Tag Archives: authors

Author Interview: Ada Hoffmann Discusses Monsters in My Mind and Other Projects

Posted on by

We sat down with Ada Hoffmann, author of Monsters in My Mind, to talk about speculative fiction, the state of the writing world, and what’s next.

AutPress: Why MONSTERS IN MY MIND? Why speculative fiction generally, and why this collection?

Ada: I grew up around speculative fiction. It’s a childhood love, and one of those things that was always there. Literary realism never felt grounded to me – it felt small, stifled. Consciously cut off from all the realms of imagination that could have been.

I’ve been publishing short speculative fiction and poetry since 2010. Short fiction is a delight to me – I probably read more of it than novels. I’ve also written a lot, and I wanted to make that writing tangible. A physical object that I could hold in my hands and give to people.

I organized MONSTERS IN MY MIND around a loose theme appropriate to NeuroQueer Books – the theme of being different, monstrous, or out of place, and hoping to somehow be accepted that way. I grouped stories and poems so that they moved through different ways of engaging with that theme in a way that felt, in a very abstract sense, like its own story. A few short works I loved didn’t make the cut, not because there was anything wrong with them, but because they didn’t fit into that “story”. Maybe they’ll go into a future book!

As for the title, I don’t remember where I got it, but it happened fairly late in production. I’m not the first person to have used the phrase. If you want to assume cryptamnesia, then it probably comes from the song “Happy Hurts,” by Icon For Hire.

AutPress: What are some of your favorite sources of inspiration? What/Who else do you read or recommend?

Ada: Sometimes ideas just happen. It isn’t glamorous. “You Have to Follow the Rules” was based on a dream that my friend A. Merc Rustad had. “The Chartreuse Monster” came partly from a random number generator. “Centipede Girl” was inspired by an actual centipede that crawled on my keyboard, and “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library” was based on a list of tropes that another friend of mine liked. One of my best ways to generate ideas is by going to a classical music concert, where I’m forced to sit in a chair for two hours, listen to pleasant noises, and let my mind wander. And my go-to method for coming up with more poetry is just to binge-read any poetry at hand until my mind starts automatically arranging its thoughts into verse.

In terms of other authors who inspire me, Catherynne M. Valente’s collection “A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects” was the reason I got serious about poetry. Meda Kahn’s short story “Difference of Opinion” pushed me to be better and braver about autism representation. I would love one day to build worlds like China Miéville, develop characters like Lois McMaster Bujold, dispense careful wisdom like Rose Lemberg, build up a sense of scale like Robert Charles Wilson, quip and twist the plot like Joss Whedon on a good day, and tap into the depths of my id like Tanith Lee. Anybody wanting more of the queer and neurodivergent themes from MONSTERS IN MY MIND should check out A. Merc Rustad and Bogi Takács, among many others.

AutPress: What’s the most unexpected thing that happened while you were working on this collection (or any particular part of it)?

Ada: Once I had all the stories, putting the collection together was pretty straightforward. Though – one unexpected thing that happened while the collection came together was that I landed an agent for a novel I’d written. That was very distracting, in a good way.

[Full Disclosure: The interviewer was a beta reader for this novel, which fully deserves all the love an agent can give it.]

AutPress: Where is spec fic/dark fic/weird fiction headed? What does it need more of?

Ada: I don’t think spec fic will ever go in just one direction. It’s a big tent with a huge number of things going on.

It’s clear, though, that at least some parts of spec fic are moving towards more diversity and better representation. There’s an increased interest in diverse characters, in diverse authors, in concepts like #ownvoices – and also in the range of new ideas, not just writing about themselves, that marginalized authors bring to the table. I’m really enjoying all the recent counter-Lovecraftian fiction, for instance. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Innsmouth Free Press was doing this for years, but now it’s been joined by some higher-profile friends: Ruthanna Emrys’s “Innsmouth Legacy” series and Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom”, to name two.

Of course, this trend comes with pushback; you don’t need me to tell you the story of the Sad Puppies. It would be naive, especially in 2017, to say that things will clearly keep changing for the better. But we’ll see what happens.

AutPress: What are you currently working on, and what’s next?

Ada: Well, my agent is shopping my novel around, and I’m replenishing my store of short fiction and poetry. I’ve written some really daring short pieces that I’m very excited to share when they find a home. Two collaborations that I love are coming out in the next year or so – one with Jacqueline Flay in Persistent Visions, the other with A. Merc Rustad in Lightspeed. I’m also working on a collection of dinosaur poetry called “Million-Year Elegies”. That’s about 75% done, and a few early pieces from that series are already published online, if you want a teaser. Of course, I’m also still working on my PhD research, in which I teach computers to write their own poetry. My biggest challenge is finding time for all these projects and book promo, too!

Visit Ada Hoffmann online at http://www.ada-hoffmann.com. Pick up a copy of Monsters in My Mind on Amazon or via the AutPress store.

Author 101 featured image

Author Marketing 101, Part 1: Why Every Author Needs to Do Their Own Marketing

Posted on by

Very few writers daydream about becoming their own marketing point person. On the list of exciting things that might happen after you complete your manuscript, “author marketing” might rank near the bottom.

In order to succeed, though, you need to do what every successful author does: take the lead on your own marketing.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to show you how to do just that. First, though, we’re going to answer a burning question: Why do you need to promote your own book?

1. No one knows your book like you do.

You’ve lived with the world of your book for months or even years. You understand what’s going on, why it exists, and how it operates. While a professional promoter or your publisher can help you place promotional materials in front of the right audiences, the most compelling promotions are going to come from you.

2. People like to put their money where their friendships are.

“Author marketing” isn’t just about an author promoting their own book (although that’s a lot of it). It’s also about promoting yourself: as an author, as a source of fun and creative ideas, and as a person.

About 350,000 books get published each year in the U.S. alone. Most of us only hear about a fraction of them, but we definitely hear about the ones our friends and acquaintances write. By building a strong following, you expand your “friends and acquaintances” circle – thus expanding the circle of people who will line up to buy your book.

3. Promoting your book will make you a better writer.

Try this writing exercise: Imagine someone else wrote your book. Generate 3-5 one-sentence descriptions of it that would make you pick it up and read it.

Not easy, right? But a lot of fun. Marketing your book gives you a different perspective on the work. It demands that you write in different ways. And in doing so, it sharpens your own writing skills.

If author marketing feels like a total mystery, don’t fret. As a publisher who markets our writers and teaches them to market themselves, we’re going to break down the details for you over the next several weeks. Stay tuned!

stack of blue hardcover books

4 Things You Can Do to Help Your Favorite Author Succeed

Posted on by

Following a favorite writer can be hard on a fan. Often, it’s years between books, and even when a writer is as prolific as possible, it can be hard to find people to connect with unless there’s already a broad base of fans. That means your favorite funky sci-fi series might just have to be enjoyed in solitude. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to connect your favorite authors to your social media following. There are also a couple of great ways you can help promote a writer’s work so that more people will see it. None of them take very long, and when fans get active about promoting the books they love, it provides opportunities and leads to others who are looking for their next great read.

Since publishing companies base their release schedules and their future book contract offers on the sales of individual books, promoting your favorite writer isn’t just a way to share the love. It’s also one of the best ways to make sure the author will be able to continue doing good work. Here are four things we encourage every Autonomous Press fan to do when they want to help encourage our authors.

1. Review the Book

You don’t need to be a professional writer to put together a review for your favorite book. In fact, you don’t have to write more than a sentence if you don’t want to. Doing something as simple as going to the Amazon page for a book you love and leaving a four or five star review with a statement like “This book changed my life and made me a fan of all this author’s work” is enough. See, the major bookselling sites like Amazon recommend books based on past readers, reviewer social networks, and the number of reviews it has received. Whenever you leave a review, it helps those numbers.

If you want to go a little farther, leaving three or four paragraphs will let you show people why they should love the book. Make sure you give a brief summary of the plot, compare it to one or two other similar works, and provide clear explanations for the things you like about the book. If you do that, then you will be able to sway readers who might be on the fence. You will also be able to get more traction out of your review, because on top of being great for Amazon, it will also be a great fit for book loving social networks like Goodreads.

If you blog at all, then you might want to consider posting a blog about the book. If you do, make sure you link to the writer’s page and to a place where people can buy the book. This does a few things:

  • It helps your review show up when people search for the writer or places to buy the book
  • It helps the writer find your review for their own promotional purposes
  • You provide the book wider traction on search sites by making sure it is mentioned on more websites

2. Suggest the Book to Other Reviewers

OK, so you might have a book blog or a Goodreads account, but chances are that unless you’re a journalist or an aspiring author yourself, you probably don’t have access to a large platform for your reviews. That’s OK, though. You can suggest books to reviewers with larger platforms than yourself, too. Sometimes they will post threads on their venues asking for suggestions, and that is your opportunity to get in there and make a suggestion. It can also be helpful to drop notes or link to your review in the comments of related books. For example, if you follow a reviewer and they cover something similar to your fave’s books, you can always drop a comment suggesting your favorite to people who also enjoyed that book.

3. Nominate Your Favorite to Your Book Clubs

The fastest way to get ten or twelve new fans of a book to talk to is to get that book picked up in your local book clubs. Whether you gather in a friend’s living room to exchange notes on favorites or your club is larger and more organized, it helps to make sure you can spread the word and it gives you the chance to really talk about what you loved in detail. If you have the reach and the support to turn this into a larger-scale reading event like a community read-along, then that’s even better.

4. Buy Copies as Gifts for Friends

Last but not least, if you have people in your life you want to share a book with, it’s important to put copies into their hands. This is most easily done by gifting out copies to anyone you want to encourage to read the book. It also helps you figure out what to get people when you have a gifting opportunity for people you don’t know that well. Nothing works better for a Secret Santa present than a great book, too.

When you go all-out to make sure people know about the books you love, it helps build community around them in ways that are important for both readers and authors. Make sure you are taking the time out to encourage writers by gifting your favorite books. You can also help people find new writers by giving them books that their favorite writers are in–for example, if you know someone who loves Michael Scott Monje Jr.’s Shaping Clay series, you might want to get them The Spoon Knife Anthology to help them explore similar writers, or even Spoon Knife 2, the anthology where “Michael” is revealed to be Athena Lynn Michaels-Dillon, one of our founding partners.

Writing the Marathon: The Pros and Cons of NaNoWriMo

Posted on by

For many first time writers, November has a new name: NaNoWriMo, or “National Novel Writing Month.” Sometimes shortened just to NaNo, the goal is to write an entire novel in just one month. There’s a community and a wide range of advice, but as with any novel endeavor, the bulk of the work is done alone – just you and your writing tools of choice.

If you’ve been thinking about writing a novel, NaNo might sound intriguing – and the fact that several novels that started as NaNo projects went on to become bestsellers might sweeten the deal. Should you NaNo your way to author success?

Here are the pros and cons of NaNoWriMo, from the perspective of editors who read and publish a lot of work from first time writers.

Pros, or “NANO YES”

It gets you writing.

Every novel in existence was written in only one way: the writer(s) sat down and wrote it. Every word.

When you’re new to novel-writing, a structured system like NaNo can help you turn writing into a ritual and a habit. Because the word count demands are so high, you really have no choice but to write every day if your goal is to have a novel-length work in 30 days. If you’re having trouble holding yourself to that schedule, NaNo can help.

There’s no time for the inner critic.

The novels we publish through NeuroQueer Books run about 70,000 words. Divided by the 30 days in November, that’s 2,334 words a day – about 7-10 double-spaced typed pages.

That’s a lot of fiction in one day, especially for a first time writer. There’s no time to question whether it’s any good; you just need to get it done. If your inner critic is keeping you from writing a word, though, speed might be the answer to quieting it down.

Cons, or “NANO NO”

The community can derail you.

Every year, NaNo writers sign up online with every intention of finishing their project, only to get sidetracked by the community aspect of the event. Writing is hard. It’s much easier to join message boards to talk about how hard writing is. If socialization or the shiny new things of the Internet regularly get in your way as a writer, consider skipping NaNo – or doing it without formally signing up.

For the love of cheese, please edit.

No matter who you are or what you’ve written, any novel produced in spurts of 2,500 words a day is going to need editing before it can be published. You’re going to need to cut, rearrange, rewrite, add, and polish – and it’s going to take a lot longer than a month to get your manuscript ready to be seen. Please do not send the results to any publisher until you’re confident you’ve told a solid, engaging story. (Unfortunately, there’s no National Novel Editing Month!)

Is NaNo right for you? Try it and find out. It might be the tool you need to go from first time writer to debut published author.

F*ck You, Pay Me: Why Publishers Need to Pay Their Writers

Posted on by

“We can’t afford to pay, but it’ll be great exposure!”

This statement, from so many publishing outlets that aren’t offering payment in exchange for writing (but who want good writing anyway), is so cliché it’s become a joke among writers. Yet it’s not funny. Paying outlets for writers shouldn’t be rare or magical; they should be the norm. Here’s why.

  1. Writing is work.

Every writer, whether published or not, knows that writing takes effort. Writing is a skill that can be learned and taught, but like any skill, it takes practice and patience to master. The act of writing is mentally and often physically laborious. Add research, interviews, or reviewing materials for context? That’s more work.

Fiction and poetry are fun to read, but that doesn’t make them not hard work to write. Regardless of the genre, labor goes into its creation—and that labor deserves compensation.

  1. Publishers get value from publishing written work.

Why would publishers ask for written work to publish if that work was worthless?

Trick question—they wouldn’t. Whether the goal is to gain ad revenue through online page clicks or to release an on-paper literary anthology, publishers seek writers and their work because they want to make money. Writing has value, and publication outlets know it. Failing to share that value with the writer—say, by being a paying outlet for writers—isn’t just selfish, it’s disingenuous.

  1. “Exposure” is (a bit of) a sham.

“We can’t afford to pay.”

“We offer great exposure.”

Do these two statements seem to contradict one another? That’s because they do.

A website, journal, or press that truly cannot afford to pay its writers (or to offer a fair royalty agreement to them) might be a startup. It might be run on a shoestring. It might be an editor’s hobby or labor of love. All of those are noble, but none of them are likely to be big enough to offer the exposure your hard work deserves.

Is the outlet big enough to offer substantial exposure? Look up its financials in your favorite search engine. Chances are good it’s got the cash to be able to pay its writers—and that its profit margins are as large as they are because it’s making that money off its unpaid contributors’ backs.

Publishers’ goals and focuses are as vast and divergent as publishing houses themselves. That’s a good thing—it means there’s a place for every writer. When deciding where to publish, don’t sell yourself short: the best outlet for your work is (like AutPress) a paying outlet for writers.

Getting Started on Goodreads: Indulging Your Love of Books (and Making Your Writer Friends Happy)

Posted on by

If you’re a book lover who hasn’t fired up a Goodreads account yet, you’re missing out. Half social media, half catalogue, Goodreads lets you wander the stacks of a nearly endless library or bookstore—where the staff recommend new reads based on your personal preferences, steering you toward great literature from both traditional and independent publishers instead of simply plugging whatever’s new, bland, or overstocked.

Sound like a dream come true? Here’s how to start living the dream:

Sign Up

Goodreads asks for a name, email, and password when you sign up. If you like your social media accounts linked together, you can use a Facebook, Twitter, or Amazon account to sign in as well.

Add Some Books

Under the “Home” or “My Books” tab, you can search for books you have read, are currently reading, or want to read, and add them to your personal Goodreads bookshelves. Goodreads’s library contains millions of titles—from the “Big Six” to small independent publishers—and you can also add titles if the search function doesn’t find what you’re looking for.

Rate and Review Your Books

When you add books to your “read” list, don’t forget to give them a rating from one to five stars. Ratings help Goodreads recommend books you’re likely to enjoy. Writing a review also helps the books you enjoyed most float to the top of other readers’ recommendations and build your network on Goodreads. Reviews are a great way to help writers you know get paid.

Get Social (If the Mood Strikes)

Like any public library, Goodreads can be as personal or social as you make it. If you want to stick to browsing book options and building your own shelves, you can—or you can join discussion groups, start a book club, and share your shelves and reviews so that you can talk about books with other avid readers. It’s up to you!

Brick-and-mortar publishing is anything but a meritocracy. It’s easy to find books from the biggest publishers, and tough to find books from smaller independent publishers, even when some of the best literature you’ll ever read comes from a small press. Goodreads helps level the playing field for your favorite writers, and it helps you ensure you’re finding the books you love—not just the books with the biggest marketing budget.