Today is the first day of summer. For my friends who celebrate the solstice, I wish you a hearty HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE. One of the greatest joys of warm weather, at least for me, is the ability to go barefoot in the yard. Feeling the grass tickle between my toes, or the mud squish is a tactile sensation that here in Iowa, only comes when the weather is decently warm. The heat of sunny pavement…The ouch!-ouch!-ouch! of dancing across blacktop…The squish of the yard after a heavy rain storm…these are all things that you can’t feel with shoes on.

Of course those who live in the city might not have the pleasure of experiencing the world through the soles of their feet. I know I don’t venture beyond my yard without slipping on shoes. It’s a dangerous world out there for unprotected feet.

Summer bare feet brings another pleasure (at least for me)…male bare feet. I admit, I’m probably a little strange, but even with all the other eye catching parts on a guy, I think a guy’s bare feet can be sexy. There’s something about them that is so masculine. Nicely maintained bare feet speak confidence to me. Add that to the usual summer wardrobe of a pair of shorts (shirt optional), and well let’s just say, summer is a real time for eye candy.

What are your favorite summer pleasures?

There have been numerous articles and blog entries written about how to research a publisher. However, an author has to be just as careful when choosing service partners. Luckily when you research a service provider (such as a hosting company or a design company), you’ll use many of the same techniques.

Why would you want to research a service provider? First, you’re paying your hard earned money. And it doesn’t matter if that money is a gift, your royalties, or a paycheck. You want to get what you paid for. Secondly, a bad service provider can leave you worse off than when you started. In a “best case” scenario you simply don’t get what you paid for. Moving down the scale to the worst case scenario you’ll get something that you have to pay to have finished, possibly quite a bit more than it originally cost, because of the way the person put it together, or you might have someone up and vanish, leaving you with no website, no service, and no reputation.

So how do you check out your service provider?

1) How long have they been in business? What’s their track record?

2) Do they have sample work and can they provide references? If they do not, or cannot provide references that should be a huge red flag. It should also be a flag if their only references are people who you know the individual is buddy-buddy with online.

3) What is their service guarantee?

4) Google them. Granted, this might not turn up any implosions, but you have to try. Not googling is akin to not telling the waiter about the fly in your soup.

5) Be careful. Don’t enter into long-term contracts or ask for a 90 day money back guarantee (In the hosting world 30 days just isn’t long enough to find any issues.)

Hopefully this will help you when it comes to finding service providers. As authors, we work with a number of different people from our web hosting service to graphic designers, marketing gurus, and more. A little due diligence goes a long way towards a beautiful professional relationship.

It’s not uncommon for authors to submit to more than one publisher, or to take the same submission materials and send them to a new publishing house. However there are a few things authors can do help ensure their presentation has the best polish.

1.  Watch out for FW: or RE: in the subject line. It’s okay to resend or or reply to a submissions email to send to a new publisher, but make sure the subject line looks nice and fresh. No marks of forwarding or replying to a seperate email.

2. Check names. You’d be surprised how many times I receive a submission addressed to another publishing house. Make sure you spell names correctly. If you’re uncertain of gender, use the full name. Don’t guess.

3. Watch your reply all button. I’ve received replied emails that I bet were meant to be forward to critique partners or writing buddies. I’m thrilled you sent the submission and have high hopes, and sorry to hear that you never heard back from the other publishing company. But you know, I also have to wonder if you’re careless with “reply all” then are you careless in your prose.

These are little steps, but they’re big ones in ensuring your submission email looks clean and professional. Taking a few extra seconds will convey to the publisher that you are thorough, professional, and ready to be published.

I recently finished a trilogy of romantic suspense books published by a NYT Bestselling author. She was a new to me author, and the first book completely blew my mind. I loved it. The hero was an alpha male extraordinaire; the heroine was a strong and powerful woman. The danger was real, and so was the heat between the characters. And yeah, so the hero was a cowboy, which always pushes my “MUST READ” buttons. But really, the use of language and the story telling skills made this a book that I could not put down.

The second book…I don’t know. The hero was no less alpha, and although he wasn’t a cowboy, had a suitably manly job. The heroine was someone who I bet I would have liked instantly if I’d met her in real life. And the heat was no less sizzling between the two of them. But in the end, I thought the ending was somewhat bland. The hero seemed horribly passive for someone of his character, and the heroine ended up saving the day. I closed the book, looked at the third in the series sitting on my shelf, and thought, “I don’t know, but I’ve read this far.”

We’ve all done that, haven’t we? Read just one more book in a series because we read the previous ones and feel like we’ve made an investment in the author. I picked up the third book, and I don’t know. I liked the hero, having met him in the previous books. The heroine was removed from me, but I liked her character, and what she was doing was admirable. I simply couldn’t get into the story. Like a good reader, I continued on. And eventually the story captured my interest, the danger ratcheted up, and in the end, the story blew my mind.

I think most readers have run into series fatigue, purchasing and loving the first books in a series, or several of them, and then having a volume that completely lets them down. It happens for many different reasons. People’s tastes change, oftentimes preferring a different direction in the series than the author took. Sometimes an idea simply didn’t strike the reader as well as it did the author. There are many reasons why a series might go “off” for a reader.

As a reader, all it takes for me to forget a slumping middle of the series is one awesome final book. Now, obviously, as a writer and a publisher, I’d hope that someone (beta readers, editor, line editors) might have pointed out the problems and helped steer the series onto a better course. However, in the end, it took that final book, and as a reader, I turned the last page and felt that throughout it all, I’d had a satisfyingly wonderful reading experience.