Tayari Jones: I've been thinking of what you said to me the other night on the telephone about us being veterans of the same war-- with our books coming out on the very same day, we've been dodging some of the same bullets. Maybe that metaphor is a little extreme, but anyone who has published a book will know what we mean!

Bulletproof Girl is your second book and The Untelling is mine. Can you tell me a bit about how your experience with High Strung was different than the experience with Bulletproof Girl? Have you learned anything? Have you changed as a writer, as a business person? Are these changes for the better?

Quinn Dalton: Did I say war? I think I meant warp. Note to self: quit chewing ice until your teeth are numb. Anyway, I try to remember that if I feel frustrated about all this book stuff right now, I'd be even more frustrated if I hadn't yet sold a book. I meet many talented writers who are in that position, and it's hard to keep trying. I used to get irritated when published authors I knew complained about lack of support from their editor, their agent, their publicist. I was always thinking, "At least you can use 'My agent' in a sentence." But this is a very punishing business for everyone at some point or another.

The difference between my experience with High Strung and now with Bulletproof Girl is that I have a better sense of timing, better judgment. I knew starting out that I'd have to do everything possible to promote the novel, and that it wouldn't ever seem to be enough. But this time around I feel I'm working a little smarter. I'm doing some events but focusing more on leveraging the Internet -- email campaigns and blogs, mostly -- to get the word out. It has worked well so far-- I've gotten more reviews, online and in print, and Bulletproof Girl debuted on Amazon's Top 100 in Fiction & Literature.

On the downside, I'm not doing a lot of writing lately, though I have finished another story collection and hope to get back into a novel soon. The writing time is as much a function of childcare and other demands as it is related to this new book coming out. When people ask me when my next book will be out, I don't know what to tell them. I went from very few people knowing or caring about whether I'd even finish my novel, much less sell it, to a slightly larger group asking, "So, what's next?" It's a bit of a leap.

Tayari, how did you go about selling both of your novels? I hear it's even harder to publish a second novel than a first.

Tayari: Well, Quinn, for me, challenge of the second novel wasn't publishing it. The editor with whom I worked on Leaving Atlanta bought The Untelling. There was some back and forth. It's so hard to sell a book to ONE person. When you are willing or able to send out widely, you can find an editor out there who loves just what you have written. But when you have to produce something that is agreeable to one person in particular, well that's harder. She accepted the second version that I showed her, about six months after Leaving Atlanta was published. I think I showed her 100pp.

For me, the challenge was actually writing the second novel. My first one, did pretty well critically-- nothing phenomenal, but just enough for me to have a reputation to live up to. Or, a reputation to try and exceed. So, I had to spend a lot of time shutting out voices so that I could hear what my characters were trying to say. And let me tell you, it was tough going. My editor was not thrilled about the project and there was a long period of about six months when I thought that Warner would refuse to publish it.

And then, one day, I turned it back in, the editor liked it and everything was back on track. My friends said, "See, we told you not to worry." But there was a LOT to worry about.

Quinn, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you have gotten much savvier about marketing. What are the three best tips you'd give to someone who has a book coming out in the next year or so?

Quinn: Good question--here they are:

1. Hire an indy publicist. Reasons why are detailed here.

2. Stock your own books. Sometimes you'll go places where people want to buy books, but your publisher might not ship there. For example, if you're meeting with a writing group at a small library like I did last week, it's not really a book appearance, but it's a chance to sell books. I met with 8 people last week and sold 4 books. Most publishers offer a 40% discount to authors, but the book sales don't count toward your royalties. If the price difference isn't too high for you, order them from an online retailer like Amazon or B&N. Most offer free shipping on orders above $25. You can sell your own books for whatever price you want. My collection of short stories came out as a trade paperback original. It sells for $9 on Amazon new. I order 20 at a time and sell them for $10, which is $2 off cover price.

3. Have a web site. For most people this is probably common sense, but there's no better way to keep people informed about what you're doing. It gives people a place to go to find out about you and your books. It's a great marketing tool.

What about you? What are your top 3 marketing tips?

Tayari: My three tips to a first timer are more about how to be sane on the road. For Leaving Atlanta, I went on what ended up being a fifteen-city tour and I am off on something similar for The Untelling. My schedule is actually more intense this go round, but I am a lot calmer because I've learned a few things, some spiritual, some practical.

1) Remember, you're not a rock star. On your first (and second and third!) book tour, you probably won't get big crowds. There may be a time or two when no one shows up at all. Don't panic, don't cry, don't blame yourself. It happens to everyone. The reason you will go to so many bookstores is, of course, to reach readers, but also to reach people who WORK in the bookstores. If you impress them, they will hand-sell your book once you're gone. With this in mind, NO HISSY FITS... even if you get there and there are no people, no chairs, and no table or even no books. Be a good sport. And remember, it's NOT YOUR FAULT.

2) Say NO to friends who want to hang out. Your publisher will likely send you to cities where you have some sort of support base, which translates to friends and family. Many people will want to take you out for dinner, for drinks, etc. You'll only be in the city a couple of days so you may try to cram every one in during your free time. Not a good idea. Spend time with one person, maybe two in each city…enough to keep you feeling connected, but don't wear yourself out. I don't want to sound like a school marm, but keep drinking to a minimum. A glass of wine, maybe two. I know it's not the glamorous writing like you may fantasize about, but you need to rest. A book tour is hard.

3) Don't pack a lot of clothes and shoes. You will be trekking from airport to airport and you don't want to have to lug around a huge suitcase. Take about four outfits that you can mix and match. Two pairs of shoes and your workout clothes. That's it. Don't worry. You'll be in different cities so you won't see the same people over and over again. While you are in hotels, you can send your clothing to the dry cleaners, your publisher expects you to. And if you go shopping and end up with too much stuff, just ship it home. When it comes to baggage less is more.

4) Be prepared to become overwhelmed, depressed, anxious. Think about it. You're away from home for weeks at a time, talking to strangers who may say all manner of rude things to you. "You're prettier in your author photo." Or "I liked your book alright, but the ending was terrible." You may feel like you are in a time warp because you do the same thing over and over: Morning TV in the wee hours, bookstore at night. Repeat. Then, there is the matter of reviews popping in. You never know when or where.

I remember being tired and a little under the weather in the Memphis airport at 7am. To sort of get out of my own head, I bought People magazine. There on page 63 was my picture and the caption, "Jones: a partial success." At this point, I burst into tears. It wasn't just the review it was everything put together. And I couldn't call anyone because everyone was so busy telling me how lucky I was. And I was lucky, but it was hard.

But enough of the AUTHOR stuff. Let's talk about being WRITERS. Quinn, what do you hope to accomplish with your fiction? Why do you do it in the first place?

Quinn: Why do I do write? Sometimes I think it's because I'm slow on my feet — not good with comebacks, so I write. I don't have a particular agenda beyond whatever might be motivating me to pursue a particular story -- short fiction or novel. I think I have an energy in me that needs to go somewhere and an interest in people and what they go through. Sometimes anger or fascination or humor motivates me, makes me think, "I've got to write about these people; I've got to pay attention to them."

But what I'm trying to do with my writing also seems to change depending on what phase I'm in during the process. When I'm first drafting a story or novel, my goal is so completely to hear and see my characters. I only want to think about them, listen to their voices. I have to give up everything else for a while -- questions like where is this story going? Or, is this any good? The story isn't a story yet; it's a person -- or people -- and I have to tune everything else out and let them show themselves.

Then, once I've got a draft, my focus shifts to the reader: What do we have here? What does the story trying to accomplish? And then I try to do everything I can to the story where it needs to go.

How about you? And how did you translate your creative impulse into the business end of things...making yourself revise and send work out, finding an agent/publisher in the first place, etc.?

Tayari: This is going to sound crazy, but I always wanted to write, but I can't say that I always knew that would be PUBLISHED. I didn't really think about publishing until I was in my MFA program -- and not until I had just about finished writing Leaving Atlanta. I know that makes me sound like some sort of pious art-for-art's-sake kind of person, but I don't mean it that way. With Leaving Atlanta, I was on a mission. I desperately wanted to make a record of what it was like living in Atlanta during the Atlanta Child Murders. This was my entire goal. I felt like a sort of violence had been done unto my memories by the way that this story has been buried by that American Media. I remember thinking, "Thirty children from my community murdered and nobody remembers.” I had this thought while watching a TV report of Jack-The-Ripper. That happened 100 years ago! The child murders happened in the 1980's. So that was what was driving me for Leaving Atlanta.

For The Untelling, I thought about publication throughout the process, and I have to say that didn't help me any. I sold it on a partial manuscript, so It meant my editor had her fingers in the pot. And I had my own little reputation to contend with. The Untelling is the story of a single family. Just one family. For my first novel, I was trying to speak for an entire community. I was trying to document HISTORY. So I felt a little insecure writing such a domestic, feminine novel after writing my big RACE novel. You know?

Hey Quinn, in a way I feel like these are what Lauren would call "High-Class Problems." Sometimes when I start freaking out, I think about how lucky I am to HAVE this issue in the first place. It makes me want to swoon over a fainting couch, "How ever will I live up to my reputation!" Because really, just a few years ago, I had no reputation, no agent, no editor, no nothing.

Okay Quinn. Take it away with your publishing story.

Quinn: My publishing story goes like this: I had been publishing stories in literary magazines for a number of years, and while it is gratifying to see one's work in print, I really wanted to see if I could actually get paid, say, or even have a reading audience beyond 500 or so. I had put together a collection and was sending it out to various contests with no luck. Then the wonderful Nat Sobel contacted Tom Lorenz, editor of Cottonwood, a literary magazine where I'd had a story appear, to ask about me. Oddly enough, I'd planned to contact Nat, who is also the agent of my friend and one of my favorite writers, Julianna Baggott. I was by then working on the beginning of what I hoped was a novel, and I wanted to send him the first 50 pages. But having him contact me first based on the merits of what he saw in my work was very sweet.

When I talked with him, he asked if I was working on a novel, and I said I was, and he invited me to send those first 50 whenever I got them, no rush. Then I brought up my story collection and asked whether he'd want to take a look. He said, "Sure, send me a few of the stories, but generally we like to start with novels because they sell better." I said, "But I'm looking at your website now and I see you've sold several collections." He said, "Sure, and when you're a bestseller like Richard Russo, I'll sell yours."

Fortunately, I did not have to wait to be a bestseller to sell that collection, which went through a good deal of revision between the time he first saw it in 2001 and when it appeared last month as Bulletproof Girl. Once Nat felt my novel, which became High Strung, was ready to sell, I reminded him of the collection, and he decided to offer it along with the novel to Simon & Schuster, which bought both, to my surprise and elation. Though I have to mention this exchange when I met him in New York right before he sent out the manuscripts. I asked, "So how long do you do this before you give up? Is there a time limit or something?" He said, "I'll do it for as long as you can take the rejection letters."

Isn't this true for all of us? We do it for as long as we can take it.

Quinn Dalton (www.quinndalton.com) was born in South Carolina, moved to Ohio for high school and college at Kent State, then came back to the South for an MFA at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Over the years, she has sold cameras, ladies shoes, water filters, antiques, her wedding dress and an old van. She's worked as a waiter, bartender, fundraiser, teacher, freelance writer and spindoctor, all of which continue to be a good source of material. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary magazines, such as Glimmer Train, StoryQuarterly, Mangrove, Cottonwood, Emrys Journal, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), The Baltimore Review and The Kenyon Review. She won the Pearl 2002 Fiction Prize for her short story, "Back on Earth." Her work is forthcoming with several anthologies, including Sex and Sensibility and American Girls out on the Town. Dalton lives in Greensboro with her husband David Mengert and daughter Avery. She is the author of the novel High Strung and the short story collection Bulletproof Girl, both published by Washington Square Press.

Tayari Jones (www.tayarijones.com) was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, where she spent most of her childhood with the exception of the one year she and her family spent in Nigeria, West Africa. Although she has not lived in her hometown for over a decade, much of her writing centers on the urban south. Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, received many awards and accolades including the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction. It was named “Novel of the Year” by Atlanta Magazine, “Best Southern Novel of the Year,” by Creative Loafing Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Washington Post both listed it as one of the best of 2002. She has received fellowships from organizations including Bread Loaf Writers Conference, The Corporation of Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, Arizona Commission on the Arts and Le Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland.) Tayari Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, The University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English at The University if Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches creative writing. Her second novel, The Untelling, has just been published by Warner Books in April of 2005.