Ok, well she DID do Dallas. I had the fabulous opportunity of meeting with Margaret George after her Arts  & Letters Live lecture that was held at the Dallas Museum in April for her Elizabeth I: A Novel tour. You can read my review of Elizabeth I here. I loved the book, and I was so thrilled that she was coming to Dallas. Margaret is very sweet in person, and her lecture spoke of her writing processes as well as her main character, Elizabeth. This couldn't come at a better time for me personally, as I feel I have now read so much on Elizabeth from non-fiction to fiction that I have a firm grasp of her character.

Yet, as Margaret suggested, there is always something intangible about Elizabeth, something vague that a reader always struggles to capture. But can a writer capture that? I believe Margaret rounded out Elizabeth's story very well for me, especially since the novel focused on the later years of her reign. Most of the reads I came across would focus on Elizabeth's lusty father and all of his wives, and if it focused on Elizabeth there were always scenes regarding Thomas Seymour or Robert Dudley. This time around, we had Dudley's step-son, the Earl of Essex as a leading character along with Lettice Knollys who is also a favorite Tudor of mine.
Margaret's lecture was titled "In the Footsteps on Queen Elizabeth I: Adventures In Research". She shared with us her experiences of becoming a writer, and her research tactics. She didn't have scholarly training as a writer, but she had great fortune to live in foreign places as a child due to father's career. Living in places like Israel, she felt very close to history as a child living next to places where historic events occurred. Her school in Jaffa, The Tabitha School, was run by strict Scottish missionaries, and was supposedly the place where St. Peter raised the little girl Tabitha who had died also known as Dorcas. She said she came from a bookish family, where her father had Ph.D. in 18th century literature and her mother taught high school English, and they all liked to read. She started writing as a hobby when she was young, from stories about horses to teenage stories as something that she did for her own pleasure. Only once she decided to write Henry VIII's story is when she became focused on her writing. Margaret wanted to introduce a young Henry to readers, when at that time there was not a lot about the young Henry as opposed to the monstrous traits that some writers focus on. Although Margaret has given us the story of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots and now Elizabeth, we won't be seeing a book on Mary Tudor anytime soon from Margaret. She feels Mary's life is just so full of depressing events and it would just be sad to delve into her story.

Margaret went on to discuss her research process of reading books for research, making notations (in pencil!) in the margins, and then writing separate index cards categorized by topic. She showed us an example of an index card for her research on Elizabeth's progresses where Margaret made notes of what book referred to which progress in which year and what unique fact she learned that could be incorporated into her developing story. Elizabeth used these progresses as a bit of PR, and she liked to do them during the summer. It was very interesting to see how Margaret detailed out the pages numbers of which book to get herself organized to store facts such as how far a progress went and how long it was. Once upon a time, she used to write her huge books by hand! She also discussed the merits of first person versus third person point of views and how she used those in her books.

When Margaret is done with the actual researching of books and filling in index cards, she prefers to go to the actual places in her story. She visited the sites of Elizabeth just as she did for her previous books. At this point in the lecture, Margaret held up an Elizabeth tea cosy (audience laughed when Margaret was poking around under the tea cosy), showing how some of the royal figures in history get reduced to such a thing, but yet we still have no idea of who Elizabeth was. She really feels like the only way to get a glimpse of what's inside her character's heads is to be put in that setting of which they lived. Elizabeth left almost no private letters, and her poetry that is attributed to her cannot actually be authenticated.  We get nuances of Elizabeth through the contemporaries, but Elizabeth controlled her image as much as she could, as well as controlling what portraits were commissioned of her.

Margaret also discussed the outlook Elizabeth may have had on her beheaded mother, Anne Boleyn. She showed us a photo of the ring Elizabeth had commissioned which features both the portraits of Anne and Elizabeth. Even though she didn't attempt to rehabilitate Anne's reputation, she clearly had some bond or love of her mother simply for the fact that she wore that ring. And her father.. well, what do you do when your father beheads your mother? (More audience laughter). Elizabeth learned much from her father's reign, and she learned early on regarding the dangers of being close to the throne. Margaret shows us a portrait of Elizabeth when she was about thirteen years old, and how it was abundant with books. Did she want to portray the fact that she was a harmless bookworm, with no ambitions of the throne for herself, especially being third in line to the throne? It certainly was a clue that she was someone to not be tossed off as a silly girl. Further portraits of Elizabeth were always heavy with symbols, many dealing with purity and virginity.

The Ermine Portrait, 1585

An intriguing fact of Elizabeth is the fact that she was the Virgin Queen. Margaret discusses how Elizabeth wouldn't marry someone among her subjects (Dudley), which leads to rivalry and maybe riots. Yet, why didn't she want to marry to merge with another foreign power? She knew that to do so, England would be put at risk after her death. She also didn't want to share her status as Queen and give off any power to a consort which would breed discontent just as Philip of Spain did when he married Elizabeth's sister, Mary I. At the time, sexual relations conferred a legal status of a relationship, thus compromising her royal sovereignty. Margaret goes further into the speculations of the marriage negotiations, and the psychological reasons behind Elizabeth's refusal to marry. As popular story goes, King Henry IV of France reportedly said that Elizabeth's maidenhead was one of the three great mysteries of his day. He did not say what the other two were!  The audience loved this little story!

Margaret talked about the major crises or her reign: Mary Queen of Scots, the Armada, and the Earl of Essex. Elizabeth was not a vicious ruler like that of her father. She didn't want to execute Mary Queen of Scots or the Earl, but only did so when she had no other choice when they threatened Elizabeth's crown. An interesting fact Margaret offered is that Essex was the last nobleman to actually challenge the crown thereafter. Elizabeth's reign did not encompass many notable positive changes or events such as the Magna Carta, yet she goes down in history as a much loved monarch.

Elizabeth loved controlling her image such as her orchestration of the famous scene of addressing her troops wearing her virginal white dress as well as a breast plate. If anyone missed the speech she wrote, Elizabeth made sure it was copied and distributed throughout the land. Margaret shows us some portraits as well as her funeral effigy. The effigy was probably made from her death mask and the closest we would come to an accurate image of her, as she was not around to make sure it make her look young and vibrant.


After discussing Elizabeth, the audience was given the opportunity to ask questions of Margaret George. She told us that she is studying Nero for her next book, as she loves larger than life characters, and it takes about five years for her books to shape out. So we'll have quite a wait, yet that gives me the chance to read the rest of Margaret George's books. I think I will start with Mary Magdalene..




Margaret George signing, & me, being ecstatic.

(*Newsletter subscribers get this in their mailbox every Saturday (an early version sometimes un-edited), with access to exclusive newsletter only giveaways. This is the only mail that you will receive from me if you sign up for my newsletter; it winds up in your spam folder. Sign up for my newsletter by looking below my Follower gadget in the left sidebar.)
Christmas Christmas Christmas...It's almost here already!! I hope you are all done with your shopping.. I am not looking forward to the grocery shopping in preparation for the big day. It was utter madness for Thanksgiving.

I finished reading Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World by Abigail Reynolds, and I will have that up for you right after the New Year, and a guest post probably with a giveaway as well courtesy of Sourcebooks.

This week, I also read Kate Emerson's second novel in her Secrets of The Tudor Court Series: Between Two Queens. Some people tend to pull their hair out when there is a new Tudor novel, but I really enjoyed her last novel "Pleasure Palace". With this one, Nan Bassett is the main protagonist who is known to Tudor fans as a mistress to Henry VIII. This review will be posted Monday.

I think I will begin another Tudor novel, Brandy Purdy's The Boleyn Wife aka Vengeance is Mine aka The Tudor Wife.

Every now and then I come across an eye-opening article on the world wide web. With a hop skip and jump, I was at M.'s blog, and she mentioned certain fees for aspiring writers, and directed her readers to L'esprit D'escalier's article regarding Harlequin H-something (I already forgot). Apparently, they offer(ed) this awesome program for those writers who are rich and want to be published. Go check it out. It was indeed interesting. Yes I know the post is a month old. But it is still worthwhile.. think of $0.042 cents/word.. marketing packages.. And I wish I could be a publicist. With Harlequin's rates.

This is the final post on the Publishing Series with Mary DeMuth and So You Wanna Get Published hosted here on my blog.

Part Three Video of Mary DeMuth (about 14 minutes):
~Marketing with the Publisher
~Book Catalog
~Finished Copy of Book!
~Publicity: Radio, Interviews (*I must mention for you BlogtalkRadio!! Fabulous resource!)
~Advance (Money!)
~Royalties (once you outpace the advance!), Percentages (split with publisher)
~Question Session
~The Burton Review is mentioned.. woo hoo my voice is on a video (That I filmed and put on my blog, okay be quiet, you hecklers)






I am not a writer.. yet.. I don't have a novel spinning around in my head yet, or the intense desire to write a book at all. I have dabbled in short stories in my younger days, which I kept to myself, and I enjoyed writing poetry. Several were award winning at my high school, I believe one was worth $10.00. I took Creative Writing in school, and enjoyed the AP English courses. I was the News and Features Editor for my middle school's newspaper. I used to say I wanted to be a writer or a teacher when I grew up, and that is the end of my writing career experience. When my brain gets back to functioning (when the toddler grows up) I actually plan on pursuing the plan to be an aspiring writer. So for now, I'll stick to critiquing books and learn what I can as I do so.

But I know that there are ALOT of others who are ahead of me, and that you just devour any information about learning new things to get you closer to your goal. So I've scoured the Internet for you, because another nickname I had at my old job was Jeeves. They'd say how do you spell this, or I wonder how to do that, and ~voila~ Jeeves (me) would speak up and answer. I had preferred the title Google Queen, but Jeeves is what stuck. So to bring back Jeeves for a moment, I am sharing the best of what I found for those who are on that journey to getting published.

Please begin your journey with my two previous posts of So You Wanna Get Published, featuring Mary DeMuth which also includes external links. (Part One and Part Two)

On Writing & Agents:
Mary Danielson's blog as a guide to writing and living http://www.writechic.com/
Wylie-Merrick Literary Agency http://blog.wylie-merrick.com/
1000 Literary Agents, another database http://www.1000literaryagents.com/
Association of Authors’ Representatives http://www.aaronline.org/mc/page.do
Writer Beware http://www.sfwa.org/beware/
Agent Query ~ 2009 Best Website for Writers Award 5th Year in a Row~ http://www.agentquery.com/
Do's & Don'ts Summary http://www.duotrope.com/writers.aspx
WEBook Services http://www.webook.com/ and WE book blog(tips and resources) http://www.blog.webook.com/
Advice For Authors http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/08/advice_for_auth.html

How to Market Your Book?
Obviously, Get Connected! The online social media network has so many different platforms for you to use. This is a must-do, and the more platforms you are visible, the better!
The Book Market has many different topics of Marketing http://www.bookmarket.com/
4300+ members at http://bookmarket.ning.com/ group to share ideas, tips and tricks.
Some Numbers regarding Self-Publishing http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/story.html?id=1871009
Duotrope's Digest: free writers' resource listing over 2550 current Fiction http://www.duotrope.com/index.aspx
Pitching Tips http://blog.wylie-merrick.com/search/label/pitching

More on Publishing Tips:
Twitter! There are so many Publishing Articles that get twittered. Always put your website in your profile, regardless of what platform you are using.
I found this one immediately via Twitter: Literary Agent Nathan Bransford
Self-Publishing Tips on Publisher's Weekly Blog http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/660000266/post/1490045549.html
MidWest book Review Self-Publishing http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/advice/selfpub.htm
The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom Ross, informative google books view

That's about all I am going to inundate you with. This So You Wanna Get Published Series has been fun for me and I hope it helps someone at some point. A big thank you to author Mary E. DeMuth for allowing me to film her speaking event. Be sure to visit her blog and show her some love as well. Her list of books can be found here and here.

Please refer to my introduction to this So You Wanna Get Published Series in my Part One Post here at The Burton Review.

Here is Part Two of the Guest Speaker Mary DeMuth, with her insights on how to get published.
Click only the middle red X to play the video. You will also get a pop-up of another window for an advertisement, just close that. Then click only the Green X in the middle of the video. And finally, on the bottom of the video at the left corner, click the play button arrow if it doesn't start playing. YouTube doesn't upload videos longer then 10 minutes so this was my only option.



Part Two (14 minutes long) consists of:

~Continuation of Literary Agents (Regional and small presses don't require an agent)

~Marketing the Book to Publishers

~The possibility of revising what comes naturally to you (set aside your first novel and start another)

~Differences between Non-Fiction Proposals and Fiction Queries

~Breaking into Publication via Local Publications (Check your reference library for how to write a proposal and how to submit it)

~Building your Platform

~Social Networking (online and publicly)

~How to Write Non-Fiction Proposals (PDF file at http://www.marydemuth.com/)

~Your Synopsis at Committee

~Editing Process

~Substantive or Developmental Edit, Line Edit

~Editorial letter for Fiction

~Advance Readers Copy (ARC = uncorrected proof)

~Marketing Plan from the Publisher (which continues on Part Three)

I am going to jump in here and give some of my editorial (my mini comments are also in the parentheses at the contents list above) at this point to those who are new to the Book Blog world because I do understand the importance of promotion and marketing and of course how the book blogger, such as I am, helps to influence and gain potential readers. If my fellow book bloggers do want to jump in here with advice for new authors, please feel free to comment with your advice and thoughts.

The ARC's (the advance reader copies) have been receiving a wider audience and more emphasis on book blogs, such as this one. These Advance editions can start coming out on an average of 6 months before the official publication date, and some contain many grammatical errors and typos, other are not so bad. I know of several publishers that aggressively seek out reviewers of books, and therefore they are more well known in the book blog world. I myself have been a book blogger who has been reviewing for publishers and authors since about April 2009, yet I am already bogged down with ARC's to review. I also receive galleys on occasion, which are very basic bound pages, generic covers and very pre-publication and it seems more like a final draft of the manuscript. For example, I have a copy of Girl Mary which comes out in September but I had received it probably in May sometime, and I still haven't had a chance to review it. But with the publication date being in September, I like to keep my reviews more in line to those dates so that potential buyers will be able to go out and have access to purchasing the book.
All of my free time is spent blogging, reading, and reviewing (& I work full-time and I have a family) and most book bloggers take this challenge very seriously, even if it technically is just a hobby since we do not get paid for it. A Book Blogger reviews the ARC online and builds a web presence for the book. Book Bloggers also post reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, WeRead, Barnes & Noble, etc. as well as twittering about their reviews, which further promotes the book on other platforms besides the blog. The author themselves should also always be in contact as much possible to promote their own book, and should have an interactive platform to build web 'friends', either followers on a Blog, Twitter friends, Facebook, Fan bases on Goodreads, etc. The more friendly interaction that occurs between readers/reviewers and the author, the more positive feedback an author will receive in general. Anna Elliott, author of Twilight of Avalon, has been one of these authors for me. She has commented on my blog, and said thank you to everyone that reviews her book for her, and responds to the comments on her own blog. Medieval historical fiction author Susan Higginbotham also maintains a web presence with her own blog and regularly contributes to discussions within the genre that she writes of.

Freebies are a must do for a new author, and even for an established author promoting a new book. In order to gain readers, the new author needs to be willing to shell out some cash and giving their book out to those that will review it for them. You will obviously get a discount on your books you purchase from the publisher. Buy more, save more. The more copies of your books that you have on hand, the more freebies you can give out. It is common sense, building your readership is key before you can branch out and be a successful author. I understand you wanted to be a published author and make money from that, but with this tough economy readers who do not recognize your name or talent are going to be very hard pressed to shell out cash on your full-priced book. So fork out the cash on your end, aggressively pursue new readers, especially within the ever growing online communities such as the blogosphere. Outside of the online arena of promotion, the book blogger will also share their favorite reads with the 'real-life' friends and family, which is promoting the author's book behind the scenes.
For instance, I went to hear Mary DeMuth speak and then went to lunch the next day with a friend. I told her all about Mary's books, and gave her a bookmark that I received from the event. That full-color glossy front and back bookmark shows the two recent books that Mary wrote. That one bookmark can go a long way in getting noticed by new readers. These little freebie promo's (don't forget postcards, magnets, pins, pens, totes) are a wonderful tool for a new author to use for promotion. I once read an author's blog where he was at the post office and mailing out 15 of his books to reviewers, and the clerk was very interested in the subject matter of his book. He thumped his head and realized he needs to have extra copies of his book in his car so that he can give it out to people like that who would be thrilled and interested in reading his material. A little kindness goes a long way.
Another thing to remember are the giveaways that a Book Blogger does. Once a blogger puts up a review, it is the ideal time to offer up a giveaway to the blogger's followers. Sometimes the giveaway is for 5 copies of that book. The publisher/publicist most of the time mails out the books that are won via the giveaway once the mailing addresses are collected. On a side note, bloggers are generous people and also give away copies of books from their own library in order to promote camaraderie and readership of their own blog. Not only are they giving away a book, they are taking time out of their day to package it, mail it, pay for the postage etc.
Blog Tours are also a big part of promoting a book within the Book blogosphere. This is where a selected group of bloggers publish their reviews or a guest post from the author at a specific date. They link to the rest of the members of the blog tour as well, and a giveaway is most often featured. The guest blog from the author can cover any variety of topics, from what inspires the author or an essay of a particular aspect of the book itself. Instead of a guest post, an interview can be featured instead. A blog tour should be promoted on the author's website and most often in the groups where the publisher is a member of. Hachette Book Group sponsors many of the Blog Tours and their giveaways. Sometimes a blog tour is just the review itself. Here is a link to two of my blog tours with them: Follow Me by Joanna Scott Blog Tour and The Mating Rituals of A North American WASP by Lauren Lipton where each had an average of 50 commenter's. And a link to two of my favorite guest posts by authors Anna Elliott and C.W. Gortner.

All this is old news for my current readers, but I wanted to put this information in here and my thoughts on it while I was here for those who are new to this blog and came here by way of So You Wanna Get Published!
Any questions, and comments are welcomed!

(Below is Part One, click for Part Two and Part Three)
Mary DeMuth is an accomplished author, speaker, mom, wife, blogger and of course an inspiration to women everywhere. She writes a blog devoted to tips for those who want to get published at Wannabepublished. Rather than be part of the Author's Secret Society Club, a promise that she made to herself if she ever became a published author was that she would in turn share her trade secrets with the world for those that are curious. She thrives on being a part of a writer's' journey towards publication. I had the opportunity to film one of the events that she hosted in our hometown, and I am thrilled to be able to share my experience with everyone everywhere.
I personally do not have any real experience on the Publishing business except for receiving and reviewing Advance Readers Copies. But during this series, I will share my thoughts and helpful links to places where I think you'll find some helpful information. Obviously, the first point of contact to recommend is Mary DeMuth and this link here at WannaBePublished as it shows her specific journey written out which is also highlighted in the videos.

Please be advised these videos are not stellar, not a movie for effects, it is here to just to learn what Mary had to say in a short amount of time (about a total 0f 40 minutes which will be spread out over the next few days). So sit back, relax and the keyword: listen to Mary's speech. And then it cuts off mid-sentence..(insert snarky smiley face here).. I apologize but then you have to watch Part Two. Click only the middle red X to play the video. You will also get a pop-up of another window for an advertisement, just close that. Then click only the Green X in the middle of the video. And finally, on the bottom of the video at the left corner, click the play button arrow. YouTube doesn't upload videos longer then 10 minutes so this was my only option.