DELIVERING My BABY

I'm a bit past that now, but that's what my

agent said she'd do for me. And believe me, I'm

the one who has experienced all those labor

pains.

I have had a few miscarriages with my manuscripts. I

have come close, but failed at the committee level.

Unlike a baby coming whether ready or not, our little

novel babies require a great deal of perseverance and hard work to actually bring the delivery to pass.

 

The following is not really for published authors, but for those who feel their precious manuscripts are ready to be sent out into the world of traditional publishers.
 

 First that well written query, then if accepted comes the BOOK PROPOSAL which causes most authors to shudder. It's very demanding. In it you must persuade an agent, then a publisher why they should read a

chapter or two of your book.

Here's what I wrote for my novel and maybe you can use it as a guide:
Title:              The Testing of Taylor Jones   Historical Romance with Quest subplot 

Hook:             A venture into the unknown. A step of faith or an incalculable blunder?

Late 1890s: As members of a covert expedition in search of a creature thought extinct, Dr. Garrett Steele, veterinary professor of the New England Museum of Natural History and reporter, Miss Taylor Jones, are thrust to the limits of their courage and endurance in the rugged outback of Australia. He wants to make the find of the century and she wants to write an account that will make her a household name. When betrayed by a rogue team member, danger escalates their passionate clash of personalities into a relationship neither had bargained for. Will each find what they crave, or will they fail the final gut-wrenching challenge?

Then follows a one or two page SYNOPSIS, PROMOTION,  MARKETING and COMPETITION

 

Uniqueness:

v  The fascinating subject of cryptozoology: the study and search for animals thought to be extinct. Many naturalists were involved in this well over a century ago.

v  The huge but elusive Burrunjor has been depicted in cave paintings, rock carvings, and in reports by early Australian colonists. And bones of large carnivores have been located in remote Outback caves. Also the fascinating, mysterious Aboriginal culture.

v  Along with her speleologist brother, Rita has been on a few caving jaunts and these experiences gave her real insight into the feeling of aloneness in the cave depths. 

This is followed by ENDORSEMENTS, CHRISTIAN THEME, INTENDED READERS, and the MANUSCRIPT STATUS - length and whether completed. 

A full AUTHOR BIO, PUBLISHING CREDITS and FUTURE PROJECTS.

I was also urged to get a TWITTER a/c. Would you also like to follow me? @RitaSGalieh

Even at this stage where my agent has given it to her editor contacts, I can only continue praying my novel will eventually find the right publishing home. 

 

    So, as soon as you can, begin working on your Hook and Synopsis for your Book Proposal. It helps by planning ahead.   

 

  *Rita Stella Galieh is a scriptwriter and co-presenter on Vantage Point, a 5 minute program broadcast throughout Australia. She has contributed to several US Anthologies by Adams Media and has two Historical Romances published by Ark House Press. Each year she and her husband minister in Buddhist Government schools, prisons, hospitals & churches in Thailand

My Characters are holding my Manuscript Hostage!

Writers - Has this ever happened to you?

Readers – Do you think this sounds crazy?

Well, crazy or not, this is what happened to me while beginning to write my latest novel.

Keep in mind, this novel is the third in a series set during the War of 1812, so I know these characters, I know this setting, I know what needs to happen in this book. But my characters refused to let me write it!

Thankfully, they let me plot the outline of the book, but forget about writing from their points of view.

Why would they do that?

To understand, you must first know my heroine. She did something bad in the first book of this series. Thus, she needed me to figure out why she would do such a terrible thing so I can redeem her in this book. She really does want people to know why she did what she did and offer her forgiveness. Hence, only after I could appreciate what would have possessed her to behave in such a way did she allow me to begin having the fun job of watching her work through her problems, make amends and get her happily ever after.

Ah, a big sigh of relief. Yay! Now I can finally write.

Nope.

About fifteen pages in my hero put on the brakes. He refused to participate until I figured out his entire back story. And boy does he have a part of his past that I was missing that he is seriously running away from. No wonder why he understands my heroine like no one else. They’re perfect for each other, even if they don’t realize it.

But regardless, they’ve finally given me the green light to explore their relationship so they can get past what haunts them, solve the boundless conflicts they find themselves faced with and eventually arrive at a future they can enjoy—together.

Finally, we'll all have a happy ending :) And I do love those!

Here's hoping you have a wonderful day!

Blessings,

Eva

Eva Maria Hamilton is the author of Highland Hearts, a Love Inspired Historical novel published by Harlequin. Her novel, Highland Hearts, won 2^nd Place in the Historical Romance, as well as the Traditional/Inspirational Romance Categories in the Heart of Excellence Reader’s Choice Awards, and was an Inspirational Series Finalist in the 2013 Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence.

Highland Hearts

Scotland 1748
The Battle of Culloden is over, but one Highlander’s fight has just begun…
Logan McAllister survived years of indentured servitude in the Americas to reach this moment. Now he’s returned to Scotland, ready to redeem the secret promise from Sheena Montgomery’s father – that his years as an indentured servant would earn him Sheena’s hand in marriage. But when he arrives home, he learns that Sheena’s father has died, his contract has been lost… and Sheena is engaged to another man.

To connect with Eva Maria Hamilton online, please visit her at www.evamariahamilton.com

Recovering a Lost File

If you are a writer, chances are you use a computer. There was a time when everybody wrote by hand. Even today in our technological era, we talk about writing, editing and submitting a manuscript, which is defined as “a book, document, or piece of music written by hand rather than typed or printed”. The word “manu” is from Latin and means “by hand”.

In spite of this legacy, the vast majority of writers create, edit, store and (increasingly) read their manuscripts on some form of computerised device. The last person I heard of who produced a novel by hand was Robert Ludlum when he wrote The Bourne Identity back in 1980.

If you pursue writing for any length of time, and if you use a computer, there is a good chance that, sooner or later, you will lose a piece of that writing. I’m a pack rat at heart and hate throwing stuff away. I have snippets of writing I typed out almost two decades ago. Every now and then, while organizing my data, I stumble across one of these old pieces and it’s a little bit like finding an old photograph, or a birthday card.

By the same token, however, I have also lost an awful lot of writing. I used to keep a backup of my stories on an Iomega Zip Drive. I haven’t used the drive for ten years and recently decided to see if it still worked. The drive was always a little bit temperamental, but I was hopeful. Besides, I still had six disks full of backup data. Sadly, the drive refused to read any of the disks and just clicked and whirred in an endless loop.

Old devices tend to die from abuse or neglect, but new ones can give up the ghost just as easily. Over the past month, three hard drives have died on me. One was not even two years old. One day it was working fine, the next it refused to function, which is why it is vital to have a solid backup regime in place. I try to keep at least two copies of anything I deem important. I have all of my writing on a second hard drive, plus a thumb drive that I keep on my key chain (password-protected of course).

Oops, now where did that file go?
Even if you keep regular backups, it is possible to lose something you are working on. You spend a day on your latest novel. Your word count is going through the roof. You do a final format change, save, and shut down your machine. The next day, you open your manuscript only to find that most of it is missing. You start to panic as you realize that you didn’t make a backup yet. You search for any copies but this is the only one. You try to figure out what happened to your manuscript. Then you realize that, during the format change, you accidentally selected and deleted a large portion of the text. The data is gone. A day of hard work down the drain.

Autosave/AutoRecover
Luckily, modern word processors have multiple undo options and powerful autosave features, but these are not failsafe. Many (like Word) allow for recovery from a temporary file in the event of a machine crash. If your PC encounters an error and reboots while you are working, it will present you with a recovery option the next time you start the program. This however does not always work, especially when human error is involved. The program assumes that, when you hit the Save button, you know what you are writing to disk and are happy to lose any recovery data. If you save or delete a file by accident, the machine assumes you wanted to do that and will delete the AutoRecover file.

A deleted file recovered
All is not lost, however. When a file is deleted from your hard drive, the data is not wiped clean. For the sake of efficiency, a deleted file is flagged as “available space”. The information is still there, it has just been earmarked for occupation. Even the filename is available. If you are quick and careful, you can get it back.

Whenever I buy a new computer or install an operating system, one of the first programs I install is something called Recuva by the company Piriform (http://www.piriform.com/recuva). If ever I lose a file, I run Recuva. What it does is scan a drive (or selected directory) for these flagged files. In a matter of minutes, you can locate and recover a deleted file, if you are careful.

How about an overwritten file?
This is fine if you have deleted a file and it is not in your Recycle Bin for some reason. You have a bigger problem, however, if you have edited your file and saved it. The original file will have been overwritten and the AutoRecover file erased. In this case you have to recover the AutoRecover file. To do this, locate your AutoRecover folder. In Word 2007, you can find this by going to Word Options  Save and looking in the AutoRecover file location box. The default is “C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\” (to see this folder, you will need to change the File Options on your PC to display hidden or system folders). If you run Recuva against this folder, you can recover the AutoRecover file of your lost document (it will have the name “AutoRecovery save of <filename>.asd”). If you recover this file and put it back into its proper folder, Word should find it and prompt you to restore this file the next time you load the program.

Prevention is better than cure
While this is useful to know, it is a big hassle. The reason you should install Recuva early on is to avoid overwriting your lost file during the download of the program. If you lose a file, avoid doing anything that could cause data to be written to your hard drive. Just the act of surfing to the Piriform website could cause your lost file to be overwritten.

A simple way to avoid all of this is to perform new edits in a new version of your file. I always start a new edit session by creating a new version of my file. I just suffix the file with “_001”, “_002”, etc. That way, if I lose data from one session, I can go back to an earlier version. And if I spend all day writing, I create a new version after every break. This is the simplest way to avoid a disaster.

In summary:
-    Backup regularly to at least one external drive.
-    Make sure you know where your AutoRecover data is stored (you can change this to make recovery easier if you want.).
-    Make sure that the “Save AutoRecover information every xx minutes” checkbox is selected. I would also recommend changing the 10 minutes to 1 minute.
-    Install a file recovery program straight away. I recommend Recuva from Piriform. It’s free and it works.
-    Use versioning in your filenames.
-    If you really want to keep something forever, print it out on paper. Magnetic and optical storage media will fail with time. Paper lasts ages.

Next time: how to recover data from a hard drive that refuses to boot.