Peg Herring, Mystery Author

Since self-publishing has become popular, one might wonder why people still pay big bucks for books by known authors from big publishers. The answer, I believe, is quality. With a self-pubbed book, it's hard to know if you're getting junk or a gem. For example, I once bought an e-book that sounded interesting and found the whole thing center spaced. Using a segment from my latest book, I'll show you what that looked like. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?” Nettie’s gaze met hers. “I shot him.” The abruptness of the admission shocked her, but Belizek recovered quickly. “I need to know why you shot him.” The detective tried to wait out the silence that followed. In training, they were taught to let the witness, suspect, whoever, tell the story in their own way. Silence bothers people , the instructor had claimed. Because they can’t stop themselves from filling it, they reveal things they don’t intend to. In this case, the silence went on and on, and it fel

 It occurs to me that I should have discussed why people choose traditional or self-publishing, so I'm going to take a step back and do that. When I finished my first book, there were two options for publication, traditional publishing or vanity publishing. Vanity publishing requires that an author pay for her work to be presented to the world. It's been around for centuries, and some pretty important writers started out that way, but it was definitely a no-no for "serious" writers. Traditional publishing, getting an agent, waiting for her to shop the book to publishing houses, and hoping for an offer was, at that time, the only way to get any kind of credibility. I did it that way. It took years, but the result was good. The publisher who signed me up got me reviews from prestigious places like the Historical Novel Society and Kirkus Reviews . I was thrilled that my first review in HNS (For Macbeth's Niece ), got a star, meaning the reviewer thought it rose above

 If you decide to self-publish, there are good prospects and bad ones. It's a complicated process, though it's much simpler now than it was a few years ago. It's hard to break it down, and the learning curve is brutal at times. While I've tried to develop a schedule that covers all the necessary steps, I find myself doing what I feel like doing on a given day and neglecting things I should be doing. That's bad, but since I don't consider writing a "job," I give myself a break and do what sounds doable at the time. Here's what I work on in the months and weeks before publication. Cover Manuscript setup Publicity Corrections Ordering Let's start with the cover. The easiest thing to do is hire a cover artist, and ninety percent of experts will tell you to do that. I admit that I don't have the tools, smarts, or experience that a cover artist does, but here's the thing: they don't know the material like I do. I had a really good cover a

  In the last post, I gave hints on writing your book. Now it's time to make sure your work appears in its best form, whether you plan to self-publish or submit to an agent. However you recorded your story, at this point it has to become a computer file. There are two reasons for that: first, modern publishing requires it, and second, it makes editing a whole lot easier. You'll need to get to know your computer's editing aids, which can be frustrating but will pay off in the end. Things like FIND/REPLACE can save you hours of searching when you realize you changed the spelling of main character's name halfway through the story. When you get stuck, ask the internet. There's always a tutorial or a site where someone asked the same question you need answered. There are different ways of going about the editing process , and individuals arrange them to their liking. I do several self-edits before anyone else sees the book. Sometimes I combine a few of the edits listed

 If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, "I'd like to write"...I'd have a lot of nickels. To help those people out a little, I thought I'd do a series of posts on the topic, similar to a presentation I used to do in live settings called WRITE, EDIT, PUBLISH.  WRITING If you want to write a book, you have to find the time, energy, and perseverance to keep at it until the story is done. When you type "The End" (We actually don't do that, but the image is nice), it won't be perfect, but--at least in the world of fiction--a story needs to be finished before you can consider the next steps. Mostly, this means the BITCH principle is in effect: Butt In The Chair, Honey . Your method doesn't matter. I know authors who hand-write their first drafts, some who keyboard, some who dictate, and even one who uses some antique half-computer half-typewriting device she claims works best for her thought process. Whatever, just get your story on pa

 Though I'm not sure how, I recently heard about Shepherd.com The people there are trying to change the way we find new books to read online, and I'm all for that. When you type in "mystery" or "crime fiction" in most book-finding sites (like Amazon), you get a list of the 8 or 10 biggest-selling writers, like James Patterson, Michael Connelly, and Janet Evanovitch. The problem with that is that telling me Michael Connelly has a new book is useless. I've already bought it, read it, and passed it on to a friend. Also, some of those big names don't interest me, for a variety of reasons. I'd like new suggestions, new authors to try, but it's hard to choose, and the list goes on forever, with no hints as to which ones I'll really like. Enter Shepherd.com. Right now, things are in the beginning stages, but the site categorizes books with a clever teaser: "The Best Books about..." You can search by title or author and along with the

 I'm usually pretty neat. I like my house in order. I keep a regular schedule. I pick up items dropped on the floor at Kohl's and rehang them so they won't get stepped on. Neat is good. But if you look at my writing career, you might think, "This woman has no sense of order at all!" I started writing historical novels, using my own name.(I used Peg instead of Peggy because there's another author with that name.) I got an agent, she found a publisher, and I was on my way...sort of. I had an idea for a paranormal mystery, and I met a publisher at a conference who liked it, so suddenly Peg Herring writes about Elizabeth I but ALSO about a detective who solves crimes from the afterlife. In the meantime, I wrote a mystery about a homeless woman. My second publishers loved that one, so now I had THREE series going. I also wrote a stand-alone mystery that I called "vintage," meaning it took place in the past but not that far back (the Vietnam era, which is