ms « Robin Writes

Since the release date of Seven Dirty Words is just around the corner – four days from this morning, to be exact – I’m going to take this opportunity to first tell you all ways you can get your own copy of this great romantic read:

You can enter the giveaway over at Goodreads – nearly 300 other people have done it!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Seven Dirty Words

by Charlotte V. Howard

Giveaway ends January 29, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

You can go directly to the publisher’s website – and get an autographed copy.

You can download for Kindle… or Kobo. AND, you can get that signed too, very soon, through Authorgraph!

You can go to Amazon or Amazon UK for a paperback.

And, by Monday, you can download for your Nook!

Of course, there’s a link on Charlotte’s website too….

Moving right along, let me tell how Seven Dirty Words came to be a book:

I met Charlotte several years ago, online of course, where we both wrote non-fiction articles for a certain unnamed website. Last fall, when I was slightly bored one day, I decided to start a publishing house. For my own two books, of course, and why yes, I will name them, thankyouverymuch: REDUCED and REUSED, but also for other authors – authors who may or may not be able or interested in self-publishing but who were possibly having trouble finding an agent or traditional publisher. And as I’ve mentioned before, RHP is a traditional publisher.

So, never one to let grass grow under my feet, I put out a call for submissions. Initially, I received two: one from a gentleman in Oklahoma, and Charlotte’s manuscript. Now, the gentleman from Oklahoma called me after receiving my email. I had made some suggestions/corrections and told him I’d be happy to look at it again after he made those changes. It was a good story, but needed some work. Two beta readers had gone over it, and I based the requests on their comments.

And there was Charlotte’s book. Seven Dirty Words. Our beta readers really liked this one! The only issue was to tone down some of the “Britishisms.” I have no idea if that’s a real word, but I like it. As you know, English is not always English on both sides of the pond – and that’s all I’m going to say about that!

At any rate, Charlotte was awesome about all this – she listened to what I had to say, made a few changes, and presto: we had a workable manuscript which went off promptly to editing. I will say that our editor was a little flummoxed over a few of those “Britishisms” which remained, the ones that I felt were essential to the story; it does, after all, take place in the UK. Shannon Yarbrough was busy during this time designing the amazing cover…. And then we had a book. To sell.

Charlotte is an absolute joy to work with – she follows through almost immediately on any marketing ideas and suggestions that I throw her direction. This is particularly remarkable when you consider the time zone differences – which I frequently forget about – and the fact that I’m very off-the-cuff about such things: when I think of them, I shoot off an email before I forget!

Besides selling and promoting Seven Dirty Words, though, I really do want to thank Charlotte for taking a chance on a new publishing house – and for helping me learn A LOT MORE about this business. And I’m really glad that I got her on board with RHP before anyone else came along and snatched up her very talented writing!

I wanted to give a shout-out, first and foremost, to my good friend Melinda Clayton, author of the Appalachian Justice series. She invited me to participate is this linked blog thingy and I total dropped the ball – I’m trying to pick it up again, but I seem to be all thumbs. Or all carpal tunnel. Or something.

Anyway, here’s my contribution and, since I’m not all sweet and polite and stuff like Melinda, who actually asked me if I was interested before springing the trap (!), I’m just going to name a couple writers and pass the love along! Just answer the questions on your blog and tag/name/elect a few others to participate too.

And by the way, if you haven’t yet read Melinda’s book, you are MISSING OUT! You can order them here, just call or shoot us an email.

With no further ado:

1. What is the working title of your book?

My first book is REDUCED, so naturally the second one had to be REUSED. But the working title of REDUCED was originally “Abby.” I’m not good at titles, REDUCED stuck in my mind, and the change was made – under protest from a few people!

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

Ha. The story has been passed around a bit, in several interviews, but in a nutshell: I got hungry late at night and chips and salsa sounded good. At my age, it may have tasted good – delicious, in fact – but my stomach disagreed and sent word to my brain. My brain responded with a very strange dream wherein my lead character, Abby, was having a shoot-out at a convenience store. (It’s okay, they were bad guys.) So when I woke up, I realized that Abby was running from/to something and very bad things were going to happen. As soon as she clued me in, I was off and running!

3. Under what genre does your book fall?

Dystopian, science fiction, apocalyptic. Somewhere in there. Not a genre to which I expected to write, it just kind of happened!

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Wow, that’s tough. I don’t think I know enough about any actors to pick them. [Note to readers – do YOU have any ideas? I mean, just in case!]

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Um, one sentence? One??

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Oh, I’d love for an agent to swoop in and take off some of the marketing pressure. It could happen. Maybe. At the moment, however, I’m self-published even though, like a lot of SP authors, I use a “publisher” imprint. It’s legit, though, it falls under the bookstore SAN.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

First draft? There are supposed to be more?? Oh, well, about six months in time; probably four in actual writing. The second book is taking about three, more or less.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Oh, I wouldn’t dare to make comparisons. Although one reviewer did mention Stephen King’s The Stand….

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Abby did. She told me what was going on, I wrote it down.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I hope the title and cover start the process – a little dark, a little mysterious, and just one word: REDUCED. Of course, the question is just what is “reduced?” Morals? Politics? People? Government? Hmmm.