Category Archives: Blog

Come and Get It! Contest

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Cupid’s Literary Connection is hosting a contest called COME AND GET IT!

I’m one of the judges.

This contest is for un-agented authors with polished, query-ready manuscripts who’d like a shot at getting bid on by agents, but they have to make it past the gauntlet of writer judges first. Those who get selected will have agents look at their work.

The genres we’re accepting are Middle Grade, Young Adult, New Adult, Women’s, Romance, Historical, Thrillers, Commercial, Literary, and Memoir. Woo-hoo.

On Editing

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So you wrote your book and then you ran the spell-checking program.  Now you’re done!  Right?

There’s that laugh I needed.

One popular misconception among writers is that spelling, grammar, punctuation, and all the little language-correctness tidbits aren’t really all that important because surely real professionals can look past inoffensive mistakes and recognize a wonderful story when they see it.  Right?  Well, no.

I’m not even going to touch the importance of test readers for story, character, and concept purposes right now.  I’m going to pick on the nuts and bolts and explain why proofreading is super important.  Why should you have a near-perfect manuscript before you even think of trying to submit a book to an agent or publisher?

Because thinking those things aren’t an important part of the writing craft is about as unprofessional as you can get.

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Representation Settled: Bad Fairy

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Today I accepted an offer for literary agency representation and signed a contract for my novel Bad Fairy.  I am officially an agented author.

What this means: Once we get the contract finalized, we will develop some materials to introduce and present my book (and me) to publishers.  It’s a lot like authors querying agents to find representation, except that the agent is querying acquisitions editors at publishing houses based on what they’ve purchased in the last 12 months.  The goal is to find editors eager to buy books that are similar to those they’ve recently sold. If they like the idea, they’ll ask to see the book. If they like what they see, they’ll offer to buy the rights.  Negotiations begin.

We’ll be approaching publishers soonish.  I hope to be able to share good news when I have it.

In the meantime, please continue to tune in for blathering on any other projects I embark upon as well as news on this one.

Everyone, please meet my agent, Michelle Johnson.  We both like coffee and books and spend too much time on the computer.  I can’t wait to start working with her, and I’m so happy that she’s on my team.

Results of Querying: Bad Fairy 2012

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I know 2012 isn’t over yet, but I have to stop querying agents for Bad Fairy. 

Happily, it isn’t a depressing reason, though (like it was the last time).  It’s because I’ve been offered representation.

I don’t want to go into detail because I still have some decisions to make before I sign with an agency, and I have a bit of a dilemma I don’t want to discuss publicly, but I will have specifics ready for you soon.

In any case I thought I’d show you this year’s track record so far, since it stops here.

Agents queried: 20.

Query rejections: 10.

The rest were not rejections.

One was a partial request that turned into a rejection after 100 pages.  That agent had puzzling feedback which I won’t share here.

There were also three full manuscript requests.  Ffffffffffff.

Once I actually sign a contract, I’ll share more . . . and I’ll be sure to keep everyone in the loop on what happens next. Which hopefully will involve a book deal.  (Yay.)

Whew!

Editing, tweaking, clipping, fixing

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Editing of the new book (Stupid Questions) is going well with the help of my massive test audience. (Okay, maybe not so massive. Twenty-two people volunteered and confirmed. Exactly half of them have given me comments.)

It’s interesting how consistent the comments are. Nearly everyone who is commenting on which lines they like best identifies the same lines. Nearly everyone who didn’t like a certain scene in the third chapter had the same reason. Nearly everyone has said something about the dialogue that was at least somewhat in the ballpark with what everyone else was saying. And most of the readers seem to really like my characters and concept.

There are always a couple I don’t know what to do with, though, and so far I think it’s just two:

One person says a guy character needs to be presented as less layered and multifaceted and whatnot because guys aren’t very complex. (The reader clarified when I disagreed, but I still disagreed after the clarification, and so far the other male readers who have commented on that issue explicitly appreciate the choices I made supporting him NOT being the stereotypical straightforward disconnected guy.)

And another person has noticed that this story includes people with psychic abilities, and is indicating in the commentary that he’s looking forward to finding out the “explanation” for it. I wonder how many people get disappointed at the very small percentage of these kinds of stories that don’t have an “explanation” and don’t happen to be about why or how? (Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever written a story about such things that DID include an “explanation.” Maybe I’m weird.)

I’m not criticizing my critics, though—I’m grateful for input. Just kinda rambling here and pointing out that sometimes the comments or criticism I get confuse me. 🙂

On Self-Publishing

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What do you know about publishing?

Do you know what the traditional path to publication is?

Do you know what self-publishing is?

I’ve run into a lot of people over the years who truly believe that self-publishing is the norm for books that later become successful.  What non-writers (or just people who don’t research) believe is that all a writer must do to become “published” is write a book, have it printed and bound by a service (or just down at the copy shop), maybe register a copyright and get an ISBN/barcode if they’re sort of sophisticated, and boom, set up book signings and become famous.

They have no idea that bookstores won’t suddenly start carrying their book.  That all of the hype surrounding their book will be generated by them and whoever they have on their team.  That there aren’t a multitude of shrewd, kind “publishing scouts” wandering the bookstores and shopping malls looking for the next big thing.

You might as well make a plan for becoming a movie star by moving to Hollywood and walking around dressed in your best, expecting a talent agent to discover you and put you in a movie.

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On Killing Your Darlings

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“Kill your darlings” is one of the commonly dispensed pieces of writing advice.  What does it mean?  It means that no matter how precious and beautiful you think your words are, you have to murder them.

What do I think?

Well, I think it’s true, of course.

First, why is it true?  Why are we expected to “kill” our words if it’s already come out the way we wanted it?

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Results of Querying: So You Think You’re Asexual

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I’m going to stop querying on So You Think You’re Asexual for the time being because I have received two nibbles from agents who are currently considering my expanded nonfiction book proposal, and I think that’s enough.  If I get rejections or something I’ll go back into it.

Agents queried:11

Agents who declined: 5

Agents who didn’t respond (yet?): 4

Agents who responded in the affirmative: 2

So we’ll see what happens.

On Writing What You Know

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There are two ways this gets slung around.

“Write what you know.”

  • If you know it, you’ll write it well.
  • If you wrote it well, you know it.

Neither of those are true.

I’m speaking in the general, of course, but not everyone who writes well can write their own experiences well; and not everyone who writes something well is doing so because they’ve experienced it.

I’ve had problems with my audience on this issue, from both angles.  One camp assumes that something I wrote about is my experience, and brings those assumptions to the table when talking to me.  And the other camp knows what my experiences are, and uses them against me to insist that I couldn’t possibly write an experience unlike mine authentically (or that I don’t have the right to try).

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Editing Hell: Bad Fairy

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One of the agents I’m talking to asked me to scale my Bad Fairy book back from 146,000 words to 115,000 or less because that fits the length that’s commonly accepted in the market for first novels.  If I can do that then she’ll look at it.

I considered it for a while and decided that even though it’d likely be hell, she’s probably doing me a favor.  I’ve had a couple full-manuscript-reading agents end up passing on my project citing a saggy middle or problems with the pacing.  So . . . maybe an ultimatum like this is the best way to help me tighten it up, like it or not.

It’s just frustrating because I already got it down to 146,000 words from its original 171,000 words (mostly with Jessie’s help), and I thought THAT was monumental.  The ridiculous word count was part of the reason I never entered this book in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition; they have a word cap of 150,000 words.  I was astounded when I slipped below that for the first time.

And now I’ve gotta do it again.  I’m not looking forward to it but I need to roll up my sleeves.

In the meantime, I made a comic about it for So You Write.  Haha.