Dave Brummet And Lillian Brummet asked:


Question:

What was it like as new authors in the publishing world?

Answer:

As free-lance writers of informative articles, we had no prior experience with book publishers. We did a lot of research and were aware of some basic contract and publishing procedures, yet there were many things we were not prepared for. For instance, there was the book cover design to conceive of – which our good friend Brian McAndrew created. The back cover text had to be developed, an author’s bio written, photos to have taken and lists of nearly 2 hundred contacts to sort out. The marketing research took weeks to do, but it resulted in a 12-page plan to ease our way. Then there were formal things like dealing with the Library of Congress and Copyrighting. For instance, copies of the book had to be sent to the Library of Congress at our expense. There are rules to be aware of as well. The rights for free use (using quotes from other people) is so gray that we opted out of including this kind of text. Unfortunately, that meant more editing. We were disappointed because there were some very good quotes that would have added a great deal to the book.

Question:

What were some publishing experiences or unexpected turn of events?

Answer:

While Lillian was browsing the Internet looking up information on other publishers, she came upon Publish America’s website. It inspired her to send a query in on the spot. Within 3-days we received a request for a sample manuscript. Now, these publishers only accept 20% of the thousands of queries that cross their desks, so we were excited to have such a good response in a very short time. Unfortunately, we were also relocating our home from one part of town to another, finishing a garden year and working as well. Time was short and stress was high. We got that sample manuscript off in a timely fashion, however, and we received an acceptance within a few days. The heady sensation of signing the 7-year contract flew by us in a blur.

Question:

What time and resources do we put in for promoting the book?

Answer:

Every day we put in 2-6 hours into some aspect of the book. The Internet has proven to be a powerful tool where an immense amount of information can be found from newsletters, publishers, forums and authors. Every on-line communication we have is an opportunity to plug our book by simply attaching an auto signature. We developed promotional materials (flyers, mini-posters, large posters, bookmarks, labels) and, of course, galleys and sample packages for editors and booksellers. Most importantly, we had a great website built for us by Brian McAndrew of Beyond Graphix.

Question:

What did you learn in researching the book?

Answer:

We thought we were committed to the concept of the book in our lives, but when researching and writing this book we found we became much more motivated, more committed and more informed about waste reduction.

Question:

As a writer, what have you learned about staying organized or motivated?

Answer:

Having a plan of action for every project is vital. Every project should have an outline starting from the title through to the end. There should also be a market plan laid out. Who are you marketing to? How you are going about it? What will you do first? These are the most important tools of a writer. Most people think of a writing career being one where you have lots of leisure time and creating with words. On the contrary, most of the time is spent marketing and organizing projects. For instance, we might write an article and query it to a market. That market may take a few days to get back to us, but it may also be as long as a year before we hear from them. That article is idle and we do not get paid until after it is published. A writer may have hundreds of pieces of their work at various stages of writing and marketing at one time. They need to know where it is and its status, at a glance. We use the Excel program to take care of this. For the book, plans were indispensable. The market plan alone is a book in itself and will take us years to complete. That is normal, actually. A writer must spend much of their time promoting the book for years after publication in order to keep sales happening. Unfortunately, promotion and writing time are unpaid hours in the meantime.

Question:

When do you write?

Answer:

We have to do a bit of juggling to manage our business, day job and writing career with some kind of balance. Usually, We work as a team, though we write separately and then conglomerate and edit the work together. Because we share one computer, this can be a bit of a juggle. Dave works shift work so when he is at work or sleeping Lillian will use the computer to research and promote.

Question:

What is your professional background?

Answer:

Dave and Lillian began their (paid) writing career working as staff writers at Openminder Newsletter where they experienced the harried pace of getting several articles and even feature or interview articles ready for a by-weekly deadline. It was our start in the writing world and plunged us head-first into the community, interviewing unique and enterprising people. The concept of Trash Talk was already developed and this market snatched up the column immediately. When Openminder closed shop, we started a free-lance career. Our articles have since appeared in a variety of magazines including Seeds of Diversity, Country Connection and ISKRA.

Question:

Have you won any awards or contests?

Answer:

Yes, Dave has recently won first prize in the Nature category of BC Cottage Magazine’s 2004 Photo contest. Lillian has won several editorial awards for her poetry and has had her work published in 5 hardcover anthology books of poetry through contests.

Question:

What is the most important lesson in your writing career?

Answer:

Research. If you know something is coming up, research it and make a plan of action well ahead of time. If we did not start the market plan and develop a plan of action and estimated schedule soon after finding out the manuscript was accepted, we would have never been ready for the myriad of work ahead of us, much of which is time-sensitive. Doing it right is essential – there is but little chance to make an impression with a reviewer, reader or publication. Even with the best of preparation you will be caught off guard or unprepared. Don’t sweat it too much if you make a mistake. Think of it as a lesson.

Question:

Have you any advice for new writers?

Answer:

We hate to sound redundant, but again, do your research. Join forums and research the previous messages for several months ago. You will find many novice questions are thoroughly answered with many different people contributing ideas and opinions. Always research your market and query them in a professional manner before sending a finished product.

Jack laughed out loud when the letter came.

“I won a sales contest,” he told us later, “and I didn’t even know I was in it.”

Jack, a freelance printing salesman, was one of our steadiest customers at the photo lab. He wasn’t really a photographer, but he sold full color brochures and picture postcards, and his customers never had good photos of their facilities, so he supplied them and the gold prospecting equipment.

Simply to ensure that no sale got away from him, he bought a cheap 4×5 view camera and learned to take the photos his customers needed. And he brought all his film processing to us.

He didn’t know that the photos he took were better than most of the work that came in from “real” photographers. And I doubt he would have cared if he had known. Jack never claimed to be anything but a salesman – just doing the job he enjoyed.

Then came “The Letter.” The company that printed all his color postcard orders notified him that he was their salesman of the year, that he’d outperformed the next competitor by 4-to-1. They awarded Jack a cash prize, a trip and a nice engraved plaque.

He stuck the money in the bank, put the plaque on a wall, and took a few days off in Jamaica. But as soon as possible, he was back out on the roads, knocking on doors.

He enjoyed helping people put a better face on their businesses. That’s the way he saw his work.

I guess a psychologist might say he was “inner directed.”

But time moved on, I left the photo lab, and now, decades later, I’m a writer living in Japan.

And last week I got an unexpected phone call from my long-distance phone carrier. They tell me I was their biggest non-corporate customer for the three-month period just ended, and they wanted to send me a prize to express their appreciation.

During the last several months I’d been doing a series of one-hour interviews for a new book I was working on. Thus, I’d spent many hours on the phone, racking up the minutes, and now they wanted to give me a prize.

That’s when I remembered Jack.

He was just doing the job he had set for himself. So was I. He enjoyed what he was doing. So did I. For him, winning their contest was a nice little surprise, but otherwise irrelevant.

In my case also, the wristwatch they sent just went on a shelf. I suppose I’ll give it to one of my grandkids the next time I see them.

And I keep on doing the job I enjoy.

Meantime, as I look around the Internet, it’s easy to identify the people who, like Jack, really enjoy what they’re doing. Their websites have a different feel, a personality. Their eBooks give real, solid, usable information. Their email gets read, not deleted.

They’re the ones with the crowds of customers, the masses of fans and followers thronging their websites.

The public is rewarding them, but these achievers don’t dwell too much on the prizes and awards. Oh, don’t get me wrong. They like the big earnings and the popularity. That’s all pleasant, but their real pleasure is the job they do.

They love writing their eBooks, producing their ezines, running their Internet businesses. Giving value.

And you can be sure that if they weren’t enjoying it, they’d instantly go do something else instead.

But not everybody recognizes how important it is to give value.

That last eBook you produced: of course most of the information in it came from you… surely you didn’t just drag it together from bits and scraps you lifted from here and there around the Web?

And your ezine – I’m sure you don’t scrounge around and grab up whatever article is at hand five minutes before the mailing deadline. (Or 2 hours after?)

And your website? We’ve all read article after article warning that a page with nothing but banners, links and buttons – a flea market site – is a total waste of time.

So why do we all still see them?

Two things I can guarantee: first, visitors to such a website leave almost immediately because they sense no personality; second, such sites are done by people who feel they don’t have anything of their own to give.

This is tragic. Everyone has something valuable to give. Most people just haven’t ever done a personal inventory, so they don’t know all the things they have to offer.

In a future article, I may talk about how you go about doing that kind of inventory, but for now, just remember this.

If you’re enjoying what you’re doing, and you’re giving it everything you’ve got, you’ll win contests – even the ones you didn’t know you were in.

Peter Finch asked:

If you think you have gone nuts when you think of marrying somebody you met on a bride site from the other side of the world, you are wrong. In fact, it should not matter where or how you found the woman who will be your wife as long as you love her.

Although the media tend to highlight on failures of these marriages, there are hundreds of success stories from couples where the wife is a so called mail order bride. Online dating is getting more efficient as more people are finding their lifetime partners on line.

The term mail order bride goes back to the time when American pioneers ordered European women to accompany them in the new land, corresponding with them through mail. Now times have changed and the advent of the internet made contact much easier, and the term mail order brides does not apply anymore. Considering how much society has matured since those days, the term “mail order bride” is downright insulting to any woman. Nevertheless it is still used by the misguided.

Before you will marry your intended bride, you will have to correspond with her for a long time, fill her email inbox to overcapacity with your messages (and vice versa), make the telecommunication giants rich with the exorbitant fees you pay in making those frequent long distance calls, and finally you have to meet her in person. Not much mail order about that!

If you know how to search, you will find a gem from the many Filipina women who have submitted their application to look for foreign husbands. Surf through the internet for reliable matchmaking sites and the possibilities are endless. When you think you have found the ideal Filipina lady for you and you plan to take her seriously, it is time for you to visit the Philippines to meet her.

When you go searching for that Filipina lady, you are in control. Just a few clicks on your mouse and you can meet her in the comfort of your home. Time is on your hands, and you can write or chat with her when you are available.

Communication is not a hindrance when you find a bride from The Philippines as most of Filipino women are highly educated and speak very good English.

You may have heard hundreds of testimonials of how good it is to have someone waiting for you when you arrive home after work, someone who greets you and has a hot supper prepared for you. Right, the Filipina wife will do this for you because she loves you, but dismiss any idea that just because of the way that you found her, you can shout and order her around or treat her like a slave. Do not be surprised if she hollers at you back or walks out on you. She is still a human being regardless of how and where you found her.

Reports from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas site that marriages arranged through these services appears to have a lower divorce rate than the nation as a whole, and 80 percent of these marriages lasted over the years. A word of caution, when you decide to choose a bride from the Philippines, think a thousand times because unlike goods you order from the internet, a Filipina bride is on a “No return, No exchange” condition.

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Suzy Davis asked:


We arrive to the land of 1000 languages and 1000 gods. At the Intercontinental, the women in my group are welcomed with marigolds and branded with the typical red dot on our foreheads. This hotel is an oasis of luxury in a polluted city of 14 million people.

Two days are spent touring Delhi. The obligatory sites include Gandhi’s Tomb and many UNESCO World Heritage Sites. No where else have ancient traditions blended with the modern on a scale so evident as in Delhi. Fat sacred Brahma bulls block traffic creating delays. In this Hindu land, cows rule. Dogs, monkeys and children cross at their own risk.

I love spiced food and begin each day with a 3 alarm-curry breakfast. We head by coach for Rajasthan, the beautiful desert state where cows are replaced by camels. The air is sweeter and everything more colorful. Here is a microcosm of all that India is.

The people are genteel with a humility if spirit and still light up at the sight of foreigners. We continually wave through our windows to those who stare with curiosity and seem to say, “why have you come here?” As a fan of the third world, this place has been on my dream list for years. I now vividly enter that element of travel that provides me astonishment.

We’ve come to attend the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar that has taken place for a thousand years. As the world’s largest, it has at its peak attracted 50,000 camels with 200,000 traders. We unpack at our camp called Exotic Adventures. Our spartan tents did have ensuite toilets but toilet paper was at a premium. There was a 24 hour guard outside who stingily rationed our quota.

In the desert, nights are frigid and afternoons sweltering. I confided to a guest there from the American Embassy that I felt like I was in an episode of “Survivor.” She laughed assuring me that it was all worth it. Soon my shock turns to awe as I enter the fairgrounds.

Set on miles of shifting sand dunes with festooned camels and a flood of pilgrims, the scene looks totally surreal. Its like a State Fair on steroids. There is a flurry of horse, bullock and camel races, contests for milking, animal decorating, turban tying, tattooing as well as snake charmers, free carnival rides, mystics, astrologers and dazzling stalls of handicrafts at giveaway prices. The ground reverberates with activities. Thousands of Rajasthani woman have arrived dressed in their finest clothes in near neon colors. I watch trained monkeys, painted cows and cobras dance. No words can adequately describe how this helter skelter overwhelms my 5 senses. Others can have Europe with its cathedrals and museums. For me, this exotic exposure and cultural immersion is the ultimate travel!

Covered in dust, we return to camp. Each night there is entertainment under the stars with musicians, folk dancers, puppet show or fire eaters. No alcohol is allowed here and all meals are vegetarian buffets. An Ayurveda Center offers us treatments to cleanse body toxins. We decline them: induced vomiting, enemas, nasal drainage and blood letting.

We tour the holy city of Pushkar with its sacred lake created by Lord Brahma. Pilgrims come from afar to bathe in the ghats and worship round the clock. We learn about religions here: Zorastrism, Sihkism, the mystic Sufis, Jainists who won’t kill a mosquito, Hinduism that claims no absolute truth and the caste system. We tour temples at the lake; some are “blessed” by priests. Later, a highlight for me was a one hour Camel Cart Safari behind the scenes of the fair. Children line our route shouting to us “hi, hello, one pen please!”

We see a camel slaughtered and half naked people washing. Back inside the grounds, we visit an orphanage and scatter individually to get lost in the feverish revelry. We ride huge spitting camels that provide us a heightened perspective of it all. I purchase a dozen garnet necklaces and silver ankle bracelets. Teenage boys approach Terry to photograph him. One politely as him, “Sir, what do you eat?”

There are endless food courts however we must pass all enticements to prevent “Delhi Belly.” I find the cacophony of chaos delightful. Pushkar is truly a party affair for the locals and we are just observant guests. I’m so grateful to experience such but time to proceed on with our busy itinerary.

We arrive to the famed “Pink City” of Jaipur, now more deep maroon from pollution. In touring its palaces, fort and architectural marvels, we learn of the great Amber rulers and maharajahs of the Moghul empire. History comes alive and I find myself so interested in that which I never cared about. And here is a shopper’s paradise for silk sarees, gems, jewelry and marble crafts. I visited an animal sanctuary called “Help In Suffering.” The worst cases of various species are treated here by volunteer veterinarians. Forty five stray dogs are sterilized daily and I witness a surgery. On to see the grand Fatehpur Sikri, “Ghost City of Akbara” that was abandoned due to scarcity of water. We finally reach Agra, a broken city of 2.5 million. Hawkers harass us. Chained bears dance for rupees in the street. Hungry children beg. We are thankful to lodge at the deluxe Sheraton here with its western cuisine and affordable massages at $20. It was like a galaxy change from the downtown.

After witnessing an eyeful of wonders along the way, we have saved the best for last at the world’s greatest tribute to love. Goosebumps rise as I enter the majestic gate to the Taj Mahal. Morning sunlight illuminates it like a flawless pearl. 22 years to build by 200,000 men with 2 million pieces of inlaid semi-precious stones. After a lecture on why this perfect symmetry was created for Queen Mumtaz, we disperse to photograph what looks to be a mirage. It is poetry in architecture and as magnificent as can be imagined.

Back in Delhi, we all enjoy a free day of leisure to explore as we choose! Most go shopping as prices are extravagantly low but how many Pashmina shawls does one need? For our final evening we enjoy a show called “Dances of India” followed by a farewell feast of our Last (Indian) Supper.

I remises another journey well done with excellent guides, drivers, assistance and accommodations. I recall my favorite moment which took place at the fair when I hired two “body guards” to assist me through the crowds, Jamal and Ranshi. These two 11 year old boys bonded to me like barnacles and their beaming smiling faces will forever remain etched in my memory of India. This trip has renewed my curiosity of the world reminding me again that my love of travel proliferates itself. The more I see, the more I want to see.

This country is for the seasoned traveler. I am extremely impressed with the fortitude and patience of my group of 60 people in a land of erratic infrastructure. For some it was their first visit to the third world but they all persevered like pros. To witness suffering first hand is the fullest way to appreciate home. We saw things both appalling and joyful. The word “fascinating” however would sum up the entire trip. I must return again.