Archive for May, 2010

An Interview with "Dream Wanderers" Author, Paula Brown, Part 3

Thank you all for stopping by again today to read the final installment in the Paula Brown interview. If you haven’t read Part 1 or 2 yet, please make sure to do so. 

Q: What are your goals? What would you like to accomplish next? 

A: I want and need to finish my sequel. The story is done, I just need to find the time for one more look through it. I will probably have one more book in that series and there is another series that has been bugging me for a long time that I just haven’t done anything with. 

Q: What advice do you have for other writers?

A: Write for yourself. Don’t do it for others and don’t do it expecting to become the next famous author, because it won’t happen. If you write for yourself then you just may end up with something that you are proud of, like I did. 

Q: How do you feel about content mills? 

A: They have their place, I guess. I do work for them because it gives me a chance to write and get paid for it. What I don’t like about the content mills is that readers will assume that the author is an expert, which most of the time they aren’t. I wrote one “How To” type of article a while ago that I STILL have no idea of what I was talking about. I also wish that some of them had higher standards as far as grammar is concerned. 

Q: Are there any you’d recommend over others? 

A: I love Word Gigs! They treat their writers with respect and really listen to us. I have also have a love/hate relationship with Demand Studios. When things are going well with them they are fantastic but in my opinion they don’t have a good enough communication system set up.

Q: How you do you balance your writing with being a mom and wife?

A: I gave up sleep. Okay, kidding aside, I try to get a couple of hours of writing done in the morning when I have some time to myself. I also will work a couple of hours in the evening. The rest of the day I just try to grab a few minutes to write here and there.

One of the most important parts of my day is the daily walk that my daughter and I go on. We walk about five miles every day, rain or shine, no excuses. We have been in several 5, 8 and, 10K races, and we even did a half marathon. It’s become an important part of our lives and it’s been a real bonding experience. 

Q: Do you find it hard to fit in time to write? 

A: The hard part for me isn’t finding the time, it’s forcing myself to write when I have the time. It’s just too easy to make excuses.

Q: Do you feel a mother should be able to follow her dreams? And if yes, how should they go about balancing it all?

A: That’s a very interesting question because becoming a mother always was my biggest dream. The moment that my daughter was born I felt like a missing piece of me was suddenly there. Past that, though, following a dream is important and mothers should do it. It should just never be at the expense of her family. (The same goes for dads.)


I guess that the best way to balance it all is to schedule and to share responsibilities. A wife and mother does not have to do EVERYTHING, even though many of us feel like it is all up to us. Wives and mothers need to learn to delegate some of their responsibilities. The kids can help out, and Dad can too. If the dream is something that can be accomplished with the family then she should definitely go for it. If the dream is at the expense of the family, then that’s a different story. 


* Thank you all, again, for taking the time to read this 3-part interview. (Hopefully I’ll be able to post more like this in the future. If you’re interested in doing an interview, please feel free to contact me.) I also want to thank Paula for making this possible.

An Interview with "Dream Wanderers" Author, Paula Brown, Part 2

Here you go folks! This is the 2nd part to the Paula Brown interview. Part 1 was posted last night. 
Q: What successes have you had since? 
A: I’ve co-written a series of books on Walt Disney World. As I already mentioned, I have a novel called “Dream Wanderers”. The sequel is getting closer to completion. And I have written probably thousands of Internet articles for varies companies.
Q: Who would you say influenced your writing? Who do you look up to?

A: I have two major influences. My first one is A.A. Milne. I have loved Winnie the Pooh my entire life and some of my best childhood memories are sitting in my father’s lap and reading the books together.
My other major influence is my sister, Nancy Holzner. Nancy is a serious writer and makes a living full time at it, as does her husband. She has written several computer books under the name Nancy Conner, and she has had two novels recently published with well respected publishers. She has encouraged me and helped me out every step of the way. I never would have done any of this without her.
As far as looking up to someone it would be my parents, who always put their kids and grandchildren first (they still do), and my late grandparents…simple the most incredible people that I ever knew. 
Q: How did you find your publisher?

A: This is kind of a strange story. I am a huge fan of Walt Disney World and am a member of some fan sites. One day I received an email that there was a publisher who was looking for people to write reviews on various rides for a series of books on the parks. I wrote to him and asked if he needed someone to write about Star Tours. The next thing I knew I was writing ride reviews left and right, enough that I got my name on the covers of the books.
In talking with the publisher I mentioned that I had written a novel, and he asked if he could take a look at it. The next thing I knew he wanted to publish it. It’s a very small company, but he really believes in me and that has made a huge difference in my confidence level.
 Q: What part of the publishing process was the hardest?

Since it is a small company I was responsible for getting the manuscript print ready, and I kept having all these blank pages! That was hard for me to figure out; computers confuse me. The other part is the promotion of it. I’m not very good at self promotion, and it is really hard to get the name of a new book out there.
 
Q: Is there anything you would do differently in regards to getting published?


A: I don’t think so. I would rather have a small publisher that likes me than a large one who always tells me everything that I do is wrong.
 
Q: How do you get over submission nerves? How do you handle rejections? Any advice?

A: Since I didn’t exactly find my publisher by the normal route, I didn’t really have to deal with rejections there. Before I found him I was looking for an agent and ran across someone who was rather cold. I took a deep breath and just kept looking. The trick, I think, is to not take it personally, which is next to impossible because writers put a little bit of their soul into their work. 
*Please check back tomorrow for the final installment where Paula discusses future goals, writing for content mills and following your dreams.

An Interview with "Dream Wanderers" Author, Paula Brown, Part 1

As some of you know by now, I’ve been working from home for several years. Over the course of that time, I’ve met some truly amazing people who create works of art from their words alone. Paula Brown, the author of Dream Wanderers, is one such person. (You can purchase Paula’s novel through DriveThru SciFi.)

Recently, I asked Paula if she would be interested in answering some questions regarding writing and working from home. She said yes, and the answers below are the end result. We hope you enjoy!

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?


A: Sure, I was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in Western Massachusetts and will always consider myself a New Englander, no matter where I live. (As I write this I live in Virginia, but we’re moving to Florida in June.)

I’ve always been into the arts. I’ve played the flute since I was 10, and I studied theater in college. I eventually became a disc jockey at a radio station in Western MA. I was offered a job with a station in VA and took it. I met my future husband in the station parking lot. (We will have been married for 21 years in September.) I left the station when my daughter was born in 1991 and never looked back.

Q: When did you first realize that you wanted to write for a living?


A: I never really realized that I COULD write for a living. I would write because I loved to write. I’ve always enjoyed making things up. Sometimes I would write them down and sometimes I would just play them out in my head. I never really thought about it as a career of any type until I found out about places like Demand Studios. 

Q: Have you always wanted to share your work with others?


A: No, pretty much the opposite. My fiction has always been very internal, and I was always scared to let anyone read it. When I wrote “Dream Wanderers”, though, something was different. I was happy with the way it came out, and I loved the ending so much that I wanted to share my work for the first time.


Q: Where do you get your ideas from? What inspires you?


A: They just kind of come to me. I’m a huge Star Wars” fan, and I have always loved the idea of creating an entirely new universe.
 

 Q: When did you publish your first piece of work?


A: The very first piece that I consider published was a poem that I wrote for the official website for the original “Battlestar Galactica”. I don’t write poetry and this was very much a tongue in cheek piece. I had included the words “A Very Bad Poem” in the title, but they removed that when they put it on the site. The site has changed drastically, though, and I don’t think it’s there anymore.
 

*This marks the end of part one. Please check back tomorrow to read more of the Paula Brown interview.