My publisher Speaks!

Hey everyone!  if you get a chance, my publisher, Stephanie Taylor, of Astraea Press, did a guest spot at the Six Questions For blogspot here: http://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/   Please make sure you stop by there and check it out.  It's a great opportunity to get in the head of an editor/publisher and see what they look for when deciding to offer a contract to an author.

The site is also a great way to check out presses and publishing houses you may not have heard of, like Astraea Press, but are publishing some great reads, (like SPELLBOUND, of course!)  Enjoy!

A deviation

Forgive me for today's post.  I lost my job yesterday.  Today I have become part of the economic mess our country has become.  I had all this free time today to write and even though I was on the computer all day long, I never got the chance to write a single line.  Not of fiction, anyway.  At least as far as my resume is concerned.  The best thing about today was that I realized at this point in my career, every word on my resume is the God's Honest Truth. (I used caps there for emphasis for that surely wasn't the case twenty years ago.)

The job market is weird though.  Most ads post descriptions of the position where they need the candidate to be able to do about a hundred things, and then you scroll down and they are paying $13 an hour.  Really???  And they're comfortable enough with that figure to actually advertise it???  I so need an act of God here.

The real test will be how well SPELLBOUND does upon release.  Of course, it will do stupendously, right?  And make all my worrying today seem so laughable.  Keep your collective fingers crossed for that and we'll return to our regularly scheduled posts tomorrow.  Thanks, all.

Writing YA

My post yesterday about the conference I attended made me dig up my old notes.  I found some great advice in there I had forgotten since I attended.  The best seminar by far was the one called "Young Adult: Why Write It, How Not To" taught by the editor-in-chief of an award winning small press.  Many of the things I learned I am employing today.  They may seem like no-brainers, but they were quite enlightening to me at the time.

Most importantly, don't dumb down or patronize your words just because you are writing for kids.  Kids are smart and will spot that a mile away.  Mine do.  They also have a strong sense of justice.  You have to decide how far you will go before your character offends your audience's sense of right vs. wrong.  I find I analyze that as I write now.

Another biggie is that while your story will have an antogonist, it won't always be the bad guy.  This was a stunner for me and helped me out of a writing corner.  Your antagonist can be the person who loves them the most, but just keeps them from getting what they want.  He or she will hinder, challenge, or outright deny them their goal, while loving them all the way.  In this way, the antagonist will illustrate the protagonist the most and help us understand him the best.  This conflict, then, drives the story.  Isn't that awesome?

Here's a couple more eye openers for me:  Dialogue should NEVER reveal the character.  Only action reveals the character.  That, for me, was the definition of show, don't tell.  Take a paragraph you've written that just isn't working for you.  Yank out the yammer and rewrite it with show words.  Now read it out loud.  Better, right?  I love, love, love doing that.  Works every time.  Layer in sensory words for taste and texture.  End each paragraph with a landing line, a pause that makes the reader WANT to read more.  Then you are exciting the reader's curiosity.  Kids bore easily.  You as the writer have to keep their world alive.

Another cool trick:  A one word paragraph punches the reader in the stomach with finality.  Here's an example.  The landing line would be:  She said she was pregnant.

Twins.

See how powerful it is when it sits by itself?  Do this on your first page and an agent can't help but be interested in what you do next.

Great notes, right?  See?  GO TO A CONFERENCE.  I'm telling you.  Worth the money.  :-)

Query Letters

So now that I have a book being published, I am in the middle of writing the sequel.  I also have another young adult paranormal romance I want to start querying.  My mind went back to some great advice I got at a convention I attended last September.  Now, I know they can be pricey but if you can beg, borrow or steal the money (I begged for mine) you can't believe the information available at one.

I went to the Southern California Writers' Conference in Los Angeles.  It was their 8th one and they've got it down pat!  I got my little schedule and marked all these killer seminars I wanted to attend.  Defining Genre.  First paragraphs and What They Must Do.  The all-time fave, Show, Don't Tell.  What I learned right away was the value to the conference is the Read and Critiques and getting your face in front of an agent or editor.  Sign up for as many of those as you can!  And go to ALL the Read and Critiques you can stomach.  One of mine was a Rogue Read which started at 9pm and lasted till nearly 2am!  But it was incredible.  The people leading them are unmatched in their fields and have the most amazing things to say.  And this is where I learned the best thing I ever learned about a query letter.  And here it is:

There are only 4 things the query letter has to do:

1. Introduce the protagonist and his/her problem.
2. What the protagonist is going to do about the problem.
3. What the conflicts are that are keeping the protagonist from reaching his/her goal.
4. What are the stakes?  What happens if he/she doesn't succeed and why does the reader care?

Isn't that brilliant?  I have seen a million books and posts about the query letter but that one piece of advice slugged me in the solar plexis with its simplicity.  I even format my query letter with the 4 things in a sort of template, like this:

• First paragraph, name of my book, genre, word count.  Launch into #1 and #2
• second paragraph, #3, wrapping up with #4, maybe leave with a question.  (ex: But, can he do it?)
• third paragraph, who I am, some credentials, thank intended reader for time.  Boom.  Goodbye.

Other thing I learned at the convention, agents and editors HATE wordy queries.  If you can be in and out under 250 words, they are LOVING you.

Now, I only offer this as my opinion.  But, it worked for me.  I'm going to try it soon with my second PR, THE GIRL, THE GHOST, AND THE GUYS.  We'll see how it goes again.

Editing

So, the first round of edits have been completed.  These were called the pre-edits.  Basically, I went through the whole manuscript and looked for the following:

• overuse of the character's names in dialogue or narrative.  Excessive pronouns, too
• removed words like very, really, smiled, turned and grinned.  To do this I use the "find" feature in Word.
• I was reminded that words cannot be growled, hissed, or any other animalistic sound, unless alliteration allows it.  (found a couple!)
• no head hopping.  Only one POV per scene
• I checked for and removed excessive adverbs ending in LY
• I removed all cuss words except for hell and damned in their intended forms.  My publisher wants to be able to market to all age groups and I agreed to this condition in my contract.  Plus, as I write for young adult anyway, I had only one or two places where I could find alternative wording.

The rest of my editing was grammatical in nature.  I spelled out chapter numbers, made only one space after periods (I did this with the "find and replace" feature also), and indicated scene breaks with only three asterisks, not my standard million of them. :-)

I think the above list is a great place to start when you are looking to generally edit yourself.  I know I learned a lot I will remember going forward.  I'm sure I'll learn to hate editing, but since it was for my first book, I have to say, I really enjoyed it.  (almost put a really in there, then backspaced and deleted it.  Old habits die hard.)

Bloggers!

I have learned something recently.  I have learned that bloggers are super friendly.  And that all they want to do is read your book!  I have been tentatively dipping my toe in the blogosphere (did I even spell that correctly?), joining some other blogging groups and trying to make some friends in the blogger world.  I feel a little bit like that little girl approaching the well-established circle of girls on the playground, not knowing if I'll be accepted or not, but taking a deep breath anyway, and tapping the shoulders of one of them and saying, "Hello, can I come in and play with you guys?"

The amazing thing is moments after being invited into the group, in this case the group is called Book Blogs, no less than four new friends sent me messages welcoming me!  And I don't want to sound like PollyAnna, but each new message made me blush with delight!  New friends!  People who want to play!  Girls who read the same things I write!  Yaaayyy!  Feel like I just found a beautiful pair of purple suede wedge pumps as I rush out of the store, stop and look, and THEY ARE IN MY SIZE!!!!!!  Like a dream come true!  (That actually happened to me one time and I still recount the story to my shoe-loving friends to gasps of "No!" and "Tell me you're not lying")

So, my new epiphany for the day is this:  Bloggers Rule.  Plain and simple.  Bloggers are Rock Stars.  Think on that for a while and I'll see you later.

Exciting News!

I have pretty bad at blogging.  I suppose 3 months and 6 days qualifies as stupendously bad at blogging.  But I have something to blog about now.  I have a publisher for SPELLBOUND!  After countless agents chose not to go with me, I decided to go right to the source, the actual publishers.  That turned out to be a great decision, because as soon as I did, I started getting requests for partials and fulls for my young adult paranormal romance/supernatural fantasy.  I even got a request from Harlequin Teen, the holy grail of the publishing world.  The bummer is they didn't take me on, but I got the most wonderful rejection letter EVER! 

It proved to me that I did have talent, I can write and SPELLBOUND is a publishable commodity.  And it wasn't a month later that I was offered a contract.  So now, I am in the editing phase and soon to be assisting in the design of the cover of my book!  SO EXCITING!

The release date is to be either early to mid June and my new publisher is a wonderful company called Astraea Press.  They can be found at www.astraeapress.com and working with the talented team so far has been nothing less than a delight.  Head on over there and check them out.  I am starting to read several of my other fellow authors on the site and am awed by the talent I am rubbing elbows with!

As I am writing a sequel to SPELLBOUND, I am indeed hopeful that I am starting a long relationship with Astraea Press.  I'll keep you posted on this journey I am embarking on as I start this new phase of my life....as a published author.  Woo-hoo!