Queries and Changes

Progress ... The queries in the back of my mind jumped to the front over the weekend -- like it's time to refine my approach to queries.  Spent a whole evening sorting through the stale queries I had hanging out there.  (About six for three books.)  By the time I organized them, cleaned them up and set up a new tracking system, I had three left ... one for a book submission which I'll probably withdraw. 

Actually, I'm thinking of not sending out anymore queries for a while.  Found a new critique partner (I hope.) who caught stuff my other valiant critiquers hadn't.  (Believe me, they found plenty wrong.)  -- Guess I don't have the craft stuff firmly internalized yet.

One thing, I'll be pickier about who I send my queries to.  No more general fantasy agents.  Now, I'm looking for agents who do both middle grade and young adult with a strong interest in fantasy (not necessarily just paranormal).  It narrows my options so I really do need to limit the number of queries I send out there,or I'd quickly exhaust the possibilities.

If you are looking for some in-depth info about agents -- beyond the summaries at Agent Query and Query Tracker (etc), you might look at Casey McCormick's blog Literary Rambles.   Click Here.

Of course, there's Publisher's Marketplace too, but they charge.  I'm still an amateur and don't feel I can justify the cost.

Sterling Reading Advice ... The Sunday New York Times Magazine had an interview with Charlaine Harris, "Once Bitten" where she gives her take on vampires.  I liked her writing advice: "For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write.  That's all there is to it."

I really wish it were so.  All I can think of is the joke about the guy who wrote a class paper:  "Pop pop, poppity pop pop ..."

The Read ...  Jim Butcher keeps moving Harry Dresden from one disaster to another conflagration.  Old and new characters appear ... giving him a smidgen of help while digging him deeper into a hole.   As usual, I love the way he depicts characters through their actions and dialog.  His vampire-hired assassins are a hoot in the way he gets the dialog to indicate their weird mental processes.  I don't know if Butcher was a student of Edward Sapir or Benjamin Whorf, but ...  [I'll reserve that discussion for when I find myself among a bunch of anthropologists.]

Did I mention the action?  During the transition (about half way through) from setting up the problem facing Dresden to delaying Dresden so can't reach the villains in time to prevent his daughter's sacrifice -- he's being chased by these weird  assassins, mentioned above, who fire bomb his basement apartment.  The problem:  Dresden is faced with the problem of saving his cat and the elderly people who occupy the other apartments in the burning building -- with the hurt/broken(?) back he had retreated to his apartment to treat.  By the time he rescues the elderly occupants and gets taken to a safe-house, Dresden is treated for his back only to face a different assassin.  --  All in about 20 pages or so.

Thought I'd just throw in a couple lines, out of context, that had me laughing out loud.
1)  "Wizards don't giggle," I said, hardly able to speak.  "This is a cackling."  [Note the adverb and to-be word, anyone?]
2)  Sanya's eyes danced, though his face was sober.  "You are a drug dealer (pizza).  To tiny fairies.  Shame."

I've noticed another interesting difference in this book -- rather long, for Butcher, existential commentaries about religion, values, change, and other important stuff I don't remember in the previous books.

Trivia ... Went to the Farmer's Market in the cold.  Bought all sorts of good stuff -- kettle corn, snickerdoodles, apple strudel.  Hey, I didn't say healthy.

Changes ...

The current read...  Am savoring Jim Butcher's Changes featuring Harry Dresden.  The family lending library came through with pennants rampant so I could read the book before the mass paperback came out.  

(Sorry.  I refuse to join Cheapskates Anonymous.  I love pinching my pennies and hugging my dollars.)

Opening hook?  How about learning you have a daughter, you never guessed you had, who has been captured by your vampire enemies.  Talk about pushing an orphan's buttons!  Of course, the Wardens supposedly protecting mankind from the supernatural are dysfunctional again.  If they weren't, Dresden couldn't be such a "lone ranger".  Dresden's going to have to solve this contretemps on his own.

Butcher always blows my mind in how much action he puts into his stories.  The chapters are short, and he leaves all sorts of hooks dangling at the end of his chapters.  You never know which characters from the previous books will appear to complicate things.  More often than not, they poke a finger in Dresden eye ... or wreck more violent mayhem.

How does Butcher work his "action arcs", besides masterfully?  Each chapter presents a problem which leaves Dresden deeper in trouble than he was before.  The larger arc moves too.  By page 70 (out of 400+), I think most of the major players are on the stage, each with a scene that complicates the plot.  Then, when Dresden makes the first move to counter the vampires, I looked up and saw I was on about a third of the way through.  --  [Do you think I've discovered a formula for writing fiction?]

Incidentally, I think Butcher foreshadowed the ending by page 36.  Why?  Just the way it stuck out in the prose.

Web Notes...  The Gotham Writer's Workshop sends out emails to people interested in learning how to write or wanting to improve their results.  You can sign up by visiting:  http://www.writingclasses.com/   There is a little box at top where you can drop your email.  Granted they want to sell you classes, but I find the info in the emails useful (even though I tend to ignore the ads.  (I connected with them when I entered one of their contests ... and lost, but won at the same time.)

Are there any literary types lurking around here, here's Gotham's take on the best literary markets.  http://bit.ly/9nf44I   You can sample their info and decide if you want to read more from them.

Efforts ... Still, revising along to see what I wrote for Kaffy Anne and the Voices of Ghost Creek.  Was pleased that the first ghost appeared right where it's supposed to -- the midpoint of the draft, after much foreshadowing.  Still feel rather elephantine in the lack of speed in my progress.

Trivia ... The surgery went well -- just the removal of some scar tissue, but I had to drive to another town to get it done.  I was going to use it as an excuse to take a vacation but was on the computer and critiquing within two hours of getting home.

Answers: The Opening Hook Contest

"Opening hooks" being important may be a given, but I think my contest sort of showed how similar opening hooks are, regardless of genre.  I picked the pieces included because they hooked me.  With my fantasy leanings, that may have created some bias.  However, I don't think the editors for The Atlantic Fiction 2010 shared my bias.  For the record, the other selections came from P. N. Elrod's collection of short stories, Strange Brew.

Sorry if any of you thought the contest was too hard.  I didn't mean for it to be a MFA qualifier.

The Answers:

A ... "This morning, in the dark, my neck sore from sleeping in my son's room ..."  --  Literary --  Ryan Mecklenburg: Hopefulness, Atlantic.  I thought the beginning had the feel of commercial fiction when he mentioned the neighbors and their sons avoiding the street lights.

B ...  "My body hit the wooden floor with a loud thud."  -- Fantasy -- Jenna Maclaine:  Dark Sins, Strange Brew.  The witch had problems controlling more than her magic in this cute story.

C ...  "Hattie met him behind the dye vats, and me, I was forced to come along." -- Literary -- Katie Williams:  Bone Hinge, Atlantic.  The problems of being a conjoined twin when you start dating.

D ...  "Howell was still on the lam." -- Literary  --  Jerome Charyn:  Lorelei, Atlantic.  The piece started off similar to a mystery, but had some interesting table turnings to follow.

E ...  "The pounding began at 2:11 A.M. and continued until I hauled my weary ass out of bed."  --  Fantasy --  The story starts out with students turning their "martial arts/magic" lessons on their teacher and ends with establishing the rules of a relationship after the battles are fought.

What's the difference between commercial and literary fiction?  I'm sure I don't know.  All the pieces were good stories that held my attention.  Of course, if you want to be difficult you could say all the stories were commercial because they sold.  Maybe I'll have to retreat to my "snobbery" distinction.  On the other hand, I don't think I care.  I'll read a good story regardless of genre -- if I fall over it.

Progress ...  I've rewritten about a third (I think) of Kaffy Anne.  How much I have left to do depends on how much of what I had previously written lands in the junk pile.  Was rather please when, after all the foreshadowing, the first ghost appears on cue (at about a third of the way through the book).

Trivia ...  I'm having some minor surgery on Wednesday, and will be taking off a week to write and read stuff I don't have to report on.

Oh, the winner.

Pat Stoltey.

She got all the answers write.  I hope she likes Strange Brew as much as I did.

PS:  The family book exchange sent Changes, the new Harry Dresden just in time to keep me amused.

Hooked by an Angel?

There's still time to enter the opening hook contest

as I post this blog.
[ PS: Ended].

The Read...  Picked up an angel novel since they may be the new obsession, like replacing vampires and werewoves.  Thomas E. Sniegoski's  Dancing on the Head of a Pin hooked me in the book store.   After reading the cover content, I couldn't resist the opening:
"It isn't easy being a human.

      "And it was never more obvious to Remy Chandler than it was now, as he stared across the desk at the foul thing pretending to be a man."

This book has a lot going for it.  The writing is lean, mean, and right on.  Consider this example from the book:  "The Seraphim waited patiently just below the surface, as if it had somehow known that its fury would be called upon.  Dropping the mental barriers just a crack Remy allowed a small portion of the power to emerge, feeling the fire of Heaven flow through his body to ignite his hands.
        "I wouldn't do that if I were you," one of his attackers warned."

At one level, the story line is a classic good against evil, which is well set up in the first third, with a twist at the end with a touch of gray.  On another, I couldn't immerse myself in the story line as I prefer to do .

Remy, while an angel fighting to stay on earth, is obsessed with lesser beings, including a human women who he married.  The obsession kept pulling my out of the story in spite of the good writing.  Why?  I kept thinking about bonobos, a being of lesser intellect than humans.  Just as humans are a lesser intellect than Seraphims and the other angels, by definition.  [It's surprisising where orthodoxy appears, even in an iconoclastic brain.]

Sniegoski kept knocking his main character against the prejudices I had left over from growing up.  First, the few dumb guys I dated.  Then, the tragedies of the women married to really dumb men when I was growing up.  Fortunately, both my parents were smart people. -- The book is on the trade pile.  Our experiences influence our reading as well as our writing.

Progress ...  I'm beginning to think my novel hopefuls share a common genetic  flaw.  They start in the wrong place.  At the moment, I don't think I'll search for a cure.  You need an ending before you can edit your book.

Trivia...  I think spring as really sprung.  Can summer be far behind?

An Opening Hooks Contest

The Reads ...  I just discovered good literary fiction hooks a reader almost as fast as commercial fantasy fiction.  [I know, I'm a slow learner.]  I don't normally read short fiction but The Atlantic Monthly fiction issue and P. N. Elrod's Strange Brew landed on my reading table at the same time.  Then, my brain started bubbling, and I wondered what a bunch of writers might think.   So, a contest based on these two sources:

First, I won the trade paperback, Strange Brew edited by P. N. Elrod over at the Dark Wyrm Reads.  [ http://darkwyrmreads.blogspot.com]  I've been reading stories between the books normally commented on.  If you like contests, the Dark Wyrm Reads is a quick place to located a lot of them.  Also, you can get a quick heads-up on a variety of new fantasy books. 

Second, The Atlantic Fiction 2010 arrived today.  Now, I've always considered fiction in The Atlantic Monthly as literary fiction lite, by definition more entertaining than stories appearing in college literary magazines.  [I may be right or wrong, but that's my view from what little I've read in the genre.]  Whatever, you can probably find a copy on a magazine rack.

You'd think there'd be a major difference in the openings of the two types of stories.  I glanced through the Atlantic stories so see if any interested me.  Some did, and surprised myself by reading some.  So, I thought I'd do my own contest to see how easy it was for you tell the difference between the two types of openings.  Below are the first three sentences of five stories [hopefully without any typos].  Can you guess which ones are fantasy and which ones are literary?  Rules and prize can be found at the end.

A ...This morning, in the dark, my neck sore from sleeping in my son's bed, I stand at my front window with a cup of coffee, wait for the paper, and look out on the neighborhood.  From up the street the Jensen couple walks with their two teen-age sons.  They're dressed in dark colors and avoid walking under the street lamps.

B...My body hit the wooden floor with a loud thud.  I'm not sure if it was the fall that knocked my breath from my chest, or the naked man who landed on top of me.  Either way, I was left lying on the cold floor, blinking up at the ceiling, and trying to drag some air back into my lungs.

C...Hattie met him behind the dye vats, and me, I was forced to come along.  Why did I agree to it?  All-morning whines, whispers, and pinches to the nape of my neck, that's why.

D...Howell was still on the lam.  He'd been a grifter most of his life, a guy without a permanent address.  He had six Social Security cards, seven driver's licenses, a potpourri of voter-registrations cards, bankbooks under a dozen names.

E...The pounding began at 2:11 A. M. and continued until I hauled my weary ass out of bed.  My hand fumbled awkwardly around the nightstand until it finally closed over my gun.  I was fuzzy from the lack of sleep, but I never left my weapon behind these days.

To start the comments:  I read all the pieces before I selected them randomly and just noticed that most of the selections were first person point-of-view.  Another quaint point:  two of the passages have people waking up, something that's supposed to be part of a cliched opening.   Guess if it works, it sells; if it doesn't work, it's a rejected cliche.

The Prize (Re-prizing forward, really):
P. N. Elrond (editor).  Strange Brew.  New York: St Martin's Griffin, 2009. [used]

The Rules:

1.  I'd appreciate knowing which opening hooked you fastest. 

2. For the contest: write the letters in sequence and tell whether you think the opening is literary (L) or fantasy (F) [ ie:  Z = F ] at the end of your comment.

4.  Contest closes at midnight on Saturday, April 24, 2010, USA MDT, and is limited to the USA so I can send the book media mail.

5.  The winner will be drawn from the people who label the most openings correctly (by my definition).

6.  By Monday, April 26, 2010, I'll announce the identity of the winner. 

To End on a Fun Note:

The Kindle has made the comics.  Crankshaft got a Kindle as a gift.  The comic comes from the studio of Tom Batiuk and Tom Ayers and is one of the comics I read -- even before writing.  The series started 20 April 2010.  Follow the fun: http://tinyurl.com/ysszfn

Winning the Query Wars

Cough.  Cough.

The Springtime allergies caught up with me.

I've been spending most of my daytime sleeping in the chair with the hot water bottle, 
much to Wiggle's delight.

Thought a lot about my query though without coming up with a new pitch angle.  Darn.

The Read (modified):  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't have to do queries.  Everyone would just love to open a bidding war for our immortal words.  Oh, it's time to wake up.  Hey, I can dream I could write like Charlaine Harris, can't I? 

Finished the True Blood DVDs.  My opinion:  While well done, they're just another example of how of how screen adaptations oversimplify novels.  Though Dead and Gone offered a belated explanation why women were so ready to jump into bed with Jason.  He unconsciously casts a sexual glamour, thanks to his fae heritage.  Of course, it took Harris a few books to reveal that bit of info.  --  Just another way in which the Sookie Stackhouse novels have grown.

A few words on Dead and Gone.  Harris has closed down the fae element, except for faes who decided to remain in the mundane world.  In the process, she gave the reader a rip-roaring conclusion that was only hinted at in the beginning.

[Why do I use the word fae?  The term fairy is usually used for a narrowly defined being.   Example:  Fritha, a spriggen who serves as a villain in Emma is a fae, but definitely not a fairy by any definition except a supernatural being -- and we all know how many of those there are.]

 Web Notes:  You did catch the information that Twitter is going to be archived as a culturally significant phenomena?  To the tune of tetragigabites [or some such word].  The number is bigger that the US national debt.  My computer works in the 100 gigabite realm, and with all the novel manuscripts and research material I have stored on it, it's less than 80% full.

Queries:  Am giving this it's own section.  Because I've got to push myself off the can and market the manuscripts I've "finished".  Problem?  I'm thinking I need to have them Beta Read which to me is different than critiquing.  Betaing includes reading the whole stew from beginning to end.

Will say one thing, writing a query is like going into battle ... just like selling anything is.  I think one of the biggest misconceptions about writing is that we're dealing with "art".  Even if you write literary, you still have to sell it if you want to have readers.  You have to sell your book even if you self-publish ... unless your someone like Florence Foster Jenkins.
 
Progress:  Shifting the words of Emma's query has become a obsession.  In stead of piles of printouts of research info, the papers on my desk are about what to include in your query and examples of successful ones.  It's an important campaign since selling your query to an agent or publisher crosses the bridge from being a writer to becoming an author.  --  I'll be writing more about queries in the near future.

Kaffy Anne Beaugarrd.  It's the manuscript I rescued from My Documents.  Threw Maren in there, and pulled out Voices of Ghost Creek, which was more than 2/3s written.  Not bad.  But, needs some major revisions which I have started to do.  All the excitement Maren extinguished has come bubbling up again.

Trivia:  Just eating lunch, having coffee, running errands, and, maybe, getting rid of the to-trade pile which is two columns tall.  I actually got some authors off the bookshelves, even including Candace Camp's weres.

Plot Points

The Read:  Plot points, big and little, need to be embedded a story -- fiction or narrative non-fiction.  I think plots work as a compass to keep us on track to where we need to end up.  Think of a hook dragging the writer through the story.  If we're lucky, the happenings will hook readers into our tale and keep them there.  Woe be to the writer who can't stay interested in the book they are trying to write.  They will gnash their teeth mightily. 

Now that I've played Cassandra, all gloom and doom, I'll move on to admire Charlaine Harris's nimble exercises in keeping the action in Dead and Gone moving.  No secret that Harris is one of my favorite authors.  I started the book sometime over the week-end (Sunday?) and expected it to take as long to read as Pure Blood.  Only, I was more than half-way through it as of Tuesday, making me wonder why the novels I like the most finish the quickest.  

Dead and Gone is the ninth in the Sookie Stackhouse series [in mass paperback, at least].  I picked it from the pile to comment on because I'm watching the True Blood DVDs.  Only the two don't compare too well.  So, I'll gnaw on the plot points.  By the first fifth of the book [some 60 pages],  Sookie contends with the weres of America coming out, finds herself married to Eric [the New Orleans vampire], and having her sister-in-law [Jason's wife and a werepanther] crucified with silver nails.  A third of the way into the book, Sookie discovers her life's in danger because her great-grandfather (a faery prince) is in the middle of a fae war.  Also, somewhere in that mix, the FBI has shown up to determine whether Sookie's powers are real enough to recruit her.  Yeah, Harris ties it all up in a smoothly flowing story.  --  My mouth hangs open in admiration.  I'll try not to drool in front of you.

In the middle of all this, I went out and bought Dead Until Dark, the first in the series after spending a half hour last night looking for my Charlaine Harris pile.  (I was certain they were behind the Laurell K. Hamiltons, but they weren't.)  It'll be a couple days before I finish the DVDs, and then, I might have something to say about the differences between the two formats.  [Actually, I stayed up late last night and finished them.]

Web Notes:  Technically, I'm commenting on printed material, but since the editor is Chuck Sambuchino of Guide to Literary Agents  [ http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/ ] , I'm going to mention the Writer's Digest Get an Agent.  Haven't looked at too much of it yet, except for the 21 agents panting for new clients.  --  Just my luck.  Very few of them were interested in MG/YA or fantasy.

The publication offers lots of tips to digest, if not implement.  Revising your manuscript.  How not to start your book.  [Probably the next thing I read after failing to get Maren out of the blocks.]  Successful Queries.  Lots, lots more.  Much of the information can be gathered free by reading agent blogs, but I think it's nice to have it contained in one publication.

This blog.  I'm always amazed at the number of non-Americans taking a look at what I write.

Progress:  Gave up on Maren and consigned her to My Documents ... maybe after some fermentation, she'll reappear in another form.  At least, a different story.  I still like her and the new villains.

Emma.  Still, thrashing over a query.  Or, is that twisting in the wind? 

Kaffy Anne.  Pulled her from limbo where she's been languishing for a couple years.  From the looks of it, it's 2/3s drafted with lots of notes for the subsequent chapters.  Got a couple chapters read yesterday, and it wasn't too distressing to read even though it was written before Britt and the gargoyles.

Trivia:  After laying in a stock of sheep sh*t bags ... we went looking for the kind of parsley the old man likes.  The flat leaf kind since he thinks it's best, but that may be a Greek prejudice.  --   I like it too since it has more flavor.  Gives more snap to my mom's German noodle dishes.

Hooking Your Readers

The Read:  Well, growl-ly Luna and Caitlin Kittredge finally hooked me for the final third of Pure Blood.   But, the need to see how Kittredge tied all the loose ends together kept me going -- not any particular involvement with the characters.  They remained too simply drawn to tie up my interest against all the other distractions in my life.

Kittredge had all the major secondary characters sunk up to their necks in danger, including Luna.  She did end up with the love interest she preferred,  discovered the supposed "partner" was planted to build a case for firing her, and managed to destroy the nasty magical talisman that was causing all the trouble in an interesting fashion.  More important, as a foreshadowing for the sequels, Kittredge suggests that Luna isn't the magical null Luna and her family of witches thinks she is.  --  However, I won't go looking for the next book in the series.  [The plot's more complicated so this paragraph isn't quite the spoiler you might think.]

The True Blood DVDs still absorb my after-the-news reading time -- until midnight.  I can get two episodes in if I don't do anything else.  Am thinking of getting one of the later books in the series and comparing the two.  While the acting in the TV series is good over all, I think some of the actors for the secondary characters -- like Jason and Tara -- often go over the top and make caricatures of their characters.

Web Notes:  The momentus things one learns on Twitter:  Colleen Lindsay (agent at Fine Print) was out of coffee beans.  Yasmine Galenorn ( the creator of the D'Artigo sisters though I prefer Emerald O'Brien) needs coffee to write sex scenes. 

Galenorn also recommends that you never play on the web drunk.  What you say might come back and bite you.

Maybe, this is an example of why I spend so much time on the web?  No, I seldom visit Twitter.  As for Facebook, I mostly check for family and personal friends.

So much for building a platform ... though I still think you need an audience in mind before you can do it.

Progress:   None.  Struggling.  Can't even get a query draft for Emma done.

Trivia:  The Dark Wyrm [book review site, http://darkwyrmreads.blogspot.com ]  sabotaged my to-read pile.  She held a contest with Strange Brew, a collection of short stories by the likes of Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, and would you believe, Caitlin Kittredge.  Something strange happened; I won.  Do you think I can't keep my hands off it? 

Since I can't write short  fiction, I won't be commenting on any of the stories.  Though liked the twist on who was messing with Harry Dresden's favorite beer.
 

Keeping a Reader Hooked

The Read:   Once a writer gets a reader to buy the book, they have to keep them hooked long enough to keep reading.  Right?  Well, Caitlin Kittredge has pulled me pass the middle of PURE BLOOD.  Hey, I'm squirming here, but still reading.  [Duty is a harsh mistress.]

The writing isn't that bad.  The structure is twisting tighter with a bomb blast starting the change in the dynamics of the MC's partnership with the Barbie detective.   I'm at the last third of the book, and Kittredge is finally concentrating on the war between the two witch clans.  Must admit I'm hooked enough to want to see how she semi-resolves the issues with MC's personal and professional life.   But ...

The DVD set of True Blood arrived.  [Have you notice fantasy has gotten decidedly bloody in the last couple years?  Oh, for simple marauding orcs!]  The HBO series is based on Charlaine Harris'  Dead Until Dark.  Like the casting of the Bill Compton character, but I don't think Sookie Stackhouse  is portrayed with enough dippiness.  Grew up with kids like her [without the ability to hear thoughts], once removed (by parents moving to California), and don't think Paquin quite catches it.  Still, I look forward to the news ending so I can fire up the next episode.

The reading of Pure Blood is going to take a long time.  Too much competition for my free time.

Web Notes:  Got my horizons broadened by a blog again yesterday.  Nugget of wisdom:  You shouldn't limit your visits to classrooms to promote your book -- if you're lucky enough to be published.  Jewel Allen did a guest blog on Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents with a wonderful suggestion to find out what kind of stories children like.  Visit their classrooms with a partially written story ... and have the kids put the ending on it.  Visit http://tinyurl.com/yge42uk  to read all her excellent suggestions.
 
Blogging:  I'm thinking more and more that the web/social media are a huge time vampire.  Maybe that's why so many people are writing about the undead, you think?  They're trying to use the research they did when trying to discover ways to escape from vampires?  --  I now follow so many blogs, you have to hook me into clicking as I rush through my allotted web time.

Progress: I'm staggering on with Maren's metamorphosis.

Trivia:  On a more positive note.  Had tempura for lunch.  Love unhealthy vegies.

I Made It

Progress:  I kept this thing going for a month.  Now, I have to figure out how to make this pertinent to something or other.  Don't ask me what.  Am making a few changes though.

Got Emma through another chapter.  Have some ideas about making words appear faster on the page ... that I can follow through on ... but it remains to be seen if they'll work.  I'd have to start a whole new WIP to test them.  (Actually, I've got notes on file.  Like the characters, but have no idea what they are going to do besides fight something.)  

Bottom line here:  I must devise a way to outline that'll work with the way my brain doesn't work.


Tangled continues on its introspective way.  The tone won't change -- which will probably end up with it and its siblings never getting published.  It is so 70s, and maybe too literary for genre fiction.   -- Whoever said I was a conformist?

Trivia:  Pickings are getting slim at the farmer's market:  apples and squash.  I did buy a green pepper and probably the last corn-on-the-cob (for us).  Of course, there are other vegies there, but we get most of those from our own garden.  Today is tomato sauce day since we had to pick the vines before the big frost.  (I'll sneak one of the zucchini in there so I only have the two smaller ones left on the counter.)

Critical Reading:  (For me, that is.  Like trying to figure out how published writers make it work.  Maybe I should call this:  How They Done It.)

Finished the second of Charlaine Harris' Harper Connelly series (Grave Surprise) with way too many corpses showing up in the same grave and the suspects camouflaged within a sympathetic dysfunctional family.  This is a recently written series so maybe she's continuing it.  Still, haven't looked at the third book yet so I don't know if Harris capped it as a trilogy.  -- This is a mystery ... but it does have supernatural elements so I consider it fantasy.  Paranormal mystery, anyone?


One of the things I've noticed in both of the Harper Connelly books is that Harris gives a hint at the topic of her next book in the series.  In Grave Sight, she mentioned Tabitha Morgenstern as Harper's one failure.  In Grave Surprise, I think she gave some indication the relationship between Harper and Tolliver is changing.  At least, they seem to be reconciling with their estranged family.  I'll find out in the next book.  -- An interesting way to hook a reader outside of the usual pitch.



Guess this qualifies as a "cozy" since the gruesome details occur off-stage.  I'm not too sure what constitutes a cozy mystery, outside the murderous English village settings.  In my mind, I use two classifictions -- soft and hard-boiled.  Charlaine Harris is soft-boiled.  Lee Child is hard-boiled.

Writing:  I'm going to have a hard time concentrating on writing next week.  Fantasy-reading son  sent the DVD of the Harry Dresden TV show.  What a temptation, even though I understand not all the episodes aren't up to the standards of the weaker books.  Who knows, I might hate the episodes, but they should prove an interesting illustration on how a book (s) gets adapted into another medium.

Harking back to Harris.  (Or, is that 'harping', like nagging?).  In Grave Surprise, I could almost see the incident board, as in a police procedural.  The second time the perp (No spoilers here.) was mentioned, my suspicious were raised.  Each further mention of family members dropped clues and few red herrings.  Liked the twisted motive.  Harris puts sugar on southern gothic.  -- Guess, if I add a mystery element (since I flunked at thriller), I'll have to add an incident board to my outline. 

(Nothing like more balls when you can't even juggle three.)