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Status Update

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 19, 2012| 2 Comments »

Just a (relatively) quick status update today.

Monday, I finished the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT. Yay! I took longer with that than with any first draft since my first novel. Now it rests for a while before I go back for revisions. I have it slated to be read by my writing group in January.

It’s good I have something to celebrate because my chances of getting into the second round of the GUTGAA (Gearing Up to Get an Agent) agent pitch contest aren’t looking too good. That’s a disappointment, but with four anonymous judges making the picks, you just can’t ever tell what particular kinds of stories will appeal to them–just like with agents.

Meanwhile:

Yesterday, I went through and outlined the existing version of that first novel, THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, as a way to help me decide what direction I want to take with this story. That was a very interesting exercise and certainly exposed some of the weaknesses. It also proved to be a pretty good way to get the last story out of my head and clear it for the next. Whatever I do with this will be a rewrite, but I need to decide on audience first. After I play around with it some, I may just submit this to my writing group for some brainstorming.

Now, it’s time to get back to the revisions on my middle grade fantasy, MAGE STORM. I know exactly what I want to do, so once I get into it it shouldn’t take long. 

Then I think I’ll get to the revisions on BLOOD IS THICKER (paranormal romance). I might even squeeze in a couple of short stories that need some attention.

And then it’ll be time to go back to THE BARD’S GIFT.

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Multiple Versions of Queries

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

First, a little status.

I made it into the first round of the GUTGAA Agent Pitch! Yay! Man that was competitive–in the sense of being able to click on send really, really fast. Now it’s fingers crossed that I make it through to the second round.

Also, I’m within a chapter of writing “THE END” at the bottom of the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT. Whew! TBG will be my ninth completed novel. (We won’t talk about the first three, okay? I’ve got to work on revisions of two others while TBG cools. And one has been tabled for the time being.) It still feels great to get to “THE END”–or even close to it.

Now to the main topic.

I’m currently contemplating the possibility of working up–and polishing–another version of the query for FIRE AND EARTH. Not a new version to replace the current one (version number seven), but a whole new and separate query. After all, you do it for resumes, rght?

See, FIRE AND EARTH has two point-0f-view characters. I’ve consciously written the query from Casora’s story but, if I’m honest, Tiaran has a strong story, too, even though he didn’t even show up until Chapter 5.

And now, as I research agents to query, I find that at least some are actively looking for boy stories. Well . . . but to get their attention I’d have to write another version of the query. And then the fact that Ti doesn’t come in until Chapter 5 could be a problem. He probably wouldn’t even be in the sample pages.

Hmm. Probably not. I’ll just wait until I get the revisions to MAGE STORM completed. That’s a legitimate boy story, with a single point-of-view character.

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Decisions, Decsions

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 5, 2012| 4 Comments »

Well, I only have a couple more days of indecision. On Friday, the next phase of Gearing Up to Get an Agent starts up. Time to try to get my query in for the Pitch Polish part of the event. And I have to decide which story to send in.

I’m currently querying FIRE AND EARTH, a young adult fantasy.

When her country is invaded, seventeen-year-old Casora loses her battle against the berserker curse she was born with. The curse turns her into an unstoppable warrior, but that’s no use to her family when she must be exiled for the ferocious temper that goes along with it. She turns mercenary while searching for a way to tame the berserker. Hope comes in an unexpected form when she’s sent to rescue the scholarly Prince Tiaran.

The rescue leaves them stranded on the wrong side of the city walls by the besieging army. Now they–and Casora’s mercenary band–are the only ones in a position to stop the invaders. Casora teaches Tiaran how to fight. His special knowledge of the enemy allows them to devise a plan that just might work.

Even with Tiaran’s plan, the odds will be against them, but the situation becomes still more complicated for Casora. Now it’s more personal than defeating the enemy or freeing her people. Tiaran is the only one who’s ever called her curse a blessing or been able to calm her berserker rage. If she has a prayer of finding the serenity to conquer her curse, Casora must decide if she can believe that there’s any future for a battle-scarred warrior and a prince.

But I’m also making some revisions to MAGE STORM, a middle grade fantasy, and getting ready to start querying that one again.

Rell doesn’t want magic. He doesn’t dream of being a hero or a mage out of old legends. 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 Rell to be careful what he wished for.

Mage storms, composed of the ashes of the wizards killed in the War, are the scourge of his world. The embers that fall like rain burn and destroy everything they touch. When he’s caught out in one, Rell is struck by a strange blue cinder that infects him with magic. That’s when the real trouble starts.

His father expects Rell to bring back the useful magic Da remembers from before the war. Rell wants to make his father proud, but his magic responds more to his emotions than his will. He can’t figure out how to make it do what he wants and the frustration only brings out one of its most dangerous aspects: fire.

Blowing apart the cave his family uses to shelter from the mage storms makes it clear that he’s never going to figure this out by himself. The next thing that blows up may be Rell himself, if he can’t find a better way to learn than trial and error. Turns out he’s not the only one–and not every solution to their problem is what it appears to be.

So what do you think? These aren’t posted for critiques at this time. That’s next week.

On another front. I think I’m within sight of typing the end on the first draft of my YA alternate history, THE BARD’S GIFT. Realistically, that one won’t be ready to start querying probably until next summer. But it’ll still feel good to type THE END again. It always does.

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Gearing Up to Get an Agent Meet and Greet

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2012| 39 Comments »

This is a day early, but, well, Sundays and Wednesdays are my usual posting schedule and this way it’ll be up earlier than it would be if I waited until tomorrow to post it.

Mini bio:

Professionally, I’ve been a financial analyst and a visual basic programmer. I also have a paralegal certificate, although I’ve never worked in that field. It’s anybody’s guess what I’ll be when I grow up.

Imagining stories and writing have always been an important part of my life. It’s one I’ve finally gotten to spend a significant amount of time on while I care for my mother who has Alzheimer’s disease.

Questions:

  • Where do you write?

Currently, at my desk in one corner of my bedroom. I have plans eventually to set up a real office space, but can’t do it just yet.

  • Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see?

Hah! I cleaned off my desk and actually dusted and polished it last week or the answer to this question would have been different. Right now, there’s a pewter unicorn figurine in that spot.

 

 

  • Favorite time to write?

Hmm. I write on and off all day, but my most productive time is probably late afternoon or early evening.

  • Drink of choice while writing?

Usually water or tea in the morning.

  • When writing, do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?

Complete silence? Where do you find that? And would you want it if you could find it? I think complete silence is a little bit creepy. Usually, I have the tv on as a kind of general background noise. Sometimes, I’ll play instrumental music while doing revisions.

  • What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?

Ah, long story. Let’s see. About two and a half years ago, there was a trigger challenge on Hatrack River Writers Workshop. The trigger was “slave to the flame”. I wrote a fable about a little dragon who outmaneuvered his larger tormentors by learning to breathe fire, but then I didn’t quite know what to do with the fable. (It had an unhappy ending by the way, partly because I couldn’t do anything else in the space allowed for the challenge. Everybody hated that ending. And a lot of readers didn’t really like the fable quality, either.) So, I wrote a framing story about a girl who had the gift of telling the right story for any occasion. I submitted that to a few places without any success. Some readers thought it felt like the beginning of something (a common complaint about my short stories) and I had some ideas about what else might happen to that girl and how she came to be in that position in the first place. So, now I’m writing a young adult alternate history. That original story will be near the end, though. Not the beginning.

Interestingly, to me at least, the manuscript I’m about to revise (a middle grade fantasy) also grew out of a trigger challenge on Hatrack River. The trigger for that one was “Cinders of the Great War”. Maybe I should do more of the challenges.  

  • What’s your most valuable writing tip?

Never give up. Never surrender. There’s going to be plenty of rejection and disappointment along this road. You’ve got to believe in your own writing and your own stories, even when nobody else does. Perseverance is the only way to succeed.

Oh, and find a great critique group. (I have two.)

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Progress Is What You Make of It

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Seriously, sometimes in this business you just feel like you’re beating your head against a brick wall. It’s so hard to break in. But I’m nothing if not stubborn. I’ll keep banging on that wall just as long as I have to.

I’ve been querying FIRE AND EARTH–a story I love maybe more than any other I’ve written so far–since April. I’ve had three requests for partial, two of which are still out. But that represents only about a 10% request rate. Not bad, but hardly great. I’ve recently overhauled the query. Too soon to tell how well that’s going to turn out. On the other hand, if I choose to look at the glass as half-full, I had three requests on MAGE STORM in a little over a year and more than twice as many queries sent out. So, my current request rate is actually progress. (And nothing says that I can’t requery some of those agents with the revised query in four or five months. What’s the worst they could do? Reject me again? Been there, done that, survived.)

Recently, my mind has been going back to MAGE STORM. I still really, really like this one. I keep hearing that agents and editors are crying for middle grade boy adventures. Well, that’s what MAGE STORM is, darn it. I just may have to take another pass through this one, revamp the query, and send out some more queries. I’m half inclined to use this one for the Christmas in July contest. Hmm. I wonder if it’s allowed to submit more than one book to that contest. I might have to ask.

I did get “The Music Box” e-published, but it’s going to languish just the same as “Heart of Oak” and BLOOD WILL TELL unless I start figuring out this marketing thing. It’s out of my comfort zone, but that’s part of the whole point. I need to learn how. Skin in the game was supposed to force me to do that. That hasn’t been too successful so far. I may just have to force myself to schedule in some time for that exclusively in order to make this work.

I don’t really write enough short stories to make much progress on that front. I’ve only written one and an abandoned partial so far this year. I should try to write more, but novels are just so much more satisfying. On the short story front, I’ve got two out on submission. One has been out for 147 days and a response on the other should come back any day now, assuming the publication keeps to their stated response time.

I’m making good progress (not roller-coaster, nanowrimo type progress, but good steady headway) on THE BARD’S GIFT again. That actually feels great. I’ve got my two characters close enough to begin depending on each other. Now it’s time to drop the axe and separate them for awhile. Have to make your characters suffer. And I think the opening of this one is the very best first page I’ve ever written.

So, even though sometimes it feels like standing still, I really am making progress. Sometimes, you just have to stop and remind yourself of that. It makes banging on the wall a little easier.

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The Power of Requests

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on June 13, 2012| 6 Comments »

It’s amazing the power a simple request has–as in a partial or full request for a manuscript. I swear a request makes me feel like I’ve lost 30 pounds. For a little while, I can float.

I’ve had a few, now, on various projects. They always make me feel the same. I got one yesterday from the Pitch Slam over on YALitChat. So did a fellow member of the Pied Pipers. Another Pied Piper actually got an agent (from a different contest, not Pitch Slam). It can happen.

For the most part, we send our queries out into the void. Often we never hear back at all. In the subjective nature of the business–and given the difficulty of drafting a really good query–the most common response is “No, thank you.” But we keep sending those queries out because one of them, sometime, is going to be the one that works, the one that gets us an agent and one giant step further along in this process.

And that’s what makes requests so wonderful, because every once in a while, the response is “Please send more.” And maybe this will be the one. One of them, sooner or later, will be the one that says “Yes.” And it’s very nice to float in that maybe-this-time space for a while.

Hurray for requests.

Now, back to writing.

 

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Mixing Things Up

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, this is why I like to have multiple projects to work on. I can let THE BARD’S GIFT simmer a bit more, while I work out how to bring my main characters firmly together in a short amount of time and in just about one more chapter. I want it to feel like the end of the world to them when they’re parted, but I can’t spend half the book getting there. That’s a tall order and I need to do some more brainstorming on it.

Multiple projects are wonderful for this. I don’t have to lose productivity; I can just switch to something else–in this case, a bit of editing.

  1. I’ve had some ideas about that ill-fated science fiction story of mine, “Apocalypse Cruise”. I think maybe, just maybe, I can fix it–more conflict and a more satisfying ending. Actually, the ending won’t change. Just a bit more build up may make it work better. It’s worth trying, at least.
  2. Now that my critique group has had a crack at it and I’ve had time to digest their comments, I need to make the revisions to “The Music Box” so I can e-publish it next month. The main revision on this one will be to put back a bit of world building that I’d removed when I was trying to make it fit into a more (traditionally) publishable word count. Novellas are a tough sell, traditionally. If I e-pub it, I don’t have to worry so much about the word count. And it’s precisely the kind of story that should do well in that venue (romance, with only a slight fantasy element).
  3. I was beginning to think that the query for FIRE AND EARTH needed a touch up. The contest below, celebrating the publication of Wilde’s Fire, has provided me with some ideas on a couple of directions I can take to improve it for the next round.
  4. The contest has also given me an idea or two on how to improve the opening of FIRE AND EARTH.

By the time I work through that list, my subconscious should have thrown up some good ideas on how to get through this part of THE BARD’S GIFT. If not, then I’ll either:

  1. Skip ahead and write around it, for now. Not my preferred course, but it can be done.
  2. Or, do a little work on the first draft of my backup, MAGIC’S APPRENTICE.

Forward, always forward.

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Fire And Earth

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on May 26, 2012| 32 Comments »

I found out about this contest, hosted by Sharon Bayliss to celebrate the release of Wilde’s Fire, a bit late.

Fire and Earth query:

Now that she’s lost it and gone berserk, seventeen-year-old Casora is doubly cursed and there’s no going back.

Born with the mark of the berserker, she’s been sent away to learn war craft. Those skills are no use when her home is invaded while she’s far away. She turns mercenary, leading a band of teenage warriors looking for the chance to avenge themselves on the marauders.

What she really wants is to find a cure for the curse so she can go home. When she prays for an answer, she’s told to rescue the youngest prince to find what she needs.

Tiaran, third prince of a neighboring kingdom, is considered more a scholar than a warrior, but he’s determined to fight for his home. When the raiders attack, he’s trapped on the wrong side of the city walls. Casora and her band are sent to rescue him. With the capital city now besieged, there’s no option but to keep him with them and teach him to be a warrior.

But Tiaran has something to teach them, too. It’s just possible that Tiaran and Casora may be the answer to each others’ prayers.

FIRE AND EARTH is a 76,000-word young adult fantasy. Readers who liked Kristin Cashore’s GRACELING will enjoy FIRE AND EARTH.

Fire and Earth first 500 words:

Casora paused on her way to the mess tent to watch Marcian and Derian sparring with blunted swords on the practice field. Another girl might have watched Derian. He was more handsome, but Casora only had eyes for Marcian. Anyone less familiar with him might not expect so much grace or speed in such a muscular young man. Marcian was one of the best of the Deathless. Better, he was hers or would be when they were free of their obligatory service. She wished her duties were still uncomplicated enough to allow her time to spar with him–in lieu of other things.

While she was at it, she might as well wish that she was like her twin sister. Grita was lucky. She could marry whoever and whenever she chose. Having been born free of the Curse, Grita wasn’t required to be a warrior. Casora and Marcian would have to wait until their duty permitted more.

A horn blast interrupted her thoughts. At the cry of “Riders coming,” she turned and dashed to her post. Duty first.

From her desk at the front of the command tent, Casora watched the large group of riders approaching. She wore the regulation leathers and enough of her armor to disguise her slender body. By reflex, she reached for her helmet to hide her face as well. No outsider ever saw the face of a Deathless.

The tent stood on a little rise overlooking the camp, where the flag bearing a circle of seven stars on a dark blue field could be seen for miles around. It was also above most of the mud, although the smell of wet earth, damp horses, and manure still reached her on the stiff breeze that whipped the flag above her.

The rise gave Casora a good view of anyone arriving at the camp long before they reached her. More than enough time to note that these riders were all redheads, not a common hair color outside of Astraea. Casora grinned and set her helmet back on the corner of the desk. They were replacements. No need to hide her face from them. They were about to become Deathless themselves and they wouldn’t be shocked to find that the second in command of the famous war band was a girl only a couple of years older than they were.

As the riders made their way down the central road, between the orderly rows of tents, she took note of their condition and readiness. The horses looked good. Someone had thought to stop and groom them before riding in. Very shortly before, by appearances, since the mud from the recent rains didn’t rise above their fetlocks. The riders’ spears had been polished and sharpened, too. Replacements usually tried to make a good impression.

The effect was spoiled by the ease of the riders and their ragged line, strung out like a hunting party. And the shiny weapons were held too loosely. In a skirmish, they’d be overwhelmed before they could get those spears into position.

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Update on E-Pub Plans

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on March 7, 2012| 7 Comments »

I’m still working my way through all the information on formatting a manuscript for e-publication. There’s a lot of it.

However, I am also seriously considering entering this contest and having e-published a novel would potentially be a disqualification. There’s no doubt it would be a challenge to organize things–Mom’s care first of all–in the unlikely event that I won, but I think I’d find a way.

Meanwhile, I’ve been playing around with another cover art idea. This is obviously barely started. The dimensions aren’t even right, yet. I think it could be interesting, though.

Also in the mean time, I’m thinking of starting off with something smaller. A novelette titled “Heart of Oak”.  That might be a more manageable place to start, anyway. And then I could give the novelette away for free when I eventually e-pub BLOOD WILL TELL. Guess I may have to start on cover art for that, too.

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Honorable Mention

Posted in writing, tagged , , on November 13, 2011| 8 Comments »

I  received a very nice piece of validation for my writing this week. I was notified that my fourth quarer submission to the Writers of the Future contest had been awarded an Honorable Mention.

Okay, you say, it’s just an Honorable Mention. Yes, but it’s an Honorable Mention in the biggest and most respected contest for short speculative fiction. When I stop and think about how many–and how many really excellent writers I personally know (well, in cyber space anyway)–enter every quarter, it’s a huge honor to have gotten this far.

It’s only the third story I’ve entered in the contest, too. So, all in all, I’m feeling pretty good about it. I had to read the email through three times before I quite believed it, in fact.

I’ve been submitting stories, short and long, to agents and publications for three and a half years now. I’ve gotten a couple of nice, personal rejections. I’ve gotten to the second round of a pro-paying publication. I’ve had agents request full or partial manuscripts of my novels. And sometimes it feels like I’m beating my head against a brick wall just because it’ll feel so good when I finally stop.

I’m nothing if not persistent, though. And I love to write. And, of course, I’m so in love with every new story that this one just has to be the one. So I’ll keep at it.

This feels like a validation. I am indeed on the right track. I can so write. I will get there eventually.

It’s especially sweet because I really consider myself more of a novelist than a short story writer (there must be some more elegant way to say that). I work on short stories because they’re an excellent way to hone my craft. And I submit them, so far without success.

It’s funny, though. My short stories seem to have a tendency to become novels if I let them sit for a year or so. The stories just seem to grow.

I’ve been hard at work on novels most of this year. Finishing up SEVEN STARS (except for the polishing edit scheduled for early next year). A revision to BLOOD WILL TELL. Making some late revisions to MAGE STORM. First drafts of BLOOD IS THICKER and MAGIC’S FOOL.

I don’t have a short story for Quarter 1 of the Writers of the Future contest. But I do have a couple of ideas percolating. I’ll be back in Quarter 2. This time, it might even be near-future science fiction.

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