"Mars Ain't No Place for Ladies" is Live!

Go check out Space Westerns if you wanted to catch my latest short story! I've been told it's tight and well crafted. Even if you don't like sci fi, check it out anyway, I think that you'll enjoy it.

Took me long enough

For Immediate Release

Filamena Young

writer@filamena.com

www.filamena.com

Modern Hardboiled Novel with a Paranormal Twist

Philadelphia, PA - January, 1st 2008 - In the proud tradition of the gritty, pulp, rough and raw detective novels of yesterday, Filamena Young makes available to the public \"Twice Dead Men: A Jack Doe Mystery.\" Only this hardboiled novel has a modern and paranormal twist.

J.R. Blackwell (http://blackwell.livejournal.com), blogger, writer, and photographer says this about the book. \"It’s chocolate in bright, attractive pulp packaging with a sweet and silky center. It’s the kind of chocolate people refer to as “naughty” or use the word “devil” in describing. It’s a noir detective story, with a detective who could have stepped out of Chinatown, sexy dames both naughty and nice, a mystery and action that keeps the pages turning. It’s fun. It’s delicious.\"

For the full review, visit http://blackwell.livejournal.com/165201.html

\"Twice Dead Men: A Jack Doe Mystery\" can be bought through the authors website, a print on demand publication through www.lulu.com .

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Invest in an Idea Bank, the Interest is Priceless!

I keep an Idea Bank. Actually, I keep two, one for fiction and one for nonfiction.

I've heard a lot of writers worry about an over abundance of ideas, or worse, the fear that they'll run out of ideas before they run out of need. Fancy enough, an Idea Bank solves both of those problems.

All it is, for me, is a document on my computer with a running list of short story ideas. At least once a day, I drop in an idea that I can't work on right now. (I have them all over, written on my hands, on napkins, on a physical notebook in my purse.) This way, I don't have to worry about losing them. They're sitting there ready for me when I'm running low on gas. What do I do when I don't have extra ideas floating around? I look over my list again and force something out. The thing about an idea bank is, the story sparks don't have to be any good. They just have to be there, en mass. The more you have, the more chance of you stumbling upon something really good when you're in need.

Format is an issue, of course. With each entry, I throw up a date to keep myself honest, and I structure the format like this... Character + Event = Change of life.

I heard somewhere that a story starts where the main characters life changes. Something like "Jessica Fletcher picked up the phone and answered her nephews phone call. With her first mystery book to be published, her life would never be the same.)

(I'm watching Murder She Wrote. I feel no shame about that.)

So, I have Jessica, the acceptance of her book, and how it was about to spring her into a series of mysteries all over the globe. One or two sentences will do. More than that and you're taking too much time away from what ever projects you're supposed to be working on. --And you do have those, right now, don't you?--

Thank having been said, go make a deposit!

On Contracts

So, you know, you think you know everything because you've read an Idiot's Guide to a few things, and you've looked at some websites by writers and editors and agents. Seems like you've got all your ducks in a row and you start submitting your writing.

Then you get something accepted and suddenly you realize you weren't prepared for actually getting published.

Sounds crazy? I know. I was there. I have a short story being accepted by an ezine, and I was all a tizzy with joy and had already spent my gigantic twenty dollar pay out when I realized I had no idea how to handle getting published.

First, there's the anxioty of waiting for date of publication. (I'm a cynic, until I see the thing up, I'm going to assume the 'zine is going to close the day before I'm published, it's happened to me before.)

Then there's contracts. That turned out to be way more terrifying than it needed to be. Worst still, there was no need for it to be terrifying.

Basically, it went something like this. I got my contract in the mail and realized it didn't have a clause in it defining how much I was getting paid. I panicked. I thought it was the end of the world and I was going to lose my first good shot at getting a pub cred on my resume. Obviously that would result in me never getting away with one, my husband leaving me, and my daughter growing a tail and joining the cheer leading squad. (Yes, I overreacted.)

I called my parents in the music publishing world. I talked to friends, acquaintances, even friends siblings trying to determine if I was supposed to have that in the contract or not.

Finally, after a full day of flailing around like a chicken with her head cut off, I actually just, you know, wrote the editor and asked him about it.

He wrote back saying he thought that was standard.

I panicked again. I asked everyone I knew. Should I demand it in writing, or should I skip it and hope for the best? No matter what I did, I imagined my writing career going up in a cloud of smoke. Yep, I'm that naive.

After debating it with my husband for a while, I finally wrote the editor again. I firmly, but politely told him I needed the payment included in the contract.

I chewed my finger nails waiting for a response.

You know what? He said "sure, it's your writing, you get to be picky about the contract."

I about crapped my pants. He went on later to say: "I believe in Writer's Rights."

So what's the moral? Other than 'it's going to be scary, no matter how much you prepare?' Maybe. I also like 'ask for what you want. if you don't get it and can't live with that, take YOUR writing and go somewhere else. It is yours after all.'

Or something like that.

TTYL