Then… as I was getting ready for bed last night, inspiration attacked me.  Not book related, unfortunately, but inspiration nonetheless.  Inspiration in the poetic sense where something suddenly is, and demands to be written.  This used to happen to me all the time, especially in my late teens and early 20s.  I’d often have a piece of a poem bubble up as I was falling asleep and demand to be transcribed.  Sometimes I’d do it, but more often than not I’d be lazy and want to sleep (because I was probably up too late anyway), so I wouldn’t.  Then, the next morning I’d feel this wave of loss, like something minor died (because I never, ever remembered a fragment the next morning).  It was frustrating.

Now, I have no illusions about myself being a “great” poet.  But there’s nothing I can do to deny that I am a poet in the sense that things that are not prose occasionally force themselves upon me, and sometimes my sleeping mind (as Rothfuss would call it) rears its head and shows me strange things unbidden.  Sometimes conflicting things are simultaneously true for long enough to make sense, then vanish, and seem stupid in the morning’s wakelessness.

The first one I can remember writing was in 5th grade – and it was dumb, but it was a start.  But you know… once you open the door, after that she comes and goes as she pleases.  Sorry if this all sounds pretentious, especially if you happen to think what I write is crap  (not that I think quality has much bearing on one’s state… some people are driven to write bad poetry their entire lives, I don’t think it makes them any less of a poet, just not successful/good ones :P)… but that’s how it works for me.  I generally cannot make myself write a poem.  The few times I have tried they come out noticeably worse than normal.  I can ponder, and process, and encourage… but not force.

Anyway, if you’re curious what kind of thing a non-practicing poet might churn out after half a year of inactivity  (Note that the blog format messes up the line breaks. GRRR.  Each line except the second one begins with a capital, if that helps…)….:

WHILE {

Some endless metal monoton(y/e) of the furnace’s verses clunking sullenly onward
stumbles into This and this trembles, sloughing years;
Nonplussed, feeding an animal

Her prophecy written in porn on lcd screens
Letters of fire framed in flesh/insteps aching of arching
Recursive vision, a moment’s curse, then gone and/cursing as it fades
The hart is elusive/but this is immortal, uncaught/
Why now-
The muse chooses to return
Her feautures etched in another’s shame
I am grown old/every time she catches me it’s/Bedtime/
The greetings of forgotten childhood lovers;
Chalk on glass as
Lightning struck here long ago
But now only rain
}

LOOP
05/03/11

My whole goal for this years UMoB was to get myself geared for writing again so… gotta push.

I love writing, I love telling stories.  Mostly I love falling into a world.  I’ve been doing that as long as I can remember – I remember creating detailed maps complete with cultural divisions by empire for D&D campaigns that I never got to run in middle school.

I wish I was better at the writing part – I’m actually pretty confident about the world building – when I’m working on it, I’m always trying to “get better”. I hope I’m improving… but I feel that my second book wasn’t as strong as my first.  What does that mean?  Did I try different things and they didn’t work, or am I just biased because I don’t feel the world as deeply?  I’ll post bits from each and, if anyone feels like taking the time to read them and comment, please do.

(One of the) painful things for me about writing is that while I am heavily weighted towards writing for myself in the sense that I am telling the stories that I want to read, putting flesh on bones that I haven’t been able to unearth in bookstores, that weight has no gravity without witnesses.  Stories need to be consumed to breath.  For me at least.  If I can’t suck someone else into my world, what’s the point?  Maybe some folks can churn out 60-100k words 100% for themselves… but I can’t.  I need to know that my tendrils are burrowing their way into other souls as well.

Not that I’m claiming that what I’m writing is especially “deep” – it’s fantasy.  Pure fantasy.  Fantasy with touches of reality and “real” and hopefully heart and soul and some things to say about real world situations but still, it’s meant to be a world worth escaping to.

I’m pretty sure I read and write to escape.  Not that I have any reason to “flee” reality – I think I’m about as content as I could be with my place in life – but rather my brain craves seeds and earth for fantastical imagery.

So.  Escape.  Escapism.  Need to visualize things that are “bigger” than the real.  Whatever you call it.  That’s my conclusion after a few years of examining what I read at least.  I have no interest in reading historical fiction or anything set in “reality”.  There has to be some element of the fantastical to it (even if the fantastical is just a mystery set in an unfamiliar location (or time, I *can* do historical mystery for some reason) – that I can do occasionally).  I don’t want to read about police in LA.  Police in LA that have to wrangle dragons?  Police in LA where one partner is a werefrog and the other one is a recovering alchemy addict?  SOLD.  I don’t want to read about brave soldiers struggling against Napoleon.  Oh, they are riding dragons?  SOLD.

Even my sci-fi need a touch of fantasy.  I can’t do the 100% human future sci-fi stuff.  Gimme some aliens and post-humans and hell, maybe even the returning dead (Ick!  $10 for an ebook?  Still, that book is so awesome I can almost recommend it if you’re hooked on ebooks.  Better to grab a used dead tree copy for a couple bucks though at a local…) – then I’m gold.

*IF* I want to read about reality and history, I read history books and science overview type stuff.  Literal fact and history.  No interest in fictional situations mired in the constraints on the unfantastic.

I’m big on shapeshifters too – something you’ll probably notice from my work, as they both address that, albeit in pretty different manners (I think).  Psychologically, maybe that comes from a childhood spent feeling out of place, trapped in a fleshy prison, and dreaming of being something else, somewhere else?   I don’t particularly care where it came from, but my interest with shifting physical, mental identities, racial, spiritual – even gender id shifting, to a lesser degree -  is pretty clear.

The physical aspects of shapeshifting make for great scenes, but I think the psychological aspects are even meatier.  It’s one thing for a character to be uncomfortable in their own skin – but what about one who can change their skin?  Maybe they were born that way, maybe they chose to be, maybe they didn’t.  Maybe they’re not comfortable with that state… maybe they are too comfortable… maybe they have issues with identity on multiple levels.  Maybe they are just 100% pure awesome, with a dash of WTF.

That’s me; everyone’s got a different boat.  I’m hopeful that someday my works will find their way to the other passengers on my cruise.  The plan now, I think, is to try e-pubbing after I get a second book in the first series down.

So, let’s throw some #s out first:

[all in reference to my first book, THE CASE OF THE SHATTERED SOULS, an urban fantasy (*1)]

21 agents queried on 04/22/10
19 via email
2 via webform

11 responses received so far
7 queries rejected
4 partials requested – 3 via email, 1 via snail mail
2 partials rejected (both very quickly after received)
2 partials still out

10 queries still out

So far these numbers (which I think are decent) tell me 1-3 of 3 things:

1. That I can write a decent query.
2. That my genre is in demand right now (and I know it is), so they are willing to overlook not-perfect queries.
3. That my book actually sounds interesting

Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing which 1-3 :).

Maybe I’ll get some responses in the next month?  90 days seems like a solid cut-off date for “if you don’t hear from us….” type stuff.

Also, after that 90 day mark I will probably query a few publishers that take unagented submissions directly.  Because I have no reason not to?

Based on things I’ve observed and learned since my querying, I suspect that this book will not be picked up – for any number of reasons – but one major one, I think, is that chapters 2-4 are flashbacks (and agents typically request chapters 1-3 for a partial…).  I have a feeling this throws of an agent reader (but I have no problems with this a reader… so who knows) due to the way they “seem” to want things structured to “grab” the reader and suck them into the “immediate” plot.

But maybe I’m just projecting.  Either way, if I had this book to write over, I would find a way to shift around or split up the flashbacks more.  Maybe.  Except that an early draft had them all split up (but more of them).  UGH!  Who knows, right?  I’m just rambling now.

Before anyone says anything about me being negative – I am still hopeful!  Because man, I love this world and the characters.  I have a solid 4-5 books left in the series that I would love to get paid to write.

O.O

But, you know, recognizing that your first book is not the best you can do…

I’m currently working on a prequel now as a semi-last ditch attempt to maybe backdoor the series in if this shot fails.  If I write the prequel convincingly enough – and I think I can do a better job with it a) because it’s focusing on 1 character instead of 4 and b) because I’ve written quite a bit (including a whole other book, in another setting) since the book I’m querying (my first), and hopefully learned something from that – then maybe I can sell the rest of the series after that.

BACK TO RE:QUERYING!

In the interest of openness – especially in light of how hard I had to work to track down good query info/help, I’m going to post my actual query skeleton here, for you to mock or paw at or hey, maybe even mine for ideas or find in some way useful.

Also, maybe an agent or editor trolling my tumbleweefested  portion of the net will stumble across it.   Maybe… :P

Dear Mr/Ms. Awesome Agent,

When ex-werewolf Mark Brand, agent of the Supernatural Investigations Agency woke up this morning, he expected another round of the usual – zombies, vampires, and entirely too many possessions.  Putting your life on the line is the basic job description and Uncle Sam doesn’t round up hazard pay for fun.  Besides, someone has to keep the darker side of the supernatural at bay.  He expected the usual handful of lives would hang in the balance – not millions of them.

His squad is sent to Los Angeles to track down a traceless killer.  A traceless, invisible, inhumanly strong, erased from memory, soul-destroying, killer.   But finding the killer is the easy part: an ancient demon is pulling itself into our world through the body of a teenage girl, one annihilated soul at a time.   The last time it manifested it took three crusades and the largest alliance of supernaturals in hidden history to banish – and four is much less than four thousand.

THE CASE OF THE SHREDDED SOULS is an 85,000 word work of urban fantasy about the monsters that stand between us and the things that eat monsters for breakfast.  This is my first novel.  I’ve noticed a dearth of urban fantasy titles angled toward male readers and I’d like to be a part of changing that.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
<ME>
<CONTACT INFO>

If I especially liked the agent, based on things read, website, etc. I might even put a customized paragraph at the beginning.  For some I also altered the closing paragraph, shortening it or changing the wording.  Because I’m crazy, that’s why.

A thought experiment to put yourself in a querying writer’s mind for a moment:

It was kind of like writing 21 separate reports, then turning them all in at the same time to 21 different teachers (especially considering almost EVERY SINGLE AGENT had different requirements (*2)).  Also note that you don’t even necessarily receive your grade back from some of them and, for the ones that do give you a grade, there is almost no feedback as to why you received the grade you did.

For those curious about the process of building a query, here’s a handy thread where you can actually watch my query progress via feedback from the forum crowd @ querytracker.  The folks there are very friendly and helpful, and I wish I had more time to participate in the community itself but… you know… life!  I’d would HIGHLY RECOMMEND the forums there for aspiring writers – especially in the querying phase.  Lot’s of good info, etc.

As always, aspiring query-ists should read through Miss Snark’s blog, as well as Queryshark and many others.  While I don’t necessarily agree with everything they say (especially some of the queries that Queryshark picks), the blogs do give you a good idea of how agents think and look at your work.  Which is kinda incredibly important for getting your work SOLD.

Not that I have any experience there, because I haven’t sold anything.  But I do have lots of experience in researching how to write and get things sold O.O.

(*1) Note that “urban” in this construction conveys something completely different than in “urban fiction”.

(*2) I think I pointed out 14 or so different combination in this post.

Elric of Melnibone (1st Elric book, been meaning to start this series for a literal decade)

The Forge in the Forest, Winter of the World bk 2 (cheap used paperback to hold me over until I can find the HC at a good price)

Storm Front – which thankfully has nothing to do with the neo-n#zi movement.  Yes, I filtered out the letter ‘a’ so people searching for n#zi shit don’t hit this page.

The first two aren’t of much consequence, at least in the sense that I haven’t touched them yet, and it’s quite obvious why I picked them up.  The third one though was basically an impulse buy. I was scanning the shelves on my way to the register (in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section of course) and caught the “Dresden Files” tagline and stopped a second.  Where had I seen that?  Certainly not on “SciFi” (the channel, under it’s old, PROPER, name I think) as indicated by the books cover…no – it was in a twat from Brandon Sanderson.

So, he said something about someone suggesting he read it, and he finally started, blah blah.  So, I stopped and scanned the back cover blurbs [BACK COVER BLURB NOTE:  YOUR COVER BLURB SHOULD SAY SOMETHING INTERESTING AND USEFUL TO A NEW READER ABOUT YOUR FUCKING BOOK, NOT SOME GENERIC BULLSHIT THAT COULD MEAN ANYTHING - I skipped on another series because the cover blurb was just some idiotic piece of generic fluff, nothing for a new reader to latch on to - and it was the first in a series! Follow the link and click on show back cover if you are curious!  The text is basically "Bob must save the world" - how the hell did someone approve that?].  Wait…where was I?

Oh, right.  Back cover blurbs.  This one was useful, and hooked me right off – it’s fucking pulp detective + urban fantasy (vampires, etc.).  SHIT. That’s the book I started trying to write 3 years ago.  I’m glad it wound up somewhere different – because I don’t think I could compete with this guy in the pulp urban fantasy detective schtick, he seems to have it down pat.  86 pages in and I’m enjoying it. It’s exactly what you’d expect – which is a good thing I THINK when you buy a book and get what you hoped to get out of it – so far.

Woah, just took a shower and I don’t even remember washing the shampoo out of my hair. I hope I did.  I think I did.  Where was I?  Ahh, graham crackers & OJ.  Good times.

Ahh, ok, books.  So, it’s a good thing I didn’t find this book 3 years ago – because dude evidently has like 11 books out in this series!!?  The Fuck.  How did I not find this when I was looking for EXACTLY THIS?  Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t find it then – that’s why I didn’t find it – fate or some bullshiT! – because that might have dissuaded me from trying to write what I thought I was going to write which wound up at least moderately different.

Also, dude has his whole dilemma/plot laid out by page 86, paperback.  So that’s a little something for me to keep in mind as I try and spruce my book up a bit.  What the hell does that mean?  How is making something like a tree making it better?  Oh, ok, evidently it has to do with leather.  Mystery solved, I love English.  And the internet.

OK, other random question – why is this filed in Fantasy (@ Powells) and Laurell K. Hamilton is in Horror?  I mean, I could see filing Mrs. Hamilton in Romance but, beyond that, these two books are exactly the same genre – “Urban Fantasy” (or whatever they’ll call it next year).    Readers of one might actually be interested in the other.  I know I would have gladly jumped ship to this series… Hamilton had potential, but blew it for me with the massive amount of penis & sex references.  Look, I like sex as much as the next guy – but not nearly as much as her target audience – I guess ;P.

Not to retread old ground but, seriously, how are there 11 books in this series, and I just now found it? Maybe Powell’s didn’t stock it?  I would say maybe it had low print runs but this paperback I picked up is, oh, the TWENTY-NINTH PRINTING so…no.  I’ve walked down that aisle a hundred times….looked at every book.  Crazy.

Oh, and yes, he really should have named the book something else, especially in the internet age.  Because, you know, first thing that comes up when you google the title without any other info.  YEESH.  Then again, maybe he did that on purpose?  Fuck, I hope not.

Midpoints of large projects are uplifting, because the end point suddenly lumbers into view, and you can feel better about yourself and your capabilities and all that.  Which is good.

It’s definitely going faster than my first attempt – that took me a year to get this far – maybe longer!  Still, not nearly as fast as I’d like to: either I don’t have the time, or when I do I’m really not in the mood (late evening kid burnout, or holding a kid).

So, “what is it?” you ask  ( I assume you ask because you’ve bothered to read this far).

I’m trying for basic pulp fantasy this time around.  Swords and sorcery.  A (small) dragon or two.  A heroine and a hero.  No unicorns (yet?).  Not quite epic fantasy, but with the potential to bloom into that with later books in the series.  Yes, it’s the first book in another series.  I can’t concept a book that stands on its own.  /shrug.

It’s about… a sword and the woman he loves.  More or less.

“Use only said, avoid alternates as much as you can.”

So, you know, “John said x”, “Betty said y”, never “John groused x”, “Betty mumbled y”.  I guess. I think it’s even in On Writing.

Yet, I’ve also seen it suggested that you should avoid adverbs to the same degree (no “John walked casually”) and attempt to get all that meaning from the verb itself (“John strolled”).  These two points seem kind of at odds with each other.  “Said” is most certainly a verb.  Here’s a relevant quote from Annie Dillard, itself quoted in the useful and interesting essay here:

You want vivid writing. How do we get vivid writing? Verbs, first. Precise verbs. All of the action on the page, everything that happens, happens in the verbs. The passive voice needs gerunds to make anything happen. But too many gerunds together on the page makes for tinnitus: Running, sitting, speaking, laughing, inginginginging. No. Don’t do it. The verbs tell a reader whether something happened once or continually, what is in motion, what is at rest. Gerunds are lazy, you don’t have to make a decision and soon, everything is happening at the same time, pell-mell, chaos. Don’t do that. Also, bad verb choices mean adverbs. More often than not, you don’t need them. Did he run quickly or did he sprint? Did he walk slowly or did he stroll or saunter?

And, it seems like something like “I hate dogs,” mumbled John. actually tells the reader more than “I hate dogs,” said John. in the same space.  In fact, you could argue it is more efficient – which is exactly one of you goals as a writer (unless you’re trying to be deliberately obtuse).

Now, I can see why you would want to avoid things like: complain, praise, mocked, etc.  IE things that tell you the temperament that the authour should be showing you with their word choice and sentence structure in the dialogue itself.

Also, I find myself resorting to things like said slowly much more than things like walked slowly. I can establish the pace of movement with other contextual clues much easier than I can the pace of dialogue.  Although I have been known to use a fuckload of ellipsis … indeed.

But I’m no longer convinced of the “Always use said” maxim.

Of course, this is all probably just a case of different advice givers at odds with one another – but it’s still working thinking about when you write – anything that keeps me analyzing my word choice is helpful :).

By: Gopi Krishna

The story of how I got this book is worth telling.  Mostly because I don’t even remember half of it:

Somewhere during my devouring of various texts in grad school, I came across a reference to this book, and so used Amazon’s “wish list” to make a note for myself of this.  I used to just use it to keep lists of books that I found interesting and wanted to consider buying at some point.

Skip ahead 5 years to a point when I’ve happily forgotten about the book and the existence of said wish list.  Jen is looking for something to get me for, a birthday I think, so she checks my wish list.  SCORE!  Sorta.  Except that I had no idea why I wanted to read it in the first place.  But I did, because I must have wanted to for some reason.

It was interesting.  I found it to be an “honest internal examination of mania, insanity, religious epiphany and encounters with the muse”, or at least that’s what I had in my notes.

It really made me think about the concept of inspiration as it relates to writing, specifically my own encounters with internal fires.  Those who know me may know that I used to write poetry.  Occasionally at some points, and very frequently at others.  Most of the time it was inspiration motivated (and I don’t mean inspiration in the mundane sense of “oh what a pretty sunset/structure/event/person/etc.”…although there was some of that, I mean it in the sense of art originating somewhere other than oneself) – it wasn’t that I would sit down and say “I need to write something”, it was this feeling of an upwelling from inside telling me “something is being written right now, you can choose to write it down, or forget it”.

And this often happened at night, as I was falling asleep.  Very annoying.  Many nights I would just fall asleep and try to ignore the words flashing around in the back of my head, and then live with my disappointment in myself the next day.  These days I’m really good at ignoring it – not that it happens often at all – I’m so good I can tell when the feeling itself is just starting and ignore that root of the idea and completely circumvent exposing myself to the idea itself.  It’s only slightly less depressing than being exposed to the words and not writing them down.

Tangent: I saw this great quote from Elvis Costello about this the other day…*googles*… here we go.   Here’s the quote:

EC: Do you ever think, “I’m really tired. I should get up and write that down, but I’ll remember it in the morning”? Always write it down — there’s nothing more torturing than when you don’t write it down and you go, “I know I thought of a line, but I have no idea what it was.” I keep a notepad by the bed, and I learned how to write in the dark, so if a line comes in my head I don’t even need to turn the light on and write it.

Glad it’s not just me.  Annoyed I never had much conviction in getting up at night and writing.  Hopefully that those rushes of inspiration return to me someday, and I keep a notepad nearby.

Anyway, yeah the book. It’s about one man’s spiritual awakening and, even if you think it’s all BS, it’s still pretty interesting to watch his thought process as he processes what he’s going through.  It definitely got me thinking about some things near & dear to my “self”, as mentioned above.