Have you signed up for the DPP newsletter?
Subscribers got early access to the current (12/25/22) issue of Instant Noodles (that’s right, they got the password to get to read it before the general public!).
And this month, we have a freebie that we hope authors can use to help them meet their goals.
Do you like Humphrey Bogart movies?
How about Raymond Chandler mysteries?
Join us online for a conversation with William F. Crandell, award-winning author of Let’s Say Jack Kennedy Killed the Girl, Book 1 in The Jack Griffin Detective Series.
In this hard-boiled adventure we find a young senator Kennedy’s personal and political future at risk when he’s set up to take the fall for a ghastly murder. Working against time, bureaucratic red tape, his own personal demons, and individuals who want him out of the way, Detective Jack Griffin must identify the real killer, assuming he survives long enough.
William F. Crandell returned home from the Vietnam War with a taste for adventure, a skeptic’s eye, and a hundred thousand stories. Awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award for his private detective novel, Let’s Say Jack Kennedy Killed the Girl, Crandell has published short stories, book reviews, scholarly articles, journalism, state and federal reports, political analyses, and congressional testimony that he presented in Washington hearings. An Ohio native, Crandell received all his degrees at Ohio State University, completing his doctorate in American History with a study of the interaction of McCarthyism and Republican politics. Bill is a former DC speech writer for Veteran’s Affairs.
Click below to register for the Zoom link:
If you like your mysteries cosy, then this one is for you!
We are actively seeking reviewers for the Charlotte Smart Mysteries, a 3-book series.
Folks who are kind enough to review the book(s) on Goodreads or Amazon will be given:
There is no requirement to write a review that is approved by us. In order to get the print book (this is a pristine new copy, not an ARC copy or a draft copy, this is a brand-new, gift-able book) we require that the review be between 200 and 500 words, and submitted by the agreed-upon date, and not removed at a later date.
If you are willing and able, please contact Hawkshaw @ publisher@hawkshawpress.com .
If you are able to complete the book review process, we will give you notice of all future review/free book opportunities from our publishing group, so that you have a chance to secure more free books.
We are actively seeking reviewers for the Charlotte Smart Mysteries, a 3-book series.
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As much as we love our wonderful authors like Stan, we love readers even more.
Our readers help us keep doing what we love to do here, publishing great and undiscovered writers.
Thank you for being a Hawkshaw reader, for each and any book you read, and for every time you’ve reviewed a book for us. You truly help our authors when you give of yourself in that way.
Much love~
Over at our parent imprint, Devil’s Party Press, we recently released the second issue of our lit mag, Instant Noodles We would really value having some feedback from you on the magazine if you have a few minutes to spare. Thanks so much for your feedback~
READ INSTANT NOODLES
I’m a writer too; I write. I understand how much we crave to have our writing accepted, how much we want to be published.
If you have finished your damn novel I consider you something stupendous. And, at Hawkshaw, we may or may not choose you.
Consider the call you are applying for, from any publisher anywhere. What is it asking for?
Is it asking for stories about moments of grace, and you send a horror novel that has a woman in it named Grace? Is it asking for happy, and you send sad, or sad, and you send happy? Is is asking for stories about the spring, and you send a story about fall?
I would venture to say there are a few reasons why I turn down the stories I turn down:
1. You haven’t gotten the book ready for prime-time. It has multiple errors, or misplaced modifiers, or comments from beta-readers or workshop groups in the margins. It’s not clean, though the author thinks it is. It is the equivalent of spinach in the teeth. It might be a great story, but HP and all the DPP enterprises are a small company; we’re not going to clean up your manuscript because we cannot afford it in time, or money. AND it should be your book, not ours. I once developmentally edited a gentleman as a work for hire, and he related to me how sad he was that his publisher chose all the sections I had written to use for advertising and pullout quotations. He said, “Your writing is better than mine.” I did not want that to happen, and it was his story, not mine, so the lines get all blurred when we have to go in and re-arrange the furniture. Clean, clean, and clean again before you submit.
2. You haven’t read the room. Look around, look at the website for the press to which you wish to submit. In the case of multiple imprints like HP and DPP, look at all the websites. See the book covers. Read the synopses of the books already published. Check out the blog. Who are these people you are asking to publish you? If we’re the wrong press for you, if you wouldn’t want to hang out with us on the weekend, you probably should search out another press. To us, the relationship matters.
3. You haven’t read the call. With HP I see that more often than I had hoped to. We designed a logo meant to invoke Chandler. We profiled classic female mystery authors. We are currently publishing a Chandler disciple and a Christie disciple. And you send Harlan Coben. And though I am enjoying his Netflix series, he’s not what I’m looking for in a book, here. I love Christie, PD James, Chandler, Hammett, Mosley, Doyle, so, if you want me to publish your mystery novel, you should probably lean in that direction. It’s not that you could not have a wonderful novel that is like a Coben novel. Of course you could. But for me, and the amount of unpaid work it will take me to get your book to paper (and all books published traditionally are published on spec, right? I do the publishing work for free, and I hope your book sells, and you and I make a split of the profit), I have to like it, enjoy it, be excited about it. And that is subjective as hell and not fair. And true. And, also, those novels that I love are often in a series. Is your book a one-off? That may be fine for horror, but less welcome for mystery.
4. You haven’t been culturally sensitive. Walter Mosley, a Black guy, has Easy Rawlins, a Black guy, as his detective. Raymond Chandler, a white guy, has Philip Marlowe, a white guy, for his detective. Both books contain characters of other races (good) but both of the main characters align with their authors. Good. I am very sensitive to being careful of cultural appropriation. Are you? Maybe you think that is a lot of hooey and too bad for me, and I need to get over myself. You are entitled to think that, of course. And I refer you to #2, above.
5. You’re a luddite, and you refuse to change. You’re not going to sell any books. Get your social media working. Build an audience.
6. You go on too long (probably like me, here!). A good writer, truly, knows when to cut, and when to add. Some books are long looping rides of fun, such as my beloved Jitterbug Perfume. But mystery novels, at least the kind I like, are more spare. Do you really need all those similies? I bet you could cut a few. He jumped back in horror at her words, like a young boy touching a hot stove. She frowned at him, like a headmaster at an errant truant. When she walked toward him her shoes made a sound like hooves clomping on cobblestones. He began to sweat like a suspect in the hot seat.
Each press is going to have its own vibe, and you will do better with one that is simpatico with you. It takes some effort to check a press out, but it is worth it and saves your ego, your time, and, if there are fees from some presses, your money.
We went from HP being just an idea of something I wanted to do, to over 100 submissions in 3 months. Your book, against that tide of other books, needs to hit the bullet points above really well. What kind of glut of submissions are other publishers looking at?
We hope that at all DPP imprints we give off a welcoming and kind vibe, being welcoming and kind is part of my ethos, and I do want to help good writers who also happen to be, like myself, getting around to this publishing thing after the age of 40, have a chance at publication. I want potential HP authors to know that I care. And yet, though, “It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in,” it actually isn’t. Just take a little more time to think about that submission before you send it off, and maybe you won’t have to number the rejections.
Welcome to Hardboiled and Loaded with Sin, the anthology of Hawkshaw Press. First issue drops summer 2023.
Here’s the deets:
Fiction only.
Short stories 1500-7,500 words. If yours is longer send us a query @ publisher at Devil’s Party Press dot com.
12 pt New Times Roman, double-spaced.
Authors over 40 only.
Submit everything through our Duosuma page as a Word or Pages file.
FEE: $10
PAYMENT: All authors selected for publication receive a one-time royalty of 25 bucks, a copy of the anthology, and our semi-undying love.
Created by Caroline Keene, and first published in 1930, Nancy Drew Mystery Stories have sold over 70 million copies and become a cherished part of our cultural landscape. The teenage sleuth has been a noted inspiration for generations of women, including Sonia Sotomayor, Sandra Day O’Connor, Hillary Clinton, and me!
Nancy Drew novels are the first novels I remember reading independently, and I think I began at around first grade. Her stories were just scary and dangerous enough, and over the years I read and reread them many times. I consider myself lucky because my mother read them first, and her mother used to buy her one sometimes when they took the trolly to the bank to deposit my grandfather’s paycheck. The books were expensive for my grandparents, and so my mother wasn’t able to collect the whole set, but she did get quite a few, and she was very generous with them, first loaning them to her friends as a child, and then to the local high school girls who used to babysit my brother and me, and then I read them. When I got my own apartment as an adult, two things from home went with me, the family dog, and the Nancy Drews. Lucky for me, my sister was never interested in either!
Nancy, what a great woman. Nancy was very smart (I always wanted to be very smart!), and she was kind, and a busybody, but in a good way. She was also wealthy, generous, and a great friend to both Bess and George. Nancy dressed well, had a convertible (I’m still waiting for mine Nancy!), and a dapper boyfriend.
I’ll share an interesting bit of trivia from my association with Nancy Drew. When I was getting my BA my college decided that all students (no matter their major) in their junior year, would have to take an English exam, and if they didn’t pass it, they would have to repeat freshman composition ( a fate worse than death!). The funny thing was, it wasn’t a writing exam, it was a vocabulary test. And it was chock full of words like divan and consommé and luncheon and vacuous; words I knew, because of Nancy Drew (or, more correctly, Caroline Keene). In my graduating class, among the other English majors, I was the only one who passed the test on the first try. Thank you Nancy!
Carolyn Keene is the pseudonym of the authors of the Nancy Drew mystery stories and The Dana Girls mystery stories (also a favorite of mine!), both produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Syndicate, hired writers, beginning with Mildred Wirt Benson, to write the manuscripts for the Nancy Drew books. The writers were required by their contract to give up all rights to the work and to maintain confidentiality. Benson is credited as the primary writer of Nancy Drew books under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Harriet Adams (Edward Stratemeyer’s daughter) added new titles after the retirement of Benson. Also involved in the Nancy Drew writing process were Harriet Stratemeyer Adams’s daughters, who gave input on the series and sometimes helped to choose book titles, and the Syndicate’s secretary, Harriet Otis Smith, who invented the characters of Nancy’s friends Bess and George.
Are you the next Caroline Keene? Hawkshaw Press is seeking a great woman detective writer, and it could be you!
Submit through Duosuma
Hawkshaw Press 