Author: tamaramorning

Query Hell

You know, honestly, writing query letters is hard. Really hard. You want to capture the reader’s (agent’s) interest immediately, and keep it in your grasp for the rest of that one simple, short page. It doesn’t sound hard. I mean, really, how difficult could it be to keep someone interested for 200 words? As it turns out, pretty dang hard.

I’ve spent most of the week working on my query letter for the 2YN story. And I have the bruises on my forehead to prove it, from banging my head on my desk in frustration. I thought I had a decent query letter. Then I started working on Lesson 11 of HTTS, which just so happens to focus on query letters. (Perfect timing, yes?) And I promptly started second-guessing myself. Holly Lisle’s example starts off with THE SENTENCE as the first paragraph. The second paragraph has about two sentences on story, then delves into theme. That’s sort of where I ran into trouble. I mean, I hadn’t consciously thought about theme for this story, except WAY back in the beginning stages, roughly 2 ½ years ago. So, revisiting that was a bit of a challenge to me. As was cutting down the story details to a bare minimum. Most of the sample queries I’ve seen lately have that one initial hook paragraph, then another paragraph focusing on story. Not two sentences focusing on story. So yeah, little bit of trouble there.

And then there’s the bio paragraph. I don’t actually have a bio or credits, and I’ve seen conflicting opinions on how to play that out. So far, I’m going with a simple statement of the story’s stats and the fact that it’s my first novel (It’s not, actually, but the first one I’m subbing.), for lack of anything else. I’m planning to post it on Forward Motion for feedback, but if anyone has any suggestions for the bio information, it would be greatly appreciated.

Done!

With this draft of Witches. Finally. It comes in at 188k. Which, considering the original draft was 297k, doesn’t sound so bad. I know I need to cut quite a bit more, but right now, I’m letting it sit and breathe. I’m hoping to do a novel swap with it, but I’m not in any great hurry. It’s also going through my crit group, and I have no intentions of subbing it anytime soon.

Now that this draft of Witches is done, I can work on some other things. Like finishing the sequel, which is probably about 2/3rds done. And considering I haven’t written anything new in over a month, that should be interesting, getting back into the swing of things.

I’m also working on my query letter for the 2YN story. I hate writing queries, but I’m determined to come up with a good one for this story. I also plan on going through the MS one more time to make sure everything’s cleaned up and pretty, then I’m going to start subbing it. Nervous about that, but it’s time that story left the nest.

But for now, let me just say again: I’m DONE!

Standing On The Edge

I’ve been editing Witches like mad for the past two months. Mad, I tell you. Until some days I just wanted to strangle my characters, or merely use some transparent act of God to kill them all off at once so they wouldn’t make my head hurt anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I love this story. Love it. However, it’s been running around in my brain, in some form or another, for almost ten years. That hurts just to type those words. Ten. Years. So, I think I can be forgiven for getting a little tired of the story. Only occasionally, mind you, as I haven’t been working on it continuously for ten years. Far from it. The original first draft ended at around 297,000 words. Yes. Far too long. The second draft was about 50k shorter. I’ve mostly finished the current editing pass, and it’s sitting at 197k. So, all in all, I’ve cut 100k from the story. Yeah. I’ve cut, in essence, an entire book from this story, and I know I still need to cut at least 50k. I have about eight more chapters to re-visit, all of which I marked in my notes as possible cuts. When I finish that, I’m going to put this story aside for a while and let it breath.

But you know what? I still love these characters. They don’t bore me. They pop into my head at unexpected moments. I still can’t wait to see what happens to them. I think that’s a good sign. Heck, a lot of the real people I know have more than started to bore me after I knew them for ten years. But not my characters. So up next, when I finish the little bit of clean-up I have left on this draft, I’m going to finish writing the sequel to Witches. And I know, the draft of that story won’t be anywhere near as long as the first draft of Witches.

All in all, I’ll be happy to put Witches aside. For now.

Killing My Darlings

I’ve spent most of the day editing. About ten hours. I know this draft of Witches is WAY too long, and I know I rambled on a bit, seeing as how it was the first thing I ever really tried to write (and I lost my way several times), but it still sucks when I have to take out scenes that I love. I hate doing that, even when I know the entire scene (chapter, really) was pointless in terms of the story, except to illustrate the sheer volatile nature of Kahleena’s relationship with Julien. But still. Hard to cut it. Of course, I stuck it in the file I keep for everything I’ve cut from this story. Hey, if it ever gets published, I can do something with the deleted scenes, right?

Of course, I wrote much of Witches without an outline. Now that I’ve learned the folly of that (for me personally, anyway), I’m hoping to avoid any more purely indulgent scenes. And not have to cut half the MS to get it to the outer reaches of publishing length. Here’s hoping the editing goes well tomorrow, though I won’t spend nearly so long at it.

The Prodigal Returns

No, I haven’t actually dropped off the face of the planet. Not that there’s been much evidence to the contrary around here…I’ve been busy. Yeah. That’s it. Busy. Sort of. Or lazy, whichever word you prefer (although the second is probably much nearer the actual truth). Work’s been pretty busy lately, and I’ve been out of town, too, so that’s two excuses I’m using.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of editing on Witches. I’m a little past the halfway point in this pass, and of course, editing eats my brain, so it’s a slow go most of the time. At this point, I’m looking forward to finishing this pass and putting it away for a while.

My crit group has two new members, and is a lot more active lately, so that’s been taking more of my time than it has in roughly a year. It’s all good, though. We needed the new blood, and they seem to be a good fit. They’ve both done really useful crits on my latest chapter, and I’m looking forward to getting into both of their stories.

I haven’t done any writing this month. At all. Might possibly explain my less-than-sunny attitude of late. (Actually, it probably does. I’m always much happier when I’m writing something. Guess that’s a sure sign I was meant to be a writer, huh? Maybe not a good one, but a writer nevertheless.) I’m hoping to get at least a few thousand words in this week so the month won’t be a total bust on the writing front. I think I needed the break from my over-achieving madness, but I can feel the stories starting to nibble at the edge of my brain again. Not to mention that I’m playing catch-up on the HTTS lessons, and that story is starting to take shape as well. Like I need another story in the queue for this year.

Actually, the main reason I haven’t been around lately is that I got sucked into Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books. Completely consumed. To the point that I find myself talking with a Scottish accent (But only in my head. So far, I’ve managed to keep it from being out loud. The talking-to-myself-in-my-head thing is totally normal for me. I swear.) I absolutely love these books. The world is so realistic I feel like I’m there. I love Jaime and Claire. I think they’re great characters, and so lifelike I feel like I know them. (And, incidentally, could I get a Jaime for myself, please?) I love big books that let me sink into them, and I’ve been totally immersed for the last several weeks, to the point of staying up ’til 3 a.m. on a day I have to work because I had to find out what happens! I just wish I’d read the books before Conestoga last July, when Diana Gabaldon was the Guest of Honor. I did go to several panels she was on, and was very intrigued by her, but I probably would have gotten a lot more out of it if I’d read the series first. Love them. Can’t wait ’til September when the next one comes out. And, strangely enough, I’ve seen three people in the last couple of weeks who have been reading one of the books. Go figure. I’m surrounded.

So, that’s the reason I haven’t been around. I’ve been in Scotland (I wish), and in the 1700s. Good reason, no? But I finished A Breath of Snow and Ashes today (at about 2 a.m.), so I have absolutely no excuses for slacking off. (Like I need an excuse.)

Why, No, I Don’t Have A Life Outside Of Writing (Why Do You Ask)?

And the results for the first week of June are….Success! Well, partial success, anyway. I hit all my word count goals for the week, in all four stories. The zombie story is going, and that’s about all I can say about that. The sequel to Witches is coming along quite well, and staying mostly true to the outline. The werewolf story is flowing very well, and I have the next two or three scenes outlined (and by “outlined”, I mean I have one sentence for each scene). I started writing the sequel to the 2YN story this weekend. It’s flying along surprisingly well, especially considering I outlined the first two chapters only, and hey, finished those this weekend. Looks like there’s some more outlining in my near future…

The editing? Didn’t go so well. I did get about five chapters edited in Witches. Sigh. It needs a lot of editing. Right now, I’m going through back crits from SG, and seeing what I agree with. Most of the crits are spot-on, and the changes make the story much stronger. So, now all I have to do is follow up with those changes through the rest of the story. Didn’t even get started editing Tempest, but I’ll catch up on that. I’m going to try to re-do the outline for that story before I edit, to help keep me in line. Here are my approximate word counts for the week:

Zombie story: 1,500
Werewolf story: 5,500
Witches sequel: 4,000
2YN sequel: 5,500
Editing: 10,000

May Madness

I knew at the beginning of the year when I set my personal goals that I was being overly ambitions. But it seemed doable. It still seems doable, although my brain does not seem to share my belief. For the last two weeks, I’ve written nothing. Nada. Zilch. On the upside, I did get the 2YN story edited. Again. And I’m happier with this draft. Hoping to start sending it out soon. It’s now tentatively titled Charming Dragons. I wrote about 37,000 words in the first two weeks of the month, so May wasn’t a total bust, but I’d hoped to finish the draft of the Witches sequel this month, and that didn’t happen. It didn’t even come close to happening.

However, I do have a spiffy new plan to finish writing the three stories I’m currently working on (zombie story, Witches sequel, werewolf story), by the end of August, along with the sequel to Charming Dragons. And edit Witches AND Tempest of Angels. So, clearly I haven’t passed the overly-ambitious part of the year yet. 🙂 I do have set word count goals every day, and certain days to work on certain stories. I’m hoping the juggling act will keep me from burning out on any one story. At least, that’s the plan.

Now I’m off to brainstorm the new story. Wish me luck!

Newest Reading Discoveries

Yes, this will be the post about books I’ve read lately. Except I’m not going to list all the books I’ve read since I last talked about it. There are far too many, and not because I’ve read a lot this year. (I haven’t. I’ve only read 43. I’m woefully behind on my goal of 165.) It only means I’ve been horrible about posting here. But I’m trying to remedy that, I swear.

I mentioned three of the books I’ve read lately (Outlander; Need; Tattoo) in my post about Conestoga, so I won’t mention them again here. (Except to say you should really go buy them. Right now.) So, skipping those, and touching on a few of the books I really, really enjoyed over the past couple of months.

First up are a pair of books by Maria V. Snyder: Magic Study and Fire Study. These two are the last books in the trilogy that started off with Poison Study, which I read last year. I don’t know how I managed to forget that there were more books in this series, but when I saw them on the shelf, I immediately bought both of them. How to explain just how sucked into these books I became? I can’t. The first one, Poison Study, intrigued me from the very first page, when Yelena is taken from the dungeon, where she’s about to be put to death, and offered a position as the General’s poison taster. Freedom or death? Hmm. Not a tough choice. The catch is, she’s given a poison, Butterfly’s Dust (I think that was the name of it), for which she has to come to Valek, the General’s chief of security and über-spy, every day for an antidote. Of course, much chaos and intrigue ensue, at the end of which, she’s revealed as having magic, and therefore is banished…back to the homeland from which she was kidnapped as a child.

In Magic Study, she is reunited with her family, and then taken to the Citadel to learn how to use her magic. Except that there’s a crazy-mad magic-wielder out there who is kidnapping girls and torturing them in a bizarre ritual to gain unlimited power (aren’t they all after unlimited power?), and she ends up as his final victim. This story carries over somewhat into Fire Study. Ms. Snyder’s writing and storytelling kept me absolutely riveted, and I found myself staying up far too late on several nights, desperate to find out what happened. Her newest book, Storm Glass, which is set in the same world, came out last week, and I’m eagerly anticipating its arrival in my mailbox.

I’m a huge fan of Rachel Caine, especially the Morganville Vampires series (new book out in approximately one month), but I enjoy the Weather Warden series as well. She has a new series out, the Outcast Season, the first book of which is Undone. This one is set in the same world as the Weather Warden books, and it’s about Cassiel, a Djinn who refuses to do as she’s ordered, and gets cast out and into a human body. Needless to say, this does not make her very happy. Or well-adjusted. But she ends up working for the Wardens with a human partner, and discovers that something evil is after her new friends.

And I just finished reading Nobody’s Princess, by Esther Friesner. The cover caught my attention first, so I picked up the book and read the back cover copy. Helen of Troy as a young girl who can’t figure out why everyone thinks she’s so pretty, nor does she understand why it even matters? I immediately fell in love with the idea. She doesn’t care about being pretty, she just wants to be a warrior, like her brothers. For a Spartan, you wouldn’t think that was such a big deal, but she is a princess, so apparently that’s a no-no. But she manages, and when her sister is sent off to the neighboring kingdom to be married, she goes along to comfort her, then ends up on several grand adventures of her own. Adventures that would make even her Spartan-king father have a heart attack. This one is firmly YA, and I really liked it. There’s a second book of Helen’s adventures, too, called Nobody’s Prize. I assure you, it will be making an appearance on my bookshelf in the near future as well.

Near Disaster

This was supposed to be a post about what I’ve been reading lately, but I think that will have to wait while I ramble on about something else: Yesterday, as I was working on the Witches sequel, my computer apparently took a dislike to the work and ate it. All 75,000 words of it. Gone. Not only did the computer close my Word program, it erased the entire document off of my thumb drive. It did do an AutoRecovery save at the last second, because I saw it before it vanished into the ether. So I didn’t panic. Then.

I opened up Word again. No message saying Word had saved the file I was working on and would I like to open it again? (Yes, please, I would have loved that. But no.) And that’s when I realized the draft was gone off my thumb drive as well. This is the point where I started to panic. I mean, I’ve been working on this story for two months, and this draft is scheduled to be finished this month, so that was a lot of work. I resisted the impulse to bang my head against the desk.

I checked the on-line help site, and came up with a whole list of things to try, including re-setting Word functions to recover a damaged file. No go. After two hours of this, I developed a headache (No, not from banging my head against the desk.), turned off the computer (a.k.a. “you piece of crap, give me back my story!) and retreated to regroup and take a nap. Which wasn’t very restful, let me tell you, since visions of re-writing all 300 pages kept flashing through my mind, along with a plan to get myself caught up on this by the end of the year while still accomplishing my other goals.

When I woke up, I took a deep breath, turned on the computer, and tried again. Three hours and countless document searches later, I finally found it. Well, most of it. I lost about 500 words, but really, in the scheme of things, what’s 500 words? It was stored in some temporary file somewhere, and I was so happy to see it that I could have kissed the screen.

Now, after my best friend had her hard drive crash a couple of months ago and lost everything, I made sure to save copies of all my drafts to my two e-mail storage accounts. Did I have a copy of the Witches II draft there? No. Of course not. Do I now? Definitely. So, the morale of this story is: 1) Always, always, always back up your work, and 2) Prayers to the computer gods sometimes get results.

In a slightly different writing-related-crash, Holly Lisle has a new website where she does Writing Crash Tests. You should check it out, and see what happens with the Case of the Exploding Cat.

Conestoga 2009

I’ve been to this con three times now. Does that qualify me as a regular? Possibly. I have to say, this year seemed a lot… tamer than previous years have. Not nearly so many people in costumes this time around, which was something of a disappointment. I always enjoy checking out the costumes.

We did sit in on some interesting panels. And, of course, discovered some great new (to me) writers. One of them was Carrie Jones. I went out and bought her newest book, Need, which came out in December and is on it’s 7th print run. 7th! Isn’t that awesome? And the book was great. I think I read it in under 3 hours. Actually, I owe Carrie a great big thank you. Her YA tale of pixies running amok kept me entertained in the airport AND distracted during my flight. And I’m terrified of flying, so that should tell you what a great book it is.

I also-finally-read books by two authors I “discovered” at Conestoga last year. The first one was Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. Yes, I know that book has been out a little while, and many people have told me to read it, I just…didn’t have time, okay? But I couldn’t put it down. LOVED it. I love me some Scotsmen in kilts. And how many hot red-headed protagonists do you really see these days? Not enough of them, if you ask me. I already bought the next two books in the series (and would have bought more, if the bookstore had had the third one in stock just then).

I bought Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Tattoo. I’ve been on a bit of a YA kick lately. It seems my own writing is running to YA, and I’ve always loved reading it, it just seems to be dominating in my reading pile the last few months. Although, glancing at said TBR pile, I seem to have run out of YA. Hmm. Well, Rachel Caine’s new Morganville Vampires book will be out in June. Guess I can wait ’til then. I think. Anyway, enough blathering. Tattoo was an excellent, engaging read. I liked the premise, loved the characters. I’m a sucker for a four-friends book anyway, but the girls in this one were so different and yet so compatible, I really enjoyed it. The idea of temporary tattoos that give you cool Sidhe powers and only having three days to save the world from an evil fairy, all while getting ready for the biggest dance of the school year, is awesome, too. I definitely recommend this.