Crash

My life, right now, is like a sucking black hole that devours all my good intentions, leaving me with nothing but gaping holes in my blog that stare at me and make me feel guilty like those bell-ringing Santas who I know are mentally heaping voodoo curses on me every time I walk by without dropping whatever spare change and pocket lint I happen to be carrying at the time, and I just can't take that kind of pressure right now without possibly going on a garden gnome killing spree or gelato binge (possibly both).

So how are you all?

Anyway, with all the talk of bad books, I want to take a second to talk about some books that

I'm REALLY looking forward to.

CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins. I was sort of blown away by The Hunger Games (which my co-worker calls The Hungry Games and makes me snort fried rice up into my nose) when it came out. So much so that I've bought roughly a half-dozen copies to give to friends. I've avoided reading too much about what to expect but what I have heard has only made me want this book more. It should be arriving at my doorstep this Friday.

LIAR by Justine Larbalestier. I admit to having read nothing else by her. Her magical type based series didn't appeal to me, and while I thought the cover of HOW TO DITCH YOUR FAIRY was quite clever and funny, it didn't scream something I needed to read. However LIAR has got me so excited I've already pre-ordered it. Plus I really like that she brought an awareness of multi-cultural narrators to light and got her publisher to change the cover to accurately reflect that her main character was a black woman and not a white girl.

THE DEMON'S LEXICON by Sarah Rees Brennan. When I first heard about this book I was meh. I thought it was kind of a chick book. However buzz got me to take a second look and I'm now anxiously awaiting my copy. Oh, and I had to order it from England because I feel that the American cover is kind of lame. The British cover is on the left and American on the right. Maybe I'm shallow and self-conscious, but I wouldn't be caught dead in public with the American cover.

LEVIATHAN by Scott Westerfeld. I loved UGLIES but I felt the rest of the books began to get slightly repetitive, however I'm dying to read his new book. Have you seen the freaking trailer? Damn.

GOING BOVINE by Libba Bray. Finally I'm waiting for this one. I don't know why but something about it just caught my attention. I tried reading her other series beginning with A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY, and while the writing was top notch, it just wasn't my thing. GOING BOVINE just seems like such a departure that I'm beyond curious.

Expect reviews of these when I get and read them. And now tell me what you all are reading. Anything you're looking forward to that I should know about?

Oh, and on the DEATHDAY LETTER front, I might (might not) have some fun news in the next few weeks. Sorry to be a tease, but it's so much fun.

Friday Mixed Bag: I'm super lazy

Such a loser. Me. Loser. Bad at this blogging thing. I tried setting up a schedule to encourage me to write more routinely. But here's the problem: When you spend hours every day writing, and then more hours editing, carving out another 30 minutes to write a blog entry just manages to always find itself at the bottom of the to-do list.

Plus: I'm seriously boring.

For example, my week consisted of finishing my revisions for Deathday and turning them in, working on my WIP, and watching Six Feet Under. My dog is always good for a couple minutes of amusement, but he has his own life and can't entertain me all the time. Oh, my other big thing this week was upgrading the hard drive in my laptop. I went from a 120GB to a 500GB. Super Big Fun.

I read, "When You Reach Me," a middle grade book that I really liked. I think I would have been in love with it if I'd actually read it in middle school. The great part about the book is that it deals with complex issues without ever playing down to the reader. No small feat when your book is about time travel. The only downside to it is that it's set in 1979 and two of the main plot threads (The $20,000 Pyramid game show, and Latch Key Kids) are relics. These days it's common for kids to be home alone after school. Back then I guess it was more of an issue because more women were entering the workforce. It didn't detract anything from my experience because I watched the show and grew up around some latch key kids, but I wonder if kids reading this today would understand the significance.

The other book I'm reading is Paper Towns by John Green. John Green is one of those writers whose work I both admire and dislike. I have the utmost respect for John Green. Not only do I think he's a fantastic author, but his blog posts and video blog posts and sundry other internet projects, are brilliant in a way I could only hope to be. Mostly I'm just happy with my blog posts if they're mildly intelligible, which they're usually not. Green puts together amazingly cogent arguments on everything from healthcare to censorship to why we should like Catcher in the Rye. It's that admiration that led me to pick up Paper Towns despite not really getting Looking for Alaska.

Okay, that's not true. I did get it. I liked everything that happened BEFORE. It was the AFTER section of the book that left me a little, "eh."

As writers I think we tend to mine the same subjects, whether we know it or not. Deathday reflects my own inability to live life to the fullest all the time. It mines my fear of dying without doing all that I want to do. My current WIP carries similar themes, even though they're significantly different stories. Both have boy protagonists who are unsure of themselves, who flounder through life until something happens to make them take charge. But even when they take charge, they still become barriers to their own success.

Similarly, I feel (notice the "I feel" part, because these are only my opinions) that Margo from Paper Towns, and Alaska from Looking for Alaska, are both manifestations of the same unattainable girl that Green likes to explore. That came out dirty and I didn't mean it to. I didn't read Green's second book...maybe I should...but it became clear to me after the second chapter of Paper Towns that one of John Green's themes that he will probably explore until it's out of his system is the idea of the plain but overachieving boy who is infatuated with the crazy, kooky but ultimately unattainable girl. This theme is nothing new and teen books and films have been doing this for quite some time. My problem thus far (since I haven't finished the book) is that Margo, like Alaska before him, feels two-dimensional. Why does Q love her so fully? I'm hoping I'll find the answer I'm looking for by the end of the book. However I'm beginning to suspect that I, like Q, will only come to realize that there is no real Margo. Margo, and all unattainable girls like her, don't actually exist.

And maybe that's the point of the book. That all unattainable girls (and guys) are little more than Paper Towns. But so far I feel like that's a bit of a cop out. If Q's discovery that the Margo he believed existed never really existed is the point of the story, then fine, but what's missing for me is seeing, at least, the Margo that Q believes existed. It's great that we're getting to see all the places where Margo is supposed to have existed but I'm not buying that Q is obsessed enough to go to such great lengths to find her.

And before I go, I'd like to take a second to discuss the difference between liking a book and not liking a book and being able to say so. For me, loving a book and hating a book produce similar effects. When I loved a book, such as Harry Potter or The Chaos Walking series, I tend to buy every book multiple times so that I can loan them out with abandon and make people love them as much as I do. I talk about the books with anyone who will listen and foster a dialog about them. I then go on to read as many things by that author as I possibly can. When I hate a book, like all the works of Hemmingway, I buy all the books and read them several times, loaning them to my friends to make them hate it as much as I do. I talk about them incessantly because I think talking about books I dislike is even more educational than talking about the ones I liked. I also tend to read everything by that author so that I can form a well rounded opinion.

Making me dislike a book is just as great a feat as making me like it. The biggest failure a book can make is to be uninteresting. I just want everyone to understand that when I hate on a book, it's almost as big a compliment as gushing over it. Because it inspired major feelings in me, and isn't that what books are supposed to do?

Okay, I'm out now. Have a safe labor day.

Anatomy of my query process

I'm a researcher. I love doing research. I have to shut off my internet connection while I'm writing because if I don't I might lose myself in researching some tidbit that has come up. It's a sickness really. One of the ways I come up with story ideas is to surf wikipedia. I just go from article to article. I can start with NASA and end up with DARPA. Or puppies.

Anyway, so when I decided (prematurely) that I was ready to search for an agent, I put a lot of research into it. First I read up on how to query an agent. The following sites were indispensable:

Miss Snark
Pub Rants
Nathan Bransford
Janet Reid

Now, there are more. There's Agent X, my awesome agency's blog at Firebrand Literary, and many others. But the sites above (especially Miss Snark) helped me learn what NOT to put into a query letter.

The most important rule I learned is that when in doubt FOLLOW THE AGENCY GUIDELINES. Did I say that loud enough? It seems silly to say but one of the biggest gripes I hear from agents is that people shoot themselves in the foot by NOT following guidelines. If an agent requests a query letter and the first five pages, then don't send a query letter and the fourth chapter. Or just a query letter. Or just five pages. If an agent says that they only accept queries via homing pigeons named Steve, then that's how you need to send it.

Some of the requests might seem meaningless to you. They might seem arbitrary. They might seem downright silly. But it's their right to ask for queries to be submitted in any form they want, just as it's your right not to submit to them. It's just like applying for any job. If you don't like their policies, don't apply there.

All you're really doing if you ignore their guidelines is pretty much guaranteeing that your query will be deleted/ignored/rejected out of hand. I mean, you wouldn't show up for a job interview in plaid shorts, flip flops, and that one tee shirt with the hole in the armpit would you? Unless you're applying for a job as me.

The next thing you want to do is gather your list of agents. You'll want to query widely. When I compiled my list, I created a two-tiered list (I did say I liked research, right?). The first tier consisted of my ten dream agents. They were the agents I really wanted to work with. The agents who I thought would most mesh with my annoying personality. Then I created a second list with about 30 agents that I also thought would represent me well.

How did I come up with the lists? A combination of research, intuition and guess work. I liked Kristen Nelson not just because of how well she represented her clients on her blog, but also because she has kickin' taste in music.

The websites that helped me find agents were:

Agent Query

Preditors and Editors

There are other sites like BackSpace and Publisher's Marketplace, but Agent Query especially helped me find the agents I was looking for. I had specific criteria in mind. I wanted a younger agent because my book was a little edgier (and I have the sense of humor of an 8th grader). I wanted my agent to have a good web presence. I wanted my agent to rep the kinds of books I wanted to read. I wanted my agent to have a proven track record.

Once I'd made my lists I wrote my basic query letter. Now, most sites will tell you to avoid gimmicks, and I agree, but this is where I broke the rules. Since my book is about a boy who receives a letter informing him he has one day to live, I decided to open my query the same way. I did have some fear that I'd send out all these query letters and that within days FBI would be arresting me for sending out death threats, but it was a risk I'm glad I took.

The next couple of paragraphs described my book. This is the most important part. These couple of paragraphs are all you have to hook the agent. If you can't do it in three paragraphs, they're going to bet you can't do it in a whole book. Maybe they're wrong, but with most agents getting a couple hundred query letters a day, they have to draw the line somewhere. There's just not enough time for them to read every person's book.

In order to make my query stand out, I used the same voice from the book. That gave the agent a taste of my writing style as well as the plot. I used those three paragraphs to let the agents know what the main crux of the story was, but also what some of the smaller subplots were going to be.

After I described my book, I gave them a real quick bit about me. I have no real writing experience, but once again I kept the irreverent voice and made a quick joke. This was in keeping up the tone of the book. These kinds of jokes were going to be in the book. This was the kind of writer they'd be getting. I also told them what genre the book was and how long. Two bits of important info too many people leave out. Granted, one could have surmised from my description that The Deathday Letter is YA fiction, but better safe than sorry.

Finally, I personalized every email. If they had a blog, I mentioned reading it. If they had a cool webpage, I mentioned that. This is your chance in just a sentence or two to let them know that you didn't just pick their name with a finger jab. Have you read a book they rep? Mention it. Did you meet them at a conference? Remind them. Have you spent the last six weeks outside their window with a telephoto lens and a box of Cheez-its? Yeah, maybe leave that out.

Once you've written your query, let others read it. I honestly think I spent more time on those 260 words than I did on my novel. Tweak it. Set it in a box and forget it for a week. Then, when you're ready, send it out.

Then wait. I got my first reply in hours. My next in a day. The rest staggered over the next couple of weeks. But it can take many weeks to get a reply. Then, if they want to read the partial or full, many more weeks (months) after that. Patience is one thing you absolutely have to learn.

And that's it.

Next week I'll tell you all why I chose Chris Richman at Firebrand Literary, a relatively unknown agent with one sale under his belt, to rep me. Which incidentally turned out to be the best decision I could have made.

Right. My query letter. So here it is. It's not perfect by any means, but it got the job done. It got my foot in the door of nine out of my ten dream agents, which is all it needed to do. By the way...don't forget to personalize every query to the agent you're sending it to. Spell their names correctly and use the appropriate salutation. Details matter.

It is our duty to inform you that your death is scheduled to occur on the early morning of October 17th, 2008.

Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated. Have a pleasant day.

All thirteen year-old Oliver Travers wanted to do when he woke up Thursday morning was squeeze in a little underwear gymnastics before school, until his mom called him downstairs to tell him he had received a Deathday Letter, which sort of ruined the mood.

Content to spend his last day of life at school (where the girls are), Oliver's best friends Shane Grimsley and Veronica (Ronnie) Dittrich convince him to burn his books and ditch school to track down the source of his letter and find out why he's been chosen to die.

In a world where only taxes, Deathday Letters, and teenage boy's hormones are certainties, Oliver, Shane and Ronnie embark upon a bus ride that takes them from the post office, to a house filled with college-aged anti-Deathday Letter activists (and Dave Matthews fans), and nearly to prison. And as the end draws near Oliver learns that living is way tougher than dying…and that kissing is wetter than he'd expected.

THE DEATHDAY LETTER, a quirky YA novel, is complete at 60,000 words. This is my first novel, but my short fiction has previously appeared on the wall of Mrs. Miller's third grade class (with two gold stars), and my non-fiction has previously appeared in XY Magazine.

I appreciate you taking the time to read my query and I look forward to hearing from you.

Tuesday Book News!

Not a lot of news to report about The Deathday Letter. I finished the huge revisions and turned them in. Now I'm just waiting for the feedback. My beta readers liked it and my agent seems to like it. He's been a little stingy on his comments since we sold it, so it's a little tough to judge where he really stands, but he's got good reasons. If he likes something my editor hates or vice versa, it might confuse me, and we all know I'm easily confused.

Have I mentioned today that my agent pretty much rocks?

Now that the major revisions are done, my focus is turning to what comes next. Truthfully, it's been weighing heavily on me. I have so many ideas it's so often difficult to choose one. Since I wrote Deathday, I've written a few chapters of a terrorist thriller, half a book about an invisible boy, an entire book that would rather be a graphic novel, two wiki's full of info on stories I'd like to start, and 3/4 of a book about a dead soldier and his brother. They're like bodies strewn along behind me of stories I fell out of love with.

Perseverance is part of the game, and if I didn't have 4 finished books (one a 140k word YA Norse adventure I hand wrote) I'd worry about my ability to finish work, but for me it's more about finding the right idea. But it's like dating. Sometimes you have to date a lot of bad ideas before getting to the good one. So that's what I'm doing. Dating ideas. That's where my agent is awesome. He let me know that I'm definitely a freak, but that I have time to figure this all out.

Continuing book news, I'm working on an idea that I'm tentatively calling Project Revolution. It's a mixed media thing that I'm fleshing out. I haven't got any more news on it than that, but I wanted to put it out there. Project Revolution. Because it's time for one.

Writing's a Battlefield

I listen to a surprising amount of Pat Benatar when I write. Pat, Aimee Mann, Dave Matthews, and The Kooks. Those are my go-to bands for writing. I'm not sure why. Probably because I've been listening to them so long that they sort of become white noise and let me focus.

Right. Wednesday. Writing Tips. Let me first say that I've written more stuff that's NOT publishable than is, so feel free to say, "What a tool!" and move on. I won't be offended. I might cry, but don't let that stop you. No really. Go ahead and go.

I've never been a fan of Stephen King. I'm just not a horror fan. I read "Salem's Lot" for a class in college and enjoyed it immensely, but I never cozied up to his whole collection like my brother did. I was too busy reading fantasy novels. Anyway. Even though I wasn't a fan of King's fiction, I found his book "On Writing," and picked it up. This was back when I was working on my second real attempt at a novel. It was slow going and I was having MAJOR doubts. Stephen King's book is pretty much the reason I'm published today.

The biggest thing I took from it was to always be honest. Be honest to your readers. Be honest to yourself. Never shy away from anything. If your character would say it or do it, then write it. Never censor yourself.

That's my first writing tip. Be Honest.

Why? Because if you're not, your readers will know. Especially in YA. If you're writing about a teenager FOR a teenager, not only are they going to know when you're being inauthentic, but they're going to call you out on it in a very big way.

And I'm not just talking about being honest about the topics you write. It doesn't mean you have to tackle Sex, Drugs, and Emo. I'm talking about honesty in every aspect. I'm talking about opening yourself up. I'm talking about getting out the fountain pen, tapping a vein, and getting some blood on the page.

If your writing isn't tapping your own emotions, then it's not real.

When I wrote The Deathday Letter, I tapped all my awkwardness from high school. All the times I was in school and I heard people talking about me. All my embarrassing moments. I didn't write them in, nothing in my book has ever happened to me, but I tapped the emotions. All the emotions in the book are real because I was honest about how I felt and how my characters would feel.

Right. So there it is. Be honest. Just trust me on this one.

Have an awesome day!

Home Stretch

Figured I'd check in since I'm busy trying to avoid work.

Very sad that Michael Jackson died. His album, Thriller, was the first album I remember owning. And yes, I said album. Not tape, not CD, not MP3. Album. At least I didn't say 8-track.

I've bee reading Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief, and really enjoying it. The first couple of chapters are a little slow, but it's well written. I've also got the second book of Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy. I loved the first book so much that I ordered the second from England since it won't be available in the states until Sept. Not that I have time to read it.

I'm working on my webpage. Hopefully I'll have stuff to view later in July.

I'm anxious to get to work on my follow up to The Deathday Letter. It won't be in the Deathday world, but I think I'm settled on my next three projects. I hope. It's difficult for me to hang onto a project. Let's not forget that I was in the middle of a project when I dreamed up Deathday, so you never know what'll happen.

Sorry for the boring post, things will pick up soon.

Hello, Tuesday. We Meet Again.

Been busy reworking my outline. I had some moments of outline panic, but a nice chat with my fantastic editors cleared it all up.

I'm not used to other people giving me their opinions on my work. It's cool and strange and annoying. Yeah, I said it. Sometimes it can be annoying. But just because it's annoying doesn't mean they're wrong. Doesn't mean they're right either. What it means is that I (and every other writer out there) have to become a better listener. I have to learn the art of zen and the scary editing letter. I have to learn how to take comments, evaluate them, and make them work for me. I also have to stop feeling bad for possibly disagreeing with all the changes. That's part of it too.

It's all a crapshoot.

Either way, we're chugging along now. Heading toward the July 1 finish line. I can't wait.

I also slacked on Monday and worked on my probable next project. I created RocketBall. It's a combination of rugby and basketball but with heely type shoes equipped with ion propulsion. Just think jetpack shoes and rugby.

This week I leave you with a pug in a toilet.

Taking a Break

It was about a year and a half ago that I decided to really take my writing seriously. I hadn't written much in a couple of years and I was surprised by how terrible and out of practice I was. I'd sit for ten minutes trying to think of a word. That's because writing is like playing the guitar; you'll never be able to play an F chord if you don't practice.

So I've been writing pretty much every day for the last year and a half. Every time I finish something, I immediately move onto something else because I'm afraid that if I stop, if I take a break, I'll lose what I've gained. I'm also an inherently lazy person, so I'm afraid if I don't stick to my routine, I'll have trouble getting back into it.

The problem is that i dove into this present work without much planning. I'm not really a planner. I know where the story begins and where it ends and I like to just wing it from there. Usually that works out well for me. It allows me to take side trips I wouldn't have take had I mapped out every aspect. But it doesn't always work. I'm at about 60k words for my current project. I know what the ending looks like and I've been working toward that. However the last couple of weeks have seen me struggling more and more every day, until yesterday and today I found myself just sitting there, staring at the screen wondering how I'd ended up where I was. I realized if I stayed the course, I'd end up with a story I didn't want, and if I wanted to get to the ending I'd originally intended, I'd have to go back, almost all the way to the beginning and start again. The problem is that I'm not sure yet, where I went so wrong.

And worst of all is that I'm not entirely certain the story is worth saving.

My agent's been trying to get me to slow down since he signed me. And while I heard him, I didn't really listen. So I'm taking a break. At least until my revision deadline for Deathday Letter. I'll keep up my routine by doing some short stories or something, but mostly I think I just need to find the right idea and go from there.

Sometimes I wish that I was the kind of writer who only had one idea. But I'm flooded with them. I'm practically Noah.

Maybe I'll write a story about a clown hunter.

Who's a Good Boy?

That's my new dog, Maxx.  I was thinking about changing it to something like Percival or Gimpmeister Sir-runs-into-a-lot-of-trees, but I didn't want to confuse him. 

He's maybe the sweetest dog I've ever met.  Of course, I'm biased, just like most parents are of their own ugly, drooly children.  Maxx doesn't drool though.  Seriously, he's awesome.  He snorts when he gets excited (just like dad!) and he's not real keen on carpet yet, but we're getting there.  He woke up this morning and scared himself so bad that he snorted amazingly loud and woke up my neighbor...which is totally payback for all the mornings I had to wake up to Queen's Greatest Hits.  Anyway, say hi to my new crazy writing companion!

The writing goes.  I'm at a point.  I'm not sure what that point is.  I'm either 1/3 or half way through with the book.  I like where it's going, what it says (what it says about me) but something's off with it.  It's like, I like the first part and I like the last part, but I feel like there's a middle part that I'm missing.  It's difficult.  THE DEATHDAY LETTER spanned one day, so charting a path was pretty easy.  This book follows about six months.  I have to choose the moments which best reflect the story.  I guess I'm just questioning whether the moments are cohesive enough to create a whole.  I won't really know that until I finish, which I hope I'll do before I get my edits for DDL, but I highly doubt.  

I got around to reading THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH by Carrie Ryan this weekend.  It was a really fun read.  I like my zombies hungry.  It read like the best kind of slasher, horror flick from my youth.  The kind where the killers never, ever stop tell you why they're going to kill you, and the protagonist (by protag I mean:  Large breasted virgin who runs fast enough in the dark to always stay ahead, but manages to trip and take ten minutes to get back up) keeps going long past the point where she even knows why anymore.  The book was heavy on fantastic description, and the lurve story was touching.  The prose was a little uptight but I think that Ryan will loosen up a little as she goes, and there was a history, a mythology, if you will, that was hinted at but never went anywhere.  Neither of those things detract in any way (and I think that Ryan has stated she's writing a second book, so maybe the mythology of the Sisterhood will be addressed more in that), so I say, go read it, but don't plan on eating at the Rib joint for dinner.

The end of one path, the beginning of another

FYI, the first thing I realized is that my blog is OMG-BORING.  I've hired someone less boring to post as me from now on.  Bring in the dancing puppies!

So this is the entry.  This is the one where I look back on the start of this blog that no one reads and go, "Wowiee, wow!  I'm a real writer now.  Paid and everything."  And that's true.  I started this blog to track my path from first written word to sold manuscript, and we're there.  Yesterday it was official.  And I'll continue this blog as I begin a new journey as an actual author.  Will I be able to turn this into a career that supports me?  Will my book bomb?  Will they actually name it THE GREAT COOKIE?  (The day after I found out it had sold I had a nightmare that they demanded my book be named THE GREAT COOKIE).  Those are the questions I'll be answering over the next year as I move from published author to "holy sh!t that's MY book on the shelf with the neon-puke cover."

Until then though, I'm going to answer the one burning question on everyone's mind:  what's my secret?  What made THE DEATHDAY LETTER what it is?  

The answer is:  masturbation euphemisms.  And penis euphemisms, and sex euphemisms.  

My next book is just a listing of samurai and ninja themed porn movie titles.  And some other stuff that happens.

Stay tuned for my next entry:  The entire plot of the Twilight series in haiku.  

Oliver Travers is my co-pilot

Today is the day.  Today it's official.  THE DEATHDAY LETTER is going to be published by Simon Pulse in the summer of 2010.  

Holy frakkin' crap!  It's real! Frak, frak, frak.  The feeling is absolutely insane and awesome and FRAK!

I'll have loads more news soon along with a real description of THE DEATHDAY LETTER.