Third Time... Strike or Charm?

I’m not ignoring my blog, I’ve just been stupid, crazy busy. I have to finish one complete edit of UnAltered by November 4th. The rules of submission, state that the manuscript must be mailed by that magical date and I’m only on 189 of 262 pages.
The good news is that I’ve shaved approximately 4,000 words. The bad news I may have gone a bit heavy on the contractions and once those are fixed….well, you get the gist.

Another exciting news tidbit is the uber YA agent Suzie Townsend has skipped over to the Nancy Coffey Agency and is holding a query contest next Tuesday from 9 am to 10 am, est. Anyone can enter, but wear your rhino skin as she says she’ll be brutally honest. Googling Teflon underwear shops as soon as I'm done here...

Enough excuses. I eliminated a portion of the original query and now have a shorter, more in-yo-face kind of query. Okay, maybe not, but I’m trying to learn how to roll here, be kind.

This is the end product:

Dear Ms. Thang,

According to your website, you are seeking dystopian YA with character driven plots and real emotional power. You may enjoy my novel, UnALTERED.

“Primitive birth, genetically unaltered…mutt.” All names sixteen-year-old Ezra Thibodeaux is grotesquely familiar with. But she only has one goal: be the best Cadet Smith 902 she can be. In other words, assimilate or die. But when the Freedom Fighter’s grandson, Thorne bin Laden sets his targets on her, assimilation becomes the least of her worries.

Raped, pregnant, and selected for survival exercises, she faces the toughest decision of her life. It’s made tougher when fate reunites her with a boy from her past. If she chooses to keep her baby, she must fight her way out of One Globe or die. If she doesn’t, she’ll never have to tell the boy she loves she’s pregnant…with their enemy’s child.

UnALTERED is an 78K word YA dystopian. Per your submission guidelines, I’m including the first ten pages in this email and look forward to sending the remaining manuscript at your request.

Sincerely,
ME

So, any more advice or is everyone sick to vomit of this query? I’m kinda feeling that way…

UnAltered Query Mess Numero Dos

I asked for a critique or ten of my query letter that I’m submitting for the Big Sur Writer’s Workshop and while I didn’t get ten, I did get a couple. Thank you so much Nancy and Gail for your time and assistance.

But instead of that warm, fuzzy ‘problem solved’ feeling, I now feel utterly addled. As a result, I’m going to break it down bit by bit over my next couple of blogs.

As you know by now, I deplore the longwinded; I’ll attempt to be brief.

The beginning of my query, as was posted:

Your website states that you are currently seeking YA, “…character-driven AND page-turning contemporary fiction with real emotional power; dystopian…”

My intention was to prove that I had gone to her website and researched what she is specifically seeking, without repeating her tweets and outing myself as a fangirl.

But one critiquer thinks this is grand faux pas numero uno.

That commenter, a fellow writer with extensive querying experience, stated:

“Unless an agent specifically asks for an introduction, always jump right into the meat of the query. Besides, the agent already knows which genres she reps so you don't have to remind her.”

The other commenter, one-time journalist, poet, children’s writer, etc., had a different idea:

“…SOME WANT TO KNOW STUFF LIKE WHY YOU ARE QUERYING THEM IN PARTIC, HOW YOUR BOOK FITS INTO THEIR LIST, ETC, I HEAR THIS OVER AND OVER IN AGENT PANELS AND INTERVIEWS. WHICH IS WHAT RESEARCH IS FOR. DEFINITELY DO HOMEWORK ABOUT EACH AGENT…

As I’m no expert I went to the expert’s corner…

In my world that’s Chuck Sambuchino’s blog, A Guide to the Literary Agent. All the following quotes are from his immeasurably helpful blog. (Maybe I have a small crush…)

These are a few of those wants and don’t wants in queries:

Molly Glick of Foundry Literary & Media told Chuck: “…No. 3-Proof that you have researched and hand-picked an agent…” (Maybe I will repeat her tweets…)

Janet Reid, the infamous Query Shark, says it a little differently: “…Section Three: 1. Why you chose this agent…” Essentially, keep the intro but put it at the bottom.

She also demands a query letter not surpass 250 words. I’m good there, mine currently is 203.

And I could go on and on, but your eyes are already bleeding and you’ve just scrolled down three-fourths of the page.

This is my current intro:

According to your website, you are currently seeking dystopian YA with character driven plots and real emotional power. You may enjoy my novel, UnALTERED.

So you tell me, do I scrap it or keep it or rework one more time?

W equals WIP

If you're a writer then you know what a WIP means. If you're shopper you're busy 'googling' this exclusive designer, and if you're the parent of small children you are trying to make it into a sandwich.

WIP = Work in Progress. So, what's your sign? Mine, of the two, the one I am working on like mad, in between querying the already growing dust manuscripts, is a YA dystopian. And I love it! But hey, don't we all? Don't we all fall madly in love with our MC (main character, not mayo and cheese)? The weird thing is every one of my works is vastly different, which does make it easier to go wild in his/her world, I fear also dooms me to never finding my niche.

Here's my one-liner (Don't judge, it's a WIP): 16 year-old Ezra Thibodeaux should be assimilating on target, but getting her period proves her biochip is worthless. Raped, pregnant, and marked for destruction, she fights One Globe alone, utterly alone.

Drop me yours!

Verbomania or Validity

Vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary.

I will be the first to admit that I suffer from verbomania. It’s a real word, I’m being veridicous, although perhaps a bit versute and I’m making myself vertiginous. Okay enough of that! Feel free to consult a dictionary, I know I did.

As I am fully aware of my verbomania, I have to be extra careful to maintain validity. I love nothing more than writing a lyrical and sweeping paragraph, preferably one that has me blowing into a Kleenex, and then reading it aloud to myself. But far too often I use deep poetic license and end up scrapping the tear jerking prose. Why? Because it’s verbose and since I don’t write literary fiction, I write YA, and one sentence usually cuts to the chase.

But even with short and sweet our work must maintain validity. For example, if you are writing sci-fi or a futuristic dystopian you can simply make up all the inventions that your world will need. But, will the story be believable? I’m sure several of you will disagree with me, but the minute I start reading anything and the physics of the story are impossible, I’m done. So how can we maintain that balance?

Remember the movie, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, from 1968? The super computer HAL was completely believable, even to people who at that time had likely never seen a computer. Why? Because it was grounded in probability, the movie had validity.

I’m currently writing a dystopian set about sixty years in the future, that’s not such a long time away but the world will be much different. Forty years ago open heart surgery was huge, now, you’re lucky to visitors while you’re in the hospital. It’s become so routine we don’t even say open heart surgery anymore. My problem lies with what will be possible sixty years from now and still be probable? I spend a ginormous amount of time reading genetic research because I want my freaks to be freaky, freaking believably so. I try to give my writing validity.

So drop me a line, how do you find yourself cornered with literary license versus validity or are you so far gone with verbomania you can bluff your way through it?

I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T & Other Things That Go Blahhhg

The April Blog A to Z Challenge was rolling along nicely…

Okay so on the 10th of April I posted my “H” blog and was almost caught up in the blog challenge and feeling rather spiffy about myself. And then disaster struck! A common malady in my world, I think I must have been a troll or goblin in a former life and Karma is paying me back in this one. My laptop contracted a latent zombie virus and began to eat itself.

I replaced the laptop on Thursday and have been playing catch-up ever since. I was an uber idiot as I had not bothered to save my WIPs on a flash drive and had only backed up my laptop to my laptop. I did have my completed novels on flash but not the latest edits. SO yeah, I suck!

As my head is perpetually in the clouds, the silver lining is sticking to my eyelashes and I'm to be assured my old laptop will be returned in a week or so, sans virus. I’ve already chunked out the cash for this miracle, so I’m hoping being the Easter season I'll have a little luck at that resurection thing.

In the meantime, I’ve been answering the two weeks worth of missed emails which included……big drum roll here…2 partial requests on one of those edited but not the latest edited completed works.

I…is for Idiot, me. As I will now fastidiously copy everything on flash and backup online.
J…is for jumbo, as in my jumbo mistake at not saving my files adequately.
K…is for kicking, myself in the butt.
L…is for libation, poured myself several after the fiasco.
M…is for murder, the act I wish to commit on the sicko who invented the virus.
N…is for Norton, worthless antivirus company that assures me they protected me from other viruses.
O…is for obsessive, my new devotion to backing up files.
P…is for peeps, those nasty little marshmallow things stuffed in Easter baskets (just seems appropriate).
Q…is for query, only the favorable ones shall be remembered.
R…is for raving, ranting, and railing, still ongoing but trying to shut up.
S…is for snorting, something I did for hours as my laptop died.
T…is for tomorrow, for tomorrow never comes.

Okay so tomorrow I’ll post the ubiquitous “U” and be back on track. Anyone feeling the need to point out that this is flagrant cheating, please keep it to yourself, I’m already wallowing in guilt.

"How Horrible!" as said by Benny Hill

One of my all time favorite British phrases!

I am huge ho for British comedy with Benny Hill being my most beloved. It just so happened that I was detained in Heathrow Airport the weekend that he passed away. (When I say detained, well, let’s just say it was a misunderstanding of security forces concerning the passport under which I was traveling.)

Being the easy going person (I so want to say bloke right now) that I am, I proclaimed my sincere remorse at the lost of one so admired the world over. Considering the circumstances in which I found myself, I was already aware the police force in the United Kingdom was severely lacking in humor. Which is undoubtedly why the genius, who was Benny Hill, lampooned them often as the police farce.

Yet I was still taken aback at the vigorous retort I received for my heartfelt condolences.

“How horrible!” I was rebuked with overly forthright self-righteousness by a picture perfect depiction of a Benny Hill characterization.

Instead of upsetting me, why bother, I was about to be sold down the River Thames anyway, I began to chuckle. Which wasn’t well received either, but thank goodness not illegal. His obvious horror at my laughter set me off in a bout of giggles so tremendous it still amazes me I didn’t end up in the tower. Which thinking about it now, I realize would have been a tour indeed.

With the letter ‘h’ being the assignment, I challenge you to recall your most ‘h’umorous accounting of the humpbacked letter.

For me and my own, my multiple personalities that is, we will stay with, “How horrible”, and our fond memories of the greatest comedian to ever live…Benny Hill.

Apocalypse Anyone?

I am participating in the A to Z Blog Challenge, but didn’t start until the letter “C” so this is a make-up blog. I do know the alphabet, honestly, I do.

a•poc•a•lypse/əˈpäkəˌlips/Noun
1. The complete final destruction of the world, esp. as described in the biblical book of Revelation.
2. An event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale. More »
Wikipedia - Dictionary.com - Answers.com - Merriam-Webster

Apocalypse…the word means different things to different people.

To my mother it means the end of the world, as described in the Bible in the book of Revelations, see numero uno above. She sees the attack on the World Trade Center as the first horse of the apocalypse. She truly believes that Barack Obama getting elected heralded in the second horse…something to do with his views on Israel. Yada, yada, yada. So when she called me to espouse her views on the tsunami, earth quake, and subsequent damage to the nuclear reactors in Japan, I wasn’t surprised to learn that was the third horse. As she has nothing else to talk to me about, figured I’d make her happy and asked when she expects the fourth horse to be coming down the track? Let’s just say that conversation didn’t end on a pleasant note. But hey, it gives her something to pray about…besides my soul.

To me the apocalypse, in some form, is my favorite writing subject. It’s the possibility, of all that havoc and wretchedness. Not saying I buy into the whole four wild horses, I’m more of numero dos option. It opens my mind to describing what a certain place would look like if it actually survived an apocalypse.

The most common in movie themes and literature is the nuclear holocaust. And I’m no different, that’s the exact world I’m building in my current WIP. But I don’t have total devastation, as I don’t believe total devastation is likely. Sure, if every country currently holding nuclear weapons decided to release them against each other in showdown, we’d most definitely have total devastation. But what are the actual chances of that? Man has the innate will to survive. And even the most evil villain alive, with the exception of a certain few, realizes that a nuclear war would take them out as well.

So what do you think? Am I wrong in making part of the planet still inhabitable? According to the definition I suppose I am. Leave me a comment about your thoughts and apocalyptic works.

G is for Gassler

I galloped through the gamut of ‘g’s but couldn’t garner one that got me going so I gave up.

And will use one of my own, “gassler”.

Writing YA the vocabulary changes as rapidly as Paris Hilton’s lovers.

I have a couple of online sources that I go to often http://www.thesource4ym.com/teenlingo and http://onlineslangdictionary.com. I also ‘Google’ like mad for new Adalonic (Adolescent Vocabulary) Dictionaries. But sometimes even that’s not enough.

For instance, my current WIP is a dystopian set in post apocalyptic America, vaguely set about seventy years in the future. Writing dialogue becomes more of a challenge.

Will ‘lame’, ‘tard’, ‘sick’, ‘sweet’, ’awesome’, or ‘bank’ still be common teen usage of the future? Or will they have gone the way of ‘stoked’, ‘stellar’, ‘tubular’, ‘dude’, and ‘chill’?

The language of the future is just as unpredictable as the fashion sense of their generation. But instead of taking this as a roadblock, I’ve made up a few of my own words and given an alternate meaning to common words. For even though the words will change, a teen’s need to be different and possess their own vocabulary will not.

So that brings us to ‘gassler’. It’s a slur. A newly seized genetically unaltered human and is non-gender specific. So go ahead and insult someone today, call them a gassler. The worst that can happen is they think you are accusing them of wasting too much fuel or burning up the ozone layer.

Frenzied, Fabulous...Failure

I spent three days dreaming up the perfect “F” word and all I could come up with was that song by Cee Lo Green, F______ YOU”. Regardless of the version you choose, the result is the same. While I adore the song, both versions, decided I’d best not choose either of those “F”s.

Frenzied describes my life right now. I write, I blog, I cook, I edit, I query, I tweet, I FaceBook, and do all the things that have to be done, eating, cleaning, bathing, pretending to listen to my other (money man), and all at a frenzied pace, but I still feel three days behind.

Fabulous is my first grandbaby. She’s beyond amazing and I could spend every second holding her, and kissing her little fingers and toes. In fact, when I get to spend time with her I don’t set her down, much to my son’s chagrin, but he can get over it.

Failure. No matter how big the pep talk I give myself prior to reading that email. You know the one, the response to your query one. When the answer is no, whether it’s an eloquent note, a long description of why not, or the evil abominable form letter, I feel like a failure. I know there are thousands of agents out there and I only need one, but each reject makes me sick, literally.

Failure. Failure. Failure. I read the rejection ten times at least, trying to glean every shred of useable info imparted. I take that chunk of criticism and go back to edit and then despair. Unless the agent has specifically said I can resubmit, I sit there and stew, and pout, and frown, and curse the futility of trying to get published and then the inevitable. I google self-publishing websites and read their promises of automatic success and world-wide recognition. I’m not ready to go there yet, but it gives me a glimmer of hope. It makes the failure easier to swallow anyway.

Ecdysiast Everyone?

Are you an ecdysiast? I am.
Well not literally, although there was that one time…but I digress.

An ecdysiast is a striptease artist.

They are tempters, teasers, and sirens.

They can draw you in slowly. Grabbing your attention with just a pretty face and turn your head to follow their every movement. Next a glove, peeled enticingly down her slender arm, sharing just a tad of flesh, wetting your appetite for more. Next a stocking?

Or they can be wild frenzied flesh, gyrating and grinding their bony hips in your face. Tossing you into the action with unrestrained abandon. Captivating you so entirely that you can’t rip your eyes away, you can’t escape, and you become their unexpected slave.

Of course they are only successful if they fit the part. No one, or very select fetish few, is willing to hand over their last dollar to a four pound linebacker looking female sliming up the pole.

So what does getting naked for money have to do with writing? EVERYTHING!

You have to grab your reader, whether you do the slow dance or the action packed gyrate, the result is the same. You’ve got to latch onto them and keep them mesmerized. If you lose your reader’s interest, first page or half-way through, he’s not going to hand over his hard earned bucks again.

So, look at your WIPs and ask yourself? Am I tempted and teased into a slathering drool fool, begging for more?

If not, it’s time for a rewrite.

So, be an Ecdysiast but don’t be an Ecdemomaniac.

(Should make you look it up, but since you were so kind to stop by, I’ll give it to you. A person with an abnormal compulsion to wander.)

Tangled in My Own Web

I made this amazing schedule to get my writing career going in a forward direction instead floundering in the quagmire. Well that sucked! Even without the laptop keyboard glitch, I haven’t succeeded at following it one single day. These are the reasons why:

1. Querying a mere three agents, not the ten I so loftily amused myself with, per day takes me upwards of four hours. I troll QueryTracker.net selected picks for me and then research the agent. Hoping my letter will not look completely random, I Google said agent and read at least one of their interviews and quote some little ditty they’ve espoused.

2. I hadn’t scheduled time for bathing or Chardonnay, but I’m proud to report those items have not missed a day. I cocooned my laptop in Saran Wrap and have been practicing with washing and guzzling while typing. Not vastly successful yet, but I have high hopes. Sadly for the monumental span of my derriere, exercise has been moved down on a notch on my ‘to do’ list.

3. I swore that I would write on one of the two WIP’s and rotate them regularly, but that has been revised to writing like mad on one and ignoring the shouting voice of my MC in the other.

4. I committed to editing my badly needed rewrite on my NaNoWriMo. Wisely, I moved it to the end of my document’s list so I need not feel any guilt by accidentally scrolling past that sad file.

5. No more time suckage allowed by FaceBook or Twitter? No comment.

6. And as for that blogging, reading blogs, and commenting on such… I’m working on it.

So for those of you who have this whole shebang under control, how do you do it? And how do you deal with the guilt when you flop miserably?


On a completely sane level, would anyone like to post their query letter and let random strangers poke fun, er, I mean critique it?
Leave me a comment if you want to be my guinnea pig.

Schedule Wisely or Get a Job

The above are the sage and heartless words of my dearest..

Several of the NYT Best Selling Authors churn out multiple novels in a year, which in itself with the required hours of editing and rewriting is monumental. Add in Twitter, FaceBook, a myriad of other social networking sites and a blog and the task seems unattainable. How do they do it? Where do they find the time?

I’ve spent 3 years beating my head against the wall, not literally (I hate pain), and I feel no closer to being published than the day I scaled down my real estate brokerage in order to do this. I’ve come to an impasse. (My husband is losing patience with my lowered income, but I’m fine with not working 80 hours a week.) It’s time to get serious, to get organized, or admit defeat and go back to work fulltime.

I have three finished novels and two under way. I write, I edit, I rewrite, I edit, but I really suck at querying. I have queries for each of the aforementioned novels but sending them out? Ewww! I’m breaking out in hives just thinking about it. I do the research, I find my dream agents, but… just...ewww.

Enough! I will, starting today.

Since I have three completed novels, I will work on one book at a time rotating them weekly. The new and improved (first ever) schedule I came up with went like this: 10 query letters per day-three hours, two hours of editing, two hours of blog reading/writing, two hours of FB/Twitter (time suckage no longer allowed), and four hours on the WIPs. A full thirteen hours of devotion.

Extremely proud of my spurt of industriousness, I boasted of my eminent success to my other. He rolled his eyes and sagely noted that I hadn’t scheduled time for him, bathing, eating, exercise, or (OMG how could I have forgotten?) chardonnay.

Okay so something has to go, and it won’t be my wine. Do I really need to query?

First Day a New Way

Thanks to my innate laziness I'm the world's worst blogger. Besides the fact that I find writing about writing incredibly sad, especially as to date I'm unpublished. Sure, I could go the indie way lots of today's millionaire writers have done that very thing. I've even read a few of those books, but I haven't found one yet that made me stay up all night reading it. They read like early drafts, the potential of something great is there, the yeasty scent is enticing but the bread is only parbaked.

So, I shan't give up my quest, I shall lumber on.

This new blog will be my rant at the futility of my search to obtain that goal. It will be filled with angst and guest bloggers and contests. Why? Because I've been assured by the “oh so wise”, Office Girl, see her blog under blogs I follow, that this is the key to wild success. And she knows all. She is wise beyond her tender years.

What I won't do is curse the heads of those sage and venerable creatures, otherwise known as agents, even when they turn down the unbelievable opportunity to represent my work. I will sadly keep a public count of my humiliation here for your pleasure.

Why? Dare you say I should wail at the beasts that could so obtusely refuse such a gold plated sweet deal? I should spit in their eye? After all they must be blind; they couldn't see the spit coming.

Well I won't and I'll tell you why. Because one day, one of those higher beings is going to pick up my query letter, laugh their asses off, and request a full. And it goes without saying that the wise one will love it! Find me a publisher with a flick of his/her cellphone and rocket us both to instant success. So there!