Category Archives: Publishing

Too-Small Blanket

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Note: My feet are a little bigger than that^

My mind may be shrinking. I hope not. All I know for sure is that it currently feels like a too-small blanket.

I remember this one winter night when I crashed at a friend’s place. The amazing party and afterglow were followed by folks hunkering down and sleeping it off ’til morning. The hosts were [are] the magnificently odd artist-types that I love. You know–they forego creatures comforts like ‘heat’ in the Ohio wintertime so they can live solely on the income from their artistic endeavors. Once again, amazing folk, extending hospitality. (Within a freezing cold midwest loft.)

Curled up in a recliner with an electric lap blanket wrapped around me, I had the best accomodations. But you can only sleep in the fetal position for so long. Enter: the effort to stretch out. Bad idea. That poor little 3′ square blanket was cranked up to High and giving all it had to give. It wasn’t the little guy’s fault that I was twice as tall as it was long. Cramping and kinked, the too-short blanket saved me from frost-bite and hypothermia. As long as I kept myself wound into a tightly wrapped ball, my core body temp remained above freezing. That too-short blanket was my savior.

My mind is having a tough time wrapping around the things going on with Freeborn right now. It seems like, just yesterday, I was scribbling down those first few chapters. Now, after a small amount of well-placed effort, here are the current standings:

Freeborn Request Tally = 5
– 2 Agents with Full: Elana Roth, Michelle Witte
– 2 Agents with Partial: John Cusick, Tamar Rydzinski
– 1 Publisher with Partial: Month 9 Books
 
You never know how these things will turn out. All this really shows is that I intrigued these industry pros with my pitch. It says NOTHING about how the manuscript itself will be received. They could all stop reading at the second sentence and toss Freeborn into the “Dear Intern, Please send out my form rejection” pile.
 
Nevertheless, I continue to find myself bursting out in random fits of masculine, butch-like Squeeeeeees.
 
So what if my mind feels like a too-small blanket right now? I’ll take it. But I’m holding off on curling up into the fetal position. I’ll save that survival technique for the day the last rejection rolls in. No, scratch that! The thought is colder than a harsh Ohio winter. Instead, I’m gonna find a way to stretch this mind-blanket out. If all goes well, I’m gonna be needing an oversized quilt to keep me warm in the next stage of the process. Might as well get to yanking and pulling before it happens.

Connecting the Virtual Dots

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A lot has been popping with Freeborn. I’ll reiterate this from previous posts: I have not submitted a single query via the usual channels yet. In fact, I didn’t complete my last round of polishing until 1:30 this morning. A month ago, my plan was to complete the final edit, and then begin querying on my self-imposed deadline of 6/16/2012.

Alas, that plan was tweaked a bit by some amazing opportunities which sprang up between the tightly laid cobblestones of my proposed path to publication. If you walk away with nothing else from this blog post, then I ask you to consider the weight and importance of being active online and being involved with the personalities you meet there. The partials I have received have stemmed from those virtual relationships.

I received TWO partial requests for Freeborn yesterday.

  1. Via the YaLitChat YALitChat Pitch Slam2 Contest – A request for the first 50 pages from agent Tamar Rydzinski of Laura Dail Literary Agency.
  2. Via the Month9Books Facebook page – A request for the first 5 chapters from publisher Month 9 Books.  

I originally heard about the YaLitChat Pitch Slam2 contest from a Twitter friend. To trace that lineage back even further, she & I were both involved in the #WVTP contest. Afterwards, a group of us continued to message one another, connect via Facebook, and celebrate/share/whine about our writing endeavors. If this connection had not been made and sustained, the Tweet announcing Pitch Slam2 would have scrolled along, getting buried in the rolling feed. Because we had connected with one another, I took notice of the Tweet and followed up on the opportunity.

Here is the form the request took. [Pay attention to the name of the Moderator. You will be seeing it again shortly…]

 Reply by Georgia McBride 
Tamar would like to see your first 50 pages! Congratulations! Please email us at membership@yalitchat.org for submission instructions!

I’ll try to keep the circuitry of the Month 9 Books motherboard as sorted as possible. While on YALitChat, the ‘Chat’ window bleeped at me. I joined in a conversation with Brenda Drake and Georgia McBride. Brenda and I had originally connected through her Brenda Drake Writes blog months ago, and then we connected again as she served as hostess-with-the-mostest for the #WVTP contest. Georgia is the founder of the YALitChat site [along with a ton of other endeavors!] and we connected there. A week ago, she took the time to thank me for being active and helpful in the PS2 conversations on the site.

In the midst of discussing a concern I had regarding a specific element in my pitch, Brenda asked if I had pitched to Month 9 books. I scribbled the info on a post-it to investigate later and continued chatting. Later, I discovered that M9B is yet another of Georgia’s many endeavors–and Brenda’s publisher. At the time, I had no idea of either connection.

I found M9B’s website and started my research. First of all, I loved the publisher’s tagline: Speculative fiction for teens and tweens…where nothing is as it seems. As always when researching agents and publishers, I delved further. I checked out every aspect of the company including the basics, what they are looking for, current titles & authors, and quality of the book covers. What I found particularly interesting were the Publishers Marketplace announcements on the ‘News’ tab: 2 & 3-book deals, auctions, and an expanding staff roster.

With the confidence that M9B would make a perfect fit for Freeborn & its author, I followed a link to their Facebook Page and submitted my query. Within five minutes, I received this response in the form of a Comment:

Month9Books, LLC. I’ll bite. I’m looking for straight-up sci-fi. Please send first 5 chapters to submissions@month9books.com. Please polish and make sure the world-building is solid.

One more dot to throw in here to increase the connectivity a hundred-fold: Georgia is represented by the illustrious, aforementioned Tamar Rydzinski.

Is your mind scrambled? It took me a few takes to trace all the circuits.

So, what’s the point of this post? Other than the fact that I’m geeking out over a pair of requests on the same day?

Make and sustain meaningful online connections with others who share your passion.

Yeah, I know. It’s common sense and it has been said before. Maybe I have nothing to offer except a reiteration of the obvious. I’m totally okay with that, because I am seeing the importance of the simple truth being played out in my own experience. Don’t underestimate the power of seemingly ‘simple’ advice–and virtual relationships.

Unsolicited Advice from an Undercover Agent #AGENTX

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Being involved in multiple online writing communities means I get the pleasure of bumping into other writers’ ideas. A few absolutely blow my mind with their amazing, unique, fresh, must-read concepts. After reading hundreds of excerpts and pitches, I have quickly formed an aversion to certain topics. Yep. It’s a long list.

As a reader and writer myself–there are some ideas/concepts/characters I am totally sick of seeing. You know what I mean. Don’t you? If not in the arena of novels, then perhaps in the land of music? I bet you can think of at least three songs that have been so ‘radio-killed’ by stations playing them over and over and over and… When they pop on, do you snatch at the knob to turn the station because you have. heard. them. enough. already.?

I’m going to pretend like I’m a literary agent for a moment. [Wouldn’t it be cool if–secretly–I already am? This John Lucas Hargis cat is my alter-ego. Hiding behind it allows me to find potential authors without being stalked or hounded. You never know…] Since I’m an agent seeking fantasy and sci-fi, I can make a list of things I absolutely DO NOT want to see pitched to me. My opinions may or may not apply to every other agent in the galaxy.

Here is my Don’t Send Me This Crap List.

  • Vampires – Sparkly, evil, peace-loving, or otherwise. They make my eyes bleed. I’d rather drive a stake through my own heart than read one more query…
  • Werewolves – Calling them Lycanthropes, Lycaons, Were-cats, or Wericorns won’t change my mind.
  • Reapers – Grim, Happy, chasing or being chased by, becoming or assisting one = REJECTED
  • Wizards – I’ll give a little leeway here. But you better work your arse off to make the concept modern. It has to smack me in the face with your unbelievable take on this overplayed archetype. Your idea MUST make me spit out my coffee and scream, “Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before?!?!”
  • Portals to other worlds – Books, mirrors, amulets, maps, attics, closets, secret doors, a copse of trees, vomit, vomit, vomit
  • Dragons – I *might* let this one slip through IF a unique, fresh, wild, unexpected interpretation should appear. No scales, fangs, claws, or fire-breath allowed. 
  • Angels – Haven’t we seen enough Gabriels, seraphim, and nephalim in novels to last us through eternity? Come on. Think for yourself. (Spoiler alert: You won’t fool me by plucking off their wings or calling them ‘guardians’.)
  • Demons – With so much imagination at your disposal, why not create your own brand of bad guy? Why reinforce an ancient stereotype? Shame on you.
  • Magical Objects as the sole-means of an MC’s powers – UGH. Can’t your character find strength within his/her/itself? Empower him/her/it! Crush the unnecessary magical objects with a super-rare sword or something.
  • Powers which suddenly manifest when the MC hits ## years old – We get it–growing up, changes, new problems, moving out of ‘childhood’, learning to deal with adolescence analogy. We got it 5 gajillion books ago.
  • Rehashed Fairytales – Unless you (1) Change every name. [Tip: I know what “Ella” is short for. Same with “Red”. And don’t even include a “step” anything: mom, sister, dog, goldfish.] (2) Hide the tale under so many of your own original thoughts and ideas that the Grimm or Disney version is no longer recognizable.
  • Fey / Faeries / Fairies – This includes any and all versions of these folk. Avoid the words Seelie & Unseelie like the plague.
  • Protags who want to be authors – Wow. Who did you model that character after?

“Thanks a lot, Mr. Agent! You just wiped out my entire collection of queried and re-queried novels. All the trilogies I have written contain at least four of the items on your stupid list!”

Sorry about that. Not really, though. I’m only one little agent. These are merely my personal preferences based on the 100,000 ideas that beg for my attention every week. Feel free to shop your manuscript(s) elsewhere. No, I do not know any other agents that would be thrilled to look at your query-killed, played out–I mean–great idea. Don’t give up. Just don’t come back to me with it…

So, what does this AgentX want to see? That’s easy.

  • An idea that is uniquely yours.
  • A concept that has never graced the printed page before.
  • A premise that makes me wet my pants (just a little) due to it’s sheer originality, simplicity, and genius.

“But, Mr Agent, all the good stuff has already been taken.”

I’m not looking for good, honey. I’m looking for a m a z i n g. Give me something that’s haute couture écriture.

“What’s that?”

It’s my new catchphrase. Taken literally, it means “high fashion writing”. And that doesn’t translate to “write a book with the theme/elements currently in fashion”. In essence, it means I’m looking for one-of-a-kind, designer plotlines and characters.  As a literary agent (ahem), from now on, I am only accepting queries for  haute couture écriture.

[Say it with me.] Haute couture écriture. High fashion writing. One-of-a-kind.

Stop wasting my time–and yours–by submitting queries with any variation of the items on my “Don’t Send Me This Crap List”. Not only will I thank you for it, but so will every other agent I know. Not that I really know any… I’d have to be a ‘real’ agent for that to happen.

If you believe your novel has what I’m looking for, please, feel free to post your pitch in the Comments section.
Prize: You may make me spit out my coffee.

I’m also looking for your parodies. How many items from my “Don’t Send Me This Crap List” can you squeeze into one query of 10 sentences or less?
Prize: You might make me pee (just a little) in my pants.

::: BONUS FEATURE: Use the #AGENTX hashtag when referring to this post & challenge on Twitter :::

Forget the Zombie Apocalypse. Prepare for F-DAY!

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As writers, we write stuff. [Genius, I know!]

Sometimes that stuff hits a chord and resonates with a reader. I’m not talking about the “Oh, I really like that story” or “You should be a real writer” kind of resonance. I’m thinking of something a little deeper, a bit more personal–the kind of connection that happens when a story actually zings inside the reader.

There have been many instances of writers ‘foretelling’ the future. Sci-Fi is good for this. Authors like Isaac Asimov created fictional events, technology, and gadgetry which seemed far-fetched and ludicrous at the time. I remember [bits and pieces of] Fahrenheit 451 from High School. I can turn my head away from this laptop screen and see something in my very own home that seems eerily similar to Ray Bradbury’s wall TV concept. 

There have been a slew of zombie movies and books hitting the market for years now. [For the record, the campy 1950’s setting of the movie Fido is my all-time favorite.] Sometimes the zombies are really fast and nimble, other times they are slow and clunky (but still eat your face anyway). Apparently, In Miami, the Zombies prefer to dine au naturalle.

And so the Zombie Apocalypse Begins.

Do I really believe in a soon-coming day when Zombies will roam the land? Ummm, no. What I do believe is this: the story in that link is kinda creepy. Not because it has a coked-up killer in it, but because–one day–somebody’s book is going to get it right. We’re going to wake up and find that the world as we once knew it is gone.

It could be real-life (real-death?) zombies, an alien spacecraft hovering over Paris, animals with the ability to talk, some chap in S. America who suddenly reveals he can fly under his own volition, a near-earth asteroid scorching the ozone, or a little girl who can predict the lottery with 100% accuracy. And, chances are, someone will already have written a story about it before it ever happened.

My novel, Freeborn, has some of the basic sci-fi elements necessary to make it believable: technology that has evolved from where it is now to where it might be heading, socio-economic dynamics as they may look in the future if we remain on our current trek, realistic interactions between characters in a world based on these changes.

Thankfully (because I wouldn’t be much of a writer if it didn’t),  Freeborn also incorporates fresh concepts that have never been explored in the genre. Plenty of these are sprinkled throughout the narrative, but everything hinges on that one key hook which–to my knowledge–has never been explored in the same way in previous novels.

Clones have been done–yes. Infection by viruses has been done–no brainer. But, when the virus infecting the clones causes spontaneous pregnancies to occur–regardless of the clone’s sex–well, haven’t seen that one until I put it down on paper myself.

Once-fictional-now-real technology exists. Folks wrote about zombies and then some naked guy kept munching his victim’s face even though the cops shot him–over and over. I’m not saying dudes are going to start having spontaneous babies. I’m just saying: if it ever does happen, you heard it here first.

So how will you know what to do when you wake up as a victim of the spontaneous pregnancy apocalypse? What should you do when Freeborn Day (F-Day) becomes a reality?

You must begin by clicking “Like” on FREEBORN’s Facebook Page. Today!
Don’t wait until it’s too late!

And, once it’s published, you need to buy the book (of course!)

It’s the only way to be prepared when F-Day hits.

[You know, if it ever comes…]

Full Manuscript Request: FREEBORN

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Understatement: I’m excited about this.
Disclaimer: I am stretching this post out to include a Twitter-teach along the way.

Yesterday, I spent 6 hours monitoring a Twitter feed. Brendra Drake, along with a a couple other hosts, organized the Writer’s Voice Twitter Party. The full rules for the contest can be found here: http://brenleedrake.blogspot.com/

[I’m going to pop in the bracket explanations for those of you who are still working on your Twitter savvy. I know you’re out there. Don’t be embarrassed. I’ll help you. 😉 ]

The contest involved tweeting a pitch for a novel using the imposed 140 character limit.
[A Tweet is simply a post–similar to a Facebook update. If you don’t know what that is…oh my…]

The hashtag #WVTP was crucial to the contest to feed the tweets into the correct stream where agents would be lurking.
[A hashtag is simply a label. Hashtags serve as funnels to carry updates from anyone using them into a common folder. By searching for a hashtag, you can see the Tweets of others with similar interests.]

So, out of techie world, and back to the experience itself.

The timeframe for the contest was 12-6pm. Literary Agents trolled the stream during that window. Aspiring authors submitted their pitches in hope of having one of the agents ask to see the manuscript. Basically, it served as a way to get the idea of a book in front of many agents at once instead of sending tedious, individual query letters.

At noon, the #WVTP stream exploded as authors began submitting their pitches. It was insane. Trying to read each pitch was difficult because so many were flooding in. The screen kept scrolling as the new entries stacked on top of the previous ones. The hashtag was used so much in such a short amount of time that it began ‘trending’. [In other words, it became popular since so many Twitterers were using it.]

That’s when the steady influx of SPAM messages added to the melee: “enhance your penis size”, “can this be real”, “I can’t believe they let me post this”, “come see what everyone else is seeing”, “make 10k a week from home”. The nude avatars and constant posting of the SPAM started as a novelty, became an annoyance, and then pretty much made the pitch-reading impossible.

Enter: http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta. [Oh no, more brackets…TweetDeck is a secondary program that can be downloaded free. It serves as a dashboard for your personal Twitter feed and is outstanding for organizing tweets from users all over the world into easy-to-read columns. It’s like a digital filing system for all your Tweet interests.] TweetDeck contains a filtering function. With a few keystrokes, the file extensions for all the SPAMmers’ links could be weeded out of the feed. Voila! Back to only pitches and agent/host comments.

Then the fun began.

I pitched both FREEBORN and CAPRITARE when agents were present on the feed. No bites. So I started rewriting the tweet-pitches to focus on different aspects of each story. You know: put more hooks in the water, try different bait. My reworked pitches for FREEBORN took on many forms by zeroing in on different elements: Katia, Adam, their relationship, the Surgeon Generals, the clones, The Candystripers, the mission to overthrow the government, gender issues, the virus, spontaneous pregnancies, etc.

Still, no bites.

Then, fifteen minutes before the contest was to end, Agent John M Cusik http://johnmcusick.wordpress.com/ pointed out he was looking for Young Adult novels. Now, the vast majority of the pitches were for YA. Only, we couldn’t spare the characters to include those two little letters. I reworked the pitch [again] and sent this one blazing into the feed:

YA The Surgeon Generals are liars. The lives squirming inside Katia and the other clones aren’t parasites. They’re bastard Freeborns. #WVTP

I waited. Then a Direct Message [not a mass Tweet, but a message sent directly from one user to another] popped up in its column on my TweetDeck. Here’s what it said:

Yo yo, send me that. #WVTP

Sweet! So, John and I chatted a few direct messages back and forth. Apparently, he didn’t know it was YA until that Tweet. Also, he noted that sometimes persistence is the key. It damn sure was!

I have already received my instructions on how to bypass the slush pile and send the full manuscript for FREEBORN directly to an agent who asked for it. This is a great opportunity. I have not even queried FREEBORN yet, so the Twitter Party was it’s first foray into the larger world of publishing professionals.

Understatement: I’m excited about this.

FREEBORN: Facebook Page

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Just like his older brother before him, FREEBORN now has his own Facebook Page.

Stop by and give it a “Like”. It costs absolutely nothing, and you can watch the little tyke as he grows up and makes his way to market.

In the novel, the Infection is viral. It’s hard to imagine that a Facebook Page for an [as-of-yet] unpublished book could be as well—but hey—an author’s gotta have dreams ya know.

 

Publisher’s Feedback: Capritare

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I haven’t sent out any queries for Capritare in over two months. In fact, with the new novel in the works, I haven’t referred back to my submission tracking sheet in a long while. Today, I received this unexpected letter from a publisher. It is–by far–the most indepth bit of feedback I have received.

Mr. Hargis,

Thank you very much for the chance to read CAPRITARE. We have reviewed the manuscript, and your story has promise, though could benefit from some additional work. I was very interested by the world you created and the core of the story. If you’re interested in revising the manuscript to resubmit, I’d be happy to reconsider it.

Some of the thoughts I had while reading:

  • By dropping us in the story with no lead-up, I was too fish-out-of-water in order to get a footing in the narrative. Since the story is about Capritare’s journey, start at the beginning and let us discover existence in this new world alongside him.
  • Too often I was confused by the names of people, places, and things, unsure of what was actually going on. You can smooth over the culture shock with a light description of things before naming them, so the reader has a more concrete idea of what the object is.
  • On the other hand, the lofty descriptions got away from me too easily. Your primary target audience for YA should be 15-20, with a secondary of 13-15 (20+ is good for YA, but something that comes naturally). I’m not saying to dumb down the narrative, but streamlining would go a long way to hitting the buttons you want with your intended audience. Try to strike a balance if at all possible.

While your submission isn’t quite right for [NAME] Publishing at the moment, you do have promising talent as a writer, and we would be interested to see more of your work in the future.

So, there are some good comments in there, as well as some great suggestions. These statements echo what many of my readers have noted. I want to keep the LitFic feel, so I believe that taking it out of the realm of teen readers is my best bet. Capritare was my first novel, and provided a huge amount of learning and experimentation for me. So, the question is: to do a major edit? Or lose the YA tag and self-publish?

FREEBORN is written in a much more ‘commercial’ style, so it has become my new arrow pointed at the mainstream market. Capritare may have to hang in the background and serve as my ‘loss-leader’.

Decisions, decisions…

I’m a Loser Baby

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Well, after a month of waiting, 10,000 authors’ blogs will have entry fodder for the day. ABNA announced the winners of those who made it past the Pitch phase in the contest.

General Fiction
YA Fiction

I searched the YA list; not once, nor twice, but seven times to make sure my name was missing. I did a “Find” for my real name, my pen name, my birth name, my mother’s maiden name–just in case. Nothing. So, I repeated the search on the GenFic list, just in case it was mistakenly categorized. Nothing.

So, I am putting the whole experience into perspective.
1. The contest entry is really only equal to a single query submission.
2. I know the pitch I am currently including in queries is much stronger than the original I submitted to the contest.

Here’s the new tagline:

Starting over can be a good thing—unless you’ve already lived a thousand lifetimes,
and still can’t get it right.

Here’s the new Pitch:

Oblivion. Rebirth. Failure. Oblivion.

Capritare has no idea how many times he has repeated this sequence, but he knows it is time to end it. He stands before the three sovereign entities. Which one will lead him to completion: the masculine Yramid, the feminine Pheras, or the mysterious Esque? He will be granted seven such choices in his short lifetime, after which he will be judged.

He is not alone on his quest. Hundreds of others struggle with the ever-changing embellishments of wings, antlers, tentacles; and the search for a lifelong companion. In a world where girls can be masculine, boys can be feminine, and everyone can switch at any time—Capritare experiments to find a mate. His experiences lead him through the sweetness of love, and the pain of disappointment.

As the seventh cycle ends, they each must vow to only one of the entities. Capritare is drawn to one in particular, but he is afraid to eat the proffered seed that will confirm his choice. If it is the wrong one, he will return—yet again—to oblivion.

So, like all the other “losers”, I move on. Time for another querying blitz! And I’ll be trolling the blogs to see how many more response posts I can find.

[Disclaimer: At the request of a friend, I must note that this is not a self-pitying post. The title and use of the the term “Loser” are intended as tongue-in-cheek hyperbole!] ::: insert smirk here :::

Not "Will", But "Which"

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I declare that from this moment forward, I will stop thinking:
Will an agent represent my novel? Will s/he be able to snag a publisher?

I declare that from this moment forward, I will begin thinking:
Which agent will snatch up my novel? Which publisher is going to beg to print it?

*** UPDATE 2/17/12 ***
Well, it WILL NOT be my top choice–Barry Goldblatt… WHICH other agent will it be?

30 Minute Rejection

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Over the last two days, I have focused on an agent querying blitz.  At this point, I have submitted thirty-six queries. By researching not just each agency’s website, but also blogs and online interviews, I have been able to further narrow down the hundreds and hundreds of agents to a much more manageable list.

There are 5 agents in particular that I would most like to court. These constitute my “All-Star” list. I am drawn to these agents for a number of reasons:
– Past success as measured by recent and overall manuscript placement
– An amazing roster of current clients represented
– An interest in novels with the themes, genre and demographic-target of my Capritare trilogy

I pulled out all the stops when querying these agents. In addition to following the “Submission Guidelines” perfectly (as always), I also tailored the query using specific information I learned about the agents online. It will be interesting to see if this experiment results in anything more than a good ol’ form rejection.

Speaking of rejections…

I received my quickest one ever today. I emailed the query, and within thirty minutes, got my response.

“Sent from my Ipad.
Thanks, but we will pass.”

If only an acceptance from one of my All-Star agents would come through that quickly.