The wonderful Chris Redding write an “Open Letter…” that I thought had such wonderful and timely points that I asked if I could blog about it. And being the gracious person she is, Chris said yes.

By nature of my work, I have a lot of contact with authors and other individuals in the industry. For the most part my contact is pretty perfunctory. A manuscript is sent, I review it (or an editor does), a response is sent back. Questions are asked and replies given. Mostly business-like correspondence. That’s great! And that’s how it’s supposed to work.

What isn’t great is when an author either knowingly or unknowingly starts using your email as part of their “blast” list. I’ll start with the “unknowingly” side. When you sign up for Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other service, and they ask a question like “May we invite your friends?” and it starts listing off a bunch of email addresses, if you don’t personally know and haven’t personally asked those individuals, don’t do it. Because once you do, people you might only know in passing start getting email after email after email to “connect” on a service. And if it’s coming to an email address such as a submissions one, then that tells me that you told the service it was okay to raid your email and blast everyone to whom you’ve ever sent or from whom you’ve ever received an email. That’s like selling your family’s phone numbers to a telemarketing service.

Now for my part, I just delete the emails and move on. It’s no big deal. But it’s also invasive and takes up my time. Chances are, I won’t remember the name, and it won’t have any effect on my interactions. But it’s also better to just don’t allow it to happen.

When you knowingly add someone to your mailing list without permission (and without providing an opt-out link), now that’s another matter intirely. That’s SPAM, and not the meat stuff that comes in a tin can. That’s a violation of the CAN-SPAM act, and if reported enough times to your ISP could get your account terminated. Really.

That’s just not polite. I’m sure the book being promoted or the content of the newsletter is witty and wonderful, but to me it’s just another piece of spam. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

Think of these two things in the terms of how you would want your email to be treated. Would you want someone to allow a service to pilfer through your email address, send off numerous emails and then do who knows what else to it. (For example, I had a specific email address I used to sign up on sites devoted to software/support forums. The amount of SPAM that email received was crazy. And I knew it had to come from a these forums because the email address wasn’t used for anything else. And these were supposedly “secure” sites. So you just never know.)

It’s a golden rule situation. Do unto others’ emails what you’d want done to yours.

It’s amazing what imagination can do. I mean, I’m an author. I make a career using my imagination, and sometimes I still can’t believe I make money from the weird things my brain comes up with. Honestly, writing stories is all I’ve ever wanted to do, and it’s kind of mindblowing to realize that now I’m actually doing it. I started writing in the first place, when I was about five, because my imagination was running wild and I needed some kind of outlet or I probably would have gone insane.

The power of imagination is behind my current work-in-progress, in more ways than one. Obviously the story came from my imagination, since I’m the one writing it. Although I have to confess my husband played a role in the story’s development. Not his imagination, but his tendency to read and watch way too much manga and anime. He was trying to explain the concept of “bishonen” (a Japanese “pretty boy”) to me, and as he was talking, my imagination took off.

The story is about a man who reads a lot of manga, though not the same kind as my husband. My hero reads yaoi–M/M manga. And his imagination involving the characters in the stories he reads is pretty darn good. So good, in fact, that he wakes up beside one of the characters one morning.

As I said, this is a work in progress, though it’s nearing completion. When it’s done, it will be the first M/M that I submit to Pink Petal. I’m having a lot of fun writing it, and the best part is I’ve gotten to read some manga and yaoi and call it research. *Grins* Hopefully, if it’s accepted when it’s done, it will spark readers’ imaginations too.

This seemed like a good title for my first post. Why? Because I’ve been trying to straighten out my office and that includes my file of ideas. I’m not sure how other authors keep track of the shiney new ideas that come from sometimes out of nowhere. I assume someone has come up with a spreadsheet or two, but I have my own process.

1st) I write down the idea and flesh it out a bit. This could be a page or two, or ten depending how hard it hits me. 

2nd) Then I print it out and add to the files in my desk drawer (which is getting a little full).

3rd ) I add the title, character, or name of the series to my White Board of Hope, which is aptly named since I hope to write each of these stories at some point.

Now there are times when a story needs to be written so I just do it.

Also on my white board are the current series I am working on, this helps me keeep track of what I have going on. For me as a writer, mom, and wife being organized is really a big help. It also helps my family. They know that if I’m crabby and my office is a mess then they may want to give me some space.

Anyone else want to chime in on how you handle ideas that come along while you’re working on something else?