anna genoese

Obligatory hurricane update: my mom's house in Brooklyn flooded, and we don't have an idea of the extent of the damage yet. Up in Lowell, though, we barely got any rain and emerged entirely unscathed.

I am posting for a completely different reason, though: the team I run at Jones & Bartlett Learning is looking for a few people who know what metadata is and are good communicators. I know that sounds too good to be true, but seriously. I run the photo research team (under department manager c_katherine, actually!), and we are looking for several assistants.

The environment is a mostly-casual cubicle farm, all stripes of queer friendly, heavy on people who are female-identified, and a few of us are definitely fannish and/or weirdos. We are considering people who do not have elaborate work histories or college degrees; we are way more interested in people who can communicate and represent our department than people who have extensive experience with metadata (but experience with metadata -- like, even just knowing what it is and how to do it to an image in Photoshop -- definitely helps).

Please check out the job ad below if working for a textbook company in Burlington, MA, appeals!

( Photo Research Assistant at Jones & Bartlett Learning )

Announcement #1:
Bad news for anon commenters: I am turning off anonymous commenting everywhere. Not because I have anything against anonymous people, but because dealing with the spam has grown altogether too tedious. Apologies, people who wish to stay anon!

Options for commenting on LiveJournal beside an actual LJ account include OpenID, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. I realize those are all associated with "real" identity, but nothing is stopping you from grabbing a pseudonymous Twitter account and posting using that. I continue to not track IP addresses!

(Note, I believe Dreamwidth allows only Dreamwidth accounts and OpenID.)

Announcement #2:
I am on Google+ as Anna Genoese. I believe I am, thus far, the only Anna Genoese over there. Come add me! If we don't actually know each other, a short note to say who you are or what name you comment here under would not go amiss. I've had a few people add me without telling me who they are, and it's pretty confusing.

It's pretty unlikely G+ will take the place of blogging or Twitter for me, but it's nice to have a Facebook-type thing that is not Facebook (which I despise).

Relatedly, if you know me fannishly, I also have a profile for my fannish pseud, and you're welcome to add me to your circles in that way as well.


...I hope everyone's having a decent weekend! I'm pretending it's not 80F outside my apartment and baking bread. Oh, and I am still trying to figure out my xbox. I feel really old and stupid every time I try to use the Kinect and realize that I can't do so wearing a dress -- oh, and figuring out how to play first-person fantasy games? Wow. It took me eight hours to do something my baby sister (who grew up playing this kind of video game) accomplished in an hour. I'm thinking about retreating to Mario, frankly!

Recently, one of my clients asked me what my recommendations were for someone starting out in the publishing industry. Here's the answer I gave her:

My big recommendations about publishing are:

1. Educate yourself.

2. Stay polite, even when dealing with someone who may not be polite to you.

3. Be open to hearing ideas, but keep hold of your own vision.

4. Be persistent! Don't give up after the first few rejections; it can take years to get published.

...These are the same things I've been saying to people who want to be professionally published for years. Sometimes I rephrase the advice, but it's basically stayed the same. E-book, comic book, print book, whatever -- these four pieces points hold true!

Is there any advice that you wish someone had given you? Or advice that's held true as you navigated the murky waters of publishing?

I've been struggling with how to announce this for a while, but the time is at hand, so I figure I should just... say it.

Tomorrow I'm moving to Massachusetts. I've taken a full time job with Jones & Bartlett Learning, in their Permissions department. (I will not be editing anything there except memos and databases. Sorry, aspiring textbook writers!) My job there starts on the 18th (Monday).

I am very very excited about this; aside from being an interesting position with a great company, I will also finally have health insurance! Woo! And the apartment complex I'm moving into in May (until then, it's an extended-stay hotel for me) has a pool. How decadent!

Reassurance: I am still freelancing. You can still hire me. I am just going to be slightly more picky about the projects I work on. Right now, as usual, I am booked for the next two months, but I am taking on clients for July. (I know it seems like that's far away, but if you need to split up my fee into three or more payments, you'll be grateful for the extra time!)

As always, if you need to get in touch with me, you can email me at annagenoese at gmail dot com or leave a comment on any entry here (anonymous comments are screened). For the people who have it: my phone number is not changing.

And if anyone needs a real estate agent in eastern Massachusetts, I know a really super fantastic one I'd love to refer you to!

So I'm in Swampscott visiting my cousin and her family. (It seems like I'm in Massachusetts more than Brooklyn these days!) She has a bunch of interesting-looking books on her shelves, and I'm taking the opportunity to peruse them.

The one I read last night: Best of the Britcoms: From Fawlty Towers to The Office by Garry Berman

It was really entertaining! I am a PBS junkie, so I'd seen quite a few of the (famous) Britcoms Berman talks about in the book -- and I wrote down a bunch of titles, because even though sometimes I don't "get" British comedy (or, like many plebian US-ians, find it depressing!), I do love me television shows about wacky British vicars!

I like that the book is divided into decades (beginning with the 1970s), and that before each decade is a little introduction in which the author explains basics of things the American audience (the target for the book) may not know. For example, before the section on the 1970s, there's a brief history of British television. I did not know that British television was ordered to be shut down during WWII! (BBC began airing again, according to Berman, in June 1946.)

I did find myself wishing that the index was slightly more comprehensive. There's no listing for "vicar" -- so I have to read the book and make myself notes if I want to know about any Britcom about vicars besides The Vicar of Dibley. On the other hand, I don't think this is meant to be a comprehensive encyclopedia as much as it is a cute "reference" guide for your coffee table. (That's totally fair.)

As expected, the entries for shows like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder and The Office are much longer -- and contain more actor, writer, and producer quotes -- than the meager half-page shows like Ever-Decreasing Circles got. There's also small tidbits of the author's opinion threaded in, but I didn't find that to get in my way at all.

Now that I've read this book, first thing on my list to buy when I have some pocket change is the dvd set of Extras, because the pages dedicated to it make it sound incredibly charming.


(Today, while sitting in a sun-drenched courtyard in Salem, I finished Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans by Poppy Z. Brite, which was a gift to me from the trifles family that I've been carrying around for a month. The first story in the book, about the boys as teenagers, was a lot more enjoyable for me than the second, a very self-indulgent story that was mostly just loosely strung together vignettes about characters I wasn't invested in enough to really care about. Still: that first story was great. Teenage boys in love in New Orleans! Plus cooking!!!)

So... when Kat and I wrote Salt and Silver, we used a lot of NY slang, because our narrator is from Long Island and lives in Brooklyn. Our copyeditor (as Kat and I have talked about before), did not "get" a lot of the slang, and queried some of it -- including a statement our narrator makes several times:

"I cannot even."

Now, this is something that I say, my (NY) friends say it, and, you know, Valley girls in California say it! We stetted the copyeditor's change and the instances are still in the book (as I am sure you all know, being devotees and owning multiple copies, right?).

Today, at the mall on Staten Island, my sister and I lugged our giant shopping bags into the nail salon and plopped ourselves down for pedicures. (Here's mine, a delightfully shiny black from OPI.) Sitting next to me, getting a neon orange pedicure, was a high school-aged girl, clearly cutting class to hang out at the mall with her best friend. (No judging here; I used to cut out of school and go to the mall, too. And hang out at the bookstore. Oh yeah.)

Her best friend was just lounging around, not having anything done, drinking a delicious-looking coffee/ice cream concoction. And talking. I do not think she stopped to take a breath for the entire hour they were in the salon. She actually was reading an IM conversation out loud, off her phone -- she'd been chatting last night with her ex-boyfriend. It sounded like this:

My ex just won't leave me alone! Can you even believe it? And I was all, dude, I am going to Italy soon, you can't be weighing me down, and he was all, oh my god, but I still want to be friends, and I was all, oh my god, I can't be your friend, and he was all, oh my god, and he was, like, totally whining like you wouldn't believe, and he can't, like, ever, like, figure out when a conversation is, like, totally over -- do you, like, know what i mean?

Because, like, oh my god? I cannot, like, even.

IT WAS HILARIOUS. Well, it was hilarious for the first half an hour or so, and then I wanted to smother her with a hot towel.

Still, the whole time I thought about Salt and Silver's copyeditor and how zie queried every instance of "I cannot even" as not being a complete sentence.

Ahh, antibiotics! I'm about 80% better now, which is lovely. So I thought I would come write a blog entry about punctuation!


The biggest punctuation problems I see in the manuscripts I edit for my clients are misplaced punctuation marks. Particularly the misplaced question mark and the misplaced comma. Here is a quick and dirty refresher.

A question mark goes at the end of a question, whether that question is in dialogue or narrative. Examples using some of my favorite characters from Flashpoint...

"Do you have the solution?" asked Greg.

If Ed had the solution, would Greg give the order to take the shot?

A question mark should not be used if a question is not being asked. For example:

Greg wondered if Ed had the solution already.

That's not a question, because Greg is not asking anything -- it's a statement about what Greg is thinking.

Incorrect examples:

"Do you have the solution" asked Greg?

Greg wondered if Ed had the solution already?

Commas. I'm not going to go over every single time you're supposed to use a comma (or not supposed to use a comma!), but I'm going to hit the two biggest offenders:

1. The comma in dialogue. It goes inside the double quotes. Like this:

"The labels on the tanks of chemicals say chlorine and NH3," said Jules, staring down at the target through the scope of her rifle.

2. The comma in direct address. If one character is talking to one or more other characters, the comma comes before and/or after the name. Like so:

"Boss, I have the solution," said Ed.

"Me, too, Boss. Waiting for your go," added Jules.

"Okay, Ed, Jules, take the shot whenever you can," said Greg grimly.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go through your manuscript and make sure you haven't made any of these common errors! Go forth and proofread!

The other day, a friend of mine complained to Twitter that an adult with a business relationship to her organization had sent her an ostensibly professional email using "txt speak" -- not just the shortening of words we've all been known to do at one time or another to make our long thoughts fit into the 160 characters of a text message or the 140 characters for Twitter, but full on "c u l8r"-style.

I get emails like that a lot -- unfortunately. Sometimes people even send query letters to agents and editors written in less than professional language. Now, I'm not talking about a casual letter instead of formal; some editors and agents actually respond better to a more casual tone in a query letter. No, I am talking about full on spelling errors, grammatical errors, and punctuation errors; long, run-on sentences; a page that is entirely one paragraph; unsigned emails and letters with no contact information…

Several people have even sent me religious and political forwards! While that may be appropriate for some business relationships (if you work for a religious or political organization reaching out to others, perhaps?), it is certainly not appropriate for an author to send to editors or agents, especially ones who are almost strangers.

This is important: be professional. I have said it before, so many times, but I will say it as many times as I have to. The secret handshake is professionalism. Professionalism is what makes people take you seriously. Professionalism is what will sway someone to your favor. Professionalism is what's going to tip the scales for you if, for some reason, it comes down to a choice between you and another author, especially when most other things are equal. Professionalism will encourage other people to view you as a force to be reckoned with, even if you're unpublished or working on your first book.

Writing to an editor, agent, or other (professional) author is not like writing to your best friend. I'm not saying to ditch your signature voice and write a dry, formal email. Professionalism is proofreading your emails, keeping your temper, signing emails to strangers with the appropriate name (and contact information, if you don't want to be emailed back).

Personally, I have an appreciation for casual business emails -- but there is a huge difference between a casual "I read your blog and find it really helpful, and I, too, love Fringe fanfic about Astrid," and "YO, CAN YOU EDIT MY BOOK CUZ ITS GOOD BUT NOONE BLIEVS ME BCUZ MY SPLLING AINT SO GOOD PLZ HELP OK???!!"

(Depressingly, I get quite a few emails like that every month; when I was an acquiring editor, I got a lot of query letters like that, or written with crayon on construction paper, or printed in silver ink on teal paper and therefore unreadable, etc.)

Your email address also has to do with this. A professional email is your name or pseudonym @whateverdomain. It is not "limpbizkitfan27" or "iluvtomhardy" or "7babies1dad" -- okay, these are not exactly emails I've seen, because I don't want to embarrass anyone, but they are very close. Your email address, subject line, and identifying name are the first things new business contacts will see when you email them; start off on the right foot.

I'm not writing off (har har) emails like "annawrites" or "katwitharedpen" or something related to your industry, but first impressions really do stick around, and if you give the impression that you're twee or ridiculous, it will be hard to overcome that to get someone to take you seriously later.

I know this may seem unfair, but in the absence of meeting someone personally, email stands in! An unprofessional email address is the equivalent of wearing sweatpants to a convention where everyone else is wearing business suits; an unprofessional subject line is equivalent to sliding your manuscript to an editor under the stall door of a bathroom.

Some of my personal tricks for staying professional:

1. I take my time when I write emails. Almost no email needs to be written in a half-thought flurry. I write slowly and always proofread before sending.

2. If I'm concerned at all that I might send the email before I'm ready by accidentally hitting the button (or Cat Ex Machina), I take the email address out of the TO box and put it into either the subject line or the body of the email. That way, even if "send" gets hit accidentally, the email doesn't go anywhere.

3. I never write email in the first bite of new anger. If someone's emailed me something that upsets or angers me, I step away for at least fifteen minutes and do something that does not make me upset -- pet a cat, play a video game, whatever. Since I work from home, I can knead bread dough or fold laundry; when I worked in an office, I would do a completely different task, like read slush or talk to my interns or file or go across the street to get a latte. Just like with #1, I maintain that almost no email needs to be written in a half-thought flurry (or fury). Even if the anger doesn't go away, taking your time to calm down and think about how to approach answering that infuriating email is always better than writing a rageful email and sending it in a fit of pique.

4. I keep all my personal stuff in Firefox, and all my business stuff in Chrome. Email, Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, Twitter, Delicious, Google Reader, Tumblr, Wordpress… Everything. This serves two equally important purposes.

One: I never accidentally post a personal journal entry to my professional accounts or a personal Twitter post to my professional Twitter account. I never accidentally bookmark something on my professional Delicious account that should go into my fanfic Delicious; I never accidentally send a client or business contact an email from my private account. (This also means that when I want to write a Twitter post, I have to go and open up the account in the right browser, giving me extra time to make sure I really want to post those 140 characters.)

Two: At the end of the day, when I am done working, whether that's at 7 p.m. or midnight, I just close the whole browser and I don't have to worry about my work stuff until I open that browser again when I start working the next day. It's tempting to work all the time, and keep my work email and Twitter open all the time -- but I've learned that it's very important to keep a separation between a personal life and a professional one. Even if it's just a few hours, those are important hours, giving me a chance to recharge. Anyone who has worked a 120-hour week will tell you that it's damn exhausting to think about work and keep that professionalism going all the time. Closing the browser lets me relax a little, and put work -- writing, editing, blog posts, whatever -- out of sight and out of mind for a while.

These tricks may not all work for you. What do you do to stay professional?

Hey, folks. I know I've been kind of quiet lately, but here are some updates!

1. I've changed my website a little bit. All of the articles I've written are now available for free in HTML and PDF. You can also download a zip file of all the PDF articles by clicking here.

2. Kat and I have finished the sequel to Salt and Silver -- it's with our agent right now! In celebration, we revamped the Anna Katherine blog, and changed the way we post. We've been posting "brain radio" -- quotes, comics, pictures, and videos we find inspirational and interesting. Maybe you will, too. (The blog has an RSS feed you can subscribe to here.)

3. This week, Dreamwidth is offering open account creation -- you don't need to pay and you don't need an invite code. All you have to do is sign up: https://www.dreamwidth.org/create. I am personally really into Dreamwidth; I love it a lot more than I ever liked LiveJournal. It has a heck of a lot of positives in my book, from the ability to subscribe to someone's journal without giving them access to your own locked posts, to the little ticky box that makes sure every Dreamwidth page loads in the style you prefer. (For me, I like ?format=light!) Plus there are no ads, no games, and no insulting "prompts" on the home page. Those are just a few reasons I dig Dreamwidth, and recommend getting an account.

Now I'm off -- earlier this month, Kat gave me a delightful textbook about crime scene investigation that I've been reading. It's more compelling than you'd think!

For the last month, my mom has been teaching her students about "feature articles" -- drafts and sidebars and the lede! It's very exciting. As they turn in their final articles, I've been helping convert them to HTML (or scan them in), and post them to a website/blog (or, if you like, a "virtual magazine"). If you have a few minutes, you should check out their articles and maybe leave a comment or two (keeping in mind that these are seventh graders, most of them struggling readers and writers).

Ms Canin's Virtual Classroom

While I have you here, have another link! The Language Log's post on passive construction. It's a really great explanation. I get a lot of questions from my clients (and friends) about passive construction -- and I tend to make a lot of comments about it when I edit, because it really slows down action scenes. I'm not entirely against it all the time, but it's important to understand what the passive is and how to use it.

(It's also important to understand what the PASIV is and how to use it, but that's a post for another time -- and, possibly, another dream...)

Okay, one more link: Michelle the Fat Nutritionist (who I love) has posted an article called "Food you like is food that feels good" which puts forth the radical notion that healthy food is tasty food. I love Michelle's blog, and this is another in a long line of posts authored by her that I think everyone should read.