My Pub Story is up. Which reminds me: I should update my author photo/bio on my website.
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I think the current effort on the part of literary agents to demystify and explain their roles, discuss the details of the oftentimes confusing world of publishing, and give advice to aspiring authors everywhere is capital-A Awesome. I regularly check out sites like Janet Reid’s blog, Pub Rants (Kristin Nelson), Bookends Literary Agency, Jennifer Jackson, and my own agent’s Knight Agency Blog. I highly recommend the archives of Miss Snark to anyone getting started on this query roller coaster. This kind of thing was just gaining ground when I was looking for an agent. Now, there are a ton of agents out there who blog, twitter, and otherwise donate their time to the aspiring author. Good for them, better for aspiring writers everywhere. However, it is important to note that though all of these agents have your best interests at heart when they choose to give advice, the advice might differ from agent to agent. The Bookends folks infamously don’t like it when those who query “thank them for their time.” Nathan Bransford goes ballistic if a query begins with a question. Other agents hate “X meets Y”-style comparisons, and still others hate comparisons to published books, period. If you read my query, you’ll see that I include comparisons. Didn’t stop my book from getting several agent requests and offers. Though one must remember, this was in 2005, where what agents were looking for may have, in fact, been quite different. I thought the “request stats” and responses for Allison Brennan’s THE PREY in Nathan Bransford’s “Agent for a Day” experiment was quite interesting, and not necessarily indicative of anything. A lot of people said the book sounded “too familiar” (well, it was a NYT bestseller) or yesterday’s news. Well, it sold in what? 2003? That was six years ago. The books people are querying now are going to come out in 2011. Huge difference. Last week, a bunch of agents, editors, and writer participated in a Twitter event called #queryday, whereby the pros shared their experience and answered questions from writers looking for advice. Did the agents all agree with one another? No way. In fact, I saw several instances in which the advice of one agent or editor directly contradicted the advice of another. I saw advice given that directly contrasted not only my own experience, but the experience of other authors who were watching #queryday and wondering what in the world that particular agent meant. The conclusion we came to was that different agents want different things. One agent might say they can’t sell boy-focused MG to save their lives, but another agent is slavering for it. That doesn’t mean toss your MG, it means don’t send it to the agent who thinks there’s no market. That same agent might say they’ve had great luck with Amish inspirational romance, while the second agent’s response is “jigawhat now?” If you’re all about the Simple Folk, then by all means, send your romance to Agent #1. If an agent tells you that 100k is way to long for a YA fantasy, but you’re seeing debut YA doorstoppers published all the time (my own debut YA fantasy clocks in at 108k, though I know someone who sold at over six figures but cut it down to ~75k for the final), then maybe the answer is just submitting to an agent who is fine with the long stuff. The blogs are great, in my opinion. Knowledge is power. But no one agent is omniscient. That’s why there is more than one. That’s why a lot of these agent blogs tell you to query widely. If you’re getting the same answer all over the place, well, maybe it is your manuscript. If you don’t get any bites off your query, after querying widely, then you need to take a long, hard look at your query. Maybe you aren’t presenting the info in a dynamic form. Maybe there is something in the letter that is turning them off (don’t sound desperate, or include TMI about your twenty-seven rejected manuscripts or how this is the first book you’ve written ever ever ever!). Maybe the premise of your book is flawed in some way. I once queried a paranormal romance that got very few bites until one kind agent explained ot me that though para rom was hot, I needed to have the paranormal elment more front and center int eh premise. A vampire boyfriend, say, not a few ghosts around the edges. (Again, this was 2004. I don’t know how the market might have changed now.) If your query is getting bites but they never turn into anything more, then maybe there’s something wrong with your manuscript. A dull opening, a sagging middle, aliens that land in chapter fourteen. Maybe you need to work on your craft. But just as you shoulnd’t take ONE rejection as a condemnation of your entire manuscript, you shouldn’t take one agent’s opinion about the state of the market as the be-all-and-end-all word from on high. Especially if you look at Publisher’s Marketplace and see deals being made like that every day, or hear another agent say they are wild for that kind of book. Agents are different. Query widely. Is JENNIFER, at website comment #20. Jennifer, please drop me an email with your address and specify whether or not you want the first book or the second.
And come back at noon to find out who won the Beka Cooper Giveaway. Read an interesting article in The New York Times recently, about how modern technological devices jam long-revered literary ones. Missed connections (the letter about Juliet’s faked death that doesn’t reach Romeo in time) doesn’t work if both teens have cell phones. The author of the article, a thriller writer named Matt Richtel says: Technology is rendering obsolete some classic narrative plot devices: missed connections, miscommunications, the inability to reach someone. Such gimmicks don’t pass the smell test when even the most remote destinations have wireless coverage. (It’s Odysseus, can someone look up the way to Ithaca? Use the “no Sirens” route.) Of what significance is the loss to storytelling if characters from Sherwood Forest to the Gates of Hell can be instantly, if not constantly, connected? Plenty, and at least part of it is personal. I recently finished my second thriller, or so I thought. When I sent it to several fine writer friends, I received this feedback: the protagonist and his girlfriend can’t spend the whole book unable to get in touch with each other. Not in the cellphone era. Then I started talking to fellow writers and discovered a brewing antagonism toward today’s communication gadgets. (Ironically, RIchtel’s debut novel is about how “hooked” we are on digital technology. I guess he became a luddite sometime in between the two?) He’s got a point. I was chatting with some author friends recently about the modern trend of rewriting fairy tales or other old stories, and how sometimes, getting them to work in a modern setting is very difficult.The other day, I was watching one of my favorite old movies, A LETTER TO THREE WIVES. In the film, three young wives are headed out to an island campground with a group of children when a telegram is delivered to them stating that a fourth “friend” of theirs has run away with one of their husbands. Which one? Their friend deigns to say. There’s an excellent shot of the three of them looking at the dock’s one lone pay phone before the boat pulls away. The women spend the rest of the day wondering, discussing, and fretting over whether or not each of their husbands will be there when they get home. If they had cell phones, there’d be no movie. Of course, there are advantages to modern technology as well. I get a lot of dramatic mileage out of cell phones and emails in Under the Rose. Indeed, much of the plot hinges around the way that emails can be manipulated — a plot that woulnd’t have been able to exist if it were about, say, secret letters, instead. And in Rites of Spring (Break), when it was important that people not be able to communicate by cell phone every second*, I just made sure that their island was out of range of any convenient towers. (It happens. I was camping last summer and I coudln’t find the campground where I was supposed ot meet my friends, and the only place that got cell phone reception was a precarious roadside pull out on the top of a mountain. That was…not fun.) All of which is to say that though there are some dramatic devices you lose with the advent of technology, there are some that you gain as well. Indeed, I think the tension is even raised in situations where you know that help *is* only a phone call away — if you can just get reception on your cell phone! And when you’ve got a girl like Amy, who is used to whipping out her cell phone at the first sign of trouble — and you take that away from her… In Rampant, Astrid has no cell phone once she gets overseas. This was a conscious decision on my part and one that makes sense in the context of the story. Given her isolation in the nunnery and her mother’s finances, I saw no reason why either her mother or the people at the Cloisters would give her one. Her cousin, on the other hand, has a cell phone. Having just returned from overseas with nine other Americans, I noted that only one actually had a usuable cell phone. (Actually, maybe Maureen did, too.) However, in KU2, which I’m writing now, she does have a cell phone. Things have changed with her situation and she’s got a greater degree of agency. With that, comes control of her own telecommunication. It’s a subtle shift, but an important one, as it definitely has an impact on the plot. And now, changing gears to a land with no cell phones. This weekend, I’m doing a giveaway of the marvelous Beka Cooper series by Tamora Pierce! Since I know some of you have not read the first book yet, how this works is, if you win and have read Terrier, I’ll send you Bloodhound. If not, I’ll send you Terrier.
And all you have to do to enter is leave a comment here about your take on modern technology in stories. Does it make things too “easy” or can it gum up the works as much as any Renaissance Italian waylaid messenger can? In what books/films/TV shows do you think that modern technology (or the convenient lack thereof– hello, LOST!) is portrayed most effectively? Hey guys! Sorry about the website snafu yesterday. It turns out it was as silly as me putting in extra carriage returns into some code. Oops. Luckily, I have the most awesome website designer ever, and she figured out what I’d done to myself in no time flat. All hail Austin Design Works!
In other news, I just got word that my newest non-fiction endeavor will be available June 2.*I’m so excited about my essay in MIND-RAIN, Your Favorite Authors on Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Series. Isn’t that a creepy cover? Apparently Tally took to camouflage once she went all eco-warrior on us. My essay is called “Team Shay.” One guess what it’s about. The coolest part of the antho is that Scott edited all the essays, so was naturally free to say, “You are utterly mad, I didn’t think that at all when I wrote it!” But he didn’t. Instead I got an email from him being like, “Huh, you know, I never thought of it like that, but when you pulled all those quotes and put them together it’s pretty blatant, huh? Ah, subtext.” Which is cool because that’s something that I discover as a writer all the time. People pull things out of my books and show them to me and I’m like, oh, weird, I never thought of that but you’re right, it’s totally there. At Yale, we called this New Criticism, which boils down to we don’t care what the author thought, the text is its own thing now.** I’ve had so much fun doing these non-fic anthologies. I hope I get to do more in the future. Right now, I’m actually working on my first fiction anthology (more on that later).
And yes, I admit that I’ve been actively avoiding all the talk of this book online. I really, really don’t want to be spoiled. But man, I love the cover! I love how the cover artist really respects how tough and down-to-earth Beka is and doesn’t try to pretty her up or put her in some fantasy dress with tons of makeup.*** Who else is reading this series? I’m in love with the diary style! It’s so intense and personal… somehow even more than the usual first person. It’s like epistolary novels (my favorite), only more so. Agggggghhhh, so many books, so little time! ________________ *I mean, other than this blog, and let’s face it, that’s mostly fiction. For instance, “Rio?” yeah, those are stock photos of some little red dog I got off the internet. And Sailor Boy is an old G.I. Joe figure. ** Oddly enough, this cycles back to the controversy over this month’s secret story. I thought I was writing something very different than what a lot of the readers were getting out of the narrative. Me and Upton Sinclair and John Milton. No, he didn’t mean for Satan to be a hero. *** More on covers… um, presently. But yes — TOUGH!
And, in unicorn news, waaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnt. I could wear it to signings! So today was supposed to be a new episode of the Tap & Gown show, but YouTube is giving me fits. Le sigh. We had a big spring cleaning weekend Chez Diana. We beat the rugs and everything. (Rio is shedding, and if one knows a sure-fire way to get dog hair out of throw rugs, please let me know.) We also rearranged the furniture. We like it. Rio is…. less pleased. It means she can’t sit in her favorite spot and watch every denizen of the house at the same time anymore. Poor control-freak puppy. Some interesting topics of conversation. First off, Courtney Milan responds to my earlier post about chasing the market. (Hi, Courtney!) But the other thing you hear is the frustratingly vague answer you get from agents and editors when they are asked what they’re looking for. Because while sometimes they will say, “Gosh, I’d really love to find a great story about a werestag,” most of the time, the answers they give look something like this: I’m looking for compelling books. Books you can’t put down. Good books. Books with a strong voice. And of course, that seems like it’s no help, because nobody sets out to spend a year of their life writing a bad book that is not compelling, written in a grating, painful style, which readers must set down every other page just to prevent eye-bleed. Nobody sits down and says, “yes, I am going to produce a book that cannot be saved.” The market for compelling books is always strong, but it’s harder to talk about than the market for the former, and so when people talk about “market” it tends to focus on the stuff that’s easy. Vampires. Weredeer. That kind of thing. So the portion of the market that is easy to prognosticate over will overshadow the “compelling” part in discourse. Which is why I was shocked to discover that “compelling” trumps market prognostication. Which is interesting, because when Marley Gibson originally pitched Secret Society Girl for me at a conference (ain’t she sweet?), it was in response to an editor saying pretty much that whole werestag thing. She was looking for a book about a girl at Yale. Now, we didn’t end up selling the book to that editor, which means that other editors were interested without knowing, or that what really compelled them about Amy’s tale was something other than the fact that it was at “Eli.” (In fact, knew my editor was the one for me when she told me very early on that her favorite scene in the proposal is the one where Amy talks to herself in the mirror while brushing her teeth.) But I digress. Point is, Courtney is right on. I think in some ways, writing to market is like gimme points (or, since we just finished that whole March Madness thing, it’s like being seeded higher in your bracket.) You’re automatically going to have a leg up if you’re writing soemthing in the clearly definable box of “we know we want more vampire boyfriend stories.” But vampire boyfriend stories are a dime a dozen, so from there, your story still has to be a super-compelling one to rise above the pack. If you don’t have vampire boyfriends, you might have a harder time getting your foot in the door, but once its there, and you’ve got a really compelling story on your hands, you can still push it through. There were a fair share of editors who were like, WTH killer unicorns? They didn’t even want to give it a chance. Or they thought no one could get behind the idea. (And, to be honest, on my bad days, I worry they may be right. I’m still kinda baffled about how people feel the need to send me emails telling me the idea for my unreleased book that they’ve never read doesn’t appeal to them. Um, thanks for sharing?) But there were other editors who were like, “hmmm, you know, this is a bit like Buffy, and I love Buffy.” Or just, “killer unicorns: an idea whose time has come!” (I feel it only fair to note, that unless your name is Sarah Rees Brennan, there are no killer unicorn boyfriends in this book. No, SRB, I don’t want to hear it. Sarah Cross can back me up on this one.) So what you need is one editor to convince her acquisition team that they’re totally Team Unicorn and then you’re on your way. (Well, you also need a cover. We’re working on that. Haven’t you seen how hard I’ve been working?) I’m a big fan of the hot premise (otherwise known as high concept), but I do not under any circumstances believe that should trump storytelling. Premise is not your story. And premise is not what people who’ve read your story remember. Premise, I’ve discovered, is merely promise. If I tell you I’ve written a book about killer unicorns and the virgin warriors who hunt them, well, I’ve basically promised you lots of big unicorn battle sequences. If I tell you I’ve written a book about Ivy League secret societies, I’ve promised you scintillating secrets about the whole secret society world. If I tell you I’ve written a romance about an uptight marquess and the fortune teller he’s debunking, I’ve promised you frocks and nice houses and class struggles. But everything else is a surprise, and it’s probably the part you’ll end up remembering long after the book is closed. The other day, those of you who follow me on Twitter saw me post that I had a secret. there was much speculation on the nature of that secret. Mari Mancusi asked if it was official that Rampant was going to be the first book released without a cover (somedays, it seems like it). Then, Saundra Mitchell asked if it was a new cover for Rampant. Saundra was right. And here it is:
Very Rankin-Bass, what? The thing I like best about this one is that the unicorn here actually is Rampant. Wait, maybe, I can’t tell about that last foot (“Rampant,” for the uninitiated, is heraldic jargon for the position that an animal is in when it is rearing with three feet off the ground. So, in heraldry, the following crest would be described as:
Vert a Unicorn Rampant Argent (Vert=green; unicorn=the animal shown; rampant=the position its in; Argent=the color of the animal — in this case silver/white) Heraldry-speak is actually super cool, once you start getting into it. And it makes the last line of The Scarlet Letter seem so much less bizarre. It can get a lot more complicated than that, too. Like some heraldry purist would want me to talk about how the animal is facing left, or its tongue, or all kind of things. But that’s where the title Rampant came from, in case you/’re curious. And also, where the title of the awesome LIONESS RAMPANT, by Tamora Pierce, came from. Heraldry, bay-bee! I really don’t know if I’m amusing anyone but myself with this stuff.) And, on the adult side, guess what? I got my first blog review of Tap & Gown, from Angie of Angieville. It’s a triumph of spoiler-freeness, so don’t worry about checking it out. My favorite part (other than the fact that, bless her, she used the PROPER cover of Tap & Gown, rather than the mutant, yellow, color-corrupted scan that somehow made it free from the top secret underground graphic design laboratory at Bantam Dell and is, even as we speak, wreaking havoc all over the internet): Amy is such a strong character. She’s an everygirl and, as a result, it’s just so dang easy to empathize with her, particularly when we’ve had the opportunity to follow her through four books and watch her progress from an uncertain, unwelcome, uncomfortable-in-her-own-skin fledgling Diggirl, to a confident lynchpin member of a whole new order of Rose & Grave. Perhaps most satisfactory of all, she becomes brave in her honesty. Even when it scares her. She learns to be careful with (and protective of) the relationships she formed in her time at Eli. She understands how she fits into the larger scheme of things and she knows what (and who) is important. Frankly, I was proud of the girl. I have to say, it is extremely gratifying to finish a series feeling like the characters would be people worth knowing, like it played out the way it was meant to, like the author knows the score. Diana Peterfreund delivers with Tap & Gown. Yay! Isn’t that nice? What a welcome warm fuzzy. I hope you have a lovely weekend. I’ve got the old two-holiday thing happening around here. Growing up, Passover was always one of my favorite holidays, even though I didn’t discover until college how utterly bastardized our celebration was. (It probably also helped that we did not follow the special diet.) I think I actually scandalized my Jewish friends in college when I described to them what we used to do. My mom, who grew up Catholic, tried so hard to put together a Seder for my grandfather and father, who grew up Jewish, and us kids, who were growing up without organized religion, but she was pretty much working from zilch. All she had were vague descriptions of the dishes, and there was no internet to help her out back then. For instance, we never had actual Charoset, just sliced apples and nuts on a plate. Still, we had the story. Which is the most important part, and I think it was the part I liked the best. (Though the matzoh hunt was always fun, as was trying to rush back to the table before Elijah came and left.) It’s an awesome story. Plagues! Miracles! Freedom from Slavery! Story and ritual food = awesome holiday. The best Seder I ever went to was the year I graduated from college, where I went to my roommate’s father’s home. He was a cantor in New Jersey and there were dozens of people there. All the furniture was out on the lawn so they could fill the house with endless rows of folding tables and chairs snaking from room to room. And we all had tambourines. And we sang and ate and danced all night. And my other roommate, who is a Christian from the heartland, went around singing the song about Miriam finding water in the desert for like a week straight after that. I never hear the name Miriam without thinking of that night.
Six Weeks until the release of the final volume in the Secret Society Girl Saga.* I’m so excited! And of course, there are all sorts of goodies coming to this site in time for the release.
I retreated into Clarissa’s bedroom and sank down at the foot of the bed, resting my face in my hands. [snip for spoilers] “Amy?” I looked up to see Clarissa standing in the doorway. “You okay?” I nodded miserably. She closed the door and came to sit next to me, cat-hairing up her sequined fantasy. “Good, because I totally call dibs on being the hot mess tonight.” She beat her head against the duvet. “Not fair,” came a voice from the other side of the bed. “I called dibs long before either of you.” Demetria sat up and stared at us over the top of the mattress. “What’s your problem?” Clarissa asked. “I don’t want to submit anyone on my list to their own version of this crap next year. I hate every minute of this and I’ve decided that friends don’t let friends join secret societies.” This again. I put my head back in my hands. Also, a few fans have been writing me to tell me that, in anticipation of the last book’s release, they are doing re-reads of the first three books in the series. A few of them have even banded together to do a sort of SSG bookclub series. Which is so awesome! Thanks, guys! And if you’re an LJ member, you might consider joining the Peterfreundfans forum that jobiegirl6 and katayla have set up. Word on the street is that they will be reading an SSG book every two weeks until the release. I’ve got a special giveaway planned for LJ forum members. That’s all I’m saying for now. PS: Just found out there’s a great new review of SECRET SOCIETY GIRL up at The Booksmugglers. Go check it out! My favorite part is how the review was structured as a series of SSG-style “confessions” like “I hereby confess, I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did,” “I hereby confess, Ms. Peterfreund’s writing style is more addictive than Pringles,” “I hereby confess, Amy Haskel is freaking awesome.” and, possibly my favorite: “I hereby confess, there’s no way in hell I’d want to be in Rose and Grave.” That was a question that a lot of readers had at the beginning of the series, namely, why would someone fight to be a member of a society that causes so much trouble? That could be so misogynistic to its members, that would cause all the problems that Amy has to deal with? I think that is the central question of the story. It’s a question that Brandon poses at the very beginning. It’s a question that Amy –and, many of the other members — struggle with throughout the series. It’s a question that comes to a head as they attempt to encourage new members to join. What’s the point? Should the society even survive? Should it go on in the form that it has all these years? Is that good for the members, for the school, for the community at large? I think the answer is different for each of them in terms of what they, as people, need — friendship, acceptance, bragging rights, closure, exposure to different ideas, revenge, whatever it is — and I hope that by the end of the last book, some of those questions will be answered. So yeah, great question to have! ________ * Just kidding. Saga feels more like there should be horeseback writing. And swordfights. Wait… there *is* a swordfight. Sorry, spoiler.
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So yesterday, due to my website problem, I was unable to mention what i’m most excited about right now, which is that I have in my hot little hands a copy of BLOODHOUND, the second book in Tamora Pierce’s awesome Beka Cooper series. Yay! I cannot wait to read this! It’s like my little carrot for finishing my book on deadline.
