I feel like a murderer.

This edit of Apocalypse is a bit harder than I thought. I need to make our unlikely heroes more unlikely, and by that I mean they need to struggle more. They need to be less successful.

More of them, in other words, need to die.

I don’t like killing characters. Not because of sentiment; I would kill major characters if I didn’t need them for the plot. I’m just bad at writing death.

But my dev editor is very, very correct. This battle is going to have to be stacked against my protagonists and people are going to have to die.

Funk and an old white lady

I didn’t know it was called funk when I grooved to it as a child. I didn’t know that I, a white child, wasn’t supposed to groove. I just felt the thumping play and the sense of play, and I wanted to shake my booty, which the adults around me considered slightly scandalous. I listened to that top 40 Chicago AM station and got caught up in its infectious rhythms; I didn’t know their names as well as I knew the Beatles’ catalog, but they became part of the background music of my childhood. I know their names now: “Flashlight” by Parliament, “Fire” by Ohio Players, “Mr. Big Stuff” by Jean Knight, “Tell Me Something Good” by Rufus and Chaka Khan (which gave me goosebumps as a child).

Years later, in college, I followed a community radio show that dealt in blues and funk, mostly funk. The first time I heard Parliament’s Aquaboogie, I sat there with this goofy grin on my face wondering “What the hell is this?” and called the DJ to ask. That was my introduction to Parliament/Funkadelic/P-Funk.

As I studied the genre (as an adult, I study everything) I discovered that funk, in addition to being playful, was sexy. And political. And inspirational. For example, P-Funk melds aspirations of political dominance (“Chocolate City”) with tales of survival (“Cosmic Slop”) and perseverance (“Aquaboogie”). The politically incorrect “Superfreak” rubs elbows with the motivating “Yes We Can” from the Pointer Sisters.

I’m very aware as I listen to the music that I am, as P-Funk would have it, devoid of funk. I do not have the shared experience of slavery and discrimination that funk seeks to rise above; I don’t even have the ice cool of David Bowie, whose “Fame” fits the genre. (I detest the song “Play that Funky Music White Boy” because it seems to be blatant co-opting.) I think about this because I’m going to see George Clinton and his P-Funk All-Stars tonight on his closing tour, knowing that I was not the audience funk was written for. I hope funk will accept me as a respectful tourist.

***********

This is for Steve Emmerman, who was the DJ for that long ago funk radio show on WEFT.

What I’m up to

What I’ve been up to lately:

Yesterday I wasn’t feeling it — at least not feeling like revising Gaia’s Hands or trying to figure out if another old book, Gaia’s Eyes, was worth resurrecting (as a short story, novel, birdcage liner, who knows what.)

So I entered a couple short story contests and a flash essay contest. I always feel more optimistic when I have things in the pipeline, whether they be queries or submissions. I still don’t know about DAW. I keep hoping.

I got the dev edit back for Apocalypse, and my work is cut out for me there. But it’s so promising now, and I want to get it in the hands of an agent. I’ll be proofing that starting today after I give platelets (or instead of platelets if my hemoglobin is low).
*******************
I have a problem with this blog right now. I keep getting visits from some Eastern European porn site blog. The one time I thought I’d isolated it, it was from Ukraine. The sad thing is, I get random hits now from other Eastern European countries like Moldova and Asian countries like Azerbaijan (sp?). I’m afraid these addresses aren’t real and are being spoofed by the porn vendor. Sigh, time for that marketing plan. (Although I’m likely to wait till I have product.)

Wait for it.

So what happens when you come out of an affirming moment into ordinary life?

If you’re me, you feel like someone launched you out of a cannon into … a field. A muddy field. In the middle of nowhere. With cows placidly munching on grass.

“What should I be doing in this field?” I ask, realizing that a chair and my laptop have materialized in the field beside me. I sit down; the chair sinks into the mud about an inch or so, and I realize these shoes will never be the same.

I set myself to writing on a story, but I don’t know which one to write on — the serious rewrite of Gaia’s Hands? The attempt to write a short story out of the long lost Gaia’s Eyes? Some other short story? A new novel?

I ruminate: Will I ever get an agent? Will I ever get published? Is there a reason for all this? Is this God’s will? Is there really a God, and if so, doesn’t She have something better to do than land me a writing career? A placid bovine eyes me with sympathy.

Restless, I stand, setting the laptop on the chair. The cows low about me. Disgruntled, I take a deep breath and remind myself:

I am out standing in my field.

Slush Pile

Prodigies is still sitting at DAW, probably in a slush pile somewhere, as the status hasn’t changed since I sent it in.

DAW publishes science fiction and fantasy. They’re one of the big publishers for fantasy and science fiction; the others being Baen and Ace. The interesting thing is that these publishers will take submissions without an agent, and ask for the whole book instead of a query.

But submissions begin in a slush pile, or a pile where unsorted books get a first read, and most people don’t make it out of the slush pile. What gets the book out of the slush pile and into another set of hands is less how good the book is (though that helps) but how ~~sellable~~ salable the book is.

I admit I fantasize that my book is on someone’s desk, a someone who has influence in making decisions. Or in a meeting. Or on the “Congratulations!” pile. Realistically, however, it’s probably still on the slush pile, waiting.

At least it hasn’t been rejected yet. There’s always hope.

Working on a marketing plan

Even if I don’t have a book to sell yet, I (optimistically) will. So I’m going to start playing with a marketing plan here.

Who is my audience — other than my current followers here?

Readers of intelligent contemporary fantasy/magical realism.

Where do I find them? (I have 20 regular readers of this blog and 100 readers of my page on facebook — I don’t think new people will find me if I don’t look for them). So where are they hiding?

fantasy writer groups on facebook
fantasy READER groups on facebook

What will I talk about?

being a writer
progress on books
anything published

How will I present the message?

craft messages/blurbs about my writing
consider excerpts of my work
use hashtags: #gardenofeden #archetypes #prodigies #talents #fantasybook
use instagram and twitter (I hate twitter; I don’t ever have good pictures for instragram, but time to up my game)

How often will I send messages?

continue to blog/hootsuite the blog to twitter and facebook daily
newsletter monthly

Ha! A marketing plan!

Not home quite yet

Two hours into my drive, I needed to stop because I got too sleepy to drive safe. So I’m about to leave the Holiday Inn at the edge of Columbia for the rest of the ride home.

I have documents to edit (kill the ellipses!) when I get home, a small business plan to make (with help from our local small business council), a marketing plan to make, 30 pages to shoot to Marisa Corvisieri, hope DAW can let me know what they thought of my manuscript (probably a rejection) …

The Conference

Sorry I haven’t written for a couple of days, but I’ve been busy busy at the conference. It’s been a very positive experience, and here are some of the things I’ve learned:

A lot of the people here write science fiction and fantasy. And the stories are all very different from each other.
Character may be more important than plot in hooking an agent in.
My work is good — I was told by one editor that my work was “going places.” I hope so.
The same editor told me I need to back off on the novels (high effort) and start writing some short stories to submit to journals. I have 5-6 novels, none sold yet. He is probably right.
The same editor teased me about my character padding her calves to look like a man, saying that several females he knew had more muscular calves than he did. Well, shit.
Comp titles (“Twilight meets Hunger Games”) really exist for a reason.
I made a friend who’s about my age who introduced me to Broad Universe, a writing space for women (love the pun) and might get me into a critique group if there’s a space.
I made another friend in Kansas City (about my age) who writes stuff with similar worldview quirk (turning mythologies on their head).
I need to put the fact that I was a runner-up in Cook Publishing’s Short Story contest in my query letter.
I need a business plan
I need a marketing plan (this blog is part of it)
I need to quit using so many dashes — and ellipses …
The conference has coffee service ALL DAY.

That’s probably not everything, but the experience has been affirming and I’m a little giddy thinking about it. I’m sure the impostor syndrome will take hold tomorrow, but for now, I feel like a writer.

Waiting for Things to Happen

I’m drinking coffee in my room while I write this, hoping for a productive conference.
The writers’ conference starts at 9 CDT and I already have some ideas for places to get peer reviews. I have to remember to give business cards — I have plenty. Networking does not come naturally to me, especially as I have a hearing problem that’s getting worse with time.

During the conference, I have a pitch session and a session with an editor during the conference (short selection, not the whole book) and a 5×5 critique session during this conference.

Anything to get better — my only fear is that my book doesn’t have good bones. By “bones”, I mean the bedrock of the book. Ok, enough of the metaphors — the basic idea and structure of the book, the language, the characters, the plot.

I still have a manuscript out at DAW (Prodigies); not expecting them to bite, but there’s always hope. Apocalypse is back in dev edit, and the editor is doing a thorough pass after all the changes I made. My dev editor (shout out for Chelsea Harper here) says she believes in Apocalypse. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Short note

So the writers’ conference is tomorrow. I’ll be going out there today because it’s a five hour drive from here and I’m impatient. I’m as prepared as I can manage — all packed, with copies of the first few pages of Prodigies for further critique/editorial exercise, business cards, my pitch (which I really need to memorize, because it’s succinct as it should be), my business casual garb.

My friends assure me I’m already a writer, so I have this. I think my idea is to have fun with this and see where it gets me.

Thank you, friends!