Friday, July 29, 2005

Interview with NYT Bestselling Author, Carly Phillips!!!!!




CLG: I took a trip through your website, http://www.carlyphillips.com, and I noticed that you have written a lot of books. How long have you been writing?


Carly: I've been writing for about thirteen years now. I started when my first daughter was born. I wrote ten completed manuscripts, revised over and over, and they were rejected over and over for about seven years until I received "The Call". A long process but there's a definite learning curve and a lesson to be learned from each rejection.



CLG: I read your CINDERELLA MOMENT article. Great story. That took some determination to contact your publicist and create the basket and send your book to Kelly Ripa. Do you think this creative spirit to market and promote one's self is a necessity for authors today?


Carly: Thank you! I believe that everyone who writes a book has talent. There is a degree of luck involved in how far you go in this business, but there is also a degree of "make your own luck". You need to be in the right place at the right time (for example, I needed to be watching television that particular morning when Kelly joked about a book club), but you also need to go after what you want. Think outside the box. Don't wait for luck or fate to shine on you. Go out there and try to make your own. There'll be many failures but as I said above, every one you can learn from. Without a doubt, the first thing to do is write the book, but you should also be aware of the business, how it works, the people within it, and what you can do to promote yourself. There are ways of starting small that don't cost an arm and a leg, and you can build your career over time.



CLG: What are you three guilty pleasures?


Carly: Soap Operas (ABC), shopping, and surfing the internet.



CLG: There is the rule (and I have NO idea who began it) that says writers should write EVERY DAY. Do you follow this rule? Do you have a writing schedule? Do you think "serious" writers should have schedules? (LOL-TRIFECTA question here!)


Carly: Hahaha! I guess I don't follow the rules. The fact is, you finish a book faster when you write every day. You become part of the characters and it is easier to write when you write every day. If you're a stay at home mom with a life, a husband, friends, kids, dog etc., you just can not always write every day. At least I can't. I do have a schedule in that I have a deadline, and I know at what point I need to buckle down and turn out 25 pages a week in order to finish the book on time. I am not a writer who pours out tons of pages a day and I can't make excuses for it. I'm doing what I can do! Serious writers can't NOT write. When they write, how they choose to write, how much they write, is up to them. I really believe nobody has the right to tell someone what makes them a "real" writer.



CLG: What is the one thing that makes you feel the most feminine, and why?

Carly: Makeup and a good hair day. Sorry that's two things but they really do go together! ;)



CLG: What new work are you writing now?


Carly: I'm trying to finish up HOT NUMBER, the last in the "the Hot Zone" series about three sports publicist sisters and their sexy heroes, which is due out next year. June 2006 I believe. Then I move on to a brand new story for the next hardcover also out next summer. Tentatively, that's titled Cross My Heart. But I'm also gearing up for two brand new books this August 2005: Hot Number and Summer Lovin'. My publisher HQN is doing a fantastic "Win a Makeover in L.A." promotion with a Hollywood cosmetics company! Details will be on my website soon!



CLG: There is always an almost painfully sexy man one of your stories. What makes a man sexy to you?


Carly: A man needs to be real. I like to infuse my heroes with a reality that makes them a man you can relate to, even if he is sexy and larger than life. In my experience, the past is what defines people, so most of my heroes are defined by their past, be it something like coping with Dyslexia (Hot Stuff) or having a sister who ran away (Summer Lovin') or being the youngest child who was orphaned at a young age and raised by a bachelor uncle (Hot Number). Most of all, my hero has to be drop dead sexy and when he looks at the heroine, there's no one else who interests him ever again.



CLG: If you had three pieces of advice for the aspiring-to-be PUBLISHED author, what would they be?


Carly: 1) Write and write often. Hone your skills. 2) Finish a book, revise and send out, then move on to the next one. Don't spend a lifetime revising that one book. It's the rare author who publishes her first novel. 3) Join RWA and learn the business and do it before you have unrealistic expectations or alienate an editor! You can visit the "For Writers" section on my website for more articles and advice!

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Beginning of Women Writer Interviews Coming Friday!

Hey all.

Just a quickie. About to head over my friend's house to start working on a script together. Oh the fun. Literally. Forced to write. Maybe it will jumpstart me into this chick lit mystery I want to write BADLY. :-/

N.E.WAYS, Friday, I will post an interview I conducted with New York Times Bestselling author, Carly Phillips! Once a month (or more often if I shake a leg and get to it), I will have interviews with female writers who I love and who I admire and who oftentimes, get me pumped to want to write. They will talk about writing, why they write, and girly things.

Be on the look out!

Before I leave, just a note that SISTERDIVAS and TNC will go live this weekend. I will be making final touches Friday and sending out right after! They look great. I'm totally stoked.

:-)

Let me leave. Since I've been on official "summer break," I've been busier than ever; however, it's "busy" in my HOUSE and I look a "hot" mess...need to look somewhat presentable to my friends (which means try to pull all this massive hair into a ponytail and brush my teeth--clean clothes are optional)!

Laterz.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Moment of silence

Sir Mixalot's "Baby's Got Back" is being used (well "Sir" and the instrumentals) for a Target back to school commercial. Picture changing "I like big butts" to "I like backpacks."

To say I'm disgusted is an overstatement. That's EXACTLY what I want my kids thinking about. "Hey, ain't this music from the guy who wrote about big butts?"

The world is so twistedly pitiful. I want to pimp slap the exec who stood up in a boardroom and said, "Look, I know EXACTLY what kids want these days. I know what will get them and their parents in the stores to buy school supplies. BIG BUTTS. Wait, wait, wait, let me explain."

I don't EVEN want to know what that explanation would be.

*sigh*

Briefs...

It's late, so I'll be brief...

1. Worked hard today. Created websites for SisterDivas Magazine and TNC Magazine. Have to do a read-through this week before they go live.

2. Did a little work on my new personal site. Hope to have it done in a week or two.

3. Organized my work for next week...it'll be busy. Can't believe I'm still SO busy despite this supposedly being my "summer break" now.

4. Lived through a HUGE storm. Lightning. Thunder. Torrential downpour. Fallen trees. Electricity off for about two hours. Needless to say, I didn't know WHAT to do with all that semi-darkness, heat, and silence. I could have lay and drifted off to sleep, but no. I grabbed a flashlight and finished reading a new book on Andrea Yates. It's a phenomenal book, by the way: The Unspeakable Crime of Andrea Yates: "Are You There Alone?", by Suzanne O'Malley. It's a moving, detailed story/account of a horrifically tragic event. Been the best thing I've read in a while.

Tomorrow, I will hang with my friend, T...we have Mondays and Tuesdays to hang because she works (and when not working, she is sleeping) the rest of the week and weekend. I don't have anything HARD scheduled, so I do plan to work on my book at some point tomorrow.

Wish me luck. Hope to have a report on me having done SOMETHING on it soon! :-/

Nitey nite!

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Hip Hop HURRAY....and a piece of short fiction!!!!!

FINALLY. The book is D-O-N-E! I went to school, again, and helped to finish put the academic book to bed. It will be Fed-Exed to the publisher tomorrow morning. I'm SO glad to get it out of the way. I'm cranky and pissed and tired as hell as a result of having spent the last three days at school, but I am going to try hard to get over it.

I came home, got me a pizza and wings and just vegged out while surfing the net. Tomorrow, I'll be doing a bit of running around before hanging out with my bud, Bill. *HEY BILL!* :-)

Got some projects I'll be working on this weekend. Just bought the sites for SisterDivas and The Nubian Chronicles magazines, and for my own personal website. My website will offer a bio, info about my novels, and occasional reads for everybody. There will be a link to HERE...never fear, I rant and whine TOO much to not have this place, rest assured. LOL SOOOO, this weekend, I will be working on the magazines and on some writing of my new novel idea. I'm very serious about getting writing done over the next four or so weeks. Lord knows how much writing I'll get in once the semester begins.

ANYWAY...it's bed time. I'll go and surf the TV now for a bit.

I'll leave you all with a short piece of fiction. I wrote it about a year ago, but I took it out today and tweaked a bit. Hope you enjoy. More later! :-)

**********
The Little Gray House

There was something remarkable about the little gray house on the corner of Smith and Vine, despite the shutters that dangled from the windows and the porch steps that threatened to crumble with each heavy foot that climbed them. If you managed to climb the porch steps and live, you could peer into the Windex-cleaned windows and see Omar, the eldest son, dribbling his ball on his mother's just waxed, hardwood floors. She doesn’t come yelling after him. She will be too busy chasing the baby, Taylor, who at eight months, can’t stop crawling and tottering around the house, pulling the vacuum's cord out of its outlet and trying to stick his just-from-his-mouth, juicy fingers into the slits. A mother half-near losing her mind races after her kids. Typical day in a family.

If you could enter this little gray house, with its crumbling porch steps and dangling shutters...if you could walk up on this mother who is yelling, "Taylor, come here. Don't touch the outlet, Baby. You can get hurt," you would notice that she's barely touching on 30, but the faint lines on the corners of her eyes and the few, sparkling silver strands of hair laced in her black mane, makes her look older, well-lived, almost worn.

If you could see into her dull brown eyes, you would see that she just wants some time to herself to do what she loves: write. That's why she waits. Waits until the kids are finally asleep and her husband rolls in from his 14-hour-a-day job at the plant, tired and cranky. With her three men asleep, she will trudge up the stairs to the attic: her shop, where she sits with her old, black typewriter and types the stories that should be her life. Stories that only she will read because her husband tells her that writing is silly; her stories won't pay the bills. Stop trying to do things, he tells her. Your role is here, in the house, with the boys, and me.

But I want to write, damn it, she screams inside her head as she picks up Taylor and ushers Omar into the dining room for dinner. She eats. One bite. A few more, but mostly, she watches her sons and thinks, one page. If I can write just one page tonight, all this will be worth it. Blood throbs through the thick vein that takes up residence at her right temple because she knows writing will be the last thing on her agenda tonight. It's Friday, which means Harry will come home, eat his dinner, and will expect her to lay in their bed while he takes the last of her energy and will eventually leave her spent beside him, dozing off only to awaken and repeat the day again.

Monday, July 18, 2005

English Sucks!

OK, not true, but I had to say it.

In the last 72 hours, I have spent over 25 of them here on campus, reading through this developmental writing book that should have been out to the publisher Friday. It's Monday. Today, I'm going through the back end with the senior faculty member overriding the project. Yesterday, I was here from 9am to midnight. Friday, from 9am to 9pm. Today, I'm here to do round robin grading of essays for someone else's class and to try to finish this book so it can be shipped out today.

To say my eyes are bleeding would be an understatement. My beautiful, brown eyes are marred by their own little luggage, :-(

I am DREAMING about this book. I can't wait for it to go away from me. If I hear of faulty predication or mixed construction or subject-verb agreement error, or fragments in the next three to four weeks, I will shoot somebody. Be warned! Thing that sucks is that I know when we get the book back, there will be that ONE error I WISHED we would have caught. Isn't it always the case?

I'm really hoping it's done today because I do want to get a few days of sleep in. Well, SOME sleep. I do have some things planned for this week. Plan to get websites again for the two magazines, SISTERDIVAS and THE NUBIAN CHRONICLES and have them out for the summer by the end of the month. Two weeks late, but hey...grammar and essay writing called. SOWWEE!

I also plan to outline a new book idea that has been burning my brain for about a month now. It's a chick lit mystery that I hope to work into a series. Really excited about it. Also, probably starting next week, I will begin working on a screenplay with my friend Bill. We've been talking about the story for about a year now, and I have some time to start working on that. I know in the fall, with Bill graduating and me losing my mind with a new "gig", it will be hard to find quality time to write.

You know what this means, don't you? ORGANIZATION. Stellar Organization to be exact. I will need to plan my next five weeks away from school meticulously so that I can get a few things underway:

1) Create lesson plans for my new classes
2) Outline a book (maybe start it)
3) Begin a script

There may be, and probably is, more things on that list. I can't just do one thing at a time. I need to juggle all the dishes and the appliances in the kitchen or I feel off.

Anyway, let me end this here. I'm in a rambly mood, and I feel a long ramble coming on!!!

ONE LAST THING: Starting this weekend, I will be posting occasional interviews from hot and up-and-coming (and still HOT!) female authors here. I am a writer--though the writing is slow coming these days--and immersing myself back into writing by talking to writers about writing seems like a good thing to do. PLUS, you guys get to see what good writers consider good writing AND read some interesting things from these authors as "women" and not just writers.

TTFN

Sunday, July 10, 2005

A Brief, Early Morning Moment of HMM

yeah. 7:31 in the morning. on a sunday. crazy. should be in bed sleep. yeah. well, haven't got much sleep since the break-in. i still sleep with the light on, with a weapon and the phone in my bed. when sister isn't here, i sleep with most of the house's lights on. but these things are neither here nor there...

got up early because someone's been stealing my sunday paper, which i PAY for, so damn it, i went outside to get it. scanned the paper real quick (an article about the academic book i helped to write--with a pic--should be in the paper soon), and came upon a q&a column in the LIFE section.

a 12th grader wrote to the columnist, asking if he knew of any black colleges because she planned to apply to black colleges "since she's black." even this early in the morning, with unflattering crust in my eyes, i paused, tilted my head and thought, "doesn't this child know she can go to ANY school she wants (for the most part--money and grades DO amount for something)?" i don't know why her statement "crinked" something in my gut, but it did. i'm all for historically black colleges, but to apply just because you're black is like white people listening to, say, Pat Boone, just because he's white and they're white, too.

i don't know if this child had other reasons for going to a black college, but this is the sole reason she stated in the column. the columnist, bless his heart, writes about Howard University, a prestigious university PERIOD. if i were he, i would have responded with, "baby, child, it's 2005; surely you know you're not kept from going ANYwhere you want."

overall motto for today: get OUT of the box. you might like what you see.

Lit? Genre? What's the deal? Can't we all just get along?

Was out with one of my friends and his wife today (waving to them because they read the blog). Whenever I get around Bill, we talk about books and writing. As you may know, I graduated from a MFA program in '04; MFA programs work to generate writers of LITERATURE. I came to the program as a pure GENRE head. I wrote mysteries. I wrote women's fiction. My goal in coming to the program wasn't to necessarily write LITERATURE. It was to better my writing in general so that EVERYTHING I write, no matter the "genre," was the best writing I could do.

Needless to say, the program shoved LITERATURE down my throat (which isn't a bad thing) and at times, I felt compelled to hide the fact that I was a published author of genre novels; in fact, my fiction professor did not know about my published activities until my third year at the uni.

So why am I telling you all this?

Well, Bill and I talked about lit and genre today. I was telling him how it's gotten so outrageous; IT'S being the riff between genre and literature. He's a big sci-fi/fantasy buff and believes that there are some sci-fi/fantasy books that are literature; I agree. I told him about the huge CHICK LIT vs. REAL WOMEN'S LITERATURE clash that's been going on for a while now.

I remember back when I was like 14, and I would write scripts and bad stories in my 5-subject notebook, and I didn't think about whether it was popular, or whether I would be Shakespeare's long lost illegitimate great (to the umpteenth power) literary grandchild (though I wish that were true--totally dig Shakey!). It was just the love of words and the visions of stories that played on my mind's screen that now others could enjoy. I miss the idea of writing SOLELY what I love without someone going, "Hmm, so well, you write the stuff that goes inside bubblegum pink covers?" And being black, it's even harder because most of the stuff I like to read comes in one color: vanilla. So here I am, liking bubblegum pink, but bubblegum pink isn't dark enough (though I digress).

I'm staring at one of my bookshelves now. I see Plath and Sexton. I see Donald Goines. I see black feminist thought. I see semiotics. I see I'm with Cupid, The Pact, The Psychology of Suicide, Alcohol and the Addictive Brain, The Godfather, several books by Virginia Woolf, nearly two shelves of Red Dress Ink and Downtown Press books. I'm an eclectic reader. I like to think. I like to be entertained. I like to be rescued from my life and to escape into someone else's for awhile. GOOD stories, whether they are chick lit, lit, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, etc., do that.

I think both sides of the fence--genre and lit--need to come together and realize that just as there is literature that is entertaining, there is genre that makes one think, that is about character development and not strictly plot based. Though....I can't help but think of how ANY story, any story that's good mind you, could NOT have something happen (plot) and strong characters that change and call itself a STORY, but then, that's just my opinion...

Monday, July 04, 2005

Storytelling in Aisle Five: ramblings

First the fetish. Then the answer to the question that plagues millions of women.

To you, I will openly admit this: I have a fetish. It’s a succulent, little fetish that sparks all the nerves in my body. It’s. Well, it’s a book fetish. There. I’ve finally said it. I love books. Absolutely adore them. Every time I enter a bookstore, I know that I will lose half my paycheck in there. Usually, anything with words makes me tingle: how to build a better resume, autobiographies, creative non-fiction, inspirational…but I’m particularly fond of fiction. I have books on shelves. Books in boxes. Books in closets. Books under the bed. Books at friends’ homes. People assume I’m well read. Thought-provoking. Well-rounded from all my books. Between you and me, I salivate over a good title and cover and will buy a book and maybe never read it. Time eludes me. Keeps me from reading every book I buy. But I still buy. It’s because of the words. It’s the words that make me walk over to a bookshelf and skim up and down the spines of books, wanting to open each of them and become ensconced in their secrets. Words.

Late at night, I like to turn off the lights in my bedroom. Slip into bed. Retrieve the book du jour from the nightstand. Grab the mini-flashlight that lies beside the book. Read in the dark. There is something so alive about being in the dark—with only you and the words. Physically, beyond you and the book, the world is nothing. Blank. A newly washed blackboard. Except for the one beam of light that filters from your flashlight. A beam that illuminates the book. Brings light to words. To your mind. Imagination.

You may not be able to see your hand about your face. Or the leg of that table you’re bound to snag a toe on when you head to the bathroom at three in the morning, sleep embedded into the corners of your eyes, but you can see—for example—Cheryl, a young woman whose family is on the verge of destruction. You see the tears that hold fast to her lashes, begging gravity to make them fall. You smell the pineapple lotion that Cheryl delicately rubs into her soft shoulders. You taste the rain that falls onto Cheryl’s face as she tilts her head up to the sky, welcoming nature’s cleansing. You hear the screams of Cheryl’s parents that stab through every wall of the house that Cheryl calls home. You feel Cheryl’s emotions. You become Cheryl. Or the antithesis of her. You love or hate her. But you feel something for her.

Sure, you can get the same thrill out of movies, TV, and radio, but think about it. With movies and TV, the images are given to you and for the most part, the five senses are spoon-fed into your psyche. Where is the imagination in that? Nowhere. Radio comes close to stories. A good song can be a story that elicits various emotions from the listener, but why listen to a song to get a story when you can read a story? Have your mind interact with the words. Bring life to the inanimate ink stains on the pages called letters that form words.


(more to come...later)

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Briefs...

A lot of things going on:

  1. 12 days until academic book must be in to publisher. needless to say, the upcoming week will consist of long days, revising and tweaking the book.
  2. putting SisterDivas and The Nubian Chronicles magazines together to be released within two weeks for their summer issues.
  3. typing a manuscript for a client to get it out to publishers.
  4. editing a novel for a client.
  5. getting my newly revised novel, DEATH AT THE DOUBLE INKWELL back out into circulation for possible publication.
  6. creating lesson plans for the new courses I'm teaching as a part of my new position.
  7. co-authoring a casebook on African American literature that will go into a new English 102 book we are publishing.
  8. getting forms filled out on a study I'm doing, along with a professor, on the students I'm teaching in the fall.
  9. translating Latin.
  10. outlining a new book that I really want to start on, but it seems like there is never enough time.

See where my "writing" fell? Tenth! And these are just the things I can remember right now. About to clean my bedroom a bit, organize myself some before my friends call and drag me away from my home.