That why I kept careful track of the passage of time and had tight control of the story. I know when victory celebrations were held downtown and how a deadly 1918 influenza affected the operation of public places, so I can figure out what my characters would be doing in the city on each particular day. However, it is impossible for an author to accurately edit her own work, so I received outside help before going to print. I tend to do too much story editing as I write, which slows me down, but I have a hard time letting a troublesome scene dangle while I move on to other parts of the book. I constantly have to remind myself that I can always go back and fix things later.
Promotion can be key in today's tight book market.
I ve found that joining online discussion groups has had the biggest impact on Gilded s sales. I ve discovered readers, reviewers, and marketing ideas this way, and can t stress how important it is for newly published writers to spend a good amount of time promoting their work across the Web. Word of mouth is the best way to sell fiction, and there are now ample opportunities to easily spread the word across the entire world. I now belong to the Historical Novel Society, which has been a big deciding factor in pursuing historical fiction. Formerly, agents and New York editors had discouraged me from writing in the genre because of the belief that historicals don t sell.