On Waiting

Really Tom Petty has it : "Don't let it kill ya, babe, don't let it get to you."

I've been waiting on Harper Voyager since October--and for the record, I'm not at all bothered by this. Most of the big publishers that take unagented manuscrips (and there are dang few of them) tell you to expect waits of up to a year.  So I haven't concluded that they are playing bingo to determine who they email next.  I think they just haven't read my manuscript yet.  My surname does begin with a T.  Sometimes life is easier if you're A. Andrews.

(It is always possible, of course, that they have lost my manuscript, hate shapeshifters, or for some other reason will never respond to me.  I have just as many paranoid thoughts as the rest of you; I just try to squish them.)

Still, waiting isn't easy, and it isn't just Harper--I'm also waiting on some agents, another big publisher with an open sub call (although they probably won't answer me at all...), and so on.  So, to keep it positive, here's some people who were refreshingly prompt:

Beneath Ceaseless Skies - they are a very cool "literary fantasy" magazine and they send the best rejection letters ever.  They almost always offer food for revision.

Nelson Literary Agency - apart from running the great blog Pub Rant, they got back to me (with a rejection, alas, but polite!) in just under a week, making them the speediest of the agencies I subbed to.

You've heard all my advice about how to deal with waiting before--start new projects, keep busy, etc. etc.  Personally, I went and got chickens--chicks, actually, that have to be checked on every few hours.  They keep you from obsessively refreshing your email quite well.

It's also spring here, which means the garden needs to go in, the firewood for next year needs to get stacked, and the flowerbeds need to be weeded.  All this manual labor is helpful--breaks through writer's blocks like nobody's business.  I've got a short story almost figured out; I might know what's wrong with the one that Beneath Ceaseless Skies rejected; and I think I can finally write the next chapter of New Novel.  Also--music, listen to lots of music.  Dance.  Do anything you can to get out of your head for a bit, it probably needs to be aired.

Cheers,

Breanna

We Have A Cover!

No, not mine.  One of my critique partners/writing friends/cool people, Allyson Lindt.  She has a book coming out soon, and I got to see the cover before ANY of you.  Here is the cover of her new romance novel, "Conflict of Interest" :

Allyson manages to put together romance and humor in a really cool way.  I get the privilege of reading some of her stuff as a beta, and I can always count on her to create characters I can believe in and like--as well as storylines that keep the tension high.

Why not check out her blog?  Apart from the fact that it's fun to read, I hear all sorts of cool things are happening there today--and you can read an excerpt of the book.  Need to be enticed more?  Fine: legs,  coffee, William Gibson, and high top sneakers.  Go!

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S. - and I only mention this because I know I have some moms that read my blog--but this book is PG13, possibly even R rated.  So don't go and buy it and then leave it where the kids can find it, okay?

Book Recommendation/Rabbits

So today, in writing world, I am:

1. Fulfilling my promise to tell you about a cool writer.  His name is James Tuck and the world really needs more writers who are also tattoo artists.  Full disclosure: I'm not even finished with the first of his Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter books yet (got sidetracked because we acquired some livestock--bunny rabbits!), so I don't know how the rest of the series turns out.  But judging by what I've read already, they should be very fun.  If you like the kind of action implied in "Occult Bounty Hunter" and/or enjoy the rare spec fic author who really knows about guns, give it a go.

I can post this now that Mr. Tuck (very nicely) rejected my short story.  I sort of thought he would; after I submitted it I realized it was probably not quite what the anthology represented.  (It was a sword & sorcery anthology, but leaned more toward sword than sorcery, while my story did the opposite.)  The story is now on sub to another market.  I am not at all dismayed, by the way.  Very few of my published stories are accepted by the first market I sent them to.  If you get a rejection for a piece, first try to figure out what you did wrong (wrong market, in my case) and then fix it, and resubmit someplace else.

2. Writing "two page" synopses that are four pages and then editing, editing, editing to make them shorter.  The best I've gotten down to is 690 words.  That's right, I have to compress the plot of a 102K novel into 690 words.  But I'd like it better if I could get it down to 500 words.  I'll have another go at it tomorrow.  After this a twenty-page synopsis should feel like coming home and putting on pajamas.

3. Sending queries.  And wishing it was late enough to drink wine.  And deciding to read more Deacon Chalk so I can't obsessively check my email.  (It's Friday! They are not going to answer today! I tell my brain.  But they might love it/hate it and answer right away, my brain says.  I hate having a brain that can argue with me.)

In my non-writing world, I am:

1. Waiting for my car to get fixed.  It's been in the shop since Monday with the kind of problems you just can't limp around with because they could, you know, kill you and a van-load of innocent people.

2. Telling the puppy "Get down, Fritz" 9,457 times.

3. Reading "Little House in the Big Woods" to my 5-year-old and explaining what a "hog" is.

4. Hugging the woodstove.  It isn't spring in Nevada yet.

5. Eating Cornish pasties.  Yes, they are really a thing.

What kind of projects/pseudo-spring activities have you all got yourselves into this weekend?

Cheers,

Breanna

A Funny Dilemma

It's not often that I find a new series that I can get excited about, but I found one the other day.  Only I can't tell you what it is yet.

See, I'm trying to write and submit more short fiction this year as well as finish and polish New Novel, and while querying First Novel.  (Both of them have titles that will probably change before you ever get the chance to buy them, but trust me I'll tell you what they're called if someone picks them up.)  Thanks to Fadz, I submitted a short story to an anthology project.

I did it the way I usually do such things--make sure the story is remotely viable for the submission call, obsess over the story's editing and comma placement for a few days, write what I hope is a cool but what is probably a dumb cover letter, and send the whole mess off into the hinterlands of the internetz.

Then I did something unusual for me: I started poking around to see what I could find out about the anthology's editor.  I discovered he's an accomplished novelist in his own right, and in a moment of curiosity (prompted by his blog, which is hilarious) I picked up the first book in the series he wrote.

And it, ladies and gents, is awesome.  Like the Die Hard movies are awesome (but more tightly plotted and without as many helicopters).  Like getting to watch while the military tests ammunition in the desert is awesome.  It's just plain fun, and I've been having a blast reading it.

Only I can't tell you what it is, because as I started to go to the airwaves and recommend it to everyone I knew, I realized that I hadn't got my rejection email from Editor Guy yet, and that me tootling on about his book might be construed as trying to--ahem, flatter my way into the anthology.

And that would be sad.

So you'll just have to wait until I get my rejection--or acceptance, we can at least give it equal airtime--before I tell you what the series is called.

Now there's nothing left to do but obsessively check my email finish up the edits on New Novel's most recent chapter and start mulling another short story idea.

Cheers,

Breanna

Cheerleaders

Get some.  Be one.

(Okay, now you don't have to read the rest of the post.)

When I was in nursing school, I was the encourager for the entire class.  Getting a degree always takes perseverance, but for student nurses it also takes getting over your natural aversion to blood and body fluids, and sitting still while a fellow student puts a needle in your arm.  Many, many times.  You can see why it would be easy to give up.

But this is a thing that I do--I can see so much potential in so many people, and I tell them about it.  Most of them seem to like it.  (And no, I'm not making any of it up, I really do see it.)  And we didn't have many people drop out of my class, not because I was the cheerleader but because we all became each other's cheerleaders.

Here's the thing.  Writing, like nursing, is hard, especially in the beginning.  There's no needles, but there's valid critique points that feel like needles.  You need someone to tell you that you can do it.

You need cheerleaders in your writing career.  But you also need to BE a cheerleader to someone.  Once you've done the thing of mopping up a friend who has been reduced to a puddle of revision-induced tears, it's easier to take it when someone has to come along and mop you up.  If you are in close contact with others while they query and get rejected, you won't be so shattered when you get your own rejections.  You're all in it together, and that's how humans--even introvert writer humans--are wired.

So that's my tip of the day.  Go find your writing buddies and start a little mutual admiration society (with claws, of course, when it comes to ruthlessly critiquing each others' work).  Nobody has so much encouragement in their lives that they don't need more.

Cheers,

Breanna

I know, I know...

It's been almost a year since I posted here last.

The truth of the matter is that, apart from being busy writing and with life, I just haven't felt like I had that much unique stuff to say about writing and so on.  And it feels silly coming up with an article a week that's just the standard rehash of writerly topics.  (Women's magazines have fashion, dating advice, diets, and some lifestyle tips, writers have "show don't tell", "read your contracts carefully", "process is unique" and so on.)

I mean, I could write about my writing process over and over, but that seems pretentious, not to mention a bad use of time.  I could be writing novels with that time spent explaining to you that my characters show up in my head and start doing things without explaining to me why, and that novel writing is a process of chasing them.

Instead I think I'll tell you about finishing one book and starting another--I finished a novel that, at the moment, is titled Shift.  It has a passel of noble, highly moral characters who walk around trying hard to serve the greater good.  I've started another novel called, for now, Lord of Secrets.  The characters so far are very different.  For one thing, the main character in Lord of Secrets insists on the story being in first person; for another, he's an unreliable narrator.  We'll see if I can live with him for an entire novel.  He's really pushy, though.  I wouldn't be surprised if the book got done quickly.

But that's where real life comes in.  My eldest has learned to read, my middle son really wants to learn to read, and the baby has started yelling random words and phrases like "GLASSES!" and "HELICOPTER!"  Life gets busy and interesting, and any writing time has to be carved out from it.

This is something, see, that you don't necessarily hear a lot about on writing blogs.  They tell you that you have to take time out to write (true), but they create a false sense of urgency about it.  It IS true that the industry is changing so much that it's easy to get behind on the business side of writing, but it isn't true that the stories you have inside will somehow spoil if they don't get written.

So I wind up doing my best--there was a time when I could write a novel in three months or so, and so "my best"--finishing a novel in a year or two--feels terribly slow.  But I also know it's dependent on my situation; I can still, if the stars align, the inspiration is hot, and the Husband takes the children somewhere, crank out five thousand words in a couple of hours.

The fact is, though, that my children make me a better writer.  Before I met the Husband the romance in my stories was idealized and hypothetical--I had never been in love, so I had to simply imagine what it would be like.  Now, I hope, the romance is a little more believable.  In the same way, the relationships between parents and children in my stories have gotten richer, and the lives of my characters have gotten more complex.  I hope.

I don't have a lot more to say--I hope your writing projects this new year turn out beautiful and profitable, and I can't wait to read them; I hope that mine will be available for you to read soon.

Much love,

Breanna

Guest Post

John Ling, indie publisher and author of an action-packed thriller called The Blasphemer, has asked me to guest blog.  See for yourself whether it was a good decision on his part.

Cheers,

Breanna