2012 Lesbian Fiction Appreciation Event: Catherine M. Wilson: When Women Were Warriors

When Women Were Warriors—the journey to publication and how the revolution in publishing will change the world...

Trying the “traditional” route

When I began querying agents early in 2007, I knew my book was going to be a tough sell—not because of the lesbian content, although that could have been an issue, but because of its length. The complete manuscript of When Women Were Warriors, at 315,000 words, would run close to 1000 pages as a trade paperback.

I consulted a person with long experience in traditional publishing about how best to approach agents and editors. She told me flat out that no publisher would publish a book that length by an unknown writer, so I made the decision before I started querying agents that I was willing to release the book as a trilogy, provided all three books were published at once. That, evidently, was a deal-breaker. I queried over 80 agents, and I was honest about the book length and my requirements. No one asked for a complete manuscript.

Plan B

While I was querying agents and awaiting their replies, a process that took up most of 2007, I read everything I could find about self-publishing. Reading Dan Poynter, the guru of self-publishing in the days before ebooks, convinced me to set myself up as a publishing company and print my books using print-on-demand (POD) technology through Lightning Source.

It took the first half of 2008 to learn the software I needed to produce my own books. I acquired the Adobe Creative Suite and learned InDesign, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver by taking online courses through my local community college. It took the second half of 2008 to format the books, create the covers, put up a website, and set up my publishing business, Shield Maiden Press. I took my own advice and published the book as a trilogy. All three books came out as trade paperbacks in October 2008.

In a fortunate bit of timing, Amazon released the first generation Kindle in November 2007. I bought one early in 2008 and became an instant convert to ebooks. As soon as the paperbacks were launched, I formatted the books for Kindle and had them on sale in the Kindle store in December 2008.

The old paradigm

Although that year of trying to publish the traditional way did not produce the result I was looking for, I do not regret having done it. I learned a great deal about how traditional publishing works. I learned, for example, that once you have a publishing contract, you lose a lot of control of your work. The publisher will choose the cover art and the retail price. The publisher can give the book a different title, if they aren’t happy with the one you came up with. They can even demand changes to the story itself.

By traditional publishing I mean mainstream publishing, not the niche publishers that publish lesbian fiction. I considered submitting my book to one of them, but at the time they were publishing romance almost exclusively, and while my book does contain a love story, it doesn’t belong in the romance genre. And I had another concern. I felt that my story had universal appeal, and I didn’t want to restrict it by choosing a publisher that markets exclusively to the lesbian community.

Now we’re “indies”

I have never regretted my decision to self-publish. In the three years since my books came out, there has been a revolution in publishing that will have consequences we are only beginning to foresee. The “self-published” label is no longer synonymous with dreadful. Now we call ourselves indies. And as independent publishers we have total control of our work—both its content and how it is formatted and marketed.

The ebook revolution has made it even easier for author/publishers to get their work into the hands of readers. It took me a year to create my trade paperbacks. It took me a week to format the books for Kindle. I now do ebook formatting for other people as well as typesetting paperbacks, and I recommend to my clients that they publish the ebook first. It might as well be out there earning money and creating buzz while we go through the tedious process of typesetting and waiting for a paper proof. Some authors have chosen to bypass paperbacks and publish only ebooks.


The new paradigm

The digital publishing revolution has enabled writers to make an end run around the “gatekeepers”—the agents and editors who used to be the only route to publication. It took me awhile to realize the profound implications of that fact. Communities of writers have always spent a great deal of time discussing the marketplace—what was selling well, what certain agents were looking for, what certain publishers were looking for. That means that quite a few writers were not writing what was close to their hearts. They were writing for the market. They were writing what they thought an agent would represent, what an editor would buy.

There’s nothing wrong with writing for the market. Industries that produce products for which there is no market will fail in short order. But writing is different. I believe there’s an audience for just about anything that a writer can come up with, and for a very long time, those audiences have been underserved. They have been offered more and more of what sells. Every so often a “maverick” book will come out and set a new trend, but squeaking through that very narrow gateway of what traditional publishing considers marketable is no longer required for an author to reach her audience.

Imagine what kind of work will be produced when writers don’t have to write for anyone but themselves and their readers. We are already seeing genre fiction that crosses over into more than one genre. We are seeing work that doesn’t fit neatly into any genre.

While some people bemoan the fact that just about anybody can publish just about anything nowadays, thus creating a “tsunami of crap” that will overwhelm good writing, many of us are celebrating the fact that, not only are we able to produce the kinds of books we want to write. We are also able to find the kinds of books we want to read.

Yes, there will be piles of crap produced. And there will also be wonderful stories that we could never have imagined into existence in the old days a few years ago.

Finally, we get to the “lesbian fiction” stuff

Lesbian fiction has changed a lot. It isn’t mostly romance anymore. Lesbians are writing stories that cross over into other genres. Lesbians are writing stories as varied as the work of mainstream writers.

I believe it’s just a matter of time before the wider world discovers us. My fan mail comes from both men and women, gay and straight. My reviews come from both men and women, gay and straight. My books are listed in the gay and lesbian fiction category and also in historical fiction as “alternative history.”

I market to both lesbian and mainstream readers. I have entered awards contests, both lesbian and mainstream. The award I won was the 2010 EPIC ebook award in the Mainstream category.

In October 2009 Red Adept reviewed Book I of the trilogy on her review blog. As a heterosexual reviewer, she felt a bit uncertain about reviewing something in the “lesbian fiction” genre. Which gave me the opportunity to respond:

People of all races will read Toni Morrison and Amy Tan, because most of us understand that stories about people who are racially different from us are still about our common humanity, about the basic human experience that we all share. We believe, or we hope that we believe, that race no longer divides us.

I hope that heterosexual people will read my books and books by other lesbian authors, because our stories, too, are about our common humanity, about the human experience of love, that the love we feel for our beloveds is no different from the love they feel for theirs.

I wrote my book about women whose most important relationships are with other women, but I didn’t write it just for lesbians. Love is love, and I think you will find that as Tamras matures, her ability to love is her hero gift, and her quest will be to learn what love is and what love isn’t, what it gives and what it demands.

Over the three years that my book has been out, I have seen a revolution in attitudes. Early in 2009, one of my straight reviewers on Amazon felt it necessary to add:

Note: Because of the imposed segregation of the women in this society of warriors, this story does have a couple of scenes of female sex.

Three years later a reviewer posted this:

I (a straight woman) somehow didn't realize this was in the LGBT section, and so went into it without the expectations, hopes or prejudices of others. I simply fell into a beautifully written book that deserves a wide, wide audience.

I hope that blogs like this one will help us cross over into the mainstream, because our stories belong there, just as we belong there.

Just as we encourage gay and lesbian people to come out, I believe it’s time we encouraged gay and lesbian fiction to come out, to dare the straight world to read our stories, to get to know us and our lives, perhaps to experience with us the alienation that so many of us have endured, and also to realize that we love as they do and that we want what most people want—a joyful, peaceful, and productive life.

Bio:
Catherine M Wilson has spent most of her working life as an engineer of one sort or another (broadcast engineer, software engineer) and people who know that side of her are surprised when they learn about the writing side. Catherine says, “I like science and engineering because I like to know how things work, and I like the arts because I like to know how people work.”

Catherine began writing her trilogy in 1996 and finished it in 2006. She really should have been working at a day job, because everyone knows that no one can make a living from writing, but in 2011 the revenue from her books made up more than half her income. Considering that she was living on the other half for much of the last 15 years, she feels that she is indeed making a living from her writing.

Websites:

Shield Maiden Press website:
http://www.shieldmaidenpress.com/

Catherine M Wilson’s website:
http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/

When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior’s Path is available as a FREE download in multiple ebook formats from the author’s website, and also on Amazon for the Kindle (for as long as Amazon will price-match the free Nook version), Barnes & Noble for the Nook, and on Smashwords in multiple formats.

Links to Book I:

Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/When-Women-Were-Warriors-ebook/dp/B001MBU7EK

Nook:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-women-were-warriors-book-i-catherine-m-wilson/1009236079

Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/8413