Friday, August 16, 2013


How happy am I? Happier than this happycat inexplicably decorated with three cherry tomatoes.

I'm done whining about rejection (errrr... for now, give it a few weeks). Since Sunday, I've sent out three partials and two fulls! Oh happy, happy day.

Hrm, the only thing I'm regretting now is... how long it's been since I last looked at my manuscript. My first fifty pages are clean, sparkling, fresh. The next 2/3 of my manuscript is amaze-o as well (yes, I'm biased). HOWEVER, the last oh, 50-60 pages are...

I love the ending. It's a great resolution. But the battle at the end? It could use a little work. It very neatly, very quickly sweeps everything under the rug and leaves you wondering what the chicken just happened. It's kind of a tricky thing because I've read books with five chapters of showdown with the big baddie at the end and been like, woh-kay we know the protagonist is gonna get 'em, let's get this over with. But it's a fine line. There are those endings that wrap up so suddenly that they leave you pissed off that you wasted four hours reading for that kinda conclusion. Like a really good, long date followed by bad, really brief...erm. Anyway...

So hopefully... aforementioned agents like it anyway. In the meantime, before I send off any more queries, I'm going to beef up the last three or four chapters, which will probably  add maybe 5k to my manuscript. I don't want to get too heavy - it is young adult and it's good to keep things moving in the storyline - but I also don't want to piss off the reader, or leave them hanging.



Obviously... this is something I should have figured out before I sent out the fulls. Before I even queried (much less gave up on querying). But that's the problem with manuscripts - sometimes you look at them so long that it's hard to see the trees for the forest. Hopefully someone falls in love with it anyway. And if Agent Awesome says, gee I really love this, but the last few chapters leave a little something to be desired... I can tell her, you know what, I thought the same. I started a re-write of that very thing.  Otherwise, fix up time before I send the next batch of queries.

Have a wonderful Friday!


Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Licks to get to the center of the querypop?



Don't mind me. An entire day of querying Gargoyle Moon has made me go a little nutters. I'm pretty sure I don't have a story, if I do it doesn't have a plot, the characters deserve to die, and the query doesn't even look like words anymore.

Thing is, I'm done with Gargoyle Moon. It's done, it's edited, it has a shrine on my computer made up of tens of folders and hundreds of word documents. GM's had several full and partial requests, a couple near-misses of representation, some small-time blog fame, and one interested big-time agent who loved the name, but did not, unfortunately, love the story. It's done, and I still love it, but I need to move on.

I've been working really hard on two works-in-progress. One of them, Double Trouble, is moving along at record speeds. (Erm, record speeds for me, not for like, Stephen King). And still... and yet... breaking up is hard to do. I'm having trouble burying Gargoyle Moon when it's not even dead yet.

So I devoted today to querying every poor agent who hasn't had the chance yet to reject Gargoyle Moon from their inbox. I want to say in my queries,

"I know the markets flooded with vamps and werewolves and what not, but you don't understand! I've been reading YA fantasy before Twilight, before it was cool! When I was a kid, no one even knew the books I read existed--and now all of 'em are being made into movies, WTH? Every sixteen-year-old girl wants to read this book because it's the YA fantasy I couldn't find on the shelf when I was sixteen. SIGN ME, darnit! 

Xoxo, 

Crazed Writer"

But I don't. I just send out my little queries and sample chapters, waiting for the instant rejection because it's just another YA creature feature. (That's not entirely fair--I did have an agent who loved it, but was having a tough time selling YA fantasy. Even if she was just being nice, that R made my day.) And sending out these queries is satisfying. It's like, the closure I need. And who knows, maybe one of those responses won't be a rejection.

Anyway, I think there's a good chance I'll be writing Witch's Moon, Gargoyle Moon's sequel this fall or winter. Because you write books that you want to sell, but even more, you write the books you want to read. The ones you read when you were a kid. The one you wish you would have found at the library book sale when you were sixteen.

Xoxo,

Crazed Writer =)