Agent Horror Story #1

Since I've been writing and querying, trying to get published, I've done a lot of querying. Most of those queries, thus far, have ended in a form-letter rejection. That's a little annoying, to be honest, but nothing especially traumatic.

Some of the queries have resulted in a partial request. My Horror Story #1 features one of these.

This agent was kind of near and dear to me... I followed her blog, left comments and well-wishes due to some news in her life, and she commented back on mine. I really felt like I had a connection with her, even though it was entirely virtual and totally tenuous. I got excited when she let me know that she would be reviewing my partial.

When it came close to the time she was going to review my partial, tragedy struck and she had to take two months off of work to take care of herself. I was trying to be understanding, but when it's your dreams on the line, it tends to drive you beyond crazy to be in limbo. Other queries came in and out, but I had my heart kind of set on this agent.

Then, on the day before my birthday, I received an email. It was a rejection of my partial.

Was it a nice letter, with a snippet of advice or a tiny nugget of insight, given the fact that I had effectively networked with her?

Nope. Form letter.

I had a birthday party the next day that I had to put on a brave face for. I received a few books as gifts, and I had to give them to my roommate to hide, because even the sight of a book was hurtful. I felt like my boyfriend just broke up with me (even though I'm a confirmed bachelorette right now), or like the kid from Little Miss Sunshine who found out he was colorblind and therefore disqualified to be a fighter pilot. A bit of my dream died that day, and I was heartbroken.

I suppose it worke dout for the best, as the agent recently changed the focus of her business and is no longer representing clients, and she still had clients that hadn't sold their manuscripts.

How Not To Be This Guy

I sometimes enjoy reading AskMetaFilter questions, as well as the responses, just to get ideas for my own life, or alternatively, to indulge in my occasional strange desire to peek into the lives of other people. A few days ago, I came across this question. A little later, the same guy posted this, so I suppose he learned a bit of a lesson.

If you bothered to read through the full first question (I read it on a BlackBerry. My thumb hurt afterward), you will see some of the most overblown prose you could possibly imagine, about the young man simply describing his living situation. The kicker is, he wants/"needs" at least 3 days a week free (preferably 4) so that he can write his poetry/Literature/philosophy. As it generally happens on the wonder of the Internet, people make suggestions and comments about something outside of the central issue (he is looking for a situation that would allow him to write for at least 3 but preferably 4 days a week and still pay the rent), and actually mentioned that he might want to consider trying to write under less than ideal conditions. After people responded with those types of suggestions, he decided he was being insulted, and decided to post another question a week or so later, but with most of the unnecessary footnotes, citations, philosophy, and other extraneous details omitted. The second time around, he managed to get advice that, hopefully, applied to his situation.

Sometimes, as I'm idly reading AskMetaFilter, I come up with a few ideas for the advice-seekers, but this time, all I could think was "what a pretentious asshole." I don't approach my writing as High Art of the Highest Form. It's kind of hard, especially since I'm writing genre fiction, which is sort of seen as the opposite of High Art, to keep ones pretensions alive. But, even when I was in school and attempting literary fiction, which was not really my show, I still couldn't see it as Art.

Also, I believe that acting like one is attempting Art, they are sort of closing themselves off to criticism and suggestions for improvement. Can anyone say that The Mona Lisa has technical flaws, or The Thinker, or Falling Waters by Frank Lloyd Wright? How about Pamela? When you present yourself as an Artiste of Very Serious Literature, it's an attempt to silence anyone that might say something negative or critical about your latest Attempt.

Unfortunately, receiving criticism is how you grow, especially as an author. If nobody tells you that the plot is kind of stale and needs a twist, or that your characters act out bizarrely without reason or justification, or that no, you have to double-space your manuscripts, you will never learn. You can take what you've learned, analyze it, and discard what doesn't really apply, and figure out how to work the criticisms to make sense with your style.

But, if you distance yourself from that entirely, you'll never grow into being able to legitimately call yourself an Artist (which I differentiate from Artistes, who are those kind of people who I'll describe below). You'll still be writing the same tired prose, the same bizarre characters that an audience can't connect to, and you'll still be submitting to agents with a single-spaced manuscript that they won't bother to read. Eventually, people will get tired of trying to tell you things, and then they will start to roll their eyes at you. I already roll my eyes at these types, and I'm not even that mean.

Why do I roll my eyes? Because Artistes are boring as hell to talk to. They aren't open to learning anything, they aren't intersted in what anyone else has to say, since they already know everything they can possibly know about Art. Also, they tend to put their Work on a high pedestal, which gives them an excuse when they can't produce. They can basically ignore just about any suggestion, critique, or idea based on the fact that their Work is so all-consuming. Finally, an Artiste is boring mostly because they spend so much time focused on their Work and their Artiste-ness, that they don't really have anything else to talk about. Ask them about current events, pop culture, other artwork, travel, or just about anything, and they either can't carry on a conversation about it or all, or they play along until they can pull back to their glorious Work. If you haven't clicked the link above, go ahead, and tell me if you can successfully boil down the Artiste's mile-long stretch of blather into a succinct question. If that's what he's writing when he's trying to be clear, can you imagine the detours that his book takes?

How do you avoid becoming this guy? First of all, get down to earth. Submit your work to multiple critique groups, and see what they say. If you get the same series of critiques from all of the groups, from multiple people (concrete things, like "use more/less description" or "your dialogue reads terribly and I'm not too sure what's going on, clarify your plot," not things like "I don't like the title" and "Ruby's a bitch, how dare she break up with Rowan???"), then you have an idea that perhaps you have things to focus your attention on. Second, get out in the world, and learn something that doesn't apply to your current project. For me, it's my job, my friends, and archery lessons, which all help remind me that I might be Writing Great American Literature, but I still can't hit a target at ten paces, and I still laugh at fart jokes. Finally, read. Read read read read read. Read novels and poetry from people so insanely talented, you know it's impossible to approach them, to keep yourself humble... mine are Milton, e. e. cummings, and Jane Austen. Read work from people that you know you are better than, to give yourself hope. Mine is The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb. Read things about American idioms, soapmaking, the Zodiac, and AutoCad 2009. Read everything you can get your hands on. Not only will this help give you perspective on where you might fit in, but it will help keep your mind sharp and engaged with the world around you.

On Talent

Nathan Bransford wrote an amazing article on his blog this week, about how one can tell whether or not one has talent when it comes to writing.

No, he does NOT give you a checklist, unfortunately.

He sparked a very intelligent discussion about whether or not talent is important to one's potential career as a writer. I personally believe that it doesn't mean a single thing whether or not a particular author has more "talent" than another.

Skill is much more important, as well as an ability to play to your own strengths.

True, real, honest genius is very rare. We may hear about two or three brilliant "talents", but for every single one of those, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people that swing between total failure and moderate success. If you were a genius, you would probably know.

In the absence of genius, skill can do almost all of the legwork for you. If you learn how to craft a sentence, a plot, a setting, and characters well, if you can learn how to work dialogue and description, you can really do quite a lot for yourself in the writing world. Spend time working your craft, learning how to do what it is you need to do to make your story work better... take classes, join critique groups, and find an editor if you can.

Also, using your strengths to your advantage will get you just as far. One of my writer friends has difficulty in writing a linear story. However, his world-building is absolutely amazing, so he's learned how to craft his stories to unfold as the world becomes more and more familiar to the reader. My weakness happens to be world-building, so I transferred myself out of high fantasy and moved onto urban fantasy, where I can use the world in which I live to make my story happen.

If you can focus on those two things, you can likely make your manuscripts a lot better. Don't worry about your talent... talent is a very subjective term, anyway, and it's mostly for history to nail down upon you instead of for you to take on yourself. Skill and strengths. Let them be your sword and shield.

Unexpected Sources

I did something a little odd last week.

About a year ago, I got a clairvoyant reading on my past lives, as I was at a total loss as to where my life was going. I didn't know where my life was headed, and I was beginning to get very frustrated with the direction that things were going. Whether or not the delightful psychic was accurate or not didn't really matter to me at the time, as I really just wanted to feel better about where I was going, and let go of some of the frustration and anxiety I was feeling.

She told me, during the course of the reading, that my past lives had a very strange pattern... I would have a "big" life where my soul would learn a huge cosmic lesson, and then I would have a few "small" lives, where I was taking time to connect with the people and the places around me. The lives would swing back and forth along the path, and they led to this life, which is a life of synthesizing the desire to connect with those around me and the desire to connect to something higher. Kind of awesome, right? And whether or not that was the truth of the matter, it made me feel one hell of a lot better (and she was cheaper than a psychologist by a MILE).

So, since my life has not been going in the direction I want it to at this time, I figured I'd drop her a line to see if she was still in the business and if she was free. She was, fortunately, and we had a reading about what the heck I needed to do in order for my life to go where I wanted it to. She gave me a gentle, supportive kick in the root chakra, and told me that I was getting bogged down in my negativity, and I hadn't been doing nearly enough to make my dreams come true. She told me to keep trying, to edit my script, to make it perfect, and to put myself out there more, and I could have my silly tale published within a year.

Thus heartened, I attacked my quest with renewed vigor, and I feel energized by it. I'm writing and gathering a few sources to start querying again, and I think that a successful attack on the publishing world could be in the cards.

The economy might still be in the toilet, dear readers, but remember this... I taught junior high. It takes a lot more than no jobs and no money to scare THIS lady!

Inspiration, then Perspiration

I have gotten myself into a bit of a pickle.

I decided that I wanted to start a new novel while I am shopping The Last Fragment. This will be a story focused on a character that appeared in both Penhadrian books I've written. He filled in as the mentor role in The Face-Stealer and took the role of evil henchman in The Last Fragment, and I think he definitely deserves his own novel.

Unfortunately, he is completely insane. I don't mean that he's a little quirky or random, I mean that he is NOT in his right mind at all. He cannot be depended on to do anything or follow anything through, he has no concerns about how he's viewed, has almost zero conscience, does not regret anything that he does, and is completely driven by his own jollies, which are not what most people would consider things that they would want to do. In Freudian terms, his superego does not exist, his ego does not exist, and he is a creature of pure id. He tends to steal, lie, and misbehave for no other reason than he likes to.

He is, without a doubt, the most difficult character I've ever written for. Most of my other characters are a little more leadable than he is, and can be put into a cohesive story with a plot and a point. Unfortunately, nothing that crosses my mind for him is even something I can remotely make him do. He just won't. He'll show up in the back of the classroom, ready to work, and then he'll get distracted, wander off, and then fall asleep under a tree while the rest of the class is doing their arithmetic.

I'm not sure what I can do to make him work into a story... he's always a supporting character, and I definitely want to tell his story, though I'm not at all sure what can be done about him. I might have to investigate other techniques in order to bring him to life.

Long Time No Blog

I'm a bad, bad blogger.

It's been far too long since I last blogged... for the most part, I've been working on articles for Examiner.com, querying, playing on Twitter, working, moving, and attempting to get all of my clothes in a much smaller closet than I am used to.  However, since I'm also kicking around a new book idea (I just can't help myself!), I'm likely going to be blogging more.  Forgive me, readers!

My fingertips bleed!

Check out my page on Examiner.com!!

This is why I haven't been blogging right now.  I have four queries for the novel still out, and I've been networking and trying to talk to industry people and make connections as well.  It's been difficult, as my full-time employment has been especially busy, and I am doing my hardest to build an audience, or at least get a platform together.

I also have to revamp my website to include the Examiner.com space, vacuum the apartment (oh, I'm moving in the middle of all this too) and get ready for a dinner with the family, as well as wrangle the Siamese cyclone that's currently running through the apartment.  Oy!

I'm an Examiner!

I just got a great new job! I know, I already have two jobs, and this is more of a hobby, but I'm now working for Examiner.com!

I am now the Chicago Japanese Animation Examiner, which is a huuuge hobby of mine. I think anime is just about the prettiest form of animation out there, and I love the storylines, the fantastical elements, and the dynamics between the characters.

Chicago is also a great town for anime. The Music Box Theater features some feature-length anime films, and we have the annual Anime Central convention every spring. Which I shall be reporting for from here on in! Not to mention that it's also a great way to get some additional writing credits on the resume.

If I Had A Million (plus) Dollars...

I've given a lot of thought to this topic... if I became an overnight millionairess, would I still want to write and still have a drive to be published?

Of course! It has been said so many times that one shouldn't write unless they absolutely have to. I really honestly HAVE TO. It's a compulsion, to climb into someone else's mind and watch them react, make choices, fall down, and pick themselves back up. It's likely why I was a huge RPG player (stop laughing) in high school and college. I'm always wondering what's in other people's minds, and how they might react to different situations.

So, if I had over a million dollars, what would I do?

I'd probably start by the usual... straightening out a little credit card debt, buying a house, paying off the car, and setting up some kind of investment plan, as well as quit both jobs. I might take a few weeks off to recover from being almost completely overworked as well.

Then? I'd hire myself a publicist, and mount an attack on the publishing world. There is nothing within the bounds of law that I wouldn't do in order to achieve my dreams, and if I had more resources with which to accomplish them, very few things would stand in my way.

Self-Service?

Many people get frustrated and upset on the long road to getting a book in stores, and decide they can do better themselves. They bypass the agenting and publishing process, and find themselves a self-publishing operation. They figure if they can move a decent amount of books, somewhere in the thousands, in the first few months of selling, they can likely get the attention of an agent or a publisher, and then can have their book brought into the mainstream.

For the most part, they also think that winning the lottery is easy.

There are always exceptions to the rule, like Eragon by Christopher Paolini, for example. But, there are a number of drawbacks to self-publishing to consider.

First of all, you will likely never see your book in a bookstore. A lot of booksellers are used to things like discounts, 60 to 90-day billing cycles, and full returnability, which are not available with a self-published book. You might have to sell your books yourself, on consignment, and skip over Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or Borders entirely. It might even be difficult to get through to Amazon.com as well.

Second, a lot of authors are unhappy with the promotional services and editorial assistance available through their traditional publisher. Some feel that their novel does not get the attention they expected when they signed on with their publisher. Even if all you get is a copy edit of your manuscript and a listing in a publisher's catalogue, imagine what might happen if you didn't even get that. Most self-publishing operations offer only paper, a printing press, and binding, and that's it. Anything else is an extra fee, and the quality of any marketing or editorial services is spotty at best.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is very difficult to make the leap from a self-published book to a traditionally published book. It has to be an absolute gem, and the agent is going to need to see some amazing sales figures (in the several thousands) to even raise an eyebrow at the book. There is a stigma attached to self-publishing, and many agents believe that if the book was any good in the first place, the author would have signed on with an agent and a traditional publisher in the first place, and not bothered with going the backwards route.

That's not to say that self-publishers don't have their niche. For a professional, academic, or genealogical publication where a print run would be limited in the first place, it can be absolutely perfect. But if you eventually want to be a best-selling author, you're going to need all the support that a traditional publisher has at their disposal.

On A Personal Note...

I just adopted a kitten from Purebred Cat Rescue!  They work in northeastern Illinois and Wisconsin, mostly with purebred cats. 

I have two Siamese, one from a breeder and the new baby from the rescue... I absolutely love the breed and I'm glad to give another kitty a loving home.  If you're considering a purebred cat and you live in the Midwest, I would strongly consider checking into it.  Alternatively, I would check out the information that they have on the site... great for anyone looking for a breeder or considering a Persian or Himalayan cat.  I'll post pictures of Yelling Cat and her new sidekick, Screaming Cat (Siamese are loud) ASAP... they're beautiful babies!

Stupid Author Tricks

Now that I'm facing the staggering process of querying, I feel like I'm not above posting a few mistakes I've made in previous query-fishing.  Let this serve as a cautionary tale... please do not make the same mistakes I have!

For good measure, I have included a few mistakes that other author friends have made.  Try to spot which ones are mine!

1. Addressing a query to "Mr. Greenleaf" when the agent is a Ms or Mrs.
2. Expounding at length about the plot of a novel, without remembering to include the title.
3. Discussing an agent's blog or website in the query letter.  To another agent.
4. Including a space for a word count of the novel, without actually adding said word count.
5. Querying the same agent twice in two weeks.
6. Signing off on an email with your pen name that doesn't match the name the email is registered to.
7. Querying the wrong agent entirely.
8. Sending a query letter for a novel to an agency that only represents screenplays.
9. Forgetting to update the date on your query letter.
10. Not researching your title to ensure something has not been published under it.
11. Misspelling the word "query".

All of these can be fixed by a little proofreading, or a simple Google search.  Consider yourself warned... these are simple mistakes, and they can seriously mean the difference between your query being selected for a partial and your query being used to line a birdcage.

KatrinaRue.com, GO!

Katrina Rue has a website!

I just got it all together, but there's a PDF of my prologue up there for anyone that's interested.  My dearest writer friend is trying to push me to get a picture of Yelling Cat on there as well.

Querying!

I just sent out my first query letter this evening.

I'm going to pay more attention to this in another entry, but I'm going to gloss briefly over how I chose the agent I queried.

My three basic criteria for a literary agent are as follows:  they understand the genre, they have demonstrated sales, and they're not too "big".  I define big as someone like Christopher Little, who was the incredibly lucky, lucky, lucky agent that took on what was to become the Fantasy Juggernaut That Became The Merchandising Empire of Harry Potter.

Not that big agents are bad (I hope to have one someday, thanks to my own efforts), but I'd rather not have someone TOO large, as I would like to have someone that has the time to pay attention to my project, but is a step or two up from some guy with delusions of grandeur with zero contacts.  I think there can be a happy medium, and I would love that to be my agent.

Ah well.  Let's see how this initial salvo goes.

Weekly Roundup!

Well, it's over.

My novel has been written!  It's shorter than I anticipated, 11 chapters, prologue, and an epilogue instead of 12 chapters, prologue, and epilogue, and 65K instead of the 70K I was looking at.  I think it's a decent length, as it's over 300 pages now that it's been formatted

I'm a little nervous about the querying process... last time, I was emotionally killed by querying for like, three weeks.  I think, though, since I'm approaching this novel so differently, from the writing, to the editing, et cetera, and learned a lot of lessons from my first two attempts, I might actually have success this time!

Anyway, I also bought webspace (www.katrinarue.com) and I'm going to spend the next week building that, as well as sending out queries and editing.  Keep me in your thoughts!

Finding Your Process

I was talking with a writer friend (if you're a writer and you don't have one of these, GO GET ONE!) about how I prefer to write.  He looked at me like I was absolutely nuts.  He told me about how he likes to approach a project, and I thought he was crazy.

Finding your own process is the most influential part of writing.  It's so important, I can't even put it into words.  That said, it is so highly individual that I can't sit here and blog about how you should approach your writing.

My process is probably a little exhausting for some people.  First I outline my novel, getting a rough idea of how I want the plot to go, and sketch out the characters, settings, themes, and chapters.  Then I write 1,000 words a day, until I reach my goal, and every so often, I review what I've done.  I check my chapters and my outlines, to make sure everything is chugging along, and then I revise the outline if things aren't happening as I want them to.  When Im done writing, I give it a few days, then begin to revise and edit.

See?  This is probably not the way that you might want to write, which I totally understand.  My way is not for everyone.  But here are the ways that you can find your process.

• What time of day are you most effective?  Are you a morning, daytime, evening, or night person?  If you're writing when you're exhausted, you'll dread it.  If you're writing when you're at your best, you'll look forward to it and actually get things done.
• How much can you reasonably write a day?  If you simply don't have the time to write a thousand words, or don't like writing for hours at a time, write what you can.
• Do you like writing longhand, or do you prefer to type?  I'm a typer, myself, but some people have a very strong connection to a paper and pen.
• How do you prefer to research?  I'm not much of a researcher myself, and I tend to do it in fits and starts while I'm writing, if I come up against something I need to look up, but some people like to get into their research and learn everything before they put fingers to keys.
• What can you give up to write?  You might not be able to go out every single night if you're writing a novel, or you may have to wake up a little earlier every morning.  Or, if you're a daytime person, you might have to write during your lunch break at work and miss out on the water-cooler conversations.  If you really, honestly, can't give something up, you will resent the time you spend writing, and that is not conducive to writing a book.
• Where do you like to write?  What environment do you need? Can you work in complete silence, or do you need noise?  Do you feel better about writing at home, or do you prefer to be away from it all to write?
• How many breaks will you want to take?  Breaks are important, as the part of your mind that finds inspiration will most likely be most active during a break.

Most importantly though, if your process isn't working and you're not making the progress you really want to make, don't feel weird about editing it.  I never used to outline, until I realized that I was losing the plot of my novels midway through, and then I started to outline and found that the plot got lost much less frequently after I started outlining.  You will edit your novel a million times before it gets published, so why not edit your process?

Titles

Some people have ideas for novels that come with a title, as naturally as the sun rises every day.  I am not one of these people.  Titles are amazingly hard for me to come up with... I never know what to call something, so I've worked a lot on how to effectively title something.

• Pick a word or an image that is repeated throughout the whole book.  That's how I named my current project, though more on that when it becomes a reality.  If you keep using the word "pomegranate", for instance, you can title your book, "The First Pomegranate."
• Choose a title based on the overarching theme that ties the whole book together.  For instance, a book about a journey to find oneself can be entitled, "Raymond's Journey."
• Choose something that describes the major plot arc.  J.K. Rowling did this with all of her Harry Potter novels.
• Base your title off the main problem, or the main solution in the story.  If your characters have to find a cure for the deadly Kali virus, you can title your novel, "The Hunt For The Cure".
• If one of your protagonists or antagonists have a defining feature that is repeated over and over, you can use that for a title, like "Auburn Hair".
• If there's a particular detail that you'd like to emphasize and give particular weight, pick that out and use that as a title.
  

If you're working on a series, please make sure that they are cohesive.  They should have a structural or thematic similarity to them, so they are easily identifiable as a series, and they fit together, as all series should.

Like I said, titles are hard.  Some people just know how to choose a title... it's a knee-jerk thing for them, and I salute them for this talent.  I also envy them, because I have had to find ways to compensate for that.

Anyway, feel free to share your suggestions, if you have any more!

Week In Review!

Lots got accomplished this week!  I wrote every day this week, and got all the way up to 60,000 words!  Just ten more days and I'll be DONE!

Or, relatively done.  The editing needs to be started (and then finished), the querying needs to be started (and finished), and the website needs to be taken care of.

Speaking of the website, I also got some pictures taken today that were smokin' hot.  It's all really starting to come together for me right now, and I'm very excited and hopeful for this project.  I think that this time, it's going to be The Time.

Keep you fingers crossed, Internet!

Rejection

On July 18th, 2008, my determination to be a published author was temporarily shattered by some very unfortunate news.

It was a Friday, the day before my birthday, and I was very excited.  I was going to see The Dark Knight with friends the next day, and I had a partial with an agent that I had a great feeling about.  I had commented on her blog, sent her well-wishes when she was sick, and she had actually commented back on my blog.  We had a bit of a relationship brewing, which is exactly what you're supposed to be doing with agents.

On my lunch break at work, I went to check my email on my phone, and I saw the worst thing EVER.

A form rejection letter.

I had gotten a lot of these before, but never from someone that I had actually networked with.  I thought that maybe, since she knew who I was (I made a point to tell her), she would at least give me a few pointers.  But no, not a word.  It broke my heart.

Rejection is something that we all have to deal with in life.  We get rejected by schools, jobs, friends, romantic interests, customers, and institutions all the time.  And every single time, it sucks, especially when what is getting rejected is something that has been labored over, cultivated, and worked on for months or even years.  I think that we give a bit of our souls to every creative effort, and it can really be brutal when our creations don't measure up.  But it does good to remember that rejection is just as inevitable as death and taxes.  Sometimes , no matter how we might try or what we might do, we are just not the right fit.

Even though creative people are by nature sensitive, it's absolutely necessary to develop a thick skin.  Unless you're purely doing something for yourself, without the intent to have the world scrutinize it, any effort that is put out for the pubic to enjoy will be put under the magnifying glass.  The agenting process is a good way to develop that thick skin, to not be devastated when someone doesn't like something, and to be able to learn how to take criticism, absorb the good critiques and shed the bad.

Rejection can also be very good fuel for moving into an unexpected direction.  After I recovered from my crushing defeat, I sought out a professional editor for a consultation on my manuscript.  He tore that sucker apart, but he gave me a lot of good tips and tricks, and a lot of really worthwhile feedback on my strengths and weaknesses.  His help was exactly what I needed for the project that I'm about to shop.  I figured, that if everyone thought that my manuscript was not publishable, maybe it was the manuscript's problem, and not just a fact that I didn't hit on the right agent or that maybe the market was moving away from what I was doing, and if I could fix what I had done wrong that was repeatedly missing the mark, then I would have greater success.

This is not meant to be a "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and chin up, slugger, you're a winner" post... I don't really do that.  But if you are a writer, don't worry.  You are not alone.  We have all been rejected, we have all been turned down, for whatever reason, and I am right here with you on the Reject Bus.  However, the Reject Bus is a journey, not a destination.  There will be a time when your stop comes up.

The Genesis of Katrina Rue

It may come as no surprise to hear that the name I write this blog and my novels under a pen name.  

It took a very long time for me to hit upon the correct name, that resonates with me well and doesn't feel like a pen name... I played with versions of my first name, middle name, and last name, as well as other names I had always loved.  For awhile, I was Raine Voss.  

Eventually, I hit upon the one that signs off on this blog.  It's not that complex, once you understand where it came from.  Katrina is a variant of my first name, and Rue is a variant on my mother's maiden name.  Rue is also an herb of remembrance, said to improve eyesight and creativity, both necessary to the writer's life, and also means "regret" or "sorrow."

I wouldn't say that my life is full of regret, but it does loom large in my legend  Even though there have been good times, there were also quite a few bad ones, and perhaps a portion of that might be mitigated by turning my life from its relatively modest circumstances currently to a relatively modest success.

My reasons for choosing a pen name aren't simply due to privacy, though I definitely would like some.  I think that there should be a separation between the professional life and the personal.  At my current job, I certainly don't share every single detail about my personal life.  In fact, I err very firmly on the side of privacy.  I don't see how knowing certain things about my private life would be conducive to selling books, so I'd prefer to keep some of those bits where they belong, behind my front door.

Also, the last name I was born with is more than a little unwieldy on the tongue.  It's a natural telemarketing screen, though, as it is just that easy to mangle.  But, it also made my first day of school every single year just that much more hellish, as I would have to take that time to train my teachers every single year how to say it.  And if a substitute teacher arrived?  Forget about it.  Not only that, but the quirks of its spelling have also gotten me in trouble.  When I was in Japan, I had some tax documents sent to me by the IRS to my address overseas.  When I went to submit them, they were rejected by Japan's tax office since the "O" in my last name was changed to an "A".  So then I had to stay up until 2 am to call the IRS eighty times to get me a new form.  Ugh.

Anyway, my process to choosing the right pen name is fairly straight forward, but it's relatively easy.

• Choose something close enough to your birth name that you won't have much of an adjustment period to hearing it.  One of the reasons I decided against "Raine Voss" was that if someone kept shouting "Raine, Raine!" to get my attention, I would go for an umbrella.
• Choose something that means something to you, and that you can connect with.  It might not just be a personal connection, perhaps it's a familial one (i.e. your grandmother's last name) or perhaps a nickname that people have called you.
• Choose something you can live with.  If you are published under this name, it's a lot like a tattoo.  Once you tire of them, they are extremely painful, difficult, and bloody (at least, metaphorically) to remove.
• DON'T choose something that has been published under already.  It's really easy to double check... if you were to Google "Katrina Rue", you'd find my Facebook, this blog, and some news stories about Hurricane Katrina.
• DON'T choose something trendy.  It will date you.
• DON'T choose a gag name.  If you are not writing a compendium of jokes told by second-graders, a silly name, chosen to make you laugh, can be very hard to shed when the joke is no longer funny.
• DON'T choose something too "out there" without a very good reason.  People can be very cruel about names (just see Not Without My Handbag if you don't believe me) and you could be turning people off unnecessarily.  Important people.  Like agents, publishers, reviewers, and customers.  Just food for thought.
  
• DON'T be afraid to choose something that is different than your birth name.  You are not necessarily changing your name, as you can still cash checks written out to your pen name without going through the legal process, and even though families can be strange when one of their numbers drops the name that binds them, you are not doing this to spit in their collective eye.  If you absolutely have to, tell them that Katrina Rue says that it is a protective measure for them, and only the lowest of the coattail riders would have a problem with not being able to exploit an obvious connection.  They would never be this callous and self-interested, right?  Of course not.

Hope this helps!

Great Blogger or Great Author?

So, I went on a first date with a young man I'll call Andrew last weekend.  He and I had a nice, quirky date over at IHOP (I have a weakness for Eggs Benedict) and we had a great conversation.  Near the end of the date, though, he told me how I was going to get my book published.  According to him, I needed to get a website, post a blog on it, and go find the top five "fantasy blogs" and begin commenting and link-dropping on them.  Eventually, I will get a following, and then a publisher will publish whatever I want them to.

Let's put aside the obvious, which would be the fact that as of right now, I know about four HTML tags, and have neither the time (two jobs plus a novel to write) nor the energy (two jobs, novel, Siamese kitten) to learn how to create one, nor do I know how to post a blog on said webpage.  I may be a child of Generation Tech, but I am strictly an end-user.  Also, I have been blogging since 2002, mostly under a personal LiveJournal before I started this blog.  So, the cheery advice to "get a blog!!" is much like "Have you heard of Facebook?"  Um, yeah, thanks, but have you heard of this newfangled contraption called Google?

Moving on.

There is a huge difference between being a great (or good, or even decent) blogger and a great (good, decent) author.  The ability to stretch a theme throughout a blog post is nothing compared to the ability to weave several themes together over 200 pages.  Also, most blogs employ either a very journalistic or a very conversational style, and are driven by information.  A novel has a narrative style, where a distinct story is told, and is driven by characters and plot.  These are honestly two different animals.

I'm not knocking the idea of becoming an Internet sensation before becoming a published author.  I mean, it worked for MegaTokyo, right?  But, the Internet is a very fickle, very capricious beast, and is insanely difficult to harness for good purposes.  However, for a topical, non-fiction blog (CakeWrecks, PostSecret, or Passive Aggressive Notes), this can be a great strategy, though I wonder if they were starting those blogs in order to accumulate enough readership to publish a book.  That said, for a fiction writer, blogging is not necessarily indicative of fiction writing ability.

All in all, scraping up some Net notoriety might not be the worst strategy, but I really wonder if it's the right strategy for someone in my shoes.  I'm going to keep blogging, as I find this insanely helpful, and I might even troll a little if I can find the "top five fantasy blogs" that aren't attached to a specific fandom.  But, I'm not going to abandon the traditional method just yet, as I'd much rather be an author than a blogger.

The Arcane Art of Getting Published

Ahh, getting published.  

I honestly think that there are more articles, blogs, and guides about how to get published than there are authors with novels they hope to sell.  But, I feel compelled to put my own out there, at least from my perspective.  I have two unpublished novels that I repeatedly tried to get published countless times, and I have quite a handle on how the beginning of this process works.

So, here is Katrina Rue's unofficial guide to getting published!

• Step One:  Learn how to write.  No, there are not teams of editors with red pens standing around to fix your novel.  If you can't craft a sentence, please learn.  If you can craft a sentence but you don't understand characterization, plot, etcetera, learn.  If your spelling or grammar is atrocious, learn.  Get the gist?  There are plenty of resources out there... groups, classes, books, poor college students, and the like.
• Step Two:  Write the novel.  Most non-published authors have to present agents (see Step Three) with a complete manuscript before they will be taken on as a client.  The exceptions are the usual subjects: celebrities, politicians, other luminaries.
• Step Three:  Find an agent.  These are the wizards that hold the keys to publishing contracts.  They are the people that talk to publishers on the behalf of their clients (read: you) and get them said contracts, and usually take a cut of advances and royalties.  The amount I've heard quoted most often is 10%.  There are several ways to go about doing this.  Many people go to conventions to meet agents, send query letters to agencies, or network their backsides off until they end up finding an agent.  Some people, however, are fortunate enough to find one of these rare creatures in their immediate acquaintance.  I have cursed the heavens several times wondering why I couldn't have been born into a family that counted an agent among their numbers.  If you aren't one of these lucky people, be prepared to WORK.
• Step Four:  Agents talk to publishers.  If you have seen the episode of South Park where the boys were trying to drive a corporation out of town and encounter underpants gnomes, this would be the "???" Phase in between "Collect Underpants" and "Profit".  I have no idea what happens here, but the agent talks to publishers and hammers out the deal between them and you.
• Step Five:  Profit.  I understand this involves a lot of signing things.
  

This is the process of getting something published, in a nutshell.  It sounds pretty easy, but it's just as difficult as getting discovered as an actor or musician, but without 90% of the associated glamour.  And, of course, I'm really glossing over several important bits, like writing a proper query letter, finding these mysterious beings they call "literary agents", and writing clearly and effectively.  But those are all entries for another time.

To Do List!

Here are all the things I have left to do, in my pursuit of the noble publishing contract!

-  Continue writing manuscript, to approximately 70K words

-  Edit manuscript, get it beta read, tweak all inconsistencies and polish

-  Edit query letter

-  POLISHpolish up first 30 pages for partial

-  Create submission package

-  Buy webspace and create webpage, post PDF of prologue

-  Take promotional pictures

-  Send queries to Top Ten Agents

Lot of work to do!  And since my goal is to be published by the time I'm thirty, I have three years, three months, and ten days to accomplish this.  Yikes!

First Things First

Hello, Internet!

My name is Katrina Rue.  I'm a Chicago-area author, though I am not yet a published one.  As of this writing, my third publishing attempt is at just over 52K words.  I've got approximately 70K in my mind as a goal.  

I write science fiction and fantasy with a young-adult focus to it.  Ideas for the novels I've written generally come out of my nightmares, which is something that I suppose is a little morbid and weird, but I promise, they were really interesting ones.  If I publish something from the most recent batch, I'll be sure to share the gory (not really) details here.

I'm a little dark, a little silly, and a little quirky, much like my fiction, though still accessible at the same time.  Not out there enough, and people get bored.  Too out there, and people get confused, and in both cases, they get angry.  At least, this is my perspective.

Getting a little more personal... I usually watch television in my genre, but I do have a very odd fascination with reality TV.  I really wonder how much of it is as edited as the participants claim, if their TV personas are who they truly are, or if the camera forces them to do things they may not necessarily do otherwise but feel compelled to do with the unbiased eye staring at them.

I also read a lot of classic literature.  My favorites are Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.  There's something about literature from those days... though I no way think my humble monster stories can compare, I love the careful crafting of literature from the 18th and 19th centuries. 

I'm not exactly sure why I'm blogging for this novel when I haven't blogged for the other ones, but I'm trying something different.