By Holly Bargo

I’ve long asserted that ideas are cheap and plentiful and have a folder full of partial manuscripts to prove it. Each of the files within that folder began as an idea that just wouldn’t leave my mind until I wrote it down. Each began with good intentions--and we know what paves the road to hell. However, somewhere along the way--sometimes not more than a few pages in--those ideas faltered. I couldn’t sustain them. 

I published Rowan in 2014. I was employed full-time in a soul-sucking job I loathed. After work, I did the wife-and-mother thing. Let’s just say that my life didn’t leave me a whole lot of time for idle amusement like writing. Rowan took me two years to write. I don’t remember where the story premise came from. I do recall sending it to a friend of a friend who was kind enough to serve as an informed beta reader and taking encouragement and direction from her feedback. It was probably my first genuine experience as an indie author. 

I remember as I wrote Rowan that other characters inserted themselves into the story. Those characters, Cassia and Willow, demanded I write their stories. And so a trilogy, the Tree of Lifeseries, was born. 

Rowan isn’t perfect by any means, either as a manuscript or as a character. Among all the heroines appearing in my books (over 20 titles published since 2014), she’s the one most like me in personality. Perhaps for that reason, her story remains my favorite. 

Ideas for other books spring from diverse sources: some begin with a question of “What if?” Others arise from idle daydreaming. The Falcon of Imenotash was sparked by a movie: I disliked the movie’s ending and my imagination immediately went to work on a new story that touched upon some of the themes in the movie. I challenge you to identify the movie that generated that spark. Russian Gold, Russian Dawn, and Russian Pride all came into being because some enthusiastic fans asked for stories featuring the protagonists who appeared as secondary characters in Russian Lullaby. 
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Inspiration comes from many sources. Ideas are cheap and plentiful, we pluck them from the air. Whether we can carry an idea to its natural fruition is another matter entirely.

“What are you?” he asked, his voice just a little raspy.

“Tonight I’m your waitress,” I said dispassionately. “Please allow me to pass.”

He looked at me, at the dead thug, and back at me. He did not move. Then he raised his hand and ran a finger down my cheek.

“Pretty,” he said and smiled.

“Poisonous,” I replied coolly and touched the ornate necklace of linked silver medallions that circled my throat.

He sneered, but pulled his hand away. He hadn’t noticed the necklace of linked silver medallions until I pointed it out, which indicated to me that he was very young, very hungry, very stupid, or all three. The way he moved, with his reliance upon speed and stealth, also indicated his recent conversion from human to undead. The inexperienced ones tended to stalk and pursue their prey, using concealment, speed, and ambush techniques—rather like cats, I always thought.

Oddly enough and despite the similarities, I like cats.

Vampires, not so much.

“You’ll have to lick the pavement if you dither much longer,” I prompted him.

He growled, yanked the necklace so that the links shattered, and yowled again as the silver burned him. (Yes, that was another bit of true vampire lore: silver is toxic to vampires; faerie silver even more so.) Faster than I could get away, he grabbed my hair, forcefully tipped my head to expose the vulnerable neck, and bit down. He gulped once, twice, a third time, and then started screaming as the faerie silver of sidhe blood coursed through his body, burning him from the inside. His face began to char at the mouth, beginning with his lips that were yet smeared with my blood, the undead flesh shriveling and sizzling. I sank to my knees and a scrabbling hand found a silver medallion from my necklace. I wiped it against my dirty, bloody skirt and then pressed it against the wounds on my neck. I felt and heard and smelled the sizzle of my own flesh as the silver burned away the poison of a vampire’s saliva. Those three gulps had been long, deep, starving ones and I was weak and unsteady. Yet still I pulled sufficient energy and strength from deep within myself to heal the wounds and leave no scar. Then I sat there, nearly unconscious, for far too long.

And that’s where the police found me.

Recent freelance gigs have made me finally realize that I ought to add a new service to my business: assisted publishing.

People hire me to write their manuscripts. They hire me to edit their manuscripts. They hire me to format their manuscripts. Now they can hire me to edit, format, and publish their manuscripts.

Here's how it works.

The comprehensive packages each include three rounds of editing (initial deep edit, edit of the revised manuscript, and final proofreading), formatting (with up to three revisions), and publishing the document through Kindle Direct Publishing. The author may contribute a self-created cover design or outsource the cover design to a graphic designer with whom I will be happy to coordinate.

To publish the book, I'll need the following information from the author:

• Page specifications (which I'd need anyway for formatting)
• Paper preferences (white or cream)
• Cover preferences (matte or glossy)
• Up to seven (7) keywords for SEO
• Cover image file
• Back cover blurb (i.e., book description)
• Book category selection (maximum 2)
• Desired e-book and print prices for the book (Amazon establishes minimum prices, so that will serve as a guide)
• Decision whether to enroll in Kindle Unlimited
• Author's Amazon login credentials.

If the author does not have an Amazon account, then I'll help set one up. The author must also enter his or her bank account information and tax information with Amazon, liking the buyer profile with the author (seller) profile, so that Amazon can pay royalties directly to the author's bank account. If the author isn't sure how to go about this, then I'll be happy to help.

That's the beauty of this service: all royalties are paid directly to the author, but I do the heavy lifting of publishing the book. The service will take advantage of the free Amazon-assigned ISBN number for printed titles; e-books don't require ISBN numbers. The author pays me up front: I don't take a percentage of anything, nor do I claim any ownership of the copyright. I will, however, enter Hen House Publishing as the publisher.

The packages are all-inclusive. There are no add-on fees. And the author gets a professionally produced book.

If all you want is someone to assist you in publishing your book through Kindle Direct Publishing without the editing and formatting work, then we can discuss that.

So, if you've been using COVID-induced free time to write that book, then let's get it published!