Welcome to Son of a Pitch! #TeamRebels

Welcome to my blog! This week, I’m happy to host some writers and their queries. For those of you new to Son of A Pitch, the only people who should be commenting on these posts are the approved judges and the author of the piece. All other comments will be deleted by me. (don’t make me do it!)

Other than that, look around, read some entries and have fun.

#TeamRebels

A to Z: Y

And we're all the way up to Y for You Can't Handle the Truth.

No really

Once more into the blog: V for Verbose

We're back with another A to Z challenge.

Today we're up to V for Verbose

And Q is for Query

Welcome back! Monday is brought to you by the letter Q.

Geeking out

Right, so I’m over here geeking out about the faculty they’ve posted over at WriteOnCon (you'll have to scroll down to get the full list of faculty as they've had two announcements). One of the people they’ve announced (note how I’m not using names, that might be rude) is an editor at a publishing house I’ve thought my query bait would fit. Speaking of query bait, I’ve actually stopped querying with it, and now I’m going to talk about my process, because I like to share too much.

When I first wrote my query bait, almost two years ago now, I didn’t really know what I was doing—well, I don’t really claim to know what I’m doing now, but I’ve done some research so I’m less clueless. When I grew up, fantasy novels tended to start with these lugubrious beginnings that told a story that took until page 30 or 40 for the plot to kick in. Seriously, the style for fantasy in the sixties and seventies, is pretty slow, and when I was a kid (in the eighties), I only read the books my mom had or that I picked up for a quarter at the used bookstore. We didn’t even have a new bookstore in town (not even my town, mind you, it was the nearby “big” town) until I was in fifth grade (that store is still doing well, actually). So when I wrote my book, despite having read a ton of other more recent fiction, I wrote my book like those beloved classics from my youth.

Needless to say, that manuscript hasn’t exactly been burning up the request hotlines. Add to it the fact that most of the agents I queried early on got to see my biggest mistakes, you know, waking up from a dream, POV merry-go-round, nothing but description. In short, I burned a lot of chances with an unfortunate manuscript. The story is awesome sauce on toast; the execution? Not so much. I wrote two sequels for that story, and I even had a third planned.

Still, it’s a lot of work to be that stupid, and even I woke up to the fact that sending out my manuscript with the equivalent of post it notes that said “Please read it, it gets good after about the first fifty page; even my mean sister likes it” probably wasn’t working. Yeah, did I mention marketing is my other weak point?

I started to see that what I needed to do was to try another story. I had most of one, but I hadn’t really fleshed it out, it hadn’t been the lightning strike of previous ideas, where one minute no novel existed in my brain, and the next minute: ding, one novel, ready to order. But, I didn’t really think much would come of it. It was my practice novel. So I thought, “What the hell, write the novel you want.” And I did. I gave it my snarky voice, my “I didn’t fit in as a teenager.” I put my main characters up against kidnapping trolls and my hero got to save the day with a big damn sword of DOOM. Okay, well, it’s more like a rapier of doom, but my point is, it was fun. And actually, kind of decent. That really shocked me, actually. I didn’t think anyone but me would even want to read something like that, but again, the dumb, it blinds me sometimes. My betas reported such things as laughing out loud. How could that be? It was my crappy practice novel.

And then I realized the important part of my practice piece: I gave it my voice, my sarcastic, obnoxious, take no bull, snarky voice.

It was a definite flash bang sort of moment, because most of my fiction writing up to that point didn’t have my voice. I’d written an awesome story like I was going to submit it to an academic journal. “Just the facts, ma’am.” And I’d written a whole series of them. Silly me.

So even though there's someone I'm dying to show it to, I've pulled my query bait in favor of better writing. But I'm not going unarmed, I'm bringing my practice piece, the novel that got an E on its O.W.L. (I feel under qualified to give it an Outstanding since it really only Exceeds Expectations as far as I can tell).

And still a full week before the con.

It feels awesome to type The End

I’m always amazed at how accomplished finishing a first draft makes me feel. It’s not like I haven’t typed “The End” before, but every time, I feel like I should go shout it from the mountain tops. I love that feeling. It’s a powerful drug, and I’m surprised I was able to overcome its addictive qualities when I first wrote those words at the ripe old age of twelve (that was the pegasus/starship Enterprise Fan fic, for those keeping track). This work has been harder than most. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I feel like I had to dig down and pull this one out in the clutch. Most of my work just flows, but I had to bleed for this one.

And so, in celebration of finishing a completed rough draft I’m putting up the query letter for some help (no, I’m not planning to query for a long time, heck, I’m not even going to start the rewrite until August, and I’m not querying with a project that hasn’t been through the meat grinder editing force of my beta readers).

First, some stats because it’s as close to statistics as I’ll ever get.

Title: From the Blood of Dragons

Words: 60,000 (that makes it the shortest rough draft I’ve had so far)

Date started: April 9, 2011

Date finished: July 1, 2011

Words per day: 712 (see, when you put it like that, writing a novel must be easy)

FROM THE BLOOD OF DRAGONS (working title, as in, I’m trying to figure out if it’s working).

Like most girls her age, Allyson Carter hates everything about herself. She’s had acne to shame a pepperoni pizza since she was ten. Her asthma’s so bad, she keeps three inhalers (backpack, pocket, bed stand). She can’t catch the eye of her crush at school, Steve, and her best friend is a troll. Okay, technically Beth’s only half troll. When a group of kidnappers corners Allyson and her friend at the mall, all hell breaks loose when Allyson spits fireballs to escape. Allyson is half dragon and never knew it. Her acne? Emerging scales. Her asthma? Actually a fiery breath weapon.

After they escape the kidnappers, Allyson learns that Steve has disappeared, and he wasn’t just any hot guy from school. Steve is descended from unicorns. The police think it’s a simple runaway case, but Allyson knows better. Someone is kidnapping the other halfs and taking their powers. If the police won’t find him, Allyson will.

Good enough just isn't

I've been waffling about this post. See, as it turns out, I can't help myself. I can't quite follow Janet Reid's advice. Last night I was lucky enough to put my query in the pot to go through the ringer with Roseanne Wells. It was hosted by the folks over at WriteOnCon, and it was awesome. When she got to my query, she basically said, good idea, but not strong enough to take a peek. I can't thank Roseanne enough. Her take sort of boiled down to: There's nothing wrong, but it could be better. (caveat: I'm interpolating, so don't quote this or pretend that she actually said it).
I think the part here that struck me, is that I've suspected it. No, I've known it. The query that sent to die for my laziness is: adequate, ordinary, run of the mill. I don't know that I'd pick up the book if that was printed on the back cover. I sort of got sucked into the lurking evil thread, and that was bad bad bad. I know better. So it's a classic case of me knowing that there's something wrong, and not knowing how to fix it. I sent it out anyway, knowing that it wasn't there. It's a pretty classic case of jumping the gun. And now, I've rewritten the letter again. Now I think it's great, but I'm convinced that first drafts are actually laced with dopamine.

Know thy self

As it turns out, many of us don’t get those clarifying moments in our lives when we can label ourselves with any sort of accuracy, but I was granted one such day. While on summer field (an intensive six week course on mapping), we had the privilege of mapping in a region of Nevada with deep, rumpled valleys. The floors of the valleys were at 7000 feet, the rims: 9000 feet. We, of course, were out in the middle of Nevada mapping in mid July. While most of Nevada is a very dry kind of desert, this region is prone to the occasional summer thunderstorm (Ely, Nevada for those who care). As always, the most interesting things are always the ones hardest to get to, and the rocks in this valley were no different. All the interesting rocks were at the top, along the rim, and that’s where we would all be hiking.

As per the normal routine, we got out of the vans and listened to the days lecture on the rocks we were about to map, and how we needed to determine the structure in the area and what forces had folded the regions rocks like the front end of a Toyota camri after a head on collision. Then, to our surprise, the TAs moved on to give us a talk about safety. They described the effects of lightning (as if we’d never been through a lightning storm before), and finished off by saying that if we found ourselves in an ionized column we should throw all the metal on our person as far away as possible while crouching down in the fetal position and balancing on our tip toes. No joke, and this is still the recommended stance if you’re caught out in the open.

Of course, we all looked around, sort of nervously inspecting our boot laces. I used the awkward moments to take stock of my metal objects: Cell phone, rock hammer, compass, carabineers to clip stuff onto my back pack, belt buckle, metal eyelets of my boots… the list went on and on. I came to the conclusion that I was a walking conductor with no actual hope of shedding all this metal in time to dodge out of the striking lightning. But the sky was clear, so when they ended their rousing safety speech, I, like everyone else, headed straight up the side of the mountain to get to those tantalizing rocks at the top.

That was at 7am. By 10 am, enormous billowing clouds were forming at 8,000 feet. That’s right, I got to watch thunder-boomers forming from above, nice perspective that. At noon I ate my sandwich while dipping my feet in the clouds, feeling like some great god toying with nature. By one, lightning was striking all around. I hadn’t finished mapping, and I’d be damned if I caved in before the boys. There was a bit of rivalry between the ladies and our male counterparts who seemed to have lost the ability to talk about anything other than mapping naked—it was that remote.

Determined to stay the course, and make the world’s greatest map, I played chicken with the clouds. I told myself that I’d stay on the ridge until the lightning was really REALLY close. I decided that anything under the 4 second mark would be a little too close for comfort. And so I walked along the ridge counting between the flash and the boom to determine if my life was yet in danger. I know this is a terrible way to do it. People can be struck by lightning as far as twenty miles from a storm. And here I had lightning on all sides: Grade A dumb.

Then one particularly bright flash happened and I opened my mouth to count (turns out I talk to myself while mapping the great wilds). The percussion wave knocked the air out of me before I could say “One.”

At that moment in life I knew something very valuable about myself: I am a coward.

With no conscious thought, my legs propelled me right over the edge towards the valley floor and presumed safety. I leapt bushes, rocks, and cacti. Nothing would slow me. I have never—before or since—moved as fast as that day. I descended 2,000 feet without falling in only a few short (terrified!) seconds. I really have no idea how I managed it, but by the time I made the valley floor, the gods had sent hail stones to ensure I’d learned my lesson.

And boy did I ever. I’m mortal. A mortal coward.

And what does this have to do with anything? Well, I’m about to send out the query letter, and I feel like I did at 3:30 that day, hiking back up to 9000 feet.