I'm increasingly convinced that the things that might make my book hard to publish are the things that also make my book totally kickass.

Here's the deal: it has the usual trappings of urban dark fantasy (female protagonist, modern setting with occult and mythological influences), but the first couple scenes have some graphic bloodiness that I've been told are icky and horror-esque, and the protagonist has all the alienation and emotional distance of the hero from film noir even though she's female. An intersexed female. I approach the book by telling the end of the character's career and then move on from there, which gives it a distinct sense of being an "after the end" affair, which some people find confusing. It's super feminist and occasionally surrealist and has no romance in it.

But you know what? There are people out there who like women that aren't feminine, and lots of graphic violence, and unusual storytelling methods, who also happen to be feminist-friendly and uninterested in romance. We're out there for sure. Maybe it's a market of six people, but gosh darnit, those six people deserve their action/adventure urban dark fantasy feminist horror noir too.

I take it to heart that the personalized reactions I have gotten so far have been along the lines of, "It's nice, but I don't know what to do with it/just don't like the approach." An agent out there will like the approach, I hope, and give it time beyond the somewhat graphic beginning. (I'm told it's graphic, but I don't really think so. I do play a lot of video games and have a high tolerance for gore, though, so that doesn't mean much.)

There is an agent out there that wants to give those six readers* a darn good book. And I'm going to find him or her, goshdarnit!

* Okay, I think it's a little more than that, but I know there's six at least.

I just hit 50k! Woo hoo! This is only my second win. (I usually give up on NaNo really fast because I almost always finish my last books in September/October and don't feel like pushing through, but this year I did, so kudos to me.)

I was pretty lazy today (only 1,750 words), but I had a good start this weekend, so I feel good about it anyway.

My new dog has become my writing buddy of the year. Since he has a wandering, mischievous mouth and can't be left in a room unsupervised, he gets locked in my office with me whenever The Hubs is out of the house. Almost this entire book so far has been written with a lab mix snoozing peacefully on the couch by my desk. (The "no furniture" rule for didn't last long.)  The only problem is that playing tug-of-war and brushing him in the spot that makes his leg kick is almost as fun as writing, so he's kind of diverting.  But I don't care.  He's so cute.  (Currently, he's ravaging a Kong and slobbering on my carpet.)

Speaking of The Hubs, he rocks for going on brainstorming walks with me. As he observed, if the folks in the neighborhood hung out on their porches anytime we were going for a walk, they would probably know how my entire book is going to unfold by this point.  And the view toward his posterior region is very pleasant, too, which is a necessary feature for any Writing Slave.  All in all, he's one of the best purchases I ever made.  (I can say stuff like this because he doesn't read my blogs.  Tee hee!)

 

17500 / 50000 words. 35% done!

I've only written three pages (about 750 words) today, because I'm feeling lazy.  I just want to play video games and bake cookies, and so that is what I shall do.  Haha!

Rejections and requests for partials pop in and out of my inbox with enough frequency that I don't really care to discuss it every time, but personalized rejections are always noteworthy.  This time, I'm told, "I found the concept intriguing and it definitely has an appeal in today's market, but I didn't like the execution as much as I need to."  Although there's the accompanying slight "ick" feeling of any rejection, I'm still super grateful the agent took a second to tell me why she didn't want it, and I'm even more relieved that she thinks the concept is marketable.  I've been worried about that a lot lately.

I expect it will take a long time for me to find an agent that really fits with me because of some odd aspects of my writing style (for instance, my love of describing horrific things in minute detail even though I'm not really writing horror).  Personalized rejections are, to me, like a sign I'm inching closer to finding that agent.  :)

 

7625 / 50000 words. 15% done!

I'm doing my NaNo this year on a typewriter, so I'm estimating the word count.  I have 30.5 pages at the moment, so I give myself 250 words a page, plus 125 for half pages.  (If it's less than a half page, I just won't count it.)  The actual word count will be different than that, but I'm not too worried about being exact yet.  I'll get a more accurate count later when I transcribe stuff.

How's everybody else doing?

They are definitely urban.

They definitely have fantasy elements.

They are definitely dark.

It would definitely be fair to call my books urban dark fantasy.

And yet, my books have very little in common with urban dark fantasy.

I've still got a couple partials out there, along with a few queries, and I'm waiting to hear back on the partials before sending out more.  I can't shake the niggling sense I'm not marketing my book correctly, or submitting to the right agents.  Saying "urban dark fantasy" in the query letter immediately brings Anita Blake, Rachel Morgan, Sookie Stackhouse, and other witty first person femme fatales.  That's most of what fills the genre, after all.  But my heroine is not a femme fatale.  She's not witty.  She's a lot like the stoic, emotionally detached heroes of film noir, but with breasts.  The focus in my series isn't on romance or relationships; it's on the action.

So I think I'm going to see how people react to the book marketed as action/adventure rather than urban dark fantasy, even though it's really somewhere in between.  I'm not sure how that will work.  People are rather cool toward weird mixed genres that don't fit in any market at the moment, since it makes it basically impossible to market.

Thoughts?  Does adventure urban fantasy sound interesting?  Does anyone know if there's already stuff out there like that I could look at?

132,587 words (7,000 of those written tonight) and I'm done with the rough draft of "Hellborn."  Goodness gracious.

Things are going swimmingly on the "Death's Hand" submishe front.  There's a couple partials floating in the ether, and I'm getting about a rejection a week, with several queries without responses as of yet.  I feel good about it, all in all.  I'm averaging one in three positive responses to my query, and that's REALLY good.  It's mostly a waiting game, though, and unfortunately I'm becoming an impatient person in my old age.  (Hey, 21 was old in the Dark Ages, right?)

I'm occupying my time in the meanwhile with writing the sequel to "Death's Hand," which is called "Hellborn" at the moment.  I don't think I'm satisfied with the title.  The general theme and meaning of the book changed over time, and it's virtually indistinguishable now as the book I started out writing.  I'll have to think of something more appropriate, but I don't know what.  I'm terrible at naming things.

I hit 120,000 words on "Hellborn" yesterday.  I suspect I still have about 10 - 15,000 words to go, even though I've only got four chapters left and they're already partially written.  The climax is naturally going to run a bit longer.  Writing a lot of action and fight sequences is tiring, so I'm just really going to have to push through it to make sure I finish before NaNo.  This is still not the longest book I've ever written.  That one hit 155,000 words!

My writer type quirks always get a lot worse toward the end of a book.  I've been listening to Bjork incessantly, much to the annoyance of That Husband Character, especially since I've been getting up at five thirty in the morning to walk the dog and write (which means playing Bjork in my office by six fifteen).  I've also become a brandyholic.  Being slightly buzzed makes it easier for me to write certain surrealistic scenes, of which there are several at the end of this book.  ;)  Don't judge me; I'm an artiste!  Now I just need a pipe (bubbles instead of tobacco, please) and I'll be extra artistic.

In between "Hellborn" and getting started on "Emissary" for NaNoWriMo, I'll probably get back to working on my erotic romance, which I'm still just so ashamed to be writing.  Le sigh.

Who else is doing NaNo?  I would love to start picking up friends!  :D

Dear one sentence pitch,

Eff you.

No love,
Me

With that act of maturity aside, I can now say that I am the worst business major ever.  I can't describe my book in one sentence.  Well, I suppose I could ("a retired demon hunter gets back into the game to protect her partner from being sacrificed" or something like that), but I just can't think of an interesting, compelling way of describing the book.  And I get completely blocked up when someone asks me, "So what's your book about?"

I used to be good at this.  It was easy for me to step outside that dratted metaphorical box and take a look at my book from a new, funky, interesting perspective and distill it down to a sentence, or a paragraph, or three to five pages as necessary.  But now, as my writing improves and becomes publishing-quality (IMHO, of course, although most people who have read my manuscript ask me, "Why isn't it published? What are you waiting for?"), I find my marketing skills have gone out the window.

It's not hard to pin down where this problem began.  Last November, I attended OryCon with the intent of meeting a Really Important Publisher.  I had a conversation starter (she almost published one of my mom's books before the line she was writing for got shut down) and I figured out her schedule.  And lo and behold, I managed to meet her and have her attention to myself for thirty seconds.  She asked me what my book was about.  I handed her my card, and opened my mouth to blow her away with the most interesting, need-to-know-more pitch possible that would get me a contract with Ace Books and immediately vault me to the NYT Bestseller list.

Obviously that's not what happened.  I don't even remember how I pitched the book, but it was really stupid.  She nodded, politely unimpressed, and we parted ways.  Unsurprisingly, I didn't hear back from her.

I don't consider it a blown opportunity, since it was a great learning experience and it really made my weekend to get to talk to such a Really Important Publisher about my book (MY book!).  Sure, it didn't open up more opportunities from there, but I learned.  And that's good.  But since then, I just haven't been able to make anything resembling an interesting pitch.

I do believe, so, so passionately, that my book is interesting, compelling, and unique.  (Everything my pitch isn't.)  It isn't for everybody, and I'm not sure there's a market for it yet, but I think the market is starting to open.  I think I'm well-timed for certain trends that are appearing in urban fantasy.  The series has underlying themes and characters I believe people will really enjoy.  It's not literature, and it's far from flawless, but it doesn't have to be-- for what it is, I think it's pretty stinking awesome.

And yet, if I can't get out there, and if I can't convince agents/editors that they should read my book, little else matters.

Sigh.  I'm going to need help talking through my plot in order to redo my one-sentence pitch, query, and synopsis soon.  Anyone who volunteers to help will be thanked heartily.

I suspect there is life in the universe beyond our own.  Given the sheer size of the universe, it's inconceivable that Earth is the only one that managed to get just the right factors in place to develop life.  The fact we haven't found it yet doesn't mean it isn't there.  Part of the reason we may have yet to detect extraterrestrial life is because our equipment isn't sensitive enough yet to find anything but the large, gaseous, Jupiter-like planets in other systems.  Even so, we've already found a couple extrasolar planets that fit the criteria of distance from the sun and mass that we believe is necessary for life, and as our equipment becomes more advanced, we'll start finding more and more.  So-called "Earth-like" planets (which is a very loose phrase, because Earth-like, again, has to do with mass and the distance from its star and not the amount of water, trees, and fuzzy things that bounce around on four legs) increasingly appear abundant.

Even in our own solar system, we haven't ruled out the possibility for life beyond Earth.  There are two great candidates: Io, which has extreme geologic activity (sort of like what we suspect pre-life Earth may have been like); and Europa, which is a high-density moon covered in ice that very well might have liquid water under the surface.  It's super exciting.  If these two moons were to prove to have some kind of life, even basic microbial life, this would be huge.  Life in multiple locations in an area as relatively small as our solar system would suggest our universe is much more life-filled than we see at the moment.  Even if we don't find life in our solar system, I do (personally) believe our universe is probably rich with life, some of which may be sentient and comparable to us in advancement, if not above and beyond us.

But there are a lot of problems with believing that extraterrestrial life has visited us.  Distance, for one.  They would also need to find us in the first place.  (Shockingly, the universe is huge.)  They would also need the desire to visit us for some reason.  They would need the technology to make the trip in a timely fashion, which would require an advanced civilization.  And look at us piddling little humans-- we're struggling to find the money (ha) to make it back to our own moon within the next eleven years.  I certainly hope other life is more advanced than we are, because we're kind of sad as far as the potential for sentient races go.

So we can suspect other life exists, and it's not beyond the realm of possibility for it to have visited us (although the chances seem pretty remote).  If someone says they've seen UFOs, I'm not going to automatically assume they're bonkers.  But I'm not going to think they're a visionary, either, and it's going to make me second- and third-guess any other claims they make since it gives me the impression they might be a person who will easily believe in anything (or they're a liar).  Unfortunately, personal experiences (claims of sightings and abductions) don't mean much.  Just because a large group of people believes something doesn't mean it's true, after all.  I'll hold out for the evidence.  (And no matter how many conspiracy theory sites you send me to, I'm not going to consider it evidence.)

Keep in mind I'm not a scientist, though.  Just some writer.  I like science fiction and I sometimes write it, but it doesn't exactly make me an expert on aliens (or anything else).  I would love it if we were visited by aliens.  I'd happily volunteer to get abducted by them, too.  (As long as they're cool aliens like in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and not the type that want to shove probes in my orifices.)  But just because I think it would be fun doesn't mean I'm going to drink the Kool-Aid, so to speak.  ;)

Gosh, I rambled on there, didn't I?  I've been thinking about the space program a lot lately and how woefully underfunded it is, so aliens and stuff have been on the tip of my brain for awhile now.  I'll try to keep my ramblings to myself in the future.  Tee hee.

I haven't been too active online lately because I've actually been getting a lot of writing done-- at least 1k words per day on my current project, although oftentimes more.  It feels great writing again, and I really want to be done with it before NaNoWriMo, so this is definitely a good thing.

On the other hand, I've had a finished manuscript for awhile now, and I've only queried a handful of agents so far.  I feel so guilty that I'm writing more instead of working hard on getting my mostly-polished manuscript published.  Sigh.

How do you guys deal with this kind of thing?

Writing two books at the moment is delightful.  I'd like to have at least one of them done before November, though, so I have lots of free time for NaNo, but I'm not sure that will be possible.  I've been quite a slow writer lately.  I'm lucky to get a thousand words done in a day.  (Really lucky.)  But I don't know if it's worth it-- these words I am getting out are shittier than usual.  Or maybe I just haven't done a rough draft in too long and can't remember how shitty they're supposed to be.  The benefit of writing two books is that when I get bored with one, I can move to the other and doodle on that for awhile, but then I'm ot as likely to get them done in a timely fashion.  Two books go slow, rather than one book going fast.  I guess I'm not on a deadline, so it's not really a big deal.

I think I'm getting close to submitting Death's Hand around, so that's kind of exciting.  Even though I don't feel 100% confident in the quality of it, it's still a hell of a lot better than what I'm writing now, although after a good year of editing, I would sure as hell hope it's better.

In other vaguely writing-related news of excitement, I got a new desk.  I know that doesn't really have any effect on the quality of my writing, but it's still way awesome.  The desk is huge.  It's about as wide as my old desk, but much taller (with all sorts of exciting cubbies and levels!), and a good deal deeper.  I'm almost halfway through the room now when I sit, versus being right by the wall.  All this desk space feels luxurious after being crammed into a shared space with my coworkers for three years now (and that's a long time when you're only twenty-one) and writing at a little desk with only room for a laptop or the typewriter, rather than the laptop and the typewriter and a lamp and my digital photo frame and all the paper and the extra monitor and the speakers and...  You get the hint.  ;)  It was really cheap too, which makes it extra exciting for penny-pinching ol' me.  (Who does not pinch pennies whatsoever where movies are concerned.  District 9 is coming out on Friday, amiright?!)

Anyhoo, I just felt like I should let people know that I'm being really productive and not spending nearly as much time online so there's no question about why I haven't been on my usual forums very much.  (However, I am getting through your book, Oh Great and Powerful Morr, and I will let you know when I finish.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've inherited my great-grandma's typewriter, and yesterday I finally received the ink ribbons to go with it.  It works perfectly.  I was stunned when I first laid my fingers on the keyboard to type and it responded with even greater sensitivity than my laptop's keyboard.  I was prepared to pound my fingers on the keys, but this puppy is digital -- the immediate precursor to computers -- and it knows my thoughts and has them on the page before I can even make the strokes.  Awesome.

I've been doing a lot of editing lately -- and I do mean a lot -- so my two WIPs have been going slowly, writing-wise, moreso on "Hellborn" than on "In a Darkened Garden."  I think my problem is that I'm trying to edit as I write my rough drafts, which, as we all know, is completely counter-productive.  On a computer, I can write a paragraph and then think, "Oh no!  That's terrible!" and edit for a few hours.  But on a typewriter, once you've typed it, the words are out there.  Done.  Sure, you can revise it-- if you want to retype everything.  But that's a lot of effort, and I'm super lazy.

Last night, I pounded out ten pages of type-written material within an hour (and that includes all the fiddling I did to figure out how to format the pages semi-neatly)..  I think it feels like writing on a typewriter is giving myself permission to write badly, which is really what you need to do in a rough draft, so I didn't worry about phrasing things well or putting together a good sentence or anything else like that.  I just... wrote.  I haven't done that in ages.  It felt amazing.

What do you guys do to find your productivity when it's gone into hiding?

I'm inheriting an IBM typewriter from my Great-Grandma, who passed on just a few years ago.  She was a writer, too, and she kept trying to get her manuscript together until she died, even though she was battling the loss of her coherence to dementia.  She was an amazing woman.  Super epic badass.  She was born before the Titanic hit an iceberg and was bleaching streaks of white in her hair to express her individuality before World War II.  There's nobody in the world cooler than my Great-Grandma.  Period.  Getting to write on her typewriter is so awesome.

Also, I just "discovered" pre-Christian Basque mythology.  I was trying to think of what kind of hell-beasts and whatnot would logically reside in northern Nevada, where my books take place, and it occurred to me that the Basques have quite a considerable presence in the area (including great food).  I wasn't sure if they would have mythology of their own, since I'm dreadfully ignorant, but I'm thrilled to discover that they do!  And it's so interesting and neat.  *singsong*  I have some new creatures for my boo-ooks... */singsong*

Is anybody on here also on Tumblr?  My blog is sounds to melt your brain, and while I don't have anything particularly interesting to say on there (I'm mostly reposting things I find interesting on the 'tubes, which is virtually everything), you might find it a delightful time-waster.

Now that I've "finished" the "final" draft edit of Death's Hand (by which I mean I could tweak it forever and a half, but I'm cutting myself off for now), I'm going to be sharing the manuscript with a couple friends who are completely unfamiliar with the book. My usual readers have been reading this book, or the various drafts of it, for years now. It's not fresh for them, and I'd like a fresh look.

However, my New Readers aren't writers by any means. They do like reading, but they have no idea how to give something a critical review. As such, I'm going to include a little survey to see if I can puzzle out their basic reactions-- what they liked and didn't like, if they would like to read more. I'm not really sure how to phrase the questions, though. Obviously, there's the whole "would you be interested in a sequel?", but that's basically all I have right this second. (To be fair, my brain has been mushed by working a night of graveyard.)

So I pose the question to the wiser internet community: If you could ask Brand New Readers for their thoughts on your book, what, specifically, would you ask?

Also! The Fringe Awards has opened for voting. My fanfic, "What Peter Knows," has been nominated for Angst, Peter/Olivia, and Other Het (Peter/Rachel). Maybe go take a look-see? Eh?  Obviously, the Peter/Olivia and Angst categories are pretty saturated, but I think my odds are pretty decent for the Other Het category.  (But I don't think it's possible to beat Astrid/Walter.  You just can't.)

It's really no secret amongst those in the Inner Sanctum (ie "serious" writers) that writers spend very little time actually writing.  I know, it's sacrilege to say it.  Of course we spend hours at a time sweating on the keyboard, making the joints in our fingers explode from the typing, pulling out our hair, bouncing our legs, chewing on pencils, and ultimately coming out with amazing prose.

What total BS.

A lot of my "writing time" isn't spent in front of the computer at all.  A lot of it spent gazing out a car window with my chin on my hand, seeing demons and angels instead of endless plains of sagebrush.  A lot of it is spent in the shower with hot water pounding on my back, blinking soap out of my eyes, and trying to imagine what a den of blood-suckers would smell like.  A lot of it is spent rambling at my husband, who nods helpfully and offers often-ridiculous plot ideas just to show he's listening.  (I married the bastard for a reason.)  A lot of it is spent stretched out in bed, my fat cat laying on my hips to my chin, purring and cleaning the same spot on my wrist for hours while I dream of conversations.  A lot of it is spent nibbling at a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of my screen, reading what I've already written.

Of course, this isn't to say I don't have more productive periods.  I once wrote 50,000 words in two days.  That was pretty much non-stop writing for twelve to sixteen hours straight on those two days, and that's the image a writer wants to project: productivity.  Also, when I'm editing, I can usually do that for hours on end, since it takes less creativity and more objective, analytical thought.  However, this sort of thing is rare.  I try to spend as much of my supposed writing time in my home office with the door locked to help me look more productive, while really I'm slurping tea by the gallons and playing a video game (what us gaming writers affectionately call "brain-storming").

How do you kindly folks spend your writing time?  And if you say "I actually write the whole time," I'll either laugh at you in disbelief or hate you forever.  Risk it if you dare.  *piercing stare*

I seldom write fanfic these days, but if you watch Dollhouse or Fringe, I do have one fic for each fandom up on my Dreamwidth.  My Dollhouse fic is super duper spoilery, so don't read it unless you've seen all of season one (or don't care).  Extra deliciously, my Fringe fanfic ("What Peter Knows") has been nominated for a couple awards at the Fringe Awards!  Voting hasn't started yet, but you can keep an eye out for when it does.  :)

Those are both great shows, so when the seasons start in the fall, you can expect more occasional fanfic-- but only if you all watch them.  ;) 

I think all writers who take themselves seriously will eventually question whether they would rather make themselves happy or write something that could be commercially viable.  Sometimes, what a writer loves to create has commercial potential, and they are the lucky kind; the rest of us are forced to occasionally make sacrifices to make something that we don't like as much, but everyone else will like more.

In editing my manuscript, I've come across this little dilemma in a couple places, primarily in the characterization of the hero.  I've been told she isn't relatable enough.  I have the choice between making her more like the popular heroines of urban dark fantasy (a sexy, witty, smart-aleck), or going in the opposite direction and perhaps making her completely alien to the reader.  This is what makes me happy: a socially dysfunctional semi-sociopath with no ability to empathize with people, driven to be good only by the knowledge that it's the "right" thing to do, and a fragile relationship with morality.  Most people are not sociopaths, however, and it's hard for a reader to relate to such a cold character.  On occasion, though, she does have a true emotional outburst, and it's spectacular when she does.  Such outbursts are rare, and only one or two make appearances later in the book, so the opportunities for a reader to sympathize with her are few and far between.

That is what I like, but frankly, I don't think it will sell.  This is why I'm asking myself if I would rather make a living off my writing or if I should just write it the way I like it.  I do think if I write something I love, there will be people who love it with me.  Passion is contagious.  I would someday like to live off my writing, though, and it's a risky move to do something different and potentially unpopular with the hero of my series.

What do you guys think?  Is it sellable?  Should I even care if it isn't?