From "WIP"-ed to "Published" (I hope)

If I may be real for a moment...no, seriously. I really mean it.

I finally got frank and earnest (they weren't cheap either; sorry, I tried) with myself and started getting my stuff published en masse.

The reason?

It’s called the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA), sponsored by Amazon.com’s CreateSpace publishing division.

[ Deadline Feb. 7, 2010 or first 5,000 entries (be quick). Right now, the site is accepting unpublished manuscripts (ones that have not had any contracts tendered for it) until Feb. 7 or  until 5,000 entries are received, whichever comes first. ]

Anyway, the ABNA contest spurred me to finally stop tweaking Land of the Blind and send it in as early as I could.

Before this, I had sent things piecemeal to various small groups like Lulu.com. I dabbled with vanity publishers, but dismissed them when they wanted tons of money up front. I finally found Writing.com and made myself content with putting my writing on the site, occasionally trying contests on the site.

By not paying attention to the publishing end of the writing thing, I missed valuable opportunities like the most recent edition of Abaculus from Leucrota Press.

I did NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which only gave me the satisfaction of writing a novel in a month (though not one even close to publishable). While I did that and felt satisfaction at writing more than 50,000 words, I almost missed ABNA.

Fortunately, I started paying attention and entered ABNA. Prepping for ABNA got me researching for possible publication sites. That led to looking at online sites and other venues, which led to a flurry of activity on my part. I'd been sluggish for the last several months and needed that swift kick in the...pants.

So, I am now concentrating on the next reason to finish something. It’s called “Page To Fame” from Webook.com.

Now for what I sent out during my flurry of activity.

I currently have part 3 of my novella Crawl appearing in the latest edition of Spectacular Speculations.

I just published They Call the Wind Muryah, Dark Tidings (Vol. I) and Dark Tidings (Vol. II) on Smashwords, an ebook service that puts items through a literal meat grinder and reworks them to be compatible with Kindle, Sony Reader and others.



I submitted a short story called “Onward” for Farspace Anthology 3 and another called “Atonement” for www.farsideofmidnight.com. And I’m still not sure what I’m going to submit for Writers of the Future (which I can only do until I sell 5,000 books or get 5,000 or more hits on ebooks).

One thing that getting published on Smashwords and the other sites did was get me to go back into my old folders. I had stories in one of my files marked “finished” that I hadn’t done anything with. So, now I am editing stories like “Romantic” and “Only Human” to send out.

I’ve also gone back into the “Unfinished stories” and “Story ideas” files for more writing stuff. With Land of the Blind and all the aforementioned items published or submitted, I suddenly have time on my hands.

Finally (and none too soon), I am trying to figure out what to do with Hunters, my first completed full-length novel worth publishing. I had a contract for publication with the late (but not lamented) Mystic Moon Press (an ugly mess I won’t get into here). Now, the rights are back with me. I could try PublishAmerica and let them have first right of publication for seven years or I could go with a small, independent press.

Ah, decisions, decisions.

In the meantime, I'll get my idle hands active (sorry Lucifer) and start doing the research, leg work and prep work for sequels to Hunters and Land of the Blind, along with some short stories from my "ideas" file (including ideas from the 90's).

Sometimes I wish I could be like Bethany Page, this week’s guest blogger. She’s juggling six titles, plus a household, numerous contests and — gasp — teenagers. Meanwhile, I’m fretting over a novel I finished a year ago and wondering how I can juggle all of the things I want to do.

But, that is where I am at the moment with my writing.

Until I top the bestseller lists, enjoy the blogs and view my stuff — please (before I become rich and famous like...oh, wait, I'm not supposed to mention her in my blogs for awhile...let's make it Wendy and Supriya).

It looks as if my attempt to be serious is failing, so I will sign off.

P.S.: If you haven’t read Bethany’s guest blog, by all means do so. After seeing her ordeals, trials and tribulations, your efforts won’t seem so bad. You’ll get a lot of inspiration.

What the hell is a query letter?

C.J. has asked us for our experiences in trying to get our work published, namely by asking what we wish we knew before we sent the first query letter.

Well, my answer is the title of this piece.

Yes, I had finished the 22 chapters of my novel Land of the Blind and had e-mailed the entire thing, along with the synopsis, and some samples to Leucrota Press and DAW Books.

Both companies said to allow 6-8 weeks before hearing anything. Finally, DAW sent a reply saying I needed a query letter first. Two months to be told I forgot the query letter? I guess it could have been worse -- they could have told me I didn't put the query into the body of an e-mail.

(for those who were just wondering -- a query letter is, according to www.agentquery.com:

"...a single page cover letter, introducing you and your book. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s not a resume. It’s not rambling saga of your life as an aspiring writer. It’s not a friendly, “Hey, what’s up, buddy. I’m the next John Grisham. Got the next best selling thriller for ya,” kind of letter. And for the love of god (sic), it is NOT more than one-page. Trust us on this.

A query letter has three concise paragraphs: the hook, the mini-synopsis, and your writer’s biography. Don’t stray from this format."

Truer words have never been spoken.)

Ironically, I didn't do that and, while I got backhanded by DAW, I got read by Leucrota, a small press dealing with science fiction, horror and fantasy. The book was rejected, of course. The editor liked it but couldn't quite get the main character's motivations. He then mentioned that I should send a query letter with the rewrite.

Thus, I 'd had my first real lesson in publishing -- read the submission instructions. It has helped me avoid future instances (so far) of smugly waiting for a letter from a publisher who thinks I'm too stupid to follow directions.

On a side note, I was both perturbed and perplexed at the rejection.  I went back and reread the entire novel. When I finished, I said "Wow, this guy was being kind. This thing sucks." So, then I felt worse. No query letter and my work blew.

So, I set about re-writing the entire novel (and adding four chapters, while borrowing liberally from Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 2, Dark City, Minority Report and Children of Men). While I did that, I was busy in the online field, sending out short stories to lulu.com and createspace and putting stuff up on Writing.com. Richard Yee from Writer's Bumpzine contacted me to put one of my stories into an anthology (hey, I didn't need a query letter, so I accepted; it's a rarity, so don't get all excited like I did). Most recently, Spectacular Speculations has been posting my work (I submitted my work with a query, in the body of the e-mail, of course -- oh, wait, I already used that joke; oh, what the hell, it's still funny).

I also sent out a query letter for Hunters , my novel about vampire killers, to Mystic Moon Press. They were intrigued enough to ask for a sample and then sent me a contract (alas, they've gone belly up, but they were, technically, the first book publishers to send me a contract).

Oh, I'm sorry, there were the second. I'd heard about this publisher called PublishAmerica and thought I'd try them. Then, I wisely did what I advocated in last week's blog -- I researched and found some not-too-kind words about them.

Hoping to get some answers, I did up a lengthy query letter and sent it to them. But, I rushed it and it went out with all sorts of misspellings and grammatical mistakes, the kind journalists like myself feel really embarrassed about.

Well, I may have been embarrassed but PublishAmerica wasn't.

They sent me a contract!

I think I burned it.

Would I still recommend PublishAmerica? I hear they've changed. My advice is to check their website and google comments about them. Sometimes beggars can't be choosers.

Okay, back to my blog.  I decided to stick to my old way of doing queries. That lasted until C.J. told me how she was going bald trying to craft a query letter for Vampire Vacation. I suddenly had the urge to hide in the attic with the squirrels. I soon got over it (the squirrels kicked me out), partly because I knew that there was no way that C.J. Ellisson (no relation to Harlan) could not write a brilliant query letter if I'd once done one that lay somewhere between crap and average.

Another thing that made me feel better about query letters is that I found something scarier than writing one. And that is...

...finding the right publisher!

Oh yeah, no problem there, eh? All the big companies get inundated by thousands of would-be writers, so they've all but decided to accept no new manuscripts unless through an agent who most likely has enough paperwork on his or her desk to make a social worker  or parole officer feel lucky.

Thus, I've had to seek out the small presses like Leucrota (found through an ad on Writing.com). A quick look in the library also got me references to things like Fiction Publishers Directory, a listing by Wildside Press of agents who deal with first-time writers, and that old standby Writer's Market. Beware, though, of Tor Fiction. They're pretty good but they have this list of new writers and they call it the Dick List. A very good resource but, for God's sake, don't ask the librarian for it by name.

Note: be prepared. You're going to find some rocks mixed in with your Halloween candy when looking for publishers, like I did with Mystic Moon Press. Some companies will be out to screw you, while others will mean well, but be overwhelmed by the industry. You'll see groups like PublishAmerica, CreateSpace and WordClay that you'll have to investigate before making a decision (though you should try CreateSpace's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award). And, of course, there will be the vanity publishers, who will require you to pay to get published (with packages ranging up to the thousands).

Just keep sending out the queries. Use your best judgment and, above all, live and learn. Don't let the bad experiences or rejection slips get you down.

As I was saying, I scrolled through many sites online and through books at my local library (the ones that haven't been closed) to find resources. I sent query letters to many of them, but heard back from maybe 5 percent. At first, I felt like Bill Murray in "Ghostbusters" when Sigourney Weaver makes fun of his compliment to her:

"I don't have to take this abuse from you. I've got hundreds of people dying to abuse me."

But then, I settled down and figured that nothing had changed from the day before. I wasn't published the day before and I still wasn't published. Now, it's when you do get published and they start rejecting your later stuff that you know  you're screwed (I call it the "M. Night Shyamalan" effect).

To sum up, I don't dread the query letter anymore, though I wish I could have skipped the headaches I got from them. I know it's all part of a package that the publisher wants -- query letter, sample chapters, synopsis, etc. If I can't sum up what my book is about in one page, then I don't deserve to be published. It's not like it's a blog or something where I just ramble on and on. What counts more is that I understand the process of preparing my work to be sent to a publisher.

I don't really even dread the publisher. Once, they all used to be giant, drooling monsters hovering over desk tops, stuffing SASEs with brightly-colored rejection slips. Then, I realized that I was just scaring myself needlessly and had gotten it all wrong -- the rejection slips weren't brightly-colored.

In all seriousness, it was kind of scary.

But, not as scary as not trying. For the readers, there might be some benefits to be found in not trying, in seeking safety with the masses. But, most of the time, that doesn't work. There's a certain portion of the population that likes to drag go-getters down to their "safe" level because they don't have the chutzpah to do something outside the box. Those people are called human beings. We call them "the masses" for clarity.

If it helps you, do what I do (and I tend to do this a lot because there are too many people with my skin color who think science fiction is for white people). Think of the query letter as giving all of those naysayers the middle finger.

And when you get published, give them two, along with an autographed copy.