Publication...Sort Of

You'll obviously note that I haven't been around much.  I'd like to make some very colorful excuses about this and that, and so on, but the truth is that very few people are reading.  The original purpose of this blog was to promote my self-publishing, which has been a wash.  Maybe, if I see a little pick up over the next year I'll pop in here again for news and updates and so forth, but I've been getting a lot more out an offline journal that I've writing in.

Sorry bizarre public platform where anyone can say anything, it was fun.

Moreover, I'd also like at least plug my story that will soon be appear on digital screens near you.  I've recently discovered Jukepop, an indie publisher for serial fiction that accepts novels published chapter by chapter.  My first book (now currently title Hired Gun) will appear totally free to read in the coming weeks.  Once it's fully revised and ready to be read, I'll go ahead and drop it on Amazon or something.  I've pretty much decided that the big publishers can bugger themselves.  You can't get in unless you're already in.  How the bloody hell does that work?

I read an article today about whether or not you can make money with your novel, and the frank answer was basically "No".  It was very well supported and largely true (at least it coincided with the research that I did).  Agents and publishers are really only seeking books that will sell over 50,000 copies a year.  Most books will only sell about a tenth of that.  Furthermore, they advise you to get your start by publishing short fiction, but guess what?  Those short story magazines want to sign stories from big-name authors that are already published, too.

So, how does a regular Joe Blow writing about magic and dragons get published?  You really just don't.  Or, if you do, you have to wait two to three years for it and you still live in obscurity.  Blows ass, I know.  Anyway, whole reason I came here was to drop a link for Jukepop and show off the new cover, so here goes that.

I'm actually pretty happy with this one.  Not bad for five bucks.  You can find the story on Jukepop here.

How NOT To Find An Agent

Looking for a literary agent is the most ass-backward thing that I've ever done.  It borders between idiotic and insane.  Let me explain how it works.

I'm Chumbo Newauthor.  I have written a book (with all the screaming and crying that goes with that) and now I want to get it published.  I have a couple options.  I can try to publish online, which works well for some people, but you don't make as much money that way.  I can try to send my book to publishers, which very few publishing houses still let you do.  Or I can seek an agent.  Most people start with the last option.

So, you take your shiny new book in hand.  In my case, a gritty crime-oriented urban fantasy novel, and you show it around to every agent you can find, right?  Well, there are a lot of genres and tastes out there, and just regular people, agents have very specific things that they're seeking (sometimes to the point that I'm like, dude, you should write that book you want).  So I start by filtering for folks who like fantasy.  That's a huge genre.  Anything that isn't real life is considered fantasy.  Occasionally, I find someone that says they want urban fantasy and I get excited, but usually, they just say most genres of fantasy (of which there are tons, remember).

Here's an analogy to represent just how dreadfully silly this process is.  Imagine if buying a car worked this way.  Rather than you going to a car lot where you can kick the tires and ask about cup holders, you put up a thing on Craig's list that says you want a car.  You don't leave a lot of details (something with four wheels and a rad stereo).  But, really, you have a very specific idea of what you want.  Now the people who have the cars bring them by your house.  After looking at literally hundreds of cars this way, people showing you what they want to sell rather than what you want to buy, a sale has still not been made.  You still don't have a car, and those poor car engineers still can't get their hunks of shiny metal sold to anyone.

I mention this because an odd thing happened to me while I was looking at agents today.  I saw this:

Chris Lotts
The Lotts Agency

*This agent accepts queries

*I handle adult science fiction and fantasy for the agency, and am currently interested in hard-edged, innovative crime novels and thrillers, paranormal and urban fantasy, and SF; strong commercial writing is the most important criteria.

My heart just about jumped into my throat.  Here was the first agent listing that I'd read (out of about 100 so far) that not only used the words "crime novels and thrillers" with the words "urban fantasy", they're actually in the same sentence!  However, when I clicked on the agent's website, the domain name didn't exist.  No way to tell if this was a real person patiently awaiting a manuscript just like mine, or some ghost of a posting from untold years ago that only leads down the internet's darkest and most forgotten back allies of obscurity.  I sent him an email anyway.

Writing Is Hard

Or rather, it should be hard.  It seems like a lot of people are under the impression that writing is "making up whatever crap you want and putting it down on paper".  Sure, maybe this is how many writers get started, but I would offer that good writers, who write something that sticks with you long after you read it, work really hard.

If you're a good science fiction writer, you might actually research some science (gasp).  If you're a good fantasy writer, you might learn about mythology and mysticism.  The level of work should reflect what your readers get out of it.

I've read stories that were obviously made up on the spot, and although some of them were good, none of them left me with a profound sense of...anything, really.  Let's consider Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.  It's funny, I actually just read a review of this book that really slammed it, but I suppose that reviewer was an idiot.  What can you do?

The book in question was written back in the 60s and took the author about ten year to write.  Part of this had to do with the political climate and some of the ideas that the book offered (not that they're all that racy these days).  But that's what I think a good book should offer: ideas.  Not necessarily rhetoric or religious in instruction (looking at you C S Lewis) but an idea or a feeling that resonates with its audience.  Is my writing there yet?  Since I'm being so judgy and all?  I don't really know.  I hope that one day it will be.

Coffee and Other Dark Rituals

Lately, I've been doing some research on the things that help one write fiction.  I've been researching them so that I can use them for myself, you see.  Most of the time, I sit down and get work done, but I can't help but think that I could get into that Writing Mode a little faster and more reliably.  My research has led me to a resounding conclusion that I'm sure I've put somewhere else on this blog already.  That is this: there is no perfect thing that works for everyone.

I've read about authors who actually wake up in the middle of the night and write for an hour before going back to bed.  Presumably, this is because the house is quiet and empty at these hours.  Not to mention dark, too.  Another author sits down in his study and works for twelve hours on as many different projects.  I've actually considered doing this.  Well, maybe not twelve books but two would be feasible.  I've definitely heard of authors who drown the surrounding noise with music.  Sometimes, they'll play the same song over and over because it captures a certain mood.

For me, it's coffee and comparable silence throughout the house and absolute solitude.  If I could figure out how to write inside of a black hole, I probably would.  It'd be the perfect place.  Of course, the black hole would draw my coffee in molecule by molecule until it was crushed to oblivion.  That would suck.

Live: From the Batcave

The fortress in the living room worked out really well yesterday.  I think it's going to be part of my daily routine, which, by the way, will be a little different this year because my shift at work is changing.  I'll get to stay at home for a full extra hour in the morning.  What's that mean?  Writing time.  I like it.

So far, my only goal for Broken Promises is to finish it sooner than my last novel.  However, I noticed that last year the more I set myself deadlines, the more I missed them.  So, this year, no deadlines.  Maybe forecasts or tentative finish lines but that's it.

I hate to admit this, but I really need to see something move on my last novel.  So far, no agents are interested.  I know this part of the plan takes time (a lot of time, probably a number of years) but I'm really the kind of person that needs to see some success.  That's not to say that I'd quit writing if it never made me any money, I'd probably just do it a lot less.  I see some of these other books that get published, and they're not bad but they're also not good, and I wonder how they get on the shelf.  I mean, seriously, it's a really competitive market.  Every agent is looking for a huge payday, the next Da Vinci Code (or whatever else has been popular) and I'm not convinced that this book is it.

Yup, just knocked my own stuff.  I like my book, mind you, that's why I wrote it, but I don't see legions of fans in my future.  Maybe just a few sweaty nerds in basements, and I get that it's going to be a tough sell.

Lately, I've been thinking about my writing career in the more abstract sense, what I want it to be rather than I want to do.  I considered crafting a non sci-fi book that was more intended for a mainstream audience, but I came to a realization.  That's just not what I want to make.  If it was solely about success and money, I'd probably be training to do tech support.  Doing what you want is way more important, even if it never takes you anywhere.  I want to write sci-fi/fantasy, and I don't care if it's never that popular.

Absolute Solitude

The time has finally come for me to begin serious work on my second novel.  Nope, the first one hasn't sold yet, but that's fine.  Books don't get published overnight.  This book is tentatively titled: Broken Promises and will (hopefully) see some new characters and some interesting developments on some old ones.  No spoilers here.

The only problem is this: whatever little hamster that runs the wheel in my head has been unresponsive the last few days.  I threw some coffee in there to wake the little guy up, but I think he may be trying to go on strike.  Something about unfair working conditions, I think.  Whatever the cause, when I sit down to put some cool stuff into my word processor, the whole machine stops and fingertips just hover over the keyboard.  It is for this reason that I've built a fort in the living room.

That's right.  My computer is out here, which is cool, but I have little to no privacy.  Particularly from my dog.  Every time I sit on the carpet and grab my keyboard, he thinks its an invite to play.  Puts his nose right in my face until I can't ignore him any longer.  So, with this in mind, I restructured my couch (which is sort of a tetrisy number) to block the little guy out for a while.  Only people with legs and opposable thumbs can enter the small space in front of my computer now.  It seems to be working.

Much like Superman in the Fortress of Solitude--no, wait.  Much like Batman in the Batcave, I will now get some bloody work done.

Head. Hit. Keyboard.

I hate looking for stupid literary agents.  What a pain in the ass.  Just a few days ago, I sent out my second wave of queries to potential agents.  So far, I've sent thirteen queries all together and have received two rejections.  One of those was sent to me the next day.  Gotta give that guy credit for being on it, though.  I know that rejections aren't supposed to be a big deal, I guess I just wish it wasn't so much work.

I did find some suggestions to meet agents at writer's conferences (of which there are several throughout the year), but most of them are on the East Coast or so far south in California that the street names start reading like the menu in a Mexican restaurant.  I did manage to run one down in Portland, the Willamette Writer's Conference in August, but just to go a single day, the admission is 250 bucks.  The whole weekend is about 450.

Still, I carry on.  Just keep working, I tell myself.  Lately, I've been thinking about adding a few more titles to my self-publishing catalog.  Not because I think it would make any money, but because it's something that I could have some control over.  I think that's probably the worst part of the whole agent thing.  Not having any control over the matter.  Having to sit here and bite my fingernails for weeks on end.

This Racket Again

Writing is a tough-ass hobby.  And I'm pretty sure it's not something that people just say.  Like you'll catch a cold if you stand in the rain too long (not true, the reason we get sick when the weather's cold is because we spend more time indoors, close to other people).  Or, if you make that face it'll get stuck that way (this one goes without saying, but there is evidence to show that holding a particular expression a lot can make your face look like it all the time).  Or maybe the numerous things that people say about sitting too close to electronics (most of which aren't true).

But for reals, writing really is hard.  I mention this, not only because I've started writing again, but also because a friend of mine has been talking about starting a novel.  Finally, this last week, he did it.  After he wrote his first 400 words (a page and a quarter) he had this, of all things, to say: writing is hard.  Just like that.  It was great, at least for me, you know, I've been there.  The nice thing about writing is that it's more of a craft, I think.  The more you do it, the better you get at it.  Some may disagree with me and that's fine, I have a special, round file on the floor where they can lodge any complaints.

I don't usually consider myself artistic.  In fact, I usually run in terror at the thought of sketching or painting something.  I even have a hard time coordinating colors for an outfit.  But I can write.  Always been good with words, at least, better than with paints and such.  I think that's because there's more of a process to it.  You can't always follow the process perfectly, mind you, that's part of the process, knowing when to chuck it out.  Wait.  This is sounding kind of arty.

New declaration: writing is whatever you want it to be.

Agent Me An Agent, Please

I wish I could hire an agent to find me an agent.  This part is a pain in the ass.

I've taken the advice of more than one article telling me to research books like mine and query the agents that represented them.  That's great and all, but I did that and was only able to query two agents.  Some books didn't say who represented them and others acknowledged agents that I couldn't find or that were closed for submissions.  Today I found a listing for agents that say they represent fiction and I went to their websites to query them.  Of that giant list, only a half-dozen agents even consider fiction and many of them explicitly don't represent science fiction or fantasy.

I started to ask myself, "How do these books even get on the shelf?" There's certainly no shortage of them every year.  I mean, seriously, the sci-fi section at Fred Meyer is huge.  Of course the romance section is twice the size.

I finally whittled down that group of agents to those that accepted fantasy and said that they were interested in urban fantasy.  A total of three agents that will likely reject my submission.  In all, I've queried five agents and will have to wait six to twelve weeks for their responses.  Not a typo.  Six to twelve.  And they'll only respond if they're interested.  Seriously, how do people do this?

Titling Titles Tidily

Revising went smoothly today.  Mostly, I was just gliding through and patting myself on the back.  It feels good to finally be going through the writing that I really like.  But it's probably sad that it's 90% through the book until you reach it.

I'm still considering whether or not I need a new title.  Lost Lamb has been the working title, but I'm starting to worry that it's too cliché.  See that?  I know how to make one of those in Windows.  The little E with the doohicky over it.  Résumé.  Ha.  Anyway, I really want this book to stand out, and I know that I tend to sort them by title and decide whether or not I'll even bother with the first page.  Here are some that I'd probably pass up.

Dragon Strippers
Vikings on Motorcycles
The New Tales of Merlin in San Fransisco
Chumbo And The Giant Fangaly Beast

You get the idea.  We judge heavily based on the title.  And, while I understand that my publisher can choose to change the title, I really want to come up with the right one.  But shit, maybe I already have.  Who knows?  Maybe I've just been looking at it for over a year and am now hating it.  Yeah, that's right, been working on this crazy thing for 12 full months.  Think I've lost the exact date, but I've been doing serious work on it since early May of last year.  I actually wrote the first chapter as an experiment back in February before that.

Anyway, thank god or whoever that its done.  I'm really looking forward to working on something else.  Anything else, really.

The Attack Of The Mutant Alien Query Letter

And then, as he sat down to revise the last little bit of his novel, he realized that he still had to write his query letter.  The one thing that every agent and editor would expect him to be able to do.  Dammit.  He bit his lip.  That last little piece was still dangling and he still had no idea what to do with it.

Maybe he could include a sticky note.  Something heartfelt that would assure agents that yes, he was a real person with a real novel and not some plagiarizing yahoo.  Perhaps it would read, "Hey!  I'm Steve and this is my novel.  Hope you like it.  P.S. I am a real person and not an alien from Xanthu 4.  Please take me seriously."  Yeah.  That might not work.  Even aliens have sticky notes.

His next idea was a photo of himself sitting at his keyboard.  Cup of coffee in hand.  Black-rimmed glasses and copy of War and Piece to look smart.  Surely, that would prove to them...something.  What were they even looking for anyway?  And what would they do if he didn't have a query letter?  Do the literary people employ a secret police force?  Some Black Water-esque band of trigger-happy crazies?  Maybe they hunt down other offenders, too.  Make them put commas and hyphens in the right spot or else, dammit.  Capitalize that sentence or I'll get angry.  Now use proper grammar in your dialogue too, buddy.

He flinched away from the keyboard.  Maybe this was his last chance to leave the country before the Literary Police caught on.  He'd been a bad bad writer after all.  Being all willy-nilly with commas and sentence structures.  Leaving fragments dangling out in the open like that.  Frequently using made up words like he was different from other writers.  Sheesh.

It wasn't too late yet.  He could still charter a boat and take his typewriter to some other country that didn't have query letters and agents, or all the long series of tiring, hair-ripping, nail-biting hoops he had to jump through to get meaningfully published.  Maybe some place in the mountains between Spain and India.  Come to think of it, he didn't think those countries were next to each other.  He'd have to brush up on his geography.  But there would plenty of time for that in the mountains of wherever.  Yes, that was where he would go.  The mountains.  They'd never find him there.

Finish Line Redux

Now that I'm FINALLY reaching the end of revisions, I'm actually starting to feel pretty good about this novel.  I'm really getting exciting about writing the next one, too.  I hope people like these books.  I guess that's what I worry about the most.  I really felt like no one actually read my last story.  Most of the people I know who bought it, did so because they thought they were helping me and never actually read the thing.  Yeah.  It sucked.  So, my only goal for this book was to reach a larger audience and make a more accessible final piece.

My research indicated that, although ebook sales have been steadily rising, 75% of all book sales still happen in a bookstore.  Most people prefer to read a book on paper, myself included.  I also wrote this book in a more popular and successful genre that's continuing crank out new entries every year.  Of course, that's not really the reason I chose to write this book.  I started the idea because of my own frustration with finding a good Urban Fantasy series outside of the Dresden Files.  Well, not just good, but also not drenched with hardcore love-making scenes and friendly, misunderstood monsters.  So, with those rules and ideas wadded up in my hand, I thought I'd write a book.

That's where Lost Lamb came from.

In some ways, I think this story has nothing to do with me as a person.  I've never shot at orcs or been friends with any cute, lady wizards.  But, in another way, the story is me.  I was thinking about it the other day.  I went to great length to make Jason Ingram different from myself.  I didn't want a more athletic, kick-ass version of myself.  Looking at you, Laurel K. Hamilton (just teasing).  I gave Jason a dark side and a weakness for rage.  Not just passionate anger that makes you punch a hole in the wall.  Jason's vice is that kind of rage that swells out of your gut like a ball of lava.  That intelligent, honed hatred that you form into the keenest weapon you can until you can plunge it where it'll do the most damage.  Wrath, you could call it.

As you may have guessed, this is based on firsthand experience.  When I was younger, I had a lot of anger problems.  Pretty bad ones, too.  I went through all kinds of different support methods.  Counseling.  Prayer (back when I was religious).  Meditation.  Most of it didn't work for me.  Finally, when I was fifteen, I took a karate class.  That did it.  Physical exertion put me in control of how I felt and gave me a positive outlet.  I had to do something with my anger.  Just like Jason.

If a thought is a jewel, no matter how much we work on it and add facets to make it special and different, each surface is a tiny mirror reflecting its maker.

Mostly, This One Is About Me Bitching About Stuff

Lately, I've been feeling some hesitance about revising my novel.  I'm not really sure where it's coming from, but I'm noticing the tendency to open the word document and stare blankly at it whilst smacking myself with the keyboard.  Regardless, coming here and blabbing into the infinite space of the internet has been helping me get the crazies out of my head before I get to work.

I had been envisioning some perfect world where I didn't have to continue this therapy, but such a world only exists in fantasy.  My head is crazy.  That's just something I have to accept, and even five, six years done the road, my head will still be crazy.

At least I can keep most of it stoppered in there, right?  I don't go around chanting or rapping to myself.  I saw a guy last week walking down the same road as me and he reading aloud from the dictionary.  Well, shouting aloud from it anyway.  When I was walking by he was only on the Ds and was going on about government terms.  Democracy, I think.  Dude needs a blog.

Ha.  Let's see if my blog gets flagged now for political speech.  Wouldn't mind the extra traffic.

Fiction Writers Mantra

For some reason, our first attempts to do something don't turn out as well as they could have.  Why is that?  When shooting, the first shot on the range is a cold shot that will most likely not hit its target.  When you cook a crepe on a heated pan, the first one turns a little too hard and rubbery to serve.  The first novels of a series tend to be the weakest of the bunch.  Of course, there's always the reverse tendency.  The first movie is always the best one, but maybe that's the exception that proves the rule.

Were the other ones really as good?

It's funny that I just wrote that.  I've always hated that saying.  It suggests that rules can be proven.  They can't.  There are no rules or measurements or standards other than the ones of our own making.  Do you think time cares how many seconds are passing?  The universe is 13.8 billion years old.  No.  Time don't give a crap.

How miles you think that is?

Not the point.  The first doohickey is usually the crappier of the group.  Much of my life (at least what I spent in school) I tried my damnedest to do things right the first time.  Solve the math problem without checking my work.  Write the final draft of the paper without the rough draft.  Most of the time it worked out, too.  But that doesn't always cut the mustard (what does that even mean?).  Sometimes you really need the cold shot.  The dry run.  The test that tells you if everything you've painstakingly put together is going to hold up to what you're going to do with it.

Doesn't it seem more efficient to do it like one of my school papers?  My teachers were always impressed.  But ultimately, I guess now I just really want to make the best possible thing I can.  Especially when it's something you care about.  You don't just wake up one day and knock it out before coffee and toast.  But all that takes work, don't it?  And god, we hate work!  I think that 9 out of 10 people probably have wonderful ideas for novels but won't write them because it's too much work.  I know it for a fact, actually.

If you are one of those people, I have an excellent piece of advice for you.  I've been working on it.  Where's the caps lock...THERE.  JUST FUCKING DO IT ALREADY.  Yes.  Writing is work.  So is breathing, so is thinking, so is blinking.  You're not going to stop doing those things are you?  Didn't think so.  Whatever it takes to get you started, just refer to that mantra in all caps.  Print it on a shirt or something.

Brain Out Of Fuel. Powering Down.

I think I can feel the gears in my head grinding to a halt.  I did my editing today, which has been going well for the last few days and I'm crossing the 3/4 mark, and then I got the notion that I should write a new Jason Ingram short story and post it on my blog.  Hurray, right?

I haven't been able to think of anything since then.  It feels like dipping a bucket into a well and then pulling up a cat, a toy train, and a sculpture of a meatball sandwich.  You don't know how they fit together or what they're for.  And the more you dunk the bucket, the more of it you get.  You can imagine my irritation, I'm sure.  I keep thinking about how there are exercises for muscles and things, and that there must exercises for the brain.  Maybe I could just do a few mental jumping jacks to get the ball rolling.  But what those would be, I'm not sure.

Sometimes in these sorts of situations they tell you to freewrite about anything, which is what I'm doing now, I guess.  I think I need a tall glass of wine and a cheesy sci-fi movie to make fun of.  On that subject, one of my favorites is the Mario Bros. movie from 19...93?  Google it.  Booya, internet says it was 93 (I can remember that, but I don't know what to write about).

Dennis Hopper was in this sack of crap, too.  Seriously, why?

Anyway, this turd-shaped bucket of manure had John Leguizamo as Luigi and...uh, some dude that actually won awards as Mario (not googling him).  80% of this movie is screaming, grumbling, muttering and shouting from one set piece to another.  It is not only laughably incomparable to the source material, it's also absolutely nonsensical in its structure.  Over Christmas break, my friend (nephew-in-law?) Josh came over and we watched it together.  It was amazing to watch someone totally new react to it for the first time.  Beautiful.

I remember him screaming at me, "Why, Steve?  Why would they do this?  Is that supposed to be Yoshi?" Things like that every five minutes or so.  There's even a scene where they put the characters in brightly colored suits and they put the WRONG guy in red.  Just sad.

I'm feeling like I just need to turn my brain off for a while and let it power up again tomorrow.  Then we'll see how things go.

Blogger, Keep Blogging

I promised myself I wouldn't neglect my blog this month.  Since I finished the rough draft of my novel, I've only been posting about one post a month, which is sad.  I'm trying to maintain this thing because that's what editors and so on want you to do.  "Blogs are cool," they say.  Regardless, I've had very little to say lately and I hate to repeat myself.  I'll save everyone some time and summarize what the last few weeks of post titles would have read.

Still Editing
I Hate Editing
10 Reasons That Editing Sucks
So On and So Forth
Lather, Rinse, Repeat

You get the idea.  What am I doing now?  You guessed it.  Editing.  I have reached the 55,000 word mark on the "final" manuscript, though.  I'm hoping to have it done before summer, because I have the feeling that I'll be doing very little writing over summer vacation.  I have bad work ethic when I'm not alone with the computer.

I'm planning on distributing some copies of the "final" manuscript to friends and family who are genuinely interested in reading it.  I figure it'll probably be a couple years before it actually gets into print, and this way they don't have to wait as long.  I'm done with self publishing at the moment.  No sir, I did not like it.  Too many insistent, screaming voices with nothing to say.  Reading some of the more bad self-published stuff made me actually pity agents and editors who receive a hundred of those everyday.  I express pity now, but I'm sure I'll rage against those same people when they reject my novel.  Rejection's just part of it, I guess.

Uhm, something to wrap this post up...cows.  Cows in tuxedos.

Wherefore Art Thou Query Letter

Lately I've been doing the extra legwork of finding an agent.  It's hard to get started too early on this end of fiction writing (this being the marketing end, the end I hate) because there's a lot of work to be done.  Ultimately, this is the first gateway to a world of success and possibility.  Your first sell as a novelist is usually your hardest one.  You have to get out there and say, "Hey! Jaded-ass-editor person who reads pile after pile of shitty manuscripts on a daily basis.  Yeah, it's me down here, Chumbo NewAuthor.  I think you'd really like my book."

Lately, I've been putting together a list of agents that I'm going to send queries to.  The last thing you want to do here is shotgun a bunch of manuscripts at agents that you find on a database.  Everyone hates that.  Instead, they like you to do a little research and find out what books they've represented in the past.  Then send them that sort of book.  This one is much easier to do the other way around.  Confused?  Good.

You've written a book about an eccentric college professor who falls in love with an alien from another dimension who only communicates in cheeseburgers.  You call it Cheeseburger Out of This World of Love.  It's a masterpiece.  Here's how you get an agent for it: find another book that falls very closely into this same category.  Might be tricky with Cheeseburger Out of This World of Love but you manage it.  You find a book about an archeologist who falls in love with a magic dinosaur fossil that comes to life and wants to be a gourmet, Italian chef.  It's called Jurassic Meatball of Love.  Now that you've got this book, which is pretty similar to yours (and that isn't a bad thing in this industry) you open it to the acknowledgements.  Sure enough this author, Dutchess Esmerelda De Allistair, has credited her agent in the front, one Chumbo McWeatherbottom.  You Google Chumbo and find his agency along with his contact information.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Finding more books like yours and the agents who represented them isn't that hard.  It just takes a little extra work and the agents you query will usually really appreciate it.  The tricky part, at least for me, is writing a query letter.  This is my next labor that I must meditate on.

Cyber Detective Series Is No More

Bad news for Bad for Business fans--all two of you.  The time has almost come for me to start a new project.  Well, that's not exactly true, but the time has come for me to THINK about starting a new project.  While I considered writing the next book in the Cyber Detective series that I self published on Smashwords and Amazon, this is proving to not be a productive use of my time.

I think I actually lost money on that novella.  Let's work it out.  I spent just about $5 each time I went to Office Supply for printing, which was about three times.  Okay.  I spent about $15 dollars just on paper copies for my writer's group and I made about $10 in royalties.  Yup, I'm in the hole by five bucks.  Awesome.

I don't have much time to spend on writing and I feel that, ultimately, my Urban Fantasy hero, Jason Ingram (had to change his name) will actually make me money.  Sure, I could write another story about Adrien, and maybe someday I will, but at this point, it's just not worth it to me to write another book that no one will read.  Sorry.

Cyberpunk just isn't a big genre.  Remember Johnny Mnemonic?  Yeah, who does?  With the exception of the classics (Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Blade Runner) people just aren't that into this genre.  That's okay.  The one person who left me a review on Smashwords said that he was into it until he figured out that it was Sci Fi.  If I'd written a regular detective story about a regular dude, I probably would have had a lot more success and that's what I want.  Sad to admit but true.

Monday, Monday, Bloody Monday

You ever get out of bed in the morning and realize you've just made a horrible error?  Now you have to be awake and do things.  Get dressed.  Brush your teeth.  If you don't, no one else will.  That is a Monday.  They suck balls.

You trudge through your day and count down the minutes to your lunch break and then, eventually, to your final minutes of work.  You count down the minutes in your car until you get home.  You have a snack.  You count down the minutes until that's over.  If you're me, you also have a cup of tea and reluctantly turn on your computer.  Editing is the last thing you want to do.  In your head, it sounds like mining iron ore on Mars without a spacesuit.  You blood boils and freezes at the same time on the surface of Mars.  You think about how cool that science is as you choke and reach your hand at nothing and die.  Cool cool science.  All in your head.

Finally, you groan and come back to life.  Computer's still waiting for you.  It's weird, double-visored cyclops-like face staring at you and mocking.

See?  It's got a face.

Come on guy.  Don't you want to be a writer?  Do this stuff for a living?  Fun fun fun.  You peel yourself off the floor and do your damn job.

It's a little dramatic, but that's how I feel.  Editing is the absolute last thing I want to do right now.  I'm actually looking out my window and seriously considering mowing the lawn.  My old nemesis.  But I'm editing anyway.

Rewrites Are A Pain In The Ass

Just like the title says.

I remember blogging about how much I hated the editing stage when I was working on Bad For Business last year.  What I didn't know was that a much larger work, my new full-length novel in particular, would be a much bigger pain in the ass.  I guess what I hate about it is that, for the most part, the creativity is over at this stage.  Now it just needs to look as nice as it can and be a good face for me and my work.

I also hate that aspect too.  The shoe-shining, hair-slicking, put-on-your-best-suit angle.  I feel that people who genuinely like the story won't stop reading because of a typo or a cluttered image.  The people that I'm really concerned with at this stage are the more flighty readers.  The people who put down a book because they thought the horse's name aught to be Tom instead of Fred.  And yet, I'd really like these people to stick around and read the whole thing.  I want as many readers as I can get, that's the marketing angle of it.

I know that some readers will ultimately drop off at some point in the story.  It's okay.  Reading is a hobby, not a job.  You don't always finish every book you pick up, but I've spent so much work on this one that I hope someone does finish it.

Addled Brain, Muttled Ideas

Sometimes I wish writing was just about the ideas.  Those nuggets that you get in your head and make you think, "Hey, that would be a cool story." I feel that happens for me a lot these day.  Like to the point that if I write at my current pace (which is about a novel a year) I'll have work until I'm 124 years old.

Getting to that point, my only goal for my next novel is that I write it faster.  That's it.  No fancy language or character goals.  Just faster.  Although, most publishers think you should write about a novel every two years, but some authors produce as much as two novels within a year.  Different series of course.  Much more than that, and they expect you to use a pen name.  You know, Isaac Asimov wrote or edited something like 500 hundred novels in his lifetime.  It's pretty crazy.

This was going somewhere...started as a rant but it got away from me.

Novel Finished, Still Work To Do

I've been delaying this post for several weeks now in case of fire or flood or aliens or zombies or...apocalypse stuff.  I finished my new novel, the one that I'm tentatively calling Lost Lamb.  Title still isn't finalized.  Anyway, I guess I was expecting more to happen when I finished it.  I mean, not like confetti and sexy parties or anything just, I don't know, a more powerful sense of accomplishment.  I was happy that it got done, it was a personal milestone, but I guess I already knew then that there was still a lot of work to do on it.

Now there's editing and rewriting, which is turning out to be really challenging because my style shifted a lot during the writing process.  Now I'm trying to go back through and make it all sound like me.  Whoever that is.  Maybe the really exciting part will come once I get an agent and then a publisher.  That just might make my ego inflate to the point that it explodes.  In the meantime, I'm still trying to write some shorter works when I can.  One such work, The Admin Level is one that I'm actually considering sending off to a big-boy magazine.  The kind that .10 cents a word.  Much nicer than it sounds.

So, after a long day of wrangling kids at work, here I go to more work.  Edit.  Edit.  Edit.

Fear, Loathing, Fiction.

With every new chapter I start, a creeping fear returns to me like a boomerang that I threw five years and forgot about until it knocked my head off this morning at breakfast.  Even though I've punched this creeping fear in the nose several times already, it still manages to return.  Always with that same question on its floppy, dumb lips: "Is this the chapter that won't get written?"

Even at this stage in my novel, it still manages to return,  That memory that I always seem to give up on writing.  Maybe it was too hard or I didn't know how to fix a problem or whatever.  It's really been a nonfunctional hobby for me until the last couple years.  Whether my work needed the right timing, or maybe its the alignment of the planets or my chi being in the right spot, I'm doing it now like I should have done it before.

But with each success comes another round of fear and apprehension.  Will it be worth it?  Hard to tell.  Even setting my expectations to their lowest possible setting, I still wonder if I should bother.  Just two chapters from the finish line and it seems like I just started.

I try my best to be ready for the next stages, rewriting and editing and all that, followed by the search for an agent and eventually a publisher.  It's a strange new sea of terror and rejection that I'll be taking my little manuscript into this year, and I don't yet feel ready to brave the waters.

[Insert Something Witty Here]

Lately I've noticed that I've been a little reluctant about writing.  Seems odd, given that I'm so close to the end.  Usually vaulting over that three-quarters hump gives me enough momentum to finish a piece, even a longer one.  Today, anything looks more appealing.  Washing dishes sounds like fun.  Scooping dog crap in the front yard?  Sure.  Finally opening the last of my moving boxes no longer sounds like purgatory.

I think it's because somewhere deep in the vault of my subconscious, I'm getting nervous about letting other people see it.  What will they think?  Publishers.  Agents.  Critics.  The more logical side of my brain tells me that rejection is part of this career path--just deal with it.  But the more emotional side wants me to lock the manuscript in my closet before it's too late.

Part of making something--anything really--are the rose-colored glasses we see it through after it's all done.  We see it as perfect.  Beautiful.  A triumph of its form, and we're immediately shocked when the next person says, "I didn't get the part where the goat ate the sandwich." And you try to explain that it's a delicate criticism of the modern legal system, but that theoretical reader never sees it the way you do.  They aren't wearing rose-colored glasses like you.

I have to remember that some people are going to hate it.  And it's going to hurt.  It's only human to fear pain, after all.  But also, some people are going to love it.  Maybe not as much as me, but they'll love it enough to read it.  And that's really what I want.

These Are Meaningless Words In The Subject Line

I've been having a hard time reigning in my nineteenth chapter.  My hero is finally dealing with the thread of conflict I wrote into the first chapter.  It's weird to think that I wrote those original words a full year ago.  It's exciting, but also scary.  Anyway, I discovered just now what the problem was.  I'd been trying not to admit that I was shoving two chapters together and that the information he gathers in chapter nineteen is really the climax.  I really wanted to have him kill some orcs in that chapter and I tried to squish together what should've been squished.

Of course, I'd been trying to rescue a particular scene that I'd dreamed up when I first put the idea together in my head.  I like the cliffhanger chapter endings and I thought this one was pretty good, but now, because of length, it has to happen in the middle of the next chapter.  Which is okay.  I guess.  *folding arms and pouting*

In her book, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott references a writer's practice of "killing your babies" (or something like that, I can't look it up right now because I loaned out my copy of the book) It sounds gruesome, I know, and in a way it is pretty gruesome.  Your absolute favorite scenes, often the ones that convince you a novel is worth writing, are the scenes your try to cling to the most as you proceed to chop through your outline.  Much like a film director, you want to cut scenes that don't show the story as well as they could or maybe take your story in the wrong direction.  At some point you must slay this scene that you love without mercy.  If you restructure your book around it, it will inevitably harm your work as a whole.  It must die.  This doesn't make it any less painful, of course.

The point is this: for some crazy reason I thought I was immune to this.  I thought that I could keep this scene where I wanted it (as a cliffhanger) and people would read it and gasp.  Just not the case any more.  I had to let it go.  Today I cut off chapter nineteen where it needed to end and moved the other stuff to the next chapter where it will receive a stern talking to and I will expect it to think about what it's done.

Writers Don't Like Writing

It's true.  We really don't.  Writing is a pain in the ass.  A very complicated and multifaceted hobby if ever there ever was one.  Give yourself something to write--I dare you.  Say to yourself, "I'm going to write a story about a robot who slowly becomes human." Sounds like fun at first.

Then you sit down at your computer, typewriter or other word-making gizmo and punch out a few lines.  Great.  We got to the third sentence.  Suddenly you have an itch on your back and you can only scratch it by sitting up from your chair.  You do that.  You sit back down.  Then you remember that you have to unload the dishwasher.  You do that.  You sit back down.

Then it suddenly seems really important to clean the gutters.  Another few hours of that goes by.  Then you sit back down.  Tap your finger a few times on the G key.  You always liked G.  Some of your favorite word start with G.  Gorilla.  Grapefruit.  Gratify.  Guarantee.  Gastronomic.  What is a gastronome?  You look it up.  Huh.  Who knew?  You forget what it was you were doing with your word-making gizmo and wander off to explore your attic.  Then, neck deep in a pile of old scarfs your aunt Pauline gave you, you remember.  You run back down stairs and punch out a few more words on your next sentence before you fall asleep on the keys.  It's midnight after all.  The letter G is stuck to your face.

Free Writing: Ryan West Monologue

The following deserves an explanation, I suppose.  A few years back, I'd been experimenting with a few different ideas for an urban fantasy hero.  This is before I created Jaden and the book I'm writing about him now (that was a shameless plug for Lost Lamb--buy it, own it, collect them all, etc.)  But before Jaden, was a guy name Christian--a shaman/investigator who was working out of San Fransisco.  I ultimately chucked out Christian and his world but there were a few dangling threads that didn't get torn out all the way.  This character, is one of them.  The following is a short monologue from a hero who never was, a sort of spinoff from Christian's world, I guess you could say.  Now, with a dark magic I call boredom, he lives again.

The hardest thing about being dead isn't the dying part.  That part's easy.  I did it on accident when I stepped in front of the south bound L train on Thursday night at 8:14 with half a bottle of Jack Daniels in my bloodstream.  Didn't feel a thing and haven't ever since.  The hard part is coming back.  When some bald-headed circus freak covered in tattoos and rosary beads knelt over my body and whispered a blessing to tie my spirit to it, I had little choice but to come back.  I had just discovered the joy of flying across the Border of life and death when a set of ghostly chains snared me and dragged me back into my body.  After that, he took me to a basement and tattooed some Sanskrit on my forehead.  Then he just cut me loose.  No explanation or reason.

I miss food.  Especially pizza.  Goddamn I miss pizza.  Deep dish crust.  Five different kinds of cheese guaranteed to plug your arteries like plumbing snakes.  Layers of thick pepperoni and crumbled sausage.  Chicago's best.  Growing food, as my mom used to call it.  I don't do much growing now, and everything I put in my mouth tastes the same.  Like grave dirt.

There are some perks though.  I got stabbed through the heart by a longsword and didn't so much as sneeze at it.  I've been hit by a couple more cars too, it's a little like skydiving from a low altitude if do it on the freeway.  If I break a bone I can usually set it and it heals again.  Same isn't true for limbs, I found out.  I don't have a left pinky finger any more because I lost a bet.  Figured it was a safe one since I don't bleed.  My bad.  Now there's a hell hound running around in the fifth circle of hell with my finger in its stomach.  Imagine the egg on my face.  I do still have a face--gotta have something for the ladies to look at.

Mostly I pull odd jobs now, the dangerous stuff, since I still haven't figured out how to die.  People pay a lot of money for nigh invulnerability and I'm happy to oblige.  Usually.  Of course, I find that I don't need that much money these days--no shopping bills or rent to pay, since I don't sleep--but it's still fun to collect the stuff.  Way cooler than stamps.

My name's Ryan West--and I'm a zombie.  If you come to town and need a walking pile of bricks to do something for you, look me up.  I've got a lot of time to kill.