At Behind the Zines this month, I'm talking to Jennifer R. Donohue and going behind the zines completely to talk about self-publishing. Donohue's short fiction has been published in magazines like Apex and Fantasy Magazine. She has also self-published several novellas and her self-published debut novel, Exit Ghost, is out March 7. I'm thrilled to be able to talk to her about her experience with self-publishing and the joys and challenges of getting your work out into the world without a publisher as intermediary.
More about Jennifer R. Donohue:
Jennifer R. Donohue grew up at the Jersey Shore and now lives in central New York with her husband and her Doberman. She is a Codexian and an Associate member of the SFWA, and short fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Apex, Syntax & Salt, Escape Pod, and elsewhere. Her cyberpunk novella series Run With the Hunted is available on most digital platforms. She tweets @AuthorizedMusin.
More about Exit
Ghost:
After her father is murdered and an attempt is made on her life, New Jersey heiress and witch Juliet Duncan is supposed to be concentrating on getting better and moving forward. Instead, Jules summons her father's ghost using her blood and tears and his old rotary phone to answer the question: who did it? He reveals it was Hector, her dad’s best friend and her mom’s new fiancé.
Certain her life is still in danger, Jules flees the family estate to the Asbury Park apartment she shares with her best friend and fellow witch, Ashes. When another friend joins them, all three women get caught up with a secret boyfriend who’s also big into magic, but in all the wrong ways, all while Jules wrestles with whether her father’s ghost was telling the truth. But what Jules does know is that power has its cost, and she is more than willing to pay the price in order to get her revenge.
***
Q. First up: what’s your background, and what do you do
outside the world of speculative fiction writing?
JD: I was born in New Jersey and went to college for
psychology in a small town in central New York, where I ended up staying after
graduation. My husband and I went to college together, and staying in town
afterwards just made sense to us. What I do for my day job (my non writing
career?) is I work at my local public library; I was on the circulation desk
and then in charge of interlibrary loan for my first years there, and now I do
what the library world calls “tech services,” I do the book ordering, and then
receive and process them. There’s also the joke in libraryland (probably other
fields as well) that our job descriptions all contain “other duties as
required.” In addition to ordering materials, I’ve helped with our local
history materials, I’ve researched the building’s construction projects, helped
coordinate room remodels and asbestos abatement projects, and I’ve run a
writing workshop there since 2014. The writing workshop feels a little bit like
cheating; what a dream it is, to be able to write at work!
Since getting dogs (we’ve had them one at a time, but it’s
been two now,) my ambient interest in animal behavior and dog training
expanded, and I’ve said that I have to use my psychology degree for something,
and so dogs it is. I was even a dog blogger for a little while, before the
whole ‘fiction career’ thing got traction.
Q. What attracted you to the speculative fiction genre
when you were a child or young adult (or adult)? What was your gateway into the
world of speculative fiction?
JD: I was born in the 80s, and a lot of the media then (that
I remember) was very fantasy/scifi/genre mashup, and I think that’s really
influenced me my whole life. I read far more “literary” fiction than genre for
a really long time, which might be what landed me in that “too speculative to
be literary and too literary to be speculative” niche at times. The very first
scifi book that I ever remember reading is The Magic Meadow by Alexander
Key, though one of my aunts also lent me The Earthsea trilogy and The
Hobbit and Lord of the Rings once I was old enough for those. I
did used to try to write more literary fiction, especially in college
when I was taking writing classes, but also in high school I hand wrote (but
never finished) 1000 pages of an epic fantasy novel with many dragons and
characters but no real plot.
Q. I always love reading your work and you have had many
short stories published in various speculative fiction zines over the years,
including "Into the Dark" in Fantasy
Magazine and "A Country of Eternal Light" in Apex
Magazine. Your novella The Drowned Heir was published
last year, and you have a novel called Exit Ghost coming out in March.
Both the novel and the novella are fabulous reads, and both are self-published.
Can you talk a bit about why you decided to go the self-publishing route for
these stories?
JD: Thank you so much!
I actually did try to go a more traditional route with both The
Drowned Heir and also Exit Ghost. With The Drowned Heir,
I submitted it to both magazines and small presses that accepted those lengths
(20k words.) After a few years of that, though, and after putting out several
books in my Run With the Hunted series, I thought “well fine, I’ll just
do it myself,” and put it out in ebook and hardcover.
Similarly, with Exit Ghost, I queried agents with
it……….starting in 2020. Querying agents is difficult in the best of times, but
the pandemic really made things that much harder on all levels. I did get
several full requests, and continued querying for perhaps longer than I
otherwise would have while waiting on a very exciting, high profile agent to
decide, and when that rejection finally came, I thought “well fine, I’ll just
do it myself.”
Q. Can you describe the work involved in getting your
work ready for publication when you self-publish. How do you go about the
process of editing, getting a cover, and then publishing and distributing your
work?
JD: Most of my covers come from screwing around with things
on Canva until I arrive at something that I don’t hate. I’m actually personally
a minimalist when it comes to book covers; as a reader, I’ve been frustrated
with movie tie in covers, or covers that have people on them that don’t end up
representing the characters as they are on the page, and I would just as soon
have a black book with the title and author name on it, and maybe some cool
embossed designs, like those leatherbound-with-a-ribbon-bookmark editions of
things that get put out.
I benefit greatly from having very good friends (some of
whom are also writers) who are willing to read my stuff for me, ranging from
short stories on up to novels. My ultimate proofreader has been my friend since
high school, and I’m super grateful for his keen eye.
I use Draft2Digital for my formatting, and for distributing
my non-Amazon ebooks. I’ve done paperback on Amazon, and the hardcovers through
IngramSpark (who then will distribute to Amazon and everywhere.) I find it very
frustrating that Amazon will only do preorders for digital items, and that is
one reason I have not tried out their (new) hardcover options. In general, I
like the Amazon book building tools better than Ingram’s, but that ability to
run preorders is just too compelling.
Q. What are some of the things you’ve learned about the
self-publishing process? Any insights, tips and tricks, or bloopers you’d like
to share? What are some of the biggest joys and some of the hardest challenges?
JD: The very first time I formatted a book for self
publishing (Run With the Hunted, back in 2018), I came to the belated
realization that everything that is in the book has to be in the file when I
upload it, which is VERY obvious but I wasn’t thinking about, say, an author
bio, when I was in the homestretch of getting that ready. Since then,
Draft2Digital has really expanded their tools, and you can add things like the
dedication, copyright page, author bio, etc. in their interface (they don’t pay
me for being happy with them, I’ve just found them crucial to my process!)
It’s truly a joy to see people engage with my work, be it
discussion with a podcast or even just somebody responding to a meme that I put
on twitter. These are characters and events that only existed in my head for
however long, so seeing how they exist in the world is delightful. It’s also
really exciting if somebody picks up on a reference that I’m making, or even
mentions liking something that I am particularly pleased with or proud of.
Q. For writers who might be interested in doing this for
themselves, what advice would you give?
JD: It’s important to be pragmatic, and behave
professionally. Did I think I would be rich and famous by now, perhaps even
discovered by a big publisher who wanted to do a run of my books, and then
movie producers who want to bring my work to the screen? Maybe! We hear those
self-publishing success stories, like with Hugh Howey, and E. L. James, and
many others. I guess it could still happen at any moment, given my ever-growing
back catalog, but it hasn’t yet. Does that mean I’m going to stop? Absolutely
not. I write first and foremost for myself, and then also because I want to be
read.
And I am read! People, not just my family or friends, but strangers
have bought my books, and even rated or reviewed them, and that’s a really
gratifying experience. People who I don’t have social currency with are still
interested in my work, and I hope that they continue to be.
When I say behave professionally, that includes treating
your fellow writer and other peers with respect, and also never going
after reviewers, which is something that happens with alarming frequency, and
is wildly inappropriate. Not everybody is going to love your book and give the
ratings that you hope for, and that is just part of the territory. You can
complain to your friends if you need to, or your group chat, venting can be
really important, but that’s for private.
Q. What are your thoughts on the business of speculative
fiction publishing and the challenges and joys of taking control of that
process yourself? And also any thoughts you have on the challenge of getting
self-published work reviewed and noticed for awards season?
JD: It’s really very freeing to be beholden only to myself.
I push preorders because that is a thing that is “done,” but having a shortfall
in expected preorders isn’t going to get anything canceled, if that make sense.
I’ll continue to put out Run With the Hunted as long as I’m having fun
with it. I’m publishing Exit Ghost as my debut because it is my most
personal novel. When I publish my trilogy of werewolf books, I won’t have to
worry about an editor rejecting my books 2 and 3 and sending me back to a blank
page.
Admittedly, it is difficult being my own marketing
department. I don’t have a background in it, and my self-promotion has largely
been on Twitter, which is the social media site that’s meshed best with my own
habits and how my brain works. And it is very hard getting self-published work
reviewed and noticed for awards season; indeed, and I might be wrong, but
self-published novellas (and probably novels, but I didn’t have a novel out
when I looked this up) didn’t used to be eligible for the Nebula Award, but are
now eligible for the Nebula and Hugo. But even my non-self-published short
stories haven’t gotten awards nomination levels of attention, so it’s difficult
to know what will hit the cultural consciousness just right and then sustain
that attention right up until awards nominations. So many writers are producing
work at such amazing levels, it’s really a privilege to have these stellar
peers.
Q. Talk a bit about your new book, Exit Ghost.
It’s a witchy story that might have some connections to a certain work by
Shakespeare, with dead father, witches, and a Yorick (even though your Yorick
is a dog). How did this story come to you and what kind of journey has it been
to get it to publication?
JD: I’ve loved Shakespeare from my first contact, which I
think was Romeo and Juliet during my freshman year of high school. That
teacher taught two half-year Shakespeare electives, so my sophomore year of
high school, I just spend the whole year immersed in Shakespeare, which he
taught by actually just having us watch the plays, as is kind of the whole
point of plays. There were a lot of BBC productions (The Taming of the Shrewwas
the notable one I remember of those) and then a lot of Hollywood Shakespeare
around that time, so we watched Romeo + Juliet, and Kenneth Branaugh’s Hamlet,
and Laurence Fishburn’s Othello. I don’t remember which Macbeth
we saw, maybe that was BBC as well, though when we did Macbethin junior
year English, we watched the 1971 film that was produced by Playboy, and
we as a class were very mature about that. Since then, I’ve happily watched a
number of Macbeths (Patrick Stewart’s is particularly good) and King
Lears (no surprise that Anthony Hopkins’ is very good) and other Hamlets.
There is an unfortunate category of my writing that is “my
dad died and I’m sad about it,” and this novel falls under that heading.
My original idea for this novel was actually two separate
ideas for two separate novels, one a thriller-y sort of thing that was a modern
girl Hamlet but not speculative, and one that had nothing to do with Hamlet and
was two friends who were witches in 1970’s Asbury Park, NJ. Both of those
drafts petered out, as things sometimes will, and then I got the notion to
combine them, so I essentially shuffled them like a deck of cards, picking the
elements that I liked from both, and then wrote to The End. Then came my own
rewrites and edits and adjustments, and then my trusted first readers got it,
and then the dreaded query letter and synopsis, and Exit Ghost started
hitting agent inboxes in January of 2020.
In the course of querying, I did get several full requests,
some of which took longer for that rejection than others, and I waited an entire
year to the day for a particularly high-profile agent’s full rejection. Had
that agent not requested the full, I might not have queried for more than two
years, but in November of 2022, when all was said and done, I’d written four
more novels while waiting (they always say “write something else,” right?) in
addition to three Run With the Hunted novellas, and I decided that I
didn’t want to wait for rounds of small press slush pile submissions. I was
seeing witch novels getting published, I was tired of waiting, and that was
that.
Q. As a fellow dog lover, I approve very much of Yorick
in this story. I know you are a Doberman lover in real life too, so I’m
guessing it was important for you to include not just any dog, but this
particular dog. What’s so great about Dobermans? 😊
JD: It’s funny, first draft Yorick was actually a mastiff,
due to their occasional historic estate guardian roles, and then I thought it
would be very funny if he was a Great Dane, giving the certain work by
Shakespeare that Exit Ghost is inspired by/in dialogue with, but really,
he always needed to be a Doberman. The Doberman Party Line is that they are the
first/only breed that was created with personal protection in mind, and while I
have never protection trained a dog, I can absolutely testify to the breed’s
need to be with their people at all times. Our first Doberman, Elka, was eerily
intelligent, and our current Doberman, Ulrike, is one of the sweetest dogs that
I have ever known, and both of them performed the important role of “rest for
my left elbow” as I’ve sat on the couch with a laptop in addition to their
other duties of alerting us to neighborhood goings-on an getting me out of the
house for constitutionals. Dobermans want to be with their people, and also
would love to share whatever it is that you’re eating. I’m absolutely heart and
soul sold on them as the breed for me.
Q. I loved your novella, The Drowned Heir, and
found its description of magic and the society it takes place in to be
fascinating and uniquely imagined. It’s a place where people are literally
magicked into being possessed by the deceased. Tell us a bit about the
inspiration for that story the world you created.
JD: I literally dreamed the first line of The Drowned
Heir: “They drown me when my uncle dies.” I woke up and immediately wrote
that down, so I wouldn’t lose it, and then texted it to one of my
aforementioned writer friends who was like “well that’s a lot.” I went about my
morning, but the sentence stuck with me, and the general textural feeling of
that scene, the place in the rocks where the water comes up, the salt, the
strangeness of it all. I very rarely plan when I write, and it was no different
when I wrote The Drowned Heir; I started at the start, and wrote to the end.
The first draft was about half the length but contained essentially the entire
plot arc, and then I went back and expanded it because it just didn’t seem like
enough.
Q. Is there anything in particular you want to promote
here, some exciting projects coming up for you in the near future?
JD: With all of my Exit Ghost promotion, I don’t yet
have any sense of what comes next. There will be another Run With the Hunted
in October (book 6! Title as yet undecided!) so that gives people who are
new to the series plenty of time to catch up with the first five novellas. I’ll
release a Run With the Hunted short story collection eventually, but
need a few more to make it a reasonable length. It’s such a fun project, and I
love playing with those characters and their points of view.
I do have a short story forthcoming in Interzone, and
another that’s a secret right now, because the anthology hasn’t yet done the
Table of Contents reveal but that I’m very excited for.
***
Thanks so much to Jennifer R. Donohue for talking to me!
About Behind the Zines:
In this interview series, I talk to people working behind
the scenes at various speculative fiction publications. My goal is to
highlight the work that goes into keeping these publications alive, and to
share insights from the people doing that work. Each interview is available
exclusively on my Patreon for one week, and is then posted here at Maria's
Reading.
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If you want to support my work, check out my Patreon or Ko-Fi.
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