Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they’d like to share with you, the readers!
Today, we are joined by Jeremy Broyles, as he shares the elements he believes make a compelling case for getting your work published.
Check it out!
What Do Writers Need?
In a
recent online exchange, I attempted to articulate what I thought authors needed
in order to see their work published out into the wider world. Like any similar
list, mine is not definitive. However, what follows are the elements I felt I
could make a compelling case for regarding publication. What, then, do writers
need?
1.
Unflinching
belief in their book
2.
Dogged
persistence
3.
Willingness
to celebrate rejection
4.
Time
5.
Luck
It is
item number five that, in my own opinion, we avoid talking much about in our
various writing circles. Let’s face it though; publishing a novel requires a
certain amount of good fortune. Whether that takes the form of a literary agent
signing on to a debut project or a dedicated editor believing in a manuscript,
luck plays a role in the publication process. We are reluctant to talk about
luck because there is nothing to be done about it. After all, it is wholly out
of our control. We want to believe that committing to the next thorough
revision or recruiting beta readers or building a social media following—these
things over which we have some semblance of power—is what is going to dictate
how our project goes from submission to publication. I’m not arguing against
any of that. Revise, recruit, and build. But as a novelist who has experienced
both sides of luck—a little bit of good and plenty of bad—I want to strategize
around how we as authors can reclaim some autonomy from the randomized
happenstance of fate. How can we help manufacture our own good luck?
·
Read
books. All the way through. From cover to cover. I realize this is not the most
original advice, and the advantages it extols are already well understood. We
can learn about ourselves as writers through reading others, reading makes us
good literary citizens, etcetera. But from a purely pragmatic, luck-building
standpoint, reading has a distinct advantage for would-be published authors.
Read the acknowledgments section at the end of novels, and pay close attention
to the people the author thanks. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, those
thanks will include the author’s agent, editor, and/or publisher. Keep track of
those names. When it is time to take your novel out to
agents/editors/publishers, you will already have a point of connectivity with
them given your familiarity with the that particular novel by that particular
novelist.
·
Contact
authors. Now that you’ve read these novels, why not engage the tellers of the
stories in a conversation? Yes, social media is fine, but those places are all
very noisy. Punching through that noise can often prove challenging. Seek out
author webpages; the majority of authors have one. And the majority of those
have a contact link. Use it. As a novelist myself, I am always delighted when a
reader reaches out to me—even if that reader is soliciting advice. “Hey,
Jeremy, I really enjoyed Flat Water. I was wondering how you went about
getting it published.” I am happy to share my own story of publication, and I
know of very few novelists who would attempt to pull the ladder up behind
themselves. Additionally, I think it is also a well-kept secret within the
publishing industry, especially indie, how many authors have direct input into
who is published next. These are, after all, people with direct experience with
the press’ aesthetic. Those same presses recruit their previous authors as de
facto scouts. Having a previous conversation or two with those writers will not
guarantee anything, obviously, but neither can it hurt for them to know a
little bit about you already.
·
Get
facetime. These authors, editors, agents, and publishers—they are not as
reclusive as the industry would have you believe. There are opportunities to
speak with them face-to-face. Here, admittedly, we might have to work harder.
Are there conferences or book fairs in your area? Is an author on a limited reading
tour or offering a craft talk? Attend these events. Digital facetime works
equally as well. For example, if you really want to get in good graces with a
novelist, read their book for your book club and then bring them in for a
visit. To give away another trade secret, authors are nearly universal in their
love for speaking to a group of readers in a shared reading environment. The
idea here is to become more to these people than just a name on a page. Names
on pages are easy to reject. That happens all the time. But names with faces
and histories and stories to tell? These are people, and people are always
harder to reject. To be sure, that happens all the time too. I refer you to
item number three in my previous list. But if we are to manufacture our own
good luck to manifest our published novel, then being people connecting with
other people is the closest we are going to get to a foolproof plan in this
chaotic industry of publication.
I am a
creative writing professor, and I often tell my students that writing is
horribly unnatural. We are each called, in our own way, to tell these stories
rattling around in the six inches between our ears. For some, myself included,
there exists the need to get those stories out of that space and into the world
as a published piece. That process is one rife with form rejection letters and
briskly slammed doors. I do not know that any advice I have to offer will stem
the flow of those letters or prop open any doors. I believe, however, that the
author who creates their own luck is far better positioned than the one waiting
for fortune to turn their way. So I mean it sincerely when I write that on your
own publication journey, I wish you the very best of luck
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On a road trip to Flat Water, the home he fled years before, Monty
Marinnis must confront the complex and painful loss that drove him away and now
demands his return: family. Called back to California for his sister’s wedding,
Monty’s journey from the Midwest to the California Coast is also a journey
through memory, one complicated by the presence of his adoring, but
increasingly frustrated wife Charlotte, from whom Monty has concealed the
horrifying details of his family’s fracture and how he remains haunted by what
he witnessed as a teenager. The Marinnis’s lost their eldest son in a
shocking attack, while Monty watched, helpless. Since that day, he has been
obsessed with finding an answer to a question that has none: why do bad things
happen to some people but not others? Why were the Marinnis’s selected to
suffer? In Flat Water, Monty will be confronted by brutal truths
that rise like sharks from the depths. Faced with such realities, Monty will
have to choose between acceptance and self-destruction.
Buy direct from publisher
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeremy Broyles is an Arizona native, originally from the
Cottonwood-Jerome-Sedona high desert. He earned his B.A. from Doane College,
now University, his M.A. from Northern Arizona University, and his MFA in
fiction from Wichita State University. He is a professor with nearly twenty
years of experience teaching in higher education, and he currently serves as
the creative writing program director at Mesa Community College where he has
taught since 2017. His stories have appeared in The MacGuffin, Santa
Clara Review, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, The Black
Fork Review, Pembroke Magazine, Red Rock Review, BULL,
Suburbia Journal, and Reckon Review amongst many others. His
novella, What Becomes of Ours, was published in 2014 by ELJ
Publications. His novel Flat Water–the story of siblings, surfing, and
sharks and what happens when those things come together both in and out of the
water–was released by Mint Hill Books, an imprint of Main Street Rag Press, in
2023. He is an aging rider of bicycles, a talentless surfer of waves, and a
happily mediocre player of guitars.
