Book Series Start-Ups

The Read ...

Book series are nothing new in fiction.  Mystery writers have been doing them for decades -- have even tried to kill off their characters ala Conan Doyle.  Other writers, especially fantasy writers, often do serial stories set in the same world but with different characters though series can be based on single characters or set of buddies.  Whatever, that's the background thinking when I pulled Andre Norton's Witch World off my shelves.  Imagine my surprise that my Ace paperback was copyrighted in 1963, one of those shortie ones that cost 60 cents.

 Witch World is about Simon Tregarth's escape from our world to one more suitable to his warrior sentiments via the Siege Perilous from King Arthur's court.  He lands in Estcarp, a matriarchy of mages (Witches is too weak a term for me.) who are beseiged by three different enemies -- two presenting in-sync cultural menaces and the mechanical Kolder, who offer a different kind of danger.  I'm about 2/3s the way through the book, and Tregarth is still gathering allies for the end-fight with the Kolder.

So what does a 1963 book read like?  I don't know if the opening paragraph would hack it today.  "The rain was a slantwise curtain across the dingy street, washing soot from city walls, the taste of it metallic on the lips of the tall, thin man who walked with a loping stride close to the buildings, watching the mouths of doorways, the gaps of alleys with a narrow-eyed intentness."

The paragraph hooked me.  What's a guy doing out in the rain watching the alleys?  The problem is the reading level.  That's one sentence there with a "to-be" verb.  I realize you guys are readers ... but how easy did you find the sentence to follow.  Do you think the average high school kid would read it comfortably?

The book itself is organized in a series of interlocking novellas (novellettes?), introducing new characters and involving old ones and making me wonder if the stories first appeared in magazines.  While Norton is telling a story slightly more than showing the characters in action, each of the characters are presented facing a clear and present danger which ends with them facing a new problem/difficulty.  --  Nothing like being led by the nose past your bedtime reading a book you know the ending of.

 

Progress ...

Revising away, high ho ... and still wondering about submitting to editors.  (Britt)  Groaning to myself about all the research needed -- even after you get the darn thing written.  Then, you hit an agent who wants a 250 word synopsis????  (We won't talk about agents who like a personlized query.)

Conclusion:  You better darn well know what your book is about.  It's something like using your pitch to focus your book -- before you market it.  If you can't write a sentence and two-paragraph summary of your story, you may not have a story.  Just a bunch of words.  I wonder if that's what I'm afraid of and not admitting it to myself.

Trivia ...

Errands, errands, and more errands.  Can't even go out to lunch because we're still eating the onion soup.  Hopefully, it'll be gone today.

Resisting the Query Itch

Queries ...  Queries ...  Of course, I've been studying how to write effective queries ...  I've got the query itch.  With three manuscripts in the hopper, I want to query.  Long to query.  --  So, I have every unpublished, unagented writer's problem (with a completed manuscript).  To query or not to query.

Last week, I thought writing a hooking query was my major problem.  After listening to a couple critique partners, I'm worried more about whether my manuscripts are up to snuff.  (Britt and Emma)

Writing an effective query seems simple enough.  Here, I'll give the "stage" to my guru-in-chief, Janet Reid ... an agent who doesn't represent what I write (dang it).  Here's the link to her guidelines:  http://tinyurl.com/2djd38m

Every other, agent I remember repeats Reid's theme ... if not the specifics. Agent Rachelle Gardner , a very nice person I've met thanks to the Northern Colorado Writers and who also doesn't represent what I write, offers some pointed comments on why an agent wouldn't want to bite on your wonderful, maybe glorious query.  http://tinyurl.com/28z76hm  [Though yesterday, Reid did extend a fin offering a temptation to query even if you think your manuscript is inappropriate.]

Now, I'll tell you a secret in case you didn't read Rachelle's post.  You can write the most glorious query in the world.  If the agent you send it do doesn't represent the genre of the book or hates horses (or whatever), you'll get a form rejection.  Sounds self-evident, but from the agent blogs -- inappropriate submissions happen all too often.  Maybe incompetent submissions more often. 

[I now have only three queries out there -- for Emma.  The rejections should more or less land by June -- one's one of those "if you don't hear from us, it's a rejection." types.  I don't see why if agents can automatically acknowledge the receipt of a query -- they couldn't sent an automatic "Your project isn't for us".

The Read ... Well, I now know what all the comment was about when I finally got to the end of Changes by Jim Butcher.  No spoilers here.  I'll just say the action gallops along to the end with a little rumination about doing the right thing.  A lot of loose ends were tied up ... but huge dangling questions left Dresden simmering.  My disappointment, Mab didn't appear at the end to tell Dresden what she thought about her new Winter Knight's adventure.

One thing I noticed in this book, Butcher is still promoting the Codex Alera series.  I don't know what it's doing nationally, but I don't think it's doing too well where I live.  Two used book stores didn't take the two books I had in trade.  (I more or less just skimmed the books.)  The Friends of the Library gets them to do whatever with.

Trivia ... Pat Stoltey, a friend from the Northern Colorado Writers, gifted me with a BFF Blogger award.  Only I don't know what to do with it.  Maybe, I'll have to go to the office after the chiropractor's to find out.  Must thank her though.  Her mention got me a couple new followers, I think.

Dumb Queries

Query Quicksand:  Since I'm stuck in the swamp, you'll just have to listen to me groan and whine about writing queries -- unless you quickly backspace or scroll down.  I thought of calling this "query hell", but I think someone else has already used the term.

In case you're wondering what I'm bitching about.  Here's as far as I've got with Emma's query:  

"Thirteen-year-old EMMA KLOKEN just knows she's the unluckiest girl in the world.  Every time she turns around, her grandmother locks her in the broom closet -- even before she thinks about doing something bad.  Emma wishes she could tell the old bat to jump in a lake, but she's too afraid.

"When her family moves to Hardscrabble in the California Gold Country, Emma's bad luck holds true.  The first girls she meets [NANCY and GLENDA] told a grudge against her because they think Emma's father 'stole' Nancy's mother's promotion.  When Nancy and Glenda take Emma for a picnic in the foothills, they throw her new bike down an abandoned mine and ditch her.  Trying to rescue her bike, Emma slides into the mine where she encounters GRIMM, a hobgoblin, who rescues her.

"When Emma learns Grimm was punished for helping her, she decides to go to Faery to rescue him.  Only problem, Nancy insists on joining her because Glenda has disappeared into Faery too."

If you're stuck on writing queries, I'm finding myself working with several tools a lot:

1)  From the Northern Colorado Writers conference pitch class:  Be able to put the basics of your story into the formula,  MC wants ????????, but can't because  ???????? makes it impossible.  Expand on that, and you have a query.  --  If you can't, you don't have a clear idea about what your story's about.

2)  Kristen Lesko at The Disobediant Writer also has a great blog about  writing pitches, http://disobedientwriter.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/writing-the-pitch/.

I printed it out a while back and have covered it with red underlinings of things I should already be able to do, but seemingly can't.

3)  Then, there's the Guide to Literary Agents.  Chuck Sambuchino features a series on successful queries.  The latest is from Ginger Clark at the Curtis Brown Agency.  http://tinyurl.com/y7k9ypw  In case you didn't know, Sambuchino is an editor at the Writer's Digest.

The Read:  Thought it was time I proved I read middle grade fiction as well as the other stuff.  So,  Ta Dah  --  let's consider Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R. L. Lafevers set before WW 1, another example of the smart kid/stupid parents genre.  You'd expect Lafevers  to fill the book with tons of backstory and explanations on Edwardian England.  Actually she concentrates on the mystery of the Egyptian curses and how Theodosia protects everyone from them.  In the process, she doles out background info on a need-to-know basis.  --  Just so happens I've spent a fair amount of time in the modern British Museum/Charing Cross neighborhoods, and I could almost picture the street layout in my mind as the kids chased around.  Also, loved Lafevers' description of the Seven Dials neighborhood which was physically more visual than given by Anne Perry, the mystery writer.

One thing to note:  While the plot is simpler than in adult/YA novels, it follows the pattern of introducing a major plot change about every third of the way through the book.  This is another book worth studying to see how an accomplished author handles a major problem. 

Progress:  How nice to be writing again -- as opposed to spinning my brain.  The funeral is going nicely, thank you.  I still have to go back to the foreshadowing of Kaffy Anne's abilities to perceive ghosts.

Trivia:  It's raining, it's pouring, and the pollen is drowning.  Hooray!  --  Except, it's Sunday and the sun came back -- so the stuff's polluting the air again.  Yeah, I know the plants don't agree with me.

Oh, I forgot.

This is my 101th post.  Guess I can keep a blog going after all.