Speculative Fiction

The other night I was reading (on my Kindle) Delia Sherman's delightful short story Wizard's Apprentice.

It is the story of an evil wizard living in Dahoe, Maine. It even says so on the sign hanging outside his shop:
"Evil Wizard Books
Z. Smallbone, Prop"

Part way through the story, a runaway breaks into the bookstore, blah, blah, blah. Eventually the wizard hands the intruder his business card. The card says:

"Evil Wizard Books
Zachariah Smallbone, Porprietor
Arcana, Alchemy, Animal Transformations
Speculative Fiction
Monday-Saturday. By Chance and by Appointment"

Did you notice that in the list of evil things the wizard will do, Speculative Fictions is so bad it gets its own line? Don’t get me wrong, I love that line. I laughed out loud when I read it. Yet, I couldn’t help but think that the best humor has an element of truth.

I don’t know how speculative fiction got to be the ugly step-child of writing, yet just the mention of it will cause a nerve paralyzing eye-roll. (I'm waiting for the day when my mother’s warning that “you’re face will stick that way” comes true.: “What happened to your face?” “Oh, some fool mentioned fantasy. Didn’t even look to see who might overhear.”)

“I don’t read fantasy. I just don’t understand it” If you haven’t said it, you’ve at least heard it.

People, almost everything Disney does and has done for over sixty years is fantasy: “Cinderella”, “Beauty and the Beast”. And, PLEASE give me a piece of the action Disney rakes in at its theme parks.

The stories you read to your children, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” “Jack and the Beanstalk” “Little Red Riding Hood” – speculative fiction.

Please don’t try telling me you didn’t watch any of the Star Wars movies because they were science fiction. And don’t kid yourself, “Pirates of the Caribbean” is fantasy. (I will grant that any movie staring Johnny Depp is a must watch.)

“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas” is science fiction. So is “The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. I know you know the stories and suspect you liked them.

If you try telling yourself you don’t love everything Pixar does, I will call you a liar to your face. It is all speculative fictions.

(And, don’t get me started on that Romance you’re reading. IT’S A FANTASY.)

I’m not asking to be at the top of your reading list, but when it’s time for the family photo, may I please come out from behind the tree.

I Don't Write Paranormal...Right?

So I'm sitting at the computer, editing my next novel (even though I haven't even sold the last two I worked on for what seemed like endless hours, weeks, years) and I just don't want to continue working on it.

It's not that the story is dull, lacks plot and conflict, or has banal characters. Nope. If that were the case, it would be a simple chuck everything and begin anew. Instead the problem is I started a novel a year (two years?) ago, and I can't get it out of my head.

Anyone else have this problem?

I reread it (I'd stopped writing it at page 56 last fall) and I'm still very drawn to it. I want to know what will happen next. I want to make it bigger, better. The problem? It's a paranormal.

I don't write paranormal.

At least, I don't usually write paranormal. It's sneaked up on me in the past...when I was fifteen I wrote an entire novel based on the Salem witch trials. I still have it. And I've written bits and pieces of stories with a supernatural element over the years since. But I've never much enjoyed reading paranormal because it seemed too farfetched to me. Ghosts? C'mon. Vampires? Puh-lease. Wolves that walk and talk, stalking and yet falling in love with their prey? Ridiculous. Nonsense, all of it.

And yet I'm curious about this story that keeps cranking the gears in my head. I suppose if I keep returning to a story I didn't think I was serious about writing, I should reconsider its place on my mental priority list. Maybe oil up those gears and keep going. I am, after all, the CEO of my company. I can do what I want within the limits of my capabilities.

Today I will work on the paranormal. Today I will enjoy myself and fall into the story and see where it takes me. Tomorrow I may discover I'm not cut out for the paranormal and maybe then I can pick up on the edits of the story I'd been working on for hours, weeks, years.

Or maybe this CEO will move this unfinished story up on the priority list so I can see how it ends. I don't write paranormal, so it should be interesting.

Write What You Know

Having attended a number of writers conferences over the years, I've had the privilege to sit in on any number of workshops, the Craft Tract being a personal favorite. One which stood out the loudest came when Nora Roberts told the audience, 'write what you know.'

Coming from one of my writing heroes, the advice made sense―except I wondered how I, as a nurse [then] could ever turn a doctor into a hero. If you don't know where someone had their hands last, well . . . not an appealing thought as far as I was concerned.

Then came the day when I heard Tess Gerritsen speak at a New Jersey Romance Writers conference. She spoke about how her roots in writing dated back to her medical residency days in the ICU and observing what the nurses―whom she spoke of with great respect and affection―were reading: category romances. Wow. A physician who spoke of nurses with respect. I had to read one of her books. Let me tell you, after devouring “The Apprentice”, I was hooked. Tess Gerritsen writes what she knows!

As a teenager, living in a very rural area with little to do and no way to get anywhere, I read anything I could get my hands on. I discovered a book by Frank G. Slaughter in my parents' library, a Civil War story about a female spy and a male battle surgeon. Very bloody, lots of spilled guts, gore and suffering. Right up the alley of a fourteen year old with an over-active imagination and way too much time on her hands. Thoroughly hooked, I proceeded to sign out every one of his books from the school library as well as the library in a neighboring town. It wasn't until I later that I learned Mister Slaughter was actually a medical doctor. This man had the ability to put me in the moment of a battlefield hospital scene, suffering right along with the physician and his patients. One of Dr. Slaughter's contemporary novels, “Daybreak” featured the trials and tribulations of a physician working in the mental health system prior to the advent of effective anti-psychotic medications when pre-frontal lobotomies and electroshock therapy were considered last ditch efforts to treat intractable psychiatric problems. Very chilling stuff for this young woman who was about to head off for three years of nursing school in―you guessed it―a state psychiatric facility. By the end of my schooling, I'd passed more Thorazine and Mellaril than any ten nursing students―and no fresh lobotomies, thank you very much.

As a young wife with a graduate student husband and two small kids, money was tight. I lucked out when I discovered a second-hand book store which stocked copies of Robert K. Tannenbaum's legal thrillers featuring Assistant District Attorneys Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi. With each book I learned about the steps in the legal process, evidence that can degrade over time or be lost by dumb luck or stupid accident, “eye witnesses” who don't see everything, and a how-to manual for criminals who want to beat the system. It came as no surprise when I learned this man spent many years in the Manhattan DA's office, prosecuting the worst of the worst. Writing with a sharp wit and biting sarcasm, after more than thirty years, Mr. Tannenbaum's books continue to hold my interest. Another instance of writing what one knows.

Lastly, I'd like to blow the horn for one of my nursing as well as writer heroes: Eileen Dreyer. After many years in category romance [writing as Kathleen Korbel], Eileen―an experienced ER nurse―was called up to the big leagues with a series of medical thrillers set in and around St. Louis, Missouri. Invariably her heroines are nurses with advanced training [such as Eileen herself] in forensic evidence collection, death examinations, and critical incident management. Using gut-busting humor, Eileen makes the everyday come to life and answers the question, “What if?”

In closing, I challenge any author to look at their everyday life and incorporate something they find there into his/her writing. Okay, so maybe you don't have an exciting job which includes passing bed pans or inserting suppositories, but do you have a volunteer job you really love, something that gives back ten times more than what you put in? I have a friend who volunteers at a soup kitchen, another takes calls on a domestic violence crisis line, a third takes an AA meeting into the county jail every week.

Do you have an Aunt Helen [like me] who retired from the Navy Nurse Corps at the rank of Lieutenant Commander after serving in World War II and Korea? Do you have religious connections you might tap for a secondary character? I know an author who pumped her priest uncle for the scoop on how to get around the priest-penitent privilege and the sanctity of the confessional―and yes, under certain circumstances, it can be done.

Where do you live or go for a vacation? Can that be turned into a setting so vivid readers want to move there? I am currently working with an author who set her story in the Adirondack Mountains―and believe me, she nailed it.

What turns you on? How do you fill all those empty hours in your life? Do you attend festivals or state fairs? How about protest marches? I edited a September 2010 release for a Wild Rose Press anthology which featured a protest march that turned into a riot. The author was a veteran of protests from back in the 80's and 90's; it was clear she knew what she was talking about. The description spoke to me as an editor as well as a woman.

As an editor and a reader, I have developed a second sense for what rings true and what comes from someone who took the easy way out when it came to doing his or her homework―and not all were unpublished. Do not depend on legal whodunits on the big screen or mystery illness of the week on TV for accuracy. If you want to know which shows portray accurate situations, ask someone who's already in The Biz. I myself DO NOT EVER EVER watch any of the “CSI” shows, “House”, “ER”, “Law and Order, SVU”. The shows earning the highest ratings do not always consider the truth because they would lose viewers.

Writing a query letter

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege to attend a presentation on query letters by Kimberly Gore Wehner. Following are the notes I took. (Neither Kim nor I take any responsibility for the accuracy of these notes. Just because I heard it doesn’t mean she said it. :-) ) Kim's blog can be found at: http://www.blog.klgore.com/

General Notes:

According to an agent who spoke at the last conference Kim attended horror stories are on the rise, vampyre stories are on the way out.

Your manuscript must be completed for fiction submissions. For non-fiction, you are pitching an idea, with the promise to write the manuscript.

Go the web site to get the instruction for querying the agent/publisher. Follow them to the letter.

o Try to find the name of the editor or agent you are submitting to and address them by name. (Be formal: Dear Mr. Jerk Face, not Dear Jerk)

o Do not submit to another agent in the same company. They will know. And if they feel it would be a good fit for a different agent at the agency, they will take it to them.

If your manuscript is non-fiction, be sure to justify why you are qualified to write it.

Include a list of your published works.

Pitch only one manuscript at a time.

o You can mention you have others later.

Publishers/agents do not want you to put your work on the internet. If they want to see a sample they will ask.

The larger publishing houses may only want to be contacted by an agent. (Read those guidelines.) Some smaller houses will accept direct submissions from unagented authors.

If you are have a children’s chapter book, be sure there are a lot of places to stop. (Chapter breaks)

Query more than one agent at a time. (It may take a long time for them to get back to you.)

Interview your prospective agent. (Let the other agents you queried know you are interviewing an agent. Give them a deadline to contact you.)

o Ensure you are a good fit personally and that they represent what you write.

o Set up expectations for both sides.

o Ask for the email addresses of authors they represent.

Know your audience. You are writing your query letter for the agent, not the public.

A couple of publications to consider:

o 2011 Guide To Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino (Out in August 2012)

o How to Write Attention-Grabbing Query & Cover Letters by John Wood

(My idea: Rather than say “This is my first novel,” say “This is the first novel I have submitted for publication.”)

Mention that it may be similar to XYZ. (Some strongly disagree with this.)

Don’t say that your story would be good for ….

o Or that “Readers and listeners will be interested in ….”

Don’t say you are looking for representation. (Why else would you be contacting them?)

Unlike a synopsis, in a query letter do not capitalize the character’s name the first time you use it.

The Letter:

This is your only chance to make a first impression

o Your writing will be judged on the letter

o Write it in the style of your story.

o Be professional, not casual.

Format:

o Keep it to a single page

o Single space

o Don’t double space

o If querying via snail mail, include a SASE

Include the genre and word count – rounded to the nearest 100.

Keep your query in the tone of your book

Explain why you chose this agent/publisher for your book.

o If you have met them and they requested a query, mention that.

o A tip for finding the name of agent is to Google everyone in the acknowledgments.

Be brief with the story summery. (250 words or less for a novel.)

Do not tell the ending. (That goes in a synopsis.)

Keep your main character(s) the focus of your letter. If the story won’t work without them, they should be mentioned. Never mention a secondary character unless it’s crucial to the plot.

In non-fiction:

o Start with the purpose of your article.

o Then why you are the one to write this article/book.

o Show what the reader will get from the article/book.

o Ensure your slant is known.

Start with an opening sentence that will blow the socks off the agent. You want to hook them at once. (If you can include something you know the agent is interested in, so much the better.)

In as few sentences as possible:

o Show a little of ordinary life.

o Tell of an exciting event.

o Give your protagonist’s goal

o State what choices must be made

o Explain what will happen if those goals aren’t met.

Welcome 2011

Happy New Year, friends. How will you start off the new year? I've been working on editing my manuscript. It's exciting to see the developments as I progress. The only problem I'm having is setting aside time to actually work.

With the new year, our group will be embarking on a new chapter as well. I think we all have high hopes for a successful and fruitful year. Fresh ideas, cooperation and understanding will be expected to this end.

I'm going to change the day of my blog because I've picked up a waitressing position Monday evenings. This is after hostessing for the lunch hour as well. Wednesdays will be better for me with my new schedule.

To start the new year off well, I'm asking everyone to bring their top five goals for 2011. By sharing our goals, the consensus may be helpful in guiding us toward completing these goals.

2010 Reflections

Another year is coming to a close. For the first time, I'm aware of all that's happened in my life and can take the time to reflect on them.

One of the biggest changes has been the loss of over 100 pounds. By the elimination of flour and sugar from my diet, my mind is clearer and more focused than I can remember. Thank God I found a 12-step program to help me make this change.

Now that my focus is sharper, I've been writing more proficiently. One book has been completed and submitted not only to one publisher, but two. The first publisher requested editing and I'm currently working on that. It's very exciting and envigorating. I've also been working on two of the eight or so books I've got on the back burner.

All in all this year has been a good year for me. I've made new friends and have reconnected with old friends. My attention is clearer and I'm more present with these relationships. Such changes are amazing in their clarity. I'm happier than I've been in years.

Now that I've got my writing going in the direction I want it to, I feel more driven than I have in years. My goal for 2011 is to keep the drive going on finishing my books, submitting them for publication and working to help strengthen the LCRW group's presense.

So my wish now is for everyone to enjoy a happy and healthy New Year!

Resources

What kind of resources are helpful to a fledgling author and how do you find them? I've stumbled upon some really great resources at the bookstore by accident. They are "Forensics, A Guide for Writers," and "Police Procedure and Investigation." My brother, the lawyer, almost salivated when he saw the title of the latter book and he works with corporate litigation.

Another book I've collected is "From First Draft, A Writer's Guide to Cohesive Story Building." I do have to admit I haven't used this book. It seemed too much work to me. Guess I'm learning there's more to writing than just putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

I had two unexpected discoveries as I cleared out more clutter from my sunroom. The first was a book entitled, "RWA Online Presents 12 Steps to Publication." This book was a timely find as I needed to learn about writing a synopsis. There was a chapter on just that. The second discovery was a six-audio tape series, "Writing and Selling Your Novel, A Live Workshop with Jack M. Bickham." Imagine my dismay to find the first tape is missing from the set. Bummer.

So, armed with all these resources what do I do? Place them on my bookshelf until needed or start studying? Originally, I just put them away on the bookshelf. With the submission of a manuscript to publishers, I think I'd better make time to study some of these books along with time to continue writing.

Old Endings

I was reminded of Patti's recent "incoming Presidential" message and, as we left yesterday's wonderful event at Kathy Schafer's lovely home, I was reminded of her grace and enthusiasm for leading LCRW into a new decade.

With that in mind, I would like to thank you all for allowing me to serve as president for these past 4+ years. We certainly had our moments, some good, some less than. I learned a lot and hope some of you did also.

I wish all the very best as you travel your individual paths toward your dreams, whatever they may be.
Kat Doran

Just call me Pinball Brain

Does the title have you guessing? I hope so. Let me elaborate here.

Lately with the stress of life as the mother of three young adults who don't drive, part-time restaurant hostess and now waitress for two evenings, I feel my life's control slipping away from me. One case in point? I missed my blogging obligation yesterday.

Between taking a short morning nap, working the lunch hour and the returning to waitress the evening shift, I didn't get much of my planned work completed. I didn't have enough time to make dinner - it doesn't help when I don't plan it ahead of time. The laundry still sits (it's only mine and I'm not running out). The powder room didn't get its weekly clean either.

I can say that I've got a manuscript ready for submission to a second publisher - the publisher I've dreamed of writing for most of my life. My first try at a synopsis turned out to be the back-of-the-book blurb. Now, after confering with my critique friends, I've got a decent synopsis, a query letter and the first few chapters ready to go. Of course, I couldn't get my husband to understand the need to keep working on it. He thinks that since I have the work in one place, I can sit on my hands and wait for a response before working on anything else. EEKKKK!!! Do they ever get it? I think mine's only going to get it when I can show a sale.

To top it off, today's list hasn't been completed either. Maybe that afternoon appointment wasn't necessary today. Then again, it was and I do feel better for having it. So, the list piles up. With a commitment tonight, when am I going to get things finished?

Do you think it would help if I got to bed at a reasonable hour and didn't have a need to take that morning nap? Probably. Will I be able to do it tonight? It doesn't look like it. Have to drive all the way out to Charlotte and pick up my van from rhe repair shop.

I think one of the events that have tipped the scales toward the feeling of my brain being a pinball in my skull was the near misses I've had with deer for the past three days. Every day I have encounter a deer running in the path of my car, my heart stops beating and my nerves stretch tighter and tighter. My body feels so strung out it's hard to fall asleep.

Someone suggested I try not to drive at night. I responded, "How will I get home from work?" Answer - "Husband?" My response? "Yeah, right."

So you get the drift. I hope this blog is entertaining as well as a warning to others not to let their lives get to this point. Why do I want to stop the pinball?? The holiday season is upon us, my favorite time of year, and I don't feel festive. I want the season to go away. So NOT me. Thanks for letting get this out of my system.

Time

Why is it when the days get shorter, my time seems to shorten as well? There seems to be no end to the list of things I need to do and no time in which to do it. Even my writing has suffered.

I started the NaNoWriMo challenge on November 1 with the full intent to finish. Things went well for the first two weeks. Now, according to the stats tab on my NaNoWriMo page, I won't finish the 50,000 challenge until Jan. 15. How sad is that?

However, many of the delays are of my own making. Parts of my life have gotten out of control and makes for difficult times at home. I need to take some time to sit down and re-evaluate what I want and what I need to do. This goes for my writing too.

My goal for January is to submit my current manuscript to one of the major publishing houses within the next month. I really don't want to have to put a buck in the kitty for not making that goal. HeHe. The one thing I will not do is overtax myself to achieve that goal. To that end, my head is beginning to ache. Must mean it's time to go to bed.