Then check out the recipe she talks about--Strawberry Dumplings--at http://www.happinessrecipe.net/happiness-recipe-whats-great-encouragement/
Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Words of inspiration from author Cheryl Kaye Tardif via The Happiness Recipe
Listen to Cheryl's latest interview at The Happiness Recipe:
Then check out the recipe she talks about--Strawberry Dumplings--at http://www.happinessrecipe.net/happiness-recipe-whats-great-encouragement/
Then check out the recipe she talks about--Strawberry Dumplings--at http://www.happinessrecipe.net/happiness-recipe-whats-great-encouragement/
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
10 Silly Things You Didn’t Know About Canadian Crime Writer Cheryl Kaye Tardif
So here it is, folks! The complete list of...
10 Silly Things You Didn’t Know About Canadian Crime Writer Cheryl Kaye Tardif (with a teaser introduction from Anthony.)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Guest Post: GumboWriters interviews literary agent Kae Tienstra
Hey, this is Cheryl again, bringing you another great interview--this time with literary agent Kae Tienstra. Kae shares some 'inside secrets' on how to hook this agent's attention. This interview is brought to you by my friends at GumboWriters.com. Enjoy the interview. ~ Cheryl Kaye Tardif
GumboWriters: How long have you been agent and how did you get your start, Kae?
Kae: This is a two-part answer. I began my publishing career at Rodale where I served as publicity director for the book division for over 10 years. I left Rodale in 1993 to launch my own book publicity firm, KT Public Relations. My husband Jon had retired from corporate life and acquired a Masters in library science. He joined me in the PR business. A few years ago I accompanied one of my authors to a popular home and garden show where she was taping several segments to publicize her book. In the greenroom I met a delightful woman who had self-published a book on homemade beauty products. I asked her if she'd thought of shopping it to publishers. She had not, but welcomed my interest. I came back home and talked to a literary agent friend, asking her if she'd be interested in the project. She was, and together we sold the book to Putnam. The same agent and I sold another self-published book to Marlowe and Company. My friend retired from agenting and encouraged Jon and me to launch our own literary agency. She felt that our marketing and publicity background would be most helpful in this "platform driven" business. We decided to keep our publicity business and create the literary agency as a separate entity. We call our new combined business KT/PR & Literary Services.
What makes your agency different than any others?
We are not your standard literary agency. Because publicity is our bread and butter, we are acutely aware of a book's marketing potential. Our decisions are based, in large part, on the publicity potential of the project. We are also intimately connected with our authors. It's just the two of us here--reading the queries and partials and asking for manuscripts. When you sign on with us, you sign on with us, not a junior member of the agency.
What are you looking for specifically that you wish you would see more of?
I love fiction of all kinds, but am interested in finding brilliant nonfiction as well. We don't get much of that and I'd like to receive health books (from pros), and other kinds of nonfiction. The problem with the nonfiction genre is "platform." Most nonfiction publishers today insist that their authors are well-known or that they write a newspaper column, are sought out by television and radio interviewers or have a fabulous blog with a huge readership. Because we have to sell to these publishers, we insist on author platform for nonfiction as well. Jon likes science fiction and is looking for fine writing in that genre. He also is looking for mystery/crime, thrillers and military.
Kae, what are you tired of receiving?
I still get lots of standard sword / wizard / dragon fantasy and I can't sell it. Please, no more!!
How can a new writer get your attention in a good way?
Write a beautiful, "perfect" query. Do your research--online, in books and writer's magazines. Information abounds that will help you hone the ideal query to get my attention and the attention of other agents. Don't send me a long synopsis or chapters until I ask you for them.
How can a signed writer stay in your radar without driving you insane?
Email. It works every time.
What do you wish more writers understood about you as an agent Kae that they don't seem to?
There's no way for authors to understand how much material we process on a daily basis. We talk about that on our blog and it does impact our work to a great extent. But, as Jon is fond of saying, "Good writing trumps all." Our goal is to sift through everything we get to find the jewels, the good writing that can find a home with a publisher. That means we are reading each and every day and that we may not get back to your query or to your requested partial or manuscript in good time. We try, but we tend to fall behind.
What's the best way for a writer to reach you?
Again, email. Or, read our blog http://www.newliteraryagents.blogspot.com/ and post comments. We try to answer all of those.
Article provided by http://www.gumbowriters.com/
GumboWriters: How long have you been agent and how did you get your start, Kae?
Kae: This is a two-part answer. I began my publishing career at Rodale where I served as publicity director for the book division for over 10 years. I left Rodale in 1993 to launch my own book publicity firm, KT Public Relations. My husband Jon had retired from corporate life and acquired a Masters in library science. He joined me in the PR business. A few years ago I accompanied one of my authors to a popular home and garden show where she was taping several segments to publicize her book. In the greenroom I met a delightful woman who had self-published a book on homemade beauty products. I asked her if she'd thought of shopping it to publishers. She had not, but welcomed my interest. I came back home and talked to a literary agent friend, asking her if she'd be interested in the project. She was, and together we sold the book to Putnam. The same agent and I sold another self-published book to Marlowe and Company. My friend retired from agenting and encouraged Jon and me to launch our own literary agency. She felt that our marketing and publicity background would be most helpful in this "platform driven" business. We decided to keep our publicity business and create the literary agency as a separate entity. We call our new combined business KT/PR & Literary Services.
What makes your agency different than any others?
We are not your standard literary agency. Because publicity is our bread and butter, we are acutely aware of a book's marketing potential. Our decisions are based, in large part, on the publicity potential of the project. We are also intimately connected with our authors. It's just the two of us here--reading the queries and partials and asking for manuscripts. When you sign on with us, you sign on with us, not a junior member of the agency.
What are you looking for specifically that you wish you would see more of?
I love fiction of all kinds, but am interested in finding brilliant nonfiction as well. We don't get much of that and I'd like to receive health books (from pros), and other kinds of nonfiction. The problem with the nonfiction genre is "platform." Most nonfiction publishers today insist that their authors are well-known or that they write a newspaper column, are sought out by television and radio interviewers or have a fabulous blog with a huge readership. Because we have to sell to these publishers, we insist on author platform for nonfiction as well. Jon likes science fiction and is looking for fine writing in that genre. He also is looking for mystery/crime, thrillers and military.
Kae, what are you tired of receiving?
I still get lots of standard sword / wizard / dragon fantasy and I can't sell it. Please, no more!!
How can a new writer get your attention in a good way?
Write a beautiful, "perfect" query. Do your research--online, in books and writer's magazines. Information abounds that will help you hone the ideal query to get my attention and the attention of other agents. Don't send me a long synopsis or chapters until I ask you for them.
How can a signed writer stay in your radar without driving you insane?
Email. It works every time.
What do you wish more writers understood about you as an agent Kae that they don't seem to?
There's no way for authors to understand how much material we process on a daily basis. We talk about that on our blog and it does impact our work to a great extent. But, as Jon is fond of saying, "Good writing trumps all." Our goal is to sift through everything we get to find the jewels, the good writing that can find a home with a publisher. That means we are reading each and every day and that we may not get back to your query or to your requested partial or manuscript in good time. We try, but we tend to fall behind.
What's the best way for a writer to reach you?
Again, email. Or, read our blog http://www.newliteraryagents.blogspot.com/ and post comments. We try to answer all of those.
Article provided by http://www.gumbowriters.com/
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Author Cheryl Kaye Tardif interviews Vikram Narayan from BookBuzzr.com
Hello Vikram, and welcome to The Write Type ~ Multi-Author Musings. We are so happy to have you visit us. Since I’ve used BookBuzzr and fReado.com myself, I can say that you offer a terrific service for authors and their readers. And it’s free!
Can you tell us a bit about yourself? Are you a writer? Reader?
I’m a serial entrepreneur who’s obsessed about building the next big thing on the Internet. I earned an MS in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University some years ago. I’m also a keen martial artist and practitioner of Aikido. I’m an avid reader of books and listener of audio books. I do have a book inside me that is waiting to come out some day soon.
Where did the idea for BookBuzzr come from? Why did you decide to create it?
A few months ago, an author friend of mine – Chetan Dhruve – was describing the pain that authors face in marketing their books online. There are two problems with traditional author sites:
1. Most of the traffic goes to 'destination sites' such as Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo or the New York Times. So your author site may not receive the kind of traffic that you would want.
2. Even if a fan of your book comes to your site, it's not easy for her to easily share information about your book with her friends.
So how do you market your book in an era where the attention-spans of consumers measure a few micro-seconds? How do you tempt your potential readers to flip-through the pages of your book? How do you allow easy sharing of your book on networks such as Facebook, MySpace and other social networks?
So I asked him what would be a dream online marketing tool. Chetan, in a few moments of inspiration, described what he’d want and we sketched out the screens of the ultimate online book-marketing tool. I got the product developed in a few months using developer resources at another software business that I own.
What exactly is BookBuzzr and how does it work?
BookBuzzr is a free, online book-marketing technology that can be placed instead of your book-cover image on your author website, Facebook profile and blog. BookBuzzr is more than just a replacement for your book-cover image. It's a portable author website that allows your book information and extract to be shared on Facebook, Blogs, MySpace and more. So every time a fan of yours decides to post your book-widget on his or her blog, your entire information (including where to buy and buzz about your book) becomes available there. It’s like your business card on the Internet!
Apart from the easy share-ability, we've worked hard at making the pages of your book look and act like a real book. So when a reader clicks on the edge of the book, the page turns like a real book. Somehow, this seems to elicit a "wow!" from most people who try BookBuzzr.
fReado.com is the site which carries all the books that are available in BookBuzzr format.
Is it difficult for an author to set up a BookBuzzr widget?
Putting up your book into BookBuzzr format is quite simple. If you know how to share your videos and photos on Facebook or MySpace you know how to use BookBuzzr.
How many authors are using fReado?
We expect to have over a 1,500 authors & books on fReado by the end of this month.
Are there any recognizable names using BookBuzzr? Any “big” authors”?
We have quite a few big name authors using BookBuzzr. Chetan Dhruve whose inspired vision gave us the start for BookBuzzr is a pretty well-known name and his book has become an international sleeper-hit that’s been translated into 5 languages. Author Tony Eldridge whose book “The Samson Effect”, acquired by a Hollywood studio, is also using BookBuzzr.
Are publishers using your service to promote their authors’ books?
Yes. We’re making it easier for publishers to mass upload their books and author information with just a few clicks. We’ve got about 60 Publishers who have begun using fReado and BookBuzzr.
Can you give us an example of a BookBuzzr book widget?
Where do you see BookBuzzr in 3 years?
The other day, we got a testimonial from the author Lee Murphy and he said, “I think you have a terrific service and I know I have already sold one copy on Amazon as a direct result of it.”
So we know that we have a unique little book-marketing technology that every author needs. Our challenge is to let authors know about this free resource that can help every author in building and extending their platform. So in terms of where we see BookBuzzr in 3 years … we want to be the first place where every author goes when he or she begins to think about marketing books online. If every book-cover image on every author, publisher and book-seller’s website is replaced with the BookBuzzr book-widget, then I would say that most of our mission has been accomplished.
Towards this end, we’re making several improvements to BookBuzzr in the coming months to make it easier for fans to distribute a book-widget on their Facebook profiles, Twitter, blogs, social networks and cell-phones.
Thank you, Vikram!! I am sure that authors will be very excited about your service/product, especially after they've tried it once.
For more information on BookBuzzr and fReado, please check out http://www.bookbuzzr.com/ and http://www.freado.com/.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Interview with Meredith Holmes, author of Unseelie
One of my first independent reviewers, Christina Whitcher, is now the PR coordinator for a small speculative fiction publishing company called Drollerie Press, and she recently contacted me about one of her authors. Meredith Holmes lives and writes mostly in Southeast Texas. Unseelie is her first published novel and she hopes there's many more to come.
Today I'm interviewing Meredith about her debut novel, an urban fantasy/romance titled Unseelie.
1. Meredith, welcome to The Write Type. First, how did Unseelie get started?
Unseelie began as an exercise for NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org). A local shop had a display of greeting cards including one with this absolutely beautiful faerie prince on the front and the image just stuck with me so when it came time for NaNoWriMo, I began by writing about this prince, whom I decided was named Cadfael (from an old word meaning "battle prince"). Alfhild came soon after, and the story just grew around the characters.
2. Did you research mythology and legends before writing Unseelie or did you make a lot of it up as you went?
Most of Unseelie was researched in terms of mythological origins of names (I have a "thing" for names!) and stories about ancient heroes and the like but some of it was made from whole cloth or "inspired" by old legends. Take Jenny Greenteeth, for example: in the legends, she's nothing like the character of the same name in Unseelie outside of a few key similarities. Characters like Alfhild and Cadfael aren't based on any historical or legendary characters pre se but I was definitely inspired by some ancient stories when creating them!
3. Is Unseelie a romance?
Yep, but that's not the sole focus--there's a war, conflict between humans and supernaturals, self-discovery... It's pretty complex!
4. Did your background prepare you for writing or is it something that just "happened"?
I never went to school for creative writing though I did consider it! I was always making up stories about imaginary friends as a kid and later writing them down, at the encouragement of my mother and grandmother. I remember making little books at my grandma's house, stapling them together to "bind" them and giving them to my grandparents for the bookshelf! Writing just grew out of that early fantasy life and the support of my mom and maternal grandmother.
5. What's your next project?
Other than finishing grad school? I have several stories in the works right now but the one in the home-stretch is the first of a trilogy about demons and some pretty ancient alliances that carry into the modern world. It's another supernatural-romance story but much different in tone and characters than Unseelie. It's more of a mystery than not but it's definitely supernatural romance.
6. You work on more than one story at once then?
Definitely. I get ideas and have to start writing them out before I lose them. Some authors keep notebooks of plot ideas or characters, I keep files on my hard drive (backed up to the moon and back--I'm super careful about that!). I have snippets of stories, some all the way up to their fifth and sixth chapter, waiting in the wings. I tend to work on the story whose characters are most insistent on getting written first.
7. How does writing impact your life outside of the process?
Oh, it's pretty much in every aspect of my life. If I'm not doing it, I'm thinking about it and it's become a very big part of my life. It's gone from me poking at a NaNoWriMo story to getting published by Drollerie Press. Unseelie is my first book (I've had short stories in ezines before, and they are now on Drollerie) so of course I was really excited during the entire process. Now that Unseelie is out and available since December on Drollerie's site, Mobipocket and Fictionwise, the excitement is still there but it's getting spread out to my WIPs as well because now I know what it's like!
Links:
http://www.meredithholmes.com/
http://drolleriepress.com/bookshop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=18_41
Email Meredith at: meri.holmes (at ) gmail (dot) com
Thank you again, Meredith, for sharing your inspiring journey with us. I wish you the best in success! ~Cheryl Kaye Tardif, bestselling author of Whale Song
1. Meredith, welcome to The Write Type. First, how did Unseelie get started?
Unseelie began as an exercise for NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org). A local shop had a display of greeting cards including one with this absolutely beautiful faerie prince on the front and the image just stuck with me so when it came time for NaNoWriMo, I began by writing about this prince, whom I decided was named Cadfael (from an old word meaning "battle prince"). Alfhild came soon after, and the story just grew around the characters.
2. Did you research mythology and legends before writing Unseelie or did you make a lot of it up as you went?
Most of Unseelie was researched in terms of mythological origins of names (I have a "thing" for names!) and stories about ancient heroes and the like but some of it was made from whole cloth or "inspired" by old legends. Take Jenny Greenteeth, for example: in the legends, she's nothing like the character of the same name in Unseelie outside of a few key similarities. Characters like Alfhild and Cadfael aren't based on any historical or legendary characters pre se but I was definitely inspired by some ancient stories when creating them!
3. Is Unseelie a romance?
Yep, but that's not the sole focus--there's a war, conflict between humans and supernaturals, self-discovery... It's pretty complex!
4. Did your background prepare you for writing or is it something that just "happened"?
I never went to school for creative writing though I did consider it! I was always making up stories about imaginary friends as a kid and later writing them down, at the encouragement of my mother and grandmother. I remember making little books at my grandma's house, stapling them together to "bind" them and giving them to my grandparents for the bookshelf! Writing just grew out of that early fantasy life and the support of my mom and maternal grandmother.
5. What's your next project?
Other than finishing grad school? I have several stories in the works right now but the one in the home-stretch is the first of a trilogy about demons and some pretty ancient alliances that carry into the modern world. It's another supernatural-romance story but much different in tone and characters than Unseelie. It's more of a mystery than not but it's definitely supernatural romance.
6. You work on more than one story at once then?
Definitely. I get ideas and have to start writing them out before I lose them. Some authors keep notebooks of plot ideas or characters, I keep files on my hard drive (backed up to the moon and back--I'm super careful about that!). I have snippets of stories, some all the way up to their fifth and sixth chapter, waiting in the wings. I tend to work on the story whose characters are most insistent on getting written first.
7. How does writing impact your life outside of the process?
Oh, it's pretty much in every aspect of my life. If I'm not doing it, I'm thinking about it and it's become a very big part of my life. It's gone from me poking at a NaNoWriMo story to getting published by Drollerie Press. Unseelie is my first book (I've had short stories in ezines before, and they are now on Drollerie) so of course I was really excited during the entire process. Now that Unseelie is out and available since December on Drollerie's site, Mobipocket and Fictionwise, the excitement is still there but it's getting spread out to my WIPs as well because now I know what it's like!
Links:
http://www.meredithholmes.com/
http://drolleriepress.com/bookshop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=18_41
Email Meredith at: meri.holmes (at ) gmail (dot) com
Thank you again, Meredith, for sharing your inspiring journey with us. I wish you the best in success! ~Cheryl Kaye Tardif, bestselling author of Whale Song
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Author Jeff Rivera interviews Cheryl Kaye Tardif on GumboWriters.com
I was recently interviewed by a good friend and fellow author, Jeff Rivera. Not only has Jeff been a supporter of me and my work, he has taught me a few new tricks, mainly how to write compelling and intriguing query letters. His tips led to me signing with a reputable New York agent. For this I am eternally grateful to Jeff.
Jeff asked me some interesting questions, and the first part of my interview is on GumboWriters.com now. In it, I talk about the things I've done to market my books.
I'll let you know when the next part of the interview is up.
Read the interview on GumboWriters.com.
~Cheryl Kaye Tardif
Jeff asked me some interesting questions, and the first part of my interview is on GumboWriters.com now. In it, I talk about the things I've done to market my books.
I'll let you know when the next part of the interview is up.
Read the interview on GumboWriters.com.
~Cheryl Kaye Tardif
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