ONEIROS

There are three things I’ve learned so far in this endeavor that I think are really important.  Everyone writes differently so you may disagree, but for my money those things are:

Get Feedback

Feedback from an early draft (I never show the first but I’ll let people read the second) will benefit the book tremendously, as long as the feedback is good.  I don’t mean that the feedback has to be all positive, but if you can find someone willing to do it who is smart, who reads, who you trust to give constructive criticism, and who is not afraid to speak their mind, then I don’t think you can go wrong.  Listen to what they say.  Even though your book is really close to you resist the impulse to defend your work and instead just absorb what you’re hearing.  You don’t have to follow every suggestion but I think learning to listen to them is key.

Don’t get overly attached to anything you’ve written

No matter how cool it played out in your mind it might just not work for your readers and being stubborn about it isn’t going to help the story as a whole.  Be prepared to rework or even replace your favorite scene in the book.  I’m finding that sometimes a bit may not work in one story but then find a home later on in a different one.

Don’t forget to breathe

Stepping away from a project then coming back to it later helps a lot, at least for me.  I don’t let myself do this in mid-draft unless I find I’m just pushing food around my plate but even then I don’t do it long.  After say a second draft, though, it really pays off for me to walk away and work on something else for a while.  When I come back to it, as I will shortly with APPLE, I find I’ve got totally renewed energy and a ton of fresh new ideas for it to make it better.  That combined with the feedback should spell a productive third draft.

Ok the first test read is in; my wife finished up and once again came through with detailed and valuable feedback.  I’ll hear from the others this weekend and see what I’ve got then as the first draft of THE SILENT ARMY wraps up I think I’ll take a breather from it and tackle the APPLE rewrite which should only take a couple of weeks.

First thing that needs to go is the title (I have no delusions about my title picking; I am not good at it) then there is some rework to do.  Good test readers will find a lot of leaks and the initial discussion we had about it has totally got me ready to dive back in.  The time away from the project has also given me a new perspective on certain things.  Once I’ve got my ducks in a row I’ll forward it to my agent and see what he thinks.

I get asked sometimes about the violence in my writing.  My mother came to terms long ago I think with the fact that although much of what she read was disturbing it didn’t seem to be some kind of early warning that one day she would open the newspaper to discover I had been found inside my home with a vast collection of human uvulas.  At least a couple of people who test read for me do look at me like they wonder sometimes though, and sometimes I catch them peeking into cupboards and whatnot looking, I think, for a stray uvula.  My wife in particular provides excellent feedback that is frankly on par with what I’ve in some cases paid for but I know parts of it rub her the wrong way.  She is dutifully reading through Apple even though I know it’s absolutely not her bag and It got me thinking about the nature of violence in writing and my writing in particular.

Some would say (and have) that it’s a cheap device but I disagree.  In my view a person’s actions really do speak louder than their words and their actions when thrust into a dangerous situation can say even more about them.  Stories thrive on conflict and there are all different kinds of conflict both internal and external, but at the end of the day there is none more fundamental than physical violence.

Do you use violence in your writing?  How do you use it?  Do guests poke around in your sock drawer, looking for human remains?

Still no word on the contract, but I am assured by my agent this is normal and that ‘the wheels at big publishers grind slowly’…since Jack managed to procure a three-book deal in less than six months and is therefore a complete rock star I believe I will heed his advice and leave the worrying to him while I concentrate on the next book.

I have tentatively decided to call the second book The Silent Army though if history is any indication I will probably change this ten times or so before this is all over.  Writing the first draft of the second book is turning out to be a blast and it’s coming along very well.  I plan on having a first draft in hand by the beginning of September or so, then give it a couple more reworks before handing it over to test readers.  This is the first time I’ve ever written anything creative under a deadline…I have plenty of time but want to put the effort in up front on a first draft so I can be free to polish it obsessively without a date rushing at me.

So, basically the work continues but this is work I love and I have to say that knowing what I write will down the road find its way to an audience gives it a whole different feel.  I did believe that if I put enough effort into it that my work would eventually see print, but in they back of my mind lay the truth that a lot of people never do, even people who are deserving.  Knowing that I’m over that first hurdle gives it a whole new vibe.

Before I managed to find an agent, never mind a publisher, I spent a lot of time wondering exactly how the whole business worked (I’m still trying to figure that out, but have a slightly better idea now than I did then).  I wanted very badly to be published but had no idea how to go about making that happen.  I looked online and found a lot of information there, a lot of it conflicting.  Some said you absolutely don’t need an agent until you get your first novel published, others said you absolutely need an agent if you’re ever going to get your first novel published.  The scattered sources all had a lot to say and some smacked of experience, some conjecture, and some just didn’t sound right at all but having made no headway of my own who was I to judge?

I love the internet, and I love the fact that anyone can throw anything out there that they like because that’s part of what makes it what it is.  That being said, it also means you have to take everything you see there with a grain of salt.  Sifting the truth from the rest is a skill that has to be learned especially when digital manipulation makes it impossible to even trust your own eyes anymore.  I tend to start off assuming anything I see on the internet is not true until I at least begin to see some kind of consensus then I’ll consider it might be true.  The problem was, even a consensus wasn’t really emerging.  Everyone had ideas and opinions as to how to go about it but few of them completely agreed.

I decided this was because there were many ways to go about it and I still think I’m right about that.  People describe their experiences and many people’s were different.  I can only add to that, I’m afraid, and describe my own but to any others out there who may be making the attempt maybe it will be useful to you.

For me, I used the Guide to Literary Agents, which can be found on Amazon or probably any bookstore.  It had a lot of good information and of all the agents listed there were only a few that were no longer active (including one that was actually a scam for a gambling site…not sure how that got slipped in).  That aside it’s a great reference.  It gives a good breakdown of information that can be tricky to track down otherwise, and it will tell you who handles what kind of material and also what they are looking for in a submission.  Some wanted a three-page synopsis, some wanted a ten-page synopsis.  Some wanted the first three chapters.  Most wanted a query and cover letter and some only wanted a query and cover letter.  They all have their own preferences so you’ll have to hand-tailor your submissions.  The Guide will go over how to format cover letters, etc. and I followed their format.  I think the gist of it is to provide something that will hook them and grab their interest, but also something that looks professional and shows that you’ve done your homework and are serious.  If that seems underwhelming I’m sorry but I think that’s the long and short of it; find a good collection of agents (or publishers if you want to go the direct route), target your submissions based on what they’re looking for, then go to their websites (almost all of them have one, both publishers and agents) where most of them have more detailed information about how they prefer to receive submissions.

I got a ton of rejections before finally getting a bite and the tone of them across the board struck me as very businesslike.  Unlike short story rejections which often included notes or critiques, these rejections tended to be more along the lines of ‘the property isn’t right for me’.  I got the sense it’s not just about the quality of the writing; I had many rejections to simple queries that didn’t even include a writing sample.  There also needs to be a good match, I think, someone who likes and deals in the type of material that also appeals to you.

That said the writing matters.  Endless books have been written on the subject of writing and I’m by no means an authority so I won’t pretend I am one, but I will say this because I think it did help me in the long run;  Early on I decided that my novel may get universally rejected, but that it wasn’t going to be rejected for technical reasons.  If it wasn’t the right time for my book that was one thing, but that it wasn’t going to be excessive typos or grammar mistakes or sloppy structure that killed it.   That meant getting feedback, some of it bad, and accepting and processing it.  It also meant editing; writing and rewriting then rewriting again.  I saw mistakes on subsequent runs through I just didn’t catch on the first go.  I hope to get better at that but until I do, I’m committed to as many drafts as it takes.  When I finally found an agent (Jack Byrne), he remarked my novel was ‘unusually clean’ which to me said the efforts paid off and that the time is well spent.

Once I got the call, I was asked to send a digital copy of the novel alone with two hard copies (which together filled a box about the size and weight of a cinder block).  He pitched it first to Ace Books, and made the sale right there.

I’ll break down what happens moving forward as it happens and try to provide some insight for those out there who may be interested.

Again, somewhat old news.  It’s been about a month now but I’ve had my hands full with The Silent Army.  Apple is basically what I would term Sci-Fi Horror, I suppose, but in a weird way it’s mostly a story about two lost souls.  The crisis that brings them together could have been a lot of things, but to me an intelligent form of necrotizing fasciitis engineered by a dead race seemed the logical choice.  One of my test readers once told me I had an obsession with the transformation of human beings into something else, and I suppose this falls into that category on both a figurative and literal level.

It’s also pretty grisly so I’m not sure how it will be received.  Some might say it’s a little extreme but then, I’m sure there are those who would say it’s not extreme enough.  I’m shooting for as extreme as it needs to be to get its point across.  We’ll see.

Once I have feedback I’ll get another draft together and forward that to my agent.  I’ll be able to manage that I think once the first draft of The Silent Army is complete (or maybe after the second, while it’s in test read).

I called my original novel RISE but I think on some level I knew it would have to change.  Titles are something I kind of dread trying to come up with, and RISE went through five or six before I settled on that but even then I wasn’t sure.  The publisher contacted my agent to ask about a possible title change and he forwarded the question to me.

While I was never really happy with the title I picked, this did put me in the awkward position of having to come up with another one, something I am notoriously bad at.  The publisher suggested the title REVIVORS, which I initially, internally balked at but it has since grown on me.  I think REVIVORS is more eye-catching than RISE and the book (actually the entire series) revovles around them so it’s fitting that the first book in the series take their name.

The point is this; I renamed the character of Nico Wachalowski too.  For a long, long time he was something else.  Then I decided I didn’t like it.  It didn’t feel right.  I like the new name much better but sometimes still think of him with the old name when I’m trying to work out outlines or something.  When I told one of my test readers what the old name was, they said ‘that was fine, why did you change it?’  I think if the order of the name change had been reversed, I would have gotten the same response.  I think Nico’s name doesn’t matter as much as him being an interesting and engaging character.

The same goes for the book itself.  I want people to pick it up, especially as a first novel, because the rest won’t matter if no one reads it.  The original title, I think, would not help achieve that end.  Letting go, I’m finding, is a big part of writing; letting go of that scene, or even that character that you loved but just doesn’t fit.  Letting go of that killer line that just wouldn’t have come from that character’s mouth.  Letting go of that awesome idea you were sure everyone would love as much as you did, but the truth was it just didn’t fit the story.  If it doesn’t work, or it doesn’t fit, then it has to go.

Long story short; RISE is no more.  It is now REVIVORS.

Got my first call from the editor at Ace who I’ll be working with on RISE.  Her name is Jessica Wade, and she has had some very nice things to say about the book.  She seemed as excited as I am to be moving forward and I look forward very much to working with her.  It looks like the timetable will be close to what I expected (in excess of a year before seeing print) but honestly since I’m kind of nitpicky about my drafts this will give me time to obsess properly over the second book.  I’m not completely sure yet what the process will entail; I only have the non-fiction book to go on, and the majority of the work on that was more making sure all the technical details were completely correct and less my breathless narrative about how User A found himself unable to communicate with User B because of a missing entry in the corporate router’s routing table.

It’s exactly for that reason though that this is so exciting.  Although it was satisfying writing a book like that, people bought it because they wanted access to the information inside of it and not for any other reason.  People buying that book didn’t care if User B made a life-altering decision that she would have made differently if User A’s message had actually gotten through (User B never got over that, by the way), it wasn’t the point so it never came up.  People who read RISE will be reading it for a completely different reason and the story, the characters and what happens to them will be all that they care about.

The contract should arrive in roughly a month (I’m assured this is normal), and then it begins in earnest.

Yesterday I received a call from my agent informing me that Ace is drawing up a contract for a three book deal; RISE followed by two sequels.

It’s difficult to explain exactly how that made me feel.  It was difficult to convey it even to him as he told me.  I first conceived of RISE when I was bumming on a friend’s sofa not long after graduating from college, and although it has changed quite a bit from its original form as I myself have changed, it’s been in my mind for many years.  To see it finally take shape and see print means more to me than I can express in this inline frame, but trust me when I say that to me this is a very big deal.  I labored on RISE for a long time and always envisioned it as a three part series, so to have not just the first book but all three lined up like this really means the world to me.

APPLE, the book I began after completing RISE at a time when I still hadn’t managed to find an agent yet, is nearing completion and will be test read soon.  It is a bit horrific compared to the last one.  Ok, some might say it is extremely horrific but I hope it will find a home as well.

After that, the saga continues and honestly I can’t wait to begin.

This is older news but it’s good news. My novel RISE was accepted for representation by Jack Byrne of the Sternig and Byrne Literary Agency back in November of 2007.  For those who aren’t familiar with the whole writing thing, this is a significant accomplishment and one that I’m very excited about.

My wife begins to wonder if staring at the computer screen for such extended periods of time is a risk to either my physical or mental health, and I don’t know a single person who can for the life of them understand why I would rewrite for the fourth time a book I have already written. I tell them it’s because I enjoy it, but I don’t think they believe me.  I do enjoy it, very much, but after years of work it is very nice to reach someone in this manner and I look forward to reaching many more.

If you linked here directly, feel free to browse around the rest of the site. It’s mostly just stuff that interests me but as it turns out the enjoyment I get out of creating stories, art, and music seems to apply to web sites as well so what’s one more drop in the internet bucket? I seem to get special enjoyment out of creating animated gifs in particular, so try not to go blind when you see the homepage.