Thursday, June 29

Book Talk: Kim Harrison

Went to University Bookstore in Seattle last night to witness a reading/signing by mega-selling urban fantasy author Kim Harrison.

Or, to be more precise, I left the DJ at 6 p.m.. The signing was at 7. University Bookstore is located 9.5 miles from the DJ. One hour and thirty-three minutes later I arrive at the bookstore, sweaty and cross and having missed the reading and half the Q&A that followed.

I HATE Seattle traffic. Hate it. Hate it with the fire of a thousand suns and the glare of Paris Hilton's artificial tan.

I hate Seattle parking too, but that's an entirely different rant and would detract from the point of the post, which is that what I did manage to see of the Q&A was very informative and the signing was suprisingly un-awkward, given that I have a tendency to stammer and babble around industry pros.

Author signings are a whole other animal from authors at cons. The people who show up to signings are a) fans b) frustrated writers and c) stalkers. And there was me, but I fit into the fan-who-happens-to-write category. If you're at a signing keep it light. Don't attack the author asking if they'll read your MS. Ask good questions during the Q&A and thank the author for coming, unless the author was a giant dickhead, in which case you are allowed to collect a signature and sell the book on eBay.

Kim Harrison is a very sure speaker and offered some good insight into her writing process as well as answering 8 billion questions about who her heroine is finally going to end up in the sack with. (You get these questions a lot if you write urban fantasy with a female protagonist. I've asked myself this question about Luna more than once.*) Kim shared that she wrote many, many short stories before starting to write Dead Witch Walking, which is a common theme among pubbed writers, I find.

I have not written and/or pubbed many short stories, because I am way too verbose to keep things under 10,000 words.

An audience member asked Kim how she came up with one of her characters, and Kim responded "She was just sitting in the bar!" This is the best answer ever.

All in all, a fun evening with some good info and a very nice inscription in the front of my brand spankin' new copy of Fistful of Charms.


*The answer is "pie."

Wednesday, June 28

Asking Dumb Questions with a Vampire

The first of many posts in which the writer tells you stuff about herself you didn't necessarily want or need to know.

This time it's my blogger name. I have a perfectly good gods-given name that I put on manuscripts and checks and stuff, but I chose not to use my real name on the blog because I found one that was way funnier courtesy of Evil Editor.

From Guess the Plot of Face-Lift 73:
"A young knight and an escaped slave fight each other, as well as spirits that would enslave, corrupt and destroy the minds of mankind. Also, a vampire."

That's where I got my name.

Luv ya, EE!

Tuesday, June 27

Pitching to the Choir

In between working and bathing my cat (yes, you read correctly. Dear Kitty (DK) has unfortunately sprouted fleas before the Frontline I ordered for his furry behind showed up. Excuse me as I wander off muttering about 1-800-Pet-Meds...)

Where was I?

Ah, yes. In between the DJ and the DK, I thought I'd better get that post on pitching up.

BIG HUGE DISCLAIMER
Also, a Vampire is an unpublished author who does, however, work as a writer in her DJ and has an awesome short story about demons coming out in a issue of Heavy Metal soon. She's also managed to write an entire novel and pitch it to industry pros without screwing things up too badly. At least, none of the pros responded to her pitch with "Get the hell away from me, you freakish stalker." Some of them even asked for the book.
BIG HUGE DISCLAIMER END

Pitching 101: You Don't Suck as Badly as You Think

Pitching is a mental game. I don't care how much ego you have stuffed into your soul--you are going to be nervous as all get out the first time around. The good news is that publishing pros, unlike people from Hollywood and lawyers, are just people. They live in New York, and they have the power to get you published, but other than that--totally normal. They eat and everything. Editors and agents want to find new talent because if they don't, they don't get paid. And they need money just like you do, because of the eating thing.

This doesn't mean you can be sloppy, or weird, or unprepared. It does mean have a good manuscript and reasonably coherent pitch to explain it to the editor/agent. Here's the thing, agents and editors know that we're a bunch of undersocialized artists who talk to people who aren't there for a living. They don't expect you to be Meryl Streep (although if you are you'll get a deal, I bet.) They just want to know that you can keep it together long enough to say "Hello, I have a good story to tell you."

Keep that in mind and no matter how nervous you get, you can't fail.

Pitching 202: Tips (Don't Be the Weirdo the Pros Talk About Later in the Bar)

Herein are contained the notes I took during an agent presenation on giving a polished pitch at WW '06.


-Be prompt. Fer god(desses) sake, you only get five minutes to begin with.
-Be shameless. See WW recap post for my accidental encounter with Elizabeth Winick for details.
-Know your book. Don't read from your book. Or index cars. Or business cards. Or the skywriting you paid for in advance.
-Don't synopsize. Have a "back-cover"-style blurb to cover plot, hit the MC's and the emotional high points of the book, and then STOP. Editors/agents need to ask you questions too.
-Don't get personal. "So, Mr. Agent, how's your divorce going?"
-Don't be needy. "But when will you read my partial? What day? Before or after lunch?"
-Speak from one professional to another. They're not demigods, and you are not a peon. Unless they're from one of those e-pubs that are into that sort of thing...
-Be comfortable and confident in your physical dress and demeanor. Wear jeans, wear a dress. DON'T wear full-dress Native American regalia even if you a) are Native American or b) feature them in your book. It's especially bad if you do neither.
-Don't obsess. That's all I'm saying about that one. You writers know what I mean.

Pitching 303: Real Live Agents and Editors
I pitched to three at WW, so here's a bit more detail about what to expect. Bring pen and paper to write submission instructions on. Some business cards if you have them, but ask before handing them out and don't be offended if agents/editors don't accept them. You try keeping track of 35 2"x1" pieces of paper on a plane back to the 212.


Editor #1 was my first pitch ever. My heart was slamming up into my throat and paralyzing my tongue. But much like massive internal trauma, when I sat in the chair my brain shut off all the slam dancing. I opened my shy-ass mouth and words came out. Too fast and very high-pitched, but coherent. My pitch took about 1:30. Editor #1 asked me if I had plans for a series, which I do, and requested 3 chapters and an outline. Simple. Like a cup of coffee. I walked out thinking that this pitching thing was so much easier than it looked.


Agent #1 was very receptive to my now slower and less shrill pitch. We had a lovely chat and I was asked to email her. This meeting ran a little over because we started to chit-chat. Agents do that, you know. If they like you they'll start yakking, which is fantastic. Yakking you want.

Agent #3, even though I wasn't on her list of appointments, was receptive and courteous once I explained "I met you yesterday, we didn't get a chance to talk but I'd like to tell you more about my book." This is where "be shameless" comes into play. There is a difference between shameless and creepy. Don't harass agents in the bathroom. Don't follow them to their hotel room doors. If you find them in the bar and ply them with alcohol, talk to them like people. They know you're a writer and that you have a book (either that or you're a huge boozehound. Or both.) It will come up somewhere in the course of the conversation.

And with that, so endeth the recap.

Grr Argh

Overheard at my DJ (day job), in which I'm also a writer, but without the excitement and angst of novels:

Co-worker: Look at this line. This is just someone groaning.
Second co-worker: What does it say?
Co-worker: It says "ARRRRGHHHH!"
Second co-worker: It looks okay to me.Co-worker: True. There isn't enough dialogue with "ARRRRGHHH!" in it these days.

He's absolutely right, too.

Sunday, June 25

Writer's Weekend

I made it home alive, no thanks to insane Sunday-afternoon drivers on the I-5.

I pitched NIGHT LIFE to no less than three industry pros.

And they all asked for it. Partials, to be sure, and one agent just said "email me and we'll talk about your novel", but OMG!!!1!!!!! 3 requests for my little novel in the space of a day!

I also went to a ton of panels given by for the most part lovely, accomodating, knowledgeable professionals in the industry and I learned a lot. I was also suprised at how much I already knew. I've done a lot of research on the "how to get your book published" side, but I had no idea some of the nuts and bolts that go into the actual publishing of a book once you've sold it. I also picked up some very handy tips on how to actually sell the novel.

Ate a lot of room service food. Accidentially stalked an agent, but she was nice about it and I think she believed it really was just a coincidence, because I am way to shy to be an agent-stalker. I could barely form words during my pitches, and they came out at about 1000 MPH. But requests are what matters, and I have a feeling that agents and editors are used to awkward, undersocialized writer types coming up to them and babbling about werewolves for five minutes at these types of events.

A brief breakdown follows:

Day 1
Arrived at 3 p.m., mistakenly thinking that registration was at that time. Not until 4. Showered, dressed in "professional" attire (meaning I added a blazer to my tee and jeans) and went back down to register. Got a name tag. I hate name tags. It lets creeps pretend they know you and start conversations, and it makes introductions weird because hello, they can SEE your name already and you're starting off the relationship with a huge redundancy.

Or maybe I was just very tired and very grouchy.

Opening ceremonies were a little weird. Conference organizer was also very tired and very very grouchy. She scared the hell out of half the pitching authors with her sternly worded admonition that they MUST have a completed novel and they MUST have it polished and DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE WASTE THE PRO'S TIME.

Yikes. It was harsh, and meanly put, but I agree with her. DON'T waste the pro's time with unfinished books. They don't CARE if you have 40,000 of 80,000 words and plans for a sequel. If you do not have a finished manuscript in your hands, there is no way that an agent or editor knows you are CAPABLE of writing the other 40,000 words and you took up 5 minutes someone with a FINISHED book could have used to pitch. When you're an unpubbed writer, being a selfish dick is not the way to do it.

Attended a mandatory workshop on pitch basics with agent Mary Louise Schwartz. Very useful information for terrified n00bs like me who had never pitched before in their life. (I'm going to post more extensively on what I learned about pitching seperately, so hold on to your shorts about that one.)

Attended a second workshop on pitch etiquette with the funny and gracious Hilary Sares, a Kensington editor. Hilary later got into a car accident, but hopefully she doesn't blame the writers.

Huge FUBAR situation about writers with editor/agent appointments. Screaming, cursing and refunds demanded. More yelling from con organizer. At the time very scared I would lose appointment, because I would rather vomit on an agent from nervousness than never meet them at all. At least I would be memorable.

Went back to my office and worked on revisions until 1:30 a.m. Got lost trying to find a 24-hour drive through. Ended up with a hamburger from Denny's. Too tired to care.

Day 2
Up at ungodly hour of 8:45, having achieved sleep at 3:00. To writing workshop with first 5 of NIGHT LIFE.

Find that workshop group has been consolidated. A very pushy fellow con-goer attempts to boss me towards a table of fantasy writers, but I demur and find my own table, one labled intriguingly "mixed-genre".

We are the first table our presiding Editor of a Major House arrives at. She reads all of our pages. This is terrifying. Pitching cannot POSSIBLY be worse than this. My first 5, apparently, do not suck, but our EMH quibbles the voice and subject matter don't match.

EMH moves on and I spend a delightful hour and a half with some very nice writers, three of whom are now on my blog links to the left. They like my voice. Really like it. I am shocked/thrilled. They also have advice: switch my editor appointment from the EMH who found my heroine insensitive to another EMH who is known to take on paranormal chick lit/fantasy. I do so.

End of the workshop, and Elizabeth Winick, an agent, takes a seat. Elizabeth Winick, it turns out, likes fantasy a lot, even though her agentquery listing does not say this. We are all shocked/thrilled. She reads my first 5. I blow the pitch. I am a moron.

I salve my wounds with lunch and panels. That night, I decide NIGHT LIFE is as revised as it's going to get for this weekend and stay in my hotel room watching America's Got Talent. Have a great conversation with my ex who is now my friend, hereinafter referred to as Ex-Friend in which I start telling him the plot of NIGHT LIFE and along the way come up with elements I never actually incorporated. Notes! Inspiration! I don't hate my MS any more!

Day 3
The pitches.

Panels in the morning. Pitches in the afternoon. Shower and professional dressing in between. Nervousness verging into panic always.

Pitch #1
Anne Groell, senior editor at Bantam Spectra. I confess up front I've never done this before. Anne Groell is a seriously nice human being and puts me at ease as I swing into my blurb. I don't blow it. I manage to convey the basic plot, the emotional high points and the main characters and I don't blow it.
Request: 3 chapters and an outline.

Pitch #2
Mary Louise Schwartz, literary agent. I am much more loose and confident with M.L.S. She mentions my MS is a bit short and I should consider epubbing. I ask politely if I extended the lenght could I then query her?
Request: "Email me and we'll talk about your book." Personal contact is a Good Thing.

Pseudo-Pitch #3
Elizabeth Winick, literary agent. The agent that read my first five. After my two allotted pitches I hang about outside the conference room, and after everyone is gone except me I poke my head in and sit down. I am not Ms. Winick's last appointment, but she is gracious and when I ask "can I talk to you a little bit more about my book?" she says of course and lets me pitch. I promise at the end to stop stalking her.
Request: 3 chapters, with a "requested materials" tag and thankfully no synopsis if I don't have one. Hilary Sares offered the advice "be shameless" in her industry etiquette panel and it works! There is a fine line between shameless and creepy, though.

After pitches is dinner with Holly, Vernieta and Ann and then sweet, sweet sleep.

It was a good weekend.

Thursday, June 22

The Bite

In NIGHT LIFE, werewolves who are turned after birth have "gotten the bite".

Just so my post title makes sense...

I'm up to page 114 in Revision Hell, firmly 3rd-circling.

I have two more nights to finish the first revision pass (assuming I get a request for material at Writer's Weekend, which I probably won't.)

I'm going to feel awfully silly having killed my brain over this draft if no one ("no one" meaning 1 editor and 1 agent) wants to see NIGHT LIFE. Plus, I realized last night that what I have is not paranormal chick lit, it's paranormal fantasy/gritty detective story with female protagonist. Hard sell. Gargh.

If nothing else, the conference gives me a dandy excuse to leave work early, and not be there at all tomorrow. I'll be updating nightly while at WW. My first conference, so I'm very nervous. Will let you know how it pans out.

Tuesday, June 20

Revision Method

Since I ranted about Revision Hell at such length, I realize I appear very much like the worst kind of angsty!bitchy writer, the type that spends hours moaning about their Craft on blogs and doesn't get a damn bit of work done. I'd really hate for anyone reading to think that. Writing is hard work but that doesn't give you an excuse to slag off or whine (which in itself is a form of slagging off.)

This is what I've done so far in the first revision of NIGHT LIFE:
  1. Wrote a cohesive 4-page outline of what happens in the novel. Not what happens in the first draft. That would be too much to ask.
  2. Seperated the entier 360-odd page manuscript into scenes. Not chapters. Some of these are about half a page long, but so what. Forced myself NOT to make any changes that were glaring at me from the pages with little inky eyes.
  3. Printed out a hard copy with page breaks. Almost blew up my friend's laser printer, but again, so what.
  4. Seperated each scene into a section with a paperclip. Ended up with about 50 scenes for a 73,000 word novel.
  5. Read through each scene, making notes at the top and bottom of what needs to go into the scene (top) and whether a new bit should occur between scene 1 and scene 2 (bottom.)
  6. Transfer notes to electronic copy.
On page 12 now, and so far so good.

Hell is Your Unedited Manuscript

It took me over six months to bring NIGHT LIFE to its current state: 73,000 unedited words that roughly form a story. Procrastination and woe-is-me-for-I-cannot-write moods aside, six months is a decent (not great, but decent) length of time to bang out a first novel in.

I started NIGHT LIFE as a NaNoWriMo exercise, although it was actually the second novel I started that month, the first being about a genius forensic psychatrist and a serial killer and the genius forensic psychiatrist's father, who may or may not have also been a serial killer. Believe me, after getting 6,000 words into that mess it was a relief to write about werewolves and fancy shoes for a while. NIGHT LIFE does contain a serial killer, but he's way cooler than the poor schmuck from my first, forgotten NaNoWriMo novel.

After I finally type END at 2:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning about three weeks ago, Revision Hell has firmly settled in.

The first circle of Revision Hell is more procrastination. "I have finished a manuscript, and now, because I am a Good Writer*, I will let it sit for a week and not touch it. I will not think about it. If I accidentially find myself thinking about it, I will conjure an image of a shirtless Hugh Jackman from X-Men: The Last Stand until the thoughts go away." A week can easily become months, or decades.

Fear is the second circle. I am still battling this stage even as I mercilessly shred through needless backstory and infodump to make the manuscript coherent. I worry that brilliant turns of phrase are being lost. I worry that necessary continuity is being deleted, and I will get to page 342 and realize that because I wrote out the shoe-shopping scene on page 12, the story no longer makes sense in the context of a logical universe. Eventually, you just have to accept that you are ruining the story, the revised version will be ten times more horrible than the rough, and do it any way.

The third circle is boredom and disgust with everything even remotely related to the manuscript. You want it to be done. It is a hunkered, snarling precense sitting next to your computer, daring you to come near it and read over page 1 for the fiftieth time. Pages turn up mysteriously in your bed, your briefcase, and behind cartons of leftovers in the ice box. You would be happy to take a lighter to the pile of manuscript that has grown out of control, smash your hard drive, and go back to college to become an electrical engineer.

I can offer no easy way to outwit Revision Hell. I'm not really big on rewriting. Large chunks of my published work remains exactly as it did when I first typed it out. But NIGHT LIFE needs help. It is by far the longest thing I've ever written, and it is riddled with continuity errors, inconsistent characterization and either too much or not enough exposition, depending on whether I'd decided that the world was Anita Blake-happy-slappy-everyone-and-his-dog-is-a-paranormal-creature, or whether I'd decied that werewolves-are-a-secret-society-and-no-one-believes-in-them-shhh! Plus, I could never decide where to put the chapter breaks, making the entire novel one long, schizophrenic scene.

Ray of hope: I solved the continuity/infodump issues, fleshed out my admittedly largely wooden cast of characters and I even came up with an ending that didn't want to make my Inner Reader scream and hurl the book across the room. Sadly none of this has yet made its way into the actual document.

That's Revision Hell.

*By Good Writer I mean any typical writer, who is neurotic and terrified that their manuscript will suck, so they think of excuses never to touch or look at it again, and warehouse it deep in the recesses of their hard drive much like the Ark of the Covenant.

Monday, June 19

Scoreboard

I've brought three novels to various stages of near-completion in my writing life, and being in the so-close-yet-so-far-away stage of revisions on NIGHT LIFE compelled me to see where, exactly, things broke down before.


Novel #1:
Genre
: SF
Plot: A Star Wars tie-in novel, because I was 13 and didn't realize you needed a contract in hand to write such things. This was before I discovered fanfiction. I think the plot still stands up in the context of the genre: two heroes discover that the essence of dead Dark Jedi doesn't disappear into the universe, and instead goes on to feed an evil energy-based entity that now wants to swallow the galaxy. Much space fighting and lightsaber dueling ensue. I think there was also a sub-plot involving droids that could use the Force.
Word Count: 10,000, making it a novella, not a novel. I didn't know any better.
Ultimate Fate: Sitting on my hard drive as a reminder of a time when I was young and foolish.

Novel #2:
Genre: Dark fantasy
Plot: Lucius Bleakwind, leader of a pseudo-pagan rebel army that pillages a pseudo-Christian kingdom, learns he is the avatar of Choronzon, the death god. To fulfill his fate, he must die and be reborn. Not really wanting to endure a torturous death and resurrection as the scion of ultimate evil, Lucius finds a necromancer named Tranna and forces her to help him avoid his prophesized demise. I think they fell in love, too. First in a planned trilogy (don't we all have one of those laying around?)
Word Count: 30,000. We're moving up in the world.
Ultimate Fate: sitting in hard copy/electronic format with many encouraging notes from a college writing professor, but no real desire to be finished.

Novel #3:
Genre: Paranormal fantasy/romance
Plot: Luna Wilder is a homicide detective in fictional Nocturne City, USA. Luna is also a werewolf, member of an outcast caste known as the Insoli. Tracking a serial killer who brutalizes werewolf prostitutes, Luna discovers that he's actually a daemon (race of evil-ish beings that were cast out of the human world long ago) who is trying to breach the veil between worlds and find his lost human love. To prevent the EOEAWKI (end of existence as we known it) Luna must stop the daemon's final ritual with the help of sexy werewolf guy Dmitri Sandovsky. Along the way she finds love, shops for shoes, and does a bunch of cool werewolf stunts. I set out to write Novel #3 in the vein of the Kim Harrisson/Laurell Hamilton/Jim Butcher deliberately, because I actually want to sell this one.
Word Count: 73,000. Something of publishable length! How exciting!
Ultimate Fate: Revision hell. To be pitched at Writer's Weekend 2006.

Novel #1 had the obvious problem of taking place in a licensed universe, and being really really short, and written when I was 13. Plus, Episode I came out and ruined large chunks of continuity so that it didn't even make sense any more. Novel #2 also had continuity issues (I have no less than 5 version of Page 1, and those are just the ones I kept.) I fell in love with the concept, but not the story. I started writing and got incredibly bored, to the point that trying to grind out a page gave me a tension headache. With Novel #3, it was the exact opposite--I loved Luna, loved Dmitri, loved the world I had created, and yet whenever I tried to explain the plot to anyone it came out sounding lame. I might as well have thrown on some leather pants and screamed out "I'm a desperate Anita Blake clone! Somebody bring me a vampire lord to have hot steamy sex with!" But that's what Revision Hell is for--to chop away crap and find a good story. Or more crap. But hopefully saleable crap.

I'll let you know.

About the Writer

  • Luna
  • Nocturne City
  • I've been a homcide detective in Nocturne City for two years and a werewolf for a good bit longer than that. I wasn't born this way, but now it's who I am. Sure, balancing my work life and keeping my secret from almost everyone I care about can be stressful, but after a few full moons a girl learns how to deal--or at least how to accessorize for fur, fangs and claws.
Profile