Still in deadline hell

Except it has nothing to do with books and everything to do with a dayjob. Sorry for the silence. I am trying to keep up, but for some reason there are only 24 hours in the day. Go figure.

I bring you two lovely reviews of my upcoming books here and here. Did you know that book 1 comes out in 2 weeks? I can’t seem to forget about that.

I’ll be blogging on Fresh Fiction later this week, and another website which I’ll announce as soon as I get the official word. Check this space!

I also bring you two phrases people used to find my website today:

“Free your breasts”
“Little smokies past expiration date”

Yessir, bringing the romance around here.

It happens

I’m working on a little piece of a story for a project. Nothing that will ever see the light of day, mind you. But the idea comes from two halves being squished together to make one crazy whole.

But the trick is, if I’m meshing two stories, I need to make sure that one half does not overwhelm the other. And I realized as I was writing that my story was 90% of one flavor, and not the other. Balance needed to be set again. So I deleted a few pages and started over again, and the story is back on track.

And here I thought writing was about words and stories, not balancing. Learn something new every day.

Unofficially Official Agent Day — Ode to Holly Root

I heard through the grapevine that today, Friday December 11th is ‘Unofficially Official Agent Day’, where writers are encouraged to ‘give back’ a little to their agents on this day.

Good deal. I love talking about my agent, because she is awesome. It’s hard to know what an agent relationship is going to be like until you’re in one. People can tell you how amazing their agent is all day long, but the truth of the matter is that the relationship is different from agent to agent. I’ve had three agents so far. Neither Agent #1 nor Agent #2 were ideal relationships — either on their part or on mine, because it’s a two way street. They both have clients that adore them and continue to sell books. The fact that I parted ways with both does not make them bad agents — just not the right agent for me.

Anyhow. After Agent #2 and I parted ways, I was a little…gun shy. I’d had two relationships I wasn’t happy with, and I wasn’t super thrilled to get into a third. However, I was willing to give agents another shot – if relationship #3 didn’t work, I could safely say that *I* was the problem and go about this thing on my own. So when I started querying for agent #3, my query count was really, really small. I think I sent out six total queries, all to agents that had spotless reputations. Agents that had clients gushing over them and had big name lists. Oh, and I sent out to one agent that used to be a big name agent’s assistant. She’d changed agencies and had built her own list, but she wasn’t a household name. However, I remembered her because back in 2005, I’d queried big name agent, and her assistant — Holly Root — had been amazingly friendly, gracious, and prompt. It couldn’t hurt, right? So I queried Holly Root at her new agency, not quite sure what to expect. Holly asked for the full, and I sent it.

A month later, I got an excited little email from her – she loved my book! Could we talk? Oh boy! Okay, I admit, as much as I wanted to be all zen about it, I did a happy jig in my chair. She liked it! So we talked and…I pretty much developed a crush. Holly was funny, she was smart, personable, knew her contracts, knew paranormal romance, and answered everything I pushed her way. I tossed a few jokes in there to test the waters. She joked back.

I was in agent love.

So when she said “I’m throwing it out there. You interested?” I wanted to say “YESSSSSS” but I forced myself to be a good little author, and contacted the other agents reading. And when the week was up, I went back to Holly, nervous but excited. I had an agent again!

It was difficult to sit on my hands when we first got together — I was afraid to contact her and bug her. She assured me I could contact her at any time. I still sat on things and bit my nails, trying to be what I envisioned was a ‘good’ client. Silent. Hardworking. Silent. Did I mention silent? But then stuff would come up, and I’d send her a tentative email, usually apologizing for contacting her.

Holly would respond within hours — always the same day — and fixed my problems. Just like that. And she usually poked at me for apologizing too much. Within a few weeks, she had me organized and straightened out, and I was beginning to feel more comfortable about emailing her. I warned her that I might be a bit high maintenance after two previous agent experiences, and she assured me that I was fine.

From there, it has spiraled out into a relationship that I can only term as: awesomesauce. I know everyone says that you can’t be ‘friends’ with your agent, but I think you have to define ‘friends’. I talk with Holly about anything and everything in my writing career. Totally open. We are friendly and casual, but the business angle is still there. I lob ideas at her. She shuts me down if I’m heading down the wrong path, or encourages me to work on something she particularly likes. No problem is too small, no email too needy. I’ve had weeks where I haven’t contacted Holly at all, and days where we’ve emailed five or six times. She has never, never made me feel like a douchebag.

And did I mention this was all before she got paid? We sold our first contract together late this summer.

As time passes, I can’t imagine what I did before Holly. I throw wild ideas at her and she runs with them. I tell her my anxieties and she talks me off of the authorbeast ledge. She is ALWAYS available to talk if I need her. She contacts me with “Hey, what if we did this?” type ideas. And if I have to rewrite a manuscript, let’s say, five or six times, Holly is right there reading it, even on round six. She wants to make sure we get it right. She’s in, elbows-deep, on the niggly, nitpicky things of my first contract (the one she doesn’t get paid on).

I love that. I love working with Holly. I hope she never changes jobs, because the agenting world will be a little less bright without her in it. /sappy

Pushing the envelope

Yes, I’m still talking about Lady Gaga. It occurs to me that as writers, we can learn from her.

Consider the evidence. Here’s a short clip talking about some of her more wackadoo outfits:

And here’s another one of her videos. This one features her in a weird Hello Kitty get-up (toward the end), and some sort of cyborg paraplegic outfit. Seriously.

You might be watching that and thinking “Dang. Bitch is crazy.” And she totally, totally is. And I (and nine bajillion other fans) absolutely love that about her. She is not afraid to be strange, and absolutely, completely unafraid to take people out of their comfort zone. She loves making her audience wonder what she is going to do next.

I love that about her.

I mean, sure. There are always people that do not get it. That’s the same for any kind of artistic form, whether it be music or books or watercolors. And we’re not going to talk about that today, because that’s totally another blog post. What we’re going to talk about here is pushing the envelope.

Do you push the envelope in your writing?

See, I think that aspiring writers don’t push the envelope. When you are seeking publication, I’ve noticed that there’s a big focus to find that “new” thing that has never been done before. Frog-changelings! Never been done! Let’s run with that! Were-turtles!

I’ve been there, done that. You see, I wrote a book about a valkyrie heroine back in 2004. Back when the urban fantasy craze was really just beginning. Vampires were ‘over’ (yes, even back then) and everyone was scrambling to find the ‘next’ vampire. So I wrote about valkyries (since I’m a Norse mythology geek) and sent it out, proud that I’d come up with something ‘so original’. And I sent it out, and sent it out. Half the agents I sent it to didn’t know what a valkyrie was and weren’t interested.

When that book didn’t sell, I was stumped as to what to do next. I mean, here I had this great idea and nobody knew what to do with it or how to market it, right? One agent flat out told me that “We need something easily marketable, and a valkyrie isn’t it.” (at least, at that time)

And then I got an idea for a new novel. And discarded it. It was a little too ‘out there’. It was about a female vampire, but instead of blood, she fed on…sex. I thought it was completely and totally ridiculous. It was crazypants. No one was going to want this! But I started writing it anyhow…and I just threw in whatever. Sex in a confessional? Sure! Historical figure turned evil nemesis? Why the heck not? Speedboat chases and fallen angels? Who cares at this point? There was no mental filter to tell me ‘No’ when I wrote that book. Anything I wanted to put in there, I put in there.

I wrote it. And as I wrote it, I realized…this one was marketable. It wasn’t the concept itself (immortals that feed on blood, yawn). It was that I’d pushed the concept of vampire into a different territory. I’d made it into a succubus, but kept the same basic concept as a vampire – feed or die. Except it wasn’t like all the other vampire stories out there. Not quite.

And it sold, along with a sequel.

I recently sold another book, about a dating agency that deals exclusively with paranormal clients. Again, a basic concept, neatly twisted into something different. Pushed outside of the regular envelope. It’s the same old thing…except, not.

This is why vampire books continue to sell. And Twilight clones. And Regency romances starring dukes and bluestockings continue to sell. This is why Navy Seals continue to sell. People love to read what’s familiar and comfortable. Why re-invent the wheel? There’s nothing more basic or versatile other than the wheel (except for maybe a stick!) and the reason why we keep using the wheel is because IT WORKS.

You can come up with wacky, mythical creatures known only in the most obscure of mythologies (lamias! catoblepas!) but you’re also going to run into a lot of head-scratching and puzzlement. Whereas if you take the established and put a twist on it and push it outside of the ordinary, it’s…clever.

After all, if you take away the wacky videos and the strange outfits (and the odd name), Lady Gaga is just a young, blonde pop singer. Nothing special about that. But she packaged herself in a unique way to stand out, and continues to push the envelope and surprise her audience. And they keep coming back for more.

So what are you going to put in your book to push the envelope?

Last post

Just deleted the last post, sorry. Wasn’t comfortable with the comment train.

Will blog more later tonight!

I want your love & I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad romance

Have you guys seen the new Lady Gaga video? It’s freaking amazing. Go on and watch – I’ll wait.

We good? Good. Anyhow, I just love that video because it inspired a roundabout scene in my current book. No one shows up at a bath-house to be auctioned off to shirtless male models, mind you, but inspiration is a weird thing and steals tidbits here and there.

My schedule continues to get a little hairy with the book release and such. I’ve spent part of the weekend prepping blog posts for guest spots. It feels a little dumb to think that far ahead, but on the other hand, there’s nothing worse than waking up and realizing you should have posted something 3 hours ago. Oh, and be funny!

I’m working on a teensy seekrit project that might turn into something, might turn into nothing. My goal is to keep it under 5k (3k would be ideal) so we’ll see how it turns out. I might hate it and then just scrap the entire thing.

No writing on the novel this week. I’m afraid that it’s going to be intermittant until both books come out and something on my schedule lets up.

Snuggiewatch 2009: Still no Snuggie.

Klausnerfication

My friends, I have passed the rite of passage known as ‘being Klausnered’. And I am appropriately charmed.

Harriet Klausner’s Review

I also got a ‘Recommended Read’ from Fallen Angel Reviews — they loved GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI: Fallen Angel Reviews — Recommended Read

(Isn’t that cool? Okay, enough promo on this side.)

Anyhoo, that was a cool thing to find in my inbox! You know what else is in my inbox? A BILLION EMAILS. Emails for promo, emails for advertising, emails from the publicist — and it all has to be done, like, yesterday. The obsessive micromanager in me is dying a slow and painful death over all the small things I have to get done over the next six weeks. To appease it a little, I’m making a calendar for myself. So not joking. I wish I was.

It’s also heading into the busy period at the payroll dayjob (also known as ‘fun’ in a very sarcastic voice). So if you see me randomly sobbing on Twitter or wailing about my lot in life, it’s not a permanent sort of thing. It’s a December/January sort of thing and it happens to me every year for the 9 years that I’ve been doing payroll and accounting. Please do not be alarmed – I assure you it’s quite normal.

I should have some cool stuff coming up a bit later in this month, so I’m going to try and blog more often (hahahaha) because you know we are only TWENTY FIVE DAYS OUT. Holy cow. I think I need to go lay down.

Lunch Today…

Was Doritos and Little Smokies. Yes, I’m lazy. Why do you ask?

Final Nano Count

My ending Nano tally:

The widget isn’t 100% accurate – I’m at 35230 for the month. Not what I wanted, but I’m still pleased with it. Hitting the halfway mark with the book – my total count is around 47k for the full novel, I think.

The trick is momentum – I had well over a week in which I moped and whined about not getting wordcount. But I’ve noticed that if you get wordcount one night, it’s easy to get wordcount the next night. It’s tricky to climb back into a scene after leaving it for a week.

Anyone else have good Nano results?

Vacation Over

So I’m sad to report that tomorrow morning, my bright and shiny face will be returning to the dayjob after a little over a week off. It was really nice to have the time to mentally unwind and get some writing in. I sort of slacked mid-month and have just crossed 30k in my Nano. No success for me! Still, 30k is not bad and it gives me a jump start. I’m going to try and hit 33k today (if possible) and maybe another 2k tomorrow night. If I hit 35k for the month, I’ll be pleased with myself.

And I am sooo not ready for Christmas. I say that even as I drag out the ornaments and decorations. Thing is, my book comes out 4 days after Christmas. 29 days from today! AAAAAH! My brain is a little caught up in that. Will it do well? Has anyone looked at my book trailer? Should I blog more often? What’s my print run? How can I promote? Blah blah blah.

Reviews are also starting to trickle in. I got a lovely one at this site and got a mention on another site. Since this is the first book that is hitting, I get a weird, vicarious little thrill whenever my book is mentioned – for so long, I have kind of felt like my book has existed in a vacuum. Anyhow, I hope the thrill doesn’t go away anytime soon (though I suspect it might the first time I see a really bad review, and I’m sure there will be one).

That’s all I’ve got! I’d offer a snippet of the new book that I’m working on but…it’s really, really rough (my first drafts are mockable) and I’m currently at the OMG-I-HATE-IT on the sliding scale of book writing. Maybe next weekend! My goal is to finish as much of Book 3 as I can before Release Day, because I’m pretty sure my brain is going to be fried in all of January, and the book is due March 1.

Hope everyone else had a lovely holiday. Onward to the next one!