Only writing related activity in the last few days was reading my writing magazines. Read both (Romance Writer’s Report & RT Book Club) from cover to cover before salsa class yesterday. Yvonne was featured in an article in RWR about contest wins. Way to go, Yvonne!
Was happy to see that RWA is planning a new category, one for general fiction with “romantic elements” because that’s what I write. Set out to write a romance, but my manuscript, having a mind of its own, decided to become a mainstream story with a romantic subplot.
And kept noticing Five Star jumping out at me from the pages of Book Club(this is where I review, btw). FS is one of the publishers of the recent batch of reviews, and I thought it was a vanity press. Which it is, and isn’t.
After more research, found two Five Star(s). The first to come up on goggle and Jeeves is Five Star Publications: Publishing Support. This outfit evaluates manuscripts and offers other writer support, for a fee. Second on the search engines is Gale Five Star a legit publishing house respected in the industry. The book I reviewed was by Gale, not the fee charging, house.
Now that that’s cleared up, there’s still the question of the iUniverse book yet to be reviewed. Personally, I have no quarrel with people self publishing. James Redfield did it and hand sold his books from the trunk of his car to enormous success with the Celestine Prophecies. Guess I’ll read the book and then decide its merits from there.
Meanwhile, the 2003 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market waits patiently for me to get through the rest of this batch of reviews, and the Christmas decorating, and the party we’re hosting a week from today. Using WM, I’ll compile a list of likely agents and editors to send my query out to. Am going to wait until first of year to send anything, since still suspect many editors and agents get together for a holiday bonfire and burn all past year’s unopened correspondence.