Weekend Workshop: Summary

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Last weekend in my Nano to Publish update I mentioned I would write a summary for a book that you would send to an editor or agent. This is NOT the back of the book summary, which is really teaser.

So in a three paragraph format, which ties to a three act play if you like tying your novels to movies in your head ( I see everything I read or write as film showing in the world’s smallest movie theater, but at least it has great surround sound).

Elizabeth is the second oldest in a family of five daughters. She is long on intelligence and humor, and enjoys the world around her a result. Her oldest sister, Jane, is her closest companion and confidant. They live in a small village where their acquaintance limit their options for marriageable men.  When a rich man moves into their small neighborhood, he immediately becomes the object of their mother’s obsession as a husband for Jane. Jane obligingly falls in love with the young man. Unfortunately, his friend, Mr. Darcy schemes to separate the two, insulting Elizabeth and the rest of her family along the way.

A distant cousin arrives determined to marry one of the daughters as he will inherit the estate after Elizabeth’s father’s death. He proposes to Elizabeth but she declines. Her close friend marries the cousin to the shock of the family. Elizabeth travels to stay with the married friend and her cousin after their marriage. She encounters Mr Darcy, who proposes. Elizabeth declines him severely, citing his wretched behavior. Mr. Darcy writes a letter of some heart felt persuasion defending himself against her charges. Elizabeth is forced to consider the counter accusations Mr. Darcy supplies. 

Elizabeth encounters Mr. Darcy for a third time while on a vacation with her Aunt and Uncle. He is much changed in behavior and she finds herself softening towards him. Their time together is cut short however by the news that her youngest sister has eloped. Elizabeth blurts out her troubles to Mr Darcy before rushing off with her Aunt and Uncle to assist in the search for the sister. Initially unbeknown to Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy finds the young love birds, pays off the man in question to marry the sister, and saves Elizabeth’s reputation. Elizabeth is eventually brought to know these good acts and it seals her change of opinion of him. Mr Darcy brings his friend back to the neighborhood so the friend might woo Jane and succeeds in wooing Elizabeth himself. Elizabeth and Jane are married much to their mother’s pleasure.  

I think you know what book this is. It’s not a perfect summary, I only spent about a week on it. I didn’t cover every plot point. In a three paragraph set up you can’t. You have to pick and choose what presents a total picture to the reader. In this case the agent/editor you are trying to catch. I advise you work at your summary until it feels exciting to you. Expand it when the submission instruction allow for expansion. Contract it when they say otherwise. Follow the instructions. LOL.

 

Fiendish Friday: Beta

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

Have you ever noticed when someone likes you as a person they never want to come right out and say your book sucks. They use phrases that when you boil them down sound like:

-I hate your characters

-Your plot is boring

-the sex scenes are pointless

-and I don’t like that you made the girl a bad guy.

wow. thanks. Would have been shorter just to say: I hated it.

So I get this feedback from my first beta reviewer and I tell my husband I just got my first beta feedback on the spy novel.

“Oh how was it?”

I rattle off what I typed above and he says, “Babs?”

Holy crud how did you know that? Did I tell you she was betaing for me?

No I just thought who you might ask and who might say that if you did.

Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off.

 

What’s the most unusual way someone has told you your work stunk?

Wednesday Writer’s Update 7/6

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

Hello darlings. Want to guess what my next sentence will be?

I am not at writers cafe. LOL. How many of you got that right?

A good friend of mine called this morning, a family member was dying, could I take her two youngest? Of course I said yes and told her not to worry, just to collect them when she could, even if that was not today.

So I have three kids right now. And while I think that’s pretty easy peasy (at least with this set of kids), dumping three kids on the hubs…um yeah, not happening.

So I’m home, trying to get some work done. Things for the club. Things for that book I’m editing for a friend. Doing a little reading. Stunned I managed to walk the dog, yoga, and shower this morning. LOL

I’ve decided to report on my stated 2016 goals each Wednesday for a little prod of accountability.

– Participate in one flash fiction challenge per month.

√ New month, I haven’t failed July yet. LOL

– Prepare and teach “Nano to Publish”.

√ yep. posted last weekend about the June meeting, posting this weekend about writing summaries. Check it out.

– Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel, write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

√ First draft done and out to writer beta.

Non writing goals

– Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.

√ Working on that actually. Reading a book I might use for my geography class.

– Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either.

√ This has been good, partly because the club is sucking up so much time I don’t have any to spare to paint, crochet, or …

-Yoga daily

√ Much, much better.

Book Review: The Martian

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By now everyone and their brother has probably read The Martian by Andy Weir but what can I say, I tend to avoid those things which EVERYONE says you have to do. But it was available on kindle download and I was looking for something to take on my CA trip that wouldn’t be so interesting I would choose to read it over working on my own novel. LOL

I never read it on the trip. I was home for a good week before I double clicked one morning while waiting for my son to finish breakfast so I could start his home school for the day. Holy crap. I laughed my ass off. I actually read parts of it out loud to my husband who in his defense was just trying to pack his lunch and get out the door.

I read all day. Finished it in one day. Loved every second of it. I actually wish I had read it earlier because I knew from all the popular talk, Mark Watney gets off Mars. And I would have liked to have worried about him.

Mark Watney is funny. My kind of smart ass, all the way. He’s MacGyver with less zen like Buddhist peace. He’s politically incorrect. And the science is phenomenal.

If you haven’t read it, just do it. Whether you like science fiction or not has ZERO baring on the damn book. This isn’t science fiction. This is what man is capable of when he has to be. What man is capable of when politics are swept away and people work together for a common goal. The book is a love letter to man at his best. Happy Fourth!

℘℘℘℘℘℘ – 6 pages. A rare rating from me.

Nano to Publish

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Mid June we had our usual Nano to Publish meeting. It was a couple of weekends back, I’ve been a bit snowed under with stuff, my apologies.

We got a new participant. Better late than never, right? And someone stepped up right away to be his critique partner. So that worked out. We’ll get him rolling on things.

I spent an inordinate amount of time talking about how to get a publisher. I know the workshop was originally conceived to help people self publish, but not every wants to go that way and it’s a bad teacher/leader who doesn’t tailor her information to the needs of the people. So publishing….

  • Follow the instructions on their website. Seriously they all have them. Pick up a book you like. Go to the page where they list the publishing information, now google the publisher. Right there at the top will be a link for submissions. It might be called authors or contact but less than fifteen seconds will get you there.
  • Follow the instructions on their website. The instructions will be specific and they do vary considerably between publishers, from NO unsolicited manuscripts we shred them to send the first three paragraphs of your novel, and only the first three paragraphs.
  •  Yes I just gave you two bullet point for following instructions, it was the number one complaint I have heard from agents and editors. Follow instructions.
  • Be professional. This is not the time to whip out your humor, sarcasm, or witticisms. This is a business letter you are writing. This was the second biggest complaint from agents and editors.
  • Pick the right person. Some small-medium publishers will even tell you which of their editors are looking for what kind of book and give you direct contact email for those editors.
  • Investigate carefully. Some “publishers” are looking to do no work on your behalf, they just want to run it through and collect their percentage. If you want that, Amazon is way cheaper.

And that was pretty much it. I took them through the examples I had looked up in about ten minutes of thumbing through my fave books and then clicking about online.

I talked some about conferences. You want to go to the bigger industry ones when you can take full advantage, when you’re fully prepared. That means, when you register early and can get slots for face to face time with editors and agents. And when you have a finished product. Sitting down with the editor of your dreams and then saying I have this idea for a book will be a cold wake up call. Sitting down with the editor of your dreams and saying, “I have a completed 85 K new adult mystery that focuses on the transition between college and a working life in the career the protag thought she wanted but people keep dying instead. She finds herself investigating these murders and loving that a lot more than accounting. I have outlines for three additional book in the series and am currently writing the second one.” Which one do you think an editor is most likely to say, “Here’s my card, I’d like to see that.” Yeah, me too.

We also talked about cover design. I can sum it up for you but spend an hour going to Amazon and poling around. In general covers are simpler now, with stark contrast that looks good in a one inch by two inch rectangle. LOL. Look at the best sellers in general, then drill down into the categories that will apply to your book. What are people doing there? I personally toss out any big names. Because their name sells the book as much as the cover or story.

One thing that seemed to surprise people, when you write a summary for a perspective agent or editor, you tell the whole story. This is not a back of the book teaser, they want the whole enchilada with chips and guacamole, bring me another beer please. The full arc should be there in it abbreviated form. I’ll write up a sample for next week.

In the mean time we’re doing more first page idol and expanding to titles, tag lines, back of the book copy, and summaries for editors/agents. If you’re working along at home, send me any of these things which I will read to the group and send you back the feedback.

 

Fiendish Friday: The Place Where You Live

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

After last week’s surprise at my black bear comment I thought maybe I should talk a little about where I live. I’ve mentioned before – Pacific Northwest. Slightly more specific, about an hour outside Seattle without traffic.

I live on a mountain that is 2/3 to maybe 3/4 state park, I’m bad at that spacial estimation thing. What do I mean by mountain, the summit is around 3K on the highest peak. There are a number of homes up here, carved into the hills and valley, embracing the very NON city living.

But there are other inhabitants….

I had been in the state of Washington maybe 3 weeks and in our new home maybe 2, I was still unpacking the last boxes, when my hubs flew back to Cali for the weekend. The kiddo was in bed, I was watching netflix on the TV downstairs when the security lights went on in the driveway outside the room I was in. I look and there is this thing in my driveway. I blink once or twice, is that someone’s dog? The worlds biggest raccoon? God, if I didn’t know better I’d swear that was a bear. It ambled off. Now I’m a rural/city girl. What I know of animals are farm animals and frat boys. So I grab my laptop and google, and what do you know…it was a bear. Huh.

Flash forward a few months, the dog won’t go outside. This is very unusual for him, he always pees at 11 before bed, like clockwork. But he won’t go. I step out onto the deck coaxing him that everything is ok and then I hear this low growl. I look to my right and twelve feet away are gleaming eyes and – no flipping way. I stepped backwards into the house, lock the door, run around shutting all the windows, praising the dog. Grab my laptop and sure enough, a cougar.

Flash forward a few more months. The dog is outside for his morning pee. He doesn’t come back right away. Odd for him. Then I hear him barking like mad. I ask the hubs to check it out, since he has shoes on. He goes out and comes back a few minutes later laughing. Dog treed a bob cat.

Deer are such a routine sight that I don’t even have a funny story for them, except to say my dog is desperate to catch one and can’t quite manage it.

Rabbits less common now that we have a dog because he is able to catch them and they seem to have moved onto someone else’s property. LOL

Keep in mind these aren’t one offs. Someone posted a picture of a cougar walking down the road up here last summer. The summer before that a cougar went into a neighbor’s yard during a BBQ and stole a small dog. I see bear at least once a month in the months when they aren’t hibernating.

Tell me about the place where you live….

Wednesday Writer’s Update 6/29

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

I decided to stop calling this Writer’s Cafe since my chances of making it regularly this summer are slim. The work around for the no Wednesday sitter issue will be to go after my husband gets home from work I think. But since some weeks he’s home by 640, which would make me an hour late-not too bad, and some weeks he’s home at 815-LOL. Yeah. It’s hard for me to have things be so up in the air. I am a planner. That’s how I handle all that I do, by having a plan.

Which now that I write that, makes me laugh as I am a huge panster when it comes to my writing. LOL. Maybe that’s all the spontaneity my life can accept. hrm…file that under things to mull over when I have the spare time. cough. right….moving on…

I usually tell a funny story that happened at Cafe but since I don’t have any of those right now….Monday morning my hubs shaved his goatee off. My son told him it was weird. Then later in the car I was explaining an idea to my son and he says, “That’s weird mom. Not like dad without his goatee weird, but weird.” bwahahahahha

I’ve decided to report on my stated 2016 goals each Wednesday for a little prod of accountability.

– Participate in one flash fiction challenge per month.

√ Negatory. And June is almost over. Sigh. Well, no one is perfect. And Friday is another month. LOL

– Prepare and teach “Nano to Publish”.

√ Yup. I’m super proud of this little group that’s ripped the band-aid off and are moving forward. It takes guts to put your work out there to be critiqued, then beta’d, then to publish or seek a publisher, but they’re doing it.

– Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel, write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

√ So first draft is done and out to Beta. I have four readers this first go round and a couple of people already asking to be in the second one. I’m breaking it down, first go round is for other writers who want to give me writerly feedback instead of reader feedback. Second go round is for the reader experience. If you want in, let me know.

Non writing goals

– Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.

√ Actually working on this, reading a non fiction book which may or may not be applicable. Have to wait til I’m done. LOL

– Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either.

√ Sadly I have had almost no time to compulsively do anything this week. The Club. Oh, the Club. LOL

– yoga daily.

√ No way, not even close. Right now I’m at some sort of three times a week 2 1/2 hour work out situation, which is so not ideal but what I can get on the schedule right now. I keep thinking another couple of weeks and the club will be all reasonable and manageable again. Another couple of weeks and I can spend 30 minutes a day on club business instead of what I’m averaging now which is four hours. Yes, FOUR A DAY. Bleh.

Book Review: The Art of War for Writers

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

I can’t remember why this book made it’s way onto my list at the library. I put it on so stinking long ago. But just before I started off to Cali on my road trip with the kiddo, I got an email, come and get it. So I did.

Maybe I’m cynical but practically the first thing I did when I picked up The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell was check the publication date, 2009. Frowney face. This is out of date already. Bell has essentially applied Sun Tzu’s Art of War to the writing battle. I found a lot of his advice useful. He had lots of examples for each bit of concrete advice. For example, when detailing how to write a query letter, he wrote a query letter using a well known novel. When talking about how to create a tagline, he used well know movies. The extra effort made it easy to see how I might create these things for my novel.

Of course I wondered about a few things he said as well. For example, when looking to traditionally publish, having previously self published should not be revealed as it will be a debit against you in consideration by potential agents or editors. I think this is where the out of date comes in to play. Perhaps that was so back in 07 or 08 when he must have written it for 09 publication, but I think now, a good showing of quality work is generally considered a credit.

That said I still felt the book was an excellent investment of time.

℘℘℘℘ – Four Pages. Enjoyable book. Useful as well.

AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 14 Comments
seals.jpg
Me when I discover my child has been lying

Yesterday I discovered my son’s hamster had been stuck in it’s ball since I cleaned the cage last Sunday. Apparently my husband forgot to open the ball door when he and my son got done playing with the hamster and put him back. Ok, he oopsed. It happens. And it should have been caught by my son when he checked on his hamster right? Which I ask him to do every morning and he verifies he has done.

Nope. I found the poor hamster yesterday, 5 days no food or water. The poor thing was visibly distressed.

Picture long, calm conversation about this. Parenting at it’s kindest. But apparently not it’s most effective.

Today I go upstairs to vacuum, cat allergic friend coming over this afternoon and I like to have the allergens at a minimum for her.

My son’s cat has NO water. I ask him every day, did you check on your cat’s food and water? Yes, mom. She has plenty.

AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

He lied to me. All week. To my face. My sweet little boy. Lied to me.

Please, please share your stories before I decide I am the worst parent on the planet. Tell me about the last time your kiddo lied to you? Or the worst time?

Fiendish Friday: Broken Give a F***

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

Yes I just swore really big. Note the day. I don’t whip that one out very often.

I’m sure if you pop by my blog at all you’ve seen there’s been lots of club drama. Lots of missed write ins because of meetings etc. And each week my stress level has gone up. And up. And up.

And then I missed a deadline on my book. Because of the incredible time suck that is the club. And definitely due to the emotional drain that the club has become.

And then Tuesday morning my kiddo burst into tears for like the 20th time in the last week and when I asked him what was happening he said “Your stress is making me anxious.”

Pop. It was like someone through a switch.

There went my ability to give a f*** about the club.

Bad enough it’s messing with my mental health but mess with my kid and it gets ugly.

So I am now a paper processing machine. I do what work needs to be done and then I shelve it and move on. No emotional energy for the club.

And I can’t even give credit to my dear friend who coined “break my give a f***” right now because her husband has viral meningitis. Slaps forehead. Some things are so much more important than a club.

Holy guacamole, in the vein of more important, I just came face to face with a black bear having breakfast. Luckily my dog convinced him I would not be a tasty second breakfast.