Archive for the ‘writing’ Tag
Masks
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: new novel, Storytelling, writing
Comments (2) I’m very nearsighted…like, I need my glasses to find my glasses nearsighted. As a result, I’ve never been able to wear a mask without walking into furniture, walls, people, large pets…you name it and I’ve probably smacked a shin on it without corrective eyewear. And I’m not a big enough nerd to wear glasses over a mask.
In The Valmont Contingency, both the hero and heroine use masks. While Garrick doesn’t hide his face, he does hide his name and identity while out on shakedown / privateering patrols. It’s a reasonable precaution, given the kind of people he deals with and his family’s net worth. I’ll discuss Tasha’s mask in my Release Day post on the Carina Press blog.
I’ve noticed that the characters in my stories are never just one thing, just as the people in my life are never just one thing. My supervisor (at the day job) is a software QA manager. He also plays bass guitar in a band. Spooky Man is retired on disability, but he’s also an animal seducer — doesn’t matter what species, they all seem to adore him.
In my stories, the characters often need to disguise or hide part of themselves to protect friends, family or their own future. In Blade’s Edge, Taryn needs to hide that she’s a twin, because it would cloud the line of succession in her small country.
In Open Mike at Club Bebop, the hero has a military handle he uses when in the net, but he keeps it separate from his physical identity for several reasons, including the facial reconstruction after the “friendly fire” incident that nearly killed him. And the fact that he still does clandestine cyberwork for the government.
Once upon a time, I was active in the Society for Creative Anachronism. As part of developing a persona for recreating history, members are encouraged to research and adopt a Medieval- and/or Renaissance-appropriate name. I still have friends who know me primarily by that name.
Even Val Roberts is not my legal name, but a shortened version of it, in case I need to sign hundreds of autographs at a time one day. Hey, it could happen. Technically, then, I have three identities, although I seem to be able to limit my characters to two identities.
But what about you? Do you have a mask, or an alter-ego that you don’t reveal to everyone? If you’re a superhero, don’t answer that. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for your nemesis discovering your secret.
Be careful out there. Things are not always the way they first appear.
The Query Letter
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: business, query letter, writing
Comments (2) This is another post primarily for writers, but about the business end of things.
Yesterday, @saramegibow mentioned in her #10queriesIn10tweets Twitter feed that she passed on a query, in part, because the writer said agents are crazy. This boggled my mind: Why would anyone put that in a query letter? It’s a business communication, not a manifesto.
Your first introduction to your editor or agent is most often a query letter. When you’re introduced to a person for the first time in real life, you don’t say, “Hey, I’ve heard you’re not as big of a [bleeeep!] as other people in your field.”
At least I hope you don’t. It’s insulting. And a little on the crazypants end of the spectrum.
Okay, quite a bit on the crazypants end of the spectrum.
There are four parts to a query letter:
- Salutation (why I’m sending this to you in particular)
- Manuscript statistics (word count, genre, the fact that it’s done)
- Blurb (enough of the story to make sense and get the reader interested in the rest — not a synopsis)
- Bio (something about the writer’s writing background)
For the salutation, you might mention you follow the person on his or her blog, or you met at a conference, or you know he/she has bought/sold books in your genre.
You don’t say anything about traditional publishing gatekeeper trolls; it’s not relevant, it’s not polite, and it isn’t going to make this person disposed toward working with you. Period.
For the statistics, all you need to say is “Best Book Evah (your title) is a [genre genre], complete at [computer wordcount] words.” That’s it.
And please don’t say “fiction novel” — you can get away with “science-fiction novel” or possibly “womens-fiction novel” if you hyphenate it. Otherwise, they will giggle at your redundancy; these are word people, and we word people find that sort of faux pas amusing.
The blurb is where you put your version of back-cover copy. Beware, you want to sweat over this, because a) it can make the difference between a request and a pass, and b) when you sell, the production team might just use it as the basis for the real back cover copy. I have had that happen to me. I suck at back-cover copy for my own books, so this is a little worrisome.
Please note that a blurb is not the same as a pitch or a synopsis. A pitch is generally one sentence, something you can blurt out between floors in an elevator, particularly if you’re terrified at the time.
A synopsis is a high-level summary of the entire manuscript (including the entire plot, character arc(s), and voice of the manuscript, if you’re good), usually 3-5 pages long.
It won’t fit in a one-page query, but many editors and agents would like to see it with the query, so write it to go with the query. Sweat over this one, too. It’s how you prove you can write a character and structure a story. Again, when you sell, the publisher is going to use the synopsis in production, giving it to the cover artist, the blurbist, the sales force.
The last part of a query letter is the writer’s bio. This is the place to mention that you have an MFA, or you’re a member of a professional organization such as RWA, or if you’ve had books published. You can also mention self-published titles, particularly if they’ve sold well.
Agents and editors will do an internet search on you if they’re interested in your work, so if you put a link to a professional-grade website or blog, or a social media handle, that’s okay, too. You might want to skip the Facebook profile with naughty photos or the twitter handle @gross-stuff.
Once upon a time (the 1980s), I was the college student who copy-edited and typed a children’s book manuscript for a lovely senior citizen. She also asked me to look at her query letter; I was appalled, because she was sending her checking account number to Vantage Press (a venerable “vanity publisher”). In a query letter.
Please don’t do that; it scares me. Yes, I talked her out of it, but it wasn’t easy. And it was in the vicinity of 30 years ago, so probably slightly less dangerous than it would be today. Still.
Be careful with those query letters.
Valmont Contingency Excerpt — Meet Captain Rick
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: excerpt, Valmont Contingency, writing
Leave a comment Garrick checked the ping on his long-range sensor array, flagged it for identify and smiled at the results. Corinth 6.0, flagged Port Hazard, ident: Trouble’s Here. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one member of his bridge crew flinch, and two others grinned in response. That meant he’d shown a few too many teeth.
“Charlie, get me an intercept with our bogey. Joss, send a standard hail, hold for inspection.” He pulled out his control panel from the armrest lock. “Shak, get the boarding party ready. We’ve got tail.”
Tail was freighter parlance for the trail of ionized particles a starship engine left behind between jumpgates, probably an allusion to a comet’s tail of similar particles. Bogey was a word so old nobody knew what language it came from, but it meant an unknown sensor contact. And in this case, it was inaccurate. Garrick knew exactly who was out there, and Trouble’s Here was on his List of Marque, flagged out of Port Hazard, a station on the boundary of the Republic and the Reich that changed allegiance with every watch shift. Its last port of call had been Dorrigan, which was a much higher dock zone than Trouble could afford unless her captain was running something off manifest. Something that would shortly belong to Garrick Yusuf ben Khalid and the crew of Direwolf.
Damn, he loved this part of his job.
Next came schematics, complete with his personal notations of every likely hidey-hole on Corinth Model 6.0. He forwarded that to Shakiro Nobinata, who would be leading the boarding party. The departure manifest was light, showing only high-value pharmaceuticals with very specific handling instructions. Garrick frowned. Not bloody likely that the Blaine cartel would be shipping on a tramp. It had to be a cover, and whatever it was covering was now up for grabs. And he had big hands.
“Intercept in two hours, thirty-six minutes and four-point-two seconds.” Charlie wanted to be Vulcan when he grew up, and as a result he was overly precise about, well, everything. If he hadn’t been the sector’s best navigator, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it.
“No response to hail.”
Did they have comm turned off to save power, were they ignoring him, or was Trouble about to be somewhere else?
“Bogey jink, forty-five degrees absolute vertical with fifteen percent velocity increase. New intercept two hours, forty-six minutes, thirty seconds.”
Charlie must be busy if he’d left off a decimal. “Boarding, I’m on the way. Intercept in two and forty-five.” He glanced up and Charlie was glaring. “Give or take.” He swung the computer back into the armrest of his chair. “Gentlemen.”
“Yeah, we know the drill,” Misha said from the copilot’s station. “Go play, Rick. Bring back something pretty.”
His new space armor rubbed his right shoulder when he put it on and he made a mental note to have Shak or Misha adjust the pauldron’s curvature. The new umbilical homed perfectly on the freighter’s personnel hatch and connected atmosphere-to-atmosphere without manual override. Inside, Trouble’s Here had that special kind of corner-grime that he only saw in all-male ships.
The captain and watch crew were white-lipped on the bridge, everyone else herded into the wardroom and locked down. And then it was time to search.
Everything was going according to plan until, “Rick, we have a passenger.” Shak’s comm unit squelched. “In a closet in enviro. She…you’d better come take a look.”
“Did you say she?” The plan had turned left without him.
There were no passengers on the manifest. No females in the crew. And Trouble was the kind of ship that gave steerage a bad name. He turned right at the next corridor intersection and took the lift to the mechanical deck. Enviro was normally as far away from crew quarters as possible, because it always had a certain smell to it, no matter what kind of seals and scrubbers tried to contain it. In his experience, this also tended to make it a desirable place to hide contraband in his experience. Nobody in his or her right mind would go rummaging around in there unless sealed into an environmental suit.
For a woman to hide in enviro, she had to be serious about not wanting to be found. He frowned at the deck indicator. What in the known worlds was she hiding from?
“Rick-san, you’re not going to believe this,” Shak told him on the command channel when he stepped into the room containing the environmental control systems. It was barely bigger than a closet. “If I weren’t looking at her, I wouldn’t effing believe it.”
He edged past Shak’s armor and looked for himself. She was pretty enough, in a grime-encrusted sort of way. Wearing practical clothes for stowing away, nothing-colored ship knits, her hair pulled back in a medium-brown braid. There was something familiar about her eyes, but he couldn’t place it. The rest of her face might have been anyone’s, features the symmetrical dead average associated with good genes and good nutrition. “What won’t I effing believe?” he asked on the same private frequency as he watched her stare back at him.
“She’s got a chip passport. Give it a standard scan.”
Garrick sighed and brought up his scanner display, checking the readout for the woman’s implanted identification. Text scrolled up his visor as he skimmed for a name. When he found it a couple of updates back, he blinked, in case it had been a mistake. And blinked again.
Publishing News – Audible picked up my book
The Carina Press Executive Editor (the magnificent Angela James) sent out an e-mail this morning on the latest audiobook deal, for October and November titles.
The Valmont Contingency was the first title on the list! Probably only because its release date is October 1st, but still…Squee!
Okay, that’s enough celebrating. i have a book to finish.
OMG I have a cover
Muppet flail!
And here it is:
Not the best birthday gift
Spooky Man took away my laptop. Actually, he sent it to the shop to have the hard drive replaced with a solid-state drive. SSDs are quieter, faster, require less power and generate less heat, so it’s a thoughtful gift.
Except it requires me to spend five days without a computer at home. During vacation days when I was planning to do a lot of writing. Insert frustrated noise here.
I did get a few thousand words written with a pen and a notepad (I tried writing on an Ipad, too, and it was awful — virtual keyboards are ridiculously inaccurate for real typing), but it wasn’t the 7-10K I was hoping for.
So I’m currently behind where I want to be on the works in progress. What else is new?
I think I’m going to be spending a few extra hours at the day job this week, borrowing the keyboard for a — ahem — side project, at least until I get my New! Improved! laptop back.
Marketing: When is it squicky?
Writers have heard for years they have to brand, they have to be “discoverable” and they have to market, Market, MARKET their own work because nobody else is going to do it for them.
I’m here to say there are times and places to turn it off. For example, I belong to the Romance Writers of America professional organization, which costs me US$95 per year. I belong to several chapters within that organization, including a couple of special interest chapters, which all charge US$20-US$30 per year in dues.
For any individual listserv, I’m pretty much paying US$50 a year for the privilege of getting e-mails. At least two of the chapters I belong to have a promo/marketing problem on their listservs/Yahoo groups. Frankly, it smacks of personal injury attorneys handing out business cards at a Bar Association meeting. Squicky.
I work closely with sales and marketing people in my day job (pretty much, I am the marketing communications department at my small company), so I deal with message, urgency, and spin — a lot. I know all the tricks, and I don’t like it when they’re used inappropriately.
So what do I mean by promo/marketing? This:
- “I just posted to my blog about (insert subject), so click this link to read it.”
- “I entered this esoteric contest you’ve never heard of and I’m blatantly soliciting votes.”
- “Congratulations!” or “I commented on your blog!” (followed by a 20-line signature that includes multiple book covers and an author blurb) — this one looks particularly desperate, which is extra squicky.
Basically, marketing is anything that demands an action from me: give you blog traffic; give you support; give you more attention than your words merit; buy, buy, buy your book(s). Greasy-leer, sweaty-palm, used-car-salesman-with-matching-white-belt-and-shoes squicky. Note: Not all used-car salesmen are squicky. I’ll bet you know the ones I mean.
What’s not squicky?
Class is never squicky. Write thoughtfully about interesting topics and have a discreet link in your signature (that is four lines, maximum, with no graphics) and I’ll probably click it and read about your books.
For example, if your new blog post is so fascinating you want to promote it, post it to the list as well as your blog. Discuss it with your colleagues, using full sentences and words (textspeak on an email list is definitely more squicky than classy).
Be polite. Be interesting. Have ideas. I know, that takes time and we don’t have time because we’re on the social-media-marketing hamster wheel. So get off the wheel; it’s probably the leading cause of squick. I’m a lot more likely to tell my tribe about your new title if I know you as classy, thoughtful, polite, and interesting.
Even if it’s a humorous YA vampire mystery romance I’m most likely never going to read (sorry, YA vampire romances aren’t my thing, even if they have funny mysteries attached), I have friends who love that premise and would also love to find a new author. Just not a squicky one.
Writing What I Don’t Know
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: plotting, Stray thoughts, writing
Leave a comment Specifically, Japanese and Chinese traditional culture. I am working on a novel where the hero is from a space-faring culture based in East Asian cultural traditions and genetics, and the heroine is the equivalent of Japanese-American or Chinese-British. The more research I do, the more I find out exactly how much I don’t know about Japanese and Chinese culture.
I’m ethnically Irish, which means I have light hair, light skin, and round blue eyes. So, what do epicanthal folds feel like? Nobody who has them can tell me, because they don’t know what it feels like not to have them. At least I can figure out the hair — my mother had hair so vehemently straight it rejected poodle perms in about four weeks.
I’m culturally American, specifically Western American, which means I have one of the largest personal-space bubbles in the world. You get closer than four feet without a good reason and I’m going to be uncomfortable and backing away — just because of where I grew up.
Compare that to the Tokyo subway system, where they employ people to cram commuters into the trains with the personal space of, say, canned sardines. Shakiro (Our Hero) isn’t going to equate physical proximity with intimacy. Well, there goes that scene. He’s also part of the imperial security clan, which means researching the Samurai Bushido, the ninja/shinobi Oniwabanshu, and multiple schools of Chinese martial arts philosophy. Good stuff (Sun Tzu was fascinating), but still…that’s just the deep background of his world.
Because of my day jobs in technical writing and localization, I know that Japan has three different writing systems, one of which was co-opted from Chinese writing (kanji), one of which looks like Gregg shorthand (katakana), and one of which looks like a cursive version of Gregg shorthand (hiragana). And you read it from top to bottom, right to left. Yesterday, I had to look up the name of the Japanese short sword often used as a left-hand weapon by the Samurai class: wakizashi. Or at least that’s the Romaji for it (phonetic approximation using the Roman alphabet).
How would that shape someone’s brain? Does Shak trust written language at all? Would you?
It’s a good thing this is fiction, so I can make stuff up.
Need for Subconscious Speed
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: plot turns, plotting, writing
Leave a comment “Your job is done for now, so pat yourself on the back…then go write me a new book. ” This is how my editor ended her latest e-mail, the one accepting the copy edit changes and stets (which is copy editor-speak for “don’t make this change”) from me.
I’m working on it. Unfortunately, last night I was writing the scene where the hero and his father meet again for the first time in years, and dad started apologizing. Huh?
I realized that the reason Our Hero has been in the Republic (and not the Nipponese Empire, where he was born) is because he was passed over for a clan leadership position — by Dad. He went into self-exile to save face.
Which explains a lot, actually. You, in the basement — Muse — you couldn’t have sent this up three months ago? Whaddaya mean, you were working on the editorial changes for the last book? You’re supposed to be able to do both at the same time.
This little nugget changes motivations for half the plot. It makes perfect sense, but now I have to scrap most of the paltry 5,000-word first draft I have written. And I have to rework the synopsis/outline. Le sigh.
I need a faster subconscious.
May submission calls
Entangled Publishing has put out several special submission calls in May. You can see them all here:
http://www.entangledinromance.com/category/call-for-submissions/.
In addition, they have a new line of category (55-70,000 words) paranormal romance, called Covet. The main focus is on the romance, with the paranormal/worldbuilding aspect more in the background. Guidelines are here: http://www.entangledpublishing.com/submission-information/covet-submission-guidelines/.
Crimson Romance (Adams Media) put out a twitter call for more romance submissions the week before US Memorial Day. They want category length, approximately 50,000 words. Submission guidelines here: http://www.adamsmedia.com/call-for-submissions.
Carina press put out their Spring 2012 submission wish list on May 18, with specifics for most of their editors (I say “most” because my editor wasn’t listed): http://carinapress.com/blog/2012/05/carina-press-spring-2012-call-for-submissions/.
Avon Impulse (their digital-first imprint) put out a twitter call for their Halloween anthology in mid-May. Here’s their tweet: “We are looking for a few good spooky love stories! @AvonImpulse seeking submissions for Halloween anthology. Info online:…” I can’t find any specific information on their website, but you could always tweet them and ask.
Those are just the calls that caught my eye in the last few weeks. I’m sure there are more out there. It’s a good season to be a romance writer.
