Author One Sheets

Over the past few years the publishing industry has been going through growing pains as it is “morphing” into a new version of itself. At the Romance Writer’s National Conference in Orlando that I attended, almost every workshop had something to do with the changing industry and the role of the internet.

More and more editors and agents want to see email queries and proposals as they do their part in going “green.” Authors are expected to have a web site and promote their books through activity on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads...and a host of other sites. And the ebook is no longer a stepchild of the industry, but a serious, viable alternative to printed books.

As I gear up to go to the ACFW Conference, along with the clothes, business cards, and laptop, one of the things I will be taking along that I have not used in the past is a One Sheet. As I speak to editors and agents, a One Sheet is something I can hand out that will jog their memories of my pitch and of me. It is also something they can jot notes on of our conversation if they choose.

So just what exactly is a One Sheet?

It’s a condensed, comprehensive sales pitch — and there are two types for authors.
1. Author One Sheet – promotes yourself and your services (author, speaker, teacher)
2. Book One Sheet – promotes your book (s)

Things to include on both are:

· Genre – is it contemporary, historical, fantasy, speculative, non-fiction?

· Word count

· Contact information – including website and blogs

· Short biography of yourself

· Photo

For the Author One Sheet, include a short synopsis of your book (25 to 30 words.) And then include other services you provide. For example: online teaching, speaking at conferences or writing workshops.

For a Book One Sheet, include the short synopsis and then also a longer version that goes into more detail. With fiction, you would want to note the important plot points. For non-fiction, you would want to point out the topics. You can also include the target audience and how you intend to market this book.

Make your One Sheet as professional looking as you can. This means white, 8 ½ x 11 inch, paper. Use different fonts minimally to attract attention to the main areas, but stick to standard Times New Roman, 12 point for the main body. Keep things clean and concise.

One Sheets can be used for other business ventures as well. A quick search of One Sheets on-line will put a plethora of examples at your fingertips.

Texas Giant: Richard King of The King Ranch

Hello, Caroline Clemmons here filling in for Jeanmarie Hamilton, who has a home repair emergency today.

Because Jeanmarie and I each write Texas settings for our historical romances, I thught I'd include a post on Texas history. No groaning, please! I promise this will NOT be a pedantic treatise. Grades will not be taken nor test given. Probably. Okay, no tests. Let me tell you about Richard King, nicknamed The King of Texas.

In 1852, Steamboat captain Richard King embarked on one of the most profitable undertainkings of his life. He was a 27-year-old New Yorker riding the Texas prairie. He had fallen in love with the 17-year-old daughter of a Presbyterian minister and had begun contemplating other business ventures that might support a wife and family.  When King and a few companions reached Santa Gertrudis Creek about 45 miles southwest of Corpus Christi, King was impressed with what he saw.

He told his partner in the steamboat business that land and livestock had a way of increasing in value. Cattle, horses, sheep, and goats would reproduce themselves into value. Boats had a way of wrecking, decaying, falling apart, and decreasing in value and increasing in the cost of operation.

King met with his friend, Texas Ranger Gideon Lewis, and the two men hammered out a partnership to establish a small ranch on the banks of a creek in South Texas. King was to provide the capital while Lewis and his Ranger patrol would provide protection from rustlers and Indians. As his cattle operation grew, King located the Mexican owners of the original Spanish land grant to which he had staked his claim and purchased 15,500 acres from them for $300. Shortly afterwards he added 53,000 acres for which he paid $1,800. King was something of a visionary and dammed a small stream on the property. When drought hit the area--as it always does in any part of Texas--he was the only ranch with a good supply of water.

Over the next few years, the Santa Gertrudis ranch continued to grow, although King retained his share in the steamboat business.

 King and his foreman traveled across the Rio Grande to Mexico and bought cattle at low prices. On one occasion, after buying all the livestock in a particularly poor village, he offered to take the town's entire population back to the ranch and put them to work. This was the beginning of Los Kineros, the King People, progenitors of generations of intensely loyal Mexican tenant families who worked the King Ranch.

By the time the Civil War broke out, King was one of the largest landowners in Texas, if not the largest. With a wife and three children to care for, he had increased his holdings to support twenty thousand head of cattle and three thousand horses. He initiated a series of livestock breeding experiments that he hoped would result in better, more durable strains of horses and cattle.

After King's death in 1885, his son-in-law Robert Kleberg took over the operations of the ranch. Following in his mentor's steps, Kleberg and those family members who succeeded him turned the King Ranch into the world's largest livestock operation with branches in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Cuba, Brazil, and Australia. King's initial efforts lived up to his name, The King Of Texas.

Reference, IT HAPPENED IN TEXAS, by James A Crutchfield, Falcon Press, Helena, Montana, 1996.

Thanks,

Edgar Allan Poe - Beta Male?

Three roses and a half-bottle of cognac – a fitting toast to the man who created a literary genre, contributed to the development of short stories as a literary form in American literature, and created macabre images that have spawned countless nightmares, influenced literature and served as the inspiration for books, movies and songs. For sixty years, an unknown visitor (or perhaps, visitors), clothing positioned to obscure his identity, ventured out to Poe’s grave during the wee hours of the night to drink a toast and leave the flowers and liquor at his grave. Visitors from across the country journeyed to Baltimore to witness what had been an annual event since 1949. Unfortunately, this year, that toast did not come.

How fitting that the so-called Poe Toaster (and his conspicuous absence) should be shrouded in mystery. Edgar Allan Poe was known for his literary mysteries; he created the detective fiction genre decades before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dreamed up Sherlock Holmes. His life clouded by tragedy and cut short at the age of forty under mysterious circumstances from a cause that has never been determined, I imagine the man whose stories of horror and mystery changed American literature would have richly enjoyed the aura of mystery surrounding a simple bottle of cognac and a few cut flowers laid on his grave.

This recent flare of interest in Poe piqued my curiosity. I’d always been fascinated by Poe’s works such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue and intrigued by the concept that a modern day pro-football team is named after a poetic work by a man who died long before football became a national obsession. I was aware his works inspired hundreds of movie and television works (he even has a page on the Internet Movie Database – not bad for a man who died in 1849), and have to admit to watching and enjoying several corny Vincent Price movies loosely based on Poe’s works – in some cases, it seems only the title was used. I knew his death occurred under mysterious circumstances, and I was aware he’d experienced tragedy and heartbreak in his life. But I’d never thought of Poe as anything other than a writer. Honestly, I’d never given a moment's thought to Poe, the man.

I won’t bombard you with details on Poe’s life. Suffice it to say his life might have provided ample fodder for a melodrama. Orphaned as a young boy when his actress mother died and his actor father abandoned his family, he was taken in by a family that raised him but never adopted him. Eventually disowned by his foster family, Poe foundered at college and in the Army, lost a brother to alcoholism, and buried his young wife after two years when she succumbed to tuberculosis. By the time of his death, he was believed to be drinking heavily and reported exhibited erratic behavior. Despite these woes, Poe harnessed his literary genius to create an enduring legacy.

He wasn’t a conventionally handsome man, but there was definitely a dark, penetrating quality to his eyes. Poe wasn’t tall (Army records list his height as 5’8” ), and he was definitely not the man to bet on in a bar fight. His nearly black hair could have been cut in a more flattering style. And in his few portraits, he is unsmiling and his face shows the effects of a hard life as he entered middle age. But still, there's an intensity there, especially in those brooding eyes. My author's active imagination supposes his moody genius would have made him quite intriguing. And possibly quite passionate.

A recent article at Romance University by author Tracey Devlyn highlighted the appeal of the beta male. While the vast majority of romance heroes could be considered alpha males, the beta male offers an undeniably unique, intellectual appeal. Edgar Allan Poe could be considered a beta male. Intelligent, prone to star-crossed romance, the type of man to use a pen rather than a sword – just the kind of man a strong woman could engage in a battle of wits and claim lasting love as her victory…intriguing possibilities abound. Of course, we can’t travel back in time (and honestly, if I could, it would be to Liverpool around 1961 in search of another beta male, a young Englishman known for his biting wit, touching lyrics, and beautiful melodies – John Lennon), but it’s fascinating to imagine what might have happened if Edgar Allan Poe had met a woman who was his intellectual equal. And equally fascinating to consider the plot possibilities of a hero with Poe’s moody romanticism. Hmmmm…do I feel a story forming???