Why did my author home page need to come down for maintenance? You see, I had foolishly let it get about 8 months out of date, and that wasn't too bad the first few months, but then the minor problems eventually became larger. I knew my website needed a major overhaul, but I was putting so much time and energy into my next book that I didn't want to give up valuable writing time to work on my Internet presence. A good excuse, I suppose, as excuses go. But it became quite clear that the needed overhaul was so massive that it would be best to take the entire site down for a bit.

Why so many changes? For one thing, I'm currently trying to put a bad mistake behind me. In 2003 I had published with a vanity press. What is a vanity press? It is defined as any "publisher" who tries to pretend that it is geared toward readers when its intended market is actually the author. My website had at first been centered around selling my vanity-published book and creating interest in several future books that I hoped to place with real publishers. After I realized my mistake and had my contract cancelled, I then used my website to warn people about the dangers of vanity presses and to create interest in my future books. However, I found that there were already much better warning sites out there than anything I could come up with, and by then I had also started to learn about the problems that crop up when people hear about books they can't purchase now and probably won't be able to purchase for a couple of years or more. It generates interest, yes, but it's frustrated interest. I realized that saying a whole bunch about a book with no foreseeable publication date was not really helpful. Thus, the need to rebuild this website from the ground up.

I did pretty well for vanity publishing, selling nearly a thousand copies over the course of three years (see the stats*), but such a victory is meaningless. Vanity published is still vanity published. Unless you can sell 5,000 books or more over a relatively short time period, it isn't even a publication credit. In November 2006, I gave up on my vanity publishing dream and I learned that I'd have to start all over again with a new book. Real publishers don't consider a vanity book to be a publication credit, but they do consider the vanity book to have lost its first publication rights, so that they could only buy reprint rights. And, real publishers aren't interested in reprint rights of a vanity-published book unless you can publish some other book first. Fortunately, I had a new book waiting that was on its tenth draft or so. I worked hard to expand and polish it. Now that new book is on its thirteenth draft (lucky 13 I hope!) and I believe it's about ready for agents and publishers to see.

Before I tell you about the new book, you might want to know about vanity-published book. The vanity book was called Half Human, Half Animal: Tales of Werewolves and Related Creatures and it was a collection of folklore, superstitions and urban legends aimed at an adult audience. In actuality, it was only half of that book, because I discovered that with the extra expenses of vanity publishing I'd have a $30 paperback unless I cut my original book into two volumes. I thought of that first book as Volume 1 and I had planned to publish the second half later as Volume 2. I realized my mistake and refused to send Volume 2 to the vanity press. So my vanity-published book was only really half a book. I did build up a minor fan base online (as you'll probably realize by the mere fact that I far exceeded the 50 copies that an average vanity book sells) and these people were clamoring for Volume 2, but after I realized my mistake I knew I could never again let any of my writing into the world of vanity publishing.

What is the new book that I am hoping to get published for real? It is called They Could Turn Into Animals: Werewolves, Cat People and Other Shapeshifters and is similar to my vanity-published book except that it is aimed at a juvenile audience and is much shorter. It had a common origin with Half Human, Half Animal, back in 2002 when I was sending around to publishers a really huge book that I called Legends of the Shapeshifter. I'd done a large amount of research, and I didn't realize until late 2002 that I'd incorporated enough material for at least two books into that monstrously large manuscript. At that time I cut it down to size and separated out the material into two books, one for adults and one for young readers. In addition to cutting the size and organizing the material more suitably, I was also hoping to tap into synergy. If I could get both an adult book and a juvenile book on the same subject in print at the same time, each book would help to sell the other, yet they wouldn't compete since the readership for each would be different.

Then, a year after separating the original Legends of the Shapeshifter into an adult book and a juvenile book, I stupidly got sucked into the world of vanity publishing. I was smart enough to know that I was taking a risk, so I only published one book that way, the first half of the adult book. I kept back the juvenile book and continued to work on it, but then the bane of the vanity-published author, the need to indulge in lots of largely useless marketing schemes, began to erode away my writing time. I was not able to work on the juvenile book very much until after I completely gave up on vanity publishing in November 2006.

After recovering my wits and getting my contract cancelled, I tried to immerse myself in learning as much as possible about the publishing industry. How had I failed? Why wasn't I smart enough to smell a scam? How could I avoid scams and bad advice? How could I get published for real? I sought out useful websites such as the Bewares and Background Check forum at Absolute Write, Miss Snark, Writer Beware and many blogs of literary agents. I learned that a fair number of the books about the publishing industry are full of bad advice and misinformation, such as this one that I relied on and later wished I hadn't. You need to go to respected agents and editors working within the industry to get untainted, current information. And, in this age of widespread blogging, it is quite easy to get the best information once you start looking for it. It took me months of reading, combing, sorting and digesting that information but I now think I'm finally ready to start my journey toward real publication without being afraid that I'm going to do something stupid that will land me back in a dead-end situation.

Do I have books in progress other than my two collections of animal transformation folklore? Yes, many of them, in various stages ranging from a detailed outline to several chapters of the first draft. Once I'm certain that I should do no more polishing on my juvenile book They Could Turn Into Animals, I'll give my undivided attention to these other books and begin completing them. I don't want to say much about them at this early stage, but I do want my prospective fans to know that I've got additional interests and that I'm not a one-subject author.