Guest author Angie Fox: How'd you think of that?

Angie Fox is the New York Times bestselling author of A Tale of Two Demon Slayers, a new release from Dorchester Publishing.








We all want to make our books as unique as possible. It’s about grabbing the attention of that busy agent or harried editor, making it so they absolutely must stop what they’re doing and sit right down with your submission and – of course – ask for more. Through three unsold manuscripts and the sale of my series to Dorchester, I’ve developed a few techniques that help me keep my quirky paranormals fresh. Hopefully, they’ll work for you too.

The character push
In the beginning of my series, the heroine’s long-lost grandmother shows up and – whoops – locks the heroine in her bathroom with an ancient demon. I’d pushed the situation, but the grandmother was too nice. My critique partner called me on it and, blast her, she was right. I sat down and brainstormed a few pages of alternate “grandmas” before I hit on an idea I loved – a Harley biker witch grandma who hurls recycled Smuckers jars full of home brewed magic. One character change and the book became a lot more fun to write.

The unexpected additions
It’s also important to be open to unexpected characters. When I sat down to write my series, I had no notes about a sidekick for my heroine. But when Lizzie learns she’s a demon slayer and there are some very scary, very angry creatures on her tail, she takes comfort in her dog. As I was writing, I thought, ‘This is a sweet moment. Now how do I throw her off?’

I made the dog say something to her. Nothing big. After all, he’s only after the fettuccine from last week. And he knows exactly where Lizzie can find it (back of the fridge, to the left of the lettuce crisper, behind the mustard). It amused me, so I did it. Thanks to her unholy powers, Lizzie can now understand her smart-mouthed Jack Russell Terrier. I ended up having a ball with it. And as an added bonus, Pirate can say and do things that my heroine can’t.

The mini-brainstorm
Sometimes, the first idea isn’t the best idea. Mini-brainstorms during the writing of a chapter always help me see if where I’m going is where I want to be. Sometimes, I go back to my first idea. Other times, after I’ve forced myself to come up with a page full of alternatives, I find I like a new idea better.

It works on big plot points, but just as well on little details. For example, in A Tale of Two Demon Slayers, Lizzie finds a mysterious egg-shaped stone. I had no idea what it was, but decided to play with it. Turns out, it was a dragon egg. The egg hatches and Lizzie’s dog, Pirate, decides he has a pet. It made me smile to think of a pet owning a pet. Lizzie is not happy about that. She has enough going on and doesn’t think her dog needs to own a pet.

So she tells Pirate to find a new home for Flappy the dragon (Pirate named him, not Lizzie). So Lizzie is battling evil people and losing track of what Pirate is doing. He keeps promising to find a new home for the dragon, but instead Pirate is hiding the dragon, and loving the dragon and teaching him tricks. Every time Lizzie realizes the dragon is still there, it’s gotten bigger and bigger and, well, it’s just one more thing she can’t quite control.

The “chill out – this doesn’t have to count” brainstorm
Sometimes, when a chapter just isn’t working, I have a hard time making the (often necessary) massive changes, because I don’t know if I’m going to make things better or (gulp) worse. But one day, I borrowed a technique from my days as an advertising writer and lo and behold, it works on fiction too.

I made a duplicate copy of the impossible chapter, and then went to town on changes. By letting my brain loose on a “throw away” chapter, I freed it up to stop thinking about “How am I going to get my heroine out of the love scene and ramped up for hell?,” to “Hmm…pillow talk. This is a good time for the hero to admit he wasn’t one hundred percent honest with the heroine at the start of the book. Now the heroine can get so mad that she dumps his boxers in the ice bucket, throws his pants off the balcony and almost goes to hell without him.”

Brainstorming is all about freeing up your mind and your creative energy. You get to surprise yourself, and feel the rush of excitement as you hit upon new ideas and new places to take your story. Because when you’re fully engaged in the story, pushing your characters harder, waiting to see what’s around the next bend – chances are, your audience will feel the same way.

Angie is giving away a copy of A Tale of Two Demon Slayers right here! Just take the quiz, inspired by Pirate and his pet dragon: What supernatural pet is right for you? Post your answer in the comments and you're entered to win!

The writer as Sisyphus

In an ancient Greek myth, evil King Sisyphus of Corinth ratted out Zeus for abducting the nymph Aegina. Zeus punished him by condemning him to an eternity of pushing a boulder uphill over and over again, only to have it roll back down just before reaching the summit.

Writers everywhere can sympathize.

Our task perhaps is worse: We never get a reprieve. Sisyphus at least could stroll down the hill after each effort. As writers, the more we know about writing, the more room for improvement we see in our own work.

This is not such a bad thing. Where would the fun be if we reached some plateau and said, "Now I'm the best writer I can possibly be." Every book afterward would be like factory work, putting parts together over and over to produce a product. And isn't that boring repetition one of the reasons we left the security of our day jobs to become writers?

In a post at my own blog last week, I detailed my struggle to understand the term "on the nose" and to grasp why on-the-nose writing was a bad thing.

Several years ago, I spent months struggling with the technique of deep point of view. I finally understand it, but I still struggle to execute it. Next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, new problems will crop up that I must solve to improve my writing. Like dancers, like musicians, writers continue learning their art their whole life.

Author and philosopher Albert Camus said this of Sisyphus:

....one must imagine Sisyphus happy....The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

Thanks for visiting my blog. Next time, on June 23, I'll talk about deep POV for those of you frustrated that I did not define it here.

—Shauna Roberts

Free copy of Sexaholics!

Greetings - For those who enjoy erotica, I have a free autographed copy of my second PYNK title, Sexaholics, that I'm ready to giveaway to the first person who comes closest, without going over, to the total number of actual pages in my first erotica book, Erotic City!

Please submit your guesses as a Novel Spaces comment by Tuesday evening, June 8th at 11:59 p.m. The winner will be announced the next day and asked to email their mailing address to divapublishing@aol.com.

Live your sexy dreams and good luck!

PYNK

The Truth About Booksignings

I first saw Parnell Hall's hilarious video on the lovely JoAnn Ross’ blog, and I couldn’t help sharing it with my Novel Spaces friends.

I laughed so hard (to keep from crying) I clicked over to Amazon and bought one of his books!





Enjoy! And have a great weekend!

Rejected again

I received a rejection letter the other week that cheered me up.

You see, I'm transitioning from media tie-in writing to original fiction and the two industries play by different rules. Media tie-in is for the most part write-for-hire. The way it usually works is the book packager or game developer or whoever the deciderer is lets it be known she is looking for thus-and-so. We writerly types then pitch ideas or proposals illustrating how we would handle the thus and the so. The deciderer picks the one(s) she likes, contracts are inked, and we write stories that are even better than we promised and a mere three point four eons later the amount we'd agreed to in the contract is rendered unto us.

The process is more streamlined in freelance writing. The writer writes a story, mails it to the market, and waits to find out if the editor wants it. (There are some markets, like BattleCorps, that invite unsolicited stories but they're the exception.) I know this is how most writers do business. It's how I started out. But I still feel as though there's a step missing. (And not knowing if the story will be bought while I'm writing it feels a bit odd.)

The reality is chances of a sale are pretty slim. Fiction doesn't sell magazines the way scandal and true-life stories do, so there are fewer and fewer magazines looking for stories. Prestige print markets, like The New Yorker and The Atlantic receive several thousand submissions each month, of which they can purchase only one or two. Online markets are growing, of course, but competition is still fierce. All of which means the short fiction writer quickly develops a collection of rejection letters – and eventually learns that not all rejection letters are the same.

Ninety-nine percent are form letters. Given the volume of manuscripts they receive each month, editors can not take the time to include an explanation of their decision with every story they reject. Thus the form "Thanks for letting us see your story, but …" letter. A form letter does not mean your story was bad or that you need to rewrite it. It just means that the magazine could not use your story at that time. Don't agonize over what you should have done better; print a fresh copy of the ms and mail it to the next market the same day.

A form rejection with a handwritten (actually hand-scrawled) phrase across the bottom led to my first sale. He wrote "rough spots lose reader" and I knew what he meant. I was fond of "dramatic" scene changes, and the editor was telling me the jarring transitions were throwing readers out of the story. That story I did rewrite (a rarity for me); I smoothed out all the transitions and resubmitted (with a note saying it was a resubmission and why) and the editor bought it.

Two of my most confusing personal rejections came from the late Marion Zimmer Bradley. Both came attached to the copies of the stories I'd submitted to her fantasy magazine and both mss showed evidence – including words scratched in the margins – that she (or someone) had read them closely. The first story was about people who could change reality to fit their beliefs – reality altered to fit its nature was controlled by those with the deepest convictions; conflicts between faiths shaped the world. The note, signed MZB, said "Very well done but if there is an element of fantasy here we have failed to find it." The second letter was longer – a full page critiquing the story, which she evidently liked but could not use. However the critique had nothing whatever to do with the story I'd submitted (the ms to which it was attached). I know that at least one other writer out there somewhere has had the exact same experience.

My favorite personal rejection came from Esquire five years ago and came nearly six months after I'd submitted (normal turn-around for editorial decision is three months). The editor loved the story, and wished he could use it. What's more he said he wasn't the only one. The long delay had been caused by the editors hanging on to the ms trying to find a way to fit it in. In the end they'd decided it just wasn't quite right for Esquire.

As I've been writing and mailing original short stories, my collection of form rejection letters has been growing. Which is why the personal note cheered me so. It wasn't much. The editor wrote that the story was well done, citing a touch she'd liked, that she liked my narrative "voice," and that she wanted to see more from me. From a busy magazine that must reject hundreds of stories a week, a personal note like that is huge.

Never take a rejection as a defeat. It's a step in the process. Writers are people who get past rejections and keep moving forward.

Ten things to do while waiting for your next book contract

Once again, I find myself in that incredibly uncomfortable place where I've fulfilled the obligations of my current book contract and am waiting to hear back on the next proposal.

*pausing for commiserating groans*

Anyone who has ever been brave enough to send their work out into the publishing world has hung around in this zip code. Whether it's an unpublished writer waiting to hear back from an agent they've queried , or a multi-published author waiting for word on their newest story. Wherever a person is along the publishing spectrum, Waitingville is a place no one wants to visit.

So, what can you do when you find yourself checking email every half-hour for news from your agent, or tapping the screen of your BlackBerry to make sure it isn't suffering from a technical glitch? (Because it should be ringing with a call from your agent, right?)

Here are my top ten things to do while waiting for my next book contract:

1. Develop character profiles for your next book

2. Search for five new industry-related people to follow on Twitter

3. Try a new plotting technique to plot your next book

4. Research the trip to Ireland you plan to take with your advance money

5. Decide which bills to pay with advance money and settle for weekend trip to Disney World instead (hey, at least you still get to see a castle)

6. Start first chapter of your next book

7. Completely scrap first chapter of your next book

8. Volunteer to hold a workshop on writing at your local library

9. Find better way to began first chapter of your next book

10 Accept that waiting is a part of the business and learn to live with it.

Back to Basics

I think we all have those moments in life when you have to reach deep into yourself to remember why you’re where you are to begin with.

You know: Your partner has been on the warpath and taking it out on you. You are totally empathetic, but a little battle weary. So you think, “Oh, yeah, it was your smile. “ Even if you haven’t seen so much as a grin in weeks, you can push yourself through the “for worse” days by re-visiting the better ones.

Or, if you have kids, you know they invariably (more likely, consistently) test your patience and make you wonder what on earth made you think you wanted to take on that lifetime task. (We all know it doesn’t really end at 18, 21 or 30 – does it?) When someone brings home a poor grade, detention slip, or colors all over your freshly painted walls, you revert to the joy you get from their unsolicited hugs, the way dumb things make them laugh, or the way they look at you like you’re a superhero (or, maybe, used to. lol)

Every author knows that writing has those days, too. Your mind may have hit a blank patch, a deserted wasteland without so much as a mirage of an idea in sight. Or perhaps your muse has declared herself to be on vacation – or ditched you to manage a family emergency. Or maybe life is just kicking your behind right now and you can hardly see straight from one day to the next – less known, arrange characters, plots and sub-themes into a cohesive happy ending.

Stuff happens.

A few days ago, guest blogger June Shaw wrote about not giving up. Her focus was on editors whose visions don’t always align with our own. But beyond the decision makers at publishing houses and magazines, there may be family naysayers, skeptic friends, demanding children, even writing colleagues who disagree with your choice of genre, style, or subject matter. Those challenges affect your motivation as much as any internal stall.

But it’s going to take YOU to get that engine going again. Reach back for why you write in the first place. If it’s for accolades, well, your goals can get blown away like so much chaff with the first rejection or two. If you’re in it for the money, um, I think you’re in the wrong pursuit.

But, if it’s like breathing, a compulsive must-do, something you can’t see yourself not doing for the sheer sake of doing it, well, take a deep breath, pick up a pen, keyboard or tape recorder and start spilling your mental guts.

Like the partner you share your life with out of love or the children you care for out of love, write from that place deep within that burns no matter how the world tries to douse its flame. Eventually, you’ll surprise yourself with the joy of your own smile at a sentence, scene, then story well written – whether it’s sold yet or not.