Emilie J. Conroy

Emilie Conroy wrote arcade game programs for her Commodore 64, and eventually became one of the original pioneers of Internet communications and digital networking. Her education has taken her to graduate school for Medieval History and to mortuary school out of strong curiosity. She had her first international publication in 1996 and has since steadily worked on articles and projects in a kaleidoscope of areas. At the moment Emilie is taking her 40+ year old brain full throttle into a new academic adventure--astronomy and astrophysics. It turns out calculus and physics are both easier one the brain has calmed down sometime past 35. Alas, her one guilty pleasure is a good historical romance novel to be read in a lavender bubble bath. Emilie lives in Philadelphia with a host of patient friends and kinfolk both real and imaginary.

FIVE QUESTIONS TO LUCIDITY

1) You started your career in traditional publishing, with the infamous blue-line editing and the dreaded slush pile. Could you tell us about it?

I was incredibly fortunate to have so much experience in the traditional model--I was only 15 when I had my first apprenticeship. That was in a different world. The industry was always looking for "the next big thing" without having any idea of what that would be and who would have written it. For authors, it was much like reading minds. Additionally, there were few people around willing to teach authors that publishing is first and foremost a business, and more often than not quality is sacrificed for commercial viability. Now don't get me wrong--I'm not bashing traditional publishing. How can I fault a business for doing what businesses do? But it tends to leave art and meaning in the dust.

2) What roles did you have in traditional publishing?

I've done editing, copy writing, proof reading, professional advice, marketing, seemingly every facet of the publishing gem. But maybe I'm best known for my attention to the query letter. The query was, in my opinion, the most crucial aspect of the process for a new author to understand and perfect. Essentially, a query could make or break any writer, because the query is what the editors had time to glance at, and it would either catch their attention or start the long hard journey to the slush pile. People think 144 characters on Twitter is too short, but more often not it was the careful crafting of the first two or three sentences that got the editor's attention. The query letter truly is its own art form, and my job was to help writers understand this and craft their own top rank queries. I'm very proud that my Query Review Service had close to a 98% success rate--that is, 98% of the queries I had helped create had a positive return from the publishing companies in the form of "send us more".

3) Does traditional publishing have a place in this digital world?

Well, personally I don't think there's anything like holding a great book in your hands, feeling its heft and caressing the pages turn by turn. But it was at least 20 years ago when I started thinking of publishing endeavors which were more ecologically sound. There was also the matter of the physical quality of the books being sold--good money for a paperback that falls apart, that sort of thing. Independent publishing, in e-books or in tactile form, has put the power of the word into the hands of the authors. The future of traditional publishing will be determined by the industry's ability to adapt and evolve.

4) Do you have any comments on the quality of e-books?

I am a recent convert to e-books. That I'm able to store so much information in very little room is invaluable to me. However, I'm seeing a lot of editing problems--not only in free texts, but in purchased e-books as well. This time, it's up to the writer to be their own editor, and it's no small part of the process.

5) Have you decided to take your own writing on the independent path?

I take any avenue available to me. But for a lot of my more obscure topics, independent publishing gives me the options I need.

Look for more to come from me including any of the following: Amazons, angels, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, cemeteries, clothing/costume design, crows, dianism, eschatology, ethnobotany, etymology, ghosts, gnosticism, goth, graphic design, herbalism, history, homeopathy, horror, languages, medieval literature, occult, paganism, paranormal, ravens, real vampires, shamanism, snakes, taoism, thanatology, voodoo, witchcraft, and good old writing.