Writing the Novel was the Easy Part!

Last week, my “Gangster’s Gold” manuscript came back from my agent and I’m happy to report, it’s ready to roll! Well, it’s ready to roll, but all my ducks aren’t quite all lined up yet.

When I decided to write this book, no one ever told me that writing the book was going to be the easy part! I mean, I whipped out that rough draft in thirty days. Then, of course, came the editing. That turned out to be far more involved than I expected. I mean, wasn’t it perfect already!? Um. No.

But still, I survived that step (although if we sell it to a publisher I will very likely be going through another round or two) and figured we were almost home free. What a silly, naïve fool I was! I hadn't counted on The List.

When my agent sent me back my manuscript, along with it was a list of additional items my agent needed. I studied this list with some alarm. A marketing plan? Wasn’t it the publisher’s job to sell your book? Ha! Not quite. They’ll publish it, but unless you’re Stephen King or James Patterson, you better be expecting to be out there hustling your own novel. So, if you see me out by the side of the road with my trunk open waving books around, be sure and stop by.

Next, she wanted a tag line and a cover blurb. I figured those should be easy. I mean, how hard could it be to condense a 70,000 word novel into a paragraph or a single enticing sentence? The answer to that is: really hard. In fact, I spent an hour at the bookstore one day just looking for tag lines and cover blurbs. I mean do you write a cryptic and mysterious tagline like A girl trapped between two lives separated by time or a more descriptive one like A girl travels through time to prove the innocence of a ghostly boy unjustly accused of stealing a fortune in gangster’s gold. Beats me. So, I’ll write one of each just to be safe. Then, the blurb (that descriptive paragraph on the inside or back of the cover that convinces you to buy the book). Again, I need to make it sound like the most exciting book ever so you’ll want to buy and read the entire thing before you even reach your car. It took me less time to write the first half of the book!

But I’m lucky. I have helpful friends. Mackie sat down with me and helped me think of ways to market my book. My critique group gave me suggestions on writing my blurb. My brother Brian even made me a little video teaser to put on my website to help (you can see it by looking in the right hand margin for the youtube link). Others also threw in their helpful two cents. My ducks are lining up quite nicely now.

So, by the end of this week, I plan to have this all back in my agent’s capable hands and see if she can drum up any interest. Granted, it’s not a paranormal romance or a fractured fairytale, both of which seem to be very popular right now, but hopefully someone will find some merit in it, publish it and make me Rich and Famous (or at least give me bragging rights that I published a book!) . I still need to find some other time traveling, treasure hunting ghost stories similar to mine. Oddly enough, there don’t seem to be a lot out there. If you think of one, let me know!

Consuming the Soul: The second novel arrives

I'm happy to announce the completion of another milestone in my writing "career". It's only taken me ten months since I started it, but I finally completed the first draft of my second novel! Okay, technically, it's my third novel since I have another one about two thirds completed that I started after "Gangster's Gold", but it's the second I've actually completed.

For the past three Novembers, I have participated in the National Novel Writing month writing event. The goal is to write a 50,000 word in thirty days. My friend, Mackie, told me about this back in 2009, and I decided it was a sign. It told me the time had come to write My Novel. You know, it's that novel everyone has tucked in the back of their head. The one we just know we'll write Someday. For most of us, Someday never seems to arrive, and if Mackie hadn't told me about NaNoWriMo (yes, that's what they call it), I suspect my story would still be loitering in those back alleys of my brain. Thus inspired,  I wrote and actually completed "The Legend of the Gangster's Gold." The following year, I started a second novel about a kid who sees ghosts, forced to work in a carnival, and eventually has to save the souls of dead children who were murdered in an abandoned mine, and finally the year after that, my third, "Consuming the Soul".  If all goes well, I'll start a new story come November 2012.

I'm excited about this newly completed novel. Its current working title is "Consuming the Soul" and is based on an old New England supersition. In the early eighteen hundreds there were those who believed that when a number of people, especially those in the same family, died from consumption (aka tuberculosis) it wasn't due to disease but due to an evil force inhabiting the body of the first victim. That force subsisted by consuming the life energies from living souls. Some believed if you dug up the body of that initial victim, you would find fresh blood in his heart or liver. You must then burn the organs and feed the ashes to those afflicted by the disease. This would supposedly cure the ill and stop the deaths. Needless to say, not many adhered to this "Yankee vampire" supersition, although for awhile, it was somewhat popular in the backwoods of Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire. Regardless, it was the inspiration for this book. A "vampire" book without vampires!

This novel was a actually lot of fun to write. It's a young adult novel and my first attempt at writing in first person. There are historical aspects, danger, mystery, and even a little romance. I'll have to admit, romance isn't really my thing. I usually prefer the thriller stories where romance doesn't get in the way of a good old-fashioned gunfight. I'll take a fun-filled fiery explosion over gooey mush any day.  Yet, I threw some in just the same. However, we are definitely not talking "Fifty Shades of Grey"!

So, now that the first draft is completed,  I've put the story away for the time being. I'll let it simmer for awhile and eventually go back and start the editing process. As I have learned, that can be a long, drawn out process. In the meantime, I'll start thinking about my next story. November is only a few months away!

Confessions of a Fanfiction Nerd

People have frequently asked (well, maybe twice) how I got into writing. Was it something I had been doing all my life, or did I just one day sit down at a computer and start writing? Well, to be honest, it was a little of both.

As a kid, I used to write and illustrate little books all the time. My favorite was a series called “The Spooks” which obviously was the inspiration for the “Addams Family”. It was just that original. Then, of course, there was the previously mentioned book I wrote in seventh grade about how my entire middle school was captured by Nazis and dug tunnels with spoons. It was over a hundred handwritten pages of hairbreadth escapes, witty adolescent banter, and nonstop adventure. I still have that someplace but sadly, it was never finished. I’m sure it would have made a terrific Nickelodeon movie. As an adult, I wrote a few stories for my then two year old daughter when we spent a summer in Norway and I quickly discovered we had not brought nearly enough books with us. I bought a couple of books in Stavanger, but since they were written in Norwegian, it made reading them aloud a bit difficult. Did help me work on my cheesy Norwegian accent, however.

Beyond that, I didn’t really write much, but in the back of my mind, I knew one day I would write a children’s book. That was my dream. However, I needed to actually write something in order to accomplish that goal. That’s actually a substantial hurdle to get over. What should I write about? Could I even write something like that? Then, my daughter introduced me to the world of fanfiction.

To the uninitiated, fanfiction are stories written by fans of particular books, movies, TV shows, video games, etc. Writers take the characters and settings and create new stories. Now, as a kid, I used to do just that but in my head. I’d take the Star Ship Enterprise on new adventures, create new versions of events in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or provide new missions for the prisoners of Stalag 13. I had no idea anyone else did that, much less wrote these stories down. I was intrigued and headed to www.fanfiction.net to begin my investigation.  I was immediately hooked. I started reading stories about every show, book or movie I had ever loved.

Some of the stories were actually extremely well written and more than a few were as long as an actual book. Some were obviously written by teenaged girls who wanted to be part of the action and wrote themselves in as a new character (these are often referred to as “Mary Sues”) and sure, when I was 13, I did that too. I was amazed at the number of stories out there. On fanfiction.net there are over 600,000 Harry Potter fictions alone! That doesn’t even include the private websites people have created for their own fanfiction stories.

So, I read and read and read. Then, the little niggling idea got in my head that maybe, just maybe, I could write a fanfiction. I was quite immersed in the whole Lord of the Rings thing going on when the movies came out so that seemed like the most logical starting point. I wrote a short little fiction, just over 8000 words, then took a very deep breath and posted it on the site for others to read. Mind you, when I wrote it, I assumed it was my little secret and would never see the light of day. I mean, writing fanfiction? How dorky is that!?

Then, I got a few reviews. Positive reviews! That was all it took. A monster was born. I began another, much longer LOTR story. This one was 34,000 words and 18 chapters! I had never written anything that long in my life. And the drug that is reader reviews fed my addiction. I wrote four more LOTR stories, the longest over 91,000 words and had over 400 reviews. I knew then I couldn’t stop. I continued writing in other genres: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, NCIS, and yes, Hogan’s Heroes.

  For a long time, I wouldn’t tell anyone I did this, but now, I don’t care! I have fans! People who ask me to write more stories. People who put me and my stories into their Favorites lists! If that’s not worth writing for, what is? And fanfiction isn’t just for nerds anymore.  In case you didn’t know, that infamous Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy started life as a Twilight fanfiction.

As much as I’ve enjoyed writing about old favorites, there was really a very important consequence of this activity. It got me writing. I was able to experiment, work on plot and character development, learn to craft sentences that made sense, evoke emotions, and figure out how to write dialogue. It was like a writer’s workshop. And because I had been doing all this writing, I finally got up the confidence to try writing my children’s story, the one I had always dreamed of writing.

So, here I am today. I just returned the revised manuscript of that first original story to my agent. Hopefully, we will soon move onto the next step of approaching publishers. And for this, I have to thank my love of old TV shows and books!

I would also like to take a moment to thank all of you that signed up to follow my blog. You guys are the greatest and when I’m Rich and Famous, I’ll be sure and wave to you as I drive by in my chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. I know how to treat my friends right! :-)

P.S. If any of you are dying to read some of my fanfiction stories, go to www.fanfiction.net and look for the author, yellowrose. FYI.