Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2011, Entering: Finding Mulligan

I decided to enter Finding Mulligan in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition.  It gives me a chance to win a publishing contract with Penguin.  The international Amazon contest stops taking entrants once it hits 10,000 people.  Each of us has to send in a pitch statement, a bio, a first chapter, and a full manuscript.

The second round will involve the 10,000 entrants being cut down to 2,000 Second Round competitors based entirely on our pitch.

This is my pitch statement:

What if you fell in love with someone who might not exist?

Cassandra Howard leads a double life. A smart, sarcastic student by day, Cassie is a different person in her dreams—literally. In dreamland, her alternate reality, Cassie becomes a happy-go-lucky, charismatic girl named Dia, and she prefers to keep her two lives separate. That changes when she falls in love.

Mulligan is the perfect dream guy, and in her nighttime paradise Dia has him all to herself, but in Cassie’s world Mulligan only exists as a mysterious painting.  Feeling left out, Cassie begins to obsess over finding the waking-world version of Mulligan.  Soon enough, Cassie tracks down two people with connections to the painting, leaving her confused as to which one of them is the man she’s looking for.  What if her two selves are in love with two different guys?

Unwilling to live in the shadow of her other life forever, Cassie tries to remake her waking-world self in the image of Dia to attract the “real” Mulligan, but her actions blur the lines between dreamland and the waking world until neither girl is sure who she is.  For Cassie, finding Mulligan—and figuring out whether he exists—might require finding herself first.

Finding Mulligan combines magical realism, identity issues, and a complicated love triangle (or is it a pentagon?), plus a dash of psychological weirdness.  While the concept is unique enough to seem fresh, the struggle for self-definition will be comfortingly familiar to teens.  It will resonate with young adults who appreciate self-aware, realistic characters, and will be enjoyed by those who like their romance without a side of fluff.  Because of its gifted but fractured protagonist, early readers have compared Finding Mulligan to stories like Life of Pi, A Beautiful Mind, and Fight Club.

 

Results of Querying: Finding Mulligan 2010

Finding Mulligan didn’t do any better in 2010.  I’ll be entering Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award competition with it in January, though.

Agents queried: 15.

  • Non-responses: 8
  • Query rejections: 7

One of the rejections said this:

I’m afraid it’s not striking a chord with me– dreams/dream worlds aren’t really something I’m drawn to. Further, your protag is a bit old for YA– college is a hard sell to publishers for a YA novel.

Yeah, I’ve heard that before.  Hm, maybe this will be a thing someday, though?  Who knows.

I also had a phone chat with an agent who seemed kind of interested in my other project, Bad Fairy, but not as much in this book.  We ended up talking on the phone kind of as a fluke.  One of my editing clients asked if I wanted to talk to his agent, and he had the guy call me.  It was a good chat and he said a lot of supportive (and reality-check-oriented) things, but I told him I haven’t started developing Bad Fairy into a trilogy yet, and he never responded to my partial manuscript for this book.  Oh well.

I’m going to leave off querying for this thing until I have some better ideas of what to do, but I’m going to try contests.

Finding Mulligan: Murder Your Darlings

I EDITED AND THE BOOK GOT SHORTER.

This is unprecedented! Hahaha.

Written in my journal December 30, 2007:

“I’m thinking a bunch of it might be cut later. This is a special case and all, but I’m not sure how many people want to watch my character go to the hair salon.”

Verdict from others:

Mom: The hair salon part is BORING. You need two paragraphs about that, tops.
Rob: There was one part I thought was really slow and unnecessary. It’s this part where she goes to the hair salon?

Uh . . . surprise. There are also two other scenes just like this (though neither of them are a whole chapter long, so this was public enemy #1), where I went on for a long time just dilly-dallying over a concept.

Continue reading

Results of Querying: Finding Mulligan 2009

Really struck out on Finding Mulligan queries in 2009.

Agents queried: 24.

  • Non-responses: 9
  • Form rejections: 13
  • Partial requests: 1

. . . Most of the form rejections contained the phrase “publishing is a subjective business.”  Well, I hope so!

One of the rejections said this:

If I may offer a tip, you may want to consider your word count as this genre is usually more like 70,000 words.

::shrug::

The guy who rejected my three-chapter partial had this to say:

While I thought the premise to be unique, I just did not get enough sense of the paranormal.  Along the same lines, I simply did not find myself drawn to the characters as much as I had hoped to.  It seemed as if the story was lacking a depth that I wanted to see in the early pages.

Hmm, boo.  Though I will say I’m surprised to see disappointment over lack of “the paranormal” because my book isn’t paranormal.  I’m still using this advice to try to make my stuff better.  I’m continuing to tweak and edit here and there.

 

Ready to Query: Finding Mulligan

Okay, enough editing.  Thank you to the following people who helped me in the test audience:

These people read the whole thing and gave comments: Mommy, Fred, Ronni, Mike Lee, Reeny, Jessie, Laura, Victor, Cara, Meggie, Alicorn, Amanda, Rob, Patricia, Jeaux, Daddy, Stacy, Kim, Jeremy, Kalinda, Corinne, and Jay.  These people read part of it and gave comments: Jack, Deborah, Mikey, and Jessika.

My basic query letter (with personalized agent stuff at the beginning, and modified if needed):

Nobody understands the meaning of “a double life” better than Cassandra Howard.  A smart, sarcastic student by day, she becomes a different person at night; Dia, her charismatic second self, is the darling of a fantastical dreamland where she can do anything.  And while Cassie and Dia share their memories, they prefer to keep their lives separate.  That changes when they fall in love.

Mulligan, dreamland’s delicious drummer boy, sets his eyes on Dia.  But Cassie is pretty sick of her other self getting everything good about their life, and she talks Dia into helping her find the waking-world version of her boyfriend.  A mysterious portrait of Mulligan leads Cassie to two candidates: is it Terrell, the model who posed for the painting?  Or is it Jamie, the artist who painted it?  Maddening maybes play tug-of-war in her mind until she finds herself attracted to both guys, and she fears betraying her dream love if she picks the wrong one.

To test her contenders, Cassie begins to impersonate Dia in the waking world, but gets the shock of her life when her counterpart’s magical charisma and talent actually work in her favor.  When lines of identity start blurring beyond their comfort, they’ll have to uncover the nature of dreamland and deal with the repercussions of this love triangle.  (Or . . . love pentagon.  Whatever.)  And one thing’s for sure: dreams of happily ever after do sometimes turn out to be nightmares.

Finding Mulligan: Page 119

I read something on an agent’s blog about how at some convention they did a workshop where they read page 119 of a bunch of novels, and tried to decide if the novel might be good based on page 119.

Why page 119? No idea.

Out of curiosity, I of course flipped to page 119 of my novel to see if it would seem “good” if this was all you got.

Unfortunately it kind of makes it seem like a straight romance novel, even though it’s not. Heh.  Here’s my Page 119:

“You know what, I never understood why people say roses smell ‘sweet.’ They kind of stink if you ask me. I prefer honeysuckle or gardenias.”

I almost spilled the drink I was pouring when she said that. I steadied my hands and tried like hell not to conjure up the scent of gardenias in my mind.

“So, tell me about him,” she needled me as I brought the beverages into the living room and set them on coasters on the table.

“The flower’s not from a guy,” I said. “I bought it from a gas station.”

“Gas stations sell roses?”

“Yeah, haven’t you ever seen those little cups of roses sometimes, by the cash registers? The one across from the McDonald’s has them.”

“Why’d you buy a rose?”

“I wanted it.”

“But there is a guy, right?”

My cheeks got hot as I tried to cover it by sipping my drink. I glanced at her and saw that familiar mischievous expression. She wasn’t going to let me go. I was going to have to give her some semblance of an answer.

“Actually, I’ve met a couple of guys.”

“Oh, jeez, really?”

“Yes, I’m into two different guys at once. And they’re friends, and I don’t know which one to chase, ’cause they are both sweet guys and they’re talented and hot as hell, and probably not interested in me at all because I’m a boring, stupid freshman.” Okay, that had been more than I had been planning to say.

And that’s that. Amusing exercise!

Completed New Novel: Finding Mulligan

Finished writing Finding Mulligan!


Genre: Young Adult (Crossover?)/Modern Fantasy/Romance/???

Length: 26 Chapters/420 pages/~120,000 words.

Tag line: “What if you fell in love with someone who might not exist?”

Keywords: YA: Fantastical, young adult, romance, dreams, psychological, alternate-world, college, interracial romance, magical realism, young-adult crossover, chronic illness (in a family member).

Protagonist: Cassandra Howard.

POV: First person, past tense.

About:

Cassandra Howard lives a double life—literally. She spends her days worrying about school, hanging out with her best friend, and sulking in the shadow of her chronically ill (and pampered) younger sister. But at night, she’s busy with her charmed life in an alternate universe. In dreamland, Cassie becomes a charismatic, carefree girl named Dia, and she prefers to keep her two lives separate. That changes when she falls in love.

Dia kicks off a fairy-tale romance with Mulligan, dreamland’s delicious drummer boy. But Cassie is pretty sick of her other self getting everything good about their shared life, and she talks Dia into helping her find the waking-world version of her boyfriend. All the clues point to Mulligan existing in both worlds, just like Cassie does.

A mysterious portrait of Mulligan leads Cassie to two candidates: is it Terrell, the model who posed for the painting? Or is it Jamie, the artist who painted it? Maddening maybes play tug-of-war in her mind until she finds herself attracted to both guys, and she fears betraying her dream love if she picks the wrong one.

To test her contenders, Cassie dresses up like Dia and tries to act like her, but gets the shock of her life when some of Dia’s practically magical charisma and talent transfers to her. When lines of identity start blurring beyond their comfort, they’ll have to uncover the nature of dreamland and deal with the repercussions of this love triangle. (Or . . . love pentagon. Whatever.) And one thing’s for sure: dreams of “happily ever after” do sometimes turn out to be nightmares.

Next up: Lots of editing!

The Mystery of the Cigar Box

I was a productive little author this weekend. Two more new chapters!

Actually I had originally planned for these two chapters to be one chapter, but . . . as per usual, the characters got carried away with their conversation, and it seemed like it would be an awfully long chapter if I stuck them together.

So. The book’s total word count so far: 94,751.

Oh noooooo, it’s almost 95,000! It’s inching ever closer to that horrific 100,000-word mark! 🙁

I am not, nor will I ever be, capable of a short novel.

I have a SHORT STORY that’s around 22,000 words. Good lord.

I’m pleased with the chapters. Two scenes that I thought would kill me were easily survivable. This is why I think if these characters ever stop surprising me, it won’t be soon.

So, yes. Couple-fights. Psychoanalysis. Minor injuries. Vegan muffins. Crazy cats. Crying. Grape juice. And EVERYONE is acting sort of creepy now, especially Mulligan. It’s weirding me out.

I can’t wait until I’m done with this monster. I really, really want to share it.

Although . . . I don’t know how the book ends. I rarely do. 🙂

(It’s okay—the characters always figure it out.)

Ah and I have introduced . . . THE MYSTERY OF THE CIGAR BOX!!! What’s inside? Condoms? Rat poison? Yo’ momma?

The world may never know.

About to. . . .

Just a note to say that I’m really nervous. . . .

I’m about to write a really important bit of a chapter that I’ve been putting off in my current work in progress. I’ve been kicking it around in my head and I think it’s ready to come out now, and I wrote the setup and everything, but . . . I’m about to dive in.

I have no idea how exactly it’s going to be written and what this revelation is actually going to DO to my main character’s brain, but it is very hard to pull the rug out from under someone you love—as I love all my characters—and it’s going to be very hard for me to shove all this suspicion and betrayal and realization in her face. I don’t know if she’s going to be shocked or angry or hopeless or just determined or WHAT, but I’ll know once she’s actually in the moment. I can’t write the “wrong” thing once I’m there, even though I don’t know what I’m about to write. . . .

But I kind of don’t want to go there.