The South Bay Scribes

The South Bay Scribes

I can't put my finger on the precise date, but somewhere along the way I wandered off the path and away from my focus on writing. My last post here was in March, a distant five months ago. My novel, "The Majik of Spark," is finished but hasn't found an agent. The plan to self-publish remains an idea, not an action. I wrote a new story, "The Royal Gramma." It was well received in our writer's group, but other than losing a writer's contest it lays fallow.

During my five month haitus our writer's group drifted apart following the tragic death of our leader, Gerardo. Most of the original group I belonged to simply stopped coming and I eventually lost track of them. The South Bay Scribes took me in, led by Charlie Berigan. I felt immediately comfortable with the new group. The jokes about how to discern between the two Charlie's when getting our attention grew, and to this moment we both still respond to any and all form's of "Charlie." One member of Gerardo's group also came to the South Bay Scribes, Robert, and he also helped draw me into the group, for which I'm grateful.

I met many new friends and they soon got to know me, my writing, and my penchant for endlessly doodling during the meetings. My "doodling" morphed into a sort of artform and the more artistic in the group, like Susan, took my better pieces and fit them into our chap books. I can now say I'm both writer and artist.

My artwork has recently taken a new direction. I'm not sure who to give the credit to, but whoever it was showed me a coloring book for adults. I was fascinated, and did some research. The patterns used in virutally every book I checked was nice, but repetitive. Most books were based on the same set of patterns.

I can do that, was my first reaction. My second reaction was, I can do it better, with patterns that are unique and original, not cookie-cutter. I am now working on marketing my "Uniquely Original Art Coloring Book for Adults."

Writer's Digest 2015 Short Story Competition Results

Writer's Digest 2015 Short Story Competition Results

The results are in and my entry, "The Royal Gramma" did not win any prizes. There were over 6,700 entries. Quoting, the "winner's names will be made public when they appear in the July/August 2016 issue of Writer's Digest magazine. Afterwards, their names and story titles will be posted at www.writersdigest.com. The competition collection has a May 2016 publication date and we anticipate that we will begin mailing in June."

So there we are. I'm disappointed, of course. More than disappointed. I really thought the story worthy of publication. This isn't the end, and I will be working on finding a home for the story.

In other news I am actively working on the "Song of Chord." This is the second book following "The Majik of Spark." The first book is still making the rounds of publishers and literary agents. I am also considering a shorter work based on the trilogy as a means to get more interest in the novel. I'm exploring a number of possibilities.

Writer's Digest Short Story Contest

Writer's Digest Short Story Contest

Writer's Digest does an annual short story competition for all genres. The only rule is that the story has to be under 1500 words. The first place winner of the competition receives $3,000. The top twenty-five submissions will also receive at least $25. The most important prize, though, is that the top ten submissions will be published.

I have several projects in work, but the story I felt was the best for the contest takes me back to the late 1960's when we lived on the Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When I first started writing the story, I didn't think I had enough content to get close to the 1500 word limit. I should have known better. In writing the non-fiction story about the three years we lived there, I began to remember more and more. Soon, I was struggling to keep the story under those 1500 words.

Judi came to the rescue by pointing out that there was an episode in the story that didn't fit.  I liked that episode, which was funny and scary at the same time. On second reading, though, it was obvious that it interupted the flow of the story and did not add to the central theme. The result is a better story - and cutting that scene brought the story back under the word count restriction.

The name of the story is "The Royal Gramma." I sent the story to the Writer's Digest contest. The contest closed on 15 January, and winners will be announced sometime in February.

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.