Query Letters

Getting ready for the #philadelphiawritersconference I’ve been finishing up my novel and working on my query letter. Getting the query letter right is helping me focus on pitching the novel. I’m worried it’s a little short (the novel) but I’m hopeful someone will bite and ask for pages.

 

Born in the poorest village on the mountain, Aarya is unwavering in her pursuit of the special training needed to become a jeweler. All she has to do is impress her apprenticeship’s Mistress. Hard to do when she’s competing against the magical elite, long-lived humans who can literally heat-treat gems with their hands. Then the dreams come, playing through her sleep like memories gone bad: sled rides ending in screams, vibrant days fading into black and white, a child begging for help, and, always, a voice begging Aarya to join with it; claiming her.

As the children in her town fall ill and begin dying, Aarya realizes the truth. Her dreams are actually happening and a creature hunts the children of her village. Aarya worries her sickly sister is next. When the adults in her community dismiss Aarya’s concerns and dreams as hysteria, she turns to her best friend Jasmine. Together with Aarya’s magic-wielding competition-turned-ally George, they begin uncovering the secrets of the Gillion, a creature connected to one of Aarya’s past lives. But, some secrets are buried deep and as the teenagers learn of the Gillion’s origins, they unwittingly discover and help release a dark power meant to remain forgotten.

Aarya and her friends find themselves in the midst of a losing fight not just against the Gillion, but also a community determined to blame Aarya for the children’s deaths. Now, Aarya must make the hardest decision of her life. She could choose the safe path and destroy the Gillion, saving her village but leaving her friends to an uncertain fate at the hands of her community. However, as the whispered promises of the Gillion grow more compelling and her girlfriend’s life is threatened, she must weigh the cost of the risker choice: join with the Gillion and attempt to harness its hunger to save her friends.

The Elephant in the Room: Race, Sexuality, and Social Mobility in my YA High Dark Fantasy Novel

My post today is about topics I’ve chosen to represent in my high dark fantasy novel. I would love to say this was all my own decision and I was brave enough to write this character on my own. However, a friend challenged me and I’m very glad she did.

The Challenge (this was months ago but the conversation went something like this):

Indian Friend: “… you know, I didn’t have an Indian heroine in fantasy stories when I was a teenager. Could you write one for me?”

Caucasian Me: “I don’t know a lot about your culture, I wouldn’t want to do it injustice.”

Indian Friend: “That’s like saying because I’m Indian I can’t write a white character. I’ll help you research and I’ll beta read. Give it a shot and see what you can do.”

Caucasian Me: *thinks*. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

Weeks later looking at my novel, “Okay, if the main character is Indian I can’t just change her name and physical description. I don’t want to white wash this….”

Lots of conversations with my friend later and the things I changed included: some customs, fashion, naming conventions, character descriptions, actively describing various races throughout the story, and things I probably can’t even remember anymore.

This challenge has been very rewarding and helped me expand my characters in my story and in helping me represent the diversity I want in the story. I always had a multi-cultural world, this just helped give me the confidence to expand it to the main character.

The world tropes I didn’t want in my story:

Here are a few things I actively decided to avoid:

• Everybody is straight
• A social norm is being gay has to be hidden
• Everybody is white or race isn’t mentioned
• The world is basically medieval England renamed with magic

My main character is an Indian sixteen year old girl who lives at the top of a mountain, socially and economically the worst place to grow up in her community. She dreams of moving down toward the Valley Settlement and up in the social structure.

Although the book is fantasy, I’ve been trying to have Indian culture and fashion significantly influence the country.  I’ve been doing a lot of research and I have a friend coming over today to help explain traditional Indian fashion (South Asia not Native Americans). She and I had many conversations about Indian fashion and today she’s bringing her Sari to explain how it works and the differences. I owe her!

Discussions I wanted in my story:

While writing I’ve been pushing myself to have a high fantasy story that has multi-dimensional characters who deal with many of the same common issues we do:

• Social mobility
• Race and Racism: although instead of being based on skin color, it’s based on the long-lived races versus the short-lived races.
• Having homosexuality and asexuality represented without or with minimal social stigma
  • Part of this is giving me a headache because there are all new tropes I needed to familiarize myself with. I’m happy I did because it’s letting me see the potential pitfalls.
• Teenagers who don’t always trust that adults know what they’re talking about
  • I was a teenager once! Adults are fallible so I’m trying to show both kinds of adults.

When other people have asked what I’m focusing on or working on in term of cutting edge topics I mention the list above. I was speaking with a woman who is probably in her forties and talking about this. When I mentioned the main character was Indian and the parts of the story which focused on LGBTQIA social norms in the world, she didn’t ask me if I’d researched Indian culture. Instead she focused on whether or not I’d researched LGBTQIA cultures.

The answer to both is yes, I don’t rank one above the other. Both elements influence a core piece of the world but neither are exactly the same as we see them here. There is a history in the real world we must take into account, luckily in Fantasy I create that history.

So, this is what I’ve been doing while working on my novel. What have you been doing to expand you world and enrich the lives of your characters? Do you feel this kind of research and attention to detail is hindering or helpful in your own writing?

I’d be happy to expand on any of these topics if anyone is interested.

The Gillion

I’ve been posting a lot of poetry but I’m also working on a young adult dark high fantasy novel. Here’s a bit of the pitch for it. Down below you’ll see the poem I wrote in college. The poem informed the flash fiction that is becoming the novel. Would you want to read this?

Pitch:

Death rolls over the mind, a lingering pain as dreams are slowly devoured. Mint scorches the air. A boy screams. Still, an ever persistent hunger lingers. Always so empty. Always alone. A mother walks into a room and sees a creature with glowing blue eyes leaning over her son. Sixteen-year-old Aarya wakes up screaming. Nightmares. The creature disappears. Days later, the boy dies. It wasn’t just a dream; it was the first of many deaths.

Poem:

I wrote this at least six years ago. It is the inspiration for my novel but is quite different in how everything works. However, I felt this would be fun to post and share with everyone.

The Gillion

The trees shook and shivered as the moon rose to its zenith
The felines hissed and canines barked voices raised in fear
People ducked inside as the rain cascaded down
And a jackal’s woeful cries echoed in my ear

The moon screamed once as a shadow took its glow
The stars hid and whispered as their master stole their light
You might ignore the cats, and tell the dogs to shush
But when the sky goes black turn in for the night

I’m sure you’re wondering, what caused this scene to peak
What caused the barks and meows, and made the moon go out
Have you heard of the Gillion, monsters of the sky
Who swoop and dive and strike when the darkness is about

The Gillion are the remnants of those forbidden dreams
Phantasms of a world of darkness and spite
Where dreamers are forbidden and children are concealed
And death is dealt quickly for each imagined slight

They always find our world a most pleasant place to feed
Culling out dreams burned with incandescent light
They cross at new moon to hunt as we dream
Of futures and fancies and the next day’s delight

Their long midnight tails pull the thoughts from our minds
They then tie them and bind them and lock them away
They feed on our hopes and devour our dreams
Until our dreams are but shards in thoughtless disarray

They say the summer sun will scare them away
And when soundly sleeping they’ll ignore our beds
They claim that a child can slay them from the sky
But that battle must be fought where only dreamers tread

Many weeks have passed since I was called to war
The felines hissed and canines barked warning all to hide
The trees shook and shivered as the moon hid away
That night I fought a Gillion and watched two worlds collide

He hunted me all night, my dreams an eerie call
I laughed as I hid preparing to do war
He finally caught my dreams and drug me to his side
I swooped and dived and then let out a mighty roar

I twisted from his grasp and grabbed my deepest dream
I focused deep inside and stuck a mighty hit
The brawl was long and fearsome but victory was mine
And down fell a Gillion made to finally submit

No more will we fear, the Gillion’s midnight romps
They no longer cross the border at the jackal’s woeful call
Fear not, my friends, a Gillion was destroyed by my blow
And at last he released dreams stolen from us all

Queries, Novels, and Sequels…

I’ve nearly finished my first novel. Two friends and looking it over for any remaining grammatical uncertainties or any story issues. For better or for worse I’ve finished a query letter and a synopsis. I have a “submission package” document ready to go. To wrap this novel up I just need to look through the edits once they’re sent back and start the query process. Over the last months I’ve taken some time off of writing stories and worked on the submission documents. Anyone who tells you writing a query or synopsis is easy is lying. Or, at least in my case they are. I found creating these documents really difficult.  The multiple POV issue didn’t help! Which stories and intrinsic? What can be left out? What are preconceptions a reader might have? So much to juggle and think about…. ugh.

A few weeks ago I started outlining the sequel.  I’m using Scrivener to outline this novel. That’s something I didn’t do for the first and in hindsight I regret.  That being said, I don’t know if I would have known how to outline a novel. I never did it for papers in school so I think I needed to work through the process. For my first novel I shot from the hip and had to rewrite and reorganize. I had to create an ending, to revamp the middle, to cut and rewrite thousands of words. I want this to be more focused. I want to do half my brainstorming up front. Then, I want to hide and to write. I want to return to Agrini and my lords and ladies. I want to watch characters fall in and out of love, to see the machinations of gods and goddesses, kings and paupers, come to fruition or fail. The Shadow of the Labyrinth (oooh! title perhaps?)  is going to cover this novel. Sebelina will be stronger than in the first novel, she will rise, get knocked down, and come back all the better.

And now, a bit about our antagonist Edric and his first taste of magic from his sorceress Shira:

Shira’s already pale skin shone white as pulse after pulse of red energy shimmered down the ribbons, circling her flesh, and then reaching out toward him. He gasped, his own pale flesh stained red from the scalding touch of magic burning its way up his arm. After long moments of agony, the pain faded and he began to feel stronger, better, more. He could think of no other word. He could scarcely think. He was more.

Anyone else struggle with query or synopsis? How about a title for your novel? Do you outline or shoot from the hip?

Transported

Every time I sit down to write I’m transported into a world that I’ve created. For those minutes (sometimes hours) I allow myself to be swept away be an imaginary character I’ve created. Along with the joy of spending time with these friends and enemies, is a sense of responsibility to find and tell their stories.

My current story is older YA. A person at a writing group asked if I ever considered writing an adult story. My mind strayed to the unfinished manuscript I have saved to my computer. That story is 100,000 words that never quite became a full story, which never built a grand arc of tension, and which will eventually require massive rewriting.

I told him I had and mentioned the other story. It’s adult fantasy with sinister villains, sword fights, sex, magic, and death.  At some point I’ll finish that story. But for now? Now, I’m enjoying the world of monsters and teenage angst.

What genre and age range do you write and why are you drawn to it? Answer in the comments!

Pushing through

So, I’m pushing through the tension section that’s leaving me nervous. I guess I can come back and refine it later. I also started an overall motives outline of the story to track the two different goals the protagonist will have. I realized that I needed to flesh out some supporting characters and figure out who they were and where the fell in the great scheme of things. I cut a subplot because I felt it detracted from the tension. I can always resurrect it but at this point I think it would only work if I cut the horror element of this story. That’s not something I’m currently willing to do. 

Tension and Contests

I might not have posted since October, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. In February I entered a flash fiction writing contest. It’s the first contest I’ve ever entered and I’m nervously/excitedly waiting for feedback from the judges. Women on Writing (wow-womenonwriting.com) hosts quarterly contests, the entry fee is only $10 to cover their costs and prizes. You can also buy a critique of the story which is another $10. So, for a grand total of $20 I’ll get feedback on my story and it’s entered in a contest.

In other writing news, I put my rough draft fantasy novel on the shelf and I am expanding the flash fiction story into something longer. I’m not sure how that’s going to change the story but it has psychological thriller tension that I’m cautiously outlining. I’m nervous about getting too hopeful because I’ve had issues with tension throughout an entire story before. It seems to be going well so here’s hoping.

When you write tension how do you track it?  I’m working with outlines but I’ve heard about people using spreadsheets and sticky notes. What works for you?

Lost

Disaster.  So, I disappeared in order to get married.  It was a lovely ceremony and I’m so happy I took to time to really enjoy it.  When I came back, disaster.  My dogs bumped my open, not backed up laptop on to the ground and the (not solid state) hard drive died.  Gone.  So, I’ve lost a lot of work and now have to re-imagine it.  Perhaps this is good but the tension I’ve been working on building is gone and I’ve been struggling to find the motivation to continue writing.   I keep telling myself that it’s find and I can take the opportunity to focus on other parts of the novel.  But, it’s so much that I’ve lost.

How do you handle such a loss?

Working through a SNAFU

So, we write because we have a story to tell.  What happens when the story we tell isn’t one that somebody else is reading?  In my current novel I have an elaborate world which is hard to get across.  Some have told me it’s too elaborate, some that it isn’t.  There is a great depth to it.  Getting enough through in this first novel is proving difficult.

 

On a side note.  Working with a friend to critique each other’s writing.  Very helpful.  It’s nice to have an honest opinion which isn’t tainted by previous knowledge of the book.  Back to trying to figure out how to illustrate this information. 

Friday Morning Ramble

When you read do you see a video playing in front of you? For better or for worse, I do.  I also fall asleep telling myself stories and watching these scenes.  Somewhere between awake and asleep is often where I fix troubled parts of my story, once the scene is clear in my mind I can write it.

How about writing, when you write what do you see then?  It’s more difficult to craft these scenes (some days I’d rather just read a great scene!)  Layer by layer a moment in a scene is built: the visuals, the sound, the texture, voices, smells, even taste can become important elements.  Some of this has been written in the first draft and some was left out.

When I’m in need of texture I walk around my apartment touching walls, wood, and other items.  I think about them, feel them, and then I write the object I need in my scene (sometimes nothing like the item I studied, but studying a single item helps my mind begin working through texture).

Happy Friday Everyone!