Dear 2012: Goodbye and Thanks For All The Fish*

2012 was a good year. I finished one book and started another (and, if I'm very crafty, I'll be finishing FIND ME today, on 12-31-12, literally at the 11th hour...) I got an agent (which sounds like I got a puppy or I got new car but actually means I got a mensch, an advocate, a literary ninja...) I have met some amazing writerly souls and become friends with people I care about a whole heck lot but have never actually met. I've become a better crit partner and beta reader (you'll just have to take my word for it) and I took up running completing my first 5K run with my daughter a month ago.

Of course there have been knocks. I now know how it feels to be rejected by a publisher (spoiler alert: it's even worse than being rejected by an agent.) And some difficulties involving kids/clients/neighbors/family. But that is every year. 2012 for me will go down as the first year where I felt that I had built and was living a sustainable writing life. I do this now. I am this now. I'm not effing around.

So, here's to 2012. Thanks for being awesome (and you know, a special shout out to the Mayans for being wrong about the end of the world.)

How was your 2012?

OH AND WAIT!!!!

On Wednesday, January 2, 2013 I will be revealing the cover to an awesome book, coming in March 2013 from Curiosity Quills Press: THE CHARGE by Sharon Bayliss. How do I know it's awesome? Cuz I beta read it way back in early 2012, and it's the business. So remember to swing by, though it's not my regular blogging day, on Wednesday for THE CHARGE cover reveal!

*Who doesn't love Douglas Adams? I resolve to re-read The Hitchhiker books in 2013...

H is for HOLY EXPLETIVE! I GOT AN AGENT

Subtle, right?

The short story:
I don't know what to tell you first. Maybe start with the fact that I'm deliriously happy to be represented by Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Agency. You don't understand (she whined like a star struck fan girl) Barbara was the first agent I ever met, the first who requested my full before I'd finished revising it. I saw her at the Pennwriter's Conference last year with CJ Lyons and later that summer at writeoncon with Holly Root. Lots of agents talk about how necessary passion is, but with Barbara you feel it, it comes off her in waves. She's whip smart and funny and lovely and I KNOW she's married, I am too. I'm just saying, when she offered me representation (which I didn't know was coming) I told her I love her. I'm not taking it back, either, though it was probably too much too soon.

The long story:
I sent Barbara BookEnd in January, SEVEN MONTHS after she requested it. I wanted to send it sooner, I had a voice in my head that kept whispering, you're taking too long, your taking too long. I worried that she wouldn't be interested after all that time. But against that panicky feeling I had something substantial. Jonathan Maberry's voice in my head. I met him at Pennwriter's too and over lunch I asked him when I should send in the full request I had gotten from Barbara, after I took some time to clean it up.  He got very zen-like and said, "When it's ready." I didn't think he understood me, so I said, "Right, but how long is too long to wait to send it - what's the optimum time frame for sending out a request?" He didn't even blink. "When it's ready," he repeated. (He's like the writing Kung Fu master, by the way.)

So I took his advice and polished that sucker until it shone. In January I sent it to Barbara and also sent it out to a few other agents. I started racking up rejections (see rejection badge) quickly, but I also got a couple of other fulls. January was OK, February was worse, March was terrible as I got a rejection on my full on my birthday. Cry.

On April 2 I got an email from Barbara saying my book was next in her queue and thanks for my patience. I pretty much ate Tums like Pez that week. Then a week ago I got an email from Barbara saying lovely things about my work and asking if we could talk.

 

I don't know why I'm so clueless sometimes but I managed to convince myself that this was going to be a request for a revise and resubmit.

Keeping a brown paper bag nearby in case of hyperventilation, I called Barbara and found that she was just as lovely as I remembered. She asked me some scarily insightful questions about my story - about a character's motivations and development - and then she said she'd like to offer representation. All casual and stuff, like she'd said she was running out to Starbucks and would I like a chai? I couldn't speak for a good five seconds. She might have thought I'd dropped dead. Then she said, "Um, hello?" That's when I told her I love her. Cry. Tears of happiness.

I'm so excited and grateful to be on this journey with an agent (advocate, ally) like Barbara.

H is also for the Hunger Games Soundtrack:

Cupcakes, Empanadas and the Last Full Request

Yesterday I made 26 strawberry cupcakes.
Today I am making 26 mini-empanadas. Do you see a trend? It's Eldest's eight birthday today and I brought in pink-confetti icing sugar bombs for the kiddies to enjoy. I hope their parents forgive me for the extra dose of red dye #40 I've injected into their diets. As for my kid, she comes by her wonderful kookiness naturally, no red dye required.

The empanadas are for tomorrow, International Snack day at school. Because public schools don't have enough things to do, they have to celebrate foreign snacks. I get it, I really do, it's part of cultural awareness. But I don't think a mini empanada is going to make a second grader belt out a rendition of Depeche Mode's People Are People, do you?




I'm griping. I'm kvetching. Because I'm nervous. Today I got an email from agent Barbara Poelle - a short note to say that my full ms is next in her queue and thanks for my patience. She's the nicest frigging agent on the planet, to let me know that the wait is almost over. But, of course, it means that I need to gird my loins. This is the last full request I have out on BookEnd.

Do I think I'm going to get rejected? Yes. I do, actually. Not because I don't believe in my work, not because I don't believe in myself. I think I'm a really good writer. My writerly ego has a tendency to look like a puffer fish. But still, I think I'm getting rejected, and I'm trying to get ready for that feeling.

Someone (sorry I can't remember who) commented a while back on a post of mine which was similarly not so positive that I should believe in the good outcome - even against the odds - believe in the positive as a way of projecting out positive vibes and then having them rebound back at you, like some gigantic cosmic, fuzzy-warm boomerang.

I am seriously in AWE of the person who can do that. HOW DO YOU DO IT? I can do it for other people. I can absolutely 100% believe positive things (or 6 impossible things) on behalf of someone else, but I can't do it for myself.

It feels like the worst kind of hubris to think positively of myself. It feels like I'm pinning a KICK ME sign on my own back and daring the writerly fates to have a go. Besides, if I'm wrong it's not like that will make me sad - I'll be psyched to be wrong, thank you very much. But if I'm right, I'm hoping that I'm prepared. That I've had time to get used to the idea and (when it happens) ameliorate some of the damage.

Am I wrong? Am I actually making things worse by being negative? What do you think?

Write On Con - Day 2 Highlights

From Rise of The Planet of the Apes

I had a bit of a break down today. Somehow, with a combination of sixth sense/telepathy and an uncanny sense of smell, my husband knew I was at a loooow ebb and came home from work early. Took the kids to the pool and sent me off by myself. God bless that man.

I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It's good, see it. I only have two things to say: Andy Serkis needs an Oscar or three and Tom Felton needs to stop playing bad guys. If you thought Draco was an ass, imagine Draco being mean to animals.

All this is a long winded way of saying, didn't get to delve into Write On Con as much as I wanted today. But the beauty of this conference is that it's always there. You can 'attend' by reading the post/transcript or watching the vlog. And the magic that happens in the forum is priceless.

I do have to give a special shout out to the Barbara Poelle/Holly Root agent panel. In addition to query/agent/writing gold that you've come to expect from the fab agents on Write On Con there was: Red Velvet Cake and chocolate pudding; martinis; leeches and aaaaardvarks. It was hard to explain to my kids why I was barking with laughter alone in my office. "Are you watching a good cartoon, mommy?" 

Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Also, there's a great vlog by agent Kate Testerman. She outlines the check list you must have ready before you query. CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF. You can't jump into the query fray until you have done everything on the list.

Tomorrow, when I catch up, I'm going to check out:

YA Muses - on Crit Groups

On Compactness by Weronika Janczuk 

Your Own Hero's Journey

PLUS all the new stuff for tomorrow. I'm feeling faint. But in a good way. 

Write On Con - Get Ready for Awesome

So, writers conferences are cool, right? But they can be exhausting. First you have to wear clothes. Not just any old thing you have to hand, but actual clothes that don't make people stand away from you. And, as if clothes weren't bad enough, you need to wear shoes. Probably pointy or uncomfortable. If you are slightly girly you might even have to slap on some make up. All this ON TOP OF being brilliant, erudite, attractive to agents and coherent.

UGH.

But Write On Con is the wonderful exception to the rule. It's completely, 100%, come-as-you-are online.

A combination of blog posts, live chat events, forum events and contests, it's all the good conference stuff and none of the bad. Except for the excuse to rent a bad movie in your hotel room. I would never have seen Beastly if it wasn't for that last writing con.

I can't wait to for Beth Revis on Don't Give Up (Tues 4pm) - One, because I loved loved loved Across the Universe and two because I need a talented stranger to tell me not to give up.

Also looking forward to Panel with agents Holly Root and Barbara Poelle (little girl crush on Barbara, if you hadn't noticed before)

Here's the link to the full schedule for the next three days. What are you looking forward to the most?

Conference Secrets: Welcome to the Jungle

This workshop at the Pennwriter's Conference, with agent Barbara Poelle and novelist CJ Lyons was my favorite. It was also the only one I didn't take any notes on.

CJ started the workshop by turning off the tape recorder and closing the door. "This is just between us. You can ask us anything. If you don't want to raise your hand, write your question on a piece of paper and pass it up. There's nothing we won't answer."

And there really wasn't anything they wouldn't touch on. It was a comfortable, inviting experience. The highest compliment I can give this workshop is that, barring the lack of Bombay Sapphire, it felt more like sitting at the bar with two friends than a workshop.

Man, can you tell Barbara was a comedienne in a past life. She's funny as hell and completely off the cuff. Sharp and smart but amazingly for the industry, not jaded. 

She is passionate about what she does, saying she was born to be a agent. Most of the questions directed towards her were about the state of the industry (is publishing dead?) and ebooks (is print publishing dead?) This is the kind of agent you want in your corner, seriously. Nothing fazed her. She genuinely believes that this is the most exciting time to be working in the industry, on the cusp of all this change. When asked if she was worried that Amazon was setting up what looked like a traditional publishing house (ie. that they would 'corner the market') she said, "They sell spatulas too. Spatula makers aren't worried. I'm not worried."

One point she made that gave me the warm and fuzzies (which echos what Nathan Bransford said in his post this week about rejections.) was that, when she gets in to work in the morning, NOTHING WOULD MAKE HER HAPPIER THAN SAYING 'YES.' We have this image of agents as gatekeepers, trolls under bridges or bouncers at a VIP party, their only joy being to gleefully say NO to you. Couldn't be further from the truth, says Barbara. She makes her living on 'yes', she's dying for there to be 'yes'. She's not sitting there looking for the tiniest flaw in your query letter and sample pages, she's looking for potential. She wants what you want. Barbara knows what will sell, knows what the publishers she deals with are looking for, and she's going through haystacks to find those 'yeses.'

Some key points from CJ Lyons

• Know your audience and brand yourself accordingly. It's as valuable to know who isn't your audience as it is to know who is.
• An Author platform is not, contrary to popular belief, a website, a twitter account or a facebook page. It's Soylent Green. No! Sorry, kidding. But it is people. Your audience is your platform. How you get that audience to follow you, care about you is how you brand yourself and your books.
• And obvious but bears repeating in these 'author, market yourself' times: Your product is your best advert.

Some key points from Barbara Poelle

• She's looking for: 
• Authority
• Authenticity 
• Unique Voice
• And in your query* letter you should have "The hook, the cook (journey) and the book (sample pages)"

So, did I leave the Welcome to the Jungle workshop hearing Axl Rose snarling "You gonna die!" in my head? No. I left feeling that the publishing 'jungle' is an industry like any other and not my own personal purgatory. It's not a validating or invalidating Mount Olympus peopled by unfeeling demi-gods. I would totes buy Barbara and CJ a drink any time. Especially if they spill more secrets.

Check out my conference mate Laura's post on Researching the Police

*In a few weeks, I'll be posting the query letter I sent to her along with her comments/corrections.

Why You Read What You Read

Yesterday, when I posted about Summer Reads 2011, I realized that most of my picks were in the YA/Fantasy realm. I've been slowly sucked into that genre since Harry Potter and Lyra Belacqua hit the scene. Now it's what I look for especially since it's what I'm writing (now.)

Having said that, I love all genres, even the literary 'non' genre. There's nothing I won't read, but I do go through phases. When Bryce Daniels posted on my blog yesterday that he was looking forward to the new Jeffrey Deaver book, it brought me back to when I would devour those books. I had a serious crime/thriller bent in my late twenties. I've also been into golden age mysteries, romance novels, classics and graphic novels. 

It's not that I don't like those things now, it's just not where I'm at. I bought a romance recently by an author who I really liked, Elizabeth Hoyt. It has gathered dust in my TBR pile while other books get whipped through. I pick it up, I put it down. My reading moods seem to last for years. It's a funny thing.

At the Pennwriters conference agents couldn't say enough about the need to be knowledgeable about your genre - specifically reading in your genre. I think it was Kathleen Ortiz that had the rule '2000 in 2000 out', meaning that for every 2000 words you write, you should be reading that much of your genre. Barbara Poelle went a little further, telling us to find the shelf at the bookstore where our book would be. Go alphabetically in the genre and find where your yet-to-be-published book would be. Then buy (or get out of the library) the two books on either side of the shelf. Educate yourself.

So, do you read in your genre? Do you cheat on the genre you write in? Do you mix it up or go through phases like I do? What genre are you reading and why?

Live! from the Pennwriters Conference - Day 2

Note: Blogger Ate My Homework.  I wrote the below during the conference and scheduled it to post, but for some reason it never did. So I'm manually posting it today. Yes, it's not actually 'Live' but it felt live at the time, does that count? 


Tomorrow I start my Conference Secrets posts with Revising from Critique. Conference Secrets will post every Thursdays for the next four weeks. My fellow BCWG writer, Laura Campbell will also be posting about the workshops she's attended on her blog, Writing Unleashed. Check her out, check me out. It will (almost) be like you were there.

BURRRNED out.
I've left the Build Your Brand workshop because despite the copious amounts of coffee I've had, I'm nodding off. It's absolutely not the fault of the workshop or the leader, it's that I'm exhausted. I've got fifteen minutes before my next workshop entitled Welcome to the Jungle! I can almost hear Axl Rose screeching, "You're gonna diiiiiie!"

That's something I didn't think about before, the sheer weight of the information I'd want to absorb, the names of people I've met, the books, blogs and resources I've been told I have to read. I'm worn out but I'm looooving it. Everyone here is a writer, everyone understands how hard that is to say sometimes. I'm sorry for the corniness, but it's like coming home.

And something good has happened. Two somethings.

Because I'm a chicken I chose not to do face to face agent pitching. Barbara Poelle at the Irene Goodman Agency was offering to review and comment on query letter, synopsis and first ten pages in lieu of an agent pitch. That seemed like a pretty amazing deal, to have that much focused feedback from such a high caliber agent. Plus, I thought if I had to talk to someone about my book face to face, I might pass out.

After my first workshop, Perfect Pitch with Rachel Coyne of FinePrint Literary, I found my courage and signed up to pitch to her after lunch. Then I went to registration to pick up my feedback from Barbara Poelle.

I swear I'm not exaggerating, I actually started trembling. Across the bottom of the page she'd written "Alexandra, I'm interested in seeing a full ms."

The nice volunteer at the registration table asked me if I was okay. I think I answered 'oh shit'. She said, "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I told her it was good and then went away to hyperventilate. It's so much more than I expected.

The pitch didn't go so well. I was nervous, job interview nervous, and I didn't do a great job of presenting either myself or my story. Rachel was very nice, gave me some insightful feedback and told me to query her when I was ready.

It was a rollercoaster all day long, ups and downs. As soon as the day ended I got into PJs and tried to relax. I seriously considered not going to that evenings Read & Critique, I just felt a bit pummeled. But I've got immigrant-grade work ethic so I scraped myself together and put on my glossy red lipstick.

In room 306 were: A moderator, an editor (Becky Levine) and an agent (Kathleen Ortiz from Nancy Coffey) plus eight nervous people. This was an anonymous read and critique with the moderator reading the two-page submissions and then comments from the editor and agent.

Both Becky and Kathleen were wonderful. Whip smart, insightful, kind and respectful. How they can read just two pages and be so spot on with their advice is a mystery to me. I truly have a lot of respect for agents now, seeing how deftly (and, I say again, respectfully) they handle submissions. I learned as much from hearing their crits on other submissions as I did when they got to mine.

Okay, I feel weird writing this. It goes against my Catholic self abnegation upbringing. But they freaking loved my submission. I was shocked. Becky said she loved it, just loved it. She mentioned a line that she thought was especially beautiful and said she just loved the story, the evocation of an 'other' world. She had some suggested edits, but generally she said it was a home run.

Kathleen said she loved the male protagonist, loved the world building and some other nice things that I don't remember. I don't remember because what she said next was, "Whoever you are, see me after we're done. I want to read more."

There was one more submission after mine. Then Kathleen said "Okay, who wrote BookEnd? You can't leave until I give you my information." I raised my hand like I was back in high school and everyone started to clap. Can you believe that they'd clap and congratulate me? They don't know me from Adam. My face was red and I was all trembly again. People were talking to me, smiling. I felt like I'd won some incredible jackpot. I spoke to Kathleen, who is lovely, and she asked me for 100 pages.

I floated down to the bar in the lobby and drank a pint with my friend Laura. I hardly slept at all last night.

This morning at breakfast I find Laura sitting next to Barbara Poelle. Barbara recognized my name from the submission I sent her and we started talking about my book. She is so smart and funny, so insightful. What is it with the bad rap that agents get? Everyone I met at the conference, even if they weren't interested in my book, were kind and respectful and completely generous with their time. The whole day feels surreal. I can't believe all these good things are happening to me. I expect the sky to fall at any moment (see previous comment about Catholic upbringing).

As soon as I get home from the conference I'm going to throw the kids in front of Spongebob and start polishing my manuscript. Okay, first I'm going to kiss and tickle them until they're gasping, but right after that, it's WORK TIME.