...check out Lynn Viehl's post on the reality of a NYT bestseller.
Archive for April, 2009
...just because I write paranormal romance.
According to Mary W. Walters's open letter to editors:
...your desk is piling up with flimsy bits of vampire literature, fantasy, romance, detective stories and the kind of first-draft bubble gum that used to be called chick-lit but is now shuffled in with other women's writing in order to give it heft -- although as far as you can see, neither the quality nor the subject matter has improved -- which you are required to somehow turn into publishable books.
...
...fine fiction writers who are crappy copy-writers attempt to write fast-paced pitches about their own serious novels that will make those novels sound as much as possible like commercial drivel.
And literary agents are like rabid dogs -- or was it vampires? -- trying to destroy fine literature and screw editors:
They are the literary agents -- that league of intellectual-property purveyors who bring you every new manuscript you ever see, those men and women who are so anxious to gain access to the caverns of treasure they believe you sit upon like some great golden goose that they would likely hack one another's heads off were they not united by one self-serving mission: to ensure that quality fiction never hits your desk.
Then Mary goes on to say that her novel was rejected by over sixty agents, "mainly sight unseen". I assume this means her query letter was rejected by lots of agents. If your query letter can't get you some decent partial / full requests, you need to rewrite your query.
Oh...it also helps if you don't say all those nasty things about agents on your blog.
I'm still struggling with the ninth chapter from All the King's Women. Nothing's happening!!!!! My h/H brood, brood, brood, eat, brood, brood, brood, brood. I want to delete the entire chapter or just pretend that everything's fine in it, but I know better. Ch. 9 shows the aftermath of my h/H's first love scene. I can do better than having my h/H brood.
Another thing I noticed as I revised -- I used different spellings for the same thing. *sigh* Usually they're for words that do not exist in ours. So I made a vocab list in Excel and sorted it alphabetically. I haven't realized this until I put them on the paper (or on my trusty computer screen) but I have fifty-five world-specific terms.
No, not my books.
My hamster babies.
Buttercup delivered six babies several weeks ago. As adorable as they are, Hero Material and I just could not keep them. Four hamsters are more than enough for us to handle.
So on Thursday, we took them to the local pet store where we bought Shiro and Kuro and gave them to the exotic pet lady.
Let's just say that I was highly depressed about that. I really adored the babies and spoiled them as much as I could while they were with us.
Today we stopped by the pet store to check up on them. Fortunately, they had their own aquariums with their own water, toys, etc. They looked very small and happy inside.
Hope they find a new home soon. :wub:
P.S. Here's the picture of one of the babies we had to give away.
I finished reading Butcher's Small Favor. Very very good, although the middle part felt a bit slow. Also read Cole's Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night and Rich's Free-Range Chickens.
On my own writing front -- I figured out what's been bugging me about the second quarter of the book. There are two sex scenes, and they're so...dry.
What I mean is that the characters are doing this and that, but very little emotions are coming through. My characters have a lot of history together, so the scenes rang false when I reread them for the sheer lack of feelings from both of them. A lot of missed opportunities.
I also decided to add a couple of short scenes to advance the main subplot (the court intrigue part). They're all new and feature secondary characters. I think they'll add a bit more to the subplot because currently the book's about 85% romance.
After dinner I spent about ten minutes jotting down notes on my next project -- a futuristic paranormal romance. I can't decide if I want to write it in 1st person or not. The heroine is snarky and slightly eccentric, but I think the snarky 1st person narrator is a bit of a cliché now. I wonder if her voice can come through just as clearly in 3rd person.
Hmmm.
