• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

What book is everyone writing right now?

Me? I think I'm going to print up a couple dozen copies of my "first" novel (the first one I completed, not started) using Lulu.com or the like, and just hand them out to interested parties.

Beanbag
 
Ian Osborne said:
I've submitted to one or two publishers, but mostly agents.
Click to expand...

Nothing to do with your rejection rate, but I'm curious about your process for selecting agents - only to compare against my approach, looking for different ideas. I'm assuming you selected candidate agents from some database or published book? (eg: 2015 Guide to Literary Agents?)
 
blutoski said:
Nothing to do with your rejection rate, but I'm curious about your process for selecting agents - only to compare against my approach, looking for different ideas. I'm assuming you selected candidate agents from some database or published book? (eg: 2015 Guide to Literary Agents?)
Click to expand...

Yes, Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2016, and some online sources.
 
I'm totally following this conversation. I have exactly one rejection slip and really want to collect more.
 
The opening passage to my newest novel-in-progress:

It was well past midnight when the Mirror of Telling began to stir, couched between the peak of the moon's arc and the rising of dawn. The Mirror of Telling always would awake in the wee dark of morning, though no one in the fortress remained alive who might have witnessed other than the previous Awakening (except for old Morwen, the executioner, who had been all of two years old at the Awakening-before-last, and everyone discounted his mumbled ramblings as nonsense, anyhow).


The Mirror would wake only once during the reign of each Sorcerer, coming to life to show the birth of the Successor, so by definition it was a momentous occasion when the Mirror would stir, an event laced with equal portions of joy, sadness, and uncertainty:


Joy came from the knowledge that another Successor to the Dark Throne had been born;


Sadness as the birth of the Successor implied the inevitable passing (though hopefully for not many years to come) of the current Sorcerer;


And the uncertainty came from the most maddening fact that while the Mirror would tell OF the birth, it rarely gave a clue as to WHERE.


The Mirror of Telling was kept in the Great Hall of Wonders. In fact, the hall had been built specifically to hold the Mirror. But since the Mirror functioned only once during each reign, the mostly-unused hall had gradually filled up with the unwanted gifts from hopeful supplicants seeking favors. Gifts that (for reasons political or otherwise) could not be graciously (and mercifully) lost.


Over six centuries of detritus. Multi-headed horrors pickled in crystal jars of noxious fluids. Suits of armor so extravagantly embellished they posed a greater hazard to the warrior inside than ANY opponent they might face. "Magic" weapons of questionable function and even less use.


It was a Hall of Wonders, all right: one had to wonder how anyone could be so, so dense to imagine ANY of the “gifts” banished to the hall would gain them any favor at all. Indeed, many had the opposite effect.


It was, one could suppose, the price one paid to be The Dark Lord.


One of many.


***************


Not bad for the first draft. Maybe forty-five minutes old.
 
Hey, good idea. Here's the opening paragraphs to my novel Reality Check, which is currently causing a storm of apathy among literary agents everywhere.

---

Robbie looked at himself in the full-length mirror and grinned. He was a handsome chap. No, more than handsome. He was a minor god, a figure of near-perfection. The sort of person men wanted to be and women wanted to be with. With his chiselled jawline, curls of rich, dark brown hair and penetrating blue eyes, his was the sort of face more commonly seen on movie posters and aftershave adverts than in your average high street.

Nor did his body leave any room for imperfection, with a six-pack stomach and prominent pectorals with just the right amount of chest hair. His bronzed, unblemished figure was covered only by a figure-hugging pair of Speedos which left little to the imagination. Life was good, he reflected. Or at least his life was good.

He tore himself away from the mirror with reluctance, left his cabin and strode to the stern of his luxury yacht. The almost uncomfortable warmth he felt as he gingerly picked his way barefoot across the sun-drenched deck reminded him he was in Monaco. His native England was having its usual miserable early summer, but here in the Mediterranean principality the sun blazed overhead.
 
News on my writing...

My former publisher changed ownership and I was able to get my publishing rights back on my first two books. I self-published those two a little over two weeks ago and now I have four novels and a Halloween short story all self-published. My first two weeks on the new editions of Jade & Jane have earned about $200 in royalties so they are off to a pretty solid start.

I had new covers made, new blurbs, added chapter titles (I have fun with those), and a new round of edits on both books. My goal is to have fun writing fun books to read.
 

Attachments

  • RM4CovrsNew.jpg
    RM4CovrsNew.jpg
    80.1 KB · Views: 6
blutoski said:
That's interesting, I'd never heard of anything like that.

Looks like it's in the USA - would they entertain pitches from noncitizens?
Click to expand...

No one seemed to be concerned about nationality. I know there were some Canadians, one Brit and an Israeli there (that I met) might have been more.
 
The second horror in my "Fallowgrave" series of novellas is being proofed by a friend.

I am making my fourth attempt at getting an idea for a romance / buddy adventure down on paper. I'm trying to set it in the same sort of nebulas past that the Ealing Comedies used, but more Small Town American. So... After a war (though it is never quite clear which war) a pregnant farm girl and a faux-genteel magician take a trip between fictional cities that don't quite fit into the history books.

Of course, if I get it wrong it will be quite, quite, terrible.
 
Tomtomkent said:
The second horror in my "Fallowgrave" series of novellas is being proofed by a friend.

I am making my fourth attempt at getting an idea for a romance / buddy adventure down on paper. I'm trying to set it in the same sort of nebulas past that the Ealing Comedies used, but more Small Town American. So... After a war (though it is never quite clear which war) a pregnant farm girl and a faux-genteel magician take a trip between fictional cities that don't quite fit into the history books.

Of course, if I get it wrong it will be quite, quite, terrible.
Click to expand...

...add in some Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny type background
 
Hans said:
I went to a writer's convention so I could concentrate the rejections into one event. Got four

Here is one I went to last year. Here you can pitch your book or idea en masse

http://willamettewriters.org/wwcon/pitching/
Click to expand...

They have their Aug 2016 info up. I'm so close but not quite ready for pitching or query letters, especially at the price.

There's a similar conference in the Pacific NW. It's a month sooner so I for sure won't be ready by then.

http://www.pnwa.org/page/conference

It's also expensive, $475 to be able to sign up for a series of 3 minute pitches.

It's not that I'm unwilling to pay, if I feel confident I'm ready to pitch in person, I'll sign up. I expect a few query letters to go out well before I'll try pitching in person.

I'm almost ready for beta readers and have a couple lined up that I trust. It's hard to tell people you've been working on a novel for more than 4 years but my excuse is I also had to learn how to write during that time. I'm really pleased with what I have so far. I've also read and read it and edited and edited and I'm still not tired of it so I think that's a good sign.
 
It's amazing the rate of expansion I get when transliterating from screenplay to novel. The first page of the screenplay (two short scenes) has bumped out to 12 pages (double-spaced). Plus there's a lot of humorous details and internal dialog (a la Pratchett) that just can't be handled in a screenplay.

But then again, I've always espoused the theory that screenwriting is writing for lazy authors.

Beanbag
 
I have a short story called "The Guaxeneau" in an anthology called "Creature Stew" from Papa Bear Press, and I have a story in the upcoming SciFi anthology: "Last Outpost" called "The Quarry".

Currently hunting for an agent for my novels (eight of them), and at the moment I'm working on a crime novel.
 
Ian Osborne said:
Cheers, I'd not heard of that one. I'll give it a look. :)
Click to expand...

Let me know if they're helpful. If you're hunting rejections, or just the stunning sound of silence from response, this seems to be the way to go. I've had a couple of near-misses. Apparently, I dodge success incredibly well. :D
 
Steam Punk project on hold, as the ideas for Fallowgrave are picking up momentum. So the third Fallowgrave story is taking over (next to nobody read the other two, but those who have let me know they did read them are all very enthusiastic about the series).

This means the back burner of my mind is a little full. The second I,Mortal, book is still in there, as with a gangster romance road trip, that I have been failing to write for years...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom