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Oops!

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 6, 2011| 4 Comments »

I got so busy writing I forgot to blog.

So, here’s an update on my progress:

  1. I finished this round of revisions to SEVEN STARS and closed the file. I intend to leave it closed for about six months. Then I’ll come back, read it through, hopefully do only a polishing edit (but who knows what I’ll find after six months) and then get ready to start sending it out. I may start the query and synopsis during those six months. It’s not too early.
  2. I got through Chapter 5 of MAGIC’S FOOL. A tricky chapter because one of the characters dies. And getting to that point made it clear to me at least part of why I wasn’t happy with the first 4 chapters. It’s a first draft. It doesn’t have to be perfect or anywhere close at this point, but it is comforting to know what I need to fix in the second draft. I think (well, I hope, anyway) that I’ll be able to move along faster, now.
  3. I’m hard at work on Chapter 6 of BLOOD IS THICKER. The central problem has been set up, but the characters aren’t yet agreed on a course of action. In fact, there’s a certain amount of conflict over Rolf’s choice. Conflict is good.
  4. I’ve just started looking over the early chapters of MAGE STORM. So far, it’s just tinkering. There are more significant problems in Chapters 2 and 3 that I have to resolve. Chapter 2 is not giving the reader a good enough sense of Rell as the main character. Chapter 3 isn’t setting up Rell’s decision to go off and seek an answer “out there” nearly well enough. I’m anxious to get this back out there.
  5. I’ve just about made a decision on BLOOD WILL TELL. I think its time is now or very soon. I haven’t heard back from the agent who has a full manuscript, yet. (It’s still really early for that.) But, if this one falls through, I think I will go ahead and e-publish this one. I even started a mock-up of the cover art. I am not nor will I ever be a graphic artist.
  6. I’ve started research for THE BARD’S GIFT, my YA alternate history. This story will ake place far enough (physically) from the main events of its time that I’m not too concerned about historic events or people beyond what I already know. But I do need to have a feel for what daily life would have been like for these characters.

Whew! I guess that’s why I was too busy to remember to blog.

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Something Exciting

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on September 25, 2011| 16 Comments »

Part of me is a little nervous to blog about this. Superstitious that I’ll jinx things, I guess. But it’s exciting and it’s something that all of us writers dream about, so I will. Besides, redux already mentioned it in the comments to my last post, anyway.

This happened Wednesday, very shortly after I wrote and published my last blog post. As I try to do every week, I sent out a couple of queries for BLOOD WILL TELL. I hadn’t even gotten off the computer when the phone rang.

I answered it, fully expecting it to be somebody trying to sell me something. It nearly always is. Blow me away, it was one of the agents I had just queried. We talked for a little while about BLOOD WILL TELL and about what else I’ve been working on. A very little about me because when she asked that question my mind totally blanked. I’m sure I came off as a blithering idiot because I was so shocked.

I’ve gotten emails back from agents. Even a few requests for partial or full manuscripts. I’ve asked questions of agents on live chats. I’ve spoken to an agent at a conference. I have never before had an agent call me.

Anyway, in the end, she requested the full manuscript for BLOOD WILL TELL and the first chapter of MAGE STORM.

And I’ve just started shaking again typing this blog post.

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WriteOnCon

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on August 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

If you write young adult or middle grade stories, what are you doing reaind my blog today? Get over to WriteOnCon. It’s free and you don’t have to travel–both of which make it right up my alley right now.

I didn’t even know about it until Monday.  But don’t worry about what you may have missed. It’s still there and, while you might not be able to participate live, you can still read it.

Go.

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Something Interesting

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on August 10, 2011| 2 Comments »

While researching agents to query, I came across this very interesting post. Very useful ideas for any kind of writing.

Meanwhile, I’m making good progress on my third draft of SEVEN STARS. Hopefully, I’ll find a way to incorporate at least some of these ideas as I go.

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Back to Submitting

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on July 31, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Whew! I finally finished my stint in query and synopsis purgatory. Well, mostly. Experience tells me that these things are never really done. I’ll still be tweaking them as I go along. But I now have two queries I like.

MAGE STORM:

Rell doesn’t want magic. He doesn’t dream of being a hero out of old legends or a mage. Certainly not a mage, after they all incinerated each other at the end of the Great Mage War. He’d just like not to be in his big brother’s shadow for a change. Someone should have reminded him to be careful what he wished for.

All he knows of magic are the violent, frighteningly aware mage storms formed of the ashes of those dead wizards. Caught in a mage storm, Rell is struck by a strange blue cinder that infects him with magic that protects him from the fury of the storm and allows him to shield his family. Rell starts to think that maybe magic’s not so bad after all, but he finds it only complicates his life. His father expects him to bring back the benefits of magic from before the war, but Rell doesn’t know how. Meanwhile, others who only remember the terrors of the war fear Rell and his new abilities. Frustration and anger only bring out one of the most dangerous aspects of his magic: fire.

Rell soon learns that whether he intends it or not, his magic will leak out, uncontrolled, whenever his emotions are strong enough. Now, he has to find some way to learn to use this “gift” before he ends up adding his ashes to the mage storms.

BLOOD WILL TELL (still working a bit on the last line of this one):

Being a half-blood is inconvenient on a good day, especially when the half you got from your mother is werewolf.  Valeriah can’t take wolf form, but the full moon still fills her with manic energy.  Running helps; a tired werewolf is a good werewolf.

Living perennially caught between two worlds–human and werewolf, magic and non-magic–doesn’t leave much room for love. That suits Valeriah just fine. She’s never had any luck with that anyway.

Until her cousin’s life is threatened, that is, and out of necessity she accepts the help of a mysterious young man to protect Cristel. Rolf is everything that makes Valeriah’s pulse speed up in spite of herself. Now, with Cristel’s life in the balance, is the worst possible time for that kind of complication.

But Rolf’s secrets could be fatal, both for their budding relationship and for Valeriah.

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Queries and Synopses–Again

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on July 24, 2011| 6 Comments »

I believe I’ve mentioned that this isn’t my favorite kind of writing. In fact, I don’t think I know anybody who’d say it was. But it is necessary. So, I’m back at it–doubled this time because I’m doing new queries and revised synopses for two books–MAGE STORM and BLOOD WILL TELL–at the same time.

I think I’ve just about completed the MAGE STORM (MG Fantasy) set and will be ready to start sending that back out into the world of agents next week. Now I’ve got to work on the query and synopsis for BLOOD WILL TELL (paranormal romance). This time around with BWT, I’m emphasizing the paranormal romance aspect, rather than the urban fantasy. It’s a somewhat different set of agents. Maybe it’ll play better, since the story really doesn’t have the hard edges often associated with urban fantasy.

Queries are bad enough. At least they’re only about 250 words. Of course, I agonize over every one of those words. The hardest part for me is to get some semblance of the story voice into the query. Too many years of practice writing bland business letters, I guess.

Synopses: that’s a whole new level of torture. I didn’t have to do too much to the MAGE STORM synopsis. Just reflect the changes in the latest revisions. Not that I’m thrilled with it. There’s no way I’ll ever be thrilled with trying to tell a 50,000 word story in 1,000 words. Just not going to happen.

I’ll probably have to do more to the BLOOD WILL TELL synopsis, since I’ve changed the focus of the query.

After this, I need to do a serious round of revision on my Writers of the Future entry for this quarter. Then it’s back to MAGIC’S FOOL. I’ll be really glad to get back to original writing by then, I’m sure.

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E-Publishing Considerations

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on July 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

I’ve got two projects that I may decide to take to e-publishing within the next few months to a year.

The first is BLOOD WILL TELL and its sequels. In order to do this right, though, I need to have the sequels written, critiqued, revised and polished. Therefore, this likely won’t happen for at least a year. In the meantime, I will start querying BWT again. Might as well.

The other would be a collection of short stories. I have three right now that are nearing the last of the markets I would be willing to sell them to. It’s not that they’re not good enough. Some of them have come close. Most of them have been vastly improved from their original versions, too. That’s a problem because most publications don’t want to see revised stories unless they request the revision. So, a story I sent out to one market and then later revised and improved, can’t go back to that market again. Two of those stories are actually novelettes (in the 10,000-word range), so there aren’t that many markets available for them in the first place.

At least not markets I’m interested in. There are a couple of places I could send them that just don’t pay much. In fact, they pay so little that I’m willing to take my chances on doing it myself. So those short stories are very likely to end up in an e-published collection by the end of the year or so.

It used to be, not so very long ago (perhaps as recently as this time last year) that there was a real stigma against self-publishing, including e-publishing. That’s been changing rapidly and it’s no so true anymore.

What is still a concern is that I’ll have to come up with (or pay to have someone better at it than me come up with) cover art. That’s doable.

And the real issue is marketing. Not in the traditional sense, of course. But I will have to find some way to make my stories stand out so interested people can even find them among the literally thousands of e-published story collections and novels out there now.

That’s going to require some thought.

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Next Project

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on July 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Well, I’ve finished the revision to BLOOD WILL TELL. Now I need to write a new query letter, research some agents, and start sending it out again. Meanwhile, I’ve started the revision to MAGE STORM.

As I said in my last post, the next thing I need to do is to decide what I’m going to work on next. The candidates are:

  1. THE BARD’S GIFT. Young Adult. The story of a girl who has the gift of story telling. Despite the fact that she’s a believer in the new god, the old gods literally put stories into her head that she’s compelled to tell. Her internal conflict and the trials of getting her elders to listen to and accept her stories would be set against the greater difficulties of carving a new settlement out of the wilderness. This one is an alternate history in which the norse actually did create a permanent settlement in the New World some two or three hundred years after Lief Erickson. Frankly, I don’t think this one is quite fully cooked yet. I don’t have enough plot points mapped out. And I need to do some research before I can tackle the alternate history part, anyway.
  2. Book One of the series tentatively titled THE HARBINGER. Middle Grade, although the series might migrate into Young Adult in later books. This would be a completely new look at the story told in my first two novels, so the plot is pretty much complete (at least that far). I know the characters and the milieu very well, too. No additional world building required. The interesting task in this one, beyond trying to forget (and not peek at) what I did before, is to chop it into smaller but still complete parts. The story formerly told in TSC (I’m still just sticking to the initials) would make up probably three books of this series–and each one has to have its own central conflict which is completed withing that single book. That’s really the only thing I would need to work out to be ready to start writing tomorrow.
  3. BLOOD IS THICKER. Adult, first sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL The continuing story of the main characters from the previous book. They have a clutch of three eggs, but there’s something wrong at the hatching grounds. The geothermal heat that keeps the grounds at a constant temperature is failing, due to some earlier activities of the antagonist from BWT. To save their unborn children, Rolf and Valeriah have to find out what’s gone wrong and find a way to fix it. I know the bones of this story well enough to start writing any time. I even have a couple of scenes already written.
  4. WILD MAGE. Middle Grade, first sequel to MAGE STORM. On a trip home, Rell and his friends discover that isolated settlements are being attacked. They set out to find out who’s behind it and end up having to battle with the wild mage and her coterie of loyal creatures–gryphons and a young dragon. Again, I know the major plot points and could start writing this one at any time.

So. I’m not really ready to start THE BARD’S GIFT, but I could start any of the others. For MAGE STORM, I’m committed to continuing to try to get that published by the traditional route for a good while yet, so I probably won’t start the sequel to that, yet. That leaves either Book One of THE HARBINGER or BLOOD IS THICKER. And the answer to that depends on whether and how soon I seriously consider e-publishing BLOOD WILL TELL.

Decisions, decisions.

 

 

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Decision Time

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on July 3, 2011| 2 Comments »

Well, I’ve come down to the last 20% or so of the revisions to BLOOD WILL TELL. The time to make some hard choices is coming right up.

I’ve already made the decision to give this one another try by the traditional route. I’ll redo the query letter, research some new agents, and start sending it out there again, this time as paranormal romance. That’s not the hard choice.

The decision is this: Do I want to be prepared, in case this one still doesn’t get anywhere through traditional channels, to put it out there myself.

If so, then I have more work to do. Not just learning more about e-publishing. If I want to make it a success, then I really need to be able to put the sequels out at or close to the same time. Sequels that aren’t written yet.

You see, up ’til now I’ve pretty much concentrated on the traditional route. And the conventional wisdom in that arena is that it’s better not to start the sequel until you’ve sold the first book. The reason is that if the first book doesn’t sell, the rest of the series has about the same chance as a snowball in . . . well, you know the rest of that saying. It’s better, in that venue, to write something new that may have a better chance.

But, for e-publishing, that turns around completely. Those who’ve done best with e-publishing have been able to follow up with more books in the same series to really build readership.

So now, as I complete the revisions to BLOOD WILL TELL and then a revision to the beginning of MAGE STORM and send both of them back out there into the world, and wait for first reader responses to SEVEN STARS, I have to choose what to work on next.

New stories, like THE BARD’S GIFT (alternate history) and THE HARBINGER (a total re-imagining of my earliest novels).

Or the sequels to BLOOD WILL TELL (BLOOD IS THICKER and SPILLED BLOOD) and MAGE STORM (WILD MAGE and DRAGON MAGE).

Happy Independence Day

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Persistence

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on June 26, 2011| 4 Comments »

I’ve always considered myself to be a fairly persistent–even downright stubborn–person. I just found out I’m a piker.

Friday night, I listened to this interview with Elana Johnson. She racked up 188 rejections for her (now published) novel. But you only need one agent to love it and find the editor who will love it, too. Elana Johnson sent 189 queries and sold her novel.

Of course, to be fair, she was also getting a better percentage of requests for full or partial manuscripts than I have. That’s at least partly due to writing a much better query letter. Something I still have to work on–and I plan to work on it with the help of her free e-book, FROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL (available on her website).

But it’s also clear to me that I just have not been sending out enough queries. So far, I’ve averaged around thirty to thirty-five queries on my novels. Not nearly enough.

Okay, so part of that is because I stop querying the previous book when the next is ready to go out. That’s something I may have to rethink, especially as I finish up revisions on BLOOD WILL TELL. I mean, with a few exceptions, BWT and MAGE STORM won’t even be going to the same agents. They’re not the same kind of books or aimed at similar audiences. BWT is an adult urban fantasy/paranormal romance (I think I’m going to query it as a paranormal romance, this go round.) and MS is a middle grade fantasy.

But that’s still only part of it. If I query a novel for an average of one year, I ought to be able to send out at least three queries a week. The problem is the periods in which I don’t send out queries, because I’m going to revise the query letter or the synopsis or, like now, because I’m contemplating a revision to the work itself. Then I don’t send out any queries for a month or more. Not good.

The biggest problem, though, is  researching agents. This is where the real procrastination creeps in.

New resolution (mid-year, if you like): Send out way more queries than I have been.

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