A Querying We Shall Go

The upcoming writer's workshop at Big Sur requires a writing sample and query letter before I'm officially approved to attend. So, I'm asking your help. I SUCK at writing query letters.

I'm sticking in my current sample and ask for your feedback. Tear it to shreds, spare no blood, please!

Dear Amazing Uber Agent,

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

They say religion ended the world in a day. It only took 7 hours. And two years later it was banned. So was reproduction.

Primitive birth, genetically unaltered…mutt, 16 year-old Ezra Thibodeaux 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 and future One Globe leader, Thorne bin Laden sets his targets on her, assimilation is no longer an option.

Raped, pregnant, and selected for survival exercises, escape becomes her obsession. In a rare twist of fate she’s reunited with a boy from her past and faces the toughest decision of her life. If she chooses to keep her baby, she must fight her way out. She must also tell the boy she loves that she’s pregnant…with their enemy’s child.

UnALTERED is a 82K word YA dystopian. Per your website, I’m including the first ten pages in this email and look forward to sending the remaining manuscript at your request.

Sincerely,
Lea McFalls Zeqiri

Lea McFalls Zeqiri
1234 Sunshine Ln.
Dallas, TX 75666
(469) 222-2222 cell
(888) 515-5555 fax
myunbreachableemail@yahoo.com

Now, ready, set, go...rip my heart out.

Big Sur Here I Come!

Big Daddy has agreed to my attending the Big Sur Writer’s Workshop! Yay me!

Of course, he’s insisting on tagging along.

Now we are squabbling on how to pay for it and which package to buy. But thanks to the infinite wisdom of a fellow blogger, I’ve come up with a solution. There may or not be a midnight organ snatch on a certain father-in-law who may or may not be living in foreign lands. Well, financing is in order.

So now my new puzzle…

Which manuscript do I use for the workshop?

My very first novel is a fictional piece set in both and Kosovo and needs massive overhaul. And that’s after 4 full edits. It started at 174K so I’ll let you figure out the ridiculous shape of it. ALKONOST-A TATTOO AWAKENS

My second is a tongue-in-cheek YA with major voice issues. McDRACULA

My third is my NaNoWriMo YA love story from this past November that I’m currently editing and it’s getting kind of cute. BLAZE

But my favorite, which I think is the best I’ve written to date is a YA dystopian that I’m letting simmer. UNCLASSIFIED

Should I start editing the fourth, the dystopian, so that I have something that I love to work on or use the NaNo YA love story which is in a better position editorial wise?

I don’t want to get laughed out of my chair, but I think the dystopian has the most potential overall…

What would you do?

To Conference or Not to Conference

The Big Sur Writer’s Workshop is coming up December 2-4, 2011.
And I’m dying to go.

I had wanted to go the one they held in the spring at Seabreeze/Monterrey, California, but I’d just returned from a month off in Europe and couldn’t justify the funds. I considered on cutting the kid’s stipends but was terrified that would lead them to life of crime or pan handling. Or more truthfully have them making voodoo dolls with my face stuck on them.

So what does that have to do with now, right?

Well, my other half chose the same day to announce his father had overblown our patio renovations on our retirement home by a “Democratic Party” amount and funds are once again tight. Like hairball tight.

This workshop is unique in that you work with three specific faculty members throughout and it includes critiques! I could go on and on but don't want to do an ad here. And these faculty are not your typical ‘Jane Harlequin wrote a dirty book, epubbed herself, and is now going to show you how do it’ authors. These are BIG name YA and children’s writers with several NYT Best Sellers under their frockcoats.

I WANT TO GO!

But it’s pricey. The price without airfare and rental car is $720 and that’s sharing an adjoining bathroom with a stranger. It’s an additional $150 if, “…you have a special reason to be private…” Doesn’t that sound like they don’t want you to get your own room? If you want to bring a friend that’s not attending the conference but wants to view the redwoods, well that’s an additional $390. Of course, that includes their meals. Why can’t I just pay the $150 extra and he get his own meals?

So now, my conundrum…

Which organ do I sell to pay for it?

See you in December at the Big Sur Lodge in California!

Finished, Finished, Finished

Ta dah!

I finally finished my WIP with an ending that will stand. At least until I edit and undoubtedly I will chop it to shreds.

But for now, I have that satisfying feeling. You know the one, you've cleaned your entire house and you're finally soaking in a bubble bath with a case of chardonnay? Sorry, that was just a fantasy it usually entails a guy name Guy rubbing my shoulders and begging me to let him paint my toenails. I don't know why, it's a fantasy, okay?

I've been neglecting my blog and I would like to promise to never allow that to happen again but as I already live in a world of self-delusion I don't want to press my luck. But I will check in more often.

Now that UNCLASSIFIED is marinating, I am taking a little breather and writing a couple of short stories for competition. One thing I've learned so far about shorts, I suck. Short, right? I'm actually surprised at how hard it is to write a complete story in under 2500 words or less. And what should I write about? I mean, do YA shorts even have a chance up against lost love (most common category)?

Please leave me your ideas for short stories so I can shamelessly steal them. Just kidding, I will feel shame, promise.

Rethink & Research

I've finished my WIP three times. And I hate every ending.

How did I lose my path? Where exactly did Ezra take over and spin out of control? I could just move on, leaving my three endings and begin the edit. I could do that. I should do that. When I finish a story I like to let it sit for a month or two and marinate, but I can't leave poor Ezra with her swollen belly hanging out.

I backed up a few chapters to where the climax first begins to peak. In this case, it's during her survival exercises when she's forced to make a big choice. Keep the baby and die or skewer the baby and die. Yeah, her options her grim. Reading over these chapters, I realized I didn't like the scene setting.

It's not that I didn't do my homework, I did. Truly, I did. The setting is Post-Apocalyptic Baton Rouge, LA. And I've visited Baton Rouge, granted it's been years and I've never actually been since the bomb, but I googled the fancy out of it. So, I was ready, right? Wrong!

Our memory plays tricks on us, especially Chardonnay tinted ones, and cities change. I told my wonderful husband, yep the one I stabbed, (It wasn't even a flesh wound, relax.) that I absolutely had to go... immediately. He agreed, maybe he's a little afraid of me, suppose he has reason to. Since he didn't make a fuss, I insisted on a private guide for a predawn swamp tour. He agreed to that too, probably hoping I'd be eaten by an alligator.

But my fairy godmother was by my side. The guide was a no show and the two hours waiting on the bank of the bayou was enough for me. (I've got mosquito bites where no mosquito should go.)

To make a long winded blog a wee less windy, the walking tour through Baton Rouge, AKA Red Stick, was wonderful. It was everything I imagined the Mississippi River would be in July. Hot, stick, and fragant. I found a dozen flaws in my manuscript, drank only coffee, and dusted off the cobwebs of my memory. Ezra's survival exercises will be so much better for it, although the Belle Casino may not feel the same.

Well, I drank only coffee anyway, can't say that about my dearest...

Drop me a note on how you research your WIPs...

Pantsing Vs Plotting

This is a dilemma I face each time I start a new book. My brain says, “Sit down, plot it out.” But my heart says, “Just go with it, you'll be fine.”

As, I'm not known for my reasonable approach, I inevitably start typing away. About halfway into chapter 3 I no longer recognize my MC and have no idea who this cast of hoodlums are that are following his/her every move. Then I'm stuck....

Do I go back and start over? Or do I incorporate these ballsy bullies who've butted their way in? Well, you've probably already guessed, I write them in. After all, what fairy story doesn't need a one-eyed psychopathic demon-eater with morning breath and a hankering for milkshakes?

And all is fine for a few more chapters.... But once I'm forced to start tying everything altogether, I run into massive roadblock. Boulders are dropped from cliffs, cars crushed beneath and my fairy has sprouted demon horns and developed a madness for poltergeist sherbet. Don't ask...

When all this happens I can't even remember where the story was supposed to go in the first place. Sigh :( Which is where I find myself now. My current WIP, a YA Dystopian is running amok on me. I've tried spanking her back on track, but she'll just have none of it. While this one, I made a flimsy outline of the plot, (spent nights obsessing right before falling asleep and tucking it safely into one corner of my manic brain) I seem to have taken a wrong turn or six.

It's not that I don't like where I am, I absolutely love the story. But I'm on the down slope and the climax is growing instead of diminishing. Is that a good thing? Will my Ezra blow up One Globe or will her rapidly expanding love for both the baby in her belly and the gun-boned ghost from her past slow her down? I don't know! I just don't know...

Drop me your dilemma. Are you a pantser or a plotter?

Still looking for a good match on a YA critique partner, help!

Comments, Cookies, and Kooks

I've been pulling my hair out for weeks due to an internal “third-party cookie filtering error”. Sounds like a personal problem, right? Apparently, I am such a wiz at computer security, (coughs into kerchief-I've only blown three laptops in the past two years.) that I made it impossible for myself to leave comments on other blogs.

As we all know, if you don't seek out other bloggers and leave comments, then no one will reciprocate the love. Well, for the most of us anyway. There are those of you, and you know who are, who can insult the pope himself and still gain thirty followers a day. But alas, I'm not one of you.

Even as I was going through my emotional meltdown of the past month, I continued to read and search writer's blogs. But without the ability to say anything, I slowly oozed off the planet.

So, I posted a question on blogger's site asking why I could no longer post comments. Right direction, right? Wrong! I got an answer by a mean spirited, condescending techno geek. He told me all about my cookie sickness and suggested I go to his blog site to get the fix.

Well, I read page after page of insults aimed at us poor schleps that are so pathetic that we purchase our laptops and computers at places like Best Buy and Target, but are too stupid to do more than open the box. I found post after post telling me what my problem is, but advice on fixing it? Not hardly.

Then I Googled my question and lo and behold, got an answer. And I quote... “The fix is simple...Just unclick the “remain logged in” button and enter your username and password.” Posted by the remarkable Level 1, Mikhail Borgin on June 19, 2011. All hail, Mikhail!

And it WORKS! Yay! Back to reading and blogging!

My writing partner and I are still looking for a third or fourth, so if anyone wants to join in, we need ya! We'll read and answer your stuff pronto.