Call for Submissions

Spots are available for new (never published before) novellas to be a part of our next Sweet & Sassy Anthology releasing April 2017. 

The theme is Europe
(meaning it must have part of the setting there and be a meaningful part of the story)

and

you must include a strong, clean romance element.

(No swearing. No sex. Nothing erotic please.) 

To submit, you'll need 

• A full synopsis (tell all the plot points from beginning to end, including the ending)
• The first chapter of your story.
• Email to 2anthologies@gmail.com by October 30th.                       

The purpose of this anthology is to help provide more exposure for the authors included.

Those who are chosen for the anthology will need to pay $20.00 for cover and formatting and $25 for promotions, agree to adhere to the schedule and word counts, critique for all members of the group, and pay for their own story to be professionally line edited prior to final submission. All other deadlines will be emailed out to those who are chosen.

The accepted stories only have a 90-day exclusive to the anthology, then the authors may publish them on their own.

We are looking forward to reading your stories! 

Proposed Schedule

October 30: Submission of application (full synopsis and first chapter)

November 15 (on or before ): Notification to successful applicants 

January 31: Draft (20,000-30,000 word count) sent to group for critiques

February 15 (on or before ): Critiques back to all other authors

March 15 (on or before ): Professionally line edited final draft due
April 15: Proposed publication date 

Royalties are paid twice per year in April and October.

Feel free to email, FB or comment any questions you may have. :)

Character = Plot = Character

One of my favorite professional development sites is a blog by

K.M. Weiland
called Helping Writers Become Authors

A couple of years ago, she did a 15-session series of weekly blogpost about character arcs and story structure that is amazing!!!

If you don't like to read blogs, NO PROBLEM. She podcasts most of her blog posts and embeds them in the post so you can just click and listen. In this series it begins on Part 2--you'll have to read part 1.

Here's a link to the first post in this series:

Creating Stunning Character Arcs, Pt. 1: Can You Structure Characters?

The best part of the lessons are the questions she puts in each segment that you can add to your story bible (or use to create one) to deepen your characters and story.

Getting New Covers

When we first release a book, we design a cover we think will sell and we send the book out into the world. Over time, though, we might find that the cover isn't as eye-catching as we wanted, or we've found something we like better.

Are we stuck with the former cover? No!

There's absolutely nothing wrong with changing out covers that don't work. In fact, that's one of the first things to look at if a book isn't selling.

Let me tell you a little story.

Back when I first started Trifecta, we released a book called The Princess and the Prom Queen by Jaclyn Weist. The cover concept was pretty straightforward - it's about two girls in two different eras of time, so we did a split cover with one girl on one side and one on the other, as you can see here:

This is actually the second version - the first version had simpler font for the title.

This story is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, and the author began getting fan mail asking for a sequel. She decided she wanted to use the evil sorceress more in the second book, and found a fantastic evil sorceress picture. This is how that cover came out:

Now, you can see how awesome this sorceress picture is - there's no way we could have passed that up - but now there was the problem that the two books don't match. Not a problem at all, actually! We'd been talking for a while about redoing the first cover to increase sales, and some study of the market had shown us that gorgeous dresses are selling really well right now, so with some bibbety-bobbity-boo (sorry - wrong fairy tale), we created this:

All I have to do in order to change the cover is upload it to Kindle and CreateSpace. I don't have to get a new ISBN or anything because it's the same book - just in a different package.

So if you'd like to give an older book cover a little boost, feel free to experiment and see what you come up with. You're not obligated to keep the same cover forever if you'd like a change.

Writers' Retreat in Hawaii 2018

iWriteNetwork is planning our first WOW retreat.

5 wonderful days of adventure that are sure to spike your creativity and drive your imagination wild.

Save the date now and start saving your pennies.  There is very limited availability and it is first come first served.

Plan on spending about $1500 buckeroos. We estimate that you will spend about $800 on the flight, but if you watch prices, you can get that cost down. (You will book your own flight.) We will secure accommodations. It looks like it will cost somewhere between $500 and $700 for the five nights. We will be providing breakfast, but you will be in charge of your own meals beyond that. Don't forget to budget for activities and souvenirs.

We can't wait to share this special WOW retreat with you. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, give us a shout out.

I can almost feel that beautiful warm sand between my toes right now. What about you?