A Big New Wave

I almost forgot to post – in fact, I did forget to post until just now. Last night was my monthly Embroiderers Guild of America meeting, and we were busy preparing for a regional meeting. We’re making favors to give away at the banquet, and I got caught up in doing some stitching on them and was tired when I got home and just went to bed. Then this morning I got word that my old novel, The Unforgiving Minutes was now available on Smashwords and Kindle and I downloaded it and started to read it, and time just got away from me. Then I found a couple of e-mails about planning for my writers group retreat and started answering them.

Then I remembered today is Tuesday, and that I hadn’t written a blog entry.

My bad. I apologize.

Interesting, isn’t it, that a person without a regular job to go to – whose time is ostensibly her own – can somehow get so busy that an important task just doesn’t get done.

I really liked The Unforgiving Minutes. It was the first novel I ever wrote. In fact, I learned how to write a novel by working on it over and over. Unfortunately, I think it shows – oddly enough, in its uneven quality. It has some hardboiled elements and some cozy elements and some weird elements. That opening scene, for example, is decidedly a mix of those three. Still, it’s not a bad story, or at least I don’t think it is. I know I had fun writing it. I hope a lot of people decide to give it a try. The price is certainly reasonable.

We’re planning on spending some time at our writers retreat discussing e-books. Is this the future of the book or only some books? How can we best take advantage of this new way of getting our writing before the public? What’s going to happen to the Big Six publishers? What will be the role of agents? Will there be any room at all for their traditional role? How quickly is this change going to come about?

I think we’re all fairly sure that publishing is in for a big change in the near future and that we’d better be prepared to ride this new wave. To change metaphors in mid-stream, I hope I can follow the steep learning curve ahead of me. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?