Should I Attend PPWC? A Q&A With the Voices in My Head

By MB Partlow, Conference Director, 2015 PPWC

I don’t know if I should attend the conference. I’m not a “real” writer.
If you write, or if you want to write, you are welcome at our conference. You don’t need to show ink-stained fingers at the door to prove your worthiness. If you have the desire to write or learn more about writing, you’ll be welcome at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference.

But I’m shy/introverted/antisocial and nobody will want to talk to me.
Then let me teach you the four magic words: What do you write? Ask anyone that and they’ll happily talk your ear off. And if they aren’t socially stunted, they will in turn ask, “And what do you write?” Instant conversation starter!

Aren’t these things often cliqueish?
People do tend to like to talk to people they already know. But everyone on the conference planning committee, and every single volunteer, is encouraged to reach out and be especially welcoming to the new faces in the crowd. Friendships, critique groups and love affairs have all started between people who were strangers before they met at our conference. (Okay, possibly not love affairs. But it could happen.)

Where should I sit during the meals if I don’t know anybody?
Pick a table, any table. For lunches and dinners, every table is hosted by a faculty member. There are signs on every table indicating who is sitting there and what they write or represent. So you could sit at a table with someone knowledgeable about your genre, or you could strike out in a new direction. You might sit with an author you’re a fan of, or an agent or editor you’re interested in querying at some point (a great way to break the ice). And remember the four magic words!

I can’t possibly talk about my writing. I’ll probably vomit on my shoes if a Big Author or Agent asks me what I write. Help!
Relax, Grasshopper. That story you’re writing? It’s your story. Own it. Be proud of it. Remember that people ask because they’re interested, not to trick you out of your inheritance or learn your secret family recipe for barbecue sauce. Also, the people asking the questions are human beings, not deities. They’ve got pets, children, achy feet, cranky coworkers and a mysterious rattle under the hood of their car, just like the rest of us. So erase any pedestals you’ve erected for them in your mind, and you’ll be just fine.

I’m not a beginning writer. Is there going to be anything there for me?
Tons. When we put together the workshop schedule, we try to balance between beginner, intermediate and advanced writers, as well as balancing the craft and the business aspects with the writing life. And we’ve never met a writer yet, no matter how experienced, who didn’t think there was some aspect of their writing they could improve upon. Sometimes just doing the writing exercises in a workshop will spark ideas you can apply to your work in progress, whether it’s your very first manuscript or your seventh published novel. And don’t forget, this is a wonderful time to network with other writers, as well as industry professionals.

Will you be talking about my specific genre?
We do have some genre-specific workshops, plus we take the attitude that good writing is good writing, no matter the genre. We find that elements of different genres, such as romance, horror, suspense and mystery, cross a variety of genres.

Where do you stand on indy vs. self vs. traditional publishing?
One thing we’re never going to do is tell you the exact path you have to travel. We support all paths to publication, because we want the stories to be told. We want to help writers put out their best work. To that end, we try to provide a balance of insight into as many types of publishing as we can. This year we’re focusing on Choose Your Writing Adventure because we want to celebrate all the choices available to writers today, as well as bring back the fun of the most wildly diverse occupation there is—writing.

For more information about the 2015 Pikes Peak Writers Conference: Choose Your Writing Adventure, please visit our website. 

About the Author: MB Partlow
MB's first paid writing gig was for the A&E department of The Independent. She wrote a parenting column for Pikes Peak Parent for several years, and freelanced for The Gazette. She’s a longtime volunteer for PPW, working her way up from chair stacker at Write Brains to Moderator Coordinator, Contest Coordinator, Director of Programming, and now Conference Director for 2015. A voracious reader across genres, she primarily write urban fantasy, although she ventures into space opera, mystery and magical realism. MB is physically unable to restrain her sense of humor, and her mouth occasionally moves faster than her brain. She blogs at PartlowsPool@wordpress.com, and can be reached at Conference@PikesPeakWriters.com.

Indie Publishing and Me

(Note from the Editor: With so many submissions from PPWC attendees, you are seeing a lag between conference time and the time we can schedule out the posts. But it's never too early to start applying our writers' insights into next year's conference!)

By Fatma Alici

I’d been considering indie publishing for a while. As is my nature, I started to read every online article, every book, and look into every resource I could find. What I got in return in was a lot of conflicting information. Some sources talked about how horrible most eBooks were. Others claimed the only real way to get your books to the public was to go to big publishers. Even more warned of the horrors of traditional publishing and how it would eat your soul.

storydam.com
 

None of it really offered any truly practical advice. I wanted charts, graphs, and evidence. And failing that, I’d like some down to earth advice. From what I already knew, this wasn’t going to make me a millionaire. But I wanted to be a writer. I never thought I’d be a millionaire anyway. What did it really take to be a successful indie publisher? How did one market? How did I even know where to start? Which products or services did it make sense to pay for and which didn't? What should I be aiming for?

Becky Clark and Deanna Knippling aren’t really that much alike when it comes to the ways they set up their publishing. That ended up being an asset for their workshop. They each do it their own way. That was the first thing I learned. When you enter indie publishing, you need to figure out what you want out of it. What are you trying to accomplish? What your goals are will determine everything else.

Together, they had great marketing tips. Marketing is the key to getting yourself, and your book, out there. And it’s definitely not tweeting the same book blurb over and over. Instead, you have to look at everything you’re doing to see what you can apply to marketing. Your author bio doesn’t help you if it is only about you. Instead, what about you makes your books unique? You might write a certain genre, but what makes your vision, your words so different from everyone else’s? It is the small changes to things you already do that are the start of marketing. The rest is realizing you are marketing director, your boss, your editor, and so forth. You have to know your strengths and your weakness.

There is a community of independent publishers around you. Connect with them. They can help you keep up with the latest new developments. They can give you reviews on services you might need. Let’s face it; none of us can do everything we need to be published.

The most important thing I learned was the hardest one for me and they mentioned it a few times. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to do it all wrong. Don’t be afraid of not being perfect. You will mess up. You will get things wrong. You will not be perfect. In the end, you have to accept those blows, dust yourself off and get right back up. That’s what indie publishing has in common with writing -- at first we were all terrible, and with time we found our stride. If I can make it through critique groups and rejection letters, I can take on indie publishing.

About the Author:  Fatma Alici is gamer geek turned writer who blogs about neglectful gods, magic gone crazy, tech that can save you or kill you, and of course aliens, lots of aliens. Each week I take a slice off these realities and put it up at http://www.fatmaalici.com.

The Sex, Money, and Angst Behind Hugh Howey’s Graphs and Data Spiders

By Aaron Michael Ritchey

Okay, the writerly world has been topsy-flippin'-turvy over Hugh Howey and his analysis of the sales, customer satisfactions, and general informations (plural) taken from Amazon's database. Mostly, it concerns the Indie pub revolution and all the different kinds of authors out there. You can google it. I’ll wait. You’ve read it now, right? Well, most of the graphs I don’t understand, so I skip them and read Howey’s thoughts. I’m more of a word person than a graph person. But basically, Indie authors are doing better and taking more market share than ever before.

It’s a lot to take in. I wish I were better at graphs because I like graphs, I really do. So I decided that in my blog post this month on PPW, that I will break down the economic picture and give you graphs that I do understand.

Are you ready? Okay, this is going to get technical very fast.

Mr. Howey has an anonymous data collector which he refers to as his data spider.  I don’t have a data spider collecting the data for my analysis.  I have data aphids. They don’t spin webs, but they do flit about and live very short lives. Like my attention span.

Okay, let’s get to it.

This first graph is an easy one. It shows which kind of writers get published, and I lump both traditionally and independently published together.

I know. The graph is startling. Writers who don’t write have published 0 books. 100% of the books written are written by writers who write. I was shocked. I asked the data aphids to check the statistics again, but most of them died before they could.

Let’s look at the money and sex behind the numbers. I mean, most people are obsessed with either sex or money, finances or romances.  That’s what drives most people.  We’ll do money first, then sex.

Now, you can’t just have one graph about money, you have to have two. So here’s the next one, which is a pie graph, but that’s because I like pie:

The graphs above aren’t a big surprise.  I want a whole mess of money for writing books, really, more money that can fit on this grid.  But a hundred million dollars is about right, just so I can be comfortable. Then there is the money that others are making, like J.A. Konrath, Hugh Howey, Stephen King, those kinds of people. Not sure they are making 200 million dollars, and I was going to check with my aphids, but I couldn't catch them. Anyway, the important thing is how much money I'm making. Rats! My slice of pie isn’t even a point on the Weight Watchers system! Not even on the new Points Plus system! It’s slim.

Okay, that’s the money part. What about the romance part?

As far as I can tell, I’ve split the market after my big haircut. Some women think I look younger and sexier and some pine for my lovely locks now long gone. Only a few women want me for the books I write, but then there’s my wife, who loves and adores me. I won’t do a graph on the fact that my wife is often frustrated with me and doesn't always adore me, but you get the picture.

I’ve been writing, I’ve made some money, and I have met women who wanted me, and I’ve had some successes to be sure. But I’m not where I want to be, as the next graph explains.

I’ve written sixteen manuscripts. I’ve published two. But there are a ton of other books I want to write and publish, so I’ve not even scratched the surface.

Now, what are my options for the hundred or so books I still want to write? Well, I have a graph for that.

So my options are split. I can Indie Pub, I can go with a small press, I can go for the traditional book contract, or I can sell my soul to the devil in return for a lifetime of success and awards and an eternity of burning in hell. Hey, it’s an option. I’ve read my Goethe.

Let me be clear. This graph is controversial. I don’t mean to say that I only have to choose between one of these four options, no, as Catherine Ryan Hyde’s agent Laura Rennert pointed out in a recent blog post, we live in a time where authors can decide, book by book, what they want to do. One book I might Indie Pub (I have one of those in the works), one book I want to get out into the world through a small press (I have a bunch of those), and I have a book that might appeal to the mass market, which in turn would appeal to the big publishing houses (I have one of those). Lastly, writing any book in a sense is a Faustian deal, but we’ll talk about that in the next graph. It’s all about the benefits of writing books and getting them published:

Yes, the best benefit of publishing books is that real readers are reading my work. Real readers.  Real people. Some like it. Some don’t. Some are touched by it. Some aren’t. Some cry and write me letters and get really excited because I moved them with my story.

It’s real. It’s not a fantasy. It’s real. Yes, it’s not perfect, it’s not what I had in mind when I started out, it’s gritty, imperfect, flawed, but it’s real.

And getting to be an author? I get to do all these hard, terrifying, soul-breaking things that bring me joy, meaning, and a rich, full life. It’s a hard life, but a good one. Not for sissies, definitely. Writing and publishing books is not for sissies.

Let’s do one final graph, and this is an important one. It’s as important as the first graph in this little blog post:

Yes, that’s right. If you get your book published, either traditionally, through a small press, or independently, you will have more readers. Some people will read your unpublished book, but not many. Not many.

In summary, since if you have graphs, you have to have a summary. I write books, I publish books, by any means necessary, and what I want is a lot of stupid, selfish desire, a lot of fantasies that have nothing to do with reality. I’m at my best as a writer, as an author, as a human frickin’ being when I let go of all the bullshit I think I want, and just do the next, right thing that will benefit the world. Writing books benefits the world, whether I get the huge contract including Learjet, or if I Indie Pub and become famous, or if I Indie Pub and three people read my book.  It benefits the world. And remember that first graph? If you don’t write books, you will not get published, not by anyone.

My aphids are all dead, so I’ll end here.

Writers write. Authors get published. Some make money. Others don’t. But every book adds to the world. The end and amen.

About the Author: Aaron Michael Ritchey grew up as a garbage can for stories including way too much Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Stephen King. His debut novel, The Never Prayer, was published by Crescent Moon Press in 2012.  More recently, he has two new stories in the second and third issue of a new magazine, Fictionvale. Aaron’s next novel is a happy, little suicide book for young adults and anyone just this side of hopeless.  Long Live the Suicide King is available now!  Aaron lives in Colorado with his moviestar wife and two rockstar daughters.

Stock Art For Indie Writers

By DeAnna Knippling


A moment of your time, please.

Imagine, if you will, that you woke up one morning and found out that your book was on a pirate website, being used as part of a marketing campaign to sell...laundry soap. Or porn. Or the all-singing, all-dancing version of your book. 

OMG! You’ve been ripped off!

You painstakingly track the offender down. 

The offender is shocked at your outrage. Shocked! Because they bought a copy of your book off Amazon. Bought it! Fair and square!

And therefore could do with your book whatever they wanted.

You reissue your demands that this thief take down their pirated books, cease and desist using your book in their marketing campaign, put some clothes on, and stop with the moonlit serenades.

Just because someone bought a copy of your book doesn’t mean they get...copyright. Sheesh!

---

This horrific scenario could happen to you.

Chilling, no?  We must ever be on constant vigilance against the ignoramuses of the world, those Philistines, who have no idea what the difference between buying a copy of a story and copyright are...

But wait!

It’s time to publish your new indie book. 

You’re working on the cheap, because it’s not like you’re making a ton of money off your work, so you don’t get custom art made. Too much money! Either the artist is good and knows what book covers look like (and are too expensive to afford), or they have no clue what to do when it comes to covers.

So you go to a stock art site, and buy some art.

And use it on your book cover. It looks great! (If you do say so yourself.)

Then, suddenly, out of the blue...someone contacts you. Screaming at you for violating their copyright. For your book cover.

“But wait,” you say, “I bought that art!”

---

The thing was, though, you didn’t. You licensed the art for a limited and specific purpose, and the license likely came with strings attached.

I blame the Internet, really. That thing where everything you do has these massive EULA agreements that you can’t do anything about where they hold your software hostage have. It's trained us to skip reading our agreements. And mostly that’s okay. You’d have to be a thousand years old in order to actually read all the way through every EULA you signed, and there’s a good chance that a lot of them won’t hold up in court after they’re tested.

But licensing copyrighted work for reuse is different. That has been tested, many times.

Now, I’m no lawyer and please don’t take what I say as legal advice.

But it might just be in your best interests to read the license agreements you use on your indie books.

The licenses may say things like: “You can only distribute X many copies of the book before you need to start paying royalties.” “You cannot use this image on t-shirts.” “You have no guarantee that someone else won't use this image on their book cover...like Stephen King. Too bad, sucker!”

And they probably also say, “YOU MUST GIVE CREDIT FOR THIS IMAGE.”

You will never, ever get copyright for a work of art unless it is specifically assigned to you. You will only get a license to use the image...and then only in a limited, strictly defined way. 

Don’t be the jerk who stole someone’s copyright. Or else I’ll point and laugh when it happens to you, because karma.

---

Tips:

• Read your license agreement at each site you use. Check that when you buy an image, you understand the agreement for that image.
•  Always give copyright credit for the image. This includes your author photo. Even if your spouse took it: give copyright credit.
• Never use a font that you don’t have a license to use. Fonts are copyrighted. If you download a font that is supposedly free, check the info file attached to the font to make sure.
• A lot of fonts are free for personal use. Ebooks are not personal use. They are commercial use.  Make sure you have permission.
• Save your licenses in the folders where you have the images/fonts/etc., in case the website you got it from goes down or goes away...and someone tries to sue you.

---

Remember: You do not get a “get out of jail free” card just because you’re a cute little indie writer/publisher/DIYer. You’re a businessperson, and you can get sued for ripping other people off, whether it was intentional or not.  

Cover your bum - and be scrupulous about copyright.


About the Author: DeAnna Knippling started freelancing in May 2011 and wouldn’t be able to do it without her wonderful family and friends, especially her husband. In fact, she owes a lot to Pikes Peak Writers for helping her be a better writer, especially through the Write Brains, both in the lectures and in meeting lots of other writers.

Her reason for writing is to entertain by celebrating her family’s tradition of dry yet merry wit, and to help ease the suffering of lack of self-confidence, having suffered it many years herself. She also likes to poke around and ask difficult questions, because she hates it when people assume something must be so.

For more kicks in the writerly pants, see her blog at www.deannaknippling.com or her ebook How to Fail & Keep on Writing, available at Smashwords, B&N, Amazon, and OmniLit. 

Why a Critique Group? Because the Good is the Enemy of the Best!

By Aaron Michael Ritchey

So a couple of months ago, I blogged about how to handle a harsh critique and my critique group read it. Uh oh. I had some ‘splainin’ to do, to quote Desi Arnez as Ricky Ricardo. Some day no one will watch I Love Lucy. It will be gone, like tears in rain.

I  didn’t want to bash my critique group in that other post; I love those guys, and so I knew I needed to write a blog post about the benefits of a critique group - my critique group. They really are a supremely talented bunch, and I feel very grateful they took me in.

Now, let’s be clear, some writers do VERY well without a critique group. They write their books, give them to their editors, and the world loves them. I’ve talked to many Indie pubbed writers making large amounts of cash and they do this (in easy to read steps, for our listening audiences.) I love me a good numbered list.

1)      Write a book

2)      Go through the book and get a working draft, generally a once-over

3)      Give it to a couple of beta-readers, whom they trust

4)      Edit based on beta-readers’ comments

5)      Give it to their editor

6)      Edit based on the editor’s comments

7)      Copyedit

8)      Publish

It’s fast and it seems to work.

I’m gonna' try it at some point, but I still like my critique group. Here is why (and this time, I’ll do bullet points instead of numbers ‘cause that’s how I roll. And this is more list-y and less step-py.):

·         My rough drafts are unintelligible. My second drafts are worse.

·          I like the slow progression of a critique group, because submitting ten pages a week gives me time to pound my unreadable drafts into a semi-readable state.

·         I like the weekly discussions of the book and what arises out of the discussions. Simple comments on a page, like from a beta-reader, isn’t as powerful as the stew of ideas that can be slopped together on a random Tuesday night.

·         It gives me a weekly deadline that I can’t miss. I submit every time, or at least try. It gives my writing life some structure.

·         Writing is a lonely thing, and so the social aspect of a critique group is beneficial. Not only do I get comments on my writing, I also get news of the world, what other people are doing, and general shop-talk.

·         It’s great practice and every time someone doesn’t like what I brought, my skin gets a little tougher. I’m naturally suicidally sensitive, so I need to work on getting thicker skin.

·         My work is better because of the critique group experience.

On that last bullet point, ‘cause I’m out of bullets, I’ll go all freestyle. The subtitle of this little blog post is “the good is the enemy of the best”. Here’s why.

I brought a short story to my critique group. It was a good story, not great, but good. I knew something wasn’t quite right, so I read it over with a friend, and I tried to make it better, but I failed. Then I brought it to the brilliant minds that fill my Tuesday nights. My critique group took something good, and they made it great. The comments and suggestions were fabulous! Most of them. Others I ignored, ‘cause that’s the game.

Ignore what can be ignored, follow through with what can’t be ignored. 

Comments from a critique group is like someone telling you that several million dollars worth of diamonds have been sprinkled across a field of horse manure. You have to search through the manure to find the diamonds. 

Lucky for me, in my critique group it’s mostly diamonds, and not a lot of horse manure. Still, I just know there’s a pony around here, somewhere, and who doesn’t dig a pony?
 

About the Writer: YA Paranormal author Aaron Michael Ritchey has penned a dozen manuscripts in his 20 years as a writer. When he isn’t slapping around his muse, Aaron cycles to look fabulous, works in medical technologies, and keeps his family in silks and furs. His first novel, The Never Prayer, is available now from Crescent Moon Press. Most recently, his work appears in the steampunk anthology The Penny Dread Tales Volume III and in the May 31, 2013 issue of Electric Spec. His next novel is under contract, due out spring of 2014. It's a happy, little suicide book for young adults.

Dammit, Jim, I'm a Writer, Not a Bricklayer!

By Aaron Michael Ritchey

This is the reality of my life. Last month on the PPW blog, I wrote a rousing post on Indie pubbing, giving my stories to the world no matter! It was all so full speed ahead, take no prisoners, damn the torpedoes, or in the words of that lovely workaholic polygamist Dagny Taggert, GET OUT OF MY WAY!

This month, not really feeling it. My current work in progress is too long, too unmarketable, too dripping with tears and complications. All my query letters are going unanswered. I’d rather take a physical beating than email silence from the traditional publishing industry. I’m working with an editor at a small press, but I don’t have a contract yet. Writing feels like a chore, not just a little chore, but like cleaning out the Augean stables. Marketing, even worse. More like when Hercules had to shoulder the world for Atlas to get the apples of the Hesperides. My website is out of date and lonely. I’m off track shopping projects around. Things feel bleak.

I’m so not Hercules at this point. Nor very Atlas Shrugged. I still can mix metaphors, so I got that going for me.

Do I still show up and write and do the marketing stuff? Yes. Do I do it overjoyed and inspired? Hardly. Writing is a vocation, like being a priest or a monk or a nun. It takes stupid amounts of self-discipline. Writing is less divine act of sacred storytelling, more bricklaying. Does the bricklayer lay bricks with joy and inspiration in his\her heart? Some days, probably, other days, it’s just mortar, baby, just one brick at a time.

I was talking with a friend about all this, when it hit me. I’m impatient. I want glory, fame, truckloads of greenback dollar bills, right now. I don’t want to march anymore like a good little writerly soldier. I wanna' fly to Olympus on my very own gold-plated Pegasus. I want Harry Potter amounts of success, and I want it yesterday. I want adoration, damn you.

So I say all that, loudly, in public. People stare, and my friend says, “What would that give you?”

Big pause. Even if I could quit my day job, live the dream, write full-time, would everyday still shine like diamonds, which are forever? No. Would I be able to write all the books I want to write? No. What would change? Maybe I’d get some adoration, but I’d also get packs of critics chewing on my heart.

So I go back to the basics. Writing is its own reward. Writing is hard, but it’s the hard that makes it good. My job is to write stories and get them out into the world. Which means laying one word next to another next to another. Which means sending out the emails to the abyss the traditional publishing industry is becoming, a void where query letters go to die.

It’s so not sexy. It’s so not my dreams of riches and praise. It is what it is. What else should I be doing with my time? Yes, if I didn’t write, I could get caught up on movies, but I’ve been watching a lot of summer movies, and mostly, they are all very explosion-y. Are they worth the precious minutes of my life? Not really.

Writing is worth the time I spend on it. In the end, writing is a gift to the world. Might just be a small gift, but it’s still a gift.

About the Writer: YA Paranormal author Aaron Michael Ritchey has penned a dozen manuscripts in his 20 years as a writer. When he isn’t slapping around his muse, Aaron cycles to look fabulous, works in medical technologies, and keeps his family in silks and furs. His first novel, The Never Prayer, hit the streets on March 29, 2012. Most recently, his work appears in the steampunk anthology The Penny Dread Tales Volume III and in the latest issue of Electric Spec.

One Size Fits All?

By Cindi Madsen

Ever walk into the store and see that magical One Size Fits All tag? I mean, it fits ALL? Then you put that muumuu up to yourself and you think, well, technically I can wear it, but it doesn’t exactly fit. 

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed the other day, noticing all the opinions on publishing. There’s a lot of information out there, which is awesome. I nodded at some of the good tips. But…well, I started thinking, “I’m not sure about that”, “Maybe I’m doing it wrong,” and “That’s sorta' insulting when I think about my process.” Some of the tips were from well-known agents, some from authors with agents, some from people who are writing their first books. I think they’re all valuable for different reasons, but there were a lot of opinions that were stated as fact.

Again, I’m not saying that all the tips are like that. They don’t all fit in one neat category. But I saw one about how long it should take you to write a book. And how you should/self-publish/not self-publish/market/etc. I also noticed a lot of discussion about this at PPWC. What’s so great about right now is that there are so many ways to publish: self, traditional, boutique, indie, Facebook (one line at a time - don’t actually recommend that, but hey, if it works for you…) If you want to write in more than one genre, you can. If you want to get a book on the New York Times Bestseller list, you don’t have to be published by a New York house. There’s also a group of authors they’re referring to as “hybrid authors,” both traditionally and self-published.

Before you make any decision, you want to know what you’re getting into. Big houses have different promotion plans than indie publishers. Sometimes you get more attention at the big houses; sometimes you get more in the smaller houses - the smaller fish in a big pond idea. If you publish yourself, you’ll need to do your own marketing. All of it. Unless you hire someone, which is also an option. A lot of the self-published authors that are doing so well already had a large fan-base and money to do their own promotion, just like a lot of them grow an audience and get promo help after hitting "publish" for the first time. I won’t dive into all the nitty-gritty details of all the methods. I’m just saying, don’t ever let someone tell you there’s only one way to do it, or make you feel badly if you choose another path. (How’s that for a One Size Fits All statement?) Study your options, as well as what’s working for authors in your genre. Build a support system. Keep working on your craft. As writers, we have more options than we ever have, and why wouldn’t you want that? I mean, yeah, you can throw on that floral muumuu and marvel that it fits you, your kids, and your pet dog, but is that really what you want for your book?

About the Author:  Cindi Madsen sits at her computer every chance she gets, plotting, revising, and falling in love with her characters. Sometimes this makes her a crazy person. Without it, she’d be even crazier. She has way too many shoes, but can always find a reason to buy a new pretty pair, especially if they’re sparkly, colorful, or super tall. She lives in Colorado with her husband and three children. Look for her YA novels, All the Broken Pieces with Entangled Publishing, and Demons of the Sun with Crescent Moon Press. More information can be found on her website: www.cindimadsen.blogspot.com.