Cover letter, one-page synopsis, manuscript, SASE and SASP in the mail--two of them to two different publishers. One was sent Friday, the other today. Until I hear something, on to my next writing project -- either Armitage or the development of the G.O.A.L.S./Jennie Graves series -- details to follow on "Books by Robyn Echols" at www.robynechols.blogspot.com.
Just as a weird little aside -- one of the reasons I like to watch "Ice Road Truckers" with my husband sometimes is occasionally they slip in a shot of an aurora flashing across the darkened sky.....
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
And the Final-Final Is.....
*
81,300 words. 278 double-spaced 12 pt. typewritten pages.
I am finished -- again -- after how many rewrites? But, yes, I am happy with this one. I am writing up my submissions forms and preparing my letters for submitting to L.D.S. publishers.
Yup! You read it right.
I had not considered this avenue very seriously before. I was not interested in promoting this book to an exclusive L.D.S. audience even though I consider my work very appropriate for this group. After looking into their websites and seeing book reviews of what they are publishing, I liked what I saw. I started digging deeper into publishing guidelines.
I am still hoping for mass-market exposure and sales. It appears that several L.D.S. publishers will fit that bill if they take on my novel.
With no agent, it means I will not receive an advance. Most of these publishers are "pay as you go," meaning I need to wait until the sales come in to receive any royalties. I can live with that.
Here goes!
81,300 words. 278 double-spaced 12 pt. typewritten pages.
I am finished -- again -- after how many rewrites? But, yes, I am happy with this one. I am writing up my submissions forms and preparing my letters for submitting to L.D.S. publishers.
Yup! You read it right.
I had not considered this avenue very seriously before. I was not interested in promoting this book to an exclusive L.D.S. audience even though I consider my work very appropriate for this group. After looking into their websites and seeing book reviews of what they are publishing, I liked what I saw. I started digging deeper into publishing guidelines.
I am still hoping for mass-market exposure and sales. It appears that several L.D.S. publishers will fit that bill if they take on my novel.
With no agent, it means I will not receive an advance. Most of these publishers are "pay as you go," meaning I need to wait until the sales come in to receive any royalties. I can live with that.
Here goes!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Series Of Changes
*
I have decided that the easy part of writing a novel is to get the story down on paper (aka computer). The hard part is to prepare it for marketing. At least, that has been the case with Aurora Rescue.
I just wrote the story as it came to me without thought of word count. For one thing, when I first started writing, I could not conceive writing too many words for my story. I have edited this manuscript several times, and I still find misspells and phrases I want reworded. I was so proud when I got this thing from 148,000 words down to a word count of 106,635.
However, I have contacted several agents, and the rejections keep coming back. Me and my analytical mind keeps looking at the situation and asking, "What might be turning them off? Is it because I am new? Is it my writing style? Is it the plot or characters? What?"
So, back to the drawing board a little. After looking at several agents' Young Adult genre wants for "Edgy" YA, meaning, let's have some drugs, sex and abuse thrown into the plot, I thought of redoing the book more for the Middle-age/Tween market. When I started looking into guidelines, I found YA guidelines along with them. After going through several sources, I have decided this is still a Young Adult novel.
This is more of a futuristic urban fantasy/science fiction adventure story. It turns out that genre fiction for Young Adults, which is what this is, is a lot shorter than what I could get away with for an adult novel. Right now, it is an epic novel, very hard to market in the current publishing climate.
And, that is after I cut off the part I was going to originally write into this book. That section later was designated Book 2. Now it is Book 3, Aurora Recover. Why the change? Because, in order to fit my story into the YA genre guidelines of between 60,000 to 75,000 words, the Kezia story needs to be its own separate book--Book 2, Aurora Redress. (I chose that title to be a play on words for more than one purpose.)
Marty in the colonial world of 1748 and 1758 is enough for a stand-alone book. That is how I feel I need to rewrite it before I query any more agents.
I have already tentatively separated the two sections of the book. I had to rearrange some of the Cy and Lee Hardin chapters to make Rescue work. I am still toying with the idea of changing Marty's age to 16 and Cy's age to 17, making Eddie and Andrea closer friends of them both and maybe involving Marty's younger brother Jason more. I will think on that a bit. My biggest challenge will be to come up with a satisfying ending for a stand-alone book that will also allow me to use the closing scene as a jump-off for the next book.
Right now, without rewrites, I ended up with the new Aurora Rescue at 61,547 words--right in the ballpark. The Kezia section weighed in at 45,337 words, but there is a lot more I can do with that story.
So, I am beyond a quintology. If this group of stories gets sold, I have enough adventures planned, including a trip into a dystopian future, to make it a series.
I have decided that the easy part of writing a novel is to get the story down on paper (aka computer). The hard part is to prepare it for marketing. At least, that has been the case with Aurora Rescue.
I just wrote the story as it came to me without thought of word count. For one thing, when I first started writing, I could not conceive writing too many words for my story. I have edited this manuscript several times, and I still find misspells and phrases I want reworded. I was so proud when I got this thing from 148,000 words down to a word count of 106,635.
However, I have contacted several agents, and the rejections keep coming back. Me and my analytical mind keeps looking at the situation and asking, "What might be turning them off? Is it because I am new? Is it my writing style? Is it the plot or characters? What?"
So, back to the drawing board a little. After looking at several agents' Young Adult genre wants for "Edgy" YA, meaning, let's have some drugs, sex and abuse thrown into the plot, I thought of redoing the book more for the Middle-age/Tween market. When I started looking into guidelines, I found YA guidelines along with them. After going through several sources, I have decided this is still a Young Adult novel.
This is more of a futuristic urban fantasy/science fiction adventure story. It turns out that genre fiction for Young Adults, which is what this is, is a lot shorter than what I could get away with for an adult novel. Right now, it is an epic novel, very hard to market in the current publishing climate.
And, that is after I cut off the part I was going to originally write into this book. That section later was designated Book 2. Now it is Book 3, Aurora Recover. Why the change? Because, in order to fit my story into the YA genre guidelines of between 60,000 to 75,000 words, the Kezia story needs to be its own separate book--Book 2, Aurora Redress. (I chose that title to be a play on words for more than one purpose.)
Marty in the colonial world of 1748 and 1758 is enough for a stand-alone book. That is how I feel I need to rewrite it before I query any more agents.
I have already tentatively separated the two sections of the book. I had to rearrange some of the Cy and Lee Hardin chapters to make Rescue work. I am still toying with the idea of changing Marty's age to 16 and Cy's age to 17, making Eddie and Andrea closer friends of them both and maybe involving Marty's younger brother Jason more. I will think on that a bit. My biggest challenge will be to come up with a satisfying ending for a stand-alone book that will also allow me to use the closing scene as a jump-off for the next book.
Right now, without rewrites, I ended up with the new Aurora Rescue at 61,547 words--right in the ballpark. The Kezia section weighed in at 45,337 words, but there is a lot more I can do with that story.
So, I am beyond a quintology. If this group of stories gets sold, I have enough adventures planned, including a trip into a dystopian future, to make it a series.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Bite the Bullet
*
I am going to have to "bite the bullet", as the expression goes, and fork over the money to buy Microsoft Word for my new laptop. Yes, you can open a Word document in Open Office. No, you can not transfer files interchangeably between the two programs and expect the formatting to hold.
I even tried to save my files in Rich Text Format, which both programs open, and still the formatting went all whacko. When I tried to correct it, I lost my paragraph indents.
So, now I am once again working on my full manuscript in Word, going back through it to not only edit excess, check spelling and grammar, etc., but to be sure all my paragraph indentations, quote marks and other formatting are where I want them.
All this transferring file formats back and forth--not to mention trying the copy and paste to and from the body of emails--has resulted in dropped letters and other anamolies. I know I have been through the first part of my manuscript--the part I need to send to agents--many times. Some of those errors that I worked on today are so obvious, I know I would have caught if they had been my typos. That was before all the file type and computer swapping. But, I fear, some of my sample pages have gone out with errors that will not doubt turn some agents off.
Whoops!
Some literary agents are agents because they love to read. Others, I get the feeling, are closet English professors who consider themselves the grammar and spelling police. Hopefully, my sample pages on which there are a couple of goofs due to my formatting problems of transferring Word files between RTF and Open Office will end up in the hands of the former kinds of agents who look more at the story and understand the little typos are the reason we have copy-editors.
Anyways, I am doing myself a favor and sticking to one version of one brand of software that will transfer text files cleanly from one computer to the other and will produce a clean Rich Text Format document that will copy cleanly into the body of an email. Time to go software shopping.
Oh, by the way, I am down to 107,104 words and not finished with this final edit.
I am going to have to "bite the bullet", as the expression goes, and fork over the money to buy Microsoft Word for my new laptop. Yes, you can open a Word document in Open Office. No, you can not transfer files interchangeably between the two programs and expect the formatting to hold.
I even tried to save my files in Rich Text Format, which both programs open, and still the formatting went all whacko. When I tried to correct it, I lost my paragraph indents.
So, now I am once again working on my full manuscript in Word, going back through it to not only edit excess, check spelling and grammar, etc., but to be sure all my paragraph indentations, quote marks and other formatting are where I want them.
All this transferring file formats back and forth--not to mention trying the copy and paste to and from the body of emails--has resulted in dropped letters and other anamolies. I know I have been through the first part of my manuscript--the part I need to send to agents--many times. Some of those errors that I worked on today are so obvious, I know I would have caught if they had been my typos. That was before all the file type and computer swapping. But, I fear, some of my sample pages have gone out with errors that will not doubt turn some agents off.
Whoops!
Some literary agents are agents because they love to read. Others, I get the feeling, are closet English professors who consider themselves the grammar and spelling police. Hopefully, my sample pages on which there are a couple of goofs due to my formatting problems of transferring Word files between RTF and Open Office will end up in the hands of the former kinds of agents who look more at the story and understand the little typos are the reason we have copy-editors.
Anyways, I am doing myself a favor and sticking to one version of one brand of software that will transfer text files cleanly from one computer to the other and will produce a clean Rich Text Format document that will copy cleanly into the body of an email. Time to go software shopping.
Oh, by the way, I am down to 107,104 words and not finished with this final edit.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A Matter of Style
*
When I described Marty in the first chapter, one paragraph read:
"Her one concession to style was her earrings. The thin gold-plated fishhooks looped through her ears, and dropped in front where each held a polished opal stone separated from a small shaft of lavender quartz by a gold-plated bead."
It was important to describe the earrings. It was important to have them made of materials that would not be too modern. She gives them to Green Corn, my Lenni Lenape woman, in what Marty later learns is the year 1748.
Speaking of style, that is where I am delving. No, not into fashion, but into editing. Chicago Manual of Style is the industry standard for law and other technical fields, but what I own is Webster's Standard American Style Manual. Necessary, if not fascinating, reading when one is doing the final edits on a manuscript.
I have also found a professional copy-editor (Is that styled correctly?). Unfortunately, she is leaving on a month-long vacation. But, hey, at least I know that when I get an agent to say, "We are interested in your manuscript. But, Hon, you really need a copy-editor to go over this thing before it goes to a publisher," I have one I can hire. (Now, was that a sentence that needs copy-editing, or what?)
I am still whittling down that word count. I am claiming this novel at 107,000 words. I currently am at 107,478 words. Go, delete key!
When I described Marty in the first chapter, one paragraph read:
"Her one concession to style was her earrings. The thin gold-plated fishhooks looped through her ears, and dropped in front where each held a polished opal stone separated from a small shaft of lavender quartz by a gold-plated bead."
It was important to describe the earrings. It was important to have them made of materials that would not be too modern. She gives them to Green Corn, my Lenni Lenape woman, in what Marty later learns is the year 1748.
Speaking of style, that is where I am delving. No, not into fashion, but into editing. Chicago Manual of Style is the industry standard for law and other technical fields, but what I own is Webster's Standard American Style Manual. Necessary, if not fascinating, reading when one is doing the final edits on a manuscript.
I have also found a professional copy-editor (Is that styled correctly?). Unfortunately, she is leaving on a month-long vacation. But, hey, at least I know that when I get an agent to say, "We are interested in your manuscript. But, Hon, you really need a copy-editor to go over this thing before it goes to a publisher," I have one I can hire. (Now, was that a sentence that needs copy-editing, or what?)
I am still whittling down that word count. I am claiming this novel at 107,000 words. I currently am at 107,478 words. Go, delete key!
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Choose Your Pick
*
YES! I did get my first email query for Aurora Rescue off to an agency.
NO! It was not an easy process.
As if it was not enough to study from among my pre-selected possible agencies to be sure I was preparing a submission according to their guidelines, I was dealing with another issue.
I want to track my submissions on my new laptop, sans MS Word. Even though Open Office is supposed to be compatible, well it almost is. It is the little quirks that are not real compatible that just about drove me nuts last night.
As if that was not bad enough, transferring the ODT document that originated as a DOC document into the body of a Thunderbird email message was less than delightful. More formatting there in hopes that once the query and sample pages were sent, it would look like something decent on the receiving end.
Then there was that other little quirk.
After a little more editing--okay, I admit, I can edit 'til the end of time if I let myself--my grand total of words for Aurora Rescue in Open Office is 112,475. I took the exact same manuscript and dumped it into a MS Word document and came up with 110,571 words. A little bit of a discrepancy, wouldn't you say?
So, what I am I going to say to those agents who want a word count included as part of the query? I guess I can choose my pick.
YES! I did get my first email query for Aurora Rescue off to an agency.
NO! It was not an easy process.
As if it was not enough to study from among my pre-selected possible agencies to be sure I was preparing a submission according to their guidelines, I was dealing with another issue.
I want to track my submissions on my new laptop, sans MS Word. Even though Open Office is supposed to be compatible, well it almost is. It is the little quirks that are not real compatible that just about drove me nuts last night.
As if that was not bad enough, transferring the ODT document that originated as a DOC document into the body of a Thunderbird email message was less than delightful. More formatting there in hopes that once the query and sample pages were sent, it would look like something decent on the receiving end.
Then there was that other little quirk.
After a little more editing--okay, I admit, I can edit 'til the end of time if I let myself--my grand total of words for Aurora Rescue in Open Office is 112,475. I took the exact same manuscript and dumped it into a MS Word document and came up with 110,571 words. A little bit of a discrepancy, wouldn't you say?
So, what I am I going to say to those agents who want a word count included as part of the query? I guess I can choose my pick.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Red-Letter Day
*
Yesterday was a "red-letter day." I not only have finished my Green Corn segment in Aurora Rescue, I finished the editing. I am at 110,749 words. A little over the upper goal of 110,000, but a far cry from the 148,004 less the Green Willow section and the double-paste Section Three to get to 106,648. I added the Green Corn, which upped it a few thousand words, but I cut-cut-cut from the Kezia section. As far as I am concerned, I'm good until I am told I have to cut some more.
My next project was to get everything transferred to my new computer. I may have mentioned earlier that I bought it when the older laptop started to stick, jump and otherwise act up. As I write this, I am still using it. But, I have the new one just in case this one decides to "crash and burn" on me.
As for transferring everything for tracking my agent queries and beyond (love that ten-key for numbers), not as easy as one would think. I bought the new laptop stripped of software, and decided to go with Open Office. Unfortunately, because there is a trial version of MS Word on there, it keeps activating when I open Word documents. So, I have converted all my files on the old laptop to Open Office. I mean, between my writing and my research notes, there are HUNDREDS of files that needed converting. That took me HOURS.
The actual text of the novel, the five-page sample, the ten-page sample and the first chapter sample (different editors want different samples for consideration) are all in rich text format. I have that plus all my novel files and my publishing files backed-up three places. Now, I will transfer it to the new laptop. My goal is to send out my first agent query tomorrow.
Part of the object is, you see, to get from the red into the black. I want to get this novel sold!
Yesterday was a "red-letter day." I not only have finished my Green Corn segment in Aurora Rescue, I finished the editing. I am at 110,749 words. A little over the upper goal of 110,000, but a far cry from the 148,004 less the Green Willow section and the double-paste Section Three to get to 106,648. I added the Green Corn, which upped it a few thousand words, but I cut-cut-cut from the Kezia section. As far as I am concerned, I'm good until I am told I have to cut some more.
My next project was to get everything transferred to my new computer. I may have mentioned earlier that I bought it when the older laptop started to stick, jump and otherwise act up. As I write this, I am still using it. But, I have the new one just in case this one decides to "crash and burn" on me.
As for transferring everything for tracking my agent queries and beyond (love that ten-key for numbers), not as easy as one would think. I bought the new laptop stripped of software, and decided to go with Open Office. Unfortunately, because there is a trial version of MS Word on there, it keeps activating when I open Word documents. So, I have converted all my files on the old laptop to Open Office. I mean, between my writing and my research notes, there are HUNDREDS of files that needed converting. That took me HOURS.
The actual text of the novel, the five-page sample, the ten-page sample and the first chapter sample (different editors want different samples for consideration) are all in rich text format. I have that plus all my novel files and my publishing files backed-up three places. Now, I will transfer it to the new laptop. My goal is to send out my first agent query tomorrow.
Part of the object is, you see, to get from the red into the black. I want to get this novel sold!
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