In Which I Search For Some Betas

Well, the time has come. I'm allllllmost done with my most recent line edit on Glimpse (just finishing up the whole "read backwards" edit. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a great way to edit each sentence on it's own merit)

The novel has been read by Twin, and by the sparkling (but not in a vampire sort of way) Hannah and is in the hands of my other Crit Partner Teebore. It's also been sent to a few non-writers (Brother and some fabulous friends) So, now it's time to reach out to the rest of my awesome blog pals.

I am looking for a few Beta Readers for my YA Fantasy Glimpse of Another Shore.

logline = A boy rescues an orphaned sea serpent and discovers a way to save his home from war.

My sea serpent is not this scary

Things I would require in a beta reader:

• I'm looking for someone who reads YA. I really need someone who has a good feel for the YA audience.
  
  
• You have to be willing to read the entire manuscript. I'll email the whole thing to you.
  
  
• You have to be willing to read the entire manuscript in a month or less. I want to give people time to read it, but I also want people who will be willing to commit.
  
  
• You have to be willing to answer a questionnaire sent with the manuscript. It's not a huge list of questions, but it'll be included with the email.

In return, I can beta read for you if you would like me to.

If you are interested and fit the criteria, either comment on this post or shoot me an email at sarah.ahiers (at) gmail.com. I'm looking for 2-3 peeps and I hope to hear from you.

Otherwise, how are you doing? Are you working with betas for your novel?

In Which I Hit A Webinar

So on Thursday of last week, I attended the Writer's Digest Webinar Starting Off Right: How to hook an agent with your first pages (this may not be the exact title. I was dumb and forgot to write it down. It's close though and I'm sure you get the gist)

I heard about this webinar from the lovely Roni over at Fiction Groupie, since it was her agent, Sara Megibow, putting on the webinar. The best part of the webinar? It comes with a critique of the participant's first 3 pages! Awesome, right? Totally worth the money. It's like they knew what bait to hang in front of us to entice us in



see more Lolcats and funny pictures

(also, she stated that, if she likes the first pages, she may ask for more. How awesome is she?)

Anyway, I took notes during the webinar so I could write this blogpost and let you all know what Sara said. I have to say, when the webinar was done, I felt totally confident. She said very little that surprised me and it seems I am on the right track.

She broke it up into a "why" and a "how" section, though most of the seminar was in the "how" section.

WHY (is it important to start off right)

• The agent has to be engaged immediately
• Sara says, for her to offer representation, she must love the manuscript AND think she can sell it
• She also almost always knows within the first three pages if she loves the novel
• She is actively looking for new clients (and she's with the Nelson Literary Agency. Pretty snazzy, IMO)
• She is looking for: YA, MG, Romance, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Women's Fiction and Literary Fiction with a commercial bent
  

That was pretty much it for the "Why" it's important to start off strong. She then went into the "How" and this was broken down to "Hot" and "Not Hot" sections

HOW (to start off strong)
HOT (what she likes to see)

There needs to be:
1. A clear inciting incident
2. Compelling Characterization
3. Command of the basics

1. the writer needs to be able to explain in 1 or 2 sentences what propels the novel forward. This should also be in your query. She says it is essential for the writer to be able to do this. For her, it is a deal breaker if there is no clear inciting incident

2. Why do we care about the characters? This is clearly important and good characterization needs to be present early on

3. This is broken down into more sections:

• Superior writing. If you do not have a firm understanding of the basics of writing, this is a deal breaker for her. She stated multiple times that a writer needs to master the art of writing before one pursues the business of publication
• Unique concept. Which mean, no vampires, no super powered children discovering they're the key to saving the world, no women opening bead and breakfasts, and in sci-fi and fantasy, no prophecies and cliches. None of these things are deal breakers, but you'd better have an interesting spin on it to make her love it or think she can sell it.
• Effortless world building. She wants to be engaged by the world.
• Realistic character motivation. For example, if your character finds a body, that character better have a damn good reason for investigating the murder instead of doing the actually believable thing of calling the police

NOT HOT (what she does not like to see)

1. Data dump - we all know this is a no-no for the beginning of your novel

2. Ineffective use of dialogue - all the examples she showed were obvious things such as "as you know, David, I'm the king and was crowned thirteen years ago on your birthday".

3. telling vs. showing - again, she stated the necessity to have masted the art of writing before jumping into the business of publication

4. mistakes with POV - a deal breaker for her would be an adult narrator in a YA novel. Or strange narrators like houses or jewelry.

5. prologues or dream sequences - this isn't a deal breaker for her, because they can be cut if needed, but it is a red flag. And if you've got some marks against you in other areas (sloppy grammar, etc) you're probably in for a form rejection.

Then the last few minutes of the seminar were wrapped up in questions. A lot of the questions were unproductive or had already been answered (questions about prologues, or questions regarding queries, which the seminar did not address) but I took a few notes.

• it's good to keep momentum moving in the beginning. Shortening chapters is a way to do this, but isn't necessary
• always keep queries short - like back cover
• if the novel's momentum slows in a scene, it's typically due to too much data
• For genre fiction - opening with action is important (though, for fantasy, it's acceptable to start off slower)
• prose and imagery can function as a hook, however this is harder in genre fiction
• if an agency's submission guidelines don't say it's not OK to submit to more than one agent in the agency, then you're probably OK to query more than one agent
• read other books in your genre - especially what's selling well and has good reviews
• if you're looking for critiques of your work from people "in the biz" she recommends the annual Brenda Novak auction (the link she gave is broken. Usually though there's a lot of buzz for it around the time). Yes it will cost money, but it's for a good cause (though in my experience, it's huge leaps above what I could afford).

And that was pretty much everything she talked about!

I would definitely recommend this type of webinar in the future for anyone who's interested.

I hope this helped, and now I'm off to work on my first three pages to submit for her critique.

In Which I Do A Dance

The "I finished a novel" dance of course!

It looks a little something like that, though to be fair I kinda hurt my back shoveling on Saturday, so it was much more restrained. You can ask twin, she'll vouch for me (she'd better...)

So, the working titled Glimpse of Another Shore is now completed at 58K words. Also, because I edited as I wrote (which was awesome by the way, I highly recommend it) I'm also technically done with my first line edit as well! wOOt!

Here are some fun stats:

This is my second novel completed in 2010 (though to be fair, Foxfire was started in late 09)

This is my first novel written in First POV (though I've done many a short story in first POV)

This is my first full length YA novel. I had a lot of fun and now think I may delve into YA more often. Also the shorter length required for YA is kinda nice.

I love it. A lot. I think some of my love has to do with the very minimal amount of editing and rewriting that needs to be done, but I don't even care. I LOVE IT.

So now I'm giving it another read through for a quick line edit. I'm also adding chapter breaks instead of just scene breaks. Then it will go to Twin for a read (since she's my alpha/beta reader) and also Hannah and Teebore who are my awesome crit partners.

After that I may look for a few other betas as well, peeps who read a lot of YA, preferably fantasy YA. So if that's you, we may be chatting later if you're interested (I'll make a post about it in the future)


So, how is your WIP coming?

In Which I Conference

So I mentioned on Monday that I was out all weekend (and Friday evening).
And the reason was:

Palindrome and I went to a writing conference!!

4th Street Fantasy to be exact.

It was our first writing conference and Hannah located it by doing an interwebs search for local writing conferences. She's just so clever.

It was quite a bit of fun. And we got 4th St Fantasy pens that were also flash drives! AWESOME!

The Program and thoughts (in red) are as follows:

Thursday, June 24, 2010

8:00 PM – Three Shouts On a Hill
Last year we added a pre-conference opportunity to laugh and play. It was so successful that we decided to continue it and establish a tradition! Tonight we share in presenting the world premiere of Jo Walton's play version of the Irish legend of the Sons of Tuirean: Three Shouts On a Hill.

Jo Walton, Author, on the right

Hannah and I did not attend Thursday. We have day jobs and junk.
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Friday, June 25, 2010

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM What should I be reading (that I'm not)?

An open discussion of what's exciting out there: not limited to fantasy or genre at all! We want to know what's getting us jazzed in the world of books and web stuff.
Tom Whitmore, with much audience help

Tom Whitmore, Conference Organizer and retired reviewer

Again, the day jobs prevented us from hitting this one. Too bad because I bet it was a lot of fun. However they made a list and posted it online.


5:30 PM – 6:30 PM How do you know when a story's going wrong?

An editor, a writer, a reviewer and a reader talk about how to tell when a story is going wrong, and what to do about it, from their perspectives.
Steven Brust, Karen G. Anderson, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Pamela Dean

Steven Brust, author, and his awesome editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Hannah pulled some strings at the day job and was able to leave work early. So we got zazzed up and hit this panel as our first foray into the conference. Both Steven Brust and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (editor for Tor books) were fantastic panelists. Funny and enlightening. Mostly the conclusion was, things can go wrong in the beginning, middle and end, but the middle and end mistakes are usually brought about by poor revision. Also this panel served to add to my confidence that the majority of work in the slush is terrible so we're already at an advantage.


8:00 PM – Getting to know you gatherings

Join Steven in the Smokers Den for Philosophy and Fun, Peggy in Courtyard Ballroom A for Singing and Silliness, Tom in Courtyard Ballroom B for Musings and Meanderings, or Janet in the ConSuite for Munching and Mischief... or stroll among them all. Other amusements will undoubtedly ensue.

Since we weren't planning on attending anything on Friday, we skipped this because we'd have to be up early for Saturday. Next year, I would definitely stick around to get to know everyone better
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Saturday, June 26, 2010

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Mixing genres

We've had a raft of different ways of mashing up genres over recent years. Fantasy with rivets, dragons with novels of manners, future-setting fantasy — what's coming next, and why does this sort of synthesis work well (when it does)?
Jo Walton, Elizabeth Bear, Teresa Nielsen Hayden

We started off with a delicious breakfast. Twin came with and I brought my camera to take photos but for some reason it stopped working (though it's miraculously OK now...).
Elizabeth Bear told a fun story about how her first novel she submitted was All the Windwracked Stars which has MCs that are: A Valkyrie, Fenrir and a two headed mechanical horse. The response from her editor was that it was a good book, but not suitable as a "first novel". It was eventually published as her fourth book (and both Hannah and I picked it up from the dealer's room)



11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Beyond promotion: Reputation management

Why is it wrong to put a stack of your books in front of you at a panel? What is effective at a convention in terms of promotion, and why? How do you get a reputation, and what do you do once you have one?
Steven Brust, Ctein, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

This was my least favorite panel. They pulled someone from the audience who was actively engaged in self promotion to sit on the panel as well. But all the authors more or less said, why would anyone want to self promote themselves when that's what the publisher was for. Which wasn't very helpful for everyone in the audience who didn't have publishers. Or who were published at small prints and couldn't even get bookstores to understand that they weren't self pubbed. Still, it was an entertaining panel. It just made me think that I should try real hard to be published with Tor books (BTW, they still accept un-agented submissions. Crazy awesome, right?)


2:00 PM – 3:00 PM How does the medium affect the story?

There are many ways to tell stories. Why choose graphic novel over song? What are the advantages of keeping it short or making it long? Why has epic poetry pretty much died?
Adam Stemple, Elise Matthesen, Elizabeth Bear

Elise Mathessen, writer, jewlery maker

This was an interesting panel. It ended up mostly focusing on using music or jewelry as a medium. Elise Matthesen was one of the most interesting people at the whole conference. She also had a jewelry booth set up for shopping where Hannah bought a set of earrings based on Jo Walton's discussion of her face shape. Hannah also bought an old Renfest costume of Elise's that she was selling for $80 which is ridiculously cheap. (I wanted one of her necklaces, but it was $425 and there's no way I could ever justify that). While the panel was going on Elise made us vote on what kind of jewlery we wanted to her to make. Eldirtch Horror won out, and then Pirate (even though Steampunk was CLEARLY the better choice...). When the panel was done she had created two necklaces.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Fantasy vs. Progress

Sarah Monette had a blog post which began a discussion on the nature of progress in fantasy, and how conservative fantasy tends to be. Of course we had to continue it.
Sarah Monette, Marissa Lingen, Adam Stemple, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Elise Mathessen, Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear (aka Bear), authors

This panel discussed why, in fantasy, we rarely reach, or go beyond, the industrialized age, and why we think that is so. Topics included Tolkien and his supposed dislike of technology that somehow allows him to have bicycles and umbrellas in The Shire which are not simple bits of technology



5:00 PM – 6:00 PM Submit, or die!

What keeps you from submitting and what keeps your submissions from being seen by the right people? Includes stories about the story an author won't submit.
Tom Whitmore, Elise Matthesen, Skyler White

For some reason, I can't remember what was discussed in this panel... WTF

Update: I now recall, with help from Hannah, that the discussion more or less centered around the fact that sooner or later, it becomes more painful to not submit, than to submit

7:30 PM – 8:30 PM Second thoughts: The morning after

The aftermath of Food, Fashion, and Fornication. Happily ever after? I don't think so. Unruly, lively discussion of what happens next.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Jon Singer, Elise Matthesen, Karen G. Anderson


We skipped this one and went home so we'd have more energy to tackle Sunday
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Sunday, June 27, 2010

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Point of view: How not to suck

Who's telling this story, anyway? Why should I care? Does it make a difference?
Jo Walton, Sarah Monette, Steven Brust

This was a fun in depth discussion about POV and authors that use it well and those that don't. A lot of focus was spent on the unreliable narrator



1:00 PM – 2:00 PM The new cliches

When does something change from a fad to a cliche? What's jumped the shark recently (besides "jumping the shark")?
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Tom Whitmore

Discussion ranged from anti-cliche's that become cliches to trends. General consensus was that if you begin a story by examining a cliche, it was probably OK, but if a cliche was the punchline of your story (ie - aliens come to earth in the past and create Adam and Eve) then you're in trouble


2:30 PM – 3:30 PM But that's a different panel...
Everything you wanted to discuss that got tabled until now.

We voted on two topics to discuss. And though both Hannah and I voted for "Why the horror genre collapsed" the winners were "How to make your problems fun" and "When to stop revising"

For "Problems" there was discussion about how every writer is given a "freebie" which is a writing skill that just comes naturally. For me, it's dialogue. Then to take that skill and use it to help the areas you suck at. Bear stated she hates setting, so she uses her freebie, which is fun, to try and make setting fun to work on.

For Revisions it all depended on what kind of writer you were. Do you know the ending? Then you probably need less revisions. If not, you'll need to go back and work it in. All the authors said they had had a book that they either had to, or came close to, starting completely over on. Also they pointed out that every writer, on every book, will always reach the point where they feel like they're the worst writer in the world.

So that was it! It was super fun and I'll definitely hit it next year.

My Contest Entry

Natalie Whipple had a contest this week which involved writing a scene for a picture she drew. It was fun and I hope there are more contests like that in the future.

Here's the picture she drew:

I really liked my entry and I hoped I would pull in a prize, but I wasn't a judge (though I will be when I have my own contests... (insert forboding music here))

Anyway I've decided to post my contest entry because I enjoyed writing it quite a bit and I hope some of you will enjoy reading it (though a few of you have already seen it and assisted in cutting my words down from 650 to 498)

So without further ado, here it is! (hmm I should probably come up with a title for it...)



Groggy, Elisa rolled over in bed and stared through sleep-heavy eyes at the glowing clock display.

3:13 am? What the hell…? But she heard them again, the quiet, yet insistent, taps from her window which forced her out of bed.

She leaned over to peer at the glass but it was too dark to make anything out and she’d be dammed before she turned the lights on at this hour.

Elisa cursed as she opened the window, jerking it past the middle where it always stuck.

Immediately a light zoomed inside, bright and painful against her eyes.

Elisa gave a shriek and swatted at the light, sure it was a bug, but bugs don’t swat back and this one slapped her across the bridge of her nose.

Even though it was a tiny slap, it still stung painfully.

“Ow! What was that for?” Elisa asked as she rubbed her nose with her palm.

“For swatting at me,” the light answered. It had landed on her shoulder and Elisa offered it a hand to rest upon.

Now that the light had calmed and ceased slapping, Elisa could see it was a fairy, and an angry one too, judging by the red color of her skin.

Great. Just what I need.

“What do you want?” Elisa asked.

“You’re the elf that kissed Brendan, right?” the fairy asked. Her hands rested on her hips and her tiny elbows pointed sharply against her wings which gave an occasional flicker.

Of course, all this went out of Elisa’s head at the thought of Brendan and the kiss. And how he had looked down into her eyes and how he smelled of horses but tasted of the chocolate ice cream they had just shared.

It was probably Elisa’s smile that told the fairy she had found her culprit. The fairy gave a very sharp, very high pitched shriek and flew at Elisa’s face. She grabbed Elisa’s hair and tugged it severely.

“Ow! Why do you care?”

“Because I’m his ex-girlfriend that’s why!”

Elisa stared, shocked. “But you’re a fairy!”

“You’re a quick one.” The fairy tugged her hair again and Elisa winced. “I don’t want you messing around with Brendan, or else.”

Angry, Elisa swatted the fairy away from her face. “Or else what?”

“Or else you’ll get more than just hair tugs and slugs to the nose!” The fairy turned, lifted up her skirts and bared her tiny, naked ass. Elisa couldn’t help but notice how each cheek looked like a pomegranate seed.

“Oh that is it!” Elisa shrieked. And before she knew it she had slammed her hands together, the fairy between them.

Brendan’s ex-girlfriend exploded in a shower of sparkles, light and a curious smell of Fritos.

Elisa thought perhaps she should feel something, shock at least. But instead she returned to bed and burrowed under her blankets.

No one likes fairies anyway, she thought as she drifted back to sleep, sighing at the reminiscent taste of chocolate on soft lips.

In Which I Become A Writer

I'm often amazed at people who state they always wanted to be a writer - like they popped out of the womb with a pencil in hand and a story to tell.

That's not how it happened with me.

I didn't want to be a writer. I remember Twin reading Dear Mr. Henshaw in elementary school (I think she read it multiple times) and I always thought it was kind of dumb. A kid who wants to be a writer and so he becomes pen pals with an author? Boooooring.

No, not for me. I wanted to be a veterinarian.

And when I was even younger I wanted to be a veterinarian and a singer. Of course my parents then teased me, asking me if I would sing to the sick animals which, naturally, drove me crazy.

Now when I think about it, that's actually kind of a clever idea. It would be awesome if there was such a job, where all you had to do was sing to the sick (animals or people) and they would be healed. Though stuff like that has pretty much been done to death

But then I hit high school and the aforementioned fan-fiction. When I did NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2009 I noticed that on the website and in the book they constantly talk about how, when you've become a winner, it could possibly the most you've ever written! Well, barring the fact that my previous WIP was stalled at over 70K word, I spent high school writing elaborate fan-fiction stories with my friends, the longest one over 40K, though there were at least three others that capped in the 30K range. So you can see I spent much of high school writing a lot of fan-fiction. Word count was not an issue for me.

Fan-fiction was fun. Of course, the majority of it was that it allowed you to fantasize about fun and exciting things with your best friends who were also involved in the fan-fiction. But the writing was fun too. I began my very first writing notebook where I stored ideas for fan-fiction and other stories - my Puppy in the Pot Book.

so named because of this picture on the cover

Also, I began to do very well in English class. I mean, I guess I had always done well in English, I never got bad grades in anything, but in high-school I began to enjoy doing well in English. I still loved science (especially biology), but a few great English teachers began to steer me away.

When Twin and I went to our orientation for the University of MN, one of the first things they ask is what you want to major in, so they know where to send you during the orientation. I was all prepared to say "pre-vet" like Twin, but instead what came out of my mouth was "English".

It was then that it was finalized, well at least the English degree idea. I still didn't have any plans of wanting to be a "real" writer. My original idea was to become a high school English teacher (something I still kind of wish I had followed through on).

But then, around my sophomore or junior year, I realized with an English major I could have an emphasis in creative writing, and well, that was it. My senior project wasn't a big paper on an author, instead it was a lengthy short story. All my electives were fiction classes and solidified my desire to be a writer.

So there you have it. Had you asked me when I was eight if I wanted to be a writer, I would have laughed in your face (Twin would have helped). If asked when I was 18, I might have hesitated and then said no. But here, when I'm approaching 29 (omg 30 is on the horizon...), well I've been saying it for almost a decade. It's kind of a weird little path I wandered.