heroine

Although most books about the Civil War have young male heroes, Johnson said, she wanted to tell this story from Hannah’s point of view.” She was just one of three characters at first. But girls need to know they had a part to play, too,” she said. (more…)

Judith Josephson loves to dig into the past and is fascinated by people’s lives. A former teacher, Judith Josephson has written stories, columns, and articles for children. Her award-winning biographies and history books include both nonfiction and fiction for children. Jesse Owens: Legendary Olympian is her most recent title.

In February, we celebrated African Americans. In addition, all eyes were trained on Sochi, Russia, where the Winter Olympics took place. Each day’s sports coverage featured athletes in blazingly colorful athletic outfits. Results of each competition were instantly photographed, tweeted, emailed, and recorded in real time on television. For more than a century, the Olympics, summer and winter, have represented the greatest athletic competition in the world, an event where months and years of training culminate in the best of the best, producing surprises, disappointments, and heroes.

1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin

At a very different Olympics seventy-seven years ago, the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, African American track and field star Jesse Owens won four gold medals, surprising the world and infuriating Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler, who called Owens and other African American teammates America’s “black legions.” Hitler’s close associate declared Jesse and his teammates unfit to compete with “human” athletes, akin to allowing a gazelle or a deer on the team.

Today’s Olympics are different in many ways, but similar in others. Olympic athletes have always trained hard to reach this pinnacle of sports. Jesse Owens had grown up in poverty, but had been training for this day since junior high and high school days, when he started breaking records for his age.  In college at Ohio State University, at a 1935 meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the space of forty-five minutes, he broke four world records.

Politics isn’t supposed to have a role in the Olympics. But in 1936, the Olympics unfolded against Hitler’s evil intents, racism in the U.S. and the gathering storm of World War II.  Since then, issues like the “Cold War,” “Human Rights Violations,”  America’s “Civil Rights Movement,” and “South Africa’s apartheid policies” have caused boycotts and affected outcomes.

Fresh-faced young people have always inspired those who watch the Olympics.  When Jesse Owens won the gold medal in the 100-meter race, he graciously thanked his Olympic hosts, saying that Berlin was “a beautiful place, a beautiful city.  The competition was grand.  But I was very glad to come out on top.”  Proudly, he wore the winner’s laurel wreath and saluted his flag. Jesse Owens had class. Similarly, earlier this year, American luger Kate Hansen, danced for the crowd and in spite of her 10^th place finish, said, “I will be thankful for this moment the rest of my life.”

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L.C. Scott is the founder of eFrog Press and an author. Her many years of teaching at the high school and university level and her freelance writing career have prepared her to lead a team of experts to guide both fledgling and experienced authors through the maze of indie publishing. Today on Take the Leap she shares how she makes custom business cards to keep up with her rapidly changing business—DIY, of course!

Although I am a big fan of sites like Vistaprint and Moo Cards, I prefer to design and print my own business cards until I get the content and design just the way I want it. As an entrepreneur with a young business (2 ½ years old), I know things can change quickly.

Three days before a big networking event I realized my business cards were lacking. No time to order online, so I resorted to DIY.

Now I did have a cool logo to use. My brother-in-law is a wildlife artist and sketched a frog sitting on an iPad (instead of a lily pad). Perfect for eFrog Press, as we started out with a focus on creating ebooks. Never seen a frog with fingers? That’s a northern leopard frog or Lithobates pipiens. Really. Here’s proof.

How to DIY Professional Business Cards

Don’t have a color laser printer and industrial paper cutter? No worries. You can still create professional looking business cards.

I love Avery’s linen cards. The rich texture gives a custom look to homemade cards. Also, Avery has greatly improved their perforation methods. No longer are your cards marred by little bumps that reveal to all that you punched them out of sheets of perforated cardstock. Avery’s Clean Edge business cards pop out with smooth, flawless edges. My personal favorite is Avery® Linen Textured Two-Sided Printable Clean Edge Business Cards for ink-jet printers.

The other feature I love is the printable backs. I was able to free up an increasingly crowded front side and list our services on the back. For a touch of color and to highlight our social media presence, I decorated the bottom edge with social media icons.

Business Card Content

Let’s talk about content. Of course you want logo, business name, and your name front and center—or at least front! Be sure to include your website so people can learn more about your business and remember why they have your card when they clean out their wallets.

You want people to contact you, right? So why put your email and phone number in 7-point font? As I age my near vision fades, and I resent having to use a magnifying glass to read a phone number when there is plenty of white space for a bigger font!

As eFrog Press has evolved over the last 2 ½ years, it has been convenient to add new services to the back of the card. Of course, not all businesses have changed as much as publishing services in recent years, but all successful entrepreneurs sharpen their focus and need to update their business cards to reflect those changes.

Designing Your Business Cards

Avery provides templates but I just use Microsoft Word. Follow these steps to create your own business card using Word.  (I use Office 2010, so depending on the version of Word you are using, some of these steps may be different).

1. Click on Mailings tab (I know you’re not mailing anything but this is the secret location).

2. Click on Labels (top left).

3. Click on Options (bottom left of new window) and scroll through until you find the Product Number for the business card stock you are using. Mine are Avery #8873. Then click OK. (more…)

Richard Fitchen, BA MA MLIS PhD, was a firefighter and National Guardsman before teaching at the University of Washington and the University of California (Berkeley and Santa Barbara). He served as the social sciences bibliographer in Yale University’s Libraries and retired as bibliographer and reference department head at the Stanford University Libraries. He now writes full time and enjoys traveling with family.

Publishing electronically rather than in traditional print seemed a smart choice to me, like online retail versus newspaper ads.  Then Linda at eFrog Press explained the print-on-demand option.  Voilà, the best of both worlds!  When I met Linda, I mentioned projects in which I had participated to convert paper bound information to electronic files ranging from cutting-edge scientific journals to archives of the World Trade Organization.  She made the connection:  give readers of my fiction the same advantages!   I had tried putting up an electronic file but with no more success than I found earlier sending material to print publishers.  Now with editorial and technical guidance by Linda and her expert staff, my new book is properly launched.

United by Covenant, Ben’s America is the first of five books to be published in a series called An American Saga.  Three of the remaining four volumes are already in draft form, and we anticipate publishing at least two in 2014.  It helps to have design and layout decisions already set for the series by volume one!

I began writing United by Covenant because I could not bear to change a very long but personally cherished prequel.  The prequel rivals books like Hawaii and Shogun in length and complexity, and many letters to editors/agents plus meetings at a writers’ conference convinced me no publisher would undertake such a leviathan tome from an unknown author.  No doubt, I’m not the first to be consumed by unsalable abundance of creativity!  The prequel was polished occasionally and given ever better titles, but in the end a fresh start was needed.

Fortunately, the prequel experience helped enormously in writing United by Covenant, in many ways allowing me to learn from experience.  Writing it was very satisfying (ditto its sequel), perhaps partly because the project was planned from the very outset to comprise five volumes.

My previous career in American universities required highly developed research skills and a depth of subject knowledge, and I’ve drawn deeply on both to produce this title.  Its central character rises above the story’s dramatic fray to articulate the political faith that unifies partisan and cultural antagonists in America.  The covenant of American life reaches a peak of success in preserving the union through civil war, massive immigration, and sweeping industrial transformation.

United by Covenant is FREE today and tomorrow

After years of researching and writing, it is exciting to see my book come to life both as a print and ebook version. In my first attempt to connect with readers of historical, especially American, fiction, I am making my book free today and tomorrow, January 29 and 30. Please spread the word, download the Kindle ebook, and post a review. I wrote the book to make U.S. history as interesting to readers as I have always found it, and the best way I know is through story. So if you enjoy United by Covenant, standby as more volumes are coming soon in this American Saga.

We are delighted to interview Mrs. Saint Nick as the holiday season approaches. She has some great advice for slowing down and enjoying this time of year. We also ask about the new gift book featuring her Christmas duties.

eFrog: Hello, Mrs. Saint Nick. I appreciate your taking time for our interview during this busy time of year.

Mrs. Saint Nick: It’s more my husband’s busy time, although the more frazzled he gets, the more frazzled I get.  Much as I love the season of giving, I can’t imagine giving to all the children in all the world.  But that’s my husband.  He’s always dreamed and acted large.  And I love him for it.

eFrog: Tell us about your role at Christmas.

Mrs. Saint Nick:  The elves do most of the work in the factory, but they often need a woman’s touch.  How many men, truly, know how to dress a doll?  And they would never think a girl wanted a baseball bat, unless I set them straight!

eFrog: Is it true that you have your own sleigh?

Mrs. Saint Nick:  Absolutely.  My husband’s sleigh is a mess when he returns Christmas morning.  The first thing he does is give it a good scrubbing.  The elves help.  And his poor deer.  I couldn’t ask them to travel one more time around the world.  That’s why I have my own team with Rudolph’s sister Ruby lighting the way.

eFrog: What is the most challenging part of your job?

Mrs. Saint Nick:  Often when I arrive at homes, the fathers and mothers are still wide awake, both overwhelmed by the task of cleaning up.  I find myself pausing to make them tea and chat a bit and sometimes the delay forces me to work all through the day after Christmas so I can reach everybody.

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