I think that both my query letter and story are much stronger than they were at this time last year, but I suppose I’ll have to wait and see what sort of response I get.

The issue that’s going to work against me the worst, I believe, is length. Hands, Like Secrets is bloody long, both for a debut and especially for the YA market. And there’s only so far I can knock it back without compromising the story. At best…at the very, very best I can do on my own…I might could knock it back to 118,000 or so. That’s how long Twilight is. Twilight was a debut, and a YA to boot. It’s not impossible.

It just makes an already difficult job harder.

I try to tell myself that Eragon was somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 words, and it took off nonetheless. However, Eragon was originally self-published, and had something like a year to gain momentum before a publisher ever picked it up. I will self-publish Hands if I absolutely have to, but I want to exhaust all my other options first.

I’m about to get back to work on Promises, Like Tears, which has become a bit bogged down. I think there’s a lot in there that I need to go back and cut, or rearrange, and I can’t quite decide if I should do that first or just push on to the end and THEN come back. The latter is probably the better option.

Changed Shades to Seven Shades. I really have no reason other than it sounds more interesting. And the characters occasionally swear by it. The only fact I’ve established is that there are seven “shades” in shayol, and I haven’t really worked out why that’s important. Might become relevant in the last book, when Saeli is briefly taken to shayol by the Keeper of the Oath. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I’ve also decided to attempt NaNoWriMo this year, and see if I can’t get This Chosen Fate written. It’s all plotted out; all I have to do is sit down and write it. That’s something I really need to practice: writing straight through something without going into editing mode. And this way I’ll have something besides Shades to shop around…something that isn’t as long

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

Apparently one of my plugins was actually hiding all of my posts except the top one, but only if you weren’t logged in. So of course because I was logged in, I didn’t notice. Anywho, I have fixed that problem, and I’ve also gotten the audio player back up and running, so music should work now. Troubleshooting is a laborious process, involving a lot of logging in, turning features on and off, logging out, refreshing the page, checking the page, logging back in, and well, you get the idea. I posted two new posts since the Great Fatal Error and Two Week Shutdown, but because of the above problem, I don’t know if anyone has actually seen them. Was kind of wondering why they never showed up on Facebook.

The continuation of the second book in the Shades trilogy is going well. I’ve had a lot of fun incorporating snippets and elements from the first draft into unexpected places in this draft. My favorite this week is when Raphel actually takes over Naeth’s body for about three seconds, long enough to scare the crap out of Othau. How and why, you ask? The visual was taken from a scene in the first draft where Othau is taunting Saeli and Mora, saying he isn’t afraid of “their leader”, when Raphel appears in a doorway looking all awesome and scary and says something appropriately badass like “You should be afraid of me”.

In the current scene, Saeli and Mora are still trapped in a cave with Othau and his gang (see the post I wrote about that). Naeth has just showed himself, and is using Mora’s suras bond with Raphel to allow the two of them to communicate (as though they had a sorarc). They are interrupted by Othau, things escalate to a point where Othau grabs Mora’s arm…and we discover that apparently Raphel was still “on the other end of the line”, listening through Naeth’s connection. Raphel uses an intuitive combination of spirit walking, qi, and Mora’s suras bond and transfers his consciousness into Naeth long enough to possess the god’s body and knock Othau away. Then Naeth bucks him out. On the surface, after everything calms down and they make it to Caosgi, everyone kind of writes off the incident. Although Saeli and Naeth will both wonder how the hell Raphel did that, and will worry about what it means. And they are right to worry.

It’s really a very small incident, one of those things that happens in the thick of a fight that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but nobody really pays attention to because zOMGpeoplearetryingtokillmerightnow. The “how the hell”s come later, when everyone’s had time to sit down and think.

I did this primarily to foreshadow the end of Book 2. It gives Raphel a small taste of what it’s like to have an immortal’s power, and provides the motivation for his major turning point. It will tweak the nature of the quest from “I want to destroy the gods” to “I want to destroy the gods myself, and take their place”. Raphel is no longer content to simply let the Keeper take out the gods of Verre; he starts fantasizing what it would be like to take that revenge himself. It won’t be until they get to Caosgi and learn about how newborn immortals are made that Raphel begins to contemplate possessing one permanently, and the incident with Naeth gives him a very good reason to start thinking this way: “I did it once, which means I can do it again…and if I do it with a newborn, he or she won’t be able to kick me out like Naeth did.”

And it gives Naeth a very, very good reason to never trust Raphel again. He probably won’t ever confess it, but that incident will have scared the crap out of him. Just as Raphel got his split-second of immortal power, Naeth got a split-second flash of who Raphel really is on the inside. The god will probably very quickly guess Raphel’s intentions on Caosgi, and will step up his efforts to turn Saeli against Raphel.

So as you can see, my writing has been going pretty well. Which is good, because little ELSE about this process is right now. Still agent hunting, and I’m getting kind of discouraged. Aside from that first nibble right at the beginning of the hunt, I’ve gotten nothing but silence and form rejection letters. I’ve revised the query letter once, and now it looks like I’m going to have to revise it again. I’ve read that if you aren’t getting at least like 4 out of 10 requests for partials or fulls, then there’s something wrong with the letter. But I’m also a a point where I honestly do not know how to make my query any better.

It occurred to me that part of the problem may lie not in the story itself, or the query letter, but in the genre, of all things. High fantasy for YA is not “in” right now, if the shelves at Books-a-million are any indication, and it may be only wishful thinking on my part that I think it’s making a comeback. It may be that a lot of these agents I’m querying actually like my story, but they just don’t think they can sell it right now. They might love it, but if they can’t sell it, they aren’t going to take it on.

Unfortunately there isn’t much I can do about that. I can’t make Shades NOT be high fantasy without fundamentally rebulding the whole thing from the ground up. I do have a couple of other options.

I can start hawking the story as a crossover to agents that represent adult fantasy. I may have to do that anyway, as my list of agents to query grows thinner.

And/or I can revise the query letter to contain specific selling points. I’d been dedicating most of the letter to the story hook, as I felt that was Shades’ strongest suit: yeah, it’s YA and yeah, it’s fantasy, but the point is that it’s a good story. But maybe I need to spell out why I think people will like Shades despite the fact that YA high fantasy is not the “in” thing right now.

1: The fantasy elements read more like an adult fantasy. There’s a reason teenagers who read fantasy and sci-fi tend to read ADULT fantasy and sci-fi…there isn’t much of the YA variety, and the YA variety tends to be less epic, less comprehensive, less grandiose. The voice and tone are different. It’s a difficult nuance to describe in words, but as a child who grew up on adult fantasy and now reads YA, I’m telling you, it’s there. Shades will appeal to teenagers like I used to be.

2: The voice, the pacing, the environments…these are all pure YA. Young adult is quicker, more immediate. Sharper. Pain and heartbreak are tasted and smelled and felt with all their sharp edges, but not really understood. Plenty of adult fantasies star teenaged characters, but those characters tend to be, due to circumstances, practically adults in all but age. Or, if they are children, they are handled in such a way that it becomes obvious that it is nevertheless an adult who is telling the story. It blunts the immediacy, in a sense. Adults just don’t handle problems the same way teenagers do. In contrast Saeli, despite being 19, is still an adolescent. A combination of upbringing and isolation from the larger world have shaped her in such a way that she still thinks and feels and deals with things like a teenager. Her life essentially revolves around school and studying until the cute bad boy intrudes on her life. That’s a pretty typical YA plotline because it’s something your typical high schooler will relate to.

Shades will sell to teenagers who grew up on Anne McCaffry and the Wheel of Time, and are now devouring Westerfeld and Holly Black and Melissa Marr.

Now I just have to figure out how to describe all that in a sentence or two.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

And it was so very, very easy to fix. Gah.

Anyway, that’s why things have been down for the last…week? Two weeks? Time tends to get away from me…

Back with your irregularly scheduled posts soon!

Edited to add: You may notice that some features, like my embedded music, are not working properly. Updating always breaks a few plugins (just usually not so thoroughly). I apologize. It will take me some time to get everything all updated and running again.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

However, last week I did take myself to the movie Prom, on the justification that it was a teenager movie and I write stories for teenagers. I ought to keep myself familiar with how they dress and talk and act around each other if my books are going to contain any amount of realism. And…sometimes I like a simple young toothy love story. And the guy who plays Jesse is kinda cute *cough*…

Anyway, it was pretty much what I expected. Nothing deep or riveting or complicated. But it did affirm why the young adult genre appeals to me as a whole, and also reminded me that it’s been a while since I was a teenager.

I like the immediacy. People tend to mock teenaged angst, how everything that’s happening is so dreadfully important and a big deal all the time. How ups are like mountaintops and downs are like the end of the world. It’s true that young people lack a certain amount of perspective that comes with age and living life. But you know…sometimes I think adults could use more of that immediacy and significance. Young people care, immensely and deeply, and that kind of passion can do amazing things in the world, if channeled. We, as adults, need to remember how it feels to care, and to love, and to ache…to not let those things slip away with the years.

I like the sort of on-the-cusp, anything-is-possible vibe that seems to permeate stories that involve teenagers. It’s both exciting and scary to be making momentous decisions that will affect the rest of one’s life, and it makes those characters stand out in a way that wise, mature, rational adult characters sometimes don’t.

But watching that movie, I noticed something. Many of the problems between characters could have been easily and quickly solved, if the characters would only talk about what was bothering them. It amazed me how many times I was sitting there in the theater thinking, “Just say it! Why can’t you just speak up??” I found myself sometimes getting frustrated with how easily they would sometimes just give up and go along with the crowd, or follow orders, or do nothing.

But see, I’m an adult. Been there, done that, you know? I’ve learned from experience that getting things out in the open is usually worth any possible repercussions. I’ve learned to express myself, and I’ve learned that voicing my needs and feelings is far better in the long run than hiding them. I’ve had a few years to hone what I’d say, and how I’d say it, and I’m no longer so insecure about what people will think of me if I speak up. It takes some deliberate effort on my part to put myself in a teenaged mindset. Thinking like that not an automatic thing for me.

In other words, I don’t remember what it’s like to be a teenager quite as well as I think I do. And I’d do well to keep that in mind.

In other news, I’ve started another blog. I was very adamant that this blog was going to be for writing, and only for writing, and that I wasn’t going to get into religion or politics here unless it directly related to my writing. But more and more I’ve found myself needing a place to vent on certain issues…because otherwise they just bother me and bother me and I don’t get anything done for like a week. If you really want to know where I stand on such topics, you can head over here and poke around. There’s not much there yet, but it’ll probably get added to pretty fast. I will warn you, sometimes I may not be very nice and I’ll probably be doing a lot of picking on fundamentalist Christianity in particular. Not because I have a problem with the Christian faith…actually, I like it very much, which is why I’d like to see its blind spots and idiocies and dark sides exposed and dealt with. But, if that sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, then you should probably leave exilemusings alone.

Like this post?

Like!

9 likes

Anonymous(9)

You may notice some little things that have been updated.

I changed the name of the last Shades novel from Hearts, Like Glass to Dreams, Like Ashes…also ganked from a song, and I just think it has a better ring to it. “I watched the city burn, these dreams like ashes float away…” Updated the explanation to reflect my current progress.

Changed the title of Kailar to Fire Into Frost…because Fire and Ice is too cliched, as badly as I wanted to use it.

Changed the title of The Waters to This Chosen Fate; hard to come up with. I toyed with something like Beyond These Shores, but I didn’t want it to sound like I was equating the Waters to the afterlife, or that Lauren had died. The story is all about choice and fate, so.

Updated To Wake a Windmaker to just Windwaker. I was reluctant to give the book the same name as a Zelda game, but I think the story and format are different enough that it will be okay. And it gives Quintin more of a focus: he’s not just some random guy looking for answers, he IS the answer, he IS the Windwaker. No longer a journey to the saviors, but the journey OF a savior.

Changed some music around. Also, you may notice that some of the new ideas don’t have any explanation other than the pitch. That’s because…I haven’t put my thoughts together yet. I may do that in a few individual blog posts.

Like this post?

Like!

2 likes

Anonymous(2)

My car died. Like, permanently. Poor old Pontiac. The only thing worse than driving an overheating car across Melbourne was then having nightmares about driving said overheating car across Melbourne that night. Which, I now know, was not a wise thing to do…but alas. Thankfully, I have the most wonderful dad in the world, who funded the Hyundai Sonata I’m driving now.

We now have a cat. The hubby heard him crying outside one night after those two huge April storms we had. I, of course, had headphones on and didn’t have a clue. So we’re sitting there working on our computers, when the hubby suddenly gets up and walks out the front door with no explanation. He then calls my phone and asks if we have anything we could feed to a cat. I cut up some hot dogs and take them outside, where I find him with a very skittish orange kitty in the downstairs breezeway. We debated what to do with the cat, as it was raining and we didn’t want to just leave him outside. As it was around 11 in the evening, our options were limited. We ended up bringing the cat up to the apartment for the night and made plans to call animal control in the morning.

We got some basic supplies and discovered that the kitty was housebroken (litter trained and everything). Also, this cat really, really liked my husband. I mean, he couldn’t even leave the room without the cat trying to follow and put its paws up on his ankles. I stayed home with the cat the next day until animal control came, and that part was absolutely horrible. My son was home on spring break, which made it even worse (how do you explain to a five-year-old why someone is taking kitty to the pound, when every single child’s movie that features a pound portrays it as a BAD PLACE??)

Well, we debated, and debated, and finally decided that we couldn’t bear the thought of this cat getting possibly euthanized if no one claimed him. After a week, we went back to the animal shelter and officially adopted him. His name is now Kansuke, and he is settling in very nicely (after he got rid of the cold he caught at the shelter).

I have been writing, despite all this; working on Promises, Like Tears and This Chosen Fate kind of in tandem. When I hit a block in one story, I switch to the other. By the time I hit a hard place in the other, I’m ready to continue the first one. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time on Amphiptere’s Vision, tweaking the skillsets. “Sandboxing” them, I call it; where instead of coming up with a straightforward list of abilities, I create a set of “tools”, skills that can be combined to create the individual abilities. It gives the player the opportunity to create their own “style” of fighting, hunting, building, etc. It also forces the player to think about what the various tools do, and to anticipate what might happen if one tool is combined with another. I want the player to “know” his skillsets nearly as well as the character does, and to be creative in how he employs them. Breaks the bash-bash-bash-loot monotony of grinding that most MMO’s seem to have.

I’ve heard back on a few submissions, mostly the standard not-right-for-us-at-this-time letters. The few more personal notes I’ve gotten have been encouraging, however (as is the fact that I’ve even gotten personal notes at this stage in the game). I’ve sent out a few more and hope to hear back in the next few weeks. The agent hunt continues.

That’s about it on the real life front. More to come later.

Like this post?

Like!

3 likes

Anonymous(3)

In the tags, I deleted a number of redundant and rarely-used ones, and combined a few others. Notably, got rid of both the artwork and Mortal Instruments tags. Made the artwork a category instead of a tag, and the other…well, for some reason the MI tag was getting hits every day (almost since the day I created it, mind). There was only ever one post in that tag, making the sheer number and consistency of hits a bit mind boggling. I suspect a bot was responsible. I really don’t like bots snooping around. Don’t worry, the post hasn’t gone anywhere…I just nixed the tag.

Categories have been redone to reflect the new direction, and are, I hope, somewhat self-explanatory. Input is what I absorb in the form of books, movies, TV shows, etc…that which fuels the process. Output is whatever I’m working on, the results of the process. And there’s the process itself; how influence, inspiration, and imagination combine to make something new.

My next goals are:

1) Update the Projects page. Add some story ideas that have emerged in the last few months. Reorganize to reflect the current queue.

2) Update the Wands page. Add pictures as needed. Start the process of writing descriptions for each wand.

3) Make the first “official” creative process post.

Also I may, in the future, create a separate artwork page that showcases a bit more of my art.

Like this post?

Like!

2 likes

Anonymous(2)

I’ve been productive, which I suppose is part of the updating problem. Have plotted out the Waters story, and decided to give it an actual title: This Chosen Fate. Have also written nearly a full chapter of Promises, Like Tears. I’m getting a much better handle on Naeth’s character this time around. He’s actually supposed to be sort of annoying and not really all that likable when you first meet him, which will make his later improvements stand out all the more. I’ve been debating theology with friends, which easily turns into a time-sucker with me.

Also, one of the blogs I follow regularly, Slacktivist, moved to a new internet home last week, which sparked a…ruckus. Very quick sum-up: Within the community of commenters and lurkers that follow Slacktivist, many people had objections to the content of the new home site, Patheos, and felt that they could not in good conscience support such a site. The community seemed ready to split over the move. This is the type of situation that moves at internet speed and can only be kept up with if one is willing to follow 1000+ comments or so across the space of about 5 separate threads on two different websites. However, the community seems to have settled on a compromise: Fred will stay at Patheos to be a sort of light in the darkness, per se, but he’s handed the old space over to a few of the regulars from the community as a safe space for those who don’t want to or cannot bear to deal with the vile stuff on Patheos. Which, I have to say, is pretty awesome of him. But…following all the drama has taken up a lot of time this week.

Have also been cleaning the apartment, which is of course a never-ending job.

However, the truth is…I’m not sure where to take this blog. I definitely want it to remain about the writing, but really what it’s become is a sort of “update on me and my writing” space. Which is great (if a bit narcissistic) for me…but how interesting is that for other people? I’d like to give this place more of a direction, so people can come here and know more or less the sort of topics to expect.

I have two sort of hazy ideas. One, have the main theme be “the creative process”. The process of getting ideas. Turning those ideas into stories (or art, or…well, those are my two areas). Brainstorming. Worldbuilding. I could get even more specific, like: The Creative Process for Fantasy Writers. Or something. This could also incorporate the “real life meets writing” and “how such-and-such impacted me as a writer” posts that I do every so often.

The other idea would be to focus on the more nuts and bolts aspects of writing, like GMC and problematic plots and such. And how certain books and movies either succeed or fail based on these things. That’s kind of what Writing Excuses is, which makes it really interesting to me…but it’d essentially make this into a how-to blog. Dunno if I like that.

Anyway, I’ll be giving this more thought over the next few days. Just wanted to check in and say, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet.

Like this post?

Like!

2 likes

Anonymous(2)

“Here ends Book 1.”

The draft is done! I made it to the end before December. Final word count: 124,178. Okay, that’s about 20,000 words over my limit, but hey, it could’ve been worse. Woo hoo! Being me, the first thing I did was crank up some Hanson in the car. Georgia, Penny & Me, and Rock ‘n Roll Razorblade, in that order. Out of all the music I have, that’s what I needed just then.

Anyone feel like celebrating with me before I start the editing process?

I’m debating whether to print out a hard copy to edit. On one hand, it’d be easier for me to flip back and forth, decide where to add stuff, etc. However…that’s a lot of paper. I’d almost certainly have to take it somewhere to get it printed. Meh, we’ll see. Right now I’m just kind of giddy that it’s actually done.

Like this post?

Like!

3 likes

Mistress of FeathersAnonymous(2)

Tonight or tomorrow, I’m going to add the Fall-Reconcile story.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes