Fast Start, Slow Start.

The Read ...

 Fast or slow, the start of your novel and its speed off the blocks are always a problem.  A breaking point for agent, publisher, and reader.  My latest read has me puzzling this question ... because the start of next year's "novel" is breathing down my neck.   

I bought Cricket McRae's mystery, Lye in Wait, at a local author's reading.  She read such a vivid characterization of an interfering mother getting her way within the context of a brother's mysterious suicide that I thought she was worth buying a trade paperback for ... the first in the series.  Then, I read the first chapter and wondered if I'd lost my mind.

Oh, the book started great.  Opening sentence:  "That Thursday morning had been going so well until I found the local handyman dead on my workroom floor."  

A wonderfully simple opening line that'd warm the cockles of any critics heart.  But, the character turned out to be something of a dip.  In the first chapter, she committed two stupidities the likes of which'd get any teen in a horror movie killed ... or at least, lose a finger when she put it in an unknown substance by a dead body.

Since McRae didn't strike out with a third goof-up ... and then, used the protagonist's bad decisions as a point of humor in the book ... I kept reading and was rewarded with a neat, intricate plot that illustrated that having a family can be dangerous to your health.

Web and Other Stuff ...

Tamela Burhke at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer's asks a question I often ask myself:  basically Why blog?.  One of the first things she mentions is what a time-sink it is.  Many of her comments seem to apply to non-fiction writers more than fiction ones.  Still, you should make note of her comments.  Oh, I've followed the blog too so I can read the next installment in the discussion.

Overwhelmed by all the tweets on Twitter?  Roni Lauren over at *Fiction Groupie* has a simple way to organize your Twitter "follows"?  -- "Authors on Twitter".  You might go over and take a look.

Did you catch the Thursday (12/9) front page article on e-books in the New York Times?  Romance readers seem to be buying the most e-books.  (Link courtesy of the AW Water Cooler.)   Seems like they don't have the courage to show the semi-salacious print covers in public.  ...  Don't quite understand it, but then, I've always thought Favio something of a turn-off.  Maybe shy away for displaying erotica?

One more media networking thing.  David Wisehart is doing a promotion experiment on Twitter -- #Sample Sunday.  Visit his blog, Kindle Author, to get the details.  Published, work-in-progress, short stories -- the categories are open.  This is listed as an experiment on AW Water Cooler.

Progress ...

If cleaning is progress, I'm making it.  So far, it's only manuscripts ... but I have loads of paper piling up again that needs to be sorted and filed and recycled in the printer.  Now ... if only some of the places where I have long standing submissions would start cleaning up their files.

Guess, I just as soon have a rejection after three months as let a submission continue to hang in the nether regions.

Trivia ...

The rest of the house needs sorting and dumping and cleaning too.  Part of it gets done today and tomorrow.  A friend who's allergic to cats is coming to visit.

 

Too Cheap for Hardbacks

The Read: Sunday, the number 1 son (actually, the only) said he saw Patricia Briggs Bone Crossed in mass paperback.  Now, I've been salivated over the hardbound for what seems forever.  With my inclination to dive into worlds I know and enjoy, you can imagine my dilemma.  My cheapness and and lack of shelf space ruled.

Monday, I bought the book with the intention of maybe reading it by Tuesday.  Finished it Wednesday night because I really am concentrating to trying to do a rough outline for Maren (not title in sight).  Can't say I "loved" the book, but I sure read slow while I savored it. 

On the cover, Charlaine Harris says:  "An increasingly excellent series... I love these books."  The "increasingly excellent" comment got to me.  The books so far are mining a rich lode of werewolf, walker, vampire, fae lore with non-duplicating plots.  What I liked about Bone Crossed is the plot within a plot with two villains chasing Mercy -- one she'll fight with another day (the local vampire master) and one she didn't kill, but caused to be killed by a wooden fae staff who follows her around wielded by a oakman (a type of fae) victim.  Hey, there's only so much a 30 pound coyote can do.

Guess others would latch onto the progress of her romance with the local alpha werewolf (which also added an additional complication since not all the werewolves welcomed a coyote into the pack).  I'm more intrigued by the 2" diameter oak tree that suddenly appeared by Mercy's trailer -- especially since the next episode in the series features a fae book (grimoirie?).

So back to salivating.

 Progress:  Bone Crossed made it more difficult to outline Maren.  I was thinking I only had problems figuring out where to start it.  (I've some 4,000 words of mostly backstory ... or beginning which seem to be retarding my writing speed (lack thereof, actually).  Now I have to complicate my plot.
 
Already did that once with the shifter who followed her into our world being captured by the bad guy and have a section where she rescues him against her better judgment.  But I still have to comb my research for a unique combination of traits and powers for the ultimate villain who controls the people who were going to be my first villains.  That doesn't make much sense, but I'm still working out the details.

Emma.  One rejection down.  Super fast in two days.  Ain't email wonderful?

Trivia:  The New York Times had an article about readers complaining about the new pricing agreement between Amazon and Macmillan.  Kindle users are complaining about paying more than $9.99 (a loss leader price) for a book.  They've taken to leaving lousy reviews of the book in protest.  While I don't like the rigidness of the Kindle/Amazon paradigm, I think the readers are being more ossified than Amazon.

Actually, the readers are just showing their own ignorance.  They were quoted as calling the writers greedy for setting the price of their books so high.  Granted I haven't published a novel, but I didn't realize I got to price my book if I ever do.