The Writer's Market

The Writer's Market

The novel "The Majik of Spark" is finished and got it's first look by a literary agent at the San Diego Writer's Workshop on October 9th. The details can be found in the October 10th post. In a nutshell, the agent, Jennifer Azantian, liked my pitch and requested I send a formal query letter.

Jennifer responded to the query letter on November 12th. In her response she said: "I found your story to be very strong and truly believe you're quite talented." Then she politely said no, the book wasn't right for her, and wished me all the best.

Finishing the book was my first milestone as a writer. The second milestone was getting the attention of a literary agent. Now I have a third milestone - my first rejection letter.

I consider that positive news. Using tools such as the Writer's Market book (and it's online version,  writersmarket.com) published annually by Writer's Digest, I am building a list of literary agents and publishers that might be interested in the book.

My first search on the website for literary agents turned up forty. I am working my way through those listings and will report on how that goes.

I'm still writing, of course. The advice I've been given from several sources is NOT to go right into working on the second book of my trilogy. Should the first book not fair so well, few if any would be interested in part two. Well, I can't help but work on the second book, at least part time.

I am branching out, though. I have two short stories in progress, and maybe it will surprise readers to know neither is fantasy or science fiction. The first story has the working title of "Belefonte's Device" and began its life as a science fiction story. When I pitched the idea to my wife, she asked a very good question. "Do you always have to write fanatasy and sci-fi stuff?"

My knee jerk answer is yes, I always write fantasy and sci-fi. But then I took another look at the story, which centers on two friends in their sixties, Nathan and Madge. It didn't take much thinking to see that the story could be better told as straight fiction, and that's now my approach.

My very smart wife also suggested I should write something closer to home. I knew almost immediately what I wanted to write about. In 1968 my Dad was stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mom, Dad, me, and my two brothers lived there for three years. I remember very little of my childhood, but the three years I lived in "Gitmo" from the age of twelve to fourteen stand out in great detail in my mind. So I can now add a non-fiction story to my list of projects.

Writing On The Go

Writing On The Go

I still do most of my writing at my desk on a desktop computer. Lately, though, I've been considering getting a portable device so that I can write wherever I happen to be. The choices are numerous and continue to expand.

First off, I should describe the not-so-current system and devices I have now. For those with all the newest gadgets, you may need to hold your nose and roll your eyes at my "setup."

The desktop is an Intel Velocity Micro Edge Z40 running Windows 7 with a 250GB SSD drive, a number of external drives and a 21" HD monitor. Not flashy, but stable and gets the job done. The very few problems I've had were handled superbly by my favorite local PC store, MPC Electronics in Chula Vista, CA.

http://www.mpcelectronics.com/home.php

I bucked the Apple bandwagon (favored by my iPhone spouse) and use an older model LG smart phone (identical to the Galaxy 5). Works for me.

I also have a Lenova Windows 8.1 tablet that I never really got comfortable using. The detachable keyboard and wireless mouse worked fine, but other connections for HDMI, USB, microUSB, etc were poorly placed which quickly became irritating. The Windows 8.1 touchscreen was also difficult to manage and maddeningly vague about how to navigate it. Okay, so some of that is from my own inexperience with touch screen tablets. I hoped the Lenova would help me get over that, but it didn't. When the battery utterly failed, that was the end.

Since the main reason for getting a second device is to write in places other than at my desk, I considered getting a small, inexpensive wireless laptop that I could use anywhere. There are any number of those and I may still wind up settling on one of them. As a secondary desire, I am very interested in checking out the now available Windows 10. I could use the laptop to get comfortable with the new operating system before trying to upgrade my PC. In other words, I'm not going to screw up my PC by attempting to upgrade the OS to Win 10 until I really knew I could do it safely.
I dug deeper, looking to see what else is out there that might fit my needs. I came across this recent article:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911098/computers/mini-pc-invasion-10-radically-tiny-computers-that-fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand.html

The PC World article reviews 14 tiny devices that are fully functional computers. Looking through all fourteen, it was the last one on the list that got my attention. The Asus Vivo Stick fits in the palm of your hand, has all the connections you could want, and it runs Windows 10. It's not yet released, but the projected price is $129. I could use the keyboard from the Lenova and connect to any screen with an HDMI connection. 

http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-vivo-stick-pc

I want it. Let me know if you use similar devices or know of other good ways to write on the go.

Talking with an Agent

Talking with an Agent

Wow! I'm so excited I can barely contain myself. Yesterday I pitched my novel, "The Majik of Spark," to an agent. A real literary agent! I was so nervous  I knew I'd forget my pitch. I had a pile of paper notes to keep track of what I wanted to say, though I know I should have memorized it.

Wait. Maybe I should back up a bit. An apology first for disappearing for the last seven months. It's been that long since my last post. That was in March, after I attended the Southern California Writer’s Conference. I had a lot of lofty plans after the conference. In hindsight, I'm okay I didn't get to many of them. Instead, I focused on making the novel better. Not long after the March conference I began to realize my "finished" novel was really more like just the latest version. I kept finding issues in my read throughs, and my wonderful editor, Deb, was put through the ringer fixing grammatical errors and other missteps. I lost count of how many versions we went through before I really felt like it was DONE.

Back to the present. Yesterday, 9 Oct 2015, I went to the San Diego Writers Workshop. This is an intense, one day workshop hosted by San Diego Writer's, Ink. The key reason I went is that the conference offered sessions with real literary agents where I could pitch the book. Out of the many agents available, there were two who represented sci-fi and fantasy works. The sessions are short - ten minutes. The idea is to get practice pitching our work, learn that agents aren't ogres and that they are just as excited meeting us writers as we are to meet them.
 
One of the agents liked my pitch enough to ask me to submit the first 25 pages of the book. Literary agents see hundreds of pitches and read thousands of query letters from novel toting writers trying to get their books published. Nearly all are rejected. So this is a big step, but I have to remind myself it is only one step.

What happens now? I'll write a query letter. In addition to the 25 pages I'll send a synopsis (a 1-2 page summary of the entire book). She asked that I add the word "Requested" in the query letter, which gets my submission out of the slush pile of other query letters and directly into her hands. I can't ask anymore than that. But I can hope.

PS - If you don't know who this is, this is Charlie Bell. My pen name is J Walker Bell.  

Back To Work

Back To Work

It’s March now. The Southern California Writer’s Conference ended two weeks ago. The novel is finished. It’s time I start polishing my manuscript into a fine shine and getting those query letters started. I expected to take a few days to decompress. I’m not surprised, though, that I’ve let two weeks go by.

I’m one of those people who have a hard time starting a new project. Yes, the novel is done, but there is still an ominous mountain of work to do, and I hesitate and equivocate. Once I get myself engaged, I’m all in. It’s that first step which I always find hard to take.

Our writer’s group meets on Thursday. By then I WILL be back at work. I’m not sure yet exactly in what order I’m going to work on my many tasks. I know I need to craft a final, clean manuscript before I will let it out of my hands. I dithered over how to do this, but the solution is simple. First of all, I want to be able to make editing corrections myself. It is a fundamental element of my craft. I’m still learning, though, so I’ll continue to rely on my volunteer editor to help clean up the mistakes I make. Between the two of us, my expectation is that the manuscript will be good enough to get the eye of agents and publishers.

I am smiling as I write because I find myself already noticing problems. For example, re-read the first sentence in the second paragraph, which has fourteen words. “I’m one of those people who have a hard time starting a new project.” That is not the original sentence. It read: “I’m one of those people that has a hard time getting started on a new project.” It has sixteen words. Eliminating small problems can make a big difference overall.

Next up is my website. When I built the current J Walker Bell website I included all four of my blogs. My idea to drive content to the website by enticing them to read the blogs didn’t turn out quite like I wanted. The website became less and less about my writing and more about the other things I was doing. I was also not consistent in posting blogs, and that, too, was a problem.

Despite its flaws, I like the site. I designed and built it myself using Wordpress. I selected and used a template for the basic design and then tweaked it using Wordpress tools. I am no expert, but I had fun learning. Even so, it was a lot of work.

I have a novel to nurture now, and the existing multi-purpose website doesn’t meet my needs anymore. My Wordpress skills are admittedly rusty from disuse. Still, I am going to take a crack at building a new site. I know what I want. It will be very focused on the novel. I even have a template based on studying many writer’s websites as well as advice I received at last year’s La Jolla conference. Keep an eye out for the site’s coming out party.

Okay, the post is done. I’m now officially back at work. 

The Rogue Workshop

The Rogue Workshop

This past weekend I attended the 2015 Southern California Writer’s Conference at the Crown Plaza Conference Center in San Diego. The conference was a blast as well as instructional and productive. I met some great authors and authors-to-be.

This is the second writer’s conference I’ve attended. The first was the La Jolla conference in November at the Paradise Point Resort last year. There are many similarities in the two conferences, including workshops, lectures, read and critiques, advance submissions for readers, guest speakers, and late night marathons for the hardy. The Friday night no-host cocktail reception and the Saturday night banquet are also staples of both.

One immediate difference in the two conferences is the venue. Last year's Paradise Point Resort is a far better choice than the Crown Plaza by a wide margin. The meeting rooms at the Paradise Point Resort are smaller and more intimate, nestled together with short, outdoor pathways through beautiful landscaping. Inside the meeting rooms, the U-shaped or squared table arrangements encouraged conversation and participation.  By contrast, the Crown Plaza meeting rooms are large, high ceiling chambers that echoed and made it hard to hear. We sat at large round tables intended for dining, not meeting. Unless you were able to grab one of the 8-10 seats at the teacher’s table, it was a challenge to hear and participate. Second, the meet and greet socials were right outside the meeting rooms and our conference wasn’t the only group using it. Since we were encouraged to move freely between different meeting rooms, doors were routinely opening and closing, flooding the room with noise each time.  Third, the conference seemed to be put together at the last minute. We were encouraged to go to the conference website to review and select the many sessions available, which I did. Yet, right up to the day of the conference, a good percentage of the sessions listed only a title with no description of any kind as to what was being taught.

On the very positive side, there were some great sessions and excellent teachers.  I also learned a lot just by talking and listening with those like me who are still learning, and share the same dream of being a writer. The best presentation of the conference was by Ara Grigorian, a commercial fiction writer who has only recently written his first novel. He taught me a lot about the pacing of a novel, and he did it in a very entertaining way that I will remember long after the conference is over. Ara took clips from several movies, primarily ‘Notting Hill,’ and used scenes from the movies to show the ebb and flow of act one to act three that must exist to keep the readers attention to the end.

I also want to acknowledge two more people who impressed me. I sent a request to the conference for an advance read and critique from author Matt Pallamary, and met with him on Saturday afternoon to go over the fifteen pages I submitted from the first chapter of my novel, The Majik of Spark. I was excited to see that there were lots of red ink spilling across those pages. To me, it meant that I would be learning a lot as we went through it. I did, and that short session is going to drive the self editing phase of the novel. I also want to acknowledge author Bethany Lopez. I had never met her before, but we have an affinity in that both of us served and retired from the military while still pursuing our dream of writing. In addition to being an inspiring guest speaker, she led a number of classes which I attended. During a session about secondary characters, we got into a spirited back and forth about happy endings and untimely deaths. Bethany, being the true optimist, roots for happy endings, and her fine novels deliver just that. I looked more for high drama, killing off a key player so that a secondary character would have to rise to the challenge. When she pointed out that I done similar deadly deeds twice more, I realized that maybe I should take a more serious look at “happily ever after.”  Uh, not. Seriously, the debate made me think, and I will be reviewing the romantic angle that is present but somewhat buried in the book.

Finally, I come to the Rogue Workshop. I’m not quite sure how to describe it. On the surface, the workshop is a group read and critique where anyone can ask to read their work (or have their work read). After the reading everyone else in the room gets to critique the work.  The only rule is that the critique must be about craft, not content. I’ve never been to one of these, and I was pretty nervous about it. Not only was I expected to have my own work critiqued, I was expected to critique the work of others as well. It’s not a format that I am comfortable with, but something Bethany said during her speech on Friday helped me get over my jitters.  I don’t remember the specific quote, but it was something like “attack what you fear, and believe that good will come of it.” By the way, did I mention that Bethany is a very positive minded person?

Back to the rogue workshop. I went to it. There were about fifteen people in the room, led by a young lady who I have unfortunately forgotten the name of. She is a fine reader and made everyone feel comfortable sharing our work and placing ourselves under the critical eye of our peers. The read and critique began at 9pm, and our last read and critique ended at 2:40am in the morning. Several of these sessions go on at the same time and there is a bit of a competition to see who grinds it out the longest. We outlasted them all. I was exhausted but pleased, and even a little exultant (that might have been the sleep deprivation). It was the highlight of the conference for me.

With the conference over but still fresh, my next task is a self edit of the novel to tighten up the prose and improve the pacing of the story. Matt Pallamary showed me in just 15 pages how much work that is going to be. Then, if I go the “traditional route” I am looking at having to find an agent, an editor, and a publisher. Each will evaluate whether to take a chance on me. If I get that far then I’ll need beta readers, formatters, cover artists, social network planning, and a growing list of things that must come together to actually become a published work. Finishing the novel is only the first step.

I’m a long way from the finish line, but I’m most definitely in the race.

The Finishing Touches

The Finishing Touches

I wrote "The End" for the manuscript "The Majik of Spark" on January 12th, 2015. The manuscript in my hands now tells a much different story than when I first began writing it. The story began as an extension of the online game World of Warcraft. The characters were based on my pixilated characters from the game. That was in November 2013 and I was participating in the annual National Novel Writer's Month (NaNoWriMo). That process helped me to write a second draft that removed all references to the game. The third draft was completed based on the great advice and information from my first writer's conference. From start to finish, from first draft to third, it took fourteen months of work to complete.

The manuscript is one hundred and thirty-two thousand words long (132k) and is composed of thirty-four chapters. The grueling process of editing the manuscript now begins in earnest. Frankly, I haven't done a very good job of preparing the groundwork needed to get the manuscript to an agent, so that will be my focus in the time I have. The editing work will also continue. 

The Southern California Writer's Conference begins on 13 February, 2015. I am attending the entire conference. With a loving nod to my wife, who paid for the hotel reservations as a Christmas present, I will also be staying at the hotel for the duration of the conference. For three days I can focus 100% of my time into my writing and the conference. 

I have four weeks to be ready.