"Womance Witing"

Recently, I went to Vegas and met up with two writer friends. We had a blast (but that's a whole 'nother story). At one point, one of the writers revealed she can read tarot cards and offered us a reading.


It was terrific and created a nice bonding moment for us all. Reading the cards is often subjective and I felt our friend did a fabulous job. The moment opened up to us talking about the industry, trying to stay the course, and our rejections. I even dug through my old email for my first rejection letter so they could share in my very first smack down from an agent.


They laughed their asses off and then sat in shock. Even at the time I received it, I didn't take it seriously. I laughed. Looking back, it is kind of odd a professional used made up words when giving any writer a rejection. My friends encouraged me to share the entire letter with other writers, not just snippets as I have before, to inspire them not to give up and to never lose faith in what you've written.


Before you read it, let me point some things out. First, My work was edited and the chapter she received had been re-written like ten to fifteen times.  It was the same chapter I had entered and finaled in contests with and the one which gained me over 600 followers on Facebook. With very few tweaks, it is the same work that earned me "fan favorite" and second place in the huge Dorchester contest in January '10, first place in another, and landed me an agent in March '10.


Second, the agent answered my email query in thirty minutes from when I sent it out. I was giddy with excitement but also slightly sick to my stomach. To be honest, the full MS wasn't ready yet. I had bargained on a response time of three to six weeks.


So, without further ado, here is my very first rejection letter, which helped me qualify for PRO status at my first RWA national writing convention, a mere four and half months after typing "Chapter One":

Hi C.J.:

I think you hit part of your target, but didn't land in the best place.

"If it's not your cup of tea, then I completely understand.  Having read a lot in the urban fantasy, paranormal, and erotic genres, I can assure you it is not erotica, but very erotic at times."

OK, it is very much not my cup of tea, but not for the erotica element--what you describe as the erotic element could be OK.

This plot/setting/character of innkeeper is not a bad idea but I can't get with the narrative.

A present tense narrative entices the author to fill the prose with ignorable, non-memorable details and you fell into the trap.  This combined with the narrator's voice which talks as much about how she receives sensory information and thinks, as what she sees and thinks, places the emphasis in the wrong layer of experience. I suggest you study (not just read) some Raymond Chandler to see what he leaves out and what you've put into this draft. Ex: "I mentally counted the guests..." It is much easier to read:  "I knew we had ten guests..."

Real people's interior monologs don't reach so hard for lush, romance-novel-expressions to describe what they are seeing and hearing and saying. So the narrator doesn't sound like an innkeeper or a vampire, but a script that has been shoved through a Romance Novel Thesaurus machine.

My free editorial advice is to revise by removing any word, phrase, or stock expression that even smells like Womance Witing and you might have a nifty Vampire Mystery. Then remove any prose that describes the character operating like a hydraulic system or computer.

Finally, the fact that the vamperoine has a warm (ha) relationship with her husband should provide the romantic element without carving each paragraph from Romantistone.

You might check out XXX by XXX as an example of an Urban Vampire series that worked for us. If you like XXX, you'd likely like this one too.

Other agents may feel differently.

Here are some links to help you survey agents and avoid scam agents and subsidy publishers.

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html#004641

http://www.sfwa.org/beware/

http://www.aar-online.org/mc/page.do

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/

and you can follow our blog at: XXX

And there you have it. My first rejection letter. I was grateful she took the time to write back and share her thoughts with me. As I later learned, it's rare to get anything other than a stock rejection form letter. 

It was good that I had enough confidence to shake her email off. I can see how writers can easily be crushed by a stranger telling them to get a book and learn the craft, or "here, read what I think is clearly a better writer than you", or being told their prose is carved from "Romantistone."

What do you think? Would you have been humored when this showed up in your inbox? Or cracking open the seal on that bottle of whiskey and starting before lunch?

**CONTEST TIME**

I'm running a unique pre-launch promo contest. I plan to give away ten signed and numbered copies of The Hunt (numbers 3-12, 'cause I'm giving my brother the first two). They will be mailed to winners one week prior to the book going up for sale, which is slotted right now for June 30th, 2011.

Here is how you enter: You comment on any blog I do for the next six weeks. I will notify readers when I post on my Facebook business page, and I will Tweet about it. Each comment counts as one entry (only one entry per post, but you can comment more if you'd like). The comments must be made within the first 48 hours of the post going live, and I will post a "closing" comment when the entries for that day are closed.

All entries will be tossed into a drawing, and the participants with more entries have a higher chance of winning.
BONUS!! Every entrant who comments on at least six blog posts and does not win a signed print copy will receive a free ecopy when the book goes up for sale.


Let the games begin!!