Author Spotlight: Cleolinda Jones (Part 2 of 2)
You haven't taken the traditional path to publishing. Can you tell me a little about how you became published?
Well, as I said above, someone (I never did find out who) linked an editor to "Troy in Fifteen Minutes," and he emailed me and asked if I'd like to do a book. I got an agent (see below) and we worked out a contract within the week, and then I sat down to write the book to order--we decided on ten movies, I missed half a dozen deadlines, so on and so forth. It was a bit unusual in that I wasn't shopping a novel (which I had done twice before and gotten rejected pretty soundly) I'd already written; I was creating something from scratch at someone else's prompting, and we had no idea how long it would take me to do it. Orion was really patient and understanding about the deadlines, though--very supportive.
How did you get an agent? Any advice for anyone who is looking for representation?
Well, after the editor emailed me, I went into a complete panic and emailed a creative writing professor I had a class with at the time, and he gave me a couple of "find an agent"-type links (which I've since lost). So I ran out and picked a name, based on which agency she was with (a name I recognized) and what genres she specialized in (the ones I happened to write), and typed up a letter saying that I already had a contract, could she help me with it? That was on Thursday or Friday, and she called me on Monday. Of course, "I've already made the sale, would you like some of the money?" is going to get you an answer every time. It's really a terrible story, in terms of giving advice, because it was such a fluke that it's no help to anyone. And my current agent is a friend of mine, so that's no help, either.
What do you do when you aren’t writing?
Well, you can tell a lot about me from my journal and the things I end up haring off after. I love movies; I love dolls; I love jewelry and costumes (this is what you get on my Tumblr. This, and Pallas cats). I've been fascinated by vampires since I read an illustrated edition of Dracula when I was eleven or twelve; The Hobbit and the Narnia books were as my favorites as a child. Jane Eyre was my favorite book in middle school, and I picked up the Sherlock Holmes stories in eighth grade, so I got really into the Victorian era around that time (and haven't gotten out of it since). Really, I love reading historical biographies and nonfiction in general--I love the Tudor-Elizabethan period and the late 1700s as well, and I would read pretty much any biography Alison Weir has done. Biographies in particular are a really great way to research a period from the inside out, if you get a writer who's willing to dwell on the cultural details the way she does. Honestly, I'm not as well-read as I should be in terms of current fiction because I read so much historical nonfiction both for fun and for research (which is also fun).
Now that Lost is over, I don't really have anything I'm watching at the moment--there are so many good shows out there, I kind of don't know where to start, and I spend so much time staring at a screen as it is. I'm thinking of starting my Netflix account back up, which will probably make me a much more interesting person.
What do you do to spark your creativity?
I love picking out atmospheric writing music, but I have to be really careful--sometimes it just drowns out my own thoughts, and I have to know when to turn it off. But yeah, I really love movie scores, which are great for writing. For what I'm writing at the moment, I'm listening to David Bowie, a couple of Rolling Stones songs, and the Inception soundtrack. Honestly, though, I have terrible, '80s-based taste in music, and I would be listening to Def Leppard right now if they would just get on iTunes.
I also have a huge collection of pictures--people, locations, costumes, artwork, historical photographs--that I browse through from time to time. Tumblr is a great and terrible timesuck of a way to build that up.
Whenever I run dry or get blocked--and with "Secret Life," I got so blocked on one particular subplot that I had to take the better part of of a year off, so sometimes it does just happen. But a lot of times, it means that I need to go read something, or see a movie. I've reached an input/output imbalance, as it were, and I need to take in something new. I have seen really great movies that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was writing, but they made me want to go home and get back to work--just a general sense of inspiration, of wanting to be as creative as what I just saw.
For a specific problem--a scene or a paragraph I just can't get through--taking a shower seems to solve a lot of problems, somehow. Or pacing in front of the microwave while something's heating up, for some reason.
Spread the love to someone else. In other words, recommend your favorite writers, favorite podcasts, major influences, that kind of thing.
Made of Fail is a really great geek-oriented podcast I guest on two or three times a year. Cinematical and Rope of Silicon are my two favorite movie news sites. I pretty much live on Lee Jackson's victorianlondon.org site for research. Speaking of which, I nearly had a meltdown when it looked like Delicious was going to close down; that's a huge help in organizing my research bookmarks. And I love Echo Bazaar, a game set in a really weird, fun, alternate Victorian London.
If you could go back in time 10 years and give writing advice to your younger self, what would it be?
"Write what you want to write, not what you think other people want you to write." Which is to say, I was very hung up on the idea that I was supposed to write Very Serious Mainstream Literary Literature, which is... exactly the kind of thing I don't like to read. I mean, I like to read anything good, but I was aspiring for a certain level of pretension that I didn't even enjoy as a reader, much less as a writer, because I thought that's how you were supposed to do it if you wanted to be good. Don't do that, Twenty-Two-Year-Old Me. Just write what you love. You're going to do okay with that.
Any advice out there for people who want to get started writing?
Just... write. Write it down, whatever's in your head. Write about things, to start with--about what you did today, about your favorite books, about things you love, about things you hate. It's not a substitute for actually sitting down and writing a novel, if that's what you've always wanted to do, but like I've said, writing various things for my journal has been great practice for actual fiction. Just--don't be afraid, because you cannot fail harder at something than not trying at all. I have to keep reminding myself of this.
And--this is important--don't get hung up on getting published. The things I was hellbent on getting published were terrible. I am, in complete sincerity, really lucky that no one wanted to publish my teenage fantasy angst novels, because I would have been so impressed with myself that I never would have thought I needed to get any better. Work on writing, and getting better, and let people you trust read your work and give you feedback.
And--this is really important--don't give money to anyone. You generally give 15% of a sale to your agent after the agent has made a sale. You don't give them money up front, and you should give anyone who asks for it the side-eye. Vanity publishing is fine, as long as you know that's what it is. If you're paying someone to publish your book, you're either getting scammed, or you're making a conscious choice to take a different approach. I want to say it was E. Lynn Harris who had his books printed up and sold them out of the trunk of his car, and that's how he got discovered. I ended up putting an e-book on Lulu because it had hypertext footnotes; it couldn't have worked as a printed book. Vanity publishing or self-publishing or e-publishing is all great, as long as you understand what it can and cannot do for you. The SFWA's Writer Beware page and blog is great for explaining this kind of thing.
What are your favorite books to read? What are you currently reading? (If you already mentioned your Varney project, are you reading anything else?)
I'm on a fresh round of 19th century research--I just finished Edward VII: The Last Victorian King and and am halfway through rereading Brigitte Hamann's Elisabeth of Bavaria biography, The Reluctant Empress. When I get back to research reading, I've got Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France's Belle Époque; The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914; Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored; and Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals. But since I'm horribly behind on years of current(ish) fiction, I'm doing some book discussion posts first. I've done the new Stephen King, Matched, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so far; next, I'm reading the Hunger Games trilogy and then probably going back to finish the Stieg Larsson books.
Cleolinda's Secret Life of Dolls is updated on Saturdays on her Livejournal blog.
Next Week's Author Spotlight will be on Lou Antonelli. Lou's short story collection Fantastic Texas was published in 2009 by Fantastic Books.
Well, as I said above, someone (I never did find out who) linked an editor to "Troy in Fifteen Minutes," and he emailed me and asked if I'd like to do a book. I got an agent (see below) and we worked out a contract within the week, and then I sat down to write the book to order--we decided on ten movies, I missed half a dozen deadlines, so on and so forth. It was a bit unusual in that I wasn't shopping a novel (which I had done twice before and gotten rejected pretty soundly) I'd already written; I was creating something from scratch at someone else's prompting, and we had no idea how long it would take me to do it. Orion was really patient and understanding about the deadlines, though--very supportive.
How did you get an agent? Any advice for anyone who is looking for representation?
Well, after the editor emailed me, I went into a complete panic and emailed a creative writing professor I had a class with at the time, and he gave me a couple of "find an agent"-type links (which I've since lost). So I ran out and picked a name, based on which agency she was with (a name I recognized) and what genres she specialized in (the ones I happened to write), and typed up a letter saying that I already had a contract, could she help me with it? That was on Thursday or Friday, and she called me on Monday. Of course, "I've already made the sale, would you like some of the money?" is going to get you an answer every time. It's really a terrible story, in terms of giving advice, because it was such a fluke that it's no help to anyone. And my current agent is a friend of mine, so that's no help, either.
What do you do when you aren’t writing?
Well, you can tell a lot about me from my journal and the things I end up haring off after. I love movies; I love dolls; I love jewelry and costumes (this is what you get on my Tumblr. This, and Pallas cats). I've been fascinated by vampires since I read an illustrated edition of Dracula when I was eleven or twelve; The Hobbit and the Narnia books were as my favorites as a child. Jane Eyre was my favorite book in middle school, and I picked up the Sherlock Holmes stories in eighth grade, so I got really into the Victorian era around that time (and haven't gotten out of it since). Really, I love reading historical biographies and nonfiction in general--I love the Tudor-Elizabethan period and the late 1700s as well, and I would read pretty much any biography Alison Weir has done. Biographies in particular are a really great way to research a period from the inside out, if you get a writer who's willing to dwell on the cultural details the way she does. Honestly, I'm not as well-read as I should be in terms of current fiction because I read so much historical nonfiction both for fun and for research (which is also fun).
Now that Lost is over, I don't really have anything I'm watching at the moment--there are so many good shows out there, I kind of don't know where to start, and I spend so much time staring at a screen as it is. I'm thinking of starting my Netflix account back up, which will probably make me a much more interesting person.
What do you do to spark your creativity?
I love picking out atmospheric writing music, but I have to be really careful--sometimes it just drowns out my own thoughts, and I have to know when to turn it off. But yeah, I really love movie scores, which are great for writing. For what I'm writing at the moment, I'm listening to David Bowie, a couple of Rolling Stones songs, and the Inception soundtrack. Honestly, though, I have terrible, '80s-based taste in music, and I would be listening to Def Leppard right now if they would just get on iTunes.
I also have a huge collection of pictures--people, locations, costumes, artwork, historical photographs--that I browse through from time to time. Tumblr is a great and terrible timesuck of a way to build that up.
Whenever I run dry or get blocked--and with "Secret Life," I got so blocked on one particular subplot that I had to take the better part of of a year off, so sometimes it does just happen. But a lot of times, it means that I need to go read something, or see a movie. I've reached an input/output imbalance, as it were, and I need to take in something new. I have seen really great movies that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was writing, but they made me want to go home and get back to work--just a general sense of inspiration, of wanting to be as creative as what I just saw.
For a specific problem--a scene or a paragraph I just can't get through--taking a shower seems to solve a lot of problems, somehow. Or pacing in front of the microwave while something's heating up, for some reason.
Spread the love to someone else. In other words, recommend your favorite writers, favorite podcasts, major influences, that kind of thing.
Made of Fail is a really great geek-oriented podcast I guest on two or three times a year. Cinematical and Rope of Silicon are my two favorite movie news sites. I pretty much live on Lee Jackson's victorianlondon.org site for research. Speaking of which, I nearly had a meltdown when it looked like Delicious was going to close down; that's a huge help in organizing my research bookmarks. And I love Echo Bazaar, a game set in a really weird, fun, alternate Victorian London.
If you could go back in time 10 years and give writing advice to your younger self, what would it be?
"Write what you want to write, not what you think other people want you to write." Which is to say, I was very hung up on the idea that I was supposed to write Very Serious Mainstream Literary Literature, which is... exactly the kind of thing I don't like to read. I mean, I like to read anything good, but I was aspiring for a certain level of pretension that I didn't even enjoy as a reader, much less as a writer, because I thought that's how you were supposed to do it if you wanted to be good. Don't do that, Twenty-Two-Year-Old Me. Just write what you love. You're going to do okay with that.
Any advice out there for people who want to get started writing?
Just... write. Write it down, whatever's in your head. Write about things, to start with--about what you did today, about your favorite books, about things you love, about things you hate. It's not a substitute for actually sitting down and writing a novel, if that's what you've always wanted to do, but like I've said, writing various things for my journal has been great practice for actual fiction. Just--don't be afraid, because you cannot fail harder at something than not trying at all. I have to keep reminding myself of this.
And--this is important--don't get hung up on getting published. The things I was hellbent on getting published were terrible. I am, in complete sincerity, really lucky that no one wanted to publish my teenage fantasy angst novels, because I would have been so impressed with myself that I never would have thought I needed to get any better. Work on writing, and getting better, and let people you trust read your work and give you feedback.
And--this is really important--don't give money to anyone. You generally give 15% of a sale to your agent after the agent has made a sale. You don't give them money up front, and you should give anyone who asks for it the side-eye. Vanity publishing is fine, as long as you know that's what it is. If you're paying someone to publish your book, you're either getting scammed, or you're making a conscious choice to take a different approach. I want to say it was E. Lynn Harris who had his books printed up and sold them out of the trunk of his car, and that's how he got discovered. I ended up putting an e-book on Lulu because it had hypertext footnotes; it couldn't have worked as a printed book. Vanity publishing or self-publishing or e-publishing is all great, as long as you understand what it can and cannot do for you. The SFWA's Writer Beware page and blog is great for explaining this kind of thing.
What are your favorite books to read? What are you currently reading? (If you already mentioned your Varney project, are you reading anything else?)
I'm on a fresh round of 19th century research--I just finished Edward VII: The Last Victorian King and and am halfway through rereading Brigitte Hamann's Elisabeth of Bavaria biography, The Reluctant Empress. When I get back to research reading, I've got Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France's Belle Époque; The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914; Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored; and Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals. But since I'm horribly behind on years of current(ish) fiction, I'm doing some book discussion posts first. I've done the new Stephen King, Matched, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so far; next, I'm reading the Hunger Games trilogy and then probably going back to finish the Stieg Larsson books.
Cleolinda's Secret Life of Dolls is updated on Saturdays on her Livejournal blog.
Next Week's Author Spotlight will be on Lou Antonelli. Lou's short story collection Fantastic Texas was published in 2009 by Fantastic Books.