Guest blog by John Greaves III

I knew this would be a busy day, so I asked my most recent published author to write about his experience.  John first had me edit a full length book about his characters, Zac and Mya, but then he sent me a short story aimed at introducing his characters ahead of the book.  He has just gotten his short story, Pit Stop, published.  I’m turning it over to John Greaves III from here:

My writing journey feels sort of like the barrel riding scene from “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll wait while you race to the theater to see the movie. I just saw it myself and I can’t recommend it enough. Plus then my opening sentence will make sense to you.

Back with us? Good!  Let’s continue.

I’ve been writing since my age was measured in single digits, keeping my stories of being shrunk down and riding puppies in one of my mother’s old college three ring binders.  It took thirty-two more years to drum up the courage to  actually publish something I’d created however.

My mother and my Aunty Womi were both constantly urging me to publish, but I was always intimidated by the prospect of multiple rejections.  I never doubted that I would be rejected.  All of my literary influences, including both Roberts (B. Parker and E. Howard) experienced rejection at one time or another.  To paraphrase Jesus, “The student is not greater than the master.”

Plus the model for success in writing when I was a wee English major was probably one of the grimmest in the history of honest craftsmanship.

  1.    Pour your soul out on paper for months on end
  2.    Compress the finished product into a query letter and send the entire package to every publisher you can find until one of them accepts it for publication.
  3.    If possible, find an agent willing to risk his/her reputation on your unproven scribbling.
  4.    Don’t shoot yourself in the process as the inevitable rejection slips pile up and you see other books which remind you of your own on the bookshelves. (I don’t drink but this one almost boosted Jack Daniels’ quarterly sales figures.)

So yeah, I decided to take a pass. Oh, I wrote freelance nonfiction pieces here and there, edited a magazine in college one semester, but put my fiction out there to be shot down?  Nope.

My character Zac was born full grown in Atlanta traffic. One day my son, Marshal, turned off the Jeep radio to ask for a story instead. I live far enough away from Atlanta to avoid having to help pay for the long neglected sewer systems but close enough to enjoy its legendary traffic. This gave me plenty of time to give Zac a girlfriend and problems to both of them. I’d stop the story when we exited the Jeep and he’d pester me to resume whenever we got back in it. He was so into Zac’s and Mya’s story that I gave him the printed manuscript as a fifteen birthday gift.  Just holding that bound manuscript from Staples snapped some of the fear chains off of my soul.

My soul was still strapped for cash, so I tried using friends and family as editors. No Bueno. But I was too green to know where to get help so I sent out an SOS on LinkedIn and Denise answered.  She’s been a Godsend; insightful, patient and supportive.

While trying to boost my chances of acceptance by traditional publishers I created a short story featuring the characters from my novel to try to prove to any prospective publishers that I was worth the risk.  In grand literary tradition, I was rejected hard.  Denise had already suggested self-publishing and I knew that hip hop artists changed the music business by selling their music from the trunks of their cars. I learned that Riyria creator Michael J. Sullivan’s work was rejected for ten years but took off when he self-published.  Hugh Howey became a legend by self-publishing the “Wool” series. So I imposed a deadline on myself and started to do all of the things an independent author does, from finding a cover designer to self-marketing. And on December 14, 2013, I became a published author. I stared at the notification email for about twenty minutes before I could talk enough to tell my wife. Dream come true.

I’ve gotten great advice throughout my journey so I’ll leave you with some bullet points:

  1.    ACT on your dreams. Remember the barrel ride? If you wait until the river is smooth and free of attackers before you start the journey, you’ll never get anywhere.
  2.    PAY for editing. Too many author published books have reviews that begin with, “Could use an editor”.  I’ve read somewhere that one negative review has a greater impact than five positive ones. Pay for editing.
  3.    PAY for the copyright! Do I really have to explain this one?
  4.    DON’T be social media obnoxious once the book is out. I just saw this again in a great post by Jason Matthews and basically that means don’t pull a John Greaves III and generate tons of posts urging people to buy your book, thanking people for buying your book,  etc.  all with helpful hyperlinks to your sales page.
  5.    KEEP writing! You don’t know which one of your books will resonate with readers and all books don’t grab all readers. However, people tend to buy multiple books by authors they like, so write a lot to increase the number of fish hooks you’ve got in the water.
  6.    BECOME a student of your craft! You are a wordsmith.  What good would the finest swords be if the blacksmith never learned the path to getting his sword to market where warriors could buy them?

I hope this was entertaining as well as informative.  God Bless you as you share your stories with the rest of us.

2 thoughts on “Guest blog by John Greaves III

  1. Pingback: Busy, busy, busy! | John Greaves III

  2. May I add that Denise was my editor also, and in addition to being patient as John said, she also let me set the speed in which I was comfortable to make corrections. I was determined to get my book out as soon as possible because I felt it necessary to help others that were dealing with the same type of problems I was writing about. I can’t thank her enough for allowing me to set the pace.

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