Thank you to everyone who offered band name ideas–it was hard to choose! But I painstakingly narrowed it down to my faves and what I ought worked best for the words and characters, and the chosen two are…
Simple Mischief (from Lexie)
and
Rose Killers (from Angela)
Thank you again! It’s a bit of a wait, but you’ll be seeing those names in print (as long as my editor likes the scene 😉 ) in early 2013 (the sequel is due out one year after THE WAY WE FALL).
You may be a fan of the supernatural and things that go bump in the night, but how much would you show that love in your home decor?
I could see getting this shower gel for amusement’s sake:
But coffin cabinets? I don’t know, that’s getting a little too macabre for me.
There’s a bunch more creepy home decor here. What would you want in your house? (My other fave is the butcher’s apron–heh.) Or is all of it bringing horror a little too close to home?
The Feast of Awesome (otherwise known as the 2009 Debutantes) is giving away 40 sets of L.K. Madigan’s two books. Why? To celebrate what a wonderful writer and friend she is, because recently Lisa got some very hard news.
I was impressed by Lisa’s writing from the moment I started FLASH BURNOUT, which has one of the most authentic boy voices I’ve ever read, and is all around heart-wrenching and real and honest in its portrayal of teens and friendship and love. I was lucky enough to get to read an early version of her second book, THE MERMAID’S MIRROR, as a critiquer, and I could tell readers would adore Lena’s story too.
I’d love to share both of these great books with even more readers. To find out how to enter, read the full giveaway post. Whether you enter or not, please consider spreading the word!
The second song of GHOST’s unofficial soundtrack is “How Soon Is Now?” by Love Spit Love. Yes, I know this is a cover of a Smiths song. Yes, the original is generally the best. But I was introduced to the song via this version, which appeared on the soundtrack for the movie The Craft, so I guess it’s not a surprise I’ve always associated it with teen paranormal goings-on.
It’s a little more depressing than Cass actually is, but I think it matches her sense of isolation and frustration with social conventions pretty well. Most telling lyrics: “How can you say/I go about things the wrong way?/I am human and I need to be loved/just like everybody else does.”
Happy almost-weekend!
I’m excited to announce my first US events to take place outside New York City! In the middle of February, I’m going to be heading down to Florida and spending a couple of Authors Love… Ghosts! evenings with the Palm Beach County Library.
The events are open to teens age 12-17, and include me talking about my books and giving advice to aspiring writers, plus a chance to use real ghost hunting equipment with the Gold Coast Paranormal Society and hear local ghost stories with Florida Storyteller Monica Ladd. Refreshments will be provided.
If you’re interested in coming, I recommend preregistering. The phone numbers as well as dates and all the other important details can be found below:
Authors Love… Ghosts! – Wednesday, Feb 16, 2011; 6:30-7:30pm
Glades Road Branch
20701 95th Avenue South, Boca Raton, FL
Call 561-482-4554 to preregister.
Authors Love… Ghosts! – Thursday, Feb 17, 2011; 6:30-7:30pm
Wellington Branch
1951 Royal Fern Drive, Wellington, FL
Call 561-790-6070 to preregister.
Hope to see you there!
For the first time yesterday, I was able to capture all three of the Crewe-Morris household cats cuddling together. I feel cuteness of this level deserves to be shared with the world.
Molly and Hazel often hang out together, but Fiver is usually more stand-off-ish. Perhaps the chilly weather is bringing them together?
I’m hard at work on the sequel to THE WAY WE FALL, and I’ve come to a scene where the characters are discussing two bands. I don’t want to use actual bands, since that will date it, so I need made-up names. And I thought it’d be fun to give my blog readers a chance to be a part of the book!
So, this is how it works. Suggest one or more names that you think would fit a band older teen boys would like. Something alternative, rock, or maybe electronica sounding. I’ll pick my favorite two names, and yours could end up in the book! Pending, of course, editorial approval.
Ready, set, go: name those bands!
(Open until this time next week.)
Last week I posted some tools to help writers embarking on the search for an agent to represent their work. Today, I’d like to make a sort of addendum to that post, because over my years in the writing community, I’ve seen a lot of people struggling to cope when the agent search or the publisher search doesn’t go as well as they hoped.
I think it’s easy to put a lot of expectations and dreams on one book, the most recent book you’ve written, maybe your first book, maybe your fifth. But to stay sane in this business, you can never forget that this book might not be THE book.
And that’s okay.
GIVE UP THE GHOST was my first published novel; it was also the tenth I’d completed. (I posted the full list of my completed novels pre-GHOST a few years back, for those interested.) Which isn’t including the many unfinished novels I had to abandon along the way. I queried agents with two books before GHOST: one only a few before I decided the hook wasn’t strong enough; one quite widely, and ultimately realized based on agent feedback that it wasn’t working and I didn’t know how to fix it. I could have queried for the earlier books, but each of them, for whatever reason, I felt wasn’t strong enough before I got to that point.
The only reason I’m now a published author is that, when I got those agent rejections, when I decided a book wasn’t ready, I accepted it as part of my learning process as a writer, and went on to write the next book.
As Lisa Schroeder explained so well a few days ago, “Oh well” should be a writer’s favorite words. Not everything will work out the way you’d like. Most likely, most things won’t work out the way you’d like. Whether you cope well enough to continue working toward your dreams will be determined by your ability to roll with the punches, shrug it off, and keep going.
So I wish the best of luck to everyone planning on seeking publication this year. But I also wish you the ability to accept both the successes and failures along the way, and the knowledge that if this book isn’t THE book, there’s still the next book. And the one after that. And the one after that.
The dream only dies when you give up and stop writing.
The paperback of GIVE UP THE GHOST is coming out in just three months! Since music is one of my biggest writing inspirations, every week until then I’m going to post a song from the unofficial soundtrack of the book, along with a few thoughts about how it relates to the story. 🙂
First up is “Trouble” by Lisa Germano:
If GHOST has a theme song, this is it. I listened to the album “Trouble” comes from, Geek The Girl, about a gazillion times while I was writing the book, and I think it’d be one of Cass’s favorites. The tone fits her cynical, awkward-but-trying-to-be-confident persona so well.
And this song in particular gives a pretty accurate sense of Cass’s emotional conflict throughout the book. That feeling of wanting to connect but being scared to, of not knowing how to change and so making mistakes you hate even as you’re making them. The lyrics aren’t perfect, but I could imagine her thinking lines like “And as I smile, I catch myself” and “yeah I’m human too” right in the narration.
I’m seeing “start querying agents” and “find representation” in a lot of the new year’s goals posts on my friends list. Having just gone through the process last year, I know how much fun (ha!) that diving into the agent-search waters can be. The only thing I find harder to write than a query letter is a synopsis (because at least with the query letter you don’t have to try to make your ending sound spectacular in greatly condensed form). Mine went through several drafts over a number of weeks, ending with me sending three different versions to my crit partners begging for help choosing the best one–despite the fact that I’ve been through the process successfully before. And let’s not get into the stress of sending out the letters and manuscripts and waiting to hear back.
So I wanted to share some of the tools that helped me craft my query and prepare for the search, and feel a little bit confident that I knew what I was doing.
Making your submission list
QueryTracker’s Who Reps Who – One of the best places to start is by finding the agents who repped books you loved that you think are similar in content, style, or sensibility to yours. QueryTracker’s database is the best I’ve found, though I still recommend double-checking on Publisher’s Marketplace (see below) or a simple Google search to confirm the info as it’s occasionally out-of-date.
AgentQuery – An excellent site for searching for agents by genre; remember to check agency websites for current guidelines and sales. (Plus many agents these days have great blogs where you can get a sense of their approach and interests.)
Publisher’s Marketplace – Another way to find out who reps your favorite authors (although many agents don’t report any or all of their sales, so there’ll be some you can’t find) and also to get some idea of an agent’s tastes (what sorts of books they’ve repped and sold) and the variety of their connections (are most of their sales to the same few houses/editors or to a wide range?). Just remember, as mentioned, not some agents don’t report at all and many don’t report everything, so it’s an incomplete picture.
Verla Kay’s Message Board – Excellent all-round resource for children’s writers, but in this case particularly useful for seeing if there’s been any recent news or issues reported with agents you’re considering querying, regardless of whether you’re writing for children or adults (since an awful lot of adult agents also handle at least YA these days).
Writing your query
Evil Editor (use the tags to narrow the posts down by genres like Fantasy or YA), Query Shark, and the Miss Snark crapometer archives (scroll down from this link to the posts from Dec 30 and continue back from there) are full of excellent examples of both successful and (mostly) unsuccessful query letters and story pitches, with the thoughts of a professional on why they do or don’t work. You can learn a lot by example. You’ll also notice that the professionals don’t always agree, even on query format. That’s why it’s always important to read each agent’s guidelines before you query them, rather than sending out a bunch of queries all exactly the same.
Amazon or GoodReads – Look up your favorite books in your genre, and successful books with related premises. Read their back cover descriptions and try to figure out how you could structure your story description similarly. A good query pitch should read like cover copy–just enough detail and story to hook the reader.
Knowing what to expect once you start the search
QueryTracker’s agent statistics – Look up any agent and QueryTracker has stats for their response times to queries, partials, and fulls, and how many of those submissions ended in success. There are also comments from queriers about what sort of responses to expect.
Hope those sites help you as much as they helped me. 🙂 And if you have any sites or articles you’ve found helpful, share away!
