Thank you all for your good thoughts, well wishes and cards. I’m feeling better every day.

During my recuperation we moved into the new house. Who knew I had so many books? Plus, The Fabulist Flash got a makeover, too.

Gregory

January 3, 2008

Gregory A. Kompes, Editor

ISSUE #159

Internet ACE: Building Your Online Self-Platform Platform with Gregory A. Kompes — learn how build, brand, and expand your writing career using Internet Technology during this 10 week, interactive, online course. Begins January 7, 2008. $147. Register Today!

The Writer’s Pen & Grill (Las Vegas, NV) is a social networking evening for writers. Meets the 4th Wednesday of the month at 6:30 PM. Open to all. Visit http://www.PenandGrill.com for location and details.

If your goal is getting published in magazines, you need to flip your internal calendar. Today is never today in the publishing world.

 

It's important to understand the process. Let's work backward. The monthly magazine you're reading today was at the printer several weeks ago. To get to the printer on time, the layout and design was begun many weeks before that. For layout and design to be completed, the content first had to be selected, edited, and formatted weeks or even months earlier. On our timeline, we're now 3 to 6 months ahead of the publication date on the magazine you're holding today.

 

You need to query end-of-year winter ideas during the spring and summer ideas in the winter. Sadly, timing isn't the only factor to getting your ideas submitted at the right time. You also need to know what the editors are planning for their issue so you can tie your idea into their plans. What, you're not a mind reader?

 

Here's the trick to gaze into the editor's crystal ball. Editors plan their editorial calendars well in advance, sometimes two or more years in advance. An editorial calendar is a simple outline of what topics and ideas each issue will cover. With the calendar in place, the editor begins filling each issue with staff writing assignments and by assigning articles from the hundreds of freelance queries they've received and found interesting.

 

Having a publication's editorial calendar is like reading an editor's mind. You can send article ideas that are perfect for that upcoming issue and have them there early enough to be considered. Once you know what an editor has planned, sending the perfect query to arrive on the editor's desk six months ahead of the issue date is easy.

 

So, how do you get those all important editorial calendars?  Here are a few suggestions:  1. Search the publication's website for "submission guidelines."  Often, the editorial calendar or a link to it will be listed; 2. Email or Snail Mail the publication and request their editorial calendar; 3. Subscribe to a paid service that provides updated information. (See Fabulist Flash Recommends below)

 

If you hope to see your New Year's Resolution article in your favorite publication it's too late for this year, you'll need to send that query letter in the spring. As for today, send out those Flag Day queries.

Wooden Horse Publishing provides information about US and Canadian consumer and trade magazines so that professionals and enthusiasts can select publications that fit their purposes. They independently collect and publish contact information for magazines, such as addresses, phone numbers, editor-in-chief and managing editor, website URL, email addresses, circulation, frequency, subscription price. Plus, they publish editorial concepts, writer’s guidelines, reader demographics and editorial calendars. It is a complete set of data you won’t find in one place anywhere else. It is available by subscription to their Magazines Database. Get more information at http://www.woodenhorsepub.com.

1. Did you choose the writing profession or did it choose you?

I was born to write. My dad wrote westerns for a well known western writer. He also wrote articles on animal husbandry and agriculture for several farm and ranch magazines. One of Dad's brothers wrote college textbooks on engineering. Another brother wrote college textbooks on biology. My Mom's brother wrote books of humor and politics. Two grandfathers wrote books of sermons, and a great grandfather wrote hymns in England.

 

2. What is your background? (education, work, etc.)

Studied English, Library Science and Elementary Education. After my children were grown I went back to college and got my legal certificate, an abstractors license, a CPA license and a degree in psychology. Also a songwriter, I took a music business course at Belmont in Nashville, Tennessee.

 

3. When did you 'know' you were a writer?

In 1946 my dad handed me a copy of The Country Gentleman Magazine with two of my poems that he'd submitted. I was hooked when he gave me the check for two dollars they'd sent.

 

4. How would you describe your style of writing?

I write stories that my grandchildren and older friends can read: no porn, descriptive sex, profanity or bloody gore and horror. There is no set style to my writing. Often I surprise myself when a story makes a twist at the end.

 

5. What is your writing process?

There's a journal with me everywhere I go. Everything inspires me, and I just start writing. My characters take on a life of their own, make me crazy, and won't leave until I've put them on paper.

 

6. What was your path to publication?

Self publishing: some of the best writers self published to get their works to the public. I don't want to sit and wait for years for my stories to be read.

 

7. What is your favorite self-marketing idea?

My writers groups, friends, family and word-of-mouth. I've placed ads in area newspapers, hung posters on the church, college and library bulletin boards, and set up book signings at various locations across the area. My books are also featured and sold on Amazon and their affiliates worldwide.

 

8. What are the biggest surprises you've encountered as a writer?

When a friend called me to say that he'd bought a book at a signing and it was my manuscript. At his request, I'd submitted it earlier to an unscrupulous agent who passed it to another writer and self published it as his own work.

 

9. How do you inspire yourself? What are your sources of creativity?

Everything inspires me. Stories are all around me. I can't write them fast enough My daughter-in- law has a huge hound dog that has inspired four stories. He's a character: the antics he does in a week would fill a book.

 10. What is your proudest writer moment?

I love it when someone comes up to me and says about "Shaking the Apple Trees" book and laughs, "I know someone just like Jake" (or Jesse or Jim Bob), or someone else laughs and says, "Did you write that story about me?"

 

11. What's the best advice you were given about writing?

Write what you know and have experienced, and at my age, I've known and experienced a heck of a lot. Use your own life's joys or sorrows to humanize your characters.

 

12. What is your most embarrassing writer moment?

I was in a writers' chat room and a teacher from Oklahoma told the group she'd used my poetry book to teach her seventh grade students how not to write poetry.

 

13. What business challenges have you faced as a writer?

None really. I've learned the writers don't get rich right away, if ever.

 

14. What is your writer life philosophy?

Love it, or don't write because readers know when a story is forced. You have to love (or hate) your characters and get into their personal lives, and their minds.

 

If a story comes to you in the middle of the night, get up and write it down. Don't think you'll remember it and turn over and go back to sleep: it won't be there the next morning.

 

15. When you're not writing what do you do for fun?

Play with grandchildren, spend time with family, have lunch with friends, attend writers' meetings and take long walks in the woods behind my house with my Min Pin, Becky, and a camera. I take lots of photos to illustrate my poetry.

 

16. Who do you like to read?

My favorites are Mike Huckabee, Stephen King and John Grisham.

 

17. What's your advice for new writers?

Keep a journal with you always and write down every thought that comes to you, no matter where you are at the time. Write what you know, and do lots of research. Don't listen to other writers who tell you to write another way or you'll become frustrated. We're all different, with different ideas and tastes. I have a friend who only writes about vampires and werewolves. She doesn't care for my stories, but there's no way I can identify with vampires and werewolves so we don't discuss our work with each other.

 

18. What are you currently working on?

I'm working with my writers' group on an anthology with a target date of February, 2008. My next book, "The Far Red Hills," A Short Story Collection, is targeted for summer of 2008. I'm also working on a novel, "The Pigeon Feeder," and a sequel to "Shaking the Apple Trees, entitled, "Stories from the General Store."

 

Bibliography

The Misplaced Poet

A Little Girl's Treasures

Shaking the Apple Trees, the Stories of Henry Jesse Hatton

The Joshua Mission, a Short Story Collection

Follow through on that New Year resolution to build a stronger online presence...

Internet ACE: Building Your Online Self-Promotion Platform with Gregory A. Kompes — learn how build, brand, and expand your writing career using Internet Technology during this 10 week, interactive, online course. Begins January 7, 2008. $147. Register Today!