It takes a village to raise a book

Please welcome guest blogger Shona Husk

As writers we are told writing is a solitary pursuit. That is true…partially.

While no one else can write your story, the same way no one else can give birth for you (though wouldn’t that be nice), once it is written your baby becomes exposed to the world.

Much like a child it will be influenced by those around it. At first this will be family and close friends, for a manuscript this will be critique partners. I have the WINKgirls. They see everything, even the stuff that isn’t working, because I know that between us we will find a solution. They help the manuscript grow up so it’s ready to go out into the world with nothing but a query letter, a synopsis and a prayer to help it on its way.

Not everyone is going like your story, the same way not every child will be popular, or be great at every subject. That doesn’t mean they won’t be successful, but you have to play to their strengths, so that means doing your homework and finding out who publishes what you write.

Once you have an editor interested the fun begins. My editors at Samhain Publishing and The Wild Rose Press have been great. The suggestions they made strengthened the manuscripts so they were ready for a contract and publication.

So now your baby has grown up and finished school, but that’s not the end. Before it gets released for sale several more people will have input. They will help dress and market your book so people will want it, crave it and buy it. As writers we haven’t spent months, sometimes years on a project just to see it languish at the back of a bookstore, unnoticed and unloved. But in the end we have to step back. We can’t control sales, reviews or Amazon ratings. Like any child we have to let it lead its own life.

In the meantime we work on the next manuscript and the cycle begins again.

Shona raised several novels and a couple of novellas before she could say one of her manuscripts graduated. Now she has several novellas and short stories available from all good ebook retailers. Her latest, Boyfriend in a Bottle, is a red hot romance with a dash of wish fulfilment, a little magic and a lot of fun. She can be found at Goodreads, Face Book and www.shonahusk.com.

Boyfriend in a Bottle

Be careful what you wish for. It might come with an expiration date…

Josie’s well-meaning friends just don’t get it. It’s not that she’s overjoyed to be thirty-two and celibate since her boyfriend dumped her. She’d love to settle down, but she refuses to settle for just any man. After all, better single than a sucker.

Nevertheless, she humors her friends and follows the instructions attached to the gift they’ve given her—a beautiful bottle from a new-age shop. Lick, and the perfect man will appear.

It works. The naked man she finds tied to her bed is everything she’s ever wished for. Except Mr. Perfect comes with a time limit.

Kede is tired of living life by the hourglass. Once, fulfilling the desires of the women who freed him was enough, but now it’s just another job. Josie is different, though. She sees him as a real man—a man she wants for all time.

Kede wants more than a moment. He wants a chance at life outside the bottle, and he wants a life with Josie. But he belongs to the goddess Inanna, and his time is running out…

Warning: This title contains a little magic and a lot of wish-fulfillment sex. It also contains a perfect man created by a goddess solely for a woman’s pleasure, and it may cause you to feel compelled to lick strange, random bottles in search of your own Inanu.