My Name is Megg and I am a Gambler

There are few things I enjoy more than a game of cards. Poker, euchre, hearts, rummy, Egyptian War (or maybe that's unique to where I grew up?), if it involves cards I'll sit down at the table.

I am a gambler and when I play, I play to win. I take risks, but every single one is calculated, which is what makes me a tough opponent. No one ever knows if I'm bluffing or if I have the full house - and I like it that way.

I've approached e-publishing the same way

It was a HUGE gamble for me to become an independent author.

Gamble One: Two agents were still reviewing a full (not Anathema) and I pulled it back. Yes, I essentially rejected two agents, one of whom spent the entire day emailing with me about my choices. Guess what? She was supportive.

Gamble Two: I risked alienating some of my traditionally published friends. I think a few were miffed or horrified (someone actually called me a traitor), but to my surprise a few came out of the woodwork and fully supported me.

Gamble Three: I started over from scratch with a pen name. I could have published under my real name and perhaps had a much larger audience from the start. However I wanted to keep my fiction totally separate from my nonfiction. So far it seems to be working. Everyone in my real life knows my pen name so it's not like I'm living in the shadows.

I have more gambles, some I'm working through now and others I've saved for future dates. If there's one thing I learned in my six years of freelancing for magazines it's that the publishing industry is one big, fat gamble.

I'm willing to play, are you?

When Dreams Change

I'm a traditional girl in many ways. For years I dreamed of walking into a bookstore or a library and seeing a hardcover with my name on the front. As someone who loved to write since early childhood, I believed that to be the pinnacle of success for a writer. My name - in print - for all to see.

I'm 35 now and the world has changed. I don't browse library shelves; I load up their website, place a hold on a book that they may or may not carry (because they'll just borrow it from another library for me), and get an email telling me it's in. Then I pop into the library for five minutes, at the most, to pick up the book I put on hold. I don't spend time combing through the shelves. Why? There's simply too much to browse through. Fiction is shelved alphabetically, not by genre. I wish fiction was more like the Dewey Decimal System, where all nonfiction is shelved by topic.

I get my book recommendations from friends and family, colleagues and blogs, or by basic word-of-mouth. It's rare for me to be left wondering what to read next because I maintain a list a mile long. I will never, ever run out of books to read - which is a wonderful thing.

But as the "great" rejections from agents piled up, I began to get a little sad. What was I doing, spending two years writing when I was never going to make it? They kept telling me my writing was great, but that the market was too narrow for my work. Narrow? How can a world as wide-open as books ever be too narrow?

The more I thought it about it, the more I realized I simply want people to read my books. I don't have to be on a shelf in a bookstore for that to happen anymore. I don't have to be a New York Times bestseller. What I want is to put a smile on someone's face or make a heart pound just little faster.

I've been published regularly for years as a under my secret journalist identity. I've seen my name in print more often than I can count. You know what? It gets old. It does and I'm sorry if that upsets anyone, but the thrill of seeing my name in a magazine wore off within a year or so. If my biggest goal in traditional publication was to see my name on a hardcover book, I bet eventually that thrill would wear off too.

It's not about seeing my name in print anymore - it's all about sharing the stories I have. My goal is to entertain you, not to feed my own ego.

Peace,
Megg

Release Date Pending....

Everyone keeps asking me when my book will be out ... and I wish I had an answer. Soon is about the best I can do.

Since I'm new to the whole epub thing, I don't have a good gauge for how long everything will take. I'm currently in the midst of revisions and I hope to have those done within the next two weeks. Then there's formatting and other things that need to be done before I can release the book.

Some of you are really excited to read it - which makes me really excited too!!!! And maybe a little scared....

I'm going to keep you updated on everything I'm doing. But, for now, I'm mired in revisions.

Thanks for hanging out with me for a few minutes!

Megg

An Introduction

Hey world! Today a new writer, Megg Jensen, was born.

Okay, I'm not new. I've been around the writing block a few times. I'm a successful freelance parenting journalist, but I'm about to embark on a new adventure - e-publishing a YA fantasy novel.

Why e-pubbing? Well, two of my books have been shopped around to agents. For those who requested to see my  book, I've had nearly the same response each time: "Your book is amazing." "Such an intriguing plot." "You're a great writer."

Ultimately many of their responses came down to the same thing: "It doesn't fit on any list."

After hearing that more times than I care to remember, I decided that maybe my book doesn't fit in to the traditional publishing box. These agents admitted I was a great writer, and let me tell you, agents are known for rejecting writers without saying a word, much less a compliment. Did the rejections hurt? Sure, but they didn't have to tell me I was a great writer or that my book was well-written. Those tidbits bolstered my confidence. But where was I supposed to go from there?

My most excellent friend, Karly Kirkpatrick, e-pubbed her first book, Into the Shadows, in 2010. It's an amazing book - a book that went through the same wringer mine did. But guess what? People are reading and buying her book, which is all she ever wanted.

It's all I ever wanted too. I write because the voices in my head won't shut up. I publish because I want to share those words with you, the reader. If I can't fit into the traditional model, fine. I'm not really a traditional girl anyway - I'm accustomed to being the oddball.

I hope you come along with me on this journey (OMG, that sounds so like The Bachelor - *vomit*). I'm guessing it will be a wild ride. What's coming up? Posts on why I'm using a pen name, a teaser for my first book and info how to start the wild e-pub ride.