In My Words: Kimberly Burton Allen, Writer

This week I met a delightful woman who is a fellow writer of the same vintage as I am – i.e., we both worked when writing still paid (for example: HuffPost expects writers to contribute for free ) and midlist authors weren’t being dropped  by the Big Five publishers as they acquired smaller houses. We were reminiscing about back in the day--gaaah, that makes me feel old!--when we sent print queries via snail mail (don't forget your SASE!) to agents and waited weeks, sometimes months, for a reply. I was recounting the story of seeking an agent for Blood Exposure , the first of my novels.  Organized (compulsive?) as I am, I diligently tracked every query with a spreadsheet and saved every response. I used to segregate the responses in categories – Request for Full MS, Request for Partial MS, Rejection, Handwritten (getting a handwritten comment was almost as good as getting a request for a partial), Rejection, Form Letter. Far and away, the thickest file ...

I wrote last about decluttering with an aim to opening up some literal as well as mental space in my life. Well, things are progressing. After much research, I managed to find a vinyl collector for the majority of Dad's old jazz albums. Armed with a special turntable that records straight into a computer music file, I spent a whole weekend copying some early folk and contemporary trad jazz that will never be sold on iTunes or found on YouTube. It was a rainy weekend, perfect for soaking up the memories that bubbled up in me as I sang along with the old music. Then I catalogued and uploaded the tracts to my iPod, packed up one hundred pounds of vinyl record albums, and shipped them to Tennessee. On tax day. It was, quite literally, a weight off my mind. Next up? A doll collection. I was never the sort of child who played with dolls. But I spent my college years working at Disneyland in the gift shops in Fantasyland. I became friendly with Elyse, the Doyenne of the Doll Departm...

True confession, from someone whose former career was in marketing and advertising: I am lousy at self-promotion. I know I am hardly alone: Most writers I read or follow find it difficult to put the sales hat on when their natural bent is to retreat into the wizard hat of creation. Of course, at a certain tipping point of sales and word of mouth, your name is all the self-promotion you need. But getting to that point involves marketing yourself. In my opinion, the contemporary author most successful at self-promotion is James Patterson, who back in the early years, personally paid the big bucks to run ads for his books in the New York Times Book Review , and later, even television commercials. Truly, how often had you -- have you even today -- seen a TV ad for a book? But it works for him, and according to his (admittedly self-promotional) website, he holds the Guiness record for the most New York Times bestsellers ever. Love his books or hate them, you gotta admit the man is a ma...

A while back I wrote that I believed  the future of traditional publishing was in trouble.  The future of the printed word has much to do with distribution channels (where and how do we get our books?) and with business models that, in my not so humble opinion, can or should no longer support waste. More and more of us are enjoying the ability to read on our tablets, be it a Kindle, iPad or other e-reader, and they are changing our experience in more ways than you might expect. A classic example:  At our bed and breakfast inn , I meet a lot of guests who are fellow readers. We'll be comparing notes about something we've enjoyed and they'll say, "Oh, if you like Author A, you should try Author B!" And instead of making myself a note in my smart phone where I won't happen upon it again for months, I punch up the app on the spot and send the ebook, or a sample of it, directly to my Kindle. I have done this at bars, yoga studios, sandwich shops, cocktail partie...

Winter is my writing time. When the bed and breakfast business slows and the cold sets in, Chris and I go away to California to relax and rejuvenate our bodies and minds. And, away from the siren call of house projects like painting rooms or planning garden additions, I try to reconnect with my writer spirit and channel my muse through my computer keyboard. This winter I have been finalizing Choice . Unlike my previous fiction, the suspense novels  Blood Exposure  and Net Stalker , Choice  is women's fiction. As I was doing the final edit from Southern California, where much of the book is set (and relishing NOT being in the midst of the horrific winter the East Coast had this year!), I found it easy to slip back into the arms of the characters once more. From the "flyleaf:" Jody Carpenter loved and admired artist Keith Ackerman and believed their personal and creative synergy was evidence they were meant to be together. But after months of assuming their sexua...

"A writer writes." Except when she's doing her day job. Thus begins the time of year when I struggle with feelings of inadequacy (a writer writes! Why aren't I writing?) as days pass and all I've accomplished is a few notes jotted regarding a scene I am thinking of revising in my next book, CHOICE.* To be sure, it's not like I'm a stranger to the keyboard. I've spent the past month or so working on copy for our website -- we just launched a new and improved version, and we're very proud of it. It's marketing copy, the flow and purpose of which comes back to me from my previous life pre-A Butler's Manor. It's still crafting words, finding the feel. But it's not "writing." Or is it? The issue is, as usual, me. The perfectionist in me that somehow thinks that I can accomplish two things at the same time, both at 100% of my energy. And of course I can't. But the "shoulds" still hover in the back of my ...

The goal this winter has been to bring my second suspense novel NET STALKER to publication, which involves not only final editing, but details such as securing permission for the lyrics I've used in the book and acknowledging them correctly. This necessary administrative "stuff" has been balanced by the creative endeavor of working with a graphic designer to get the cover just right. I'm really pleased with it. As I write, Chris is stretched out on the couch in our vacation rental in Laguna Beach, CA. Always my first reader, he is on the final chapters of the final draft of NET STALKER, which will go live on Kindle very shortly. Chris hasn't read the book since my first draft was finished lo, these many years (!!) ago, so I am on pins and needles to hear his response. As I've said before, I live sort of a split life: Nine months of the year all my attention and creativity is focused on A Butler's Manor, our bed and breakfast, on welcoming and enjoyi...

Today is Mother's Day. This isn't my holiday, as my only children are comprised of words, rather than genes, and my own mother "changed addresses" long ago...in fact, I realized with a distant shock today that she has been gone more than half my life. But where these two intersect was a critical turning point for me. My mother died of cancer at 51-- the precise age I am today. Though she was far from demonstrative, we were very close. She was diagnosed in late October four years after I graduated college.  Anyone who has lost someone to cancer knows the pain of witnessing the slow death that you can't stop, or often, even ease. I cried so much through the term of her short prognosis that when she passed away, I thought I had no more tears to shed. While I missed her dreadfully, mimicking her pragmatism, I boxed up my pain. I went back to work the day after her funeral and threw myself into practical matters like my then-career in advertising and...

A couple months ago, I attended a breakfast book event that featured author Elizabeth George, one of my favorite mystery writers. In the Q&A session that followed, someone asked Ms. George where she got her ideas. Elizabeth George writes a series in what the British would call crime fiction, and I'd have guessed her ideas mainly come from police blotters or the nightly news. Her answer surprised me: She gets the ideas. she said, from her settings. She visits the UK looking for a great setting and imagines what might happen there. Starting a book from the setting -- I wonder how usual that is. Does it depend on the genre? Certainly, setting is critical in sci-fi and fantasy, where worlds are created wholecloth...think of Narnia, Middle Earth, or Hogwarts. Stephen King said that his horror book The Shining was conceived after spending a night as the only guests in the grand old Stanley Hotel  in Estes Park, CO  the last nigh...

It feels like changing religions. As someone who even as a girl loved the feel of a hardcover book in my hand and who has a large collection of cherished favorites (including the first 50 Nancy Drew books, all of the same vintage in which I first read them!), I hereby admit to a paradigm shift in my publishing beliefs: I have come to believe that the future of most contemporary bookselling lies in e-books . And in accepting--and even embracing--the trend, I've just released my first novel, BLOOD EXPOSURE, on Kindle, following the November release of A BUTLER'S LIFE ( also on Kindle). This is exciting as well as bittersweet. Like almost all of my fellow book lovers and authors, I've been saddened to watch the closing of more and more independent bookstores in our communities. I want it all: the homey feeling of the small bookstore with the bibliophile staff whose handwritten recommendation cards are stuck into the crowded stacks; the vastness of the large chain store wi...